School of Velazquez

Date:	1987
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	70 x 60
Size cm:	177.8 x 152.4
Signature:	Signed and dated lower right and on the reverse
Location:	Private Collection, New Canaan, Connecticut

 

George Deem's School of Velazquez places Velazquez's work behind a set of desks, so that those desks rather than the King and Queen of Spain are reflected in the back mirror seen before us, and the ironic suggestion is made that these are now the main subject of the artist. The Infanta and her companions also seem ironically well-suited to the schoolroom scene, but the otherwise ubiquitous portrait of George Washington is not on display as in the pastiches of American works by Deem, such as those of Hopper and Eakins and in Deem's opening "Schoolroom" scene... As in other of Deem's "Art School" works the original works are not subjected to satire as much as to an ironic reworking that suggests Deem is paying homage to the earlier artists rather than making a satiric attack on their styles or subject matter. (Margaret A. Rose, Pictorial Irony, Parody, and Pastiche: Comic interpictoriality in the arts of the 19th and 20th centuries, Aisthesis Verlag, 2011 p. 190-91).

School of Velazquez

Working with Velazquez's great painting Las Meninas, using his perspective structure, I have projected my school desks out from his painting. Velazquez, the master painter, stands at his easel in front of my school desks.

    -- Undated note

Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, Indiana

Exhibition date:	May 12 - July 11 1993
Institution:	Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Evansville, Indiana
Works Shown:	Ashcan School Barbizon School, The Bauhaus School The Fauve School Hoosier School Hudson River School 1985 L'Ecole de Paris L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts New York School, The School of Athens School of Balthus School of Bingham School of Canaletto 1 School of Canaletto 2 School of Caravaggio School of Chardin School of de Chirico School of Degas School of Eakins School of Georges de La Tour School of Hopper School of Ingres School of Juan Gris School of Mantegna School of Matisse 1 School of Matisse 2 School of Modigliani School of Piero Della Francesca School of Rembrandt School of Sargent School of Stuart Davis School of Thought School of Velazquez School of Vermeer School of Veronese School of Watteau School of Winslow Homer Schoolroom 1979

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York

Exhibition date:	October 2007
Institution:	Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
Works Shown:	School of Velazquez

Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana

Exhibition date:

May 27 - July 24, 1994

Works Shown:

Art Deco School Ashcan School The Fauve School Hudson River School 1985 School of Athens School of Balthus School of Bingham School of Caravaggio School of Chardin School of de Chirico School of Eakins School of Gauguin School of Juan Gris School of Modigliani School of Modigliani 2 School of Piero Della Francesca School of Rembrandt School of Stuart Davis School of Velazquez School of Vermeer School of Veronese School of Watteau Schoolroom 1979