This path was created by Giuliana Angotti. The last update was by Anne Paxton.
Lawrence's L'Ouverture
I am sure much of what they said was romanticized but that didn’t matter. What mattered was to have something to be proud of, something to look up to.
Jacob Lawrence Interview w/ Phillips Collection
In 1938, at just twenty years old, Jacob Lawrence created a series of forty-one paintings depicting the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture. While already a big hit in his own time, this wasn't the end of the story for Lawrence's Toussaint. The painting series continued to spark discussion amongst many art lovers, the leaders of the Black Power movement [1], and even children through the publication of picture books [3]. Nearly fifty years later, Lawrence would bring the series back as a series of silkscreen prints produced in collaboration with printmaker Lou Stovall. The fifteen screen prints of select works from the original series remind us that the fight against white supremacy and Western imperialism in America is far from over and that L'Ouverture's work is far from finished.
But this isn't to say that Toussaint L'Overture's image is as clean as Lawrence makes it seem. Like the signature flat, bold style of his painting, Lawrence simplifies L'Ouverture into a figure synonymous with only one word: resistance. [4] In reality, L'Ouverture has been as controversial as he is celebrated. [5] Lawrence doesn't show Lawrence's tolerance of his former enslavers, or his return to the plantation system that had gripped Haiti so soon after its liberation, as can be seen in the [Special Collections] comic book on display in our exhibit. Today, it is important that when we praise L'Ouverture as a hero, we do so consciously, acknowledging his faults alongside his victories.
This page has paths:
- The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture in Print Sibel Zandi-Sayek