Nudes (Couple in Forrest) 2013, Photo Romi CortierNude (Man Kneeling on Towel) 2014, Photo Romi CortierNude (Woman at Shore) 2014, Photo Romi Cortier
These exquisite Nudesby Phil Bower on view at the Samuel Freeman Gallery were a remarkable discovery during the Culver City Summer Solstice ArtWalk. I’d seen the latter image, Nude (Woman at Shore)online, but wasn’t prepared for how remarkable she’d be in person. The paintings are billed as photorealism, however, they’re far beyond that in person. In my opinion these paintings are a new form of Impressionism. When viewed up close the images become almost pixelated and difficult to understand… step back about 5 feet, and Voila! Your eye connects the dots and builds the image for you. Bower’s use of color is a true gift, especially when combined with his glazing technique. His images are culled from websites broadcasting voyeur videos from around the world. He then takes a frame grab and works from the low resolution images. While it may sound a bit creepy, these ‘models’ have been captured in a moment of being pure, honest, and completely uninhibited. Standing in front of Nude (Woman at Shore) was like being transported back to the Musee d’ Orsay in front of Alexandre Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus… it took every ounce of restraint to not reach out and touch her life like flesh.
I was schedule to meet the Iconic Architectural Photographer Julius Shulman for lunch at Pinot’s on Sunset, April 4th of 2004. The lunch had been arranged by a client of mine who’d known him for years. Once the date was set, I cleared my schedule and arrived early for our 1:00 meeting. At 1:15 my client came dashing in the door and said ‘Julius can’t make it, his friend Pierre just died and he’s fielding phone calls, would you mind getting lunch to go and meeting us at the house?‘ Absolutely. I arrived 30 minutes later at his Hollywood Hills home with our lunch in tow. From the moment I crossed the threshold into his home, I was speechless. There in front of me was every iconic image of his that I’d ever studied in my art history classes at UCLA, and then some. I had to fight back the tears, because at that moment I knew I was in the presence of genius. No Hollywood celebrity could hold a candle to this man standing in front of me, a man who’d shaped how I’d seen the world of architecture, long before I even knew who he was. But in that moment, his life’s work touched me in a very profound way that I’ll never forget.
As we were setting our lunch entrees on the dining room table, Julius began telling his stories. Stories about how his peers looked to nature to create the homes of their era… cutting an avocado in half and being inspired by it’s color. He gushed about how the architect Soriano had built his home for him nearly 50 years ago and that he’d watched the trees grow up around the home. The phone rang and interrupted him… it was another publication calling and wanting to use his image of the Case Study Home #22 for free. ‘Absolutely not, I don’t work for free’ he replied. His friend Pierre Koenig had built it… the man who’d just died. It was all making sense now. He was the architect of the Stahl House, one of LA’s most iconic home’s for 50 years, the home that Julius made famous as 2 elegant women sat perched in the glass box that appeared to float over the city at night when he snapped their photo in 1960.
After lunch Julius gladly autographed one of his books for me, which is what he’s doing in the studio shot above. It’s a bit jarring to watch the virtual tour and see his studio stripped bare, and the walls of his home without his iconic photos, but they’re all in safe keeping at the Getty Archives. Ultimately I ended up buying that iconic photo from Julius and returned to his home a second time to pick it up. He rolled it out on his dining room table, inspected the print, and signed it in white ink. It’s still one of my favorite possessions to this day and I’m so grateful that I had the incredible honor of meeting him.
