(uplifting classical music)
- My friends of Texas.
I have come here today to bear the tribute of the nation
to you on your hundredth birthday,
oh, you are 100 years young.
And what a birthday party.
A huge $25 million exhibition in Dallas
with all Texans staying home.
- [Female Narrator] We're in the photo studio
at the de Young Museum, part of the Fine Arts
Museums in San Francisco, and we're looking
at a painting by an important early 20th century artist,
Aaron Douglas called Aspiration.
- [Male Narrator] Aaron Douglas' first major commission
was for the iconic publication, The New Negro
An Interpretation by Alain Locke.
In those illustrations, he takes
a Alain Locke's lead that African American artists
should embrace their African heritage.
Historically, Europeans had claimed
the history of Africa in general, but especially Egypt
as the bed rock of European culture.
Douglas and the other artists associated
with the Harlem Renaissance were insistent
that African Americans embrace this culture
as their history.
- [Female Narrator] And we do see the influence
of ancient Egyptian art here in the profiles
of the figures, in the way that their shoulders
are turned frontally, and even the influence
of African masks.
But this painting had a very specific purpose,
it was commissioned for the Texas Centennial Exposition
of 1936 that commemorated Texas' independence from Mexico.
And for the hall of negro life that,
despite many obstacles, was created for that Exposition.
- [Male Narrator] Aspiration was one
of a four-part mural depicting the history
of early Texas, but very importantly from
an African-American perspective.
Two of the panels are lost, but the other extant panel
shows Africans being taken into slavery
to a ship that will then cross the Atlantic
in the Middle Passage.
Aspiration is the other part of this story
here on the American side of the Atlantic.
- [Female Narrator] We see hands in bondage,
we see the shackles of slavery around
the wrists of these upraised hands.
- [Male Narrator] And they are surrounded
by these curvilinear flowing waves,
this represents the Middle Passage
of ships across the Atlantic Ocean carrying
their human cargo of enslaved Africans.
Historians often point out if someone
on these ships became ill, they were often
thrown overboard because the slave traders
didn't want to endanger the rest of their human cargo.
And so you see these arms upraised
as if they are sinking beneath the waves,
reaching upward for some kind of salvation.
- [Female Narrator] As we move up,
we see three figures on a podium pointing
to a city on the horizon.
- [Male Narrator] The three-tiered plinth
symbolizes the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of Egypt.
Egypt was famous for its innovations
in architecture, most famously the pyramids.
- [Female Narrator] And we see those pyramids here
in the fractured forms between
the five-pointed star.
And one female figure sits on the corner of that podium
holding a book in her right hand,
leaning back, and looking up toward the city.
Her face, her body intersects that star.
- [Male Narrator] This female figure
for Douglas I think represents Mother Egypt.
She is the font of African-Egyptian history and culture.
She holds the open books, the symbol of knowledge.
And notice that the waves of the Middle Passage wash across
her feet just as the Nile River when it floods
every spring washes across the temples along its shores.
Her hair wig is a very typical symbol
of that Egyptian culture, as is her purple color,
which is a royal color.
So this introduces imagery of kingship,
a symbol of pride for contemporary African Americans.
The pose of Mother Egypt holding
the open book is derived from a Renaissance source,
Michelangelo's Libyan Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Sojourner Truth, one of the great freedom fighters
against slavery was known as the Libyan Sibyl.
The two modern African Americans on the plinth
embody new ideals of the Harlem Renaissance.
The figure holding the right-angle square,
the compass and adjacent to the terrestrial
or celestial globe might be Benjamin Banneker,
a famous astronomer and mathematician.
The man holding the beaker in the center
might be George Washington Carver
who was an agricultural chemist.
But there are other associations for these two modern men
who embodied the educated new negro.
There are three famous figures who might indeed
have appeared upon a plinth or podium at this time.
Among them are Jesse Owens, the American olympian,
Paul Robeson, the actor and singer,
and Joe Louis, the champion boxer.
Three real-life African American heroes
who set an example for the rest of society
of the kind of aspiration and achievement
embodied in Douglas' painting.
- [Female Narrator] And that idea
of being uplifted, of imagining a future
where racial discrimination is no more.
It must've been difficult to imagine
in the segregated Jim Crow South of Texas.
But still, this sense of hope
as the figures look up toward the upper-right corner
of the composition.
- [Male Narrator] Viewers always notice
that the glowing five-pointed stars point
to the city on the hill in the distance.
The star could be seen as the Lone Star State, Texas,
and the star was all over the fairgrounds
in Dallas as a celebratory symbol
of the dominant white culture.
On the other hand, for an African American viewer,
they would've seen that star as the North Star
that led slaves out of slavery in the Deep South
to freedom in the North.
And not only do the stars radiate from Egypt,
but also circles and Douglas felt
the greatest contribution of African American culture
to the world was jazz.
And he likened the radiating circles
to sound waves spreading African American culture
around the world.
- [Female Narrator] On the opposite corner,
a threat looms, we see lightning,
we see clouds, and a darkness that the figures
turn away from.
- [Male Narrator] Douglas' glowing and radiating stars
seem to dispel the darkness.
It's not an easy path, but it is possible
to triumph and transcend the evils
of the past, but also draw, nurture
from the great accomplishments of the past.
When visitor entered the lobby of The Hall
of Negro Life and cast their gaze
upon Aaron Douglas' four extraordinary murals,
white visitors, the few that dared to enter
The Hall of Negro Life, the segregated building
on the periphery of the main fairgrounds
often challenged the attendant at the front desk,
claiming that it was not possible
that an African American artist
could've created these murals.
These queries were so numerous,
they actually had to post a sign stating
these murals were painted by Mr. Aaron Douglas
of New York, an African American artist.
- [Female Narrator] I'm struck by the incredible
optimism of the people who put together
The Hall of Negro Life, writing a history
to be able to imagine a future in America.
(uplifting classical music)