?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
HARRY BUSH (1925-1994) ARCHIVE
Archive of his personal correspondence and art. Including 22 Autograph Letters Signed and 2 typed Letters Signed by Bush to a friend in West Chester, PA; 9 retained carbon letters from the friend to Bush; one original pencil drawing by Bush; one photograph of a Bush drawing with his extensive annotations; and a set of 5 reproductions of Bush drawings. Most of the letters have 4 holes punched in the margin and are bound in a binder lacking its wrappers.
After retiring from a military career, Bush settled near Los Angeles and became a popular illustrator of beefcake, making his first appearance in Physique Pictorial in 1966. Although he published under his own name, he remained closeted until toward the end of his life, in part because he feared losing his military pension. He struggled with depression, was notoriously reclusive, and destroyed much of his own original work. Offered here is a thick sheaf of letters written between Bush and an East Coast fan over a period of several months in 1977.
Bush's perfectionism, misanthropy, and depression are all on full display from his first undated letter: "I probably am a hopeless bore: removed and unreachable, distracted and not 'with it.' I don't need any money to be alone, so ambition and drive are nullified. As long as I've got a door to close and a place to lurk, there is no other requirement." His art did not come easily: "I can struggle hours with proportion, can get hung up irretrievably in a bad drawing to the point where I throw down the pencil with the absolute realization that I really can't draw." By this point he had stopped drawing commercially. He explained on his 1 February 1977 letter: "I had in mind to somehow change the aspects of physique drawing, but it would seem somebody named Quaintance had already established 'fine art,' Tom of Finland was busy taking basic 'physique art' to its epitomized arch-style, and Colt already adept at single drawing story lines. . . . I decided after 2 or 3 years of trying I was apparently still anonymous and just foisting bad drawing off on people. . . . [Physique Pictorial editor Bob Mizer] has written 'Why don't you stop arguing with publishers and start drawing in a way that can be published?'"
On 25 March 1977 Bush announces: "It would seem that I have definitely stopped drawing. For the reasons I stopped in 1969. . . . I gave it the old college try for a rather prolonged period at Mizer's and stubbornly hung on hoping it would fall into place. . . . Doors are not thrown open. I remain isolated and remote from 'that' world. I cannot go on pushing at the fringe like a dumb idiot." On 22 April 1977 he wrote: "I have torn up and destroyed everything. No one will ever hoodwink or coerce a drawing from me again. There are none in existence nor will there ever be as far as that world is concerned. I've yet to pick up the last two from Embry, and will tear them up immediately I leave that office." In a postscript to his 17 June 1977 letter, he recounts his life story at length.
Included with the correspondence is an original pencil drawing on artist board, 280x175 mm; 11x6¾ inches, a frontal nude captioned on verso in Bush's hand "This could also be called 'Did you use my toothbrush?'" A photograph of a Bush drawing, about the same size, is annotated with his extensive complaints about the reproduction quality: "This is Kurt Mann's halftone reproduction of what In Touch printed as line. This is much paler than the original, but at least some of the detail and most of the veins are there. . ." Finally, a set of 5 photographs of Bush's drawings (250x200 mm; 10x8 inches) is paired with a photocopy of a 1966 Mr. Sun advertisement, showing that they were offered commercially as a set.
Provenance: acquired by the consignor from the estate of District of Columbia councilman Jim Graham (1945-2017).
