Craig Kauffman: Sensual/Mechanical

Craig Kauf fman Sensual/Mechanical

Craig Kauf fman Sensual/Mechanical

Frank Lloyd Gallery, Inc. 2525 Michigan Avenue, B5b Santa Monica, CA 90404 PH: 310 264 - 3866 FX: 310 264 - 3868 www.franklloyd.com

Craig Kauf fman

This exhibit traces the development of Craig Kauffman’s paintings from 1958 to 1964. A turning point in modern Los Angeles art, the paintings were sparse, clean, sensuous, yet intelligent. Kauffman absorbed influences from European painting as well as American abstraction. Even as a teenager, Kauffman had read Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s book The New Vision. By 1958, he had clearly begun to work in opposition to the dominant Abstract Expressionist mode. Kauffman has stated that his lean, lyrical look was a personal reaction to the heavy and thick abstract painting of the time.

Expressionism and a “sexual biomorphic mixture with mechanical things.”2 The 1958 exhibit had significance because it influenced other L.A. painters. “The ‘clean’ Abstract Expressionist work by Craig Kauffman,” critic Peter Plagens has written, “could be the point at which Los Angeles art decided to live on its own life-terms, instead of those handed down from Paris, New York, or even San Francisco.”3 This new sense of professionalism was echoed by fellow painter Billy Al Bengston, who later wrote, “Kauffman was the first Southern California artist to ever paint an original painting. His paintings of ’57 and ’58 proved that we had to wash our hands, throw away our dirty pants and become artists.”4

Kauffman’s 1958 solo exhibit at the Ferus Gallery included Untitled, 1958, Still Life with Electric Fan and Respirator, 1958, and Tell Tale Heart, 1958, along with ten other works. The paintings show open areas free of markings and brushwork, loose linear qualities, and the use of primary color. In a catalogue essay for the show, critic Jules Langsner wrote that Kauffman’s paintings were mature, sinuous, fresh, lyrical and “bursting with joie de vivre.”1 According to Kauffman, his sources included Dada, Duchamp, Mondrian, Abstract

In the early 1960s, after living in Europe with his wife Vivian, Kauffman returned to L.A. and began a series of work that took forms from the earlier paintings. He realized that he had to “catch up really quickly”5; his painter friends had taken the next step with the clean, clear “L.A. Look.” In many drawings and small paintings on advertisements for shoes and lingerie, the

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artist’s statements contradict this popular misunderstanding. Instead, the evidence reveals a highly intuitive process, arriving at abstracted imagery of male and female sexual parts. The forms are ovoid, phallic, mammary and vaginal. As the art historian Barbara Rose wrote, Kauffman’s biomorphism had an “explicitly sexual character.”6

artist explored sensual abstract forms and acknowledged a continued influence of Dada.

His earlier biomorphic forms were developed through drawings, and then eroticized by placing them on top of advertisements for Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie or high heel shoes.

Kauffman repeatedly used drawing as a direct source of images as well as a method of abstraction. The drawing of a female figure dressed in lingerie becomes the source for several shapes in subsequent drawings and paintings, and the long pendulant male form is developed more fully. It is interesting to note that the large painting on paper is titled Git le Couer, No. 3, a title that makes reference to a street in Paris where Kauffman and his wife Vivian lived. This large painting on paper also marks the artist’s first known use of metallic paint.

Transferring these images to paintings on flat plastic in 1963, Kauffman integrated bold line and intense color with playfully suggestive forms. The final room of the exhibition includes works that were shown at Kauffman’s exhibit at Ferus Gallery, including No. 1, No. 7 and No. 8, all dated 1963. Painted on the reverse of acrylic plastic and employing flat shapes with rounded contours, the bold and animated paintings demonstrate Kauffman’s skills as a draftsman, his willingness to engage the viewer in erotic content, as well as his bold use of color. At this point, the imagery is suspended on clear flat plastic, in a similar way to Duchamp’s suspension of imagery on glass in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.

Kauffman’s work is often portrayed as being derived from the automobile culture of Southern California, or mischaracterized as being influenced by surfboard shapes and technology.

However, these drawings, paintings and the

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As stated by art historian Susan Larsen, “They had the sleek good looks of a wellmade machine, animated by strong sexual overtones. As such, they are late twentiethcentury counterparts to the mechanic-erotic visions of Duchamp and Picabia.”7 Kauffman had attended the 1963 opening of the first retrospective of the work of Marcel Duchamp, organized by his childhood friend Walter Hopps, at the Pasadena Art Museum. A signed poster from the Duchamp exhibit was kept in Kauffman’s personal collection.

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Langsner, Jules. Robert Craig Kauffman: Paintings &

Drawings. Los Angeles: Ferus Gallery, 1958.

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Auping, Michael. Interviews with Craig Kauffman, May 21,

1976-January 27, 1977. Los Angeles: University of California, 1977.

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Plagens, Peter. Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the

West Coast. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publisher, 1974.

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Bengston, Billy Al. “Late Fifties at the Ferus: A Participant

Refuses to Take the Show Lying Down.” Artforum 7.5 (Jan. 1969): 33-35.

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Auping, Michael. Interviews with Craig Kauffman, May 21,

1976-January 27, 1977. Los Angeles: University of California,

The flat plastic works predict the artist’s later vacuum formed pieces, which began in 1964.

Two examples of paintings on formed plastic from 1964, both Untitled, are included in this exhibit. The use of molds and the discovery of the process of vacuum forming acrylic plastic would propel Kauffman’s work for the next several years, from 1964 to 1972. These works would bring Kauffman international recognition, and are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, and MOCA.

1977.

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Rose, Barbara. A New Aesthetic. Washington D.C.:

Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 1967.

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Larsen, Susan C. Art in Los Angeles: Seventeen Artists in

the Sixties. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1981.

Frank Lloyd

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Untitled, 1958 ink on paper 24 x 18 inches

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Untitled, 1958 ink on paper 11 x 8 ½ inches

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Untitled, 1958 oil on linen 64 x 51 Âź inches

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Still Life with Electric Fan and Respirator, 1958 oil on canvas 51 x 41 inches

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Untitled, 1962 acrylic on paper 11 x 8 他 inches

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Untitled, 1962 acrylic on paper 11 x 8 他 inches

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Untitled, 1963 graphite on paper 13 ½ x 10 inches

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Untitled, 1962 graphite on paper 48 x 32 inches

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Git le Coeur No. 3 1962 oil and enamel on paper mounted on wood 80 x 42 inches

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No. 1, 1963 acrylic lacquer on plastic 80 x 42 inches

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No. 7, 1963 acrylic lacquer on plastic 80 x 42 inches

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No. 8, 1963 acrylic lacquer on plastic 80 x 42 inches

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Untitled, 1964 acrylic lacquer on vacuum formed plastic 90 x 46 ½ inches

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Untitled, 1964 acrylic lacquer on vacuum formed plastic 47 ½ x 35 ½ inches

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Craig Kauf fman 1932 2010

Born in Los Angeles, California Died in Angeles City, Philippines

Education

1955 1956

B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, California M.A., University of California, Los Angeles, California

One Person Exhibitions

2011 2010

Sensual Mechanical, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California Loops, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California Works on Paper Retrospective, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, California Late Work, Danese Gallery, New York New Work, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California Wall Relief Sculpture From the Sixties, Nyehaus, New York New Wall Relief Sculpture, Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, California Craig Kauffman: A Drawing Retrospective, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California Craig Kauffman: Works from 1960’s, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York Sandra Gering Gallery, New York Sandra Gering Gallery, New York Bubbles, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California Painted Drawings, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California New Work, Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica, California The Works Gallery South, Costa Mesa, California The Works Gallery South, Costa Mesa, California The Works Gallery, Long Beach, California New Paintings, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California Craig Kauffman: Wall Reliefs, 1967-69, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, California Craig Kauffman: Wall Reliefs from the Late 1960s, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, California New Paintings, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery, Hope, Idaho Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts Blum Helman Gallery, New York Drawing, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, California

2009 2008

2007 2004 2003 2001 1999 1998 1995 1992 1990 1988

1987 1985 1983 1982

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1981

1979

1978 1976

1975 1972

1970

1969 1967 1965 1962 1960 1958 1953 Museum Collections

Craig Kauffman: A Comprehensive Survey 1957-1980, organized by the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, CA traveled to: the Elvehijem Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin; the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia; Oakland Art Museum, Oakland California (1982) New Paintings, Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, California Recent Paintings, Grapestake Gallery, San Francisco, California New Works, Janus Gallery, Venice, California Blum Helman Gallery, New York Arco Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, California Comsky Gallery, Los Angeles, California Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, France Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles, California Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, France Pace Gallery, New York Irving Blum Gallery, Los Angeles, California Pasadena Art Museum, California, traveled to the University of California, Irvine, California Pace Gallery, New York Irving Blum Gallery, Los Angeles, California Pace Gallery, New York Ferus/Pace Gallery, Los Angeles, California Pace Gallery, New York Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California Paintings and Drawings, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, California Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, California

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Fredrick R. Weisman Collection, Los Angeles, California Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, California Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California

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Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California Orange County Museum of Art, Newport, California Philip Morris Foundation Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington The Tate Gallery, London, England University of New Mexico Art Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Š 2011 by Frank Lloyd Gallery

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