Dan's Papers - July 4, 2008

Will Barnet, who will receive the first Hamptons Medal of the Arts for Lifetime Achievement Award on July 10, has had a career that's lasted longer than many artists' lives. But through all the twists and turns in the art world since he began in 1930, the 97-year-old painter, lithographer, drawer and printmaker has always held tight to his own vision. As he put it, "I was my own person. I kept my own style."

Not that he kept doing the same thing over and over. He went through distinct periods, sometimes realistic, sometimes abstract. But, "There has always been an architectural structure behind my work. I had something of my own to say, and it's very individual, very humanistic in the figures and the portraits. Those are the main elements in my work, but it's the structure that gives it my identity."

The award will be presented at a gala that kicks off a three-day art sale and series of evening fundraisers hosted by ArtHamptons at the Bridgehampton Historical Society. "We wanted to establish a tradition to honor a great living artist every year," said Rick Friedman, ArtHamptons founder. "And the work of Will Barnet makes him pre-eminent, one of the top living painters in the US." Barnet has donated a serigraph print, "Summer Idyll," to the event - bid price starts at $6,000.

Barnet's long New York career began in the 1930s. His work then reflected the themes of social realism. "I was greatly influenced by the situation around me, the conditions of people's lives during the Depression," Barnet said recently in an interview at his studio in the National Arts Club in New York. One of his most famous paintings from that first period is "Idle Hands," depicting the despair of an out-of-work man with his face buried in his arms, his useless hands resting on his elbows.

As the Depression ended and Barnet married and had children, his focus shifted to domestic scenes. One of his most famous oils is "Soft Boiled Eggs," in which Barnet depicts his family.

Barnet went through an abstract period, then returned to figures. He was divorced, then remarried in 1953 to Elena Cirulys. Elena's mesmerizing blue, up-tilted eyes and enigmatic look, along with the darker and equally magnetic gaze of his daughter, Ona, captivate the viewer from the famous oil, "Mother and Child," painted in 1961. Portraits became more important in Barnet's work, and he now feels they represent much of his best lifetime work. Paintings that remain among Barnet's favorites are "Portrait of Roy R. Neuberger," done in 1966-67, in which the tycoon's office space almost overshadows him; "Portrait of T.T.M," done in 1966, in which the subject is looking away from the lower torso of a nude adolescent girl; and "Homage to Leger, with KK."

At one point during his 70-plus-year career, Barnet was at the forefront of the Indian Space Painting movement. Much of his career as an artist has been as teacher, at such schools as the Art Students League of New York, where he himself studied, and at Yale University. He occasionally struggled to support his family, but times became less difficult for him in the 1970s, "when graphic art came in full bloom and was financially successful."

One of his favorite self-portraits was done in the Hamptons, where he spent many summers. He had always found himself working and socializing with other enormously successful artists, including Jackson Pollock. While he was never close friends with Willem de Kooning, Barnet said de Kooning did attend Barnet's shows.

Barnet's works are held by the great museums of the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Babcock Galleries in New York represents him.

Barnet may be 97 years old, but he is endlessly fascinating in conversation, and his deep brown eyes hold the same disconcerting intensity - almost as if he is looking through you, not at you - as those in self-portraits from his youth. An accident half-a-dozen years ago left Barnet unable to go out without a wheelchair. At home, he is quite mobile in a swivel chair that allows him to entertain guests, move about the studio and apartment, and to paint. Though not quite as much. "Before the accident, I used to work all day." Now it's a few hours a day. "Usually in the morning, but often in the afternoon as well, or later. I'm not one of those old people who gets tired at night."

There is a calm about him that seems to go with those rare cases of great talent meeting great success, of ambition satisfied. Asked why he thinks he is being honored with the lifetime achievement award, he said simply, "I've been in the art world a long time."

Barnet's great heroes of art begin with Rembrandt and run through the ages to include Poussin, Watteau, Daumier and Chardin, and Chagall. Barnet describes his training as "classical." He was first attracted to Rembrandt's paintings, spending hours poring over art books in the public library in his hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts. He firmly believes that artists of all styles should learn drawing and other traditional disciplines of art. Even though much of his work is abstract, "I'm more classical than expressionistic. I was trained in drawing and seeing things in a very precise way. Discipline was an important part of it. It's a fable that if you have academic training you can't express yourself. If you have it in you, the training would only give you substance." He pointed to Picasso as an example. "He had very severe training. His father insisted upon it." He added of the art world, "It's contrary to what's going on now. If you have a new trick, it becomes an art form."

He admitted that cliques are part of the art world, a fact of life, and they can be good for sharing ideas, but there is also a negative. "Sometimes the clique is more important than the work," he said, not wanting to name certain 20th-century artists that he feels do not deserve their fame. " A person gets to know the right people, moving in a certain circle, and that makes them more important than their work. People these days are sometimes paying a million dollars for work and it's not worth it."

Aside from talent, he said an artist has to have endurance. "A lot has to do with the ability to go through phases, and one has to recognize that time will take care of it. During the Depression, nobody sold anything." Succeeding in art, he said, "is having a hard time. So many things happen that are not the best. And you survive and continue."

He said when he was young, sometimes he would begin a project, and if it wasn't quite right, "I'd tear it up. I regret that now." That sort of thing doesn't happen much these days, he said. "I am more thoughtful before I start now. I do a lot of drawing before I paint. And I use a lot of layers of paint, I build paintings up."

Talent, vision, recognition and persistence are vital elements in becoming a legend - along with a touch of genius. Barnet acknowledged that hiding one's light under a bushel does him little good, as an artist at least. "I showed a lot, I taught a lot, and my work was exposed." But he wasn't the darling of any stars, he insisted. "I didn't have a famous person behind me. I did it on my own."