BETSY BROUN: 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 twenty-three years there. Scholar Richard Jay 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 pair his style to powerful essentials, and to concentrate on the big issues: family, religion, war, history, and the joys and sorrows of daily life.
“I Baptize Thee” is part of a tradition of religious expression in the black community that includes both trained and untrained artists. Johnson was a sophisticated artist who spent years abroad and knew many avant-garde painters. He even visited the aging Henry O. Tanner in France, where Tanner had moved to escape prejudice. When Johnson returned to America for the last time in 1938, he deliberately simplified his style to large, flat color shapes. He adopted some devices associated with naïve artists, like enlarging hands and feet for expressive purposes.
The woman to be baptized is flanked by a praying minister and another man ready to support her when she is immersed in the baptismal waters. This section is a jazzy gospel hymn of gestures – just try to figure out which of the six hands go with each of the three figures. Johnson loved wit and sight games. He deliberately confused us by making the left arm of the minister look like the back edge of the pool. The right arm of the supporting man actually coincides with the pool edge. While playing games, Johnson remembered to create a powerful vertical axis in the center, from the hand uplifted in prayer to the woman’s echoing gesture at bottom. While the next person to be baptized waits, eleven friends watch from behind. The horizon line neatly separates their heads from their bodies. We notice how squarely frontal these figures are because one breaks ranks to stand in profile.
No one did clouds better than Johnson, unless maybe Albert Pinkham Ryder, and no one more enjoyed having two of everything. Two trees, two groups of onlookers, two ministers, two candidates for baptism. Johnson really got carried away in going to church – another religious subject shown as part of life’s routine. Matching trees, two blue buildings, two crosses, double pairs of ox legs, two cart wheels, two people riding forward, two riding backward, with two feet dangling. Pairing has been a solid part of literature, art, and life since Adam and Eve – even Noah’s Ark. The cloud in this painting is particularly nice. It links the small trees and then expands for the longer journey to the blue shack.
Although Johnson loved putting wit and play into his images, his religious pictures in particular always display his deep personal belief in a religion that is rooted in church and community.
