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Aristodimos Kaldis 1899-1979 A Retrospective
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Aristodimos Kaldis A Retrospective 1899-1979
Jan. 12-Feb. 10, 1985
Artists' Choice Museum 394 West Broadway New York, New York 10012 Tel. 212-219-8031
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I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it Wore it in the world's eye As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked. W.E. Yeats 1914
I think of Kaldis every time I read Yeats' short poem, The Coat. Like the singer in Yeats' poem, Kaldis was self-made, richly "Covered with embroideries/Out of old mythologies" and, to fools, unfair competition for his work. But now that time has taken Kaldis' coat, his paintings walk enterprisingly naked-the white light and pure color filling us with song. When I first met Kaldis, I recoiled. With graduate-school smugness (a fool catching the coat?), I perceived him as an anachronistic manque-a vestige of the past, painting like a second-rate Kandinsky (Kaldis would laugh, since he always said the only thing that mattered was to be rated) and pontificating with an etymological authority that came simply from knowing (by his Greek birthright alone, I thought) an exotic language. But he did have a presence, and he was warm and charming, and he was always eager to help the many young artists of our community who were struggling to reconcile abstraction and figuration. His lesson was pure-like Aristotle he prized clarity-"all art is abstract." Then he was in need of help. Diabetes and a long life of self-neglect deprived him of a leg. I went to help him from time to time and found his mind undiminished by age and illness, his spirit undiminished by a lack of financial success. I came away from every visit with him in possession of some new insight into the painters and paintings we discussed. At the time, I was engrossed in Seurat, and Kaldis was pleased. Fond of Seurat and his very "Byzantine" paintings, Kaldis saw Pointilist paintings as mosaics. Despite the many physical complications visited upon him at this time, his energy was undaunted; his prosthesis adjusted, he came to my one-man show at the Bowery Gallery. He instructed me to meet him at the bus stop on the northeast corner of Houston St. and West Broadway, and he could be heard all over SoHo as he bellowed, "IDIOT!" because I was on the southeast corner, not having had the time to cross the street yet. It was 1978 and he would die a year later, but once inside the gallery he began attacking my canvases with his cane in order to make critical observations, always preceeded by praise. Paul Resika once told me not to pay much attention to Kaldis in public, that he was profound in private but nervous and frightened in public. I had initially judged him by his public performance. When his age and illness brought us together, I would benefit enormously. Curating this show has proved to be a continuing education for me and, hopefully, for everyone. Spending the necessary time with the paintings again, talking with his son Guy, and with the artists who knew him so well, I was once again educated by Kaldis, his work, and his life. He was truly a larger-thanlife presence, a show-stopper, but his work has triumphed. From its inception, the Artists Choice Museum was intent on mounting a Kaldis retrospective. This exhibition, then, is a project realized with pride, a homage from a community to a man and his work, and an educational experience for all. For me, there is also the fortunate redemption from folly. Stephen Grillo, Curator, NYC 1984
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Aristodimos Kaldis "One of the official philologist-estheticians on the downtown scene" was an art magazine's way of referring to Aristodimos Kaldis in 1962. Kaldis was famous for his impassioned and often humorous discourses, more so, perhaps, than for his paintings, although these too were frequently exhibited. But when the Poindexter Gallery offered its view of The Thirties in 1956, it was Kaldis the painter, not the philosopher, who was chosen to represent the decade with one of his rather rare still lifes, along with prestigious names such as Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning] Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and others. Incidentally, this present exhibition is more complete than the recent one at the Kouros Gallery-Oct. IO-Nov. 3, 1984-a statement not to be understood as a critique of the gallery. The Artists' Choice Museum has more space and it was thus possible to include more examples of Kaldis' life-work, which includes many of his largest works. Secondly, I would like to say at this point, that this present essay is some 700 words longer than the essay in the Kouros Gallery catalogue, and includes, in addition to extra copy, a number of revisions. _ I first got to know him in 1952. He was a vital, powerful, large man with an enormous head who talked about himself most of the time, because he was easily the most interesting person he knew. Conversations with Kaldis consisted in listening to his oratory. It was rumored that he was the original of Katsimbalis in Henry Miller's book The Colossus of Maroussi. It was also widely believed that the Eighth Street Artists Club, which began in 1949, had been started by a group of artists who were tired of Kaldis interrupting their discussions in the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue near Eighth Street. The group, it was said, made article one ofthe Club's constitution, that Kaldis would not be allowed in. The first rumor may have had some basis. Anyone reading Henry Miller's book will be struck by the many points of resemblance to Kaldis in his fictional character. The second rumor was quite false. It not only ignored the true background of the Artists Club, but also that Kaldis was a regular visitor at the Club's Friday evenings, and often entertained its audiences with his off-the-cuff remarks, laced by a penetrating and sometimes cruel wit. When Kaldis wasn't talking about himself, he was quoting from one or another of the sage-philosophers whose thoughts accompanied him as he journeyed through life. His lectures on archeology, with slide accompaniment, although intended for the lay public, entranced not only that public but also a loyal claque of artists. He was not only well-informed but had an unusual and compelling style of delivery. (In later years Kaldis liked to recall that Willem de Kooning would sometimes carry his slide projector for him on his way to his lectures.) Kaldis died in 1979, but I can still see him wearing his long orange scarf, reminding me of Aristide Bruant, the poet of the cafe-concert, in the famous poster by Toulouse Lautrec. With this scarf flung loosely around his neck, Kaldis would make highly visible appearances, at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, or at the gallery openings uptown or along East Tenth Street. It made no difference if the artist who was having an opening was famous or at the threshold of his career; for Kaldis was never an arts' snob. He was sometimes difficult to avoid if one was not in the mood to be buttonholed. Thomas B. Hess, always an admirer of his work, spoke of Kaldis and his archrival, Landes Lewitin, as the Scylla and Charybdis of Eighth Street. Born in a small port town off the eastern shore of the Aegean between Pergamun and Troy, educated at the gymnasium of Mytilene and the Evangeliki College of Smyrna, Kaldis arrived in Boston at the age of 17. When he moved to New York in 1930, he felt immediately at home in the polyglot, cosmopolitan city. He himself, he said, spoke five languages, and he had no difficulty in finding other people who spoke them in New York. He once said that he had only to cross the Hudson River to find himself once again in Greece.
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At first he was a writer and, during the 1930's, an editor of research for the mural division of the Federal Art Project in New York City, presumably working with Burgoyne Diller who was in charge of the murals. Several people encouraged him to become a painter, including Diego Rivera whom he met while on the Art Project, and his wife, Laurie Eglinton Kaldis, who was an editor and art critic for the magazine Art News. He never received any formal instruction, and was usually critical of art teachers. He said his inspiration came from visits to the studios of the great-Picasso, Braque, and, above all, Matisse-not to omit mention of the day-by-day encouragement he received from Elaine and Willem de Kooning who were certainly chief among his earliest supporters. He was also a great traveler, crisscrossing Europe and the United States in search of museums and libraries to visit. Kaldis had his first one-man show at the Artists Gallery in 1941, followed by others at the Ferargil Gallery, the Puma Gallery, the Kornblee Gallery, the Carlan Gallery, the Stewart-Marean Gallery. He won two Guggenheim Awards in 1975 and 1977, to paint American landscapes-which invariably ended up looking somewhat Aegean. He was probably the first living American artist to have his work bought by Dr. Albert C. Barnes for his Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. But even though his subjects were often suggested by places he had seen in Staten Island or New England, he somehow always managed to spice them with Attic ingredients-with thyme, sage, olive trees, honey, tufa. Hilton Kramer said in the New York Times, January, 1976: "Everything Mr. Kaldis paints is invested with the passion and extravagance of his personality which is given to un contained outbursts of feeling and whimsical ebullience." Although his press usually lauded him, it was not always for the right reasons. Many critics tended to think of him as a "primitive," and they sometimes said his work was "child-like." I asked Kaldis about this when interviewing him for an article in 1959. He replied, according to my notes: "When you draw academically, you don't really see with your own eyes. You associate the subject with the eyes of some past master, and resist it through your own. You lose spontaneity. You are shadow-boxing. Direct drawing may appear naive. But I accept naivete, like Clement the Alexandrian, who defined it as the capacity to discard the inessential. My aim is always to compose. In other words, in drawing, not to pick or select but to discard the inessential. That is what I call a true, a real abstraction. When you select, as in choosing an hors d'oeuvre, you degenerate into a fragmentary painter. My aim is always to compose, to synthesize, and not to paint makeshifts. Otherwise, the outcome is chaotic. Instead of developing into a higher form, it degenerates by returning to the thicket that is, to the virginal nature." Only in one aspect can a painting by Kaldis suggest a child's painting, and that is in his occasional use of the edge of a form as a ground-line for the placement of trees, houses or figures. In some paintings, where the edge of a mountain seems to be running downward to the base of the picture, we see trees and figures attached perpendicular to this "line," making them seem, from the viewer's vertical standpoint, to be lying down sideways, although they are intended to be read by the viewer as "standing up." But this use of a ground-line, usual in children's art at certain stages in the child's development, is not peculiar to Kaldis. We find it often in early landscapes by Kandinsky, also in paintings by Klee (who was conscious of children's art as a source for adult style), Miro, Chagall, and many others. Although his paintings may strike the viewer as having the freshness and unsophistication of the naive painter, there is really nothing naive about a Kaldis painting. He merely has a highly individual and personal style. Kaldis worked slowly and deliberately, and only when the spirit moved him. Behind each finished painting, there might be a number of smaller studies which he called "vignettes"-a term he sometimes applied to a painting without any paint in its corners. Using brushes for the most part, he would pour a flood of lyrical brushstrokes into a form, and sometimes he would scrub the paint into the canvas. On occasion
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he would also squeeze the paint directly from the tube to make lively or agitated blobs, and sometimes with the tube he would make long, curving pipettes of paint, or "armatures," which would serve to seal off an area as well as direct the eye of the observer in the direction he wanted. He seemed always to know the right moment to stop. Had he worked the paintings more, they might have acquired the stiffness of "finish"a characteristic of much folk art. A typical Kaldis painting would be a view of a mountain-or of several mountains-thrusting their humps into inky blue skies. Winding paths, villas, gates, churches, shrines, temples, cart-wheels and olive trees in clumps dot the landscape rhythmically, with, at the bottom, a curving bay echoing the color of the sky. He did not use the traditional foreground, middle ground and background, but moved directly into a kind of middle ground which was the plane of the picture itself. In the arrangement of his elements-which often took the forms of circles, triangles and squares, embedded into the landscape-he seems to be affirming nature as emblematic of a mystical faith. In color, as well as in a sense of a powerful inner world, we sense in his art something akin to the early Kandinsky, a response-I believe-to an inner necessity banishing the nightmare of materialism, and transforming every Kaldis painting into a lyrical affirmation of the joys of existence. Somewhere during the middle of the 1950's Kaldis invented for himself what he called an "explosive space," which he compared to the diastolic expansion of the chambers of the heart. In these paintings he seems to be catapulting his familiar forms into a white space. The paintings began to look more "abstract" although never non-objective. But this was not his only direction for at the same time he developed a more compressed kind of painting, which he thought of as being a kind of systolic contraction. The forms now begin to be part of a dense tapestry of colors wedging together with many diagonal shiftings, interlacings and interpenetrating movements. Although usually simple descriptions of subject suffice-like Greek Village with Man or Bulls Head Cape -on occasion Kaldis would take off with titles like Eternal Soil of Democracy-Greece, Polydactylic Divine Hand and Sappho's Eternal Sleep Blessed. I am indebted to his, and also my friend, Paul Resika, for the opportunity to read the famous Kaldis Glossary, which originally appeared in the second issue of the magazine "It is," published by Philip Pavia. The glossary is a three-page document available to students, along with the writings of other artists, in the Master of Fine Arts Program at the Parsons School of Design. I wish I had more space to quote from it. Here is a particularly choice Kaldisian quote: "COLOR: Derma-Color ... Derma, in Homeric times, the skin. When color is applied creatively, it multiplies itself and enhances the composition. It has magical powers. It moves the shapes and forms without changing the lines of the painting. However, color is a dangerous temptation for those who suffer from achromatopsia-color-blindness. Fortunately this optical impediment is not so perilous to painters as to city drivers or to navigators of narrow shoals. For example, a headmaster in England relented and allowed one of his pupils to take carpentry in lieu of the arts. Three days later the pupil returned to the class with his left hand in a sling. The pedagogue said to the student: "Unlike the Fine Arts, young man, carpentry does not tolerate inaccuracies." Kaldis was a part of that scene which today there is tendency to view as having been dominated by the Abstract Expressionists to the exclusion of everybody else. Actually there were many painters and others who found a climate of support within this scene and I think of Kaldis always as one of those who influenced others, especially younger painters, if not by his own paintings but by his ideas and his own example of one who had the strength of will to work for many years in conditions of near poverty. He was certainly the quintessence of the Bohemian artist, but he was much more besides, as these beautiful paintings so ably testify. Lawrence Campbell
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Minerva Surveying
1974, o/c, 53 x 88
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Sphinx over Thebes, 1972 ole, 16" x 20" 9
Day Dreaming 1973, o/c, 30 x 41 10
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Hydra, 1959, oil on canvas, 26" x 21" 11
Venetian Fortress, 1976, o/c, 40" 12
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Patmos 76 1976, ole, 50 x 60 13
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Sporadic Landscape, 1972-73, ole, 40" x 30" 14
Scylla and Charybdis 1972-3, ole, 40 x 52 15
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Hellenic Landscape #1 1951, ole, 50 x 80 17
Cycladic and Sporadic 1972, ole, 40 x 60 18
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Buffalo
Landscape
1944, ole, 26 x 36
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Prometheus
Unbound in Alaska 1t77, ole, 72 x 144
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White, White, Metaphysical
Who 1973-75, ole, 72 x 96 21
Haut Cagnes oil on canvas, 16 x 20 22
Meduano 1976, o/c, 36 x 24 23
Kaldis Remembered At the recent opening of the retrospective exhibition of paintings by the late Aristodimos Kaldis at the Kouros Gallery in New York (Oct. lO-Nov. 3, 1984) several of his old friends commented that they expected him to appear at any moment. Everyone seemed to be responding to the spirit of Kaldis that filled the gallery. This is the way anyone who knew him and his paintings thought about him. He was the personification of his paintings and they were the embodiment of him. All the diverse content of his person was expressed, if not in one painting, in a large number of them as was seen in this exhibition. It has been written of Kaldis that he was "an artist, free-lance etymologist, free-form lecturer, and familiar figure in the New York art world" (Newsweek, Nov. 5, 1962, pg. 106). The key words in that description are "artist" and "free." True, he was a man of extraordinarily versatile talents with a commanding use of English richly supported by his native Greek tongue (he said 68 % of English words derive from the Greek language), and he was equally at home in Europe where he had circles of friends in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, and throughout Greece that rivaled his New York circle. He could hold forth for hours, be it before a crowd or only a few artist friends, discussing almost any subject, from the sublime to the pecuniary. In fact, he had a healthy respect for money and that subject seemed to find a place in his conversation whether it was on art, philosophy, or etymology-all favorite subjects with him. All this rich diversity however was channeled into art, which was his life, as freedom was his spirit. It was these qualities that so inspired the artists who knew him. To his artist friends he spoke with enlightenment and inspiration about light and color, of the subtle nuances that make such a difference in a painting, about composition, and about the struggle, about the "home-runs" and the "strike-outs," about the need to keep going when we are discouraged. By example he taught what he believed to be essential for an artist: dedication. Though Kaldis never passed up an opportunity to speak to the world, he spoke most directly to his fellow artists, with his words as well as with his paintings. To his entourage of young artists he always spoke of dedication, and of the importance of being able to make a good soup. Every new female acquaintance was a rich heiress until she proved otherwise, and the Stork Club, rich ladies, and Greek shipping magnates often spiced his parables. Kaldis is remembered as a man of superlatives. His large stature was greatly magnified by his mind and personality within. He was outstanding in any crowd, with his lion's mane hair underscored by his perennial red scarf wrapped several times around his neck with one long end hanging down his back. When he spoke' his sonorous voice floated to all quarters of a room, and the insistence with which he expressed himself always compelled an audience to listen. His knowledge of the classics and art history, and his repertory of little known anecdotes about well known artists were fascinating and enlightening to his artist friends. One could usually find him in the verbal forefront where artists gathered, whether it was at the Cedar Bar, the old Club on Eight Street and later a few blocks north on Broadway, or more recently at the new Club way over on East Broadway, where in the 1970's he frequently held the floor with eruditions that pleased some and injured others. Kaldis was a unique artist in a time when many artists were building careers by associating with new art movements and reaping the benefits of the group publicity generated by the latest "ism." His remarkable paintings, with their nervous forms dancing wildly in rich colors, had great emotional impact, but they simply didn't fit comfortably into any art movement of their time. He patiently pursued a creative path charted by the mystical voices of a religious art from his Near Eastern childhood, tempered by a firsthand study of the great art of the museums of the world, in which he successfully merged the icon form with landscape painting, creating his unique iconized landscapes. It was the Near Eastern foundation of his work that set it apart from the dominant art of his time. His paintings were greatly admired by other artists from the 1950's on and many art critics, among them Thomas B. Hess, Lawrence Campbell, Hilton Kramer and Lenny Horowitz, perceived the distinctive character of his paintings and praised them highly. His message to artists lives on in his work: "Be dedicated to art but remain free in spirit." Jack Stewart NYC,1984 24
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Kaldis' paintings are at the same time shocking and pleasing. Today's photographic realism has browbeaten our eyes so much that it is a relief to read Kaldis' fresh, bouncing details. His brushstrokes are always on the run-nothing like the too even results of darkroom films. Instead, we see dabs of color racing, running up and down the mountains. His details, his brushstrokes, are never static or dead on their feet. These colors are all mixed from the chemistries of his brain, his senses and sweat, all made into one. Kaldis trained like a race horse running for the finish line. He didn't bother with details that took too much time. At times he changed from a race horse to a marathon running-amazing how fast his feet could touch and lift up and touch again! Instead of runner's ankles, one pictures Kaldis' wrist touching and then lifting a brush full of color on the canvas. Kaldis was one of the original artists in the Waldorf cafeteria during the forties: A magnificent talker, who spellbound us for many nights, for many many years. At first, no one understood his paintings-his bad friends said he was a primitve, and absolutely lost. Not true, it turned out. Here he is in his paintings, a modern man in spite of his long great heritage. Amazing, how he absorbed so much Greek tradition but kept his image-presence alive and above it all. That was his point. He wanted to be personal about his painting. And he became an expressionist in spite of himself. His paintings do have magical colors that match his personality. His character was formed by the many determined decisions he had made within himself. For instance, he decided not to be influenced by French painting or the Italian Renaissance. Decadent was his favorite word whenever the subject came. These two areas he believed [after the war] could not build up a new contemporary painting. It was this premise which Kaldis then supported with magnificent monologues that strengthened the revolutionary art being born on 8th Street. His arguments were unforgettable, and I for one will never forget them. Kaldis, again inspite of his origins, was in an odd way, an abstractionist. From way back in his sensibilities and imagination, there came forth projection of the Greek tradition of solid geometry. He painted his mountains as if they were the noble pyramids of Euclid. The geometrician, perhaps, was influenced by the Greek mountains too and transcribed them into textbook problems of solid geometry. But Kaldis, he just painted greens, blues, yellows, houses, woods, trees, rocky, craggy, protrusions, roads and villages all over the pyramids. The strict, geometric pyramid, is a presence or a shadow underneath the life of the mountain. Not overburdened, his mountains seem very, very happy with their burden. An art historian or "futurist" would say that Kaldis had interpenetrated both image of mountain and pyramid into one. Sometimes Kaldis would paint his mountains with hard colors, sometimes with soft. These were moods. No matter. However he paints his mountains, Kaldis never forgets his Euclidian abstract shadow. That is his message. Philip Pavia
When Kaldis sat in the backseat with my mother-in-law very cozy and told her she should give us a lot of money right away, he was, at once, his most gross from her point of view and his most delicate from mine. He raged his whole life between extremes. One could not forgive his transgressions; they had to be ignored. His fineness showed always in relation to Art. His paintings are delicate, and always an expression of a wonderful self. When he spoke about art or helped someone with their paintings he was sensitive, completely confident that one could make ones paintings better, and he was able to show them, in a way that they could integrate into themselves, exactly how. In touching and astounding ways, his paintings were on the mark. He set out to make a painting of a polar bear in Alaska, and though it looked a bit like Greece, he carried it off easily. His best head was truly with the Gods. And then I can remember him with his arms around a freshly cut platter of a whole turkey saying "I know more than all of you." I don't think you could tell from the gross scene I just described, but he did. Paul Georges NYC, 1984 25
Aristodimos Kaldis, born in 1899, did not start painting as a career until 1938. His early paintings reflected a Fauvist style similar to Cezanne and Matisse. These early pictures, sometimes labeled 'primitive,' were characterized by Kaldis as "naive," which he defined as "having the capacity to discard the inessential.''t His method in painting a realistic landscape or still life was to reduce visual memories to their essences, thus arriving at a canvas that appeared simpler than it was. Although these paintings have a childlike charm, it is 'color' which makes them vibrate with energy. Beethoven and Wagner were his favorite composers, for his paintings are bold and sonorous, rather than quiet and subtle. Kaldis was a giant figure in the art world because of his sincere interest in art and other artists' work. Walking with him on lower 5th Avenue in the 1940's was like being in a parade interrupted by frequent stops to greet and talk with other artists. He was a very social person, yet he never belonged to any clique or movement in painting. Kaldis was solitary only when he put paint on a canvas in his own unique style. Influenced by other expressionists and colorists, he never belonged to an 'ism' of painting. He was always willing to share his ability to use color to help colleagues with their incomplete paintings, even colleagues who may have had more recognition as artists. One such painter, John Groth, himself beloved as a teacher at the Art Student's League, once called upon Kaldis for help with a painting of a race track scene commissioned by Armour and Company. This painting had been rejected by the meatpackers and I, who was 8 or 9 years old at the time, was dispatched to the roof to drink Coca Cola and amuse myself with the view of 57th Street below. After they had worked 45 minutes on the painting, I was summoned back, whereupon my father asked me, "Guy, what difference do you notice in the painting?" I answered naively, "Dad, you put a hot dog in his mouth." They both laughed while my father patiently showed me how he had highlighted the hot dog with ochre and the bun with white. On many other occasions I witnessed the salvaging of an otherwise lifeless picture by another artist by Kaldis's skill in using color to separate out planes in a picture without resorting to the exaggerated tricks of academic drawing perspective. Starting often with little scraps of colored paper from Pall Mall and Lucky Strike wrappers temporarily stuck on the canvas with a little saliva, he would suggest the colors that would transform an otherwise dull painting. So pleased were many of his friends that they referred to him as the "Doctor of painting." He often stated in lectures that the trick was to keep the eye moving from the foreground to the background and back again to the middle ground. Willem de Kooning, one of Kaldis's intimate friends, also a master of color, respected Kaldis's critical judgments of his paintings. I first met Bill de Kooning as a youngster on a visit to his 8th Street studio. Later, three generations of the Kaldis family visited Bill in his Easthampton studio. The last time de Kooning saw my father was on one of his rare trips to New York City to accept the medal given him by the Queen of Netherlands. Kaldis was very proud that Bill came by to see him recovering from a heart attack in his West Side Studio before going to receive the medal. Recently de Kooning viewed a videotape of the October, 1984, Kaldis exhibition at the Kouros Gallery. When asked "Which paintings he liked best?", de Kooning replied with boyish enthusiasm, "I like all of them." Posing for a brief videotape of himself standing in front of the only painting in his living room, a colorful Aegean landscape by his friend, Aristodimos Kaldis. while de Kooning reminisced about the times that Kaldis would hold forth with great authority and clarity on art and philosophy at the cafeteria just around the corner from his 8th Street studio. Like de Kooning, Kaldis was totally absorbed in painting and lived an aescetic life. Living frugally, he valued his paintings more than the sums of money he could obtain for them at that time. He often counselled younger artists to take after his example of not working at a 9 to 5 job, but devoting all of his energies to art. Some who saw him pinch, kiss, or otherwise show affection to young women misunderstood his love of beauty in the visual and tactile forms. He lived alone from 1941 until his death in 1979. He encouraged others to marry, but felt driven to spend his energies on art. He also hurt his chances at popular recognition by
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very strongly criticizing artists who taught at universities or art critics who knew less on art and art history than he. This high level of criticism was ironically the quality that attracted many young artists to his side. In return for stretching a canvas, an errand in a car, studio space or other practical favors, he would give a student hours of exhaustive criticism of their work. Kaldis' study of painting and sculpture was gained in his frequent travel and visits to museums in Europe and U.S.A. His perspective on art was unique in that he had a great capacity to reflect about the relationships between art and the rest of life. In his lectures at the Carnegie Recital Hall, discussions with other artists at the Artist's Club, and numerous guest lectureships at universities around the country, he was able to give clarity to the puzzling concept that artists don't belong to society and yet are part of it with a story both charming and instructive. 2 He had a vast knowledge of history, philosophy, and government, and was able to show the complexity of those relationships clearly where others often only add to the listener's confusion. Whenever Kaldis is the subject of a meeting at the Educational Alliance or an opening, almost all his friends and colleagues turn up. The spirit remains the same five years later-very little sadness, instead a festive air which Mrs. Milton Avery (Sally) described at the Kouros Gallery opening: "It was so much fun to see the old crowd together again." The quality and quantity of Kaldis's friends and colleagues never diminishes. His spirit lives on in the paintings on the wall and in the animated discussion and vivid memories in the rooms full of people looking at his works of art. Guy C. Kaldis 1. cf. Kaldis, Aristodimos, "Glossary," IT IS, Volume II, Autumn 1958 2. cf. Kaldis, Aristodimos, "Parson's School Lecture," page 2
Kaldis, like Longinus, was a "living library and a walking museum" - a rhetorician and the "first of critics." Like Falstaff, he was subversive, outrageous, priapic and noble. "I have the gravity for my levity," he said. He was generous with criticism. Three generations of artists and "mere painters" listened to him at the Cedar Bar, various Rikers, and alliances here and abroad. Years ago, Kaldis sent me a postcard of Seurat's Bathers. On the back in a magnificent scrawl was written: "To my colleague and friend with productive years of color and tonal composition." I also have from him the injunction to "be heroic" and "detonate the picture." But when I asked him how Renoir painted the nudes we both loved, he replied: "Renoir had patience." Kaldis knew the bitterness of lack of "success." The New York museums totally ignored him. But I never saw him melancholy. And now a "Museum" show at last! Aristo, wanderer in the Elysian fields, what is your criticism? Paul Resika 6 November 1984
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Striding through Gothic, Romanesque and Byzantine cathedrals, orating-often to startled strangersbefore art works at the Louvre, the Prado, the Stedelijk, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, Moma, Aristodemus Kaldis was a ubiquitous presence. With his massive head and majestic stance, he was the incarnation of Rodin's Balzac. A Dionysian scholar, Kaldis was a reservoir of a staggering body of arcane knowledge. Through his eyes, art was viewed not in terms of years or decades but centuries, millenia-all at his finger-tips, ready for instant retrieval. Whenever I planned a trip abroad I would always consult with Kaldis who would immediately begin drawing maps for me, no matter what the city or-country, locating a cathedral here, a museum there, a little known sculpture or a particular painting that none of the guide books mentioned,-all the while pouring out a stream of relevant information about the location of American Express offices, railroads, airports, excellent, cheap restaurants, beautiful gardens and parks, millionaires whose acquaintance I should make, until I was quite dizzy. When I arrived at a given city and pulled out one of these impossibly chaotic maps, everything was suddenly perfectly clear; his accuracy truly amazing. The lectures he gave in 1945 in a room on one of the upper floors of Carnegie Hall had the same kind of kaleidoscopic clarity. Artists who wouldn't dream of attending a lecture would flock to hear Kaldis (paying fifty cents at the door) and the room was always packed with a highly professional and merrily responsive audience. Willem de Kooning managed the slide projector on these evenings once a week while Kaldis poured out a seemingly helter skelter profusion of brilliant insights about artists, ancient and modern. Slides of the work of Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Giacometti, Miro, Leger, Arp were shown in illuminating juxtapositions with examples of Etruscan, Persian, Byzantine, Egyptian, African, Greek sculpture, architecture, painting, mosaics. Immensely-if erratically-erudite, Kaldis chose his slides with great care, and once the members of the audience got used to his unorthodox delivery, they always left with a sense of revelation-of expanded perceptions. In all the lectures, at some point or other, an archaic Greek figure would appear holding a fish which was an extension of his arm-a key figure for Kaldis and for us. The room would rock with laughter at the inevitable appearance of this key figure. Kaldis was apparently oblivious to the laughter that constantly punctuated his lectures but, in fact, he lived on it. Laughter was the air that Kaldis breathed as he swooped through the art world like a festive zipper, bringing strangers, friends and enemies together, showering them with his theories about marriage, money, religion, etymology, art history, and politics-usually over tables laden with Greek food. He would maneuver
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his large entourages to restaurants near Eighth avenue in the forties where an order of beer, retsina or ouzo for each of us would bring forth platters of mezethakia-vine leaves stuffed with rice, feta cheese wrapped in layers of delicate, flaky pastry, dainty sausages and quantities of pita. Kaldis would keep up a running commentary in Greek with the waiters, inspiring them to bring more and more food and then, he'd leap to the center of the room and join them with explosive zest as they sang and danced between courses. Kaldis was such a powerful personality, such a commanding figure that one is tempted to say he overshadowed his painting but, in terms of its freshness, originality and extraordinary psychic energy, his painting is a match for the man. I remember vividly my first view, in 1944, of Kaldis' paintings in his unbelievably messy studio in a huge building on Fifth Avenue and 16th Street. There was an unmade bed with clothes piled on top of it; tables and chairs cluttered with fruit, bread, paint tubes, dirty dishes, books, brushes, and everywhere-leaning against furniture, stacked against the wall-small canvases glowing with intense primary colors. These early landscapes and portraits were reverently and painstakingly finished with a religious, almost Byzantine fervor. Every inch of the canvas was covered with pigment in a manner often categorized as "primitive" -a label that infuriated Kaldis, whose concerns were those of a highly cultivated artist. Primitives don't change their way of painting: their imagery is locked into a particular technique. Kaldis' approach to his work changed considerably during the 'forties and the 'fifties. Like the Abstract Expressionists with whom he was closely involved, his canvases became larger, his brushwork freer. The imagery is always rooted in the landscape of his beloved Greece. Houses, boats, temples, mountains, trees-all carefully considered as abstract elements-emerge with joyous economy. There is a remarkable variety in the application of paint as the white space of the canvas is activated by brilliant colors and freeflying contours. The classic "artists' -artist," Kaldis is revered as a major painter by his fellows who avidly collected the drawings he made wherever he happened to be. Willem and I acquired a painting from Kaldis four days before he died at the age of seventy-nine in 1979. He had just returned from the hospital and we were visiting him in his hotel room. Kaldis was his usual exuberant self on this occasion and burst into song as we bade him farewell. The painting hangs in our living room where we see it every night as if for the first time. It constantly exhilarates us with its free-wheeling precision-its miraculous verve. There is a frolicsome form like a dolphin gliding through the air past a steep white and yellow mountain high above the sparkling Aegean-blue water: "That's Kaldis' soul," said Paul Resika. Elaine de Kooning Easthampton, N.Y., 1984
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Chronology 1899
August 15, Born to Efstratios and Ourania Kaldis in Dikeli, (Atarneus) Turkey, grows up in Mytilini, Lesbos, Greece. Gymnasium, Lesbos and Evangelika, Smyrna, Turkey
1915
Takes over the management of Kaldis family shipping firm
1917
Emigrates to Boston, Massachusetts
1919
Visits Paris
1920's
Worker and interpreter at Hood Rubber Company, Watertown, Massachusetts
1930's
Migrates to New York City, becomes economist for Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, Local #6, leads Waldorf Strike
1934
Meets and marries Laurie Elaine Eglington, Art Critic and Editor of Art News
1937
Guy C. Kaldis, son, born
1935-38
Mural Division of the Art Project, (WPA). New York City, Chief of Research for Diego Rivera; meets Kline, Gorki, Rothko and De Kooning
1938
Trip to England, France, Italy and Greece to visit relatives.
1941
Greek War Relief Auctioneer, Volunteer for Roosevelt, La Guardia Reelection Campaigns
1941
December, 1ST GROUP SHOW, Artists Gallery
1942
April, participant in Group show of Modern Christs at Puma Gallery
1942
November, 1ST ONE-MAN SHOW, Carlen gallery, Philadelphia
1942
Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania, acquires Negro Looking at Modern Art. first living American artist to be purchased by Dr. Barnes.
1944-50
Key to Modern Art Lecture Series, Carnegie Hall, Studio 819
1946
Lecturer at the Rand School
1947
June 15, Front cover of Greek National Herald
1948
May, Artists Gallery Group Show
1950
Washington Square Inn Group show
1951
Artists Gallery, Group Show
1951
November, Leonardo Da Vinci Lecture, Miami, Florida
1951
December, Artist Gallery, FIRST ONE-MAN SHOW
1956
September, Reunion on Lexington Avenue, Artist Gallery
1957
April, Large Picture of Kaldis with scarf, Cover of Vii/age Voice
1957
October, The Thirties, Group Show, Poindexter Gallery
1957-59
Articles in IT IS, published by Philip Pavia
1959
April 19, Picture in N. Y. Times Sunday Magazine Section, with caption 'Bohemian' in Paris, later sues NY Times.
1959
April, Stewart-Marean etymology.
1959
November, Art News, Article and Color Plates
1959
November, Rome-N.Y. Art Foundation, foreword by Herbert Read.
1962
Museum of Modern Art, Spoleto International exhibition, Traveling show for one year
1962
October, Kornblee Gallery, One-man show
Gallery, one-man show, published Glossary, article on
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1962
November, Painting on Cover of Art News
1962
NewsWeek Article on Kaldis (Kennedy on cover!
1964
Kornblee Gallery, one-man show
1965
June, Festival of Two worlds, Spoleto Exhibit
1965
September, Hecksher Museum, Huntington, Long Island.
1966
ART USA Show in NY Coliseum
1966
August, Guest Lecturer, University of Oregon
1966
Kornblee Gallery, one-man show
1971
Samos Workshop, taught at the Pythagorean School of Art
1974
Landmark Gallery, 118Artists,
1974, 1975
1974
December 5, Leonard Horowitz interviews Kaldis in Soho Weekly News
1975
Guggenheim Fellow in Painting
1977
Second Guggenheim Fellowship
1977
May, NOEMATA, Brooklyn Museum, group show of Greek artists.
1977
September, Kornblee Gallery, One-Man Show
1977
November, Group Show with De Kooning, Krasner in Philadelphia College of Art, Lecture
1978
September, WPA Show, at the Parsons School
1978
November, One-Man Show at the Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore. Lecture at Maryland College of Art.
1978
November 23, Parsons School Lecture
1979
May 2, dies at the age of 79.
1980
September, Little Gems, Kornblee Gallery.
1981
September, Artists Choice Group Show
1982
Fall, in Artist Choice exhibit at One Penn Plaza
1983
April, Group Show, Kouros Gallery
1984
Lyrics and Myths, Kouros Gallery
Selected One Man Exhibitions Kaldis, The Artists Gallery, New York, 1941 Kaldis, Carlen Galleries, Philadelphia, 1942 Kaldis, The Artists Gallery, New York, 1951 Kaldis, Stewart-Marean Gallery, New York, 1959 Kaldis, Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1976, 1977 Kaldis, Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, 1978 Little Gems, Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1980
Selected Public Collections The Barnes Collection, Marion, P A The Joseph Hirschhorn Collection, Washington, D.C. The Michener Collection, University of Texas, Austin Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
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Selected Group Exhibitions Group Show, Artists Gallery, New York, 1941 Modern Christs, Puma Gallery, New York, 1942 Group Show, Artists Gallery, New York, 1948 Washington Square Inn Group Show, New York, 1950 Tenth Anniversary, Artists Gallery, New York, 1951 Reunion on Lexington Avenue, Artists Gallery, New York, 1956 The Thirties, Poindexter Gallery, New York, 1957 Rome=N. Y. Art Foundation, Rome, 1962 Spoleto International Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, Traveling Exhibition, 1962 Recent Paintings by Nine Americans, Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto, 1965 Paintings in the Collections of Harvard Graduates, Heckscher Museum, Huntington, Long Island, 1965 Art USA, New York Coliseum, 1966 118 Artists, Landmark Gallery, New York, 1974, 1975 Group Show; Kornblee Gallery, New York, 1975 Birmingham Festival of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1976 Noemata, Greek-American Artists, Brooklyn Museum, 1977 Seventies Painting, Philadelphia College of Art, 1978 Painting and Sculpture Today, Indianapolis, 1978 WPA Show, Parsons College, New York, 1978 Artists Choice Museum Show on 57th Street, New York, 1979 National Academy, 154th Annual, N.Y., 1979 Contemporary Realism, One Penn Plaza, New York, 1983 Hellenic Expressions, Kouros Gallery, New York, 1983 Lyrics and Myths, Kouros Gallery, New York, 1984
Selected Bibliography Burrows, Carlyle, New York Herald Tribune, December 7, 1941 Bonte, C. H., "Greek from Classic Isle shows very Modern Art", The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 1942 "Kaldis Handles Color in Extraordinary Manner", New York Herald Tribune, May 25, 1948 "Ebullience in a Single Plane", New York World, June 1, 1948/ Arms, Val, "Animated Still Life", The National Herald, June 15, 1957 Kaldis, Aristodimos, "The Glossary", It is, Volume II, Autumn, 1958 "Paintings, poetic ... abstract", The New York Journal American, April 25, 1959 Longwood, William, "A Glorious Bean Soup", The New "fork World Telegram, October 15, 1959 Campbell, Lawrence, "Kaldis Paints a Picture", Art News, November, 1959 Sandler, Irving, New York Post, October 17, 1962 "On with the Dance", Newsweek, November 5, 1962 Waggoner, Karen, "Greek Painter Sketches Life", Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, August 7, 1966 Horowitz, Leonard, "Artscope: A Dialogue with Aristodimos Kaldis", Soho Weekly News, December 5, 12, 1972 North, Charles, "Aristodimos at Kornblee", Art Voices, January, 1976 Hess, Thomas B., "Five Bywaymen", New York Magazine, February 2, 1976 Kramer, Hilton, "The Art of Painting is Alive and Well", New York Times, January 25, 1976 Ellenzweig, Allen, "The Mythic Mirror of Aristodimos Kaldis", Arts Magazine, September, 1977 De Mazio, Violet, "E Pluribus Unum", Journal of the Barnes Foundation, 1977 Kramer, Hilton," Aristodimos Kaldis", New York Times, October 10, 1980 Valamvanos, George," A Lifelong Sojourn in the Aegean: A Tribute to Kaldis", The Journal of the Greek Diaspora, Summer, 1979 Campbell, Lawrence. "Aristodimos Kaldis", Arts Magazine, November, 1984. 32
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Artists' Choice Museum
394 West Broadway, New York, NY 10012 212-219-8031 Board of Trustees
Hans van den Houten-Chairman Timothy E. Taubes-Director Michael Tcheyan- Treasurer Leonard D. Easter, Saundra Krasnow, Ann R. Leven, Patricia J. Murphy, Cynthia Parry, Anthony Quinn, Frank Taubes, Livia Sylva Weintraub Board of Artists
Paul Georqes=-Chairrnan Emeritus Richard Pitts-Chairman Stephanie DeManuelle, Pamela Endacott, Joe Giordano, Robert Godfrey, Stephen Grillo, Richard Hall, Howard Kalish, Morton Kaish, Charles Leopardo, Donald Perlis, Jim Wilson
•
Board of Advisors
Lennart Anderson, Milet Andrejevic, Isabel Bishop, Nell Blaine, Larry Day, Lois Dodd, Rackstraw Downes, Jane Freilicher, Sidney Goodman Roger Lewis, James McGarrell, Alice Neel, Raphael Soyer, Berta Walker, John Yau Benefactors
A.M.Sampling, Chase Manhattan Bank, N.E.A. (National Endowment for the Arts), N.Y.S.C.A. (New York State Council on the Arts), Ohio Arts Council (O.A.C.), Sidney and Frances Lewis Foundation, Hans van den Houten, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, David Rockefeller, Consolidated Edison Lila Acheson Wallace Fund
Acknowledgements Credits:
and
We would especially like to thank Guy Kaldis, Jill Kornblee, Angelos Camillos, Jean Davidson, Janet Bosse, Annick du Charme, Sally Avery, Richard Ahntholz, Robin Magowan, Harriette Forbes, and the ACM staff for their indispensable help with this exhibition. Also, thanks must go to Lawrence Cambell, and all the artists who so vividly evoked the spirit of Kaldis and his legend for this catalogue. Catalogue design - C. Leopardo Catalogue editor - S. Grillo Photo credits Camerarts (Ali Eali) , Mark Ellison, John McMahon, Mano Orel Printer - Colormasters