{"data":{"id":"1336","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":1336,"topgoose_id":441,"tms_id":1336,"display_name":"George Tooker","sort_name":"Tooker George","display_date":"1920–2011","begin_date":"1920","end_date":"2011","biography":"\u003cp\u003eA leader in the Symbolic Realism movement—a group that included his close friends, the painters \u003ca href=\"/artists/210\"\u003ePaul Cadmus\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/462\"\u003eJared French\u003c/a\u003e—George Tooker is known for works featuring dreamlike imagery, androgynous figures, a sense of suppressed homoeroticism, and examinations of the troubled relationship between society and the self. Tooker’s deliberate, intellectual method of art making seldom resulted in more than four paintings a year. His medium was egg tempera, a Renaissance-era material he embraced while he was studying with \u003ca href=\"/artists/841\"\u003eReginald Marsh\u003c/a\u003e at the Art Students League of New York in the early 1940s. Egg tempera’s long drying time allowed Tooker to work slowly, building up fine layers of pigment through which the white of the gesso ground emanates, lending his paintings a distinctive luminosity.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTooker considered his works from the period in which \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/3052\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Subway\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ewas created to be “paintings of protest.” He was frustrated and saddened by the social injustices and dehumanization of contemporary urban society, and the resulting isolation of the individual. \u003cem\u003eThe Subway\u003c/em\u003e—one of the painter’s most\nvehement statements against the\noppression and loneliness of city life—\nemploys multiple vanishing points\nand repetition of strong vertical elements\nto create an imagined world that\nis at once familiar and uncanny. Instead\nof looking at each other, the painting’s\ncommuters stare watchfully and with\ndread into the station’s sterile, overlit, and\nclaustrophobic corridors and stairwells,\nwhich seemingly lead nowhere. The painting\ngives visual form to Cold War America’s\nexistential despair, suspending the\ncity’s inhabitants in a modern purgatory.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500017656","wikidata_id":"Q938221","created_at":"2017-08-30T15:40:36.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-09T07:04:10.241-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/1336/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/1336/exhibitions"}}}}