Spectre

Artist Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962)

Date1956

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 165.1 x 127 cm (65 x 50 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineIn memory of Carter Chapin Higgins, the gift of his mother, Clara Carter Higgins.

Object number1967.14

Label TextAlthough painted with broad motions using a housepainter’s brush and five-gallon cans of paint, Franz Kline’s signature black and white abstractions, produced from around 1949-1961, were carefully composed of elements often taken from earlier sketches and studies, mostly figurative. Paintings like Spectre were inspired by the innovative work of his peers, especially Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, but also by Kline’s experience of seeing his small-scale drawings projected onto a wall. When magnified and isolated, simple details such as an intersection of lines became powerful and dramatic expanses of paint. The immediacy of Spectre initially diverts us from traces of Kline’s thoughtful revisions and complex over-painting of black and white. “People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.” ProvenanceCarter Chapin Higgins; then Richard C. Higgins, Worcester, MA, then gifted to Worcester Art Museum, 1967.

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