Artwork Details
- Title
- Street Life, Harlem
- Artist
- Date
- ca. 1939-1940
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 45 5⁄8 x 38 5⁄8 in. (116.0 x 98.0 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of the Harmon Foundation
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on plywood
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Figure group
- Cityscape — New York — New York
- Cityscape — street
- African American
- Cityscape — celestial — moon
- Cityscape — New York — Harlem
- Architecture Exterior — commercial
- Object Number
- 1967.59.674
Artwork Description
The New York Amsterdam News reported in 1939 on the crowds gathering at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. The reporter described the "cock-eyed hats, perched at crazy angles on . . . shiny hair" and skirts "a tantalizing fraction of an inch below their knees" (Powell, Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, 1991). In Street Life, Harlem, William H. Johnson portrayed an elegant couple dressed "to the nines" for an evening on the town. Style, as much as skin color, was a mark of pride among many African Americans who had come of age during the Harlem Renaissance, but the flamboyant appearance of zoot-suiters inflamed racial tensions long after swing music and the jitterbug had been absorbed into American popular culture.