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Introduction

One Voice, Many Visions

Work By African American Artists
February 20 - June 14, 1998

The history of American art has been enriched by contributions from African American artists in all mediums. The artists in this exhibition share a cultural identity, but their paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs also reveal individual artistic visions that are as diverse as their subjects and styles. The exhibition presents a small selection of works produced by African American artists over the past one hundred and twenty-five years. They have been chosen from the Museum's permanent collection and range from late nineteenth-century landscapes by Rhode Island artist Edward Mitchell Bannister and early twentieth­century sculptures by Nancy Elizabeth Prophet to a 1997 book by Kara Walker. In One Voice, Many Visions, individual interests and personal histories emerge, connect, and contrast in works that enhance the range and perspective of American art.

In 1913, through a major bequest from Providence collector Isaac C. Bates, RISD became one of the first museums to acquire the work of Edward Mitchell Bannister, an African American artist whose landscapes reflect the scale, technique, and subject matter of the French painters of the Barbizon School.
Bannister's painterly New England views represent the enduring appeal of intimate local landscapes to American artists and collectors. In contrast to Bannister's secular spirituality, religious sentiment is more overt in the art of Henry Ossawa Tanner, a successful academic painter who studied with Thomas Eakins and settled in Paris in the late nineteenth century.

Around the tum of the century, American artists began to explore a strong realist aesthetic that supplanted both landscape and academic figural imagery with scenes of urban work and culture. In the 1920s, James VanDerZee photographed bourgeois interiors and African American families in fine attire during Harlem's renaissance of culture and prosperity. Jacob Lawrence's brilliantly colored gouaches explore social problems and opportunities after the Second World War, while Roy DeCarava 's black-and-white images and Vincent Smith's etchings reveal both the vitality and social challenges of the 1950s and 1960s.

The narrative tradition of the first half of the twentieth century became a touchstone for many of the artists who followed. One Voice, Many Visions indicates the strong figural direction that emerges in the work of younger artists such as Joseph Norman and Alison Saar, whose prints interweave social and mythological themes. In the photographic images of Loma Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, poetry is partnered with images that reflect deep connections with African and African American culture and invite private contemplation. In contrast, Kara Walker's compelling silhouettes are both delicate and unflinching, rich in movement and detail and provocative in meaning.

One Voice, Many Visions also includes the work of artists whose interests lie in painterly surfaces and personal marks. Donnamaria Bruton's painting Me and My Dad presents biography through metaphors defined by drawing and collage of interior spaces and features. Nanette Carter's sweeping gestures and Mahler Ryder's complex constructions suggest movement and music in visions that reject both words and images. This intimate cross-section of work by African American artists resonates with individual styles that have flowed with and influenced the direction of American art for more than a century.

Selected Objects

Edward Mitchell Bannister

Westminster Street, 1895-1900

Roy DeCarava

Couple Dancing, New York, 1956

Kara Walker

The Beginning, 1995

Kara Walker

The Means to an End...A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, 1995
No Image Available

Kara Walker

The Hunt, 1995

Kara Walker

Freedom -- A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times, 1997

Roy DeCarava

Untitled, 1956

Roy DeCarava

Five Men, 1964, 1964

James Van Der Zee

Dancer, Harlem, 1925

Henry Ossawa Tanner

The Wailing Wall, ca. 1898

James Van Der Zee

Daddy Grace, Harlem, 1938
No Image Available

Kara Walker

The Chase, 1995

Alison Saar, printmaker

Ulysses, 1994

Roy DeCarava

Hallway, 1953

Roy DeCarava

Untitled, 1978

Carrie Mae Weems

A Place for Him, A Place for Her, 1993
No Image Available

Joseph E. Norman

Untitled, 1990

William Clark Noble

The Garland

Edward Mitchell Bannister

Landscape, 1884

Joseph E. Norman

Goree, 1993

James Van Der Zee

Portrait of Two Brothers and their Sister, Harlem, 1931
No Image Available

Joseph E. Norman

Untitled, 1990

James Van Der Zee

Miss Suzie Porter, Harlem, 1915
No Image Available

Edward Mitchell Bannister

Landscape, 1897

James Van Der Zee

Kate and Rachel Van Der Zee, Lenox, Massachusetts, 1909
No Image Available

Joseph E. Norman

Untitled, 1990

Mahler B. Ryder

Keith Jarrett, 1989

Roy DeCarava

Untitled, 1956

Roy DeCarava

Untitled, 1973

Jacob Lawrence, designer

The 1920's ... The Migrants Cast Their Ballots, 1974

James Van Der Zee

Nude, Harlem, 1923

Lorna Simpson, designer

III, 1994

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Discontent, 1920s

Nanette Carter, designer

Containment #42, 1994

Edward Mitchell Bannister

Landscape, 1878

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Negro Head, before 1927
No Image Available

Kara Walker

The Plunge, 1995
No Image Available

Joseph E. Norman

Untitled, 1990

James Van Der Zee

Marcus Garvey and Garvey Militia, Harlem, 1924

James Van Der Zee

Couple, Harlem, 1932

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Silence, 1920s

Horace Pippin

Quaker Mother and Child, ca. 1935-1940

Vincent Dacosta Smith

First Day of School, 1965

Attributed to Charles Douglas

Three Masked Figures, n.d.

Donnamaria Bruton

Me and My Dad, 1996

Jacob Lawrence

There is an Average of Four Bars to Every Block, 1943

Lorna Simpson, printmaker

Counting, 1991
No Image Available

Henry Ossawa Tanner, designer

Untitled (Harbor Scene), late 1800s- mid 1900s

More objects +

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