More Than Meets the Eye: Archibald Motley and Debates on Race in Art

In 1933, Archibald J. Motley Jr., an African-American artist from Chicago who enjoyed a moderate level of national and international renown, issued his only formal public statement concerning the relationship he perceived between his art and race. His words, resonating with confidence, assert his conviction that painting could capture the truth of race through pigment. Reproduced opposite this declaration,Bluesof 1929 (Figure 1), which depicts well-coiffed men and women dancing in the Petite Cafe in Paris to tunes played by musicians seated in the foreground, would seem to reinforce Motley's point: paint transcribes the gradations of skin pigment incarnated by the various African, West Indian, and perhaps even African-American patrons of this nightspot. The color of skin, transmuted into the color of paint, identifies and catalogs race.