Jerry Lemenu: Case Studies

 

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Jerry Lemenu prepares his pastel drawings to allow a viewer to grasp the issues in a court case in a few seconds of airtime. Separated from their newscasts and viewed at leisure, however, they make a rather different case, one that resists the momentary hype of television news, and resists also, perhaps, our own desire for summary judgment, a clear idea of right and wrong, a quick and easy verdict.

 

During a trial a good courtroom artist spends much of his time studying subjects, looking for the distinctive human being in each person. The mobster, murderer, and embezzler; the fallen athlete, police chief, and corporate leader: all receive a fair trial in Lemenu’s drawings—as do attorneys, judges, and members of juries. The accused are innocent until proven guilty, and, if judged guilty, never lose their humanity. Lemenu places them in a context and selects expressions, postures, and gestures that define these characters caught in moments of high drama. Courtroom drawings add a dimension to what we learn from photographs, videotapes, news accounts, and trial transcripts. A good courtroom drawing is a sensitive observer’s rendering of an important event.

 

When collected in one place, however, these case studies present not only isolated moments of high drama. In a city with a reputation for crime and conflict, history has often occurred in courtrooms. In 2003, Defining Detroit presented historian Heather Thompson, whose book, Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, relies heavily on court records to describe Detroit’s contested political and social terrain in the 1960s and 70s. Jerry Lemenu’s drawings cover the next generation of this city’s trials and tribulations. They are thus primary sources in Detroit’s rich and complicated recent history.

                                                                                                                                                        Frank D. Rashid

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