WHITE OUT

One of the best things about snow is that it makes a busy landscape (or backyard, in this case) look stark and uniform. Figures are like swift brushstrokes on a white ground--exactly like the abstract paintings of Franz Kline.

Kline was an Abstract Expressionist active in the New York school during the 1940s and '50s. Alongside artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, and Mark Rothko, Kline was a proponent of the action painting movement.

His mature works are bold graphic compositions in black and white, which have been compared to Japanese calligraphy (an influence Kline denied).

Although his works appear to be visceral and quickly realized, he usually created numerous compositional studies leading up to a large canvas.

To him, the positive and negative space were equally important, and some of his works are actually white paint on a black ground.

Kline was famously impetuous (like many of the AbEx artists), and his life, in many ways, mirrored the ferocity of his large canvases.

I took advantage of the all-white background and struck some Kline-esque poses in the snow, which my Aunt captured from the (relative) warmth of the back doorway.

I wore a Tibi coat, Uniqlo jeans, NY & Co. sweater, vintage fur hat, and Sorel "Joan of Arctic" snow boots. Thank goodness for the boots, as the snow nearly reached the top of them!

[Kline images from beatmuseum.org, artic.edu, oceansbridge.com, and beatmuseum.org, respectively.]