SOLD. George Dureau, ‘B.J. Robinson’, Photograph, New Orleans, 1979

GEORGE DUREAU

B.J. Robinson – Proof (GDUR 0545), 1979

Signed; signed en verso

Vintage silver gelatin print

6-7/8 x 6-7/8 inches / image
10 x 8 inches / paper

SOLD.

Private Collection, Toronto, Canada

“The Camera is a Mindless Lunatic”.

– George Dureau (1930-2014)

“If I contribute something strong to photography that’s probably it,

my ability to picture the model’s sexuality in their brain or their life

as told through their face, at the same time.”

– George Dureau (1930-2014)

SEE FULL LIST OF AVAILABLE WORKS HERE:

Digital private view includes all 12 paintings owned by the Estate and a selection of 150 photographs.

Each work is displayed with a high-resolution image, artwork information, and pricing details.

https://privateviews.artlogic.net/2/7c908cbf57ab31fa7f6d69/

George Dureau (1930-2014), American. New Orleans, Lousiana, USA.

Selection of Authentic Silver Gelatin (Darkroom Printed) Vintage Photographs.

Acquired directly by the trustee of the Dureau estate, his brother Don Dureau, whom I am now friends with.

With permission and in collaboration with Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Prices Vary / Please see under each image for details & price.

Condition reports available upon request.

Sales include Certificate of Authenticity & Estate Stamp on Verso.

Shipping is from New Orleans, Louisina, USA.

George Dureau
Born	December 28, 1930 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Died	April 7, 2014 (aged 83) Kenner, Louisiana, U.S.

Education	LSU and Tulane University
Known for	Painter, Photographer

George Valentine Dureau (December 28, 1930 – April 7, 2014) was an American artist whose long career was most notable for charcoal sketches and black and white photography of poor white and black athletes, dwarfs, and amputees. Robert Mapplethorpe is said to have been inspired by Dureau’s amputee and dwarf photographs, which showed the figures as “exposed and vulnerable, playful and needy, complex and entirely human individuals.”

Biography

Dureau was born to Clara Rosella Legett Dureau and George Valentine Dureau in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. He was raised in nearby Bayou St. John. He graduated with a fine arts degree from LSU in 1952, after which he began architectural studies at Tulane University. He briefly served in the U.S. Army. Before being able to survive as an artist, he worked for Kreeger’s, a New Orleans department store, as a display designer/window dresser. For the vast majority of his life, he lived in the French Quarter, where he was well known for his eccentricity and hospitality. His friend and student, Robert Mapplethorpe restaged many of his earlier black and white photographs. Dureau died of Alzheimer’s disease.

NEW BIOGRAPHY; Coming out 2025.

https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/G/George-Valentine-Dureau

PHOTOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES LOUISIANA ART AND ARCHITECTURE

George Valentine Dureau

Life and Art in New Orleans

By Howard Philips Smith
Foreword by Daniel Hammer

Hardcover : 9781496853837, 360 pages, 728 color illustrations; 2 maps, March 2025

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy
Ebook available

An expansive and beautiful survey of one of New Orleans’s most accomplished and provocative artists

Description

New Orleans artist George Valentine Dureau (1930–2014) has always been an enigma. His status as an important artist gained momentum beginning with his first exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, then the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, in the mid-1960s. Not only did his career undergo a meteoric rise, but his work proved at once controversial and provocative, nuanced and groundbreaking. Critics and collectors embraced his bold images, describing them as sexual, sensual, exploitative, erotic, iconoclastic, and innovative. Beneath the surface, Dureau was even more complex as a person and persona, as he crafted a sensational character out of his artistic acumen. His reputation dimmed after his death, but in recent years his importance, and that of the New Orleans art scene he occupied, has once again been recognized.

George Valentine Dureau: Life and Art in New Orleans reassembles the pieces of Dureau’s puzzle-work life. The complexity of his life came together in the studio, where he created some of the most important artworks of the latter twentieth century. This lush publication features 100 large-format photographic plates, most of which have never been seen or published and surprisingly some in color. There are more than 200 illustrations and two essays to accompany the plates, along with a special section devoted to the artists and artwork of 1980s New Orleans, featuring hundreds of additional photographs, and several appendices of supplementary materials, such as interview transcripts, a timeline of Dureau’s life and career, a map of important locations, and a section on relevant art publications, invitations, and posters.

Reviews

“Painter and photographer George Dureau deserves national recognition, as does the Bohemian art world that flourished in New Orleans in the late twentieth century. With Howard Philips Smith’s comprehensive study, this will no longer be an underappreciated chapter in the history of contemporary art in America.”
– E. John Bullard, director emeritus of the New Orleans Museum of Art

Works

Some of his pieces are held at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Several of his works are displayed publicly throughout New Orleans, most notably, the pediment sculpture for Harrah’s New Orleans, and his cast-bronze sculptures stand sentinel at the entrance gates of New Orleans City Park. His depiction of a Mardi Gras parade dominates one wall in Gallier Hall. “Black 1973–1986,” an exhibition of black and white photographs concentrating on young black men at the Higher Pictures gallery in New York City, garnered rave reviews.

Selected Publications

Lucie-Smith, Edward (1985). George Dureau New Orleans: 50 Photographs. London: GMP Publishers Ltd. ISBN 0-907040-47-0.
Gefter, Philip (2016). George Dureau, The Photographs. New York: Aperture. ISBN 978-1-59711-284-0.