Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason

David Sutherland
1986-11-30

This peach of a collaboration between subject and Sutherland displays both their geniuses.
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59 min

This bold and unconventional film portrait reveals America's foremost Social Realist painter doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians and police, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind. Jack Levine got his professional start during the Federal Art Projects of the WPA, and quickly became world famous for his brilliantly painted, brutally ironic vision of America and the world. He is the only American artist who never stopped painting as a Social Realist, even when it went out of vogue in the 1950's and 1960's. "I'm alone at the old stand. . . I feel I still have something to say. . . Let the avant garde go hang-the human condition is what interests me." A self-imposed 'outsider', Levine has deliberately cut himself off from the mainstream: "I'm like the little dog at the circus who runs the wrong way under the hoop."