The Artist Profiles Project

Mike Price at Work

2012-01-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

I came across these images while organizing the complete slides of the late sculptor Michael Price for his wife, Susan Davis Price. Price was a figurative sculptor who was influenced by Marino Marini and Giacomo Manzu and whose work was often inspired by scripture. He worked in clay, and like every sculptor written about on this blog, he knew how to cast his original clay pieces into plaster and bronze, and he did it himself (in a foundry he built by hand), often with the help of the students he taught at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he lived.

Shot in October and November of 1971 with beautiful Ektachrome slide film, these images show Price in nearly every stage of the 6,500-year-old process know as lost wax investment casting. Inevitably, they also show Mike's characteristic good humor and sweet personality.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Early in the process, Price melts the wax, applies it to the inside of a rubber mold, and inserts pins into the cast wax head.

Here, Price encases the wax in an investment mold, made of plaster, silica and sand, and wraps it tightly with chicken wire.

At this point, the investment mold is placed in a kiln for several days and heated ("burnt out"). This stage melts the wax and burns out the carbon, creating a void that will filled by the molten bronze.

The bronze, heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, is poured into the investment mold.

When the bronze has cooled and has been broken out of its investment mold, we see Price chasing, welding, and grinding to prepare the piece for its final state.

Lastly, Price applies a chemically-induced color, called a patina, to the near-finished bronze.

See more images from this collection on our Flickr page.

Learn more about lost wax investment casting here.

Thanks to Susan Davis Price for the use of these images.

Jonathan Silver

2011-08-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

J.Silver in studio, 1983

“Silver’s sculpture is steeped in classical and religious myth. It is assembled, however, with a keen sense of modernist history, in particular, of the formal and psychological implications of Cubism and Surrealism. In Silver’s work, myth is not quiet and controllable, but something that grows and evolves on its own and obliges mere mortals to flail away in its wake.” (Michael Brenson, 1984, The New York Times)

Barbarian killing his wife, 1985

Jonathan Silver was born in New York City in 1937. He decided not to go to high school, preferring to be educated by tutors at home. He received a B.S. degree in general studies from Columbia University and later enrolled in the Art History Ph.D. program under the famed historian, Meyer Schapiro. Schapiro was impressed by Silver’s intellectual prowess and supported his dissertation on Giacometti. Silver, however, started making sculpture seriously in the late 1960’s and never completed his doctorate. As a Columbia student, he drew in Peter Agostini’s class between 1960 and 1966, where he met future colleagues Christopher Cairns and Bruce Gagnier in 1965.

head, 1974, plaster

head, 1975, plaster

During the 1970’s Silver worked alongside Cairns, collaborating on ideas for heads and figures. The two approached their work with the ambition and stamina of scientists tackling big questions, in it for the long haul; it was clear they neither expected, nor were interested in, quick or dramatically “personalized” solutions. Cairns and Silver developed a common method of assembling and reassembling, or embedding fragments of one head or figure into another, thus creating new works. The sculpture produced during this period was shown by Silver and Cairns at the 4x10 Gallery in New York in 1976. The same year they showed at Haverford College’s Comfort Gallery with their fellow alumnus from Agostini’s class, Bruce Gagnier. Cairns and Silver also exhibited together at the Weatherspoon Gallery in Greensboro, NC, in 1978, and at the New York Studio School in 1979.

Agamemnon, 1977, mixed media

Silver began working on larger figures in the early 80’s. Abounding with classical, mythical and art historical references, these ambitious works further developed the method of combining and recombining elements from several different pieces. Elaborately constructed, they often included found objects or sections of the plaster molds themselves. Wounded Amazon, which is in the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, dates from this period. Silver liked to say his work “tended towards the Greco-Oriental.”

Wounded Amazon, 1984, plaster

A visit to the Medici Chapel while traveling in Italy with Cairns in 1982 was formative. Silver began experimenting with placing groups of figures together in a room, leading to his Room Dedicated to Septimius Severus, exhibited with other large pieces at the Gruenbaum Gallery in Soho in 1985. Shows at the Victoria Munroe Gallery followed in the early 1990’s.

Chapel of Septimius Severus, 1985-86

During the last seven years of his life, Silver worked on rooms of sculpture, including the Lower Room installed at the Sculpture Center in 1990. Consisting of a dramatic ensemble of figures evoking the disabling effects of memory and aging, the room was filled with figures seized by uncontrollable and incomprehensible forces. Silver’s late works were often scenes of torment or rage, where the expressionistic surface treatment contributed to their high emotional pitch.

The Lower Room, 1989, mixed media

“Silver’s figures are survivors. They are vulnerable, yet unalterable, sacrificial, yet in command. Violence has been done to them, but through their statuesque power, or through the force of their will or rage, they retain the ability to avenge or punish, and to impose themselves on their situations.” (Michael Brenson, 1995)

Birth of Venus, 1985-86

Chance, 1987-1990, plaster

Silver spent his entire life drawing from the model. He would stand at an easel, drawing with a number 2 pencil, making small, exquisitely constructed figure drawings. He also drew incessantly while watching television.

head, 1977, mixed media

To support himself, Silver taught Art History at Montclair State College in Montclair, NJ. Noreen Sanders, a student of his in the late 70’s, wrote in an email, "In class, he would walk up on the stage, in front of the screen and directly into the paintings he put in the slide projector… talking passionately about the piece (good or bad) – smoking Kool cigarettes with his saggy-ass jeans and bits of plaster stuck in his hair. He would assign novels from the same time period. Before class, you could catch him playing piano – some Schubert piece or other. Or he’d recite poetry. For me, the work came alive."

Silver was a frequent lecturer and visiting critic at the New York Studio School and at Haverford College, where he had a profound influence on students for over twenty years, inspiring those who worked closely with him by his penetrating intelligence, erudition and aesthetic probity and his willingness to share his perceptions. Silver wrote and published extensively on art historical topics. His articles on Giacometti and David Smith were published by ArtNews.

The New Gretchen, 1991

Jonathan Silver died in New York in 1992 at the age of 54. There was a posthumous show of his heads at the Sculpture Center in 1996 and one of heads and figures at Lori Bookstein Fine Art in 2008, co-curated by Cairns’ son Nicholas.

figure, 1983

Text adapted with permission from an essay in the exhibition catalog for the 2006 show Five Sculptors.

Additional photos of Jonathan Silver's work can be viewed on our Flickr page.

Photo of Silver is from the announcement card of the 2008 exhibition of his work at Lori Bookstein Fine Art.

See also:
Jonathan Silver: Drawings

Agostini in Soho (a guest post by Scott Sherk)

2011-08-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

One day, sometime in the 70’s when I was attending Haverford College, I was invited by my teacher, Chris Cairns, to go to New York to do something with Peter Agostini. Chris had organized a retrospective exhibition of Agostini’s sculpture at the college, and we were returning the work to Agostini’s Greene Street building. I seem to recall that we had some difficulty locating Agostini—the buzzer at the building was either non-existent or broken. There was waiting around.

Soho in those days was a very different place. Large trucks were parked along the loading docks and the area looked rough. The sidewalks were mostly empty with an occasional worker passing. Trash was present. Greene Street was barren— no boutiques, no bars, no cappuccino, no tourists. I was left on the street to guard the van. Sometime later I was sent out to find coffee, which I bought from a window somewhere, maybe on Broome Street. There were no restaurants. Sometime later, I helped load things into Agostini’s elevator and into the basement. Upstairs his loft was raw, filled with stuff, and very dark. He was still living in the East Village. I vaguely remember a washing machine.

Eventually Chris, Agostini, and I walked over to West Broadway. Chris and Agostini were deep in conversation with me following a step behind when we were hailed from across the street, “Peter! Pete! Great to see you!” Agostini stopped in his tracks and turned to face a dapper young man who was rapidly crossing Spring Street. The guy was really happy to see Agostini and gushed about him and his work. This short conversation reached its climax when he said something like, “Let’s do something, Peter. I really want to show your work. Let’s do a show.” Agostini looked alarmed and said, “Can’t you see I’m talking to my friend Chris?” and we walked away.

“Jeez”, I thought, ”so this is how it works”.

Scott Sherk is an artist living in Pennsylvania with his wife, artist Pat Badt. He is a professor of art at Muhlenberg College and his work is exhibited regularly at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York. His work can be viewed at thethirdbarn.org.

Learn more about Peter Agostini on his profile.

Christopher Cairns: A Portrait of the Artist (a guest post by Michael O'Keefe)

2011-04-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

Cairns in studio 1985

Teacher is a title that I, as an artist, reserve for a handful of people. Of course, I learn lessons from many people, in some cases from idiots on the street or children at the park. And indeed I have learned enormous amounts of invaluable information from dead artists via their works. However, in spite of being an artist whose resume lists five different undergraduate and postgraduate educational institutions, I would tell you that I have only had a few teachers. Christopher Cairns is one of my teachers.

Between 2000 and 2002 I worked at Haverford College as the Departmental Assistant to the Art Department where Cairns, at the age of 60, was wrapping up a 35-year teaching career. Following this time at Haverford I lived in New York City for two years. During these two years I would often see Cairns, both in the city and at Haverford where I spent many weekends working in the foundry, helping to cast his sculptures. It is during this four-year period that I was deeply affected by Chris Cairns, his work, and my proximity to his world. And it is from the vantage point that I had during these four years that I will try and make a portrait of Chris Cairns, not as a teacher, but as an artist.

It is worth noting that during the four years I have mentioned, Cairns only visited my studio twice to give any formal critique of my work. Cairns believes in the development of the individual through working. Hard work was regularly noted as a virtue in Cairns’ classroom. In fact, he often made the point that hard work was a much more essential ingredient for artistic success than talent. I also believe that Cairns made few official visits to my studio because he was quite confident that I was receiving a strong dose of influence by simply being around him and all that that entailed.

I was often invited to have dinner with the Cairns family, where I got to examine the collection of art in the Cairns home. As good as the meals always were, the real thrill for me was discovering the works of art there, works that, underneath the distinctive elements, shared a kinship. In seeing the way Cairns lives, surrounded by these works of art, it was apparent that he does not see himself as a purely self-contained artist whose work has no precedence or influential context. In this modest home in Haverford, Pennsylvania one finds a few works by Cairns himself, but other artists made most of the works of art displayed there. On a number of occasions I sat in this home and heard stories of how these various artists fit into a puzzle of influence and commonality. These artists include: Peter Agostini, Francoise Andre, Alexis Cairns, Nicholas Cairns, Bruce Gagnier, Joseph Goto, Walter Hall, Fritz Janschka, Earl Kerkam, Marko Krsmanovic, Michael Lekakis, Mike Price, Scott Sherk, Jonathan Silver, Lance Solaroli, George Spaventa, Charles Stegeman and Kevin Tuttle. These are the artists that begin to give a context for the life and work of Christopher Cairns.

The context for Cairns’ sculpture is not limited to the 20th century. In fact, in various ways his work is in dialogue with much of the entire history of sculpture, excluding many of the fashions since the 1960’s. Cairns would often present slide shows of various works of art to his students. These were not formal presentations but rather impromptu commentary on works of art that he finds powerful. More often than not the content of these presentations would span huge periods of time and would skip across cultures and continents: An image of a Tilman Riemenschneider sculpture from the early 16th century would be followed by an image of an Ife sculpture from west Africa, then followed by a Giacometti sculpture from the early 20th century, all the while Cairns would be talking in ways that expressed much more concern for what these works shared rather than how they were different. This was a shocking contrast to a college professor of mine who told me the best thing I could do as a young artist would be to hunker down in the library and read every review in Art Journal starting with the year 1960. The prescription that Cairns would give to a young artist would be regular trips to the art museums, drawing from the drawings, paintings and sculptures housed there. On a bookshelf in Cairns’ home is a stack of drawing pads filled with drawings that show Cairns’ commitment to this practice. These are beautiful drawings that show a careful study of great works of art. These drawings also reveal a personal experience, a solitary sifting through the sea of great art.

In many of these same drawing pads one finds drawings made in front of a live model. Cairns based a lot of his teaching on the convention of working in clay or with drawing materials in front of a nude model. It was in the classroom of Peter Agostini at Columbia University during the academic year of 1965-66 that Cairns was first introduced to this way of working. Cairns has since continued to work in front of a model off and on, resulting in a deep understanding of human forms and how they relate, an understanding that underpins all of his work. Working from observation has rarely been an end in itself for Cairns. Instead it is a means to understand essential aspects of the language of sculpture, a means of becoming highly sensitive to proportion, balance, form, tension, etc. It is also a way to commune with his subject, the figure. Cairns has made a few sculptures that successfully render a rather straightforward figure through a process of observation, but most of his work is a departure from naturalistic or literalistic figuration.

The large figures that Cairns made in the 1980’s have a dynamic and beautifully realized combination of naturalistic, modeled forms and bare formal elements turned inside out. These female figures reveal Cairns’ interest in literature, history and religion. They are narrative, allegorical figures that embody aspects of the human condition, referring to ideas of sacrifice, suffering, love and death.

Black Madonna 1984, bronze, 6' high

When talking about sculpture, even sculpture that is made from direct observation of a still, live model, Cairns will use words such as movement, velocity, compression, torque, extension and tension: Cairns’ sculpture relies heavily on gesture as an animating element. This is most apparent in the large figures from the late 90’s through 2004, such as the large group installations Wieviel Stucke and Recognition / Remembrance. The “body language” of these figures contributes to their narrative but the gesture of the figures also serves to create dynamic movement between the primary expressive parts, most often being the head and the hands (and in some cases the feet). A few times I heard Cairns attribute this idea of heads and hands to Medieval Sculpture, and for good reason, but it is an idea that one can see throughout the history of sculpture. It is an idea that is rooted in essential human interaction: we find meaning in body language, but we rely most on hands and heads for critical expression and communication.

Wieviel stucke? 2000 plaster

The expression of Cairns’ work tends to be severe and grave. Consider Cairns’ Rack of Heads, a 12’ tall group of shelves that support about 35 different heads made over the span of fifteen years prior to 1996 when the piece was assembled. In this ensemble one can find heads that have a severe facial expression, that of agony or anguish, desperation or despair. But it is not simply the facial expressions that create the severity of the work. The overall scale of the piece is demanding; one is consumed when standing in front of this wall of sculptures. And when one approaches a single head they are not only confronted by the psychology of that sculpture but also by a lively surface. The urgency of Cairns’ expression is felt in every element of his sculpture, from the largest compositional element to the smallest evidence of how the work was touched by its maker.

Rack of Heads, 1996, bronze

The initial and most profound impact of Cairns' sculpture has little to do with surfaces. However, when one examines any of the work closely one is consistently seduced by the rich and wonderful surfaces of the work. The surfaces themselves are gestural and stirring. These surfaces offer insight into a process of making that is impulsive and technical, improvisational and precise.

Last head, 1976 plaster 30"h

In the 1970’s Cairns emerged from the heyday of Minimalism making sculptures that reinvigorated the figure as a vital subject. While many artists were beginning to use the figure in a Duchampian way, Cairns was making sculptures that expressed a full spectrum of human psychology. These sculptures were not made to be part of the spectacle of contemporary art. It was during this time that Cairns was working in dialog with Jonathan Silver. The two artists developed a way of working that, in a very fresh way, picked up where artists such as Rodin, Rosso, Giacometti, Picasso and Braque left off. In the early 70’s Cairns and Silver were focused on composing within the modernist motif of the isolated head. These heads from the 70’s have the complexity of analytical cubism and the austerity of Egyptian reserve heads. It was in the mid to late 70’s that Cairns began to apply the same concerns to the full figure. This work from the 70’s was made with a construction mentality, working variably in plaster and clay. Many of the full figures exploited the total range of possibilities that plaster offers as a sculpture material, a material that Cairns was introduced to while working as an assistant to Peter Agostini. With these sculptures conventional mold-making techniques were used not for the sake of reproducing a finished work but as a means to deconstruct and reconstruct the sculpture throughout the making process. Partial casts, plaster shards and discarded mold pieces were joined together to make new compositions. This making process had built into it conditions that inevitably led to new possibilities. The figures and heads that Cairns made in the 1970’s are some of the most exciting sculptures made in the past 50 years. These works of art pursued traditional sculptural language and contemporary concerns to their edge, unfolding beyond that edge in striking revelation.

Powell figure,1976, 40"h

I had the valuable experience of watching Cairns plan, prepare and execute the installation of two large exhibits of his work, once at The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery on the campus of Haverford College in 2004 and once at The Erickson Gallery in Philadelphia in 2001. In both cases, the entire group of work being shown, sometimes varying in scale and aesthetic concerns, was always thought of as a dramatic ensemble. Cairns understands the long-established power of sculpture when placed strategically within an architectural space, considering the narrative of how people approach that space, enter and move through it. The most intense presentation of Cairns’ sculpture can be found at his studio in Havertown, Pennsylvania, a 9,000 square foot former fire station that houses hundreds of sculptures and works in progress. This space displays many of the individual sculptures Cairns has made over the years, but more than that it displays Cairns deep love of sculpture and his unyielding and committed pursuit of a very distinct experience.

An old student and long-time friend of Cairns, Walter Hall, said it well when he wrote of Cairns, “I saw him (and still do) as an indefatigable, relentless spirit, unwavering in its conviction, driven to ends not defined by trends or fame or the marketplace, principled and uncompromising in the extreme.”

Michael O'Keefe is an artist living and working in Dallas, Texas. His work has been shown extensively in Dallas, where he is currently represented by the Valley House Gallery, as well as in New York City and Pennsylvania. O'Keefe teaches drawing and sculpture at various colleges as well as non-academic institutes in the Dallas area. Learn more at www.michaelokeefestudio.com.

Photo of Cairns by Joan Kanes.

Charles Seliger (a guest post by Nicholas Cairns)

2010-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Charles Seliger (1926-2009) represents an interesting crosscurrent to the general trend lines of what is called the Abstract Expressionist movement. A first generation AbExer, albeit the youngest of the group, Seliger somehow managed to avoid the pitfalls of both the fame and the ridiculous obsession with scale that plagued so many of his contemporaries. Throughout a career that spanned seven decades, he was able to maintain a near monofocus on his interest, which, as he stated very early on, was to ‘apostrophize micro-reality’.

Hidden Skeleton 1945

Creating small paintings that rarely exceeded 30 inches in any dimension, and were often much smaller, Seliger painted an intimate world of kaleidoscopic and biomorphic forms that suggest microcosmic life. In his own words: “My work, even when most abstract, reflects the natural world. Strata of the earth, forms relating to botany and biology and the ocean depths, all figure in the imagery of my work, no matter how abstract. The images are developed with a feeling for the intricacy of the structure of matter. There is a sense of something happening organically among the forms. The images are changing, there is suggestion of movement in the earth, of botanical development, always a sense of growth. A metamorphosis occurs.”

Chrysanthemums 1952

In his teens and early 20’s, Seliger developed a close association with two figures who would prove to be instrumental in his maturation as an artist. Seliger first met Jimmy Ernst in 1943 at Peggy Guggenheim’s renowned Art of this Century gallery, where Jimmy was Peggy’s secretary and where Seliger had his first one man show in 1945 at the age of 19. On the first day that they met, Jimmy, after seeing one of Seliger’s paintings, suggested that Charles look at the British publication, London Bulletin, that presented the work of European Surrealist artists like Jimmy’s father, the German painter Max Ernst. The work presented in this magazine, particularly that of Max Ernst, had a profound effect on Seliger and it was through careful study of these Surrealist paintings that Charles began to develop a painting method that used a variety of automatic means to generate a range of unpredictable and non-preconceived naturalistic imagery. It was these processes and the imagery that emerged from them that would serve as the bedrock of his work for the rest of his career.

Luminous Field 1965

It was also during this early period that Seliger encountered Mark Tobey, a Pacific Northwest artist. Tobey, a Bahai, painted on a small scale and with a certain Eastern philosophical or mesmeric/mystical approach that connected to Seliger’s ethos. Tobey had quite an effect on many New York artists of the day, particularly Jackson Pollock, who made a habit of attending all of Tobey’s Willard Gallery shows in NYC, and whose most characteristic work appears, at times, to be simply a scaled up and sped up version of the intricately woven and near-etched paintings of Mark Tobey. But for Seliger, Tobey’s influence was more ingrained. Seliger, through Tobey, must have seen a legitimate alternative to the large scale, often breezy, paintings of the day in NYC, a way of painting that allowed for an attachment to the subject that was intimate and not distant, reflective and meditative, not concept or ‘action’ driven. And the small scale and finely drawn elements in the work of both Seliger and Tobey encourage a certain reflectivity on the part of viewers as well, in effect willing them to stand very close to the work, and to peer into it as one would into a telescope or microscope.

Prophecy 1985

Seliger lived most of his adult life in Mount Vernon, New York, where he maintained a full-time job at Commercial Decal for 5 decades. He painted at night when he returned from his job and, working slowly and steadily, often produced no more than 10 paintings a year. From 1989 to the present, Charles Seliger has been represented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery on 57^th St. in NYC.

Runic Veil 1989

“'I need not be afraid of the void. The void is part of my person. I need to enter consciously into it.' This is a quote from Paul Tillich… It struck me that it is this void I enter when I paint… by making it a part of yourself one can then deal better with the despair. For me the void is the endless changing-changeless world of organic being. Becoming from this void, I try to extract (from my experience during the process of painting) some visual evidence of what I see or feel in the void. No matter how I plan a painting, or try to work the concept out in advance, I fail. Only when I enter the painting as a void where I know nothing but must retrieve from the void evidence of my consciousness – evidence of the struggle of the organism to become, to emerge… only to pass again therein is the never ending cause of despair… but one must carry the void within – and not fear but rather celebrate its beauties, ecstasies and endless complication… beyond our minds. I never seem to know where my paintings come from – or how they come about. One must look into the emptiness and the artist must not come back empty handed." – 1972

Transcendence 1993

Nicholas Cairns is a painter who has exhibited in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Dallas. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, artist Elizabeth Wade. See his work online at www.nicholascairns.com.

All biographical details and quotes are taken from Charles Seliger by Francis O'Connor

Peter Agostini's 12th Street Studio, as Photographed by David Carrow

2010-12-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

For most of the 1960’s, Peter Agostini had a studio on 12^th Street in Manhattan, between Avenues B and C. In the early 70’s, he purchased a building on Greene Street in Soho, and the12th Street studio was left unused for several years.

David Carrow, who was a student of Agostini’s at the New York Studio School, and later, his graduate assistant at UNC Greensboro, remembers telling Agostini he wanted to photograph the old studio before it was cleared out. “The place had become sort of a tomb," he told me recently. "It was very quiet and dusty. There was no activity in there, which was so interesting. I remember just saying, I gotta get in here and take some pictures because this is just fantastic with the light coming in on all the plaster and just the kind of decay and deterioration that was there, because nobody had been moving things around for a while.”

The resulting photographs, 20 in number, show the studio as it stood sometime in the early 70’s. Agostini worked mostly in plaster during his years on 12^th Street, making many of his famous swells, cast balloons, drapery and found objects, and these pieces can be seen as they sat on that day, abandoned and in disrepair, covered in dust, beautifully lit by a combination of natural light and fluorescents.

The studio space measured 125 by 25 feet, with concrete floors, a sink, one skylight and a four-burner stove, the only source of heat. Eventually the building, across the street from Public School 61, was condemned and became a parking lot. Where the pieces in the photos are today is unknown, as is the exact date these photographs were made.

See more of these photos on our Flickr page.

Click photos to enlarge.

Learn more about Peter Agostini on his profile.

Christopher Cairns: A Short Video

2010-12-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

"Age makes no difference, whether a sculpture's 7,000 years old or whether it was just made. It makes no difference in friendships. If you've got the temperament, if the temperament's there, that's enough."

Photographer Richard Anderson made this 6-minute video, Chris Cairns on Sculpture, Life, Art, Catastrophe and Music, in the summer of 2010. Interviewed in his Havertown, Pennsylvania studio against a backdrop of life-sized plaster figures, Cairns talks about art and his friendships with composers George Rochberg and Michael Hersch. The video images are accompanied by music by Hersch and Rochberg.

Chris Cairns on Sculpture, Life, Art, Catastrophe, and Music from Richard Anderson on Vimeo.

Francoise Andre

2010-10-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

Francoise Andre, 1962

“Andre’s work is full of the sense of what has been lost of certainty and stability in a world full of turmoil.” (Victoria Donohoe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 2003)

“For me, painting is the act of uniting thinking and emotions regarding all that is happening in human evolution, by utilizing the means of all times, and even from more than one civilization. All this is so terribly enormous, and I am not so amazed anymore to have spent so much time doing it. I think . . . that man and the earth remain at the core of my research.” (Francoise Andre, 1993, translated from the French)

Jan Cox, 1985, 2.10 x 2.2 m

When she was just five years old, Francoise Andre announced to her parents, “I want to be a painter.” As the story goes, the three were standing hand-in-hand in front of Jan Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in the Cathedral of Ghent, Belgium. The very next day, Andre’s father bought her paints and brushes, and she created her first painting, a tree with a single apple in it.

So began an artistic career that would eventually span almost eight decades and four countries on two continents. By the end of her life, Andre’s work had appeared in exhibitions in Europe, Canada, and throughout the United States, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle. Her paintings can be found in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D. C., and the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, among others.

Born in Vendee, France in 1926 to Franco-Belgian parents, Andre was a descendant of famed collector and Hellenist Alphonse Willems, composer Florent Schmitt, French revolutionary Talleyrand, and portraitists from the court of Louis XIV. When Andre was a teenager in Belgium during the war, she and her family had nothing to eat but beans for a time. As a result of this deprivation, she developed osteoporosis and dealt with life-long back problems.

She was educated at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the Roger Institut voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, and studied with Marcel Gromaire at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.

Landscape, 1988, 24" x 48"

In 1951, spurred by a chance meeting with Morris Graves at Chartres Cathedral, Andre and her husband, painter Charles Stegeman, left post-war Europe for Canada. They spent less than a year in the Yukon before moving to Vancouver, where Andre began teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts, a position she would hold for 19 summers. Deeply ambivalent about teaching, she later complained to at least one friend about what she saw as a lack of independent drive in her students. Both she and Stegeman were educated in a time and place when art instructors were hands-off and students were left to motivate themselves and learn largely on their own. After Banff, she taught very little. Later, back in Belgium, she took on private students, her only source of income at the time.

In Vancouver, Andre and Stegeman’s personal and artistic relationships with Graves and fellow “mystic painter” Mark Tobey grew. In particular, according to a friend, Andre began using gold leaf in her work at this time, a technique she apparently adopted from Graves.

Of Andre’s work at the time, Joseph Plaskett wrote, “If we feel an aura in her new work of the mythic, the mystic and the surreal, it came as much from the exoticism from the newly discovered natural world as from influences from Graves and Mark Tobey. It was born out of a fusion of regional content with Abstract Expressionist manner. Her contribution was truly personal. Unlike most of the others, she never abandoned the figure . . . An undercurrent of subdued passion sets her work off from the mandarin refinement of Graves or the virtuosity of Tobey.”

In his article “Art in the Fifties: Design, Leisure, and Painting in the Age of Anxiety,” Scott Watson writes, “Both Stegeman and Andre practiced a kind of surrealism which allies their work to animistic painters. However, their roots were in European surrealism. As a result their work often has an intoxicating richness that made it seem overwrought at the time.”

In 1963, the couple moved to Chicago, where Stegeman had received a job with the Art Institute. In Chicago, both artists showed at the Vincent Price Gallery and counted Irving Petlin, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero as friends.

Six years later, they moved again, this time to Haverford, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, where Stegeman became a founding member of the Department of Fine Arts at Haverford College.

Andre remained in Haverford until 1976, when her marriage ended. After 25 years in the United States, she finally moved back to Europe—to Brussels, although for the rest of her life, she would travel between Brussels and Philadelphia, where she maintained a studio in a 200-year-old stone building in the Manayunk section of the city.

Guardien, 1985 (detail)

“Art never leaves me, even on holiday. It is a world that is my framework, which is therefore always the real support. But I don’t “need” to paint. It is far more than I need, since it is ONESELF. It is not a part of me, it is me.” (Francoise Andre, in a 2006 letter to Sophie Orloff, translated from the French)

“Francoise Andre revives a conception of art that has been a long time in eclipse, the ideal of creating a masterpiece . . . The idea of a painting being a controlled projection of all that the artist has mastered, the culmination of a lifetime of learning and experience, has become strange to us, but it is a view that Andre demonstrates, and she has taken risks to do so. In that sense alone her work is heroic. It goes against the grain of contemporary mental attitudes.” (Joseph Plaskett, “Francoise Andre,” 1985)

Portrait of Jack Coleman, 1975, 30" x 40"

Andre’s preferred subjects were, in her words, “man and the earth”: heads and figures, including many self-portraits, and strange, lonely and mystical landscapes. Her canvases were often large, and their intense colors—scarlet, turquoise, gold—were frequently juxtaposed with the sensitive and beautiful lines of an artist who could really draw.

Often categorized as surrealist, Andre’s work was informed and inspired by art of the distant past: early Flemish painting, Byzantium, Raphael, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Ingres, and Delacroix.

All this is obvious in the paintings themselves and in her writings about her own work and life. Through both, she revealed her complex personality, her sharp intellectual focus, and her unwavering commitment to art.

“The arts escape everything that is tangible and to survive they must have total freedom. In the meantime, we are floating just above the horizon line and the world tries to find a new direction. In all this, the quest for an interior space, which is at the heart of what art is about, has disappeared as well, because art is not a mere decoration to a man’s life, but the search for an invisible facet, hidden in all of us, to which we must devote our life. This is why it’s a “feat” to be conscious of this state as an artist, and to be able to keep on going towards this invisible goal, knowing full well that you are going against the tide—but knowing also that there is no other way to go—we have no choice.” (Francoise Andre, 1993, translated from the French)

Francoise Andre died on December 4^th, 2009, in a nursing home in Paoli, Pennsylvania. She was 83.

“Facing the world’s true problems, everything is put in perspective. One must now fight against the inhuman and one of the means, short of physical strength, is to use other faculties. Painting may appear to be a wretchedly poor force, but it may be one nevertheless. Not a political force, but a force of communication.” (Francoise Andre, 1993, translated from the French)

Humain Trop Humain, 1992, 2 x 2.35 m

See more photos of Andre's work on our Flickr page.

See also:

An Interview with Painter Francoise Andre

More of Andre's paintings, writing, and other material can be found on her friend Frederic Hage's website.

Nauplius, 1993, 1.2 x 1.3 m

De l'Amour, 1990, 1.2 x 1.5 m

Photo of Francoise is from artistfrancoiseandre.com.

Landscape, 1988, is owned by the Joseph P. Melvin Company in Wayne, PA, and was photographed by Richard Anderson. Thanks to both and to Christopher Cairns for orchestrating.

All other photos of work are from the 1994 catalogue Francoise Andre.

Thanks also to Hilarie Johnston for her insights and assistance.

Sources:

Donohoe, Victoria. “Breadth of vision evident in works of Franco-Belgian artist.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 11, 2003.

Exhibition Catalog: Francoise Andre, Brussels: BP Gallery, 1986.

Exhibition Catalog: Francoise Andre, 1994, including “Faces, Landscapes” by Jean-Louis Ferrier, “Ode to a New Humanism” by Sophie Orloff, and “Francoise Andre” by Joseph Plaskett.

“Francoise Andre” (from www.haverford.edu)

Watson, Scott. “Art in the Fifties: Design, Leisure, and Painting in the Age of Anxiety.” Vancouver Art and Artists: 1931-1983.

www.artistfrancoiseandre.com

Zemens, Joyce. “Francoise Andre at the Gallery Moos, Toronto.” Canadian Art, #83, January/February 1963.

Tete et Corps, 1990-91, 1.5 x 1.1 m

Earl Kerkam (a guest post by Christopher Cairns)

2010-07-23T20:51:00.001-07:00

You can look all you want to on the internet, but will find very little about the painter Earl Cavis Kerkam. And what little you do find will be deeply unsatisfactory. There are biographies on Artnet, etc. (if you want to pay for them) listing general dates, events and places--all of which are of little interest.

Self-portrait, 1963

I saw my first Kerkam painting in the early seventies in a show at the New York Studio School on 8th Street. It was a small oil, an abstract frontal head from the early sixties. The painting belonged to the Poindexter family who ran the Poindexter Gallery in the 1950’s and 60’s. This gallery showed Earl Kerkam as well as George Spaventa. Years later, in 2005, I got to show one of my sculptures in a show at the NYSS which included this very same Kerkam painted head. At that time, as well as 35 years prior, I wanted to steal this little beauty. This particular painting, in and of itself, puts Kerkam in the top rank of American painters of the 20th century. Check out some of the others. Forgotten though he is, Kerkam had some extraordinary strengths.

In the early 1970’s, my friend Jonathan Silver and I were both working on frontal sculpted (and drawn) heads. I told him about the outstanding little painting at the NYSS and together we took a look. This little Kerkam head had a big effect on us both. Of course there were many other things that we also had on our minds during those years, including Roman heads, Medardo Rosso, psychoanalysis, Hans Holbein, Giacometti, Ernst Gombrich, Ernst Kris and F.X. Messerschmidt. But this head had a big impact on both of us.

Earl Kerkam lived in New York and Paris. He had a regular job for many years and also a wife and three kids--and then, a la Gauguin, he abandoned his family and spent the rest of his life painting, seemingly on his own. Two articles in Art News, one by Elaine de Kooning (“Kerkam Makes a Painting”) and one by Louis Finkelstein, make unsuccessful stabs at shedding light on this artist. There are a few catalogues of his work, principally one from a 1966 memorial show at the Washington Museum of Modern Art, now long since defunct.

For a clearer idea of this artist, one must go to the paintings themselves (and photographs of the artist in his studio) along with a few quotes and anecdotes that can be retrieved from the scrapheap of history.

Pictures show Kerkam painting, shirtless or in an old-fashioned undershirt, in a dilapidated and disheveled studio, often with a model. Various photographers took pictures of him, and a number can be seen in the records of the Archives of American Art. No one knows how he managed to make a living. His friends Pollock, de Kooning and Kline saw him as uncompromising. Pollock is said to have waved a postcard in the Cedar Tavern one night declaring, “Earl says that I’m not bad!” (This postcard came after Kerkam had seen a Pollock show in Paris.) Franz Kline said that “Earl could paint in a telephone booth.”

Kerkam in Studio 1950's

Kerkam had a curious approach to painting. Often using a model, he might start with a voluptuous female model and by the time the painting was finished it would have morphed into a strong male figure. He seems to have had a generalized idea of the figure, perhaps derived from his own physique. On the other hand, his portraits of the 30’s and 40’s often have a very specific look, as if they are particular people. It is interesting to learn, however, that he often used multiple models for the same portrait, so the specificity very well might have been a conglomeration or synthesis of their individual attributes. In this way he was a bit like Sherwood Anderson. Kerkam himself said, “I try to paint a construction instead of a sensation.” Earl Kerkam was obsessed with painting. “I can’t talk French, but I can paint French,” he liked to say.

One finds this on the Mercury Gallery site:

“An artist must get rid of all encumbrances,” [Kerkam] told a friend. His apartment was “so sparsely furnished," wrote Finkelstein in Art News, “that it did not look furnished at all… There was a broken-down cot with a slab of foam rubber… [and] a bucket for washing his clothes (which he sometimes let burn on the stove while he was painting)"... Once, a Seattle heiress arrived with $1,000 to have Kerkam paint her picture. He opened his door a crack, gave her the once-over and said: “You're too pretty. Go away.”

On a more obscure website is this: “Earl Kerkam was holding court at his one-man show at the Bonestell Gallery. He was complaining that some of his models refused to pose in the nude…'Well paint them with their clothes on!' someone said. 'That’s no good,' answered Kerkam. 'Painting a woman who won’t take her clothes off is like interviewing a woman who won’t tell the truth.' Max Weber hit the nail on the head when he said: “Kerkam has more art in a stroke than most men get in a whole painting.” One can see this written all over his paintings.

Head of man, 1940's

Kerkam showed at the Poindexter Gallery, the World House Gallery and the Charles Egan Gallery. Galleries were different in those days. Artists did not snivel at the feet of the gallerist, as is now the practice. A gallery director or owner like Charles Egan or Stephen Radich or Curt Valentine took a direct personal interest in their artists. The relationship was partly business, partly personal, a far cry from the strictly commercial business strictures of today. Egan would support his artist whether or not she or he sold, and sales weren’t common. In other words, he gave them a modest stipend. Poindexter must have done the same.

People can make all the excuses they want--about why things were the way they were then and why things are the way that they are now--but these are only hapless excuses masking a deep and unabiding lack of aesthetics and feeling on the part of all contemporary gallery owners. In the 1940’s and 50’s, gallery owners would take care of their artists. Later, in the seventies, newer owners really learned to “take care” of their artists.

Earl Kerkam died at the age of 74 in 1965, shortly after beginning to teach at the newly formed New York Studio School. Mercedes Matter thought he would be a good teacher but he did not live long enough for anyone to find out. The painter Chuck O’Connor has fond memories of Earl Kerkam in the fall of 1964. I either did or did not meet Earl Kerkam, although I like to think that I did.

After all is said and done, we have to let the paintings speak for themselves and rely on the audience to establish the necessary context for these works--if that is possible in this day and age.

After Kerkam’s death, Zabriskie Gallery had a show of his work. Hilton Kramer, the vaunted art reviewer for The New York Times, led Kerkam on his way to oblivion with a review entitled "Earl Kerkam: A Sensibility Unfulfilled; Late Painter's Work on View..." You can look up the review and pay to read it, but why bother? Kramer did the same shit with Peter Agostini. This guy Kramer was the worst--and he did a great deal of damage.

Here is a review by Victoria Donohoe from 1967. (In 2010, Victoria Donohoe continues to write her fine reviews for The Philadelphia Inquirer.):

Earl Kerkam Show: Elegant Fleshiness
The Philadelphia Inquirer--Sunday, November 12, 1967
 The Earl Kerkam (1891-1965) show at Johnny Aiello's “Gallery Pane Vino,” 20th Street at Pine, must surely be one of the best contemporary drawing exhibitions displayed in a gallery here. These 62 drawings have been lying unseen, mostly unknown except to a few scholars, and they come from the only large source of supply of the artist's work--a collection of about 400 drawings and 200 oil paintings belonging to his son, E. Bruce Kirk, of Chestnut Hill, who displayed a few of the paintings at Wanamaker's last season and will show a larger group of the oils at New York's Zabriskie Gallery in January.

The drawings are nearly all spontaneous, unpretentious studies of the nude female figure and were created around the early 1950's as notes of fact and ideas rather than as developed essays. In their concentration of the artist's style, the few swift, decisive lines with a brush, chalk and watercolor speak with a personal intensity that tells us more than his painterly Cubist self-portraits or even his sensuous still lifes. And the finest of them have a weight, a sense of fleshiness and elegant informality of line that swing their lift into high art. Since drawings are an art for close-range inspection, the close grouping here, sometimes in double rows, favors them. This small gallery must be congratulated on its initiative in organizing the present show--a step that should long since have been taken by some of our more august institutions. It is also worth remembering that at the time of Kerkam's death, his friends de Kooning, Guston, Rothko, Spaventa and Vicente petitioned the Museum of Modern Art to plan an exhibit in honor of this man who "in our eyes is one of the finest painters to come out of America."

I was always struck by the disconnect between Kerkam’s painting and his drawing. His drawings were appealing to many people, but I always found them preposterously stylized compared to his painting, which show much more uncertainty and a shifting decisiveness.

Today, older paintings of Kerkam's from the 40’s and 50’s occasionally show up on the internet or in obscure auctions. I purchased two portraits, one male, one female, each for under $225. Kevin Tuttle bought his fine portrait for about the same amount.

Later I bought three 1930’s paintings at an auction house in DC for $1100. Here is one of them:

Red shoes with vase, 1930's

At the opening of a retrospective show at the World House Gallery in NY in 1963, a friend asked Kerkam, “Where are all the people?” “They’ll come when I die," Kerkam replied. “I’m not a fashionable man.” As Earl Kerkam recedes slowly into the mists of time, we can now guess that he was incorrect in his assessment of impending fame. His most recent auctioned painting, a small abstract head from the 1960’s, fetched $700.

head 1953

See additional photos of Kerkam's work on our Flickr page.

Christopher Cairns is a sculptor and Professor Emeritus at Haverford College. See his work online at www.christophercairns.com.

Havertown Studio Open House, May 2010

2010-07-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

For two days in early May 2010, sculptor Christopher Cairns, painter Nicholas Cairns, and composer Michael Hersch hosted an art and music open house in Chris’s 9,000-square-foot studio in Havertown, Pennsylvania.

The event, which attracted people from as far away as Massachusetts and Washington, DC, featured sculpture, painting, drawing, film and music.

On display in the multi-room studio were 25 paintings by Nicholas Cairns—including Dies Irae (2009) and Wreckage of Flowers (2009)—20 small prints and about 10 drawings.

Installation, Nicholas Cairns

Christopher Cairns presented a near-final version of his Rochbergtorium, an installation honoring his late friend, the composer George Rochberg. Arranged in a 250-square-foot, skylit room, the Rochbergtorium included 25 sculptural heads of the composer in assorted sizes, styles, and mediums, a 12-minute video interview of Rochberg by Peter Cairns, and a small desk with scores, books and photos. A recording by Peter Sheppard Skaerved of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations played on a continual loop.

Rochbergtorium

Elsewhere, Peter Cairns’ 2009 film about an NGO in Haiti, made just five months before the 2010 earthquake, played in a makeshift screening room in one corner of the cavernous studio.

Prints, drawings and watercolors by Alexis Cairns (yours truly) capped off the largely family affair.

A highlight of the event was the May 1^st performance of Michael Hersch’s Sonatas No.s 1 and 2 for unaccompanied cello, played by frequent Hersch collaborator Daniel Gaisford. Of Gaisford, Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2008, “In Daniel Gaisford, Hersch has found an ideal interpreter, an ideal exponent . . . Gaisford has a formidable technique and a formidable mind. He can make a hundred sounds: fat, thin, spiky, lyrical, rich, sickly, piercing, warm, and Hersch’s sonatas call for a great many of them.”

Hersch (foreground) and Gaisford

In a surprising coincidence, a review by Vivian Schweizer of the recording of Hersch’s cello sonatas, played by Gaisford, was printed in the New York Times on May 2^nd. It read:

Michael Hersch’s Sonata No. 1 for unaccompanied cello is one of his earliest published works, written when he was 23, in 1994 . . . The sonata’s profoundly solitary, rhapsodic first movement veers between yearning lyricism and agitated outbursts. The reflective second movement, a showcase for Mr. Gaisford’s rich, penetrating tone and searing musicality, ebbs and flows into the harmonically rich final movement, with its virtuoso challenges and almost brutal intensity . . . Mr. Gaisford, who, to judge from this recording, deserves greater recognition, also offers a mesmerizing performance of Mr. Hersch’s seven-movement Sonata No. 2, composed in 2000.

Daniel Gaisford

The intense 70-minute performance took place in a 2,500-square-foot room in the center of the studio building, in front of an audience of about 75.

Artists who attended the open house included Pat Badt, Rick Bechtel, David Carrow, Bruce Colburn, Hilarie Johnston, Steve Larson, Michelle Post, Scott Sherk, Charles Stegeman, Kevin Tuttle, and Elizabeth Wade.

Kevin Tuttle and Michael Cairns

NOTE: the Havertown Studio Open House has become a regular event. Join The Artist Profiles Project on Facebook to be notified of future dates.

For more photos of the open house please visit our Flickr page.

Photos above by Richard Anderson (from top, 1 & 2), Margo Cairns (3, 6, 7), and Kevin Tuttle (4 & 5).

Jonathan Silver: Drawings

2010-05-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Silver drew well, and he drew often.

In the sixties, he drew in Peter Agostini's class at Columbia, and in studios on 14th Street and Spring Street in Manhattan, where, for a few bucks, you could draw from the model for several hours.

In the afternoons, he would drop in at the New York Studio School on 8th Street--into classes taught by Peter Agostini, Chris Cairns or George Spaventa--and stand in the corner and draw while smoking cigarettes.

He drew at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from art of the distant past, including Greek and Egyptian sculpture.

Later in life, he would draw at night in front of the television while watching crime drama Kojak or New York Mets baseball.

Silver, who was left-handed, usually drew small--8 x 10 inches or less--using a standard Number 2 pencil with an eraser on the end, often on pads of paper his friend Bruce Gagnier would bring back from Sennelier, in Paris. His drawings were highly restrained, tightly constructed, exact, and disciplined. He admired Da Vinci and Michelangelo for their rigorous approach, and adopted from Agostini--whose drawings he especially emulated--a method of making a line with a heavy, abrupt ending point--almost a dot--at the end, like a period at the end of a sentence.

Away from the model, his subjects were most often heads or figures--also methodically composed and constructed--mirroring whatever he was doing in sculpture at the time, until the very end of his life, when, as lung cancer was swiftly killing him, his subjects--animals and humans--became more fantastical and frightening.

Click on images to enlarge.

Three drawings from the 1970's

Three drawings from the 1980's

Three drawings from the 1990's

See more drawings by Jonathan Silver on our Flickr page.

Learn more about Silver on his profile.

Mark Tobey: Excerpts from Two Robert Gardner Films

2010-05-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Filmmaker Robert Gardner made two short films about American painter Mark Tobey, one in 1952, and one in 1973, at the end of the artist's life. Documentary Educational Resources, from whom both films are available for purchase on DVD, has posted a short clip of each film online, below.

This first clip is from 1973's Mark Tobey Abroad, a 28-minute film shot in Basel, Switzerland, where Tobey was living at the time. Tobey, who was born in 1890, would have been about 83.

About the film, DER's website reads, "With remarkable candor and objectivity, Tobey discusses his work and that of fellow artists, including Picasso. His keen wit lends humor and bite to his critiques, and his own vitality and spirit make an important statement on his work and on art itself."

This second clip is from Gardner's 1952 film, Mark Tobey. Originally titled Mark Tobey: Artist and shot in 16mm, the 19-minute film was shown in festivals in Venice and Edinburgh when it was released. Tobey, who wrote the music and script, lived in Seattle at the time it was made, and would have been about 62.

As the DER website explains, the film "tries to show in cinematic language how this man looked at the world; Tobey himself both performs and is observed. A unique film in the Gardner oeuvre, the film not only presents an experimental portrait of Tobey, but serves as a window into the American art, avant garde film, and poetic movements of this period."

Christopher Cairns: 2005 Show at Haverford College

2010-03-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

(Installation shot Closing Time)

(Installation shot Closing Time)

In April 2005, Christopher Cairns marked his retirement from Haverford College, after 35 years of teaching, with a solo show at the school called Closing Time. Twenty-seven life-sized figures, in bronze and plaster, invaded Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery en route from their former home in Cairns’ on-campus studio to a new home in a converted firehouse, now a studio, in nearby Havertown.

From Synagogue as AIDS Memorial to Lazarus Rising, the show featured some of Cairns’ most arresting work of the previous decade. Of particular note was the Rochbergtorium, an installation dedicated to his close friend, composer George Rochberg. Featuring plaster and bronze sculptural portraits, a painted portrait by son Nicholas Cairns, a video interview by son Peter Cairns, and a recording of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations by Peter Sheppard Skaerved, the Rochbergtorium functioned as a sort of living memorial.

(Synagogue as AIDS Memorial, plaster)

(Lazarus Rising, bronze, 1996, Lasalle University Art Museum)

(Rochberg head, wax)

Closing Time was reviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohue, who wrote, “Cairns has developed a life-long morally charged attitude toward his art and toward the portrayal of human life episodes…This show should go a long way in according Cairns his due recognition, for, by any standard, he is one of the truly accomplished sculptors working today.”

(The Mound, plaster)

Peter Cairns documented the show in a short film, below.

A statement by Cairns’ long-time friend Charlie Angermeyer was posted near the entrance. Read it here.

Closing Time was dedicated to Ingrid Muan, a friend and former student who died earlier that year at age 39. Two small paintings of Ingrid’s and a statement about her were included in the show.

See more photos from Closing Time on our Flickr page.

(Tanit, Electra, plaster)

(Spring, plaster)

(Evidence, plaster)

An Interview with Painter Francoise Andre

2010-03-02T16:03:00.000-08:00

This minute-long clip is an excerpt from several hours of interviews Peter Cairns conducted with painter Francoise Andre in 2002. I will post the additional footage, which is of a higher quality, when I can get it.

Learn more about Francoise Andre on her profile.

Charlie Angermeyer on Christopher Cairns

2010-03-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

Poet and writer Charlie Angermeyer wrote this piece on the occasion of Christopher Cairns' 2005 show at Haverford College, Closing Time. It was posted at the entrance to the gallery. Cairns and Angermeyer met in 1963 at Oberlin College.

The Sculpture of Chris Cairns: An Appreciation by an Old Friend

CREATION plus “M” equals CREMATION. I don’t know why I thought of that now. For me, it seems original, but I know everything is derivative, and it probably has occurred to some poor devil who writes crossword puzzles or some Scrabble players in a think tank. I stand in my crow’s nest. I imagine F-16s buzzing my head, youth in Asia, old punctured love dolls wishing they were dead. I know “Dial M for Murder”, but I don’t stop eating M&M’s. But art is imagination under some kind of control. Words and labels can’t change what’s already done. I don’t judge it. Art should be beautiful, but never in competition any more than slaves bought with gold.

I watched Chris in our first college art class draw his first melted choir boys. We rented separate rooms in Mrs. Morgan’s house; she was a sweet old lady with a short memory. One cold winter night, Mrs. Morgan opened the door, recognized me, and said, “Who is your friend?” (Chris had his scarf wrapped around his head.) I said, “This is my sister.” “What a surprise! How long will she be staying?” Mrs. Morgan said. Then, after Chris took his first sculpture class, he started tracking in plaster dust. He had it all over his shoes and clothes. He loved drawing and making figures, and he’s still at it as you can see. Bones are made of plaster, and bronze makes fine, expensive, caskets. Thus, there was the Bronze Age. Maybe we’re in the Drywall Age. When you get old, the back bends, and your skull feels heavy. Pinch yourself. Feeling alive right here, right now? Some old philosopher wrote, “Existence precedes essence.” Your body was a thing before it thought. It’s all in Sartre’s novel Nausea, if you have the stomach to read it. Chris is more tactile than most people—Mr. Touch, I’d call him.

Try looking at these things on display as if you just woke up but you still feel like you might be dreaming or watching T.V. Think about the space you are filling now and what happens to it after you leave. For me, these sculptures are all music and light—the way water flows around a stone or flames dancing or the way the wind shifts sand dunes. Chris gave me a big, coal black, bronze head. It sucks up all the light in my room. It’s so damn dead it makes even me feel almost alive! You are part of the show. The content may be at first disturbing, but, for me anyway, it quietly becomes beautiful as the content recedes while the form overwhelms. I wrote a poem that fits, I think:

If looks could kill,
then all the dead
would be beautiful.

Charlie Angermeyer lives in Tokyo with his wife, Mari, and his cat, Nicky. He is currently working on three books and a screenplay.

Peter Agostini

2010-01-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

(Peter Agostini, 151 Avenue B, 1960)

"That is the prime thing—to generate 'up'—leverage, elevation. The balloons rising, clothes on a line being picked up by the wind. The same with my horses. Whatever use they are, my horses are about flight, bursting out."
(Peter Agostini)

(Balloon Fountain, 1962, plaster)

Peter Agostini exploded on the New York art scene in 1959 with his first one-man show at the Galerie Grimaud. He was 45 years old. In 1960, he began showing at the Stephen Radich Gallery and, over the next few years, was celebrated by Time and Art News and participated in the 1964 World’s Fair exhibition, alongside Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Mallary.

Prior to his debut, Agostini worked as a mold and mannequin maker, skills he learned during the Depression as part of the WPA. He made sculpture in his kitchen, which doubled as a studio. In this tiny space he made horses, burlesque queens, and heads in clay and wax.

"One person who really motivated my mind was Michelangelo. Raphael was another. And Botticelli. What about their works? I have no idea . . . the essence—the life force—that they imbued into their pieces. They made what was, real. I’m not talking about realism. I’m talking about creating a reality." (Peter Agostini)

(Marina head, 1945, bronze)

(figure, 1957, bronze)

Peter Agostini was born in Hell’s Kitchen, a then-tough neighborhood on New York’s West Side, in 1913. His mother died when he was three, and he spent some time at a school for orphans before his early education in a Catholic school, which ceased after the eighth grade. Agostini was a self-taught artist whose only art training was one year at the Leonardo Da Vinci School in midtown, a school run by the sculptor Onario Ruotolo and sponsored by Benito Mussolini. Ambitious from the start, he made a 40” plaster figure, The Swimmer, while in attendance. At Leonardo Da Vinci, Agostini met artists George Spaventa and Nicolas Carone, with whom he had life-long friendships.

In the late 1950’s, Agostini moved into his first studio on 10th Street. His work of that time was impulsive, and to accommodate its spontaneity, he began fashioning sculpture directly in plaster, working it in its fluid state. In the 60’s, his plaster work was distinctive for its extreme immediacy. Anticipating Pop Art imagery, he cast and assembled with incredible assuredness newspapers, balloons, egg cartons, clotheslines, pillows, corrugated cardboard, truck inner tubes, bottles – all sorts of disparate objects – “frozen from life.” He made “instant sculpture” whose characteristics were speed, luminosity, and explosiveness that ran the gamut from figurative to abstract. He had a great gift for enlivening inert matter, and a fluid control of the unyielding materials he used.

"His forms totally are seductively inviting. They are nerve-wrackingly intense, made now, for now . . . live now, die later." (Art News, Dec. 1960)

(Squeeze, 1963, bronze)

(Saracen, 1960, bronze)

In 1960, Agostini was hired by Andre Racz at Columbia to teach sculpture and drawing. He had had no previous teaching experience and had to invent his own way. His approach was to direct the student’s observation through demonstration, without giving any verbal instruction. This hands-off teaching style appealed to many young students, including Christopher Cairns, Bruce Gagnier and Jonathan Silver. As a teacher Agostini combined an intense charismatic charm with a certain detachment, always putting emphasis on personal expression. His approach had no artifice and his presence was electric. He consequently had many devoted students. In 1969 he joined Spaventa on the faculty of the New York Studio School where he often worked from the model alongside his students. Agostini also taught for many years at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and was a Distinguished Visitor at Haverford College.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Agostini returned to figuration, producing a series of old men, female heads and large horses. For Agostini, there was no difference between representation and abstraction. In their commitment to mass and form and in the masterful modeling technique employed, these works were as related to his “swells” and “squeezes” of the 1960’s, as they were influenced by Michelangelo and Leonardo. Grounded in his lifelong habit of drawing from the figure, and reflecting his personal experience of aging, these works demonstrate consummate observation and distillation of form, and marriage of subject to that form.

"Meaning is always a big problem. Like in art, you don’t really know how to get it. But when it happens, it’s already enough. The power of meaning is a very, very difficult thing to approach." (Peter Agostini)

(Apollo, 1975, bronze)

Agostini showed regularly at the Radich Gallery until 1969, when the gallery closed. He subsequently showed at the Zabriskie and Bernice Steinbaum Galleries, among others. By the end of his life, Agostini’s work would appear in more than 25 one-man shows and more than 100 group shows world-wide. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Walker Art Center.

(Winter Wall, 1962, plaster)

(Burlesque Queen, 1965, plaster)

(The Hurricane, 1962, plaster)

Peter Agostini died in 1993 at the age of 80 at his home in Manhattan.

Text adapted with permission from an essay in the exhibition catalog for the 2006 show Five Sculptors.

Additional photos of Peter Agostini’s work can be viewed on our Flickr page.

The 2nd, 8th, 9th and 10th photos (from top) were taken by Don Cook.

An Interview with Composer George Rochberg

2010-01-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

In early 2005 filmmaker Peter Cairns shot several hours of video interviews with George Rochberg at the composer’s home. A few months later, sculptor Christopher Cairns debuted his Rochbergtorium, an installation dedicated to his close friend, in which the interview excerpt below plays on a continual loop, surrounded by sculptural heads of the composer in various sizes and styles, accompanied by a recording of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations.

Fritz Janschka: A Short Video

2009-11-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Vienna-born artist Fritz Janschka was a founding member of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, whose work, which includes drawings, paintings, printmaking and sculpture, is often inspired by literature, especially that of James Joyce. He taught printmaking at Bryn Mawr College for over 30 years before retiring to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he currently lives.

In this 10-minute video slideshow, journalist Joe Scott combines images of Janschka’s work from as far back as 1947 with stories and commentary by Janschka himself.

George Spaventa

2009-11-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

George...was a man of eloquent silences. His work breathes with the eloquence of his muteness. (Elaine de Kooning, 1978)

                                                             Torso, 1968, 21"h, bronze
George Spaventa was a thoughtful, somewhat reclusive artist who claimed that the ideas for his sculpture came to him in dreams. He was born in New York City in 1918, where he studied as a teenager at the Leonardo Da Vinci Art School. After serving in the military during World War II, Spaventa studied art in Paris on the G.I. Bill. There, he worked with Ossip Zadkine, visited Brancusi in his studio, and had the good fortune of meeting Giacometti, one of his great influences.

Spaventa's work was small, intimate, molded by hand in clay or wax and later cast in bronze. Besides Giacometti, his influences included Medardo Rosso and David Smith. In a 1964 Art News review of Spaventa's first and only New York solo show during his lifetime, his good friend, the poet Frank O'Hara, described his work:

In Spaventa, the emphasis is on the hand, and handling. With the single exception of Nakian, it is difficult to think of an American sculptor who has insisted more upon the imprint of his finger, thumb, wrist and arm. Sensitivity to the material is there, but first and foremost the material itself is required to be capable of sensitivity to Spaventa.

                                                             Head, 1955, 17"h, bronze
He was a methodical worker, not particularly prolific, and it wasn't until he was in his mid-forties that he had his first solo show, the first of just two. His work was exhibited in a number of group shows, however, in the 50s and 60s, including the Annual Exhibition 1962 at the Whitney Museum, and an exhibition entitled, Four American Sculptors, which also included Peter Agostini.

Spaventa was especially well liked and admired by many sculptors and painters of his time. He was particularly associated with a group of artists who worked on Tenth Street in New York City, and developed what came to be identified as the "Tenth Street Style." They included, among others, Milton Resnick, Earl Kerkam, Franz Kline, Peter Agostini, and Willem de Kooning, with whom Spaventa was sometimes compared, and who once said about him, "When I look at George's sculptures, I wish I had made them myself."

Spaventa was one of the founding faculty members of the New York Studio School, where he taught until he died. Students remember him perpetually encircled by a cloud of smoke, ashes dropping from the lit cigarette in his mouth onto the clay as he rearranged their pieces with crushing movements and inarticulate grunts.

Spaventa found verbal expression difficult and would demonstrate with his hands and whole body in making a point. During the late 70s he would often comment on the work of Matisse, Michelangelo, and Brancusi using the words "oneness...plasticity..." over and over. He spoke about visiting Brancusi on Sundays when all the artists opened their studios. He once asked Brancusi about The Endless Column. Brancusi answered only by breathing deeply. George interpreted this to suggest that the column was about breath. He would often refer to a picture in the Matisse Sculpture book of Jaguar Devouring a Hare after Barye. He would demonstrate how Matisse simplified the thrust of the jaguar by drawing his finger (with dry clay on it) along the form on the page. I am sure that that streak of clay is still on the book in the Studio School Library. (Scott Sherk, 2006)

Despite the public nature of his teaching life, Spaventa spent much of his time alone, in a life dedicated to art. He died of a heart attack in his studio in 1978. His work has been shown just twice since his death.

                                                          Figure #1, 1963, 13"h, bronze
I originally wrote this essay for the 2006 catalog for Five Sculptors, an exhibition of work by Peter Agostini, Christopher Cairns, Bruce Gagnier, Jonathan Silver, and George Spaventa.

Photos of sculpture courtesy of Christopher Cairns and Vita Litvak
Photo of Spaventa from 1979 Gruenebaum Gallery catalogue.

Sources:

O'Hara, Frank. "Introducing the Sculpture of George Spaventa." Art News, April 1964, p. 15.

Kramer, Hilton. "Uptown: Intimate Sculptures Grace Tribute to George Spaventa." The New York Times, 11 January 1980.

Exhibition Catalogue: A Tribute to George Spaventa, New York: Gruenebaum Gallery, Ltd., 1979.