bed) I haven't been by myself enough since, well, since the evening after
my return to New York on August 6th, when I went out to the airport and met
Jonathan de Montfort, who flew in from Toronto. That Friday was the last
day I painted too -- a few hours only. That troubles me more than
abandoning my record. But I suppose I am entitled occasionally to the
company of friends, to a change of routine, to vacationing, to try
entertaining others. Jack de Montfort stayed in New York several days. We
were together constantly. Then on Thursday the 15th Bill Dane and I set
off by car for Cape Cod. He and I were together uninterruptedly until his
return to New Jersey this morning. This -- what shall I call it? -- isn't
customary with me. I'm used to living alone. Most people aren't. To be
five or six days with one chap, then immediately thereafter, an equal
length of time with another, is curious. It was both easy and not easy. I
would have preferred an interlude between.

Jack and I went twice to the theatre. We enjoyed a light musical.
I'm not sure what I think of our other drama, Tennessee Williams' current
*Sweet Bird of Youth*, another study in the perniciousness of sex. I was too
tired that evening to absorb it. Jack and I also went through the Museum

2034

of Modern Art. On a gray Sunday afternoon, accompanied by Virginia, we visited The Cloisters. I took him to drinks with one of my neighbors in the building (of whom his opinion was low), and on our final evening I had in for dinner Charles Alan, recently back from Europe, and his friend, young Don Magner.

Charles was in excellent form; he talked most interestingly. Incidentally he formed a poor impression of Paris art galleries and the quality of painting they display. Jack liked him. But Jack concluded that Don Magner is a dangerous fellow to know, a mere hustler. Don was replete with world weariness. He had been on an all night fling and eaten nothing all day. This may have influenced his attitude. Anyway he sounded off in negative terms, said he's been painting for fourteen years and no one will buy his paintings, so he is giving up painting because he has tried all aspects of it and finds that everything has already been done by other painters; he wants to get rid of all his canvases; he would sell any and all of them for $50 apiece; he doesn't know what to do next. Jack was at first quite sympathetic towards him but ended up apparently despising Don.

Jack is the sort of man who forms intuitive opinions of people. Two

2035

days earlier he had taken an even profounder dislike to the painter Alfonso
Ossorio. As part of my job of selecting the AFA's "The Artist as
Collector" exhibit, I had to go out to East Hampton to call on Ossorio. I
thought no time would be better than in this period when I have my car in
New York. I also thought Jack would enjoy the trip on Long Island to that
attractive town. So I rang up Ossorio and asked if I could see him on
Monday, mentioning that I would be accompanied by a friend visiting me from
Toronto. Ossorio urged that we plan to stay overnight. He told me to call
upon him at 5:30 P.M., which meant, owing to East Hampton's distance
from New York, that we would have to remain on Long Island overnight.

Several summers ago, conducted by John Hohnsbeen, I visited the ground
floor of Ossorio's villa, in his absence, but with permission, to see his
assemblage of notable paintings. Hohnsbeen did not want to penetrate to the
second floor, however, where Ossorio hangs in upstairs rooms a quantity of
Dubuffets, an oil by Clyfford Still that connects with my imagination more
than any other Still I know, and also paintings in black and white by
Jackson Pollock.

This time around, Jack and I were favored with a complete tour. To

2036

Jack the house is curiously dead and sinister; it was too neat and the flowers were wilting. I am too engaged by the art in it (while I was absorbed by the oils, Jack was noting the fine quality and value of the rugs, which I did not even notice until he drew my attention to them) -- I was getting too much pleasure from the Pollocks, Stills and Dubuffets to form theories on the essential atmosphere of "The Creeks."

It is unquestionably a strange house -- and a strange owner. Ossorio is allegedly rich, heir to a Philippine fortune. The estate (many acres of woodland, several buildings, a bay shore) was once the property of a mural-ist whose son, Christian Herter, is now Secretary of State. Ossorio has owned this home for over a decade, I should guess. He shared it with a man I've never seen named Ted Dragon who was caught thieving from a Whitney mansion this past winter. It was found that Dragon (a false name) has for years been stealing choice objects from wealthy neighbors. They were found hidden on Ossorio's property. A vast scandal. I briefed Jack on this. We made no allusion to it, but Ossorio himself twice referred to Ted Dragon's artistic taste.

On the ground floor of this largish dwelling hang many oils by Ossorio

2037

himself. He has great skill; some of his work merits admiration; but an
overwrought, overentwined, overripe hot-colored character clings to many of
his canvases. Some are twisted psychologically to be almost frightening.
Jack drew on them to fix his view that a mass of evil dwells in <u>assorio</u>.

Ossorio was once very close to Jean Dubuffet. He owns a quantity of
grotesquely beautiful creations by that highly original artist. In the
current market they alone are worth a fortune. All were acquired before
Dubuffet's prices rose so high.

In the entrace lobby hangs a mammoth <u>Clyfford Still</u>. The <u>chef d'oeuvre</u> of the collection seems to be the delicately wrought large-scale <u>Lavendar Mist</u> by Jackson Pollock. Scores of collectors and museums would explode with joy to possess this important canvas!

Ossorio gave us each drinks. He said he had bought his Pollocks, Dubuffets and Stills years ago as part of his own artistic training. He <u>(works by) P</u> <u>(on behalf of the AFA)</u> would not buy them anymore. I had understood my role <u>(to be that of a selector of works belonging to the participating artists as well as of examples of their own creativity.)</u> I indicated an Ossorio canvas over the mantlepiece that I liked especially and suggested that it might suitably

2038

represent him in the exhibit. He said he could not lend it as he thinks it
is about to be sold. This was the beginning of several difficulties. I
knew that he would never part with his larger, very valuable Pollocks for
an AFA, year-long circulating show, but I supposed that among so many
Dubuffets, one might be lent. I was not long in indicating my favorite,
plus another, smaller Dubuffet of especial appeal to me. Jack meanwhile
remained discretely non-communicative.

Ossorio hotly argued that he is tired of being known as a collector of
only three artists, Pollock, Still and Dubuffet; that was a phase from the
past; everyone knows that he has those; he thinks the show I am selecting
should be more daring. It came out that he has already decided to be
represented by works of Lee Krasner, John Little and David Budd. He cur-
rently has works by these painters on his walls, but the pictures of his
choice are none of them yet in his house. He wanted to take me next day to
the artists' homes to see them.

At this point the phone rang; he excused himself. We heard him ring
off with the statement, "I'll be there in five minutes." Returning in
agitation, he told us he had overlooked a dinner engagement. We hurried

2039

away, accepting on departure his invitation to stay in an upstairs bedroom
that he designated. I concurred with embarrassment in the realization that
my negotiations with him had arrived at no conclusion. I would have to see
him again. It would be easiest if we stayed in his house. As we departed
for dinner he showed us the hiding place of his front door key. I drove
Jack to a restaurant where I had once eaten with the Kootzes. Jack voiced
the opinion that Ossorio's phone call was a fake, a device to get us out of
his house at the dinner hour. Don't agree myself.

Anyway, when we drove back to "The Creeks" after dinner, both of us
tired, the house was illuminated. There was no linen on the two day-beds
in the bedroom designated for us, but Jack wearily lay down. He wanted
sleep. I felt I should be up when our host came in. Jack served years in
the navy. He got into his pyjamas, lay down uncovered and fell asleep. I
went downstairs to wait and to study the wealth of art further. It was a
privilege to see the paintings by myself. I sat in a chair before Lavendar
Mist and really looked at it. After a while fatigue overcame me. I
returned upstairs and lay down on my linen-less daybed. But I could not go
to sleep. I kept listening for Ossorio's return.

2040

After an interminable time, it was heralded by the rush into the house and upstairs of his dog. Ossorio himself soon mounted the stairs and knocked at our door. Jack was slumbering but I jumped up at once, apologetic for having retired. Or host, dressed more elaborately than when we had separated, was at once embarrassed by our having neither proper pillows, nor sheets nor covers. He sputtered and went to his linen closet, apologized, found a few sheets, could not find enough, was confused, seemed to forget part of what he was doing. He also asked me to come downstairs for a chat. He brought me a glass of milk and himself a whisky.

We sat talking in his living room for a long while, although first he fed the dog. He was flushed and angry. At the dinner party he had had a dispute which upset him considerably. His wrath had not worn away.

He disparaged the AFA, criticized the vagueness of Virginia's letter inviting his participation, told me I had been unfairly treated to be asked to do the show after it had already been botched (I had told him that Lipschitz and Hofmann declined to lend before I was asked to work on the exhibit), informed me that I must always know clearly what I am to do before I undertake it, etc., etc.

2041

We talked of the Pollocks. He told me that the Pittsburgh collector, G. David Thompson, has just been in East Hampton making desperate efforts to buy a major Pollock either from him or from Lee Krasner Pollock. According to him, Mrs. Pollock has sold only one of her husband's pictures since his death (the one acquired by the Metropolitan Museum). After leaving East Hampton without a purchase, Mr. Thompson telephoned Ossorio that he proposes to buy a painting by Ossorio himself and one by Lee Krasner to present to the Carnegie Institute. The inference to be drawn is that by this means Mr. Thompson hopes to ingratiate himself with two of the principal owners of major Pollock paintings.

Ossorio also told me that he has received a firm offer of $35,000 for a long narrow Pollock oil that hangs in his entrance hall. It is the least in size and consequence of the three drip Pollocks now in his house. These high prices exasperate him. They are hoisted to these levels by rich men desirous of getting tax benefits, he pointed out. I felt that he must be irked, as a fellow painter who knew Pollock so well during Pollock's years of struggle and poverty, that his own work has little or no market while the misfortune of death has so fantastically distorted prices for Pollocks.

2042

Speaking again of the show I am selecting, Ossorio confided that he
detests the painting of Esteban Vicente and Adja Yunkers. He growled that
I must not let inferior works be foisted upon me. This implied rebuke I
let pass meekly, but thought it inconsistent with his own determination to
yield me none of his best paintings. He did agree, however, that I should
get a Dubuffet, not one now in the house, but one he has at his brother's.
By this act, he said he could recover possession of it. Shown a photograph
of the picture, I was persuaded of its quality.

At last I said I must go to bed. I slept fitfully, as did Jack, who
had been wakened partially by the provision of bedclothes and my moving
about the room.

Next morning maids came to the house, breakfast was served soon after
nine in the dining room, and Ossorio took us to his studios. He has two.
A large one that he uses in winter is, during an ordinary summer, converted
to a music room. A vast one, built for the muralist Herter, occupies an
adjoining building. In these spacious studios we saw many more of Ossorios
own paintings, some striking, some awful. I came upon one that I truly
liked. I asked to borrow it for the show. He said it has never been

2043

finished and therefore won't do.

Next we drove off to visit Lee Krasner. It was of great interest to me to see the house at The Springs where Jackson Pollock lived. She now works in the studio, a converted barn, that was formerly his, its roof lined inside with light-reflecting aluminum foil. Jack liked Lee Krasner. She was easy and natural. The house is pleasantly informal inside, done in good taste. At the moment her own painting is in black and white. Large canvases are attached directly to three walls of the studio. She alternates work on them. The painting Ossorio had in mind for me was hanging in her house. I said I liked it.

We afterwards drove to the home nearby of John Little and his family. Ossorio says Little is one of the major unrecognized painters, who has mishandled every opportunity for fame. Mr. Little seemed to me an amiable Southern gentleman. He owns pictures of interest by Kline, Pollock and Hofmann. Looking at Little's own work, when we visited his studio, I felt that he has mastered Hofmann's "push and pull", so I asked if he ever studied with Hofmann. He did many years ago. We saw paintings of his that I do not admire at all, since they seem confused; others I find excellent.

2044

Jack and I drove back that afternoon to New York. It was in the evening that we went to Tennessee Williams' play. My being too tired to experience it was due to the strain of maneuvering the car in traffic following the stress of coping with Ossorio. Jack alleges that Ossorio would have become a dangerous enemy of mine if our visit had terminated after its first session. This astonished me to hear, but Jack rated Ossorio as so evil that he suggested (surely in jest) that Ossorio was the murderer who for several days was at large on Long Island, coincident with our visit.

Jack and Bill Dane met at the apartment on Thursday, just before Bill and I set off for the Cape. As Bill is self-effacing, readily conversational, and good-humored, I felt that Jack could not possibly sense in him the viciousness of spirit that he attributes to my neighbor, Charles Dear, to Don Magner and to Ossorio. I was right, for Jack has written since that he liked Bill.

En route to the Cape, Bill and I stayed the first night at Hammond Hill with Mother, then went on to settle ourselves in Truro, in a shaded roadside cabin near the head of Long Nook Road which leads to a fine

2045

stretch of ocean beach. We spent much time in the sun on that and other
beaches, but I shall record only a few of our visits to artists and not
merely the vacation aspects of this trip.

To confess it, I experienced a certain tension most of the time we
were in the Provincetown area. For Bill this was a carefree resort, but I
suffer always on returning to places where I once lived from the belief
that friendly good manners demand a series of social calls on old asso-
ciates. Yet I have a timidity about paying calls. I am never at ease
"dropping in" on people. We did "drop in" during our first morning on
Mason Wells, since both Bill and I know him. Mason had sent me a post card
urging that I come up to see a group show in which he, Nela Arias and
Jennie Haddad were to participate. Mason is so extravertedly genial that
one cannot fail to be at ease with him. He exudes good will — genuine,
not calculated aimiability. Frank Hamilton, the ceramicist, who recently
returned from a European tour, was staying with Mason in Mason's pleasant
quarters overlooking the bay. One can swim from his dock. One morning we
did.

I also called upon the Hofmanns. He was not at home. Mrs. Hofmann,

2046

her white hair awry, I found seated in her kitchen talking with Suzanne De
Pinna, busily peeling the skin off pieces of veal. She said they were due
shortly at a cocktail party and she was giving a dinner, so I kept my call
to five minutes.

At the various Provincetown galleries I saw other acquaintances such
as Nat Halpert, Ivan Karp. By chance, emerging sun-drenched and blinking
from Long Nook Beach, I ran into Dick Bellamy with his live-in girl friend
and her children. They had been picknicking with Al Leslie and his girl,
Diana. Nothing more than astonished greetings took place. But Provincetown
is a small place, word of arrivals spreads, and knowing this I could not
feel altogether easy about my guilt in not paying respects to various
people. Bill came for the beaches, not to meet my art world buddies. I
felt especially wrong about finding no opportunity to look up Norman Carton
and his wife, as Norman, who is ever ecstatically anxious to promote his
painting, had sent me a card weeks earlier vrging me to come to
Provincetown.

The fact is, I can never wholly down the suspicion that all these
artists take an interest in me primarily because I am known as a buyer of

2047

paintings. To go among them and not buy, to sense their hopes for my
enthusiastic backing, is not relaxing to me. I wished I had thought of
diverting Bill's vacation aims to Nantucket, where we could both have been
anonymous. There I would not have had to view myself as something of a
public figure. Even Mason Wells I caught looking at me once with an
unfamiliar expression. He has no financial need whatsoever to sell his
paintings, he prices them modestly, and I knew it would please him immense-
ly if I were to acquire one. The expression on his face was a quizzical
one, as if he were puzzling to know my real estimate of his work.

The one artist to whom I felt confident in going was Myron Stout, as
last summer's deal, in which I potentially acquired one of his black and
whites as well as his earlier red abstraction, still exists, without his
yet having finished a black and white oil to deliver to me. Myron is
another friendly man, by no means a self-seeker. That makes his company
pleasurable. Bill at once warmed to him. Bill, who seems to me always to
have an easy sociability, had declined accompanying me, however, when I
called at the Hofmann's; he said he was shy; it would be an effort for him.
But when I found Myron at home in his cluttered Brewster Street studio and

2048

asked Bill to come in, Bill immediately felt at ease. Myron was expecting
Bill Freed and his wife for drinks, since Jimmy Gahagan was his weekend
visitor. We had a moment's enjoyment of this impromptu party before driving
on to Mason Wells' for the cocktails to which he had invited us.

An appointment was made with Myron to return and see what progress he
has made with his black and white oils. It is fantastic the turtle-pace
speed with which he works, the integrity with which he pursues his goal of
perfection. For the third summer in succession I have seen the same group
of unfinished oils. The six or seven of them make a superb effect spread
out simultaneously in his studio. Even Bill Dane, who had hesitancy in
accepting contemporary abstractions, felt admiration for those strangely
simple, curiously moving pictures of Myron's that hover on the edge of
completion but always seem to require further infinitesimal readjustments.
Neither my favorite of '57 nor my favorite of '58 is concluded. The '57
one has moved ahead. In my mind I returned my allegiance to it, but Myron
said he prefers me not to indicate a choice, as it makes him nervous. He
wants to do his work unhindered by even the slightest pressure to hurry.
Mr. La Rivière, the Canadian collector, has also become a potential buyer of

2049

Stout's. But I am to have first choice, as I was first, making my verbal
agreement a year ago before either the Carnegie Institute or the Museum of
Modern Art bought their Stouts.

Myron also showed us a number of his delicate representational
drawings. It occurred to me that I ought, while the opportunity exists, to
get one of those in addition to the two abstract oils. The one I selected
is subtle, delicate, as old-fashioned almost as an Old Master drawing.
Myron said he had intended to keep it for himself, but would part with it
to me, just as last August he had let me take his red abstraction, which is
also a favorite of his.

While I admire Myron's integrity in not forcing his art, making sure
that it attains his aims before he lets it out of his studio, I privately
begin to boggle a bit at this slowness. Is it preciousness? Does he lack
boldness enough to push through to a finish? Three summers in a row the
same canvases in process in the studio! He mentioned that he is determined
not to start another until these are brought to completion. Myron was born
in 1908. Remembering Albert Urban's sudden demise, the thought passed
silently through my mind: suppose Myron doesn't live to finish them?

2050

I stress the deliberation of Myron's painting process as a dramatic
contrast to the frenetic creative energy of Stan Freborg, who is Myron's
neighbor. For the past two summers Stan was my fellow student at
Hofmann's. Dodie Freborg happened to be standing on her front steps when
Bill and I drove along Cooke Street looking for a parking place. I leapt
out of the car to greet her. Dodie is all effusive warmth. She promptly
invited Bill and me to come in for a nightcap later in the evening. She
and Stan were going to the first half of a concert.

As a result of her impromptu invitation, we were shown canvas after
canvas that Stan has painted since last season. He has improved. While we
were in their house, Dodie lost no chance to refer to collector this and
as purchasers of collector that who has purchased Stan's pictures. W. Chrysler, Jr. came
into the conversation often as "Walter." Stan, in addition to painting,
has turned out more than a dozen rusty metal sculptures which I found
pleasantly graceful. They are the sort of assemblages of machine parts
that Stankiewicz does, without Richard's inimitable plastic complexity.
Stan took a lesson or two from the sculptor Sidney Gordin; he also went to
vocational school to be instructed in the handling of a blow torch.

2051

Dodie herself paints. I asked to see her work and was taken into the bedroom, which was hung entirely with "Lecours," as she signs her pictures. The rest of the house is given over to "Freborgs." In less than three years the pair have certainly manufactured a quantity of modern art, all of which is offered to the public, through Dodie's personal press agency, as serious avant-garde art.

Although I liked a number of Stan's creations, and acknowledge that he is a hospitable, friendly man, bursting with eagerness to do well, and that Dodie is a woman who can manifest almost more affectionate warmth for a virtual stranger than could an intimate member of his family circle, something within warns me that Freborg is not an important artist. There are "Freborgs," and "Lecours" too, that look well in the modern mode; they are suitable for hanging in modern homes, but I suspect that major art critics will devote little of their attention to these energetic artists.

From Frank Hamilton next day I gathered that Stan and Dodie are by now regarded as jokes in Provincetown. Frank at least appears to detest Dodie. She is so effusive, so encritically a promoter of her husband's art, that Stan is alleged to be often embarrassed by her. Stan has elements of

2052

modesty. Dodie tries to put him over as one of the major talents on the
international scene. This provokes derision in a jealous, close-knit
colony like Provincetown.

Mason came out of his house and at once asked me, "Well, how many
Freborgs did Dodie sell you?" I had already told Frank of successfully
resisting her blandishments, but I deadpanned to Mason, "I didn't feel I
could be outdone by Walter Chrysler, so I acquired sixteen of his paintings
and four of his sculptures."

From the brief second in which he believed me, I could tell how ill
an impression I should have made on Mason and Frank if in fact I had bought
a Freborg, especially without acquiring a Mason Wells or a Jennie Haddad.
Nevertheless, Mason himself owns a small Freborg and a small Lecour. Frank
especially detests Stan's sculptures, but then he doesn't like
Stankiewicz's work either. He is against the whole art of fitting spare
parts together. It angers him.

I said to Frank that I could not get over the contrast between Myron
Stout's inordinate deliberation and Stan Freborg's electric productivity.
Frank replied that he'd rather have one small bit of Stout's work than the

2053

whole of Freborg's. Continuing to mock at Dodie, he said she models herself in every detail upon Mrs. Hofmann. Mason said it is fascinating to compare the Freborg's report of what other artists said of Stan's work and what these artists themselves give out as their opinions of it.

At cocktails at Mason's I met a painter named Warren Brandt and his wife. Artists' wives never miss a chance to promote their husbands. As Mrs. Brandt, an intelligent, literary woman, and I talked, it came out bit by bit that he taught several years ago at the Women's College in Greensboro, N.C. In that academic setting they knew the Townends and were enchanted by them. She learned that I am interested in contemporary painting as Ben Townsend is and have formed a collection. Warmed by the cocktails, Mrs. Brandt was in favor of taking me at once across the street to her husband's studio so that I could see his work. The Brandts indeed, with their tradition of southern hospitality, cordially invited Bill and me to a party to be given in honor of Grace Borgenicht by Sidney Gordin -- not that I know Mr. Gordin. The Brandts wanted to be friendly. As the party wasn't to begin until eleven P.M. on the night before we left the Cape, Bill and I declined.

2054

I think I'm glad to have returned to Provincetown. Once there, I found it fun to see the old places, the artists, the sequence of shows, the boats, wharves and little wooden houses -- to look at moonlight on the water from the town pier, to hear the gossip, to lie on the sun-drenched sands. For all that, art colonies are places to eschew as far as I'm concerned. They're too ingrown. I feel always the surge of rival individualities -- the competition in art and sex between these people who are a mixture of the truly talented, the confused, the eager, the ambitious, the arrived, the pushing, the snobbish, the indecent. I'm glad Bill Dane was with me. Without his choosing to go, I'm sure I wouldn't have returned. Perhaps I never will again. On the contrary, possibly I'll go each summer for a look-see. The town is exploding, however, and the artists may soon find it too much. Myron, I think it was, said that one school of Provincetown old timer-thought hopes that conditions of crowding and revelry will be carried so far that the tide will suddenly turn; Provincetown will be desolated by those responsible for its excesses, and the old peace and charm will come back.

While we were there I neglected to take a look at the red barn where

2055

last summer we Hofmann students struggled to learn. Franz Kline has bought
it and converted it to his studio. I didn't see him, but was told he is in
residence with a beautiful girl. Betsey or another? From three sources
(one of them arthritic old Vallie Burlingame, that strange, kind, piquant,
shriveled little woman), I learned that on the protest of neighbors, Franz
Kline was taken before the magistrate on the charge of playing his
gramaphone at four A.M. He was put on probation. Vallie had it that he
was thrown in the jug; the commoner claim was probation; the Provincetown
police are reputed throughout the art colony to be sons of bitches. Kline
is unlikely to have had any idea what hour of the clock it was. The police
probably were nasty.

August 1959 -- New York

In one of his letters Ben wrote: "I did return to Richard Stankiewicz's studio Wed. morning before catching my plane. It was at best an empty gesture, at worst a betrayal, as the day before I had purchased at the MOMA a beautiful bronze by Barbara Hepworth, with a prosaic title Reclining Figure, classic design and modest price that Stankiewicz would

2056

never have approved of. Even so, it was not altogether a betrayal because
in my manic mood I would have purchased one by Richard also, but the only
one I really coveted was $1,100. He had not completed the piece in which I
had taken a midwife's interest and it has been left that he is to send me
photographs of it when it is ready. I wish that his prices were not quite
so high. -- It is ironic that the avant-garde artists are now fetching
higher prices than many of the established artists."

In Provincetown I heard a report that Richard is worried by the
elevated level his prices were pushed to when he left the Hansa for the
Stable Gallery. How shall I ever pay for that piece of his I agreed to
take? I spoke to Ivan Karp about the strange telephone call I received
from Jean Follett. Ivan told me that she called all of Richard's friends
and that Richard knew it.

August 31, 1959 -- New York

In the morning came a mover to convey my Diebenkorn, Jan Müller and
Oliveira paintings to the Museum of Modern Art. Once that was accomplished
I was free to go uptown to my studio where I made some linear additions to

2057

a largish painting begun several days ago. Joe Heil, who has a studio one
block away on East 75th Street, suggested last week that we at last ex-
change studio visits. Today was the occasion. I went to him at one
o'clock. He showed me the paintings he has done in the past few months.
Joe was trained in the Yale Art School and studied with Stanley Wm. Hayter.
He painted actively until 1950 when -- I recount what he told me -- he
suffered an emotional crisis arising out of a disintegrated love relation-
ship, whereupon he went to pieces, gave up painting completely and even
ceased looking at contemporary work. He withdrew into an Art Nouveau, *fin*
*ciecle*
*de siete* world, devoting much of his time to collecting glass and other
objects designed by the then neglected Louis Comfort Tiffany. About a year
ago he resumed his interest in contemporary art, stimulated by his acquain-
tance with Jim Harvey. Not only has he begun painting again (no longer in
the surrealist vein but abstractly) but even purchases an occasional avant-
garde picture.

We spent an hour and a half discussing his work, then went out in a
rainfall to luncheon in a Second Avenue delicatessen. Later in my studio I
hauled from the racks the majority of my monstersities. The more lyrical

2058

and subtly painted of my pictures Joe applauded, but his color sense is
offended by those of my paintings in which the colors are many and varied.

As neither Joe nor I had plans for the evening, he suggested at four
thirty that we separate, work a couple of hours and then get together for
dinner in a steakhouse uptown that he likes. I spent the next couple of
hours struggling to improve one of my 1957 pictures that, re-seeing, I
realize was a failure despite some areas of good painting. I seek to
salvage it if I can.

During dinner Joe proposed that we call on Jim Harvey who is getting
ready for his October exhibit. He telephoned Jim, who invited us to come
by. The three of us spent a pleasant evening chatting informally together.

September 1, 1959 -- New York

I'm getting to be a regular studio habitue. For the AFA show I went
this noon to see José Guerrero in his newly acquired house on West 20th
Street. He and Roxe occupy the two ground floors; they have made a pleas-
ant small garden in the rear; they rent a portion of the building to two
tenants. On the top floor, the old attic, José has his studio with a big

2059

overhead skylight and ample space. José told me that he spent on this
property nearly all the $10,000 he received as an award from a Chicago
foundation.

The Guerreros have a small, black-haired daughter. Roxe works for
Life International; consequently she wasn't at home. José and I spent more
than an hour in his studio, where I was interested to examine his newest
work. We then walked several blocks downtown to luncheon in a Spanish
restaurant. We continued our talk of painting while eating shrimps and
saffron colored rice and drinking glasses of white wine. José is a very
sincere painter, less self centered in the painterly role, I suspect, than
H Jim Harvey. Both paint well. José has a warmer temperament. Jim Harvey's
pictures flow, like the water of rivers; they are marked by tasteful,
subtle color relationships; they are handsome. José's are more passionate;
they explode; masses teeter in balance or fly through space. But in his
latest phase he is concerning himself more with big masses, subtly
variegated, and with a greater glow and richness of paint surface.

After being in the studios of three painters all more experienced than
I, I feel a new access of humbleness. I ought again to go through my

2060

accumulated student work and either repaint boldly, or ruthlessly eliminate
by covering surfaces with a new white ground. It is silly to have a studio
full of canvases that I cannot myself admire. Making satisfactory paint-
ings out of amateurish ones is exasperatingly difficult.

September 10, 1959 -- New York

Last night, after Mother had gone upstairs, I picked up from the table
and skimmed through a biography of Kate Chase Sprague, a woman whose life
has a fascination that is inseparable from beauty, position and influence
climaxed by ultimate downfall. Her disastrous, once brilliant career made
me think of the fictional Anna Karenina, approximately her contemporary.

September 11, 1959 -- New York

At the Alan Gallery this noon I was introduced to a slender, unshaven
young man wearing soiled work clothes, the painter Robert D'Arista. In the
spring of 1956 when he was in Italy on a fellowship, I bought a study of a
head by him. I still like it. Lately I have been less attracted by his
paintings. He gave himself over for a time to excessive impasto. I asked
him, to make conversation, a rather banal question, whether he has done lots
of work this summer. His reply -- "No, because I have had a toothache all
summer, but I'm having the tooth pulled today" -- was so unexpected that I
thought he might be mocking me, making clever retort to end my
inquisitiveness. When he was on the point of leaving, Howard Rose
reassured him about the painlessness of an extraction -- Novocain and all
that. He was in fact going to a dentist. I should not dare keep a dentist
appointment in such messy clothes as D'Arista was wearing.

I went to my studio, put on my own work clothes (though perforce I
continued clean shaven) and with a will tackled a painting that was begun a
few months ago and painted badly. I have now considerably altered it,
among other changes converting it from a horizontal to a vertical picture.

2066

Then I took a bus across town to the 57th Street studio of Enrico Donati, who reluctantly last spring agreed to lend to the "Artist as Collector" show. It is evident that his generosity is limited. The paintings he hangs in his apartment he is not even letting me see, as he will not loan them and disarrange the appearance of his rooms. He had a Gorky drawing for me to look at and an early Carone oil. What was most interesting was his own current work. He has painted well this summer. I considerably admired several of his new abstractions, all constructed from figures or other actualities, and indeed got in deep enough to say foolishly, that I wished I could afford to add a particular one of them to my collection. For nearly four years I have owned a Donati. He plainly desires me to acquire another, more recent one.

For information I asked what this particular painting would cost me.

I was dismayed when he said, after indicating that he would for my sake lower the price considerably and also not expect payment this year, $1,500.

I bought my earlier Donati for $900. This canvas may be larger, but not very much. The fact is, as I well know, prices for contemporary paintings have gone up all along the line. $1,500, as a special bargain price, seems

2067

to me a great deal of money, but can one really protest? Donati has
exhibited for many years, here and abroad; at the Alan Gallery a large oil
by the English painter Francis Bacon, which the *New York Times* reviewer
this morning acclaims as "an extraordinary painting" (Charles Alan bought
it this summer in England) is priced at $7,000. Donati, although he hasn't
a comparable international reputation, is a year older than Bacon. Charles
Alan, no doubt, is at least doubling his cost on the Bacon, but all these
price facts show how hopeless it is for me, with my resources, to continue
art buying, even though I apparently enjoy a somewhat favored position.
Donati, at least, stressed how much his dealer, Betty Parsons, likes me.
*because*
It was *because* of her approval, and because he knew that she would favor
reducing the price for me, that he dared ask as little as $1,500. he went
on to tell me that Betty is not at all commercially minded, he has seen her
resolutely refuse to sell a painting to a certain Boston collector for no
better reason than that she did not want the painting to be in his
possession.

Donati's painting has affinities with certain work abroad -- with Jean
Dubuffet and Antoni Tapies to a certain extent -- in the moulding of the

2068

surface. It is apart from New York School painting as influenced by De Kooning. Donati is a clever, sophisticated man. At times he has shown the fault of overexclamation, of decorative elegance. These 1959 paintings, however, seem to me all well done; they are in harmony, their strength imparted by the relationship of areas to each other. Their control is that of artistic intelligence.

September 13, 1959 -- New York

Hurtling through outer space, aimed to hit the surface of the moon later this afternoon, is a Soviet rocket, whose launching was announced yesterday. If it makes contact with the moon, it will be man's first missile to arrive on a celestial body. The timing of this portentous event has evidently been arranged to adorn and dramatize the arrival in Washington of Nikita Kruschev.

To my mind this linking of the celestial with a politician's journey is sheer vulgarity -- not so much of the man or his regime but of the human race. Men have immemorially fancied the conjunction of the stars with mortal events. At Caesar's death -- when Wallenstein was great. To me this is ridiculous human vanity. We little mortals should not vie with planets,

2069

September 14, 1959 -- New York

Another day so brisk and beautiful that I walked to the Yale Club to return a book and get a haircut. On the way I stopped in at the Downtown Gallery. When Edith Gregor Halpert, its proprietress, appeared, I asked her the prices of an oil by Charles Sheeler, a very good gouache by Ben Shahn ($2,900) and a large abstract by Stuart Davis ($9,500). After we had admired the Ben Shahn, and she had explained its meaning, Mrs. Halpert (having first complained that these artists yield her too few pictures to sell — Sheeler only four a year), Mrs. Halpert began to speak of her experiences this summer in Moscow, where for a period of 24 days she supervised the art exhibit sent by the United States. She told me that,

2072

although born in Russia, she had left it when twelve years old and had not
used the Russian language afterwards. However, the summer before last she
revisited the USSR. Thus she regained her command of the language enough
to be able to use it during her Moscow job. She said that being able to
speak Russian made all the difference in her experience.

From indignant discussions she overhead on the day the show opened,
she realized that the titles of the American paintings were confusing the
Moscow public. Two girls became angry because, in a Hopper painting called
Soda Fountain, they saw no fountain. Mrs. Halpert said to them, "I suppose
you think capitalists have soda flowing in their fountains," at which the
girls burst into laughter. Having realized the literal-mindedness of the
Russian public, Mrs. Halpert sat up all night writing what she referred to
as "short stories" about each painting. She made Peter Blume's painting
Eternal Rome appreciated by saying that it was an attack upon Italian
Fascism and identifying the thrusting green head as that of Mussolini. The
Russians had failed to recognize the features of the late Italian dictator.

I asked what American painters were best received in Russia. The
favorite with both Russian and American visitors was the meticulously

2073

realistic Andrew Wyeth. Peter Blume was also liked. The average Russian
could find no merit in the American abstract expressionists. They have
such an academic standard of appreciation that even the social satires of
Jack Levine missed their taste.

Mrs. Halpert found a different response from the artists, art teachers
and art-trained Russians however. She arranged special hours when they
could see the paintings at leisure, free from the crowding of the public.
In her apartment she also received many young artists. "How they cheat!"
she said twice, which I took to mean that they often secretly paint
"modern" despite the strictures of the regime. She was astonished at the
knowledge of American art already possessed by many of the professionals.
They even inquired about specific paintings, which they knew from
photographic reproductions and critical writings.

One man, a critic, stayed two hours at the exhibit and displayed a
heart warming appreciation, a truly marvelous comprehension, of the
paintings. His enthusiasm was superb. As he was about to leave, Mrs.
Halpert said, "Well, I'm glad we shall at last have one favorable and
understanding review." He stopped short, gave her a look and said, "I have

2074

a job to keep." She was horrified. After his appreciation it seemed to
her incomprehensibly immoral that he should go away and write adversely
about the art for which he personally felt such sympathy. He explained in
self defense, reacting against her anger, that he would not be harsh in his
own voice, but would use expressions such as, "it is considered" etc. He
simply could not safely express in his writing his personal sentiments.

Mrs. Halpert remarked to me that, although she did not say so to
anyone in Russia, she felt that the "5,000 American painters" in New York
who have turned to abstraction in the past five to ten years, merely as a
means to get into exhibitions, have shown an even greater immorality than
the Soviet art critic, because these American painters are free to paint as
they like and have contradicted their own taste, training and judgment (so
she implied) by hopping aboard the abstract-expressionist bandwagon.

"I've been in the art field for 34 years in New York," Mrs. Halpert
said, "and I've never seen anything like the last ten years, more
especially the past five, among painters. Fortunately there are signs of
change. Some artists all along have kept their integrity (with a toss of
her head in the direction of Ben Shahn's picture) -- and done well too."

2075

I wondered whether my integrity required me to confess that within the past five years I too have sought to make myself an abstract painter; but I kept silent.

When I had finished my business at the club the brisk weather led me to walk all the way north and east from the Yale Club at Vanderbilt and 44th Streets to my studio on East 75th Street between First and York Avenues, a walk I'd never ordinarily undertake. Then I set to work and turned out a small abstraction that Mrs. Halpert would no doubt view with aversion. But I didn't do it from the immoral motive of getting into an exhibition.

September 15, 1959 -- New York

This morning I took the subway to Washington Square and walked to Ben-Zion's studio on Morton Street. Ben-Zion and I had never met before; he is an old friend of Virginia's. She considers him a dear man. He has exhibited for many years -- since the 1930s in New York -- but I am not particularly familiar with his achievements, although, as the Jewish Museum is about to stage a retrospective of his work from 1933 - 1959, I shall

2076

soon acquaint myself with it.

Ben-Zion told me that a "whole generation" of American painters, the expressionists, has been overlooked by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the critics of *Art News*. He and Max Weber have not had their due. I gathered.

In the course of our conversation, during which he asked what other artists are participating in the show that I am choosing (and, I'm afraid, was chagrined by their names), he made plain that he scorns non-objective painting. He makes a firm distinction between abstractions from nature, of which he approves, and the non-objective which, he told me, has nothing to do with art. It has only to do with decoration. Its grip on the contemporary public has been achieved through high pressure publicity rather than through worth. He shook his head at this dreadful state of affairs, and said that the attempt to put the stuff over will fail. He said it is all right for people to splash paint if they wish, but it is fraudulent to pretend to a philosophy behind this splashing.

Last winter Ben-Zion taught painting in Iowa. He told me the art students there are pathetically confused by the ridiculous criticisms

2077

favoring non-objective art that they read in *Art News*.

Ben-Zion, disclaiming that he is a collector, showed me his accumulations of primitive Greek, Assyrian, pre-Columbian, Etruscan, African and Egyptian small sculptures. Mixed among these are sculptures he has made himself. He says he isn't a collector because of the variety of his acquisitions. Before my arrival he had laid out an Aztec stone figure, a wrought iron American Indian with bow and arrow and a superb wooden figure from the Cameroons. These he proposed to lend. I assented. He also had ready an oil painting of several years ago that he considers representative of his work.

He asked me what I "do" and got it out of me that I paint and "do" nothing else. He said I couldn't have a healthier activity. He asked about my instruction, made no comment, but showed disapproval at the names of Morris Kantor and Hans Hofmann. On learning that I no longer receive instruction, he applauded my separation from the crutch afforded by a teacher.

We parted with my promise to go Thursday evening to the opening of his retrospective. The pictures I saw in his studio did not persuade me that

2078

he is a major artist. His course may be more independent than that of many
of the non-objective painters, but his pictures lack the power to excite my
deep admiration. He growls that the non-objective bubble will burst, and
his work will receive in the end superior recognition. I don't agree. I
presume he would deplore my own collection if he saw it.

I went uptown and before going to my studio visited The Contemporaries Gallery, where a show of drawings by Harold Altman opened Yesterday. It was a drawing by Altman that I liked best of all those in the drawings section of the Boston Arts Festival. Dore Ashton in this morning's *Times* gives Altman high praise. After I had expressed the desire to buy one called Park, Karl Lunde, the dealer, told me that this was the Altman drawing about which Dore Ashton was most enthusiastic. It is a beautiful and subtle work.

"By using a delicate cross-hatch technique," writes Miss Ashton, "crowding filaments of line close to suggest shadow, and so spreading them wide to give a filtered light, Mr. Altman can organize forms both within the human figure and in its surroundings so that they seem continuous. The even, dimmed light is enough to suggest harmony. -- Specific environment

2079

is played down in favor of an almost abstract, or metaphysical notion of
the continuity of all things. -- His masses of foliage against the white
of paper awake the figures within them and seem to summarize the tender
vision of summer landscapes passed on by the Impressionists. The
occasional asymmetry in Mr. Altman's compositions, the long spatial pauses
consisting of untouched paper, give them the fluency of Oriental drawing."

I walked away pleased at having possessed myself of a top Altman
drawing, spent time at my studio and then went to an opening at the Whitney
Museum with Jim Harvey. We had drinks, chatted with a number of people
(Bill Gerdts among them) and then dined at Larre's restaurant. Jim all the
while was carrying something wrapped in brown paper which he said was mine.
After dinner he gave it to me. I opened the wrapping to disclose a nice
abstract water color in yellows, ochres, dark brown and open areas of white
paper. He did it outdoors during his visit to Canada while seated on a dam
watching the flow of water, the impression of which it conveys. He is
giving it to me on the excuse that it is to thank me for loaning his
painting Oxus for his forthcoming show at the Graham Gallery. As I
extracted it from the wrapping I paused to admire it. Jim said, "it's

2080

upside down."

"I don't doubt it," I replied, "but I like it so well this way that I want to look at it more." I continued gazing at it wrong side up. When I turned it around, so that his signature was on the bottom, it gained nothing, I thought. In fact, after looking at it both ways, I concluded that it is best wrong side up. Jim looked too. Presently he reached the same opinion. He said he painted it the other way around and had not hitherto seen it upside down. For reasons that neither of us can put precisely in words, the water color gains in effectiveness, in the feeling of motion and light, from its switcharound. Jim took an eraser to his name that he had penciled in and then resigned the picture, which is charming.

September 16, 1959 -- New York

As I finished breakfast Bill Ronald telephoned from New Jersey that he would be driving in to the city today. I invited him to come on arrival to my apartment (as I expected to be here awaiting the return of Kline's Wanamaker Block from the Museum of Modern Art) and afterwards to lunch with me. Before either Bill or the painting arrived came Mr. Victore, the art

2081

appraiser and restorer, came by to return a relined painting. Mr. Victore, in his glossy silken gray suit, sat down to be sociable, smoked a cigar, and almost drooled with admiration for Pollock's Arabesque. Bill Ronald, when he came, also volunteered his admiration for the Pollock. By this time Mr. Victore had departed. Wanamaker Block had still not been delivered. I brought out a few paintings for Bill to look at. He seemed disposed to like everyone -- Urban's Sibyl, Lanyon's Boscastle, the Viseux, my Afro (although he dislikes more recent Afros), Alan Davie's No. 13, Hosiasson's Secret Life (he is an admirer of both Davie and Hosiasson as painters) and above all Hans Hofmann's The Pond. Over this painting he was ecstatic. He said it is just about the best Hofmann he has seen. That is high praise indeed because, before ever The Pond was painted, Bill rated Hofmann as a great artist.

Bill has been working since April under great pressure to ready his October one-man show. His last year's work went to the Biennial in Sao Paolo. (The Canadians asked for it months sooner than was necessary and thereby prevented Kootz from having a show for Bill last May). He has now built up considerable tension, nervousness, discontent. He looked fine,

2082

but I inferred that he has been straining his nerves. With Kootz he has had several altercations. He thinks Kootz is crazy. "He has more temperament than I have." Changeable, contradictory moods. Bill's big gripe momentarily is that he has struggled and slaved, and in materials spent much money, on an odd-shaped painting ten feet high. Before he began it, eight months ago, he asked Kootz whether it would be all right to do such a big picture. Sam told him to go ahead. After Bill had put his heart and soul and strained his financial resources to create this monster, Sam, forgetful, recently expressed ill-humored surprise to learn of the picture's existence. This hurt Bill, who had it in the foreground of his consciousness. For him it is an exciting creation.

Next December his present contract with Kootz expires. He finds Sam's moods so variable that he is uneasy about his financial future. The cost of living troubles him enormously. $7.50 for a pair of shoes for the baby to be outgrown in a brief while. He told me he thinks artists marriages often don't last for economic reasons. The wives can't have the security they want.

2083

His water colors, which are so impressive, Sam has been selling well, but Bill told me confidentially that he makes nothing from them himself. Sam thinks he has a greater freedom in the water color than the oil medium. Bill said he lacks incentive to do these as they do not profit him.

Bill wishes I had seen his younger brother Jack's show in a Canadian gallery. The canvases were very cheap, only $250. Jack sold two, which for Canada was an achievement, but Bill is worried about the utter helplessness and shy withdrawal of this younger brother who lives in a backwater, has to be protected by his mother or brother, hasn't the gumption to take out girls, etc.

Bill himself is pretty confident that he will soon be awarded a $5,000 Canadian fellowship. He is on the look out for an inexpensive place to live and asked my suggestions. Having heard that Greece is cheap, I suggested that. He told me everyone recommends Greece. For him there would be a language barrier. I suspect, on thinking it over, that Bill, with his curious inhibitions, his non-consumption of alcohol, his refusing ever to eat shellfish, his fear of elevators, is not readily adjustable to the foreign. He might not like the Mediterranean lands at all. He has

2084

been thinking of Ireland and was on his way to an Irish travel organization
when he left me. Also to see Kootz. I suggested that he consider St. Ives
in Cornwall where Peter Lanyon lives.

On our returning to the apartment for his coat, we found Wanamaker
Block on its side. Bill helped me hang it in its old place at the end of
the room. I was disappointed to find it in a black frame, as Dorothy
Miller, who had called me about reframing it before its return, very much
agreed with Sidney Janis, myself and others that the thick black frame that
the museum placed around it for protection during its travels abroad with
the New American Painting show, has an enclosing effect upon the movement
and spatial areas of the painting. She proposed sending it back to me in a
narrower, natural wood frame. A slip-up in the museum's framing depart-
ment!

To have this picture again in my home is awesome. In my imagination,
its having become known to art viewers in many countries, and the
reproduction of it in several new books, has added to its aesthetic value
an extra quality of prestige, comparable to the prestige accumulated by an
individual as he grows from a brilliant unknown to a celebrity with wide

2085

influence. Thus I fell justified in being awed by its presence.

September 17, 1959 -- New York

Didn't paint today but strung a new light in my studio and worked on
stretchers. This was after I had gone to the Museum of Modern Art to look
at the several Harold Altman drawings in the Lending Service. I remembered
a small one for $45 which I thought might interestingly supplement the fine
large one I bought on Tuesday. I don't know why, in my poverty, I should
have a yen for two Altman drawings. A collector's instinct, I suppose,
tells me that he may be about to "catch on"; that it will be clever to get
aboard his bandwagon early. This is the sort of behavior that is despised
in collectors by those who are not collectors. Altman's work is so subtle,
so delicate, that I have not in fact been pulled irresistably toward it.
If I had been I would have bought that wonderful example of his skill to
which we awarded the prize in Boston. Anyway, what I must confess here is
that, after looking at the Lending Service's stock of Altman drawings, I
rejected the little $45 one in favor of a larger one entitled Arrested
Moment that will cost me $115. As a starter I am renting it for three

2086

months. It is not as important, nor as well framed, nor half as expensive
as my Tuesday acquisition. I have it here in the apartment. The more I
see it the more enchanted I am. It may be only a whisper of art, so light
in its ink strokes as to seem dim to some viewers, but I cherish its
quality. I just hope Altman does not catch on too well, become fashionable
and succumb to being dainty and slick. At the moment his work could be
compared to that of an exquisite minor lyric poet.

I invited Virginia to meet me for cocktails in the Stanhope Hotel,
around the corner from which, as I had forgotten, is ex-Governor Harriman's
house. Shortly before I reached the area, Nikita Khrushchev was received.
Photographers were coming away. Wooden barriers remained on the sidewalks.
I was too late to see the celebrated visitor. I had been reflecting
earlier as I saw the flags flying along Fifth Avenue that never in the
history of New York until today has a visitor arrived who has it in his
individual power to order the annhilation of this great metropolis in the
space of an hour. Such presumably is Khrushchev's political authority,
combined with the destructive power technicians have created, that it is
little exaggeration to say that this power is his.

2087

Virginia, when she arrived, said she had stood on the sidewalk to gape
at Khrushchev on his way to Harriman's, but had not seen him for the crowd.
We dined at the Cafe Geiger and then attended Ben-Zion's opening at the
Jewish Museum. Virginia sincerely likes many of his paintings. For me
they do not spring over the barrier into the realm of interest, well done
though many are.

September 18, 1959 -- New York

Perverse indeed was my reaction today to Ben-Zion's contemptuous
reference to the "splashes" of the non-objective painters. Working upon a
new small canvas in yellows and ochres, I began to splash and spatter

2088

dilated paint upon the bare white ground. I have almost never done that
before, although plenty of others have. A skein of splattered paint
constitutes a good portion of the picture as I left it.

S

John May came to dinner with me for the first time since early Spring.
Art teacher though he is, he barely noticed and did not remark upon the
different paintings hanging around us. He persists in believing that I buy
pictures to enhance my social position. When I mentioned that I plan to
take art history courses this winter at the Metropolitan Museum and the
Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, his comment was, "You ought
to be giving out instead of taking in information" -- perhaps a reference
to my being at least fifteen years older than he.

I indicate his attitude in order to speculate upon his different genus
as a person involved in the arts from many of my other friends.

Bill Dane and Lee Anderson are concerned with the history of art. The
origin and quality of a specific painting or sculpture, its creation and
the nature of the person who produced it are of interest to them and to
most of my friends. My own lifelong fascination with history -- the record
of what people have done and are doing and the individual idiosyncracies of

2089

those who lead, think and create -- makes me historically minded.

John May must also have a commitment to art or he would not make
teaching it his career, yet the character and identity of the creators of
art appear not to touch his imagination. I theorize, perhaps
unjustifiably, that his kind of indifference, which I interpret as a
disregard for human artistic achievement in the past and even by
contemporaries, may be widely experienced and can explain why so frequently
in human history neglect or even deliberate destruction is the fate of many
fine specimens of architecture, painting and sculpture. They are
overlooked as achievements.

2090

On stepping out doors I found it to be a clear cool autumn day.
Before going to my studio I chose to visit an exhibition (Kandinsky,
Picasso, Miro, etc.) at Eugene Thaw's New Gallery, which has opened new
quarters. A fine show. That led me to visit several other galleries in
the neighborhood, among them the Krasner. Mr. Krasner welcomed me
beamingly. He has a show of lithographs by Ochikubo, ~~one of whose sumi drawings~~
~~of whom I once bought~~.

a sumi drawing. Krasner begged me to look at recent paintings by another
Hawaiian of Japanese descent, Jerry Okimoto, who is in process of changing
his style. The first Okimoto I saw there reminded me of paintings by
Philip Guston. Krasner said, speaking as a salesman, that Okimoto really
does not paint like Guston; he has evolved his present way as a natural
growth, and is, in fact, a better painter than Guston. I consented to look
at the paintings. R Krasner, who knows of my collection, told me he is
anxious to open the Okimoto show with several canvases sold. He therefore
offered me any one of the Okimotos for $300, to be paid at my leisure,

2091

although, according to him, he is going to ask five to six hundred dollars once the show opens. Last year he tried to enlist my support for one of his artists (Ochikubo, perhaps, or maybe Okimoto) by the similar offer of a bargain. Then I resisted, determined not to be bribed into backing an artist whom I did not sufficiently admire. Today temptation overcame me. I became interested in these painterly efforts by Okimoto. I compared canvases. Bit by bit I convinced myself that several are good indeed and finally that my favorite is the one named Meteor. Meteor is slightly smaller than most. I offered Mr. Krasner $275 for it. He accepted. This is probably folly. I certainly don't need another oil painting, but I think this is a strong and subtle picture. Few of quality are available at such a price. I wonder whether I was influenced at all by the Albright Gallery in Buffalo having bought an Okimoto last year?

To my studio thereafter, where I began painting on a 50" x 60" canvas.

At 6:30 this evening I joined Sam and Jane Kootz in their apartment. We drove after dinner to their country property in that great sleek white car that signalizes their increased prosperity.

2092

September 1959 -- Yorktown Heights

I awoke at five A.M. dreaming that Sam, to his wife's disgust, had taken me at four A.M. to see the new storage house he has erected here to contain his surplus pictures. Perhaps it was eagerness to see it, and the paintings in it, that occasioned this dream.

In any event, I did not get up for a long time afterwards, as Jane and Sam are late risers on weekends. When I did, the sun was shining beautifully on their rocks and trees, flowers and lawn. A gem of a morning. By the time I had finished dressing, it was already ten. Not another member of the household, even Xena, the colored maid, was stirring.

I got myself orange juice from the refrigerator and went outdoors -- to the swimming pool, bathed in light, and even into the woodland behind it. Sam has had all his trees fertilized; he worries over the greenness of the lawn; Jane tends the flower beds. They love their place here and have done much to improve it.

While I was strolling by the pool, Sam came out the front door in his bathrobe to tell me the maid was up ("She sleeps later than any of us," he said) and would get us breakfast.

2093

Later he took me to the two-room building of cinder blocks in which he
stores his excess art. A viewing room, with white walls and a floor of
white tiles, is furnished with a divan and several easy chairs that face a
large blank wall before which are placed two stands for showing pictures.
Overhead, running the whole length of this blank wall, is a curving plastic
skylight from which daylight radiates evenly. Supplementing it are lights
inset in the ceiling.

Adjacent to the viewing room is the storage area, fireproof,
windowless and air-conditioned, with a steel door and locks. Wooden racks
inside contain the pictures that Sam plans to keep for Jane and himself.
More are to be transferred later from the warehouse in Manhattan and his
gallery.

Sam unlocked the repository door and asked me what I wanted to see. I
suggested early Motherwells. Sam brought out an important collage, a large
oil that I didn't like, a small oil that is very handsome (and which he
afterwards took to the house to hang in their bedroom) and a 1944 drawing
that I found especially appealing. We talked of these for a while. He
invited me to stay and look at whatever I chose while he went back to the

2094

house to dress.

For me it was a delightful experience. I found two oils by Hans Hofmann (1950 and 1952) that I hadn't previously seen, studied and admired them, set up an exhibit of four paintings, grotesque and violent, by Amsterdam-born Karel Appel, and remained pretty much of my original opinion, that Appel is too crudely forceful for my taste. I looked at a couple of Ronald's. When Sam returned, we arranged a display of superb Mathieus. I am still sold on the intuitive elegance of Mathieu's art. A top Mathieu painting is beautiful, and beautiful in a gracious, decorative way that many works of art are not.

In mid-afternoon Conrad Marca-Relli and his Peruvian wife, Anita, arrived to spend the day. They came, in fact, at about four and did not depart in their sporty little white MG until midnight. Anita was suffering from hay-fever. The Kootzes tell me she rarely talks. On this occasion she seldom uttered more than a sentence. Nevertheless, unlike some silent people who appear uneasy and uninterested, Anita had all along the air of participating with us. She is attractive. I felt her presence even if she left verbal expression to Marca-Relli. He was easy and talked

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presumed it to be modest. Therefore I recommended that he buy shares in a mutual fund and explained to him at considerable length what a mutual fund is. On his behalf I called my investment counselors and got information on a fund they manage.

I wonder whether this is the commencement of prosperity as a sculptor for Richard? It's been a short time only since his work has been on view at "The Sixteen Americans" show, but it could be that already this is stimulating demand for his work. I'm sure someday that demand will materialize. It could even come sooner than I anticipate. His sculpture has until recently not even paid its way. Now his prices have been raised. When he does sell he makes more. Will three or four years hence his income be truly sizeable? If it has happened with De Kooning and Kline, why may it not with Richard?

## AUTHOR'S NOTE —

Reading the above entry twenty-five years later, I hazard the guess that Richard Stankiewicz never in his lifetime earned a substantial income from his sculpture alone.

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entertainingly. I have previously met him only briefly, introduced in
galleries. His Italianate face, with its black beard, has made this
Boston-born contemporary of mine (he was born the year after I was) appear
foreign in character.

For the past year or two the Marca-Rellis have spent much time abroad.
He had a studio in Rome. One anecdote he told us concerned visits to a
bank in Monaco that he made with Afro; the banking system struck him as
absurdly inefficient.

My ear for gossip delighted in Marca-Relli's tale of Bill De Kooning.
It seems that for years De Kooning has talked about going to Europe. Until
recently he has been too poor. After last season's show, a sell-out of his
paintings at elevated prices, he finally set out for Europe in company with
Ruth, who was identified for me as the girl who was Jackson Pollock's
mistress in the final months of his life. She was in the car at the time
of Pollock's motor accident. Ruth, I infer, subsequently became Bill De
Kooning's girl friend. Marca-Relli says their affair is now definitely
off. De Kooning went to Europe for a stay of several months but returned
precipitately to New York after a few weeks. Marca-Relli said the pair

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September 30, 1959 — New York

After such a late night I had to receive at eleven Jean and John Denman, the collectors, who are visiting in New York from Seattle. At the New Images of Man opening they made an appointment. After they had been shown many things, the conversation reached the topic of my own painting, which I deprecated as not yet developed enough. Mrs. Denman half seriously suggested a visit to my studio saying, "we want to get in on the ground floor." But I passed my painting off as beginner's work. I have thought since: how stupid. Such apparent modesty is half arrogance and half cowardice. They are amiable young people, experienced in looking at modern art. Why hadn't I the courage to entice them to look at my efforts? It is arrogant to decide for them that my paintings aren't worth their attention; it is cowardly to shy from the probability of their indifference.

I must learn to get over this deprecating approach to my personal efforts. Remember the counsel of Mrs. Alfred Barr, Jr.; be ruthlessly

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self-confident and egocentric. If I don't stand up for my own art, who will? Think of the eloquent self confidence of Lauren Libow!

I finally reached my studio and spent a strenuous afternoon stretching a 50" x 60" canvas and a smaller one. It is sultry weather; it's a good time for stretching when the humidity is high.

Then to a cocktail party given for Mary Williams, due to sail next morning for several months of luxurious travel in Europe chaperoning two 19 year old girls of rich families. Mary has become so wealthy herself (her word) since inheriting from her mother's trust that she has resigned her United Nations job.

Later I dined with Jim White, Secretary of the Museum of Modern Art, whom I see barely more than once a year. He attended the museum dinner and surprised me by suggesting that we get together. Jim had had a grueling previous evening because Balcomb Greene, one of the artists shown in the

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effort so late at night. He snarled, "Why won't you tell me?" so
threateningly that I exerted myself promptly, and held one up for him to
look at. At a stop intersection he turned on his light and stared at
Richard's creation. "So they're worth thousands of dollars," he concluded.

Frightened lest he rob me of them, I assured him they have no such
value. I remember only two more remarks of his during the long ride. "He
[Richard] is as stupid as I am." Then he went on philosophically to
observe that men have their peculiarities, drawing an analogy between
Richard's odd practice of making things out of scrap metal and his own
hobby of feeding stray cats and dogs, a custom for which, apparently, both
his wife and neighbors criticize him; he assured me that it gives him great
satisfaction.

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had seen in an exhibit. I told him that was undoubtedly by Kulicke, and as
Kulicke's workshop is only a few blocks from my studio I suggested that we
take it there and that he arrange for the framing, since a discount is
given to artists. I would recompense him afterwards.

We first stopped at Billy's for luncheon, during which Jose told me in
confidence that one Fred Ringler has approached him twice about shifting
his gallery connections. José said he respects Betty Parsons and would
prefer to remain loyal to her but he does not feel that she promotes his
work successfully. She has been of no help at all in respect to his desire
to do murals in concrete. He has his family to provide for. The idea of
better sales ensuing from a shift to Hirschland Adler, a firm currently
devoted to traditional painting but contemplating following the example of
French & Co. and entering the field of modern abstractions, tempts him
sorely.

José philosophized, however, that maybe his rejections and rebuffs are
more fruitful and better augur the quality of his art than would flashy
successes. We agreed that the success-god is stirring the art circles of
New York in possibly unhealthy ways.

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We took a bus up to the seventies and stopped off at Kuliche's, where
a young woman arranged the framing plan for us. It is going to be an
expensive frame. Even with the lower price that is charged to artists and
galleries, it comes to $30, or exactly half the amount José is being paid
for the drawing itself.

Then José came to my studio. Seating himself on the couch, he allowed
me to show him many of my paintings. What pleased me was that he grew
genuinely enthusiastic over my most recent work, the paintings I have
created since leaving the Art Students' Leage. One or two he commended
highly. He used the adjective "fresh" in reference to some of them, a word
that Morris Kantor more than once employed in the same connection. José
also gave me astute and constructive criticism concerning several specific
canvases. His objections to certain areas I saw at once were well taken.
It was a great benefit to receive his opinions. He was neither
condescending, cruel or vague in his comments. He gave me both praise and
guidance.

He had to be off for an appointment after an hour, but I invited him
to join me at the Whitney opening at 5:45, Paul Gourary having again

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thoughtfully passed on to me his invitation. José came and we both consumed quantities of Martinis and fine sandwiches. What a good caterer the Whitney employs! The occasion was a retrospective of William Zorach, sculptor and painter.

I cannot say Zorach looms larger in my vision as a result of seeing roomfuls of his life's work. A few stone masks of recent date move me. In painting he was a modern as a youth, then, turned back toward a traditionalism that smacks of the conventional. Certain of his big figurative sculptures of a few decades ago are unpleasing now, but I agreed: dated, decorative. I enjoyed being present in terms of a party more than in reference to the art we were gathered to behold.

October 14, 1959 — New York

My morning lecture at the Metropolitan dealt with Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, those Flemish brothers whose art, in the case at least of the elder, stemmed from the craftsmanship of medieval illumination but who went on to produce in such larger formats as the Ghent altarpiece big paintings of superb richness, precision of detail, and jewel-like color intensity. I

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noted from the lecture that Jan Van Eyck was "the real creator of portraiture in the modern sense." His portraits as projected on the large screen look admirable. Mr. Marks quoted, however, from a letter of Michaelangelo, a severe attack upon the school of Flemish painters. I wish I had copied this diatribe of Michaelangelo's, accusing the Flemish painters of seeking only to deceive the eye, preoccupied principally with the externals of fabrics and other material objects, lacking proportion and artistry. For me it is fascinating to learn how far back into art history extends the incapacity of artists to appreciate the merit of work done by their contemporaries whose attitude or approach differs from their own.

At the conclusion of Claude Marks' talk I wandered for about an hour in the museum, my eyes lingering upon such objects (rich things that Jan Van Eyck could have rendered beautifully in paint) as 16th century Japanese helmets simply and stunningly shaped of ridged iron plates, Malayan kris of the 18th century, Persian scimitars with jade handles carved as animal heads, damascened shields and 18th century Turkish and Balkan jewel-set, silver pistols.

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Looking at these treasures of craftsmanship, I remembered my recent
reflections upon what I consider the wasteful consumption of artistic
talent in mid-20th century America upon the design of alluring
advertisements, women's clothing, stunning packages, window displays, etc.
I saw that in all countries through the centuries a tremendous wealth of
artistic ability has been expended upon objects or situations tied in with
aspects of living that the Puritanic moralist could condemn as either
superfluous or malefic. I have thought it pitiable that someone somewhere,
with far greater artistic gifts than mine, is obliged for economic reasons
to expend his or her energies upon ads for cars or designs for perfume
flasks when that same gifted person might, theoretically, be painting on a
par with Cézanne.

Could my prejudice in favor of high art be misplaced? These beautiful
weapons displayed in the Met were clearly the product of outstanding
artistic skill. Was a Brancusi lost in the carver of Malayan kris handles,
his talent confined to ornamenting lethal instruments?

The Met's memorable artifacts are physically durable. They have
survived the obsolescence of their functional values. That can't be the

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future of contemporary magazine ads and chic shop window displays.

I must consider, however, that works of pure art are appreciated,
apparently, by few, whereas ordinary people in great numbers benefit by the
excellences of design and craftsmanship that are applied to the objects or
situations called into being by the mundane demands of regular living.
Whether such living is wise or good may not be relevant. I must remember
not to sentimentalize over the conditions of art; to bear in mind that art
is all gratuitous. Its creation is one of the distinctions of Man as
compared with other animals.

In the late afternoon I went to a cocktail party given by Charles
Alan. I talked mostly with John Hohnsbeen, who told me that poor Reva,
although released from mental hospital, is afflicted again with signs of
cancer. She had a serious operation for this some years back. Even so,
she insists upon having a show of her paintings in January. John, I think,
finds Reva too much to cope with.

From Alan's party I walked to the Grolier Club to attend a small
dinner upstairs, during which I was engrossed in conversation with Paul
Gourary.

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Our after dinner speaker was an English bookseller whose father has assembled a notable collection. (Is it of Voltaire?) He himself has collected musical manuscripts. He contends however, that book collectors are being priced out of the market. Neither his father nor he could afford today to assemble their respective holdings. Prices have been pushed up and treasures drained off the market into institutions.

Several club members in rebuttal expressed confidence that new collectors will find new subjects. Our speaker persisted in his gloomy outlook, convinced that book and manuscript collecting no longer offers the opportunities of the past.

From the Grolier Club I went uptown to a late opening of sculptures and paintings by the renowned British artist, Barbara Hepworth, who at one time was married to Ben Nicholson. Her show as a totality appealed to me more than Zorach's, yet none of her pieces really engage my enthusiasm. Her sculpture relates in my mind to her countryman's, Henry Moore, without achieving the impact of his. At the end of a long day with a champagne glass in hand, after the various drinks at Charles Alan's and the clubhouse, I was in no state to evaluate seriously the work of an artist of

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her quality. Barbara Hepworth was present herself. I did not chance to
meet her. I talked to Kay Hillman who seems to be increasingly active as a
private dealer, and to Bill Gerdts, again in company with his colleague
from the Newark Museum.

October 15, 1959 — New York

With a vast quantity of cases containing cameras, lenses, stands and
arc lights, two men came to the apartment this morning at ten to make a
photograph in color of my painting by Georges Mathieu, Hommage to Richard
I, Duke of Normandy, for inclusion in a children's encyclopaedia of art. I
remember how shocked a girl I knew was when she saw this painting
attributed to my collection in an exhibit. Barely five years later it has
advanced from a state of outrageous unfamiliarity to being singled out for
showing to the rising generation as part of the mainstream of art.

After this session with the photographers I went to my studio and
began reworking two paintings that José criticized. I broke off early to
go to the Frick Collection to listen to a lecture on the Bellini family.

I had not realized before (though perhaps years ago I knew it) that

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the famous Venetian Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516) was the son of a
painter, Jacopo, and brother of another, Gentile Bellini. Their sister
Nicolosia married Andrea Mantegna.

Here in New York are innumerable couples wherein husband and wife both
paint. The only two brother painters of my acquaintance are Bill Ronald
and his shy younger brother Jack (Meredith). Ben Nicholson's father was
a well known artist, Sir William Nicholson. It is curious how the creative
preoccupation flourishes on occasion among relatives.

October 18, 1959 -- New York

Yesterday I "made my rounds," of the galleries in the Saturday fashion
of wintertime. It was like paying social calls. I first dropped in to see
Catherine Viviano. Two of her sisters were there. I had met none of the
Vivianos since last spring and was welcomed like an old friend. Catherine
spent part of the summer in England, where she passed a week at St. Ives as
guest of the Peter Lanyons, suffered a bad cold, went out to a remote place
in Cornwall to see the Alan Davies and was too ill to eat any of the grand
dinner Mrs. Davie had prepared.

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Catherine says that all the artists in England are filled with
jealousy of each other. Lanyon and Davie, although friends, are also
rivals. She gave me a pep talk about the new work, not yet arrived here,
of her other English painter, Jack Smith, whom I didn't buy last year. She
also is eager that I should be among early purchasers of another new artist
in her stable, an American, Dan Rice. For the good of my collection she
disires me to buy pictures of these two men. Rice, she says, was
recommended to her by Franz Kline.

She also complained that Gimpel, the London dealer for Davie and
Lanyon, has been selling their work widely in the past year, but exclusive-
ly to Americans. The British didn't, and still don't, buy Lanyon and Davie
paintings. What especially gripes her is that Gimpel Fils sells them for
less than she can. Her own customers who visit London come back with
"bargains" of the artists whom she has to bear the expense of promoting in
this country. Consequently she's mad as can be the Gimpel Brothers.

*I don't like art dealers," she proclaimed.

I went across the street next to call on one whom I suspect she
especially resents, Sidney Janis. He is showing a series of drawings by

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Arshile Gorky done in 1944. Janis said he used to see Gorky "once a week, twice a month" at that time, but he then perceived only the resemblance to European work and not the "prophecy" in these drawings. Gorky's fellow artists in the 1940s, who admired him as a great draftsman, were disappointed in the "roughness" of these 1944 drawings. They thought he was losing his skill. Fifteen years later, after the abstract expressionist blaze-up, this criticized "roughness" can be viewed as a foretaste of what was to be the new freedom.

Janis complained that Gorky's widow plans after this exhibit to hang onto the balance of his work that she still owns. Mrs. Pollock for her part, will release no more than one or two Pollocks a year. Thus he has, in effect, lost from his gallery two of its major artists. He won't have anything to sell.

At Fine Arts Associates I cherished a new David Smith sculpture. I seldom take enthusiastically to his work. This I did respond to promptly. It costs $3,800, so I didn't buy it anymore than I'd bought the Alan Davie's Fish God at Viviano's or a large Birolli that I also liked.

My abstentions evaporated however, when my eye was attracted to

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