Rockmore's Preservation Hall Portraits

Bill Matthews, Preservation Hall
1964, oil on canvas

If you've spent any amount of time, as I have, in conversation with the old-line bohemians of the French Quarter, you've heard many tales of the late Noel Rockmore. He was a regular patron of the lower-Quarter artist's cafes and bars central to that social scene, and he held court with no less intrigue and charisma than his fellow bohemian, Tennessee Williams. Arriving in "the last frontier of Bohemia" in 1959, Rockmore discovered the place of his dreams, a place that allowed him to both portray the fantasy and decay so central to his personal aesthetic, and to do so by painting what was there, without embellishment.

Born in New York City in 1928, he had both lived in France and studied violin by the age of five. He and his sister, Deborah studied briefly at Julliard. By 1939, painting and art had become his passion. By 16, he was copying Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum. By 18, he was studying at the Art Students League.

In 1948, Joseph Hirshhorn purchased Rockmore's Self-Portrait with a Model. At the same time, his style was being defined through a series of seventy-five drawings of Bowery bums. He depicted these crushing figures without social comment, a style he continued throughout his career. He spent time in the Natural History Museum painting monkeys and mummies. Several years were spent depicting Coney Island through drawings, etchings and paintings.

In 1951, Rockmore married and honeymooned in Mexico. During the trip, his car hit a cow, and much to the dismay of his bride, rather than seeking help, he spent time sketching the dying bovine. This obsession with death and decay continued in his next major series of three hundred circus paintings and drawings. For several weeks he travelled with the circus, and found himself overwhelmed with the thundering throngs of humans and animals, all in various states of decline.

Throughout the fifties, his work matured and continued to meet growing critical success. The Whitney Museum exhibited his work in 1956. In 1958, Hirshhorn bought nine more paintings, all of which are now in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.


Billie and DeDe Pierce, Preservation Hall
Oil on canvas, 1963.

A friend recommended that Rockmore visit New Orleans in 1959, and arranged a studio for him in the home of Paul Ninas. By 1963, Rockmore had executed over 350 portraits of musicians at Preservation Hall. Ben Jaffe, bassist, creative director and proprietor heir of Preservation Hall, told me recently that his father would often purchase the portraits painted in Preservation Hall. It was a kind of steady income for Rockmore during his early years in New Orleans.

The Ogden Museum is proud to have five portraits from the Preservation Hall series in its collection, all gifts from the Roger H. Ogden Collection. The two works pictured above are currently exhibited on the fourth floor of Goldring Hall.

Delivering Deliverance

French poster for Deliverance

On Saturday, September 26, 2009, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will present "Delivering Deliverance with Clint Maedgen and Helen Gillet." As part of our ongoing series, The Art of Southern Film: Established Masters & Emerging Makers produced by Madeleine Molyneaux, the Ogden has commissioned a new original score composed and to be performed live by Maedgen and Gillet.

Clint Maedgen is a multi-instrument singer, songwriter, composer and arranger born in Lafayette, LA. He started his career in New Orleans twelve years ago as a bicycle delivery boy in the French Quarter, and over the past twelve years, has risen to the top of the New Orleans music scene, winning the 2009 Big Easy Award for Best Male Performer. Most widely known for his work as leader of the cabaret game-show circus, The New Orleans Bingo! Show, Maedgen also plays for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and leads Liquidrone, Clint Maedgen with Strings and Clint Maedgen +9. He sang the National Anthem with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for the BCS National Championship at the Superdome last year. He has also performed at Radio City Music Hall, the White House and Ogden After Hours.

As you can see from the short film below (blending archival film with his own photographs), his talents do not stop with sound.


Maedgen
by wadesumrall

Helen Gillet is no stranger to the New Orleans music scene, herself. Growing up in Belgium, Chicago and Singapore, Gillet moved to New Orleans in 2002. Trained as a classical cellist, she has performed and recorded with a wide range of projects, including Happy Talk Band, James Singleton, Leroy Jones, Mafouz, Moose Jackson, the Zydepunks and Yippie poet Ed Sanders. According to her bio, she "uses electromagnetic effects, looping and vocal percussion to explore sound as well as the wide range of natural sounds possibly drawn, knocked, rubbed, sensed, bounced, scraped, plucked, and sung out through the acoustic cello."

The 1972 film, produced and directed by John Boorman, is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Georgia-born poet and novelist, James Dickey, who performed the role of the sheriff. The film is set on the Cahulawassee River, in a valley soon to be destroyed by a dam built to supply Atlanta with water. The allegorical theme of man against nature is set up when the character of Lewis (played by Burt Reynolds) lectures his friends on why they should brave the river:

"...because they're buildin' a dam across the Cahulawassee River. They're gonna flood a whole valley, Bobby, that's why. Dammit, they're drownin' the river...Just about the last wild, untamed, unpolluted, unf--ked up river in the South."

The themes of man vs. nature, city vs. country, and man vs. adversity all find their focus with the River. It becomes both setting and player. Through my conversations with Maedgen and Gillet, it is clear that the River will play a major role in their composition and performance, as well, perhaps leaving the audience with a musical memory of iconic film beyond the enduring Dueling Banjos scene.

Doors open at 7:30. The film screens at 8. A whiskey reception will follow.