Westmoreland Museum author talk explores Pittsburgh artist John Kane

Oct. 28—It seems fitting that two people long involved in the artistic and cultural life of Pittsburgh should tell the story of Pittsburgh artist John Kane.

Authors Maxwell King and Louise "Lulu" Lippincott will discuss "American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane," their book about the self-taught, early 20th-century painter, during a program at 2 p.m. Nov. 5 at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.

Many of Kane's paintings depict Pittsburgh landscapes, along with industrial and domestic scenes.

His work is included in The Westmoreland's current exhibition, "Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America," featuring artists without formal training whose work found its way into major American museums, helping to diversify the art world across lines of race, ethnicity, class, ability and gender.

Lippincott is an art historian and former curator of fine arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art. King is the former president of the Heinz Endowments and former CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation.

Published April 12 by the University of Pittsburgh Press, the book contains King's biography of Kane, set in a historical Pittsburgh context, and Lippincott's assessment of the artist's work and critical reputation.

King first became interested in Kane about 20 years ago when a local art dealer noted that, in the Heinz Endowment's "wonderful collection of 20th century Pittsburgh artists," there was no Kane.

"I knew nothing about John Kane," said King, now retired and living in Ligonier. "I started reading about him, got really interested in his character and his life story, which is just such an extraordinary, picaresque journey."

Life marred by tragedy

Born in Scotland in 1860, Kane emigrated to the United States at age 19. He landed in Western Pennsylvania, where he worked for the railroad, mined coal and stoked the coke ovens of Henry Clay Frick. His life was marred by tragedy, including the amputation of part of his left leg after an accident and the death of an infant son, leading to alcoholism, depression, estrangement from his family and an itinerant lifestyle.

His art-making started with drawings on the sides of railroad cars. He submitted paintings to the 1925 and 1926 Carnegie Internationals, which were rejected but caught the eye of curator Andrew Dasburg.

Dasburg convinced jurors to accept the 67-year-old Kane's "Scene in the Scottish Highlands" for the 1927 exhibition, and his fame quickly grew. Kane had his first one-man show in New York in 1931 and died in 1934.

King, also the author of "The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers," delved into the Kane project as a way to fill his time during the pandemic shutdown.

"I felt confident about telling Kane's story but incompetent writing about art history or art criticism. I knew that would be a real weakness in the book," Kings said. "I knew Lulu from the Carnegie Museum and her reputation as a very sharp intellect and also a pretty tough customer who did not suffer fools lightly.

"That's what I needed, an expert to poke holes in what I'm doing and make it stronger," he said.

Lippincott said the major source of information on Kane has been Marie McSwigan's "Sky Hooks: The Autobiography of John Kane," published in 1938.

"We thought it was the first and last word on John Kane, but Max started interviewing his relatives and I started poking around in archives of the Carnegie Library," said Lippincott, now living in Portland, Ore. "We discovered some descendants of Marie McSwigan and her original notebooks."

The notebooks contained material that hadn't made McSwigan's book.

Lifelong struggles

"One of the things we both had to deal with was the long history in Kane's life of alcoholism and mental illness, which severely disrupted his ability to function as a workman, as a family man and sometimes as an artist," Lippincott said. "Given his addiction and his terrible struggles with alcoholism all his life, I think making art was what kept him going and kept him alive."

The pair also heard stories from Kane's children and other relatives that put the works in a personal context.

"Some of the scenes look like cozy family pictures but have terrible memories embedded in them, in the symbols and activities," Lippincott said. "They look straight out of calendar art until you hear stories he told the family, and then they become incredibly painful."

Lippincott noted that discussions of Kane's work and exhibitions, like "Gatecrashers," come at a time when the art world is reassessing the concept of so-called outsider art.

"The whole field is in a heated argument about how to talk about these artists," she said. "The outsider category has traditionally included a lot of women, people of color, anyone without traditional education.

"We tend to forget that before about 1750, almost all great art was produced by artists who would be considered self-taught. Formal art training did not exist," she said. "You learned through apprenticeship to a master and took what you got. The whole idea that artists had to be taught by an academic program is a relatively modern concept."

As a white European male, Kane himself doesn't fit all the outsider parameters, Lippincott noted.

"But as an immigrant and as a laborer and a member of what is sometimes called the underclass, he fits the category of someone without an elite background or training," she said.

King sees that as a gift.

"One of my opinions coming out of this project is that John Kane was lucky that he didn't have formal training," King said. "In effect, John Kane was taught by John Kane to be a painter. His style, his approach, the character of his work is so distinct from most of the other art that I'm familiar with."

The talk by King and Lippincott is hosted by The Committee for the Westmoreland. The program will include a wine reception with light hors d'oeuvres and a book signing.

Fee is $25, or $20 for museum members. Reservations are due by Wednesday by calling 888-718-4253 or online at thewestmoreland.org.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .