Aron Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance is the term given to a period in American history where a new focus on the African-American experience emerged. This emergence began in the Harlem region of New York.

It was a time when African-American artists began to express their culture and at this time in history there came a new focus on the African-American artist and African-American Art.

The Harlem Renaissance has been described as "a cultural and psychological watershed, an era in which black people were perceived as having finally liberated themselves from a past fraught with self-doubt and surrendered instead to an unprecedented optimism, a novel pride in all things black and a cultural confidence that stretched beyond the borders of Harlem to other black communities in the Western world" (Powelland).

This Renaissance extended to all areas of the arts including painting, singing and performing. What was similar about these artists was their focus on the black experience, "painter Aaron Douglas, author Langston Hughes, jazz musician Duke Ellington, blues singer Bessie Smith, dancer Josephine Baker and the consummate all-round performer Paul Robeson - had certain attitudes about the black experience as art that, through paintings, writings, musical compositions and performances, explored an assortment of black representational possibilities" (Powelland).

This period in the 1920s is describes as "extremely uplifting to African-Americans as a people. Personalities and individuals connected...

David Schwartz Memorial Library).
Aaron Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance

Douglas emerged in the time of this Renaissance and because of this was encouraged to express his African roots, "Douglas's use of African design and subject matter in his work brought him to the attention of William Edward Burghardt DuBois and Alain Locke who were pressing for young African-American artists to express their African heritage and African-American folk culture in their art" (Schomburg Center).

With the focus on African-American artists "Aaron Douglas became a leading visual artist during this time" (Schomburg Center).

His work was closely associated with the rising Harlem image with Douglas regularly published in The Crisis, Opportunity and Vanity Fair. He also became famous for illustrating James Weldon Johnson's book God's Trombones and for his illustrations published in The New Negro anthology (Schomburg Center).

In 1934, Douglas was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the New York Public Library, with the murals designed to represent certain aspects of Negro life (Schomburg Center).

Aaron Douglas's Work

Aaron Douglas's work has significance both for its themes and for its style.

The themes reflect the African-American place in the world.

Some of his most notable works include Triborough Bridge, oil, 1935, The Negro…