Making History: Meta Warrick Fuller's "Ethiopia" Renée Ater American Art

Making History: Meta Warrick Fuller's "Ethiopia" Renée Ater American Art, Vol. 17, No. 3. (Autumn, 2003), pp. 12-31. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1073-9300%28200323%2917%3A3%3C12%3AMHMWF%22%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L American Art is currently published by Smithsonian American Art Museum. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/smith.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Tue May 29 14:36:10 2007 Making History Meta Warrick Fuller's Ethiopia Rente Ater Meta Warrick Fuller (1877-1968) creat- hand breaks away at an angle from her ed Ethiopia for the America's Making bound legs. The figure's head, draped Exposition, a 1921 fair that focused on in a nemes worn by Egyptian kings, is the contributions of immigrants to turned to her left and her eyes gaze over American society. Sponsored by the her left shoulder. Fuller's original small- New York City and New York State scale model, now lost and known only Departments of Education, the festival through surviving photographs, was the and accompanying pageants were held at first of several versions she created during the Seventy-first Regiment Armory at her lifetime of the sculpture, variously Thirty-fourth Street and Park Avenue called Ethiopia, Awakening Ethiopia, from October 29 to November 12. At Ethiopia Awakening, or The Awakening of the suggestion of writer W. E. B. Du Ethiopia. A later, sixty-seven-inch plaster Bois, James Weldon Johnson, field figure, similar in design, is pictured here secretary of the National Association (frontispiece).2 for the Advancement of Colored People Art historians such as David Driskell, (NAACP) and chairman of the exposi- Judith Wilson, and Richard Powell have tion's "Colored Section," requested that rightly discussed this sculpture in terms Fuller sculpt the allegorical figure for of its Pan-African ideals and the way in this event. "They had an idea all cut and which the work symbolized a new radi- dried that they would have Ethiopia," calized black identity at the beginning of Fuller recalled in discussing the commis- the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of sion. She agreed to make "a twelve-inch literature, music, and visual art in the sketch or model which could be enlarged early twentieth century. A more in-depth to whatever size they wanted."' and nuanced discussion of the historical The artist ultimately conceived a context for this important work can fur- striking image of a pseudo-Egyptian ther enrich our understanding, however.3 black woman unwrapping her swathed Fuller's sculpture must be looked at lower body, a mummified form slowly Meta Warrick Fuller, Ethiopia within the framework of the America's (detail), rnid-192Os. painted plas- returning to life. Her right hand rests in Making Exposition and contemporary ter, 67 in. high. ~rtand Artifacts the center of her chest where her crossed perceptions of Egypt and Ethiopia, which Division, Schomburg Center for arms were positioned in death, and supplied source material and context for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox between thumb and forefinger she holds her conceptualization. Fuller turned to and Tilden ~oundations the end of her linen shroud. Her left Egypt for archaeological references and 13 American Art .%' ..-*-,:&.i ,3- t:;;. , .,&1-: 'A "'J.d. an authentic racial identity by looking to the grand achievements of Egyptian history while also supporting the romantic ideal of Christian Ethiopia as a symbol of black liberation. At the same time, it was assimilationist in the way it was exhibited at a "melting pot" event, repre- senting the emancipation of a people attempting to prove their value to a society that had long excluded blacks from full involvement as United States citizens. The Journey to Ethiopia Born in Philadelphia in 1877 to a mid- dle-class family, Meta Warrick (fig. 1) received her early artistic training at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts beginning in 1897. She followed a course of study at the school that focused on applied arts, including decorative painting and design, and grad- uated in 1899. With the encouragement of a teacher, she decided to further her art instruction overseas and studied in Paris until 1902. Much influenced by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, whose I studio she visited at Meudon, the young American modeled The Wretched (fig. 2) I!! I!! after the tympanum of his Gates of Hell I .; :-- r . (1880-1917). She exhibited the small figural group to much acclaim at the Parisian art gallery L'Art Nouveau Bing . and at the 1903 Salon of the Socittt Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After her return to the United States, she initially 1 Photograph of Meta Warrick historical validation of African Americans' settled in Philadelphia and then in the Fuller, ca. 1911. Meta Warrick place in history. The artist used Ethiopia Boston area following her marriage in Fuller Photograph Collection, Schornburg Center for Research in the title of her work to represent a 1909 to psychiatrist Solomon Carter in Black Culture, New York source of racial pride as well as to refer- Fuller Jr. African American organizers, Public Library, Astor, Lenox and ence the literary-religious tradition of especially Du Bois, provided Fuller with Tilden Foundations Ethiopianism that was based on the bibli- three major commissions related to fairs cal prophecy of Psalm 68:31: "Princes and expositions: in 1907 she created shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall fourteen tableaux for the Jarnestown soon stretch out her hands unto God." Tercentennial Exposition in Virginia; in Ethiopia ultimately served two seem- 1913 she made a seven-foot sculpture ingly contradictory purposes. It filled a titled Emancipation (fig. 3) for the need for African Americans to formulate semi-centennial celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Boston; Ethiopia, with a crystal globe in each and in 1920-21 she produced Ethiopia." hand, that would occupy a central place By the early 1920s Fuller had become in the black exhibits: one of the preeminent black artists of her time. As her principal advocate and a Her darkface shinesforth from the massed close family friend, Du Bois sought drapery of a white Sudanese bernouse out Fuller for the America's Making whichflows down infolds to the ground Exposition commission. Du Bois was a and has perhaps a single splash of crimson prominent political philosopher and cul- color. rhefacP has closed &es and on the tural critic, and editor of the Crisis, the cheek a slight trace of tears. The arms and magazine of the NAACP Most likely, hands are black and bare and in the right the pageant he had produced for the hand is a crystal globe marked Music and National Emancipation Exposition in in the lef)a crystalglobe marked Labor." October 1913 was one of Fuller's early inspirations for this project. She had seen Ultimately, however, Fuller relied on her his "The People of Peoples and Their own artistic imagination to complete the Gifts to Men," later renamed "The Star sculpture for the exposition. As prepara- of Ethiopia" (fig. 4), at the Twelfth tions advanced for the fair, the Crisis Regiment Armory in New York, where reported that she was "designing a statue it was part of the celebration of which will be in the center the fiftieth anniversary of the of the Negro exhibit, show- Emancipation Proclamation.5 ing a female figure emerging As one of the executive from the wrappings of committee members of the a mummy with hands "Colored Section" of the upraised, symbolizing Americals Making the self-emancipation of Exposition, Du Bois that race from ignorance proposed an elaborate into educated, self-reliant citizens 2 Mera Warrick Fuller, The Wretc/~ed,ca. 1 90 1. Bronze, 17 x 21 x 15 in. Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale, Washingron 15 Arnerirnn Art 3 Meta Warrick Fuller, Emancipation, 191 3; bronze cast, 1999. 84 in. high. National Center of Afro-American Artists and the Museum of Afro American History, Boston A scene from "The Star of Ethiopia" pageant. Photograph reproduced in the Crisis 7, no. 1 (December 1913), p. 79 and makers of America." We do not during the early decades of the 1900s. know whether the Crisis report about the While a student in Paris, Fuller visited position of the figure's arms was inaccu- the Louvre on many occasions and most rate or whether Fuller revised them as she likely saw its collection of Egyptian arti- worked. But she did elaborate on her facts, which had been on view since intentions in a letter to an acquaintance 1826. As a resident of Framingham, shortly before the 1921 fair opened, saying: Massachusetts, a small town outside of Boston, she also had at her disposal one Here was a group (Negro) who had once of the most significant collections of made history and now afier a long sleep was Egyptian art in the United States at awaking, gradually unwinding the bandage Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

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