Coming of age as an artist in the 1970s, Krause could stand at the great divide between realism and abstraction and see in both directions. In Krause’s binary view there were those mural-sized canvases painted by Frank Stella or Kenneth Noland that were covered with solid colors and perhaps with some geometric details. Alternatively, he observed the photo-realists like Tom Wesselmann who were nailing down their graphic images resplendent with objects from “everyday life.” In this panorama it was the San Francisco painter Richard Diebenkorn who drew Krause’s closest attention and sustained his interest. Early on in his career Krause says he chose between “a painting as a wall and a painting as a window.”
Chronos/Tropos is the title of the suite of paintings in Krause’s 2008 exhibition and accompanying catalog. Produced within the prior year, this body of work is unified by subject, content and painterly composition. Against a range of solid grounds in bright colors, tangles of what appear to be party decorations and miscellaneous toys are suspended in a rich and slightly smoky atmosphere. Meticulously drawn ribbons, streamers, party horns and something like the casings of fireworks are laced, twined and jumbled into floating ornaments that descend from the upper edge of the canvas or paper sheet.
But clearly the party is over. The air is plangent with the brittle sound of something ending. From the substance of the floating islands of ornaments thin washes of paint pour down the canvas surface, alluding to the disintegration of the illusion above that has generated them.
www.artistsmagazine.com ■ November 2008
“What does the work mean?” an abstract artist will often be asked, and titles frequently provide the clues. Chronos/Tropos, (Time/Turning) gives this body of work a name, while alluding to the personas of the minor gods and mythical actors invoked by individual works. The Furies, the Sirens, Nymphs and Hermes, the messenger of the gods–all figure as players in a metaphysical world Krause has brought into the more concrete reality of art. Krause describes these paintings as “meditations” on mythological subjects. “I began reading the Greek myths after researching the origins of the stories on which the famous Unicorn Tapestries were based,” says Krause. “I became interested in how certain stories become the embodiment of a particular explanation as to why things are the way they seem. The paintings in Chronos/ Tropos are neither an illustra-
■ By Kim Krause
I worked on Sibyl 1 during more than thirty painting sessions in the spring of 2008. The painting is oil on linen canvas and measures 60x54.
The image grew out of a desire to explore the visual concepts coming out of the Chronos/Tropos series, in particular, the visual ideas responding to the mythic stories of the Oracles, later known as Sibyls. There are historical references to actual women who performed as fortune tellers to people in power by interpreting passages from texts. Michelangelo depicts five Sibyls on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; the Sibyls are the largest figures painted there.
I placed an ominous black shape at the top of the image to remind myself that even after hearing the best news, there may be unintended consequences to actions taken. After looking at the sequence of steps, I was surprised at how concrete the initial drawing and visual concept played throughout all the sessions. This is not always the case! I often make many starts. There was something new in using the flower form, and I suppose it seemed strong enough to hold onto.
Chronos is the personification of time. An incorporeal god, serpentine in form, he has three heads: that of a man, a gull, and a lion. His consort is Ananke; transliterated from the Greek, the word means inevitability. Chronos is portrayed today as Father Time.
Erinyes are the Furies, sometimes euphemistically called The Kindly Ones. They punish violations of the rules governing society, like crimes of patricide, matricide, etc., by making the guilty go mad. Foul creatures who have snakes for hair, they appear most dramatically in the Oresteia cycle of plays by Aesychlus.
Hermes is the messenger and herald of the gods, identified by by wings on his feet and cap; in Rome, he is called Mercury, from which is derived the adjective mercurial. Nymphs are minor deities, spirits of bodies of water, of land, trees and mountains. They are portrayed as beautiful girls with the power to change the shapes of things. In entomology, “nymph” denotes the larva of an insect with incompletely developed wings. Sibyl is a prophetess or fortune teller, active in Babylonia, Italy, Egypt, as well as Greece. Sirens are daughters of a river god; they appear in Homer’s Odyssey, where their enchancting voices tempt sailors toward shipwreck on the rocks. Tropos means curving in response to stimuli. —M.B.
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