French Rug

Date:	1970
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	48 x 72
Size cm:	121.9 x 182.9
Signature:
Location:	Location Unknown

 

References
Courbet, Venus de Milo, bust of Napoleon, marble grain, etc., in a rug pattern.

George Deem's The French Rug brings together fragments of Courbet, Prud'hon, Holbein, a bust of Napoleon, and a kind of pseudo-Hals into totally new and witty relationships...the art of the past...is simply another available source from which the artist can choose what he will as material for his activities. While Deem's painting retains a considerable degree of the "painter-like" manipulation of much painting of the past, (other contemporary painters) express their exploitation and translations of specific earlier works...with slick impersonality. (James R. Shipley and Allen S. Weller, introduction to the catalog Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture 1974, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1974).

The artist dated the painting October 1970.

Benedicte Pesle, who is French, looked at my painting French Rug and asked me why in this painting I quoted the image of Holbein's portrait of Edward VI in profile, and quoted the image so many times. Edward the Sixth is an English prince, she said. Yes, I said, he is looking at France.(George Deem, undated unpublished notebook entry)

Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois

Exhibition date:	March 10 - April 21, 1974
Institution:	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Works Shown:	French Rug