2015 House Tour Preview: The Studio of Jack Levine
We’re just under two weeks away from our annual house tour. We hope you’ll be joining us! Six Village townhouses will be opening their doors to help benefit the work of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Tickets can be purchased here.
One of the homes on this year’s tour has a special connection to Jack Levine, an influential artist known for his Social Realist paintings. The special connection? He lived there until his death in 2010. While we’re not sure when he bought the property, the current owner says Levine lived here for decades.
According to the homeowner, Levine used the top floor of the house as his studio. Although it’s now a master bedroom, the floor is still lit by the same large skylight that Levine used to paint. Windows also look out to the interior of the block.
We’re excited to have such a direct connection to an influential artist on this year’s tour! The current owner is the first to own the house after Levine, who would have turned 100 this year.
According to ARTFIX Daily, “One of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, Jack Levine imparted a wry and penetrating social commentary to his work that deftly skewers the rich and powerful, as well as all those whom he encountered who were inflated by pretension or hypocrisy. He developed a highly individualized modernist approach, an expressive mode of painting that he used to critique injustice and dishonesty in American society. He also explored classical and biblical themes with an updated sensibility that demonstrated his lifelong study of art history and his mastery of Western painting traditions. Throughout his long career, he remained committed to figurative art, disregarding trends in the art world that did not suit his purposes. This was particularly true in the 1950s, when abstraction was in ascendance and social content was deemed out of fashion by leading writers and critics.”