{{Short description|American painter}} {{about||the Major League Baseball pitcher|Don Eddy (baseball)|the basketball coach|Don Eddy (basketball)}} {{Infobox artist |name = Don Eddy |birth_date = {{Birth date|1944|11|4|mf=y}} |birth_place = Long Beach, California | death_date = | death_place = | known_for = Painting | education = University of Hawaiʻi, University of California, Santa Barbara | movement = | style = | spouse = Leigh Behnke | website = [https://www.artdoneddy.com/ Don Eddy] | patrons = | awards = }}
thumb|right|310px|Don Eddy, ''New Shoes for H'', acrylic on canvas, 44" x 48", 1973. Cleveland Museum of Art collection. '''Don Eddy''' (born 1944) is a contemporary representational painter.<ref name="Martin87">Martin, Alvin. "Spaces of the Mind: New paintings by Don Eddy," ''Arts'', February 1987, p. 22–3.</ref><ref name="Baker72">Baker, Kenneth. [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/197203/don-eddy-70351 "Don Eddy,"] ''Artforum'', March 1972. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref> He gained recognition in American art around 1970 amid a group of artists that critics and dealers identified as Photorealists or Hyperrealists, based on their work's high degree of verisimilitude and use of photography as a resource material.<ref name="Rosenberg72">Rosenberg, Harold. Review, "Sharp-Focus Realism," ''The New Yorker'', February 5, 1972.</ref><ref name="Schjeldahl72">Schjeldahl, Peter. [https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/24/archives/realism-a-retreat-to-the-fundamentals-realism-a-retreat.html?searchResultPosition=24 "Realism—A Retreat to the Fundamentals?"] ''The New York Times'', December 24, 1972. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Chase72">Chase, Linda, Nancy Foote and Ted McBurnett. "The Photo-Realists: 12 Interviews," ''Art in America'', November–December 1972.</ref><ref name="Battcock75">Battcock, Gregory. ''Super Realism: A Critical Anthology'', New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref> Critics such as Donald Kuspit (as well as Eddy himself) have resisted such labels as superficially focused on obvious aspects of his painting while ignoring its specific sociological and conceptual bases, dialectical relationship to abstraction, and metaphysical investigations into perception and being; Kuspit wrote: "Eddy is a kind of an alchemist … [his] art transmutes the profane into the sacred—transcendentalizes the base things of everyday reality so that they seem like sacred mysteries."<ref name="Kuspit02">Kuspit, Donald. ''Don Eddy: The Art of Paradox'', New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2002.</ref><ref name="Eddy12">Eddy, Don. "The Movement That Was Not," ''RH Art Magazine'', 2012.</ref><ref name="Wallach00">Wallach, Amei. "Reflections of Things Not Seen: The Paintings of Don Eddy," ''Don Eddy: From Logic to Mystery'', Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 2000.</ref> Eddy has worked in cycles, which treat various imagery from different formal and conceptual viewpoints, moving from detailed, formal images of automobile sections and storefront window displays in the 1970s to perceptually challenging mash-ups of still lifes and figurative/landscapes scenes in the 1980s to mysterious multi-panel paintings in his latter career.<ref name="Raynor84">Raynor, Vivien. [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/nyregion/art-whitney-exhibit-looks-into-the-world-of-the-car.html?searchResultPosition=21 "Whitney Exhibit Looks Into the World of the Car,"] ''The New York Times'', May 6, 1984, Sect. CN, page 11. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Raynor87">Raynor, Vivien. [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/02/arts/art-the-window-in-20th-century-works.html?searchResultPosition=27 "The Window' in 20th-Century Works,"] ''The New York Times'', January 2, 1987. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Kuspit02"/> He lives in New York City with his wife, painter Leigh Behnke.<ref name="Harrison00">Harrison, Helen A. [https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/27/nyregion/art-reviews-the-evolution-of-style-a-look-across-time-for-an-abstract-painter.html?searchResultPosition=7 "Art Reviews: 'Together Working,'"] ''The New York Times'', February 27, 2000. Retrieved November 8, 2019.</ref><ref name="AAA">Smithsonian American Archives of Art. [https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/don-eddy-and-leigh-behnke-papers-15689 "Don Eddy and Leigh Behnke Papers,"] Collection. Retrieved November 8, 2019.</ref>
==Early life and career== Eddy was born in Long Beach, California in 1944. In early adolescence, he worked at his father's auto body shop doing custom paint jobs, an experience that familiarized him with Southern California car culture, the airbrush as a painting tool, and working-class concern for craft—all factors in his later art.<ref name="Urban84">Urban, William and Robert Paschal. "Interview: Don Eddy," ''Airbrush Digest'', July/August 1984, page 18.</ref><ref name="Johnson91">Johnson, Neil. "Don Eddy: Master of Reality," ''Airbrush Action 7'', November–December 1991, page 10.</ref><ref name="Bonito99">Bonito, Virginia Ann. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080307190851/http://www.artregisterpress.com/DonEddy/Files/Cover.html ''Don Eddy: The Resonance of Realism in the Art of Post War America''], ArtRegister Press, 1999.</ref> He studied art history and fine arts at the University of Hawaiʻi (BFA, 1967; MFA, 1969), also working as a snapshot photographer for a tourist agency.<ref name="Martin86">Martin, Alvin. "Don Eddy: Image, Reflection, Dream," ''Don Eddy'', New York: Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 1987.</ref><ref name="Bonito99"/> After exploring and rejecting the prevailing mode of abstract expressionist subjectivity, he was drawn to the more accessible work of Surrealist René Magritte and the commercialized realism of Pop artist James Rosenquist, both of which juxtaposed incongruous images in a single painting space.<ref name="RHT1">Gokduman, Safak Günes. "Don Eddy," ''Artist Modern'', April, 2010.</ref><ref name="Wallach00"/>
After graduating, Eddy completed PhD coursework in art history at University of California, Santa Barbara while continuing to paint.<ref name="Martin87"/> By 1970, he had shifted from early mixed-media and figurative work and turned to car-culture imagery and the Paasche H airbrush from his youth (which he has used his entire career) in works focused on the nature of space in painting.<ref name="Urban84"/><ref name="RHT1"/><ref name="AD84">''Airbrush Digest''. "Interview, Don Eddy," July/August 1984, Cover, pages 16–23, 58–9.</ref> He received his first widespread recognition through exhibitions such as "Sharp-Focus Realism" (Sidney Janis Gallery) and Documenta 5 (1972), "California Realist Painters" (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1973) and "Hyper-Realisme Americaine, Realism European" (Centre National d'Art Contemporain, 1974).<ref name="Kramer72">Kramer, Hilton. "And Now...Pop Art: Phase II," ''The New York Times'', January 16, 1972, Section D, page 19.</ref><ref name="Kurtz72">Kurtz, Bruce. "Documenta 5: A Critical Preview," ''Arts Magazine'', Summer 1972.</ref><ref name="SBMA73">Santa Barbara Museum of Art. ''California Realist Painters'', Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1973.</ref><ref name="CNAC">Centre National d'Art Contemporain. ''Hyperrealistes Americains/Realistes Europeens'', Paris: Centre National d'Art Contemporain, 1973.</ref> After moving to New York City in the early 1970s, he continued to appear in prominent surveys at the Whitney Museum and San Antonio Museum of Art, among others, while establishing a longtime relationship with New York dealer Nancy Hoffman, whose gallery has put on his solo exhibitions from 1974 to 2020.<ref name="WM79">Whitney Museum of American Art. "Auto Icons", New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979.</ref><ref name="SAM81">San Antonio Museum. [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7698810 ''Real, Really Real, Super Real''], San Antonio, TX: San Antonio Museum Association, 1981. Retrieved March 9, 2021.</ref><ref name="Shere82">Shere, Charles. "An impressive show of airbrush painting," ''The Oakland Tribune'', February 28, 1982.</ref><ref name="Graves19">Graves, David C. ''Don Eddy: An Event of Consciousness'', New York: Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 2019.</ref>
==Process== Eddy paints using a systematic, painstaking process he developed early in his career, exploiting what he calls his "obsessive-compulsive" temperament.<ref name="Urban84"/><ref name="Johnson91"/><ref name="Lockridge01">Lockridge, Larry. "The Changes of Don Eddy," ''Image'', February 2001, pages 29–37.</ref> He begins with multiple photographs recording a maximum of detailed visual information.<ref name="Urban84"/><ref name="Carr83">Carr, Gerald. "Don Eddy," ''Arts Magazine'', December 1983.</ref> After selecting a "master image", he projects it onto a canvas and maps out his composition. He then lays down three sequences of transparent underpainting in tiny (1/16") layered airbrush circles of different value: the first, in phthalocyanine green, supplies detailed image information and value structure; a burnt sienna layer distinguishes warm from cool regions and amplifies the darks; and a dioxazine purple layer further specifies the warms and cools.<ref name="Urban84"/><ref name="Martin87"/><ref name="EddyPro">Don Eddy website. [https://www.artdoneddy.com/the-process The Process]. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref> In the final stage, he airbrushes the full range of local colors in the same manner (often 15–25 layers), based on the chromatic structure of the underpainting rather than the actual objects photographed.<ref name="Martin87"/><ref name="Carr83"/><ref name="MEAM14">Museu Europeu d'Art Modern. "Don Eddy and American Hyperrealism," Barcelona: Museu Europeu d'Art Modern, 2014.</ref> He has described the result as a kind of illusion—small, abstract circles that resolve into highly representational images at a distance.<ref name="Urban84"/>
==Work and reception== Eddy's work has been informed by wide-ranging, sometimes contradictory influences: old masters (e.g., van Eyck and Vermeer), Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist color, the analytical cubism of Braque and Picasso, Hans Hofmann, Conceptual and Minimalist critiques of Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art.<ref name="Martin86"/><ref name="Bonito99"/><ref name="Kuspit02"/> His art stakes out paradoxical positions to both realism and abstraction, investigated in the context of recognizable, accessible imagery.<ref name="Criqui03">Criqui, Jean-Pierre. [https://www.artforum.com/print/200306/locus-focus-hyperrealisms-4887 "Locus Focus: 'Hyperrealisms,'"] ''Artforum'', January 1976. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Bonito99"/> It rejects abstract art, yet like that work, emphasizes surface and pictorial issues over imagery according to writer William Dyckes: "[Eddy] is essentially a field painter … concerned with the interactions of shapes and colors rather than with the representation of specific imagery in space."<ref name="Dyckes75">Dyckes, William. "The Photo as Subject," in ''Super Realism: A Critical Anthology'', Gregory Battcock (ed.), New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. page 155.</ref><ref name="Wallach00"/><ref name="Kuspit02"/> Likewise, it seems to value photographic verisimilitude, yet in fact, exceeds the camera and human eye by heightening painting attributes such as optical brilliance, tactile highlighting and multiple perspectives.<ref name="Johnson03">Johnson, Ken. [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/arts/art-review-realism-admittedly-slippery-explores-what-can-and-can-t-be-seen.html?searchResultPosition=13 "Realism, Admittedly Slippery, Explores What Can and Can't Be Seen,"] ''The New York Times'', December 19, 2003, page E40. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Patton76">Patton, Phil. [https://www.artforum.com/print/197601/super-realism-a-critical-anthology-38310 "Super Realism: A Critical Anthology,"] ''Artforum'', Summer 2003. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Criqui03"/>
thumb|left|310px|Don Eddy, ''C/V/II E: Dreamreader'', acrylic on canvas, 1984
===Early painting cycles (1970–1989)=== In the early 1970s, Eddy painted several largely formal cycles involving automobiles.<ref name="Grellis72">Grellis, Charles. "Art Around the Automobile," ''Road and Track'', 1972.</ref> The first captured the reflective possibilities of chrome and high-gloss paint in large, deadpan, highly detailed images of tightly framed bumpers, headlights, grills, wheel hubs and car bodies, which critics suggest transformed ordinary things into animate, uncanny presences and objects of contemplation beyond function (e.g., ''Bumper Section XIII'' or ''Ford—H & W'', both 1970).<ref name="Mezzatesta00">Mezzatesta, Michael. "Foreword," ''Don Eddy: From Logic to Mystery'', Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 2000.</ref><ref name="Martin87"/><ref name="Kuspit02"/> According to critic Amei Wallach "they juxtapose an exuberant baroque abstraction with a modernist geometry that suggests the hyperpurity of Charles Sheeler and the American precisionists."<ref name="Wallach00"/> In the "Private Parking" series (1971), Eddy depicted cars seen through chain-link fences hung with signage, using the crisscrossing patterns and abstract shapes to intensify contradictions between illusionism and the single-plane picture surface.<ref name="Baker72"/><ref name="Boice73">Boice, Bruce. [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/197306/john-salt-73559 "John Salt,"] ''Artforum'', Summer 1973. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Raynor84"/>
In subsequent cycles, Eddy dissolved the corporeality and decipherability of his images by focusing on windows—initially car showrooms (the "Showroom" works, 1971–2), and later, kitchenware and shoe storefronts yielding more chaotic compositions (e.g., ''Pots and Pans'', 1972; ''New Shoes for H.'', 1973).<ref name="Baker72"/><ref name="Janson77">Janson, H.W. ''History of Art'', New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977.</ref><ref name="Wallach00"/> The window surfaces—both transparent and reflective—enabled him to focus simultaneously on two planes, something impossible in normal vision.<ref name="Baker72"/><ref name="Schwendener13">Schwendener, Martha. [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/nyregion/a-review-of-mirrored-images-realism-in-the-19th-and-20th-centuries-in-huntington.html?searchResultPosition=15 "Breaking with Tradition, Over and Over,"] ''The New York Times'', February 22, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref> The clash of recognizable forms, hard-edged shapes, light and cityscape resulted in what art historian Alvin Martin called "highly veristic adaptations of Cubist theory."<ref name="Martin86"/><ref name="Baker72"/> Eddy pushed this dissolution to a maximum in late-1970s paintings depicting silverware (and later, crystal) displays on stacked glass and mirrored shelves, which he set up in his studio to explore light refraction.<ref name="Russell76">Russell, John. [https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/13/archives/art-legers-american-friezes.html?searchResultPosition=3 "David Stoltz/Don Eddy,"] ''The New York Times'', November 19, 1976, page 15. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Raynor79">Raynor, Vivien. [https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/01/archives/connecticut-weekly-art-realism-magnified-at-storrs.html?searchResultPosition=18 "Realism Magnified at Storrs], ''The New York Times'', April 1, 1979, Section CN, Page 112. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Martin87"/> Critics described that cycle—stripped to an austere palette of icy blues and silvers—as inducing a "perceptual overload"<ref name="Harrison91">Harrison, Helen A. [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/28/nyregion/art-focusing-in-on-superrealism.html?searchResultPosition=17 "Focusing in on Super-Realism,"] ''The New York Times'', April 28, 1991, Sect. 12LI, page 11. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref> where dazzling optical play and complexity reduced space and imagery to nearly unrecognizable abstract patterns (e.g., ''Silverware V for S'', 1977; ''G-I'', 1978).<ref name="Russell76"/><ref name="Neff79">Neff, John Hallmark. "Painting and Perception: Don Eddy," ''Arts'', December 1979.</ref><ref name="Wallach00"/>
In the 1980s, Eddy decided that this work was too cerebral.<ref name="Cempellin00">Cempellin, Leda. ''Conversations with Don Eddy'', Padova, Italy: Coop. Libraria Editrice Universita di Padova, 2000.</ref><ref name="Lockridge01"/> He reintroduced color and a Pop dimension—in the form of quickly chosen, inexpensive toys, gumballs, and Disney characters recognized from his youth—in the "Dime Store" cycles.<ref name="Raynor86">Raynor, Vivien. [https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/05/arts/art-new-malcolm-morley-paintings.html?searchResultPosition=8 Review], ''The New York Times'', December 5, 1986, p. C33. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="Johnson91"/><ref name="Wallach00"/> These paintings inaugurated dramatic evolutions in style and imagery, including a conceptual shift from perceptual issues to more profound questions regarding thought and the nature of experience.<ref name="Carr83"/><ref name="Martin87"/><ref name="Wallach00"/> He turned from fully painted still lifes to compositions in which he intuitively selected and painted only what he deemed most compelling, yielding imagery that hovered, apparently weightless, over black voids suggesting memory or dream (e.g., ''C/VI/B (Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight)'', 1982).<ref name="Raynor86"/><ref name="Martin86"/><ref name="Kuspit02"/> With the subsequent '"C/VII", "Daydreamer" and "Dreamreader" series, Eddy introduced more jarring juxtapositions of time, place, space and mood, which floated dime-store items over vistas of places he visited (Paris, Italy, Hawaii), interiors, and figures (his daughter, old-master painting personages).<ref name="Mezzatesta00"/><ref name="Martin86"/><ref name="Urban84"/> These series, which mix man-made and natural, fantasy, reality and mystery, point toward his more spiritual later-career work.<ref name="Kuspit02"/>
thumb|right|300px|Don Eddy, ''Oracle Bones'', acrylic on canvas, 75" x 74", 1996.
===Later painting (1989– )=== By the late 1980s, the everyday quality of Eddy's past work was overtaken by imagery that seemingly spanned the universe, from microscopic to cosmic: flora and fauna, landscape, figures, architecture and art history (e.g., ''The Clearing II'', 1990; ''Oracle Bones'', 1996).<ref name="Bonito99"/><ref name="Wallach00"/><ref name="RHT1"/> The new paintings explored the mystery of being through images of flowing water, rainbows, light and immaterial energy alluding to both timelessness and shifting conditions (e.g., ''Seasons of Light'', 1998–9).<ref name="Kuspit02"/><ref name="EddyPro"/><ref name="Genocchio05">Genocchio, Benjamin. [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/nyregion/art-review-photorealism-is-that-all-there-is.html?searchResultPosition=5 "Photorealism: Is That All There Is?"] ''The New York Times'', January 30, 2005. Retrieved March 4, 2021.</ref><ref name="MEAM14"/> Donald Kuspit characterizes his revival of the spiritual as a "mystical leap of faith" combining aspects of Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism in works that suggest modern-day icons.<ref name="Kuspit02"/><ref name="Lockridge01"/>
Eddy employed a new multi-panel strategy to capture this quality: geometric polyptychs, grids (''Catena Aureum'', 1995), and most significantly, medieval altarpiece formats that were vehicles for poetic juxtapositions encouraging contemplation (e.g., ''Imminent Desire and Distant Longing II'', 1993).<ref name="Wallach00"/><ref name="Mezzatesta00"/> He sought to overcome what he considered a weakness of single-canvas representational work—a reductive "fixing" of the richness and dynamism of experience.<ref name="MEAM14"/> His multi-panel works employ images like textual signifiers; meaning does not reside "in" the image (as with symbols), but rather, is generated between and amongst images in relation (e.g., ''Krishna's Gate'', 1995; ''The Dante Paradox'', 2000).<ref name="Lockridge01"/><ref name="Cempellin00"/><ref name="RHT1"/> Writers note the work's open-ended, democratic character, in which meaning relies on the specific experiences observers bring into active interaction with each painting.<ref name="Lockridge01"/><ref name="RHT1"/>
In his exhibition at the Museu Europeu d'Art Modern (Barcelona, 2014), Eddy presented eight largely rectangular triptychs created between 2005 and 2011 that combined natural, architectural, and gradually, urban imagery (e.g., ''Nostos I'', 2005; ''Mono No Aware II'', 2011).<ref name="MEAM14"/> In subsequent work, he has continued to explore natural and ephemeral imagery (e.g., the "I Am Water II" works, 2019–20), but has more often focused on urban images of evening skylines, traffic and cafes, elevated trains, bridges and interiors (e.g., ''Sleepless in Paris'', 2017; the "Metal City" works, 2016–20).<ref name="Graves19"/><ref name="EddyRec">Don Eddy website. [https://www.artdoneddy.com/recent-work Recent Work]. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref>
==Collections== Eddy's work belongs to many museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum in New York,<ref name="Met">The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/747147?searchField=All&%3BsortBy=Relevance&%3Bft=Audrey+Flack&%3Boffset=0&%3Brpp=20&%3Bpos=4 ''Untitled'' 1986-1987, Don Eddy] Collection. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref><ref name="MoMA">Museum of Modern Art. [https://www.moma.org/artists/1678#works Don Eddy] Artists. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref><ref name="Whitney">Whitney Museum of American Art. [https://whitney.org/collection/works/4096 Don Eddy, ''Strictly Kosher Meats'' 1973] Collection. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref> the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art, Cleveland Museum of Art,<ref name="CMA">Cleveland Museum of Art. [https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1974.53 ''New Shoes for H'' 1973-1974, Don Eddy] Collections. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref> The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Israel Museum, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMC, France), Saint Louis Art Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art,<ref name="SAMA">San Antonio Museum of Art. [https://sanantonio.emuseum.com/people/350/don-eddy/objects Works of Don Eddy] People. Retrieved March 11, 2021.</ref> and Utrecht Museum (The Netherlands).<ref name="Kuspit02"/><ref name="Mezzatesta00"/><ref name="Bonito98">Bonito, Virginia Ann. [https://www.amazon.com/Get-Real-Contemporary-American-Collection/dp/0938989162 ''Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection''], Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Museum of Art, 1998. Retrieved March 8, 2019.</ref>
==See also== *Photorealism *Hyperrealism (visual arts)
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[https://www.artdoneddy.com/ Don Eddy official website] *[http://www.doneddyart.com/ Don Eddy] website *[https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/don-eddy-and-leigh-behnke-papers-15689 Don Eddy and Leigh Behnke Papers], Smithsonian American Archives of Art. *[https://web.archive.org/web/20080314233858/http://www.artregisterpress.com/DonEddy/Files/Chapter1.html Virginia Anne Bonito, online biography of Don Eddy] *[https://www.nancyhoffmangallery.com/don-eddy Don Eddy] Nancy Hoffman Gallery artist page
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eddy, Don}} Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American male artists Category:20th-century American painters Category:21st-century American painters Category:21st-century American male artists Category:American male painters Category:Photorealist artists Category:Painters from New York City Category:Artists from Long Beach, California Category:Painters from California Category:University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Category:University of California, Santa Barbara alumni