CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/13/2023

Hot book alert! ‘Jameson Green’ is new from Derek Eller Gallery

Cronus (2022) is reproduced from Jameson Green, the first major monograph on the rising painter whose work directly addresses and critiques the imagery of racism via intuitive sampling from a long list of influences, including R. Crumb, Philip Guston, Jacob Lawrence, Pablo Picasso and Bill Traylor, to name just a few. Writing on Green’s most recent cycle of paintings, essayist Dan Nadel cites certain myths around the sacrifice of the son. “In three large canvases and a group of related portraits, Green explores the human emotions, paint languages and contemporary implications of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ for a better future; Abraham’s offering to sacrifice Isaac as a show of faith; and Cronus eating his son out of sheer power hunger. Green is painting these with ever sharper edges looking to the pine tree angularity of F. N. Souza’s religious paintings. We are privy to Cronus’s depraved indifference as he tears apart the pearlescent child, setting off crimson fireworks. Rooted in the pageantry of Rubens and the grit of Goya, these paintings are asking what’s worth a sacrifice, what lessons are on offer, and how, as with the American story, we go forward on a ground riven with violence. Green, a son and soon to be a father, is deep in the weeds of the human project, offering questions beautiful, terrifying and necessary.”