Re-Presentation of African American Womanhood in Three Works of the New Negro Visual Arts Movement
Keywords:
New Negro, Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, double consciousness, the Jezebel, the Mammy, African American, womanhood, Winold Reiss, Richmond Barthé, Archibald J. Motley, Jr.Abstract
This article analyzes three works of the New Negro Visual Arts Movement in the 1920s-30s United States, in particular how each artist worked towards reinventing the visual representation of the African American womanhood. The analysis is grounded in, among other sources, the writings of Alain Locke and W.E.B. DuBois as leading African American intellectuals of the period considered. The paper focuses on one painting each by Winold Reiss and Archibald J. Motley, Jr., and a sculpture by Richmond Barthé. It examines how renditions of African American womanhood by these artists complicate the reductive, denigrating stereotypical imagery of the black woman as either the asexual Mammy, or the wanton Jezebel morally unfit to be a mother. Analyzing Motley’s rendition of the black female nude, the article argues that the work restores the black female body to its purity and aesthetic integrity even as it complexly interrogates the issue of the split African American identity in the racially divided world of the period.
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