Back to: William H. Johnson
Art and Life of William H. Johnson:
A Guide for Teachers
Lesson 2. City Life: Harlem
Street Life, Harlem
Johnson pays homage to the people and dynamic energy of Harlem, New York, in this painting of a stylishly dressed couple standing on a street corner. The couple's clothing—hats topped with bright feathers, shoes with big platform heels and open toes, spats, a vest, long gloves—serves as a kind of urban insignia wearable only in this vibrant environment. Even the multicolored buildings around them seem to throb and pulsate with life.
Johnson's view of Harlem was neither overstated nor fabricated. The following excerpt from an April 1939 article in the New York Amsterdam News reports on clothes and lifestyles at Harlem's famous dance hall, the Savoy Ballroom:
Women young and old began packing into the Savoy at 10 p.m., all decked out in their Sunday best. They were breaking-in Palm Sunday and Easter clothes last Thursday—tiny veiled, cock-eyed hats, perched at crazy angles on their freshly shampooed, shiny hair; and swing skirts a tantalizing fraction of an inch below their knees.
Located minutes away from the Harlem Community Art Center where Johnson taught art classes, the Savoy Ballroom provided Johnson with vast amounts of visual information and inspiration. Johnson interjects a dash of visual humor into this scene—the buildings undulate and sway, as if to follow the swing of the woman's skirt.
Questions and Activities
Listen to "Roll 'Em" by Mary Lou Williams. Discuss how Johnson's painting relates to the mood the music creates.
Johnson used many geometric shapes and repeated patterns in this painting—note the windows and lines on the pavement. Ask students to find examples of squares, triangles, circles, etc.
Ask students to look through magazines and newspapers to compare the expressive clothing of the 1940s (gloves, spats, and hats) with today's fashions. How are they similar? How are they different?
Moon over Harlem
Following one of New York's worst race riots, Johnson painted Moon over Harlem. Against the ghostly silhouette of the New York skyline, a black female rioter, bloodied and turned upside down by three uniformed men, seems to embody the riot's victims: an oppressed and debased community, whose frustration and self-destruction provoked an abuse of power by the authorities.
Johnson adapted several figures from newspaper photographs showing beaten and bloodied suspects and underage offenders wearing stolen top hats and tuxedos. Johnson did not simply document the heated exchange between a white policeman and a black woman that erupted into violence and left six people dead and hundreds injured. Instead, he created a powerful image of violence and its results.
Better economic prospects, improved race relations, and the desire to experience a more just world inspired many black men and women to leave southern towns and move to larger, bustling cities in the North. In addition to being faced with new challenges, many African Americans found that life in the urban North was not devoid of poverty and violence.
Questions and Activities
Discuss with students the title selected for this painting, Moon over Harlem. How does the title contrast to the violence depicted?
Discuss Johnson's use of color and form. How does Johnson show evidence of the riot without realistically portraying it?
Research newspaper and television coverage of race riots in the 1940s, 1960s, and 1990s. What are some of the similarities and differences in the causes?
Pictured top: William H. Johnson, Street Life, Harlem, about 1939–40, oil on plywood,
Pictured bottom: William H. Johnson, Moon over Harlem, about 1943–44, oil on plywood,