Jacob Lawrence, We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton . . . the night was excessively severe . . . which the men bore without the least murmur . . .—Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776, Panel 10, 1954, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003.414, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
SILVIA WALTNER: I am one of the happy SAM members who has had the opportunity to view the newly opened exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. Congratulations on securing SAM as the only venue in the West Coast!
I would be remiss if I did not start this conversation by asking you to tell us how it was that the long lost panel 28 came to be discovered and reunited with the rest of the group. It is such a great story, please share with us as many details as possible.
THERESA PAPANIKOLAS: Panel 28 hung in an Upper West Side residence for many years, until its owner saw a story on a neighborhood blog that another lost panel—panel 16—had recently resurfaced in a home not too far from hers. This motivated her to take a closer look at her painting, and when she did, she discovered that it was signed by Jacob Lawrence. The Struggle series was on view at the Met at the time, and when she Googled the exhibition she discovered that one of the missing panels was indeed hers.
Jacob Lawrence,. . . If we fail, let us fail like men, and expire together in one common struggle . . . —Henry Clay, 1813, Panel 23, 1956, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Collection of Harvey and Harvey‐Ann Ross, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
SW: While walking through the exhibition I really appreciated the layout and the fact that the small works were given lots of space on the museum walls. I thought this was a powerful way to present the series since it stands as a whole as well as individually. Can you comment on the curatorial process in designing the exhibition layout?
TP: We wanted the works to make sense as a series, but, given the large size of our Special Exhibition Gallery, we had the opportunity to treat each painting as a unique aesthetic experience. Add physical distancing recommendations into the mix, and you have a nicely spaced, yet still intimate, exhibition design.
SW: Among all the panels, I noticed a very minimalist panel, Panel 23 [. . . if we fail, let us fail like men, and expire together in one common struggle . . .—Henry Clay, 1813]. This mostly white and abstracted composition stands apart from the rest of the series, which is dominated by strong colors, bold lines and highly figurative content. Can you please talk about his technique and approach to painting? His use of color and line and how well these serve the message?
TP: Lawrence created the Struggle series in the mid‐1950s, during the heyday of the New York School. He also frequented the Museum of Modern Art, and he was highly educated in modernism. So while his work is strongly anchored in narrative and figuration, his style merges these with the languages of abstraction, and he made formal choices that bolster and add nuance to the stories he is telling. The title of Panel 23 comes from US Senator Henry Clay’s New Army Bill Speech, where Clay urged Congress to increase support for the war efforts against Britain so as to protect the troops from impressment. This scene of a lone, brutally murdered sailor—set off against ship’s sails rendered with only a few dashed lines—demonstrates the duality between figuration and abstraction in Lawrence’s work.
Barbara Earl Thomas, Grace, 2019, cutpaper and hand‐printed colorbacking, 40 x 26in., Courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery, photo: Spike Mafford.
SW: Seattle holds a special place in our heart for Jacob Lawrence as he taught for 13 years at the University of Washington and indeed passed away in his home in our city. So I guess it comes as no surprise that SAM has also a show by Barbara Earl Thomas one of his talented students. I was lucky enough to listen to Barbara explain this show via Zoom. Her passion and honesty as an artist and human being shine through. The show is simply exquisite and delicate given the media (paper cut outs) but I think it compliments beautifully the idea of struggle championed by Lawrence. Can you tell us how you see the dialogue between these two artists?
TP: Barbara was very close to Jacob Lawrence, and she is definitely present in the Struggle show, specifically in Derrick Adam’s installation, Jacob’s Ladder. Adams is one of three contemporary artists in the exhibition, and this particular work is an homage to Lawrence made up of a montage of photographs of the artist through the years, together with his studio chair, a record player, and a book from his library—all of which Barbara had kept. She also has a cameo in one of the photographs. That said, Barbara is also a highly significant artist in her own right, so while she graciously acknowledges her connection to Lawrence, it is important to hold her separate from his legacy, even though her exhibition at SAM happens to coincide with his.
CATHARINA MANCHANDA: Jacob Lawrence’s life‐long subject was the Black community in connection with American history and themes of labor and family. Black lives and community are equally important to Barbara Earl Thomas but her focus and aim is quite different. Since religion and mythology have been important in her life experience, these are themes that surface in her work. Lawrence’s modernist aesthetic, including his approach to abstraction, would have been of importance to Thomas but that’s only one artistic lineage from which Thomas draws. If you look closely, you will see that she references religious icons as much as contemporary Black portraiture. In recent years she developed a multi‐medium practice, her expertise as a printmaker merging with new insights gained from two glass residencies. The resulting works, including cut‐paper portraits, cut‐glass portraits, and candelabras, as well as her room‐filling filigree Tyvek installations, demonstrate her profound artistic development.
SW: I learned that the figures in Barbara’s pieces are real people from her life. As in the case of Jacob Lawrence, they are both telling stories in each panel; can you please explain her thought process as to what they represent and the message she is trying to send?
CM: The first portrait she made for this exhibition in 2019 was a newspaper photograph of young boys demonstrating against police violence. Grace was the resulting image. Subsequent portraits of children and teens (and two women) are based on photographs of members of her family and those of friends. The installation as a whole, centers on the symbolic significance associated with light and dark. Deeply rooted in religious and mythological contexts (good and evil, innocence and guilt), these values were applied to light and dark skin in the context of colonial history. They inform our perception of Black individuals, including children, to this day. The exhibition, The Geography of Innocence, undertakes the inversion of the values associated with light and dark that have dominated Western belief systems. Her cut‐paper portraits make the individuals appear illuminated, connecting to the visual repertoire of religious icons, and an adjacent gallery is transformed into a light‐filled space reminiscent of a chapel with altars.
SW: Thank you so much Theresa and Catharina, and again, congratulations on these remarkable exhibitions!
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