It’s the last day of Black HistoryMonth—a great moment for the gallery debut of the Museum’s newest

It’s the last day of Black HistoryMonth—a great moment for the gallery debut of the Museum’s newest pre-contemporary African American art acquisition. The powerful 1945 still lifeby Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Fang,Crow, and Fruit) now hangs among other important mid-century American worksto which it has strong connections. The painting’s history begins withDelaney’s impoverished Tennessee childhood, his training in Boston, and hismove to New York the year of the stock market crash. Delaney struggled to sustainhis art in bohemian Greenwich Village, living and working in a raw, unheatedloft space. By the early 1940s, he was experimenting with the expressionistictechnique visible in this work. The composition isarranged like an offering—the bowl of yellow fruit placed before a Fang figurefrom Cameroon that was even then a well-known African sculpture, while a bird (spirit?)hovers above. Delaney’s electric colors and animated brushwork create vibrations—formsalmost appear to spin or rock. He was inspired by artists including StuartDavis, whom he knew well, and Marsden Hartley, whose Gull, that hangs nearby, had been featured in the 1944 Hartleyexhibition at MoMA. In 1945, Delaney had begun to mentor the young writer JamesBaldwin, who was deep into his work on GoTell it on the Mountain. Both wereseeking empowerment as black artists and gay men, and were and sustainedthrough a connection to African culture and art. Several of our new AfricanAmerican acquisitions demonstrate an active engagement with traditional AfricanArt—a practice inspired by the writings of the Harlem Rensaissance leader AlainLocke. This striking work introduces to the galleries a new facet of Americanmodernism from the inter-war years, and a brilliant dialogue in which two greatAfrican American artists engaged with each other and with a powerful andempowering collective past.Posted by Teresa A. Carbone -- source link

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