Although often classified with the "Regionalists", both these artists may be better seen as "Outsiders". They are NOT part of the American realist tradition, NOT concerned to create essentially American artform or style. Both ARE concerned to help found new society of universal humans, responsibly committed to each other regardless of social station or class. Both depict their cultures' struggles to free themselves from white oppression; and both create styles from historic components to express the distinctiveness of each culture and its real connection with the rest of humankind.
This page has some links to their work on the web. Beware if you study the texts accompanying the images - researchers of ethnic (and female) artists are often heavily agenda'd & unscrupulous with the data. There is no justification for this! Despise it, and shun it in your own work! Just to prove the point, see if you can find out when Lawrence really had his first solo exhibition! See if you can find out when the first African American art really was shown outside Harlem! See if you can find more than one example of Rivera using encaustic, which he supposedly revived. There is so much that is genuinely interesting and enlightening that can be discovered and said about these artists. Why waste time, why undermine their work, by perpetrating agenda'd drivel?? (Rant over)
Artistic Roots - supported by Alain Locke, America's first African American Rhodes Scholar, art critic, promoter and interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance. Locke believed in the universality of humankind and that this must be expressed as clearly as its superficial diversities. He promoted Cubism as a suitable style for people of African origin because he believed it to be derived from African art. Cubism was more universal than that, though, it was also derived from Palaeolithic art, Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek (pre-Classical) art, and it was wedded to a visual investigation into how the human brain deals with reality - the process of visual stimulus, codification and internal reassembly - what we do with reality before we culturally rationalise it. Cubism is possibly the most universal art approach ever invented.
Here are some classic Cubist pieces and comparative material:
Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, painted in 1908 but never exhibited till 1937 - but this is where he worked out the basics.
Braque, Violin and Pipe (Le Quotidien), 1913-14 - a collage (Synthetic Cubism), note emphasis on flatness, restricted colour range, and texture.
Picasso, Guernica, 1937 - horrid pic, but the copyright holders are fierce about web images. Nevertheless, see how Picasso changed his original Cubism to something flatter, more homogenized (parts thoroughly digested and mixed together), and thus more universal.
Making his name - two important series (gouache/tempera on ordinary page-sized paper), plus a couple of independent pieces. These series both featured in the 1941 exhibition in Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery, 1941, and the Migration series was also featured in colour by i>Fortune Magazine, the same year - and then went on a national tour organized by the Museum of Modern Art.
Lawrence, General Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1938 - portrait from the series. For info, here is the earliest known portrait of Toussaint l'Ouverture done from oral descriptions, not life.
Here are several more images from the Toussaint L'Ouverture series, from an Exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art, last year. And here is the story of the man.
Rain, 1937 (tenement family watching their roof leak)
Interior Scene, 1937 (brothel, drugs)
They were Very Poor and The female worker was one of the last gps to leave the south - both from The Migration of the Negro series, 1940-41.
Here are some more images from the Migration Series, courtesy of ArtsEdNet, plus one mentioned by Hughes, Another Cause was Lynching.
Established - a regular visitor to the Met, Lawrence admired Botticelli, Crivelli and Sheeler; and later worked with Joseph Albers (ex Bauhaus instructor, where he had also been a colleague of Lionel Feininger - who had influenced Sheeler & ultimately led to American Precisionism). Botticelli and Crivelli mostly painted in egg-tempera, and used the same layered tecnique when they painted in oil. Sheeler and many other American artists also painted in "tempera" - but used the direct technique proper to oil painting. Their "tempera" is really gouache, an opaque, non-runny watercolour paint.
Later life - in 1967, Lawrence became Professor of Art at the University of Washington in Seattle. Most unusually, he seems to have been brought in with tenure - a high compliment. New subject matter appears in his work, especially themes of building - shown as a flourishing community enterprise and often accompanied by comfortably Middle Class African American families - and he also reworked all his old history series in silk screen. Here's an example of the reworked Toussaint series (and the portrait again). By juxtaposing the history and the present in this way, he reaffirmed that original vision of Alain Locke and the Harlem Renaissance. A diverse yet universal humanity is indeed possible. He died last Christmas.
Head of a Woman, 1898 (aged 12) - a great pity this cannot be illustrated online. Nothing gives a clearer idea of his classical training and his real control of the pencil.
Nude Torso, 1926 - this one shows his tremendous drawing skills, both as a formalist and as an expressive artist.
Settling in Paris, Rivera moved with the artists Modigliani, Juan Gris, Picasso, and Mondrian - and tried his hand at all their approaches.
Sailor at Lunch, 1914 - this kind of Cubism so offended the other Cubists (and it certainly looks like a deliberate send-up) that his relationship with them ended. In any case, Rivera's Russian mistress (later his wife) had introduced him to Trotsky and thus changed his whole artistic orientation. Now, like the Communists, he took seriously art's social role in creating the ideological conditions necessary for building a new society.
So in 1920-21, Rivera went to Italy to look at the first ever "people's art" - the frescoes produced by the Late Gothic and Early Renaissance artists of Italy's revolutionary "city republics". Take a look:
Giotto, Arena Chapel, Lamentation, c.1308 - plain and simple, realistic and forceful: easy to understand by an uneducated populace.
Lorenzetti, Effects of Good Government - civil propaganda on the wall of the local town hall, oh yes. In this half, we see citizens of a well-run city-republic, healthy, wealthy, working, dancing ... The other half showed the effects on the agricultural countryside.
Gozzoli, Journey of Magi - quite a detail-oriented artist ("anecdotal"). Notice the handling of the background and the use of continuous narrative. Check out this wall too, and the background on this one. Rivera will weld this approach to Mexico's Mayan and Aztec artistic heritage. Some Mayan Frescoes
Botticelli, Mars & Venus - an allegory in which love conquers war. Notice Venus' posture.
After the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution, returned as contributory Marxist artist & educator.
Creation, Escuela Nacional Prepatoria, Mexico City - this first commission back in Mexico has all those influences very clearly showing.
Good Government, Admin Bldg, Independent University of Chapingo, 1921
Two Women & Child, oil, 1926 - compare the whole treatment of the figures with Giotto
The Totonac Civilization, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, 1950 - and this one with Gozzoli and Lorenzetti.
The Making of a Fresco, California School of Fine Arts, 1931
A visit to Russia in 1927 had reinforced Rivera's ideas on proletarian art. Note here the unification of the arts with each other and with society as they form an integral part of building the future and
generating economic wealth.
In 1929 Rivera agreed to become Director of the Central School of Fine Arts, Mexico City - and instituted a 15-year work-training program! But he was also expelled from the Mexican Communist Party, partly for accepting this post.
There followed a prolific career of fresco making in Mexico & America, including projects in California, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Mexico City.
There were also some interesting humorous works:
Self Portrait dedicated to Irene, 1941, is a restatement of a portrait by Botticelli.
Portrait of Natasha Gelman, oil, 1943, brings back Botticelli forcefully, not to mention, perhaps, O'Keeffe, and perhaps also that whole tradition of reclining (usually nude) females receiving flowers from admirers. Never let it be said! It's the Sailor at Lunch all over again ...
Dream of Sunday afternoon in Alameda Park, Alameda Hotel, 1947 (and a detail of himself with the skeleton) - some time after this, Rivera was diagnosed with cancer and died not long afterwards.
Both these artists convey meaning through their content, of course. But it is too easy to overlook the way both also convey meaning through the judicious choice of the components of their styles. Each component has a historic, political and/or geographical meaning, which resonates with the content to give it greater power.
