{"id":25594,"date":"2014-05-08T14:40:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T20:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=25594"},"modified":"2025-10-24T12:46:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T19:46:53","slug":"artist-profile-howard-brough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/artist-profile-howard-brough\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Profile: Howard Brough and the Comically Grotesque"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bloghoward\"<\/a>
\nFor years, Howard Brough helped artists hang their work at the Salt Lake City Library. Measuring twice before nailing, righting a frame with a level, carefully adjusting lighting . . . scores of local artists can attest that Brough\u2019s work was meticulous. But by his own admission it was not always wholehearted. \u201cIt was great to be around this interesting work,\u201d he says of his years as gallery director, \u201cbut you say to yourself, \u2018I\u2019m not producing, I\u2019m too busy working to pursue my own work,\u2019 and you can\u2019t help but feel some resentment that someone else is able to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, two years into retirement, Brough returns to the Gallery at Library Square with an exhibition of his own \u2014 dozens of works in graphite, ink and paint on clayboard, gessoboard and canvas, all executed in a style that makes them appear like the comically grotesque spawn of Sophocles and Daffy Duck. In a sense it is a retrospective, even if all the works are new: the output comes from a lifetime of art that was never set free. It is a chance for an artist whose career was put on hold for decades to consider his earliest as well as his current interests, to intertwine their accrued and overlapping meanings into visual metaphors that in Brough\u2019s case are full of charm and surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a central fact of my life and maybe a central fact of the work: it was really difficult being born a gay person in early \u201950s Provo,\u201d Brough says rather matter-of-factly. \u201cI always felt a sense of otherness there.\u201d Moving to the Salt Lake suburbs in the early seventies, when Brough studied art at the University of Utah, didn\u2019t change things much.<\/p>\n

San Francisco promised something better. Early trips there opened Brough\u2019s eyes to new possibilities, so when he was accepted into an MFA program in the Bay Area he jumped at the chance. \u201cIt felt like it was going to be Nirvana,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t.\u201d San Francisco in the hedonistic \u201970s was so far on the other side of the pendulum it gave him a sense of vertigo. \u201cAlmost everyone you met was from somewhere else and they had gone there to escape . . . It was like being on the Mayflower and instead of landing on Plymouth rock, landing on the Barbary Coast. I felt a different kind of otherness.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Bough learned of the impending closure of the small liberal arts college he was attending, this discomfort made the decision to leave easier (besides, \u201cwho wants a degree from a school that doesn\u2019t exist anymore?\u201d). In Tuscon, where he began studying at the University of Arizona in 1977, Brough felt more at home, and found something closer to Nirvana: shortly after arriving he met the man who would become his lifelong partner.<\/p>\n

When school was completed, the couple made a surprising decision \u2014 to move to Salt Lake City. \u201cAfter we graduated we were looking for a place with better job prospects. My partner actually really likes Salt Lake, and my family was urging me to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because in San Francisco he had worked at the city library, Brough applied for a job at Salt Lake\u2019s Main Library when he returned. \u201cI thought I would work part-time, enough to pay the bills, and do art work. But they hired me full-time and then I got promoted. Then the artwork got minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brough remained at the Library for thirty years. His art wasn\u2019t completely abandoned, but with only a handful of solo shows and a dozen or so group shows to his credit during that time, he certainly wasn\u2019t producing or exhibiting as much as he would have liked. The job, however, had its advantages. \u201cI got to see a lot of interesting work, and with all the books coming in it was like being in the best bookstore every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, two years into retirement, things have changed for Brough. \u201cIt\u2019s been so different working solely on the artwork and getting up in the morning and having what used to be the job time be the time to make art; instead of coming home and being kind of brain-fried and trying to get up the energy and just not being able to.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The change is evident in the work. During a 2012 residency at the Lab at the Leo, Brough exhibited his first new body of work, a series of zoomorphic drawings full of overlapping planes of organic lines filled in with a patchwork of textures and designs. It is a body of work that is both playful and serious. At the time, he wrote, \u201cOver the past year I lost three elderly companion animals (two dogs and a bird) to age and cancer. It was an emotional and devastating loss for me and my household. Beyond the grief, it triggered a heightened personal examination of the complex emotional, psychological, and magical association we have with members of the animal kingdom.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Animals continue to influence Brough\u2019s work. The waterfowl he sees on his daily walks through Salt Lake\u2019s Liberty Park inspired the series of \u201cSirens\u201d currently on exhibit. Two large canvases and a score of smaller pieces line the gallery\u2019s south wall, all in that same flowing line and patchwork design, now in full and vibrant color. The charm of these and Brough\u2019s other works are their multivalent formal and thematic aspects. This row of \u201cSirens\u201d look like collectible cards from a saccharine-saturated cereal box, but also call to mind Renaissance portraiture and medieval icons; his \u201cMiss Leda and the Fowl\u201d paintings suggest illuminated manuscripts; \u201cThe Judgment of Mr. P.\u201d triptych, Egyptian papryri.<\/p>\n

These varied art historical references may come naturally to someone who for years was surrounded by and dealt in books and art. But they are also a purposeful strategy to play with what Brough refers to as the \u201ccomic grotesque.\u201d Grotesque references both the arabesque quality of the work (the word originally comes from the caves or \u201cgrotto\u201d in Rome where remnants of Nero\u2019s palace were found decorated in the style), and, as Brough says, \u201ca place where incongruent things are bumping up next to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brough says these new works are both a continuation and an amplification of what has come before. \u201cThere\u2019s always been a theatricality and an absurd quality to the work. Certainly always a narrative quality to it \u2014 I\u2019ve never been a formalist or abstract artist; but the nod to mythologies and religious aspects is new to this body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

His interest in mythology goes back to childhood, when stories of Gods and Heroes served as an escape from day-to-day reality. \u201cWhen I was young I was very interested in Greek mythology; as far as a system of deities it sort of made sense to me because they\u2019re such a flawed group of creatures and ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t know it from the playful lines, bright colors and Arcimboldo bulges, but Brough\u2019s works reference stories of horrible consequence: Leda and the Swan is an episode of rape; the Judgment of Paris leads to a ten-year war and the genocide of the Trojans; and the story of Orestes contains just about every type of interfamilial murder you can think of. But at the Main Library all this blood and tears is wrapped up in a sinuous line full of bathos that encases cartoon ducks and cows.<\/p>\n

The choice of animals is deliberate, and personal. Brough says he\u2019s always been interested in wings, which is why so many of the avatars of his stories resemble fowl, and also explains his \u201cGentleman Angel\u201d series. The other recurrent animals are cows, sacred cows, if you will. \u201cWe as a species mythologize animals, give animals a place of respect; but at same time we sacrifice them and abuse them. It\u2019s a strange, two-sided type of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brough is serious about these larger cultural issues, about the mythologies and ideologies that are woven through are lives; but never so much so that he can\u2019t have some fun with it. For his \u201cProphets of Baal,\u201d (famous, though not always successful, sacrificers of cattle) he used figures from the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) as references. \u201cTheirs is a performance, built on the extreme,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

In another work, inside a centrally located vitrine, between screaming pink furies above and four-fingered cartoon hands in front, Brough has placed five portraits. \u201cThey\u2019re all meant to be Orestes,\u201d Brough says, \u201cbut I wanted five because I wanted it to be like a boy band. I wanted the whole set up to be somewhere between an altar and a Busby Berkeley musical stage setting.\u201d This is how Brough represents the story of a matricide.<\/p>\n

There is tension in the works, but it is not particularly violent. If Brough is interested in taking on sacred cows, he is aiming his jabs not at specific groups or ideologies; rather he means to poke at a sense of inflated piety. His comedy seems fueled not by affronted anger or hollow hipster irony, but by mature acceptance and maybe even delight in the incongruities of life. \u201cI think its what my life feels like; or that\u2019s what reality is for me; that juxtaposition or that incongruent bumping up of things; somewhere in that is where the reality of things is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brough\u2019s current reality is a pretty good one. \u201cI don\u2019t need to make a living off of the art,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich is good, because it isn\u2019t going to happen. Now I just want to make some works I can be proud of and maybe someone else will say \u2018Wow, that\u2019s got some real validity to it.’\u201d And he\u2019s found a home in Salt Lake City, a place he describes as \u201ca strange middle ground.\u201d He says the city itself has a very bohemian quality, a strong underground scene, but at the same time it\u2019s the headquarters of the LDS Church. It\u2019s the perfect sort of place for an artist exploring the comic grotesque.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Howard Brough\u2019s\u00a0o.o.o.m.g.A.W.E.D.: icons and boojums for the semi-agnostic<\/em>\u00a0is at\u00a0The Gallery at Library Square<\/a>\u00a0through June 13th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, Howard Brough helped artists hang their work at the Salt Lake City Library. Measuring twice before nailing, righting a frame with a level, carefully adjusting lighting . . . scores of local artists can attest that Brough\u2019s work was meticulous. But by his own admission it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[916,1936],"class_list":["post-25594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-gallery-at-library-square","tag-howard-brough"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/bloghoward.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-02 14:20:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25594"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97429,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25594\/revisions\/97429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}