F. Scott Hess: Art History & The Dreams of a Reluctant Realist
Forty years ago, F. Scott Hess had a wild dream. In it, the history of art overflowed from the second floor toilet of the Madison, Wisconsin co-op where he lived. “It was like mummy wrap,” he recalls of the vision that hit while he was sick. “It was bouncing off the toilet and down the hallway and on the highway and then I suddenly got caught up in it—as you do in dreams—and I was wrapped in the history of art, like a mummy.”
In the dream, Hess was famous for two paintings—one of a monk and one of an egg—and those appeared alongside centuries of famed artworks. “It was very uncomfortable,” he says. “I didn’t like being in the history of art.”
The bizarre series of imagined events didn’t end there. On a highway, a large car came towards art history and crashed right into it, sending Hess into a ditch. The artist’s dream life was ending. He recalls, “As I’m dying in a ditch, I said, ‘Thank God I’m not in the history of art anymore.’ Then I woke up.”
Hess recalls the decades-old dream, which he had written down in detail, while sitting in the living room of his Los Angeles home. On a nearby wall is “The Dream of Art History,” a 54″ x 96″ painting that brings the 1978 fever dream into 2018. It’s an incredibly detailed painting, filled with nods to famed works of art. It’s also a significant painting that gives a peek into the mind of an artist considering the past, present, and future. But, Hess didn’t set out to paint this scene on the large canvas that had been hanging out in his studio for a year.
Initially, Hess wanted to make a painting about fame, with Hollywood Blvd. twisting at the ends of the image. Kim Kardashian would have been in it. “I couldn’t get so excited about Kim Kardashian,” he says. Then he remembered the dream, which had taken on a different meaning for him since he had it. “It was a strange dream, but one that fit what I was feeling at the time. I was a young man and felt that art history was a restriction,” he says. “Now, I’m much older and I’m wondering, how do I fit into art history?”
That’s a question he also poses while presenting “The Dream of Art History” in the recently released documentary F. Scott Hess: The Reluctant Realist. It’s an interesting thing to ponder for an artist who has seen the rise in popularity of representational, figurative painting coincide with his own career.
Art history, in Hess’ painting, is comprised of tiny renditions of famed works that are patchworked together. They appear like reams of unfurled toilet paper that form vortices. One spiral extends into the past. Another spiral contains the twenty-first century. Much of the work in this section is from artists that Hess knows. “As you’re painting it, it’s whatever comes to mind,” says Hess of deciding which works he would depict in the painting. “Then you get to a few spots left and realize what you left out.”
As you’re painting it, it’s whatever comes to mind… Then you get to a few spots left and realize what you left out.”
Hess stands on the twentieth century, with tiny representations of works by Dalí and Mondrian near him. “Those are things that I would have learned in school and really admired, since I was born in 1955, just about every famous painting and everything that would have influenced me,” he says. “There is a lot more representational art than an art history class would have had back then, since it was mostly abstract, contemporary painting classes.”
As time shifts along the span of art history, so do the colors, which move from orange to red to purple to blue to green. Capturing famed pieces of art in these dream-like hues was one of the more challenging aspects of making the painting. “Each painting had to be shifted to the color scheme of that section,” Hess says. “That took a little more skill in color than one might normally be exercising. That was kind of hard to get all that to work.”
It took about a year for Hess to complete “The Dream of Art History.” The piece was intended for an early 2018 exhibition with famed curator Greg Escalante. After Escalante’s untimely death in September of 2017, the show was cancelled. Hess slowed down progress on the painting.
There’s a sense of mortality permeating the painting. That car from the initial dream makes an appearance here. Its headlights tear through a stretch of twentieth-century art, veering towards the artist himself.
Hovering near Hess are three nude women—a brunette, a redhead, and a blonde—that he now sees as guardian angels. The blonde angel is looking back on the past. The redhead is concerned with the present and the car that is about to hit him. “The dark haired one is sort of about the future and dealing with death and legacy,” Hess explains. She’s headed towards a skeleton whose back is turned towards the viewer.
I spent so much time doing genealogy, I figured I should make art out of it otherwise it would be a total waste of time…”
Hess has frequently told the story of his origins as an artist. He was seven when his parents divorced. After his father left, he started drawing pictures of tied-up, nude women. He drew those figures so frequently that he became incredibly skilled at this. By the time he finished school in the United States and headed to Vienna, Austria to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, erotic art was his thing. That was the subject matter of his first solo show, held in Vienna, and it sold well. In part, the popularity of his work prompted him to move in another direction: “I think there had been more shock than I would have admitted back then,” he says. He also came to the realization that the women were representative of his mother. “My father had left. I had been binding my mother so that she wouldn’t leave too,” he explains.
The artist spent six years in Austria. By the time he left, he was a very strong painter exploring human interaction and socio-political issues. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles in 1984, Hess was one of only a handful of artists making representational, figurative work. “I think what I did, bringing the sex and death themes from Vienna and mixing the Disney technicolor once I was here kind of was a surprise to people,” he says.
“Some of my colleagues at the Academy would complain that my colors were too American. Once you’re in America, this is not an issue, so color exploded out of me,” says Hess. “I think that for the first ten years, my art was almost about that change from Europe back to America and American society.”
Hess’ art may have been against the grain for the era, but he did well, earning solo shows and press. A print of his painting “Procession,” made its way into LACMA’s possession in the late 1980s. More recently, the original was donated to the museum by collectors in honor of Greg Escalante.
Earlier in his career, Hess’ work explored socio-political subjects. He veered away from that upon his return to Los Angeles after time spent in Iran and France in the early ‘90s and ventured into more personal subjects. Still, the personal and socio-political intertwine today.
Also on view in Hess’ living room is “Past the Wit of Man,” its title derived from a quote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the forefront is a creature with a male human body and the head of a bull, naked and posed on the edge of a river. A monkey in a red hat and vest is crouched on the back of the hybrid creature, lighting its fart. Meanwhile, a donkey laughs and an anthropomorphic rabbit in an ill-fitting blue suit and too-short tie holds a crown of money. Three nude women play music while perched in a tree and Hess’ dog watches the scene.
“It was a self-portrait in many ways about aging—but, at the same time, I realize that there is some of Trump in there and these two things can be held in the painting at the same time,” says Hess. “The painting doesn’t have to be perfectly logical. It can mean many things at once. Me being Trump is like antithetical things, but they’re both in that painting, so I gave that bull a slight tinge of orange hair just to add a little bit of that in.”
He did paint Trump once too. It came out of an exercise where he began with abstract painting on plastic, then cut the piece into smaller pieces. “Whatever I saw in the abstraction, I would paint,” he says. “The rule was that no matter how stupid it was, I would have to do it. In one of them I saw Trump and a bunch of stuff around him, like a burning KKK torches and flying pigs and all this stuff.”
Some of my colleagues at the Academy would complain that my colors were too American. Once you’re in America, this is not an issue, so color exploded out of me,”
It’s a sign of the times. “Trump, just as he has for everybody, worked into our consciousness and you can’t get rid of him, but it wasn’t something where I set out to make a statement to change the world,” he says. “That’s not going to happen.”
Hess paints near daily. “But I don’t paint if I don’t feel like painting,” he says. “It’s just that most days, I feel like painting.” He typically starts in the morning and finishes by six p.m. “I’m more efficient than I used to be too,” he says.
He says that, close to a decade ago, he saw a resurgence in his career that coincided with his use of social media. “That was important,” says Hess. “What I really hope is that it hasn’t changed what I make.”
On Instagram, followers can watch the progress of paintings like “The Dream of Art History” and “Past the Wit of Man,” with close ups of the figures as they come to life in the works. You can catch a glimpse of his palette, providing insight into how Hess himself paints, a subject he says he can’t teach. “My colors are all arranged and I know where they are and I just mix stuff,” he says. “To teach somebody that is very difficult, but I could teach you how Rembrandt painted.” In fact, Hess spent years teaching subjects like group figure painting. He even taught a class on Instagram once. Recently, though, he left his post at Laguna College of Art and Design to work on a mural commission.
Hess’ biggest show to date was The Paternal Suit: Heirlooms from the F. Scott Hess Family Foundation, a deep dive into the family history of his biological father with ancestors. It opened at Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston in South Carolina in 2012 and ultimately traveled through five different venues.
For more than thirty years, Hess was not in contact with his biological father. When they reconnected, at the end of the 1990s, Hess asked about details of the family history and received some vague answers. And it just so happened that one of his collectors was an amateur genealogist who found some unusual information about the family. Hess started digging into the history. “I spent so much time doing genealogy, I figured I should make art out of it otherwise it would be a total waste of time,” says Hess.
The family history unfolded in an exhibition of one hundred two objects. Paintings were part of the show, but so were “artifacts,” all made to help tell the story. “Basically, the history of the family is true and the artifacts are of questionable parentage,” says Hess.
The show became the central event in the documentary The Reluctant Realist.
“There’s this document now of this creative time, which is really quite wonderful,” says Hess of the documentary, made by filmmaker Shirin Bazleh. It’s also bittersweet. Hess’ biological father died a week after the exhibition opened. Meanwhile, his mother, who was also featured in the documentary, passed between the making of the film and its release. The Reluctant Realist also features commentary from Hess’ late supporter, Greg Escalante.
“A little too quickly, these things happened,” says Hess. “Things are changing awfully fast.”
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 49, which is sold out. Get our latest issue by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here!
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