Peabody Essex Museum
January 18–April 26, 2020
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
June 2–September 7, 2020
This January, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), debuts Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle the first museum exhibition to feature the celebrated series of paintings, Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954–56), by Jacob Lawrence. Painted during the civil rights era by one of the best-known black American artists of the 20th century, the series of 30 intimate panels depicts pivotal moments in early American history with an emphasis on the contributions that black people, Native Americans, and women made in shaping our nation's founding and identity. Elizabeth Hutton Turner and Austen Barron Bailly are the organizing curators of Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle and Lydia Gordon is the exhibition's coordinating curator. The exhibition, organized by PEM and touring nationally through 2021, tackles a question central to Lawrence’s work: “What is the cost of democracy for all?“Reunited for the first time in more than 60 years, the Struggle series brings American history to life through energetic, expressive paintings that hug the boundary between figuration and abstraction. For this reunion, 25 of the Struggle paintings are accounted for while five remain unlocated. Of these, the known works are presented alongside reproductions of the missing paintings as well as those too fragile to travel. The paintings reflect Lawrence’s desire to “express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle” and his visual style conveys the physical, emotional, and ideological struggles inherent to the country’s founding.
Lawrence saw American history as a complex shared experience and his paintings sought to create a broader, more encompassing narrative that celebrated prominent historical figures alongside those unsung and underrepresented. Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle presents Lawrence’s paintings in dialogue with contemporary artists Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas whose work powerfully asserts that America’s struggles — for democracy, justice, truth, and inclusion — continue in earnest today.
Born in 1917, Lawrence broke through the color line of New York’s segregated art world when, at the age of 23, he created the Migration Series, a historical narrative that was instantly recognized as a masterpiece and became the first work by a black artist to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.
“This truly historic exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Lawrence’s greatest and least-known works while considering our own relationship to the ongoing struggle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” says PEM’s associate curator, Lydia Gordon. “His work continues to influence and impact so many today because his messages are urgent, pressing, and timeless.”
Inspiration and ApproachJacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was one of the most prominent and celebrated black artists in America in the 20th century. His artistic training was fostered by the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance and inspired by the stories he heard from elders about the abolitionist movement, black heroes, and familial struggles. Because of the lack of black history taught in American schools, Lawrence chose his early work to depict iconic figures like abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. With a style that was expressive and symbolic in form, Lawrence combined Social Realism and modern abstraction to create pared down compositions brimming with vitality and graphic strength. Lawrence went on to create compelling, often metaphorical stories of the black experience and the history of the United States, including the great migration of black communities from the South to northern cities like New York and Chicago.
StruggleBy mid century, Lawrence had perfected his narrative invention of using modestly scaled panels to tell a sweeping epic. In 1949 the national political climate was fraught, freedoms were under threat, and the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. In this context, Lawrence began his research for Struggle: From the History of the American People, a narrative that sought to visualize a more complete — and more complex — version of American history. His goal was to “depict the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy.” Lawrence spent countless hours at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Black Research and Culture) in Harlem poring over historical texts that included first-person accounts, letters, and coded messages from individuals on all sides of the American Revolution. For more than five years, he read and researched, and then, in May 1954, just as the Supreme Court ruled to desegregate American schools, he began to paint.
 Jacob Lawrence, Of the Senate House, the President's Palace, the barracks, the dockyard . . . nothing could be seen except heaps of smoking ruins . . . —a British officer at Washington, 1814 , Panel 24, 1956, from Struggle: From the History of the American People , 1954–56, egg tempera on hardboard. Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photography by Bob Packert/PEM.  Jacob Lawrence, And a Woman Mans a Cannon , Panel 12, 1955, from Struggle: From the History of the American People , 1954–56, egg tempera on hardboard. Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross. © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM. |
Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000). Struggle Series - No. 10: Washington Crossing the Delaware (detail), 1954. Egg tempera on hardboard, 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003 (2003.414). © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Lawrence’s often lengthy captions that accompany the panels in the Struggle series feature excerpts from famous speeches as well as reports, letters, and petitions from anonymous soldiers and enslaved people. Panel eight depicts the image of clashing soldiers in the Battle of Bennington in 1777, accompanied by the caption “...again the rebels rushed furiously on our men” which is from an account written by a Hessian mercenary (German soldiers who served as auxiliaries to the British Army). The viewer is left to consider the fate of the Hessians, as well as the fate of other mercenaries such as black soldiers who fought in the war. Ironically, after the war, the Hessian soldiers would be granted citizenship long before the descendants of blacks who fought and died in the American Revolution.
Good article, many more images
More images