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JEROME WITKIN : DRAWINGS : LCAD

2,271 views · Published 8 December 2012 · 4:30 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: ERIC MINH SWENSON ART FILMS · 2012 · Howto & Style

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Film by Eric Minh Swenson. Produced by Seda Baghdasarian and Laguna College of Art and Design

This exhibition brings together an extraordinary range of drawings that make clear why Jerome Witkin has been compared to so many formidable artists, ranging from Lucien Freud, Manet, Courbet, Ingres, Goya, and others. 

Witkin is best known for his monumental scale paintings, which critics have described as being among the great narrative works of our time. This exhibition is dedicated to a cross-section of his equally remarkable drawings and serves to emphasize the critical role of line in his artistic process. To a degree greater than most contemporary painters, Witkin integrates line seamlessly with fluid masses of color.  These emphatic contours showcase the importance of shape and structure in his compositions. 

In this exhibit, the full range of Witkin's drawings is evident in his intimate figure studies and portraits, a few of which serve as studies for some of his most well known paintings such as Terminal and The Presentation of Jimmy's White Suit.  Also included are his urban landscapes - be they gritty New York scenes, or drawings of Jerusalem - drawn with deceptively simple and nearly abstract marks when viewed upon close examination - light and perspective is extraordinary and the atmosphere palpable.  Additionally, two large paintings: Keep Me In Your Heart For A While (2004) and A Boy And His Mother, The First Chair (1999) will be on view at the College for the duration of the exhibition.  

Witkin's previous exhibitions have drawn rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times  hailed Witkin's "indelible, pungent force," and cited his work as ". . . a breakthrough in post-Cold-War art."  Art in America declared: "Jerome Witkin charges the realism of his paintings with Action-Painting technique, tour-de-force draftsmanship and emotionally loaded narration."  Art historian Donald Kuspit, called Witkin's works "dreams in the grand visionary manner of the Old Masters" . . . painted with the rhapsodic abandon of pure sensation . . . unequivocal masterpieces."   Indeed, art critic Kenneth Baker has declared that "Witkin's only peer is Lucien Freud."

Jerome Witkin's works are included in many major museum collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.    Since 1971 Jerome Witkin has been a distinguished Professor of Painting at Syracuse University in New York.

In conjunction with the show, Jerome Witkin will be presenting a talk on his work at the College on November 12.

For more info on Eric Minh Swenson or project inquiries visit his website :www.thuvanarts.com

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