text underneath is in the vernacular of the film noir expanding the themes of rejection, mysterious liaisons, and havoc. Perhaps these women serve as alter egos for Chernow who believes that these women did everything that she wanted to do. It was not only the subject matter of the film noir that captivated Chernow. In the mid-1980s, she met Herbert Lust, the renowned collector of Alberto Giacometti living in Greenwich, Connecticut. This meeting was pivotal in expanding Chernow’s artistic impulses. Chernow developed a love for Giacometti’s style. Alberto Giacometti’s drawings, etchings, and lithographs provide an important foundation for Chernow’s works. It was not only Giacometti’s competence as a draughtsman, but it was also the way that he set up a scene with accompanying text – the boxing of a scene with text underneath. She noted the use of erasures to mold the scene and his use of cross hatching to provide texture and depth to his tableau. Chernow similarly incorporates these techniques in her art. With his lithograph titled, Moving, Mute Objects, dated to 1931, Giacometti drew on lithographic stone, sculptures from his studio with accompanying prose text creating a compelling ensemble. Herbert Lust provides a translation of a Giacometti prose poem: “…Someone is speaking in a room way off: two or three people – of what station? The locomotives which whistle, there is no station near here – one might throw orange peelings from the terrace top into the narrow and deep street, the night the mules bawled desperately, toward morning one slaughtered them, she approaches her head to my pillow.” Both artists are fundamentally draughstmen, creating their figures through the quality of expressive line. For Giacometti, the underlying structure is oftentimes seen through his figural work. For Chernow, the underlying substrate disappears so that all is left are her subjects interacting close up and frontal in cameo-like portraits that are personal and private. For Chernow she incorporates lighting in her scenes that cast a luminous glow on her figures emerging from a smoky, diaphanous veneer. Chernow also admires Giacometti’s work ethic. He was always working – whether researching, looking at art, creating art or reading. Chernow lives her life in the same vein – completely committed to her craft. Most recently, Chernow has been working on large scale drawings measuring 24” x 30”, created with at least twelve layers of pencil marks. She began working in pencil after she developed an allergy to oils when she painted Polka Dot Marilyn, her take on Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn of 1962 that is an icon of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, given to the Museum by Philip Johnson. Polka Dot Marilyn was done in oil measuring 16” x 20”. She began creating pencil drawings and has continued drawing every day. Chernow loves storytelling and creates her work whether in pencil, oil, lithography, or etching daily. She is a master of capturing pathos through charcoal pencil. Chernow is a fine draughtsman and her line captures the best of storytelling in two dimensions. Chernow’s admiration of film noir and love for art and art history was shared by Burt, her late
husband. Ann and Burt met when they were students at New York University but they were not married until five children later; three for Chernow, two for Burt. A little known fact about Burt Chernow is that he was a gambler and a gifted pool player. He transferred these wily talents to collecting works of art. These collections would ultimately go to Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the public school system in Westport, Connecticut. As it turned out, Chernow was the serious artist while Burt, with his shopping list that began with a desire to own a Sandy Calder and a Roy Lichtenstein, in the early 1960s, began to meet artists and collect work. Burt could walk into a bar in Nice, a French gambling center, walk up to the roulette table, and leave with a wad of cash in his pockets. He could walk into a bar in Malaga, Spain, walk up to a pool table and leave with the money in his pockets. This was no novice. Burt could play pool better than any other fellow at the bar on that particular evening. Chernow enjoyed this double life and enjoyed the excitement of Burt by day collecting art and by night working the casinos and pool halls. Ann and Burt donated hundreds of works of art to the Housatonic. These works have been exhibited in the Housatonic Museum of Art and the designated Burt Chernow Gallery as well as throughout the college in the offices and classrooms where the professors work and teach. He was able to build a collection without a budget as he cajoled and charmed first rate artists to donate works of art. This was no ordinary love affair and these were two extraordinary people – Ann, the artist – Burt, the collector. It is clear that Chernow’s fascination with film noir and femme fatales, and the precarious nature of relationships comes through in her works of art. It is her connection to the world of art, collections, and artists as well as her shared zest for the intricacies of life’s situations that have provided a strong foundation for her career as an artist.
Love’s Old, Sweet Song, Pencil, oil ink drawing, 24" x 30"
In ABC, Burt contributed his own poem:
Ordinary Miracles
Moonlight, Lithography 11" x 14"
Life’s big machine of chance pops a soul into the air and mindlessly drops it into a body, a place, a time. We become accustomed to ordinary miracles like no war, like eating well, like living from art, savoring here and now with you. Chernow was told by Herbert Lust when Burt passed away in 1997, “He’s gone but leave him in your memory as you are working. He will always be with you. You will always be with him.” It is clear that this raconteur provided Chernow, the artist, with great stories and a life that provided fuel to her interest and love of the femme fatale.
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