New York — I make no claims on being an art critic, merely an appreciator, who often goes with his wife (a painter) to museum exhibits and art galleries. We recently visited the Whitney to see an exhibit of a gifted,
though not well-known, black American painter Archibald John Motley Jr. (1891–1981). His show is closing on January 17 and though Motley’s work is not in the same league as Edward Hopper or Jacob Lawrence, it’s an exhibit that shouldn’t be missed.
Motley was a Chicago-based, formally trained painter, whose prime subject was the black urban experience. He began by painting striking self-portraits and stately, dignified ones of people he knew as well as family members. However, his most distinctive paintings were his neon-lit, richly colored scenes of urban black life in Jazz Age Chicago. These paintings combined realism and expressionism and aimed at capturing the vitality and hedonism of urban life — fevered nighttime church services, nightclubs packed with dancers and musicians, card players, and the night street itself — without making moral judgments or ever sentimentalizing the scene. Motley was an artist whose stylized paintings were permeated with movement and crowded with throngs, who clearly took pleasure and found humor in all that he saw. He loved the night and the rhythm of the city. Still, he remained somewhat outside of the world he painted.
I commend the Whitney for resurrecting Motley — a good painter who merits being seen by a wide audience.
