Inspired by African-American artist Aaron Douglas’ style of African cubism and Jamaican artist Edna Manley’s expression of Black bodies, James Lesesne Wells, an Afro-Caribbean artist, highlights the Caribbean intersectionality within the heart of the Black Harlem Renaissance through his work Looking Upward (1928). Acculturation, the union of two cultures within a societal influence, such as the arts, applies to Black cultural arts in the United States due to the transatlantic slave trade. The Harlem Renaissance sparked a celebratory art movement through acculturation, painting a future towards gaining equality with the arts, promoting intersectionality across various cultures and backgrounds of African and Caribbean heritage in the United States, instilling hope and optimism, and producing visual and performative cultural artworks. James Lesesne Wells is one of many Afro-Caribbean artists who contributed to this melting pot during the Harlem Renaissance and captured what it meant to be Black during this period.
The Caribbean touch on the Americas started as early as the 16th century; however, it rapidly increased during the 19th and 20th centuries when “108,000 [Caribbeans] entered the United States from the entire Caribbean region between 1899 and 1932”. The impact of Caribbean cultural immigration is often overlooked in discussions of Black arts, particularly during the Harlem Renaissance. In the early 20th century, many Caribbean islands began claiming independence from their European counterparts, causing a decline in the sugar and tobacco industries and encouraging migration towards the United States. Many West Indies and Africans arrived in New York and Florida, while “Barbadians and Jamaicans [found themselves] in Virginia and South Carolina”. The middle passage slave trade generated thousands of years' worth of generational trauma within the international Black community while promoting multi-transnational acculturation between the African continent, the Caribbean, and the Americas. The influx “peak[ed] in 1924 [when] 12,250 [Caribbeans] per year” were entering the United States, whereas coincidentally, a burst of cultural appreciation blossomed as an art movement on the East Coast.
The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro movement, was an art movement of cultural self-expression and artistic impression within the Black community during the 1920s and 1930s in the Eastern United States. Notable African-American artists, including Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Archibald Motley, emerged as influential figures. The foundation of the Renaissance follows during the migration and enslaved person trade context, as this movement “helped provide a psychological basis for the optimistic feeling of “renaissance,” the rebirth of black people as effective participants in American life”. This wave of hope, pulsing through the Black community, is a testament to their resilience, a similar feeling seen just a centenary later during the #BlackLivesMatters movement in 2020. Art movements that have grown to a significant presence in history during its height, such as manifestos, are customarily written and compiled of songs, verses, poems, stories, statements, and guidelines. In this case, The New Negro was written in conjunction with the Harlem Renaissance.
The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, written and edited by Alain Locke, contains a collection of various ageless works of art, literature, screenplays, and more that artistically express the resurgence of African American culture in the United States pop culture during the 1920s. This book of artistic expressions sparked a decade of creative technological landmarks and a breath of hope throughout society as it paved a new outlet for minorities within creative fields. Locke is one of few writers that refers to Caribbean folk as ‘West Indian,’ explaining, “Here in Manhattan…it has attracted the African, the West Indian, the Negro American,” and while “each group has come with its own separate motives, their greatest experience has been the finding of one another”. The New Negro states, “Separate as it may be in color and substance, the culture of the Negro is of a pattern integral with the times and with its cultural setting,” marking the beginning of a racial awakening on a scale bigger than Harlem itself.
James Lesesne Wells was born in South Carolina in 1902, but shares ancestry with “his maternal grandfather, James McCune Lesesne, [who] came from France by way of Martinique”. Lesesne was recorded on a petit jury list from 1751, marking his arrival to the United States. Wells began his educational career in Florida by attending the Baptist Academy, George Lawrence Nelson at the National Academy of Design, and graduated in 1925 from Teachers College at Columbia University. He studied African sculpture and art, drawing inspiration from “the beauty of form, simplicity, and expressive character African carvings” encompass. Wells understood the intercultural influences between African sculpture, Cubism, German Expressionism, and the distinctive Art Deco style similar to Edna Manley, a Jamaican-based artist.
Wells accepted an invitation to teach at Howard University in 1929 as a crafts instructor. He taught etching, block printing, and lithography, skills he learned from helping his mother’s kindergarten job when he was younger. He spent the next forty years at Howard, growing as an artist in the 1930s by exhibiting his artwork at various galleries, including the Philips Memorial Gallery and traveling exhibitions by the William Harmon Foundation. During the Great Depression, Wells made art more accessible by leaning toward reproduction materials, including lino printing.
Looking Upward (1928) is a black and white woodcut on paper, measuring about 22 inches by 17 inches. Currently housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this work uses diagonal lines and blocking to convey a sense of hope and protection within the context of Black Americans. The figure in the center gazes upward, their posture filled with determination, while the surrounding buildings, in a harmonious alignment, lean and shift in a similar upward direction. This collective movement of both the individual and the architecture conveys a powerful visual narrative of resilience, unity, and strength through community. The juxtaposition of the figure's unwavering focus and the supportive structures around them symbolizes the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity, illustrating how both individual will and external support can converge to overcome challenges and drive progress. Wells challenges the 2-dimensional surface by presenting the buildings in 3-D space. Two towers on either side of the figure gently tilt toward the viewer, creating a sense of openness and welcome. Their angled posture conveys a powerful symbolism of community as if extending a warm invitation, drawing the observer into a space of Black joy. This subtle yet striking gesture reinforces the idea of unity, suggesting that the figure and the surrounding environment are aligned in a collective embrace, fostering a sense of inclusion and togetherness.
James Wells' Looking Upward (1928) demonstrates clear visual influences from the pioneering African American artist Aaron Douglas, particularly in how Wells adopts the cubist-inspired abstraction of African mask forms. The central figure in Looking Upward is strikingly defined by minimalistic features: a small, slitted eye and a clean, short haircut, which closely resembles the stylistic choices found in Douglas’ Meditation (1925) and The Sun-God (1925), both of which were featured in the seminal anthology The New Negro. These works reflect the shared artistic vocabulary of both artists, who studied African art alongside many of their contemporaries to inform their approach to portraying Black identity and culture.
Both Wells and Douglas sought to harness the power of art to communicate narratives of African American empowerment, utilizing visual representations of African heritage and Black experiences to challenge racial oppression and elevate the importance of Black culture in the broader American social landscape. The careful positioning of the central figure in Looking Upward, emphasizing upward movement and resilience, speaks to themes of upliftment, strength, and determination—core values also present in Douglas’ and Wells’ works. The figure's assertive posture and the abstraction of its form invite the viewer to recognize the symbolic power of Black identity as an essential tool for resistance and social change. This focus on themes of empowerment and resilience is not unique to Wells and Douglas. Similar motifs are also found in the work of Edna Manley, whose pieces often convey a sense of grit and self-assertion. Like Manley, both Wells and Douglas emphasized the importance of Black pride and self-definition in the face of societal adversity, using their art as both a visual language and a call to action. In this way, Looking Upward resonates with the broader vision of the Harlem Renaissance, in which artists sought to actively represent African American culture and reshape its place in American society.
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