Once every ten years or so, the Chicago Art Institute has a special exhibit of the paintings of Ivan Albright. He’s most famous for his “Picture of Dorian Gray.” Because he was known for his searing depictions of the decay and corruption that human flesh is prone to – he was commissioned to do the final painting of the soul of Dorian Gray for the 1945 movie made of Oscar Wilde’s novel. That painting is now in the Art Institute’s permanent collection. This most recent exhibit of the corpus of his work was entitled “Flesh.”
In preparation for visiting this latest Albright retrospective, I started to do a little research into the circumstances under which Albright had produced his iconic work. I found several additional interesting facts surrounding that painting. For one thing, it seems Ivan’s identical twin brother contributed to the work. There is at least one photograph showing both Ivan and brother Malvin with paint brushes, poised to work on the picture.
But then it occurred to me that another arresting portrait appeared in the movie. Everyone remembers and refers to that shocking final reveal. However, there had been the early portrait done of Hurd Hatfield in his role as Gray, a handsome, fresh-faced Victorian gentleman. I wondered what artist MGM had employed to do that other painting, so reminiscent of John Singer Sargent’s full-length portraits of elegant ladies and gentlemen. It took some research to find out who was responsible for that “before” representation of Gray.
I discovered Portuguese artist Henrique Medina is largely credited with producing that unspoiled version of Gray. However, the several paintings used in the movie were probably a collaborative effort, with the Albrights participating in all phases of the painting and with artist Audubon Tyler largely responsible for a transitional portrait, the portrait in which the first results of Gray’s cruelty have started to register on the face of the portrait.
George Ladas, on his blog called “Full Circle,” supplies a picture of that intermediary portrait, with the subtle differences from the original labeled. It’s the only online photograph of the intermediate picture I could find. Viewers of the movie catch a glimpse of this transitional form as Gray, standing in the dim attic, wonders if the changes he perceives are in fact there, or if he is merely imagining the tell-tale reflection of his turpitude. It’s amazing how the artist demonstrated the change from open friendliness to imperious cruelty with changes in just a few lines on the face.
The history of these early, attractive portraits used in the movie turned out to be almost more eerie and interesting than that final horror everyone associates with Dorian Gray. I read that the Sargent-like portrait was given to actor Hatfield at some point after the filming of the movie. When he died, it was inherited by a friend. With some lapses in provenance, it was eventually bought by Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, a relative of Hurd’s. Then in 2015, it went up for auction again and was purchased for $149,000 by an anonymous buyer. No one seems to know who that buyer was or where the painting is now. We can assume it’s in the attic of some modern-day debauchee, ready to start the cycle over again from innocent youth to monstrosity.
But getting back to the main attraction, the Albright painting that is most vividly associated with the Dorian Gray movie – I went off to the Art Institute to confront it again. It dominates any Albright exhibit, hanging there, slightly larger than life-sized. It’s in color, and was the only instant of color allowed in the generally b&w 1945 movie. Although whenever I viewed the movie in successive reruns on TV, I always only saw the portrait in black-and-white because my family was probably the last in Chicago to get a color TV. We resisted the gaudiness of color, with its inability to displace the screen action into another world, a dream world of imagination and inwardness. We resisted the way color devalues the human face, making it a pale splotch amid brilliantly-colored surroundings that monopolize attention. Finally though, there were no new black-and-white sets that could be bought, so we had to surrender to the onslaught of technology and Technicolor. I’d never caught the movie after that though, with its last splash of color.
Even though I’d only seen the final Dorian Gray in black-and-white, it had still made me recoil in horror whenever it was shown on late-night TV. That picture slammed me with a curse, an evil eye and an omen of the savagery that humans could visit on each other. Now as I stood in front of the real thing there at the Art Institute, it still had a searing effect. But I found I could be a little more objective, a little more critical of this outcome. It seemed Albright might have gone over-the-top with this incarnation of misdeeds. I thought it might have been more effective if the viewer could still detect the original man underneath that encrustation of corruption. But there was no resemblance. This foul creature was a thing apart, severed from all connection with the smoothly handsome Dorian Gray. Now, having made a sort of study of the film’s commissioned artwork, I found I could actually be more chilled by the thought of that transitional image with just its subtlety of malign influence.
Nevertheless, I stood there waiting. I was waiting for that edge of the comical to wear off and for the full horror of the visage to hit me once again. But I also stood there waiting for something else. I stood there waiting, wondering if some sort of witchery would strike again.
That’s because a strange coincidence of reality and fiction had taken place the last time I’d stood before that picture - in that previous decade, the last time the Art Institute had assembled a retrospective of Albright’s works. It had been raining hard that day, so there weren’t many people at the Museum. There was no one else with me in the Gallery that included Albright’s masterpiece. I was alone in front of The Picture of Dorian Gray, when – the lights went out.
That whole wing of the Art Institute was plunged into darkness. I heard some sounds of surprise, of hurrying feet coming from adjoining rooms. The darkness was almost total. I was afraid to move, afraid I might lurch in the wrong direction. But I remembered a gift a pen-pal had sent me, something I always carried with me in my purse. It was a lavalier light, a little orange pumpkin globe that she said I could use in emergencies if the lights went out on a plane or in a hotel where I might be staying. I groped in my purse and fished out the little light. I snapped it on. The battery was still live, even though that light had been lying dormant in the bottom of my purse a long time. I was amazed at how bright it was.
Nervous about how long I’d be allowed to stand there alone in the dark, surrounded by Albright’s images of rotting flesh – I hoisted the light aloft. It swung wildly on its pendant, a rapid pendulum swaying away the darkness. I look up and saw the ultimately corrupt Dorian Gray in front of me in swipes of evil orange exposure.
It hit me how I was exactly replicating the most harrowing scenes from the movie. When Dorian murders the painter of his formal portrait there in the attic room where his secret has been discovered – when the rush of the outside world breaks into the attic room to find Dorian’s own body – this action causes the lantern light hanging from the ceiling in front of the picture to swing wildly. Back and forth, back and forth – the lantern light reveals the full horror of the picture to us in slashes.
In that moment, I’d been standing in the movie. Its grim fiction had become my terrifying reality. Luckily, I wasn’t left in that sickening, swaying alteration of fact and fiction for long. A museum security guard came in accusingly, telling me I had to clear out of there. She waved her flashlight in the direction she wanted me to move. I looked back and saw the effigy of Dorian Gray in one last ghastly spotlight sweep.
I waited for the staged presence of Dorian Gray to conjure another such moment on this recent visit to the Art Institute. But it didn’t happen. With a few other people milling around in mixed attitudes of fascination and revulsion, I was left with the simple shock of:
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