{"data":{"id":"462","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":462,"topgoose_id":2244,"tms_id":462,"display_name":"Jared French","sort_name":"French Jared","display_date":"1905–1988","begin_date":"1905","end_date":"1988","biography":"\u003cp\u003eJared French met fellow artist \u003ca href=\"/artists/210\"\u003ePaul Cadmus\u003c/a\u003e while attending the Art Students League in New York, and both developed a deep interest in life drawing and the idealized human figure as an expressive form. French painted the unsettling \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/233\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eState Park\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e—with its strangely stylized and isolated figures— at the height of his most innovative period, when he was exploring Surrealist-influenced imagery and portraying static, ideal bodies in minimal, airless landscapes. French, his wife, Margaret, and Cadmus developed a collective photography practice named PaJaMa—a combination of their first names. Using a few props and carefully staged juxtapositions of themselves and friends in the sandy, sunlit summer landscape of Fire Island, the artists created dreamlike tableaux for the camera, which inspired French to paint related scenes. A bleached wood platform similar to the one in \u003cem\u003eState Park\u003c/em\u003e appears in several PaJaMa photographs.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrench’s preferred medium was egg tempera, a technique common in early Italian panel painting that allows for precise buildup of form through small brushstrokes; it results in a hard clarity of edge and surface that French masterfully exploits in \u003cem\u003eState Park\u003c/em\u003e. He carefully\ncontrasts a family unit under an umbrella\nwith two statuesque male figures, clearly\ninspired by archaic Greek sculpture.\nThis separation likely alludes to the outsider\nstatus that he and his circle of friends\nand lovers—including Cadmus, the painter\n\u003ca href=\"/artists/1336\"\u003eGeorge Tooker\u003c/a\u003e, the photographer\n\u003ca href=\"/artists/17863\"\u003eGeorge Platt Lynes\u003c/a\u003e, and the arts patron\nLincoln Kirstein—felt in the bourgeois\nconventionality of the time.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500053389","wikidata_id":"Q3162702","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:14:10.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-30T07:00:41.634-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/462/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/462/exhibitions"}}}}