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Aaron Douglas

Building More Stately Mansions, 1944

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Aaron Douglas, 1899-1979, American

Title

Building More Stately Mansions

Year

1944

Medium

Oil on canvas board

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • oil paint

Supports

  • canvas board

Dimensions

50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed and dated in oil on lower right

Type

  • Paintings

Credit

Purchased with the Frederick Lippitt Bequest

Object Number

2008.30

Projects & Publications

Publications

Manual / Issue 14

Shadows
Read Online

Teaching Notes/ Imagining the Americas

Read Online

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exploring America

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

Kansas-born Douglas came to New York in 1925 at the outset of the Harlem Renaissance. Intense engagement with other African-American artists, writers, and musicians influenced the development of his unique Modernist style, seen here in Building More Stately Mansions, a study for a larger work painted while Douglas was teaching at Fisk University in Tennessee. The painting symbolizes the labor of black men and women in the creation of great architectural monuments, silhouetting their active figures against a utopian background. Concentric bands of muted color suggest waves of history and knowledge, linking the builders of pyramids, temples, and churches to the constructors of skyscrapers in the present time and anticipating their future intellectual and artistic achievements.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Building More Stately Mansions with the accession number of 2008.30. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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