E. Rodriguez: Field Exercise 4

Artist: Norman Lewis

Originally a social realist (his early works depicted bread lines, evictions, police brutality), Lewis converted to Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s, making him the only African American in the first generation of that art style. He drew inspiration from Chinese, Japanese, and African art, as well as fellow Abstract Expressionists Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Tobey. The greatest inspiration for his art, however, remains social inequalities at the time (in particular inequality aimed at African Americans) as well as Lewis's own political activism. Though Lewis initially attempted to use art to initiate some form of social awareness, in his later years his artistic focus turned mostly to simple aesthetics due his realization that art alone cannot induce change.

Work: Evening Rendezvous

Created in 1962, Evening Rendezvous is a greta example of Lewis's transition to Abstract Expressionism. By this point he had given up using his art invoke social change, but while abstract this piece still provides social commentary. The white figures obscured by the murky gray background are Klansmen. The combination of red, white and blue is meant to depict the "patriotism" the Klan claimed motivated their actions.

Response

What initially drew me to this painting was sinister atmosphere that it was creating. Even before I understood the context and what the painting was trying to represent, I saw something unsettling in the piece. The individual white figures represent Klansmen, the red is fire, and the blue is smoke, but at the piece as a whole, it looks like something is creeping out of the darkness. And whatever it is there's just enough of it obscured that I can't fully make it out but know it will come upon me in a matter of seconds. That's why I chose this piece; it was one of the first of Lewis's paintings that I saw, but in the end none of his other works invoked such a strong emotional response in me.

Product

This is the result of hour attempt to recreate Evening Rendezvous using an online sketchpad. While I'm not an artist in real life, I do believe a physical recreation of mine would have more closely resembled the original work than this. When creating digital art, I find I have a lack of control as compared to physical materials. This resulted in trouble recreating the shaping of the individual figures of the piece. Besides that, the software I was using had somewhat limited capabilities. I wasn't able to get the colors to blend in a realistic way, and the completely different background is a result of me improvising when the normal backgrounds provided proved unsatisfactory.

Reflection

My recreation only superficially resembles Evening Rendezvous. The sketchpad was unable to match Lewis's dabs of white, which simultaneously blend in with the foggy gray background and pop out. Furthermore, the red and blue streaks inability to blend lessens their imagery of fire and smoke, respectively. I improvised with the background; the radial gradient doesn't mimic the gray fog background but instead suggests imagery of a full moon. This ironically, makes it one of the few things to make the mood of the original original work, with something sinister and mysterious emerging from the darkness. This would work better, however, if the other elements of the painting could more closely mimic the original imagery. Ultimately I think I was unsuccessful in capturing the theme and style of Evening Rendezvous.

In a future similar project, I'd probably work with a different software; I think that the limitations of the sketchpad led to the detraction of the impact of the imagery.