GBN’s Daily Drop: Learn About Harlem Renaissance Visionary Aaron Douglas – “The Father of African American Art” (LISTEN)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is based on the Wednesday, February 23 entry in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 and offers a quote from renowned Harlem Renaissance artist and arts educator Aaron Douglas:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. Today we offer a quote from Kansas-born artist and arts educator Aaron Douglas:

“Labor has been one of the most important aspects of our development . . .  It is a thing that we should be proud of, because we have that part of our life that has gone into the building of America. Not only of ourselves, but in the building of American life.”

As a young artist in the 1920s, Douglas illustrated Alain Locke’s The New Negro: An Interpretation as well as James Weldon Johnson’s collection of poems, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Douglas established an expressive, geometric style that drew upon his study of African art and his understanding of the intersection of cubism and art deco.

Douglas created a style that soon became the visual signature of the Harlem Renaissance and earned him the moniker “The Father of African American Art.”

Douglas went on to paint several public murals including the Aspects of Negro Life mural series at the Countee Cullen branch of the New York Public Library, which is still there today.

Douglas influenced artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, and he schooled countless others while serving as chair of the art department and HBCU Fisk University for over 25 years.

To learn more about Douglas’ life and work, you could read the 1995 biography Art, Race and the Harlem Renaissance by Amy Helene Kirschke, take a look at several of his works on wikiart.org, watch the New York Met’s video about his work on YouTube and check out the links to other sources provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

Sources:

• https://www.wikiart.org/en/aaron-douglas
• https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/634ad849-7832-309e-e040-e00a180639bb
• https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.38654.html
• https://www.biography.com/artist/aaron-douglas
• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/douglas-aaron/life-and-legacy/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihCZwa22URM (local Topeka video)
• https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/american-art-to-wwii/harlem-renaissance/v/a-beacon-of-hope-aaron-douglass-aspiration

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com, Amazon,Bookshop and other online retailers.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

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