 | Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley's art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley's oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist's complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley's paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley's oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation. Phoebe Wolfskill is an assistant professor of African American and African diaspora studies and adjunct professor of art history at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the coeditor of Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art . |
