Untitled, 1944, by Norman Lewis (1909-1979) dates to the moment when Lewis, like many New York-based artists, was instigating groundbreaking shifts from figuration to abstraction in his work.   This dynamic period of artistic experimentation followed an earlier embrace of abstraction in the United States, initiated in the first decade of the twentieth-century when interest in Cubism and Futurism was championed by the photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, reinforced by the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, best known as the Armory Show.

This second wave of modernist commitment, in which Surrealism was also important, was impacted by the shift to New York of European émigrés, some permanently, some temporarily, some wishing to avoid the horrors of World War II.  Arshile Gorky, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Miro were among the most influential of these figures from abroad. Lewis would have been familiar with all of their work. 

Lewis was an important figure in the art and educational spaces in Harlem, including the Harlem Artists Guild, of which he was a founder, the Harlem Community Art Center, and sculptor Augusta Savage’s studio.  He also was an avid museum- and gallery-goer downtown (below 110 Street), and a serious reader as well.  In these many ways, Lewis kept abreast of the art, music, and literature that was important to his intellectual contemporaries, both White and Black.     He always claimed to be self-taught, and in that sense was referring to his belief that the education he gave himself in these ways was more important to his work than any formal training.  He was, however, often cited in the Harlem` press among Savage’s students. 

Throughout his life, Lewis’ art maintained many visual and intellectual tensions.  These include that of representation and abstraction, which parallel concerns are evident in Untitled, which also conveys a pulsation between geometric and organic form.  This likewise was essential to Lewis’s art overall, evinced in Untitled, by the juxtaposition of the human figures with architectural elements.  

Untitled also employs multiple media – ink and pastel – which is characteristic of Lewis’s art.  His works on paper generally are created using more than one drawing or painting material (including, over time, transparent and opaque watercolor, oil paint, graphite, ink, crayon, pastel, and collage).  His works on canvas often incorporate ink as well as paint.   An array of color-fields and diverse approaches to line equally are held in tension across his picture plane.   Untitled (Couple Kissing), aka Conversation (Two Abstract Heads) 1945, a horizontal and somewhat smaller work on paper, drawn in pastel, crayon, wash, and ink, in the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred  J. Guiffrida Collection, in which two figures are surrounded by an architectural structure bears relationships to this Untitled image.  In both works, the eyes and hands of the figures are emphasized, two of the essential elements to the making of art (two others, the mind and heart are not so readily pictured).

Lewis consistently (and I believe intentionally) created art that is receptive to multiple readings, in keeping with his belief in the complexity of human experience.  My sense of Untitled is that a man and woman are embracing while leaning from a window.  This accepts that the polka dot panel to the right of the composition is a patterned drapery inside the window: patterned fabrics are a frequent element in many of Lewis’s works of this time, and in works from later decades also.  Often the patterns are incorporated into his figure’s apparel, or in the array of materials on sale in shops he depicted, or, as here, in details of place. 

An element of caricature that is likewise essential to Lewis’s art, as in his many procession images, for example, is evident in Untitled as well, more so in the woman than the man.   This stylized approach may have been inspired by drawings by William Steig,  a member, as was Lewis, of the multi-racial, multi-talented 306 group, named for its address at 306 West 141^st Street, the studio of painter Charles Alston, sculptor Henry “Mike”Bannarn, and furniture-maker and dancer Addison “Ad” Bates.  This was in the late 1930s, and other participants included Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Katherine Dunham, Ralph Ellison, Benny Goodman, Langston Hughes, and Carl Van Vechten, and Orson Welles. 

As a young man Lewis earned a living through such jobs as a taxi-driver and elevator operator, and as an avid gambler This last continued throughout his life.  But Lewis eventually became an esteemed teacher at many institutions.   During the 1940s, they included the Jefferson School of Social Science, where subjects he taught both beginners and advanced students included painting, composition, drawing, abstract painting, and life drawing. This list shows the range of his interests and talents.  He also taught privately throughout his career, and was beloved by generations of students, for his supportive approach to their work, and for his ongoing emphasis on breaking boundaries. 

This was especially important for younger Black artists: Lewis’s move away from a representational emphasis, and from subjects with overt social meaning, gave younger artists permission to do so as well.   With hindsight, however, it is clear that Lewis never stopped subtly making social commentary through his art; and he was a champion of Black artists’ exhibitions and institutions, including the Cinque Gallery and The Studio Museum in Harlem.  

Lewis also never stopped experimenting with materials and building surfaces of unsurpassed beauty, especially on paper. This may be seen throughout Untitled, 1944, in the modification of color and tone in the visual  plane, achieved through rubbing and subtle layering of media, and also in echoes of forms (polka dotted fabric and the man’s eyes). Untitled thus offers keen insight into Lewis’s art, and at the very moment he was making radical shifts in his way of depicting his worlds, both visible and imagined.

Reproduced in  Four Generations: The Joyner/Guiffrida Collection of Abstract Art, Gregory R. Miller & Company, Revised and Expanded Edition, page 16 as (Conversation (Two Abstract Heads); and in Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and University of California Press, 2015, page  43, as Untitled (Couple Kissing) See Persistent Faces by William Stieg. Duell, Sloan& Pearce, 1945. In which specifically labeled types of faces include Merry Widow, Stool Pigeon, Hero Worshipper, Chairman of the Board, and Bigot.

Ruth Fine