George Tooker, Painter Capturing Modern Anxieties, Dies at 90 (slide show at link)

[cali]

George Tooker, a painter whose haunting images of trapped clerical workers and forbidding government offices expressed a peculiarly 20th-century brand of anxiety and alienation, died on Sunday at his home in Hartland, Vt. He was 90.

The cause was complications of kidney failure, Edward De Luca, director of the D C Moore Gallery in Manhattan, said.

Mr. Tooker, often called a symbolic, or magic, realist, worked well outside the critical mainstream for much of his career, relegated to the margins by the rise of abstraction. As doctrinaire modernism loosened its hold in the 1980s, however, he was rediscovered by a younger generation of artists, critics and curators, who embraced him as one of the most distinctive and mysterious American painters of the 20th century.

He specialized in eerie situations with powerful mythic overtones. Luminous and poetic, his paintings often conveyed a sense of dread, but could just as easily express a lover’s rapture or spiritual ecstasy. Whatever the emotion, his generalized figures, with their smoothly modeled sculptural forms and masklike faces, seemed to dwell outside of time, even when placed in contemporary settings.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/arts/design/george-tooker-painter-capturing-modern-anxieties-dies-at-90.html

[NV Whino]

1. Wow, I like his stuff

Why have I never heard of this man?

[catabryna]

2. I don't know much about art...

I just know what I like, and I like these paintings. Very thought provoking.

[H2O Man]

3. Recommended.

His art often reminded me of "Death of a Salesman." Maybe that is just me. But the haunting emptiness that he captured so well.

[xchrom]

5. and 'long days journey into night' -- o'neil, williams, etc

his work was lovely -- and really spot on.

[crickets]

4. Wonderful paintings.

And what an interesting man. Thanks for posting this.

[salinen]

6. OOoooo

Thanks Cali. Wow. Powerful.

[cali]

8. haunting and powerful.

you're so welcome.

:hi:

[yodermon]

7. wow, look at this: "Government Bureau"

link to full slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/03/29/arts/design/tooker-ss.html

[eleny]

9. They may be sad but it's hard to avoid examining every nook and cranny

The Embrace is really lovely and warm, though.