F. Scott Hess (born July 12, 1955) is an American painter and conceptual artist. He has described himself as a "reluctant realist" whose work is nevertheless grounded in Old Master craft and the representation of observed detail.Donald Kuspit
"Self Portraits and Old Masters"
Artnet, 2006 Art critic

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Educatio ...

suggests, "Hess uses profane realism to represent the sacred moments of life, for he knows we live in a profane world with little or no sense of the sacred, let alone of the sacredness of art".

Early life and education

F. Scott Hess was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1955, but grew up in Florida and Wisconsin.Laguna College of Art + Design MFA
"Faculty Bio for F. Scott Hess"
/ref> Hess' parents divorced when he was seven years old, and he reacted by making drawings of bound nude women - with Hess saying he didn't realize until much later that he was magically binding 'the woman,' his mother, so that she would not leave as his father had. Hess focused on printmaking and drawing at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Art in 1977. Feeling a kinship with the psychological depth and technical skills exhibited by middle-European artists, Hess moved to Austria in 1978, and attended the

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna () is a public art school in Vienna, Austria. Founded in 1688 as a private academy, it is now a public university. The academy is also known for twice rejecting admission to a young Adolf Hitler in 1907 and 1908. ...

as a student in the Meisterschule of Rudolf Hausner.Christopher Knight
"Review: F. Scott Hess paintings at the Municipal Art Gallery"
Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2014Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art
"F. Scott Hess Bio"
Paternal Suit Exhibition Description

Career

F. Scott Hess's first solo exhibition was at Galerie Herzog in Vienna, Austria in 1979, followed shortly thereafter by group exhibitions in Germany, France, and a second solo exhibition in Vienna's Tabak Museum in 1982.academia.edu
"F. Scott Hess CV"
/ref> While in Vienna Hess was awarded Austria's prestigious

Theodor Körner Prize The Theodor Körner Prize (German: ''Theodor-Körner-Preis'') is a set of annual Austrian awards bestowed by the Theodor Körner Fund in recognition of cultural and/or scientific advances. The prize is awarded at the University of Vienna. The priz ...

in 1981. In 1984 he moved to Los Angeles. Hess received a Western States Art Federation Award in 1990 as well as a

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

Fellowship and a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

Visual Arts Fellowship in 1991. Some of Hess's works have been purchased by

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st cent ...

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...

Pasadena Museum of California Art The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) was an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States, showcasing art and design originating from California. The museum was founded by long-time Pasadena residents and art collectors Robert ...

Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

, the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

Long Beach Museum of Art The Long Beach Museum of Art is a museum located on Ocean Boulevard in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States. The museum's permanent collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, works on paper, ...

, and the Bahman Cultural House, Tehran, Iran, among others as part of their permanent collections. In 2014 Hess had a comprehensive retrospective curated by Mike McGee and split between the Begovich Gallery at California State University-Fullerton, and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.Richard Chang
"Realistic paintings by Laguna professor on view in O.C. and L.A."
Orange County Register, Feb 19, 2014 A full monograph encompassing the works in the retrospective, and entitled 'F. Scott Hess' was published in 2014 by Grand Central Press and Gingko Press, with essays by Mike McGee, Doug Harvey, Leah Ollman, and John Seed. Hess was represented by Ovsey Gallery in Los Angeles (1985-1994), Hackett-Freedman Gallery in San Francisco (1998-2009), Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York (2010-2013), and has been represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City since 2010.Koplin Del Rio
"F. Scott Hess Bio"
/ref> Hess is currently an Associate Professor with the

Laguna College of Art and Design Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) is a Private university, private college in Laguna Beach, California. With an enrollment of more than 700 students, the college offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in 11 majors and three Master of Fine Ar ...

's BFA and MFA programs.

The Bastards

The Bastards were a collaborative artists' group including F Scott Hess, John Frame, Steve Galloway, Peter Zokosky, Michael C. McMillen, and Jon Swihart.Craig Stecyk
"Quote by Jon Swihart, Bastardization The Art of Jon Swihart,"
Juxtapoz, March/April, 2001 Swihart remembers the origins of The Bastards:

"The Bastards grew out of this drawing group we have where we get together and draw from the model. We'd hang out afterwards and drink beer and talk. Naturally, we started collaborating on pieces, at first just joking around, but as they became pretty good, we decided to formalize The Bastards. The name refers to the pieces not having any clear parentage. That's also how a lot of people probably consider us".

The Bastards exhibited at Hunsaker/Schlesinger, Santa Monica, CA, in 1997, and Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA, in 1999.

The Hours of the Day

F. Scott Hess worked on The Hours of the Day for six years, from 1994 to 2000, styling it roughly on the medieval

Book of Hours A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

, and injecting content from art history, the Bible, and daily family interactions into twenty-four paintings, one for each hour in Hess' mythical day.Leah Ollman
"Refrains of the 'Day'"
Los Angeles Times, Oct 27, 2001 The Hours of the Day series was exhibited at the

, Newport Beach, California, in October 2001.

The Paternal Suit: Heirlooms from the F. Scott Hess Family Foundation

The objects in The Paternal Suit tell the true story of Hess' ancestry in America as seen through the eyes of four centuries of artists and craftsmen, all of whom may or may not have existed.Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art website
"THE PATERNAL SUIT: HEIRLOOMS FROM THE F. SCOTT HESS FAMILY FOUNDATION"
/ref> The collection holds more than one hundred objects, including paintings, old photographs, ceramics, historical documents, weapons, sculpture, and antique artifacts, all appearing as authentic items from their specified time period. Hess lays no claim to the creation of the artifacts in The Paternal Suit, but acts instead as the collecting Director of his own Family Foundation, dedicated to assembling a visual historical narrative of Hess' paternal line that includes United States Senator Alfred Iverson Sr., and his son, Brigadier General Alfred Iverson Jr., C.S.A. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', "Mr. Hess came up with his own absurdist art — for example, an oversize Confederate uniform that he said had expanded after exposure to manure fumes — to combine with real evidence of events that include his ancestors' doomed attempts to market newly patented ice makers and chalkboards. "The facts are as dumb as stuff I made up," he said".Eve M. Kahn
"The Beauty That Remains Behind the Final Curtain"
The New York Times, April 25, 2013 The Paternal Suit opened at the

Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (HICA or "the Halsey") is a non-profit, non-collecting contemporary art institute within the School of the Arts at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. The HICA presents contemporary a ...

, Charleston, SC (2012), traveled to the

Mobile Museum of Art The Mobile Museum of Art (MMofA) is an art museum located in Mobile, Alabama. It features extensive art collections from the United States, Europe, and non-western art. The museum hosts exhibitions, multi-disciplinary programs (including film, ...

, Mobile AL (2013), Sumter Gallery of Art, Sumter, SC (2014) and the

, Long Beach, CA (2014).

References

External links

*
"F. Scott Hess, Vimeo, 72min, Talk at New York Academy of Art, 2014"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hess, F. Scott 1955 births Living people Artists from Baltimore University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni American realist painters American conceptual artists 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 20th-century American painters American male painters American contemporary painters 20th-century American male artists