Plastic Surgery
Ivan Albright had a warm heart and a cold head. He was stationed at a U.S. Army field hospital during the first World War. Albright made pencil sketches of the wounds of casualties of battle, tinted with watercolor. It's not always certain what the viewer is looking at with anatomical explanation, which is lacking in these drawings. All that is obvious is that the subject is an open wound.
The sketches are second-rate medical illustrations. They are, more importantly, a first-rate testament to the horrors of war. Albright's deficient artistic objectivity was more than compensated for by his sensitivity -a weakness, which he discovered, for the suffering of others. His line shakes. He is nervous. It's art.
Ivan, no doubt, thought his father, who was a successful commercial artist, would approve of his anatomical studies. When Albright returned to the United States after the war, he brought with him first impressions of mangled bodies -and his own nightmares. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduated, then pursued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia, and the National Academy of Design, in New York.
Ivan Albright's experience as a battlefield orderly carried-over to his creative career. His disposition, as said, leaned more towards giving emotional support than setting bones. The tenderness of flesh, and his feeling for it, is evident throughout his mature work. He has not only a tender touch, but sensitivity (to put it euphemistically), about body image. His figures appear to consist entirely of cellulite. They all look like they need a face lift and tummy tuck.
Ivan Albright is a stalwart of Chicago art. He influenced a generation of imitators in Chicago, the "monster school" -of deadpan art. Chicago laughs at itself, defender to the title of “second city.” A sense of irony pervades the place. Chicago may not be #1, but it's still the greatest. Vain, Chicago is in love with itself. “Kiss me,” it says, “I'm from Chicago.”
Late in his career Albright returned to drawing medical subjects. This time, the subject was himself:
In 1981 Albright began a series of drawn and painted self-portraits at the invitation of the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, which for four centuries has collected other significant examples of this motif. For the next two years, ending with his death in 1983, the artist, energized by this great honor, created around 24 small self-portraits in various media, a series that constitutes a summation of his vision and technical prowess.*
Albright suffered a stroke between self-portraits #17 and #18 of the series. Self-portrait #17, in pencil, is what we take to be the face of a man on the verge of a stroke. It was not his last picture. He continued to render self-portraits after his stroke, from numbers 18 to 24. Then he stopped.
Ivan Albright's Self-portrait #17 can be viewed on the Chicago Art Institute's website. While a reproduction is interesting to look at (given this background), it is the complete series, viewed in sequence, that gives the full emotional impact of what happened to Ivan Albright. The series was first shown at the Chicago Art Institute after Albright completed it, in a small room, exclusively dedicated for the series. It was an intimate, face-to-face, experience. The abrupt change of style, from #17, to #18, came as a shock to the casual viewer.
*Citation: Albright, Ivan, Medical drawings made direct from patients & in operating room in Base Hospital # 11 located at Nantes, France. Manuscript, Codex Ms 1560, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403