Aaron Douglas
Harriet Tubman, 1931
Mural, 54” x 72”
Powell, Richard J. Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (p. 65). Thames and Hudson. c. 1997

    In the realm of African American art, Aaron Douglas was one of the most noticeable artists of his time.  In the late 1920’s, while in New York, James Weldon Johnson noted that Douglas possessed a keen intelligence and unusual imagination in some of his work.  Aaron Douglas was then chosen to illustrate Johnson’s book of verses, God’s Trombones and immediately Douglas was thrust into national prominence.  Winhold Reiss, Douglas’ European mentor, constantly urged him to explore his ‘inner blackness’ and develop his own style.
    In his mural Harriet Tubman, Douglas showed his signature use of silhouetted figures, overlaid and gradated with diagonal and concentric bands of color.  This mural was a color abstraction, punctuated by environmental forms and action figures, and portrayed like the ancient Egyptian wall paintings.  This and his other works conveyed inspirational messages, which in the spirit of the 1930’s and the New Negro movement, combined modernism with historical and colloquial themes.  Through Douglas’ art, audiences receive a reaffirmation that modernity and primitivism are used to broaden their social context.  The New Negro movement was the time for an awakening in black awareness, something many neglect in the 1990’s.