Surveying a selection of abstract paintings produced by Terry Rosenberg over three decades, Portraits of Character asserts that these works have more in common with portraiture than abstract expressionism. Rosenberg’s paintings investigate the interaction of organic forms, including the human body, through space, time and light. The work cares little for mimetic representation, that is to say an identifiable replication or depiction of the painting’s subject, rather these paintings are portraits of their subjects’ character.
This is not to say that these artworks investigate a set of moral values, but rather that which intrinsically substantiates the subject, a life spirit or telos as manifested through physical form. In Rosenberg’s work the language of abstraction is an instrument, employed in the study of an internal portraiture; a portrait of what lies at a subject’s core and therefore shapes how they move through the world, time and space.
Often working from observation, of both human models and nature, Rosenberg’s abstractions germinate from studies of movement and moments—how a dancer carries herself through a room, how geometric patterns present themselves in nature, or even how lovers’ bodies contort in intimacy.
Recent art historical scholarship has re-examined the origins of abstraction—with particular attention to revising and critiquing the narrative of the abstract male painter as protean genius. Rosenberg’s work can be seen to complement this revisionist study, through his declaration of the origin and occupation of each abstract painting, via the frequent use of eponymous titling in reference to every painting’s subject.
Rosenberg’s embrace of the beautiful is radical, in that this aesthetic is not the central concern of each painting, but rather another instrument to allow the artwork to turn our attention to the establishment of a systematic consideration that unites the organic, man and nature. A framework that allows abstract painting and portraiture to find a meeting point outside of the physical depiction of a subject.
Terry Rosenberg (b. 1954, Hartford, CT) has lived and worked in New York City since 1978. Rosenberg received his BFA from the University of Miami, and his MFA from Alfred University, NY. Rosenberg’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Walker Art Center, and Graphische Sammlung Albertina, amongst numerous others.
Including a recent exhibition at the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center (2021), Rosenberg’s work has been exhibited in venues such as MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, The Albright Knox Art Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, National Center for the Arts, Mexico City and the Sao Paulo Biennial.
