b. St Louis, MO, 1906 - d. Brookhaven, NY, 1992
James Brooks
James Brooks, one of the pioneers of American abstract expressionist painting, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906 From 1923-1925 he majored in art at Southern Methodist University, moving to New York in 1926 where he studied at the Grand Central Art School and the Art Students League From 1938-1942, under the auspices of the New York City WPA Federal Part Project, he painted murals in the Woodside Public Library in Queens and the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia Airport - the largest WPA mural in the nation and one of the last to be completed under that program.
Brooks served in the United States Army from 1942-1945. He finished his military service at the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC, where he met his future wife, Charlotte Park. After the war, they moved to New York City. When Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Brooks' friends from the WPA days, were moving out of their apartment-studio on East 8th Street, the couple took over their lease.
They were married in 1947. They often visited Pollock and Krasner in East Hampton, and in 1948 they leased property in Montauk, eventually relocating to Springs.
A leading member of the New York School, in 1951 Brooks was included in the historic "Ninth Street Exhibition." In 1956, his work was part of "Twelve Americans," at the Museum of Modern Art as well as MoMA's exhibition, "New American Painting," which traveled though Europe.
He lived and worked in Springs until his death in 1992.
James Brooks, Flight, 1940-42, 12 ft x 237 ft. International Marine Terminal, LaGuardia Airport.
Selected Works 1952-1972
JAMES BROOKS: A PAINTING IS A REAL THING
PARRISH ART MUSEUM
August 6-October 15, 2023
Guest Curated by Dr. Klaus Ottmann
The first full-scale retrospective organized in some 35 years, James Brooks: A Painting Is a Real Thing will provide an overdue reappraisal of this artist who boldly disrupted any tendency toward repeated formula or purely formal decisions in his work, extending the vitality and validity of Abstract Expressionism well beyond its textbook limits.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 176-page catalogue with interpretive essays by Ottmann and Mike Solomon, plus a detailed chronology and bibliography.
image: installation view, photo by Gary Mamay / Parrish Art Museum
THE BROOKLYN RAIL
September 2023
James Brooks: A Painting is a Real Thing
by Barbara A. MacAdam
James Brooks was, above all, a man of his times—that is, his various times. The exhibition at the Parrish makes evident what many knew Brooks to be: a very fine painter, attentive to his position in contemporary art history, to his influences and peers, to his surrounding landscapes, to society, and to history.
image: James Brooks, South Fork, 1974. Lithograph, 35 x 46 inches. Courtesy the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 2023
‘James Brooks: A Painting Is a Real Thing’ Review: When Life Interrupts Art
by Peter Plagens
Due to his service during World War II, the painter missed the beginning of Abstract Expressionism—but an exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum suggests he was among its finest practitioners
image: installation view with detail of Flight, photo by Gary Mamay / Parrish Art Museum
27EAST / THE PRESS
August 2023
The Art of James Brooks Gets a Retrospective at Parrish Art Museum
by Jennifer L. Henn
“A rendezvous of what you know and what has never happened before.”
That’s how celebrated painter James Brooks described the goal he was chasing as an artist in a 1975 interview with then-curator of the Guggenheim Museum, Louise Averill Svendsen.
image: installation view, photo by Dana Shaw/27east.com