Heroic Painting
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HEROI F36 12:H55 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/heroicpaintingfeOOIubo EROIC PAINI ING FEBRUARY 3 - APRIL 21, 1996 SECCA SOUTHEASTERN CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART Sara Lee Corporation is the corporate sponsorfor this exhibition ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of people helped me understand the Douglas Bohr, installations manager/registrar, and evolving notion of the hero that is explored in Karin Lusk, executive administrative assistant, "Heroic Painting." They work in diverse fields from coordinated the research and administration of the social services to the arts, but all in some way installation and catalogue. Their contribution far interface with the heroic acts of daily life. I am exceeded the parameters of their jobs. I would also grateful to Gayle Dorman, Suzi Gablik, Connie like to acknowledge Jeff Fleming, curator; AngeUa Grey, Nan Holbrook, Basil Talbott, and Emily Debnam, programs administrative assistant; and Wilson for their input. Mel White, programs assistant. Thanks are also due to Ruth Beesch, director of Finally, I am indebted to the artists for providing the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, for helping me in insights on their work and to the lenders for their my search for women artists. SECCA's staff worked generosity. diligently on many aspects of the exhibition. — S.L. This publication accompanies the exhibition EXHIBITION TOUR: "HEROIC PAINTING" Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida May 5 - June 30, 1996 February 3 - April 21, 1996 Queens Museum of Art, New York at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, July 19 - September 8, 1996 Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Knoxville Museum of Art, ICnoxville, Tennessee October 11, 1996 - January 12, 1997 SECCA is supported by The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and the The Contemporary Arts Center, North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency. Cincinnati, Ohio January 25 - March 23, 1997 Published by the Mississippi Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Jackson, Mississippi 750 Marguerite Drive, July 19 - September 27, 1997 Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27106 University Gallery University of Massachusetts at Amherst 1996 Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art © October 22 - December 14, 1997 All rights reserved. Printed in the United States Catalog design: Abby Goldstein of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any Editor: Nancy H. Margolis means without the prior written permission of the Printing: Herlin Press publisher. Photo credits: pp. 14, 15, courtesy P.P.O.W., New York; pp.16, 17, courtesy Littlejohn |j|)rary ol Cjiiiigress Catalog Curd Numhcr: 95-73238 Contemporary, New York; p. 24, D. James Dee, courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; p.25, cour- ISBN: 0-961 1560-9-0 tesy Komar and Melamid; p. 26, courtesy Chase Manhattan Bank, NA, New York; p. 27, courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. DEDICATION "Heroic Painting" is dedicated to the memory of James Gordon Hanes, Jr. (1916-95). Head of the Hanes family of Winston-Salem, Gordon Hanes was a successful industri- ahst and businessman—the president and chief executive of the Hanes Corporation. But Gordon Hanes may be best remembered as a private citizen who contributed his time and resources to nurturing his state and local community and to enhancing our nation's cultural life. Devoted to the arts and the environment, he served nationally on the Collector's Committee of the National Gallery of Art, the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian Associates, and the World WildLife Fund. Within his home state, Gordon Hanes served two terms in the North CaroHna State Legislature, and served as a director of the Board of Science and Technology, the Business Council of the Arts and Humanities, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Governor's Cultural Advisory Council, the North Carolina Nature Conservancy, the Winston-Salem State University Board, the North Carolina School of the Performing Arts, and the North CaroHna Museum of Art, which he helped to found. In 1977 Gordon Hanes spearheaded the decision to provide SECCA with a permanent home on his family's estate. Throughout SECCA's 40 years, Hanes was an avid supporter and adviser. He cared about artists and made great efforts to connect the artist and the community. For all his philanthropic deeds, recognized and unrecognized, we gratefully acknowledge Gordon Hanes as a traditional American hero. HEROIC PAINTING Susan Lubowsky, Executive Director The twentieth century has witnessed the unconventional behavior and eccentricities decried gradual dissolution of the mythic national by the Victorians as unheroic became the distin- hero. As the hero has descended into guishing traits of the new artist bohemian so antihero and finally into caricature, elitist themes admired by the modernists. Modernism "exalted — the great events of history in which individuals the complete autonomy of art, and the gesture of necessarily figure prominently" — have been severing bonds with society. This sovereign replaced with a "history from below" in which specialness and apartness was symbolized by the ordinary people are the prominent figures. In the romantic exile of the artist, and was lived out in twentieth Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, modes of rebellion, withdrawal, and antagonism." traditionalist historian Gertrude HimmeKarb traces As Flaubert commented: "Life is so horrible that the course of the decline of heroism and decries one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be the loss of the hero to society. The "new history," done by living in the world of art." she charges, has eliminated "those last remnants of As the concept of heroism became increasingly heroism by denying not only the idea of eminence, muddled, the artist was there to digest, concep- but the very idea of individuality." tualize, and reveal with painful astuteness the The polarities that concern Himmelfarb — ambiguities that hover on the edge of our beliefs. historic canon versus "new history"; high culture Thus, the hero and antihero merged into one versus low culture — lead her to conclude that the dramatic persona: the figure of the artist. traditional concept of the hero has been destroyed by contemporary scholars. She might have extended the blame to the news media, who The treatment of heroic themes in twentieth- regularly reduce the credibility of public figures, century art is part of a long tradition. Dramatic, and to critics, who undermine the hero and, in so grand-scale history painting came ol age in the doing, assume the role themselves. In light of the sixteenth century, when it was considered the apex recent "culture wars" raging about such issues as of artistic pursuit. Leading the viewer to high moral NEA funding, however, a more interesting point is ground by depicting the heroic acts of mythical and how Himmelfarb's thesis of the hero's decline religious figures, history painting was instructional relates to the role of the artist as hero. — its heroes and their ideals were models for the In his Heroes and Hero-Worship, Thomas common man. By the nineteenth century, however, Carlyle provides the standard description of the history painting seemed antiquated. The forefathers Victorian hero: The hero serves "as god, as prophet, of modernism took the "academic history-painting as priest, as king, as poet, as man ol letters." model to task by punning visually upon the Although Carlyle does not include "artist" on his predictability of the compositions." list, artists not only fit, hut personify the Victorian Seen as a hackneyed academic genre, the Ideal. I)ul the Victorian ideal did not survive very tradition of history painting was not revived until Far inlo the twentieth century, in fact, the very the early modernist movement turned the genre to of its own ends. Employing irony and realism, early realism with modernist humor and a touch modernists, including Gustave Courbet, Theodore cynicism. Gericault, and Edouard Manet, worked in the style Traditional historians like Gertrude HimmeKarb of history painting, but twisted heroic themes into decry the replacement of the traditional historic personal ones. Courbet's Interior of My Studio, A canon with a "history from below," which replaces Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years ofMy Life the mythic heroic figure with ordinary people. as an Artist (1854-55) is an example of grand-scale Complicit in the destruction of the heroic ideal are painting in which the artist substitutes his contem- aspects of feminism and what has been labeled poraries for the mythic figures that a traditional political correctness. In assembling this exhibition, history painting might have featured. however, I had great difficulty finding women artists The contemporary artists shown in "Heroic whose subject and style fit the heroic theme. Suzi Painting" continue the traditions of their early Gablik, who sympathizes with "history from below," modernist forebears. Although they depict their attributed my dilemma to her belief that "heroism "heroes'" in the grand manner of earlier centuries, was the linchpin of patriarchy." they tinge their narratives with irony. The legends, The one woman artist who emerged in my wars, cinematic landscapes, and larger-than-life search is Julie Heffernan. Aesthetically grounded in personalities they depict are a means of presenting traditional history painting, Heffernan nevertheless a polemic on the very concept of heroism at the end has a decidedly feminist viewjDoint.