Strike 1949

Curator: Jacob Lawrence’s “Strike,” painted in 1949 with acrylic on canvas, really grabs the eye. The dynamism in this baseball scene, the players, the action, all rendered in Lawrence's signature modernist style... what's your immediate response to this work? Editor: The jagged shapes, the sharp angles in the figures' bodies, and those fiercely contrasting colors. The reds really pop! It feels almost…anxious? I think Lawrence does more than just depicting a game here. There's definitely some high stakes communicated. Curator: Lawrence consistently addressed issues of race and class through his artwork, and “Strike” emerges at a pivotal moment in the integration of Major League Baseball. Given the social context of 1949, Jackie Robinson's breakthrough a couple years earlier, it prompts us to view this seemingly straightforward depiction of a baseball game in a deeper way. It's a representation of cultural change. Editor: Absolutely. Consider that Lawrence would have grown up with Negro League baseball. This painting enters the conversation around who gets to play, who gets to watch, whose stories are celebrated on the field and in art. Is that crowded mass of indistinct faces in the background symbolic of societal pressure? Curator: Could be. The social realist style positions art within the everyday lives of its viewers. His subjects are ordinary people engaged in activities readily accessible, or perhaps not accessible to some...baseball, a national pastime, becomes a field ripe for scrutiny and a potential site for a visual activism, let’s call it. Editor: And that expressiveness adds layers too, doesn’t it? The distortion is deliberate, to show us, to almost force us, to feel something about it all. Is Lawrence presenting a tense and conflicted view, then, of integration, anxieties and all, and not just the celebration narrative of baseball's desegregation. Curator: Possibly. Lawrence makes the audience consider, what is gained and lost when historical transformation and access is negotiated and put on public display. Editor: It becomes a fascinating reflection of American culture during a transformative era. Thanks for the background information. Curator: Thanks! The intersectional dialogues it invites definitely leave a lasting impression.