Learning to read, John Biggers: Week 3, Wednesday

I showed a John Biggers print a couple of weeks ago, a charming picture of a playful young girl. You may remember that Biggers, like so many of the artists I am showing, overcame a lot of obstacles and had a brilliant career, perhaps limited by racism. Today’s Biggers print is a little deeper. It’s a lithograph entitled Learning to Read, and was created around 1960. I have not been able to learn much about it, but the one interesting piece of history I discovered is that it was created in at least two steps. The figure on the left/foreground appears to have been created first, as there are impressions available showing only that figure (described as an intermediate state print), without the figure on the right/background, who is holding a book. It suggest that the artist started with one figure in mind, and wasn’t sure what else he was going to put in this print. Presumably test printing just the left/foreground picture and looking at it helped him decide what else to do with this work. Both the intermediate state and the full print are show below.

I am trying to interpret the picture. I would say that both men are learning to read. The older man is ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn even at his advanced age (African-Americans were forbidden to learn to read for decades), whereas the younger man looks pained, perhaps because he knows if he was white, he would have learned at a far younger age. Please share your interpretations and thoughts!

Intermediate state print

Final print