| Frederick Hart has
been in the public eye since the 1970's when he won a competition to design
the entrance of the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. His sculptures
of Ex Nihilo (Out of Nothingness), Creation of Day, Creation of Night and
Adam redefined and invigorated figurative art. Hart's first bronze, Three
Soldiers at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, also in Washington D.C., put
faces to the names of that conflict's dead and reflected an ambiguity in
those faces that had never before been seen in public monumental works.
His victory over the
Warner Brothers film starring Al Pacino, The Devil's Advocate, which used
a recreation of Ex Nihilo, in a manner which degraded the work, helped
to preserve an artist's rights to his own work and the protection of its
intent.
J.Carter Brown, Director
Emeritus National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. wrote in "Frederick
Hart, Sculptor" , Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1994, "One of
the functions of art is to challenge. Frederick Hart's sculpture is among
the most challenging art I know."
Frederick Hart's belief that art should deal directly with public service,
figurative beauty, spirituality and the heroic possibilities of humanity
went against the grain of the art establishment, particularly in New York
City which was in the grip of Abstract Expressionism and Contemporary
Art. "Contemporary Art", pronounced Frederick Hart, "Died
of old age."
Hart's themes of being
and becoming which he had illuminated in Ex Nihilo drew him to explore
clear acrylic as a medium which would allow him to "sculpt with light".
This pristine material which had never been used to yield fine art before,
became the sculptor's tool to create images that would appear then vanish,
metamorphose and come to rest. Hart patented an embedment technique which
literally encases one sculpture within another offering a multiplicity
of form, a visual slight of hand; compelling, hypnotic and often profoundly
moving. To the present, he is the only sculptor to be able to achieve
this.
Tom Wolfe at the National
Press Club Award Ceremony in 1998 stated, "Rick is, and I do not
say this lightly, America's greatest sculptor."
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