Essay
Ever true to his style, Leonard Baskin’s Walt Whitman is printed using a wood block and printed without color. Whitman himself is the only figure. There is no background. There is no ground for him to stand on. He is isolated and colorless. Yet within him, there is movement, life. He is made up of lines: creeping, sweeping, multiplying, and dividing. Within his body is movement. What is Whitman thinking, standing alone in his empty frame? Is he numbed by the weight of the world? Can he do nothing but hunch his shoulders and brace himself against the coming storm? Or is his lonely existence a testimony to a bigger message that is addressed to all of humanity?
The lower half of Whitman’s figure is much darker than the top. The lines are bolder and thicker. My eyes are drawn to four areas of black; two are on his left side, while the other two go down the right side, where they merge. The black areas on the left are clearly defined; they don’t seem to overlap anything and have clearly defined edges. In between the two black spaces on the left, there is an area of dark shades of grey with many, overlapping, and black lines. The lines are not straight but rather stem from each other in a curvy, organic pattern, similar to tree branches or roots. Here we are reminded that Baskin used a woodblock, an organic material, to create this print.
Whitman’s body is long and narrow, and is alone, centered on the paper. In addition, Whitman is missing his feet; his long, narrow legs are cut horizontally around the ankle area, with no defining line ending the figure. The contrast between Whitman’s head and the rest of his figure becomes more obvious if you step back and view the entire piece from a distance. Whitman’s head is lighter and is created through subtle shadows and delicate lines. His face is different in pattern and shows no signs of bold, heavy strokes. Unlike the rest of his body, there are spaces of white that are left untouched and empty, causing this part of his figure to appear almost ethereal. This artistic mechanism of course begs the question of “why?” Did Baskin have a message behind this stark contrast between dark and light? I believe that Baskin meant for this contrast, and he meant to make a statement about the nature of mortality and what happens next. Whitman’s head contains his intellect, his conscience, and his soul. It is connected to his body, yet it rises above it. Our bodies are firmly rooted on the ground, but our souls are what separate us from nature. By deliberately creating a visual contrast between head and body, Baskin is showing that our bodies will eventually enter the unending cycle of the natural world, but the soul will remain apart and transcend.
The intersecting, organic-looking lines cause Whitman’s figure to appear to be a living part of nature. He is, literally, ingrained in the fabric of the organic world through both the materials used, paper and wood, and through the pattern created by Baskin. This artistic element is appropriate because Walt Whitman was a poet of nature, and one of his most famous collections of poetry is entitled Leaves of Grass. Personally, Whitman is one of my favorite poets, and I find that one of the most notable stanzas from “Song of Myself” resonates in Baskin’s image:
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Baskin’s Whitman is man who is reckoning with the earth. He is reckoning so deeply that he himself has merged with it. This is why Baskin did not depict the figure with feet; there is no line dividing man from earth. There is only a merging of soul and soil. The closing stanzas of “Song of Myself” read:
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yaws over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
Through their art, Baskin and Whitman both remind us of our own mortality: we all will bequeath ourselves to the dirt someday, but at the same time, we will live on forever.
Throughout his career, Baskin created a number of prints of fellow creative artists, such as William Blake, Edvard Munch, and Thomas Eakins (Hager; Duggan). In these portraits is the theme of suffering and pain, which is further emphasized by the medium and method used to create the print, as the process of etching damages the plate’s surface, injuring it with lines formed by acid (Hager, para. 3). The portraits are not realistic and look completely bizarre when placed next to other portraits of the same subjects. Baskin’s portraits are black and white, misshapen, distorted, and ugly (to see examples, visit Venetian Red).
At this point, I cannot help but wonder why Baskin chose Whitman, a poet of living things, for one of his ghoulish portraits. Was there some part of Whitman’s life that resonated with Baskin’s? Did Baskin want to portray struggles of Whitman’s unbeknownst to the public? Is this part of a larger idea that all humans suffer, especially ones who create art? Some of these questions are too large to answer in this essay, but they are certainly worth pondering, especially when exploring some of Whitman’s other works.
Whitman wrote all of his poetry in free verse, which was an unpopular style in the time and not widely received by the public (“Walt Whitman”), similar to Baskin’s disassociation with abstract expressionism. Could this similarity have resonated with Baskin, since both artists were working with subject matter and mediums outside of the norm? In addition, Whitman’s first book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, occupied his life for thirty years, a fact that he laments in “A Backward Glance O’er the Traveled Road.” In this work, Whitman talks about his struggles as an artist and the loneliness he often felt. He also talks about the criticism that surrounded Leaves of Grass, and the hostility that he encountered due to his use of free verse. This short work provides some insight into Whitman’s struggles as an artist, struggles that Baskin could have understood and which may have led him to picture Whitman so contrary to the norm (visit the Walt Whitman Archive for more portraits). Baskin chooses to portray Whitman not as the successful, remarkable, artistic genius, but rather as an individual man firmly rooted in the human experience.
-H.N.
Sources
Beetem, Robert N. Review of The Sculpture of Leonard Baskin, by Irma B. Jaffe. The Art Bulletin, 1984: 172-173. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Duggan, Bob. “Rising Up: Leonard Baskin’s Portrait Gallery.” Picture This. Sponsored by BigThink. Posted 2 November 2010. Web. 10 Dec.2010.
Hager, Liz. “Some Source of Elixir: Leonard Baskin’s Artist Portraits.” Venetian Red. Hosted by WordPress. Online Blog. Posted 1 May 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself.” Leaves of Grass. 1860. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Smith, Roberta. “Leonard Baskin Dies at 77; Sculptor of Stark Memorials.” New York Times Online. 6 June 2000. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Walt Whitman Archive. Ed Folsom & Kenneth Price, Eds. 1995-2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Biography
Leonard Baskin is known as both an artist and a philosopher. Within the art world, he is best known for his focus on the human figure in his sculpture, printmaking, and wood engraving, which was contrary to abstract expressionism, the popular artist movement of the time (Duggan; Beetem). His philosophical views on mortality and the human condition deeply influence his work, and most of his work focuses on showing humanity in its times of deepest loneliness, isolation, death, and despair (Duggan; Beetem; Smith). Addressing this, he says, “The human figure is the image of all men and of one man. It contains all and can express all'' (Smith, para. 4). Although his subject matter is human, he prefers not to depict women. To this, Baskin says, “The female form is useful for some ideas, but the colossal male is better suited to the ghoulish ones I try to portray” (Smith, para. 16). Baskin also does not use color in any of his prints, and prefers to use organic materials, such as wood blocks and stone for his sculpture (Beetem).
Baskin led an interesting life after he decided at age 14 that he wanted to be an artist (Smith). His occupations ranged from serviceman in the United States Army, to professor of sculpting and printmaking, to business owner when he founded his own printmaking studio called the Gehenna Press (Smith). Baskin’s work ranges from wood engravings, to sculpture, to illustrations for children’s books, to huge monuments.
Baskin died at the age of 77 from kidney failure (Smith).
-H.N.
Sources
Beetem, Robert N. Review of The Sculpture of Leonard Baskin, by Irma B. Jaffe. The Art Bulletin, 1984: 172-173. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Duggan, Bob. “Rising Up: Leonard Baskin’s Portrait Gallery.” Picture This. Sponsored by BigThink. Posted 02 November, 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
Smith , Roberta. “Leonard Baskin Dies at 77; Sculptor of Stark Memorials.” New York Times Online. 6 June 2000. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.
