Jackson’s reverie: Dragon; Ossorio. Access to The Creeks: Glasco. Smith saying alcohol was useful: CG. “Cheap lousy fakes”; “frauds and fools”; “the only giant”; “the only painter alive”; “the only damn painter”: Q. in Tabak, pp. 47–48. Destroying piano; Lee urging nonalcoholic punch: Dragon. Asking friends to watch Jackson: Mercer. “Keep him off the road”: Q. by Lord. “Dissociate herself”: Tabak, p. 48. Janis promised his pick: Janis, q. in Potter, p. 158. “An attempt to establish”: Cynthia Cole. “She nursed him”: Int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. “Don’t look at me”: Q. by Dorothy Miller, q. in Potter, p. 157. “I think she hated”: Q. in Potter, p. 157. “Lee wasn’t the best”: Q. by Kamrowski. “He would have to drink”: Q. by Johnson.
Hiding differences: Rosenberg. “Go fuck yourself”: Q. by Harry Jackson. “Whore”; “slut”: Q. by FLP. “Ugly goddamn woman”: Q. by Harry Jackson. “Some time alone”: Lord. Lee asking for return of objects: Lord. Harris hearing screams: Harris, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. “You won’t be able”: Q. by Ronald Stein. Cigarette brands: John Lee, recalling Krasner, who dated this dispute “sometime around ‘52.” “His feelings toward me”: Q. in Gruen, p. 233. “There was never”: LK, q. in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 50. Not surprised by blows: Peterson, who didn’t say she saw JP hit Krasner, only that she would be surprised if he didn’t. Houseguests seeing bruises: Harry Jackson; also Harris, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. “Lost his temper”: Applehof, recalling LK. “I’m gonna kill you”: Q. by Tony Smith, q. by Shepperd. “You did it to him”: Q. by Kadish, recalling Sande.
Stella’s arrival: SMP to FLP, MLP, and Jonathan, Oct. 27, 1952. Stella’s illness: SMP to Irene Crippen, Nov. 15, 1952: “I have been on the burn most of the summer neuralgia in my chest and Rheumatism in my knees so stiff I could hardly move or turn over in bed. … somedays quite stiff and depends on the weather.” Capillé, for the fact that it was bursitis. “Both have colds”: SMP to CCP, Nov. 10, 1952. Adding swirls: Number 1, 1952, OC&T 358, II, pp. 182–83: begun in 1951, finished in 1952; see OC&T IV, p. 261, fig. 68. Figurative painting covered up: Convergence: Number 10, 1952, OC&T 363, II, pp. 186–89; underpainting is typical black and white figurative: OC&T II, p. 171. “Some nice paintings”: SMP to FLP, MLP, and Jonathan, Oct. 27, 1952. Number 12, 1952: OC&T 364, II, pp. 190–91. Faltering confidence: CG, q. in Potter, p. 191. Painting begun with Smith: Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, OC&T 367, II, pp. 193–97. “Many, many times”: LK, q. in Namuth, n.p. Working at Blue Poles: Friedman, “Last Years of a Tormented Genius.” Belgian linen: Solomon, p. 234. Small stained canvases: Number 24, 1952, Number 2B, 1952, Number 2C, 1952; OC&T 359–61, II, pp. 184–85. Five with dates altered: Number 6, 1952, OC&T 350, II, p. 172; Number 3, 1952, OC&T 351, II, p. 173; Number 4, 1952, OC&T 352, II, p. 174; Number 5, 1952, OC&T 353, II, p. 175; Number 7, 1952, OC&T 354, II, pp. 176–77; Wilcox, for the altering of dates.
Trip to Deep River: SMP to CCP, Nov. 10, 1952; Stella erroneously says, “they were up for Thanksgiving.” Hanging until four: Parsons, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959; see also Parsons, q. in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 55. “Good-looking”: Reis. “Like a fine musician”: Little. “You’d better buy”: Q. by Kadish. “Sharpshooter”: Kadish. “Jackson, let’s get out”: Q. by Reis. Kline and Jackson not seen again: Reis. Bennington College show: Nov. 17–30, 1952. Station wagon; dance studio: Goosen: JP didn’t help hang the show, which makes sense given how recently the Janis show had opened. Feeley with Smith and Goossen: Wheelwright; also Raynor, “JP—‘He Broke the Ice,’” p. 64. “Like an undertaker”: Goossen. “Virtually motionless”: Raynor, “JP—‘He Broke the Ice,’” p. 64. Monosyllables: Goossen. Lee in charge of bar: Wheelwright. “Jackson, lay off”: CG. “Nothing doing”: Q. by CG. “Only fools”: CG. “Wobbly”; “have their run”: CG. “When you were off booze”: Q. by CG, q. in Potter, p. 165. “Wasn’t a success”; Lee knew, too: CG, q. in Potter, p. 163. Jackson staring at Lavender Mist: Dragon, q. in Potter, p. 135.
41. AGAINST THE WORLD
SOURCES
Books, articles, manuscripts, and transcripts
Ashton, The New York School; Ashton, Yes, but … ; Barrett, The Truants; Centre Georges Pompidou, JP; Friedman, JP; Gruen, The Party’s Over Now; Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, The Intrasubjectives; Myers, Tracking the Marvelous; Nemser, Art Talk; OC&T, JP; O’Doherty, American Masters; Picon, Surrealists and Surrealism; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Rosenberg, The Anxious Object; Sandler, The New York School; Solomon, JP; Tabak, But Not for Love.
Robert Alan Aurthur, “Hitting the Boiling Point, Freakwise, at East Hampton,” Esquire, June 1972; “Big City Dames,” Time, Apr. 6, 1953; Robert Coates, “The Art Galleries,” New Yorker, Nov. 22, 1952; DP&G, “Who Was JP?” Art in America, May–June 1967; J[ames] F[itzsimmons], “Fifty-Seventh Street in Review,” Art Digest, Nov. 15, 1952; R[obert] G[oodnough], “Reviews and Previews,” Art News, Dec. 1952; “JP: An Artists’ Symposium, Part I,” Art News, Apr. 1967; Max Kozloff, ”The Critical Reception of Abstract-Expressionism,” Arts, Dec. 1965; Max Kozloff, “An Interview with Robert Motherwell,” Artforum, Sept. 1965; Robert Motherwell and Harold Rosenberg, Editors’ Preface, Possibilities: An Occasional Review, Winter 1947–48; Robert Motherwell, “The Modern Painter’s World,” Dyn, Nov. 1944; JP, “My Painting,” Possibilities 1, Winter 1947–48; Barbara Rose, “Hans Namuth’s Photographs and the JP Myth: Part Two: Number 29, 1950,” Arts, Mar. 1979; Barbara Rose, “JP et l’Art Américain,” in Centre Georges Pompidou, JP; Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Art News, Dec. 1952; Harold Rosenberg, “The Herd of Independent Minds: Has the Avant-Garde Its Own Mass Culture?” Commentary, Sept. 1948; Harold Rosenberg, “Introduction to Six American Painters,” Possibilities 1, Winter 1947–48; Harold Rosenberg, “The Mythic Act,” New Yorker, May 6, 1967; Harold Rosenberg, “The Search for JP,” Art News, Feb. 1961; William Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illustrator: The Limits of Psychological Criticism, Part II,” Art in America, Dec. 1979; Gabrielle Smith, “Helen Has a Show,” New York, Feb. 17, 1969; “The Year’s Best: 1952,” Art News, Jan. 1953; James T. Vallière, “De Kooning on Pollock,” Partisan Review, Fall 1967.
Howard Devree, “Ingres to Pollock—A French Master’s Work—Abstract Painting,” NYT, Nov. 16, 1952; J. Hoberman, “Harold Rosenberg’s Radical Cheek,” Village Voice Literary Supplement, May 1986; Joseph Liss, “Memories of Bonac Painters,” East Hampton Star, Sept. 13, 1983; Curtis Bill Pepper, “The Indomitable Bill de Kooning,” NYT Magazine, Nov. 20, 1983.
Donnelly Lee Casto, “JP: A Biographical Study of the Man and a Critical Evaluation of His Work” (M.A. thesis), Tempe: Arizona State University, 1964; Ellen Gross Landau, “LK: A Study of Her Early Career (1926–1949) (Ph.D. thesis), Newark: University of Delaware, 1981; May Natalie Tabak, “A Collage” (unpub. ms.).
CG, int. by Kathleen Shorthall for Life, Nov. 9, 1959, Time/Life Archives; CG, int. by James T. Vallière, Mar. 20, 1968, AAA; JP, int. by Dorothy Seiberling for Life, July 18, 1949, Time/Life Archives.
Interviews:
Lionel Abel; Susan Barker; Norman Bluhm; Grace Borgenicht; Charles Boultenhouse; Paul Brach; David Budd; Fritz Bultman; Peter Busa; Jeremy Capillé; Nicholas Carone; Leo Castelli; Giorgio Cavallon; Herman Cherry; Dorothy Dehner; Ted Dragon; Herbert Ferber; Leslie Fiedler; Phyllis Fleiss; B. H. Friedman; Joe Glasco; CG; Grace Hartigan; Eleanor Hempstead; Harry Jackson; Mary Jackson; Sidney Janis; Buffie Johnson; Reuben Kadish; Gerome Kamrowski; Hilton Kramer; LK; Ellen Landau; Ernestine Lassaw; Ibram Lassaw; Joe LeSueur; John Little; Beatrice Ribak Mandelman; Conrad Marca-Relli; George Mercer; John Bernard Myers; Alfonso Ossorio; Philip Pavia; Milton Resnick; May Tabak Rosenberg; Irving Sandler; Jim Shepperd; David Slivka; Jane Smith; Stephanie Sonora; Patsy Southgate; Ronald Stein; Michael Stolbach; Esteban Vicente; Harriet Vicente; Marta Vivas; Joan Ward; Steve Wheeler; Helen Wheelwright; Roger Wilcox.
NOTES
Head cold: SMP to CCP, Jan. 29, 1953. Loper a clown: Potter, p. 180. Renovating studio: SMP to
CCP, Jan. 29, 1953: The shingling was going on in the dead of winter, not in spring, as stated in OC&T IV, p. 271. Impossible to concentrate: Little. Destroying Guston’s show: Friedman, p. 223. “Easel pictures”: CG. “Embroidery”: Esteban Vicente. “Topping everybody”: Cherry. Switch in styles: About 1951. New style based on Monet: Ashton, Yes, but …, p. 103. Halfhearted: Kramer: “Guston always had very ambivalent feelings about abstract art.” Busa, who considered Guston “opportunistic,” thought his abstractions all came out of Shimmering Substance. Even Kadish, later Guston’s in-law, says, “Guston felt that kind of Midtown Gallery American art was going downhill and that the art world was heading in the direction of American Abstract Expressionism. It may very well be that he was exploiting the new situation.” “Probably jealous”: Q. in Potter, p. 153.
“Tantalizing”: G[oodnough], “Reviews and Previews,” p. 42. “Quite magnificent”: F[itzsimmons], “Fifty-Seventh Street in Review,” p. 17. “Far more packed”: Devree, “Ingres to Pollock.” “I’ve always felt”: Coates, “The Art Galleries,” pp. 178–79. Landscape: Devree (“Ingres to Pollock”) complimented JP for “getting away from the confusion of means and ends which has been all too prevalent in nonobjective work.” Excursion: F[itzsimmons], “Fifty-Seventh Street in Review,” p. 17: “Pollock takes up from where he left off two years ago.” Number 12, 1952: OC&T 364, II, pp. 190–91. Borrowings from Rothko and Newman; work slipping: Friedman, p. 201. Inquiry about prints: Charlotte Owen to JP, Jan. 24, 1953. Speech invitation: Elliot Wilensky, president of Cooper Union Students Association, AIA, to JP, Jan. 29, 1953. Interview request: Richard S. Field to JP, Feb. 20, 1953. Miller letter: Miller to JP, Feb. 10, 1953; she also told him that Edgar Kaufmann had donated Number 12, 1949 (OC&T 233, II, p. 55), a small painting on paper. Complaining: Little. Art News citation: “The Year’s Best: 1952,” pp. 42–43.
Begging Stella to come: SMP to CCP, Jan. 29, 1953. Cortisone injections: Capillé. Stella saying she would try: SMP to CCP, Jan. 29, 1953. Jackson seeking out Hubbard; offering to meet Stella; “rain or snow”: SMP to CCP, May 18, 1953. Guests from Partisan Review: May Rosenberg. “A lot of shit”; “Listen, Jackson”: Q. by May Rosenberg. Evening a trap: LK. See also Resnick, q. in Potter, p. 181. “How dare you!”: Q. by May Rosenberg. “Don’t tell me”: Q. by May Rosenberg in Potter, p. 181. Lee storming out: May Rosenberg. Greenberg learning from Pantuhoff: Bultman. “Take him around”; “that mediocrity”: May Rosenberg. Half-baked Kant: See Barrett, pp. 137ff. See also Tabak, “Our Pal,” in “A Collage,” p. 293. “A tipster”: “Action Painting: Crisis and Distortion,” in Rosenberg, The Anxious Obiect, p. 43. Rosenberg learning from de Kooning: Carone. “You can’t do that”: Q. by de Kooning, q. in Potter, p. 183. “Glittering phrasemaker”: Barrett, p. 143. “Lamenting”: Aurthur, “Hitting the Boiling Point,” p. 205.
“Respectable” sketch: May Rosenberg, int. by Landau, Feb. 22, 1980, q. in Landau, “LK,” p. 98 n. 17. Brach: Miriam Schapiro’s father, who knew Rosenberg well, said, “He tried bullshitting everyone, then he found the artists. They were pushovers.” American Guide Series: Harold Rosenberg, q. in Gruen, p. 173. New York weekends: May Rosenberg. “Two dogs”: Harold Rosenberg, q. by May Rosenberg. “Individual protagonist”: Hoberman, “Harold Rosenberg’s Radical Cheek,” p. 11. “The artist’s problem”; “painting is”: Motherwell, “The Modern Painter’s World,” Dyn, pp. 9–14. Huelsenbeck: Picon, p. 32. “Literature should be action”; “fell in love”: Motherwell, q. in Kozloff, “An Interview with Robert Motherwell,” p. 37: Motherwell believed that Rosenberg’s notion of “action” derived directly from that piece. In “Introduction to Six American Painters” (p. 229), Rosenberg invoked Huelsenbeck’s militancy: “An action is not a matter of taste. You don’t let taste decide the firing of a pistol or the building of a maze.”
“If one is to continue”: Motherwell and Rosenberg, Editors’ Preface, p. 1. “Work[ed] directly”: Rosenberg, “The Herd of Independent Minds,” p. 244. “The modern painter”: Rosenberg, introduction to Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, n.p. “It doesn’t matter”: Q. by CG. Jackson’s garbled version: CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. Wheeler claims that, in 1947, he was the first to use the term “action” in relation to painting in print.
Rosenberg laboring: Aurthur, “Hitting the Boiling Point,” p. 205: Rosenberg was an agonizingly slow writer. Jackson playing central role: Rosenberg later conceded as much in “The Mythic Act,” p. 164. “When I am in”: JP, “My Painting,” pp. 78 ff. Compare JP’s original holograph (OC&T IV, p. 241) with the rewritten version that appeared in the magazine. The former includes very little of the statement. Rosenberg (“The Search for JP,” p. 58) later acknowledged the role this statement had in his thinking (without acknowledging his role in editing it): “JP’s chief public statement about his work, a three-paragraph note written in 1947, is devoted entirely to method,” he wrote in 1961; “it contains no reference to the paintings or what he was trying to achieve through them. Apparently, he assumed the value of what he did lay in his way of doing it.” Obviously, Rosenberg was unaware of JP’s public statements on the issue. In the 1950 radio interview, JP was asked, “Isn’t it true that your method of painting, your technique, is important and interesting only because of what you accomplish by it?” “I hope so,” he said. “Naturally, the result is the thing—and—it doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.” Rosenberg not liking Jackson’s paintings: Bluhm; Carone; Wilcox. Carone: When JP confronted Rosenberg, telling him that he knew nothing about art, Rosenberg said he knew enough to know that JP painted “like a monkey,” referring to the monkey whose paintings had been reproduced in newspapers. “Incapable of sustained”: Rosenberg, “The Search for JP,” p. 59.
Caring more about ideas: See Myers (p. 68), quoting his own journal from March 1946: “Harold believes that the visual arts exist on a lower level of human expression.” See also Kozloff, “The Critical Reception of Abstract Expressionism,” p. 33: For Rosenberg, as for Benton, paintings existed only “to illustrate a rhetorical field theory.” Rosenberg’s Art News essay: “The American Action Painters,” pp. 22–23, 48–50. “I think you wrote”; “smart kid”: Brach. “So full of bullshit”: Kamrowski. “Such a lie”: Carone. “Drink too deeply”: Barrett, pp. 143–44. “Not only unclear”: Abel: ”To have action, you must have some element of destructiveness. If a lifeguard jumps in the water and saves someone from drowning, that’s really not action, that’s routine—that’s what he does. But if I do it and almost drown, that’s an action. There’s got to be a destructive, perilous element. When Picasso paints a cock as Christ in the arms of the Virgin, he’s attacking the church; that’s an act.” However, Abel may not be sufficiently crediting the emphasis that Rosenberg places on “risk” in his definition of action. Smokey the Bear: Hoberman, “Harold Rosenberg’s Radical Cheek,” p. 11, quoting Irving Howe’s memoirs: ”The sheer deliciousness of it, this cuddly artifact of commercial culture as the creature of our most unyielding modernist!” “Numerous and inflammatory”: Rose, “JP et l’Art Américain,” p. 18.
Tomlin reading article: LK; see also O’Doherty, p. 109, and Rose, “JP et l’Art Américain,” p. 19, both of which rely on LK. Rosenberg calling Jackson a megalomaniac: May Rosenberg. Lee perceiving slights by Rosenbergs: Lassaw.
Tomlin sweet-tempered: Friedman. Still coming by: O’Doherty, American Masters, p. 109; Rose, “JP et l’Art Américain,” p. 19. “An attack on painting”: As characterized by CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. Lee recommending rebuttal by Greenberg: CG. “A purely rhetorical”: CG to Donnelly Lee Casto, q. in Casto, “JP,” p. 99. “You get in a fight”: CG. Sweeney no admirer of Greenberg: Barrett, pp. 145–47. According to Greenberg, an attack on Jackson: Kramer. In Greenberg’s opinion: At this time, Greenberg considered JP “profoundly unsure of himself”; Rose, “Hans Namuth’s Photographs … Part Two,” p. 118; Rose (incorrectly, we thi
nk) calls this opinion “one of the monumental critical errors of the twentieth century.” Frankenthaler more receptive: Wheelwright; Budd: “Greenberg couldn’t force Pollock to do what he wanted. In a way, it was easier to make someone else do it. He knew damn well he couldn’t have someone else using a bunch of sticks dripping paint, but, being a pretty good painter himself, he could see that you could take canvas and stain it. So Frankenthaler does it. And the next thing you know, Dzubas is doing it, and Morris Louis, and pretty soon you could hardly tell one of Greenberg’s painters from the other.” Frankenthaler’s new style dated from 1950, the year she met Greenberg and the year she saw Pollock’s show at Betty Parsons; see Gabrielle Smith, “Helen Has a Show,” p. 46.
Greenberg’s changed attitude toward Pollock: Marca-Relli: “Jackson would get very drunk, and there’d be this scene, and they would practically kill each other.” Myers: “Clem would threaten Jackson, and Jackson would threaten him back—Jackson would tell Clem that he was going to beat him up and knock him out, and so on and so forth.” Greenberg: He gave a talk at the Guggenheim Museum and noted that Dubuffet “lost his stuff after 1950.” In the discussion period that followed, Greenberg added—at the height of de Kooning’s new popularity—that “De Kooning is another case of an artist who has lost his stuff.” Not long afterward, Greenberg was sitting at a bar called Dillon’s when de Kooning came up to him. “I heard what you said,” de Kooning said, angry. “You’re riding on Pollock’s back the way Tom Hess is riding on my back.” Greenberg said, “You son of a bitch. I don’t believe Pollock said that. What would I get out of ‘riding on Pollock’s back’?” At that, de Kooning took a swipe at Greenberg’s face, and a fight was prevented only when others stepped in and held them back; story from Greenberg. Ward: “He punched Clem Greenberg pretty good.”
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