Crrraaack! Portentious thunderclap
as I open the car door in front of Bill Bomar’s sprawling, old adobe Talpa
home. Yapping of dogs at his front door. No answer. Around to the side of the
artist’s high-ceilinged studio. “Come in,” calls a voice. Enter. Silver hair
and beard, the artist in a blue jump suit wheels up in a motorized wheelchair.
Smiles. Classical music loud. One wall full of books, the rest covered with
work from all periods of a long and wide-ranging artistic career. Where to
begin? He’s returned only the day before from a trip to New York
How was it?
“I saw Baryshnikov twice. Marvelous.
An extraordinary young man, but he doesn’t have the animal magnetism that
Nureyev had.” You’re a ballet aficionado? “When I lived there I would go three
or four times a week to see Nureyev and Fontaine. They’d just arrived. They
could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and wiggle.” Smile.
Born
in Ft. worth, 12/30/19) with cerebral palsy, and then stricken with a near
fatal case of spinal meningitis in ’45, confined, more or less permanently, to
a wheelchair since the late ‘70s, Bomar’s eyes are bright with memory, recent
and old, of Russian ballet stars. Does physical infirmity create a soul
well-attuned to Beauty? A deficiency balanced by intense perception,
sensitivity and appreciation?
He
lived at the Chelsea Hotel, New York, for two months short of 30 years. The
infamous Chelsea? “There was a time when you could get out of the elevator on
the fifth or sixth floor and take a deep breath and never have to smoke your
own grass.” Laugh. “John Sloan, one of my first teachers, lived at the Chelsea,
and I studied with him (early ‘40s). Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a room, then
Sloan told me that they were throwing out some poor son of a bitch because he
was overdue on a couple of months rent. So I moved into his place. I’m glad I
never met the fellow. I spent a week at the Chelsea two years ago. It was
terrible. I then realized it had to exis6t in my mind as a memory.”
The
long years in New York were made bearable, enjoyable, by his yearly three or
four month vacations to Maine, Cape Cod, northern New Mexico. But what about
the beginning? Early influences?
“When
I was seven my mother had my portrait painted. I was fascinated. So . . . being
spoiled, I started with oils. I wouldn’t draw or touch watercolors. Just oils
until I was 16.” He finally touched watercolors under the tutelage of Joe Bakos
in Santa Fe where his family often vacationed. He attended the Cranbrook Art
Academy in Michigan from 1940-41, then New York and Sloan. “For the first six
or eight months, working with Sloan was a painful experience. He said to me one
time that until you can draw a line that is a thought, and not an imitation,
you can’t begin to solve a problem. You have to connect what you see with your
head and then to you hand. The connection of vision, head, and hand. Sloan made
me aware of that process.” Studies with Sloan were followed by a year of criticism
from Ozenfant and further studies with master abstractionist Hans Hoffman. The
work from the ‘40s and ‘50s, as that of any young artist searching for himself,
is sometimes experimental, derivative, immensely diverse, but always passionate
and whole. There is in them a kind of personal history of art. Cubism,
Constructivism, Impressionism, all laced with an almost mystical, visionary
power. An oil painting of his mother entitled
Modigliani-esque Portrait of Jewel,
vibrant watercolor landscapes and still lifes date from this period. His first
show, presented at the Weyhe Gallery where he exhibits still, was in 1944. He
participated in two Whitney Biennials.
Why
so many startling leaps in style?
Laugh.
“I don’t know. It just suits my temperament. Maybe I have a multiple
personality. I work on a thing for w while, and then move on to something else.
It’s a response to a feeling not to remain in one area too long.” Pause. “I
have no great theory. If a painter sounds too good on paper you should start to
wonder. Barnett Newmann was a fascinating talker. His paintings . . . If what
you have to say is not from visual experience it should be written. People who
talk too much about art are usually disappointed artists.”
For
three years now he’s had an intense and exhaustive concern with collage, the
results of which will be shown at Tally Richards Gallery, Taos, beginning June
4. No longer under the influence of the Cubists/Dadaists, Braque, Picasso,
Schwitters, but something different – an organic harmony and synthesis, an
unerring sense of completion in random design. “I found an old box in my studio
one day. It was full of all these trimmings, remnants of past works on paper
that I had done. So, I found this box and started gluing.” Smile. “I’ve been
doing it now for three years because there is a playful enjoyment in collage
that I find in watercolors. The nice thing about collage is that if it doesn’t
come out in a day or two, you can always start over again. It’s like solving an
equation. I ran out of ready-made remnants about a year ago, so I’ve been
making new ones since then.
“You
know, it’s the doing of the thing
that’s important. It must be something you do because it either relaxes you or
enlarges your sense of the world. It’s splendid if other people like it, but
it’s . . . A show, too, is nice. But you’re surrounded by all of your mistakes,
and nobody knows it better than you do. It’s a bloody bore, and everybody lies
to you.” Laugh. “All that socializing, all that talk, it doesn’t have anything
to do with it. Great groups of people have never been my interest. So I’ve
never found it a great difficulty being along.”
What
about Taos?
“It
feeds me through my feet.” Silence. “It’s not a ‘joining’ community. It’s not a
people-oriented place. Taos is just not arranged that way. It’s a place for doers, not for social butterflies. It’s
a place for loners.”
He
just returned from New York, New York. He’s steeped in the classic tradition of
art and art history, in training and perceptions. What of the new trends?
“I
had the most repugnant visual experience at the Whitney! It was insulting. Even
Johns was sloppy. Look, once it’s bad, if it’s bigger it’s worse! They’ve
rediscovered German Expressionism. The think if you slap on some red, some
green, and some purple, it’s saying something. It makes you ill. So negative.
Not even that positive-negative thing, you know. If it’s a reflection of the
world, if the world is in that state, then we’re further gone that we think.
Advertising has become . . . . American culture is ruled by it. Advertising and
art have been moving closer and closer together in the last 10, 20 years. You
have to have an act to go along with the work . . . Art becomes fashion. Like
Castelli – he’s doing the same thing that Duveen did with the Morgans and the
Mellons. It’s all social one-upsmanship and competitive. A form of intellectual
flattery. I think what they’re going to say in future years is, ‘There was a
culture that was told what to think, what to buy.’ The influence of advertising
on the creative field has become a major motivational problem.”
What’s
next?
“I
think I’ll start painting soon, to see what effect all this gluing has had.”
-- Thom Collins, June, 1983
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