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Frederick Hart: Rebel With a Cause
| Article
# : |
19868 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
2,201 Words |
| Author
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James F. Cooper
James F. Cooper is editor of American Arts Quarterly and art
critic for the New York City Tribune. |
Everything about the sculptor Frederic Hart seems larger than life. His home lies nestled among the rolling hills and horse farms of northern Virginia, close to the great Civil War battlefields of Spotsylvania, Manassas, Winchester, Antietam, Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
A southerner born in Atlanta forty-seven years ago, Hart was drawn to the beauty of the Virginia countryside, where three years ago he designed and built a Palladian home for his wife and two young sons. With its graceful columns and handsome decorative embellishments, "Chesley" offers a commanding view of the fields and woods below. In contrast, Hart's studio appears Spartan. The two-story-high wooden structure lies a quarter of a mile below the house at the bottom of a hill, half hidden by trees. It resembles Daniel Chester French's austere studio in the Berkshires, where one can see the modello for the majestic 1915 marble statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Along the walls of Hart's studio stand modellos of his best known works: The Creation Sculptures (Washington National Cathedral) and the Three Servicemen (Vietnam Veterans Memorial). Like French's work, they are major attractions in the nation's capital. In the center of the studio are Hart's most recent works: Spirit of Life, a three-foot millennium cross, and a recently completed bust of his wife, Lindy. She was also the inspiration for several figures for Ex Nihilo, the centerpiece of The Creation Sculptures. The modello for Ex Nihilo fills an entire wall of the studio.
Although The Creation Sculptures were completed in 1990, twenty years after Hart began work on them, they have attracted little favorable attention from the art establishment or the media. For a long time Hart suffered the neglect in silence: "They hurt most, not by fighting you, but by pretending you don't exist," he says.
A Lonely Battle
Recently, he has begun to speak out publicly about the need to improve the quality of public art. At times it has been a lonely battle, but Hart has more often than not prevailed. When the President's Commission of Fine Arts dragged its feet granting approval for his bronze Servicemen to be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (facing Maya Lin's wall), President Reagan appointed Hart a member of the commission the following year, in 1985.
Hart
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