De Kooning's Bicycle: Artists and Writers in the Hamptons
In a series of vividly told vignettes, critic and poet Long (Blue) illustrates how the East End of Long Island indelibly etched a mark on the style and work processes of the abstract impressionists and their artistically minded friends. For artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and their respective wives, Lee Krasner and Elaine, the Hamptons were a creative playground in the 1950s. Long reimagines their lives there in stories told from the artists' points of view. Pollock, aka Jack the Dripper, and Krasner moved to the East End in 1945 in an attempt to curb the infamous inebriate's drinking and stimulate his talent, and Long cleverly narrates Pollock's artistic methods. When the artist "unleashed screaming ribbons of cadmium yellow, it was like a hot trumpet solo," Long writes, likening his painting process to jazz improvisations. Former MoMA curator Frank O'Hara, Fairfield Porter, Jean Stafford andNew Yorkercartoonist Saul Steinberg receive similarly poetic treatment, but it's with titans like Pollock and de Kooning that Long best captures the spirit of modernism as filtered through New York's rural past.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.