Richard Gachot
artist
360-degree view of the Ice House.
Let technology have its day ... but before we relegate our hands to being appendages of the computer, remember there is nothing in the world of technology as miraculous as the ability of the mind to direct the hand to express ideas.
— Richard Gachot (1933-2018)
Biography
Richard Gachot was an American sculptor who lived between New York City and the haven of an old farmhouse on Long Island. After a reluctant but fruitful career in advertising, his art practice emerged in his 40s. Fueled by inner voices—an adman’s drive to communicate and a poet’s sense of loss—and inspired by folk art and found objects, he taught himself to carve, paint, assemble mechanisms, and turn his visions and ideas into playful forms.
He made more than 300 works in his lifetime that together form a unique commentary on the human condition. Recurring themes include the stuff of the past, planned obsolescence, icons of the art world, nature and animals, the jolly devils of lust and greed, and the divine comedy of modern life. Each work suggested its own approach to him; though in the end most reflect the artist’s ever-present wit, penchant for hidden messages, and love of the creative chase.
Gachot was born in New York City, the younger of two sons. His father ran the family business, which supplied meats to upscale restaurants and hotels. His mother was an esthete and socialite. They both frequented the Stork Club. Gachot and his brother were often left alone with the housekeeper, Suzie, who, with her caring, steady presence, was beloved. When he was good, Suzie took him to see the magnificent shining armor at the Metropolitan Museum. When he was bad: terrifying mummies in the Egyptian galleries. As a cadet in the Knickerbocker Greys, Gachot found himself riding the 5th Avenue bus with a loaded rifle in his lap on his way to target practice. He hid his roller-skate key in a tree in Central Park. When he went back years later to find it, the key had been subsumed into the tree trunk. In his teens the family moved to Old Westbury, on Long Island, at a time when the Long Island Expressway was little more than a dirt road.
These things stuck with him.
Gachot studied art at Yale in the 1950s with Josef Albers, who impressed him with his ability to write his name backward and forward simultaneously with both hands. After graduation, he planned to return to Yale to prepare for a career in industrial design. During the intervening summer, however, two events derailed his plans—a pretend dive into an empty swimming pool ended in multiple injuries, and he was “lost” by his father in a high-stakes backgammon game; consigned to work at the victor’s company, Einson Freeman Co., a promotion and marketing firm in Long Island City. These twists of fate led to a thirty-year career in advertising, during which he rose through the Mad Men ranks.
In 1958, Gachot married Irina Riaboff, who grew up in Sea Cliff, New York, an enclave of notable Russian émigrés that included the widow of singer Feodor Chaliapin and the ballerina Irina Baronova. Irene and Richard bought a 200-year old Quaker farmhouse in Old Westbury in 1960 and began to restore it for their growing brood (which would eventually include five sons).
Through most of the 60s and 70s, Gachot worked as an executive at Trans World Display in Manhattan, where he devised imaginative campaigns for clients such as Utica Club and Löwenbräu beers, Speidel watches, and Cutty Sark whiskey.
But it was bananas that sealed his fate. For Chiquita, he unleashed a delirious array of promotions— banana themed clothes, walkie-talkies, footballs, cereal bowls, pup tents, catamarans (with banana-shaped hulls of course), and so forth. The ennui of corporate America was giving way to the creative rhythms in his head.
One day, commuting at a snail’s pace on the Long Island Expressway, Gachot let his mind and eyes wander. He spotted a wedge of wood on the side of the highway, and pulled over to fetch it. He took it home and painted it to look like a slice of watermelon, which he placed on a wooden platter. Over the next few weeks he surrounded the melon with a cornucopia of fruits he’d carved out of scrap wood. With Fruit Platter (1975), he began his self-guided education as a sculptor.
By 1984, with three sons out of school and zero tolerance for the rat race, Gachot left advertising to devote himself fulltime to making art. During the next four decades, his practice (and home) grew to include a seemingly endless array of found objects in which he would “see things,” much as he’d seen a watermelon in a wedge of wood or a walkie-talkie in a banana. His low-ceilinged cellar became his workshop and studio, and the old ice house beside their home a place to display his work.
Gachot’s restoration of his 1761 farmhouse sparked his interest in local history and historic preservation that strongly influenced his work as an artist. He became co-founder of the Historical Society of the Westburys, Old Westbury village historian, president of the
The cellar studio/workshop.
Let’s say I have an idea I want to express visually. I look at all these objects of different materials, shapes, colors, and textures hanging down from the ceiling of my workshop like tubes of paint. With found objects it’s easy to get sidetracked. You have to stay with the idea, not the medium. As I’m working with these objects they start speaking to me. But when I’m finished, I want them to speak for me. It’s a good relationship.
— Richard Gachot
Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA, now Preservation Long Island), and a trustee and head of preservation at Old Westbury Gardens. He also co-authored the book Halcyon Days: An American Family Through Three Generations.
Between 1984 and 2018 Gachot found an enthusiastic following and received many accolades as an artist who worked for love, not money. During this time he began wearing his trademark uniform of red suspenders over a blue work shirt and khaki pants, often with important notes scribbled up and down his sleeves and trouser legs. In making his art he was notorious for exposing himself to wildly toxic chemicals in unventilated spaces. He shrugged it off as the price of modernity. He died of cancer in 2018.
Gachot exhibited extensively in New York and on Long Island during his lifetime. His exhibition credits include the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn; The Heckscher Museum, Huntington; regular appearances at the Outsider Art Fair, New York; the Country Art Gallery, Locust Valley; Lynda Anderson Gallery, Locust Valley; Frank J. Miele Gallery, New York; the Society for Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) Art Gallery, Cold Spring Harbor; Gallery Merz, Sag Harbor; the Art League of Long Island, Huntington; among others.
Exhibitions
1988
Nassau County Museum of Art, First Open Art Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition
Juror: Ivan Karp
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 33rd Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (award)
Council for the Arts on North Shore, Wunsch Arts Center. Old Folk/New Folk.
Juried Exhibition
1989
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 34th Annual Long island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
Smithtown Arts Council. 14th Annual Juried Fine Arts Show.
Juried Exhibition
1990
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 35th Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (Joel Meisner Sculpture Award)
Council for the Arts on North Shore/Wunsch Arts Center. The Expert Eye: 8th Annual Juried Show.
Juried Exhibition
1991
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 36th Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (Color Q Inc. Award)
Judges: Harvey Dinerstein (artist), Miriam Schapiro (artist)
1992
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 37th Annual Long island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (Joel Meisner Sculpture Award)
Judges: Nancy Spero (artist), Leon Golub (artist)
1993
Frank J. Miele Gallery, New York, NY. The Wonderful, Whimsical World of Richard Gachot.
Solo Exhibition
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 38th Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition
Judges: Joseph Baer, Nancy Duryer
1994
HTAL/The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 39th Annual Long Island Artists Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (Pall Corporation Award of Merit)
Judges: Emily Mason, Wolf Kahn
Chelsea Center, Visual Art Alliance of Long Island, East Norwich, NY. 6th Annual Open Juried Fine Art Exhibit.
Juried Exhibition
Smithtown Arts Council. 19th Annual Juried Fine Arts Show.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
Judges: Bernice Steinbaum
1995
Northport/B. J. Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY. HTAL Annual Members Exhibition
Juried Exhibition
Fine Art Museum of Long Island, Hempstead, NY. 12th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (first & second place awards)
Judges: Michael MacKenzie, Gertrude Stein
Wisser Memorial Library, Old Westbury, NY. Tri-County Artists of Long Island Juried Art Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition (award of merit)
Judges: Marilyn Kushner
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. 23rd Open Competition.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence & honorable mention)
Smithtown Arts Council, Mills Pond House, St. James, NY. Winners Show.
Juried Exhibition
Chelsea Center, Visual Art Alliance of Long Island, East Norwich, NY. 7th Annual Open Juried Fine Art Exhibit.
Juried Exhibition (Visual Art Alliance of Long Island Award of Excellence)
1996
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. 24th Open Competition.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
Frank J. Miele Gallery, New York, NY. Outsider Art Fair.
Group Exhibition
l997
Hutchins Gallery, LIU Post, Brookville, NY. Art League of Long Island 42nd Annual Members Show.
Juried Exhibition (award)
Chelsea Center, Visual Art Alliance of Long Island, East Norwich, NY. 9th Annual Open Juried Fine Art Exhibit.
Juried Exhibition (Visual Art Alliance of Long Island Award of Merit)
1998
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. 26th Open Competition.
Juried Exhibition (award of merit)
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY. Tri-State Juried Exhibition.
Juried Exhibition
B.J. Spoke Gallery, Huntington, NY. Art League of Long Island 1998 Showcase.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
1999
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. 27th Annual Open Competition.
Juried Exhibition (award)
Chelsea Center, Visual Art Alliance of Long Island, East Norwich, NY. 11th Annual Open Juried Fine Art Exhibit.
Juried Exhibition
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. Open Competition, Hot and Cool.
Juried Exhibition
2000
The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 45th Long Island Artists Exhibit, Art League of Long island.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
Chelsea Center, Visual Art Alliance of Long Island, East Norwich, NY. 12th Annual Open Juried Fine Art Exhibit.
Juried Exhibition (award of excellence)
2003
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. Open Competition, Small Works.
Juried Exhibition
Jurors: Mary Lou Cohalan, Director Islip Arc Museum; Kimberly Goff, owner Elaine Benson Gallery
The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. 48th Long Island Artists Exhibit, Art League of Long Island.
Juried Exhibition (award)
Juror: Gail Stavitsky, Chief Curator Montclair Art Museum
2004
Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Long Island Found, Long Island Observed.
Two-person Exhibition
Gallery Merz, Sag Harbor, NY. Richard Gachot: Mixed-media Sculpture.
Solo Exhibition
2007
Anderson Galleries, Locust Valley, NY. Richard Gachot.
Solo Exhibition
2008
Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery, Garden City, NY. Seen/Unseen.
Two-person Exhibition
2009
Anderson Galleries, Locust Valley, NY. Richard Gachot: The Art of Going “Green.”
Solo Exhibition
2011
The Art League of Long Island, Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery, Dix Hills, NY. The Many Faces of Richard Gachot
Solo Exhibition
2013
Gallery North, Setauket, NY. The Delight of Movement: Six Kinetic Sculptors.
Group Exhibition
2014
The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. Richard Gachot’s America.
Solo Exhibition
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY. Garden Party.
Group Exhibition
2015
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY. Vernacular Visions.
Group Exhibition
2016
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY. Feast for the Eyes.
Group Exhibition
2018
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY. Wild Kingdom: 100 Years of Animal Art.
Group Exhibition