Miagrating Birds 1953

Curator: Norman Lewis’s 1953 work, "Migrating Birds," presents us with a mesmerizing field of movement and abstraction. Acrylic paint brings forth the impression of a murmuration, a kind of collective noun. Editor: A collective… anxiety? The first thing I feel is a low hum of something vaguely unsettling. They’re beautiful, this dance of pale strokes against that fiery ground, but there’s something a little frantic, chaotic about it too. Curator: Perhaps that anxiety mirrors the anxieties of the time. Lewis painted this during a period of intense social change and unrest, and his abstraction often carried social commentary. Do the birds represent a desire for escape or perhaps, the turmoil and displacement of people? Editor: The symbol of a bird is universal; they can be freedom, soul, aspiration, even prophecy. They suggest hope. But a *mass* of them? Think of Hitchcock, of crowds, the loss of individual identity within a swarm. Maybe it’s a statement about collective action… or collective delusion? Curator: Or perhaps he’s simply capturing the natural phenomenon. Lewis was deeply interested in rhythm and energy, and "Migrating Birds" vibrates with both. The density of the flock shifts, areas thinning out, mirroring a natural undulation in the movement. What would it have been like to witness such a performance in real life? Editor: True. Consider the psychology of crowds, though. One takes on the emotion of all the others. The symbol, here, of *migration* feels like unrest. The ocher color is beautiful – it does suggest fields of wheat but then reminds me also of sepia, things gone by, a kind of elegy, like birds passing over the land after an epic devastation. It isn't joy. Curator: I think, for me, the beauty lies in the way he conveys such complexity with such a minimal palette. This fiery ochre – and these marks evoking hundreds or thousands of individual bodies pressing forward… Editor: Exactly. From a distance, those pale dashes might look like relief. But closer, each mark has such definition – an aloneness of purpose. Curator: So it holds that dichotomy between beauty and angst within itself. Editor: Inevitably intertwined, I think… both the journey and the question that follows: Are we going or fleeing?