ELLSWORTH KELLY AUSTIN / BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART
“The black and white stone panels also parallel The Stations of the Cross in a catholic church”
INTRO
Ellsworth Kelly was born in 1923, in Newburgh, New York. Kelly grew up in a small, secluded town in New Jersey, where his grandfather taught him how to identify birds through color and form. After high school, Kelly moved back to New York to study technical art and design at Pratt Institute, from “My forms are 1942-1943. Kelly enlisted in geometric, but they the army soon after graduadon’t interact in a tion he was inducted into the Camouflage Unit in 1943. geometric sense. The Camouflage Unit, also They’re just forms known as the ghost army, that exist everywhere, utilized art through creative even if you don’t deception in an attempt to misdirect enemy soldiers. see them.” During Kelly’s enlistment he spent most of his time overseas in Europe. After World War II, he was able to study at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston underneath the G.I Bill. He later traveled back to France and enrolled in the Ecole des beaux-arts, Paris. In the 1950’s, Kelly began to gain
recognition for his artistic work, using bright colors and multi-paneled canvases. Kelly wanted to fully remove his persona from his work, favoring the direction of minimalism. He was interested in the space between the viewer and the painting, rather than marks on the surface. While working in New York, Kelly began to experiment with large multipaneled canvases. Kelly pushed the boundaries of traditional canvasses, transforming them into irregular shapes. These paintings consisted of bold, monochromatic colors, and showed influences of minimalism, hard-edge, color field, and pop art. In Kelly’s later years, he moved to upstate New York where he was able to make larger canvases and panels due an increase in studio space. In his new space he worked on outdoor sculptures consisting of steel, aluminum and bronze. In 2013, President Barack Obama presented Kelly with the National Medal of Arts. To this day, Kelly’s work is widely recognizable through his recurring themes and elements of the relationship between color, form and shape.
Kelly spent time travelling through Europe while serving in World War II. After the war, Kelly returned to the United States to study in Boston. He then returned to back to France, where he would live, work, and study for the next six years. While in Europe, Kelly became interested in Romanesque, European architecture, including chapels and cathedrals. He took every possible chance to explore cities of rich architecture, filling up notebooks with drawings and quick studies. Kelly noticed how these structures maintained a spiritual impact on people, in the aftermath of the war. The Church Notre-Dame Du Haut, must have been particularly interesting to Kelly because specific elements of the structure are seen in some of his earlier paintings. This French Roman Catholic chapel uses redacted color panels to reflect light into the building, similar to elements seen in Kelly’s Austin. Once the war was over, Kelly returned to France to study at Ecole des beaux-arts, Paris. While attending this school, Kelly met many artists who would later become his idols. Constantin Brancusi,
Alexander Calder, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage were great influences on Kelly’s artistic career. In Paris, Kelly studied Byzantine icons, and became interested in Romanesque frescoes and sculpture. He saw a relationship between sculpture, painting and architecture through common boundaries. Kelly was physically distant from the Abstract Expressionism movement happening in the U.S., which propelled him in a different direction. He wasn’t interested in abstraction, instead he said “I was deciding what I didn’t want in a painting, and just kept throwing things out – like marks, lines and the painted edge.” Kelly took what he saw in the world and broke it down into pure elements. “I was deciding He wanted to get rid of what I didn’t want all the things that didn’t in a painting, and matter – the excess. The view from which Kelly just kept throwing saw the world would later things out.” become the overarching influence of his artistic practices throughout his 70 year career as an artist.
EUROPE
ELLSWORTH KELLY AUSTIN
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AUSTIN
Austin, is an architectural monument located at the Blanton Museum of Art, on University of Texas Campus. The site is a 2,715-squarefoot stone building with colored glass windows, fourteen black and white panels, and a wooden totemic sculpture. The work follows the artist’s tradition of naming work in correlation to the area it will live. The Blanton, being one of the largest University Museums in the country, helped raise 23 million dollars for the “It’s a chapel construction and endowment really dedicated of the work. Austin, is the only to creativity. architectural structure Kelly has designed. It is considThat’s how I ered a summation of his see it: It’s a work, his final masterpiece. secular chapel.” The original design was made back in the 80’s but attempts to construct the building fell through because the site did not meet Kelly’s requirements. The location of the site had to be in a non religious area, easily accessible to the public, and protected against future removal in order to gain Kelly’s approval. Kelly turned down an offer to construct the building at a Catholic University, because they asked that the building be consecrated. The monument
ELLSWORTH KELLY AUSTIN
GHOST ARMY
is referred to as a chapel, but it’s not a religious building in any sense. Kelly had been referred to as a “nonbeliever”, and “transcendental anarchist” by some of his closest friends. After many years, the concept was gifted to the Blanton for satisfying all of the artists requirements. In the last months of Kelly’s life, he approved aesthetic decisions of the building from his home in upstate New York before his death in late 2015. Kelly passed away at the age of 92, unable to see the completion of the site. Monuments like Rothko’s Chapel, a non-denominational building in Houston, Texas, and The Judd Foundation, a foundation formed to preserve the works and installations of Donald Judd, in Martha, Texas show similar attempts to distribute prestigious artwork throughout Texas. The unveiling of Austin, on February 18th, 2018, hope to bring a significant boost to Austin’s cultural stature. Blanton’s Museum Director, Simone Wicha, says “The fact that we are able to accomplish this here, now, is a reflection of the growth of the city. There’s a sense of excellence that is building, and I think that reflects what’s happening with Austin.”
The Ghost army, also known as the Camouflage Unit, was a group of 1,100 men recruited from prestigious art schools and ad agencies across the country. The tactics and missions of the Ghost Army was to deceive enemy soldiers using creative skills and illusions. One of the most significant missions was an attempt to create the illusion of 30,000 men moving into position for attack, using fake dummies and inflatable tanks. Some of the most common strategies of the unit were, inflatable tanks, speakers playing loud sounds of men and artillery, fake radio transmissions and fake airplanes. The most prominent forms of deception employed in the field were visual, sonic, radio and atmosphere. Visual deception techniques included fabricated objects that could fool the enemy. Fake inflatable tanks, cannons, jeeps, trucks and planes were were constructed to misdirect soldiers. Many of these objects were blow up using air compressors and camouflaged imperfectly so enemies could easily spot them. The artist’s could install fake airfields, troop barracks, motor pools and artillery in the matter of a few hours. Sonic deception consisted of
various sounds commonly heard in battlefields. Artillery guns, machines, and men would be mixed precisely to each situation they wanted to portray. Radio deception, also known as spoof radio, would disguise fake traffic nets pretending to be the radio operators actual units. Atmosphere techniques refer to the simulation of events that could be seen from above. Trucks with just two men aboard would drive around in loops to simulate trucks full of men being deployed to battle. Ellsworth Kelly was most likely directed to study color during his time in the Army in relation to camouflage tactics. Elements “The illusion of disguise through form, of 30,000 shadow and color were all studied in the practice of men moving unit. Although a signifi- into position cant amount of informa- for attack.” tion regarding the Ghost Army remains classified, it is safe to believe that Kelly utilized what he learned in the army and deployed these tactics into his artistic practice.
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BLANTON’S CURATORIAL DIRECTOR CARTER FOSTER Tell me about your relationship with Ellsworth Kelly. Did you know him on a personal level?
Yes, I knew him well for about the last 12 years or so of his life. When I lived in New York starting in 2004, I would visit him at his home and studio in Spencertown as often as I could, usually staying for a day or two at a time. He would always show me his new work, but we would often look though drawers of his older drawings together. We also talked a lot about art history--he loved to do that--and about the current state of contemporary art and museum exhibitions. He was a warm, friendly, generous man. How would you describe Kelly to someone who is unfamiliar with him and his work?
An artist of infinite nuance within a seemingly pared down visual vocabulary. A true master of color, form and line. An artist who always felt a deep connection to the natural world and close observation of it.
From my understanding, the concept of Austin was originally turned down by the artist to be constructed at a catholic university. What decisions made the Blanton Musem of Art an ideal location for the monument?
Kelly really wanted Austin to be in a public place, taken care of in perpetuity, and the Blanton and UT understood those conditions and knew they could be met. So the connection to the Blanton and to a public University in a city like Austin were all important to him. Plus a sunny climate is important for a building that is so much about light! Austin, is intended to be a non religious monument but it resembles visual characteristics that relate to religious narratives. In your opinion, why do you believe Kelly chose to make work that touches on these subjects?
Kelly love European art and architecture, including chapels, churches and cathedrals, particularly Romanesque architecture. He was steeped in that history and spent a formative period of his life in France studying it. His interest in creating a chapel-like structure and a spiritual experience definitely stems from these deep interests he had in ecclesiastical architecture and his direct study of it.
ELLSWORTH KELLY AUSTIN
When entering the space, what kinds of thoughts, feelings, and emotions do you experience?
I do find it very calming--the world really goes away when you are in that space. I am alway awe-struck by the light play of the windows, which changes constantly depending on time of day and time of year. It has a real purity to it as well. And sometimes of course I think of him and the kinds of things he told me about his work and this project in particular. From my understanding, 23 million dollars was raised in order for the construction and endowment of the monument. What kind of impact do will the monument bring to Austin, and central Texas art?
So far it has had the effect we hoped: it has become an international destination for art lovers. It gives the Blanton a wonderful kind of anchor for its collection and has and is becoming one of the city’s most important monuments. It also helps cement Texas in general as an important destination for ambitious, singular art projects (Marfa, the Rothko Chapel, James Turrell etc.)
Ellsworth Kelly Austin
What is the purpose of this monument for yourself, and the general public?
Kelly said it best: “I hope visitors will experience “Austin” as a place of joy and light” In 1943, Kelly was inducted into the Camouflage unit of the army, where he utilized his creative skills in an attempt to misdirect enemy soldiers. How do you feel Kelly’s experiences in the army relate to his artistic career?
Well it would have given him visual problems to solve and materials and time to work with them--always good for a young artist. And it also brought him to Europe, which became a touchstone for his life and art--being exposed to European culture never left him.
During Kelly’s career, he spent a lot of time in Europe and particularly Paris. Do you see any similarities in European Art and Architecture that may be relevant in Kelly’s Austin monument?
Yes, many! Especially Romanesque art and the way in which a visitor experiences art within the space of a church, which are generally in the plan of a cross, like Austin.
rarehistoricalphotos.com
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My dearest gratitude goes to Carter Foster from the curatorial department at the Blanton Museum of Art. Your participation and insightful thoughts have truly helped inspire this publication. This publication was designed and authored by James Fraley for Alice J Lee’s Fall 2018 Advanced Typography class in the Communication Design program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.
The display typeface is set in 30 point Soleil Bold, a typeface designed by Wolfgang Homola. The body text is set in 12 point Baskerville Regular, a typeface designed by John Baskerville. Gotham, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, is also used in pull quotes, set in 14 point light. Five copies were printed on tabloid paper by Newspaper Club located in Glasgow, United Kingdom.
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