Charles Pfahl is a modern-day master of American painting. His work is part of many prestigious public and private collections, including those of Oprah Winfrey, Philippe Niarchos, the Columbus Museum, The Delaware Museum, and the Salmagundi Club. He has won numerous awards and grants over the years and has had many solo and group exhibitions at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and major European cities. Reproductions and interviews have been featured in several magazines, including American Art Collector and Art in America. Two major books were devoted entirely to his work: Charles Pfahl, Artist at Work, and Charles PFAHL (published posthumously). He has also been included in many books dealing with contemporary American realism. The latest book, Behind the Easel, by the artist Robert Jackson, was also published posthumously. Charles Pfahl’s work will soon be featured in the Occhi Contemporary Art Gallery.
We are so pleased to have the opportunity to speak with Sharon van Ivan Pfahl, Charles’ wife of 21 years, about her late husband’s work, and also about her life as an actor, writer, and storyteller (monologist).
Welcome to Occhi, Sharon. We’re so happy to be able to introduce you to our readers. You knew Charles back when you were kids, yes?
I knew of him when we were teenagers. His parents were my mother’s sponsors in AA. They all wanted us to meet. My mother took me to visit once, but Charles was so shy that he hid in the basement the whole time I was there. We met July 25, 1968. I remember the date well. It was my wedding day. Charles came with his parents to the reception. The three of us—Charles, and my first husband, and I—became immediate and close friends. Charles even lived with us in NYC, and we helped him find his first apartment.
When did Charles know he wanted to be an artist?
Charles was always an artist. He studied from age 10 with the artist Jack Richard, who owned and ran a small art school in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. As he did not have the money to attend, he traded light janitorial services for classes in anatomy, drawing, and painting. The school taught only adults at that time. From there he went on to study with the well-known painter Robert Brackman. John Koch, an established realist painter of the time, befriended him when he arrived in New York in 1969, and they became lifelong friends. Charles thought of John Koch as a mentor in painting and in life.
How would you describe his work?
Realism. Sometimes with an edge. Mostly figurative work. A studio painter. And it was important to him that people knew he always painted from life. Never from photographs.
Can you talk about how Charles viewed the world, meaning his relationship to objects (or people) he chose to paint?
Charles saw everyone and everything as beautiful. He was always putting together a painting in his mind. Regarding objects: he was on a constant and persistent quest for the unusual. And that could have been the pig’s head leftover from a family feast and then left lying along the road near a ditch where we found it on a morning walk. Or a magnificent silk scarf he saw in the window of a very expensive shop on Madison Avenue. He was eerily drawn to the next thing he was going to paint. He was a collector of oddities, and everything was used in his work. His people were interesting-looking. He was limited by finances and usually painted the women he loved and the men who were his friends. The shyness rose again in this area of his work. He did many self-portraits, partly for that reason.
Right Image: The Offering
Charles mannequin appears in many of his paintings. Can you talk about his relationship with her?
When Charles studied with Robert Brackman in Connecticut during his early teens, he saw the fully articulated, realistically proportioned, 1920s French mannequin for the first time. He was fascinated by her. Brackman knew how much Charles appreciated the mannequin, and years later he sold it to him for exactly what he had paid for it in Paris many years before. In the beginning, Charles used her as a clotheshorse, substituting for a model who couldn’t devote the hours to a long sitting just for the costume. Later the mannequin became a central character in his work. And finally, he used her as the central figure in his most important work, Archetype—which now hangs in a private museum in London.
At what point in his artistic life did Charles become obsessed with dolls?
Not all dolls. Damaged dolls. Damaged is the operative word. He found them here and there, in antique shops, and when it came along, on e-Bay. These dolls became part of our family. They lived with us in every room of whatever house we lived in. And they were not hidden away. He would hang them on the wall like artwork. Or they’d sit in line on a shelf of a bookcase. Usually, he painted them several at a time. At other times, he painted them individually.
Knipperdollin (below) is a wooden box that he created using ten single paintings of somewhat battered baby dolls. A self-portrait was in the center, indicating he was one of them, part of the family. And sort of protective of them. By inserting himself into the work, he entered their world. Psychiatrists have been known to say that artists who suffered extreme abuse as children often use damaged dolls, skulls, bones, and dead animals in their work. “Hurt an artist and you will see masterpieces of what you’ve done.” An anonymous quote that I can’t get out of mind.
Charles hired models for much of his work, but you posed over and over again for him, too. What was it like to model for him?
There was not a lot of talking. I could have used a few more breaks. It was not comfortable or easy, but I learned so much about color, light, and the genius who was my love. Charles always painted with music playing in the background, so I learned about that, too, as his choices were quite eclectic: one day, classical, then blues, opera, oldies. He loved them all.
Many self-portraits came into being because he was his own best model. He didn’t talk or ask for breaks. What amazed me about those paintings was that he used a hand mirror. He’d look at himself in the mirror. Look away. Paint. Look in the mirror again. It looked so difficult. It was so difficult. Over his lifetime, he lived and worked in Manhattan, upstate New York, Los Angeles, Ireland, Bali, New Mexico, and of course Ohio. Many of his self-portraits include his environment. Sometimes in the background or reflected in his sunglasses, or even through a window to the outside world. And then one time, there was only color in the background, as in Alton (below)
detail, center panel from Bali Tryptych
Your background includes acting and writing, plus you worked for many years in production for the independent director John Cassavetes. Your critically acclaimed (and Kirkus starred reviewed) memoir, entitled Juggle and Hide, shines a bright light on your childhood, your experiences in the film world, and your lifelong, on-again-off-again relationship with Charles. Tell us about the experience of writing what could be called a “tell-all” memoir.
Although it was easy to write about my traumatic childhood and roller-coaster past, in retrospect, I believe I should have had the good sense to use a pseudonym. I thought I had waited until most of the culprits had died, but I forgot their offspring—some of whom no longer speak to me. My brother won’t read it. Friends have put it down, saying it was too sad, too hard for them to believe that all that had happened in my life. Too late to worry about any of it now.
Did Charles have any misgivings about you writing a memoir that includes so much about your life with him?
If it were not for Charles’ encouragement, I would never have even started the book. It certainly would never have been published. I read him every chapter as I wrote it. He was a lot more open about his life than people would imagine. After it was written, I tried for a while to get a publisher, but when that didn’t happen, I put the manuscript away. When Charles was dying, he asked me to do only one thing for him—and I would have done anything, and he knew it. He said, “Publish the damn book. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Use my painting for the cover.” That’s what I did. In shock and grief, I published the book. For him.
What made Charles paint that particular image for the Juggle and Hide cover?
One day he found a flawed wax head in a shop in Hollywood. It reminded him of my mother, so he bought it for me as a Christmas gift. She died suddenly just a few days before that Christmas, so I got hysterical when I opened the box and saw the wax head. Reacting to my reaction, he asked me to please never tell anyone he gave it to me. Eventually, he did the painting. The flaws and hardened wax drippings were suddenly beautiful. Reminds me of the Japanese art of kintsugi. It teaches that broken or damaged objects are not something to hide but to display with pride. Each flaw has its own story and beauty. I was thrilled when he named his painting after the title of my memoir, and so excited when I was able to fulfill his desire to use the painting of the wax head for the cover.
In addition to being a memoirist, you have been an actor, a scriptwriter, an improv storyteller, and more. Do you feel you put some of your own ambitions aside to support Charles’ work?
Charles was important to me—from the day I met him in 1968 until the night he died in 2013. The years we spent apart seemed to dissolve when we got back together again. We lived together twice. Once in the 1970s and then again from 1993 to the end. We were always friends, no matter what happened. I was devoted to him and to his work. He was a great artist. An artist’s artist. A close friend yelled at me in anger once: “Maybe you were put on earth just to take care of Charles Pfahl.” She never spoke to me again because of my answer: “Maybe I was.”
How did Charles, a lifelong painter, come to create a very large sculpture?
e-Bay. An avid watcher and shopper, Charles saw a lot of old wooden molds showing up from time to time. They were beautiful, and he began to collect them. A few at a time. From different types of factories and many different dealers. When he had enough, he put them together like the pieces of a puzzle and anchored them to a heavy piece of wood that was attached to a large wall in his studio. The first painting was done using the molds in their original primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.
Image: Revolution by Charles Pfahl
Valentine (right image) was number two. For this one, he added a large number of dolls and painted them and the entire piece white. He asked me to pose lying on a slab at the bottom center of the work. The title refers to the fact that he completed the painting on Valentine’s Day. By this time, he had been diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer. The dolls seem to be reaching out to me as if they are alive and I was not. They seem to be trying to wake me up.
Then came the third and final painting of the series, entitled Shadow. This time, he covered the entire sculpture with black house paint and added a gas mask and a few other items that he had collected. His beloved mannequin was the focal point for this one. The mannequin lies on a daybed in the center with her legs in the air. Actually, her legs are resting on the sculpture. Shadow was Charles’ last large painting.
Image: Shadow by Charles Pfahl
Charles painted no matter how ill he was – and right up until the end. How was he able to do that?
The end came when he realized he would never be able to go out to his studio again. One week before he died, as his organs began to fail, he knew he would never paint again. The acceptance was there. The sadness of it was that he had already set up his mannequin in a beautiful archetypal pose. His palette was prepared and the brushes were waiting. The large canvas was stretched. That was it for him. He was a painter. Life meant little to him once he knew he would not be going out to his studio ever again.
Did Charles approach death the way he approached painting?
Not at all. Charles Pfahl met his death the way he lived his life. He approached that most important transition face to face. One of his doctors in Albuquerque, Kevin Goodluck, a Navajo oncologist seen during his final year, was more open and honest with him than any of the other doctors. Charles always asked a lot of questions about everything, including death. Only Dr. Goodluck’s answers caught his attention. Charles asked point-blank how Navajos faced death. Goodluck said that if they were able, a Navajo man or woman met it head-on. If they could, they wanted to see the most beautiful experience in their life. As a man who spent his life learning about himself, and as an artist who saw beauty in everything, he chose to be awake and aware until the very end. He took no drugs, no painkillers. Being in hospice at home, he was able to say no to the morphine offered. He may have felt pain, but he did not show it. He was able to speak until his last day. And then he stopped communicating. His eyes were open. He was alert. And he looked as though he was listening to someone or something very carefully. Every once in a while, he would nod. That night, when he fell asleep, he breathed normally up to that last breath. No fear. A calm look on his face. Relaxed body. Propped up on pillows and lying sideways in the bed. And then he was gone.
Besides here and, soon, on the new Occhi Contemporary Arts Gallery, is there a place where readers can learn more about Charles and his work?
www.instagram.com/pfahlwriter/
Where can readers learn more about your memoir, Juggle and Hide?
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sharon-van-ivan/juggle-and-hide/
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=van+ivan+juggle+and+hide&ref=nb_sb_noss
Main photo of Charles Pfahl and Sharon van Ivan Pfahl by Pat Barrett
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