MFAH Favorites: Jon Evans on František Kupka

František Kupka, “The Yellow Scale,” c. 1907, oil on canvas, 31 × 29 1/4 inches. John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection, museum purchase funded by Audrey Jones Beck

František Kupka’s The Yellow Scale has been a personal favorite ever since its arrival at the Museum in 1994. I know I’m not alone in succumbing to its appeal over the past three decades. As a librarian I’m a sucker for works that have a rich back story and The Yellow Scale does not disappoint on this front. 

Kupka grew up in Bohemia within a culture steeped in mysticism. As a result, he was well-primed to embrace art as a means to express and explore spirituality. In particular, he sought to create a visual corollary to music’s power to invoke a sense of reverie. 

In 1905 he initiated a series of self-portraits that emphasized the expressive qualities of color, having intensively studied both optics and color theory. The Yellow Scale is a study for one such work that now resides in Paris at the Musée National d’Art Moderne (aka the Pompidou). Our work by Kupka stands at a pivotal moment, clearly exhibiting strong abstract tendencies while remaining firmly rooted in the natural world. It’s this polarity between realism and abstraction that gives this work such tension for me and marks it as a transitional work in the march towards abstraction in the twentieth century.

Beyond the historical context, the painting simply exudes pathos and power. The golden aura that pervades the work draws us in with its warmth, as if we were being called directly by the sun. Kupka’s face peers out from this monochrome mass, taking center stage in what could be misconstrued as a Russian icon painting — its central figure afloat in an amber halo and swaddled in gold leaf. The bravura brush strokes applied across the canvas give it an air of looseness and informality that underscores the intimacy of the scene. We seem to be privy to a moment of deep contemplation not only for the artist as sitter, but for the artist as painter as well.

The intensity of Kupka’s gaze is enthralling and yet I find his air of self-importance to be somewhat off-putting. Nonetheless, I can’t look away from the figure whose languorous pose features a forearm erect as a sentinel, while coolly managing a cigarette gently nestled between two fingers. Meanwhile, the other hand is a far more roughly sketched appendage that holds a flaxen-colored book into which an index finger is inserted as an impromptu bookmark. Both gestures, paired with Kupka’s laser-like gaze that seems to see through and beyond us, suggest that we have caught our protagonist in a deep psychological state. This profound sense of self-reflection along with the dexterous handling of paint and palette are what keep me returning to this work year after year.

Jon Evans is Chief of Libraries & Archives at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Kupka’s The Yellow Scale is on view in gallery 223 in the MFAH’s Audrey Jones Beck Building.