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.
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
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed January 3, 2025.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, lithographer, painter
ULAN identifier
500017656
Names
George Tooker, George Clair Jr. Tooker
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed January 3, 2025.
Exhibitions
-
On view
-
Apr 28, 2017–June 2, 2019
-
Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017
-
Sept 28, 2015–Apr 4, 2016
-
May 1–Sept 27, 2015
-
Oct 6, 2011–Feb 12, 2012
-
Jan 16–Nov 28, 2010
-
Aug 29, 2007–Jan 13, 2008
-
Dec 16, 1969–Feb 1, 1970
-
Dec 13, 1967–Feb 4, 1968
-
Dec 8, 1965–Jan 30, 1966
-
Dec 11, 1963–Feb 2, 1964
-
Dec 13, 1961–Feb 4, 1962
-
Nov 19, 1958–Jan 4, 1959
-
Nov 20, 1957–Jan 12, 1958
-
Nov 14, 1956–Jan 6, 1957
-
Nov 9, 1955–Jan 8, 1956
-
Oct 15–Dec 6, 1953
-
Nov 6, 1952–Jan 4, 1953
-
Mar 13–May 4, 1952
-
Nov 10–Dec 31, 1950
-
Apr 1–May 28, 1950
-
Dec 16, 1949–Feb 5, 1950
-
Nov 13, 1948–Jan 2, 1949
-
Dec 6, 1947–Jan 25, 1948