Afro-American Art

Black Stereotypes As Zip Coon( minstrel character)

reflected in Popular
Preposterous ( ridiculous) and citified
Culture
(city) dandy. He is an arrogant with a
mismatched vocabulary. Act in an elegant
way but is betrayed by a pompous speech
filled with malapropisms.

Jim Crow( minstrel character)

Slow-thinking, slow-moving country and

plantation darkey. He spends his time
sleeping, fishing, hunting, stealing chicken
or dancing.

Aunt Jemima( the image of the Negro as

servant and maid)

There was also Old Uncle Tom, Rastus,

Sambo, ol’mammy, Uncle Remus;
Preacher Brown and Deacon Jones.

Popular culture is an exceptional means of gaining an insight into what masses of people are thinking, feeling,
and dreaming. It is what the public likes, rather than the artist or critic likes . Poplar culture acts as a mirror.

Popular culture presented Negroes as comic figures in the period from the 19th century. The minstrel show,
first popular entertainment, had comic negroes as the focus and became widely popular in the 1840’s just
when the slavery issue was becoming a serious political question. Again in the 1880’s and 1890’s when race
relations were at their worst, black man became the most comic figurein vaudeville and the musical revue.In
this way, popular culture’s treatment of blacks reflected the society’s humiliation of them.if humour is a way
of relieving social tension, then making blacks into comics was one way of coping with an extreme situation.
The general public tried to render one of its most fearsome problems into a funny one.

In the 1880’s coarse grotesque caricatures began to dominate. Ugly, animal-like features were
displayed.Blacks were shown with bigmouths, big ears, oversized hands and feet, and sloping foreheads. In a
similar vein, several Alden Fruit Vinegar trade cards treated blacks as chicken-stealing, a watermelon-eating
brutes.In addition to these images, the stereotype showed the black as physically ugly and having easy
morals: sexual promiscuity, gambling, drinking, and razor fighting.

A Ride for Liberty- Fugitive Slaves, Eastman Johnson

Painting by the leading mid-century figure painter

Eastman Johnson, who claimed to have based the
subject on an actual event he had witnessed near the
Manassas, Virginia, battlefield on March 2, 1862, just
days before the Confederate stronghold was ceded to
Union forces. In this powerfully simplified composition,
a family of fugitive slaves charges for the safety of
Union lines in the dull light of dawn. The absence of
white figures in this liberation subject makes it virtually
unique in American art of the period—these African
Americans are the independent agents of their own
freedom.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes

and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the
United States to escape to free states and Canada with the
aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their
cause.[2] The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both
black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives.
Building more Stately Mansions- Aaron Douglass

A strong commentary on the role of black culture and

influence in contemporary American society. This work
revolves around the theme of exploring African heritage like
the sphinx and pyramid. The painting juxtaposes these
African monuments with western structures like arches, a
cathedral, and modern skyscrapers. In the foreground the
artist paints in blacks constructing the buildings of
tomorrow, but rather than writing his people off solely as
laborers erecting these structures, he also depicts black
scientists and engineers assisting in the construction.
Douglas puts a strong emphasis on the two children in the
lower left corner, they are looking at a globe which radiates
light throughout the painting. by depicting these children
Douglas creates a statement about the importance of
educating the youth. this is a largely optimistic painting,
which looks forward towards a brighter tomorrow. It also
has a theme of pride, in the accomplishments of the past the
present and the future.

Aspiration, by Aaron Douglas

created for the Texas Centennial of 1936, conveys Aaron

Douglas’s perception of a link between African/Egyptian and
African American cultures. He depicts a historical
progression from slavery to freedom, and a geographic
progression from the agrarian slave or sharecropper labor of
the South to the industrial labor of the North. The shackled
arms of slaves, rising from wavelike curves, evoke the
transatlantic passage of slave ships. The five-pointed stars
symbolize Texas—the Lone Star State—but also recall the
North Star that guided escaped slaves to freedom before
the Civil War.
Charles white – I have a dream

Colescott- whispering in ear 1985

David Hammons
Richard norris brooke a pastoral visit 1881

Christmas 1930 by van der zee

Colescott- end of the trail 1976

With an attitude that is both satirical and brash, Colescott

uses punchy colors and loose brushwork to parody a
famous early-twentieth-century sculpture by James
Fraser, which shows a defeated Native American warrior
on an exhausted horse. Here, the slouching Native
American subject has been transformed into a grinning,
dark-skinned figure wearing a pair of white briefs and torn
sneakers. A cloudy sky of unnatural colors makes up the
shallow background.During the 1970s, he used humor and
irony to address American social issues by replacing
selected individuals in historical works of art with black
figures. These paintings were unapologetic in their bold
manipulation of historical settings and skin color, and they
raised important questions about the absence of African
Americans in art history.
George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware:

Colescott re-imagined Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting of

the Revolutionary War hero, putting Carver, a pioneering
African American agricultural chemist, at the helm of a boat
loaded with black cooks, maids, fishermen and
minstrels.[2] With equally transgressive humor and an
explosive style,

Colescott
Colored entrance to movie theatre in mississipi

Discrimination, the Migration Series.Panel49

They also found discrimination in the North although it was much

different from that which they had known in the South.
Education- migration series58 better educational facilities
in the north

Neighbourhood – brownstones 1958

Portrait of a black american- van der zee

Struggle riots panel 50

Race riots were very numerous all over the North because of the
antagonism that was caused between the Negro and white
workers. Many of these riots occurred because the Negro was used
as a strike breaker in many of the Northern industries.

Transition –migration series panel3

In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North

and enter into Northern industry
African american migrants during the depression 1940

Hammon's series of "body prints" during the Black

Arts period include motifs of the American flag and
black subjects rendered like negatives of snapshots.
The "body prints" reflect Hammon's effort to assert an
art form derived from ordinary objects and capable of
graphically documenting the sociopolitical aspects of
black identity.

He expresses his own anger about the stereotypes and

racism present in not only society, but in a court of
law. He backs the image up with an American flag,
which contrasts an image of justice with an image of
something very unjust.