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Lot Essay
We would like to thank Robert Cozzolino for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.
Over the course of his career, George Tooker mastered the art of portraying evocative psychological images in a dreamlike, surrealist style using the traditional medium of egg tempera. Like his friends and fellow artists Paul Cadmus and Jared French, Tooker employed neoclassical techniques in his work while remaining unequivocally modern. Characterized by exacting detail and a representational technique, Tooker’s oeuvre can be divided into two groups: his public paintings—social images filled with pedestrians within an urban forum, such as Coney Island or a subway platform, and his private paintings that depict figures within distinctly intimate interior spaces. A compelling example of the latter category, A Game of Chess employs the artist’s mastery of tempera to create an immersive, patterned environment that transports the viewer into his imagined, haunting world.
Superb in its meticulous attention to detail, A Game of Chess at once recalls the work of Northern Renaissance masters, such as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin, with its flattened perspective and ceaseless patterning. Indeed, even the iconography of chess harkens back to earlier times when ivories, tapestries and illuminated manuscripts depicted the game as a symbol for romantic, intellectual and military pursuits. Though his historical influence cannot be denied, Tooker’s work possesses the remarkable ability to recall Old Masters in such a way that immediately communicates his contemporary experiences. At the same time, he foreshadows the work of contemporary masters of figuration, such as David Hockney.
Unapologetically daring, A Game Of Chess is a deeply personal painting for Tooker which brilliantly communicates the artist’s inner psyche as a gay man living in 1940s Post War America and unwilling to conform to heterosexual societal norms. Thomas H. Garver writes of the present work, “The Chess Game (1947), an autobiographical painting, was a watershed work of the early years. The setting is Tooker’s Bleeker Street cold-water flat, three rooms in a row with a shared toilet in the hallway. The twisting figure at the lower right, hand raised as though to ward off disaster, is the artist himself. The game is an uneven match, and Tooker is losing. It is a visual allegory of an internal struggle that pitted Tooker unequally against a society that expected him to mature, settle down, establish a family, and be socially correct and productive. The physical allure of his chess partner, the young woman in her loosely fitted and revealing blouse, is countered by the frowning, heavy-set duenna standing like a fortress behind her, there perhaps not only for protection but as a suggestion of the future as well. The young woman appears to be offering Tooker a chess piece. The gesture, a modern parallel of the flower offering in Renaissance betrothal portraits, will probably remain uncompleted, hindered by the stern gaze and formidable bulk of the massive guardian. At the end of the hallway, the silent watchers—the rest of us—stand as witnesses at the window. The painting is a document of one of the major decisions of Tooker’s life. He did not marry, nor did he conduct his life as he anticipated society thought he should” (T. Garver, George Tooker, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 15-16).
A Game of Chess was included in the playbill for The Saint of Bleeker Street (1954), a three-part opera by Gian Carlo Menotti surrounding the life of a young woman named Anna living in 1950s Little Italy who is blessed with the stigmata. The style of production was inspired by the present work along with Tooker’s Festa (1948, Private Collection), Jukebox (1953, Private Collection) and Subway (1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).
Over the course of his career, George Tooker mastered the art of portraying evocative psychological images in a dreamlike, surrealist style using the traditional medium of egg tempera. Like his friends and fellow artists Paul Cadmus and Jared French, Tooker employed neoclassical techniques in his work while remaining unequivocally modern. Characterized by exacting detail and a representational technique, Tooker’s oeuvre can be divided into two groups: his public paintings—social images filled with pedestrians within an urban forum, such as Coney Island or a subway platform, and his private paintings that depict figures within distinctly intimate interior spaces. A compelling example of the latter category, A Game of Chess employs the artist’s mastery of tempera to create an immersive, patterned environment that transports the viewer into his imagined, haunting world.
Superb in its meticulous attention to detail, A Game of Chess at once recalls the work of Northern Renaissance masters, such as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin, with its flattened perspective and ceaseless patterning. Indeed, even the iconography of chess harkens back to earlier times when ivories, tapestries and illuminated manuscripts depicted the game as a symbol for romantic, intellectual and military pursuits. Though his historical influence cannot be denied, Tooker’s work possesses the remarkable ability to recall Old Masters in such a way that immediately communicates his contemporary experiences. At the same time, he foreshadows the work of contemporary masters of figuration, such as David Hockney.
Unapologetically daring, A Game Of Chess is a deeply personal painting for Tooker which brilliantly communicates the artist’s inner psyche as a gay man living in 1940s Post War America and unwilling to conform to heterosexual societal norms. Thomas H. Garver writes of the present work, “The Chess Game (1947), an autobiographical painting, was a watershed work of the early years. The setting is Tooker’s Bleeker Street cold-water flat, three rooms in a row with a shared toilet in the hallway. The twisting figure at the lower right, hand raised as though to ward off disaster, is the artist himself. The game is an uneven match, and Tooker is losing. It is a visual allegory of an internal struggle that pitted Tooker unequally against a society that expected him to mature, settle down, establish a family, and be socially correct and productive. The physical allure of his chess partner, the young woman in her loosely fitted and revealing blouse, is countered by the frowning, heavy-set duenna standing like a fortress behind her, there perhaps not only for protection but as a suggestion of the future as well. The young woman appears to be offering Tooker a chess piece. The gesture, a modern parallel of the flower offering in Renaissance betrothal portraits, will probably remain uncompleted, hindered by the stern gaze and formidable bulk of the massive guardian. At the end of the hallway, the silent watchers—the rest of us—stand as witnesses at the window. The painting is a document of one of the major decisions of Tooker’s life. He did not marry, nor did he conduct his life as he anticipated society thought he should” (T. Garver, George Tooker, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 15-16).
A Game of Chess was included in the playbill for The Saint of Bleeker Street (1954), a three-part opera by Gian Carlo Menotti surrounding the life of a young woman named Anna living in 1950s Little Italy who is blessed with the stigmata. The style of production was inspired by the present work along with Tooker’s Festa (1948, Private Collection), Jukebox (1953, Private Collection) and Subway (1950, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).