Word: fairfielders
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Brian Mansfield New Fairfield, Conn...
Gary P. Matregrano Fairfield, Conn...
...FAIRFIELD PORTER '28 lived and painted the breezy, cheerful life of American upper middle-class success. While his Bohemian colleagues debated aesthetics and dribbled random patterns of canvas. Porter patiently ignored abstract expressionism, rejected as incomprehensible the artistic movements of the fifties and set about depicting "things as they were." Whit an optimistic and impressionistic flair all his own, he faithfully recorded the comfortable little world of pleasant surroundings and relaxed people he knew and loved so well. As the title of the first major exhibition of his work, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, puts it, Fairfield Porter...
...Fairfield Porter might well go down in history as the preppy painter par excellence. It is a wealthy and confident artist who stands next to his wood-burning stove in his chinos, blue button-down Oxford and knit tie (his work clothes) in the Self-Portrait of 1968. Then there are picnics on the golf course in Lunch Under the Elm Tree, charming portraits of perfectly attired little girls (his daughters), and a relaxing backyard clay court match in dress whites in The Tennis Game of 1972. Even Bruno, the family golden retriever, makes an appearance...
Porter, in explaining his love for the work of the Spanish painter Velazquez, once said that "it isn't that he copies nature--he doesn't impose himself upon it." Indeed, Fairfield Porter never had to interfere in the affairs of the world; he just sat been and took in the panorama around him, a panorama of, as John Updike '54 put it., "nice people, nice places, pleasantly redolent of affection and sensitivity." The results show that sometimes realism can go just as far an abstraction in imparting a unique philosophical outlook on life...