Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art (New Black Studies Series) - Hardcover

Wolfskill, Phoebe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252041143 ISBN 13: 9780252041143

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2017

Synopsis

An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley's approach to constructing a New Negro--a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect--reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift.

Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley's art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley's oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist's complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley's oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation.

About this title

About the Author

Phoebe Wolfskill is an assistant professor of African American and African diaspora studies and adjunct professor of art history at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the coeditor of Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252041143
• ISBN 13: 9780252041143
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248