Mike Hazard
A eulogy for Jerry Rudquist (1934-2001) delivered at the Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, on November 15, 2001.
Guru of color, genius with a brush, Mr. Rudquist was too gentle, too generous and too humble to be called master.
This is a portrait of the late artist as my teacher. A descriptive study of the master’s eye, by one of his multitudinous pupils.
I was lucky to have him as an advisor when I was a student at Macalester in the seventies.
Later, I made this video portrait with him called The Painted Eye in which he paints a magnificent painting of his own eye.
And I was lucky to see him a week before he died and this is what I saw. He paints the air with his hands. Eyes closed, lying on his back in bed, he paints the air with his hands as he talks.
He marvels that he’s just finished a major commission for Medtronic. The work began by looking at their medical devices, the better to see into the nature of their business. Only days after signing the prints, he had a seizure and needed one of their pacemakers.
He points to and, opening his eyes, curiously looks at the place in his body where it now is. I think, now, this is Rudquistian.
He goes on. Most all the heads I’ve drawn have a core visual idea. Not always before, sometimes it comes after. It’s the headness we all share. The peculiarities make doing heads so damn interesting.
Raquel and I often used to go to St. Olaf and sit in a pew and watch the parade of individuals. Each with a pious attitude, hands folded, receiving communion. Every one with a shared attitude, a shared gesture of their bodies, commonalities--and at the same time, amazing difference.
I’m a people watcher. We all are, I guess. There are thousands and thousands of interesting heads out there, Mike. I want them all. I study his. The eyes are deep as caves in Afghanistan. The eyes are deep as caves in Altamira, and as dark and colorful.
What does the student say to the teacher at death’s door? What does the teacher on his deathbed say to the student?
He tells of drawing Raquel modeling elegant gowns when they were students at Cranbrook. One piece in ballpoint pen hangs in the stairway, reminding him of a story of Ingres. Another charcoal portrait is downstairs. She seems so sad, and as he says this he chokes a little and says he gets like this a lot now.
She’s magnificent, he whispers. Finally, he says, They are just drawings.
We’re quiet for a minute. As I reflect, I recall he once said you have to focus on a painting for at least five minutes before the colors begin to really stimulate your retina.
A tear wets the corner of his left eye.
Tradition was central to Mr. Rudquist and his teaching. He saw himself as an organic part of an artistic lineage. After his brush with Josef Albers, he studied hard at MCAD with Albers’ chief assistant, Rob Roy Kelly.
Rudquist chose self-portraits by Leonardo, Durer, Rembrandt, Alice Neel, Bonnard, Lucian Freud, Picasso, Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Louis Corinth, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, Chardin, Gauguin, Chuck Close, Robert Arneson, Degas, and Käthe Kollwitz to illuminate the film we made together.
One painter said he saw the whole history of western painting watching Rudquist paint in The Painted Eye. Click to screen a video of the painter painting the picture from beginning to end.
Jerry asks about my family. When he hears my former wife Pat and I each have new loves in our lives, he says that’s good because we deserve a fullness of life.
A fullness of life. How to praise the praise in that phrase!
This is the master’s last lesson, a fullness of life. For when I look at Jerry, I see the fullness of a good life.
Jerry didn’t paint from photos. It was first-hand experience he lived and died for.
To paint the now famous pig called Petunia, he was hanging around the swine barn at the University of Minnesota, frustrated because he couldn’t get eye-to-eye for a close-up view. Then one day, a couple of pigs started to mate right by the fence. And all at once, he was nose to nose, eyeballing one happy pig.
So, Jerry says, I will let you go. We shake hands, his left to my right, awkward. Then he spreads his arms wide as an eagle’s wings and beckons me down for a hug. We kiss goodbye.
It is nice to feel the reality. There are two things that are really exciting to a painter, he says in the film. One is to put out fresh paint on the palette and the other is to buy a new brush. He whispers in my ear, It is nice to feel the reality.
After he visited my studio once, he said he was going to go back to his and close his eyes for fifteen minutes and see what he could see...
When I close my eyes and think about what I see in Mr. Rudquist, I love all the pictures he painted into my head: wicked wars, mystic windows, a whimsical pony tail and pork chop, heroically colored humongous heads, skulls to beat hell...
When I close my eyes, I love the way he paints the air with his hands.
Guru of color, genius with a brush, Mr. Rudquist was too gentle, too generous and too humble to be called master.