William Beckman

Seattle, WA: Frye Art Museum, in association with the University of Washington Press, 2002. 108 pages, illustrations (some colour), portraits; 28 cm. Catalogue of an exhibition held at Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, 2002. Firm binding, clean inside copy. OVERSIZE! No priority/air, except by special arrangement. A major exhibition devoted to the American painter William Beckman, one of the leading exponents of the Realist "school." A figurative artist, he leans heavily upon classical tradition. The nude portraits can be sometimes jarring. Less well-known are his scenes of rural America, with farms and silos. "William Beckman (b. 1942) paints himself, loved ones, and the land he has lived upon, creating edgy portraits and landscapes. His subjects, whether mother or lover, are delivered to the viewer with gripping details, without embelishment. He creates his figurative art using a unique method. He applies paint, then shaves of layer after layer from the surface with a razor, repainting and polishing the canvas to create lustrous, absorbing images. His realism is stripped of sentiment, his idealized portraits scrupulously rendered, and his expansive tracts of Minnesota farmland theatrically scaled. Each painting is epic in significance and matter-of-fact at the same ime. This is the first book that offers a comprehensive view of Beckman's art and career. Essays--Boxes, Diana, Couples, Self Portraits, Landscapes, and Drawings and Studies-- luster the work according to subject matter, describing the many ways Beckman has found to bond form and content and enabling the reader to grasp the unfolding shape of his artistic thought. / Carl Belz is director emeritus of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and managing editor of Art New England magazine." - Publisher.. 1st. Paperback. Fine. 4to. Collectible.