Stepping up to the Palette: African American Artists in The Johnson Collection’s Art of the Athlete
Published June 19th 2025
By Danelle Bernten
“My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having troubles off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.” —Hank Aaron (1934-2021)
The Johnson Collection’s current show of nineteen paintings named Art of the Athlete runs from April 16, 2025 through July 12, 2025 in Spartanburg, South Carolina featuring works by African Americans such as Romare Bearden, Ernie Barnes, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, and others. It swings into veritable action and displays diverse images of white and Black amateur and professional athletes in motion or briefly resting. Yet, the integrated nature of the exhibit does not conceal the unique challenges the African American athlete has faced in American history during the 1920s and 1930s. From his segregation in the underfunded Negro Leagues to his derided and hostile reception into white professional sports or college teams, the Black athlete has overcome the labels of inferiority and inadequacy in order to triumph over discrimination in American sports. Celebrating the Black athletic body is one way to highlight the achievements of Black Americans during Juneteenth by analyzing the ways in which Modern artists in the Johnson Collection simultaneously represented bodily forms, line, and shape and the struggle for equality on football and baseball fields, basketball courts, and swimming pools.
The celebration of Juneteenth is one where the enslaved in Texas were read their previously hard-earned freedom in 1865 by Union soldiers. Yet, the paintings and sculptures forged during Jim Crow reflect the reality of this freedom in the South and North. Unlike his white counterparts who primarily wrestled with concepts of European modernism or Social Realism on American canvases and murals between the 1920s and 1930s, the Black artist was viewed as Black first and then an artist. Throughout her critical 1995 text on Harlem Renaissance pioneer Aaron Douglas, Amy H. Kirschke illustrates that the proliferation of race consciousness in the arts was promoted by scholars and writers such as W.E. B. Du Bois because of the high stakes faced by Black Americans from lynching, segregation, discrimination, poverty, and the Ku Klux Klan (1). The Black professional athlete faced hurdles of exclusion and discrimination which became increasingly apparent once the Black athlete longed for mainstream opportunities and acceptance and/or white team managers sought their integration into all white professional teams.
This essay limits its focus on the works of four artists in the exhibition: North Carolina’s Ernie Barnes (1938-2009), North Carolina’s William Arthur Cooper (1895-1974), Tennessee’s Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), and Louisiana’s Clementine Hunter (1886-1988). In all works, a solitary figure emerges in action or at rest but all artists circle around the theme of small starts leading to large breakthroughs.
In Douglas’s masterpiece In Bondage found at the National Gallery of Art, enslaved Africans await their doom in wrist shackles as slave ships arrive (Fig. 1;1936).
Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936, Oil on Canvas, 60 3/8 X 60 1/2 in, National Gallery of Art, DC
Douglas’s arresting mix of Cubism, West African inspired masks, and flat, linear approach to themes of misery and suffering exposes the hidden wounds of historical racial injustice and the importance of the Black body for labor, profit, and success for plantations in New World economies. Hundreds of years later, the Black body continues to feature prominently in capitalist economies in the field of sports entertainment. Interestingly, Douglas moves away from his traditional linear, silhouetted figures perfected during the Harlem Renaissance (1910-1930s) to a thoroughly three-dimensional figure in The Athlete by the 1950s (Fig. 2; 1959).
Aaron Douglas, The Athlete, 1959, Oil on canvas board, 23 7/8 x 19 7/8 in, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC
Here, a young Black male is seated with simple undergarments. His lean but muscular frame twists his upper torso creating a ¾ profile above. The sitter’s identity remains unknown. He looks athletic but we do not know if this strength of body is due to hard manual labor, professional sports participation in the Negro Leagues, or personal physical activity for self-improvement. All we do know is that Douglas names him an athlete. Guessing that the athlete may not be a professional athlete is not a stretch as Douglas worked diligently in manual labor in glass, steel, and automobile factories to save up enough money to earn his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1922 and he continued to work in odd jobs as an artist, and teacher in order to complete his Master’s degree at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College in 1944. The race that Douglas places the impoverished but talented Black American male seeking an arts education in the first half of the twentieth century need not be literal.
The hairless body is smooth and svelte while the face avoids the viewer’s gaze and is more preoccupied with providing the artist his desired natural pose. In this work, Douglas has achieved two aesthetic feats. He has painted the skin of the Black athlete in credible tones and has managed to provide the Black body a sinewy but sturdy appearance devoid of sensual suggestion. The sitter is one who appears to have the physical strength and grit to compete in the labor and sports markets. He is resilient and ignores the judgmental gaze of the viewer, displaying an inner strength that is also present in the external body.
Next, artist-minister Revered William H. Cooper (1895-1974), also provides an anonymous sitter with broad athletic associations. Born in Hillsborough, NC, Cooper was a self-taught artist and a self-made man achieving moderate professional success in the arts, law, insurance, and church. He paints a young teenaged girl sitting in a well-coordinated bathing suit, but what kind of athlete is she? In Cooper’s seminal 1936 book on painted portraits of mostly anonymous African American people working as domestics, cooks, shoe-shine boys and prosperous physicians and educators entitled A Portrayal of Life, Cook writes that he seeks to exhibit the beauty and gentleness of Black womanhood (2). Cook accomplishes this goal by painting a range of Black woman in different occupations from the “mammy” to the musician to the poet with grace and proper likeness in skin tone and expression. As Cook emphasizes The Bathing Girl’s wistful look and casual posture, he opens a Pandora’s box of questions that showcase the freedom or lack of freedom of Blacks to swim in Southern and Northern cities during the 1930s (Fig. 3; 1932).
William Arthur Cooper, The Bathing Girl, 1932, Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 30 1/8 in, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC
Louisiana self-taught artist Clementine Hunter (1886/1887-1988) primarily paints African American life on and around the Melrose Plantation. In her images of Black Southern life, she features scenes of baptisms, weddings, and church socials and field work of cotton picking and pecan harvesting (4). Hunter worked as a cotton picker, pecan thresher, and domestic on the Melrose plantation and painted from what she saw around her. Scholars and curators have moved away from categorizing her work as simply “outsider” or “folk” because she did not possess any formal education and educational training in the arts. Hunter’s lack of education lead to a life of illiteracy but the Creole French speaking Hunter did learn to speak “American” from her Creole husband Emmanuel Hunter whom she married in 1924 (5). Academics and museum professionals dub her and artists like Grandma Moses as “memory painters,” who paint what they recalled around them—revealing that American scholars have learned to accept her complex visual language and depiction of Black Southern life (6). In Hunter’s image of a sole baseball player in side profile entitled Standing Figure (with Baseball Bat), she offers an alternative reading of leisure even among the working poor. Sport is not exclusive to the upper classes (Fig. 4; 1975).
Clementine Hunter, Standing Figure (with Baseball Bat), Acrylic on canvas board, Circa 1975, 6 x 4 in, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC
A piece of long wood can be physically transformed into a bat, not only by the artist, but in the eye of its beholder. Hunter hits a home run with the freeing and democratic qualities of sports. The Black professional athlete began his career as a humble fan and player of baseball in the Negro Leagues. But with time, African American heroes such as Georgia's Jackie Robinson (1919-1972), Camden, South Carolina's Larry Doby (1923-2003), and Alabama's Hank Aaron (1934-2021) attained previously untenable heights for Black Americans in professional sports. A deeply spiritual artist, Hunter visually depicts a strong biblical principle in life and sports in Zechariah 4:10. We do not despise the day of small beginnings with makeshift dirt bases and tree sticks, branches and trunks as bats.
Lastly, we explore the work Untitled by professional football player, Ernie Barnes from Durham, NC (Fig. 5; Undated).
Ernie Barnes, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, Undated, 36 x 18 in, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC
Instead of his familiar image of a bulky built football athlete strategizing, winning in motion, or practicing that we find in images like Blood Conference aka Three Red Lineman (Fig. 6; 1966) or The Big Lineman (2003), we find Barnes composing a sticklike elongated Black body.
Ernie Barnes, Blood Conference aka Three Red Lineman, 1966, Acrylic on canvas, 47 x 49 in, Courtesy artist’s estate and Andrew Kreps Gallery
This anonymous body reaches upward towards not a professional basketball net, pole, and backboard but a makeshift wooden hoop attached to wooden planks and a bending tree trunk as pole. Unlike the other three artists, Barnes merged his passion for art and athletics in professional and academic ways. For Barnes, the artist was part and parcel of his personality and could not be separated from his sports persona. In his autobiography, he states, “I knew that I did not stop being an artist when I was on the football field” (7). Having excelled in the fine arts and athletics at HBCU North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) from 1956-60, Barnes went on to play professional football for six years for teams like the Colts, Chargers, and Broncos. After his professional career was over, he continued to draw and paint images of sports games and practices as the official team artist for the New York Jets and other subjects particularly of Black social life including the popular 1973 Sugar Shack currently on view at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC.
In the Johnson Collection’s image of a barefoot individual player on flat dry dirt and minimal basketball components, we see the beginnings of greatness and perseverance. There are no pricey brand name sneakers, matching basketball uniforms or practice gear, nor cheering fans, and a supportive coach or family. All we find is a single body extended in Italian Mannerist proportion with long spindly arms and legs, small head, and compressed torso reaching upwards, almost making a slam dunk. In his ode to Barnes, Scholar Adam Bradley characterizes Barnes’s work as cartoonish and playful, and we can see why (8). The unnaturally skinny depiction of the basketball body gives him an Olive Oil shape while his football players are larger than Popeye and the Incredible Hulk combined.
Upon closer inspection of Barnes’s childhood and teen years, we read about an out-of-shape bullied aspiring artist turned reluctant high school football player. The seeds of his beginnings of artistic and athletic were planted by his parents, coach, and friends and can be seen in a similar image of the same basketball player in another painting entitled In the Beginning (1970). During his subsequent growth as an art student, professional athlete, and professional artist, his artistic prowess amplified, leaving us a body of work that celebrates the integrated developments of US-American football and the toughness of the game and the importance of individual practice and perseverance in basketball.
Art of the Athlete addresses the world of sports from the 1920s-1990s while providing art history a running record of early 20th century racial disparities. In the game of life, Art of the Athlete demonstrates that the eventual integration of sports allowed for Art of the Athlete addresses the world of sports from the 1920s-1990s while providing art history a running record of early 20th century racial disparities. In the game of life, Art of the Athlete demonstrates that the eventual integration of sports allowed for improved educational opportunities in college admissions and sports scholarships, economic growth, and fair capitalist competition. The ultimate winner was the United States of America.
(1) Amy Helene Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, & The Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995).
(2) William Arthur Cooper, A Portrayal of Negro Life (Durham, NC: The Seeman Printery, 1936), 45.
(3) Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 91.
(4) Clementine Hunter, Talking with Tebé: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist, ed. Mary E. Lyons (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 10.
(5) Shelby R. Gilley, Painting by Heart: The Life and Art of Clementine Hunter, Louisiana Folk Artist (Baton Rouge: St. Emma Press, 2000), 57.
(6) Art Shiver and Tom Whitehead, Clementine Hunter: Her Life and Art (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 64.
(7) Ernie Barnes, From Pads to Palette (Waco: WRS Publishing, 1995), 14.
(8) Adam Bradley, “The Triumph of Ernie Barnes,” T Magazine, New York Times (Sep 15, 2023), 122.
Danelle Bernten (she/her) is an Art Historian residing in Tallahassee, Florida.