UMUC Raoul Middleman Exhibition, 2015

RAOUL MIDDLEMAN’S Romantic ExpressionismHonoring 55 Years of Artistic Excellence

Arts Program University of Maryland University College April 10–August 30, 2015

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Welcome

Dear Art Patrons,

I am proud and deeply honored that University of Maryland University College can showcase the work of one of Maryland’s most treasured artists— Raoul Middleman.

Middleman was born in 1935 in Baltimore. Initially, his family was opposed to him studying literature or fine art, so Middleman majored in philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, graduating early. He was drafted into the U.S. Army, where his superiors recognized his artistic talent and recommended that he study at the College of William and Mary. Subsequently, he would attend The Barnes Foundation and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the Brooklyn Museum School in New York; and the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine.

After completing his studies in art, Middleman returned to Baltimore and joined the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he has taught for more than 50 years. As an educator who has helped to shape the future of count-less students, Middleman continues to use his artistic abilities to guide the next generation of artists, both on campus and in his studio.

On behalf of UMUC—an institution committed to the ideals of teaching and lifelong learning—I applaud Raoul Middleman and his devotion to teaching, to learning, and to art.

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Javier MiyaresPresidentUniversity of Maryland University College

I am also deeply grateful to Middleman and his wife, Ruth, who have entrusted UMUC with 194 original works from his vast collection. Much of UMUC’s large and growing collection of Maryland art is on public display in the uni-versity’s various gallery spaces, in its Conference Center, and in the lobbies and hallways of its administrative and academic headquarters in Adelphi and Largo, Maryland. It is a special honor to be able to continue Middleman’s longstanding legacy of education, introducing and reintroducing his mas-terful works and unique vision to a broad audience of UMUC students, staff, faculty, and guests.

Thank you again to Raoul and Ruth Middleman and to all who assisted in making this donation and celebration of art part of UMUC’s long history as a respected repository for the works of Maryland’s finest artists.

Sincerely,

Javier MiyaresPresidentUniversity of Maryland University College

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Introduction

It has been three years in the making—our celebration of one of Maryland’s most esteemed artists and art teachers: Raoul Middleman.

Raoul was introduced to the Arts Program by way of a simple phone call from Ellen Saval, an art patron who takes particular delight in supporting Maryland artists. She put us in touch with Raoul, and I’m so pleased that she did because the Arts Program at UMUC has developed a profound friendship with both Raoul and his wife, Ruth.

My first visit to Raoul’s massive two-story studio in Baltimore was memora-ble. The size of his studio space as well as the sheer number of his works amazed me. After talking with this friendly, jovial person for only a short time and flipping through some of his paintings, I knew that I was in the presence of a creative genius.

Some of Raoul’s works are massive in scale, colorful in depictions, and romantic to the eye. His works, many whimsically pleasing, reflect the people and places of his life. They draw you in with their angles and movement. You can feel the wind blowing through the trees or sense how you could fall out of a chair portrayed in a painting. The works also evoke a sense of romanti-cism—thus giving us the first half of the exhibition title, “Raoul Middleman’s Romantic Expressionism.”

From our very first meeting, I knew I wanted to have Raoul’s works represented in the permanent art collection at UMUC. Several encounters later, the Arts Program formally asked him for a donation, and his words still amaze me: “You can take whatever you want. I would be honored to have my work at UMUC.”

Stev

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rsonEric Key

Director, Arts ProgramUniversity of Maryland

University College

As we began the selection process, our goal was to depict the six decades of his career and his different artistic styles. The body of work we ended up with was even richer than we could have imagined, for not only did the artist donate works from the six decades of his career, but he gave the Arts Program a total of 194 works on canvas and paper.

We have chosen to unveil this remarkable donation to our students, staff, faculty, and community on the occasion of Raoul’s 80th birthday. The Arts Program at UMUC has selected approximately 76 works for the special exhibition, “Raoul Middleman’s Romantic Expressionism: Honoring 55 Years of Artistic Excellence.”

This celebration would not be possible without financial contributions from the Wolpoff Family Foundation, Dr. Michael Tenner, and Peter Quint. We also want to also express our thanks to Constantine Grimaldis of C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore for his help with this project, including finding additional financial support. And UMUC would like to offer a special, heartfelt thank you to Ruth and Raoul Middleman for their generosity. Additionally, I would like to thank Perette Manz, conservator, who repaired some of the works in this donation; curator Brian Young for his hard work on every aspect of the exhibition; René Sanjines for his invaluable work with the framing and instal-lation of the exhibition; and Richard Franklin who served as a consultant on handling the larger works in the show.

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Middleman never lacks energy, audacity, and inspiration. Masked by its rough finish, his bravura style recalls the virtuosic draftsmanship of a Larry Rivers. He often produces a painting a day. Some are just sketches, but none is trite; none is predictable. His visual art powerfully combines a sense of the unre-lenting flux that history has imposed on his times, with a radical return to the conviction of the Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix that what makes men of genius is the obsessive conviction that what has been said has still not been said enough. Middleman’s talk at the Troika Gallery in Easton, Maryland, in 2014—the videotape is available on www.raoulmiddleman.com—explains his aesthetics. “I learned from Titian and Giorgione how to model a figure,” he said, and combined their Renaissance vision with a Romantic worldview, with Burke and Kant’s understanding of the sublime. Beyond the pleasing picturesque and orderly beauty lies the awesome, which transcends boundar-ies. Although, says Middleman, the artist tries to reduce mystery to truth, the unknowable remains, always dark, implacable, and fluid like life itself. It appears in many details of his paintings. Like sculpture, his works are meant to be seen from more than one vantage point. “A lot of my paintings are experiments with the medium, to see how it works,” Middleman says. “I show paint as paint; I don’t want the paint to slide too smoothly.” When

“OLD MAN MAD ABOUT PAINTING”1 RAOUL MIDDLEMAN

Laurence M. Porter, PhD, professor emeritus, Michigan State University

aoul Middleman, a Baltimore artist, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) and at the Brooklyn Museum School during the glory years of the New York school of painters and poets. After art school, he reports moving to New York’s Lower East Side and painting abstract expressionist style, emulating mainly Willem de Kooning. The influx of talented refugees from Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s had shifted the center of the Western art world from Paris to New York. (A strong French influence persists; both Raoul and his wife, Ruth, were marked by their study in Paris). Middleman, whose Russian Jewish ancestors were persecuted both by German Nazis and Russian Communists, had a natural existential affinity with these immigrants.

Middleman and Ruth (née Channing), a wonderfully whimsical artist, were urban pioneers, renovating an abandoned Baltimore row house in a then- gritty neighborhood between the railway station and the freeway. They live their vision. Their home’s secret core reflects their sense of the sublime indwelling in the ordinary: they combined the second and third of the four stories into a single vast studio, with a catwalk running around the edges of the walls ten feet up. It recalls de Kooning’s self-designed two-story studio in Springs on Long Island or the intricate inner spaces of Donald Judd’s home-made desk in the Yale University Art Museum, a sculpture whose every angle rewards close viewing.

R

Artwork above: Raoul on Fire, not dated, oil on board, 24 x 16 inchesUMUC Permanent Collection, Maryland Artists Collection, Gift of the artist

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you look at it from close up, you see the deliberate rough finish and broken outlines, but when you step back, he says, “it jumps into an illusion.” He often abandons the pinhole, one-point perspective of European painting from classicism through impressionism, in favor of a two- or multiple-point perspective, all the more subtly disquieting because it is projected onto an understated, realistic subject.

He invokes Shakespeare, Mozart, and Titian to exemplify his goal of creating a meta-discourse that breaks one form or genre in order to suggest another one. “The form can become an extension of the content,” he says. “You ride the paint like a horse: you guide it, it guides you.” In contrast, his drawings are made like snapshots, and “each take is a collision with the world of appearances.”2 In his still lifes, bright yellow areas such as lemons are a fre-quent motif, like captive suns. In two works in this show, the slimy, iridescent surface of the fish, in darker, mottled tones, contrasts with the dry, bumpy surface of the lemons; and the fish, whose eyes still appear fresh and bright, seem to stare at you, challenging your illusion of supremacy in the universe.

Middleman presents his conception of history’s instability in his massive narrative paintings such as Gypsy Caravan (p. 32) and Custer’s Last Stand (p. 15) in his dynamic sketches of human figures boxing, and of swirling horses and riders. In his portraits, Middleman works more in the tradition of Rembrandt or Rubens, rather than using the slick, gleaming finish of an Ingres who flatters the rich or titillates our senses with his boneless Odalis-ques. “I’m an uglifier,” he explains. At times he makes his subjects’ bodies more corpulent and their skin more rough and blotchy than they really are. They reflect what de Kooning called “the melodrama of vulgarity.”3 You don’t have to be somebody (wealthy or socially prominent) to become the subject of a Middleman portrait.4 One noteworthy exception is the tender Portrait of Ruth (p.19), his beautiful wife, lying on a cloud of pink bedding—almost a secular apotheosis, reminiscent of the gold background of medieval painting that signifies paradise.

The Portrait of Al (p. 13), Middleman’s first painting at PAFA, displays a pow-erful framework of a handsome blond man (a fellow student who frequently modeled) seated and leaning forward on his bent forearms, looking like a stolid sphinx, in a realist-impressionist style. After this squared-off Al, Middle-man nearly always endows his painted and sketched figures with incredible kinetic energy. They seem not posed but poised. The standing figures often have one arm akimbo and the other raised. The seated figures, usually in an armchair, rarely have both legs or both arms in the same position. Even the models’ fingers seem differentiated by restless twisting motions, halted momentarily in an apparent freeze-frame. The bodies may occupy as many as six different frames: eyes looking directly at the viewer; head rotated slightly away; torso oriented toward the viewer; hips turned away; legs turned forward again; and the feet away. Seated poses may be complicated by one leg or arm draped over an arm of the chair. The fingers of one hand are seldom aligned, and each hand is typically in a different position. Middle-man’s favorite pose is a three-quarter alignment (the torso roughly forty-five degrees away from the parallel with the viewer’s plane). With the multiple figures found in many sketches, he intensifies the kinetic energy by depicting either oppositional movement (boxing) or twofold cooperative movements (horse and rider).

Midnight Snack (p. 14), an excep-tionally realistic image insofar as it corresponds to our expecta-tions for artificial renderings of reality, illustrates Middleman’s simultaneous homage to and disillusionment with pop art (in the style of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein), with its smooth finish and glossy surfaces that actually blind us to the more complex, real physical world with its shadows and refracted light, while ostensibly dramatiz-ing physicality. He thrusts his right hand, larger than his head, toward the viewer, like Frances-co Parmigianino’s self-portrait described by John Ashbery in his famous poem, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” The stem of the beer glass he is holding bends sharply into an implied fourth dimension, as if cubism were returning to infiltrate a world of hyperrealism. The left hand holds a sandwich that conflates the hungry man’s lower lip with a tomato—part of the sandwich he is eating.

Dead Eye (p. 36), a self-portrait, shows the artist when he was still affected by a stroke in his right eye. For a time, this condition caused strange distor-tions in his vision. The image reflects the ambiguity of a transition, during an affliction that enlarged his consciousness. Middleman is standing in a door-way—a symbol of passage—and although the stroke had limited his vision, it also gifted him with intuitions of another world. The artist can occupy both worlds, the real and the visionary, at the same time.

Portrait of Al, 1959, oil on board, 21 x 27 inches

Midnight Snack, 1965, oil on canvas,81 x 69 inches

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spectral legions of the Ku Klux Klan, itching to kill any man of color who approaches a white woman. Prominent in the right middle distance of the panorama is one of their lynch victims—whose alert gaze, greater size, and continuing resistance shows his superiority to his executioners, in the spirit of Claude McKay’s defiant poem “If We Must Die.” The actual appearance of the couple tells a different story: the man is handsome, dapper, and open-faced; the woman, her eyes blissfully closed, rests her head trustingly on his shoulder. In real life, these friends of the Middlemans are married; the husband brought plastic horns to the studio as a joke, attaching them to his own forehead to pose.

Similarly, Custer’s Last Stand (p. 15) reflects sympathy for permanently dis-possessed Native Americans (e.g., according to written treaties, 90 percent of the state of Maine still legally belongs to them), and Gypsy Caravan (p. 32) is in part an allegory of all the dispossessed in history. The subjects of these narrative paintings, Middleman explains, often come to him in dreams. The double portrait of his beloved uncle Sid with a younger man in militant garb, in a scene wreathed with symbols of head and heart, represent two genera-tions of Judaism in harmony. The inscription Yom Ha’atzmaut on the banner means “The Day of Independence” and commemorates the birth of the nation of Israel. The dark storm clouds above portend the inevitable troubles facing a new land where the remnant of the Jews is completely surrounded by enemies.

Raoul Middleman’s icono-clastic treatment of light and of space becomes most apparent in his landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes. You can see his Cedars and Hail Storm in the virtual Landscape Gallery section of his website, as well as his essay, “Courbet and the Modern Landscape.” “Shafts of light that invade the dark forest interior have an unnerving twitch, like a jittery muscle . . . ,” he wrote. “The distinctions between foreground and middle distance are in con-stant flux,” whereas Courbet’s seascapes evaporate “the constrictions of ten-sion and terror” into the vapors of sea and sky, creating “a glorious but fragile bubble of refracted light imperiled by storms.” Breakwater at High Tide (p. 22) echoes the choppy waves in the middle ground with the larger boulders in the foreground (one of which, during the 1938 hurricane, ended up against the inner wall of his future grandparents-in-law’s pantry hallway, with an unbro-ken glass bowl sitting on top of it). The closest boulders are incongruously highlighted, as if the yellow sun just partly visible at the top center had leapt over the darkened intervening spaces. Out in the open water to the right of

Sara in a Leopard Coat (p. 37) forms part of a series of women of Baltimore. When Sara, a student of Middleman’s at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and others came to the Middleman household to pose, they some-times playfully dressed up in gar-ish burlesque stripper, prostitute, and dance-hall costumes (includ-ing Sara’s coat) that the artist had collected, but instead of being de-picted as sexual objects, passively subject to the viewers’ gaze, they are shown as strong, autonomous figures, surviving despite their hard lives. Like Sara, they usually gaze firmly at the viewer (decid-edly subjects, not objects). Many were models from MICA, and they often became friends of the family. Paradoxically, they reflect Middleman’s feminist sensibility. Gloria (p. 31), like most of the others, gazes intently at you, but her body language is exception-ally calm, and only her legs are set in a different plane. The beautiful Nude in a Rocker (p. 27) exceptionally turns completely sideways, and turns her gaze inward, although this tranquility is belied by her multiple, twisted body planes.

Multiple human figures in Middleman’s narrative oils nearly always convey a message of social solidarity. The Devil Went Down to Georgia (p. 40)—also the title of a 1979 song by the Charlie Daniels Band—shows an African American man with horns driving a convertible tilted downward toward us at a dramatic angle, with a white woman at his side. To the side stands a fiddler-observer-narrator with a tear in his eye, and further back, the sinister,

Custer’s Last Stand, 1967, oil on canvas, 127 x 216 inches

Sara in a Leopard Coat, 1995, oil on canvas,56 x 36 inches

Breakwater at High Tide, 1975, oil on board, 24 x 24 inches

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the sheltering breakwater, the sea is surprisingly calm. The artist’s seascapes and the landscapes both often use strongly contrasted diagonal movements, forming an X, neither arm of which ends at the viewers’ eyes. The line of a beach contrasts jarringly with the thrust of a breakwater; a fan of tree trunks and branches emanating from a lower corner of a river or marsh scene leads our gaze upward toward the sky, while the flow of a stream in the middle dis-tance, and the opposite bank that frames it, rises crisscross but more gently in the opposite direction (e.g., in The Marsh [p.30] or the watercolor Bird in Flight [p.49]).

Sometimes the artist intervenes more directly. The House in Winter Woods (p. 24) makes the shadowed, blank white wall facing us at a forty-five degree angle clash with the bright white facade angling away from us to the left, and the lurid red roof. The back end of the whole structure tilts backward as if it were being slowly devoured by the forest floor. From the end nearest us, a dark tree extends bare branches toward us at a conflicting angle, startlingly transformed into pale blue by refraction from the sky. Paris Street (p. 48) looks as if two invisible giant hands had seized the two ends of a row of buildings, twisting them in opposite directions like a loaf of raw dough. Off Boston Street (p. 27) inextricably mingles smoke from the factory chimneys with the hovering clouds. The near walls are verticals, but the buildings angle downward toward the far end, as if sinking into the earth, and the leftward tilt of the pole in the left foreground emphasizes that movement even more.

In some oils, one notices small domains of pure, non-representational primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), together with the green that signifies life. See, for example, Rooftop View (p. 16), lacking the blue; Old Factories of Canton (p. 22), where the deserted buildings have melted into puddles in the foreground; the incongruous splotches of red and green in front of the row houses of Paris Street (p. 48); The Marsh (p. 30), with orange instead of red); and Landscape and Shore (p. 46). Like the modernist poets, who would sometimes allude to each of the four elements—earth, air, water, and fire—

in their compositions to suggest an all-encompassing vision, Middleman does the same with autonomous zones of the primary colors and of green.

Unlike earlier American painters of the sublime, such as Albert Bierstadt or Thomas Cole, who depict remote, deserted, and uninhabited places, with an emphasis on soaring vertical cliffs that match their own ambitions, Middleman’s land, sea, and cityscapes show places he knows and inhabits: the Susquehanna River and Deer Creek in Maryland; the beach on Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts; the Baltimore harbor, before it was gentrified. Nevertheless, isolation inspires him with visions of natural forces that overwhelm and outlast human beings. One cannot be a humanist without knowing that man is not the measure of all things. In Middleman’s painterly world, the grandi-osity of brilliant colors, multiple perspectives, and the haunting presence of that omnipresent meta-structure, time, convey his humble awareness of that fundamental truth, enhanced by images of abandoned human structures being reclaimed by nature.

1 Allusion to the self-selected nickname of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). This artist from Edo (present-day Tokyo) drew thousands of images of landscapes and from the daily lives of people at all social levels, celebrating both the sublime and the ordinary.2 Telephone interviews, January 2015.3 As you could see in his recent show at the MICA Meyerhoff Gallery, his self-portraits repeatedly demonstrate that he never exempts himself from his unsparing vision, in which life wears on us until it wears us out. Selfies: Over 50 Years of Raoul Middle- man's Self Portraits, January 30–March 15, 2015.4 “Beer with a Painter: Raoul Middleman” interview by Jennifer Samet, November 9, 2013.

House in Winter Woods, 1983, oil on linen, 24 x 36 inches

Old Factories of Canton, 1982, oil on board, 24 x 24 inches

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RAOUL MIDDLEMAN:THE CARNIVAL OF LIFEPatricia Mainardi, PhD, professor, City University of New York,and visiting distinguished professor, Beijing Jiaotong University

he city that gave us the gritty urban reality of David Simon’s The Wire and John Waters’s hilarious and transgressive comedies has also

produced the painter Raoul Middleman, another larger-than-life chronicler of the American scene. We might call them the Un-Holy Trinity of Baltimore. But their import goes far beyond the depiction of a single city, for they all illuminate something about America in our times, offering commentary on both its problems and its promise.

Like Simon and Waters, Raoul Middleman has always gone against the grain of national and inter-national trends, going his own way and dragging the rest of us along with him. The range of his subjects is encyclopedic: realist paint-ing from still life through landscape, genre subjects, and portraiture, all the way to grand-scale multi-figured “history” paintings, where the history is as likely to be performed by a group of his rowdy friends as by deities, though he has depicted them as well. It is as though, single-handedly, he wants to paint his way through the entire history of art: he wants to do it all. He gives us pre-industrial idylls, unspoiled beaches, clear air, and, at the opposite pole, the broken-down post-industrial landscape of cities, with their abandoned factories in ruins. It’s all part of our contempo-rary world. No nostalgia for the one, no despondency for the other. He brings long-established themes into modern life, as in Madonna of the Race Track (p. 58), often peopled by his rag-tag crew of friends. His still-life paintings are so far from arrangements of picturesque objects that they are just as likely to show slimy fish. Indeed, Still Life with Fish and Copper Pot (p. 42) depicts its repulsive subject as the very apotheosis of fishiness.

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Madonna of the Race Track, 2008, pastel on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

Raoul Middleman is a born

painter. When eye and

hand are working together,

the results are magic. His

narrative paintings are

bursting with invention,

wit, and good painting— the scale is unmatched by

all but a few of his peers.

Everything is big, including

his talent and ambitions.

But most important of all,

his energy, passion, and

vision, whatever the subject.

Eugene Leake, painter and president emeritus, Maryland Institute College of Art

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But we should not let the undeniable magnetism of his subject matter deflect us from an examination of the painting itself. His work is expressionist, to be sure, with a superficial similarity to the paintings of Oskar Kokoschka or Chaim Soutine. Thick swirling globs of bright pigment morph into figures, buildings, and trees. The sheer energy of his paint handling jolts the viewer with a kinesthetic charge; we can feel the frenzy of the rhythms, whatever the subject. The moment is caught like a fly in amber, in full flight, pinned down before it can get away. And though Middleman is undeniably a colorist, his work differs from the usual meaning of the term. Often colorist implies, as in the work of the early twentieth-century Fauves, that all colors exist at the same strident altitude, like an orchestral work transposed into a very loud key whose fortissimo volume negates any nuance. Middleman’s color is different in that he builds up to his touches of shrieking neon, playing through the en-tire keyboard of his palette. These electric notes do not construct a synthetic color range but rather pinpoint an incredibly heightened reality, in context both real and surreal—surreal in the sense of more-real-than-real. In House in Winter Woods (p. 24), the red block of the roof burns through the image to the forefront of our consciousness, its color and form presenting a counterpoint to the scraggly blue branches that contribute their screeching rhythm to the foreground. The blue of the sky where it meets the roof shades to green—its polar complement—setting up a clash of titans against a background of more somber earth tones. So our viewing experience is not just of swashbuckling paint handling but a full orchestration ranging from the tinny little staccato of small brushstrokes that morph into tree branches to the full-throated bellow of flat planes of solid color of the roof. If Cézanne tried to find the order beneath chaos, then Middleman shows us the chaos that is always lurking just below the apparent order of things. Paint is flung everywhere, coalescing—just barely—into a legible image. He aban-dons orderly perspectival construction whose well-behaved space rationally and mathematically recedes into infinity. If linear perspective is the symbolic form that best represents the logic and rationality of life, then Middleman’s space—spherical, distorted, rushing to and fro—expresses the pulsating vortex that aptly conveys the irrationality of our contemporary existence.

Middleman seems to under-stand that we are all actors performing a role of some kind. In his portraits, sitters assume their personae like actors in a play. They seem larger than life—indeed, the figures are often depicted over life-size, although they do their best to fit into their assigned space, often bend-ing or crouching to maneuver a limb into the frame. Sara in a Leopard Coat (p. 37) and Abram Bibi (p. 38) both seem to burst out of their confines.

Life cannot be contained wholly by art, Middleman warns us. It can only be suggested, just as his brushstrokes never wholly encompass the form. We are given a peek, a suggestion, a hint; the rest is up to us. The carnival is the perfect metaphor for his painting, a “real allegory,” as Courbet said. “All my painting life I have been trying to transform the particular into some kind of transcendent icon,” as Middleman put it. His images break through our quotidian reality to exist on a higher plane. Many artists have attempted to reach this higher plane through the elimination of all the details of a specific reality in favor of a larger, simpler abstraction, a pure essence. Middleman does the opposite, finding pure essence in the amalgam of the particular, in the sloppy reality of our lived experience, “a dangling display of the universal,” as he put it. Gypsy Caravan (p. 32) could be the icon of this universe: crowded with a pageant of people performing, dancing, singing, and making art, music, and joy to a backdrop of urban desolation. Even the bleak

landscapes of his post-industrial scenes have the energy of this carnival, like the wreckage after a great party. In Off Boston Street (p. 27), a sole bedraggled tree challenges the dominance of smoke stacks and factories, outmaneuvered and overshadowed but nonetheless surviving, a green icon of vitality amidst the ruins.

We can well understand that the two artists he admires in particular, and has even written about, are Rembrandt and Courbet. They represent two poles of the Middleman universe: Courbet, the extrovert, the showman, proclaiming his project of creating history paintings out of the pedestrian reality of modern life and drawing a carnival tent as his ideal exhibition space; Rembrandt, the introvert, choosing themes of quiet spirituality, focusing on how paint morphs into flesh, flesh into spirit. Ultimately, Middleman’s carnival is an allegory of our need to find happiness on the dung heap of life. Salvation is always possible, he shows us, despite the limits of our frames, despite the wreckage of our environment. We can—and should—greet life like the figures in Gypsy Caravan, laughing, dancing, singing, making art and joy.Abram Bibi, 1996, oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches

Gypsy Caravan, 1992, oil on canvas, 120 x 192 inches

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aoul Middleman`s corpus of works over more than five decades is immense and covers many aspects in landscape painting, portraits,

self-portraits, and narrative paintings. It gives us much to admire and to fascinate us. His unique hand manifests itself in strong brush strokes using bright colors in a restive duet.

I would like to start my essay with Raoul`s crowded and large-sized narrative paintings, which very often remind me of the extensive cycles of frescos in medieval palaces and churches. However, in Raoul`s paintings, everything seems to be happening at the same time; each work is like an extract of the story he is telling, compacted and powerful, in vivid scenes of his native Baltimore. We see in them the lust of the flesh, which Raoul finds in Ruben`s paintings and has admired in museums all over the world.

His narrative paintings depict real people with all the characteristics that attracted the artist. These paintings throw a light on the diversity of man-kind, without selective distinction between gender, classes, races, and ages. No matter if they are prostitutes or bankers, young or old, beautiful or not, all find an equal place in Raoul`s narrative world.

Using that same intensity, Raoul looks at himself in his many self-portraits, or what he calls selfies in a recent exhibi-tion. Here again he stands in a long line of artists he admires, like Max Beck-mann, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and Lovis Corinth. Raoul explores his own face scrupulously under every light, in every mood, at every age and stage of his life, and he demonstrates

RAOUL MIDDLEMAN’S ART IS EMBEDDED IN THE STREAM OF HISTORYHeidi Müller, freelance curator and art consultant, former vice director, Haus der Kunst, Munich

I like Raoul’s landscapes the

best; I think that’s where his

greatest talent lies . . . I like

the structure that he gets, and

that contains and expands

on the fabulous painting

technique he has. I think the

whole question of painting

directly from nature is still

a marvelous question, and

I’m glad that Raoul is one of

the people who is doing it

with such distinction.

Louis Finkelstein, painter and professor emeritus, Queens College, City University of New York

R

Dead Eye (self portrait), 1995, oil on canvas, 83 x 33½ inches

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his large and wonderful capacity of catching the essence of an expression. Here also he demonstrates his craftsmanship in the vitality and dynamic precision of his style.

He completed so many portraits of individuals over all these years, and I can feel his intent search for the personality of his sitter (following the tradition of European portraitists). But Raoul never seeks to flatter! As in his self-portraits, he shows us the truth and nothing but the truth. The heightened complexion always gives body to these faces. They appear most lively and fascinated, as if they were in a dialogue with the observer or, better yet, with the artist. This dialogue, de-manding and forceful, without a doubt is between the artist and his model. Raoul looks behind the surface of the face to find the real hidden personality.

Looking on his main body of work—the landscapes, sea-scapes, and harborscapes—makes one dive into a world which we sometimes know but see anew through Raoul`s eyes. How he seizes the essential motive, how he transfers it onto his canvases and brings it to life is absolutely unique.

I watched him during summer 2000 in Bavaria in a particu-larly rainy month of July, and with so many reflections now crossing my mind, I would like to cite what I wrote then:

“You, my friend, were finally back in a countryside which has always inspired you in the paintings of Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Jawlensky, and other members of the ‘Blaue Reiter.’ And at the same time, you were close to the place where Lovis Corinth painted his last landscapes of the Walchensee in 1925. It felt immediately as if you were taking up the brush where these artists left theirs—in a different way but nevertheless one could still feel their breath. A strong breeze is blowing through your dramatic landscapes in the south of Bavaria—more precisely in the area around Gabriele Münter`s and Wassily Kandinsky`s former country house in Murnau. And you enjoyed the violently changing clouds encouraging your brush to strike even more vigorously to keep up with the changing formations in the sky.

No sooner a thunderstorm or a gust was over, you immediately afterwards were rushing out of the house to profit in the most artistic sense and starting a new canvas. The so called ‘art shuttle’—my little red Peugeot—was on its way to bring you to an ever more exciting new place, either sheltered under an old oak tree overlooking the marsh towards Garmisch and the Wetterstein mountains with daily more attractive motives or in an open field facing the Alps.

What atrocious weather, people would have exclaimed. Not you! The worse the better. And one could see that it aroused your passion and that it was the ‘right’ atmosphere to bring out your outstanding qualities to grasp the essentials in a quick glance and to turn it into an amazing work of art.”

I am sure that quite a number of visitors to his shows will profit and take delight in his very personal way of looking at a landscape. Raoul is a wonder-ful translator of what meets his eye onto a two-dimensional surface. From my experience, I can say that only landscapes with a certain sense of drama and turmoil will find his attention. A totally blue sky will bore him; the artist will consider it unexciting and not worth a new canvas. Thus Raoul is always on the move with the changing clouds.

What is true for the landscape in Bavaria is true for any landscape Raoul looks on, may it be Scotland, Brittany, the Ardeche, or his beloved Cape Cod, or the area around Havre de Grace and, of course, Baltimore itself. Here he documented for many years the changing aspects of the harbor, resulting in the many fascinating harborscapes which sometimes give way to nostal-gic feelings.

Raoul Middleman is a ceaseless and loyal observer of creation, and he lets us participate in his interest in it. I hope that this creativity and interest will still last for many years to come.

Ad multos annos, Raoul!

Bird in Flight (aka Susquehanna Morning), 2006, watercolor on paper, 18 x 24 inches

Paintings

13

PORTRAIT OF AL1959, OIL ON BOARD21 x 27 INCHES2014.011.011

14

MIDNIGHT SNACK 1965, OIL ON CANVAS81 x 69 INCHES2014.011.003

15

CUSTER’S LAST STAND 1967, OIL ON CANVAS127 x 216 INCHES2014.010.024

16

ROOFTOP VIEW – NEW YORK CITY 1968, OIL ON MASONITE 11½ x 15½ INCHES2014.011.017

17

STILL LIFE WITH SKULL1970, OIL ON LINEN21½ x 21 INCHES2014.011.016

18

KAREN 1970, OIL ON CANVAS26 x 14¼ INCHES2014.011.009

19

PORTRAIT OF RUTH 1973, OIL ON MASONITE24 x 24 INCHES2014.011.018

20

FISH AND LEMON 1974, OIL ON BOARD24 x 24 INCHES2014.011.035

21

UNTITLED 1974, OIL ON MASONITE24 x 18 INCHES2014.011.020

22

BREAKWATER AT HIGH TIDE 1975, OIL ON BOARD24 x 24 INCHES2014.011.010

OLD FACTORIES OF CANTON1982, OIL ON BOARD24 x 24 INCHES2014.011.034

23

PORTRAIT OF MARGARET 1982, OIL ON CANVAS56 x 40 INCHES 2014.011.014

24

HOUSE IN WINTER WOODS1983, OIL ON LINEN24 x 36 INCHES2014.011.025

25

MATT II 1984, OIL ON PAPER27½ x 22 INCHES2014.010.017

26

FISH AND POT 1988, OIL ON PAPER39½ x 27¾ INCHES2014.009.011

27

OFF BOSTON STREET1987, OIL ON CANVAS24 x 24 INCHES2014.011.013

NUDE IN A ROCKER 1988, OIL ON BOARD48 x 48 INCHES2014.008.003

28

SELF PORTRAIT 1988, OIL ON PAPER39 x 27½ INCHES2014.011.039

29

YOM HA’ATZMAUT 1988, OIL ON BOARD60 x 48 INCHES2014.008.009

30

THE MARSH 1991, OIL ON CANVAS51¼ x 49¼ INCHES2014.008.002

31

GLORIA 1992, OIL ON CANVAS56 x 39 INCHES2014.008.001

32

GYPSY CARAVAN1992, OIL ON CANVAS120 x 192 INCHES2014.010.023

33

MORNING AT PIMLICO1992, OIL ON PAPER16¼ x 20½ INCHES2014.010.020

34

RUTH STANDING AT THE TIDE POOL 1993, OIL ON LINEN50 x 50 INCHES2014.008.010

35

THE BLONDE (AKA RED)1994, OIL ON LINEN48 x 36 INCHES2014.011.027

36

‹

PORTRAIT OF GRACE HARTIGAN1995, OIL ON CANVAS84 x 60 INCHES2014.011.001

DEAD EYE (SELF PORTRAIT) 1995, OIL ON CANVAS83 x 33½ INCHES2011.010.002

‹

37

SARA IN A LEOPARD COAT 1995, OIL ON CANVAS56 x 36 INCHES2014.008.005

38

ABRAM BIBI1996, OIL ON CANVAS54 x 54 INCHES2014.008.006

39

BOW DAVIS 1996, OIL ON CANVAS81½ x 40 INCHES2011.010.003

40

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA 1999, OIL ON CANVAS94 x 60 INCHES2011.010.009

41

FAMILY 2000, OIL ON CANVAS96 x 83½ INCHES2011.010.006

42

PORTRAIT OF AL 2005, OIL ON CANVAS80 x 30 INCHES2011.010.001

STILL LIFE WITH FISH AND COPPER POT 2003, OIL ON PAPER27¾ x 39¼ INCHES2014.011.026

‹

‹

43

VASE OF FLOWERS 2008, OIL ON WOOD30½ x 10½ INCHES2014.011.032

Watercolors

45

LANDSCAPE 1999, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 29½ x 41 INCHES2014.009.007

46

LANDSCAPE AND SHORE 1999, WATERCOLOR, GOUACHE, AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER29½ x 41 INCHES2014.009.010

47

PARIS: LATE EVENING (AKA NOTRE DAME AT NIGHT) 2004, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER10¼ x 14 INCHES2014.011.042

48

PARIS STREET 2004, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 10¼ x 14 INCHES2014.011.047

49

BIRD IN FLIGHT (AKA SUSQUEHANNA MORNING) 2006, WATERCOLOR ON PAPER18 x 24 INCHES2014.011.045

Drawings

51

MAN WITH PENCIL 1994, RED, BROWN, AND ORANGE CHARCOAL AND WHITE PASTEL ON PAPER, 41 x 31 INCHES2014.009.002

52

MALE FIGURE RECLINING 1994, BLACK AND BROWN CHARCOAL AND WHITE PASTEL ON PAPER, 31 x 41 INCHES2014.009.003

53

FIGURE WITH HAND ON CHIN 1995, BLACK, BROWN, AND WHITE CHARCOAL ON PAPER41 x 31 INCHES2014.009.006

54

Left:

MALE HEAD 1999, COLORED CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 21 x 17 INCHES2014.012.014

Right:

PORTRAIT OF A MALE 1999, COLORED CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 21 x 17 INCHES2014.012.015

55

Left:

PORTRAIT OF A MALE 1999, CHARCOAL ON PAPER21 x 17 INCHES2014.012.017

Right:

PORTRAIT OF A MAN 1999, BROWN, WHITE, AND BLACK CHARCOAL ON PAPER21 x 17 INCHES2104.012.016

56

STUDIES FOR HORSE RACING 2005, CHARCOAL ON PAPER19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.031

57



58

MADONNA OF THE RACE TRACK 2008, PASTEL ON CANVAS36 x 24 INCHES2014.011.051

59

FIVE FEMALE NUDES 2009, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 19 x 36 INCHES2014.012.037

CROUCHING NUDE 2009, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.039

‹

‹

60

TWO MALE NUDES 2009, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.042

TWO STANDING MALE NUDES 2010, CHARCOAL ON PAPER19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.067

‹

‹

61

FIGURES 2010, CHARCOAL AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER 19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.062

62

NUDE FEMALE LYING DOWN2010, CHARCOAL ON PAPER19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.047

63

THREE MALE FIGURES 2011, RED BRICK AND BLACK CHARCOAL ON PAPER19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.074

TWO NUDES 2011, BLACK CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 19 x 26 INCHES2014.012.083

Prints

65

THE MAE WEST SUITE1969, #4 OF 12 LITHOGRAPH #2 FROM AN EDITION OF 3030 x 22 INCHES2014.012.004


THE MAE WEST SERIESRaoul Middleman was teaching at MICA in 1969, the year that Jonathan Williams, founder of The Jargon Society press, spent as artist-in-residence there. Williams invited Middleman to illustrate his book of 12 poems entitled The Apocryphal, Oracular Yeah-sayings of Mae West. Through these illustrations, Middleman says, he “found his line again.” These images were first shown publicly in 2012 at Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.

66


67

Clockwise from top left:


THE MAE WEST SUITE 1969, #3 OF 12 LITHOGRAPH #2 FROM AN EDITION OF 3030 x 22 INCHES2014.012.003

THE MAE WEST SUITE 1969, #1 OF 12 LITHOGRAPH #2 FROM AN EDITION OF 3030 x 22 INCHES2014.012.001


68

Clockwise from left:




69

‹

‹



70

TREE I 1980, ETCHING ARTIST’S PROOF 20 x 14 INCHES2014.010.007

71

PLATE OF FISH1980, ETCHING #3 FROM AN EDITION 1210 x 14 INCHES2014.010.010

72

RAFE 1980, ETCHING #4 FROM AN EDITION OF 12 14 x 10 INCHES2014.010.011

AGNES 1981, ETCHING #12 FROM AN EDITION OF 12 20 x 14 INCHES2014.009.009

73

KATE 1981, ETCHING #2 FROM AN EDITION OF 8 22 x 15 INCHES2014.010.008

74

FOREST EDGE 1997, WOODCUT, ARTIST’S PROOF, 19½ x 26 INCHES2014.010.005

MYSELF@802015, ETCHING #1 FROM AN EDITION OF 50PAPER SIZE: 15 x 11 INCHES; IMAGE: 5 x 4 INCHES2015.001.001

‹

‹

75

SEATED FIGURE1972, ETCHING #3 FROM AN EDITION OF 12, 20 x 14 INCHES2014.010.006

76

RAOUL MIDDLEMANBORN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Education1961 Brooklyn Museum Art School, Brooklyn, New York

1959–1961 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1960 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Summer Residency, Skowhegan, Maine

1955 BA, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Artist’s BiographyBy Brian Young, Curator, Arts Program University of Maryland University College

Selected Teaching and Related Positions1961–present Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

2007 Visiting Artist, Jerusalem Studio School, Israel

2006 Resident Artist, International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture, Umbria, Italy

1973–1974 and 1997–2001 Artist in Residence, Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

1998–2001 President, National Academy of Design, New York, New York

1998–1999 Acting Director, Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

1985 Visiting Critic, Vermont Studio School Summer Program

1975–1978 Chairman, Painting Department, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Above: Raoul Middleman in his studio. Photo by Benjamin Middleman.

77

Selected Solo Exhibitions2015 Selfies: Over 50 Years of Raoul Middleman's Self Portraits, Meyerhoff

Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

2013 Mae West Suite, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

2012 Raoul Middleman: City Limits, American University Museum at Katzen Art Center, Washington, D.C.

2011 Baltimore Babes, Kouros Gallery, New York, New York

2011 The Century Association, New York, New York

2010 Narrative Paintings, Howard Community College, Columbia, Maryland

2010 Scraps of Self, Prince George’s Community College, Largo, Maryland

2009 C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

2008 Rodger LaPelle Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2008 Troika Gallery, Easton, Maryland

2007 Pop to Plein Air, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland


2004 Kouros Gallery, New York, New York


2002 Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, Maryland

2001 Recent Paintings, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland


2000 Raoul Middleman: Recent Paintings, MB Modern Gallery, New York, New York

1999 Raoul Middleman: New Paintings, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

1999 Raoul Middleman: Portraits, University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, Maryland


1999 Troika Gallery, Easton, Maryland

1996-1998 Annual exhibitions at Ice Gallery, New York, New York

1998 Steven Scott Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

1996 Watercolors of Scotland, Resurgam Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

1994 Narrative Paintings, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, Maryland

1994 Recent Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lifes, Steven Scott Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

1989 Bendann Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

1989 Ingber Gallery, New York, New York

1988 Contemporary Realist Gallery, San Francisco, California

1988 Swanston Fine Arts, Atlanta, Georgia

1985 Raoul Middleman & Wolf Kahn, Kornbluth Gallery, Fair Lawn, New Jersey

1983 Narrative Paintings, William Capro Gallery, New Bedford, Massachusetts

1982 Water Gap Art Gallery, Walpack, New Jersey

1980 Paintings of the Ardeche, Scott-McKennis Gallery, Richmond, Virginia

1966 Krasner Gallery, New York, New York

1963 Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Selected CollectionsBaltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Frye Museum of Art, Seattle, Washington

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

National Academy of Design, New York, New York

New York Public Library, New York, New York

Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

Towson University, Towson, Maryland

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, Maryland

Selected PublicationsCotter, Holland. “Review/Art; Contemporary Works From an Old Tradition,” New York Times, May 1, 1992.

Davis, W. Bowen. Raoul Middleman: Ice Collection, New York, New York, 1996.

Dorsey, John. “Portrait of a Critic,” Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, February 4, 1996. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-02-04/news/1996035201_1_portrait-painted-middleman-raoul

Finkelstein, Louis. In the Golden Age, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, 1994.

Gellner, Victoria. Raoul Middleman: Landscapes–Cityscapes, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, 1981.

Glueck, Grace. “Art in Review; Aristodimos Kaldis,” New York Times, June 18, 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/18/arts/art-in-review- aristodimos-kaldis.html?pagewanted=print

McNatt, Glenn. “The ordinary becomes poetry,” Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, April 6, 1999. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-06/ features/9904060228_1_middleman-raoul-commonplace

Rasmussen, Jack. Raoul Middleman: City Limits, American University Museum, College of Arts and Sciences, Washington, D.C., 2012.

Samet, Jennifer. “Beer with a Painter: Raoul Middleman,” Hyperallergic, November 9, 2013. http://hyperallergic.com/92607/beer-with-a-painter- raoul-middleman/

Schoettler, Carl. Raoul Middleman: New Paintings, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, 1999.

Shore, Virginia. From Maryland to Bucharest, U.S. Embassy, Bucharest, Romania, 1986.

Tannous, David. Raoul Middleman: Recent Paintings, MB Modern Gallery, New York, New York, 2000.

78

Portrait of Al 1959, oil on board21 x 27 inches2014.011.011

Midnight Snack 1965, oil on canvas81 x 69 inches2014.011.003

Custer’s Last Stand1967, oil on canvas127 x 216 inches2014.010.024

Rooftop View – New York City 1968, oil on masonite 11½ x 15½ inches2014.011.017

Karen 1970, oil on canvas26 x 14¼ inches2014.011.009

Still Life with Skull1970, oil on linen21½ x 21 inches2014.011.016

Portrait of Ruth 1973, oil on masonite24 x 24 inches2014.011.018

Fish and Lemon 1974, oil on board24 x 24 inches2014.011.035

Untitled 1974, oil on masonite24 x 18 inches2014.011.020

Breakwater at High Tide 1975, oil on board24 x 24 inches2014.011.010

The 79 works in this exhibition are just a portion of the 194 total works given by Raoul Middleman to the Permanent Collection of the Arts Program at UMUC. The university wishes to acknowledge his generosity and his contribution to this exhibition.

Old Factories of Canton1982, oil on board24 x 24 inches2014.011.034

Portrait of Margaret 1982, oil on canvas56 x 40 inches 2014.011.014

House in Winter Woods1983, oil on linen24 x 36 inches2014.011.025

Matt II 1984, oil on paper27½ x 22 inches2014.010.017

Off Boston Street1987, oil on canvas24 x 24 inches2014.011.013

Fish and Pot 1988, oil on paper39½ x 27¾ inches2014.009.011

Nude in a Rocker1988, oil on board48 x 48 inches2014.008.003

Self Portrait1988, oil on paper39 x 27½ inches2014.011.039

Yom Ha’atzmaut 1988, oil on board60 x 48 inches2014.008.009

The Marsh 1991, oil on canvas51¼ x 49¼ inches2014.008.002

Gloria 1992, oil on canvas56 x 39 inches2014.008.001

Gypsy Caravan1992, oil on canvas120 x 192 inches2014.010.023

Morning at Pimlico1992, oil on paper16¼ x 20½ inches2014.010.020

Ruth Standing at the Tide Pool 1993, oil on linen50 x 50 inches2014.008.010

The Blonde (aka Red)1994, oil on linen48 x 36 inches2014.011.027

Dead Eye (self portrait) 1995, oil on canvas83 x 33½ inches2011.010.002

Portrait of Grace Hartigan1995, oil on canvas84 x 60 inches2014.011.001

Sara in a Leopard Coat 1995, oil on canvas56 x 36 inches2014.008.005

Abram Bibi 1996, oil on canvas54 x 54 inches2014.008.006

Bow Davis 1996, oil on canvas81½ x 40 inches2011.010.003

The Devil Went Down to Georgia 1999, oil on canvas94 x 60 inches2011.010.009

Family 2000, oil on canvas96 x 83½ inches2011.010.006

Portrait of Al 2005, oil on canvas80 x 30 inches2011.010.001

Still Life with Fish and Copper Pot 2003, oil on paper27¾ x 39¼ inches2014.011.026

Vase of Flowers 2008, oil on wood30½ x 10½ inches2014.011.032

Landscape 1999, watercolor on paper29½ x 41 inches2014.009.007

Landscape and Shore 1999, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper29½ x 41 inches2014.009.010

Paris: Late Evening (aka Notre Dame at Night) 2004, watercolor on paper10¼ x 14 inches2014.011.042

Paris Street 2004, watercolor on paper10¼ x 14 inches2014.011.047

Bird in Flight (aka Susquehanna Morning) 2006, watercolor on paper18 x 24 inches2014.011.045

Man with Pencil 1994, red, brown, and orange charcoal and white pastel on paper41 x 31 inches2014.009.002

Male Figure Reclining 1994, black and brown charcoal and white pastel on paper31 x 41 inches2014.009.003

Exhibition List

PAINTINGS

DRAWINGS

WATERCOLORS

79

Figure with Hand on Chin 1995, black, brown, and white charcoal on paper41 x 31 inches2014.009.006

Male Head 1999, colored charcoal on paper, 21 x 17 inches2014.012.014

Portrait of a Male 1999, colored charcoal on paper, 21 x 17 inches2014.012.015

Portrait of a Male 1999, charcoal on paper21 x 17 inches2014.012.017

Portrait of a Man 1999, brown, white, and black charcoal on paper21 x 17 inches2104.012.016

Studies for Horse Racing 2005, charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.029



Madonna of the Race Track 2008, pastel on canvas36 x 24 inches2014.011.051

Five Female Nudes 2009, charcoal on paper19 x 36 inches2014.012.037

Crouching Nude 2009, charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.039

Two Male Nudes 2009, charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.042

Two Standing Male Nudes 2010, charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.067

Figures 2010, charcoal and watercolor on paper, 19 x 26 inches2014.012.062

Nude Female Lying Down 2010, charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.047

Three Male Figures 2011, red brick and black charcoal on paper19 x 26 inches2014.012.074

Two Nudes 2011, black charcoal on paper, 19 x 26 inches2014.012.083

The Mae West Suite 1969, lithograph, #1 of 12 #2 from an edition of 3030 x 22 inches2014.012.001

The Mae West Suite1969, lithograph, #2 of 12 #2 from an edition of 3030 x 22 inches2014.012.002

The Mae West Suite 1969, lithograph, #3 of 12 #2 from an edition of 3030 x 22 inches2014.012.003










Tree I 1980, etching, artist’s proof, 20 x 14 inches2014.010.007

Plate of Fish1980, etching #3 from an edition of 1210 x 14 inches2014.010.010

Rafe 1980, etching#4 from an edition of 1214 x 10 inches2014.010.011

Agnes 1981, etching #12 from an edition of 1220 x 14 inches2014.009.009

Kate 1981, etching#2 from an edition of 822 x 15 inches2014.010.008

Forest Edge 1997, woodcut, artist’s proof, 19½ x 26 inches2014.010.005

Seated Figure1972, etching#3 from an edition of 1220 x 14 inches2014.010.006

Myself@802015, etching#1 from an edition of 50paper size: 15 x 11 inches; image: 5 x 4 inches2015.001.001

PRINTS

80

Additional Works in the UMUC Collection

PAINTINGS

Cityscape, 1976

Gun Powder, 1987

Lancaster Street, 1987

The Calumny of Apelles, 1983

Boston Street, 1982

Boston Street View, 1986

Cedar Trees, 1978

Seascape (aka Red Sun Fish), 1984Coal Pier, 1987

Front Beach, 1987

Matt, 1981

Self Portrait, 1986

Carol Jean Birch, 1987Brent, 1984

Portrait of Dr. Theodore Woodward, 1981

Portrait of William Leizman, 1974

Studio View, 1987

Thunder Head, 1988

81

Cowboy Sam, 1990

Andromeda, 1988

Eager Street, 1993

Big Daddy, 1991

Leaning Shed (aka Birkintide’s Shed), 1993

Off-Shore Storm, 1990

Loading Crane (aka Loading Elevator), 1988

Cityscape (aka After the Fire), 1988

Loading Dock, 1992

Harbor View, 1988

Pied Piper, 1990

LuLu in Blue, 1990

Agnes, 1992

Deer Creek (aka Susquehanna Summer), 1993

Warren Point, 1987

Old Canton, 1987

Barns (aka Farmyard), 2000

Erin in Black High Knee Boots, 1995

82

WATERCOLORS

Along the Seine, 2004

Fugitive Sun, 2005

French Balcony, 1984

Paris Quai, 2004

Landscape, 1999

Landscape, 1999

Weather (aka Hovering Gull), 2005

The Tiber River (Umbria) (aka Sunflower Fields), 2006

Umbria (aka Cloudburst), 2006

Mesa (aka Navajo Knobs), 2008

Raoul on Fire, not dated

Ghengis Khan, 2004

Daniel Mark Epstein, 2004

Bill Sullivan, 2005

Portrait of Daryl Crofton, 2001

Self Portrait, 2002

DRAWINGS

Nude Woman Lying Down, 1995

Study for Horse Racing, 2001



Studies for Horse Racing, 2003


Male Nudes, 2005

Four Figures, 2009


Studies for Horseback Racing and Spectator, 2003

83

Nude Woman with Pole, 1975

Seated Female, 1993

Jockey, Horse, and Others, 1999







84

Three Nudes, 2010 Two Male Nudes, 2010

Two Male Nudes, 2010


Two Nudes, 2010

Three Nudes Standing, 2010

Three Nude Studies, 2010

Two Figures, 2010

Two Female Nudes, 2010


Two Nudes, 2009

Nude Crouching, 2010

Three Female Nudes, 2010

Six Female Nudes, 2010

Standing Female, 2010

Four Figures, 2009

Three Nudes, 2009

Four Nudes, 2009

Two Female Nudes Standing, 2009

Two Nudes, 2009

85

Two Nudes, 2010

Two Nudes, 2010

Female Nudes, 2011

Nude Female Dancers, 2011

Nude Stretching, 2011 Two Male Nudes, 2011

Two Male Nudes, 2011Two Nudes, 2010

Two Nudes, 2010

Two Nudes Standing, 2010



Crouching Male Nude, 2011

One Male and Two Female Nudes, 2011

Three Female Nudes, 2011

Two Female Nudes, 2011

Two Females, 2011

Two Nudes, 2011

Two Nudes, 2011

Two Nudes, 2011

86

PRINTS

Ruth, not dated

Helen Frederick, not dated

Nude, not dated

Self Portrait, not dated

Self Portrait, not dated

Two Ladies, not dated


87

About UMUCServing Busy Professionals WorldwideUniversity of Maryland University College (UMUC) specializes in high-quality academic programs that are convenient for busy professionals. Our programs are specifically tailored to fit into the demanding lives of those who wish to pursue a respected degree that can advance them personally and grow their careers. UMUC has earned a worldwide reputation for excellence as a comprehensive virtual university, providing educational opportunities through a combination of classroom and distance-learning formats. The university is proud to offer highly acclaimed faculty and world-class student services to educate students online, throughout Maryland, across the United States, and in 20 countries and territories around the world. UMUC serves its students through undergraduate and graduate programs, noncredit leadership develop-ment, and customized programs. For more information regarding UMUC and its programs, visit www.umuc.edu.

About the Arts Program at UMUCSince 1978, UMUC has proudly shown works from a large collection of international and Maryland artists at its headquarters in Adelphi, Maryland, a few miles from the nation’s capital. Through its Arts Program, the university provides a prestigious and wide-ranging forum for emerging and established artists and brings art to the community through special exhibitions and its own collections, which have grown to include more than 2,800 pieces of art.

UMUC’s collections focus on both art by Maryland artists and art from around the world. They include the Maryland Artist Collection, the Doris Patz Collection of Maryland Artists, the Asian Collections, the Education Collection, and the International Collection. The university’s collection of Maryland art includes approximately 2,000 works and provides a comprehensive survey of 20th- and 21st-century Maryland art. The university’s Asian Collections consist of nearly 420 pieces of Chinese art, Japanese prints, and Balinese folk art, dating from the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) through the 19th century—a historical reach of 13 centuries. The UMUC collection of Japanese prints includes more than 120 prints by 35 artists.

Artworks are on display throughout the College Park Marriott Hotel & Con-ference Center at UMUC and the Administration Building in Adelphi as well as at the UMUC Academic Center at Largo. The main, lower-level gallery in Adelphi is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, and the Leroy Merritt Center for the Art of Joseph Sheppard is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week. More than 100,000 students, scholars, and visitors come to the Adelphi facilities each year. Exhibitions at the UMUC Academic Center at Largo are open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

UMUC Arts Program Mission StatementThe Arts Program at UMUC creates an environment in which its diverse constituents, including members of the university community and the general public, can study and learn about art by directly experiencing it.

The Arts Program seeks to promote the university’s core values and to provide educational opportunities for lifelong learning. From the research and study of works of art to the teaching applications of each of our exhibi-tions, the Arts Program will play an increasing role in academic life at the university. With a regional and national focus, the Arts Program is dedicated to the acquisition, preservation, study, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art of the highest quality in a variety of media that represent its constitu-ents and to continuing its historic dedication to Maryland and Asian art.

ContributorsDirector, Arts Program: Eric Key Curator: Brian YoungEditors: Sandy Bernstein, Nancy Kochuk Director, Institutional Projects: Cynthia FriedmanDesigner: Jennifer NorrisProject Manager: Laurie BushkoffProduction Manager: Scott EuryFine Arts Technician: René A. SanjinesArtwork photography: John Woo

88 15-ARTS-003 (3/15)

© 2015 University of Maryland University College. All rights reserved. Copyright credits and attribution for certain illustrations are cited internally proximate to the illustrations. All rights reserved.

UMUC Art Advisory BoardJavier Miyares President University of Maryland University College

Anne V. Maher, Esq., Chair Attorney at Law Kleinfeld, Kaplan & Becker, LLP

Eva J. Allen, Honorary Member Art Historian

Alvah T. Beander Entrepreneur/Appraiser Melanin Art Appraisals, LLC

Myrtis Bedolla, Vice Chair Owner and Founding Director Galerie Myrtis

Joan Bevelaqua Artist, Art Faculty University of Maryland University College

I-Ling Chow, Honorary Member Regional President and Managing Director, Ret. Asia Bank, N.A.

Patricia Dubroof Artist/Consultant IONA Senior Services

Nina C. Dwyer Artist, Adjunct Professor of Art Montgomery College

Jeannette Glover Artist, Program Manager Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission

Karin Goldstein, Honorary Member Collector and Patron of the Arts

Juanita Boyd Hardy, Honorary Member Executive Director CulturalDC

Sharon Holston, Honorary Member Artist's Representative and Co-Owner, Holston Originals

Pamela Holt Consultant Public Affairs and Cultural Policy Administration

Michèle E. Jacobs, Past Chair Managing Director Special Events at Union Station

Eric Key Director, Arts Program University of Maryland University College

Thomas Li, Honorary Member Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ret. Biotech Research Labs, Inc.

David Maril, Honorary Member Journalist President, Herman Maril Foundation

Barbara Stephanic, PhD, Honorary Member Professor of Art History, Ret. College of Southern Maryland

Dianne A. Whitfield-Locke, DDS Collector and Patron of the Arts Owner, Dianne Whitfield-Locke Dentistry

Sharon Wolpoff Artist and Owner Wolpoff Studios

UMUC Board of VisitorsMark J. Gerencser, Chair Chairman of the Board CyberSpa, LLC

Evelyn J. Bata, PhD Collegiate Professor University of Maryland University College

Richard F. Blewitt, Member Emeritus President and Chief Executive Officer The Blewitt Foundation

Joseph V. Bowen Jr. Senior Vice President, Operations, and Managing Principal, Ret. McKissack & McKissack

David W. Bower President and Chief Executive Officer Data Computer Corporation of America

Karl R. Gumtow Founder and Chief Executive Officer CyberPoint International

Anne V. Maher, Esq. Attorney at Law Kleinfeld, Kaplan & Becker, LLP

Donald S. Orkand, PhD, Former Chair, Member Emeritus Founding Partner DC Ventures and Associates, LLC

Lt. Gen. Emmett Paige Jr., U.S. Army, Ret. Vice President of Operations, Ret. Department of Defense/ Intelligence Services Lockheed Martin Information Technology

Charles E. (Ted) Peck Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ret. The Ryland Group, Inc.

Sharon Pinder President and Chief Executive Officer The Pinder Group

Brig. Gen. Velma Richardson, U.S. Army, Ret. Vice President, DoD IT Programs and Special Projects IS&GS Lockheed Martin Corporation

Gen. John (Jack) Vessey Jr., U.S. Army, Ret., Member Emeritus Former Chairman U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

William T. (Bill) Wood, JD Attorney at Law Wood Law Offices, LLC

Joyce M. Wright Senior Consultant Fitzgerald Consulting

Documents

UMUC Raoul Middleman Exhibition, 2015