Images Of The Great Migration

http://plinth.co/jacob-lawrence-migration-series/

The Migration Series Panel 1
Jacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
phillipscollection.org

Hello Everyone:

Today blogger is going to dip her toes back into the art pool again.  Last week we chatted about Chris Burden's architectural sensibility and this week we are going to look at The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence, a series of tempera painting depicting the northern migration of African-Americans in the twentieth century.  Each panel presents images of African-Americans as "...they abandoned the rural south after World War I for cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago.  Lawrence's angular, starkly colorful scenes detail the difficult but momentarily hopeful quest for better opportunities and lives."   This came to be known as "The Great Migration" and lasted from 1915 to 1960.  The panels reside at Phillips Collection in Washington D.C and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; will be exhibited together in 2016.  Caitlin Kearney's article for plinth.co titled "Giving New Voice to Communal History in Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series," is a thoughtful review of the late painter's vivid portrayals of one the great mass migrations in American history.

Jacob Lawrence 1917-2000
punkwasp

Who was Jacob Lawrence?  Jacob Lawrence (1917-200) was a painter and storyteller, born in Atlantic City, New Jersey to parents who moved from the South for a better life in the North.  In 1930, the painter arrived in New York City and quickly discovered art as a form of expression.  His education was both informal-observing the activities of Harlem-and formal-through after school programs at the Utopia House and the Harlem Art Workshop.  At both centers, Mr. Lawrence studied with prominent painter, Charles Alston, and eventually became immersed in the cultural whirl of the Harlem Renaissance.  He received a scholarship to the American Artists School, quickly gaining notice for his dramatic and vivid presentations of contemporary African-American urban life.  These images were rendered in "crisps shapes, bright colors, dynamic patterns, and through revealing posture and gestures."  In 1941, he married fellow painter Gwendolyn Knight, the same year The Migration of the Negro debuted at the Downtown Gallery.  He was the first artist of color to be represented by a major gallery.  The success of the exhibit gave him national notoriety.  Jacob Lawrence remained active until his death in 2000.  (http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/lawrence-bio.htm)

The Migration Series Panel 3
Jacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
phillipscollection.org

Caitlin Kearney writes, "During my recent visit to view the Phillips half of The Migration Series, I was struck by the cinematic quality of the paintings and their ability to convey movement, carrying the viewer through both physical and emotional landscapes."  The panels are not large, just slightly bigger than a regular sheet of paper-12"x18," drawing the viewer into the scene and becoming part of the narrative.  Images of empty landscapes and cityscapes are mixed with dense scenes of human activity.  The figures moves restlessly from the rural to urban settings; farms through train station to tenements, giving the story a cyclical quality.  As a new wave of migrants come north while established travelers discover the hardships and discrimination of their new surroundings.

The Migration Series Panel 11
Jacob Lawrence 1940-41
nytimes.com

An introductory paragraph serves as the lone supporting text on the gallery walls accompanying the images.  In the middle of the room, visitors can find guides to the painting as well as short captions for each scene, provided by Mr. Lawrence.  The emphasis on the visual over the written in The Migration Series is, according to Ms. Kearney, "...powerful and brings up interesting questions about the relationship between various modes of historical storytelling, witnessing and remembrance."

Jacob Lawrence's pictorial interpretation of events, places, and emotions, are threaded through the migration experience and "...provides a shared memory of, and for, a people and culture."  The series becomes a voice that retell the collective history of communal life.  The narrative strength of the series resembles oral history-a cultural history written in a non-textual format, preserving it and passing it down.

The collection, all sixty panels, is currently housed in New York City and Washington D.C. and their reunion will accompanied by an online initiative that will reunite the series in a more modern format.  The Phillips Museum also plans to launch a Jacob Lawrence microsite over the summer, in conjunction with the exhibit.  The museum is also planing to include video interviews with Mr. Lawrence, accessible to the public, as well as posting archival biographical information.  The public will be able to listen to the painter's own voice, used as a form of oral history, adding dimension to The Migration Series-its creation and the events it presents.  The small size of each panel gives each image a palpable scene of first person intimacy, as if Jacob Lawrence is traveling along with the people capturing each moment, even though he was not a participant in "The Great Migration."

The Migration Series Panel 19
Jacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
phillipscollection.org

The Phillips Collection launched a website dedicated to the series (http://www.phillipscollection.org/migration_series/) in 2013 featuring biographical information and his working method.  Caitlin Kearney writes, "Lawrence himself was born in New Jersey.  His parents, however, were part of the northward journey that The Migration Series remember, and I like to imagine his parents passing down an oral account of that family history to Lawrence."  Words became pictures.  His own acknowledgments of community and culture transcending the generations tell us of shared experience and personalizes it with his own family's history.  Ms. Kearney uses the analogy of the biblical Exodus-the Israelites escaping Egyptians and their quest for a Promised Land.  This analogy seems appropriate because The Migration Series tells the shared tale of "...journey and escape from oppression..."  Being able to listen to the artist's own voice has the potential to add greater dimension of the individual narrative to the anonymous faces.

The new microsite will feature all the panel of The Migration Series, in chronological order high-resolution image (not grainy thumbnail images currently on the museum website).  By bringing together the full collection online makes sense because it allows the viewer to fully experience this part of American history.  Further, the digital presentation allows for newer platforms of dissemination and conservation.  The online presentation gives The Migration Series a sense of clarity to otherwise transient works, giving them a sense of permanence, despite the sense of motion in the pictures.

The Migration Series is wonderful collection of intimate painting that tell the history of one of greatest internal migration of people in American history.  The story of "The Great Migration" is part of the history of cities across the United States.  Jacob Lawrence's panels tell us that story in vivid images that depict joy, sadness, struggle, and success.  They bring to life a story of hope for a better life.