Chaim Koppelman

Chaim Koppelman (November 17, 1920 – December 6, 2009) was an American artist, art educator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. Best known as a printmaker, he also produced sculpture, paintings, and drawings. A member of the National Academy of Design since 1978, he was president of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. He established the Printmaking Department of the School of Visual Arts in 1959, and taught there until 2007.

Koppelman was an early student of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded in 1941 by Eli Siegel, which is based on the principle, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves". This principle informed Koppelman's art, teaching, and his work as an Aesthetic Realism consultant. About the importance of this principle to art and life, Koppelman stated, "When Eli Siegel showed that what makes a work of art beautiful – the oneness of opposites – is the same as what every individual wants, it was one of the mightiest and kindest achievements of man's mind".

Koppelman's art is noted for its originality, masterful technique, humor, and power.

Early life and education

Chaim Koppelman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Sam and Sadie Koppelman, whose images appear in several of his works. At the age of 9, he drew a profile of Napoleon in a geography book, and images of the Emperor would reappear throughout his long career. He began his study of art in Works Progress Administration (WPA) classes at the Brooklyn Museum in 1936, and continued at Brooklyn College, the Educational Alliance, and the American Artists School. He studied sculpture with William Koss, abstract painting with Carl Holty, and lithography with Eugene Morley. At the Art Students League, he studied sculpture with Jose de Creeft and etching with Martin Lewis and Will Barnet.

In the early 1940s Koppelman worked at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting on 54th Street in Manhattan (which later became the Guggenheim Museum) with, among others, Jackson Pollock, Robert De Niro, Sr., Rolph Scarlett, Lucia Autorino, and Ward Jackson. Two of his early, abstract pen and ink drawings are in the Guggenheim collection. The first recorded exhibition of Koppelman's work was held in the Lounge Gallery of the Eighth Street Playhouse in 1942, and included drawings, paintings, and sculpture. The following year, he had a solo exhibition at the Outlines Gallery in Pittsburgh.

Aesthetic Realism and artistic development In 1940 Koppelman began attending poetry classes with Eli Siegel, the American poet and critic who first came to national attention in 1925, when his poem, "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" won the esteemed poetry prize of The Nation. This poem, Siegel later stated, arose from a way of seeing that in 1941 became Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy that reality is aesthetic, and that "The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art." In Koppelman's opinion, Siegel was "the most important philosopher of the 20th century – perhaps of all time". Boldness of imagination and an unerring sense of detail were two qualities Koppelman's work became noted for.

In November 1942, Koppelman was drafted into the United States Army and in 1943 he married painter Dorothy Myers. He worked as a radio weatherman during World War II, guiding ships through the rough waters of the English Channel, which was a critical part of the Invasion of Normandy. He manned an anti-aircraft machine gun in the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, and later, as staff sergeant, was awarded a Bronze Star. Before the invasion, he had been able to study at the Art College of Western England in Bristol, and later at the École des Beaux-Arts in Reims. While on leave, he visited Picasso's studio in Paris, and it was Picasso and Louis Aragon who told Koppelman that the war in Europe was over. Letters describing his wartime experience are in the Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Upon returning to New York, Koppelman continued his study of Aesthetic Realism, and under the G.I. Bill, he studied at the Amédée Ozenfant School and became Ozenfant's assistant. he also began printmaking, a medium which, he said, combines the carving quality of sculpture with the subtleties of light and shade in drawing and painting.

Influence in the art community

In the early 1950s Koppelman was part of the Stanley William Hayter Atelier 17 in New York. Later he worked at the Printmaking Workshop founded by Robert Blackburn and Will Barnet. Blackburn credited Koppelman with saving the workshop when it faced financial difficulties in 1956, by transforming it into a seven-member artists cooperative with annual dues to keep its doors open.

Blackburn, Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman, and Leo Katz–the head of Atelier 17 after Hayter–were among the artists who attended Beauty Conferences and Art Inquiries conducted by Eli Siegel, classes in which he discussed current work of contemporary artists with the artists present and participating. "The depth of the discussions that took place," Koppelman later wrote, "encouraged the artists to understand more deeply what their work was about, and what their intention was". The motto of the Terrain was Siegel's statement: "In reality opposites are one; art shows this." The gallery held exhibitions of contemporary art, with works frequently accompanied by the artists' comments on Siegel's fifteen questions, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?, published by the Terrain and reprinted in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. After one-person shows at the Terrain, both Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman had work included in the 1962 exhibition "Recent Painting USA: The Figure" at the Museum of Modern Art.

Koppelman opened his own studio and graphic workshop in 1964 at 498 Broome Street, pioneering the SoHo artists' community. His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Koppelman was commissioned in 1968 to interview Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Clayton Pond on the relevance of the Siegel Theory of Opposites to their work. Recordings of these interviews are part of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Critical reception and awards Koppelman's prints were compared to William Blake and Francisco Goya. ARTnews wrote of his "superb use of allegory." Critics praised his work at the Terrain Gallery, the Kennedy Gallery, the RoKo Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Academy of Design, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. "Koppelman's concern is man, good and evil ... He is a superb technician whose work has grandeur and emotional impact," wrote Bennett Schiff. "Chaim Koppelman brings a totally new concept and technique to the field of graphic art," wrote critic and gallery director Sylvan Cole, Jr. "Siegel's Theory of Opposites has had a profound effect upon his work". and Tiffany Grants in 1967 and 1969. He represented the United States in the Documenta II exhibition, Kassel, West Germany in 1969. In the SAGA annual exhibition of 1967, Koppelman's print "Exodus" was awarded the Vera List Prize. The following year, his work was shown and discussed on Channel 31, WNYC-TV. In 1976, he won a New York State CAPS (Creative Artists Public Service) Grant for a suite of lithographs titled Closeness and Clash in Couples and Domestic Life. In 1992 Koppelman, Blackburn, and Barnet received a New York Artists Equity Award for their dedicated service to the printmaking community. Legends of the Printmaking Workshop, a 2011 exhibition at the LaGrange Museum in Georgia, featured prints of all three artists and Tom Laidman, selected by, and now part of, the collection of Wesley Cochran.,

Teaching, writing, and later work Self Portrait (ca. 1980), personal collectionIn 1959, Koppelman began the Printmaking Department at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught until 2007. He also taught at the National Academy, New York University, SUNY New Paltz, the Rhodes Preparatory School, and the 92nd Street Y. As part of the trio, The Kindest Art, he gave consultations to artists and others, teaching that art answers the deepest question in life: how to be fully oneself by being fair to the outside world. He taught The Art of Drawing: Surface and Depth. He studied Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel until 1978, and then in professional classes with the Chairman of Education, Ellen Reiss. His drawings illustrate Siegel's book, Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims (New York: Definition Press, 1972, 2011).

Although known mostly for his work in black and white, Koppelman's painterly interest in color took a new form in the 1970s, when he began using color in his prints. After 1980, he worked increasingly in pastel and watercolor. These sketches and notes continued to the year 2000, and some volumes are among the Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman papers in the Archives of American Art collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Chaim Koppelman died on December 6, 2009, of natural causes at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York City.

Museo Napoleonico exhibit Meeting (2007) Pastel Throughout Koppelman's long career, the image of Napoleon is recurrent, and a retrospective exhibition of over eighty works and studies dealing with Napoleon was held at the Museo Napoleonico in Rome (October 11, 2011 – May 6, 2012).

In his review, "Chaim Koppelman's Napoleon Entering Brighton Beach, Coney Island", artist Richard Sloat, past president of SAGA, wrote: "In his art, Chaim Koppelman was a maker of stories about our inner self. ... For Napoleon to be leading his army in retreat down the boardwalk of Coney Island is a bit heroic, a bit tragic, a bit funny, a bit absurd, but also glorious. Is this not a wonderful metaphor of our living this life?"

In reviewing this exhibition, the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera described Koppelman as "one of the greatest American printmakers".

Books and essays