Black magic

Norman Lewis's powerful social commentaries on canvas

by Leon Nigrosh

NORMAN LEWIS: BLACK PAINTINGS, 1946-1977 At the Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut, through June 27.

In the early 1950s, Norman Lewis (1909-1979) was one of the founders of the New York School of Abstract

Expressionism, and the single African-American painter to be included with his peers Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell.

This core group, along with action painter Willem DeKooning and color field artist Mark Rothko, laid the foundation for what was to become a uniquely American style of painting that dominated the art world for more than a quarter of a century.

Although his paintings may not have sustained the same amount of sales and critical acclaim as his comrades, Lewis did receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim fellowship and provided inspiration for the next generation of painters through his years teaching at Harlem Youth in Action and at the Art Students League in New York City.

In an effort to revitalize interest in Lewis's seminal abstract works, the Wadsworth Atheneum, in conjunction with the Studio Museum in Harlem, has assembled 45 of his "Black Paintings," which he produced from 1946 to 1977.

Prior to that time, Lewis thought of himself as a social realist painter, devoting his energies to creating figurative paintings that depicted the black struggle to survive during America's pre- and post-Depression years. Unable to gain any results through these paintings, Lewis believed it was "a waste of time" and turned to union organizing and picketing to help foment social change. From then on, he kept his social action separate from his painting; and he was able to concentrate on the formal aspects of his craft: color, line, visual texture, scale, and most important -- the paint itself.

In the earlier works featured in the exhibit, such as Metropolitan Crowd, we can see that Lewis attempted to break away from his previous figurative style by producing "allover" paintings in much the same way that Jackson Pollock did, only instead of splashing on the myriad colors, Lewis uses fluid brush strokes as evidence of his vigorous actions across a black field.

Lewis's "Black" paintings are rarely all black, like those which became Reinhardt's hallmark in the late '50s. Instead, he uses his shades of black to intensify areas of color as in his 1948 Tenement and the 1966 Playtime. The early work is little more than small rectangles of bright color spread vertically across the darkened canvas. But once the title is known, we suddenly see random windows alight in the night. The latter work is a blaze of rainbow color splashed over a six-foot black canvas. Executed in his signature drybrush technique, this work alludes to Lewis's love of jazz and the power it has to stir emotions.

During the turbulent '60s, Lewis produced a number of all black-and-white canvases which, while still Abstract Expressionist in approach, contained triangles and crosses that were unmistakably the symbols of the Klansmen. In other works, such as Processional, the dry white slashes clearly connote marchers, either in Alabama or Washington, DC. This was one rare occasion when Lewis allowed his humanist sensibilities to insinuate themselves into his otherwise apolitical paint.

As he neared the end of his life, Lewis completed work that was totally abstract -- and more colorful. He returned to his real love, the ocean (he was a merchant sailor before he became a painter) and produced long, rectangular canvases like Ebb Tide and Seachange VIII. Here, we can see horizon lines, clouds, and sky, as white seashell-like ovoids tumble slowly across the foreground.

If Lewis's "Black Paintings" can be compared to those of any other artist, rather than search through his contemporaries, perhaps we should look back nearly 200 years to Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), whose own "Black Paintings" depicted the witches and demons that populated his private obsessions. He, like Lewis, decried the social injustices of his day -- the vanity of the clergy, the Inquisition, and the oppression of the working people -- and, like Lewis, felt powerless to effect change. Both men then concentrated their dynamism in the pursuit of their personal vision of artistic perfection.

The Wadsworth Atheneum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call (860) 278-2670.