Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Oscar Micheaux, Body & Soul (still), 1925. Film (black and white, silent), 79 minutes
Oscar Micheaux, Body & Soul (still), 1925. Film (black and white, silent), 79 minutes

“Discursively, this location of Harlem to the forces of cultural encounters, assimilations, and oppositions is perhaps the most interesting part of ‘Rhapsodies in Black’ . . . . [The] exhibition calls on us to meditate on the idea of black modernity as part of the consequence of the transition of the world economy into industrialization. It offers a vision of Harlem as a real space, and its culture as important within a historical moment. The curators generously offered the view, rarely reciprocated by most surveys of modern art . . . that 20th century modernity has always been transcultural, transnational, often through the efforts of émigrés.”  Okwui Enwezor, exhibition review of Rhapsodies in Art: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Spring/Summer 1998.

Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance. With David A. Bailey, et al. London & Berkeley: University of California, 1997.

Access on Amazon