Wolf Kahn

Readers of this blog may know that I am fond not only of Wolf Kahn’s work (he says that he does “non-descriptive landscapes”), but also his approach to painting. He’s now 87 and his point of view, which resonates with views articulated in late-19th century Paris, is instructive.

I call your attention to a recent talk he gave entitled Control and Letting Go. I encourage all to watch the talk; he is very funny, using his forgetfulness to full advantage. Here are a few of the points he makes:

• If you aim in a painting, you know too much where you want it to go, you’re already at a great disadvantage because it means that all the alternative moves – you can’t make them – don’t fit into your scheme.

• The one thing you don’t want to know how to do, as a painter, is knowing how to do the thing too well ahead of time. You don’t want to make it into a performance. There has to be a bit of uncertainty attached to it.

• You are constrained by things you’ve done before.

• Students have to learn control, to do the thing so that it comes out right. As soon as you are no longer a student, you better forget all that and become something else. Become an amateur again.

• The thing that being an artist forces you constantly to value and to chase after is the idea of freedom. You don’t want to be constrained in your work. You don’t want to feel that there’s limits to it.

We have seen these ideas before: painting is not about the product as much as it is about the painter growing, becoming larger, more of who she already is. Anything that compels us to stick with what we do well is a constraint, a limitation (think of all the jobs that you have had in which you are rewarded for doing precisely that).

That to escape from the constraints of career and the market – to site obvious constraints – is to return to “amateurism;” ie, the pure love of doing where the known end or finish is non-existent. Many others, as I have noted elsewhere, have used the idea of returning to innocence or to the ways a child who is “in wonder” in relating to the world.

These ideas, on first glance, seem congenial to our way of life. But I caution the reader: if you are interpreting Kahn’s self-understanding as some sort of touchy-feely new-age bromide, you are misunderstanding his instruction entirely. What he is saying is actually quite subversive of the way in which we, as a society, organize production. Imagine a worker, also born with the same creative urges as any “artist,” showing up one day and declaring, “Sorry, I’m going for a walk. I feel constrained by my previous work. I’m unable to make all the alternative moves that are deep within me because they don’t fit into your scheme.”

I recall one student asking with regard to making paintings, “What’s wrong with efficiency?” Nearly all students are fixated on finishing. Still others, who have enjoyed success with a particular result, continue with reproducing that result because they are good at it. These orientations are woven into standard practices called manufacturing. All of us are educated as manufacturers. We paint as if manufacturing hormones controlled just about every aspect of our art lives, from the process itself to marketing. Pissarro long ago said that a painter ought to move in the opposite direction from a manufacturer. Kahn is explaining to us ways of doing that. Let me give you an example.

Jo McGovern

I first met Jo McGovern about 10 years ago when she took a workshop with me. I can’t say that I remember her work from back then, but she herself was memorable. I have had few students who would express such utter frustration when things didn’t go right as did Jo.

Over the years (I believe she took three more workshops) it became clear to me that, indeed, her work was showing signs of life. She still would get noticeably upset from time to time and I told her what my teacher told me (my personality being similar to hers): “It’s fine to be disappointed with what you are doing. It’s even a healthy thing. But don’t be so hard on yourself that you stop painting.”

During one workshop, I told Jo: “Look, if you really want to be serious about this, do nothing but underpaintings for at least a year. Make many beginnings. Don’t finish.” I have told this to a number of students but few take me up on the challenge. Jo did.

The next time I saw her, she showed me the dozens of underpaintings she had been working on. They were nice, not great. Her palpable frustration, however, had turned into palpable determination.

Another few years went by. We exchanged a few emails and I thought she had disappeared. Then a few weeks ago Jo sent me about a half dozen images of her recent work. Wow! I was blown away. This stuff was really good!

You can see one of the paintings I have inserted here. What strikes me about it is precisely the kind of thing that Kahn talks about. It is a landscape and Jo’s control is manifest: it reads as a whole, it’s not plugged up. I can see through layers. There is a nice tonality or atmospheric harmony. The colors aren’t artificially punched up for effect – she knows what she is doing.

But notice too how the whole thing doesn’t turn on description. Jo isn’t being literal. It’s really not about the beauty of the building or beach scene. I don’t even know what half of those little things at the bottom are. It’s not a picture. It’s Jo.

When I look at it I feel her excitement. The brushstrokes are marvelous. They make me want to keep looking at the sky. It looks like she is carefree, having fun, enjoying life. At the same time that she is in control, she is letting go. Which brings me back to Kahn:

“Be inventive, careless, and irreverent, and playful. The word playful has got to be used more often. I think an artist should always remember that he’s always doing a dance. That he’s doing something that’s not terribly serious. And it should be taken lightly.”

Inventive, careless, and irreverent, and playful. The painting itself should be taken lightly. It’s a good way for a painter to be. Pissarro would approve.