Rosemarie Beck immediately came to my mind as a good subject for Under the Radar. I had the good fortune to be her student at Queens College, where as teacher and a painter, she was greatly admired . She was an incredibly strong role model, especially for female students. Beck’s paintings are powerful in color, form and content. Her subject matter was usually from Greek Mythology or Shakespeare. Since her husband, Robert Phelps, taught English Literature and journalism at Parsons School of Design at The New School, this is not surprising.
Diana and Acteon 1984 52” X 60” Oil on Linen
While her work is in many museums and important collections, in my opinion, she has still not received the critical acclaim or recognition she deserves.
Self-Portrait 1975, 60” X 50” , oil on linen
Rosemarie’s granddaughter, Doria Hughes, a wonderful story-teller, is the current Collection Manager and Archivist of The Rosemarie Beck Foundation, and Doria is diligent in getting Rosemarie’s work seen.
In 1981, Beck’s magisterial 1975 Self Portrait was acquired by the @natlacademy. Unabashedly self-referential and personal, she included one of her own paintings – Orpheus and the Furies – in the background. Dressed in her habitual work outfit of smock, pants and wooden sandals, Beck is flanked by two black cats, perhaps a nod to her nickname, La Strega! A violinist and a model pose for her in a studio space scattered with still life objects that are recognizable from her earlier paintings.”
From Rosemarie on May. 20. [1981] “My picture (Self-P.) at the [National] Academy [of Design] is not aggressive or authoritative. It’s not like my others, however. I think it’s very impressive frankly + am not ashamed. It’s rhetorical, though. For the new Self Portrait a more fluid continuum. In modern art what was implicit, unconscious, inadvertent even peripheral in the art of the past (any past) becomes explicit, deliberate, central. Painting for me is always about becoming itself. That’s Modernism, I suppose. In that respect we’re not like Constable or Corot or even Manet. It’s not how you represent reality – nature but how you undertake the conflict between the various forms of what exists – from mere paint to metaphor, style, subject. The visibility of the transaction is important to his STATEMENT.”
1983 Self Portrait
From: Doria Hughes of the Rosemarie Beck Foundation on the portrait above.
This 1983 self portrait is one of my personal favorites.
Here is my grandmother as I remember her from my childhood: gesticulating wildly, hair and glasses askew, surrounded by fascinating clutter (the detritus of her art-making), and always with an affectionate cat close to hand. I adored her, was fascinated by the narrative images that surrounded her, and plagued her with questions. She stirred my earliest curiosity, and now I am a professional Storyteller. I spend my days making dramatic gestures, screeching like a cat, hair flying, while stories pour out of me. She taught me how to paint with words.”
Apollo and Daphne 1983 Oil on Linen
Phaedra 1999
“Early in her career, Beck was an abstract expressionist painter, but by the late 1950s, she had switched to the figurative focus that she would retain for the rest of her career”. [Wikipedia] “Rosemarie was “one of the few painters of our time to treat grand themes in ambitious multi-figure compositions, while satisfying a need both for abstract structure and for an execution that embodies energy without being gratuitous,”
Orpheus And Eurydice “Orpheus Among The Beasts” 1972, 42” X 50”
According to critic Martica Sawin. On Rosemarie Beck, Beck taught at Queens College of New York, Vassar College, Middlebury College, the Vermont Studio Center, Parsons School of design, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, where she was on the faculty until shortly before she died in her 80s.
Open the link below to see a wonderful video of both Rosemarie’s thinking on her work and lots of her images.
https://www.rosemariebeck.org/videos-presentations-and-lectures
You can find The Rosemarie Beck Foundation on Facebook and more at:
https://www.Rosemariebeck.Org/
On a personal note, Rosemarie Beck developed a personal relationship with me. She was very supportive. We kept up a dialogue until she died. She said very little to students while they were in the process of painting, although at critiques she spoke at length. She always talked “up” to us, expecting those interested enough to think about her commentary, wanting us to do our own thinking. Rosemarie thought a great deal about what challenges she presented us. She was the first person to visit my thesis show, coming in the moment after I finished hanging it. Her visit was very important to me.
