My 5 Favorite Paintings of 2009, Part 2
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...