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George Deem was standing before a painting in a Washington D. C. art museum when he was suddenly struck by the attribution on it’s label: “School of Vermeer.” The phrase stirred something deep and very old in him. George’s early schooling in rural Indiana took place in a one room school house with wooden slant topped desks and the familiar portrait of George Washington on the wall and over the next few years he created a series of paintings which, in extraordinarily imaginative ways, blended the visual reference of the one room school with the styles of two score of the western painting’s greatest artists: Art School. I learned about the traveling exhibition of these works in 1993 when I ran into George at a Merce Cunningham dance concert. George’s paintings never failed to engage my eye and electrify my intellect. At the time I was regularly illustrating stories in Smithsonian Magazine with photographs and photo illustrations and with George’s permission I suggested they do a piece on his Art School work. The magazine had never bitten on my ideas, but the next thing I knew I was told, “We have a hole in the next issue. We’re sending a writer to interview Mr. Deem, and of course you’ll take a portrait of him to accompany the piece.” I arrived at George’s studio on 18th Street with cameras in three formats (35mm, 2¼ and 4x5) and two crack assistants prepared for whatever photographic opportunities might present themselves. Knowing well George’s playful and creative nature I had found half a dozen old wooden slant topped desks and had them delivered to the studio. On George’s easel was a large painting, near completion — a departure from the art school series but nonetheless totally concerned with painting itself. In the upper left hand corner George’s hand was creating his self portrait. The vertical canvas was divided into three stacked scenes. They put me in mind of buildings whose outer wall has been removed allowing one to see intimate details of apartments on several floors all at once. While the style was gentle and appealing the painting was richly loaded with ideas and references to many aspects of painting and the painter’s trade. The work was permeated with George’s profound wit and erudition and with his penchant for twinned connections. My mind ricocheted around this visual playground, associations piling up at an exciting rate. We arranged the desks in front of the large easel painting. George had the idea to appear in the photograph twice: as a young student day dreaming in school and, twinned, as the accomplished artist standing beside his freshly created work. We set up the 4x5 camera and a large bank light to augment the light coming in from the studio’s north windows and I left it to my assistants to figure out how to accomplish the masking which would allow us to capture two Georges on one piece of film. To take his mind off our intrusion George went back to work on his canvas. Now here for me was an irresistible subject! So without any discussion I picked up my 35mm camera and started to photograph George at work. Attracted by his precision I came in very close while his concentration left him oblivious to everything but his brushwork. I photographed every aspect of his process that was available to me. Each of us worked in his chosen medium, our intensities twinned. Several years later I received from George a copy of a letter he had sent to the director of the Evansville Museum of Art and Science proposing an exhibition of his “Easel Painting,” a series of his works that had led up to it and my photographs of him at work. I was deeply touched that George had generously embraced by work. The exhibition, “Paintings and Photographs in Conversation” opened in the spring of 2001. The photographs in this show are from that exhibition, with the addition of four which have not been exhibited until now including the two Georges.For that picture George set a polished apple on the desk of student George suggesting the you fellow's eagerness to get ahead With his paintings and his spirit George established a beguiling domain: the School of Deem.
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| All photographs and text © Peter Angelo Simon 2004 |