Jacob Lawrence at DC Moore

Back in the 1940 Jacob Lawrence was considered the greatest in quantity important black artist in America. During this period Lawrence produc "The Migration Series," a visual saga of epic proportions that station down in advanced pictorial turn of expression the African-American diaspora to America's northern cities. by dint of decade's end, Lawrence had begun exploring another fertile theme: the "Builders," a rich humanistic make submissive he would return to again and again completely through his career. In September 1998 Lawrence finished 12 novel gouache-on-paper paintings on the make subordinate of the "Builders"--works whose special mission it is to be under the orders of as reflections on the stubborn reliance of human agency.

Lawrence has parole publicly of his childhood fascination with the local carpenters he grew up with in Harlem. This early interest in carpentry l Lawrence to gather tools for their innate esthetic interest, plenteous as the poet Pablo Neruda obsessively gathered the figureheads of ships. "Many hand tools haven't changed for centuries," Lawrence has said of the tools he depicts in his "Builders" series. "You direct the eye back on paintings of the early Renaissance and you diocese exactly the same tool; it hasn't changed. It's like an extension of the hand."

Another measure of valuable continuity is Lawrence's essential style: the "dynamic cubism" of his flat, cartoonlike shapes, his use of primary colors, the characteristic tilt in perspective that channels activity and movement into his compositions--attributes shared by means of every one of the gouaches in this exhibition.

Broadly suggesting notions of the social, works like as Four Men (1998) and Stained Glass Windows (1994) depict clusters of smiling, struggling laborers engaged in what is, essentially, a collective experience. on the other hand many of the images portray single carpenters, repeatedly captured in highly symbolic postures Man With Still Life (1998) a case in point, pictures a solitary figure straining toward tools and a goblet of fruit, both of which are just on the outside of reach. Other paintings, including Builder With a Pear (1998) and Man With Beard (1998) underline more personal belong tos evoking the ideals of striving, balance and wisdom--notions traditionally the province of the single reflective mind.

Conceived as a cohesive material substance of work, the paintings in the exhibition were execut simultaneously to make sure a maximum of consistency. Not surprisingly, they share among them Lawrence's essential philosophy, nurtur by dint of a lifelong commitment to the values of humanism and pictorial exploration.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group