George Dureau
b. 1930, New Orleans
d. 2014, New Orleans
venue
Historic New Orleans Collection
Tri-centennial Wing
520 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Monday, closed
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 AM–4:30 PM
Sunday, 10:30 AM–4:30 PM
neighborhood
About the project
This selection of works represents George Dureau’s multifaceted photographic practice and seeks to reveal not only his daring studio-based images, but also the lives he and his subjects lived outside of this framework. Works exhibited at the Historic New Orleans Collection include iconic images of people who modeled for Dureau; people who are named in the works’s titles as Kathy B., Jan Becker, Troy Joshua Brown, Louis Goins, Wilbert Hines, Earl Lavell, Brian Reeves, B.J. Robinson, and Roosevelt Sonny Singleton—who range from close friends and acquaintances to strangers he encountered. The images evoke classical aesthetic ideals that celebrate the variations in their forms, which is often the most remarked upon, and most fraught, aspect of Dureau’s practice, along with the varied circumstances and personal histories of his sitters. Shown alongside these studio portraits are photographs of several of those same people taken outdoors at both public and intimate gatherings, in parks and recognizable landscapes around the city, and on the streets of the French Quarter, where Dureau lived and worked. The presentation highlights moments of self-fashioning by his subjects and the larger context of their relationships with Dureau over time. This selection draws expansively from across Dureau’s practice to envision the intersections between everyday life and the constructed world of the studio.
Presented by the Ford Foundation, Stephen Javaras, and Arthur Roger Gallery.
About the artist
New Orleans native George Dureau studied fine art at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and architecture at Tulane University, New Orleans. He was a painter and a photographer and is best known for his black-and-white photographs exploring the male nude, the working class, little people, and disabled people. Using only natural light from his studio windows Dureau captured unexpected, and nontraditional subjects in formal, classical compositions. His work was homoerotic and he treated his subjects, who were often his friends and lovers, with tenderness, and their images take on an ethereal quality. His work and style inspired Robert Mapplethorpe, who he counted as a friend. Dureau’s work has been exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles (2017); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (2011 and 2006); and the New Orleans Museum of Art (2009).
George Dureau, 2021. Installation view: Prospect:5 : Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Jose Cotto