Thoughts & Links on Abstract Expressionism & Color Field Painting

Yellow Gesture

18" x 11"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
CTA

The popularity of the Abstract Expressionist movement continues today. Although the conventional wisdom wishes to move on, the movement has legs beyond it's supposed demise.

In the light of this, I wish to ask a couple of questions. Why would an artist today wish to identify their work as Abstract Expressionist, when it is considered defunct? Is it actually experiencing a rebirth, then? Do contemporary artists "give a care," as the vernacular has it, whether a movement is alive or dead in order to be associated with it?

Are these contemporaries the ultimate nerds of the art world? Or, are they just blithely ignorant of conventional wisdom, and happy to make art as they please?

My own references to the Abstract Expressionists have been many:

• Helen Frankenthaler (sorry, but I associate you with this school broadly)
  
• Clyfford Still
• Cy Twombly
• Jackson Pollock
• Mark Rothko
• Wolf Kahn ("second generation")
• Lee Krasner

Here are some current blogs closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement:

• David Novak
  
• Pollocks the Bollocks

On a related fresh note, the Smithsonian is loving the Color Field movement right now (through may 26th):

• Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975
• Hue-phoria

Speaking of color field work, Peter Plagens, at Newsweek, wonders what ever happened to color in contemporary art? Oh please, Palgens! Click on Google and find me, for heaven's sake! If you'd do a little research, you'd see that it is alive and kicking in the New School Color theme.

• A Room with a Hue (MoMA)

Thanks, Martha Marshall, for the Novak link.

Intuitive Choice in Art

Abstract Reds Over Blues
20" x 12"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
Collection the Artist

Things are a little "static" around here, to use the web lingo. Let's revisit a popular post that should grease the skids of creativity;

Intuitive Choices

Under the tutelage of Diane Townsend I painted this abstract work. It has some elements of color field painting, like Mark Rothko, and extensive gestural elements. The gestural nature is in keeping with the drawing roots of the pastel medium. I like the way the paper's surface is evident, and yet the color blending, and heavily worked nature of the piece makes it work as a painting for me.

Let's talk a little bit about intuitive choices in fine art. The choices that a child makes are very intuitive, because their knowledge base is limited. The hands start moving, and the limitations are the length of their little arms, and the characteristics of the tools. They are mostly trying these tools out for the very first time.

A great deal is made of technique in art. The pastel medium is no exception. In fact, technical skill is probably too emphasized in this medium. It's supposed to be hard, you see. And, admittedly, there is much to know (much that I do not know!). Sometimes beginning steps are not rewarded very well by the outcomes.

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."
Edgar Degas said in a quote posted at Expo Degas.

So, intuition! First sketches with bold gestural marks always work better for me than deliberate and measured work. The thing is to have years and years of drawing from memory in one's back pocket, and then the quick marks made on the paper will seem intentional. I don't subscribe to the subtle and tentative working that is often required of detailed realistic work.

The same goes for compositional choices. It is not easy to describe, but I think that studying good composition is necessary, and then ought to be put out of one's mind. If you can internalize compositional knowledge, it will come out naturally as you draw. The best thing I can say is: "try it".

The ability to critique one's own art becomes more important when you want to be an intuition-driven artist. Did this one really turn out to have the best composition? Color Choices? Does it have too much to say for one painting? Ask these questions of yourself.

Wolf Kahn has a chair that he sits in and ruminates over his finished art. Most artists do take some time and distance away from their works to try and get an objective perspective on their own creations. It's challenging.

The pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation. It is a direct, and rewarding tool. It's interesting to consider that in the book, Wolf Kahn's Pastels, the great colorist chose to make the text a collection of essays on artistic process. A natural fit, I think.

New Links for the quoted post:

Diane Townsend.

Schama's take on art is somewhere between pointless and powerless, in my opinion. However, I offer you his link on Mark Rothko, here.

Rothko-ized

I have become Rothko-ized! Now, I am a fully functioning zombie in the Mark-Mode.

Just kidding. I will be "out of pocket", as the hip people say, for the next three weeks. On the road for Bellevue, Park City and Sun Valley. Reports will be posted at
the Endless Summer Art Fair.

You are owed a better end to the Rothko study. Sorry, I'm not ready for the definitive post, yet. I will have some down time between driving stretches, and maybe I'll get to post a little.

The quick things I can share are my pre-conclusions. Greenberg and that whole gang (including MR) were so impressed with abstraction being the break-out style for modern art that they felt they needed to push it to it's absolute limits. I'm not sure if we have reached those limits, yet. The cracks in that infrastructure developed before the Abstract Expressionist school could run its course.

I disagree with the dialectic that insists abstraction is the end-game of art. There are some solid values to abstraction, and it is fundamental to art as a historic continuum, and as a rudimentary part of the formal structure of art itself. I love the stuff, personally.

Rothko was a huge figure on the American landscape, whose color field art did a better job of breaking away from figuration than Pollock's art, IMHO. Not to compare too much, but the lack of line and the forwarding of the element of color are why I say MR is better. Action painting, as absolutely fantastic as it is, is still very dependent (Pollock's work) on the line.

Let's see. Now that I've dug this big hole, I guess I'll have a fine job ahead of me to fill in the rationales! I don't want to leave you with a comparison between JP and MR. That's too far off the mark for understanding the Abstract Expressionists.

Let's leave you with this awesome photo of The Irascibles, a group of artists otherwise known as the Abstract Expressionists, or the New York School. I wanted to photoshop myself in there as an interviewer, but I didn't want a lawsuit from the photographer. Perhaps you'll just have to imagine that part.

Image of the Abstract Expressionists known as The Irascibles.http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/a/images/abstexp_irascibles_lg.jpeg
"The Irascibles" (photo by Nina Leen, 1950, for Life magazine) Front row, left to right: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst (son of Max Ernst), Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko. Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin. Back row: Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne.

Note:
Want to know more about Hedda Sterne? Fascinating. She is the last surviving member of this famous photo.

Rothko Response Revisit

Untitled,
6.5" x 4"
Original Pastel
10 June 2007
Casey Klahn

Here's a "bump" of this one, taken with the D80 instead of scanned. I have completed a few other Rothko responses which I'll be posting over the next few days.

Still wrestling with the great artist's philosophy (Mark Rothko). Amazon solicited a review today, since I bought it from them. How slow can I be?

Actually, I'm getting up at 4:30 AM these days in order to get some studio time before the "Daddy Day Care" opens at shortly after 7. Maybe the old guy's art philosophy is starting to sink in, after all.

Untitled

Mark Rothko,
apparently without a cigarette in his hand.

Welcome to Katherine's readers. We have been spending a great deal of time on the Abstract Expressionists, who are a major influence on my own art. Jackson Pollock came first (complete with movie review) and we are still in the middle of studying Mark Rothko.

The Rothko book from the grave has been a terrific influence on me . It has helped to widen my own philosophy of art. I'll need a little more time to be able to write about it though. In the meantime, I refer you to the best review of the book that I've read by Sheldon Nodelman in Art in America.
A quote from Nodelman:

Art and philosophy, for Rothko, are parallel enterprises, the only two human activities that aim to articulate a totalizing representation of human reality. They alone have the full capacity to "generalize"--a term of great significance to Rothko--i.e., to ascend from particular experiences toward universal truths. For Rothko this reality was dual-natured, objective and subjective, embracing equally both the circumstances of the world in themselves and the human experience of and imaginative response to them. The artist's mission is to reduce all experience, external and internal, to its essential unity. Rothko insists on the need to keep this goal firmly in view and to differentiate between true art--an activity defined by artistic intention--and its pseudomorphs proliferating in the contemporary world, all those appropriations of its techniques and languages for merely instrumental ends that we now call "visual culture."

Links:

The Artist's Reality, Rothko
Abstract Expressionism Timeline, Met Museum
Book Review, Nodelman
Front Page of Art in America Magazine

Response to Rothko

Untitled,
6.5" x 4"
Original Pastel
10 June 2007
Casey Klahn

This is a response to my Rothko research. I'd like to do more of these.

I know it looks moody to some, but you have to remember that my personal response to gray is 180 degrees opposite yours. I grew up under a cloud, you see. Gray is my comfort color!

When thinking Rothko, I think of Myth and Tragedy. Those were two of his benchmark meanings for art.

Rothko at Other Blogs

Black on Gray, Rothko, 1969/1970

Sometimes our peerage out in Blog-land have more valuable resources than the web at-large.
What follows are some very interesting links for our artist, Mark Rothko, from unlikely sources:

1. O SECULO PRODIGIOSO
A very nice, clear collection of jpegs from the Rothko corpus. A must see.
I particularly like Tentacles of Memory, which reminds me of a Mark Tobey type of work.

2. A not-as-yet published monograph about Rothko, by French author Geneviève Vidal. She considers that Rothko, by his universal dimension, is "the painter of our becoming".

"Monumental dimensions, a totally frontal perspective, and loud colors characterized their output." Vidal

3. Looks like I've found my Thinking Blogger award recipient: Lessons in Art Appreciation, by blogger "Outre". Her live journal may be on hold, but she has given us a shotgun blast of artist after artist after artist. I like that.

"the fact that one usually begins with drawing is already academic. We start with color", is a Rothko quote that she brings to us.

4. If you will be in Israel soon, visit the first Rothko retrospective, co-curated by our editor, Dr. Christopher Rothko. Also has input from Rothko's daughter, Kate Rothko Prizel. The announcement is as follows:

The American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is pleased to announce that the first retrospective exhibition in Israel of works by Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970) will be on view from March 29 through June 30, 2007 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Sam and Ayala Zacks Pavilion.

I just signed up for an e-mail alert for Mark Rothko entries on Google. Watch out, world.

Links:

http://www.jewishculturela.org/2007/04/03/
first-rothko-retrospective-exhibition-in-israel-on-view-at-
the-tel-aviv-museum-of-art-through-june-302007/

http://oseculoprodigioso.blogspot.com/2007/03/rothko-mark-expressionismo-abstracto.html

http://perso.orange.fr/vidal.genevieve/rothko/

http://community.livejournal.com/the_art_lessons/4685.html

Rothko Record

White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)
81" x 55.5"
Mark Rothko

On May 17th, 2007, this Rothko painting sold at auction for $72.8 Million. That more than doubles the record auction price for a post-war era painting, which was $27.1 Million
(De Kooning, Untiltled XXV, 1977).

Love him or hate him, Rothko is absolutely original in many ways. There is a pleasing unity to his color field paintings that immediately place my thoughts on the colors, the painting and the canvas. The interaction of the colors is attractive, yet remain in the abstract realm-giving no "handle" to hold onto except the experience of looking at the painting right now.

Mark Rothko's Posthumous Book

The late Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is my favorite of the Abstract Expressionists. Allow me to share the following quotes; one from a National Gallery of Art bio and the embedded quote from the artist, himself.

One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York School, a circle of painters that emerged during the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting. Rothko's work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained:

”It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”

Rothko is everywhere on the web taken out of context as saying "There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing". Of course, when read in context we see that he absolutely asserts the opposite.

Further to the subject of letting the great "color field" painter speak for himself, his son and daughter, Christopher and Kate Rothko have published The Artist’s Realities, Philosophies of Art, Mark Rothko, 2004. Walmart. Amazon.

The artist died by suicide, and apparently left a royal mess of his affairs. His estranged widow, Mell, died the following year, only exacerbating the legal disarray of their estate. The fallout from all of the hassles is said to have been so overwhelming for the Rothko offspring, that the handwritten notes that later comprised this memoir were not discovered or read for decades. I found this great, great piece quoting Christopher about his feelings while organizing the manuscripts.

As a matter of marketing and presentation, it's a lucky turn for the unlucky progeny of the artist. Who doesn't love to "discover" the long-lost history of a great man? It remains now for the art historians to review the writings of the "Theologian of the Abstract Expressionists" and give them some context within the broaden understanding that we have of Rothko's vision.

Rothko

Personally, I'd like to find a box of van Gogh's long-lost letters to his sister.

A blogger in Seattle has a short take on the book.

Links:

http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothkohttp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko_Case

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4529520

http://smallpressures.blogspot.com/2006/02/artists-reality-philosophies-of-art-by.html

http://www.estatevaults.com/lm/archives/2004/10/14/he_was_in_my_hands_in_some_strange_way.html

Color Field Shindig in DC

Detail Red Hill
Casey Klahn

Washington DC (the other Washington, as I call it) is celebrating Color Field painting, which is a subset of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The event is titled ColorField.remix, and came to my attention via Martha Marshall's blogsite. Thanks, Martha!

The remix site offers this definition of Color Field art:

Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation’s capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. Its roots were with painters who showed their work at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, a short-lived museum promoting contemporary art during the 1960s. Its 1965 “Washington Color Painters” show formalized recognition of the Washington Color School of painters “More than 40 years after that historic D.C. exhibition, their paintings reveal not just a shared passion for color but highly individualistic visions,” writes Jean Lawlor Cohen, guest co-curator at The Kreeger Museum. “They represent a moment when Washington heeded Willem de Kooning’s call for ‘hallelujah painting.’”

Among the best known Color Field artists are Leon Berkowitz, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jules Olitski, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Frank Stella and Alma Thomas and Larry Zox. Among the best known Washington Color School artists are Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring and Paul Reed.

Link:

http://www.washington.org/colorfieldremix/

Intuitive Choices

Abstract Reds Over Blues
20" x 12"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn
CTA

Under the tutelage of Diane Townsend I painted this abstract work. It has some elements of color field painting, like Mark Rothko, and extensive gestural elements. The gestural nature is in keeping with the drawing roots of the pastel medium. I like the way the paper's surface is evident, and yet the color blending, and heavily worked nature of the piece makes it work as a painting for me.

Let's talk a little bit about intuitive choices in fine art. The choices that a child makes are very intuitive, because their knowledge base is limited. The hands start moving, and the limitations are the length of their little arms, and the characteristics of the tools. They are mostly trying these tools out for the very first time.

A great deal is made of technique in art. The pastel medium is no exception. In fact, technical skill is probably too emphasized in this medium. It's supposed to be hard, you see. And, admittedly, there is much to know (much that I do not know!). Sometimes beginning steps are not rewarded very well by the outcomes.

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."
Edgar Degas said in a quote posted at Expo Degas.

So, intuition! First sketches with bold gestural marks always work better for me than deliberate and measured work. The thing is to have years and years of drawing from memory in one's back pocket, and then the quick marks made on the paper will seem intentional. I don't subscribe to the subtle and tentative working that is often required of detailed realistic work.

The same goes for compositional choices. It is not easy to describe, but I think that studying good composition is necessary, and then ought to be put out of one's mind. If you can internalize compositional knowledge, it will come out naturally as you draw. The best thing I can say is: "try it".

The ability to critique one's own art becomes more important when you want to be an intuition-driven artist. Did this one really turn out to have the best composition? Color Choices? Does it have too much to say for one painting? Ask these questions of yourself.

Wolf Kahn has a chair that he sits in and ruminates over his finished art. Most artists do take some time and distance away from their works to try and get an objective perspective on their own creations. It's challenging.

The pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation. It is a direct, and rewarding tool. It's interesting to consider that in the book, Wolf Kahn's Pastels, the great colorist chose to make the text a collection of essays on artistic process. A natural fit, I think.

Catching Up

High Intensity Blue Tray, Various Brands of Pastels

Playing catch-up today. I want to get a Colorist American Landscape back on the easel, today. A farm building, from a detailed area of The Heins' Farm.

Here it is, the middle of March, and I am still on pastel brands, and I want to do a hand-made pastel session with my readers, and post some more images.

The good news is, my review of brands winds down pretty quickly. The Diane Townsends, Senneliers, and my own pastels are my favorites. The others that I use are mostly on the softer end of the range of types available. The reason I keep to the softs are to preserve hue intensity, and to limit detail.

If I were to become a detailed realist, I would have to buy a complete set or two of the harder pastels, like Rembrandt and Windsor & Newton. I do use pastel pencils, especially for my small works (Colorist Italian Landscapes). The brands I use are Derwent and Faber Castell. Of course, one must have that General white charcoal pencil, as it's hardness is preferable. Use a sandpaper pad to sharpen your pencils.

The remainder of my palette are Schminke, Unison, and a few of the harder ones already mentioned. The general intensity of these are modest, except in a few of their colors, and so they perform limited tasks.

I will say that Hersey's Unisons are great for consistency of handling. That's not what floats my boat, however. I am all about "dealing" with the materials that are in front of me. Every paper - pastel combination presents the artist with a new set of challenges. That's part of the creative pursuit, and leads to a lot of unfinished or ruined projects! But, the freshness of the successes! That's the bomb ( as the kids say).

So, the Unisons have some great low-intensity greens, and the Schminke light value, both low and high intensity, yellows are indispensable to me. I will say that Unison has some high intensity umbers and sepias (browns) that are terrific. I don't use these as a rule, however.

Others will have more to say about their favorites and the handling characteristics of various brands. But, now you know my own take on these mysterious tools.

I will finish by saying that I have no great love of paper around my pastels. I don't feel compelled, for instance, to make my own sticks, and then go wrap them in paper. So, I salute the few manufacturers who don't "paper" their sticks, such as Girault and Terry Ludwig.

Let me add one other thing. You want a set or two of hard pastels. I highly value my Sakura brand set (an actual line of artist's quality hard pastels), which I have no current resource for. Anyone out there know where to buy these?

Diane Townsend

Diane Townsends in flat light outside. Good thing I'm not a photographer.

I would like to feature a few of my favorite brands of pastels and pastel products, now.
Other than my own hand made pastels, I favor the products of Diane Townsend. I consider Diane a friend, and love her art as much as her great pastels. It looks like she has posted a new gallery of art at her website, and I'll be delighted to look at these for quite a while!
I favor her Terrages, but who wouldn't love a hand made, chunky, very pure-hued pastel, with an addition of pumice to increase adhesion? Her pastels take the form of Terrages (big, with more pumice content) and Soft Form and Fine Line (more of a regular shape, with less pumice, and a unique fine shape which favors gestural marks).
Diane has a broad grasp of art, art history, and she takes a seriously astute and skilled approach to mixing her colors. I am as pleased with her colors as I am with Sennelier's, and maybe more so. The French Sennelier's (featured in my next post) are good for purity and for certain colors being very intense, but I think the DT's are all great for their intensity. Of course, you may not always want intensity, but Lord knows it isn't hard to kill intensity in a color.
They are consistent in handling, and they allow for techniques unparalleled by other brands.
I can scumble (lay down a thin, non-opaque layer over bare paper, or another color layer) in a way that cannot be done with an overly soft pastel.
The Dakota Art Pastels people rate Dianes's two product lines as Numbers #6 and #7, in their hierarchy of softness among pastels. Number #1 means the softest, which is Schmincke, and so on. See that chart here.
Have you heard of her daughter's sanded paper? Very high quality, and the coatings are hand applied. I favor it for doing abstract pastels, and it is completely unlike any other paper I have used. Looks like they now have it in smaller packs, rather than just full sheets.
Diane also seems to be a big fan of Wolf Kahn, with whom she collaborated on some of her colors.

Colorist Art

These are not her images. I just was goofing around on Photoshop.

Now that I have your attention, though, I am pleased to introduce you to an artist I found linked from Katherine's Mark blog. Her name is Tracy Helgeson, of upstate New York.
We share an affinity for color fields, barns, and landscapes. See her blog here.

Yellow and Blue

Yellow Trees in a Blue Forest, 9" x 7"
Original Pastel
$450.00
Casey Klahn

Here is one of my pastels from the Colorist American Landscapes collection. It occurred to me that there was no bluer blue on Earth than the Sennelier blues that went into this favorite work. And, given the inherent lack of intensity in the yellows available to me, I was gratified by the solution that I arrived at for the yellows here.
I will add that after a year or so of dissatisfaction with the French Sennelier pastels, I had a re-awakening to their color quality. They are very pure and good, and I had the opportunity to relate this to their president of Savoir-Faire ( U.S. distributor ). They are as good a value, or better, than making your own sticks, which I also do. I so far haven't been able to resource a blue (ultramarine) as good as theirs. I also prodded him to get the good people in France to start making their bigger sheets of pastel paper again, and he was sympathetic to this. Unfortunately the answer from the higher powers was, essentially, GTH!

Some Colorists You Should Know

My own art is in the old and venerable medium of pastel. But, by way of transition, I'd like you to have a look at two painters who use the brush (and other tools) to weave magical colorist abstracts.
Take a nice, long gander at these artist's colorful works. Elizabeth Love, at NZ Art (New Zealand), whose Mixed Media canvases are shouting color and texture at the same time. She has a wonderful grasp of intensities, which she manages to make the most of without overwhelming the structure of her abstract image. Where do we see that in another Colorist's work? Hmmn....clue here.
Then, in Florida, there is the busy Martha Marshall of An Artist's Journal.
Her work, Ember II, is an example of intensity of color that really glows. Her burnished look on this work is magic.

Red Barn with Ramp

Red Barn with Ramp
Casey Klahn
12.75" x 9.25"
Original Pastel

If you will allow me, dear reader, I would like to post this image now. I won't add too much text with it, yet. It's an image that I created about three years ago and it kind of grew legs and started walking around on it's own, and so I offer it now for your enjoyment.