121 by rob howard on 11/10/00 at 6:06 AM
Re: Paper & Oil Painting

In Reply to: Re: Paper & Oil Painting posted by T.Newson on 11/09/00 at 3:31 PM:

:>>>It makes me very sad when I see late 20th century paintings that are cracking and sagging and peeling. They are what is valuable to me about being alive, they offer me such a rich experience just looking at them. <<<
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When I was a kid artist, I studied with Hans Hoffmann in Provincetown. There I met a number of the scions of modern American art. A number of us would play softball together and it was there that I got to know Franz Kline (I was still young enough that I called him "Mister" Kline). When I asked about the permanence of the materials he used, his attitude was that if the art collectors could afford one of his paintings, they could afford a replacement once the first one fell apart. That fit well with the way Hoffmman had me working...in children's poster paints on small pieces of rough paper (the idea was to get me away from my overly-precious and precise manner of approaching painting).

That was the prevailing attitude at the time. DeKooning (Mister DeKooning to me) was using mayonaisse with his paints...a readymade form of egg/oil emulsion. Those guys certainly knew better but they made self-destructive paintings as a social statement. It's amazing how self-destructive they were. They truly never knew how important they were.