John Register

John Register
Born	John Sherman Register February 1, 1939 New York City, US
Died	9 April 1996(1996-04-09)(aged 57) Malibu,California, US
Known for	Painting
Movement	Realism

John Register(1939–1996) was an American realist artist noted for his paintings and drawings, which were notably often minimalist, spare depictions of hotels, cafés, and empty chairs.

Background

Register was born in 1939in New York City to Dorothy Deming Pratt Register (1909-1998)

Register graduated from theLawrenceville Schoolin New Jersey. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with B.A. in Literature in 1961, he met his wife Catherine Richards in a photography class atPasadena Art Centerwhere he studied commercial art. Register also studied painting for a semester at theAcadémie Julianin Paris,and later studied at theCalifornia School of Fine Artsin San Francisco.

In 1964 the two moved to New York, where Register studied design and television at thePratt Institute(founded by his great-grandfather).They were engaged in late 1963and married on February 6, 1964, ultimately having three children. While living in New York, Register pursued a successful career as an advertising art director at Young & Rubicam and later McCaffrey and McCall — and lived in a Fifth Avenue apartment.

In 1972, just after his 33rd birthday, and unhappy with his work,Register excused himself from an important client meeting saying he had a dental appointment. He wrote a note to his boss and never returned. He subsequently became a full-time painter, spent a year in New York painting every day, and studied briefly at theArt Students League— before moving with his family to California. His interests included racing cars and ice-boats, photography, tennis, running, competitive chess, letter writing, reading, backpacking, fishing, and surfing.

Register was born with a genetic kidney diseaseand suffered kidney failure 15 years before his death. He received a kidney transplant from his sister in 1981 and, when that failed, received another transplant in 1985. In September 1994, he was told he had four to six weeks to live. He lived instead for 18 months, battling cancer (caused byanti-rejection medication)until his death in 1996 at the age of 57, in Malibu, California.

At the time, Register was survived by his wife, Catherine R. Register,(Catherine R. Murff); his mother, Dorothy Pratt Register Barrett (1909-1998) (then remarried) of Hillsborough, California; his sister, Barbara Pratt Register of Rolling Hills, California; his half-brother, Eliot Steven Barrett (1943-2013) of St. Helena, California; and his three children, Peter Eliot Register, David Croft Register and Kathryn (Kate) Sisson Register; and a grandson, John Sherman Register II. He has six grandchildren who were born after his death: Emma Jayne Register, Samuel Henry Register, Finn Alexander Register, Noah John Hoffmann, Sophie Caitlin Register and Elisabeth Catherine Hoffmann.

Work

Register said "I look for offbeat beauty. I don't know what I'm looking for until I find it. There are things so ugly that I can't paint them. Sometimes I get depressed by that city, and by other cities I visit. But I like the patina of things that have been battered by life".

In his 1989 biography of Register,John Register Persistent Observer,Barnaby Conrad, wrote that Register's "vision of isolated streets, empty coffee shops, long shadows, old hotels, and bus stations represent a haunting stillness tinged with regret and hope."

Register studied with the portrait painter Raymond Kinstler and landscape painterLennart Anderson.He had his first show in Los Angeles in 1975 and received the Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Award from theGuggenheim Museum.

He has shown at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, David Stuart Gallery in Los Angeles, the Earl McGrath Gallery in Santa Monica, and theLaguna Art Museum.With his work often compared toEdward Hopper's,a show of drawings by Mr. Register andEdward Hoppertook place in 1996. TheSan Jose Museum of Arthosted a major retrospective show of Mr. Register's work in the fall of 1997.The exhibitJohn Register: Persistent Observertook place at theFrederick R. Weisman Museum of Artat Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, in 2000, subsequently traveling to his alma mater, theLawrenceville School,Lawrenceville, NJ, and later to the West Valley Art Museum,Sun City, Arizona.

Register's work was used, and credited, as the inspiration for the video for "Turn My Head"by the bandLivein 1997. His paintings were also featured in the movieIn Her Shoes,(2005), the director,Curtis Hansonusing the paintings to suggest "loneliness."

References

• Conrad, Barnaby III.John Register: Persistent Observer.Duane Press, 1999.

External links

• Register at Modernism.
• Desert Landscapeat the San Jose Museum of Art.
• The Conversationat the Seavest Collection.