Jacob Kainen, Bright Star of the New York School

Perhaps no other artist who got a start in the WPA Federal Arts Project in New York was as virtuosic a draftsman and painter as Jacob Kainen. prodigies, and accomplished painters since their teens, and both had distinct periods within their 7-plus decades of work, each period offering a powerful, new, iconic idiom, always well-received, though neither settled for success with that style and moved on.

Both were virtuosos. Picasso, one of the most powerful of draftsmen, could draw or paint in any style he pleased. So could Kainen. Compare the very simplified articulation of forms in Kainen’s genre scenes of the ‘30’s, such as “Hot Dog Cart”, 1938, with a poetic little gouache he did of his fiancée, Bertha, that same year. Like Picasso, Kainen’s virtuosity was never for its own sake, but always at the service of creating an original painterly concept.

Both were prodigious print makers, creating thousands of prints. Kainen began as a teen, using his mother’s clothes wringer to do drypoints, but became much more adept during his years on the Federal Arts Project in New York in the ‘30’s. Later, as curator of graphics at the Smithsonian, he collected a couple of thousand prints for them. He always had a print studio as well as a painting one, and continued making lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and monotypes throughout his life.

These are a few of his prints out of thousands. The lithograph, “No Dominion”, was an anti-war commission.

Student Work

His representational work starts with his student days, when it was simple and straightforward, with accurate drawing and color, rendered in strong impasto technique, yet sensitive enough to show, for instance, rouge on a cheek, and the transparency of a lace shawl, as in “Copper Girl,” also 1929. These studies, done in his junior year at Pratt Institute, at age 19, did not place emphasis on composition (“It’s the last thing you get.” he would say later), but the poses are solidly observed and well placed within the rectangle.

Disaster Scenes

In a form of social protest, rather than depict real scenes of the ubiquitous suffering around him, he invented disaster images. The expressionist painters were a big influence, but he was aware enough, to retain his own artistic independence.

Genre Scenes

His work for the Federal Arts Project itself was, at the urging of his friend, Stuart Davis, just within its print division, but he nonetheless was painting steadily throughout, and that work could come under the description of Social Realism, although no longer as severe as his disaster scenes. While socially conscious, these paintings were not a strident critique of social conditions, or glorification of the proletariat as much WPA art was, but rather an observation of daily life. The brushwork continues to be impasto and definitive. The style is deliberately simplified, as in Hot Dog Cart, or Oil Cloth Vendor, both 1937, where the shapes and forms are bluntly and clearly rendered. He rarely used topical references, such as letters in signs. For instance, whereas the number, “20” appears in Hot Dog Cart,” all other letters and numbers are reduced to shapes. Likewise, in “Tin Warrior” and “Barber Shop,” both 1939, the letters in signs over store windows are abstracted. This was very consciously done so as not to distract with specifics from its references to a broader social genre.

As mentioned above, note the intimate gouache of his fiancee, Bertha, done the same year as Hot Dog Cart.

Allegories

Street Scenes, New York

These were more abstracted images with more dramatic compositions than his genre scenes of the ‘30’s.

Buildings, Washington D.C.

Inspired by the Gothic Revival architecture of D.C., Kainen took different approaches, some more abstracted, some more dynamic, than others. The shapes distinctive, and colors always clear, whether primary, secondary or shades of grey.

Pure Abstraction

Fresh, clear colors with painterly bravura, the pure abstractions have coherent visual grammar. They let the paint speak for itself, but always with psychological overtones.

FROM HERE ON, IT’S RANDOM THOUGHTS/IDEAS AND IMAGES

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Dark Period: Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism

In “Stranger At the Gate”, 1957, a harshly abstracted, visceral apparition of a figure, evocative of Rembrandt’s "Flayed Ox”, has an alarmingly forward-thrusting presence, alternately threatening, and then pitiable. The big, strong, black, hashtag of the gate at which the figure pauses, is equally ambiguous as to whether it is permitting, or preventing entry.

Ironically, this constant self-exploration may be why he is not as well-known as many of his old friends from the WPA days in New York, such as Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Stuart Davis, who, once they found an idiom with which they were satisfied, continued largely within it, so that when one says “ a de Kooning”, “a Stuart Davis”, or “a Rothko”, a predictable image comes to mind (Gorky perhaps less so).

Kainen’s relative obscurity may also be partly due to his move from New York to Washington DC, just as the New York School was becoming famous. He was married and needed a good job with a baby on the way. He became curator of prints at the Smithsonian.

After moving to Washington, D.C. in 1942, Kainen, who had explored abstraction, still had not finished with figurative painting,

Kainen mentored and taught the Color School painters, Ken Noland, Howard Mehring, and Gene Davis about the use of color in their work. They asked him to join the group, but he refrained, since he preferred the “mass” which the brush offered, as opposed to pouring and staining.

Monumental Figures

Expressionist Figures

Totemic

Symbolic/Philosophical Abstraction

Lyric Abstraction

Formal artistic innovation, in and of itself, is not necessarily better art. It is the beauty of the work that makes it great. Just look at Vermeer or Velasquez next to their contemporaries. Hoffman, Pollack, de Kooning, and to some extent Gorky and Stuart Davis, were considered formal innovators, but abstraction had been done decades before by Malevich and others, as was Kokoschka’s expressionism, not to mention Mondrian, a hero of the downtown New York art world in the 30’s. Certainly the artists from the New York School did have their own visual grammar that sets them apart, aside from their aesthetic and spiritual qualities, but much of their fame has been enhanced by the now-glamorous image that goes along with the New York art scene of those days.

In reality of course, they were just artists trying to find their way. They were not sure of themselves at all. De Kooning, whose studio was just above Kainen’s, burst into Kainen’s studio one day and said: “Jack, am I any good?” He was upset because a dealer had come into his studio while he was working on a painting and told him he had a buyer. De Kooning said it wasn’t finished, and the dealer said it didn’t matter, because this person loved his work and would buy it anyway. “These people don’t know anything,” de Kooning said. “Maybe I’m no good. They couldn’t tell the difference.”

This incident highlights another important difference between Kainen and a number of his contemporaries. His attitude was “you never really know how good you are, but you know that you’re working up to a certain level, and beyond that, you can’t really worry about.” Kainen was emotionally grounded, and that was backed up by a remarkably deep and perceptive knowledge of art (and literature). That erudition, aside from his talent, was what endeared him to older artists like Gorky, Graham, and Davis. He was certainly not without ambition, but his over-arching goal was to be himself, and find the grandeur within. He was at ease socially, and enjoyed a good time like all his friends, and had he stayed in New York past ‘42, would have been front and center in the downtown art scene, as he had been in the 30’s. But he was not a party animal, and would have gone to fewer of the jitterbugging bashes, and spent less hours in the Cedar Bar. Married in ‘38, by ‘42 there was a child on the way. He always had a job; even in the depression he worked for a sign company because not only could he letter, but he could draw, so if they needed an image, he could supply a slick one. But now he needed a better job, so he applied for assistant curator of prints at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and got it.

This

In ‘43, his old friend Stuart Davis suggested he use a glass palette with white paper underneath, so as to see color better, and his first painting doing so resulted in “The Walk”, whose bright colors caused the historian, William Agee, to say that “The subject of the painting could be said to be color. In retrospect, we might ask if this work does not mark the beginning of the Washington Color School.”

Social scene in 30’s was coffee shops. That gave way to bars and parties in the late 40’s and 50’s.

De Kooning and Pollack are widely known, partly because their art is dramatic, and reaches out to grab you. Other artists, like Gorky and Stuart Davis are less strident, and while recognized as masters, don’t command quite the homage paid by critics, who, unfortunately, are responsible for the public’s knowledge of the period.

Nonetheless, even in the 1930’s, there are no other artists that had the sheer command

 a completely coherent, self-aware approach in that particular work, and realize that, had he wanted to, with his abilities, he could have created many

Some periods of his work are iconic. Jacob Kainen explored many approaches to his art, and therefore he is not associated with a single, signature style, unlike that of his friends, In fact,

Although Kainen’s work was always well received, in the years to come, he kept pressing his personal boundaries, conceiving one successful new concept after another, each of which could easily have become a signature style. However, that was not his way; he kept exploring - and achieving. Interestingly, Gorky, with whom he was particularly close, changed as well. Sadly, we’ll never know how many more changes there would have been, had he lived.

Picasso audaciously adopted styles as he pleased, for instance when his line drawings “looked like they stepped off the back of a 4th Century Greek mirror”, to quote Kenneth Clark, in “The Nude”.

Certain artists stand out among their contemporaries, although not necessarily because they pioneered formal innovations. Vermeer didn’t invent the Dutch genre scene, but next to his contemporaries, his paintings have an inner glow that is riveting. Velasquez’s stunning realism, rendered with seemingly nonchalant brushwork, has never been equaled.

So it is also, although in a uniquely modern way, with the work of