Leslie King-Hammond T HE DAVID C. DRISKELL SERIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: VOLUME VIII

Transcription

1 Leslie King-Hammond T HE DAVID C. DRISKELL SERIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: VOLUME VIII

2 Plate 52. Temptation, Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Collection of Melanie Lawson and John Guess. Courtesy June Kelly Gallery.

3 I NTRODUCTION If Hughie Lee-Smith had not become a painter, he would surely have excelled in another field. He nurtured an almost obsessive interest in science, mathematics, and the humanities. He had the talent and discipline to succeed as an athlete, actor, singer, dancer, poet, historian, philosopher, or teacher. It is our good luck that he decided to become a visual artist. Born in 1915, Lee-Smith was a product of the New Negro Harlem Renaissance movement, the Great Depression, and the Great Migration. In a career that spanned seven decades, his work evolved through social realism and neoromanticism to something that might be called metaphysical alchemy. He used it to conduct philosophical inquiries into the African American struggle for recognition and identity, and, more broadly, the endless discord of the human condition. When Lee-Smith acted on his ambition to become a professional artist, he did so in full awareness of the challenges he faced. The Depression was grinding along; material support for the arts was scarce; and the reality, for an African American, of trying to make a career in art was, by his own assessment, torturous. But his early work with the WPA, and an affirmation of his ability from the highest possible source a laudatory analysis of his prints in James Porter s Modern Negro Art added much to his already formidable confidence. Hughie Lee-Smith grew up in the Midwest. Unlike many artists of the time, who resettled in New York City at the first opportunity, he spent half his lifetime in Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. At times he was able to paint prolifically, but there were also periods when he had to take work in a factory to support his family and his art. For much of his life he subsisted through teaching. His public recognition, too, had its highs and lows. Throughout these times, Lee-Smith kept painting, exhibiting, and consistently winning awards, honors, and purchase prizes. Why did the mainstream art world fail for so long to acknowledge him? The answer may lie in the sorrowful realities of racial politics, the uncomfortable nature of his subject matter, and his adherence to a painterly style that was often out of step with contemporary tastes and fashions. As his images attest, Lee-Smith loved a paradox. Appropriately, the works and their maker occupy a paradoxical place in American art. Among some African American schools of thought, Lee-Smith s work may not have been black enough socially, culturally, or visibly. Are the subjects of his paintings even black? It s often hard to tell, and deliberately so. Certainly he spoke as an African American when, through his chosen medium, he interrogated the existential condition of black people in a society dominated by whites. But Lee-Smith worked long and hard toward a means to articulate even larger, still more complex questions concerning identity, humanity, and man s relationship to all things in the cosmos.

4 Plate 30. Black Bird, Oil on board, 20 x 12 in. Collection of D.C. Moore Gallery. 4

5 Plate 40. The Jugglers, Oil on canvas, 26 x 26 in. Collection of Green-Weedman Collection. 5

6 6 Plate 45. Merry-Go-Round I, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in. Collection of Les Edwards. Courtesy June Kelly Gallery.

7 Plate 46. Balloon Transitoire, Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Courtesy June Kelly Gallery. 7

8 T HE DAVID C. DRISKELL SERIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART: VOLUME VIII Leslie King-Hammond Chronology by Aiden Faust Painter Hughie Lee-Smith ( ) sought to transform his experiences growing up as an African American during the Great Depression into meditations on the human condition. In each of Lee-Smith s enigmatic compositions, barren landscapes, lone figures, and contrasting juxtapositions elicit many questions that lead the viewer to self-reflection. I cannot begin to project the meaning of my work in specific terms, Lee-Smith said, for these paintings, at their best, are multi-faceted visual complexes whose many aspects are pregnant with as many disparate meanings as there are viewers. Active in the art scenes of Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, Lee-Smith found inspiration in the New Negro Movement Harlem Renaissance and nurtured his artistic talents early by participating in the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project. While he objected to strict definitions of black art, his personal struggles with race identity, social justice, and alienation became recurring themes in his paintings throughout his career. At times a realist and at times a romantic, Hughie Lee-Smith captured the uncertainty of a generation caught between memories of the past and the promises of the future. The eighth volume in Pomegranate s David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Hughie Lee-Smith presents nearly sixty color plates from the artist s profound oeuvre. Author Leslie King-Hammond considers the powerful experiences that shaped Lee-Smith s vision, while a comprehensive chronology by Aiden Faust further informs the context of the artist s work. With historical family photographs, excerpts from Lee-Smith s own writings, and an insightful foreword by David C. Driskell, Hughie Lee-Smith provides an intimate look at one of the twentieth century s most distinguished artists. 124 pages, 8½ x 11 inches Smyth-sewn casebound, with jacket More than 65 color and black-and-white images, chronology, and index Foreword by David C. Driskell 2010 Leslie King-Hammond Images Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY $35.00 US ($42.00 Canada) ISBN Catalog no. A185 Available March 2010 Printed in China FRONT COVER: A New Song, David C. Driskell is Distinguished University Professor of Art Emeritus, University of Maryland. A noted curator, scholar, and lecturer, Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in Also an accomplished artist, his paintings were exhibited in 1993 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters and are in many public and private collections worldwide. Leslie King-Hammond received her BFA from Queens College (CUNY) and an MA and PhD in Art History from the Johns Hopkins University. She began teaching art history courses at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 1973, became Graduate Dean Emeritus, and was appointed Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA in Currently she is the Chair of the Board of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore. King-Hammond also sits on the boards of the Alliance of Artists Communities, the Creative Alliance at The Patterson in Baltimore, and the Industrial Advisory Council for the NAACP/ ACT-SO program. She has written numerous publications on African American artists, including an essay for the Jacob Lawrence catalogue raisonné. Pomegranate Communications, Inc. Box , Petaluma CA Pomegranate Europe Ltd. Unit 1, Heathcote Business Centre Hurlbutt Road Warwick, Warwickshire CV34 6TD, UK [+44] sales@pomeurope.co.uk