The Art Institute of Chicago has a number of treasures and, near those treasures, hitherto unknown treasures, such as the work of Archibald Motley Jr. I was standing near Sargent’s 1897 portrait of Elizabeth Swinton–a relative of Tilda’s–when I felt my energy being re-directed to another painting, smaller, less “monumental” in presentation, but gravitational in its colors, form, psychology. Painted in 1920, Motley’s self-portrait is not only a portrait of the artist, but of the dandy-fied Negro, a city creature standing on the crossroads where Africa and Europe meet in that new land–America. I had never heard of his work before. I had never seen hands the way he painted his hands in his self-portrait: like vertical bats in action, a flurry of intention and then execution. Born in New Orleans, Motley was a Harlem Renaissance era painter who never lived in Harlem, and who never fully identified with being black or white–he would not choose. (His nephew, Willard Motley, was raised as his brother. Willard Motley was a “raceless” novelist, the author of “Clash By Night,” and the scary “Let No Man Write My Epitaph.” I have always wanted to write about his work.) Motley’s portraits were definitely about “the race,” but also his European-ness, those masters he felt close to (Rembrandt, etc). I am less inclined to be interested in his scenes of “urban,” life, they feel forced, noisy in a way that is not him so much as a him he thought he should be (racial uplift or ideology as corrupting to art). All of this I learned and wanted to learn and think about after I saw his beautiful self-portrait, thought about the shape of his mouth, the handlebar mustache, and those hands so anxious to get their work done.
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