Roll Jordan Roll
1896-1934
Oil on canvas
38 1/8 in x 30 1/8 in
1930
Label:
Between 1928 and 1931, Greensboro-born Malvin Gray Johnson took African American spirituals as inspiration for a series of nine known paintings, including Roll Jordan Roll. Based on an antebellum Southern spiritual of the same name, Johnson’s painting conveys a sense of hope amid despair with a dark palette of blues and purples. Often interpreted as a song about the escape from slavery, Roll Jordan Roll describes the River Jordan, a waterway which Johnson reimagines as a borderland between bondage and freedom. Roll Jordan Roll depicts nine figures huddled on a boat as the wind creates repetitious curves of the sails and waves.
As Published In:
Southern/Modern: Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century, 2023
As Exhibited In:
SENSORIUM: Debussy: La Mer and Scented Visions, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, July 23–September 20, 2025
Southern/Modern: 1913-1955, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA, July 1, 2023–February 1, 2025, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, January 25–April 28, 2024, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN, July 14–September 29, 2024, Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, NC, October 25, 2024–February 2, 2025
Excellence & Emancipation: African American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, January 20–March 19, 2021
Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, January 28, 2018–March 18, 2019, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, June 24–September 30, 2018, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, November 18, 2018–March 18, 2019
Musical Fluidity: A Visual Duet, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, May 2–July 21, 2017
Picture of America: Art of the Southern Scene, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, March 9–April 21, 2017
Beyond the Harlem Renaissance, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, February 20–April 2, 2014
From Plate to Palette, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, April 17–July 3, 2014
Walkers with the Dawn: A Century of African-American Art in the South, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, SC, May 13–July 21, 2011
This is a Different Place: Works of Southern Modernism from the Johnson Collection, Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC, April 3–May 28, 2009