MS01.01.03.B02.F05.034

8
into the Harlem Renaissance a new genre
in art respective of, among oher things, the African features
these Americans genetically had brought from
Africa. Even the genius of
a Henry O Tanner whose limited view of black genre is mastery given in a subject such as his 1893 "Banjo Lesson" would not be
far enough removed from the confines
of 19th Century European and American
idealism in art to Announce and
Articulate the new Awakening to be
credited to the Harlem Renaissance.

The new visual form had to mainfest it self in
tempo and spirit to the "black is beautiful"
awakening in vogue. Alain Locke, W.E.B. Dubois
and Marcus Garvey, would add necessary
ingredients to the burning flame of racial pride and creativity which
would erupt in Harlem and eventually
flourish in every black metropolitan district
in America before the demise of the Negro
Renaissance in the mid 1930's.

Our principal concern here will be with the
visual artists who were greatly influenced in practice and plan by the
philosophical thought of Alain Locke.
Locke's ideas helped to bring about a turning point in
the visual expressions that black
artists put before an anxious public
waiting to reaffirm their own roots
with mother Africa and show themselves
a people who had artistically come of age.

While black artists pursued a path which led
them winding in search of their own racial identity, they never-
the-less were cognizant of the strenuous standards of conforming the
western world placed on persons who would be artists of any
genre, race or period. American art critics were cruel
observers of the role art played in the newly develop-
ing humanism which was taking into consideration a broader view
of social history, individual differences and national
pride. Was the black artist to be seen as a separate