Frederick Elliott Hart (November 3, 1943 – August 13, 1999) was an American sculptor. The creator of hundreds of public monuments, private commissions, portraits, and other works of art, Hart is most famous for Ex Nihilo, a part of his Creation Sculptures at Washington National Cathedral, and The Three Servicemen (also known as The Three Soldiers), at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Working within the figurative tradition of American Beaux-Arts sculpture, Hart's approach was that of a craftsman. With little formal schooling, he developed his skills on the job, learning ancient techniques from master carvers.
Hart modeled his work in clay. Many of his larger pieces were carved in Italian marble or limestone, or cast in bronze. Throughout his career, Hart explored themes of beauty and spirituality, consciousness and identity, sculpting in transparent and semi-transparent acrylic materials using a process he patented.
Strongly influenced by the dramatic poses of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Anna Hyatt Huntington, as well as the naturalism of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French,Homan Potterton, "Metamorphosis: Stone Carver to Artist" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 19. Hart's style was also shaped by that of Auguste Rodin,The Emerging Flame: The Work and Philosophy of Frederick E. Hart (Frederick E. Hart Sculpture Group, 1989). especially in the way he conveyed movement, experimented with abstract forms, and pushed the boundaries of traditional figurative art.Donald Martin Reynolds, "Apotheosis of the Human Figure: An Aesthetic of Evolutionary Humanism" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 63.James F. Cooper, "The Re-enchantment of Public Art" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 70.Michael Novak, "Beauty Is Truth: The Changing of the Tides" in Frederick Hart: Changing Tides (Hudson Hills Press, 2005), p. 1.
According to J. Carter Brown, Director Emeritus of the National Gallery of Art, “It is breathtaking to see an artist with the technical abilities and devotion to craft of Frederick Hart combine these gifts with an ability to go to the brink with them, but somehow keep the inner, emotional, intellectual and spiritual force of the work dominant."J. Carter Brown, Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1995), p. 11. In the words of Tom Wolfe: “Rick is—and I do not say this lightly—America’s greatest sculptor.”
Early life Frederick "Rick" Hart was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Joanna Elliott, and Frederick William Hart, a heavy drinker who had served in the United States Navy during World War II. Hart's older brother, also named Frederick William, died as an infant. Hart's mother contracted scarlet fever and died in 1945, when Hart was two.
As he grew up, and his relationship with his father suffered, Hart became known as a troublemaker, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother and aunt in Horry County, South Carolina.Tom Wolfe, "The Idealist," in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 12. Hart's father began working as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, and married Myrtis Mildred Hailey in 1947. Half-sister Chesley Hart was born in 1949. In 1956, they moved to Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and Hart rejoined his family. Although his relationship with his father continued to deteriorate, Hart and his half-sister Chesley became good friends.
Hart was an avid reader, but a troubled student. After failing ninth grade, he was sent back to South Carolina to live with his Aunt Essie, and to repeat the school year. Teachers were worried he would fail out of high school. The principal was almost certain that he would. He challenged Hart to take the A.C.T. to show how little he knew. When Hart achieved a near-perfect score, the principal was stunned. In 1959, he helped sixteen-year-old Hart gain early admission to the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina.Tom Wolfe, Obituary: "The Lives They Lived: Frederick Hart," New York Times Magazine, January 2, 2000.
At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement was gathering strength, and the campaign to desegregate South Carolina's school system began. In Columbia, in 1961, African-American students led 250 in a protest march against racial segregation. Hart was the only white student to join them:
“I was just walking by,” Hart said. “I happened to know some of the demonstrators. They were from Benedict College, a black school in Columbia. I went over and started talking to them. That irritated the volunteer police (who were used for riot control). They told me to move along. At that point, I said, ‘Screw you.’ And I joined the demonstration.”David Zinman, "Life in Horry," The Horry Independent, April 2, 1998, 5A.
Hart was expelled from the University of South Carolina, thrown in jail, and then chased out of town by the Ku Klux Klan.
Artistic career In 1965, Hart’s sister, Chesley, was diagnosed with leukemia. Because her parents were unable to cope with the illness, Chesley's Aunt Grace became her caregiver. Hart tried to stem his family’s disintegration by helping Aunt Grace as much as he could. The next year, when she was just 16, Chesley died.
In the turbulent period after her death, Hart “stumble[d] into a sculpture class at the Corcoran School of Art, and [was] blown away.” Mourning Chesley shaped what Hart would later describe as his “moral responsibility” as an artist. As he said: Art must ”give hope to the darkness.” It ”must be a part of life. It must be an enriching, ennobling and vital partner... It should be a majestic presence in everyday life."
Hart dropped out of the Corcoran, then attended art classes at American University in Washington, D.C., but dropped out again before receiving a degree.Irvin Molotsky, "Frederick Hart, 56, Designer of Vietnam Statue," New York Times, August 17, 1999, C2. While working at Giorgio Gianetti Studio of Architectural Sculpture, he assisted sculptors Felix de Weldon, Carl Mose, Don Turano, and Heinz Warnecke. Hart was also using his time in Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to study the public art of the nation's capital, and absorb the naturalistic style of sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Toward the end of the 1960s, Hart began work on one of his earliest and most personal sculptures, Family. Years later, Hart would say that Family was for him a way to come to terms with Chesley's death; it was an effort to represent an idea of stability, to capture a sense of belonging. The first casting Hart presented as a gift to his girlfriend in 1969. Stylistically, Family signals Hart's tendency to straddle the line between Classical and Romantic sculptural traditions. The heavy pyramidal form of Hart's Family evokes the solidity of French's Abraham Lincoln, but the raw, earthy contours set it apart, and situate it within the Romantic tradition of Rodin.
Washington National Cathedral In 1967, Hart took a job as a clerk in the mail room at Washington National Cathedral. He did so for the specific purpose of pestering Roger Morigi. Morigi was the Cathedral's legendary master carver, an Italian immigrant who had carved the iconic frieze of the United States Supreme Court Building.Tony Mauro, "The Supreme Court's Own Commandments," Legal Times, March 2, 2005. "Highly respected, [Morigi] was a temperamental perfectionist who didn't tolerate incompetence and wasn't shy about sharing his opinions."The Master Carver Gargoyle, Washington National Cathedral (official website). Hart wanted Morigi to take him on as an apprentice. In time, it worked: Morigi became his mentor. Not only that, he became a father figure to Hart, who had long been estranged from his own parents.
"Working at the cathedral was the best experience of my learning life," Hart said. "It taught me 'how' to work. I wanted to know and feel the discipline—the mastery of stone carving—and I learned that in the hours of working up on the scaffolding in the heat of summer and through the winter." At first, Morigi put Hart to work on floral ornaments, primarily ceiling bosses. Because they were so high up, and far from view, any rookie mistakes would be less noticeable there, but for Hart, this meant scaling more than ten stories of scaffolding, and working high up off the ground. As his training progressed, Morigi gave him more responsibilities. Hart carved reliefs, motifs, and gargoyles, and sculpted a figure of Erasmus.Homan Potterton, "Metamorphosis: Stone Carver to Artist" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 20. He was on his way to becoming a master carver himself when the Cathedral Building Committee announced a major competition.
Creation Sculptures
In 1971, the Washington National Cathedral Building Committee held a competition to determine the appearance of the west façade, the main entrance of the Cathedral. This was not just an important commission, it was a radical break with tradition. In the past, the west façade of a Christian cathedral typically featured a depiction of the Last Judgment; however, the Cathedral Building Committee wanted Washington National Cathedral to be the exception. Instead of the traditional image of judgment and destruction, they wanted to emphasize a message of love and affirmation, and so they specifically asked artists to focus on the theme of Creation.
To an ambitious young artist like Hart, it was an irresistible opportunity: a compelling theme, and a chance to see his own work carved in limestone over the main entrance of the Cathedral. Interestingly, too, the committee was willing to consider nonrepresentational, avant-garde designs, so for three years, Hart sketched in clay. His original tympanum design (from early 1974) was a wide, bare space, from which a woman's face emerges. The Cathedral Building Committee rejected this submission, as well as those of all the other artists. Only three sculptors were invited to submit new proposals. Hart was not one of them. Undeterred, Hart submitted a revised design of his own. Guided by the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the idea of a dynamic universe, whirling into existence, Hart developed a revolutionary, unifying vision for the entire west façade. To the committee's approval, he submitted new models for the central tympanum, for the left and right tympana, and for the figures on the trumeaux below them.
In developing Ex Nihilo—the central sculpture, by far the largest of the group—Hart studied the combination of figurative and abstract forms in Rodin’s massive sculpture, The Gates of Hell.Frederick Turner, "On Ex Nihilo" in Frederick Hart: The Complete Works (Butler Books, 2007), p. 24. The final, full-size version of Ex Nihilo spans 21 feet, and stands two stories high.Tom Wolfe, "The Idealist," in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 13. "The spiraling forms that recur throughout Hart's Ex Nihilo suggest the spirals that are found in nature—in sunflower heads, nautiluses, hurricanes, and galaxies."Frederick Turner, "Evolution Out of Chaos: The Creation Sculptures" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 60. Hart intended the title as a double reference to Aristotle ("out of nothing nothing can be made") and the Bible ("everything is made out of nothing").Frederick Turner, "Evolution Out of Chaos: The Creation Sculptures" in Frederick Hart: Sculptor (Hudson Hills Press, 1994), p. 59.
For the central trumeau, Hart sculpted an image of Adam, and for the tympana on either side, day and night.Barbara Matusow, "The Passion of Frederick Hart," Washingtonian, November 1998, p. 54. As a complete sculptural ensemble, the Creation Sculptures constitute "the most monumental commission for religious sculpture in the United States in the twentieth century."
Vietnam Veterans Memorial