Richard T. Scott

Richard T Scott

The Sophist Oil on Linen, 17" x 20", Painting by Richard T Scott
Born 1980
Stone Mountain, GA, United States
Nationality American
Education New York Academy of Art, Odd Nerdrum
Known for Painting, Numismatics
Patron(s) Morad El Hattab , Alan Howarth, Baron Howarth of Newport and Richard Epes , Robert C. Kennedy Ph.D
Website
www.richardtscottart.com

Richard T. Scott (born 1980) is an American figurative painter living in Connecticut and working in New York and Paris, France. He is a member of the Artistic Infusion Program: one of nineteen artists and illustrators contracted to design coins for the United States Mint.[1]

His contributions as a writer and aesthetic theorist have also been noted in realist circles. He spoke in the 2014 Representational Art Conference (TRAC)[2] and participated in discussion panels with Donald Kuspit, and Vincent Desiderio.[3] Scott is a proponent of an alternative philosophical superstructure for figurative painting, which he calls a Post-contemporary paradigm, separate from that of the Contemporary Art world.[4]

Along with Helene Knoop and Jan-Ove Tuv, Scott is one of the most vocal members of The Kitsch Movement.

Biography

Scott was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia in 1980 to a working-class family. He witnessed in first person the Heritage High School shooting on May 20, 1999, which profoundly influenced a later body of work. He later said of that experience that it had crystallized his perspective that his calling was to be an artist.[5]

He pursued a BFA in painting in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia where he studied with Margaret Morrison and Joseph Norman, followed by an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art, where he studied notably, with Vincent Desiderio, Steven Assael, and Edward Schmidt. After graduation he worked for two years as a painter for Jeff Koons, then three years as a studio assistant to Odd Nerdrum in Norway and Paris, France. He is a contributing author to The Nerdrum School, a collection of paintings by some eighty students of Nerdrum, and selected essays.[6][7] Scott began work for the United States Mint in 2014.

Paintings

Scott is known for his emotionally charged and often unsettling classical paintings, which hover on the border between realism, magical realism, romanticism, and often concern philosophical questions and alternative parallel narratives to biblical stories, myths, and literature. Combining skills and techniques from the Old Masters with philosophy - Post-contemporary or Reconstructivism, Scott's figurative work involves a synthesis of narrative and iconic symbolism and draws upon memories, dreams, and reality.

"I'm interested in ambiguity because it allows the viewer to enter the piece and bring their own subjective life experiences... For me a great painting must have both intellectual content and an emotional content, because that is what seduces the viewer into the work and makes the intellectual content available... I'm searching for a content that transcends my own personal experience, something that reaches for a more universal human experience, something that people can identify with in their own lives."[8]

Other appearances

Scott has acted in several films directed by Odd Nerdrum and appears as a character in Exodus, a memoir by NY Times best-selling author Deborah Feldman.[9] He appeared in American Painting Video Magazine, in podcast via the Newington-Cropsey Cultural Center,[10] and Radio France International.[11]

Political activism

Scott has made a stance against internet censorship, and as an advocate for internet freedom. In 2010, Scott told the New York Times that Facebook (contrary to their official policies[12]) was censoring classical paintings of nudes, which had been deleted from the accounts of many painters as well as established institutions such as the New York Academy of Art.[13] Facebook made an official apology, and altered their automated systems for dealing with complaints.

In 2011, Scott collaborated with other American realists such as Nelson Shanks, Daniel Graves, Alexey Steele, and American Artist Magazine[14] to mount a defense for Odd Nerdrum during the 2011 tax evasion scandal.[15][16] (Also see Odd Nerdrum for more information.)

Education

Influences

Scott's work is influenced by Rembrandt, Hammershoi, Vermeer, and late Goya. Though the signs of his studies with Odd Nerdrum are clearly evident, Scott's work equally exhibits the influences of Andrew Wyeth and Antonio Lopez Garcia.

Reviews

"Whether it is in his portraits, his compositions, or either still in his interiors, Richard T. Scott always tries to produce, on his spectators, a certain effect of strangeness, or at least, something like a feeling of longing. That's why, maybe, his compositions are populated for the greater part with mirrors in which appear, not simply beings just like those who face us - but of real spectres having the function to destabilize our glance while giving the fourth dimension for us to see."[17] - Frédéric Charles Baitinger.

"Richard T. Scott sees our epoch with the eyes of Rembrandt - an attitude nearly revolutionary on the scene of contemporary art." - Grégory Picard.

"Time and release of learned expectations gradually dissolve and what grows before our eyes is beauty. No lessons, no secondary statements, no parody or shaking of the fist against the angst of the world. Just beauty, asking us to experience it."[18] - Grady Harp.

Exhibitions

2014 "Into that Darkness Peering", Poe Museum, Richmond, VA

2014 Eckert Fine Art, Millerton, NY

2013 Galerie L'Oeil du Prince, Paris, France

2013 "Effigies and Idols", Last Rites Gallery, New York, NY

2013 "Nocturnes", National Arts Club, New York, NY

2012 Converge, 25CPW Gallery, New York, NY

2012 Art Takes Times Square, Artists Wanted, New York, NY

2011 CHIC Art Fair, Paris, France

2011 "O Miroir," Galerie Maubert, Paris, France

2011 L'esthetique, Galerie L'Oeil du Prince, Paris, France

2011 ArtParis, Saatchi Gallery, Le Grand Palais, Paris, France[19]

2010 The Facebook Show, Museum of New Art, Detroit, MI

2010 Kitsch Biennale, Palazzo Cini, Venice, Italy

2010 Corpus Hermeticum, New York, NY

2010 Galerie Francis Barlier, Paris, France

2010 Erotik Galleri PAN, Oslo, Norway

2009 Knut Hamsun, Galleri PAN, Oslo, Norway

2009 Carnival, Gitana Rosa Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2009 Take Home a Nude, Sotheby's, New York, NY

2009 Fall Kitsch, Galleri PAN, Oslo, Norway

2009 Tribeca Ball, New York, NY

2009 The Metamorphosis Project, Richmond, VA

2008 Kitsch Biennale Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, Germany

2008 Take Home a Nude Phillips de Pury & Company, NY

2007 Tribeca Ball, New York, NY

2006 La Dolce Vita, Tribeca Ball, New York, NY

2005 Take Home a Nude Phillips de Pury & Company, NY

Collections

The New Britain Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Sicily Palazzo_Riso, former British Arts Minister Alan Howarth, Baron Howarth of Newport, Austrian Embassy in Oslo, Dr. Richard Epes, Prince Morad El Hattab , The Museum of Realist Art: Boston, MA , Robert C. Kennedy Ph.D.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Coin World, May 22, 2014.
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ "The Nude in Contemporary Art" [The Great Nude Invitational], June 2010.
  4. ↑ Michael Klein , [American Painting Video Magazine] Volume II, Winter 2012.
  5. ↑ [American Arts Quarterly] Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center, Summer 2014
  6. ↑ [The Nerdrum School] Huffington Post
  7. ↑ [The Nerdrum School] Orfeus Publishing, Nov 2013.
  8. ↑ Susan Owensby "Does the Mirror Lie?", Radio France International, Paris, Oct. 2011.
  9. ↑ New York Times, May 9th, 2014
  10. ↑ Newington-Cropsey Foundation
  11. ↑ Radio France International, Oct 1st, 2011.
  12. ↑ John Seed "When is a nude OK on Facebook?"Huffington Post 5/24/2010.
  13. ↑ Miguel Helft The New York Times, Feb 2011.
  14. ↑ American Artist Magazine website.
  15. ↑ Allison Malafronte "The Nerdrum Affair", [American Artist Magazine], Jan-Feb 2012.
  16. ↑ Robin Pogrebin New York Times, Aug 2011.
  17. ↑ Frédéric Charles Baitinger "Le Silence de L’esprit", [Artension], Paris, 25 April 2011.
  18. ↑ Grady Harp [PoetsArtists Magazine] Sept 2012.
  19. ↑ Nic Occhiminuti "Back from Art Paris", April 19, 2011.

External links