Jonathan Silver

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Silver began working on larger figures in the early 80’s.  Abounding with classical, mythical and art historical references, these ambitious works further developed the method of combining and recombining elements from several different pieces.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
Jonathan Silver's Studio, As Photographed by Michael O'Keefe

Agostini in Soho // by Scott Sherk

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.

Photos from WiredNY.com

Michael O'Keefe on Christopher Cairns

Cairns, in studio 1985
©Joan Fairman Kanes

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.

Christopher Cairns: A Short Video

"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.

Christopher Cairns on Earl Kerkam

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

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

                                          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.”

                                                   Gaisford and Hersch

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 (now called the Havertown New Music and Art Series) 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).