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INTRODUCTION
As one of the most prominent artists of the
San Francisco Bay area, Sargent Johnson aimed to show the vast spectrum
of African American beauty. In 1935 the San Francisco Chronicle
quoted him as saying: It is the pure American Negro I am concerned with,
aiming to show the natural beauty and dignity in that characteristic lip
and that characteristic hair, bearing and manner; and I wish to show that
beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself. ... The Negroes
are a colorful race; they call for an art as colorful as they can be made.
Exhibits and commissions with the Harmon Foundation and the Federal Arts
Project (FAP), respectively, provided him vehicles to promote his works.
Consequently, he became one of the leading sculptors during the Harlem
Renaissance era. Like Richmond Barthe,
Augusta Savage, Elizabeth Prophet,
Aaron Douglas, and others, Johnson's
work projected African culture and racial pride during this period.
NARRATIVE ESSAY:
Sargent Claude Johnson was born on October
7, 1887, in Boston, Massachusetts, the third of six children of Anderson
Johnson of Swedish ancestry and Lizzie Jackson Johnson of African American
and Cherokee ancestry. Anderson Johnson died in 1897 and Lizzie Johnson
in 1902. An uncle, Sherman William Jackson of Washington, D.C., took the
children in when their father died. His wife, May Howard Jackson, a sculptor
of repute, guided Johnson's first efforts in claymodeling, but the children
were soon sent to live with their maternal grandparents in Alexandria,
Virginia. There Sargent continued his modeling in clay by copying tombstones.
When the grandparents could no longer care for the children, they were
dispersed. Johnson spent the rest of his childhood at an orphanage run
by the Sisters of Charity in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Johnson studied art at the Worcester
Art School and went to the Bay area in 1915 with savings earned from work
with the Sisters of Charity. He did further studies at the A. W. Best
School of Art and the California School of Fine Arts. The sculptors Beniamino
Bufano and Ralph Stackpole are often referred to as his major instructors.
Johnson's first exhibits were with
the San Francisco Art Association in 1925. He won recognition in the city
for his work. An undated San Francisco newspaper clipping in the Harmon
files reports that no choice could be made between Johnson's Forever
Free, a sculpture of mother and child, and his former art instructor
Beniamino Bufano's Torso. From 1928 to 1935 he exhibited with the
Harmon Foundation. In these exhibitions he won prizes for Sammy,
a bust of a black boy, and other busts, such as Chester. Many of
his early pieces were in glazed ceramic, and he also exhibited drawings.
From 1928 to 1933 the Harmon Foundation
was a major force in the careers of black artists in general and presented
five successful exhibitions that focused the public on the professional
accomplishments and the needs of these artists. Correspondence in the
Harmon Files shows that the foundation was very instrumental in promoting
Johnson's career. The foundation not only exhibited his works but also
provided him with materials on black culture and achievements, advised
and recommended him for awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship for further
study, promoted articles on him in the American Magazine of Art,
and sympathized with him during family problems.
JOHNSON AND THE RENAISSANCE
During the 1920s, great changes in the entire
structure of American society occurred. Many black writers and artists expressed
racial and cultural themes in their works. This period became known as the
Harlem Renaissance. Artists like Aaron Douglas used black themes in paintings
and book illustrations, while Richmond Barthe and Johnson, the two most
prominent sculptors of the late 1920s and 1930s, based most of their art
in plaster, bronze, and ceramic on African masks and other cultural motifs.
In 1936 Alain Locke, one of the most important intellectuals of the Renaissance,
described Johnson's art: "For purely sculptural qualities Johnson's
simplified surfaces are admirably adapted; and his African quality is very
suited for racial characterization."
Johnson attempted to stylize black subjects
as the ancients had stylized their art. As reported in the Black Times
of Albany, California, Johnson said this about his art in the 1930s: I am
producing strictly a Negro Art, studying not the culturally mixed Negro
of the cities, but the more primitive slave type as existed in this country
during the period of slave importation. Very few artists have gone into
the history of the Negro in America, cutting back to the sources and origins
of the life of the race in this country. Johnson felt such work was of the
utmost importance to black people and disliked the number of black artists
who worked in the style of white Europeans. He explained: I am interested
in applying color to sculpture as the Egyptian, Greek and other ancient
people did. ... I am concerned with color, not solely as a technical problem,
but also as a means of heightening the racial character of my work.
FEDERAL ARTS PROJECT AND COLLECTION
During the 1930s Johnson served
as a supervisor on the Work Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project.
The FAP gave black artists an opportunity to practice their craft and
to be paid for doing so. Some of Johnson's most significant works commissioned
by the FAP were the 1939 entrance reliefs and mosaic murals on a promenade
deck for the Maritime Museum of Aquatic Park, the two eight-foot-high
sculptures of Inca Indians seated on llamas for the 1939--40 Golden Gate
International Exposition's Court of Pacifica, and a cast-stone frieze
made for the George Washington High School Athletic Field in 1942. About
this time Johnson began producing many well-received lithographs. During
a visit to Mexico he became fascinated by black pottery made locally,
and produced numerous small figures in the material. In 1947 he began
to produce large panels from porcelain on steel. Over the next 20 years,
he had many commissions for works in this medium. The largest, 78 by 39
feet, was commissioned by a Reno gambling casino. Constants in Johnson's
work were his use of color for his sculpture and his readiness to experiment
and adopt new techniques.
Johnson was able to sell his works
to private collectors and museums as fast as he made them due to his experience
working in an art gallery, where he learned the techniques of buying and
selling, meeting buyers, and learning what they really wanted.
In 1915 Johnson married Pearl Lawson
of Georgia whose father was a white Englishman and mother a French Creole.
Their only child was Pearl Adele. Johnson died in Mt. Zion Hospital in
San Francisco on October 10, 1967, when he was 80-years old. Funeral services
were held on October 14 in Estrella Mortuary on 1115 Valencia Street in
San Francisco.
A major sculptor in the San Francisco
Bay area, Johnson contributed greatly to the field of art, particularly
black art. As other artist during the Harlem Renaissance period, most
of his works expressed racial themes. Its focus was to raise the consciousness
of Americans about black culture beyond stereotypical views. Through his
art he wanted to project a simplistic style appealing to the common man;
his works touched broad spectrums of society both nationally and internationally.
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