Son of Frankenstein
Seymour Rosofsky is an artist whose art work is best appreciated against a background of travels. As a comedian once said, being in the right place, at the right time, is 50% of success. Seymour Rosofsky made being in the right place at the right time look easy.
His first cultural immersion was in military service in Europe during World War II. He had training in art as a youth, attending Saturday classes at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Seymour was precocious then, the Army recognized his ability, and Rosofsky was assigned the duty of illustrating technical manuals.
Rosofsky did not miss the opportunity afforded by military service in Europe to visit the art museums and monuments. After completing his military service, Rosofsky returned to his studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA in 1949, and the MFA, in 1951.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, owns a curious oil painting by Rosofsky, titled: “Operating Room.” The date of the painting is 1955, which would make it one of his early mature works. The color scheme is anemic, befitting the subject.
The general style of the work resembles that of the Paris “school” immediately after the War's end. The emaciated operating room patients of the title appear to have one leg suspended at the knee bend, as if in traction. It looks like a painfully awkward position. The whole composition has the feel of Bernard Buffet, who was an up-and-coming artist at the time.
Today, Bernard Buffet is universally reviled. He, and his work, are simply crass. Like him or not, he did successfully engage the distinctive anxiety which pervaded French art, after The War. His work sold like wildfire, igniting the imagination of a generation which, through his ungainly figures, abreacted the pain of The War.
The anxious style came naturally to Rosofsky, who had himself experienced first-hand the devastation of war, against the background of the high cultural achievements of Europe. Consequently, about 1957 or 1958, Rosofsky painted his iconic masterpiece “Unemployment Agency,” a manifold statement fully in synch with social and economic conditions and, simultaneously, with complete mastery of the medium.
For these qualifications Rosofsky was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, which enabled him to return to Europe, studying in Rome. Romantic Rome! In Rome, Rosofsky married. After the end of the Fulbright Scholarship, the couple went to Paris, where they lived from 1961 to 1963, supported by a Guggenheim Grant. The Paris phase of Rosofsky's cultural immersion proved to be a turning point.
I do not know the exact date of Rosofsky's arrival in Paris. I would be willing to bet it was before the Paris Massacre of October 17, 1961, after which any sensible person would hesitate to live in Paris. That grotesque event must have puzzled the newly-wed couple, who were probably oblivious (as most Americans are), as to the local color of French politics.
Knowing the volatile situation in Paris, it would have been wiser for the couple to remain in Rome. I hope I will not be accused of gratuitous morbidity if I review the events of October 17. It was not until placing Rosofsky into historical context that my on-going interest in the art and politics of post-war France discovered the atrocity. An understanding of the figurative painting of post-war Paris is incomplete without knowing the background politics of the day.
Charles de Gaulle was an ultra-nationalist, another in a long line of arrogant French "leaders," endlessly provoking hostility in every nation—whomever and wherever—with which France had contact. His chief of National Police at the time of the October 17 massacre, Maurice Papon, would (much later) be convicted of collaborating with the Nazis in the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.
Their joint reaction to a manifestation of Algerians living in Paris was brutal. The official count is 40 dead—some from drowning in the Seine—plus many, many more wounded, an unknown number of whom later died of their wounds. Perhaps the Rosofskys were unaware of the cause of the excitement around them. They were new in town, and did not understand French well enough to get a read on the situation from the newspapers.
All the Rosofsky couple knew with certainty was that they were in the midst of great events taking place around them. Eventually their dangerous predicament dawned on the couple, and, in 1964, they made the sensible decision to return to the United States, settling in Chicago, Seymour's home. Rosofsky taught at City Colleges until his death in 1981.
A painting by Rosofsky from 1965 is remarkable for two reasons; its style is distinctly within the ball park of, what would come to be known—generically speaking—as the Monster School of Chicago art. I am not belittling the movement as lacking serious intent with that epithet. It is a new and distinctive style, with so many adherents as to constitute a movement, but a subject which (admittedly) calls for an expert historian of modern American art.
I am focused on those elements which are important to me (as an artist). I am presently looking at the painting (by Rosofsky, 1965), titled, “Homage to Spain, Thalidomide Children and Others.” Never mind the paradoxical title. Remember, Rosofsky's head was still spinning from his European sojourn. The important point is the figure, a mass of cellulite, pays homage to the grandfather of Chicago Imagism: Ivan Albright.
Thus my blog's title, Son of Frankenstein. Chicago art is a monstrosity stitched together from multiple cultural sources, all of which takes place upon the culturally barren prairie by the lake. The French hate Chicago. It is, to the French, the antinomy of everything they hold dear. No self-respecting Frenchman would admit to traveling to Chicago—not without a strong motive—such as a lucrative business deal, or political intrigue. Certainly not for the art.