In the Beginning: Gustav Klimt

For a time Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was obscure, but now he is famous if for nothing else than his gilded painting "The Kiss." If you venture into Vienna and cast about for a souvenir, you're likely to encounter one Klimt image or another unless you are truly into stocking up on Mozart candies. His Wikipedia entry is here.

As his career proceeded, Klimt's style became increasingly loose while his colors brightened. His early works were done in a highly academic fashion with a great degree of skill. From what I've seen, I'd have to conclude that Klimt could have practiced in almost any style extant in his times and would have been successful at it. Many other modernists could not handle academic style art well and, perhaps for that reason, quickly moved to modernism because there was little in the way of alternatives.

Let's take a look at some of Klimt's pre-Kiss work:

Gallery

Fabel - Fable - 1883

Idylle - Idyl - 1884
Click on the image for a large version.

Auditorium of the Alte Burgtheater, Vienna - 1888
This was painted in gouache.

Joseph Pembauer - 1890
Here we find touches of the later Klimt such as the introduction of gilt design in the background.

Liebe - Love - 1895
The painting of the background is in a looser style.

Sonja Knips - 1898
Click on the image for a large version.

Damenbildnis - Portrait of a Lady - 1898-99
Klimt is on the cusp of abandoning his previous academic/naturalistic style for the stylized paintings best known to us today.

In the Beginning: Franz Kline

If asked who is my favorite Abstract Expressionist painter, I'd probably usually answer Franz Kline (1910-1962). That's because he was bold rather than subtle, and I seem to retain a child-like preference for boldness over subtlety (I make exceptions, of course).

Poor Kline didn't quite make it to his 52nd birthday thanks to his bad heart. But from a strictly artistic-legacy point of view, his personal tragedy was possibly beneficial. That is, I'm not sure that he would have continued what he had been doing decades after Abstract Expressionism began running out of steam and fashion around the time of his death. What would he have done that would have been as aesthetically and commercially successful?

I'm not sure Kline's earlier painting would offer any clues, but I present some below as food for thought. They were grabbed off the Internet from here and there and I can't be absolutely certain that all of them were actually done by Kline. It's possible that there were misleading captions or misattributions, but this is hard to judge because Kline's early work is neither distinctive nor well-known.

Gallery

Hot Jazz - 1940

Palmerton, Pa. - 1941

Untitled circus scene - 1941

Entrance to Studio - 1947

Black on Green Red and Yellow - 1948

In the Beginning: Grant Wood

"American Gothic" is an iconic painting. It's so iconic that I won't bother wasting precious, hand-crafted, organic pixels reproducing it here.

Its creator, Grant Wood (1891-1942 -- he died the day before his 51st birthday), painted other familiar works that got him pigeon-holed as an American Regionalist (or some similar label). His Wikipedia entry sketches his career but is woefully short on images: for those, use Google or Bing.

The stereotypical Grant Wood painting, be it portrait or landscape, has a solid look to it. There also is simplification and stylization; these are exhibited to a much greater degree in his landscapes than in his other work (murals excepted).

Wood's classical style didn't emerge until after a 1928 visit to Munich. Prior to that, he was mostly influenced by French Impressionism. He visited Europe four times in the 1920s when he was already in his thirties. I suppose he might have visited there sooner, but for the inconvenience of the Great War. I couldn't locate any pre-1920 paintings on the Internet nor in two books dealing with Wood, so the "early" works shown below represent what he was painting before his style changed drastically in his late thirties.

Gallery

Paris scene - 1920s

Paris scene with omnibus - 1920s
These two paintings are typical of his urban scenes. He also painted landscapes using a similar dabby style. I could find no examples of portrait-type paintings done during this period, though he surely must have been doing some studies and experiments in those days because his 1930s faces and figures are skillfully made.

Landscape - 1930
This retains some of his sketchy 1920s practice. But he was painting solid, crafted images by 1930, so perhaps this originally was simply a sketch or color study and not a finished work even though he signed it.

Stone City, Iowa - 1930
I include this as an example of Wood's mature landscape painting.

The Perfectionist - 1936
And here is one of his portraits. The joke is that one of the lady's buttons is not completely fastened.

Iowa Cornfield - 1941
This was painted the year before Wood died of cancer. It is a partial reversion to his 1920s style.

In the Beginning: Picasso

When it comes to fame, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) strikes me as being right up there with Rembrandt in the minds of the general public. No other modernist artist comes close except, perhaps (in the USA, anyway), that other master of self-advertisement, Andy Warhol.

From what I've read, the young Picasso impressed other artists with his existing and potential talent even before he helped invent Cubism. I make no secret of my dislike for nearly all of Picasso's work, but I'm willing to explore the work he did when young as grist for speculation regarding his ability and whether or not he could have carved out a career as a representational painter.

For background and information about his early paintings, I consulted the first volume of John Richardson's uncompleted multi-volume biography of the artist.

Picasso's father was an artist and art teacher whose work Richardson considered inferior. Still, one can assume that Picasso could not have failed to absorb many nuts and bolts of the craft of oil painting by the time he entered his teens and began attempting serious work. While in his teens he received some formal training but did not go through the complete rigorous academic regimen still in place in the 1890s. He was done with schooling before he turned 19.

Now let's look at a sample of his paintings that basically can be considered representational in style; I've ordered them by year. Keep in mind that Picasso was born in late October of 1881 and do some subtracting from the painting dates to get an idea as to his age at the time.

Gallery

The Old Fisherman (Salmerón) - 1895

First Communion - 1896
Click on image for a larger, clearer view.

Altar Boy - 1896
Click on image for a larger, slightly clearer view. I saw this at the museum at Montserrat, a few miles west of Barcelona. It struck me as being smoothly painted, an attribute this reproduction fails to show.

Ciencia y Caridad (Science and Charity) - 1897
This was painted as a salon entry.

Moulin de la Galette - 1900
Painted the year Picasso first visited Paris.

Mujer en azul - 1901
Richardson suggests this painting reflects the influence of Goya.

Self-portrait (Yo Picasso) - 1901
The drawing is representational, the technique is "painterly" and the colors seem early Fauvist, even though Picasso wasn't identified with that movement. Richardson also notes (Page 417) that Picasso was never strongly interested in color -- a Spanish thing, it seems.

Woman in Mantilla (La Salchichona) - 1917
Here Picasso experiments: a smoothly-painted face contrasted with pointillist technique.

Portrait of Olga - 1917
Click on image for a larger, clearer view.

Olga Picasso - 1923
Here he was as representational as he ever got in the years following Cubism. Even so, this portrait and the one above simplify to the point where a bit too much crispness (from a reality standpoint) creeps in. This tack was taken by many artists in the 1920s and 30s wanting to introduce a whiff of modernism to their paintings. Click on image for a larger, clearer view.

Did Picasso have the Right Stuff to succeed in representational art?

I think he did, though I have trouble evaluating the ability displayed in the earliest, most representational, works. Richardson does not consider Picasso's mid-teens efforts outstanding, though he fails to offer a yardstick for this opinion.

My problem here is that I don't hang out around art schools of any kind, let alone those inhabited by 15-year-olds; I have no idea how good a painter that age might be.

The yardstick I do have is myself. At ages 15-20 I did not paint nearly as well as did Picasso, nor do I recall any fellow student who did. On the other hand, our training was close to non-existent. As best I remember, high school art classes basically were sessions where we fiddled around drawing or maybe using water-based media and the teacher's role was that of a gentle critic. College was more of the same, except that we got less than a bare minimum of instruction and also began working in oils.

It's too bad we can't invoke a parallel universe where Picasso studies at the Académie Julian under, say, William-Adolphe Bouguereau or perhaps elsewhere under Jean-Léon Gerôme or Carolus-Durand. If so, the kid coulda had a future.

In the Beginning: Francis Picabia

Francis Picabia (1879-1953) was something of a modernist gadfly, taking on this movement and that before reverting to representational work for a considerable stretch of his career. This is summarized here in his Wikipedia entry.

Picabia is yet another member of the circa-1880 generation of painters (Pablo Picasso was another) who was aware of modernism yet received at least some traditional training before cutting loose on the exiting adventure of rejecting the past in favor of an innovative future.

In case you are not familiar with his modernist paintings, here are two examples.

Dances at the Spring - 1912

Balance - c.1919

And here are two landscapes that predated his move to modernism.

Riverbank - 1905

Sunlight on the Bank of the Loing River, Moret - 1905

As mentioned above, Picabia largely set aside modernism for a while. At first, he painted a number of works that were figurative, yet included modernist-seeming embellishments. By the early 1940s he did a large number of paintings of female nudes where poses were taken from a French magazine of the 1930s that featured girlie photos. Even a self-portrait was photo-based, as is shown below.

Mi - c.1929

Self-Portrait

Photo source for self-portrait

Viareggio - 1938

L'Espagnole - 1938

Deux nus - c.1940

This series is based on the question of how good a representational artist the modernist might have become had he never "gone modern." In Picabia's case, I see little evidence to indicate that he would have been more than a journeyman realist.

In the Beginning: Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is surely the most famous Norwegian painter. For details regarding his troubled life, you can consult his Wikipedia entry here.

Munch received formal art training, but fell in with artists and others excited by the emerging prospect of modernism. By the time he was 30, he was experimenting with ideas propounded by modernists in France and Germany. Here are examples:

Evening on Karl Johan Street - 1892

Rose and Amalie - 1893

The Storm - 1893

The Dance - 1900

Friedrich Nietsche - 1903

The Scream - 1893
This expressionist jolt is Munch's most famous painting by far.

He also did work that was more representational, particularly while in his 20s and still influenced by formal training.

From Maridalen - 1881

Morning - 1884

Summer Night (Inger on the Shore) - 1889

Even though he was experimenting, Munch did not lose touch with representationalism. The paintings below reveal a respect for human anatomy that shines through the various styles he was using.

Self-Portrait with Cigarette - 1895

Madonna - 1894-95

Nude by Wicker Chair - 1929

Munch, like many other modernists in this "In the Beginning" series, clearly seems to have had the potential to have been a good representational artist. Indeed, he was off to a good start in this direction. Such a start is not surprising when one considers his generation: he was a near-contemporary of Gustav Klimt who began his own professional career painting academic-style works.