\u201cGenerally speaking, my work is about the past, both personal and historical,\u201d painter and Bates lecturer Joseph Nicoletti told the dozens of friends, family, colleagues, and former students assembled for the June 12 opening of his elegant exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art. Joseph Nicoletti: A Retrospective<\/em> <\/a>(through Sept. 25, 2010) features 60 paintings and drawings that survey Nicoletti\u2019s career from 1971 to the present. The masterful still-life, landscape, and figurative works provide clear, quiet, and convincing evidence why Nicoletti, a modest man loathe to promote his own art, is considered a painter\u2019s painter, one of the most respected artists in Maine.<\/p>\n But what the Nicoletti retrospective honors as much as 40 years of painting is 30 years of teaching at Bates. And if his art is about the past, his teaching is all about the future.<\/p>\n At the exhibition opening, Carl Benton Straub, professor emeritus of religion and former dean of the faculty, related how a first-year student had recently said this about Nicoletti: \u201cHe always recognizes and celebrates achievement, however small.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy friends,\u201d enthused Straub, \u201cthat is what this place is all about. That is what teaching is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicoletti began teaching at Bates in 1981. In recent years he has taught drawing, figure drawing, and painting during the fall and portrait painting during Short Term.<\/p>\n \u201cI really believe in a liberal arts education for an artist,\u201d says Nicoletti of his teaching career. \u201cIdeas can come from anywhere \u2014 art history, science, literature. I had a liberal arts education and I think the exhibition shows that.\u201d<\/p>\n Born in Italy in 1948, Nicoletti grew up in New York City. He received a B.A. from Queens College in 1970 and an M.F.A. from Yale in 1972.<\/p>\n A classic realist in the studio, Nicoletti is also a pragmatic realist in the classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cI recall him scoffing at the notion of talent,\u201d recalls Christopher Sokolowski \u201990, a paper conservator at Harvard\u2019s Weissman Preservation Center. \u201cWhat counted for him \u2014 quickly adopted by me \u2014 was the regular, serious practice of drawing from the figure, geometric shapes, and the landscape. He wanted to see sharp pencils and sweat in that studio.\u201d<\/p>\n
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