At first glance, many of Frederick Hart’s sculptures stand apart from tradition. In his innovative use of new materials, in the way he blended traditional figurative and nonrepresentational art, and in the dramatic poses which define his style, Hart seems very much an original artist. In fact, he was inspired by the past. He developed his own style, in part, by studying the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini and Auguste Rodin.
It was as he set to work on the Creation Sculptures at Washington National Cathedral that Hart took a hard look at Rodin’s work, especially the monumental Gates of Hell. As Hart considered his own approach to Ex Nihilo — the central sculpture, by far the largest of the group — he sought to channel into stone some of Rodin’s raw, churning, earthy power; he admired Rodin for his rough, partially obscured figures, as well as the way the sculptor used pattern to convey movement. Like Rodin, Hart was eager to experiment with abstract forms, and push the boundaries of traditional figurative art.
In 1972 Hart opened his own sculpture studio to create original artwork. Much of his early work was cast in bronze. “Bronze tends to be moving and violent and emotional,” Hart said. “It suits me, suits my temperament.” The same might have been said of Rodin!
In the 1980s, Hart began to focus more and more on developing an entirely new medium for sculpture using transparent and semi-transparent acrylic materials. In his acrylic sculptures, “The sculpture is defined purely by light.” For Hart, it’s a “very delicate sense of image. I can capitalize on the very watery, warm, flowing qualities of the material itself and compound them into images that are suggestive of dreams, memories, and visions.”
“All the clear acrylic resin works are really the offspring of the Cathedral work,” Hart said. “They deal with being and non-being. In the Cathedral, the figures emerge from something that is tangible, from a mass of stone. But more beautifully, in a sense, the clear acrylic figures emerge and disappear.” According to Hart, the innovative sculptural medium creates a “relationship between light and form, and a sense of mystery around being and non-being.”
For his figures, both in acrylic and bronze, Hart often reached back to the dramatic poses and sensuous expressions of Gianlorenzo Bernini’s oeuvre. Throughout his life, Hart was an avid fan of the Italian sculptor’s ecstatic, balletic figures, and Bernini’s influence is perhaps most evident in Elegy (acrylic) or Celebration (bronze).
Photo credit: Sailko
Frederick Hart 