The career retrospective of 88-year old American Modernist painter George Tooker at PAFA is a revelation.  Tooker, a student of Reginald Marsh and an astute observer of urban humanity, is far less well known than his teacher.  But the artist’s small dreamy egg tempera paintings are bold and captivating.  And Tooker’s subject matter – human interaction — from intimate moments of tenderness to unsettling tableaux of men and women boxed in and dehumanized by government, corporations and the city  – strikes a chord and puts him on par with both his teacher and social realist muralists like Diego Rivera.

George Tooker. Window II, 1956. Egg tempera on gesso panel, 24 x 18 in. Collection of James and Barbara Palmer

Tooker, who was active in the Civil Rights movement and marched with Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965, came of artistic age during the paranoid days of the Cold War and McCarthyism.  Works like “The Subway” (1950) and “Government Bureau” (1956} — from a series the artist dubbed his “Protest Paintings”  – present a Kafka-esque world where individuals are lost in blank urban corridors.  The Subway’s dead urban space with its labyrinthian walkways, iron bars and turnstile, is odious to contemplate.  People march in lock step, their eyes staring blankly.  The piece perfectly encapsulates the pessimism of the anxious times, and it resonates today as well.  Tooker has continued to add to this series over the years.

Subway, 1950. Egg tempera on composition board, 18 1/8 x 36 1/8 in., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Purchase, with funds from the Juliana Force Purchase Award

The works are luminous: Built up with many layers of translucent glazes, their colors sing.  Tooker studied the Renaissance masters like Piero de la Francesca, and his figures – all imagined; the artist does not work from models or photos —  have the poise, dignity, sensuality and solemnity of figures in those ancient works.  Often times, as in Juke Box (1953) there is an element of threat that lies below the surface, expressed by the heightened colors or odd dogs-eye view of the scene.  And like Van Gogh and Rembrandt, Tooker has made a study of his own face, in self-portraits that show the artist’s seriousness of purpose over time in his long career.  A devout Christian who converted to Catholicism in 1976, Tooker’s later works, like Embrace of Peace, II (1988) contain elements of a dreamy spirituality.

Self-Portrait, 1947 Egg tempera on gesso panel, 18 ? in. diameter Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, MN

PAFA Curator of Modern Art, Robert Cozzolino, recently uncovered a lost Tooker painting, “Laundress,” which was owned by a private Philadelphia collector who came forward to lend the work to the show. “It is an important early work that the co-curator and I were trying to track down but had few leads. One of its distinctions is that it is the only oil painting Tooker did…,” Cozzolino said.  The show now includes the preparatory drawing for Laundress as well as the painting.

Waiting Room, 1957 Egg tempera on gesso panel, 24 x 30 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.

Organized by PAFA, the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, and the National Academy Museum, New York, and with a beautiful catalog, this is the first major museum retrospective of Tooker’s works in thirty years.   A two day symposium on Tooker takes place Mar 20 and 21 at PAFA.

George Tooker: “A Retrospective.” $10-$15. Through April 5, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 128 N. Broad St. 215.972.7600. www.pafa.org
New Perspectives on George Tooker: Fri., March 20, 9am-5pm and Sat., March 21, 9am-3pm. $30-$60. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 128 N. Broad St. 215.972.7600. www.pafa.org

TUESDAY MARCH 17

Gary Hill, Wall Piece, (2000); Single-channel video/sound installation. Video projector, strobe light and strobe controller with steel floor mount, two speakers, one DVD player and one DVD (color; stereo sound). All images courtesy of the artist and Donald Young Gallery, Chicago.

Gary Hill–NOTE:  AS OF 2 PM MONDAY, MAR. 16, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Hill has been working with video and sound since 1973. His intermedia use of text, speech and image explore the physicality of language and our thought processes. Winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius award in 1998, and winner of the Leone díOro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1995, his work has been included in six Whitney Biennials and Documenta IX.

Coinciding with the talk, a show of Hill’s work opens at Slought on Saturday, March 21. 6:30-8:30 pm, with a conversation between Hioll, George Quasha and Charles Stein at 7 pm. The show runs to May 1.

Gary Hill
UPenn Graduate Fine Arts Lecture
Cosponsored by Slought Foundation
5 pm, Meyerson Hall, B1
210 S. 34th St. Philadelphia PA 19104
Open to the public

WEDNESDAY, MAR 18

Barkley Hendricks

Barkley Hendricks
The talk, by this major African American painter who put his own stamp on Pop Art, is the precursor to Hendricks widely acclaimed upcoming exhibit at PAFA (now at the Studio Museum in Harlem). The PAFA show opens Oct. 17, 2009 and runs to Jan. 3, 2010.

Barkley Hendricks
5:00 PM
Upper Meyerson Gallery
Meyerson Hall
210 S. 34th St.
Open to the Public

Lawrence Weschler
Weschler is a former New Yorker writer and culture critic. He’ll be talking about the shift from books to blogs and instances of the world melting into thin air, i.e., the transitory quality of the internet and what it means for the culture.

Lawrence Weschler
All that is Solid
2008-2009 Penn Humanities Forum on Change
5:00 pm
Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum
To register (required): go here
Event free and open to the public.

Drew Leshko, 2009, Untitled Installation (detail), paper, wire, plaster, basswood, plastic, acrylic, enamel, 40" x 80" x 40"

Seriously, Stupididity
And here’s a new show at a new outpost in North Philly. When you’ve had enough of the words and lectures, you can come up for air and look at some art. Damian Weinkrantz and Adam Wallacavage, both from Space 1026, are in charge here in a new space called Shadow’s Space Gallery above Kung Fu Necktie, a watering hole with one of the best signs on north Front Street.

showing work by
Drew Leshko, David Dunn, Danny Perez, Spencer Wunder, Mary Deevy, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Jessica Roberts, Gloria Joan Haag, Laura Lee and Susan Houwen, Brieann Robyn Tracey, Carrie Collins, Jason Goldberg, Isaac Lin, Kelly Turso, Adam Crawford, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Ken Sigafoos, Ben Woodward, Judith Schaechter, Amber Lynn Thompson, Crystal Stokowski, Matt Leines, Jim Houser, Jayson Musson, Andrew Clark, Plankton Art Co., Erich Weiss, Dan Tag, Dave Fox, Carolynne McNeel, Nick Paparone, Shelly Spector, Charles Burns, Aryon Hoselton, Paul E.

Seriously, Stupididity
Shadow’s Space Gallery
upstairs at Kung Fu Necktie
Opening Reception
Wednesday March 18, 2009
6:00-10:00
1248 N. Front Street
Philadelphia

THURSDAY, MAR 19

The new Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art. Image from Temple Gallery.

New Temple Gallery Grand Opening
NEW Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art on the main campus has its official opening Thurs. Mar. 19, 6-8 PM. It’s the kickoff for the series of student MFA shows as well. Those shows run Mar 18-May 9, with each student getting a 4-day slot in that window. First up and on view for the grand opening are Bassem Mostafa, Charlotte Rodenberg, Fabian Lopez, Tom Gallagher

Temple Gallery
Grand opening reception 6-8 PM
NEW ADDRESS: 2001 North 13th Street, Philadelphia 19122
215.777.9139

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, MARCH  20 AND 21

George Tooker, Lunch, 1964

George Tooker Symposium
A scholarly array of scholars from around the country and across the pond discuss the art of George Tooker, whose 40-year retrospective is on display at PAFA now through April 5.

George Tooker Symposium
Friday, 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.
Saturday, 9.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Streets
$50 members, $60 non-members, $30 students with ID. For tickets, please contact 215-972-0522 or rsvp@pafa.org.

Also on Saturday night, the reception for Gary Hill at Slought–see top entry.

Here’s the scoop in a nutshell…

A few weeks back, a man e-mailed me at PAFA to say he visited the Tooker show and loved it. “I noticed you had the study for ‘Laundress’ on view. If it is of interest, I have the painting in Philadelphia.” Well, I nearly fell out of my chair.

The drawing of the Laundress, by George Tooker, installed at PAFA before the discovery

This is a picture that has been out of public view for many decades. It is an important early work that the co-curator and I were trying to track down but had few leads.
One of its distinctions is that it is the only oil painting Tooker did after studying at the Art Students League in the 1940s. Everything else is in egg tempera. It also reveals a broader range of New York subject matter that overlaps with his later Civil Rights-era work; an interest in his neighborhood in NY and the lives of families, in this case an African American woman and her children. Much closer to social realism than anything else he did. Yet still with that mystery and haunting quality his best works have.

Anyway — so the e-mail came on a Friday; I went to visit the man and the picture in West Philly on a Monday and by Tuesday the picture was at PAFA. Our conservator fixed the frame a bit, but otherwise it is in great condition and is a knockout. I was able to place it on the wall with the study where it looks like it has been since the opening.

Tooker's laundress painting next to the drawing, waiting to be installed at PAFA.

The man who loaned the painting had a partner who formed a significant collection; he passed away about a decade and a half ago leaving things to his male partner. That partially explains the difficulty in tracking down the picture. I similar thing happened with another picture I did locate for the show (Guitar, 1957), but the phone number I had (from George’s old records) still worked and I was able to reach the former “collector’s” partner.

The picture is likely to travel to Columbus now with the show. But we are proud and delighted and grateful to be able to share this with our audiences — it’s a wonderful and touching surprise. The owner was extraordinarily generous and felt that it should be seen in the context of Tooker’s career and by a wide audience. So now it’s in the show!

It’s exactly the kind of serendipity you hope transpires when you do a show like this. I am doubly happy that I can share the news with George, now 88.