MS01.01.03.B01.F13.009

8.

Let us now examine some of the styles and the content that are evident in other aspects of contemporary African-American art and define those symbols that tend to reinforce ethnic identity.
Jacob Lawrence is one of the best known and most widely collected black artist living in America. He has always found it necessary to relate his work to social and historical themes that involve people and events. He uses a simple portrayal of people to show the importance of lively forms with simple decoration. He has looked at history with the discerning eyes of a sensitive critic. His visual records in painted form touch upon our national and ancestral interests. It is obviously noticeable that Lawrence's paintings contain some of the visual symbols associated with man's protest against the intolerable conditions that often beset him. But his work also represents a reality that ties our own lives to history as reflected in the contemporary drama of living. He distinguishes himself, through his work, as an artist who is extremely sensitive to the conditions of life that face the black man in the context of universal man.