Mercenaries II.
|
Title |
Mercenaries II. |
|
Creator |
Golub, Leon Albert (American painter and printmaker, 1922-2004) |
|
Date |
1979 |
|
Cultural Context |
American
North American |
|
Style/Period |
Contemporary
Postmodern |
|
Subject |
Politics & government
Corruption
Men
Mercenaries (Soldiers)
Soldiers
Military personnel
Military life
Conversation
Smiling
Shirts
Trousers
Belts (Clothing)
Hats
Berets
Sunglasses
Firearms
Machine guns |
|
Description |
"Set against huge fields of red oxide on mural-sized, unstretched canvases, Golub's figures' frozen poses fleetingly echo those on Greek pottery, but they travesty classical faith in the body." (Caption, p.205); "Another rediscovered American painter was Leon Golub. Since the 1950s Golub had been developing a scarred and lacerated figuration, responding to issues such as the use of napalm in the Vietnam War, but his reputation was consolidated when he exhibited his Mercenaries and Interrogations in 1982. Depicting a world of brutalized males, paid to carry out human violations at the political margins, Golub avoided a moralizing position. His mercenaries and interrogators swap banter among themselves and gaze out of his pictures as though assuming our complicity in their actions. Sometimes a bound or gagged victim is present. Golub painted the works on the floor, dissolving build-ups of paint with solvents and then scraping the surface with a meat-cleaver. Paint adheres in the weave of his canvases as though corruption were etched into the creases of his protagonists' clothes, the laughter lines around their eyes." (Excerpt, p.204) |
|
Material |
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic paint
Paint
Canvas |
|
Measurements |
305 x 366 cm |
|
Technique |
Painting (image-making)
Acrylic painting (technique) |
|
Work Type |
Paintings
Acrylic paintings |
|
Repository |
Museum of Fine Arts [Musée des Beaux-Arts] (Montreal, Canada) |
|
Source |
Hopkins, David. After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2000. (p.205, fig.104) |
|
Rights |
Photo Phillipe Bérard. Reproduced in Hopkins courtesy of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Collection. Horsley and Annie Townsend bequest. (1983.1) |
|
Digital Publisher |
University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center |
|
Format |
image/jpeg |
|
Digital File Name |
VRC 827-17.jpg |
|
Rating |
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