As Mrs. Sprague, Kate had all the money she could use. At Narragansett she built a many-styled, large house, "Canonchet" and reigned like a queen, importing from Europe all sorts of treasures to adorn her estate. William Sprague became a U.S. Senator. In Washington for a while she was hostess both for her rich husband, the Senator, and her politically eminent father, the Chief Justice. Pretty splendid for a young, vigorous woman who showed imagination in entertaining, was dressed by Worth of Paris, and took a lively interest in politics.

But William Sprague was basically a nonentity. He often drank too much. Before his marriage, he had benaved like a cad to a Providence girl of good family whom he got by child. The "old families" in Providence did not receive him. In the Civil War he began big but amounted to little in the end. As a Senator he made few speeches. For some years his business interests prospered phenomenally but he overextended, Kate was wildly extravagant, and eventually he went bankrupt. Before that their marriage was bankrupt. Years of tension.

Kate became involved in gossip with the "turkey strut" Senator and political boss from New York, Roscoe Conkling. William Sprague made a fuss. A divorce ensued. Kate (still in the prime of life I presume) went abroad with her daughters and began selling her jewelry. The Chief Justice's death at 65 forever cancelled her lifelong hope to see him elected President. Her only son shot himself to death at 25. She grew poorer and retired to live quietly in what had been her father's house in Washington. In her final years she was alone, all her beautiful possessions dispersed. She, who in her young womanhood had had almost a possessive familiarity with the White House during the Buchanan-Lincoln-Johnson and Grant Administrations became little better than a beggar woman.

1508

This is a rather romantic synopsis of the career of a proud, no doubt
hard, woman. I can't help wondering how it happened so. The situation
today would probably differ. The divorce would be less compromising. A
woman of her capacities would in this era find the means to earn money, if
only by a journalistic exploitation of her past associations. The whole
concept of a "society woman" has changed. Increasingly in her day the
ostentatious use of money was essential for a social leader. Kate was
spoiled, self-indulgent, had no idea of financial prudence and no doubt she
made enemies. A woman with so little humor and such ambition could not do
otherwise.

In any event she still can cast a spell upon the male imagination, as
my writing this suggests. I have had her on my mind nearly all day.

At eleven o'clock Mother and I went to St. Peter's-by-the-Sea in
Narragansett for the services in memory of Frank Hinckley. I am embarrass-
ed to confess that even as I looked across at his flower-covered coffin and
at his children and grandchildren, my cousins, I thought as much about Kate
Chase Sprague as about the deceased, because it was in St. Peter's-by-the-
Sea that she attended in 1890, the funeral of her suicide'd son, from whom
she had been estranged. Her biographer describes her standing by his
coffin in this church, never once looking across at her ex-husband and his
new wife and the widow of her son.

Her association with this church has particular meaning for me because
the Sprague home "Canonchet" was destroyed by fire fifty years ago. What
remains of the estate offers no suggestion that it ever was a millionaire's
property, a famous house to which prominent people resorted. Indeed the
village of Narragansett is currently so debased, a vulgar, decayed seaside
town, that it is hard for me to establish a real link with the splendors

1509

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, 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 realistic Andrew Wyeth. Peter Blume was also liked. The average Russian

1515

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 photo-
graphic 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 paint-
ings. 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 a job to
keep." She was horrified. After his appreciation it seemed to her incom-
prehensibly 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

1516

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."

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 soon acquaint myself with it.

1517

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 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.

1518

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
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-natch 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
is played down in favor of an almost abstract, or metaphysical notion of

1519

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 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

1520

had several altercations. He thinks Kootz is crazy. "He has more tempera-
ment 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 pic-
ture'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.

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 help-
lessness and sny withdrawal of this younger brother who lives in a back-
water, 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

1522

Canadian fellowship. He is on the lookout 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
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 reproduc-
tion of it appearing 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
influence. Thus I felt justified in being awed by its presence.

1523

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
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.

1524

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 annihilation 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.

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.

When we left, moon-daffy Virginia asked me to take her on a ferry ride to Staten Island. It was a clear, cold night, the moon round and bright. Not being a romantic fellow, and thinking my summer-weight suit hardly adequate for a midnight crossing of New York harbor, I assented with tolerance more than enthusiasm. Forty minutes afterwards we sailed. The scene was striking. Lower Manhattan ablaze. The Statue of Liberty fully illuminated. It was two a.m. before I got home to bed.

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 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

1525

portion of the picture as I left it.

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 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.

1526

September 19, 1959 -- New York to Yorktown Heights

I had many dreams last night. Of them all I remember only a scene in
a large old house whose rooms I was exploring with a companion. In one of
these rooms in the otherwise uninhabited house we came upon a fawn seated
on the floor, a collar around its neck and a chain stretching to the wall
by a large medieval fireplace. At first the fawn did not notice our
approach. Then it became aware and pathetically eager for attention.
Responsively I sat down by it and hugged and kissed its head. End of
dream.

On stepping outdoors I found it to be a clear cool autumn day.
Before going to my studio I chose to visit an exhibition (Kandinsky,
Picasso, Miró, 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 beaming-
ly. He has a show of lithographs by Ochikubo, one of whose sumi drawings I
once bought. 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. 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,
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

1527

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.

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

1528

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
bathtub to tell me the maid was up ("Sne sleeps later than any of us," he
said) and would get us breakfast.

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, window-
less 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
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

1529

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 nay-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 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 snow, 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

1530

stayed some while in Venice and went on to Rome for what was to be a visit
of several weeks, but De Kooning flew back to America five hours after his
arrival there. Now he is talking of going again to Europe. He's discover-
ed the wonders of quick trans-Atlantic flights. It's a new toy for him.
He has all that money and hasn't yet spending habits to go with it.

We heard this story while we were relaxing on the terrace by the
house. It grew cooler; we came into the living room for cocktails. I
asked Marca-Relli how he came to change his name from the beautiful ver-
sion, Corrado di Marca-Relli, which he used a couple of years ago, to the
present version, Conrad Marca-Relli. Anita smiled with an obvious inner
chuckle and listened with interest to his answer as if she had never
herself heard it. Admittedly, I do not know for sure that she is Marca-
Relli's wife or has lived with him for more than a few months but I assume
that they are and have been married for a considerable time. It could be
that he gives different explanations on different occasions or that they
share an intimate little secret between them as to the change. What he
said, any way, was that he likes to change his name. When he was a poor
young fellow in Depression days, he often altered the name on his door so
as to keep away creditors, especially the man who came to read the electric
meter.

At this point he told us a story of De Kooning, who once answered a
knock on his studio door. A man stood there who asked, "Willem De

1531

Kooning?" He said, "Yes." The visitor replied, "I have a process to serve on you." De Kooning said, "Oh, I'm not Mr. De Kooning. I just work for him. He isn't here now."

"Why did you say you were he?"

"I always say that," was all De Kooning could think of as an explanation.

The man looked at him suspiciously. De Kooning felt foolish and exposed, but he stuck by his declaration that he just worked for De Kooning.

Marca-Kelli went on to tell us that his real name is actually Corrad, not Corrado or Conrad. He decided to drop the di from before Marca-Kelli, although his name properly is "di Marca-Kelli."

"Do you mind if I call you Conrad?" snorted Sam, learning for the first time about the "Corrad" version. Marca-Kelli reassured him. He never explained what motivated his changes, other than his liking for variety.

I should not omit the incident of the plants. The Kootzes have a couple of plants that will die as the season gets colder. Sam said to Anita, "Take your choice of the plants. Dick, you get second choice."

We went outdoors to see them. As we left the house my eye fell again upon an oil painting by Hans Hofmann that I have often admired. "Why don't you give me this Hofmann instead of a plant?" I said jestingly to Sam, who was refilling his pipe before following us outdoors. The Hofmann would sell for many thousands of dollars. I made my remark without the slightest thought that he would take it seriously. But Sam answered "All right" in a crushed voice. I had hastily to say something that indicated my innocence.

A moment later as we were seated on the terrace, Sam said, "I'll tell

you what I'll do. I'll give you that Motherwell drawing." He was serious. Later in the evening he did in fact, when we all visited the storage house to see its interior by electricity, fetch from the racks the 1944 Motherwell drawing that I had praised in the morning. I was embarrassed by such an act of generosity (I got a plant too) but am too thoroughly a collector to reject an item with such appeal. As Bill Ronald said, Sam is a man of moods. Perhaps it was poor taste, but in my confusion at receiving this fine gift, I said, "Goodness, next time I'll have to ask for a big Picasso and perhaps Sam will give me Black Rock by Marca-Relli." (The Picasso having a sales price of say $60,000 and the Marca-Relli in question, a favorite of mine, being a large canvas that was priced at about $6,500 as I remember.)

The Motherwell drawing (with a yellow water color wash as background for the ink figures) is interesting for its indication of Picasso's influence upon Motherwell at that period, yet the drawing has qualities that one can see bear the stamp of later Motherwells. Sam acquired it long ago at small expense when he had Motherwell under contract -- before their business rupture. He told me that he and Jane hung it for years in their apartment.

September 1959 -- New York

I stayed at the Kootzes till Monday evening, when we drove back to Mannattan after dinner. It was another beautiful day although the air was crisp enough to discourage a dip in the swimming pool. Men came in the afternoon to place a plastic cover over it to keep leaves from falling into the water.

While I was with him in the country Sam spoke of his problem with Bill

A This untitled Motherwell drawing, 18¼ x 23¾, is reproduced on page 60 of the catalogue "Fortissimo! Thirty Years From The Richard Brown Baker Collection of Contemporary Art" published in 1985 by The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.

Ronald. He says that so far his accounts show that he has no more than "broken even" with Bill's paintings. He wants to keep him on; he has great hopes for Bill's future as an artist; he thinks he may develop into one of the important men of his generation. But he considers Bill extravagant; Bill is always pestering him for advances, so he says; he telephoned Saturday to ask for an advance of $100 for something he wants to do. Sam can't see why Bill won't keep within the bounds of his salary. I mentioned the great expense of oil paints and canvas. Sam said "I know nothing about that." I told him that Bill uses paint lavishly. He said he doesn't want to cut Bill off. He'll have to figure out some way -- perhaps to buy a certain number of paintings a year and let the balance of Bill's output be sold on commission. I thought it best to say nothing to Sam of my recent conversations with Bill.

On Tuesday morning I went by appointment to John Ferren's home and studio near Central Park in the West 70s in connection with the AFA show. Mr. Ferren is a likeable man. I met him some years ago at a supper party. Now in his mid-fifties, he belongs to the age generation of more acclaimed painters such as De Kooning, James Brooks and the German abstractionist, Fritz Winters, so long a prisoner of war in the USSR. Ferren has lacked the backing of the influential Museum of Modern Art, nor was he included in the last Pittsburgh International. A French critic, Michel Ragon, wrote of him in _Cimaise_: "John Ferren (53 years), whom Dore Ashton esteems, left me rather perplexed. His recent painting is a kind of Gay Nineties Rococco." I remember my own surprise that Dore Ashton picked Ferren among the artists to be shown in Houston while excluding Marca-Relli. I myself value Marca-Relli more. She does not. So Ferren has his astute supporters, while leaving some "perplexed" and others nostile. (Ragon, incidentally, in the

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same article wrote: "Marca-Kelli, who is 45, is a highly authentic and personal painter, one of those that I prefer in the American school.")

Poor Ferren, during this past summer, which he spent at East Hampton, was seriously ill with a rare infection of the nervous system that for a time produced facial paralysis. He was evidently in misery, but is convalescing now and looked well to me, although lacking strength.

His "collection" is insignificant. He remarked that American artists should exchange their work more. "In the old days", he said, he and his painter friends used often to visit each other's studios. As they've grown older, better known and have scattered geographically in the city, they are kept apart by family responsibilities, teaching duties, perhaps even different gallery connections. He hadn't much for me to choose from; an ink abstraction by James Brooks, an ink-outlined head of Zeus drawn for Ferren himself by Picasso at the time Paris was liberated (or was it on the day Germany was defeated?) and three small oils, of which I chose a Nicholas Carone, despite other Carones being in the show, because I disliked the alternatives by Perle Fine and Joan Mitchell. I was pleased however by the oil of Ferren's own that I selected. It is a bold, dramatic painting. Without being one of his vase series, it is a centered picture (his preoccupation for a while) and also a bright pigmented abstract suggestive of a different phase of his work. It lacks the nervous staccato of his "Gay Nineties Rococco" period.

As Mrs. Ferren said, all his work differs. Ferren may lack prestige with museums and collectors precisely because he is an experimenter. He tries new directions. Ben-Zion referred in friendly fashion to Ferren (whose painting approach Ben-Zion frankly opposes), saying, I remember, that Ferren is one of the few non-objective painters who thinks.

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Because of his illness, Ferren worked this summer in small dimensions, producing, despite his pain, a series of tiny abstractions in ink and pastel. I fell in love at once with one of these, which induced him to show me several others in pastel. Recalling Morris Kantor's arrangement of small sketches under a single mat, I discussed the possibility of grouping together the three that I especially like. We set them side by side on the mantle. Ferren was pleased by the relationship they established. We agreed that he should save these three for me, the sale to occur later.

In confidence he told me he plans shortly to sever his connection with the Stable Gallery. Eleanor Ward, the handsome and snobbish woman who operates the Stable, seems to have alienated most of her best painters. Marca-Relli was saying on Sunday that when Eleanor Ward opened her gallery, which is located a few blocks from Donati's studio, Donati came to him and to Carone, told them about it and said, "Let's persuade her to show the avant-garde. Left to herself she'll have a possibly stuffy selection, but wouldn't it be wonderful to have a spacious place to show the promising and original painters?"

For some while thereafter Marca-Relli and Carone acted as advisors, helping Mrs. Ward select painters to exhibit. As she became more experienced, Marca-Relli said she became more difficult to work with, more eager to impose her own taste. He left her over a year ago for Kootz; Carone went last season. During this summer Giorgio Cavallon and James Brooks have shifted from the Stable to Kootz.

Now Ferren tells me confidentially that he plans to pull out. His complaint is that she discourages would-be purchasers. Unless she knows that someone is important as a collector her attitude is cool to the border of rudeness.

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Marca-Relli also mocked her quirks, telling the Kootzes and me that when he was leaving her gallery they were going over his paintings, some of which she had purchased, to the extent, however, of only about $1,000 worth a year. She complained of her inability to sell one painting of his for which she paid him $300. He offered to buy it back from her since she was unhappy over it. Mrs. Ward turned to her assistant, Alan Groh, and asked, "Alan, what is the price of this picture now?" It had gone up to $2,000. Marca-Relli was staggered to find that she proposed to sell his own $300 painting to him for $2,000.

Later on Tuesday I showed up at the town house of another artist, the bizarre cartoonist Saul Steinberg, only to find him absent from home. When I got to my apartment, to receive a visit from Elaine and Bill Gerdts, a telegram awaited me from Steinberg saying he was detained in Amagansett.

The Gerdts came for drinks bringing a nice young fellow (his name is Finnish in origin) from the Newark Museum staff to look at my collection. By this season I pull out of my storage closet only a half dozen things that aren't hanging. It's too much to attempt a full showing.

September 25, 1959 -- New York

When I left my studio yesterday I came home, freshened up for a cocktail party and then walked around the corner to keep my appointment with the painter George L.K. Morris, who enjoys the grandeur of occupying an apartment in the building overlooking the East River at No. 1 Sutton Place South. Painters don't ordinarily reside at such fashionable addresses. Even his studio is there. Quite clearly he's an "upper income bracket" man, despite his profession. The paintings on his walls, although inexpensively acquired decades ago when he was a student, are by artists

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for whom the wealthy nowadays compete: Juan Gris, Braque, Picasso, Leger, Arp, etc. This was my first "embarrassment of riches." As Mr. and Mrs. Morris are to be away for many months, summering in Lenox, he was willing to lend anything except his major Juan Gris, which went through the hazard of the Museum of Modern Art's fire. I eschewed the bigger names (he even has a small Cézanne) and chose a beautiful oil by the not too well known Joaquin Torres-Garcia, a fine Leger oil, and a fascinating small water color by Roger de La Fresnaye.

Mr. Morris gave me a drink of Bourbon and was most gracious. After we had agreed on the three items from his collection we went next door to his studio. It is filled with hundreds of his canvases.

Although an abstract painter for many years, Morris is close to the Cubist tradition. He is apart from the usual School of New York work, less free, a different kind of painter. He remarks apropos of Ben Nicholson, of whose work he owns examples, that Nicholson is about the only painter with whom he can agree in aesthetic discussions. I have never felt the urge to acquire a Morris painting myself. Morris paints well but without great force and originality. His aesthetic predilections belong with the generation preceding the one whose post-1945 careers have excited me. He is not, I guess, "in the mode," as the many unsold good canvases in his studio indicate.

Leaving his apartment I went to the Overseas Press Club for the cocktail party to honor the publication of *ARTS Yearbook 3*, in which my Albert Urban painting is reproduced.

The first person I saw at the bar was Richard Bellamy with whom, as I forgot to mention, I had lunch the day before. He told me then that the cooperative Hansa Gallery, which he has directed, will not continue.

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Bellamy even came to my studio after luncheon Wednesday and saw the work I have been doing.

Morris Kantor and his wife were also at the ARTS Yearbook party. A Kantor oil of 1956 is reproduced in it. He and I had quite a chat despite the din. His class at the Art Students' League has just resumed. I told him I thought I would do well to work at present on my own. He seemed to give his blessing to this. Bellamy, the day before, had also encouraged me to paint without an instructor.

When I introduced Mr. Kantor to Joan Washburn of the Graham Gallery, Joan genially remarked that I am a good collector. Sweet Mr. Kantor informed her that I am also "an excellent painter." She chose not to hear that.

The room swarmed with dealers, for example, Virginia Zabriskie, Bertha Schaefer, and Betty Parsons. Bertha tried to induce me to escort her to an Architectural League dinner. I had fortunately engaged myself already with Richard Stankiewicz. Bertha hooked the Kantors later on, much to Morris' distress. Betty Parsons reported having a wonderful summer, first at Big Horn, Wyoming, where she painted, and then in London and Paris.

Oscar Krasner swooped down to tell me that "everybody wants Okimotos." John Honnsbeen, who has traveled to Russia since I saw him last, was accompanied by a beautiful young lady.

I went to speak to Reva Urban, who looked deathly pale and sounded mournful. She is a patient in the mental division of St. Vincent's Hospital. She complained of the badness of the color plate of Albert's picture.

Richard Stankiewicz was accompanied by a tall girl, Pat Doyle, from Brisbane, Australia. She works in the U.N. Secretariat. It was with a slightly quickened pulse that I noticed in the gathering Jean Follett, of

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one of whose creations the Yearbook contains a plate reproduction.
Richard's presence resulted from his being the subject of an essay by
Martica Sawin. Knowing of the estrangement between Richard and Jean, I
wondered whether Jean would cause any commotion. Richard obviously wasn't
seeking her out. Late in the party after I had joined Richard and Pat to
be ready for our departure, Jean approached the three of us. Richard in
his usual voice introduced Jean to Pat. I had been saying something about
Provincetown at the moment Jean approached, so, to relieve tension, I spoke
of everyone there gossiping about Franz Kline's being put on probation for
playing his gramaphone at four a.m.

Jean said, "I should have thought everyone at Provincetown would have
been talking about Richard's and my court case."

"Oh no," I said cheerfully, "they were all talking about Kline."

Somehow, Richard, Pat and I succeeded in taking leave at this point
before further conversation could develop. Maybe Jean is truly the injured
party, but as an admirer of Stankiewicz and never too well impressed by
her, I am on his side of the controversy.

When we got to the sidewalk, we paused under the club canopy to
discuss where we should go for dinner. Jean Follett and a Greek-mustached
man appeared almost directly behind us. I grabbed my friends and started
walking fast toward Park Avenue, lest Jean should take it into her head
that she should accompany us to dinner. Two men, only one girl, it would
have been logical, but in this situation socially unacceptable.

Richard said to Pat, when we had stowed ourselves in a taxi, a
laconic, "I was relieved to get away from Jean." He took us to the west
side, where we ate a pleasant dinner. I like Pat. She virtually said she
loves Richard. She is an outsider to the art world and its local person-

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alities, "knowing nothing," said Richard. He has evidently been taking her
out often and purposely keeping her apart from the art crowd. Art is a
subject he has not cared to go into with her. But he acknowledged that he
could not shield her forever from art talk.

I invited them to my apartment after dinner so that Pat could see
Richard's sculptures. It turned out that Pat, for all her formal ignor-
ance, has a genuine receptivity to art. I can tell the difference by now
between routine responses and enthusiastic ones. To be sure she did not
care for my Pollock and was outraged by my belly-bulging-pre-Colombian
pottery figure, but such non-obvious paintings as Franz Kline's and Esteban
Vicente's gave her a true thrill. She spotted Schwitter's fine collage and
enthused over it.

Richard, surprised and gratified, said "Maybe I'll have to take your
views on art seriously."

I said I'd test her by bringing out the painting (Bruce Conner's Man) that my sister told me never again to exhibit because she judges it ugly and obscene. Pat's verdict was that the painting is tragic. She approved of it as art but begged me to put it away because its tragic character affected her too strongly. Richard, who said he had never before seen the painting and is seldom keen on other people's creations, waxed so enthusiastic that he said this picture "goes beyond Dubuffet."

During the evening Richard revealed that Dorothy Miller visited his studio that morning at her own request. After spending some hours looking at his sculpture and at photos of absent pieces, she asked whether he "would be interested" to be included in her next "12 Americans" show at the Museum of Modern Art. This, as I explained to Pat, is a real kudos for a young artist. In practical terms it is another big stepping stone to fame

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and fortune. I am glad for Richard. His work is difficult for many to appreciate, but I have for long believed in the inevitable spread of admiration for it. A large-scale presentation at the Museum of Modern Art will expand knowledge of his accomplishment.

Today, having to go uptown to the AFA, I stopped in the Metropolitan Museum's galleries for half an hour and lunched in its cafeteria. Then, tempted by the agreeable weather, I began walking east towards my studio. Group shows in Grand Central Moderns and the Grace Borgenicht Gallery interrupted my progress.

At Grand Central Moderns, Colette Roberts made a big effort to sell me one of the inexpensive gouaches or collages by a young artist heading toward his debut. He has a Greek name and may well become very good but at this stage the De Kooning influence is too marked. I would not buy.

I walked downstairs to Grace Boryenicht's where, as I entered, my eye fell on a canvas by Luis Feito, a young Spaniard from Madrid, who is becoming known in Paris, Venice, and Germany. During the weekend I saw in my bedroom at the Kootzes a small black and white canvas by Feito that Sam brought back from Paris. I disliked it because it looked to me like a straight landscape depiction of the Guadarrama mountain range. Now I ex- claimed to Grace Boryenicht, "So you have a Feito!". New York galleries have not hitherto displayed him. She asked me to come into her viewing room to see additional Feitos. Several are predominantly in a gray black, like Sam Kootz's. The largest is painted in an orange ochre that bespeaks the color of Castile. I found myself interested in the artist's individual way of handling space. I cannot describe it. But his tendency to paint in one or two colors, with raised uneven surfaces, is characteristic of a developing European style which one sees in Dubuffet, Tapies and others.

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Here in New York I am familiar with it only in the work of Donati. The
upsnot: I threw financial caution to the winds and agreed to buy the large
Feito for $700, taking my time to pay. The Borgenicht Gallery will almost
certainly increase his prices in succeeding seasons, especially as he has
established a market in Paris.

Since I bought other Spaniards, a Canogar in Venice in 1956, a Tapies
the following summer and a Saura last December, I feel the logic, as a
former Iberian specialist, of acquiring also a Feito.

From what I read the new generation of Spanish painters (Tapies born
in 1923, Cuixart in 1925, Feito in 1929, Saura in 1930 and Canogar in 1934)
begins to make its mark in European art circles. The country that produced
~~recent times~~ in this century Juan Gris, Miró, Dali and Picasso may be renewing its cycle
of painterly creativity. As a onetime professional student of Spain, I
don't want to be blind to so welcome a development.

As I departed from Grace's, Sam Kootz stepped into the elevator, on
his way to the large new galleries he is preparing to move to in mid-
October. Sam asked me to come with him. I did and saw these spacious
rooms with workmen putting in the lighting fixtures.

September 27, 1959 -- New York

Taking a Sunday afternoon stroll through the Whitney, I came upon
Ibram Lassaw in the sculpture display a few feet from one of his own
pieces. We had a talk that must have lasted twenty minutes.

He is in Mannattan for the weekend with his family but cannot move yet
from his country place near East Hampton, as he is working upon a sculpture
14 feet high that is to adorn the new arts building of Washington
University in St. Louis. His studio is too small for such a piece, so he

1543

is making it outdoors. He says he likes the play of sunlight on metal.
Increasingly he is interested in integrating color into his sculpture.
Someday he hopes to be able to afford the services of a metallurgist and to
conquer some of the scientific problems involved in getting color into
metal. He envies painters their wonderful pigments but wishes to work
himself in the third dimension. He had come to see whetner the colors are
holding well in the Whitney's piece. They are a trifle less vivid, he
believes.

September 28, 1959 -- From RBB to his mother

I spent a quiet weekend with visits to galleries and museums. The art
season is now getting off to a start with many openings, parties, etc.
Tonight I am to dine at the Guest House of the Museum of Modern Art before
the opening of its "New Images of Man" show, to which I lent my Diebenkorn,
Müller and Oliveira.

Am still trying to wind up my responsibilities toward the "Artist as
Collector" show, which presents various difficulties. Adja Yunkers has
nothing of his own to lend at the moment; Saul Steinberg, who is in
Amagansett, broke his appointment to see me and hasn't made another;
Alfonso Ossorio wants to lend one of his paintings that is larger than any
other picture in the show and is moreover a painting that I didn't select.
So it goes.

I'm off to my studio now and hope to do some good painting myself.
José Guerrero is coming to lunch with me and to look at my work later this
week. He may give me useful advice.

I saw Morris Kantor at a cocktail party on Thursday. He seemed in
accord with my intention of painting on my own at present. He was kind

1544

enough to remark to a lady art dealer that I am an "excellent painter."
Would I were.

September 1959 -- New York

Yesterday I attacked one of my larger canvases of perhaps two years
ago and seemed to myself to have converted it from a raw strange thing to a
vibrant painting.

In the evening a dinner took place at the Guest House of the Museum of
Modern Art preceding the opening of the "New Images of Man" show. I took
Dodie Müller over the building, as she hadn't been in it before. She
confided that she was angered by Peter Selz because, although she is a
lender of a couple of Jan's paintings, the museum forgot to invite her
either to the dinner or to the opening. The dinner is given for artists
and lenders. If I had a reason to be there, she had fully as good, and
indeed a better one. Dick Bellamy had to take it upon himself to make
inquiries. Her invitation was forthcoming only belatedly, even after that.

At dinner I sat between Mrs. Albert List, the collector, whose busi-
ness-minded husband, according to Sam Kootz, commands an astronomical
income, and a French countess. James Thrall Soby, of the museum curatorial
staff, sat on Mrs. List's right, and Lloyd Goodrich, director of the Whit-
ney, on the left of the countess. Mrs. List and I are old acquaintances.
Through most of the dinner I talked with her. She is disarmingly modest
about her art possessions.

After dinner the genial Dodie drove several of us to the museum where,
in the mob of guests, I could form no basic decisions concerning the
exhibition. It was too much a party, an occasion for greeting friends, for
anyone to concentrate on the art.

1545

I walked back across town with Steve Joy and a friend of his, a young painter named Lauren Libow. As we were all in high spirits, I invited them both to come up for nightcaps. Libow professed great admiration for the art on my walls. Although Massachusetts-born, he lived for a while in Paris and spent a year and a half in Israel. Now he feels himself to be more an Israeli than an American, but he decided his career as an artist required him to return to New York. He sat on the floor and waxed extraordinarily eloquent over his unfortunate circumstances. Not enough money to afford to paint. He kept appealing to Steve for sympathy. He was angry with dealer Leo Castelli, who that evening had said he would intervene with the museum to prolong a temporary job Libow has there. "Castelli knows I cannot paint while I have that job," Libow raged. What he resented was that Castelli, whom he has hoped would take him on in his gallery, and who once even paid his rent, never mentioned that he wanted to come to Libow's studio. Libow is sublimely convinced that his as yet unpainted pictures will be of surpassing importance. His wrath with Castelli is predicated upon the assumption that he will be a great painter.

The talk and drink flowed on until, alas, four in the morning.

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

1546

2088

These three artists have in common the tendency to merge figure and
the figures' environment. Will this be a practice that spreads?

October 1, 1959 -- New York

On getting to my studio today in a downpour, the backlash of a hurricane that hit the Carolina coast, I was no sooner engaged in another stretching job suggested by the excessive humidity than I heard a dripping sound in my storage racks. Water was falling through a crack in the ceiling. Fortunately only two canvases were as yet wet. After I had shifted the endangered pictures, mopped up and placed cans to catch the drip, I went to the landlord's office to report this leak.

Whitney himself was out sick, but an elderly, fragile man, who lived once in Lincoln, R.I., came to look. Soon afterwards a youth who works in Whitney's air conditioning business as an installer of equipment arrived. I took him to be one of New York's innumerable Puerto Ricans. The older man sent him up on the roof to search for the source of the trouble. When he returned I observed him eyeing my canvases. I felt uneasy since I had on my easel a large, strange picture, created originally at the League two years ago but recently worked on again and not yet fully resolved. I assumed this young workman would scorn it.

Later he came back a third time, bringing a bigger tin can to catch
the drip in case it continued through the night.

On finding himself alone with me, he confided that painting gives him great pleasure. He did not say that he approved of my large canvas but, although I could hardly believe it, I think he did. He looked closely at a few smaller oils of mine hanging on pegs on the wall to dry and taxed my credulity by discerning a resemblance to Winslow Homer, whose large show

1552

last winter at the Metropolitan he saw. I was astonished and secretly pleased by this comparison. He then spoke appreciatively of Degas, of Velasquez, and asked my opinion of Leonardo Da Vinci. I would not have expected such an interest in painting from a workman. He came to New York two years ago from Honduras, is of mixed (predominantly German) ancestry, and is a student of physics. I advised him to visit the Frick Collection, about which he knew nothing, invited him to return sometime and then resumed my arduous stretching. A resemblance between my abstract paintings and Winslow Homer's 19th century marines seems far-fetched, yet the notion of my New England heritage coming through in paint tickles my fancy.

When I went to fetch Virginia at her apartment I narrated this incident. She and I set out for Newark via taxi, subway and bus in order to attend the opening at the Newark Museum of a retrospective exhibition of Max Weber. I suggested that we go because Bill Gerdts, who selected the exhibit, is a friend of ours. I thought he would appreciate our presence on a major occasion like this. So I got Bill Dane to recommend a Newark restaurant. After we had traveled through the murk (and how dismal industrial New Jersey looked on such a dark foggy afternoon!), we found our way on foot to The Roost, a big, quite respectably good place to eat. Our time schedule was pressed hard, but we made it to the Museum just as Bill Gerdts stepped before the microphone to give his introductory talk, after which little old Max Weber himself (who approaches 80, having been born in 1881 in Byelostok, Russia) reminiscently over his earlier associations with the Newark Museum.

This year is the museum's 50th anniversary. The celebration was in honor not only of Max Weber, who previously in 1913 had a one man exhibit here, but of John Cotton Dana, of whom I often hear Bill Dane speak with

1553

reverance. Mr. Dana headed the Free Public Library where Bill works, as well as being first director of the museum. In Newark's cultural circles the name of John Cotton Dana stands for greatness. He left a heritage.

Max Weber as a young man, freshly returned to New York after several years in Paris, including study with Henri Matisse, was employed by John Cotton Dana to set up the gallery of antique casts in the original quarters of the museum. These early associations gave the evening its sentimental aura.

Seeing Weber's work of a lifetime, I do not, as Bill Gerdts appears to, rate him as a great, front-rank painter. Nor does Virginia. Yet it is evident that his canvases glow with subtleties of color. He is a painterly painter. Forty years or more ago he was also an avant-garde artist whose experience in France enabled him to introduce the ideas of modern art to a culturally laggard America. In historical terms his art has importance.

As we moved around the exhibition, often admiring most the earlier paintings that preceded his expressionist, Hebraic emphasis, I remarked to Virginia that a weakness in his œuvre is the frequency with which it reflects other artists' styles. One sees in him the cubism of Braque and Picasso (three or four years later), the expressionism of the German Kirchner, and other such similarities. The essential, characteristic Weber, as it developed, became primarily a distorting of Hebrew personages -- an art of the ghetto -- in effects that are busy. Simplicity is lacking. His pictures nevertheless live in the richness of their pigment.

Elaine Gerdts suggested to Virginia and me that after the ten o'clock close of the museum we join them and their friends, the painter Babe Schapiro and his girl, and a young museum staff man who hung the Max Weber exhibit, in going to an Italian coffee house in Nutley. When Bill offered

1554

to drive us to Manhattan afterwards, we accepted.

I found Nutley's coffee house, with its columns and painted plaster casts of antique friezes, its Renaissance-style furniture and general Italianate appearance, an odd looking spot. California Italian I dubbed it.

It even served a New Jersey variant of the beverage, granita di caffe, that enchanted me during my 1956 sojourn in Rome.

October 2, 1959 -- From RBB to his mother

I've already attended the first lecture of the course on the art history of Rome given by Dr. Krautheimer at the Institute of Fine Arts. He speaks in what was probably the ballroom of the James B. Duke mansion on Fifth Avenue.

I plan on learning a considerable amount of art history this winter. Another series of art lectures for which I've enrolled begins in January at the Metropolitan Museum. It is called "Fundamental Problems in Connoisseurship."

I suppose I'm doing things backwards to familiarize myself first with the contemporaneous, but I believe it desirable to become better grounded in what went before.

October 2, 1959 -- New York

Soon after breakfast Sara Mazo, an assistant to Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern Art, telephoned to say that she and the framer were coming at ten to change the frame on my Kline. As her presence was hardly necessary to accomplish this carpenter's task, I imagined that she wanted a glimpse of my collection. Jim White had spoken of her as a charming woman,

1555

kind and sweet. He told me that she is the widow of the Japanese-born
American painter, Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1893-1953), whose pictures hang in most
of the New York museums. They are not favorites of mine but I was inter-
ested to meet her and found her to be very pleasant. I took her around and
showed her what hung on my walls. In front of Hofmann's The Pond, she
remarked that she has no great enthusiasm for his work, an attitude in line
with the views of her institutional superiors. She asked if Miss Miller
knows that I have Albert Urban's Sybil, confirming that Urban is projected
for showing in the forthcoming "Americans" show, along with Stankiewicz and
others.

When the framer had finished, Sara Mazo and I agreed that the light-
colored wood suits Wanamaker Block far more than the black.

I hastened uptown to my studio and painted vigorously, but not suc-
cessfully, until about 6:30. Then I went for dinner to Charles Alan's new
apartment above his gallery. He also invited Richard Stankiewicz and Don
Magner.

Don is evidently in a neurotic and unfortunate condition. He arrived
last, wearing a red sweater, and sat down beneath a large painting by
Francis Bacon, whose lower third is richly green. From my seat Don and the
painting became a Christmas symphony. One could tell from his expression
that he was in a foul temper. He and Richard were meeting for the first
time. Except for a brief chance encounter, I had not seen Don since he
supped at my place in August. His manner toward us seemed rude.

Don doesn't drink, but he rejected even a bit of cheese on crackers
and sat moodily staring at us, at first not participating in the conversa-
tion. He said he was ill.

When Charles withdrew into his kitchenette to cook, Don gradually

1556

began to speak. He is bored with life and art, unemployed. He can't decide on anything he wants to do. This young man of 27 radiates a kind of sexual vitality, but he seems spiritually bankrupt. Richard and I were drinking martinis. I cannot think precisely what replies we made to him, but we scoffed at his world-weariness. Richard, believing thoroughly in himself as a sculptor, has no patience with an attitude as defeatist, as self-pitying, as Don's. Both of us were contrary to Don's mood. Suddenly he sprang up, saying "If you're going to talk like this, I'm leaving," whereat he rushed from the apartment slamming the door behind him. Charles hurried forth, opened the door and called after him. They parlayed, while Richard and I hastily talked of something else. Finally Don came back into the room, said stiffly to us that he was sorry, but that he was ill and would have to go home.

Poor Charles, wretched at this development, told us that he could sense from our conversation, as he had heard it from the kitchen, that a blowup would follow. He then explained that Don is a man who finds meaning and satisfaction only in sexuality and that he is accustomed to intercourse two or three times daily with the result that he has been having prostate gland troubles and cannot presently indulge sexually. Charles then lamented that his dinner was spoiled; he had burned it in his excitement and distress. Actually, it tasted fine. We settled down to a most agreeable evening of conversation.

In connection with Don's confusion over the meaning and purpose of his life, Richard told us that at one point in his career he had the opportunity and might have gone as navigator of a sailing vessel about to cruise around the world. He could have pursued the occupation of mariner instead of sculptor. He spoke of learning the Japanese go game while on a war-time

1557

has kept to his own individual style undeterred by other currents of art,
and who now (in the United States but not elsewhere) enjoys established
renown.

Elizabeth Navas once told me that a critic had said to her, "Fifty

1135

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 Mr. Victore, the art 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, but I inferred that he has been straining his nerves. With Kootz he has

1521

October 13, 1959 -- New York

José Guerrero brought with him when he arrived at my apartment the crayon drawing I bought from him on the occasion of my visiting his studio. I was pleased by it, seeing it a second time. Jose told me that he too has come to recognize its special merit. The forms are in a rich blue and move transversely across a white space. It was rolled without even a mat, so we discussed how it might be framed. He spoke of a special kind of frame he

2158

for two Matisses.

I am finally allowed to see the drawings on the nearby wall. Several
are early creations by De Kooning, when De Kooning followed Ingres. there
are Giacomettis, a small sketch by Joan Mitchell -- with flair. he takes
me upstairs. We see a Mathieu gouache, some odd contemporary Brazilian
sculptures, I catch a glimpse of several of his drawings as one sees them
in *The New Yorker* and of his calligraphic spoofs that are closer to pure
art. Calligraphy is his fascination. In the midst of our conversation,
after I have mentioned which of two Giacometti drawings I prefer (and he
seems in accord), he stops me short with the remark that he has not yet
finally determined whether to participate. He wanted to talk with me; now
he will need several more days to think it over. I conceal my outrage. As
he mentions a twelve o'clock luncheon engagement, I am ushered out with no
real opportunity to settle what might be in the show if he is indeed to
contribute to it, as is now in doubt.

I don't wonder that artists are often considered dubious people by
non-artists. Steinberg capriciously ignoring his previous commitment,
disregarding time schedules, making up his mind in accordance with his

2123

personal dictates; Greene vomiting drunkenly in the bathroom of the museum guest house; Ossorio strange, devious; Libow in a rage with a man who has generously paid his rent, his anger generated because of an unfortunate emphasis on the merely practical in a renewed offer of help; Picasso using art as an instrument of power.

At three this afternoon I turned up at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University to audit the first in a series of lectures on the art history of Rome.

The Institute (such a favorite place with Bill Dane) is this season housed in a Fifth Avenue mansion that was originally the home of James B. Duke, the tobacco man. Its situation is handy to the Metropolitan Museum.

Our lecturer, Dr. Krautheimer, is undistinguished looking. Indeed, I can imagine mistaking him for the superintendent of a lower class apartment house come up to fix a jambed window. In contrast his audience of young men in dark suits (with a few exceptions) and attractively dressed young women looked very "New York Metropolitan."

I equipped myself in advance with a notebook in which I took many notes, as my memory is undependable. T throughout the lecture we were shown

2124

hundreds of photographic slides of Rome: old maps, pictures of Roman
ruins, 17th century churches, modern Rome.

Dr. Krautheimer's major point today was to distinguish between the
image of Rome and its reality.

The image, evolving from the relics of imperial Rome, has varied
during centuries. It is a selective presentation put forward by travel
agents that distorts reality.

Dr. Krautheimer, whose Germanic accent obliges me to listen
attentively to what he is saying, proposes to familiarize us with aspects
of Rome, artistically speaking, that lie outside the prevalent image.

Because Peter Selz's "New Images of Man" focuses attention upon the
figurative element in contemporary painting, I have been led to recognize
yet another way in which the American painter has recently been handling
this subject. I could call this "merged figuration" because what I am
thinking of is a skillful blending of the human outline into the overall
pictorial surface so that the outline is virtually unperceived. The fig-
ures in the paintings and sculptures of the museum exhibit are remarkable
usually for distortion of an original sort -- the strange creatures of

2125

Dubuffet's imagination, the faceless phantoms of Oliveira, Jan Múller's witches, etc. As figures they are unmistakably visible. But three artists whose work I have bought within the past year, who treat the figure quite normally, without any implications of terror, violence or ugliness, nevertheless, as they are working during a period of abstraction, have chosen to subordinate their figures to the abstract qualities of the picture. I am thinking of the torso drawn in charcoal by Jack Tworkov, a strong drawing, but so done that at least one person who looked at it did not even see the body, only an abstractly worked out distribution of areas of black and white. Of the recent drawings of Harold Altman in which the weighting of the component strokes is so equalized that individual figures are merely suggested and blend evenly into the masses that form the picture, and finally of the little oil I bought by Robert Goodnough, in which the seated figure is barely suggested, as are the trees rising above it (I say "above" because the aspect in back of it is precisely what has been eliminated), all done by strokes of color that give no solidity to body or trees, ground or sky; place all these strokes of color on the same plane, an interweaving of browns, blues and greens that composes into an abstraction.

2126

ship bound for the Aleutian Islands where he was long stationed by the
military. Charles was very impressed by him. Charles himself told of his
early experiences working in the theatre.

October 1959 -- New York

Somewhat reluctantly, almost indeed from a dutiful sense of "keeping abreast," I made a round of galleries Saturday. In the morning David Herbert, nectically preparing an opening exhibition at the gallery he is launching, came by, late, to borrow the Boddidnarma figure that I purchased from him in Gumps in San Francisco. He is starting off with an exhibit of items that he loves and at one time sold to various people.

I was perhaps mean in not allowing him to borrow Pollock's Arabesque, but I dislike the risk involved in its being carried down five flights of stairs as it must when leaving my apartment. Anyway, David has been good-humored about it and instead borrowed the Ming figure, an awl and two screweyes.

Vernon had dinner with me Saturday evening. He waxed astonishingly enthusiastic over my newly acquired painting by Luis Feito. A few years ago Vernon was provocatively scornful of all abstracts. Familiarity with my collection has developed his eye for the contemporary, as he acknowledges.

On Sunday morning I set off by bus at ten o'clock from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to visit Bill and Helen Ronald at Kingston, New Jersey.

Until the last twenty minutes of the trip, what appalling, business-perverted landscape! But the environs of Kingston, Princetown itself and beyond are lovely. It was a warm sunny Sunday, unseasonably hot for Octo-

1558

ber. I arrived before 11:30. On entering the Ronald's living room I beheld at once the tall, extraordinary Arrival III that stood ten feet tall, in its three clamped together sections, at the farther end of the room. Its shape is unusual. As Bill says, it is "wild." A huge creature, like a portent from outer space, rushes across the canvas. I was fascinated by this monstrous picture. I combined my personal enthusiasm with the prediction to Bill that some people will consider the painting hideous, disturbing, repellent. To me it is exciting, electrically alert, an eye-catcher that I could not resist gazing at whenever I came in the room. I was not seeing it to top advantage because the mantle of the fireplace behind it projects. The wall itself competes with the as yet unframed painting.

His other notable painting, 79 or 80 inches tall and 64 wide, is suggestive of a vast, gruesome head, an inhuman head. It bears the sinister title, *The Visitor*. I came eventually to decide that it is, in painterly terms, the top picture of Ronald's most recent work. He himself believes it his best. He reported that the critic Clement Greenberg, who was at the Ronalds' house the previous weekend, was high in admiration for it. When an artist quotes unpublished praise by a critic about his own work, one may question his accuracy, but Bill tells me Greenberg is frank to state his dislike when he does dislike. The merit of *The Visitor* is such that I would expect admiration from a critic reputed to be as discerning as Greenberg. Greenberg evidently committed himself less fully to Arrival III, although for me it so dominated the room that I examined the other paintings only by an effort. One, done on two adjacent parts, I could not like, although Bill himself favors it.

Helen, who is still a marvelously pretty and sweet young woman, served

1559

a simple early luncheon. I talked and played with little Suzanne, who has just passed her second birthday and is a refined, smart, chatty, very feminine little miss. Bill says he loves her so much that he's terrified by the intensity of his feeling for her. She's well behaved. He boasts that she never touches a painting. When by accident she does, she cries. His immense delight is that she distinguishes and calls a figurative picture a picture and an abstraction a painting.

After luncheon Bill took me for an automobile drive in the countryside beyond Princeton, losing his way frequently.

I awoke Monday morning with my mind occupied by confused, troubled thoughts of Bill's two larger paintings. They seemed to demand my attention. We had talked some on Sunday about my acquiring The Visitor, although before I came to Kingston I said definitely to Bill that I could not afford to purchase another of his canvases. One a year becomes a big expenditure. Bill said he would like to keep The Visitor himself. He cannot as he is under contract to Sam. Although wanting to keep it is inconsistent with wanting me to buy it, he also seems to favor my purchase of The Visitor. I told him I didn't think it to his advantage for me to hog his best canvases. They should be spread more around. Bill disagreed.

Anyway, I looked at it again during breakfast and concluded that in terms of my collection it would constitute a strong new note. It is far from being a repetition of The Raven, Zoroaster or Arrival I. Bill's work may less easily get across to the public because of the differences between his pictures; his "image" may not readily be apprehended, as in the case of artists like Soulages whose style is consistently identifiable. Personally I believe that in the long run his reputation will gain from his diversity. It is possible that I overestimate him, that some sort of a spell has been

1560

worked upon me by his personality, that I am corrupted in judgment by pride
or vanity in seeing his work almost before anyone else and being given
favorable prices. At least I am aware of these as possible factors and try
to weigh them in reaching my estimate of him as a painter. Some of his
paintings are underfelt or undernourished spiritually. They suffer from
emptiness. Perhaps Zoroaster does not hold up as it should, but, as he
said himself, an artist can't produce more than one or two masterworks a
season. His paintings can be strong, striking, virtuoso, underdone, ele-
gant, terrifying. They have range.

Bill is a young man barely entering maturity. He should have ahead of
him at least another thirty years for painting. If he grows as an artist,
what may he not achieve? Or will he fizzle out like so many other promis-
ing talents?

Sam has more than once mentioned what he calls Bill's "fear" of paint.
I do not fully understand that criticism. To me The Visitor is a bold and
painterly picture. Yet fear is a word that relates appropriately to Bill.
He is subject to nervous, temperamental fears: the fear of riding in
elevators, of his child getting encephalitis, of his hospitality failing,
of his income not being equal to expenses. Fear acts strongly upon his
moods. How it affects his actions I do not know. But he speaks of fears.
Without Helen to calm him, might he not go into a tailspin?

Fear and creativity are not necessarily incompatible I believe. One
has only to think of Marcel Proust writing *Remembrance of Things Past* in
the isolation of his cork-lined room to know that the neurotic personality
can be artistically fecund.

While I was at the Ronalds' Bill mentioned that he never reads the art
criticism in the New York press, to the disapproval of a Princeton faculty

1561

friend of his. Indifference? Conceit? Fear? When I referred to a
printed statement with which he was unfamiliar by the French critic, Michel
Ragon, concerning his paintings (I quoted Ragon as having said Bill is
"Torn between Soulages and Dubuffet") he became upset. The allusion to
Soulages he found incredible. Yet the beautiful water color I have by Bill
has its affinities with the mood and style of Soulages, while the rugged,
terror aspect of his oil, The Visitor suggests something of the mentality
of Dubuffet.

As I was boarding the bus to return to New York -- it stops conven-
iently before the Ronalds' door when flagged -- Bill muttered something
like, "Remember to get The Visitor."

In the late afternoon, at the opening of David Herbert's new gallery,
I ran across that nervous young art historian, Robert Rosenblum, who gives
courses at Princeton. I mentioned that I had just been seeing the Ronalds,
with whom he once had supper more than a year ago and whose first show
Rosenblum professed to admire. "Dr. Bob", as Bill Dane calls him, confided
that he thinks Bill Ronald "is slipping a little as a painter." Will that
be his judgment after the next Ronald show?

At David Herbert's, wandering around as nervously as Bob Rosenblum and
speaking to almost no one (he was waiting for Steve Joy) was that intense
young painter, Lauren Libow (I don't know the correct spelling of his name)
who talked so eloquently in my rooms a week before about his hard fate. At
first he did not notice me. When I spoke he permitted me to present him to
several people.

David's inaugural show consists of borrowed works that were personally
sold by him when he was employed elsewhere. It features Arshile Gorky,
Pollock, Kline and Nevelson. In his inner sales room, on a pedestal and

1562

softly lit from above, sat my Boddidharma, contemplative and lovely for all the world as if it were again in a place of worship. David was working in San Francisco when I purchased it. Linc Brownell, with whom I was to eat and go to the first of Leo Steinberg's lectures on "The Art of the 17th Century," joined me in the gallery. We walked uptown to a restaurant. He was in a gloomy mood, having been to call upon an elderly relative, enormously wealthy, for whom he is to be executor. She talked dismally of her approaching death. Her darkness of mind impinged upon the cheerfulness with which he had reached her and was in turn communicated to me.

Leo Steinberg's lecture was most interesting. He delivers himself well; the auditorium was packed. What he had to say about the relevance of the human figure to the architectural designing of the late medieval period, the relation of Christ on the cross to the layout of cathedrals, etc., was new to me, as was his explanation of Michaelangelo's anthropokinematic (as he dubbed it) approach to architectural design.

In Steinberg's view, Michaelangelo was vitally concerned with the human body in motion -- not merely with its measurements or proportions -- but with its movements. This interest was translated into the forms he developed in his architectural designs.

Linc had to hurry off to catch his train to Douglas Manor. As it was only ten o'clock, I decided to attend the opening at Andre Emmerich's gallery. His parties usually draw the leaders of the New York art world. I glimpsed Rothko, Stamos, Paul Brach, Brach's wife, the artist, Miriam Shapiro, and other familiar persons. The crowd in the garden was so close-packed that I had no contact with them. I enjoyed seeing my fellow collector, Don Blinken, and his darkly beautiful wife. They leave New York soon for a many months' stay in Hamburg, Germany. I had a long chat also

1563

with Adair Chambers, who heads the APF framing concern. David and Sylvia Chapin introduced me to a strange, tall, thin, ugly man who works in one of the departments of the Museum of Modern Art, and was once like me a student at Moses Brown School.

When I awoke Tuesday morning, a troubled insistent recollection of Bill Ronald's two big paintings was again occupying my consciousness. It seemed almost as if my sub-conscious during the night had been grappling with the problem of whether to buy The Visitor. This kind of "naunting" by a picture occurred once previously when my mind wrestled, some years ago, with the question of whether to acquire an Alan Davie oil. But it is uncommon. I felt it might be an omen. The Visitor was going to get me if I didn't get The Visitor.

Jose Guerrero, with whom I had been having a long talk in the Emmerich garden, was to have joined me at noon for luncheon and a look at my studio. He rang to ask for a postponement saying he was afflicted with a sore throat. I was settling down to the payment of bills and intending to write in this diary when Sam Kootz called to invite me to join him next day on a visit to the framers', where he has all his newly arrived Emil Schumacher paintings.

Concerning Schumacher I have evinced an anticipatory interest. The paintings came from Europe and were delayed in unloading from their ship so that Sam himself had not yet seen them, although he wished to do so promptly in order to write his opinion to the artist. I formed the notion sometime ago, compounded of respect for the painterly qualitites of the one Schumacher oil I'd seen, for Sam's judgment in taking on new foreign artists, and experience with his price-raising policy, that I probably would wish to acquire a Schumacher oil from this first year's group. Sam was

1564

thus being kind to offer me a preview.

Since my lectures at the Institute take place Wednesdays, I replied that I'd best be able to accompany him at once. He agreed; within an hour we were at the framers' workshop. Since the elevator operator has his lunch hour from 12 to 1, we had to climb six flights of stairs. Only one of the Schumachers so far was framed. It wasn't easy to judge these paintings scattered amidst work benches. We did, however, look at each one. In the taxi I told Sam I was in a quandary over one of Bill Ronald's oils. I was tempted by it, but felt it would be greedy of me to snatch up yet another, etc., etc. I presented all the arguments against my acquiring The Visitor that I had cited to Bill himself. Sam hadn't an instant's doubt that I should become its possessor. He promised to work out a satisfactory price if I took it plus a Schumacher.

Before we left the framers I made my choice of a small Schumacher. We returned to his gallery and were to go together at once to luncheon, but for a quarter hour he was detained by an art dealer from Chicago who wanted to explore the possibility of renting Sam's present premises. Sam was delighted at this prospect. It will relieve him of a considerable financial commitment if he can find a tenant who will take over his lighting system, storage racks and other gallery equipment as well as the seven remaining years of his lease. He came out to join me in what I imagine was a pleased frame of mind. He then went over the price list for the Schumachers, checked the size of the Ronald, and made me an offer that deducted $100 from the cost of the Schumacher.

He set the price of The Visitor at $1,500. I had not dreamed of getting it for that figure. The deal was thus settled to my satisfaction, although I think Bill Ronald's pride may be injured to have his painting,

1565

on which he expended vast energy and an amount of paint that he claimed
(with exaggeration I suspect) to have cost him at least $250, disposed of
unseen, except for a photo, by his dealer for only $1,500. It is naturally
gratifying to an artist and augers better for his future income, if
collectors are willing to pay high and ever higher amounts for his produc-
tions.

With the acquisition of The Visitor, I think I now have the finest
collection of Ronalds in existence. But I am eager for his sake and even
selfishly for my own, that he go on to surpass his present achievements. I
nave the guilty feeling that I am "investing" in his future and consequent-
ly wish the satisfaction of seeing his future brilliant. If he "slips
off," as Bob Rosenblum hints, I have been unwise. And yet, in the cold
calculation of dollars, my four large Ronald oils and one water color have
together cost me less that $5,000, an amount inferior to what I put into
Hofmann's The Pond. Moreover, it is a matter of public record that the
Philadelphia Museum of Art recently paid $35,000 for an oil painting,
Ground Hog Day, by Andrew Wyeth who is several years younger than I am and,
unlike Pollock, is alive and still producing, albeit his pictures, bewitch-
ingly realistic, require so long to complete that his output lags behind
demand. Yet Wyeth is not admired by all. It was at the opening of his last
exhibit that Kiichi refused to remain because he so disliked his work!

I long to know how the museums of 2059 will evaluate Ronald's The
Visitor and Wyeth's Ground Hog Day.

Enough of this collector's meandering. I worked again at my studio,
revisited the Emmerich Gallery to settle on a Yunkers pastel for the AFA
project (Yunkers himself, working overtime to prepare for his show, could
not yield one as a loan) and later turned up at the Borgenicht Gallery for

1566

Ilya Bolotowsky's opening. It was painfully hot. The artist himself, until more people arrived, was going about in shirtsleeves. He is one of the few "hard edge" painters functioning in the Mondrian tradition in America or at least whom New York galleries exhibit.

How different is the flowing paint in abstractions from nature to be seen in Jim Harvey's oils! Jim's show was another must opening for me. Again it was extraordinarily hot. Cocktails were served. I had to be present for some while as I was waiting for Bill Dane to come in from Newark. We were to attend an archeological lecture at the Met after we ate together. Like Linc, Bill has to get back to his suburban home promptly, so, once we had separated, I wandered into Leo Castelli's evening opening of new quarters for his gallery. The place was jammed. Anita Marca-Relli, Nassos Daphnis, Felix Pasilis (who said he wanted me to come to his studio and would also like to visit mine, where, he somewhat condescendingly assured me, he wouldn't be "too hard on me" as he knows I am just a .... He left it unfinished), Ivan Karp, Reva Urban, Richard Stankiewicz, Martha Jackson, Steve Joy, were just some of those with whom I remember talking. Waiters were passing around glasses of excellent brandy. One could barely see the exhibition. I left sagging with fatigue from the heat and asking myself, when have I been to such a senseless round of parties, seeing the same people over and over again within the same day, at least when since my college Christmas holidays while the debutante parties were taking place in Providence, or during my months in the Madrid diplomatic corps?

Is what is happening to the art set in New York desirable? This increasing prosperity, these expanding, thriving galleries? This frequency of openings? Hasn't the pace quickened, prosperity too obviously increased since, let us say, 1954? The past five years have seen the School of New

1567

York emerge from obscurity and poverty into international prominence. I wanted that to happen. Now that it seems to have occurred, I worry about the effects. Will the big money prospects and the fashionableness that now appears to cloak American painting do it harm? -- I sound like the script writer for a soap opera.

Wednesday evening Virginia gave a supper party in her apartment to which she invited two of her colleagues at the American Federation of Arts, Anne Kobin and Margaret Cogswell, as well as myself. All four of us went afterwards to my place so that Anne and Peg could see my collection.

Since next morning Budworth's movers were to come by to take Hofmann's The Pond to ship to the Art Institute of Chicago, I asked the ladies to help me hang Feito's painting in its place (similar shape and dimensions). Then I decided to replace Baziotes' Aerial with Hofmann's Fortissimo which hasn't been on my walls since it came back from Providence.

The following night Richard Stankiewicz dined with me in order that afterwards we might together take the four pieces by him that are in my apartment to his studio. Until recently his creations were unsigned. Perhaps because he now has many imitators using scrap metal, he has had made steel stencils. On the anvil in his studio, while I held the sculptures, he took his sledgehammer and pounded into their bases RS and the dates of each piece's origin. The S of his stencil is a strange one, copied from his writing.

When he whacked The Travels of the Pussycat King, the heaviest iron part broke cleanly off. He promptly welded it on again, assuring me that his present tool for this is superior to his old one. Thus "it will be better than ever," i.e., will adhere more firmly than previously.

He says Dorothy Miller was much intrigued by the photo of the Travels

1568

of the Pussycat King but told him the museum has borrowed so much from me
that, presumably, she will not seek to include it in her selection.

Richard decided I should take home my part-paid-for acquisition of the
summer. I remarked that it must eventually be graced with a title; the
other pieces all have them. "It will have to be called something like
Assault," he answered.

"Why not Assault?" was my reply, and so it was agreed.

It was a rainy night. Richard was willing to return uptown with me,
carrying half of the sculptures. I said that would be unnecessary if he
would help me find a cab and assist me into it; my doorman at home would
carry some pieces into the elevator.

With his umbrella and raincoat between us to improvise shelter, we
were forced, by the absence of taxis, to lock the sculptures inside his
entranceway and walk a number of blocks to a more favorable corner. After
several disappointments and a quarter hour's wait, we got hold of an empty
taxi. We rode back to Richard's and loaded in the five rusty objects that
in my collection represent his art.

The young colored taxi driver beneld these with suspicion. I said
they are modern sculptures that my friend created. The driver told me
that, as he is stupid, I must explain them to him. I balked at making this
effort so late at night. He snarled, "Why won't you tell me?" so threate-
ningly 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

1569

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.

October 11, 1959 -- Hammond Hill

On Friday morning I took a train to Kingston and was perturbed on arrival some minutes late to find that Mother and Celia had not arrived to fetch me. Mother invariably reaches a railway station a full ten minutes early. Had they had an accident driving over?

What happened was that Mother mistook the 2:21 arrival time for 2:51. Even so I had barely five minute's wait, so punctual did she intend to be.

She is just getting over an arthritic spell. Her general condition is improved over July when she was timid about going anywhere. Last evening for example, she asked me to take her to church in Kingston. She hasn't been to a church service on a Sunday since her operation. As far as I can tell, it was no strain on her.

Unfortunately the regular clergyman whom we both find interesting had given up his pulpit to a minister of Philippine origin who is temporarily in Rhode Island assigned to care for migrant farm laborers. The Rev. Mr. Gonzales described the conditions throughout the country of migrants. He has worked with Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and Spanish Americans in New York State, Tennessee and New Mexico.

I found his report highly interesting. He spoke well and clearly; but he does have a trace of accent.

Mother told me as we left Kingston that although she had heard the

1570

sound made by his voice, she had been unable to distinguish individual
words, and therefore had not been able to take in a single sentence of his
sermon.

I have experienced something like this frustrating mal-comprenension
while listening to orations in Spanish when my ear was not attuned to that
language. The sounds register but their meaning does not.

Mother's hearing aid is effective enough for her to enjoy listening to
me read aloud, however. She sits only a few feet distant. I brought with
me from New York and have begun reading Ivan Turgenev's _Virgin Soil_, a
novel that we both enjoy. Reading such a book, with its dramatization of
the conspiratorial attitudes of revolutionary-minded Russians in the late
1860s, helps me to see the Soviet Union in perspective. The anti-Soviet
propaganda amidst which we all necessarily live blunts the intelligence.
It is hard to keep in mind the abuses and ferments of the old Russia, to
recall the nearness to our own times of serfdom, to remember Nihilism.

I suspect many of us Americans, if closely examined, would reveal the
firm belief that Communism in the Soviet Union owes its origin to a sudden
successful plot by a bunch of evil theorists. Their dominance has been
maintained because all the educated and landed classes were exiled,
imprisoned or killed. The small group in power monopolizes and controls
everything so closely that the people have never had a chance to escape to
normality; the secret police keeps them under perpetual, cruel surveil-
lance. That is the generalized picture that we exploit today in the cold
war. I accept its truth myself. Yet when I read such a book as
Turgenev's--and after all, he was a wealthy aristocrat with a cosmopolitan
mind -- I am bound to see the inevitability, the suitability to local
conditions, of much that has occurred in Russia in the 20th century.

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The Communist leaders have now controlled Russia for over forty years. It is naive to suppose that, given an enlightened free choice, the Russian people would have preferred Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower as their leaders. Conditions in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries argue a different development from that of our America.

October 12, 1959 -- New York

I came away from Hammond Hill clutching a gift check of a thousand dollars from Mother.

One of her agonies over the weekend has been the proper balancing of her checkbook. She is a stickler for keeping her financial records accurately. With her dim eyesight, she was working herself into a frenzy trying to understand various transactions. Luckily I was able to grasp the general tenor of what has happened.

It came as a surprise to her that I was able to be of assistance.

This struggle with the records showed that her bank balance exceeds $20,000. In accepting today's gift, I felt I was not depriving her of ready cash. She asked me yesterday if I have bought any new art. I wasn't altogether frank. First I admitted to getting a drawing by Harold Altman. Then when she asked if there was anything else, I told her about Luis Feito's oil, showing her a pnoto of one of his paintings published in the current issue of *Art International*. I hadn't the courage to confess to my recent transaction with Sam Kootz. Mother thinks Kootz is a pretty slick salesman. In any event, the combination of the abnormally high balance in her checking account (her broker has been on vacation) and my new acquisitions evidently decided her that this would be a suitable occasion to make gifts to Marion and me.

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As Linc Brownell is out of town, Vernon joined me in going to dinner and attending Leo Steinberg's lecture. We both found it stimulating. Steinberg continued the subject of the background of Mannerist architecture, putting further stress upon the onetime interaction between architecture and anatomy, an interaction that is today, in Steinberg's phrase, "inconceivable."

He recommended for reading a volume by Geoffrey Scott, published first in 1914, called *The Architecture of Humanism*. Vernon observed me noting its title, gave me a poke and whispered, "I gave you that book several years ago." Vernon never forgets. I forget so thoroughly that I believed myself totally unfamiliar with this title. On reaching home I scanned my bookcases and presently found the little paperback.

October 12, 1959 -- RBB to his mother

Harvey [sic] Arnason, the director of the Walker Art Center, telephoned me from Minneapolis this afternoon to say he wants to call on me next Monday afternoon to discuss the scope and timing of the loan exhibit.

October 13, 1959 -- New York

Jose Guerrero brought with him when he arrived at my apartment the crayon drawing I bought from him on the occasion of my visiting his studio. I was pleased by it, seeing it a second time. Jose told me that he too has come to recognize its special merit. The forms are in a rich blue and move transversely across a white space. It was rolled without even a mat, so we discussed how it might be framed. He spoke of a special kind of frame he 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

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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. Jose 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 Hirschl and 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.

Jose 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.

We took a bus up to the seventies and stopped off at Kulicke'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 Jose is being paid
for the drawing itself.

Then Jose 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' League. 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. Jose

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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 nor 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
thoughtfully passed on to me his invitation. Jose 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 who 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, Jose and 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 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

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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.

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 clotning, 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 Cezanne.

Could my prejudice in favor of high art be misplaced? These beautiful

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