After Tanner:
African American Artists Since 1940
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA, Philadelphia
January 28 – April 15, 2012
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was a mentor and role model for younger artists during his lifetime and has been a source of pride for many generations of artists since his death. An exhibition drawn largely from PAFA’s collection and supplemented by several major loans, After Tanner: African-American Artists Since 1940 broadly celebrates what Tanner’s career inspired and made possible in its wake.
Tanner was a trailblazer, bravely choosing his own path and attaining international stature in the arts despite innumerable societal challenges. He was also an innovator of African-American genre painting and in religious subjects, where he made his most lasting and powerful contribution to art history. It is not unreasonable to assert that Tanner’s professional example together with the quality of his work made it possible for subsequent generations of African-American artists to pursue their aspirations in the art world and transform American art in the twentieth century.
“It is important to remember that Henry Ossawa Tanner’s career bridged the 19th and 20th centuries,” says Robert Cozzolino, Senior Curator and Curator of Modern Art. “He navigated a period of rapid change in the art world. While he has been firmly associated with 19th-century styles, PAFA’s Tanner retrospective [...] shows how modern he was and what an extraordinary experimenter he was with regard to imagery and technique. Younger artists took note and admired the integrity with which he managed his career. After Tanner is an opportunity to consider the innumerable channels for expression Tanner’s example opened up for African-American artists working in the wake of his career.”
Some of the artists included in the exhibition sought out and met Tanner, including William H. Johnson (in 1926) and Hale Woodruff (in 1928). Other artists, such as Reginald Gammon made paintings in homage to Tanner. Gammon's 1967 portrait of Tanner, based on a 1930s photograph, was a highly personal image for the artist, made on a panel given to him by his friend Romare Bearden. A double homage to two important figures in American art history, it is an icon of creative power and lineage. Faith Ringgold celebrates a key moment in Tanner’s biography -- the moment when he decided to become an artist – by imagining it in a recent print commissioned by PAFA.
Others, such as Romare Bearden and Alma Thomas, took up religious themes that meant a great deal to Tanner, and reworked them by using new materials and a modernist visual language unique to their time. Contemporary artists such as Laylah Ali, Willie Cole, Glenn Ligon, Quentin Morris, and Kara Walker explore identity and a complex cultural past in ways that Tanner could not have imagined.
The installation runs parallel with Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, upstairs from the exhibition in the Annenberg Gallery of the Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - PAFA
Broad and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19102
