'Subterranean Monuments' at Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Thursday, 08 June 2006 12:01

Poughkeepsie, NY -- Subterranean Monuments: Burckhardt, Johnson, Hujar, and the Changing Life of Bohemia in Post-War Manhattan, an Appreciation From the Margins of the Art World, June 30-September 17 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.  The work of Rudy Burckhardt, Ray Johnson, and Peter Hujar was essential to the developing attitudes and aesthetics of the New York School, the amorphous field of painters, poets, composers, choreographers, and street performers spawned in the mid- twentieth century and united by more than their proximity to New York City.  Yet, while each of these influential artists enjoyed considerable fame among select artistic circles, none of them was widely known during their lifetimes.

Consider, for example, that in 1995, a year after multimedia artist Ray Johnson's suicide, The New York Times described him as "New York's most famous unknown artist."  Or note poet John Ashberry's observation that, "Before there was an underground, there was Rudy Burckhardt.  The genial, Swiss-born jack-of-all-trades, and master of several, has remained unsung for so long that he is practically a subterranean monument."

With a nod to Ashberry's ripe metaphor, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center has organized the exhibition Subterranean Monuments: Burckhardt, Johnson, Hujar, and Bohemia in Post-War Manhattan.  By juxtaposing the three artists' works in three adjacent galleries, the exhibition examines the artists' analogous lives, and looks beneath the surface of their art to discover the myriad associations and parallels that tie these men together.

Tracing the path of bohemian New York, Subterranean Monuments includes upwards of sixty photographs, collages, and paintings, from as early as the mid-1930s, when 21-year-old Rudy Burckhardt moved to New York from Basel.  Through the now legendary 1950s, when the New York School redefined American art, the exhibition continues into the 1980s, when the onset of the AIDS crisis took the life of photographer Peter Hujar and many other artists.

Praising Burckhardt, a self-taught painter-photographer-filmmaker, the critic and curator Robert Storr wrote, “No one has recorded the tempo of New York life more attentively or accurately."  In Subterranean Monuments, Burckhardt portrays the city through its monuments as well as its hidden treasures -- majestic skyscrapers soar over everyday scenes of a bygone era (Times Square, New York, 1947), and the glorious skyline is glimpsed through the window of a modest apartment in Brooklyn (A View from Brooklyn I, 1953).

The Burckhardt paintings in Subterranean Monuments reflect a life alternating between urban and rural phases and intimate portraits of heroic Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

An eccentric collage artist, Ray Johnson transformed his inner thoughts and personal relationships into a massive oeuvre of correspondence art and mixed-media constructions, which paint an idiosyncratic group portrait of his era.

Peter Hujar was the quintessential downtown artist, and divided his fierce concentration between the revelatory possibilities of the camera portrait and the younger creative figures he mentored; in both respects, he quietly helped define art’s evolution in New York from the 1970s.  He was deeply enmeshed in the arts subculture, which allowed him to create sensitive portraits of such friends as Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag.

Each of the artists' lifetimes brackets the next, when viewed chronologically, with Burckhardt living to 85, Johnson ending his own life at 67, and Hujar tragically succumbing to AIDS at 53.  During the years that their lives overlapped, the three had many shared interests, similar lifestyle choices, and people in common, and Subterranean Monuments reveals some prominent connections.

For instance, celebrated poet Frank O’Hara and several artists, including Pollock, Joseph Cornell, and Mark Rothko, appear in works by both Burckhardt and Johnson.  Both Johnson and Hujar depict New York icons such as Warhol. Hujar knew Johnson and photographed him, and he also knew dance critic and poet, Edwin Denby, Burckhardt’s life-long friend and collaborator.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center was founded in 1864 as the Vassar College Art Gallery.  The current 36,400-square-foot facility, designed by Cesar Pelli and named in honor of the new building’s primary donor, opened in 1993.  Vassar was the first U.S. college founded with a permanent art collection and gallery, and at any given time, the Permanent Collection Galleries of the Art Center feature approximately 350 works from Vassar’s extensive collections.

Visit the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at : http://fllac.vassar.edu