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A PAINTER LOOKS BACK [[image - photograph]] Vincent D. Smith Vincent D. Smith is a New York painter who has exhibited nationally and abroad and has had numerous one man shows and awards. He is in many private and public collections including those at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Newark Museum. He has done four murals for Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn and has just completed another one for the Crotona Center in the Bronx. He has illustrated the children's book, "Stories from Africa", and was an art instructor for the Whitney Museum Art Resources Center for nine years. Mr. Smith is listed in "Who's Who in American Art." Smith began to work at his craft during a time when Blacks were not fully recognized as artists. In the following article interview he offers an historical overview of the problems and subsequent triumphs of Black artists from the 1950's to the present. We hope that you find this two-part series informative. Interviewer: Tell us something about your background. Vincent: My grandfather owned a huge amount of land in Barbados on which he grew yams, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, cosava [[cassava]], pigeon peas, okra and bread fruit. He had a large stone quarry which he would dynamite two or three times a week and sell the stones. My father worked on the farm and as a young man worked in the oil fields. My parents came here from Barbados in the early 20's. I was born in Bed-Sty and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. As a child I used to trace things out of the comic strips and as I got older I began drawing things around me. I went to an integrated school, studied piano when I was nine, and the alto saz [[sax]] when I was about twelve. We had a piano in our house for years on end as my father played locally, as well as created a storm at home singing as he played. Brownsville was a real community of people. Int: Did you do any painting during this time? Vinc: Not really. I had a close friend, George Ford, who was going to the Art Students League, and one week I helped him paint a backdrop for a fashion show at the church. That was the only painting I did during my teens. George took me to a Charlie White opening when I was 16 at the A.C.A. Gallery on 57th Street. For a couple of weeks when I was sixteen I worked for the Lackawanna Railroad repairing the tracks along the Eastern Seaboard. At 17 I enlisted in the Army, and spent a year mostly throughout the South. This traveling was a real revelation for me, to experience the conditions under which our people had to live. When I got out of the Army in 1949 I was active in the early civil rights movement. I met Paul Robeson when he came back from Europe in 1964. I studied African history with Dr. W. Alphaeus Hunton in 1952. Int: When did you become serious about art? Vinc: I was 22 working in the Post Office when I met a painter named Tom Boutis. He invited me to go to the Museum of Modern Art to see the exhibition of Modern Art to see the exhibition of Paul Cezanne. I came away so moved with a feeling that I had been in touch with something sacred. For a year afterward I haunted the libraries reading everything I could get my hands on about art, literature, philosophy, religion, existentialism—you name it—I touched on it somewhere. I resigned from the Post Office and studied at the Art Students League with Reginald Marsh. I started hanging out in the Village with Tom Boutis, going to parties, and meeting other painters, writers, musicians and the like. Int: Did you meet any black painters at this time? Vinc: Yes, I started dropping into the Brooklyn Museum Art School and met Walter Williams. The instructors let me sit in on the classes and also on the criticism. Walt and I used to go to all the galleries and museums. I got a studio in a basement of a brownstone next to my father's house. I would be down there painting and I could hear him beating on the piano upstairs. Int: Who were some of the other black artists? Vinc: Well, there was a really small group of us vacillating between the Village and a brownstone next block from Pratt Institute. Some of us were studying at the Brooklyn Museum, Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. There were also some writers and musicians in the group. The painters were Joseph Ducayet, Karl Parbosingh, Harvey Cropper, Arthur Hardy, Walter Williams, Richard Mayhew, Philip Martin, Cliff Jackson, Sam Middleton, Tommy Ellis, Dave Brown, Arthur Monroe, Earl Miller, Al Hicks, Edgar Fitt, Selvin Goldbourne, Virginia Cox, Jack Morton, Ted Joans, Jimmy Gittens, the sculptor, and myself. Samuel Goldwyn, a white painter, was also a part of the group. Among the writers were Alan Polite, Imamu Baraka, A.B. Spelman, and Carl Macbeth. We were a strange group because people didn't know what to make of us. Their contacts with blacks as artists were limited. People were used to black musicians and performers, but the visual arts were sacred territory. Most people I came in contact with never knew a black painter nor had they hardly ever heard of one. At that time Jacob Lawrence and Charlie White were probably the only known black artists. Beauford Delaney was known, but only in the Village. But we hung out and we hung in, in lofts and cold water flats. We used to sit in the Riviera Cafe, Pandora's Box and Rienzi's and have marathon sessions rapping about art, politics, literature, religion, esthetics and women. We'd also drop in at the Whitney Museum and the Hans Hoffman School, both of which used to be on 8th Street. The abstract painters used to hang out at night in The Cider Bar, but we preferred the Five Spot Cafe as that's where they played jazz every night. Int: So there was a lot of activity. What was the reaction from the black community and the Art Establishment? Vinc: [Laugh] People thought we were crazy, man. We were young pioneers on the brink of new discoveries. The juices were flowing. We were going to be the movers and the shakers. We went through the hallowed halls of these museums, these enclaves of idolatry, western civilization and American art, and we didn't see anything reflect the black experience or black contribution to American culture. We knew that we were going to be scorned and ridiculed. We also knew that our achievements were going to have to take, not rage, but knowledge and skill and scholarship and long years of dedication. Every fiber in our bodies was alive, man! We were open to the whole bit. You have to remember, this was before the Brown School decision, before the black tennis, football, and basketball stars. No kidding. We were entering onto sacred ground. There were no black art historians, blacks with PHD's were unheard of. Few blacks taught art in colleges in the north; there were no publications about black visual arts. There were only about four of five galleries open to us. James A. Porter's book, "Modern Negro Art", 1943, was almost the only book available which accurately documented the development and contribution of the black artist in America. Also noteworthy was Alain Locke's "Negro Art Past & Present" published in 1936 by the Washington Associates in Negro Folk Education. Yet we painted up a storm! The art world has to do with white values and archeology, white civilization, and European traditions. Images that affect, or reflect white society. Even childrens books that mold the minds of youngsters were white. White's sacred museums were their last strongholds. Man, we were battling with our backs to the wall. The art scene was in transition. There were the social expressionists and the up and coming abstract expressionists. We were influenced by everything. The French painters, Picasso, Brancusi, Klee, the Dutch painters, the Flemish school, Zen Buddhism, the Mexican painters, the German expressionists, the Japanese woodcut and African sculpture. Within the styles and forms and techniques of these schools we painted and experimented and attempted to find our ways. This was one of my most productive periods. I had won a first prize at the Brooklyn Museum and received a scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. I met Rubin Tam, Sidney Simon, Ben Shahn, William Cummings, Michael Scaporin and many other famous artists there. Students from all over the country were there as well as from abroad, and all we did was paint all day. Go to the dining hall and eat three times a day and just paint. So, when I got back to the city I was still inspired, the paintings just flowed out of me. Madonnas with children, street scenes, landscapes, market places, portraits, still lifes, nudes, you name it, I painted it, baby. [[image - painting]] Black Gold Oil & sand on canvas Photos — Alex King, Jr. 12
