The American abstract painter Paul Jenkins pulled streams of color through his canvases in a quest to depict the ever-changing nature of reality.
By Rebecca Allan
Paul Jenkins (1923–2012) liberated the materials of his art in such a way that oil, watercolor, and acrylic paints and canvases became mutable elements for the expression of his expansive life experiences, from his youth in the American Midwest to his transcontinental journeys and years of working abroad.
Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Sky Hook, 1980, oil on canvas, 77 x 165 in.
The Haskell Collection © The Estate of Paul Jenkins 2022
On view at the Tampa Museum of Art, “Paul Jenkins: From America’s Heartland to an International Journey” (through June 26) focuses on the work of a painter whose individual contributions to the language and legacy of Abstract Expressionism situates him alongside the most distinguished artists of the 20th century. Jenkins is one of two artists (the other being Frank Stella) to have been collected in depth by the Jacksonville, Fla., patrons Preston and Joan Haskell. Comprising 25 large-scale paintings and works on paper from the Haskell Collection and the Jenkins Estate, the exhibition examines Jenkins’ artistic production and inventive creative practice between 1951 and 2007. The illustrated exhibition catalogue includes an essay by art historian Gail Levin that enriches our understanding of Jenkins’ influences across creative disciplines, the impact of his international travels, and his relationship to artistic peers.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1923, Jenkins attended the Kansas City Art Institute as a high school student, where he made what he referred to as “interior landscapes” inspired by the natural rivers and caves of the Ozark Mountains. Working in a ceramics factory, he learned to recognize the alchemical nature of color glazes and how fire transforms the material of wet clay into solid volumes. His visits to the collection of Asian Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum were key to his early visual education, especially the Buddhist and Hindu artworks of China and India. Of these experiences Jenkins wrote: “These Eastern attitudes fostered in me a sense of mystery about the universe that has drawn me all my life. Eastern art has inspired, nourished, and helped me enter a state of mind where dualism seemed normal.” After wartime service in the United States Naval Air Corps, Jenkins moved to New York, where he studied for four years with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League. Kuniyoshi’s generosity extended to lending Jenkins his own studio for periods of time.
Phenomena Ritual Reach, 1983, acrylic on canvas, 81 3⁄4 x 57 3⁄4 in.
The Haskell Collection © The Estate of Paul Jenkins 2022
In New York, Jenkins formed friendships with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. He then moved to Paris, working between that city and New York for much of his life. It was in Paris that he developed the working process that would occupy him for decades. Applying diluted acrylic to primed white canvas, he coaxed the flow of paint by adjusting the canvas and utilizing unconventional tools. Jenkins’ first solo exhibition in the United States was presented by the Zoe Dusanne Gallery in Seattle, followed by his first museum purchase by the Seattle Art Museum. Beginning in 1955, the Martha Jackson Gallery represented his work for two decades.
Beginning in 1959, Jenkins referred to himself as an “abstract phenomenist,” explaining that “The world of phenomena to me means that constant involvement with the ever changing.” A series of “Phenomena” paintings followed, defined by poetic associations in their titles. Phenomena Seventh Undertow (1971), a roiling abstract field of tempered blue-grays, mossy green, whites and creams evokes the subdued light of an ocean. At 63 by 116 inches, we are immersed within the cresting pull of the waves. The absence of a horizon line, or any object that would suggest a sense of scale, further complicates the search for a fixed, stable viewpoint. This work evokes the flowing costumes designed by Edythe Gilfond for Martha Graham’s 1940 dance piece Letter to the World. In 1951, Graham had invited Jenkins to observe her dance classes, where he made drawings of her. It is no wonder that Jenkins later became deeply involved in collaborations in theatre and dance, including the adaptation of a work on canvas for Shining House, a dance piece by Jean Erdman about Pelé, a goddess in Hawaiian mythology.
Phenomena Sheffield Shield, 1981–83, acrylic on canvas, 64 x 39 in.
The Haskell Collection © The Estate of Paul Jenkins 2022
Paris was the locus of artistic freedom and fellowship for many American artists and writers during the period in which Paul Jenkins moved back and forth from Paris to New York. By 1957, Peggy Guggenheim had purchased a painting from his studio there, and he had forged an important friendship with fellow American painter Joan Mitchell. Jenkins and Mitchell traded studios for two years; he worked in her St. Mark’s Place studio in New York and she in his studio on the rue Decrès in Paris. At the Musée du Louvre the magnificent Hellenistic sculpture, Nike of Samothrace (circa 220-185 B.C.) displayed within the arch of the grand staircase inspired Jenkins’ Phenomena Samothrace Arch (1973). He translated the goddess’ wings and drapery into two flowing waterfalls of ultramarine blue, yellow, and red-orange acrylic pigments. The intermingling of liquid colors and their sediments bring to mind the actual movement of a living and forceful spiritual being, even as Jenkins must have been awed by the permanence of the Parian marble, quarried on the Greek Island of Paros, from which it was carved. Today we look upon the excavation of antiquities with concern for the ethical problems of removing patrimonial objects, and this adds a deeper layer of complexity of the experience of such treasures as well as artworks inspired by these.
Phenomena Spanish Cape (1975) was the first Jenkins painting to be acquired by the collector Preston Haskell, the catalyst for one of the most highly regarded collections of American abstract art. The Haskell Company, an architectural, engineering and construction firm, was founded by Preston Haskell in 1965. In an interview with Tampa Museum of Art curator Joanna Robotham, (in the exhibition catalogue) Haskell reflects on the personal mission of displaying works of art in the corporate environment to elevate the minds and spirits of employees, particularly those engaged in design ideas and concepts.
Phenomena Tibetan Estuary, 1996, acrylic on canvas, 77 x 160 1⁄4 in.
The Haskell Collection © The Estate of Paul Jenkins 2022
Often made of brocaded silk embellished with fur linings and embroidery, capes were among the most popular outer garments for wealthy men in 16th-century Spain. Represented by the Velázquez in his portrait Philip IV, King of Spain (1624), their association with masculine power and their shielding yet flowing forms would certainly have captured Jenkins’ imagination. In 1965 he had made a trip to Madrid and El Escorial, the most important architectural monument of the Spanish Renaissance, conceived by King Philip II.
Coupled with his techniques for adjusting the canvas to affect the movement and pooling of pigments, Jenkins utilized a knife-like ivory tool to “control and make precise designations and fusions at the same time, and to carry the color into a vast area as well as contracted form.” The tool was an Inuit implement that was gifted to him in 1958 by the abstract painter and lithographer Alice Baber. Because the ivory tool was softer than a metal knife, it enabled him to coax paint without tearing through the canvas. A documentary film, The Ivory Knife: Paul Jenkins at Work, a documentary film, was produced in 1966.
Phenomena Neanderthal Burn, 1973, watercolor on paper, 72 x 36 in.
The Haskell Collection © The Estate of Paul Jenkins 2022
By 1979, Jenkins had begun experimenting with working in impasto, a technique in which paint is thickly applied to a surface. Marks from a brushstroke or palette knife are visible as a result of the dimensionality of paint. This approach corresponded with a lengthy sojourn to the Caribbean; the monumental oil painting titled Phenomena Sky Hook (1980) is labeled “St. Croix” on the stretcher bar. Here, thick and thin stripes of cadmium red, yellow, emerald green, violet, and blue form a hook or comma-like shape in the center of a glowing white field. The blue/violet areas have been scraped through to reveal the canvas’ weave, while the red color bands dissolve at their edges as the result of the addition of oil or turpentine that caused the paint to disperse. The overall form resembles an island as seen from the sky.
Phenomena Tibetan Estuary (1996), one the most complex and layered of the impasto paintings, exploits the full range of Jenkins’ visual and geographic vocabulary, blending his pouring-pooling movements with scraped surfaces. Estuaries are bodies of water that occur where rivers meet the sea. They are ecosystems that provide critical habitat for the interdependent plant and animal communities that can thrive in brackish water—a mixture of fresh and salt waters.
Today, in addition to the Haskell Collection in Florida, Jenkins’ work is housed in numerous international public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
A more intimate aspect of his history demonstrates the breadth of Paul Jenkins’ influence, and the enduring artistic friendships that he enjoyed. In 1971, the year of his first major American retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Jenkins also attended the inauguration of the Rothko Chapel in that city. To its archives he then donated a letter that Mark Rothko had written to him concerning their 1966 trip to Paris. During the trip, the two friends visited L’Orangerie to see Monet’s Les Nymphéas, to explore different solutions for a protective distance between the paintings and the viewer for the chapel that was then being planned. Imagine how influential, if little known, this visit must have been.