Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

One of my favorite contemporary figurative artists is the Californian Don Bachardy, most of whose career has been spent making pencil drawings of friends and visitors. Bachardy, who is also known as the younger partner of the writer Christopher Isherwood, has style and elegance to burn, as well as an eerie ability to capture a likeness -- and then something more. His work is (to my mind) an entrancing combo of the exacting and the informal. There's a little bit of the classicist in him, a little bit of the celebrity portraitest, a little bit of the California party host, and a whole lot of insight.

Pencil drawings, alas, don't reproduce on computer screens as well as many of the more colorful and harder-edged media do. But there's still some Bachardy on the web that is well worth searching out. Here are some links: link, link, link, link, link, link, link. Armistead Maupin visits with Isherwood and Bachardy; Carolyn See does too. Here's a David Hockney portrait of the couple. I wrote about Christopher Isherwood, one of my favorite writers, here. Eager to hear how the figurative-art fans respond to Bachardy.

Best,

Michael

I never knew Bacardy had gone to the Slade School in London. Geeze, no wonder he could draw portraits...he had the training for it.

None-the-less, how wonderful the results...!

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on May 25, 2006 7:24 PM

What is a "California party host"? That merits an explanation in a separate post, I think.

Posted by: Neil on May 26, 2006 6:54 PM






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