Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1899. He migrated to Harlem in 1924 where he began studying art with the German artist Winold Reiss. Reiss was responsible for Douglas influence of African art design elements in his art.
Douglas’s study of African aesthetics and use of Black subject matter brought the majority of his work to the attention of leading scholars and activists like W.E.B. Dubois and Alain Locke. Later, he became a frequent contributor to area monthly magazines in Harlem like
Opportunity
,
Vanity Fair
and
Theater Arts Monthly
. During this time, when Douglas continued to be a contributor to these area magazines, Alain Locke labeled Douglas as the father of Black American art. Douglas then became the most popular black visual artist around Harlem. He was later commissioned to paint murals and historical narratives relating to Black history and cultural pride.
Douglas, like many other black visual artist during the Harlem Renaissance, collaborated with various poets and writers. Douglas’s most celebrated series of paintings that demonstrates his artistic collaboration is a collaboration with poet James Weldon Johnson in 1927. This collaboration was for Johnson’s book of poems called
Gods Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse
. This book of poems was inspired by stories of the Bible, African American Spirituals, and Culture. In this collaboration, Douglas has included illustrations of “Judgement Day”, “Let My People Go”, “Go Down”, “Death”, “Noah’s Ark”, and “The crucifixion”. As a result of the wide acknowledgement of
God’s Trombones
he was asked often to illustrate other literary works.
During the time when Douglas collaborated with various poets, it was also his desire to capture the black expression through the use of paint. He spent a lot of time watching patrons of area nightclubs in Harlem. Douglas said that most of his paintings that were captured in these particular nightclubs, were mainly inspired through music that was played. According to Douglas the sounds of the music was heard everywhere, and were created mostly during the Harlem Renaissance by well trained artists. Douglas’s work was looked upon by most critics as a breath of fresh air. His work symbolized geometric formulas, circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares became the dominant design motifs for Douglas. It was in Douglas’s series of paintings called “God Trombones” that Douglas first expressed his commitment through the use of geometric shapes for Black artists. The faces and limbs in these series of paintings are carefully drawn to reveal African features and recognizable Black poses.
In “God’s Trombones,” Douglas achieved his mastery of hard-edge painting using symbolized features and lines. Through his use of these things he was able to bring to life the stiffness in the figures which symbolized Art Deco. But, unlike the decorative programs that exist in Art Deco, most of Douglas’s work capitalized on the movement that was influenced by the rhythms of Art Nouveau. Each of the paintings in the “God’s Trombone” series expresses the humanist concerns of Douglas. For example, in “Judgment Day,” one of the seven Negro sermons Douglas illustrated for James Weldon Johnson, he planned to place emphasize on the positive appearance of Black power. In this painting, Gabriel, who represents the archangel, sounds the trumpet to awaken the dead from their spiritual rest. He is portrayed in this Painting as a lean Black man from whom the last earthly vocal sound is heard. The sound, which is perceived to travel across the world, is the inventive music of the Black man, and his blues. The music which is perceived to waken all nations, in the words of Johnson, is the song of a bluesman or famous trumpet player. The musician, who is consequently the artist, stands in the center of the universe sounding the loud horn on “Judgment Day”. Douglas also has followed Johnson’s chronicle and used simplified figures and forms to permit his interpretation of the Black man’s place of position to dominate the theme. Below are suggested lessons: