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Norman Lewis: Linearity, Politics, And Pedagogy In His Abstract Expressionism, 1946–1964, Andrianna T. Campbell-Lafleur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on Norman Lewis’s studio practice between the years 1946-1964 in particular his associations with the painters Romare Bearden, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and David Smith. Lewis’s influence extended far into the twenty-first century. As told by numerous contemporary art practitioners—Firelei Baez, Mark Bradford, David Kennedy Cutler, Charles Gaines, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, RJ Messineo, and Jack Whitten—Lewis was the mentor, friend, father and grandfather figure of an innovative black artist working with abstraction. In Chapter 1: An Integrative Line of Becoming, I trace Lewis’s change from Social Realism in the 1930s to semi-abstract portraits and genre paintings …