Born of English, African, and American Indian ancestry, Tanner grew up in a home that served as a locus for black culture and intellectual achievement. His father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, was a minister (later a Bishop) of the African Methodist Church. His mother, Sarah Miller, was a former slave who escaped to freedom on the underground railroad.

Jackson Pollock was a revolutionary and influential American painter, and the leading member of the abstract expressionism movement. 

Constantin Brancusi's Sleeping Muse—a detached head lying on its cheek—entered new ground in the representation of a conceptual image. The head is so refined and reduced in its perfect.