Between Form and Content

de Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Jeff Arnal, Julie Levin Caro

This catalog accompanies 'Between Form and Content: Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence + Black Mountain College', the first exhibition to focus on a watershed moment in the seminal career of Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), when he was invited by Josef Albers to teach a painting course at the Black Mountain College summer art institute of 1946. Lawrence's presence at Black Mountain College was part of its forward-thinking initiative to integrate the campus community beginning in the early 1940s. Curator Julie Levin Caro's introductory essay highlights the impact of Lawrence's exposure to Albers's Bauhaus-inspired theories and teaching methods and explores the ways Lawrence's pedagogy continuously fed his artistic explorations. In addition to Lawrence's paintings and prints, Caro writes about the artwork and recollections of a number of other artists at Black Mountain College during the summer of 1946, including Lawrence's wife Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence as well as Josef and Anni Albers, Leo Amino, Jean Varda, Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. Curator Jeff Arnal's essay introduces the work of the international artists commissioned to expand pathways into Lawrence's paintings through their contemporary, new media works.