Harlem Renaissance Labor

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Within the world of Harlem Renaissance art, many themes persist across the entire collection of works. One of the most important themes was the importance of labor as a backbone of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Without the shift to an industrial economy, there would not have been nearly as many jobs that pulled African Americans north to Harlem and other major cities. Therefore, labor has underlined the movement as a whole, and many of the artists created the most familiar works of the time. By analyzing the figures, background, and context of Aaron Douglas’s “Building More Stately Mansions” and Jacob Lawrence’s “Panel No. 4” I will compare across artistic generations, the role of labor, how its perception changed, and how it impacted Renaissance …show more content…
Labor was at the heart of the North, and served as the foundation of the Renaissance. Both of these works look at labor and its perception from both of their generational perspectives. With Douglas’s work, he looks at “the intrinsic tension between individual freedom and the grinding routine of the machine” (Campbell, 29). Douglas was still painting about the ideals of the Renaissance, decades after his peers had ideologically moved on. In the painting, Douglas places laborers below a sky with cranes and figures reminiscent of ancient Egypt and Africa as a whole. "Here Douglas portrays the contrast that while African Americans were still laborers, they masterfully balanced this social pressure and proudly upheld their African heritage, in turn creating and cultivating an entirely new type of culture. "All of this tension can be seen in the painting and will be explored further in the coming paragraphs. Moving on, Lawrence’s painting represents a more human side of the social pressures Douglas conveys in his work. Instead of having his figure visibly contemplated weighed down by all the pressures of the time, Lawrence’s laborer appears to be fatigued from simply
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