R. B. Kitaj
Encyclopedia
Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American
artist
who spent much of his life in England
.
, near Cleveland
, United States
, his Hungarian
father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne Brooks, shortly after he was born and they were divorced in 1934. His mother was the American-born daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She worked in a steel mill
and as a teacher
. She remarried in 1941, to Dr. Walter Kitaj, an Austria
n research chemist, and Ronald took his surname. His mother and stepfather were non-practicing Jews. He was educated at Troy High School
. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian
freighter
when he was 17. He studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna
and the Cooper Union
in New York City
. After serving in the United States Army
for two years, in France and Germany, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford
(1958–59) under the G.I. Bill, where he developed a love of Cézanne, and then at the Royal College of Art
in London
(1959–61), alongside David Hockney
, Derek Boshier
, Peter Phillips
, Allen Jones
and Patrick Caulfield
. Richard Wollheim
, the philosopher and David Hockney
remained life-long friends.
Kitaj married his first wife, Elsi Roessler, in 1953; they had a son, screenwriter Lem Dobbs
, and adopted a daughter, Dominie. His first wife committed suicide
in 1969. After living together for 12 years, he married Sandra Fisher
in December 1983; they had one son, Max. Sandra Fisher died of a brain aneurysm in 1994. Kitaj had a mild heart attack in 1990. He died in Los Angeles in October 2007, eight days before his 75th birthday. Seven weeks after Kitaj's death, the Los Angeles County coroner ruled that the cause of death was suicide.
Kitaj settled in England, and through the 1960s taught at the Ealing Art College
, the Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art. He also taught at the University of California, Berkeley
in 1968. He staged his first solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in London in 1963, entitled "Pictures with commentary, Pictures without commentary", in which text included in the pictures and the accompanying catalogue referred to a range of literature and history. He selected an exhibition for the Arts Council
at the Hayward Gallery
in 1976, entitled "The Human Clay" (an allusion to a line by W. H. Auden
), including works by 48 London artists, such as William Roberts
, Richard Carline, Colin Self
and Maggi Hambling
, championing the cause of figurative art at a time when abstract was dominant. In an essay in the controversial catalogue, he invented the phrase the "School of London" to describe painters such as Frank Auerbach
, Leon Kossoff
, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud
, Euan Uglow
, Michael Andrews
, Reginald Gray
and himself.
Kitaj had a significant influence on British Pop art
, with his figurative
paintings featuring areas of bright colour, economic use of line and overlapping planes which made them resemble collage
s, but eschewing most abstraction
and modernism
. Allusions to political history, art, literature and Jewish identity often recur in his work, mixed together on one canvas to produce a collage
effect. He also produced a number of screen-prints
with printer Chris Prater. He told Tony Reichardt, manager of the Marlborough New London Gallery, that he made screen-prints as sketches for his future paintings. From then onwards Tony Reichardt commissioned Chris Prater to print 3 or 4 copies of every print he made on canvas. His later works became more personal.
Kitaj was recognised as being one of the world's leading draftsmen, almost on a par with, or compared to, Degas. Indeed, he was taught drawing at Oxford by Percy Horton
, himself a pupil of Walter Sickert
, who was a pupil of Degas; and the teacher of Degas studied under Ingres
. His more complex compositions build on his line work using a montage practice, which he called 'agitational usage'. Kitaj often depicts disorienting landscapes and impossible 3D constructions, with exaggerated and pliable human forms. He often assumes a detached outsider point of view, in conflict with dominant historical narratives. This is best portrayed by his masterpiece "The Autumn of Central Paris" (1972–73), wherein philosopher Walter Benjamin
is portrayed, as both the orchestrator and victim of historical madness. The futility of historical progress creates a disjointed architecture that is maddening to deconstruct. He staged a major exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in 1965, and a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. in 1981. He selected paintings for an exhibition, "The Artist's Eye", at the National Gallery, London
in 1980.
In his later years, he developed a greater awareness of his Jewish heritage, which found expression in his works, with reference to the Holocaust and influences from Jewish writers such as Kafka and Walter Benjamin
, and he came to consider himself to be a "wandering Jew
". In 1989, Kitaj published "First Diasporist Manifesto", a short book in which he analysed his own alienation, and how this contributed to his art. His book contained the remark: "The Diasporist lives and paints in two or more societies at once." And he added: "You don't have to be a Jew to be a Diasporist."
A second retrospective
was staged at the Tate Gallery
in 1994. Critical reviews in London were almost universally negative. British press savagely attacked the Tate exhibit, calling Kitaj a pretentious poseur who engaged in name dropping. Kitaj took the criticism very personally, declaring that “anti-intellectualism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism” had fueled the vitriol. Despite the bad reviews, the exhibition moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York
and afterwards to the Los Angeles County Museum
in 1995. His second wife, Sandra Fisher
died of a brain aneurysm in 1994, shortly after his exhibition at the Tate Gallery had ended. He blamed the British press for her death, stating that “they were aiming for me, but they got her instead.” David Hockney
concurred and said that he too believed the London art critics had killed Sandra Fisher. Kitaj returned to the US in 1997 and settled in Los Angeles
, near his first son. The "Tate War" and Sandra's death became a central themes for his later works: he often depicted himself and his deceased wife as angel
s.
Kitaj was one of several artists to make a post-it note
in celebration of 3M
's 20th anniversary. When auctioned on the internet
in 2000, the charcoal and pastel piece sold for $925, making it the most expensive post-it note in history, a fact recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. Kitaj was elected to the Royal Academy
in 1991, the first American to join the Academy since John Singer Sargent
. He received the Golden Lion
at the Venice Biennale
in 1995. He staged another exhibition at the National Gallery in 2001, entitled "Kitaj in the Aura of Cézanne and Other Masters".
In September 2010 Kitaj and five British artists including Howard Hodgkin
, John Walker
, Ian Stephenson
, Patrick Caulfield
and John Hoyland
were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who spent much of his life in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Life
Born in Chagrin Falls, OhioChagrin Falls, Ohio
Chagrin Falls is a village in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Cleveland in the Northeast Ohio region, the 14th largest Combined Statistical Area nationwide. The village was established and has grown around a natural waterfall on the Chagrin River. As of the 2010 census,...
, near Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, his Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne Brooks, shortly after he was born and they were divorced in 1934. His mother was the American-born daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She worked in a steel mill
Steel mill
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...
and as a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
. She remarried in 1941, to Dr. Walter Kitaj, an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n research chemist, and Ronald took his surname. His mother and stepfather were non-practicing Jews. He was educated at Troy High School
Troy High School
Troy High School may refer to:*East Troy High School in East Troy, Wisconsin*Troy Area High School in Troy, Pennsylvania*Troy Buchanan High School in Troy, Missouri*Troy Christian High School in Troy, Ohio*Troy Junior-Senior High School in Troy, Idaho...
. He became a merchant seaman with a Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
freighter
Cargo ship
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade...
when he was 17. He studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and the Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. After serving in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
for two years, in France and Germany, he moved to England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
(1958–59) under the G.I. Bill, where he developed a love of Cézanne, and then at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(1959–61), alongside David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, Derek Boshier
Derek Boshier
Derek Boshier is a British pop artist works in various media including painting, drawing, collage, photography, film and sculpture....
, Peter Phillips
Peter Phillips (artist)
You also may be looking for Pete Rock.Peter Phillips is an English artist who is one of the pioneers of the Pop Art movement...
, Allen Jones
Allen Jones
Allen Jones is the name of:*Allen T Jones ceo*Allen Jones , Continental Congress delegate*Allen Jones , British pop artist...
and Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Joseph Caulfield, CBE, RA was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of Photorealism within a pared down scene.-Life and work:...
. Richard Wollheim
Richard Wollheim
Richard Arthur Wollheim was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting...
, the philosopher and David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
remained life-long friends.
Kitaj married his first wife, Elsi Roessler, in 1953; they had a son, screenwriter Lem Dobbs
Lem Dobbs
Lem Dobbs is a British-American screenwriter, best known for the film The Limey. He is the son of the late painter, R.B. Kitaj...
, and adopted a daughter, Dominie. His first wife committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in 1969. After living together for 12 years, he married Sandra Fisher
Sandra Fisher
Sandra Fisher , a successful London-based American painter, was born in New York City on 6 May 1947, grew up in Florida and California, and died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at the National Hospital for Nervous Disorders in London on 19 September 1994, aged 47.She studied minimalist art and...
in December 1983; they had one son, Max. Sandra Fisher died of a brain aneurysm in 1994. Kitaj had a mild heart attack in 1990. He died in Los Angeles in October 2007, eight days before his 75th birthday. Seven weeks after Kitaj's death, the Los Angeles County coroner ruled that the cause of death was suicide.
Career
|
| — from Catalogue for Kitaj's "Little Pictures" |
Kitaj settled in England, and through the 1960s taught at the Ealing Art College
Ealing Art College
Ealing Art College was 'Ealing Technical College & School of Art', a further education institution on St Mary's Road, Ealing, London, England. The site today is the Ealing campus of University of West London...
, the Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art. He also taught at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1968. He staged his first solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in London in 1963, entitled "Pictures with commentary, Pictures without commentary", in which text included in the pictures and the accompanying catalogue referred to a range of literature and history. He selected an exhibition for the Arts Council
Arts council
An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...
at the Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
in 1976, entitled "The Human Clay" (an allusion to a line by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
), including works by 48 London artists, such as William Roberts
William Roberts (painter)
William Roberts was a British painter of groups of figures and portraits, and was a war artist.-Education and early career:Son of an Irish carpenter and his wife, Roberts was born in Hackney, London...
, Richard Carline, Colin Self
Colin Self
Colin Self is a British Pop Artist, whose work has addressed the theme of Cold War politics.As a student at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1961 to 1963 Colin Self received encouragement for his drawings and collages from the artists David Hockney and Peter Blake...
and Maggi Hambling
Maggi Hambling
Maggi Hambling CBE is an English painter and sculptor. Perhaps her best known public works are a memorial to Oscar Wilde in central London and Scallop, a 4 metre high steel sculpture of two interlocking scallop shells on Aldeburgh beach dedicated to Benjamin Britten...
, championing the cause of figurative art at a time when abstract was dominant. In an essay in the controversial catalogue, he invented the phrase the "School of London" to describe painters such as Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...
, Leon Kossoff
Leon Kossoff
Leon Kossoff is a British expressionist painter, known for portraits, life drawings and cityscapes of London, England....
, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
, Euan Uglow
Euan Uglow
-Biography:Euan Uglow was born 10 March 1932 in London and as a child lived in Tulse Hill in south London. His father was an accountant, and Uglow went to the local grammar school in Tulse Hill, called Strand School. Afterwards he studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1948 to 1950...
, Michael Andrews
Michael Andrews
Michael Andrews may refer to:* Michael Andrews , British artist* Michael Andrews , US musician* Michael Andrews , Australian rugby league footballer* Michael A...
, Reginald Gray
Reginald Gray (artist)
Reginald Gray is a portrait artist born in Dublin in 1930. He studied at The National College of Art and then moved to London, becoming part of the School of London led by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. In 1960, he painted a portrait of Bacon which now hangs in the permanent...
and himself.
Kitaj had a significant influence on British Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, with his figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
paintings featuring areas of bright colour, economic use of line and overlapping planes which made them resemble collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
s, but eschewing most abstraction
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
and modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. Allusions to political history, art, literature and Jewish identity often recur in his work, mixed together on one canvas to produce a collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
effect. He also produced a number of screen-prints
Screen-printing
Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate...
with printer Chris Prater. He told Tony Reichardt, manager of the Marlborough New London Gallery, that he made screen-prints as sketches for his future paintings. From then onwards Tony Reichardt commissioned Chris Prater to print 3 or 4 copies of every print he made on canvas. His later works became more personal.
Kitaj was recognised as being one of the world's leading draftsmen, almost on a par with, or compared to, Degas. Indeed, he was taught drawing at Oxford by Percy Horton
Percy Horton
Percy Frederick Horton MA, RBA, ARCA was an English painter and art teacher, and Ruskin Master of Drawing, University of Oxford from 1949 to 1964...
, himself a pupil of Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
, who was a pupil of Degas; and the teacher of Degas studied under Ingres
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...
. His more complex compositions build on his line work using a montage practice, which he called 'agitational usage'. Kitaj often depicts disorienting landscapes and impossible 3D constructions, with exaggerated and pliable human forms. He often assumes a detached outsider point of view, in conflict with dominant historical narratives. This is best portrayed by his masterpiece "The Autumn of Central Paris" (1972–73), wherein philosopher Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
is portrayed, as both the orchestrator and victim of historical madness. The futility of historical progress creates a disjointed architecture that is maddening to deconstruct. He staged a major exhibition at 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....
in 1965, and a retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. in 1981. He selected paintings for an exhibition, "The Artist's Eye", at the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
in 1980.
In his later years, he developed a greater awareness of his Jewish heritage, which found expression in his works, with reference to the Holocaust and influences from Jewish writers such as Kafka and Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
, and he came to consider himself to be a "wandering Jew
Wandering Jew
The Wandering Jew is a figure from medieval Christian folklore whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. The original legend concerns a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming...
". In 1989, Kitaj published "First Diasporist Manifesto", a short book in which he analysed his own alienation, and how this contributed to his art. His book contained the remark: "The Diasporist lives and paints in two or more societies at once." And he added: "You don't have to be a Jew to be a Diasporist."
A second retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...
was staged at the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1994. Critical reviews in London were almost universally negative. British press savagely attacked the Tate exhibit, calling Kitaj a pretentious poseur who engaged in name dropping. Kitaj took the criticism very personally, declaring that “anti-intellectualism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism” had fueled the vitriol. Despite the bad reviews, the exhibition moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and afterwards to the Los Angeles County Museum
Los Angeles County Museum
The Los Angeles County Museum may refer to:* Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County* Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
in 1995. His second wife, Sandra Fisher
Sandra Fisher
Sandra Fisher , a successful London-based American painter, was born in New York City on 6 May 1947, grew up in Florida and California, and died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm at the National Hospital for Nervous Disorders in London on 19 September 1994, aged 47.She studied minimalist art and...
died of a brain aneurysm in 1994, shortly after his exhibition at the Tate Gallery had ended. He blamed the British press for her death, stating that “they were aiming for me, but they got her instead.” David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
concurred and said that he too believed the London art critics had killed Sandra Fisher. Kitaj returned to the US in 1997 and settled in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, near his first son. The "Tate War" and Sandra's death became a central themes for his later works: he often depicted himself and his deceased wife as angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
s.
Kitaj was one of several artists to make a post-it note
Post-it note
A Post-it note is a piece of stationery with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. Although now available in a wide range of colours, shapes, and sizes, Post-it notes are most commonly a square, canary yellow in colour...
in celebration of 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
's 20th anniversary. When auctioned on the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
in 2000, the charcoal and pastel piece sold for $925, making it the most expensive post-it note in history, a fact recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. Kitaj was elected to the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1991, the first American to join the Academy since John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
. He received the Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
in 1995. He staged another exhibition at the National Gallery in 2001, entitled "Kitaj in the Aura of Cézanne and Other Masters".
In September 2010 Kitaj and five British artists including Howard Hodgkin
Howard Hodgkin
Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin CH, CBE is a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction.-Early life:...
, John Walker
John Walker (painter)
John Walker is an English painter and printmaker.Walker studied in Birmingham. Some of his early work was inspired by abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and often combined apparently three-dimensional shapes with "flatter" elements...
, Ian Stephenson
Ian Stephenson
Ian Stephenson was an English abstract artist. Stephenson trained at King's College, Durham along with Noel Forster and had his first solo show in London at the New Vision Centre in 1958...
, Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Joseph Caulfield, CBE, RA was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of Photorealism within a pared down scene.-Life and work:...
and John Hoyland
John Hoyland
John Hoyland RA was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country's leading abstract painters.-Life:...
were included in an exhibition entitled The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
The Yale Center for British Art is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University which houses the most comprehensive collection of British Art outside the United Kingdom...
.
Further reading
- Chaney, Edward,‘Kitaj versus Creed’, The London Magazine (April 2002), pp. 106-11.
- Duncan, RobertRobert Duncan (poet)Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
. "A Paris Visit, with R.B. Kitaj". Conjunctions, no. 8, Fall 1985, pp. 8–17 - Kampf, Avraham. Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in Twentieth-Century Art. Exhibition catalogue. London: Lund Humphries and the Barbican Art Gallery, 1990.
- Kitaj R. B. First Diasporist Manifesto. London : Thames and Hudson, 1989.
- Kitaj R. B. The Second Diasporist Manifesto. New Haven, CT : Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 2007. - Kitaj R. B. / Irving PetlinIrving PetlinIrving Petlin is an American artist and painter renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium and collaborations with other artists and for his work in the "series form" in which he uses the raw material of pastel, oil paint and unprimed linen, and finds inspiration in the work of writers and...
. Rubbings…The Large Paintings and the Small Pastels. Exhibition catalogue. Purchase, New York, and Chicago: Neuberger Museum and Arts Club of Chicago, 1978. - Lambirth, Andrew. Kitaj. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0 85667 571 7
- Palmer, MichaelMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...
. “Four Kitaj Studies”, The Promises of Glass. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2000.
External links
- Studio International review
- KITAJ: LITTLE PICTURES & Embroidered Works by various artists feature at the Marlborough Fine Art website
- R. B. Kitaj 1932—2007 A cyber-tombeauTombeauA tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...
at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron SillimanRon SillimanRon Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
includes comments, tributes, and links - R.B. Kitaj: views of a fractured century this article, by Ken Johnson, appeared as the cover story for the magazine Art in AmericaArt in AmericaArt in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
in March, 1995. - R.B. Kitag at the Vitro Nasu Blog Archive includes links to A Day Book (Text by Robert CreeleyRobert CreeleyRobert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
with 13 ‘graphics’ by R B Kitaj); Renewal and Resistance (David CohenDavid CohenDavid Cohen , was an American lawyer, Democratic civil servant and politician. For the last 26 years of his life, he was a Philadelphia city councilman representing the northwest district. Having served a four year term not consecutive to the other terms, he represented northwest Philadelphia for a...
in conversation with R.B. KITAJ in Los Angeles) & A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence FerlinghettiLawrence FerlinghettiLawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, with art by R. B. Kitaj - Obituary, The Economist, 3 November 2007