The Art of Jean Seidenberg - 5

His skills with tempera brought him some notable commissions, including the portrait of U.S. Representative Lindy Boggs (p. 71) that hangs at Tulane University. But the slow, painstaking process proved more suitable for Seidenberg’s personal work: portraits of friends, fellow artists and studio models that reveal his powers of empathy as much as his craftsman’s skills. “Charlie in the Studio,” (p. 58) shows a black workman in profile, his face and arms lit by the glow from an open door as he sits, smoking a cigarette. Though in repose for the moment, Seidenberg’s model comes off as a lively fellow, thanks to the ONE MAN EXHIBITION, 1964, ORLEANS GALLERY, NEW ORLEANS, LA liveliness of the picture’s design. Charlie Photo by Jean Seidenberg leans forward while his seat angles back, adding a cantilevered energy to the composition. His halo of hair stands in contrast to a geometric backdrop of picture stretchers, doorframes and moldings. The warm tones of his skin and clothing pop out against the cool tones of the background. On closer examination, this panel — like all of Seidenberg’s tempera works — is further animated by a tightly woven tangle of hash-marks, streak, blots and brushed gestures that barely seem contained by the precisely etched contour lines that define the forms. Many of Seidenberg’s best tempera paintings documented the arts community of New Orleans. His subjects included painter George Schmidt, (p. 65) art critic Roger Green, (p. 68) and the draftsman and designer Franklin Adams (p. 63) in a triple portrait with his two young sons. Most masterful is the 1983 portrait of Frank Kennett, (p. 69) a ballroom dance instructor who was also the life partner of painter and printmaker Robert Gordy. Seidenberg sets Kennett in the couple’s home, creating a kind of double portrait by including one of Gordy’s figurative paintings in the background. Kennett, seen in profile, seems supremely at ease, sitting with a dancer’s erect posture in a clean-lined modernist chair. Kennett wears a pleased expression. He knows that he’s being watched: an actor posed on the steeply raked stage that Seidenberg makes of this domestic setting. Here every asymmetric detail falls into balance: spiky cactus, minimalist shelving, heavy molding, oriental rug, Kennett’s noble head and interlocked hands. This is life tuned to the highest aesthetic pitch and Seidenberg captures it all. Seidenberg returned to oil paint and canvas in the early 1990s, creating pictures that turned away from the finicky precision of tempera on panel. In these later portraits and nudes, dense impastos and atmospheric modeling replace the high polish and crisply delineated contours of the earlier work. With minor variations, such methods have held Seidenberg’s attention for close to two decades, as he experimented with thicker and thinner facture, long sittings and quick impressions, loose brushwork and sculpted forms. Gradually, his palette evolved from tenebrous earth tones to a higher-keyed radiance.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Art of Jean Seidenberg