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Hauben exposes beauty à la Bronx By Shant Shahrigian sshah@riverdalepress.com
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t least two Bronxes are on display in the glorious exposition of Daniel Hauben’s paintings currently at the Andrew Freedman House. In one version, happy people, healthy trees and bustling stores cram streets and skylines in the artist’s native Kingsbridge and beyond. Another vision depicts the borough as a wasteland where threats lurk and humanity lingers among rough roads and abandoned buildings. While there appears to be a trajectory from Mr. Hauben’s grim paintings, made from the 1970s to 1990s, to his cheerful works, which are more recent, viewers are probably safe ignoring the years printed next to his titles. The 58-year-old painter’s Bronx just might be someplace timeless. In Mr. Hauben’s Black Windows VIII, rows of abandoned grey buildings create a scene that could illustrate a modern retelling of Dante’s Inferno. The artist’s use of a knife and a dentist’s rotary tool on thick swathes of oil paint give the buildings a tactile aspect that makes you think damned souls are waiting to pop out. The three-story building in Freedom & Resting presents a bleak biography of Mr. Hauben. Going from a window at the top left of the painting to one at the bottom right, we see the artist as a boy squirming on his father’s lap, birds flapping their wings next to a caged Barbary ape and a number of references to Mr. Hauben’s painting and his Judaism. Given the artist’s placement of the sad simian at the center of the work, it seems like all the other figures in the painting represent failed outlets of a repressed nature. On the other hand — as a highly abstract, psychedelic work called Expanded View makes clear — Mr. Hauben’s world is not an entirely linear one, and trying to divine his meaning is part of the fun. The panoramic Prospect Station offers a striking contrast with wide canvases among Mr. Hauben’s more recent output. In the former work, a hooded
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man walks a wolf-like animal down the middle of a mostly deserted street. It is not clear if he is on the prowl or just on guard as one woman protects a child and another appears to offer her body on the mostly deserted street. Mr. Hauben’s Bronx Vortex and Urban Idyll depict a world as different from that of “Prospect Station” as the Land of Oz was from rural Kansas. (Dorothy and company make appearances in other Hauben works.) Bronx Vortex is a massive fisheye view of Grand Concourse and Fordham Road, with people, pets and city personnel teeming all over. A bus idles in bright white, construction workers collaborate in stark orange and pedestrians patronize stores in a rainbow of colors. A man leaning back on the Grand Concourse banister where John F. Kennedy once gave a presidential campaign speech seems to ask viewers how this ground-level vision of city life compares to their notions of the American dream. Urban Idyll presents a lofty view of Kingsbridge from Mr. Hauben’s balcony, where we see the artist paint while his wife reclines in the far left of the canvas. Across the rest of the work, fine details including a frolicsome couple stand out among colorful rooftops, lush trees, modest architecture and a soothing dusk sky. During an interview at his Riverdale studio, Mr. Hauben acknowledged a relatively recent shift toward brighter colors and themes, saying his wife of about 12 years likes to take credit for the transformation in his outlook. It is also possible that his work verifies the much-hyped transformation of the borough from a burnt-out den of crime to an urban center on the rise. But I’d like to think Mr. Hauben’s new Bronx does not cancel out the old one. Scenes like the derelicts’ redoubt in Prospect Station are just as true now as they were at the time Mr. Hauben documented them. The ugly part of humanity captured in that work and others might go into abeyance in the coming years, but it will always be a part of us. Expanding Views: The Art of Daniel Hauben is at the Andrew Freedman Home, located at 1125 Grand Concourse, until April 5. Admission is free.
Daniel Hauben’s work ranges from the realistic to the surreal, but virtually all of his paintings are deeply expressive of his Bronx environment. Clockwise from top: ‘Bronx Vortex’ depicts the hustle and bustle of a Grand Concourse intersection. ‘Conflict of Interest’ offers an apocalyptic vision. The artist can be seen in a mirror in the lefthand corner of ‘Urban Idyll.’ ‘The Fifth Crusade’ has a medieval aspect.
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