The Builders: The Family

Jacob Lawrence

1917–2000

The Builders: The Family, 1974

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: wove paper; screen print

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 763 x 564 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 866 x 656 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 30 1/16 x 22 3/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 34 1/8 x 25 13/16 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 36 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 in
Weight (Weight): 11 lbs

Credit line: Museum purchase: Friends of the Art Museum

Accession number: 1991.0009

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

One History, Two Versions

Emmett Till was denied a future that could have included building a family like the one depicted here. Showing Black families lovingly engaging in everyday activities was one way that Jacob Lawrence documented the Black experience. In 1942, when segregation was still legal, Lawrence became the first African American whose artwork was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. You can view his series The Legend of John Brown in our Marshall Balcony.

Exhibition Label: "Intersection of Race and Gender," Mar-1999, Douglas Steward Commentary on this screenprint might begin with its title, The Builders: The Family. The colon at the center of this title suggests a kind of equation: the builders and the family are equivalent. If the literal builders in the background are building a physical building, what is the family building? The answer is perhaps redundant: the builders build the building, and the family builds the family. Lawrence highlights the similarity between the two groups through a uniform use of line and color. Note, for instance, how the father’s box-like hat resembles the builders’ materials. Nevertheless, an important difference exists between builders and family. Whereas the builders are all male, the family is composed of a balanced combination of genders: father, mother, son, daughter. If the builders use wood and nails to erect a building, the family appears to use genders to construct the nuclear family. Archive Label: Lawrence grew up in Harlem, in the context of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. In this setting he was encouraged to make art that reflected his own traditions rather than to follow mainstream academic style and subject matter. In 1941 Lawrence’s Migration of the Negro series of paintings won him acclaim, and he became the first black artist to be represented by a major New York gallery. He is a professor emeritus of art at the University of Washington, Seattle. Lawrence’s abstract modernist style belies the strong political content of his work, which is inspired by African-American history and “portray[s] the lives and struggles of the people he knows best, black Americans.” The Builders series works “place a symbolic emphasis on humanity’s aspirations and constructive potential.” (Ellen Harkins Wheat)