George Deem: The Art of Art History

April 11, 2012 Through September 1, 2012

The American artist George Deem (1932-2008) had a unique relationship with the past, especially with the works of the great masters of Western art. From Raphael to Ruscha, from Watteau to Whistler, from Bingham to the Bauhaus, Deem meticulously reconstructed and reinterpreted the art of the past with insight, brilliance, and wit.

With paintings selected from over twenty private and public collections, this exhibition celebrates George Deem’s oeuvre by concentrating on two of his preferred genres: the paintings of seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, and those by great American artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and George Bellows. In his analysis and interpretation of works by artists such as these, Deem made his own important contribution to the history of art.

This exhibition is being organized by the Boston Athenæum with the cooperation of the Estate of George Deem. It will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with an essay by Dr. David Dearinger, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings & Sculpture at the Boston Athenæum.