 |
| "Ballantine" by Franz Kline 1960 |
Franz Kline was an "action painter", and, according to the film below, he was inspired by the beat poets. Though he denied a relationship, some said that his black images resembled Japanese calligraphy. He started working in color the last five years of his life, but that was cut short when death came at the early age of 52.
Kline worked in black and white during the decade of the 1950s. But not just black and white, he used grays and off whites, and incorporated other colors from time to time.
Below, this first film gives a nice overview of Kline's painting style and life.
This second film shows many of his paintings, accompanied by classical music.
Though Kline's paintings appear to be spontaneous works, he actually spent the bulk of his time sketching up designs, often using the yellow pages from phone books as his sketch paper. Growing up in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, railroads, trains, and bridges influenced his designs. Working on very large canvases with his preferred inexpensive materials of house paint and brushes, his painting method was iterative, painting over both the black and the white parts of the painting until it felt finished to him.
Franz Kline wasn't the most acclaimed of the New York abstract impressionists, but perhaps his time has finally come. I saw that the clothing store Chico's has Kline-style posters for decoration just last week, and in a walk through Crate and Barrel's huge store it was amazing to see that color is now out of favor. They call it the "monochrome home".