Black American culture has often been stifled because of pervasive prejudicial attitudes In the United States, beginning with the end of the Civil War. Then, in the early part of the 20th century, mass migrations of black people took place from the South to northern cities. Because of the influx north of blacks fleeing the oppressive Jim Crow laws, a new dynamic entered the the cities for migration away from prejudice. It is probable that the culture changed considerably, leading inevitably to the Harlem Renaissance. More or less during the same time the migrations took place, remarkable visual innovations all over the world occurred, resulting from the rise of modernism, which began in Western Europe but spread quickly to other parts of the Europe and, indeed, to America across the Atlantic. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s terrific show “Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” does not necessarily tie the work of Harlem artists to the extraordinary changes in art modernism brought about. But glimpses of innovation can be found in the general overview of the exhibition, especially in the work of the famous European modernists whose portraits of blacks in America (and elsewhere) flourished during the same time.

The Harlem Renaissance enjoyed an inspired period in art and culture that lasted roughly twenty years–from the end of the First World War through the mid-1930s. Much of the art we see in the show is documentary: photos detailing young gentlemen about town; women and men dancing to the remarkable early jazz popular at this time; and celebrities, some of the moment and some destined for permanent fame. In poetry, the major lyric poet Langston Hughes stood out, while in music Duke Ellington’s extraordinary elegance and musicality made him a household name.

The participants in this wonderful gathering of talents were varied in their interests. And there were more than a few talented artists. The great society photographer James Van Derr Zee captured the enthusiasm and zeal of black social life at the time. His famous portraits include noted poet Countee Cullen and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, not to mention the glittering parties and events people attended. Van Der

Zee tracked a social aristocracy whose names we may not currently know, but who were recognized for their celebrity at the time. It is also important to know that major major modernists in Europe, including Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso, painted portraits of notable black Americans who had made their way across the Atlantic.

While “Harlem Renaissance” is almost entirely taken up with figurative art, the freedom of its spirit, in a social sense, did partake of daring innovations. It might be said that the social expressiveness of the moment accompanied a complete acceptance of art, life, and social behavior. Art thus became a support of astonishing vigor in life, and the same happened in reverse.

The exhibition comprises 160 works across major genres of art. Curated with an eye for cultural history, as adumbrated by the remarkable individual pieces seen in the show, “Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” reminds us that the high energies of the time came from all manner of genres–art, literature, music. There is little emphasis concerning the difference between high and medium and low culture; everything was accepted as valid and exciting. (It can be commented that the merger of differing attitudes, free of class, toward art and culture is one of America’s ongoing strengths.) And the eye of Western Europe was for a time focused on the efflorescence of black America. We have only to look at the great entertainer Josephine Baker, a marvelous dancer, and singer, and actor who left the States and became famous in Paris.

Necessarily, this museum show concentrates nearly entirely on images: paintings, sculptures, and photographs, usually figurative in form. But the Harlem Renaissance was not only visual; we need to remember the achievements of those who wrote. Hughes’s poetry caught the spirit of the time, its romantic relations and innovative cultural force. His songs also commented on the continuing prejudice people of color faced. In that sense, Hughes recognized a prejudicial damage that did not go away. Alan Locke, whose portrait is found in this show, was a well-known writer and philosopher. Van Der Zee, devoted and vastly talented in his images of people, documented the rising stars of high culture and entertainment in black Harlem. He also reported on the exuberant life of parties, nightclubs, and dances people enjoyed in the city.

“Harlem Renaissance” offers a scholarly overview of the time. Interestingly, almost all the art is devoted to people; little formalist abstraction enters into the picture. The outlook advances the notion that non-objective art did not play a large role in the work of the movement. Perhaps the artists whose work is seen in the show were determined to portray the humanism of the movement, rather than an advanced formalism. One assumes that it was important to recognize the personal dynamics of the time–in a way that did justice to the vivid personalities of the people whose efforts acknowledge the importance of te artist making the work–at least as much as the art they made. One remembers that this was a gathering of personalities who also happened to be gifted artists–we have only to think of the constant joy of Duke Ellington’s public presence, his music being an accompaniment to that joy and fervent appreciation of music and life.

Van Der Zee, in his 1932 black-and-white photo titled Couple, Harlem, portrays a well-heeled couple posing in front of and inside what must have been a very expensive automobile. The highly attractive woman, standing before the open front door of the car, wears a heavy, expensive-looking fur coat to match her transportation. Her whimsical beauty is accompanied by the good looks of her companion, wearing an identical fur coat and a hat with a brim. His legs extend across the car seat and past the open door. The car, notable for its expansive elegance, prominently displays a white tire in the front. The background is taken up by three stone stairs leading to the doors of brownstones.

One has to remember that the image was taken only three years after the stock market crash. But this image of a well-to-do black couple indicates more than just wealth. Van Der Zee was very good at capturing the black elite, pictured above. Indeed, he reminds us that such a group existed, instead of the impoverished lives many black people lived. Part of the Harlem Renaissance’s success was a consequence of financial comfort.

Person in a Fur-Trimmed Ensemble (1926, printed latter) shows another example of affluence: a beautiful young black woman in an elaborately embroidered dress trimmed with white fur at the neck, the wrists, and the hem of the garment. She wears a close-fitting cap and sits in a chair next to a table supporting a vase with white flowers. Rugs intensify this image of domestic affluence, indicating that, to some extent, the Harlem Renaissance celebrated financial comfort, which, at least by the look of the photos in the show, more than a few black people enjoyed. This was a time when the cultural advances made by artists resulted at least in part from an affluent segment of the black population. Such a situation was historically new.

Winold Reiss, originally from Germany, painted a beautiful portrait of Langston Hughes in 1925. In the painting, Hughes sits supporting his head with his right arm and hand. He gazes dreamily into the distance, while an open book on the table he sits at announces his calling. In the back are complicated blue-and-white forms that may depict steps and architecture. Hughes wears a suit, indicative of the formality and seriousness with which he was taken by the black populace. His poetry, true to the essential structure of black experience, exemplified the high culture of Hughes’s chosen field.

Aaron Douglas, a major figurative artist of the period, painted a portrait of the important novelist Nora Zeale Huston, whose most famous book was Their Eyes Were Watching God. A pastel created in 1926, the portraits show the writer in a reddish brown coat and close-fitting hat, with a fur tie at the neck. The color of the coat is beautiful, and Huston looks off a bit to the side, as if taken with musings of a higher order. The chair she sits on, dark brown with a high back, tends to elevate her status. The wall is a lighter brown. Huston, also well regarded as an anthropologist and filmmaker, is an important figure in black culture of the time. She and Hughes are commemorated in outstanding portraits that commemorate their major literary contributions. With such distinguished writers describing the lives, and the thoughts and emotions, of black experience, it is clear that their voices added dignity and gravitas to an extraordinary time.

The full title of the show, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” recognizes the presence of black culture not only in America but across the Atlantic. Mention has been made of the outstanding figure of Josephine Baker, whose alluring presence charmed Paris. Beyond the remarkable individuals recorded by distinguished European modernists, the legacy of African art, certainly an influence on the cultural advances of American art generally, also made a deep impression on painters and sculptors in France. Picasso’s great 1907 painting, titled Les demoiselles d’Avignon, is particularly striking due to his use of African masks as the faces of the prostitutes he was portraying. The point is that the notion of blackness celebrated in Harlem originated with African culture–no matter how distant black American culture may have been from ancestral origins.

A wonderful painting, made circa 1939-40 by William Henry Johnson, concerns a black couple in high regalia standing on the sidework.

Each wearing outspoken hats, the man and woman front the taller buildings of the neighborhood, and are sharply dressed: the woman, on the left, wears large red gloves and a gray dress, while her companion, on the right, wears a suit with spats and a light jacket. Behind them are simply rendered, but massive, edifices in muted colors. We know the couple are out at night since there is an orange crescent of a moon. The buoyancy of good times is being treated here–a far cry from the mistreatment in the South that had caused the Great Migration at the same time.

The famous painter Jacob Lawrence’s 1942 painting, Pool Parlor, a watercolor and gouache capturing the hustling, bustling activity of figures in light and dark clothing, holding cues above the green felt of the tables. Lots of lights hang from the ceiling; their circular shades, attached to long cords that fall from the ceiling, offer a verticality meant to contrast with the broad horizontals of the tables. The jazzy amalgam of form and energetic activity in this fine

painting give a truth to the freedom people then took advantage of, when young men were occupied in the pastime of billiards.

The show makes it clear that black enthusiasm dies hard. Even today, New York City keeps the exuberance and volatile cultural past alive. In many of the show’s paintings, the atmosphere is energetic and given to bursts of assertion; black youth assume and assert the free energies belonging to their culture. In a sense, then, the Harlem Renaissance is remarkably close to a freewheeling present that can be compared with the liberties experienced today. Perhaps “Harlem Renaissance” conveys excitement that carries on in time–to the present moment.

To return to images by Van Der Zee, whose eye for the verve of the black aristocracy was unmatched: his 1937 image of a beautiful woman enrobed in a white wedding dress swirling at her feet is a demonstration of happiness and esprit. The woman holds a bridal bouquet while

wearing a bridal cap; another bouquet is found on the right on the floor. Large plants in the background suggest the outdoors, but the photo is clearly taken indoors, in an artificial setting, intended as a background for formal posing.

The contribution made by Van Der Zee cannot be overemphasized. He caught the spirit of the time in terrific works that emphasized the gaiety of a society new to social confidence and monetary affluence. But the photos are more than pictures of success; they are formally exacting and memorable. In Funeral Portrait with “Goin’ Home” Sheet Music (1932), Van Der Zee catches his audience with the sight of an open casket with a lifeless body lying at rest. The room is thick with flowers; on the right, behind all the bouquets, is a heavily curtained window shedding light on the literally lifeless scene.

The Funeral Portrait is as ornate as the heavy fur coats of the stylish couple modeling their worldly status; their car, obviously of great expense, underlines the good life they were enjoying. The image is descriptive of pleasure rather than being given to social argument. At the same time, perhaps the photo supports high society as a memorable experience. Women received considerate and flattering attention; their beauty was an adjunct to the representation of dignity and grace. Indeed, the elegance of the women in Van Der Zee’s photographs can be seen as a way of advancing black social assertion.

If we look at at Laura Wheeler Waring’s quiet, but deeply emotional, portrait of Marian Anderson, painted in 1944, we see the great singer in a floor-length red dress, with her shoulders slightly exposed. She seems to be giving a concert in a museum; behind her, to the right, is a work depicting a landscape in blues and greens. Anderson, one of the very greatest singers of her time, radiates a presence and emotional deplth that is profoundly moving.

There is an equally moving painting of a young girl by Charles Henry Alston. Made in 1934, Girl in a Red Dress shows a slender teenager late in adolescence. She wears a white bow collar and bib, which front a bright red dress. Her hair is attractively coifed, and she wears earrings. The beauty of her presence is admirably given, not to mention her unspoken grace.

The Harlem Renaissance was distinctly American, but a good portion of the show is also devoted to the European masters who conveyed both curiosity and admiration for black culture. As noted, luminaries included Matisse, Picasso, Munch, Van Dongen. Picasso’s drypoint etching of the great poet from Martinque, Aimee Cesaire, is taken from a group of etchings in a book. Cesaire, along with the Sengal poet and politician Senghors, a founder of the artistic movement called Negritude (the celebration of African culture), is rendered in profile. His long neck, protruding jaw, and sharp gaze evidence the physical attributes of a writer devoted to a black lyric vision.

Picasso crowns Cesaire with a laurel wreath–the emblem of poets going back to classical times. It is a moving portrait of the general force of someone deeply devoted to poetry, its particular force evident in the intensity of the portrait.

Matisse’s Dame a la robe blanche (1946), a passionate portrait of a black woman in a dress showing off her physical beauty celebrates her allure. Wearing short hair and lipstick, the woman’s white dress with black stripes is nearly as important as the figure wearing it. She sits in a dark purple chair, while the background is a dark red. The warmth of her brown skin is emphasized. This understated sensuous portrait shows Matisse at his elegant best.

Abdul Karim with a Green Scarf (1916) is a beautiful portrait of a black man whom the great Norwegian painter Munch felt compelled to render–in some seven works of art. The sitter’s serious mien is supported by beautiful clothing: a green scarf with black stripes and a blue jacket. Behind him is a background made up of a series of rectangles: red on the left, and blue and yellow on the right, with the latter bright with direct sunlight. The painting is wonderful, communicating the seriousness of the black man and the radiance backing him. Munch, known for his harrowing psychological studies, here restrains himself–to outstanding effect.

The last work to be discussed is a sculptural head, made of ceramic by William Artis in 1939. Titled Woman with Kerchief, the piece is more than a mere academic study of a young woman wearing a folded kerchief over her head. Her face radiates youth and maturity at the same time, as well as a dignity of purpose and determination. The sculpture is meant to show how both the individual, and black people generally, were meant to succeed. As a symbol of determination, Woman with a Kerchief tacitly defies the racial obstacles of the time. White l prejudice would not be able to hinder the black community from advancing in art and life. So the realism of this sculpture offers more than the grace of form alone; it is also, on some level, a call to action. Black achievement, as experienced in this outstanding show, was a matter of negotiating the harsh opposition a non-black convention.

Seeing “Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” now, the show’s audience must feel amazed that so much outstanding art had not been fully noticed in mainstream America. But the mainstream’s problem has to do with (deliberate) misreadings of black culture. Inevitably, white culture would have made an impact on the black artists of Harlem, who were born and educated in America, not in the Africa of their forebears. But neither can it be said that black art was willingly acquiescent to white conventional art. If the artists of Harlem were inevitably taken with the general formalisms of their time, they also were certain of their affinity with the time’s black culture.This is what they painted and photographed. Black artists’ social awareness gave their art a dignity and strength enabling the work to survive stereotyping and indifference from the mainstream.

To further the point: the black art that was made when the Harlen Renaissance took place may have used traditional techniques, but the content and emphasis remained a function of black intelligence and creativity, not a copy of white art. This creativity was not devoted to an abstract notion of the blackimaginatin, in which the creative energies of other cultures was rejected; instead, it was an inexorable expression of the way blacks lived and thought at the time.

So the artistic outpouring was intuitive rather than self-aware in intention–even though the work concerned black themes. As black Americans, the artists reported on their own lives in their own neighborhoods, where art and society mingled with ease. It is important to remember that many of the images in this show demonstrate wealth as well as an intellectual presence. It feels like money created a social confidence full in keeping with the best high culture of the time–think of the intellectual creativity of the writer and philosopher Alan Locke, whose books made clear what it meant to be black.

Somehow, the European masters seen in this show intuited the achievements of black artists and writers across the Atlantic. Additionally, major figures from Africa, such as the poet Cesaire, were drawn and painted for posterity. But it seems clear that the artists who created the Harlem Renaissance were actively American, interpreting their own culture in a fashion that would do justice to the force of their inner life. Much of the art we see in this show is about public posture: the expression of a confident society that supported a wealthy segment of black people and also produced an art important not only then, but now. The crowds seeing the show are not only celebrating the gifts of a people who had to face hardships beyond measure, they were paying attention to a blackness that continues to be asserted in a new century. The Harlem Renaissance began a spiral that continues today, evident in major achievements past and present.

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