Street Scene Autumn (Primary Title)
Sidney Goodman, American, 1936-2013 (Artist)
"Sometimes a painting can be based on one photograph or several photographs, or it can be based solely on an idea that I have. . . . So it’s a mixture, and the mixture isn’t always the same." —Sidney Goodman
Although photographs play a role inGoodman’s process, his approach to realism is painterly. Goodman’s paintings blend what he calls the ideal world of art, as seen in Old Master paintings, with the feeling of television, newspaper, and magazine imagery from today’s world.
Goodman often takes ordinary scenes—here a crowd bustling through an urban setting in the fall—and paints them in a way that implies an uncertain narrative. The sense of centrifugal motion in Street Scene Autumn—as if the figures were fleeing the red dumpster—and the unidentifiable debris in the foreground create a dramatic, even ominous tone.
Sidney Goodman: Paintings, Drawings, and Graphics, 1959 - 1979, Museum of Art, The Penn. State Univ., Univeristy Park, July 5 - Oct 12, 1980; The Queens Museum, Flushing, NY, Nov 8, 1980 - Jan 4 1981; Colombus Museum of Art, Colombus, Jan 17 - Feb 15, 1981; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, May 1 - June 14, 1981
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