On Art and Such

This chapter charts the debates on art and aesthetics that preoccupied writers during the Harlem Renaissance. It is argued that because African Americans had made slight political and economic progress they turned to the arts as the primary site for social justice. The questions generated by the ensuing aesthetic debates about the purpose of racial art, its form, its audience, and the efficacy of cultural difference, reverberated throughout the twentieth century. This chapter also analyzes the formal innovations made by African American essayists. It is shown through the examples of Alain Locke’s intellectual detachment, Langston Hughes’ fiery polemic, George Schuyler’s acerbic satire, and Zora Neale Hurston’s “jagged harmonies” that the essayists of the Harlem Renaissance both formulated and enacted the aesthetic they proposed in their writings.