Norman Lewis was a 20th century abstract expressionist painter who used his art as a form of social activism and a way to express his opinions on race relations and poverty. He was born in Harlem, spent his early years training and travelling, then went on to be an extremely influential expressionist artist and civil rights activist. He worked mostly on pieces describing black oppression through a combination of vivid colors and black on a tall vertical canvas. His most notable piece is called Migrating Birds, and while it didn't conform to his usual style, it still exhibits his sense of duality with light and dark, only between white and gold. Toward the end of his life, he focused mostly on depictions of nature rather than political commentaries.
Outcome
The Tenement, 1948. The painting is mostly black, in a tall vertical rectangle, with many brightly colored squares strewn throughout it. Unlike his most famous painting, Migrating Birds, his paintings often were predominantly black, incorporating bright colors accented by their dark outline. His paintings were also often tall and vertical, also shown in this painting, and they held a significance relating to social activism, generally targeting the oppression of black people in the mid-1900’s and the conditions of the poor. The Tenement is supposed to represent the tenement houses of the 1940’s, abstractly portraying a tangible social and political issue of the time period.
This is what I made.
Given that I only had an hour to recreate the piece, I decided to use a medium that I knew. Python! I used TKInter to draw out the picture from scratch. In most of the reviews of the painting that I read, they described the rectangles as being randomly thrown around. I believe that to be true, but for them to be deliberately randomly spread out. For that reason, and because of time constraints, I decided to randomly generate the positions the rectangles, but within parameters. I made it so that no matter where the rectangles are made, they're bunched towards the center to keep the crowded feeling of the piece. I also made it more likely for the rectangles to be taller rather wider, as they are in the piece. I think that gives the lights a more windowed look, like you're looking at the buildings at an angle.
My first few passes did not look like it at all, and I had to really analyze the stylistic choices that he made. It gave me an appreciation for the stylistic choices Lewis made in his piece. What otherwise looked like a bunch of rectangles (which it is) actually had a few other stylistic choices in it that I had to consider as I made my output look more like the original piece.
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