Word: painterly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reputations; yet their success seems tinged with panic. They are all young (Longo is 30, Salle 31, and Garouste 37) and, of course, figurative - the pendulum of taste having now swung so far that it is practically impossible to have a rising reputation if you are a new abstract painter. Each, in his way, is a perfect subject of the "postmodernist" image machine, that powerful contraption which, modeled on corporate p.r. lines, has transformed the very nature of reputation in the art world over the past five years. But how good are they...
...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 was a "realist painter in an age of abstraction." And now, a full seven years after his death, he is finally getting the recognition he deserved, but never received...
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...
...would not have added much to the sum of American graphics. Most of his lithographs and screen prints until then were small versions of his paintings, done up to ten years after the event, without much sign of the fierce inquisitiveness he showed as a painter. To expand, he needed a larger technology-and got it from two printing firms, Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles and Tyler Graphics Ltd. in Bedford...