Grand Prix Painter
Patients of DR. JOSEPH RICHARD WILDER '42, director of surgery at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and Medical Center, New York City, are not likely to confuse him with artist Joe Wilder, who has a growing reputation as a painter of Grand Prix racing cars. But the two gentlemen are one and the same.
The affinity between surgery and sports-car racing is real, according to Wilder, but for the latter he chooses to express his new-found excitement behind the paint brush rather than the wheel. In both there is "so little margin," he explains; they require precision, keen judgment, and infinite discipline.
With vibrant colors and bold strokes ("somewhat illustrative but always dynamic," writes critic John Gruen) Joe Wilder seeks to capture the highly charged essence of racing, its speed and danger, its relevance to today's violent world. The best of what he had painted in his downtown Manhattan loft or at his Long Island summer home in Springs was displayed earlier this year in his first one-man show, at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York. The exhibition was dedicated to the memory of two famous Grand Prix drivers who were Wilder's friends - Lorenzo Bandini and Jimmy Clark, both of whom were killed during the past year.
To interviewer John Radosta of TheNew York Times, shortly after the show, Wilder described his admiration for racing-car drivers: "They are superbly courageous men in a day of anti-hero feeling. They put their lives on the line with incredible loyalty and beauty, with a graciousness that makes life beautiful for those who see them."
Dr. Wilder got hooked on racing cars a little over four years ago, and the fact that he had been an All-American lacrosse captain at Dartmouth is part of the story. The doctor had long dabbled in amateur painting, but one of his patients, a talented artist, persuaded him to be more serious about it. Wilder, after using up paint and canvas on assorted subjects and styles, recalled his experiences as a college athlete and decided that sports might be a more genuine and satisfying theme for self-expression. Racing cars eventually became one of his subjects, and a friend seeing some of his sketches suggested that he take in the Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
"By the second day I was just gone," recalls Wilder. "I had been absolutely seduced." He returned home running an artistic fever, determined to translate into oils the spell of sports-car racing, "the mystical element, the beauty between man and car, the color, excitement, and power." There is general agreement that he has gone a long way toward succeeding. And in the world of racing cars he is a special figure.
Painting is still only an avocation for Dr. Joseph Richard Wilder, who leads a busy life as Professor of Surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine as well as Director of Surgery (since 1959) at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, 1919 Madison Avenue. After Dartmouth, he began his distinguished medical career by taking his M.D. degree at Columbia in 1945. As resident he taught in the Columbia, Pennsylvania and Cornell medical schools, and as U. S. Air Force captain he was chief surgeon at Wright-Patterson Hospital in Dayton, 1952-54. A fellowship in cardiovascular research took him to Stockholm for one year and in 1955 he published his monumental Atlas ofGeneral Surgery, which he revised in 1964. The string of papers, lectures, memberships, awards, and committee jobs in his career goes on for pages.
Racing cars take him away from medicine into a separate world. One would expect him to whip off to a rally in a Ferrari at least, but he sticks to his Plymouth station wagon, "just fine for a family of six."
Ferrari #9, in bright red, is oneof the Grand Prix racing car seriespainted by Artist Joe Wilder.
Ligier #19, also an oil on canvas,is painted in blue and yellow.
This 1968 painting, an oil on paper, istitled "Lotus #5 - Ford - Jimmy Clark."
