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Program #4 - Interview with the painter Wolf Kahn. Listen to program
Wolf Kahn's Chelsea studio is the kind of studio every artist dreams about. Sunlight falls from the rafters, canvas and color are everywhere. In the front room, set aside for larger works, four enormous paintings were underway.
Wolf Kahn has been described as one of the most important colorists working in America today. A student of modern abstractist Hans Hofmann, Wolf's work balances representation and abstraction of landscape with color. Kahn uses colors (in cleaned cat food tins, just the right size) with boldness and passion - tirelessly. Kahn is not only one of America's best loved modern painters, he is also one of the most prolific. I found it much harder to interview a painter, having no talent (though much jealousy) for thinking visually. But Kahn, who also writes about and teaches painting, led me gently to the canvas and showed me how one must approach it always humble, always new, always wide awake. Now in his eighties, Kahn refused to go out to lunch because, simply, he had to paint.
Thanks very much to Townie Ludington, whose friendship with Kahn opened the door to this interview, and whose friendship with me never ceases to open doors to new thoughts, distant places, and great French cuisine. Thanks also to Deborah Francis, whose New York apartment was shelter from the snow and the perfect place to read Wolf Kahn's America.
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