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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Fall 2000

Great Plains Pragmatist: Aaron Douglas and the Art of Social Protest

Audrey Thompson University of Utah

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Thompson, Audrey, "Great Plains Pragmatist: Aaron Douglas and the Art of Social Protest" (2000). Great Plains Quarterly. 314. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/314

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. GREAT PLAINS PRAGMATIST AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST

AUDREY THOMPSON

Like most of the luminaries of the first experienced black solidarity and embraced Renaissance, its leading visual artist, Aaron “the values of education and social uplift.”2 Douglas, was not himself a product of Harlem.1 Many years later, meeting William Dawson, a Although and Alain Locke were like-minded black musician, in Kansas City to guide Douglas in the development of his proved to be a “first step” out of artistic and artistic vision once he arrived in Harlem, his racial isolation.3 early years in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska Growing up in Kansas, pursuing a bachelor gave rise to both the communal values and of fine arts degree at the University of Ne- the artistic sense of isolation that were to lead braska, and teaching in Missouri, Aaron Dou- him to Harlem. It was in the black church and glas developed the commitment to pressing in Topeka’s “cohesive and politically active” against the limits of the known that was to African-American community that Douglas shape his artistic vision as a “pioneering Africanist.”4 His vision partook simultaneously of a sense of political urgency and artistic ex- pansiveness, both referenced to the situation and possibilities of blacks in America. Among the influences on that vision were the writ- ings of W. E. B. Du Bois, debates in Topeka’s progressive black press, and Douglas’s own 5 Audrey Thompson is an Associate Professor in the experiences as a soldier and a laborer. To- College of Education, and an adjunct professor in gether with the “optimism and self-help phi- Ethnic Studies, at the University of Utah. Her areas of losophy” imbibed from the black community research include philosophy of education, gender studies, in Topeka, Douglas’s experiences of racism, feminist pedagogy, and children’s literature. racial solidarity, and adventure infused him with an eagerness to play a role in promoting social change.6 Under the influence of Winold [GPQ 20 (Fall 2000): 311-22] Reiss and Alain Locke, Douglas was to forge

311 312 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000 that desire for social change into a bold and to whether they might promote socially useful liberating artistic vision. change. This essay examines the tension between African-American pragmatism thus stood art and politics in Aaron Douglas’s art of so- for progress tied to experiential and interpre- cial protest by framing his project in the terms tive pluralism. It also stood for possibility: set by the African-American pragmatism of under the terms of pragmatist instrumental- the era. As George Hutchinson argues, “a large ism, meaning depended not on the innate char- proportion” of those “fighting for black lib- acter of things but on the uses to which things eration . . . in the first three decades of the were put. Insofar as Aaron Douglas, Alain twentieth century had been molded by prag- Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, and other contribu- matism and considered themselves pragma- tors to the sought to gain tists,” although not necessarily “in the strict leverage on blacks’ shared experience by de- philosophical sense.”7 As a general phenom- vising new intellectual and cultural tools, and enon, pragmatism represented a rejection of insofar as they saw planned cultural activism fixed cultural assumptions about the way things as helping to guide social progress, they formed had to be; instead, pragmatists sought mul- part of the newly emerging tradition in Afri- tiple, new ways of framing meaning. Whereas can-American pragmatism.8 Aaron Douglas conventional approaches to knowledge solidi- figured among the African-American pragma- fied existing assumptions about the nature of tists of the twenties and thirties whose work reality into a foundation upon which all fur- was to shape a new understanding of black ther knowledge would be built, pragmatists experience and black possibility. set aside prevailing assumptions about truth. Rather than taking their cue from supposedly ALAIN LOCKE AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN universal truths, pragmatists attempted to con- PRAGMATISM struct new, emergent knowledge based on both actual conditions and as-yet-to-be-imagined Rejecting fixed categories and absolute possibilities. truths as the reference for knowledge, prag- Because they saw all existing forms of matism regards experience as the ground of knowledge as problematic, African-American knowledge; for that experience to be mean- pragmatists sought to create the conditions ingful, however, it must be mediated by the for constructing new knowledge from social tools of intelligence. While Aaron Douglas experience. Simply trying to persuade whites— brought considerable cultural and political or blacks—that the racist stereotypes of blacks experience with him to Harlem, he did not yet were untrue would not lead to significant have the artistic tools he would use to inter- change, for any new racial knowledge explic- pret and frame that experience. Winold Reiss itly tied to the old “knowledge” would have to was the German artist who introduced Aaron “build upon” falsehoods. The solution, there- Douglas to a new way of painting African fore, was to shift away from existing frame- Americans; Alain Locke, a philosopher and a works of knowledge by appealing to an leading spokesman for the Harlem Renais- altogether different framework. Inducing shifts sance, provided Douglas with the pragmatist in perception and experience afforded the framework that identified art as playing a cru- opportunity to reorganize social relationships cial role in social protest and racial education. and therefore social possibility. Whether ide- ational (as in the case of art and literature) or OVERCOMING THE EFFECTS OF material (as in the case of economic relations), MIS-EDUCATION such shifts were to be guided not by reference to timeless standards or absolute truth but by While most white pragmatists of the time instrumental considerations: by projections as did not understand experience in racial terms, AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST 313

African-American pragmatists such as Alain York but as the authentic folk culture at the Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Carter G. heart of a new racial vision. Woodson pointed out that, in the context of American culture in the early part of the twen- ART AS SOCIAL PROTEST tieth century, race was a defining aspect of black experience. Because of the stigma at- With John Dewey, Alain Locke believed tached to blackness, could that “the moral function of art . . . is to remove not choose to ignore race; insofar as African prejudice, do away with the scales that keep Americans were beginning to realize and cel- the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to ebrate the distinctiveness of black culture, wont and custom, perfect the power to per- however, they could choose to emphasize race ceive.”12 If art was to tap the African-Ameri- as a positive factor in experience. can experience, artists had to learn to see that Before African Americans could address experience afresh, setting aside the racist con- black cultural experience in all its diversity ventions that prevented the perception of and complexity, they had to be in a position beauty in blackness.13 From a pragmatist per- to acknowledge and understand that experi- spective, posing a rational challenge to deficit ence on its own terms. Having learned to think conceptions of blackness was unlikely to make like whites, educated African Americans were a significant difference in how either blacks or among those least likely to understand their whites perceived the “race problem.” Because experience outside the deficit terms set by the appeals to reason can only engage us in terms dominant social order.9 So successfully had of what already makes sense to us—thereby whites framed blackness as a problem, Locke appealing to the very assumptions that chal- said, that “the thinking Negro” had been led lenges to old ways of thinking are meant to to neglect his own experiential standpoint as unsettle—they cannot induce shifts in our a basis for knowledge.10 Confirming Locke’s overall system of beliefs but can only effect emphasis on the need to overcome the effects adjustments between existing beliefs. African- of mis-education, Aaron Douglas commented American art grounded in an authentic folk enthusiastically on Winold Reiss’s portrayal culture, however, offered the possibility of re- of African Americans in his drawings for The orienting both white and black thinking. New Negro. In order for African-American artists to achieve freshness and spontaneity of percep- Many colored people don’t like Reiss’s draw- tion, Locke advocated that they return to ings. We are possessed, you know, with the sources largely untouched by white influence: idea that it is necessary to be white, to be the ancestral legacy of Africa and the contem- beautiful. . . . It takes lots of training or a porary riches of black American folk culture.14 tremendous effort to down the idea that Because Africa represented a pre-contact past, thin lips and straight nose is the apogee of it served to move the perception of blackness beauty. But once free you can look back outside the context of the American Negro with a sigh of relief and wonder how any- “problem.” Africa pointed to a history before one could be so deluded.11 1619, when the first black slaves were brought to the American colonies. Insofar as New The new artistic tools of racial representation World and racial oppression had pre- that Douglas encountered in New York al- vented assimilation, they could be said to have lowed him to return to his youthful experi- provided the conditions that had helped keep ences of blackness with a fresh eye. Church, the African legacy pure and uncontaminated. work, education, and community were to fig- Drawing upon the African legacy also allowed ure in Douglas’s art not as provincial, Great Harlem Renaissance artists to capitalize on Plains imitations of the high culture of New the European interest in Africa that was lead- 314 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000 ing to a new appreciation of black artistry. and music, and Egyptian imagery such as pyra- “To American Negroes, long deprived of the mids. Folk imagery also plays an important importance of a past, save that which meant role, bespeaking a close familiarity with black humiliation and despair, this renaissance of religious beliefs and symbolism. Douglas’s knowledge” regarding Africa brought a “new painting was in fact intended to be a visual and growing enthusiasm for self-expression.”15 counterpart to black music, based especially African-American folk culture, meanwhile, on the iconography of the spirituals.17 Romare provided the historically American experience Bearden and Harry Henderson quote Douglas upon which black artists could draw in devel- as saying, with respect to his illustrations for oping an art form that would be distinctively God’s Trombones, new, distinctively American, and distinctively black. Because it had arisen under conditions I tried to keep my forms very stark and geo- of cultural segregation, black folk culture rep- metric with my main emphasis on the hu- resented an organically African-American man body. I tried to portray everything not framing of experience that could be seen as in a realistic but [an] abstract way—simpli- independent of white culture. Like some of fied and abstract as . . . in the spirituals. In the white patrons of the Harlem Renaissance, fact I used the starkness of the old spirituals Locke saw black folk culture as a source of as my model—and at the same time I tried vitality, purity, and spirituality not available to make my painting modern.18 to the dominant, materialist strain in Ameri- can culture except through the intermediary of Among the themes in Douglas’s work are the black artist, who would transform “primi- the struggle, work, and suffering involved in tive” feelings and insights into high culture.16 the African-American experience. The Cruci- fixion, for example, depicts a monumental AND PRIMITIVISM IN THE black figure carrying the cross for Jesus, the WORK OF AARON DOUGLAS soldiers’ spears pressing behind him. Jesus himself, a much smaller figure, is painted as a PRIMITIVISM figure of light surrounded by circles of light.19 The central and dominant figure in the paint- Primitivism for Aaron Douglas, as for Alain ing is “the legendary Simon, a Black man who Locke, referred both to the ancestral legacy of took upon himself the yoke of Jesus’ cross”; Africa and to the folk culture of African upon his face we see imprinted the “strain and Americans—folk culture meaning, above all, agony of his travail,” for he carries the “weight the blues, jazz, spirituals, and dance. The ap- of the world” on his shoulders. “He is the peal to primitivism was in part a celebration worker among men, the builder of cities that of the spirit and culture that had been strong circumscribe his access.”20 But while our at- enough to survive slavery, in part a recogni- tention is drawn to Simon’s suffering, we do tion of working-class African Americans (as not lose sight of his faith. Even in works opposed to the black aristocracy or the Tal- wherein struggle and pain are foregrounded, ented Tenth that the older generation of race strength, hope, and spirituality maintain a propagandists preferred to feature), and in part powerful presence. a bow to the contemporary fad of exoticism The illustrations and paintings that cel- connected to the urban dance halls. Although ebrate black folk creativity, on the other hand, to some extent the themes in Douglas’s illus- in some cases include violent counterpoints trations and murals reflect “decadent” primi- to the black cultural experience. Charleston, tive themes stressing night life in the cabarets, for example, depicts a relaxed nightclub scene much more of his work invokes African masks, framed by a noose hanging from overhead and fetishes, and plant life, African forms of dance clutching hands reaching in from the fore- AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST 315 ground.21 In other works, Douglas included Renaissance. Nathan Huggins, for example, portrayals of chattel slavery, industrial enslave- takes a foundationalist rather than instrumen- ment, and . Yet while Douglas never tal view of the imagery of primitivism, arguing lost sight of the threat posed by racism, per- that it “rested on very superficial imagery of haps the most important effect of his concen- African life,” with correspondingly superficial tration on African and African-American folk realizations in the art produced.23 Yet Huggins themes is the rendering of an all-black world acknowledges that the African influence had in which whiteness is not a point of reference. different effects in the , particularly Racism, oppression, and violence are all fac- in the work of Aaron Douglas, than it did in tors in black experience—represented in the the poetry and fiction of the Renaissance: paintings and illustrations by chains, nooses, “Aaron Douglas borrowed two things from the clawlike hands, and spears, for example. But Africans. He thought that art should be de- although racism and its consequences impinge sign more than subject. And his personal pre- upon black experience, they do not define it. dilections for mysticism encouraged him to Still less does whiteness define blackness in find racial unity and racial source in Africa.” Douglas’s work: racism is acknowledged as a Because Douglas’s emphasis was on design, the historical and sociological fact, but it is not appeal to African primitivism as symbol was allowed to give whiteness center stage. Indeed, more successful than in work intended as rep- whiteness appears only by implication.22 resentational; nevertheless, Huggins sees him The centrality given to black experience in as subordinating art to the idea of the primi- Douglas’s work reflects the foregrounding of tive and argues that Douglas was “abstract for racialized experience characteristic of Afri- philosophical not for painterly reasons.” In can-American pragmatism. Like both Carter Douglas’s work, Huggins argues, the legacy of G. Woodson and Alain Locke, Douglas avoids Africa was “necessarily abstract: mere design letting white frameworks set the terms for through which he wanted to see a soul-self.”24 understanding black experience; the world he Certainly Douglas saw African Americans portrays is a black world. To the extent that as sharing a unique racial gift and believed Douglas emphasizes work and struggle, he that there was a universal dimension to the shares Woodson’s political, often oppositional, black experience.25 His notes from a meeting pragmatist orientation. To the extent that of the editors of Fire!! proclaim, “We believe Douglas emphasizes the artistic and expres- that the Negro is fundamentally, essentially sive achievement represented by the spiritu- different from their Nordic neighbors. . . . We als, he participates in Locke’s cultural believe these differences to be greater spiri- pragmatist tradition, which ties the distinc- tual endowment, greater sensitivity, greater tive experience of African Americans to uni- power for artistic expression and apprecia- versal forms of experience. tion.”26 But while Douglas was not unaffected In calling artists’ attention to African and by the romantic conception of primitivism, African-American folk themes, Locke urged a he cannot be said to have accepted a fixed or specifically instrumental and emergent use of static account of the African-American spirit. primitivism—a way of framing black experi- His notes also stress that the young black art- ence outside the terms set by the prevailing ists involved, while “group conscious,” were discourse of race. By contrast, most critics have not unified by any specific message or cause: assumed that primitivism refers to a fixed, rac- “We have no axes to grind.”27 What unified ist set of meanings. In reifying primitivism as a the group was the spirit of the artistic commu- sentimental, white view in which “the Negro” nity itself. As Douglas was to explain in a 1971 was exoticized and treated as a spectacle, such interview, the “togetherness” of the black ar- critics have ignored the actual uses to which tistic community “was the thing that created primitivism was put in the art of the Harlem the Renaissance.”28 316 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000

Calling upon the African heritage, while a experience was not to be conceived in static way of symbolizing and celebrating a shared or sentimental terms but was to be understood community and a shared history, also offered a as an emergent experience, a journey into way to gain perspective on the present by look- possibility. ing at the black American experience from another angle. In effect, primitivism became a MODERNISM tool of modernism. As Amy Kirschke notes, Douglas followed the basic Egyptian “rule of Much of the art of the Harlem Renaissance, stylizing the body by painting the figure as if it argue the authors of Rhapsodies in Black: Art of were being observed from several different the Harlem Renaissance, was the very proto- viewpoints.”29 In his early work in analytical type of modernist art.32 Not only did Renais- , Picasso took the same approach, but sance artists draw on explicitly modern themes whereas Picasso’s work “suggested three-di- such as migration to the cities, urban life, and mensional form through faceted-angular alienation in the modern industrial workplace, shapes with more depth,” Douglas favored a but primitivism itself represented a modernist flat, hard-edged, silhouette style.30 In both theme. The admittedly problematic and sen- cases, the viewer sees a scene from several timental “modern cult of the primitive” was perspectives at once. Such an effect is impos- only one dimension of this modernism.33 Just sible in naturalistic approaches, but in cubism as integral to modernism was the “celebration and so-called primitive folk painting tradi- of the primordial in art: truth, beauty and tional (academic) perspective is absent. The power residing in basic elemental forms, rather refusal of “correct” perspective represents a than in overwrought ones.”34 The return to refusal of the conventions of realism and thus basic forms organizes such modern art forms as a refusal of the description of reality that those , cubism, and orphism, among oth- in power take to be obvious or natural or neu- ers. tral. Because the combination of primitivism and Metaphorically, the juxtaposition of per- futurism is one of the hallmarks of Art Deco, spectives in Douglas’s work suggests a pragma- I wish to focus particularly on Douglas’s affini- tist and modernist endorsement of pluralism: ties with Art Deco, which features simplicity of multiple, simultaneous perspectives as the and boldness of outline, formalism in the con- measure of truth, rather than a single, unify- centration on geometric shapes, and abstract, ing God’s eye view. Douglas’s own observa- idealized, stylized depictions of the human tion supports this metaphorical reading. body. Associated both with fine art and with Africanism, he said, could not simply be trans- art for the masses, Art Deco bridges the usual planted into the life of black Americans. In- high/low culture divide—an important con- stead, he suggested, “we can go to African life sideration for any art of social protest. To the and get a certain amount of understanding, extent that it is a popular style, Art Deco speaks form and color and use this knowledge in de- in a language more directly accessible than velopment of an expression which interprets that associated with high culture. In much of our life.”31 The primitive legacy thus affords its expression, moreover, Art Deco has been both leverage on the present and a “classic” more visible to a mass audience than paint- library of images that serve as a resource for ings or sculptures confined in private collec- interpolating and reinterpreting present ex- tions or museums. Most of Aaron Douglas’s perience. By using “primitivism” as a means of work was either in the form of murals, such as representing the distinctive group experience those in the 135th Street branch of the New of blacks, Douglas avoided framing that expe- York Public Library (now the Schomburg Cen- rience in the terms set by racism; by including ter for Research in Black Culture), or in the modernist motifs, he emphasized that that form of illustrations in books and magazines— AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST 317 more often than not on the covers of maga- ures: mythic, idealized figures that speak for zines like and Opportunity—and thus both the past and the future. was particularly accessible to broad audiences. While the primitive motifs in Douglas’s As with Art Deco more generally, Douglas’s work serve to foreground blackness and cel- work finds in stylized abstraction the possibil- ebrate the historical dimensions of the Afri- ity of a universal art form. The modernism of can-American experience, Douglas’s modern his figures consists in their abstraction: while themes and modernist style speak to his belief identifiably black, the figures represent, above in progress and a possible future to be shaped all, human beings. Symbolic and idealized, by present action. In the words of Bearden and Douglas’s abstract, elegant human figures are Henderson, Douglas believed that “art can be devoid of any superficial characteristics that the deepest communicative channel between might lend themselves to caricature. Human the races” and across national divides.37 In- beings in their simplest form—objects reduced deed, the symbolism of the concentric circles “to their basic shapes”35—are portrayed as crea- in much of Douglas’s work speaks specifically tures of dignity, who work, suffer, dance, and to this theme. Song of the Towers, the final pray. Abstraction thus helps to clear away some panel of the mural Aspects of Negro Life, de- of the debris of stereotypic detail and racial picts a jazz saxophonist, a desperately scurry- caricature attached to depictions of blackness. ing worker with a briefcase, and an exhausted Yet the simplicity in Douglas’s work also lends figure in the corner, all framed by a giant cog, itself to an emotional starkness that is at once skyscrapers, industrial chimneys, and ribbons unsentimental and dramatically evocative. His of smoke; grasping, threatening hands intrude murals and illustrations have an undecorated, in the foreground. In the distant background— bold directness that differentiates his work central, but so small as almost to escape no- from the formalism of Art Deco, which is usu- tice—is the Statue of Liberty.38 Despite the ally associated with decorativeness and a kind dominant impression of despair conveyed by of leisure, even luxury. The illustrations for the painting, the circles of sound that sur- God’s Trombones, for example, are concerned round the musician offer some degree of hope. not with the body as object but with the body The pattern of expanding circles invokes the as objectified: the black body under the insti- possibilities of mass communication repre- tution of slavery. In contrast to much other sented by radio sound waves.39 And communi- work in the Deco style, Douglas’s figures are cation, of course, carried a promise not only of emotionally expressive, stark in their depic- the spread of information but of organization tion of human suffering. for social change. Far more than is typical of Art Deco, Most of Douglas’s work suggests a forward- Douglas’s work has a specifically historical and looking stance, whether through the use of narrative orientation to the past; many of his modern symbols such as skyscrapers or the illustrations and murals depict periods in Af- smoking chimneys of modern industry, the rican or African-American history. The nar- aspiration signified by upward turned faces, or rative focus speaks to his interest in experience, the play of light and angles of vision indica- above and beyond style or form. Whereas most tive of a modern outlook. Yet his masks, pyra- artists in the Deco style treat “primitive” art mids, skyscrapers, and industrial cogs cannot as a storehouse to be mined for its patterns be read literally, as a straightforward celebra- and motifs, Douglas takes up the historical tion (or, alternatively, condemnation) of and political themes, as well as the decorative primitivism and modernism. For Douglas, Af- elements, of the collective African-American rican symbolism serves primarily to frame per- past.36 Because they are engaged in action that ception—to provide a formal, classical has narrative meaning, his figures are not sim- reference point for perceptions of blackness, ply elements of decoration but symbolic fig- thereby offering a perspective that de-centers 318 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000 such perceptions from the framings imposed The treatment of both primitive and mod- by American racism. Just as African tropes are ern themes in Douglas’s work, then, is far more not meant to represent a literal, known past, political and historical than that of Art Deco the modernist imagery is not meant to offer a painters in general. Douglas shares the mod- simple endorsement or celebration of “pro- ern faith in progress, but he also pays atten- gress.” Rather than using skyscrapers, for ex- tion to having come, as the spiritual says, “a ample, in the way that many Art Deco painters mighty long way.” Looking back on the legacy did, as a wholesale celebration of form as of the Harlem Renaissance, Locke was to com- progress, Douglas included his skyscrapers to ment, “By stages, it seems, we are achieving remind viewers of the contribution that black greater democracy in art,—and let us hope labor was making to the building of the fu- through art.”42 Locke’s view of art was that it ture.40 That Douglas shared much of the cul- afforded Americans the opportunity to really tural pragmatists’ optimism regarding the see blackness for the first time: to see black- future seems clear; that his outlook was unro- ness not as the shadow of whiteness but as a mantic must also be acknowledged. Neither distinctive culture to be understood on its own social progress nor skyscrapers were inevitable: terms. By putting into practice Locke’s phi- both were produced by work. The future could losophy of racial art, Douglas “effected the not be predicted or controlled in absolute terms crucial move toward affirming the validity of but it could be redirected from its existing the Black experience and thereby made one of racist course and guided by an emergent un- America’ most worthy contributions to art,” derstanding of alternative possibilities. argues David Driskell. “Had Douglas not led The progressive orientation of Douglas’s the way in using African-oriented imagery,” work is a matter both of theme and of treat- Alain Locke’s vision of “‘return[ing] to the ment. His narrative framework speaks of ancestral arts of Africa for inspiration’” might progress for the race and for civilization as a have been delayed much longer in its realiza- whole. The style and technique of the murals tion.43 and illustrations also express the sensibility of “Art Moderne,” particularly in the use of light, THE “UNIVERSAL” ART OF AARON which suggests the kind of spotlighting that DOUGLAS came to be associated with the movies. There is the same alternation between large picture Among the more politically-minded of the and close-up, except that the two co-exist in a artists and writers associated with the Harlem single image. The fragmentation and multi- Renaissance, Aaron Douglas participated en- plication of the circles and rays of light, while thusiastically in the Renaissance project as challenging conventions of realism in light Alain Locke framed it: as an artistic attempt and shadow, also suggest the multiplicity of to set the on the path toward perspectives, of focal points or centers. The full political inclusiveness and cultural under- multiple rays of light work to focus our atten- standing.44 A measure of the resistance of rac- tion, giving narrative structure to the viewer’s ism to “cultural” reconstruction, unfortunately, gaze and creating an impression of movement is the virtual invisibility of Aaron Douglas’s and relationship beyond the flat juxtapositions work and of African-American themes in most of the figures.41 Suggestive of hope, the light contemporary discussions of Art Deco. In also may be seen as religious; in most cases, American Art Deco, for example, Alastair the central figures seem to look up both to Duncan opens his chapter on painting and God and the future. In other cases, the light graphics with the words, “One has to search may be that of the future on the past, probing hard to find an Art Deco influence in Ameri- an obscure past for knowledge to be used in can paintings of the 1920s and 1930s”—and creating a new future. although Duncan then discusses the Works AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST 319

Progress Administration projects sponsored he challenge the notion of universalism predi- under the New Deal (in which Douglas par- cated on parallels between individual forms of ticipated), Aaron Douglas goes unmentioned.45 experience, but he challenged the equation of The lag in the art world’s recognition of universalism with colorblindness. Instead, he Aaron Douglas as an artist of “universal” sought universalism in the historical particu- caliber suggests the inadequacy of analyses larity of black experience. His “universal man” claiming that Douglas’s rendering of the Af- was black—and sometimes a woman. rican-American experience traded upon ste- In conjuring a black modernist vision of reotypes. So radical was Douglas’s challenge possible worlds, Aaron Douglas and his fellow to Eurocentric conceptions of art, in fact, that Renaissance artists and writers looked toward his work has been dismissed as failing to meet a New Negro and a New Nordic not confined the “neutral” and “individual” terms upon to Manhattan life. Drawing on their localized which blackness can safely be acknowledged. experiences of blackness in California, Kan- It is ironic, therefore, that Douglas was ac- sas, Utah, Jamaica, Illinois, Florida, Nebraska, cused by some of his contemporaries of play- and elsewhere, and on their shared dream of ing into racist assumptions regarding black Africa, the Renaissance artists and writers pro- primitivism. James A. Porter, for example, jected rediscovered “folk” and “primitive” val- called Douglas’s paintings “tasteless” and remi- ues into a future articulated to a black, niscent of black minstrel stereotypes.46 As modernist perspective. The effects of their Bearden and Henderson were later to read this visionary and revisionary insight into possi- reaction, it represents that of “many academic bility continue to resonate today. In setting artists to painting that did not present black aside the white-centered frameworks of mean- people as well-dressed citizens, charmingly ing attached to race, urban life, and history, preoccupied in comfortable surroundings. The and reinventing modernity in black-centered same attitude was expressed by members of terms, the artists of the Renaissance instigated the black middle class who were ashamed of a form of social protest that helped to shift jazz.”47 racialized understandings. As Douglas commented, the decision to Almost three quarters of a century after the represent black experience in particular ways Harlem Renaissance, the generative themes is always a response to a certain historical situ- found in the work of Aaron Douglas and other ation: “What the Negro artist should paint Renaissance artists are again being taken up and how he should paint it can’t accurately be by black artists, activists, and others both in determined without reference to specific so- the United States and in the diaspora; indeed, cial conditions.”48 Such a view of art is prag- the Harlem Renaissance itself is being recon- matist insofar as it suggests setting aside any ceived as a movement confined neither to appeal to ultimate truths, instead taking an Harlem nor to the 1920s. Artists and writers instrumental approach to the making of mean- connected with the movement, including ing. Douglas’s own explicit view was that black Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Langston art could not be understood or appreciated Hughes, produced important work many de- apart from a recognition of the role played in cades after the Renaissance was said to be over. experience by the politics of race. In contrast Today, other artists on both sides of the At- to colonizing approaches to universalism that lantic continue to explore the themes and in- assimilate all human experience to that of the sights of the Harlem Renaissance.49 The specifically individual experience of the white, original Renaissance artists came from almost middle- and upper-class art connoisseur, everywhere but Harlem: from the West and Douglas’s form of universalism stressed the the Midwest, from the Great Plains, from the shared historical and cultural experience of South, from the East, and from outside the African Americans as a group. Not only did United States. Their successors are found not 320 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000 only in the Americas but in Europe, Africa, At the same time, pragmatism was itself influenced and everywhere else in the diaspora.50 by other movements; Hutchinson makes an argu- ment for a mutually informing relation between pragmatism and the aesthetics of the Harlem Re- NOTES naissance. For example, he sees Dewey’s Art as Experience as “at least partly indebted to African 1. During the period between the mid-twenties and African American aesthetics as filtered through and the mid-thirties, the term “Negro Renaissance” Barnes” (p. 46). was used to refer to the flourishing of African- 8. In The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Ge- American arts and letters that later came to be nealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wis- known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” Calling it a consin Press, 1989), Cornel West makes a case for “Negro Renaissance” rather than the “Harlem Re- Du Bois as a pragmatist, but because he took a naissance” signaled the integral character of the variety of theoretical and political positions over renaissance. As Jeffrey Stewart points out, “after the course of his long and active career, it is diffi- 1925, cities such as , , Cleve- cult to categorize Du Bois with any finality. As I land, and Washington, D.C., experienced their own concentrate here on the Harlem Renaissance years, ‘renaissances.’” Jeffrey C. Stewart, “Introduction,” when Du Bois’s position was in some ways more in The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of conservative than Locke’s but still identifiably prag- His Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart matist, I have simply identified Du Bois as a prag- (New York: Garland Publishing, 1983), p. xviii. matist. It should be noted, however, that Du Bois Some recent commentaries also refer to this period embraced a number of political positions, includ- as the “First Black Renaissance” to distinguish it ing socialism and pan-Africanism. from the “Second Black Renaissance,” which 9. Pragmatists are concerned specifically with stretched from the early fifties through the seven- the uses and misuses to which tools of thought are ties. In addition to Aaron Douglas, other Harlem put, and the degree to which the intellectual tools Renaissance emigrants included Zora Neale accepted by a society promote or preclude new ways Hurston (Florida), Alain Locke (Philadelphia), of understanding experience. Carter G. Woodson’s (Salt Lake City and Los Ange- The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933; Washing- les), Claude McKay (Jamaica), Jessie Fauset (Wash- ton, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, 1972) gives ington, D.C.), (Missouri, Topeka, the classic analysis of the inadequacy of white in- Chicago, Cleveland, and Mexico), Louis Armstrong tellectual tools for understanding or shaping black (), Alberta Hunter (Chicago), and experience. Because of its emphasis on structural Augusta Savage (Florida). conflict as well as cultural difference, Woodson’s 2. Amy Helene Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, analysis might be characterized as an instance of Race, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: Uni- political or radical pragmatism. versity Press of Mississippi, 1995), pp. 2, 3. Dou- 10. Alain Locke, “,” in The New glas was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1899; he Negro, ed. Alain Locke (1925; New York: Ath- graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1922. eneum, 1992), pp. 3–4. 3. Quoted in Ibid., p. 9. 11. Quoted in Kirschke, Aaron Douglas (note 2 4. This description of Aaron Douglas is attrib- above), p. 61. (Quote dates from 1925.) uted to Alain Locke in Steven Watson, The Harlem 12. John Dewey, Art as Experience, in John Dewey: Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, The Later Works, 1925–1953, ser. ed. Jo Ann 1920–1930 (New York: Pantheon, 1995), p. 89. Boydston, vol. 10 (1934), ed. Harriet Furst Simon 5. Although middle-class, Aaron Douglas “ex- (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, perienced some of the hardships of the new black 1987), p. 328. proletariat . . . taking shape in the cities of the 13. See Alain Locke, “Harlem Types — Portraits North,” and “sympathized with” the common by Winold Reiss,” in Critical Temper (note 1 above), worker. Kirschke, Aaron Douglas (note 2 above), p. 18. (Originally published in 1925.) pp. 5, 8. 14. Stewart argues that most African-American 6. Ibid., p. 4; see also p. 2. Renaissance artists had no real interest in Africa 7. George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance or in being race representatives, and that Locke’s in Black and White (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard own sense of Africa was too vague to allow for any University Press, 1995), p. 38. Hutchinson sees insights into distinctively African artistic motifs pragmatism in the first decades of the twentieth or techniques. Nevertheless, Stewart credits Locke century as a pervasive philosophy to which Ameri- with helping to legitimate Africa in African Ameri- can intellectuals and artists in general responded, cans’ eyes and with helping to pave the way for the whether or not they were directly informed by it. Second Black Renaissance in the 1960s. Jeffrey C. AARON DOUGLAS AND THE ART OF SOCIAL PROTEST 321

Stewart, A Biography of Alain Locke: Philosopher of 20 above), p. 112. Interestingly, there is nothing the Harlem Renaissance, 1886–1930 (Ph. D. diss., in the actual portrayal of this figure to suggest University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, 1979), pp. whiteness; his coloring and the distinctive Aaron 68–70, 193, and 335–36. Also see Alain Locke, Douglas eyes resemble those of black Simon. Even “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” in New Negro the grasping hands that appear in images like (note 10 above), pp. 254–67. Charleston and Song of the Towers are not explicitly 15. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Negro Art Renais- identified with whiteness, for although in one in- sance,” in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David stance they are white, in the other they are black. Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), p. 23. Nathan Irvin Huggins, The Harlem Renais- 507. (Originally published in 1925.) sance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 16. Many commentators—including Aaron Dou- p. 188. Huggins criticizes ’s “Heri- glas and the other young artists and writers con- tage” in this regard, for example (pp. 164–65). nected with the Fire!! project—have been troubled 24. Ibid., pp. 169, 171, 172. by the influence that the white patrons of the 25. In the first part of the twentieth century, Harlem Renaissance exerted on black art. Some many African Americans accepted the view that critics have even gone so far as to dismiss the en- the white and black races were fundamentally and tire Renaissance as a failure, arguing that writers naturally different, not only by virtue of their dif- and artists were compromised by the need to pla- ferent histories but by virtue of “race” itself as a cate white patrons and consumers. (For a provoca- quasi-biological category. Liberal and leftist Afri- tive discussion of these arguments, see Hutchinson, can Americans, however, repudiated the Social Harlem Renaissance [note 7 above].) To the extent Darwinist characterization of those differences in that the Harlem Renaissance appeal to “primitiv- deficit terms, instead emphasizing parallelism and ism” did partake of the sentimentalization of Afri- the distinctiveness of the race spirit, “gift,” or ra- can Americans as untouched by modern decadence, cial identity that set African Americans apart from it is of course problematic; it is a simplification of white Americans. Among the prominent African “primitivism,” however, to see it as a strictly white, Americans subscribing to the idea of an inherited strictly patronizing trope. As I discuss in the next racial identity were Marcus Garvey, Carter G. section, primitivism also had other meanings, par- Woodson, Alain Locke, and Aaron Douglas. ticularly as interpreted in Aaron Douglas’s work. 26. Quoted in Kirschke, Aaron Douglas (note 2 See, too, the extended discussion of this issue in above), p. 87. (Quote presumably dates from 1926.) Kirschke’s Aaron Douglas (note 2 above). As 27. Quoted in Ibid., p. 87. Kirschke points out, the patrons of black art were 28. Quoted in Ibid., p. 51. Kirschke’s discussion by no means exclusively white—most of Douglas’s makes a strong argument for the centrality of group illustrations, for example, appeared in black peri- consciousness in Aaron Douglas’s work. odicals. 29. Ibid., p. 77. 17. David Driskell, “Aaron Douglas: Singing a 30. Ibid., p. 79. New Song of Heritage” (paper presented at the 31. Douglas, quoted in Ibid., p. 47. African Americans and the Great Plains Conference 32. Richard J. Powell et al., Rhapsodies in Black: in Lincoln, Nebr., February, 1997). Art of the Harlem Renaissance (Berkeley: University 18. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A of California Press with the Hayward Gallery and History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Institute of International Visual Arts, 1997). the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 130. 33. Richard J. Powell, “Re/Birth of a Nation,” in 19. Reproduced in The Studio Museum of Ibid., p. 25. Harlem, Harlem Renaissance Art of Black America 34. Ibid., p. 26. Powell draws here upon Robert (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), p. 121 (plate Goldwater’s 1938 book, Primitivism in Modern Paint- 32). ing, reprinted as Primitivism in Modern Art (Cam- 20. David Driskell, “The Flowering of the Harlem bridge: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Renaissance: The Art of Aaron Douglas, Meta 1986). Warrick Fuller, Palmer Hayden, and William H. 35. Bearden and Henderson, History (note 18 Johnson,” in Ibid., p. 112. above), p. 128. 21. Charleston, an illustration from Black Magic 36. Art Deco during the years between the wars (1929), by Paul Marand, is reproduced in Kirschke, took a particular interest in folk and Native Ameri- Aaron Douglas (note 2 above), fig. 62. can art, African art (particularly sculpture and carv- 22. For example, David Driskell identifies the ing), Egyptian art (after Tutankhamen’s tomb was “Roman sentinel” in The Crucifixion as “represent- opened in 1922), and pre-Columbian art. ing the white guardianship of Black affairs in 37. Bearden and Henderson, History (note 18 America and Africa.” Driskell, “Flowering” (note above), p. 134. 322 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2000

38. The original mural (painted in 1934) is at sion but with a different cover in Greenwich, CT, the Schomburg Center; a reproduction can be found by Dorset Press (1985). Given that books on Art in Harlem Renaissance (note 19 above), p. 24 (plate Deco published by prestigious art houses like 10). Abrams, Rizzoli, and Abbeville mention neither 39. Aaron Douglas, who worked with David the Harlem Renaissance in general nor particular Driskell at for many years, described African Americans such as Aaron Douglas, it may this connection between radio sound waves and be a comment on the politics of art that both ver- the concentric circles in some of his paintings, in a sions of Weber’s book are published by bargain conversation reported in Driskell, “Aaron Dou- presses. glas” (note 17 above). 46. Quoted in Mary Schmidt Campbell, “Intro- 40. Driskell, “Aaron Douglas” (note 17 above). duction,” in Harlem Renaissance Art (note 19 41. By contrast, the majority of other work in above), p. 50. the Art Deco tradition seems to resist narrative or 47. Bearden and Henderson, History (note 18 dynamic composition. In most examples of the style, above), pp. 133–34. A painting by Palmer Hayden it is the thing itself that is dynamic, forward-look- from around 1937, The Janitor Who Paints is testa- ing, not the thing in relation to other things. Hence ment to the artistic tensions between demeaning the fascination with the contours of objects (in- racial stereotypes and the politics of “correct” ra- cluding persons as objects) as symbolic of move- cial representation. When the painting was x-rayed ment — for example, the stepped silhouettes of a few years ago, it was discovered that the futuristic skyscrapers, which of course do not actu- underpainting was almost grotesquely unflattering ally move. to blacks. The painting, says Regenia Perry, “was 42. Alain Locke, “Up Till Now,” in Critical Tem- undoubtedly altered by Hayden in response to wide- per (note 1 above), p. 194. (Originally 1945.) spread criticism of his works by his peers who felt 43. Driskell, “Flowering” (note 20 above), p. 131. that Hayden was caricaturing blacks for the amuse- 44. By no means did all those associated with ment of whites.” Regenia A. Perry, Free within Our- the Harlem Renaissance see its project in political selves: African-American Artists in the Collection of terms. Aaron Douglas was among the more self- the National Museum of American Art (Washing- consciously political of the artists and writers of ton, D.C.: National Museum of American Art and the time. Like the other contributors to Fire!!, an San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1992), p. artistically successful but short-lived magazine, he 89. The gorgeous silver print photographs of James took an economically as well as artistically Van Der Zee from the Harlem Renaissance, of el- Africentric stance; for a time, he also studied egant, middle-class blacks, are representative of Marxism. the preoccupation of Harlem Renaissance artists 45. Alastair Duncan, American Art Deco (New with presenting best-foot-forward images of black York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), p. 234. In the many Americans to the rest of the world. books on American Art Deco that I have exam- 48. Quoted in Bearden and Henderson, History ined, only one mentions Aaron Douglas at all, (note 18 above), p. 132. and even that book does not offer any illustrations 49. Powell et al., Rhapsodies (note 32 above). of his work. The author does, however, provide 50. An earlier version of this essay was presented some brief discussion of Aaron Douglas and of at the African Americans and the Great Plains Con- African-American issues in the ’20s and ’30s. See ference in Lincoln, Nebraska (February, 1997). I Eva Weber, Art Deco in America (New York: Exeter would like to thank Wilfred Samuels for his very Books, 1985), also published in an identical ver- helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.