KLINE AND DEKOONING: A 1995 RE-EVALUATION

NOTE: I recently found this piece in my files. I'd written it early in 1995, as you'll see, and it appears I sent it in ms form to the New Statesman. This may have been the piece which prompted the response 'I like it but I can only use pieces I've commissioned', to which I replied 'well, why not commission it?' which prompted a hang-up. That editor will remain nameless, but it's not an unfamiliar occurance. My memory says the DeKooning show was the one that had the biggest impact on me of these three, but that was probably because I was already convinced by Kline, and probably felt re-establishing him in the pantheon with Pollock, Rothko, and now DeKooning was important. There is a theory that it was DeKooning who got Kline interested in using an enlarger, but that doesn't really change things one way or the other. So here it is, as written 16 years ago...

The New York School is hot again, just when it seemed about to become old hat. Following the Whitechapel's Franz Kline retrospective last summer, the Tate is hosting the massive 90th birthday Willem De Kooning show, which comes to London from New York's Metropolitan Museum. Back in New York, just before that show closed, a powerful Kline exhibition opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art; it closes on 12 March.

In New York, the De Kooning received curiously mixed reviews. The criticisms were largely due to the didactic nature of the show; it was presented chronologically, and as such documented the intellectual development of de Kooning's work alongside his stylistic progress, making clear the way he grasped the logical basis of the process of painting, the way he was able to blend the advances of the New York School into the more analytical approach he had already adopted. For an audience used to seeing lots of de Kooning, over a period of some 50 years, this somehow seemed to reduce his stature. But to a London audience, somewhat less familiar, the Tate show should reinforce his position as both a great painter and a major force in the leading art movement of the post-War century.

If we think of Jackson Pollack as the muscular force of the New York School then perhaps de Kooning was its intellectual center. The Tate's show makes clear the way de Kooning was able to take his "woman" paintings, full of Jungian symbolism, and combine them with the powerful 50s work which seems almost like Kline, but in colour. He achieved a synthesis in the 60s, by which time Pollock and Kline were already gone, which took him to a new level, and then amazingly he was able to continue pushing himself into new areas, at first as if by logical progression, and later as if by pure instinct.

And if Pollack were the muscle and de Kooning the mind of Abstract Expressionism, perhaps Rothko was its soul, but then Franz Kline was surely its heart, the one who searched for a way of transferring his feeling directly onto canvas, and having discovered that means, pushed it for all it was worth. The Kline retrospective at the Whitechapel was instructive, showing the conscious pace of development in his style, suggesting ways in which that development might have continued had he not died in 1962. But the Whitney's show, organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, is different. It is, simply, six rooms filled with Kline at his artistic peak...a few early 50s works to show the directions he was heading, and then a cannon-blast of mostly large-scale Kline which nearly overpowers the viewer.

To many casual viewers, seeing one Kline is the same as seeing them all. The fallacy of that position becomes evident immediately at the Whitney. When I say that Kline is an emotional painter, I don't mean it in the sense of DeKooning, or even Rothko, where you can see the nature of the work expressing emotions. I mean that he was able to transmit his feeling directly to the canvas, that his feelings are equal to the reality of the paint; a Kline painting is not an expression of emotion, it is emotion itself, reflected in the spontaneous nature of the individual act of making the particular painting itself..

Elaine de Kooning stopped just short of this realisation in her description of Kline's brush strokes, which " expanded as entities in themselves, unrelated to any reality but that of their own existence." While this makes a good theoretical basis for modern painting, the brilliance of Kline's work is that those brush strokes are, obviously, also related to the reality of his own existence--and that is what he is putting onto the canvas. The thing, that is, is real in itself. This feeling is present in the poetry and music of the post-war era: the open field poetry experiments of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, the be-bop jazz of Charlie Parker and his followers. There is even an affinity with the photography of film noir movies. It is an expression of the reality of emotion, through the apprehension of real things.

The Whitney exhibition contains a revealing set of small oils on paper from the collection of Cy Twombly, in which Kline seems to have realised his vision. We see from the early outlines on the pages of old phone books, and in the 'Study for Black and White #1' (1952) that Kline has found his form of expression, and from that point he produces work of such individual power that to see them grouped here, and realise their cumulative impact is literally amazing. The ways in which Kline experiments with motion 'August Day' (1957--at the top of this post), portraiture 'Elizabeth' (1958), structure 'Mahoning II' (1961) or raw feeling: 'Requiem' (1958--above on the right) belie the notion of his being a one-trick pony. And though we think of him in black and white, when he died he was working frequently with colour; compare 'Henry II'(1959-60--on the left) with DeKooning's work at the time (the 1966 painting from the 'Woman' series above it on the left) and ask who was influencing whom.

Kline reflected the raw energy of New York in the post-War period, with his background in gritty, coal-mining Pennsylvania he was able to see the power in the landscape of urban construction. He also strikes me as expressing more clearly than any American painter since Hopper the essential loneliness of the American soul. In his lifetime, Kline was always considered one of the major figures of Abstract Expressionism, yet since then he seems to have been relegated to something of an afterthought. It could be because he was just starting to reach his artistic peak when he died; you could argue Pollock and Rothko both had reached theirs when their lives ended. I suspect his death from heart failure lacked the dramatic impact of Pollock's car crash, or Rothko's suicide. The British reaction to the Whitechapel show was somewhat lukewarm, concentrating on the mechanics of Kline's work; the pages from the telephone book with the calligraphic brush strokes on them. Yet with that show, and especially the one at the Whitney, he should be restored to his place as one of the great painters of the Twentieth Century.

DIEBENKORN DOES THE WHITE HOUSE

The Obama Effect has thus far been mostly symbolic; he seems to balance every positive move (Israeli settlements) with a negative one (Guantanamo and torture), has approached the economic crisis much more like Bill Clinton than FDR, and been very cautious with his first pick to join the Supremes. But symbolic does has impact, and I'm all in favour of his latest move, which was to borrow a new set of paintings from the Hirschorn, including Richard Diebenkorn's 'Berkeley No. 52' (pictured right).

Diebenkorn's a fascinating painter, one of my absolute favourites. He's from the generation of the Abstract Expressionists and in one sense produced a West Coast version of AE which took a long time to get recognised. That may be because his Berkeley work, from the 50s and 60s, is more representational than one expects from Abstract Expressionism. Even his Ocean Park series, from the 60s and 70s, still features recognisable parts of landscape, more than a hint of Post-Impressionism in them. They have a relaxed, west coast feel to them; not the intensity of, say, Rothko (who did grow up in Portland, Oregon, where Diebenkorn was born, after all), whom they sometimes recall. There's also a touch of Franz Kline about some of them, in their structural, almost architectural, power; and it's interesting that the Obama's have apparently requested a Kline from Chicago, on approval, as it were. Apparently, Barack took Michelle to the Art Institute on one of their first dates.

The Obamas have also borrowed sculptures by Jasper Johns and Degas, and works by Josef Albers, Louise Nevelson, Rauschenberg and, oddly, a red painting by Edward Ruscha with words like 'I think' 'maybe' and 'yes' on it. This is Obama's Bob the Builder approach to art. Can we fix it? Maybe we can! They've also selected a couple of works by a little-known black American artist, Alma Thomas Sky Light (left) and the Chubby Checker-inspired 'Watusi Hard Edge'. There was an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal which, while noting the pressure to make political gestures when presidents pick art, was more concerned with the potential increase in market value for the artists. This, I suppose, would be more of a help to those who are still alive, though the works themselves need to be at least 25 years old before they can be added to the White House's permanent collection, lest presidents be seen to be playing the art market like British MPs play the property market with taxpayer funding.

Call me predictable, but I find it interesting that I immediately make connections between Diebenkorn, Rohko, and Kline--my favourites of the painters of my lifetime. There's also a nice parallel to be made with Cy Twombly (about whom I wrote last August; you can find that here), another AE artist working at a remove from the mainstream, outlasting them, and in an environment of relaxed bright light. You can see a bit of Twombly, and even more of Charles Demuth, in many of the Ocean Park paintings (right).

That Diebenkorn's work should appeal to Obama, raised in Hawaii and colleged, at first, in California, doesn't come as a great surprise. I remember in the early 90s spending a weekend in Healdsburg, mainly because Diebenkorn lived there. The Clos du Bois winery was there too, and between them and the nice little Inn I stayed in, I decided Healdsburg would be a fine place to live. I wonder if it's still the same, with a Disney 1950s feel to it. Oddly, that's the kind of feeling Diebenkorn draws from me; I find his work both contemplative and soothing, both of which I assume would be a boon to someone with Obama's job description. But the idea of having the great galleries of America as a shopping gallery makes me think the job might almost be worth it.

BEFORE WHO DIES? GUARDIAN'S 1,000 WORKS TO SEE....

I have two words for the compilers of the Guardian's week-long list of '1,000 artworks to see before you die':
Franz Kline.

There are ten Pollocks on the list. You think Jack was ten times the artist Kline was? Even Yves Klein gets one. Pissarro gets only one. This is why I hate lists like that; you get forced into making artificial value judgements, while the overall perspective of the poll drives you crazy anyway (almost like no Faulkner in Waterstone's millennial top 100 novelists).

I'm not insisting on my favourites. I'd have included one Diebenkorn too, but I'm not surprised he's out. But Kline? His early death doesn't seem to have given him a romantic image, like Pollock, but to his AbEx colleagues, he was the real deal, and in some ways the prototype: Pollock's macho crossed with Rothko's intensity.

ROTHKO'S ROOTS: HOW 1930s NEW YORK DEVELOPED MODERN ART

THE AMERICAN AVANT GARDE: A DECADE OF CHANGE

NOTE: With the Mark Rothko retrospective just opening at the Tate Modern, it seemed a good moment to revisit this 2000 show at the Bruce Museum. I wrote the following piece, in essentially the same form, for the FT, who, I think, were originally more interested in the possible appeal to their readership in the Greenwich area than in the subject matter, thus let it sit just a little too long to run in the end. But the issue of Rothko's development can't really be separated from that of the Abstract Expressionists as a group, nor can the ways in which their growth as artists was shaped by the events of the Depression years. In that sense, perhaps they echo the nation's struggles and rebirth after the war as something more direct and more powerful. The only changes of note are those of tenses; I eliminated some material about the Bruce which isn't relevant to today's story. The reference to the Tate Modern may reflect my early reaction to the museum's opening that same year. I'll have to post that essay here sometime.

The sheer power of the post-war explosion of American art which came to be known as Abstract Expressionism overwhelms the preceding decade, which gets dismissed as a period of chaotic, if not adolescent, development. To European eyes, that attitude confirms the New World’s essential paucity of talent, reinforcing the idea that New York, in Serge Guibault’s famous phrase, “stole the idea of Modern Art” from Paris, and that far from being an original and deeply meaningful epoch in art, Rothko, Pollock, DeKooning, Kline and the rest were merely the beneficiaries of economic imperialism; a CIA-funded US version of Saatchi and Tate Modern-promoted emperor's new clothes.

“The American Avant-Garde: A Decade of Change” at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, sought to redress this imbalance, and present that 'lost decade' from 1936-46 as one of vibrancy, not only a creative cauldron from which emerged the finely hammered steel of the New York School, but one which produced art memorable in its own terms. Organised by the Bruce’s Nancy Hall-Duncan and art historian Irving Sandler, it took a new look at well-known artists from the 1930s, giving a fresh perspective to their influence on the developing talents of Abstract Expressionism's icons, but also showcased a number of artists perhaps unjustly forgotten today.

It’s not enough to look at Rothko’s “Untitled: Two Nudes” (1936), imagine it without the figures, enlarged and turned to the horizontal, and see the doors, doorways, and walls creating the blocks of colour we associate with the painter today. I remember doing that the first time I saw the better-known “Entrance To Subway” (1938), and you could go back to Hopper's “Room In Brooklyn” (1932) for much the same effect. But this story goes deeper than that.

It’s a given that America’s young modernists in America in the 1930s rejected the prevailing Realist styles. Regional Realism is typified somewhat cruelly here by Grant Wood’s “Sentimental Ballad” (1940), painted to promote John Ford’s film “The Long Voyage Home”, and showing John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Jack Pennick, and the Ford Repertory company singing over pints in an Oirish pub. But at the peak of the Depression, Social Realism was also in its heyday. In Philip Evergood’s “The Pink Dismissal Slip” an artist brandishes a notice from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) firing him from the Federal Arts Project. Evergood himself had been beaten and jailed in a protest against the dismissal of nearly 2,000 artists. His painting’s power comes precisely from the primitive technique young American painters were feeling it was necessary to use, to escape the feeling of being captured by an unfair society.

This was at least partly a reaction to European modernism. The American Abstract Artists (AAA) were heavily influenced by the Cubists, but Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb belonged to The Ten, who took in a wider range of influences. They attempted to synthesise a position somewhere between propaganda and formalism by combining social consciousness with an mix of abstraction, expressionism, and even surrealism. Meanwhile, Jackson Pollock was the prize pupil of the leading regional realist, Thomas Hart Benton, who himself had studied in Paris before rejecting ‘elitist’ European styles as both introspective and neurotic. Benton’s family were populist politicians in Missouri, and that influence is apparent in Pollock’s “Cotton Pickers” (1935), originally painted for the WPA. It echoes Benton, while suggesting El Greco, Corot or Daubigny. It absolutely typifies the work which Pollock later called “something against which to react”.

A native American abstraction also flourished in the 1930s, and the works of less-remembered people like Balcombe Greene (“Two Forms” 1937) or Burgoyne Diller (“Construction no.16” 1938) suggest they were already seeking space in which their materials could be allowed to act. Particularly rewarding is Irene Rice Pereira’s “Untitled, 1944”, an assemblage of glass, fabric and metallic strips which would still be cutting edge today. With the start of the war in Europe, the surrealists had fled en masse to America. This may have been the final catalyst, or perhaps it was the Jungian analysis the alcoholic Pollock underwent at the same time. Whatever the spark, with Pollock’s “Man Bull Bird,” one of his last works for the WPA (1941), some sort of boundary has been crossed.It is no surprise to see artists like Arshile Gorky and John Graham heavily influenced by Picasso, as it was everywhere. Yet by the time Gorky painted “Horns of the Landscape” (1944) he was already adapting Cubism into a more specifically American vernacular. A bigger influence may have been Hans Hofmann, whose classes were a focus point in New York. Hofmann’s “Mirage (1946)” already contains all the elements we associate with the best of the Abstract Expressionists, while still showing its Picasso roots. The biggest step toward synthesis may have come from Milton Avery, whose Matisse-influenced landscapes, such as 'Autumn' (1944) were already reducing scenes to just a few well-judged shapes, and would clearly influence Rothko. The war is still on, but it's clear from works on display by Rothko, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning that they were already refining and inventing what would become the most dynamic painting of the second half of the century, and perhaps the end of the war was merely what set them free.

That they should have absorbed European influence is not surprising: Rothko, Graham, Gorky, Hofmann, de Kooning and Josef Albers were all immigrants. That their work should seek to adapt such influences to an “American Dream” is even less surprising. In many ways, Abstract Expressionism is about 'effete' art adapting to Americanism, in the same way immigrants or their children felt they needed to prove their Americaness. The two-fisted macho approach of most of the AbEx artists, the fights at the Cedar Bar, Pollack working in his T-shirt and jeans, were all part of a studied anti-highbrow approach. Ironically, their art succeeded in part because of the high-brow push given it by critics, who brought on board the very people these artists condemned in the 1930s, by convincing the moneyed buyers of the value of this new art. The same was true of the Impressionists, and the AbEx artists have followed their path to first popularity and then decorative ubiquity. Which would have surprised any of the artists represented in this exhibition.

What is also surprising is the way a relatively small museum like the Bruce, situated on hill overlooking the commuter rail station which links Greenwich with New York, has assembled such a spectacular collection. Significantly, they’ve borrowed not only from major institutions like the Whitney and Guggenheim, but also from smaller museums like the Neuberger at nearby SUNY-Purchase, where Sandler teaches, and the New Britain Museum of American art, upstate in Connecticut. The exhibition has been designed brilliantly by Anne von Stuelpnagel. Hung with strong black and red backgrounds, it allows you to see each work on its own merits, while inviting comparisons within rooms and from one space to the next. It’s like walking back into a more intense time, when depression and war made it seem everything was under threat, when everything seemed possible in art.