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Lot Essay
"The immediate event-the phrase within its line, the adjoining pulse in silence, the new phrase-each part is a thing in itself; the junctures are not binding but freeing the elements of configuration so that they participate in more than one figure. He strives not for a disintegration of syntax but for a complication within syntax, overlapping structures so that words are free, having bounds out of bounds" --Robert Duncan, 1967
Perhaps more than any other artist, the visceral language articulated by Franz Kline's powerful brushwork epitomizes not only the artist's own expressive voice but also encapsulates the seismic changes that were taking place during the period in which he painted. Like New York, the city which had been the artist's home since 1938, Painting No. 3's latticework of muscular brushstrokes and shifting layers of black and white pigment crackles with the painterly energy that was the result of the dramatic shift from figuration to abstraction. As the epicenter of creative power shifted from Europe to the United States it was in the studios and bars of Greenwich Village that a new generation of artists began to stake their claim on a movement that became known as Abstract Expressionism. And perhaps more than any other artist of his generation, Franz Kline stood at the vanguard of this crusade and came to define its character as the 'chronicler-in-chief.'
Painting No. 3 contains what David Anfam describes as, a force that hits "the viewer full in the face" and contains "an apparent immediacy that stamps itself sharply and at glance on the eye and the mind" (D. Anfam, "Kline's Colliding Syntax: Black, White, and Things," Black & White 1950-1961, exh. cat., Menil Collection, Houston, 1994, p. 9). Distinguished by the bold, almost calligraphic, motif that dominates the composition of Painting No. 3, this work demonstrates Kline's mastery of his painterly oeuvre as the composition switches from bold keynotes to the delicate, almost smoky, passages built up from repeatedly laying down and removing thin layers of black-and-white pigment. Kline's central motif dominates the painting, evoking the framework of iron girders that acted as the skeleton for the dozens of skyscrapers that were beginning to govern the city's iconic skyline. Unlike traditional methods of painting, which lays down a light colored ground upon which the main characters of the painting are laid, Kline reverses the process, often laying down the black pigment first, then contrasting it with the white paint, "People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it," Kline once commented, "but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white, it just as important" (F. Kline, quoted in D. Anfam, ibid., p. 19). This meant that, for Klein, every aspect of the painting was as important as the next and there was no hierarchical relationship within the canvas-each painterly element playing its role within the composition and each as important as the next. This new way of thinking opened up a whole new range of possibilities for the artist, one that excited him, allowing him to capture the energy of the city around him and absorb it into the surface of the painting, as David Anfam notes, "Every inch of Kline's black-and-white brushwork at its best betrays the touch of a hand excited by its own potential" (ibid.).
Kline's holistic approach to his art includes every aspect of his canvases and in Painting No. 3 this even extends to the artist's use of the metal frame that surrounds the extremities of the canvas. Still visible on the inner-most frame are the smatterings of white paint left by Kline as he feverishly works to get down on canvas his feelings of exuberance and excitement in the painterly process. Kline also liked to paint at night, and constructing his paintings under the glare of the artificial lights of his studio gives his work an added degree of monumentality. For Kline, the overhead lights wiped out all notions of shadows and increased the contrasts between the black and white passages of his work, reflecting the undulating textures of the black and in turn giving the white a distinctive sheen. The uncompromising nature of this form of nocturnal illumination also complimented the all-encompassing nature of Kline's composition, where no detail was allowed to merge into the background and be subsumed into the shadows.
Kline's art is Abstract Expressionism in its purest sense. As the only major artist of the genre not included in the definitive Iracibles photograph published in Time magazine in 1951, Kline has always been considered somewhat of an outsider, yet it was this status that allowed his art to develop free from dogma and pretension. When Kline was asked once to explain his art, he explained the situation with his customary succinctness: "I'll answer you the same way Louis Armstrong does when they ask him what it means when he blows his trumpet. Louis says, 'Brother, if you don't get it, there is no way I can tell you'" (F. Kline, quoted in H.F. Gaugh, Franz Kline, exh. cat., New York, 1985, p. 13). The power of Kline's paintings lie in their simplicity-the painting is a painting, the brushstroke a brushstroke-and Painting No. 3 thrives through its open-ended appearance and through the glorious free-ranging power of association of his amorphous yet vivid imagination.
Perhaps more than any other artist, the visceral language articulated by Franz Kline's powerful brushwork epitomizes not only the artist's own expressive voice but also encapsulates the seismic changes that were taking place during the period in which he painted. Like New York, the city which had been the artist's home since 1938, Painting No. 3's latticework of muscular brushstrokes and shifting layers of black and white pigment crackles with the painterly energy that was the result of the dramatic shift from figuration to abstraction. As the epicenter of creative power shifted from Europe to the United States it was in the studios and bars of Greenwich Village that a new generation of artists began to stake their claim on a movement that became known as Abstract Expressionism. And perhaps more than any other artist of his generation, Franz Kline stood at the vanguard of this crusade and came to define its character as the 'chronicler-in-chief.'
Painting No. 3 contains what David Anfam describes as, a force that hits "the viewer full in the face" and contains "an apparent immediacy that stamps itself sharply and at glance on the eye and the mind" (D. Anfam, "Kline's Colliding Syntax: Black, White, and Things," Black & White 1950-1961, exh. cat., Menil Collection, Houston, 1994, p. 9). Distinguished by the bold, almost calligraphic, motif that dominates the composition of Painting No. 3, this work demonstrates Kline's mastery of his painterly oeuvre as the composition switches from bold keynotes to the delicate, almost smoky, passages built up from repeatedly laying down and removing thin layers of black-and-white pigment. Kline's central motif dominates the painting, evoking the framework of iron girders that acted as the skeleton for the dozens of skyscrapers that were beginning to govern the city's iconic skyline. Unlike traditional methods of painting, which lays down a light colored ground upon which the main characters of the painting are laid, Kline reverses the process, often laying down the black pigment first, then contrasting it with the white paint, "People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it," Kline once commented, "but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white, it just as important" (F. Kline, quoted in D. Anfam, ibid., p. 19). This meant that, for Klein, every aspect of the painting was as important as the next and there was no hierarchical relationship within the canvas-each painterly element playing its role within the composition and each as important as the next. This new way of thinking opened up a whole new range of possibilities for the artist, one that excited him, allowing him to capture the energy of the city around him and absorb it into the surface of the painting, as David Anfam notes, "Every inch of Kline's black-and-white brushwork at its best betrays the touch of a hand excited by its own potential" (ibid.).
Kline's holistic approach to his art includes every aspect of his canvases and in Painting No. 3 this even extends to the artist's use of the metal frame that surrounds the extremities of the canvas. Still visible on the inner-most frame are the smatterings of white paint left by Kline as he feverishly works to get down on canvas his feelings of exuberance and excitement in the painterly process. Kline also liked to paint at night, and constructing his paintings under the glare of the artificial lights of his studio gives his work an added degree of monumentality. For Kline, the overhead lights wiped out all notions of shadows and increased the contrasts between the black and white passages of his work, reflecting the undulating textures of the black and in turn giving the white a distinctive sheen. The uncompromising nature of this form of nocturnal illumination also complimented the all-encompassing nature of Kline's composition, where no detail was allowed to merge into the background and be subsumed into the shadows.
Kline's art is Abstract Expressionism in its purest sense. As the only major artist of the genre not included in the definitive Iracibles photograph published in Time magazine in 1951, Kline has always been considered somewhat of an outsider, yet it was this status that allowed his art to develop free from dogma and pretension. When Kline was asked once to explain his art, he explained the situation with his customary succinctness: "I'll answer you the same way Louis Armstrong does when they ask him what it means when he blows his trumpet. Louis says, 'Brother, if you don't get it, there is no way I can tell you'" (F. Kline, quoted in H.F. Gaugh, Franz Kline, exh. cat., New York, 1985, p. 13). The power of Kline's paintings lie in their simplicity-the painting is a painting, the brushstroke a brushstroke-and Painting No. 3 thrives through its open-ended appearance and through the glorious free-ranging power of association of his amorphous yet vivid imagination.