I R V I N G K R I E S B E R GA NIM A L NA R R ATI V E S

C O NTE NTS

1 On Animals in My Art by Irving Kriesberg

2 A Painter’s Life by Adam Zucker

6 Imagination’s Menagerie by Michael McNay

17 Selected Works 18 Guada l a j ara Mu j er 19 Abraham and Isa a c 20 Ruth w i th Ivy 21 The Cave 22 Trumpe ts 24 Li t t l e B irds in B lue F i e ld 25 Study For The Gre a t B ird 26 Ma l co lm Quadriptych 28 Martha ’s Danc ers 30 Ghosts [front pane ls] 32 Ghosts [re ar pane ls] 34 Sky B irds 35 S ing Me Proxy 36 Hard and Sof t St eps 38 Tur t l e Fri eze 40 Li t t l e Ra inbow 42 How Many M irrors 43 The Runn ing Pa ir 44 Monk ey Strider 45 Med i t errane an Monk ey 46 We t Le aves Taberna c le (Large Vers ion) 47 Morn ing Dre am 48 C lose Quart ers 49 Sma l l Mason 50 Down from the Mount a in 51 Tavern Ape 52 Caut ion 53 Spe c t a tor 54 The Subt errane an Passage

55 At the Tab l e 56 Dropp ing I 57 Dogf i e ld I 58 Sparrows Tha t F a l l 59 Hey Hey 60 Quadriptych 62 Tumb l ing 63 Danc e of the Beg inn ing 64 Ma t erna l Images 65 Man and Ow l 66 Tri ad I 67 Departure 68 G l anc es 69 C l ari ty 70 Ape and G irl (w i th co lors) 71 Med i t errane an and Ba l t i c 72 Wh i l e We Wa t ch 73 Dark Tri ad 74 Te am 75 Tash i Dev i l 76 Te a ch ing 77 Se l f-Dev i l 78 C loser 79 F ina l Danc e 80 At t a ched 81 Impudenc e 82 New Sky 83 Dorm i t ion w i th Wa l k ing B irds

Unless noted otherwise all photography by Paul Takeuchi, www.paultakeuchi.com.

Works identifi ed by exhibited atLongview Museum of Fine Arts,

January 14 – February 25, 2012,Adam Zucker, curator.

First published in the United States in 2012by Estate of Irving Kriesberg.

www.irvingkriesberg.com

Designed by forbes&butler visual communications.Printed by Hudson Printing & Graphic Design.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Cover: Mediterranean Monkey, 1975Oil on canvas, 29” x 39”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

ISBN 978-0-615-57452-3

Printed & bound in the United States of America. Partial view of Little Birds in Blue Field, 1951Tempera on masonite, 15” × 17”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Irving Kriesberg, 1959Photograph by Lilo Raymond.

I R V I N G K R I E S B E R GA NIM A L NA R R ATI V E S

1

ON A N I M A L S I N M Y A RTby I r v ing K r ie sberg

Down from the Mountain, 1980Oil on canvas, 68” × 43”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

All I can say positively on this ma tter is tha t these are

the images tha t well up in my eyes as soon as the brush

hits the canvas.

We know a t once tha t these are not animals in the

biological sense nor are they humans either. They are not

animals ac ting as humans nor humans masquerading

as animals. They exist outside of such ca tegories. We

recognize tha t they confront, they converse , they confer.

Ye t we do not know their purpose . Such unanswered

questions crea te tensions - a psychic tension so tha t

the elements of painting , color, mass, direc tion, interval

all become charged . The arena is an abstrac t psychic

fi eld; the particulars of the drama ma tter less. Ac ting

within tha t psychic fi eld , I see no distinc tion be tween

the image of an owl and a white painted mass having

a certain weight, direc tion and role within the canvas.

Traditional thea ter uses masks to establish the

universality of the charac ters regardless of the

particular performance - mother, daughter, villain. The

game of chess establishes rules which govern the fi xed

obliga tions and privileges of the Queen, the Pawns,

e tc . My few animals play various roles in my art. The

meaning depends not on the species portrayed but on

the a ttitude of the painter.

C an we ask wha t a toma to means? In the hands of

Richard Diebenkorn, who adop ts a hedonistic stance ,

the freshly cut toma toes, their succulent juices sparkling

in the sunlight, embody the general experience of

wholesomeness and pleasure . In the hands of the

painter Soutine , a still life of toma toes invokes the idea

of denigra ted masses, their huddling rendered as stabs

of red and dirt.

Aesop’s animals are sly, doltish or wise; they inhabit

the human world . I feel closer to Herriman’s Krazy

Ka t. In his little panels he projec ts perfec tly the dear

foolishness of life .

Irving Kriesberg, 2006Photograph by Matthias Kriesberg

2 3

As a child in Chicago , Irving Kriesberg crea ted drawing

books fi lled with images of museum taxidermy he

encountered a t the Field Museum of Na tural History. This

early experience of biological rendering , along with his

admira tion of the innocent playfulness, poe tic dialogue

and surrealist environments in the comic strip Krazy

Ka t by G eorge Herriman (1880 – 1944), made a lasting

impression on Kriesberg .

For over sixty years Kriesberg tapped into subconscious

memory to engage his own animal imagery, inviting

viewers to observe tha t which, as he described it, “wells

up behind my eyes” . His work blurred the line be tween

abstrac tion and representa tion during a time when many

artists had chosen comple te abstrac tion as a means

to a more spiritual and absolute style . Kriesberg used

the fi gure prolifi cally, crea ting his mystical, dreamlike

environments out of a process he defi ned as the

spontaneous applica tion of paint. His animal fi gura tions

are most accura tely interpre ted abstrac tly; certainly, he

stead fastly maintained , they had no allegorical intent. In

Kriesberg’s view, the emotional impac t of his work relies

above all else on the a ttitude of the painter. He combined

his individual and shared worldly experiences with a

fantastical imagina tion.

Kriesberg’s travels around the world made him aware

of ancient spiritual cultures and modern, non-Western

civiliza tions. A fter gradua ting from the Art Institute in

Chicago , Kriesberg traveled to Mexico City in 1941. His

years in Mexico exposed him to expressive forms of art

being made “for the people , by the people” . The emotive ,

violent murals of Jose Clemente Orozco and David

Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as the political printmaking by

the Taller de Gráfi ca Popular (TG P), an infl uential print

workshop , would be important elements of Kriesberg’s

early Figura tive Expressionist work . C ombining emotive

violence with spiritual mysticism from the Old Testament,

Kriesberg began to paint poignant fi gura tions. It was also

in Mexico tha t Kriesberg fi rst started to work with clay to

A PA I N T E R’S L I FEby Adam Zucker

crea te sculp tures tha t recalled ancient cultural relics of

the past, a prac tice he periodically re turned to over the

next 50 years.

Kriesberg returned to America and located in New York

City in 1945. Soon after, he came to the attention of

sculptor Jacques Lipchitz , who introduced Kriesberg to

his art dealer, Curt Valentin, the owner of a prominent

uptown gallery, and who not long after became

Kriesberg’s fi rst dealer. Lipchitz also showed Kriesberg’s

paintings to Dorothy Miller, who was the fi rst trained

curator at The Museum of Modern Art. Miller included

Kriesberg in a 1951 ‘New Talent’ exhibition at The

Museum of Modern Art, and again in 1957. His big

break came when Miller included him in the landmark

1952 exhibition 15 Americans, the show that signifi cantly

substantiated the careers of abstract painters Jackson

Pollock, William Baziotes, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and

Bradley Walker Tomlin.

Alongside the many seminal Abstract Expressionists

shown in this exhibition, Kriesberg was the only Figurative

Expressionist to be represented . In 1955 Kriesberg had

his New York City solo debut at the Curt Valentin Gallery.

But by then Valentin had died , and when the gallery

dissolved in 1954 Kriesberg was picked up by Duveen

Graham Gallery in New York, later Graham Modern and

the forerunner of the current Graham Gallery in New York.

Over the next 50 years,

Kriesberg created his

paintings, ceramics

and sculptures in an

idiosyncratic style that

continuously evolved

over the decades, with

images of animals,

yearning angels, and

humanoid fi gures

predominating. His

output ranged from

innovative two-sided multi-panel “changeable” paintings

to banners for some of the large peace demonstrations

held in New York during the 1980's.

During various periods in his life from his 40s until well

into his 60s, Kriesberg lived and worked in India and

Japan, and spent time studying at the Buddhist-inspired

Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Although his work

sometimes refl ected imagery from where he worked, he

often described his painting style as one that developed

not so much from outside sources as from within.

Bulletin board in studio, 2009

Palette in Kriesberg studio, 2009

4 5

“! e current increase of interest in animals on the part of society

and scholars is not due to a sudden rise in the feel-good sentiment

felt toward our fellow creatures. It is because there is a growing

awareness that in animals we see variegated expressions of our

own faculties, impulses and social organization which can help

us understand fundamental aspects of our own nature.”

So the fi gures, whether animal, human or humanoid have

a painterly task. And thus, while certain creatures reoccur

in different paintings, they often exhibit different emotions

or roles. Sometimes they are fi gures of worship , friends or

guardians; at other times they are predatory or burlesque .

As is the case in Dog" eld I (p . 57) from 1988, fi gures seem

to have multiple roles within the same painting. They can

be menacing but also benign, as in the white owl that

hovers over the migrating fi gurations in the painting. The

owl initially appears to be guarding them from evil, but the

look on its face also suggests it might be guiding them

towards malevolence . In the 1984 painting Impudence (p .

81), the white owl again exhibits confl icting personalities.

It is often presented as an angel, but many times the owl

engages in conspiratorial actions with a red devilish fi gure .

If Kriesberg made any admission of meaning within his art,

it was that “Dream-like images have mystical intent.” The

abundant and individual themes throughout his work

reveal a spiritual yearning and sublimity in a style that is at

one with Kriesberg’s humanistic expressionism.

Irving Kriesberg’s paintings are held in the permanent

collection of over 60 American art museums, including

The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum

of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery, The Brooklyn

Museum, The Detroit Museum of Art, The Kresge Art

Museum, the National Museum of American Art, The

Butler Institute of American Art, The Birmingham Museum

of Art, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, The

Dayton Art Institute , The Allentown Art Museum, The

Boca Raton Museum of Art, The Rose Art Museum, The

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The Scottsdale

MO C A , The Crocker Art Museum, and many others.

Adam Zucker is an artist, art historian and curator based

in New York City.

Art historian George Nelson Preston said of Kriesberg:

“He has never consciously sought a counter aesthetic through

purely painterly means. He has been a leader in innovation

through eccentricity of composition and exposition of an

internal mental dialect of polarities. ! e means by which this

has been carried out are largely through the presentational

motifs of proscenium, setting, and encounter.”

Kriesberg consistently maintained that his concerns were

painterly and abstract. His fi gures were meant to project

their own identities and invite the viewer to partake in

a world populated by a dramatic labyrinth of colorful

characters. His fi gurations were intended , Kriesberg

asserted , to touch the observer deep in the subconscious

mind , evoking a sense of the primeval, and tapping a

collective sense of an archetypal visual language that is

inherent in the nature of humanity.

The white owl, the blue monkey, the Satan fi gure , sheep ,

frogs and snakes: animals were the medium for the

greater part of his work, and their relationship to humans

(or humanoids) is mysterious. They are not animals in any

literal sense . Their “meaning” derives from the thoughts

of the painter rather than from the species depicted .

On one level, the animals served as pictorial opportunities

to explore line , shape , color and space . They are

focal points on the canvas, vehicles for exploring the

possibilities of two-dimensional representation.

On the other hand , Kriesberg never denied an implied

spirituality in the fi guration. These spiritual infl uences

are not limited to one source , but derive from Judaism,

Eastern Philosophy and his interest in ancient civilizations.

All of these cultures have used animals in their rituals

and folklore to explore the relationship with the universe .

When, in 1965, Kriesberg embarked by freighter for India ,

he went, as he has said , in order to immerse himself in

that tradition which acknowledges that animals have

souls no less than humans. In the fragment of an essay

he was writing at the end of his life on the topic of animals

in his work, he explained:

Dogfi eld I, 1988Oil on canvas, 63” × 64”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Impudence, 1984Oil on canvas, 50” × 74”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

6 7

Although Irving Kriesberg was one of the 15 Americans

who took part in the celebrated exhibition of that name , he

was in a sense an outsider. The exhibit was organized for

the Museum of Modern Art in New York by its renowned

curator, Dorothy Miller, and subsequently dispatched

to several European venues to spread the word of the

breakout by the New York school. Kriesberg’s co-exhibitors

included William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and

Jackson Pollock; apart from Pollock, none of them yet a

household name any more than Kriesberg. The year was

1952, and Europe was still in shock from the war, looking

through the ruins to see what had survived .

Abstraction, at that point, was so ill-defi ned and

misunderstood that Kriesberg must have appeared in

Europe as not much different from the group of abstract

expressionists with whom he shared wall space . Except

for this: The two paintings he showed , Yellow Sheep and

Birds Alighting (one of a 1951 bird series from which

another, Little Birds in Blue Field, is part of the Longview

Museum of Fine Arts exhibition), suggested a painter

working from nature , rather than from within. The truth,

however, is more complex than that.

Miller’s brief catalogue foreword , aimed purely at sorting

the painters into understandable categories, would

seem blindingly obvious to an audience today. But in

those confused times when, to Europeans, American art

probably meant something between Grandma Moses

and the New Deal’s Federal Art Project, her admirably

blunt exposition was surely useful:

“In the work of certain artists in Fifteen Americans – [Edwin]

Dickinson, [Herman] Rose, [Herbert] Katzman – experience

I M AGI N AT ION’S M E N AGE R I Eby Michae l McNay

and its expression are related to the world the artist sees about

him. Others – Baziotes, [Frederick] Kiesler, [Herbert] Ferber,

and Pollock in some of his latest pictures – even when dealing

primarily with abstract forms, evoke vivid associations

with the objective world. ! e work of [Joseph] Glasco and

of Kriesberg seems to fall between these two groups. Rothko,

Still, much of Pollock, [Bradley Walker] Tomlin, [Edward]

Corbett, [Richard] Lippold, and [! omas] Wilfred fall

within the category usually called abstract, which, as many

competent observers have remarked, is the dominant trend in

mid-century American painting.”

Miller left the artists to write introductory notes to their

own work, and Kriesberg put in a nutshell the view of art

to which he was to subscribe throughout his long life ,

and its centuries-old historical context. In part, it reads:

“! e medieval man saw his icon simply as it was. Of course

it symbolized something else, but his Madonna had little

optical reference to a speci" c woman. ! e Renaissance man

saw his Madonna as a woman: what the artist painted blue

was not only a symbol, it was the depiction of a robe, a real

garment a real person might wear. Together the artist and the

observer altered the meaning of the colored panel: from being

a symbolic object it became also a depiction of natural objects.

! e optical means employed were arbitrary conventions but

they gave to painting an unsurpassed richness and scope. We

are still within this tradition. We admire medieval art and

borrow from it, but we still seek to depict natural objects with

all the richness and vitality we perceive in them. If a # at

surface can show the depth and space of nature, then a single

" xed surface can show the change and motion of nature. I see

that nature is motion and change and that is what I paint.

It is illogical, but then art is illogical. How can patches of

color transmit to one man the passions felt by another? It is

impossible. It is utterly marvelous.”

Irving Kriesberg was born in Chicago in 1919, thus

younger than the abstract expressionists in 15 Americans:

Rothko was born in 1903, Still in 1904, Baziotes and

Pollock in 1912. Like them, he looked closely at European

painting but, unlike Pollock in particular, felt no need to

measure himself against the great European modernists.

In fact, Kriesberg’s fi rst port of call in 1941 after Chicago

was Mexico City, where he lived for the next three

years. There he attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes

Plásticas, was deeply impressed by the ambition of the

Mexican muralists – particularly the volcanic classicism of

Orozco – and in 1943 himself painted murals in a Ministry

Yellow Sheep, 1951Tempera on panel, 54” × 48”Collection Rose Museum, Brandeis University

8 9

masculine assertiveness. (Ten years later he incorporated

the portrait subject’s poem Sing Me Proxy (p . 35) into a

more characteristic painting: a lyrical, raunchy diagram of

the joyously carnal life , organized in panels bursting with

incident and color like a comic book.)

In fact, Kriesberg fl ew beneath the radar partly by choice .

His experience away from the rat race while young had

nourished him into an early maturity, and forever after he

pursued neither fame nor the favor of the media as an

adjunct of his art. Though the organization of his paintings

changed and he developed a personal iconography,

Kriesberg’s approach to the application of pigment,

scrubbed and scribbled on, never changed from the time

he returned to the United States in 1944 until his death

in 2009. It was an abstractionist’s approach to subject

matter that might pass as fi gurative , but throughout his

life Kriesberg took the line that abstraction and fi guration

were , effectively, the same thing: shapes on a canvas,

working as shapes and colours or not at all.

The arrival of pop art in the '60s illuminated a sense that

abstract expressionism, despite the massive injection

of inspirational self confi dence it had brought to the art

scene (and not just in the United States), had been the

last twitch of European romanticism mediated through

the presence in wartime America of those European

surrealists who had fl ed from France to New York. But

Kriesberg’s work was unaffected; it simply proliferated in

its fecundity. Rothko possibly and Pollock certainly had

run out of juice before their early deaths; to Kriesberg

Inspiration was no more a problem than perspiration. He

was a natural with the native certainty to realize that the

big bang always ends in a whimper.

Some thirty years ago, as recounted by his daughter Nell,

he spoke about the abstract-fi gurative schism:

“It really isn’t that important what the subject matter is; the

point is what is happening on the canvas. So looking here, it’s

not so much that this is a wing and that a hand - it’s that if I

do it this way [now gesturing to a corner where the " gures were

intermingled] then something very interesting starts to happen

in that corner of the canvas. And this green over here, it’s not

that important if it’s part of a face or a hand - it’s what’s going

on with the green, and then what happens to the green when it’s

near the yellow. What’s happening on the canvas, to the space,

that’s the real thing.”

Yet in an essay written in the year of his death he suggests

obliquely that there is also a “literary” meaning to his

paintings: “Traditional theater uses masks to establish the

of Agriculture exposition hall for an agricultural fair. At the

same time he began developing religious imagery, at that

stage Judeo-Christian. A moving interpretation from 1945

of the incipient tragedy of Abraham and Isaac (p . 19) depicts

father and son clinging together in a trinity of despair,

as Abraham holds a huge knife to Isaac’s back. Had he

never visited any of the great temple sites and pyramids,

but looked only at the best collection in the world of pre-

Columbian sculpture and pottery at the National Museum

of Anthropology in Mexico City, he would nonetheless

have absorbed the biggest lesson for a modern artist:

Even if the intended function and meaning of a work of art

has disappeared beneath the drifting sands of history, its

intrinsic power as image lives on.

His fi gurative work in Mexico and in the immediate

years afterward was the sign of an emerging major

talent. Portraits and subject pictures, such as the 1942

Guadalajara Mujer (p . 18), show not just the infl uence

of the Mexican muralists and pre-Columbian art, but

some of the majestic simplifi cations of Picasso derived

from similar sources – although in Picasso’s case these

were largely Spanish and African, rather than Mexican.

Suggestions of Picasso recur, by happenstance or

intention, frequently in Kriesberg’s work. What was

happening on the other side of the Atlantic would always

be part of his mental baggage , although he never set foot

in Europe until 1966.

When Kriesberg returned to the United States in 1944,

it was to New York. The abstract expressionists were

entering into their kingdom. Their champion, Clement

Greenberg, reviewing in November of that year Robert

Motherwell’s fi rst solo exhibition, observed , “the future of

American painting depends on what he , Baziotes, Pollock,

and only a comparatively few others do from now on.”

Kriesberg fell decidedly outside the category of painters

blessed by Greenberg. Even in the 1950's, having

already begun to develop his later manner, he was still

fully capable of reverting to outright fi guration when

it suited him, as in a marvelously tender portrait of his

fi rst wife , Ruth Miller (p . 20), depicted sitting before a

pot of ivy standing on a little table , the space behind

her a lovely mauve , her dress sky blue , her face , hair

and hands picking up refl ections of blue and green –

a painting of almost feminine sensitivity from a man

who was to produce a body of work remarkable for its

Ruth with Ivy, 1954Oil on canvas, 38” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Sing Me Proxy, 1964Acrylic on paper, 29” × 23”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Guadalajara Mujer, 1942Oil on canvas, 10” × 8”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Abraham and Isaac, 1945Oil on canvas, 32” × 21”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

10 11

shows fl uttering white shapes against a pale blue ground .

A woman in yellow plucks a white fl ower; a monolithic

head peering in from the edge of the painting observes

her steadily. The pigment is thinly laid on, weightless. It’s

a kind of pale blue dream in which colors relate to nothing

in real life but create their own environment, a different

reality from the one we know.

During a 20-year stretch from the mid '60s to the mid

'80s Kriesberg worked periodically in India and Japan,

for his purposes interrelated cultures. Buddhists hold

that animal life and suffering is as profound as man’s,

and Hindus believe that cows are sacred and accordingly

must be allowed the freedom of the streets. The latter

also treat animal gods and avatars as a fact of daily life:

Hanuman the Hindu monkey god , Ganesh the elephant-

headed god of good fortune , Nandi the guardian bull,

Narasimha the lion-headed man god – their pervading

images are often painted on trucks or suspended from

the rearview mirrors of taxis.

Little Rainbow, painted in 1970 (p . 40) merges a number

of Kriesberg’s themes. It is a triptych, an early example

of his polyptychs (triptychs and quadriptychs). That no

single panel is more important than any other – a crucial

distinction from classical religious polyptychs – suggests

that the format is as likely to have been borrowed from

the world of narrative comics as from Medieval or

Renaissance art.

Quite apart from its striking beauty as a richly painted

design, Little Rainbow displays a number of Kriesberg

characteristics. Like many modern painters, but

particularly Picasso, Kriesberg borrowed from other

artists – not in direct emulation, but in awareness of

their potential, and a willingness to adapt for his own

purposes a collage of infl uences. The left-hand panel

of Little Rainbow shows a group of purposeful fi gures

marching across an arch (echoing the shape of the

rainbow in the third panel). They seem a clear reference

to Marcel Duchamp’s modernist classic , Nude Descending

a Staircase, with its fi gure multiplied to suggest movement,

and which Kriesberg may have seen in the original at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art. Beneath the arch are a man

and monkey in discussion (another recurring theme),

leaning towards each other to form a rough circle within a

rough circle . In the central panel the fi gures have resolved

themselves into one man; still striding, he passes through

a complex architectural structure of brilliant vermilion

with blue passages tapering to a point that might be

universality of the characters regardless of the particular

performance – mother, daughter, villain... My few animals

play various roles in my art. The meaning depends not on

the species portrayed but on the attitude of the painter.”

The two statements are not contradictory. Color might

be thought of as the essence of Kriesberg’s work, but

the spatial and linear treatment of animals and human

beings animates the surface . The color recalls Matisse ,

but the disposition of color from Matisse to Kriesberg is

quite different: Matisse , typically, uses color to create an

Elysian calm, but Kriesberg frequently uses his areas of

hot color to play a part equal to the drawing in intensifying

the picture surface – see the broad strips of orange

beach and sky, and the vermilion clouds refl ected in the

turquoise water, in the 1975 Mediterranean Monkey (p . 45).

Paintings featuring animals form the largest single portion

of his output. Monkeys and owls predominate as principal

characters, with a supporting cast principally of birds,

snakes, dogs and frogs – some of them with human

heads. Kriesberg never differentiated much between

human and animal. His animals, he said , were outside

such categorizations. As a child , Kriesberg had loved

George Herriman’s immortal Krazy Kat comic strip with

its setting in the moonscape of Monument Valley (long

before John Ford adopted it as a setting for his Westerns).

The landscape was clearly not a prime infl uence , but

Herriman’s animals, portraying what Kriesberg described

as “the sweet foolishness of life”, remained in the artist’s

mind not for its unhinged comedy, but as an expression of

the lightness of being. The word animal, after all, derives

ultimately from the Latin anima (breath or spirit), and in

Kriesberg’s theatre the animals are theatrical masks for

his human beings and their emotions. C ertainly they meet

human beings on equal terms.

The relatively late (1992)

Sparrows that Fall (p . 58)

is precisely about the

lightness of being.

Hamlet’s beautiful line ,

“There is a special

providence in the fall of

a sparrow”, may bear

upon this, or perhaps

Kriesberg was thinking

of the Gospel according

to St. Matthew: “Are not

two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall

not fall on the ground without your Father.” The painting

Mediterranean Monkey, 1975Oil on canvas, 29” × 39”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Sparrows that Fall, 1992Oil on canvas, 70” × 50”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Little Rainbow, 1970Oil on panel, 24.3” × 54”Panels attached in single frameEstate of Irving Kriesberg

12 13

the ava tar of the painter; the face – ragged incisors

in a spreading gash of a scarle t and orange mouth,

squashed nose , tufts of hair, horns, eyes of orange ,

green, and purple – clearly a grotesque take on a self-

portrait, the pugnacious, pugilistic face tha t shows in

photographs of the old Kriesberg . Similarly, in the 1990

virtuoso line drawing , Ape and Girl (p . 70), the ape might

be Kriesberg and the nude female his model, just as in

some of Picasso’s la te e tchings an artist ape sits a t an

easel painting the same subjec t.

Leaving aside Self-Devil,

the linear paintings are a

sub-ca tegory within a

series of a genre tha t, in

18th century European

court and aristocra tic

circles, were known as

conversa tion pieces.

Thus with Mediterranean and Baltic (p . 71) it might be

said tha t the hoary old sea green head represents the

Mediterranean, and the head spitting fi re the Baltic .

In Clarity (p . 69), ske tched in blue with just a touch

of yellow, a bearded old philosopher converses with

an owl. But projec ting charac ter onto these fi gments

underscores again the futility of the exercise . The

power of each image stands for itself. Painting is its

own meaning .

In 2003, his ninth decade , Kriesberg painted Dormition

With Walking Birds (p . 83). In the Christian Orthodox

church dormition denotes the dea th of the Virgin;

Buddhists re fer to the dormition of G autama Buddha’s

mother, Maya . The fi gure stre tched out on the ground

of Kriesberg’s Dormition is neither Mary nor Maya but

a skele ton, or maybe the x-ray of a body, possibly

Kriesberg’s itself. From neck to navel the body is

unzipped to show a fresh bouque t of fl owers instead

of entrails – or the nearest thing in terms of abstrac t

blotches of paint. Around this area of green serenity

a fl ock of walking birds assemble . The perspec tive is

as fl a t as a thirteenth-century landscape . An owl-like ,

helme t-headed angel wa tches over him . A pack of

dogs, one human-headed , pay their doggy respec ts. A

blue snake unfurls peace fully beside him . A plaque with

the face of a lion, perhaps standing in for the powerfully

symbolical Buddhist lion column of Sarna th in India ,

stands a t the apex of the composition. A t the top is the

edge of the world with “the old star-ea ten blanke t of the

sky” beyond , as though the world depic ted is merely a

painted panel.

stained glass windows. Ahead of him, in the right-hand

panel, is a long-legged white hound with a human head

leading the group; the rainbow divides passages of grey

and green pigment, and beneath it the dog emerges into

a glorious, affi rmative suffusion of blue .

Also blue , a screaming bird – differentiated from the

background blue by a touch more white in the pigment,

and graphically outlined with a few swiftly drawn black

lines – fl ashes across the sky: a reference , perhaps, to the

late Braque masterpieces depicting a huge bird hurtling

through an artist’s studio, fracturing the stasis. If Braque’s

mid-century paintings are a demonstration that simulated

movement can exist in the cubist-inspired space of his

breakthrough years decades earlier, arguably Kriesberg’s

Rainbow triptych symbolizes the emergence of painting

from European modes into the new American dawn.

But once spelt out, the whole exercise of fi nding a

“meaning” instantly seems crass. Even if that was in

Kriesberg’s mind semi-intuitively, it still matters not a

jot to us, the outsiders looking in. In both Braque and

Kriesberg, the bird stands for fl ux, for transformation, for

psychic disturbance . Yet whatever the undercurrents,

and notwithstanding the psychic tensions that Kriesberg

mentions in relation to his work in general, the thrust of

the triptych’s meaning lies at bottom in its defi nition of

space and movement and the brilliant suggestiveness

of the fully orchestrated chords of color. Nothing more ,

nothing less. And it is enough.

Whatever Little Rainbow portends, it certainly isn’t a

future of abstract expressionism. Kriesberg was as

much a designer as he was a brilliant draftsman and

colorist. The absurdist Monkey Strider (p . 44) from 1973

is a daring exposition of almost rigid design. ! e Running

Pair (p . 43) from 1971 is as taut as a commercial logo,

yet wonderfully realized in terms of color, animation, and

the characterization of two immensely fl exible frogs.

(Animated fi lm was, in fact, a Kriesberg sideline – but

that’s another story.)

The scribbled bird of Little

Rainbow, on the other hand,

is a precursor to a series of

swiftly knocked-in outline

paintings he began to produce

regularly starting in the 1970's,

of which Self-Devil (1984)

(p. 77), is typical. The devil

is, as the title suggests,

Monkey Strider, 1973Oil on canvas, 36” × 46”Longview Museum of Fine ArtsPhotograph byTammy Cromer-Campbell

The Running Pair, 1971Oil on canvas, 31” × 24”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Self-Devil, 1984Pastel on paper, 28” × 22”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Ape and Girl, 1990Monogravure, 19” × 25”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Mediterranean and Baltic,1990, Monogravure, 16” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Clarity, 1990Monogravure, 19” × 24”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

14

In 1964, Clement Greenberg announced that he had

switched his imprimatur from the Abstract Expressionists

to a group of painters including Kenneth Noland , Helen

Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Jules Olitski, decorators

of surfaces as smooth as silk and fl at as an ironing

board . In his catalogue essay for an exhibition of their

work in Los Angeles, he dubbed their work Post-Painterly

Abstraction, and added that Abstract Expressionism had

“turned into a school, then into a manner, and fi nally into

a set of mannerisms.”

Kriesberg had by then cut free of the talk and the labelling.

His world certainly had something in common with the

aspirations of his contemporaries, particularly the “all

overness”, as the critics named the practice of painting

with equal stress on every single brush stroke , seeking a

unity of surface akin to a Persian carpet. But Kriesberg

had no time for the hardening of the arteries involved in

the isms. He was set on a constant search, of fl at surface

as well as illusion, and of the spaces in the mind that

transcended the cerebral.

Michael McNay is a freelance author and journalist, and a

former arts editor at ! e Guardian in London.

Dormition with Walking Birds, 1984Oil on canvas, 50” × 74”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Self Portrait, 1976Oil on canvas, 28” × 20”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

17

I R V I N G K R I E S B E R GSELECTED WOR K S

Irving Kriesberg, 1990Photograph courtesy of theEstate of Irving Kriesberg.

18 19

Guadalajara Mujer, 1942Oil on canvas, 10” × 8”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Abraham and Isaac, 1945Oil on canvas, 32” × 21”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

20 21

Ruth with Ivy, 1954Oil on canvas, 38” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

The Cave, 1953Oil on canvas, 52” × 42”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

22 23

Trumpets, 1960Diptych, each panel 47” × 39”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

24 25

Little Birds in Blue Field, 1951Tempera on masonite, 15” × 17”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Study for the Great Bird, 1954Oil on canvas, 28” × 23”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

26 27

Malcolm Quadriptych, 1964Oil on canvas, each panel 39” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

28 29

Martha’s Dancers – Front, 1963Oil on canvas (movable panels), 65” × 77”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Martha’s Dancers – Rear, 1963Oil on canvas (movable panels), 65” × 77”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

30 31

Ghosts [front panels], 1967Oil on canvas,

(mounted movable panels), 64” × 85”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

32 33

Ghosts [rear panels], 1967Oil on canvas,

(mounted movable panels), 64” × 85”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

34 35

Sky Birds, 1978Pastel on paper, 22” × 29”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Sing Me Proxy, 1964 Poem by Ruth Miller

Acrylic on paper, 29” × 23”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

36 37

Hard and Soft Steps, 1960Oil on canvas , attached panels, each 37.3” × 65”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

38 39

Turtle Frieze, 1962Oil on canvas, 29” × 90”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

40 41

Little Rainbow, 1970Oil on canvas, 24.3” × 54”Panels attached in single frameEstate of Irving Kriesberg

42 43

The Running Pair, 1971Oil on canvas, 31” × 24”Estate of Irving KriesbergHow Many Mirrors, 1966

Acrylic on canvas, 31” × 25”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

44 45

Monkey Strider, 1973Oil on canvas, 36” × 46”Longview Museum of Fine ArtsPhotograph by Tammy Cromer-Campbell

Mediterranean Monkey, 1975Oil on canvas, 29” × 39”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

46 47

Morning Dream, 1973Oil on canvas, 42” × 39”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Wet Leaves Tabernacle (Large Version), 1978Oil on canvas, 43” × 54”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

48 49

Close Quarters, 1974Oil on canvas, 44” × 36”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Small Mason, 1976Oil on canvas, 47” × 36”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

50 51

Tavern Ape, 1979Pastel on paper, 29” × 22”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Down from the Mountain, 1980Oil on canvas, 68” × 43”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

52 53

Spectator, 1983Oil on canvas, 66” × 54”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Caution, 1981Oil on canvas, 74” × 67”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

54 55

The Subterranean Passage, 1966Acrylic on paper on board, 30.5” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

At the Table, 1982Pastel on paper, 29” × 22”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

56 57

Dogfi eld I, 1988Oil on canvas, 63” × 64”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Dropping I, 1991Oil on canvas, 80” × 59”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

58 59

Sparrows That Fall, 1992Oil on canvas, 70” × 50”Estate of Irving Kriesberg Hey Hey, 1998

Oil on canvas, 60” × 50”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

60 61

Quadriptych, 2001Oil on canvas,

Each panel 64” × 28”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

62 63

Tumbling, 1998Oil on canvas, 70” × 58”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Dance of the Beginning, 1984Oil on canvas, 58” × 75”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

64 65

Maternal Images 1991Oil on canvas, 80” × 66”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Man and Owl, 1989Oil on canvas, 68” × 56”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

66 67

Departure, 1995Oil on canvas, 44” × 30”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Triad I, 1992Oil on canvas, 79” × 71”Longview Museum of Fine Arts

68 69

Glances, 1990Monogravure, 13” × 17”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Clarity, 1990Monogravure, 19” × 24”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

70 71

Ape and Girl (with colors), 1990Monogravure, 19” × 25”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Mediterranean and Baltic, 1990Monogravure, 16” × 20”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

72 73

While We Watch, 1986Oil on canvas, 67” × 77”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Dark Triad, 1987Oil on canvas, 58” × 58”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

74 75

Team, 1987Oil on canvas, 68” × 66”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Tashi Devil, 1981Oil on canvas, 70” × 80”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

76 77

Teaching, 1981Pastel on paper, 29” × 22”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Self-Devil 1984Pastel on paper, 28” × 22”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

78 79

Closer, 2000Oil on canvas 80” × 65”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Final Dance, 2002Oil on canvas 68” × 45”

Estate of Irving Kriesberg

80 81

Attached, 2001Oil on canvas, 68” × 45”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Impudence, 1984Oil on canvas, 50” × 74”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

82 83

Dormition with Walking Birds, 1984,Oil on canvas, 50” × 74”Estate of Irving Kriesberg

New Sky (1998)Oil on Canvas, 53” × 68”The Estate of Irving Kriesberg

Kriesberg Studio, ©Jarrod Connerty, 2009

At the Table, 1982, Pastel on paper, 29” × 22”, Estate of Irving Kriesberg

I R V I N G K R I E S B E R GA NIM A L NA R R ATI V E S

USD $29.95