{"id":54916,"date":"2017-09-06T04:20:14","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T04:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54916"},"modified":"2017-09-06T04:20:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T04:20:14","slug":"archibald-motley-jr-and-racial-reinvention-the-old-negro-in-new-negro-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54916","title":{"rendered":"Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Illinois Press<\/a>
\nSeptember 2017
\n248 pages
\n6 x 9 in.
\n8 color photographs, 34 black & white photographs<\/p>\n

Phoebe Wolfskill<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor
\nDepartment of African American and African Diaspora Studies
\nIndiana University, Bloomington<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The painter’s struggle at the crossroads of artistic expression and social progress<\/em><\/p>\n

An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr.<\/a> created paintings of black Chicago<\/a> that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Wolfskill reveals the artist’s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley\u2019s 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The painter’s struggle at the crossroads of artistic expression and social progress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1196,8,17,20],"tags":[52,27497,3027,55,5488,27496,27498,1111],"class_list":["post-54916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","tag-archibald-motley","tag-archibald-motley-jr","tag-chicago","tag-harlem-renaissance","tag-illinois","tag-new-negro-renaissance","tag-phoebe-wolfskill","tag-university-of-illinois-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54917,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54916\/revisions\/54917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}