ARTISTS
EDWIN DICKINSON In Retrospect
Almost any of Edwin Dickinson’s paintings could serve as a primer on the art; there is so much to be learned from his work about depicting people
Robert Berlind / The Brooklyn Rail
01 Feb, 2012
BABCOCK GALLERIES | NOVEMBER 28, 2011 鈥� JANUARY 27, 2012
Almost any of Edwin Dickinson鈥檚 paintings could serve as a primer on the art; there is so much to be learned from his work about depicting people, landscape, light, and air, not to mention about the application of paint itself. Yet as his one-shot plein air improvisations show, there are no academic givens when it comes to achieving a startling accuracy of description. Dickinson鈥檚 paintings implicitly argue for the crucial importance of seeing imaginatively, as though for the first time. His descriptions do not rely on conventionally-known signifiers, and certain pictures hang marvelously by a thread, on the verge of being smudgy abstractions. Not for nothing was he held in such high esteem by action painters of the New York School. Jack Tworkov, as we learn in John Driscoll鈥檚 catalog note, considered Dickinson 鈥渢he greatest painter America has produced.鈥�
Along with his bravura landscapes, also on view are Dickinson鈥檚 dreamy 1927 portrayal of the sleeping Frances Foley, his 鈥淪elf Portrait in Uniform鈥� of 1942, and a corresponding, elusive portrait of his daughter Helen done the year before. These exacting studies, completed over many sessions, show both the artist鈥檚 grounding in 19th-century tradition and the dark side of Dickinson鈥檚 artistic temperament: ruminative and probing, always visionary.
Almost any of Edwin Dickinson鈥檚 paintings could serve as a primer on the art; there is so much to be learned from his work about depicting people, landscape, light, and air, not to mention about the application of paint itself. Yet as his one-shot plein air improvisations show, there are no academic givens when it comes to achieving a startling accuracy of description. Dickinson鈥檚 paintings implicitly argue for the crucial importance of seeing imaginatively, as though for the first time. His descriptions do not rely on conventionally-known signifiers, and certain pictures hang marvelously by a thread, on the verge of being smudgy abstractions. Not for nothing was he held in such high esteem by action painters of the New York School. Jack Tworkov, as we learn in John Driscoll鈥檚 catalog note, considered Dickinson 鈥渢he greatest painter America has produced.鈥�
Along with his bravura landscapes, also on view are Dickinson鈥檚 dreamy 1927 portrayal of the sleeping Frances Foley, his 鈥淪elf Portrait in Uniform鈥� of 1942, and a corresponding, elusive portrait of his daughter Helen done the year before. These exacting studies, completed over many sessions, show both the artist鈥檚 grounding in 19th-century tradition and the dark side of Dickinson鈥檚 artistic temperament: ruminative and probing, always visionary.
