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                                                          

                              

                                                                                   

Dali Drawings

 Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney; all varied and names to be associated with Salvador Dali. Dali’s showmanship and his works intrigued enlivened and enriched the lives of his viewers and admirers for decades. He still touches millions even though he is not currently en vogue in anything close to the same manner he was just a few years prior. Dali dazzled and confused with his paintings, films, prints and sculptures. His drawings were equally impressive and mysterious. They are the features of this blog.

The lines of Dali are elegant and masterful. The drawings range from the subtle to the beautifully extravagant. The many dream images, the surreal works he playfully produced in his lifetime are statements to his unusual and marvelous mind. 

He could be both baroque and modern in ways that few were able to equal. Perhaps the fact that he outdistanced his surrealist peers is the reason he was denounced by those fellows. To call Dali a genius is almost redundant but if such a thing exists he is certainly among those elite. It has been said that and there is a thin line between genius and madness.

 

 

Dali walked that line for the entirety of his public life with his wife and muse Gala by his side. We can only guess at the meanings and symbols he conjuring’s provided his public; but that is part of the pleasures of his work. He mastered many forms and illuminated many lives.

 

                   “The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not insane.”

                                                                                                                             Salvador Dali

The Social Critique and Satire of Daumier

 

                                                 

      

 Honore Daumier has been part of the “Canon” forever; it seems he was possibly born into it, an artist’s artist, his own pinnacle. Daumier was a painter, sculptor and lithographer. Most importantly he was a social satirist of the highest order. The numbers he acquired are staggering; 4,000 lithographs, 1,000 each of drawings and wood engravings, 500 paintings and 100 sculptures. An impressive feat for an artist of any era. Daumier was to be influential for generations. 

 The artist to immediately follow him, especially those to study and work in France including Lautrec, Manet, Degas and the young Picasso show his influence. The works of many American cartoonist and illustrators including Brad Holland, Jules Feiffer, Pat Oliphant, Chuck Jones and Tim Burton are testament to the Daumier wit and style. The Daumier legacy is rich, there wonderful elements to his imaginings and his technique was sound.

 

 

 

 

 

Daumier’s work can be viewed as both High and Low Art. His subjects also were high and low; the bourgeois, the working/poor classes, government leaders, and especially judges and lawyers were targets of his satire. He reported the worlds he inhabited and the art world connoisseurs and critics were not lost to his efforts, they are represented by Daumier with the same virtuosity and vigorous vanity. His lines were graceful, elegant and grand.  

 

 The works are beautiful to behold and equal to the test of time and scrutiny. He was imprisoned briefly for a scathing remorseless depiction of the king titled “Gargantua.” This incarceration failed to soften his social critiques. Daumier would continue to work and spared no one; creating brilliant things throughout his life until his eventual loss of sight.

 

 

 

 Ironically it was a year before his death that he would be recognized for his masterful and original paintings. France has given the world many greats. Daumier…decidedly, dangerously dissident!