African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History PDF

ART AND DESIGN IN THE COLONIAL ERA 2 African artists first arrived in America in the 1500s. !e earliest record of a black presence in America dates to 1526, when a group of...

ART AND DESIGN IN THE COLONIAL ERA 2 African artists first arrived in America in the 1500s. !e earliest record of a black presence in America dates to 1526, when a group of African captives was brought from Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to coastal South Carolina or to Georgia’s Sapelo Sound. Over the next century, a quarter of a million European settlers came to the Americas determined to colonize the New World. With them, they brought to the Native-American population death in millions from disease and violence. !e reduction in the indigenous population created a demand for a massive, low-cost labor force. !is need fueled the transatlantic slave trade, which grew exponentially. No less than 12.5 million Africans were displaced to the Caribbean and North, South, and Central America between 1500 and the 1860s. West-central Africa yielded the largest number (5.7 million), followed by Benin (2 million), Biafra (1.6 million), Ghana (1.2 million), Senegambia (755,500), southeastern Africa (543,000), Sierra Leone (390,000), and the Ivory Coast (337,000). Of this number, an estimated 1.5 million lost their lives during the grueling 3- to 12-week journey across the Atlantic known as the Middle Passage. African deaths were caused by everything from murder, starvation, and disease to drowning, suicide, and suffocation in the cramped, unsanitary, and nearly airless cargo holds of the slave ships. In the United States alone, the African population reached more than 4 million by the 1860 census: 12 percent of the country’s entire population and 90 percent of all Africans in America were enslaved. Restricted by their enslaved status, black artists in America were limited to making utilitarian art objects, for the most part, until well into the 18th century. !eir creative output included handwoven baskets, ceramics, metalwork, musical instru- ments, clothing, textiles, wood carvings, furniture, and architecture. Most of these categories—with the exception of architecture—have historically been considered craftwork: that is to say, “low” rather than “high” art, re- quiring technical skill but not necessarily artistic genius. As a result, until the late 20th century, much of the art produced by enslaved Africans was marginalized by scholars who considered craftwork unworthy of in-depth art historical research, discussion, and analysis. In the 1980s, however, the “decorative arts”—the design and decoration Scipio Moorhead, Phillis Wheatley (Drawing Engraved of functional objects—came to be reclassified as equivalent in aesthetic by Archibald Bell), 1773, value to painting and sculpture. Played out in museums, galleries, and on engraving. the pages of art journals, the high-low debate questioned not only the notion Library of Congress, Rare of so-called high art but also the factors of gender and class that had shaped Books and Special Collections Division, illus. in PS866.W5 its perception. For example, quilts, lace, clothing, dolls, and other “domes- 1773, LOC Catalog Number tic” objects—because they were produced in the main by women—were 2002712199. 15 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 15 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 15 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  16 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A considered women’s work and thus devalued. Similarly, art created by those who were poor and untrained (including the enslaved) was deemed “folk,” “naïve,” “vernacular,” or “outsider” art and thus also underappreciated and marginalized. !is was not the case in traditional sub-Saharan Africa, where Western hierarchies of high and low art did not apply. Despite variations in style and media from one area, group, and time period to another, art was regarded, by and large, as functional and integral to life, rather than as exclusive and iso- lated from it. Traditional African art, by its very nature, was utilitarian. Masks and figure sculptures—key forms of African art—were created for religious, civil, political, and social purposes. Textiles, vestments, vessels, in- struments, headrests, thrones, jewelry, staffs, doors, and a multitude of other objects were woven, painted, printed, carved, molded, and designed for both use and beauty. Multiple art objects were often used in tandem during ceremonial performances such as youth initiations, weddings, funerals, the conferring of rank, and religious services wherein utility and aesthetics were not mutually exclusive. African gender-based labor divisions also tended to differ from those in European society. For instance, West African men wove textiles using portable foot-pedal looms, whereas women dominated ceramic production, masonry, and, in nomadic societies, tent construction. AFRICANISMS IN THE NEW WORLD Hailing from so many geographical locations was a broad spectrum of cul- tural groups—the Akan, Bakongo, Baoule, Beti-Pahuin, Dan, Edo, Ewe, Fon, Igbo, Mande, Mandinka, Mende, Senufo, and Yoruba—who brought with them to America a rich aesthetic tradition and wide-ranging artistic prac- tices. However, western aesthetic standards were applied to African artists once they reached the New World, as were American Western divisions of labor, and slave-produced artifacts were seen as functional objects of no par- ticular artistic value. Yet despite being dislocated from their homeland and subject to rigidly enforced slave codes that restricted or forbid African cul- tural practices such as the creation of art objects, enslaved artists in America retained a great deal of their cultural memory and creative skills, which they expressed through the utilitarian objects that they were obliged to make. Slave ship rolls and insurance records indicate that the enslaved Americans came from more than a dozen countries in West and Central Africa. Architecture African traditions and practices were nowhere more evident than in colo- nial architecture. Africans were a driving force in the design and construc- tion of both domestic and public architecture during the colonial era. !is was especially true in Louisiana and South Carolina, where Africans were the majority population, and in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia, where they were a significant mi- nority of 40 percent. From entire building projects to smaller individual tasks such as foundation digging, brick making and bricklaying, carpentry, window glazing, and chimney building, black workers left their mark on the 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 16 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 16 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  A f r i c a n i s m s i n t h e N e w Wo r l d | 17 American architectural landscape. In fact, they were the labor force behind the construction of both the White House and the Capitol Building. Africans constructed Spanish-Colonial buildings as early as the 1560s in St. Augustine, Florida—a mecca of the Spanish slave trade and the location of the first documented slave birth on January 3, 1606. !e Spanish-Colonial style comprised “board houses” (one-room, thatched-roof bungalows) and whitewashed two-storied “common houses” that featured airy verandas. En- slaved laborers toiled in Maryland and Virginia on southern colonial-style buildings, marked by large parlors and central corridors. Africans also built French-Colonial structures with steeply pitched roofs and open galleries in Louisiana and along the Mississippi as far north as Missouri. Often left to their own devices, enslaved builders were sometimes able to pattern their architectural creations after African designs. West and Central African architectural forms were first introduced into Brazil and Hispaniola (where similar house construction still exists today) by way of the Portuguese slave industry in the 1600s.!ese forms spread to the French, English, and Spanish colonies of North America by the next century. Over time, their designs—an aggregate of African and European features—became stan- dard in many parts of the United States. Built in the 1790s or early 1800s, the Bequette-Ribault House (Figure 2.1) on St. Mary’s Road in Ste. Geneviève, Missouri, is one of the oldest remaining examples of a French-Colonial-style home that incorporates architectural elements from West and Central Africa. Built as the residence of French Canadian settler Jean Baptiste Be- quette (whose slaves lived and worked on the abutting property), the house is typical of the creole style. Constructed of rot-resistant red cedar timbers that are sealed with mud and grass chinking or bousillage, the house fea- tures lime-whitewashed walls fashioned with vertically placed logs (unlike ▼ 2.1 Bequette-Ribault House, c. 1800. Ste. the typical horizontal log cabin style used elsewhere in the colonies). !e Geneviève, Missouri. home integrates a raised floor and pole-support design known as poteaux- Photo: Jack E. Boucher, en-terre (posts-in-earth), which comprises evenly spaced timbers anchored Library of Congress, Prints deeply into the earth to support an extended hipped roof and to create a and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings 360-degree veranda. !e year 1723 marks the earliest recorded poteaux-en- Survey HABS MO, terre structures in the United States. Particularly in the Louisiana Territory, 97-SAIGEN,14–18 (CT). it was used to construct homes, slave quarters, and public buildings alike. !e Bequette-Ribault House is one of only three of this type in Ste. Gene- viève and five in the country that still stand. !e pyramid shape and extension of the Bequette-Ribault hipped roof can also be seen in the historic Africa House (Figure 2.2) built at about the same time by black slave owner Marie-!érèse Coincoin (1742–1816). !e daughter of enslaved African- born parents, Coincoin (known also as Métoyer) was freed by her owner 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 17 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 17 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  18 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A ▲ 2.2 Africa House, c. 1800. and paramour, Claude !omas Pierre Métoyer, in 1778 at the age of 36. Al- Melrose Plantation, though their affair continued for another decade, the two were never mar- Natchitoches, LA. Photo: Billy Hathorn, licensed ried. During their protracted relationship, Coincoin arranged for Métoyer under CC BY-SA 3.0 via to free their 10 children as well as her 8 living siblings; he also bequeathed Wikimedia Commons. to her 68 acres of land at Isle Breville in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Earning money as a skilled nurse and médicine (folk doctor) and later as a tobacco and indigo planter, Coincoin eventually purchased freedom for her three additional elder children from a prior union. Her formidable clan developed into an historical creole Cane River community. Increasing to 700 acres by the 1790s (and more than100,000 acres by the early 19th century after the bequest of the Métoyer plantation to Marie !érèse’s son Louis), the property was worked by slaves purchased by Coin- coin. Although it may seem contradictory, it was accepted practice in the South for freed blacks who could afford to do so, to own slaves of their own. Slave ownership was as much a consequence of economic and class status as it was a racial challenge. In fact, U.S. census records from 1830 indicate that some 3,700 blacks owned as many as 12,000 slaves. Coincoin’s slaves built Africa House presumably to her specifications. !e structure exhibits ele- ments of both African grassland region architecture and French farmhouse construction—a fusion typical of colonial Louisiana architecture—notably in its wide and steep pyramid (hipped) roof design. Used for storage as well 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 18 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 18 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  A f r i c a n i s m s i n t h e N e w Wo r l d | 19 as for the imprisonment of insubor- dinate slaves, Africa House is con- structed of brick and timbers that are chinked with a mixture of animal hair, mud, and moss. It is the only known structure of its particular design in the United States. African architecture in colonial America often took the form of slave cabins. Although none of the colonial- age cabins are still extant, a number of well-preserved examples from the 19th century exist today. One of the oldest—a rare cabin from the Sea Islands area of South Carolina—is representative of centuries of slave cabin construction (Figure 2.3). Recently donated by the Edisto Island His- ▲ 2.3 Slave Cabin, pre-1851. toric Preservation Society to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum Edisto Island, SC. of African American History and Culture, in 2013 the single-story pine Collection of the National Museum of African American clapboard cabin was dismantled at the Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto History and Culture, Island for transport and reconstruction at the museum in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution, One of the only surviving such cabins on the plantation, the dwelling ap- Washington, D.C. Courtesy of the Edisto Island Historic pears on an 1851 topographical map and, thus, is dated to the first half of Preservation Society. the 19th century. !e cabin consists of a small living space built on a tabby foundation of lime, sand, and crushed oyster shells. It was part of a one-time “street” of 25 such slave homes at Point of Pines. !e cabin’s most characteristic feature is a deep roof extension that provided shade and protection from the rain for the inhabitants, who performed domestic chores under its eaves. Excava- tion of the home revealed newspapers stuffed between the pine slats as in- sulation, a feature that is typical of the Gullah tradition (inherited from West Africa) of papering walls and shoes with newsprint. !e practice is analogous to the use of a grigri (a piece of paper printed with verses from the Qur’an) in Muslim West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone. It was intended to foil evil spirits, who, Sea Islanders believed, found it difficult to pass through the printed words. !e spare and cramped configuration of the Point of Pines cabin is also a reminder of the brutal conditions under which the thousands of slaves who worked on Edisto Island lived, from its begin- nings in 1674 until the outbreak of the Civil War. An octogenarian resident of the plantation site who lived in an identical cabin as late as the 1940s described it (even long after slavery) as “a tough place to live,” infested with mosquitos and severely cold during winter nights. Sculptural Art Forms Colonial-era African Americas were prolific sculptors who created pewter flatware, clay pipes, earthenware pipkins, iron kettles, and untold other useful objects. !ese skilled artist-craftsmen and craftswomen were of par- ticular value to slave owners because they created items that would 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 19 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 19 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  20 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A otherwise have to be purchased. !eir services could also be rented out to the slaveholder’s friends, neighbors, and clients who might be in need of specific products. South Carolina colonial governor James Grant noted in 1768, “the Planter has Tradesmen of all kinds in his Gang of Slaves, and ’tis a Rule with them, never to pay Money for what can be made upon their Es- tates, not a Lock, a Hing [sic] or a Nail if they can avoid it.” A common sculptural practice among colonial African Americans was metalwork. Enslaved Africans brought with them to America a 5,000-year- old metallurgical tradition. Bronze casting and ironwork were long estab- lished in West and Central Africa, from whence the majority of America’s black population emanated. Metal sculptors and blacksmiths represented an honored class in their homelands. !e cire perdue sculptors who serviced Ife and Benin royalty (present-day Nigeria) between 1200 and 1900 were particularly esteemed. Ironworkers contracted by the Edo, Fon, and Yoruba military to equip their armies during the first two centuries of the trans atlantic slave trade were also highly regarded. Blacksmiths were given almost sacred status due to the highly specialized and hazardous nature of their work. !ey were associated in Yoruba and Bamana cultures with the god of iron and war. In Mande culture, the blacksmith ranked high as a com- munity leader, advisor, and controller of the spiritual energy of metal or nyama, from which the society gained its strength and stability. !e status and technical knowledge of the blacksmith was carried forward to colonial America. A late 18th-century wrought-iron figure excavated by an- thropologist John Michael Vlach from beneath an African blacksmith’s shop in the slave quarters of a plantation in Alexandria, Virginia, showed the tech- nical skill of its unknown maker. !e wide-legged and rigidly vertical stance of the figure and its minimalist form implied its sacred origins as a guardian figure and linked it in style with Bamana (Mali) sacred sculpture. African blacksmiths were among the most skilled of all enslaved laborers and, in the Chesapeake area in particular, were allowed to work independently, were given positions of authority, and were sometimes paid for their work. African metal workers played an integral role in the development of the colonial iron industry. Between 1585, when iron ore was first discovered in the colonies, and the 1770s, North America became the third-largest ex- porter of iron in the world. !e eloquent arabesques of the wrought-iron balconies and gates of Charleston, South Carolina, are reminders of this productive age of American ironwork; and they represent some of the finest existing examples of African-American colonial artistry. Inspired by European imported models, Charleston became a showplace for wrought- iron architectural decoration—much of which was slave made in a city where the black population predominated. A well-preserved example of African-American ironwork can be found at Drayton Hall, near Charleston. Built in 1744 in the Italian Palladian style, the structure’s central pedi- mented two-story portico and rigid symmetry are counterbalanced by its ironwork details (Figure 2.4). Drayton Hall is one of the oldest plantation homes in the United States. !e surrounding property is also the setting for one of the country’s earliest surviving African-American cemeteries—in use before 1790 by the Bowens 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 20 29/12/15 9:35 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 20 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  A f r i c a n i s m s i n t h e N e w Wo r l d | 21 family (among others), who lived and worked on the plantation for seven ▲ 2.4 Drayton Hall, 1744. Charleston, SC. generations. Oral tradition indicates that the ancestors of the Bowens Carol M. Highsmith Archive, family were abducted from Africa to Barbados, where, in the 1670s, they Library of Congress, Prints were purchased by !omas Drayton and transported to South Carolina. and Photographs Division. !eir descendants still resided at Drayton in 1738, when the construction of the house began. !e fluid elegance of the wrought iron at Drayton Hall is most evident in the grills of its English-style raised basement (Figure 2.5). !is work is typical of grills, railings, gates, and balconies found throughout the old section of Charleston and other southern urban centers such as Sa- vannah and New Orleans. Influenced by English, French, and Spanish models, as well as by African ironwork traditions, African-made wrought iron is among the most stunning features of colonial architecture. Like ironsmiths, black colonial woodworkers were highly skilled, were often hired out, and were sometimes compensated for their work. !ey carved and created everything from wood floor planes and spiral staircases for wealthy homes to boats, furniture, and even musical instruments. Carved from wood and gourds, African-American instruments provided a unique outlet for sculptural creativity and for the continuation of African traditions in the Americas. !e West African lute, for instance, is a direct precursor of the American-made equivalent: the banjo (Figure 2.6). President !omas Jefferson noted in 1781 that “the instrument proper to [blacks] is the Banjar, 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 21 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 21 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  22 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A 2.5 Drayton Hall Grille, 1744, wrought iron. Charleston, SC. Photo courtesy of the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust. Photo: John Apsey. which they brought hither from Africa.” Similar references to the African origins of the banjo were made by a number of documented 18th-century observers who compared it to gourd lutes stretched with animal skin such as the Jola akonting of Gambia; the Mandinka and Wasulu ngoni of Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Mali; and the xalam of Mali and Senegal. Most like the akonting, the banjo was played during the colonial era in the same manner, with the ball of the thumb and the nail of the index finger. Akonting scholar Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta spent a decade tracing the or- igins of the American banjo to the akonting. He found that both instruments had long wooden necks that extended through the gourd body of the instru- ment and a wooden string bridge that could be removed. Further, the akonting and banjo are both vernacular instruments—unlike the ngoni and the xalam, which are played almost exclusively by griots, who are traditional African bard-historians who serve the governing classes. !e first recorded use of the banjo in the New World dates to the 1650s in slave communities in Martinique. Over the next few decades, Caribbean slaves who were sold to North America transported with them their 2.6 Banjo from Suriname, before 1777, gourd, wood, sheepskin, iron, 81 3 16 3 31 cm. Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, coll. no. RV-360-5696. 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 22 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 22 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  A f r i c a n i s m s i n t h e N e w Wo r l d | 23 knowledge of the construction and playing of the banjo (or banza as it was ▲ 2.7 John Rose (attributed), The Old Plantation, probably known in Haiti and Martinique). Slaves were recorded using the instrument 1785–90, watercolor on laid in the United States as early as 1749. Forty years later, African-American paper, 11¾″ 3 187/8″. Beaufort banjo playing was documented in art by John Rose of South Carolina, whose County, South Carolina. c. 1785 watercolor painting The Old Plantation (Figure 2.7) depicts African The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Abby Aldrich Americans, likely from his own plantation, dancing to the music of what Rockefeller Folk Art Museum. appears to be an akonting. In the 19th century, the banjo was adopted by Gift of Abby Aldrich Euro-Americans, particularly in the Appalachian mountains of the eastern Rockefeller. United States, and was popularized by blackface minstrels countrywide. Integral to the evolution of American music from folk to country to blue- grass, the banjo added one or two strings to the three of the akonting. Its use became a staple of early African-American culture. Drums comprise yet another sculptural instrument transferred from Africa to the Americas. Sometimes purchased by, or gifted to, slavers, in- digenous African drums made the transatlantic crossing along with the Africans who carved them. During the Middle Passage, drums were played at daily exercise regimens of the enslaved (the exercise was intended to prevent muscle atrophy, because most of the slaves’ time was spent in squatting positions below decks). !e oldest extant example is an Akan drum in the collection of the British Museum (Figure 2.8). It was fashioned from deerskin, plant fiber, and either bocote wood (which is durable, resis- tant to termites, and native to Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, and Angola) or camwood (African sandalwood), a hardwood also found in West Africa. 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 23 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 23 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  24 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A Discovered in Virginia, the drum was used in America but was made in Ghana by an Akan craftsman around 1700 and later brought to England, following the entire triangular trade route. !e drum is approximately one foot high and is carved with incised striations and raised rows of wood squares that allude to drum rhythms. It sits on a small riser and is peg tuned (the deerskin contracts or expands as the pegs are turned). Its construction and carvings link it directly to the Rada boula drum used in sacred Vodou ceremonies in Haiti. Played with sticks rather than hands, such a drum can also be seen in The Old Plantation (Figure 2.7) amid the participants in an African- American wedding ceremony and dance. One of the most common forms of art produced by colonial American blacks was ceramics. Archeologists working in coastal Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas have unearthed nu- merous examples of ceramics termed colonoware, which were pro- duced by African Americans between the 1500s and the Civil War (Figure 2.9). First codified in the 1960s as a genre of Native- ▲ 2.8 Akan (Ghana) Drum, American pottery, later studies indicate that African Americans were the 1730–45, wood, deerskin, major producers of colonoware in the southern states, particularly as the plant fiber, 16″ 3 11″. Virginia. Native-American population began to decrease. Created for barter at Collection of the British Museum, London. market, for African-derived ceremonial purposes, or as useful domestic objects, colonoware vessels are handformed (rather than wheel thrown) from clay coils or slabs. African, Native-American, and European in deri- vation, colonoware takes the form of bowls, mugs, pitchers, colanders, porringers, butter churns, and chafing dishes. It was burnished rather than glazed and was fired under low heat. !e need in colonial North America for simply made utilitarian pottery was mandated by the British Crown, which prohibited the manufacture in the ▼ 2.9 Colonoware Bowl, colonies of high-end ceramics such as porcelain. As a mercantile economy, c. 1700, clay, 6½″ 3 97/8″. Britain required that raw materials be shipped from America to England, Private collection. Wooten and Wooten Auctioneers, where they would be remade into fine and costly objects to be sold, ironically, Camden, SC. back to the colonies. !e practice was a circuitous way of taxing colonists. Not only was it illegal for decorative ce- ramics to be produced in the colonies, but even the production of utilitarian pottery was limited by law. As a result, colonists made their own rudimen- tary pottery to avoid the expense of importation, and they underreported the amount produced so as to circum- vent taxes or prosecution. !ose with slave labor, particularly on plantations where a great deal of earthenware was needed, created colonoware in abun- dance in the 1700s. Scholars distinguish slave-made colonoware from the indigenous Catawba or Native-American variety 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 24 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 24 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  F i n e A r t s i n t h e A g e o f S l av e r y | 25 (termed “river burnished”) by way of the less highly polished and more austere style of the African version. !e latter lacks the scoring and painted decoration common to Catawba-ware. By avoiding embellish- ments, African-American potters ensured that their colonoware would not be deemed decorative or intended for resale in defiance of the British mandate. Unique to the colonial era, colonoware was no longer produced after the Civil War. Conflicting theories as to why this occurred range from the U.S. secession from Britain, which removed restrictions on pottery manufacture, to a conscious decision on the part of emancipated African Americans to abandon “slave pottery” as a signifier of their bleak past. Because ceramic shortages still existed after Emancipation, the latter explanation carries some weight, but we may never be certain as to why the colonoware tradition came to an end. FINE ARTS IN THE AGE OF SLAVERY Understandably, colonial African Americans had limited access to the realm of the professional artist. Because they required an apprenticeship, training in an academy, or, at the very least, the free time and access to costly sup- plies necessary to self-train and produce conventional high art items such as prints, drawings, paintings, and sculpture, professional artists were not likely to emerge from the mostly impoverished and enslaved black sectors of the colonial population. Nevertheless, the history of one such artist—a rare exception—has been documented: the enslaved Bostonian Scipio Moorhead (born c. 1750, fl. 1773), one of the earliest known professional African art- ists in America. If not for the fact that one of his works was preserved for posterity in a book of Neoclassical poetry published in London in 1773 and also produced by an enslaved African American—Senegambia-born poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–84)—we would know little, if anything of Scipio Moorhead today (see chapter-opening image). Wheatley, the author of the book in which Moorhead’s art appears, came to the United States on the slave ship Phillis (her namesake) when she was seven years old. A precocious child, Wheatley was educated by Mary Wheatley, the daughter of John Wheatley, who purchased the frail West African child in 1760 as a personal servant for his wife. By the time she was a teenager, Wheatley was composing poetry, which the Wheatley family publicized in urban newspapers and gazettes. By the early 1770s, her poetry was being rec- ognized in New England and London, where it came to the attention of evan- gelical philanthropist Lady Selina Shirley Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1707–91). !e countess made arrangements for London bookseller Archibald Bell to publish a collection of the young poet’s works, and she requested that Wheatley’s portrait be included as the frontispiece of the publication. !e painter Scipio Moorhead, Wheatley’s Boston neighbor, was commis- sioned to create the portrait. His original ink drawing, described in the London press at the time as a “fine likeness,” was transposed into an en- graving in England and was included in Wheatley’s Poems on Various Sub- jects, Religious and Moral. !e Wheatley volume also included a poem dedicated to Moorhead and entitled, “To S. M. a Young African Painter, on 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 25 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 25 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  26 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A Seeing His Works.” !e poem describes Moorhead’s talent, his ability to in- spire through his art, and his (now lost) paintings Aurora and Damon [and Pythias]. Wheatley’s poem reads, in part: To show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight. Although bound in slavery to the Reverend John Moorhead, the Irish pastor of the Church of Presbyterian Strangers and a Wheatley family friend, the reverend gave to Moorhead most of the same rights as a free black. !e reverend’s wife, Sarah, who was an art educator, trained Moorhead in painting and drawing. Furthermore, a Boston Newsletter announcement dated January 7, 1773, advertised his artistic services, describing him as “a negro of extraordinary genius.” Moorhead’s portrayal of Wheatley depicts her in profile sitting contem- platively at her writing table. !e portrayal reveals Wheatley’s unique status as a literate and intellectual woman despite her enslavement; note the book on the table, the pen in her hand, and her pensive pose. Indeed, the depiction negates Wheatley’s enslaved status almost entirely. She wears attire typical of free working-class women of the time and place: an attractive colonial day dress, mob cap, neckerchief, and apron. Indeed, she too received privileged treatment (including release from domestic service and instruction in Latin and Greek) from the Wheatley family due to both her exceptional literary talents and her fragile health. Despite their evident affection and compas- sion for Phillis, however, John and Mrs. Wheatley did not emancipate her during their lifetimes but, rather, bequeathed freedom to her in their will. As the American Revolution approached, the status of African Americans hung in the balance. !e rebellion against British taxes and manufacturing limitations was meant to afford colonists prosperity and better control over their own property, and enslaved Africans were considered part of that prop- erty; slave labor and products were vital to colonial prosperity. Paradoxically, the American Revolution was rooted in concepts of human equality and free- dom, and many Americans began to consider that slavery undermined these values. !us the Revolution had the potential to both reinforce and under- mine the slave system. Furthermore, at the time of the Revolution, tobacco crops—particularly in Virginia, where a vast population of enslaved Africans worked the fields and prepared tobacco for export—began to decline, due to the excessive taxes placed on the colonies for them. With the decline in to- bacco production, America’s dependence on slaves might have come to an end as well. In fact, immediately following the American Revolution, slavery was 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 26 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 26 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  K e y Te r m s | 27 on the wane even in the major slaveholding states, where free blacks began to outnumber enslaved blacks. However, this downturn in slave numbers was not to last. With the inven- tion of the cotton gin (short for “engine”), cotton production increased expo- nentially, from half a million pounds in 1793 to more than 90 million pounds by the time of the Civil War. Tobacco, rice, and indigo planters throughout the South converted their fields to cotton, thanks to the gin, which drastically reduced the time and labor required to separate seeds from cotton. !e im- mense profitability of postrevolutionary cotton production went hand in hand with an increased demand for slave labor to support the massive indus- try. As a result, America’s black population, by and large, remained enslaved for the next seven decades, but the creative productivity of this group did not diminish. On the contrary, the number of professional artists began to grow. !ose working within the cotton industry produced works of art with fabric— namely, quilts—as a continued outlet for their aesthetic sensibilities. Summary !e earliest works of art and architecture created by Africans in America were limited, for the most part, to the decorative arts—that is, art that had a utilitarian purpose—such as colonoware, metalwork, musical instru- ments, and architectural design and decoration. Although referred to as folk, naïve, and Outsider Art today, colonial African American artists showed great creativity and skill. Enslaved Africans in America not only created a vast array of necessary objects for the rapidly developing New World but also retained much of their African cultural heritage. Hipped roofs, poteaux-en-terre construction, and broad, shaded galleries are ex- amples of African elements that were preserved in American architecture. !e same can be said of instruments such as the akonting (the American banjo) and the Rada-style drum. Finally, despite the rigors and restrictions of slavery, African creativity thrived even in the realm of fine arts, as shown by the portrait of Phillis Wheatley by the enslaved Scipio Moorhead. Key Terms academy: a formal art school, traditionally government sponsored, where acknowledged master artists set curricula and serve as faculty akonting: a three-stringed instrument constructed from a hollowed gourd and stretched animal skin, with a wood neck blackface minstrels: a genre of popular 19th-century entertainers who wore black stage makeup and performed in the guise of a black person; perfor- mances were characterized by stereotypical exaggerations and comedic caricature burnish: to hand or tool polish an object to create a lustrous surface chinking or bousillage: substances used to fill cracks, holes, or spaces be- tween logs in log cabins; substances range from plaster or clay to plant fibers or wood chips 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 27 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 27 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  28 | A R T A N D DE S IG N I N T H E C OL O N I A L E R A cire perdue: from the French for “lost wax,” a bronze casting process used to create hollow rather than solid sculptures clapboard: horizontal overlapping wooden boards used as house siding; also known as weatherboard colonoware: earthenware or clay pottery created during the colonial era along the Atlantic coast of the United States creole: a term used in the Louisiana Territory beginning in the 17th century to refer to colonists and slaves (as well as their practices and products) who shared a fusion of French, Spanish, African, and Native-American cultural history and ancestry engraving: a form of printmaking using a metal plate on which an image has been incised with a burin or metal tool; the plate is inked, overlaid with paper, and run through a printing press to create multiple copies of an image gallery: in architecture, a covered walkway open on one side and often sup- ported by columns glazed: refers to pottery that is fired after being coated with a lustrous sub- stance (a glaze) that adds shimmer and color to the clay form gourd: the hollow, dried, and hard shell of certain fruits, such as squash and pumpkin griot: a West African poet-historian, storyteller, and custodian of oral tradition Gullah: refers to inhabitants of the coastal islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida, whose customs and language fuse English and West African elements; the term traces either to the southwestern African country of Angola, the Gola (Gula) people of Sierra Leone and Liberia, or the indigenous American Guale people who once occupied the Georgia and Carolina coasts hipped roof: refers to roof construction comprised of two triangular and two trapezoidal sides that slope downward to the walls of the structure, creating a modified pyramid shape incise: to cut or carve into a surface lute: any of a variety of wooden stringed instruments with a long, usually fretted neck and a vaulted, hollow, pear-shaped body mercantile economy: a system in which the government controls foreign trade and encourages product exportation Middle Passage: journey of slave ships across the Atlantic from West Africa to the Americas mob cap: a gathered or pleated bonnet that is fringed and usually made of linen or cotton; it was used to cover women’s hair in the 18th and 19th centuries Neoclassical: art and architecture produced in the 18th and 19th century that derives from classical Greece and imperial Rome Palladian style: a style of architecture inspired by the Renaissance designs of Andrea Palladio, which in turn were derived from the asymmetrical construction of antique Roman buildings pediment: on a building façade, a triangular area created by and located directly below a pitched roof, and supported by columns pipkins: small cooking pots porringers: decorative shallow bowls with one or two handles from which one could either eat or drink 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 28 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 28 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services  Q u e s t io n s f o r F u r t h e r St u d y a n d D i s c u s s io n | 29 poteaux-en-terre (posts-in-earth): a French term that refers to architec- tural construction wherein the roof is supported by posts that are embedded in the earth Rada boula drum: a peg-tuned, high-pitched drum played with sticks at Haitian-derived Vodou ceremonies in honor of the gods of wisdom, com- posure, and benevolence Sea Islanders: inhabitants of a group of islands off the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida Senegambian: referring to the people and culture of Senegal and Gambia slave codes: a series of laws enforced beginning in the 17th century that dictated the treatment of African slaves tabby foundation: an architectural foundation created from a cement-like building material made of lime, sand, water, and seashells triangular trade route: Atlantic slave trade routes between Africa, the United States, and Europe vernacular: in art, refers to self-trained artists and to informal or unassum- ing art and architecture Vodou (Haiti): a Haitian-based religion derived from religious practices in the Congo and Benin that fuses African beliefs with Christian icons wheel-thrown earthenware: refers to pottery that is created using a potter’s wheel Questions for Further Study and Discussion 1. Choose a discussion in this chapter of a specific work of art or archi- tecture and identify those portions of the discussion that are for- malist in their method of analysis. Do the same for contextual analysis and racial iconography. 2. Why has craft traditionally been considered of lesser value than the high arts of painting and sculpture? Debate the validity, or lack thereof, of valuing crafts as high art. 3. Describe and discuss the differences between traditional African concepts of art as integral to daily, spiritual, and sociopolitical life and Western concepts of art as self-contained, nonutilitarian, and distinct from daily life. 4. Name and describe those features of colonial architecture that can be attributed to African architectural forms. 5. Discuss the reasons why wealthy African Americans owned slaves, and debate whether or not this practice was ethical. 6. Research and discuss the relationship between the neo-African re- ligion of Vodou and Christian Catholicism. 7. Analyze and discuss the symbolism and imagery in Phillis Wheatley’s poem “To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works.” 8. Research and discuss how and why some slaves, such as Scipio Moorhead and Phillis Wheatley, were given certain privileges asso- ciated with free blacks. 02-Farrington-Chap02.indd 29 29/12/15 9:36 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 159970 Cust: OUP Au: Farrington Pg. No. 29 Title: African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History, 1e C/M/Y/K Short / Normal S4CARLISLE Publishing Services