The main show was of Bill Ronald's new work, with my The Visitor in a place of honor. Unfortunately the 10 foot height of Arrival III prevented its proper placing, as Helen quickly pointed out, because the overhead lighting fixtures and wall mouldings made only one spot in the gallery feasible. This was a calamity. Arrival III exists to be the center of attention; it is an eye catcher, and yet it had to be to one side, its upper part obscured by a light fixture. However, the throng at the opening was so great that only the tops of paintings could be glimpsed. The Hofmanns were present, in town briefly from Provincetown. He was looking as strong and well as ever. I talked to Anita Marca-Relli, who charms me, to Adair Chambers, Bill Gerdts, and a host of others, among them Henry Pearlman, who told me that he doesn't like Ronald's paintings but hopes, as an old friend of Sam's, that they be successful. With Bill Ronald himself I had only a few words' exchange. He was wearing his very sporty plaid trousers which are handsome in themselves but best suited to country informality; with them he wore a dark jacket with a flower in his button hole -- an incongruous costume, I thought, yet individual. As usual Helen was lovely looking. Sam was the genial host but dead tired. For several days he's been working late to get the gallery in final shape. He and Jane had to forego the Guggenheim opening, so involved were they in preparations for their own.

Virginia Field came in. She and I eventually had dinner together in a nearby restaurant, my longstanding invitation to a buffet supper having been cancelled by Ethel Schwabacher because of an illness in her family.

October 23, 1959 -- New York

Ivan Karp gathered a group of Stankiewicz's friends (perhaps I should

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Ivan who had organized the occasion. Robert Scull, standing near the door, expansively stepped into the role of host. Richard doesn't have chairs enough for so many to be seated. He provided us with drinks, several of us choosing grappa brandy.

The topic of the week started up. Eleanor Ward declared that the new Guggenheim is a tragedy; it annihilates paintings. Howard Lipman called for a vote, yes or no, on whether the company present favors having Wright's building in existence or wisnes it had never been built. He would allow no qualifications. Nearly all of us came out in its favor, myself included. The discussion of the building's merits and defects was hot and heavy. Eleanor Ward was vehement.

Then the conversation turned upon the nature of art collecting. Mr. Scull held the floor, talking so clearly in terms of himself and his own acquisitions that at moments I felt embarrassed for him. He evidently had no idea who Howard Lipman is; he may have imagined himself the only collector present.

One of his points, which Mr. Lipman received with a dry scepticism, was that the impulse to buy art has the corollary of making a man exert himself to earn more to be able to acquire more.

Eleanor Ward maintained that collecting begins with an enthusiasm, a feeling that one "can't live without" certain beautiful things. Scull's emphasis on ambition and the drive to prosperity she evidently didn't like. I pointed out that collecting hasn't made me an energetic businessman hot on the trail of higher profits. Scull also claimed that a man purchases increasingly with the desire of winning the approbation of his friends. Mr. Lipman questioned that. He told us that in all the years since he acquired an early sculpture by Richard only two people have ever remarked

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upon it (I saw an expression of dismay flash across Richard's features),
the first being the chambermaid in the Chelsea Hotel where he and Mrs.
Lipman were then living. The maid adamantly refused to enter the room to
clean; she regarded the sculpture as an evil being. The other individual
liked it. Lipman's point was that his motivation in acquiring art and his
pleasure in possessing it had no relation to the reactions of his neigh-
bors. He lives in a small Connecticut community, Cannondale, where most
people are indifferent to art. Scull's set of art-conscious friends, he
said, is a small metropolitan coterie, isolated from the general American
attitude. Eleanor Ward put in with advice to the Sculls to get away from
this little clique that is so proud of being advanced in taste. Through
all this Alan Groh said not a single word, the only person present who
registered nothing.

At last Richard asked, "Would you like to see some fountains?" He
inquired of Mr. Scull whether he would consent to see the stages through
which he had gone. Scull, who afterwards admitted that he was anticipating
a built-up metal Stankiewicz sculpture as the main form of the fountain, at
first brushed this proposal aside, but agreed when it became evident that
this was the way Richard wished to make the presentation.

We walked from Richard's austere living quarters through his scrap
metal-filled workshop to the big room containing the experimental pool and
his finished sculptures. Because of space consumed by the pool, his sculp-
tures are currently pushed helter-skelter towards the rear. Mr. Scull sat
on a low object by the windows. Mrs. Scull asked for a chair. One was
brought and placed in the doorway. The rest of us stood expectantly
around. Richard removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser
legs, although at the start the pool lay empty. Around its edges were

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various contraptions of copper pipe, systematically numbered. Richard is a systematic man. On a platform at one side of the pool rested an electric motor, from near which came six pipes whose six terminals over the waters' edge served as connections. To these, wading through the filling pool, Richard successfully attached his fixtures. In a final version, he assured us, the connection pipes would be invisible, nor would the noisy pump distract from the sound of falling water. As he pointed out, one of the major attractions of a fountain is the splashing sound it makes. The roar of the pump deprived us of this pleasure.

I'm too lazy to describe, even if I could, the varying effects achieved by six different displays mounted for us, with much screwing on and unscrewing, padding about in the shallow water and squatting down (it always looked as if he'd wet the seat of his pants, but he never did), accompanied by an explanation of what he was seeking each time. It was rather like attending a play in six short acts. Between each demonstration, motor running and water splashing, came the scene-shifting period and audience comment. It was an extraordinary spectacle, with Richard cast as the Bernini of lower Broadway. I doubt if I shall ever experience a comparable evening.

In general the evolution marked by the six stages was towards a lesser amount of visible structure. Richard insisted on creating his sculptural forms from water only. We were nearly all enthusiastic over certain of his effects. Mr. Scull, I fear, could not get over a certain disappointment that no recognizably Stankiewicz sculpture of solid material had been created to stand out and be visible at all seasons. Something for his friends to identify, perhaps? In my hearing he made no commitment to follow through on any of Richard's designs. Yet I think the Sculls and all

of us were favorably impressed by Richard's work.

Ivan asked if I would be willing to let the Sculls have a quick
glimpse of my collection on the way home. The Karps, the Sculls and I
therefore drove uptown in the Scull's mammoth car. As the Sculls are
vocal, enthusiastic people, they flung themselves into an ecstasy over what
I showed them, but Mrs. Scull was very severe upon me for the heresy of
possessing fine pictures that I have not wall space to hang. She insisted
I should sell a picture to get funds enough for a large apartment. It is a
crime to her that everything is not simultaneously on display.

Mr. Scull, who also owns Klines, when looking at my Wanamaker Block
told me that Janis now prices such large Klines at eight or nine thousand
dollars. Janis last spring appraised mine for no more than $4,000; it cost
me $2,000. By now there is a "waiting list" for paintings by Kline. In my
conversation with Janis last Saturday he mentioned that seven paintings
Kline created this past summer at Provincetown have been delivered to the
gallery. All have been sold to clients on the waiting list.

It is fascinating to reflect that in that red barn and onetime nursery
school where we Hofmann students struggled in July and August 1958 to
please the master, the following summer a now "big name" artist created
such readily saleable, possible masterpieces.

Janis said another seven Klines are due by the time Kline's next show
is held. It seems not so long ago -- May to August 1955, to be precise --
that the Whitney Museum in its "New Decade" exhibit had a batch of big
Klines for months on display, all of them remaining unsold in the hands of
Kline's then dealer, Egan. What a change! A demand for Klines didn't
exist in '55. By '59 it is smart to own one. I'm curious to see what the
situation will be in '69.

October 1959 -- New York

A rainy, depressing, dark Saturday. I followed my habit of touring galleries, going belatedly to Betty Parsons to look at Ellsworth Kelly's large, flatly painted, hard-edge canvases. His work has its affinity to Myron Stout's, is larger, bolder and presumably less inhibited in execution than Myron's. I've thought for some time that I might one day acquire an Ellsworth Kelly.

In the gallery I found one, of deep blue and black, that I understood, admired and believed I might want, for the flat blue surface has a curious folding, living quality in relation to the adjacent black. The curving edge is subtle. The whole elegantly simple.

Betty herself was away at lunch. Her usual assistant was absent. The young man in temporary charge, a painter, was a stranger to me. He and I discussed the picture. I asked him to hold it for me, saying I'd return to talk with Betty.

Alas, when I came back in mid-afternoon, Betty told me that the architect, Armand Bartos, known for his collection of Mondrians and related paintings, has already, as her young assistant did not know, placed a reserve upon it. Most disappointing. Bartos will surely take it. Mine is the fault for not going sooner to the Kelly show.

I also visited Kootz to get a better look at Bill Ronald's work than was possible during the opening. Bill was with Sam. Sam mentioned at once a review in the morning's *Times* by Dore Ashton that I had not read. She declared that "the effect of savage intensity" has been achieved in only two paintings, my "The Visitor with its molten head and fanatic stripes" and Arrival III. The rest of the show she discounted in the statement, "All this deliberate ugliness is too often squandered in diffuse composi-

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tions."

Bill said plaintively to me that ne doesn't consider his paintings
ugly. He certainly didn't deliberately make them so. He told me also that
The Visitor was not intended as a head. The stripes which define it as
such were added in the last three quarter hours of painting. Sudden
inspiration.

When Sam left us to talk to clients who wandered in, Bill expressed
his resentment that Sam sold me The Visitor for a mere $1,500 and charged
as much as $1,250 for the considerably smaller oil by the German Emil
Schumacher, who is unknown in America. This division of the spoils burned
Bill up. I had realized it would and purposely not mentioned these prices
myself. Sam quoted them to him. Bill said twice (so as not to offend me)
that he wished Sam had given me the painting; he also thought it would have
been more tactful of Sam to lie to him (Bill) and say the Schumacher was
$1,000 and his painting $2,000 in the "package deal."

I sympathize with Bill's resentment. The Visitor is a major painting,
if one grants that Bill is an important artist, whereas my choice of
Schumacher, excellent though I think it, is not major. I endeavored to
placate Bill by stressing that Schumacher is a much older man than ne and
has a Paris market. I also told him that Sam was in a good mood at the
moment he determined the price for The Visitor, having just obtained a
prospect to rent his old premises. "That's just it!" cried Bill, slightly
mollified. What Bill doesn't like is that Sam, by letting his paintings go
underpriced, puts himself in the position of being able to say that ne
isn't making any money as Bill's dealer. This becomes a weapon for Sam in
their discussions some months hence over a new contract. Bill naturally
wants a high price level to be established for his work.

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October 25, 1959 -- New York

Elizabeth Korn came in from New Jersey Sunday afternoon to see me. She is a German who was largely brought up in Italy; she paints; she teacnes at Drew University both painting and art history. Bill Gerdts suggested her borrowing paintings for an exhibit from me.

My collection filled her with excited joy. My proposal was that we
make up an exhibit for Drew of my European paintings only. She's in
accord.

October 26, 1959 -- New York

From my studio I came back to 57th Street to attend the opening of
Morris Kantor's first exhibit of paintings in perhaps five years. His show
last spring was of small drawings, sketches, water-colors. This is of
oils. My former fellow students, nearly all of whom seem to be still in
Kantor's class for at least a few days a week, were loyally present. One
couldn't see the pictures for the crowd.

I was happy to see Kiichi Usui, whom I hadn't heard a word from since
the spring. I had figured that most of his spare time was given to Mary,
the young girl of Russian descent whom he met in class and was seeing a
great deal of last winter, but it came to me as an utter surprise that he
is married to her. I should have thought he'd have at least told me, even
if he didn't invite guests to the wedding. I asked when he was married.
He said that actually it was last year -- perhaps even before she returned
for a springtime semester at college. Perhaps the marriage was secret --
hidden from her family. They are living just three blocks from my studio,
and total silence from him the whole summer and autumn through! These
inscrutable Orientals! Kiichi is such a sweet boy I hope these new respon-