ISBN: 0764928864 9780764928864

Category: Art / Criticism & Theory

Page count: 116

Motley was born in New Orleans and grew up in Chicago, studying at The Art Institute of Chicago. First working in portraiture, and philosophically influenced by W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, among others, he presented African Americans as stylish, cultured, and self-possessed, to rebut the prevailing racist notions about blacks. He then turned to the works for which he is most famous: paintings of nightlife in the predominantly black South Side of Chicago and other genre scenes. Motley.