Ways of Seeing
A recent retrospective of late School of Art Professor Emerita Bailey Doogan at the University of Arizona Museum of Art is giving Honors College students a chance to reflect instead of just react.
Right: Bailey Doogan, Self-Portrait, Fingered I (Chin Finger), 2009, oil on panel, courtesy of the Estate of Bailey Doogan
Patrick Baliani ’89 first met artist and University of Arizona Professor Emerita Bailey Doogan at a dinner for the arts nonprofit Creative Capital in Phoenix back in the early ’00s. Baliani, a professor of practice at the W.A. Franke Honors College, was already familiar with Doogan’s work — at that point, visceral, expressive, often monochromatic paintings that confronted the realities of the aging female body — but had never met Doogan in person.
There was one seat left at the table when Baliani got there; Doogan was in one of the seats next to him.
Doogan had already retired from the U of A, where she had taught for 30 years, first in graphic design and then in painting and drawing. (As a young designer in New York, Doogan famously developed the modern version of the Morton Salt Girl — the umbrella, the yellow dress; she later wrote about the experience, including the sexism she weathered in those offices, in a great essay called “Logo Girls.”)
“She had a career,” Baliani says. “You know — she was nationally known. The rest of us were doing what we could.”
They struck up a friendship. Baliani asked if he could interview her for an essay he was writing about her work at Tucson’s Etherton Gallery. Doogan said yes, but her tire blew out the morning of the interview, so they met at Discount Tire on Speedway. Two artists and professors exploring ideas at the Discount Tire — a very Tucson scene.
‘These are facts of time,’ [a male EMT writes.] ‘To me, it is beautiful. Not in any erotic sense, but in the way all bodies are. The human soma embodies mortality. It is unapologetic in its appearance, accepting of its temporality, and marked by the time it has earned.’
Bailey Doogan, Split-Fingered Smile, 2013, graphite on Duralar with Prismacolor on verso, courtesy of the Estate of Bailey Doogan
Doogan ended up becoming a regular guest in Baliani’s Art and Anatomies class, lecturing on the history of representations of the human form while also sharing some of her own. She died in 2022, at the age of 80, but Baliani has continued to use her work in class. And recently, the U of A Museum of Art hosted a retrospective of Doogan’s work called “Ways of Seeing,” giving Baliani’s students the opportunity to experience Doogan’s work in person and over a series of visits, cultivating an intimacy and familiarity they might not otherwise get.
“I think everyone fears aging, or at least has trepidation about it,” Baliani says. “But if you’re young, you can always say, ‘Well, I’m not there yet.’ … It’s been fascinating to see young people’s responses, because initially they’re a little confused. Bailey’s work is sometimes — there’s a cognitive dissonance that happens. Almost simultaneously, you’re drawn in, and you want to run away.”
Bailey Doogan. Photo: courtesy of sartle.com
Baliani’s students visited Doogan’s work throughout the semester, documenting their responses, watching the shape of their thoughts change. One young woman describes the way Doogan “made me confront the way I’ve internalized comparison” through scrolling social media. Aspiring doctors and nurses note the refreshing anatomical honesty of Doogan’s varicose veins and cellulite.
A male EMT sees echoes of the female patients he has treated over the years, noting the way hair thins, nails gnarl and odors change. “These are facts of time,” he writes. “To me, it is beautiful. Not in any erotic sense, but in the way all bodies are. The human soma embodies mortality. It is unapologetic in its appearance, accepting of its temporality, and marked by the time it has earned.”
Photo: University of Arizona Museum of Art
Some of the most interesting responses came from students who didn’t like the work at first, or even at all, but made a good faith effort to set aside preference for the possibility of insight, leaving themselves open to that unresolved — and ultimately unresolvable — rush art sometimes delivers. As one put it, “I still do not like looking at these paintings more than I have to. But I viscerally feel what they are saying.”
Bailey Doogan, Spell IV (Legman), 1997, scratchboard, courtesy of the University of Arizona Museum of Art: museum purchase with funds provided by the Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Fund
