Butler museum acquires realist master painting

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Butler Institute of American Art has acquired a master painting by renowned American realist painter Audrey Flack. The painting, titled “Baba,” is a 7-by 13-foot oil and acrylic on canvas painting that was begun by Flack in 1980 and completed in 1983. The work, among the largest paintings in the Butler’s holdings, was a gift to the museum’s permanent collection by art enthusiast A. Barry Hirschfeld of Colorado. “Baba” is the second work by Flack to enter the Butler’s collection.

“The Butler is known for its collection of masterpieces,” said Louis Zona, director of the museum. “This remarkable painting is considered to be one of the very best examples of the work of Audrey Flack, who is one of America’s premier realist painters. The Butler’s great collection of art has just become even greater with the addition of this work.”

Flack, who lives and works in New York City and Long Island, is a pioneer of photorealism and a nationally recognized painter and sculptor. Her work is in the collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art (all in New York City), as well as in the National Museum of Art in Canberra, Australia. She was the first photo- realist painter to have a work purchased by the Museum of Modern Art.

Flack’s work has been featured in numerous traveling museum exhibitions and has been displayed at the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Denver Art Museum; and the Butler Institute.

“Baba” depicts an Indian philanthropist, a descendant from a long line of spiritual masters, who in 1965 took a vow of silence, and who communicated only through sign language. Flack shot hundreds of photographs of the subject, and Baba’s face was painted by the artist in three days in 1980.

The unfinished canvas remained in Flack’s studio for three years while she worked on other paintings. A year and a half later, she painted the three roses next to Baba’s face. She completed the skyscape and seascape late in the summer of 1983.

According to Flack scholar Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Flack transformed “Baba” into an icon of spiritual significance through this painting, making him the modern equivalent of a Byzantine icon. “The horizontal edges are defined by an intense sunset ... and by waves splashing upwards toward the clouds, both painted in thick impasto in almost relief-like, emphatic, abstract brush strokes. This expansive, elemental and mystical setting is Flack’s most monumental seascape. It was the result of her direct involvement with nature and pays homage to the early American landscape tradition of large vistas and untamed nature. The painting is a modern combination of the human and the sublime,” writes Gouma-Peterson.

“Baba” is on view at the Butler in Youngstown, in the second level Beecher Court galleries.

Flack earned a graduate degree and an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a bachelor of fine arts degree from Yale University. She attended New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she studied the history of art. She was awarded the St. Gaudens Medal from Cooper Union and the honorary Albert Dome professorship from Bridgeport University. She is an honorary professor at George Washington University and is a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania.