Ted Halkin (1924-2020) is one of
Four Chicago Artists at the Art Institute of Chicago, held in dialogue with the Christina Ramberg retrospective I traveled there to see and will feature in a separate post.
As my professor, Halkin was inventive, nurturing, incisive, and fecund, attributes that flourish in his works on view in two Chicago venues. The works on paper images are from the Art Institute show meticulously curated by Mark Pascale.
Halkin studied at SAIC on the GI bill and traveled to Europe.I believe he studied at Leger's studio, which Debra Bricker Balken tells us in her fulsome timeline for NYU's recent Americans in Paris show was an American hangout (Leger had spent time in the US.)
The Smart Museum website quotes Halkin saying, "“Any abstract painter—Rauschenberg—anyone working in New York, is producing work, with rare exception, paintings, which tend to be open, and here they tend to be closed. So what are these Chicago virtues that are being exhibited? I think they’re really middle-class virtues: hard work, doing a good job and finishing it, conscientiousness.”[1]". Maybe that's how it felt? But may have to do with time and quiet.
The second venue for Halkin's work is
Rediscovered Works, 1964-69 in Corbett vs. Dempsey's North Gallery. Here, there is a tightly knit collection of drawings, paintings, and one sculpture. How I wish there were a catalog for both these shows! Hence this post.
From the gallery's website, linked above: "Emerging in the postwar period as one of the original members of the so-called Monster Roster, alongside Leon Golub, Dominick Di Meo, George Cohen, and Evelyn Statsinger, Halkin exhibited with Alan Frumkin Gallery in New York and Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago. In the mid-1960s, Halkin's work took a rather abrupt turn. The forms continued to be complex, biomorphic, and highly abstract, but the colors and overall composition shifted dramatically, moving into a bright, saturated palette and an open-ended, spatially labyrinthine compositional concept quite different from the earlier scenarios.
"Some of these works were exhibited at the time, but a large group of them remained unshown by the time Halkin moved to a new house in Evanston in 1970. There the paintings were rolled and safely stored in the basement, where they stayed until 2023, when, in preparation for the exhibition Four Chicago Artists: Ted Halkin, Evelyn Statsinger, Barbara Rossi, and Christina Ramberg (which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago on May 11), they were rediscovered. Brilliant and as immaculate as the day they were painted, these paintings parallel the drawings in the AIC, their formal puzzles, glancing allusions to representation, and shivering color vibrations demonstrating how Halkin's creativity was in overdrive at the time. This exhibition presents a selection of these newly uncovered paintings and several important precursor sculptures, also unearthed in the artist's studio dwelling."
"You experience a series of material stuff in the world … and you feel that you turn it this way and that, that it becomes something you can transform into meaning that belongs to what you do, rather than its source." Halkin, SAIC website.
I hope you can see the brilliant color in the details, as long-time viewers know the iPhone documentation on this blog is not enhanced. Due to time and energy it's the better of two evils, the alternative not sharing them at all. Hence links to the exhibitions for proper documentation. Consider the posts the notes of a studio painter.
Halkin guided me through the shock of Imagism, after my arrival from LA to SAIC's MFA program. The Count Paza Collection at Geffen Contemporary (at the time) and Yves Klein constituted my grasp of painting history, Matisse's Tea Party and Monet's Poplars thrown in for deep time. Imagism felt like WTF -- I had no framework for it, not even San Francisco funk, which comes closest. Halkin spoke fluently to a painting orientation and as I look at these details, his advice at the time (make many small paintings, play with the material, work the same view) come into focus.
Ted Halkin's work testifies the accomplishments of a life spent painting. How delicious to view these paintings and drawings every day. They are epic, fun, and beautiful. Halkin still teaches in his work, to never overlook daily moments and their rich, imaginative yield.
Thank you to Jackie Kazarian for directing me to the CvD exhibition.
