CAA News Today

William A. Peniston is librarian at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey.

Karle Lunde

Karl Lunde, art historian and professor emeritus at William Paterson University, died peacefully at his home in New York City on December 27, 2009. He was 78.

He was born on Staten Island on November 1, 1931, to Karl and Elisa Lunde, who had emigrated to America from Norway in the 1920s. He was educated at Columbia University, where he received his BA in 1952 and MA in 1954, in the field of art history. From 1957 to 1970 he was an instructor in the School of General Studies at Columbia.

Lunde directed the Contemporaries, an art gallery on Madison Avenue devoted to modern painting and sculpture, from 1956 to 1965. While there, he was among the first to encourage the collecting and appreciation of modern fine prints and to introduce Americans to the work of Fernando Botero, Jose de Creeft, Antonio Music, and Ricardo Martinez. He was an early champion of several young American artists, now much celebrated, including Robert Kipniss, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Lorrie Goulet.

In 1970 Lunde received his PhD in art history from Columbia University. His dissertation on Johan Christian Dahl was the first English-language study of this influential nineteenth-century Norwegian landscape painter. That same year, Lunde became a professor of art history at William Paterson University of New Jersey, where he taught until his retirement in 1996. Over the years, Lunde developed a wide-ranging repertoire of courses, including classes on American painting and sculpture, Asian art, prehistoric art, and European Neoclassicism and Romanticism. A mesmerizing lecturer, Lunde received a university award for teaching excellence. He also assembled an impressive collection of over 30,000 personally annotated color slides, which he used in teaching and which he later donated to Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.

A frequent contributor to professional and scholarly journals, Lunde also wrote several books devoted to the works of twentieth-century American artists, including Isabel Bishop (1975), Anuszkiewicz (1977), Robert Kipniss: The Graphic Work (1980), and John Day (1984). He also amassed a large and important collection of rare books, art objects, and antiques and donated paintings to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Newark Museum.

Lunde was predeceased by his partner, the artist and arts administrator Roy Moyer, and is survived by his brother, Asbjorn Lunde of New York.

John Carey, an artist and art teacher, is the editorial cartoonist for Greater Media Newspapers in central New Jersey.

First there was Kimon Nicolaïdes’s Natural Way to Draw (1941), then there was Robert Beverly Hale’s Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters (1964). Then in 1966 came Robert Kaupelis’s Learning to Draw. It was a book smart enough and egalitarian enough to employ old and modern masters’ examples along with students’ work; the point was the dynamics of application, not only the procedures of attempting realism. I discovered that book in 1972 in my high school library in Richmond, Kentucky. The book offered me and my generation what we knew but didn’t quite trust yet—the processes of mark-making, be it gentle, violent, nuanced, or bold. We had seen those applications in artworks we admired—old and new—but we hadn’t had it broken down in a philosophy with lessons before. When I saw that the author of Learning to Draw taught at New York Univeristy I knew where I wanted to go to college. Three years later I was in Kaupelis’s classroom.

Describing a great teacher is a bit like explaining a great performance. There is context, delivery, insight, and presence; there is also something else: the mark left. That mark is often as elusive as an actor’s impact, but as in theater, there are now and then a few mentors that remain definitive for us in their transformative and indelible effects. In this regard Kaupelis was a star. His energy and intelligence demanded attention, and in turn one realized that a reciprocity of that demand was expected in the presentation of one’s artwork and in the articulation of one’s efforts. It was also understood that respect came only from very hard, serious work. And it was great fun. “Change!” was something often heard in the art studio (along with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Beethoven LPs); Kaupelis would shout “Change!” to models he kept busy, finding one quick pose after another as our young tentative arms began to loosen up with quick contour and gesture drawings in our search for some beauty with our own mark-making. After a few of these energized classes a Kaupelis student never looked at art in the same way again. The lessons of Learning to Draw had met the energy of the man behind it. Change had happened.

Kaupelis, who died on June 12, 2009, began teaching at NYU in 1956. He was born in Amsterdam, New York, in 1928 and educated in Buffalo and at Columbia University. In 1975 he was the subject of a chapter in a Herbert Livesey book surveying higher education called The Professors, where he was cited as one of the nation’s outstanding art educators. In 1980 Kaupelis wrote his second Watson-Guptill drawing book, Experimental Drawing, which reinforced his exuberant amalgam of stressing the fundamentals of art along with encouraging innovative and, at times, refreshingly quirky approaches: fifty nonstop drawings in three hours, drawing from out-of-focus slides, drawing the model with eyes shut. This newer book was almost as significant as Learning to Draw because at the time it was published drawing had become a very undervalued curriculum in university programs; it was a time when drawing was considered by many as old-fashioned and nearly irrelevant.

As an artist Kaupelis emerged as the New York School rose to prominence, and when nonobjective American art found its place on the world stage. His own work reflected that influence in its vibrancy and spontaneity. He was, as the critic John Canaday wrote, a seductive colorist. Eventually geometry and sharp, taped edges also merged and interacted with the wetter, looser applications. While the paintings of Kaupelis represented some of his philosophies about aesthetics, I never felt they fully matched his ability to illuminate and celebrate the art of others—the art in galleries and museums and the work of his students. He wrote and spoke of art the way Martin Scorsese speaks of movies—with a compulsive, obsessive, comprehensive insight. He thought and taught art like a man intoxicated with the anticipation of romance—that ineffable state of mind where joy and passion merge with love.

Kaupelis asked a lot from his readers and students. His main demand was: “LOOK!”—look at this: at this sepia wash Constable landscape; this Sheeler charcoal still life; this De Kooning gouache; this pen-and-ink Manet portrait; this Rauschenberg collage; this Pontormo red-chalk figure dancing off the page with a gesture line of astonishing confidence, speed, and grace! Look at this form, this line, this shade, this figure, this edge, this space! Look at your assimilation of them all! How many future artists, curators, art historians, cartoonists, animators, illustrators and teachers were asked to LOOK by Kaupelis during his thirty years at NYU and in his two important drawing books, Learning to Draw and Experimental Drawing? Thousands.

Kaupelis said drawing was anything intended as art which left a mark. He left his.

Zena Pearlstone is emeritus professor of art history at California State University, Fullerton.

Michael Kabotie with his work at the Del Rio Gallery in Flagstaff, Arizona

Michael Kabotie (Lomawywesa), a Hopi painter, jeweler, poet, and printmaker, died in Flagstaff, Arizona, on October 23, 2009, of complications from H1N1 influenza. He was 67.

Kabotie is known among Hopi artists as one who commanded several media and constantly pushed his iconographic and technical skills. His work was always powerful and often mystical. Kabotie worked with the mythology and sentiments of his people, but he described his art as pushing back in time in an attempt to arrive at the roots or basics of Hopi teachings that would promote a common understanding. His intelligence was far reaching. Some people think outside the box, but for him there never was a box.

Kabotie was born in 1942 at Songoopovi, Second Mesa, Hopi, a member of the Snow-Water clan and the son of the artist Fred Kabotie and Alice Kabotie. He attended Hopi High School, where he studied art with his father, and in 1961 graduated from the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. He began studies in engineering but did not complete the program, preferring to devote his full attention to his art. He lived at Hopi and also, for many years, in Flagstaff and New Mexico.

During the sixties and into the seventies Kabotie’s work was influenced by ancestral Pueblo art and European modernism. In the 1960 and 1961 Southwest Indian Art Project summer program at the University of Arizona, he studied with the Cochiti artist Joe Herrera, who introduced him to the kiva murals at the Hopi site of Awotovi. Herrera, Kabotie said, opened his eyes to the art of his people. The murals and the related Sikyatki pottery images remained a reference for Kabotie throughout his career. At his 1967 initiation into the Wuwtsim (a priesthood society) Kabotie received the name Lomawywesa, “Walking in Harmony.” The ceremony led him to consider the art of his ancestors as more central than modern art.

Still it was important to Kabotie to work with other artists in a modernist style that extracted elements from ancient sources. In 1973 he was a founding member of Artist Hopid, a group of five contemporary Hopi artists who felt the need to communicate their cultural and artistic experiences. Speaking for the group Kabotie said, “We hoped that from the presentation of our traditions and from the interpretations of the Hopi way in our art and paintings a new direction would come for American spirituality.” In 1996, he continued his search for basic truths when he began sharing canvases with Jack Dauben, who is of Celtic ancestry.

Michael Kabotie, silver pendant, 2004

Kabotie began silversmithing seriously in the late 1970s. His unique work modified Hopi overlay into three-dimensional pieces, a process most Hopi jewelers would never attempt. One stunning 2001 bracelet with Awotovi designs is built like a box, squared and hollow, an astounding construction feat.

Kabotie’s painting and jewelry were incorporated into large public works, including murals at Sunset Crater Visitors Center in Arizona; a large mural, Journey of the Human Spirit, made with Delbridge Honanie and now in the Kiva Gallery at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff; and a gate at the Heard Museum in Phoenix designed to look like a piece of overlay jewelry.

Kabotie was a Southwestern force and in all his endeavors an ambassador for Hopi while absorbing the ideas of other cultures. In a career of almost fifty years, he was involved, as either participant or consultant, in myriad projects concerning Southwest and Californian art and culture. He worked with indigenous artists in New Zealand, Brazil and Mexico; had exhibitions in fourteen US states, South America, Europe, and New Zealand; and served as an advisor to the Heard Museum, the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, and the Idyllwild California Summer Arts program at the Idyllwild Arts Foundation. At the latter Kabotie taught Hopi overlay jewelry techniques for almost twenty years. His work is held by museums in the United States and Europe. In 2003 he received the Arizona Indian Living Treasure Award.

He was a warm and caring person and a wonderful friend. His thoughtfulness and his humor went hand in hand. He was a quick wit and always the trickster. “Come have Thanksgiving with us,” he asked one year. “We have too many Indians and not enough Pilgrims.”

Kabotie leaves a monumental body of work that will be admired and influential for many years. He leaves a large family and a multitude of friends, all of whom adored and respected him.

Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, professor of philosophy, and director of the Logic Program and of the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He is also professor in the graduate faculty of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, professor of philosophy at Melbourne University, and adjunct professor of philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.

Bernard Allen Hanson, an art historian, critic, professor, and administrator, died on June 21, 2009, after a short illness. He was 86. For years he was recognized around New Haven, Connecticut, by his blue pickup truck with its elegantly lettered moniker, “Bernard Hanson. Art Critic.”

The youngest of five children, Hanson was born to Stephen Bernard (Bert) Hanson and Stella Cook Hanson on October 11, 1922, in Williamsburg, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Iowa in 1944 with a degree in English. While at the university he was a two-time Big Ten gymnastics champion, performing on the side horse, and was a member of the Scottish Highlanders. He earned his MA in art history at the same school and pursued doctoral research at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Hanson enjoyed a distinguished career in art history. His research, teaching, and public lectures addressed the history of Indian art, the nature of public art, the history of architecture, and film theory. Hanson was not only a noted scholar, but also an eminent academic leader and a public intellectual. His teaching career spanned four decades, and included appointments at Northwestern University, the Philadelphia College of Art, and the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. Hanson served as director of the Humanities Division at the Philadelphia College of Art and as dean at the Hartford School of Art from 1970 to 1979 before returning to the teaching faculty until his retirement in 1987.

Hanson said once in an interview, “Before people are anything, they are human beings, and education in an art school should be basically humanistic,” and his approach to teaching, to academic leadership, and to public comment on the arts reflected this sentiment. His tenure as dean at Hartford was notable for the steady stream of distinguished artists he invited to visit the school, for the installations and happenings he initiated, for the vibrancy of the community under his leadership, and for his curricular innovations, encouraging broader academic study by art students. The Hartford Art School recently recognized his contributions by endowing the Bernard Hanson Scholarship for promising artists with financial need.

Hanson was a noted New England art critic, contributing for over two decades to the West Hartford News, the Hartford Courant (where he received an honorable mention in a national art criticism competition sponsored by Art/World Magazine), and the Middletown Press. His columns were noteworthy for their ability to bring serious erudition to bear in commentary accessible to ordinary readers.

After retiring from the University of Hartford, Hanson volunteered in Literacy Volunteers of America and as a teacher’s aide in Miss DeNuzzo’s second-grade class at the East Rock School in New Haven. He derived as much joy from contributing in these contexts as he did from his academic career.

Hanson was preceded in death by his wife and fellow art historian, Anne Coffin Hanson. He is survived by his daughter, Bridget, his stepchildren Robert, James, and Blaine Garson, his nephew Stephen, and their families, as well as his beloved dog, Sheldon.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Bernard Hanson Endowed Scholarship at the University of Hartford or the SPCA of Connecticut.