Not Franz Kline, Exactly, But...

The idea of having Pac Man race around in a Mondrian painting is too wonderful for words (thanks, Boing Boing).

Pac-Mondrian Video Game
When Piet Mondrian arrived in New York in 1940, he heard the Boogie Woogie piano of Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson, and from then on refused to dance to any other jazz, leaving the floor in a huff if the music didn't boogie.

After years of completely abstract work he abandoned the black grid to use yellow lines and red, blue, and grey colour blocks to build a representation of New York infused with all the vibrant kinetic energy of raucous road-house piano blues in 'Broadway Boogie Woogie'.

Pac-Mondrian transcodes 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' into a Pac-Man video game: the painting becomes the board, the music becomes the sound effects, and Piet Mondrian becomes Pac-Man.

And jazz, too! Will continue to check out this developing story and get back to you.

Slow day for Kline news, unfortunately.

My Ordinary Style

I suddenly realized that most of you out there have no idea of what my ordinary painting style looks like. Here's a recent portrait, a studio model named Steve. Now you can see why what Kline ended up doing is so very different from my stuff. Everyone is told in class that "all painting is abstract," but some paintings are more abstract than others.



Kline went through stylistic changes too. He had originally wanted to be a cartoonist or illustrator (in the 1930s and early 1940s), did some mural work, and, yes, portraits too. Even in his most representational work, however, he pushed speed of stroke and image in complex layered compositions.

This 1941 landscape, "Palmerton", from the Smithsonian, shows the dull colors and themes of his early style. He was from the Pennsylvania coal country, and the imagery of trains, trestles, tracks, and hills were motifs he abstracted and explored in his monumental black and white works, many of which took names of trains or towns.

Here's my first attempt at doing something "monumental". I'll probably revise this, since it needs to cut in a bit from the very dark edges.



And want to work on some landscape images of my own, both in his black and white, and color on color modes.

The Bad One

As promised, here's the one that doesn't quite work, so it's now officially abandoned (until I find it in a pile of stuff someday and decide it isn't that bad after all!)



It's bad because 1) it floats in the middle of the plane and 2) the edges of the collaged piece of newspaper are meaningless and mush into nothing. It is not a Kline at all. It isn't even a fake Kline.

Have another up to bat on the easel right now that looks a bit more promising.

Until then, keep enjoying the weekend. Listening to Calexico on the mp3 player right now, a switch from jazz. Need to find a new hot-night jazz tune, you dig?

Things I Learned Today

Have been working on 3 different paintings all day, moving back and forth among them, but none of them jelled or looked particularly Klinish, unlike some of the collages and sketches posted earlier. Went back to the book and tried to figure it out, and here's the answer:

One reason why even Kline's small paintings take on a grave and monumental look is that he extends the main forms off the canvas into "your" space, thus sucking you in whether you like it or not -- unless every photo of his work in the book was cropped (god, I hope not).

So in this one I fixed some of the shapes and marks, and it's better. Not good, but better. I'm still working on the idea of including the color of the yellow pages and ordinary phone book paper, and even the color of some of the ads, along with the curving angled marks that intrigue me. These are not Kline colors. Even in his later paintings, he generally started with a white ground, though often layered black on top of a colored underpainting.

Since it still wasn't right, I tried putting different shapes from my pile of collage materials (from when I spilled my bottle of ink the other day), so that's what the shape in the middle is.

UPDATE: Shape looked too goofy for words. Removed it....



It may stay there or not. Today was not a particularly good Klinish day. May post another one that's almost done later, and one that is really really ugly and bad, too.

Later.

Collages, Partly

Here's black over red in a kind of squarish shape that Kline liked, especially in his earlier abstracts.



In this one, I worked back and forth with acrylic paint and adjusted by "correcting" with strips of phone book, both yellow pages and regular listings. There's 3 or 4 layers in a few places, and it still looks messy, but the central circle I find interesting, somewhat sexual and female amidst all this Kline maleness.



Finally, here's a simple "neat" one, black over red with collage. Seems a little tied-down to me, but the simplicity also appeals.



I'm finding doing these extremely addictive and freeing, once the arm gets going. Here's a simple one with a little yellow to supplement the yellow of the yellow pages. For some reason this shape keeps recurring in what I've been doing. My gesture always (because I'm right-handed, perhaps) starts from upper right to lower left corner, then moves elsewhere. If this seems important to me, perhaps it should be important to me, but I don't know why.



I need to get another big piece of luan so I can work on a really big painting. Everything I have right now is small. Great for the quick studies I've been doing, but I want to start something meatier too, and worked in oil, which takes longer to dry.

One step at a time, however. I'm learning a lot. People have always assumed (as did I) that he was heavily influenced by Chinese calligraphy -- not true, however. He was more interested in shapes like railroad trestles, bridges, tracks, and urban scenes.

Plus jazz...

Was listening to Leonard Cohen this afternoon while trying to work on these, but ended up listening to his sad and depressing tales and only got going again when I turned it off. Ah, music.

New Links

Added a few links to the side.

The ArtCyclopedia site will lead you to links to museums with Kline collections, so I won't duplicate here. The Beat Museum is kinda interesting in itself. Artnet has an assortment of works on paper. The Weatherspoon Museum has 2 pastel drawings. No black at all! The fan letter from Hedy Lamarr is just charming, that's all.

Did a lot more drawings today, trying to layer color as he did. Will scan and post one or two in a bit once I get them sorted out. Still recovering from what seems like the endless party that is the Independence Day holiday around here.

More later.

Phone Book Studies

Starting about 1950, Kline used old phone books as a cheap source of paper.

From time to time Kline looked throught these telephone-book drawings, which were stacked by the hundreds in a corner. Selecting one that he felt wold work as a painting, he pasted it to a piece of cardboard. Then, either tacking the drawing beside a canvas or holding it, he followed it closely, painting directly.

Here's one of his:



Here's my first perfect Kline:



And another one -- an example of a drawing that Kline might have rotated around looking for the best view:



In these two I started adding color. Many people think Kline only worked in black and white, but nearly all of his paintings have some color in them. In the late 40s, and again before his death in 62, he used a lot of color (we'll get there later):



Now I'm getting a little more comfortable with the process, and getting messier, too. This is a good thing:



Finally, in this one I didn't even notice the "sun" up in the corner streaming goodness down on the rest of the phone book, because I drew this the other way around. I don't think Kline cared what he was drawing on, but maybe it subtly influenced what he was thinking anyway:



I did a bunch more, but let's not go nuts here. I want to do some collaging of them next. A lot of his are Frankensteins (like the one above). He preferred to work at night, which I used to prefer as well, however... His roommate used to get up to go to work at 7:00 am and find him painting away, having been up all night. He used strong ceiling lights aimed at his painting wall -- he painted on unstretched canvas, only getting it stretched for a show. He also painted on board, cardboard, paper -- just about anything. He used cheap inks and paints until he started showing regularly and his dealer put a firm halt to it.

That's it for now. Still haven't prowled the net looking for Kline stuff. Will post my bibliography on the side in a bit.

Testing Testing

There. That's better. I'm warning you all, if you don't want to spend tons of time loading pages filled with artwork you probably don't care about, leave now. Go on! Scoot!

I am not in love with this man because I have no life of my own, as some have suggested, though maybe so. Here he is:



Here's one of my versions of him:



And here's how he did a portrait from a photo of Nijinsky:



That said, will probably post more studies a bit later. Have to finish setting this up and get some links over there on the side.

A note for your enjoyment: Looking at this stuff and listening to jazz from the 50s and 60s, and some big band items works well. May put up some music links too. Have discovered the joys of sampling .mp3s and am downloading them like a fevered teen.

Later. I'm going back over to Fresh Paint now...