The two Harpers: Edie’s & Charley’s diverse art & talent

You know Charley Harper, right? At least, you recognize his art – those angular, redder-than-red cardinals? And the herds of raccoons, their beady eyes staring out from the gloom that surrounds them. Even if you don’t know those specific creatures, you surely recognize Harper’s stylized approach to art – “minimal realism,” he called it. It was almost as if a whimsical industrial designer had turned his eye to fine art.

And thanks to savvy merchandising, examples of Harper’s art are on countless gift shop shelves: mugs, gift cards, calendars, puzzles, planners, coasters, wind chimes, earrings, tiles – his images are everywhere. Harper is God’s gift to the nation’s museum shops. And don’t forget that famous mural facing west between Ninth and Court streets downtown. 

But what about Edie Harper? She was Charley’s wife. And, according to Brett Harper, the couple’s only child, she was “an artist in ability and stature equal to Charley.”

But Edie, who died in 2010, three years after Charley, didn’t pursue the limelight in the same manner her husband did. Besides, when Charley’s fame started to spread, it was the 1950s. And Edie was a woman. How could she possibly expect the same recognition that her male spouse achieved?

“I think she sometimes felt that she was overlooked,” Brett said.

He tells of the time that Charley was asked to speak to the members of a local women’s club. Then, almost as an afterthought, the club representative asked Edie if she would come along and pour tea.

“As you can imagine, she was highly offended,” Brett said, “and you can be sure that she voiced that to Charley.”

It’s far too late to undo that particular indignity. But an exhibition opening at the Taft Museum of Art on Oct. 17 may do something to boost the world’s understanding of Edie’s prodigious talent. 

“Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play,” touted as the first museum presentation devoted to Edie’s six-decade career, runs through Jan. 24. Just as significant, the Taft has produced what is believed to be the first catalog chronicling Edie’s life and career.

The Taft’s 100-page catalog is dense with images and biographical information about Edie’s life and career. Just flipping through the catalog is breathtaking as we see the breadth of Edie’s work – not only her broad interest, but the excellence she displays in different media.

The genesis of Edie’s show actually begins at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where Julie Aronson, the museum’s curator of American paintings, sculpture and drawings, was preparing a retrospective of the Harpers’ collective work.

“I had this big niggling question that I couldn’t ignore,” Aronson said. “It was about Edie. I always felt that no matter how we shaped the project, Edie was going to get the short shrift. There was no way one exhibition could possibly do justice to both artists’ work.”

Her solution? Reach out to the Taft. Perhaps they would be interested in doing a concurrent exhibition focusing on Edie.

Edie revealed as gifted artist

“I think it’s safe to say that all of us were enthusiastic about the idea,” said assistant curator Angela Fuller, one of three curators who shaped the exhibition and catalog. “Originally, our thought was that it would be about Edie’s photography. But once we saw the enormous breadth of her work, we knew it had to grow to cover her entire career.”

The resulting exhibit will fill the Taft’s Fifth Third Gallery with an abundance of work: prints, paintings, tapestries, enamels, writing and photography. As dazzling as the CAM show is, the one at the Taft is likely to be downright revelatory. Edie is finally revealed to the public as a prodigious and gifted artist in all manner of media.

Though Charley achieved enormous commercial success during his life, neither he nor Edie was fully appreciated for their roles as groundbreaking artists. The Harpers, you see, occupied a unique position in mid-20th-century art.

The world of fine art has had something of a love/hate relationship with the Harpers. 

For many in the rarefied bicoastal world of high-end art, words like “successful” and “commercial” had become damning descriptions. You could make money, of course. Galleries wouldn’t have it any other way. But being popular was a no-no.

Charley was everything fine artists weren’t supposed to be. He was successful. He was commercial. And he lived in the Midwest. Not just that, but he and Edie lived in a suburb – Finneytown – that was as far removed from the world of fine arts as it could conceivably be.

For the first years after they married in 1947, the newlyweds had lived with Edie’s parents in Roselawn. Brett was born during that time, in 1953. Five years later, the family moved to a custom-built home in booming Finneytown, near strip malls, bowling alleys and an abundance of gas stations to satisfy the appetite of the gas-guzzling, eight-cylinder cars that made their way up and down nearby Winton Road.

Theirs was a “normal” life, though unlike most of their neighbors, the Harpers’ home – and studio – was tucked away on five acres of dense woodland. And the modest home with a massive wall of windows looking out into the woods had been designed by noted architect Rudolf “Rudy” Hermes. In 1960, The Cincinnati Enquirer included it in a list of the “newest and best designed buildings in the city.”

The Harpers were as far removed from the romantic image of starving artists as they could be. No chilly garrets for them. No fifth-floor walk-ups.

Rather, Brett’s recollections are of an almost idyllic life.

“I never felt lonely when I was a kid,” he said. “There was so much creative stimulation. Charley was a workaholic. And Edie always had something different she was working on. I was always chasing them around, watching what they were doing. They included me in nearly everything they did.”

That included long, leisurely days tagging along with his mother at the Art Academy, regular visits from art-world luminaries and even a camping trip to Maine with designer Michael Graves and his wife. They spent time with many Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra musicians and counted the members of the vaunted LaSalle String Quartet among their friends. Architect Ray Roush and his wife, visual artist Lucille Roush, were frequent companions and would go on to become lifelong friends.

“I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was living in the middle of an amazingly fertile and creative atmosphere,” Brett said.

Charley’s craftsmanship 

Aronson admits that, in the course of putting together the CAM exhibit, she has developed a much greater appreciation for Charley’s work.

“Naturally, I knew of his commercial success and, more recently, his immense popularity,” Aronson said. “But the more I learned about Charley, the more I became fascinated with him as a great artist. His craftsmanship was remarkable. And the paintings he made late in life are incredible.”

Specifically, she cites a series of large paintings commissioned by the National Park Service.

“We’ve been looking at reproductions of them for more than a year,” Aronson said, “but when the originals arrived, we were just gobsmacked. The colors are almost luminous. On the one hand, you think you know the work. And on the other – well, you really don’t.”

One more note.

Both of these exhibitions are brilliant in what they will reveal to us about Charley and Edie.

There is something quite optimistic about much of their work, which reflects the unbridled positivism that defined much of the era. The nation had survived a World War and had entered the jet age, the world of television and superhighways and cars decked out with enormous, fanciful fins. Suddenly, after more than two decades of deprivation, America was consumed by a booming peacetime economy.

The Harpers, like so many people around then, were trying to make sense of it all. What a glorious way they chose to explore that period of American history. And thanks to the dogged determination of their only child, much of that visual record of mid-century America has been preserved.

In the end, these exhibitions don’t just offer up the story of two gifted artists trying to juggle careers in the commercial and fine arts.

They are also a testament to a son’s love and his commitment to telling the world about the extraordinary talents that were his parents.

---

Cincinnati Art Museum

Oct. 16-March 7. “The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame”

Taft Museum of Art 

Oct. 17-Jan. 24. “Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play”