Audio Tour Stop 9

The Judgment Day, Aaron Douglas

Part of East Building: Featured Selections

审判日

道格拉斯

1927 年，纽约哈林区文艺复兴运动的一位关键人物詹姆斯·韦尔登·约翰逊出版了他的杰作《上帝的长号：黑人布道诗七篇》。每一首布道诗都配有阿隆·道格拉斯绘制的插画。当时的道格拉斯是一位年轻的非洲裔美国艺术家，刚刚在哈林区定居不久。几年后，道格拉斯开始根据他的插画创作大型油画。这幅《审判日》是他创作的八幅系列画作中的最后一幅。画面中央是跨越大陆和海洋站立的大天使加百利。大天使们吹响号角，召来地球上的各国人民，面对终极审判。

The Judgment Day (Chinese)
A winged person blowing a horn stands silhouetted in lilac purple against a field of alternating celery and muted lime-green bands in this abstracted vertical painting. The person’s body is angled toward us but they look over their shoulder, to our left in profile, as they hold a horn to their lips. The horn reaches into the top left corner of the composition, and the wings extend off the top edge of the canvas. A shallowly curving slit indicates the eye. The person stands with each foot on two rounded forms like stylized hills. The mound on our right is higher so the knee is bent, and the person holds a skeleton key in the hand propped on that knee. The hill to our right has wavy bands of muted pine and sage green, and the hill to our left has a zigzag line of the sage across the darker green. Farther from us, four people, smaller in scale, are outlined as amethyst-purple silhouettes. One person to our right of the angel kneels and raises their hands high overhead, face turned to the sky. Two more people standing on or behind the left mound are framed between the trumpeter’s legs. The fourth person stands with hands clasped, also looking up. Concentric arcs of lemon yellow and pale green suggest a sun in the upper left corner. The artist signed and dated the work with dark green paint in the lower right corner: “A. Douglas ’39.”
Aaron Douglas, The Judgment Day, 1939, oil on tempered hardboard, Patrons' Permanent Fund, The Avalon Fund, 2014.135.1

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