David Driskell lecture, "Aaron Douglas, Father of the Movement," at the University of Iowa, August 1970

Speaker 1: The following is the second in a series of five lectures by David Driskell, delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture held on the campus of the University of Iowa. The institute, held August 9th through the 21st, focused on the culture of black America, commonly referred to as The Harlem Renaissance. In this recording, David Driskell, professor of art at Fisk University, speaks on Aaron Douglas, father of the movement. David Driskell: This morning I thought we'd do something a bit different than what we did at the last hour. I won't be talking quite as much. I will show some slides. I want to play a tape of Aaron Douglas, one that... I should say segments of a tape. It was made in New York City last year. I shall then proceed with the slides after giving a brief introduction to the artist. David Driskell: Now, unlike literary works, as you know, we're all concerned with the visual aspect of it and seeing. So, what I give you for the most part will be information on the life of the artist, not going into great detail trying to explain the iconography and the symbolism of the work, because most of it is evident, and it is the kind of thing that you normally don't do with a work of art, because it is a seeing form. Now, maybe you aren't familiar with the historical aspect of it, possibly with some of the symbols surrounding it, but normally one does not go into all of this kind of subjective analyzation, because this is very often unfair to the artist, not always knowing what he had in mind when he did it. And critics and historians, as you know, become know-it-alls when it comes to someone else's work, and very seldom do they perform or do anything of their own element. No offense to any critics. David Driskell: But I mention that because I was recently in a seminar where one of my works was being commented upon. The person didn't know that I had painted this composition. There was this great explanation about why I did a certain thing. I, and the composition, called "I Am an American," and it was a bit satirical in a sense. It was a collage of a black man in the front of the composition with the stars and stripes, some of the stars and stripes in the background. And some of the stars had been torn out of white paper. I don't recall any special reason why I tore them and didn't cut them. There were others that were very precisely cut. And maybe I just had a pair of scissors around at the time, and on the other hand maybe I wanted to get this kind of contrast and textural quality in the work. David Driskell: This gentleman was explaining the painting, and he said, "You will notice that the stars are not alike all over." And he said, "This is a deliberate attempt to show that we do not have equality." He went on to explain in great detail, and I made notes as he was writing [crosstalk]. It was revealing. Maybe I can sell people paintings if I do this kind of thing and go around following people who are lecturing and carrying on. David Driskell: So, even though I've had a great deal of experience of having known Aaron Douglas, a very, very personal friend, I went down to Fisk about a month ago to talk personally with him, prior to coming out to just say the few words that I wanted to say about him, to clear everything with him, because very often sometimes we say some things that maybe we shouldn't say in public about people, even though they may be intimate and we may know about them and people might be interested in knowing all of these little tidbits. David Driskell: The Harlem Renaissance was full of this, you know, because this was a very, very important movement. So, what I should be doing is just talking in general about Mr. Douglas and his life and a little background leading up to why he was involved in the Renaissance, because you know he was in Kansas. There were many people like Douglas who migrated and came into the scene like this, how they got involved. Then I shall be showing some slides, after which time I shall try to summarize what I have to say. Then I would like to request that we stay a little longer than we did yesterday so that you can ask some questions. But I will try and end prior to taking up the full time. David Driskell: Bob has asked me to announce that my lecture on William H. Johnson, the artist from Florence, South Carolina, who had kind of a dual form of expression in his work, what might be referred to as expressionistic trend and the primitive, one of the very, very colorful characters of the Harlem Renaissance, also adopted the Harlem Renaissance like Douglas, adopted rather. He became the expatriate of the movement as far as the visual artist is concerned, and I shall be speaking on him this afternoon at 4:00. Unfortunately, we got our schedules tied up, and in the midst of all of this commitment of saying, "Yes, I can do this, I can do that," I have made two commitments at the same time. I certainly can't go over to Ohio State University and be here at the same time, so I have to make arrangements to go over there on Thursday. But I'll try and get back on Friday, if United allows us to do so. David Driskell: Pardon? Speaker 3: In this room? David Driskell: In this room at 4:00 today, William H. Johnson. For those of you who keep giving me these wonderful titles, I am very happy, but I am not Doctor. I don't mean to disappoint you, but I have not earned that high honor. So, just David, whatever you want to say. Speaker 3: [inaudible] David Driskell: Yes. Maybe I should tell you that story before we go into this. Surprisingly enough, at one time my name was King David, but I changed it when I was 10. That's kind of silly, but I don't know why someone would name someone King David. You'll have to ask my parents about that. They had high hopes, and something didn't happen. David Driskell: I was in Kumasi in December in the heart of Ashanti land. This piece of jewelry that I'm wearing is not authentic. It's a fake. I made it. It's to me, of course, it's original. It is taken from an Ashanti gold weight, and I felt very proud of the fact that I had made it and I was wearing it all over Africa, and of all places to be wearing it, in Ashanti land, where the symbol originates. This comes to mind, because someone was mentioning the awe and the real atmosphere surrounding of the spirit, the essence of the form of African art, that people outside of the culture just don't know, even many black people. I of course was looking at the decorative aspect of this form, and I wanted to wear it to be a part of the movement. David Driskell: I was walking down the street with this medallion on, and the young man, Ghanaian, came up and said he admired it. He said, "Is it gold?" I said, "No, it isn't." He seemed relieved because it wasn't gold. He said, "Do you know what it is, the meaning and so forth?" I said, "Yes. I know it's an Ashanti gold weight." I said, "It's taken from an Ashanti gold weight. I made it," and so forth. He said, "It's also a poem, and it relates to the life of the king." He started describing, giving a description, something like, "Oh thou who rulest with glory," and so forth and so on. Then he said in the end, "Of course it's worn only by the king." So, I didn't go back and change my name, but I was relieved when he told me I didn't have anything to worry about, because it wasn't gold and the original was in the national treasury. David Driskell: Well, the person that we're going to speak about this morning certainly to a great extent has gold contributions for us all. He was a man who plotted his own course at a time when it wasn't necessary to do many of the things that he did, with reference to his own racial pride, his own heritage and involvement in what is now referred to as a black movement. Here's Aaron Douglass, and I consider him to be the father of the movement as far as the visual artists are concerned. David Driskell: When W.E.B. Du Bois said, "In all sorts of ways, we're hemmed in, and our new artists have got to fight their way to freedom" an article written in Crisis in 1926, he was referring to the pit in which black artists found themselves at that time. His article called Criteria of Negro Art served to inspire young black artists to come to grips with their own problems, centering around identity and the racial crisis of their time. He was also referring to the fact that these artists seemed forced into their own little corners with no hope of being allowed out for fear of being treated, being a threat to the dominant culture. He was literally referring to the need for black artists to break out of the cultural cage in which they had been hemmed by whites. He wanted every man who called himself an artist to stand up and affirm his manhood by demanding to play a larger role in the cultural scene. David Driskell: Du Bois was not asking black people to give up their cultural heritage, all the few [inaudible] which remained with them, and those that set them apart as a special people. But he was actually aware of the stigma which slavery had placed on them, and he did not wish to be reminded of the inconveniences that had gone with this dreadful period. Now some writers, as I pointed out yesterday, contend that Du Bois wanted to rid himself of all memories of vestiges of the past, in hopes of inheriting an integrated society. But I think there is some misinterpretation of this, because he was not referring to the integration that we talk about in what I call the Great White Hope days of the '50s and '60s. David Driskell: Du Bois wrote a chapter in American history which cannot be easily erased when he spoke of the power of the meaning of the color problem in the United States, and he saw it affecting every aspect of black life in this country. The cultural patterns that man formed or hoped or had hopes of forming, and that is a black man, certainly would be obviously affected by the white man's refusal to accept this person or the black man as a human being, and this was really what Du Bois was talking about. He was trying to get to the core of what is referred to today as essential aspects of the color problem. There could be no possible way for blacks to be accepted as artists, and to this end, they could not make a contribution to the so-called mainstream if they were not allowed to enter into the various exhibitions. David Driskell: He wanted the black artist to celebrate his own lifestyle without apologies for slavery, or any other past experience. He was expecting a new form in art, which would transcend the concept of the happy slave, the tragic mulatto, or the zestful primitive. He wanted to see a new form in the art of the black man, which spoke of hope and pride. To his liking, a young artist of great promise entered the arena who fitted not only their description of the New Negro, but was also an image maker with a purpose. He became an invoker of the New World and a creator of images based in the proud and ancient past. He was bright, articulate, and most promising, and this of course was Aaron Douglas, who became the leading painter of the Harlem Renaissance. Can we have the first slide, please? David Driskell: The first slide shows... Could we have the slide, please? Shows Aaron Douglas' present studio at Fisk University. Now, as I pointed out, Douglas was former chairman of the Department of Art at Fisk, and we feel very proud of the fact that he chose to stay on after he retired. And for those of you who are Fisk graduates, a little commercial here. These are faculty townhouses, and Douglas, of course, occupies one of these as a studio. It's very appropriate for him, all of the room that he needs for painting, and for seeing his friends and what have you. He was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1898. His parents had migrated there from Alabama and Tennessee in search of a more humane life. He received his art training at the University of Nebraska and returned to his native Kansas to teach art at the Kansas City High School. David Driskell: From there, he went to New York City in search of a way to continue his study of art, and became a part of the mainstream, and hopefully, I should say, to become a part of the mainstream. From the very beginning, he had shown a very strong leaning toward being an individualist, even though his work developed out of an academic tradition. He was described by Alain Locke as, "One of the pioneering Africanists." From the academic tradition, he moved into a new form which allowed him to interpret Negro life, spirit, in art through portraiture and landscape. In a recent interview with Mr. Douglas, I was told the incidents and circumstances surrounding his needs as a young artist while attempting to make his way in a hostile and unfriendly city such as New York City. David Driskell: It was to his credit that he was taken into the studio of Winold Reiss, German artist, and was taught and treated as a very special student. Reiss noted the special skills of this young artist, and he challenged him to accept his own heritage as a meaningful experience to be translated into painted form. He accepted the challenge and combined his knowledge of classical art, because he had been trained in the traditional matter at the University of Nebraska, with that which was based in the research on a new, quote, "exotic form," end of quote, then being referred to as, quote, "primitive art." And I say quote, "primitive art," because this was a concept which was obviously misunderstood at that time, and still to a great extent. And some of the great universities throughout the world still have courses called Primitive Art, and unfortunately, they have not come to grips with the fact that these people who made these forms in many ways were much more sophisticated than what we are in so-called civilized societies, especially when it comes to the making of forms relating to their culture. David Driskell: He recounts the experience of overcoming the fright of these new forms and tells how he made an adjustment to the stylistic works that were to become a lasting influence on his own painting. I said overcome the fright of, because this was an early time when the experience of African art had not reached many people in this country. He was one of the first black artists to be confronted with it and to have to make a decision as to how to accept or reject this form as a part of his own lifestyle. He was helped along in this endeavor by having been befriended by Mr. Albert Barnes at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, who had a very large collection of African art, and probably the most extensive of that time, and still one of the most important collections in the United States. David Driskell: Mr. Douglas went there to study, and he worked for a considerable amount of time analyzing, trying to understand the various forms in the collection, and trying to make adaptations to his own work. Being sensitive to these new forms and eager to learn of other cultures, Douglas's exposure to African art was a lasting one that became the central theme or source around which many of his future works would revolve. At this time, I would like to play a tape of Aaron Douglas, which was made last year, and I don't recall just... He was in New York City, I don't recall the circumstances, but he was being interviewed by a friend. I turn to when she started asking some questions, and then maybe some skips that I'll make in order to get through some of the salient points that we wish to bring out. David Driskell: He's reminiscing about his style, the very style that you see here, from the Countee Cullen murals. Yes? Speaker 3: Oh, I was going to ask you what it was from. David Driskell: Yes, from the Countee Cullen murals, you will see four of these. There will be details here and there, but this is the first panel, which deals with the slavery, and exhilaration and the rhythmic pulsation of what we might refer to as African life being transformed in the New World, and these, of course, are still to be seen at the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem. The symbolism of this is I think readily understood, because you see the drama here, of course in a sense beats out the time, the tempo concept of black life in America, and this reflects upon the African tempo, what he brought with him, those vestiges of African form that remain with us, and of course, he surrounded it by a kind of panorama of African history, the Egyptian façade of the African sculpture, which is at the very center, kind of dominates that central part of the composition up there. David Driskell: And then the dancers, and all black people who [inaudible] they move around like snails or what have you have been accused of having this kind of spacial rhythm. And so what I meant by the exotica of this was that Douglas was able to incorporate the goodness of that in these compositions without belittling or without turning to a kind of wholesale, primitive attitude about what the black man's stance and position was. Please feel free to interrupt me as I go along if there are questions. If I could see your hand, if not, bang on the table or something. David Driskell: [Starts playing recorded Aaron Douglas interview] Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Speaker 5: So how do you describe that's the kind of the theme? Or don't you describe it? People have described it as [crosstalk]- David Driskell: He's describing the themes here now. Speaker 5: ... uniquely yours. Aaron Douglas: Well, you know, I started that with the trombone. Speaker 5: So the trombone, what do you mean, the trombone? Aaron Douglas: That trombone. Speaker 5: Oh, a book. Aaron Douglas: I started to... I saw that when I was... It's now on paper. Speaker 5: Yeah. Aaron Douglas: I started to bring it, and I said, "No, too familiar, taking things like that." It's not on paper. David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] I'm not sure that Aaron was quite aware of the fact that the conversation was going on at that time, so this is why I cut the tape back to make sure that it was all right with him, because he's very much himself now. He's not posing. I don't even think he knew a tape was being made. But after he heard it, he approved of everything. [Resumes recorded interview] Aaron Douglas: [crosstalk] that's my daughter. And- David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] Let me go back a bit, because he's doing a little commercial there. [Resumes recorded interview] Speaker 5: So the trombone, what do you mean, the trombone? Aaron Douglas: That trombone. Speaker 5: Oh, a book. Aaron Douglas: I started to, I saw that when I was... It's now on paper. Speaker 5: Yeah. Aaron Douglas: I started to bring it, and I said, "No, too familiar. Taking things like that." It's not on paper. Speaker 5: Yeah. Aaron Douglas: It gets left in the dark. And about this is when I first... Speaker 5: So that was written by Johnson? Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Johnson. Speaker 5: Yeah. And- Aaron Douglas: Of course, he actually, the first one was for the [inaudible] players, Dr. Du Bois. Down there in the library. [inaudible], something like that. It's down there. And that's the first time I put a brush to a wall. And that would have been in '26. Speaker 5: Oh. I don't think I met you yet, in '26. But you said a while ago that you didn't know how you came to create that. You were working with an artist by the name of- Aaron Douglas: Oh, Reiss. Speaker 5: ... Reiss. [inaudible] Aaron Douglas: Oh yeah. Yeah. Speaker 5: Did he inspire you to do this? Aaron Douglas: Oh, indeed so, inspired me, yes, indeed. I think that, well, actually, I wouldn't put this on him, but I think I got most of it from Reiss. Got the idea, certainly. I got the idea from Reiss, [inaudible]. David Driskell: He's talking about color, not the subject. Aaron Douglas: ... gradation of color. Speaker 5: And so [crosstalk]. Aaron Douglas: ... breaking up your background. But it didn't quite fit. [inaudible] in Cincinnati there. Were you ever in the Cincinnati Station? Were you ever at a railway station in Cincinnati? A railway station? Speaker 6: Yeah, but it [inaudible]. Aaron Douglas: Oh, then you wouldn't see it. You wouldn't have seen it, too. There's some horrible things on the wall there. And I remember that time that- Speaker 5: [crosstalk] That was done by Reiss? Aaron Douglas: That was done by Reiss. Of course, all he did was, he designed these things. And then he was doing that, I was in the studio in '26, '25 or '26. Obviously, he was better at taking these little things and pressing it to the plaster [inaudible] instead of getting it ready for the people who were going to do it, so you recognized [inaudible] from Germany. Speaker 5: Oh, he was a German? Aaron Douglas: Yeah. Speaker 5: From Germany? Aaron Douglas: Yeah, yeah. He left just ahead of the war. Speaker 5: Oh yeah. Aaron Douglas: The first war. Speaker 5: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Aaron Douglas: And went to Sweden, and then to England, and then America. Speaker 5: So your work of that sort became very popular at that time, didn't it? And then that sort of put you across on what they called at that day the New Negro, remember? Aaron Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 5: Alain Locke wrote a book on the New Negro. And he put you in that. Aaron Douglas: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 5: And how long did you stay- Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Speaker 5: [crosstalk] Aaron Douglas: Way beyond it somewhere. But yeah, I was the first person of color to work in that, as an artist, [inaudible]. Speaker 5: Yeah. And then [crosstalk]- Aaron Douglas: ...poets and musicians and all that sort of thing. Writers of all kind. Speaker 5: But in the '20s and early '30s, there was a real Renaissance of interest in creativity [crosstalk]. Aaron Douglas: Yeah, [inaudible] I'm going to talk in depth tomorrow, Romare Bearden. [inaudible] David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] It gets a little cloudy through here, so I'm going to skip onto the other part where he goes on to talk about some of his work. [Resumes recorded interview] Speaker 5: ... with more pictures or paintings that led into what [inaudible] just said, [crosstalk]. Aaron Douglas: That's what I've been doing the last... David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] Oh, this is a little too far right here. Sorry. [Resumes recorded interview] Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Speaker 5: So then you're saying that you never really left that [crosstalk], but you branched out into a [inaudible] member when I used to come up to your apartment, went Alta and you were getting those very interesting, well, everybody came to see you folks and your parties and so forth. Aaron Douglas: Yeah. Speaker 5: Your walls were lined with more pictures or paintings that went into what [inaudible]. Aaron Douglas: [crosstalk] that's what I've been doing the last seven years. But that's what I'm doing here now. Getting those things, as many as I can rescue, off the wall. They haven't been cleaned or dusted or anything in years, and I'm trying to... I've got to get some, ship them back to Nashville, so that I can prepare them for this exhibition. I don't have paintings that I, the last two or three years, that I've done that would actually be adequate for this. I don't have enough, because I haven't painted much. Speaker 5: You've had a very interesting exhibit in Nashville once when I was there, and you told me something about trying to get that involved in some way, and I remember you were, I wouldn't say critical, but a little bit disappointed at the attitudes of... It's very vague in my mind, but I recall at the time that it was very insightful the way you were able to [inaudible] what some of the other people who were trying to help. Does it come back to you? Aaron Douglas: Not really. I don't really recall now. I don't recall now. Speaker 5: They didn't seem to have the same attitude toward art that you had. Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Oh yeah. No, that's the problem. That's why I'm going to have [inaudible]. David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] Well, this, I'll have to skip over this and go to another section. It gets off into another part here. [Resumes recorded interview] Aaron Douglas: [inaudible] Speaker 5: I remember. Aaron Douglas: So they were going to have artists do some work for it, [inaudible]. I suppose they did. And so who could help? Well, there are the first ones, who are they? [Spanky Austin] David Driskell: Now he's talking about those artists with who he was associated at that time in the Renaissance. Speaker 5: Wasn't there a Norman? Aaron Douglas: Norman, what's his name? What's his name? Norman... Can't think of his name now. David Driskell: [Lewis] Aaron Douglas: And one or two others, Crichlow and... I can't think of any. But one or two others. But the main ones who are [inaudible], Hale and those people, you see. Speaker 5: Who were just beginning. David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview] I still didn't get to where I wanted to go. I'm sorry to keep pushing it. [Resumes recorded interview] Speaker 5: Oh, wow. That's interesting. What was your purpose? David Driskell: [crosstalk] Aaron Douglas: I want to do for the, what we call now black people, I look... Excuse me, I'll come back to that. I looked all over, everywhere for that. I was so anxious to [inaudible]. Speaker 5: [crosstalk] David Driskell: He's found something that he's been looking for, so you have to bear through this. Aaron Douglas: ... the last time I came over here. The last time I came from this direction. Speaker 5: Oh, I see. Aaron Douglas: But I didn't come from 23rd. Then I think 23rd down here, it must have been 22nd. So I came in- Speaker 5: [crosstalk] in a minute. But Cathy, have you anything to add? I thought when he was saying what was his purpose in art and maybe from your recent study of art, you had a question on what is modern art? But anyway, let's [crosstalk] what was your purpose from the beginning? You said you had a purpose. Aaron Douglas: Well, I thought that what we would call, that there should be something, that there ought to be an art that specially comes out of the black experience. And it ought to be, in my case, in the case of the visual artist, is a delayed family. It's delayed. So the visual artist and the musical person and the writing person aren't moving quite in the same thing, on the same track. We speak of Renaissance and so on and so on. But when it comes to this business of visual things, we are way behind. We have been delayed. Our entrance in the scene has been delayed. And as a matter of fact, we never really had a, in the same sense as the Europeans, we never really had a tradition. [African] from the [inaudible], let's say. We all had a large mass of people. You can say they did not have the- excepting in sculpture that [crosstalk]. Speaker 5: Yeah, I have that. [crosstalk] Aaron Douglas: ... of sculpture and decorative, they're ahead there, the sculpture and decorative [crosstalk]. Speaker 5: But not painting. Aaron Douglas: Not approached the way that we started [Greeks] started us out on. And then passed it on to everybody else, all of the European people. The African people have had intense interest and development and capacity, let's say, for the visual. But not the painting. And you'll see how forceful it was when they finally discovered, when Picasso and Matisse and those people finally discovered things like this. It just blew the top off things. Speaker 5: Yes, yes. Aaron Douglas: But this other thing wasn't as delayed. And we didn't... And even that was delayed when we got here. [crosstalk] Speaker 5: Yeah, because America was cut off completely. Aaron Douglas: You couldn't persue that. And if you find a few people that got to fiddling around with it back 100 years ago, in the same way that they got to fiddling around with it when we were starting. Always the fiddling starts, but not anymore because there's nothing to sustain it, nothing to sustain [inaudible] the one individual from another. Speaker 5: Do you think that the American Negro today, having been cut off from his art experience in Africa, can really get back to, or that they have to begin with something entirely new? Aaron Douglas: Well, no, you can get it back. No, you can't... You can make an effort at that, if you are careful to realize that you aren't going to do that sort of thing. Don't mix up things and try and commit to doing that sort of thing, and some people have done that. Speaker 5: And what do you call that sort of thing? [crosstalk] Aaron Douglas: You saw that messy sculptural thing. And if you... I couldn't say exactly. What I put it, I couldn't see how it would be for everybody. I wouldn't make any effort to do that. But here's what I think, here's what I think. I [inaudible] is trying to [inaudible] Speaker 5: [crosstalk] Aaron Douglas: No, as an artist with people [inaudible] Speaker 5: [crosstalk] the total history? Wouldn't you say trying to see Negro life, now- Aaron Douglas: No, not history. You're leaving out history. Speaker 5: What are you trying to say? Aaron Douglas: Leave out history. Your experience, what your experience is, and the experience of... And it has to be built around something. And that something that it was built around as far as I was concerned was this book that a lot of [inaudible] illustrate. I was given this book, and it was a very solid thing. These are all pictures who had gone on [inaudible]. David Driskell: This is very important through here. Aaron Douglas: I look on the man, his existence, and his ultimate [crosstalk]- Speaker 5: And the story from the Bible. Aaron Douglas: Yes. And they were told in his way to people who could understand, who hadn't had family traditions of English and hadn't passed through courses, as we say, of English, and so on. So he told it the way they could understand, in a way they could understand it. Speaker 5: And you said that as you read Johnson's God's Trombones- Aaron Douglas: Oh yeah, [crosstalk]. Speaker 5: And then out of that something, if you- Aaron Douglas: Well, no, what I said was I have got to place myself there in that spot, 1840 [inaudible]. I've got to get a visual statement of this [textbook]. A musical statement, the spiritual statement, the dance [crosstalk]. So there's an example, I didn't have to... All I had to do was to try to think how would a person with a piece of paper, which they didn't have, a pencil, which they didn't have, a brush, which they didn't have, paint, which they didn't have, how would he go about setting this thing down? And how would the people look to him? They wouldn't be in the refinery, really. I mean, because he didn't really... That wasn't his experience. His experience was he healed people, he tried to heal people. That's why he occasionally would have some little Sunday music, but the real thing was that, just barely covering his [inaudible]. Aaron Douglas: And that's why you always had to try to, the trousers, like they'd been torn, and so on, and you get the, at first, I did a very severe kind of thing. The arm was a very severe thing. I didn't take into account this muscular thing usually that it is in all human beings. So, and we had a question for it, because we were doing the [inaudible] kind of thing. So that's the kind of thing I did in the first trombones, those people were... And all the other [inaudible] of the crisis and opportunity. Speaker 5: [crosstalk] what you think the modern American Negro artist hasn't done or doesn't even [crosstalk]- Aaron Douglas: Well, I wouldn't say he should do that unless occasion is one to call for that. But he should be conscious of it and try to place himself in the [inaudible] that this group, known as blacks, that they are. Although we are all, I stutter, we as a group, you are at a certain stage. And that isn't so that you're going to have to try to repeat the 100, 200, 300 years of development that certain European people have experienced. Speaker 5: And at the time, as an artist, you're just Aaron Douglas, doing want you want to do at the moment and has no special relationship to your being a part of the black experience in America or Africa, isn't it? Or is it always there. What? Aaron Douglas: You never get out of that sort of thing. You're never free from it. You're never free. Why you want to be free. That's where your strength is, your spirit is, your drive is. Why devote yourself to something? And let me say, it isn't something strange. It's something that my drive is right from the corn fields and cotton, I've gotten the corn fields and the kind of field of Kansas. I'm a Kansas, but my people, my father and mother, were from Alabama and Tennessee. In other words, you got to think about this thing. If anything that you do is going to be of substance enough, of lasting, now I can talk about that. Speaker 5: What do you mean by... Aaron Douglas: Well, it considered after it's once done. But to think contemporary, much of what is done now will be tomorrow, next week, we'll drop it and run from it like we're mad. We're even doing that for some of the people that were going to wait during, trying to do the right thing by their existence here in America. And I'm thinking about the painters that preceded this upsurge of things that are going on now, Benton and Curry and [Redwood] and [Burchfield], is it Burchfield, things are really dark, and that whole group of people that came on after the Ashcan people, you see. That whole group. And the people down there in Arizona or in New Mexico, Tallas, where's Tallas? [crosstalk] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's in New Mexico. Aaron Douglas: Ah, Tallas. See, my first teacher was, left University of Nebraska, after the first year that I studied with her, and she went to Tallas. And you know what, after she was there, I wrote her a letter about... And then she answered my letter, and was about 19, 18. Speaker 5: Really? Aaron Douglas: 18 or 19, I still have the letter. See? Speaker 5: When you were a kid- Aaron Douglas: I was about second year at the university, my second year. Well, anyway, that's an aside. But what they were trying to do is to establish a Native American art. Speaker 5: Ah. Aaron Douglas: They had been accused of just taking a few, not really doing an American thing. And they were busy trying to do the American thing. And they got caught up in this thing after the second World War. People who have been all over and seen everything. Just struck those people [inaudible] You haven't heard of Grant Wood since. Not really. But Grant Wood, Curry, Benton, and some of those men who were the leaders of [crosstalk]. Speaker 5: But they're lasting, aren't they? Aaron Douglas: Well, this isn't a question of their being lasting. They ought to be... They shouldn't have been swept out like they were. Speaker 5: Yeah. Aaron Douglas: They shouldn't have been swept out. And you know, once I saw a part of that sweeping out and didn't know what it was. And it's right in this area here, I came, I don't know where I was going. Maybe I was going to Brooklyn. I came and saw a meeting, a lot of people out in front of the place, and I went to look, and I saw there was a meeting. So there are artists, and [crosstalk]. Oh, was that it? Speaker 5: Yeah. Aaron Douglas: The great meet up, gathering of people. And I was curious to see what's in [inaudible]. So this is the thing I remember about it. Benton was trying to stick this thing to this group. And they were just tearing him to pieces. I've never heard anything as wicked as that, a whole group of people, a mob, it was a mob scene really. Speaker 5: And he was there personally? Aaron Douglas: He was there trying to battle those people. He didn't have a chance. Trying to battle those people, and I don't know what he was saying, but I know one thing, I know [inaudible]. He must have said, "Well, look here. There's this American thing and we've got to exult this. We've got to make out of this what others have made out of their so on and their environment and so on." And these people were... David Driskell: [Stops recorded interview]. David Driskell: Well, that had gone off into the general American theme. Anyway, but I think you get the gist of what Douglas was talking about there, what he was involved in, very importantly, the purpose and this idea of going back when he illustrated the trombones, trying to put himself in a position to be a part of what was going on. The role of the black preacher who at one time is a dramatist, at another time is a convincer, who at another time, of course, is, as Dr. Davis pointed out yesterday, the voice of God, and a persuasive power which comes through him which is a very important part of the folklore of the black tradition. But at the same time, the very serious aspect of the religious part of the culture. David Driskell: And then also importantly, what Douglas was saying about why try and dismiss or remove yourself from the experience, which has been your lifestyle. And this is probably one of the problems of today with reference to the creation of the black aesthetics. A man like Douglas is speaking from experience and from an involvement which is not tied up all together with what is referred to as history, but something which historically is in the past, but which has been a part of his own life and something that he, at the age of 72, would certainly not try and deny and would not divorce himself from. David Driskell: His work appears in several articles as he has pointed out. He illustrated works for the Crisis, and as you will recall, he was called on by W.E.B. Du Bois to do this. Now his contact with Du Bois and Reiss, as he's pointed out, led to the execution of many illustrations and mural panels that is still a part of that glorious past. He successfully turned his pallet to the modernization of the style that reflected an African past thematically, but he was concerned not so much with the historical aspect of that as the lifestyle of people. This particular work that you have just seen was the first of the series of panels at the Countee Cullen Library, which deals with what he calls the dramas, the dancers, the [cobbed] fetish, they all represent the exhilaration, the rhythmic pulsation of life in Africa and this kind of transformation which took place in America. David Driskell: And this is the second panel. You see after the abolition of slavery in America by the Proclamation of Emancipation. In January 1863, you see the emergence of the Negro leader, and he could very well be the preacher, the orator, actually, he is an orator standing in the center, and this becomes a symbol of the people, the leader, and of course, the orator still is a very important person in the black community today. But he also points out that in this work soon, the new oppression began in the south. The Hooded Terror, the Ku Klux Klan, spread throughout the area, and of course, the Union army withdrew, and so weren't seeing the effects of all of that in this particular composition. In the background, you see the army going away. So there's a kind of literal interpretation. David Driskell: Over here, you see the Klan in the front. You see the cotton field and what have you. But in the background, you see what might be referred to as a ray of hope, that concept of what the future will be. This is just an extension of that, to show you a little more detail of what it looks like in the center, the orator with his hands raised in the regular position of speaking. He did book covers and book jackets as well, and I was rummaging through a shop in New York last year and ran across a book, I don't recall the author offhand, that he illustrated in 1929. The book was called Black Magic, and probably you know the author, and there were the plates there, first edition, that was being kicked around. Very beautifully bound, and I think paid 50 cents or something like that for it, because nobody still recognizes the worth of it. David Driskell: He illustrated works for Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes, and of course, with James Weldon Johnson. He just finished talking about God's Trombones. This is probably the best known of all of the books that he illustrated. His attention was later turned, as I pointed out, to mural decoration. It is here that he claims his own and enters the mainstream of world art, even though he was not officially recognized by the white establishment. In this particular work, called the Song of the Towers, which is a part of, this is actually the last of those four panels in the Countee Cullen Library, the symbolism of this, maybe I should say just a bit about it, is that you see a hand over in the extreme corner over here, and that is the hand of the sheriff. David Driskell: Now this is intentionally planned, and he explained all of this. That is the hand of the sheriff, because the sheriff was one of those persons of course who was instrumental in helping to drive blacks out of the south, at least it was a psychological drive, not altogether physical. Now you see the wheel of industry here, on which the black man stands, and I tried to explain yesterday this concept of migration, blacks flocking to these centers, and they were fitting into the industry of the country. Even he's based the whole thing on rhythm, this concept of rhythm, of musical flow throughout the composition. And the foot of the musician is just about ready to pat out a tune. Of course, you see the instrument in his hand and the smokestack even give a kind of a miracle appearance, a poetic appearance, of leaning, which of course is indicative of the rhythm that he was caught up with and concerned about. David Driskell: And this, of course, is way close to what it appears, like in color. Unfortunately, these slides are not the very best. Some of them have to be taken from books as the works were not readily available. Now these mural paintings were first drawn to scale in cartoon fashion on a small cart or a panel. Many of these panels are still in existence in the custody of the office, and this is one of those panels that I tried to enlarge to show you something of the massiveness of the mural, but this was actually a very small one, a study of that very famous one which is the third one of the Countee Cullen Library series. So you see this in detail, the entire panel here, and I think the symbolism is very clear here as a kind of trotting along of the field worker, the musician, and then the dance and so forth, and then finally certain aspects of freedom. David Driskell: Now these works were usually executed in soft range of white to gray-black values, or red browns and yellows, as well as a quiet pallet of blues and blue greens and rich umbers. Douglas entered works in the Harmon Foundation Exhibition of 1928 for the first time and was immediately hailed as one of the important contributors to the show. It is important to keep in mind that his return to African-based subjects was not openly welcomed by the entire community, and he of course had to try and bridge that gap. And you heard some of the things that he said in that particular tape. But Douglas understood that a superficial reaction to African art could only lead to a narrow form of academicism that touched upon the powers of ancestral art and did not ascertain the full meaning. David Driskell: For this reason, he chose not to copy the surface of African art or of African forms. Neither did he decide to become a propagandist. Instead, he loved his own heritage enough to sing a new song. He just pointed that out. And he sought out, and these are some of the panels that I was referring to, a part of those that were decorations for the cabaret scene, and he decorated many cabarets, those in New York and Chicago, Hotel Sherman in Chicago. And the famous cabaret scene in New York, and details of that here. You see the same kind of love of the land and the concept of dance, the invention of dance coming from the foliage, the birds and things of that nature. As I said, he did not choose to become a propagandist. Instead, he loved himself and his heritage, and he set out to create a revolution which would speak against the accepted patterns of culture that labeled the Negro inferior. David Driskell: His art did this without the sacrum sweetness of some of the social protest art created during the same period by white Americans, and this particular work is one of those panels from the Fisk series done in 1930. And the following panel, which shows I think the same kind of form involvement with that kind of angular type cubism of a sort, which is reduced to his own formula. Each work that he created became a lesson in the heritage of the black man, and he rejected the falsities of the previous order. In so doing, he was able to expand upon his own vision through art and plant the seed for the current aesthetics in black art. And he spoke of this at a very early age. David Driskell: He came to Fisk University in the early 1930s. As a matter of fact, in 1930, he execute the Negro history murals for the library and was assisted by [Edward E. Halston], and here began an association between Douglas and the young and energetic sociologist, Charles S. Johnson, who later became president of Fisk. When Douglas joined the faculty of liberal arts and became the sole teacher in the Department of Art, which he founded there at Fisk, he was always in the company of poets, writers, and musicians in Harlem, and it was actually at the seat of the Harlem Renaissance that you find him and his very charming wife, Alta, as you see in this portrait, done in 1934, entertaining the musicians, the poets, and fellow artists of the Renaissance. David Driskell: He would very often, on returning to Fisk, convince his friends to stop by when they were touring in that area and he was a very good friend of James Weldon Johnson. Johnson, having previously been the writer in residence, actually the first writer in residence at Fisk University in the '20s. He was interested and preoccupied with what Dr. Locke referred to as the ancestral art forms, and he made this a prime figure in the new movement of his work, or the new aesthetic of his work. And as time moved on, his Harlem experience became the experience for other artists. They looked to him, and this concept spread throughout the principal cities in the United States where you had a large black population. David Driskell: It was in the later stages of the Harlem Renaissance Douglas made the acquaintance of Henry O. Tanner, then studying in Paris, when he was studying in Paris. He visited with Tanner in his famous atelier and was befriended by and counseled by the wise old gentleman who was destined to become an international figure, even though he did not receive the honor that was due a man of his stature. While in Paris, Douglas studied with two French artists, a sculptor by the name of Despiau and [Dworka]. He had previously received the Barnes Foundation fellowship I mentioned earlier, and this, of course, gave him an acquaintance with African art, and when he went to Paris, this of course enhanced it because there were collections there that he could see. David Driskell: Even though much of his time was spent in New York, Douglas remained in the classroom at Fisk, where he taught several young artists who now bear names of importance throughout the United States in Afro-American art. And he never really gave up his residence in New York. He still keeps his apartment there, where he goes from time to time and stores many of his works and what have you. And his dedication was to teaching, even though he had been pointed out or claimed the father of the movement. Now, I want to turn just briefly and comment to a few other aspects of his work, and this is something that we don't see very often. That is a more academic side, the landscapes and portraits and what have you. David Driskell: This particular work around 1935, which gives a view of a part of New York City, looking up toward the great cathedral. And the same work that you saw yesterday, Portrait of a Little Boy, which was done around 1935, 1936, which shows his mastery of the academic traditional art. And they seen from a New York vicinity of the Triborough Bridge, just constructed about that time. Then the portraits of African noblemen who had come to this country as early as the '30s. The Portrait of a Fisk Student in the '30s. And another portrait of a famous kind of society personality in Wilmington, Delaware. Another portrait about the same period. And landscape, Yellowstone National Park. And this was around 1951. A bit of a portrait of a very famous composer and musician, John Work, who for a number of years headed the Department of Music and was one of the imminent scholars in the area of African American Studies at Fisk University. David Driskell: You see in the background a portrait of the Jubilee Singers, which was one of the traditions of the institution. This was painted just a little before Mr. Work died in 1967. Another portrait from about the same period, [Bishop Jones]. And a portrait of an African student in his traditional costume. A portrait of [Gloria Ridley], who's the wife of one of the professors of art in the department there at Fisk University. And done more recently, around 1967. Another portrait of, in this case, Dr. White done in 1968. So you see his academic style has not changed throughout the years, but he still goes back to the more angular style that you find in the murals when he is doing narratives. And a portrait of Dr. Bethune, which was commissioned by one of the organizations that she once headed, the National Council of Negro Women. David Driskell: Then finally just a close up study of Douglas. This was taken last month, when I went down to his studio. Now I think I should stop here and perhaps maybe one or two questions that you'd like to ask before you break for the next session. Speaker 1: That was David Driskell, professor of art at Fisk University, with Aaron Douglas, Father of the Movement, a lecture delivered at the 1970 Institute of Afro-American Culture held on the campus of the University of Iowa, August 9th through the 21st. This is the second in a series of five lectures by Professor Driskell on the art of the Harlem Renaissance, and was recorded by the broadcasting service of the University of Iowa.