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The
Metaphysical Humanism of Charles S. Klabunde
By: Ed
McCormack December 2001 /
January 2002
Published by Gallery & Studio Art
that transcends the gamesmanship of the art historical view to address the
larger and more terrible history of mankind achieves its immediacy and relevance
by mirroring current events, even as it aspires to an enduring universality.
Certainly this is true in the case of Charles S. Klabunde, a fiercely
independent spirit whose work suddenly seems more urgent than ever in the light
of the horrendous terror attacks of September 11. Klabunde,
a widely exhibited artist whose etchings are in the collections of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of
Art, and numerous other prestigious public and private collections the world
over, belongs to that small, often maligned fraternity of the humanist artists
who, in the words of the critic and poet Selden Rodman, "feel drawn to
values outside themselves strongly enough to examine them in their work." Rodman
himself was broadly maligned by the avant garde establishment in 1960, when he
published his controversial book, "The Insiders," an impassioned
argument for art that calls attention to "the unspeakable degradation of
the individual" and "rejects the purists' authoritarian reliance upon
the direction and umpiring of an aesthetic elite..." These
were fighting words in a period when the art world, particularly in New York,
was still drunk on the triumph of Abstract Expressionism and eager to embrace
every mini-movement that followed feebly in its wake. Just a decade later,
however, the taboo in the art world against impassioned subject matter had
relaxed sufficiently for Charles S. Klabunde to be awarded the Guggenheim
Fellowship for a series of etchings and engravings addressing what he calls
"the dark world of the existential nihilism of the twentieth century." 
"The
Mirrored Images" Klabunde
began "Cycles of Sangsaric Phenomena (The Tibetan Book of the Dead),"
in his Greenwich Village studio in 1967. From this series of prints, inspired by
Carl Jung's interpretation of Tibetan Book of the Dead, which puts into context
the theory that all human thought, including the world's great religions, are
mere illusions, Klabunde moved on to a suite on "The Seven Deadly
Sins." Although the concept is of Medieval origin, Klabunde's etchings are
based on twentieth century Jewish theologian Martin Buber's thesis that
"the inherent reality of evil lies at the threshold of our consciousness
and that this is the origin of the human dilemma." Sixteen
years later, in collaboration with the New Overlook press, Klabunde created
etchings for a deluxe edition of Samuel Beckett's "The Lost Ones" --
harrowingly beautiful images of human isolation in a desolate landscape of
lovelessness -- that the great Irish author and playwright himself praised as
"terrifying." The
final leg of what Klabunde refers to as his "solo journey into the darkest
recesses of the human soul" is the series entitled "Studies of the
Revolutionary Mind," which can be viewed by appointment at Beyond the
Looking Glass Gallery, 33 Bridge Street, P.O. Box 69, Frenchtown, NJ 08825
(telephone: 201-996-6464 or 212-777-9162). Inspired by the writings of Albert
Camus, this Blakean enterprise, presented in an elegant European box book format
bound in burgundy colored Italian linen and Morrocan leather, and includes the
artist's own text, focusing on "the incomprehensible horror of genocide in
the twentieth century." An
eloquent writer as well as a superb draftsman, Klabunde begins the introduction
to his text with the observation, "The faces of mass murderers show no
trace of the madness that lies within." And this statement proves
chillingly accurate when one recalls the photographs of the terrorists who
destroyed the Twin Towers and killed so many innocent citizens that appeared in
the mass media shortly after September 11th. With their innocuous expressions
and casual Western style sports clothes, their faces did not differ markedly
from those of their victims, in the poignant posters that papered the walls and
lamp posts of the grieving, wounded city in the wake of that unthinkable
tragedy. It
is the inner demons of such terrorists, however, rather than their deceptive
social masks, that Charles S. Klabunde shows us so vividly in his powerful
etchings, which may someday take their place beside Goya's greatest works in the
same medium, such as "Los Caprichos" and "The Disasters of
War," as enduring documents of mankind's folly and savagery. As
a contemporary artist, however, Klabunde has been liberated by his awareness of
abstract aesthetics from the specific, satirical details to which even the most
imaginative artists of Goya's time were, by and large, beholden. Thus his
figures, like the "Nazi Drawings" of the Maurice Lasansky, achieve a
monstrousness that is considerably more symbolic and visionary than those of his
illustrious predecessors. With the bulbous features and gaping mouths of
gargoyles, Klabunde's embodiments of evil float weightlessly in empty white
space. Resembling
weird hybrids of cherubs and dybbuks, they twist in mid-air like wisps of smoke
from the ovens of Auschwitz or the ruins of ground Zero, contorting their lumpy
limbs and converging as though seeking some unspeakable form of sexual congress
by which to impregnate the world with further evil. Indeed, the etching entitled
"The Communal Rage" depicts several grotesque figures entwined in an
almost orgiastic manner. According to the artist's text their congress
"blends the evil which fortifies the great lies that justify our hate and
cruelty for others." If
"The Communal Rage" suggests intercourse, another etching entitled
"Ideology of Madness" suggests a demonic birth, with gnomish creatures
tumbling from a gaping womb-like opening in the underbelly of a protoplasmic
mass of writhing limbs and grimacing faces. Here, the accompanying text
describes the "transformation of all truths into the great lie, the true
fanatical ideology of madness" which begets "the need to annihilate
all opposition to the great cause." Although
Klabunde's finely-stippled figures resemble those in the early figurative
etchings of Paul Klee, the manner in which they flare out against the white
space of the paper is more akin to the compositional freedom of more
contemporary metaphysical humanists as Rico Lebrun and Jacob Landau. Like the
latter artist, particularly, Klabundes' refusal to anchor his figures lends them
a supernatural quality that makes their demonic aspects all the more harrowing. Perhaps
the level of passion and outrage in the etchings of Charles S. Klabunde can
finally be compared to the work of the French writer, actor, and draftsman
Antonin Artaud. Unlike Artaud, however, Klabunde is not a madman, nor is he a
misanthrope. Rather, he is an immensely gifted and deeply concerned citizen
struggling to make sense of the world's random evil and pointless violence.
Indeed, it is the sense of a supremely civilized intellect driven tp the edge of
reason by that which defies reason that imbues his work with undeniable power.
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