William Utermohlen

William Charles Utermohlen (December 5, 1933 – March 21, 2007) was an American figurative artist known for his late-period self-portraits completed after his 1995 diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease. He had developed progressive memory loss beginning about four years before his diagnosis in 1995, and during that time began a series of self-portraits influenced in part by the figurative painter Francis Bacon and cinematographers from the movement of German Expressionism.

Born to first-generation German immigrants in South Philadelphia as "almost sponge like and empty". ''Head I'' (2000) shows a head portraying eyes, mouth, and a smudge on the left that appears to be an ear; a crack appearing in the centre of the head. The rest of the portraits are of a blank head, one of them erased. Associated Press' Joann Loviglio describes Utermohlen's final self-portraits as the "afterimages of a creative and talented spirit whose identity appears to have vanished."

Influences

Redmond describes these works as influenced by German Expressionism, and compares them to artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. She explained in ''New Statesman'': "It's odd, because he hardly ever thought of his German ancestry, but toward the end he becomes a kind of German abstract expressionist. He might have been quite amused by that, I think."

Shortly after his diagnosis, he and Redmond travelled to Europe and saw Diego Velázquez's 1650 Portrait of Pope Innocent X, which lead to an interest in Francis Bacon's distorted 1953 version '' Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X''. After his return to England in 1996, he painted ''Self Portrait (In the Studio)'', which includes the screaming mouth, a motif borrowed from Bacon's work.

A 2015 Scientific American article which mentioned both Bacon and Utermohlen called Bacon's "distorted faces and disfigured bodies" disturbing. It noted that his works are "so distorted that they violate the brain's expectations for the body", and went on to discuss the possibility that Bacon had dysmorphopsia. When describing Utermohlen's portraits, the writer said that Utermohlen's portraits offered "a window into the artist's" decline, adding that they were "also heartbreaking in that they expose a mind trying against hope to understand itself despite deterioration".

Legacy

Utermohlen's self-portraits first gained attention after they were described in ''The Lancet''s 2001 case report when the Crutch ''et al'' noted that the evident change in artistic ability was "indicative of a process above and beyond normal aging, particularly given his relatively young age at onset". The article further noted that, over five years, the self-portraits showed an "objective deterioration in the quality of the artwork produced". They concluded that the portraits offered "a testament to the resilience of human creativity". Crutch himself said that Utermohlen's works were "more eloquent than anything he could have said with words".

According to Hsu, the portraits are the "highlight of his career". Commenters liken them to those of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Edvard Munch. Sharma compared the self-portraits to the works of English painter Ivan Seal, noting that the latter's works show objects that " eeteron the brink of pure recognition and abstraction." Some writers have also likened the self-portraits to the illustrations of Mervyn Peake; 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". A 2013 article in ''The Lancet'' compared his work to Rembrandts self-portraits, and described Utermohlen as "struggling to preserve his self against age" while also fighting against "inexorable neurodegeneration". Giovanni Frazzetto described Utermohlen's self-portraits as similar to the works of Egon Schiele, explaining that the portraits were "evocative of the shrivelled bodies and diaphanous faces" shown in the latter's work.

Sherri Irvin says that the portraits show "remarkable stylistic features, ewardingserious efforts of appreciation and interpretation". Irvin notes that their "formal and aesthetic features", the correlation with Utermohlen's earlier works and their "aptness to interpretation", is what makes the portraits "jointly sufficient to connect them in the right way with past art, espitethe absence of an express dintention about how they are to be regarded."

Alan E. H. Emery believes that the progressive effects of dementia give neurologists "an opportunity to study how the disease affects an artist's work over time", adding that it also provides a unique method of studying detailed change in perception, and how it can be linked to localised brain functions. He concluded by stating that documenting changes over time with neuroimaging could lead to better understanding of dementia. Medical anthropologist Margaret Lock states that the portraits indicate that "there may be many avenues... that suggest ways in which humans can be protected from the ravages of this condition by means of lifelong social and cultural activities."

Purcell stated that Utermohlen's artwork provided viewers with a "unique glimpse into the effects of a declining brain." Researchers at Illinois Wesleyan University state that Utermohlen's self portraits show that "people with AD can have a strong voice through images." 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. The 2019 short film '' Mémorable'' was inspired by the self-portraits and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2020.

Exhibitions

Utermohlen had exhibited 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. Utermohlen's posthumous portrait of Gerald Penny was featured in the Gerald Penny 77' Center; earlier that year, he had artworks such as ''Five Figures'' in the Mead Art Museum. At their peak, sales of Utermohlen's earlier works ranged from $3,000 to $30,000.

His self-portraits have been shown at several exhibitions in the years after his death, including 12 exhibitions from 2006 to 2008. In 2016, the exhibition ''A Persistence of Memory'' was shown at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago. The exhibition, which contained 100 artworks from Utermohlen's work, was organised by Pamela Ambrose, 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."

Other notable exhibitions include a retrospective at the GV Art gallery in London in 2012, an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2008 sponsored by Myriad Pharmaceuticals, 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; it was open free to the public. Earlier that year, there was another exhibition at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. His self-portraits have also been shown in Washington, D.C. in 2007, the Two 10 Gallery in London in 2001, Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2005, Boston, and Los Angeles. The self-portraits were exhibited in Sacramento, California in 2008. Utermohlen's artworks were shown in 2016 at the Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland. In February 2007, a month before Utermohlen's death, his self-portraits were exhibited at Wilkes University.

See also

* ''Everywhere at the End of Time'' (2016–2019), a series of six concept albums reflecting the stages of dementia
* ''It's Such a Beautiful Day'' (2012), an experimental film depicting the progressively failing memory and worsening symptoms of the protagonist due to a neurological disease

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Journals

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Utermohlen, William
1933 births
2007 deaths
American people of German descent
Artists from Philadelphia
Deaths from pneumonia in England
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni
People with Alzheimer's disease