page_title: Chaim Koppelman
section_title: Teaching, writing, and later work
hierarchical_section_title: Chaim Koppelman / Teaching, writing, and later work
caption_attribution_description: English: Author: Chaim Koppelman Source: Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman Foundation Description: "Thought/Self Portrait," ca. 1980, Pastel, 20x26 inch
context_page_description: Chaim Koppelman was an American artist, art educator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. Best known as a printmaker, he also produced sculpture, paintings, and drawings. A member of the National Academy of Design since 1978, he was president of the Society of American Graphic Artists, which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. He established the Printmaking Department of the School of Visual Arts in 1959, and taught there until 2007.
  Koppelman was an early student of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded in 1941 by Eli Siegel, which is based on the principle, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves". This principle informed Koppelman's art, teaching, and his work as an Aesthetic Realism consultant. About the importance of this principle to art and life, Koppelman stated, "When Eli Siegel showed that what makes a work of art beautiful – the oneness of opposites – is the same as what every individual wants, it was one of the mightiest and kindest achievements of man's mind".
  Koppelman's art is noted for its originality, masterful technique, humor, and power.
context_section_description: In 1959, Koppelman began the Printmaking Department at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught until 2007.  He also taught at the National Academy, New York University, SUNY New Paltz, the Rhodes Preparatory School, and the 92nd Street Y. In 1971, he became a consultant on the faculty of the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation. As part of the trio, The Kindest Art, he gave consultations to artists and others, teaching that art answers the deepest question in life: how to be fully oneself by being fair to the outside world. He taught The Art of Drawing: Surface and Depth. He studied Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel until 1978, and then in professional classes with the Chairman of Education, Ellen Reiss.
  His scholarly writing as an Aesthetic Realism consultant showing the relation of art and life includes considerations of the lives and works of sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Jacques Lipchitz; painters René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, Fernand Léger, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Masaccio; and many American printmakers. He is the author of The Art of the Print, essays on works of Picasso, Daumier, Munch, Hogarth, and Duane Hanson. His drawings illustrate Siegel's book, Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims (New York: Definition Press, 1972, 2011).
  Although known mostly for his work in black and white, Koppelman's painterly interest in color took a new form in the 1970s, when he began using color in his prints. After 1980, he worked increasingly in pastel and watercolor.
caption: Self Portrait (ca. 1980), personal collection
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