Between Form and Content: Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence + Black Mountain College

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. The catalog also includes artist statements by music animator/filmmaker Martha Coburn, curator/writer Jace Clayton (DJ Rupture), composer/ performer Tyondai Braxton and installation artist Grace Villamil.

Between Form and Content will be on display at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC from September 28, 2018 through January 12, 2019.

Contributors. Jeff Arnal, Tyondai Braxton, Julie Levin Caro, Jace Clayton (DJ Rupture), Martha Coburn, Ben Hall, Grace Villamil