Vance Hall Kirkland (November 3, 1904 – May 24, 1981) was a painter and educator in Denver, Colorado. His paintings, from 1926 to 1981, range from realist and impressionist watercolors, to surrealist deadwood worlds, to abstract expressionist mixtures of oil paint and water to richly textured dot paintings in oil. Commenting on Kirkland's works from 1954 to 1981, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Lóránd Hegyi, stated, “... in his later work, he developed a visionary art which mystically empathized with the entire universe, gave cosmic universality visual form in explosive images and used panel painting to convey the perpetually changing state of the universe.”Dr. Lóránd Hegyi, Vance Kirkland Paintings (Valencia, Spain: Sala Parpalló, Centre Cultural La Beneficència, 1999), 65. Dr. Lóránd Hegyi was Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna from 1990 to 2001, at the time of the quote. After his death Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art was founded in his name.
Biography Vance Hall Kirkland was born in Convoy, Ohio on November 3, 1904. Hall was his mother's maiden name, which he dropped after the first few years of painting. He attended the Cleveland School of Art, receiving a Diploma Degree of Painting (1927) and a Bachelor of Education in Art Degree (BEA, 1928), continuing a second year of studies in art history and art education at the Cleveland School of Education and Western Reserve University (1926–1928).Hugh A. Grant, “Mysteries in Space: Discussions with Vance Kirkland,” in Vance Kirkland MYSTERIES IN SPACE (New York: Genesis Galleries Ltd., 1978), 60, 74.
Kirkland moved to Denver in 1929, where he remained for the rest of his life. He and Anne Fox Oliphant were married in 1941, enjoyed traveling together and entertaining. They remained married until Anne died in 1970. In addition to painting and teaching (detailed in the “Educator” section below), Kirkland volunteered his time for many institutions. Kirkland died May 24, 1981, in Denver.Peter Weiermair, ed., Vance Kirkland (Zurich & New York: Edition Stemmle, 1998), 153.
Career Dianne Perry Vanderlip, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, knew Kirkland during the last three years of his life and was co-curator of the Vance Kirkland FIFTY YEARS retrospective. She noted: “...each of these periods, of course, has been tied together with a primary interest of communicating the human spirit’s adventure through time. Obviously, though he titles these paintings with space age titles—Nebula Near Saturn and that kind of thing—these are not science fiction paintings; these are paintings about the adventure of the human spirit.”Emmerich Oross, Producer & Director; Dianne Perry Vanderlip speaking in Vance Kirkland’s Visual Language, an hour television documentary for PBS stations (Denver, CO: KRMA-TV, Denver [now Rocky Mountain PBS], 1994), DVD. Dianne Perry Vanderlip served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum from 1978 to 2007.
Periods Kirkland created about 1,200 paintings during his lifetime, spanning 5 painting periods and more than 30 series.Hugh A. Grant "Part II: Individual Periods of Paintings." In Vance Kirkland Retrospective ed. Yevgenia Petrova. (Saint Petersburg, Russia: State Russian Museum, 2000). 178–212. In the catalog for his 1978 retrospective exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, Kirkland said, “It has been absolutely necessary for me to change directions in order to avoid repetition. Whenever a cycle of ideas seemed satisfactory, I knew I had done that and needed to move on and develop a greater challenge. Then the paintings remained fresh and were, I hoped, improved, and I avoided boredom.”Lewis Story and Dianne Perry Vanderlip, “An Interview with Vance Kirkland,” in Vance Kirkland FIFTY YEARS (Denver, CO: The Denver Art Museum, 1978), 13.
One of the most important observations about Kirkland's career, made by museum scholars as documented below, is that he created something significant in each of his five painting periods. When his works were given exhibitions at 11 European museums and 2 exhibition halls, from 1997 to 2000, each of those 13 shows included all 5 of Kirkland's periods, ranging from the 1930s to the late 1970s.Catalogs were produced in nine languages and always English, with illustrations of the paintings (varying from 1930–1978 to 1929–1981).
1. Designed Realism (1926–1944): Vance Kirkland's first painting period, Designed Realism, consists of mostly watercolor and some oil paint. Lewis Sharp, Denver Art Museum Director, and former Curator, Metropolitan Museum, New York, stated, “…he handled this [watercolor] medium as well as any American artist ever has. You simply can go back and whether you want to begin with John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, or move to the 20th century with John Marin or Charles Burchfield, Vance Kirkland was a master.”Vance Kirkland Painting (Kaunas, Lithuania: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, 1997) 34. Lewis Sharp was the Denver Art Museum Director at the time of the quote. This period includes still lifes, portraits and landscapes.
2. Surrealism (1939–1954): For his second painting period, Kirkland used mostly watercolor (also some gouache, casein, egg tempera and oil paint). He invented surrealist worlds of deadwood morphing into whimsical creatures, which dwarf pre-historic humans, scampering among the vegetation. Charles Stuckey, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, commented, “...they show a virtuosity in his control of shape and transparency with the watercolor medium, that enables him to do in watercolor what artists like [René] Magritte and [Salvador] Dalí would be doing in oil at the same time...”Vance Kirkland Painting (Kaunas, Lithuania: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, 1997) 37. Dr. Charles Stuckey was Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago at the time of the quote.
Elizabeth Broun, former Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, further discussed this period: “I find in his surrealist works a charming willingness to contemplate nature as a positive force and evolution as a series of potentials. I think it comes out later in the nebula and dot paintings which give a sense of explosions in space. It’s a release of energy as a magnificent act of creation.”Dr. Elizabeth Broun, “The Paintings of Vance Kirkland,” in Paintings of Vance Kirkland (Riga, Latvia: Foreign Art Museum, 1998), 91. Dr. Elizabeth Broun is the Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was at the time of the quote “Some of his landscapes have proto-creatures, little animal forms and shapes, biomorphic, evolutionary beings. These sometimes include more or less recognizable little humanoid figures. You sense that he is putting man in his place in nature, showing him as just one of the potential evolutionary paths nature might have taken. It’s Kirkland’s way of reducing man back to the scale he may have felt was appropriate.” Dr. Elizabeth Broun, “The Paintings of Vance Kirkland,” in Paintings of Vance Kirkland (Riga, Latvia: Foreign Art Museum, 1998), 92. Dr. Elizabeth Broun is the Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was at the time of the quote.
3. Hard Edge Abstraction/Abstractions from Nature (1947–1957): For his third painting period, Kirkland mostly did hard-edge painting in an abstract way. About half of these paintings are watercolor, half oil. This period includes the Timberline Abstraction series [example from 1953 shown above]. Charles Stuckey analyzed part of this period: “There is a sense of labyrinth about his line, for example, that is obvious in these timberline abstract paintings—which are ostensibly developed from his meditations on leaves that he would see on the forest floor....some of the early attempts by him to achieve texture look like that wood grain that would obsess him and appear in everything, that one would associate with a table top, then with a sort of still life arranged on it, but a still life that went away and only left these incredible tracings.”Vance Kirkland Painting (Kaunas, Lithuania: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, 1997) 37. Dr. Charles Stuckey was Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago at the time of the quote.
4. Abstract Expressionism (1950–1964): For his fourth painting period, Kirkland invented an abstract expressionist technique of mixing oil paint and water together, creating painting surfaces different than any other artist. Richard Brettell, Director, Dallas Museum of Art, discussed these paintings, “They were painted in the ‘50s and early ‘60s and are a part of the principal contribution of Vance Kirkland to the history of Abstract Expressionism in America....he was making use of the surface of the painting as a kind of battleground between oil and water, these two media liquids that resist each other, and creating these incredible sort of symphonies of color and battles of media that are in many ways interestingly comparable to what was going on in New York and much more powerful visually.”Emmerich Oross, Producer & Director; Dr. Richard R. Brettell speaking in Vance Kirkland’s Visual Language, an hour television documentary for PBS stations (Denver, CO: KRMA-TV, Denver [now Rocky Mountain PBS], 1994), DVD. Dr. Richard R. Brettell was Director of the Dallas Museum of Art at the time of the quote. In 1980, Dr. Brettell was appointed Searle Curator of European Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1988, he became the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). As of 2014, he is Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
There are four main series: Nebulae Abstractions; Roman Related Abstractions; Asian Related Abstractions; Pure Abstractions.Hugh A. Grant, “IV. (4th Period) Floating Abstractions (1951–1964) (Abstract Expressionism),” in Vance Kirkland Retrospective, ed. Yevgenia Petrova (St. Petersburg, Russia: The State Russian Museum, 2000), 190-199. Elizabeth Broun commented, “For my own feelings, the ideas about space, about time, about nebula, about becoming, about creation were fabulously expressed in the ‘50s and early ‘60s...I suspect that the nebula will emerge as an important aspect of his career.”Vance Kirkland Painting (Kaunas, Lithuania: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, 1997) 40. Dr. Elizabeth Broun is the Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was at the time of the quote.
Charles Stuckey discussed Kirkland's Roman and Asian Abstractions from this fourth period, “Kirkland traveled widely around the world in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and brought to the grimy and colorless, dirty, abstract expressionist school a whole variety of color experiences that went way beyond the streets of Manhattan: from the deep red colors of Pompeii and Herculaneum—the wall paintings that he saw there—to the lacquer surfaces of art that he saw in the Far East.”Vance Kirkland Painting (Kaunas, Lithuania: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, 1997) 40. Dr. Charles Stuckey was Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago at the time of the quote.