History and Harlem

The Harlem Renaissance was a unique, indigenous African American cultural movement of, by and for black people. The artists themselves so stated. Theirs was an attempt to portray African American life from their unique black perspective. Christopher Knight’s racially motivated review of the current exhibition at the L.A. County Museum of Art and his Eurocentric assessment of the movement is a thinly veiled attempt to sabotage the fact that black artists created the first genuine American art movement (“More Than a Place,” July 29). To contend, in essence, that the white artists affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance is what now makes this movement expansive is about as ridiculous as the notion that the blues, jazz and Negro spirituals were launched to greatness by some European aesthetic.

As a black artist and art teacher, I am less concerned with the excessive praise Knight heaped on Winold Reiss than I am with his patronizing pat-on-the-head given to such unsung geniuses as Archibald Motley. Obviously Knight does not understand the black aesthetic characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance; I wonder if he’s aware of (or will admit to) the fact that much of the European art derives its substance from nonwhite cultures. Which no doubt is the reason Knight mistakes composition for style, rendering for originality.

I do not expect The Times to ever hire a nonwhite art critic, but I do expect it to screen out Eurocentric spokespersons with racial biases. The integrity and credibility of The Times is at stake. And the history of a people who continue to be robbed of their culture.

JUNE EDMONDS

Los Angeles