I love Black History Month. It’s a time for celebration, renewal, pride, reclaiming and sharing heritage. Some people are like, “It should be all year!” and “Why is it in the shortest month?’ (Came of age with a lot of comedians eating off of that joke).
Alternative Facts and Black History
There is just so much distortion when it comes to the facts of US history that a dedicated period set aside is essential to regularly counter the false historical and contemporary narratives perpetuated in the media. Sadly, alternative facts abound when it comes to the Black experience in the U.S.
I also love it when a totally new person (for me, fully admitting my ignorance here) gets added to the canon of incredible people who lift up all of our humanity.
Google’s Black History Month Tribute
Google kicked off the month with a doodle on its main page of the American sculptor and painter, Edmonia Lewis.
Google’s Edmonia Lewis Doodle Tribute on 2/1/2017
An Artist of Humble Origins
Born of African American and Native American (Mississauga Ojibwe) descent before the Civil War in 1843, she rose to become the only internationally recognized artist of African descent at the time of her death in the early 1900s. Her beginnings were truly humble. As she once said (from the book Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject
From Wildfire to Edmonia
Her Native American name, which she went by until starting college, was Wildfire. Still, despite her prominence (she was even commissioned to do a portrait of General Ulysses S Grant by the man himself), she had become an expatriate by 1880. Like many artists and particularly artists of color, there is tragic sadness to her life and work as well. Both her parents had passed by the time she was 9 year old. Abolitionists sent her to college when she was 15 where she went through a harrowing experience and was ultimately denied her degree. however, it is also where she learned art and would change everything.
“Hiawatha” by Edmonia Lewis
In addition to neoclassical style busts of abolitionists and famous patrons, she largely drew inspiration from her Native American heritage and the Black experience in her art, but her figures was depicted as European. This was deliberate, as she was competing in a dominant white, male and incredibly hostile art world. White artists and critics and aficionados assumed when people of color depicted the same in their art, they were always doing self-portraiture, or some silly argument like that, which was used in an attempt to diminish the work o f non-white artists.
Wildfire Unleashed
Edmonia Lewis couldn’t be denied however. Her 3000 lb sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, was a sensation at the 1876 Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia. She was big-time, too. Her work sold for tens of thousands of dollars, at least two of her works in 1873 sold for $100,000. Imagine! That’s big change by today’s standards, so you get a sense of her stature.
Escaping America’s Racism
Once she became an expat, she worked largely in Italy and worked in other parts of Europe, where there was less overt racism. She occasionally returned to the US to show and sell her works. She never married nor had any descendants. She became lost to history and changing styles in the art world and there is discrepancy in her death — although Wikipedia says parish records declare she is buried in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, in what, awfully, appears to be an unmarked grave. If only I had the money to right that wrong…
No sculpture adorns Edmonia Lewis’ grave site
Inspiration, Beauty, Celebration
The beautiful thing, though, is that we can take back and celebrate her life and work, and through the power of the internet, instantly gaze upon and reclaim the genius of this imminent artist, Wildfire, aka Edmonia Lewis.
If you are in the mood to discover more vintage African American art, stroll by our shop.