CHAPTER 2
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Alston: Columbia University and the Harlem Renaissance
Since the abolishment of slavery, Jim Crow laws were instituted to maintain control over newly freed slaves. For most Southern Blacks, the northern states held some ray of hope, through employment opportunities and conducive living conditions. Southern Blacks began to migrate to the northern states in search of a better life than what the south had given. Any thing was better than what they were subjected to. As the Southerners migrated to the northern States they settled in the large cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and New York. At the same time …show more content…
In her essay, “Redefining the African–American Self, This mass migration was an important first step towards gaining control over ones identity and destiny. LaFalle-Collins writes, “… this black migration to in North was also symbolically transformative in that it constituted one of the first acts in the African –American redefinition of self...many were determined to seize control of their own futures and how they were portrayed in popular culture and fine art” . This coming together of people from different parts of the South and the Caribbean resulted in an artistic outpouring and was a direct result of an attempt to reveal the deplorable social and political infrastructures in America. Claude McKay’s monumental poem, "If We Must Die”, is considered the first significant written work of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes poetry solidified the period. According to John Hope Franklin, philosopher Dr. Alain Locke encouraged other artists of the period with his writings on the New Negro Identity and Politics. There were also actors working towards equal rights for African Americans; Paul Robeson, musician; singer, Harry Bellefonte; artist the likes of Meta Fuller Warwick and Aaron Douglas every one working with a vision towards self- improvement …show more content…
One reason why he opted to remain in New York to study at Columbia was because he wanted a well-rounded education one he hope would include music, poetry and theatre, as they were among his other interests. Alston’s painting “Blues Singer # 4”, painting is typical of Alston’s subject/genre of work from that period. In this painting Alston revisits the familiar subject of his youth in Harlem. Here there are signs of Alston’s tendency to lean towards the sculptural and the monumental His images are reminiscent of African sculpture a theme that reoccur in his work. Bearden and Henderson state: “ They nearly always have some of the structural characteristics of expressive African Sculpture.” The woman has a large frame taking up most of the picture plane. The angular lines gives the sense of carved wood but at the same time because the background is pressed up against the picture plane leaving a shallow depth of field which closes in on the singer, there is the suggestion of a flattened piece of wood. The painterly brush strokes lends to the illusion of the image being painted on a thin veneer of plywood. This buxom figure of the woman is solid, firm, sculpted, and rendered in a painterly manner, Angular lines are reminiscent of the modified cubist style. Cubism’s flat angular planes play against painterly swatches of diffused earth tones. Gray-blues, copper, terra cotta ecru fill the shallow background,