A painting of bold black lines on a grayish white background mottled with darker gray patches and lines.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

The background of the painting has a grayish white background with random lightly applied streaks and patches of black. Two thick black lines are horizontally placed across the top of the painting extending from an irregular square. Two thicker black lines extend diagonally downward from the square to the right and left, other thick black lines extend diagonally out and up from them. A group of three triangles are attached to a black V-shaped line across the bottom third of the picture.

Gallery Text

For Franz Kline, the series of paintings that includes High Street was a breakthrough, marking his transformation from an illustrator and sidewalk artist to a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement of the early 1950s. Made with housepainters’ brushes and cheap enamel house paint, the series has the monumental intensity and fierce directness that would come to characterize Kline’s subsequent work. Despite the spontaneous look of his canvas, however, Kline carefully planned these compositions in preliminary sketches. The calligraphic black forms often evoke urban landscapes, machinery, or the engines, bridges, and railroads of the artist’s Pennsylvania youth. But Kline sought complete abstraction, and he worked the white paint as aggressively as the black, giving it a sculptural quality and material presence. The result is a dense, rugged, allover ground that challenges the impulse to see the composition as identifiable black figures on a white background.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1971.121
People
Franz Kline, American (Wilkes-Barre, PA 1910 - 1962 New York, NY)
Title
High Street
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1950
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/227867

Location

Location
Level 1, Room 1200, Modern and Contemporary Art, Mid–century Abstraction I
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
sight: 147.64 x 196.85 cm (58 1/8 x 77 1/2 in.)
framed: 150.18 x 199.39 x 5.08 cm (59 1/8 x 78 1/2 x 2 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: l.r.: Kline

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Charles Egan Gallery, New York, New York], 1950. [Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, New York] 1956, sold; to Lois Orswell, Promfret Center, Connecticut, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1971.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Lois Orswell
Copyright
© The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
1971
Object Number
1971.121
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • [Unidentified article], Fogg Art Museum Newsletter, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, February 1972), reproduced
  • Caroline A. Jones, Modern Art at Harvard: The Formation of the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums (New York, NY and Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press, 1985). With an essay by John Coolidge and a preface by John M. Rosenfield. To accompany the inaugural exhibition at the Sackler Museum, Oct 21 1985 - Jan 5 1986, reproduced in b/w fig. 5, p. 16
  • Marjorie B. Cohn and Sarah Kianovsky, Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2002), cat. no. 87, fig. 131, pp. 321, 324 (repr. b/w), 376
  • Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Friends: Works from the Lois Orswell Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., Knoedler & Co. Inc. (New York, 2003), p43
  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 221, ill
  • Harry Cooper, Spatter and Daub: Harry Cooper on the Contradiction of Abstract Expressionism, Artforum (New York, 2011), XLIV, No. 10, pp. 317-319, p. 318, ill.
  • Sarah Roberts and Katy Siegel, ed., Joan Mitchell, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yale University Press (New Haven and London, 2020), p. 50, fig. 3, ill.
  • Sarah Roberts, Joan Mitchell, Foundation Louis Vuitton (Paris, 2022), Pg. 56, Fig. 5, Ill. Color

Exhibition History

  • Franz Kline, Charles Egan Gallery, New York, 10/16/1950 - 11/04/1950
  • Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/13/1977 - 08/31/1977
  • Modern Art at Harvard, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/21/1985 - 01/05/1986
  • Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/21/2002 - 02/16/2003
  • Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Friends: Works from the Lois Orswell Collection, Harvard University, Knoedler & Co. Inc., New York, 11/14/2003 - 01/24/2004
  • Re-View: S118 European & American Art since 1900, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 09/13/2008 - 04/09/2011
  • 32Q: 1200 Gesture, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Collection Highlights

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Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu