The Metropolitan Museum fall 2020 exhibit:
"For the first time in more than sixty years, the exhibition reunites the panels of Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954-56), an important if under recognized series by the celebrated modern artist Jacob Lawrence. Originally conceived as sixty works spanning subjects from European colonization to World War I, the series ultimately resulted in thirty small-scale tempera paintings representing familiar and unfamiliar historical moments from 1775 to 1817 - ranging from Patrick Henry's famous 'liberty' speech to westward expansion.
In his ambitious portrayal of these episodes as inherently contested and diverse, Lawrence foregrounds the experiences of women and people of color. Most panels are accompanied by quotations from historical texts, which the artist drew from research conducted at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The angular, dynamic style of his imagery-compressed spatially for maximum effect-emphasizes violent conflict and sacrifice.
As a socially engaged painter embraced by leftist critics, Lawrence lived and worked under FBI surveillance. He created the Struggle series against the backdrop of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which targeted Black intellectuals and artists to a significant degree. Moreover, as he started to paint in May 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling called for the desegregation of public schools, catalyzing the civil rights movement. In these terms, Lawrence's project links past and present American struggles that still resonate powerfully today."
1957 photo of Jacob Lawrence by Sidney Waintrob. Jacob Lawrence was "born in Atlantic City, New Jersey and moved to Philadelphia as a teenager, before settling with his mother and siblings in Harlem. By the time of Waintrob's photograph, Lawrence was living in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife, fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. To conduct research for the Struggle series, he took the A train to Manhattan to visit the public library. Lawrence began teaching in 1958 at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he served on the faculty until 1970. The couple relocated in 1971 to Seattle for a new position at the University of Washington, at which Lawrence taught until his retirement in 1983."
120.9.14.286.9.33-ton 290.9.27 at 153.9.28.110.8.19.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8 - an informer's coded message Jacob Lawrence, 1955 "American Revolutionary officer- turned traitor Benedict Arnold used a numerical substitution system to inform the British of General George Washington's secret plan to cross the Hudson River in 1780. Lawrence conceived of this exchange close-up as the informer whispers in the ear of his contact. Eliminating the space between the stony faces, he emphasized the dangerous nature of espionage and betrayal. The artist painted this panel one year after the collapse of Joseph McCarthy's damaging investigations into the loyalties of progressive Americans. The subject pointedly references the widespread fear created by informers and 'friendly witnesses as well as by the FBI, which surveilled many artists, including Lawrence, for so-called 'subversive' ties to left-leaning organizations."
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity... 17 September 1787" Jacob Lawrence, 1955
"The idealism presented in the preamble to the Constitution trails off through Lawrence's use of an ellipsis in his title caption, suggesting the delegates' four months of intense work in Philadephia's summer heat. The painting shows representatives of the original thirteen British-American colonies coded in a dark space; they gesticulate, sweat, and spar with one another. Seven sword hilts symbolize the quorum of states required to ratify the Constitution. Its final passage was predicated on the Three-Fifths Compromise, a concession to the South that meant enslaved African Americans would be counted for the census but not given freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote. Rather than represent a fictional moment of peaceful resolution, Lawrence presents an American creation story defined by political struggle and moral exhaustion."
"In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit.... Jefferson to Lewis and Clark, 1803. Jacob Lawrence 1956 "This panel's title comes from a letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, who were leading an expedition across the American West. Despite Jefferson's general disregard for Indigenous rights, he asked that the explorers approach Native people with cautious respect-to befriend them, attempt to develop trade relations, and collect artifacts. The painting features the expedition's translator and guide, a Lemhi Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, in a moment of recognition that Clark recorded in a journal entry on August 13, 1805. After the group encountered the Shoshone (in present-day Idaho), Sacagawea acknowledges her brother, Chief Cameahwait, fromm whom she had been separated since childhood. Lawrence depicted the siblings dressed in vibrant red and blue, imagining a tender reunion by conjoining their strong, columnar forms."
