“Frederick Hart’s story would fit right into Giorgio Vasari’s marvelous ‘Lives of the Artists,’ assuming the great Renaissance biographer might have had a taste for tales from the boiled-peanut Hoppin’ John country of eastern South Carolina.” So begins author Tom Wolfe’s tribute to one of the 20th century’s great sculptors, Frederick Hart (1943–1999). Wolfe wrote his essay for the book “Frederick Hart, Sculptor,” which is no longer in print.
In “The Artist the Art World Couldn’t See,” however, Wolfe repeats many of his original observations. In this New York Times obituary, we learn that after his mother died, the 3-year-old Hart was sent to live with relatives in Conway, South Carolina. He got into trouble at school, failed the ninth grade, and was an indifferent student. Yet as a high school dropout at age 16, he took the ACT and scored so high on this college entrance exam that he was admitted to the University of South Carolina (USC).
(L) The cover for the 1995 book "Frederick Hart, Sculptor" with commentary by Tom Wolfe. (R) Hart sculpting, circa 1960s. Frederick Hart Foundation. (Contessa Gallery)
After six months, in 1961, Hart was expelled from USC where he was the only white student to join a civil rights demonstration. Told that the Ku Klux Klan was after him, he left South Carolina, traveled north to Washington, and eventually found work as a clerk at the National Cathedral. Intrigued by the artistry shown by the Italian stone carvers working on the cathedral, he begged their supervisor, Roger Morigi, to make him one of the apprentices. Eventually, Morigi recognized the young man’s talents—his admiration soon turned to amazement—and Hart stepped into the world of stone and bronze, for which he was apparently born.
‘Ex Nihilo’
“I saw 'Ex Nihilo' ('Out of Nothingness') as a single expression of creation, as the metamorphosis of divine spirit and energy,” said sculptor Frederick Hart about his tympanum above the central door of the Washington National Cathedral. (Eva Hambach/Getty Images)
Encouraged by his mentor, in 1974, the 31-year-old Hart entered and won the international competition to design a sculpture for the west façade of the cathedral.
By then, he was already producing human forms from clay and stone as well as continuing his work as a stone carver. That this unknown young man without the formal training of an art school could win such a commission was in itself amazing. But the pieces he created, the life-sized statues of Adam, St. Peter, and St. Paul, and the relief panels, particularly the massive central tympanum “Ex Nihilo” (“Out of Nothing”), were nothing short of miraculous.
The eight figures of “Ex Nihilo,” their eyes as yet unopened, their bodies in the throes of being born from what Hart called “a primordial cloud,” are astonishing, a blend of medieval and Renaissance sensibilities swept by Hart into our modern age. We look at these figures, and many of Hart’s later sculptures, and we think of Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” Here is an excellent example of the beauty that can be born when artists absorb the Old Masters and then add the spirit of their own time to their creations.
“The whole expression of Adam is that of tense power and inward concentration, as if seeking to grasp and find union with the presence echoing through him from the tympanum,” said Hart about his Adam under the “Ex Nihilo” tympanum. (Anna Krivitskaya/Shutterstock)
For 10 years, Hart devoted himself to what Wolfe describes as “the most monumental commission for religious sculpture in the United States in the twentieth century.” Creating full-size models first in clay, he spent those years, assisted by Morigi and his crew, working obsessively on the project.
Given such an accomplishment, Hart naively expected after the dedication of “Ex Nihilo” that the piece would be featured in art magazines and remarked on by newspapers. With one small exception, and that only in a passing comment, only silence greeted this masterpiece. The art critics turned up their noses and remained in their bubble of modernism.
Three Soldiers
“Three Soldiers” by Frederick Hart, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. (Anton_Ivanov/Shutterstock)
On Veterans Day, 1982, Maya Ying Lin’s Vietnam War memorial was dedicated in Washington. The Wall, as it is sometimes called, consists of a 500-foot-long black granite wall on which are inscribed the names of all military personnel who had died in the Vietnam War.
It is an impressive memorial, yet many veterans and conservatives had, from the beginning of this project, loudly and vehemently protested its minimalist design and its failure to mention honor or sacrifice. Before the wall was built, a compromise was reached when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund asked Hart to submit a design for a statue. His three soldiers, who would stand about 200 feet from Lin’s wall, appealed to the protesters, and Hart set to work.
Before he commenced, Hart interviewed dozens of veterans, trying to learn everything he could from them about the gear they carried in combat to their dress to the emotions created by wartime. Drawing primarily on ancient classical influences, his three bronze figures appear as if they’d stepped out of the jungle while on patrol. All three men have paused, seemingly exhausted, and all of them stare at the wall across an expanse of grass. Are they shocked by the number of names inscribed on that granite? Can they somehow discern the names of their buddies? Or are they spirits released from the grave, brought up short by finding themselves listed among those dead?
Of the juxtaposition of his soldiers vis-à-vis the wall, Hart said: “I see the wall as a kind of ocean, a sea of sacrifice that is overwhelming and nearly incomprehensible in its sweep of names. I place these figures upon the shore of that sea, gazing upon it, standing vigil before it, reflecting the human face of it, the human heart.”
This time, the popular media ran feature stories of this bronze statue. Yet once again, the art critics of magazines and of newspapers like The Washington Post ignored both the three soldiers and the artist who had created them.
Pioneer in a New Medium
(L) "Spirit Song" by Frederick Hart. Clear acrylic resin; 10 inches by 9 inches by 6.25 inches. (R) "Ex Nihilo, Fragment No. 1" by Frederick Hart. Bronze; 47.5 inches by 30 inches by13 inches. Frederick Hart Foundation. (Contessa Gallery)
Despite this critical neglect, by the mid-1980s, Frederick Hart had won both public acclaim and wealth, and not only for these and other pieces intended for public exhibition. After experimenting for years to cast statuary using clear acrylic resin, he succeeded in developing the technique to meet his exacting standards and to “sculpt in light.” As Wolfe notes in Hart’s obituary, the sales of these pieces exceeded $100 million.
In 1987, Hart moved to Hume, Virginia, where he built a Greek revival mansion and an accompanying studio. In addition to enjoying his family and the pleasures of rural life, he also helped found the Centerists, an informal group of artists, writers, and thinkers who, as Wolfe puts it, intended “to gird for the battle to take art back from the Modernists.”
Hart summed up the objectives of this group when he said: “My art isn’t art for art’s sake, it’s about life. I have no patience with obscure or unintelligible art—I want to be understood.”
Faith and Love
“Paul at the moment he was struck blind when Christ spoke to him; blind yet awakened spiritually,” said Hart about his sculpture of St. Paul in the main portal of the Washington National Cathedral. (christianthiel.net/Shutterstock)
In addition to the enormous influence of the past on his art, we should note two other components that gave life and spirit to Hart’s work.
The first was his deepening belief in Christianity and his conversion to Catholicism. While working on the National Cathedral, “he fell in love with God. … He became a Roman Catholic and began to regard his talent as a charisma, a gift from God. He dedicated his work to the idealization of possibilities God offered man.”
In an essay in “Frederick Hart: Sculptor,” Robert Chase of Merrill Chase Galleries writes: “Religion informs his art, isolating him from most other contemporary artists and at the same time meeting an apparent need for art that is spiritual and humanist in inspiration, and marked by the aesthetics and processes of tradition.”
A second grand event of Hart’s life also occurred while he was laboring on the cathedral. Here, Wolfe paints in words a sweet picture of the woman Hart would meet and her abiding influence on his sculptures and his life:
“Afternoon after afternoon, he saw the same ravishing young woman walking home from work down Connecticut Avenue. His hot Hart flame lit, he introduced himself and asked her if she would pose for his rendition of the Creation, an array of idealized young men and women rising nude from out of the chaotic swirl of Creation’s dawn. She posed. They married. Great artists and the models they fell in love with already accounted for the most romantic part of art history. But probably no model in all that lengthy, not to say lubricious, lore was ever so stunningly beautiful as Lindy Lain Hart. Her face and figure were to recur in his work throughout his career.”
Legacy
Bronze sculpture "Herald the Angel," by Frederick Hart, on his property in Hume, Virginia. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)
In a video, “The Legacy of Frederick Hart,” we learn that Hart once offered these thoughts about the future and meaning of art: “If art is to flourish in the 21st century, it must renew its moral authority by rededicating itself to life. It must be an exciting, ennobling, and vital partner in the public pursuit of civilization. It should be a majestic presence in everyday life just as it once was in the past.”
In these few words, we find the trumpet call to all those artists who would follow the example of Frederick Hart.
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Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make The Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
