Page 30 - atoday

A30
PEOPLE & ARTSTuesday 5 January 2016
Exhibit captures evolving styles of Harlem-born Norman Lewis
NATALIE POMPILIO
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — There
are two questions Ruth Fine
has heard repeatedly from
visitors emerging from the
Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts’ comprehensive
retrospective of work by
artist Norman Lewis.
“Those who don’t know his
work ask, ‘How is it possible
we didn’t know this paint-
er?’” said Fine, a visiting
curator, retired from Wash-
ington’s National Gallery of
Art, who spearheaded the
exhibition. “And those who
did know of him ask, ‘How
is it possible we didn’t know
him better?’”
Many of the works in “Pro-
cession: The Art of Norman
Lewis,” which runs through
April 3, are on public view
for the first time. The exhi-
bition in the Academy’s
main gallery includes 95
paintings and prints and
is loosely chronological
with six thematic sections:
Into the City, Visual Sound,
Rhythm of Nature, Ritual,
Civil Rights and Summa-
tion. “I think people are
surprised by what they see,
the variety,” Fine said. “This
is the first chance many
people have to get a sense
of what this artist did.”
The Harlem-born Lewis,
Diana Athill, 98, offers enchanting new memoir
ANN LEVIN
Associated Press
“Alive, Alive Oh! And Other
Things That Matter” (W.W.
Norton & Co.), by Diana
Athill
Diana Athill, 98, still has
a few things to teach us
about growing old with
dignity and humor and
grace.
Her latest memoir, “Alive,
Alive Oh!” follows the un-
likely literary celebrity she
achieved at age 90 with
the publication of the
prize-winning best-seller
“Somewhere Towards the
End.”
In this collection of astute
and sparkling essays, Athill
tries to identify “the things
that matter” after living to
almost 100.
It’s not her love affairs,
A woman views work in the exhibit titled, “Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis,” in December,
2015, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Lewis was the first major
African-American abstract expressionist. The show is scheduled to run through April 3, 2016.
who died in 1979 at the
age of 70, first gained at-
tention in the 1930s for his
figurative and literal depic-
tions of struggles facing his
urban African-American
community. He then be-
gan to experiment with
abstract impressionism, the
realm of painters like Jack-
son Pollack and Willem De
This book cover image
released by W.W. Norton
& Co. shows “Alive, Alive
Oh! And Other Things That
Matter,” by Diana Athill.
(W.W. Norton & Co.via AP) What remains are “memo-
though she had plenty.
“About halfway through
my 70s I stopped thinking
Kooning, whom he later
befriended.
Some African-Americans
artists tried to discourage
Lewis’s change in style,
seeing it as “a betrayal of
what they felt a black artist
was supposed to do,” said
Moe Brooker, a well-known
African-American artist.
“His friends said: ‘You can’t
of myself as a sexual be-
ing,” she writes. “It was like
coming out onto a high
plateau, into clear, fresh
air, far above the antlike
bustle.”
ries, thoughts and reflec-
tions”: of her grandparents’
garden, where an apple
tree provides “the nearest
I ever came to a mystical
experience.” Of women’s
changing fashions — even
for a girl born in 1917, “pink- and abhor possessiveness,”
ness and sparkle” were
everything. And of her re-
luctant decision to move
into a retirement home, an
essay that includes a hilari-
ous account of a day spent
planting rosebushes with
a few other nonagenar-
ian residents, one of them
blind.
“He continued to search
and struggle to find ways
to communicate human
issues, which is what art is
(AP Photo/Matt Rourke) really about,” Brooker said.
“Whenever I see his work,
do this. You’re supported to I’m introduced to some-
talk about the difficulties. thing new and exciting
You’re supposed to talk and different. I constantly
about the oppression,’ but come and find inspiration.”
he refused,” Brooker said. While Lewis did find suc-
“He said: “I’m black, yes, cess during his lifetime
but I’m an artist. I will not be — in 1955, he was the first
limited to doing the kind of African-American artist to
work that you think I should be awarded the Carne-
be doing.’ He’s interested gie International Award in
in being a human being.” Painting, and New York’s
respected Marian Willard
Gallery represented and
exhibited his work — he
did not get the same rec-
ognition many of his white
peers enjoyed.
One item on display at the
Academy is a 1977 letter
Lewis wrote to powerful
art dealer Leo Castelli, in
which he noted others of
lesser talent were enjoy-
ing greater success. “I’m
a good painter,” he wrote.
“I have talent. . I could be
an asset to your gallery.”
There is no indication Cas-
telli responded.
In addition to race, Fine be-
lieves Lewis may have fall-
en off the art world’s radar
because he does not have
a signature image and
can’t be pigeonholed.q
“One good thing about kinds — friends, food, fash-
being physically incapable ion, art, literature, travel
of doing almost anything is and rambles in nature.
that if you manage to do The book’s title recalls the
even a little something, you lyrics of a popular song
feel great,” she observes. about a Dublin street ven-
One of the most powerful dor, Molly Malone, who
essays recounts a preg- wheels her wheelbarrow
nancy in her 40s, a brush “through streets broad and
with death that left her narrow, crying cockles and
profoundly grateful to be mussels alive, alive oh!”
alive. Another chapter, It’s an odd image for Athill,
titled “Lessons,” offers up who was born into privi-
a few: “Avoid romanticism lege, educated at Oxford
and had a distinguished
she says. In her case, that career at the BBC and in
meant no children, and af- British publishing.
fairs with married men. And yet it isn’t. Both the
But she has few, if any, evi- fictional Molly and the real
dent regrets. Diana are out there in the
Rather, the life she de- thick of things, mixing it up,
scribes is one of abun- acutely aware that all liv-
dance — although not ma- ing things, whether mussels
terial — where every sorrow or humans, are destined to
is offset by sweetness of all die. q