The Miraculous Life of Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence is among the most distinguished and accomplished American artists of the twentieth-century. Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1917 and spent part of his childhood in Pennsylvania. He was not the only child; he had a sister named Geraldene and a brother named William. In 1930 his family split up and he moved to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, where as a teenager he attended classes taught by Charles Alston at the Harlem Community Art Center. He was the youngest of the fellow students so this was a great accomplishment. Following a period in upstate New York spent working for the Civilian Conservation Corps, he returned to art, first on a scholarship to the newly formed American Artists School, and then as an employee in the easel division of the WPA Federal Art Project. In the late 1930s, Lawrence occupied a studio at 306 West 141st Street in the company of fellow artists such as Alston, Romare Bearden, Ronald Joseph, and others. In 1941, Lawrence gained representation at the prestigious Downtown Gallery, where he met and exhibited alongside artists such as Stuart Davis, Ben Shahn, John Marin, and Charles Sheeler. Lawrence entered the Coast Guard in 1943 and was later assigned to the first racially integrated ship in U.S. history. He was released from military duty in December 1945. In the summer of 1946, at the invitation of Josef Albers, he taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Lawrence began teaching extensively in 1955, first at Pratt Institute in New York, and later at New School for Social Research, the Art Students League, and Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1962, he visited Africa for the first time; he returned in 1964 to lecture, teach and paint. In 1971, he and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, moved to Seattle, where he taught at the University of Washington until 1986.
In a century that equated the evolution of modern art with the will toward abstraction, Lawrence's early success and his sustained visibility are remarkable. He has walked a careful line between abstract and figurative art, using aesthetic values for social ends. His success at balancing such seemingly irreconcilable aspects of art is a fundamental characteristic of his long and distinguished career. In Lawrence's work social themes, often detailing the African-American experience, are expressed in colorfully lanky, simplified, expressive, and richly decorative figurative effects.
Ernie Barnes was and still is one of the most popular and well-respected black artists today. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, in 1938, during the time the south as segregated, Ernie Barnes was not expected to become a famous artist. However, as a young boy, Barnes would, “often [accompany] his mother to the home of the prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., where she worked as a [housekeeper]” (Artist Vitae, The Company of Art, 1999). Fuller was able to spark Barnes’ interest in art when he was only seven years old. Fuller told him about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, and the museums he visited (Barnes, 1995, p. 7). Fuller further introduced Barnes to the works of such artists as, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, which later influenced Barnes’ mannerist style of painting.
He has resided and taught in New York. I think his images and prints continue to reveal his practice and memories of growing up in the South. Not only is his subject matter about African American people, but more universally, people of all kinds - black, white, wealthy, poor, religious, northern or southern. As to what I found, his work has been portrayed as Southern, black, or radical, but I think he is above all an American artist. He draws on many different influences in his art, including his father.
While visiting the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the works of Archibald Motley caught my attention. Two paintings by the same artist are the focus of this compare and contrast paper. Both are oil paintings during the same time period. Portrait of my Grandmother was painted in 1922 and Hot Rhythm was painted in 1934 only 12 years later. Although the paintings are by the same artist and have similarities, there are also differences which make the artist’s work interesting. Portrait of My Grandmother and Hot Rhythm are two paintings by Motley that capture different emotions (aspects would be a better word) of African Americans.
Emory Douglas was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until 1951 when he and his mother relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time San Francisco was the hub of African American organizations that arranged events aimed at overthrowing the social injustices within the Bay Area’s black communities. As a minor immersed within the community Douglas became captivated by Charles Wilbert White, an African American social realist artist whom created various monochrome sketches and paintings, “transforming American scenes into iconic modernist narratives.” Not long after, Douglas was incarcerated at the Youth Training School in Ontario, California where he spent countless hours working in the penitentiary’s printery. It was not until the mid-1960’s when Douglas registered in the City College of San Francisco, majoring in commercial art and graphic design. Soon after, Douglas went to a Black Panthers rally, where he encountered Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; during ...
born in Topeka, Kansas, and was sometimes referred as the "the father of black American art."
Kerry James Marshall was born in Birmingham Alabama in 1955 and work is influenced by the popular culture and activities of African Americans. His view of cultural identity differed from An Xian’s in a few distinct ways. His art works general statements of using terms such as black allowed his work to fall under the category of essentialism because he used over generalized and stereotypical notions of
Born in March of 1916 as Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz, he was the third child to Benjamin and Augusta Katz. His parents were both Polish immigrants of Jewish descent and they raised him in East New York, the predominantly Jewish section of Brooklyn. As immigrants they were plagued with financial difficulties and this was further aggravated when they struggled through the Depression. Despite all of these hardships, Keats had already begun to showcase his artistic abilities. At the age of eight he was hired to paint the sign of a local store. Naturally, his father was quite proud of him when he earned twenty-five cents for his work and hoped that this might endeavor might lead to a steady career as a sign pa¬inter. Unfortunately for him, Keats was smitten with Fine Arts and won his first award in Junior High School: a medal for ...
Composer-lyricist-librettist of RENT, a rock opera inspired by "La Bohème", Jonathan Larson was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in suburban White Plains, the second child of Allan and Nanette Larson. Both Jonathan's parents loved music and theatre, and show tunes and folk music were always playing in their home. Jon and his sister Julie took piano lessons during elementary school. He could play by ear, and his teacher encouraged him to experiment with rhythm, harmony, and setting words. By high school, he was called the "Piano Man" after the enormously popular song of that title by Billy Joel; he also played tuba in the school marching band. Active in school and community theatre, Jonathan had major roles in several musicals.
Jacob Lawrence Jacob Lawrence's unique career has earned him a National Medal of Arts, election to the National Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design, a National Council of the Arts commisionership, and dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. His paintings have been featured in several major art exhibitions and many different museums. Lawrence's parents came from the south, but they moved to Harlem, where Lawrence grew up. Lawrence was born in 1917 and grew up in Harlem during the Great Depression. He had many extraordinary educational opportunities as well as his first employment as an artist.
It is important to not that the direction of Brooks’s literary career shifted dramatically in the late 1960’s. While attending a black writers’ conference she was struck by the passion of the young poets. Before this happened, she had regarded herself as essentially a universalist, who happened to be black. After the conference, she shifted from writing about her poems about black people and life to writing for the black population.
The Harlem Renaissance had a lot of influence on modern day art because many artist white and black drew inspiration from traditional African sculptures. In the 1900s, “the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art.”(“African
Lawrence was a very well educated man, but he did not have the best education until he was in college. He started college at Virginia Union University, an all-black school, where in 1951 he received a degree in chemistry and in science. After graduating he started working as a toxicologist in the medical examiner's office. In 1952, he was drafted into the army and served in the Korean War where he earned the Bronze Star for heroism in combat for ...
Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.