Wolf Kahn by Miles McEnery Gallery

WOLF KAHN

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel 212 445 0051 www.amy-nyc.com

Wolf Kahn: Recent Work / Celebrating Art and Life

by William C. Agee

By now, there can be no doubt: At the age of 88, Wolf Kahn (b. 1927) is one of the great color painters in America. Color is what immediately strikes us in his work. It is intense, vivid, even searing, contrasted at points with deep and mellow hues or with light, open—even delicate—tones, often all in the same painting. These paintings demand our attention. How could they not? It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that he dislikes being grouped with colorists, whom he calls “strokers.” This will remind us of Mark Rothko’s claim that if we think his art is about color, we are missing the point. Kahn insists, instead, that he is a formalist. By this, I take it he means that for him the artist’s credo is to fulfill the demands of the painting, not those of the artist, the viewer, or the general public. Color, we may say, is but a raw material for the painting, not an end in itself. He keeps the color “austere,” as he likes to call it, meaning that color is not an add-on, or an enhancement, but it has its own “dignity,” its own means as an essential tool of the painter. He follows in the footsteps of his teacher, Hans Hofmann, who said that “painting is 80 percent color.” To this end, Kahn sees painting as involving a “moral choice,” for it requires fulfilling the needs of art, not those of the artist or of anything outside of the process, least of all fashion, politics, or current styles. The painting itself comes first, then the artist. But above all, he insists that painting must celebrate art and life. His paintings are filled with the energy of the life force at every point; we cannot miss it. Kahn proudly says he came from, and out of, Abstract Expressionism. He was particularly influenced by Hofmann, with whom he studied and for whom he worked with in 1947–48. Hofmann’s joyous odes to the art of painting are everywhere evident in Kahn’s work. In addition, the brushing of Willem de Kooning and the color bands of Rothko are evident in his earlier work. More surprising, at least to this viewer, is the importance the artist has ascribed to Jackson Pollock, from an early date in his career to the present day. Indeed, he recently said that Pollock especially interests him right now, and this is evident in his recent “black” paintings. A color artist disclaiming himself as a colorist? A figurative, landscape artist coming out of Abstract Expressionism? These apparent puzzles are only two of the twists and turns

1. The citations here and throughout come from the author’s discussions with Kahn in the spring of 2015 in New York and Vermont. For excellent, full accounts of Kahn and his art see Justin Spring, with essays by Karen Wilkin and Louis Finkelstein, Wolf Kahn, 2nd edition (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2011) and Wolf Kahn, Wolf Kahn Pastels (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2000).

in the remarkable story of an artist who values constant ambiguity, and even perversity, perhaps more than anything else.1 But make no mistake, underlying these twists and turns, there is a deep sense of continuity in his work, due in large part to his understanding of the history of art. Kahn openly and respectfully speaks of all those in the past from whom he has gladly learned. He likes the quote, “Mature artists steal,” a paraphrase of T.S. Eliot. He sees Claude Lorrain as a source for the harmony he seeks; Titian, Rembrandt, and Jacob van Ruisdael inspired him with the light and color in their landscapes. Color has a history as a distinct formal and emotive language, as important to modern art as Cubism, although we are only now coming to understand that color indeed does have a history.2 But there it is, starting with Impressionism, through Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and, in the twentieth century, Henri Matisse, from whom Hofmann himself learned and developed his own symphonic color language.

We need to remember that color means much more than just hue, although hue is, naturally, crucial. (Kahn is always on the lookout for new colors as they become available in stores, and he does not hesitate to make his own when a painting calls for it. He was delighted, for example, to find a gray that he calls “instant Vermont.”) For Kahn, the physical, material properties of paint and pastel are the essence of color: the weight, the amount applied, the density, the size and scale of applications, the textures—soft or heavy, light or dark, thick or thin—the contrasts, the values, the relation to other hues, as well as the countless ways colors interact over and through the canvas or paper.3 These are the qualities that give his work its distinctive look, feel, mood, and effect. Color is a tool to be used in achieving an overall unity to the painting. Considered in these terms, Kahn would have a more sanguine view of the term colorist. Hofmann was one of the most influential teachers of the twentieth century. His impact on Kahn was profound, and his lessons are with Kahn to this day. We still make too much of the supposed divide between abstract and figurative, despite what artists themselves have had to say on the matter. But for Kahn, Hofmann settled the matter early on; Hofmann insisted that there is no such thing as abstraction or figuration; rather, there is only intelligent and good art, or stupid art. On the same subject, Pollock said, “I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time.”4 Fairfield Porter, a fine painter who fused de Kooning and Édouard Vuillard, and was respected by Kahn, stated, “The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the best abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality.”5 Neither is inherently better than the other, nor is abstraction the destination point of modern art.

2. See my forthcoming book, Modern Art in America, 1908-68 (London: Phaidon, 2016). 3. Principles of gradation, simultaneous contrast, and more. All this he would have seen firsthand, in practice, while he was Hofmann’s studio assistant. 4. Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1957), 82. See also Pepe Karmel, “Pollock at Work: The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth,” in Jackson Pollock, exhibition catalog (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998), 87–137. 5. Fairfield Porter, “Art and Knowledge (1966),” in Art in Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, 1935–1975, 2nd edition, Rackstraw Downes (Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books, 1993), 259.

Kahn was German-born. He suffered through the Nazi horrors until he escaped as a refugee, which was also a brutal experience, and got to America in 1940 as a teenager who had literally been given a new life. It is little wonder then that he believes so deeply that painting must celebrate art and, more than anything, life itself. Above all, he values his freedom—his total freedom to live and to explore at his will. This has been common to the modern American experience, but in Kahn’s case, it has special meaning. To undertake a work of art, large or small, is thus an act affirming life, the human spirit, and existence itself. He declares the artist’s freedom to proceed at his will, following no preset plans, no dictates of the external world, only those of his inner self, and of his artistic intuition. He follows the brush, free to let the dictates of the painting guide him, welcoming new painterly situations and new challenges, keeping open to fresh encounters. He will push to the edge of virtual ruin while working on a canvas, then relish the freedom to rescue it, to make it survive and thrive. For Kahn, life follows art. He paints with the joy and exuberance of a man half his age, so we know that, at every turn, he has been present at the making of this painting. He challenges himself: He is not afraid if he gets into trouble in a passage, for it forces him to stay alert and find new solutions—even inventing a new color and texture to save a picture. He works daily in his sunny, cheerful studio in Chelsea, and in Vermont in the summer. As you walk around the studio with him, you are aware that he is keeping a careful eye on his paintings, those that are “finished,” those that are still in progress, and one that is maybe OK “for the moment.” There is never an apparent letup. He bears down intently, as he has all his life. As he says, in the studio he is like a falcon surveying a field. Nothing escapes his attention. Staying open to all influences was another important lesson from Hofmann. This seems sensible and practical, but often artists will go to great lengths to avoid any such inference. Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and Adolph Gottlieb all thought they were the best artists in the world, and suggestions that there was the slightest influence from elsewhere, even as a matter of courtesy, could leave those making the suggestions feeling that they were undergoing a trial for heresy.6 Speaking with Kahn, however, is like a pleasant journey into art and its history. In this, one feels an essential American quality—take what you can use, drop the rest, and move on. This has been the American way, and it overrides the old cliché that American art “misunderstood” older, European art. It is a form of pictorial empiricism. Variation of textures and densities of surface, qualities he admired in Northern artists, are fundamental elements of Kahn’s art. He learned from Van Gogh, and he used to seek out sites in New York that reminded him of the Dutchman’s painterly landscapes. In his recent work, we feel the presence of Van Gogh’s textures and pervasive light, especially the yellows of daylight that even today permeate

6. As Thomas B. Hess related in Barnett Newman (New York: Walker and Company, 1969), 56-57.

such works as Yellow Horizon (2014) and Hidden Greenhouse (2015). The Northern tradition of depth and drama runs through much of Kahn’s art, reminding us of Albert Pinkham Ryder, the artist Hofmann first admired upon his arrival in America. Writing about Kahn, Barbara Novak quoted Ryder, who famously said that his own work was “better than nature, for it was vibrating with the thrill of a new creation.”7 There is no better summary for Kahn’s art. The depth, drama, and mystery of Ryder’s art, as well as that of George Inness, also admired by Kahn, even today suggest three of the most salient qualities of Kahn’s work. He is a living example of how good, truly new art comes from “the visionary reconstruction of art history,”8 as David Smith once said, or as part of the famous train track back into history that de Kooning said he was on.9

The French tradition has been equally important to Kahn, especially Pierre Bonnard, who was alive and well in the 1940s, a living presence for young artists at that time. His open, soft but strong and original colors constituted an early form of Color Field painting. This approach started literally as fields of color, and it was especially apparent in the early work of Matisse, as well as that of Bonnard. It includes a far broader range of art than the more limited Color Field of direct pouring that was so widespread in the 1960s. But Kahn should be seen as a member of the broader school of Color Field art, which can be said to still be the basis of his art today. Kahn’s birth in the 1920s places him in the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, many of whom were trained at Hofmann’s school. Kahn’s early emersions in paint and color were raucous, seemingly out of control, strokes going every which way, the heavy brushwork almost moving at random. He had plunged right in, but by 1958 he understood the need for greater stability and control. In this, he was one of the first of his generation to understand the increasingly evident problem of abstract painting being pushed too far, of becoming too dense and clotted, of being overworked. By 1951, Pollock and de Kooning had come to this understanding, and both became more open to figuration, which was one way

7. Barbara Novak, “Introduction,” in Wolf Kahn Pastels (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2000), 8. 8. David Smith, “Second Thoughts on Sculpture,” in College Art Journal 13 (Spring 1954), 205. 9. De Kooning once said: “There is a train track back into the history of art that goes way back to Mesopotamia … Duchamp is on it, Cézanne is on it. Picasso and the Cubists are on it, Giacometti, Mondrian, and so many, many more—whole civilizations.” Willem De Kooning, “The Renaissance and Order,” lecture delivered at Studio 35, Autumn 1949, reprinted in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Kooning (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968), 141–43.

Large Olive Grove, 1957-58, Oil on canvas, 47 3/8 x 55 inches, 120.3 x 139.7 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 59.10. Copyright Wolf Kahn/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

to clarify the composition, giving it a more overt structure and centering. Travel to Venice, Italy, in the late 1950s aided Kahn, as it had countless artists including J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet, in opening up his surfaces, introducing more light and atmosphere, and allowing his pictures to breathe and expand. The drive to clarity has been a long-standing goal in modern art, best stated by Rothko who said he wished to remove all obstacles between the artist and the picture and then between the viewer and the work.10 Since then, Kahn’s work has been defined in great part by his constant exploration of surface texture and its infusion with a multiplicity of light effects. He likes a feel of texture, but not one that is too crusty or too built up, thus taking attention away from the overall unity by calling too much attention to itself. In 1958, while in Italy, he visited an exhibition of Jackson Pollock at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. Black paintings and drawings were featured there, and they had a great impact on him. He loved the openness and spontaneity of Pollock’s skeins of paint, the freedom they clearly gave to the artist to move across the surface and explore it at will, letting his hand move as it would, following his own painterly instincts. The impulses arose from deep within, from an inner necessity first formulated by Wassily Kandinsky in his 1911 book, On the Spiritual in Art. These aims have marked Kahn’s work ever since. One might speculate that Kahn also saw in these works a means, an example, of how to combine the abstract with the figurative. In the works by Pollock, the black lines fuse painting and drawing, so that each line becomes an independent, freely moving and acting entity unto itself. We can see how, over the years, he has worked this into his basic approach, so that any given line of color area is abstract, yet part of a larger whole that will give a strong sense of place without being a literal depiction of that scene. Nature used abstractly was an important lesson from Pollock. Avoiding the literal is now perhaps Kahn’s overarching principle. It may also be that the dramatic contrasts of black and white in those Pollocks helped Kahn to launch his own explorations in these colors. We can trace his own black-and-white use to the early 1960s; it appears today in a new way in a series of paintings that interweave black horizontals and verticals, short lines that are bunched in trees but are in sharp contrast to the yellow light of the sky. It was a great discovery for the artist, he says, when he discovered there were as many horizontal elements as verticals in a wooded area. In these recent paintings, the titles tell us exactly what the artist is doing: In Black Tangle (2014), for example, he makes just that, a row of trees, a familiar format of longstanding use, and he pushes the foliage into a virtually abstract density that at points will remind us of areas in Pollock’s compositions. Others tell us a similar story: Upright Tangle (2015), Weaving Gray and Yellow (2014), Moving Toward Black (2015), and Half Hidden Violet (2015). He tells us what’s going on—but now it is up to us to see for ourselves, to enter into and follow these myriad areas of color and pictorial encounters. He does not paint in series, but there is a sequence here, so he moves from this to more

10. Mark Rothko, untitled statement, The Tiger’s Eye, no. 9 (October, 1949), 114. Reprinted in Mark Rothko 1903-1970 (London: Tate Gallery, 1987), 85.

open but no less complex weavings of black and purple in the trees, then abruptly shifts to the light and air around it. He has learned to avoid overworking, but now in these paintings, he reverses himself and edges toward it, the better for him to see how he might work through this new challenge. The paintings seem to be moving toward a dominance of black, eliminating white altogether. A personal note, if I may: I have followed the course of these paintings over a period of several months, and I have come to think of them as old friends. Each time I see them I want to greet them and ask, “What have you been up to?” The artist discusses them—this one “seems to want to be lighter,” he says; this one is OK “for the moment.” They evolve, painstakingly, lovingly, over time, part of his ongoing dialogue, with himself, with his work, and with the history of art. “The painting will tell you what it wants, as it develops,” he says. They will go in one direction or another; thus he calls them “additive” paintings— the artist keeps working on them until they say they are finished. He likes this one but is not sure of that other one over there. Then, in another, the shed in the woods is overt, but by the next week it has virtually disappeared. Ambiguity, change and process are all there. “I am a process artist,” he says.

He works out of the materials, a venerable modernist practice started by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903 and taught by Robert Henri in his classes and in his book, The Art Spirit, a collection still cherished by art students. It was furthered by Matisse, and then by Hofmann. He starts from a sketch but only as an initial guide; from there, the paint dictates the course of the artist. “The painting comes first,” Kahn says, “then the artist.” A literal dialogue, a simple landscape transformed into an unending abstracting puzzle. Landscape has been his mode at least since 1957–58. He has continued to revitalize this humble but universal and spiritual theme, now hundreds of years old. In the expanses of sun, woods, earth, sky, and water, we will find the elements of life itself, the world as we know it in its actuality. In the beginning, America was the land, and it has fostered much of the best of American art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was what the settlers found and had to deal with—the land and its infinite space, which even today poses a major challenge for our artists. So when we speak of the land, we are speaking of this country at its birth. Kahn loves landscape, as did the early European settlers, in great part because it best fosters an independent art, free from politics, social issues, or today’s pervasive issues of identity politics, of telling people what to think, of raising questions but never answering them. For him, landscape, as it was in the beginning, is chaotic, and it is the artist who must find its order and harmony, its essential unity, with none of the guides of the demarcated space that marks the European landscape. Kahn had left behind the temples of Europe and instead found the American barn, a symbol of America’s past that is still useful today.

Edge of the Woods, 1964, Oil on canvas, 30 x 29 inches, 76.2 x 99.06 cm.

Kahn’s landscapes, well into the 1960s, were based on the open brushwork of Abstract Expressionism. Landscape became a hallmark of second-generation artists, and indeed it was labeled Abstract Impressionism by the painter and writer Louis Finkelstein.11 But this was not necessarily a new invention of the artists who, like Kahn, had been born in the 1920s. In our concern for the existentialist rhetoric of the early Abstract Expressionist artists, we have missed the fact that much of their art in the 1940s and 1950s was based on landscape painting. Think of Pollock and paintings such as Autumn Rhythm (1950), Sounds in the Grass (1946), or Phosphorescence (1947). Barnett Newman’s Concord (1949), with its soft, lush green reminds us of the forests near Walden Pond that Henry David Thoreau described so well and that Newman had visited on his honeymoon. Much of de Kooning’s finest work from the mid-1950s on was clearly landscape, obvious in his Merritt Parkway series, or even his last works, which surely suggest the air and the water of Louse Point, Long Island, where he lived. Rothko is landscape-based as well, for his horizontal bands of hazy colors, suggesting the atmosphere of light, set up like a landscape, with foreground and background evident. In talk of cosmic voyages, this seems too simple, but there it is: obvious when we remember that in the 1920s the young Rothko closely emulated the work of John Marin and his watercolor bands of color. In the late 1940s, Marin’s late seascapes bear directly on Rothko’s diaphanous multiforms.12 Kahn once said he wanted to do Rothko over after nature, but in fact Rothko was already well immersed in nature. At first, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kahn’s landscapes were veiled, largely camouflaged under dense surfaces of paint. But in the mid-1960s, natural features became more distinct, if still shrouded in atmospheric color, as in Edge of the Woods (1964). Here was one of the first uses of a favorite motif that pervades his work today: the edge of the forest, trees forming the clarifying vertical elements. These

11. Louis Finkelstein, “New Look: Abstract Impressionism,” in Art News 55, no. 1 (March 1956), 36-39. 12. For an in-depth illustrated discussion of the Marin-Rothko connection in the late 1940s, see my essay, “John Marin’s Greatness: The Late Oils & Post-1945 Art,” in John Marin: The Late Oils (New York: Adelson Galleries, 2008).

paintings give a strong sense of place, but we can’t know what place—he avoids literal description at all costs. The row of trees give him a starting point, a compositional given, so he can then focus on other challenges of the surface. Here in the 1964 painting, he began to investigate the contrasts between light and dark within the painting, a dramatic event in the painting that still fascinates him today. At first, his colors were dark, and subdued, but by 1970 he gave full vent to his talent for the radiant, intense, often improbable colors that have defined his work ever since. This breakthrough was forcefully announced in, Red Barn (1970) in which the reddish tones of the barn are transformed into a broad mass of orange-red set into a field of greens, yellows and a light blue sky. We are literally confronted by the mass of the barn and its color, and indeed, Kahn has said that confronting the viewer, or “getting in your face,” was an idea of great interest for him. It suggests Paul Valéry’s remark that the painter should paint not what he sees, but what will be seen. It will remind us that we often remember, as Kahn said, not the person or place, but a color, and it is the color that stays with us long after. The Red Barn announced Kahn as a mature artist. For years after, the barn was a staple of his art, in good measure because, for Kahn, the barn meant the best of America, denoting “generosity, usefulness, permanency.”13 At the same time, Kahn did not go out of his way to seek out barns. He likes to be surprised, just as we are likely to be surprised by his paintings. Since then, there has been one new painterly twist after another, so a painting by Wolf Kahn is a painting by Wolf Kahn, as Barbara Novak has commented, “expressive, poetic, mysterious, transcendent.”14 Each is a personal journey, destination or destinations unknown. “I like paintings where I don’t know what’s going on—I want to get away from deliberateness,” he has said. He has traveled a lot, not to paint, for he paints what he finds there, seeking the unexpected. In Maine, he was struck by the different qualities of color and texture between wet seaweed, when the tide was high, and dry seaweed when the

13. Wolf Kahn, “About Barns,” unpublished statement, 1971. Manuscript in Wolf Kahn Archives, n.p. Quote reprinted in Spring, Wolf Kahn, 66. 14. Barbara Novak, “Introduction,” in Wolf Kahn Pastels (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2000), 14.

The Red Barn, 1970, Oil on canvas, 51 x 51 inches, 129.5 x 129.5 cm. Brooklyn Museum, National Endowment for the Arts Fund, 71.54. Copyright Wolf Kahn/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

tide was low. He observes but doesn’t depict—rather he translates it into color passages and textures as in The Gradual Meeting of Wet and Dry II (2000), and Maine Waters (2000), by any measure two of his most astonishing pictures. In the former, how the blue of water gradually elides in the light blue sky at top, and then into almost pure black at bottom, is the product of an acute color sensibility. In a third companion painting, Seaweed Fingers (1999), we see exactly what he meant when he remarked that he loved to use “artificial, chemical-looking” colors, then make them look natural, with a “harmony and austerity, rather than noise.”15 These improbable colors express the palpable feel of the atmosphere, of the world around us. Lawrence Campbell was surely right when he commented that the radiance of color in Kahn’s art could be compared only with that of Matisse and Rothko.16

The Gradual Meeting of Wet and Dry II, 2000, Oil on canvas, 52 x 66 inches, 132.1 x 167.6 cm.

More than a few, including this observer, feel that Kahn is now doing better work than ever. As usual, the work is at a consistently high standard, and no less challenging than it has always been. He has never settled for a signature look or style, which may remind us of his mentor, Hans Hofmann, whose reputation suffered because he had so many directions to explore. No less remarkable is the way Kahn has continued to push into new realms of pictorial possibilities. His development has not flagged for a moment; it’s almost as if he were a young man just starting out on his journey. His path has been so steady that it is hard to discern an old-age style, due no doubt to his resolute commitment to his guiding principles. These, curiously, have been abetted by his eyesight, which has weakened, as it does for all of us, with age. This condition, he remarks, “has made me a better artist.” It has, he says, kept him from becoming “stagnant,” although one doubts that could ever be a problem. It has also, apparently, kept him striving to be ever less and less descriptive in his work, kept his intuition keen and sharp, and

15. Wolf Kahn quoted by Lawrence Campbell in “Wolf Kahn at Grace Borgenicht,” in Art in America 77 (November, 1989): 194–5. Quote reprinted in Spring, Wolf Kahn, 93. 16. Ibid.

has let his mind and eye follow the brush. More than ever, he seeks what Valéry said, that “every work of art aspires to the condition of having been created by itself.” One can only admire this humility, but we should not underestimate the extraordinary skills on view in his work. He shuns the descriptive, but he pays special attention to the particular, in order to avoid the general, which is the enemy of us all, be it in art or life, since it stands for the routine, the unthinking, and the unfeeling. Each and every touch is its own mark, its own particular quality, distinct in its own right, insisting on its right to exist as a free entity. It is radiant and profound.

Since 2013, Kahn has returned to an old, favored motif, the line of trees at the edge of a woods, a theme he has used intermittently since at least 1991. They are now so fresh, so energetic that one might well think they have been newly conceived. In fact, they go back to a trip he made some forty years ago to Etna, in upstate New York, when visiting his brother at Cornell University. The owner of the property told Kahn the trees acted as wind breaks. He loves this motif, because the trees form a screen, of light and color, through which he can add another screen of light and color, and perhaps even more, as he goes. His “impulse” in this usage has been “to create a field of coloristic excitement, and to allow a kind of richness of alternatives which would express … who knows what?”17 There it is—precise color application, to achieve what he has described as a rich mix of “ambiguous color.” His colors are now as eye-popping as ever, a constant surprise from one work to the other, leaving us to wonder how does he even think to use them? He has said he tries to avoid pleasing colors, those everybody likes. He may use colors that look chemical—acidic, one might say—or off-key somehow, colors that, for this writer, are not usually thought of in landscape art. His direct confrontation with the lines of trees has other formal uses. It provides a given composition, an inherent structure and stability, as de Kooning said of his Women, so he doesn’t have to invent a new beginning each time out. This in turn frees him to work on color and light—and their innumerable possibilities. The trees provide a seriality, similar but different forms that can be alternated, varied, and changed at the artist’s will. The trees will also bring to mind for some viewers Van Gogh’s Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884), Cézanne’s Poplars (1890), Monet’s series of 24 Poplars (1891), Piet Mondrian’s early figurative landscapes with trees in a row, and, perhaps more distantly, Gustav Klimt’s Pine Forest (1901). Trees represent constancy and continuity, yet they are ever-changing, from season to season, thus reminding us of the cycle of life as experienced daily, yearly, and eternally. Like Monet, Kahn depicts the line of trees from various angles, perspectives and distances. At every turn, the color and its effects still take us by surprise, even after a period of getting to know the

17. Wolf Kahn, “Color,” in Wolf Kahn Pastels, 97.

work. He tells us what he is after in the tiles: Celebrating Blue Gray (2013), Overall Blue Green (2014), Yellow Haze (2014), Surprising Green—Indeed!—(2014), and Trees Against Magenta (2014). Each offers its own, unique experience; each painting has a life of its own. Each demands our careful attention. As he has gone along, he has begun to focus more closely on the trees, as if he himself were almost in the tangle of branches, the better to immerse himself in their tangle, in their “chaos of nature,” like Thoreau at Walden. Of great importance to him is his drive to give the viewer a sense of the direct experience of the artist—that the artist is actually there, at that spot. We see this clearly; he has condensed color, now concentrating mostly on black-and-white and yellow. He has moved in close; we no longer see the individual tree trunks, for they have been absorbed into the totality of the painting, achieving an all-over unity, which has always been an overarching concern. It also means that the color has been absorbed into the unity, the totality of the painting, a part of the painting, not an end in itself. We see the rhythm of the black branches worked denser and denser, perhaps the result of what the artist described as a “very fast and uncontrolled calligraphy—what I call ‘scribble scrabble.’ The hand takes over, leaving the mind behind.”18 There is control, however, we may be sure of that; just as Pollock said there is no accident. It is the way he makes order out of chaos. The new use of blacks refer to Pollock’s black-and-white works of 1951–53, but also perhaps to Hofmann’s and de Kooning’s bold use of the color. The irregular cross hatchings of the marks will recall Pollock’s dense surfaces, or even, as in other paintings of this type, the Plus-Minus series of Mondrian from 1915. Both Pollock and Hofmann had deep admiration for Mondrian, who has influenced American art to this day in ways we have yet to fully discover. We move up from the dark mass at bottom to an increasingly lighter field at top, ascending through the yellow horizon and blue sky, changing as it goes, keeping the painting process open and provisional. This ascendency to a higher order, to light from the dark, has deeply spiritual overtones and connects us to the sense of wonder felt before nature, with man and nature connecting with the heavens above in many American paintings of the nineteenth century, particularly those of Frederick Church. It makes the picture “strong, forceful, and the carrier of everything that a painting has to have: contrast, drama, austerity,”19 Kahn has said. He adds, “We can always look at the sky and the ground and derive meaning from the enterprise. If we find visual correspondences for the sky, we can find out where we are, in spirit, in history, and who knows, even in actuality.” Could n it ever be better said?

William C. Agee is an Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of Art History Emeritus, Hunter College, CUNY

18. Wolf Kahn, “Trying To Be Nature,” in Wolf Kahn Pastels (New York: H.N. Abrams, 2000), 130. 19. Wolf Kahn quoted by Dore Ashton in “An Interview with Wolf Kahn,” in Wolf Kahn: Paintings and Pastels (New York: Grace Borgenicht Gallery, 1983), n.p. Quote reprinted in Spring, Wolf Kahn, 79.

Purple Diagonal

Rose Toward Orange

Pale Yellow

Orchard Under a Gray Sky

Marsh

Small Square, White Sky

Celebrating Blue Gray (Large Version)

On the Leyden Road (Large Version)

Yellow, Orange, Green, and Gray

Weaving Gray and Yellow

Surprising Blue Background

In a Yellow Tone

Yellow Tree Row I

Pink Diagonal

Broad Gray Sky

Green Bottom

Small Tree in the Corner

Gray Green

Overall Blue Green

Yellow Haze

Greenish Haze

Two Yellow Greens Against Gray Sky

Surprising Green

April Woods

Trees Against Magenta

Sauna Cabin

Trees in March

Sauna Cabin (Large Version)

Uphill

From Yellow through Pink to Green

White Trees, Dense

Yellow Horizon

Dispersed and Concentrated

Poplars on the Horizon (Small Version)

Red Horizon

Young Growth III

Yellow and Orange

Bright

Among Young Aspens

A Brook Flows By It

Tangle Against a Gray Sky

Translucent (Large Version)

Sky the Color of Light Magenta

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Hidden Greenhouse

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Half Hidden Violet

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Moving Toward Black

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The Purple Slope

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The Green Corner

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Nearly Opaque

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Dark Green Foreground Stripe

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White Cabin in the Woods

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Overall Orange

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On the Rise

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Large Burl

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White Barn, White Roof

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Narrow Stripe of Yellow Fields

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Stand of Oaks

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CHRONOLOGY

1927 Hans Wolfgang Kahn is born 4 October in Stuttgart, Germany, the fourth child of Nellie Budge and Emil Kahn. His father is the conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the South German Radio. Shortly after Kahn’s birth, his mother leaves the family. In 1930, Emil Kahn marries Ellen Beck, a young singer who does not wish to raise an infant, so Kahn is sent to live with his paternal grandmother, Anna Kahn. Kahn’s mother dies in Berlin in 1932.

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Kahn, though separated from his father, brothers and sister, enjoys childhood with his doting grandmother, her maid, and an English governess. He also spends time with his equally devoted maternal grandparents, Siegfried and Ella Budge. He is raised in privilege, surrounded by antiques and the family’s art collection. Kahn’s early interest in art is encouraged, and he enjoys using his art to make people laugh, drawing caricatures as well as military and athletic subjects.

1937

Kahn’s father, having lost his appointment to the Stuttgart Philharmonic in 1933 when Hitler came to power, takes Kahn’s stepmother, two brothers, and sister to live in the United States. Because finances are uncertain, Kahn remains in Germany with his grandmother. He attends Philantropin, the “gymnasium” of the Frankfurt Jewish community for two years. When he is 10 years old, Kahn takes private art lessons with Fraulein von Joeden.

1939 Two months before the outbreak of World War II, Kahn, at age 11, is sent to Cambridge, England, with a children’s refugee transport. He stays with two host families over the next year and attends Cambridge and County High School for Boys.   Kahn’s three grandparents are sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and he never sees them again. There is no record of how or when they died. The only objects from either household to survive are Kahn’s drawings, which are gathered by his grandmother’s maid and sent to Kahn’s father after the war ends. 1940 Kahn joins his family in Upper Montclair, NJ, where his father teaches at Montclair State Teacher’s College. After leaving Europe, Emil and Ellen Kahn divorce, and Kahn’s 17-year-old sister runs the household, cooking for five and acting as a surrogate mother to her younger brother. Kahn attends the Experimental Laboratory School of Montclair State Teacher’s College and other New Jersey schools. 1943 Kahn and his family move to New York City and live on Riverside Drive at 102nd Street. He attends the High School of Music and Art, graduating with the class of 1945. Among Kahn’s classmates

are Allan Kaprow and Rachel Rosenthal, both later avant-garde artists. Kahn spends long hours sketching animals at the Central Park Zoo and the Museum of Natural History. 1945 Kahn enlists in the United States Navy and attends radio school. He is stationed in Chicago, in Del Monte, CA, and at the Anacostia Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. 1946 Kahn is discharged from the Navy and takes classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City, studying with the painter Stuart Davis and the printmaker Hans Jelinek. 1947

At age 19, Kahn enters Hans Hofmann’s School, located at 52 West 8th Street in New York, and in Provincetown, MA. Among fellow students are Jane Freilicher, Paul Georges, Robert Goodnough, Allan Kaprow, Jan Müller, Larry Rivers, Leatrice Rose, and Richard Stankiewicz. With the aid of the GI Bill, Kahn remains with Hofmann for 18 months as Hofmann’s studio assistant and the school monitor. He is included in New Provincetown ’47 at the Seligmann Gallery in New York, an exhibition of students in Hofmann’s summer classes, curated by the critic Clement Greenberg.

1948 Kahn attends lectures on modern art by Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University and The New School for Social Research. During this time, he develops a lasting friendship with the painter Larry Rivers. 1949 Kahn enrolls at the University of Chicago on the last of his GI Bill benefits and receives a B.A. degree. He takes classes with the American philosopher Kenneth Burke. 1950 Kahn travels across the country, working odd jobs, including harvesting peas at a Shoshone Indian reservation on the border of Oregon and Idaho, and at a logging camp in Deadwood, OR. He is offered a scholarship to continue studying in the School of Humanities at the University of Chicago, but turns it down. 1951

Kahn returns to New York and teaches arts and crafts to children and teenagers in city settlement houses for two years. He takes a loft at 813 Broadway, near the corner of 12th Street, which he keeps until 1995. With Miles Forst, John Grillo, Lester Johnson, Jan Müller, and Felix Pasilis (most of whom are former Hofmann students), Kahn organizes the 813 Broadway Exhibition. Out of this exhibition comes the artists’ cooperative Hansa Gallery, located at 70 East 12th Street. Meyer Schapiro buys a drawing from Kahn, which leads to a lifelong friendship.

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1952 Kahn travels to Baton Rouge, LA, where his brother Peter is teaching art at Louisiana State University. Remaining there for six months, he paints rodeo encampments and levees. He exhibits paintings in the Hansa Gallery group exhibition. 1953 At age 26, Kahn has his first one-man exhibition of expressionist landscapes, still lifes, and portraits at the Hansa Gallery. It is reviewed in Art News by the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, who writes, “The excellence of this first exhibition... comes as no surprise.” The critic Dore Ashton writes an article on Kahn’s life and work for Pen and Brush. Kahn spends the summer painting in Provincetown, living alone in a shack on Race Point. He is included in the Second Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Stable Gallery in New York. 1954 Kahn develops a close and lasting friendship with the painter Elaine de Kooning.

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1955 Kahn’s second one-man exhibition at the Hansa Gallery, which has moved to 210 Central Park West, is well-received by the critics. He meets the painter Willem de Kooning, who, having seen Kahn’s exhibition, gives him encouragement. They maintain a friendship. The poet and critic Frank O’Hara includes Kahn in his essay “Nature and the New Painting,” in Folder. Kahn lives and paints for six months in Tepoztlán, Mexico. His work from this period is shown at Galería Antonio Souza in Mexico City the following year. He develops a lasting friendship with Fairfield Porter. His drawings are used to illustrate Peter Viereck’s poem “Some Refrains at the Charles River” in Art News Annual. 1956 Kahn has his first one-man exhibition at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York; he exhibits regularly at Grace Borgenicht until the gallery closes in 1996. The critic Thomas B. Hess includes Kahn in “U.S. Painting: Some Recent Directions” in Art News Annual. Kahn’s work is selected for the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Stable Gallery. Meyer Schapiro notes Kahn’s work in his essay “The Younger American Painters of Today” in The Listener. At a meeting of The Artists’ Club, Kahn meets Emily Mason, a beautiful young painter who is the daughter of the artist Alice Trumbull Mason. They spend the summer in Provincetown, absorbed in their work and each other. Kahn recalls this summer as one of the happiest of his life. His paintings change, and he begins what he calls “my love affair with Bonnard,” influenced by that artist’s taste for vibrant color and luminosity. Kahn is also greatly impressed by the dignity and self-assurance of another artist he meets that summer, Milton Avery.

1957 Kahn travels to Venice to join Emily Mason, who is there on a Fulbright Scholarship. They marry in Venice and remain in Italy for two years. A joint exhibition of their work is shown at the Galeria d’Arte San Giorgio in Venice. He is included in The New York School: The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum in New York as well as the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Museum of Modern Art acquires his work for its permanent collection. 1958 Kahn and Mason live and paint in Spoleto, Italy. There, Kahn meets the painters Louis Finkelstein and Gretna Campbell, with whom he maintains a lifelong friendship. Kahn’s work is included in group exhibitions in Spoleto and Rome. Kahn and Mason return to New York at the end of the year, and a one-man exhibition of Kahn’s Italian paintings is shown at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery. He is included again in the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which acquires his Italian painting “Olive Orchard” for its permanent collection. 1959 Kahn spends the summer in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and starts a new series of sailboat paintings. He exhibits in the 145th Annual Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and has a one-man exhibition of his work at Union College in Schenectady, NY. In September, Kahn and Mason’s first child, Cecily, is born. 1960 While a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Kahn develops friendships with the painters Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and Wayne Thiebaud, and the art historian James Ackerman. He has a one-man exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley. His work is included in Young America 1960, 30 American Painters Under 36 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kahn declines a full-time position at the university and returns to New York. 1961

Kahn joins the faculty at Cooper Union, in New York, as an adjunct professor of art, a part-time position, where he remains until 1977. He spends the summer in Stonington, ME, and is included in the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1962

He teaches at the Haystack School in Deer Isle, ME, where he remains for the summer and visits Fairfield Porter on Spruce Head Island, ME. He is included in Forty Artists Under Forty at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He receives a Fulbright Scholar grant to Italy. There, he takes a studio and apartment in Milan for the winter and summers in nearby Viterbo. He meets and becomes friends with the conceptual artist Lucio Pozzi. He has one-man exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute and Michigan State University. He meets the painter Pat Adams, with whom he maintains a life-long friendship.

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1964 Kahn moves to Rome, where he has a studio in the neighborhood of Prati near the Piazza del Popolo. While Kahn and Mason are in Rome, their daughter Melany is born. 1965 Kahn’s family returns to New York in early spring to find that city loft laws have changed; their belongings from 813 Broadway have been tossed onto the street. After some scrambling, the family is offered a walkup on 15th Street. Kahn and his family spend time on Martha’s Vineyard. 1966 Kahn is awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He is commissioned to do portraits for the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York: 1966, 1967, and 1968. 1967

Kahn summers in Deer Isle, ME.

1968 Guided by a friend, the painter Frank Stout, Kahn buys a farm in West Brattleboro, VT, where he summers from this point on. Kahn exhibits at the National Academy of Design in New York. 1970 Kahn executes a commission to paint Litchfield Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC. 134

1972

Kahn has one-man exhibitions at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA.

1973 Kahn travels to Kenya with his family, and then to Italy. Returns to Vermont to spend the rest of the summer painting landscapes. Kahn delivers a lecture, “On the Hofmann School,” at the College Art Association Convention in New York, and speaks “On Being an Art Student” at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. 1974

Kahn spends part of the summer painting in Corrèze, France.

1975

As a guest lecturer, Kahn speaks on the life and work of the painter Jan Müller, a fellow Hofmann student, at the Figurative Alliance, a weekly artist-run forum to discuss topics and issues related to the figure in contemporary painting and sculpture.

1977 Kahn accepts the position of chairman of the College Art Association Committee to award the Prize for Distinguished Teaching in Art, which is presented to his friend Louis Finkelstein. Kahn is included in Artists’ Postcards at The Drawing Center in New York.

1979 Kahn receives the Art Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York. He is included in Hans Hofmann as Teacher: His Students’ Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 1980 Kahn is elected a member of The National Academy of Design in New York, and a member of the National Board of the College Art Association. He exhibits regularly at The National Academy of Design Annuals. 1981

Wolf Kahn 10 Years of Landscape Painting, a traveling exhibition, opens at the Arts Club of Chicago. His essay “Hans Hofmann’s Good Example” is published in the College Art Association Journal.

1983 Kahn is invited to lecture on Hans Hofmann at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. His essay “Milton Avery’s Good Example” is published in The Art Journal. Wolf Kahn Landscapes opens at the San Diego Museum of Art, and travels to four museums nationwide. 1984 Wolf Kahn is elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He delivers a lecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago entitled “You Don’t Have to Be Ignorant to Dislike New York Painting.” He is selected for the Advisory Committee of the Vermont Studio School (now the Vermont Studio Center). He is also an artist-in-residence for one term at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. 1985 Kahn is included in numerous group exhibitions, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Oregon State University present exhibitions of his pastels. He is commissioned by AT&T to paint five large paintings entitled “The Four Seasons” for its employees’ lounge. 1986 Kahn’s daughter Cecily, a painter, marries David Kapp, an urban landscape painter, in May. 1987 Kahn is invited to be the commencement speaker for the graduating class of the Portland School of Art in Maine. 1988 Kahn’s first grandchild, Millie Kapp, is born in March. He delivers a lecture at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, on “Traditional Concerns in an Untraditional Era.”

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1989 Kahn gives the commencement speech for the 1989 Class of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He becomes a trustee of the Vermont Studio Center and travels to Venice. 1990 His second grandchild, Arthur Kapp, is born in February. Art in America publishes Kahn’s essay “Hofmann’s Mixed Messages.” Wolf Kahn: Landscapes as Radiance opens at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale in Florida. An eleven-minute film entitled Wolf Kahn: Landscape Painter, is created by the filmmaker Alan Dater and debuts at the museum’s show. The film wins a CINE Golden Eagle Award. 1991

Kahn is awarded the Benjamin Altman Landscape Prize by the National Academy of Design.

1992 Kahn travels to Zihuatenejo, Mexico, to make pastels of sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. Kahn’s article addressing shared formal aesthetic values with young conceptual sculptors, entitled “Connecting Incongruities,” is published in Art in America. The Wolf Kahn: Exploring Monotypes traveling exhibition opens and circulates for three years. He designs a “First Day of Issue” postage stamp for the United Nation’s Philatelic Collection. 136

1993 Kahn cruises on the Nile River in Egypt. When he returns to the United States, he is an artist-in-residence at Yosemite National Park, CA. He travels down river by boat to paint the landscape along the Connecticut River, exhibiting the resulting works at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. He receives the 1993 American Artist Achievement Award for pastels. He is appointed to the New York City Art Commission and named vice president for art at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 1994 Kahn travels to Hawaii. He is commissioned by the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton, NY, to paint a large picture for the clubhouse. 1995 Kahn moves his New York studio from 813 Broadway to a walkup on West 21st Street. 1996 A traveling exhibition, Wolf Kahn: A Dialogue Between Traditional and Abstract Art, opens at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL. Kahn delivers the eulogy for Meyer Schapiro at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He completes a color etching commissioned by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for its 100th anniversary celebration. The monograph, Wolf Kahn, by Justin Spring, is published by Abrams.

1997 As one of the founding members of the Hansa Gallery, Kahn is included in the commemorative exhibition at the Zabriskie Gallery entitled The Hansa Gallery (1952-1959) Revisited. He is also included in A Tribute to Grace Borgenicht Gallery, his dealer of 41 years, organized by DC Moore Gallery in New York. Kahn gives a donation to the Vermont Studio Center, and the Wolf Kahn Studio Building is named after him. All in the Family at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut includes the paintings of Kahn; his wife, Emily Mason; his mother-in-law, Alice Trumbull Mason; his daughter Cecily Kahn; his son-in-law David Kapp, and his brother Peter Kahn. 1998

The Vermont Arts Council presents Wolf Kahn with the Walter Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award. The Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA, commissions Kahn to paint in the South. Wolf Kahn: Southern Landscapes opens at the Morris Museum, where Kahn also delivers a lecture entitled “Seven Good Reasons Not to Paint the Landscape.” As a guest lecturer at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Kahn speaks on “Intention, Control and Spontaneity in the Making of Painting.” Kahn gives a plenary lecture on “Artists’ Inspiration” at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Toronto. He directs a workshop at the Palazzo Corsini in Florence, Italy.

1999 In June, Kahn is an invited artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, which he has visited consecutively for the past 15 years. In September, he gives a workshop in Damme, Belgium, which he describes in an article published in Travel + Leisure magazine in 2000. He lectures on landscape-painting problems at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and speaks on a panel entitled “Jackson Pollock” at the National Academy of Design. 2000 Kahn receives an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Wheaton College, in Norton, MA. In July, Kahn travels with his daughter Melany to Namibia, Africa, where he is drawn to the dry, brushy landscape. He spends three weeks meeting the African people and doing pastel studies that become a major influence on his painting style. He has numerous solo exhibitions, including a large traveling show entitled Fifty Years of Pastels. Wolf Kahn Pastels is published by Abrams. 2001 Kahn is the honoree at a National Academy of Design benefit. His daughter Melany marries Bo Foard in September, and they settle in New Hampshire with Bo’s two children, Emily and Cooper. Kahn travels to New Orleans to begin work for a show featuring Kahn’s depictions of New Orleans’s trees at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has numerous solo shows, including a major exhibition of his work

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in Hamburg, Germany. The German show takes place at Galerie Brockstedt and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, which has a reproduction of the music room from the mansion of Kahn’s great aunt in its courtyard. This is Kahn’s first time back in Germany since the war. It becomes a personal “homecoming” for him, generating much publicity. Wolf Kahn – 50 Years of Pastels is organized by the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC, and then travels to the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach; the Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC; and the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH. 2002 A new grandson, Mason Foard, is born three days before Kahn’s 75th birthday party. The Ogunquit Museum of American Art hosts an exhibition of Kahn’s work. He is awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Union College in Schenectady, NY. Kahn has his first show with Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art in New York (now Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe). Wheaton College hosts the exhibition A Shared Passion for Color: Artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason, as well as his lecture “Six Reasons Not to Paint a Landscape.” 2003 Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels is published by Abrams. The publication is the topic when Kahn is a participating artist in Artists Talk on Art in New York City. 138

2004 The National Academy of Design invites Kahn to curate a major exhibition entitled The Artist’s Eye: Wolf Kahn as Curator. A special exhibition of Kahn’s own work, Nature and Color, is presented in an adjacent gallery. Kahn appears on New Hampshire Public Radio’s “The Front Porch” and Vermont Public Television’s “Profiles.” 2005 A new granddaughter, Ally Foard, is born in October. Kahn travels to Niagara Falls and creates many paintings and pastels, some of which are done from the vantage points of earlier American painters, including Frederic Edwin Church and George Innes. The filmmaker Alan Dater creates a short film about Kahn’s time at Niagara Falls. Kahn delivers a lecture at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Art and Immorality.” 2006 The National Academy of Design presents Kahn with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Wolf Kahn Day is declared in Vermont by Governor James Douglas and the Brattleboro Selectmen, and it is celebrated with a large party around his exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Kahn gives a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum entitled “The Uses and Misuses of Painting,” and gives a lecture entitled “Growing Up Privileged, and Jewish, in Nazi Germany,” at the Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He travels to New Orleans to do follow-up post-Hurricane Katrina pastel drawings of the same trees he drew in 2001. The new

pastels are exhibited alongside the earlier drawings at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The Niagara Falls work and Dater’s 2005 film are exhibited together at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum exhibits Kahn’s early works, many of which were created during his years studying in Provincetown under Hans Hofmann. The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, hosts the exhibition Wolf Kahn’s Barns. Kahn appears on Massachusetts Public Radio’s “Inquiry.” 2007 Kahn celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary with Emily Mason in March and his 80th Birthday in October. Art in America publishes the journal of his 2006 visit to New Orleans. 2008 Kahn delivers a lecture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., “Subject Matters.” He visits Wyoming, Montana, and Yellowstone National Park. A two-part interview with Kahn by NewArtTV is posted on its website. 2009 Kahn gives a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Are Artists Special?” He travels to Turkey and Holland, and does a series of barns based on the ones he sees in Holland. 2010 Kahn delivers a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Can Art Be Taught?” He travels to Turkey. Wolf Kahn Pastels opens at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA. 2011

The main gallery of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is named “The Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Gallery” in honor of their commitment to the institution over its 40 years. Additionally, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center hosts an exhibition of Kahn’s pastels. An expanded second edition of Wolf Kahn by Justin Spring is published by Abrams, 15 years after the original publication. It includes a new essay by Karen Wilkin.

2012 Kahn gives a lecture titled “Planning and Spontaneity” at both the Vermont Studio Center and the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. He celebrates his 85th birthday in Vermont among many friends. An interview with him from Story Preservation Initiative is included in Inspired Lives and airs on New Hampshire Public Radio and is posted on its website. Kahn is presented with an Outstanding Alumni Professional Achievement Award by the University of Chicago. 2014 Kahn lectures at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Control and Letting Go.” A survey exhibition, Six Decades, is held at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe.

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SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St Joseph, MO Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, NY Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN Codina Partners, Coral Gables, FL Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

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Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, CA Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, TX

Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX

The Raymond Jonson Collection, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS

George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ

List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Michele and Donald Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA

National Academy Museum, New York, NY National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, St Louis, MO

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA

Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL

Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA

Rahr-West Art Museum, Manitowoc, WI RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL Utah Museum of Fine Arts, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL

Saint Louis Art Museum, St Louis, MO

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ

The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Loretto Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT Yosemite Museum, Yosemite Valley, CA

Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, OK University Art Museum, State University of New York, Albany, NY

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PLATE LIST

page 15 Purple Diagonal, 2013 Oil on canvas 20 x 22 inches 50.8 x 55.9 cm

page 29 On the Leyden Road (Large Version), 2013 Oil on canvas 52 x 76 inches 132.1 x 193 cm

page 43 Broad Gray Sky, 2014 Oil on canvas 24 x 26 inches 61 x 66 cm

page 17 Rose Toward Orange, 2013 Oil on canvas 20 x 25 inches 50.8 x 63.5 cm

page 31 Yellow, Orange, Green, and Gray, 2014 Oil on canvas 36 x 44 inches 91.4 x 111.8 cm

page 45 Green Bottom, 2014 Oil on canvas 26 x 16 inches 66 x 40.6 cm

page 19 Pale Yellow, 2013 Oil on canvas 20 x 18 inches 50.8 x 45.7 cm

page 33 Weaving Gray and Yellow, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 47 Small Tree in the Corner, 2014 Oil on canvas 26 x 24 inches 66 x 61 cm

page 21 Orchard Under a Gray Sky, 2013 Oil on canvas 52 x 55 inches 132.1 x 139.7 cm

page 35 Surprising Blue Background, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 60 inches 132.1 x 152.4 cm

page 49 Gray Green, 2014 Oil on canvas 26 x 26 inches 66 x 66 cm

page 23 Marsh, 2013 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 37 In a Yellow Tone, 2014 Oil on canvas 20 x 22 inches 50.8 x 55.9 cm

page 51 Overall Blue Green, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 25 Small Square, White Sky, 2013 Oil on canvas 16 x 16 inches 40.6 x 40.6 cm

page 39 Yellow Tree Row I, 2014 Oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches 61 x 71.1 cm

page 53 Yellow Haze, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 27 Celebrating Blue Gray (Large Version), 2013 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 41 Pink Diagonal, 2014 Oil on canvas 28 x 22 inches 71.1 x 55.9 cm

page 55 Greenish Haze, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 36 inches 132.1 x 91.4 cm

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146

page 57 Two Yellow Greens Against Gray Sky, 2014 Oil on canvas 22 x 28 inches 55.9 x 71.1 cm

page 71 Uphill, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 85 Young Growth III, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 59 Surprising Green, 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 73 From Yellow through Pink to Green, 2014 Oil on canvas 42 x 52 inches 106.7 x 132.1 cm

page 87 Yellow and Orange, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 40 inches 91.4 x 101.6 cm

page 61 April Woods, 2014 Oil on canvas 30 x 44 inches 76.2 x 111.8 cm

page 75 White Trees, Dense, 2014 Oil on canvas 30 x 58 inches 76.2 x 147.3 cm

page 89 Bright, 2015 Oil on canvas 26 x 22 inches 66 x 55.9 cm

page 63 Trees Against Magenta, 2014 Oil on canvas 40 x 52 inches 101.6 x 132.1 cm

page 77 Yellow Horizon, 2014 Oil on canvas 60 x 52 inches 152.4 x 132.1 cm

page 91 Among Young Aspens, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 40 inches 91.4 x 101.6 cm

page 65 Sauna Cabin, 2014 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 79 Dispersed and Concentrated, 2014 Oil on canvas 72 x 64 inches 182.9 x 162.6 cm

page 93 A Brook Flows By It, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 67 Trees in March, 2014 Oil on canvas 42 x 52 inches 106.7 x 132.1 cm

page 81 Poplars on the Horizon (Small Version), 2015 Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches 76.2 x 101.6 cm

page 95 Tangle Against a Gray Sky, 2015 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches 101.6 x 76.2 cm

page 69 Sauna Cabin (Large Version), 2014 Oil on canvas 52 x 72 inches 132.1 x 182.9 cm

page 83 Red Horizon, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches 91.4 x 91.4 cm

page 97 Translucent (Large Version), 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 68 inches 91.4 x 172.7 cm

page 99 Sky the Color of Light Magenta, 2015 Oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches 61 x 71.1 cm

page 113 Dark Green Foreground Stripe, 2015 Oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches 61 x 71.1 cm

page 123 White Barn, White Roof, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 60 inches 91.4 x 152.4 cm

page 101 Hidden Greenhouse, 2015 Oil on canvas 30 x 52 inches 76.2 x 132.1 cm

page 115 White Cabin in the Woods, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 60 inches 91.4 x 152.4 cm

page 125 Narrow Stripe of Yellow Fields, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 103 Half Hidden Violet, 2015 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

page 117 Overall Orange, 2015 Oil on canvas 28 x 22 inches 71.1 x 55.9 cm

page 127 Stand of Oaks, 2015 Oil on canvas 26 x 46 inches 66 x 116.8 cm

page 105 Moving Toward Black, 2015 Oil on canvas 40 x 36 inches 101.6 x 91.4 cm

page 119 On the Rise, 2015 Oil on canvas 24 x 26 inches 61 x 66 cm

page 107 The Purple Slope, 2015 Oil on canvas 30 x 52 inches 76.2 x 132.1 cm

page 121 Large Burl, 2015 Oil on canvas 36 x 52 inches 91.4 x 132.1 cm

page 109 The Green Corner, 2015 Oil on canvas 52 x 60 inches 132.1 x 152.4 cm page 111 Nearly Opaque, 2015 Oil on canvas 52 x 52 inches 132.1 x 132.1 cm

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

WOLF KAHN 19 November – 23 December 2015

Essay © 2015 William C. Agee Photography by Christopher Burke Studios, New York, NY Catalogue designed by HHA Design, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-4951-3012-0 Front cover: Dispersed and Concentrated Back cover: Celebrating Blue Gray (Large Version)

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