African American Art

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The Eyes Looking at African American Art: Then and Now African American art was a very big part of the Harlem Renaissance and is just as important today. The audiences for this art have changed throughout the decades. Many artists during the Harlem Renaissance have influenced art during that time period and continue to today. Presently there are museums and celebrations to honor African American art. This is a very big change from the Harlem Renaissance. Even though the Harlem Renaissance was a break through time period for African American art, the white shadow was always over it. Lets take a look at how the audience of African American art has changed and what it looks like today compared to in the past. Harlem, New York City was …show more content…
This is very true especially since it pertains to Jacob Lawrence. The Museum of Modern Art or MOMA issued an essay all about this wonderful man called “One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North”. Jacob Lawrence completed a series of pieces based on the Great Migration. They were each a small painting but displayed a serious issue. They were the first series of painting to actually show African American struggles during this migration period. The struggles of starvation, crowded trains, and the feeling of missing family are portrayed. In the MOMA essay it states “Lawrence’s work is now an icon in both collections, a landmark in the history of modern art, and a key example of the way that history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era” (One-Way Ticket). Now many Caucasian and African American people appreciate Lawrence’s work. They are displayed in the MOMA and are all over the Internet for people to view. As opposed to the past, many peoples of all cultures can relate to these …show more content…
Langston Hughes composed a whole essay called The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain written in 1926. This piece of work describes the disappointment for a poet friend who wished to be more like white writers. Hughes’ essay spoke to the concerns of the Harlem Renaissance as it commemorated African American advances such as music, art, and literary. Hughes stated “…and even among the better classes with their "white" culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work” (Hughes). He is explaining that white and black cultures were very different. Today African Americans and Caucasians do have some different traditions but both races come together to celebrate each. In that time white and black writers and styles were
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