Lee Harvey died six years ago today. AG Gancarski wrote a memorial piece, titled “Remembering Firebrand Painter Lee Harvey” published by Folio Weekly on November 19, 2014.
Gancarski stated that Lee “…taught all of us to open our eyes, see the bullshit around us, and call it for what it is.”
Those words resonated with me when I read them six years ago, they resonated all the more today, a week after the presidential election, when close to 75 million people opened their eyes, saw the bullshit around them, and called it for what it was.
Some of Lee’s last paintings included nearly 100 works centered on the year 2020.
Among them were many targeting corporations. Corporate culture had frequently been a target of Lee’s, but the 2020 paintings are all the more relevant with the monetary gap between the corporate elite and everyday people the widest it has ever been.
If that doesn’t make you believe Lee had a crystal ball, he also painted black men being executed while wearing prison orange. Did Lee foresee the continued mistreatment and disproportionate incarceration of black men, or the now almost common practice of black lives being freely taken by law enforcement? Both?
One of the Muse Series Paintings from 2011 has workers in personal protection gear and facemasks, as pointed out by Stephen Dare.
Or this painting by Lee from 2010; a Chinese man, a Klansman with a bat behind him, and behind the Klansman, is that Donald Trump? And then there are flames all around. Whether Lee intended that as Trump or not, it is an apt rendition of 2020, One that was painted in 2010!
Jim Draper, the former co-owner of the Brooklyn Contemporary Art Center, which unfortunately no longer stands, but was the venue for Lee’s “Jesusville” exhibition, described Lee’s abstracts as works of genius, and defended Lee’s art with “art is not always about the pretty and the nice and the clean and the good…It’s a legitimate and non-violent way to express yourself.”
Lee was very good at expressing himself, and at stirring up controversy, almost always for the right reasons, almost always.
He could also do the “ the pretty and the nice and the clean and the good.”
His “Immortals” show was all about the pretty and the nice and the clean and the good. It was the last show he did, it included the only flowers that were at his memorial service, ones that he had painted himself.
Lee Harvey is gone, but the lessons he taught us, and the art he gifted us with remain. They are just as relevant now, if not more, then they were when Lee walked among us.
Rest well, my friend. We remember.
Photos from ‘Immortals” show
Photo courtesy of Stephen Dare Photo courtesy of Stephen Dare
Photo courtesy of Clair Hartmann Photo courtesy of Clair Hartmann
Photo courtesy of Stephen Dare Photo courtesy of Stephen Dare
Photo courtesy of Stephen Dare
Lee in his NYC Apartment
Photo courtesy of Barbara Colaciello
The sitting area of Lee’s studio in Jax
Photo courtesy of Margete Griffin
From Lee’s Sunflower collection
Photos courtesy of Stephen Dare
Special thanks to Stephen Dare with Lee Harvey Trust and Lee Harvey Memorial
Featured image courtesy of Darcy Mae Webb
Additional reading
Lee Harvey died 5 years ago today
Tropic of Mischief by Lee Harvey, now on display