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Gregory Gillespie and Frances Cohen Gillespie at the Fogg
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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The Museum of Fine Arts has in its permanent collection a painting by Western Massachusetts–based artist Randall Deihl called Artists in Studio: Lust for Life (1985), a group portrait of seven painters, all living and working around Northampton in the 1980s, and all dedicated to realist painting at a time when that artistic direction was quite out of step with such cover-of-Artforum movements as conceptual art, video art, and other postmodernisms then in full swing. And there, in the very center of the group, wearing hippie-ish sandals and a Cosby-ish patterned sweater, sits Gregory Gillespie, looking off to the side as if dissociating himself from the group, which also includes his former wife, Frances Cohen Gillespie (the couple were married from 1959 to 1979), whose formative years as an artist were intertwined with his. The charged work of this pair is the subject of "Life As Art: Paintings by Gregory Gillespie and Frances Cohen Gillespie," which opens at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum this Saturday, and it promises to be a gem, with 25 paintings spanning the careers of both artists, who’ll be seen side by side for the first time. Gregory Gillespie is best known for his self-portraits, nine of which are included. He’s unflinching in detailing his own posture and flesh (often slouching, sometimes pudgy), his clothing (his tennis shoes have every bit as much personality as Van Gogh’s boots), the setting (almost always his studio, usually crawling with freaky stuff, real and imagined), and always that piercing gaze — it’s hard to look back at someone who’s looking out so intently. The self-portraits record the artist’s changing appearance and psychological state over a period of more than 30 years. A less prolific but no less bold painter, Frances Cohen Gillespie makes colorful floral still lifes that she sets up using flamboyant flowers, patterned kimonos or vases, and mirrors; the works go beyond physical reality into the realm of psychological and emotional truth. Both artists died too young, Frances of cancer in 1998 and Gregory by his own hand in 2000; it’s hard not to view their works with an overwhelming sense of mortality and the fleeting nature of reality. Contemporary British artist Sam Taylor-Wood has addressed mortality herself, in film and photography since the early 1990s, sometimes using symbols derived from Renaissance and Baroque painting but in a totally now kind of way. Next Thursday at 6 p.m., the British sensation comes to speak at the Carpenter Center; there’ll be a reception afterward. Also on December 11, the Museum of Fine Arts is hosting the lecture "Rembrandt: Two Perspectives," with insights into the work of painter, draftsman, and etcher Rembrandt van Rijn served up by modern-day painter, draftsman, and printmaker Michael Mazur and "Rembrandt’s Journey" curator Cliff Ackley. You’ll need tickets, but listening to this knowledgeable and opinionated pair dig into the work of the Old Master should be well worth the price of admission ($10 for MFA members, $13 if you’re not). "Life As Art: Paintings by Gregory Gillespie and Frances Cohen Gillespie" will be up at the Fogg Art Museum, 32 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, December 6 through March 28; call (617) 495-9400. "Sam Taylor-Wood: An Evening with the Artist" is at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, on December 11 at 6 p.m., with a reception to follow. The event is free; call (617) 495-5666. "Rembrandt: Two Perspectives," with Cliff Ackley and Michael Mazur, is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, December 11 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $13; call (617) 369-3300.
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