HARLEM RENAISSANCE, THE: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 (Circles of the Twentieth Century)

Book Description

The first book in the Circles of the Twentieth Century series which focuses on writers, artists, poets, hostesses and patrons who played a role in moderism as we know it. Watson explores the lively and fascinating people who helped bring about what became known as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Customer Reviews:

It's good.......2006-06-28

This is a worthwhile and well-researched book. It is more scholarly than I expected, and as a result, it took me a while to get fully engaged in. By the time I got to the section discussing the jazz artists, it was hard to put down. I was familiar with most of the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance to some extent. The book painted a more vivid picture of many of them, and gave keen perspectives on the social and economic milieu that helped to shape the period. It was fascinating to read about some of the interlocking relationships, in particular the relationships between Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Charlotte Mason. Examples such as this changed my notion of writing always being an insular profession. The men and women of the Harlem Renaissance benefited by each other's support as well as competition.

Outlined the experience but no depth.......1998-06-12

In my journey to explore the Harlem Renaissance, I started with this book. I felt the author gave a good basic view of the era but he left out the soul. He focused on six or seven primary personalities of the time, from Langston Hughes to Zora Neale Hurston, and tied the times into their existence. I was left feeling like there had to be more about the era. The author also chases around issues of major character homosexuality, stating it but not really being clear about it. I was ready for it to end.

This book is informative, entertaining, coherent........1998-02-07

I read this book in hardcover as well as several others for a paper I wrote. The author was able to take the disparate threads of musicians, artists, writers and benefactors who contributed to the Renaissance and weave together a chronology that contained pictures, specific information about the "hotspots" in Harlem and complete, sometimes intimate portraits of all concerned. If the Harlem Renaissance was ever to be depicted in a movie, this book would be a ready-made screen play. The hardcover edition is worth the extra money.

Their Eyes Were Watching God= A Great Book!!.......1997-11-03

I really enjoyed this book. I had to read it for an english class. At first I thought it was going to be hard to read and dumb due to the dialect, but as I read further into the book, I found out what a great book it was and why it was on the required reading list. I would greatly recommmend reading this book to any one who hasnot. It deals with a black woman's search for indeoendence over 25 years and 3 marriages. It is a great book and gets TWO thumbs up from me!!!

Black Art: Ancestral Legacy : The African Impulse in African American Art

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Black Art: Ancestral Legacy : The African Impulse in African American Art
Alvia J. Wardlaw
Manufacturer: Harry N Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy

ASIN: 0810931044

Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film (Culture and the Moving Image)

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Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film (Culture and the Moving Image)
Paula J. Massood
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1592130038

Book Description

In Black City Cinema, Paula Massood shows how popular films reflected the massive social changes that resulted from the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, West, and Mid-West during the first three decades of the twentieth century. By the onset of the Depression, the Black population had become primarily urban, transforming individual lives as well as urban experience and culture.

Massood probes into the relationship of place and time, showing how urban settings became an intrinsic element of African American film as Black people became more firmly rooted in urban spaces and more visible as historical and political subjects. Illuminating the intersections of film, history, politics, and urban discourse, she considers the chief genres of African American and Hollywood narrative film: the black cast musicals of the 1920s and the "race" films of the early sound era to blaxploitation and hood films, as well as the work of Spike Lee toward the end of the century. As it examines such a wide range of films over much of the twentieth century, this book offers a unique map of Black representations in film.

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Contexts, Talents, and Cross-fertilization

20th Century Black Art Discussed in Dynamic Fashion

Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (World of Art)
Richard J. Powell
Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Pop Culture | Graphic Design | Design & Decorative Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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African American Art and Artists

Black Art: A Cultural History (World of Art)

African-american Art (Oxford History of Art)

A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present

Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation

ASIN: 0500202958

Customer Reviews:

Contexts, Talents, and Cross-fertilization.......2001-12-10

Richard J. Powell's Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century is fascinating reading for ever type of reader: aficionados of Negritude, lovers of prints, paintings, or sculpture, lovers of cinema and pop culture, students of Caribbean cultures, lovers of contemporary or modern art, and students of African-American history. There is truly something here for everyone. This small paperback book is jammed with illustrations rarely seen. Powell's keen eye and sharp intellect make this a rare treat. Powell approaches his subject from many angles, and we are left inspired to seek more. A fantastic buy.

20th Century Black Art Discussed in Dynamic Fashion.......2000-01-30

Examine the African diaspora - a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and western colonialism while learning about the lives of african american artists who dipicted the temprament of this timeperiod through visual arts. Catlett, Bearden, Mailou Jones, Lawrence, and many others artists are discussed. The "New Negro", Post-Depression period, Souls of Black folks and divided souls of the african american (europe versus african) which called racial idenity into question are also discussed. Very well written and I highly recommend.

Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies

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Mercer is the man (if I remember correctly).

Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies
Kobena Mercer
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415906350

Book Description

Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creativity within a sociological framework that reveals fresh perspectives on the bewildering complexity of identity and diversity in an era of postmodernity. Kobena Mercer documents a wealth of insights opened up by the overlapping of Asian, African and Caribbean cultures that constitute Black Britain as a unique domain of diaspora.

As a result of the turbulent displacements of the 1980s, new forms of hybrid identity came out of the margins while others were progressively de-centered. Looking at the United States and Britain as societies of the black diaspora, ambiguous manifestations of this dynamic are critically examined across a variety of surfaces from Michael Jackson's ethnic androgyny to the cut`n'mix profusion of post-essentialist sensibility expressed in the medium of black hairstyles.

Customer Reviews:

Mercer is the man (if I remember correctly)........2004-06-02

Both professors and students quote hooks, Hall, and Bhabha all the time, yet few refer to Mercer's work. I find this to be such a wasted opportunity. In this collection, he writes on diverse topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe, black hair, Michael Jackson, etc. I saw him once in person and he kinda reminds me of a black George Michael. This was strong cultural studies that I think many black thinkers and gay thinkers (and when I say "thinkers" that includes "paper writers) should find useful. I don't agree with all of his conclusions. Still, there is so much here that would make any paper in cultural criticism look very well informed. My only question for the author would be: "When are readers going to get more great works of yours like this out there?!"

The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)

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The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
James Edward Smethurst
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807855987
Release Date: 2005-03-30

Book Description

Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement.

Book Description

Two hundred African American murals representing the breadth of the country's urban landscape--from New York to Los Angeles, Milwaukee to Atlanta—are gathered for the first time in this striking collection. Recounting a tradition of thirty years of mural art, from the creation in 1967 of Chicago's landmark "Wall of Respect " to the hip-hop renderings of the nineties, the book also introduces many new works--some published for the first time.

Walls of Heritage showcases the work of such renowned artists as Charles White, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Hale Woodruff, and John Biggers, as well as the work of extraordinary muralists such as William Walker, Calvin Jones, Mitchell Caton, and Dewey Crumpler. The book also brings the voices of the muralists to the fore, including descriptive narratives by the artists themselves. The book includes artist biographies, an extensive state-by-state listing of the murals in the United States, and informative essays by art historians Floyd Coleman, Ph.D. and Michael Harris, Ph.D.

By James Prigoff and Robin J. Dunitz. 280 pages, size: 12 x 9". 225 full-color reproductions. Casebound book, with dust jacket.

Customer Reviews:

An outstanding, lavish display.......2001-01-16

This lavish display of Afro-American wall murals gathers three decades of murals by the nation's leading artists, presenting these urban wall paintings under one cover for the first time. Over 200 paintings explore the works, history and themes of Afro-American urban wall paintings and focuses on thirty years of mural art from 1967 to modern times. Outstanding.

Justice Done to Great Art.......2000-11-08

This is a treasure. It combines first-rate photography and exemplary scholarship with the splendid production values of a publisher reknowned for sumptuous printing. It is a work that recovers and preserves a rich, scattered and often perishable art. It should inspire young artists to new efforts.

"Walls" reaffirms the power, beauty and humanity of public art-- art in libraries, schools and along neighborhood streets, art readily accessible to people as they go about their daily life. It proclaims the values of their work, their community-involvement and traditions.

"Walls" demonstrates that Afro-Americans have their own independent tradition of mural art that emerged at the same time as but separate from the modern Mexican tradition. Although later it sometimes was influenced by Diego Rivera and his colleagues, it arose during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s inspired by African sources.

The creativity of Black murals is also noteworthy for providing continuity between the New Deal murals of the 1930s and the community-based art since the 1960s. When art on social themes was driven from public walls during the witch-hunts of the '50s, Black murals were being painted in Black colleges across the South, and the artists who gained experience here initiated the mural movement of the '60s when Black neighborhoods organized against racism. These Black artists and their untrained community assistants thereby created a movement that professional painters and local people of all races joined which continues to this day.

The horizontal format of "Walls" is especially fortunate in doing justice to paintings that have a like layout. The introductory essays by reknowned African-American art historians, the comments of the artists themselves alongside their works, their biographies at the end and a list of murals throughout the country enhance the value of this volume.

"Walls" is a major resource of US history and art and as strong proof that there is of the contribution of African-Americans to our shared culture.

A Book for Current and Future Enjoyment.......2000-10-29

"Walls of Heritage / Walls of Pride," which I first browsed, then read, reread, and loved, has greatly added to my understanding of the background and context of African-American murals. The essays, the time chart, and the comments by the artists on their own works, in addition to the beauty of the paintings and the presentation, have added to my enthusiasm for and appreciation of this vibrant art form

In the past I have enjoyed visiting sites of public art. I now intend to carry this book with me as I travel, along with my maps and travel books, and when possible visit the murals shown in "Walls" seeing to what extent I believe the artist accomplished his goals.

I urge that you do the same, and you may come to find that your best travel time is spent outdoors viewing painted walls. And sometimes indoor walls and canvasses.

Book Description

During the 1920s and 1930s, black artists and writers achieved something totally unprecedented: they created a new image of African Americans that truly reflected their times as well as their history. In so doing, they set the artistic agenda of the Harlem Renaissance and gave form to some of its most compelling visions.

This innovative study examines the efforts of Harlem Renaissance artists and writers to create a hybrid expression of black identity that drew on their ancient past while participating in contemporary American culture. Caroline Goeser investigates a critical component of Harlem Renaissance print culture that until now has been largely overlooked, arguing that illustrations became the most timely and often most radical visual products of the movement.

This vibrant partnership between literary and visual talents--a trail blazed by artist Aaron Douglas and poet Langston Hughes--resulted in the image of the New Negro, one that remade the African American past in order to foster greater participation in modern American culture and commerce. Illustrations by Douglas, James Wells, Gwendolyn Bennett, and others appeared on covers of books about black American life and in journals such as Opportunity and The Crisis. Goeser considers the strategies that these artists developed to circumvent stereotypes and shows how their work was received within the movement and in mainstream America.

Connecting visual imagery with literary text and commercial enterprise, these illustrations participated in the modern economy in ways that painting and sculpture could not. Goeser reveals how Harlem Renaissance illustrators depicted the wide-ranging and sometimes conflicting ideas about black identity held within the community: African roots and Egyptian heritage, racial uplift and gay pride. She shows how some artists revisited the Judeo-Christian tradition by portraying a black Adam and Jesus, and examines the interdependent relationships between race and sexuality in the work of artists Richard Bruce Nugent and Charles Cullen, the former black, the latter white.

Book Description

An essential piece of clothing in a woman's closet, the little black dress has maintained its popularity thought all trends because it is always the "right" thing to wear. It is a timeless classic and all great designers have created their own variation. Didier Ludot owns the most famous vintage clothing store in Paris, the fashion capital of the world. The store, La Petit Robe Noire, is housed in the prestigious Palais Royal, just steps away from the Louvre. Ludot has meticulously built and maintained a collection of black dresses, which features designs by Chanel, Balmain, Balenciaga, and Gaultier, among others. Photographs of these dresses are juxtaposed with archive photos of Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Sofia Loren, Edith Piaf, Paloma Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor - all in their black dress finest. Ludot's collection is a delightful tour of the black dress from yesterday to today.

Customer Reviews:

Mode.......2007-02-12

Pefect little compendium. Wonderful illustrations and photographs. If love history and fashion this is a must.

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The Regal Theater and Black Culture
Clovis E. Semmes
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Chronicling over forty years of critical changes in African-American expressive and popular culture, covering diverse forms of music, dance, and comedy, the Regal Theater (1928-1968) was the largest and most architecturally splendid movie-stage-show venue ever constructed for a black community. In this history of that theater, Clovis E. Semmes reveals the political, economic, and business realities of cultural production and the institutional inequalities that circumscribed black life.

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