Jack Levine
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"TO BRING the great tradition up to date," is Levine's undertaking, and with reason, since he is concerned with the living core of humanity and not with the changes which transform the surface--"considerations of modernity fill me with horror." That is to say, he is a moralist. He deals with man's predicament, and he speaks of injustice, of meanness, poverty and evil chance.
Born in South Boston in 1915, Levine grew up with a seamy city spectacle which he has contrasted ever since with the outraged ideals of a first generation American. At an early age he attracted the attention of a painter-teacher who "sustained the childish process of drawing," and taught him to draw without models, which may account for Levine's precocity. More important, Denman Ross, of the Harvard Department of Fine Arts, became his mentor, opened the world of the museum to him, "banished my ignorance," as he says, and offered him the continuity he treasures.
The WPA days gave a socially conscious orientation to Levine's morality. Such a trend leads to expressionism. Morality sets love and hate to work, and love and hate must have living people in plain sight; and emotional judgment means distortion. But Levine resists the subjectivity of expressionism, wants something more logical, plans and considers, and controls impulse. In the end it is sermons and satires that he paints.
The young Levine was swept by Soutine, and Rouault was also an inspiration. Then he moved to Greco, and finally to Rembrandt. But there is also a playful neo-romantic side under Rubens' spell. Levine draws strength from these talents of the past, and his rejections, which are many, are aimed at the present. Bringing tradition up to date has produced a somber plastic art in the main, with an increasing concern for the power of light on a dim stage. "Within light and shadow I can express some kind of drama that is most like me."
This drama has varying degrees of depth. It can be profound and poignant, sardonic, witty or satirical. His style changes accordingly, for he has eloquence at his disposal and all the facility that wit requires. He is at his best administering punishment, and his chief enemy is the callousness of mankind.
The war put Levine in a uniform not too well tailored for his individualistic nature. His experience led to at least one of his most successful and drastic paintings-which he considers "buoyant"--Welcome Home.
The war past, Levine moved to New York, then gave himself a year's interval in Rome. It is only metropolitan city life which can provide the drama which he needs: the fleeting ironies, the haunting glimpses, the extremes.
Levine: The Cubes and planes and alarm clocks created by man to conquer the problems of this life are for me secondary objects of contemplation. . . .
Dehumanization seems the keynote of every field of modern endeavor. . . .
Perhaps the most apparent thing about artists of the past is their freedom from crisis and dilemma in the sense we find it.
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