Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art (New Black Studies)
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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&apos;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&apos;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&apos;s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist&apos;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&apos;s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation.


Sticky notes: On Kindle Scribe
Page Flip: Enabled
Part of series: New Black Studies
Language: English
File size: 6842 KB
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Print length: 248 pages
Publication date: August 10, 2017
Enhanced typesetting: Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
subtitle: Kindle Edition
author: Phoebe Wolfskill