Life Lessons: The Art of Jerome Witkin, Second Edition - Hardcover

by Sherry Chayat (Author)

As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works--intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust--have earned him a growing international audience. This second edition of Life Lessons incorporates material from the past decade, including ten of his most important and provocative paintings. It brings the viewer in intimate contact with the dense interior landscapes of both people and places. Often regarded as belonging to an artistic pantheon including the work of Lucien Freud, Manet, Ingres, Goya, and Courbet, Witkin's paintings range from moody urban landscapes and penetrating portraits to intimate figure studies and vivid, psychologically charged tableaux, frequently referencing seminal moments in history.

Witkin's newer work includes-an enormous six-panel exploration of Dachau's 1945 liberation (Entering Darkness, 2001)--his culmination of a twenty-year series on the Holocaust, regarded by critics as among the most compelling of paintings made on the subject.

Back Jacket

As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works - intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust - have earned him a growing international audience. Through the "virtues of descriptive vividness and accuracy", as Kenneth Baker writes in his Foreword, Sherry Chayat elucidates Witkin's success in almost single-handedly returning to the realm of painting those subjects that are powerfully universal as well as intensely personal. Witkin believes that this is his domain as a painter, as it was for artists like Goya and Eakins. Mortal Sin: In the Confession of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Death as an Usher: Berlin, 1933; Subway: A Marriage; The Screams of Kitty Genovese - Witkin's huge and often multipaneled canvases deal with human dilemmas and current societal issues, such as the homeless, AIDS, and drugs. His art demonstrates that we bear a moral responsibility for the pain suffered by others. "I'm not just a painter", Witkin states. "I'm a person looking at my century. We must get back to someplace where we can feel again, where we have value, a sense of the future".

Author Biography

Sherry Chayat is an adjunct professor at University College, Syracuse University.