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Harold Stevenson:
The Great Society by Kelsey Karper In the far southeast corner of Oklahoma sits the small town of Idabel. It is there that Harold Stevenson spent his childhood learning to paint. Although he later spent a good deal of time in places like New York, Paris, London and Venice, it was Idabel that would always be his home. While living in Paris in the mid-1960s, Stevenson was awarded a grant from the Brooks Jackson and Alexander Iolas Gallery. This grant afforded him the opportunity to paint anything, anywhere he wanted. Rather than travel to an unknown, exotic location to paint, Stevenson chose his hometown of Idabel, Oklahoma with its residents as his subjects. “The famous art merchants who were paying for all this thought I had lost my mind,” Stevenson said. “No lucid individual would waste good money painting country folk in the middle of nowhere. I was fearless.” The journey home to Idabel resulted in one hundred and one larger than life sized portraits, each measuring thirty inches by forty-eight inches, which Stevenson considers as one large work – The Great Society. Once completed, the portraits were displayed together for the first time in 1968 at Iris Clert’s Galerie in Paris. Recently,
after thirty years in storage, the exhibition was brought together once again at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman.
I knew them all. To me, the opportunity to paint these people was unique. This series is my history and the history of small town America. —Harold Stevenson Displayed on all four walls of a single gallery of the museum, the one hundred and one faces of The Great Society surrounded the viewer, peering back at them. The frame of each painting was filled with the face of the subject and a quick survey of the exhibition revealed the unexpected diversity that the small town of Idabel had in the 1960s. There were small children, appearing to be no more than five years, as well as elderly, one noted to have been one hundred and nine. The expressions on the faces were varied as well. The solemn stares were interspersed with the wry smiles and bright eyes. Occasionally, the paintings would include part of a hand, bringing a cigarette to the lips or covering the mouth as if in a laugh. A viewer could begin to imagine the stories of the
lives represented in these paintings through the looks on the subject’s faces and the tales they told with their eyes. None of the portraits were marked with names, as Stevenson had the intention of keeping the subjects anonymous. While working on the project, he never even chose the models for his paintings. The residents of Idabel knew of his project and would simply appear at the doorstep of his studio. Stevenson hoped that through the anonymity of the people, it would be possible for the general masses to find something, some part of humanity, with which everyone could find similarities. Given a great opportunity at the height of his art career, this artist chose to return to the place that began it all. Many wondered why Harold Stevenson would return to Idabel. “I painted America bigger, far bigger than life,” Stevenson said. “I wanted to make a statement that was thoroughly American and would slap Abstract Expressionism directly in the face. And I loved the local people where I was born and reared. To my way of thinking, this was an opportunity that I dare not let pass me by.” ■