Theory in Practice

Racialized Bodies in Murals of the 1930s

Mario Pereira

In the late1930s when Baker painted the figures of black slaves in his mural, The Activities of the Narragansett Planters, three contemporary trends for depicting race in bodies in public murals were thriving in the U.S.A. As a popular, ambitious New York illustrator, Baker was certainly aware of these stylistic factions represented by the Mexican Muralists, the Regionalists, and the "New Negro" artists of the Harlem Renaissance. None of these schools could be ignored by any serious artist when painting a mural during the 1930s, and the powerful influence and inspiration, both negative and positive, of all three movements is evident in the racialized bodies of Baker's mural.

Regionalism: Thomas Hart Benton

The Regionalist movement dominated mainstream painting in America during the 1930s. Regionalism focused exclusively on easily identifiable American themes-mostly scenes from the midwest and the south-represented in a realistic, accessible style. As an aesthetically conservative movement formed during the Depression, it aimed through public art to bolster popular self-confidence by celebrating American life.

Figure 1. Thomas Hart Benton, Arts of the South,
New Britain Museum of American Art,
Connecticut, 1932

Thomas Hart Benton was perhaps the greatest exponent of Regionalism (Figure 1). Benton believed his murals should highlight American themes and values even as he developed an extremely mannered, idiosyncratic style. He favored elongated, curvilinear forms and his compositions typically feature surprisingly shallow recessional space with dramatically intersecting planes. These aspects of Benton's approach to design and composition won him widespread acclaim.[1] Although Baker was quick to adopt certain elements of Benton's popular style, he rejected Benton's representation of African-Americans. This creates a contrast in Baker's mural between a landscape and composition style similar to Benton's and the figure style employed for portraying racialized bodies, which seems almost an antithesis of Benton's distinctive figure type.

Baker had reason to avoid reference to Benton's mode of picturing African-Americans. Benton's Arts of the South panel for the Whitney Museum of American Art attracted criticism for a depiction of contemporary African-Americans that verged on ridicule. Some viewers were disturbed by the exaggerated racial features[2] and bowed, contorted posture of the singing central black figure. An enraged Stuart Davis lambasted Benton: "Are the gross caricatures of Negroes by Benton to be passed off as "direct representation"? The only thing they directly represent is a third-rate vaudeville character cliché with the humor omitted." [3]

The New Negro: Aaron Douglas

The New Negro movement, which promoted racial pride and race renewal, thrived during the 1920s. [4] It was remarkable for its optimism, confidence, and focus on black agency and independence. Alain Locke, the leading theorist of the movement, called for the creation of an identifiable racial art and aesthetic expressing a distinctive African-American cultural identity. Locke promoted the study of African art as the new classical art that would provide African-Americans with an appropriate racial tradition. Many black artists, consequently, concentrated on signifying African descent via a racial archetype based on African masks and sculpture and ancient Egyptian funerary art.

Aaron Douglas, perhaps the leading artist of the New Negro movement, was the first African-American artist deliberately to feature African imagery in his art (Figure 2). [5]? Douglas employs strongly two-dimensional figures silhouetted in profile with "slit-eyes" seen from a frontal view reminiscent of ancient Egyptian representational conventions. These streamlined silhouettes form figures of abstract geometrical design (See Eugenics and Streamlining). His energized compositions and rhythmic use of color were seen visually to suggest music and spirituality.

Figure 2. Aaron Douglas, An Idyll of the Deep South, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library, 1934

Douglas won fame for his cover illustrations for The Crisis, Opportunity, and Vanity Fair magazines; he was equally renowned as a graphic artist in the New York book publishing industry. In New York, working for Fortune and Life magazines, Baker would have been familiar with Douglas's graphic designs. In 1934 Douglas received the WPA commission to paint murals for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. In these murals, titled Aspects of Negro Life, Douglas employed symbolism to address the aspirations of the New Negro, to celebrate the past and present achievements of African-Americans, and to depict the tragedy and reality of the African-American experience. [6] Douglas's "Afro-Deco" style [7] was indissolubly linked to the ideals of the New Negro movement. This identification made Douglas's example pertinent to his Harlem audience, but limited its transferal to other kinds of contexts. To Baker it probably seemed inapplicable in Wakefield where he felt the need to stress South County's unique, exceptional experience during its eighteenth-century "Golden Age."

Mexican Muralism: Diego Rivera

Figure 3. Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, North Wall, Detroit Institute of Arts,
1932-33

During the1930s, at the height of muralism in the U.S.A., Diego Rivera was widely considered the greatest muralist in all the Americas (Figure 3). He provided a stylistic and political model for the creation of a new, highly influential mural tradition. Rivera launched a socially committed public art devoted to the daily existence of common people, fostering a fresh sense of community. Interpreting all subjects, contemporary and historical, from a dedicated, brazen Marxist ideological perspective, Rivera forged a distinctive style fashioned from a unique fusion of indigenous pre-Columbian art, European Modernism, particularly Cubism, and early Italian Renaissance fresco painting.

Rivera's mural style quickly came to dominate New Deal painting.[8] Like many other New Deal artists, Baker borrowed heavily and capably from Rivera. The influence of Rivera's figure style is apparent in the dignity and power of Baker's black slaves, achieved through simple, broad modeling of the figures. Baker evoked Rivera's "terracotta" figures based on pre-Columbian objects that for Rivera served as the classical art of Mexico. These boldly modeled figures lend legibility to large, public images designed to be seen from a distance, and maintain a striking force on such a scale. The massing of heads in groups across the plane creates a continuous, animated frieze, unifying the composition and infusing it with movement. The composition itself, emphasizing the flat wall plane, is articulated by a geometric system of receding diagonals that is countered by motion within the system, especially gesture and gaze.

Ernest Hamlin Baker

Figure 4. Ernest Hamlin Baker, The Activities of the Narragansett Planters, 1939

There are several remarkable features about Baker's depiction of four black slaves and the single white Narragansett planter who owns them (Figure 4). Three of the slaves are bare-chested and heavily muscled; these strapping, partially nude bodies exude strength and vitality. Their unclothed condition contrasts vividly with the rich finery of the planter's fashionable attire, and indicates their degraded status as slaves without meaningful identities. This is further emphasized by their uncovered, bald heads opposed to the planter's ostentatious wig and hat. However, the fourth slave to the far right is fully clothed because, like the planter, he is not actually laboring; the team of oxen does the muscle work, he just guides them with whip in hand. The state of undress in the mural corresponds directly to the degree of labor performed, the physical exertion of each figure. Baker seems to adopt typical Depression era imagery in his use of nudity when depicting actively laboring, muscular male bodies in order to make a statement about masculinity (and by implication sexuality). [9] Yet it should not be forgotten that Baker's mural belongs to a tradition of representing slaves in which refined clothing connotes a hierarchy of power and white civility, and the nudity of black figures signifies savagery and slavery. [10]

The slaves engage in visibly productive, dignified labor. [11] Toiling rhythmically and intensively, they embody a heroic depiction of manly work promoted by the government as a means of reversing the pervasive farm depression of the 1930s. The central slave figure epitomizes this heroic labor as he single-handedly curbs the wildly rearing horse. Embodying discipline and control, this central image might challenge a stereotypical characterization of African-Americans during the 1930s as unrestrained and prone to excess.[12] Through color, pose and action, the slave and horse are intimately connected as figures of raw strength, both primarily valued by the planter as beasts of burden. But Baker allows no equivalence between them. The slave, standing triumphant, is self-possessed, focused on taming the aggressive animal instincts of the pacer.

However, closer scrutiny reveals ambiguities in Baker's interpretation of the theme. Baker concentrates on the massive hands of the slaves in order to highlight manual labor while the commanding, pointed finger of the planter indicates his intimidating role as overseer. A hierarchy of labor and racial difference is naturalized through these prominent hands. While the fist of the central slave may be forceful, it is ill-defined in comparison with the detailed hand of the planter. The slave's hand looks more like a paw than a human appendage, confirming the persistent view that associated "negros" with animals on a chain of being that placed whites at top and blacks at the bottom.

The polished, cubic forms of Baker's figures evoke those by Rivera. They seem to possess the rugged dignity of the anonymous workers immortalized by the Mexican muralist. Yet it is not immediately obvious how this kind of depiction of racialized bodies should be interpreted in the light of the history of slavery in Rhode Island. Baker pictures neither a "slave paradise"; nor unspeakable misery; he neither condemns nor condones (although the obedience of the slaves suggests acceptance of the social hierarchy without resistance). While the slaves seem robust physically, they appear to lack psychological depth and emotional expression. Stripped of individualizing facial features and incapable of introspection, the slaves in the Wakefield mural possess no meaningful identity beyond the actions they perform. Paradoxically, although they seem dehumanized, they resist easy equivalence as animal or machine.

Notes

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1 In New York, Baker probably studied Benton's America Today murals at the New School for Social Research as well as his Arts of Life in America murals done for the Whitney Museum of American Art (1932).

2 Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (New York: Knopf, 1989), pp. 250-51.

3 Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (New York: Knopf, 1989), p. 228.

4 For good discussion of the art of the New Negro movement, see Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Richard J. Powell, Black Art and Culture in the 20 th Century, 2d ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002). See also, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black Representations" 24 (1998): 129-55.

5 For a monographic introduction to Aaron Douglas, see Amy Helene Kirschke, AaronDouglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995).

6 Douglas associated his art with struggle and this series showcases his ideological commitment to Marxism as a possible solution to the multifarious problems of the 1930s.

7 This term comes from Powell, p. 44.

8 Francis V. O'Connor, "The Influence of Diego Rivera on the Art of the United States during the 1930s and After," in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective ( New York : Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts, in association with W.W. Norton, 1986), pp. 157-83.

9 Barbara Melosh, "Manly Work: Public Art and Masculinity in Depression American," in Gender and American History since 1890, ed. by Barbara Melosh (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 155-81.

10Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race : Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-century British Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

11 As skilled, trained laborers, they work independently of the planter, which could be seen as conferring agency. It seems they would work even without his presence and the central slave figure, in fact, does not really acknowledge his command or respond to it. This dynamic implies the slaves know their place in this slaveholding society, making them complicit.

12Since the obedient slaves do not threaten to go wildly out of control, however, Baker suggests complicity of the slaves in South County's "golden age."