March 03rd, 2018

William Scharf's Scroll Paintings

Many of the artists found in the Telfair Museums collection came to them through an artist’s personal connection with Savannah. Gari Melchers was married to a Savannah woman named Connie Lawton, Kahlil Girbran’s matron of his art was married to a Savannah man, Helen Levitt’s sister is a Savannah resident, the Kirk Varnedoe Collection is in honor of the Savannah native who was the Curator of the MOMA, and so the list goes on.  This is the case of William Scharf who recently died in January of this year.
William Scharf was one of our great Abstract artists. He was there for the tail end of the beginnings of the movement and was at the vanguard of the second wave of Abstract artists. He was discovered by none other than NC Wyeth who assisted him in entering Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His works are found in the permanent collections of dozens of important institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. His art is well known. Since 1950 his work was being shown in some exhibit somewhere. Although he never achieved the popularity of some of his peers he was well known as the artist’s artist.
 Part of his recognition was due to his teaching jobs at some of our greatest art institutions. For three generations of artists he was their teacher.  In 1964 he began his teaching career at the MOMA. He would go on to teach at the School of Visual Arts, San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts, the Pratt Institute, Stanford University and the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. He finished his career of teaching at the Arts Students League which he began in 1987 and continued until he died in January of this year. His teaching career will extend his legacy not only in his art but in the many students he shepherded as they found their way in the art world.
 Scharf is often categorized either as an Abstract Expressionist or as a Color Field artist. He is considered an Abstract Expressionist because he moved to New York in 1952 to be a full-time artist. There in New York he became caught up in the Abstract Expressionist’s Movement that was still in its peak years. He also met and became a lifelong friend of the great Color Field pioneer Mark Rothko in the 1950s. Rothko mentored Scharf and instilled in him an appreciation for the emotive power of color. This relationship that extended to their respective families too would lead Scharf to help with the Rothko Chapel in Houston. This is considered a holy shrine to Color Field painting, and one of the most important destinations in the world for lovers of abstract art.
In 1966 Scharf began working in the former studio of Alexander Brook, another noted painter who for a brief spell led an art colony here in Savannah. Scharf’s
space was in an abandoned cotton warehouse on River Street. This made him what I call one of the Cotton Row Painters of Savannah. He would be there every summer until 1985 dividing his time there with teaching at the San Francisco
Art Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Why did he choose Savannah? One reason: he married Savannahian Sally Kravich. Another reason may have been the intellectual climate of Savannah was flourishing during this time. Many artists of the previously mentioned art colony were here. The Preservationists Society was well established here. While here he would meet and befriend Savannah’s Pulitzer Prize for literature and poetry winner Conrad Aiken. He would also give personal lessons to one of Savannah’s great artists Augusta Oeschlig. One can only imagine the other Savannahian’s paths he crossed while living here. We do know he was inspired to start his scroll paintings while here. Two of his paintings are in the Telfair Museum Collection.
Christopher Rothko (the son of Mark Rothko) eulogized Scharf with a story of a time he had spent with Scharf on Tybee Island. In the story his and Scharf’s families were having a wonderful day at the beach when Scharf began to swim out in the ocean which had particularly choppy waves that day. He asked Sally, his wife, should he be swimming so far out in the ocean. She said it was okay. But Rothko was nervous and gravely concerned when he could no longer see Scharf. In fact he would not see Scharf for another thirty minutes before he saw his steady and firm stroke making his way back to shore. Coming out of the ocean Rothko was amazed but his family and others were nonchalant. This was the way of Scharf; he was constantly doing amazing things in his teaching and his art. And those who followed his work just grew to think amazing was a normal occurrence for a man such as Scharf.
And maybe this is a metaphor for Savannah too. We treat the history of Savannah and this place of moss, architecture, artists, squares, ships, and culture, which is often amazing, as just ordinary. 
  

William Scharf's Ascending Betrayal found in the Telfair Museum's Collection a whopping 66 x 179 in.