Louis Schanker, educator
The current revival [in woodcuts,] actually had
its beginnings
before World War II. One of the pioneers was Louis Schanker,
a 51 year old New Yorker, who began fashioning woodcuts in 1935...
One of the earliest U.S. woodcut artists to do abstractions,
Schanker since has trained or influenced a generation of talented
younger artists.
"Comeback of an Art," Life Magazine, Jan, 1955
For three decades Schanker taught at the American Artists
School, The Brooklyn Museum, The New School, and
Bard College.
Schanker (2nd from left,) directing Mural Painting class
Selected Students:
Sylvie
Covey "...Louis Schanker, a tremendously influential
printmaker who was
at the center of the New York woodcut revival of the late
1940s...."
One of his art majors says of him:
"Mr. Schanker's great contribution
to Bard is his lack of pretense.
He has a workman's approach to
art--it's honest and direct. And there
is a warmth and sincerity that gets
through to us. We respect him as an
artist and as a person."
Bard, Alumni Magazine, 1963
Schanker's class at Bard
Daniel Pinkwater, author, illustrator and NPR radio
commentator was a
student of Schanker's at Bard College in the 1960's
The Pinkwater Copyright
Infringement Jamberoo!
David Nyvall, the sculptor to whom
I was apprenticed for three years, as a soldier had visited
Picasso at the close of the war. He told me that Picasso was cordial, invited
him to stay to
lunch, and flattered him by treating him as a fellow artist and an equal.
But Nyvall wasn’t much like
Picasso in his work, manner, or outlook. The closest I ever came to
meeting someone more or less of the Picasso type in person was my relationship
with Louis Schanker,
who taught printmaking at St. Leon’s College [Bard College ] when
I was a student there. Louis
was big, tanned, expansive, and rich. He drove to work sometimes in a Rolls
Royce. He always
wore one of those blue chambray work shirts, and smoked cheap black Italian
Parodi cigars.
Unlike the little pipsqueak art teachers with Master’s degrees who proliferate
today, Louis was not
given to persiflage. You could sit with Louis for an hour, looking at samples of
your own work- and
Louis might only speak once or twice- but what he said would be right on the
money.
And his manner of expression was
direct, simply, monosyllabic. He didn’t go in for jargon or
conceptual flights of fancy. Often he’d pass his hands over the picture,
pointing things out:
“See, kid... this part here...
this is nice... but don’tcha think it would work better if it came down
here...
like so?” OR, “What if there was a little more yellow in this red here?”
Things Louis might say.
Actually he never said them to me. He only ever said one thing to me- once or
twice a week:
“Do more work, kid,” and rarely, “That’s nice. DO more.” It was all I
needed.
So, the year after I graduated,
when I read in the paper that Louis was having a show- of sculpture
yet- I’d never seen any of his sculpture- I was up to the gallery like a shot.
And who should be there, giving an
interview to a reporter for an art magazine, but Louis himself!
“See lady... I was sitting in
the house in Connecticut, watching the logs in the fire... and as the fire
consumed the logs, I began thinking that- while the fire was consuming the wood-
deconstructing it,
if you will- I was witnessing an inverse of the process by which the wood had
grown. This suggested
certain essential forms, which I could bring forth by carving partially burned
logs. And always, I strive
toward the quintessential form, the seed, or nut. At the heart of most of the
sculptures is the
suggestion of the germinal element. I discussed this with my friend, Robert
Motherwell, and he said...”
Louis noticed me listening
open-mouthed. I was experiencing the same sort of shock I’d feel when
my father would mysteriously break out of Polish/Pigin and speak grammatical
English for a
sentence or two.
Louis leaned toward me and
whispered, “You should always make up some bullshit to tell them.”
(personal communication)