three artists` interpretations of city life

The Subway
by George Tooker, 1950, egg
tempera on gessoed board,
181⁄8 x 361⁄8. Collection Whitney
Museum of American Art, New
York, New York. Courtesy DC
Moore Gallery, New York,
New York.
Enduring
Realism
Taylor Montague, Max Ginsburg,
and the late George Tooker
approach the urban landscape
quite differently, but all three
represent a new front for
realism and its portrayal
of modern life.
by Michael Gormley
three artists’
interpretations
of city life
44 American Artist
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A
lthough the bulk of writing generated by art
historians, curators, and critics would like us to
believe otherwise, artists have always made what
they wanted, and every epoch has witnessed a diverse
outpouring of styles and subject matter. The linear model
of art history is largely a myth—an academic exercise that
aims to order many artists’ diverse styles and motivations
into a neat package according to school or era. This is
an impossible quest; the true diversity of art is too broad
to contain in one simple narrative. Yet this manner of
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thinking about art has been the basis for a host of decisions
that impact the entire art world—from museum-acquisition
policies to the granting of tenure posts.
Thankfully, this approach to understanding art, which
imposes categories and limits an expansive view, has begun
to change. Today, the greater art community has embraced
and profited from a cultural moment that celebrates a
multitudinous display of styles and techniques. This
diversity is not without its difficulties—with so much to
consider, it can be challenging to identify the work most
deserving of attention and discussion. But despite this
obstacle, today’s wide and varied understanding of art
makes it harder to privilege a singular ascendant artistic
style, leading to a richer artistic culture.
What better evidence of the contemporary art world’s
new diversity than the re-emergence of realism, which
for decades was the banished stepchild of the art world?
Today, realism and its related forms of representational and
figurative practice are no longer viewed as fringe artistic
movements and are propagated by numerous practitioners
and supporters who collectively have the potential to
alter visual culture. That said, the genre’s future cultural
currency rests on its continuing ability to attract native
talent. In the best-case scenario, the realist movement will
generate compelling works that resonate with the greater
community of artists, collectors, and allied professionals.
Should it fail to meet that cultural expectation—for example
by devolving into the kind of technically proficient but
unimaginative academicism that led to its earlier demise—
history will surely repeat itself and the profile of realism will
again fade.
In this article, my aim is to explore three representational
artists who privilege allegory, symbolism, and narrative
form to explore what it means to be human within a
complex society informed by a man-made environment.
Their works offer an illuminated vision of a social and
psychological landscape; not unlike what one encounters
reading Joyce, Lawrence, or Dostoevsky.
Taylor Montague, the youngest of the three, is a graduate
of the Laguna College of Art + Design, in California, and
recently mounted his first one-man show, at Catalyst, in
Westminster, California. Max Ginsburg is a mature artist
best known for his social realist works, and he is the subject
of an upcoming retrospective at the Butler Institute of
American Art, in Youngstown, Ohio. The recently deceased
and enigmatic George Tooker, whose works are currently on
view in a memorial exhibition at DC Moore Gallery, in New
York City, rounds out the trio.
September 2011 45
About the Artist
Taylor Montague
Montague notes that Catalyst—an
alternative, community-based gallery
that exists outside the rarefied
commercial-art-gallery circuit­—was
the perfect venue for exhibiting his
works. “My artwork is based on
representing life, and it would be out
of place in a swanky environment,”
he says. “All the work is centered on
themes of domesticity and urban living
and represents the human condition
California native Taylor Montague
earned his B.A. and M.F.A. from the
Laguna College of Art + Design, in
Southern California. Since graduating he has received accolades and
awards from numerous art organizations, including a grant from the
Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation
and Southwest Art Magazine award
of excellence in oil painting. He is
represented by LA Art House, in
West Hollywood, California; and
Catalyst, in Westminster, California.
For more information, visit www.
taylormontague.org.
in the context of contemporary life.”
his paintings with a location, be it a
Montague showed a range of subjects,
pool, a street, or even the corner of
including figurative compositions,
a room that he finds interesting. He
unpopulated interiors, outdoor scenes, begins to imagine ways to populate
and still lifes. Although it was a varied
this site, and in the process of
group, the paintings shared thematic
introducing and positioning figures,
links—for example, most of the works
he begins to sense the development
on display conveyed an
of a narrative. He assembles
Gravity
overriding sense of nostalgia
a multitude of source
by Taylor Montague,
and longing.
materials to develop his
2011, oil, 40 x 47.
Collection the artist.
The artist usually begins
multifigure compositions,
including on-site sketches
imagery,” Montague explains.
Home Space
by Taylor Montague,
and quick paintings made
“Even in a still shot, a good
2010, oil on linen,
from life, which help to
director can convey so much.
24 x 23. Collection
the artist.
communicate a sense of
Directors move around and
observed reality. He also uses
strategically place actors on a
photographs as a compositional aid
set the same way painters arrange their
and records various arrangements of
pigments on a canvas—both with the
objects and people within a setting.
purpose of communicating ideas and
Among the Southern California artist’s
eliciting emotions.”
influences are notable film directors,
An overarching concern for space—
such as Martin Scorsese and Alfred
and specifically for architectural
Hitchcock. “They really knew how to
formations—underscores the figural
supply the viewer with connotative
relationships in Montague’s paintings.
Realism: An Enduring Tradition
There are, and have always been, a select group of gifted and highly
skilled realists whose work resonates with a broad and influential audience.
It is likely that realism will, in some form or another, always exist, given its
overarching humanistic motive. In the end, most folks are primarily concerned with themselves and the fulfillment of their instinctual desires. And
at its most base level, realism will abide because it amuses and seduces
the spectator; its flourish of technical acuity offers a populist thrill—a
cleaned-up and glossed-over verisimilitude that aims to please.
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Open doorways and unobstructed
windows offer intimate views of
domesticity and personal moments.
Yet the viewer is aware that this
looking is more akin to spying;
Montague’s view is a passing glance
at a family member, neighbor, or
a stranger caught unaware. These
stolen looks can demonstrate human
vulnerability, such as in Home Space,
or individuality, as in Gravity.
“My work is made from
observing the actual suburban
environment where I live and is
informed by social interactions that
I experience firsthand,” Montague
says. He goes on to cite the 19thcentury French critic Jules-Antoine
Castagnary, who emphasized the
importance of authenticity in art.
“Art is indigenous—or it is not
art,” Castagnary wrote. “It is the
expression of a given society, of its
mind, customs, and history—or it
is nothing. It belongs to the soil, the
climate, and the race—or it has no
character.”
Montague’s paintings echo the
multitude of both real and imagined
momentary fancies that we entertain
every day. As such, they form a study
of human intimacy and our struggle
to both connect with and remain apart
from our fellows.
Reprinted from American Artist: Copyright © 2011 by Interweave Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
September 2011 47
left
Boricuas
by Max
Ginsburg,
1969, oil,
20 x 30.
Private
collection.
below
The Friends
by Max
Ginsburg,
1981, oil,
40 x 22.
Collection the
New Britain
Museum of
American Art,
New Britain,
Connecticut.
above
Three Card Monty
by Max Ginsburg, 1978, oil, 30 x 46. Private collection.
Max Ginsburg
Ginsburg would agree with Montague’s
view that art should arise from direct
experience with life. Ginsburg’s earliest
works reference his once workingclass Brooklyn neighborhood during
the Great Depression and the World
War II years. The New York he depicts
as a professional artist is populated
with economically struggling workers
and minority groups and is far from
the rough-and-tumble Brooklyn
mythologized in novels, movies, and
television shows.
48 American Artist
Ginsburg’s perspective, however,
gives the viewer an unsparingly
realistic appraisal of this less-thangenteel urban life. He steers clear
of sentimentality and romanticized
nostalgia. Born into a family of
activists (his mother, a hospital
pharmacist, helped to organize a
trade union), Ginsburg’s narratives
find their antecedents in the Ashcan
School and its focused depictions of
the working-class everyman. “It has
been important for me to express my
conscience,” Ginsburg says. “Raphael
Soyer, whom I occasionally went to for
advice as a young artist, was one of my
influences in his compassion for poor
people. These concerns have stayed
with me in content, although my work
has become more traditional and
naturalistic in form.”
Three Card Monty, from 1978, is
an elaborately composed multifigure
painting that stages a motley
assortment of small-time swindlers,
gullible players, and unsuspecting
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onlookers in a no-win game of chance.
Boricuas sees two men—one Hispanic,
the other black—trapped within a
maze of police barricades. A barred
window punctures a graffiti-covered
wall, and the tension of the setting
clashes against the noble face of the
Hispanic man, who holds a regal pose
reminiscent of a Velázquez portrait.
Civil rights, antiwar protests, and
the blight of the homeless have all
been portrayed in Ginsburg’s work.
The Friends, a tender depiction of two
have not earned him a large following
chatting schoolgirls, albeit in a gritty
within the art establishment. He
subway car, owes its success both to
waves away the seeming importance
its knowing nod to Norman Rockwell
of popularity—“I have chosen not to
and to the understated subtlety of
compromise on the subject matter
its message. “Although this painting
I paint,” he says. “Even when I’ve
was a commissioned illustration, it is
closer to my fine art in that it expresses exhibited my fine art and sold most
of my paintings, I still had to teach
a more truthful view of reality and
to make a living. But as a lucrative
is based on personal experience,
commercial illustrator, I completely
in contrast to most of my other
compromised by painting content I
illustration work,” the artist says.
would never have chosen to
At heart, Ginsburg is a
Donna
paint. However, I enjoyed
populist, and his hard line
by Max Ginsburg,
the painting process, as
on social issues and his
2010, oil, 10 x 7.
Collection the artist.
well as the income.” The
depictions of everyday life
artist says that illustration helped
develop aspects of his practice such as
composition and storytelling, but on
balance, he says, “It was a detraction
in terms of my painting from life,
because it was only painted from
photographs.”
Today, although Ginsburg
sometimes uses photo references for
multifigure compositions (another
skill transferred from his illustration
work), he paints mostly from life in
order to get the truest form, color,
and atmosphere possible. He also
teaches figure-painting classes at the
Art Students League of New York.
An example of his painting from life
is the head study Donna, a tour-deforce of direct painting. The artist’s
handling of paint and brush is bold
and indicative of his ability to use
tone, color, and gestural stroke to
render planar changes and sculptural
form.
About the Artist
Max Ginsburg’s art career
spans more than 50 years, and
his work can be seen in public and
private collections throughout the
country. He earned a B.F.A. from
Syracuse University, in New York,
but credits his father, portrait
painter Abraham Ginsburg, with
teaching him the skills needed to
paint and draw realistically. Upon
graduation, he worked for 24
years as a commercial illustrator,
providing images for such publications as The New York Times,
Fortune, and New York magazine,
as well as for books. An exhibition
of the artist’s work opens this
summer at the Salmagundi Club,
in New York City, and Ginsburg
will also be the subject of a
retrospective at the Butler Institute
of American Art, in Youngstown,
Ohio, September 18 through
November 11. For more information,
visit www.maxginsburg.com.
50 American Artist
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george tooker
The realism of George Tooker (1920–
2011) is the realism of dreams. The
artist situates cylindrical figures in the
kind of archaic illusionary spaces and
architectural stage sets that Alberti
recommended in his Renaissance
treatise On Painting. A great example
of this is The Subway, Tooker’s bestknown work and one that—like
American Gothic, another iconic
American painting—is probably betterknown than the artist himself.
Tooker’s art compresses the
medieval and the modern, recalling
the works of Giotto and Piero Della
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Francesca, as well as Pablo Picasso and Expressionism and America’s absolute
Diego Rivera. Our eyes are accustomed embrace of High Modernism. However,
his paintings couldn’t have emerged
to paintings that employ the deep
in any other time. The genius of
recessional spaces, hazy atmospheric
Tooker’s work derives from his ability
effects, and naturalistic figures that
to combine traditional representational
exemplify the pictorial advancements
strategies with specific modernist
of the Renaissance. In comparison to
ideas that privilege
these standards, Tooker’s
Landscape
primitive form and
work appears surreal and
With Figures
non-Western pictorial
artificial.
by George Tooker,
traditions. For example,
Tooker’s artistic
1965–1966, egg
tempera on gessoed
his simplified hulking
production, which
board, 26 x 30. Private
figures recall Picasso and
embraced figuration and
collection. Courtesy
Barbara B. Millhouse
Rivera, who similarly saw
narrative, coincided with
and DC Moore Gallery,
expressive potential in
the flowering of Abstract
New York, New York.
September 2011 51
opposite page
Coney Island
by George Tooker,
1947, egg tempera
on gessoed panel,
19 x 26. Courtesy
Curtis Galleries,
Inc. and DC Moore
Gallery, New York,
New York.
this page, clockwise
from left:
Supermarket
by George Tooker,
1973, egg tempera
on gessoed board,
23 x 17¼. Courtesy
Curtis Galleries,
Inc. and DC Moore
Gallery, New York,
New York.
Woman With
Oranges
by George Tooker,
1977, egg tempera
on gessoed board,
23½ x 15½.
Courtesy DC Moore
Gallery, New York,
New York.
Preparatory
drawing for
Woman With
Oranges
by George Tooker.
Courtesy DC Moore
Gallery, New York,
New York.
combining classical Greco-Roman
form and indigenous Native American
and Oceanic art. Tooker’s preparatory
compositional drawings, such as
Woman With Oranges, adhere to the
careful planning and execution process
for a 15th-century Flemish altarpiece. But
the artist also utilizes the minimalist
trope of repetition to great expressive
effect, as in Landscape With Figures.
The Subway, like other Tooker
paintings, employs modernist
strategies but simultaneously critiques
52 American Artist
them. The minimalist architecture,
shallow space, and anonymous
repetition of forms and figures offers a
heightened and uneasy narrative that
debunks the utopian context that gave
rise to modernist principles.
Clearly, for Tooker, Modernism is
not a utopian salve that can fix the
isolation and longing that afflicts
his characters, or those of artists
such as Montague. I also venture
that Tooker would not likely place
much stock in the peace protests
and union organizing that Ginsburg
has embraced. Tooker’s paintings
suggest that he looks for answers
to the human condition elsewhere,
perhaps in the natural world or in
religion—several pieces reveal a
quiet reverence for nature, and a
religious sensibility is apparent in
Coney Island, a humble rendition of a
working-class pietà.
n
Michael Gormley is the editorial director
of American Artist.
Reprinted from American Artist: Copyright © 2011 by Interweave Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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September 2011 53