弗朗兹·克莱恩《无题》（Untitled，纽约苏富比2012）

阴山工作室 2018-06-11

展开全文

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 纽约苏富比2012.11 成交价4040.25万美元

作品介绍

"Franz Kline's white and black pictures performed that miracle which is a constant in all major art: he changed the look of the environment and history. His style has that quality which rips the filters of Style from our eye. After 1950, we started to see city buildings, bridge spans, car tracks, asphalt spilling in cement, Velasquez, painted-out wall slogans, Rembrandt, Punch illustrators, the signature of John Hancock, Romney's drawings, Goya, Delacroix lions, a landscape by Courbet, or a landscape in Easthampton or Provincetown with fresh immediacy. It was as if a whole slice of our culture, overnight, had come to life - with Franz Kline at our shoulder to point where to look"-Thomas B. Hess (Thomas B Hess, ArtNews Vol 61, New York, Summer 1962, reproduced in Franz Kline 1910-62 exh., cat. Turin, 2004, pp. 333-336)

"Who could not be moved by his sense of push and thrust? Kline's great black bars have the tension of a taut bow, or a ready catapult. And his sense of scale, that sine qua non of good painting, is marvelously precise. His big paintings can be as good as his small ones, a rare mastery in this period concerned with the power of magnitude" (Robert Motherwell, 'Homage to Franz Kline' August 17, 1962, quoted in Franz Kline: The Color Abstractions exh. cat. Washington D.C. 1979, p. 43)

There are perhaps no finer pictorial expressions of the unique, exhilarating and dramatic period of liberation and triumph that took place in American painting in New York in the 1950s than the large, dynamic, freeform black-and-white paintings that Franz Kline produced between 1950 and 1961. Seeming to encapsulate all the energy, drama, freedom and dynamism embodied by this seminal decade in the history of American 20th Century Art and to condense it into one extraordinary flat planar space, Kline's black-and white paintings are the quintessential 'Abstract Expressionist' pictures. Stark, raw, blunt and direct, these works, often heroically scaled, are pure, elemental abstractions that dynamically express the artist's complete physical and emotional involvement in his work using only the most fundamental of painterly means. More than any other pictures from this extraordinarily vital and creative period in history, it is these works that best express the New York School painters' distinctly urban and romantic sense of themselves as lone individuals caught in an existential struggle with modern life; of their being the heroic pioneers in a modern cultural wasteland operating on behalf of an endangered humanity with the hope of forging a new art from the cultural void left by World War II, the Holocaust and the Atom Bomb. As the painter Paul Brach declared of Kline's paintings at this time, they are "statements of an acute crisis. There is no moderation, no middle ground, no compromise" (P. Brach, quoted in Franz Kline; Art and the Structure of Identity, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1994, p. 37).

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

It was for this reason, their compete and daring lack of moderation, compromise or restraint, and also because they appear to be as expressive of the vigorous and existential act of painting or making art -- of the human energy and drama that went into the picture's making -- that Kline's black-and-white paintings were also championed as the ultimate examples of 'Action Painting.' They are works, like Pollock's drip-pictures or de Kooning's abstractions, in which the heroic lone painterly struggle of the artist to arrive at a successfully resolved formal conclusion was deemed as important, if not more so, than the resultant object itself. A gestural abstraction such as that developed by Kline at this time, with its seemingly spontaneously created formal expression of physical energy fixed into the material of paint, was regarded, like Nietzsche's exemplar of the tightrope walker in Also Sprach Zarathustra, as a metaphor for man's life and death balancing act over an abyss. Kline's balletic 'push and thrust' of contrasting black and white paint was seen to be expressive of a fundamentally human act of self-assertion made in the face of the void. 'Action Painting,' its leading champion and originator of the term, Harold Rosenberg exclaimed, is nothing less than "the abstraction of the moral element in art: its mark is moral tension in detachment from moral or esthetic certainties: and it judges itself morally in declaring that picture to be worthless which is not the incorporation of a genuine struggle, one which could at any point have been lost" (H. Rosenberg, ibid., p. 17).

Painted in 1957, this nearly ten-foot wide untitled work is one of the finest of the great series of predominantly black-and-white abstractions that Kline produced between 1950 and his premature death in 1962. A large, powerful and almost visually explosive work with its vast, sweeping, brushstroke forms colliding into one another to create a taut and febrile tension of surface, it is a classic example of the tradition established by these works. With its titanic, almost girder-scaled black forms seeming to scream their vitality and autonomous identity out from the canvas surface in such a way as to actively invade the space of the room, it is a painting whose stunning articulation of scale and non-objective form powerfully conjures a profound sense of the very act of painting as one of epic human struggle.

At the same time, the apparent, though often deceptive, spontaneity and immediacy of these extraordinary painted forms, their seemingly rapid gestural application in a series of broad sweeps clashing into one another like waves on the shore, combines to convey a persuasive sense of the work as a material expression of elemental forces in conflict. Generated solely by the gestural transfer of energy through the brush that Kline, a small but strong man, made using his entire body, these are forces that have been raised to such a refined balance between form, material and trapped energy that, though still rooted in the human, their cumulative power and drama is such that it dwarfs the viewer and bestows upon them a mixed sensation of fragility and awe.

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

As Elaine de Kooning eloquently wrote of this aspect of his work, "it was Kline's unique gift to be able to translate the character and the speed of a one-inch flick of the wrist to a brush-stroke magnified a hundred times. (Who else but Tintoretto has been able to manage this gesture?) All nuances of tone, sensitivity of contour, allusions to other art are engulfed in his black and white insignia -- as final as a jump from the top floor of a skyscraper" (E. de Kooning, "Franz Kline," quoted in C. Christov-Bakargiev, (ed.), Franz Kline 1910-62, exh, cat. Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 2004, p. 345).

Although often thought to be almost miraculous products of Kline's inspired, spontaneous and impulsive action, the majority of his black and white abstractions, especially larger works such as this untitled painting from 1957, were in fact the result of a considered process of preparation and planning. Kline would usually prepare carefully the broad nature of his conglomeration of disparate brushstroke forms in an assortment of oil sketches made on paper sheets torn from the telephone book. The powerful and often swiftly executed brushstrokes that bestow such energy and dynamism to the surface of Kline's large canvases, though the product of a moment's sweeping gestural action, were, more often than not, also thought out and even practiced before being enacted, so to speak, on the canvas. "When I work from preliminary sketches," Kline once explained, "I don't just enlarge these drawings, but plan my areas in a large painting by using small drawings for separate areas. I combine them in a final painting, often adding to or subtracting from the original sketches. When I work directly, I work fast. I suppose I work fast most of the time, but what goes into a painting, isn't just done while you're painting" (F. Kline, quoted in Franz Kline: Art and the Structure of Identity, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1994, pp. 164-65).

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

Like many Abstract Expressionists, Kline had arrived at this unique way of working through a gradual process of refining an earlier figurative style of painting into a form that in the late 1940s gradually became completely abstract. The crucial catalyst for his signature black-and-white style famously took place in the studio of his close friend Willem de Kooning one night when de Kooning, who practiced a similar collaging technique with sketches and fragments to that employed by Kline, showed off his new technique of building elements of his painting using fragments blown up in scale with a Bell-Opticon projector. By way of demonstration de Kooning also used the projector to magnify some of Kline's oil sketches. Kline, mesmerized by what he saw, seems almost instantaneously to have been set on his future path.

What Kline saw in these illuminated enlargements of his drawings was both a simplification, into dark and light, and a magnifying of form and its gestural energy. Here, his own brushstrokes were expanded "as entities in themselves, unrelated to any reality but that of their own existence" Elaine de Kooning recalled (E. de Kooning, op. cit., p. 345). De Kooning's projector captured, in stark two-tone contrast that same quality that was to distinguish so much of Kline's subsequent work; all the constrained power of the impulsive and intuitive marks and the autonomous intensity and energy of their material form. Here the elemental power and force of natural energy coursing through the mercurial plastic fluidity of Kline's unique mixture of oil and house enamel seemed both fixed and boldly writ large for all to see. And it was energy, on this grandiose, even heroic scale that Kline instinctively knew he wanted to capture and contain within his abstractions. As someone who had grown up amidst the railroads, the steelworks and the coalmining districts of Pennsylvania, Kline was imbued from an early age with an innate feeling for and understanding of the unique, epic scale and power of American industry. "I am concerned," he once said of his work, "with that area of excitement belonging to natural phenomena such as a gigantic wave poised before it makes its fall, or man-made phenomena such as the high bridge spanning two distant points" (F. Kline, quoted in D. Anfam, "Franz Kline: Janus of Abstract Expressionism," in Franz Kline 1910-62, op. cit., p. 49).

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

Crucial to the realizing of this ambition in his work was not just the arrangement or formal organization of abstract marks on the surface of his paintings but also the manner of their application. Kline's careful build up of abstract forms executed on the smaller scale of his preparatory drawings often came to prove irrelevant to the finished work once he began working on the canvas itself. Working energetically in a pattern of dynamic contrasts where black forms were applied over the base white before white forms were then forged back into and over the black and subsequently black built once again over the white in a kind of formal struggle of opposites, the spontaneity, immediacy and fierce interaction of his marks was central to how a painting such as Untitled ultimately resolved itself. Kline's painting was not at all calligraphic in this respect therefore, unlike so many of the second generation of gestural abstractionists who were to follow his lead. Rather, it was an intuitive constructive process in which, through the very act of making the painting, a dialogue between two opposing and materialized forces combined to forge a dynamic and often surprising solution. "When I paint a picture, I don't know every line in advance, but I know in general what I'm about," he said. "I put something here and here, and here and here, and then I pull it all together" (F. Kline, quoted in H.F. Gaugh, Franz Kline, exh.cat., Cincinnati Art Museum, 1985, pp. 16 and 77). Often, in this way therefore, Kline's paintings would, during the process of their making, develop into something 'not at all related' to the original drawings. (F. Kline Interview with D. Sylvester, 1960, quoted in D.Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London, 2001, p. 69).

What was central to his painting's progress and key to its success was the vigorous spontaneity and immediacy of his mark-making. Every single brushstroke had to be applied not only with vigor and directness but also with complete faith and conviction in what he was doing. As Kline, with fond reference to his friend Pollock, asserted in this respect, "Jackson always knew that if you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much" (F. Kline, quoted in Franz Kline 1910-1962, op. cit., p. 78).

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

The result of Kline's dynamic attack in the way in which he approached and made his work was that his paintings, although often planned out in advance, became ultimately, what he described as 'painting experiences.' "I don't decide in advance that I'm going to paint a definite experience," he said, "but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me" (Ibid., p. 125). Such was his command of his medium that the immediacy of mark and the spontaneity of intuitive response to the forms taking shape before him as he worked was something that, he recognized could "be accomplished in a picture that's been worked on for a long time just as well as if it's been done rapidly" (F. Kline, quoted in D. Anfam, "Franz Kline: Janus of Abstract Expressionism," in Franz Kline 1910-62, op. cit., p. 42).

Kline was the leading exponent of the so-called 'Action Painters' therefore, because, in spite of whatever preparations he may or may not have made beforehand, his paintings were very demonstrably the physical consequences of the often dramatic event of their making. They provided an indefinable spatial field into which the painter's instinctive and intuitive energies, alongside his ambition and will was 'given'--laid, upon the surface and transmitted into the material entity of his paint. "You don't paint the way someone, by observing your life, thinks you have to paint," Kline said, "you paint the way you have in order to give, that's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. The question about knowing will naturally be wrong. When you've finished giving, the look surprises you as well as anyone else" (F. Kline, quoted in Franz Kline: Art and the Structure of Identity, op. cit., p. 157).

The reductive and complete abstraction of black and white provided the perfect means for Kline therefore, because, unlike de Kooning for example, with his 'slipping glimpses' of reality, Kline was not trying to reproduce or emulate the appearance of anything. Nor was he, like Pollock or Rothko, invoking an inner state of being, psychology or state of mind. Rather, he was only attempting to transmit something hitherto unexpressed and unknown through the material properties of the painter's art. "Instead of making a sign you can read," he said, "you make a sign you can't read" (Franz Kline, quoted in ibid., p. 57). Unlike Rothko or Newman for example, there was nothing transcendental about Kline's work. Of all the great Abstract Expressionist artists, Kline was the least influenced by Surrealism. Indeed, of all these artists, he was perhaps also the least modern. His work had little to do with any extension of Cubism or the invocation of archetypes from depth of man's soul or psyche. The product of an extremely conventional training in figurative drawing and painting at the Heatherly School of Art in London, Kline cited his influences as being those of Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Goya, rather than the more usually referred to Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse or Mondrian.

Kline was an adoptive New Yorker and like the city he had chosen as his home, his art too was similarly no-nonsense. It was an open, direct and ultimately pure form of painting that dealt only in is own material actualities and formal properties. In the 'city that never sleeps,' Kline was famous for working predominantly at night, and even, at times, for working all through the night with an apparently tireless strength and endurance that no doubt came to be manifested in his finished canvas. Nonchalantly, he once remarked to a visitor to his high-windowed Manhattan studio in this respect, "Yes, it's a nice view and there's plenty of light. But you know I don't really need either -- not for my work. I frequently paint at night and the inspiration -- well that comes from somewhere else" (F. Kline, quoted in Franz Kline; Art and the Structure of Identity, op. cit., p. 24).

Despite Kline's insistence that his inspiration came from 'somewhere else,' his black-and-white abstractions are in fact powerfully evocative of the cultural atmosphere and locale in 1950s New York within which they were made. There is, for example, an almost film noir-like character to many of these works that extends well beyond the simplicity of their black-and-white drama to evoke, like a character or scene from a Raymond Chandler novel, what David Anfam has described as "a peculiar American toughness" (D. Anfam, "Franz Kline: Janus of Abstract Expressionism," op. cit., p. 41). Along with their seeming ability to invoke a sense of the vast scale and power of America--the expanse of its landscapes and the might of its industry--there is also coursing through the frenetic dynamism of these works a strong feeling of modernity, of spontaneity, directness, and a celebration of the immediacy or the "newness" of the moment of creation that powerfully echoes the freeform and improvisational spirit of Jazz in New York in the 1950s.

弗朗兹·克莱恩无题 Untitled 局部

The vast sweeping black forms thrusting through this great untitled painting from 1957 for example, seem like vast girders forging some impossible, imaginary construction or composition in the air. With the stark, undeniable facticity of their monolithic forms streaked across the canvas, they scream out a distinctly urban reality with a pictorial noise that seems to speak strongly of the pulse and energy of the city streets. At the same time, the discordant, febrile tension of the almost accidentally arrived-at pictorial structure they produce seems to evoke the fleeting, tenuous spontaneity of a Jazz solo, its improvisational structure generating an indefinable but mesmerizing freeform pattern in the manner of one of Lester Young's imaginative leaps or Charlie Parker's dazzling but unfathomable Bebop flights of genius.

Like these, Untitled, like most of Kline's black-and-white paintings, is ultimately an indefinable entity, but one that remains nonetheless deeply evocative of its time and of the exhilarating improvisational spirit of creative experiment in which it was made. Indeed, it was for this reason that Kline often eschewed the practice of bestowing titles upon such works. "The first work in only black and white seemed related to figures, and I titled them as such," he recalled. Later, as the paintings grew ever bolder and freer in both scale and form, "the results seemed to signify something--but difficult to give subject or name to, and at present I find it impossible to make a direct, verbal statement about the paintings in black and white" (F. Kline, quoted in H.F. Gaugh, Franz Kline, op. cit., p. 106).

It is, in the end, this element of enigma and indefinability in these great works that bestows them with their enduring power, authority and ability to fascinate the viewer. Using an analogy to another Jazz musician, Kline once famously answered a spectator who asked him to explain the meaning of his paintings by saying: "I'll answer you the same way Louis Armstrong does when they ask him what it means when he blows his trumpet. Louie says, 'Brother, if you don't get it, there is no way I can tell you'" (F. Kline, quoted in H.F. Gaugh, op. cit., p. 13).

参考译文

弗兰兹·克莱恩的黑白作品创造了一个奇迹，这在所有主要艺术中都是永恒的：他改变了环境和历史的面貌。他的风格具有一种品质，从我们的眼睛里撕开了风格的过滤器。1950年后，我们开始看到城市建筑，桥梁跨度，汽车轨道，沥青溢出水泥，维拉斯克斯，油漆了墙壁口号，伦勃朗，插画，签名约翰汉考克，罗姆尼的绘画，戈亚，德拉克洛瓦狮子，一个景观由库贝特，或在埃斯平普顿或普罗文敦的景观与新鲜的即时。就好像一夜之间，我们整个文化的一部分都活了起来-弗兰兹·克莱恩(Franz Kline)站在我们的肩膀上，指到哪里去看“-托马斯·B·赫斯(Thomas B.Hess)ART新闻第61卷，纽约，1962年夏季，转载于弗兰兹·克莱恩1910-62呃，猫。都灵，2004年，第333-336页)

“谁不被他的推搡和推力感动呢？”克莱恩巨大的黑色铁棍的拉力就像一个紧绷的弓，或者是一个现成的弹射器。他的尺度感，这是优秀绘画的必要条件，是非常精确的。他的大画可以和他的小画一样好，这是这一时期关于震级的一种罕见的精通“(罗伯特·莫瑟韦尔，”对弗朗茨·克莱恩的敬意“，1962年8月17日，引用于弗兰兹·克莱恩：色彩抽象是猫。华盛顿特区1979年，p.43)

20世纪50年代在纽约美国绘画中发生的独特、令人兴奋和戏剧性的解放和胜利时期，或许没有比1950年至1961年弗朗茨·克莱恩(Franz Kline)创作的大型、充满活力、自由形式的黑白绘画更精细的画面了。克莱的黑白画似乎把美国20世纪艺术史上这一开创性的十年所体现的所有能量、戏剧、自由和活力集中在一个非凡的平面空间中，是典型的‘抽象表现主义者’画。这些作品赤裸裸、直截了当，往往具有英雄主义色彩，它们是纯粹的、基本的抽象概念，用最基本的绘画手段，动态地表达了艺术家对作品的完整的身体和情感的参与。这是历史上最重要和最具创造性的时期，正是这些作品最能表达纽约学派画家们对于自己作为孤独个体与现代生活的生存斗争所表现出的鲜明的都市和浪漫感；他们是现代文化荒原中的英雄先驱，代表濒临灭绝的人类，希望创造一种新的艺术。从二战留下的文化空白，大屠杀和原子炸弹。正如画家保罗·布拉奇在谈到克莱恩的绘画时所宣称的那样，它们是“一种严重危机的陈述”。没有节制，没有中间立场，没有妥协“(P.Brach，引用于艺术与身份结构，“猫”，白教堂美术馆，伦敦，1994年，p。37)。

正是出于这个原因，他们竞争激烈，缺乏节制、妥协或克制，也因为他们似乎同样表达了绘画或创作艺术这种充满活力和存在主义的行为-即进入这幅画中的人类能量和戏剧-克莱的黑白绘画也被推崇为“行动绘画”的终极范例。它们是作品，就像波洛克的点滴画或德库宁的抽象作品，在这些作品中，艺术家独自一人英勇地努力想得出一个成功解决的正式结论，被认为是比结果对象本身更重要的，如果不是更重要的话。一种手势的抽象概念，比如克莱在这个时候发展出来的抽象概念，它似乎自发地创造了将物理能量固定在油漆材料中的形式表达，就像尼采在“走钢丝者”中的典范。也是斯普拉赫·扎拉图斯特拉作为人类生死平衡行为的隐喻，跨越深渊。克莱恩的芭蕾舞‘推和推’的对比黑白油漆被认为是一个基本的人的行为，自我断言，在面对空虚。“动作绘画”这一术语的主要倡导者和发起人哈罗德·罗森博格感叹道，这不过是“艺术中道德元素的抽象化：它的标志是道德张力脱离道德或审美确定性；它在道德上判断自己是毫无价值的，这不是一种真正的斗争的结合，在任何时候都可能失去这种斗争”(H.Rosenberg)，同上。，p.17)

这幅画于1957年，宽近10英尺，是克莱恩1950年至1962年早逝期间创作的一系列以黑白为主的抽象作品中最好的作品之一。一个巨大的，强大的，几乎视觉爆炸的作品，它的巨大，扫地，画笔形式相互碰撞，以创造紧张和热紧张的表面，这是一个经典的例子，建立了传统的这些作品。它的巨大，几乎梁形的黑色形式似乎尖叫他们的活力和自主的身份，从帆布表面这样一种方式，积极侵入空间的房间，它的惊人的表达规模和非客观形式强烈地唤起了深刻的感觉，绘画作为一种史诗般的人类斗争的行为之一。

与此同时，这些不同寻常的绘画形式表面上，虽然往往是欺骗性的、自发性的和即时性的，它们在一系列广泛的清理中似乎快速地运用，就像海浪在海岸上相互碰撞一样，结合在一起，传达出对作品的一种有说服力的感觉，它是冲突中元素力量的物质表达。能量的传递完全是通过笔触产生的，Kline，一个矮小但强壮的人，用他的整个身体制造了这些力量，这些力量被提升到了形式、物质和被困能量之间的完美平衡，尽管它们仍然植根于人类，但它们的累积力量和戏剧性是如此之大，以至于它使观众相形见绌，并给他们一种混合的脆弱和敬畏的感觉。

正如伊莱恩·德·库宁(Elaine De Koding)雄辩地描述了他的作品中的这一方面，“克莱恩的独特天赋是，他能够将一英寸的手腕上的笔触放大一百倍，这是一种独特的天赋。”(除了Tintoretto，还有谁能做到这一姿态？)所有色调的细微差别，轮廓的敏感性，以及对其他艺术的暗示，都被他的黑白徽章所吞没-就像从摩天大楼顶楼跳下的最后一步“(E.de Koning，”Franz Kline“，C.Christstov-Bakargiev，编辑)。弗兰兹·克莱恩1910-62，呃，猫。Castello di Rivoli Museo d‘Arte Contimeanea，都灵，2004年，p.345)。

虽然克莱的灵感、自发和冲动的行为常常被认为是奇迹般的产物，但他的大部分黑白抽象作品，特别是1957年的这幅无名画，实际上是经过深思熟虑的准备和规划过程的结果。克莱恩通常会仔细地准备他从电话簿上撕下来的纸上的各种油迹草图中各种不同的笔画形式的集合体的广泛性。在克莱恩的大画布表面赋予这种能量和活力的有力的、经常迅速执行的笔触，虽然是一时的大势所趋的动作的产物，但更多的时候，也是在被颁布之前，在画布上思考甚至练习的。“当我从初步草图工作，”克莱恩曾经解释说，“我不只是放大这些图纸，而是计划我的区域在一幅大的绘画中使用小的图纸为不同的地区。”我把它们组合在最后一幅画中，经常加或减原始草图。当我直接工作时，我工作得很快。我想我大部分时间都工作得很快，但画中的东西并不是在你画画的时候就完成的“(F.Kline)，引用于弗兰兹·克莱恩：艺术与身份结构，特别是CAT，白教堂美术馆，伦敦，1994年，第164-65页)。

和许多抽象表现主义者一样，克莱因通过一个渐进的过程，将早期具象的绘画风格提炼成一种在20世纪40年代末逐渐变得完全抽象的形式，从而形成了这种独特的工作方式。他标志性的黑白风格的关键催化剂发生在他的密友威廉·德·库宁(Willem De Koning)的工作室里。德科宁在工作室里练习了一种与克莱恩(Kline)相似的素描和片段拼贴技术，展示了他用贝尔光学投影仪放大的碎片建造绘画元素的新技术。作为演示，德科宁还使用投影仪放大了克莱恩的一些油画草图。克莱因被他所看到的东西迷住了，似乎几乎瞬间就被设定在他未来的道路上。

克莱恩在这些明亮的绘画中看到的，既是一种简化，变成了黑暗和光明，也是一种形式和形式能量的放大。在这里，他自己的笔触被扩展为“实体本身，与任何现实无关，但与其存在的现实无关”，伊莱恩·德科宁回忆道(E·德·库宁，同前.，p.345)。德库宁的投影仪用鲜明的双色对比，捕捉到了克莱随后的作品的相同品质：所有冲动和直觉标记的有限力量，以及它们的物质形态的自主强度和能量。在这里，天然能量的基本力量和力量，通过克莱恩独特的石油和室内搪瓷混合物的可塑流动性，似乎既固定又大胆，让所有人都能看到。这是能量，在这个宏伟的，甚至英雄的规模上，克莱恩本能地知道他想要捕捉并控制在他的抽象概念中。作为在宾夕法尼亚州的铁路、钢铁厂和煤矿区长大的人，克莱从小就对美国工业独特的、史诗般的规模和力量充满了一种与生俱来的感觉和理解。“我很担心，”他曾在谈到他的作品时说，“那种兴奋的领域属于自然现象，比如一股巨大的波浪，在巨浪落地前就已经准备好了，或者是人为的现象，比如跨越两个遥远点的高桥”(F.Kline，引用于D.Anfam，“Franz Kline：抽象表现主义的Janus”一书中)。Franz Kline 1910-62，前引书.，p.49)。

在他的作品中实现这一抱负的关键不仅是他的绘画表面的抽象标记的安排或正式组织，还包括它们的应用方式。克莱恩精心构建的抽象形式，在他的预备画的较小规模上执行，往往被证明与完成的作品无关，一旦他开始在画布上工作。在一种动态对比的模式下，黑色的形式在白色的基础上被应用，然后在黑色和随后的黑色上被锻造回来，然后在白色上再次建造，在一种形式上的对立面斗争中，他的标记的自发性、即时性和激烈的相互作用是绘画的核心，比如：无名称最终自己解决了。因此，克莱恩的画在这方面根本不是书法，不像许多第二代抽象派，他们都是跟随他而来的。相反，这是一个直观的建设性过程，在这个过程中，通过绘画本身的行动，两种对立的和物化的力量之间的对话，形成了一个充满活力而且往往令人惊讶的解决办法。他说：“当我画一幅画的时候，我并不是事先就知道每一行，但总体上我知道我是怎么画的。”“我在这里和这里放了一些东西，然后我把它全部拉在一起”(F.Kline，在H.F.Gaugh中引用)，弗兰兹·克莱恩，前CAT，辛辛那提艺术博物馆，1985年，第16和77页)。因此，通常情况下，克莱恩的绘画在创作过程中，会发展成与原始绘画“完全无关”的东西。(F.Kline采访D.Sylvester，1960，引用于D.Sylvester，采访美国艺术家，伦敦，2001年，p.69)。

他的绘画过程的核心和成功的关键是他的标记的活跃性、自发性和即时性。每一次笔触都必须精力充沛、直截了当，而且要对他所做的事充满信心和信念。正如克莱恩在这方面对他的朋友波洛克说的那样，“杰克逊总是知道，如果你在这么做的时候是认真的，那就意味着这一点”(F.克莱恩，引用于Franz Kline 1910-1962，前引书.，p.78)。

克莱恩在接近和创作作品的方式上受到的动态攻击的结果是，他的画虽然经常事先计划好，但最终变成了他所说的“绘画经验”。他说：“我不会事先决定我要画一个明确的经验，但在绘画的过程中，这对我来说是一种真实的体验。”同上.，p.125)。这就是他对媒介的掌握，他意识到，马克的即时性和对他工作过程中形成的形式的本能反应，“可以在一幅已经工作了很长时间的图片中完成，就像它被迅速完成一样”(F.Kline，引用于D.Anfam，“Franz Kline：抽象表现主义的Janus”，在“抽象表现主义”中引用)。弗兰兹·克莱恩1910-62，前引书。，p.42)。

克莱因是所谓的“动作画家”的领军人物，因为尽管他事先做了任何准备，但他的画显然是他们经常发生的戏剧性事件的物理后果。它们提供了一个无法定义的空间场，画家的本能和直觉的能量，连同他的野心和意志，被“赋予”-放置在表面，并传递到他的绘画的物质实体。克莱恩说：“你不会通过观察你的生活来画别人的方式，你认为你必须画画，你画你的方式是为了给予，这就是生命本身，有人会看上去并说它是知识的产物，但它与知识无关，它与给予有关。有关知道的问题自然是错误的。当你完成了给予，你和其他任何人都会感到惊讶“(F.Kline，引用于弗兰兹·克莱恩：艺术与身份结构，前引书.，p.157)。

因此，黑色和白色的还原和完全抽象化为克莱因提供了完美的手段，因为与德科宁不同的是，克莱并没有试图复制或模仿任何事物的外观。他也没有像波洛克或罗斯科那样，唤起一种内在的存在状态、心理状态或心理状态。相反，他只是试图通过画家的艺术的物质属性来传达一些迄今尚未表达和未知的东西。他说：“你不用做一个你能读懂的手势，你要做一个手势。不能读“(Franz Kline，引用于同上.，p.57)。例如，与罗斯科或纽曼不同的是，克莱恩的作品并没有什么超越性。在所有伟大的抽象表现主义艺术家中，克莱因受超现实主义的影响最小。事实上，在所有这些艺术家中，他也许也是最不现代的。他的作品与立体主义的任何延伸或从人的灵魂或心灵深处援引原型都没有什么关系。克莱因是伦敦Heatherly艺术学院(Heatherly School Of Art)在具象绘画和绘画方面进行极其传统培训的产物，他把自己的影响称为廷托雷托(Tintoretto)、伦勃朗(RembRandt)、韦拉斯克斯(Velazquez)和戈亚(Goya)的影响，而不是更多地提到塞尚、毕加索(Picasso)、马蒂斯。

克莱恩是一个领养的纽约人，就像他选择的城市一样，他的艺术也同样不是胡说八道。这是一种开放的、直接的、最终纯粹的绘画形式，只涉及到自己的物质现状和形式属性。在“永不睡觉的城市”里，克莱因主要是在晚上工作，有时甚至以彻夜不眠的体力和耐力而闻名，毫无疑问，这种力量和耐力在他完成的画布中得到了体现。有一次，他漫不经心地对一位游客说：“是的，这里景色很好，光线充足。”但你知道我也不需要-我的工作不需要。我经常在晚上画画，灵感来自其他地方。艺术与身份的结构，前引书.，p.24)

尽管克莱恩坚持自己的灵感来自“其他地方”，但他的黑白抽象概念实际上有力地唤起了20世纪50年代纽约的文化氛围和环境。例如，在这些作品中，有一个几乎像电影一样的角色，远远超出了黑白戏剧的简单性，让人想起大卫·安法姆(David Anfam)所描述的“一种特殊的美国韧性”(d.anfam，“Franz kline：抽象表现主义的珍妮斯”)，就像雷蒙德钱德勒小说中的人物或场景一样。同前.，p.41)。除了他们似乎有能力唤起美国巨大的规模和力量-美国风景的广袤和工业的力量-这些作品的狂热活力，还有强烈的现代性、自发性、直截了当的感觉，以及对创造时刻的即时性或“新鲜感”的庆祝，强烈地呼应了20世纪50年代纽约爵士乐的自由形式和即兴精神。

例如，从1957年开始，巨大的黑色横扫着这幅未命名的伟大画作，就像巨大的大梁在空中锻造着一些不可能的、想象的建筑或构图。在画布上刻板的、不可否认的真实的整体形式下，他们高喊着一个明显的城市现实，带有一种图像噪音，这似乎有力地反映了城市街道的脉搏和能量。与此同时，几乎是偶然到达的不和谐、狂热的紧张气氛-它们产生的图案结构-似乎唤起了爵士独奏的短暂而脆弱的自发性，它的即兴结构以莱斯特·杨(Lester Young)想象的跳跃或查理·帕克(Charlie Parker)令人眼花缭乱但却无法理解的天才的方式，产生了一种无法定义但令人着迷的自由形态模式。

《无题》就像克莱恩的大部分黑白画一样，它最终是一个无法定义的实体，但它仍然深深地唤起了当时的时代和创作过程中令人兴奋的即兴创作精神。事实上，正是出于这个原因，克莱恩常常避免将名称授予这类作品的做法。他回忆道：“第一部黑白作品似乎与数字有关，我把它们命名为数字。”后来，随着绘画在规模和形式上变得越来越大胆和自由，“结果似乎意味着某种东西-但很难给出主题或名字，目前我发现不可能用黑白分明的语言直接描述这些画”(F.Kline，在H.F.Gaugh中引用)，Franz Kline，前引书.，p.106)。

最终，这些伟大作品中的神秘和不确定性元素赋予了它们持久的力量、权威和吸引观众的能力。克莱恩曾用另一位爵士音乐家的比喻来回答一位观众的问题，他要求他解释他的画的含义，他说：“我会像路易斯·阿姆斯特朗那样回答你，当他们问他当他吹喇叭时意味着什么。”路易说，‘兄弟，如果你不明白，我就不可能告诉你’“(F.Kline，在H.F.Gaugh中引用的话)，行了。，p.13)

画家简介

参阅阴山工作室美国抽象表现主义画家弗朗兹·克莱恩(Franz Kline）

作品资料

Untitled

成交总额USD 40,402,500

估价USD 20,000,000 - USD 30,000,000

signed twice and dated twice 'FRANZ KLINE '57' (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

79 x 110 3/8 in. (200.7 x 280.4 cm.)

Painted in 1957.

拍卖 2597

Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

纽约|2012年11月14日

拍品 17

来源

Collection of the artist

Robert and Adriana Mnuchin, New York

David Geffen, Los Angeles

C&M Arts, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner

展览历史

Rome, Galleria d'Arte La Tartaruga, Franz Kline, November 1963, no. 44 (illustrated in color and on the cover).

Houston, Menil Collection; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art and Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Franz Kline: Black & White 1950-1961, September 1994-June 1995, pp. 86 and 113, no. 43 (illustrated in color).