Jacob Lawrence : the American struggle / edited by Elizabeth Hutton Turner and Austen Barron Bailly ; with contributions by Derrick Adams, Sandy Alexandre [and 35 others].
"This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts"--Title page verso. Exhibition itinerary: Peobody Essex Museum, January 18-April 26, 2020; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 2-September 7, 2020; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, October 17, 2020-January 10, 2021; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, February 25-May 31, 2021; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, June 26-September 19, 2021. Includes bibliographical references (pages 178-180) and index.
Contents:
'I, too, sing America' / Steve Locke -- Reading history : recovering Jacob Lawrence's lost American narrative / Elizabeth Hutton Turner -- To and from Decatur Street : Jacob Lawrence's Brooklyn and the War of 1812 Struggle panels / Austen Barron Bailly -- Struggle : from the History of the American people : the panels -- History forward : Jacob Lawrence's Struggle series and contemporary art / Lydia Gordon -- Contemporary artists statements and plates / Bethany Collins, Hank Willis Thomas, Derrick Adams -- Jacob Lawrence and the Struggle years : a chronology -- Jacob Lawrence's research for the Struggle series -- Titling Jacob Lawrence's Struggle paintings : captions and inscriptions.
Summary:
This publication sets the precedent for the next generation of Lawrence scholars and studies in modern and contemporary discourse. The American Struggle explores Jacob Lawrence's radical way of transforming history into art by looking at his thirty panel series of paintings, Struggle ... from the History of the American People (1954-56). Essays by Steven Locke, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Austen Barron Bailly, and Lydia Gordon mark the historic reunion of this series--seen together in this exhibition for the first time since 1958. In entries on the panels, a multitude of voices responds to the episodes representing struggle from American history that Lawrence chose to activate in his series. The American Struggle reexamines Lawrence's lost narrative and its power for twenty-first century audiences by including contemporary art and artists. Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas invite us to reconsider history through themes of struggle in ways that resonate with Lawrence's artistic invention. Statements by these artists amplify how they and Lawrence view history not as distant period of the past but as an active imaginative space that is continuously questioned in the present tense and for future audiences.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.