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Le Tumulte Noir/Male Dancer with Blue

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@ National Portrait Gallery

Description

Paul Colin and Le Tumulte NoirThe jazz age had taken hold in Paris and with it, le tumulte noir, an intense fascination with black culture. African sculpture had inspired such artists as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso; African American ragtime and jazz stimulated avant-garde composers; dancers were captivated by the Cakewalk, the Black Bottom, and the Charleston. Many people perceived in non-Western art forms a "pure" and intuitive creative impulse, in contrast to the overrefined artifice of white European culture. African American expatriates fleeing segregation at home were welcomed.In 1927 Paul Colin published his portfolio Le Tumulte Noir, featuring forty-five lithographs with pochoir, or stenciled, color, in an edition of 500. Colin's dynamic images were inspired by cubism and art deco modernism. Several lithographs directly evoke Baker's slim form, costumes, and energetic dancing. Others feature jazz bands, prominent white music-hall entertainers depicted as black, or amusing images of the French attempting new dances.Le Tumulte Noir is not without racist overtones drawn from imagery prominent in American and European popular culture. Nonetheless, it does not just celebrate the "primitive"; its tone is more admiring than condescending.
Type:
Image
Format:
Lithograph With Pochoir Coloring On Paper
Rights:
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
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Record Contributed By

National Portrait Gallery

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution