The Brooklyn Rail

Inventive and original painter. Inspired and inspiring teacher. Perceptive commentator on works of art. Connoisseur of wine, sunsets, and sunrises. Excellent cook. I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to remember when I first met the multi-talented Graham Nickson. I recall being invited to give an evening lecture at the Studio School, not long after Graham was appointed Dean, then another lecture, then a short summer school lecture series. The next thing I knew, I was at the school every Tuesday and, when the MFA program was initiated, all day Tuesday. Graham had that mysteriously transformative effect on his students, as well. They described his marathons as “life-changing” and said he permanently altered their perceptions—in the best possible way. One artist alumnus told me that Graham was not just the best art teacher he ever encountered, but the best teacher. Period. I was always fascinated by his comments on student work when I took part in critiques; they were invariably pertinent, often surprising, and always thought-provoking.

I was fortunate enough to work closely with Graham when he led the Studio School’s intensive Orvieto program. Students drew from the Signorelli frescos in the morning and, in the afternoon, from a pair of models, posed in complex relationships, in set-ups that forced the participants to consider Graham’s insistence that “everything is relational,” and to concentrate on intervals and “plasticity,” a word whose meaning was obsessively probed over meals. (The studio was a disaffected church, normally the town sports center. The men who ran the center sat outside, reading porn magazines, making sure that no unauthorized person entered to look at the naked models.) At the end of the program, competing teams transcribed the main Signorelli frescos—Heaven and Hell—very large scale, on opposite sides of the former church. Hell usually won because the imagery was more engaging; each of the damned has a personal tormentor, like a sadistic personal trainer. Graham urged the artists on, as the air filled with charcoal dust and the floor silted up.

At intervals, we traveled to see works by Piero della Francesca, Giotto, Uccello, Morandi, and more. Graham’s discussions of these masterworks—helping students to see the difference between Giotto’s frescos in San Francesco, in Assisi, and those by the workshop, for example—enlarged on those held in the studio or in front of the Signorellis. But mostly, I remember silence, as everyone looked intensely and drew, Graham more intensely, it seemed, than anyone else. These visits to important works of art throughout Umbria, with occasional forays into Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, were sometimes provoked by other motives. The Benozzo Gozzoli frescos in Montefalco, interesting as they are, may have been less of a draw than the Sagrantino wine, celebrated since Roman times. We sampled it sitting in the enchanting, semi-circular piazza, a home-made, ad hoc version of a Renaissance ideal city.

Installing the graduating MFA students’ thesis shows with Graham was exciting. We usually had very similar ideas, but often, after we had found a preliminary placement that seemed to satisfy everyone, he suggested improbable relationships of works or surprising groupings. These new ideas always caught the student off balance and almost always worked, adding intensity to the installation. I’m good at that sort of thing, but Graham was a true master of the unexpected—the shift that brought the whole show to life. It may have been related to his notable culinary skills, his gift for combining flavors and textures that enhanced and intensified each other. (When I served as Graham’s sous chef, on weekends during the Orvieto program, I felt honored when he entrusted me with assembling his list of ingredients from the market in the main piazza. It was an exacting task requiring complicated negotiations with the vendors in my most colloquial Italian.)

Some of my richest memories are of working with Graham on exhibitions of his paintings and watercolors. It was a rare privilege to visit the studio with him, especially the packed, rather claustrophobic space in Soho that he occupied for decades, before he moved to the light-filled studio in Long Island City. Being shown sometimes unexhibited works for consideration was thrilling. Most moving, perhaps, was visiting Graham’s Connecticut studio the summer before last. A stack of vigorous watercolors elegantly continued his investigations of light, time, and season of the past few years. Most compelling were three large, dazzling, broadly painted landscapes, striking for their urgent brushwork and brilliant color, very different from the firmly drawn visions of a contemporary Arcadia that first established Graham’s reputation—marvelous examples of a transformative late style. My colleagues Christina Kee and Mary Anne Costello and I included all of these robust late works in the retrospective we curated at the Studio School last year. Happily, Graham saw the exhibition and approved.