Jacob Lawrence @ Virginia Tech

The Jacob Lawrence road show came to town in late August. “History, Labor, Life: the Prints of Jacob Lawrence” is the featured exhibit at The Moss Arts Center on Virginia Tech’s expansive campus. It is stunning in scale, quality and daring. Art is many times not what we see but what we perceive. Lawrence has come of age or perhaps the world is catching up to his incredible gifts.

Lawrence was recognized early on in his life and remained a force as an interpreter and chronicler of the African American experience. He was given to work in series; many included forty or more individual pieces. He was purchased early on by MoMA and other prominent collections. Lawrence was truly a modernist, innovator and cultural contributor. He was much akin to the European Modernist of his time, Matisse, Picasso, Leger and Modigliani. His African American compatriots Bearden, Douglas and Alston are alluded to in his virtuosic efforts too. With that being said Lawrence remained true to his vision throughout his life; all the more remarkable for an almost totally untrained master.

Narrative was a hallmark of the man’s work. He strayed from the modernist doctrines in this respect. His Migration Series, Toussaint L’Ouverture Series and War Series are represented in this exhibit along with others including his Harlem Series and John Brown Series. These are definite historical stories and close to theatrical story boards. At best; when all is spoken Lawrence considered himself a Social Realist.

A high point of the opening reception was a talk by Leslie King Hammond; activist, historian, and professor emerita at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Dr. Hammond was a close friend to Jacob Lawrence and able to give personal reflections of the man along with a deep knowledge of his life and works. She touched all the bases and added interesting and new insights. Dr. Hammond was like a fountain in a beautiful garden of color and content.

This exhibition of Jacob Lawrence prints featured over ninety individual pieces. The last exhibition I have recently seen with such a large, over whelming number of great pieces was at New York’s Metropolitan. That exhibit featured about one hundred original and exclusive drawings by the world and historically renowned; Michelangelo Buonaroti.  Rarely has something of that cultural significance and scale been mounted in South Western Virginia. The color, vibrancy, refinement and geometry of Lawrence’s work holds it ground very well. 

 I drove home still under the spell of this mammoth in scale; major exhibition. I happened to see a young man that I often see power walking around town.  I spot him in the distance; black, bold, beautiful, shirtless…red shorts against the dark grey highway making his way around a curve. The green of late summer in the surrounding foliage were working as bracketing frames. Above all this was the elegance of a luxurious cumulus clouded blue sky. This moment, this scene, I had witnessed countless times without much thought. In my eyes now I’m in the presence of and viewing a living, breathing Jacob Lawrence Painting; a transformative visionary thing.

 “My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life; if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas.”

                                                                                                    Jacob Lawrence