John Hartman - American Landscapes by California State Univeristy Stanislaus School of the Arts

John H ar t m an

American Landscapes

D ir e c tor ’s For ewor d

John Hartman – American Landscapes, represents an occasion to view the inspiring works of John Hartman. One of the Art Department’s fundamental areas of educating is painting. Whether a painting is abstract or formal still life, creating a painting or viewing a painting is one of life’s most enjoyable activities. Having exceptional exhibitions of paintings in our galleries helps to generate meaningful discussions and life-long learning about painting. The University Art Gallery’s programing helps to support our faculty’s teaching. It is through faculty recommendations that many exhibitions come to our galleries. This exhibition was recommended by my colleague David Olivant, who wrote the following about John’s work: “John Hartman is quite possibly Canada’s preeminent representational painter. He chooses an imagined viewpoint much higher than the one he sees the sprawling coastal landscapes from, lending his monumental canvases a sense of cosmic vastness and melodrama. While his work opens up fresh painterly territory, he has affinities with Kokoschka, who also found a living presence in his landscapes. In this sense he also reminds of the recent paintings of British artist John Virtue, but Hartman is distinct in teasing a sense of layered human history from the battered, agitated and somehow ecstatic coastal topographies he conjures into being.” I would like to thank John Hartman for the opportunity to exhibit his wonderful work, David Olivant for recommending John to be invited to exhibit with us, Ian M. Thom for writing the insightful catalog essay, the College of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design, Parks Printing for printing the catalog. We are also grateful and extend our warmest appreciation to the Instructionally Related Activities Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue.

Dean De Cocker Director, University Art Galleries California State University, Stanislaus

Venice, Louisiana, oil on linen, 40” x 46”, 2013

Bayou Lafourche, oil on panel, 9” x 11”, 2013

Joh n Har tm an - A m er i c a n La nd s c a p es

When I was young, I had dreams that I was flying over familiar places, which would unfold below me in the dream as a continuous oblique angle view, as if I was a few hundred feet above the landscape. Much of my painting career has been devoted to re-capturing the sense of wonder that these dreams gave me. Hence the aerial views that dominate my paintings. Sometimes these are based on airplane trips I make in small planes, sometimes on drone photographs I make, but most often they are made by becoming so familiar with a place that I can imagine what it might look like from three or four hundred feet in the air. As I paint these landscapes I am aware of my past experiences in each place and of the history of others as well. So, I often include visual references to people and their stories when I paint a landscape. These are aerial views of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles. New Orleans and the Delta communities south of New Orleans. There are also two aerial views of the landscape where I grew up, Port Severn, Canada. These two landscapes are peopled with memories. The selection of cities is serendipitous. I was in each place, I became intrigued, I sketched what I saw. My continuing curiosity lead to more visits and more sketching and the paintings came from this process. Up close these places are visceral, there is noise, smells and a lot to look at. Seen from above this visceral quality is gone and it is the play of light on the landscape and the compositional possibilities created by land and water that are most apparent. I try to get some of the up close visceral feeling and some of the feeling of lightness from flying into each painting.

Delacroix, oil on panel, 9” x 11”, 2013

Joh n Har tm an - A m er i c a n C i t i es Essay by Ian M. Thom How to visualize the complexity of a city is a puzzle that has occupied artists and map-makers for centuries. The advent of the printing press led quickly to maps of cities across Europe and Asia and the nineteenth century is rife with aerial views of urban settlements. The subject of the city is not, therefore, a new one and John Hartman came to it, as he does to all of his work, from a place of study and contemplation. The purpose of his paintings of American cities is, however, somewhat different from the map images of the past. The famous Civitas Londinum (sometimes called the Agas Map)1, for example, had a practical goal, to map and place the city of London in the context of the River Thames, the complex network of streets and lanes and to, as much as possible, includes all the buildings and bridges. While too large to be used as a daily guide it had (and continues to have for historians) an important reference function. It allows the viewer to comprehend and make his or her way through the city. Hartman’s city paintings have different ambitions – they too seek to give the artist and viewers an ability to comprehend the scope and complexity of their subjects but there is no sense that they are accurate portraits of a city. Hartman seeks to convey the essence of his experience of a city and realize his childhood dream of seeing the world from above. As he told writer Noah Richler: As a kid I always dreamed of flying. I had this ability to imagine the ground as a film – to see the Earth as a moving picture rolling towards me at an oblique angle. Now, because I am able to gather the information, I can do that. 2 Hartman began painting cities in 1997, when he depicted Copenhagen3 from above. He had, however, been interested in aerial views before this – earlier landscapes show vast vistas usually from great heights.4 The challenge for Hartman was how to distill and organize the vast amount of visual information before him into a cogent pictorial statement. In approaching cities Hartman marshals a variety of approaches. He walks the city; he draws and paints the city in watercolours done in situ; he collects and studies guidebooks, postcards and aerial photographs; he views the city from atop high hills and tall buildings; and, when possible, he charters a small plane and flies over the city and takes numerous reference photographs. All of these elements come together to provide the source material for his paintings done far from his subjects in his studio in Lafontaine, Ontario. This body of work builds on the example of previous art. Hartman is a voracious viewer and has been influenced by many – he cites Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Issus, 1529 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and Oskar Kokoschka’s expansive expressionist views of London, as well as the city paintings of Canadian painter Bruno Bobak and American Wayne Thiebaud.5 The most important reference point however is Hartman’s own artistic practice. In his words: the transition to painting cities came very effortlessly and naturally to me because I see them in the same way [as landscapes]. I see them as a place; it’s just that there is much more density and human activity…6 He also came to see cities – New York, in particular, “as a pulsing body, its roads as arteries, it buildings as an armoured skin, the moving water and sky as a breathing lung, an open space of intense light.”7

Downtown Los Angeles, oil on linen, 40” x 46”, 2011

These twin ideas of place and body animate the works in this exhibition which range from 2008 to 2014. The earliest are two paintings of San Francisco. In each case Hartman accessed a high viewpoint and then extrapolated above that position. We therefore see a massive expanse of the city in each work and we are at such an imagined height that the horizon reflects the curvature of the earth. The roads sweep like arteries across the painted surface and the buildings, quays and bridges are indicated in quick, but readily legible, brushstrokes. The use of colour is striking in San Francisco, note the fiery red of the hills in the middle ground. We know that this is San Francisco but it is more than a simple portrait of the city. It is a vast, teaming, sprawling, energetic, human place set within the greater expanse of the world. The second painting, San Francisco from Twin Peaks, is somewhat more immediate in focus but never distracts the eye with minor details. It conveys a sense of the wonder of the city while allowing us to remain slightly apart from it. We appreciate the beauty of the place without seeing the tawdriness that also exists. Hartman made a trip to Louisiana in 2012 and this resulted in a series of paintings.8 The earliest, Redfish Above Shellfish Beach Louisiana, 2012, is a work that reflects Hartman’s belief that “when I am sketching a landscape I am aware of its history and that is part of my experience of the place, so it seems to me that I should include

references to these histories in the final painting.”9 Here, in addition to an expansive landscape, we see a huge redfish raised above the horizon and in the foreground a ghostly figure on the left and a crouching figure on the right perhaps genuflecting to the wayside cross. These are images of the imagination and the spirit wedded to an astute observation of the landscape. All of the Louisiana images result from photographs that Hartman took on several aerial reconnaissances of the area south of New Orleans. The smaller panels were conceived of as massing and colour studies for the larger Yscloskey canvases. It is striking that in both of the final canvases Hartman has radically altered the colour scheme of the work. The dominance of reds and the vivid blues of the waterways suggest that Hartman has an expressionist rather than a realist agenda. While the panels are acutely observed studies of the landscape with enough detail to allow us to read them, the larger canvases are magisterial in their scale and their celebration of colour, boldly disconnected from banal realism. The works Port Fourchon, The Industrial Canal, New Orleans and Venice Louisiana, all from 2013, share a strong calligraphic quality as the road and waterways are written across the surface. There is a sense of abstract pattern even as we read these images as views of real places. Hartman has successfully walked the line - giving enough but not too much visual information. We come to know these places even though it is impossible to physically experience them the way that Hartman has painted them. The wonder of the paintings is that they work both as a whole and as we examine details and marvelous vignettes of the viscosity and character of oil paint. These paintings are united by Hartman’s keen visual sense and enormous skills with paint. They are compositionally adventurous, visually electric, and quite simply, startlingly beautiful. They join a long tradition of depicting the urban sphere but do so in a way that is uniquely Hartman’s. As Canadian art historian Dennis Reid has written: The place depicted is vitally present in every painting, but no more so than the artist’s hand and mind.10

Ian Thom is a distinguished art historian and curator with more than forty years of art museum experience. He held senior curatorial positions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The author of numerous books and catalogues, he was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2009.

Originally published circa 1561, there are no extant copies from that period. A revised version from 1633 is found in the City of London, London Metropolitan Archives. It is also available online (https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm).

John Hartman, quoted in Noah Richler, “Icarus Need Not Have Died,” in John Hartman et al., Cities (Canmore: Altitude Publishing, 2006), p. 45.

His canvas, KobenHavn – Western Approach, 1997, is reproduced on page 121 of Cities.

Kim Ness, with minimal means: John Hartman Prints 1985-1995 (Hamilton: McMaster Museum of Art, 1995), p. 4, places this progression to “an exaggeratedly high viewpoint” to shortly after Hartman’s move to Lafontaine, Ontario in 1981.

Emails to the author, December 2 and 3, 2019.

Hartman quoted in Stuart Reid, “The Ecstatic City,” in Cities, p. 120.

Hartman, Cities, p. 123.

This journey began an association with the Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans which continues. He returned to New Orleans in 2013 and has been back several times to sketch since. Email to the author, December 10, 2019.

Email to the author, December 17, 2019.

Dennis Reid, “Preface,” in Cities, p. 19.

Flushing Meadows and Long Island Sound I am flying into La Guardia airport in New York on a commercial airline flight from Toronto. It is a clear, cold day and the water of Long Island Sound and Flushing Bay are a deep ultramarine blue. The details of the landscape below me are picked out sharply by the hard, bright northern light. My plane is just finishing a big loop over Manhattan and is heading north over Brooklyn and Queens. I am in a window seat and taking lots of photos. As we approach La Guardia the plane descends and starts a turn toward the runway which is built out over the water. It is the white shape on the left edge of the painting in the middle. Below me in the foreground are the stadiums of Flushing Meadows, home of the US Open tennis tournament, and the various freeways that define the edges of the park. I love the density and confusion of New York and the very organic quality of its roads and freeways when seen from above.

Flushing Meadows and Long Island Sound, oil on linen, 34” x 36”, 2010

Jean and Frank Har tman Above Por t Severn This is my home landscape. My parents founded a summer Camp for girls, Camp Shawanaga, on an island in the Severn River just where it f lows into Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron. The small community of Por t Severn, with its largely Metis population, was our point of boat access to the island. There is now a four-lane highway bypassing Por t Severn. It is on the lef t side of the painting. An unf inished off ramp is being held up by a giant hand. My mother and father, as twenty-year-olds, their age when they star ted the camp, are painted in the lower right corner. My childhood camp friend Beth Perr y and I, are painted as six-year-olds to the lef t of my parents. Floating in the space between you, the viewer, and the sur face of the land are the various items essential to this life, such as small outboard boats, and metal jerr y cans for gas.

Jean And Frank Hartman Above Port Severn, oil on linen, 60” x 66”, 2014

Port Fourchon, oil on linen, 48” x 68”, 2013

Redfish Above Shell Beach Louisiana, oil on linen, 40” x 46”, 2012

Remembering ‘Cookie’ from Above Port Severn, oil on linen, 60” x 66”, 2014

San Francisco ‘On a clear day in January 1949, Chronicle Photographer Barney Peterson climbed into a small airplane and circled skyward over the San Francisco peninsula. At 12,000 feet his camera lens reached out 250 miles to catch this remarkable shot…’ I found this press photo described above on EBay and I was immediately taken by the sweeping view. I travelled to San Francisco, rented a plane and flew over this same area but at a lower altitude. I extended the view beyond that of the press photo to include the coastline north of San Francisco as far as Chimney Rock. I compressed the view at the horizon so that the it extends only as far as Napa Valley. The freeways and office towers are contemporary. I painted the San Bruno Hills red. I also compressed the east west view in order to fit everything from Bolinas to the Bay Bridge, where it crosses Treasure Island, into the composition. I am always intrigued by the infrastructure we lay over the landscape as we build cities, but as the viewpoint gets higher, the underlying landscape is revealed.

San Francisco, oil on linen, 60” x 66”, 2008

San Francisco from Twin Peaks The city of San Francisco has within its borders several high hills, each with unique views. The highest of these hills is Twin Peaks. There is a road that winds its way to the top. This is the blue ribbon that curves through the foreground of the painting. The view then extends over the dazzling brightness of the city to the cluster downtown office towers and across the Bay Bridge to Oakland.

San Francisco from Twin Peaks, oil on linen, 60” x 66”, 2008

The Industrial Canal, New Orleans, oil on linen, 40” x 46”, 2013

Yscloskey From Above, Looking North I drove into Yscloskey in 2012, coming south into the marshland of the Mississippi Delta from New Orleans. Seven years had passed since the hurricane force winds of Katrina had ripped through. Many houses, all on high stilts, had been rebuilt or repaired. The lots fronting the water are very sought after by the commercial fisherman who form the backbone of this community. But there was still lots of evidence of the storm, random pieces of metal roofing scattered across the bayou, whole boats stranded miles from their moorings on dry land, abandoned for good. The refrigeration unit on top of the ice processing plant was stripped of all its metal, rendering the plant useless. This is where the Islenos have lived for over 300 years, descendants of the Canary Islanders brought here by Spain as a line of first protection to the inland city of New Orleans. As improbable as this defence force seems, the settlement of the delta south of New Orleans is equally improbable, one long bet that hope will overcome circumstance.

Yscloskey from Above, Looking North to New Orleans, oil on linen, 48” x 68”, 2013

Yscloskey and Shell Beach, oil on linen, 40” x 46”, 2013

The Mississippi Delta Near Triumph, oil on panel 9” x 11”, 2013

Yscloskey From Above, Looking North, oil on panel, 9” x 11”, 2013

Yscloskey From Above, Looking East, oil on panel 9” x 11”, 2013

J oh n H a r t ma n

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 Many Lives Mark This Place, curated by Mary Reid and circulated to: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg 2020 Audain Art Museum, Whistler, 2020 Grenfell Art Gallery, Cornerbrook, NL, 2021 Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia, 2021 Confederation Art Centre Gallery, Charlottetown, PE, 2021 Canada House Gallery, Canadian High Commission, London, UK, 2022 Woodstock Art Gallery, Woodstock, 2022 2017 Across the Great Divide, The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff 2013–16 Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans 2012 The Columbia In Canada, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, curated by Liz Wylie Shore Line Over View, MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, curated by Jennifer Withrow and Ben Portis 2009–17 Christina Parker Gallery, St. John’s 2007 Cities, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York Cities, curated by Stuart Reid and circulated to: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound Art Gallery of Calgary, Calgary Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge University of Toronto Art Centre, Toronto, 2008 Kenderdine Gallery, Saskatoon, 2008 Art Gallery of Sudbury, Sudbury. 2008 MacLaren Art Centre, 2008 Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery, Conerbrook, 2009 The Rooms, St. John’s, 2009 2005–20 Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto 2005–07 Jill George Gallery, London 2000–15 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary 1999 Big North, curated by Brian Meehan and circulated nationally by the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery and The London Regional Art and Historical Museums 1998 Stories from the Northland, The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Lethbridge 1995 With Minimal Means: John Hartman Prints 1985-1995, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton. Curated by Kim Ness and circulated nationally 1995–99 Hart Gallery, London 1993 Painting the Bay, Recent Work by John Hartman, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg 1992 Fired Light - The Glass Paintings of John Hartman from the Workshop of Lars Frese, Copenhagen, London Regional Art and Historical Museums, London. 1991 Expulsion from Paradise, an Allegory, 49th Parallel, New York 1989–04 Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto 1988 Invisible stories, Curator Kim Moodie, Embassy Cultural House, London, Ontario The North: Life on the Edge, Curator Dorothy Farr, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston 1983 John Hartman - New Paintings and Drawings, Art Gallery of Hamilton, curated by Glenn Cumming 1979–88 Gadatsy Gallery, Toronto

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2018 Bluerocks, the Paintings of Marsden Hartley, Gerald Ferguson and John Hartman, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax 2017 Pride of Place, The Making of Contemporary Art in New Orleans, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Stone and Sky; Canada’s Mountain Landscape, curated by Darrin Martens, Audain Art Museum. Bonavista Biennale 2017, Encounters on the Edge, Bonavista Peninsula, curated by Catherine Beaudette and Patricia Grattan, Bonavista Peninsula, Newfoundland 2016 Living, Building,Thinking, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, curated by Ihor Holubizky 2014 Changing Tides, Contemporary Art of Newfoundland and Labrador, McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinburg Land Reform[ed], Ajagemo Gallery, Canada Council, Ottawa, curated by Stanzie Tooth 2013 Natural Selection: An Evolving Idea of Canadian Landscape, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John’s 2012 Aspects of A New Kind Of Realism, Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, curated by Michael Klein 2008 Invention and Revival, The Colour Drypoints of David Milne and John Hartman, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa. 2006 Far and Wide, the Paintings of David Alexander and John Hartman, Art Gallery of Alberta Edmonton 1996 Rediscovering the Landscape of the Americas, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, curated by Alan Gussow, circulated to Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, 1997 Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington 1990 Notes from Eden, Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery, Owen Sound 1989 Glaskunst og Billege, Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro, Denmark

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston Art Collection of the Archives of Ontario, Toronto Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Toronto Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton British Museum, London Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa Glenbow Museum, Calgary Hart House, Toronto Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda Museum London, London New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Remai Modern, Saskatoon Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark The Rooms, St John’s, Newfoundland Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Lethbridge Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff

Ackn ow le dge m en ts

California State University, Stanislaus

Dr. Ellen Junn, President

Dr. Kimberly Greer, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Depar tment of Ar t

Martin Azevedo, Associate Professor, Interm Chair

Tricia Cooper, Lecturer

Dean De Cocker, Professor

James Deitz, Lecturer

Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor

Patrica Eshagh, Lecturer

Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor

Daniel Heskamp, Lecturer

Chad Hunter, Lecturer

David Olivant, Professor

Dr. Carmen Robbin, Professor

Ellen Roehne, Lecturer

Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor

Susan Stephenson, Assistant Professor

Jake Weigel, Assistant Professor

Meg Broderick, Administrative Support Assistant II

Andrew Cain, Instructional Technician I

Kyle Rambatt, Equipment Technician II

Stan State Ar t Space

Dean De Cocker, Director

Leon Bach, Gallery Assistant

School of the Ar ts

Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II

John Hartman - American Landscapes March 16–April 17, 2020 | Stan State Art Space, California State University, Stanislaus | 226 N. First St., Turlock, CA 95380 300 copies printed. Copyright © 2020 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN 978-1-940753-50-8 All artworks are ‘Courtesy of the Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. This exhibition and catalog have been funded by Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus.