Visual and Performing Arts

US Critics and Racial Anxiety at the 1925 Exposition

Document Type

Article

Abstract

What was behind the heated—some even called it “hysterical”—responses by US critics to the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes? This article uses the close reading of primary documents and speculative counternarratives to argue that anxiety about the racialized identity of modern design played a role in the US reactions. Prior to 1925, the modernism of the Parisian art world included extensive exploration and appropriation of the art of its African colonies in a movement dubbed l’art nègre, and during the decade Paris became a destination for Black American artists and musicians. White American critics of the 1925 Exposition expressed distaste for the work they saw, using language that associated French design with racialized Others. In the 1920s, one of the most thoughtful writers on the topic of African art was Alain Locke, who spent the summer of 1925 completing work on the path-breaking anthology The New Negro and did not visit Paris. It is thought provoking to ask what might have happened had he seen the Exposition and written about it. Might he have called for Black designers to have taken up this modernism?

Publication Title

Journal of Design History

Publication Date

3-2026

Volume

39

Issue

1 Special Section: Art Deco Centenary Edited by Grace Lees-Maffei

First Page

18

Last Page

28

ISSN

0952-4649

DOI

10.1093/jdh/epaf048

Keywords

1920s, Art Deco, design critique, exhibition history, Paris, race

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS