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33 Aaron Douglas's Magisterial Aspects of
Negro Life
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/sho
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Harlem's avant-garde culture of the 1920s was inseparable from
Modernism, and no one else captured this powerful pairing,
emblematic of the Jazz Age, with the rigor and strength of Aaron
Douglas (1899–1979), a painter, muralist, and illustrator who is
considered the foremost visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance.
Douglas's use of African design and subject matter in his work
brought him to the attention of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke,
who were pressing for young African American artists to express
their African heritage and African American folk culture in their
art. His work was published regularly in The Crisis, as well as in
Opportunity and Vanity Fair. His most famous illustrations were
for James Weldon Johnson's book of poetic sermons, God's
Trombones (1927). Alain Locke called Douglas a "pioneering
Africanist" and used his illustrations in his famous anthology, The
New Negro (1925), in which Locke's classic essay "The Legacy of
the Ancestral Arts" appeared. Douglas created numerous largescale murals that portray subjects from African American history
and contemporary life in epic allegories. In 1934, he was
commissioned, under the sponsorship of the Public Works of Art
Project (PWAP), to paint a series of murals for The New York
Public Library's 135th Street branch, now the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture. Among his best-known works, the
four panels of Aspects of Negro Life are characteristic of
Douglas's style, with graphically incisive motifs and the dynamic
incorporation of such influences as African sculpture, jazz music,
dance, and abstract geometric forms. One of the murals, Song of
the Towers, depicts a figure fleeing from the hand of serfdom. It
is symbolic of the migration of African peoples from the rural
South and the Caribbean to the urban industrial centers of the
North just after World War I. Standing on the wheel of life in the
center of the composition, a saxophonist expresses the creativity
of the 1920s and the freedom it afforded the "New Negro."
Douglas joined the faculty of Fisk University in 1937 and stayed
there until his retirement in 1966. A true pioneer, his artistic
insight has had a lasting influence on American art history and
the nation's culture heritage, and is a testament to the themes of
African heritage and racial pride.
Aaron Douglas. Aspects of Negro Life. Mural series comprised of
four panels: Song of the Towers, From Slavery Through
Reconstruction, An Idyll of the Deep South, and The Negro in an
African Setting. Oil on canvas, 1934.
The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division.
Treasures Video: Watch a Short Film About Aaron Douglas and
the Harlem Renaissance
Online Exhibition: Harlem 1900–1940: An African-American
Community
About the Art and Artifacts Division