Michael J. Deas at the Ogden is the Art For Arts' Sake show not to ...

Michael J. Deas at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art is the Art For Arts' Sake show not to miss. (Photo by Doug MacCash / The Times-Picayune)

Michael J. Deas' show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art is the don't-miss show of this weekend's coordinated New Orleans art-opening extravaganza, Art For Arts' Sake. You?ve certainly seen Deas? paintings, but you may not have realized it.

That glowing goddess with the torch that lights up the screen before every Columbia Pictures movie is a painting by Deas. The U.S. postage stamp of Marilyn Monroe was painted by Deas. The James Dean stamp, too. And the one featuring Tennessee Williams. That eerie red-tinged still-life on the 25th anniversary edition of Anne Rice?s ?Interview with the Vampire? is by Deas. So are five covers of Time magazine.

Over the years, Deas has made his mark on America's visual iconography. Yet almost no one gets to see his mesmerizing brand of romantic realism in person.

On Saturday (Oct. 6), however, the Ogden is hosting a career-spanning exhibit of 35 paintings and drawings by Deas.

Many of his best-known works will be on display, even the Columbia logo, called ?The Lady.? The lady with the torch, was modeled on a New Orleanian, Deas said during a recent visit to his French Quarter studio. Those fiery Olympian clouds that billow behind her are New Orleans clouds.

It?s a marvel that in an art-conscious town such as New Orleans, Deas has remained mostly out of the spotlight. The Ogden Museum exhibition will be the 56-year-old master?s first solo show.

Deas paints with oil in a time-honored and time-consuming method. He began the large painting that currently stands on his studio easel in April. The haunting painting features a blindfolded woman in a 19th-century wedding gown groping her way through a wooded landscape at dawn, or perhaps dusk. The composition is amazingly balanced and still, owing to a studied repetition of rectangles in the tree trunks and limbs. The colors are rich yet subtle. The tone of the gown is the creamy green of absinthe flowing into cold water. Studying a luminous Deas painting close up is like looking at a mountain stream. Light reflects off of the bottom layers of paint, passing through translucent glazes nearer the surface.

Deas was born in Norfolk Vir. His dad, who is from New Orleans, was in the U.S. Navy. As he grew up, Deas? family spent the summers in his dad?s hometown. The rest of the year was spent in Long Island, N.Y. Though he kept a New York apartment for years, Deas has, since 1988, spent most of his time in New Orleans.

Deas said he was always able to draw. As a kid, he said, it was the only thing he was really good at. A moody graphite night-scape drawn by Deas when he was 19 is included in the exhibit. But learning to translate his pencil skills into paint was tough. He attended the Pratt Art Institute in the 1970s, but at the time realistic painting was so far out of fashion that Deas said his professors mostly ignored his interest.

?Realism has been in disrepute for a century and abstract art, minimalism and conceptualism have dominated,? he said. ?But I think as human beings we have a thirst to see things done that represent the world around us, in a representational manner.?

Deas quit art school a semester before graduation to embark on professional illustration. A low-paying commission for a movie poster for a Werner Herzog film launched his career.

Art for Art's Sake

The Oct. 6 opening at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art is part of the traditional kick off of the New Orleans art season, with dozens of simultaneous exhibition receptions from Magazine Street to the Warehouse Arts District to the French Quarter. The big night is known as Art For Arts? Sake, a title that has a certain resonance when applied to Deas. In some smug art circles, professional illustrators such as Deas are dismissed on the theory that though their artwork may beautifully capture a given subject, it doesn't reflect the artist?s inner soul. Real artists are pure poets; illustrators are more or less ad men -- that?s the condescending theory anyway.

Michael J. Deas

• What: Paintings and drawings by the New Orleans master realist, known for his designs for U.S. postage stamps, Time magazine covers and the Columbia Pictures lady with the torch logo.
• Where: The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 504.539.960, www.ogdenmuseum.org.
• When: Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5, with extra hours Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. for Ogden After Hours concerts. Closed on Tuesdays. The Deas exhibit opens with a reception Oct. 6, from 6 to 9. It continues through Jan. 7.
• Admission: Adults $10; seniors and students $8; children $5. Free to Louisiana residents on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

But, Deas said, before the mid-1800s nobody made a distinction between fine art and illustration. Then James McNeill Whistler and other like-minded artists declared the supreme importance of personal expression. Their catch phrase was ?art for art?s sake.? Deas points out that the distinction between fine art and illustration may have always been a little narrow-minded. Good illustrators always find a way to put their personal slant on their assigned subject matter. He points out that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was a commission, after all, and Michelangelo was just illustrating the bible.

But, Deas said, ?art history has a way of changing? and the finely honed skills of illustrators are becoming more and more revered. Ogden curator Bradley Sumrall said that the distinction between fine art and illustration doesn?t much apply in Deas? case since ?Michael approached every illustration hoping to complete a finished painting.? You couldn?t have a Deas exhibit, Sumrall said, without displaying some of his renowned illustrations, but ?what will be the revelation, is the highly personal allegorical work? that makes up 40 percent of the exhibit.

Deas? mysterious new painting of the blindfolded bride falls into that category. It is not a commissioned illustration. Whistler would be happy to know that it?s an example of art for art?s sake. Deas said that the allegorical image has something to do with the passing of time and the mystery of the future. A wedding gown, he said, traditionally symbolizes hope. A blindfold, of course, implies the unknown. Deas said that he hopes to spend more of his unknown future on his own personal compositions.

?At this point in my career I?d like to do what I set out to do as a younger man; to create paintings for myself,? he said.

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Source: http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2012/10/michael_j_deas_at_the_ogden_th.html

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