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Reference
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema,
A Reading from Homer, 1885, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
George Deem (Allan Stone Gallery; to Nov. 9) is superbly able to lift from his subjects their face values and carry out his own purposes with a beautiful disregard for the historical demands. Recent work concerns master paintings, not as pop art, but, traditionally, as subjects. The
Hals lady with tankard and owl is r
epeated six times and has six distinct and inventive statements to make about color, light, jokes, paintings.
A Painting for a Library, a warm grisaille synthesis of every nineteenth-century Greco-Roman Information Desk portrait, looks at the toga-set in coffee-break attitudes and makes mock of style and subject directly yet marvelously. Deem is not content with parody, but builds a taut luminous painting to complete his image of himself. His Degas', Corots, English portraitists are born with their own beginnings as Deem paints a new work every time with sensitive, serious dynamics. (Prices: $150-$650.) (Valerie Petersen,
ArtNews, New York, October 1963).
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
