The Art of Jean Seidenberg - 1

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P O R T R A I T
C H R I S WA D D I N GTO N

J E A N S E I D E N B E R G ’ S W O R K I N G L I F E , FA S H I O N A B L E C R I T I C S have proclaimed the death of representational art. But Seidenberg, born in 1930, is still here, still painting his own kind of portraits in a light-flooded New Orleans studio. At 78, the veteran realist hews to an older, purely visual tradition, seeking his own place amid the Old Masters and Modernists he first saw while growing up in New York during the Depression and World War Two. This self-proclaimed “Jewish kid from Brooklyn,” got an early start. He won scholarships to schools at the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and to Art League classes run by the City of New York and a full scholarship to Syracuse University School of Fine Art. Coming from a simple, working class background, Seidenberg quickly made art his livelihood. As a teenager, he worked in art galleries, learned the rudiments of framing and the craft of silkscreen printing. Through all those years, Seidenberg hung out at New York’s museums, educating his eye. Seidenberg is no reactionary, but his work and his conversations are peppered with references to the art of the past — to the incisive line of Edgar Degas, to Willem DeKooning’s freedom with painterly gesture, to the rumpslapping sensuality of Gustave Courbet. For Seidenberg, such choices are dictated by temJEAN perament and the imperatives of craft. They are also a luxury c. 1948–50 Silver gelatin photo print permitted by his chosen isolation in an old Creole city. Photographer: Herb Lerner, Brooklyn, NY Working in New Orleans since 1951, Seidenberg has found himself in one of the few American cities disposed to support a serious, full-time figure painter. Here every date on the calendar is someone’s special occasion, the daily paper employs a society writer, obituaries trump the sports page, and everyone from working class black men to wealthy bankers find reasons to dress in formal wear. In New Orleans, every man is truly a king — and every man knows that his visage deserves celebration. Immersing himself in the sociable, self-regarding culture of New Orleans, Seidenberg has pursued his muse for 60 years, establishing a series of distinct period styles and never wavering in his passion for rendering the human form. In the late 1950s, he developed a gesU R I NG MOST OF

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