2001 Alford Park Drive Kenosha, WI 53140-1994 www.carthage.edu/artgallery
Perfectly Natural
Charles Munch, Randall Berndt, Carol Pylant, Ann Worthing and Matthew Hagemann
September 12–October 13, 2007
“ Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things… “ Walt Whitman
CHARLES MUNCH Two Worlds Oil on canvas 32” x 48” (left)
MATTHEW HAGEMANN Day’s Beginning Oil on canvas 17” x 41” (top-middle)
CAROL PYLANT Interlude Oil on linen 48” x 40” (top-right)
ANN WORTHING Squirrelly Oil on board 18” x 36” (bottom-middle)
RANDALL BERNDT Lynx’s Moon Acrylic on panel 11” x 14” (bottom-right)
Five Views of Nature by Fred Camper
“Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to
the universe?” Despite the “retrospective” nature of our age, “why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition,” Ralph Waldo Emerson famously asked at the opening of his 1836 essay Nature. The five artists in this show, consciously or not, each follow Emerson’s suggestion, defining their relationship to nature in unique ways. Three fit in to the Romantic outlook of Emerson that also informed the Hudson River School landscapes that began appearing in his own time, in which human consciousness and nature were seen as interpenetrating, as evocations of each other, while the other two rather pointedly stake out different terrain.
Dream #3 Oil on canvas 13” x 35”
Matthew Hagemann M
atthew Hagemann is perhaps the purest Romantic
Starting from photos he takes of landscapes in the flat
of the five. He has studied architectural illustration
Midwest, Hagemann unstraightens some of the lines.
and worked as an architectural draftsman, and first
Day’s Beginning shows a lake bathed in the pink of
began selling prints of his black and white, rectilinearly pre-
dawn, the curvy shoreline seemingly cradling the water,
cise renditions of famous Chicago buildings in frame shops
the curves of land and trees echoing in streaks on the
and at outdoor art fairs when his architect employer died in
lake’s surface. His curves often collect in little nubs,
1990. Even though these drawings are not overly personal,
never sharp but more acute than the slopes, adding a
he chose buildings whose “character” he liked. About seven
peculiarly individual dynamism. This is a landscape of
years ago, he switched from architectural illustration to
imagination, of dreams, in which human subjectivity and
nature painting: “I think there’s much more life and spirit in
nature have become fused. The tree that rises against
nature,” Hagemann says. For much of his life, this Chicago-
the sky in Dream #3 has curves that are matched by
an has been taking drives into the country, enjoying himself
the surrounding landscape and the clouds behind,
in “God’s cathedral”—using a term that the painters Church
lines dancing harmoniously with each other rather than
and Bierstadt would feel at home with. With their quirky
seeming to collide, varied swoops and slopes creating a
bends and curves and dynamic, almost musical rhythms,
kind of mental swirl that gives a view of nature as being
his paintings are perhaps closest to those of Thomas Hart
alive, not as an entity separate from humans but as
Benton, and Hagemann knows Benton’s work—but says he
something part of our inner lives.
prefers Dali and Hopper.
Memories Oil on canvas 13” x 35”
Lynx’s Moon Acrylic on panel 11” x 14”
Randall Berndt Berndt grew up on a family farm 50 miles north of
David Friedrich about “seeing your picture first” with your
Madison, and his childhood spent in nature—“a kind of
“spiritual” rather than “bodily” eye, he places himself
a Huckleberry Finn lifestyle, wandering hither and yon,
firmly in the Romantic tradition. Writing in the Wisconsin
fishing, building little forts”—remains a key inspiration.
Academy Review, Richard Long suggests that Berndt’s
“Nature is my great teacher. My memories are not
painting is kin to “conjuring,” and with the inwardness
so much of people but of landscape, of patterns on
of his light and his mysterious groupings of objects
trees, rocks and water.” But he lived in a world that’s
he does seem to be suggesting magical invocations of
“completely vanished” today, the close-knit community of
another world, each of his objects infused with an iconic
he Hudson River School painters rarely showed
his youth now “oddly fragmented” between factory farms,
suggestiveness. At the same time, his recent works
nature as totally wild. Whether offering a balance
a new Amish community, and the huge new homes of
have a clear theme: civilization and nature, including the
between the wild and the settled landscape, as in
exurbanites. From knowing nothing about art as a youth,
most basic instinctual nature within us, are different and
Thomas Cole’s The Oxbow (1836), or showing the
he was painting “abstract Rothkoesqe clouds” in graduate
possibly incompatible realms, a theme suggested even
intrusion of a railroad, or simply including tiny figures
school and then biomorphic forms, until, partly inspired
in the title of Instinct and Shelter. A nude man sits on a
in wilderness scenes, these contrasted the products of
by Wisconsin painters such as Munch, John Wilde, and
log whose cut face is flat but whose huge ridges suggest
human civilization with wilderness, showing them as quite
Tom Uttech, he switched to his present figurative style.
wildness; before him is a precisely honed miniature
T
house he has apparently made, while the hanging deer in
different entities. This point is also made in different ways by Randall Berndt and Charles Munch, two Wisconsin
Berndt is the first to point out that he’s not a photorealist,
the warm light of the rougher tent suggests something a
artists who are also friends.
and in citing as a key inspiration a quote from Caspar
bit wilder, and the dark background trees are wilder still.
What Nature has to Teach Us: Lumberjack’s Lesson Acrylic on panel 14” x 12”
Road Kill Oil on canvas 32” x 32”
Charles Munch over this little kingdom.” His realistic landscape paintings
in the background. The monuments are largely rectilinear
of the 70s led to a crisis in the early 80s. “I was trying to
and Euclidean, but betwixt and amongst them, a group of
understand a lot of dichotomies I felt in my life, between
deer is crossing from right to left. The deer seem oblivious
emotion and intellect, representation and abstractions,
to the monuments’ presence, and the contrast is almost
the human world and the natural world, artists and
humorous. In Salvation, a couple seems to be carrying a
everyone else. I didn’t feel I could express my feelings
stretcher out of a forest, and on it lays a deer—perhaps
about landscape to my satisfaction with realism.” Early
wounded, perhaps dead. There’s a contrast within the
Renaissance painting, and the power of its intense colors—
couple too: the woman, in a torn dress, stands on the forest
in contrast to Raphael, where “the color has started to
floor, while the man, a bit more civilized looking, walks on
hildhood experiences of nature remain key for
be subsumed in the representational efforts”—was also
meadow. The forest behind the woman seems dense and
Munch as well. Growing up in the old St. Louis
important, as were also the children’s book illustrations and
wild, while a plane flies at the upper left. Munch’s schematic
suburb of Webster Groves, he remembers the
comic books of his childhood; he had been impressed by
style, with broad areas of solid color that have a faint
wild unoccupied areas in the middle of blocks, “kind
the variety of color shades possible on a comic book cover,
picturebook, even coloring book, quality, contributes to the
of neglected backyards,” where he and his friends
as opposed to the inside.
speculative, even philosophical nature of his enterprise.
C
Less than convincing representations of how civilization
played. Even more important were childhood summers spent in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. “It wasn’t organized
In Munch’s paintings, the clash between the wild and the
and nature really look, they present symbolic interactions
rectilinearly,” Munch noticed early, unlike Webster Groves’s
civilized is every bit as strong as it is in Berndt’s. Two Worlds
between different layers of wild and tamed, encouraging the
grid. “I had the freedom to spend whole days wandering
shows a group of cemetery monuments in a clearing, trees
viewer to her or his own thoughts on the subjects.
Salvation Oil on Canvas 35 1/8” x 45 7/8”
Sempre Oil and Acrylic on panel 48” x 39”
L
Carol Pylant
ike Munch, Carol Pylant has made the transition from
softness of nature, seem to break with traditional Romantic
in the background is most impressive. The view through
relatively realistic landscapes to a more symbolic
painting—it seems as if there is more than a single unified
the arches, too, recalls the distant views toward infinity of
style in the last decade, and with a similar gain in
consciousness at work here, and the painting is as much
Caspar David Friedrich, though Pylant says he’s not much
speculative questioning. Her recent paintings with animals
about disconnections as about unities. The clashing worlds
of an influence. There’s some of the “distillation of light in
in landscapes have a strangely surrealist aura, tiled
of Berndt’s and Munch’s paintings, by contrast, are unified
space” from her “longest-running influence,” Vermeer. Her
floors adding a suggestion of great depth. In Interlude,
by a consistent painterly style throughout.
spaces, indeed, seem suffused with a mystical light, the ubiquitousness of which is heightened by the framing floors
a peacock copied from a photo she took struts across a
and archways -- which also somewhat break with that light.
checkerboard floor. Early Renaissance archways behind
Pylant, too, had formative early encounters with nature.
open out onto water and distant land, and in one archway a
Growing up in economically disadvantaged circumstances
bird flies. The viewer might not guess that she was reading
in the urban chaos of 1960s Detroit, she remembers the
Pylant’s free-floating symbolism parallels Munch’s
Dante’s Inferno at the time, but her comment that it’s not
contrast with summers on her grandmother’s Tennessee
ambiguities. There are two dogs in Blessed, one inside
clear if the peacock is trying to get in or out makes sense,
farm—and saw nature as an escape. She was impressed
the aches seemingly looking out and the other outside,
and one in general feels a heavy symbolic weight invested
in high school by the 17th-century Dutch paintings at the
beside the water, looking in. They suggest different human
in the two birds, the floor, and the contrasting nature
Detroit Institute of Arts, for “the way light was dealt with,
owners, and different positions in life. The knowledge
with its soft-edged hues, making the contrast between
the believability of space, the detail,” and their influence can
that one dog is hers and the other, recently deceased,
nature and culture even sharper visually than in Berndt or
be seen in some of her earlier work. In the recent paintings,
was her mother’s, and that the painting was inspired by
Munch. That the symbols are not specific, and the contrast
the contrast between the Renaissance style tiled floors
the unexpected death of a friend, provides only one set of
between the rigid geometry of the architecture and the
with their geometrical precision and the soft landscapes
possible interpretations.
Blessed Oil on linen 48” x 42”
Top Dog Oil on board 36” x 30”
A nn Worthing A
seductive colors of the other four, Worthing’s are mixed
Worthing says that one reason for avoiding highly
with their complements. One inspiration is the paintings
saturated colors is that she wants the paintings to change
of Giorgio Morandi, which she discovered in the late 80s;
with the changing light around them. They indeed have a
another could be winters in her hometown: “Everything
modesty, a lack of pride in themselves as paintings or in
turned brown, and it was really monotonous. The land is
the objects they contain, that suggests an artist even less
very flat, and I learned to pay attention to subtle changes.
assertive about her role than the others. But if respect for
I remember noticing different shades in the brown grass,
nature means anything, it should mean knowing that it is
and the way the grass took on colors from anything
not our property, nor is it even given to us to completely
that might be around.” Top Dog shows a pet she once
understand, and Worthing’s stance suggests a respect
owned, his back indeed arched and his stance direct
for her subjects as well as an openness to the changing
and confrontational, but he’s painted in a pale cream
environments they might be seen in. Nature is not a
that doesn’t stand out that much from the yellowish
creature of her inner consciousness, but something that
nn Worthing presents nature somewhat differently
background. The cat in Pussy III seems drawn into himself,
exists out there in the world, and changes in nature are
from the other four artists. Her childhood
the way cats often are; self sufficient, his eyes seem to be
not simply changes in our inner awareness, but also can
experiences of nature include time spent on
staring out, but it’s not clear if they really are, and his pose
reflect changes in that outer world.
family farms, and also time spent with the family’s pets,
is symmetrical, statuesque. His fur is paler than the green
including the “menagerie” her brothers kept while she
behind or the turquoise of the pool below, but it also feels
was growing up in Wharton, Texas. Unlike the bright,
as if each color can be seen in the other.
Pussy III Oil on wood panel 30” x 36”
Fred Camper
Special Homecoming Hours:
Fred Camper is an artist, and a writer and lecturer on art and film,
who lives in Chicago. His Web site is www.fredcamper.com.
Friday, October 5 • 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturday, October 6 • 1–4 p.m. Sunday, October 7 • 12:30–3 p.m.
Randall Berndt is represented by Grace Chosy Gallery in Madison,WI.
Regular Gallery Hours: Matthew Hagemann is represented by Portals,Ltd. Gallery in Chicago, IL.
and Monforts Fine Art in Racine, WI.
Charles Munch is represented by Tory Folliard in Milwaukee, WI. and
Grace Chosy Gallery in Madison,WI.
Carol Pylant is represented by Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago, IL.,
Grace Chosy Gallery in Madison,WI. and Peltz Gallery in
Milwaukee, WI.
Ann Worthing is represented by Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago,IL.
Tuesday–Friday • 10 a.m.–3p.m. Thursday evening • 6-8 p.m. Saturday • 1-4 p.m. For more information, please contact Diane Levesque at (262) 551-5853 or send an email to dlevesque@carthage.edu. To learn more about the H. F. Johnson Gallery of Art please visit www.carthage.edu/dept/art/gallery.