William Henry Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina, to a woman of black and Sioux ancestry. His father was thought to be a well-to-do white man who never acknowledged him as a son. Johnson studied under Charles W. Hawthorne and George Luks at New York’s National Academy of Design. Realizing that his chances of success in the United States were limited by racial prejudice, Johnson moved to Paris in 1926. After a brief return to the United States, he settled in Denmark in 1930 and married Holcha Krake, a Danish weaver and ceramist he had met in France. The artists remained in Scandinavia until the threat of Nazism forced them to move to the United States in 1937. Thereafter, Johnson concentrated on aspects of African American life with a new style of bold outlines and colors. His wife’s death made Johnson despondent, leading to his institutionalization in 1947.

Johnson produced Jitterbugs II, a silkscreen print, while teaching at the Harlem Community Art Center. The print’s jagged contours and bright hues communicate the energy of the dances in fashion among the young people whom Johnson observed upon his return to New York. He combined the abstracting methods of Synthetic Cubism and the strong patterns of Scandinavian folk art to address the vitality of jitterbugging, communicating movement and energy through graphic forms. Art historian Richard J. Powell has characterized the works in the series of which this print is a part as “overtures to a palpable, living Cubism . . . [which] . . . indicate that Johnson fully understood that the hyperkinetic dances and fashion extremes of contemporary black culture were appropriate inspirations for a modern African-American art.” 7 Space is collapsed in his composition, which focuses on the dramatic poses of figures engaged in fast-paced movement. The dancers’ facelessness draws attention to their bodies and dress and emphasizes the anonymity of the dancehall. The musical instruments seem to be playing themselves and moving to their own sounds. The jostling, interconnected forms of dancers and instruments evoke the syncopated rhythms of jazz. So connected are the figures to their actions that the dancers become almost inseparable from their dance. (MF)