Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004 | 8:21 a.m.
James Mann knew he was re-igniting a long-standing contentious argument in the art world when he brought the work of late American sculptor Frederick Hart to the Las Vegas Art Museum last week.
First there was the turbulence created in 1984 when Hart's figurative bronze "Three Soldiers" was unveiled near Maya Lin's minimalist design at the Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C., bringing to culmination a showdown literally between Hart's classical work and modern sculpture.
Then there was the fact that Hart (who died of lung cancer in 1999) was mostly ignored by critics, even when his "Creation Sculptures," including "Ex Nihilo," a large-scale relief panel representing creation and the divine energy of the universe, was unveiled in 1990 on the Washington National Cathedral, the sixth-largest cathedral in the world.
And of course, there was the clamor from Tom Wolfe, an ardent defender of Hart's work and harsh critic of modern artists, whom he referred to in an essay for The New York Times Magazine (2000) as "the great sculptors of the time" whose "unionized elves put arrangements of rocks and bricks flat on the ground."
But that's part of the reason "The Creative Spirit: The Sculpture of Frederick Hart" is opening at the Las Vegas Art Museum this weekend.
"This is meant to be a proactive and challenging show that is willing to contend with various facets of contemporary taste -- to question these established notions, shake 'em up and see what happens," Mann, LVAM's curator-at-large, said last week.
"I'm fully aware of the angle of attacks that can be taken against him, and quite plausibly, by contemporary critics. This is not meant to sanctify or enshrine this artist, but to cast his work on the waters and see where it washes up."
Hart came to prominence when his designs, based on the theme of creation, won an international competition for decorating the west front of the National Cathedral. The young sculptor had been kicked out of school in ninth grade, but scored high on his ACTs (American College Testing), which got him admitted into the University of South Carolina when he was 16.
In 1968, while he was in his 20s, he began working as an apprentice stone carver and sculptor at the Washington National Cathedral -- the only place he believed he could get the training he needed.
"That building was almost an historic anomaly," Mann said. "I don't know that there's another cathedral made of stone being built anywhere in the world."
Sculpting forward
Spiritual transcendence became a major theme in Hart's work. The "Creation Sculptures," which included "Saint Peter," "Saint Paul" and "Adam," were inspired by the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Hart converted to Catholicism while working at the cathedral.
By the time the "Creation Sculptures" were finished, Hart had already made himself known among mainstream collectors. In 1971 he had begun experimenting with clear acrylic resin and in 1982 completed and released his first-edition work, "Gerontion," using that medium.
That same year he received the commission to create "Three Soldiers" at the Veterans Memorial, which would be installed and dedicated two years later by President Ronald Reagan.
Hart had actually placed third in the blind jury competition of more than 1,400 artists. When veterans decried Lin's work as something that looked too much like a tombstone, Hart was selected to create a second monument, a bronze that features three seemingly exhausted but sensitive young soldiers muddied from battle.
"They are vulnerable and fragile. They don't have helmets on. One veteran saw it and said, 'That man knew who we were,' " said Madeline Kisting, longtime friend of Hart's and spokeswoman for Chesley/Sculpture Group Unlimited, which handles and markets Hart's works.
Hart's "Daughters of Odessa," a bronze sculpture of four young women in translucent flowing gowns, was created in response to a civilian uprising in czarist Russia in which civilians were slaughtered by soldiers. Hart referred to the piece as "an allegorical sculpture in remembrance of the innocent victims of all the acts of repression of the 20th century."
Other bronzes by Hart, mostly of women, focus on beauty and transcendence. His "Cross of the Millennium" is a Lucite sculpture depicting Christ on the cross.
"He loved the human figure. He loved what was beautiful," Kisting said. "He felt that art should reach out and grab your heart without you having to grasp what it means."
Regarding "Ex Nihilo," Kisting said, "When you look at that piece it is impossible to just observe it. You are forced to participate in it. It is a work to become a part of.
"He thought that not just in visual art, but in dance, theater, music, architecture and fiction, we should move toward beauty, truth and goodness."
Critical mass
Hart was also commissioned to create a marble sculpture of late Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr., a bronze of President Jimmy Carter and a bronze bust of Sen. Strom Thurmond. Though he received mainstream popularity, the representational artist was always working against the grain of the art world.
Of Hart's distaste for modern art, Mann said, "That's not to be held against him, in my opinion. He came to birth as an artist in a crucial crossroads in art history and he simply was not interested. He wanted to chisel in stone, which was a misfit, non-conformist, anti-establishment thing to do."
Despite great marketing success, Mann said, "The serious art world hasn't paid attention to him.
"The work kind of came into being in a strange cocoon. His great work, the one that occupied the first decade of his profession, was created in that strangely isolated environment."
But Dave Hickey, national art critic and faculty member in the UNLV College of Fine Arts, said that the coolness Hart received from the art world didn't necessarily reflect the quality of his work.
"It's not really a value judgment," Hickey said. "In the moment that he was making his art, the kind of art he was making was not part of the conversation.
"It may be part of the conversation later."
The more than 40 pieces on display at the Las Vegas Art Museum, including "Daughters of Odessa," acrylic resins and castings, a small creation of "Ex Nihilo" and life-size resins of "Saint Peter," "Adam" and "Saint Paul," might generate that conversation.
"This show can easily be critiqued by hostile angels," Mann said. "But that's part of the job of the critics, to shake things up. There's nothing less permanent than artistic taste.
"A lot of writers and critics that I am personally acquainted with have championed his work."
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