Jerry Pinkney, Cotton Club. Illustration from Sweethearts of Rhythm, 2008. ©2008 Jerry Pinkney Studio. All rights reserved. |
Witness:
The Art of Jerry Pinkney
June 28 – September 22, 2013
Special
Exhibitions Gallery, Perelman Building
2525
Pennsylvania Avenue
Philadelphia,
PA
Witness:
The Art of Jerry Pinkney displays almost five decades of work by the celebrated
Philadelphia-born illustrator. He is well known for spellbinding visual
narratives that bring to life classic children’s literature, folktales, and
trailblazing explorations of the American story. The exhibition comprises more
than one hundred images, including designs for record album covers, commissions
for African American historic sites, and luminous illustrations from his
award-winning children’s books—including The Lion and the Mouse,
winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal—all of which trace Pinkney’s artistic journey
as one of the United States’ finest visual storytellers. This exhibition is
part of Art Splash, a suite of five family-friendly exhibitions, interactive
art and play zones, and daily family programs in the Perelman Building from
June 28 to September 2, 2013.
The show
explores Pinkney’s achievements as a designer, with images for advertising,
book jackets, and record album covers. In 1984 he created a series of calendar
illustrations for the Smirnoff Company honoring jazz greats of the Harlem
Renaissance. These watercolors combine figures, text, and graphic elements to
create playful images that reflect the improvisational nature of jazz as well
as the individual quirks of each musician. Jazz Greats (Coleman
Hawkins)shows the tenor saxophonist and his band at the Savoy Ballroom in
Harlem.
Illustrations
of classic folktales and fairy tales anchor the exhibition and have long been
Pinkney’s signature work. He has illustrated more than one hundred books,
bringing national attention to African American culture as well as
reinterpreting European fables and stories like The Little Match Girl and Little
Red Riding Hood. With the writer Julius Lester in the 1980s, Pinkney took a
fresh look at The Tales of Uncle Remus, illustrating
the puckishness of Brer Rabbit and his associates without evoking connotations
of slavery.
Pinkney
not only reinterpreted European tales with black protagonists but also
developed work that depicted the everyday life of African Americans. Many of
the works in this section reflect his personal experiences of faith and family.
Illustrations for Mirandy and Brother Wind and The
Patchwork Quilt (a Reading Rainbow book) celebrate
African American traditions, while The Sunday Outing, a story
by the artist’s wife, Gloria Jean Pinkney, shows Christian imagery
that is also seen in Pinkney’s Bible illustrations. In Opening of the
Red Sea, frothy walls of water peel away from a column of migrants
moving along the sandy ocean floor, showing the frailty of human life preserved
by divine grace.
A detailed
observer of the American visual landscape, Pinkney humanizes historical events
with care and empathy. His work for National Geographic magazine,
the National Park Service, and the US Postal Service portrayed the
contributions that African Americans have made to the history of this country.
In Mary, done for the African Burial Ground Interpretive
Center in New York, a woman holds a hoe in her hand and a baby on her back,
showing the drudgery and pain of slavery, while Plural Response, a
series for the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, shows a variety of
folk, from a sharecropper to a store proprietor, on the march for civil rights.
This
exhibition showcases the power of visual storytelling, whether that story is a
familiar legend, a forgotten folktale, or a neglected corner of history. Witness:
The Art of Jerry Pinkney explores this gifted artist’s legacy through
compelling images that offer insight into where we have been, who we are, and
who we might become.
The
catalogue accompanying the retrospective traces Pinkney’s long career and
features essays by the artist, Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Dr. Gerald L. Early,
Steven Heller, Leonard S. Marcus, and Dr. Joyce K. Schiller
June 26,
2013 has been declared Jerry Pinkney Day throughout Philadelphia and the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania. The offices of the First Lady Susan Corbett, State Senator
Larry Farnese, State Representative Michelle Brownlee, Councilwoman Blondell
Reynolds Brown and City Chief Cultural Officer Gary Steuer on behalf of
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, will be at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to
present the artist with letters of commendation from US Congresswoman Allyson
Y. Schwartz and the office of Governor Corbett.
Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney was organized by the
Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
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