Peter Beard: Last Word From Paradise at Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton
The work of artist, author, and photographer Peter Beard will be on view from June 18 – July 31, 2016, at Guild Hall Museum. Peter Beard: Last Word From Paradise provides a rich perspective on Beard’s extraordinary life and work both in Africa and on the East End of Long Island. Representing the artist’s first U.S. museum solo exhibition in 15 years, the show presents more than 50 multi-layered collages, drawings, photographs, and diaries from the 1960s to the present, some on public view for the first time. Peter Beard: Last Word From Paradise includes the artist’s iconic work from Africa that chronicles the change in the landscape from a time richly populated by elephants, rhinos, and crocodiles, to what remains today. Also on view will be never-before exhibited Montauk portraits of his home, family, and friends including Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Onassis, and Lee Radziwill. Divided into two sections installed in separate galleries, the exhibition is organized around the two outposts that Peter Beard calls home – Africa and the East End of Long Island. Said Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Museum Director and Chief Curator, Guild Hall Museum, “We wanted to present Peter Beard’s body of work through a different lens, by exploring the artist’s visions of Kenya and Montauk as encampments/refuges where his art and life converge.” Ever since early childhood, keeping diaries has been a constant source of artistic inspiration. “Life is ever-evolving and with it so is my work. That is one important aspect of doing my diaries—continuous enhancement,” said Beard recently. Using his diaries as points of departure, his complex process often involves incorporating newspaper clippings, dried leaves, feathers, insects, old sepia-toned photos, photographs of women, quotes, and all sorts of found objects, in addition to working with ink and paint. At times the shamanistic quality and visceral nature of his compositions are further animated by the addition of animal blood, or even his own blood. The heart of the life-long adventurer’s work, his relentless concern about the state of the environment, and his chronicles of the devastation of the animal population in East Africa, are seen in the artist’s richly textured and multilayered work on view. His images have been described as providing a memory of the past, a record of the present, and an image of the future. Among the exhibition highlights is the striking self-portrait, I’ll Write Whenever I Can, 1965/2004, depicting Beard writing in his diary with his lower body submerged inside the fresh corpse of a crocodile. A number of Beard’s works depict the death of African wildlife especially his beloved elephants, featured in his groundbreaking book The End of the Game (Viking Press, 1965; Taschen, 2015), which chronicled the mass elephant starvation and destruction of the ecosystem in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park. (In 1996, the artist barely survived being crushed by an elephant when photographing on the Tanzanian border.) Beard’s visual record of Africa serves as a prophetic warning concerning the irrevocable threat to wildlife caused by human encroachment — cautionary tales of loss, distance from nature, density, and stress that still resonate today worldwide. In 1974, Beard bought property near the Church Estate, which was owned by Andy Warhol and Paul Morissey, in Montauk, Long Island. Beard’s captivating persona together with the stunning cliffside, beachfront dwelling, drew the Studio 54 crowd. During stays in Montauk, Beard photographed a number of luminaries and friends including Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, the Rolling Stones, Lee Radziwill, and Jacqueline Onassis, whose portraits are included in the exhibition. Then and now Beard applies the same commitment to conservation issues and land preservation in Montauk. His efforts are documented in a series of prints depicting the cliff erosion and preservation efforts deployed to preserve his beloved Montauk bluff. A devastating fire in 1977 destroyed the main house of Beard’s Montauk property including years of journals along with works by Picasso, Warhol, and Bacon. “When I got the news, I knew that you could either get into self-pitying mode or not, and I picked the later,” Beard said. Peter Beard was born in New York City in 1938. During his childhood spent in New York City; Tuxedo Park, New York; Southampton, Long Island; and Montgomery, Alabama, where his father was stationed during WWII, Beard began keeping diaries, which later became source material for many of his collage works. Among Beard’s most formative experiences after graduating from Yale were many exchanges of ideas with his former teachers, artists Vincent Scully, Josef Albers, and Richard Linder. Collaborations with fellow artist friends followed, including Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Gordon Parks, among others. Beard is the subject of and author of numerous books including most recently Zara’s Tales: Perilous Escapes in Equatorial Africa (Knopf, 2004) and Peter Beard (Tashen, 2013) among others. Museum exhibitions include the International Center of Photography, New York, 1977, the Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1979, the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, 1996-1997, and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2000-2001. International gallery exhibitions have been held in Berlin, London, Toronto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo, and Vienna, and his work can be found in museum and private collections worldwide including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; WestLicht, Vienna; Hugh Lane, Dublin; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Guild Hall
158 Main Street East Hampton New York 11937 631 324 0806 • GuildHall.org
Featured Image: Peter Beard I'll Write Whenever I Can…, 1965/2004 Gelatin silver print with gelatin silver collage, animal blood, and rag 50 1/4 x 88 1/4 inches (127.6 x 224.2 cm) ©Peter Beard, Courtesy of Peter Beard Studio www.peterbeard.com
