presentsHARVEY and THE LOST NUDES OF CARMEL
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HARVEY HIGLEY of CARMEL
1911 - 1988
HARVEY HIGLEY, creator of the "Harvey Girl Nudes" and portraits of women from the 1930's through 1970's.
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Harvey stopped painting sometime around 1982 and locked his Carmel studio of 40 years for the last time. It was here he painted both local women, celebrities and burlesque subjects in private seclusion. By all accounts he was retiring and reclusive. He never married and was the only son of General Higley, from a long history and tradition of military service. He was 6 foot 7 inches which in the 1930's was considered a giant among men. He was handsome and his father must have thought, a natural born officer and leader. |
In the 1930's Harvey went to Washington, DC, not to military school, but the Corcoran School of Art, and then later to New York City and attended the Art League there. He returned to Carmel in 1939, bought a home on a large lot and built a fantastic artist studio, large with very high vaulted ceilings to fit his stature.
He was very quiet, modest and unassuming about his work. Of his other few passions was golf. Harvey forsake the many provential galleries in Carmel and only showed his portrait works very rarely at the Carmel Art association. He often played at near by Pebble Beach and had a completely separate social life there and often sold commission portraits and nudes to golfing buddies and acquaintances. He stopped painting around 1982 and his studio was locked with several hundreds of paintings and drawings. When he died in 1988, they remain there while his only sister lived on. As he had no children, his sister secured the studio and so these nude paintings were long forgotten and untoched until recently discovered by the Vanguard.
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTARY OF HARVEY'S WORK BY ARTIST DANIEL VANCAS
These nudes were mostly painted in a conservative small town environment, a little "Pleasant-ville-by-the-sea" in a growing post WWII and Cold War era OF new conservatism, of Atom Bomb scares, growing family values, in direct proportion to segregated buses.
Harvey's work posed a dichotomy, as well as caught a glimpse of hidden sexuality in America. The viewer should be made mindful of the duality of social issues, mixed messages between, banning Elvis' hips, McCarthyism, the Red Scare and The Kensey report on Human Sexuality.
When Harvey first moved here, there were still vestiges bohemian artist and writers. They were the beatniks of their time, explored forest and coves of Carmel while experimenting with open sexuality and everything artistic and playful. The bohemian artist came and flourished in the Jazz age. Many had defied conventions as well as clothes when cavorting in and around Carmel. This too must have been an early influence on the only young son of a General and future artist.
After W.W.II, the Bohemians were all but gone. Carmel, sealed their fate to keep them away by issuing a law that there will be no live music what so ever. So there wouldn't be any crime, no "trouble" with a capitol "T" nor bohemian hippies in this "Little River" city-by-the-sea.
Things did indeed change and Carmel shifted it's younger population from a sleepy and very quiet Mayberry-by-the-sea, to the aged retirement and second home community for the nouveau riche.
Indeed at 51, I am still called "young man" about town.
It's little art gallery tourist trap community that, though it is full of fine art, it's also full of itself. Unaware that it is still anemically weak in culture and ethnic diversity. Like the movie "Pleasantville, A community that has been slowly going colorblind, because it has not see color and diversity and disassociated itself with a colorful past...
In this Carmel microcosm, mimicked the American transition of average same-ness, so desired by the new 1950's. Honest sexuality became one of the new colors that many reacted to but still couldn't see. By plan or default, Harvey's work captures the raw and vulnerable emotions of individuals in a society caught in conflict or they were defying the conventions and morals of the time.
Harvey subjects, his interest in human sexuality and even his models became voices of communication who express and captured all the emotions, from vacant suppressed anger, to vulnerability, fear, release, and wanton desires.
Harvey by his own modest omission, his seclusion while painting this work for 40 years, by his act of hiding away his work and paintings, only to be discovered now make the reexamination of this work worthy of the view. Even if thought by some to be foolish and trivial then, it becomes even more poignant today. After all, many of Harvey's nudes were cultivated from the local women, some our or mothers, others our grandmothers. Dear viewer, remember in these same decades were also in a time of feminist strife just before and during changing women's rights and issues.
What act of free _expression is the subject, who is a wife, or a mother, the girl next door, when she is in collaboration in secret with the artists to defy the conventions of the time. Look again, because these are NOT just nude women. They are women with a voice, speaking with their look, their attitudes, even with their bodies they are breaking the barriers of moral precepts and communicating with the viewer across both time and generations.
I am impressed that these paintings as a whole suggest we have not changed all that much. Sadly, today with all our political correctness, it is still incorrect to view naked bodies and explore our natural feelings of sexuality, yet is is ok for our children to see on the nightly news still clothed bodies, bleeding out life or dismembered. What then is the meaning of correct-ness.
We are still vulnerable, we have the same needs, desires and wishes that make us all, very human.
(c) Daniel Vancas, November 2004. All rights reserved, all or in part.
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