Listeners, I heard you—a bunch of self-admitting hopeless romantics who wanted to hear more about people bound by attraction, fascination. By love. Though there are examples of romantic and sexual relationships between creators that are sprinkled throughout art history as we know it, it’s true that we have the most information about relationships from folks who lived in the last century—because we have greater access to documentation recording the lives of these people, and because, as the 20th century progressed, people—artists, perhaps especially—became more vocal about their relationships, less inhibited. Modern artists, artists especially from the first half of the 20th century, lived their art, and their relationships, out loud-- writing about them, talking about them, and sometimes even creating works of art about them.
This season, I’m rounding up stories about modern artists in love, in lust, in relationships— digging into these individuals, see how their liaisons, marriages, affairs, and connections played in or on their respective works of art, and how, if anything, they affected art history as we know it. I, for one, believe that it’s time for Modern Love.
Today: we’re enjoying the story of one supremely confident couple, incredibly supportive of one another and individually talented, two makers who epitomized the explosion of creativity that was the Harlem Renaissance, and who helped shape American art. Meet Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight.
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Episode Credits:
Research by Ann Catherine Hughes. Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional music by Storyblocks. Logo by Vaulted.co.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Episode Transcript
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After over one hundred episodes of ArtCurious, I’ve learned a thing or two about you, the listeners of this show. You’re young, you’re older, you’re artistic, you’re nerdy, you know a ton about art, you know nothing about art. You love drama. You love to feel good. Essentially, you are everything. But a large segment of you are enamored of romance, or at least interested in the complexities of human relationships. And you’re the reason this season, which I’ve called “Modern Love” exists. Throughout this season, we’re exploring the tumultuous and passionate relationships of some of the most famous artists of the 20th century. From Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's turbulent marriage to the shattering affair between Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, we delve into the ups and downs of love in the art world. Today, we’re enjoying the story of one supremely confident couple, incredibly supportive of one another and individually talented, two makers who epitomized the explosion of creativity that was the Harlem Renaissance, and who helped shape American art.
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. ArtCurious Season 13 is all about Modern Love, and today, it’s time to get to know Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
Jacob Lawrence is one of those artists that, I admit, I didn’t learn about in school. I don’t think that that would necessarily be the case today, but I am middle-aged, and am a product of my own limited education, based on what was available to an art history student back in the day. All of this is my way of saying that when I did learn about Jacob Lawrence, a stunning American artist who is by no means a minor figure in our nation’s cultural heritage, it was a wonderful surprise, a shock of graphic design and coloration. I was drawn to his work immediately. I was likewise drawn to the work of the woman whom he married, too: Gwendolyn Knight, a fascinating and wonderful artist in her own right. But I didn’t learn about her until much later, either, even later than learning about Jacob Lawrence. Let’s hope that you can learn from my late blossoming of interest in these artists—because truly they are awesome both as a couple and as individuals. Let’s get into it.
Our story begins with the birth of a little girl on the Caribbean island nation of Barbados. Gwendolyn Knight was born in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, on May 26, 1913, born into a family whom she deemed, quote, “free thinkers.” Her family was mixed-race: her mother, Miriam Helena Small, was a Black Barbadian woman, and her father, Malcolm Knight, was a white Barbadian man. Her parents were loving and strong, but their life wasn’t easy at the beginning. Miriam was disabled with an injury she sustained during a strong hurricane one year, and Malcolm sadly died when Gwendolyn was just two years old. With a deceased father and a disabled mother, Gwendolyn had the odds stacked against her in their small island nation, and her mom wanted more for her than that. So when Gwen was 7 years old, Miriam convinced her to emigrate to the U.S. with family friends. Gwendolyn Knight settled first with her family friends in St. Louis, where she enjoyed being part of a warm and welcoming Black community, and then, in 1926, when Knight was 13, her family moved to Harlem, where her creative interest and abilities blossomed during the Harlem Renaissance. It truly was the perfect community for someone like her: she was an avid reader and a lover of dance, theater, and opera, and everywhere she went she was surrounded by creativity. She even lived temporarily in an apartment building on Seventh Avenue that was also home to the jazz pianist Billy Strayhorn and the actress and blues singer Ethel Waters. Within this formative and inspiring environment, it’s not surprising to learn that Gwen herself eventually gravitated toward the arts, too.
Gwendolyn Knight’s first formal study of art was at Howard University in Washington, D. C., where she attended undergraduate studies beginning in 1931 under the guidance of the painter Lois Maillou Jones (herself another awesome figure in art, by the by) and the printmaker James Lesesne Wells. Even with those two established and trustworthy professors supporting her, Knight did note that noted that, unlike male painters, female painters were not taken very seriously at Howard. Heck, at anywhere, really—as we’ve discussed time and again on this show, to be a woman and to be a professional artist were descriptors that often seemed to be at odds with one another. Unfortunately, though, Knight’s time at Howard was cut short because of financial difficulties. The Great Depression, by 1933, had hit full force, and she could no longer afford to stay there, so returned home to Harlem.
The good news, though, is that, again, Harlem was still a magnificent place for Black artists and creators. Knight quickly became a daily participant in the workshop of sculptor Augusta Savage, director of Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts and later the Harlem Community Arts Center funded by the Works Progress Administration. Again, another truly awesome artist—hopefully we can get into the life of Augusta Savage more deeply at a later date. What’s important to note here is that Savage became a mentor to Knight, and her studio was a second home. It was also an artistic epicenter, and Savage was connected to everybody. Through Savage, Gwendolyn Knight met writers and poets like Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Alain Locke; and artists like Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas and Romare Bearden: folks who were front and center of the Harlem Renaissance. Like Augusta Savage, the artist Charles Alston would play a pivotal role in Knight’s life, because while she was assisting him in a mural project in the mid-1930s, he introduced her to another young up-and-comer. That person was Jacob Lawrence. And that’s coming up next.Stick with us over this ad break. And hey, want to listen to this show ad-free? Join me over at Patreon today for $4 a month, and you’ll be all set. Check it out—patreon.com/artcurious.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
Jacob Lawrence was a couple of years younger than Gwendolyn Knight, but by the time they met in 1934, he was already well on his way to becoming a renowned and respected artist. Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7, 1917, to Southern parents who had moved North during World War I. For a time, the Lawrence family lived in rural Pennsylvania, but before too long, the Lawrence children were moved to Philadelphia in the aftermath of their parents’ divorce: they called it quits in 1924, when Jacob was seven years old. Like Gwendolyn Knight, he, too, had a family shake-up and a big relocation at a young age. Jacob Lawrence and his siblings were moved into foster homes, shuttling in and out of other peoples’ lives for almost a decade until they moved to New York and reunited with their mother in 1930, when Jacob was thirteen.
Thanks to the newfound stability of his family life—and probably, again, the relocation to Harlem—Jacob Lawrence flourished in his teen years. Not terribly long after reuniting with his mother, she enrolled him in an after-school art program, and had progressed far enough that by the mid-1930s, he was regularly participating in community art programs that garnered some great attention. By 1937, he had secured a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School, a coup brought about with the help of none other than one of his teachers, Augusta Savage-- and the very next year, at the age of 21, he secured employment with the WPA—the Works Progress Administration—in their influential Federal Art Project, working as a professional painter in the easel division. One of his influential connections was with Charles Alston, himself the first African-American supervisor for the WPA’s Federal Art Project. And it was through a visit to Alston’s studio that Jacob Lawrence first met Gwendolyn Knight.
For Knight, it may very well have been love at first sight, or at least interest at first sight. Many years later, she could recall the moment she first laid eyes on her future husband, noting, quote, “He had beautiful skin and long beautiful eyelashes that anyone would die for.” So she found his gorgeous, sure, but it wasn’t only that. Right away she sensed a seriousness in him, a dedication to his work that was unlike anything she had yet seen. This focus and intensity was something she witnessed firsthand early on. When they met, Lawrence was in the middle of what would become his first great painting series, a cycle of 41 paintings depicting the life and works of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian general who was one of the leaders of the so-called Haitian Independence against French rule—someone sometimes referred to as the, quote, “Black Napoleon.” Lawrence was captivated by the experience of African Americans and the African Diaspora, and sought to commemorate and celebrate the struggles and victories of people like Toussaint, folks who are often—even now—left by the wayside in the historical narrative. So consumed was Lawrence by his painting, by the stories he told on paper and canvas and panel, that he would work even when everyone around him was socializing, returning to his easel in the midst of a party. To Gwendolyn Knight, this was entrancing and enchanting. The pair quickly became besotted with one another, and in 1941, they got married. Their strong, enduring partnership was just beginning.
Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence eventually became a power couple in the art world, with their working styles and subject matter in a kind of complimentary contrast—if that’s a phrase—with one another. Lawrence was methodical, precise, with everything worked out in advance, the grand narrative of cycles like the Toussaint L’Ouverture one expertly arranged prior to the paint hitting the canvas. And it all meant something, you know, it was for the great purpose of highlighting the glories and injustices faced by Black Americans in particular. Gwendolyn Knight’s paintings were lighter in comparison—both in color palette and in subject matter. She liked to sit in parlors, in homes, painting people—especially women—in everyday settings and situations. By no means does this make her work less important or intriguing than her husband’s. It’s just nice to see that there wasn’t competition between one another, that they both came to the art world with different ideas and goals, both taken equally seriously with the bounds of their marriage and friendship. Knight’s work was important. Lawrence’s work was important. And they never let each other forget that. Lawrence was always quick to note this in interviews, too, proclaiming the greatness of his wife’s works for their difference as much as anything else. In 1987, he told one interviewer, quote, “She’s a very lyrical painter, very poetic, very romantic in her painting, entirely different from me. She has a feel for color that is very lyrical and has a certain kind of rhythm. Her approach is feeling out the canvas as she goes, for clothing it with color, with lines and form and light and dark…I can appreciate Gwen…because we are so different.”
Of course just because the artists were so accommodating and accepting of each others’ careers didn’t mean that others acted similarly. It will surely come as no surprise to you, dear listeners, to learn that Lawrence was more quote-unquote “successful” during his lifetime than Gwen Knight was. Not that Lawrence necessarily had it easy, either: remember, too, that both of our protagonists here were Black, and thus the barriers they faced were significant in comparison to white artists. But Gwendolyn Knight had the double-whammy of being both Black and a woman, God forbid, so her career was the secondary one in their relationship. And she often subjugated her work so that she could support his—whether or not that was something she wanted to do, or if she felt that she had to do it is something that I don’t know for sure. But here, as an example, was the kind of working relationship that Knight and Lawrence shared: In 1940, Lawrence was awarded a $1,500 grant from the Rosenwald Foundation to paint his seminal cycle, The Migration of the Negro—which we typically refer to as The Migration Series today. And if you thought that the Toussaint L’Ouverture series was big at just over 40 paintings, this one was even bigger, topping out at sixty small panels, each of which depicted one specific moment in the northward journey of Southern Black folks as part of the “Great Migration” after World War I, one of the largest population movements in U.S. History. For the massive preparations for this series, Knight assisted her husband in research and even in the writing that accompanied each panel. Once the painting got underway, Gwen Knight often helped with the preparatory work, arranging and covering panels with layer of gesso, a kind of support layer made of pigment and glues that act as a base for many paintings. Knight was Lawrence’s best assistant, best supporter. But she wasn’t just his helper, she also gave him critical advice, leading him to make alterations to designs based on her feedback. It was something that Lawrence never took for granted. Even years later, he praised their working relationship, saying, quote, “It’s a stimulating thing. It’s a good thing to have someone like this. I tell all artists this, all young people…it’s provocative when you have a person like this whom you respect.” And here’s the other thing: it worked. Their working relationship worked. So much so that the Migration Series is often seen as the pinnacle of Lawrence’s career, and one that lead to another big milestone: the first solo exhibition by a Black artist at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). And for her husband, Gwendolyn Knight was an integral part of that. She had put aside her career and made her husband’s work her primary focus, and it showed in his successes. The Migration Series, by the way, was purchased jointly by MoMA and the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., so you can see them in both of those locations today.
I mentioned in our last episode on the Alberses that we’d be returning to Black Mountain College in today’s episode, and that’s true, even if the college won’t be the main focus of today’s story. In the mid-1940s, after his success with The Migration Series and after the end of World War Two (a time in which Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard as part of the first racially-integrated crew on his ship), Albers had reached national attention for his work, and he caught the eye of Josef Albers. Albers invited Jacob Lawrence to come down to Black Mountain to teach at the school’s influential summer program, and it had a lasting effect on Lawrence because it introduced him to teaching—something he grew to love, and which he would later return to in the last decades of his life. Though they only stayed at Black Mountain for one summer, the summer of 1946, it had a lasting impact on both artists. For Lawrence, again, it was the teaching, and a teaching style based in no small part on that of Josef Albers himself; and for Gwendolyn Knight, the campus’s encouragement of experimentation, especially in the realm of abstraction, became a new touchstone, too. The artists returned to New York after their stint in North Carolina feeling inspired and refreshed.
Not that they’d remain feeling that way. That’s coming up next, after one more quick break. Come right back.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
We all know that looks can be deceiving. Someone can appear to be living their best life, achieving all their goals and fulfilling all their dreams, but hating their existence. For Jacob Lawrence, that’s what it might have been like. On the outside, he was hugely successful, with the national attention garnered for The Migration Series, the exhibitions, the Guggenheim Fellowship he received alongside other accolades: Jacob Lawrence had it made. But not long after his teaching stint at Black Mountain College, Lawrence grew depressed, and the situation became so dire that in 1949, Lawrence voluntarily checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in Queens, New York, to seek treatment for what he called “exhaustion and tension from overworking.” That was probably a huge part of the issue, of course, but there’s also the potential issue of FBI surveillance on the couple. As the ‘40s melted into the 1950s, the artists—though not members of the Communist Party—were often associated with pals and colleagues who were themselves members, and thus Lawrence and Knight were occasionally hassled for their political leanings and associations. They weren’t alone in this, of course—lots of artists, from Jackson Pollock to Robert Motherwell, also faced surveillance and being deemed so-called “security threats.” But this, and the persistent systemic racism that Lawrence undoubtedly faced, pushed him to the brink. He ended up remaining in inpatient treatment for a full year with Knight’s care and deep support. Speaking of support, she provided for them financially during this time, too, taking a job with the publishing company Conde Nast during her husband’s hospitalization, working in their library and magazine archives. She remained with Conde Nast for more than ten years, providing her family with a sustainable, reliable income.
Just because Lawrence was in recovery didn’t mean that he was just lounging there. He used his time to create works of art depicting his fellow patients, a series fittingly deemed “The Hospital Series.” So although Lawrence's time at the psychiatric hospital was positive, as he rested, recovered, and produced new works, his mental health struggles never ended, especially as the 20th century progressed. In particular, he felt a kind of internal pressure during the early stirrings of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite not considering himself a leader and certainly not a politician, Lawrence had become one of the leading Black artists of his time, and was thus highly visible. That meant that he—and perhaps Gwendolyn, too—were constantly being hounded to be art-world spokespeople for Civil Rights, and to lend their good names and their financial support to various related causes. It was exhausting, and that pressure did nothing to alleviate Lawrence’s depression. So instead, he did what he knew he could manage: to continue painting and to count on Knight’s ongoing love and support.
Not that Gwendolyn Knight ever stopped making art of her own. Sure, she put her artistic career aside for the furtherance of her husband’s stellar one, but she never dropped it—and eventually, like many of the hetero couples we’re discussing this season, Knight’s time in the spotlight came later in her life. In the early 1970s, the couple moved to Washington State after Lawrence took a job at the University of Seattle, where he remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1983. The geographic shift from New York to Seattle was a natural turning point, then, and with Lawrence secure in his university position, Knight could now try something new and different. Suddenly, she and her work were everywhere. She joined the King County Arts Commission, she participated on art panels and juries, she found gallery representation—in the same gallery as her husband, of course, but still—and she began showcasing her work in group exhibitions. Only a few years after their move to the West Coast, Knight enjoyed her very first Solo Exhibition, which took place at the Seattle Art Museum in 1976. And that was just the start. From the mid-70s until the turn of the 21st century, with her works gaining more and more recognition throughout the country. And it wasn’t just painting. She made prints, she danced, she found creative outlets in all sorts of different ways, and she thrived. Even after Jacob Lawrence passed away in 2000 at the age of 82, she continued to focus on her art career, and two years before her own death, she witnessed a career retrospective, held at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, and at the DC Moore Gallery in New York. It was, you might say, a pretty good way to go out. Gwendolyn Knight died two years after her career retrospective, passing away at the age of 92 in 2005.
Next time on ArtCurious, it’s that age-old story: he sees her as just one thing—a weeping woman, he says—but she, a creator in her own right, is so much more. Join us in two weeks for our next episode.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal. Huge thanks to Ann Catherine Hughes for her excellent writing and research help for this episode. The ArtCurious theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our brand new, fabulous logo is by the fine folks at Vaulted, check them out at vaulted.co. Our podcast is co-produced by Kaboonki - podcasts, creative video, and more. Subscribe to their show, Subgenre, a podcast about the movies, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at subgenrepodcast.com. Kaboonki: Leave your mark. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space, Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator, which means you can donate tax-free to ArtCurious to show your support, and you can join us at Patreon for the price of a cup of coffee. Check back with us soon as we explore some of the most unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful Modern art lovers in art history.
