Sandler’s recollection simplifies matters that phenomenology can render unduly difficult to comprehend and therefore merits quoting in full. Probably it applies to many of those who admire Kline too. The art historian Irving Sandler had this kind of awakening when he happened upon Kline’s Chief (1950, fig. Instead, it evokes more an encounter where the two blend into a single experience that feels as vivid as it proves hard to verbalize. 11 involves not just “understanding” (mind) or even “seeing” (vision) per se. As the French philosopher explained, the task is “to reawaken perception and foil its trick of allowing us to forget it as a fact and as perception in the interest of the object which it presents to us.” 3 Simply stated, what a sentient spectator gets in front of a quintessential Kline such as Painting No. 2 Nevertheless, they grab our attention in a phenomenological way, a mode entailing a level of scrutiny that alters mere looking into apperception. Certainly, his pictorial strategies are not “about” the phenomenology of perception (to recall Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s famous 1945 account of seeing, knowing and feeling). They make us look or think again-which is what Kline’s mature art does. Puzzles also have another knack: to solve them (successfully or not) sharpens the faculties. Puzzlement is one explanation for why Painting No. 11 (1951, plate 5), despite seeming forthright, baffles the viewer. At the end of the proverbial day, Franz Kline’s Painting No. Nor is this really any old table unless, perhaps, conjured by imagination-the composition teases us, so to speak, to identify it.
Pentimenti and blurs, inimical to a true gestalt, also prevail. “Grisaille” sounds more apt, though even then there lurks a second hue, an almost subliminal creamy tone. All the white is palely mottled-grayed by its opposite color, while it makes inroads upon this selfsame black. Neither is “black and white” quite the correct label. Likewise, the verticals are less than foursquare, 1 not to mention that each stops or fades as it nears the composition’s edges.
Ambiguously, three, because to the left of center the line crumbles into a trace resembling a faint afterimage compared to the much denser black parallel band above. How many parts has it? Two for sure, given the rupture at right. Consequently, this rule is, more accurately, a slight diagonal. The leftward rises slightly and the rightward tilts a bit downward (each direction depending on whether one reads from above to below or vice versa), while the central section is almost level. For a start, the “horizontal” splinters into two or three segments.
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