Anyone alive today who is old enough to remember what was going on in this country in the early 1960s can recall a period of incredible turmoil, uncertainty and change. For Kevin Teare, who was then an adolescent coming of age in Indianapolis, the period from November 1963 to February 1964 remains a seminal time in his life, and one that has affected his work as an artist as well.
“In ‘63 things were happening with my family and the country,” says Teare. “There was the assassination of JFK, my parents’ divorce and the subsequent death of my father in a Corvair… I hit puberty and The Beatles landed.”
As incongruous as these events may seem in their relative importance, for a teenager, world politics and personal problems have a way of converging and sharing center stage in the psyche.
“My world was coming unglued,” he says. “I think stuff really imprints when you’re hitting puberty.”
And it is this time period that Teare uses as the jumping off point for his exhibit “Kevin Teare: Upon This Rock,” which opened last weekend at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton. Teare, a Sag Harbor resident, was the winner of the 69th Annual Guild Hall Artist Members Exhibition Part II in 2007. In this one-man show, he introduces a series of upcoming work based on The Beatles in America and the optimism their arrival in this country represented in the face of despair. It was a sense of despair that would only grow as the decade progressed, even as the music of the decade made spirits soar.
In some of his work, Teare starts with Mylar or vellum printed documents from the era — flow charts, graphs, lists of names from political investigations or imagery reflective of The Beatles and their music. Some of them are square, like an album cover, and to these, Teare adds his own colorfully abstract strokes, shapes and marks to obscure, enhance or somehow diffuse and reshape the power of the imagery beneath. He also has created a series of works entitled “Upon This Rock” graphic representations created from CD stickers on paper that resemble famous mountains with a connection to the band – including the Rock of Gibraltar where John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married. Other pieces in the show are mosaic fractals, color studies and shapes that represent the color components on each of The Beatles album covers. Presented as they are in round or oblong format, these images are reminiscent of the rounded screens of old TVs and the hundreds of pixels that created those TV images and defined reality for those far from the action.
“This show was supposed to be all Beatle paintings, but instead it’s behind schedule,” he says. “Usually you do a big body of work and then have this show. Well, I had the show and now I have to do a big body of work.”
“I only know where I’m jumping off,” adds Teare who envisions eventually painting his fractals directly onto the wall.
Growing up in Indiana, Teare’s connection with The Beatles was like that of many American teenagers in the middle part of the country — far removed. While his peers may have been waiting for tickets outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre or catching glimpses of mysterious black limos on Manhattan streets, kids like Teare had to settle for the fuzzy on screen views of the Beatles landing at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport aboard that Pan Am jet. Though he was a teenage drummer with a set of Ludwigs (the same brand of drums that Ringo had), Teare’s experience with The Beatles relied, not on up front and personal contact, but on promotion and packaging.
“Indianapolis wasn’t like Chicago or even Cincinnati,” says Teare. “There was a remove — so it instilled this obsessive longing for connection. We’d get the new albums by The Who, The Kinks, The Stones, whoever, and we’d walk around school carrying the album so you could be seen with it.”
“What we saw was a 12” x 12” album cover. You studied it and knew who the producer was. Part of the interest is the packaging, how it was promoted and appeared. We didn’t know these people but how they presented them,” adds Teare. “My paintings on The Beatles is based on packaging. I start with the colors on the album covers.”
Behind the work there is also amazing social and political context. Teare points out what an astounding day November 22, 1963 turned out to be in historical and cultural terms. It was the day that JFK was assassinated, the day novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley died and the day The Beatles second album “With The Beatles” was released in the UK. Teare notes that he has always had interest in history and that much of his art, including this newest work, is imbued with historical references — not only the politics, but in this case, the music as well.
“I like the idea of including history and politics in my work,” he says. “I avoid being too clever… a little service oriented maybe. If you think you can bring something new or shed light on it. But for real psychic weight, I found music made it more open ended — more optimistic.”
“I’m not a Pollyanna, I got to my optimism honestly and with a lot of hard work,” he adds. “I still have to work to maintain it and stay positive. I’m trying to put more of that into what I’m projecting.”
Teare readily admits that being a little bit obsessed about his subject doesn’t hurt either.
“On a certain level, I think artists have a tendency to over-identify with what they do and become obsessive and compulsive,” he says. “Why not be obsessed with what you’re obsessed about? For me, it’s pop music, conspiracy theories and family systems therapy. It’s kind of like personal archaeology. You figure out where you’ve been and what it means to be here in the present — a personal connection.”
“There’s a certain point for me when I felt I had to bring personal narrative into the fray, just to keep my interest,” he says.
But for now, Teare has a good deal of work ahead of him. He hopes to create one painting for each of the albums released by The Beatles and eventually compile them in a book called “The Most High” along with autobiographical reflections about the time period and what was then going on in his life in the 1960s.
“The way the ‘60s are portrayed now is a plastic shrink wrapped version,” says Teare. “My interest was the peaks and valleys — the music and all that went with it were the peaks and the valley was the systematic murder of all the liberal leaders. The music is what I concentrate on now. It’s better than assassinations.”
“Kevin Teare: Upon This Rock” is on view at Guild Hall Museum through January 17. Guild Hall is at 158 Main Street, East Hampton. For information call 324-0806.
Top: Kevin Teare's "Upon this Rock (Gibralter Version)," 2009, C.D. stickers on paper, 39" x 60"
