Project Editor: Amber Harris Leichner, English 418/818, Fall 2005

Critics Praise
Work of Negro
Artist and Poet

The following article is a criticism
of the work of a young negro, Aaron
Douglas, who was graduated from the
drawing and painting department of
the School of Fine Arts three years
ago. Mr. Douglas illustrated a book
of Negro verse written by James
Weldon Johnson.

"With a collaboration which is
truly vital and a vision which is truly
spiritual, Aaron Douglas, the artist
who conceived the eight symbolic
drawings which do so much to en-
hance the book and vivify its mes-
sage, gives us in an entrely sub-
limated, abstract way a background
of sense and feeling in which there is
this great, timeless, everlasting prim-
itive folk-quality. In seting this
vision up before America of today,
and especially before the young Ne-
gro poets of today, both the poet and
the artist have made a significant
contribution. Contemporary Amer-
ican poetry and art are richer for it,
but richer still the prospects of the
Negro poet and his tradition."—from
August "Survey Graphic," 1927.