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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Jacob Lawrence

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 2:05 PM

Confrontation at the Bridge

There's a room full of bodies on the third floor of Seattle Art Museum. It's a party in honor of Jacob Lawrence. The show is called Freeing the Figure, and it looks at three of his paintings in the context of other figurative work in the museum's permanent collection—Philip Guston's

Lawyers and Clients

disembodied feet and legs are here; Max Beckmann's rope dancers; Willem de Kooning's feral woman; Robert Colescott's "the one" (as in, night and day, you are); Fay Jones's woman trying to figure out why she'd possibly need a "rustic pine entertainment center."

Lawrence is the star. The show encourages you to consider his figures aside from their cultural context—the sociopolitical stuff we normally talk about when we talk about Lawrence. It's an easy thing to do; there's enough going on in Lawrence's work that it's not necessary to know what story or situation each piece specifically refers to.

Three of his paintings are in the show: Confrontation at the Bridge (1975), Struggle #2 (1965), and Lawyers and Clients (1994).

Struggle #2 is the starkest. It gives the purest impression of Lawrence's use of line—it's essentially a study in what happens when all kinds of lines come together.

Jacob Lawrence, The Struggle #2, 1965, ink and gouache on paper

Seattle Art Museum
Jacob Lawrence, The Struggle #2, 1965, ink and gouache on paper

And what happens! Lawrence can make a line that's smudgy and crayon-like. Smooth and silky as a new marker (look at the horse's ears). Graphite-sketchy. Buzzed and confident as a Matisse. There are almost no straight lines anywhere here; the single exception to that rule creates the central tension from which the rest of the wild movement of the painting flows: the constable's left side pulling on the horse's reins. There's no escaping comparison to this. The terrible, bloody hooves are coming down on five victims, but then a ghostly sixth face appears below the horse's huge back thigh. You could just keep looking at this, and just keep finding. Like: THE HANDS! See?