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Harlem Renaissance Artists tried to gain control over how they were depicted by whites, especially through "caricature and denigration." They wanted a new kind of image for themselves, and created a style based on African artistic traditions like folk art.

• Meta Warrick's sculpture Ethiopia Awakening (1914) shows a black woman wrapped like an Egyptian mummy from waist down--but "her upper torso aspires upward, suggesting rebirth." 

• Aaron Douglas, whose "stylized, silhouette-like rendering of recognizably black characters, imbued with qualities of spiritual yearning and racial pride, became closely identified with the Harlem Renaissance generally"

• Palmer C. Hayden, Jeunesse. "interpreted black

  

  Jeunesse

  folklore and working class life"

• Archibal Motley, who depicted the "New Negro" in his paintings

• Augusta Savage's sculpture Gamin (1930)

Although most black artists left Harlem for more liberal areas like Paris--as Josephine Baker did--they returned for contests and exhibits. --Encyclopaedia Britannica

Chronicle of the New Negro

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