One Artist's War on Phoniness
The Miami Herald - October 18, 1978
By ELLEN EDWARDS, Herald Art Writer
Hank Virgona has declared war on mystiques. In the way he lives, he is attacking the image of the artist slaving away in a little, garret, suffering to produce art.
And with his dark, brooding etchings, he is fighting the battle against systems that corrupt and people who run them -- the bureaucrats, the politicians, the clergy.
"I try never to pick on one specific person," says Virgona, sitting back in a chair and puffing on a cigaret much in the style of Humphrey Bogart, to whom he bears a certain resemblance.
"EXCEPT FOR Nixon, I mean he was just crying out to be done." His etching shows the ex-President dressed as a butcher, dropping people into a meat grinder and turning them into bombs.
Virgona is in Miami for the opening of an exhibition of his etchings at the Lowe-Levinson Gallery of Temple Beth Sholom, 4144 Chase Ave., Miami Beach, tonight at 8.
He is himself a devout Catholic, and he finds no conflict between his own beliefs and the images of corruption he depicts -- even among the clergy.
"I saw all this phoniness around me, everyday it's there. I would go to church when I was a kid and hear people saying all this stuff about not killing, and then they would go home and beat their neighbor over the head.
"THE CHURCH is made of men. If you saw the television of the cardinals and you didn't know what they were there for (in Rome), it looked like and pre-convention political program. There were power groups and they were bargaining."
His art goes for the universal statement. Under the banner, "Equal Justice for All," for example, is the man with the rubber stamp cranking out legal decisions. His "Signing the Declaration of Mutual Trust," is filled with cliques of angular-faced men whispering among themselves.
"There are a lot of things that corrupt. I mean, sure, there are things like a bribe, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about glamor, and getting with it, and all the things the consumer life pushes on us.
"Everybody is susceptible. I'm susceptible. All I want to do is make etchings. I don't care if they sell so long as I have enough to eat. But then there's an exhibition or something in a magazine, or somebody says 'He's the modern-day Daumler,' and I love it. Things happen. Things get in the way.
"BUT SOMETIMES I think I've been getting by for 20 years, just gettting by, by just that much," he says, holding up his thumb and forefinger with a quarter-inch of space between. "Sometimes I think I would like to have just a little bit more than getting by. Not much. Just a little bit."
Virgona, whose work is reproduced in numerous national magazines and is in the collections of several New York museums, began to draw as a child, in part because he was a stutterer.
"I saw all these things going on around me, and I felt like I had to say something. But I couldn't say it. So I would go home and draw it.
"Madness is running rampant through the world. But I often think that if individuals did their own thing, the world would be a better place. It would take a search, a search for that which is real, and it presupposes an honesty on the part of people.
"My life has a kind of purpose and serenity. I feel that I have some meaning to it, and if it could happen to me it could happen to other people. With my work, all I can do is point. It's difficult to take something seriously once it has been ridiculed."