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The Reflective Surfaces and Perfectly Honed Edges of Jack Brogan

by Christopher Pate

As Exhibitions Manager at LA Louver, I had a two-year period of close interaction with Jack Brogan during the restoration of two John McCracken freestanding columns dating from the late 80s.

It was a lengthy process, due to the inherent difficulty in repairing work made of resin with reflective surfaces and perfectly honed edges. Everything from color matching to correcting slight aberrations in planar surfaces was difficult and painstaking, even with Jack’s deep knowledge and wealth of experience with the work of McCracken and other SoCal Finish Fetish artists.

He was incredibly patient with the many stages of the process, as some of the lingering issues with the restoration weren’t detectable until the pieces were back with us, on display and properly lit, so there were a lot of deliveries back and forth until the best possible result was achieved.

According to Jack, those currently representing McCracken’s estate look for a level of perfection, through the process of conservation of completion of works either left in process or from the artist’s plans, that McCracken himself was either not able to achieve or not interested in pursuing during his lifetime. Even though it looks like it somehow materialized from outer space, Brogan described the work as being essentially handmade and that McCracken embraced that aspect of his work. I should point out that this ‘handmade’ quality is likely only to be detected by a seasoned conservator, a researcher or a devotee highly in tune with the work.

Another interesting note is that McCracken enlisted Brogan to fabricate the first generation of his mirror-polish stainless steel sculptures. These were very, very difficult to produce, as the seams had to be welded, but the act of welding distorts the mirror of each plane, creating a fun house effect, the opposite of what was intended, leading Brogan to invent proprietary means of returning each plane to absolute flatness.

Brogan was able to produce stainless steel works that McCracken was happy with, but I remember him saying it was at such a cost of time and labor that at a certain point, it wasn’t feasible to continue doing so. More recently, techniques have been developed with other fabricators that have taken the stainless steel work to a level of perfection that perhaps McCracken didn’t even get to experience during his lifetime.

Jack has a gunslinger mystique, tall and lanky with a cool confidence. This vibe is enhanced by the high-end cowboy boots that are his signature, made of exotic leathers such as alligator and snake. He mentioned having a collection of different types from a maker whose name I can no longer recall, but having visited the website at the time, I quickly found that cowboy boots can cost as much as a decent used car. Perhaps he has other indulgences, but for a man not ostentatious in any other prominent way, this is an admirable gesture.

Besides gunslinger, the other semblance would be to Gandalf, as Jack is the wizard who has helped a whole swath of artists form their work. He has the magic techniques for repairing said work in the seemingly inevitable event of damage or weathering over time.

He seems to be keeping a tight rein on this secret knowledge. During the time I spent time with him, I poked around to figure out if he had plotted out any sort of succession, such that this knowledge could live on to later generations. My sense is that he hadn’t found the right person, or persons, to share these secrets with.

He had been interviewed by the Getty Conservation Institute for their archives, but I didn’t get the impression he specifically trained anyone in specific, duplicatable techniques.

I heard the opinion expressed from a young conservator of sculpture that Jack kept the knowledge to himself somewhat selfishly, from a sense of being the creator and inventor; he just couldn’t find a way to feel comfortable sharing it, perhaps due to it being based more in artistry and alchemy than hard cold science.

There are a group of workers in Brogan’s shop that he directs, but I never got the sense that any one of those guys knew more than a piece of the whole; no one seemed to stand out to me that I could see stepping into Gandalf’s shoes.

This leads to some pretty crazy thoughts about this whole generation of Finish Fetish artworks and how they will be conserved once Jack’s magic touch is no longer available.

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CHRISTOPHER PATE is an artist working in painting, photography and collage. His work can be found at www.ChristopherPate.com

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