Art & the Opposites

NAPOLEON ENTERING NEW YORK, A New Exhibition by Chaim Koppelman

2011-08-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

At the Museo Napoleonico in Rome in October of this year, an historic exhibition will open showing the prints, pastels, paintings and drawings which Chaim Koppelman did over six decades on the meaning of Napoleon to him. In the 1950s, as part of his study of Aesthetic Realism, Chaim attended a lecture by Eli Siegel on the character of Napoleon. Referring to a work by Eli Faure, Mr. Siegel explained something never seen before: "Napoleon," he said, "felt the injustices of the past should be changed." Yes, "he had a tremendous desire for power, but also, he wanted to be welcomed by the masses." Chaim Koppelman was so deeply affected by this idea that he put Napoleon into the 20th century, a man of opposites, in New York, in Coney Island, cavorting on the beach. With his fertile imagination, Chaim did work which showed Napoleon in an entirely new way, in entirely new circumstances--a figure with an ego, in his familiar hat, and also a man of the people. Napoleon retreated from Moscow as Meissonier showed, but he then went to Brooklyn, Chaim Koppelman's hometown.

LEGENDS OF THE PRINTMAKING WORKSHOP

2011-03-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

AT LAGRANGE MUSEUM, LA GRANGE, GEORGIA
OPENING April 2, and through August 2011
Showcasing the prints of Will Barnet, Bob Blackburn,
Chaim Koppelman and Tom Laidman. These works
were personally selected by Wesley Cochran to show
the pioneering spirit of these innovative printmakers.
A film will be shown of a conversation between Bob
Blackburn and Chaim Koppelman where the artist
talks of the effect of Aesthetic Realism on his work, and
particularly on the print Combat which became part of the
Blackburn collection at the Smithsonian Institution and
is at the Museum of Modern Art.l

Alice Neel's Studio in 1944

2011-01-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

In this much reprinted photo of Alice Neel's studio (recently NYTBR 1-2-11), her portrait of me at age 23 is in the middle right. Alice painted this when she was staying at the studio I shared with Stamos. I was telling Alice about my first Aesthetic Realism Lesson with Eli Siegel. I think what we talked about then made for the quality of the painting.

Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims

2011-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

I am immensely pleased to say that Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims by Eli Siegel and drawings by Chaim Koppelman is being republished with a new Foreward written by me.

White Plane Painting, l960

2010-12-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

When the plane crash occurred in Park Slope, Brooklyn on December l6, 1960, I was so moved I did first one painting, and then another. The first one was shown in my exhibiton at the Terrain Gallery in 1961, and is on my website now.

One of the deepest and most important things I have learned through my study of Aesthetic Realism is that ugliness is not only in the same world as the beautiful, but through relation we can find something like form in the ugly which makes for a new relation that is wonderful. We can even find sense in what seems so senseless.

Looking at a photograph of the crash I saw the white wings of the plane on the ground and I saw a wide sky. People were dark in the foreground. The photo I saw is reprinted in the Dec. 15 NYT. Something high had fallen low. I saw a symbolism in it quite other than the horror of having more than 100 people suddenly, terribly killed Sometimes when what is high (and wrongly high) is brought low, a person feels it is right. I translated the awful happening into that ethical situation. I hoped to show that in the painting.

Meanwhile I was moved by the fact that one lone, little boy had survived. And I read that a nurse had come to take care of him. Gabe Pressman in his emotionally affecting broadcast may have mentioned this. I do not remember. But I wrote to the woman at a place she was said to have frequented, Snooky's Pub. But unfortunately as the proprietor, Michael Hillyer wrote to me Ms. Lewnes did not appear. Or at least did not choose to respond.

I was born and brought up in Brooklyn not far from the site of that crash, and I was shaken as everyone was. But Brooklyn is the site of such beauty and such tragedy all mixed, and to be made sense of.

Chaim Koppelman Selections from Memorial Exhibition Now Showing

2010-11-11T13:11:00.000-08:00

Chaim Koppelman (1920-2009)

Prints, Paintings, Pastels, Sculpture

Note: The Chaim Koppelman Memorial Exhibition at the Terrain Gallery closed on Oct. 16. However, selections from this large exhibition will continue to be on view on the 2nd floor of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 141 Greene Street, NYC 10012.

The pastel on the right "Napoleon Seeing," is one of many works the artist did during his whole career about the meaning of Napoleon for him. Napoleon, Eli Siegel explained, put opposites--the emperor and the democrat together, which is just what the artist wanted to do himself.

__________________________________

Current, exciting exhibition! Click below for announcement of--

Painting Matters

At the Terrain Gallery now.

Emotion — in Black & White and Color

2007-03-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Current Exhibition is great!

“The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.” — Eli Siegel, Afternoon Regard for Photography

15 PHOTOGRAPHERS
Dale Laurin • John Reddy • David Bernstein Louis Dienes • Len Bernstein • Allan Michael Vincent Di Pietro • Steve Poleskie • Wayne MumfordAmy Dienes • Dan McClung • Harvey Spears Perry Hall • Doug Cox • Mary Fagan

Hours: Wed – Fri 12-5; Sat 12-4 & by appt.

For the announcement click here

92nd Street Y exhibition: Process & Promise opens in May

2006-04-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

The print by Chaim Koppelman, "Napoleon Entering New York," will be included in the 75th Anniversary exhibition celebrating the start of Art clases atthe Y. Chaim Koppelman was one of the early teachers there, conducting children's art classes under the then director William Kolodny. This was one of the artist's first teaching jobs where his study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder, poet, educator Eli Siegel, so successfully encouraged the art in children. The exhibition includes a very fine selection of work by past members of that illustrious faculty. Everyone is invited to the Opening in the Weill Art Gallery at the Y on May 12th. The show will be on for almost two weeks.

Peace Tower at the Whitney Museum: Day for Night, Opening in March 2006

2006-02-02T16:30:00.000-08:00

We are proud to be showing new work on the Peace Tower, reconstructed now by the original designer, Mark di Suvero, as part of the Whitney Museum Biennial opening in March of 2006. On the original 1966 Artists Tower Against the War in Vietnam we were among the almost 400 New York artists who voiced our protest, and we do so now against this unscrupulous and cruel war on the people of Iraq.

In the Sixties, the Terrain Gallery showed where we stood: buttons saying "We Are Ashamed of What Our Country is Doing in Vietnam; exhibitions titled, "All Art Is For Life and Against the War in Vietnam, and printing more than 1000 copies of the poem by Martha Baird, "We Are Responsible." In 1967 together with hundreds of others, including our colleague film-maker Ken Kimmelman, we were part of the "Collage of Indignation" at the Loeb Student Center in NYU.

Ken Kimmelman's 2005 film based on Eli Siegel's famous poem "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana," has been winning awards all over the US.and is being nationally televised over PBS; the poem and the film have the true democracy of poetry, a musical oneness of opposites asked for and needed by our world. The film is produced by Imagery Film, Ltd., and the poem is the title poem of the book, with an introductory letter by William Carlos Williams, published by Definition Press in New York City. Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman and Ken Kimmelman are on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation website

at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

2006-02-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

In the current exhibition "Alice Neel's Women" there is the artist's portrait of me done in my studio in 1944. At the opening of the show, on October 26th I was happy to tell to the filmmaker doing a documentary of Alice Neel's life and art, about the circumstances of this portrait. I have told about this when the portrait was shown at the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia last year. And I am so happy that I could say again how my early study of Aesthetic Realism affected our conversation and this painting.

I told about how I was beginning to learn from Mr. Siegel about the opposites in painting, and in a person. As I looked at the painting again, I saw more how that conversation got into the work; it is in the way Alice Neel showed me as a painter too.

The exhibition will continue until January 14th, and I hope other people will be moved as I was by the depth of seeing that comes through as one goes from one portrait to another. Alice Neel wanted to know women. What I was learning from Mr. Siegel affected Alice. It is, I think, in the way the light is in the painting, and in the way the leaves curl up the stretchers, on the back of the canvas. What is hidden and what is shown change places--there is an action here that is like conversation--as I see it. To the question I love so much, "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" I think this painting is an early answer: Yes.

Aesthetic Realism Sunday Matinee

2005-09-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth: Songs about Love, Justice, & Everybody's Feelings! is going to be a terrific afternoon in which you will hear the cast of The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company singing and performing on Sunday, October 23, 2005 at 2:30 PM in the Terrain Gallery of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 141 Greene Street, New York, NY 10012 in SoHo, off W. Houston; call for more information 212.777.4490. To find out more click here for the announcement.

We'll see you there,

Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman

Arnold Perey's GWE, a novel against racism

2005-09-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

I first saw Arnold Perey's photographs, which he took in New Guinea, when he brought them to the Terrain Gallery. I saw that they had two qualities that impressed me enormously: 1) the people in the photographs did not look distant like "natives"--they were not foreign in their expressions. I could have met an expression like that on the face of a person walking down Grove Street near the gallery. 2) The next quality I saw was beauty, they put opposites together. There were figures softely curved carrying stiff limbs of trees and spears. The Terrain Gallery showed those photographs in an exhibition.

I have seen something new about the relation of a person born in Brooklyn, like myself, to someone born in New Guinea who doesn't speak my language. We have feelings that are akin. I thank Arnold Perey, my colleague as an Aesthetic Realism consultant for showing this in GWE. Here it is: http://www.gweofnewguinea.net/

"Portrait," Chaim Koppelman's work included in Disegno* at the current 180th Annual Exhibition at the National Academy of Design

2005-05-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

*To draw, delineate, mark out, sketch in outline, or otherwise give visual expression to, as a conception or a plan, especially for the first time, or to serve as a pattern or model for a more finished study."

(This is the description of the exhibition's purpose; and on view are both the preparatory works and the finished pictures.)

Chaim Koppelman shows his early drawings and the finished "Portrait" --and the person being drawn is not stated. It is simply "portrait"--of an unnamed person. Several states of the aquatint were submitted, and then the final portrait. The artist says "I wrote on the proof suggestions of what I wanted to change, to do better, and worked with on the proof, before a final proof was taken, the final state.

The interplay of opposites, as Aesthetic Realism describes them, can be studied so valuably here because the unconscious impulsions, and the decisions--both unconscious and conscious--are on display. In the work of every artist there is a desire to welcome the unknown, and to join that with what is known--including techniques of the past and newly found. We look at some-thing mysterious and at the same time visibly "worked out," in the artist's mind and on the surface.

This exhibition opened on May 25th and will be on view through July 5th. It is a first of its kind and provides a view of how a work comes into being. The National Academy Museum is on Fifth Avenue and 90th Street.

Terrain Gallery 50th anniversary exhibition opening on May 7th

2005-04-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

THE TERRAIN GALLERY OPENED IN 1955 AND FOR THESE FIFTY YEARS THERE HAVE BEEN EXHIBITIONS BASED ON ITS SIGNATURE MOTTO--ELI SIEGEL'S STATEMENT: "IN REALITY OPPOSITES ARE ONE; ART SHOWS THIS.'

WE HAVE HAD EXHBITIONS SHOWING THE SCOPE, THE FRESH MEANING THAT CAN BE SEEN IN PAINTINGS, PRINTS, SCULPTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, AS WE ASK "IS BEAUTY THE MAKING ONE OF OPPOSITES?"

THOSE FIFTEEN QUESTIONS ASKED BY MR. SIEGEL ARE THE GREATEST NON-EGOTISTICAL, ALWAYS DEPENDABLE, ALWAYS FRESH CRITERIA FOR SEEING THE VALUE OF A WORK OF ART OF ANY TIME, PLACE, OR MEDIA. WE CELEBRATE THEIR EXISTENCE AND ARE PROUD TO SHOW THE WORK OF THE 52 ARTISTS IN THE CURRENT EXHIBITION.

TO FIND OUT MORE CLICK INTO THE WEBSITE TERRAINGALLERY.ORG AND COME ON MAY 7TH!

New References for DK paintings

2005-04-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

I was glad to find out at the last American Society of Contemporary Artists meeting that the ASCA book is now in the collections of the Thomas Watson Library, the Archives of American Art, and the New York Public Library.

Terrain Gallery Celebrates 50 Honest, Colorful Years

2005-03-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, February 26th the Terrain Gallery celebrated 50 years of a vivid, imaginative fidelity to the meaning of art as we learned it through Eli Siegel's great Fifteen Questions, "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?"

We shall in time include here the presentation in text and pictures of that great evening to a full house at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation's Terrain Gallery. Co-directors Carrie Wilson and myself, Dorothy Koppelman and Chaim Koppelman told in almost telegraphic form about some of the highlights of the 150 exhibitions, the historic publications of Eli Siegel's essays, and the many personal and artistic triumphs of these years. We were joined by Dale Laurin, architect, who spoke on Heaviness and Lightness in the Empire State building; and Marcia Rackow, painter and teacher on the Aesthetic Realism faculty and Donita Ellison, high-school teacher of art. who spoke on American Realist painters and what they can say about all people's lives now.

Among the proudest publications of the Terrain Gallery are "The Rosary of Evil," which shows how to see evil beautifully through poetic form. This breathtaking talk by Mr. Siegel can correct for all time any ignorant misrepresentations of what Aesthetic Realism is and teaches.

More recent publications of Eli Siegel's work and books about Aesthetic Realism can be found at Definition Press.

Reviews of books and poems by Eli Siegel can be found here.

Portrait of Dorothy K in Alice Neel Show in Phila.

2005-02-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

In the winter of 1943-'44, as I was beginning my career as a painter, had also just begun my study of Aesthetic Realism with poet Eli Siegel, had recently married Chaim Koppelman who was then a soldier in England during WWII, I shared a studio on Fifth Avenue with another painter, Stamos. Alice Neel came to visit, stayed a day or so, and she painted me, as I was also painting her.

When Sarah Powers called me about the show she was organizing at the Locks Gallery, I remembered so well that time-- sharing tubes of paint, giving Alice a canvas and then she went to work, standing at the easel while I sat across the room at my easel. We talked about what I had been learning about poetry, art and myself from Mr. Siegel, most importantly that a painter's job was to see all things as well as possible, to LIKE THE WAY WE SEE THE WORLD even when we weren't painting! Alice talked about herself, and I think my saying things about my own thoughts and myself encouraged her. I admired Alice Neel's forthrightness and brave way of talking, and she encouraged me to continue my study and my hope to be a painter.

All this is about the circumstances of the painting which is to be included in the Alice Neel show at the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia during March of 2005. I treasure these memories, and I am glad the painting is cared for, and will be seen.--DK

THE GATES: THEY DO HAVE A MEANING

2005-02-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

My friends and I walked through the Gates on Saturday and we were moved. I have heard that Christo and Jeanne Claude say the Gates have no meaning, they are just "a work of art," and for "liberty." But it is just what a work of art is that gives them meaning. People's hearts were lifted and we walked with a sense of wonder. In my Critical Inquiry class on Sunday morning my students and I discussed what gives us such a feeling--it was the way opposites shimmered and stayed put in those lovely marching along structures.

Importantly, the way the artists carefully considered the month of February when the structures and the bareness of leaves would complement and contrast with one another we admired.

The Terrain Gallery where I teach is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Eli Siegel's Fifteen Questions "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" which we have described on this page before. On Sunday as we talked of what we saw and felt,it was so clear that oneness and manyness, grace and seriousness--to begin with--were affecting us--such a surprising relation of cool steel and glowing, of firmness and a shimmering motion, a fusion of exactitude and joy. The way opposites are firmly and playfully one in this Central Park extravaganza is the way, just as Aesthetic Realism describes, we want them to be one in us. Would that logic and abandon could work in us the way they do in that graceful joining of Orange and Steel. This is the meaning of the Gates.

Aesthetic Realism: The Opposites in Art & Life

2005-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

Artists Talk on Art

What are artists doing in their work that people--including artist--want to do in their lives? The answer is in this great principle stated by poet and founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Chaim Koppelman, printmaker; Marcia Rackow, painter,
Dale Laurin, architect; Ken Kimmelman, filmmaker;
with Carrie Wilson, moderator

--will all give examples from their own work and that of contemporary artists showing how, for instance, surface and depth, space and matter, abandon and restraint are working vividly in contemporary painting, prints, architecture and the film.

All this will take place in the School of Visual Arts Amphitheater on Friday, January 21st at 7 PM at:

209 East 23rd St. (East of Third Ave.)

We invite everyone to come! Get there at 6:30 to be sure of a seat.

For further information visit the January calendar of the Artists Talk on Art and Aesthetic Realism Foundation

And we invite you to come to the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 141 Greene Street, NYC, In SoHo, NYC 212.777.4490 on February 26th to celebrate

the 50th Anniversary of the Terrain Gallery!

--featuring--

Eli Siegel’s immortal and immediate Fifteen Questions: Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?
presented by—Dorothy Koppelman, Chaim Koppelman, Carrie Wilson

--and--

"AESTHETIC REALISM SHOWS WHAT’S GOING ON IN AMERICAN

REALIST ART & IN OURSELVES"

This talk by Marcia Rackow and Donita Ellison, first presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, looks at works by Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Duane Hanson, and others. The speakers say:

“Central in all realist art is the seeing that the common-place also has grandeur….And one of its great values is that it is critical, through form, of the ways we can lessen reality, divide it, be disproportionate.”

Further resources please see:

Donita Ellison, Art Educator and Aesthetic Realism Associate
Michael Palmer on John Sloan, reprinted from Journal of the Print World
The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method
A New Perspective for Anthropology: The Aesthetic Realism method
Aesthetic Realism vs. Racism
Photography Education: the Aesthetic Realism Viewpoint
Lynette Abel on Sargent's Madame X; or, Assertion and Retreat in Woman
Self-Expression and What Interferes: an Aesthetic Realism Discussion
"Is a Person an Aesthetic Situation?" by Eli Siegel, Founder of Aesthetic Realism
Aesthetic Realism Resources
The Terrain Gallery / Aesthetic Realism Foundation
The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known (TRO)
Rev. Wayne Plumstead on Aesthetics and Religion
Article by Rev. Wayne Plumstead, United Methodist minister, in the Circuit Rider
Park United Methodist Church, pastor Wayne Plumstead, presents Parenting Workshop
Article by Rev. Wayne Plumstead on on Cause of Columbine HS shootings