THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503180049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Art Review
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
WHEN JACOB Lawrence was a youngster, he was immersed in the exhilarating atmosphere that was the Harlem Renaissance.
The budding African-American artist grew up amid important writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. He heard jazz spilling from clubs out on to the gyrating, uptown avenues of Harlem.
He saw paintings and sculptures by community artists who depicted the everyday life he knew - art by likes of Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage, who took on themes of social injustice and heritage.
Lawrence also headed downtown to look at Renaissance paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Later, he studied the modernists, from Matisse to Cezanne. Goya, Daumier and Kathe Kollwitz also commanded his attention.
How wholly American Lawrence was, and is, to have assimilated such a diverse blend of influences.
Lawrence, now 77 and living in Washington state, created five narrative series from 1937 to 1941, each of them brilliant in what they offer to both the scholar and the layman. Each series presents in poignant detail the story of a major figure in the history of African Americans, focusing on the move from slavery to freedom around the time of the Civil War.
As sophisticated as they are, the works have the comfortable, accessible look of self-taught art. A viewer might feel as if an older relative is telling a story. That's how Lawrence first encountered these legendary figures - from the mouths of his elders.
Two of the series - ``Frederick Douglass'' and ``Harriet Tubman'' - are on view through July 31 at Hampton University Museum.
These early works continue to gain an audience. Through April 11, his ``The Migration Series'' from 1940-'41, is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, where Lawrence had his first solo show in 1944. His work also is featured this season at several New York galleries.
The Douglass and Tubman paintings are in the collection of the Hampton museum, which organized a three-and-a-half-year national tour of the works to such top venues as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and, fittingly, the Studio Museum in Harlem.
For some viewers, it may have been their introduction to Douglass and Tubman, both of whom were slaves on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Douglass became a leading abolitionist spokesman and writer, and a powerful voice in the creation of black Union regiments.
In 1849, Tubman fled north with the aid of the Underground Railroad, a network of helpers who fed, housed and otherwise assisted northbound slaves. In the next decade, Tubman made the treacherous journey south to north 19 more times, liberating more than 300 slaves.
The Douglass series, undertaken in 1938 and 1939, consists of 32 tempera paintings, each measuring 12 by 18 inches. The 31 Tubman works, completed in 1940, were created in the same format.
Amazingly, Lawrence was only 21 when he started the Douglass works. Lawrence himself has marveled at the achievement. ``They are some of the most successful statements I have made in my life. I couldn't repeat them now,'' he said in a 1988 talk he gave at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
These early paintings were far more than illustrations, but they function well as that. The progression of images, each accompanied by a caption, tells the stories in an emotionally penetrating, memorable way. Though his subject is an emotionally loaded one, Lawrence steers clear of melodrama, which allows the images added bite.
Lawrence manages to convey the emotional truth behind significant moments in each figure's journey. He puts this across through his use of color, brushstroke, and his manner of flattened, almost cubistic stylization.
The environment in which Lawrence sets his heroes is a fearsome place, full of risks and adventure. He utilizes sharp angles and a dynamic placement of objects and figures, connoting danger and action.
Lawrence allows the brushstroke to be evident in applying semi-transparent paint, which makes the surface seem alive and energized - like the nervous system of a fleeing slave.
Both series are exceptionally well-balanced portrayals. Perusing the panels chronologically, a viewer would encounter distant views of a whole community, then closeups of each figure's life, followed by anecdotes about whippings, riots and legs in chains.
In each case, the body of work holds together like a tight armed unit. Yet, certain images may be more unforgettable than others.
There is a painting of Tubman as a Union nurse, healing a fallen black soldier. Tubman, it turns out, was skilled at determining the cause of diseases that struck certain troops. She knew how to concoct herbal potions to bring the boys around.
Lawrence could have drawn her in a hospital room, administering to the sick. Instead, he made her into a great healing spirit, an angel almost, here to free her people. ILLUSTRATION: Two of African-American artist Jacob Lawrence's series -
"Frederick Douglass," left, and "Harriet Tubman" - are on view at
the Hampton University Museum through July 31.
ON EXHIBIT
What: ``Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman
Series of Narrative Paintings''
Where: Hampton University Museum, in the Academy Building
When: through July 31
Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; noon to 4 p.m. weekends
How much: free
Call: 727-5308
by CNB