R.B. Kitaj

Acquired directly from the artist by Eduardo Paolozzi by 1964
Marlborough Fine Art, London, where acquired with the J. J. Haverty Memorial Fund for the J. J. Haverty Collection, The High Museum of Art in March 1968

London, Tate Gallery, 54-64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 22nd April - 28th June 1964, cat. no.340, illustrated in the catalogue;
Tennessee, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Exhibition of Contemporary Works from the High Museum Collection, 21st September - 16th October 1970;
Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum, R.B. Kitaj, 17th September - 15th November 1981, cat. no.4, with tour to Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, and Stadtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf;
London, Tate Gallery, R.B. Kitaj: A Retrospective, 16th June - 4th September 1994, cat. no.2, illustrated in the catalogue p.71, with tour to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 23rd October - 8th January 1995 and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 14th February - 14th May 1995;
Houston, Texas, The Menil Collection, Pop Art: US/UK Connection 1956-1966, 26th January - 13th May 2001, cat. no.2, illustrated in the catalogue p.115.

R.B. Kitaj, exhibition catalogue, Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover, 1970, no.102, illustrated in the catalogue;
John Ashbery, Joe Shannon, Jane Livingston, Timothy Hyman, Kitaj: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Thames and Hudson, London, 1983, illustrated pl.21;
Marcio Livingstone (ed.), R.B. Kitaj: An American in Europe,  Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 1998, illustrated p.13;
Marco Livingstone, Kitaj, Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1999, cat. no.2, illustrated pl.4.

Original canvas. There are a few fine lines of craquelure and the surface may be very slightly dirty. Otherwise, the paint surface is in good overall condition with areas of strong impasto. Ultraviolet light reveals a few very tiny specks of fluorescence to the light green pigment lower right and a few flecks to an area of yellow pigment near the centre of the left edge, which may be minor cosmetic retouching. Otherwise, there are pigments which fluoresce but these are the hand of the artist. Held in a stained wood box frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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'I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience.' (T.S. Eliot, notes on The Waste Land, quoted in R.B.Kitaj: A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery, 1994, p. 70)

In 1958 Kitaj was discharged from the US army in Europe and arrived at the Ruskin School in Oxford. After painting Erasmus Variations, 1958 (Private Collection), described by Kitaj as 'the first modern art I committed' (R.B.Kitaj: A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery, 1994, p. 68), Kitaj considered Tarot Variations as 'the next painting I made at Oxford, over which hovers another American's unhappy London marriage' (Ibid). That American was T.S. Eliot, and talking of his influence on Kitaj's painting, the artist stated:

'Besotted since teenage with Eliot and Pound and The Waste Land, I believed I had truly found myself in their violet American airs (in their cracks and reforms and bursts), in an England which would never be real home because I would never, like Luftmensch, be at home anywhere. Eliot inspired me, first in a tentative way in this painting and then more plainly and awkwardly in a few others, to place images abreast (and later annotated), as if they were poetic lines on a page. Some few early modernist poets had arranged words to resemble pictures or designs and I began to think I could do the reverse for art: to lay down pictures as if they were poems to look at. And, oh, those inspired notes! The Waste Land seemed revolutionary to me'. (Ibid).

Tarot Variations is separated into four distinct squares. The clear, 'comic-strip', graphic flow of imagery, emphasised by the numbered boxes, is contradicted by the expressive dripping of paint and overlaying of lines and images, such as the cloud floating overhead, which gives the appearance of graffiti or annotation. Recalling the painting of the work, Kitaj has said, 'My journal entries for this painting are lost and I can't remember what exactly stands for what, but Eliot claimed that characters and genders melt into each other in his poem, and anyway I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience.' (R.B.Kitaj: A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery, 1994, p. 70).

Kitaj's arrival at the Royal College of Art the year after he painted Tarot Variations cemented the importance of the relationship between literature and art in his work: 'There were at least two students at the College who were great readers and they damn well knew that books and art are inseparable companions in many art lives. Those who think otherwise don't know their stuff. The two colleagues were Adrian Berg and David Hockney. I believe it's common knowledge that I encouraged more than a few young painters to introduce dramas and ideas that interested them into their pictures...All the bright young painters at the College were doing abstraction at first – even Hockney.' ('Kitaj Interviewed By Richard Morphet' in R.B.Kitaj: A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery, 1994, p. 44).

Kitaj also met Eduardo Paolozzi when he arrived in London in 1959 and the two artists collaborated on a number of projects a few years later at the beginning of the 1960s. Although the exact details are unknown, the Tate exhibition, 54-64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade lists Paolozzi as the owner of Tarot Variations in 1964 so it is likely Paolozzi acquired the painting directly from Kitaj.

We are grateful to Robin Spencer for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.