Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine and George Tooker are among the finest artists America produced between the World Wars. In vastly different styles, they painted the world around them with a profound sense of social conscience.
Lawrence told the story of African-American people in cycles of paintings such as his famous early one–now at the Chicago Historical Society–on the migration of rural blacks to the industrial North. Levine combined moral outrage, pathos, satire and wit to present both the victims and predators in modern life. Tooker created a haunting, almost hallucinatory vision of alienation, dehumanization and oases of counterbalancing love.
Their works are part of an exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints by 60 artists who created nearly a half-century of socially committed art in North America. The Tribune met with the three in the show, at the Terra Museum of American Art, to learn the motivations behind their work and their opinions of contemporary art with a social orientation.
Lawrence and Levine have known each other for so long that the latter once said “we were dumped into the same playpen”; Tooker is a more recent–and more reticent–friend. Their discussion indicated a sensitivity toward painting the urban scene that proves uncommon at any time but seems especially so today.
Question–What led to the social content in your work?
Tooker–I suppose I treated things I felt very serious about, and it was my main impulse for painting. I had to be emotionally involved and identify with the subject matter. That was essential. (Some people said,) “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.’ ” But, basically I continued painting from my gut feeling. It was the only way I could paint.
Lawrence–I agree with George. It was all I could do. I never was aware I did social commentary. It was the only content I knew. I lived in a teeming urban community, and that became my content. I didn’t go looking for it. The content was there, and I was encouraged by the community to express myself, not because of the content, but because I was doing something that kept me out of trouble.
Levine–I was born in 1915, and by the time I was 9 or 10 I was doing pencil drawings. It was genre: I drew drunkards in the street and so forth. Later, under the influence of a teacher, I even did religious stuff. At some point I just decided, or a friend decided for me, that the human figure was where the drama was. And I want to underline the fact that this way of working has been going on for at least 20,000 years.
Q–Once you had embarked, did you ever want your work to raise public consciousness?
Tooker–Yes. Exactly. I don’t know as how it made any difference. But it was something I felt I had to try to do.
Lawrence–In my case, no. I couldn’t live in a tenement and see my parents go to work for very little money to keep the family together and make paintings where the imagery said something else. But what I saw around me was neither good nor bad. All I can say is I think suffering and the capacity of the human being to suffer is very beautiful. I don’t want it to sound masochistic, but to persevere and endure we have always had to have that capacity. I wanted spectators to see my work had a certain scope, a certain dimension, that made them pertain not only to today but tomorrow.
Levine–I never was very sanguine about the idea that (my paintings) would turn anybody in one direction or another. I just found the subject matter I was looking for. Knowing I function the way I do, I needed a subject, a topic; I didn’t want to paint without it. But once I got into social criticism, I wasn’t a loyal member. I mean, I wasn’t exactly motivated by it.
Q–Nowadays a lot of socially conscious art explores quite different topics, such as sexuality. Mr. Tooker, you were, in a sense, a pioneer of that. It seems a strong current of sexuality ran through a lot of your work.
Tooker–Those were not so much my “protest” pictures. They were pictures in which I felt I was trying to paint something positive. I did a whole series of pictures of people at windows, for example, which were about miscegenation, intermarriage and people getting along, being happy. But people seem to remember my negative pictures. There are not that many–“Subway,” “Government Bureau,” “Waiting Room,” “Hospital” and a few others–but people do remember them more than the positive ones.
Q–What kind of work did you remember, Mr. Levine, when your style was in its formative stages?
Levine–Long before my social expression, I was brought to the Boston Museum (of Fine Arts) and saw a long wall filled with lithographs by (Honore) Daumier. I went crazy. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. Then, much later, at the end of the 1930s, I was the first person I knew who was fascinated by the painting of Middle Europa, which was not known at all in this country. I tried to get little glimmers about George Grosz, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka. And in more radical quarters in New York, that was a little bit heretical. You were supposed to do murals, like the Mexicans (Jose Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros). People were always telling you to do this or that. But I wanted to paint like (the German Expressionist) Dix, which was almost illegal.
Lawrence–I was very fortunate in that I was never told how to paint. I was eventually told I was able to take a figurative element and give it more than illustrative content. I was told it but didn’t say, “Now I’m going to work this way.”
Levine–I’ve no business speaking for Jacob Lawrence, but none of his paintings are abstract. The minutiae of what things look like don’t bother him very much, either. He’s an epic painter. He reduces things to their essence to produce drama. I’m a spoiled portrait painter. I’m interested in identity, not epic movement. I want details. Jake doesn’t give a hoot.
Q–After hearing these descriptions, Mr. Tooker, how would you characterize your painting?
Tooker–I’ve been influenced by different painters at different times: the Florentines and some 17th Century French painters, like Louis Le Nain and Georges de la Tour. I try to put my pictures together in a good, workmanlike way; I think they’re put together as carefully as any abstract painting without being abstract. I once experimented with abstraction and realized it was like writing blank verse. What really brings out the deepest feelings in me is painting the human figure.
Q–Some people feel we are now again in a period of socially concerned art, although a lot of it doesn’t lead to the production of objects; it’s more conceptually oriented. What do you feel about that kind of art?
Tooker–I don’t think our period better accepts art with social messages.
Lawrence–I try to keep an open mind. I try not to turn away from what I call “new” things, meaning new to me. But you know, I came up in a period where we not only had content but also had a great deal of respect for craft. Now, speaking generally, I can’t see Conceptual art in that way.
Levine–I took such a pounding from certain people during the heyday of Clement Greenberg (the American critic who in the 1950s dismissed all narratives and representational pictures) that I turned off. So as far as what’s going on now, I haven’t the faintest idea.
Q–Weren’t you even a little encouraged by the renewed emphasis on representational painting in the ’80s? It seemed like every young artist who achieved recognition, both here and abroad, was a painter of human figures in the Neo-Expressionist style.
Levine–I thought we’d never get onto this. I don’t remember any figure painters, unless you mean (Philip) Pearlstein. Were these people from SoHo? SoHo is a real place only in London. That’s all I have to say about it.
Q–Do you, Mr. Tooker, share the same sense of isolation?
Tooker–I’ve always had friends to talk to who had similar ideals. Paul Cadmus is a friend, Jared French (who died in 1988) was. So there were artists of my generation, and there now are some younger artists. In fact, there’s one from Chicago, Tim Lowly. I never met him in person but we communicate by writing, and he sends me announcements of his shows. I think he’s a very good painter. Otherwise, I don’t know a great deal of what’s going on now–by choice.
Q–Mr. Lawrence, have you also seen young artists whose work you like?
Lawrence–Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. I’ve seen young people who have a passion for what they’re doing and an interest in things around them. They’re making choices in their work, and I respect them for it.
Levine–Actually, the kind of social expression (we three have) has just about petered out (in painting). There are no forces in the art world to consider it relevant. And there don’t seem to be any dominant social ideas that would inspire much else. A lot of our adherents and supporters and mentors have faded away. We’re pretty old. So we’re going it alone. That’s it, I think. And that’s all right. That’s the way to be.
