Terry Winters, Good Government

Good Government, 1984
Oil on linen
101 1/4 × 136 1/4 in
257.2 × 346.1 cm

What a perfect title for the past week of baloney in Washington D.C.

I’ve have a postcard of this work in my studio since first seeing it in probably 1993. I never tire of looking at Terry Winters work, but this remains my favorite. The postcard is now sun-faded beyond belief. I believe the original is part of the Whitney’s collection.

52 painters is a collection of artists I’ve been thinking about for a long time and want to talk about here. I have a love of Winters for his drawing of organic shapes and general charcoal use.

Here is his official site.

And his Beer with A Painter interview from 2015 which shows his humanity and I love in particular due to their discussion of above painting. Here is the excerpt for your viewing pleasure:

JS: Some of your paintings do have interesting and evocative titles, like the painting owned by the Whitney Museum: “Good Government” (1984).

TW: I was going to call it “Still life with Apples,” but no one would have believed me! The title is taken from Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government. But “Good Government” was also a poster in my elementary school: a chart picturing everybody doing their daily chores and being good citizens. It was also a joke about a painting “working”—the delusion of a painting’s functional formal completion.

One more for the road: