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Sidney Goodman at Seraphin Gallery
An Old Master at 71, still growing
ANNE R. FABBRI
Welcome home, Sidney Goodman. It’s been a long, long time, and we missed you. This exhibition of 20 paintings and drawings by one of Philadelphia’s most prestigious artists is the first in this city since Goodman’s major exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1996. And now the art world has caught up with him.
Goodman’s work looks as if he must have been the mentor for all the young artists featured in New York’s Chelsea galleries. Images from photographs, with all their distortions of depth and focus, in high intensity colors, define today’s art. Goodman began it years ago, and he’s still in the lead. He might be an Old Master of 71, but his work continues on the edge.
Goodman follows the traditional dictum: Never complain; never explain. You, the viewer, interpret each painting however you please. Or just immerse yourself in the sensuous painterly quality of each one and forget about story-telling. Man in Water (1999), depicts only a man’s head above the water. It looks like a self-portrait, reminding us that most art is autobiographical. There is no struggle, so the subject must be an expert swimmer, enjoying the refreshing dip in gently moving water. Goodman, with charcoal and pastels on paper, has managed to communicate all the pleasurable sensations of a late afternoon dip mid-summer.
A riff on renaissance Madonnas
The Struggle (1995-1996), another charcoal and pastel on paper 58” x 42,” creates a maelstrom of intertwined male and female figures. Women’s swelling breasts protrude between men’s legs on the lower right center. Female legs can be followed separately from the hairy, masculine limbs weaving throughout the knot of figures. It definitely portrays men and women in turmoil, beautifully rendered throughout. What does it mean? Who cares? The art is in the work itself; read into it whatever you want. Goodman is not a narrative painter. He is a visual artist.
Goodman’s figures are as realistic as those of John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage— last year’s stars of the New York art scene— but they’re not meant to recall individuals encountered on the street. Instead they are images with a different purpose. The large, 46” x 70” Floating Woman with Men (2005, oil on canvas), is a beautifully painted riff on all those Renaissance Madonna paintings depicting a full-bodied Madonna floating through the air while the male Apostles stand helplessly, looking up. Think of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Frari Church, Venice. Goodman’s female figure just exists. She’s not questioning her unusual situation; again, it is all up to you, the viewer.
Legs Above, Head Below (2006, 83” x 48” oil on canvas), captures Goodman’s sheer mastery of figure painting along with an enigmatic composition that hints at much more than you might want to consider. Is she the victim of violence? It doesn’t look that way. But what are those red splotches on the lower right? And is that a shadow of a man’s head?
In the Eakins tradition
Goodman’s use of photographic references goes back to Thomas Eakins. It’s in the Eakins tradition and it isn’t, depending what you do with the references. Goodman no longer needs to employ a model. Just as we know how to write our names in the dark, he knows how to draw and paint male and female bodies. Brushes, crayons and pencils are only the beginning, but they always capture a sense of the human spirit.
Goodman populates his work with family members, friends and passers-by, all of whom remain purely symbolic and this accounts for their timeless imagery. He paints Everyman, writ large. We furnish the biography. Therefore it can change from year to year.
Goodman’s work seems to be reaching a new level of expression. He has eliminated many of the extraneous touches that formerly bothered me and has achieved clarity of expression and technique that enhances everything. He has taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts since 1979, and his paintings hang in the permanent collections of major museums here in Philadelphia and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago and many others. He enjoys a well-deserved national recognition; Europe and Asia should follow.
ANNE R. FABBRI
Welcome home, Sidney Goodman. It’s been a long, long time, and we missed you. This exhibition of 20 paintings and drawings by one of Philadelphia’s most prestigious artists is the first in this city since Goodman’s major exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1996. And now the art world has caught up with him.
Goodman’s work looks as if he must have been the mentor for all the young artists featured in New York’s Chelsea galleries. Images from photographs, with all their distortions of depth and focus, in high intensity colors, define today’s art. Goodman began it years ago, and he’s still in the lead. He might be an Old Master of 71, but his work continues on the edge.
Goodman follows the traditional dictum: Never complain; never explain. You, the viewer, interpret each painting however you please. Or just immerse yourself in the sensuous painterly quality of each one and forget about story-telling. Man in Water (1999), depicts only a man’s head above the water. It looks like a self-portrait, reminding us that most art is autobiographical. There is no struggle, so the subject must be an expert swimmer, enjoying the refreshing dip in gently moving water. Goodman, with charcoal and pastels on paper, has managed to communicate all the pleasurable sensations of a late afternoon dip mid-summer.
A riff on renaissance Madonnas
The Struggle (1995-1996), another charcoal and pastel on paper 58” x 42,” creates a maelstrom of intertwined male and female figures. Women’s swelling breasts protrude between men’s legs on the lower right center. Female legs can be followed separately from the hairy, masculine limbs weaving throughout the knot of figures. It definitely portrays men and women in turmoil, beautifully rendered throughout. What does it mean? Who cares? The art is in the work itself; read into it whatever you want. Goodman is not a narrative painter. He is a visual artist.
Goodman’s figures are as realistic as those of John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage— last year’s stars of the New York art scene— but they’re not meant to recall individuals encountered on the street. Instead they are images with a different purpose. The large, 46” x 70” Floating Woman with Men (2005, oil on canvas), is a beautifully painted riff on all those Renaissance Madonna paintings depicting a full-bodied Madonna floating through the air while the male Apostles stand helplessly, looking up. Think of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Frari Church, Venice. Goodman’s female figure just exists. She’s not questioning her unusual situation; again, it is all up to you, the viewer.
Legs Above, Head Below (2006, 83” x 48” oil on canvas), captures Goodman’s sheer mastery of figure painting along with an enigmatic composition that hints at much more than you might want to consider. Is she the victim of violence? It doesn’t look that way. But what are those red splotches on the lower right? And is that a shadow of a man’s head?
In the Eakins tradition
Goodman’s use of photographic references goes back to Thomas Eakins. It’s in the Eakins tradition and it isn’t, depending what you do with the references. Goodman no longer needs to employ a model. Just as we know how to write our names in the dark, he knows how to draw and paint male and female bodies. Brushes, crayons and pencils are only the beginning, but they always capture a sense of the human spirit.
Goodman populates his work with family members, friends and passers-by, all of whom remain purely symbolic and this accounts for their timeless imagery. He paints Everyman, writ large. We furnish the biography. Therefore it can change from year to year.
Goodman’s work seems to be reaching a new level of expression. He has eliminated many of the extraneous touches that formerly bothered me and has achieved clarity of expression and technique that enhances everything. He has taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts since 1979, and his paintings hang in the permanent collections of major museums here in Philadelphia and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago and many others. He enjoys a well-deserved national recognition; Europe and Asia should follow.
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