Introduction
African American culture has greatly been influenced by African artistic traditions, which mainly manifest in visual art. The visual art that has become the definition of African American culture reflects its origin in native Africans, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Visual arts that transcend African culture include paintings, sculptures, textiles, pottery, personal decoration, rock arts, jewelry, and masks. The realism of African American culture started actively during the 18th and 19th centuries, which was a period characterized by anti-slavery movements and freedom for African Americans. During this period, the African Americans wanted to see themselves through their own eyes, and thus, they developed aesthetics that would elevate their individuality and reinvent their lost heritage. To connect to their ancestral land and their blackness, many African American artists incorporated stylistic elements of visual arts from African art in their works.
Ways Used to Incorporate African Art by African American Artists
The early years of the 20th century defined the trajectory progress of African American art, which was characterized by the “New Negro” movement. The “New Negro” movement, also known as Harlem Renaissance, largely influenced African American art. During this time, many African American artists started incorporating African art in their work. For instance, Palmer Hayden made a Fetiche et Fleur painting, which entailed a Fang mask and Bakuba commonly found in Gabon and Congo (Cohen 21). In the 1920s and 1930s, Sargent Johnson molded masks from copper, an art that had its roots in West African countries (Farebrother). The yearning drove this imagination for identity and individuality was a problem for many African Americans due to racial injustices that prevailed during the Harlem Renaissance.
In African culture, sculptures were carved from wood and symbolized a different aspect of their life depending on the shape and type. Some sculptures symbolize the genesis of humanity, the origin of life, while others mark the foundations of Kingdoms. For instance, the Senufo society of West Africa uses a pair of prominent sculpted figures to commemorate the divine creation and depict a balanced archetype of humanity (Johnson and Oliver 290). In the early 20th Century, African American artists used sculptors as contemporary art to express the injustices and inequality in the United States. Elizabeth Catlett, a renowned sculptor in the 1920s and 1930s, used her sculptors to mobilize support for Black Power Movement by including confrontational symbols and portrayals of African American heroes such as Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X (Cramer 90). Another sculptor who inspired is Edmonia Lewis, who carved sculptures of Robert Gould Shaw and John Brown. During the civil war, they enlisted African Americans from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
In African art, human hair arrangement and styles are less-known aspects that influence African American artists. In African culture, the shape of one’s hair is used to identify one’s ethnic origin, status, personal taste, leadership role, or place in society. Similarly, African Americans have incorporated hairstyles as art to uphold African heritage (Van Horn 153). In the 20th Century, African American artists such as musicians popularized a hairstyle called Afro, which became popular in the United States and beyond. Nevertheless, the African American Sculptors found a way of carving human sculptures with different hairstyles for different types of people in society. In 2000, a traveling exhibition themed “Hair in Africa Art and Culture” was conducted by the Museum for African Art in New York to show the richness of African hairstyles as visual art to be admired and cherished (Edmondson). The exhibition had over 180 objects from different parts of the world that demonstrated the importance of hairstyles in African culture, indicating that hairstyles are a unique segment of visual art.
Another visual art common in African art and became popular among African American artists is bodily decoration. Many people covered a small portion of their body in many African cultures, leaving the rest of the part for decoration. Africans used body painting, scarification, jewelry, and beadwork to adorn their body, another unique African art that defined African identity. In the wake of the 20th century, African American artists, particularly musicians, started embracing body decorations (Johnson and Oliver 290). The standard body decorations adopted are body painting, commonly known as a tattoo, and wearing jewelry, both of which have become an identity for African Americans in the United States.
Conclusion
Despite African Americans living in the United States for centuries, their culture still identified with African culture through visual arts. The 20th-century era of African Americans was characterized by reinventing and connecting themselves with their culture and heritage. Various artists in visual art were at the forefront of creating a unique identity that shaded the influence of European culture. Some of the visual arts incorporated from African art include sculptures, masks, body decoration, and hairstyles. Through the visual arts, African Americans were able to unite and fight for freedom and social injustices such as racial segregation in the United States hence shaping their culture.
Works Cited
Cohen, Joshua I. The Black Art Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents. University of California Press, 2020.
Cramer, Lauren M. “Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life.” (2017): pp. 90-92.
Edmondson, Tiffany Y. A Fusion of Music, Rhyme, Poetry, and Art: A Literary and Visual Analysis of Themes in the Works of Ashley Bryan. Diss. Dominican University, 2018.
Farebrother, Rachel. The Collage Aesthetic in the Harlem Renaissance. Routledge, 2016.
Johnson, Deborah, and Oliver Wendy. “Aaron Douglas and Katherine Dunham: The Exploration and Legitimization of African and African Diasporic Roots.” Dance Chronicle 40.3 (2017): pp. 287-309.
Van Horn, Jennifer. “The Dark Iconoclast,”: African Americans’ Artistic Resistance in the Civil War South.” The Art Bulletin 99.4 (2017): pp. 133-167.