Plastic Color

Four works on the easel, awaiting good photographs.

The studio was humming this weekend, and I got four works done. Three sketch/studies, and one medium sized pastel. If you want to count failed works, then many more were done!

Four New Works

At Pastel, I posted some words on plastic color, as part of my Tree School series. Find out why I don't paint my trees green.

Plasticity in art is important to understand. "Plasticity is the quality of the presentation of a sense of movement in a painting," said Mark Rothko. Another less developed theory of plastic qualities in art refers to the three-dimensionality of the visual arts.

Deadlines for juries are looming, so I want to get a series done so as to submit four to five images that agree with one another. I hope to photograph them in a day or two, and you'll get to see them, too.

On another topic, I recommend Joanne Mattera's Marketing Mondays.

Commitment

Photo Credit: Lorie Klahn

Finger Crack,
Leavenworth, Washington

Commitment, in the world of mountain climbing...

Commitment, in the world of mountain climbing, is a word used to represent the point in a climbing route where turning back is a worse option than continuing. In other words, going back down the way you came up is either more dangerous, or more arduous than continuing to the summit and then down the originally planned way. The finding of oneself at the point of commitment in a difficult climb, and with just enough energy, food, and (worse yet) protection equipment to go on is a test of one's will that is truly challenging. Rubber meets road. Do or die. That kind of commitment.

Commitment: interaction characterized by obligation.

Parents know all about commitment, too. Getting up at night to feed the little squawker. Putting on those boy scout trousers and heading to the meeting. Commitment is defined as an interaction characterized by obligation.

What are an artist's obligations to himself? Does he have any obligations to society?

Rothko. Let's Talk Inimitable.

Rothko was obliged to his art

Mark Rothko seemed to feel an obligation to his art to the degree that he backed out of his commitment to hang his paintings at the Seagram Building. He didn't wish his art to be the decoration for a restaurant. Rothko became so invested in the "life" of his paintings that he created demands upon the methods for hanging his paintings. The lighting, the position, and so on. Rothko was obliged to his art.

I suppose, in the light of this kind of story, one may ask the question: does society have any obligations to art?

But, enough about "society". This is supposed to be my goal setting task. Stay tuned for the next character trait that an artist wants: Courage.

Creativity

Kim Barker, of Australia, is a great one for memes and awards. She excels at this activity, having created the Top 101 Artist's Blogs list. I want to say thanks for adding me to her list with this award: The Creative Artist Award.

I, too, created an award, which is The Art Medal. Unlike the standard blog award, this meme is given out very, very sparingly, and without much link activity associated with it.

But, I am a fan of blog bling, and will pass this creativity award on. After me, I will ask my awardees to write something original about creativity. Say, 100 words in your own opinion on the subject of creativity. As I usually do, I'll contemplate whom to award, and get back to you soon.

My words on creativity:

It isn't easy to be creative as an artist. That may sound funny, but I hold creativity up as the chief mission of the artist, and in the land of two dimensional art it is hard to find new avenues for expression. You will find other artist's ideas compelling, and the classic artists were tremendous copiers. One thing I can say is interact, for heaven's sake, with the works you are interested in! What makes them attract you? What place do these works have in the broader art world? What can my work possibly add to the bigger corpus of the art world? Look out for triteness and the overdone content. On the other hand, take what is common and give it your signature.

Item of Interest:

See Alyson's post on Art Documentaries.

Through Alyson's ArtBizBlog, I found my way to: Rothko's Rooms.

Rothko The Courageous

Do you ever argue with historians? You should. It keeps your reasoning fresh, and exercises your critical thought.

Not long ago, the BBC series, Simon Schama's Power of Art, aired in the USA. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing Schama's segment on Bernini. On the one hand, I learned a great deal about the artist, but decided to quibble with the historian.

Then I had the chance to see Schama's segment about Mark Rothko, in part, on You Tube. Having just re-read the TASCHEN book on Rothko, I was thrilled with this video. The Power of Art series reenacts key, historical artists' lives in vignettes, with narration and lecture by Schama, who is compelling in his writing and not a bad speaker.

Historian and art historian Simon Schama, in the year 1970, took a wrong turn in the Tate and was confronted, unexpectedly, by the Rothko Room. He admits, and I think very transparently, that when he realized it was the Rothko display, he expected to see the "cemetery of abstraction...a dead end". Instead, he was transported.

"This isn't about now,
this is about forever.
Can art ever be more complete; more powerful?
I don't think so."
Simon Schama on Rothko.

In this video, Schama illuminates Rothko's courage as an artist, and the essential quality of his art that transcends paint and canvas. I have no argument with this opinion!

The Seagram Murals at the Tate Modern.

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.

Untitled: Red, Gray, Blue

Untitled: Red, Gray, Blue
8" x 5"
Original Pastel
July 1st, 2007
Casey Klahn

Remember we were talking (in my post: Color Field Painting) about Rothko and the Abstract Expressionist's desire to take their art to the final or ultimate expression of art. The critic Clement Greenberg was an influential voice for the art movement that would take abstraction to absolute and near-absolute expression.

The Encyclopedia Britannica offers some insight here into Greenberg's reasoning for going whole hog into abstraction:

The intellectual justification for his approach had been articulated a few years earlier in two essays published in Partisan Review. "The Avant Garde and Kitsch" (1939) was a manifesto in which Greenberg made a sharp distinction between "true culture" and "popular art." He asserted that quality in a work of art had nothing to do with contemporary social and political values. "Retiring from the public altogether," he wrote, "the avant-garde poet or artist sought to maintain the high level of his art by both narrowing it and raising it to the expression of an absolute…." This was necessary, he argued, because of the ways in which modern society had debased high art into kitsch. In "Towards a Newer Laocoon" (published in Partisan Reviewin [sic] 1940) Greenberg explained the necessity for avant-garde artists to break away from the traditional dominance of subject matter and place a new emphasis on form.

We're still emphasizing form, or formal qualities of art, today. I was talking with another artist the other day who takes after Andrew Wyeth, and he was extolling the abstract values in all styles of painting that succeed. My friend, Stan Miller, was saying that one of the great artist's patrons insists on hanging a large Wyeth upside down. The abstract composition is that good, even though it's a "realist" work.

Color Field Painting

Untitled: Red, Gray, Violet
5.5" x 4"
Original Pastel
June 20, 2007
Casey Klahn

This is one of my recent Rothko responses. I did another two this morning (photos are pending).

Let me share the following quote from our author:

"Art therefore is a generalization. The use of the plastic elements (editor: the artist's tools) to any other ends, which are most usually particularizations and descriptions of appearances, or which serve the stimulation of separate senses, are not in the category of art and must be classified in the category of the applied arts." Mark Rothko

Rothko indicates that abstraction is the ultimate end "type" of art, which is a main theme in Abstract Expressionism. Obviously, art has moved on from then (the Forties and Fifties through roughly the early Seventies), and artists are producing realist work again. We'll get into DeKooning later, who had to explain to his peerage why he went back to the figure instead of pure non-figurative abstraction. Link here to Wiki on abstraction, and here to ArtLex definition, which you must scroll or page to under the letter "a".

Anytime you say that "thus and such" is the last word on something, you get into trouble. I don't blame the AEs for looking for the ultimate definition of art, since the urge to be your best is what takes even artists to the top of their field. Certainly that happened for this group of American painters in the post-war years.

And, since they insisted on being "of the age", they did feel apocalyptic overtones to their time. Think: Atom Bomb. Pollock brought that up in a famous quote, and the times also were influenced by the overwhelming and then-present effects of the Second World War. Of course they needed an end-all art, since maybe they were in an end time.

But, when you get over the apocalyptic hump, you return to the studio and make some art. Will it be realist, or abstract? There are shades of each, and abstraction can be at the level of the idea, not just the subject or style of a painting. Today we live in a post-abstract world, where new things have to be created for art to flourish. Is there something new for abstractionists to say? I think so. What about realists. Of course there are new things to say!

William Lehman has a good brief on the whole mess at his post: Design VS Art.

Links:
http://www.artlex.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_art
http://www.artisthideout.com/design-vs-art/

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

Memorial Day

Last year at this time
I was overseas attending a Memorial Day service at the American Cemetery in Florence.

Memorial Day, and a mixture of thoughts borne to me by my readings and my memories are giving me pause.

My Mark Rothko book has arrived in the mail, and I have mixed feelings as I open it to read. Christopher Rothko, a psychologist and the late artist's son, has organized and published The Artist's Reality, Philosophies of Art from a long stored manuscript written by the late artist.

Imagine the labor that went into this book. Christopher was left an orphan by his father's sudden suicide in 1970, and his mother Mell's passing only 6 months later. Can there be any doubt as to the trauma felt by the six year-old boy after his father slit his own wrists? On top of the emotional loss came the endless and brutal legal battles over his father's estate.

The Jackson Pollock and Vincent van Gogh stories have also made sobering reading for me of late.

What's more, I also just finished watching Flags of Our Fathers. The kids and I were renting a Sponge Bob classic, and I spotted the Clint Eastwood flick. The idea of the movie came from the James Bradley book, which is a post-mortem research by the son of one of the famous servicemen who raised the US flag on Iwo Jima. I had trepidation seeing it, because of the historical redaction that is beginning to torture our historical memory of the great conflict of my father's generation. It turned out to be a faithful and, IMO, an honest story telling of the dramatic events surrounding the Iwo Jima saga. The same February of 1945 that this Pacific Theater battle was being fought, my own father was in combat in a far less publicized theater of the global conflict: Northern Italy.

A year ago this Memorial Day I was honoring my late father's service in the Second World War at the US Cemetery in Florence, Italy. My dad, Kenneth Klahn was in the famous Tenth Mountain Division, which was a super-elite organization that created a great legacy in battles known by the names of places: Riva Ridge, Mount Belvedere, and the Po River.

Maybe the memories of my own father has a little to do with my emotional connection to Christopher Rothko's story. He, too, is remembering his father's life.

Links:

Flags of Our Fathers-Movie
Florence American Cemetery
Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley's book about his late father, John "Doc" Bradley.
Tenth Mountain Division

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.

Rothko Vision

No. 3/No. 13 1949
Mark Rothko

We are studying the Abstract Expressionists at The Colorist. Jackson Pollock has been covered, and we continue now with Mark Rothko.

His book from the grave, The Artist's Reality, arrived from Amazon late last week, and I find it interesting that I agree with what I've read so far of this great "color field" painter's philosophy.

I offer the following principles or vision for abstraction from the introduction of the Rothko book:

1. Unity
2. Generalization
3. Ideas
4. Emotion

What are your thoughts when you read these "abstract" words?

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