#Charley #HarperA #Modern #Twist #Nature #WorthPoint
Before Charley Harper became a globally recognized artist, he was an environmentalist—or was it the other way around? It doesn’t matter because even today, long after his passing in 2007, Harper’s bold and witty geometric wildlife pieces are popular collectibles that remind us of the desperate need to protect our natural world.
Harper’s Art: Less Was Always More
When I think of a nature artist, my mind goes to painters like John James Audubon (1785-1851), who focused on authentic bird paintings, or I envision the dainty pastel landscapes and gardens of Claude Monet (1840-1926).
But Harper, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based artist, balked at painting what was already there, instead creating clean, vibrant interpretations of flora and fauna. His style eventually developed into what he described as “minimal realism,” in which plants, trees, and animals transformed into stripped-down, modern-style images with spirited color and crisp edges, making them easy to reproduce through the silkscreen process he conducted in his basement during the early years of his career.
“Wildlife art has been dominated by realism,” Harper once said, “but I have chosen to do it differently because I think flat, hard-edge, and simple. When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see feathers, fur, scapulars, or tail coverts—none of that. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior, and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures.”
A Farm Boy at Heart
Born in 1922 in West Virginia, Harper grew up on a farm where nature was a constant inspiration. Despising farm chores, Harper would steal away to the woods and draw. He never stopped sketching, even while serving in the U.S. Army in France and Germany during World War II—the army unit chaplain carried his art kit into battle. Following the war, Harper graduated from the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1947, married his classmate, Edie McKee, a respected photographer and artist, and settled in Cincinnati to begin his art career. He did freelance work for Ford Times magazine, creating auto interior illustrations. Harper also produced commissioned artwork for environmental organizations, including the Cincinnati Zoo, The Ohio State University Byrd Polar Research Center, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.
Harper’s art is witty and instructive, as he believed humor helped the public more readily understand serious environmental issues. The title of each piece usually contained a title or play on words that Harper thought up to explain the piece humorously. For example, a print of a smiling dolphin with a crab is entitled “Dolfun.” A print of four buzzards is called “Buzz Off, You.”
Exceptional Art Is Always in Style
Although Harper has been gone for over 15 years, his popularity continues through the Official Charley Harper Art Studio, an online store filled with reproductions, clothing, decor, and a separate category for his original pieces that can cost between $10,000 and $30,000. Many of Harper’s reproduction serigraphs and lithographs cost between $35 and $170.
Meanwhile, fans and collectors can still enjoy his art on vintage and pre-owned products like ice buckets, greeting cards, coffee mugs, puzzles, calendars, clothing, and even needlepoint kits that remain solid staples in the secondary market. Other popular products of note come from the early 2000s, when Harper collaborated with famous designer Todd Oldham, a longtime fan who produced an overview book of Harper’s work entitled Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life, as well as a line of mid-century modern style dishes and serve ware. The pieces were carried briefly in the New York City-based home goods store Fishs Eddy and are prevailing resale favorites.
A Wrinkle in Time
Sometimes, it takes a cameo on a popular television show for an artist’s work to get in front of a younger generation of possible fans, and that’s what happened to one of Harper’s older pieces.
A poster entitled The Desert was featured as a prop in the fourth season of the Netflix science fiction show Stranger Things, set in the 1980s. You needed an eagle eye to glimpse the cameo, but in episode six (“The Dive”), there it was—the framed art featuring a bright green modern cactus commissioned in 1986 by the National Park Service to highlight the desert’s abundant natural resources. It was one of ten posters that Harper created for the Park Service during the 1970s and 1980s, which helped solidify its brand identity.
Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Haadiza Ogwude wrote that the poster appears “at the exact time stamp of 14 minutes, 36 seconds (when the gang enters the bedroom in search of Suzie, the hacker).”
An Artist & Environmentalist
Throughout his career, the thread tying Harper’s images together was the message he continually sought to convey—that the natural world must be defended and protected at all costs.
Harper said of nature in a 1974 interview:
I need it a lot more than it needs me. And the more I become involved with it, the more I am troubled by unanswerable questions about our exploitation of plants and animals and our casual assumption that the natural world is here only to serve people. I have to ask myself how man, the predator with a conscience, can live without carrying a burden of guilt for his existence at the expense of other creatures. Can a Nature lover ever find true happiness at the top of the food chain? Maybe all of this is why my pictures are usually humorous—I’m laughing to keep from screaming.
In 1966, Harper said that had he not become an artist, he would be a conservationist. Looking back on his life, it’s clear he was both, as his iconic art symbolized environmental awareness causes throughout the twentieth century.
“His artwork connected us with nature,” Cincinnati artist Jan Brown Checco said in 2007, “and by consequence, we connected to each other through appreciation of Charley’s viewpoint.”
Between excursions to hunt for antiques and vintage décor, Lynda Houston is busy restoring her 1950s cottage in Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her partner Dave Beck operate TheRustInPeaceShop on Etsy.
WorthPoint—Discover. Value. Preserve.
