Stewart Hitch
Schenevus
1982
oil on
canvas
91,5 x
76 cm (36 x 30 in)
University
of Alaska Museum of the North
Last year I was watching
The Mona Lisa Curse (2008) on YouTube. In this documentary, Robert Hughes shows
how commerce changed the way we look at art and what art stands for.
In one scene, Hughes was
speaking about collectors and a still shot popped up on the screen of Herb and
Dorothy Vogel in an artist's studio.
The artist was nondescript
and unassuming (as were the collectors, by the way) but the work struck a
nerve. The paintings were large and I was immediately drawn to the scruffy and
lopsided “star” shapes surrounded by flat backgrounds that served to lock
in and isolate the startling central bursts.
As a painter, there is
little more exciting than discovering an artist that is completely new to you.
So I took a screen shot from the video and began a frantic image search to find
out more.
After coming up empty time
and time again, I got smart and asked myself who I knew that would be familiar
with this painter. I immediately thought of the poet and art critic John
Yau, with his extensive knowledge of a New York art world that many have
forgotten. Sure enough, he responded to my email with the artist's name:
Stewart Hitch!
I quickly learned more
about Hitch and his career and feel lucky to have seen a small amount of his
work in person. With each viewing or online discovery I began to feel a
growing connection with his painting.
At the time, and for about
two years prior, I had been struggling (or struggling not) to find a way to
integrate a certain type of imagery - forced through my own non-objective meat
grinder- into my work. The imagery kept showing up, unannounced and
unwelcome. And as every painter knows, if an element keeps happening despite your
best efforts at obliterating it, it's probably time to embrace it and see where
it takes you.
In Hitch's work, I had a
concrete example of one way of achieving this. I now knew it was possible.
Stewart Hitch had done it. It was in the world and his paintings confirmed my
desires for my own work.
Other artists I had been
aware of, like Nicholas Krushenick and some very early paintings by the British
Pop artist Allen Jones, had successfully combined Pop and Op with abstraction.
But I saw in Stewart Hitch's work something more, a timeless thing that spoke
of a love for and a belief in abstraction and an integration of the pop culture
that we drown in everyday. Through the repetition of the "star"
shape, I also felt a sense of the mystic, of a transcendent quality and a bit
of the spiritual that I was looking to convey in my own painting. The vague
open quality of Hitch's signature, central form allowed for this. And my
connection to and discovery of Hitch's work continue to suggest a way for my
own paintings to become more integrated and better represent me as a person and
a painter.
Paul
Behnke, 2015
Paul Behnke (US)
Green Haint
2014
acrylic on canvas
152 x 147 cm (60 x 58 in)
