“Untitled” (America)

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Jacob Lawrence,War Series, 1946–47

Kay WalkingStick, April Contemplating May, 1972.
Alma Thomas, Mars Dust, 1972.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (America), 1994.
Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916.
Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930.
Archibald John Motley Jr., Getting’ Religion, 1948.
Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926–c. 1936.
Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970.
Isamu Noguchi Gallery.
Georgia O’Keeffe, The White Calico Flower, 1931.
Aaron Douglas, Mural Study for Cravath Hall, Fisk University, 1929.
Elsie Driggs, Pittsburgh, 1927.
Joseph Stella, The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme, 1939.
Jacob Lawrence,War Series, 1946–47.
Fritz Scholder, Massacre at Wounded Knee II, 1970.
Robert Rauschenberg, Satellite, 1955.
Marisol, Diptych, 1971.
Jasper Johns, Racing Thoughts, 1983.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood Africans, 1983.
Rosalyn Drexler, Marilyn Pursued by Death, 1963.
Norman Lewis, American Totem, 1960.
Jay DeFeo, The Rose, 1958–66.
Zilia Sánchez, Eros, 1976/1998.

Soldiers and guns in an abstract painting by Jacob Lawrence.

Jacob Lawrence,War Series, 1946–47

Jacob Lawrence’s War Series evokes the regimentation, community, and displacement that the artist experienced firsthand during World War II, in which he served as a Coast Guard artist on the first racially integrated naval ship in United States history. Lawrence rendered these scenes using his characteristic flattened planes and silhouetted figures, rejecting naturalistic detail in favor of bold, semi-abstract forms. The series is an early example of Lawrence’s signature approach of responding to a single theme across multiple paintings; these panels (seven of the total fourteen are shown here) testify to Lawrence’s commitment to dynamic visual storytelling and his belief that one cannot “tell a story in a single painting.”