Vaudeville In Harlem

The Mexican school wasn’t essentially a school but rather than a group of artists that believed the same thing and expressed with different ways. Every artist expressed it with different techniques, ideas, styles, and procedures. Each artist that was involved with the Mexican school created images to express the problems that were presented at the time. Some problems that were occurring are discrimination, dictatorships, and abuses of minorities. African American artists understood these views and collaborated since they nearly settled in the same cities throughout the United States. Not just in the United States but on both sides of the border the struggles of common people were deeply shown in these murals, these pieces art. African Americans became interested in studying in Mexico. “The Mexican murals that influenced the work of African-American artists first began to appear in the United States in the 1920s. Their arrival coincided with an early twentieth-century migration of Mexicans to the United States” (Goldman. 44-45). Revolutionary artist Jose Clemente Orozco settled in Harlem, New York where he created a mural called, “Workers Rally” for a school in Los Angeles. In this mural Jose painted “an African American father and a Mexican-American mother standing side by side with their babies in their arms as they listen to an agitator.” (Goldman.10) Directress was not pleased with Jose’s work and his mural was later destroyed. Another young artist that was recognized was Miguel Covarrubias. Miguel was fascinated by the culture in Harlem. He was captivated by the richness of the African American culture. While staying in Harlem, Miguel enjoyed going out to theatres and night clubs. He was so inspired by the dancers, poets, actors, singers, and musicians that he began expressing the Harlem’s nightlife into his paintings. Miguel’s drawings were published into Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blue’s and the audiences weren’t pleased. He began a debate with non-Negros that he was interpreting and portraying Negros in their aspects of life. Two years after Orozco started a project called lithograms presenting the life in Harlem. …show more content…
Giving viewers another way of discrimination. In one of the lithographs we have seen was called Vaudeville in Harlem. In which we would see a quiet audience while they watched leaping frogs and monkeys. This interpretation the monkeys were minorities and the audience are white people. But that wasn’t the only portrait that Orozco has created to interpret the way that the white people would discriminate and feel more superior to the minorities. No one in that era was daring enough to paint portraits as Orozco did to show the public African Americans sought these muralists …show more content…
Diego Rivera painted a mural in Mexico illustrating the history of the Mexican people. In 1936, the Great Depression was stalled and the Art project of eight African-American artists developed a cultural group to portray the history of black people in the United States in a Hospital in Harlem. Artist Charles Alston created the year before as part of the Works Progress Administration. Both artists Diego and Charles placed stressed on the influences of tribal cultures to medicine. However, in Alston’s Medicine mural message was taken by some critics as meaning that “African medicine was characterized by primitive concepts that were later advanced by Europeans.” Charles Alston was influenced by Alain Locke’s philosophy from creating the African American