No Pictures (Primary Title)
Rosalyn Drexler, American, born 1926 (Artist)
“You could call me a ‘click’ artist. I work from camera images. I look through newspapers and magazines for photographs, and when one hits me, I can visualize the painting immediately, even to size and color. I blow up the photos and paint right over them. It’s a way of using found objects, I guess.” —Rosalyn Drexler
Drexler produced a large body of bold and bright works in the early 1960s that directly engaged popular culture during the same period as artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Ed Rusche. In No Pictures, she appropriated a famous 1945 photograph by Weegee (born Usher Fellig) for the image of the two men on the right side of the canvas. Captioned “Henry Rosen and Harvey Stemmer arrested for bribing Brooklyn College basketball players, New York,” the original photograph captured the men covering their faces at the moment of their arrest. Unlike the media culture that entices with promises to reveal the secret lives of celebrities and criminals alike, her painting draws the viewer up close only to deny access.
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