Coni Uzelac

The outpouring of interest that has come about in recent years on the subject of African American art would come as no surprise to James A. Porter, if he were alive today. The preeminent scholar on this subject, he paved the way for other scholars, collectors, and patrons of art to see the importance of the subject and to assess its relevant role as part and parcel of the larger field of American art, long before it was popular to do so.

Porter’s committed pursuit of scholarly research in the field is commensurate with the vigilance of the prophet, whose vision of what lies ahead is seldom heeded in his or her lifetime. But life does not always honor with longevity those who deserve to hear their accolades spoken aloud in their own lifetime. Yet, long after such visionaries are no longer physically with us, we who witnessed their gifts of the spirit continue to profit beyond measure as we share their artistry and scholarship with future generations.

Porter bequeathed to those who have come after him an unusual legacy, the fruit of a creative mind whose eminence in art education was of such magnitude that he has been accorded a singular place in the history of African American art. Much of what we know about the cultural legacy that Blacks in the visual arts inherited from their African forebearers has come to us by way of his writings. Porter’s Modern Negro Art the classic work on the subject, was the first such book to denote and define the African impulse in the visual arts in the United States. Without his knowledge and constant vision of the role that artists of African descent played in American visual culture, many of us who attempt to carry on this noble tradition and to correct the omissions so inherent in African art history would be without the guidance we extol to others.

I am one, among many such persons, who, blessed beyond account, benefited thoroughly from Porter’s wisdom and wise counsel. He served as my mentor at Howard University, where I studied the history of art and the practice of painting as an under-graduate. He inspired me to see art, particularly the practice of painting, as a necessary accompaniment to the study of art history, and I learned from him the dual pursuit of these noble endeavors.

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Artist and educator David Driskell is Professor of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned an AB degree from Howard University and a MFA from Catholic University, and he has served on the faculties of Howard and Fisk Universities. He has received numerous honors and awards, including several honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees. He is a member of many organizations and serves on the board of directors of the National Museum of African Art and the American Federation of Arts.
Time will not permit, however, a personal account here of the influence that Porter had on my life as I have pursued both painting and writing, nor indepth commentary on the role of his own art in the making of what we now call the Black aesthetic. His writings were critical to those who sought to add clarity to the subject of Black identity and its relationship to cultural emancipation from a Eurocentric ideal in the decade of the sixties. Nearly fifty years after its original publication, Modern Negro Art remains the most often quoted source in the field. Thus, it is both fitting and proper that on the eve of its golden anniversary this classic work should be reissued, particularly as it's reprinting coincides with the opening of a major exhibition of Porter’s art in retrospect. In this introduction, I shall attempt to highlight the salient contributions Porter made to the field of African American art scholarship, draw the contours of his successful career as a creative artist, and show how these pursuits fertilized each other.

The fact that Porter was able to carve his own niche into the tableau of history at an early age and to produce the kind of scholarship in art that remains relevant today should come as no surprise to any one who has followed his career. From the outset, he contributed essays of revealing scholarly importance on the subject of the Negro in art that were published in The American Magazine of Art, Art in America, Opportunity Magazine, and other journals in the years prior to and immediately after World War II.

Of particular significance was the extensive essay, "Robert S. Duncanson, Midwestern Romantic-Realist," published in Art in America (October 1951). Robert Duncanson (1821-1872) was a second generation Hudson River School painter, and his landscapes were highly sought after in his lifetime. Like the work of his predecessor, Joshua Johnson (ca. 1770-1830), they were often mistakenly said to be from the hand of a Euro-American artist. Porter’s research proved that both men were of African ancestry. His writings were both historical and prophetic in that they revealed important elements of our cultural past while looking beyond the contours of time to announce the relevance of Black Studies long before the disciplines of this curriculum became fashionable. Porter’s meticulous research and scholarly review of early newspapers, wills, and
authentic documents from the nineteenth century redefined the role of slave artisans by showing how they provided countless creative services to the households of the Old South as well as the emerging communities of the industrial North.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Porter’s research, much of which centered on the years of bondage, and the search into our creative past, has inspired scholars across racial lines to investigate the margins of history more thoroughly. Many of these same scholars have spoken with strong voices for justice and equity in the arts, revealing the need for a revisionist approach to the study of American art history.

Porter was born in Baltimore, Maryland, forty years after slavery was officially abolished in the United States. The year of his birth, 1905, represents a critical time in the cultural history of African Americans. An acknowledged revolution in modern art was underway. It had been inspired almost entirely by the exposure of Western artists to the powerful forms of sculpture from Africa that were beginning to be seen in European capitals, particularly in Paris. The dynamic expression that was observed in African art helped change the surface and styles of modern art forever. Cubism would be born of such geometric observation, and Expressionism, as a style, particularly in Germany, would be greatly influenced by the abstract qualities of African art.

In America, the Niagara Movement, founded by W.E.B. DuBois in 1905, paved the way for the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which highlighted an agenda set on obtaining justice for people of color throughout the nation. A more militant mindset emerged in the decade of Porter’s birth that allowed Blacks and whites the chance to see themselves as allies against racism, anti-semitism, and sexism. Politics and cultural definition were the subjects of conversation among Black intellectuals in the decade in which Porter was born, the eve of World War I. Porter became keenly aware of the cultural plight of African Americans at an early age. He was born into a family in which everyone was expected to pursue a respectable profession. His mother, Lydia Peck Porter, was a teacher. His father John
Porter, was a Methodist minister and a recognized Latin scholar. Porter attended public schools in the District of Columbia, graduating, with honors, from Armstrong High School in 1923. For the next four years, he pursued courses of study in painting, drawing, and the history of art at Howard University. He received the Bachelor of Science degree in the Instruction of Art from Howard in 1927. He accepted an appointment at Howard in the fall of the same year as instructor of painting and drawing. While the teaching of studio art occupied an inordinate amount of Porter’s time, he was not content to devote his time exclusively to teaching and he
managed to paint and to continue his study of art history.

Recognizing the need to keep his own practice of the craft of painting at the forefront of his career, Porter enrolled in painting and drawing courses at Teachers College, Columbia University, during the summers of 1927 and 1928. He returned to New York City the following summer to study figure drawing and painting with Dimitri Romanovsky and George Bridgeman, both of whom taught at the Art Students’ League. In the spring of 1929, Porter’s art was singled out by judges to receive the coveted Prize for Portrait Painting for the Harmon Foundation’s Annual Exhibition of Work by Negro Artists.

Porter’s paintings were later exhibited at some of the nation’s leading museums, principally the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in 1934 and 1936, the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1931 and 1935, the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936, the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1935, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 1936. During the next four decades, Porter’s paintings were seen in a number of group exhibitions around the nation, including prestigious exhibitions such as "The Negro Artist Comes of Age" at the Albany (New York) Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1945, "The Negro in American Art " at the Wright Gallery in UCLA in 1966, and "Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976, to mention only a few. Numerous solo exhibitions were arranged of the paintings and drawings created in the United States, Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, and West Africa prior to the artist’s death in 1970.

In the early years of balancing teaching, painting, and researching, Porter was determined to make a systematic study of the history of art in an effort to see more clearly the role that people of African ancestry played in American art and in the art of other countries, such as Cuba and Brazil. In 1935 he received an Institute of International Education scholarship that allowed him to study abroad at the Institute d’Art et Archeologie at the Sorbonne in Paris. This experience offered him the chance to broaden his scholarship in art history to include European and West African art. In 1937 he received the Master of Arts degree in the history of art from New York University. For his thesis, Porter chose African American art, a subject that had received little attention beyond the historical writings of his mentor, James V. Herring, head of the Howard University Department of Art, and the critical essays on the work of Black artists written by colleague Alain LeRoy Locke, who headed the Philosophy Department at Howard.

Porter’s thesis, The Negro Artist, presented a historical overview of African American art, beginning with an examination of the early extant forms of arts and crafts from the period of slavery through the first quarter of the twentieth century. Always at his side during the pursuit of his research was his wife, Dorothy, whose invaluable service and bibliographical assistance could always be counted on. Together, they checked every available source known to them for information that aided their search for authentic examples of the art that would comprise the text of Porter’s groundbreaking study of African American art. Porter’s research, which centered on the slave artisan as builder and craftsman, revealed that some of the finest examples of workmanship in the plantation homes of the South, such as furniture, cabinets, cooking utensils, tableware, and wrought iron implements, were the products of slaves, many whose identity remains unknown to us today. His research further revealed that this superb endowment of artistic skill among slaves knew no gender barrier, as women, like men, often supplied many necessary craft items for southern homes, while performing the usual duties of domestic servant and caretaker of the children of slaveowners.

Porter discovered that a number of craft items were made in a tradition that connected them iconographically to the art of West Africa, the region from which most African slaves had come. Slave- made vessels in the medium of clay, such as the "grotesque jugs," as Porter termed them, walking canes, household textiles and a number of examples of architectural buildings, such as the slave houses at Keswick Plantation on the James River, Midlothan, Virginia, and the African House at Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana, are among the many extant forms of early African American workmanship that carry the imprint of their African origins. Porter’s research highlighted the need for a text that addressed the areas of scholarship that he had unearthed in his thesis, "The Negro Artist." It was in this spirit of interest and scholarly devotion that Porter’s Masters’ thesis was redirected to become the time-honored text called Modern Negro Art.

Immediately after its publication, Modern Negro Art met with high critical acclaim from art historians, art critics and academics around the nation. Laudatory messages and congratulations came from individuals such as historian Charles H. Wesley, former Works Progress Administration art administrator Holger Cahill, and museum director Lloyd Goodrich. The book received wide recognition and reception at Black colleges and universities throughout the South. It was immediately adopted as a standard text at Fisk, Howard, and Lincoln (Pennsylvania) universities, where courses of study that highlighted Black achievements in world culture were already in place in their curricula.

Despite the wide reception given Modern Negro Art in 1943, few white authors writing thereafter on the subject of American art considered the body of work by artists of African ancestry cited by Porter worthy of inclusion in the current compendia. Helen Gardner’s standard art history text, Art Through the Ages (1970, 1975), referenced neither African nor African American artists in its bibliographic index during Porter’s lifetime. The same is true of David Robb and Jesse Garrison, whose much acclaimed art text, Art in the Western World (1953, 1963), made no mention of Porter’s research on African American artists. Such were the omissions of a large number of scholars whose insensitive bearings on the subject of Black culture helped to fuel the prejudices of those set on promoting the racial myths about the inferiority of members of the Black race. Among those respected white scholars who welcomed Porter’s scholarship by endorsing Modern Negro Art as one of America’s essential cultural records was the respected author and art connoisseur Walter Pach, whose book, Masters of Modern Art (1924), had set a high standard for scholarship in the interpretation of modern American art.

In his enlightening introduction to Modern Negro Art, Pach praised Porter for his insightful view of history, which gave parity to an imbalanced equation pertaining to the Negro in American art. Art historian Oliver W. Larkin later followed Pach’s lead when he assigned the Negro artist a respectable place in his book, Art and Life in America (1949). Larkin discussed in brief the art of Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Edmonia Lewis, Joshua Johnston, and Henry O. Tanner – an unprecedented number of Black artists to be found at that time in a mainstream publication. Most often, however, these voices of reason, as in the case of Pach and Larkin, did not prevail in matters of race, since ignorance of the Black race had so long been championed in the form of racial propaganda designed to promote racial disunity. Porter chose not to address the
political aspect of the race question in Modern Negro Art. Instead, he spoke to a more accessible
aesthetic that proved to be "culturally correct" in citing the omissions of Black achievements from the history of American art. This he was able to do without resorting to the rhetoric of those who sought a more confrontational posture with white writers and critics of the period.

When Modern Negro Art was published in 1943, only two books devoted exclusively to the accomplishments of African American artists had preceded it. Both books, Negro Art, Past and Present (1936) and The Negro in Art (1940) were written by Alain LeRoy Locke, Porter’s Howard University colleague. While both books were landmark publications in that they were the first to survey the field, neither addressed the critical issue of racial identity and self-affirmation in art as did Modern Negro Art, which painstakingly integrated the history of Negro art into the larger format of American art without distilling from it that synthesis of form designed to give clarity to Black creativity.

While Modern Negro Art sought to establish clearly, once and for all, a sense of territory or cultural space for the distinction that artists of color brought to American art, it did so with an unusual sagaciousness that endeared the book as much to white scholars as it did to Blacks. When the book was reprinted in 1969 by the Arno Press, the Black cultural revolution was well underway. Prior to the 1960’s few institutions of higher learning, other than predominantly Black colleges and universities, offered courses of study in Black studies. But this soon changed. So-called mainstream institutions throughout the nation began recruiting Black faculty and students in an effort to become "relevant," both politically and culturally. Few reliable textbooks or reference guides highlighted the achievements of African American artists with the depth of Modern Negro Art. The Arno Press reprint made the book a classic.

In the final years of Porter’s life, he further pursued research relating to the additions he planned to make to the literature in print of what he was then referring to as "Afro-American art." An important element of the author’s continued research centered on his clarifying and correcting the record of some matters in African American art that had been invalidated by then current research. Most notable among the corrections and additions were details about the lives and work of Patrick Reason, Edmonia Lewis, and G.W. Hobbs, all of whom had been discussed in Modern Negro Art.

Prior to Porter’s death in 1970, scholars writing on Reason seldom listed the date or place of his birth. Porter did not note with certainty Reason’s exact birth date, but he assumed from other research that it was 1817. But a number of supporting documents have been found by the author’s wife, Dorothy Porter, and Steven L. Jones, a visual arts consultant, that list several relevant facts about Reason’s life. It has been ascertained that Reason responded in writing to an inquiry about his life that affirms the fact that he was born in New York City on March 17, 1816. His death certificate notes the place and date of his death as Cleveland, Ohio, August 12, 1898.

In May 1969, less than one year prior to Porter’s death, Porter ascertained that the celebrated neoclassical sculptor Edmonia Lewis is buried in the city of San Francisco in an unmarked grave. Further research revealed that Lewis was alive in the year 1911. More than thirty of her works in marble and plaster have been found since the original publication of Modern Negro Art.

More recently, significant research by Thomas C. Battl