TitleRoman Torso
Artist
Andrew Forge
(British/American, 1923 - 2002)
Date1985-1986
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 44 3/8 × 36 1/4 in.
Framed: 45 1/2 × 37 5/8 × 2 1/2 in.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, May 26, 1993
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1993.20
Label TextKnown not only as a painter, but also as an equally well respected critic and art historian, Andrew Forge has written on topics ranging from Claude Monet to Alberto Giacometti and Al Held. Forge was born in Hastingleigh, Kent, England and attended the Camberwell School of Art and Crafts (renamed Camberwell College of Arts), London, where he studied with the figurative painter William Coldstream and abstractionists Kenneth Martin and Victor Pasmore. Following his graduation in the late 1940s, Forge spent the next twenty years teaching painting at the University of London, first at the Slade School of Art and subsequently as the head of the Fine Arts Department at the prestigious Goldsmiths College. He moved to America in 1973 and took a one-year teaching a position as visiting professor at The Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art. The following year Forge became the associate dean at the New York Studio School and in 1975 entered the faculty at the Yale University School of Art, where he served as dean from 1975 to 1983.In the 1950s Forge's work was representational and reminiscent of the style of his mentor, Coldstream. By the end of the decade, however, the artist felt as if he had exhausted all the possibilities of representational painting: "I couldn't decide on the most essential question of all, which was the relationship between the canvas and that which is depicted." Forge eventually reached an impasse with his work and for six months could not paint. He had something of a revelation, however, when he visited America for the first time in 1963 and saw the work of the Abstract Expressionists and met the group around John Cage, including Jasper Johns, NA, Robert Rauschenberg, NA, and others. It was this experience that inspired his move toward abstraction.
While Forge was influenced by the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, NA elect, he encountered in the States, he found Abstract Expressionism overwhelmingly romantic and instead channeled his impulse for abstraction into a much more controlled, what might even be called classical, format, "Fragment." "Roman Torso" is from a series of works painted in the mid-1980s when the artist spent an extended period of time in Rome. It is a typical example of Forge's mature style and illustrates his use of dots to create an infinitely subtle composition. While the artist's technique is similar to that of the Neo-Impressionists, Forge never intended to paint representationally in these works. Interested in perceptual psychology, he would commence without any preconceived ideas and apply the daubs of paint to create a densely woven fabric of metamorphosizing color. As he stated in the entry form for the 1999 Annual exhibition: "The painting starts with a single dot and grows around it. Its beginning is abstract but as it grows it collects associations and suggestions." The ultimate effect, as seen in "Fragment." "Roman Torso," is an eidetic image of great complexity.
