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H. J. Blackham
H. J. Blackham, (31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009), was a leading and widely respected British humanist for most of his life.
As a young man he worked in farming and as a teacher. He found his niche as a leader in the Ethical Union, which he steadfastly moved away from the trappings of religion. The Ethical Union maintained that ethics was independent of theology, and this ethical dimension was central to Blackham’s life.
In the 1960s he played a leading role in the transition from the Ethical Union to the British Humanist Association and became its first Executive Director. He worked with leading figures such as Barbara Wootton, A. J. Ayer and J. Bronowski. Particular interests were education and counselling. Blackham cared deeply about the importance of moral education, writing on ‘Education for Personal Autonomy’ and ‘Education and Drug Dependence’. He was involved in founding the Moral Education League while with the Ethical Union. He worked with politicians, not entirely successfully, to bring moral education into schools, and was a founder of the Journal of Moral Education.
H. J. Blackham was a key organiser of the World Union of Freethinkers’ conference in London in 1938. When he tried to refound it after the war he decided a new organisation was needed and together with the Dutch philosopher Jaap van Prag started the International Humanist and Ethical Union, of which Julian Huxley was the first President. Blackham worked closely with Julian Huxley in many ways including helping him to revise Religion without Revelation.
Throughout his career he lectured , taught and wrote. His first book was a collection of essays called Living as a Humanist(1950), published by the Rationalist Press Association. His long term belief was that humanism was a way of living as well as a way of thinking. He wrote an epilogue to a revised version of J. B. Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought.
His philosophical interests were seen in Six Existentialists(1951), which became a standard university text, and The Human Tradition (1953). His humanist beliefs were founded on the whole humanist tradition from the Greeks and the Epicureans, from Democritus and Protagoras, to Bentham and Mill, including the philosophers.
One of his most widely read and definitive works was a Pelican Special, Humanism (1968) which succeeded his analyticalReligion in a Modern Society (1966). He continued writing, lecturing and officiating at humanist funerals into his nineties.
The Fable as Literature and the mammoth and original historical survey The Future of our Past: from Ancient Greece to Global Village were fruits of his old age.
Blackham enjoyed many years’ retirement in the Wye valley, reading, writing and growing vegetables. He lived the exemplary humanist life: that of thought and action welded together.
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Blackham lived to the age of 105 and died in 2009. During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer and challenge them with the evidence for the Bible’s historicity and the claims of the gospel. Usually I would send them a cassette tape of Adrian Rogers’ messages “6 reasons I know the Bible is True,” “The Final Judgement,” “Who is Jesus?” and the message by Bill Elliff, “How to get a pure heart.” I would also send them printed material from the works of Francis Schaeffer and a personal apologetic letter from me addressing some of the issues in their work. After reading Francis Schaeffer’s book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? I was interested in corresponding with H.J. Blackham because of a very powerful and revealing quote of his in Schaeffer’s book. I wrote him in 1994 and sent him the cassette tape mentioned early but never got a response back. Below is the Blackham quote as given by Schaeffer:
The humanist H. J. Blackham had this same message that “On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
H.J.Blackham pictured above
Actually this one quote alone from Blackham made me want to share the message that Christ does provide a lasting meaning to our lives, and that is why I started writing several leading atheists in the 1990’s. In my letters I demonstrated that there is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true as Schaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? There is a basis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This link shows how to do that.
Origins of the Universe (Kalam Cosmological Argument) (Paul Kurtz vs Norman Geisler)
Published on Jun 6, 2012
Norm Geisler argues via Kalam Cosmological Argument for the origins of the universe with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. No matter how much evidence Geisler gave, Paul Kurtz refused to fully acknowledge the implications of it, while NEVER giving evidence for his own interpretation of the universe’s beginning.
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(Paul Kurtz pictured above)
Paul Kurtz teamed up with H.J.Blackham and put together the Humanist Manifesto II which they both signed in 1973. I wrote back in 2012 when Paul Kurtz passed away that he was a fine gentleman that I had a chance to correspond with and I read several of his books (Forbidden Fruit was his best effort). One thing I vividly remember from the writings of Paul Kurtz was his love of life and his love for others. However, how can a materialist like Kurtz stay optimistic about his future when he did not believe in God or an afterlife? At the time when I was reading his writings that question kept popping up in my mind.
It is truly ironic to me that a truly outstanding person such as the British Humanist H.J. Blackham who lived such a long and interesting life would make the statement that “…On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing…” In fact, when Norman Geisler quoted this from Blackham in his famous debate with Paul Kurtz on the John Ankerberg Show, Kurtz said he knew Blackham and he was surprised that he would say such a thing, but that had been my contention that a secularist humanist worldview would logically lead to nihilism such as the nihilism that King Solomon discussed in Ecclesiastes (more on that later). How did humanist man get to that pessimistic conclusion? Francis Schaeffer has shed some light on that in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?
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Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
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Following is the first few pages of the chapter “The Basis for Human Dignity” which is found in the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer.
Introduction
So far in this book we have been considering an evil as great as any practiced in human history. Our society has put to death its own offspring, millions upon millions of them. Our society has justified taking their lives, even claiming it a virtue to do so. It has been said that this is a new step in our progress toward a liberated humanity.
Such a situation has not come out of a vacuum. Each of us has an overall way of looking at the world, which influences what we do day by day. This is what we call a “world-view.” And all of us have a world-view, whether we realize it or not. We act in accordance with our world-view, and our world-view rests on what to us is the ultimate truth.
Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era
What has produced the inhumanity we have been considering in the previous chapters is that society in the West has adopted a world-view which says that all reality is made up only of matter. This view is sometimes referred to as philosophic materialism, because it holds that only matter exists; sometimes it is called naturalism, because it says that no supernatural exists. Humanism which begins from man alone and makes man the measure of all things usually is materialistic in its philosophy. Whatever the label, this is the underlying world-view of our society today. In this view the universe did not get here because it was created by a “supernatural” God. Rather, the universe has existed forever in some form, and its present form just happened as a result of chance events way back in time.
Society in the West has largely rested on the base that God exists and that the Bible is true. In all sorts of ways this view affected the society. The materialistic or naturalistic or humanistic world-view almost always takes a superior attitude toward Christianity. Those who hold such a view have argued that Christianity is unscientific, that it cannot be proved, that it belongs simply to the realm of “faith.” Christianity, they say, rests only on faith, while humanism rests on facts.
Professor Edmund R. Leach of Cambridge University expressed this view clearly:
Our idea of God is a product of history. What I now believe about the supernatural is derived from what I was taught by my parents, and what they taught me was derived from what they were taught, and so on. But such beliefs are justified by faith alone, never by reason, and the true believer is expected to go on reaffirming his faith in the same verbal formula even if the passage of history and the growth of scientific knowledge should have turned the words into plain nonsense.78
So some humanists act as if they have a great advantage over Christians. They act as if the advance of science and technology and a better understanding of history (through such concepts as the evolutionary theory) have all made the idea of God and Creation quite ridiculous.
This superior attitude, however, is strange because one of the most striking developments in the last half-century is the growth of a profound pessimism among both the well-educated and less-educated people. The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all.
Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with:
… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way.
Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere. The humanist H. J. Blackham has expressed this with a dramatic illustration:
On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility.79
One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has existed forever and ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form.
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Notes
78. “When Scientists Play the Role of God,” London Times, November 16, 1978.
79. H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
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Francis Crick was in agreement with H.J.Blackham’s materialistic views and he concluded, “The Astonishing Hypothesis is that you—your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules” What if all this is true? What if the cosmos and the chemicals and the particles really are all that there is, and all that we are?
“If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.” —Francis Schaeffer in The God Who Is There
“Eventually materialist philosophy undermines the reliability of the mind itself-and hence even the basis for science. The true foundation of rationality is not found in particles and impersonal laws, but in the mind of the Creator who formed us in His image.” —Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds “Can man live without God? Of course he can, in a physical sense.
Can he live without God in a reasonable way? The answer to that is No!” Then there is the problem the longing for satisfaction that every person feels. This is the same question that Solomon asked 3000 years ago in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He knew there was something more.
The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
These two verses below take the 3 elements mentioned in a materialistic worldview (time, chance and matter) and so that is all the unbeliever can find “under the sun” without God in the picture. You will notice that these are the three elements that evolutionists point to also.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 is following: I have seen somthing else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brillant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. __________
Let me show you some inescapable conclusions that Francis Schaeffer said you will face if you choose to live without God in the picture. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun” in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
- Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
- Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
- Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1)
- Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).
Solomon had all the resources in the world and he found himself searching for meaning in life and trying to come up with answers concerning the afterlife. However, it seems every door he tries to open is locked. Today people try to find satisfaction in education, alcohol, pleasure, and their work and that is exactly what Solomon tried to do too. None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). You have to wait to the last chapter in Ecclesiates to find what Solomon’s final conclusion is.
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Kansas – Dust In The Wind
Uploaded on Nov 7, 2009
Music video by Kansas performing Dust In The Wind. (c) 2004 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
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Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
(part 1 ten minutes)
(part 2 ten minutes)
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Take a minute and compare Kerry Livgren’s words to that of H.J. Blackham.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
The humanist H. J. Blackham had this same message that
“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
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H. J. Blackham
By Jim HerrickLast updated 2009-10-22
This page provides a brief biography of H. J. Blackham, who was a leading and widely respected British humanist for most of his life.
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H. J. Blackham
| Harold John Blackham | |
|---|---|
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Harold Blackham (1974)
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| Born | 31 March 1903 Birmingham, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 23 January 2009 (aged 105) Hereford, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Writer and philosopher |
Harold John Blackham (31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009) was a leading British humanist philosopher, writer and educationalist. He has been described as the “progenitor of modern humanism in Britain”.[1]
Born in Birmingham, Blackham left school following the end of World War I, and became a farm labourer, before gaining a place at Birmingham University to study divinity and history.[2] He acquired a teaching diploma and was the divinity master at Doncaster Grammar School.[2]
Joining the Ethical Union, Blackham drew the organisation further away from religious forms and played an important part in its formation into the British Humanist Association, becoming the BHA’s first Executive Director in 1963. He was also a founding member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), IHEU secretary (1952–1966), and received the IHEU’s International Humanist Award in 1974, and the Special Award for Service to World Humanism in 1978. In addition he was one of the signatories to the Humanist Manifesto.[3]
His book, Six Existentialist Thinkers, became a popular university textbook.
He died on 23 January 2009 at the age of 105.[4]
Contents
[hide]
Publications[edit]
- Bury, JB, with an historical epilogue by HJ Blackham. A History of Freedom of Thought (2001). University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 0-89875-166-7
- The Future of our Past: from Ancient Greece to Global Village (1996). Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-042-8
- The Fable as Literature (1985). London: Continuum International Publishing Group – Athlone. ISBN 0-485-11278-7
- Education for Personal Autonomy: Inquiry into the School’s Resources for Furthering the Personal Development of Pupils (editor) (1977). London: Bedford Sq. Press. ISBN 0-7199-0937-6
- Humanists and Quakers: an exchange of letters (with Harold Loukes) (1969). Friends Home Service. ISBN 0-85245-011-7
- Humanism (1968). London: Penguin. (published by Harvester in hardback, 1976. ISBN 0-85527-209-0)
- Religion in a Modern Society (1966). London: Constable
- Objections to Humanism (editor) (1963). London: Constable. ISBN 0-09-450170-X (published in paperback by Penguin, 1965, ISBN 0-14-020765-1)
- The Human Tradition (1953). London: Routledge.
- Six Existentialist Thinkers (1952). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7100-1087-7
- Living as a Humanist (1950)
See also[edit]
- Barbara Smoker, a fellow humanist who published Blackham’s Best.
External links[edit]
- BHA obituary of HJ Blackham
- BBC biography of HJ Blackham by Jim Herrick
- Works by or about H. J. Blackham in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
References[edit]
- Jump up^ Barbara Smoker (2003). Blackham’s Best. Blackham’s Best – Selected by Barbara Smoker. ISBN 095126351X.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Barbara Smoker (19 April 2009). Harold Blackham SPES Memorial Meeting. SPES Memorial Meeting pamphlet.
- Jump up^ “Humanist Manifesto II”. American Humanist Association. Retrieved 7 October 2012.
- Jump up^ http://www.iheu.org/node/3402
XXX
Featured artist today is Richard Anuszkiewicz
“I’m interested in making something romantic out of a very, very mechanistic geometry. Geometry and color represent to me an idealized, classical place that’s very clear and very pure.“ Richard Anuszkiewicz
Early Life – 1930-48
Richard Anuszkiewicz in his studio 1965
Richard Anuszkiewicz was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, USA in 1930. Both his parents were originally Polish but had met in the USA. Anuszkiewicz was interested in art from an early age and this was something that was encouraged by his father.
After attending a series of parish run schools, Richard transferred to Eire Technical High School aged 14 (1944). It was there that his fascination with art and drawing was allowed to develop, as he was able to draw each day for several hours. His exceptional talent was evident even during this time – winning a major artistic award as a senior in 1947.
In 1948, Anuszkiewicz gained a place at the Cleveland Institute of Art where he began to become interested in abstraction and the underlying design process behind creating a work of art.
Formal Study – 1948-55
Richard Anuszkiewicz – Self Portrait – 1954
Anuszkiewicz graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1953 with a Batchelors in Fine Art. By this time he was already receiving formal recognition of his immense artistic talent. During his final year at Cleveland, the National Academy of Design awarded him a Pulitzer Travelling Scholarship. The award gave would have allowed Richard the funding to travel to and study art in a European city, but he instead chose to stay in the USA.
At the time, Josef Albers was the head of the Design Department at Yale University. Anuszkiewicz was fascinated by the work Albers had done with colour, and felt that this element was something that would further enhance his work. He talked his decision over with his tutor at Cleveland and was accepted at Yale, where he studied under Albers, from 1954-55, graduating with a Masters in Fine Art. Interestingly his room-mate at Yale was another highly influential Op Artist, Julian Stanczak.
The Influence of Josef Albers – 1954-55
Josef Albers – Homage to the Square series – 1962
Albers didn’t use a formulaic set of rules in his teaching, instead encouraging his students to look objectively at their work and to work out what was and wasn’t happening. Anuszkiewicz learned from Albers about form and colour, the Bauhaus Movement, the color theory of Paul Klee, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists masters like Cezanne and as he began to appreciate these movements and artists more and more, their influences began to become apparent in his work.
Anuszkiewicz, under the influence of Albers and his teaching, began to abandon the realism of his previous work. “Self-Portrait” (shown above) painted whilst at Yale in 1954 is a good example – painted in vibrant colours, Anuszkiewicz has reduced himself to a flat abstract figure.
At Yale, Anuszkiewicz became fascinated with the current thinking on the Psychology of Perception, reading extensively and keeping up to date on the thinking of the time.
From Yale back to Ohio – 1956
Richard Anuszkiewicz – Concentric-ii – 1958-
After graduating from Yale, with a view to supplementing his income from art with teaching income, Anuszkiewicz returned to Ohio for a year, where he studied for a Batchelors in Science in Education at Kent State University (1955-56). (He later held visiting teaching positions at Dartmouth College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, and Kent State University).
Whilst at Kent, he was offered his first solo show by the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown. During this time at Kent, he has later said that he began to paint ‘seriously’ and began to develop the style for which he is known, making extensive use of contrasting colours and form.
After he graduated from Kent State University, Anuszkiewicz worked painting houses with friends for the summer. In September, he quit, rented a flat in Cleveland and started painting for real.
New York – 1957-
A section of the cover to Anuszkiewicz’s solo show at the Contemporaries Gallery 1960
In the Spring of 1957, Anuszkiewicz made the move to New York, taking with him much of the material he had created over the preceding six months. After a short time off travelling in Europe, Anuszkiewicz began the process of taking his work around the New York galleries.
There was some interest in his work, but at the time, the strong colours and hard-edged style were seen as a little bit ‘difficult’ for most. The breakthrough came from The Contemporaries Gallery in the autumn of 1959. The gallery director of the time, Karl Lunde, had seen some of Richard’s work and sought him out. He was offered a solo show at the gallery in early 1960.
That Anuszkiewicz was going to be an important artist became clear in the final week of the show. Towards the end, a representative of the Museum of Modern Art walked in and purchased one of his paintings. Key private collectors rapidly followed suit.
The Momentum Builds – early 1960s
Richard Anuszkiewicz – Plus Reversed -1960
“Fluorescent Complement” – the work purchased by MoMA – was exhibited there later that year alongside a work of the ‘father of Op Art’, Victor Vasarely. A second show at The Contemporaries Gallery followed in 1961. Museums and Galleries were really beginning to show a lot of interest in Richard Anuszkiewicz’s work. The important and influential 1962 “Geometric Abstraction in America” exhibition from the Whitney Museum of American Art featured works by Anuszkiewicz.
He was again exhibited at MoMA’s 1963 exhibition ‘Americans’ where he displayed 5 paintings and received much of the attention from the critics of the time. As a result of the exhibition, Time Magazine ran a feature on him which featured a full page reproduction of ‘Plus Reversed‘ (1960 – shown right) and the brilliant ‘Knowledge and Disappearance’ (1961). In 1964, Life magazine ran a feature on him in which they called him the ‘new wizard of Op’.
The Responsive Eye – 1965
The Responsive Eye – detail from catalog cover, 1965
The defining exhibiton in the history of Op Art, and one of the major contemporary art events of the decade, was MoMA’s ‘Responsive Eye’ exhibtion from 1965. The exhibition had been conceived (although not titled) and announced several years earlier in 1962, with a view to documenting the development from Impressionism to the exciting new trend of a “primarily visual emphasis”. The historical development was abandonded along the way, as “so rapid was the subsequent proliferation of painting and construction employing perceptual effects that the demands of the present left no time nor gallery space for a retrospective view” (curator William Seitz)
The major Op Artists of the time showed their works there, including Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely. The exhibiton, featured Anuszkiewicz as one of the outstanding and notable American Op artists of the time. Op Art had arrived and so too had Richard Anuszkiewicz. The public loved the exhibition and Op Art inspired designs began to show up in popular culture – Op Art advertising and Op Art fashion and design abounded.
The Sidney Janls Gallery – 1965-1975
Richard Anuszkiewicz Sol I – 1965
Richard Anuszkiewicz had already been taken under the wing of wealthy clothing manufacturer and art collector Sidney Janis prior to the Responsive Eye in early 1965. Janis was a highly influential gallery owner, known for the quality of the artists he represented, including Josef Albers, Kline, Pollock and Rothko.
Janis quickly put Richard into the gallery’s exhibition line-up, giving him a solo show in late 1965. It was there that Anuszkiewicz showed his Sol I and Sol II paintings – the first two of an ongoing series that he still continues today. The show was an enormous success and the paintings almost sold out.
Soon after Janis exhibited his work in the influential and important ‘Pop and Op’ exhibition alongside notable artists of the time such as Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.
Continuing Success – late 1960s – 1975
Untitled (The Peace Portfolio) – Richard Anuszkiewicz – 1972
During the late 1960s and 1970s, Anuszkiewicz’s meteroric rise continued.
In 1965 he exhibited at Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC and was included in American Art Today at the New York World’s Fair. In 1966, the Cleveland Museum of Art organised a major retrospective of his work. He was then featured in American Painting Now at the United States Pavilion at Expo 1967 in Montreal. His relationship with the Sidney Janis Gallery continued; Anuszkiewicz had further solo shows at the gallery in 1967, 1969, and 1973. Both the public and the critics loved his work: John Canaday called the 1969 Janis exhibition “dazzling” in the New York Times.
In the late 1960s, Anuszkiewicz started to create sculpture, often taking the form of painted wooden cubes, sometimes on a mirrored base. In the early 1970s, Anuszkiewicz developed his primarily ‘square’ based painting style to one primarily based on rectangular forms.
The mid-1970s and 1980s
Deep Magenta Square – Richard Anuszkiewicz – 1978
Anuszkiewicz continued to be widely exhibited throughout the 1970s and 1980s although his last inclusion in an exhbition at the Janis gallery came in 1975; Janis had moved on to representing the photo-realists.
Over the same period, he developed his use of colour in his ‘Spectrals’ series, making extensive use of ‘simultaneous contrast’ – where two colors, side by side, interact with one another to change our perception of them accordingly. He also concentrated on his ‘Centered Square’ series of works, a good example of which is shown right.
In 1981, in the same year that Riley found inspiration there, Anuszkiewicz visited Egypt and was inspired by the vibrant colour he was confronted with. This inspiration led to his famous “Temple” series of works.
Late Work
Richard Anuszkiewicz – Translumina Trinity II, 1986
Around the mid-1980s Anuszkiewicz started to produce works in his Translumina series, which saw him starting to work with wood constructions in low relief, often limiting the colours he used to a mere two, primarily black and one other colour.
His work continued to evolve as each year went by. 1990 saw him creating work that had been laser cut from sheets of aluminium or steel painted typically with a single primary colour, or from welded bronze tubing and stainless steel.
In 2000, he created a series dedicated to Mondrian – ‘For Mondrian’ – made from painted steel.
2011 saw him revert to more traditional media – acrylic on canvas – to complete a series of works based on the Twin Towers.
Richard Anuszkiewicz is alive and well and painting today. His work is still widely exhibited and can be found in galleries and museums around the world.
| Richard Anuszkiewicz |
| BIOGRAPHY |
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Paintings
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| Translumina with Deep Blue SOLD |
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Sculptures
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| Centum Tile A-D On Request |
Yellow, Blue & Green Star SOLD |
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Prints
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| Reflections IV (Panel 34) $8500 |
Olympics 1976 $1500 |
Untitled from the Peace Portfolio $1500 |
Celebrate New York $1200 |
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| Soft Satellite Red $2500 |
Untitled – Blue II $2500 |
Untitled – Red I $2500 |
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| Sun Keyed $450 |
Grey Tinted Rainbow On Request |
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| League of Women Voters SOLD |
Triptych SOLD |
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| Six Squares SOLD |
Squares SOLD |
Spectral Square SOLD |
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| Spectral Cadmium SOLD |
Spectral Cadmium II SOLD |
Panel 46 SOLD |
Panel 47 SOLD |
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| Rosafied SOLD |
Untitled (Orange to Red) SOLD |
Untitled, Inward Eye #8 (1970) SOLD |
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| Untitled – 25 SOLD |
Manhattan SOLD |
Untitled (1968) SOLD |
Untitled (1985) SOLD |
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Portfolios and Suites
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| Volumes: Variable Multiple Suite |
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| Orange on Blue Square $1500 |
Yellow on Blue Square $1500 |
Yellow on Blue Rhombus $1250 |
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| Orange on Blue Rhombus $1250 |
Orange on Green Rhombus $1250 |
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| Volumes: Variable Multiple – Suite of Nine SOLD |
| Sequential Portfolio |
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| Sequential I $1500 |
Sequential II $1500 |
Sequential III $1500 |
Sequential IV $1500 |
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| Sequential V SOLD |
Sequential VI $1500 |
Sequential VII $1500 |
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| Sequential VIII $1500 |
Sequential IX $1500 |
Sequential X $1500 |
| Annual Editions |
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On Masonite
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| Untitled (1978) On Request |
Untitled (1979) On Request |
Untitled (1983) On Request |
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| Untitled (1986) $3000 |
Untitled (1987 – 88) On Request |
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On Paper
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| Untitled (1983) On Request |
Untitled (1986) On Request |
Untitled (1989) On Request |
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| Untitled (1991) On Request |
Untitled (1993) On Request |
Untitled (1985) SOLD |
| Midnight & Season Suites |
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Midnight
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| Black with Silver $1500 |
Black with Blue $1500 |
Blue with Black $1500 |
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| Purple with Silver $1500 |
Red over Gray $1500 |
Purple with Red SOLD |
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Spring
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| Peach on Peach $1500 |
Yellow with Yellow $1500 |
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Summer
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| Red with Gold I $1500 |
Red with Gold IV $1500 |
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| Red with Blue $1800 |
Blue on Red $1800 |
Red with Gold II SOLD |
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Autumn
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| Green with Red $1500 |
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Winter
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| Green with Silver $1500 |
Light Blue with Light Blue $1500 |
| Spectral Portfolio |
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| Spectral Portfolio (Suite of 9) SOLD |
| Inward Eye Suite |
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| Cover – Suite On Request |
1 SOLD |
2 $800 |
3 $800 |
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| 4 SOLD |
5 $800 |
6 SOLD |
7 SOLD |
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| 8 $800 |
9 $800 |
10 $800 |
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Posters
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| Vote for New York SOLD |
Richard Anuszkiewicz
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| Richard Anuszkiewicz | |
|---|---|
Self Portrait, 1954: One of the last representational works Anuszkiewicz created
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| Born | May 23, 1930 Erie, Pennsylvania |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Cleveland Institute of Art |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Op Art |
Richard Anuszkiewicz (pronounced Aah-Nuss-KAY-Vitch; born May 23, 1930, Erie, Pennsylvania) is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor.[2]
Contents
Life and work
Richard Anuszkiewicz trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio (1948–1953), and then with Josef Albers[1] at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut (1953–1955) where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts.
He was one of the founders and foremost exponents of Op Art, a movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s.[3] Victor Vasarely in France and Bridget Riley in England were his primary international counterparts. In 1964, Life magazine called him “one of the new wizards of Op”.[4] More recently, while reflecting on a New York City gallery show of Anuszkiewicz’s from 2000, the New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described Anuszkiewicz’s paintings by stating, “The drama — and that feels like the right word — is in the subtle chemistry of complementary colors, which makes the geometry glow as if light were leaking out from behind it.” [3] Anuszkiewicz has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Florence Biennale and Documenta, and his works are in permanent collections internationally. He was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1992 as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1994.
Style
Considered a major force in the Op Art movement, Anuszkiewicz is concerned with the optical changes that occur when different high-intensity colors are applied to the same geometric configurations. Most of his work comprises visual investigations of formal structural and color effects, many of them nested square forms similar to the work of his mentor Josef Albers. In his series, “Homage to the Square,” Albers experimented with juxtapositions of color, and Anuszkiewicz developed these concepts further. Anuszkiewicz has continued to produce works in the Op Art style over the last few decades.
Anuszkiewicz summarizes his approach to painting as follows: “My work is of an experimental nature and has centered on an investigation into the effects of complementary colors of full intensity when juxtaposed and the optical changes that occur as a result, and a study of the dynamic effect of the whole under changing conditions of light, and the effect of light on color.” (from a statement by the artist for the exhibition “Americans 1963” at the Museum of the Modern Art)
Selected Museums Holding Works
- Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas
- Boca Raton Museum of Art
- Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
- Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Columbus Museum of Art
- Denver Art Museum
- Detroit Institute of Arts
- Flint Institute of Arts
- Fogg Museum, Harvard University
- Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art
- Honolulu Museum of Art[5]
- Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
- Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
- Whitney Museum of Art, New York
Grants and Awards
- 1953: Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship
- 1963: Charles of the Ritz Oil Painting Award
- 1964: The Silvermine Guild Award for Oil Painting
- 1977: Cleveland Arts Prize
- 1980: Hassam Fund Purchase Award
- 1988: Hassam Fund Purchase Award
- 1994: New York State Art Teachers’ Association Award
- 1995: Emil and Dines Carlson Award
- 1996: New Jersey Pride Award
- 1997: Richard Florsheim Fund Grant
- 2000: Lee Krasner Award
- 2005: Lorenzo dei Medici Career Award, awarded at the Florence Biennale
Exhibitions
Anuskiewicz has exhibited in many public collections around the world, including notable New York galleries as Sidney Janis, The Contemporaries,[1] and Andrew Crispo Gallery.
- 1955: Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
- 1966: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
- 1967: The Hopkins Center, Hanover, New Hampshire
- 1968: Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
- 1972: Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida
- 1976: La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California
- 1977: Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
- 1978: Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida
- 1978: Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania
- 1979: Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, New York
- 1979: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
- 1980: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
- 1980: Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- 1984: Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York
- 1984: Canton Art Institute, Canton, Ohio
- 1986: Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida
- 2005: Florence Biennale, Fortezza da Basso, Firenze, Italy
Bibliography
- Anuszkiewicz, Richard and Karl Lunde. “Anuszkiewicz.” New York: H.N. Abrams (1977). ISBN 0-8109-0363-6
- Alviani, Getulio, Margaret A. Miller and Giancarlo Pauletto. “Richard Anuszkiewicz: Opere 1961-1987.” Pordenone: Centro Culturale Casa A. Zanussi (1988).
- Buchsteiner, Thomas and Indgrid Mossinger. “Anuszkiewicz Op Art.” Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Publishers (1997). ISBN 978-3-7757-0671-1
- Kolva, Jeanne, Maxine Lurie (ed.) and Marc Mappen (ed.). Anuszkiewicz, Richard. “Encyclopedia of New Jersey.” New Brunswick: Rutgers University (2004). 9780813533254
- Madden, David and Nicholas Spike. “Richard Anuszkiewicz: Paintings & Sculptures 1945-2001: Catalogue Raisonné.” Florence: Centro Di Edizioni (2010). ISBN 978-88-7038-483-3
- Price, Marshall N. “The Abstract Impulse: fifty years of abstraction at the National Academy, 1956-2006.” Manchester: Hudson Hills Press (2007). ISBN 978-1-887149-17-4
- Ratliff, Floyd, Neil K. Rector and Sanford Wurmfeld. “Color Function Painting: The Art of Josef Albers, Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz.” Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery (1996). ISBN 0-9720956-0-8
References
- “Oral history interview with Richard Anuszkiewicz, 1971 Dec. 28 – 1972 Jan. 7”. Oral history interviews. Archives of American Art. 2011. Retrieved 17 Jun 2011.
- Richard Anuszkiewicz Biography. Invaluable.com, retrieved February 20th, 2011
- New York Times. December 15, 2000. By Holland Cotter, p. E41.
- Life. December 11, 1964 “Op Art.” p. 132.
- Honolulu Museum of Art wall label, Sol V, 1968, acrylic on canvas, accession 3546.1
External links
- “Op Out of Ohio” review by Ken Johnson for the New York Times
- Richard Anuszkiewicz Pronunciation
- www.richardanuszkiewicz.com
- rogallery.com
- www.picassomio.com
| [hide] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Artists |
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- 1930 births
- Living people
- Contemporary painters
- Contemporary sculptors
- 20th-century American painters
- 21st-century American painters
- American printmakers
- Abstract artists
- Yale School of Art alumni
- Cleveland School of Art alumni
- American people of Polish descent
- Op art
- 20th-century American sculptors
- People from Erie, Pennsylvania
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