FINAL COMPOSITIONS:

Research Vision Board:

Key Characteristics and Values in His Work:

• Radiant

• Layered

• Hopeful

• Empowered

• Resilience

• Juxtaposition

• Retrospection

• Synthetic Cubism

• Art Deco

• New Negro Movement

FONT CHOICE:

To match the time period in which Aaron Douglas created many of his murals, I used Art Deco-esque, geometric fonts that could've appeared on the magazines that featured him.

Typefaces and System:

Mostra Nuova & Broadacre

INCORPORATED MURALS:

Aspects of Negro Life:

Idylls of the Deep South, 1934

For my cover spread, I wanted to integrate my title into the art piece, using the concentric lights to form the 'O' in his last name. This piece fit the best in terms of color and position, despite wanting Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to the Reconstruction to work instead. Despite that, both pieces worked thematically; in both, Douglas juxtaposes the torture of slavery with Black joy and resilience.

Aspiration, 1936

I framed the second spread with two murals, Aspiration and Negros in an African Setting. I cropped the former to direct eyes towards the latter. I also placed the pull quote over the star in this piece because both expressed Douglas' hopeful ambitions for African Americans.

Aspects of Negro Life:

Negros in an African Setting, 1934

I chose to display this piece as well because it directly showed Douglas' appreciation for African culture and the values of the New Negro Movement.

Into Bondage, 1936

The background of my second set of pages, Into Bondage is a mural that features African people at the inception of their enslavement. Because most of Aaron Douglas' work focuses on the empowerment of African Americans rather than the tumultuous and oppressive history of slavery, I greatly reduced the opacity of the piece.

FINAL COPY:

(spliced and edited from linked sources)

Chosen Pull Quote:

Who Was Aaron Douglas?

Aaron Douglas (1898-1979) was the Harlem Renaissance artist whose work best exemplifies the New Negro Movement. Douglas was an active member of the thriving cultural milieu known as the New Negro Movement which sought to cultivate the Black American cultural experience and highlight the effects of racial injustice. Progressive at heart, he developed a distinctive painting style using silhouetted forms and fractured space to express both, the harsh struggles of African American life in 1920’s Harlem and the future hope of social progress.

Early Life

Born in Topeka, Kansas, Aaron Douglas was a leading figure in the artistic and literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. He is sometimes referred to as "the father of Black American art." Douglas developed an interest in art early on, finding some of his inspiration from his mother's love for painting watercolors.

After graduating from Topeka High School in 1917, Douglas attended the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. There, he pursued his passion for creating art, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1922. Around that time, he shared his interest with the students of Lincoln High School, an elite all‐black high school in Kansas City, Missouri. He taught there for two years, before deciding to move to New York City, drawn by an article in Survey Graphic magazine entitled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro.” At the time, New York's Harlem neighborhood had a thriving arts scene.

Harlem Renaissance, Paintings and Art

Arriving in 1925, Douglas quickly became immersed in Harlem's cultural life. He contributed illustrations to Opportunity, the National Urban League's magazine, and to The Crisis, put out by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Douglas created powerful images of African American life and struggles and won awards for the work he created for these publications, ultimately receiving a commission to illustrate an anthology of philosopher Alain Locke's work, entitled The New Negro.

Many of the avant‐garde artists and intellectuals Douglas met exemplified Alain Locke’s notion of the self‐determined “New Negro,” individuals who celebrated their African heritage and possessed a strong sense of cultural pride. Inspired by Locke and by W. E. B. Du Bois, a host of young artists, writers, dancers, and musicians believed that artistic expression could bridge the chasm between African American and white communities. Douglas was inspired by these progressive philosophical and political ideas and by Marcus Garvey’s back‐to‐Africa movement, which prompted him to look for sources in the images and forms of African art.

Douglas had a unique artistic style that fused his interests in modernism and African art. A student of German-born painter Winold Reiss, he incorporated parts of Art Deco along with elements of Egyptian wall paintings in his work. The modernist “public” style for which he is best known features flat, silhouetted figures, a limited color palette, and radiating bands and circles of light.

With his reputation for creating compelling graphics, Douglas became an in-demand illustrator for many writers. By the late 1920s, Douglas was a frequent contributor to Opportunity, the National Urban League’s journal, and Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and other noted writers asked him to create cover designs for their books, and in 1930, at the invitation of Nashville’s Fisk University, Douglas began a large mural cycle for the new library building. By the mid‐1930s, Douglas was in demand as a muralist, illustrator, and educator. In 1937 he returned to Fisk to found the art department, which he chaired until his retirement in 1966.

Throughout his life, Douglas provided a dignified voice of opposition, insight, and aspiration through powerful and provocative images. Known as the Dean of African-American painters, Douglas challenged the African-American community to commemorate their struggles through art:

― Aaron Douglas, in a letter to Langston Hughes, dated Dec. 21, 1925

Back in New York, in 1933, Douglas had his first solo art show. Soon after, he started one of his most legendary works—a series of murals entitled "Aspects of Negro Life" that featured four panels, each depicting a different part of the African American experience. Each mural included a captivating mix of Douglas's influences, from jazz music to abstract and geometric art.

Aaron Douglas forged a powerful aesthetic that was conceptual yet optical, spiritual yet real, political yet visual. His portrayal of the hardships faced by African Americans, tempered by his triumphant scenes of future hope have influenced generations of young artists. At Douglas’s memorial service, Fisk University president Walter J. Leonard praised the artist as:

Sources:

camdencivilrightsproject.com

Aaron Douglas (1898-1979) was the Harlem Renaissance artist whose work best exemplifies the New Negro Movement. Douglas was an active member of the thriving cultural milieu known as the New Negro M…

www.biography.com

Aaron Douglas was an African American painter and graphic artist who played a leading role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.