William Utermohlen

William Charles Utermohlen was born on December 5, 1933,[1][2] in Southern Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only child of first-generation German immigrants.[3] He earned a scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1951, where he was educated by realist artist Walter Stuempfig.[4] Utermohlen completed his military service in 1953,[5] which included two years in the Caribbean. Shortly after completing military service, he studied in Western Europe and travelled through Italy, France, and Spain[lower-alpha 2] where he was heavily influenced by the works of Giotto and Nicolas Poussin.[7] In 1957, he graduated from PAFA.[8]

From 1957 to 1959, Utermohlen enrolled at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, where he met R. B. Kitaj.[9][lower-alpha 3] After leaving Ruskin, Utermohlen returned to the U.S. and stayed there for three years.[11] He then moved to London in 1962, where he met art historian Patricia Redmond, whom he married in 1965.[12][lower-alpha 1] In 1969, Utermohlen's artwork was featured in an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery.[14] In 1972, Utermohlen began teaching art at the Amherst College in Massachusetts,[15][lower-alpha 4] where Patricia received her master's degree.[17] By 1975, Utermohlen returned to London, earning British nationality in 1992.[18][19]

His early works are mostly figurative;[20] although James M. Stubenrauch described the as also with an "exuberant, at times surrealistic, expressionism."[21] For a period in the late 1970s, as a response to the photorealist movement, he printed photographs onto a canvas and painting directly over the photograph. An example of this technique can be seen in Self-Portrait (Split) (1977). He would employ this technique for two portraits of Redmond.[22] Most of his early paintings are grouped into six cycles: Mythological (1962–1963), Cantos (or Dante) (1964–1966), Mummers (1969–1970), War (1972–1973), Nudes (1973–1974),[lower-alpha 5] and Conversation (1989–1991).[24]

The Schizmatics (Canto XXVIII), which was created in 1996, is one of the paintings in Utermohlen's Cantos series.

The Mythological series are mainly water scenes.[25] The Dante cycle was inspired by Dante's Inferno, while the art style paintings drew influence from pop art.[26] The War series references the Vietnam War;[27] and according to Redmond the inclusion of isolated soldiers represented his feelings of being an outsider in the art scene.[28] Both Mummers and Conversations were based on early memories; the former, completed between 1968 to 1970, is based on the Mummers Parade of Philadelphia.[29] In a letter from November 1970, Utermohlen stated that the cycle was also created as a "vehicle for expressing my anxiety".[30] Redmond said that Mummers was "an empathetic vision of the lower classes, but also his own projected self-image".[28] Polini states that the cycle also had elements of war, alongside the cycles Dante and War.[31]

The Conversation series was described by French psychoanalyst Patrice Polini as Utermohlen trying to establish the events of his life before they fade away.[32] The paintings have been considered a prelude to his diagnosis, representing of a number of symptoms.[33] Titles such as W9 and Maida Vale reference the names of the district and neighborhood, respectively, that he lived in at the time.[34] The artworks themselves contain more saturated colours and "engaging spacial arrangements", which highlight the actions of the people in the artworks.[35] Utermohlen's art dealer Chris Boicos wrote that, in Conversation, "[s]igns of the disease are made apparent in the shifting perceptions of space, objects and people."[36]

Head I (2000), Utermohlen's last recognizable self-portrait. According to his wife Patricia, these paintings show his "efforts to explain his altered self, his fears and his sadness."[37]

In 1994, he was commissioned by a client to create a family portrait. After around a year, Patricia took the client to Utermohlen's studio to check the progress, where they noticed that the portrait had not changed in nine months.[38] Patricia, believing Utermohlen was depressed, sought medical advice.[39] He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in August 1995, at the age of 61.[40][41][lower-alpha 6] He was sent to the Queen's Square Hospital where a nurse, Ron Isaacs, became interested in his drawings and asked him to start drawing self-portraits.[43] The first of these, Blue Skies,[lower-alpha 7] is a self-portrait of Utermohlen gripping a yellow table, in an interior that The Wall Street Journal described as "an empty studio".[7] When neuropsychologist Sebastian Crutch visited Utermohlen in late 1999, he described this painting as representative of him trying to hang on and avoid being swept out of the open window above.[45] Polini likened the depiction of him holding onto the table to a painter holding onto his canvas, saying that "[i]n order to survive, he must be able to capture this catastrophic moment; he must depict the unspeakable."[46] Blue Skies was also Utermohlen's last painting to be considered "large scale".[47] Created the same year, the sketch A Welcoming Man shows a disassembled figure, representing the loss of spatial perception.[48]

During his work on the Conversation series, Utermohlen began to experience memory loss and an inability to remember recent events, and eventually found himself unable to navigate the route to his apartment or how to tie his necktie.[49] Between 1993 and 1994, Utermohlen created a series of lithographs depicting short stories written by World War I poet Wilfred Owen.[50] The figures were more mask-like than in the Conversation pieces. The artworks, which show a collection of disoriented and wounded soldiers,[51] were described by Chris Boicos, his art dealer, as a metaphor for the forthcoming Alzheimer's disease diagnosis a year later.[52] By the time Utermohlen finished the lithographs, he would often forget to show up for teaching appointments.[53]

He began series of self-portraits after his diagnosis in 1995.[54] The earliest of these, the Masks series, are in watercolour and were completed between 1994 and 2001.[55] His last non-self-portrait dates 1997, and was of Patricia.[56] It was titled by Patrice Polini as Pat (Artist's Wife).[57]

Utermohlen's self-portraits gained attention after they were analysed in The Lancet's 2001 case report, which has often been attributed for advancing the work's popularity.[93][lower-alpha 11] According to Xi Hsu, the portraits have been marked as the "highlight of his career."[95]

Commenters have likened Utermohlen's works to those of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Edvard Munch.[96] Some writers have also likened the self-portraits to the illustrations of Mervyn Peake;[97] although Demetrios J. Sahlas of Peake Studies noted that Peake's works were different to Utermohlen's, because shown in the works is the "preservation of insight".[98] A 2013 The Lancet article compared the self-portraits to those created by Rembrandt; describing that they detail Utermohlen "struggling to preserve his self against age", while also fighting against AD's "inexorable neurodegeneration".[99] Giovanni Frazzetto described Utermohlen's self-portraits as similar to the works of Egon Schiele, explaining that the portraits were "evocative of theshrivelled bodies and diaphanous faces" shown in the latter's work.[100]

Purcell stated that Utermohlen's artwork provided viewers with a "unique glimpse into the effects of a declining brain."[101] Researchers at Illinois Wesleyan University state that Utermohlen's self portraits show that "people with AD can have a strong voice through images."[102] The existence of his earlier self-portraits (which allowed viewers to create a time-lapse of his mental decline) and the idea that his works give a rare view into the mind of an Alzheimer's patient were two aspects contributing to his growing popularity.[103] The 2019 short film Mémorable was inspired by the self-portraits and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2020.[104][105]

Utermohlen had exhibited his early works long before his diagnosis. His paintings were exhibited at the Lee Nordness Gallery in 1968 and the Marlborough Gallery in 1969; in 1972, the Mummers cycle was displayed in Amsterdam.[14] Utermohlen's posthumous portrait of Gerald Penny was featured in the Gerald Penny 77' Center;[106] earlier that year, he had artworks such as Five Figures in the Mead Art Museum.[107] At their peak, sales of Utermohlen's earlier works ranged from $3,000 to $30,000.[108]

Utermohlen's artwork and his late self-portraits have also been shown in several exhibitions in the years after his death, including 12 exhibitions from 2006 to 2008.[109] In 2016, the exhibition A Persistence of Memory was shown at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago.[110] The exhibition, which contained 100 artworks showing the effect of Alzheimer's on Utermohlen's work, was organised by Pamela Ambrose,[111] who said about his portraits: "If you did not know that this man was suffering from Alzheimer's, you could simply perceive the work as a stylistic change."[112]

Other notable exhibitions include a retrospective at the GV Art gallery in London in 2012,[113][lower-alpha 12] an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2008 sponsored by Myriad Pharmaceuticals,[115][116] and The Later Works of William Utermohlen, shown at the New York Academy of Medicine in 2006, which marked the centenary of Alois Alzheimer first discovering the disease;[117] and was also open free to the public.[118] His self-portraits have also been shown in Washington, D.C. in 2007,[119] the Two 10 Gallery in London in 2001,[120] Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2005,[121] Boston, and Los Angeles. The self-portraits were exhibited in Sacramento, California in 2008.[122] Utermohlen's artworks were also shown in 2016 at the Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland.[123] In February 2007, a month before Utermohlen's death, his self-portraits were exhibited at Wilkes University.[124]

• Everywhere at the End of Time (2016–2019), a series of six concept albums reflecting the stages of dementia