Harlem Renaissance Art

Jacob Lawrence was the first mainstream African American Artist of his time, his Migration pieces are my favorite. This artwork depicts the journey that African Americans took to get to America. Lawrence talks about how as a young child although he studied American history he never learned about African American History, he said that is was impossible to talk about American History without involving the African American. He used these pieces to tell that story, and although not one particular piece stood out to me collectively they were very powerful. In these paintings Lawrence gives us just a fragment of the full picture and we as observers are supposed to take it and decode it. This element of modernity is quite common through his Migration pieces almost as if he is telling a story.