Ian Hornak

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Ian Hornak

Ian Hornak in his East Hampton, New York studio, 1997
Birth name John Francis Hornak (later changed to Ian John Hornak)
Born (1944-01-09)January 9, 1944
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died

December 9, 2002(2002-12-09) (aged 58)
Southampton, New York

Interred: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
Nationality American (United States)
Field Painting, Drawing, Printmaking
Training University of Michigan, Wayne State University
Movement Hyperrealism, Photorealism
Website ianhornak.com

Ian Hornak (January 9, 1944, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – December 9, 2002, Southampton, New York) was an American draughtsman, painter and printmaker associated with the Hyperrealist and Photorealist art movements.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ian Hornak moved to Brooklyn, New York at the age of 2 and then relocated with his family to Mount Clemens, Michigan at age 8. At age 9 he received a set of oil paints and a book of important Renaissance paintings from his mother as a gift and immediately began copying the works of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Sanzio. During an interview with the 57th Street Review in 1976, Hornak remarked "I picked up my technique as a child through my interest in art and copying paintings I liked. I especially loved Renaissance painting, because it had clarity and simplification of form and great organization." Upon graduating from High School in New Haven, Hornak relocated to Detroit and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and later received his BFA and MFA at Wayne State University where he taught for a short time.

Hornak produced Hyper-Realistic and Photorealist artwork with surreal overtones in the midst of the pop art movement. He was introduced into the New York art scene in 1968 by Pop Artist, Lowell Blair Nesbitt, with whom Hornak lived and worked with until 1969. By 1971, he maintained his primary residence and studio in East Hampton, NY and a secondary penthouse studio in New York City at 116 East 73rd Street near the corner of Park Avenue. While living in East Hampton, Hornak came to work with and befriend renown art world figures, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Fairfield Porter.

Ian Hornak. Marcia Sewing, Variation III, acrylic on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1978

In 1969, Hornak was exhibiting his artwork in New York at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery and in 1970 upon the suggestion of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's Nephew, Jason McCoy (assistant director of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery), he entered into an exclusive contract with the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on West 57th Street (Manhattan), a relationship that produced the artists first New York Solo exhibition in 1971. Hornak remained with the Tibor de Nagy Gallery until 1977 and in 1978 chose the Fischbach Gallery of West 57th Street (Manhattan) in New York to be his primary gallery, a partnership that lasted until 1984. In 1986, he entered into an exclusive contract with the Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery of SoHo and latter East 57th Street (Manhattan) where he remained until his death in 2002.

Ian Hornak. Title: Hannah Tillich's Mirror: Rembrandt's Three Trees Transformed Into The Expulsion From Eden, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 120 inches, 1978.

Hornak's early works were pen & ink drawings and acrylic paintings of floating figures both clothed and nude, in addition to an erotic art series. In 1970, Hornak began to produce primarily traditional landscapes in addition to conceptual multiple exposure landscapes in the medium of acrylic, pen & ink and or pencil. From 1985 until 2002 he produced Dutch & Flemish-inspired botanical and still life paintings with 4-6 inch painted frames where the artist extended the imagery of the primary painting onto the frame itself. Author and Poet Gerrit Henry said of these works in Art in America Magazine in 1994: "Hornak is a rather self-explanatory if not wholly tautological postmodernism. Perhaps, though, his excesses ring true for the approaching millennium: this is "end-time" painting that exercises its romantic license to the fullest in its presentation of multiple styles of the last fin de siecle - naturalist, symbolist, allegorical, apocalyptic." Throughout his career Hornak's instruments of choice were the brush, pencil and pen; never did he resort to the creation of mixed media works or employ the use such devices as the airbrush. The artist often cited the Hudson River School artists as major influences, especially Martin Johnson Heade and Frederic Edwin Church in addition to Nineteenth-Century German Romantic Artist, Caspar David Friedrich.

Ian Hornak suffered an aortic aneurysm on November 17, 2002 while painting in his studio in East Hampton, New York. Though Hornak was immediately rushed to the Southampton Hospital in New York and surgery was performed to repair the aorta, he died on December 9, 2002 as a result of complications from the surgery. He was 58 years old.

In 2007, Hornak's personal papers and effects were inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art and in 2010-2011 Hornak's work was inducted into the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress.

Hornak was interred in a private section (not accessible by the public) of the Great Mausoleum in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale in California on January 21, 2011.

Grave of Ian Hornak at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California

A traveling retrospective exhibition of his artwork will take place at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, California in 2012, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the Eccles Building located in Washington D.C. in 2012-2013 and the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland in 2013.

[edit] Ian Hornak's artworks are owned by the following public collections

[edit] Selected statements by art critics and historians

  • "Not since the Hudson River School glorified the grandiose panorama of the natural world in meticulous detail has an American artist embraced landscape painting with the artistic totality of Ian Hornak." - Marcia Corbino, "Hornak Exhibit: Landscapes At Their Best," Sarasota Herald Tribune, March 7, 1980.
  • "He [Ian Hornak] is right at the top of the list of romantically descriptive painters today." - John Canaday, New York Times, January 12, 1974
  • "Given his creative guidelines, Hornak has admirably succeeded in producing an imagery at once visionary and hauntingly intimate. It is personal painting that colors the memory, and stays fixed in the mind." - John Gruen, "Ian Hornak's Personal Painting," Arts Magazine, February 1976
  • "Odds are 10,000 to one against a young artist surviving in New York on painting alone. But former Detroiter Ian Hornak has been doing so… More than surviving, this painter who just turned 30 has been living comfortably in a studio apartment on 73rd Street and in a weekend home on Long Island. Collectors wait in line for Hornak's landscape paintings since his third one man show sold out at New York's Tibor de Nagy Gallery." - Joy Hakanson, "He's one in 10,000," Detroit News, June 2, 1974
  • "The exotic landscapes he began to paint were evocations of a world partly inside the mind but also with a very real existence outside related to color photography and modern industrial life. I was deeply interested in the implications of these paintings." - Frederick J. Cummings, Director [former], Detroit Institute of Arts, May 1974 [circulated catalogue, "Ian Hornak: New Paintings and Drawings]
  • "Successive viewings of Hornak's paintings make one sense that the artist takes great risks and that the risks are often successful… Without risks there is neither art nor achievement. Hornak's recent paintings are both." -John L. Hochmann, Arts Magazine, February 1978

[edit] Selected quotes

  • "My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments." -Ian Hornak, The 57th Street Review, January 1976
  • "While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are today suspect I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art." -Ian Hornak, Cover Magazine 1994
  • "What I so like about Poussin and Cézanne is their sense of organization. I like the way in which they develop space and shape in architectural continuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, I get the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work out a visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images." - Ian Hornak, Sneed Gallery Catalogue (circulated) 1976

[edit] Selected studios and residences

  • 116 East 73rd Street (penthouse), New York City, New York 11234. Ian Hornak's New York City studio and residence. Years active: 1968-1985.
  • Hands Creek Road, East Hampton, New York 11937. Ian Hornak's primary residence and studio. Years active: 1970-2002.
  • 33 Main Street, East Hampton, New York 11937. Ian Hornak's administrative offices and horticultural design studio. Years active: 1976-1984 (currently owned by Ralph Lauren).
  • 7193 Pine Glen Court, Sarasota, Florida (P.O. Box 34) 33583. Ian Hornak's winter studio and residence. Years active: 1985-2001.

[edit] Selected solo exhibitions


[edit] Selected bibliography

  • Audrey Michelle Mast, "Spotlight: Labor of Love," Chicago Collection Magazine, Fall 2010
  • Elise D’Haene, "The Art Scene: Ian Hornak in Chicago," East Hampton Star, April 29, 2010
  • Chris Miller, "Review: The Big Picture Show/Galleries Maurice Sternberg," Newcity Art, Aug. 10, 2009
  • Sara Herbert-Galloway, "Southampton's Star Studded Benefit: Southampton Hospital Celebrates 100 Years Of Healing," The Insider, Aug. 04, 2009
  • Susan Saiter, "A Hospital Born from Two Surgeons in an Attic," Dan's Papers, July 10, 2009
  • Chris Miller, "Review: Ian Hornak/Galleries Maurice Sternberg," Newcity Art, April 20, 2009
  • Alan Artner, "Alan Artner's Gallery Roundup," Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2009
  • "Light From The Past: Ian Hornak, A Retrospective," Galleries Maurice Sternberg, March 2009 (Circulated Catalogue)
  • "The Art Scene: Ian Hornak Retrospective," East Hampton Star, Oct. 14, 2008
  • Paul Varnell, "Art in bloom: Fall art exhibits feature wide range of genres," Chicago Free Press, Sept. 8, 2008
  • Stephanie Cash, David Ebony, "Ian Hornak", Art in America, Feb. 2003
  • "Ian Hornak", Washington Post, Jan. 1. 2003
  • "Ian Hornak", West Hawaii Today, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Orlando Sentinel, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Dallas Morning News, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Amarillo Globe News, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", The State, Dec. 31, 2002
  • "Artist Ian Hornak", Victoria Advocate, December 31, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak", Associated Press, Dec 30, 2002
  • Ken Johnson, "Ian Hornak, 58, Whose Paintings Were Known for Hyper-Real Look", New York Times, Dec. 30, 2002
  • "Ian Hornak, 58; Painter Was Known for Photo-Realism Style", Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 2002
  • Morgan McGivern, "Ian Hornak, East Hampton Painter", East Hampton Star, Dec. 19, 2002
  • Edward Albee, Constance Ayers, Helen Harrison, Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach

(Chronicle Books, April 1, 2002 [Hardcover])

  • "Ian Hornak: A perfusion of color", Florida Design Magazine, Volume 1-2, June-Aug, 2001
  • Kay Kipling, "The Hamptons", Sarasota Magazine, Feb 1, 2001
  • Phyllis Braff, "The Artistry of Getting Into Costume", New York Times, Nov 12, 2000
  • John Ashbery Karen Wilkin, Tibor de Nagy: The First Fifty Years, 1950-2000 (Tibor de Nagy 2000 [Paperback])
  • Gerrit Henry, "Ian Hornak: Reverence and Reverie," November 1999 (Circulated Catalogue)
  • Sheridan Sansegundo, At The Galleries, East Hampton Star, November 4, 1999
  • Phyllis Braff, "Moods of the Land and Its Other Inhabitants", New York Times, July 25, 1999
  • Phyllis Braff, "What the Material Contributes to the Work", New York Times, April 18, 1999
  • Phyllis Braff, "A 20th-Century Master, and Signs of the Season", New York Times, Feb 7, 1999
  • Patsy Southgate, "Ian Hornak: Creating an Art Apart", East Hampton Star, November 11, 1997
  • Jerry Gargiulo, Art Byte, The Independent, September 4, 1996
  • Grace Glueck, "City Sophistication Spends The Summer on Long Island", New York Times, July 12, 1996
  • Helen A. Harrison, "Gardening Themes, Diverse Pleasures", New York Times, June 23, 1996
  • Genie Chipps Henderson, Rameshwar Das, "The Doll House" (1996 [Hardcover])
  • Roger Caras, "Cats of Thistle Hill: A Mostly Peaceable Kingdom" (Fireside July 1, 1995 [Paperback])
  • Readers Digest [back cover image & feature article], July 1994
  • Gerrit Henry, Art in America, July 1994
  • Paul Cummings, Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists (Palgrave Macmillan; 6th edition June 15, 1994 [Hardcover])
  • Leslie Ava Shaw, "The Sanity of Absolute Beauty", Cover Magazine, Feb. 1994
  • "Drawing on Friendship, Portraits of Painters and Poets," The New Yorker, Jan. 31, 1994
  • Hilton Kramer, "De Nagy, Secret Banker Charmed Bohemians," New York Observer, Jan. 17, 1994
  • "Folk Art by Loustau", The Press of Atlantic City, Jan 9, 1994
  • Linda Southwood, "Love in a Pencil Line," The Westside Resident, Jan., 1994
  • "West art & the law: annual exhibition: an exhibition of work by contemporary artists interpreting the law and society in our

times" (West Publishing Company, Saint Paul, MN 1993 [Paperback])

  • Rose Slivka, East Hampton Star, Dec. 2, 1993
  • "West art & the law: annual exhibition: an exhibition of work by contemporary artists interpreting the law and society in our

times" (West Publishing Company, Saint Paul, MN 1992 [Paperback])

  • Phylis Braff, New York Times, Dec. 13, 1992
  • Richard J. Bilaitis, Selections from the Wayne State University Art Collection (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1992 [Paperback])
  • "West art & the law: annual exhibition: an exhibition of work by contemporary artists interpreting the law and society in our

times" (West Publishing Company, Saint Paul, MN 1990 [Paperback])

  • Ian Hornak, "Birds on Canvas", Bird Talk Magazine, August, 1990
  • "West art & the law: annual exhibition: an exhibition of work by contemporary artists interpreting the law and society in our

times" (West Publishing Company, Saint Paul, MN 1989 [Paperback])

  • Robert Long, Four Painters and a Sculptor at the Benton, Southampton Press, Aug. 11, 1988
  • Joan Altabe, "Modern Artist Draws Inspiration from Old Masters," Sarasota Herald Tribune, May 22, 1988
  • Steven Chrzanowski, "Ian Hornak: A modernist tied to the past," HAMPTONS Newspaper/Magazine, July 17, 1987
  • Dennis Longwell, "Masquerading as works of art," East Hampton Star, October 16, 1986
  • Alvin Martin, "American Realism- 20th Century Drawings and Watercolors" (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in

association with Harry Abrams, Inc., Washington D.C., 1983 [Paperback])

  • David L. Shirey, "Glimpses of Whats Current", New York Times, June 20, 1982
  • Helen A. Harrison, The New York Times, June 11, 1982
  • Frank H. Goodyear, Contemporary American Realism Since 1960 (New York Graphic Society 1981 [Hardcover])
  • "to the Editor: 'Happiest Times,' 'Spacious Attack,' 'Vendetta,'" East Hampton Star, Oct. 2, 1980
  • "to the Editor: 'Amateur Critic,' 'Thus Rests...,' 'A Perfect Eye,' East Hampton Star, Sept. 25, 1980
  • "to the Editor: 'Artistic Meal,'" East Hampton Star, Sept. 18, 1980
  • Peter Schjeldahl, "33 Artists Offer 33 Views of Realism", New York Times, April 13, 1980
  • Marcia Corbino, "Hornak Exhibit: Landscapes At Their Best," Sarasota Herald Tribune, March 7, 1980
  • Gerrit Henry, Art in America, Feb., 1980
  • "New York realists 1980," (catalogue) Thorpe Intermedia Gallery, Sparkill, New York 1980
  • Victoria Donohoo, The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3, 1979
  • David L. Shirey "Guild Hall Displays Landscape's Lure", New York Times, Jan 14, 1979
  • Jean Kemper Hoffmann, "Palette to Palate, The Hamptons Artists Cookbook," (A Guild Hall Museum Book; Times Books 1978 [Hardcover])
  • John T. Elton, Romanticism in Painting, Humphrey Milford/Oxford University Press, New York, 1978
  • Helen Harris, "The New Realists", Town & Country, Oct. 1978
  • Joy Hakanson Colby, "Painting in the Big Apple," Sunday News Magazine, Detroit News, September 18, 1978
  • David L. Shirey, "More Real Than Real", New York Times, Aug 6, 1978

"Artists of Suffolk County," (catalogue) Heckscher Museum, September 22, 1978

  • "Long Island This Week", New York Times, July 23, 1978
  • "Aspects of realism," (catalogue) Guild Hall, East Hampton July 22, 1978
  • John Hochmann, "Wordsworth in the Tropics and Hornak's Painting", Arts Magazine, Feb. 1978
  • Anne Sargent Wooster, Art News, Jan. 1978
  • Vivien Raynor, "Representation Is Alive in SoHo", New York Times, Dec. 30, 1977
  • Ann Barry, "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Oct. 30, 1977
  • Ann Barry, "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Oct. 23, 1977
  • Mary Lou Kelley, "At Dartmouth College," The Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 1977
  • Julian Weissman, Art News, March 1976
  • John Gruen, "Ian Hornak's Personal Painting", Arts Magazine, Feb. 1976
  • "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Jan. 4, 1976
  • Norman Lombino, "Interview", The 57th Street Review, Jan. 1976
  • C. Greene, "Critique, Editor," East Hampton Star, September 1, 1975
  • "Hornak paintings add interest to two areas," Ohio Citizens Trust Co. Tempo Magazine, April 1975
  • John Gruen, The Soho News, Jan. 1975
  • David Bourdon, The Village Voice, Jan. 20, 1975
  • "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Jan. 19, 1975
  • "Arts and Leisure Guide", New York Times, Jan. 12, 1975
  • Gregory Battcock, Super Realism: A Critical Analogy (E.P. Dutton and Co., New York, 1975 [Paperback])
  • Joy Hakanson, "He's one in 10,000", Detroit News, June 2, 1974
  • Jack Mitchell, "The Artist as a Subject", Arts Magazine, Jan. 1974
  • John Canaday, The New York Times, Jan. 12, 1974
  • John Scarborough, Houston Chronicle, May 27, 1974
  • Frederick Cummings, [circulated catalogue] "Ian Hornak: New Paintings and Drawings", May 1974
  • "Ian Hornak," ARTnews, March 1974
  • Judith Van Baron, Arts Magazine, March 1974
  • "Opening Saturday," East Hampton Star, January 3, 1974
  • "What's New in Art; In the Galleries", New York Times, Dec. 30, 1973
  • "Art Shows", Washington Post, June 1, 1973
  • "Georgica Pond at Sunset," East Hampton Star, May 24, 1973
  • Paul Richard, "Major Influence, Minor Artist", Washington Post, May 24, 1973
  • "Stage", Washington Post, May 18, 1973
  • Gregory Battock, Art and Artists, Feb. 1973
  • Jo Ann Lewis, "Seeing is Believing," Washington Evening Star, April 28, 1972
  • Painting and Sculpture Today, The Contemporary Arts Society and Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis, 1972)
  • Phyllis Braff, "From the Studio," East Hampton Star November 4, 1971
  • "A Tree is a Tree, Hornak Works His Canvas in Romantic Realism," The Herald-Time Off, Oct. 24, 1971
  • Joy Hakanson, The Detroit News, Oct. 10, 1971
  • Jack Mitchell, "Portrait of an artist as a contemporary," After Dark Magazine, May 1971
  • Frank Getlein, The Evening Star, Washington D.C., May 12, 1971
  • Sarah Booth Conroy, "Realism Back In Art", Washington Post, May 17, 1971
  • "Printmaking in Retrospect 1946-1984," (catalogue) Wayne State University, November 20, 1964
  • Who's Who in American Art
  • Who's Who in the East

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

  • [13]New York Times; "Ian Hornak, 58, Whose Paintings Were Known for Hyper-Real Look;"

December 30, 2002; written by KEN JOHNSON (NYT); The Arts/Cultural Desk Late Edition - Final, Sect. A, p. 15.

  • [14] Art In America, Ian Hornak at Katharina Rich Perlow - New York, New York, Author Gerrit Henry, July 1994
  • [15] East Hampton Star, Creating An Art Apart: Ian Hornak, Author Patsy Southgate, November 20, 1997
  • [16] Alan Artner, "Alan Artner's Gallery Roundup," Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2009
  • [17] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art: Ian Hornak papers, 1955–1991
  • [18] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art (images of Hornak catalogue)
  • [19] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art (images of Ian Hornak's Passport)
  • [20] Wayne State University: Department of Art & Art History Alumni Profiles (Ian Hornak 1944-2002)
  • [21] Art in America, Feb 2003, Ian Hornak Obituary
  • [22] Ian Hornak, 58; Painter Was Known for Photo- Realism Style, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2002
  • [23] Ian Hornak (page 10), Expressions Magazine, Wayne State University 2008
  • [24] Chris Miller, "Review: Ian Hornak/Galleries Maurice Sternberg," Newcity Art, April 20, 2009
  • [25] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Union List of Artist Names - Record for "Hornak, Ian"
  • [26] Smithsonian Institution: Archives of American Art, "Gallery announcement for an Ian Hornak exhibition at the Sneed Gallery, ca. 1976."
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