Seachange Series
Norman Lewis, Block Island, oil on canvas, 1975. Sold October 6, 2016 for $245,000.
Block Island, oil on canvas, 1975, a radiant blue composition of curvilinear forms, was the first work on canvas from Norman Lewis’s Seachange series to come to auction, in 2016. Each piece in the series—the last major body of work by Lewis—is identifiable by undulating shapes surrounded by deep hues, drawing abstraction from the rhythms of nature. The paintings largely date from 1975-77, though the artist began making Seachange paintings as early as 1968, and continued to explore it throughout the 1970s, until his death in 1979.
Norman Lewis, Block Island, oil on canvas, 1973-75. Sold April 4, 2019 for $389,000.
An earlier version of Block Island, oil on canvas, 1973-75, was sold in 2019. Lewis clearly revisited the canvas as it bears a pair of signatures and dates of 1973 and 1975. The work initially predates his Seachange series, but it is clear that Lewis returned to the painting as he began to fully explore the more abstract compositions of vibrating, concentric circles that began to define the series in 1975.
Engaging Line and Space
One of the most distinctive aspects of the abstract painting style that Lewis developed is his use of line. His brush strokes are wispy and energetic, even lyrical, and yet they possess an architectonic structure that endows them with a sense of strength and weight. He employed this element in such a way that his lines created relationships with each other, implying the presence of forms rather than describing literal objects in space. In paintings like “Street Musicians” (1948), a congregation of lines occupies the center ground of the canvas, surrounded by a pinkish, atmospheric haze. The painting is fully abstract, and yet because of the way the space is divided it seems as though it is a picture of something recognizable. The linear patterns in the middle of the canvas suggest the appearance of actual musicians, perhaps shattered into a Cubist multi-verse of perspectives and planes. But this is not a picture of musicians. This is more of an expression of the the energy and emotion of music played on the street; the excitement of notes piercing space, and the carnival of colors and sounds as they fill the air.
Norman Lewis — Florence, 1947. Oil on Masonite. 14 x 18 in. Private collection. The Estate of Norman W. Lewis, Courtesy of Iandor Fine Arts, New Jersey.
In addition to his use of line, Lewis also developed a distinctive and highly effective method of engaging with visual space. His were not “all-over” paintings like the paintings of Jackson Pollock, covering every inch of the canvas with brush marks in such a way that no part of the canvas deserved more attention than any other part. Rather, Lewis gave viewers something to focus on within the pictorial space, even if the subject of their focus was abstract. In “Green Mist” (1948), he achieved this by blending techniques in such a way that the eye was intuitively drawn to the center of the canvas. On the outer edge of the canvas, the paint is smudged and smoothed by hand to create the sensation of an atmospheric green cloud, while in the center of the image, crisp, calligraphic lines suggest that something concrete is present, or perhaps evolving within the mystery of the visual space.
Norman Lewis — Crossing, 1948. Oil on canvas. 25 x 54 in. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. The Estate of Norman W. Lewis, Courtesy of Iandor Fine Arts, New Jersey.
Абстракция
Джаз-группа (1948)
В конце 1940-х его работы становились все более абстрактными. Его полное увлечение абстрактным экспрессионизмом было частично связано с его разочарованием в Америке после военного опыта во Второй мировой войне. Казалось крайне лицемерным, что Америка борется «против врага, идеология господствующей расы которого находит отклик у себя дома в факте разделения вооруженных сил». Видя, что искусство не способно изменить политическое состояние общества, он решил, что люди должны больше развивать свои эстетические навыки, а не сосредотачиваться на политическом искусстве. Многоквартирный дом I (1952), Гарлем становится белым (1955), и Ночной ходок № 2 (1956) все примеры его стиля. Звуки сумерек (1947) и Джаз-бэнд (1948) являются примерами его интереса к передаче музыки.
Одна из его самых известных картин, Мигрирующие птицы (1954), выиграл Народную премию на Музей Карнеги 1955 год Carnegie International Выставка New York Herald-Tribune назвав картину «одним из самых значительных событий художественного 1955 года». Его фирменный стиль тех десятилетий включал повторяющиеся идеографические или иероглифические элементы, которые позволяли Льюису включать повествовательные последовательности в свои картины.
Он заинтересовался движением абстрактного экспрессионизма и начал посещать встречи в Studio 35 с Бешеные, на чердаке по адресу 35 East Eighth Street, Манхэттен. Он был единственным присутствующим афроамериканцем, и именно на этих встречах он встречался Дэвид Смит, Ад Рейнхардт, Марк Тоби, и Ричард Липпольд. Однако Льюис не полностью принял движение абстрактного экспрессионизма, потому что «оно не одобряло всех художников одинаково», и он боролся с получением коллекционеров и музеев, несмотря на свои награды и престижную выставочную историю. Норман Льюис был единственным афроамериканским художником из первого поколения абстрактных экспрессионистов, но его работы не заметили ни белые, ни афроамериканские арт-дилеры и владельцы галерей.
За последние 20 лет Льюис создал и развил свое уникальное сочетание абстракции и фигурации. Его ритмичные линии и формы теперь намекали на фигуры, движущиеся через его слои цветов. «Без названия» (около 1957 г.) показывает переход Льюиса от чистой абстракции к новому подходу, сочетающему абстракцию с фигурацией.
Группа художников Спираль (1963-1965)
Льюис был одним из основателей Spiral, группы художников и писателей, которые регулярно встречались с 1963 по 1965 год, в том числе Чарльз Алстон, Romare Bearden, и Хейл Вудрафф. Группа встретилась, «чтобы обсудить потенциал чернокожих художников в решении вопросов расового равенства и борьбы в 1960-х через свою работу»
Группа «Спираль» распалась в 1965 году в результате дискриминации группы, и Льюис считал, что протесты — лучший способ привлечь внимание и разобраться с социальными проблемами, чем живопись
Несмотря на недолгое существование Spiral, он оказал большое влияние на мир искусства, поскольку привлек внимание ко многим проблемам расового неравенства, существовавшим в то время. Например, из-за непрекращающегося протеста Spiral и других групп против вызывающей споры выставки 1968 года «Гарлем в моих мыслях» в Метрополитен-музее чернокожие стали более заметными в мире искусства
До этой выставки в Метрополитене ничего не было о культурном центре Нью-Йорка Гарлеме. Гарлем известен своим искусством и музыкой, но на этой выставке не было саморепрезентации этого из окрестностей, а вместо этого она была составлена из фотографий людей, которые там жили, которые сделал не гарлемитский фотограф.
Позже работа
В 1969 году Льюис основал галерею Cinque в Нью-Йорке вместе с Romare Bearden и Эрнест Кричлоу. В том же году он протестовал перед MoMA из-за весьма неоднозначной выставки. Гарлем в моих мыслях.
Его более поздние работы включают Алабама II (1969), Частичное видение (1971), и Пришествие Нового Света (1971), а также серию под названием Морское изменение сделано в его последние годы.
С 1965 по 1971 год он преподавал искусство в Гарлемской программе «Молодежь в действии». Он начал преподавать в Лига студентов-художников Нью-Йорка с 1972 года и работал там до своей смерти в 1979 году.
Works on Paper
Norman Lewis, Untitled (Processional Figure Composition), oil, pen and ink on paper, 1956. Sold April 7, 2016 for $87,500.
In addition to Lewis’s canvas paintings, the artist also created a number of paintings on paper throughout his career—the largest measuring 26″ x 40″. Swann has offered a number of these large works, including Processional Figure Composition, 1956, which sold in April 2016 for $87,500. The oil, pen and ink work on paper is a superb example of the artist’s evolving calligraphy of “little figures” in the mid-1950s. In February 2010 Swann sold Midnight Carnaval, 1960, for $55,200. The watercolor, pen and ink drawing is a culmination of Lewis’s inventive calligraphy of small dancing figures that can be seen in Processional Figure Composition and his other works on paper through the 1950s.
Norman Lewis, Blue Moon, oil on paper, 1960. Sold April 4, 2019 for $62,500.
Blue Moon, 1960, which sold in April 2019 for $62,500, is an elegant oil on paper and a significant example of his mid-career works on paper. Created on the largest size paper that Lewis would use, the vertical composition is a soaring abstraction based on the phases of the moon. Nocturnal subjects can be seen repeated throughout the artist’s career.
Lewis went on to receive a grant from the Mark Rothko Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His first comprehensive museum retrospective, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, traveled across America in late 2015 through early 2017. His works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Museum of Fine Art, Boston among many others.
Norman Lewis in the 1950s
Norman Lewis, Untitled, oil on canvas, 1956. Sold April 5, 2018 for $725,000.
Norman Lewis, Cathedral, oil on canvas, 1950.Sold April 2, 2015 for $317,000.
In 1956, Lewis was selected to represent the United States in American Artists Paint the City, an exhibition of 46 works by 36 artists in the American pavilion during the 28th Venice Biennale. Lewis joined fellow Willard Gallery artists Lyonel Feininger and Mark Tobey—he and Jacob Lawrence were the only African-American artists included, and his 1950 composition Cathedral, oil on canvas, was exhibited there. By 1957, Norman Lewis had gained national recognition, having had a series of well-received solo exhibitions at the Marian Willard Gallery, New York.
Norman Lewis’s stature was soon recognized with his inclusion in the 1951 Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. However, Lewis was conspicuously not included in the famous Irascibles photograph published in LIFE magazine that year despite his involvement with the group of Abstract Expressionists. In 1955, Lewis’s Migrating Birds, oil on canvas, 1954, won the Popular Prize at the Carnegie International Exhibition, making him the first African-American artist to receive the award.
Norman Lewis, Untitled, oil on canvas, circa 1958. Sold December 15, 2015, for $965,000, a record for the artist.
A large oil on canvas dating to about 1958 was rediscovered in 2015. A masterful midcentury composition that had never been publicly exhibited, it revealed yet another dimension to his late-1950s body of abstraction—a series of larger canvases that he painted after a trip to Europe and North Africa in 1957. In this painting, Lewis continued his investigation of “ritual” calligraphic figures while moving further toward color field painting. Here, Lewis both reveals and obscures a large, dense composition of his figures with a limited palette by deftly balancing the warm beige color of the linen canvas with washes of a warm white. The figures, comprised of more modernist shapes, and less of his frenetic calligraphic line, confirm Lewis’s inspiration from his European experience.
Norman Lewis, Untitled, oil on canvas, circa 1957. Sold October 3, 2013 for $581,000.
The muted field is a stark contrast to his intensely colored circa-1957 oil on canvas that sold at Swann in 2013. Similarly, this bold blue composition was also previously unrecorded and unexhibited.
Summary of Norman Lewis
Norman Lewis, a leading African-American painter, was an important member of the Abstract Expressionism movement, and he also used representational strategies to focus on black urban life and his community’s struggles. Lewis’s work is characterized by the duality of abstraction and representation, using both geometric and natural forms, in the depiction of both the city and natural world, and expressing both righteous anger and joyous celebration. His paintings are singled out for their linear, calligraphic lines, along with his bright, expressive palette and atmospheric effects. Unlike other Abstract Expressionists, his technique and content never wholly gave over to the subjective. Often overlooked in art history studies, there has been a renaissance of interest in Lewis’s oeuvre since the 1990s.
Useful Resources on Norman Lewis
Books
websites
articles
video clips
More
Books
The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.
paintings
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Norman Lewis: A RetrospectiveOur Pick
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From the Margins: Lee Krasner | Norman Lewis, 1945-1952Our Pick
By Norman L. Kleeblatt, Stephen Brown, Lisa Saltzman, Amanda Bagneris
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25 Highly Important Paintings by Norman Lewis
By Norman Lewis -
Beauford Delaney & Norman Lewis: Abstractionist Visions
By Bill Hodges Gallery
websites
articles
video clips
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The Spiral Group
Although his decision to explore the universal aspects of aesthetics rather than realistic portrayals of the Black struggle in America did little to raise his profile amongst dealers or collectors, it did bring Lewis into the company of other Black American artists who shared his belief in the importance of aesthetic achievement. On 5 July 1963, he was invited to the studio of Romare Bearden to join Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, James Yeargans, Felrath Hines, Richard Mayhew and William Pritchard to form a collective known as The Spiral Group. The group was dedicated to promoting aesthetic mastery and cultural universalities. They met regularly to discus the ways realistic depictions of racial inequality did or did not help Black Culture, and to study how excellence in the realm of “common aesthetic problems” might do more to raise the cultural status and increase the influence of Black artists in America.
Norman Lewis — Jazz Band, 1948. Incised on black coated masonite board. 20 x 23 7/8 in. Private collection. The Estate of Norman W. Lewis, Courtesy of Iandor Fine Arts, New Jersey
The name Spiral Group was suggested by Hale Woodruff. It was a reference to the Greek mathematician Archimedes, whose “screw” spiraled “upward in ever broader circles, as its symbol of progress.” Although some of the painters in The Spiral Group made figurative work, their wholehearted embrace of the potentialities of abstraction was groundbreaking, especially for Black American art. It laid the groundwork for artists like sculptor Richard Hunt, whose solo exhibition in 1971 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was only the third solo exhibition by a Black artist in the history of MoMA, and the first by an abstract artist. It also brought into sharp focus the unfortunate reality that in America there never has been only one art world, but multiple art worlds competing for recognition and influence rather than cooperating towards common cultural goals. Norman Lewis and the other members of The Spiral Group laid the groundwork for something better: an approach to art that is not only universal, but unifying.
Click here to read more about this artist who became a voice in Abstract Expressionism.
Смерть и наследие
В 1975 году он женился на своей давней подруге Уиде Брамвелл. У него никогда не было собственных детей, но он был отцом Тарина Фуллера, дочери Брэмвелла.
Он неожиданно скончался 27 августа 1979 года в возрасте 70 лет в Нью-Йорке.
Его работа включала картины, рисунки и фрески. Хотя он был представлен галереей Уилларда, его единственной галереей, и он был удостоен множества наград и хороших отзывов, его работы продавались далеко не так хорошо, как другие абстрактные экспрессионисты, с которыми он выставлялся, например, Марк Тоби или же Марк Ротко. Он не был включен в важные публикации абстрактного экспрессионизма того времени, в том числе Триумф американской живописи: история абстрактного экспрессионизма (1970) и Нью-Йоркская школа: художники и скульпторы пятидесятых годов (1978) автор Ирвинг Сэндлер и никогда не упоминается в трудах Доре Эштон.
Accomplishments
- Lewis ceased painting Social Realist works in the early 1940s because he found the style was not effective to counter racism. He saw abstraction as a strategy to distance himself from racial artistic language, as well as the stereotypes of his time. Abstraction proved an important means to both artistic freedom and personal discovery.
- One marker of Lewis’s work is his frequent use of the color black, which appears to predate that of his friend and fellow artist Ad Reinhardt. However, for an artist who was concerned with race and racism in America, painting during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s, it’s hard not to see social commentary in his choice of palette.
- Lewis garnered important gallery representation and was involved with several key events of the Abstract Expressionist movement, this despite the racism of the art world and American segregation of the 1940s and 1950s.
Библиография
Перечислены по возрастающей дате:
Художественные портфолио
Впечатления: Наш мир, Том I (портфель из семи офортов — пять с акватинтой, два с тиснением). Эмма Амос, Бенни Эндрюс, Вивиан Браун, Эльдзер Кортор, Норман Льюис, Винсент Смит, Джон Уилсон (все были сотрудниками художников) (35 изд.). Нью-Йорк, Нью-Йорк: Мастерская гравюры. 1974.CS1 maint: другие (связь).mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:»»»»»»»‘»»‘»}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(«//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg»)right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(«//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg»)right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(«//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg»)right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(«//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg»)right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}
- «Норман У. Льюис, Второй переход: 1947-1951», 1994, Галерея Билла Ходжеса.
- Иннисс, Сьюзен (2002). Норман У. Льюис — Линейные абстракции (каталог выставки). Нью-Йорк, Нью-Йорк: Галерея Билла Ходегса. ISBN 1-891978-16-0.
- Норман Льюис: Одиссея художника 1935-1979. Нью-Йорк, Нью-Йорк: Галерея Билла Ходжеса. 2009 г. ISBN 978-1891978265.
- Актон, Дэвид; Хорошо, Рут (2015). Шествие: искусство Нормана Льюиса (каталог выставки). Андрианна Кэмпбелл (Автор), Дэвид С. Дрискелл (Соавтор), Жаклин Фрэнсис (соавтор), Хелен М. Шеннон (соавтор), Джеффри С. Стюарт (соавтор). Пенсильванская академия изящных искусств (PAFA), Калифорнийский университет Press. ISBN 978-0520288003.
- Кэмпбелл, Адрианна; Осима, Тэцуя (2018). Норман Льюис: Взгляд на восток. Коламбусский колледж искусства и дизайна, Галерея Майкла Розенфельда.
From the Margin to the Art Market Center
Born in Harlem in 1909, Norman Lewis developed as a painter as the New York Modern Art scene grew. He first studied art during the Harlem Renaissance under the sculptor Augusta Savage. Lewis became a painting instructor at the Harlem Community Art Center during the WPA, and painted social realist subjects during the Depression.
Birds in Flight, oil and metallic paint on canvas, 1953. Sold October 6, 2016 for $149,000.
Norman Lewis’s stature was soon recognized with his inclusion in the 1951 Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. However, Lewis was conspicuously not included in the famous Irascibles photograph published in LIFE magazine that year. In 1955, Lewis’s Migrating Birds, oil on canvas, 1954, won the Popular Prize at the Carnegie International Exhibition, making him the first African-American artist to receive the award.
Block Island, oil on canvas, 1975. Sold October 6, 2016 for $245,000.
Block Island, a radiant blue composition of curvilinear forms, is the first work on canvas from Norman Lewis’s Seachange series to come to auction. Each oil on paper and canvas in the series is identifiable by undulating shapes surrounded by deep hues, drawing abstraction from the rhythms of nature. The works in the series date from 1975-77, though the artist began this series of works as early as 1968, and continued to explore it throughout the 1970s until his passing in 1979.
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Left: Untitled, oil on masonite board, 1947. Sold April 7, 2016 for $149,000.
Right: Untitled (Abstracted Figures), oil, 1962. Sold October 6, 2016 for $68,750.
Untitled, oil on linen canvas, circa 1958. Sold December 15, 2015 for $965,000.
Norman Lewis’s large Untitled, oil on canvas, circa 1958, is a recently re-discovered and important painting. A masterful mid-century composition that has never been publicly exhibited, it reveals yet another dimension to his late 1950s body of abstraction–a series of larger canvases that he painted after a trip to Europe and North Africa in 1957. In this painting, Lewis continues his investigation of the «ritual» calligraphic figures while moving further toward color field painting.
Here, Lewis both reveals and obscures a large, dense composition of his figures with a limited palette by deftly balancing the warm beige color of the linen canvas with washes of a warm white. The figures, comprised of more modernist shapes, and less of his frenetic calligraphic line, confirm Lewis’s inspiration from his European experience.
Untitled, oil on linen canvas, circa 1957. Sold October 3, 2013 for $581,000.
The muted field is a stark contrast to his intensely colored Untitled, oil on canvas, circa 1957, which realized $581,000 at Swann on October 3, 2013, setting a record for the artist at auction. Similarly, this bold blue composition was also previously unrecorded and unexhibited.
Untitled (Cloud Break), oil on paper, 1964. Sold April 7, 2016 for $33,800.
Left: Untitled, oil on canvas, circa 1960-64. Sold October 7, 2008 for $312,000.
Currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Right: Cathedral, oil on canvas, 1950. Sold April 2, 2015 for $317,000.
In 1956, Lewis was selected to represent the United States in American Artists Paint the City, an exhibition of 46 works by 36 artists in the American pavilion during the 28th Venice Biennale. Lewis joined fellow Willard Gallery artists Lyonel Feininger and Mark Tobey; he and Jacob Lawrence were the only African-American artists included, and his 1950 composition Cathedral was exhibited there. By 1957, Norman Lewis had gained national recognition, having had a series of well-received solo exhibitions at the Marian Willard Gallery, New York.
Untitled (Processional Figure Composition), oil, pen and ink on paper, 1956. Sold April 7, 2016 for $87,500.
Lewis went on to receive a grant from the Mark Rothko Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A recent exhibition of Lewis’s work at The Jewish Museum in New York contrasted him with a contemporary, the Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner. The first comprehensive museum retrospective of Norman Lewis will be held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum from November 2015 through April 2016.
Norman Lewis, Birds, oil on canvas, 1950. Sold February 16, 2012 for $108,000.
This is an archived post. For more information on Norman Lewis works at Swann, visit our blog, or contact a specialist in our African American Art department.
Соцреализм и фигуративная работа
Льюис начал свою карьеру в 1930 году. соцреализм. Сначала он рисовал то, что видел, в диапазоне от Место встречи (1930), сцена обмена и Желтая шляпа (1936), формальный Кубист живопись, чтобы Обездоленный (1940), сцена выселения и Джазовые музыканты (1948), визуальное изображение бибоп музыка, которая звучала в Гарлеме. Его соцреализм был написан в «откровенно образном стиле, изображающем очереди за хлебом, выселения и жестокость полиции».
Льюис сказал, что он изо всех сил пытался выразить социальный конфликт в своем искусстве, но в более поздние годы сосредоточился на эстетике по своей сути. «Целью художника должно быть эстетическое развитие, — сказал он историку искусства Келли Джонс, — и, в общем смысле, внести свой собственный вклад в культуру».