Exhibition: ‘Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards’ at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

Exhibition dates: 10th July – 28th November, 2021

Curated by Ian Berry in collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio, and with Jessica Eisenthal, Independent Curator

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Gauloise Blue with Red Curve
1954
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

An intimate change of pace now.

I love these playful interventions which “catch something that’s a flash, a mysterious thing, the beginning of something, a primal thing.”

Starting with the solid base of a printed postcard Kelly constructs and abstracts his collages on their surface, using shifting positions, using his vision rather than his mind. He intuitively feels what is needed, what essence is required to compliment or complicate the existing scene.

As Dr. Jessica Eisenthal insightfully observes, “The collages involve a fundamental interplay between concealment and exposure, with every card containing both a secret and its revelation, a construction and a deconstruction.”

And then there is the simplicity and beauty of his interventions. The clear seeing and feeling expressed in a few pieces of cut or torn paper, promising “a compilation of experiences, a journal of travel, creative play, and relationships.” The thickness and irregularity of the white line over Statue of Liberty (1957); the emptiness and ambiguity of the blue in Moon Over Manhattan (1964); the abstraction of a black “diamond” over Cincinnati Riverfront Stadium (1980) baseball park; and the textural beauty of three disparate bodies of water in St. Martin – Baie Rouge (2005).

Reminding me of the felt immediacy of Gerhard Richter’s overpainted photographs, Kelly’s postcards speak to the heart rather than the head. Their intimate, jewel-like size draw the viewer in to imbibe of the transformative scene, to drink in an unbounded space of creative freedom those glances that we sometimes catch – in the light of revelation – of our life dis/continuous. The fabric and structure of existence itself.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the art works in the posting. Please click on the art work for a larger version of the image.

In all his postcards, Kelly’s drive to upset perception, to create moments of uncertainty and “mystery,” is apparent. As he explained in 1991:

“As we move, looking at hundreds of different things, we see many different kinds of shapes. Roofs, walls, ceilings are all rectangles, but we don’t see them that way. In reality they’re very elusive forms. The way the view through the rungs of a chair changes when you move even the slightest bit – I want to capture some of that mystery in my work. In my paintings I’m not inventing; my ideas come from constantly investigating how things look.47

While his goal was to achieve visual ambiguity, Kelly began with images of visual certainty, from the postcard images themselves to the photographic reproductions from which he cut or tore his fragments, for example, those of celebrities, advertisements, or homoeroticism.

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Tricia Y. Paik. “Sights of His Life,” in Berry, Ian and Eisenthal, Jessica (eds.,). Elsworth Kelly: Postcards. Delmonico Books, 2021, pp. 318-319.

Over the course of more than 50 years, renowned American artist Ellsworth Kelly made approximately 400 postcard collages, some of which served as exploratory musings and others as studies for larger works in other mediums. They range from his first monochrome in 1949 through his last postcard collages of crashing ocean waves, in 2005.

Together, these works show an unbounded space of creative freedom and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced and translated the world in his art. Many postcards illustrate specific places where he lived or visited, introducing biography and illuminating details that make these pieces unique among his broader artistic production. Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards is the most extensive publication of Kelly’s lifelong practice of collaged postcards.

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1948 he moved to France, where he came into contact with a wide range of classical and modern art. He returned to New York in 1954 and two years later had his first exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organised his first retrospective in 1973. Subsequent exhibitions have been held at museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate in London, Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Jack Shear (American)
Ellsworth Kelly’s Studio
1994
Photo: Courtesy Ellsworth Kelly Studio

Installation view of the title wall of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College

Installation view of Gallery A of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College

Installation view of Gallery B of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College

American painter Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. His abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints are masterworks in the exploration of line, form, and colour. In a lesser-known part of his practice, Kelly made collaged postcards, some of which served as exploratory musings and others as preparation for larger works in other media. From 1949 to 2005, Kelly made just over 400 postcard works. They show a playful, unbounded space of creative freedom for the artist and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.

Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards will present a comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, with 150 works on view. Many postcards reveal specific places where Kelly lived or visited, such as Paris, where Kelly lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and where he often returned, or other areas in New York City – My New Studio (1970), is a picture postcard of downtown Old Chatham, New York, with a stapled arrow pointing to the second-floor windows of his new studio building.

This kind of overt biography and revealing details make the postcard collages unique among Kelly’s works. Flashes of the artist’s playfulness show through, which is less visible in his formally rigorous paintings and sculpture.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-colour catalogue featuring newly commissioned writings and never-before published images.

Text from the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery website

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
EK as Velázquez
1988

Foreword to catalogue

Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is known for paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints that are masterworks in line, form, and color. Having played a pivotal role in the development of postwar abstract art, Kelly’s inventive approach to abstraction draws on found composition and observation of the physical world. In a rarely seen aspect of his practice, Kelly made approximately four hundred postcard collages over the course of six decades. Some were exploratory musings, while others served as studies for larger works in other media or a means to revisit important concepts from years prior. Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards is the first survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, starting with his first monochrome painted on a postcard in 1949 and ending with his final collages of crashing ocean waves made in 2005. Resisting clear taxonomies of abstraction and representation, these works show an unbounded space of creative freedom and provide important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.

Many postcards illustrate specific places where the artist lived or visited, introducing biography and context that make these works unique among his broader artistic production. During his lifetime, most of these works were held privately by the artist, only occasionally making their way into institutional collections. Many were sent to friends and colleagues as personal correspondences, though many more were kept in his studio. Revealing an unrestrained curiosity and the breadth of his practice, Kelly’s postcard collages are as humorous and intimate as they are formal and discerning.

Kelly began his studies at Pratt Institute in New York from 1941 to 1942, then continued at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1946 to 1948. While on his tour of duty in Europe during World War II he visited Paris for the first time. He returned with funds from the GI Bill in 1948 and stayed until 1954. Those years in France were formative; this was when Kelly first painted and collaged on picture postcards, which, at the time, he mostly sent to artist and friend Ralph Coburn. In 1954, Kelly moved from Paris to New York, where he rented a studio in Coenties Slip in downtown Manhattan, as part of a community of artists that included Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, and Jack Youngerman. The influence of that fertile time can be seen in several New York postcards of the 1950s.

Throughout the literature on Kelly’s oeuvre, scholars have consistently noted the cyclical process of his art making, his tendency to revisit ideas from years, even decades, earlier. In keeping, the production of the postcard collages was rhythmic and episodic, punctuated by other artistic and life activities. One can trace the years of prolific and less prolific output to align with important life events, including new bodies of work, retrospectives, and studio moves. For instance, Kelly made a great number of cards in 1970, the year he moved to Spencertown, New York, and in 1974 while traveling in Europe following his 1973 Museum of Modern Art retrospective.

Mapping the postcard collage production onto a timeline of Kelly’s life and work also reveals that the postcards were not a part of his general studio practice, but rather constituted a kind of freedom from the studio. In this sense, they comprise a compilation of experiences, a journal of travel, creative play, and relationships. The decade of the 1970s includes a significant number of cards made in St. Martin in the Caribbean, where he would travel to stay with artist Jasper Johns, who had a home on the island. The mid-1980s – particularly around the time he met photographer Jack Shear, who would become his life partner – was another prolific period for Kelly’s postcard collages. This intensity of collage production waned in the 1990s, in part due to the decline in print quality of mass-produced picture postcards, which Kelly did not appreciate.

The postcard collages use a wide variety of found materials, including pieces of vinyl records, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, wine labels, and even sections of his own prints. For example, in 1964, Kelly used torn proofs from his own lithographs in a series of postcard collages with Paris monuments, as studies for sculptures. This source material is discussed in a new essay for this book by Dr. Tricia Y. Paik. Her essay reviews Kelly’s biography and outlines key features of his iconic work that can be found in specific examples of the postcard collages. Dr. Lynda Klich surveys the advent of the picture postcard itself and points to the use of postcards by modernist artists of the early twentieth century – from Art Nouveau and Futurism, to Surrealism and Dada. Dr. Jessica Eisenthal focuses on the mostly hidden, double-sided aspect of the postcard collages. She reveals that Kelly not only used the backs of the cards for personal notes but also to continue compositions and create even more experimental and, at times, teasing imagery. The book begins with the artist’s own words from a brochure that accompanied the exhibition Kelly organized from MoMA’s collection in 1990, Artist’s Choice: Ellsworth Kelly, Fragmentation and the Single Form. In this essay, Kelly discusses breaking up the visual world into fragments and provides key insights into his ways of seeing and presenting his art.

The vast majority of the postcard collages in the plates section of this book have never before been reproduced. Over the course of this project, new works were discovered in the artist’s archive, and others came to light from personal collections. May this project be the start of more discovery and continued scholarship on this distinctive and revealing body of work.

Ian Berry (curator)

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Columbus Circle
1957
Postcard collage
5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Installation view of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College showing at left, Columbus Circle 1957 (above); and at second left, Four Greens, Upper Manhattan Bay, 1957 (below)

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Four Greens, Upper Manhattan Bay
1957
Postcard collage
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Coenties Slip
1957
Postcard collage
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Statue of Liberty
1957
Postcard collage
5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Kelly’s Strategies through Postcard Analogies

“During the day, we see so much at one time. I want to catch something that’s a flash, a mysterious thing, the beginning of something, a primal thing.”

~ Ellsworth Kelly, 2008

Aided with the clarity of five decades of hindsight, this exhibition and catalogue afford us the opportunity to observe the breadth of Kelly’s postcard experimentation, the myriad ways he explored strategies, ideas, and shapes to which he returned time and time again. It can be argued that these postcard objects, more than his other works on paper, allow us the closest entrée into what caught his eye, what he pondered, and what he altered, giving us glimpses into his intuitive and transformative vision. These postcard collages allow us to revisit some of “the sights of his lifetime,” how he found what looked “right” to him at different moments during more than half a century. Indeed, his manipulated postcards tangibly analogize how the artist investigated vision. In 1973, at the time of his mid-career retrospective at MoMA, Kelly admitted to his intriguing relationship with the real world; despite his important reliance on empirical observation, he confessed, “I’ve always felt competitive with reality.”34 Postcards – unchanging templates of predetermined realities – offered him controlled environments with which he could actively compete through his pasted papers.

To create his abstractions drawn from the real world, Kelly relied on various artistic impulses that he learned to follow and trust. He explained in 1992:

“I automatically distance the idea of what I’m looking at. I play with what I see, forget what it is, which color it is, perceive the changes through my shifting positions. I don’t look at it with a thinking mind but with the possibilities of my vision.”35

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Kelly enacted this strategy of distancing through collage, both “placing” and “ellipsis” as previously described by Motherwell. In doing so, he was able to “compete” with reality by obscuring and fragmenting the view. In 1973, the artist explained, “I’ve always been interested in fragmentation, through apertures, doors and windows. When you look through them, that fragmented view changes as you move, and you get a series of different pictures.”36 Through fragmentation, he was able to isolate his forms to arrive at singular shapes. Collage also allowed Kelly to deploy another key artistic goal that further distanced his art from his original sources – to reiterate flatness through the flat piece of collage itself, to push out space, to “flatten”37 the experience of vision. Kelly’s act of collage, his intrusion into the scene, also results in a shaped obstruction, an “ellipsis” of the original postcard view, diminishing our ability to discern and recognize the entire scene and thus achieving the ambiguity he desired, “an open, incomplete situation.”38

Now considering Kelly’s postcard output holistically, there is no observable consistency in how these objects relate to his finished body of work. Sometimes his postcard explorations correlate with what he was exploring in paintings and sculptures at the time, while sometimes there is minimal connection. Although most do not serve as actual studies per se for a completed work, a small number of these postcards, in fact, do. Other times his postcard collages are retrospective, returning to shapes and ideas already produced in work finished years prior – such as La dune du Pyla III, 1983 (p. 183); Blue Yellow (Saint-Michel, Paris), 1985 (p. 267); Seascape, 1985 (p. 274); and Blue Red Rocker / St. Martin, 1986 (p. 275).39 While some postcards appear deliberate and “worked,” some can be understood as quickly collaged “sketches.” During the period of his postcard output from 1949 to 2005, there are specific years when Kelly regularly manipulated the postcard – 1957, 1964, 1974, 1977-78, and 1984-85; in particular, 1974, 1977, and 1984-85 proved to be periods of great experimentation, with as many as seventy-six documented postcards from 1984, the most in any given year.40 In some years there is no documented evidence of any activity; however, perhaps in the future, postcards that Kelly might have made and sent out during the mid to late 1960s (from which only one extant card remains) or other years could resurface. One consistent fact is how much delight Kelly took with the postcard, whether as communication mailed to those within his circle, or as private visual dialogue saved for himself.

Tricia Y. Paik. “Sights of His Life,” in Berry, Ian and Eisenthal, Jessica (eds.,). Elsworth Kelly: Postcards. Delmonico Books, 2021, pp. 316-318.

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Study for Green and White Sculpture for les Invalides
1964
Postcard collage
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Study for Blue and White Sculpture for Les Tuileries
1964
Postcard collage
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Study for Yellow and White Sculpture for la Tour Eiffel
1964
Postcard collage
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Moon Over Manhattan
1964
Postcard collage
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
Private collection
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Nose / Sailboat
1974
5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Horizontal Nude or St. Martin Landscape
1974
4 x 5 7/8 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Marilyn Monroe / Shadows
1974
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Study for Dark Gray and White Rectangle I
1977
4 x 6 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Volcano
1977
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Amsterdam
1979
4 x 5 7/8 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Cincinnati Riverfront Stadium
1980
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Study for Blue White
1980
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
The Young Spartans
1984
4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Giant Artichoke
1984
3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
Sagrada Familia I
1985
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015)
St. Martin – Baie Rouge
2005
4 5/8 x 6 3/4 inches
Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear
© Ellsworth Kelly Foundation