Leonard Baskin: The Artist as Counter-Decadent

Leonard Baskin: The Artist as Counter-DecadentAuthor(s): Robert SpenceSource: Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Winter, 1962-1963), pp. 88-91Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/774669 .

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Robert Spence

LEONARD BASKIN

The Artist as Counter-Decadent

Among the talented young American artists who estab- lished reputations in the 1950's, Leonard Baskin has attained a position in the front rank. Today he stands in the full maturity of his powers as a sculptor and graphic artist, an in- tensely dedicated and tough-minded man who strives earnestly to see life steadily and see it whole, and who labors to distill from this perception essential truths which may be transmuted into the figurative idiom of art.

Because his prolific production continues without stop into middle life, one may perhaps be excused for deferring until a later day a full-scale qualitative assessment of his oeuvre. Probably most students of contemporary art will agree that his work to date-particularly his sculpture in wood and bronze and his prints in woodcut and wood-engraving-con- stitutes a considerable achievement. It may be more profitable here, as a first step to further study, to record some of the formative factors of his career, to assay his basic emotional temper, and to note certain dominant preconceptions which contribute substantially to the rationale of his work. Such an exposition should throw light on the intentions of his art while suggesting some of the yardsticks with which to measure his performance.

Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on August 15, 1922, the son of a transplanted Brooklyn rabbi.1 When he was seven his father returned to New York, and Leonard was put to school at Yeshiva, that rigorously orthodox institution where his youthful years were given to an exacting regimen which included intensive study of the Talmud. His creative impulses were not stifled, however, and while still a boy he vowed to become a sculptor. As a first major step toward this end he served an apprenticeship (1937-39) in the New York studio of Maurice Glickman, performing with such skill and promise that at the age of eighteen he won honorable mention for the Prix de Rome.

Because his family was moderately well-to-do, he escaped the worst privations of the Great Depression; but merely living through those bleak years was sufficient to stimulate his humanitarian sympathies. He was outraged by social injustice of every kind, not the least by that resulting from the onsweep

Mr. Spence is a member of the Henry Clay Frick fine arts faculty at the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh. He did his doctoral work at Wisconsin, specializing in the history of printmaking under James Watrous. He is presently preparing a book on the prints of Misch Kohn.

Biographical data have been graciously supplied by the artist.

Fig. 1. Baskin, Self-Portrait as a Priest, 1952, 251/2" X 12". Courtesy Boris Mirski Gallery, Boston.

of Fascism. His political-social outlook as he approached ma- jority may be described as left-of-center, impatiently activist, and militantly meliorist. In maturity, all things considered, he has not much retreated from this position, though he is of course more sophisticated, less certain that he has all the answers. It is true, however, that he tends now to depreciate his early social consciousness, and that he endeavors to avoid direct personal involvement in such matters as party politics, sectarian religion, and particular social crusades.

When World War II came he enlisted in the Navy. A tenacious effort to qualify as a flyer ended unhappily when he washed out after nearly a hundred solo hours, and for much of the war he served inconspicuously as a gunner in the Mer-

ART JOURNAL XXII 2 88



chant Marine. His tours of duty took him to various parts of the United States and, ultimately, around the world; but he saw no action. Afterwards, like many another ve eran, he married (Esther Tane, in 1946) and went to college Inder the G.I. Bill. His pursuit of the bachelor's degree pro, ed to be

peripatetic if not desultory, with sojourns at New 5 ork Uni-

versity, the Yale School of Fine Arts, and the New 5 :hool for Social Research. The degree was conferred by the N( w School in 1949.

The following year he went to Europe for study and travel, principally in France and Italy. In Paris in 1950 he studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere; in Florence in 1951 he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti; and every- where he ingested art objects with intelligent voracity. Upon returning to this country he settled in Massachusetts, assuming teaching duties first at the Worcester Museum (1952-53) and then at Smith College (since 1953). He is now an associate

professor at Smith, giving courses in printmaking and sculpture.2

Although he dislikes the demands upon his time and

energies which teaching exacts, he has been a successful teacher. Indeed, though he would question the statement, one could say with some justification that he is at heart essentially a pedagogue. He has a compulsion to communicate, to reach an audience. Whether or not by coincidence, he has tended in his work to employ a visual language which one may suppose to be reasonably intelligible to the layman-that is to say, the

representational image, usually the human figure, or the ani- mal. This predilection was confirmed in him by certain ex-

periences in Europe, particularly his observations of the humanist art of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.3 But it was present in his work from the beginning, for his aesthetic roots lie principally in Expressionism, with its representational base and tendentious purpose. His earliest hero, it is pertinent to notice, was Ernst Barlach.4

Probably this desire to communicate with a large audience accounts in part for the fact that he supplements his sculpture with printmaking rather than painting. His own statement of artistic purpose seems to indicate as much:

Artists have ever turned to the print for the expression of specific ideas, impelled by an immediacy of purpose that often is alien to the slower more contemplative medium of painting. Or to give wider circulation to an attitude, a feeling, a position that the in- escapable singleness of a painting is incapable of. Reactions to the disasters of war were etched by Goya, the miseries of war engraved by Callot and Rouault, the cycle of war on wood by Kaithe Kollwitz, the lie of war by Picasso, and the lunatic brutality of war by Otto Dix. The roster of artists who thus employed the print for social and programmatic ends is formidable. These are the moralists and the political partisans. I ally myself with this tradition, seeking for guidance in the print medium both learned and unlearned, ever

2 For a colorful account of Baskin in his habit, as he lives today, see Brian O'Doherty, "Leonard Baskin," Art in America, L, 67-72 (Sum- mer, 1962).

3Arts, XXXI, 66 (February, 1957). 4Printing and Graphic Arts, VII, 46 (June, 1959). Baskin freely

acknowledges sources of inspiration. Among the many artists whose works have deeply impressed him he cites Tino da Camaino, Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Rodin, Barlach, Marcks, Manzu, and Lachaise in sculpture; Griinewald, Velasquez, Manet, and Degas in painting; and Diirer, Seghers, Rembrandt, Goya, Blake, Daumier, Redon, Kollwitz, and Orozco in graphics.

Fig. 2. Baskin, Man of Peace, Mirski Gallery, Boston.

1952, 62" X 31". Courtesy Boris

aware of its long popular tradition, seeing in its quintessential black and whiteness, the savagery of Goya, the melancholy of Diirer and the gentleness of Rembrandt.5

Savagery, melancholy, gentleness: singly or in combination they are all there, in the man as in his art. His end, then, is social, as in fact it has always been. But only in a broadly human and humanitarian way is it programmatic. It is moral, but only in an oblique way is it political.

The essence of his teaching is simple enough: it is that

5Art News, LIV, 31 (May, 1955).

89 Spence: Leonard Baskin



Fig. 3. Baskin, Laureate Standing, 1957, cherry wood, ht. 36". Collection Dr. and Mrs. Abraham Melamed, Milwaukee.

life, full of travail and indissolubly bound up with death,6 is basically an affirmative thing, demanding of all men the best that is in them, and offering in return a full measure of intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic satisfaction. The rewards

6Most writers on Baskin to date have made much (perhaps over- much?) of his interest in death. Cf. Selden Rodman, "Leonard Baskin: Poet of Death," The Insiders (Baton Rouge, 1960), pp. 91-96.

are real and considerable, but most men, because of circum- stance or human frailty, do not attain them. Sometimes the age itself seems to militate against success-never more so, indeed, than today.

More and more are we rendered effective in fewer and fewer areas. The world moans and laments and the corral is subdivided further. Wise men can scarce speak to one another so alien are the dialects of specialization. To burst the bounded fen, to be a master jack, to enrich oneself and one's work by multi-faceted activity; to do this is to spread oneself thick and is to invite sanity.7

Perhaps not every man can be a "master jack" in this Renais- sance or Enlightened sense; but all men, he thinks, can take sustenance from the wisdom of the past, can strive for that

variety of interest and activity, that balanced vision, self-dis-

cipline, and intelligent deportment which make for "sanity." To invite sanity at a time when sickness of one kind or

another seems to threaten human existence-that is the goal. How to achieve it is, of course, the problem. There are no

easy prescriptions and no shortcuts, not even through art, where today one frequently is confronted by the extravagant claims and "therapeutic posturings" of the purveyors of Good

Design: At an unending series of conferences and symposiums [he observed acidly in 19591 one encounters sophisticated merchandising mis- taken for a philosophy of life. A philosophy, further, that deems itself a panacea for universal ills. One need only to good design the evil out of the universe. This nonsense must serve as a palliative for a quotidian existence devoted to selling, for this glistening fa- cade of "creativity," "ideas" and "good design" is but a rood for affixing net sales and profits. Better an ill designed bit of truth than the prettiest concoction of corruption. Sad it is that such astonish- ing graphic initiative serves so shoddy an end. One is urged on to counter this usurpation, to restore to Ruskin and to Morris what is rightfully theirs, and to rout the grandiloquent salesmen.8

In his speech no less than in his art Baskin can be caustic, but he is so partly because he regards life with high seriousness and has no patience with anyone who would suggest that there are easy solutions to the problems confronting man in the mid- twentieth century. His patience is particularly thin where artists are concerned, and in both prints and sculpture he assails those members of the guild9 who abdicate their truth-telling responsibilities, compromise their integrity, or sell out to success. He is severe with them not only because he holds the call- ing of the artist sacred, but because he believes that in these times of uncertainty, of political and social flux, of eroding moral values, the responsible artist can play a significant role in fostering the sanity so essential to life in the atomic age.

Precisely what the artist may do to promote this goal Baskin does not, of course, attempt to spell out. He is less assertive than either Ruskin or Morris about the specific mode in which the human condition can be bettered. In harmony with the ethical heritage of the New England where he now resides, he would, however, urge an inward purification of the individual heart as a desirable antecedent to any attempt

7 Art in America, XLVII, 31 (Winter, 1959). 8 Ibid. 9

Generically, although Man of Peace (Fig. 2) may be a reference to Picasso.

ART JOURNAL XXII 2 90



at outward, legislative, coercive reform. He would urge that the implications of good design are moral no less than aesthetic, and that beauty is to some extent the by-product of right-living. He would reaffirm the dictum of high thinking and plain living.

These are no small ideals, and they are difficult to trans- late into the visual arts. That his reach sometimes exceeds his grasp Baskin would admit, but he believes that there is virtue in reaching. He regrets that so many of his fellow artists seem content to be decorators or, worse, posturers, palming off as profundity what is merely esoteric subjectivism or downright obscurity. L'art pour I'art in whatever form is, all things considered, a sop to the intellectually indolent and a snare to the ethically irresponsible. Accepting the traditional conception of art as a fusion of the aesthetic and utilitarian, he insists that the main stream coursing through the history of art is fundamentally one of didactic intent. The wise and truly gifted artist, therefore, will in his most substantial efforts perform such instructional functions as are consonant with his personal idiom and view of life, teaching by admonition and example, and modulating as occasion demands the relative proportions of the pleasurable and the useful.

In Baskin's opinion, the ultimate purpose of the artist, when all is said and done, is to impel man to levy in good faith and good sense upon his own resources, which are considerable. He endeavors unceasingly in his own work to live up to this lofty ideal. For he is one of the great moralists of contemporary art, a humanist who believes that the eternal verities are valid still, a counter-decadent who clings to the conviction that man remains at least potentially the master of his fate.

PURPOSES OF CAA

(Continued from page 71)

at outward, legislative, coercive reform. He would urge that the implications of good design are moral no less than aesthetic, and that beauty is to some extent the by-product of right-living. He would reaffirm the dictum of high thinking and plain living.

These are no small ideals, and they are difficult to trans- late into the visual arts. That his reach sometimes exceeds his grasp Baskin would admit, but he believes that there is virtue in reaching. He regrets that so many of his fellow artists seem content to be decorators or, worse, posturers, palming off as profundity what is merely esoteric subjectivism or downright obscurity. L'art pour I'art in whatever form is, all things considered, a sop to the intellectually indolent and a snare to the ethically irresponsible. Accepting the traditional conception of art as a fusion of the aesthetic and utilitarian, he insists that the main stream coursing through the history of art is fundamentally one of didactic intent. The wise and truly gifted artist, therefore, will in his most substantial efforts perform such instructional functions as are consonant with his personal idiom and view of life, teaching by admonition and example, and modulating as occasion demands the relative proportions of the pleasurable and the useful.

In Baskin's opinion, the ultimate purpose of the artist, when all is said and done, is to impel man to levy in good faith and good sense upon his own resources, which are considerable. He endeavors unceasingly in his own work to live up to this lofty ideal. For he is one of the great moralists of contemporary art, a humanist who believes that the eternal verities are valid still, a counter-decadent who clings to the conviction that man remains at least potentially the master of his fate.

PURPOSES OF CAA

(Continued from page 71)

Fig. 4. Baskin, Hydrogen Man, 1954, 711/2" X 41". Courtesy Boris Mirski Gallery, Boston. Fig. 4. Baskin, Hydrogen Man, 1954, 711/2" X 41". Courtesy Boris Mirski Gallery, Boston.

To encourage qualified students to enter the arts as a profession and to this end to seek ways and means of establishing scholarships, fellowships and awards for academic achievement or creative ability and promise. To seek support from foundations, philanthropic organizations or individuals for specific programs or activities of merit in the arts. In proper instances, to administer moneys contributed to the Association in order to finance pertinent conferences, meetings, symposia, surveys, studies, exhibitions, and similar activities. To assist members of the profession and institutions in locating and filling positions on the staffs of colleges, universities, art schools, museums, foundations, govern- ment agencies or commissions, and other organizations engaged in art activities or programs consonant with the purposes of the Association.

To encourage qualified students to enter the arts as a profession and to this end to seek ways and means of establishing scholarships, fellowships and awards for academic achievement or creative ability and promise. To seek support from foundations, philanthropic organizations or individuals for specific programs or activities of merit in the arts. In proper instances, to administer moneys contributed to the Association in order to finance pertinent conferences, meetings, symposia, surveys, studies, exhibitions, and similar activities. To assist members of the profession and institutions in locating and filling positions on the staffs of colleges, universities, art schools, museums, foundations, govern- ment agencies or commissions, and other organizations engaged in art activities or programs consonant with the purposes of the Association.

91 Spence: Leonard Baskin 91 Spence: Leonard Baskin



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Leonard Baskin: The Artist as Counter-Decadent