Betsy Tian - 2021 Near Scholar by The Harker School

2020-21 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient Artistic Pathfinder: Aaron Douglas and the Authentic Black Voice in American Modernism Betsy Tian

Artistic Pathfinder: Aaron Douglas and the Authentic Black Voice in American Modernism

Betsy Tian 2021 John Near Scholar Mentors: Ms. Pilar Agüero-Esparza, Mrs. Lauri Vaughan April 14, 2021

Tian 2 “We still rejoice that we were among those who were found able and willing to shoulder the heavy burden of the pioneer and the pathfinder, firm in the conviction that our labor was a small but withal an essential contribution to the continued flowering of the art and culture of the black people in this nation.” — Aaron Douglas, 19711 In 1925, at the age of twenty-six, Aaron Douglas launched his career as a young visual artist, eager to create a striking, new visual style that could defy stereotype and caricature in capturing the Black American experience. Quickly gaining a reputation as the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Douglas established himself as a trailblazer as he offered an authentic Black voice through the visual arts, fulfilling a much-needed role of the era. While the Harlem Renaissance marks the beginning of Douglas’s artistic career, both the relevance of his works and his artistic style extend far beyond the movement and position him as a pioneer of modern arts in America. From dust jackets to magazine covers to oil paintings, Douglas’s oeuvre spans a range of materials, color palettes, and stories. Early works dating to the Harlem Renaissance like Douglas’s cover illustrations for the magazine FIRE!! and the novel Home to Harlem showcase Douglas’s spirit and passion, as well as his deft grasp of a graphic art form compatible with modern media. Later paintings like Aspiration and Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers illustrate Douglas’s stylistic development and his deepened perceptiveness to the complexities of being both Black and American. However, despite Douglas’s revolutionary role as a creator of art who captured truthful stories of humanity, his work remains largely overlooked in art history and American history. While 20th century visual artist Aaron Douglas remains largely excluded from mainstream narratives, he created a uniquely Black American

Amy Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 134.

Tian 3 conversation on Modernism and left a profound and lasting influence on American arts that remains essential today. Midwestern Roots Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1899 to migrant laborers.2 Growing up, Douglas often watched his mother draw and paint still life after taking occasional classes from itinerant artists, which instilled in Douglas an early interest in color and shading.3 Douglas’s artistic aspirations and talent developed throughout his youth, and by high school, he was described by his school yearbook, whose cover he designed in sophomore and senior years, as “one of the most talented artists in school.”4 In the larger environment of Topeka, Douglas found a culturally literate, politically active Black community that impressed him with the value of racial progress.5 Recognizing the power of education in contributing to social uplift, Douglas, who had decided to pursue a career as an artist, attended college preparatory exams at Topeka High School, committed to obtaining a fine arts degree.6 In spite of financial struggles, Douglas’s ambition and efforts paid off as he became the first Black student to enroll in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in January 1918.7 Douglas excelled there and quickly acquired praise as “the fair-haired boy” of the Fine Arts Department.8 During his college years, Douglas trained in the traditions of European realism. He recounted spending hours, “copying and trying to grasp something of the form, technique and

Cheryl R. Ragar, "Aaron Douglas: Influences and Impacts of the Early Years," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, by Susan Earle (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 75. 3 Kirschke, Aaron Douglas, 1. 4 Stephanie Fox Knappe, "Chronology," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, ed. Susan Earle (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 207. 5 Kirschke, Aaron Douglas, 3. 6 Kirschke, 3. 7 Ragar, "Aaron Douglas," 81. 8 Knappe, "Chronology," 207.

Tian 4 proportions of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterful drawings.”9 While his formal art education was grounded in conventional European art forms, Douglas was also increasingly drawn to the boom of Black culture in the 1920s. Delving into the work of Black creatives, Douglas became a faithful reader of The Crisis, a magazine published by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.10 Douglas recalls, “The poems and stories, and to a lesser degree the pictures and illustrations were different. The poems and other creative works were by Negroes and about Negroes. And in the case of one poet, Langston Hughes, they seemed to have been created in a form and technique that was in some way consonant or harmonious with the ebb and flow of Negro life.”11 After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1922, Douglas obtained a teaching position at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri, in the fall of 1923.12 While the job provided Douglas with a stable source of income, he yearned to become an independent artist. Amy Helene Kirschke, the art historian who published the first monograph on Douglas in 1995, wrote that “Later in his life he would say that hunger of the spirit was more painful than hunger of the stomach and, despite the security of teaching, he wanted to take more risks.”13 Ultimately, what struck Douglas as “the most cogent single factor that eventually turned my face to New York” was the 1925 issue of the Survey Graphic magazine, titled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro.”14 A special issue devoted to Black life in Harlem, the magazine was edited by Alain Locke, one of the leading intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance and a professor of philosophy at Howard University. Eager to pursue his aspirations

Ragar, "Aaron Douglas," 82. Ragar, 82. 11 Kirschke, Aaron Douglas, 8. 12 Kirschke, 8. 13 Kirschke, 11. 14 Kirschke, 11-13. 10

Tian 5 at the heart of the Black art world, Douglas quit his teaching job and boarded a train to New York at the end of the 1925 school year, embarking on a new stage of his artistic journey.15 Artistic Beginnings in New York The changes occurring in Douglas’s life echoed a renewed spirit of emancipation that swept the Black community in the early 1920s. As Black intellectuals sought to define the goals of the community in postwar America, Douglas drew inspiration from the figures involved in the Harlem Renaissance once he arrived in New York. Among them, Alain Locke and German artist Winold Reiss mentored Douglas in the development of his artistic vision and style.16 Douglas’s works reflect the influences of Locke’s philosophy on racial progress and Black art while Winold Reiss guided Douglas’s development of a ground-breaking visual style that shattered previous conventions of depicting Black Americans. Locke popularized the term New Negro to describe the coming-of-age of the postwar Black individual in his 1925 anthology of Black art and literature titled The New Negro, an expansion of the 1925 Survey Graphic magazine issue.17 Locke describes how “for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being—a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.”18 Locke calls the Black individual in this state the Old Negro. With one’s self-image distorted by stereotypes, the Old Negro is unable to attain a genuine perception of oneself.19 The transformation from the Old Negro to the New Negro, Locke declares, is “the development of a

Kirschke, 11. Kirschke, 20-26. 17 Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, updated ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57. 18 Huggins, 57. 19 Alain Locke, "The New Negro," in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 47. 16

Tian 6 more positive self-respect and self-reliance,” which spur on “the rise from social disillusionment to race pride, from the sense of social debt to the responsibility of social contribution … the belief in ultimate esteem and recognition.”20 Locke’s message of the New Negro is rooted in liberation through self-assertion. Freeing oneself from subordination and patronization, defying stereotypes and caricatures, the Black American could rediscover oneself with a new sense of race consciousness and pride. Locke also argues on the means through which the Black community could achieve selfdetermination. While he acknowledges contemporary causes like Garveyism, which urged Black Americans to return to Africa and establish self-governing nations, Locke writes that “more immediate hope rests in the revaluation by white and black alike of the Negro in terms of his artistic endowments and cultural contributions.”21 Thus, the Black community’s mission should be to progress their race by advancing their culture, contributing a unique artistic form of selfexpression to American society.22 To accomplish this, Locke believed that Black artists must first reject the racist ideas that prevented the perception of beauty in Blackness. Diving beyond surface-level conventions of beauty, art should appeal to a fundamental and universal sense of beauty, for “Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid. And all vital art discovers beauty and opens our eyes to that which previously we could not see.”23 Douglas details his own journey of discovering beauty in Blackness through the art of his mentor Winold Reiss:

Locke, 52. Locke, 55. 22 Locke, 56. 23 Alain Locke, "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts," in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, by Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 140. 21

Tian 7 I have seen Reiss’s drawings for the New Negro. They are marvelous. Many colored people don’t like Reiss’s drawings. We are possessed, you know, with the idea that it is necessary to be white to be beautiful. Nine times out of ten it is just the reverse. It takes a lot of training or a tremendous effort to down the idea that thin lips and straight thin nose is the apogee of beauty…So when you see these pictures by Reiss please don’t look for so called beauty. It ain’t there. But there is a powerful lot of art.24 After arriving in Harlem, Douglas studied at the Winold Reiss Art School in New York.25 Douglas was initially drawn to Reiss’s illustrations of Harlem residents in the 1925 issue of the Survey Graphic magazine.26 Experimenting with African and Native American design forms in a bold, abstracted style, Reiss created caricature-free illustrations of African Americans, such as his 1924 work Harlem at Night (See Fig. 1).27 Locke identified Reiss as a mentor to young Black artists, praising his work as “a path-breaking guide and encouragement to this new foray of the younger Negro artists.”28 Commissioning Reiss as the primary illustrator of The New Negro, Locke believed that Reiss’s work demonstrated that “any vital artistic expression of the Negro theme and subject in art must break through the stereotypes to a new style, a distinctive fresh technique, and some sort of characteristic idiom.”29 As Locke predicted, Reiss’s influence on Douglas was enduring.

Caroline Goeser, Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 10. 25 "Winold Reiss," in Britannica School, 1, accessed January 2, 2021, https://school-ebcom.puffin.harker.org/levels/high/article/Winold-Reiss/218446. 26 Kirschke, Aaron Douglas, 26. 27 Richard J. Powell, "The Aaron Douglas Effect," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, ed. Susan Earle (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 54-55. 28 Locke, "The Legacy," 141. 29 Locke, 141.

Tian 8 Having trained in the painting tradition of European realism, Douglas was initially wary to experiment with African art forms. During the Harlem Renaissance, several intellectuals, including Locke, strongly advocated for young Black artists to incorporate ancestral African arts into their work. Locke believed that African arts could affirm the rich history and culture of the modern Black American and demonstrate that “the Negro is not a cultural foundling without his own inheritance.”30 A fascination for African arts had overtaken Modernism at the turn of the century as artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, idealizing the primitivism of nonEuropean civilizations, incorporated African motifs into their work. Locke noted this interest, commenting “In Paris … there has grown up an art coterie profoundly influenced by an aesthetic developed largely from the idioms of African art.”31 While White Europeans often approached African traditional arts from a perspective of colonization and presumed inferiority, Locke nevertheless saw this recognition of African art as a positive evaluation of its value and quality.32 To Locke, this further affirmed that Black American artists should learn from African arts to produce a unique visual style that could capture the African American experience. Urging that “There is a vital connection between this new artistic respect for African idiom and the natural ambition of Negro artists for a racial idiom in their art,” Locke called for Black artists to create a “racial art” that could place an authentic depiction of the Black American at the forefront of its narrative.33 Inspired by Locke’s call to “move in the direction of a racial school of art” and encouraged by Reiss, Douglas made a pivotal decision that shaped his career. Instead of pursuing realist painting, Douglas ventured into the exploration of racial themes in his art with African

Locke, 138-39. Locke, 139. 32 Locke, 138. 33 Locke, 138. 31

Tian 9 aesthetics.34 Douglas remembers, “I wanted to do something else. Actually I was a little hesitant about this blackness, so Winold almost forced me ... to use this African material.”35 Gradually, Douglas began to fuse African art with his portrayal of the spirit of African American experience. He compared this integration of African motifs into his work to “the old black song makers of antebellum days, when they first began to put together snatches and bits from Protestant hymns, along with the half remembered tribal chants, lullabies, and work songs.”36 Similar to musical traditions, Douglas’s borrowing of ancestral art forms rooted the Black American in a rich culture. Locke pointed out the stark difference between African and African American art, stating that “The characteristic African art expressions are rigid, controlled, disciplined, abstract, heavily conventionalized; those of the Aframerican,—free, exuberant, emotional, sentimental and human.”37 Yet, Douglas would successfully meld these opposites in his work. Transcending dichotomous categorization, Douglas’s art pioneered a new visual language to capture the complexity of the African American experience. Douglas not only learned from Reiss’s use of African-influenced forms; he also began to work with Modernist styles under Reiss’s guidance. Richard J. Powell, professor of art and art history at Duke University, notes that Reiss was “One of the main transmitters in the United States of European visual modernism in the years just before, during, and after World War I.”38 As Reiss introduced these elements to Douglas, Douglas incorporated them into his visual vocabulary. Douglas explained, “I wanted to create something new and modern that fitted in with

"Aaron Douglas (1899-1979)," in Topics, ed. Janet Witalec, vol. 1, The Harlem Renaissance: A Gale Critical Companion (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 475. 35 Donald F. Davis, "Aaron Douglas of Fisk: Molder of Black Artists," The Journal of Negro History 69, no. 2 (1984): 95. 36 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 26. 37 Locke, "The Legacy," 137. 38 Powell, "The Aaron," 54.

Tian 10 Art Deco and the other things that were taking the country by storm. That is how I came upon the notion to use a number of things such as Cubism and a style with straight lines to emphasize the mathematical relationship of things.”39 Thus, Douglas emerged from his mentorship under Reiss with an artistic style that was representational yet modern, flat yet dynamic. His compounding of these various art forms to develop a distinctive style established Douglas, still a budding young artist, as an African American Modernist, someone who could contribute a uniquely Black American perspective to Modernism. With his first major project in 1925, to illustrate for Locke’s The New Negro with Reiss, Douglas began to build his identity and legacy as “the father of Black American art.”40 Early Involvement in the Harlem Renaissance: Douglas’s Contributions to FIRE!! The year 1926 brought Douglas a multitude of creative collaboration opportunities in New York. Along with illustrating for publications like Opportunity for the Urban League and The Crisis for the NAACP, Douglas joined other young artists, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and Gwendolyn Bennett, to produce FIRE!! A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists.41 As Hughes recounted in his 1940 autobiography, The Big Sea, the impetus behind the magazine was to “burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past, épater le bourgeois into a realization of the existence of the younger Negro writers and artists, and provide us with an outlet for publication not available in the limited pages of the small Negro magazines then existing, the Crisis,

David C. Driskell, "Some Observations on Aaron Douglas as Tastemaker in the Renaissance Movement," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, ed. Susan Earle (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 89. 40 "Aaron Douglas," 475. 41 "Publishing and Periodicals During the Harlem Renaissance," in Harlem Renaissance: A Gale Critical Companion, ed. Janet Witalec (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 245.

Tian 11 Opportunity, and the Messenger.”42 As a founder and illustrator for FIRE!!, Douglas played a central role in shaping it, both intellectually and aesthetically.43 Douglas’s contributions to the magazine marked his commitment to pioneering new forms of artistic expression and representation for the Black community early on in his career. In a letter to Hughes from 1925, Douglas wrote on the mission of the African American artist: Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not white art painted black…Let’s bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crudge, rough, neglected. Then let’s sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let’s do the impossible. Let’s create something transcendentally material, mystically objective…Spiritually earthy. Dynamic.44 Rejecting the traditional Western approach of adopting White European art forms, Douglas calls for a new visual language that is uniquely Black to depict the Black experience. With his manifesto style proclamation “Let’s do the impossible,” he asserts that finding a novel visual language for Black people may have been dismissed as unattainable in the past, but he believes it is possible and calls upon his community to rally to action. Douglas notably deploys a series of oxymorons, “transcendently material,” “mystically objective,” and “spiritually earthy,” to capture his aspirations for Black art.45 In calling for it to encompass these seeming opposites, Douglas suggests that the Black experience cannot be contained within simple dichotomies. To reflect the complexity and authenticity of the African American consciousness, Black art

Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (1940), accessed February 26, 2021, https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/hugheslbigsea/hughesl-bigsea-00-h-dir/hughesl-bigsea-00-h.html; épater le bourgeois: to shock the middle classes (French) 43 Farah Jasmine Griffin, "On Time, in Time, through Time: Aaron Douglas, Fire!! And the Writers of the Harlem Renaissance," American Studies 49, no. 1/2 (2008): 46. 44 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 1. 45 Goeser, 1.

Tian 12 required its creators to fashion new artistic forms, “Not white art painted black.” Douglas asserts his confidence in the potential of art to construct a powerful modern Black identity and his mission to take on this challenge of revolutionizing contemporary concepts of Black art. The cover page of FIRE!!, released in November 1926, visually tackles these oxymorons and demonstrates Douglas’s new holistic Black experience (See Fig. 2). The black form represents a head whose facial features and hoop earring are represented in red, and hanging from the earring is an ancient Egyptian sphinx.46 Renée Ater, a public scholar currently working at the intersection of art and history, describes how Douglas fuses tribal African and Egyptian aesthetics in his illustration, linking the modern Black to a multidimensional cultural history. Douglas models faces on the mask forms of Liberia’s Dan people, including the slit eye feature that would continue to be a distinguishable mark in his works.47 Both the sphinx and Douglas’s representation of a head in a flat, profile view recall ancient Egyptian visual imagery.48 On Douglas using Egyptian motifs to depict the Black experience, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a professor of African American Studies at Columbia University, comments that Douglas “[situates] himself in a debate that had been going on since the nineteenth century … currently known as American Egyptomania—a discourse that posited Egypt as a white civilization and as proof of the Negro’s inferiority.”49 By associating ancient Egypt to his notion of African ancestry, Douglas refutes these ideas and affirms both tribal Africa and ancient Egypt as origins of the modern Black American. Griffin also writes that Harlem Renaissance figures like Locke and art sponsor Albert C. Barnes “dismissed Egyptian influences in an effort to link African

Goeser, 30. Renée Ater, "Creating a 'Usable Past' and a 'Future Perfect Society': Aaron Douglas's Murals for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, ed. Susan Earle (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 106. 48 Ater, 106. 49 Griffin, "On Time," 50-51. 47

Tian 13 American arts with more primitive forms of African art because those forms were influencing modernist artists such as Picasso and Matisse.”50 For Douglas to incorporate both in his work is to reclaim African arts, free of a Eurocentric, colonial perspective, while simultaneously representing primitive and civilized facets of Africa. Douglas elevates his representation of the Black American beyond the Harlem Renaissance to span across history. Caroline Goeser, a curator of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, remarks that by linking Black American identity both to the past and the present, Douglas suggests that the race could contribute this hybrid dynamic to modern society.51 His cover illustration impresses viewers with the blazing purpose of the modern Black American as the head of the cover’s subject literally encapsulates FIRE!!. True to its name, FIRE!! was an incendiary publication that aroused controversy and criticism in addressing topics like homosexuality, colorism, and interracial relationships.52 While it was largely ignored by White critics, Hughes writes that “None of the older Negro intellectuals would have anything to do with Fire. Dr. DuBois in the Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names.”53 Douglas’s illustrations were similarly subjected to fiery criticism. Rean Graves, then critic for the Baltimore Afro-American proclaimed in his review of the magazine that “Aaron Douglas who, in spite of himself and the meaningless grotesqueness of his creations, has gained a reputation as an artist, is permitted to spoil three perfectly good pages and a cover with his pen and ink hudge pudge.”54 Graves’ comments and other similar disparagements reveal the revolutionary content and unconventional aesthetic style that Douglas developed in his art. While many deemed it as unsophisticated and offensive, FIRE!! is a

Griffin, 51. Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 30. 52 Griffin, "On Time," 46. 53 Hughes, The Big Sea. 54 Hughes. 51

Tian 14 testament to Douglas’s commitment in defying social and artistic conventions, a vital step in his redefining the modern Black experience. While FIRE!! met its demise after the publication of its first issue due to lack of sales and ironically, a fire that burned the basement where a large portion of the magazine’s copies were stored, the magazine now holds a legacy of historical importance. Emergence as a Black American Modernist: Douglas’s Cover for Home to Harlem In the mid to late 1920s, Douglas continued to illustrate for Opportunity and The Crisis. His work was quickly embraced by leaders of the Black Harlem community, including Charles S. Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois, the editors of the two publications respectively. Kirschke looks back on this period in Douglas’s career when Black leaders discovered in his art a distinctive visual style that could transmit the message at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance: Douglas’s “quick acceptance reflected the need felt by black leaders such as Du Bois and Johnson for visual art that reflected an authentic black voice.”55 Later in his life, Douglas himself commented on the rapid success he achieved in the early years of his career. In a speech recalling the Harlem Renaissance, he described his art as “a heaven-sent answer to some deeply felt need for this kind of visual imagery. As a result, I became a kind of fair-haired boy and was treated in some ways like a prodigal son. I began to feel like the missing piece that all had been looking for to complete or round out the idea of the Renaissance.”56 As Douglas received public endorsement and personal support from Johnson and Du Bois, their broad realm of influence brought Douglas increasing visibility, which came with abundant opportunities to collaborate with Black authors. After illustrating for The New Negro, Douglas went on to create images for

55 56

Kirschke, Aaron Douglas, 68. Kirschke, 68.

Tian 15 other writers in the late 1920s, including Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Countee Cullen.57 In 1928, Douglas received an opportunity to create a dust jacket for Claude McKay’s novel Home to Harlem (See Fig. 3). Featuring protagonist Jake Brown, McKay’s novel narrates the experience of a young lower-class Black man who returns to Harlem from World War I in search of identity and belonging.58 Brown’s story represents the realistic social currents that many Blacks experienced in modern America during the World War I era. The Great Migration of the early 1900s saw millions of African Americans flock from rural, largely homogeneous communities to major American cities. Mostly concentrated in the Northeast, these cities grew to host African Americans diverse in both origins and aspirations. Locke declared in 1925 in The New Negro that the city, and in particular Harlem, was becoming a pioneering ground for African Americans to override preexisting prejudices about their race and to construct a selfasserted racial identity founded on shared experiences and perceptions of the world.59 Douglas’s cover concisely captures this journey of self-determination in the modern city. A man with a suitcase, symbolizing his pursuit of new economic and social opportunities, stands between two buildings. Susan Earle, a curator at the University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art, analyzes how the image’s message of racial uplift and unity is grounded in the horizontal symmetry and verticality of its forms.60 As the buildings spring from the ground on either side of the central figure, he towers beside them. With one building being a New York skyscraper and the other a Gothic-style church tower, the man spans a symbol of the modern and secular with

Knappe, "Chronology," 209-13. Elmer Lueth, "The Scope of Black Life in Claude McKay's Home to Harlem," Obsidian II 5, no. 3 (1990): 44. 59 Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 58. 60 Susan Earle, "Harlem, Modernism, and Beyond: Aaron Douglas and His Role in Art/History," in Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007), 28. 58

Tian 16 one of the classical and spiritual.61 Douglas once again wrestles with the dualities of African American modernism in the tension he creates between concepts of past and present. Yet he transforms this apparent contradiction into an image that conveys how the nuances of the Black experience transcends dichotomous boundaries. Earle comments that Douglas captures how “African Americans bridged many of these modern, newly urban contradictions, emerging from shacks and chains not only to build cities but to shoulder past and present burdens.”62 This carrying of past legacy into the present and future is further underscored by a bridge of music notes that links the two buildings together, below the man’s outstretched arms. Silhouetted against a vibrant purple background, the music notes evoke the rich history of Black American music, from spirituals to jazz. Empowering African Americans in their search for belonging in America, music represents the history and culture that the race contributed to the modern era, as well as its progress in literary and artistic achievements that came under centuries of oppression. Rather than resolving the ambivalence underlying the modern African American experience, Douglas conveys its complexity in an image that is charged with the struggles and aspirations of millions. While Douglas’s piece stands as its own work of art that resounds with themes of his era, the illustration’s role on a book jacket presents a new layer to Douglas’s modernist identity as this medium was uniquely modern. During the early 1900s, with the development of industry and consumerism, the circulation of mass media accelerated throughout America.63 As public demand for magazines, newspapers, and books skyrocketed, visual elements appeared more and more frequently on dust jackets and pages as a way to grab reader attention.64 Illustration thus

Earle, 28. Earle, 28. 63 Erika Doss, Twentieth-century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4. 64 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, viii. 62

Tian 17 became an indispensable modernist medium that linked art to commercial culture. Within the Harlem Renaissance, images disseminated through books and magazines played a powerful role in increasing visibility for African American illustrators although Black artists who participated in the fine arts of sculpture and painting received very limited public exposure and gallery opportunities.65 Yet, as modern visual media often relied on stereotypes to communicate with a broad and diverse audience, including many who were illiterate or non-English speaking, Black illustrators faced the challenge of creating an image of the African American that was identifiable but at the same time, free of prejudice.66 In his essay “The Legacy of Ancestral Arts,” Locke underscored the importance of this mission, proclaiming that “The Negro physiognomy must be freshly and objectively conceived on its own patterns if it is ever to be seriously and importantly interpreted.”67 Douglas’s dust jacket illustration for Home to Harlem stands as an example of how he tackled an authentic visual representation of the modern Black American. In his cover for McKay’s novel, as is largely consistent throughout his other works, Douglas employs distinctively Black features in the figure’s face, such as full lips, flared nostrils, and a jutting jaw.68 However, he removes the pejorative associations of these traits that were prevalent in contemporary mainstream media.69 Instead, through a bold and sleek style influenced by Art Deco, Douglas links the Africanesque face to power and self-determination.70 Another key component of Douglas’s style is his silhouetted figures. Silhouettes created a level of

Goeser, 2. Doss, Twentieth-century American, 48; Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 5-6. 67 Locke, "The Legacy," 140. 68 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 21. 69 Goeser, 21. 70 Stephanie Fox Knappe, "Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist: The Exhibition, the Artist, and His Legacy," American Studies 49, no. 1/2 (2008): 124. 66

Tian 18 generalization that elevated his subjects beyond the realm of an individual to a point where a viewer could self-identify with the artwork. At the same time, Douglas’s use of the silhouette extended to surrounding buildings or plants, grounding his figures in the tangible realities of their settings.71 These stylistic choices in the Home to Harlem illustration allow his image of Jake Brown to broadly symbolize a Black free agent in the urban north, independent to navigate the city and make choices regarding the fusion of the traditional and modern within his life.72 Douglas’s creation of a new, visually arresting racial type that could easily be grasped by a viewer solidified his role as a modern African American artist and placed him in the front ranks of contemporary Black artists. With McKay’s novel amassing public exposure as the first bestseller by an African American writer, Douglas’s jacket also attracted a wide audience and was circulated broadly as it played an important role in establishing an art form compatible with modern consumer culture.73 Transitioning from the Page to the Canvas: Texas Centennial Exposition Murals In 1927, Douglas’s first public mural, depicting African dancers and musicians against a backdrop of the modern cityscape, was unveiled at the opening of the Club Ebony in Harlem.74 Later, in 1929 and in 1930, Douglas was hired to paint murals for the new campus library of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and the College Inn Room of Chicago’s Sherman Hotel.75 These opportunities marked a turning point in Douglas’s career as he transitioned beyond creating art for the literary community to a medium of larger scale and broader audience. Nevertheless, Douglas maintained his fundamental artistic style and further developed his unique

Powell, "The Aaron," 55 Goeser, Picturing the New Negro, 11. 73 Goeser, 11. 74 Knappe, "Chronology," 212. 75 Knappe, 213. 72

Tian 19 visual vocabulary through painting. Douglas’s early art featured solid blocks of color that emphasized shape and contrast over tonal rendering as he engaged in graphic art and printmaking. Working with greater space and more artistic freedom, Douglas’s color palette and the complexity of his compositions would evolve significantly as he would revolutionize the mural to be an agent of social commentary with powerful illustrations of Black narratives.76 Douglas’s life in the 1930s was generally characterized by increased involvement in social and political activism. In 1935, he was elected as the first president of the Harlem Artists Guild, which aimed to secure WPA (Works Progress Administration) funds for Black artists. Later the same year, he joined other New York artists to form the American Artists’ Congress to combat the spread of fascism.77 Amid this period of political radicalism, Douglas was commissioned to create a series of murals for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Texas’s independence from Mexico. The exposition was a massive cultural gathering, hosting over six million people, consisting of fifty buildings, and costing twenty-five million dollars.78 Douglas’s murals demonstrate his heightened perception of the Black experience and his growth as an artist in capturing its layered and complex nature. Although two of his four murals were lost, Aspiration, the last painting in the series, is one of the two that were preserved.79 Aspiration illustrates the role of education as a bridge between the legacies of the past and Black aspirations in the modern world (See Fig. 4). The painting features three silhouetted figures standing on a three-stepped platform. Below, waves of raised shackled hands symbolize the

Lauren Kernes, "Aaron Douglas Teacher Resource," Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, last modified 2007, accessed February 5, 2021, http://www.aarondouglas.ku.edu/resources/teacher_resource.pdf. 77 Knappe, "Chronology," 216. 78 Texas State Historical Association, "Texas Centennial," Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-centennial. 79 Ater, "Creating a 'Usable," 105.

Tian 20 monumental struggle of slavery.80 While Douglas visually recognizes slavery as a milestone event of Black history, he extends and enriches the narrative of Black American past by imbuing the image with African-Egyptian symbols. A major theme throughout his artwork, as evidenced in earlier illustrations like the cover of FIRE!! and the Home to Harlem dust jacket, Douglas’s exploration of Black American roots is especially relevant within the context of the Texas Centennial Exposition as he presents an overlooked but indispensable narrative of American history. The platform that the silhouetted figures stand on is a three-tiered plinth representing Egypt’s Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms.81 These three rectangular segments could also reflect the registered composition of ancient Egyptian art where scenes are organized in horizontal bands. Onto the rightmost figure of the artwork, Douglas applies his African mask-influenced motif of representing eyes with slits. Through a cut into her purple figure, Douglas visually melds her into the dynamism of her environment to represent how Black Americans engaged with the modern world through careful perception and scrutiny.82 Furthermore, Timothy Anglin Burgard, a curator for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, explains that Douglas could intend for the woman to represent Mother Egypt.83 Not only does Douglas model the woman’s profile on ancient Egyptian relief forms, her wig is also typical to Egyptian royalty.84 She sits with a book in her hands, engaging in the knowledge of ancient Egypt and representing the

Ater, 107. Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon of Hope, Aaron Douglas's Aspiration," video, 7:41, Khan Academy, March 27, 2020, accessed January 23, 2021, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art1010/american-art-to-wwii/harlem-renaissance/v/a-beacon-of-hope-aaron-douglass-aspiration. 82 Earle, "Harlem, Modernism," 27. 83 Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 84 Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 81

Tian 21 contributions of ancient African civilizations to the foundations of modern society.85 Douglas’s allusions to ancient Egypt’s tradition of innovation and rulership evoke pride for Black accomplishments and serve as a testament to the possibilities for African Americans in the twentieth century.86 Tying the past to the present and future, the two figures standing next to the woman hold an assortment of objects, which Ater analyzes as conveying the painting’s theme of education and knowledge. The man on the left holds a compass and carpenter’s square, alluding to architecture. A globe, a symbol of exploration and travel, rests next to him on the ground.87 In the middle, a man holds a beaker half-filled with solution, representing science.88 He points toward an illuminated city, consisting of four skyscrapers and a factory. Together, the three figures gaze at the prospects of the future, having ascended the platform and advanced with the power of education. With references to past events and cultural legacy, as well as representations of the future, Douglas captures the complex intertwining of diverse experiences that construct Black history. On his continued artistic exploration of the connections between the past, the present, and the future, Douglas declared that “The past rather than constituting a burden on our backs or a stone around our necks can become, when properly understood, the hard inner core of life giving bounce and resilience to our efforts which would be otherwise flat and uninteresting.”89 In a state where social and economic growth had relied on slave labor just decades prior, Douglas’s

"Celebrate Black History Month and See Aaron Douglas's Aspiration," de Young Museum, last modified February 1, 2015, accessed January 23, 2021, https://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/announcements/see-aarondouglass-aspiration-de-young-galleries. 86 Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 87 Ater, "Creating a 'Usable," 108. 88 Ater, 108. 89 Ater, 105.

Tian 22 art not only acknowledged the role of slavery in Texas and America, but more importantly, it recast American history through the lens of a Black perspective to highlight the progress of present Black generations and the potential of their future. A unique characteristic of Douglas’s style in Aspiration is his layering of transparent, curvilinear forms and concentric geometric shapes over objects and figures. While not present in much of his early graphic illustrations for books and magazines, Douglas began to incorporate these radiating shapes in his later work as he experimented with different media like oil painting and gouache. Unique in color, shape, and placement throughout various works, these shapes play both symbolic and aesthetic roles in Douglas’s paintings. On one hand, they convey a metaphysical energy that pulses at the heart of the Black experience and permeates the interactions of Black people with their environments.90 In Aspiration, Douglas presents a bright five-pointed star as the central focus of the layered shapes, around which other stars and circles emanate. The stars point to the distant city, aligning with the gazes of the three figures. Burgard analyzes how the star shape could take on multiple symbolic meanings when interpreted from different perspectives. While it could represent the Lone Star State of Texas in the context of the exhibition event, it also reads as the North Star, which guided slaves out of bondage, when interpreted from a Black perspective.91 In both contexts, the shape serves as a beacon of liberation, but the duality in its interpretation highlights the ambivalent nature of being both Black and American. For instance, the independence of Texas from Mexico gave rise to accelerating rates of African American enslavement in the state. Nevertheless, the radiance of the star counters the darker forces that Douglas depicts in the corners of the painting.92 He fills the

Earle, "Harlem, Modernism," 30. Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 92 Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 91

Tian 23 bottom right corner of the painting with a layer of blue wave patterns. Washing over the mass of hands in bondage, the wave-like forms evoke the Middle Passage, the voyage that enslaved Africans were forced to undertake across the Atlantic Ocean.93 In particular, the image of shackled wrists appearing among the waves conveys the appalling practice of slave ship crews who threw sickly slaves overboard.94 In the top left corner of the painting, deep purple curves loom over the figures, and a lightning bolt strikes through the storm-like mass. Yet the sharp point of the star pierces through the threatening atmosphere, suggesting that it is possible to progress past the evils of history.95 Aesthetically, the color gradient of these shapes creates an internal source of light in Douglas’s artworks. In Aspiration, light seems to emanate from the yellow star that intersects with the seated woman. For artists who emphasized realism in their works, details of light and shadow, achieved through techniques like chiaroscuro, could enhance emotive effects. Similarly, the sense of light in Douglas’s art adds a level of sophistication that is sacrificed in his use of silhouettes and a simplified, analogous color palette. For example, the radiating light visually directs the viewer toward the city on the hill while the darker tones on opposite corners of the painting create a sense of balance. In return, when Douglas reduces his figures to distinctive African-Egyptian forms and adheres to a narrow color range, he creates pictorial space for the layer of radiating shapes without convoluting the composition. By juxtaposing figures and objects with transparent forms in Aspiration, Douglas grounds the painting in the lived realities of its subjects while evoking a level of abstraction that captures the forces driving Black progress, including the aspiration for freedom and the power of education.96 Concrete yet

Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 95 Smarthistory and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "A Beacon," video. 96 Earle, "Harlem, Modernism," 30. 94

Tian 24 abstract, specific yet allegorical, this layered effect visually aligns with the dualities of the painting’s symbols and narrative.97 Within the cultural and historical context of the Texas Centennial Exposition, the message of Douglas’s art becomes even more significant. Through his work, Douglas offers a narrative that underscores racial identity and social justice. The Texas Centennial Exposition was touted as a monumental event in race relations, with its Hall of Negro Life dedicated to Black culture and contributions to America.98 Douglas’s works were showcased within this building as part of six major exhibits on Black American life (education, fine arts, health, agriculture, mechanical arts, and business).99 A number of publications praised the Hall of Negro Life, and Black presence at the exposition even received coverage from mainstream media, like the major daily newspaper Dallas Morning News, which published an article titled “Negroes at the Centennial” in May 1936. The Negro’s contribution to the development of Texas is a large one, whether measured in human values or in cold mathematical terms…It is eminently proper that the Negro race should have a significant part in the celebration of Texas’s freedom and independence. The Negro exhibit will be both a revelation to the Centennial visitors in general and a source of justifiable pride to the Negro race itself.100 Yet, Ater points out that “Such positivist rhetoric did not exclude problems from arising.”101 These seemingly optimistic messages masked how deeply segregation was ingrained in the entire exposition, a grim reflection of American society. On the day after the opening of

Earle, 30. Texas State Historical Association, "Texas Centennial," Handbook of Texas Online. 99 J. Walter Fisher, "A New Frontier," The Journal of Negro Education 8, no. 1 (1939): 84. 100 Ater, "Creating a 'Usable," 104. 101 Ater, 104. 98

Tian 25 the Hall, which was set as Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves, the Dallas Morning News reported Joining in with city negroes were other thousands of dusky country merrymakers who had deserted catfish streams and left fiddle-faced mules to munch contentedly in idleness, farm work forgotten…Laughter and carefree happiness comes easy to the sons and daughters of Ham and with the many wonders and attractions of the magic city at their disposal they made this Juneteenth a Christmas, July Fourth and Thanksgiving all rolled into one.102 Such articles revealed how old stereotypes still pervaded attitudes toward Black Americans, and the progress that promoters of the exposition claimed to have made with the Hall of Negro Life was far from the reality. The Hall of Negro Life was also constructed to be physically isolated from the rest of the grounds, in particular the Hall of State, the main building of the exposition.103 This segregation in location alone reflected the deep divide between Black American art and mainstream American art. Even within the Texas Centennial Exposition, Douglas’s status as an artist was questioned and became a point of controversy because of his race, rather than the content or style of his work, which was viewed by over 400,000 visitors, an estimated sixty percent of whom were White. Jesse Thomas, a member of the National Urban League, was selected as the general manager of the Hall of Negro Life and recorded its public reception firsthand.104 Thomas describes how visitors perceived Douglas’s art in his book Negro Participation in the Texas Centennial Exposition: “Many white people insisted that these murals were not painted by a

102

Ater, 104. Ater, 102. 104 Paul M. Lucko, "Hall of Negro Life," Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 9, 2021, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hall-of-negro-life. 103

Tian 26 Negro … Some became so rude that the administration decided to have a sign painter paint on the wall the following statement: ‘These murals were painted by Aaron Douglas, a Negro artist of New York City.’”105 Such comments reflect how negative racial attitudes on the limitations of Black artists’ intellectual and creative abilities were entrenched in the American general public. While restricted by the circumstances of his time, Douglas’s art nevertheless provided an important, underrepresented aspect of American history, amidst an event that was dominated by the historical narrative of the White pioneer conquering the Mexican.106 Douglas’s contribution to the Texas Centennial Exposition developed and reinvented concepts of being Black and American in the twentieth century. A Modern American Artist By the late 1930s, with tens of works, a number of exhibition appearances, and a teaching position in Fisk University’s art department, Douglas had established his legacy as a leading Black artist of his era.107 Yet his work also contributed to the larger discussion on American identity that visual artists sought to address in the early 20th century. As America entered the modern era with a booming economy and cultural power, several art movements cropped up nationwide. While unique in style and message, “all were similarly committed to the primary cultural and critical issue of the post-World War I era: defining uniquely American forms of modern art distinct from those of Europe,” according to Erika Doss, the Professor of Art History at the University of Colorado, Boulder.108 Among these movements, Precisionism is often considered America’s first independent modern art movement. Precisionist artists believed the

105

Ater, "Creating a 'Usable," 111. Ater, 100. 107 Knappe, "Chronology," 214-17. 108 Doss, Twentieth-century American, 77. 106

Tian 27 defining aspect of modern American identity was its urban landscape.109 Influenced by Cubism’s emphasis on geometric form and Italian Futurism’s focus on the modern city, Precisionist art captured factories, machines, and buildings as emblems of the city.110 A comparison between Douglas’s Song of the Towers (See Fig. 5) and Georgia O’Keeffe’s The Shelton with Sunspots (See Fig. 6) reveals how Douglas’s art shares stylistic similarities with Precisionist art, placing him alongside contemporary American artists. In 1926, O’Keeffe painted The Shelton with Sunspots, a view of the Manhattan skyscraper, for a series of canvases on the New York skyline.111 Eight years later, Douglas painted Song of the Towers from his Aspects of Negro Life series for the New York Public Library. Song of the Towers captures Black experience amidst the American industrial boom. A huge cogwheel and the three figures running on it dominate the foreground of the painting while illuminated circles radiate from the Statue of Liberty against a New York cityscape background.112 Both paintings reveal the principal role that the city takes on in the two artists’ perception of modern American reality. With a similar color palette, they capture buildings with simplified, geometric forms. Additionally, the depiction of the skyscrapers at skewed angles creates the perspective of a viewer at ground level looking upward. From this point of view, the magnitude of the buildings is enhanced, emphasizing the power of the modern American city. Another unique commonality between the two paintings is a central source of light that creates an organic atmosphere permeating the urban environment. In O’Keeffe’s painting, a glaring sunspot in the corner of the Shelton Hotel illustrates the lens flare that photographers encounter.113 Creating an illusion of a

109

Doss, 80. Brianna McMullen, "Precisionism: Art in the Industrial Age," Art Education 59, no. 2 (2006): 27. 111 Doss, Twentieth-century American, 85. 112 Powell, "The Aaron," 68. 113 Doss, Twentieth-century American, 86. 110

Tian 28 bite taken out of the building, the sunspot magnifies the formidable height of the skyscraper. Flowing lines of clouds and smoke, coupled with the upward-narrowing of the buildings’ shapes, evoke a mountain-like image and suggest that the grandeur of man-made structures parallels that of nature’s. Douglas similarly uses concentric circles of light to illuminate the skyscrapers. Divided into two groups, they part for an image of the Statue of Liberty like towering twin peaks. Combining vertical shapes and sharp angles with curvilinear forms, Douglas and O’Keeffe use strikingly similar visual vocabularies to present the greatness of the American city, encompassing both its steely power and organic undertones. Nevertheless, the two artists approached the subject of the modern city from starkly contrasting perspectives. Modern American movements like Precisionism and Southwest modernism espoused the belief that national cultural identity should be rooted in American places and regions rather than racial or social identity.114 As these artists shifted away from portraying people as subjects, many also downplayed socio-political tensions.115 Yet for Black American artists like Douglas, race was an undeniable aspect of American reality. While Black artists in the early 20th century were also committed to the search for a collective national identity, the tensions of individual and group belonging in American society dominated their art.116 The Black American experience is at the core of Song of the Towers, like many of Douglas’s other works. Here, Douglas depicts Black workers in the modern American city. Powell analyzes how each of the three running figures represents a unique aspect of the urban experience. On the bottom right corner of the painting, a fleeting laborer representing the Great Migration escapes from the clutches of skeletal hands. The leftmost figure is similarly hunched

114

Doss, 86. Doss, 80. 116 Doss, 92. 115

Tian 29 in fear, symbolizing Depression-era life. In the center of the image, a man stands upright, tilting his face upwards and holding a saxophone.117 In contrast to the struggles that the two other figures evoke, this man is emblematic of African American creative self-expression.118 His saxophone is spotlighted in a glowing, transparent circle with the Statue of Liberty, symbolizing the pursuit of the American dream. But illusions and promises did not always hold true, and the different stages of running on the industrial cogwheel illustrate the harsh realities for those seeking opportunities and liberation in the city.119 In spite of the glorious skyscrapers that tower in the background, Douglas’s nuanced representation of the city is grounded in human experience. In creating human-centered art with a Modernism-influenced style, Douglas offered a distinctive contribution to the modern art world. Douglas provided a visual vocabulary for the truths of America. Yet the cultural environment of his era did not award Douglas the recognition that he deserved. While Black artistic talent was increasingly recognized throughout the 20th century, segregation in the art world remained unchallenged.120 Doss states that while the Harlem Renaissance spurred on a number of exclusive private patronage and exhibition opportunities for Black artists, they continued to be excluded from mainstream art museums and collections. These inequities were rooted in the belief that “‘Negro’ art was understood primarily as an expression of racial identity, and was thus seen as separate and distinct from ‘American’ art,” even though artists like Douglas engaged with modern American topics, according to Doss.121 More importantly, the exclusion of Black creators from the modern American art world revealed a rejection of African American

117

Richard J. Powell and David A. Bailey, Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (London: University of California Press, 1997), 24. 118 Powell and Bailey, 24. 119 Powell and Bailey, 24. 120 Doss, Twentieth-century American, 95. 121 Doss, 95.

Tian 30 experience as an essential aspect of collective American identity. While Douglas’s work was lauded within the Harlem Renaissance and within the Black art community during his years as a professor at Fisk University, he was often marginalized from mainstream exposure. Aaron Douglas’s Legacy During Douglas's lifetime, his convention-shattering visual style did not escape criticism. As one of the first artists to create African-influenced art, alongside figures like Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi, whose use of African art forms were relatively unknown to Americans at the time, Douglas received harsh attacks from contemporary critics.122 In the 1943 book Modern Negro Art, which is recognized as the first thorough analysis of Black artistic contribution to America, author James A. Porter, now known as the first African American art historian, condemns Douglas: [Douglas] took literally the advice of racial apologists and, without a clear conception of African decoration, attempted to imitate in stilted fashion the surface patterns and geometric shapes of African sculpture. The early paintings and drawings and book illustrations of Aaron Douglas exemplify this weakness. The influence of African decoration on Douglas’s style is apparent to the close observer. It emerges in flat and arid angularities and magnifications of forms which, though decorative, had the dynamic effect one might expect from the dismemberment of a traditional art for the sake of rearranging the motifs thus plundered. Their representational value is almost negligible while their modernism is dominant.123

122

Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 133. 123 James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992), 94-95, digital file.

Tian 31 Artist Romare Bearden and art historian Harry Henderson, the authors of A History of African-American Artists, a 21st-century review on Black American art, reflect on what led Porter and others with similar beliefs to criticize Douglas’s work: Porter’s “outburst against one of the truly innovative black artists of the 1920s demonstrates the reaction of many academic artists to painting that did not present black people as well-dressed citizens, charmingly preoccupied in comfortable surroundings.”124 Thus, Douglas faced significant pushback from not only a mainstream, predominantly White audience that either rejected or did not recognize Black art, but also Black critics who believed that Black artists should illustrate the race in a dignified and idealized light that aligned with social norms of success. While he is now granted the title “the father of Black American art” by historians and art critics, Douglas was not the first notable African American artist. The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a handful of Black artists, like Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872), Edmonia Lewis (1845-1907), and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), who overcame previously insurmountable challenges in American society to establish careers in the art world.125 Douglas was inspired by these artists, and his work and life built off the legacies and paths that they had forged. Recalling early influences on his decision to become an artist, Douglas recounted that once in his youth, “My mother … came home with a magazine. … It had in it a reproduction of a painting by Tanner. It was his painting of Christ and Nicodemus meeting in the moonlight on a rooftop. I remember the painting very well. I spent hours poring over it, and that helped lead me to deciding to become an artist.”126 With his own art, Douglas took on the challenge of crafting a compelling, new, and modern representation of the Black American. Douglas contributed to

124

Bearden and Henderson, A History, 133. Bearden and Henderson, 3-111. 126 Ragar, "Aaron Douglas," 77. 125

Tian 32 Black arts and American arts with a visual style that utilized universal symbols to bridge races and link the African past with the modern Black American.127 Bearden and Henderson recognize that Douglas “offered a new way of seeing the African-American that was recognizable to all.”128 In transforming America’s concept of Black people and celebrating Black contributions to American history and life with visual arts, Douglas was a pioneer. In the decades following his 1979 death, Douglas and his art have attracted growing recognition, with 1995 marking the publication of the first monograph published on Douglas, Kirschke’s Aaron Douglas: Art, Race and the Harlem Renaissance.129 In 2007, the Spencer Art Museum of the University of Kansas organized the first traveling exhibition commemorating the life and legacy of Douglas, visiting locations nationwide from the Nashville Frist Center for the Visual Arts to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.130 Douglas’s influence also extends to generations of young Black artists whom he mentored as an educator at Fisk. With Douglas’s encouragement, many of his students went on to pursue successful careers in art, including painter LiFran Fort, filmmaker John Simmons, and printmaker Stephanie Pogue.131 Bearden and Henderson note that “The impact of his work on young African-American artists over a period of sixty years has been profoundly synergistic.”132 New York artist Terry Adkins, who was a student at Fisk University from 1971 to 1975, testified to Douglas’s influence on younger generations: [Douglas’s work] is art of the people, by the people, for the people; yet it is also illuminated propaganda, a powerful chronicle of the Black experience from the

127

Bearden and Henderson, A History, 134-35. Bearden and Henderson, 135. 129 Knappe, "Chronology," 227. 130 Knappe, "Aaron Douglas," 121. 131 Earle, "Harlem, Modernism," 44. 132 Bearden and Henderson, A History, 135. 128

Tian 33 perspective of the Diaspora.… Aaron Douglas’s art heroically transcends the Harlem Renaissance that dates it. His imagery spans and enfolds generations because it is ever brilliant and relevant.133 As Adkins highlights, one of Douglas’s primary artistic missions was to capture the complex intertwining between individuals of the past, the present, and the future. Douglas himself and his art have become powerful links across time. A century after the Harlem Renaissance, Douglas’s work remains relevant to present-day society, and his significance continues to extend into the future. A pioneer of Black American art and modernist aesthetics, Douglas made important visual and intellectual contributions to modern art and Black liberation. His work and life articulate the obstacles he faced as he sought to shape the future of the arts in America. Capturing the stories of real individuals with a striking visual style, Douglas blazed an artistic activist conversation that places Black American life and freedom at its center. By using his craft to transform society with truth and beauty, Douglas contributed significantly to African American arts. His legacy grows as his art continues to be an agent of social change, inspiring, empowering, and broadening the limits of belonging in society.

133

Earle, "Harlem, Modernism," 47.

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Murphy, Jessica. "Precisionism." The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last modified June 2007. Accessed January 6, 2021. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prec/hd_prec.htm. O'Keeffe, Georgia. The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. 1926. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago. Accessed February 17, 2021. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/104031/theshelton-with-sunspots-n-y. Porter, James A. Modern Negro Art. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992. Digital file. Powell, Richard J. "The Aaron Douglas Effect." In Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, edited by Susan Earle, 53-73. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007. Powell, Richard J., and David A. Bailey. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. London: University of California Press, 1997. "Publishing and Periodicals during the Harlem Renaissance." In Topics, edited by Janet Witalec, 243-340. Vol. 1 of Harlem Renaissance: A Gale Critical Companion. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Ragar, Cheryl R. "Aaron Douglas: Influences and Impacts of the Early Years." In Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, by Susan Earle, 75-85. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2007. Reiss, Winold. Harlem at Night. 1924. Ink on paper. Accessed March 18, 2021. https://www.culturetype.com/2018/05/03/folklorist-of-the-brush-and-palette-rare-winoldreiss-exhibition-features-distinct-illuminating-portraits-of-harlem-figures/. Smarthistory, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "A Beacon of Hope, Aaron Douglas's Aspiration." Video, 7:41. Khan Academy. March 27, 2020. Accessed January 23, 2021. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/american-art-to-wwii/harlemrenaissance/v/a-beacon-of-hope-aaron-douglass-aspiration. Texas State Historical Association. "Texas Centennial." Handbook of Texas Online. Accessed March 3, 2021. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-centennial. "Winold Reiss." In Britannica School. Accessed January 2, 2021. https://school-ebcom.puffin.harker.org/levels/high/article/Winold-Reiss/218446.

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Figure 1. Winold Reiss, Harlem at Night, 1924, ink on paper, accessed March 18, 2021, https://www.culturetype.com/2018/05/03/folklorist-of-the-brush-and-palette-rare-winold-reissexhibition-features-distinct-illuminating-portraits-of-harlem-figures/.

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Figure 2. Aaron Douglas, cover for FIRE!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, 1926, Collection of Thomas H. Wirth, accessed February 6, 2021, http://www.aarondouglas.ku.edu/press/fire.shtml.

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Figure 3. Aaron Douglas, "Home to Harlem" dust jacket, 1928, accessed February 6, 2021, https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2010/02/23/claude-mckay-and-the-making-ofhome-to-harlem/.

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Figure 4. Aaron Douglas, Aspiration, 1936, oil on canvas, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, https://library-artstororg.puffin.harker.org/#/asset/AMICO_SAN_FRANCISCO_103857611.

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Figure 5. Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers, 1934, oil on canvas, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, accessed February 17, 2021, https://libraryartstor-org.puffin.harker.org/#/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822003152087.

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Figure 6. Georgia O'Keeffe, The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y., 1926, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago, accessed February 17, 2021, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/104031/theshelton-with-sunspots-n-y.

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