Mark Tansey

Mark Tansey (born 1949 in San José , California ) is an American painter . He lives and works in New York .

Life

Mark Tansey, son of the American art critic Richard G. Tansey, studied at San José State University in California from 1967 to 1969 and at the College of Design in Los Angeles , California until 1972 . In 1974 he continued his art studies at the Graduate School of Painting at Hunter College in New York. After completing his studies, he worked as an assistant at Helen Frankenthaler from 1978 to 1979 and then worked as a freelance illustrator for various newspapers and magazines.

Tansey received increasing recognition as an artist in the early 1980s. In 1982 he had his first gallery exhibition in New York. At least in 1986 with his participation in Aperto , an exhibition related to the Biennale in Venice , his international breakthrough. In 1987 Mark Tansey took part in documenta 8 in Kassel.

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Mark Tansey is seen by critics as a typical representative of postmodern art. In his representational painting, Tansey reflects in part ironically aspects of the history of art and philosophy and often plays with the perceptual patterns of his viewers.

This can be seen, for example, in his painting The Triumph of the New York School from 1984. In it he translates the international success of American art in the second half of the 20th century into the image of a military defeat of the European modern artists against their American artist colleagues. You can see a surrender scene : the Europeans wear uniforms from the First World War and mostly sit on horses, while the representatives of American art come to the scene in armored vehicles. Another level of the picture is a quote, because the express model for the representation of the scene is the painting Transfer of the City of Breda by Velázquez .

Tansey's realistic and often monochrome paintings have almost a photo-realistic character, but on closer inspection often contain “unrealistic” elements, such as the portraits of Karl Marx , Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush in the painting Snowman .

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1986 “Aperto”, Venice Biennale , Italy
• 1987 documenta 8 , Kassel
• 1990 Kunsthalle Basel , Switzerland
• 1990 Seattle Art Museum , USA
• 1993 Los Angeles County Museum , USA
• 1995 Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia , Düsseldorf
• 2005 Museum Kurhaus Kleve

Web links

• Materials by and about Mark Tansey in the documenta archive
• Mark Tansey at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve 2005

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mark Tansey: The Triumph of the New York School, 1984. Image at ArtChive.com.
2. ^ Mark Tansey: Snowman, 2004. Illustration from Artnet .