Harry Sefarbi: Artist and Teacher (2014)
By William M. Perthes
Introduction
To discuss a painting with Harry Sefarbi, whether his own or another’s, was to have a tutorial in the traditions of art. In a line he would see the arabesque of Botticelli or the feathery touch of Renoir; in a patch of color he saw the rich, golden glow of Giorgione or the subdued earth tones of Van Eyck. This was hardly surprising given that for fifty-four years Sefarbi taught the Traditions in Art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, in which students explored the plastic evolution of painting; that is how artists over time have used the media of color to express their experiences at a particular time and in a particular culture. Decades of teaching the great traditions of art left Sefarbi with a vast reservoir of knowledge of what history’s most creative painters had discovered and expressed in their work. His students were the beneficiaries of this knowledge. Over the course of a year Sefarbi traced a path from the dawn of painting through the turn of the twentieth century, demonstrating how traditions inform one another and how one artist learned from his predecessors.
Despite his long career as an instructor Sefarbi first and foremost identified himself as an artist, one who also happened to teach. However, as he said, he did not teach people to paint but instead to see, or rather to perceive, what they saw in paintings. In essence Sefarbi sought to teach his students to see as he did, as a painter. This lifetime of looking and thinking about art also deeply affected his artwork so that while his work speaks the language of Modernism it also resonates with the histories of painting. Qualities and elements from the great traditions of painting unconsciously found their way back into his own pictures, reimagined and reinvented.
Biography
Harry Sefarbi was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on 19 June 1917. As a young boy he “caught the art bug” as he called it, drawing constantly. In high school this interest attracted the attention of the school’s two art teachers, both graduates of Philadelphia’s Museum School of Industrial Arts (now the University of the Arts), who taught him the technical aspects of drawing such as how to articulate a form through the use of line and create the illusion of mass via line and light/shadow modeling. He also frequently visited Philadelphia’s Fleisher Art Memorial, an art institution that offers free and low cost art classes where students can draw or paint from the model or still life and receive criticism from an instructor if they wish. At Fleisher Sefarbi was able to practice, explore, and hone his growing interest in drawing and painting.
After graduating from high school Sefarbi had hoped to enroll in the Museum School but financial concerns lead him to pursue a degree in education instead. In 1935 he enrolled in West Chester State Teacher College, which at the time was free, graduating four years later with a Bachelor’s of Science degree. With his teaching degree he could teach in the Philadelphia Public School system, something he did for a time as he found his way towards becoming the artist he hoped to be.
Pursuing this interest in 1941Sefarbi enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the first school of fine arts in the United Statesand the country’s first museum, and still one of the country’s premier art schools. The Second World War interrupted his studies. From 1942 until 1945 he served as an infantryman in the Army earning a bronze star. Following his discharge he returned to the Academy, but by his own admission his interest in studying under the Academic model had begun to wane.
As he later recalled, the Academy’s curriculum in the 1940s was essentially the same as it had been when the Academy was chartered in 1805. As its name suggests the Pennsylvania Academy followed an academic model based on the French Academy. Students first learned to draw from antique casts in line before moving on to drawing in mass by means of light/shadow modeling. Students then advanced to painting from life where it was understood they would classicize the live model guided by their experience drawing from antique casts. These however, were skills Sefarbi had learned in high school and honed at Fleisher.
After three years of study Academy students could compete for awards such as the prestigious Cresson Traveling Award which financed a summer in Europe and a year’s tuition at the Academy. Although he tried twice, Sefarbi’s work was never selected for awards, largely, he felt, because he did not follow the school’s unstated protocol. As Sefarbi would later describe:
Word got around (amongst Academy students) that the way to win a Cresson was to cultivate some teacher and to have them show an interest in you, and you in them, and to go for criticism, and get help, and so on, so that on the days of the competition he would remember who you were and hopefully vote for you. [1]
A shy young man, especially about his work, Sefarbi was uncomfortable with this process, feeling that his work should speak for itself.
Sefarbi’s paintings from the 1940s such as Nude: 1940 or the student work Still Life: Compote and Fork from 1949, some painted under the name Harry Smith, demonstrate firm handling of color to create volume and form; color that is predominantly local[2] although tends to be more high key[3] with hints of inventive deviations, such as introducing contrasting colors rather than relying on tonal effect to form volume; the brush work is active and supports composition, although never attracts undue attention; picture space is clearly delineated – works such as Student Landscape uses both linear perspective and modulation in color intensity to suggest depth and spatial recession. Even at this early stage Sefarbi showed ability and creativeness, qualities that would grow stronger in time.
Disillusioned with the Academy, Sefarbi increasingly painted in his room on Race Street, having friends pose for him or painting still-lifes; going to the Academy only if he liked or could get close to the model. He could not help notice however that every Tuesday fifteen or twenty students seemed to disappear from the Academy. He quickly learned that they were making the short trip from Center City to Merion to attend classes at the Barnes Foundation which he described as “practically an adjunct to the Academy”. At the Barnes, where classes were free, Sefarbi found the kind of exploration of art for which he had looked. Students in the first year class, taught by Violette de Mazia, and the second year class, Traditions in Painting taught by Angelo Pinto, discussed “Art” - what it was, what it was not, and what it could be.
Sefarbi enrolled at the Barnes in 1947 and ever after credited his experience there, studying with Ms. de Mazia and meeting Dr. Barnes, with literally changing his life. At the Barnes art was discussed not as a craft of skill or technique, not as a reflection of historical events, nor as a window into an artist’s psyche, but as a means of communicating what artist’s saw and felt as important about their own experiences in their world. These intereses, expressed plastically through the painter’s primary medium of color and its subsidiaries - light, space, line, texture, traditions, and so on – if successful resonates with the viewer’s own experiences. Where the viewer’s and artist’s experiences converge communication begins, where they diverge learning is possible. During his two years at the Barnes Sefarbi began to learn to see and consider art in a profoundly new way.
Eventually dropping out of the Academy Sefarbi used his teacher’s certificate to obtain a position with the board of education as a steady substitute teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. At that stage he thought he would be a school teacher who painted on the side. However, things soon changed. In the fall of 1950 the Academy announced its Annual Competition, a large and competitive art exhibition which drew submissions from around the country. Sefarbi submitted a painting he had finished the year before, Interior: Jim, and it was accepted. Not only was the painting accepted, but Dr. Barnes bought it and eventually hung it in the Foundation, “above the door in gallery nine” as Sefarbi would regularly say, where visitors can see it today.
Dr. Barnes’s purchase of Interior: Jim was just the vote of confidence Sefarbi needed to reignite his ambition of pursuing a life as a painter[4]. With money from his GI Bill which would provide a modest amount for living expenses, lodging, tuition, and supplies he decided to go to Europe. Before leaving he wrote to Dr. Barnes requesting the “Itinerary”, a list compiled by Barnes of the major European cities to visit and works of art to see when there. Barnes invited him to the Foundation and asked how much money he had for his trip; only later did Sefarbi realize Barnes was considering giving him a stipend – which in the end he did not. Although he missed out on financial support Barnes told him to look him up when Sefarbi returned.
So began a three and a half year sojourn in France where he lived in a dollar-a-day hotel in Paris, painted, and studied French. In the morning he would paint in his hotel room. In the afternoon, committed to learning the language, he studied French at the Paris headquarters of L’Alliance Française. In the late afternoon he went to the famed Académie de la Grande Chaumière, an École Libre or free school which, like Philadelphia’s Fleisher Memorial where he painted in high school, has neither an over-arching philosophy nor true art instruction classes. Instead students had access to models from which to draw or paint and criticism from a monitoring artist if desired. In the evening he would meet friends in the cafés; a good life for a young aspiring painter.
While in France, Sefarbi met Ruth Fishman, a young American student. In 1955 Harry and Ruth were wed beginning 53 years of married life together. Harry and Ruth would have a daughter, Mia, in 1959 and in time, a grandson, Benjamin. Ruth was a remarkable and accomplished woman. She served as a WAC (Women's Army Corps)in the Second World War. When she and Harry met she was studying at the Sorbonne from which she received her diploma. Later she would earn a Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania and would go on to be a distinguished family therapist in Philadelphia. For many years Ruth worked at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center as both a clinician and then a supervisor. To know Harry Sefarbi was to know Ruth, they were inseparable. In later years, after she retired, Ruth was a fixture of Harry’s classes at the Barnes – often an indispensable extension of Harry. She would help to recall an artist’s name that slipped his mind or remind him not to forget an item or point from his notes. Together they remained devout Francophiles, making several trips back to France and striking up conversations with French visitors to the Barnes.
When his GI Bill money ran out Sefarbi worked at the American School teaching art first in a one-day-a-week job that soon became twice weekly. In 1951, only a year into Sefarbi’s time in France, Dr. Barnes was killed in an automobile accident. Receiving the news Sefarbi must surely have recalled Barnes’s offer to look him up when he returned from Europe and thought that any opportunity to teach at the Foundation was dashed. Despite that, in 1953 Sefarbi wrote to Violette de Mazia, who had become both a Trustee of the Foundation as well as its Director of Education following Barnes’s death, and asked her for a job. To his surprise and delight she offered him a position on the faculty teaching the second year class, Traditions in Art, class. Seizing this new opportunity Sefarbi returned to Philadelphia that same year. In 1955 Harry and Ruth moved to the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia where Sefarbi established his studio.
For the next fifty-four years from September to May Sefarbi taught the Traditions in Art at the Barnes Foundation and painted. In those years he published three articles in the Foundation’s journal: “The Clue to Klee,” “Vincent Van Gogh: A Fiction,” and “Henry Rousseau: From ‘primitive’ to Primitive.” Autumn to Spring Sefarbi taught, but Summers were devoted to painting. Over the years his work continued to evolve as he digested the lessons he learned from studying and teaching the traditions of art. Harry Sefarbi died on Monday 28 September 2009, both his 54th wedding anniversary and Yom Kippur - "a powerful day to die," Ruth would say. Harry Sefarbi was 92 and he painted until the end.
Art
Harry Sefarbi’s artwork is at once familiar and unexpected, presenting even the perceptive viewer with both challenges and surprises. Early on he understood that color was the foundation of good painting and the body of his work is an exploration of color’s expressive possibilities. No painter could set a higher goal for himself. Along the way he developed a highly personal plastic form and established a stable of unique subjects on which he would work for the rest of his life.
Sefarbi’s artwork is marked by the seemingly contradictory features of consistency and experimentation. Yet anyone familiar with the traditions of art will recognize these qualities as those shared by the best of all painters from Titian to Matisse and beyond. Consistency is derived from an artist’s plastic form, those expressive characteristics that are indelibly his or hers regardless of subject or style. It is through this form that artists constantly experiment in an effort to find new ways of expressing their interests. For instance, while Titian’s early work is smoothly painted and refined his later work is impasto with vigorous brushwork. The body of his work is an ongoing experiment in color application and its effect. Yet throughout his oeuvre Titian’s pictures express active solid volumes of luminous color set in atmospheric space. These qualities are characteristics of Titian’s plastic form, aspects of his work as fixed as an unconscious gesture or food preference. One does not think about one’s form, it is there of its own accord. The history of art teaches us that true artists are never satisfied with merely working and reworking what is familiar and easy. They know that routine is the death knell of creativity. Instead artists constantly push themselves to try what is unfamiliar and challenging in order to discover new possibilities. As Henri Matisse understood, “Creativity takes courage.”
So it is with Harry Sefarbi’s work. Each picture is an opportunity for discovery. Nonetheless, no matter what he painted his work is rooted in color: color directly applied, usually with discernable brushstrokes; color that is intermixed, whether applied wet-on-wet, scumbled[5], color-chorded[6], or glazed, creating variety in depth, richness, and texture; limited picture space, often narrow or shallow, yet which rarely feels cramped or confining; a sense of light inseparable from color itself with little need for a directional light source; shallow volumes of structural color – color that forms dimensionality independent of light/shadow modeling – even when color is thinly applied or translucent; and a unfailing sense of wit and humor whether in the subjects he chose – a small man in a dark suit and tie perched atop the shoulders of a large seated redheaded woman in a bright red dress – or through the means used to construct a subject – small interlocking compartments of solid to semi-opaque rich, luminous reds set off by contrasting acidic green color lines[7]. Neither the subject itself nor the colors used to create it are conventional. All the same, each supports the other creating a humorous, unexpected effect.
However, Sefarbi’s use of humor can lead the unperceptive viewer to underestimate his work. This would be a mistake. Painting for Sefarbi was serious business because as he knew to paint is to explore, and ultimately express, something profoundly personal. This is not to say painting that is confessional per se, but rather expressive of what an artist finds personally of interest at a given time. For Sefarbi that interest was often rooted in the traditions of art undoubtedly influenced by his teaching at the Barnes Foundation. So ingrained did the traditions become that he would have hardly to think about them. Instead, given a creative problem while painting, the answer would be found in his funded experience, or the vast storehouse of knowledge of the traditions accumulated over a lifetime of learning. Solutions would unconsciously present themselves as problems arose.
Just as a professional baseball player reflexively adjusts his stance in preparation to hit a curve ball – the correction made unconsciously, ingrained by hours of batting practice – so discoveries from the traditions of art inform the artist’s actions in response to a need while painting. Neither the batter nor the artist must think about their actions, however when each responds it can legitimately be considered an intentional act. Intension in either case is grounded in past experiences. These actions are not random, or coincidental, nor are they instinctual, rather they have been learned. While the interest to learn may be motivated by a natural inclination, an athleticism or creativeness, these traits alone cannot account for the resulting facilities. Ability and interest both motivate training – time in the batting cage or hours sketching and painting. The act of doing and redoing hones aptitude so that when needed the solution, “pre-learned” and reserved in one’s funded experience, comes forth unconsciously. Ultimately, an action’s roots in past experiences can only be fully discovered and understood on reflection, after the act has been made. Jackson Pollock described it this way:
“When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well." [1947-48 statement in Possibilities]
At times Harry Sefarbi’s work may appear simple and straight forward. Yet on closer inspection his work’s facture can be unexpected, even surprising. Sefarbi’s post-Academy paintings are characterized by color that is often applied in small, geometric compartments which give the appearance of fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. These works are often figurative although figures are rarely recognizable as individuals[8]. Instead, figures are highly generalized often on the verge of abstraction; faces are smudges or blocks of color, necks are elongated posts, and legs color bands[9]. However, even when figures or objects are greatly abstracted they rarely lose their objectness so that figures and objects are discernable as such.
Color areas themselves are often constructed of intermixed dabs of harmonizing colors – red and purple, blue and green – set beside more strongly contrasting complimentary color areas – aqua blue and green aside burnt umber/red. The resulting tension between color areas create a spatial effect as some areas appear to recede and others move forward[10]. Picture space is defined by color relationships with minimal use of conventional perspective. While lines of color or edges of color areas may angle so as to suggest spatial recession true linear perspective is rarely employed. Picture space is frequently very shallow creating a sense of compression though rarely to the extreme. Color is bright, high key, non-local with color luminosity that provides effects of lighting in many works so that no directional light source is employed. Sefarbi’s color has a richness not unlike that of Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) although rarely as bright or high key as the Frenchmen’s. The work’s heightened decorativeness calls to mind Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954), although not literally, and sometimes to the extreme of Secessionist’s such as Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918). His description of figures suggests late Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), the Barnes’s The Large Bathers, 1895 – 1906, seems to have been a touchstone for many of these earlier works[11], as was the legacy of Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), Girl Before a Mirror, 1932. Color application can often take on the quality of tesserae, imparting a mosaic like effect[12]or when larger lending the feel of tiles[13].
By the 1960s, as Sefarbi began to focus on subjects that would occupy him for the rest of his life, his treatment of color continued to evolve. Thickly applied areas of paint slowly gave way to increasingly translucent color. Moderately thin color patches often overlay or overlap one another allowing them to interact and intermingle. The result, surprisingly, is color that has more depth and better suggests volume, color in other words that is more structural[14]. Similar to glazing, as light travels through thinner layers of color they intermix resulting in an overall more complex hue. The effect is often unexpected, particularly as the application of individual color patches is more rather than less pronounced[15]. Even when working with a limited pallet variations in color density add depth and richness[16].
Color application in dabs, patches, and blobs is obvious, so much so that viewed one way the color application nearly conceals the picture’s subject. Yet, just as quickly these areas coalesce into a figure or object[17]. At its best the experience is like a magician first showing an audience how a trick is done and then astonishing them all the same when it is performed. Another result is an increased sense of luminosity. By selecting colors that interact positively, that is colors that complement and enhance one another, an overall quality of color glow is produced. Further, by juxtaposing complimentary colors overall color intensity is enhanced.
It was also during this period that Sefarbi settled on a group of distinct subjects. Although he continued to paint landscapes and still life works, unique subjects began to emerge. Those acquainted with Sefarbi’s work will be familiar with the most common of these – the Gentleman Caller, Ikon, Highchair, Ancestors, Dinner Party, or Game Board. Throughout his career he would work and rework these subjects, each time finding something new to say not only about them, but with them. Not surprisingly these themes reverberate with the traditions of art. For instance, his Ikons put a humorous spin on the Byzantine Enthroned Madonna and Child, his Gentleman Caller works were often structured like Renaissance diptychs or triptychs, and a line of small automobiles found at the bottom of a picture recall an altarpiece predella.[18]In Sefarbi’s hands these themes were vehicles for expression and discovery, ever malleable, offering endless opportunity for reinvention and discovery. In addition, these subjects often merged and combined. Figures from the Gentleman Caller theme would appear in Ikon pictures, Checkerboard paintings would include a predella of cars, and his Highchair works also recall enthroned Madonnas.
Having a subject was clearly important to Sefarbi but given his generation not an obvious choice. New York School, or Abstract Expressionism, was the prevailing movement in the United States during his early development. For many artists the attraction of pure or near pure abstraction, of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings or Mark Rothko’s hovering stacked rectangles of luminous color, was difficult to resist. Sefarbi however adapted aspects he found of use from his contemporaries but never fell under the New York School spell. Where needed he would use vigorous brushwork or allow paint to run and drip but his work remained anchored in a subject. Even when verging on full abstraction a subject is always discernable[19].
Sefarbi most often dealt with life’s general aspects. Unlike Honoré Daumier (1808 –1879) or William Glackens (1870 – 1938) for instance, artists who focused on everyday life caught in the moment, Sefarbi’s pictures have a timelessness about them. His figures tend to be types – the little dark suited man with a red tie, the large redheaded woman, the child in a high chair – rather than individuals, which lends them a universality. In many ways they are similar to the Dutch tronie[20]. Instead Sefarbi used themes as a way of conveying commonly experienced qualities, what he would call broad human qualities – qualities understood by a plurality of viewers drawn from experiences of everyday living not restricted by time, place, or culture. Qualities such as firm solidity, soft pliability, flowing or staccato rhythmic movement, bigness or diminiutiveness, or luminous glow are just a few examples. Qualities such as these can be experienced in a nearly infinite variety of ways yet in each case, regardless of how it is experienced, the common, core quality remains.
Artists have long understood the advantage of using established subjects. With its basic elements set an artist is free to explore a subject’s expressive possibilities. Just as jazz musicians use standards from the American songbook as a springboard for improvisation, painters find freedom in returning to established subjects such as the still life, landscape, or nude. Again the traditions of art are instructive. Whether it is Jan van Goyen’s (1596 – 1656) harbor scenes, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s (1699 – 1779) kitchen utensils, or Paul Cézanne’s apples, a subject’s elements are not simply repeated but artists return to familiar themes in order to experiment with new combinations and relationships.
An important element of Harry Sefarbi’s mature work is his use of art’s decorative aspect. From the very beginning he was attracted to the decorative quality of color. Early pictures exploit color’s inherent decorativeness. This was likely an appealing feature of Interior: Jim to Dr. Barnes. As color application became more pronounced so did its decorativeness. Pronounced brushstrokes have visual appeal of their own, all the more so when they function cooperatively to convey a picture’s expressive qualities. For instance, in (11) Party Dresses, 1970, Sefarbi grouped clusters of brushstrokes on the left-hand figure, delineating her structure by defining the dress she wears as well as her volume beneath it. The right-hand figure on the other hand is more simply clothed and Sefarbi used decorative brushstrokes to describe the receding space in which the figure is set.
Sefarbi’s interest in the decorative is one shared with many of the important traditions from the Byzantine to Impressionism and Fauvism, and found its way into Sefarbi’s work in numerous modes. The Checkerboard theme for instance is rooted in the appeal of sequential blocks of constantly changing colors.
In the early 1980s Sefarbi’s interest in overt decorativeness took on an even more important role in many of his works. In pictures such as (60) Diptych: Gentleman Caller, 1992 Sefarbi used a distinctive decorative patterning to further identify walls, fabric, and objects, visually defining areas of picture space. As suggested by the title this picture is organized in two sections although not the traditional vertical division of its medieval counterparts but horizontally. In the upper section the female figure prepares herself in an upstairs room, seated on a bed of cool white color, her dress is decorated with a sunburst pattern and the room’s wall is decorated with small striated leaf-like designs. Downstairs, the expectant Gentleman Caller nervously awaits, hat in hand, under the watchful eye of the small child seated next to him. The two exchange a wary look. The Gentleman Caller’s chair back is defined by a large striated floral pattern that creates a visual link to the upper section. An even larger design indicated the wall of the lower room. The upper section with its stretching female figure creates a sense of slow movement while the lower section with the seated figures is tense and still. Each section is characterized by its own unique decorative pattering yet throughout the work it is the use of similar patterning that helps to unify the picture.
Patterned decoration took on an even more important function when it moved into the foreground as a lacy scrim. In this mode, panels of open linear designs cover sections of a picture. In shallow picture space this lacy scrim creates a definition of spatial placement, often the feel of an interior or enclosed space in opposition to a corresponding open, exposed space. Sometimes, as in (91) Double Date: Lace Curtain, the decorative scrim is used to partially obscure areas of the image so that the viewer must look carefully to see what lies behind. This has the added effect of enhancing the visual prominence of any uncovered areas. In the most extreme cases, such as (277) Lace Curtain, 1988, the decorative scrim covers the entire picture, dominating the visual field while the image behind plays a supporting role.
Finally, an aspect that should not be overlooked in Sefarbi’s work is his often deft conveyance of movement. In what could be considered a subset of his themes strong linear elements come to dominate a piece. In these pictures lines coax and entice the viewer’s eye to follow them through the composition keeping it in constant motion and in so doing create a sense of visual movement[21]. In these cases line is highly active as it curves, dips, swoops, and intertwines. Even when a picture’s subject suggests something still or static linear elements create a sense of visual activity for the viewer[22]. In other works line functions to define or support figures[23]. In these cases line varies in weight, intensity and tonality; line is present then drops away, only to reappear further on; line contains color into compartments and then elsewhere allows color to melt across its boundaries creating a transfusional effect.
Color and composition can also create plastic movement. In (146) Nude and Observers, 1966, we see another early manifestation of the Gentleman Caller theme. In this picture the Gentleman Caller is small and Sefarbi strings a series of them together to create a cascading line of figures that runs down the right-hand side of the canvas, like a dangling garland. The canvas is divided into sections, here like a diptych, with the string of Gentlemen Callers in the left-hand panel and the expectant female in the right-hand one.
Color areas are translucent with the edges of individual brushstrokes less well-defined and often feathered. Brushstrokes overlap so that translucent color areas intermingle and combine creating the effect of glazing suggested above yet through direct painting[24]. The Gentleman Callers are made of interspersed individual color dabs which combine to form the figures. Looking at the picture one is simultaneously aware of distinct brushstrokes but also the figures they combine to form.
The garland of Gentleman Callers in Nude and Observers captures well Sefarbi’s interest in movement. A figure shown in multiples like this recalls a series of stitched-together action stills by the 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. More directly the idea echoes both Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912, found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Italian Futurists, such as Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913, and Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed + Sound, 1913-1914, both of whom were interested in suggesting movement and speed[25].
The following year in (32) Gentleman Caller: Arriving, the effect is doubled as both the Gentleman Caller and the awaiting female are multiplied. Here the line of interlocking figures, Gentleman Caller on the right-hand and female in the center, twist and turn in descending lines as they slouch to the left, combining in the left-hand corner as they exit the canvas together.
While 1969s (142) Hello Lover, Goodbye, movement is more physical. The Gentleman Caller enters on the left, leaning into the picture space, only to be thrust out on the right as if having been kicked in the seat of the pants, Sefarbi’s sense of humor again at work. The female nude in the center is simultaneously static, she is seated, and moving, her arms raised and waving. These overlapping scenes are a variation on the now familiar triptych. Remarkable as is the sense of movement is Sefarbi’s description of the figures, especially the Gentleman Caller. Overlapping patches of semi-transparent color create a glazed effect building color depth and volume. This work, like many of his paintings, is a visual sleight of hand. Sefarbi makes apparent his color application yet does not disrupt a reading of the image, nor of the image conveying tangible qualities of the tilting leaning weight of the left-hand Gentleman Caller, the planted, swaying volume of the nude, or the unbalanced volume being thrust forward of the exiting Caller.
Once again the discussion returns to color, always the foundation of Harry Sefarbi’s work, and when combined with his complex understanding and use of the traditions of art a strong argument for holding his work up with some of the best painting of the twentieth century. In many ways his work is the perfect example of successful painting: instantly accessible and engaging as well as plastically complex and expressively inventive. Sefarbi’s work in unlike anyone else’s, yet never so foreign as to be alien. His pictures are both of his time, that is wholly modern, yet timeless in their expressive rewards. Ones sees in his painting a reflection of what preceded it as well as an example of what might yet be. While painting has more than once been declared dead, artists such as Harry Sefarbi demonstrate there is much life left in an old form.
[1]Harry Sefarbi Interview as part of the Senior Artists Initiative Inventory and Oral History Project.
[2] Local color corresponds to the hue normally associated with an object – grass as green or the sky as blue.
[3]High-key colors are the tints and middle tones at the light end of the value scale. They are usually pure colors and convey a feeling of soft, harmonious ambient light.
[4]Barnes wrote to Sefarbi regarding Interior: Jim, “Your painting at the Academy struck me as one of the three or four in the show that is really a picture – i.e. it carries out an idea, accomplished by intelligent use of the plastic means that give it an individuality. I like it better at a distance than I do at close view, particularly because, when looked at from afar, the color functions as color, but when closely examined the color has too much the quality of paint. I suppose you know that, and also that to put quality in color is the most difficult job of all. The painting has a few other minor defects – but so do a number of great painters, including Cézanne. If you want to sell it, the enclose check for one hundred dollars is offered. I can’t hang it but Ms. de Mazia can use it in classes when she talks about what to look for in a painting that makes it a work of art.” Letter, Albert C. Barnes to Harry Sefarbi, February 17, 1950, Barnes Foundation Archives as quoted in Richard Wattenmaker’s American Paintings and Works on Paper in The Barnes Foundation.
[5] A technique perfected by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin in which a dry brush of paint is dragged across an under lying color resulting in a pocked, textured layer which allows the color beneath to show through.
[6]The juxtaposition of two or more hues or tonalities of hue which register to the viewer as a single hue, similar to a musical chord in which multiple notes are played together creating a single sound.
[7] (61) Ikon: Red Dress
[8](13) Mother and Daughter, c. 1950 being a possible exception
[9] (30) Interior: Two Figures, 1953
[10] (30) Interior: Two Figures, 1953
[11] (186) Two Figures: Red Wall
[12] (8) Clearing, c. 1950
[13] (156) Window: Passing Children, 1954; (192) Mother and Twins, 1967; (299) La Collection, c. 1950
[14] (144) Figure at a Table, 1964
[15] (146) Nude and Observers, 1966
[16] (26) Gentleman Caller: Waiting, 1964
[17] (274) Totem: Acrobats, 1965
[18] (33) Nabi Park; (126) A Stroll in the Country; Two Cows, 1994; (162) Park: Predella of Cars; (122) Cat Park, 1975
[19] (107) Seated Man, 2001; (189) Couple: Orange
[20] In the Dutch seventeenth century an unidentified figure, often with an exaggerated expression or features, functioning as a stock character.
[21] (23) Fall Park, 1979; (193) Extension, 1981; (197) Two Cyclists; (198) Happy Bride
[22] (28) Strollers, 1980
[23] (2) Ballroom; (5) By the Sea, 1978-1980
[24] To glaze color a painter thins pigments to a translucent consistency then layers hue upon varying hue so that when light passes through these thin layers of color it picks up each hue, combining them as it is reflected back to the viewer’s eye which registers it as a single color. In essence this is a form of color chording.
[25] also see (156) Window: Passing Children, 1954
By William M. Perthes
Introduction
To discuss a painting with Harry Sefarbi, whether his own or another’s, was to have a tutorial in the traditions of art. In a line he would see the arabesque of Botticelli or the feathery touch of Renoir; in a patch of color he saw the rich, golden glow of Giorgione or the subdued earth tones of Van Eyck. This was hardly surprising given that for fifty-four years Sefarbi taught the Traditions in Art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, in which students explored the plastic evolution of painting; that is how artists over time have used the media of color to express their experiences at a particular time and in a particular culture. Decades of teaching the great traditions of art left Sefarbi with a vast reservoir of knowledge of what history’s most creative painters had discovered and expressed in their work. His students were the beneficiaries of this knowledge. Over the course of a year Sefarbi traced a path from the dawn of painting through the turn of the twentieth century, demonstrating how traditions inform one another and how one artist learned from his predecessors.
Despite his long career as an instructor Sefarbi first and foremost identified himself as an artist, one who also happened to teach. However, as he said, he did not teach people to paint but instead to see, or rather to perceive, what they saw in paintings. In essence Sefarbi sought to teach his students to see as he did, as a painter. This lifetime of looking and thinking about art also deeply affected his artwork so that while his work speaks the language of Modernism it also resonates with the histories of painting. Qualities and elements from the great traditions of painting unconsciously found their way back into his own pictures, reimagined and reinvented.
Biography
Harry Sefarbi was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on 19 June 1917. As a young boy he “caught the art bug” as he called it, drawing constantly. In high school this interest attracted the attention of the school’s two art teachers, both graduates of Philadelphia’s Museum School of Industrial Arts (now the University of the Arts), who taught him the technical aspects of drawing such as how to articulate a form through the use of line and create the illusion of mass via line and light/shadow modeling. He also frequently visited Philadelphia’s Fleisher Art Memorial, an art institution that offers free and low cost art classes where students can draw or paint from the model or still life and receive criticism from an instructor if they wish. At Fleisher Sefarbi was able to practice, explore, and hone his growing interest in drawing and painting.
After graduating from high school Sefarbi had hoped to enroll in the Museum School but financial concerns lead him to pursue a degree in education instead. In 1935 he enrolled in West Chester State Teacher College, which at the time was free, graduating four years later with a Bachelor’s of Science degree. With his teaching degree he could teach in the Philadelphia Public School system, something he did for a time as he found his way towards becoming the artist he hoped to be.
Pursuing this interest in 1941Sefarbi enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the first school of fine arts in the United Statesand the country’s first museum, and still one of the country’s premier art schools. The Second World War interrupted his studies. From 1942 until 1945 he served as an infantryman in the Army earning a bronze star. Following his discharge he returned to the Academy, but by his own admission his interest in studying under the Academic model had begun to wane.
As he later recalled, the Academy’s curriculum in the 1940s was essentially the same as it had been when the Academy was chartered in 1805. As its name suggests the Pennsylvania Academy followed an academic model based on the French Academy. Students first learned to draw from antique casts in line before moving on to drawing in mass by means of light/shadow modeling. Students then advanced to painting from life where it was understood they would classicize the live model guided by their experience drawing from antique casts. These however, were skills Sefarbi had learned in high school and honed at Fleisher.
After three years of study Academy students could compete for awards such as the prestigious Cresson Traveling Award which financed a summer in Europe and a year’s tuition at the Academy. Although he tried twice, Sefarbi’s work was never selected for awards, largely, he felt, because he did not follow the school’s unstated protocol. As Sefarbi would later describe:
Word got around (amongst Academy students) that the way to win a Cresson was to cultivate some teacher and to have them show an interest in you, and you in them, and to go for criticism, and get help, and so on, so that on the days of the competition he would remember who you were and hopefully vote for you. [1]
A shy young man, especially about his work, Sefarbi was uncomfortable with this process, feeling that his work should speak for itself.
Sefarbi’s paintings from the 1940s such as Nude: 1940 or the student work Still Life: Compote and Fork from 1949, some painted under the name Harry Smith, demonstrate firm handling of color to create volume and form; color that is predominantly local[2] although tends to be more high key[3] with hints of inventive deviations, such as introducing contrasting colors rather than relying on tonal effect to form volume; the brush work is active and supports composition, although never attracts undue attention; picture space is clearly delineated – works such as Student Landscape uses both linear perspective and modulation in color intensity to suggest depth and spatial recession. Even at this early stage Sefarbi showed ability and creativeness, qualities that would grow stronger in time.
Disillusioned with the Academy, Sefarbi increasingly painted in his room on Race Street, having friends pose for him or painting still-lifes; going to the Academy only if he liked or could get close to the model. He could not help notice however that every Tuesday fifteen or twenty students seemed to disappear from the Academy. He quickly learned that they were making the short trip from Center City to Merion to attend classes at the Barnes Foundation which he described as “practically an adjunct to the Academy”. At the Barnes, where classes were free, Sefarbi found the kind of exploration of art for which he had looked. Students in the first year class, taught by Violette de Mazia, and the second year class, Traditions in Painting taught by Angelo Pinto, discussed “Art” - what it was, what it was not, and what it could be.
Sefarbi enrolled at the Barnes in 1947 and ever after credited his experience there, studying with Ms. de Mazia and meeting Dr. Barnes, with literally changing his life. At the Barnes art was discussed not as a craft of skill or technique, not as a reflection of historical events, nor as a window into an artist’s psyche, but as a means of communicating what artist’s saw and felt as important about their own experiences in their world. These intereses, expressed plastically through the painter’s primary medium of color and its subsidiaries - light, space, line, texture, traditions, and so on – if successful resonates with the viewer’s own experiences. Where the viewer’s and artist’s experiences converge communication begins, where they diverge learning is possible. During his two years at the Barnes Sefarbi began to learn to see and consider art in a profoundly new way.
Eventually dropping out of the Academy Sefarbi used his teacher’s certificate to obtain a position with the board of education as a steady substitute teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. At that stage he thought he would be a school teacher who painted on the side. However, things soon changed. In the fall of 1950 the Academy announced its Annual Competition, a large and competitive art exhibition which drew submissions from around the country. Sefarbi submitted a painting he had finished the year before, Interior: Jim, and it was accepted. Not only was the painting accepted, but Dr. Barnes bought it and eventually hung it in the Foundation, “above the door in gallery nine” as Sefarbi would regularly say, where visitors can see it today.
Dr. Barnes’s purchase of Interior: Jim was just the vote of confidence Sefarbi needed to reignite his ambition of pursuing a life as a painter[4]. With money from his GI Bill which would provide a modest amount for living expenses, lodging, tuition, and supplies he decided to go to Europe. Before leaving he wrote to Dr. Barnes requesting the “Itinerary”, a list compiled by Barnes of the major European cities to visit and works of art to see when there. Barnes invited him to the Foundation and asked how much money he had for his trip; only later did Sefarbi realize Barnes was considering giving him a stipend – which in the end he did not. Although he missed out on financial support Barnes told him to look him up when Sefarbi returned.
So began a three and a half year sojourn in France where he lived in a dollar-a-day hotel in Paris, painted, and studied French. In the morning he would paint in his hotel room. In the afternoon, committed to learning the language, he studied French at the Paris headquarters of L’Alliance Française. In the late afternoon he went to the famed Académie de la Grande Chaumière, an École Libre or free school which, like Philadelphia’s Fleisher Memorial where he painted in high school, has neither an over-arching philosophy nor true art instruction classes. Instead students had access to models from which to draw or paint and criticism from a monitoring artist if desired. In the evening he would meet friends in the cafés; a good life for a young aspiring painter.
While in France, Sefarbi met Ruth Fishman, a young American student. In 1955 Harry and Ruth were wed beginning 53 years of married life together. Harry and Ruth would have a daughter, Mia, in 1959 and in time, a grandson, Benjamin. Ruth was a remarkable and accomplished woman. She served as a WAC (Women's Army Corps)in the Second World War. When she and Harry met she was studying at the Sorbonne from which she received her diploma. Later she would earn a Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania and would go on to be a distinguished family therapist in Philadelphia. For many years Ruth worked at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center as both a clinician and then a supervisor. To know Harry Sefarbi was to know Ruth, they were inseparable. In later years, after she retired, Ruth was a fixture of Harry’s classes at the Barnes – often an indispensable extension of Harry. She would help to recall an artist’s name that slipped his mind or remind him not to forget an item or point from his notes. Together they remained devout Francophiles, making several trips back to France and striking up conversations with French visitors to the Barnes.
When his GI Bill money ran out Sefarbi worked at the American School teaching art first in a one-day-a-week job that soon became twice weekly. In 1951, only a year into Sefarbi’s time in France, Dr. Barnes was killed in an automobile accident. Receiving the news Sefarbi must surely have recalled Barnes’s offer to look him up when he returned from Europe and thought that any opportunity to teach at the Foundation was dashed. Despite that, in 1953 Sefarbi wrote to Violette de Mazia, who had become both a Trustee of the Foundation as well as its Director of Education following Barnes’s death, and asked her for a job. To his surprise and delight she offered him a position on the faculty teaching the second year class, Traditions in Art, class. Seizing this new opportunity Sefarbi returned to Philadelphia that same year. In 1955 Harry and Ruth moved to the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia where Sefarbi established his studio.
For the next fifty-four years from September to May Sefarbi taught the Traditions in Art at the Barnes Foundation and painted. In those years he published three articles in the Foundation’s journal: “The Clue to Klee,” “Vincent Van Gogh: A Fiction,” and “Henry Rousseau: From ‘primitive’ to Primitive.” Autumn to Spring Sefarbi taught, but Summers were devoted to painting. Over the years his work continued to evolve as he digested the lessons he learned from studying and teaching the traditions of art. Harry Sefarbi died on Monday 28 September 2009, both his 54th wedding anniversary and Yom Kippur - "a powerful day to die," Ruth would say. Harry Sefarbi was 92 and he painted until the end.
Art
Harry Sefarbi’s artwork is at once familiar and unexpected, presenting even the perceptive viewer with both challenges and surprises. Early on he understood that color was the foundation of good painting and the body of his work is an exploration of color’s expressive possibilities. No painter could set a higher goal for himself. Along the way he developed a highly personal plastic form and established a stable of unique subjects on which he would work for the rest of his life.
Sefarbi’s artwork is marked by the seemingly contradictory features of consistency and experimentation. Yet anyone familiar with the traditions of art will recognize these qualities as those shared by the best of all painters from Titian to Matisse and beyond. Consistency is derived from an artist’s plastic form, those expressive characteristics that are indelibly his or hers regardless of subject or style. It is through this form that artists constantly experiment in an effort to find new ways of expressing their interests. For instance, while Titian’s early work is smoothly painted and refined his later work is impasto with vigorous brushwork. The body of his work is an ongoing experiment in color application and its effect. Yet throughout his oeuvre Titian’s pictures express active solid volumes of luminous color set in atmospheric space. These qualities are characteristics of Titian’s plastic form, aspects of his work as fixed as an unconscious gesture or food preference. One does not think about one’s form, it is there of its own accord. The history of art teaches us that true artists are never satisfied with merely working and reworking what is familiar and easy. They know that routine is the death knell of creativity. Instead artists constantly push themselves to try what is unfamiliar and challenging in order to discover new possibilities. As Henri Matisse understood, “Creativity takes courage.”
So it is with Harry Sefarbi’s work. Each picture is an opportunity for discovery. Nonetheless, no matter what he painted his work is rooted in color: color directly applied, usually with discernable brushstrokes; color that is intermixed, whether applied wet-on-wet, scumbled[5], color-chorded[6], or glazed, creating variety in depth, richness, and texture; limited picture space, often narrow or shallow, yet which rarely feels cramped or confining; a sense of light inseparable from color itself with little need for a directional light source; shallow volumes of structural color – color that forms dimensionality independent of light/shadow modeling – even when color is thinly applied or translucent; and a unfailing sense of wit and humor whether in the subjects he chose – a small man in a dark suit and tie perched atop the shoulders of a large seated redheaded woman in a bright red dress – or through the means used to construct a subject – small interlocking compartments of solid to semi-opaque rich, luminous reds set off by contrasting acidic green color lines[7]. Neither the subject itself nor the colors used to create it are conventional. All the same, each supports the other creating a humorous, unexpected effect.
However, Sefarbi’s use of humor can lead the unperceptive viewer to underestimate his work. This would be a mistake. Painting for Sefarbi was serious business because as he knew to paint is to explore, and ultimately express, something profoundly personal. This is not to say painting that is confessional per se, but rather expressive of what an artist finds personally of interest at a given time. For Sefarbi that interest was often rooted in the traditions of art undoubtedly influenced by his teaching at the Barnes Foundation. So ingrained did the traditions become that he would have hardly to think about them. Instead, given a creative problem while painting, the answer would be found in his funded experience, or the vast storehouse of knowledge of the traditions accumulated over a lifetime of learning. Solutions would unconsciously present themselves as problems arose.
Just as a professional baseball player reflexively adjusts his stance in preparation to hit a curve ball – the correction made unconsciously, ingrained by hours of batting practice – so discoveries from the traditions of art inform the artist’s actions in response to a need while painting. Neither the batter nor the artist must think about their actions, however when each responds it can legitimately be considered an intentional act. Intension in either case is grounded in past experiences. These actions are not random, or coincidental, nor are they instinctual, rather they have been learned. While the interest to learn may be motivated by a natural inclination, an athleticism or creativeness, these traits alone cannot account for the resulting facilities. Ability and interest both motivate training – time in the batting cage or hours sketching and painting. The act of doing and redoing hones aptitude so that when needed the solution, “pre-learned” and reserved in one’s funded experience, comes forth unconsciously. Ultimately, an action’s roots in past experiences can only be fully discovered and understood on reflection, after the act has been made. Jackson Pollock described it this way:
“When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well." [1947-48 statement in Possibilities]
At times Harry Sefarbi’s work may appear simple and straight forward. Yet on closer inspection his work’s facture can be unexpected, even surprising. Sefarbi’s post-Academy paintings are characterized by color that is often applied in small, geometric compartments which give the appearance of fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. These works are often figurative although figures are rarely recognizable as individuals[8]. Instead, figures are highly generalized often on the verge of abstraction; faces are smudges or blocks of color, necks are elongated posts, and legs color bands[9]. However, even when figures or objects are greatly abstracted they rarely lose their objectness so that figures and objects are discernable as such.
Color areas themselves are often constructed of intermixed dabs of harmonizing colors – red and purple, blue and green – set beside more strongly contrasting complimentary color areas – aqua blue and green aside burnt umber/red. The resulting tension between color areas create a spatial effect as some areas appear to recede and others move forward[10]. Picture space is defined by color relationships with minimal use of conventional perspective. While lines of color or edges of color areas may angle so as to suggest spatial recession true linear perspective is rarely employed. Picture space is frequently very shallow creating a sense of compression though rarely to the extreme. Color is bright, high key, non-local with color luminosity that provides effects of lighting in many works so that no directional light source is employed. Sefarbi’s color has a richness not unlike that of Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) although rarely as bright or high key as the Frenchmen’s. The work’s heightened decorativeness calls to mind Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954), although not literally, and sometimes to the extreme of Secessionist’s such as Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918). His description of figures suggests late Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), the Barnes’s The Large Bathers, 1895 – 1906, seems to have been a touchstone for many of these earlier works[11], as was the legacy of Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), Girl Before a Mirror, 1932. Color application can often take on the quality of tesserae, imparting a mosaic like effect[12]or when larger lending the feel of tiles[13].
By the 1960s, as Sefarbi began to focus on subjects that would occupy him for the rest of his life, his treatment of color continued to evolve. Thickly applied areas of paint slowly gave way to increasingly translucent color. Moderately thin color patches often overlay or overlap one another allowing them to interact and intermingle. The result, surprisingly, is color that has more depth and better suggests volume, color in other words that is more structural[14]. Similar to glazing, as light travels through thinner layers of color they intermix resulting in an overall more complex hue. The effect is often unexpected, particularly as the application of individual color patches is more rather than less pronounced[15]. Even when working with a limited pallet variations in color density add depth and richness[16].
Color application in dabs, patches, and blobs is obvious, so much so that viewed one way the color application nearly conceals the picture’s subject. Yet, just as quickly these areas coalesce into a figure or object[17]. At its best the experience is like a magician first showing an audience how a trick is done and then astonishing them all the same when it is performed. Another result is an increased sense of luminosity. By selecting colors that interact positively, that is colors that complement and enhance one another, an overall quality of color glow is produced. Further, by juxtaposing complimentary colors overall color intensity is enhanced.
It was also during this period that Sefarbi settled on a group of distinct subjects. Although he continued to paint landscapes and still life works, unique subjects began to emerge. Those acquainted with Sefarbi’s work will be familiar with the most common of these – the Gentleman Caller, Ikon, Highchair, Ancestors, Dinner Party, or Game Board. Throughout his career he would work and rework these subjects, each time finding something new to say not only about them, but with them. Not surprisingly these themes reverberate with the traditions of art. For instance, his Ikons put a humorous spin on the Byzantine Enthroned Madonna and Child, his Gentleman Caller works were often structured like Renaissance diptychs or triptychs, and a line of small automobiles found at the bottom of a picture recall an altarpiece predella.[18]In Sefarbi’s hands these themes were vehicles for expression and discovery, ever malleable, offering endless opportunity for reinvention and discovery. In addition, these subjects often merged and combined. Figures from the Gentleman Caller theme would appear in Ikon pictures, Checkerboard paintings would include a predella of cars, and his Highchair works also recall enthroned Madonnas.
Having a subject was clearly important to Sefarbi but given his generation not an obvious choice. New York School, or Abstract Expressionism, was the prevailing movement in the United States during his early development. For many artists the attraction of pure or near pure abstraction, of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings or Mark Rothko’s hovering stacked rectangles of luminous color, was difficult to resist. Sefarbi however adapted aspects he found of use from his contemporaries but never fell under the New York School spell. Where needed he would use vigorous brushwork or allow paint to run and drip but his work remained anchored in a subject. Even when verging on full abstraction a subject is always discernable[19].
Sefarbi most often dealt with life’s general aspects. Unlike Honoré Daumier (1808 –1879) or William Glackens (1870 – 1938) for instance, artists who focused on everyday life caught in the moment, Sefarbi’s pictures have a timelessness about them. His figures tend to be types – the little dark suited man with a red tie, the large redheaded woman, the child in a high chair – rather than individuals, which lends them a universality. In many ways they are similar to the Dutch tronie[20]. Instead Sefarbi used themes as a way of conveying commonly experienced qualities, what he would call broad human qualities – qualities understood by a plurality of viewers drawn from experiences of everyday living not restricted by time, place, or culture. Qualities such as firm solidity, soft pliability, flowing or staccato rhythmic movement, bigness or diminiutiveness, or luminous glow are just a few examples. Qualities such as these can be experienced in a nearly infinite variety of ways yet in each case, regardless of how it is experienced, the common, core quality remains.
Artists have long understood the advantage of using established subjects. With its basic elements set an artist is free to explore a subject’s expressive possibilities. Just as jazz musicians use standards from the American songbook as a springboard for improvisation, painters find freedom in returning to established subjects such as the still life, landscape, or nude. Again the traditions of art are instructive. Whether it is Jan van Goyen’s (1596 – 1656) harbor scenes, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin’s (1699 – 1779) kitchen utensils, or Paul Cézanne’s apples, a subject’s elements are not simply repeated but artists return to familiar themes in order to experiment with new combinations and relationships.
An important element of Harry Sefarbi’s mature work is his use of art’s decorative aspect. From the very beginning he was attracted to the decorative quality of color. Early pictures exploit color’s inherent decorativeness. This was likely an appealing feature of Interior: Jim to Dr. Barnes. As color application became more pronounced so did its decorativeness. Pronounced brushstrokes have visual appeal of their own, all the more so when they function cooperatively to convey a picture’s expressive qualities. For instance, in (11) Party Dresses, 1970, Sefarbi grouped clusters of brushstrokes on the left-hand figure, delineating her structure by defining the dress she wears as well as her volume beneath it. The right-hand figure on the other hand is more simply clothed and Sefarbi used decorative brushstrokes to describe the receding space in which the figure is set.
Sefarbi’s interest in the decorative is one shared with many of the important traditions from the Byzantine to Impressionism and Fauvism, and found its way into Sefarbi’s work in numerous modes. The Checkerboard theme for instance is rooted in the appeal of sequential blocks of constantly changing colors.
In the early 1980s Sefarbi’s interest in overt decorativeness took on an even more important role in many of his works. In pictures such as (60) Diptych: Gentleman Caller, 1992 Sefarbi used a distinctive decorative patterning to further identify walls, fabric, and objects, visually defining areas of picture space. As suggested by the title this picture is organized in two sections although not the traditional vertical division of its medieval counterparts but horizontally. In the upper section the female figure prepares herself in an upstairs room, seated on a bed of cool white color, her dress is decorated with a sunburst pattern and the room’s wall is decorated with small striated leaf-like designs. Downstairs, the expectant Gentleman Caller nervously awaits, hat in hand, under the watchful eye of the small child seated next to him. The two exchange a wary look. The Gentleman Caller’s chair back is defined by a large striated floral pattern that creates a visual link to the upper section. An even larger design indicated the wall of the lower room. The upper section with its stretching female figure creates a sense of slow movement while the lower section with the seated figures is tense and still. Each section is characterized by its own unique decorative pattering yet throughout the work it is the use of similar patterning that helps to unify the picture.
Patterned decoration took on an even more important function when it moved into the foreground as a lacy scrim. In this mode, panels of open linear designs cover sections of a picture. In shallow picture space this lacy scrim creates a definition of spatial placement, often the feel of an interior or enclosed space in opposition to a corresponding open, exposed space. Sometimes, as in (91) Double Date: Lace Curtain, the decorative scrim is used to partially obscure areas of the image so that the viewer must look carefully to see what lies behind. This has the added effect of enhancing the visual prominence of any uncovered areas. In the most extreme cases, such as (277) Lace Curtain, 1988, the decorative scrim covers the entire picture, dominating the visual field while the image behind plays a supporting role.
Finally, an aspect that should not be overlooked in Sefarbi’s work is his often deft conveyance of movement. In what could be considered a subset of his themes strong linear elements come to dominate a piece. In these pictures lines coax and entice the viewer’s eye to follow them through the composition keeping it in constant motion and in so doing create a sense of visual movement[21]. In these cases line is highly active as it curves, dips, swoops, and intertwines. Even when a picture’s subject suggests something still or static linear elements create a sense of visual activity for the viewer[22]. In other works line functions to define or support figures[23]. In these cases line varies in weight, intensity and tonality; line is present then drops away, only to reappear further on; line contains color into compartments and then elsewhere allows color to melt across its boundaries creating a transfusional effect.
Color and composition can also create plastic movement. In (146) Nude and Observers, 1966, we see another early manifestation of the Gentleman Caller theme. In this picture the Gentleman Caller is small and Sefarbi strings a series of them together to create a cascading line of figures that runs down the right-hand side of the canvas, like a dangling garland. The canvas is divided into sections, here like a diptych, with the string of Gentlemen Callers in the left-hand panel and the expectant female in the right-hand one.
Color areas are translucent with the edges of individual brushstrokes less well-defined and often feathered. Brushstrokes overlap so that translucent color areas intermingle and combine creating the effect of glazing suggested above yet through direct painting[24]. The Gentleman Callers are made of interspersed individual color dabs which combine to form the figures. Looking at the picture one is simultaneously aware of distinct brushstrokes but also the figures they combine to form.
The garland of Gentleman Callers in Nude and Observers captures well Sefarbi’s interest in movement. A figure shown in multiples like this recalls a series of stitched-together action stills by the 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. More directly the idea echoes both Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912, found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Italian Futurists, such as Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913, and Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed + Sound, 1913-1914, both of whom were interested in suggesting movement and speed[25].
The following year in (32) Gentleman Caller: Arriving, the effect is doubled as both the Gentleman Caller and the awaiting female are multiplied. Here the line of interlocking figures, Gentleman Caller on the right-hand and female in the center, twist and turn in descending lines as they slouch to the left, combining in the left-hand corner as they exit the canvas together.
While 1969s (142) Hello Lover, Goodbye, movement is more physical. The Gentleman Caller enters on the left, leaning into the picture space, only to be thrust out on the right as if having been kicked in the seat of the pants, Sefarbi’s sense of humor again at work. The female nude in the center is simultaneously static, she is seated, and moving, her arms raised and waving. These overlapping scenes are a variation on the now familiar triptych. Remarkable as is the sense of movement is Sefarbi’s description of the figures, especially the Gentleman Caller. Overlapping patches of semi-transparent color create a glazed effect building color depth and volume. This work, like many of his paintings, is a visual sleight of hand. Sefarbi makes apparent his color application yet does not disrupt a reading of the image, nor of the image conveying tangible qualities of the tilting leaning weight of the left-hand Gentleman Caller, the planted, swaying volume of the nude, or the unbalanced volume being thrust forward of the exiting Caller.
Once again the discussion returns to color, always the foundation of Harry Sefarbi’s work, and when combined with his complex understanding and use of the traditions of art a strong argument for holding his work up with some of the best painting of the twentieth century. In many ways his work is the perfect example of successful painting: instantly accessible and engaging as well as plastically complex and expressively inventive. Sefarbi’s work in unlike anyone else’s, yet never so foreign as to be alien. His pictures are both of his time, that is wholly modern, yet timeless in their expressive rewards. Ones sees in his painting a reflection of what preceded it as well as an example of what might yet be. While painting has more than once been declared dead, artists such as Harry Sefarbi demonstrate there is much life left in an old form.
[1]Harry Sefarbi Interview as part of the Senior Artists Initiative Inventory and Oral History Project.
[2] Local color corresponds to the hue normally associated with an object – grass as green or the sky as blue.
[3]High-key colors are the tints and middle tones at the light end of the value scale. They are usually pure colors and convey a feeling of soft, harmonious ambient light.
[4]Barnes wrote to Sefarbi regarding Interior: Jim, “Your painting at the Academy struck me as one of the three or four in the show that is really a picture – i.e. it carries out an idea, accomplished by intelligent use of the plastic means that give it an individuality. I like it better at a distance than I do at close view, particularly because, when looked at from afar, the color functions as color, but when closely examined the color has too much the quality of paint. I suppose you know that, and also that to put quality in color is the most difficult job of all. The painting has a few other minor defects – but so do a number of great painters, including Cézanne. If you want to sell it, the enclose check for one hundred dollars is offered. I can’t hang it but Ms. de Mazia can use it in classes when she talks about what to look for in a painting that makes it a work of art.” Letter, Albert C. Barnes to Harry Sefarbi, February 17, 1950, Barnes Foundation Archives as quoted in Richard Wattenmaker’s American Paintings and Works on Paper in The Barnes Foundation.
[5] A technique perfected by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin in which a dry brush of paint is dragged across an under lying color resulting in a pocked, textured layer which allows the color beneath to show through.
[6]The juxtaposition of two or more hues or tonalities of hue which register to the viewer as a single hue, similar to a musical chord in which multiple notes are played together creating a single sound.
[7] (61) Ikon: Red Dress
[8](13) Mother and Daughter, c. 1950 being a possible exception
[9] (30) Interior: Two Figures, 1953
[10] (30) Interior: Two Figures, 1953
[11] (186) Two Figures: Red Wall
[12] (8) Clearing, c. 1950
[13] (156) Window: Passing Children, 1954; (192) Mother and Twins, 1967; (299) La Collection, c. 1950
[14] (144) Figure at a Table, 1964
[15] (146) Nude and Observers, 1966
[16] (26) Gentleman Caller: Waiting, 1964
[17] (274) Totem: Acrobats, 1965
[18] (33) Nabi Park; (126) A Stroll in the Country; Two Cows, 1994; (162) Park: Predella of Cars; (122) Cat Park, 1975
[19] (107) Seated Man, 2001; (189) Couple: Orange
[20] In the Dutch seventeenth century an unidentified figure, often with an exaggerated expression or features, functioning as a stock character.
[21] (23) Fall Park, 1979; (193) Extension, 1981; (197) Two Cyclists; (198) Happy Bride
[22] (28) Strollers, 1980
[23] (2) Ballroom; (5) By the Sea, 1978-1980
[24] To glaze color a painter thins pigments to a translucent consistency then layers hue upon varying hue so that when light passes through these thin layers of color it picks up each hue, combining them as it is reflected back to the viewer’s eye which registers it as a single color. In essence this is a form of color chording.
[25] also see (156) Window: Passing Children, 1954