Von Bruenchenhein’s art confirms his weird greatness
If people driving past Mary Nohl’s house in Fox Point thought she was a witch, what would they have made of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s artwork, with demonic faces growing out of mushroom clouds and towers fashioned from chicken bones? ♦ But few people saw the art of Von Bruenchenhein (1910-’73) during his lifetime, though not for lack of effort on his part. He tried, but gallery owners weren’t interested. ♦ When the artist died, his tiny Milwaukee home was crammed with hundreds of works in various media. His friend Daniel Nycz contacted the Milwaukee Art Museum, which referred him to Ruth Kohler of Sheboygan’s Kohler Arts Center, which conserved the work and acquired many pieces.
The Kohler continues to champion his work, which has a rising profile in the art world. “Mythologies: Eugene Von Bruenchenhein,” on view through Jan. 14, presents a large selection of art in each of his key media, plus ancillary photographs and artifacts. It is part of Kohler’s yearlong “The Road Less Traveled” series of 15 exhibits representing artist-built environments.
Portraits of Marie
Born in Marinette, Von Bruenchenhein worked for a florist after graduating from high school and cultivated a strong interest in plants and cacti. Later, he worked for a commercial bakery. At 29, he married 19-year-old Eveline Kalke, whom he called Marie in honor of a favorite aunt. They moved into a small Milwaukee home that had once been his father’s storefront.
In a 1943 wedding portrait of the couple incorporated in this exhibit, Marie stands half a head taller than her husband. She loomed large in his imagination, too. He made countless photographic portraits, many black and white, though some color Kodachromes are displayed here in a slide show.
These portraits are initially the most accessible works in “Mythologies,” but they’re also as complicated and question-provoking as Von Bruenchenhein’s other kinds of art. He photographs Marie in various outfits, but also nude and semi-nude. Some present her in a pinup mode, though she never becomes a completely idealized sexual object. A hint of human awkwardness always remains. These photos are erotic, but hardly prurient, especially by today’s standards.
In her review of a 2010 exhibit, New York Times critic Roberta Smith likens those photos to the work of Cindy Sherman, with Marie taking on Hollywood roles for women. Smith also ponders, as do the curators of this Kohler exhibit, the dynamics of Marie and Eugene’s relationship. Was Marie enthusiastic about modeling for her husband? Or would compliant be a better description?
Flowers and crowns
The couple must have scrimped to pay for those Kodachromes. “By all accounts, the Von Bruenchenheins lived in abject poverty,” the Kohler points out in its visitor guide to the exhibit. A compelling aspect of his work is how Von Bruenchenhein used whatever humble materials he could scrounge to make his art. He painted on scavenged cardboard, dug up clay to make ceramics, fashioned pieces of Marie’s hair into paintbrushes and repurposed poultry bones as the skeleton of his sculpted towers.
Apparently inspired by his stepmother, who painted floral still lifes, botanical imagery showed up everywhere in Von Bruenchenhein’s art, including the dresses Marie wore and in the backgrounds of her portraits. “This desire to synthesize the organic (botany, chaos, natural geometry) with the rational (mathematics, structure, and image) and be seen as the creative ‘engine’ that drives all of his compositions and sculptures,” wrote Brett Littman, a curator and scholar who is one of the Kohler’s “responders” for this exhibit.
Many of his weird oil paintings suggest botanical and anatomical patterns vastly enlarged. With their dark backgrounds behind intense colors, they could be highly abstract depictions of space battles.
Those paintings and Von Bruenchenhein’s H-bomb series strongly bring to mind the concerns and patterns of 1950s science fiction; some of the weird paintings can be seen as abstract counterparts to SF magazine covers.
His artwork, and the clever techniques he devised to make it, also make me think of other men, like my father, who worked blue-collar jobs to support families, then poured their passionate creativity into crafts and hobbies. My father, a skilled cabinetmaker, had no loftier goal than making furniture that was both beautiful and useful. But Von Bruenchenhein was convinced of his inherent greatness as an artist even though, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, the world never wrote back to him. The Kohler exhibit includes a form letter from the NEA turning down his grant application, as well as form letters from White House staff perfunctorily acknowledging artwork and a poem he sent to the president.
Crowns, in sculptures, paintings, even on Marie’s head, run through his work, reflecting his belief that he was descended from German royalty.
The obsessiveness, the sheer intensity, that radiates through a room filled with Von Bruenchenhein’s artwork can be daunting. Photographs of the walls and shelves of his home, crowded with sculptures and photographs, suggest it might have been uncomfortable to live in there. But the Kohler’s “Mythologies” exhibit affirms that Von Bruenchenhein was correct in believing he had an artistic destiny. It just took the world some decades to appreciate him.