{"id":9977,"date":"2015-08-29T11:44:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T15:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=9977"},"modified":"2015-08-29T11:44:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T15:44:03","slug":"jacob-lawrences-existential-sociology-im-at-amcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2015\/08\/jacob-lawrences-existential-sociology-im-at-amcon.html","title":{"rendered":"“Jacob Lawrence’s Existential Sociology”: I’m at AmCon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

reviewin\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u2026It\u2019s easy to read artists\u2014and maybe especially black artists\u2014as mere reporters. Or, worse, sociologists. And Jacob Lawrence\u2019s work does indeed have\u00a0many reportorial or sociological characteristics: He\u2019s racially conscious (and self-conscious about his role as a voice of his race), he\u2019s influenced by folk art, he\u2019s panoramic in his attempt to depict many layers of society. He has what The Wire<\/em> would call \u201cthe Dickensian element.\u201d These are all artistic choices he made that add to the power of \u201cMigration.\u201d To see it all in one room, all 60 stark yet brightly-colored panels, is to feel the sweep of history.<\/p>\n

But what stood out most when I saw the whole series was Lawrence\u2019s modern, existentialist sensibility: his sensitivity to modern loneliness. The great artistic tension in his work is the alternation between crowds and isolation.\u00a0There is room for individuality in some of \u201cMigration\u201d\u2018s crowds. In panel 6, showing a railway car crammed with migrants, a mother nurses her infant and a man prays by a woman\u2019s bunk. \u201cMigration\u201d is modern in its depiction of technology, the trains, and the machines\u2014panel 7 uses rushing colored lines, flaming and flowing, as abstract images of urban life and industrial work\u2014but it returns insistently to the inner human experience.<\/p>\n

One of the more unusual themes in \u201cMigration\u201d is the presence of modern loneliness and alienation in rural scenes as well as urban ones. We\u2019re used to bleak and inhuman depictions of skyscrapers and subway lines. But Lawrence gives us, in panel 8, Biblically-stark and leafless branches rising up from a flooded field\u2014nature\u2019s metonymy for the loneliness of bereft human beings. In panel 9 the delicate flowers of the cotton are attacked by giant boll weevils, against a jagged stylized background. The Southern trees are always spindly and contorted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewin\u2019: \u2026It\u2019s easy to read artists\u2014and maybe especially black artists\u2014as mere reporters. Or, worse, sociologists. 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