was involved in several different types of printing,
GOLD: Can you elaborate on how this work reflects
and to my eye he mastered them all very well!
Freelon’s political views?
If you look at his body of work and consider his themes, his topics, his choices of what to depict, you realize how varied it is. From beautiful, bucolic scenes to nighttime scenes, from industrial urban environments to men in coal mines working grueling, difficult jobs—it really runs the gamut.
ASANTE: This work was part of a controversial
exhibition on lynching titled An Art Commentary on Lynching, organized by the NAACP in 1935 at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in New York. If you allow yourself to be included in an exhibition on lynching that was rejected from other galleries,
GOLD: Barbecue—American Style (1934), a
you’re stating an opinion and adopting a political
graphically violent lynching scene, is an entirely
stance. Just because everything you make doesn’t
different direction for Freelon.
focus on those issues does not take away from
ASANTE: Exactly. Social Realism is there, too.
Barbecue—American Style is probably the most violent he got. There are layers of figures heaped up in the composition—it’s just so powerful. VEGA: Of course, it’s a commentary on life in America,
and it speaks to his political views. Freelon was very concerned about the condition of African Americans.
your commitment to them. Freelon did make a few other lynching paintings, such as This Is Her First Lynching. The titles are so gut-wrenching. It would be hard to do an exhibition on this topic even now. GOLD: What kind of exhibition opportunities did
Freelon have during his career? I know that the Pyramid Club was one place where he could exhibit his work. Did he also exhibit at the Print Club or the Tra Club, for instance? VEGA: He certainly exhibited in what we would call
alternative spaces—non-museum spaces where his work would be accessible to the black community— but he exhibited in places where the broader community could see what he was doing as well. He was part of a show in the 1940s at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and he exhibited his work at the Maryland Institute College of Art as well. ASANTE: He also exhibited at Morgan State
University in Baltimore. MCCAY: He must have grown up going to museums
and not seeing work by African Americans Allan R. Freelon, Sr. (second from left), Samuel J. Brown (second from right), John T. Harris (right), and an unidentified woman (left) during a dedication of paintings to school district, 1940s. (John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, Charles L. Blockson AfroAmerican Collection, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA) Photograph by John W. Mosley
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represented in their collections, because this work wasn’t collected on a significant scale until recently, and even today the imbalance remains a problem. Barbecue—American Style, 1934, by Allan R. Freelon, Sr. Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images WE SPEAK: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s–1970s
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