17 Contemporary American Painters the Crossmedial Exhibition As Propaganda

17 Contemporary American Painters The Crossmedial Exhibition as Propaganda

11 Elizabeth Ferrell How can we make dif!cult art more understandable to the people? How can we make them understand that these abstract artists aren’t madmen? The Soviet Pavilion is right across the road! Elizabeth Ferrell deconstructs a Cold-War infused exhibition of American abstract expressionist art.

Despite its message of world unity, the Brussels tion’s forty-four paintings by the following artists: World’s Fair of 1958 (the !rst after World War William Baziotes, James Boynton, Lawrence II) was a Cold-War battleground. Its Belgian Calgagno, Nicholas Carone, Richard Diebenkorn, hosts – perhaps recognizing that competition Jimmy Ernst, Sonia Gechtoff, Grace Hartigan, would prevail over the event’s pretense of Ellsworth Kelly, William Kienbusch, George international cooperation less than a year after Mueller, Kyle Morris, Bernard Perlin, Corrado Sputnik’s launch – set the stage for a confrontation Marca-Relli, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, between the Soviet Union and the United States and Lundy Siegriest.4 by assigning the sparring powers adjoining plots. Although the jury’s proceedings were con- The fairground mapped the riven geopolitical !dential, some of its selection criteria are known. landscape as the blocky, neo-classical Soviet Staemp"i asked the committee to pick artists Pavilion – a monument to totalitarian techné under forty-!ve years of age from diverse regions according to the U.S. press – faced off against the of the country. They also calculated their choices airy rotunda of the American Pavilion – which to appeal to young, sophisticated Europeans – in the domestic media interpreted as a symbol of other words, to the continent’s future ruling class.5 democratic freedom and transparency.1 The U.S. government had been targeting this de- The ideological stakes were therefore mographic for several years with traveling shows incredibly high for the four visual art exhibitions curated by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) featured in the U.S. Pavilion.2 The contemporary in New York.6 During the Brussels Expo, two painting show – matter-of-factly titled 17 Con- state-sponsored exhibitions, The New American temporary American Painters – was assembled Painting and Jackson Pollock, toured Europe under the auspices of the American Federation of promoting abstract-expressionist painting as a the Arts with the leadership of George Staemp"i, manifestation of the personal freedom granted by a former curator of paintings at the Museum of capitalist democracy.7 Museum curators portrayed Fine Art in Houston who would open a modern art the paintings’ non-objective subject matter as gallery in New York the following year.3 A jury of evidence of the artists’ individual liberty. MoMA’s three museum professionals selected the exhibi- director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., made this pitch in

12 Kunstlicht nr. 4 – 2012 1a.

The New American Painting catalog: ‘In principle recognition earlier in the decade for his portraits [the artists’] individualism is […] uncompromis- of abstract-expressionist artists) to travel the ing […]. For them, John Donne to the contrary, country photographing each artist in his or her each man is an island.’8 (The passage references a ‘native’ habitat.12 Staemp"i then selected several famous line from ‘Meditation XVII’ of Donne’s prints of each artist and assembled them – along Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624): ‘No with a brief biographical sketch by Namuth – on man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a individual panels. These were displayed in slanted piece of continent, a part of the main.’) This state vitrines in the center of the exhibition space, while of liberty was ideally recreated for viewers by the paintings hung on walls around the periphery presenting the works in a white cube environment, (!gs. 1a & b). without interpretation or contextualization.9 While By including photographs, the show generally not as well-known as the established ab- violated the white cube exhibition design that stract expressionists featured in MoMA’s cultural MoMA used both at home and abroad.13 The white propaganda, the artists picked for 17 Contem- walls and minimal furniture of MoMA’s galleries porary American Painters worked in a similar were supposed to erase context, communicate the style.10 All of the paintings included in the show sovereignty of the artist’s expression and enable were abstract, and a majority of canvases were big, viewers’ direct and purely aesthetic experience bold, and gestural. of the artworks. Namuth’s photographs invaded However, the Brussels show differed from this pristine, decontextualized space like an alien MoMA’s traveling exhibitions in one crucial spacecraft. They forced the paintings to interact respect: it accompanied the display of paintings with a foreign medium and smuggled the outside with photographs and written descriptions world inside the gallery’s cloistering walls. They of the artists who made them.11 Staemp"i also swapped all pretense of direct engagement commissioned Hans Namuth (who had gained for a declaratively mediated experience of the

13 Contemporary American Painters – Elizabeth Ferrell 1b. 1a & 1b: Photographer unknown, installation photographs of 17 Contemporary American Painters in the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, 1958. National Archives, College Park, MD: Records Re- lating to the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition, 1956-1959, RG 59, Photographs nos. 59-WF-58 1010-15 and 59-WF-58 1010-13. Courtesy National Archives.

exhibited works. The installation mobilized a speak to the ideological imperatives of the U.S.’s viewing process that spanned media and visual participation in the Brussels Expo and, more gen- languages, in which abstract paintings, represen- erally, of American abstract painting during the tational photographs, and written biographical Cold War?14 Since the photo-panels are lost, I base information mingled in the audience’s perception my analysis on archival evidence of the exhibi- and consciousness. tion’s production, installation shots, reviews, and The exhibition was not received well in photographs that Namuth took for the commission the American press. What went wrong? What but which may or may not have been included in accounts for the curious eruption of photography the show.15 and text into the abstract art exhibition? Did their Staemp"i succinctly described the photo- inclusion contribute to the critics’ unfavorable panels’ intended function in a memorandum from assessment? What aesthetic and political purposes 1957: ‘Photographs of the artists would go a long was this interplay of media supposed to serve? way towards humanizing this otherwise rather How, in sum, did the crossmedial exhibition abstract exhibit.’16 His statement con"ates multiple design of 17 Contemporary American Painters connotations of the words ‘humanize’ and

14 Kunstlicht nr. 4 – 2012 ‘abstract,’ collapsing each term’s reference to an freedom and disparaged as a sign of the nation’s artistic language with the type of viewing experi- lack of social cohesion. Photography was often ence it was thought to prompt. Thus ‘abstract’ framed as a medium capable of illuminating the signi!es both the non-objective character of the obscurity of abstraction and, consequently, of exhibition’s paintings and their abstruseness, restoring the balance between self and society.18 while ‘humanize’ conveys both the photographs’ This idea evidenced a tremendous period faith in representational nature and their capacity to make photography as a communication and social-en- the works more relatable.17 gineering tool, a belief that bolstered the extreme The idea that photography is a unifying popularity of illustrated weeklies (such as Life force capable of compensating for the alienating magazine) and documentary photo-exhibitions effects of abstract painting was commonplace (such as The Family of Man) in mid-century when Staemp"i expressed it. As Abstract Expres- America.19 The peculiar exhibition design of 17 sionism rose to national prominence in the 1950s, Contemporary American Painters re"ects this exhibitions and popular publications accounted period con!dence in photojournalism. for the dif!culty of abstraction when marketing it The details of Namuth’s assignment indicate to mass audiences. This situation, in combination that Staemp"i wanted the photo-displays to temper with the nation’s Cold-War values, gave rise to the the paintings’ ‘individualism’ both by creating narrative that the artworks’ obtuseness re"ected a more comprehensive viewing experience and the extreme individualism of their makers. The by depicting the artists as integral members of artist’s autonomy was a highly politicized and American society. He charged Namuth with contested construct in postwar America because it capturing the artist ‘in the context [of] his daily was intimately tied to contemporary debates about surroundings’ and in ‘relationship to [. . .] his the individual’s relation to society. The challenge family and friends’ – speci!cations clearly that abstract art posed to public communication calculated to counter the image of the isolated was both celebrated as a declaration of individual artist.20 Staemp"i explained, ‘I cannot overstress

15 Contemporary American Painters – Elizabeth Ferrell 2. Hans Namuth, Ellsworth Kelly with Delphine Seyrig and Duncan Youngerman in Kelly’s Coenties Slip studio, 1958, photograph. Reproduced in: Diane Upright, Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1987, p. 195.

the importance of demonstrating with good as it normalizes the spaces and relations of that photographic material that each of [these artists] is bohemian collective through strategic framing. human and has normal community ties, families Namuth not only situated the artists and all that.’21 Namuth’s documentation of each socially; he placed each within a series of nested artist’s connectedness ‘to the people and things physical environments – home, neighborhood, with which he lives’ was ultimately supposed city – that ended, conceptually, with the nation, to illuminate his belonging to the national a context represented by the Pavilion housing the community.22 Staemp"i wanted the photographs installation. A photograph of William Baziotes, to contextualize each artist within ‘the “American for example, adamantly contextualizes the artist way of life”,’ the nation’s common cultural habits within a speci!c milieu (!g. 3). Namuth places and the ideological principles thought to underlie the artist in the street. A row of boys crowds close them.23 to the lens, eliding the foreground and "atten- In keeping with his assignment, Namuth ing the cityscape of large apartment blocks and depicted the artist as a thoroughly social animal. wide streets beyond. Baziotes is nearly lost in the His seemingly candid shots frequently capture fray: his head and shoulders barely peak above the artists interacting with other people and the boys’ caps, and one of their arms threatens to performing ordinary roles in society (e.g., the occlude him altogether. Only Namuth’s selec- artist as family man, neighbor, teacher, et cetera). tive focus and an arrow-like tree differentiate the When combined on the panels, these images artist within the photograph’s jostling visual !eld. mapped each artist’s network of private and public The shot takes pains to perceptually integrate the relationships. Furthermore, they often implicate white, middle-aged artist with his Harlem neigh- the viewer within the normalized social scenes borhood, an environment which the photograph they represent. One typical shot situates the viewer codes as urban, working class, African American, as Ellsworth Kelly’s dinner guest (!g. 2). The and vibrantly youthful.26 fragmentary composition and low angle of view Namuth’s photographs represent relation- create the illusion that the viewer is ‘in’ the scene ships and places particular to each artist’s life – sitting across the table from the conversing but do so in ways that familiarize them – that !t artist in his Manhattan loft, which was part of the the speci!c details of individual biography into Coenties-Slip artists’ colony.24 In the background, typical, non-threatening molds. Thus Kelly’s com- a woman and small child play in the commodious munal and queer Coenties-Slip circle resembles interior.25 The artist – a gay man – appears to a heterosexual family, and Baziotes’ Harlem perform both gender- and hetero-normative roles a friendly neighborhood where ‘the color line within this web of interactions staged across the does not exist’ – perhaps suggesting that these photograph’s lateral composition. Like many of American artists are approachable and not that Namuth’s photographs of Kelly, this one represents different from the European audience.27 In these him within the Coenties-Slip community even photographs, difference provides super!cial inter-

est that gives way easily to a sense of commonal- Her use of the phrase ‘picture here’ to join her ity. Staemp"i expressed this imperative in his description of the photograph to the quote conjures directions to Namuth: ‘What we would like to get a spatial – speci!cally, caption-like – relationship across to our large foreign audiences is that the between the two media that did not exist on the artist is not only a creator but also and simply a panels, where the text was presented as a solid human being’ and thus, the statement implies, like block (the English original followed by French and the viewers.28 Namuth’s seemingly informal shots German translations) rather than fragmented and of artists smiling and socializing in everyday situ- paired with corresponding images.30 Genauer’s ations foster a congenial atmosphere that inclines reading suggests that Staemp"i’s montages resem- viewers to sympathize with those depicted. By bled an illustrated weekly’s photo-essay enough putting a relatable face to the sublime and poten- to prompt a similar viewing experience – one in tially disturbing works, the photographs provided which photographs appeared to illustrate (i.e., to a sometimes misleading human-interest angle into serve as informational and rhetorical equivalents the show’s abstract paintings. of) prose.31 This photojournalistic relationship The photojournalistic style of both between text and image facilitates (deceptively) Namuth’s images and Staemp"i’s arrangement of clear communication by anchoring polysemous them was vital to conveying the artists’ approach- pictures to speci!c, stable meanings.32 Therefore, ability. Due to their documentary aesthetic, the the panels should be considered photojournalistic photographs appear uncoded; they read as direct panels, rather than photo-panels. windows into real events from the artists’ daily At times, Namuth protested the aesthetic lives. This !ction of transparency was essential to strictures imposed by the Brussels project. His each panel’s ability to acquaint viewers with the creative con"icts with Staemp"i are manifest in artist in a seemingly natural way – through his a letter criticizing the curator’s choice of photo- or her biographical sketch and (simulated) social graphs for the panels: interactions. Emily Genauer’s review for the New York Herald Tribune indicates that the panels’ To give you an example: I am quite disap- text contributed to the images’ explicitness. She pointed that in the case of Marca-Relli you are excerpts a passage accompanying Bernard Perlin’s omitting the large photograph of his face; I panel: ‘He keeps to himself and goes three times a value this picture very much; the same applies week to the gymnasium for exercise (picture here to the face of Bernard Perlin with his eyes of Perlin in shorts working with dumb-bells).’29 closed which I think is an outstanding one

in the entire group. Pictures like these reveal ferent role in the viewer’s experience of abstract more about the man, in my opinion, than all artworks. Secluded in his austere studio, the artist the supermarkets in the United States.33 exempli!ed the transcendent, autonomous selfhood that the viewer ideally attained in front of Here, Namuth reveals his preference for intimate the abstract expressionists’ sublime canvases. Such portraits over the documentary, situation-based photographs drew an analogy between the subject shots Staemp"i selected. His comments indicate positions of the artist in his studio and the viewer that he also took issue with the panels’ portrayal of in the gallery that preserved the autonomy of each. artistic identity. For Namuth, the locus of the art- The archetypal portrait of the abstract-expressionist’s selfhood – and thus the most worthy subject ist artist supplemented his paintings by reinforc- to capture on !lm – was his subjective interior- ing – rather than by counterbalancing and thus, ity, not his participation in ‘the American way of contradicting – their account of the private self. life.’34 Namuth’s con"ict with Staemp"i betrayed Standing back-to-back in the middle of the gallery his allegiance to the model of artistic identity, and and facing out towards the works, Staemp"i and the conventions for representing it photographi- Namuth’s panels physically usurped the position of cally, that developed around Abstract Expression- the ideal beholder, according to the 1950s’ conven- ism in the 1940s and 1950s.35 Photographs of the tion of direct, autonomous viewing. The panel’s solitary artist absorbed in contemplation within centrality and direction, that is, implied that they his cloistered studio – such as Namuth’s portrait constituted an interpretive layer of information of Barnett Newman from 1952 (!g. 4) – pictorially between viewer and artwork. codi!ed the persona of Romantic genius adopted Namuth was not alone in objecting to 17 by many abstract expressionists.36 Such images Contemporary American Painters. The over- served as public expressions of artistic autonomy whelmingly negative press the exhibition received and the privacy of abstract art. indicates that the photojournalistic panels failed to The Brussels exhibition – perhaps due suture the tears that abstract painting was seen to to its pressing political stakes – subverted the rend in America’s social fabric. A chorus of critics tropes for representing abstract artists. Namuth’s and visitors feared that expressing individualism photographs for this occasion made over the through the language of abstraction came at an lonely visionary into an Average Joe engaged in undermining cost – communication failure. A the world around him. They also assumed a dif- reviewer for Time articulated this view: ‘They [the

18 Kunstlicht nr. 4 – 2012 artworks] leave no doubt that in the U.S. an artist Interpreting the experience of viewing art is free to pursue his personal vision and interpreta- as an inter- or intra-subjective encounter – as, that tion. The hope of the U.S. show is that this unique is, staging either the viewer’s relationship with message of freedom will make its way through the society or his alienation from it – was pervasive bewilderment.’37 Given the exhibition’s high politi- in Cold-War America. This reading is evident cal stakes, the argument went, these opaque works not only in 17 Contemporary American Painters were not only frustrating; they were dangerous. but also in MoMA’s representation of Abstract By ‘representing the wildest extremes of personal Expressionism and Life’s coverage of abstract art. liberty’, the paintings supposedly conjured a frag- 17 Contemporary American Painters represents mented America – a society unable to strike the a moment when extreme ideological pressure was proper balance between personal freedom and the put on the viewing experience of art – when the national good, private and public, individual and ability of works to communicate was analogized collective.38 By portraying Americans as atom- to the ability of individuals to relate to one another ized, decadent, and self-centered, abstract art, in society. During the Cold War, culture became commentators warned, played into Soviet propa- a stage for debates about the proper balance ganda and catalyzed dire political consequences.39 between personal freedom and societal cohesion, The fact that most reviewers did not men- individualism and collectivity. 17 Contemporary tion the photojournalistic panels and panned the American Painters attempted to simulate a bal- exhibition by rehashing clichéd criticisms of ab- anced relationship between the self and Ameri- stract art suggests that photography failed to per- can society by creating a reciprocal relationship form the mediating role that Staemp"i intended. between media. Speci!cally, Staemp"i endeavored The one review to include an analysis of Namuth’s to use photojournalism’s combination of photog- photographs and texts suggests why. Genauer’s raphy and text to compensate for the alienating unfavorable article begins by deriding the panel effects of abstract painting by staging the opposite notes and, by implication, the photographs that experience – i.e., social belonging – between illustrated them as packaged, super!cial, and viewer and artist. Ultimately, however, the two frivolous. ‘It’s completely in character with our formal languages were too disparate (and, most exposition planning,’ she continued, ‘that the same likely, the political climate too charged) for them audience !rst assumed to be sophisticated enough to cohere meaningfully in the viewer’s experience. to appreciate the most dif!cult abstractions should In hindsight, the crossmedial installation design now be addressed on the kindergarten level.’40 In of 17 Contemporary American Painters speaks to her view, the condescendingly-simplistic pan- art’s complicated liaison with society. It evidences els were inadequate because they were utterly the simultaneous con"uence of and collision be- incongruous with the works on display. Rather tween capitalist democracy’s imperialism and the than translate the paintings’ ‘sophisticated’ aes- art world’s romanticism, as well as the curator’s thetic language into a comprehendible idiom, the perilous attempts to mediate between them. photographs, in her view, spoke past the works – their ‘kindergarten level’ communication style Personalia overcompensating for abstraction’s dif!culty. The two media failed to cohere in Genauer’s expe- Elizabeth Ferrell is a Ph.D. candidate in the rience of the exhibition: the photographs’ History of Art Department at The University of California, Berkeley. She is currently and biographies’ model of identity could not graft writing her dissertation, Collaborated Lives: onto the paintings’ existential account of selfhood; Individualism and Collectivity in Jay DeFeo’s the mundane sociability simulated by the photo- Fillmore Street Circle. graphs con"icted with the transcendent experience of individual interiority fostered by the paintings; the photojournalistic panels’ cheery tone clashed with the paintings’ bravado. As a result, the artist as Everyman and the artist as Other passed without meeting.

19 Contemporary American Painters – Elizabeth Ferrell Notes 10 Two of the New York artists featured in the Brussels show, Baziotes and Hartigan, were also included in The New Ameri- 1 For examples of this popular binary interpretation of the can Painting. Soviet and American Pavilions see ‘Our Image at Brussels’ 11 It is unclear who came up with the idea of incorporating in: Life, 14 July 1958, p. 44 and Walter H. Waggoner, ‘We photographs of the artists into the exhibition, though cor- Look at Them, They Look at Us’ in: The New York Times respondence indicates that it may have originated with Morley Magazine, 11 May 1958, pp. 12-13, 63-64. (Morley, unpublished letter to Harris K. Prior, 2 December 2 The U.S. Pavilion’s visual art program included Indian Art 1957, AFA, AAA). in the United States (organized by René d’Harnoncourt of 12 Namuth was a German émigré based in New York City. His the Museum of Primitive Art, New York), American Folk Art most famous works, then and now, are his iconic photographs (organized by Mrs. John A. Pope of the Smithsonian Trave- of Pollock painting, which were !rst published in Portfolio in ling Exhibition Service), Contemporary American Sculpture 1951, and his short !lm (Pollock Painting) depicting the same (selected by the Of!ce of the Commissioner General in subject, which he co-produced with Paul Falkenberg in 1951, cooperation with the architect of the U.S. Pavilion, Edward and for which Morton Feldman wrote the score. D. Stone), and the subject of this paper, 17 Contemporary 13 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the Museum’s !rst director, crafted this American Painters. installation idiom, which became the dominant mode of exhi- 3 Staemp"i’s of!cial title was Assistant Chairman of the Fine biting modern art in the twentieth century (C. Klonk, Spaces Arts Section. He answered to both Harris K. Prior, Director of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800-2000, New of the American Federation of the Arts (AFA), and Thurston Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). Davies, Executive Director of the U.S. Pavilion. The task of 14 Like the term ‘intermedial,’ ‘crossmedial’ implies an inter- organizing 17 Contemporary American Painters !t the AFA’s action between media – that different material forms affect mission to foster public access to original artworks by as- or bear on one another. Unlike the former term, however, the sembling exhibitions for display both at home and abroad. By latter connotes contention as well as connection – that the the late 1950s, the venerable non-pro!t had plenty of practice media are at cross odds or are even ‘cross’ (as in displeased) assisting the U.S. government in crafting exhibitions for inter- with one another. I argue the relationship between painting, national art fairs. It had, for example, organized the American photography, and text in 17 Contemporary American Painters Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 1924. !ts the simultaneously complementary and contestatory 4 The AFA-appointed jury was made up of Grace Morley of the dynamic implied by the term ‘crossmedial.’ San Francisco Museum of Art, Robert Beverly Hale of the 15 If the panels are extant, I have yet to locate them. They ap- Metropolitan Museum of Art and H. Harvard Arnason of the pear to have passed into the proprietorship of the American Walker Art Center. Federation of the Arts at the Expo’s end. 5 Grace Morley, unpublished letter to Everett Elliott, 25 July 16 George W. Staemp"i, U.S. government memorandum to Dr. 1958, American Federation of Arts records, 1895-1993, Thurston J. Davies, 6 December 1957, RG 59, Records Rela- Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. I will ting to the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition, henceforth refer to these records as ‘AFA, AAA.’ 1956-1959, Box 1, folder ‘Fine Arts,’ National Archives, Col- 6 For more information about the well-documented relationship lege Park, MD. I will henceforth refer to this folder as ‘RG 59, between MoMA and the U.S. government see E. Cockcroft, NA.’ ‘Abstract Expressionism: Weapon of the Cold War’ in: Art- 17 ‘Humanize’ also alludes to the Fair’s slogan, ‘A World View forum, June 1974, pp. 39-41, M. Kozloff, ‘American Painting – A New Humanism,’ which expresses the event’s stated goal during the Cold War’ in: Artforum, May 1973, pp. 43-54, of fostering global unity through the recognition of mutual S. Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, humanity. See: R. H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, and J. Elder!eld American Culture Abroad in the 1950s, Washington D.C.: (ed.), The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century: At Home Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997, p. 94. and Abroad, Studies in Modern Art 4, New York: H. Abrams, 18 Life magazine’s postwar coverage of the visual arts exempli- Inc., 1994. !ed the overt politicization of abstract art and the abstract 7 The three exhibitions were simultaneously on view in Europe artist. From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Life he- at various moments during 1958. After The Brussels Expo, ralded its signature brand of photojournalism as the antidote the paintings from 17 Contemporary American Painters were to modern art’s obscurity. Incorporating nonobjective works displayed at the United States Information Service Library into photo-essays, Life’s editors claimed, made the former’s in London. At this time, Jackson Pollock was showing at the enigmatic language instantly legible. The magazine framed Whitechapel Gallery, and The New American Painting was its mediation between avant-garde and public as a not only scheduled to open at the Tate the following February (Mar- cultural but also political task. ‘This tremendous, individu- garet Cogswell, unpublished letter to Stefan Munsing, 8 July alistic struggle, which makes modern art so dif!cult for the 1958, AFA, AAA). layman,’ explained Life’s editors in 1948, ‘is really one of the 8 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., ‘Introduction’ in: The New American great assets of our civilization. For it is at bottom the struggle Painting: As Shown in Eight European Countries 1958-1959, for freedom’ (‘A Life Roundtable on Modern Art: Fifteen New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1959, p. 15. The Distinguished Critics and Connoisseurs Undertake to Clarify full quote is as follows: ‘In principle their individualism is as the Strange Art of Today’ in: Life, 11 October 1948, pp. uncompromising as that of the religion of Kierkegaard whom 56-79). But, Life cautioned, the artist’s "aunted independence they honour. For them, John Donne to the contrary, each man – manifested in the avant-garde’s elitist ‘cult of unintelligibi- is an island.’ lity’ – also imperiled the Free World (‘In a Second Revolution 9 The introduction that Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA’s director, the New Role for Culture’ in: Life, 26 December 1960, p. 45). wrote for The New American Painting catalog exempli!es ‘The chasm between artists and democratic society could this interpretation. Essays like Barr’s implicitly contrast conceivably prove as frustrating to cultural progress as the old America’s gestural abstractions with Russia’s content-laden, class war,’ warned a 1960 editorial. ‘Yet, it can be bridged’ state-sponsored realism. (ibid.). When modern art’s individualism strayed into ‘alienation and obscurity,’ when its autonomy courted solipsism

20 Kunstlicht nr. 4 – 2012 and hermeticism, Life would undertake the crucial task of dial exhibition or a crossmedial art exhibition, in accordance reintegrating it with the mainstream (ibid.). with contemporary standards. 19 Blake Stimson investigated many such facets of the postwar 35 Fred W. McDarrah, a staff photographer for The Village Voice perception of photography in The Pivot of the World: Photo- and Life magazine also contributed to the development of graphy and its Nation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. these tropes for representing abstract-expressionist artists. 20 Staemp"i, unpublished letter to Hans Namuth, 17 January 36 This characterization of the artistic identity cultivated by 1958, RG 59, NA and Staemp"i, letter to Namuth, 23 October many abstract-expressionist artists derives from C.A. Jones, 1958, RG 59, NA. ‘The Romance of the Studio and the Abstract Expressionist 21 Staemp"i memo, 6 December 1957. Sublime’ in: Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar 22 Op. cit. (note 20), 17 January 1958. American Artist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 23 Ibid. Staemp"i reiterated this sentiment in a congratulatory pp. 1-59. letter to Namuth dated 23 October 1958: ‘Thanks to your 37 ‘Americans at Brussels: Soft Sell, Range and Controversy’ in: effort we were able to illuminate with great poignancy the Time, 16 June 1958, s.p., Sonia Gechtoff papers, 1957-1980, American scene and the civic climate in which our artists live AAA. and work.’ 38 As cited by: R.H. Haddow, op. cit. (note 17), p. 126. 24 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kelly occupied a loft at 3-5 39 For examples of this sentiment see: D. Brinkley, ‘Downright Coenties Slip, a former light-industrial building overlooking Shameful,’ in: The New Republic, 7 July 1958, p. 8, J.S. the East River. Other artists who lived and worked in the Drago, letter to the editor, in: The New York Times, 13 March building during this period included the abstract painters 1958, page unknown, and N. Kent, ‘Why Did They,’ in: Agnes Martin and Jack Youngerman and Pop artists James American Artist, May 1958, p. 3. The exhibition was one of Rosenquist and Robert Indiana. For more information about the most contentious aspects of the U.S. Pavilion. Broadening the Coenties Slip artist community see: J. Beardsley, Nine Ar- the show to include representational paintings was one of the tists/Coenties Slip, New York: Whitney Museum of American few suggestions made by George V. Allen, director of the Uni- Art, 1974. ted States Information Agency, whom President Eisenhower 25 The woman depicted in the photograph is the French actress sent to investigate citizen complaints about the Pavilion. The Delphine Seyrig, and the child is her son, Duncan Younger- controversy that 17 Contemporary American Painters kicked man. When the picture was taken, Seyrig lived with Duncan up in Brussels became the focus when it was later shown in and her husband, the American painter Jack Youngerman, in New York to raise funds for charity. The show’s press release the same building as Kelly. announces this slant: ‘Few people who did not actually see the 26 Baziotes’ location – like most of the places depicted in much-debated exhibition of American Painters and Sculptors Namuth’s photographs – is identi!ed in the brief biographical at the Brussels Fair really know what all the shouting is about. sketch that was af!xed to his panel (H. Namuth, ‘Notes on Here is a chance to see for yourself’ (Press release for World Painters,’ AFA, AAA). House Galleries, undated, AFA, AAA). Despite its failure at 27 Ibid. the World’s Fair, the exhibition’s crossmedial design had an 28 Op. cit. (note 20), January 17, 1958. afterlife in the United States. Panels with photographs of the 29 E. Genauer, ‘U.S. Art Show at Brussels Fair Baf"es or artists were also displayed in the traveling exhibition The In- Amuses Europeans’ in: New York Tribune, 22 June 1958, s.p., dividual and his World, which was organized by Fred Martin AFA, AAA. for the San Francisco Art Bank in 1959. 30 Since the panels are no longer extant, it is dif!cult to deter- 40 These adjectives are implicit in Genauer’s snide description mine how Staemp"i’s choice to lump the text together, rather of the notes as ‘Miss Subways type comments’ (‘U.S. Art than distribute it into captions, would have in"uenced the Show’). This reference to a New York City Subway poster viewer’s experience. I speculate that the distance between campaign that featured headshots and brief descriptions of text and image would have diluted the connection between attractive female riders likened the account of identity created them somewhat, giving the viewer more latitude to interpret by the photo-panels to that of a personal ad. photographs. However, the panel’s divergence from the typical photo-essay format does not appear to have made much difference to Genauer. 31 In fact, Staemp"i unsuccessfully petitioned Time, Life and Look to publish Namuth’s ‘picture stories’ as magazine spreads (Staemp"i, unpublished letter to Prior, 4 December 1957, AFA, AAA and Staemp"i memo 6 December 1957). This fact suggests that the curator intentionally modeled the exhibition’s photo-panels on the illustrated weekly photo- essay. 32 In this example, Namuth’s note moors the equivocal snapshot of Perlin in the gym to a concrete event – the artist’s tri- weekly workout. My analysis is informed by Roland Barthes’ famous structural analysis of the press photograph in ‘The Photographic Message’ in: Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 15-31. 33 Namuth, unpublished letter to Staemp"i, 11 March 1958, AFA, AAA. 34 One could also argue that Namuth objected to Staemp"i’s presentation of the photographer’s work as photojournalism rather than art. Depending on whose side you take, 17 Con- temporary American Painters can be considered a crossme-

21 Contemporary American Painters – Elizabeth Ferrell