SLEEPING: Rick Bartow Once Again Confronts Death

The first time I encountered Rick Bartow’s work in 2003 I was immediately spellbound and I still am. The depth, complexity, and diversity of Bartow’s art continues to fascinate me and, for that reason, I have more work by him in my collection than by any other artist.  Some people are put off by Bartow’s art because they find it dark and disturbing.  Many of the artist’s works fit that description, but it does not categorize the sum total of his output.  There is also often sly humor in his work, much of it self-deprecating, as well as many beautiful images.  However, art doesn’t always have to be pretty.  As an artist, Rick Bartow wanted his audience to think and to feel.  The viewer may come away from a Bartow work unsettled, but the images the artist created will most probably remain in one’s mind.  Art is supposed to move us.  Rick Bartow’s work certainly can be said to do just that.

Sleeping. . . . by Rick Bartow, Wiyot, cuttlefish ink, gouache, and pencil on LANA paper, 19 3/4” x 25 3/4” (1995).  Collection of E. J. Guarino.  Image courtesy of the Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR.

 

Rick Bartow explored a wide range of themes and subject matter in his art, which reflect the artist’s many interests and influences – his Wiyot heritage, Vermeer, Klimt, Chagall, Max Beckmann, Francis Bacon, Odilon Redon, Horst Janssen, Edward Hopper, Hieronymus Bosch, Monet, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Hans Holbein the Younger, Expressionism, Surrealism, as well as Japanese Ukiyo-e prints.  Nonetheless, Bartow’s art is unique.

Sleeping (detail).

          Recently, I had the opportunity to acquire Sleeping, a multimedia piece by Rick Bartow, and, as usual, I could not resist adding it to my collection since I felt that this was an important work by the artist.  In it Death was faced head-on through the image of the skeleton.  This subject was one that the artist returned to again and again, especially towards the end of his life, but it was present throughout his career.  He saw fellow soldiers die in the Viet Nam war and had to accept the loss of his wife to cancer.  Although Bartow often included images of the human skull in his art, to my knowledge, Sleep is the only work in which he employed an almost full skeleton.

Sleeping (detail).

 

Sleeping contains many signature Rick Bartow elements – a handwritten statement, Japanese characters, enigmatic marks such as a cross, splotches, dots, flecks, and ink drippings.  Bartow often repurposed paper, using sheets that already contained printed words and/or images. Often the words were banal, just decorations as far as the artist was concerned.  It might be kanji characters or words written in English or German.   Everything was grist for the mill; nothing was off limits.  Bartow would create a powerful image over printed and handwritten words or on pieces of paper glued together and even envelopes that had been stamped and mailed that he found interesting.

Sleeping (detail).

 

One of the most intriguing aspects of Sleeping is the piece’s handwritten section.  Bartow often wrote on his prints and multimedia works.  Sometimes, it is easy to read what the artist wrote, but in other instances, some of what is on the page has been obscured by ink splotches.  Although these marks create a feeling of spontaneity, one cannot help but think that Bartow only wanted his audience to decipher part of what he had written, giving works with handwritten notes a sense of mystery as well.  The viewer is glimpsing only the parts of the work that the artist chose to reveal giving such works, including Sleeping, a seductive quality.  We not only want to see more, we want to see everything.  It is as if Bartow has heeded the advice Momma Rose gave to her daughter, the fledgling stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in the musical Gypsy: “ . . . make them beg for more, and then don’t give it to them!”

Charles Froelick, owner of the Froelick Gallery, was kind enough to transcribe the handwritten statement Rick Bartow had written on Sleeping.

Sleeping (detail.)

 

Here we go again. Another one sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, and I don’t know how to say goodbye. really say it and know it and say it for real that this . . .  is it and I have trouble later I know . . . w . . . trouble later and I don’t want to repeat, and yet I know that there is no end to the ‘tou . . .d’ I started to say goodbye and end up saying something stupid. And then I heard myself say it for a second, knowing it wasn’t what I should have said. It wasn’t over it wasn’t, but what came over me was what came out as . . .  began here we go again same o . . . is su . . . .  I can’t do a damn thing about it it just goes over and over on and I don’t know what . . . on in there but I don’t know I don . . . for my love’s family friend and the . . .  I don’t like or even know we gotta be ready you know it I know it, but what does that mean really – what we gonna do when tealzes it really my grandpa and grandma left here.  . . . and screaming and they are devout  . . . .   . . . they studied it and she believed in a tomorrow . . . and I do too but how to get there without hurting anyone or leaving anyone . . . . You know something I just got a glimpse of who I am down in theere close where I don’t go much maybe when when the left me and my . . . we were t . . . younger and I’ve never left that summer night as we walked over the sand and … sang side by side and we were just as two and he was next … where I could see him I was . . . my . . . wasn’t broken or nothing I was just . . . my Mom and I wasn’t confer . . . over the . . . as years i we cried at times when . . . couldn’t explain why and I guess I am a the . . . and that where I left it.  . . . my friend and it’s just not tru you know only . . . the . . .  just lays there and sleeps don’t snore or nothing just lays there sleeping and I know I got feelings for him and all he is so important to my family and I, and I look at him sleeping and sleeping and I hope he isn’t hurting in there and I wish it were different but it’s not and I know it and we all know it and it is not gonna change or reverse no more and I wish it would cause he was so . . . to so many and now he just sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and it makes me so nervous damnit I can’t sit still and concentrate it’s so . . . like him to sleep . . . long and not be talkling and moving around taking care of things now he just sleeps and s . . . .

Death was often a theme in Rick Bartow’s art, but he wasn’t morbid about it.  It was just one of the many subjects he explored in his work.  Bartow had seen death close up in Viet Nam and later in his life he was to experience it in a more personal way when his wife Julie succumbed to breast cancer in 1999.  The handwritten text Bartow recorded in Sleeping seems to refer to someone in Bartow’s life who was dying at the time the piece was created.  The phrase “my love’s family friend” suggests that it was someone connected to Bartow’s wife Julie.  However, this long statement is most definitely a meditation on death.  As with all of Bartow’s work, Sleeping somehow manages to be both personal as well as universal.  Visually, this work is, in essence, a momento mori (Latin for “Remember you must die”).  Clearly, death was a very powerful subject for the artist and one that he explored in various ways repeatedly throughout his career in prints, drawings, mixed media works, and paintings.  Sleeping is mysterious and fascinating and, as with many of the artist’s works it presents us with a mystery, which we may never solve – a message that appears to be to some unidentified person, but, in fact, may just be ideas that the artist wanted to convey to the wider world.

Since ancient times, death has been compared to sleep in works such as the Bible and in a number of Shakespeare’s plays. Even in modern times the analogy exists in such works as Raymond Chandler’s 1939 crime novel The Big Sleep and the 1946 classic noir film based on it.  Rick Bartow’s Sleeping follows in that tradition.

In the course of many years, Charles Froelick has assisted me in acquiring scores of works by Rick Bartow and he has graciously taken the time to answer my many questions about individual works and patiently transcribed the handwritten statement in Sleeping.  In one of his emails to me, Charles Froelick said of my collecting that it was “methodical, strategic and thoughtfully meandering.”  I certainly can’t quarrel with that, especially the “thoughtfully meandering” part.  My tastes do tend to be eclectic, especially where Rick Bartow is concerned.

Rick Bartow’s art cannot easily be confined to culturally based interpretations; it defies categorization.  This is definitely true of Sleeping. I make no secret of the fact that I am a great admirer of Bartow’s work. In addition to acquiring the artist’s work, whenever and wherever possible, I advocate for it to be exhibited.  It is the best way to keep this major artist’s legacy alive.

 

All images are courtesy of the Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon.

The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to Charles Froelick, owner of the Froelick Gallery, for his invaluable help with this article and for his assistance in acquiring numerous works by Rick Bartow.