The Racial and Gendered Messages in Henry Robert's Paintings - Essay Example

?Running Head: The racial and gendered messages in Henry Robert’s Paintings Assignment Over the of Robert Henri's career he produced more than 200 portraits of ethnic and racial minorities in the United States and Europe, producing a catalogue of racial types. These images would prove to be some of the most financially and critically successful of his career. Evidence of his success with these portraits can be measured in the fact that these paintings currently reside in most of the major American collections of art (Art Experts Inc 1). In this paper I will discuss a few of his portraits both in the context of his writings about race and also in terms of the racialised critical responses these works received. Within this narrative two major issues arise in terms of Henri's portrait production. First, Henri constructed the image of his "people" as mostly women, children, and old men.1 Over the course of his career, Henri almost never painted images of non-white men his own age. In other words, non-white sitters represented a feminised, infantilised, or feeble image; all marking the territory of what was not white manhood. These images of non-white children and women in a study of white masculinity, communicate how Henri framed both whiteness and manhood. Race and gender exist in dialectics, black informing the construction of white, female instructing male, and vice versa. I think it was not a coincidence that Henri painted so few portraits of white men, and instead focused his attentions on racial and ethnic minorities. The white man, for Henri, could not be represented, for as he wrote, something had been lost in "the race"- white manhood was unstable, faltering. What he could paint instead was the boundaries of whiteness and the boundaries of manliness. As such, his portraits of non-white sitters become instructive, notifying the viewer of the distinctions between races and between genders. These numerous portraits then become a sort of reverse self-portrait; Henri looked into each of his sitter's eyes and saw what he was not. This interpretation of the way Henri's portraits functioned is then reflected in the contemporary criticism that the portraits received. As stated before, these works were some of the most successful of Henri's career and indeed resuscitated his reputation after the eclipse of modernism and the Armory Show. Critics were for the most part enthusiastic about his portraits, but beyond that their comments reveal that the racial and gendered messages he encoded in the paintings were not lost on the audience. His paintings of African Americans, for example, tell a different narrative than his images of Native Americans. Critics quickly read these variances and frequently expounded on the "differences" they saw represented in each race. Viewed collectively, each of these categories reveal the role each specific racial group played in defining the boundaries of white manhood. Even more to the point, the portraits encouraged critical responses which also addressed the nature of whiteness and masculinity vis-a-vis the individuals depicted. In short, Henri's project of racial and gender categorisation produced both a visual and critical record of the ongoing desire to define ideal whiteness and manhood, both of which seemed so illusive. Reading "Willie Gee." Harper's Weekly 58 (February 21, 1914): 2. McElroy, Guy C., ed. Facing History: The Black Image in American Art. 1710-1940. San Francisco and Washington D.C.: Bedford Arts, and Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990. Perlman, Bennard, Robert Henri: His Life and Art. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. Takaki, Ronald. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Assignment 2 Henri's portraits of African Americans are emblematic of the ways in which his work participated in larger, early-century, racial discourses. During his career Henri painted only six portraits of African Americans, a relatively small number. These portraits have been generally considered racially progressive by art historians because they do not conform to the stereotypes that abounded at the turn-of-the- century both in commercial and fine arts (McElroy 108). This credit, however, is perhaps overly generous. While these six portraits--all of African American children --may not engage in the more grotesque racist imagery of the time, but as a whole do reveal a white supremacist discourse of African-American inferiority. Henri's infantilisation, along with consistently lethargic or vacant facial expressions, and the pointed narratives that accompanied these portraits, suggest that his childhood prejudices were perhaps only replaced by a more sophisticated racist vocabulary. While Native Americans, Irish, and Mexicans stand as his "people," Henri never referred to African Americans in his popular writings and certainly not as his "people." The way that he returns to them throughout his lifetime, however, reveals their importance in his oeuvre. Henri's first image of an African American, The Portrait of Willie Gee (fig. 1), was painted and widely exhibited in 1904 (Mary & Wilmot 331). Willie Gee is a young child, around seven or eight years old. Seated in the centre of the canvas with his shoulders relaxed he gazes out at the viewer. He is dressed in an oversized coat, with large lapels and baggy shoulders and a white collared shirt underneath. In his left hand he holds an apple that is slightly hidden by the shadow in the crux of his arm. The palette of the painting is very dark with the outlines of Gee's body obscured in the bottom half of the canvas. Cropped at the waist, Willie is thrust to the very edges of the canvas, a style of portraiture that appeared for the first time in Henri's oeuvre. Art historian Bennard Perlman wrote that Willie Gee was Henri's newsboy at his residence at the Sherwood Studio Building on West 57th (Perlman 61). Henri produced numerous portraits during this period, mostly of friends and colleagues. When the painting was first exhibited in 1905, it garnered little critical attention. A writer for the New York Times remarked that Willie Gee was "rightfully robust" and a "characterful darky" (Paintings at the Society 11). This short mention is unfortunately significantly vague, revealing neither affection for the Henri's painting nor a hint at how the paintings' intentions were received. Several years later, however, in a Harper's Weekly article featuring the painting, an anonymous author is more revealing. The author describes Willie Gee as "a little New York newsboy, a full-blooded black son of a Virginia slave" (Willie Gee 2). Henri himself never elaborated on his portrait of Willie Gee in his writings or diaries. but this narrative was never disputed. The short review concludes, "Mr. Henri has found the type that reflects our problem" (Willie Gee 2). By "our" the author presumably meant the white, educated readers of the magazine, but what was the "problem" he/she referred to? The apple in Gee's hand, his shabby clothes and the accompanying narrative give some indication of the "problem," and what "we" were meant to see in the painting. It has been suggested that the apple Gee holds is an allusion to the apples customarily given to needy children at the Children's Aid Society. (Weber 10). This projection of poverty dovetails with Gee's appearance. His coat is obviously oversized, with its saggy shoulders and large lapels. The shirt underneath is barely visible, only a wrinkled whitish-gray section emerges around his neck. While Gee's clothes are not in obvious tatters, the general impression forms an image of childhood poverty. Compare this visual representation with the narrative in Harper's Magazine about Gee's origins. He was a newspaper boy, the son of a former slave from Virginia (DiGirolamo 63). In 1904, New York was just starting to see the influx of African Americans from the South (Tolnay 20-22). In a decade this migration would increase as the First World War and worsening social and economic conditions in the South would push African Americans North in search of work and better standards of living. The narrative of the article, however, accesses the racist anxiety of the first decade of the new century. During the Civil War, a major pro-slavery argument was the notion that African Americans, after having been slaves for so long, would not be able to take care of themselves (Takaki 108). This notion carried into the post-bellum era, with chronic unemployment (due to prohibitive Jim Crow laws and increased immigration) standing as "evidence" of the feared black labour crisis. I would argue that this stereotype is the "problem," that the article is referring to. This image, of an African American child that needs public assistance, is precisely the sort of black poverty that many whites feared they would be responsible for after the Civil War. The identification of Willie Gee's mother as a slave anchors him further to this particular narrative. He is representative of the new generation of African Americans, not born into slavery, but dependent on "white" America for his sustenance. This "problem," supposedly once the responsibility of Southern slave owners was now a nationwide issue and the responsibility. Critically, this narrative does not account for Willie Gee's father. Gee's only caretaker is a female former slave so he is forced to work on the streets and take handouts. The representative face of African Americans is this small, impoverished child with no father-a persistent racist narrative in the twentieth century. The way this painting was read by the author at Harper's creates an image of pity for the child but also a legacy of blame-the passing of a "problem," from South to North, and from black men to white men. While it could be argued that this reading is limited to the critic at Harper's Magazine, Henri's portrait suggests certain racialised understandings. Comparisons, for example, with other Henri portraits from the same period renders the racialised narratives of Willie Gee more stark. As mentioned, this was one of the first times Henri positioned a sitter so close to the edge of the canvas. His other portraits (also non-commissioned works) were remarkably different both in tone and presentation. Henri's portrait of George Luks, 1904 (fig. 2) was painted the same year as Willie Gee and provides a rich counterpoint to the portrait of the young boy. Luks is shown standing in slight contrapposto, holding a cigarette in one hand with his head tilted. His dressing coat is loosely tied with one side slightly askew. He seems to emerge from the darkness, emanating an inner light. His head is particularly bright despite a shadow that falls on his face. What is striking is the volume of personality that Luks exudes, his hair tussled, his eyebrow cocked, and a slight smirk. We are presented with a complex portrait of a man as well as his attitude and character. This vibrancy of personality was not limited to Henri's portrait of Luks. During the same year, 1904, Henri painted another peer, Portrait of John Sloan (fig. 3). The painting is distinctly more solemn with emotion that emanates from the sitter. Sloan's body is turned to the left as his face (which like Luks and Gee looks out to the viewer) exudes a tension that is both rigid and casual. With his right arm shoved in his pocket and his left leg slightly raised, his body suggests a lanky relaxed comfort that his face contradicts. This contradiction, however, is what creates the character the portrait exudes. This tension that is very similar to the portrait of Luks, and all of Henri's portraits of white sitters. These two portraits also share a sense of physical distance between the sitter and the audience. Both Luks and Sloan stare out at the viewer but lean back ever so slightly, giving the impression that while the viewer sizes them up, the sitter, in turn, is sizing up the audience. Thus, Henri's portraits give the audience a taste of both Luks and Sloan, but we are constantly reminded of the chasm that exists between the sitter and ourselves. No such distance is provided in the portrait of Willie Gee. His body is pushed up to the very edge of the canvas and he lacks the space to move around within the picture frame. His expression is also significantly less articulated. While it is possible to discern certain personality traits from Henri's images of his friends-- seriousness about Sloan or a free-spiritedness about Luks-- the expression in Willie Gee reveals little. This is noteworthy because Henri was not a particularly subtle painter. His portraits during this period are emotionally shallow and so while his portraits of white sitters reveal so much personality it is odd that Willie Gee reveals so little. His eyes are opened wide, but not in surprise or inquisitiveness, and his mouth is slack. In short, his expression is blank- it gives nothing to the viewer about this little boy's personality (Paintings at the Society 11). There are several reasons for this discrepancy. Certainly Henri's friendships with Luks and Sloan could have given him much more personal insight into their characters that could have been expressed in the canvases. The variation in portrayal is also perhaps due to the differences between adults and children, adults being associated with having more pronounced and definite personality types (New York Tribune 25). But I would suggest that the distinct portrayal of Willie Gee is in fact linked to the issue of race. Henri would later write that he thought the race was expressed in the individual. So while by itself the portrait of Willie Gee does not read as having any distinct racial overtones, when compared with Henri's images of whites, his portrayal of an African American is marked by an emotional vacancy. The production of whiteness, as stated earlier, is contingent upon defining non-whiteness. So when confronted with the image of two, vibrant, complex white men and one vacuous small African American boy, the definition is in the contrast. Whiteness, and indeed manliness is not black, poverty stricken, and dependent on others. Whiteness, in short, is not the "problem." This review of Henri's images could be extended to include all his portraits of racial and ethnic minorities. These paintings of minority children, teenagers, women, and old men (and it is important to remember that there are hundreds of them) ultimately articulate the boundaries of whiteness to give purpose to white masculinity. Each of these portraits was meant to function, and if reviews are any indication, did function, self-reflexively. This is to say that the audience looked at the portraits as markers of difference by which to situate their own positions of power vis-a-vis race and gender. The way that these portraits infantilise, racialise, feminise, or in some way negate the authority of non-white sitters provided a space for audiences to evaluate and compare their identities. This was, after all, Henri's stated intention for his paintings- to "rescue" the race. He was attempting to reinvent whiteness, giving it the authority and validity that was perceived to be in decline. These portraits invigorated a weakened sense of masculine identity and reminded the viewer of the authority of white, masculinity. Work Cited McElroy, Guy C., ed. Facing History: The Black Image in American Art. 1710-1940. San Francisco and Washington D.C.: Bedford Arts, and Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990. Mary S. Sweeney, Wilmot T. Bartle, American Art in the Newark Museum: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture American Art in the Newark Museum. Newark, NI: Newark Museum, 1981. Perlman, Bennard, Robert Henri: His Life and Art. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. "Willie Gee." Harper's Weekly 58 (February 21, 1914): 2. "Paintings at the Society." New York Times, 11 April, 1905. Weber, Bruce. Ashcan Kids: Children in the Art of Henri. Luks. Glackens. Bellows and Sloan. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., 1999. DiGirolamo, Vincent. ''The Negro Newsboy: Black Child in a White Myth." Columbia Journal of American Studies 4 (2000): 63-92. Tolnay, Stewart E. and E.M. Beck. "Rethinking the Role of Racial Violence in the Great Migration." In Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South, edited by Alferdteen Harrison. Jackson and London: University of Mississippi, 1991. Takaki, Ronald. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. New York Tribune, "Only Out of Home's Narrow Confines Is Full Growth Possible for Children Says Robert Henri." New York Tribune, 25 January 1915. Art Experts, Inc. Information Retrieved from http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/henri.php Appendices Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Read More