Faces of the People

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

New York City is a magnificent environment for people watching. On the streets, manual laborers mingle with capitalist big shots, celebrities blend in with the masses, and economic refugees share the sidewalks with tourists on spending sprees. I know of no other city that compares with New York for ethnic and cultural diversity. If you love humanity for its endless variations, New York is a sumptuous banquet.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

Of course, once you leave the street or Subway and step into a culturally specific environment, most of that diversity disappears. Unfortunately, that is true in the galleries and performance venues of the art world. The art world in New York is not all white or all American, but it is almost entirely populated by people with a certain kind of education and upbringing, with certain well-defined ways of speaking and acting and dressing.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

Those who work in arts administration are united in proclaiming the value of diversity and have been trying for years to reach out to “underserved audiences” and “underrepresented populations”. Their efforts have been somewhat successful – I think art audiences in New York, especially for large, well-publicized events, are clearly more diverse now than when I moved here two decades ago. Still, it doesn’t begin to compare with the diversity on the streets. Art galleries in New York are all free to enter, but the vast majority of people never do. Unfortunately a lot of art is pretentious and unfriendly to the uninitiated. This attracts an audience of initiates, whose aura of exclusivity tends to deter those who do not see themselves as art world insiders.

"The Active Mirror",2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

A few years ago I took advantage of an opportunity to use my art to connect with people on the street. Chashama is an arts organization that has special access to the asset that is most problematic in the dense and expensive city – space. Chashama’s founder and artistic director, Anita Durst, is a member of a legendary real estate dynasty family. The Durst Organization develops skyscrapers in Manhattan. Properties that are condemned or transitional are made available for the arts through Chashama. I’ve been involved with Chashama events since the mid-1990′s. They have a great track record of supporting all kinds of artists, including some that most of the institutions would consider too underground or outsider or offbeat to present.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

During the early 2000′s, Chashama had a whole block of storefronts on 42nd Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, while the Durst Organization was constructing the Conde Nast Building at the corner of Broadway and 42nd, the southern end of Times Square and the Theater District. They hosted a huge festival of theater and dance, performance art, visual art and installations called “Windows on 42nd Street“. In April, 2002, and again in July, 2003, I presented a drawing performance called “The Active Mirror.”

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

A sign on the window read: “A reflection is the view of a virtual eye behind the glass. Look at your reflection in a storefront window, and you see yourself and your surroundings, superimposed over the merchandise on display. But in this window, on this day, the view you see in the window is that of another subjective eye, an artist who sketches what he sees through the window, on the window. Stop to watch, and your portrait may appear there on the window.”

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

I lined the inside of the window space with white fabric and the inside of the plate glass with clear acetate. I hung some of my portraits in the window space, to prove, I suppose, that I was a qualified portrait artist. I stood at the window with my black Sharpie and sketched the urban landscape until I could attract passersby to stop for me. If anyone paused to watch, I quickly began sketching a likeness, starting with a recognizable detail of attire or hairstyle so the subject would know that I was drawing him or her. I had to work quickly, as I couldn’t expect anyone to have the patience to give me a prolonged pose. Other passersby would stop to watch the action, and I would quickly move on to the next subject, since if my audience would disperse I would face the difficult challenge of gathering a new cluster.

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

Visual art is usually considered an indirect form of communication. You make a painting or whatever, and later, people look at it and try to imagine what you were thinking or feeling in the act of creating it. For a long time I’ve had an interest in the potential of visual art as a more direct way of relating to another person. This interest has been explored through a highly collaborative way of working with models, through the idea of art as a ritual or experience (such as body painting), and through treating the act of drawing or painting as a dance or performance, for an audience.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

In “The Active Mirror”, my offer to strangers was to share with them my way of seeing them. I could not speak to my subjects, nor they to me, through the thick plate glass. My sharpie sketches were my only way of relating to people. Around the corner in Times Square, there are portrait and caricature artists who make a living sketching the tourists. My sketches were not for sale, just for public display, and I think many of the people who stopped for me were not tourists, but New Yorkers who would never think of sitting for a street caricaturist.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

Everyone is comfortable looking at something in a store window, even people who would never enter an art gallery or performance space, so by the end of five hours of sketching, the windows were covered with images reflecting the wondrous diversity of the New York street.

"The Active Mirror", 2002, view from inside the window, drawings and photo by Fred Hatt

Here are some more details:

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

"The Active Mirror", 2002, by Fred Hatt, view from inside window, drawings and photo by Fred Hatt

Daniel Maidman

Very cool project Fred! I like your quick-sketch style here. I’ve sometimes wondered about how to characterize the difference between the portrait artists working in tourist areas, and what people we think of as “artists” are doing – or if in fact a fundamental difference exists. The portraitists have some characteristic properties to their work, but some of them are good, some are bad, and some are very idiosyncratic. So it’s something I wind up not giving as much thought to as perhaps I ought.

Anyhow, thanks for sharing this – and I love seeing your 2002 hair!

http://www.fredhatt.com/blog/ fred

Daniel, I think the differences between the street artists and the studio artists are not worthy of being considered “fundamental”. Fifty years ago the snobs of high art wanted to think that illustrators were a different and lower species than the Pure Artist. But from the perspective of our time Norman Rockwell looks like a significant painter while a lot of the work that was in the high end galleries at that time looks rather dated. The way I see it, street portrait artists figured out a way to sell their practice work, while those of us who go to figure drawing sessions gather up piles of practice work we can’t do anything with!

http://tribalartsworkshops.com john Dodge

thanks for another great experience.
the last place i would look for a “real” artist is in a gallery or museum. Like the last place to find real food is in a restaurant or grocery store.
A “real” artist could be the guy driving the bus or even some guy sitting under a tree painting flowers on peoples butts.

http://www.fredhatt.com/blog/ fred

Thanks, John, for identifying me as a “real” artist, whom you first saw sitting under a tree painting flowers on peoples’ butts!

Actually I think there’s a lot of real art in museums – more than real food in a supermarket! I’ve gotten much inspiration from things seen in museums, although sometimes the museum setting loses something compared to seeing art in a more “living” context. It’s a bit like seeing animals in the zoo, as compared to seeing them in the wild.

Daniel Maidman

Hmm. Perhaps you’re right. I think one of the things I’ve seen in the work that makes me dismiss it is a kind of strange stereotyping system: identification and exaggeration of key features to produce a rapid and nearly mechanical likeness – a likeness, I would put it, without a resemblance. I’m not sure if I’m just using language idiosyncratically here or actually making sense. But it seems like a set of algorithmic correspondences and distortions which could me machine-generated, and to the extent I wonder about it, I wonder about the parallel but different skill-set involved in becoming proficient in this strange practice. Does it involve heightened detail-selection on top of a very solid generic sense of structure? Does it involve memorization of successful depiction of thousands of features, as one might memorize a pictographic alphabet? You may be right, but I retain a hunch that the street artists I find the most interesting are working in a categorically different way from me, and that difference sometimes really catches my interest. Incidentally, the difference does not arise at all in the work you show here – when I look at the work, I know exactly what you’re doing, because, while the details of your process and cognition are different from mine, the underlying mode of representation is exactly how I would solve the problem you have set yourself. I’m not coming up with anything conclusive, but thanks for raising an interesting topic.

http://www.fredhatt.com/blog/ fred

Daniel, I think you have nailed what makes most of the street portrait art not so interesting. An important difference with what I was doing in “The Active Mirror” is that these people weren’t paying me and I wasn’t giving them the drawings. I was also protected behind a very thick piece of plate glass, which somehow helped me not worry about whether people liked the way they were depicted or not.

When I’ve been commissioned to do portraits of people, I have often found it far more challenging than drawing portraits of class models at Spring Studio or Figureworks. Something about knowing that the person is paying me and cares about how I make them look makes it a lot harder for me to find the boldness that makes the model portraits work. Uh oh – This is really not a good thing for me to admit on one of my websites. Actually my commissioned portraits are wonderful! All blog readers, book now for your Christmas and anniversary gifts!

But seriously, can you imagine the pressure if you’re a court painter, and you have to paint the King, who has the power to have you beheaded if he’s not happy with the results!

Jennifer

This is such a fabulous idea! It’s a great concept, and the end results are marvellous too – no doubt helped by the fact that you are the master of the quick line drawing!
New York reflected back through them looks great too. Fascinating stuff!
(Okay, think I’ve run out of superlatives, but it’s such an interesting idea – there, found another one:))

http://www.fredhatt.com/blog/ fred

Thanks, Jennifer. I’d love to repeat this in other cities – London would be a good one!

drawing life