{{Short description|American painter and sculptor (1956–2022)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2022}} {{Infobox artist | name = Donald Baechler | image = Donald_Edward_Baechler.jpg | image_size = | caption = portrait of Donald Edward Baechler by Daniel Oh | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1956|11|22}} | birth_place = Hartford, Connecticut, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2022|04|04|1956|11|22}} | death_place = New York City, New York, U.S. | known_for = Painting, assemblage | training = Maryland Institute College of Art<br>Cooper Union<br>Städelschule | movement = Neo-expressionism | notable_works = | patrons = | awards = }}
'''Donald Baechler''' (November 22, 1956 – April 4, 2022) was an American painter and sculptor associated with 1980s Neo-expressionism. He had lived in Manhattan and Stephentown, New York.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Smith |first=Roberta |date=April 26, 2022 |title=Donald Baechler, Painter of Cartoonish Collages, Is Dead at 65 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/arts/donald-baechler-dead.html |access-date=April 27, 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
== Early life and education == Baechler was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to parents Marjorie (née Dolliver), a journalist and quilter, and Henry Jules Baechler, an accountant.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[http://www.artnet.com/artists/donald-baechler/biography Artnet Biography]</ref> He was one of four children raised in a Quaker family.<ref name=":0" /> Baechler was interested in art at a young age, after his mother died, and started painting in collaboration with his maternal grandmother, who was a painter.<ref name=":0" /> He attended Westtown School, a Quaker private school, for his last three years of high school. Westtown had an effective art department, and while at Westtown Baechler determined to be an artist.<ref name=":0"/>
Baechler attended the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1974 to 1977, studying for his B.F.A. in Painting,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://events.mica.edu/event/donald_baechler_77|title=Abstract artist Donald Baechler '77|date=2010|website=MICA|language=en|access-date=December 29, 2018}}</ref> and Cooper Union from 1977 to 1978 for his M.F.A.<ref name="Contemporary 2021">{{cite web | title=Weng Contemporary | website=Weng Contemporary | date=December 8, 2021 | url=https://www.wengcontemporary.com/ | access-date=April 6, 2022}}</ref><ref name="Crane Kalman Gallery 2018">{{cite web | title=Overview | website=Crane Kalman Gallery | date=April 27, 2018 | url=https://www.cranekalman.com/artists/26-donald-baechler/overview/ | access-date=April 6, 2022}}</ref> Dissatisfied with New York City, he proceeded to the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.<ref name="Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE)">{{cite web | title=Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) | website=Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) | url=https://www.ulae.com/artists/donald-baechler/bio/ | access-date=April 6, 2022}}</ref><ref name="Greenberger 2022">{{cite web | last=Greenberger | first=Alex | title=Donald Baechler, Maker of Pared-Down Paintings That Brought Him Fame in '80s New York, Dies at 65 | website=ARTnews.com | date=April 5, 2022 | url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/donald-baechler-dead-1234624176/ | access-date=April 6, 2022}}</ref>
<blockquote>"At Cooper Union I met some German exchange students. This was 1977, and I found the whole scene at the school to be white and boring, to be honest. It wasn't what I wanted out of art school or what I wanted out of being in New York. The most interesting minds, the most interesting talents and energy came from those German kids. And they said, 'Why don't you come to Germany?' The easiest school to get into was the one attached to the Frankfurt Museum. The entrance requirements were less strict, so I went with it and spent a year in Frankfurt. They were very generous."<ref name="bombsite.com">{{cite web |last=Kapp |first=David |date=July 1, 2000 |title=Donald Baechler by David Kapp |url=https://bombmagazine.org/articles/donald-baechler/ |access-date=April 6, 2022 |website=BOMB magazine}}</ref></blockquote>
Baechler returned to New York City in 1980,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ropac.net/files/a347c1c3.pdf|title=Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Profile|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref> working as a guard at Walter De Maria's New York Earth Room.<ref>Richer, F and Rosenzweig, M (2005), ''No.1: First Works of 362 Artists''. D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. p. 26. {{ISBN|978-1-933045-09-2}}</ref>
In February 1981, he worked for a month as a studio assistant for the artist Joseph Glasco and profited from working with Glasco or at least shared some of his attitudes.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Raeburn |first=Michael |title=Joseph Glasco: The Fifteenth American |publisher=Cacklegoose Press |year=2015 |isbn=9781611688542 |location=London |pages=299 |language=English}}</ref> Baechler’s early collage and black and white works were influenced by the collage painting techniques Glasco was using at that time.
He was soon a part of a burgeoning Lower Manhattan arts scene,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/arts/design/16shaf.html|title=When Artworks Collide|first=Roberta|last=Smith|newspaper=The New York Times|date=May 16, 2008|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref> showing in the East Village and exhibition spaces such as Artists Space and the Drawing Center.<ref name="bombsite.com" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.at149st.com/fungallery.html|title=New York City Graffiti: The Fun Gallery|website=www.at149st.com|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref> Baechler and Tony Shafrazi struck up an acquaintance over a shared interest in artist Joseph Kosuth.<ref name="bombsite.com" /> Shafrazi was developing an interest in graffiti-oriented works, and founded a downtown gallery that represented Baechler, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and eventually Jean-Michel Basquiat.<ref name="NYTimes20080516Smith">{{cite news |title=When Artworks Collide |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/arts/design/16shaf.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date= May 16, 2008 |last1=Smith |first1=Roberta |author-link1=Roberta Smith }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Curley |first1=Mallory |title=A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia |publisher=Randy Press |date=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ARvlZwEACAAJ |language=en}}</ref> In a 2000 interview, Baechler said:
<blockquote>"Tony obviously had some grander vision about what was going on and decided that it wasn't the end of conceptualism, but the beginning of something else. I never felt entirely comfortable showing my work there because it had nothing to do with what Keith and Kenny Scharf were doing. I wasn't part of this downtown club scene, and I had nothing to do with so-called graffiti art ... I always used to tell people, 'I'm an abstract artist before anything else,' For me, it's always been more about line, form, balance and the edge of the canvas—all these silly formalist concerns—than it has been about subject matter or narrative or politics."<ref name="bombsite.com" /></blockquote>
Baechler's early work was noted for childlike imagery and thematics—associations which recurred throughout his career.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20121012142225/http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=KC&p_theme=kc&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAF3FB1498621DB&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM The Kansas City Star (November 17, 1993)]</ref> "Like Art Brut," wrote Steven Vincent in ''Art in America'', "Donald Baechler's seemingly ingenuous depictions of everyday objects and simple figures succeed in large part by tapping into our nostalgia for childhood, that period of life before the rivening onset of self-consciousness and guilt. It's a myth, of course: children are hardly angelic, and alienation is the state of humanity—while Beachler's art works hard to achieve its trademark appearance of prelapsarian sincerity and artlessness."<ref name="i1.exhibit-e.com">[http://i1.exhibit-e.com/cheimread/2f3f8517.pdf Art in America]{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, September 2005, Steven Vincent</ref>
==Art and context== Baechler's source material drew broadly from classical art history, the New York School, contemporary art, folk art, outsider art, pop culture, and childhood.<ref name="NYTimes20061013Scott">{{cite web | title=ART IN REVIEW; Donald Baechler | website=The New York Times | date=October 13, 2006 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/arts/art-in-review-donald-baechler.html | access-date=April 6, 2022 |first1= Andrea K. |last1=Scott}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.tandempress.wisc.edu/tandem/gallery/baechler/baechler.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080723222405/http://www.tandempress.wisc.edu/tandem/gallery/baechler/baechler.htm|url-status=dead|title=Tandem Press at Wisconsin University|archivedate=July 23, 2008|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref><ref name="F00E4DF143BF93BA15752C0A9639C8B63 2005">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/arts/art-in-review-donald-baechler.html|title=Art in Review; Donald Baechler|first=Ken|last=Johnson|newspaper=The New York Times|date=January 28, 2005|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref> Grace Glueck of ''The New York Times'' noted "echoes of Rauschenberg, Warhol, Lichtenstein,"<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/19/arts/art-in-review-donald-baechler.html|title=ART IN REVIEW; Donald Baechler|first=Grace|last=Glueck|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 19, 1999|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref> while Edward Leffingwell of ''Art in America'' characterized Baechler's approach as "some strange and uncompromising posture out of Otterness and Rodin."<ref name="ReferenceA">[http://i1.exhibit-e.com/cheimread/ee90c794.pdf Art in America, September 2003, Edward Leffingwell]{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
Holland Cotter of ''The New York Times'' described a 1993 exhibition at Sperone Westwater Gallery: "Mr. Baechler jams together pages from children's copy books, maps of Africa and Europe, sketches of toys (beach balls, building blocks) and the reiterated form—emphatic and phallic—of an upheld thumb. In one drawing several thumbs fill the inside of an outlined head, perhaps giving a clue to the darker undercurrents in Mr. Baechler's work as a whole. Art, like play, he seems to suggest, is just a method for keeping chaos at bay, and these days even the best-behaved child knows he's under somebody's thumb."<ref name="NYTimes19931203Cotter">{{cite news |title=Art in Review |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/arts/art-in-review-121093.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date= December 3, 1993 |last1=Cotter |first1=Holland |author-link1=Holland Cotter }}</ref> Playing cars, fortune cookies, a ceramic onion,<ref>[http://i1.exhibit-e.com/cheimread/f8c8608e.pdf Elle Decor, June/July 1994, Deborah Eisenberg]{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> flowers, ice-cream cones,<ref name="NYTimes20061013Scott"/> even a visual play on Mr. Bill of ''Saturday Night Live'',<ref name="i1.exhibit-e.com"/> little escaped Baechler's image bank, which is a literal collection.
"I hold onto absolutely everything," said the artist. "I would guess out of every thousand images I save, I probably use one or two. I've never actually counted. I save images in many different forms; I save them in endless file cabinets. I have slide binders with thousands and thousands of slides that I work from. But most of the things I photograph never find their way into a painting; and most of the things I save and catalog and photocopy never really find their way into a work. It's necessary to accumulate all of these things to get to the point of what's important."<ref name="bombsite.com"/>
Widely regarded as a painter, Baechler's three-dimensional work has been correlated to the sculptural works of Roy Lichtenstein, Alex Katz, and Carroll Dunham.<ref name="F00E4DF143BF93BA15752C0A9639C8B63 2005"/> Baechler long experimented with a variety of forms and materials, always maintaining what has been dubbed his "gee-whiz approach."<ref name="NYTimes20061013Scott"/> Alex Hawgood, in a 2008 profile in ''The New York Times'', summarized ...."Baechler ... is known for his sunny, multimedia work that explores the language of cultural symbols."<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/the-insider-donald-baechler/|magazine=The New York Times Style Magazine |title=The Insider | Donald Baechler|first=Alex|last=Hawgood|date=August 14, 2008|accessdate=April 6, 2022}}</ref>
But Baechler's "animated, engaging and ... beautifully made"<ref name="NYTimes19870410Smith">{{cite news |title=Art: Works by Lois Lane |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/10/arts/art-works-by-lois-lane.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=April 10, 1987|last1=Smith |first1=Roberta |author-link1=Roberta Smith}}</ref> images are not without sentiment. "Baechler," wrote Edward Leffingwell of ''Art in America'', "scatters his surfaces with the detritus of childhood, portraying the adult today through the images of a past not quite left behind."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> And neither is Baechler outside the purview of art history. ''The New York Times''{{'}} art critic Holland Cotter remarked of Baechler: "At this very moment, some industrious doctoral student somewhere is documenting how thoroughly images of childhood have pervaded art of the late 1980s and early 90s. The images aren't chiefly those of adolescence, as was the case with Pop Art in the 60s, but of infancy."<ref name="NYTimes19931203Cotter"/>
The restaurant Caravaggio on the Upper East Side of Manhattan exhibits two paintings and a sculpture by Baechler.<ref name="metromix1">{{cite news |url=http://newyork.metromix.com/restaurants/italian/caravaggio-upper-east-side/1342313/content |title=Caravaggio – Upper East Side – New York, NY 10021 |publisher=Metromix New York |accessdate=January 20, 2013}}</ref><ref name="crainsnewyork1">{{Cite news |last=Greene |first=Gael |date=August 23, 2009 |title=Caravaggio |url=http://www.crainsnewyork.com/opinion/restaurant-reviews/details/9/2294907 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131215034852/http://www.crainsnewyork.com/opinion/restaurant-reviews/details/9/2294907 |archive-date=December 15, 2013 |department=Opinion |work=Crain's New York Business |access-date=April 8, 2022}}</ref>
==Death and legacy== Baechler died of a heart attack on April 4, 2022, at the age of 65.<ref name="Greenberger 2022" />
Baechler's artwork is in various permanent museum collections including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Stedelijk, and the Centre Pompidou.<ref name="bombsite.com" />
==See also== * ''Walking Figure'' (2014)
== References == {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{official|http://www.donaldbaechler.com}} * [http://www.ajaxpress.net Ajax Press (Books by Baechler)] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20090506095625/http://www.cheimread.com/artists/donald-baechler Cheim & Read Gallery] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20090223121404/http://www.ropac.net/artists/donald-baechler/ Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery] * [http://www.artnet.com/artist/1815/donald-baechler.html Artnet] * [https://triumgallery.com/artist/donald-baechler/ Trium Art Gallery] * [http://www.artsignaturedictionary.com/artist.php?id=3161 Art Signature Dictionary, genuine signature by the artist Donald Baechler] Eight dated examples of Donald Baechler's signature and monogram. * {{discogs artist|Donald Baechler}} * {{IMDb name|1304085}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Baechler, Donald}} Category:1956 births Category:2022 deaths Category:20th-century American male artists Category:20th-century American painters Category:20th-century American printmakers Category:20th-century American sculptors Category:21st-century American painters Category:American contemporary painters Category:American male painters Category:American male sculptors Category:American pop artists Category:Artists from Hartford, Connecticut Category:Painters from New York City Category:Maryland Institute College of Art alumni Category:Artists from Manhattan Category:American postmodern artists Category:Sculptors from Connecticut Category:Sculptors from New York (state) Category:Neo-expressionist artists Category:Westtown School alumni