Lisa McShane Art

Jacob Lawrence, the Migration Series. "The factory owners had to find new workers to replace those who were marching off to war." At the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. I've always loved the abstraction and color of Jacob Lawrence's art but didn't know about the powerful migration series until I ran into the odd numbered panels at the Phillips Collection. The series consists of 60 panels painted in 1941. The odd numbers are displayed at the Phillips, the even numbers are owned by the MOMA. The images and story are powerful and I was inspired by his process of conception and planning. He planned the paintings as a series in advance to tell the story, his wife prepared the surfaces and Lawrence painted them in a series, working on several at once. He tells the entire story of the great migration: life in the south, lynchings, the difficulty of moving, the circumstances people found in the north. Here's the website for the series at the Phillips: http://w...

Picasso, Woman With Green Hat, 1939. This may be my favorite photo from the Phillips. I can't wait to go back there.

Chaim Soutine, Return from School After the Storm, circa 1939 This is a private museum, housed in a series of town houses in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of DC. This museum is a must - we loved it. It's an extraordinary collection of modern art, especially American modern art. Each painting is well signed with interesting information. I learned a lot. Jacob Lawrence is an African American artist who painted a series of 60 paintings in the 1940's, 'The Migration.' Half are here, half are at the Museum of Modern Art. Fantastic! Renoir's famous and fantastic Luncheon of the Boating Party is here. I had a print of this on my wall when I was a teenager. There's a small room with 4 Rothko paintings. As they explained, he intended his paintings to be experienced up close, in smaller rooms. It felt like a chapel.