Research Catalog

Title

Life lessons : the art of Jerome Witkin / Sherry Chayat ; with a foreword by Kenneth Baker.

Author

Chayat, Sherry.

Publication

Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Witkin, Jerome.

Description

xv, 94 pages : illustrations; 27 cm

Summary

• As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works - intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust - have earned him a growing international audience.
• Through the "virtues of descriptive vividness and accuracy," as Kenneth Baker writes in his Foreword, Sherry Chayat elucidates Witkin's success in almost single-handedly returning to the realm of painting those subjects that are powerfully universal as well as intensely personal. Witkin believes that this is his domain as a painter, as it was for artists like Goya and Eakins.
• Mortal Sin: In the Confession of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Death as an Usher: Berlin, 1933; Subway: A Marriage; The Screams of Kitty Genovese - Witkin's huge and often multipaneled canvases deal with human dilemmas and current societal issues, such as the homeless, AIDS, and drugs. His art demonstrates that we bear a moral responsibility for the pain suffered by others. "I'm not just a painter," Witkin states. "I'm a person looking at my century.
• We must get back to someplace where we can feel again, where we have value, a sense of the future."

Subject

• Witkin, Jerome > Criticism and interpretation
• Figurative painting, American
• Narrative painting, American
• History in art

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Foreword / Kenneth Baker -- I. A Painter's Crossing -- II. Brooklyn and Beyond -- III. The Human Condition -- IV. Avatars in Dark Corners -- V. Conclusion -- Appendix: A Statement on My Technique / Jerome Witkin.

ISBN

• 0815626177
• 0815602790 (pbk.)

LCCN

93038713

OCLC

• 29259252
• ocm29259252

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries