Kathan Brown, acclaimed fine art printmaker, dies at 89
Crown Point Press is "the most instrumental American print shop in the revival of etching as a medium of serious art," art historian Susan Tallman wrote in her 1996 book, "The Contemporary Print."
Unlike the more common practice of lithography, which uses chemicals to bind an image to the flat surface of a metal plate or stone, intaglio printing involves etching the image into a copper or zinc plate with a stylus or with acid, creating grooves that are then filled with ink.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
When the plate is run through the steel rollers of the press and the image is transferred to paper, the ink reservoirs create a deep color saturation and a velvety quality, Valerie Wade, director of Crown Point Press, said in an interview.
Advertisement
Ms. Brown typically invited artists, both emerging and established, to Crown Point for two-week residencies. The point was not to create reproductions of existing works but to produce originals — or 'unique multiples,' as the company calls them — in editions of 25 to 35. Over the years, Ms. Brown's stable of artists included luminaries like Sol LeWitt, Pat Steir, John Baldessari, Helen Frankenthaler, Chuck Close, and Ed Ruscha.
Advertisement
The limited-edition prints, currently priced from about $3,000 to about $15,000, made the work of top artists affordable to casual art enthusiasts, as well as to private collectors and galleries. Many have ended up in the archives of museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Because most of the artists Ms. Brown worked with had no experience with this form of printmaking, their efforts amounted to forays into a new artistic medium. 'Printmaking's layered quality allows the artist to see his drawings more analytically,' Ms. Brown said in a 1982 interview with The Atlanta Constitution.
Experimentation was part of the experience, she told The Oakland Tribune in 1980, "an opportunity to take some chances and risks with ideas that they might not take within their normal mediums."
Kathan Louise Brown was born April 23, 1935, in New York City, the elder of two children of Elwood Brown, a portrait photographer, and Clarissa (Bradford) Brown, a schoolteacher who graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago.
She grew up in Daytona Beach, Fla., and eventually enrolled at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, earning a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1958. Along the way, she studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, where she took an etching class.
On a trip to Edinburgh after graduating, she found an old etching press in the yard of an inn, where it had been hidden during World War II by art students hoping to spare it from government scrap-metal drives for the war effort. She bought it for the equivalent of $75 and cashed in her return flight, traveling home on a freighter instead, so that she could bring the bulky cast-iron press back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she settled with her first husband, Jeryl Parker.
Advertisement
Using her salvaged press, she and her husband started Crown Point Press in 1962, but they divorced shortly thereafter, and Ms. Brown set up shop in the basement of her home in Berkeley.
Early on, she established working relationships with acclaimed California painters Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn.
Thiebaud's "Delights," a series of pop art depictions of ice cream and other sweets from 1964, was bound in book form, and decades later, a copy sold for about $100,000. "Green," a print of an abstract work by Diebenkorn from 1986, sold at auction last year for about $572,000.
In addition to her son, Ms. Brown is survived by her second husband, artist Tom Marioni, whom she married in 1983; and two granddaughters.
Always looking to push boundaries, Ms. Brown did not restrict herself to working with visual artists. In 1986, minimalist composer John Cage visited Crown Point's studio and tried to capture the essence of fire by burning sheets of delicate Japanese paper on the press and creating prints out of the singed fragments.
Vito Acconci, the performance and video artist, once printed an image of airplane wings big enough to fill a gallery wall; he included the print in an early 1980s installation, along with a 20-foot ladder.
That particular artwork was a bit cumbersome to appeal to the casual art buyer. But, as Ms. Brown once said, 'we are more concerned about work that will last rather than what will sell.'
Advertisement
This article originally appeared in
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Evergreen Park Community High School band director Ken Kazin retires after nearly 40 year career
Teaching can be a tough job, but then something happens that makes all the effort worth it. Ken Kazin, the longtime band director at Evergreen Park Community High School calls them 'aha moments,' when his students 'finally get something really well. You just see it.' 'That's something I can never get too much of,' he said. After a nearly 40-year career at the school, Kazin retired at the end of this school year. The school's new band director is Colin Curatolo. Kazin said he'll miss his students, and is proud of how far the band program has come since he started in 1987. Back then, the marching band didn't participate in competitions and the band director position wasn't even full-time until he started. Among his more recent accomplishments was introducing a rock band element to the music program about five years ago. Now the school also has strong jazz and concert bands. It's a full time job indeed. In fact, as of his retirement Kazin had banked 406 hours of paid sick time, the equivalent of about 50 days. In addition to overseeing the school's bands, he's taught classes in AP Music Theory, Technology in the Performing Arts, World Music and other related topics. He is also principal percussionist for the Southwest Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Chicago Federation of Musicians. He was a drummer for Oak Lawn Theatre musicals and plays percussion with his son Keaton, a junior at Stagg High School, in the DuPage Youth Symphony. Kazin grew up in Oak Lawn, attended St. Laurence High School in Burbank and obtained a degree from VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. He lives in Hickory Hills with his wife, Amy, who is activities director at EPCHS. His son Jason teaches music at Scarlet Oak School in Oak Forest and his daughter, MacKenzie, teaches English in Columbus, Ohio. A song called 'Evergreen' performed during Evergreen Park Community High School's recent spring concert, which Kazin directed, was commissioned for him and the school by William Owens, his former VanderCook classmate. Kazin credits working with his wife as a big part of the school's musical/artistic success. She was formerly choir director there and directed and choreographed musicals, sharing his enthusiasm for ensuring students grew in their musical abilities. Their combined talents helped students work together in the school's band, choir and theatre programs. 'I think that made a big difference in the school environment and especially the kids,' said Kazin. 'What I'm most proud of is we built a music department. It was about all the music students and making sure they participated in the arts.' A big part of his overall success goes back to his parents, Kazin said. His mother was a professional pianist and organist, and he performed with her for a local VFW, playing drums. His father, a roll tender and inkman for RR Donnelley Printing, taught him his strong work ethic and the importance of showing up ready to give the job his all. He also gets a kick out of student shenanigans, chuckling when he noticed a mustache drawn on his picture in the hallway. 'You put the kids first, our job is to make them better by the end of the year,' he said. Students appreciate Kazin, too. 'Mr. Kazin has explained the importance of trying new and different things time and time again,' said Ryan Brennan, a rising junior, who plays in the concert band. 'He suggests that you don't need to understand everything to try … try something different and ask questions when you need to. 'That's how you can be most successful,' said Ryan. He also had a way of boosting self confidence, according to Zion McCadd, a rising senior and drum major in the marching band. 'I have learned so much from Mr. Kazin,' said Zion. 'Just from being in his band for three years, I've learned to be confident in everything I do from leading the band to playing my instrument. 'He also taught me it's okay to have a little fun!' Kazin also made an impact on Louise Brady, a band student who also just finished junior year. 'I am beyond grateful to have had him as a teacher, mentor, and dad-joke provider,' said Louise. 'I truly couldn't ask for a better experience and hope he has enough adolescents to tease in his retirement!' Principal Matt Dugan said Kazin had made a significant impact with his 'dedication toward the community and school as a whole.' But coming to work was no chore for Kazin, both because of his students and the many colleagues who 'had my back.' He said he might teach college students in the future and he plans to continue performing. 'I had the best job in the teaching world,' he said. 'I was a band director, so I got to grow with my students over four years. 'I loved growing with them.'
3 hours ago
50th anniversary of 'Jaws': How the film impacted public perception of sharks
A theme song consisting of a simple two-note motif has kept swimmers terrified of open water for decades. John Williams' iconic score for the movie "Jaws," which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its release later this month, is instantly recognizable -- the sound of which is enough to prompt people to look around for a monster of the sea to emerge from the surface, even if they are no where near the ocean, shark experts told ABC News. The movie, one of the first feature films directed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg and based on the book of the same name by Peter Benchley, shifted the collective consciousness surrounding sharks and the danger they present for the past 50 years, some experts said. Based in a coastal town in New England, residents are terrified after a woman is killed by a great white shark that seems to want to continue raising its number of human kills as it stalks boats and swimmers. "Jaws" is almost synonymous with the American summer -- similar to Fourth of July and apple pie, Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University Long Beach, told ABC News. The film tapped into humans' primal fear and became a social phenomenon in the U.S. and abroad, grossing over $470 million at the box office, adjusted for inflation. Shot at water level, which is where humans see the water, "Jaws" instilled a fear of the unknown -- which is why it is still relevant today, Ross Williams, founder of The Daily Jaws, an online community dedicated to celebrating the movie, told ABC News. "It villainized sharks and people became absolutely terrified of any species that was in the ocean," James Wilkowski, director of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station at Oregon State University, told ABC News. 'Jaws' transformed sharks into the new marine villain When "Jaws" was released on June 20, 1975, it transformed the apex predator into an underwater villain whose presence made water unsafe, Wilkowski said. Whales were the most feared marine animal in the generations before "Jaws," said Lowe, who grew up in Martha's Vineyard, where the movie was shot. Lowe's grandfather was a commercial fisherman, and his grandfather's uncles were commercial whalers, who passed down the terror of whales to the subsequent generations, Lowe said. The fear was based on stories of sailors coming back from whaling expeditions where friends and family had died, Lowe added. "Moby Dick," the 1851 novel by Herman Melville about a whaling ship captain named Ahab and his quest to get revenged on the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg, likely contributed to the trepidation as well, Lowe said. But the anti-shark propaganda had been brewing long before the movie was released, Williams said. Horror stories published during World War II and films that preceded "Jaws" did not paint sharks in a nice light, Williams said. Chapple, who started his career in Cape Cod, knew people who saw the movie as a kid and still refused to enter ocean waters as an adult. "It was really in the psyche of the community," he said. Misconceptions about sharks due to 'Jaws' Like many fictional films, there were several exaggerations or dramatizations about sharks included in "Jaws" for cinematic effect. The most glaring inaccuracy is that sharks want to attack or eat people, the experts said. The notion that sharks are some "mindless killer" that are going to kill anyone who is swimming in the water or on a boat is inaccurate to the nature of the predator, Taylor Chapel, co-lead of Oregon State University's Big Fish Lab, told ABC News. "We're not on a shark's menu," Wilkowski said. "They don't want to eat us, and if they did, we'd be easy pickings. It'd be a buffet." Shark research began in the 1970s, so at the time, scientists -- and especially the public -- didn't know a lot about them, Chapple said. There are also anatomical inaccuracies in the shark animatronic itself -- including bigger teeth, larger "dark, black" eyes and an unrealistic 25-foot body, Wilkowski said. Technology at the time made it difficult for the filmmakers to get actual footage of the sharks, so there are barely any glimpses of real sharks in the movie and filmmakers largely relied on the animatronic as well, Lowe said. "When the movie came out, it was probably the most deceptively but brilliantly marketed movie ever," Williams said. The biggest misconception that still reverberates among public fear is that a shark sighting is a "bad thing." But the presence of sharks is actually a sign of a healthy ecosystem, Wilkowski said. "To see sharks in an environment is a good thing," he said. "...we just have to learn how to coexist with them." After the movie was released and permeated society's awareness of the dangers that lurk beneath the surface of the water, there was a direct correlation of shark population declines due to trophy hunting, Wilkowski said. "Because people's perceptions of sharks were negative, it made it easier for them to allow and justify overfishing of sharks, regardless of the species," Lowe said. Both Spielberg and Benchley have expressed regret in the past over how "Jaws" impacted the public perception of sharks. But Chapple has noticed a shift in the past two decades, where sharks have transformed from a "terrifying" creature to one people are fascinated by, instead, he said. "The fascination has outlasted and outpaced the fear," Williams said. Humans are actually a much bigger threat to sharks, killing up to 100 million sharks per year as a result of overfishing, according to the Shark Research Institute. Climate change and shifting food sources are also causing species-wide population declines, the experts said. Sharks are crucial for a healthy ocean ecosystem. The apex predators maintain balance in the food web and control prey populations. "If we lost sharks, our marine ecosystem would collapse," Wilkowski said.
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
New '1984' foreword includes warning about ‘problematic' characters
The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's novel 1984, which coined the term 'thoughtcrime' to describe the act of having thoughts that question the ruling party's ideology, has become an ironic lightning rod in debates over alleged trigger warnings and the role of historical context in classic literature. The introduction to the new edition, endorsed by Orwell's estate and written by the American author Dolen Perkins-Valdezm, is at the center of the storm, drawing fire from conservative commentators as well as public intellectuals, and prompting a wide spectrum of reaction from academics who study Orwell's work. Perkins-Valdez opens the introduction with a self-reflective exercise: imagining what it would be like to read 1984 for the first time today. She writes that 'a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity,' noting the complete absence of Black characters. She also describes her pause at the protagonist Winston Smith's 'despicable' misogyny, but ultimately chooses to continue reading, writing: 'I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story.' 'I'm enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story; that is, until Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character,' she writes. 'For example, we learn of him: 'He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.' Whoa, wait a minute, Orwell.' That framing was enough to provoke sharp critique from novelist and essayist Walter Kirn on the podcast America This Week, co-hosted with journalist Matt Taibbi. Kirn characterized the foreword as a kind of ideological overreach. 'Thank you for your trigger warning for 1984,' he said. 'It is the most 1984ish thing I've ever f***ing read.' Later in the episode, which debuted on June 1, Kirn blasted what he saw as an imposed 'permission structure' by publishers and academic elites. 'It's a sort of Ministry of Truthism,' he said, referring to the Ministry of Truth that features prominently in the dystopian novel. 'They're giving you a little guidebook to say, 'Here's how you're supposed to feel when you read this.'' Conservative commentator such as Ed Morrissey described the foreword as part of 'an attempt to rob [Orwell's work] of meaning by denigrating it as 'problematic.'' Morrissey argued that trigger warnings on literary classics serve to 'distract readers at the start from its purpose with red herrings over issues of taste.' But not all responses aligned with that view. Academic rebuttal Peter Brian Rose-Barry, a philosophy professor at Saginaw Valley State University and author of George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality, disputed the entire premise. 'There just isn't [a trigger warning],' he told Newsweek in an email after examining the edition. 'She never accuses Orwell of thoughtcrime. She never calls for censorship or cancelling Orwell.' In Rose-Barry's view, the foreword is neither invasive nor ideological, but reflective. 'Perkins-Valdez suggests in her introduction that 'love and artistic beauty can act as healing forces in a totalitarian state,'' he noted. 'Now, I find that deeply suspect... but I'd use this introduction to generate a discussion in my class.' Taibbi and Kirn, by contrast, took issue with that exact line during the podcast. 'Love heals? In 1984?' Taibbi asked. 'The whole thing ends with Winston broken, saying he loves Big Brother,' the symbol of the totalitarian state at the heart of the book. Kirn laughed and added, 'It's the kind of revisionist uplift you get from a book club discussion after someone just watched The Handmaid's Tale.' Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer, Harvard graduate and professor of literature at American University, also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: 'That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all.' Kirn responded to that sentiment on the show by pointing out that Orwell was writing about midcentury Britain: 'When Orwell wrote the book, Black people made up maybe one percent of the population. It's like expecting white characters in every Nigerian novel.' Richard Keeble, former chair of the Orwell Society, argued that critiques of Orwell's treatment of race and gender have long been part of academic discourse. 'Questioning Orwell's representation of Blacks in 1984 can usefully lead us to consider the evolution of his ideas on race generally,' he told Newsweek. 'Yet Orwell struggled throughout his life, and not with complete success, to exorcise what Edward Said called 'Orientalism.'' Keeble added, 'Trigger warnings and interpretative forewords... join the rich firmament of Orwellian scholarship-being themselves open to critique and analysis.' Cultural overreach While critics like Kirn view Perkins-Valdez's new foreword as a symptom of virtue signaling run amok, others see it as part of a long-standing literary dialogue. Laura Beers, a historian at American University and author of Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, acknowledged that such reactions reflect deeper political divides. But she defended the legitimacy of approaching Orwell through modern ethical and social lenses. 'What makes 1984 such a great novel is that it was written to transcend a specific historical context,' she told Newsweek. 'Although it has frequently been appropriated by the right as a critique of 'socialism,' it was never meant to be solely a critique of Stalin's Russia.' 'Rather,' she added, 'it was a commentary on how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the risk to all societies, including democracies like Britain and the United States, of the unchecked concentration of power.' Beers also addressed the role of interpretive material in shaping the reading experience. 'Obviously, yes, in that 'interpretive forewords' give a reader an initial context in which to situate the texts that they are reading,' she said. 'That said, such forewords are more often a reflection on the attitudes and biases of their own time.' While the foreword has prompted the familiar battle lines playing out across the Trump-era culture wars, Beers sees the conversation itself as in keeping with Orwell's legacy. 'By attempting to place Orwell's work in conversation with changing values and historical understandings in the decades since he was writing,' she said, 'scholars like Perkins-Valdez are exercising the very freedom to express uncomfortable and difficult opinions that Orwell explicitly championed.' Related Articles Gabbard Links 'Ministry of Truth' to Obama Speech, Calls Biden 'Front Man'Tulsi Gabbard Compares Biden Admin to Dictatorship Over 'Ministry of Truth'Joe Biden's Disinformation Board Likened to Orwell's 'Ministry of Truth'Memory Holes, Mobs and Speaker Pelosi | Opinion 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
