"Portrait of Nureyev,"
James Wyeth, 1977/2001. Combined mediums. Collection Jim and
Jocelyn Stewart.
Capturing
Nureyev:
By Stephen May
NEW YORK CITY - Over the course of what is now a relatively long
and productive career, Jamie Wyeth has created memorable
paintings of animals and birds, views of rural Pennsylvania, and
evocations of the Maine coast and its islands. At 55, the third
generation painter of the famed Wyeth clan continues to seek new
and challenging themes, often invoking the sense of fantasy and
whimsy that runs through the work of his grandfather, N.C. Wyeth,
and his father, Andrew Wyeth.
One constant in the younger Wyeth's career has been portrait
work. A precocious and successful artist from his teenage years,
he has always done likenesses - of family, neighbors, celebrities
and people who interested him, including American icons ranging
from John F. Kennedy to Andy Warhol. They form an impressive and
sometimes overlooked niche in his oeuvre.
Wyeth approaches portraiture with patience and determination. He
prefers to create likenesses only after extended exposure to his
subject and the execution of numerous meticulous studies. "When I
work on a portrait," he has said, "it's really osmosis. I try to
become the person I'm painting. A successful portrait isn't about
the sitter's physical characteristics - his nose, eyeballs and
whatnot - but more the mood and the overall effect. I try not to
impose anything of mine on him."
Wyeth's most sustained portrait-painting campaign, initiated a
quarter century ago, involved the famed Russian dancer, Rudolf
Nureyev. They met in New York in the early 1970s, at a time when
Wyeth shared a studio with Warhol. Struck by Nureyev's intense,
enigmatic personality, Wyeth asked the famously vain and
charismatic dancer to pose for him, but he refused.
Nureyev relented a few years later and, in 1977, allowed Wyeth
full access to his life for a year. The artist and his wife
Phyllis became very close to the dancer, who visited their home
and joined in family costume parties and other hijinks.
"Black Background, Three-Quarter Figure, Nureyev (Study #17),"
James Wyeth, 1977/1993. Combined mediums. Collection of the
artist.
Wyeth, fascinated by Nureyev's magnetic persona, striking Tatar
face and superb physique, turned out sketch after sketch of the
dancer off stage, but none in performance. Excerpts from the
artist's sketchbooks and a photograph in which he is measuring
Nureyev's physiognomy with calipers suggests the care and
planning that went into the project.
Those 1977 depictions, along with others Wyeth created over the
intervening years, including several large works last year, have
been assembled into a fascinating exhibition, "Capturing Nureyev:
." A unique collaborative effort among the Farnsworth Art Museum
and Wyeth Center in Maine, The John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in Washington, and The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center in
New York, it features more than 35 paintings and drawings, plus
Nureyev costumes, set designs and photographs.
The show was co-curated by Lauren Raye Smith, assistant curator
and conservator at the Farnsworth and Barbara Cohen-Stratyner,
curator of exhibitions at The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts. A well-illustrated catalog, with informative
essays, accompanies the exhibition.
After opening at the Kennedy Center in February, where it
coincided with a visit by Nureyev's old troupe, the celebrated
Kirov Ballet, the exhibition will be on view at the New York
Public Library space at Lincoln Center March 22 to May 25, and
then travels to the Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine (June 9 to
January 5, 2003), and the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford,
Penn. (January 18 to May 18, 2003). The show is sponsored by the
MBNA Foundation, generous supporter of the Farnsworth and the
artwork of three generations of Wyeths.
In Nureyev (1948-1993), Wyeth (born 1946) found a particularly
fascinating and challenging subject. Born of Tatar parents, he
studied under Alexandr Pushkin in Moscow and, after joining the
Kirov Ballet in 1958, became one of its leading dancers. During
the Kirov's first appearance in the West, in 1961, Nureyev caused
a sensation by defecting in Paris.
Thereafter, he teamed up for a time with London Royal Ballet's
star dancer, Margot Fonteyn, attracting new audiences to the old
art. That synergistic partnership is recorded in photographs of
the pair performing Marguerite and Armand (1963)
and Swan Lake (circa 1976).
Working as a dancer, producer and choreographer throughout the
West, Nureyev revitalized the Twentieth Century world of ballet.
Similar to the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky in "animal magnetism and
intensity of artistic focus," in the words of dance critic Clive
Barnes, Nureyev inspired generations of dancers to raise their
standards and expand their repertoires, and transformed Western
perceptions of the male dancer.
He was the first major classical ballet dancer to work with
modern-dance choreographers and companies, including Martha
Graham, José Limon and Paul Taylor. Wherever he went, Nureyev's
aura, charisma, intelligence and superb dance skills made a
lasting impression. Through him an indifferent public in the West
became aware of and appreciative of dance.
By the time he died of AIDS in Paris in 1993, his
larger-than-life persona - on and off the stage - had become the
stuff of legends. "Nureyev," writes Barnes in the exhibition
catalog, "had the power of the possessed and a faculty for
possession. He danced with all of himself...[H]e danced like a
demon, [with everything]...projected for maximum dramatic
effect." These qualities are well conveyed in the photographs and
Wyeth's artwork in this show.
Drawn to what Wyeth calls Nureyev's "physicality, that peasant
force...his animal nature...[and] marvelous energy," the artist
created more than 30 delicately rendered, intimate portraits
focusing on the dancer's taut, Tatar features and finely tuned
body. "I became so fascinated with him as a person," Wyeth
recalls, "that the fact he was dancing was almost immaterial."
Notoriously self-absorbed and sensitive about his appearance,
Nureyev was a difficult and demanding model, frequently
criticizing the way he was depicted in Wyeth's sketches. "We had
a great argument," says Wyeth, "and I had to explain, 'Rudolf,
you're interpretive in your dance and many of these drawings are
interpretive, too.'"
Wyeth's 1977 studies provide not only penetrating physical and
psychological views of his intriguing subject, but offer insights
into the artist's painstaking creative process.
"There's no formula to it," he observed a few years ago.
"Sometimes it can be a momentary look that's a distillation of
all these different moods. But I'm never satisfied with one
portrait. I think the studies probably are as important as the
finished piece." A pen-and-ink excerpt from a sketchbook, with
detailed written descriptions of Nureyev's physiognomy, documents
Wyeth's meticulous effort to get it right in his portraits.
An especially memorable result is a full face, introspective
bust, with white highlights and dark washes, that seems to peer
deeply into Nureyev's enigmatic soul. Others, depicting the
dancer from the waist up, are equally compelling and insightful.
As co-curator Smith writes in the exhibition catalog, "The
'studies' do not necessarily build to a final definitive
portrait; they are portraits in and of themselves."
The dancer's craggy profile and commanding physical presence
dominate another sketchy image in which Nureyev wears the
suggestion of a black fur coat. There are a number of full-length
studies of Nureyev in his leotard, culminating in a finished oil
painting, "Portrait of Rudolf Nureyev" (1977).
In 1993, following the dancer's death at age 54, Wyeth reworked a
series of large-scale, unfinished three-quarter length figure
studies that emphasize Nureyev's energy, power and physical
grace. These highly expressive images, several measuring a
sizable 48 by 36 inches, bring to mind Phyllis Wyeth's fond
recollections of the dancer.
"Nureyev exuded animal energy," she writes in an affectionate
memoir in the catalog. "His spirit was the spirit of a racehorse
with all its beauty and muscle and speed. His body had that
perfection."
In 2001, Wyeth completed the striking "Portrait of Nureyev"
(1977/2001), showing the dancer still wearing full stage makeup
and resplendent in a fur hat and coat. Also last year the artist
created several sizable, boldly hued, mixed-media works that
convey the sense of drama and fantasy Nureyev projected on stage.
"That was his life - performance," says Wyeth. "But in life he
was a such a strong force, he was so captivating, it was hard to
focus on what he was doing. Now, of course, the distance helps me
see him in context."
One painting, showing Nureyev portraying Don Quixote, recalls his
histrionic gestures and assured dance movements. It captures the
sense that, as Barnes puts it, "when he danced [he] always became
the character...but equally he always elusively remained
Nureyev."
"Rudolf Nureyev, Curtain Call for 'The Sleeping Beauty,'"
August 6, 1974. Courtesy Robin Platzer, Twin Images.
The display invites interesting comparisons between Wyeth's
images and documentary photographs. "Curtain Call" (2001) is an
80- by 60-inch view of Nureyev bowing in the spotlight, clutching
a rose, at the conclusion of a performance. He looks both
exhausted and pleased with the response of the audience. A
similarly posed, albeit smiling, dancer is shown in a photograph
of his curtain call following a performance of The Sleeping
Beauty in 1974.
A highlight of the exhibition is a poignant death scene,
measuring an eye-catching 42½ by 78 inches, "Mort de Noureev"
(2001), in which two Degas-like ballerinas kneel in mourning next
to the fallen star, their figures dramatically highlighted by a
brilliant yellow background.
"These [2001] paintings," observes Smith, "have a fanciful,
otherworldly quality to them. They possess less of the physical
solidity of the 1977 pieces, but a greater sense of drama and
fantasy." Many will find these most recent Wyeth works
unforgettable.
"Capturing Nureyev" also includes costumes worn by the dancer and
more than 60 photographs that trace a remarkable career that
changed the world of dancing forever. The photos are from the
Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, the
world's largest archival collection of dance materials.
Reflecting a dynamic collaboration between two outstanding
artists, these paintings and drawings capture the look and spirit
of a unique and legendary figure in ways that are exciting and
enduring. Wyeth's images will linger long in the memories of fans
of art or ballet - or both.
The 92-page exhibition catalog is exceptionally handsome and well
done. In addition to lavish illustrations of Wyeth's artwork and
vintage photographs, there are useful contributions by Barnes,
dance critic of the New York Post; Lynn Seymour, a Nureyev
friend and fellow dancer; Phyllis Wyeth, the artist's wife (with
Wendy Larsen); Cohen-Stratyner of the New York Public Library and
Smith of the Farnsworth. Published by the Farnsworth and
distributed by University Press of New England, it will be
treasured by both Nureyev and Wyeth aficionados.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy
and Lewis B. Cullman Center is at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. For
information, 212-870-1630. The Farnsworth Art Museum is at 16
Museum Street in Rockland, Maine. For information, 207-596-6457.
The Brandywine River Museum is located on US Route 1 in Chadds
Ford, Penn. For information, 610-388-2700.
