About Geoffrey Moss
Moss’s career as a painter has taken a circuitous route: art restorer, photographer, illustrator, theatrical designer, animator, author. Eight years as a patinator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Conservation Department resulted in a travel grant to study medieval polychrome statuary and frescos throughout Europe.
To support his painting he free-lanced for the Op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, consequently leading to a 23-year contract with The Washington Post Writers Group as a nationally syndicated political satirist. A collection of his drawings was subsequently published, The Art and Politics of Geoffrey Moss, forwarded by CBS’s Dan Rather. His captionless iconic drawings, MOSSPRINTS “…an artist’s take on global politics” gained recognition with three Pulitzer-Prize nominations including one for his series on the Watergate Scandal and another for his 9/11 series, recognized with a solo exhibition at Washington D.C.’s Newseum.
For the first of three solo shows at Lauren Clark Fine Art Moss presented “Breaking Plates and Flying Dogs”. Of this work Moss says “I first became intrigued with Chinese acrobat “furniture” while watching Chinese cable TV a couple of years ago in my New York studio. At once, those pieces had the solid appearance of familiar domesticity. However, all was actually reconfigured furniture of the absurd: upholstered, fringed, tasseled, for one purpose, to cradle acrobats juggling teacups, dogs, tables and each other; fascinating, because these were vibrant platforms of performance; essentially, art enabling art. If these “silk sofas” were to share space in a traditional living room, that would be a place of tangible insanity, a salon gone mad”.
Subsequent one man shows at Lauren Clark Fine Art include “Inappropriate Appropriations” in 2010 and “Pop Art, a tribute to that all-American icon, The Popsicle, in all flavors and condition” in 2012. Of “Inappropriate Appropriations” Moss has said, “…these pieces are deliberately 'Inappropriate Appropriations', inspired by popular 18th and 19th century Japanese erotic prints. By rearranging and adjusting the economy of those works I have incorporated an American sensibility of my own, inspired, as well, by saturated comic book colors of the 1940's to exaggerate the initial sensuality inherent in the original prints.
Another, dramatically different view of Geoffrey Moss’s world emerges from the featured selections from his vast body of work in drawings, which have earned him a national reputation for constantly pushing the envelope of political cartooning in the United States. His pioneering political drawings without captions, which first appeared on the “Washington Post” Op-Ed page in the post-Watergate era, have reached newspaper readers nationwide through the Post Writers Group syndicate and most recently the Los Angeles-based Creators Syndicate.
“As a conceptualist, Geoffrey Moss is credited with forming a unique metaphorical language, drawings so powerful and multi-leveled that they need no tag lines,” the artist’s biographical notes observe. “For more than 25 years, Moss has doggedly refused to use traditional captions, dialogue or labels in his work, relying on the intelligence of editors and readers to ‘get the message’.... His unique syndicated graphic feature, ‘Mossprints,’ cannot be categorized as traditional ‘political cartoons.’ Fans and critics alike, because of the artistic nature of his drawings, refer to his visual column as ‘an artist’s take on politics.’”
Discussing the uncommonly wide range of his work, Moss observes in his artist statement, "As a working artist, I am continually conscious that critically it is confusing to categorize all that I do. All the work comes from one place, and feeds on all that I pay attention to."
His artistic works have been featured in major shows at diverse venues including the Modern Museum of Art in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Cartoon Museum, and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. From 2002 to 2004, his mosaic, “Bus With White Walls,” was featured in an exhibition celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and six other museums nationwide. Moss’s works have also become part of important art collections including the Yale Gallery, the Flemming Museum, the Poynter Institute, the Comcast Corp., and the American Can Co.
Moss holds degrees from The University of Vermont (B.A., Distinguished Alumnus) and Yale School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., M.F.A.)
To support his painting he free-lanced for the Op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, consequently leading to a 23-year contract with The Washington Post Writers Group as a nationally syndicated political satirist. A collection of his drawings was subsequently published, The Art and Politics of Geoffrey Moss, forwarded by CBS’s Dan Rather. His captionless iconic drawings, MOSSPRINTS “…an artist’s take on global politics” gained recognition with three Pulitzer-Prize nominations including one for his series on the Watergate Scandal and another for his 9/11 series, recognized with a solo exhibition at Washington D.C.’s Newseum.
For the first of three solo shows at Lauren Clark Fine Art Moss presented “Breaking Plates and Flying Dogs”. Of this work Moss says “I first became intrigued with Chinese acrobat “furniture” while watching Chinese cable TV a couple of years ago in my New York studio. At once, those pieces had the solid appearance of familiar domesticity. However, all was actually reconfigured furniture of the absurd: upholstered, fringed, tasseled, for one purpose, to cradle acrobats juggling teacups, dogs, tables and each other; fascinating, because these were vibrant platforms of performance; essentially, art enabling art. If these “silk sofas” were to share space in a traditional living room, that would be a place of tangible insanity, a salon gone mad”.
Subsequent one man shows at Lauren Clark Fine Art include “Inappropriate Appropriations” in 2010 and “Pop Art, a tribute to that all-American icon, The Popsicle, in all flavors and condition” in 2012. Of “Inappropriate Appropriations” Moss has said, “…these pieces are deliberately 'Inappropriate Appropriations', inspired by popular 18th and 19th century Japanese erotic prints. By rearranging and adjusting the economy of those works I have incorporated an American sensibility of my own, inspired, as well, by saturated comic book colors of the 1940's to exaggerate the initial sensuality inherent in the original prints.
Another, dramatically different view of Geoffrey Moss’s world emerges from the featured selections from his vast body of work in drawings, which have earned him a national reputation for constantly pushing the envelope of political cartooning in the United States. His pioneering political drawings without captions, which first appeared on the “Washington Post” Op-Ed page in the post-Watergate era, have reached newspaper readers nationwide through the Post Writers Group syndicate and most recently the Los Angeles-based Creators Syndicate.
“As a conceptualist, Geoffrey Moss is credited with forming a unique metaphorical language, drawings so powerful and multi-leveled that they need no tag lines,” the artist’s biographical notes observe. “For more than 25 years, Moss has doggedly refused to use traditional captions, dialogue or labels in his work, relying on the intelligence of editors and readers to ‘get the message’.... His unique syndicated graphic feature, ‘Mossprints,’ cannot be categorized as traditional ‘political cartoons.’ Fans and critics alike, because of the artistic nature of his drawings, refer to his visual column as ‘an artist’s take on politics.’”
Discussing the uncommonly wide range of his work, Moss observes in his artist statement, "As a working artist, I am continually conscious that critically it is confusing to categorize all that I do. All the work comes from one place, and feeds on all that I pay attention to."
His artistic works have been featured in major shows at diverse venues including the Modern Museum of Art in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Cartoon Museum, and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. From 2002 to 2004, his mosaic, “Bus With White Walls,” was featured in an exhibition celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and six other museums nationwide. Moss’s works have also become part of important art collections including the Yale Gallery, the Flemming Museum, the Poynter Institute, the Comcast Corp., and the American Can Co.
Moss holds degrees from The University of Vermont (B.A., Distinguished Alumnus) and Yale School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., M.F.A.)
