Franz Kline, New York
Seated amid the bohemian effects of his 14th Street studio, Franz Kline (1910-1962) is pictured as the paradigm of the American artist-tough-minded, independent, and solitary. Frank must have sensed a kindred sensibility at work in Kline, whose speeding off-kilter brushstrokes and gritty black-and-white surfaces find a visual analogue in Frank's photographs. He has set Kline against an unstretched canvas tacked to the wall, cleverly embedding the persona of the artist in the work itself. In its unblinking directness, Frank's portrait of Kline embodies the postwar aesthetic credo that a work of art should truthfully record the psychological and phenomenological experience of its creation.
Artwork Details
- Title: Franz Kline, New York
- Artist: Robert Frank (American (born Switzerland), Zurich 1924–2019 Inverness, Nova Scotia)
- Date: 1959
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 33.5 x 22.3 cm. (13 3/16 x 8 3/4 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1995
- Object Number: 1995.139
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2005 Robert Frank
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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