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“The
AIDS virus is just a virus. It has no personal agenda against me. It’s
just another creature in God’s creation.” So said visionary painter
Frank Moore, an artist who made his illness a focal point of his
life’s work, in an interview with the New York Academy of Sciences
shortly before his death this past April at age 48.
When
Moore learned he was HIV-positive 17 years ago, the diagnosis actually
seemed to bolster his confidence as an artist as well as inspiring him
to environmental and social activism. As one member of his family
privately says, “He acquired depth as an artist as he met the AIDS
crisis head on as he assessed its emotional and physical toll, and
plumbed its political and economic dimensions.”
An
admitted “flower child” during his youth in the Adirondacks in the
1960s, Moore was always fascinated by the natural world and how modern
science could alternatively support it and destroy it.
While
many artists perceive science and technology to be enemies of art, Moore
decided to explore and even embrace them. “My experience with science
especially pharmaceutical science has been very positive,” he told the
Academy of Sciences. “Let’s face it, genetically engineered
formulations have kept me alive.” And his long personal and public
battle to stop the “demonizing” of AIDS inspired an often disturbing
but always optimistic artistic vision.
A
surrealist grounded in the brushstrokes of reality, Moore described his
work as “providing a visual forum for people to reflect on what their
relationship with nature is. … I believe you cannot have healthy
people in an unhealthy environment and you can’t have a healthy
environment where unhealthy greedy, exploitative people predominate.”
Many
of his paintings reflect some kind of battle between nature and its
spoilers. A dramatic series set at Niagara Falls stems from a trip Moore
took there. Submerged in mist during a tour-boat ride, he wondered about
the water’s makeup. He did some research and found that the EPA was
monitoring more than 350 harmful chemicals in the river. In his
paintings Niagara (1994 and 1995), he included alchemical symbols to
represent mercury and other pollutants that have corrupted the water. In
the related Maid of the Mist (1994-95), he depicted raingear-clad
tourists on the boat as monks ministering the last rites at a sacred
site.
Moore’s
AIDS-themed pieces usually include a note of hopefulness. In Freedom to
Share (1994), a mother and father have gathered their multi-racial
family for a Thanksgiving feast; the turkey is made entirely of pills
with twin syringes of “AIDS cocktails” in the place of the
drumsticks. The children eagerly await their portion of the bird’s
bounty. And, in Beacon (2001),” Moore shows us a young man in a
hospital bed, drifting in a turbulent electric-blue sea. As unsettling
as the image is, there are lifelines: an octopus tentacle offering a
syringe and a human hand rising up with a bottle of pills.
Another
of his potent AIDS-related works evolved from a walk in the woods he
took near his rural country home outside of Binghamton, NY. Moore
noticed plants growing from a rotting, fallen tree. In his painting,
Release (1999), the tree becomes an outstretched arm covered with bloody
sores and lesions, but sprouting from them are new plant life and
colorful butterflies. The image reveals a microcosm of regeneration,
life rising from death.
While
Moore’s distinctive style is well known in New York where his work
hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney, his name is not
yet a household word outside of his home state. But one of his creations
has become internationally renowned. In 1991, working with other artists
in the advocacy group Visual AIDS, Moore came up with a concept to
advance the cause. “My neighbors had a daughter in the Gulf War, and
they tied a yellow ribbon around a tree,” he explained in a 1997
newspaper interview. “I took that idea and suggested we turn it into
something you could wear.” Before long, the AIDS red ribbon had become
the world’s most recognizable lapel accessory, raising millions of
dollars and a great deal of public awareness.
In
recent years, Moore downplayed his role in the ribbon’s development,
describing it as a “collaborative effort” with others on the Visual
AIDS team. He didn’t want his fellow activists to think he was hogging
the glory for a project that took a lot of teamwork.
Despite
occasional health scares from opportunistic infections, a lot of good
things were coming together for Frank Moore at the outset of this year.
There was a new book, Between Life and Death (Twin Palms Publishing),
the first oversized monograph of his work. And he was excited by plans
for a major tour of his paintings: Green Thumb in a Dark Eden. The
exhibit is currently at the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida (through
July 28), before moving to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY.
Both
the book and the exhibit include many of his paintings since the late
1980s, shortly after he learned of his HIV-positive status. In his
artwork, AIDS “came to the fore,” he explained, “simply because it
was affecting every aspect of my life.”
That
included his political consciousness. He became active in the
then-fledgling Visual AIDS group, which raises money to provide direct
services to artists living with HIV/AIDS. In addition to his
contributions to the Ribbon Project, he helped launch its Archive
Project in 1994. The aim has been to provide free photo-documentation of
artists’ work, to ensure that their cultural legacies would be
preserved and to provide a visual record of the AIDS
pandemic
for future generations. The project also provides grants for materials
to low-income artists, offers exhibits and educational programs, and
assists with estate planning.
Moore
also was instrumental in the development of the Estate Project,
organized by the Alliance for the Arts in New York to document and
preserve works created by people with AIDS in all areas of creative
endeavor from music to dance to filmmaking.
In
his final months, in addition to completing a surge of new paintings,
Moore was working on a new philanthropic organization, the Gesso
Foundation. Named for the substance painters often use for a base
coating on their canvases, the foundation will manage his art and use
the proceeds from exhibitions, books and other sales to assist
worthwhile causes. According to Frank’s sister, Rebecca Moore, who is
setting up the foundation, “Frank didn’t leave a lot of money, but
he wanted it to go where a little money means a lot. He wanted to give
grants to organizations working for social justice, AIDS and
environmental issues.” [The foundation’s website, www.gesso.org,
will be on line soon.]
In
many ways, Frank Moore lived his last two decades by an old adage:
It’s not how much time you have to spend, it’s how you spend your
time that counts. And the harder he worked, the more confident he became
in his ability to connect with people through painting. Shortly before
his death, an interviewer asked him if he really believed that art can
change anyone’s mind.
Snapped
back Frank Moore, “It’s changed mine.”
For
information on the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, go to www.artistswithaids.org.
For Visual AIDS, go to http://thebody.com/
visualaids/text.html. Some of Moore’s paintings can be seen online
at those sites and at www.geneart.org/moore/htm.
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