Richard Loving (1924–2021) was an American artist and educator, primarily based in Chicago, Illinois.Artner, Alan G. "2 Loving exhibitions double the pleasure," Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2007. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Yood, James. "Richard Loving," in Spirited Visions by Patty Carroll and James Yood, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991, p. Retrieved July 6, 2021. He gained recognition in the 1980s as a member of the "Allusive Abstractionists," an informal group of Chicago painters, whose individual forms of organic abstraction embraced evocative imagery and metaphor, counter to the dominant minimalist mode.Gedo, Mary Mathews. "Abstraction as Metaphor: The Evocative Imagery of William Conger, Richard Loving, Frank Piatek, Miyoko Ito", Arts Magazine, p. 112–117, 1982.Schulze, Franz. "Richard Loving’s Abstract Imagism," New Art Examiner, April 1981.Adrian, Dennis. Chicago: Some Other Traditions, Madison, WI: Madison Art Center, 1983.Pincus, Robert L. Review, Los Angeles Times, July 1984. He is most known for paintings that critics describe as metaphysical and visionary, which move fluidly between abstraction and representation, personalized symbolism taking organic and geometric forms, and chaos and order.Moser, Charlotte. "Abstract/Symbol/Image: A Re-vision," Abstract/Symbol/Image, Chicago: Illinois Arts Council Travel Exhibition, 1984.Blake, Kevin. "Inside the Outside: Richard Loving and Eleanor Spiess-Ferris at Hyde Park Art Center," Bad at Sports, February 5, 2014. Retrieved July 6, 2021. They are often characterized by bright patterns of dotted lines and dashes, enigmatic spatial fields, and an illuminated quality.Artner, Alan G. "Review: Richard Loving," Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1989. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Schulze, Franz. "Artists the Critics Are Watching," ARTnews, May 1981. In 2010, critic James Yood wrote that Loving's work "mull[ed] over the possibilities of pattern and representation, of narrative and allegory" to attain a kind of wisdom, transcendence and acknowledgement of universals, "seeking understanding of self within the poetics of the physical world."Yood, James. Recent Views of an Inner World: Paintings by Richard Loving, Valparaiso, IN: Brauer Museum of Art, 2010.
Loving's art has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago,Art Institute of Chicago. "72nd Annual Exhibition of Artists from Chicago and Vicinity," 1969. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Art Institute of Chicago. "81st Annual Exhibition of Artists from Chicago and Vicinity," 1981, p. 20. Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York,Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Enamels, New York: American Crafts Council, 1959, p. 36. Retrieved July 9, 2021. Block Museum of Art,Yood, James et al. Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago, 1935-1995, Evanston, IL: Block Museum of Art/ Northwestern University, 1996. Retrieved July 9, 2021. Hyde Park Art Center and Brauer Museum of Art. His work belongs to the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago,Art Institute of Chicago. Richard Maris Loving, Artists. Retrieved July 6, 2021. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Richard Loving Artists. Retrieved July 6, 2021. and Smart Museum of Art, among others.Smart Museum of Art. Richard Maris Loving," People. Retrieved July 9, 2021.State of Illinois, Department of Central Management Services. James R. Thompson Center Permanent Art Collection. Retrieved July 9, 2021.
Life and career Richard Maris Loving was born in Vienna, Austria in 1924.Art Institute of Chicago. "Oral History of Richard Loving," Artists Oral History Archive, 2012. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Enamel Arts. Richard Loving. Retrieved July 7, 2021. His parents, Pierre and Faith Loving, were American writers who lived in Europe and socialized in 1920s artistic circles.Loving, Pierre. "The Crossing," in Americans Abroad: An Anthology, Peter Neagoe (ed.), The Hague: The Servire Press, 1932, p. 235–49. Retrieved July 7, 2021.Loving, Faith Maris. "Introduction," in The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard by Anatole France, New York: Classics Club by W.J. Black, 1943. Retrieved July 7, 2021. After his family moved to New York City in 1929, Loving studied art at Bard College, The New School for Social Research and the Art Students League in the latter 1940s, interrupted by a stint in the army. In 1945, he married Frances Brando, a fellow artist, and later, naturalist and teacher, who was the sister of actors Marlon Brando and Jocelyn Brando.Mays, Gary. "Brandos' Last Tango in Mundelein," Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1996. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Elder, Robert K. "Marlon Brando, 1924 – 2004," Chicago Tribune, July 3, 2004. Retrieved July 13, 2021.Johnston Laurie. "Notes on People," The New York Times, December 31, 1974, p. 9. Retrieved July 7, 2021. They lived in Hell's Kitchen in the late-1940s, where Frances introduced Loving to family friend Wally Cox, then a silversmith with a jewelry shop and an aspiring comedic actor.Flavin, Genevieve. "Rare Harvest of Art reaped at Pennypoke," Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 3, 1953., p. 3-1, 3-6.Welkos, Robert W. "When the wild one met the mild one," Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2004. Retrieved July 13, 2021. Loving learned the craft of enameling from Cox, which he supplemented by studying Limoges enamels at city museums; as Cox's entertainment career advanced, he turned over management of his shop to Loving.
In 1953, the Lovings left Manhattan for the Brando family's farm, Pennypoke, near Mundelein, Illinois. Loving converted the property's barn and out-buildings into a family-operated jewelry workshop and art studio, including a large kiln that he built in order to produce large-scale enamel artworks.Anderson, Don J. "Work in Enamels, Kovler Gallery," Chicago American, June 26, 1966. During that time, Loving exhibited at the Bloomington Art Association (1957) and Lawrence College (1963), and in the exhibition, "Enamels" (Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, 1959), developing what art historian Franz Schulze later called " a modest, static local reputation in craft circles."Buchwald, Wesley R. and John W. Mulder, Craftsmen in Illinois, Illinois Art Education Association, 1965, p. 6–7.
By the late 1960s, Loving had largely left the Brando farm, eventually divorcing Frances. He settled in a Chicago loft, which spurred a significant shift in his art toward drawing and painting, and gradually, abstraction. Schulze cites a 1969 Kovler Gallery exhibition as his "first important solo show" in this new phase; Loving also exhibited at Galerie le Chat Bernard (1973), N.A.M.E. Gallery (1977), the St. Paul Art Center ("Drawings, U.S.A." exhibit, 1968) and Art Institute of Chicago (1969 "Chicago and Vicinity Show").Lust, Herbert. Richard Loving: Image Destroyer, Chicago: Galerie le Chat Bernard, 1973.St. Paul Art Center. Drawings USA., St. Paul, MN: St. Paul Art Center, 1968. Retrieved July 8, 2021. He received steadily increasing local and national recognition during the 1970s and 1980s, exhibiting at Roy Boyd Gallery (Chicago and Los Angeles) from 1983 to 1996Gedo, Mary Mathews. "Speakeasy: Mary Mathews Gedo," New Art Examiner, April 1985, p. 12–3.Taylor, Sue, "Richard Loving: Two Kinds of Order," Roy Boyd Gallery, March 1993. and in a ten-year survey at the State of Illinois Art Gallery in 1990.Donato, Debra Duez. "The Mark to the Bird House," The Living Museum, Vol. 52, no. 02, 1990, p. 28–30. Retrieved July 6, 2021. He was also selected to exhibit in the traveling shows "Abstract, Symbol, Image" (Hyde Park Art Center, 1984),Artner, Alan G. "Analysis of new showing smacks of revising history," Chicago Tribune, October 1984. "Chicago: Some Other Traditions" (Madison Art Center, 1984) and "American Abstraction/Four Currents" (Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, 1985).Meisel, Louis K. American Abstraction: Four Currents, New York: Meisel Gallery, 1985. Retrieved July 8, 2021.
In his later career, Loving had featured exhibitions at Printworks Gallery (1998, 2003), Jan Cicero Gallery, (2000), the Brauer Museum of Art (2010) and Hyde Park Art Center (2014),Buchholz, Barbara. "Gallery Watch," Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1998. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Holg, Garrett, Review, ARTnews, December 2000.Artner, Alan G. "Richard Loving is enamored of breathing," Chicago Tribune, February 21, 2003. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Hertzlieb, Gregg. "Introduction," Recent Views of an Inner World: Paintings by Richard Loving, Valparaiso, IN: Brauer Museum of Art, 2010. and thirty-year reviews at the Evanston Art Center and Art Center in Highland Park (both 2007). Loving died on March 27, 2021, at age 97, in Oak Park, Illinois.Chicago Tribune. "Richard Maris Loving, 1924–2021," Obituaries, April 11, 2021. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
Work and reception In Arts Magazine, critic Mary Mathews Gedo characterized Loving as a "virtually self-taught … maverick artist" and late bloomer, who worked representationally during Abstract Expressionism's heyday, retreated from the Manhattan zeitgeist to the country to explore the medieval art of enameling, and in Chicago, turned to abstraction at the height of city's Imagism movement, reaching his mature style and height of productivity and recognition in his upper fifties. Chicago Tribune critic Alan Artner described Loving's work as evolving from early figuration and representation, to a semi-abstract symbolic discourse from the 1970s to 1990s, to more representational, "spiritually transcendent" pictures suggesting cosmic subjects and landscapes in the 2000s.
Early work Loving's enamel works on copper often depicted stylized figures set in semi-abstract, primordial landscapes seemingly in flux (e.g., Untitled, 1959).Enamel Arts. Richard Loving, Untitled (5-part Landscape). Retrieved July 7, 2021.Art Institute of Chicago. Untitled, 1959, Richard M. Loving, Artworks. Retrieved July 6, 2021. They employ painterly gesture influenced by Abstract Expressionism and bright colors sometimes flecked with gold and silver;Chicago Tribune. "Work in Enamels," July 3, 1966. the work differs from traditional enameling in its modernist resistance to the medium's inherent decorativeness, achieved through the incorporation of disparate materials such as rough wood, multi-panel formats and large scale. Loving largely discontinued enameling by the end of the 1960s, but writers cite its influence in his later work's use of color, transparency, and geometric divisions within canvasses.
Loving's new direction was heralded in a 1969 Kovler Gallery show, in which he presented large shaped drawings of fantastical machine forms described as faintly evocative of the Cubist work of Francis Picabia. The drawings led him back to oil painting, yielding a more abstract, subsequent series depicting webs of hard-edged geometric forms disappearing into densely marked backgrounds.
Mature work After moving to Chicago, Loving's work began what Franz Schulze called its "slow ascent toward more ambitious things"— a personal style of lyrical abstraction that by the mid-1970s made him "a figure of recognizable substance on the Chicago art scene." He arrived at his mature style during a period when he belonged to the "Allusive Abstractionists," a self-named group of artists that included Miyoko Ito, William Conger and Frank Piatek.Warren, Lynne (ed.). Art in Chicago 1945-1995, Museum of Contemporary Art, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996, p. 247, 260, 275. Retrieved July 6, 2021.Vine, Richard. "Where the Wild Things Were," Art in America, May 1997, p. 98–111. They were united by their mutual interest in a form of organic abstraction that—counter to minimalist hard-edged abstraction—embraced real-world referentiality, evocative imagery, metaphor, subjectivity and old master techniques, while exploring contemporary stylistic problems.Moser, Charlotte. "Regional Revisions: Houston and Chicago," Art in America, July 1985, p. 90–9.