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                                                          

                              

                                                                                   

The Banjo Lesson

There has always been a special place for Henry Ossawa Tanner’s “The Banjo Lesson” in my personal exploration, understanding and connection to art.  “The Banjo Lesson” is a high point in Art History as well as a pleasurable, visual feast for the connoisseur. Tanner executed this work with his usual mastery of technique, light, color and composition. He chose to provide two light sources, emanating from the left and right of the central figures; the soft light from a window and the gentle glow from a fire place. The composition draws the eyes to the central features of the young boy and the older teacher/grand-parent figure. The work emotes with a purity of heart from a tradition dating back to the baroque period. The sentiments are genuine here and Tanner excels.

This particular work (The Banjo Lesson) and Tanner himself were of personal importance simply because after years of creating and studying art in school and independently it failed to expose me to the works of any African Ancestry Artist. I was being denied something that I should have been able to take for granted; the knowledge of visual artists of African descent. A definite and defiant part of me knew these artists existed but I was in some kind of vacuum that was failing to acknowledge any historical or contemporary example of creation or culture.  I had learned of the works of Winslow Homer (The Gulf Stream) and Norman Rockwell (New Kids in the Neighborhood.) These are two works of note that I still enjoy but I needed to experience the creations of great Black Artists for reference and as a connection of spirit. The early seventies were still a time of exclusion for “artists of color.” Books, magazines and videos failed to produce evidence of any Black aesthetic. Yet; I was destined for that element of my life to be remied.

My room-mate at Ferrum College; Addae Jahi,  would  land a job in what was then called the AV (Audio/Visual) Room that changed what seemed almost futile; my search for an African American identity in art. While looking through the AV archives He found a multi-media production devoted to African Americans in art and culture. The production featured the works of many greats ranging across fields. Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Lois M. Jones were featured as visual artists; I knew nothing of them before. This was a treasure trove to me. It was Tanner’s work that stood head and shoulders above the others from my then point of view. Addae had found something of incalculable value; a thing iconic in nature, my first viewing of “the Banjo lesson.” Tanner was the quintessential African American Artist.  

Since my initial encounter of “The Banjo Lesson” in video I have seen it reproduced in many other forms including: books, posters and digital. I even had the great fortune a few years ago of seeing the original where it resides at Hampton University in my home state of Virginia. I remember climbing the stairway into the gallery; seeing the seminal, distinctive work of Tanner on the opposite wall and then standing before it. I remember within that moment of loosely bridled passion a total rapture, a cosmic blessing, all vanities replete and somehow my existence complete. 

LANDSCAPES George Inness

The Hudson River School, the Barbizon and even Baroque painting as expressed by the French artists; Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin are magnificent styles of the landscape form. There is one great artist to encompass all of the fore mentioned and develop his own personal and recognizable vision. That artist is the American Master George Inness. Inness’ works have taken their place among the most noted and beautiful of paintings. His paintings are at once joyous, spiritual and illumining. As Inness matured; and with the spiritual influences of Emanuel Swedenborg, his work became more abstract in quality and reflected  spiritual as well as aesthetic ideals. The paintings of Inness have a softness and a muted understatement that is seductive and captivating. They are considered by many to possess a certain visual poetry. These Inness’ products of spiritualism and technique are wondrous treasures. They speak most eloquently and are their own statements.

"The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual nature."

George Inness