Aaron Douglas was one of the most well known artist of the Harlem Renaissance because of his skill to make African-American history modern. His painting Aspiration was a very important art piece for the Harlem Renaissance because it captures the progression of slavery to freedom. In the painting, you see a lot of contrasts. When looking towards the bottom, you can see slaves with shackles on their arms, raising their hands in the air toward three silhouettes. Two of the figures are standing up, representing African American men of the 20th century, who are gazing at buildings and a “city.” One of the silhouettes is a woman sitting down and holding a book which represents Egyptian art. You can also see in the right background of the image the five pointed star that represents Texas (lone star state) but it also represents the North Star, which guided escaped slaves to freedom after the Civil War. The top part of the painting represents the future, while the bottom shows where we once were and how far we have come.
Palmer Hayden was a prolific artist during the Harlem Renaissance era. His paintings depicted African-American life and African influence. The art piece “Baltimore” illustrated by Palmer Hayden depicts a scene from a neighborhood with kids walking around and cars driving. The painting seems to be showing an upper class neighborhood with row homes during the fall or winter time. Some of his other paintings show how the African-American population lives compared to this painting, how upper class “white” people are living. Hayden’s majority artwork are paintings that depict the working class. In this painting it could show how an upper class neighborhood looks
My mashup was of two paintings: Baltimore by Palmer Hayden and Aspiration by Aaron Douglas. Baltimore, depicts a scene from a neighborhood with kids walking around and cars driving. The painting seems to be showing an upper class neighborhood with row homes during the fall or winter time. The painting Aspiration by Aaron Douglas, captures the progression of slavery to freedom. In the painting, you see a lot of contrasts. When looking at the bottom, you can see slaves wearing shackles on their arms and the two of the figures that are standing up, represent African American men of the 20th century, who are gazing at buildings and a “city.” The top part of the painting represents the future, while the bottom shows where we once were and how far we have come. I mashed these two paintings together to show the struggle of how the Black people got to the same place as the White people. In Baltimore it looks like the white people had no struggle to get to their nice neighborhood, where as in Aspiration you can see the shackles around the black people's hands, showing what they went through to get to where they are now. The mash up of the two paintings is both painting intertwined together.