On a tour of Cincinnati, the novelist John Updike wondered why the city hadn’t erected a statue to America’s sweetheart Doris Day, a native daughter who lit up Hollywood for decades with her Pepsodent smile and plucky vivacity. A regrettable oversight, in Updike’s estimation. When it comes to the prolific, nonpareil nature artist Charley Harper, no one visiting the Queen City today could lodge such a complaint.
Although not a native (he was born in Frenchton, West Virginia), Harper qualifies as the Cincinnati Kid. Educated at the Cincinnati Art Academy, he made the city his creative home, and promoted tourism and local campaigns with posters for both the Cincinnati Nature Center (crazy-quilt phalanxes of fall and winter birds) and the Cincinnati Zoo (a smiling tiger framed by the words “Support Your Local Cat House”). Next Friday, the Cincinnati Art Museum opens a resplendent retrospective, “The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame,” which displays more than 140 drawings, gouaches, collages, screen prints, paintings, and posters. It’s Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals in kaleidoscopic array.