Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 3, 1994 TAG: 9402020070
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
One after another, the struggles and hopes of black Americans have been touched by the brush of artist Jacob Lawrence.
With bold colors Lawrence painted the lives of black abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. He captured the World War I-era migration of rural Southern blacks to the industrial North in a monumental 60-panel series and showed the facts of everyday Harlem life in paintings done throughout his career.
Called "one of the foremost African-American artists of this century" by the New Yorker magazine and showcased in museums and galleries nationwide, Lawrence has achieved recognition in part because he has approached his subjects with a uniquely qualified perspective - that of a black man who has lived and studied what he paints.
"His paintings portray the struggle of African-American life," said Aletha Cherry, curator of Roanoke's Harrison Museum of African American Culture, which will host "Jacob Lawrence: The John Brown Serigraphs" beginning Friday. The exhibit's arrival coincides with the opening of the museum gift shop, which will feature Afrocentric merchandise including gift wrap and books.
The traveling exhibit, prints of a 22-panel series, depicts the life of white abolitionist John Brown, who was hanged for treason in 1859 after years of fighting slavery. Painted in bold colors and flat forms, the series includes images of a bleeding Christ on the cross and the hanging body of John Brown.
For Lawrence, who grew up in the Harlem district of New York, such a correlation of martyr figures is not surprising, said Peter Nesbett of the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle, which represents Lawrence's work internationally.
Lawrence, 76, "always talks about [his subjects] being very much a part of his everyday experience," Nesbett said.
Figures like Brown and Tubman were heroes in Harlem of the 1920s and '30s, he said, and thus were common topics of conversation. The constant reminders of those heroes and the extensive time Lawrence spent at church-related activities as a youth contributed to the Brown-as-Christ images, Nesbett said.
Although his paintings portray black American life, Lawrence was not attempting to exclude the rest of the population from his study of struggle, Nesbett said.
"When he talks about struggle, about hope, he always talks about it in a grand sense," Nesbett said. Lawrence's works transcend the black experience; it is because Lawrence paints what he knows that he has focused on the black struggle, Nesbett said.
"We had some wonderful, creative people in the community," Lawrence was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times. "That's where it all started - my motivation - in the Harlem community."
Lawrence told the Times he was pleased with the renewed interest in his work in recent years. "It's important that people are responding to what I did 50 years ago, and it's a wonderful feeling," he said.
"Beyond that, I would like to think it's important because the works tell something about our history, and I don't mean our ethnic history, but our history as a country, as a people, the struggle that has gone on, is going on and will continue in various forms," he said.
"What [Lawrence] has tried to do is to do these large, ambitious epics about the struggles of people in communities," said Patricia Hills, a Boston University art history professor who is working on a biography of Lawrence.
Although other black artists had taken up the same subjects, Lawrence was the only one to approach them with such ambition, Hills said. Beginning in 1937-38 with a 41-panel series on the life of Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture, Lawrence created numerous narrative works, including the 32-panel Douglass series (1938-39), the 31-panel Tubman series (1939-40) and the 60-panel Migration series (1940-41).
The John Brown sequence, completed in 1941, continued both Lawrence's work with narrative series and his use of what Hills called "expressive cubism," a modernist-influenced style incorporating brilliant colors and bold images.
Lawrence finished the John Brown series - in water-based gouache on paper - in New Orleans while he and his wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight, were on their honeymoon. The sequence was displayed at New York's Downtown Gallery and was purchased as a whole on the opening day of the exhibit.
The collection was later acquired by the Detroit Institute of Arts, which commissioned prints of the paintings after decades of wear and tear on the originals led to a number of denied tour requests, Nesbett said. Lawrence oversaw the printing, which was finished in 1975.
Lawrence has lived in Seattle since 1971. He recently completed a loosely connected series of paintings focused around a "Builders" theme, Nesbett said. The series, which Lawrence had been working on for several years, includes images of construction workers and cabinet makers.
Several Lawrence shows, including the Migration series, are touring the nation. The Harrison Museum will feature the John Brown prints through March 28.
"I studied African American art in college, and to actually see these pieces, to experience them up close, is amazing," Cherry said. "It's not just a story - it's about struggles and goals. It's something everyone can identify with."
by CNB