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William Utermohlen

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William Utermohlen
A 1967 self-portrait of and by William Utermohlen as a young man. He has an angular face with a high forehead, and he wears a short beard.
Self-portrait, mixed media on paper, 1967
Born(1933-12-05)December 5, 1933
South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedMarch 21, 2007(2007-03-21) (aged 73)
London, England
NationalityAmerican (1933–1992)
British (1992–2007)
EducationPhiladelphia Academy of Fine Arts
Years active1957–2002
Known forDrawing self-portraits after his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease
Spouse(s)
Patricia Redmond
​
(m. 1965)​
[a]
Signature
William Utermohlen's signature.svg

William Charles Utermohlen (December 5, 1933 – March 21, 2007 (1933-12-05 – 2007-03-21)) was an American figurative artist who became known posthumously for his self-portraits created after his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in 1995.

Born to first-generation German immigrants in South Philadelphia, Utermohlen earned a scholarship at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1951. After completing his military service, he studied in Western Europe in 1953. There, he gained inspiration from Renaissance and Baroque artists before graduating from PAFA in 1957. He moved to London in 1962 and married the art historian Patricia Redmond in 1965. Utermohlen moved to Massachusetts in 1972, before returning to London in 1975.

Utermohlen's artworks, created during a career which lasted from 1957 to 2001, have been condensed into six cycles. The Dante cycle (1964–1966) was influenced by Dante's Inferno, while series such as the Mummers cycle (1968–1970) and the Conversation pieces (1989–1991) were based on his early memories.

He experienced memory loss beginning in 1991, and was diagnosed with AD in 1995. Following his diagnosis, he began creating self-portraits and continued it for another six years, until he made the final self-portraits in 2001. He died on March 21, 2007 at the age of 73. In the years after the publication of his works in The Lancet in 2001, Utermohlen's self-portraits have been displayed in several exhibitions in places such as Chicago and London. His self-portraits were also the inspiration for the 2019 short film Mémorable.

Early life[]

William Charles Utermohlen was born in Southern Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 5, 1933,[1][2] the only child of first-generation German immigrants.[3] He earned a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1951, where he was educated under the realist artist Walter Stuempfig.[4] Utermohlen completed his military service in 1953,[5] which featured two years of service in the Caribbean. Shortly after completing his military service, he studied in Western Europe and travelled through Italy, France, and Spain[b] where he was heavily influenced by the works of Giotto and Nicolas Poussin.[7] In 1957 he graduated from PAFA.[8]

Pre-Alzheimer's career[]

The first artworks were a series of self-portraits completed between 1955 and 1957.[9] From 1957 to 1959, Utermohlen enrolled in the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford,[4] where he met R. B. Kitaj.[10][c] After Utermohlen left Ruskin, he returned to the U. S. and stayed there for three years.[12] Utermohlen moved to London in 1962 where he met the art historian Patricia Redmond, whom he married in 1965.[13][a] In 1969, Utermohlen's artwork was featured in an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery.[15] In 1972, Utermohlen began teaching art at the Amherst College in Massachusetts,[16] where Patricia received her master's degree.[17] Utermohlen had returned to London by 1975, [18] eventually obtaining British nationality in 1992.[12]

His works have been described as figurative by The Times, NBC and Emmanuelle Tulle.[19] For a short while in the late 1970s, Utermohlen adopted the technique of printing a photograph onto a canvas and painting directly over the photograph, which was a response to the photorealist movement. An example of this technique can be seen in Self-Portrait (Split) (1977). He would employ this technique for two portraits of his wife.[20]

Most of his paintings are classified into six cycles: the "Mythological series" of 1962–1963, the Cantos (or Dante) cycle of 1964–1966, the "Mummers Cycle" of 1969–1970, the 1972–1973 "War series"; the 1973–1974 "Nudes",[d] and the "Conversation pieces" of 1989–1991.

The "Mythological" series consist of relatively dim water scenes.[22] The "Dante cycle" was inspired by Dante's Inferno, but the art style was also influenced by 1960s movements including pop art.[23] The "War" series were artworks that referenced the Vietnam War,[24] and according to Utermohlen's wife, the inclusion of isolated soldiers represented his feelings of being an outsider in the art scene.[25] A 1973 painting in the "Nudes series" titled Five Figures, was influenced by events that happened at Amherst College.[21] Both the "Mummers Cycle" and "Conversation pieces" were based on early memories. The "Mummers Cycle", completed between 1968 to 1970, is based on the Mummers Parade of Philadelphia,[26] but in a letter from November 1970, he stated that the cycle was also created as a "vehicle for expressing my anxiety".[27] His wife, Patricia said that the Mummers Cycle were "an empathetic vision of the lower classes, but also his own projected self-image".[25]

The Conversation pieces have been described by Patrice Polini as Utermohlen trying to fix the events of his life before they fade away, with titles such as W9 and Maida Vale referring to the district and neighborhood, respectively, that he lived in at the time.[28] Utermohlen's art dealer Chris Boicos wrote about the Conversation pieces: "Signs of the disease are made apparent in the shifting perceptions of space, objects and people. They are premonitions of a new world of silence and sensory deprivation about to close in on the artist"[29]

For a short period in the early 1980s, Utermohlen' produced murals for such places as the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and the Royal Free Hospital.[30][31] The mural at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue was inspired by Italian painter Piero della Francesca.[32] Utermohlen had also been commissioned to paint portraits, which were created from the late 1960s to 1990.[33]

Illness[]

An oval shaped head with an semi-circle smudge that looks like an ear, the tiny mouth at the bottom and the two dots in the middle, representing eyes.
Head I (2000), Utermohlen's last recognizable self-portrait. According to his wife Patricia, these paintings show his "efforts to explain his altered self, his fears and his sadness."[34]

During the creation of the Conversation pieces, Utermohlen started to experience memory loss, including an inability to remember recent events, forgetting the route to his apartment, and issues with tying a necktie.[35] From 1993 to 1994, Utermohlen created a series of multiple lithographs, which depicted short stories written by the World War I poet Wilfred Owen.[28] Chris Boicos, Utermohlen's art dealer, said that the subject matter of the lithographs were a metaphor for the forthcoming Alzheimer's disease diagnosis a year later.[36] By the time Utermohlen had finished these lithographs, he would often forget to show up to the art classes that he would teach.[37]

Utermohlen was diagnosed with AD in August 1995, at the age of 61.[38][39] He was sent to the Queen's Square Hospital where a nurse, Ron Isaacs, became interested in his drawings and asked him to start drawing self-portraits.[40][18] The first of these, Blue Skies,[e] is a self-portrait of Utermohlen gripping a yellow table, in an interior that The Wall Street Journal described as "an empty studio".[7] When neuropsychologist Sebastian Crutch visited Utermohlen in late 1999, he described this painting as representative of him trying to hang on and avoid being swept out of the open window above.[41] Blue Skies was also the last painting that Utermohlen created that has been considered to be "large scale".[42]

Utermohlen started drawing self-portraits the same year he was diagnosed, and continued making them until 2001.[43] Utermohlen also began working on a series of watercolours around this time. These watercolours were titled the Masks series. The series continued from 1994 to 1999, but showed the most activity in 1996.[44] The last non-self-portrait was made in 1997, and was of Patricia.[45] Patricia explained that his later work such as the Masks series shows similarities to movements such as German Expressionism.[46]

Shortly after his diagnosis, he and Patricia travelled to Europe. While there, Utermohlen was interested in Diego Velázquez's 1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X,[47] and according to New Statesman, he had seen the portrait and likened it to versions of the portrait created by Francis Bacon.[40] After they returned to England in 1996, he created Self Portrait (In the Studio), which includes the screaming mouth, a common motif in Bacon's work.[48]

As Alzheimer's began to affect his work, his self-portraits especially became increasingly unrecognizable.[49] Alzheimer's disease had spared Utermohlen's ability to paint, despite what was observed in Crutch and his research team's tests.[50] Patricia said in a 2013 interview that she had to cover the mirrors in their house because he was terrified by what he saw there, stopped using mirrors when painting his self-portraits.[f] However, his illness did not affect his transition from figurative to abstract art.[52]

In Self Portrait (In The Studio) (1996), consternation and fear are seen in Utermohlen's expression. Another portrait from 1996, Self Portrait (With Easel), shows more confused emotions.[53] His Self Portrait with Saw (1997) contains a carpenter's saw in the far right, which Patricia believes references an autopsy that would have given a definite diagnosis for illness.[54] Polini also noticed that the saw was pointed vertical, similar to that of a guillotine blade; stating that it symbolises the "approach of a prefigured death".[55]

Erased Self Portrait (1999) was the last attempt at a self-portrait using a paint brush,[5] and took him nearly two years to complete.[56] The self-portraits from 2000–2001 consist of just a head. "Head I" (2000) consists of a head with eyes, a mouth and a smudge on the left that appears to be an ear.[43] It was described by the BBC as "almost sponge like and empty".[57] The rest of the portraits were of a blank head, one of them erased.[43] In a 2001 interview with Margaret Discroll, he said that he created the self-portrait in an attempt to try and understand "what was happening to me in the only way I can".[58]

Death[]

Utermohlen had retired from painting by December 2000.[59] By 2002, he could no longer draw, and was sent to the Princess Louise nursing home in 2004.[11] He died at the Hammersmith Hospital on March 21 2007, as a result of pneumonia at the age of 73.[18] Patricia said that "really he was dead long before that, Bill died in 2000, when the disease meant he was no longer able to draw."[60]

Legacy[]

Utermohlen's self-portraits gained attention after they were published in a 2001 paper from the medical journal The Lancet, a paper that has often been attributed for advancing the work's popularity.[61][g] According to Xi Hsu, the portraits have been marker as the "highlight of his career."[63]

Pam Ambrose, a director of the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), said that "If you did not know that this man was suffering from Alzheimer's, you could simply perceive the work as a stylistic change".[64] Other commenters compared them to Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Edvard Munch.[65] A 2012 New Scientist article said that Utermohlen's artworks provided viewers with a "unique glimpse into the effects of a declining brain."[66] The existence of his earlier self-portraits (which allowed viewers to create a time-lapse of his mental decline), and the idea that his works give a rare view into the mind of an Alzheimer's patient, were two aspects contributing to his growing popularity.[67] The 2019 short film Mémorable was inspired by the self-portraits,[68] and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2020.[69]

Exhibitions[]

Utermohlen already had his works in exhibitions before diagnosed with AD. By 1968 he had an exhibition by the Lee Nordness Gallery in New York City, and in 1969 he would have an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery; in 1972 Utermohlen had the Mummers cycle featured in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.[15] While he was in Massachusetts, Utermohlen's posthumous portrait of Gerald Penny was featured in the Gerald Penny 77' Center,[70] and earlier in that year, Utermohlen had artworks such as Five Figures in the Mead Art Museum.[71] Sales of Utermohlen's earlier works at his exhibitions ranged with prices from $3,000 to $30,000.[72]

Utermohlen's artworks and his late self-portraits have also been shown in several exhibitions in the years after his death, including 12 exhibitions from 2006 to 2008.[73] Notable exhibitions include A Persistence of Memory, shown at the Loyola Museum of Art in Chicago, in 2016,[43] A Retrospective at the GV Art gallery in London in 2012,[74][h] an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2008,[75] and The Later Works of William Utermohlen, shown at the New York Academy of Medicine in 2006, which marked the centenary of Alois Alzheimer first discovering the disease.[76] His self-portraits have been shown at the Two 10 Gallery in London in 2001,[77] Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2005,[78] Boston, and Los Angeles. In 2008 the self-portraits were exhibited in Sacramento, California.[79]

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ a b Sources conflict over the date of Utermohlen and Redmond's marriage. For example, NBC and New Statesman claims that they married the same year they met.[14]
  2. ^ He was able to travel through Europe through the G.I. Bill, which he gained from his additional service in the Vietnam War.[6]
  3. ^ According to Margaret Lock, Utermohlen was also influenced by Kitaj's pop art works.[11]
  4. ^ Although his earliest nudes date to 1953, he produced most of the works between 1973 and 1974.[21]
  5. ^ According to NBC, the painting was made between 1994–1995.[5]
  6. ^ The last self portrait that Utermohlen had used a mirror for was Self Portrait (With Easel) (1998).[51]
  7. ^ Utermohlen had wanted his works to be a subject of medical research and he willingly engaged in research published by The Lancet, which involved the relationship between the symptoms of the disease and aesthetics.[62]
  8. ^ The GV Art gallery had a previous exhibition of Utermohlen's work earlier that year, which was titled "William Utermohlen: Artistic decline through Alzheimer's".[60]

Citations[]

  1. ^ UK Government.
  2. ^ The Times 2007; Baldwin & Capstick 2007, p. xxix.
  3. ^ The Wall Street Journal 2012; Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 5; Lock 2015, p. 244.
  4. ^ a b Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 5.
  5. ^ a b c NBC 2006.
  6. ^ Baldwin & Capstick 2007, p. xxix.
  7. ^ a b The Wall Street Journal 2012.
  8. ^ Bradley et al. 2006, p. 152.
  9. ^ Utermohlen 2006f.
  10. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 5; The Times 2007.
  11. ^ a b Lock 2015, p. 245.
  12. ^ a b The Times 2007.
  13. ^ The Wall Street Journal 2012; Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 5.
  14. ^ NBC 2006; New Statesman 2012.
  15. ^ a b Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 6.
  16. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, pp. 6–7; NBC 2006.
  17. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 7; The Wall Street Journal 2012.
  18. ^ a b c Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 7.
  19. ^ The Times 2007; NBC 2006; Tulle 2004, p. 105.
  20. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, pp. 7–8.
  21. ^ a b Utermohlen 2006j.
  22. ^ Utermohlen 2006g.
  23. ^ Utermohlen 2006c.
  24. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 8.
  25. ^ a b Hsu 2014, p. 114.
  26. ^ Utermohlen 2006h.
  27. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 12.
  28. ^ a b Polini 2007.
  29. ^ Cook-Deegan 2018, pp. 64–65.
  30. ^ Bradley et al. 2006, p. 152; Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 7; Crutch, Isaacs & Rossor 2001, p. 2130.
  31. ^ Green et al. 2015, p. 19.
  32. ^ Utermohlen 2006d.
  33. ^ Utermohlen 2006i.
  34. ^ Utermohlen 2006e.
  35. ^ Gilhooly & Gilhooly 2021, p. 116; Davenhill 2018, p. 300.
  36. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 116.
  37. ^ Davenhill 2018, p. 300.
  38. ^ Association of American Medical Colleges 2006; Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 24.
  39. ^ Grady 2006.
  40. ^ a b New Statesman 2012.
  41. ^ Ball 2017.
  42. ^ New Statesman 2012; The Wall Street Journal 2012.
  43. ^ a b c d Boicos 2016.
  44. ^ Utermohlen 2006a; Boicos 2016.
  45. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 25.
  46. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 24.
  47. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 126.
  48. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 127.
  49. ^ Gerrard 2015; Loyola University Chicago 2016.
  50. ^ Hsu 2014, pp. 111–112.
  51. ^ Polini 2006, p. 11.
  52. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 121.
  53. ^ Green et al. 2015, p. 11.
  54. ^ American Academy of Neurology 2006; Loyola University Chicago 2016.
  55. ^ Polini 2006, p. 9.
  56. ^ Association of American Medical Colleges 2006.
  57. ^ BBC 2001b.
  58. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 123.
  59. ^ Derbyshire 2001; BBC 2001b.
  60. ^ a b Purcell 2012.
  61. ^ The Wall Street Journal 2012; Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 7; Tulle 2004, p. 107.
  62. ^ Swinnen 2015, p. 147.
  63. ^ Hsu 2014, p. 111.
  64. ^ Loyola University Chicago 2016.
  65. ^ Swinnen 2015, p. 145.
  66. ^ Swinnen 2015, p. 146.
  67. ^ Swinnen 2015, pp. 145–146.
  68. ^ Grobar 2020; McLean 2020.
  69. ^ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2020.
  70. ^ Jackson & Blair 1974, p. 1.
  71. ^ Iacobuzio 1974, p. 18.
  72. ^ Gerlin 2001.
  73. ^ Utermohlen, Polini & Boicos 2008, p. 35.
  74. ^ The Wall Street Journal 2012; New Statesman 2012.
  75. ^ Lock 2015, p. 244.
  76. ^ American Academy of Neurology 2006; NBC 2006; Grady 2006.
  77. ^ BBC 2001a.
  78. ^ Harvard Art Museums 2005, p. 34.
  79. ^ Trinity Journal 2008.

Sources[]

Bibliography[]

External links[]

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