George Tooker

1920–2011

A leader in the Symbolic Realism movement—a group that included his close friends, the painters Paul Cadmus and Jared French—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 Reginald Marsh 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.

Tooker considered his works from the period in which The Subway was 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. The Subway—one of the painter’s most vehement statements against the oppression and loneliness of city life— employs multiple vanishing points and repetition of strong vertical elements to create an imagined world that is at once familiar and uncanny. Instead of looking at each other, the painting’s commuters stare watchfully and with dread into the station’s sterile, overlit, and claustrophobic corridors and stairwells, which seemingly lead nowhere. The painting gives visual form to Cold War America’s existential despair, suspending the city’s inhabitants in a modern purgatory.

Wikipedia entry

Introduction

George Clair Tooker, Jr. (August 5, 1920 – March 27, 2011) was an American figurative painter. His works are associated with Magic realism, Social realism, Photorealism, and Surrealism. His subjects are depicted naturally as in a photograph, but the images use flat tones, an ambiguous perspective, and alarming juxtapositions to suggest an imagined or dreamed reality. He did not agree with the association of his work with Magic realism or Surrealism, as he said, "I am after painting reality impressed on the mind so hard that it returns as a dream, but I am not after painting dreams as such, or fantasy." In 1968, he was elected to the National Academy of Design and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tooker was one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2007.

Wikidata identifier

Q938221

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 23, 2025.

Getty record

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, lithographer, painter

ULAN identifier

500017656

Names

George Tooker, George Clair Jr. Tooker

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Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 23, 2025.

Not on view

First acquired
1950

Date of birth
August 5, 1920

API
artists/1336

Has image On view

3 works

Exhibitions

Audio

George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

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George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

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Narrador: ¿Alguna vez has tenido la sensación, cuando entras a una estación del metro, de que tal vez ya no puedas salir? Esta pintura de George Tooker está llena de entradas y salidas, y aun así las personas en la imagen parecen estar atrapadas. Mira a la mujer en el centro de la pintura con el sobretodo gris. Puedes ver que ha puesto un pie delante del otro, pero su cuerpo parece congelado. La expresión de ansiedad en su rostro sugiere que sabe que no va hacia ningún lado.
Observa cómo esta escena en el metro se asemeja a un laberinto o a una prisión, con sus puertas y barrotes. Mira el lado izquierdo de la pintura. Fíjate en las tres figuras con sobretodo, paradas dentro de cubículos estrechos. Podría tratarse de gente utilizando teléfonos públicos, pero se ven misteriosos y hasta siniestros. Para Tooker, el metro es un símbolo de la ansiedad y alienación de la vida moderna. Tooker no creó esta imagen con pinturas al óleo sino con témpera de huevo. En esta técnica, se mezclan los pigmentos con yemas de huevo para que la pintura seque rápidamente. A Tooker le gustaba este método porque sentía que se adaptaba al realismo minucioso de sus pinturas.
George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

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George Tooker, The Subway, 1950

0:00

Narrator: A primera vista, esta parece ser una estación de metro común y corriente. Pero detente y mírala bien. La estación está llena de gente, sin embargo todos viajan solos. Fíjate que ninguno de los personajes es exactamente igual a otro, sin embargo se asemejan de un modo siniestro. Ninguno mira a los otros. ¿Qué opinas de la expresión en sus rostros?
Y una cosa más: ¿cómo se sale de allí? Esta pintura de George Tooker está repleta de entradas y salidas; sin embargo, la gente parece atrapada. Atrapada por ese techo tan bajo, por los barrotes y accesos cerrados y por el extraño ángulo del pasillo del fondo. Para mí, no es un lugar agradable. No sé qué opinas tú, pero parece que todos los retratados piensan lo mismo: ¡déjenme salir!