Patrick Angus

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Patrick Angus: Exhibition in Stuttgart 2017–18

Patrick Angus (born December 3, 1953 in North Hollywood , California ; died May 13, 1992 in New York City ) was an American painter of American realism . He gave enduring artistic expression to gay life in the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s. He died of AIDS at the age of 38 .

Life

Patrick Angus was born in North Hollywood. His mother was Betty Angus. The family soon moved to Santa Barbara, California , where Patrick Angus grew up. From an early age he had the desire to become a painter and received lessons from the portrait painter Alice Simmons Randolph. His high school art teacher, William Morez, also nurtured his talent by introducing him to the Old Masters such as Eugenio Lucas Velázquez , Tizian and Peter Paul Rubens , as well as the American realism of Jack Levine . At the age of 17 he enrolled at the Santa Barbara Community College , where he learned the works of Henri Matisse , Claude Monet , Pablo Picasso and Richard Diebenkorn through his teacher Robert Frame .

In 1974, Angus received a scholarship to the Santa Barbara Art Institute . He came into contact with Abstract Expressionism , the New York School and the works of David Park (1911–1960), Elmer Bischof (1916–1991) and Paul Wonner (1920–2008). The encounter with the works of the British painter David Hockney , who lived in California and inspired and encouraged him through the self-confident sexual freedom and the openly homoerotic look in his pictures, was groundbreaking. During this time he created the expressive portrait of a young man against a yellow background Untitled (Yellow Boy) 1974. He had been aware of his own homosexuality since he was 15, but it was only when he encountered the lifestyle of the then already established Hockney that he helped to live too. After an initial attempt to gain a foothold in Los Angeles , Angus initially moved back to Santa Barbara in 1976, as he lacked the financial means to participate in the glamorous gay scene in Los Angeles. There he made the acquaintance of Gary Brown, who taught as a professor at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California and of whom Angus later testified that he had met the "first thinking gay person" in him.

In 1979 Angus went back to LA and began to keep a diary of drawings . From January to March he created the Los Angeles Drawings , a series of 60, mostly precisely dated, drawings.

Financially, Angus lived in precarious circumstances all his life. In addition to various other jobs, such as washing dishes or in saunas, with which he earned his living, he worked in 1980 at the great Picasso retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which gave him the opportunity to see the works of this painter whom he admired to be able to study intensively. After returning to California for two years, he was able to establish himself in MoMA from 1984 and gradually got better positions that gave him enough time for his own artistic activity. Between 1988 and 1989 Angus, like many of his friends, was diagnosed with an HIV infection, which at the time was hardly treatable and amounted to a death sentence. He only confided in his parents and close friends who supported him. He gave up the work in the museum in order to be able to devote himself entirely to his art in the remaining time, and was able to live from the first sales of his works and a small social fund that he received because of his manifest AIDS illness.

During this time Angus created a large number of drawings and paintings , the success of which remained largely unsuccessful during his lifetime. The open portrayal of gay life in all its facets stood in the way of artistic recognition. He was suspicious of the beginning of sales of his works in the underground scene, as he suspected that they were being bought on the basis of sexual motives, while the official art scene was not yet able to recognize the artistic quality of his pictures, but instead was able to recognize it this issue came across. In the last year of his life, however, Angus was able to experience three solo exhibitions, in Van Buren County (Arkansas) , Santa Barbara and New York and a first book about him was published.

“I don't even pretend to understand the people who are hurt by my paintings. [...] People forget the power of painting when they only concern themselves with the subjects of the picture. "

- Patrick Angus, p. 17

Angus was just as convinced of his own artistic ability as he suffered from the lack of recognition. Just before he died at St. Vincent Hospital in New York, he asked his friend and sponsor Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, "Do you think my prices will go up?"

Work and reception

In his work, Angus was influenced by David Hockney , David Park (1911-1960), Henri Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn, Pablo Picasso , Edward Hopper , Thomas Eakins , Giacomo Balla and Giorgio De Chirico . He soon turned away from the abstract and minimalist painting that was predominant at the time and found his own style in figurative painting. The playwright Robert Patrick calls him the "Toulouse-Lautrec of Times Square". His paintings and drawings include portraits of friends, self-portraits , urban scenes, landscapes , men in parks, in middle-class domestic settings as well as in strip shows, relevant bars and bathhouses. They show the gay world openly and unadorned, are handcrafted of high painterly quality, intensely colored, sensitive and often streaked with deep melancholy. They are in the tradition of American realism and its representatives such as James Whistler , Thomas Eakins and Edward Hopper. Both in the deserted landscapes and in the scenes of night life they reflect human loneliness.

There are references to art history, such as in a gay menage á trois reminiscent of Manet's breakfast in the countryside or in the transfer of the animals from Edward Hicks' The Kingdom of Peace to urban Los Angeles. In titles he refers to famous disco songs that were selected by dancers for their striptease and nude dance performances, such as "I'm only human", "Boys do fall in love" or "Remember the promise you made" by Diana Ross , Queen , Bobby Brown and Grace Jones .

Twenty years after his death, Angus' works began to gain acceptance in which the frowned upon image content no longer let the artistic meaning of his works take a back seat.

“His art is not limited to being a document of a subculture that has disappeared. She is great in her power to show what is most important: devotion and love. "

- Jens Hinrichsen, Monopoly 09/2016

While the exhibitions before the turn of the millennium were overshadowed by outrage or the erection of privacy screens, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart learns about Patrick Angus for the solo exhibition . Private Show , with which around 200 of his works are shown to a wide audience, clear recognition by the press, which seeks to put the rejection of Angus' work due to the gay topic in the past.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1991 Fine Arts Gallery, Von Buren, Arkansas (solo exhibition)
  • 1992 Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art , New York (solo exhibition)
  • 1992 John Pence Gallery, San Francisco (solo exhibition)
  • 1993 Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York (solo and group exhibition)
  • 1995 Hours For Life Gallery, New York (group exhibition)
  • 1997 Schwules Museum , Berlin (group exhibition)
  • 2006 New Society for Fine Arts , Berlin (group exhibition)
  • 2012 Kymara Gallery, Biddeford , Maine (group show)
  • 2015 Loom Gallery, London (solo exhibition)
  • 2015/2016 Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart (solo exhibitions)
  • 2017/2018 Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (solo exhibition)
  • 2018 Museum Bensheim (solo exhibition)
  • 2019 Long Beach Museum of Art (solo exhibition)

Movie

The film An Englishman in New York documents the friendly encounter with the writer Quentin Crisp , who valued his painting and campaigned to make his works known. Angus is played by the actor Jonathan Tucker . The film shows several of Angus' works and thus made them known to a wider public.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Sebastian Preuss: Patrick Angus, an American realist . In: Patrick Angus. Private show. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart on the occasion of the exhibition December 2, 2017 to April 8, 2018 in Stuttgart, pp. 10-18.
  2. ↑ Illustration in: Patrick Angus. Private show. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart on the occasion of the exhibition December 2, 2017 to April 8, 2018 in Stuttgart, p. 11.
  3. ^ Patrick Angus: Los Angeles Drawings. Leslie Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 2003 ISBN 978-0-913-92502-7 .
  4. ↑ Douglas Blair Turnbaugh: Strip Show - Paintings by Patrick Angus Heretic Books, 1993
  5. ^ A b Douglas Blair Turnbaugh: Vita Brevis Ars Longa . In: Patrick Angus. Private show. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart on the occasion of the exhibition December 2, 2017 to April 8, 2018 in Stuttgart, pp. 142f.
  6. ↑ a b Tobias Bednarz: Patrick Angus at the Thomas Fuchs gallery. Retrieved February 4, 2018
  7. ^ Sebastian Preuss: Patrick Angus, an American realist . In: Patrick Angus. Private show. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart on the occasion of the exhibition December 2, 2017 to April 8, 2018 in Stuttgart, p. 13.
  8. ^ Nikolai B. Forstbauer: Patrick Angus in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Who believes in love here? Stuttgarter Nachrichten of December 1, 201. Retrieved on February 4, 2018
  9. ↑ Patrick Angus attracts the masses. Stuttgarter Zeitung of December 2, 2017. Accessed February 4, 2018
  10. ↑ Sebastian Preuss: The male painter. Patrick Angus and the gay life. in: Die ZEIT of August 18, 2016, No. 35, p. 46.

literature

  • Patrick Angus - Under the Surface. With texts by Christoph Breitwieser and Anna Raab. Stadtkultur Bensheim, Bensheim 2018. ISBN 978-3-9818233-2-5
  • Patrick Angus. Private show. Published by the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart 2018. ISBN 978-3-954-76213-2
  • Patrick Angus. With texts by Thomas Fuchs, Mark Gisbourne and Douglas Blair Turnbaugh. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Berlin 2016. ISBN 978-3-7757-4180-4 .
  • Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Mark Gisbourne: Patrick Angus: Painting and Drawings. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016 (English). ISBN 978-3-775-74180-4 .
  • Douglas Blair Turnbaugh: Strip Show - Paintings by Patrick Angus Heretic Books, 1993 (English). ISBN 0-854-49172-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Angus, Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd December 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Hollywood
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1992
Place of death New York City