Exhibition Catalog | Jacob Lawrence

Moving Forward
Together: New York
in Transit
MICHELE ELAM Jacob lawrence’s 1998 silkscreens, new
York in Transit I and II (figs. 14–15, cats.
56–57), were the artist’s last commissioned
public works before his passing in 2000. Comprising
two panels, the prints together form the
maquettes—small-scale models, or prototypes—for the thirty-six-foot-wide glass
mosaic mural (fig. 16) permanently installed in the Times Square /42nd Street
subway station in New York in 2001 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Arts for Transit and Urban Design.¹ New York in Transit offers viewers a vision of companionable
humanity, of people unique yet all en route toward a shared destination.
Created in Lawrence’s distinctive abstract aesthetic, New York in Transit is a
kind of tableau vivant of New York’s ethnic diversity, socioeconomic gumbo, idiosyncratic
personalities, and hallowed cultural institutions that are both representative of
the city and yet suggest, more universally, the mosaic of human experience. We are
given an omniscient glimpse into an elevated train hurtling through time and space.
Within this diorama, what we might call visual moments, or beats, are framed and
defined by the floor-to-ceiling poles that riders hold. But the hands grasping these
poles, and the bodies of the passengers appearing on both sides of them, transgress
these boundaries, so the effect is one of continuity rather than subdivision. Contrary
to the notion that riders of subways and trains face socially isolating experiences in
which criminal threat and physical discomfort are the norm, in Lawrence’s New York
in Transit people are represented as being both contentedly solitary and enthusiastically
social. The first panel is bookended by books: on the upper left-hand corner are
red, blue, green, and black books piled up as though in a library carrel; in the lower
right, an African American man is intently reading a book with a binding of the same
colors. The visual beats in between feature both people privately engrossed like the
reader (a man gazes upward, lost in whatever is playing from his headphones; a
woman protectively cradles a plant) as well as those in animated engagement with
others (the woman sharing a menagerie of pets on her lap with the woman in the seat
FIGURES 14–15
New York in Transit I and II,
1998. Two silkscreens. Gift
of Dr. Herbert J. Kayden and
Family in memory of Dr.
Gabrielle H. Reem, 2013.115–116
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