Wolf Kahn Obligations

Bravo, Mr. Kahn. I couldn't agree with you more about having a sense of obligation to our culture. Our better angels thank you.

Wolf Kahn 2013

WOLF KAHN 6 June - 26 July 2013

Wolf Kahn, 2013

Color & Wolf Kahn

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Wolf Kahn, Color & Consequence

from Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe on Vimeo.


I find that embedded videos that are not You Tube load slower than anything You Tube.  What is up with that?

There is a river image in this exhibit that solves a compositional problem for me on a particular river work that has noodled around in my head for a number of years.  It is a transformative thing.  You may enjoy Wolf Kahn's color ideas, but his compositions are very edgy and deserve some study.

You're Welcome

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Dealing With The Wolf, In Which I Tell a Rock Climbing Story, Get Long-Winded, and Bring It Back Around To Art.

Riverside Grays

@6" x 6"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Every art has it's context.  Just because you want to paint the future thing, this doesn't mean you will necessarily have to lose the older things.  These things can co-exist: the new and the old.  Wolf Kahn employs the uber-abstractionism and expressionism of his era (which era still continues) and yet he paints nature.  It is a balancing act that has to be done; a voice that must be heard.


In a comparison from my days as a rock climber, I think of the old-timers (many of whom I have talked with and had the pleasure of being at the same crag with) who used a climbing trick of standing on their partner's shoulder to gain a high reach.  What do we painters do when we consider the earlier painters?  Do we stand on their shoulders, or do we put our foot on their face, so to speak, and say, I have no regard for you?  Whatever the case, we still find ourselves elevated to the higher stance by their work and its stature.


To continue the metaphor, I well remember the first time I led through on a hard rock climb that my mentor crumped on.  He offered me to lead through, which was a compliment.  For some inexplicable reason, the thing worked out, and I climbed past my master (just once).  To fill out the analogy, this climb was rated the same as a particular climb that is near Los Angeles and was the hardest climb of the decade of the nineteen fifties.  I met the first ascensionist and we got to be on a first name basis for a short while.  My hero, whose work was breakthrough stuff a few decades past, was now easy to match.  But, only because the march of time had brought his knowledge and techniques forward for every man to obtain with some effort.


I tell this story because I often think of the challenges we face when we try to be good painters today.  There are more paintings to paint and we can certainly try to paint to the highest standards, if we just put in the effort. 


This stream of thought is my response to an article about Wolf Kahn at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in 2007.  Anyway, you should go read that if you are still with me this far. An excerpt:

The question of whether to use landscape to "capture" a moment, place, or light thereof, or whether to use it as a means to deliver personal self-expression, is one of the philosophical forks in the road for some landscape artists who choose one or the other. Kahn seems to be well aware of the question and quite satisfied not to answer it. Color can be subservient to place, or place subservient to color. Image can be subservient to abstraction, or abstraction subservient to image. All could have come from nature or from the artist's process. That's the game, so to speak. Find the painting.

I Enjoy Making Analogies Between Rock Climbing and Art Making, But Nobody Ever Gets It.  I Do Them Anyway.

Upcountry Companion

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By The Orange Butte

7" x 3.3"

Pastel

Casey Klahn

Here is the companion piece to yesterday's painting.  The studio is abuzz with activity.  My two grade schoolers come out and play on the computer, Lorie organizes and designs the framing for my next shows, and I *supervise*.

Yesterday, while we were looking at frames and Lorie was crunching numbers for the frame order, I took apart an old work in the frame, wiped it down, and remade it to my liking.  Wolf Kahn talks about painting as a struggle.  He says, of a painting, that it is complete "when its potential no longer  requires articulation."  Chew on that tidbit for a while.

So, Lorie comes into the room, next, and says, "quit making paintings!"  She knows we have to get ready for the shows.

Video Interview and Opening - Wolf Kahn, The Early Years, 1950 - 1970

Wolf Kahn, by Justin Spring. 1996.




For some reason I have been looking at Wolf Kahn's early works, mostly in my copy of the book by Justin Spring.  Why did I overlook these before?  Because I am working on subtlety in my studio, Kahn's early monocolors and minimalist works are an inspiration to me.  I really love the ones where he just pushes one or two intense colors through a tonalist surface, such as the one titled Sunset, 1967.


By coincidence, the Jerald Melberg Gallery, in Charlotte, NC,  just finished an exhibition of Wolf Kahn's early works, from the fifties and sixties.  Here is a video series with a very informal interview of Kahn, and if you want to get a better look at some of the paintings, go to the website for the exhibition.

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Write This Down And Put It In Italics

Aperture Bright

11" x 14"

Charcoal & Pastel

Casey Klahn

Wolf Kahn:

I’m not so involved in description because I think that the greatest sin an artist can be accused of is telling people things that they already know. And you can write that down and put it in italics. Our aim as artists is to use ourselves as agents for expanding possibilities; and if you’re just doing something that’s conventional and everyday, you’re not doing it right. Of course, we constantly struggle against our own conventions because that’s one of our worst difficulties—trying to avoid doing something that we already know how to do.

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I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

OTOH, Artist's Quotes

Everyone is wise until he speaks. Irish Proverb.

"I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art,"  Balthus.

"Words may show a man's wit, but actions his meaning, " Benjamin Franklin.

"I had placed my stick on the table, as I do every evening. It had been specially made to suit my height, to enable me to walk without too much difficulty. As I was standing up, a customer called to me: 'Monsieur, don't forget your pencil.' It was very unkind, but most funny," Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

"But often it's doubtful whether the logic of the work itself and the words used to describe it really have anything to do with each other,"  Thom Mayne.

"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale,"  D.H. Lawrence.

"Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own," Peter Anderson.

"Hear the meaning within the word,"  William Shakespeare.

"Self expression shouldn't be the goal,"  Wolf Kahn.

 

2010 Artist Quote of the Day.

On The Other Hand - Artist's Quotes

Artist's Quotes.


"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else,"  Pablo Picasso.

"Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid, " Jules Feiffer.

"Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman," Guillaume Apollinaire.
 
"Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things--the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by," Willem deKooning.

"The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious,"  Lester Bangs.

"Its hard to find the light when you're born in the dark,"  Emile Zola.

"I don't know what to do with my arms. It just makes me feel weird and I feel like people are looking at me and that makes me nervous,"  Tyra Banks.

"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master,"  Leonardo da Vinci.

"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass,"  Fran Lebowitz.



Note:

Loriann Signori is treating her readers to fresh quotes that she gleaned from attending master artist Wolf Kahn's recent talk.  One thing I like about Mr. Kahn is that he doesn't play the, "I know something you don't know" game.  He generously shares his painting wisdom, and then the challenge is on your shoulders.  Paint well, my friends!

Loriann Sees Wolf

Please read Loriann's after-action report on attending a Wolf Kahn seminar.  You will get much from his quotes.  My own Wolf Kahn studies lie here.


Also, around the blogosphere, see Katherine A. Cartwright's post of her Laws of Nature Series as it stands so far.  I am a fan.

A Wolf Kahn Curriculum

After Wolf Kahn, #1
9.5" x 6"
Pastel on Paper
Casey Klahn

"Painting is easy, till you know how."
Edgar Degas. h/t Wolf Kahn.

Speaking of Kahn, I found an interesting lesson plan at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts: Wolf Kahn, A Curriculum of his Life, Work and Influences. I didn't like the section where a teacher assigns common meanings to colors, but if you stand back from the whole lesson plan, you see a nice hodge-podge of data on contemporary beliefs about color. Actually, it is a collection of various lesson plans on color, with an emphasis on Modern art and current artists. There are also a lot of art and education links embedded in this plan.

The Wolf Kahn images are enough to recommend this pdf. file to you.

Quote, Hoyt Center curriculum,

These lesson plans are the result of the work of the teachers who have attended the Columbia Education Center’s Summer Workshop. CEC is a consortium of teacher from 14 western states dedicated to improving the quality of education in the rural, western, United States, and particularly the quality of math and science Education. CEC uses Big Sky Telegraph as the hub of their telecommunications network that allows the participating teachers to stay in contact with their trainers and peers that they have met at the Workshops.

Three Big Years

Turquoise Forest
13" x 9"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn

“Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.”

Vincent Van Gogh


The 16th of December will mark the three year anniversary of this newsletter-style blog which I named The Colorist. That turned out to be a good move, because for some reason that name has struck a chord, and The Colorist is widely read and many have chosen to link here over the years. Why do people read The Colorist? Partly to see my art, and partly to read the process essays that I write. Occasionally, some nugget of interest brings a reader in via the magic of Key Words.

Did you know that I, personally, am not "The Colorist?" I may paint colorist works, but the name of this blog was meant to describe a place to explore, report and essay on the central theme of colorist art. Of course, anything else that interests me makes it in here, too. I styled it as a newsletter, with a mish-mash of interesting content, all held together under the central theme of "why make this art?"

Am I any closer to that manifesto? I would say, in retrospect, that I have written, and you have very kindly read, a number of things that are descriptive of the artist's process. If that draws someone in to take a closer look at my artworks, then I guess the words have helped. I am told (and the artists in my audience will attest to this experience) that the longer someone looks at my paintings, the more they see. It is like entering a room, and then somehow one finds another hidden room, and then another one, and so on.

So what is a contemporary "colorist?" Did the high mark of overly colorful art end in the nineteen hundred and oughts with the Fauvists in France? My very good blogging friend, Adam Cope, (who does brilliantly colored paintings of the Dordogne region of France) observed this week to me that we all use brilliant color now, and the inference was kind of, "so what?" I couldn't agree more - so what? The market for art supplies is sick with brilliant pigments, and we are rich - filthy rich - with paint intensities. Is it like eating that candy corn in the fall, or that sugar cookie in the winter, and rediscovering why you don't eat them all year? They are soooo sweet! Too much!

Not a few of the artists I admire in the present day use subdued color religiously, and to wonderful effect. Art cannot be "all about color," as these artists prove. But, why do I persist? To be honest - and maybe you've noticed - for the first time this past year, browns made it into my palette.

I think my favorite artist, Wolf Kahn, has said it best. He indicates that there is a knack, or talent if you will, for bringing colors together, that either you have or you don't. Put another way, I would say that the way to failure with intense colors is broad, but the path to success is narrow. High key colors are like dynamite - useful if you know what you're doing.

For those of you who've been around the whole 3 years, reading TC, I thank you. There are others who've been fellow travelers for one or two years, and I am equally thankful for you. As luck would have it, there are also more new readers lately. Welcome, and I hope the next three years will profit you as much as these past three have done me.

Colorist Studio Update - Bumpdated

Bumpdate! See below for updated items of interest.

Casey Klahn Mugging for the Camera
Photo: Lorie Klahn

Here are a few things for your weekend reading interest. I made the time yesterday to listen to contemporary master, Wolf Kahn, giving a speech at Wheaton College. It is occasioned around a show of his and Emily Mason's works, and he speaks for 50 minutes (fair warning for your Internet time!) on the "Six Reasons Not to Paint Landscapes." Find it here.

Two American artist bloggers are live blogging their European vacations, complete with museum reports. Jala Pfaff, of Colorado, is in London viewing John Singer Sargent, and Kelly Borsheim, an expat living in Florence, Italy, is giving us Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt in Vienna.

Back to Wolf Kahn for a moment. Kahn is known for painting barns, and fine artists realize that that isn't about sentiment if you can help it. I like the formal parts: the negative spaces, the position of the barn upon the land, the color planes, the leading of the eye, the bigness, etc. Bob Lafond has been doing barns at Mark and Remark, and has one here that I really love.

Time for a cup of coffee. I have been busy in the studio trying to finish the last few artworks for my upcoming Sausalito show. Other challenges I'm planning for are framing and making sure my booth is ready for the unusual set-up at Sausalito (they provide the artist's booth - I usually bring my own). Not to mention the long drive to the Bay Area.

Visitors to the Sausalito Art Festival will get to see all of my River Series pastels in one place for the first time. Probably the only time they will appear together, BTW.

The music stage schedule at the Sausalito Art Festival (Sept. 5-7, 2009) has been announced. Always top drawer, this year's Sausalito music venue is themed as a 40th. anniversary Woodstock tribute. Many San Fransisco Bay Area bands were there, and will be on tap for this special event. My faves? Country Joe McDonald, Johnny Winter, and the Jefferson Starship.

Sausalito Art Festival.
Marin County.

Watching the River Flow

River Pilings, Hoquiam
@ 4" x 3"
Graphite
Casey Klahn

The river of my studio life flows on. Thanks for stopping here to watch the progress.

Brian McGurgan has provided us with a review of his visit to the current exhibit at the Ameringer-Yohe Gallery in Manhattan: Wolf Kahn, Toward the Larger View: A Painter’s Process. I found the following quote inspirational: "...color and tone are pushed to their extreme," Wolf Kahn. Note the pdf catalog at the gallery web site. A feast for the heart and the eyes.

Color and tone are
pushed to their extreme,
Wolf Kahn


That WK quote about his recent work is like balm to me. I struggle with the blown-out look of extreme value ranges, but still go there like a moth to the flame. Such is the attraction of pure color in all of it's permutations.

National Day of Prayer. My prayer is to be looser in my art, at the same time as my technique is improving. My God is certainly the God of paradoxes, and so I have faith that He'll answer my prayer!

Incidentally, Twitter Casey Klahn is here.

Watching the River Flow

Intuition Revisited

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

This is a re-post of a favorite essay.


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.

The choices that a child makes are very intuitive


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



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 pastel medium is "made to order" for the artist who wants to favor intuitive creation


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.

Riposte -Repost

I am making a fine recovery from my operation on Tuesday. It will be a while before I am 100%, as my medical professional wife and I agree, it would be hard to find a more painful operation to have done. Meanwhile, enjoy a re-posting of this Barn subject essay.

Anthology of American Literature, McMichael.

Elijah Shifrin at Art & Critique has written about my barn and rural building subjects in his article, "Casey Klahn: Barns And The Abstract Wizard Of Washington".

Elijah is thoughtfully focused on the abstract qualities of my building paintings. I have carefully tried to avoid being cast as "the barn guy". The reason is that sentiment is so easily attached to this great American symbol, and yet sentiment is bygone content in contemporary art. The challenge has been to de-construct this awe inspiring structure and make it relevant for today's art.

My Barn
Photo: Lorie Klahn

Working against my efforts to keep the barn image down have been a number of forces. Sales, believe it or not, has been a force tugging at my shirt tail. The popularity of this theme and image, the American Gambrel barn, has been so high that sales of anything barn related are a fairly easy turn. The great thematic content that is associated with the barn is reflected by the book cover that has my Red Barn with Ramp image on it: An Anthology of American Literature, by McMichael. Another force is the fact that I live out here in the rural landscape where every farm has a big barn.

Barn Sketch
Pencil
Casey Klahn

Here in Davenport, WA, the barn isn't just American myth writ large, but an actual part of our lives. To be sure, the way of life is changing. The Heath family pioneered this farm at a spot about five minutes walk down canyon from my house. When the internal combustion engine started to replace livestock for locomotion, the farmers were able to build their houses and outbuildings uphill and farther from spring water sources. My family are the third owners of this farm, and the agricultural roots are gradually being eclipsed for a number of reasons. How wonderful for us to not see another house from ours!

Violet Oil Drum
7.5" x 10.5"
Soft Pastel
Casey Klahn

I'm heartened that Elijah has seen the abstract elements that are key to these building paintings. Shapes, colors and position are the content, more than the buildings themselves. Don't get me wrong. I'm as much a sucker for the deep meaning of the American barn as the next guy. My father built a barn once upon a time. And, the building in my iconic painting is my own barn.

Thumbnail of Barn
Pastel
Casey Klahn

The architect who designed the Gambrel barn was a flat out genius. The way the barn structure occupies the open land in rural America is stunning in scope and even vision. My barn, which is no longer used for any working good, occupies a side hill and commands a territorial view. I have some pride in owning it, but the Great Horned Owl that frequents it seems to have a bigger claim by virtue of time spent there.

Behind the Garage
Graphite on Sketch Paper
7" x 8.5"
Casey Klahn

Wolf Kahn uses the barn image a great deal in his work. He has taken it down to the pictorial elements with content that describes the position of the building on a slope or prominence, and elements like through-looking doors and windows, and severe value gradients.

The Heins' Farm
7.5" 15"
Casey Klahn
Private Collection

The story of my Red Barn with Ramp image I have told many times. I received a box of twelve "Wolf Kahn" Terrage pastels made by Diane Townsend, and in a first moment of inspiration I made a very small thumbnail sketch with the colors. It was the barn image just as it is seen on the book cover, except that sketch was about 1 inch square. I was in the moment, entranced by pure color and by the tactile qualities of the big, thick pastel sticks. Abstract shapes were the tools, and color was the content.

Elijah has written a good back story to the barn and building themes. The literary link to The Wizard of Oz is apt. The elemental truth of my surroundings is hard to contradict. Wind, sun, sky and agriculture. Can an artist overcome his environment long enough to forge content that aspires to higher art? I suggest not thinking too hard, but letting the hand and eye draw intuitively. Maybe that's the only way.

Excellence

Bouldering at Joshua Tree

Photo Credit: Lorie Klahn

There has been a strong case put forth against excellence in art. The whole Postmodern Art movement declares that "dominant paradigms" need upturning, like beauty and skill.

My contemporary hero, Wolf Kahn, wrote that he regrets his latter-day skills in technique, because formerly, without his expertise as an oil painter, he was freer to "overwork" his images. Our current subject, Henri Matisse, worked years to undo his formal art training in order to create his Modern Art statement of pure, "over-wrought" and sensational color.

Because of Wolf Kahn's influence, I frequently take a pastel work and bring it well past any coherent finished point. I literally ruin the artwork, over-filling the tooth of the paper and muddying the colors. In the process, many wonderful discoveries occur! New color combinations and compositions come about. New possibilities with the medium are revealed.

In the dock for excellence, one can argue that the very definition of the word "artist" includes the idea of skill. And as my prime exhibit, I refer you to the high quality of current art. Evidence of Postmodernism's faults is everywhere present.

How to reconcile my personal beliefs about rudimentary values in art versus excellent technique? Maybe there doesn't need to be a reconciliation when one considers that there is a continuity to the artist's progress from his early to his late works. The unity of an artist's corpus is undeniable in the fact that both his early works and his later works are created by the same hand.

I feel that many more paintings await me with greater powers as a pastelist. I'll be thinking about the finer use of my medium as my studio life progresses this year.

Round Up

TBR, May 2007

This may be an "open head - disgorge thoughts" post. The reason I put it that way is I'll be darned if I can find a common thread for all of them.

First, this Wolf Kahn interview is from The Brooklyn Rail, and WK has some new things to say. He gets into process versus results. I like what he says about his disagreement with Clement Greenberg on the subject of "flatness". And he pays homage to Hans Hofmann, his Modernist teacher. Do follow the link on Hofmann, which leads to a stunning new website ( I think it's new, anyway).

Read the interview even if you're not that "into" Kahn, because he has a great lot to say about artist's self doubt and discipline. You can't help but feel good about your own work, even if you feel like a failure sometimes, if you adopt his attitudes.

And, the keeper quote from WK is this:

I’m not so involved in description because I think that the greatest sin an artist can be accused of is telling people things that they already know. And you can write that down and put it in italics. Our aim as artists is to use ourselves as agents for expanding possibilities; and if you’re just doing something that’s conventional and everyday, you’re not doing it right. Of course, we constantly struggle against our own conventions because that’s one of our worst difficulties—trying to avoid doing something that we already know how to do.

Wolf Kahn with David Kapp and Robert Berlind

On the subject of Washington State Art Bloggers, I missed a local artist in my last post who is blogging and has a fascinating life story as a fourth generation artist. Kathleen Cavender.

Over at my blog Pastel, I have been doing a Plein Air Project. I have an interesting plein airist to show you who works in oils, however. Jason Waskey, from Seattle. His usual fare is daily still life paintings, but he is on a road trip and posting his small daily works and a photo of his easel set-up in front of his landscape subject. And, as if that's not enough, he adds a map reference, too. Great fun.

Lastly, I have been keeping this blog I found a secret for long enough. Enjoy looking at Old Paint, which posts a dated artwork or illustration and labels it by artist and year.