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Emile Dillon
The Brooklyn Diner

2020

$12,600
£9,570.01
€11,007.26
CA$17,604.67
A$19,631.20
CHF 10,242.72
MX$240,882.21
NOK 130,373.54
SEK 123,526.10
DKK 82,151.27
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About the Item

After a long, successful career with the Eastman Kodak Company as a photojournalist and editorial photographer, Emile Dillon returned to painting in 1998. As a photographer he traveled the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe. While he’d chosen the camera for his profession, he’d grown up with oil on canvas. His grandfather was the Harlem Renaissance painter Frank Joseph Dillon and a favorite uncle was the Latin American artist Felix Vargas. Dillon’s years behind the camera and days in Soho galleries inspired him to pursue Photorealism as a style. But instead of the landscape of the exotic which he’d experienced in his Kodak travels, he was fascinated by the humble diners, motels, and vintage signs which were vanishing from American towns and cities. To perfect his craft, he studied at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League in New York. In an article on his work in the July 2019 issue of American Art Collector magazine, Dillon comments on his subject matter. “Somebody’s got to save these things…These places may not exist anymore in the next 100 years.” Dillon’s favorite painting in this exhibition is Dunkin Donuts. When he drove up to the location that inspired this painting, he was struck by the ridiculous giant coffee cup bearing the famous pink and orange logo, and the comparatively subtle competing franchise Subway beside it. White Castle II, is from an ongoing series of paintings celebrating the country’s first fast-food chain, established in 1921. Famous for the small square hamburgers which were initially priced at 5 cents, today the surviving vintage locations are revered as textbook examples of industrial Art Deco with their white enamel-glazed brick exteriors and interiors of enameled steel. In paintings of locales in Florida where he lives, Dillon delights in the refined palette and elegance of Art Deco in State Theater and Avalon, a portrait of the classic 1941 hotel on Ocean Drive in South Beach, Miami. For the past couple of years Dillon has focused on vintage popular culture in SoCal and Las Vegas. Casa Escobar in Santa Monica has been a local icon since it opened in 1967. Beverly Cinema, built in the 1920s has long been a well-loved repertory revival theater for modern and classic film. Emile Dillon’s work is in numerous private collections and that of the American Historical Museum in Jersey City, and the New Public Library in Newark, New Jersey. This is his second one-person exhibition with Skidmore Contemporary Art.
  • Creator:
    Emile Dillon (American)
  • Creation Year:
    2020
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 31.5 in (80.01 cm)Width: 41.5 in (105.41 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Fairfield, CT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU183212544052

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After a long, successful career with the Eastman Kodak Company as a photojournalist and editorial photographer, Emile Dillon returned to painting in 1998. As a photographer he traveled the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe. While he’d chosen the camera for his profession, he’d grown up with oil on canvas. His grandfather was the Harlem Renaissance painter Frank Joseph Dillon and a favorite uncle was the Latin American artist Felix Vargas. Dillon’s years behind the camera and days in Soho galleries inspired him to pursue Photorealism as a style. But instead of the landscape of the exotic which he’d experienced in his Kodak travels, he was fascinated by the humble diners, motels, and vintage signs which were vanishing from American towns and cities. To perfect his craft, he studied at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League in New York. In an article on his work in the July 2019 issue of American Art Collector magazine, Dillon comments on his subject matter. “Somebody’s got to save these things…These places may not exist anymore in the next 100 years.” Dillon’s favorite painting in this exhibition is Dunkin Donuts...
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