Grounding the Social Aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism: a New Intellectual History of the Club

SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Grounding the Social Aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism: A New Intellectual History of The Club A Dissertation Presented by Valerie Hellstein to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University May 2010 Copyright by Valerie Hellstein 2010 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Valerie Hellstein We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Michele Bogart—Dissertation Advisor Professor, Art Department Andrew Uroskie—Chairperson of Defense Assistant Professor, Art Department Jonathan D. Katz Associate Professor, Visual Studies Department University at Buffalo Sally Promey Professor, American Studies Yale University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Grounding the Social Aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism: A New Intellectual History of The Club by Valerie Hellstein Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University 2010 This dissertation remaps the intellectual terrain of Abstract Expressionism, uncovering the deeply communal nature of the artists’ aesthetic projects and shifting the narrative away from the usual biographical and psychoanalytic models. Drawing on extensive archival research, I argue that the early years of The Club, from 1949 to 1955, are central to understanding Abstract Expressionism. Not only does the evidence of the artists’ weekly discussions suggest intellectual sources that have never before been associated with Abstract Expressionism (vitalism, Martin Heidegger’s existentialism, Paul Goodman’s Gestalt therapy, and Zen), but it also indicates that this social community embodied anarchist mutual aid that avoided the ideological Cold War rhetoric that pitted individualism against totalitarian collectivism. Vitalism’s connectedness, Heidegger’s Being-with, Gestalt therapy’s organism-environment field, and Zen’s awareness and interrelatedness addressed the fundamental issue of the individual’s relationship with the collective, striking a new key that was neither Communist nor Capitalist. Using these discursive frames, I reread Harold Rosenberg’s articulation of Action Painting and offer a new interpretation of the artists’ “signature styles” as a community of difference rather than as emblematic of sovereign individuality. By looking at the artists’ material processes and their compositional strategies, I recover on the surfaces of their canvases the communitarian impulses that also directed their intellectual discussions and their everyday lives. While Abstract Expressionism has come to signify heroic individuality and Cold War patriarchy, I want to suggest that it signifies the very obverse—radical community that recognized separate-togetherness. This rereading puts Abstract Expressionism squarely within the reformulation of Leftist politics that began after World War II and came to fruition in the New Left and the “new sensibility” of the 1960s. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………....v Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1 The Social Foundations of The Club……..…………..……………………....12 Chapter 1: “Society’s Individualized”: Reimagining the Individual and the Collective…...25 The Club as Anarchist Community...................………………………………42 Chapter 2: An Intellectual History of The Club: A Foundation for Action Painting……57 Vitalism at Mid-Century…...………………………………………………....62 Heideggerian Existentialism at The Club....………………………………….85 Paul Goodman and Gestalt Therapy at The Club…………………………...99 Zen at The Club……………………………………………………………115 Action Painting at The Club………………………………………………..132 Conclusion...................................................................................................................153 Chapter 3: Toward a Social Aesthetics of Abstract Expressionist Painting…………....156 Chapter 4: Rereading the Triumph……………………………………………………..188 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………....214 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..217 iv Acknowledgments First and foremost, I must thank the Smithsonian American Art Museum for granting me a predoctoral fellowship in 2008-2009. Without this year, my dissertation would be a different creature. Besides having the time, space, and resources to concentrate solely on my project, I met an amazing group of young art historians. My fellow fellows, especially Jonathan Walz, Melissa Warrak, Jason LaFountain, Ellery Foutch, and Jason Goldman, were supportive and generous with their time, insights, and suggestions. Their humor and friendship have made this process bearable and, more importantly, enjoyable. This project would have been impossible without the help and knowledge of many fantastic archivists. I would like to thank Polly Armstrong at Stanford University for her help with the Herbert Matter Papers, Valerie Gillispie at Wesleyan University for her help with the John Cage Papers, Michelle Harvey at the Museum of Modern Art Archive, Brigid Herold at the Barnett Newman Foundation, Lena Hoff of the Nicolas Calas Archive at the Nordic Library of Athens, Gretchen Opie and Katy Rogers at the Dedalus Foundation for their help with the Robert Motherwell Archive, Sarah Sherman at the Getty Research Institute for her help with the Harold Rosenberg and Irving Sandler papers, and Kathy Shoemaker at Emory University for her tremendous help with the Philip Pavia Papers. Additionally, the staff at the Archives of American Art in Washington D.C. were extremely generous with their time and their patience, especially Marisa Bourgoine and Liza Kirwin. I would also like to thank Denise and Ernestine Lassaw, Natalie Edgar, Cynthia Navaretta, Dore Ashton, and Irving Sandler for taking time to answer my questions. These conversations helped to cement the fact that the Abstract Expressionists were real people and brought the late 1940s and early 1950s alive in a way that I had not experienced before. In some way, this project started over ten years ago when my undergraduate advisor, Claude Cernuschi, told me that writing about Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross would be like hitting my head against a brick wall. He was mostly right, but it has become less painful over the years mainly due to the support and encouragement of many professors, including Marty Cohen, Richard Shiff, Linda Henderson, Joseph Monteyne, Jim Rubin, Barbara Frank, Shoki Goodarzi, Anita Moskowitz, Ed Casey, Calvin Schragg, and Taylor Stoehr. I am grateful for my committee—Michele Bogart, Andrew Uroskie, Jonathan Katz, and Sally Promey—for their guidance, patience, astute questions, and helpful suggestions. I would like to thank Linda Henderson and Taylor Stoehr for reading an early version of chapter 2 and their many helpful, timely, and enjoyable conversations. A special thanks also to my colleagues, Danielle Lenhard, for listening to too many ideas, Tom Williams, who read an entire draft of the dissertation and helped me see things in a new light, and Travis English, who translated some of Herbert Matter's writings for me. This project would have been impossible without the support, encouragement, and enthusiasm of Jonathan Katz. His tough questions, frank assessments, and genuine excitement about my project pushed me to do my best work, and I am truly thankful on so many levels. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, who did not really believe that art history was a more practical major than philosophy or theology, but who have been more than supportive from the very beginning. I would also like to thank the Clarkes for their generosity and support for the last several years, including my fellowship year in DC, and Donna’s keen proofreading eyes. I also must thank my dearest friend, Cristina Moyer, whose weekly phone calls and pep talks kept me going in the last year. And then there is Sean...whose patience, humor, and good cooking kept me grounded and sane throughout this process. Thank you. Introduction By the middle of the century, New York City had eight, ten, fifteen millions of people, depending on where you drew the circumference. You would imagine that in a population like that a man would be quite lost. But it didn’t work out that way at all. For, just as a reaction to being lost, there came to be small language groups, of persons who understood what the others were talking about and therefore occasionally listened to what one said: such a group might be about the size of a small village where one’s native tongue was spoken, and the rest of the people (if they were people, how would one know?) hardly existed at all. ——Paul Goodman, The Empire City1 The mythic Abstract Expressionist, toiling alone in his studio, spilled his emotions on the canvas, expressing his unconscious desires and his anxiety in gestural paint.2 This image is not one that recent scholars invented; this mythologized portrait was contemporaneous with the formation, consolidation, and canonization of Abstract Expressionism. In a 1952 panel debating the “problem” of Abstract Expressionism, the painter Paul Brach accused expressionists of “taking down their pants

Load more