Miniaturist will display vast collection

Richard McMahan, 34, paints miniatures of art masterpieces. He is currently working on a silent film called "The Mummy."

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has about 200 of the Dutch master's 864 paintings in its permanent collection. The museum is a high-ranking destination for many tourists, art historians and fans of the troubled and driven painter who created a canvas a day during his last productive period.

But the Van Gogh Museum's collection has been missing the artist's most famous painting, one of the most famous paintings of all time: the magnificent "The Starry Night." That picture, with its cosmic blue swirl, glowing orbs and inky-green cypress trees that loom over a country village like beings from another world, hangs on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art.

Good thing for those in New York City. Not so good for the folks in Amsterdam.

So when Andreas Bluhm, head of exhibitions and display at the Van Gogh Museum, goes to New York on business in early 2003, he speaks longingly of "The Starry Night."

Mark Sloan happens to be there. The two men are visiting a mutual colleague. People travel great distances to visit the Van Gogh Museum thinking they'll see "The Starry Night," Bluhm says, and museum staff must tell them it's not in the collection.

Sloan, director of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, is in a position to do something about that. He excuses himself from the room for a moment. Tucked away in the inside pocket of his bookbag is a miniature reproduction of a certain famous painting ...

Richard McMahan can tell you the contents of every National Geographic since the magazine redesigned its cover in late 1959.

When on the telephone, McMahan invites a reporter to test him, a date is delivered, May 1965, and the information comes forthwith: The cover features a photograph of the Nile River for the cover story, "Yankee Cruises the Storied Nile," and inside there's a map of the Nile, Part 3 of the five-part presidential series and something about a volcano.

The reporter quickly turns to Google. Bingo. (The volcano story, by the way, was about the Icelandic island Surtsey.)

McMahan, a 34-year-old artist living in Jacksonville, Fla., discovered National Geographic a long time ago. Reading it is one way he learns about the world and his place in it. The artist rarely leaves his hometown.

He attended the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, which required an audition to get in. "If you were into sports, you were in the wrong place," McMahan jokes.

It was the art history course he took during his first year there that set him on his current course. He saw image after projected image of the world's great works of art. The Egyptian tombs, Babylonian architecture, Byzantine icons, Northern European landscapes strewn with demons and angels, Renaissance frescoes, Italian sculptures in marble, Baroque ceilings that provided a clear view of heaven. He saw the dramatic realism of Corot and Millet, the moody mists of Turner, the dappled light of the impressionists and skewed reality of Cezanne and Seurat. He saw "The Starry Night" and the abstractions that ensued.

He was inspired. McMahan began to paint, relying on the reproductions he found in books and magazines. He used acrylics purchased at Wal-Mart. He made frames out of manila folders, string and glue. He created one reproduction after another, tiny works that fit in the palm of the hand.

Sloan likes to navigate the line between fine and folk art, between the traditional and avant-garde, the wonderful and the weird.

In 2001, a friend read a blurb in the Jacksonville newspaper, something about an exhibit of miniatures. She sent the notice, along with a scribbled note, to Sloan: "Member of your tribe?" Sloan contacted the artist and learned that McMahan had created a miniature reproduction of all 700 objects in King Tut's tomb.

"How can I see them?"

"Come visit."

As Sloan was planning his trip South, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, subsumed the world. Sloan never went.

He decided to mount a show anyway ("It sounded too interesting"), arranging for McMahan to travel to Charleston by train. The miniaturist arrived with three suitcases full of art. It was his first time on a train. It was his first time sleeping in a bed other than his own.

This time around, more than 1,100 of McMahan's works are being mounted on a special exhibit wall designed by students of the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston. On April 29, they presented their final design, and the methodology used to reach it, at the Addlestone Library, where the exhibit is mounted in the rotunda.

The students tried many approaches, eventually settling on a traditional wall scheme with a twist. Or, rather, several sharp turns that enable the exhibit to maximize use of the space. It's epic and intimate at the same time.

The exhibit features a short film, by Kendall Messick, of McMahan making a painting, from beginning to end.

In New York, Sloan pulls the tiny picture from his bookbag and returns to Bluhm, setting it down before the Dutch curator.

Bluhm's eyes widen. What he sees amazes him. The brushwork is so similar to the original, the colors so true. Everything is in place, a minuscule fraction of the original. Bluhm tries to speak, stuttering. "How ... do I ... can I ... get this?"

Sloan smiles. His instincts about McMahan — the artist's talent, his quirky uniqueness — are validated. The little painting is so much more than a copy of another work. It holds its own. In it is manifested the human impulse of creation, the longing for beauty, the cunning of an original eye. Here is an object that reflects a bigger object that reflects a natural scene that is interpreted and perceived in a unique way. Here is a tiny work of art that, because of its format and size, expresses ideas much different than those that seized the imagination of van Gogh. The Dutch master's goal was to capture some fantastical essence of nature, to share this particular vision with others. McMahan, instead, is conveying something more essential still: the nature of human ingenuity itself.

"I will get one for you," Sloan tells Bluhm. "It will be a gift from me."

McMahan doesn't get away from Jacksonville much. He works in a flea market, assisting a coin dealer who, overweight, cannot manage to move the merchandise.

He converted to Catholicism at 19 after growing up without religion. He likes the pomp of the Catholic Church, the ritual, the costumes and props, he says. He's not much interested in those who want to tell him what to believe.

Often, he says, people at the flea market or at Wal-Mart will cast a glance his way and decide that he's a candidate for proselytization.

"I have this aura that attracts weird people for some reason," he says.

In 2004, McMahan traveled to Washington, D.C., to look at art. It was bad timing: The National Gallery was under renovation and many of the paintings were inaccessible. McMahan couldn't see the premonitory works of Bosch, the detailed portraits of van Eyck or the huge canvases of Jacques-Louis David and Diego Velazquez.

He did see Whistler's Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery, though. And later he visited the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts.

He says he paints whatever tickles his fancy at the moment. There is no system. His output, though, includes a disproportionate number of Goyas and Kahlos. McMahan finds Mexican painter Frida Kahlo especially fascinating.

"Her paintings are like a diary," he says. They record her sad, difficult, extraordinary life.

In October, McMahan's father died of lung cancer. He is the breadwinner in the family now, caring for his mother and brothers.

Jan. 7, 2003

Dear Mark,

It is with pleasure that I can tell you that today the Van Gogh Museum has accepted Richard McMahan's miniature version of Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" as a gift. Today, at our management team meeting, I could hand it over to Chief Curator Sjraar van Heugten. He will integrate it in our collection of van Goghiana. ... With all good wishes to you and Richard for the new year.

Andreas Bluhm

Head of Exhibitions & Display

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.