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Juno Kughler

Sue Ballard Kughler

William Francis Vandeveer Kughler

On Women, Kabbala,
and The Enigma

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One Artist's Opinion of Women
World Journal Tribune, Sunday, March 26, 1967

"Today's look is one of emaciation and the glorification of the ugly." Thus did portrait painter Francis Vandeveer Kughler describe what he thinks of the fashion figure of today . . . "the 11-year-old-boy figure, tall for his age."

"Twiggy's starved beauty look doesn't appeal to me," said the fearless artist, who looks like a halfback on a winning team. "Men like a healthy look," he continued, "a woman who projects the mother quality."

Thin legs and pale lipsticks also came under Kughler's barrage of dislikes.

"What man could worship a shank of bone?" he asked as he sat in his Des Artistes duplex studio and served Bolinger '55 and caviar on thin brown bread. "And those pale lipsticks. Ugh. A woman's pretty mouth is lost when smeared with that goo."

Does he have an ideal woman? Certainly, he has two--at least the two he mentioned. "One is Garbo, and the other, trite as it sounds, is Jacqueline Kennedy," Mr. Kughler replied without any hesitation. "They have all the fully-rounded qualities of beauty."

Sexpots are also high on his list of qualities he loathes in a woman, both as an artist and a man. Nor does he want around a woman who lives only for herself or her clothes.

"The woman who builds a man up, no matter what she looks like, is the one a man marries," Mr. Kughler said. The woman who is only interested in herself and self-adulation destroys a man. Who needs her?"

Francis Vandeveer Kughler

 

He tightened the belt on the black kimono he paints in, spread caviar on another piece of bread and added, "Of course, this is just one man's opinion."

Mr. Kughler, who has spent the last six years doing the murals for the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, began his famous career when he was four.

I can't remember whether it was a pumpkin or someone falling out of a window," he laughed. "Mother saved them all and some day I'm going to have an exhibit, beginning with them up to the present."


The Enigma by Francis Vandeveer Kughler

The canvas he has just finished is called The Enigma and is tied in with his tremendous knowledge of the Kabbalah.

"The Kabbalah is the basis of a Hebrew cult," he explained.

To find his own art theme, he explored many mystic paths in his Kabbalalistic pursuits. In the process, he has broken many important secrets of the Kabbalah. He would not explain them, for "they cannot be explained lightly."

"However, in this canvas there is embodied the analogical hints of the Kabbalah," he said, pointing to The Enigma. "The chess board represents skill, the sea shells the basic patterns in a simple form, Venus the feminine principle, and the contemporary nude putting on her lipstick accents the perpetual search for beauty."

He paused, then continued with a smile"

"There is no artist greater than the female, for she is the universal factor in every form of life."

--Marjorie Farnsworth