Artist Spotlight: Sargent Claude Johnson

Overview 

Artist Name: Sargent Claude Johnson

Lived: 1888-1967

Synopsis: Sargent Claude Johnson was the first Black Modernist artist from the West Coast to gain national acclaim.

Johnson’s art made a national impact as part of the Harlem Renaissance (also called the Black Renaissance), even though he lived in California’s Bay Area and not the movement’s center of Harlem in New York City.

His artistic work stands out due to his skill with multiple mediums and his embrace of Black identity at a time when many popular depictions of Black people were racist. Besides his work as an artist, he was a passionate and dedicated teacher who believed creativity was an essential civic value.

About the Artist

Career in California

Johnson settled in California around 1915, got married and had a daughter, Pearl, in 1923. By 1925 he owned a house in a Black neighborhood of Berkeley.

By this point, Johnson was already creating art while he continued his artistic studies at Best’s Art School and the California School of Fine Arts (later renamed the San Francisco Art Institute). While he was in school, he studied with influential sculptors Ralph Stackpole and Beniamino Bufano.

Johnson gained exposure as an artist through the annual San Francisco Art Association exhibitions, where he won several awards in the 1920s and 30s for his sculptures including Chester and Forever Free.

He also won awards in juried exhibitions put on by the Harmon Foundation in New York, an organization devoted to celebrating the artistic works of Black artists between 1928 and 1934 (except for 1932, when no exhibition was held). As part of these Harmon Foundation exhibitions, selected works featured in them went on national tours. This, together with a solo exhibition of Johnson’s work the foundation organized in New York in 1935, cemented his place as an important Black artist. Besides his work as an artist, he supported himself as a gallery and studio employee and took on WPA government art projects, like the commission for the California School for the Blind, for which he made his monumental Organ Screen. The Works Progress Administration (WPA, renamed Work Projects Administration in 1939) was created in 1935 as a program to help put unemployed people to work building infrastructure and public goods. As part of the U.S. government’s New Deal, the WPA sought to revitalize the economy during the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and ended in 1939.

After establishing himself as an artist, Johnson became a teacher. He taught sculpture at Mills College in Oakland and ran workshops organized by the San Francisco Housing Authority. He believed creativity was an essential civic value and saw teaching as a way of sharing this value with others, especially working-class Black people experiencing the repressive effects of redlining and over-policing that continue to affect non-white people today.

Johnson also worked commercially. In 1948, he was hired to create a mural for the exterior of Dohrmann’s department store in San Francisco, a chain of retail department stores that had stores across Southern California and Hawaii. The result was a modernist mural composed of enameled steel panels and marble.

Artistic Style

Influences

Sargent Claude Johnson drew from a wide variety of influences across his long career. Explore his primary influences below:

Modernism: Modernism is an art movement from the early 20th century that emphasized experimentation and finding new ways to express oneself. Industrialization was changing society and daily life at a rapid pace, and Modernist artists attempted to create works that reflected those changes. However, in his modernist works, Johnson worked to highlight diversity and inclusivity and made artworks that challenged stereotypes, especially when it came to non-white people.

Mexican Modernists and Indigenous Artisans: Johnson traveled to Mexico multiple times between the 1940s and 1960s, twice on scholarship with other artists and several other times on his own. His travels through Mexico took him to many cities and states including Mexico City; Puebla; Cuernavaca, Morelos; Veracruz, and Taxco, Guerrero where he explored museums, archeological sites, and artists’ studios. In Mexico City, he marveled at the murals by Mexican Modernist muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, whom he later had the opportunity to meet, in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He also traveled south to the state of Oaxaca where he explored Zapotec and Mixtec pottery made from barro negro, the area’s black clay. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Johnson was more interested in the contemporary and ancient artistic traditions of rural Mexican populations than in its big cities and major art centers.

The Pacific Rim: The Pacific Rim refers to the coastal regions bordering the Pacific Ocean. Around 1915, when he moved to the Bay Area, partly because of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition that happened that year, it was common for people to think of the Bay Area as the central place that connected the U.S. to Asia. Johnson was no different and was clearly interested in Asian art. While living in Berkeley, he probably saw Buddhist sculptures that belonged to his Chinese and Japanese neighbors. Some of his early sculptures, including one of his infant daughter, look like Chinese Buddhist works. He also made a sculpture of a young Chinese American girl named Elizabeth Gee, who was a friend of his daughter, and was able to travel to Japan more than once to learn more about Japanese art.

African Art, the Black Renaissance, and the New Negro Movement: Johnson never visited Africa, but his multiracial identity undoubtedly influenced his interest in African art. Art historian Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw said Johnson may have seen photos of West African masks and statues in an article by Black philosopher Alain Locke, an early supporter of Johnson’s work, about how Black people were represented in Western art. Johnson then created art directly inspired by the masks in Locke’s article. Locke. As one of the most influential thinkers and writers during the Harlem Renaissance, Locke saw how emerging Black artists were encouraged to emulate European artistic style and values. In response, he urged artists to embrace African influences. Johnson did just that. According to Locke, by 1936, Johnson’s work had “come to reflect more than any other contemporary Negro sculptor the modernist mode and the African influence.” Johnson's work aligns with Locke's imperative to challenge racist art history assumptions and to celebrate modern Black culture and identity.

Media

Johnson searched restlessly for his ideal medium. He was a painter, printmaker, engraver, sculptor, ceramist, enamellist, and mosaic artist who worked adeptly in all manner of sculptural materials including wood, ceramic, natural and cast stone, metal, and plaster.

Not content with mastering such different mediums, he worked on both minute and massive scales. For example, his 1945 terracotta sculpture The Cat, is roughly the size of a shoebox, while his cast stone mural at George Washington High School runs the width of a football field.

The Cat is roughly the size of a shoebox.

The George Washington High School Athletics mural runs the width of a football field.

Enamelwork

His interest in enamel was piqued in 1947 when he met the owner of an Oakland company that specialized in enamel-on-steel signs. For the next 20 years, Johnson taught himself the technique, perfected it and made over 100 enameled works, including the aforementioned facade for Dohrmann’s department store in 1948. Despite his mastery of the medium, his works have been left out of the history of twentieth-century American enamel because he was self-taught and rarely submitted his enamel works for juried exhibitions.

Related Objects

Vocabulary

• Modernism: An art movement from the early 20th century that emphasized experimentation and finding new ways to express oneself.
• Black Renaissance: A creative movement beginning around 1920 and through the 1930s that focused on the importance of African traditions. It encouraged artists to incorporate African influences into their work. Also known as the Harlem Renaissance.
• Enamelwork: A method of decorating metal that consists of applying and fusing glazes made of colored ground glass to metal using high heat to produce glossy, bright colors.
• Terracotta: A type of ceramic made from clay that ranges in color from orange to red or brown.
• WPA: Short for Works Progress Administration, this program helped put unemployed people to work building infrastructure, public goods, and art during the Great Depression, which began in 1929. It was part of the U.S. government’s New Deal, which sought to revitalize the economy during the Great Depression. It was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.

Questions and Prompts 

Identity and Community

• Who played a role in shaping Johnson’s identity?
• What communities was Johnson a part of? How did those communities influence him? How did he influence those communities?
• Some of Johnson’s siblings chose to pass as white. Why might they have made that choice? Why might Johnson not have made that choice?

Communicating through Art

• Which media, techniques, and work processes did he use, and why did he make those choices?
• What did he intend for audiences to see, experience, and think about when viewing his work?
• In your opinion, which are the most successful aspects of his work? Share your reasoning.
• Johnson believed creativity was an essential civic value. Do you agree? Why or why not?

California

• What motivated Johnson to move to California?
• What was Johnson’s experience with the move?
• Where did Johnson live in California? What influenced his decision to settle there?
• What systems of power did Johnson encounter in California? How did he navigate those systems?

Authors, Contributors, and Reviewers

Coauthors

Victoria Gonzalez is the Digital Learning Specialist at The Huntington.

Rebecca Kon is the former Curriculum Development Specialist at The Huntington.

Contributors

Dennis Carr is the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington.

Lauren Cross is the Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Huntington.

Reviewers

Kim Tulipana is the Associate Director of Public, School, and Digital Programs at The Huntington.

Renee Ergazos is an editor and the Owner and Managing Editor of Foresee Communications LLC.

References

Carr, D., Francis, J., & Bowles, J. P. (Eds.). (2024). Sargent Claude Johnson. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Locke, Alain. 1925. “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts.” In The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke, 254-67. New York: A. & C. Boni.

Page, Thea. 2011. “Rare Chance to See Artworks The Huntington Might Purchase.” The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. https://www.huntington.org/verso/2018/08/rare-chance-see-artworks-huntington-might-purchase.

Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois. 2012. "Creating a New Negro Art in America: Relocating Sargent Johnson’s African-inspired Art.” Transition 108: 74-87. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478409.

Turner-Lowe, Susan. 2013. “Monumental and Melodious.” The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. https://www.huntington.org/verso/2018/08/monumental-and-melodious.

Underhill, Justin. 2019. “Virtual Model of a Masterful Wood Carving.” The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. https://www.huntington.org/verso/2019/04/virtual-model-masterful-wood-carving.

The Pullman Porter — Museum of the American Railroad (historictrains.org)