Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Lou Zona, director of the
Butler in Youngstown, calls LeRoy Neiman ‘an original.’
By MARK KENNEDY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW YORK — Something strange is missing from LeRoy Neiman’s art studio.
There’s an easel, of course, and a long table piled with pots of paints and brushes. Years of work have left a thick coat of multicolored droplets splattered across the floor.
What’s missing? In a word: Art.
Other than a few commissions stacked below the easel and two enormous paintings hanging on the walls, Neiman’s airy studio is remarkably spare — a testament to his astounding selling prowess.
“I haven’t got anything left,” he says. “I’ve got a couple dozen decent paintings that I’ve kept. But everything else is taken.”
He says it without regret or hubris. It’s just a fact of life for the 86-year-old known for his expressive, vibrant portraits of sports figures and cultural life. For decades, Neiman has turned his art into a virtual one-man empire, creating a phalanx of fans and joining the ranks of artists whose works command prices over $100,000.
“I haven’t bought a cigar or a bottle of wine in 40 years,” he says with a laugh during an interview in the Upper West Side home and studio he has shared with his wife, Janet, for decades.
It’s here that Neiman has created his abstract, vivid and kinetic views of racetracks and bars, as well as portraits of such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Mickey Mantle.
Along the way, he’s churned up more than paint. Neiman has often been dismissed by some as too commercial to take seriously.
“Many people would say that the very popularity of LeRoy’s work would speak against his being a great artist,” says Tony Jones, president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I think it’s all a complete waste of time. He is who he is, and he paints what he paints.”
His slicked-back hair and signature handlebar mustache may be gray these days, but Neiman hasn’t slowed down. He still cranks out paintings every few months and always has a stack of prints and posters to sign.
He’s just finished portraits of former Yankee great Reggie Jackson and the two Ryder Cup captains — Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger — and a painting for the popular East Harlem Italian restaurant Rao’s. He’s planning a 160-foot-long mural for the soon-to-open Sports Museum of America downtown and has been commissioned to climb into a helicopter and paint the Los Angeles skyline.
This month, his smallest works are up for sale. Franklin Bowles Galleries in San Francisco and New York are offering 300 of his drawings for Playboy magazine.
Dr. Louis A Zona, executive director and chief curator at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, compares Neiman to the much-mourned Luciano Pavarotti, celebrated for bringing opera to the masses.
“LeRoy Neiman has done the same thing. He’s taken fine art techniques, he’s taken abstract expressionist techniques, and he’s presented them to the average person,” Zona says. “He’s truly an American original.”