Jack Levine (1915-2010) was born in south Boston, the youngest of 8 children born to Jewish Lithuanian migrants. He first studied with Harold Zimmerman in 1924-31 while still a teenager, and his early work reflects their emphasis on Old Master traditions. Levine went on to study at Harvard Uni under Denman Ross in 1929-33. There he was introduced to, and influenced by the works of Georges Rouault, and my favourite, Chaïm Soutine. ![]()
George Grosz,
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Oskar Kokoschka
After finishing university, he was employed by the Federal Works Progress Administration (1935-40). In 1935 Levine joined the WPA’s Federal Art Project, where he was employed from time to time. In 1937, while with the WPA, Levine painted The Feast of Pure Reason, the work that catapulted him to fame for the first time. The painting, which depicted a politician, a policeman and a gentleman of wealth smoking and drinking together, was interpreted by the press as an indictment of police corruption and its connection to wealth and organised crime. The press was correct.
This work, a critique of political corruption, was presented to the NY’s Museum of Modern Art. The trustees’ debated for a long time whether they would accept the gift or not. In the end, they did!
Levine was a social realist painter who became well known for his highly satirical and Expressionistic portraits of politicians, society women, policeman and other members of the social fabric. Levine drew some of his scenes sympathetic to the socially oppressed, while some were satiric commentaries on social or political situations from contemporary life. His 1936 exhibition was at NY’s Museum of Modern Art where he showed the paintings that were based on observed tough street scenes. See Samuel Gruber's great blog post.
Levine's career was interrupted by his moving into the Army as a camouflage painter. After the war he married artist Ruth Gikow and moved to NY. Like Bloom, his Expressionist style was based in early C20th German art, very close to the work of George Grosz and Oskar Kokoschka (see above).
Levine’s interest was sparked by his study of El Greco’s Mannerist paintings, while in Europe on a Fulbright Grant, 1951. The artist satirised the rich and powerful in paintings that echoed Old Masters stylistically eg Goya.
His work Welcome Home (1946), satirising American capitalism and military power, was controversial when it was later shown in an exhibition of American culture in Moscow in the 1950s. Then he painted more commentary on modern US life in one of his favourite works, the thuggish Gangster Funeral (1953), which was acquired by the Whitney Museum. The squalid Election Night (1954), 35 Minutes from Times Square (1956) and Inauguration (1958) soon followed. ![]()
Jack Levine
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Levine's works went into the major museums: Art Institute of Chicago; NY's Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art NY; and National Gallery of Art in Washington. DC Moore Gallery New York has represented Levine’s estate, as have the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis.
Levine angered rightwingers so much he was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to be questioned on his apparent pro-Communist, Jewish sympathies. Alas for his judges, Levine was travelling in Spain at the time. In any case, the 1959 the Committee’s power was fading.
But not all went well for Levine; the boom in social realism and satire backed before WW2 by Pres Roosevelt's Federal Art Project was swept away post-war by different modernist movements. Levine’s response was that he was alienated from all of these movements. They offered him nothing. He thought of myself as a dramatist. He looked for a dramatic situation, which may or may not have reflected some current political social response. And he paid a price. Despite a retrospective exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the onward march of abstraction and avant-gardism relegated him to the margins.
He acknowledged his own marginal position: “I made quite a splash in the art world in the 1930s, and it seems to me that every year since I have become less and less well known”.
Thus Levine remained a figurative artist throughout his career and fell out of fashion with the abstraction surge at mid-century. Levine remained a man of the left but never an ideologue. He knew what side he was on and what he wanted to paint. He saw the 1930s-mid 50s as part of the general uprising of social consciousness in art and literature, and he didn't care for anything horribly modern.
Jack Levine, who satirised the rich and powerful in art, died at 95 in NY. His obituary called him an unrepentant and much-admired realist artist whose crowded history paintings skewered plutocrats, crooked politicians and human folly.
Autumn Leaves, 1928
Lovers with a cat, 1917
After finishing university, he was employed by the Federal Works Progress Administration (1935-40). In 1935 Levine joined the WPA’s Federal Art Project, where he was employed from time to time. In 1937, while with the WPA, Levine painted The Feast of Pure Reason, the work that catapulted him to fame for the first time. The painting, which depicted a politician, a policeman and a gentleman of wealth smoking and drinking together, was interpreted by the press as an indictment of police corruption and its connection to wealth and organised crime. The press was correct.
This work, a critique of political corruption, was presented to the NY’s Museum of Modern Art. The trustees’ debated for a long time whether they would accept the gift or not. In the end, they did!
Levine was a social realist painter who became well known for his highly satirical and Expressionistic portraits of politicians, society women, policeman and other members of the social fabric. Levine drew some of his scenes sympathetic to the socially oppressed, while some were satiric commentaries on social or political situations from contemporary life. His 1936 exhibition was at NY’s Museum of Modern Art where he showed the paintings that were based on observed tough street scenes. See Samuel Gruber's great blog post.
Levine's career was interrupted by his moving into the Army as a camouflage painter. After the war he married artist Ruth Gikow and moved to NY. Like Bloom, his Expressionist style was based in early C20th German art, very close to the work of George Grosz and Oskar Kokoschka (see above).
Levine’s interest was sparked by his study of El Greco’s Mannerist paintings, while in Europe on a Fulbright Grant, 1951. The artist satirised the rich and powerful in paintings that echoed Old Masters stylistically eg Goya.
His work Welcome Home (1946), satirising American capitalism and military power, was controversial when it was later shown in an exhibition of American culture in Moscow in the 1950s. Then he painted more commentary on modern US life in one of his favourite works, the thuggish Gangster Funeral (1953), which was acquired by the Whitney Museum. The squalid Election Night (1954), 35 Minutes from Times Square (1956) and Inauguration (1958) soon followed.
Election Night, 1954
Jack Levine
Gangster Funeral, 1953
Jack Levine
Welcome Home, 1946
Levine's works went into the major museums: Art Institute of Chicago; NY's Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art NY; and National Gallery of Art in Washington. DC Moore Gallery New York has represented Levine’s estate, as have the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis.
Levine angered rightwingers so much he was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to be questioned on his apparent pro-Communist, Jewish sympathies. Alas for his judges, Levine was travelling in Spain at the time. In any case, the 1959 the Committee’s power was fading.
But not all went well for Levine; the boom in social realism and satire backed before WW2 by Pres Roosevelt's Federal Art Project was swept away post-war by different modernist movements. Levine’s response was that he was alienated from all of these movements. They offered him nothing. He thought of myself as a dramatist. He looked for a dramatic situation, which may or may not have reflected some current political social response. And he paid a price. Despite a retrospective exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the onward march of abstraction and avant-gardism relegated him to the margins.
He acknowledged his own marginal position: “I made quite a splash in the art world in the 1930s, and it seems to me that every year since I have become less and less well known”.
Thus Levine remained a figurative artist throughout his career and fell out of fashion with the abstraction surge at mid-century. Levine remained a man of the left but never an ideologue. He knew what side he was on and what he wanted to paint. He saw the 1930s-mid 50s as part of the general uprising of social consciousness in art and literature, and he didn't care for anything horribly modern.
Jack Levine, who satirised the rich and powerful in art, died at 95 in NY. His obituary called him an unrepentant and much-admired realist artist whose crowded history paintings skewered plutocrats, crooked politicians and human folly.