Time to Clear the Table - Harold Krisel

Guest Writer - Elizabeth Jarrard
Article Three

Harold Krisel in his "studio".

Daughter Judy Krisel Langille remembers the household a bit differently than her mother. "Our entire apartment seemed to be his studio," says Judy, "and it was a spacious apartment,"

"But I do remember my mother calling out, 'Harold, time to clear the table' before dinner every night."

Linear - Black

Silkscreen

Approximately 20" x 20"

Harold Krisel

Part of the Permanent Collection of The Spartanburg County Museum of Art, Spartanburg, SC

Now an artist living in New Jersey, Judy says she wasn't really into art until high school. "But my only toys were art related."

Harold built the girls doll houses and gave them art supplies to create the furnishings.

Middle sister Elizabeth Krisel, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and now the director of innovation for Fisher-Price, loved making clothes pin dolls and other toys.


The third sister Martha Krisel is a lawyer and lives on Long Island.

Even the girls' school assignments became art projects. "No plain shoe boxes for us," says Judy. "We had dioramas made from lovely foam core board."

A House in the Hamptons

Harold loved his summers off for painting and printmaking. The family began vacationing in the Hamptons in the mid-1960s and in 1974, built a vacation home in Bridgehampton, N.Y.

Krisel at the beach.

Harold and Rose retired from teaching and moved to the Bridgehampton house in 1981, where he pursued his dream of being a full-time artists. He became friends will other artists including Perle Fine and Ibram Lassaw. He began showing at the Elaine Benson Gallery. Locals remember him wearing a beret and driving around in an old Peugeot.

Harold's decline with Alzheimer's disease was such a sad time for his family. The man who always had ideas was losing his memory. After he died in 1995, Rose began clearing out the remote house for her next move to Great Neck, N.Y.

Untitled, 1965

28" x 28"

Oil on Canvas

Harold Krisel

Presented by The McCormick Gallery

Each of the children took favorites but their father left behind a huge store of work, some of it damaged by the dampness on the island.

Rose gave some pieces to the American Abstract Artists organization and donated the remaining to a local animal rescue fund. This is where coincidence created a wonderful opportunity.

Structured Form, 1964

Silkscreen - 24" x 19"

Harold Krisel

McCormick Gallery, Chicago, Il

Thomas McCormick and Vincent Vallarino agreed to help another widow — a friend whose husband had acquired some of the art donated to the animal charity — clear out her storage locker. This is how McCormick and Vallarino describe their discovery in the catalog they produced for a 2009 exhibition at the McCormick Gallery in Chicago:

"In July 2008 we were visiting in the Hamptons and Vincent made good on a promise to help an old friend sort through the artwork left behind by her deceased husband. Early on a Sunday morning — armed with hot cups of coffee — we met the widow at a self-storage facility in Southhampton. When she rolled up the overhead door to her ten by twenty foot storage unit we beheld a tsunami of sardine-packed artwork. Canvases, frames, tubes, boxes and stacks of loose paper were crammed together as if by a deranged pack rate. ... At some point a bit of wreckage was pushed aside revealing a tantalizing site in the rubble: a dusky stack of extremely handsome paintings of the geometric sort. We expected them to be products of the 1970s but on closer inspection found a date of 1948! We also found a name, crisply inscribed by the maker. "Krisel". ... How who the hell is that?"

The trove was rescued and restored and organized into a successful exhibition. And now more and more art lovers are discovering Harold Krisel.

***

Footnote from Terry:

Earlier this month I traveled to Spartanburg along with my sister and husband to visit The Spartanburg County Museum of Art to see some of the Krisel works in their collection. They had 7 of his pieces right in the front of the gallery and I was delighted to see that the work sparkled. The colors were sharp and clear and floated on the white of the paper. The work seemed as if they had just been printed and were full of life.

Seven silkscreens installed in The Spartanburg County Museum of Art.

A closer view of some of the work.

In addition to having work in Spartanburg, here is a list of other Permanent collections in which work is included: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum (London), the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Trinity College (Dublin), the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Princeton University Library.

I want to thank Judy Langille for introducing me to her father and his beautiful art. My appreciation also to her mother Rose Krisel for speaking with my sister and sharing her memories and insights about her husband and his life as an artist. My appreciation also goes to The Spartanburg County Museum of Art for allowing me to take some photos and share them. Thank you to Scott Cunningham, Associate Director, for providing additional photographs of Krisel's work from the museum's collection. You can see more photographs here: Flickr Photostream.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of articles on Harold Krisel and...

On Oct. 24, Fab.com will be offering a selection of original prints for sale from the Krisel Estate. If you are interested you can register to view this offering via this link: Fab.com/

Thank you for spending time at Studio 24-7. I love hearing from you and Remember:

Commenting is FREE!!!

Who Is Harold Krisel?

Guest Writer - Elizabeth Jarrard
Article Two

Harold Krisel may not have been a household name in the art world of the 20th century, but his work was central to the household he shared with wife Rose and their three children.

The dining table was his studio where he made art — paintings and prints that appear as fresh and relevant today as they were then.

A current exhibition of this work at the Spartanburg County Museum of Art includes works from the 1960s and 1970s with sharp lines and saturated colors. They are right at home in the city that was also home to the late Roger Milliken, founder and former CEO of Milliken and Company, one of the world's largest textile manufacturers and Krisel's primary patron.

Three Obulates

Designed by Harold Krisel

Painted by Carl Tait

Greenville/Spartanburg Airport

While Krisel was working with famed architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, from 1955-1965, Millken hired the firm to design his new headquarters building in Spartanburg. Krisel designed tapestries and carpets for the project as well as a dramatic 26,000 square foot aereation pond with a striking stainless steel spray fountain.

He was also commissioned to create murals for the new Greenville/Spartanburg Airport, championed by Milliken and built in 1962 to support this burgeoning area.

Rectangles

Designed by Harold Krisel

Installed at The Greenville/Spartanburg Airport, Spartanburg, SC

Millions of travelers have since passed through this terminal, possibly taking note of the large-scale art but not being familiar with the artist's name. But all that changed in 2009 when Chicago's McCormick Gallery presented an exhibition of his work.

Krisel's daughter Judy Langille says he would be really surprised at the attention his work is drawing, and then she suggests another word.

"He would be shocked," says Langille, who most admired her father's "intensity; his ability not to care what others thought of his work."

"He did it for the love of it," she says. "He just had to do it."

Architect, Artist, Family Man

Harold Krisel and Rose Breuer met on a blind date on the Staten Island Ferry and married in 1942. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he enrolled in 1949 at the Institute of Design in Chicago (originally known as the New Bauhaus) under the G.I. Bill.

Harold Krisel pictured in class where he taught architecture

at the high School of Art and Design in New York City.

His many influences there helped direct his course of study and his career path. Founder Lazlo-Nagy had just stepped down and the new director, Serge Chermayeff, recognized something special in this new student and committed to his education as an architect.

He met famed artist Mondrian and developed friendships with Gyorgy Kepes, who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT; Martin Rosenzweig, noted graphic designer; and Harold Cohen the distinguished designer and architect.

Krisel was commissioned to design the stainless steel water fountain
which is on Butler Avenue on the campus of
Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC.

During this period, he joined American Abstract Artists and maintained a lifelong membership.

To this day, he widow Rose says she has a hard time understanding the interest in Harold's work. "I don't understand conceptual art."

But she understood and appreciated Harold's devotion to his family. It is obvious Krisel was not driven by fame.

Rose Krisel, the widow of the late Harold Krisel.

After completing graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1952, Krisel taught briefly at MIT. Then he and Rose returned home to New York, where he pursued an architecture career, first with Kahn and Jacobs and later with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

During this period, he declined offers he felt would be disruptive to his young family. An invitation from Buckminster Fuller to work on the development of the geodesic dome required moving to Canada. An offer to teach at Harvard would have meant another move.

"Our dining table was his studio," says Rose Krisel. And for his growing family, extra art supplied became the children's toys. "Harold set up still lifes" for July, Elizabeth and Martha to draw," she says.

Red Circle - Silk Screen

approximately 20" x 20"

Harold Krisel

Included in the permanent collection of The Spartanburg County Museum of Art, Spartanburg, SC.

Eager for more time to pursue his art, Krisel resigned from SOM in 1965 and accepted a teaching position at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. Rose, also a teacher, says Harold enjoyed the regular hours and the summers off.

"He had always wanted to be a museum curator but was discouraged from this career because he was Jewish."

To see many other photographs visit here; http://www.flickr.com/photos/dimondgirl/

The article for tomorrow is: Time to Clear the Table

On Oct. 24, Fab.com will be offering a selection of original prints for sale from the Krisel Estate. If you are interested you can register to view this offering via this link: Fab.com/

Thank you for spending time at Studio 24-7. I love hearing from you and remember:

Commenting is FREE!!!

My Introduction to Harold Krisel

Article One of A Three Part Article

Summer 6 - Silkscreen

20" x 20" approximately

Harold Krisel

Included in the permanent collection of The Spartanburg
County Museum of Art. This work is part of a collection
of Krisel's work presented to the museum from the estate
of the late Roger Milliken, founder and CEO of
Milliken and Company.

In October of 2010 both Judy Langille and I were scheduled to teach at Quilting by the Lake 2 in Auburn, NY. As soon as we met Judy mentioned she had something for me — a catalog of work by her father Harold Krisel. Later that evening she presented me with an absolutely beautiful book titled Structured/Forms. The 49-page full-color catalog presents paintings and silkscreens produced by her father from the 1950s through the 1960s. The catalog was published by McCormick Gallery in Chicago and Vincent Vallarino Fine Art, Ltd in New York City. It's a treasure.

As Judy and I talked she also told me of her father's connection to my area of South Carolina. In fact, just that day, I had walked past a couple of large-scale paintings designed by Mr. Krisel which are in my home airport, Greenville-Spartanburg. I was very familiar with these works but had not recalled the name of the artist. She further revealed that the late Roger Milliken, founder of Milliken and Company, had a large collection of her father's work in both his personal collection and in his corporate headquarters and that part of that collection had been donated to the permanent collection of the Spartanburg Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC. Additional works in the permanent collection were donated from the Krisel Estate.

I knew that evening that I wanted to write about Mr. Krisel. In addition to being a fine artist, he came across as a wonderful father, family man, designer, architect and teacher. My desire to write about him was to honor all of the roles he fulfilled during his life with so much success. With this in mind, I made the decision to invite my sister, Elizabeth Jarrard, to be a guest writer for the major portion of this article. Much of Beth's professional career focused on interviewing and writing about interesting people as well as doing feature articles, so this seemed a great fit.

Harold Krisel passed away in 1995 but his wife, Rose Krisel still lives in Great Neck, NY . This week I will be posting a series of three articles (this is #1) on consecutive days which feature the art and design of Mr. Krisel as well as interviews with his widow Mrs. Rose Krisel and one of his daughters, artist Judy Langille. I hope you will join us in the celebration of a creative accomplished artist.

The article for tomorrow is : Who Is Harold Krisel?




On Oct. 24, Fab.com will be offering a selection of original prints for sale from the Krisel Estate. If you are interested you can register to view this offering via this link: Fab.com/

Thank you for spending time at Studio 24-7. I love hearing from you and remember:

Commenting is FREE!!!