This is obviously something that needs to be taken into account if one is looking to create a decisive taxonomy such as the one proposed here. What’s more, the painter even appears as an amateur onomastician who specializes in the Native American place names of eastern Pennsylvania.
The quotes from Mattison and Finsel both imply a rather interesting fact : Kline had a keen interest in the toponymy of Pennsylvania. Each category is supported by one or more selected quotes, or by a brief remark. Therefore, what follows is a taxonomy of the titles of Kline’s paintings – or at least those I could certify as his as no catalogue were ever produced of Kline’s oeuvre. And studying what the painter himself (or those very close to him) have said about either the titles or of the naming process that birthed them appears the proper methodology for such an investigation. What is of interest to me is rather to categorize the titles of his paintings so as to try and uncover any invisible threads that might tie them together into a significant – and perhaps telling – whole. That said, such a freudian program is not the aim of this humble paper. Having himself claimed that his inspiration came from unconscious sources, there may very well be some truth to this hypothesis. So strong were Kline’s roots in the Coal Region that many connoisseurs have postulated that his “black girders and joists and I-beams, built in layers and then feathered into white pictorial voids” (Graham-Dixon 1994) were subcon scious manifestations of the industrial installations he longly observed as a budding drafsman.
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