Nashville Arts Magazine

Anton Weiss Freedom of Expression

In the years directly following World War II, the most definitive movement in American art captured the global imagination. Abstract Expressionism dramatically transformed visual culture as the world had known it. Figures like Jackson Pollock and

Clement Greenberg championed Abstract Expressionism as the culmination of all art history to date. Artists and critics, fueled by American

political and economic prominence, used Abstract Expressionism to relocate the art capital of the world from Paris to New York City. Waves of Eastern European painters departed for the United States and brought with them the cultural richness and classical training that they had received in their homelands.

Anyone who appreciates modern art knows that the year 1945 is the watershed moment for this style. Postwar America bebopped in local dance halls, drove fast cars, and lined up at drive-in movies. The pride of victory in war and economic flourishing permeated American culture. European artists made the journey from war-torn, occupied Paris to the bustling streets of New York City. In this environment, Abstract Expressionism exploded in popular culture. This painting style forever changed the course of modern art.

One can trace the same geographical and stylistic motifs in the career of Nashville artist Anton Weiss. Weiss, who is Austrian, arrived on American shores from behind the walls of a Russian concentration camp. His brother and grandfather dead, his father forced into years of conscription with Hitler’s army, Weiss’ life was shattered and broken. For him, the colorful sidewalks of New York City and the freedom of Abstract Expressionism determined the arc of his life as an artist.

Weiss spent his boyhood summers at his mother’s family’s winery in Yugoslavia. The country was invaded by the Nazis at the outset of World War II. Before the war, Weiss’ childhood had been quiet and peaceful. His parents were both painters, and his early memories are dotted with recollections of their work. When Hitler’s army exited Weiss’ ravaged homeland, the echoing footfall of soldiers’ boots fell on a life altered and damaged for the teenage artist.

Forced into a Russian concentration camp in Yugoslavia, Weiss and his mother both courageously escaped. Weiss was 10 when he entered and 13 when he escaped six months after his mother. This turning point in his formative years allowed the artist to take part in an activity that has characterized his career and painting process to this date: the quest for freedom has played like a leitmotif throughout the artist’s personal and professional life.

In Weiss’ opinion, his experiences in the prison of a concentration camp fuel a greater freedom of expression in his paintings today. He says, “I don’t feel bad about what happened to me. I reveal or address those experiences to make me a better individual, and I will perform in a much deeper sense than if I block them out. There’s no such thing as a bad experience if you use that experience as a positive gesture for the future. I think that you survive by that, and eventually it makes you a broader individual.”

During the war, Weiss had watched a documentary on the stormy life of the artist Michelangelo with his father while the latter was on leave from war. The film made a vivid impression on the young boy. He knew as he left the theatre that his true passion and

identity would be found in art. After leaving the concentration camp, Weiss enrolled in an apprenticeship in which he restored damaged frescoes in venerable Austrian cathedrals. Already, art was helping him to repair the damage of war and captivity. Internally, he continues the process to this date. Weiss directly confronts his memories and experiences from the past to inform his painting technique: “A revolt is stimulated within me and I will probably exercise a much stronger action to that revolt than if I were to paint all pretty things . . .It depends on the individual how they want to approach life. I find myself digging into the past to be stimulated by a positive reaction to that.”

In the aftermath of the war, Weiss and his mother were reunited with his father by the Red Cross. A Catholic charity helped bring them to the United States. The family by which they were sponsored lived in Middle Tennessee. After a couple of moves to different towns in the area, Weiss settled in Nashville. Neither the city nor the artist has ever been the same.

Weiss attended Watkins Institute, the forerunner of Watkins College of Art and Design. Studying at Watkins gave Weiss the opportunity to continue pursuit of the great traditions of Western art. In his adulthood, the artist returned to Watkins as a professor and later became head of the art department.

In 1956, Weiss began a four-year sojourn in New York City. This visit allowed the painter to experience the Big Apple in the full bloom of post-war American painting. The city was buzzing with new artists, immigrants, jazz music. Weiss enrolled in the legendary Art Students League in New York. Originally hopeful about his involvement in this organization, Weiss gradually became disillusioned with the traditional approach to art that it fostered. He left the Art Students League in search again for freedom. Just as his quest for political and personal liberation had carried him from a concentration camp to the United States, Weiss’ desire for artistic freedom demanded that he find a mode of painting and expression that he could own.

Weiss enlisted in courses with the now-legendary Hans Hoffman. Time spent under the tutelage of this trailblazer of the Abstract Expressionist style opened Weiss’ eyes to a new thought process and way to approach and execute painting. He found lasting freedom and stylistic liberation in this movement. The very atmosphere of New York City directly impacted his nascent ventures into an

exiting new style. “I spent quite a bit of time in New York. The sidewalks gave me so much energy…the energy of existence and travel and accidents that were on those sidewalks! I took a multitude of sidewalks, just sections of that sidewalk, all the way from the Village to Spring Street—and a lot of the paintings come from that.”

In 1960, Weiss triumphantly returned to Nashville. He was armed with a new stylistic approach and full of the spirit and activity of the burgeoning New York arts scene. Photographs from this period capture a confident, masculine artist—the typical image of the Abstract Expressionist painter. Clinching a pipe between his teeth, a lock of hair carelessly falling over one eye, he wields authority over his canvases. Inside, though, the artist experienced trepidation about the manner in which the Nashville community would respond to his new art. To his surprise, both art and artist were embraced with excitement. He remains a local icon and holds historic importance to the Nashville area. He helped to found both the Tennessee Art League and the Tennessee Watercolor Society.

Abstract Expressionism with its liberated attitude about what art is, and emphasis on the event of making it, allowed Weiss freedom of technique and execution that he exercises to the current date. Abandoning mimetic approaches, naturalism, and even paintbrushes, he brings a host of self-made tools and unconventional approaches to work at his easel. He attacks the canvas with homemade trowels, power drills, and palette knives.

Today, Weiss is more engrossed than ever in experimenting with “chaotic elements” that happen on his palette, more so than what he’s doing to the canvas, explaining, “I have total control on one hand what I’m composing, but I also have the chaotic experiences leading up to it.” Experimenting today means switching or changing his energy, doing something to stimulate himself to get over a stagnation in the process, in order to get to another plateau.

The painting shown on the following page, bottom, is a work on a handmade metal substrate. Bright, almost bloody hues of red are modeled on the surface. They are scratched, scraped, and eventually diffused into a flesh-colored boundary at the edge of the painting. Divided into two uneven regions, the red fields are torn and dislocated from each other. In the empty, gray segment that divides the red zones, metal rings pierce the surface. The viewer cannot discern if the rings are there to suture a torn painting or torture and puncture the surface of the metal. These elements are synthetic at the same time that they are damaging and corrosive.

This type of painting is essential to Weiss’ oeuvre. It asks the viewer questions rather than providing them with answers. It uses deconstructed elements, allowing the viewer to assimilate them mentally and recognize their original power as forms. Weiss combines the Abstract Expressionism that he learned from Hoffman with the technique of opaque transparency borrowed from painter Richard Diebenkorn. This style features the layering of numerous glazes to enliven and provide depth to the surface painting that meets the eye.

Color is central to Weiss in achieving this phenomenon. He says, “There are certain colors that will react to certain situations. It’s very rare for me to use the color purple. For me, it brings out too much of the dark side of an experience. Now red, most people say ‘red, blood.’ Whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. I think red is a very flamboyant color. . .. Most of [my paintings] are concerned with earth color. I don’t analyze myself and the reasoning for it, but, at the same time, this is how it happens.”

Through courage and hard work, Anton Weiss has pursued political, personal, and artistic freedom throughout his life. He has taken part in trends and events that have become part of the fabric of twentieth-century history. In doing so, he has created an artistic legacy that is itself historic. Weiss’ personal life spans a constellation of cities in Europe and the United States. His art is known globally. And yet, he has chosen to be a local man. Through his work as director of the art department at Watkins and invaluable contributions to the Tennessee Art League and Tennessee Watercolor Society, he has shaped the Nashville arts community. A local treasure and an icon of a vital American style, he has enriched the lives of generations of artists and art lovers. He says, “I probably feel better about my painting process than I ever have—because it’s exciting!” Nashville shares his excitement.