Dennis Kardon (born 1950) is an American painter based in Brooklyn, New York. The New York Times's Ken Johnson has described Dennis Kardon's paintings as "generously painterly, voluptuously creepy narrative pictures of familial conflict, sexual angst and infantile yearning."[1] Kardon's work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.
Background and education
Kardon was born in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1973, he graduated from Yale University with a B.A. degree in Visual Arts. In his final year at Yale, he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He also attended the Yale School of Art at the Norfolk summer program, studying with Al Held, Judy Pfaff and Chuck Close.
Life and work
Kardon began exhibiting his work in the 1970s. His early black and white cut-paper pieces, shown at the Drawing Center (1980) and Barbara Toll Fine Art (1981), played with figure-ground relationships.
49 Jewish Noses, Kardon's best-known piece, gained attention in the exhibition Too Jewish, Challenging Traditional Identities at the Jewish Museum in 1996.[5][6] Organized by Norman Kleeblatt, the exhibition traveled to museums in the United States and abroad, including the Hammer Museum and museums in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and Bruges. Kardon's subjects included artist Nan Goldin, gallerist Helene Winer, and the then-director of the Whitney Museum, David Ross, among other notable Jewish people.