My Neoplastic Paintings and Reliefs

Leonardo, Vol. 13, pp. 216- 218 Pergamon Press 1980. Printed in Great Britain MY NEOPLASTIC PAINTINGS AND RELIEFS 'Jaya' James Kern * 1. I remember the occasion when, at the age of four, I asked my grandmother how to draw the letter 'J'. In response, she drew a right angle like an 'L' backwards, which I at first accepted. But I came to question the shape of her 1's after I found others making them with a straight verticle line and a curve. This experience I regard as the first among those that were to influence me toward an art career in which I was preoccupied with nonfigurative artworks. It was in 1964, while I attended an art course at the University of Minnesota, that I saw for the first time a reproduction of Mondrian's painting 'Broadway BoogieWoogie '. The picture shown as a slide projection proved to be not only a moving experience for me but also a powerfully influential one. It gave me a feeling of optimism to continue as an artist, and it had a marked influence on the style of my later artworks. In 1965 I saw an exhibition of Charles Biederman's constructionist or structurist reliefs at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota [1]. On casual observation , they seemed simple in execution. But on closer examination, I saw that they were made of carefully machined painted aluminum parts. The precision of the application of paint and of the machine work impressed me. Earlier, in my studio-art studies at the University I had been taught painting by abstract expressionist and by hard-edge painters, but Biederman's structures suggested to me a direction to explore. I wrote to Biederman telling him ofmy interest in his work and was invited to visit him at his studio in Red Wing, Minnesota, where I observed his way of making them. Beginning in 1969 I worked for five years under his guidance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; I settled in Rochester, Minnesota in 1970. During this period I made painted reliefs in wood and in Plexiglas, similar to the one shown in Fig. 1. 2. My experience in making structurist reliefs has shown me that as a beginner one should make relatively large cubical-type forms with small distances between them. I have found that this helps in gaining an understanding of the interplay of forms in a spatial array. Later one can proceed with more assurance to making reliefs with more complicated arrays involving thinner forms and larger distances of separation between them. Figure 1 shows an example ofwhat I call a block relief, one of the kind that I made during a period of five years following graduation from the University of Minnesota. In the work shown the forms were painted white and red, and the back plane was made white. Strong illumination from one side was *Painter, c/o Post Office, Oronoco, MN 55960, U.S.A. (Received 21 June 1979). 216 Fig. I. Untitled, relief, Plexiglas, oil paint, 36 x 44cm, 1977. provided to cast deep shadows and, hence, to emphasize the visual characteristics of the block relief. When I began making block reliefs, I first took particular note of the works by the constructivists Jean Gorin [2] and Bergoyne Diller, and was further encouraged to continue with this application of Neoplasticism , a phase of the De Stijl style initiated in the Netherlands in about 1917 [3]. I felt that artworks of this kind would help to humanize some of the manifestations of urban life that I find objectionable. In 1968 at the Exhibition 'Relief/Construction/Relief in Chicago, I was pleased to find other artists who shared my view. From 1973 on, however, I have returned occasionally to the traditional 2-dimensional painting format. I had met a mystic from India, who taught me a way of meditating and gave me the name 'Jaya'. I was introduced to the Moghul miniatures and I decided to make a nonfigurative version of them in the neoplastic style. These were done by drawing and painting with oils on one side ofa Plexiglas sheet, for viewing from the reverse side. An example is shown in Fig. 2. I have used...