Christianity and African American Art

The relationships between Christianity and African American art compose a rich mosaic of interconnecting histories. As Christian subjects, themes, and practices have inspired the creative imaginations of African American artists, their work in pottery, quilts, paintings, prints, sculpture, and photography have, in turn, expanded and enriched the history of Christianity and the visual arts. The diverse, remarkable, and manifold ways in which African American artists have both contributed to and drawn from Christian motifs, symbols, and rituals make up one of the most complex and compelling chapters in the history of art. The history of Christianity and African American art is not composed of groups or movements; nevertheless, artists from divergent backgrounds and personal motivations have emerged from common historical and/or cultural contexts. These shared experiences have often led to parallel strategies toward the process of selecting and visualizing Christian themes and motifs. From the enslaved potter David Drake to the internationally acclaimed painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, African American artists of the 19th century, including Harriet Powers, Robert S. Duncanson, and Mary Edmonia Lewis, connected their creative practice with the struggle for survival and freedom. Perceiving the Christian faith through a lens of their own experiences, their art witnesses a faith in God that supported them in life and promised to grant them eternal salvation. In the early decades of the 20th century, the Harlem Renaissance was the most visible manifestation of a new African American identity. Artists, including Aaron Douglas, James Lesesne Wells, Romare Bearden, William H. Johnson, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, and Jacob Lawrence, reinvented the aesthetic developments of European modernism to challenge racial stereotypes in religious imagery. These artists depicted motifs that had been popular in a history of art, where biblical figures were often visually interpreted as European. If the history of Christianity and art is characterized by an attempt to make the biblical motif personal to the artist, and their presumed viewer, then the creation of images and objects in which Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary are portrayed as Black is one the most important contributions of African American artists to the project of expanding the elasticity of Christian art. Later 20th-century artists, such as Allan Rohan Crite and David C. Driskell, continued this legacy through the era of the Civil Rights movement. Paralleling the increasing recognition of artists working in urban centers, such as New York, African American artists who were “outside” of the official art network produced some of the most original treatments of biblical motifs. Believing that they were ordained by God to proclaim revelations and prophecies, artists such as William Edmondson, Clementine Hunter, Horace Pippin, and Sister Gertrude Morgan have read the Bible in ways informed by their own experiences and also employed references to biblical narratives to give meaning to these experiences. In the most recent half-century, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kerry James Marshall, Renée Cox, and Genesis Tramaine have created provocative images of Christ and Christian saints that promote social activism and personal empowerment. From Basquiat’s gnarled halos to Cox’s naked self-portrait as Christ, their art envisions traditional motifs in ways that resonate with contemporary life. From Drake to Tramaine, African American artists have been united by a refusal to surrender their individuality to any presumption of who they should be or how they should create. This assertion of personal will has ignited and sustained a bold inventiveness. These artists have had experiences of racism and injustice, of struggle and success, of doubt and faith, and each has found unique and individual ways of employing the motifs, symbols, and themes of Christianity as a means of articulating these experiences in art. Connecting across this history of divergent contexts and artistic ambitions, there are recurring motifs and themes that connect the pieces of this mosaic. Narratives found in the Bible, from the crossing of the River Jordan into the Promised Land to the flight into Egypt to the crucifixion have found renewed meaning when represented as dramas with African American actors. As these sacred narratives visualize dimensions of Black experiences, they evidence how art can both act as subversive protest in the present and orient the viewer toward salvation in eternity. The wealth and heterogeneity of creative ways in which African American artists have transformed the history of Christianity and the visual arts as well as the place of Christianity in the history of African American art are among the most important, and often neglected, narratives.