JOHN VON BERGEN

By Hayden Carruth

The case of the artist at the end of the twentieth century is enough to make anyone believe in apocalypse. Here we are. We've survived modernism and post-modernism, to use literary terms, we've seen our muster scattered like ants fleeing from a ravaged nest, some scurrying to minimalism, others to realism—which in this light are not as different as casual observers may think-and everything is in disarray. Where is our refuge?

For some of us, at least, it is in independence. It is in the strength of the individual sensibility, unruffled by the hysteria of sectarian theoreticians.

John von Bergen lives and works in the hills of upstate New York, where he has built his home and studio in an isolated sector, and the important word here is built. He designed and constructed the buildings himself. They are impressive. Not because they are different or quirky or architecturally ostentatious, but because they are not: they're in the mode of the region. Yet they are beautifully adapted to his needs—and to Heidi's needs, for his wife has been closely involved in his work from the beginning. The site is a small abandoned quarry; their house stands on the brow of the cliff, John's studio, which is capacious and furnished with a foundry and all other metal-work-ing equipment, is down below. Here he builds his sculptures. He does not make them or sculpt them; in his own words he builds them.

When you build something you need building materials. Von Bergen's house is made of bricks, concrete blocks, boards, and timbers, objects of uniform dimensions, which, when put together purposefully but somewhat improvisationally, establish natural architectural rhythms. So it is with his sculptures. He manufactures uniform materials by casting bronze forms in sand, using a stick to create his mold, something he has picked up in the woods, usually a small branch from an ash or a maple, broken to a length of eight inches or less. Then when he builds his sculpture he puts these "pieces" together, welding them, sometimes bending them (with a vise and a pipe-wrench), following the rhythms of his intuition that lead into flowing, swinging arrangements. Jazz plays in the background while he works.

Over the years Von Bergen has worked in various modes and media-plaster, epoxy, terra cotta, aluminum, steel, wood, bronze. His earliest surviving pieces, some of them, are figurative; Heidi was his model. Later, after he built his house, he worked in monumental shapes, using huge steel armatures and twenty-foot pine timbers to build leaning, curving, enclosing structures in which imagined people of the spirit live and worship. When I saw them I was reminded spontaneously of the ancient sea-goddess, reviled as Rahab by the Hebrews but admired in the seagoing cultures, she who survived into medieval times and was known to the Celts in the icon of a whale skeleton beached on the shore: the sea-wind singing through its ribs was the ideal of the Celtic harp. Indeed marine imagery is important to John, who has spent part of his time on the coast of Maine and who keeps a wrecked hulk in the quarry-yard outside his studio in New York. Some of his sculptures can be said, if one is so inclined, to resemble fish or ships or undersea crea-tures, anemones and medusae. But the idea of the skeletal is even more important, the rhythmic structure of repeated forms which encloses light and space, movements of rising and falling. Some of his pieces are nearly translucent, so that you see all sides while standing in one place, though of course the relationships change as you walk around.

And color is important too. His pieces in wood have often been painted, or equally often painted and weathered; their textures are debonair and elegant. His pieces in steel, sheets of warped, shorn, and sometimes contused metal, have been rusted to different shades, and his bronzes have been patinated chemically by processes I do not know or understand. They are red or golden or bluish—autumn colors. When he speaks of his finished work, John more often refers to the different sculptures by their colors than by their shapes.

When I watched a casting session in Von Bergen's studio, he and his helpers, crouching over the sand-forms, pouring in the fiery metal, looked to me like Vulcan and his primeval crew in the workshop of the world. Certainly it was a scene that has been repeated millions of times since the Bronze Age, five thousand years ago-before the siege of Troy, before the migration of Abraham.

Although the studio was not dark, it seemed so in contrast to the brightness of the flaming, molten metal. The figures of the men seemed dim and archetypal. Are Von Bergen's sculptures animistic, abstract, architectonic? Are they grounded or ethereal? Are they formal or functional, sited or un-sited? They are all these things, and in varying combinations. Consequently I am brought back to my original point, ie., to John von Bergen's independence. He was born in Stockholm, raised in Minnesota, educated in New York; he has, like all of us, his own history-genetic, cultural, geographical. And his life is in his work, no doubt of that; such individuality is unmistakable. But how?

How is the life incorporated in the sculp-ture? One cannot say precisely, though the scholars of course will try. It is a question of genuineness, which is unprovable. The independent artist, who seems to me extraordinarily important in our present cultural impasse, is one who places function above form, imagination apart from theory, and who is forthright in the expression of his or her idiosyncratic vision. Such an artist uses whatever technique lies readily at hand in the cultural environment, without ideological attachment to it. Such an artist chooses his or her materi-als, both physical and psychological, from among those that are handy and naturally congenial, without regard to fashion. This is what Von Bergen has done and is doing. He is the figure of the poet in the wilderness, eminently practical, a builder devoted not primarily to the products of his own hands as such but to their inter-influential relationship with the world; he is a giant and a dwarf, a conservative revolutionary, a poor person of independent means. I salute him. But more than that I recommend him. He is the artist we need in our own time. He is indispensable.

Born 1939 Stockholm, Sweden

INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS

1996 Kouros Gallery, "Sculpture," New York, NY

1996 S.M. Stanley Gallery, "John Von Bergen: A Survey 1974-1994," Utica, NY

1996 Rosefsky Gallery, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

1995 Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland, ME, "Counterpoints".

1992 Edith Barrett Gallery, Utica College of Syracuse U., Utica, NY, "John von Bergen, A Retrospective 1970-1992"

1990 The Gallery, Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts, Oneonta, NY, "Navigation Series"

1989 Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY, "John von Bergen: New Sculptures"

1988 Art & Art History Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, 'Inside/Out" 14 Sculptors Gallery, New York, NY, "New Bronze Sculpture"

1987 Art Museum, Colby College, Waterville, ME

1986 Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY, "Fossils from the Forge"

1982 Roberson Center for the Arts & Sciences, Binghamton, NY

1982 Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY

1980 Union Station, Utica, NY, Baggs Square Revolving Sculpture Installation, "Bagg's Piece." (Funded by the New York State Council on the Arts)

1981 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, "New Work" Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

1977 "New Work" Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

1969 Root Art Center, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1995 Munson, Williams, Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, 'Sculpture Space: Celebrating 20 Years" Kouros Gallery, New York, NY

1994 Frick Gallery, Belfast ME, "Abstractions"

1993 Cooperstown Art Association/Smithy-Pioneer Gallery, Cooperstown, NY, "Art Discovery '93"

1993 Frick Gallery, Belfast, ME, "Abstractions"

1992 Frick Gallery, Belfast, ME, "Five Year Anniversary Exhibition" Gallery 53, Cooperstown, NY, "Inner Space" Frick Gallery, Belfast, ME, "Bronze Sculpture"

1991 Gallery 53, Cooperstown, NY, "Inner Space"

1990 Frick Gallery, Belfast, ME, "Bronze Sculpture"

1989 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, 51st Annual Exhibition (also 1969, 70, 74-77, 79, 80,83, & 88)

1988 Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, "Bruce Muirhead/John von Bergen"

1986 Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, "New York Artists Series V"

1984 Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, "Everson Biennial"

1984 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, "Sculpture Space - Recent Trends", cur. by Sarah Clark-Langager

1983 Port of History Museum, Philadelphia, PA, "Sculpture/Penn's Landing" Chesterwood, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Stockbridge, MA, 'Interim I"

1982 Major Albany Sculpture Sites (M.A.S.S.), Albany, NY

1982 Beaver College, Glenside, PA, "Sculpture '82, Beaver College"Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse U., Syracuse, NY

1982 "From Drawing to Sculpture", cur. by Ruth Appelhof

1980 Lowe Art Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, NY, "Southsite Project"

1980 Nassau County Museum, Port Washington, NY, "Sculpture at Sands Point" (an A-R-E-A project)

1980 The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, "Sculptor's Studies: Prospect Mountain Show"

1979 Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY "Prospect Mountain Sculpture Show: An Homage to David Smith", curated by Irving Sandler

1978 Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, NY, "10 x 10/ Sculpture Space"

ADDITIOANAL

1975 Co-founder of Sculpture Space, Utica, NY

Grande Camore
Bronze, Patina
2002