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Description
George Tooker: Painting and Working Drawings 1947-1988
September 6 to September 27, 1989
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Paintings such as Subway, 1950, and Ward, 1970-71, are unforgettable images of the numbing isolation and anonymity that George Tooker finds in our secular bureaucratic society. What lies behind these compelling images? The larger context of private and public themes offers us insight into Tooker's achievement. I would like to propose that at least a part of this achievement lies in his simultaneous use and dismissal of the traditional, that is Renaissance-based, perspective construction of pictorial space.
While studying at the Art Students League in 1943-45, Tooker absorbed the American revival of Renaissance techniques of draughtsmanship and composition emphasized at the League. The expectation that we as spectators bring to an artist's use of one-point perspective is that it generate the illusion of a spatially unified and coherent world.
Publication Date
1989
Publisher
University of Richmond Museums
City
Richmond, VA
Keywords
George Tooker, paintings, University of Richmond Museums, Subway, Marsh Art Gallery
Disciplines
Art and Design | Fine Arts | Painting
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.