David Bierk
Born
David Charles Bierk

(1944-06-09)June 9, 1944
Appleton, Minnesota, U.S.
DiedAugust 28, 2002(2002-08-28) (aged 58)
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
NationalityAmerican-Canadian
EducationCalifornia College of Arts & Crafts; Humboldt State University
Known forPainter, draftsman
Spouses
  • Kathleen Mae Hunter
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1967, divorced)​
  • Elizabeth Lovett Aimers
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1980)​

David Charles Bierk RCA (June 9, 1944 – August 28, 2002) was an American-Canadian realist painter known for working in the postmodern genre.[1]

Early life

Born in Appleton, Minnesota, to Glennon Bierk and Doris Ruth Steenson,[2] Bierk moved with his mother to Lafayette, California, following his parents' divorce.[3] Bierk said of his childhood,

"We were plunked into an upper middle class neighbourhood before divorce was common, and she [my mother] not only provided for me but also was my mother, father, teacher and friend. It was my uncle Spiros, though, who taught me – at an early age – what you might call the work ethic. I always worked, at least from the time I was in grade six or seven. Spiros owned a mayonnaise factory in San Francisco and I started working there, doing things like scraping the labels of returned mayonnaise bottles and scraping the mold from cheese – eight hour days in the summers from the time I was 12 or 13."[3]

Bierk graduated from high school in 1962 and joined the National Guard.[3][1] Initially he studied at California College of Arts & Crafts,[4][5] Bierk dropped out after a year and half, and as he described it,

"...I took off, hitchhiked across the country, ended up in Florida, and then caught a boat to the Bahamas....I got a job as librarian at...Mary Star of the Sea School, a Catholic grammar school, where I persuaded Sister Mary Alice to let me teach art as well."[3]

Upon his return to California, Bierk was admitted to Humboldt State University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts 1969, and a master of fine arts in 1970.[4][6][1] Bierk's sister-in-law lived in Toronto, and in 1971 he immigrated there with his young family.[7]

Career

During the year that he lived in Toronto, Bierk immersed himself in the local cultural scene, which he described as exploratory.[3] Then he moved to Peterborough, Ontario in 1972 to take up a teaching position at Kenner Collegiate Vocational Institute, and later at Fleming College.[3] Along with poet Dennis Tourbin, Bierk founded and directed Artspace between 1974 and 1987, which was one of Canada's earliest artist operated art centers.[8][3][1]

Bierk's early painting drew on sources such as diverse as American West Coast Pop and Photo Realism.[9] In Canada, he expanded his West Coast Pop into Canadian images as well as painting a Canadian Rock series, and a multiple fold painting series. In the early 1980s, he began his Repaintings, quoting from famous artists of the past. In a June 2001 Art in America review, critic Jonathan Goodman wrote that

"Bierk quotes from the past not so much to critique current art as to reinterpret a way of seeing that he associates with artists as disparate as Vermeer, Eakins, Ingres, Manet and Fantin-Latour....[Bierk] accomplishes this particularly well when he starkly juxtaposes two or three of his eclectic art-historical references within a single work."

Noting the work's "virtuoso" technical quality, Goodman also observes that Bierk's "marvelously romantic" landscape paintings are, unlike these referential paintings, invented images, rather than appropriated or copied from masterworks.[10] Both Goodman's review and Bierk's 2002 New York Times obituary note that Bierk used framing to call attention, in a way that is pointedly "postmodern", to the historical disjunction between the evoked masterworks and the contemporary cultural environment: "He painted copies of works by artists like Vermeer or the Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church, for example, and framed them within broad steel panels, setting up a tension between humanism and old masterly craft on the one hand, and Modernist abstraction and industrial fabrication on the other."[1]

Exhibitions

His solo shows included exhibitions at Artspace, Peterborough (1976), the Art Gallery of Peterborough (1981–1983), and Museum London (1983).[9] The travelling exhibition After History: The Paintings of David Bierck organized by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama in 2002 toured in Canada.[11] His group exhibitions were extensive. In 2017, his work was included in the Robert McLaughlin Gallery's show titled Land, Sea and Air.[12]

Public collections

Awards

Notable works

Queen Elizabeth II portrait hanging inside the (pre-renovation) Peterborough Memorial Centre
  • Hockey Night in Canada (1975)[23]
  • The Laundromat, A Canadian Interior (1975)[23]
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee (Canada Post stamp, 1976)[24]
  • Locally one of his most famous paintings is his iconic, larger than life portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that overlooked the Peterborough Memorial Centre arena. Completed in 1981 and measuring 3.6m x 2.4m (12' x 8') is believed to be the largest portrait of the Queen in North America.[25]
  • Internationally his most widely recognizable work is the 1991 album cover of Skid Row's Slave to the Grind.[26]

Personal life and death

Bierk became a Canadian citizen in 1978.[4] He married Kathleen Mae Hunter in Freeport, Bahamas, in 1967.[27] Following his divorce from Hunter, Bierk married Elizabeth Lovett Aimers at Abercorn, Quebec, in 1980.[28][1] Bierk had eight children: Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer for the rock group Skid Row; Zac Bierk, a former ice hockey player; Heather Dylan, an actress; Lisa Hare; Alexander Bierk; Jeffrey Bierk; Nicholas Bierk; and Charles Bierk.[1]

Bierk died in Peterborough, Ontario, in August 2002, aged 58, from pneumonia related to ongoing leukemia.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "David Bierk, 58, Canadian Artist Who Reinterpreted Masterworks". The New York Times. September 7, 2002.
  2. ↑ "David Bierk genealogy". Geni.com.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Canadian Art Database". Archived from the original on July 22, 2019. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 Young, Christopher R.; Arts, Flint Institute of (March 1, 1993). The purloined image: Flint Institute of Arts, March 28-May 9, 1993. Flint Institute of Arts. ISBN 978-0-939896-03-5 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ Bierk, David (1974). "Artistes Canadiens: Expositions". Roundstone Council for the Arts, 1974. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Bierk, David; Kingwell, Mark; Bellefeuille, Galerie de (March 8, 2006). David Bierk, 2006. Galerie de Bellefeuille. ISBN 978-0-9687931-7-6 – via Google Books.
  7. ↑ Gillis, Carla (September 28, 2011). "Bach in business". NOW Magazine.
  8. ↑ "A look back at Peterborough's Artspace in the 1970s". kawarthaNOW. July 25, 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, volumes 1-8 by Colin S. MacDonald, and volume 9 (online only), by Anne Newlands and Judith Parker National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada
  10. ↑ Jonathan Goodman, Art in America, June 2001
  11. ↑ Sarah Milroy, "An artful life and work". Globe and Mail, September 7, 2002
  12. ↑ "Land Sea Air" (PDF). rmg.on.ca. Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  13. ↑ "Works – David Bierk – People – eMuseum". aggv.ca.
  14. ↑ "Permanent Collection". agp.on.ca. Art Gallery of Peterborough. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  15. ↑ "David Bierk". www.agw.ca. Art Gallery of Windsor. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  16. ↑ "David Bierk". collection.museumlondon.ca. Museum London, London, Ontario. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  17. ↑ "David Bierk". www.gallery.ca.
  18. ↑ "David Bierk". rmg.minisisinc.com. Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  19. ↑ "David Bierk cv". ccca.concordia.ca. Concordia University, Montreal. Archived from the original on November 2, 2021. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  20. ↑ "David Bierk". ccca.concordia.ca. Concordia. Archived from the original on November 2, 2021. Retrieved November 27, 2021.
  21. 1 2 "David Bierk". debellefeuille.com. Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  22. ↑ "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
  23. 1 2 "Work Detail".
  24. ↑ "Robert W. Service, Sam McGee – Canada Postage Stamp". Archived from the original on July 22, 2019. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  25. ↑ "Report: The Fair-Bierk Building 383 George Street North" (PDF). City of Peterborugh Peterborough Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee. January 2004. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 1, 2019. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  26. ↑ "Artwork [Art], Design – David Bierk". www.discogs.com. Discogs. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  27. ↑ "David Charles Bierk and Kathleen Mae Hunter wedding". The Windsor Star. November 28, 1967.
  28. ↑ "David Charles Bierk and Elizabeth Lovett marriage announcement; part 1". The Gazette. May 28, 1980.
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