R.B. Kitaj: A Survey 1958-2007

R.B. Kitaj and Robert Storr Photo: Susan Middleton. Copyright 1998 the J. Paul Getty Trust

10 June - 11 July 2015

A SURVEY 1958 - 2007

Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY t: +44 (0) 20 7629 5161 e: mfa@marlboroughfineart.com www.marlboroughfineart.com

“Some books have pictures; some pictures have books,” Ronald Kitaj told his friend David Hockney.

Classmates at the Royal College of Art when the 1950s was becoming the 1960s and the dour old postwar English art world was morphing into Swinging London, Kitaj, Hockney and their cohort were on the cusp of historical changes in the styles, manners, and mores of the day.

So rich in evidence of these changes is Kitaj’s work that an entire book might be written on any number of Kitaj’s pictures as emblems of that historical process at work. Indeed, early on he distinguished himself as one of the few artists of his generation who might fairly be called a “history painter” in the sense that that term was used in earlier centuries – Gerhard Richter being another, with the work of both artists epitomizing a cool contemporaneity at the same time as their pictures evinced a painful awareness of the recent past, in particular the cruel middle decades of the twentieth century. Traditionally history painters were storytellers whose ambition it was to account for the signal moments of their own times or render the major events and portray the protagonists of other epochs.

Usually this took the form of heroic dramatizations of one kind or another.

However the modern era turned out to be short on heroes and long on regrets and bad conscience making

the task harder if not impossible when approached in the conventionally celebratory manner.

Generation” type appropriation of the late 1970s and early 1980s quite literally avant la lettre.

In Kitaj’s case there were nonetheless admirable men to praise even though their accomplishments and acts of bravery took place not on the battle field but were, in the main, to be found in the pages of books, whence the fuller resonance of Kitaj’s dictum.

Accordingly his earliest most “Pop” paintings included one – Walter Lippmann (1966) – that was dedicated to the eponymous political essayist, while another The Autumn of Central Paris (After Walter Benjamin) (1972-73) commemorates the fountainhead of contemporary post-modernist critical theory. Recently, a detail has been used for the cover of a new edition of Gershom Scholem’s Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, originally published in English in 1981 by the Jewish Publication Society of America.

Such bibliographic information might be out of place in most catalog essays devoted to the work of a contemporary artist but not in Kitaj’s case. In fact among his more radical early projects was a series of lithographs reproducing photomechanical enlargements of the original covers of books by Leon Trotsky, Ezra Pound and Maxim Gorky all symbolic of modernist thought of the radical Left and the extreme Right in the 1920s and 1930s when it was still in the process of unfolding.

These prints were in effect “Pictures

As such they remind one of the often bitter fate of artists who are just a few steps too far ahead of the curve. For with all the historical ironies that the term will hold for those sensitive to the ideological echoes of the formulation - based as it is upon Stalin’s definition of those who opposed Hitler before he had ended the tactical alliance between Communist Russia and Nazi Germany – Kitaj would seem to have been a “premature post-modernist.”

Meanwhile, the Scholem book whose cover Kitaj’s homage to Benjamin now graces is devoted to the unbreakable bond that existed between one of the subtlest and most influential Marxist thinkers of his day and one of the greatest scholars of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism generally.

In short, between two friends of what might seem diametrically opposed intellectual orientations, yet ones that nicely bracket the dialectical counterterms of Kitaj’s own position as an inherently political man who was also an acutely self-conscious part of the Jewish Diaspora in a period of rampant, frequently horrific anti-Semitism.

Among the most common accusations against Jews made by anti-Semites is that they are “cosmopolitan”; signifying, for those who march to the Volkische call of “blood and soil,” that they have

Robert Storr

a broadly international worldview, and are culturally tolerant rather than culturally exclusive. In a period when “nativism” of various toxic varieties is again on the loose in countries on all continents, it is noteworthy that Kitaj, who bore a Hungarian name, hailed from Cleveland, Ohio, spent his most active years artistically in London, the former hub of an empire, which in turn became among the most cosmopolitan of cities and that when he returned to the United States he settled in Los Angeles, another such city. A measure of that cosmopolitanism is the pantheon of writers whose portraits he drew or painted over the years.

Aside from Lippmann and Benjamin they included historians Isaiah Berlin, James Joll and John Golding, and poets Paul Blackburn, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, as well as W.H. Auden whose preternaturally lined and folded face represents his versifying brotherhood in this exhibition along with that of the ever youthful Michael McClure. But here again an innate pluralism was fundamental to Kitaj’s aesthetic, indeed a kind of democratic openness to extremes of “high culture” and “high born” status and the “low culture” of commoners. For instance, along with these distinguished men of letters he would with equal verve limn the portraits of the likes of baseball player Eddie Stanky. Or, also present in this exhibition, he turned his keen attention and deft hand to both actor and fellow Cleveland

native Burgess Meredith, a specialist in playing ordinary people with hard lives like “George” in the 1939 version of John Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men and “Mickey,” Sylvester Stallone’s corner man in the Rocky series, and Lady Ottoline Morrell, poet and aristocratic doyenne of the Bloomsbury circle.

In the postwar years when Kitaj started out the formalist doctrines of Clement Greenberg were in the ascendency.

Which placed Kitaj beyond the pale in terms of sanctioned “High Modernist” criticism since one of Greenberg’s main tenets was that literature was anathema to serious modernism because it put painting in service to literature when painting was destined to serve only its own ends which were held to be the search for its essence. Thus Kitaj had no choice but to find common cause with previous modernisms and modernists who embraced the very things Greenberg rejected out of hand. One might reason that with the eventual retreat of midtwentieth century formalism in the face of challenges from all sides, chiefly from conceptualism and tendencies informed by critical theory, not least those concerned with “identity politics,” in particular those of shunned minorities, that Kitaj’s hour might have come at last. It should have.

Unfortunately not all of the conflated dogmas that shaped modernism and its immediate post-modern spin offs have gone the way of Greenberg and

his aging acolytes. To the contrary, if storytelling is now permissible with a camera it remains taboo with brush.

And if cerebral art is à la mode then only within prescribed modes. Still hamstrung by binaries of which the opposition of mind and body is still the most prevalent, the art world doesn’t know what to do with an intellectual who is also a sensualist.

Kitaj was most definitely both. And while many of his friends were openly gay while homosexual acts were a criminal offense in Great Britain – that is to say as late as 1967! - starting with Hockney and continuing on through Auden, Duncan, Golding and Joll and up through Quentin Crisp (the art school model turned writer and a “Naked Civil Servant,” as Crisp called himself in an autobiography of that title), Kitaj’s own predilections were decidedly, avidly heterosexual.

Generally lithe, frankly naked – rather than nude - women’s bodies abound in Kitaj’s work. Men’s bodies too. In The First Time (Havana 1949) (1990) one man would seem to be remembering his first “conquest” though it is unclear whether the initiation of the frontally exposed man with the large penis flanked by his upended partner with unshaven armpits in a bra and panties has taken place in a cheap hotel room or a brothel. I’ll wager that it is the latter. In any case the canvas like many other paintings – including The Waitress (1980) Movie Star (1993,) the

biblically themed Study for the Song of Songs and After Chagall (both 2006), his marital recollections I Married an Angel (1990) Los Angeles No. 16 (Bed) (2001-2002) - and drawings such as American in Paris (Wendy) ( 1983) and Listening to Music (1996) are fragrant with erotic musk, though none is more so than the empty bed with the scarlet coverlet in The Room (rue St Denis) (1982-83.) In a jocular vein the sexual exertions suggested recall Kurt Vonnegut’s description of the site of such encounters as “Cupid’s gymnasium,” but overall the ambiance in which Kitaj’s liaisons or implied liaisons occur comes closer to that of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, a series of novels that for all its anachronistic and unmistakably colonialist depictions of exotic “others” nonetheless evokes the amoral tug of desire with greater nuance than most contemporary fiction.

Such literary parallels and Kitaj’s devotion aside, his primary concern was the pursuit of picture making and in that endeavor his compass was art history. Few among his generation so revered the Old Masters – premodern and proto-modern as well as modern – and still fewer knew their work inside and out as he did.

Allusions to great works of the past abound in Kitaj’s oeuvre – one of the pleasures they afford is recognition of adroit quotations and was it not Walter Benjamin himself who imagined a literary work that would be entirely composed of quotations? – and the imaginary portrait of a pensive Paul Cezanne without his pants on is a wry meditation on the sublimation and

yearning embedded in the practice of painting. “Tout pour la tripe,” the earthy humanist Rabelais once said, meaning “All for the gut.” “Tout pour la bite” might have been Kitaj’s rejoinder, “all for the cock” - cut or, as in Cezanne’s case, uncut. Formally though, his role model was less the methodical, awkward, repressed Cezanne than the voyeuristic and virtuosic Edgar Degas – ironically, along with Pound, Unity Mitford and others among Kitaj’s subjects Degas was avowedly anti-Semitic – whose sinuous classical lines provide the paradigm for Kitaj’s own alternately tendon-taut and voluptuously swelling and contracting contours. Whether coursing over toothy textured hand-made papers or smooth ones, whether combined with rich pastel hues or just a dense Contéė crayon or charcoal black Kitaj’s vigorous Degas inspired interlacing of line and tone is as distinctive and as irresistible as the assiduous hatchings and shading of Cezanne, or, for that matter, those of the principle contemporary exponent of his incremental graphic approach, Jasper Johns and the equal in their way to the bundled striations of Lucian Freud’s comparably corporeal etchings and engravings. In the final analysis Kitaj’s greatest claim to fame is as a draftsman, supported by the pitch perfect feel for graphic design that one finds in his prints.

So saying in no way disparages his paintings. Rather this gift and the panache with which he deployed it are, in combination with an intense, unexpected palette, the underlying strength of his works on canvas. It is like saying that Picasso’s fundamental genius was as a draftsman, which it

was, or Watteau’s. In fact one of the many dualisms that need dismantling is the one that pits draftsmanship against painterliness when in the best art they are twinned though one of the pair may be dominant and the other, relatively speaking, recessive without, by that token, necessarily being subordinate and, for all that, hardly being inconsequential.

Thus the attentiveness and conviction of Kitaj’s hand visible in his study of a less than beautiful art school model from his earliest days in England in Miss Ivy Cavendish (Oxford) (1958) saw him through to the very end of his life in the elegy for his wife who died young in London prompting his repatriation to Los Angeles, Painting Sandra (2007) a work that in its simplification of forms and their reduction to flat blocks and seams of color explicitly recalls that most painterly of painters Henri Matisse.

This mini-retrospective of Kitaj’s career whets one’s appetite for more and while the last one that was mounted in London with arguably too much input from the artist himself, one looks forward to there being a tight, vivid one being organized in this country soon. Maybe Kitaj’s day will have come at last.

01 Miss Ivy Cavendish (Oxford) 1958 charcoal pencil on paper 53.3 x 41.6 cm.

21 x 163/8 in.

L5 02 Burgess Meredith as George 1964 oil on canvas 35.6 x 25.4 cm.

14 x 10 in.

L 61 03 Monograph on Black Bile 1965 oil on canvas 66 x 15.2 cm.

26 x 6 in.

04 Alone 1965 oil on canvas 79.4 x 15.9 cm.

311/4 x 61/4 in.

L 91 05 Because Mr. James Joyce 1964 oil on canvas 76 x 51.1 cm.

297/8 x 201/8 in.

06 W.H. Auden 1968 oil on canvas 35.6 x 25.4 cm.

14 x 10 in.

L 120 07 Collaborator 1966 oil on canvas 24.4 x 27 cm.

95/8 x 105/8 in.

L 97 08 Michael McClure 1969 oil on canvas 25.4 x 20.3 cm.

10 x 8 in.

L 139

09 Nuts 1 1969 oil and collage on canvas 30.5 x 121.9 cm.

12 x 48 in.

10 Nuts II 1969 oil and collage on canvas 30.5 x 121.9 cm.

12 x 48 in.

11 Catalan Christ (Pretending to be Dead) 1976 oil on canvas 76.2 x 243.8 cm.

30 x 96 in.

L 199 Private collection 12 Dying Life Model 1978 pastel on paper 55.9 x 76.8 cm.

22 x 301/4 in.

L 240 Private collection 13 The Waitress 1980 pastel and charcoal on paper 77.5 x 69.8 cm.

301/2 x 271/2 in.

L 282

16 Yiddish Hamlet (Y. Lรถwy) 1985 oil on canvas 124 x 63 cm.

487/8 x 249/16 in.

L408 17 Mother and Child (Tempest) 1986 oil on canvas 115.8 x 71.3 cm.

455/8 x 281/8 in.

L 447 18 The Sensualist 1973-84 oil on canvas 246.4 x 77.1 cm.

97 x 303/8 in.

L379 19 Two Messiahs 1988 oil on canvas 243.8 x 76.2 cm.

96 x 30 in.

L 477 20 American in Paris (Wendy) 1983 charcoal on paper 77.8 x 57.5 cm.

305/8 x 225/8 in.

L 361

14 Portrait of Robert Duncan 1982 mixed media on paper 68 x 54.6 cm.

263/4 x 211/2 in.

21 Listening to Music 1996 charcoal and pastel on paper 77.1 x 56.4 cm.

303/8 x 221/8 in.

L 702

15 The Room (rue St Denis) 1982-83 oil on canvas 121.9 x 91.4 cm.

48 x 36 in.

L 354

22 The Man on the Ceiling 1989 oil on canvas 122.6 x 122.6 cm.

481/4 x 481/4 in.

L 527

23 The First Time (Havana, 1949) 1990 oil on canvas 122.8 x 123.2 cm.

483/8 x 481/2 in.

L 537

30 Kabbalist and Shekina 2003 oil on canvas 121.9 x 121.9 cm.

48 x 48 in.

L 841

37 Bahama Self-Portrait 2007 oil on canvas 30.5 x 30.5 cm.

12 x 12 in.

L 1003

24 I Married an Angel 1990 oil on canvas 121.9 x 121.7 cm.

48 x 477/8 in.

L 544

31 Cezanne after Pissarro 2005 oil on canvas 91.4 x 91.4 cm.

36 x 36 in.

L 899

38 SMF 2007 oil on canvas 30.5 x 30.5 cm.

12 x 12 in.

L 1037

25 Father Reading Tom Sawyer to his Son 1994 oil on canvas 121.9 x 152.4 cm.

48 x 60 in.

L 636

32 Male Car 1997-2000 pastel and charcoal on paper 52.1 x 77.5 cm.

201/2 x 301/2 in.

L 769

39 Painting Sandra 2007 oil on canvas 30.5 x 30.5 cm.

12 x 12 in.

L 1026

33 Poet 2006 oil on canvas 45.7 x 30.5 cm.

18 x 12 in.

L 970

26 Movie Star 1993 oil on canvas 152.4 x 84.4 cm.

60 x 331/4 in.

L 612 27 Bad Back 1990-92 oil on canvas 61.2 x 51.1 cm.

241/8 x 201/8 in.

L 571 28 Bad Hearing 1996 oil on canvas 62 x 51.5 cm.

245/8 x 201/4 in.

L 700 29 Los Angeles No. 16 (Bed) 2001-2 oil on canvas 121.9 x 121.9 cm.

48 x 48 in.

34 Study for the Song of Songs 2006 oil on canvas 45.7 x 45.7 cm.

18 x 18 in.

L 986 35 After Chagall 2006 oil on canvas 45.7 x 30.5 cm.

18 x 12 in.

L 933 36 Technicolor Self-Portrait 2007 oil on canvas 30.5 x 30.5 cm.

12 x 12 in.

L 1039

L = Marco Livingstone, Kitaj, Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, fourth edition (revised and expanded) 2010

01 Miss Ivy Cavendish (Oxford) 1958 charcoal pencil on paper

03 Monograph on Black Bile 1965 oil on canvas

02 Burgess Meredith as George 1964 oil on canvas

04 Alone 1965 oil on canvas

05 Because Mr. James Joyce 1964 oil on canvas 06 W.H. Auden 1968 oil on canvas

07 Collaborator 1966 oil on canvas 08 Michael McClure 1969 oil on canvas

09 Nuts 1 1969 oil and collage on canvas 10 Nuts II 1969 oil and collage on canvas

11 Catalan Christ (Pretending to be Dead) 1976 oil on canvas

12 Dying Life Model 1978 pastel on paper 13 The Waitress 1980 pastel and charcoal on paper

14 Portrait of Robert Duncan 1982 mixed media on paper 15 The Room (rue St Denis) 1982-83 oil on canvas

16 Yiddish Hamlet (Y. Lรถwy) 1985 oil on canvas

17 Mother and Child (Tempest) 1986 oil on canvas

18 The Sensualist 1973-84 oil on canvas

19 Two Messiahs 1988 oil on canvas

20 American in Paris (Wendy) 1983 charcoal on paper

21 Listening to Music 1996 charcoal and pastel on paper

22 The Man on the Ceiling 1989 oil on canvas

23 The First Time (Havana, 1949) 1990 oil on canvas

24 I Married an Angel 1990 oil on canvas

25 Father Reading Tom Sawyer to his Son 1994 oil on canvas

26 Movie Star 1993 oil on canvas

27 Bad Back 1990-92 oil on canvas 28 Bad Hearing 1996 oil on canvas

29 Los Angeles No. 16 (Bed) 2001-2 oil on canvas

30 Kabbalist and Shekina 2003 oil on canvas

31 Cezanne after Pissarro 2005 oil on canvas

32 Male Car 1997-2000 pastel and charcoal on paper

33 Poet 2006 oil on canvas

34 Study for the Song of Songs 2006 oil on canvas

35 After Chagall 2006 oil on canvas

36 Technicolor Self-Portrait 2007 oil on canvas

37 Bahama Self-Portrait 2007 oil on canvas

38 SMF 2007 oil on canvas

39 Painting Sandra 2007 oil on canvas

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Design: Shine Design, London Print: Impress Print Services Ltd. Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd; Bill Orcutt ISBN 978-1-909707-19-1 Catalogue no. 646 Š 2015 Marlborough

A SURVEY 1958 - 2007