Frederick Hart (sculptor)
The creator of hundreds of public monuments, private commissions, portraits, and other works of art, Hart is most famous for Ex Nihilo, a part of his Creation Sculptures at Washington National Cathedral, and The Three Servicemen (also known as The Three Soldiers), at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.[1] Working within the figurative tradition of American Beaux-Arts sculpture, Hart's approach was that of a craftsman.
Throughout his career, Hart explored themes of beauty and spirituality, consciousness and identity, sculpting in transparent and semi-transparent acrylic materials using a process he patented.
[3][1] Strongly influenced by the dramatic poses of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Anna Hyatt Huntington, as well as the naturalism of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French,[4] Hart's style was also shaped by that of Auguste Rodin,[5] especially in the way he conveyed movement, experimented with abstract forms, and pushed the boundaries of traditional figurative art.
[12] As he grew up, and his relationship with his father suffered, Hart became known as a troublemaker, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother and aunt in Horry County, South Carolina.
[15] At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement was gathering strength, and the campaign to desegregate South Carolina's school system began.
At that point, I said, ‘Screw you.’ And I joined the demonstration.”[16] Hart was expelled from the University of South Carolina, thrown in jail, and then chased out of town by the Ku Klux Klan.
[19] While working at Giorgio Gianetti Studio of Architectural Sculpture, he assisted sculptors Felix de Weldon, Carl Mose, Don Turano, and Heinz Warnecke.
[12][1] Hart was also using his time in Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to study the public art of the nation's capital, and absorb the naturalistic style of sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Years later, Hart would say that Family was for him a way to come to terms with Chesley's death; it was an effort to represent an idea of stability, to capture a sense of belonging.
The heavy pyramidal form of Hart's Family evokes the solidity of French's Abraham Lincoln, but the raw, earthy contours set it apart, and situate it within the Romantic tradition of Rodin.
[20] Morigi was the Cathedral's legendary master carver, an Italian immigrant who had carved the iconic frieze of the United States Supreme Court Building.
Instead of the traditional image of judgment and destruction, they wanted to emphasize a message of love and affirmation, and so they specifically asked artists to focus on the theme of Creation.
[23] To an ambitious young artist like Hart, it was an irresistible opportunity: a compelling theme, and a chance to see his own work carved in limestone over the main entrance of the Cathedral.
Guided by the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the idea of a dynamic universe, whirling into existence, Hart developed a revolutionary, unifying vision for the entire west façade.
"[2] After laboring over the Creation Sculptures for ten years, with the project approaching completion at last, Hart began to look around Washington, D.C., for new jobs.
[31] However, in response to the controversy over the winning architect's design, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund tasked Hart, as the most highly ranked sculptor in the competition, to provide a sculptural component.
Of his work on The Three Soldiers, Hart said he would put the “folds of those fatigue jackets and pants up against the folds of any [carved] medieval angel you can find.”[34] In the 1981 competition to design the Carter Presidential Library, Hart was a principal of the winning team with Jova, Daniels, and Busby Architects (Atlanta, Georgia), and EDAW Landscape Design Firm (Alexandria, Virginia).
From the Camp David Accords and SALT II treaty, that were among the achievements of his presidency, to the myriad projects he has since undertaken on behalf of human and environmental needs.
The gestures of the figure refer to the generosity of Carter’s nature, his eagerness to share a vision of justice, and his unpretentious delight in spreading a message of brotherhood.
[5] Hart modeled his figurative style on the dramatic poses and sensuous expressions that he admired in the work of the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
[27] Many were cast in bronze, some were carved in marble or limestone, but especially after the success of Herself (1984), Hart focused more and more on developing entirely new media for sculpture, using transparent and semi-transparent acrylic materials.
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.”[38] In honor of the Pope's fifty years of priesthood, Hart presented an acrylic work titled The Cross of the Millennium to Pope John Paul II in a ceremony at the Vatican in 1997.
When it was unveiled, Pope John Paul II called the sculpture “a profound theological statement for our day.”[38] Hart sculpted a smaller version of The Cross of the Millennium, cast and released as a limited edition.
In 1995 he created and donated a memorial portrait of African-American educator Ruby Middleton Forsythe, to honor the local hero who devoted her life to teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in a small town in South Carolina, where Hart had grown up.
[15] He married Lindy Lain on December 1, 1978, in a civil ceremony, and on June 2, 1980, their marriage was blessed at Saint Matthew's Cathedral.
[12] In 1997, Washington National Cathedral asked Hart to join a lawsuit accusing a major motion picture company of copyright infringement for the appropriation of Ex Nihilo in the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate.
[15] According to art historian James M. Goode, "the most significant new figurative works to grace public spaces in Washington during the late twentieth century were created by Frederick Hart.
Once Hart's assistant, now an award-winning artist in his own right, Carpenter has produced sculpture for the State Department, the Smithsonian Institution, and Canterbury Cathedral.
[52][53] In his later years, Hart became the center of a group of like-minded artists, poets, and philosophers striving to move beyond the Modernist and Post-Modernist categories which dominated the 20th century.
