Artwork Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
James Brooks (1906-1992) |
Title |
Untitled |
Date |
1963 |
Medium |
Ink and watercolor (grey tones) |
Dimensions |
15 x 18 in. |
Description |
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906, Brooks studied at the Dallas Art Institute from 1923-26 and at the Art Student League in New York City from 1927-30. After working as a commercial letterer and display artist, from 1936-42 he was employed on the WPA Federal Art Project, executing murals for the Queens Public Library and the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia Airport. After returning from military service in World War II, he and his wife-to-be, the painter Charlotte Park, moved into the former Greenwich Village apartment of their good friends Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. They later joined their friends on eastern Long Island, buying a summer cottage in Montauk in 1949. Inspired by Pollock's improvisational pouring technique, in the late 1940s Brooks moved beyond Cubist-derived abstraction and began using diluted oil paint stained into raw canvas to generate more spontaneous imagery. According to the art critic Carter Ratcliff, Brooks sought "to create painterly accidents of the kind that allow buried personal meanings to take on visibility." This ink drawing was a gift to his friend, the painter Sheridan Lord (1926-1994), and his wife, know as Gypsy, and is inscribed to them. Gift of Pamela Lord. |
Catalog Number |
1999.005 |
Object Name |
Drawing |
Current Exhibition |
Crosscurrents: Selections from the Permanent Collection |