Harlem Renaissance is a conceptual manifestation of the blossoming African American culture with particular focus on creative arts. Through considerable inclination to embrace musical, literary and visual arts, Harlem Renaissance accorded artists the opportunity to re-conceptualize the racial stereotypes that had influenced the relationships of the black people within the spectrum of heritage.
According to Houston (1989), the period of Harlem Renaissance informed the artistic commentary on the ability of the blacks to break away from the bondage of the Victorian moral value on the basis of the bourgeois shame that characterized racist belief. With regard to this, it is imperative to underscores that the composition of Harlem Renaissance manifest a school of thought that was anchored on the American America literature and subsequently impacted on the worldwide consciousness of world attracting remarkable concentration of talent and intellect thus serving as the social and symbolic capital for the cultural awakening (Huggins, 2007).
One of the greatest product of the Harlem Renaissance is poetry. Led by Langston Hughes, the evolution of The Negro Artist and Racial Movement allowed the African Americans to create distinctive art spectrum that combated the urge within the race towards the white concept (Gates and Higginbotham, 2009).The revelation of Langston Hughes reinforced the primitivism in the quest to press for the authentic American forms of art. The black writers revolutionized their poetry alongside historical racial paradigms presuming the black artistic development with relative autonomy from the traditions of the white.
Langston Hughes shaped the trajectory of poetry that explored the vernacular speech of the blacks as well as the lyrical forms that build artists projects based on the recognition and identification of the Negro masses. Bloom (2009) explains that the Hughes wrote poems derived from the life and experiences of the black popular culture. Such a poetic structure answered the needs, desires and other aspects of aesthetic sensibilities for the back. Such Harlem Renaissance products took the personae of the working class black thus demonstrating the spirit with other poetic forms and ballads that informed the spirit of the Negro heritage outside the imitation of the folk performance.
The present-day work of artistic expression meets the definition of the Modernist movement. While Harlem Renaissance built on the earlier traditions and cultural orientation, it is plausible to note that its profound effects are underscored in the modernist trends of artistic circles. The question of present day artic expression extol the primitive scope and thematic direction where commentary of people enjoying direct relationship to the natural world is emphasized. This reconnects the ideals of the renaissance spirt that reinforced the elemental dimension of human desire (Gates and Higginbotham, 2009).
The characteristics of modernist movement hinges on the authentic expressions and artistic revolutions around stereotypical thinking of the African and black culture. In view of this, it is plausible that the modernist artists have masked the inspiration of the Harlem Renaissance breaking from the realist style of representation towards abstraction in poetry. The prestige of such approach, tone, style and thematic understanding informs the Negro heritage within the dimension of reconnection and multicultural diversity. The present day creation would use the features of the Modernist artistic movement to create a noticeable concentration on the cultural instability of the contemporary life. This marks a pedestal on which the diversity of the renaissance experiences across boundaries of gender, color and class implicitly and explicitly advocate for equality and multiculturalism.
Reference
Bloom, B (2004). The Harlem Renaissance. New York: Routledge
Gates, H and Higginbotham, E (2009). Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Houston A. B. (1989). Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. University of Chicago Press
Huggins, N. (2007). Huggins: Harlem Renaissance 2E UPD PPR. Oxford: Oxford University Press
