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HEADLINES FROM AROUND THE WORLD |
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Portrait Artist Draws Out His Celebrity Subjects |
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When Kenneth Hari paints a portrait, he doesn't want his subject to keep still and quiet. Instead he tries to draw out the personality through another art conversation. "I study first what they are saying, their life story. That's the birth, the embryo stage for me," says Hari, whose portrait subjects have included some of popular culture's biggest names. Among them: writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr., comedian Groucho Marx, singer Dolly Parton, Actor Gene Kelly, artist Salvador Dali (who reciprocated by painting a portrait of Hari), comedian George Burns, composer Henry Mancini, astronomer Isaac Asimov, actress Olympia Dukakis, sitarist Ravi Shankar and soccer great Pele. Chatty and effusive himself, Hari says he even got a master of pantomime Marcel Marceau to loosen his tongue during one of his sittings. "He wouldn't shut up," laughs Hari. Hari's career resembles an eclectic version of "Whos Who" filled with countless other luminaries - dancers, architects, boxers, magicians, rodeo champs, CEOs and surgeons. He shrugs off the title of celebrity portrait painter, yet clearly enjoys talking about the names he has known. "There's no difference between a regular commission and doing someone famous," he says. "The only difference is people know who Dustin Hoffman is when he's walking down the street." The Oscar-winning actor, Hari says, told him that sitting for a portrait with him was "better than talking to a shrink." And like a psychiatrist, Hari refuses to dish the dirt from his sessions, citing "patient confidentiality." The 49-year-old painter has studios in Beijing, Florence and near Nashville, Tenn., but has kept his official residence here in his native city. "(Gene) Kelly told me that I was the inspiration for his character in 'An American in Paris,'" Hari recalls, The character of Jerry Mulligan was also a painter from Perth Amboy who traveled the world - but the movie was made in 1951. "I was just a kid then, so I didn't know what he meant. I do now. He was just talking about my spirit," says Hari, who painted Kelly 22 times. Unlike Kelly's character, however, Hari never had to struggle to ply his trade. His portraits have always sold, starting at $50,000 each. To a visitor at his home and studio here, he showed off photographs of himself looking surprisingly somber and serious, with the likes of poet Marianne Moore, actor James Earl Jones, and W.H. Auden, the poet whom Hari credits with launching his career. "Auden was a father figure to me. He introduced me to the right people, and it just took off from there," he said. "Losing him was like losing my father again." Hari's father, a musician and band leader, had a house in Key West, Fla., where as a child in the 1950's the artist-to-be met author Ernest Hemingway and swam in playwright Tennessee Williams' backyard pool. "I did a sketch of Ernest Hemingway. ...He liked it and patted me on the head," Hari recalled. A portrait, he said, is more than just a decoration over the mantlepiece. "It's a link to those people who will be forgotten, the artist, the architects, the writers, the scientists, people I've known who are dead or dying," Hari said. "Even Gene Kelly will be forgotten. I really think these people have to be preserved." He recalled one celebrity who preferred to be preserved in his prime. "Doing Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s portrait was like the Portrait of Dorian Gray," said Hari, alluding to Oscar Wilde's tale of an old man who gains physical beauty through a painting. "He had me do two paintings - one as he looked when I did it in '89 or '90, and then one when he was young." "He was in love with the younger one! I don't even think he even wanted the other one," Hari laughed. |
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