#mondernism

While considered a contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, Archibald Motley Jr. never lived in Harlem and was in fact born in New Orleans. He lived in Louisiana until his family moved to Illinois, settling in Chicago's South Side. A mixed race man, his experience living between black and white worlds made him keenly aware of the boundaries, privileges, and prejudices that came with race and skin tone. His work, while beginning largely in portraiture, explored those realities, informed by his study of the Old Masters. His work also explores jazz culture with bright, colorful night scenes full of vivid figures in gleamingly city lights. Motley's Life was complex and fascinating, if you'd like to see his work and learn more about him:

Whitney Museum of American Art - Archibald Motley

Motley Archibald Jr - Encyclopedia.com

"It promulgated free verse, stream of consciousness, montage and photomontage, collage and numerous other formal innovations in order to illuminate experiences that older forms could not... Modernists longed to transcend the limitations of a capitalist status quo" 

"Few European modernists were political... Most exhibited a soft humanism, through many anticipated once-personal issues that have since become political: alienation, anomie, identity, generational conflict, sexual repression, and more."

"exaggeration, collage, montage, and a host of nonrepresentational techniques liberating the unconscious and reconstituting the experience of everyday life were made by the new emphasis on subjectivity"

Self-Initiated - Work the Angle

Here is a shot of my WASSUP WASSILY nails and a collage of Kandinsky's art i referenced!

to see the original post with what i used and additional photos click the link