Harvard Art Museums > 2009.63: The Blind Singer Prints Collections Search Exit Deep Zoom Mode Zoom Out Zoom In Reset Zoom Full Screen Add to Collection Order Image Copy Link Copy Citation Citation"The Blind Singer (William Henry Johnson) , 2009.63,” Harvard Art Museums collections online, Nov 21, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/331817. Reuse via IIIF Toggle Deep Zoom Mode Download This object does not yet have a description. Identification and Creation Object Number 2009.63 People William Henry Johnson, American (Florence, South Carolina 1901 - 1970 Long Island, New York) Title The Blind Singer Classification Prints Work Type print Date c 1945 Culture American Persistent Link https://hvrd.art/o/331817 Physical Descriptions Medium Screen print on wove paper Technique Screen print Dimensions 45.1 x 29.8 cm (17 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.) Inscriptions and Marks inscription: back of sheet in pencil: Blind Singer, FO-156 (II) William H. Johnson Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund and gift of Monroe E. Price and Aimée Brown Price Accession Year 2009 Object Number 2009.63 Division Modern and Contemporary Art Contact am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu Permissions The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Descriptions Commentary The screenprint, Blind Singer, is the first work by William Henry Johnson to enter the collection of the Harvard Art Museum. After studying at the National Academy of Design in New York under Charles Hawthorne in the 1920s, Johnson traveled to France where he began working in a less academic style. After a brief return to New York where he experienced intense racism, he returned to Europe in 1930 and began his travels through northern Europe-Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He remained in Scandinavia until 1938 when political unrest prompted another return to New York. Exposure to the Expressionism of such northern European artists as Nolde and Munch had a lasting influence on his work. Upon his return to the US, Johnson took a WPA job teaching at the Harlem Community Art Center, where he was introduced to the technique of screen printing. (The FAP/WPA transformed screenprinting from a commercial practice to a fine art technique when it set up a workshop dedicated to the medium in New York City in 1938.) Johnson's previous print work had all been woodcut, a favored technique of the Expressionists. His arrival in Harlem also initiated an interest in subjects related to African-American life in the US-agrarian southern life, black American heroes, battalions of black soldiers, religious imagery, and northern urban black life, especially centered on the Harlem Renaissance. Screenprinting provided him with a visual language to represent these subjects with renewed vitality. The flat areas of bold color that comprise the stylized figures and objects are distinctly modernist in appearance and subject. Publication History David Bindman, Suzanne Blier, and Vera Grant, ed., Art of Jazz: Form, Performance, Notes, exh. cat., Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art (Cambridge, MA, 2017), p. 44, ill. (color) Exhibition History Recent Acquisitions, Part II: Building the Collection, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/19/2012 - 09/29/2012 Art of Jazz: Form, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/23/2016 - 05/08/2016 Verification Level This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
