Back to: William H. Johnson
Art and Life of William H. Johnson:
A Guide for Teachers
Lesson 1. Rural Life: South Carolina
Early Morning Work
A confluence of lines—from the broad ones on the clapboard house to the faint ones of the plowed field—form the background
against which three members of a farm family perform various
tasks. One person operates an animal-pulled plow and two
others carry pails that might hold water drawn from the
well.
Although Johnson's distorted anatomical forms may derive from his study of traditional African art, they also play a symbolic role. For example, the large hands and spindly limbs of the farmers suggest a life of hard work. Even the mule, an essential animal in a pre-tractor, agrarian society, assumes similar characteristics—knobby knees and broad hooves. Indeed, all cultivators in Early Morning Work—farmers and mule—perform their duties with an almost instinctual, ritualistic cadence.
Although Johnson left his South Carolina home at the age of seventeen and only revisited it twice as an adult, his memories of fields of tobacco and cotton, small wooden shacks, plows pulled by mules, and hard-working black farmers, were forever captured in his paintings.
Questions and Activities
Ask students to look carefully at the painting. Many different lines are repeated (e.g., verticals, horizontals, and diagonals). Have them describe the different kinds of lines they see.
The artist uses several pairs of opposites to balance this composition. Ask students to list some of them (e.g., the profile versus frontal poses, human power and animal power, etc.).
Discuss the role of work on a farm that does not have a tractor. Why would animal labor be important? Why would children need to assist adults? Compare early morning work in homes today. What are the roles of children and adults?
Give students a blank sheet of colored construction paper and colored felt-tipped pens. Ask them to draw a picture of early morning work in their home using lines and opposites. What would they be doing in their picture? What would other members of their family be doing in their picture?
Cotton Pickers
Despite the many years that elapsed between Johnson's childhood in the South and his return to New York, there is almost timeless, ethereal quality to works such as Cotton Pickers. Held together by intriguing color relationships and a strong rhythmic sensibility, this painting of rural life focuses on the mundane activity of harvesting farm produce. In this work ritual, however, Johnson visually links as one entity workers and harvest.
Johnson's paintings of his southern roots can be viewed within the context of the classic 1936 anthropological study of African American folklore Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston. Like Hurston, Johnson carefully examined the rituals of farm work, the pairing of human beings and animals in the agricultural endeavor, and the cyclical, almost instinctive aspects of rural life.
Johnson's interest in black folk culture was the subject of his January 1941 fellowship application to the Julius Rosenwald Fund. In his application, he explained his reason for asking for support to travel south to "paint Negro people in their natural environment":
On returning to the U.S. from thirteen successful years spent in Europe and Africa, I came back with the burning desire to commence where I left off.… This development shall continue for the rest of my life, and [it] is the painting of my people. My travels taught me that to create an artist must live and paint in his own environment.
Even though his application was not funded, applying for the fellowship forced Johnson to explicate the principles and direction of his art.
Questions and Activities
Listen to "Summertime" from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Compare Johnson's painting to the lyrics and mood of the song.
Ask students to conduct an oral history project. Ask them to interview neighbors, family friends, or relatives who lived in the South during the 1930s and 1940s. What are their memories? Did they pick cotton? If so, what was it like? If not, what was their occupation?
Pictured top: William H. Johnson, Early Morning Work, about 1940, oil on burlap,
Pictured bottom: William H. Johnson, Cotton Pickers, about 1940, watercolor and pencil on paper,