JOHN WILDE (1919-2006)

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

John Wilde’s process of painting was meticulous and often included many drafts in silver point. His paintings were intensely personal to him, and they often sat in his studio for months at a time. He would constantly return to his works and reevaluate them, making changes when he felt it necessary.

In one, reflective journal essay, John Wilde wrote: “All art (comes) from sex and the awareness of death.” No other quote can best sum up the philosophy that John Wilde lived by. Much of his work can be divided according to these two subjects-- sexuality and death.

The focus of Wilde’s painting Her Menagerie of 1999 is a seemingly classic painting of the reclining, female nude. However, Wilde’s reasoning is far from the traditional realm of feminine beauty. He writes, “[The female nude] is symbolic of reality—the stark reality of nakedness; its bluntness and its nice un-niceness.” So, as viewers, we must ask- what exactly is the reality Wilde is attempting to convey in his art?

In Her Menagerie of 1999, a pale woman feeds an assembly of animals. While the birds stare intently upon the offered seed, the dog ominously watches the dangled meat. Traditionally, a dog symbolized fidelity in the works of the Old Masters, which Wilde himself so greatly admired. However, the pose of the nude woman is immodest. To wit, the two cats in the foreground stare out at the viewer in an almost challenging gaze. In this context, the cats appear to suggest independence. This nude, to return to tradition, is a witty comment on infidelity and the dangers of sexuality.

In the painting Studio Still Life– Red of 2001, Wilde evidences the second part of his mantra-- an awareness of death. In this still life, Wilde used fruit, as he often did, to symbolize fertility. The warm colors and sifted light which surrounds the bounty on the table evoke feelings of autumn and harvest. However, a closer inspection reveals that one element seems at odds with the others-- the large slab of meat at the center of the fruit. The meat of a dead animal, plays up the tradition of the memento mori. As in many of his works, the reminder of death is always present, hidden behind delicate brushwork and a shimmering surface.

Those who see the work of John Wilde glimpse a magical reality that is different enough to inspire and familiar enough to engage. While we are left wondering upon the precise meaning of each work, perhaps we should remember that Wilde appreciated pure observation, simple joys, and the full scope of human life-- the good and the bad. To him, his studio was a refuge where he could develop common themes from his physical surroundings or peers, as well as recreate scenes from his imagination. When pondering on what would his perfect day entail, Wilde once stated that it would require him to be “alone with my true love, a little (studio) work, a little yard work" and "no one to see, no one around, no nonsense.” Today, it is the fruits of these days that are his legacy.

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1963 Lambert Purchase Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
1965, 1980 Childe Hassam Purchase Award, National Academy of Design
1970 First Purchase Award, Butler Gallery of American Art, Youngstown, OH
1982 Alfred Sessler Distinguished Professor of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1984 Purchase Award, The West Publishing Company, Atlanta, GA
2006 Wisconsin Visual Arts Lifetime Achievement Award

Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters
National Academy of Design, New York City

COLLECTIONS

Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin (formerly Elvehjem Museum of Art)
Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
National Museum of American Art
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
*more than 1,400 of his works are held in private collections

CHRONOLOGY

1919 Born on December 12th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Mathilda and Emil Wilde
1938 Started studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison
1940 First individual exhibition at the Zona Gale Museum, Portage, WI
1942 Received B.S. from University of Wisconsin-Madison
1942 Drafted U.S Army and Air Force during WWII
1943 Married first wife Helen Ashman
1948 Received M.A. from University of Wisconsin-Madison
1948 Instructor, Department of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1960 Professor, Department of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1966 Death of wife Helen
1968 Alfred Sessler Professor of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1969 Married second wife Shirley
1982 Emeritus Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1994 Elected full academician at the National Academy of Design, New York, NY
2006 Died on March 9th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

WISCONSIN SURREALISM

During the 1930s, the American Midwest was understood as a haven of the pastoral tradition, seemingly removed from the bustling European and East Coast cities. Idyllic depictions of the farming life or beautiful vistas were upheld as acceptable subject matter for the art of the region. However, America’s conservative art trend was soon challenged by the introduction of Surrealism to the area. The Surrealist movement advocated the union of the imagination and reality, and it seemed out of place to the conservative critic in the American Midwest .

In Wisconsin, a new faction of American artists took up the tenants introduced by André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto” of 1924. John Wilde was a prominent member of this group, which would later be recognized as the Wisconsin Surrealist Movement. He and fellow artists Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977), Marshall Glasier (1902-1988), Karl Priebe (1914-1976), Dudley Huppler (1917-1988) and Sylvia Fein (b. 1919) rejected “American Scene” painting and cultivated their own version of the Surrealist style. The University of Wisconsin-Madison became the new hotbed of debate as the acceptance of Surrealism pervaded the university’s art program.

Different from past Surrealists, Wilde and his peers depicted surreal images directly from their imaginations and were less concerned with dreams and psychology. In 1942, Alfred Barr, then curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, more specifically named this new surrealist style as “magic realism.” Such a term is clearly justified in the work of Wilde. He pairs realistic details and impeccable draftsmanship with fanciful images of unusual landscapes. The result is a truly personal, sometimes ironic, picture of reality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Ask Art, entry for John Henry Wilde, (www. askart.com)
2. Cozzolino, Robert, In Memoriam: John Wilde (1919-2006), Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors Inc., Art in Wisconsin
3. Cozzolino, Robert, Myself During the War: John Wilde’s WWII Sketchbook, Elvehjem Museum of Art Bullitin (Spring 2002), p. 41-54
4. Doss, Erika, John Wilde, Recent Work
5. Doss, Eirka, With Old Friends: New Work by John Wilde (2006 exhibition catalogue, Spanierman Gallery, New York, NY)
6. Duncan, Michael, Wilde at Schmidt Bingham-New York, New York (review of exhibitions) Art in America, October 1994
7. Duncan, Michael, Heretics of the Heartland (review of With Friends exhibition at the Chazen Museum of Art for Art in America, February 2006)
8. Goldstein, Rosalie, Leaders in Wisconsin art, 1936-1981 : John Steuart Curry, Aaron Bohrod, John Wilde, (Milwaukee Art Museum, April 4-May 23, 1982)
9. Hamady, Walter, 1985, The Twelve Months, 1992?Twelve Paintings by John Wilde, with other illustrations
10. Hedy O'Beil, John Wilde, Arts Magazine 59 (October 1984): 6
11. O’Beil, Hedy, John Wilde, Arts 59 (October 1984)
12. Panczenko, Russell, Wildeworld: the art of John Wilde with an essay by Theodore F. Wolff. (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 1999)
13. Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Collection description, John Wilde
14. Schumacher, Mary Louise, Wilde found path of ‘magic realism’ in art, (obituary for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 12th, 2006)
15. Smithsonian Museum of American Art, John Wilde Diary Collection Microfilm reel(s): 1154-1157, 2539-2540 and 4710, 2539a, 4710a, and 5661 (http://americanart.si.edu/art_info/1001/2000/02/020200.html)
16. Tandem Press, John Wilde, University Wisconsin-Madison
17. Wilde, John, Interview with John Wilde, conducted and edited by Russell Panczenko, September 1998, Wildeworld, p. 31
18. Wilde, John, Whmshw : what his mother's son hath wrought ; twenty-four representative paintings with excerpts from notebooks kept off and on between the years nineteen forty through nineteen eighty-eight.
19. Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award, John Wilde, 2006 Award Recipient Profiles, (www.wvalaa.com)
20. Wolff, Theodore F., Artists at Work, Christian Science Monitor (July 2nd, 1986, p. 16-17)