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Moving
From the Darkness to the Light
By: Beth E. Fand
July 6, 2003
Published by The Trenton Times
The woman
stood in Charles Klabunde's art gallery, transfixed by his drawing of a tiger
ascending to heaven.
The work
reminded her of the death of her dog, she told the artist, and she wanted it -
as long as her husband agreed.
He
didn't.
"The
husband comes in and says `It reminds me of death,' and he runs out,"
Klabunde remembers. "He came back several times, but he was really
frightened of it."
The
reaction didn't bother Klabunde a bit.
The
artist's work - which includes etchings, drawings and paintings - "should
scare (people)," he says, "because it has a lot of the undertone of
the rawness of ourselves, and we are a dangerous species."
That kind
of honesty is what Klabunde's work is all about.
In it,
the noted Frenchtown artist, a philosophy buff who describes himself as an
existential realist, strives to emphasize truths about the human condition -
from the monstrous capacity of a society to follow a man like Hitler to the
divine grace of a dancer's body.
"I
take life very seriously," says Klabunde, 67. "People should think
about things. Why shouldn't they be jarred out of their complacency? I want to
reach in and awaken people so they feel alive."
-- -- --
The artist has had some major opportunities to pursue that goal.
He's sold
pieces to the Metropolitan and Philadelphia museums of art, the National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago and Prince Charles and
Lady Diana, among others.
The
winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, he exhibited a retrospective of his
work, spanning the years between the 1960s and today, at his Frenchtown gallery
in November.
It's a
collection that looks as if several different artists might have created it.
A series
of engravings titled "Studies of the Revolutionary
Mind," for
instance, features cavorting cartoonish characters in black and white,
intricately shaded with tiny black dots.
Much more
realistic-looking, Klabunde's recent paintings and drawings are of male and
female nudes done in long, lean, flowing lines and sometimes bold colors.
Divided into three groups, they touch on physical beauty, Christian themes and
the traditions of a dwindling African tribe.
The shift
in Klabunde's style and subject matter was spurred not just by artistic choices,
he says, but by a change in attitude that evolved over time.
When he
was younger, Klabunde says, his work reflected his biggest concern: the most
upsetting aspects of being human.
In
"Studies of the Revolutionary Mind," for instance, Klabunde examined
the "genocide of the 20th century, the concept of the mass liquidation of
human beings."
Through
the works, he explored two basic questions: "What triggers an ordinary
human to become a monster? And how do we, en masse, follow them?"
In
"The Seven Deadly Sins," the artist looked at ideas including greed,
lust and envy, and, in a 1984 group of etchings, he illustrated the story of
Samuel Beckett's "The Lost Ones."
It's the
tale, he says, of "a chamber where you can't escape from yourself. There
are no human relationships at all; everyone is trying to escape, but no one is
helping each other escape. There's the myth of a way out, but no one will
achieve it."
When he
finished "The Lost Ones," though, Klabunde found he was ready to do
"more affirmative" art that celebrated humanity as "a wonderful
species."
He was
done, he says, searching for evidence of meaning amid the madness of life; his
art had taught him that beauty could spring from nothingness.
"When
I met Beckett, he was in despair, tired, and his plays were getting more
minimal," Klabunde recalls. "I did not want to go that way. There's
only so far down into yourself you can go. Maybe it's because I had a couple of
young children, and I thought their lives should be built on something besides
the nihilism of the 20th century."
His
recent series of nudes, "Burned By the Fire of Our
Dreams," reflects
that change of heart.
In it,
Klabunde presents "this magnificence that the camera can't catch - a
transcendency, a magic."
Unlike
the use of flawless models in advertisements - a trend that "only makes us
feel we were left out" - Klabunde's nudes show "a perfection that will
not last," he says, "and that makes us moved."
The works
also give viewers a glimpse of a beauty beyond the physical, the artist says.
"People
will (look at the images and) say `Yeah, I feel that way inside,' "
Klabunde says, "because there's a sense of grace there."
-- -- --
Klabunde was a child when he began expressing his ideas with a pencil and a
sketchpad.
"I
was born to be an artist," he says. "I have a natural talent."
The fact
that he pursued that ability professionally is a bit more surprising.
A
dyslexic student from a lower-middle-class background, Klabunde says his
parents' biggest aspiration for him was that he become house painter. It never
occurred to anyone, he says, that he would paint artistically.
That all
changed one summer when Klabunde worked as a surveyor and met a fellow employee
his own age who kept pushing him to go to college. He finally gave in, attending
the University of Nebraska in Omaha, where he earned a bachelor's degree in fine
arts.
He went
on to graduate school at the University of Iowa, where Mauricio Lasansky, a
professor and printmaker, became his mentor and encouraged him to build a career
as an etcher.
He did
just that, heading to New York City after graduation and opening a print studio
there in 1967.
"I
started to make a living right away," he recalls. "I had 30 galleries
eventually carrying my work. And I got into museums right away. The first was
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was 31."
After
teaching art at the Cooper Union, winning the Guggenheim Fellowship - he created
"The Seven Deadly Sins" with the $10,000 grant - and traveling the
world to show and sell his art, Klabunde and his wife moved, with their two
sons, to Frenchtown.
The two
later divorced and their sons grew up and moved away, but Klabunde has remained
in the little village, working in a Bridge Street studio that overlooks the
quaint downtown district and the posh, salon-style gallery where he exhibits and
sells nothing but his own work.
He's been
there since 1990, and, since then, his work has evolved.
For one
thing, Klabunde, long known for the prints he makes from his handmade etchings,
has branched out into painting.
He did it
when the "print world started to come apart" due to the influence of
corporations that hired artists, made mass reproductions of their works and
"called them collectibles," Klabunde says. "It took the wind out
of the sails of original printmakers, because you can't compete with that."
The
difficulty, he says, is that one handmade etching can take an artist several
months to complete. The process involves tracing a drawing and etching the image
into a copper plate with acid. Afterwards, the plate is combined with wet ink to
make prints - or editions - of the work.
"When
you first do an etching, it drives you crazy," Klabunde says. "It's
not for lighthearted people who don't want to work hard."
But the
process is worthwhile, Klabunde says, because artists can offer something in
their etchings that is missing from mass-produced prints: enhancements, such as
added background shading, that weren't in the original works.
-- -- --
While Klabunde hasn't given up on etchings, he says he's glad he was pushed to
start painting, a pursuit that had always tempted him anyway.
"Aesthetically,"
he says, "I wanted to grow."
Klabunde
admits the move has made him unusual, though, since "only a handful of
artists do both etchings and paintings."
The
differences in the two forms explain a lot about why Klabunde's style varies so
much from work to work.
For
instance, one etching, "San Andreas Annunzio," focuses on a tall,
complex building surrounded by lots of smaller buildings. Done in muted shades
of teal, the work is so crammed with detail that it almost feels cluttered.
On the
other hand, the paintings in the "Burned by the Fire" series feature
large, distinct, less complicated figures that stand out against dark
backgrounds of solid or near-solid color.
Klabunde
approaches the two types of pieces differently, he says, because etchings are
meant to be viewed up close, while paintings are best considered from farther
away.
"Etchings
are very private," he says. "Paintings are very public."
So far,
Klabunde has been able to attract plenty of customers with both of those styles.
Hailing
from New York, Philadelphia, Bucks County in Pennsylvania and Hunterdon County
in New Jersey, Klabunde's clients - who include French President Francois
Mitterand - pay from $600 to $27,000 for his works.
"I
was never recognized as a great artist, so I never had that pressure, but I have
always made enough money so I didn't have to compromise myself," Klabunde
says. "I have what I really want: I'm free to paint, draw and make
etchings."
It's an
ideal situation that Klabunde often urges his fans to emulate by pursuing their
own dreams.
"If
you have talent, you'd better maximize it instead of making money, because
otherwise it is a waste," he says. "How sad it would be. It leaves you
with nothing."
Charles
S. Klabunde's work can be seen at Beyond The Looking Glass Fine Art Gallery, 33
Bridge St., Frenchtown. The artist can be reached at (908) 996-6464 or at
www.klabundeartist.com.
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