Reuben Kadish
Encyclopedia
Reuben Kadish was an American artist
, specializing as a sculptor
, draughtsman
, mural
ist, painter
, and printmaker
. In his later career he also taught art history
and sculpture in New York
.
to immigrant parents from Kovno
(now Kaunas) in Czarist Russia
(now Lithuania
), he was the oldest of three sons. The family moved to Los Angeles
, California
in 1920 and it was there that Kadish developed strong roots and lifelong friendships.
His father, Samuel Kadish was a painting contractor
by trade but also harbored strong political interests having been, while a young man in pre-revolutionary Russia, a member of the Marxist
-oriented General Jewish Labour Bund in Kovno. The Yiddish
-speaking household was rich in books and magazines though the artist's father had stopped his formal schooling at age ten. The elder Kadish was quite artistic in his own right as a trained decorative painter, expert in various decorative painting techniques such as Faux Bois
and marbling. He passed his artistic proclivities to his eldest son, Reuben, who from an early age drew everything in sight. Kadish also inherited his father's political activism and, as a teenager, became a political radical, leading a protest against the U.S. Marine presence in Nicaragua
, which resulted in his suspension from high school
.
in Los Angeles, where he befriended two young men who not only became his lifelong friends but who would later wield an enormous influence on the postwar art world: Philip Goldstein
(later known as Philip Guston) and Jackson Pollock
. Goldstein and Pollock had been classmates at the Manual Arts High School
in Los Angeles until both were expelled for distributing satirical pamphlets. Although Pollock never studied at Otis (he moved to New York in 1929 to study at he Art Students League of New York
with Thomas Hart Benton
), he often visited Los Angeles, remained close with Goldstein and struck up an instant rapport with Kadish.
Goldstein and Kadish soon grew tired of Otis and set up a studio nearby where they continued their self-taught apprenticeship to Renaissance painting
and the growing movement of the Mexican
mural
ists.
firebrand, David Alfaro Siqueiros
. Kadish had volunteered his services to the charismatic Siqueiros and chauffeured the famed artist around Los Angeles and assisted him in local outdoor mural projects such as the Plaza Art Center in 1932. "I was his 'go-boy' for this, 'go-boy' for that," recalled Kadish during an interview with the Archives of American Art in 1991. "I never expected any remuneration and enjoyed the intensity and vigor of the guy. He had tremendous charisma. Along with Thomas Hart Benton, the main thing I got out of these people was that they were interested in big ideas."
Siqueiros had secured a major mural commission in Morelia, Michoacán, and had intended to execute the project himself but his energies were drawn to Europe
by the Spanish Republican
movement and the nascent Spanish Civil War
. Several other more prominent artists were in the running for the opportunity but for various reasons, declined. After seeing photos the duo had sent him of a completed mural project for a community center in LA, Siqueiros invited his young charges to paint a 1000 square feet (92.9 m²) mural at the University of Michoacán in Morelia, the former summer palace of Emperor Maximilian
. Their mutual friend, the poet and budding art critic Jules Langsner accompanied the young men to Mexico, their first venture outside the U.S. At ages 21 (Kadish) and 22 (Goldstein), they literally became art stars once the U.S. press got wind of their radically themed mural. The ambitious, wall-sized composition, titled The Struggle Against War and Fascism, encompassed both Renaissance and Surrealist
influences, complete with dangerous looking hooded figures strongly reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan
thugs and their forebears from the Spanish Inquisition
.
Kadish and Goldstein returned to the U.S. and joined the fledgling artistic arm of the Works Progress Administration
. In 1935 they painted a politically charged mural (recently restored) at City of Hope
, at the time a tuberculosis
hospital located in Duarte
, California. But that proved to be the end of their short-lived but remarkable partnership. The two split up after that, with Guston moving to New York and Kadish to San Francisco.
, Kadish executed the brilliant and still extant A Dissertation on Alchemy
mural in the Chemistry Building at San Francisco State University
in 1937. It proved to be his solo San Francisco commission despite submitting twenty odd designs for the WPA. "[My designs] were too flamboyant, too revolutionary, too this, too that," recalled Kadish in the Archives of American Art interview.
During World War II
, Kadish worked as a civilian for Bethlehem Steel
and the shipping industry, building destroyer
s and submarine
s until he was recruited to join the U.S. Army's Artist Unit, an elite branch funded by Congress
to artistically document the war effort. Many of his searing images of bombed-out villages in Burma and India
and heart-rending scenes of death and starvation are now in the collection of the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.
's storied Atelier 17 in Greenwich Village
, printing editions for the likes of Joan Miró
, André Masson
and other European Surrealists.
Keen on living in New York (a dream he had ever since his first boyhood visit in the mid-1920s when he saw a Courbet
nude at The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Kadish wanted to join old friends like Jackson Pollock
who were migrating to the eastern end of Long Island
for cheap housing. But Kadish had no luck there and eventually found a run down, 40 acres (16.2 ha) farm in northern New Jersey
, about sixty miles from Manhattan
. He more or less turned his back on the percolating New York art world where Abstract Expressionism
and the New York School
were raging and became a successful dairy farmer. Years later, the artist characterized that move: "Unfortunately I lost and separated myself from that world. It could have been in Kansas
. Really, it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life."
Though he quickly became an expert dairy farmer and grew enamored of the land and life cycles of raising animals, misfortune pursued him. A catastrophic fire in his metal quonset
hut studio on the farm in the late 1940s destroyed all but a few of his Abstract Expressionist paintings. He would never paint again. But after hard times of torment about his loss, the artist, geared to the soil and hands-on machinery of the farm, became a sculptor.
, the Brooklyn Museum of Art School
and finally in 1960, began his long association with the Cooper Union
in Manhattan as a professor of art history and sculpture.
Setting himself up in a small carriage house
on East 9th Street, walking distance from Cooper, the new empire included a nasty basement where his etching
press was set up. So Kadish, after a ten-year exile, returned to the then booming New York School scene that still championed Abstract Expressionist painting and largely ignored sculpture, except for the legendary likes of David Smith
.
Apart from his teaching and art-making in the late 50s and 60s, Kadish also moonlighted as part-owner of the White Horse Tavern
, the legendary Greenwich Village bar where the British poet Dylan Thomas
died from alcohol poisoning in 1953.
During the 1960s, Kadish's wife, Barbara Weeks Kadish, actively pursued her lifelong passion for archaeology
at New York University
, eventually heading NYU's pre-history dig at Aphrodisias
in southwestern Turkey
. Julian, the youngest of their three sons, accompanied Barbara to Turkey for several of her summer expeditionary digs. In 1962, Dan Kadish, the couple's oldest son, married Philip Guston's daughter, Musa Jane Guston.
In 1977, Kadish led a group of students in completing the restoration of the historic Foundation Building at Cooper Union, casting missing and broken pieces of the cast-iron lamps and capitals in the shop's foundry, saving the school approximately $40,000.
Kadish created an impressive oeuvre of deeply scored terra cotta
and bronze
sculpture that was viscerally reflective of his Abstract Expressionist roots and hammered out a respectable exhibition career. It included stints with the Elaine Poindexter Gallery and Grace Borgenicht Gallery as well as two retrospective exhibitions at the Artists' Choice Museum in SoHo
(1985) and the New Jersey State Museum
(1990).
Those lucky ones heard Kadish's thundering lectures on Egyptian funerary sculpture
, Greek mythology
, and cinema-like slide shows of exotic art and architecture from around the world. A portion of that huge slide collection is now part of Cooper's Library.
Even during his most prolific period during the mid-1980s when he executed his brutally expressionistic caste of terra cotta and bronze portrait heads, most attention from critics, art historians, and filmmakers were centered not on Kadish's artworks but his raconteur-like recollections of the deified Jackson Pollock or his personal brushes with Siqueiros and other artistic titans like Joan Miró.
In fact, Kadish and his late wife Barbara turn up as characters in Pollock
, the Hollywood
film starring Ed Harris
.
As Kadish himself said: "It is my wish and direction that my works of art shall be conserved, displayed and distributed to reach the widest practicable public and shall not be sold or otherwise exploited for the private gain of any individual."
Visual arts of the United States
American art encompasses the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement,...
, specializing as a sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, draughtsman
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
ist, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, and printmaker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
. In his later career he also taught art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
and sculpture in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Early life
Born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to immigrant parents from Kovno
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
(now Kaunas) in Czarist Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
), he was the oldest of three sons. The family moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1920 and it was there that Kadish developed strong roots and lifelong friendships.
His father, Samuel Kadish was a painting contractor
Painter and decorator
A house painter and decorator is a tradesman responsible for the painting and decorating of buildings, and is also known as a decorator or house painter...
by trade but also harbored strong political interests having been, while a young man in pre-revolutionary Russia, a member of the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
-oriented General Jewish Labour Bund in Kovno. The Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
-speaking household was rich in books and magazines though the artist's father had stopped his formal schooling at age ten. The elder Kadish was quite artistic in his own right as a trained decorative painter, expert in various decorative painting techniques such as Faux Bois
Faux Bois
Faux bois refers to the artistic imitation of wood or wood grains in various media. The craft has roots in the Renaissance with trompe-l'œil. It was probably first crafted with concrete using a steel armature by the inventor of ferrocement, Joseph Monier. In 1875, Monier created the first bridge...
and marbling. He passed his artistic proclivities to his eldest son, Reuben, who from an early age drew everything in sight. Kadish also inherited his father's political activism and, as a teenager, became a political radical, leading a protest against the U.S. Marine presence in Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, which resulted in his suspension from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
.
Early art career
By 1930, Kadish was a student at the Otis Art InstituteOtis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...
in Los Angeles, where he befriended two young men who not only became his lifelong friends but who would later wield an enormous influence on the postwar art world: Philip Goldstein
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
(later known as Philip Guston) and Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
. Goldstein and Pollock had been classmates at the Manual Arts High School
Manual Arts High School
Manual Arts High School is a secondary school in Los Angeles, California. When founded, Manual Arts was a vocational high school, but later converted to a traditional curriculum.-History:...
in Los Angeles until both were expelled for distributing satirical pamphlets. Although Pollock never studied at Otis (he moved to New York in 1929 to study at he Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
with Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (painter)
Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States...
), he often visited Los Angeles, remained close with Goldstein and struck up an instant rapport with Kadish.
Goldstein and Kadish soon grew tired of Otis and set up a studio nearby where they continued their self-taught apprenticeship to Renaissance painting
Early Renaissance painting
Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of that period of European history known as the Renaissance, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science...
and the growing movement of the Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
ists.
Mural period
The young men would soon make a big impression on the famed Mexican muralist and left-wingLeft-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
firebrand, David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros
José David Alfaro Siqueiros was a social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco that helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance, together with works by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and also a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an...
. Kadish had volunteered his services to the charismatic Siqueiros and chauffeured the famed artist around Los Angeles and assisted him in local outdoor mural projects such as the Plaza Art Center in 1932. "I was his 'go-boy' for this, 'go-boy' for that," recalled Kadish during an interview with the Archives of American Art in 1991. "I never expected any remuneration and enjoyed the intensity and vigor of the guy. He had tremendous charisma. Along with Thomas Hart Benton, the main thing I got out of these people was that they were interested in big ideas."
Siqueiros had secured a major mural commission in Morelia, Michoacán, and had intended to execute the project himself but his energies were drawn to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
by the Spanish Republican
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
movement and the nascent Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. Several other more prominent artists were in the running for the opportunity but for various reasons, declined. After seeing photos the duo had sent him of a completed mural project for a community center in LA, Siqueiros invited his young charges to paint a 1000 square feet (92.9 m²) mural at the University of Michoacán in Morelia, the former summer palace of Emperor Maximilian
Maximilian I of Mexico
Maximilian I was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire.After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he was proclaimed Emperor of Mexico on April 10, 1864, with the backing of Napoleon III of France and a group of Mexican monarchists who sought to revive the Mexican monarchy...
. Their mutual friend, the poet and budding art critic Jules Langsner accompanied the young men to Mexico, their first venture outside the U.S. At ages 21 (Kadish) and 22 (Goldstein), they literally became art stars once the U.S. press got wind of their radically themed mural. The ambitious, wall-sized composition, titled The Struggle Against War and Fascism, encompassed both Renaissance and Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
influences, complete with dangerous looking hooded figures strongly reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
thugs and their forebears from the Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
.
Kadish and Goldstein returned to the U.S. and joined the fledgling artistic arm of the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
. In 1935 they painted a politically charged mural (recently restored) at City of Hope
City of Hope National Medical Center
City of Hope National Medical Center, is a private, not-for-profit clinical research center, hospital and graduate medical school located in Duarte, California, United States...
, at the time a tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
hospital located in Duarte
Duarte, California
Duarte is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 21,321, down from 21,486 at the 2000 census....
, California. But that proved to be the end of their short-lived but remarkable partnership. The two split up after that, with Guston moving to New York and Kadish to San Francisco.
Great Depression and WWII
As a WPA artist during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Kadish executed the brilliant and still extant A Dissertation on Alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
mural in the Chemistry Building at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
in 1937. It proved to be his solo San Francisco commission despite submitting twenty odd designs for the WPA. "[My designs] were too flamboyant, too revolutionary, too this, too that," recalled Kadish in the Archives of American Art interview.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Kadish worked as a civilian for Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation , based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S...
and the shipping industry, building destroyer
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...
s and submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
s until he was recruited to join the U.S. Army's Artist Unit, an elite branch funded by Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
to artistically document the war effort. Many of his searing images of bombed-out villages in Burma and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and heart-rending scenes of death and starvation are now in the collection of the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Dairy farming
But the earth-shaking events of World War II had another impact on Kadish, back in the U.S. with a young family to support and no job prospects, so to speak. He worked for twenty-five cents per impression in a part-time job for Stanley HayterStanley William Hayter
Stanley William Hayter , CBE was a British painter and printmaker associated in the 1930s with Surrealism and from 1940 onward with Abstract Expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of the 20th century, in 1927 Hayter founded the legendary Atelier 17 studio in Paris...
's storied Atelier 17 in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, printing editions for the likes of Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...
and other European Surrealists.
Keen on living in New York (a dream he had ever since his first boyhood visit in the mid-1920s when he saw a Courbet
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
nude at The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Kadish wanted to join old friends like Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
who were migrating to the eastern end of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
for cheap housing. But Kadish had no luck there and eventually found a run down, 40 acres (16.2 ha) farm in northern New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, about sixty miles from Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. He more or less turned his back on the percolating New York art world where Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
and the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
were raging and became a successful dairy farmer. Years later, the artist characterized that move: "Unfortunately I lost and separated myself from that world. It could have been in Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
. Really, it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life."
Though he quickly became an expert dairy farmer and grew enamored of the land and life cycles of raising animals, misfortune pursued him. A catastrophic fire in his metal quonset
Quonset
Quonset may refer to:*Quonset Point, a peninsula North Kingstown, Rhode Island**Naval Air Station Quonset Point**Quonset State Airport*Quonset hut, a military structure* Quonset Hut Studio, an early recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee...
hut studio on the farm in the late 1940s destroyed all but a few of his Abstract Expressionist paintings. He would never paint again. But after hard times of torment about his loss, the artist, geared to the soil and hands-on machinery of the farm, became a sculptor.
Cooper Union period
Once that dramatic transformation was made, there was no turning back and Kadish moved his family back to New York City, renting out his land to tenant farmers and starting a new career. He taught design at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial ArtsNewark School of Fine and Industrial Arts
Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts was a city-run vocational and art school in Newark, New Jersey. Opened in 1882 as the Evening Drawing School, its name was changed in 1909 to the Fawcett School of Industrial Arts, and changed again in 1928 to the Newark Public School of Fine and...
, the Brooklyn Museum of Art School
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
and finally in 1960, began his long association with the Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
in Manhattan as a professor of art history and sculpture.
Setting himself up in a small carriage house
Carriage house
A carriage house, also called remise or coach house, is an outbuilding which was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and the related tack.In Great Britain the farm building was called a Cart Shed...
on East 9th Street, walking distance from Cooper, the new empire included a nasty basement where his etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
press was set up. So Kadish, after a ten-year exile, returned to the then booming New York School scene that still championed Abstract Expressionist painting and largely ignored sculpture, except for the legendary likes of David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
.
Apart from his teaching and art-making in the late 50s and 60s, Kadish also moonlighted as part-owner of the White Horse Tavern
White Horse Tavern (New York City)
The White Horse Tavern, located in New York City's borough of Manhattan at Hudson Street and 11th Street, is known for its 1950s and 1960s Bohemian culture. It is one of the few major gathering-places for writers and artists from this period in Greenwich Village that remains open...
, the legendary Greenwich Village bar where the British poet Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
died from alcohol poisoning in 1953.
During the 1960s, Kadish's wife, Barbara Weeks Kadish, actively pursued her lifelong passion for archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, eventually heading NYU's pre-history dig at Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias was a small city in Caria, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Its site is located near the modern village of Geyre, Turkey, about 230 km from İzmir....
in southwestern Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. Julian, the youngest of their three sons, accompanied Barbara to Turkey for several of her summer expeditionary digs. In 1962, Dan Kadish, the couple's oldest son, married Philip Guston's daughter, Musa Jane Guston.
In 1977, Kadish led a group of students in completing the restoration of the historic Foundation Building at Cooper Union, casting missing and broken pieces of the cast-iron lamps and capitals in the shop's foundry, saving the school approximately $40,000.
Kadish created an impressive oeuvre of deeply scored terra cotta
Terra cotta
Terracotta, Terra cotta or Terra-cotta is a clay-based unglazed ceramic, although the term can also be applied to glazed ceramics where the fired body is porous and red in color...
and bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
sculpture that was viscerally reflective of his Abstract Expressionist roots and hammered out a respectable exhibition career. It included stints with the Elaine Poindexter Gallery and Grace Borgenicht Gallery as well as two retrospective exhibitions at the Artists' Choice Museum in SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
(1985) and the New Jersey State Museum
New Jersey State Museum
The New Jersey State Museum is located at 205 West State Street in Trenton, New Jersey, United States, overlooking the Delaware River. The Museum is operated as part of the New Jersey Department of State. General admission is free....
(1990).
Reception
But for a variety of complex reasons, some of it a result of his decidedly prickly and often combative manner, Kadish made a far larger impact on a generation of art students who passed through the great hall of Cooper Union than his career in the New York art world.Those lucky ones heard Kadish's thundering lectures on Egyptian funerary sculpture
Art of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization in the lower Nile Valley from 5000 BC to 300 AD. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and symbolic...
, Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, and cinema-like slide shows of exotic art and architecture from around the world. A portion of that huge slide collection is now part of Cooper's Library.
Even during his most prolific period during the mid-1980s when he executed his brutally expressionistic caste of terra cotta and bronze portrait heads, most attention from critics, art historians, and filmmakers were centered not on Kadish's artworks but his raconteur-like recollections of the deified Jackson Pollock or his personal brushes with Siqueiros and other artistic titans like Joan Miró.
In fact, Kadish and his late wife Barbara turn up as characters in Pollock
Pollock (film)
Pollock is a 2000 biographical drama film which tells the life story of painter Jackson Pollock. It stars Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Robert Knott, Bud Cort, Molly Regan, Marcia Gay Harden and Sada Thompson.-Plot:...
, the Hollywood
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
film starring Ed Harris
Ed Harris
Edward Allen "Ed" Harris is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Radio, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies...
.
Legacy
Since his death in 1992 at the age of 79, the Reuben Kadish Art Foundation has worked with one goal in mind. It's simple and straightforward: distributing Kadish's sculpture and graphic work to museums and public collections in order to make his name and contribution to the annals of American Art better known to new generations.As Kadish himself said: "It is my wish and direction that my works of art shall be conserved, displayed and distributed to reach the widest practicable public and shall not be sold or otherwise exploited for the private gain of any individual."