| To Paint My People | ||
|---|---|---|
| This clip is not available for streaming at this time. Please contact WPA. | Tape Master: | 11512 |
| Catalog #: | 492905 | |
| Clip Number: | 492905-1 | |
| Orginal Film: | 61-2302 | |
| Timecode: | ||
| Location: | New York City and Kerteminde, Denmark | |
| Year Shot: | 1985 (Actual Year) | |
| Audio: | No | |
| Color: | Yes | |
| Headings: | ART: Painting | |
| Description: | William Johnson was a black painter with a deep human understanding. His European works are impressionistic, colorful and are focussed on landscapes. The American pieces are more controversial in their composition and reflect a primitive tendency Johnson employed to help illustrate his perspective of the African American struggle. The program is narrated and features several interviews with individuals who reflect back from the present day to the life and impact Johnson, and his paintings had. Although the narration of the program is weak, the interviews, along with many other examples of primary source materials, help to paint a well-balanced time line of Johnson's private and professional life. There are many shots of his work, photographs, documents and film footage of areas where Robert, and his wife Holka, lived and worked. The program starts with a painting of what appears to be religious man. Dressed in a white robe, the figure has a golden glow encircling his head and neck. His large hands are stretched outward and raised high as if he is making a proclamation. A group of children and a young woman have gathered around him. They are all dark skinned, but the religious man is white. Loud, religious chanting can be heard. 01:00:27 Title: "To Paint My People". Music fades over a photograph of William (Robert) Johnson. Johnson looks like cowboy in the Dust Bowl days of the American west. VOgive his birth date; 1901, death; 1970, and explains his death after a 23 years in a hospital. 01:00:56 VO over shots of a small country home, and close-up of the tower where Johnson lived and painted is shown. The geographic location is the town of Kerteminde, Denmark. Next, a shot of Johnson working on a canvass with a palette of paint in his arm. Fisherman standing along a long, canoe styled, bright blue boat. Johnson, the voice states, often sold his paintings to local fishermen in exchange for herring. Shot of one of his works. Using bright shades of orange and pale shades of blue and green, it is of a windmill atop a wooded bluff next to a small pond. 01:01:29 Today, Johnson's collection is housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C.. A clip of one of a gallery wings shows Adeline Breskin, senior curator at the museum, walking up to one of Johnson's works in admiration where she then gives a quick summation of his talent. Narrator explains Johnson crossed the Atlantic six times during his life. A clip a beach on Long Island and a grainy shot of Johnson doing a handstand in his youth is used to make this point. Then, a clip of the mental hospital where he eventually died, located not far from where the last scene took place, is shown. Today abandoned, there still are bars on the windows and doors. As a self-portrait of Johnson is shown, the narrator discusses his childhood growing up in Florence, South Carolina. 01:02:57 Narrator speculates that it was one of Johnson's teachers who pushed him to persue painting. Another painting appears. This one is of a large African American family hanging out on a front porch in, what looks to be, a shack in the Deep South. Blues music is played in the background. Next, as a scene of the Statue of Liberty and surrounding waterway is shown. The narrator explains how, at the age of 17, Johnson traveled to New York City where he eventually enrolled at the National Academy of Design. As the camera zooms out and right, the harbor docks are revealed in contrast to various ships passing left to right in the background and the NYC skyline. The narrator discusses Johnson's early hardships. 01:04:17 Using a street scene from present day Washington Square Park, the area where Johnson had lived, the narrator states he received numerous art awards. A close-up of a yellowed certificate shows that he received an honorable mention from his academy. One of Johnson's mentors was artist Charles Hothorn. Transitioning from a portrait photograph of Hothorn to a group shot of one of his summer school classes, the narrator explains that he personally raised funds for Johnson to travel to Europe to study art following his graduation at the Academy. Using another angle of the Statue of Liberty, the camera fades into a shot of a rather elementary map of the East Coast of the United States. The narrator explains the map originated from Johnson's scrapbook. A single red line charts his migration from Florence to New York, but then two lines were drawn marking his passages to and from Europe. The destination cities he traveled to are circled and connected to one another with additional red lines. This is a nice primary source document and should be taken note of, for it helps one to keep track of Johnson in his various travels; all of which are detailed throughout the rest of the program. 01:05:36 Next, a shot a Johnson painting with a pallet of paint in hand while in Paris, France. Although the photograph is rather distorted, its' composition is diverse and very appealing. Johnson has set up his easel along a still, reflective river. A young girl with a checkered shirt is sitting near him, and an impressive stone bridge is set in the background. As another work is spotlighted, this time a still life of fruit, a perfume bottle and a water pitcher, the narrator details Johnson's artistic European mentors. Johnson soon traveled south to Cannes, on the French Mediterranean Coast, where he meets a group of sisters who were traveling Europe. They too were artists. Transitioning from a village landscape painting, presumably Cannes, to a series of photographs from the Isle of Fyn, the narrator details how this group of traveling artists brought Johnson to Denmark. The photographs have poor contrast, but provide rich detail of what life looked like on the Isle during that time. Shots are of dirt streets, thatch roof homes, a country landscape, a large estate and a family portrait of the three sisters. 01:07:10 Johnson went on to become engaged to one of the sisters, Holka, at the age of 28; she was 43. There is a profile shot of Johnson and a headshot of Holka with one of her hands placed to her right temple while the left rests under her chin. | |
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