PM
June 1935
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. New York: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., Volume 1, No. 10: June 1935. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Stapled printed wrappers. 32 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Cover portrait of Alexander Dumas by Aaron Douglas beautifully printed in the photogelatine process. Laid paper wrappers lightly handled with a small scrape to lower front corner. Text block bruised to upper corner, so a very good copy.
5.5 x 7.75 Digest with 32 pages of articles and advertisements.
- Frontispiece: Songs of the Forest & Idyll of the Deep South - Mural paintings by Aaron Douglas.
- Editorial Notes
- Color V. Color Printing Methods
- Printing at 42nd & 5th
- Aaron Douglas by Robert L. Leslie: 2-page article that includes Jungle Dancers and Visions of Liberty.
- What is Diffraction
- Printing Education
- What is Diffraction
- Photo-Gelatin
- PM Shorts
- Photo-Gelatin
- Unmailed letters from a Prod. Mgr.
- Books Reviewed: Process of Graphic Reproduction in Printing by Harold Curwen
- Listing of Advertisements: Reliance Reproduction Co., Walker Engraving Corp., The Composing Room, Collotype Co., Frederick Photogelatine Press, Flower Electrotypes, Fotone Process and Weber - Johnson.
Aaron Douglas [1899 – 1979] was an African American painter and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His striking illustrations, murals, and paintings of the life and history of people of color depict an emerging black American individuality in a powerfully personal way. Working primarily from the 1920s through the 1940s, Douglas linked black Americans with their African past and proudly showed black contributions to society decades before the dawn of the civil rights movement. His work made a lasting impression on future generations of black artists.
A native of Topeka, Kansas, Douglas graduated from Topeka High School in 1917. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1922. In 1925, Douglas moved to New York City, settling in Harlem. Just a few months after his arrival he began to produce illustrations for both The Crisis and Opportunity, the two most important magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He also began studying with Winold Reiss, a German artist who had been hired by Alain Locke to illustrate The New Negro. Reiss's teaching helped Douglas develop the modernist style he would employ for the next decade. Douglas’s engagement with African and Egyptian design brought him to the attention of W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Locke, who were pressing for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their art.
Douglas was heavily influenced by African culture --his natural talent plus his newly acquired inspiration allowed Douglas to be considered the "Father of African American arts." That title led him to say," Do not call me the Father of African American Arts, for I am just a son of Africa, and paint for what inspires me."
For the next several years, Douglas was an important part of the circle of artists and writers we now call the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to his magazine illustrations for the two most important African-American magazines of the period, he illustrated books, painted canvases and murals, and tried to start a new magazine showcasing the work of younger artists and writers. It was during the early 1930s that Douglas completed the most important works of his career, his murals at Fisk University and at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).
Throughout his early career, Douglas looked for opportunities to increase his knowledge about art. In 1928-29, Douglas studied African and Modern European art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania on a grant from the foundation. In 1931 he traveled to Paris, where he spent a year studying more traditional French painting and drawing techniques at the Academie Scandinave.
In 1939, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 27 years. Coinciding with this move was a shift to a more traditional painting style, including portraits and landscapes.
Excerpts from “Black in America, Painted Euphoric and Heroic” by Ken Johnson, published in the New York Times, Sept. 11, 2008: “For African-Americans the 1920s were an exciting time. From New York emerged the great flowering of black culture that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Though primarily a literary movement driven by writers like W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Toomer, the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance extended to music, dance, theater and the visual arts. And no visual artist expressed the movement’s euphoric sense of possibility better than the painter, illustrator and muralist Aaron Douglas.
“Aaron Douglas created a singular mix of Afro-centric allegory and Modernist abstraction. His major works feature semitransparent silhouettes of black people in heroic poses representing struggle and triumph mystically overlaid by concentric, circular bands of light. Rendered in muted colors, they project visionary romanticism in a suave, Art Deco-like style.
“If Douglas is not widely remembered today, it may be because he did his best work as a muralist and illustrator. Easel painting, the dominant currency of early-20th-century art, was not his forte. Another reason is that he redirected his energies to teaching.
“In 1938, which still maintaining ties to New York, he went to Fisk University in Nashville, where he founded the art department and taught for 29 years. (There’s a selection of works in the exhibition by former students, who remember him in statements quoted in wall labels as a kind and inspirational mentor.)
“Born in Topeka, Kan., the son of laborers, Douglas started making art as a boy. Cover designs for two of his high school yearbooks pictured in the exhibition catalog attest to a precociously sophisticated sense of design. He worked his way through the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1922 as the first black art major in its history. After teaching high school for a couple of years in Kansas City, Mo., he moved to Harlem.<p>
“In New York, Douglas quickly fell in with some of the Harlem Renaissance’s major players. The literary critic and philosopher Alain Locke invited him to contribute to his book “The New Negro: An Interpretation”; Du Bois gave him a job in the mailroom of The Crisis, the journal of the N.A.A.C.P.; and he illustrated poems by Langston Hughes. He also began studying with Winold Reiss, a German-born artist who introduced him to Modernism and encouraged him to look at the African art at the Brooklyn Museum.”
PM magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 to its end in 1942 (then called AD). As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.