Life and Career
Aaron Douglas was born on May 26th, 1899 in Topeka, Kansas. He worked several different jobs while growing up and began making art while he was a young boy. After graduating from Topeka High School in 1917, Douglas received a bachelor’s of fine arts from the University of Nebraska in 1922. He then received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas where he graduated as the first black art major in the school’s history. Douglas taught art at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri for two years and then moved to Harlem in 1925.
The Negro In An African Setting
Douglas took advantage of many great opportunities in Harlem that helped to establish and build his career. He studied with German-born artist Winold Reiss who introduced him to modernism and encouraged him to look at his African ancestry for inspiration for his art. Douglas also contributed illustrations to Alain Locke’s The New Negro, the NAACP’s The Crisis, and several poems by Langston Hughes.
Aaron Douglas became well-known for some of his many large murals portraying allegories of African-American history and contemporary life. One of his best-known works was a series of four murals painted for the New York Public Library’s 135th Street branch in 1934 called Aspects of Negro Life. Aspects of Negro Life features Douglas’s signature style of shades of grey, silhouetted figures, and radiating bands of light. Its four panels incorporate graphic motifs and influences such as African sculpture, jazz, and dance through the depiction of scenes that present different periods and aspects in African-American history: The Negro In An African Setting depicts tribal dancing back in Africa; An Idyll of the Deep South depicts a guitarist and banjo player performing while others sing and dance along; From Slavery Through Reconstruction depicts an orator speaking to slaves who are picking cotton; The last mural, Song of the Towers, depicts a figure fleeing serfdom and a saxophonist looking towards the Statue of Liberty while standing on the wheel of life. Song of the Towers symbolizes the Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural South to urban industrial centers in the North after World War I. It presents the hope of freedom and the creativity of the era for the “New Negro”, but also the difficulty and hardship of urban society that African-Americans face.
From Slavery Through Reconstruction
Douglas travelled to Paris in 1931 to study classical art for a year before coming back to New York City. While studying at Columbia University, Douglas was invited by one of his mentors, Charles S. Johnson, to help develop the art department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He joined the faculty at Fisk in 1937 and eventually became the head of the art department. Douglas remained at Fisk University until his retirement in 1966. He died on February 2nd, 1979 in Nashville at the age of 79.
Legacy
An Idyll of the Deep South
Aaron Douglas is considered to be the most prominent artist of the Harlem Renaissance and has become known as the “Father of African-American art”. He was a painter, muralist, and illustrator who combined Afro-centric allegory with modernist abstraction unlike any other artist. Douglas was able to present the spirit and euphoria of the Harlem Renaissance better than any other artist could. Although his work may not be as well-known as the literature and music of other prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance, it is just as important and influential in conveying the era’s creativity.
Socio-Economic & Cultural Contexts
Song of the Towers
Aaron Douglas was one of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was an African-American cultural movement between the end of World War I and the Great Depression. It resulted largely because of the Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural South to Northern urban centers. Southern oppression and the lure of freedom and higher paying jobs in the North contributed to an influx of thousands of Southern blacks to Northern cities such as New York and Chicago. The period of the Harlem Renaissance was characterized by a renewed admiration for African culture and new contributions of music, literature, and art. One of the most significant contributions of the era was the birth of jazz. Jazz helped to express the sense of social and personal freedom that modern cities seemed to offer African-Americans like they had never experienced before. The liveliness and creativity of the Harlem Renaissance contributed greatly to the overall free spirit of the prosperous “Roaring 20s” in America. Douglas presented these socio-economic and cultural factors through his artwork, and his work reflected much of the era itself.
Seminar Theme: New York City characters and lifestyles
Aaron Douglas portrayed and reflected African-American culture during the Harlem Renaissance through his work. He was able to combine the modernism of black culture in the New York City and other northern cities with the admiration and appreciation of traditional African culture that characterized the era. Douglas presented both the optimism and hardship of African-Americans, and he conveyed the journey of African-Americans over the course of time from Africa, through slavery, and into the modern era. His work captured the new and vibrant African-American culture that came to prominence in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and made significant artistic, musical, and literary contributions to the city. He presented the culture and lifestyle of a growing demographic that forever altered the city’s culture as a whole.
Works Cited
“Aaron Douglas.” Kansas Historical Society, June 2003, www.kshs.org/kansapedia/aaron-douglas/12039.
Johnson, Ken. “Black in America, Painted Euphoric and Heroic.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/arts/design/12doug.html.
“Aaron Douglas’s Magisterial Aspects of Negro Life.” Treasures of The New York Public Library, exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/170.
. “Harlem Renaissance.” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Ed. Michael Kelly. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 19 Oct. 2017.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t234/e0253>.
December 17, 2017 at 5:35 am
I really like Douglass’ style of art. It reminds me of contemporary, minimalistic art that I’d see on the wall of a Barnes & Noble or something. His choice of drawing the people in his art pieces in solid colors is unique and I believe it is intentionally done in correlation to how he names many of his paintings with the term “negro”, meaning black in Spanish. The fact that much of America saw African Americans as a color, for their color, and only their color seems to be a cynical play on the term “black people”. The anonymous nature of the people portrayed in Douglass’ paintings seem to also hint at how much of America doesn’t truly understand what it was like to be an African American in a very racist, segregated nation. But for me and many others, it seems evident that those people are likely African Americans while the topics of the paintings have to due with describing and portraying the struggles, hopes, and emotions of the black community in New York City.
December 19, 2017 at 4:01 am
I’m actually really glad that I was able to read about Aaron Douglas’ personal history and cultural contributions, because I had actually seen his work in the 135’th street library, without knowing anything about its creator. I think his integration of African and African American culture, motifs, and history into modernist abstraction makes his artwork unique and groundbreaking, earning him his unofficial title as The Father of African American Art. However, I think his use of abstractionism, basic shapes, and colour-blocking to convey his views on his culture and the history of his people allow his work to be an unusual mix of simple and aesthetically pleasing on a cursory view, but also very meaningful and symbolic upon deeper analysis.
My favourite piece of his would be The Negro in an African Setting, which depicts African tribal dancing, because I think it conveys musicality and the atmosphere of social, ceremonial dancing perfectly – one can practically hear a beat and feel the subjects’ rhythmic movement when looking at the painting. Douglas’ ability to capture life, vitality, and energy in his works may be what allowed his work to be so representative of the vivacious Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties.