Aaron douglas paintings aspects of negro life

His unique style brought a new dimension to African-American art, drawing connections between African heritage and contemporary African-American culture. In The Negro in African SettingDouglas uses gouache to depict figures and landscapes that echo African traditions and symbols. Moving to Harlem inDouglas quickly became a central figure in the movement, using his art to explore and celebrate African-American experiences.

His contributions, particularly through works like The Negro in African Settingestablished him as a pioneer of African-American modernism. This style features geometric shapes and bold colors, which Douglas used to create dynamic and visually striking compositions. He often employed streamlined forms and decorative elements that reflect the elegance and modernity of Art Deco.

The use of light and shadow in his work further emphasized the depth and movement, adding to the dramatic effect. The intricate patterns and vibrant tones in his paintings demonstrate the clear presence of Art Deco characteristics. These elements combined to create an aesthetic that was not only visually appealing but also richly expressive of cultural themes.

Douglas also incorporated elements of Synthetic Cubism into his work. This style is known for its use of abstract shapes and fragmented forms to build a cohesive image. In his paintings, Douglas used overlapping geometric shapes to represent human figures and landscapes, creating a sense of layered complexity. His technique of blending different planes and perspectives allowed him to convey motion and rhythm in his compositions.

The use of muted and monochromatic color palettes in some of his works highlights the influence of Synthetic Cubism, focusing on form and structure over color variety. This approach enabled Douglas to explore and depict the multifaceted experiences of African Americans. This series includes works like The Negro in African Settingwhich showcases his unique style and thematic focus.

Douglas used this series to narrate the history and experience of African Americans through modernist visual language. Each piece within the series blends African cultural elements with contemporary artistic techniques. His use of silhouette figures and concentric circles creates a sense of unity and continuity throughout the series.

The thematic content of the series revolves around the struggle, resilience, and cultural heritage of African Americans, presenting a powerful visual history. This painting is not only a representation of African heritage, but also a reflection of the cultural movements in the United States during the early 20th century. The Harlem Renaissance was a major cultural movement that began in the s, centered in Harlem, New York.

It was a time when African American artists, writers, and musicians gained significant visibility and influence. This period saw a blooming of African American culture and pride. Aaron Douglas was a prominent figure in this movement. Douglas sets the stage with a scene amidst lush foliage in Africa: A pair of dancers perform, accompanied Bearden conceived of this volume before his death inand Harry Henderson continued work on it until its publication in Based on many oral interviews and firsthand accounts, the text contains many details not found elsewhere.

Locke claimed that the essay was so poorly organized that he had to rewrite it. At center is a sculptural personage, perhaps a deity. Other human figures are shown in profile. The central image in particular, with its frontal symmetry, elongated torso and arms, and seated posture, bears a general typological resemblance to certain Dogon, Senufo, and Fang carved works.

To begin a story of America in Africa was unusual: It is hard to find precedents in the fine arts, though, to be sure, they existed in the stories told by those who had been enslaved, whose narratives were published in the rare volumes now held in the Schomburg collection. Shryock, Locke reviewed the show of African art organized by the Museum of Modern Art inwhich displayed over four hundred objects on six floors.

Thanks to Huey Copeland for the prompt to think of other modes in which this narrative appeared. Of course, more work is needed here. Beginning at the right, a federal soldier reads the Emancipation Proclamation; the document itself emits an aura of light. At the edge of the circle of light, sounds a bugle player, whose brass instrument foreshadows the birth of jazz with a singer by his side offering, one imagines, a song of thanks or of prayer for the journey to come.

While a group rejoices with their arms above their heads, one figure raises a fist. At the very center, a speaker stands on a soapbox podium, holding a rolled paper scroll tightly in his hand: Is it the Emancipation Proclamation? Or the Constitution itself? At his flank, voters wait to take their turn at the ballot box. To the left, laborers picking cotton in a field rise up as they take in the words of the Black candidate.

Above in the upper left, under cover of darkness, are a trio on horseback of cone-headed Klansmen, the paramilitary forces of white supremacy. Barely visible, a long figure seems to turn to challenge one of them. It was an Du Bois recounted an experience in which he submitted an entry on the American Negro for the Encyclopedia Britannica that included a paragraph on the achievements of Black Americans in the Reconstruction era.

The editors asked him to delete it. He withdrew the article instead. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, p. Du Bois writes of his experience with the entry for Encyclopedia Britannica in the preface, loc. Pollard, cited in Gates, Stony the Road, p. Prodigious numbers of freedmen—enabled by federal military occupation of the states of the former Confederacy—took up the promises of these amendments and asserted their right to vote, electing approximately two thousand Black officeholders and creating a robust Black leadership class.

The dozen years after Robert E. Hayes as president with a Faustian bargain that traded Southern electoral votes for a commitment to withdraw federal troops from the South and led to both Jim Crow segregation laws and suppression of the Black vote. At left, the presence of hooded night riders acknowledges the surging forces of the neo-Confederacy in stark terms.

The contrast sets the joy of Emancipation and the dispersal of the Confederate Army Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, loc. Gates gives the number of officeholders in Stony the Road, p. Gates, Stony the Road, p. Aaron Douglas and Aspects of Negro Life against federal abandonment with the departure of Union troops. At the same time, this panel, hanging in the th Street library in the heart of Harlem, speaks to the latent legacy of these years as thousands of Black Americans moved northward to claim their rights as citizens.

At far left, kneeling figures look up at the base of the tree, where we see a pair of hanging feet, an image that is still searing despite the years that have passed since it was painted. A distant star casts a beam of light that cuts across the panel. The image shifts the focus to those who remain, and in doing so points to the paradox of such murderous tactics: Despite hooded costumes and secret, extralegal societies, the spectacle of damaged bodies was required for lynching to serve its aim of terrorizing communities into submission.

With these feet, Douglas points to the way that Jim Crow—its aarons douglas paintings aspects of negro life of segregation, the economics of sharecropping, and white-supremacist ideology—was underFlag from from the window of the girded by violence. The NAACP had aggressively lobbied for this goal sinceand other key officials included James Weldon Johnson executive secretary, — and Walter White executive secretary, — The practice was discontinued after the threat of eviction.

More than two hundred bills to make lynching a federal crime were introduced in the first half of the century and failed, meaning that the federal government failed to intervene on behalf of its Black citizens and left enforcement of racially motivated murders to the states. Legislation outlawing lynching was signed only in Walter F.

Aaron Douglas and Aspects of Negro Life Yet despite the vivid specter of aaron douglas paintings aspects of negro life, the composition centers on music: on men gathering with banjo and guitar, singing the blues. The poet Sterling Brown, the Williams College—educated son of a minister born into enslavement, offered commentary, along with Alain Locke and the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, on Black musical genres in the opening program for the exhibition that they organized with others for the 75th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment at the Library of Congress in Brown described the poetic structure of the blues—usually twelvebar stanzas with three lines of four stressed syllables, with the second line often repeating the first and the third line clinching it with a rhyme.

He is poised on a gear of a giant machine, the emblem of an industrial economy, a far cry from the Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers. Another figure, holding a briefcase or toolbox, runs up the circle of the gear. A third figure in the left foreground lies prone in despair. There is no doubt that these figures are urban denizens and citizens of New York in particular.

Aaron Douglas and Aspects of Negro Life Locke, the meaning of this concentration in population went far beyond demographics. It is—or promises at least to be—a race capital. The Absent Fifth Panel Mr. Douglas is openly apologetic about the note of defeat upon which his mural ends. Had there been a fifth panel, he believes, he could not have escaped pointing to the way out for the Negro—to the one way outlined by Karl Marx and his disciples—the unity of the black and white works in the class struggle.

Had this been done, however, the whole mural would undoubtedly have been rejected by the FWA authorities. Unsigned [T. High Res TIF format. Order Order Print. Free to use without restriction. View as book. This Item. View this item elsewhere:. Item Data. Moreover, by simplifying his images in such a way, he allowed for the message of his work to be read by anyone, even children.

In an early review of God's Trombonesthe Topeka State Journal wrote "These illustrations are remarkable for their originality, their poetry of conception and their appropriateness to the text. They stamp Mr. Douglas as one of the coming American artists. For instance, O'Meally asserts that the concentric circles "may have been inspired by the new technology of the audio-recording," as they mimic the form of vinyl records.

Moreover, the various geometric shapes used by Douglas create a sense of "rhythmical repetition [which] gives them a natural and supernatural aspect, and underscores their sense of musicality". The combination of both smooth and jagged forms in Douglas's work may be read as an embodiment of jazz music, which, according to O'Meally, is " This painting, completed in a palette of greens and blues, showcases Douglas's mature style.

At the center is the silhouetted female figure of Harriet Tubman, who freed over slaves through her work with the Underground Railroad. Rendered in a dark shade of green atop the lightest portion of the painting, she provides a focal point for the viewer as her arms stretch upwards, revealing a broken set of shackles. Just below her sits a cannon, wafting smoke directly to her right, and a kneeling figure with his hands shackled together, who looks up at her.

Behind this figure is another kneeling form, bent over with his head and hands on the ground. Several other figures are seen in the background, carrying large loads likely sacks of cotton on their heads and backs. This is in contrast to the area to the right of Tubman, where several more figures men, women, and children appear kneeling, standing, and sitting, with one of them reading a book, and another holding a hoe.

At the far-right side of the image stand tall towers, reminiscent of modern skyscrapers. The image has been overlaid with Douglas's signature radiating circles and a beam of light. The central point of the concentric circles is focused on the muzzle of the smoking cannon, while the light shines down on Tubman from the top of the frame. This painting can be read from left-to-right as a narrative about past, present, and future, starting with slavery and bondage the shackled, toiling figuresmoving through the efforts of abolitionists like Tubmanthe civil war and emancipation the cannon, and the broken chains held by Tubmanand ending on the right-hand side with opportunities and accomplishments.

Douglas highlights access to education the reading figurebeing able to remain with, and provide for, one's family the woman and childfreedom to farm independently and benefit directly from one's own labor the figure holding the hoefreedom to enjoy leisure time the man relaxing on his backand freedom to relocate to urban centers and build lives and communities there the towers.

With this narrative, Douglas offered "New Negroes" a collective narrative by which they could define themselves, their origins, their futures, and perhaps even their own version of the American dream. A central aspect that he emphasized was the new self-determination of African-Americans, which stands in sharp contrast to previous depictions that were made for white audiences, showing African-Americans as dependent on white society.

While this sense of self-determination and defiance is shown, in part, through Tubman's strong body language, he focuses more on the broader efforts made to liberate slaves in the American South, rather than just on Tubman as a heroic figure. This is why the concentric circles focus on the cannon, rather than Tubman. That this work was commissioned for the Bennett College for Women may have influenced Douglas's choice to also highlight Tubman.

Each of the murals depicts a different aspect of African-American cultural history, from its roots in Africa, through the era of slavery, Emancipation, post-Reconstruction, and the Great Migration north. This mural, The Negro in an African Settingrepresents pre-slavery life in Africa as vibrant and joyous. Douglas depicts a large group of Africans, holding spears and bows, in circular formation around two individuals engaged in a sort of ritual or dance.

These two central individuals are tilted backwards at a steep angle, creating a more dynamic sensation that captures Douglas's view of African spirituality more than any specific African dance, which typically would pitch the dancers forward. The lushness the African wilderness is indicated by the repeated foliage in and around the group. Concentric circles of varying opacity indicate motion and energy, while simultaneously focusing the viewer's attention on a small, totem-like "fetish" figure, emphasizing the importance of spirituality to the African people.

Aaron douglas paintings aspects of negro life

The cultural historian Glenn Jordan asserts that "The image evokes a sense of community, spirituality, sovereignty and self-determination," which exemplifies the African-American imaginative construct of African life prior to European interference. Douglas said of the image "The first of the four panels reveals the Negro in an African setting and emphasizes the strongly rhythmic arts of music, the dance, and sculpture, which have influenced the modern world possibly more profoundly than any other phase of African life.

The fetish, the drummer, the dancers, in the formal language of space and color, create the exhilaration, the ecstasy, the rhythmic pulsation of life in ancient Africa. Black art historian James A. Porter called Douglas's paintings "tasteless" and "reminiscent of minstrel stereotypes. This work forms the second of four murals that Douglas created for theth Street branch of the New York Public Library, commissioned through the Works Progress Administration.

The image shows several African-Americans in a natural setting, with trees punctuating the picture plane and foliage above. Unlike the title suggests, however, this is no idyll but a scene of tragedy and forced labor. A group of African-Americans sit at the center, playing musical instruments. A series of concentric circles draws the viewer's eye to these figures, a technique that Douglas often used to indicate movement and energy.

To either side, he depicts the violence and struggle of slave life. On the far left, figures kneel on the ground, perhaps weeping or praying, gathered around a rope hanging from a tree that references the practice of lynching. At the far right, several slaves obscured in darkness hold hoes and work the earth. A small, white, five-pointed star at the upper-right corner of the image shines a beam of light down diagonally across the image.

With this work, Douglas critiqued the stereotypical notion of the "happy Southern plantation Negro," flanking the central group of musicians with scenes of harsh, historical reality. At the same time, Douglas's symbolism remains open-ended and allows for multiple levels of interpretation. For example, the star in the image was typically understood to represent the Underground Railroad's well-known directive to "follow the North Star" to freedom.

However, in an April conversation with artist David C. Driskell at Fisk University's Fine Arts Festival, Douglas revealed that he actually meant it to represent the "the red star of Russia," referencing the belief among some Harlem intellectuals that true equality might be reached through the "alternative policies of communism and socialism.

This woodblock print was part of a commission to illustrate Eugene O'Neill's play Emperor Jones. The play tells the story of an African-American, Brutus Jones, who is imprisoned for killing another B man during a dice game before escaping to an island in the Caribbean where he establishes himself as a tyrannical emperor. The play was meant as a commentary on the U.

The play won a Pulitzer prize, and is notable for being the first Broadway play with an African-American actor Charles Gilpin in a lead role, particularly as he performed a complicated psychological character that did not rely on bigoted stereotypes of black people. Robeson would star in the film version, as well. Douglas completed four black-and-white woodblock images representing his interpretation of the story.

This print, Defianceshows Jones in a military uniform with an aggressive, wide-legged stance and a confrontational expression.