DAN CHRISTENSEN (1942-2007)

New York Times Obituary

Southampton Press Obituary

New York Times - January 27, 2007

Dan Christensen, 64, Painter of Abstract Art, Dies
By ROJA HEYDARPOUR

Dan Christensen, an abstract painter best known for his unfettered use of color in various styles, including Color Field painting and lyrical abstraction, died last Saturday in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 64.

The cause was heart failure due to polymyositis, a muscle disease, said his wife, Elaine Grove.

In 1967 Mr. Christensen, finding the realism of his classical training restrictive, began using spray guns to paint colorful stacked loops on canvas, a technique that won him critical acclaim. He started by spraying over square pieces of tape, then removing them, creating a grid. The grids turned into tightly coiled loops, which graduated to looser whirls and finally broke into strokes and lines of color.

Mr. Christensen was concerned as much with the interaction of colors as with the process and pleasure of the act of painting, which guided much of his experimentation. The spray paintings soon gave way to saturated blankets of color underneath a coat of dark, and later white, paint, in the early to mid-1970s. He would then use a squeegee to scrape away the top layer and reveal some of the vibrant colors underneath. These works were not as well received as the spray paintings.

Daniel James Christensen was born in Cozad, Neb. He was inspired to be a painter when he took a trip to Denver as a teenager and saw some of Jackson Pollock’s work. Mr. Christensen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri with a B.F.A. in 1964 and started graduate work at the University of Indiana. But he abandoned school and in 1965 moved to New York City, where he began his life’s work.

Mr. Christensen painted until his death. His works are featured in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Twenty-three of his paintings are at the Spanierman Modern gallery in Manhattan.

Mr. Christensen is survived by his second wife, Ms. Grove; his sons James and William, of Brooklyn; his son from a previous marriage, Moses Lindebak, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; two sisters, Marilyn David of Estes Park, Colo., and Kay Remus of Omaha; and one brother, Don, of New York City.

Southampton Press - January 25, 2007 - Obituaries

Community Remembers An Artist
Blood Disease Claims Daniel J. Christensen
By ERIC ERNST

Daniel J. Christensen

When the painter Martin Kippenberger noted that “a good artist has less time than ideas,” he might well have been speaking of Dan Christensen, who died at his home this past Saturday, January 20, after a long bout with the blood disease myositis. He was 64. Writing this last phrase might actually be the most surprising aspect about his passing because, like many great artists I have known and admired, his age was always entertainingly indeterminate. Even in the throes of the disease to which he would eventually succumb, he always exuded an element of childlike wonder in the way he perceived the world around him. Because he was seemingly ageless and perpetually impish, it was difficult to engage in conversation with him and not think of Al Hirschfeld’s observation that “artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.”

Initially a minimalist geometric painter whose art evolved into rhythmic and dreamlike reveries of elegantly simple abstract patterning, he was an artist who was widely admired both for his creative vision and also for his deep sense of soft-spoken decency.

Ever since he first moved to the East End in 1982, he was immediately accepted by my father’s generation of artists and was referred to admiringly as “that young, talented Dan Christensen.” This was due, at least in part, to the recognition of his undeniable painterly abilities, but, in addition, respect was accorded because that recent generation of masters—DeKooning, Brooks, Marca-Relli, and Ernst—all recognized in him an ineffable sense of quiet and gentle humanism and a profound sense of inner strength.

Later, when he had become a senior statesman of the art community himself, this same measure of thoughtful and considerate perception made him a model for the next generation of artists. To speak from personal experience, I would submit that this was no small achievement in and of itself, because young artists already think they know everything and yet he—while always indulging us our idiocies—was somehow able to gently steer us toward a deeper understanding of our own work.

Born in Cozad, Nebraska, on October 6, 1942, to William Milo Christensen and Mabel Viola Christensen (née Rosse), Dan received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1964 and moved, presumably as quickly as possible, to New York City soon thereafter.

First beginning in 1967 to use the tools and approach to space and figuration that would later become the hallmark of his work, he was quickly recognized as one of the most original young artists of the decade. Using spray guns to create magical universes of both sound and silence, he developed a vocabulary that expressed the ethereal interplay of light dancing gently with form, rhythmically contorted in elegant bands of luminescent color.

Conjured from within the rigid conceptual framework of the minimalist philosophy of painting, his work soon transcended this static manifestation of image and freed itself by exuberantly appropriating concepts of Surrealist automatism, totemism, and, to the horror of minimalist adherents, abstract expressionism.

Technologically updating Jackson Pollock’s technique of sending paint flying through space, Dan was able to match the gesturalism of action painting with minimalism’s calm and deliberate atmospheric gentility. As Stephen Westfall wrote in the catalog to Dan’s triumphant retrospective in New York City, which opened just two days before his passing, his approach “was a garage brainstorm: as if attaching a booster rocket to Pollock’s gesture, from which multicolored trails blazed.”

This sense of adventure was hardly an early aberration, however, as throughout his career he avoided being stylistically categorized and constantly searched for new methods of painting and personal expression.

While those on the periphery of the creative process, such as art dealers and collectors, usually frowned on this sort of restless searching for painterly truth, it was his confidence and lucid and articulate ability to explore that made him an object of admiration among his fellow artists, and an example of greatness for artists to come.

Predeceased by his parents, he is survived by his wife, the painter and sculptor Elaine Grove of East Hampton; three sons, Moses Michael Lindebak of Arizona, and James Luther Christensen and William Daniel Christensen, both of New York City; two sisters, Marilyn David of Colorado and Glenda Kay Remus of Nebraska; a brother, Don Christensen of New York City, and nine nieces and nephews.

A memorial service will be held at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton on Saturday, January 27, at 1 p.m., followed immediately by interment at Green River Cemetery in Springs and a reception at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett. There will also be a memorial service at the Spanierman Modern Gallery at 53 East 58th Street in New York City on Monday, February 5, from 6 to 8 p.m. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in Mr. Christensen’s name to the Myositis Association of America, Suite 402, 1233 20th Street, Washington, D.C. 20036 would be appreciated by the family.