Don Bachardy—‘The Women: 50 Years of Portraits’

On Display at Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery at Santa Monica College Until Dec. 2

By ALISON ROWE | Special to the Palisadian-Post

Fittingly, Don Bachardy’s latest exhibition, “The Women: 50 years of Portraits,” showing at Santa Monica College’s Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery, starts with two drawings of his mother, Gwen.

They are from the 1960s in that distinctive monochrome style that demonstrate the artist’s wonderful control of line.

The show then bursts into color as Bachardy, in ever more free and inventive ways, moves decade by decade to document significant women, including, in a generous nod to his surroundings, a section devoted to local artists.

At a talk at the gallery on Saturday, Nov. 25, the 83-year-old Palisadian recalled his first attempts at drawing: copying photos of women from movie magazines with his brother Ted.

The stars he copied most were Bette Davis and Paulette Goddard, both of whom later sat for him in person.

Sadly, the Davis is not in the show, but many other amazing women are.

However, the midwife to his mature talent was the British author of the book that became “Cabaret,” Christopher Isherwood, his life partner.

Isherwood was the first to respond to the intimate act of seeing what Bachardy brings to portraiture.

A Bachardy work grows in depth over many serial sittings. He calls this “probing,” an intense quality of attention, which enables him to capture minute but telling details of a sitter’s personality.

For example, his observation of the line made by Bette Davis lips and the rather different line of her lipstick is captured in his portrait of her. The perfection of his art is that he lets us see these acute details too and find meaning there.

Asked how he achieves this depth he replied, “Doing it over and over. That’s my responsibility … I know no other way of doing it but really, really looking.”

He starts a drawing with the eyes, which are the most compelling feature in all Bachardy’s portraits, and works outward from there.

He said that looking into the eyes of his sitters is a source of real energy. Then “all the things that I hadn’t noticed will suddenly bloom. It’s very exciting.”

One suspects that part of Bachardy’s secret sauce is his openness and unaffected enthusiasm.

At the completion of a portrait Bachardy signs the piece and so does the sitter. It’s an acknowledgment that the work was made between them.

“It’s a collaboration and I want my collaborator’s sign off—so they can’t sue me,” Bachardy joked.

During the course of his career, Bachardy has drawn the humans in the hallowed halls of celebrity and power.

His portrait of Governor Jerry Brown hangs in Sacramento but the experience of the sitting was not a happy one for either artist or politician.

“He became restless. I’d ask him, ‘please be still,’ he then would be still, but go into his head and absent himself from me. He got a kind of glazed look.

“I can’t think of anyone who simply resisted the whole experience as determinedly as he did.”

Bachardy admitted that his method of long and serial sittings is hard.

He has himself sat for portraits and he described the experience as “agony, sitting there watching somebody else having all the fun. It takes so long when someone else is doing it. But it’s also a good experience to realize what it’s like for the other end.”

When asked whether there was anyone whom he wished had sat for him, Bachardy answered without hesitation: Alfred Hitchcock.

The pair had talked about a sitting, but Hitchcock died before it could take place.

As he recounted the sittings, the thrill of drawing his childhood idols from life is still apparent: “Oh, the excitement and fun, years later to actually get them to sit.”

It’s touching that among the drawings he credits with inspiring him are those that he inveigled from Isherwood.

“I’d ask, ‘Please do some drawings for me.’ He had no natural skills for drawing, so it was so fresh,” he explained. “They were always so surprising to me.”

He still works every day, until the light fades, always drawing from life.

Such is the nature of his practice: He said it becomes almost painful to begin a day without a sitter.

“Desperation drives me, I have to do some kind of work and [if I have no sitter] that’s when I do the self-portraits. I do try different approaches to myself because I can assume I’m not going to lose my sitter.”

Long may he continue to delight us with his extraordinary art.