~GREGG HERTZLIEB~
THOMAS
H. KAPSALIS: STILL LIFE AND CLOTH
Like Kapsalis himself, the painting has
one foot in the old world
and
one foot in the new; while it demonstrates a fondness
for Synthetic
Cubism, it also shows the artist far enough
past the movement
historically to identify and capture those
qualities of Cubism of
particular personal fascination so that
far from feeling like an
exercise in style it becomes a meditation
on enduring
influence,
personal in tone . . .
On display in the Brauer
Museum of Art this past winter was a major exhibition of paintings and
sculpture by the noted Chicago abstractionist Thomas H. Kapsalis.
Curated by John Corbett and Jim Dempsey, the exhibition included more
than thirty pieces from all phases of the artist’s career, some drawn
from significant public and private collections. The works
overall reflect the artist’s commitment to formal abstraction,
demonstrating in their variety Kapsalis’s ability to find delight and
challenge in exploring this style and the elements of design.
Kapsalis’s biography is a fascinating one, and key
life events had impact on his work. A veteran of World War II, a
German POW, and a soldier in the Battle of the Bulge, Kapsalis saw
first hand the horrors of war and perils of captivity. His work
following his years of service began to celebrate his freedom and
creative opportunities, although an awareness of war experiences and
the futility of war in general informed his work to various degrees for
years afterward. His Fulbright to Stuttgart in the early 1950s
further exposed him to the world of possibilities in Modern Art.
The Vietnam era and accompanying controversies led the artist to limit
his palette to only black and white as a gesture of protest.
Decades of teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
combined with ongoing pictorial experimentation in color, shape, and
composition resulted in Kapsalis laying the groundwork in part for
stylistic directions and approaches that now seem to characterize art
from Chicago. His work today is strong in design, colorful, full
of appreciation for the capabilities of artful division of the picture
plane.
Kapsalis’s interests briefly mentioned above speak
to a lifelong fascination with Modernism. While avant-garde
concerns in the present day oftentimes lead to an ironic questioning of
artistic enterprises and inspiration, Kapsalis reminds through his
example that the arrangement of pictorial elements, the application of
pigment on the surface, the juxtaposition of carefully chosen colors
all continue to hold real and satisfying rewards that engage the
imagination and please the eye. His firm attachment to the world
of Modernist invention itself provides an aspect of content to his
work, giving viewers a sense that the artist is able to stay relevant
with impressive innovations while belonging to a time largely free of
irony but simultaneously eager for new visions.
The artist’s humble and mild-mannered demeanor
complements well his Modernist priorities in this day and age, as do
his patient but enthusiastic discussions of Modernist evolutions.
Add to that profile a fine sense of humor, and his art then presents
something that playfully questions itself as it engages fundamental
artistic principles. Formal abstraction generally is fairly
cerebral in its goals, and Kapsalis’s art certainly treats issues that
are intellectual in nature, but add reflexivity spiced with humor and
the work moves from a pure abstraction based on systems into the realm
of the surreal or fantastic. Design enhanced by narrative, or at
least the suggestion of narrative, gives depth and charm to the
artist’s pieces.
One particular painting by Kapsalis points in
interesting ways to his identity and aims as an artist. Still Life and Cloth from 1984
might not necessarily reflect in an obvious way the artist’s
aforementioned sense of humor, but it does have a narrative dimension
in that it refers to the many table representations Kapsalis has made
during his career, and in that it frames Cubism simultaneously in its
early stage of development, later pictorial stylizations, more austere
styles that followed, and the artist’s own pictorial idiom. Like
Kapsalis himself, the painting has one foot in the old world and one
foot in the new; while it demonstrates a fondness for Synthetic Cubism,
it also shows the artist far enough past the movement historically to
identify and capture those qualities of Cubism of particular personal
fascination so that far from feeling like an exercise in style it
becomes a meditation on enduring influence, personal in tone because
the distillation of Cubism, and its most pleasing elements, is unique.
The painting’s gray and umber tones visually are
reminiscent of the severely limited palette adopted by Picasso and
Braque during Cubism’s earliest Analytic phase; in analyzing the
selected subjects these artists wished to focus viewer attention on the
idea of multiple points of view represented on a single picture plane,
with color seen as too seductive, too distracting for a proper
exploration of such a concept. Later, Synthetic Cubism offered
more varied subjects and greater use of color as the goals shifted
toward investigating the broad capabilities of this new pictorial
language. Kapsalis has mentioned that Still Life and Cloth was inspired
by Synthetic Cubism and his fondness for the opportunities of that
style. His discussions of Cubism inevitably reach back to Cezanne
and the liberties, as a father of Modernism, that he took in order to
encourage or demonstrate a new way of seeing based on the act of
observing as opposed to the savoring and transcribing of a particular
tableau. Perhaps the table is a subject of fond consideration for
Kapsalis who saw the occasionally distorted table perspectives in
Cezanne still lifes as among the first indicators of a shift of
priorities from the capturing of a likeness to the self-conscious
manipulating of the basic tools of art making.
Kapsalis’s abstract works, and this painting
specifically, show abstraction as an activity of simplifying through
degrees. His latest works may be the most nonobjective he has
done, but these too when not manifesting or exploring in highly
personal fashions various design principles are based on some lived or
experienced subjects, sometimes so highly simplified that connection
with a specific subject becomes more linked to the metaphorical.
The table in Still Life and Cloth
is recognizable, identifiable, but specific traits that might connect
the table to an actual one give way to a general configuration; the
table stands as an idea, not a portrait. The cloth atop the table
contains just enough bold and stylized marks to suggest and communicate
folds or wrinkles. Planes in the background have no specificity
and become paradoxically indications of spaces and spaces that have
been flattened to become shapes.
The right edge of the table exists as a dashed line
dividing a tan field, challenging in its perspective and leading back
to an edge not delineated and (like Cezanne’s still life example) not
matching or continuing the table’s left back edge. The left edge
of the table is painted in the sense that black paint (the use of which
is daring in its flouting of painterly convention) is used, but this
edge is actually more drawn than painted (or realized through
coloristic or gestural means). The left front leg is bisected by
a background line and is terminated by a change of color rather than an
edge.
Such details in the painting make clear that the
primary subject is the act of painting itself, which itself refers to
decision making and a mode of seeing that transcends mere looking and
instead becomes a statement of the artist’s attitudes about his craft
and the aims of art making. The canvas for Kapsalis and other
dedicated Modernists becomes a kind of arena, where through grappling
with something familiar and prosaic like a table the artist is able to
call into question the particular natures of drawing and painting, the
points at which the identifiable departs from the specific to become
symbolic, the points at which color ceases to be illustrative or
defining and instead becomes yet another component to adjust for
effect, and the ways that spaces can become design elements for, say,
planar invention. While Cubism saw reality as food for invention,
Kapsalis sees Cubism as food as well for him to make individual choices
that establish the painting as a summary statement of his
interests. The rich color of the Venetian Red rectangle moves
across the idea of a cloth to connect to a shaded corner, the
dimensionality of which is thrown into wonderful doubt by linear
elements and scumbled color areas immediately adjacent.
Modernism was all about questioning and the breaking
of rules. Kapsalis’s Modernism enables him to proclaim his
interest in such questioning and the beneficial aspects of it.
Viewers surrender to his patient and attentive guide, where through the
gentlest means he takes them on a tour of twentieth-century art.
As much as they appreciate and comprehend the developments he shares
and models, they most of all recall fondly his unique artistic voice
and passion for the elements of art that sustain him.
© by Gregg
Hertzlieb
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