User talk:Fuhghettaboutit/Reisman

Philip Reisman (July 18, 1904 – June 19, 1992) was a New York City-based painter, muralist and printmaker predominately of the Social Realism school of art. After graduating from the Art Students League of New York, he first exhibited at ___ in 1931. He was enlisted as a muralist and painter for FDR's Works Progress Administration later in the decade and ____. He is best known for his depictions of New York City street life, especially of the Lower East Side.

Early life
Reisman was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1904,

Self-described as a "constant doodler" as a child of ten, a deeper fascination with art was galvanized in him after viewing materials from an art correspondence course that his oldest brother took in 1914. Reisman left high school to work at an art service that guaranteed to teach him illustration, where instead he learned only "how to run errands and wrap packages". He enrolled with the Art Students League of New York, taking etching and drawing classes which he paid for with odd jobs and as a soda fountain clerk. By the late 1920s he was illustrating short stories published in Colliers, such as for "The Fighting Heart" by George F. Worts (published October 15, 1927), and had exhibited in galleries and museums.

Reisman was among forty-nine other artists whose works were exhibited upon the Museum of Modern Art's grand re-opening at a new location in 1932.

He was a member of the John Reed Clubs in the early 1930s, and later of the Artists' Union and the American Artists' Congress. Reisman was a social activist and painted controversial works such as the drypoint etching South (1934), which is in the art print collection of the Museum of Modern Art. The etching was done under commission for F.D.R.'s Public Works of Art Project, and was not exactly what PWAP administrators bargained for. Reisman's submitted proposal for the commission was simply stated as "a portfolio of twenty drawings, watercolors and gouaches, depicting the significant types, occupations and landscapes, both rural and industrial, of the South". The subject of South, however, is a brutal depiciton of black man lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, with cotton pickers and a chain gang in the scene. In 1935, South was shown at the John Reed Club's "Struggle For Negro Rights" exhibition.

"Philip Reisman ... paints ... with gusto. His affection for the human race seems unbounded: affection most ardently stirred by the carnival spirit and when mankind can be caught humorously off guard. Paint has a chalk-like texture. Often the brush, prone to be discursive, slithers and flings itself about with rather febrile fussiness."

In 1979 an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York entitled "The Sixties and the Seventies" showcased 42 paintings on canvas by Reisman described by The New York Times as "20 years of urban-scene observations" including "vignettes of Greenwich Village, street musicians, deserted buildings, subway riders and nightclub interiors."

He had a studio at West 18th Street in Manhattan.

In 1940 Random House published a two-volume English edition of Anna Karenina featuring over one-hundred Reisman illustrations, with sixteen in full color.

He taught courses at the American Artists School in Manhattan, such as "Composition through Social Research", offered in 1936.

As related by New York Times art critic Howard Devrees after viewings an A.C.A. Gallery exhibition of Reisman works in 1943, "behind the folk of the Fourteenth Street sidewalk and the cheapjack side-shows lurks an eerie spirit and eldritch overtones are to be detected in the battered humanity which enlists Reisman's sympathies."

In ____, the Metropolitan Museum hosted an exhibition called Portrait of America, which had its start as competition among artists, sponsored and run by Artists for Victory, to be selected for the merit of their work. Prize money was offered as well, furnished by Pepsi-Cola: $2,500 to $1,000 for first and second places and $500 for ten 'honorable mentions', with all twelve artists to be exhibited at the Met. 3,216 artists submitted nearly 5,000 paintings. A jury selected the 12 prize-winners, with Reisman among the ten honorable mentions.

Exhibitions
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art, National Print Exhibition and the National Academy of Design

Collections
Reisman's works are in the collections of NYC's Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of the City of New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.