Franz Kline ~ Reprised and with a Mind Open to all Kinds of Things

Okay, this is just not a reprised piece from our archives. I've decided to include some additional content that I came across while trolling the internet. Voice from the Couch knew that I wouldn't be able not to add to this site. Here's a nugget from Crown Point Press ~ well worth the five minutes.



Franz Kline 1959, Steve Martin 1981 ~ Rue  originally posted 02/05/09



This piece by Franz Kline, famous Abstract Expressionist painter, is entitled Rue (on loan to the Portland Art Museum from a private collection). Like his other paintings, Rue is the result of Kline having lived for many years in New York. He said that the feelings aroused in him by seeing the city for so long was what he painted. Although some abstract expressionist painters of his day left their paintings untitled. Kline chose to name many of them. Just before his first one man show he asked Willem and Elaine De Kooning to help him name his paintings. "[I]n a spirit of levity with a bottle of scotch on the table," was how Elaine would later describe the eight hour naming session. My own mind turns over the word rue and I chuckle thinking about the person who rues the day that he ate the rue he had found on the "rue".

Kline definitely belongs to the sub-group of abstract expressionists known as action painters. In my reading I found this quote from his friend Philip Pavia , "When I would visit Kline in his studio, he had stretched a large canvas on the wall, and underneath he would push with his feet a wood beer box to a certain spot. After a few trials and errors, he fixed the box into a right spot. He then slanted a plank from the floor with one end on the beer crate. A temporary ramp. Coming up the plank and down the plank, he slanted his brushstrokes for long strokes or short ones, and some of them were very loaded with paint."

Although Kline's paintings were the result of the emotions the city aroused in him and he didn't care to be in his painting, one owner of Rue did say that he could see himself in it. Steve Martin is listed as being the previous owner of this painting and had always said that he wanted to be part of it. The Portland Art Museum is also exhibiting the photo Annie Leibovitz took of Steve Martin in Beverly Hills when he posed for his portrait. Complete with black brushstrokes on his white suit, Martin realized his dream. A companion photo appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

Louise Nevelson ~ White House Appearances with Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama

Check out this shot of Louise Nevelson with Jimmy Carter. Nevelson has been invited to the White House at least twice – the first in person as shown here and the second represented by her art. In 1979 the Women's Caucus for Art presented their first Annual Lifetime Achievement Awards. Recipients in addition to Louise Nevelson were none other than Georgia O'Keefe, Isabel Bishop, Selma Burke, and Alice Neel. If I should ever have a chance to speak with Jimmy Carter or his wife Rosalind, my first question, after telling them what an honor it is to be in their presence, will be what they thought that day when they met Louise Nevelson. My follow-up would be which piece of her work they liked the best.

Following in this grand tradition of innovation, the Obamas have recently added new art to the White House.President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have broken with tradition and have added twentieth century art to the walls of the White House. George Bush did hang a Jacob Lawrence. But the Obamas have moved far past that and have sent word to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. They are choosing bold, abstract art works including Nicolas de Stael's Nice, Alma Thomas' Skylight, Jasper Johns' Numerals 0-9, Richard Diebenkorn's Berkeley No. 52 and the one on the left by Ed Ruscha...




The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamas have also selected a work of art by Louise Nevelson although I've yet to find reference to which one. The rules as to what art work can be added vary depending upon where the work will hang. The Obamas are free to hang whatever they want in their residence and offices, including the Oval Office. Work added to public rooms must be approved by the White House curator and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, an advisory board on which the first lady serves as honorary chair. The rules are even stricter when the work will be added to the permanent collection. Those pieces must be at least twenty-five years old and are generally not from living artist because that could impact the market value of the works.

When I wasn't wandering around Las Vegas yesterday, I was wandering around the internet to do research for this post. In addition to the great photo of the Carters with Louise Nevelson, I did find this beautiful self-portrait Nevelson did in 1938. Although she said she knew she'd be a sculptor when she was nine years old, she didn't actually start creating sculptures until the 1940's and her famous assemblages until the 1950's. In the thirties she was drawing and painting. The black outlines around her eyes could be seen as harbingers of the long fake eyelashes she became famous for later in life.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner ~ Portraits and Self-Portraits

Although Ernst Kirchner's father had encouraged Kirchner's love of art while he was growing up when it came time for a proper education and vocation, Kirchner was pointed to studying architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule in Dresden. He also enrolled in art classes and the first photo here shows him with four of his paintings on the veranda of his parents' home in Chemnitz, ca 1902.









This next photo is of Kirchner and Doris Grosse when they lived together in Dresden. In 1911, Dodo refused to move to Berlin with him. Many of the photographs of Dodo show her wearing hats as do most of the paintings that she sat for as a model. The hats are an indicator of her profession as a milliner.





Once in Berlin, Kirchner met up with the Schilling sisters, Erna and Gerda in June 1912. Both Erna and Gerda posed as models for Kirchner. Gerda dropped out of their lives about 1915. Kirchner lived with Erna for the rest of his life. They never married although at one point during the month of his suicide in 1938 they had taken out a marriage license and planned a ceremony that Kirchner cancelled. After his death, Erna petitioned the Swiss government to be allowed to use the name Kirchner which was granted. The last photo shows Kirchner and Erna in Berlin, ca. 1912-13.

Plans are for a video of Kirchner's self-portraits on this post. Stay tuned.

And here it is, self-portraits of Ernst Kirchner drinking, smoking (when didn't he?), standing calmly with a black cat, looking out at us quite abstractly...

Franz Kline 1959, Steve Martin 1981 – Rue

This piece by Franz Kline, famous Abstract Expressionist painter, is entitled Rue (on loan to the Portland Art Museum from a private collection). Like his other paintings, Rue is the result of Kline having lived for many years in New York. He said that the feelings aroused in him by seeing the city for so long was what he painted. Although some abstract expressionist painters of his day left their paintings untitled. Kline chose to name many of them. Just before his first one man show he asked Willem and Elaine De Kooning to help him name his paintings. "[I]n a spirit of levity with a bottle of scotch on the table," was how Elaine would later describe the eight hour naming session. My own mind turns over the word rue and I chuckle thinking about the person who rues the day that he ate the rue he had found on the "rue".

Kline definitely belongs to the sub-group of abstract expressionists known as action painters. In my reading I found this quote from his friend Philip Pavia , "When I would visit Kline in his studio, he had stretched a large canvas on the wall, and underneath he would push with his feet a wood beer box to a certain spot. After a few trials and errors, he fixed the box into a right spot. He then slanted a plank from the floor with one end on the beer crate. A temporary ramp. Coming up the plank and down the plank, he slanted his brushstrokes for long strokes or short ones, and some of them were very loaded with paint."

Although Kline's paintings were the result of the emotions the city aroused in him and he didn't care to be in his painting, one owner of Rue did say that he could see himself in it. Steve Martin is listed as being the previous owner of this painting and had always said that he wanted to be part of it. The Portland Art Museum is also exhibiting the photo Annie Leibovitz took of Steve Martin in Beverly Hills when he posed for his portrait. Complete with black brushstrokes on his white suit, Martin realized his dream. A companion photo appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.