Karl Benjamin and the Evolution of Abstraction 1950-1980 [antikvár]

FILL UPTHE SPACE AND DON'T MESS AROUND By Suzanne Muchnic Karl Benjamin makes art by the rules, his rules, but he can't quite account for the intuitive insight that creeps into his paintings. Or for the magical relationships that are sparked by exactly the right colors and shapes. To this day—more than 60 years after he embarked on a journey that would make him a master of geometric abstraction—he squints at a deftly composed early work and remarks, "I don't know how I did that. I had no background." Shifting his gaze to a dazzling grid of flickering triangles made 20 years later, he attributes the painting's allure to restless luck. "It started as four quadrants, all the same," he says. "But that got boring, so I cut them in half. It's fun to do things you didn't intend to do, but something comes up."i So many visual wonders and contemplative delights have "come up" in Benjamin's studio in Claremont, California, that the evolution of his work can be baffling. And he has bent the rules so many ways that any attempt to analyze his art in terms of a linear progression is destined to fail. But the artist, who is essentially self-taught, is acutely aware that his life in art began with two emphatically stated rules; "fill up the space with pretty colors and don't mess around."2 That's what he told his sixth-grade students in 1949, when he got stuck with the unwelcome challenge of adding art to their curriculum. The approach, which allowed for lots of variation and ingenuity, worked so well for the kids that Benjamin tried it too, eventually launching himself into a boundless world of exploration and discovery. "I was bumping my students up and they were bumping me up," he recalls. "But I didn't totally realize it until about three years ago. I'm 85. A native of Chicago and a veteran of the US Navy, Benjamin emerged from the University of Redlands in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, history and philosophy. He was an aspiring writer, but also a family man who needed a job. The only one available was a teaching position at an elementary school in Bloomington, a hardscrabble community in San ^ •I.'' Bernardino County where most of the students lived in trailers and had little i. access to books. I