Artists use a variety of tools and processes to communicate ideas and tell stories.  The stories that they share can be drawn from a variety of sources including popular books, ancient myths, legends, historical narratives, and personal experiences.  Looking closely, studying, contemplating and reflecting on these artworks will bring these artists’ works and stories to life.  As you spend time with these artworks, consider the artists’ perspective and intent as the stories unfold in your own imagination.

This ArtSpace Gallery installation is sponsored by the Amarillo Area Foundation

The Farm Security Administration

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a federal program and part of the New Deal response to depressed conditions in American life between 1933 and 1943. While much of its work was devoted to studying and aiding indigent small farmers and farm laborers, one FSA division, the “Historical Section” led by Roy Stryker, set out to use photographs to document the conditions of rural and urban life throughout the country.

The FSA compiled a remarkable collection of more than 80,000 photographs of America during the Great Depression.  Roy Stryker, an economist from Columbia University, who was not a photographer himself, recognized the power of the medium for social change.  Stryker’s goal was to produce a “visual encyclopedia of American life.” He provided his photographers with guidance and detailed outlines of what and how to photograph.

“In 1936, photography, which theretofore had been mostly a matter of landscapes and snapshots and family portraits, was fast being discovered as a serious tool of communication, a new way for a thoughtful creative person to make a statement.”

Jacob Lawrence created artworks from the African American experience as well as historical and contemporary themes such as war, religion, and civil rights.  In Revolt on the Amistad, Lawrence’s subject is the famous rebellion aboard the slave-trading schooner La Amistad by its cargo of West African captives.  These captives were kidnapped from Sierra Leone near the coast of Cuba in 1839.  Led by Joseph Cinqué, the mutineers freed themselves and took control of the ship from their captors.  In their attempt to sail back to Africa, the ship was captured and the men were jailed and stood trial.  Eventually freed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the rebellion had important political and legal repercussions in the American abolitionist movement.

Lawrence made this print in 1989 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the 1839 revolt. The print depicts a violent moment of intense hand-to-hand combat between the prisoners and the ship’s crew. The composition is a tangle of slashing angular shapes, most in the forms of arms and hands, with many holding blood-tinged knives. The captives, depicted in warm shades of brown and umber, are clustered near the top of the image. The ship’s crew, wearing blue, are being subsumed within the thicket of dark arms, rigging, and dark water that churns violently below.

Japanese screens, also known as byōbu were seen as exquisitely beautiful emblems of wealth and power.  The earliest literary accounts of screens describe native landscapes with rounded green hills, cherry blossoms, maples leaves, and seasonal flowers.  By the late medieval period there are examples that include human figures and narrative scenes.  As screens became more varied in subject matter and style, members of the merchant class became collectors.

Japanese screens were also used as diplomatic gifts and could be interpreted as a message to the recipient. They were often used as gifts for births, deaths, or other significant events during the lives of high-ranking members of the aristocracy.

James “Jack” Boynton was born in Fort Worth, TX and is primarily known as a painter and printmaker.  He was widely recognized for his modernist and largely abstract paintings created during the 1950s and 60s.  In 1957 Boynton was one of 17 artists selected to represent the United States at the Brussels World Fair.  In 1980 the Amarillo Art Center (now AMoA) organized a retrospective exhibition titled Jack Boynton: Retro/Spectrum that traveled to museums throughout Texas. 

Text and language are powerful visual tools for artists.  Using text as the central communication vehicle in their artistic expression, artists literally spell out their ideas to engage the viewer.  Jenny Holzer and Ed Ruscha are two artists who use text as the primary vehicle for their ideas.

Named one of the “World’s Ten Best Artists” by then-popular Look magazine in 1948 and renowned for his anguished and bold imagery, artist and activist Ben Shahn protested against social injustice and honored ordinary people in lithographs, paintings, photographs, and public murals. For Shahn, art was a powerful tool for sociopolitical commentary and for urging and effecting change.  Along with photographers Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, and others, Shahn also worked to document the struggles of working Americans as a photographer within the Farm Security Administration.  

Text and art have been intertwined for centuries prior to illuminated manuscripts.  The practice of communicating with written text combined with visual imagery likely contributed to language development, storytelling, and culture across civilizations.