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Vital Expressions Few American painters of the last hundred years have used religious themes. There was an energetic wave of church-building in the 1880s and '90s, which meant lots of commissions for religious subjects by muralists and stained glass artists. But after that period, traditional biblical and religious subjects all but died out of American art. Twentieth-century art has been very secular, or at most vaguely spiritual. Within African American communities, however, religious music and art have remained vital expressions down to today. This painting called I Baptize Thee is one of many great works on religious themes by William H. Johnson.William H. Johnson's life combined tragedy and triumph. His self-portrait shows some of the struggle he experienced. It was made about 1929, when he returned from his first long trip to Europe with high hopes and ambitions for his career. A year later, he won a gold medal in an art show in New York, but his luck did not last. He experienced racial prejudice, homelessness, illness, and poverty, and he died unknown in a mental hospital after 23 years there.
Scholar Richard J. Powell has done pioneering research on Johnson's life and art. Now the artist is belatedly celebrated as a great modern painter. Perhaps it was his hardships that led him in the late 1930s to pare his style to powerful essentials and to concentrate on the big issues: family, religion, war, history, and the joys and sorrows of daily life.
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 Part 1 Discussion: I Baptize Thee (574K) Get QuickTime |
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