Claude Lawrence 'A World of His Own Making' Exhibition Catalogue | Keyes Art

CLAUDE LAWRENCE

A

WORLD

OF

HIS

OWN

MAKING

[Cover] Home October 2013

Acrylic on canvas 23.5 x 21 in.

CLAUDE LAWRENCE A

WORLD

OF

HIS

OWN

MAKING

KEYES ART 53 Main Street Sag Harbor, NY | 631.808.3588 | juliekeyesart.com | info@juliekeyesart.com

A W OR LD OF H I S O WN MAKING Seven months ago Claude Lawrence completed a significant work titled “Eastside Ruminations”: it’s made gutsy by jolted figures, anthropomorphic prompts, and heavy black contouring that gives the work the look of a stained glass window.

It glows. In reality almost no forms overlap, instead they snuggle up and create clusters or configurations on a larger and more substantial framework. The sense of a controlled disorder lurks throughout this work and lends itself easily to free association and fantasy. “Eastside Ruminations” has swagger and warrants all the space it takes up in the world. The musician turned painter renders his own feelings with pigment knowing full well that any visual reconstruction has limits. The picture plane will always be that mysterious fusion of fact and fiction where the physical becomes transformed into illusion and then almost simultaneously resumes its previous state. De Kooning famously described himself at work as a “slipping glimpser”: You know the real world, this so-called world, is just something you put up with like everybody else. I’m in my element when I’m a little bit out of this world: then I’m in the real world.

he developed friendships with other more established African American artists like Jack Whitten, William T. Williams, Peter Bradley, and Joe Overstreet. In the 1960s and 70s these artists exhibited their work in New York with sketchy results as the art world was slowly souring into a period of posturing and appropriation. Jack Whitten recalled: For black artists doing abstract painting, there was no support whatsoever. Even through the early ‘70s, nobody reached out.

There was a great divide there.

Thankfully, a more recent and sweeping reevaluation of many African American artists from this period is correcting this injustice and bringing very deserved attention to the astonishing work of these artists. The list includes the aforementioned plus among others: Edward Clark, Adger Cowans, Jeanne Moutoussamy, Melvin Edwards, Terry Adkins, Stanley Whitney, Sam Gilliam, Gerald Jackson, Quincy Troupe, Cannon Hersey, Maren Hassinger and Linda Goode Bryant.

Deus ex-machina!

Never too polished or too raw, Lawrence keeps his search honest and straightforward. He came of age as a visual artist in the 1980s when New York City was still considered the imperial center of culture. During those years Lawrence maintained a career both as a jazz musician and painter and

Lawrence landed in New York during the 1980s when the art world was over-hyped, over-saturated, unbridled, and plagued by a lack of critical distance. The idea of an epicenter had been forged much earlier after the war in the 1940s when the USA

received Europe’s artistic avant-garde by the boatload. New York City became the triumphant hub because artists from everywhere quite simply followed the money trail to New York and brought with them Surrealism and Abstraction. A musician/ painter arriving in NYC in the late 1980s was greeted by a pictorial vernacular rooted in experimentation and defiance. The implacable father figure and art critic Clement Greenberg had been cut down to size and swapped for the deconstruction of anything/ everything formal. However, the visceral and painterly ambitions of a painter like Lawrence probably found an amenable

the same sea and sky as the master and like Pollock bravura took Lawrence a long way forward. His creative pursuits in Sag Harbor were dogged and strong-willed like a heavyweight boxer elbowing and flexing his way around a ring.

atmosphere in this unraveling of tradition and practice because everyone prided themselves as beginners. During these years Lawrence is aptly grappling with figuration, abstraction, a sense of direction, the complex language of painting, and studio time.

the National Gallery of Art, and the Parrish Art Museum. This institutional recognition has fueled Lawrence to produce new and larger works: bolder, even more direct, and blissfully vivid.

At first glance these new and larger paintings look like they were painted crude and fast but they are hardly makeshift. They are artifacts that are set apart, self-sufficient, and speak on their own terms. Purged of restraint, Lawrence has moved into a universe of visual freedom: released from reason and relieved of all baggage. His nomadic life is visually granted respite and in this breathing space we find the fruition of years of work. We see the visible traces of a hand rooted in the real, the indivisible, and the not-manipulated. Lawrence has delivered works that leap up and don’t let go, proving once and for all that he is very much alive in a world of his own making.

Foreword by George Negroponte

Fortuitously, Lawrence retreats to Sag Harbor for two extended stays from 1994 to 1998 and again from 2001 to 2006. These years in Sag Harbor provide Lawrence lengthier periods of time to make work in a very beautiful, new surrounding. This historic whaling community had once been designated as the first port of entry into the USA; Sag Harbor could also claim an African American community dating back to the 18th century.

As importantly, Lawrence landed not far way from Jackson Pollock’s home and studio: 10.9 miles directly east. Pollock had died some 40 years earlier but his legend still had enormous resonance. Trickle down aesthetics work. Lawrence experienced

After leaving Long Island, the ensuing years find Lawrence in yet another peripatetic mode practically making art with his studio on his back. By 2013 acquisitions of his work start piling up: thirty-two major museums throughout the USA including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem,

East Side Ruminations January 2019 Acrylic on canvas 52 x 71 in.

Untitled December 2011 Acrylic on canvas 39 x 72 in.

Salvation Seekers 2019 Acrylic on canvas 58 x 85 in.

Untitled Acrylic on canvas 66 x 36 in.

Home October 2013 Acrylic on canvas 23.5 x 21 in.

Best Guess September 2013 Acrylic on canvas 25 x 22 in.

Dream Street October 2013 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 23 in.

The Fall-Back October 2013 Acrylic on canvas 32 x 23.5 in.

Acrylic works on paper 8.5 x 11 in.

Acrylic works on paper 11 x 8.5 in.

Acrylic works on paper 8.5 x 11 in.

Theatro 2010 Acrylic on canvas 41.5 x 59.5 in.

Purpose Is: It’s Own Agenda August 2013 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 28 in.

The Browns January 2007 Acrylic on canvas 45 x 53 in.

“Like De Kooning, and others of his contemporaries, Lawrence began his artistic journey as a figurative painter.”

– Julie Keyes, Curator

Offering Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 in.

Space Boy 1989 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 40 in.

C H R O N OLOGY Education

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

1963

Chicago Vocational High School, Studied Music

The Los Angeles County Museum

1965

Fine Arts: Roosevelt University, Chicago

The Cincinnati Museum of Art

1993

Printmaking: Printmakers Workshop, New York

The Naples (Baker) Museum of Art, Florida The Wallach Art Gallery at Colombia University, New York City

Museum Collections 2013 – 2019

The New Orleans Museum of Art

The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY

The Schomburg Center, New York City

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Howard University Art Museum, Washington DC

The Studio Museum in Harlem

The Hampton University Museum of Art, Virginia

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY

The Neward Museum of Art

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC

The African American Museum in Los Angeles

The Westover School, Middlebury, CT

The National African American Museum and Cultural Center, Washington DC

North Carolina Central Museum of Art, Durham, NC

The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA

The American Folk Art Museum, New York City

The Neuberger Museum of Art, State University, Purchase, NY

The Detroit Institute of Art

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City, MO

1996

“Cusp of Culture,” WLTV. Riverhead, NY: Interview by Virginia Walker

1996

Water Mill Museum, member’s show. Water Mill, NY

1996

“Plates by Artists” benefit auction at the Elaine Benson Gallery: Bridgehampton, NY

The Long Island Museum of Art, Stony Brook, NY

1996

East End Arts Council. Riverhead, NY: Solo

The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

1996

Great Neck Library. Great Neck, NY

1995

East End Arts Council. Riverhead, NY:

1995

Goat Alley Gallery. Sag Harbor, NY: July 9 -23; Solo Show

1995

Goat Alley Gallery. Sag Harbor, NY: May; Group Show

1994

Warren Street Gallery. Hudson, NY: February; Group Show

1993

Hugh Hill Gallery. Kent, CT: August: Solo Show

1993

Works of Art Gallery. New York, NY: Group Show

1991

Museum of African-American Art. Los Angeles, CA: Group Show

The Perez Museum of Art, Miami, FL Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME

Exhibitions and Appearances 2019

Keyes Art Gallery. Sag Harbor, NY

2015

Gerald Peters Gallery. New York, NY: “Claude Lawrence: Beyond Improvisation”

1999

Cinque Gallery. New York, NY: Group Show, “Artists for the New Millennium.” Works on Paper

1998

East African Cultural Center. Philadelphia, PA: Solo Show

1997

Montclair University. Montclair, NJ: Solo Show

1996

Parrish Art Museum. Southampton, NY: Juried Show

Julie Keyes, Curator E.T. Williams Jr, Collector George Negroponte, Foreword Madison Kelly, Design

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