Maude Kerns Art Center

In memory of Maude Kerns lives an Art Center in Eugene, on 15th Ave. It has a twitter page, so you can stay up to speed on everything the art center has programmed. The upcoming show includes photography of Walt O'Brien, Charles Search, Gary Tepfer, and Justin C. Williams as well as Mixed Media Photography by Jeffrey T. Baker. I wonder what Maude would think of the work by these artists. Here is a shot by Jeffrey Baker:

And here is one of Walt O'Brien's:

Maude Kerns ~ Composition #22, Sharpness another comparison

The blue background in the painting above is far less structured than the one from Composition #22, Sharpness. Take a look at this painting by Maude Kerns – the internet identifies its current home as the University of Oregon. A logical entry point into the painting is that tiny outlined circle within a circle towards the bottom. Follow the line and you wind your way up and through the painting until you reach nearly the top of the multi-colored circles and squares. Leave that main body of color and it's as if you've taken off into the boundless universe towards the small circles at the paintings' top end. Compared with Composition #22, Sharpness on the left, this painting is almost lyrical. The myriad of triangles, squares and circles include colors ranging from pink through orange, brown and then to green. There's a whole city filled with people and places.

Looking at these two images makes me wish that I had seen the exhibits of Maude Kerns' work last year at the Guestroom Gallery and Katayama Framing. There were seventy two of Maude Kerns work shown at the two locations – watercolors, oils and woodblock prints. From the looks of the thirty thumbnails shown below the exhibit must have been a very good retrospective. Visit the site here.

Philosophy Behind Kerns' Work

Maude Kerns trained under Hans Hoffman, a teacher four years younger than herself. Hoffman was interested in abstract art, everything he painted had to do with color relationships, structure and spacial illusion. Hoffman said "The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." Kerns joined the dozens of wonderful female artists that took Hoffman as a teacher, including the likes of Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner.
Kerns adopted the art-as-spiritual expression philosophy from Hoffman, which she shared with one of my all time favorites Wassily Kandinsky-to these artists all art has a duty to be spiritual in nature. Hoffman's spacial realtionships, though not trees, rocks and streams but shapes of varying color echo those found in nature, like Pollack's ability to create fractal patterns.
This reminds me of my original draw to this piece, It was Lisa's idea that this abstract work mimics the bird at sea, the moon on the horizon and a big tree in the middle of it all.
Here is a Kerns piece similar to the one in Portland, another composition- this one is number 57. It is oil on Masonite, she painted it in 1947.
This Kerns is at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum at Utah State University.
I don't know what Lisa would see in this one, but today is her birthday- I hope today looks and feels a lot like this painting. Happy Birthday Darling!

And Then There's Maude

Does this look like a woman who can't just do as she wants to? I don't think so. Maude Kerns may have said that in response to some snooty thing Mark Rothko had to say, but she didn't really mean it. She said it out of spite.
Maude Kerns was one whole heartedly independant women of her time, not unlike the Maude of the show whose name this blog entry is taken from. In "And Then There's Maude" Bea Arthur played the main character of the liberal persona Maude. She embodied the theme lyrics- which compared many historical figures to Maude, such as Lady Godiva, Joan of Arc, Isadora Duncan and Betsy Ross. Here they are:
Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didnt' care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.

Isadora was the first bra burner
And you're glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.

And then there's Maude.
And then there's Maude.
And then there's Maude.
And then there's Maude.
And then there's Maude.
And then there's Maude.
And then there's

That old compromisin', enterprisin', anything but tranquilizing,
Right on Maude

I realize these lyrics weren't actually written about Maude Kerns, but if you, like me, love the movie Harold and Maude, and also like me, id you love Bea Arthur you realize there is something unobtainably free about the name Maude.
If you are Maude, you can absolutely do as you want to.

Maude Kerns ~ Composition #22, Sharpness compare with earlier works

Maude Kerns is most well known for her "non-objective" art as seen here in Composition #22, Sharpness. However, at various times, mostly early in her career, Kerns also painted landscapes and portraits. She also did some woodcuts along the way. Today's post is a compendium of these works. Later in the week, I'll post a grouping of her abstracts.

LANDSCAPES

Eastern Oregon, Oil


Provincetown, Watercolor 1939


Untitled (Seascape), Oil c. 1900


American Nomads


Chicago, Waterercolor 1939


PORTRAITS
Old Woman, Woodcut


We Three Woodcut


Edith Kerns Chambers– Edith Chambers was Maude Kerns sister. At one point Maude made the decision to stay in Eugene to care for her sister and mother after her sister's husband had died. So even though she didn't marry and have those obligations, she did limit her ability to move with complete mobility in the art world. In 1951, Mark Rothko commented on her paintings and said "that she should have had the courage to stay in the East and join the avant-garde, she remarked 'Of course, he did not know that a woman can't just do as she wants to.'"


Frank Chambers Maude Kerns' brother-in-law


Royal

Maude Kerns ~ Composition #22, Sharpness / A View into Another World

Stand in front of Maude Kerns' Composition #22, Sharpness at the Portland Art Museum and you'll be transported into another world. At least I am. Those horizontal bands of blue merge seamlessly from light pale through cerulean to aqua. The triangles of blue and green focus me to a location where I can step through and enter a realm of oneness with the universe. Many of Maude Kerns paintings are like this. Even though she was a "non-objective" artist in the 40's and 50's, her work carries a level of spirituality that reflects her studies of Wassily Kandinsky art-as-spiritual expression philosophy.

It's fitting that we have included Maude Kerns here at Fifty Two Pieces. Our focus each week is a piece of art at the Portland Art Museum and Maude Kerns was born here in Portland in 1876. Her pioneer parents must have been forward thinking since they sent her to the Universtity of Oregon after she had graduated from high school. She continued her studies at the California School of Fine Arts and later Columbia University, where she received a second degree in Fine Arts under the guidance of Arthur Wesley Dow. She was able to travel through Asia and Europe seeing the works of not only Wassily Kandinsky but also Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee and others from the avant-garde art movement. Like Louise Nevelson from Week 24 Kerns studied with renown art teacher Hans Hofmann. Subsequent to these travels, she taught art at the University of Oregon in Eugene. While there she was named head of the Arts Department and remained until her retirement in the 1940s.

Kerns was actually more well known in the art world in New York than she was here in the Pacific Northwest. Baroness Hilla Rebay, chief artistic advisor to copper magnate Solomon Guggenheim, encouraged Guggenheim to purchase a number of Kerns paintings. He included Kerns' work with art from other standouts in the early American abstract art scene, for his Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later named Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in New York.

What is not often mentioned about Maude Kerns is her deep commitment to the spirituality of Christian Science. She joined that religion in 1907. In addition her advice to young women is also not usually written about. However, she is known to have advised her female students to be "more than baby- making machines" if they desired careers in art – an early feminist who achieved much. Here is a self portrait with more of Maude Kerns' words of advice for us all.

Maude Kerns, Composition #22, Sharpness

Maude Kerns painted Sharpness in 1943. It's oil on canvas.
Nothing could have made me choose this piece- except my dear friend Lisa. Lisa is a scientist, she only visits museums when I don't give her a choice. If I can't go hiking or biking or out for a beer she has to roam the halls of art with me. Which she is starting to like. A few weeks ago we were tromping through the American gallery here at the Portland Art Museum when she saw this piece.
"Whoa, what is that?"
"It's a painting by Maude Kerns, it's abstract, it doesn't really represent anything" I said.
"Oh I see- that is a bird," she pointed to the figure with the blue halo around it's beak "and that is a tree," she said of the flattened green triangle that shoots upwards with angled black branches "and that is the moon," she said of the circle out on the horizon with light all around it, "and it is all happening at sea" she said, and suddenly I liked this piece in a way I had not discovered before.
Maude Kerns painted the Oregon Coast 35 years earlier in 1909. It is also part of the Portland Art Museum collection.

This week on 52 pieces we'll think about Maude Kerns and her oceans of work.