The Study of Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence occupies an unusual position in the history ofAmerican art. He is an ionic figure, one of the great modern painters of the twentieth century, a distinction he earned early in his career when he gained widespread recognition for the narrative painting series The Migration of the Negro in 1941. In a century that equated the evolution of modern art with the will toward abstraction, Lawrence's early success and his sustained visibility are remarkable. He has walked a careful line between abstract and figurative art, using aesthetic values for social ends. His success at balancing such seemingly irreconcilable aspects of art is a fundamental characteristic of his long and distinguished career. ( Dubois,11)This Toussaint L'Ouverture series, number seventeen. A description of this composition is Toussaint captured Marmelade, held by Vernet, 1795, 1937-1938. The medium used in this composition was tempera on paper, 19 x 11". The original piece resides in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. "It was late in that year," chronicled the New York Amsterdam News about Lawrence in 1937, "that he began the Haitian series, doing his
In 1936 he enrolled at the American Artists School, where he met artists who were political activists involved in the Scottsboro case, the frame-up of nine black youth in Alabama on rape charges. He has been the subject of three retrospectives, at the Brooklyn Museum in 1960, the Whitney Museum in New York in 1974, and the Seattle Art Museum in The Phillips Collection in Washington is scheduled to mount a retrospective next year. In 1940 he won a prize for his exhibit at the Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro at the American Negro Exhibition in Chicago. Kimmelman pays tribute to Lawrence by quoting him on one of his favorite paintings, Sassetta's "Journey of the Magi" at the Metropolitan Museum. When Lawrence first moved to Harlem in New York he was amazed at how large the buildings appeared to him. Lawrence also worked in genre painting, the most successful series of which was the Builders Series. My mother and father were on their way north when I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, so at the very beginning of my understanding of communication with words I was very much aware of this movement. Over the next 18 months, while the federal government provided at least some support for the struggling artists, the younger painter produced two narrative series, on the lives of abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Jacob planned to change this with his art. Also in May 1937, he had an exhibited six pencil drawings in a group show of the Harlem Artists Guild at the New York Public Library. If many other artists, from Giotto to Orazco, influenced him, his style is derivative of none.
Common topics in this essay:
Jacob Lawrence,
Toussaint L'Ouverture,
Giotto Orazco,
Due Lawrence,
Migration Negro,
Migration Series,
Langston Hughes,
City Jersey,
Frederick Douglass,
Museum Art,
jacob lawrence,
toussaint l'ouverture,
metropolitan museum,
museum art,
frederick douglass,
migration series,
harriet tubman,
rosa lee lawrence,
african american,
painted series,
toussaint l'ouverture series,
won prize,
metropolitan museum art,
lawrence unique style,
atlantic city jersey,
|
Acceptance Essays
