Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Franz Kline
American; 20th-century
Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Art Association and Museum (Exhibition: Go Figure: Selections from the Permanent Collection)
27%
Sketch for Portrait of Sue Orr. 1950. Oil on paper
Kline was always the most minor artist among the New York AbEx'ers, but this thing is inexcusable even for him. It might've been de Kooning's "women" that compelled him to paint a portrait like this, but if it was, he wasn't looking at anything his colleague was actually doing with figuration. The only redeeming quality of this painting is its sitter's Modigliani mug; the rest is a misunderstanding of how abstractness can facilitate the study of the human form. Look at the way the blotchy application of paint muddies up the massing; look at how the muck that makes up the background fails to cultivate any suggestion of space. The sitter's body is empty where it should be full and crowded where it ought to have been allowed to breathe. The linework at right fails to put the figure into any kind of place. (TFS, 2025)