The Harlem Renaissance

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What is a renaissance? A renaissance is a movement or period of energetic artistic and intellectual activity. Some prefer to call it a type of “rebirth” or a development of artistic ideas that have not been explored before in that particular era in time. It is a time of learning, relearning and expounding on ideas that may have already existed but are now being taken to another level. Although we have always had art in some kind of form in the world, the movements of the Harlem Renaissance and the European Renaissance stand out in a light of their own. The European Renaissance as well as the Harlem Renaissance was both a time when new artists were coming into their own. Both of these Renaissances were originated or developed after suffering…show more content…
It was like a cultural explosion of African Americans that had never been before. This particular renaissance started off as a succession of literary dialogues in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem). Many African-Americans had a significant impact on contemporary arts during this renaissance. Alain LeRoy Locke was considered the head and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance. His efforts to discredit race-based myths of the natural intellectual, social, and spiritual inferiority of African-Americans that surfaced in the post Reconstruction era are thought to be some of his greatest achievements. Many artists in all types of forms came into being during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes was one of the poets who published many works of literature during this time. He was one of the initial trendsetters of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Many other poets and writers like W.E.B. Dubois, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name just a few came onto the scene during this time with their own styles and different themes that ran through their…show more content…
Charles Alston was one of those painters who exploded onto the scene. His focus was mainly on mastering a type of art that was called portraiture, which was a genre in painting that works at showing a realistic portrait of their subjects. Jacob Lawrence, one another important artist of the 20th century, and is best known for his series of narrative paintings which outlined important moments in African American history. It was a time when different artists like Lois Mailou Jones, and Aaron Douglas explored new meanings in their paintings using color, texture and design and although sometimes they weren’t recognized for their own works and prizes that were awarded to them were taken away and given to the white painters it did not stop them from continuing to
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