POST #170: WORDS OF WISDOM

My best friend, – for over thirty years - died about a decade ago. In addition to fond memories, she left me her words of wisdom, aphorisms from her childhood in pre-Nazi Europe. I can occasionally dredge one up but unfortunately, didn’t write them down at the time and have forgotten most of them.

Dina Pisé was born in Lithuania in the late 1920s. Her idyllic childhood came to an end when the Nazis invaded her home town, Kovna, murdering her father and brother while she watched and sending her and her mother to a German work camp where she spent the remainder of the war. Weeks before they were to be liberated, her mother died of typhus fever. Not the most auspicious way to enter adulthood but a testimonial to how human beings can live through unbelievably dire experiences. She not only survived, she lived life to the fullest, refusing to dwell on the horrors she had witnessed. She would not participate in Shoah memorials; the past was dead and as far as she was concerned, would stay that way. I remember her saying that the Nazis had robbed her of her childhood and she was not giving them any more of her life.

After coming to this country from a DP camp in Germany, she married, had a child, divorced and remarried a brilliant French entrepeneur and became an artist. She was exotically beautiful, had lots of friends and lovers, gave great parties where she cooked marvelous Eastern European food, played the guitar and sang melancholy Russian love songs. Her Friday night poker games were legendary, a “hot ticket” invite; only men, no wives allowed. (if you knew their wives, you wouldn’t have invited them either). Most of all she became a sculptor, creating a house full of life-sized figures made of paper mache or stuffed muslin. Her work was wise and loving and witty, a chance to recreate in art some of what she had lost in life.

I still remember some of her sayings, and, like most folk wisdom, they were remarkably accurate.  I think most of them were Russian or Yiddish in origin, but universal in meaning. At one time, I thought about collecting them and turning them into a book, but unfortunately, I never got around to it, and then she was gone.  I have forgotten most of them, but every once in a while one will pop into my head. Although it’s a little late, I’ve started writing them down and thought I’d share a few that I remember:

1)    Three heads can’t sleep on one pillow.

 Meaning, we never really know the truth of what goes on in someone else’s life. And, as far as marriages are concerned, you can never believe what the couple tells you. Even the two heads involved have trouble figuring it out.

2)    She exchanged good shoes for slippers.

This was her comment about a friend of ours who was noted for having frivolous lovers, none of whom were equal in quality to her rather dull but devoted husband. (see #1)

3)    If he were mine I would drown him.

This referred to my late husband who got on her nerves.

The images in this post were taken of the two of us about forty years ago for a joint exhibit held at the Art Barn in Greenwich. We even looked like sisters.

POST #169: A CASE OF “THE CUTES”

Decades ago, when my third and last child hopped on the school bus, I got around to what I hoped would be my life’s work: I was going to be a full-time artist. It soon became obvious that while I might be having a great time painting in my studio, I was never going to make a living at it – my 1920s Weimar Germany satirical style wasn’t exactly what people wanted over their fireplace. Since I was determined never to go back to teaching in the public schools  (I would go on Welfare first,) I needed to find an alternative source of income – “just in case.” Maybe I could be a children’s book illustrator?  At least that would not be a life sentence to the gulag of the Junior Highs.

But if I planned to be an illustrator, I needed a portfolio to show potential publishers; “commercial, but with artistic merit.” I found an old Eastern European folk tale, “Clever Manka” (in the public domain) and proceeded to create a series of drypoint etchings to illustrate it. Fortunately, I had come up with a way of making drypoints that did not require a press, something I could do on the kitchen table without special equipment. The results seemed passable so I “dummied” up a book and set up an appointment with a Children’s Book Editor at Harper & Row” – the big time.  Off I went to the city with my six year old (no baby sitter available) in tow.  The editor I saw LOVED my work, loved it! loved it!  Said it was ‘unique’ – (it was). She planned to show it to her boss, the famous Ursula von something – a legend in the children’s book world. And then, nothing happened. When I called to enquire, I was told that the editor I had seen was no longer at Harper & Row and since persistence has never been one of my outstanding qualities, my career as a children’s book illustrator ended before it had begun.

There was one problem however, my short foray into the commercial world had without my realizing it, done considerable damage. I had acquired a serious case of what I call “the Cutes.” Everything I did looked adorable, like children’s book illustration; I had lost my satirical bite. It took almost two years to get back to my old sardonic self. Every once in a while since then, I try my hand at commercial illustration but I am very careful not to take it too seriously lest “the Cutes” take me over again.

I have several friends who were once very successful commercial illustrators and designers; in fact some of them were at the top of the New York advertising heap, award winning and all that. They all retired to be “fine artists” but could never rid themselves of the slickness that came from years of having to please clients. Even when there was no buyer or gallery in view,  their work always looked “saleable” i.e. “commercial.” Most of the time, they were unaware of the problem, convinced that they could make it in the fine arts the way they had in advertising or publishing. And while their work was always of high quality, the desire to sell, the scarlet letter “S” on their foreheads, never went away. In effect, I was fortunate that my career as a children’s book illustrator had ended before real damage was done.

I dug out some of my stabs at being an illustrator to use for this blog and after not having seen them for years, decided they’re NOT BAD. Maybe I could have been a good children’s book illustrator. The irony is that the extra income I wanted ended up coming from teaching art history on the University level - and that, I think, made me a better artist, although definitely not a very cute one.

POST #168: ON BECOMING INVISIBLE

While shopping at Trader Joe’s today, I passed an interesting looking man, late 50s, 60 maybe. I glanced at him but received a blank stare in return. It took a moment for me to realize that he hadn’t noticed me at all – I was an invisible old(er) woman.

I think it has more to do with age than gender since I’ve heard similar complaints from older men; they too become invisible with age. But it is worse for women, especially good-looking ones who have become accustomed to being admired, flirted with, able to manipulate both men and women with their looks. They have a tough time adjusting to being invisible, but hey, that’s the price we pay for growing old. What was the line in some ‘50s novel I once read? “Die young and have a good looking corpse.”

There’s something to be said for being invisible. You don’t have to put on makeup when you go to the supermarket, or a bra when you go walking at the gym. You don’t have to have some guy leering at you wondering if you’re wearing underpants.  Nobody sees you; invisibility is a protective cloak. It allows you to be the observer, not the observed.

I don’t mind becoming sexually invisible as I age but I do resent being treated as intellectually disabled, as is often the case. There’s a perverse side of me that takes great pleasure in the look on the faces of the younger generation when they discover I know more about the subject under discussion than they do. Yes. I do know who Sartre is and I can also quote Baudelaire (badly).  In other periods of history, older meant wiser, someone to be looked up to, listened to. Obviously, that no longer the case.

I was chatting with some friends recently about this subject and we were reminded of a wonderful c1970 movie starring Ruth Gordon: “Harold & Maude.” Maude is a full of life seductress approaching her 80^th birthday - with a lot to teach her adolescent lover. In the words of the immortal baseball coach, Leo Durocher: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

POST #167: Art in a Time of Terror

As the Trumpian night descends upon us, it will be interesting to see how the art world responds, if it responds at all. So far, our esteemed President has accurately appraised the insignificance of the arts in his Pantheon of Power. They aren’t even important enough for him to attack. At one time, artists were formidable critics of power, a respected elite to be reckoned with. Now they are lap dogs, in thrall to rich patrons  (investors, really, not even collectors) backed up by a museum structure struggling to come up with a new flavor of the month, preferably a previously undiscovered minority that needs to be brought under the tent. At least, in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy thought artists, writers and filmmakers important enough to frighten into silence.

Every morning, I open my New York Times Art Section in the vain hope that there will be something new that’s worth a damn but I find only meaningless abstraction or cliché “rights” movements or assemblages of detritus (lots of assembled detritus) Humanism? Satire? All passe, died in the 1950s, killed off by the esteemed Senator  under the tutelage of his mentor (and Donald Trump’s), Roy Cohn. If there is some “protest” art around, it is so cliché-ridden as to be worthless. Satire? Forget it. It can be dangerous to your financial health. The so-called elite didn’t get rich by encouraging people to make fun of them. It costs so much today to even be an impoverished artist that no one in their right mind is going to be stupid enough to make fun of the hand that’s paying the bills. Certainly not the artists who are around today; they are all gratefully circling the money trough.

And, oddly enough, none of this retreat from life is deliberate. The social realists of the ‘40s such as Philip Guston and Mark Rothko who turned to abstraction in the 50s during the Age of McCarthy didn’t consciously say to themselves: “I’m scared so I’ll only paint colored brush strokes.” It’s not like Nazi Germany where the terror, the repression was overt. Times change; fashions in art change. Be safe and avoid depicting the real world; no one can blame you for what you didn’t say.

So where am I going with this screed? I’m trying to explain (to myself mostly) why I’m now painting imaginary cities occupied by mysterious fragmented men and beasts instead of my usual gangsters and plutocrats. None of this is conscious or deliberate since I paint without premeditation. It’s like reality has now passed the point where satire is even a possibility. How do you satirize a Donald Trump with his orange hair and dangling penis tie? Barbie Doll wives? the goons that surround him? It’s forcing me into a make-believe universe that I’ll probably hang around in  until the next election;  it’s more tolerable than reality any day.

Respectfully (and sadly) submitted,

Renee Kahn

POST #166: SOLITUDE AND THE NEED FOR UNINTERRUPTED TIME

If you want to become a really good artist, musician, writer, scientist – If you want to do creative work in any field, you need a distraction free environment and an unlimited period of unbroken time. There are people who claim they can create in chaos but I don’t believe them. Some can work with distraction around them, but not create. If you want to be innovative in any field, you must arrange your life so that when ideas finally begin to flow, you can stay with them as long as necessary. EVERY creative person I know,or have read about, insists on solitude without interruptions. If you have to stop to put wash in the dryer or answer the phone, the FLOW is lost, often never to be retrieved. You will be amazed at the difference unbroken time makes in the quality of your work. If you’re writing poetry for example, you can’t get up every ten minutes to check your e-mail, or answer the phone; it disrupts the rhythm of what you are doing and you have to start all over again. Not everybody has a life they can control that way, but if you can’t fully immerse yourself in your work for a distraction free period of time, nothing terribly new and interesting is going to happen and you are going to do the same old, same old again. That’s why so many creative people stop being creative once they achieve success. The phone keeps ringing; they have to give talks, go to parties, be celebrities, etc.,etc. They probably did their most significant work before becoming famous. The smart ones know how to protect their “flow” and, like Philip Roth with his writing cabin in the woods can keep coming up with new ideas into old age.

When you start looking at the lives of “geniuses,” most seem to have done their best creative work when young. I don’t believe it’s age that stops the flow of ideas, it’s the obligations of a mature life (marriage, children) coupled with the distractions of worldly success. Einstein did his most innovative work before he became a celebrity. I’ve read that most math geniuses made their discoveries when they were young (and had lots of undisturbed time). Artists like Picasso might live in social turmoil during the day but do their creative work at night when no one is around. I remember reading a biography of the artist Philip Guston, one of my favorites. He would lock himself in his home studio and (despotically) insist on total silence in the house. His long suffering wife and children were ordered never to make as sound; no phone calls or visitors were allowed, anything that would disrupt the flow of the “great man at work” was forbidden. And it paid off with the best, most creative art of his life.

And here I am, in later years, turning out work that is far beyond my – or anyone else’s - expectations. Why? I think it’s because I live alone. I can be in the studio for as long as I want, whenever I want. I don’t have to make conversation or dinner. I can allow the flow of my painting to be uninterrupted leading me into paths I never imagined. I can think clearly, sequentially, without distraction. For some unexplained reason, the Universe has given me the gift of uninterrupted  time and I am determined to make the most of it.

Renee Kahn

POST #165: TRAVELING IN MY HEAD

I’m a notorious armchair traveler. This is an expression I haven’t heard used much nowadays. At one time it was used to describe someone who did his or her traveling through books – there were lots of travel books when I was young - in the comfort of their own home. Today, everyone I know is flying off to somewhere grand and exotic. “Morocco?” “Bosnia?” “You haven’t been to the Carpathians? “ No, and neither do I intend to go. I am perfectly happy traveling in my head, or if I need to get out, within a twenty mile ratio of home. If I’m going to get an upset stomach, I’d prefer to be close to familiar facilities.

In The Bardo

Diptych   66”x86”. Oil, charcoal and collage on canvas

I come by my stay-at-home genes honestly. My parents came to New York as teenagers in the early 1900s and never budged. Why should they? New York had everything they could ever want in terms of culture and ethnic diversity. There were Greek neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, Chinese neighborhoods. Food shops, restaurants, clothing stores. Maybe the Metropolitan Opera wasn’t equal to La Scala (although it probably was), or the art museums the size of the Louvre, but they were more than enough to amply fill their cultural requirements. My sweet father had an extensive library of travel books, most written in the early 1900s when the world wasn’t McDonalized. I’ve kept a few. At night, he would sit in his comfortable armchair, next to out cabinet radio, listen to WQXR (the classical music station), get a book (with photos) and travel (safely) in his head.

After college, most of my friends set off on travels. Because I was needed at home to take care of my parents (I was an “only” child with elderly, unwell parents), I had a one-hour travel radius and could only go where I could be reached quickly in an emergency. Somehow, I don’t remember being envious of my wandering friends. I was studying Art History in graduate school and it seemed to me that a version (maybe not as grand) of everything I would have seen in Europe, was within my one hour time frame. So the Catskills weren’t the Alps and Coney Island not the Riviera; I didn’t feel deprived.

Heaven on Earth

Charcoal and oil on canvas
Center panel. 72” 44”

I remember listening to a woman at a party brag about her recent trip to the Carribean. I asked her if she (a native New Yorker) had ever visited the Spanish market under the elevated tracks in east Harlem? It was a typical tropical street marqueta, except that the stallkeepers all spoke Spanish with a Yiddish accent. I would go there with a Cuban artist friend and we would sketch the natives from a hiding place behind the stone pillars. But then, you couldn’t brag about going to Spanish Harlem could you?

After marrying, I had three children in five years, and since going to the supermarket with them was a herculaean effort, travel to foreign places was definitely out of the question.  When we moved to Stamford 55 years ago (only temporarily, we thought) we discovered there was no end to interesting local places to take them to and they did not grow up culturally deprived. My husband, also a non-traveler, preferred his garden to any place in the world.  He had served in the South Pacific during World Was II and when he discovered that the women of the island he was stationed on bore no resemblance to those painted by Gauguin, he lost interest in exotic places. When two of our children moved to California, we did get out and about on the West Coast, visiting the Redwoods, the Pacific Northwest, San Franscisco, but the New York Botanical Gardens are 30 minutes from our house and, except for the joy of seeing our children, we would have been just as happy going there.

Nowadays, given my “advanced” years, I definitely prefer to travel in my head. There’s enough stored there to keep me visually occupied, in fact, I’m never going to get around to using the imagery that’s already on file. I know that many, if not most, of my readers love to travel, and I’m not being critical of them. À chacun son goût (See, I even speak French.)

Renee Kahn

POST #164: HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE ART WORLD (by someone who hasn’t)

I’ve been around (not exactly “in”) the art world for an embarrassingly long time and have come up with hard earned words of advice for someone who is trying to make good in the current scene. Even though I wrote this about twenty- five years ago, it seems to still hold true.

1)      Rent or buy a loft in an up and coming artists’ slum. An ‘unfashionable’ address (i.e. the suburbs) is the kiss of death.

2)      Find the cafe where all the artists hang out and spend your free time there.

3)      Show up at every loft party and opening. Try to figure out who is important and talk only to them. Forget friends. They know you already.

4)      Sleep with celebrities – all sexes. Make sure everyone knows about it.

5)      Say and do outrageous things. i.e. Jackson Pollock got lots of mileage out of pissing in a rich patron’s fireplace.

6)      WORK BIG. Bigger is always better. Shows you have “balls”, confidence.

7)      Exhibit at up-and-coming galleries only. (No "has-beens" or "pay to play’s")

8)      Gift a member of the board or staff of a prestigious museum some of your work. He’ll be sure to promote you to increase its value.

9)      Get a National Endowment for the Arts grant; better yet, propose something  outrageous and get the grant revoked (or investigated.)

10) Find out where all the big guys in the art world go for the summer and show up in your shorts.

11)   Get a divorce and marry someone very rich or thirty years younger. 

12)   Leave your original art dealer, the one who gave you your start.

13)  Have a retrospective at the Whitney or MOMA preferably while you’re still alive.

14)  Die and have your ex-spouses, non-functional children, and greedy dealers fight over your estate. Why should you make these losers rich?
 

POST #163: Painting People

I’ve always been pretty good at painting people but not very good at painting portraits. John Singer Sargent, one of America’s greatest portrait painters, defined a portrait as a painting with “a little something wrong about the mouth,” (loose quotation) referring, of course, to the difficulty of capturing the planes of the area around the lips, but also to the fact that what the painter sees and what the subject hopes he’ll see are often two different things. Conventional portraiture is not so much an art form as a skill, something that can be learned, a form of pleasing psychophancy. Really good portrait painters manage to capture the subject’s interior life as well as a likeness. There’s also a great story about Picasso’s portrait of the poet, Gertrude Stein. When she complained that it didn’t resemble her, his response was “Don’t worry. It will.” (or words to that effect.)

Portraiture goes back several millennia to ancient Egypt when the pharaohs decided to place ‘photoshopped’ versions of themselves up there with their gods. Other ancient civilizations, including the Greeks and the Mesopotamians also portrayed their rulers, but in a stylized, non-realistic manner, more like gods than real people. It wasn’t until the humanizing influence of the Early Renaissance that ordinary mortals were deemed worthy of having their likenesses preserved. Over the centuries there have been a great many artists who could capture a physical resemblance but only a few who could - Pygmalion like - depict internal emotions as well as exterior appearance. Giotto, Rembrandt among the more noted

Once the camera appeared, portrait painting was doomed. Why bother? The camera can do in a second what would take weeks of hard labor and years of training to achieve in paint. However, even after the invention of the camera painted portraits remained popular producing some surprisingly great examples. Painters such as van Gogh and Modigliani and many of the German Expressionists, Kokoschka and (my personal favorite) Max Beckmann created portraits that went beyond mere photographic resemblance. However, for most of the 19^th and 20^th centuries photography has become the preferred way to record one’s appearance for posterity.

Today, good portrait painters are few and far between. Most of them specialize in what I call “Imperial Portraiture,” votive likenesses of Captains of Industry and Civic Leaders. And now, in the current Age of the Selfie, there’s no need now for anyone to even hire a photographer; the camera does it all.

I have never been able to “capture a likeness,” maybe because I never really worked hard enough to acquire the necessary skills, but I am good at creating “life” in my paintings. My goal is not to be a camera, but to get my subjects to talk to me, look into my eyes and tell me what they are thinking, feeling. It’s a gift and I have no idea how it came about. I recently completed a series of 54” x 24” oil and charcoal sketches on canvas.  I intended to use them in a series of paintings of Harlem I’m planning to work on next winter. However, I like the sketches so much I think I’ll stop right now. There are six “characters” currently residing in my studio, and they’re great company.

POST # 162: Is it Art or Illustration?

At what point does one morph into the other? Not as easy to answer as it might seem. Historically, until the mid 1800s, most art was what we today would today consider “illustration.” It told a story: historical, biblical or mythological. Even something as non-literary as a 17^th century Dutch still life or a Turner landscape painting had an underlying “moral” basis, maybe a condemnation of sin or a Momento Mori, a commentary on the briefness of life. I recently came across a book in my library entitled: Modern Painters and Sculptors as Illustrators, with dozens of examples of famous artists from Picasso to Matisse, Chagall and Rodin, They clearly had as their primary intent the creation of a work of art. The written word, the story it came with, was secondary. On the other hand, when you compare their work to the great American illustrators like Howard Pyle or the Wyeths, you can see the difference clearly; their primary goal was to clearly tell a story. I’m not making a value judgment; Picasso is not “better” than Wyeth, just different. You can be a hack artist or a hack illustrator. What makes the difference between artist and illustrator is intent. Is the purpose primarily to tell the story or to create a work of art? With shades of everything in between.

As you suspect, whenever anyone makes a statement about art or artists, the exceptions jump out  at you. If you gave a copy of a poem or a short story to ten different artists and ask them to illustrate it, you would get ten totally different interpretations – as you should. Let’s say, there is a continuum, ranging from a totally abstract interpretation of a work of literature to an image where there is an almost photographic adherence to the story. “Fine Artists” have always been derisive of illustrators, assuming that work done for a client is necessarily less valid as of a work of art. Certainly, there’s no historic or even artistic basis for that. Is Giotto’s mural for the Arena Chapel less a masterpiece because it tells a story? Hacks are hacks; mediocre “artists” are no better than mediocre illustrators.

Anyhow, let me give an assignment to everyone reading this blog, artists and non-artists. Find a piece of literature you like: poem, story, book – and illustrate it in the manner of your choice. You can interpret it realistically or fantastically or abstractly. Any way you like. In fact, try it a couple of different ways. It’s a great way to push yourself, get out of a rut. For example, the artist Chagall was at his peak, did his best, most creative work from around 1910 to 1920. Then, he fell into a formula that sold well, made him rich and famous: his “faux” Vitebsk ghetto scenes, with flying lovers, rabbis and (cash) cows. It wasn’t until he turned to illustrating works such as Les Fables de La Fontaine and the Arabian Nights that his genius re-emerged and he ended up one of the greatest artist/illustrators of modern times.

Here’s your homework assignment: Pick a poem or a quote, a proverb, a fable - and create an illustration for it! I don’t care if you are an “artist” or not – in fact – I’m curious to see what the non artist readers come up with!

GO!…and send me the results.

 Renee Kahn

Artist and Ersatz Illustrator

POST #161: RENEE KAHN -THE PHOTOFRAUD

I was never much of a photographer, mainly because photography, especially back in the days when I was starting out as an artist, required a lot of technical expertise which I didn’t have, as well as expensive equipment which I couldn’t afford. But, since I drew pretty well the only time I really needed a photo was to jog my memory, provide some details I couldn’t remember and my $2.99 Brownie camera was just fine for that. Nowadays, thanks to the incredible I-phone cameras, everyone can take good photographs, be an artiste. What nobody seems to realize is that it takes more than equipment to make a good photograph.

Over the past few decades I’ve had the mixed blessing of being invited to judge a half dozen Camera Club competitions, mostly little local meetings, not the major shows that want big names. I would be invited, not because I had any expertise in photography, but because I taught art history at the local university and the club leaders thought I might add a “different point of view.” And that I did! At the beginning of the session, the judges would be introduced. No one had any idea (or interest) in who I was and why I was invited, so my first job was to inform the group that I had very little, if any, knowledge of photography as a skill, however, I could teach them something about photography as an art. The other judges got to critique before me, quick to point out smudged negatives, out-of-focus backgrounds, poor lens work, in other words, the technical aspects of photography.

The modus operandi of the meeting was to project the photos the members had brought with them onto a large screen for the judges to critique. When it was my turn, I would walk back to the projector and with a couple of pieces of masking paper crop their mediocre images into something that produced gasps from the audience. I would hear complaints from the other judges that cropping was “cheating,” that “good” photographers (like Henri Cartier-Bresson) cropped with their eyes before they took their photos. “B.S. I would reply, there are no no’s, only what works.” I would then proceed to give the audience a crash course in “Principles of Design 101”, the underlying basis for a good photograph or any work of art.

A few weeks ago, my friend Bob gave me his usual copy of the art section of the London Financial Times. Much to my surprise, there was a review of a newly published book of photographs by one of my all-time favorites Helen Levitt. She was one of a group of talented “street photographers” influenced by the great Walker Evans who roamed the city in the 1940s taking candid snapshots of run down New York City neighborhoods. She died over ten years ago in her mid ‘90s, leaving behind over 10,000 unpublished negatives and the images in the new book were taken from this archive. The FT generously reprinted several photos that were in the book along with the review. But something wasn’t right. The images they showed, although very interesting, didn’t have the flawless composition and punch of Levitt’s usual work. Maybe that’s why she never published them in her lifetime. Or maybe she never had a chance to work on them. I was bothered enough to get up in the middle of the night, find my copy of the newspaper, cut out the illustrations in the article – and crop them myself.  There ya’ go Helen Levitt! I went back to sleep, content. The next day, I proudly showed what I had done to a photographer friend. He looked puzzled. “They looked okay to me before.”

P.S. If anyone is interested, I can give a one-page intro to the “Principles of Design” in my next post. The rules are easy, but they’re only the beginning; you have to practice a lot.

POST #160: FILTHY LUCRE: Working for the Mighty Dollar

As most of my readers know, I taught art history at the University of Connecticut for over 22 years. Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern etc. etc. All the great artists I taught about worked ‘on commission,’ rarely for their own pleasure. Today, we would have called them “commercial artists.” With few exceptions, everything they did was for a wealthy client, usually the church or royalty. They did not look upon themselves as “geniuses,” creating work that might or might not be sold. Of course there were exceptions, eccentric anomalies like a mystical Blake or an exiled Goya, or a wealthy JMW Turner. The greatest artist of all, Rembrandt, did his finest work towards the end of his life when he was no longer in demand and just scraping by selling prints and teaching a handful of students.

When I was growing up in New York City right after the Great Depression, the few artists I actually knew supported themselves and their families by teaching and an occasional sale of work. Unlike today, an artist could live inexpensively and most (men) had working wives who supported them. Currently, I do not know a single artist who survives off his or her art; they either have a pension, savings, inherited wealth or a working spouse. From time to time one of them will sell something, but if they had to depend upon sales or commissions, they would starve.

In a way, knowing that you can’t earn a living off your artwork is liberating. It means you can do whatever you like without thinking about a buyer. Where there is no art market, there’s no need to worry about it. For example, I can paint without concern about a buyer. If I die with an attic full of unwanted paintings, some starving artist will be happy to re-use my canvas and there’s always the recycling center at the dump.  I’m currently working on a giant, 6’x12’ triptych, the last in a series of three that look like Russian Constructivist stage sets. They’re the best work I have ever done. Nobody is going to buy them because no one has room to put them up. When I have some bills to pay, I can take on a historic preservation review project for the City’s zoning department and when that contract runs out, I can always take in boarders. That’s how people did it during the Depression when I was growing up. It beats making artwork that ‘goes with the drapes.’

I’ve done pretty well the past year or two, sold quite a lot of work, mainly from my “rooftop” series based on the view from my daughter’s New York apartment. They are a lot easier to live with than my voluptuous ladies of the night. Since I had a broken ankle, I couldn’t get to Curley’s Diner and the city skyline had to suffice as inspiration.

credit to:
Robert Callahan

In a way, I envy my artists friends who had successful careers as commercial artists and art directors in New York City. They do very finished looking work, nothing edgy or offensive, all of it eminently saleable. One of them puts layers and layers of varnish on her work: abstract paintings with beautiful colors. They sell like the proverbial hotcakes to office decorators. I know another who paints romantic clouds wafting over Florida beaches, also a best seller. This is what they were trained to do: create a product for a market. Even when they try to do something off the beaten track, there’s a slickness and a desire to please in their hand that they can’t get rid of. In a way, I envy the ease with which they turn out work that sells, but I was trained to be a starving artist (although I haven’t missed a meal yet!) 

Since I’m obviously not in it for the cash, what’s my current goal?

First, to keep working for a few years more; I think I‘m getting really good. And….

I would love a decent sized retrospective in a major gallery or museum while I’m still around to enjoy it.

Renee Kahn

POST #159: FULL FRONTAL – no nudity!

I have a friend who saves the art section for me from the London Financial Times. Writing about art, translating the visual into the verbal, is never easy and lends itself to pseudo-jargon and just plain bull s----. but FTs reviewers, especially someone called Jackie Wullschlager, manage to be erudite without being self-important or deliberately obscure. Every few weeks I climb into my bed with a stack of back issues and work my way through them. It doesn’t matter where the shows they write about are held or if they’re over by the time I read about them - I wouldn’t go anyhow - I always manage to learn something.

The March 18^th issue had an article by the aforementioned Ms/Miss/Mrs/Mr. ? Wullschlager that discussed a show currently at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam devoted entirely - reputedly for the first time ever - to full-length, life-sized portraits. Of course, being the Rijksmuseum, the stars of the show are two pendant portraits of a husband and his very pregnant bride painted by Rembrandt when he was in his twenties, two of only three such portraits in his lifetime. The idea of full-length wedding portraits only went back a century or so, invented by Cranach in 1514. I guess they were the equivalent of those elaborate formal wedding photos you used to see on everyone’s buffet. Most of the other paintings in the show, however, were of single figures, not pairs.

What prompted this post was a conversation I had with my friend Rachel who paints life-size, full-length portraits of ordinary people, i.e. the owner of a hardware store in Michigan and his wife. We were trying to figure out why artists seem to avoid full-length frontals and came to the conclusion that they are difficult to compose, given that the viewers’ eye ends up smack dab against the model’s belly button. How do you deal with that when you’d rather have them concentrate on the subject’s face. It’s interesting to see how some of the more famous full-length portraits in the history of art: Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy”, Goya’s “Duchess of Alba” or John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” deal with this problem. Rembrandt’s solution was to paint elaborate lace cuffs and waist trim on his pair, creating visual interest, but not enough to compete with their faces.

What prompted my interest in the subject was that several months ago I began a half dozen or so almost life-size oil sketches of people walking on 125^th Street in Harlem. I’m working up to a series of semi-abstract paintings like the ones I did of the Lower East Side several years ago. The figures are placed on 2’x5’ canvas scrolls. I start with a photograph or a sketch from life and end up with something almost entirely out of my imagination. I think my goal is to create companionship for myself in the studio, what my psychologist husband used to call my “Only Child Syndrome.”  (I was an “only child.”) When the person on the canvas makes eye contact with me, talks to me, smiles at me, I know I’ve succeeded.  I’m like the Florentine sculptor Donatello, who notoriously would scream at his statues: “Speak, damn you! Speak!” There’s an element of magic involved in all of this and while I have no idea how I bring my painted people to life; I just know when they contact me.

POST #158: DEVELOPERS I HAVE KNOWN (and not loved)

One of the downsides of trying to preserve historic buildings is that much of your time is spent fighting development (and developers). Over the past years (decades actually) this has brought me closer to a cast of Trump-ian characters than I ever dreamed of knowing. The good part is that over the years they provided fodder for a lot of strong, satirical artwork, although recent events have far surpassed anything I could have invented. LIFE has now completely overwhelmed ART.  Nothing I might create would ever come close to what is going on today: the politicians, the shyster lawyers, the bimbos, their surgically enhanced wives, the Mussolini grimace our current leader thinks makes him look like Churchill.

I could probably name at least a dozen big time real estate developers I have locked horns with – their names will sound familiar. They range from pure, unabashed Mafiosos to pseudo ‘aristocrats’ with Princeton degrees and Saville Row suits. The relationship between them came to me one evening many years ago at a Planning Board hearing I went to with my late husband, a Clinical Psychologist. While we were listening to the proceedings, the next “item” on the agenda walked in: MR. BIGSHOT and his entourage. “Who are they? My husband whispered. “They look like gangsters.” “Oh, no!” I replied. “That’s ----------. He’s one of the most important developers in the country. He’s a well-known art collector. That’s his lawyer, his sons, their wives, the architect etc.etc. They’re here to present their next project.” - which of course required the demolition of a block of historic buildings in the downtown. Higher and Best Use, you understand.

I thought about the incident afterwards and how my husband, with his professional training, had intuited something about the expensively-dressed applicants, their attempts to look like gentry that only hid what they actually were: gangsters. I immediately began to draw (I never go to zoning hearings without pencil and pad.) Where else could I get such great subject matter – for free?

Recently, however, I find I can no longer be a satirist. Reality has gone beyond my gentle spoofs: too grim. It’s almost the way satire vanished in the Weimar Republic (George Grosz et al) once Hitler came to power. The brilliant social satirists of Germany in the 20s and early 30s left the country or hid away, hoping not to end up in a death camp.

There is however, a difference between Developers and Builders. Some of my best friends are builders. Most of them are small town guys who grew up and plan to stay here. They are essentially craftsmen and will save and restore historic buildings if given half a chance… and they don’t leave town with the profits as soon as the job is over. I’m friendly with at least half a dozen. They respect me and try to “do the right thing” both for the community and themselves. They do quality work and take pride in the finished buildings. Many years ago, a local planner and I got together and came up with an innovative zoning regulation that would allow builders to squeeze in a couple of extra units in return for preserving an existing historic building: Section 7.3 Historic Density Bonus. It was the first of its kind in the country. By using its bonus provisions, we’ve managed to save dozens of historic houses. In fact, it’s the only thing that has ever worked.

Of course, big-time developers are hardly ever interested in preservation; their plans are much too grand to waste time and energy saving old buildings. And what if they do tear down a local monument or affordable housing in the process? They don’t live here; it’s not their home.  One of them actually had the nerve to tell me that was why he didn’t live in Stamford: the City’s zoning regulations weren’t strict enough!

Renee Kahn

POST #157: CHAUCER UPDATED or Whores Are Not Bores

A friend lent me his precious modern translation of Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” a few years ago because I wanted to do a blog about The Wife of Bath.  (Post # 80) Why is she so intriguing? I think it’s because her modern counterpart kept turning up in my life (relatives, friends) and now she’s on TV all the time. They are the lusty goddesses/ temptresses I loved to paint. My alter egos? The adventuress I would or could have been if I had had the guts (and the measurements.) 

Anyhow, the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s tale (now married to her fifth husband – the previous four died) is a very modern woman. In fact, she is so modern she recently dominated television news in the re-incarnated form of a tart turned tactician with the nom de plume “Stormy Daniels.” She refused to be a victim, instead, using her ‘know-how’ and her natural (or un-natural) equipment to equalize the gender gap, telling the men who lusted after her: “If you want to use my body, I will control you.” Chaucer makes no bones about her methodology, allowing her to brag about her endowments and skill in utilizing them.

Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath” lived during the Late Middle Ages, a time when women were chattel; upon marriage their bodies as well as everything they owned became the property of their husbands. First married at thirteen, four husbands pre-deceased her leaving her their worldly possessions, plus what they had acquired from her at marriage. In the Prologue to her story, she makes it very clear that while the New Testament may have encouraged chastity, church leaders soon realized this policy wasn’t going to provide them with a lot of followers. It didn’t take our Wife of Bath more than a couple of husbands to learn how to manipulate men, keep herself from being a victim and get them to do what she wanted. Sound familiar?  $130,000? Not bad for a couple of hours of fun and games!

Every time I read a Stormy Daniels interview, I think of the Wife of Bath and how ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same.’ We are supposedly in an age of liberation and sexual freedom where women will no longer have to subjugate themselves to the whims of the men in their lives, I heartily approve of this brave new world, but women like Stormy surely make for interesting art. Where would Titian and Rubens be without them?

POST #156: TO SIGN OR NOT TO SIGN? (a good question)

An art dealer I know came by recently, looked at my work and commented: ”You shouldn’t sign on the front. Nobody does that anymore.” Of course the “nobody does that anymore” raised the hackles (what are hackles?) on the back of my neck. “I do!”  I angrily replied. And I explained that I didn’t do it out of “ego,” but because the composition required it, needed a touch of “something” in the lower right or left. I hate people who make rules for artists. Real artists don’t follow rules but I’m sure the ones he represents no longer sign their work on the front since he told them “nobody does that anymore.”

His condescending remark brought out the quarrelsome art historian in me. When did artists begin to sign their work? Certainly not in antiquity, although there’s an occasional identifying mark. The best example I could think of was ancient Greek pottery where craftsmen of note (i.e. Euphronius) proudly lettered their names onto their work. An occasional medieval artisan left his mark: “so-and-so fecit,” but for the most part, artists were considered craftspeople producing work in service of rulers or gods. When did this change and why?

I started checking in with my knowledgeable friends. We all agreed that for the most part signatures appeared when art became a commodity. If art was now to be bought and sold on an open market, you needed to know who did it to establish its worth. Seventeenth Century Dutch art is probably the first time artists routinely signed their works as there were now literally thousands of artists producing paintings for a newly rich merchant class.

And so it went for the next two or three hundred years with most art either signed or definitively attributed.  When we get to the Modernist era, the 20^th century, a signature usually appears, modestly, in an unobtrusive corner. Some artists, like Stuart Davis in his later years, incorporated the signature into the design of the piece. Davis made his signature an integral part of the painting. one that represented the completion of the process of painting. I found a great quote from him on the subject:

“Manufacturers put their name on your refrigerator and automobile. They’re proud of it, So I thought, if it’s going to be there, it ought to be a decent-looking thing. In the context of a total composition, you plan a place for it and regard it as an object.”

Picasso had a very distinctive signature that he frequently incorporated into the design of his work.  He used his mother’s maiden name rather than Ruiz, his father ‘s because he thought it looked more interesting. It’s only recently, that it has become unfashionable for artists to sign their work. In my humble (unasked for) opinion, the current tendency to leave work unsigned is a kind of phony bravado, telling the viewer that if he or she is knowledgeable about art, they will immediately recognize who did it. Besides, so much current work is chaotic and gimickky that one would have difficult finding place to put a signature or locate it if there was one.

Anyhow, I sign and date most (but not all) of my work. I have no hard and fast rule. I like the way my signature looks; it’s a final flourish that says (proudly) “R.Kahn.” However, I noticed that my most recent paintings remain unsigned, not because as my dealer friend insisted, it has become unfashionable, but because it would ruin the composition which I like to think is perfect as is. I used to tell my art students that a work of art was finished when you could not add (or subtract) a single thing – even a signature.

POST #155: ON GETTING ADVICE YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR

An artist I know called me up a while ago complaining that nobody wanted to show or buy her work, or even adopt it temporarily. Her basement was filling up with huge rolls of painted canvas that had no place else to go. She announced that she was discouraged and thinking of going back to her high-paid but not very exciting life as a computer programmer. I’m afraid I wasn’t very helpful and didn’t give her the answer she wanted to hear. I quoted an anecdote my Russian friend Elena was fond of telling about a young poet who, in despair, goes to see a friend, an old poet. The young poet is terribly unhappy; he complains to the old poet that nobody wants to hear his poems or buy his books. He is thinking of giving up being a poet and doing something else. The old poet shakes his head sadly and says: “If you CAN give it up – you should.” 

And that’s how I feel about being an artist of any kind. If you CAN give it up – you should. The world certainly needs plumbers and dentists and accountants far more than it needs more poets, writers or painters.

Well, this is not what my (now ex) friend wanted to hear and she hasn’t spoken to me since. She wanted me to tell her it was only a question of time till she became rich and famous and everybody wanted to fete her and buy her work. But, that’s just not how the real world works. If you want to be an artist, (of any kind) it has to be because you have no choice and that if didn’t live a creative life, you might just as well shrivel up and die. The truth is that there is no job with fewer external rewards than being an artist. For every one who succeeds in making even a modest living from their art, there are dozens who live below the poverty level or are supported by indulgent parents or spouse.

Art is a calling, not a career any more than going into the priesthood or becoming a teacher in a poverty stricken neighborhood. Now that I’m more or less retired and free to paint full time, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and I look forward to getting into my studio every morning. Not that I had such a terrible life before – I had an interesting career teaching art history and writing about preservation. I had a loving marriage and three wonderful children. I’ve had lots of ups and downs in my 87 years and the bad times (I never told anyone about them) were horror stories, but, as long as I was able to go into my studio, I felt I could survive anything. Aside from the sheer pleasure of moving up and down the canvas with a brush in my hand, I now look forward to seeing what I am capable of when I give it my undivided attention. When someone asked my friend, the esteemed sculptor Reuben Nakian, what it took to be a good artist, his answer was simple: “You just need to live long enough.” That’s my goal.