Agency, Artistry, Activism 2

The Banjo Lesson

Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1893:

• he worked in all forms of media, a writer and correspondent

• ‘ I preach with my brush’

• a moment of creativity and togetherness, at the same time as poverty gives dignity and respect

• perhaps most famous work, alongside canon of white supremacist caricature

The Thankful Poor

Henry Ossawa Tanner 1894:

• showing the inner via the outer

• invites you to sit at the table

• rejects voyeurism or misrepresentation

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother

Tanner 1897:

• his mother secured liberation on Underground Railroad, thoughtful and intellectual pose

Harriet Powers Context

A quilt maker, using the bible to speak to the past and present. Surrounding devotion and faith. Displays fighting for freedom

Notable Quilts from Powers

• Bible Quilt 1885

• Pictorial Quilt 1895

Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt

Missouri Pettway: 1942

• when her husband died, she tore work clothes and fashioned into a quilt

• carrying spirit and reminders of family hood

Mary Edmond Lewis

First woman of African American and Native American ancestry to gain notoriety as a sculptor.

Mary Edmondia Lewis other works

Marble bust of Robert Gould Shaw 1864: abolitionist

Wendell Phillips Medallion 1871: White male anti-slave

John Brown Bust: a freedom fighter and martyr

Hagar sculpture

Lewis 1875:

• biblical story of hagar, forced into the desert

• water just at her feet and hands clasped in prayer

• she has been exiled by her enslaver as her husband Abraham impregnated her

• drawing from biblical

Cleopatra sculpture

Lewis:

• portrays in the moment after her death from a venomous snake

• in royal attire on a throne

• at the time of neoclassicism, shows the death realistically

• has an emotive power

David Drake

Born into enslavement, and became a potter

• no portrait to his memory

• pioneered a luminescent glaze

• worked in huge scale and inscribed poetry

• radical and a gesture of resistance

• the pots were carried by enslaved and the writing at the top a sign of hope