Hot Chocolates
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Object Details
- Date
- ca. 1919-1928
- Artist
- Theresa Bernstein, born Cracow, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Kraków, Poland) 1890-died New York Cit
- Luce Center Label
- Theresa Bernstein often painted urban scenes and everyday people at play throughout the 1920s, finding inspiration in New York’s music venues. The Hot Chocolates jazz revue started in a Harlem nightclub, Connie’s Inn, and then moved to Broadway’s Hudson Theatre. Over the course of its production, Hot Chocolates featured notable jazz performers Fats Waller, Edith Wilson, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong in his Broadway debut. This painting’s lively composition and rich colors capture the syncopated elements of jazz, as well as the boisterous mood of the show itself. As Harlem Renaissance gossip columnist Geraldyn Dismond wrote in 1929, some parts of Hot Chocolates could "make even a flapper blush."
- Topic
- Figure group
- African American
- Performing arts\theater\performer
- Recreation\theater
- Architecture Interior\civic\theater
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- On View
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 4th Floor, 33B
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Luce Foundation Center, 4th Floor
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Girard Jackson
- Data Source
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Object number
- 1998.128
- Type
- Painting
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 30 1/4 x 40 in. (76.8 x 101.6 cm.)
- Metadata Usage
- Not determined
- Record ID
- saam_1998.128