Artwork Details
- Title
- Café
- Artist
- Date
- ca. 1939-1940
- Location
- Dimensions
- 36 1⁄2 x 28 3⁄8 in. (92.7 x 72.2 cm.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of the Harmon Foundation
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on paperboard
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Figure group
- Recreation — courting
- African American
- Dress — accessory — hat
- Recreation — leisure — eating and drinking
- Object — foodstuff — wine
- Object Number
- 1967.59.669
Artwork Description
Johnson spent decades traveling the world, searching for the authentic spirit of ordinary people from different cultures. In the late 1930s, he found what he was looking for in his own African American community. The strong colors and silhouettes in this painting evoke the African art that Black artists and writers had embraced during the Harlem Renaissance. But this affectionate couple also had the fashionable flash of zoot-suiters in the big band era. Above the table, the two figures coolly take in the café scene; below, a tangle of legs and limbs hints at the erotic energy of a night on the town.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006