Leonard Baskin
American, 1922 - 2000
The year of his graduation (1949) Baskin began making prints. In 1950 he went to Paris and studied at the Acadamie de la Grande Chaumiare, and the following year to Florence to work at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Baskin's traditional training and his conviction that art should serve one's fellow man made him a rather unique figure during the 1950s, when abstraction and the expression of one's personal feelings held sway. Rather than experimenting with new formal structures, media, or techniques, Baskin developed a mastery of old techniques -woodcarving, woodcuts, etching, and lithography-and determined to use his work for social ends. During the 1950s he began a series of full-length standing figures of "dead men" in stone, bronze, and wood. Related to these are his "Birdmen" (human figures with bird heads that are reminiscent of certain statues of Egyptian gods) and his "Oppressed Men" (often featuring an owl -another favorite theme-standing on the head of a man). All of these figures represent "universal man" struggling with the problems of life and death, aspiration, immortality, and corruption. In his prints Baskin extends the psychological overtones of his sculpture even further, frequently producing powerful brooding, and even tortured, images. Much of the strength of these works derives from his bold cutting technique, which exploits the texture of the wood, and from his mastery of black and white.
Perhaps the two greatest influences on Baskin's work are Japanese calligraphy and German expressionism (the artists he admires most are Kaethe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach). Defending the so-called "literary" or "journalistic" qualities of his work, Baskin has noted: "All art is propaganda.... The communication of an artistic idea is an act of propaganda." He has stated that for him the most important subject is "anxiety-ridden man, imprisoned in his ungainly self," and has illustrated this theme in such prints as Hanged Man, Angel of Death, and Oppressed Bird with Human Aspects.
Like his black ink drawings on white paper, Baskin's graphics are technically brilliant. His most recent work is a series of bronze sculptures-many with an elegiac air-on the usual themes of death and compassion, and like all his work they display an odd combination of sophistication with the seemingly primitive." Baskin is often termed a romantic humanist," perhaps a result of his disavowal of the "purely decorative" and "the private world of the artist."
He has long been interested in book illustration and founded the Gehenna Press, Northampton, Mass., which prints and publishes limited editions. A typical volume would be Homed Beetles and Other Insects, for which Baskin has provided thirty-four etchings; however, his interest extends beyond illustration into total book design: the integrating of type, paper, illustrations, and binding to form an esthetic object. Baskin has taught at Smith College since 1953 and has won numerous awards including the Printmaking Prize at the Sao Paulo Biennial (1961) and medals from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (1965) and the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1969)
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Leonard Baskin was born in 1922, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Rabbi Samuel Baskin and May Guss Baskin. Religious themes as well as mythological symbolism and images of human nature have been entwined throughout his career, serving as the subjects of many of his works. Baskin became intrigued by Greek history, philosophy and mythology at an early age and now the central object of many of his sculptures and paintings is the sibyl, the prophetic female from Greek mythology.
Perhaps Baskin's best known image is the bird, either as subject matter in itself, or as a form of life emanating from humanity, as a caricature of perceived human ills. "The link between Baskin's images is his humanism. His sculpture of the human figure depict the grace and mystery of woman, pay homage to man the individual. Other works, in sculpture and on paper, portray the evil side of humankind. Although Baskin treats the frailties and injustice of humankind in all media, his caring for human beings and the human condition is ever present."
Baskin's sculpture, watercolors, and prints are in the permanent collections of most of the world's major art galleries and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Vatican Museum, and the Smithsonian. Leonard Baskin's main focus throughout his life was sculpture: "My sculptures are memorials to ordinary human beings, gigantic monuments to the unnoticed dead: the exhausted factory worker, the forgotten tailor, the unsung poet... Sculpture at its greatest and most monumental is about simple, abstract, emotional states, like fear, pride, love and envy... Over the years I have developed a series of images of predatory birds and vicious human beings as well as producing a bizarre motley of iconic devices that say...BASKIN!"
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1864 - 1901
