Saturday, October 07, 2017

Frederick Hart

Frederick Hart was an American sculptor whose working life spanned the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. He appears to have been politically liberal in his youth, but nonetheless stands out as being a countercultural traditionalist in his art philosophy. He wrote:
I believe that art has a moral responsibility, that it must pursue something higher than itself. Art must be a part of life. It must exist in the domain of the common man. It must be an enriching, ennobling, and vital partner in the public pursuit of civilization. It should be a majestic presence in everyday life just as it was in the past.

Here are some of his sculptures:





2 comments:

  1. I believe that art is the result of someone creating under an artistic impulse -- that's it. It doesn't need to be morally uplifting, offensive, shocking, or "make the viewer think" to be art.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Didn't hear about him being liberal in his youth, but I've seen a few things from him that seem to indicate he took on a more conservative outlook in his later years (he eventually converted to Catholicism). Tom Wolfe's essay collection Hooking Up included a piece about him that gave an interesting assessment of who the man really was, and how that played into the art he created.

    ReplyDelete