The Danforth Art Museum/School in Framingham, MA
Having been blown away by
Jacob Lawrence's War Series back in October, seeing a listing for a
series of paintings by him on The Legend of John Brown had me hopping
on a commuter train to this unlikely destination (conveniently
located near the train station, though). Perhaps due their being
prints of too-delicate-to-display originals, the paintings come off a
bit more flat then their brethren at the Whitney which are painted
with tempura on composite board. Lawrence is very adept at depicting
sorrow, pain and inner turmoil without showing faces, allowing some
of the crudeness of the figures to not matter. The sometimes subtle,
sometimes overt placement of crosses framing the characters of the
painting got me thinking “why don't we have religious fanatics
devoted to such noble causes these days."
