Spotlight: Head of a Boy by Sargent Claude Johnson

Overview

Artwork Title: Head of a Boy

Date of Creation: Ca. 1928

Creator: Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967), American.

Synopsis: Head of a Boy by Sargent Claude Johnson is a glazed terracotta sculpture created around 1928. A young Black boy from Johnson’s neighborhood inspired the sculpture. It is one of many portrait busts of children he made.

About the Artist: Sargent Claude Johnson

Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967) 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 in 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.

African Art Influence

Beginning around 1920 and through the 1930s, Black artists, writers, and scholars participated in the Black Renaissance. This creative movement focused on the importance of African traditions and encouraged artists to incorporate African influences into their work. Black arts blossomed because of it.

Johnson’s multiracial identity (his father was white and his mother was Black) undoubtedly influenced his interest in African art. Unlike today, Johnson couldn’t go on the internet to research different artistic and cultural traditions from the African continent. He also could not look up his mother’s family’s history online to learn their origins before slave traders brought them to the U.S. African art is vast, and he learned what he could by reading books and periodicals and getting inspiration from their images. For example, 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 about how Black people were represented in Western art. Johnson then created art directly inspired by the masks in Locke’s article. Since some modernist artists were interested in African art around the turn of the century, he also may have learned about some of it while studying in San Francisco at Best’s Art School in 1915.
Locke was an early supporter of Johnson’s work. 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.”

Community Influence

Born and raised on the East Coast, he moved west as a young adult. By 1925, Johnson owned a house in a Black, middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, where he lived with his wife and young daughter. He was active in his neighborhood and artistic community and worked in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

Johnson was both an arts educator and a student who took and taught art classes. In addition to teaching sculpture at Mills College, he briefly led daily art workshops, organized by the San Francisco Housing Authority in 1947, where he taught drawing, sculpture, and woodwork to children.

People inspired Johnson, and he developed friendships with his neighborhood community. Perhaps because of his daughter Pearl, who was around five years old when he sculpted Head of a Boy, he also befriended local children. As a result, Head of a Boy was just one of many portrait busts of children Johnson created during this period. Today, we know the identities of some children who modeled for the series. Others remain anonymous, like the one who inspired Head of a Boy.

Johnson worked at a time when portrayals of non-white people in media were almost exclusively negative, racist caricatures. The artworks he created subverted these harmful caricatures. By making these sculptures, he honored and celebrated non-white people in his neighborhood and portrayed their identity, dignity, and complexity. In 1935, Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I am concerned with color, not solely as a technical problem, but also as a means of heightening the racial character of my work.”

Materials and Artistic Process: International Influence

Johnson’s artistic process for Head of a Boy reflects his interest in techniques from around the world, particularly from the Middle East and China. Explore some of the materials of this artwork as described by Dennis Carr, the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington:

• The green glaze on the terracotta base is mixed with deep cobalt blue. The glaze’s high lead content caused some of it to run when the sculpture was fired, resulting in a dripping look.
• Like sculptures from the Middle East, Head of a Boy contains lead oxide with metal inclusions, including copper and cobalt, which turn green and blue, respectively, when fired, giving the sculpture its color.
• The glazes used in this work are derived from Chinese sancai (three-color) glazes found on objects transported to the Middle East via the Silk Road.
• The gold highlights on Head of a Boy relate to Middle Eastern and Chinese techniques. To achieve this, artists apply powdered gold using mercury gilding. The mercury burns off in the heat of the kiln and leaves a fine coating of gold behind.
• The glaze is especially thin around the eyes, nose, lips, and outer edges of the ears. The thin glaze reveals the terracotta body underneath and makes these features more defined.
• Johnson also made an unglazed version of Head of a Boy. The terracotta simulates the warm skin tone of his non-white sitters.

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.
• Sitter: The person posing for a portrait.
• Terracotta: A type of ceramic made from clay that ranges in color from orange to red or brown.

Questions and Prompts

Communicating through Art

• Which media, techniques, and work processes did Johnson 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?

Identity and Community

• What influenced Johnson’s thinking about Black identity?
• What communities was Johnson a part of? How did those communities influence him? How did he influence those communities?
• Why do you think he created Head of a Boy?
• Why do you think his work matters today?

Related Objects

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., & Shaw, G. D. (2024). Sargent Claude Johnson. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Johnson, S C. (1935, October 6). San Francisco artists. San Francisco Chronicle, D3.

LeFalle-Collins, L., & Wilson, J. (1998). Sargent Johnson: African American modernist. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Locke, A. (1925). The legacy of the ancestral arts. In The new negro: An interpretation (pp. 254–267). Albert and Charles Boni.

Locke, A. (2020). Negro art: Past and present. Martino Fine Books.

Shaw, G. D. (2012). Creating a new negro art in America. Transition, (108), 75–87. https://doi.org/10.2979/transition.108.75