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Author Wolfskill, Phoebe, author

Title Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention : the Old Negro in New Negro Art / Phoebe Wolfskill
Published Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2017]

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Description 1 online resource
Series The New Black Studies Series
New Black studies series.
Contents The New Negro and Racial Reinvention -- The Art of Assimilation -- Migration, Class, and Black Religiosity -- "Humor Ill-Advised, If Not Altogether Tasteless?" Stereotype and the New Negro -- Old and New Negroes, Continued : Betye Saar and Kara Walker
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 30, 2017)
Subject Motley, Archibald John, Jr., 1891-1981 -- Criticism and interpretation
SUBJECT Motley, Archibald John, Jr., 1891-1981 fast
Subject African Americans in art.
Ethnicity in art.
African American art -- Themes, motives
ART -- Subjects & Themes -- General.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
African Americans in art
Ethnicity in art
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2017001617
ISBN 9780252099700
0252099702