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Wally Hedrick

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File:Wally lawnpolo.jpg
Wally Hedrick at his home in Bodega, CA, c.2001. Photo Credit: LG Williams.
File:Hedrick flag c.1953.jpg
Wally Hedrick, Flag, c.1953, Painting, Oil on Canvas, 18 x 14", Private Collection. (Compare [[4]])
File:Hedrick blackptg.gif
Wally Hedrick, Black Painting, c. 1965-68, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 48”, Collection: Richard Reisman, Napa, CA.

Wally Hedrick, (born Wally Bill Hedrick in 1928 Pasadena, California – d. December 17,2003[5], San Francisco, California) was an influential American artist who came to prominence in the early 1960s.

Beginnings

Hedrick visited California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946. During this period, he joined Progressive Art Workers with Paula Webb, David Simpson, Deborah Remington, Hayward King, Rudolph Jenkins, John Allen Ryan, John Stanley and others. The Progressive Art Workers was a social club which also functioned as a co-operative through which the group the members were able to exhibit their works.

In 1951, during the Korean War, Hedrick was drafted into the United States Army and stationed in Korea until 1952. This action had a profound effect upon Hedrick’s life and work since he was enlisted against his will. In fact, Hedrick was escorted away by US Army MPs without even having the chance to call his parents. Throughout his career a recurring theme is his anti-war stance. During the Vietnam War, he actually painted all of his works black (the now infamous “Black Paintings”) believing he was withdrawing his contribution to western culture. These paintings he later recycled -- recycling being another recurring theme in his work--during the Persian Gulf War, slathering the older black paintings them with new statements in white acrylic paint like, "So damn, whose sane?".[1]

In 1954, Hedrick co-founded The Six Gallery in San Francisco, California with David Simpson, Hayward King, John Allen Ryan, Deborah Remington and Jack Spicer. The Six Gallery functioned as an underground art gallery for the members and a meeting place for poets and literati alike. One of the most important events in Beat mythos, known simply as "The Six Gallery reading" took place on October 7, 1955 at the Six Gallery, when Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time.[2]

The Sixteen Americans Exhibition at MOMA

In 1955, art curator Dorothy Miller came to the West Coast and included Hedrick in the 1959 "Sixteen Americans" show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY. Most of the chosen participants in this now infamous exhibition have since become firmly placed in the pantheon of Pop Art, Minimal Art and Contemporary Art: for example Hedrick's then wife, Jay DeFeo, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. True to form, Hedrick gave his cross-country plane ticket for the New York museum exhibition and spectacle to someone he hardly knew, rather than participate in the nonsense of pomp and spectacle.

It would be some time before Hedrick would figure prominently again in New York, in fact, 25 years later during the Whitney Museum of American Art’s, "Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965" exhibition in 1995.[6]

Significance and Artistic Temperament

It is important to stress that one cannot properly evaluate Hedrick’s enormous artistic legacy without acknowledging the key role his temperament significantly thwarted the conditions by which any critical determination, or any commercial success could begin.[3] Throughout his life, Hedrick gleefully shunned (if not refused completely) any and all media attention that would insure his proper place in the history of art among his peers. Walter Hopps, one of the nations most influential art curators, in his forward to 1985 Hedrick’s Adeline Kent Award exhibition catalogue at the San Francisco Art Institute, stated that Hedrick “decided to ignore the ideal of "career", "fame" and "greatness" to which his peers aspired, and settled for a simpler life, uncomplicated by openings and galleries and cocktail parties”.

Fortunately, the cultural historian Rebecca Solnit in her important 1990 book, The Secret Exhibition: Six Californian Artists, reasserted Hedrick’s unprecedented artistic achievements:

“It is now possible to say that Hedrick was ahead of his time: the first American to protest the Vietnam War, the artist to paint flags before Jasper Johns painted flags, who made kinetic junk sculpture before Tinguely did. Hedrick was a forerunner of Pop Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. It might be more useful to view Hedrick as an artist who was of his time in a unique way, a maverick whose responses to the world showed it in a different light.”

LG Williams installing Hedrick's, War Room at SSU in 1992. Photo Credit: LG Williams.
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LG Williams installing Hedrick's, War Room at SSU in 1992. Photo Credit: LG Williams.

Career

Hedrick taught at various institutions throughout his career including the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Francisco Academy of Art, San Francisco State University, University of California at Davis, San Jose State University and the College of Marin, where he held Professor Emeritus status. Many of his students have achieved remarkable success: Jerry Garcia [7] (The Grateful Dead), William Wiley, Robert Hudson, William Allen, Mike Henderson and LG Williams.

Wally Hedrick’s works have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world including The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The de Young Museum. His work resides in public collections which include The Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The de Young Museum to name a few.


References

  • Wally Hedrick, Statement for Catalogue, "Sixteen Americans", Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1959, p.13.
  • Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, Art Review: At the Whitney, A Celebration Of Beat Culture (Sandals and All), November 10, 1995.
  • Rebecca Solnit, “Secret Exhibition: Six Californian Artists”, 1990. ISBN: 0872862542
  • Walter Hopps, "Can't Be Cut to Fit (Too Few Thoughts of the Subject of Wally Hedrick)"
  • Lucy Lippard, "Pop Art", 1966, p.144
  • Gina Dorre and LG Williams, "Envisioning The Dark Millennium - Wally Hedrick’s Black Paintings 1953 - 2003" [8], 2005.
  • Kenneth Baker, “Mass appeal: Art comes at visitors from all directions at the S.F. International Art Fair”, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, January 18, 2003.[9]
  • Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Paul Karlstrom, "Wally Hedrick Oral History Interview", June 10, 1974.[10]

Famous Works

  • "Flag" (1953) [11]: "Hedrick...painted flags before Johns painted flags." -- Rebecca Solnit, The Secret Exhibition (1990)
  • "The War Room" (1967) [12]: "A significant item of Bay Area art history." -- Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle (2003) [13]


Awards

See Also

Notes

  1. ^ Biographical material: Catherine Conlin, editor, Wally Hedrick Official Webpage. See full resource here [1]
  2. ^ (Additionally) Jack Kerouac sat on the side of the low stage at the reading, drinking from a jug of wine and shouting, "Go!" at the end of some of the long lines. The audience of fewer than a hundred soon joined in with shouts of encouragement, exploding in applause at the conclusion, as Ginsberg left the stage in tears. (Gary Snyder had the bad luck to follow Ginsberg.) [2]
  3. ^ Wally Hedrick quoted in conversation[3], August 16, 2002, "It's not that I don't want to sell my paintings, it's just that people who can afford them don't deserve them, and people who deserve them can't afford them."

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