Craig Kauffman (artist)
Encyclopedia
Craig Kauffman was an artist who has exhibited since 1951. Kauffman’s primarily abstract paintings and wall relief sculptures are included in over 20 museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
, the Tate Modern
, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
, the Art Institute of Chicago
, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
, Seattle Art Museum
, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
.
(founded in 1957 by Edward Kienholz
and Walter Hopps
), and had a one-person show at that gallery in 1958. According to critic and historian Peter Plagens, the 1958 paintings were:
In several series of wall relief sculptures made between 1964 and 1970, Kauffman pioneered the use of acrylic plastic
as a support for painting. Craig Kauffman’s wall relief sculptures are his most well known work. Throughout his career, Kauffman has explored the use of unorthodox materials. Art historian Susan C. Larsen notes:
Through his integration of sprayed color and shape, Kauffman achieved the visual presence of his vacuum formed
acrylic wall reliefs. Works from the late 1960s have been described by museum curator Richard Armstrong as:
Curators and historians now regard Kauffman’s works from the late 1960s in relation to the art movement known as Minimalism
. Susan L. Jenkins wrote:
Since that period, Kauffman has continued painting, and his works have been included in exhibitions such as Time and Place: Los Angeles 1957-1968, at the Moderna Museet
in Stockholm in 2008, Los Angeles 1955-1985, Birth of an Art Capital at the Centre Georges Pompidou
in Paris, and A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
, 2004.
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, the Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located directly on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark with an extensive permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, dating from World War II and up...
, the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
, Seattle Art Museum
Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, USA. It maintains three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill, and the Olympic Sculpture Park on the central Seattle waterfront, which opened on...
, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
.
Life and career
Kauffman first exhibited at the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles, and was included in other Los Angeles group exhibits during the early 1950s. He was a member of the original group of artists at the Ferus GalleryFerus Gallery
The Ferus Gallery was a contemporary art gallery operating from 1957-1966. In 1957 it was located at 736-A North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, California...
(founded in 1957 by Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz was an American installation artist whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz...
and Walter Hopps
Walter Hopps
Walter Hopps was an American museum director and curator of contemporary art. His obituary in the Washington Post described him as a "sort of a gonzo museum director -- elusive, unpredictable, outlandish in his range, jagged in his vision, heedless of rules."Hopps was born in Eagle Rock, Los...
), and had a one-person show at that gallery in 1958. According to critic and historian Peter Plagens, the 1958 paintings were:
…Abstract Expressionist but contain the first evidence of a Los Angeles sensibility: Tell Tale Heart (1958) is structured superficially along the lines of a second-generation New York painting, but it reveals the original stem-and-bulb shapes that Kauffman was later to translate into PlexiglasAcrylic glassPoly is a transparent thermoplastic, often used as a light or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. It is sometimes called acrylic glass. Chemically, it is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate...
. The ‘clean’ Abstract Expressionist work of Craig Kauffman could be the point at which Los Angeles art decided to live on its own life-terms, instead of those handed down from Paris, New York, or even San Francisco.
In several series of wall relief sculptures made between 1964 and 1970, Kauffman pioneered the use of acrylic plastic
Acrylic glass
Poly is a transparent thermoplastic, often used as a light or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. It is sometimes called acrylic glass. Chemically, it is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate...
as a support for painting. Craig Kauffman’s wall relief sculptures are his most well known work. Throughout his career, Kauffman has explored the use of unorthodox materials. Art historian Susan C. Larsen notes:
Kauffman’s work has maintained its radiant color and its emphasis on certain sensuous physical properties of his materials.
Through his integration of sprayed color and shape, Kauffman achieved the visual presence of his vacuum formed
Vacuum forming
Vacuum forming, commonly known as vacuuforming, is a simplified version of thermoforming, whereby a sheet of plastic is heated to a forming temperature, stretched onto or into a single-surface mold , and held against the mold by applying vacuum between the mold surface and the sheet.The vacuum...
acrylic wall reliefs. Works from the late 1960s have been described by museum curator Richard Armstrong as:
Glossy and symmetrical, the work’s visually wet surface engenders anatomical, sometimes overtly sexual, comparisons.
Curators and historians now regard Kauffman’s works from the late 1960s in relation to the art movement known as Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
. Susan L. Jenkins wrote:
…his works, as well as others associated with the L.A. Look, can nevertheless be thought of as possessing a relatively Minimalist sensibility. Like Judd’sDonald JuddDonald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
‘specific objects’, Kauffman’s vacuum-formed plastic works exist in a space between painting and sculpture.
Since that period, Kauffman has continued painting, and his works have been included in exhibitions such as Time and Place: Los Angeles 1957-1968, at the Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet
Moderna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
in Stockholm in 2008, Los Angeles 1955-1985, Birth of an Art Capital at the Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
in Paris, and A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
, 2004.
Further reading
- Armstrong, Richard. Drawings by Painters. Long Beach, California: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1982.
- Baker, Hilary, Julia Couzens and others. Sexy: Sensual Abstraction in California 1950's-1990's. Pasadena, CA: Armory Center for the Visual Arts, 1996. 13.
- Barron, Stephanie, Sheri Bernstein and Ilene Susan Fort. Made in California: Art Image and Identity, 1900-2000. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000.
- Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art, A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton Publishers, 1968. 428.
- Belloli, Jay. Craig Kauffman: A Retrospective of Drawings. Pasadena, CA: Amory Center for the Arts, 2008.
- Davis, Douglas. Art and the Future. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1973. 12.
- Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter. Craig Kauffman. Santa Monica, CA: Frank Lloyd Gallery, 2008.
- Fujinami, Noriko. Abstraction, 5 Artists. Nagoya, Japan: Nagoya City Art Museum, 1991. 47-61, 89-100 (illus.)
- Goldstein, Ann. A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004: 263-265.
- Grenier, Catherine, et al. Los Angeles: 1955-1985: Birth of an Art Capital. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2006. 152, 170.
- Hopkins, Henry T. 20 American Artists. San Francisco, California: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1980. 26-27.
- Hunter, Sam. American Art of the 20th Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972. 324, 432.
- Kienholtz, Ed. Craig Kauffman. Hope, Idaho: The Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery, 1983.
- Larsen, Susan. Sunshine and Shadow: Recent Painting in Southern California. Los Angeles, California: University of Southern California 1985. 46.
- Lucie-Smith, Edward. Late Modern. New York: Frederick A Praeger Publisher, 1969. 267, 227.
- Martin, Julie, and Barbara Rose. Pavilions' Experiments in Art and Technology. New York: Dutton Publisher, 1972.
- McDonald, Robert. Craig Kauffman: A Comprehensive Survey 1957-1980. Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art, 1981.
- Newman, Thelma R. Plastics as Sculpture. Rodnor: Pennsylvania Book Company,1974. 74
- Nittve, Lars and Cécile Whiting, eds. Time & Place: Los Angeles 1957-1968. Stockholm, Sweden: Moderna Museet, 2008. 27-28, 46, 52, 60-63, 93, 124
- Plagens, Peter. Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast. New York: Frederick A Praeger Publisher, 1974. 105, 115, 120, 121, and pl. 7, 12, 13, 16.
- Prown, Jules David, and Barbara Rose. American Painting. New York: Rizzoli Books, 1977. 223, 224.
- Rose, Barbara. American Art Since 1900. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1975. 225-226.
- Strick, Jeremy, Ann Goldstein, Rebecca Morse and Paul Schimmel. This is Not to be Looked At: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008. 146, 147.
- Wortz, Melinda. The Carolyn and Jack Farris Collection. La Jolla, California: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 1983. 63.