New American Gothic: The Great Migration, “Not Like Us” & the Future
I grew up knowing about and seeing artist Grant Wood’s famous 1930 painting “American Gothic” that was intended to convey a positive image of rural American values. Wood evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a man and woman posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, “tintypes from my old family album.” They stand outside of their 1880s Carpenter Gothic style home. With this painting in mind I imagined a different meaning if the couple were Black American.
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans… Racial violence again became more common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28 in 1933. — Library of Congress
The Great Depression impacted Black Americans for decades to come. It spurred the rise of Black American activism, which laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. The popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal program saw Black Americans switch their political allegiances from Republican to Democrat. This era coincided with the Great Migration, one of the largest movements of people in U.S. history. Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states roughly from the 1910s until the 1970s. After World War II, they moved further west from places such as Chicago, Illinois to California’s major cities including Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Rapper Kendrick Lamar (Duckworth)’s parents left Chicago for Compton, California in 1984. Lamar and his family lived in Section 8 housing, were reliant on welfare and food stamps, and experienced homelessness. Hip hop culture helped him cope with hardships. For many young people like Lamar, hip hop was a way to cope with poverty. His 2017 album Damn won the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year. The Pulitzer jury praised the album as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African American life.”
On July 4, 2024, Lamar released a rap music video for “Not Like Us,” a diss track written and recorded amidst his recent feud with the Canadian rapper Drake. Diss (disrespect) tracks were fueled by hip hop rivalries such as the East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry of the mid-1990s. “Not Like Us” is Lamar’s fifth installment in his series of diss tracks directed at Drake who previously alleged that Lamar had cheated on and abused his fiancée. The music video was an opportunity for Lamar to counter Drake’s allegations, including a segment with his family (see above), with a photo that was taken in what appears to be his grandmother’s living room.
The “Not Like Us” photo is actually the second publicly released family portrait. The first was on the album cover of Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022). In the photo Lamar’s back is to the camera and his face is in profile. Lamar holds his daughter, while in the background his partner (now fiancée) Whitney Alford, who is mentioned throughout the album, sits on a bed breastfeeding their baby son. Instead of using generative AI (ex. Midjourney) Kendrick Lamar is using album art and music videos to explore and offer a view of modern Black American life. Note: Lamar did actually use generative AI in his music video for “The Heart Part 5.”
Nearly 100 years later, fewer people can directly relate to the painting’s subjects, but the iconic image has been fodder for generations of pastiche that play off of and into the original’s status of depicting “real” America. —via Hyperallergic
Seven years ago, artist Criselda Vasquez painted her take on Wood’s American Gothic (see above). Vasquez’s painting includes her Mexican immigrant parents who are posed in front of a red van, holding the tools of their trades. Today we have Kendrick Lamar’s visionary representation of Black American values that calls upon generations of struggle mixed with celebrations of family, culture, and community, with a cautious look towards the future.