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Klabunde's
"Shadows and Ceremonies"
By: Ed
McCormack February / March 2002
Published by Gallery & Studio When
European artists first discovered African masks and sculpture at the beginning
of the twentieth century, they were primarily attracted to heir formal
qualities, which along with the structural innovations of Cezanne, served as one
of the primary catapults for the launching of Cubism. Picasso, particularly, saw
African tribal art as a tool with which to wrench himself free from his roots in
classical representation. His struggle culminated in 1907 with the epoch-making
large canvas "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," one of the pivotal
masterpieces of modernism. But
while African art has yielded a wealth of formal innovation, Western artists
have generally ignored its equally rich spiritual content, as well as the
humanity of its creators. By the very nature of their enterprise, collectors and
curators, too, have taken African artifacts out of the context, entombing them
behind glass in display cases and museum vatrines, when their beauty and meaning
can only be fully appreciated in the vital kinetic motion of the ceremonial
dances for which they were created. All
of which brings us to "Shadows and Ceremonies," a new body of work by
the contemporary American painter and printmaker Charles S. Klabunde, inspired
by the art and peoples of Africa and Papua, New Guinea, which can be viewed by
appointment at Beyond the Looking Glass Gallery, 33 Bridge Street, P.O. Box 69,
Frenchtown, New Jersey, 08825 (telephone: 908-996-6464 or 212-777-9162). Klabunde,
whose work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of
Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C., and numerous other
important public and private collections here and abroad, tends to work in
series. Most of his suites of etchings and series of paintings spring from a
philosophic or moral principle that he feels compelled to explore. This can come
from anywhere. Previous bodies of work have evolved from diverse sources,
ranging from Carl Jung's interpretations of the Tibetan Book of the dead, to
Martin Buber's writings on The Seven Deadly Sins, to Albert Camus' ideas about
revolution, to a half coherent plea muttered in pain by a homeless man on the
subway: "Hold back the night!" This last poetic phrase struck Klabunde
as a poignant expression of the human spirit's constant struggle against the
engulfing darkness, and lead to a powerful series of paintings of that title. The
idea for "Shadows and Ceremonies" began to germinate when Klabunde
found himself deeply moved by a book on African art and life that he encountered
by chance. When, equally serendipitously, a neighbor began to import are from
Africa and New Guinea a short time later, the artist became a voracious
collector. Soon an entire wall and a good-sized area of floor space in his
studio in Frenchtown, New Jersey, was covered with colorful masks and carved
figures. Working among them, steeped in their strong emanations, aided by
photographs of tribal dancers, he began to make the large, meticulously detailed
pencil drawings that precede his paintings. While many artists employ drawings
either as preliminary studies for paintings or separate statements, Klabunde's
are both. While serving to guide the compositions of his large oils on canvas,
they are also finished statements in their own right. Like the paintings, the
drawings take as their subjects either the graceful bodies of masked dancers
captured in the throes of strenuous movement or the expressive faces behind the
masks, decked out in tribal regalia and confronting the viewer in dignified
repose. Of the latter portraits, Klabunde says, "It's very important to me
to show these people as individual human beings with souls, rather than treating
them the way Africans are usually depicted in our culture: not much differently
than those faceless extras who get tossed to the crocodiles in the old Tarzan
movies!" In
the paintings, particularly, the individual character of each portrait subject
comes across powerfully, asserting itself through the tribal camouflage of
facial paint, intricate beadwork, and elaborate ceremonial jewelry. Much like
the plumage of endangered avian species, these exotic adornments call attention
to the innate beauty of these indigenous people and remind us of all that we
lose when their cultures are usurped by the questionable "progress" of
the modern world or wiped out by disease or tribal warfare. In
Klabunde's paintings of masked dancers, as in his tribal portraits, each
composition depicts a single figure and conveys its singular presence with a
centralized power that can only be compared to certain canvases by Francis
Bacon. Granted, Klabunde himself might balk at this comparison to a painter
whose often grotesque subject matter and looser, more impetuous form of
figuration he might think antithetical to his own humanist goals and methodical
working methods. Nonetheless, the two artists share an ability to create the
sense of an encounter with a palpable human presence placed in a frontal pose at
the center of the composition, invariably against dark backgrounds that cast the
figures in start relief. While Bacon assaults the viewer with the visceral jolt
of seeing the human image flayed like a side of beef, Klabunde confronts us with
the culture shock of a spiritual tradition far different from our own. This is
especially pronounced in Klabunde's powerful painting of a woman with a
trance-like countenance gripping by its legs a rooster apparently sacrificed in
a religious ritual, as well as in another canvas depicting a young boy with
another dead fowl draped limply as a turban over his head. While such
images may be somewhat disturbing to a "civilized" modern sensibility,
they accurately reflect the spiritual content that most mainstream Western
artists who ransack African culture for its formal riches choose to ignore. 
"Mambilia
Mask Dancer" Cameroon,
Africa Klabunde's
paintings of masked dancers may be less provocative to some than the previous
two pictures involving animal sacrifice, yet they still convey a host of
meanings equally foreign to our way of life. In the tribal cultures of both
Africa and New Guinea, masks are often worn to communicate with ancestral
spirits. The dancer is believed to be transfigured by the mask, becoming the
bearer of supernatural spiritual powers. Through their proud, stylized postures
Klabunde's tautly muscled figures manage to convey the awesome responsibility of
such transfiguration. Although these figures are considerably more realistic
than those in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," their anatomy appears to
meld more naturally with the outlandishly exaggerated human and animal masks
that they wear. For while Picasso's ladies pose as though for an old fashioned
bordello portrait, Klabunde's dancers flow with the fluid movements of their
rituals, becoming one with their masks. Charles S. Klabunde, the recipient of a
Guggenheim Fellowship and the creator of a suite of hand etched illustrations
for a deluxe edition of Samuel Becket's "The Lost Ones" that the
author praised as "terrifying," has stated that "Shadows and
Ceremonies" is intended to preserve aspects of a culture that is rapidly
vanishing. In the process, he has created a series that, like all of his work,
transcends its specific subject to make a universal human statement.
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