Doris Bravo06 May 2011

ARH 386 Early 20th Century Art of the African DiasporaFinal Paper

(A)ddressing Race in Winold Reiss’s Portraits from the 1920s

I.

In this paper I explore the relationship between the subject’s race and how Winold Reiss,

an early-twentieth century German artist, renders their face and dress in his portraits of African

Americans, Asian Americans, and Blackfeet1 tribal members from the 1920s. Throughout his

career Reiss depicted non-white subjects that had been excluded as subjects within the art

historical canon. When these subjects were represented, especially in popular culture, it was in

stereotype. Reiss confronts these one-dimensional depictions by emphasizing the particular

elements that mark his non-white subjects as such in order to celebrate America’s diversity. Reiss

does this through the channel of mass consumption—printed media—thereby confronting how

these groups have been traditionally portrayed in this medium. Reiss utilizes the sitter’s face and

dress to present a more nuanced portrait of these marginal figures and thus subvert the

superficiality of caricature.

II.

In order to better understand the impact of Reiss’s portraiture of these marginal subjects,

one must revisit the historical moment the artist created these images. In “Social Distance: A

Measuring Stick, Gaging Racial Antipathies on the Coast—And Elsewhere” the sociologist

Emory S. Bogardus conducted a study that reflects the racial sentiment of 1926 America.

Bogardus asked 248 “adult educated citizens” of North European descent “to indicate that races

they felt the most antipathy for” through questions that measured how close the participants were

2

1 As John C. Ewers notes, the Blackfeet is actually a term that refers to four tribes. Three tribes—the Siksika or Northern Blackfoot, the Blood, and the North Piegan—lived in separate reserves in Alberta Canada. The tribe Reiss visited, known as the South Piegan, lived on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. For the sake of this paper I will refer to the tribe Reiss visited as the Blackfeet since that is how the literature regarding Reiss has called them.

literally willing to get to these races (fig. 1).2 The results indicate that the Chinese and Japanese

are kept from “close kinship,” being labeled as “chums,” greeted on the street as neighbors,

employed in white occupations, and citizenship; however, they are permitted as visitors. African

Americans marginally achieve citizenship while Native Americans are excluded from the list.

Bogardus concludes that “race prejudice is measurable in terms of social distance, and racial

goodwill expands to the degree that social distance shrinks.”3 The sentiments expressed by these

results illustrate how social distance manifests as alienation of these groups from mainstream

society, therefore casting people like Reiss’s African American, Asian American, and Blackfeet

subjects as marginal.

Robert Park, another noted sociologist, also considered the issue of assimilation into the

mainstream in his 1926 essay “Behind Our Masks.” Here Park introduces the notion of the

“racial mask” as something so fundamentally physical that it presents a challenging obstacle to

assimilation:

The Oriental in America experiences a profound transfiguration in sentiment and attitude, but he cannot change his physical characteristics. He is still constrained to wear his racial uniform; he cannot, much as he may sometimes like to do so, cast aside the racial mask. The physical marks of race, in so far as they increase the racial visibility, inevitably segregate the races, set them apart and so prolong and intensify the racial conflict.4

Garments, be they Western or folkloric in origin, can be easily put on and taken off. Yet, race and

ethnicity at their most naked root—one’s face—cannot be so easily altered. For Park assimilation

occurs through personal relations and friendships since they aid in transforming the mask into a

human face: “it is, in fact, only as faces become expressive that the persons behind these living

3

2 Emory S. Bogardus, “Social Distance: A Measuring Stick, Gaging Racial Antipathies on the Coast—and Elsewhere,” Survey Graphic 56, no. 3 (May 1926): 169.3 Ibid., 210.4 Robert E. Park, “Behind Our Mask,” Survey Graphic 56, no. 3 (May 1926): 138.

masks assume for us the character of human beings.”5 In this sense Park echoes Bogardus’s

conclusion that it is through diminishing social distance and knowing people as individuals that

anti-racial sentiments will be conquered.

Yet, those sentiments are often deeply ingrained and despite society’s move towards

racial pluralism there are many factors that maintain some groups as marginal. Often it is the

work of legislation that first establishes these divides. Immigration from Asia to the United

States increased in earnest in the nineteenth century as immigrants searched for work and better

wages. The arrival of these immigrants was met with numerous anti-Asian laws, which

controlled many aspects of life: from dress (1876 Queue Ordinance that prohibited Chinese men

from wearing long pigtails), to land ownership (1913 California Alien Land Law prohibited the

lease or sale of land to people ineligible for citizenship; since 1790 Asian immigrants could not

gain citizenship), to immigration (1924 National Origins Act limited immigration from Asia).6

These regulations impacted Asian American communities in the United States for decades, as

well as the formation of families, and the assimilation process. Perhaps most damning was the

image of Asians in the mainstream as something that needed to be contained: “yellow peril,” a

color metaphor born in the nineteenth century, implied that “Asians would destroy American

society with disease, crime, ‘backward’ cultural practices, ‘theft’ of economic opportunity from

whites, and the seduction or rape of white women.”7 Evidence of this perception of Asians is

evident in political cartoons from this era (fig. 2). Asian-American caricature in printed media

during this period is defined by the use of “yellow face” which “sharply defines the Oriental in a

4

5 Park, “Behind Our Mask,” 138.6 Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia, eds. Huping Ling and Allan Austin (Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2010), s.v. “Chronology.”7 Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia, eds. Huping Ling and Allan Austin (Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2010), s.v. “The Japanese American Experience: History and Culture.”

racial opposition to whiteness. Yellow face exaggerates ‘racial’ features that have been

designated ‘Oriental,’ such as ‘slanted’ eyes, overbite, and mustard-yellow skin color.”8 Such

printed media, especially in the form of political cartoons, reflects the sentiments of the

mainstream; however exaggerated the caricatures seem, they carry a truth about how those in the

majority view minorities. Therefore, when thinking about how legislation impacted Reiss’s

subjects it is critical to understand also how this legislation carried over into representation.

In the early twentieth century, the African-American political situation was largely

informed by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In this landmark case the United States Supreme Court

upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, thereby implicitly supporting racism against

African Americans, especially in the South. The early-twentieth century South viscerally

reflected these racist sentiments, especially “in the systematic disfranchisement of black men, in

rigid patterns of racial segregation, in unprecedented racial violence and brutality, and in the

dissemination of racial caricatures.” 9 Between 1884 and 1914 “more than 3, 600 people were

lynched...with the vast majority of victims being black southerners.” 10 The Great Migration of

African Americans from the South to the North during this period was spawned by economic

necessity as well as white racism. In terms of racist representation the National Association for

the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been founded in 1909, protested the

release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915, reflecting the Black community’s efforts “to keep racist

images of African Americans out of circulation.”11 The NAACP was fighting racism in the street

5

8 Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 2.9 Ibid.10 Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, ed. Colin A. Palmer. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), s.v. “Migration in the African Diaspora.”11 Anne Elizabeth Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 7.

as well as in representations of African Americans. Since the eighteenth century, negative ideas

regarding African Americans have circulated in American popular culture. In order to rationalize

slavery, African Americans “were defined as strikingly different from white Americans and as

incapable of significant intellectual, economic, or moral advancement, and thus incapable of

assimilation.”12 Even after slavery was abolished these ideas persisted and informed how African

Americans were depicted. In printed media, racist images of African Americans appeared in

advertising, “from the slovenly, gambling buffoons in Fisk Tire Company ads to the servile

mammy Aunt Jemima” (figs 3-4).13

Government legislation was also often responsible for worsening the poverty of some

groups, like Native Americans, further miring them in marginality. In 1900, the General

Allotment Act removed the Blackfeet’s agency by deeming that their consent was no longer

needed to sell parcels of their reservation land near Glacier Park, Montana. During this period

many tribal members faced fierce economic hardship in light of changes to their way of life.

Moreover, the community was also divided on fundamental questions regarding the tribe’s

future, namely whether they should “sell its surplus land to fund the expansion of a Blackfeet

cattle industry.”14 Yet this industry failed to improve the condition of the Blackfeet, as did other

ventures, in part due to inefficient government policy. By the time Reiss visits the Blackfeet in

1919, they were in the midst of a four-year drought that had exasperated their poverty, hunger,

and health issues; “by 1919-1920 two-thirds of the entire tribal population of some 3,000 relied

upon government rations” (fig. 5).15 The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship rights

6

12 Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro, 5-6.13 Caroline Goeser, Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 20.14 Paul C. Rosier, Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 53.15 Rosier, Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 53.

to many Native Americans without them having to renounce their tribal citizenship. For many

Native Americans, the Citizenship Act was at odds with their own indigenous administrative

apparatus which, for the Blackfeet, was facing internal divisions towards the end of the 1920s.

At one point in their histories of representation both Asians and people of African descent

were exoticized as “noble savages,” the romantic ideal of “the uncorrupted man of nature” who

lives in contrast to the civilized man.16 Native Americans also fell into this lot as they were

perceived both within the United States and abroad “as a brave, proud people endowed with

‘handsomeness of physique and physiognomy’ and living lives of ‘liberty, simplicity, and

innocence.”17 Indeed when Reiss was a boy in late-nineteenth century Germany he devoured

stories about the American West and its indigenous people. Unlike their counterparts, however,

Native Americans had to coexist with this ideal into the twentieth century when people continued

to want to see them as primitively connected to nature. This longing for the “noble savage” was

mingled with other perceptions of the Native American that began to develop at the end of the

nineteenth century: “as either a bloodthirsty barbarian or a filthy reservation degenerate.”18 Such

depictions appeared in turn of the century plays and printed media, often coinciding with

government interventions (figs. 6-7). In these depictions, Native Americans “never achieved

status as a penny-opera or cartoon stereotype, with humanizing tendencies and autonomous

status as a mythic convention independent from daily events.”19

7

16 The Oxford Companion to Black British History, eds. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore, and Cecily Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), s.v. “Noble savage.”17 Roger A. Fischer, Them Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Political Cartoon Art (North Haven, CT: Archon Books, 1996), 103-104.18 Ibid.19 Fischer, Them Damned Pictures, 103.

III.

Though it was a dire situation for these communities in the early-twentieth century, there

were voices in the mainstream, especially in printed media, that sought social reform and

challenged these depictions. One such voice was the periodical Survey Graphic. Founded in

1923 by Paul U. Kellogg, Survey Graphic was a monthly periodical that endeavored to “present

information that would contribute to their readers’ knowledge and spur the forces of social

change.”20 Issues were full of visual material— photographs, graphs, charts, and etchings—often

of communities that were in want of assistance. As Anne Elizabeth Carroll notes, this

anthropological gaze, mingled with a philanthropic mission, established a clear division between

the othered subject and wealthy readers who “were understood as different from its subjects,

particularly in terms of their ability to understand developments and administer aid.”21

In the 1920s, Survey Graphic dedicated two issues to African Americans and Asian

Americans. There had been an issue dedicated to African Americans in 1905 and Kellogg had

been considering revisiting this topic when he attended a 1924 Civic Club dinner hosted by

Charles S. Johnson that celebrated the work of African American writers and was attended by

such figures as W.E.B. Du Bois and Countee Cullen. Inspired by “this concentration of talent”

Kellogg began to formulate an issue of Survey Graphic that would “focus on African Americans’

achievements,” specifically in Harlem, turning the issue to African Americans and “thus allowing

[them] to define themselves.”22 Kellogg appointed Alain Locke as guest editor of this issue,

which was titled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” and published in March 1925. When it

came to considering which artists would make illustrations for this special issue, Locke called

8

20 Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro, 124-125.21 Ibid., 124.22 Ibid., 128.

upon Reiss, whose reputation for dignified portraiture of marginal people was growing. Locke, a

great admirer of Reiss’s approach to portraiture, called him

A folklorist of brush and palette, seeking always the folk character back of the individual, the psychology behind the physiognomy...Without loss of naturalistic accuracy and individuality, he somehow subtly expresses the type, and without being any the less human, captures the racial and the local.23

Reiss played a critical role in this mission: his portraits include well-known figures within the

Harlem Renaissance (Roland Hayes, Elise Johnson McDougald) and Harlem residents. As

Carroll notes, the essays and visual content within the special issue were critical in redefining

African-American life because they “claim a place in America for African Americans.”24

Due to the popularity of the Harlem issue, the Boni Brothers Publishers approached

Kellogg to publish the issue as a book. As Carroll notes, “‘Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro’

became The New Negro: An Interpretation, signaling a move away from the local focus of the

magazine issue to a broader focus on the New Negro movement as a whole in the book.”25 Reiss

completed cover designs and endpapers for the book; his drawings and portraits from the Harlem

issue were included. The book also contains ten portraits of notable Harlem figures as well as a

few more portraits of known people (Paul Robeson) and anonymous subjects.

One year after the Harlem issue, Survey Graphic dedicated an issue to Asians living in

the United States. The May 1926 issue was intended to “present a rational and progressive view

of Asian American assimilation and the benefits to American foreign policy of a more human

view of Asia and its inhabitants.”26 Bogardus’s study on social distance and Park’s essay on the

9

23 Jeffrey C. Stewart, “Introduction,” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989), 17-18.24 Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro, 122.25 Ibid., 156.26 Jeffrey C. Stewart, “Folk-lorist of brush and palette,” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989), 63.

“racial mask” were featured in this issue. Reiss completed six portraits of Chinese and Japanese

individuals. Essays within the issue presented Asians in America as industrious (“The Oriental

Finds a Job: Changing Roles of Chinese and Japanese Workers”) and mindful about the

complexities surrounding their dual heritage (“Three Roads and None Easy: An American-Born

Japanese Looks at Life”, “Born American, But—”). Survey Graphic was thus a voice that sought

to challenge stereotypes of marginal people and present them in a better light as educated and

hard-working citizens that can contribute to American society.

IV.

Reiss’s work from this period reflects his ability to balance the commercial needs of his

clients with his artistic philosophies. As a student in Munich he studied at an art school

(Academy of Fine Arts) and also in a technical program (School of Applied Arts). His training in

both fine and commercial art gave him the versatility to adapt to the tastes of the public. For

Survey Graphic his practice of dignified renderings of his subjects married well with each issue’s

mission. In other instances, Reiss would find a way to maintain his artistic integrity while

responding to the commercial needs of his clients.

One of Reiss’s most important clients during this period was Great Northern Railway.

Founded in 1889, Great Northern operated lines that stretched between Washington and

Minnesota and included lines in Canada. Great Northern also operated several hotels in Glacier

Park since the early twentieth century, responding to “eastern interest” in travel to this part of the

country.27 The company gave work to the Blackfeet at East Glacier, Great Northern’s major hotel

that was near the reservation, in order to provide a livelihood for the tribe. Blackfeet members

10

27 William E. Farr, The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945: A Photographic History of Cultural Survival (Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1984), 11.

“lived in tepees provided by Great Northern, greeted tourists at the train depot wearing formal

dress outfits, posed for photographs, and danced in powwows at the hotels.”28 During the

summer of 1927 Great Northern Railway struck a deal with Reiss: the company would pay for

Reiss’s travel and living expenses for three months as he drew tribal members. In return, the

company could select and hold copyright on the portraits they wished to use in their calendars,

which were used to advertise tourism to Glacier Park.

For this project, Reiss created many “double” portraits where the sitter is dressed in

traditional dress and then in day-to-day dress. For example, Lazy Boy is depicted in one portrait

in the native costume he wore to the sacred Blackfeet religious rite, the sun dance (fig. 8). Lazy

Boy was a famous warrior who became a medicine man later in life. This portrait shows him in

his sun dance shirt and fur headdress, wearing an eagle bone whistle. The background includes

designs from painted hides, something Reiss repeated in other portraits of the Blackfeet. In

another portrait Lazy Boy appears in his everyday clothes: simple blue shirt, vest, and wide-

brimmed hat (fig. 9). This realistic, documentary portrait breaks with the traditional, ceremonial

portraits of Native Americans that are so deeply linked with their Romantic image. According to

Jeffrey C. Stewart, “there are two Lazy Boys, Reiss is telling us, the formal and the informal

Blackfeet, and they are both the same person.”29 This double-portrait documents the transition of

Native Americans from a nineteenth-century to a twentieth-century lifestyle, as they become

more enveloped in the modern world. As Stewart notes,

While it was certainly true that his sitters looked more beautiful in formal dress, in reality that dress was worn less and less frequently on the reservation... By producing both kinds of portraits, Reiss satisfied the railroad’s desire for

11

28 Jeffrey C. Stewart, “The Late 1920s: Glacier Park and St. Helena,” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989), 72.29 Ibid., 75.

traditional Indian images for its advertising calendars, but also introduced through these calendars a more accurate image of how Blackfeet Indians looked in Montana in the late 1920s.30

Though tourists may have been hesitant to let go of this image—Stewart also implies that Great

Northern may have been “perpetuating” the wearing of these costumes to fulfill Romantic

expectations—Reiss nonetheless succeeds in presenting a more nuanced view of Native

American life while responding to Great Northern’s needs.

V.

In other instances Reiss could not as easily translate the sentiments behind his portraiture

into his practice. For example, the Harlem issue of Survey Graphic contains two strains of

Reiss’s work: portraiture and imaginatives. The former are dignified renderings of real people, be

they part of the intellectual elite or everyday folk. For example, in the portrait Roland Hayes

(1925) Reiss portrays the concert singer as confident and vibrant (fig. 10). His attention to every

line Hayes’s facial features create, the places where light bounces of Hayes’s face, the directness

of Hayes’s stare into the distance towards the left, and the command that seems to come from

Hayes’s potent voice unite to create an individualized image of depth and careful study. Hayes’s

portrait appears on the cover as well as beside the introductory essay on Harlem. In this latter

reproduction, beneath Hayes’s name, an inspirational text appears which attests to the power and

dignity of this portrait: “Roland Hayes, Whose achievement as a singer symbolizes the promise

of the younger generation.”31 This portrait exemplifies Reiss’s gift with capturing the humanity

of the sitter, reflecting “the respect he had toward all mankind.”32

12

30 Stewart, “The Late 1920s,” 75.31 Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro/ Survey Graphic 6, no. 6 (March 1925): 628.32 Paul Raczka, “Winold Reiss: The Holbein of the Humble,” In Winold Reiss Portraits of the Races: “Art Has No Prejudice,” ed. Ray W. Steele and Paul Raczka (Great Falls, MT: C.M. Russell Museum, 1986), 19.

Deeper in the Harlem issue, Reiss’s illustrations accompany an essay by J.A. Rogers

titled “Jazz at Home” as well as a poem by Langston Hughes titled “Jazzonia.” However, these

are not portraits but “imaginative” drawings, which were abstracted compositions. The three

drawings in these pages are of urban life and contain cityscapes populated by African-American

figures. In Harlem at Night (ca. 1924), numerous figures inhabit this slice of Harlem (fig. 11).

The top half of the composition is occupied by a cluster of high-rises lorded over by a smiling cat

and full moon. The figures are crowded into the lower half and occupy six overlapping yet nearly

distinct areas.33 Through his depiction of a variety of activities and people, Reiss “captur[es] the

rhythm, tension, and expressive form of Black culture and Harlem itself”; which is also evident

in the other drawings published with this essay, Dawn in Harlem (ca. 1925) and Interpretation of

Harlem Jazz (ca. 1925) (figs. 12-13).34 Yet in these works Reiss seems to succumb to the

stereotypical portrayals of African Americans discussed earlier. For example, the silhouetted

figures in Harlem at Night are all the same shade of black and have the same red, exaggerated

lips. Though the color choice may be in keeping with the three colors used in this work, the

racial implications remain. Stewart calls these “ethnically familiar” forms, thereby noting the

need to maintain familiar elements so the viewer could ascribe race to these figures.35 Charlotte

Goeser notes a similar practice in the work of Aaron Douglas, Reiss’s pupil. Douglas’s June 1926

cover of Opportunity features a singular silhouetted figure looking over his shoulder as he sits

between a sun and leafy plant (fig. 14). Similar to Reiss’s imaginatives, Douglas’s figure is

13

33 Beginning in the lower left of the work and moving clockwise, a woman in her nightgown and cap prays; a man in a tuxedo is locked in an intimate conversation with a woman holding a cane; several figures are in an interior space with two in the doorway; three figures overlap yet seem unrelated in contrast to two seated figures nearly looking at each other; a child sits on a blanket unattended.34 Stewart, “Folk-lorist of brush and palette,” 57.35 Ibid., 61.

rendered in black, with exaggerated lips. For Goeser the Opportunity reader would identify this

figure “as a black type because of his dark skin, but also through his familiar facial features,”

thus conforming to Stewart’s notion of “ethnic familiarity.”36 Yet, there is something within a flat

rendition that ironically makes the work complex:

For example, the silhouette would not allow the reader to discern the specific hue of the figure’s skin. Beyond the indication of a pant leg, the silhouette hid the figure’s clothing, refraining to disclose further details. Was he partly nude? Just as the silhouette drew the reader in to perceive a familiar type, the ambiguous form concealed as much as it revealed.37

Perhaps the dignified portraits Reiss creates of figures like Hayes are not meant to be reconciled

with the imaginatives since his practice of the latter does not necessarily demean the former. It

may be an issue of seeing both types of artistic practice as functioning in the same constellation

of representation, one that was seeking to enhance and complicate the image of African

Americans rather than define it in a singular, superficial dimension, as stereotypes had so

successfully done.

VI.

Through his depiction of folkloric and modern dress within his portraits, Reiss presented

another means of providing a more complex visual narrative of African Americans, as well as of

the Blackfeet and Asian Americans. Reiss’s choice to portray both kinds of dress reflects this

historical moment when immigrants especially were transitioning from their native culture to the

Western, American one. The traditional, ethnic, or folkloric dress of their homeland reflected

14

36 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 21.37 Ibid.

“the past”; by contrast, “the wearing of Western dress was associated with a society moving from

a state of ‘primitivism’ to one of ‘civilization’.”38

This transition is most visible when it comes to dress, especially when Romantic

preconceptions expect a Native American to be dressed in a specific way. Returning to Lazy

Boy’s “double” portrait, Stewart proposed that this “doubling” was Reiss’s effort to blend the

two Lazy Boys in the viewer’s mind; Lazy Boy was not simply the Blackfeet in traditional

clothes, but also a man living in 1927 Montana in a casual button-down shirt. Yet, for this project

Reiss could not completely eliminate the portrait of Lazy Boy in his regalia. Commercially-

speaking, Great Northern probably would not have allowed it. However, it is important to

emphasize that the portrait of Lazy Boy in his native attire is just as critical in the “doubling”

effort as the modern portrait. And though a Western-style Lazy Boy may emerge, the other Lazy

Boy does not disappear.

Perhaps Reiss endeavors to search for the “traditional Lazy Boy” within all his sitters,

even if the sitters themselves do not identify with that past. It is unknown who decided how each

sitter would dress, though Paul Raczka notes how specific types of clothing were often

summoned for portraits of Native Americans. For example, “while his father and uncle ran the

classes, young Tjark Reiss drove to various reservations seeking models for the classes and to

Margaret Carberry’s trading post in East Glacier to borrow costumes for the models to wear.”39

This anecdote suggests that many of Reiss’s Native American sitters lacked their folkloric garb.

Perhaps they dressed in Western clothing, like Yellow Elk whom Reiss had first encountered on a

15

38 Joanne B. Eicher and Barbara Sumberg, “World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress,” In Dress and Ethnicity, ed. Joanne B. Eicher (Oxford: Berg, 1995), 301-302.39 Raczka, “Winold Reiss,” 39.

New York City train. M.D.C. Crawford, who worked in the American Museum of Natural

History, recalled an anecdote from an early Reiss catalog:

The burden of the white man’s civilization was heavy upon [Yellow Elk]...we dressed him in the war bonnet, the beaded shirt of Flaming Cloud, the not unworthy lieutenant of the great Sitting Bull, once the terror of the plains. The change was instantaneous.40

By dressing his subjects in their indigenous wear, Raczka ensues that Reiss may have been

reconnecting them with their ancestral past and therefore returning a sense of pride to them. As

Raczka notes, “gone was the slouching gait, the hang dog look, the dumb suffering; Yellow Elk,

the discharged circus rider...vanished. In his place there stood a man and a warrior.”41 However

culturally inaccurate the actual articles may have been—it is probable that Yellow Elk and

Flaming Cloud were not from the same tribe—the case of Yellow Elk reflects Reiss’s efforts to

find the native essence within his subject.

This native essence is sometimes the work of the sitter. During this period Reiss

completed two portraits of Japanese women and one portrait of a Japanese man wearing kimonos

(figs. 15-17). As stated earlier, it is unclear who decided what the sitter would wear. However,

the use of a kimono may be a political choice to retain a piece of Japanese heritage that was

disappearing. During Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912), Western dress became more acceptable,

eclipsing the use of the kimono, which “literally means wearing (ki) and item/thing (mono).”42

As Masami Suga notes, “a Japanese man dressed in a Western suit with a pair of geta (traditional

Japanese wooden sandals) was a familiar street scene of the early Meiji period.”43 Some

16

40 Raczka, “Winold Reiss,” 8.41 Ibid., 9.42 Masami Suga, “Exotic West to Exotic Japan: Revival of Japanese Tradition in Modern Japan,” In Dress and Ethnicity, ed. Joanne B. Eicher (Oxford: Berg, 1995), 97, footnote 7.43 Ibid., 97.

information regarding the sitters appears beneath their portraits in the Asian issue of Survey

Graphic—the man’s name is Watanabi and he is a Japanese painter in New York; Mrs. Tabusa is

from Hiroshima, Japan. Since this periodical features the plight of Asians in America, we can

consider these two sitters to be residing in the United States though it is unknown when they

immigrated. Nonetheless, thinking about their use of a kimono and the precedent in Japan for

mixing Western clothing with traditional garments supports the notion of a more complex

relationship between the ethnic sitter and their costume.

By contrast, Reiss’s portraits of African Americans for Survey Graphic’s Harlem issue as

well as in The New Negro depict the sitters in Western clothing. Though Reiss created portraits of

well-known figures as well as of anonymous people, they all wore modern clothing; which

should not be surprising since the issue of immigration and a native costume is not present within

these portraits. However, there are distinct levels of how this clothing is rendered. For example,

the most elaborate depiction of modern dress occurs with The Librarian (ca. 1924), who is nearly

overwhelmed by her large sashed hat and lavish fur coat (fig. 18). By contrast in some portraits

the clothing is completely abstracted. Elise J. McDougald (1925) wears a top or dress that has

been rendered by a few lines (fig. 19). Yet her clothing does not detract from her stunning and

intricately rendered upper body. In actuality, this plain outfit focuses attention on the sitter’s

captivating face. Perhaps, the anonymous woman in The Librarian needed the accessories to

17

bring her portrait to life; while McDougald’s portrait, which appears before her essay, speaks

volumes because of its minimalist clothing.44

The next level in sartorial interpretation is less abstracted, though still lacking in

significant detail. In most of the portraits of Harlem’s male intellectual elite they are rendered in

three-piece suits, often with a handkerchief. Personages from W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S.

Johnson, to James Weldon Johnson appear as stately figures with their faces as carefully

rendered as McDougald’s and their capable hands resting in their laps (fig. 20). One portrait

among the group, though, lacks the poise of these depictions. In Paul Robeson (1925) Reiss

portrays the actor with a smirk and shifty eyes looking towards the right of the composition (fig.

21). Though Reiss completed numerous portraits during the 1920s, the majority of his sitters are

caught in a pensive, sober mood; this aids in giving the overall portraits an air of dignity. Yet,

Reiss applies a conniving grin to Robeson which detracts from the purpose of these portraits.

Stewart attributes the grin to Robeson’s recent role as Emperor Jones: “all of the ruthlessness and

smirking condescension of that character are conveyed in Reiss’s portrait.”45 Perhaps this portrait

highlights the class differences within the sitters Reiss depicted for the Harlem issue as well as

for The New Negro. After all, during this period actors did not generate as much respect as

college professors or literary intellectuals. The issue of class difference is also evident in the

choice of clothing among Reiss’s portraits of men: Lazy Boy’s modern clothing (casual shirt,

18

44 This pairing of portrait and writing is part of a long tradition among African-American intellectuals. Running parallel to the history of racist imagery is a history of self-representation among people of African descent, as exemplified in the practice of African American writers including portraits of themselves within their published works. For example, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative (1845) included a portrait of the writer, which included his signature, next to the title page. According to Anne Elizabeth Carroll, “the portrait and signature show Douglass to be a sophisticated, literate individual, and they reinforce the assertion of the subtitle that the Narrative was ‘written by himself’” (8-9).45 Stewart, “Folk-lorist of brush and palette,” 49.

vest, and hat) reflect his life in Montana, working as a medicine man, while the suits of the

Harlem men suggests office work and perhaps more intellectual activities.

The placement of A College Lad (1924), who is dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit,

at the end of Survey Graphic’s Harlem issue’s “Harlem Types” may be a means of appealing to

white readers on a personal level (fig. 22). As Carroll notes, “white readers thus start with an

image of a person who they can easily characterize as very different from themselves, but they

end up looking at someone who probably does not look that different from themselves or their

male friends.”46 Stewart makes a similar assessment of Reiss’s portrait of Mark Ten Sui (1926),

which appeared in Survey Graphic’s Asian issue (fig. 23). Sui is depicted in Western clothing and

through “his bearing and clean-cut demeanor [he] challenged the prevailing American view of

Chinese as uncultivated ‘heathens’.”47 Thus Sui may also resemble someone the reader knows.

Though these two men adopt Western dress in an effort to appear as part of the mainstream

culture, and therefore less threatening, they remain outsiders since they can never remove their

“racial mask.” Moreover, by dressing like those in the mainstream the only difference becomes

that physical manifestation of race that cannot be altered or covered up. And the adoption of this

Western or mainstream dress becomes a means of trying to de-emphasize that difference and thus

appear less threatening. In this light, other aspects of Reiss’s artistic practice can be re-evaluated.

Perhaps the abstracted lower body Reiss utilized in several portraits of African Americans is a

means of rendering them partly invisible and therefore less threatening. Perhaps the soberness

and lack of direct eye contact is also a means of appearing docile to white readers.

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46 Carroll, Word, Image, and the New Negro, 143-144.47 Stewart, “Folk-lorist of brush and palette,” 63-64.

VII.

In the end, whether dressed in ethnic or modern clothing the way Reiss depicts his

subjects presents a host of issues surrounding representation. Instead of accepting the

definitiveness of the “racial mask,” Reiss chooses to emphasize this fundamental difference; he

shows the diversity within each community as well as the subject’s transition into mainstream

society. He moves his subjects away from caricature though not so much that they are fully

empowered; traces of obedience remain. Most poignantly, Reiss illustrates the deep complexity

of the African American, Asian, and Blackfeet experience in the United States, which earlier

stereotypical depictions failed to grasp.

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VIII. Works Cited

Bogardus, Emory S. “Social Distance: A Measuring Stick, Gaging Racial Antipathies on the Coast—and Elsewhere.” Survey Graphic 56, no. 3 (May 1926): 169-170, 206, 208, 210.

Carroll, Anne Elizabeth. Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005.

Dabydeen, David, John Gilmore, and Cecily Jones, eds. The Oxford Companion to Black British History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Eicher, Joanne B. and Barbara Sumberg. “World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress.” In Dress and Ethnicity, edited by Joanne B. Eicher, 295-306. Oxford: Berg, 1995.

Ewers, John C. “Winold Reiss and the Blackfeet Indians.” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss, 126-141. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.

Farr, William E. The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945: A Photographic History of Cultural Survival. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1984.

Fischer, Roger A. Them Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Political Cartoon Art. North Haven, CT: Archon Books, 1996.

Goeser, Caroline. Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

Ling, Huping and Allan Austin, eds. Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia. Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2010. Palmer, Colin A., ed. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006.

Park, Robert E. “Behind Our Mask.” Survey Graphic 56, no. 3 (May 1926): 135-139.

Raczka, Paul. “Winold Reiss: The Holbein of the Humble.” In Winold Reiss Portraits of the Races: “Art Has No Prejudice,” edited by Ray W. Steele and Paul Raczka, 7-50. Great Falls, MT: C.M. Russell Museum, 1986.

Rosier, Paul C. Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

21

Stewart, Jeffrey C. “Introduction.” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss, 17-19. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.

———. “Folk-lorist of brush and palette.” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss, 40-69. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.

———. “The Late 1920s: Glacier Park and St. Helena.” In To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss, 70-91. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1989.

Suga, Masami. “Exotic West to Exotic Japan: Revival of Japanese Tradition in Modern Japan.” In Dress and Ethnicity, edited by Joanne B. Eicher, 95-115. Oxford: Berg, 1995.

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IX. Figures

Figure 1: Graph from “Social Distance: A Measuring Stick, Gaging Racial Antipathies on the Coast—and Elsewhere,” Survey Graphic 56, no. 3 (May 1926): 169.

Figure 2: Late 19th century and early 20th century political cartoons portraying “yellow peril.”

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Figure 3: Leslie Thresher, Fisk Tire Company advertisement.

Figure 4: Quaker Oats Co., advertisement for Aunt Jemima Buckwheat, Corn, and Wheat Flour.

Figure 5: Issue day for beef rations at Blackfeet Agency, ca. late 19th century-early 20th century.

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Figure 6: Thomas Nast, “The Usual Summer Eruption,” Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1885.

Figure 7: Frederick Burr Opper, “The Red-Handed Prodigal,” Puck, October 19, 1881.

Figure 8: Winold Reiss, Lazy Boy in Medicine Robes, 1927. Pastel and tempera on board.

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Figure 9: Winold Reiss, Lazy Boy, 1927. Pastel on board.

Figure 10: Winold Reiss, Roland Hayes, 1925.

Figure 11: Winold Reiss, Harlem at Night, ca. 1924. Ink on paper.

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Figure 12: Winold Reiss, Dawn in Harlem, ca. 1925. Ink on paper.

Figure 13: Winold Reiss, Interpretation of Harlem Jazz, ca. 1925. Ink on paper.

Figure 14: Aaron Douglas, cover for Opportunity cover, June 1926.

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Figure 15: Winold Reiss, Watanabe, The Painter, 1926. Mixed media.

Figure 16: Winold Reiss, Mrs. Tabusa, from Hiroshima, Japan, 1926. Pastel on board.

Figure 17: Winold Reiss, Japanese Woman (Tama), ca. 1930. Mixed media on Whatman board.

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Figure 18: Winold Reiss, The Librarian, 1925.

Figure 19: Winold Reiss, Elise J. McDougald, 1924. Pastel on board.

Figure 20: Winold Reiss, W.E.B.Du Bois, 1925. Pastel on board.

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Figure 21: Winold Reiss, Paul Robeson, 1924. Conté crayon on board.

Figure 22: Winold Reiss, A College Lad (Harold Jackman), 1924. Pastel and conté crayon on board.

Figure 23: Winold Reiss, Mark Ten Sui, 1926. Pastel on board.

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