Hughie Lee-Smith was one of the most important African American artists of his generation. He spent nearly two decades in Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s, and it was there that he developed his mature style—dreamlike tableaus of figures positioned within bleak landscapes, spare beach fronts, or decaying urban streets. Lee-Smith is known for paintings depicting singular figures in stark, open landscapes. His work addresses feelings of isolation and seclusion, emotions he experienced as an African American, as a child denied access to the neighborhood carnival, and as widower in 1961. His early work focused on using realism to promote social change, but as his career progressed, he turned inward. “In the 1960s,” he said, “I began to lose my youthful dream of a better world — free of racism, free of the threat of instantaneous cremation of the bomb — and feed on a slow burning disillusionment. As a consequence, my work turned inward, and I began to seek the essence of it all.” Lee-Smith studied at Wayne State University in Detroit and moved to New York in 1958. In 1963, he was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design, only the second African American after Henry Ossawa Tanner to receive the honor. His work is now held in major institutions across the US. Après-Midi, while largely realistic in style, remains mysterious. The woman raising a blanket in the spare landscape is insular and preoccupied, detached from the environment she occupies. The painting displays the most provocative personal signifiers that the artist established early in his career: the remote, stage-like setting; the singular figure moving out of the picture plane; the fluttering ribbons and long shadows; and the presence of incongruous objects. Lee-Smith described his enigmatic vision as “a shifting back and forth between that which is patently artificial an d the real.”
Aprés Midi by Hughie Lee-Smith, 1987, Muskegon Art Museum (Muskegon, Michigan)
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