Searing Anti-War/Anti-Consumer Culture Art of Irving Norman at Crocker Art Museum until Ja

by Sandy Sanders (sandy_sanders [at] earthlink.net)

Sat, Dec 9, 2006 9:00PM

Dark Metropolis: The Social Surrealism of Irving Norman at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento gives the greatest American Anti-War/Socio-Political artist well deserved recognition and major museum exposure.

Would You like to See the Most Powerful American Political Art Ever Made? If you have never heard of, or seen, the work of artist Irving Norman you are in for an experience you will never forget. Dark Metropolis: The Social Surrealism of Irving Norman is currently at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento (a short Amtrak trip from the East Bay) and runs only until January 7, 2007. It then travels down to Pasadena; Logan, Utah and most likely will end its US tour in D.C. in 2008. If your are an artist, activist or just interested great visual art then you deserve to make the pilgimage from the Bay Area to Sacramento for this timely exhibition.

Irving Norman is the most important American socio-political/anti-war artist ever. I first saw his work at his first major museum show at the deYoung Museum in '96, 7 years after his death. I was awestruck that I had never heard of this person's work. His painting and drawing titled "War and Peace" is probably the most devastating condemnation of war and the evils of contemporary society imaginable. It is a huge 9 x 17 foot triptych, that is accompanied by an also huge drawing/study for the painting that is beyond compare. His works have largely gone by unseen for 40+ years due to museum and gallery establishment fear and ignorance. His relevance today is more important than ever and you will find his work to be created with a cosmic authority. Jewel-like color, huge size, iconic composition and a fractal scale relationship of pictorial elements make his work unforgettable. I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of seeing this man's work.

He lived near Half Moon Bay the last half of his life. He immigrated from Lithuania to NYC, surviving WWI. The realities of the depression era led him to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. The horrors he encountered there and through out his life, fueled his passionate visual art making quest to express truth in the hopes that human beings would be able to realign their behavior to more humanistic methods and goals.

“jaw-droppingly effective social indictments that would have been endorsed by Orwell and Huxley. The unrestrained passion and monumental energy of this work blows most contemporary political art out of the water.” - Michael Duncan, Art in America, July 2003

Review by SN&R... http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A200719

My web page with more details and images and links...
http://www.bluejayway.net/recommended.html

Tour of the show installation at the Crocker...
http://www.irvingnorman.com/exhibition_tour.htm

Crocker Art Museum Irving Norman page... http://www.crockerartmuseum.org/exhibitions/exhib_pages/Norman.htm

Irving Norman website...
http://www.irvingnorman.com

Exhibition Catalog with 154 color plates...
http://www.irvingnorman.com/book%20pix_text.htm

For more information: http://www.irvingnorman.com/exhibition_tou...

§American Street Scene on exhibition flyer

by Sandy Sanders

Sat, Dec 9, 2006 9:00PM