George Dureau
This signed George Dureau lithograph is bargain-priced because it has some light brown spotting (as you can see in white areas of the close-ups) — but I do not find it too distracting since the central figures are what get the attention, and if you don’t either, you can put a signed Dureau on your wall for less than it costs to buy and frame a Jazz Fest poster. Framed and ready to hang. Information about this famous New Orleans artist, who greatly influenced his friend Robert Mapplethorpe, is easy to find on the Internet.
Artist George Dureau, New Orleans legend
George Dureau was one of New Orleans’ major 20th-century artists (b. 1930, d. 2014). His drawing style is instantly recognizable, as he was a notable draftsman, but he is just as well known for his photography. His pictures often included dwarves and amputees – not as a sort of freak show, but in order to expand the notion of beauty and “rightness.” His photos and drawings of black men inspired Robert Mapplethorpe, who was a friend. Both worked in a classical, formal tradition, but with a transgressive, contemporary flavor. Dureau is an icon in the history of New Orleans art.
George Dureau (1930-2014) was a New Orleans born and based painter, sculptor, and photographer known for his focus on the male figure. His paintings command regional and national recognition, and draw on classical and baroque traditions. His photographs of nudes, street people, and people who are maimed and deformed (often figures also incorporated within his paintings and sculptures), have garnered international acclaim. Often compared to Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, Dureau’s black male nudes predate Mapplethorpe’s Black Book pictures by several years. Also classically formal, they distinguish themselves from Mapplethorpe’s work by the nature of the connection between photographer and subject. Dureau’s career has been the subject of retrospectives at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2006 and 2011) and the New Orleans Museum of Art (2009). The first exhibition of his photographs in New York (at Higher Pictures) was in 2012. Immersed in New Orleans’s unique art and culture throughout his life, Dureau became a widely known character of the French Quarter.