Chuck Connelly, combative neo-expressionist artist, dies at 70

Boston Globe

23-04-2025

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At one point, his fame and volatile persona led to his being hired as the model for an impassioned artist character played by Nick Nolte in Martin Scorsese's 'Life Lessons,' part of a trilogy of short films under the title 'New York Stories' (1989). (The other films were directed by Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola.)
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Mr. Connelly's art frequently drew critical praise.
Reviewing a show of American neo-expressionists at a gallery in Ridgefield, Conn., in 1984, Grace Glueck of The New York Times wrote, 'Chuck Connelly's heavily textured paintings, 'Freedom Ride' and 'Two Men Sitting,' in muted grays and browns make eerily effective compositions of satanic clown figures, and come closer than anything else here to the mood of early-20th-century German expressionism.'
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Mr. Connelly was known for his thick applications of paint and his furious brushstrokes. He worked on a remarkable breadth of subjects, including his cat Fluffy; still lifes (one of them showed a box of Bran Flakes, a bowl, and a hammer); the perilous loop-the-loop of a roller coaster (or maybe there are two?); and portraits of the 20 children, all smiling, who were killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
Responding to an earthquake in Russia, Mr. Connelly in 2011 created a series of anguished pictures, in muted colors, of terrified and injured students and parents hugging their rescued children.
He was asked by Bomb magazine in 1991 how the free and expressive way he handled paint -- which the interviewer praised for its 'playful, childlike beauty' -- helped produce his 'dark, underground' vision of crashes and accidents and even a suspicious-looking Santa Claus (with the word 'Ho-Mo' scrawled across the painting).
'Sometimes I use a real event,' he said. 'And other times I don't know where it comes from. The mailman, for instance, you see him everywhere you go, and the dog's always biting at his foot. It's tapping into what we're supposed to know.'
As talented as Mr. Connelly was, his hot-tempered personality alienated some dealers, patrons, and buyers. His distaste for the art world and his alcoholic rages were captured in 'The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale,' a 2008 HBO documentary directed by Jeff Stimmel.
One patron, Matt Garfield, said in the film that his relationship with Mr. Connelly -- during which he paid 'hundreds of thousands' of dollars for paintings for his home and business -- ended when the artist refused an offer of $200 for a canvas. Mr. Connelly called the offer insulting.
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'For a person who had pleaded that he was going through his life savings just so he could eat,' Garfield said to the camera, as if he were addressing Mr. Connelly, " I would suggest you take a small 8-by-10 canvas, and spread some paint on it, then put it in the oven at 450 degrees, let it cook for 20 to 25 minutes and have that for dinner."
In a separate interview in the documentary, Mr. Connelly said, 'Another patron bites the dust.'
Stimmel said Mr. Connelly had felt he deserved success but had found it hard to accept. 'Coming from the late 1970s, early '80s, East Village, CBGB's place,' he said in an interview, 'he considered success a sellout. He wanted massive success, but he hated the idea of it -- it was so uncool.'
John Charles Connelly was born Jan. 7, 1955, in Pittsburgh. He recalled that his parents -- Christopher, a salesman, and Ann (Adamson) Connelly, who managed the home -- had a contentious relationship.
'She would get drunk and start shouting at Dad, mocking his dead mother,' Mr. Connelly told The Daily Mail of Britain in 2015. 'Dad would grab her and drag her to the sink, where he would pour the vodka bottle all over her head.'
He was hooked on art in kindergarten, when he painted a clown and realized that he could get attention for his talent, he said. He graduated from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1977.
He then moved to New York, where he found a patron in Dr. Robert C. Atkins, creator of the Atkins diet, whose support allowed Mr. Connelly to spend two years in Germany refining his work. He was successful enough in the 1980s -- and well enough known for his intense personality -- that he was hired to tutor Nolte for 'Life Lessons,' with a screenplay by Richard Price.
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'When they were looking for a 'crazy, wild man, angry painter/artist,' several galleries told them, 'Chuck Connelly is your man,'' Stimmel said.
While on the set, he painted 'Bridge to Nowhere,' which became a central prop in the film. Close-ups of Mr. Connelly's hand in the act of painting stood in for Nolte's until the actor's brushstrokes improved.
He and Nolte went out drinking during the film's production and became close friends.
'He was as raw as you can get,' Mr. Connelly told The New York Times Magazine in 1991. 'Like an animal.'
But Mr. Connelly said he ran afoul of Scorsese when he told Page Six of the New York Post, after 'New York Stories' was released, that he thought 'Life Lessons' was 'mundane' and 'cliched.'
'It ain't no 'Raging Bull,'' he told the paper, referring to another, acclaimed Scorsese movie.
He told the Post in 2015 that after the comment appeared, 'momentum stopped immediately, and then it slowed downwards, a slow decline of the career.' Mooney-Connelly said her husband's 'drinking and raging also hurt his career.'
Eventually, she said, the price of his paintings recovered, 'and we were extremely careful who we sold to.' (In 2015, Mr. Connelly painted three portraits of Scorsese at different ages -- to put the episode in the past, he told The Daily Mail.)
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His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and other institutions.
Connelly continued to paint while in hospice care. 'We knew he was a goner when he hadn't painted for 48 hours,' Mooney-Connelly said.
In addition to his wife, he leaves his sister, Marjorie Connelly; his brother, Dan; five stepsons, Alek and Phillip Cvetkov, and Mac, Connor, and Henry Henzel; and one stepgrandson. His marriage to Laurence Groux, a Swiss-born artist, ended in divorce in 2005.
Mooney-Connelly, who married Mr. Connelly in 2021, said that sobriety over the past dozen years had buoyed him, and that her presence and that of her sons in his life brought him relief from years of solitude after his divorce.
'A lot people didn't forgive him for things from the past, but he was hurt by the art world in many ways,' she said, adding, 'But Walter Robinson' -- the influential critic and founding editor of Artnet.com, who died this year -- 'was a major fan. And critics loved him.'
She added: 'Chuck was always going to do his thing. He wasn't going to be a sellout.'
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