Born and raised in Los Angeles, the late American artist Craig Kauffman became a poster boy for his hometown's modern art scene during the 50s and 60s, pioneering a playful use of colour, light and shadow. From there, he continued expanding his practice, stretching the limits of painting and sculpture in the process.
Read MoreAfter a stint studying at the School of Architecture, University of Southern California, from 1950 to 1952, Craig Kauffman transferred to the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 1956 with a bachelors degree in fine art. In 1953, at age 20, he showed his debut solo exhibition of abstract painting at Felix Landau Gallery, LA, earning a rave review in Art News. Then, in 1958, Kauffman became part of the esteemed Ferus Gallery, honing his calligraphy and deliberate use of line in painting and drawing.
For most of his life, Kauffman remained in California, his works presaging and forming a core part of movements like the Finish Fetish, a style characterised by high-gloss surfaces, and Light and Space, a minimalist offshoot focused on the interactions of perceptual phenomena. He did, however, enjoy short periods in Paris, New York and San Francisco, taking cues from collaborators, including artist Donald Judd, as well as holding personal interests in Chinese landscape painting and Japanese ceramics.
With a practice rooted in form, Craig Kauffman rejected traditional painting's strictures. From vacuum-formed plastics or scaffolded wood and canvas wall pieces, Kauffman's artworks were, in his eyes, just another stage in the history of painting, a belief he evidenced by wall mounting almost every one, no matter how bulbous or irregularly shaped.
A glistening veneer is present throughout Craig Krauffman's works, a trope that goes back to his early-60s stiletto paintings. 'I have a shoe fetish, and I always have', he admitted in a 2008 interview with the Armory Centre for the Arts. 'It dates back to when I was a kid. So they appear.' Evolving from ink illustrations into increasingly abstract acrylic lacquer wall works, they became progressively suggestive and sculptural.
Besides an introduction of phallic and yonic shapes into his 'sculptural paintings', Kauffman's artwork also embraced bolder colours and transparency as tools to increase sheen. What had begun as quite direct sexual references, such as drawings of padded lingerie from the push-up bra inventor, Fredericks of Hollywood, morphed into architectural forms.
By the late 60s, Kauffman began prolifically producing vacuum-moulded works, a marked development seen in his eponymous exhibition at Pace Gallery in 1967. Eschewing his previous references to bodily forms, the works instead relied on undulations and relief to 'paint'. Each work was mounted vertically, bloodlessly slick but seemingly soft to touch. Often, critics positioned his work as reflective of the automobile culture prevalent in Los Angeles.
Continuing in a similar vein throughout his career, Kauffman also discovered another process to merge sculpture and painting. Hot draping, a technique that stretches or drapes thermoplastics across a mould, for example, became a favourite, appearing in his work all the way into the 2000s.
In his lifelong mission to stretch rigid artistic practices, Kauffman rejected the protocol of only using one medium per work. During the 70s, for example, he combined sculpture and painting in the most explicit way, merging painted canvas with jelutong wood to form colour-blocked triptychs.
While not as popular as his vacuum-formed works, the series has since been revisited in Sprüth Magers' exhibition, Constructed Paintings 1973–1976 (2023). Interestingly, the body of work showcases one of his recurrent techniques, whereby he used an absence of material to form a subject. Indeed, in other works, he would often cut into drawing boards, using the edges to outline a subject, rather than drawing it himself.
Craig Kauffman has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: Constructed Paintings 1973–1976, Sprüth Magers, London (2023); Craig Kauffman: A Comprehensive Exhibition, 1957–1980, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1981); Craig Kauffman, Pace Gallery, New York (1967); and Paintings and Drawings, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles (1958).
Group exhibitions include: Light, Space, Surface: Selections from LACMA's Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2023); Open Ends, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000); and 15th Annual Watercolor Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (1951).
Articles on Craig Kauffman have been published in various publications, including Artforum, the New York Times and Flash Art.
Joe Bobowicz | Ocula | 2023
