George Deem | Nancy Hoffman Gallery

GEORGE DEEM
"Vermeer Interiors"

For more than 30 years, Deem has dedicated himself to the work of the masters throughout art history, not simply "appropriating imagery," but delving deeper into the artist's work to reveal ever more about the secrets that lie within those masterpieces. While a wide array of artists and styles have engaged George Deem, from Mantegna to Chardin to Ingres to Matisse, it is Vermeer that he has most notably turned to for painting ideas to explore. In this exhibition, the artist's life-long commitment to and passion for Vermeer are in full symphonic view.

George Deem,Vermeer's Concert,Two Figures Removed,oiloncanvas, 20x18inches,1999

Each of the paintings is based on a painting by Vermeer. Sometimes Deem adds, sometimes he subtracts from the original and sometimes he lifts a small detail to create a jewel of a painting as in the "Two Vermeer Chairs." Deem invites the viewer to closer and closer examination of the rooms we know so well by the Dutch master. There is light, there are windows, curtains, tile floors, familiar architecture and cabinet details, but in most of these paintings Deem has removed Vermeer's human figures. These are paintings that have distilled the essentials for meditation and contemplation. The palette feels familiar, the dryness of the paint is recognized; it is as if we are viewing old friends anew.

George Deem,Vermeer's Easel, oil on canvas, 42x36inches,1999

Peter Frank has written about George Deem's work: "Something of what is known as the 'post-modern' sensibility is embodied in the work of...George Deem. It is not a post-modernist concept merely to quote from the past, but to devote one's whole oeuvre to a constant reconsideration and reworking of images from art, literature, and history is assuredly post-modernist. Deem has been quoting from famous artworks of the past for at least two decades, not copying other people's paintings, but making painting of them. In these he re-examines and incorporates all the droll cliches, misunderstandings, and personal reinterpretations that have accrued to well-known pictures since they became well-known."

George Deem, Two Vermeer Chairs, oil on canvas, 12x11inches,1998

Of Deem's 1994 "Vermeer's Chair," Christiane Hertel writes: "A rather different painterly emulation of Vermeer is George Deem's Vermeer's Chair of 1994. Taking as his point of departure several Vermeers, among them Young Woman with Pearl Necklace (c. 1664)...the artist creates a new "Vermeer" while staying as close as possible to the original¹s style, painting technique and color harmony. There is a subtle irony in Vermeer's Chair in the way that this chair is inaccessibly placed to the left, in the corner of a spare Vermeerian interior that to the right appears to come forward toward the beholder, and then gradually dissolves into the abstract self-evidence of the canvas. While thus visualizing the difficulty of understanding Vermeer's places he also suggests that as painter, that is in the process of painting, he can temporarily hold his place in a Vermeer. Perhaps more than any other of Deem's many "Vermeers," Vermeer's Chair, in its simplicity, pays homage to the seventeenth-century painter."

George Deem,Vermeer's Concert, Two Figures Removed, oil on paper, 23x22inches,1997

Deem's quiet, consistent strong voice in his paintings hold the viewer in a tone poem of the master's world in contemporary hands.
George Deem was born in 1932 in Vincennes, Indiana. Deem was Artist-in-Residence, The Branson School, Ross, California and at the Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; Visiting Artist, Illinois State University, Normal; was a three-time Resident Fellow, The MacDowell Colony and served as Secretary, Executive Committee, MacDowell Colony Fellows.

George Deem, Vermeer's Woman in Blue Removed, oil on canvas, 20 x 16inches, 1999

George Deem, Seven Vermeer Corners, oil on canvas, 50 x 86 inches, 1999

The artist's work has been shown at Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; Bergstrom -Mahler Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana, Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis; Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando, Florida; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Mitchell Museum of Art, Mount Vernon, Illinois, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma; University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Indiana; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wichita Center for the Arts, Kansas; Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas; among others.
His work has also been shown abroad at Gemeente Museum, The Hague and Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany.
George Deem's work is included in the collections of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; Becton-Dickinson and Company, New Jersey; Rockford Art Museum, Illinois; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, New York; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; First National Bank of Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany; Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York; Mirage Resorts, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada; Museum Ludwig Donation, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln; Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

George Deem's Biography