University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Exhibition Brochures University Museums 1989 George Tooker: Painting and Working Drawings 1947-1988 University of Richmond Museums Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/exhibition-brochures Part of the Fine Arts Commons, and the Painting Commons Recommended Citation University of Richmond Museums. George Tooker: Painting and Working Drawings 1947-1988, September 6 to September 27, 1989, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums. Richmond, Virginia: University of Richmond Museums, 1989. Exhibition Brochure. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Museums at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Exhibition Brochures by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GEORGE TOOKER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS LENDERS TO THE First, I would like to thank George Tooker for his EXHIBITION cooperation, time and hospitality, which have enabled this exhibition and made its organization George Tooker a pleasure. Second, without the consistent su pport Marisa del Re Gallery, New York and interest of Joel and Lila Harnett, this exhibi­ Museum of Modern Art, New York tion would not have come to fruition . I owe them a debt of gratitude. Whitney Muse um of American Art, ew York Many people have been generous in their a sist­ Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York ance: Julia May of the Marisa del Re Gallery; Joel and Lila Harnett lldiko Heffernan and Mary Ann Ricketso n of the Robert Hull Fleming Museum of the University of Kitty and Herbert Glantz Vermont; and Arnold Skolnick of Chameleon Books, New York. I owe special thanks to Victoria The Marsh Gallery exhibition i made possible by Robinson, WC'89, for conducting the interview the generosity of Joel Harnett, RC'45; the Cultural with George Tooker, and for her suggestions, hard Affairs Committee. University of Richmond; and work and good spirits. the Art Department, University of Richmond. Brownie Hamilton of the Office of Foundation and Government Support spurred our grant appli­ cation: and Dorothy Wagener of the Office of Communications has provided her excellent edi to­ rial assistance. Of the Art Department, Charles Johnson and Mark Rhodes have given their unfail­ ing good will and support; Lynda Brown ha pro­ vided invaluable administrative assistance: and Ephraim Rubenstein has been unstinting in his advice and expertise, and has generously agreed to give the opening lecture. Elizabeth Langhorne-Reeve Director of the Marsh Gallery Cover: George Tooker. Sleepers 11, 1959 Egg tempera on gesso panel. 16 \ii x 28 inches Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund. 1960 GEORGE TOOKER Paintings and Working Drawings 1947-1988 Study for SleC'per.1 II. 1959 (Checklist no. 6d) September 6-27, 1989 Organized by Elizabeth Langhorne-Reeve Director, Marsh Gallery Marsh Gallery Modlin Fine Arts Center University of Richmond GEORGE TOOKER: PERSPECTIVES By Elizabeth Langhorne-Reeve Paintings such as Subway, 1950, and Ward, this human spiritual community. Thus the Cornice. 1949. The per pective pace of the 1970-71, are unforgettable images of the Renaissance pace is associated with man's city recceds to the left. but is inaccessible; the numbing i olation and anonymity that desire for a coherent and spiritually alive Tooker man, literally backed up against the George Tooker finds in our ecular bureau­ world. Even as we are invited into thi. world wall in the compressed pace of the fore­ cratic society. Whal lies behind these compel­ and clown the path under the arches, our ground plane, stands terrified on the ledge of ling images? The larger context of private and entry into thi deep pictorial space is not a high building. He contemplate a leap- not public themes offers us insight into Tooker's without obstacles. These arc dramatized in a suicidal one, but an existential leap. Cornice achievement. I would like to propose that at Subway, 1950 (see illustration, p. 4). is one of the few canvases by Tooker to be least a part of this achievement lies in his About Subway Tooker has aid: "I was directly inspired by literature, in this instance simultaneous use and dismi. al of the tradi­ thinking of the large modern city as a kind of a poem by W. H. Auden: tional, that i Renaissance-based, perspective limbo. The subway seemed a good place to Yet. at this very moment when we do a1 la t construction of pictorial space. present a denial of the enses and a negation see ourselves as we are. neither cozy nor While studying at the Art Studenb League of life itself. Its being underground with great playful. but swa ing out on 1he ultima1e in 1943-45, Tooker absorbed the American weight overhead was important."2 In thi wind- hipped cornice that overha ngs the revival of Renaissance techniques of work Tooker . ets up the potential for a deep unabiding void - 1~e have never 'itood an)­ draughtsmanship and composition empha­ and humanly habitable space. but makes the wherc else- when our rea . on~ arc si lenced sized at the League. The expectation that we occupants.' and the viewer's. oyage through in the hea y huge dcri ion. There i as spectators bring to an artist's use of one­ this space torturous. nothing to say.·' point perspective is that it generate the illu­ The per pective grid of this subway world There is no coherent unitary world view sion of a spatially unified and coherent world. contains at least four different and diverging accessible to modern man lo give meaning to To what effect does Tooker use perspective spatial istas. The central one, backed at the our lives: the Tooker man contemplates the in his early work? About Birdwatchers, 1948 vanishing point by a fierce-looking woman in void of modern existence. (see illustration, p. 3), he has stated, ··1 red. opens up in rever e into the unfocused Again and again in hi public themes. wanted to paint a positive picture, a religious divergent paths of the foreground figures; the Tooker uses our expectation of deep three­ picture without religious subject matter." 1 vi. ta to the left i. marked by a equence of dimen ional pace. onlv to frmtrate them. and Raised in an Episcopalian church-going fam­ human fear, isolation and ultimate despair at to make us aware of modern man's true exis­ ily. Tooker stopped attending church when he the blocked passage; the turnstile exit to the tential position . In Ward. 1970-71 ( ee illus­ went to art school. In Birdwatchers he pre - right i a bristling maze of contradictory lines. tration. p. 6). created at the height of the ents hi piritual ideal in pictorial term , with The only path open is to the lower left, one of Vietnam War, he deal with the treatment of a three-dimensional tactility that has the sim­ descent. Tooker's conviction is that ·'the the old a well a of the wounded. The erect ple strength of Giotto's early Renaissance de ign of a picture must come out of its figures. male and female. are caught not only world, and with a spatial construction gov­ meaning.'' Here "denial of the sense and a in the somnolent grid of the hospital beds. but erned by a single vanishing point. negation of life" motivates the symbolic in their own patial funnel - whose vani hing This point, indicated to us in the perspec­ expression of the labyrinthine spatial points diverge to left and right. In the center is tival recession of the firm masonry arches and truclure. the curtained cubicle of the terminally ill. par­ marked in the working drawing, is located The 'Tooker man," loosely modelled on tially blocking our view of the American flag. within the heart of the man on the left of the Tooker's own features, is a figure type which In Ward Tooker\ avowed intention "was to central trio of foreground figures. Their he u es throughout his work as an image of shock and jolt people ...." 4 upward and arden t gaze draws our attention univer al modern man. While the ideal of a In his private theme . for in Lance the win­ upwards to the birds and the arch that frames deep and coherent space exists, the Tooker dow series. Tooker acknowledges th e paradox man cannot make use of it. Thi paradox. at of the desire for Renaissance pace and the Notes appear on p. 4. the heart of Tooker's art. is made vivid in inability to inhabit it. and re. tricts him elf to 2 Study for Birdwatchers. 1948 rC h cck h ~t no. Ja) Study for Cort1/Cl'. 1949 (('hcck l"t no. 4a) the fo reg round plane of the per pective grid, The initial re lati onship of female and male i ~ wo rking in what he descri be a a bas-reli ef not fi nall y reversed until Window, 1987, ann oun ced in Birdwatchers- th e center of pace. Of th e window series exec uted where the black male is presented confidentl y th e compos iti on is now instantiated in human between 1955 and 1987, we have Window, to th e fo re. intimacy, and resolved in a ingle vanishing 1987, and oth ers closely related to its co n­ Continu ing to wo rk in a ba -reli ef space point th at encompac;ses the natu ra l world and ce rns: Gypsies. 1968 ( ee ill us trati on, p. 7), Tooker ex plores not onl y the dynamic ten­ th e pac;sage of tim e.