Throughout Jacob Lawrence’s long and distinguished career, he has demonstrated a deep interest in African American history and in black peoples’ collective struggle to attain racial equality. He is perhaps best known for his powerful narrative series on topics such as migration and the achievements of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Great Depression and received his early training at the Harlem Art Workshop, beginning in 1932. A precociously gifted young man, he thrived in the dynamic and creative atmosphere Harlem provided.
Graduation, a recent acquisition, is one of six ink drawings made by Lawrence to illustrate One-Way Ticket, a book of poetry about the plight of blacks in America by Langston Hughes. Many of the poems refer to subjects specific to Chicago such as State Street, Calumet Avenue, and the city’s jitneys. Inscribed below this drawing’s lower left edge are the words “South Side Chicago.”
Like graphic art by the German Expressionists, whose work and concern for social issues continue to inform Lawrence’s art, Graduation employs bold outlines, flat forms, and the interplay between light and dark areas. Indeed, the work’s strong graphic impact resembles the effects achieved in woodblock prints by Käthe Kollwitz and others. In the graduates’ caps and gowns, for example, the juxtaposition of positive and negative space (the relationship between solid and void) creates the illusion of shadows and light. The repetition of the graduates’ profiles and onlookers’ bodies produces an insistent rhythm that builds toward a crescendo, creating a sense of ascension. (Lawrence has addressed the theme of upward movement throughout his oeuvre.)
Commencements were cherished occasions for the migrant communities that had settled in northern cities; Lawrence’s image invokes proud families coming together to honor the scholastic achievements of loved ones. The language and imagery of Hughes’s poem “Graduation” emphasize the energy and import of such an occasion: “The Diploma bursts its frame/To scatter star-dust in their eyes.” 11 (ADB)
