2016-09-22

Andy, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Koshalek and unidentified guest, 1980s



I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him.  Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age of 92.

BELOW IS MY LETTER TO ELLSWORTH KELLY:

November 23, 2015

Ellsworth Kelly c/o Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, P.O.Box 220, Spencertown, NY 12165-0220

Dear Mr. Kelly,

I live in Arkansas and I just can’t get enough of the CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM in Bentonville.  In 1981 I visited 20 European countries on a college trip and I was hooked on art. I later discovered that two men I had read a lot about were friends of yours HANS ARP and JOHN CAGE. More on that later.

Francis Schaeffer is one of my favorite writers and he was constantly talking about modern culture and art in his books and that really got me interested in finding out what it was all about.  Actually on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org I devote my blog every Thursday to the series called FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE  and I examine the work of a modern day artist.

Francis Schaeffer pictured below:



You will notice below that your name is in bold type since I took a look at your work in one of my blog post. I would honored if you took time to look it over and let me know what your reaction is to how your life is presented in the blog post.  Here is an alphabetical list of those I have featured so far:

Marina Abramovic, Ida Applebroog,  Matthew Barney, Aubrey Beardsley, Larry Bell, Wallace Berman, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Brenda Bury,  Allora & Calzadilla,   Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Heinz Edelmann,  Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Jan Fabre, Makoto Fujimura, Hamish Fulton, Ellen Gallaugher, Ryan Gander, John Giorno, Rodney Graham,  Cai Guo-Qiang, Brion Gysin, Jann Haworth, Arturo Herrera, Oliver Herring, David Hockney, David Hooker,  Nancy Holt, Roni Horn, Peter Howson, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Martin Karplus, Margaret Keane, Mike Kelley,  Ellsworth Kelly, Peter Kien, Jeff Koons,  Annie Leibovitz, John Lennon, Richard Linder, Sally Mann, Kerry James Marshall, Trey McCarley, Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney, Paul McCarthy, Josiah McElheny, Barry McGee, Richard Merkin, Nicholas Monro,  Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Tony Oursler, John Outterbridge, Nam June Paik, Eduardo Paolozzi, George Petty, William Pope L., Gerhard Richter, Anna Margaret Rose,  James Rosenquist, Susan Rothenberg, Georges Rouault, Richard Serra, Shahzia Sikander, Raqub Shaw, Thomas Shutte, Saul Steinberg, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Stuart Sutcliffe, Mika Tajima,Richard Tuttle, Luc Tuymans, Alberto Vargas,  Banks Violett, H.C. Westermann,  Fred Wilson, Krzysztof Wodiczko,Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth, David Wynne, Andrea Zittel,

Recently I saw the film THE LONGEST RIDE and it featured the BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE. Since then I have done almost 30 posts on some of the individuals who were associated with that college such as  Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Donald Alter, Sylvia Ashby, James Bishop, John Cage,   Willem de Kooning (featured  in 3 posts), Ted Dreier, Ted Dreier Jr.,  Robert Duncan, Jorge Fick, Walter Gropius, Heinrich Jalowetz, Pete Jennerjahn, Wassily Kandinsky,   Karen Karnes,  Martha King, Irwin Kremen, Charles Olson, Charles Perrow, Robert Rauschenber,  M.C.Richards, Dorothea Rockburne,  Xanti Schawinsky, Claude Stoller,  Bill Treichler, Susan Weil,  David Weinrib,  and Vera B. Williams.

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF INFLUENCED BY ANY OF THESE ARTISTS?

I wanted to encourage you to go to You Tube and take a look at Francis Schaeffer’s 26 minute film How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation that has been posted recently by Eduardo Miller.  This film starts with the impressionists and goes through the modern day artists of the 1960’s (the film was made in 1976). I would love to hear your reaction to it.

How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation

In the article, “A Little Art History,” I found these words:

It was while in Paris that Kelly met Dada artist Jean Arp (1950), and this was to have continued and strong impact on his work. Following Arp’s example, Kelly began to explore the laws of “chance and random selection” in his own work. Kelly used a cooler, more detached, near lyrical form of large-scale abstract painting, allowing this chance selection of color and pattern to bring life to his paintings. The formal composition, at that time, was created on a predetermined grid structure. When Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, he moved to New York where he became one of the chief proponents of hard-edged abstraction. As early as 1950, Kelly had made sculptural relief works, but it was not until the end of that decade that his free-standing compositions were created. As he became celebrated for his large-scale monochromatic canvases, Kelly continued to pursue sculptural projects over the following years.

I recently read this quote from YOU:

My collages are only ideas for things much larger – things to cover walls. In fact all the things that I have done I would like to see much larger. I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long – to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures – they should be the wall – even better – on the outside wall – of large buildings. Or stood up outside as billboards or a kind of modern ‘icon’. We must make our art like the Egyptians, the Chinese & the African and the Island primitives – with their relation to life. It should meet the eye direct.

In a letter to John Cage, 4 September 1950; as quoted in “Ellsworth Kelly, a Retrospective”, ed. Diane Waldman, Guggenheim museum, New York 1997, p. 11



(John Cage pictured above)

Since you were good friends with John Cage and since you were influenced by Jean (Hans) Arp to explore the laws of CHANCE AND RANDOM SELECTION  I wanted to include this next portion from the writings of Francis Schaeffer concerning Hans Arp and John Cage and it is taken from the book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?:

Hans Arp (1887-1966), an Alsatian sculptor, wrote a poem which appeared in the final issue of the magazine De Stijl (The Style) which was published by the De Stijl group of artists led by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Mondrian (1872-1944) was the best-known artist of this school. He was not of the Dada school which accepted and portrayed absurdity. Rather, Mondrian was hoping to paint the absolute. Hand Arp, however, was a Dadaist artist connected with De Stijl. His power “Für Theo Van Doesburg,” translated from German reads:

the head downward

the legs upward

he tumbles into the bottomless

from whence he came

he has no more honour in his body

he bites no more bite of any short meal

he answers no greeting

and is not proud when being adored

the head downward

the legs upward

he tumbles into the bottomless

from whence he came

like a dish covered with hair

like a four-legged sucking chair

like a deaf echotrunk

half full half empty

the head downward

the legs upward

he tumbles into the bottomless

from whence he came

Dada carried to its logical conclusion the notion of all having come about by chance; the result was the final absurdity of everything, including humanity.

The man who perhaps most clearly and consciously showed this understanding of the resulting absurdity fo all things was Marcel Duchamp (1887-1969). He carried the concept of fragmentation further in Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), one version of which is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art–a painting in which the human disappeared completely. The chance and fragmented concept of what is led to the devaluation and absurdity of all things. All one was left with was a fragmented view of a life which is absurd in all its parts. Duchamp realized that the absurdity of all things includes the absurdity of art itself. His “ready-mades” were any object near at hand, which he simply signed. It could be a bicycle wheel or a urinal. Thus art itself was declared absurd.

Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? noted on pages 200-203:

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is perhaps the clearest example in the United States of painting deliberately in order to make the statements that all is chance. He placed canvases horizontally on the floor and dripped paint on them from suspended cans swinging over them. Thus, his paintings were a product of chance. But wait a minute! Is there not an order in the lines of paint on his canvases? Yes, because it was not really chance shaping his canvases! The universe is not a random universe; it has order. Therefore, as the dripping paint from the swinging cans moved over the canvases, the lines of paint were following the order of the universe itself. The universe is not what these painters said it is.

John Cage provides perhaps the clearest example of what is involved in the shift of music. Cage believed the universe is a universe of chance. He tried carrying this out with great consistency. For example, at times he flipped coins to decide what the music should be. At other times he erected a machine that led an orchestra by chance motions so that the orchestra would not know what was coming next. Thus there was no order. Or again, he placed two conductors leading the same orchestra, separated from each other by a partition, so that what resulted was utter confusion. There is a close tie-in again to painting; in 1947 Cage made a composition he called MUSIC FOR MARCEL DUCHAMP. But the sound produced by his music was composed only of silence (interrupted only by random environmental sounds), but as soon as he used his chance methods sheer noise was the outcome.

But Cage also showed that one cannot live on such a base, that the chance concept of the universe does not fit the universe as it is. Cage is an expert in mycology, the science of mushrooms. And he himself said, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operation, I would die shortly.” Mushroom picking must be carefully discriminative. His theory of the universe does not fit the universe that exists.

All of this music by chance, which results in noise, makes a strange contrast to the airplanes sitting in our airports or slicing through our skies. An airplane is carefully formed; it is orderly (and many would also think it beautiful). This is in sharp contrast to the intellectualized art which states that the universe is chance. Why is the airplane carefully formed and orderly, and what Cage produced utter noise? Simply because an airplane must fit the orderly flow lines of the universe if it is to fly!

New York, 1982, 25th Anniversary Lunch of Castelli Gallery at The Odeon. Standing left – right: Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Serra, Lawerence Weiner, Nassos Daphnis, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Salvatore Scarpitta, Richard Artschwager, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Cletus Johnson, Keith Sonnier Seated left – right: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Castelli, Ed Ruscha, James Rosenquist, Robert Barry.  Photo: Hans Namuth

In an interview of Francis Schaeffer  published in New Wine Vol. 14 no..2 Feb. 1982 pp.4-9, he noted:

We must realize that there is no vehicle which displays the glory of God and the wonder of God as Creator as clearly as the practice of the humanities. By the humanities I mean the results of human endeavor in the area of intellectual matters and in what we usually call art. We must realize that art doesn’t have to be a gospel tract to be right. “Art as art” is right – though it can be misused -and it is right because art is a reflection of God’s creativity, an evidence that we are made in the image of God.

We must not think that because man has revolted against God and needs Christ as his Savior that his revolt has totally eradicated the marks of his being made in the image of God. It doesn’t matter who a materialist says he is – he is who he is, and he is made in the image of God. He bears some marks of being made in the image of God. No matter how far away from God these people are or how destructive they are in their teachings about the nature of man, they are still made in God’s image, whether they believe it or not.

The Bible teaches that we all know that God exists and has made us in his image and if we deny that then we are suppressing the knowledge of our conscience in unrighteousness.  Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESS and HINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them and MADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God  has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine).

I have enclosed a short tract called THIS WAS YOUR LIFE and I hope you will take a few moments and read it.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, USA

Art This Week-Blanton Museum of Art-Ellsworth Kelly Symposium, Part 1-Ellsworth Kelly

Art This Week-At the Blanton Museum of Art-Ellsworth Kelly Symposium, Part 2-Austin

Art This Week-At the Blanton Museum of Art-Ellsworth Kelly Symposium, Part 3-Questions

___________

Featured artist is Art Green

Art Green
Dire Straits

1979

oil on canvas over plywood

36 1/2 x 44 inches

BIO

b. 1941

Art Green was born in Frankfort, Indiana. He came to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute, and graduated from there in 1965. In 1966, Green participated in the first Hairy Who exhibition organized by Don Baum at the Hyde Park Art Center. This show introduced six graduates of the Art Institute: Green, Suellen Rocca, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, and Jim Falconer. Over the next three years, this same group would exhibit together in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., both inspiring and popularizing the Chicago art movement that came to be known as Imagism.

Green also participated in two of three Phalanx shows at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1965, as well as the 1968 Chicago & Vicinity Exhibition at the Art Institute and a three-person show at Allan Frumkin Gallery (the other artists were Ray Siemanowski and Jordan Davies). In 1969, at exactly the point that Imagism was lifting off and gaining wider exposure outside of Chicago, Green accepted a position teaching in Canada, and he moved away permanently. In spite of not living here, Green continued to have a presence in Chicago through his affiliation with Phyllis Kind Gallery, with whom he showed regularly in the ’70s and ’80s. He was, in this way, sort of a shadow member of the Chicago Imagists, a historical figure and at the same time an active member of the scene.

Like many of his Imagist colleagues, Green’s paintings are highly complex compositions characterized by a dazzling use of color and a graphic sensibility drawn from popular culture. Throughout his career, he has been a master manipulator of space. In his early work, this manifested itself in surreal scenes populated by enigmatic men, curious buildings, and monumental foodstuffs. Layers of depth are indicated and complicated by piles of word bubbles and images of splitting zippers or parting curtains. Green’s later paintings are increasingly dense, with layer upon layer of bands of color woven in front of or behind finely rendered landscapes of cities or bridges. These paintings become engrossing visual puzzles for the viewer, who is simultaneously drawn into their hyper-realistic landscapes and confounded by their impossible architecture.

Green’s more recent exhibitions include his 2005 retrospective at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario, a 2008 solo show at the Stride Gallery in Calgary, Alberta, and a solo exhibition at the CUE Foundation in New York in 2009. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.

Art Green
Standard Deviations

2011

oil on canvas on MDF

46 1/4 x 34 inches

Art Green
Willful Representation

2011

oil on canvas on MDF

54 x 46 inches

Art Green
Hang Time

2010

oil on canvas on MDF

83 x 40 1/2 inches

Art Green
Same Difference

2009

oil on canvas over MDF

48 1/2 x 43 inches

Art Green
Panic Stop

2009

oil on canvas over MDF

48 x 48 inches

Art Green
Turning Point

1983

oil on canvas

60 x 33 inches

Art Green
Pressure Points

1977

oil on canvas

29 x 43 inches

Art Green with Gladys Nilsson.

Photograph by Jim Nutt

Art Green
Dire Straits

1979

oil on canvas over plywood

36 1/2 x 44 inches

1 / 9

PrevNext

EXHIBITIONS:

Art Green: Tell Tale Signs (2011)
Art Green & Suellen Rocca: Imagist Classic Hits, Vol. 1 (2007)
Abstract Imagist (2006)

CATALOGS:

Art Green: Tell Tale Signs
Art Green & Suellen Rocca: Imagist Classic Hits, Vol. 1
Abstract Imagist

NEWS + EVENTS:

Art Green: Certain Subjects at Garth Greenan Gallery (2013)
Karma International presents a Chicago Imagist exhibition (2013)

CURRICULUM VITAE:

PDF – Art Green CV

BIO

b. 1941

Art Green was born in Frankfort, Indiana. He came to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute, and graduated from there in 1965. In 1966, Green participated in the first Hairy Who exhibition organized by Don Baum at the Hyde Park Art Center. This show introduced six graduates of the Art Institute: Green, Suellen Rocca, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, and Jim Falconer. Over the next three years, this same group would exhibit together in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., both inspiring and popularizing the Chicago art movement that came to be known as Imagism.

Green also participated in two of three Phalanx shows at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1965, as well as the 1968 Chicago & Vicinity Exhibition at the Art Institute and a three-person show at Allan Frumkin Gallery (the other artists were Ray Siemanowski and Jordan Davies). In 1969, at exactly the point that Imagism was lifting off and gaining wider exposure outside of Chicago, Green accepted a position teaching in Canada, and he moved away permanently. In spite of not living here, Green continued to have a presence in Chicago through his affiliation with Phyllis Kind Gallery, with whom he showed regularly in the ’70s and ’80s. He was, in this way, sort of a shadow member of the Chicago Imagists, a historical figure and at the same time an active member of the scene.

Like many of his Imagist colleagues, Green’s paintings are highly complex compositions characterized by a dazzling use of color and a graphic sensibility drawn from popular culture. Throughout his career, he has been a master manipulator of space. In his early work, this manifested itself in surreal scenes populated by enigmatic men, curious buildings, and monumental foodstuffs. Layers of depth are indicated and complicated by piles of word bubbles and images of splitting zippers or parting curtains. Green’s later paintings are increasingly dense, with layer upon layer of bands of color woven in front of or behind finely rendered landscapes of cities or bridges. These paintings become engrossing visual puzzles for the viewer, who is simultaneously drawn into their hyper-realistic landscapes and confounded by their impossible architecture.

Green’s more recent exhibitions include his 2005 retrospective at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario, a 2008 solo show at the Stride Gallery in Calgary, Alberta, and a solo exhibition at the CUE Foundation in New York in 2009. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.

Art Green (artist)

Page issues

For other people named Art Green or Arthur Green, see Arthur Green (disambiguation).

Arthur Green (born 1941) is an American professor and painter. Green was a member of the Chicago artistic group, The Hairy Who in the 1960s, a member of the University of Waterloo’s faculty for over 30 years and has been an influential painter for over 40 years.

Contents

Early lifeEdit

Green was born in Frankfort, Indiana. His father was a civil engineer who designed bridges. His mother crafted quilts and grew flowers.

He first studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1965, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts.

CareerEdit

Green first came to prominence in 1966, when he joined five other recent Art Institute graduates for the first of a series of group exhibitions called The Hairy Who at a series of shows at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center. The strange name reflected the trend in monikers for rock groups of the time. The other members of the group were James Falconer, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum. Their work was known for its coarseness and vulgarity. It stood in contrast to the sleek and urban work by Manhattan artists at the time, namely Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist.

Between 1966 and 1967 Green worked at various Chicago public schools teaching seventh grade art. Between 1967 and 1968 he worked at Chicago City College as an Instructor. Green taught basic design, interior design, and art history. The following year he moved to Kendall College of Art and Design, Evanston, Illinois to assume a position as the Chair of the Fine Arts Department. There he taught studio and art history courses.

In 1969, Green married Natalie (also a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago), whose Art Institute education in pattern and fabric design became a strong influence on his work. He also accepted a teaching position at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University as an Assistant Professor.

In 1975, he received a Canada Council bursary, which enabled him to teach painting and drawing at the University of British Columbia.

In 1976, he moved and this time to Stratford, Ontario to teach at the University of Waterloo. While at UW, he served two terms as Chair of the Fine Arts Department; 1988–1991 and 2000-2002.

In 2005, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery hosted Heavy Weather: Art Green Retrospective in collaboration with theUniversity of Waterloo Art Gallery. This exhibition brought together 50 of Green’s pieces, loaned from the artist and several private and public collectors in the United States and Canada, as a comprehensive survey of his 40 year career. Gary Michael Dault created a soft cover book with the same Heavy Weather title. The book contains photographs of the 50 pieces, commentary, and resource images which had inspired Green.

In 2006, the University of Waterloo gave him emeritus status. Green is married with two children, Catherine and Nicholas. As of 2006, Green lived with his wife in Stratford, Ontario.

PaintingsEdit

Green is known for his layered paintings.

In the introduction to Heavy Weather, Green writes in the early days, “I aspired to make paintings that were awkward and monstrous, boring and familiar.”

In the mid-1980s, Green was interested in the Necker Cube. He wrote, “I was intrigued by the possibilities of simultaneously representing all sides of a rotating cube. I incorporated tiling patterns of unfolded cubes along with the hypercube in my work.”

Of his more recent work, Green wrote, “I have been trying to make layered paintings that take a long time to “see”. I want to encourage the viewer to be conscious of the (usually unconscious) process of the interpretation and construction of images in the mind.”

Noteworthy piecesEdit

Absolute Purity, 1967, Tastee-Freeze series

Immoderate Abstention, 1969, Fire and scissors

Saturated Fat, 1971, Tastee-Freeze series

Blank Slate, 1978, oil on canvas. First painting of an extended series that involve images of mirrors.

Risky Business, 1980, a fire-and-fingernail totem with a layered and shaped canvases

Persons Unknown, 1985, layered and shaped canvases

Double Crosser, 1991, imagery is secured, wired, lashed, tied-off, taped, and fastened with screws

Circular Argument, 1994, layered and shaped canvases

CollectionsEdit

Green’s paintings are in many public and private collections including those of The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON;The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL;The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; The National Museum of American Art (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC; The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art,University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; <a title="Northwestern Unive

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