HOFSTR A UNIVERSIT Y MUSEUM
DOUG HILSON: Urbanscapes
HOFSTR A UNIVERSIT Y MUSEUM
DOUG HILSON: Urbanscapes September 1-December 11, 2015 | Emily Lowe Gallery
Front cover credit: Doug Hilson (American, born 1941) Little Pearl, 2006, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in. Photo credit: Dana Duke © 2015 Hofstra University Museum All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the Hofstra University Museum.
Additional exhibition funding has been provided by New York Community Bank Foundation. This exhibition is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Echoing the Ages
Foreword
It has been documented, dating back at least 40,000 years, that humans have created drawings as artistic expressions as well as a means of communication. In fact, before the invention of writing, pictorial forms were used to represent physical objects, along with actual representations of people, animals and patterns. It was not until the fifth century in Asia and Afghanistan that oil painting began to evolve in these regions where natural plant oils were used to decorate cave complexes. By the 15th century in Europe, oil paint was the artist’s material of choice, as its vibrancy and blending capabilities, as well as its enduring properties, were evident. It wasn’t until the 1920s and ’30s that artists began to experiment with a “new medium” of acrylic paint. Acrylic paints are flexible synthetic pigments that can achieve a variety of consistencies from thickly opaque to transparent qualities. The versatility of the medium allows for it to be mixed with other mediums, including oil paint. In Doug Hilson: Urbanscapes, through the curatorial selections of Karen T. Albert, associate director of exhibitions and collections, we pay tribute to a contemporary artist/educator (professor emeritus of fine arts at Hofstra University) who has influenced, through his work and teachings, a generation of new artists. Doug Hilson’s
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large-scale paintings in oil and acrylic, as well as his smaller daily sketches and works on paper, truly echo traditions of drawing and painting that span the ages. His own versatility as an artist and creative thinker has brought forth the works highlighted in this exhibition, which focus upon his most recent interest in the repetition of patterns, shapes, and colors emanating from city dwellings, apartment complexes, and other urban vistas that have engaged his imagination. He has created a unique vocabulary for expressing an almost sci-fi rendering of these sources of inspiration that captures our minds and stimulates our own creative imaginings. We are pleased to share with our many varied constituencies these dynamic and powerful works that provide just a glimpse into the creative energy and distinctive style that defines the master artist, Doug Hilson. We thank both the New York Community Bank Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts for their support of this exhibition.
Beth E. Levinthal
Executive Director, Hofstra University Museum
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Doug Hilson has developed his signature style – the “fantastic, imagined city” – after many productive years as an artist.i I have known Hilson for many years and have seen the development and changes in his work. As an observer, I often wonder what factors may influence or direct changes over an artist’s long artistic career. Artistic style develops and changes over time; it is not created overnight, nor does it develop in a vacuum. There are myriad influences, from personal challenges and experiences to global events, which can have an impact on an artist’s work. The realization of these influences in a work of art can range from concepts and ideas to direct visual references. The development is often intuitive and not linear, as an artist will sometimes return to earlier work or a previous idea as an inspiration to follow another direction or path.
Curator Statement
One of the strongest influences on an artist is his or her everyday environment. For Hilson that meant many years of living in the urban areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn and working at Hofstra University on Long Island. He frequently drove from the crowded city location to the more open areas of suburbia. Hilson has said that he has a love/hate relationship with cities: he is attracted to their visual beauty and exhilarated by the activity but repulsed by the pollution, traffic, congestion and impersonal buildings.ii He views urban life as the antithesis of romantic landscape. The complex and intricate imagery of his paintings clearly reflects both environments through the repetitive use of high-rise buildings and intersecting roadways, along with the dynamic elements of spheres and twisting perspectives. The overall compositions create a sense of order to the chaos and a level of control to the kinetic energy. The juxtaposition of contrasts — wealth and extreme poverty, beauty and decay — found in the urban settings are the underlying subjects of Hilson’s work. An artist’s personal experience can often guide the direction of his or her work. Changes to Hilson’s vision (from a detached retina, surgery and macular degeneration) have left the artist with no depth perception and weak eyesight. He has stated:
i Laurie Fendrich, “The Imagined City.” Doug Hilson: Urbanscapes. Hempstead, NY: Hofstra University Museum, Hofstra University, 2015. ii Studio visit and conversation with artist, July 29, 2014. iii Wynn Newhouse Awards website, original post 2010, accessed June 9, 2015, http://www.wnewhouseawards.com/doughilson.html
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My earlier paintings were very complicated in terms of illusionistic depth and shapes. After a period of depression about my future as an artist, I decided to simplify my work by using flatter images, less complicated compositions and increased color intensity.iii
These choices led me to my most productive period in forty five years as an artist. Hilson not only overcame the obstacles created by the deterioration of his sight but utilized these changes to expand his painting in a new direction. The densely packed compositions build upon the volumes prevalent in his previous work. In addition to flattening the picture plane, his work shows a renewed interest and emphasis on pattern and repetition. Decorative designs and repeated geometric motifs have become part of his signature style. He also developed a more vibrant color palette, which was influenced by trips through India that began in 1992. Artistic influences may originate from a multitude of sources, including other works of art. For example, Bronx Bound, In Hot Water and Rub-ADub-Dub include large painted areas of water stylistically similar to traditional Japanese woodblock prints. The linear marks, created with oil pens, are symbolic of water rather than an accurate representation of oceans or rivers. While the paintings included in the exhibition appear to be very similar, closer examination reveals the diversity and variation within Hilson’s aesthetic. One painting, Night Shade, has a more muted color palette that is reminiscent of the artist’s earlier work. Often elements from an artist’s previous style reappear in his or her current work, and new ideas and directions take effect. A grid-like pattern of lines floats over the surface of the detailed images in Little Pearl and Grossnet, while in other paintings the lines are interrupted, disappearing and reappearing throughout the canvas. In contrast to the paintings, the ink-on-paper drawings are more loosely constructed and can been seen as a respite from the highly detailed paintings. These are only a few of the numerous factors that have influenced Hilson’s work. Artistic development is a continuing and unending process of discovery, experimentation and rediscovery. Through his paintings and drawings, Doug Hilson demonstrates how an artist finds new inspiration in seeing the world from multiple perspectives.
Karen T. Albert
Associate Director of Exhibitions and Collections Hofstra University Museum
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The Imagined City To get a handle on Doug Hilson’s moiling, maximalist art, there’s no better place to start than Hot Spot, the most recent painting in Doug Hilson: Urbanscapes — the first survey exhibition of the artist’s work in almost 20 years. Completed in early 2015, Hot Spot is not a particularly large painting. Yet with its full-blown color and dizzying concatenation of marks, lines, circles, arcs and spheres — and its ring of skyscrapers, each topped by a strange little ball — it behaves as if it’s enormous. As is the case with all of Hilson’s paintings, we see many possible sources — New York, India, billiard balls, paintings by the Chicago Imagist Roger Brown (1941-1997), or perhaps even the work of Charles Sheeler (1883-1965). A large, dark circle that continues off the bottom of the picture plane — suggestive of a Ferris wheel, a roulette wheel, or a gear in a piece of machinery — anchors the composition. Near the center, slightly down and to the left, sits a large, static, fat blue sphere, with a smaller, decidedly humorous orange sphere hovering in front of it. Whatever that orange sphere is (a billiard ball? the sun? an intergalactic orb of unidentifiable origin?), it cheerfully asserts its authority over the restless, tumultuous and chaotic world in which it sits. Hilson’s method of approaching a painting like Hot Spot has been the same for a very long time. Relying on intuition, he paints a thin, wet, acrylic black or dark blue line (usually a mix of ultramarine blue and 8
a little Payne’s gray to dull it down), roughing in what he calls the painting’s “architectural structure,” or composition. From there, still working intuitively, he inscribes a very large circle or arc, followed by smaller circles and arcs. At a certain point, he abandons the world of flatness, modeling some of the circles to turn them into spheres. Somewhere around the halfway point, if he decides to add his comically imagined skyscrapers, he brings in some linear perspective. Near the end of a painting, he returns to the flatness of the picture plane, using oil markers or office-supply white-out to create patterns of tiny, dabbed marks or small, illusionistic balls. (In the early 1990s, after Hilson visited the studio of comic-strip artist Ben Katchor and observed his use of white-out, he started including it in both his paintings and works on paper.) For all the two-dimensionality implied by the large, cropped red circle that organizes the picture plane, Hot Spot is a hybrid world where mark, line and shape collide with a bodily world of threedimensional forms. The “drawing” marks, laid over and against the rich rainbow of painted colors, establish the staccato rhythm characteristic of almost all of Hilson’s art. The painting is a fantastical and yet mechanical world, devoid of human beings. Yet for all the brash and noisy exuberance of this made-up metropolis, there’s something ominous about it. The sunset colors of the sky, appearing in the leftover, negative spaces existing around the skyscrapers,
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imply an infinite, unknowable universe that dismisses civilization’s urban triumphs with a smile of sublime indifference. Over the years, Hilson has maintained studios in several locations, including Manhattan, where he lived and worked from 1980 into 2008, and Brooklyn (from 2008 to 2013). In 2013, after he retired from Hofstra University, Hilson and his wife, Danielle, moved to their home in Callicoon Center, New York — a tiny, rural town about 120 miles northwest of the city. In his very large studio — a steel outbuilding constructed to his specifications — the artist painted the preponderance of the works in this exhibition. In his studio are several large collections of photographs and postcards, and odd collectibles. A pool table (Hilson is a superb player) occupies one corner of the building. The artist’s own paintings and drawings are everywhere. These include many of his ongoing series of sensuous black-and-white ink drawings — four of which are part of this exhibition (two of them, in their liquid looseness, approach full abstraction). Hilson’s studio also displays some of his droll, lightly ironic, “Dug’s Museum” drawings — small ink-and-wash or collaged figurative works whose subjects range from the pretensions of the art world to the absurdities of academic life. Since 1990, as an aside to his serious work, he’s made over 600 of these (a few are presented in Urbanscapes). Born on the momentous day of December 7, 1941, Hilson grew up in a working class neighborhood in Flint, Michigan, where his father spent 41 years on a Chevrolet assembly line. Never an A-student academically, from the time he was small, he loved drawing — making doodles and designs, and then in high school, cartoons. At Flint Technical High School, he studied drafting, but with no exposure
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to fine art, his main extracurricular focus was on football and golf; he excelled at both. At the end of his senior year, he says ruefully, he knew utterly nothing about art, and even though his dream was to become a professional golfer, he assumed that like everyone else he knew, he’d end up working in one of the nearby GM factories. Flint Community College, where Hilson enrolled following his high school graduation, changed his life. His grades were poor until the second semester of his freshman year, when he took drawing, painting and sculpture classes. There he encountered young, active professional artist/teachers, including the renowned ceramicist Richard DeVore, who told him, “You have to read.” He also became friends with other young artists — John Torreano, Harvey Gordon and Sally Kirkpatrick. The four of them became, in Hilson’s words, “hooked on serious art,” and together they transferred to the Cranbrook Academy of Art. After graduating from Cranbrook in 1964, Hilson earned an MFA from the University of Washington, where he painted enormous, abstract, geometric paintings. Remarkably, even for that era, Hilson was offered employment by a couple of fine arts departments at different universities. He chose to join the painting faculty at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, becoming a full professor in 1975, at the young age of 34. While at Illinois, Hilson regularly made the two-and-a-half-hour drive north to Chicago to visit galleries and museums. Although Chicago had a vigorous art scene, its urbanity made him more aware of the even more consequential art world in New York. He became convinced that as a serious painter, he needed to be in New York. In 1980 he took the plunge, giving up his tenured position as a full
professor and director of the graduate painting program at Illinois and, with his family, moved to a live-work loft in Tribeca. For the first few years, Hilson supported himself painting and rehabbing residential interiors. In 1984 he began teaching again, at first as an adjunct. In 1989 Hofstra hired him as a full-time professor, and for the second time in his teaching career, he successfully went through a tenure review and was promoted to full professor. He remained on the faculty at Hofstra until his retirement in 2013. Over the course of his long career, Hilson has worked in different modes. Attracted to minimalist painting during his senior year at Cranbrook, Hilson painted in this manner right through graduate school. After earning the MFA and moving to Champaign, however, he left abstraction for a zany, semi-cartoony style that had strong affinities with the work of such Chicago Imagists as Roger Brown and, especially, Ed Paschke. By the late ’70s, and into the early ’80s, Hilson was making life-size, realist charcoal and graphite portraits, mostly of family and artist-friends. They soon evolved into a series of colorful paintings of women at their vanities. He then began leaving out the human figures, making paintings entirely about looking down at the objects on the table. By the ’90s, after these objects began to suggest buildings in complex grids, he had landed on his signature style — the fantastic, imagined city. Beginning in 1992, the Hilsons began taking long trips to India (they will return for their seventh visit in early 2016). For Hilson, the aesthetic impact was immediate, and India continues to inform his work. He says his first trip was “visually overwhelming,” but adds that he loved everything about the place — from the warmth of the people to the spectacularly colorful markets. He loved the cities and villages, the museums and temples. He was especially affected by
the way India, like New York, is a “mix of millions of different kinds of people” — intensified, he says, by the omnipresence of urchins, beggars, and lepers, as well as cows, goats, elephants, and the smell of burning dung. As the titles of two recent paintings — Bollywood (2014) and Green Gotham (2014-2015) — confirm, India and New York are the two primary sources for Hilson’s current visual ideas. With its rolling hills, its complementary blues and oranges, its vibrant, roller-coaster rhythms, and its suggestion of big letters floating in the sky, Bollywood (the nickname for the giant Indian film industry that’s a pun on “Hollywood”) humorously alludes to the iconic sign in the hills above Los Angeles. And in Green Gotham, with its parade of skyscrapers set against a sizzling hot New York sky, its verdant spheres evoke money, and its three wheels of fortune, money and luck rule the urban roost. But for all the affection for modern cities, Hilson’s paintings are, first and foremost, about his love of painting — all the marks, shapes, colors, compositions, and the paint itself that go into it. This exhibition invites us to revel in those wonderful things. And we do.
Laurie Fendrich is a painter and professor emerita of fine arts at Hofstra University.
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A Round in the Neighborhood, 2005, ink on paper, 22 x 30 in.
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Balls Over Broadway, 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Big Chicago, 2010, oil on canvas, 36 x 96 in.
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Bollywood, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Bronx Bound, 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Circle River, 2002, ink on paper, 15 x 20 in.
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Crosstown, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Double the Ride Across the Side, 2005, ink on paper, 22 x 30 in.
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Five Boros, 2012, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 96 in.
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Gotham Tours, 2009, oil on canvas, 66 x 77 in.
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Green Gotham, 2014-2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 108 in.
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Grossnet, 2008, oil on canvas, 26 x 35 in.
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Haloed Habitats, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Hot Spot, 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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In Hot Water, 2010-2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Little Brooklyn, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Little Pearl, 2006, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Murky Depths, 2007, ink on Mylar, 15 x 20 in.
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Night Shade, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Primary Urban Balls, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 66 x 77 in.
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Rub-A-Dub-Dub, 2009, acrylic and oil on canvas, 66 x 72 in.
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Urban Myths, 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
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Works of Art
Achievement Highlights
DOUG HILSON: Urbanscapes
DOUG HILSON
All works are courtesy of the artist. Photo credit for all works: Dana Duke
Artists Make Money & Other Tall Tales, Vol. 2 1999 Various media 12 x 8 1/4 in. A Round in the Neighborhood, 2005 Ink on paper 22 x 30 in. Balls Over Broadway, 2010 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in. Big Chicago, 2010 Oil on canvas 36 x 96 in. Bollywood, 2014 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in. Bronx Bound, 2015 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in. Circle River, 2002 Ink on paper 15 x 20 in.
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Crosstown, 2011 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Haloed Habitats, 2009 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Night Shade, 2009 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Double the Ride Across the Side, 2005 Ink on paper 22 x 30 in.
Hot Spot, 2015 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Primary Urban Balls, 2009 Oil and acrylic on canvas 66 x 77 in.
A Dug’s Life, 1980-2002 Various media 8 1/2 x 7 in.
In Hot Water, 2010-2014 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Rub-A-Dub-Dub, 2009 Acrylic and oil on canvas 66 x 72 in.
Five Boros, 2012 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 96 in.
The Little Book of Paintings, 2008 Various media 8 x 6 in.
Urban Myths, 2010 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in.
Gotham Tours, 2009 Oil on canvas 66 x 77 in. Green Gotham, 2014-2015 Oil and acrylic on canvas 48 x 108 in. Grossnet, 2008 Oil on canvas 26 x 35 in.
Little Brooklyn, 2009 Oil and acrylic on canvas 36 x 48 in. Little Pearl, 2006 Oil on canvas 36 x 48 in. Murky Depths, 2007 Ink on Mylar 15 x 20 in.
Education
MFA, University of Washington BFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art
Awards
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, 1973-74 Two Ford Foundation Fellowships 1973 and 1977
Exhibitions: 11 one-person exhibitions or special exhibitions, including: Doug Hilson-206 Drawings, Delaware Valley Art Center, NY, 2005 One-person show, Donahue/Sosinski Gallery, NYC, 1999 10-year retrospective, Bradford College, Bradford, MA, 1997 One-person show, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, NYC,1986 One-person show, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, NYC, 1983 One-person show, Deson-Zaks Gallery, Chicago, 1975 Green, Hilson, Kubota, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, 1973 Bushman, Hilson, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 1970 Over 60 group exhibitions, including: Four-Year Anniversary Exhibition, NOoSPHERE ARTS Gallery, NYC, 2015 Color, But No Apologies, Broadway Suites Gallery, NYC, 2010 Paper Works, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2010 Abstract Art-9/11, Studio 18 Gallery, NYC, 2002 Pools of Light, Donahue/Sosinski Gallery, NYC, 1998 Neurotic Art Show, Artist Space, NYC, 1992 Still Life Anthology, Grace Borgenicht Gallery, NYC, 1990 Art in New York, University of Wisconsin, 1983 New Work-New York, Newcastle on Tyne, England, 1983 Reality of Illusion, organized by Denver Art Museum and University of Southern California, 1979-80 Painting and Sculpture Today, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1978 Chicago Connection, two-year traveling exhibition organized by Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, 1978 Included in numerous public, corporate and private collections
Professional Educational Achievements:
Hofstra Distinguished Service Medal, 2014 Hofstra University, Professor, 1986-2013 [retired] Hofstra University, awarded title of Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts Chairman of Fine Arts/Art History and Graduate Humanities, Hofstra University, 2000-2006 Pratt Institute, Adjunct Professor,1982-86 Director of the MFA Program in Painting, University of Illinois, 1974-79 University of Illinois, 1965-79; awarded full professorship, 1974 University of Washington, Teaching Assistantship, 1964-65 Cranbrook Academy of Art, Sali Moran Memorial Scholarship, 1963
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HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY STUART RABINOWITZ President Andrew M. Boas and Mark L. Claster Distinguished Professor of Law GAIL M. SIMMONS Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY MUSEUM BETH E. LEVINTHAL Executive Director KAREN T. ALBERT Associate Director of Exhibitions and Collections KRISTY L. CARATZOLA Collections Manager TIFFANY M. JORDAN Development and Membership Coordinator KARLA J. ODERWALD Senior Assistant to the Executive Director NANCY RICHNER Museum Education Director RENEE B. SELTZER Museum Educator GRADUATE ASSISTANTSHIP Joie M. Johnson-Walker GRADUATE STUDENT ASSISTANTS Chelsea Laggan Mairead Senk
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