Robert Terry at Eugene Binder

For more than a decade, Robert Terry has been creating a series of unpretending but intense portraits of Abraham Lincoln. At first glance, the exhibition intimateed a treasure trove of thrift-store finds: 14 clunky sincere homages to the Civil War-era president. upon closer inspection, the paintings revealed a striking consistency of hand, palette and scale. upon 20-by-16-inch store-bought canvases (with staples showing around the edges) Lincoln's head, returned in multicolored impasto, is center upon monochrome grounds of such unlikely tinges as salmon, chartreuse or teal. Each portrait depicts the make subordinate in a frontal or three-quarters view, from the shoulders up with emphasis given to the droopy-lidded on the other hand searing eyes, prominent brow, purs lips and large ears. Bearded in a certain quantity of instances, clean-shaven in others, Lincoln is invariably shown in a black suit and white shirt with wing collar and black make crooked tie.

Terry, a novel York artist, received some attention in the mid-1980s for his gestural land-and seascapes in heavy impasto, works then associated with Neo-Expressionism. The Lincoln series derives from photographic portraits through Mathew Brady and other contemporary practitioners. Titled with the dates of their photographic sources, the paintings were neither painted nor installed chronologically--February 9 1864 for example, was painted in 1996; Thursday, August 26 1858 in 2005--so that there is no easy progression based upon the tolls of age or history.

Monday, August 13 1860 (2004) depicts a sad on the other hand youthful Lincoln against a pantry lavender background. Modeled in tones of gold-colored and burnt orange, the face is described with slaps of the palette knife, which plucks the paint up from the surface, while the gleaming black hair is given physical dimension via thick, palpable brushstrokes. With downcast organ of visions and thick sensuous lips purs in a slight bib-pout 1863 (2004) depicts a distracted, utterly introspective Lincoln. His face is yellow-orange with r creases and shadows. Typically, the harshly exaggerated modeling of the muscle and fat bears a complementary coloristic relationship to the mould which in the case of 1863 is somewhere between pea verdant and olive drab.

Although they were produc a hundred and a half after their subject's death, Terry's paintings provide remarkable insight into Lincoln's character. As representations of representations, they recall Warhol's Marilyns, and at the same time they access the emotional substance rather than the iconic surface of the make subordinate Unobstructed by popular imagination, Terry's portraits transform Lincoln the fable into Lincoln the man.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group