Ambulance Call

Lawrence’s paintings convey the human experiences of joy, pain, and community through a focus on African American urban life. In Ambulance Call, healthcare workers transport an ailing figure covered in white sheets on a stretcher as a crowd gathers. A paramedic stands by, monitoring the victim. In the 1940s, the Harlem Hospital was one of the few facilities in New York City that admitted black patients. Lawrence conveyed the sense of community in his Harlem neighborhood by grouping the figures closely together. A densely packed crowd of spectators has downcast eyes and sad expressions to suggest that they are not anonymous onlookers but rather a close-knit community of neighbors, friends, and family.

Ambulance Call exemplifies Lawrence’s melding of traditional narrative subjects and the visual language of modernism. The schematically rendered figures wear bright, monochromatic clothing. The artist distributed passages of red, blue, yellow, green, and black throughout the picture in a lively, rhythmic pattern. Lawrence painted blocky forms in a bold but limited palette to express the attention of the onlookers—and capture ours.