New World primitivism in Harlem and Havana: Constructing modern identities in the Americas, 1924--1945.
Item
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Title
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New World primitivism in Harlem and Havana: Constructing modern identities in the Americas, 1924--1945.
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Identifier
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AAI3008805
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identifier
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3008805
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Creator
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Aranda-Alvarado, Rocio.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jack Flam
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the role of the racialized figure in modern art in the New World or the Americas, particularly as it is depicted in the paintings of four artists---Aaron Douglas, Carlos Enriquez, Jacob Lawrence, and Wifredo Lam---between 1925 and 1945. During this period, artists in the New World worked towards the creation of a culturally, nationally and racially specific image that would stand as a symbol for a new national identity and, simultaneously, for modernity as a whole. I call these efforts by New World artists "re-negotiations" of Modernity as it was originally presented in the work of the European avant-garde. These artists created images that responded to a new set of conceptual demands framed by a rapidly changing social environment.;In the course of this examination, I have selected a number of important texts by major writers of the period that coincide with the work of these artists as examples of rhetorical statements or strategies that supported the visual construction of cultural nationalism. As will become apparent, national identity was closely linked to racial ideology in some places and, in others, to a more generalized notion of race in the New World as distinct from European races. Authors cited include Alain Locke, W. E. B. DuBois, E. Franklin Frazier, Jose Gomez Sicre, Juan Marinello, and Luis Soto y Sagarra.;The exploration of both visual art and text reveals individual similarities in modern discourse across the Americas, particularly in reference to the racialization or primitivization of national culture, through a focus on just two centers of artistic production, Havana and Harlem. In examining the visual rhetoric created in these two cities, I underscore how aesthetic production here expressed itself as part of a larger movement that was reflected throughout the Americas. In Harlem, I examine the development of the concept of the New Negro as an element of racial pride that was rhetorically linked to both cultural nationalism and modernism. In Havana, I explore the concept of Cubanismo and how it is reflected in the work of the Cuban avant-garde.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
