James C. Harrison, American (Detroit), 1925-1990. A 1980s mixed media collage on paper with attached photograph of the artist by Doug Quackenbush, newspaper and paper components, titled "Achilles in Hades". Initialed “JH”, dated “7 -22-1989” and titled lower left. Image 24 x 36", framed 27 x 39 1/2" overall.
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Born November 27th, 1925 in Detroit, Harrison graduated from Cass Tech High School with a commercial art degree in 1943. Harrison went on to study briefly at Cranbrook Academy of Art and Olivet College before realizing that a traditional educational setting was not agreeable with him. Thus, he became largely a self-taught artist, and moved to New York City in 1950. A member of the second-generation New York School, Harrison progresses from Abstract to Neo Expressionism with a disarming intimacy.
“It is not uncommon to feel suddenly immobilized by a rush of sublime rapture as one stands before his work.“
- Gregory Gilligan, Contributing Editor to Art International and Arts Magazine, 1989
Within Harrison’s work, there is a compelling tension between classical allegories, Jungian imagery, and intense subjectivity. His distinctive ‘rough handling’ and layered visual syntax shows an artist's struggle to transcend his own internalized chaos. Frequently collaborating with Thelonious Monk photographer Doug Quackenbush throughout the 1950s, Harrison befriended and exchanged works with Cy Twombly in 1955.
Though he participated in several group exhibitions, the vast majority of his works produced between the 1960s and 1980s were held as closely guarded secrets. He would often revisit his works adding to or further explaining his inspiration for each one. As his interests changed or his understanding deepened, Harrison would inscribe the backs of his works to reflect this evolution. These writings now shed light on Harrison’s complex personality as he critiqued his own art, days, weeks or even decades later. Harrison had his first solo exhibition at A Place Apart Gallery in Brooklyn in 1983.
“To Harrison, all images were religious, in that the contents of the imagination were sacred. He understood that imaging and dreaming were processes; the point of modern art was to reveal the process as much as the resulting images. He read his drawings as texts of the Collective Unconscious, where meaning is elusive, changeable, layered, and funny. Baroque webs and fiery geometries dance together, delineating, as James Hillman calls archetypes, "the skeletal structures of the psyche".”
- The Brooklyn Rail, April, 2006
Group Exhibitions: