Harvey Family 02 Catalog

FAMILY LINE drawings and paintings by Anne Harvey Jason Harvey Steven Harvey FAMILY LINE drawings and paintings by Anne Harvey, Jason Harvey and Steven Harvey essays by Henry Lessore Jennifer Samet David Shapiro New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture Family Line Steven Harvey IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES , my in the collection of the Weatherspoon father, Jason Harvey ( 1919 –1982 ) and I Museum of Art. had regular “sessions” where we drew Jason’s precociously gifted older sis - and painted each other. Jason comment - ter Anne Harvey ( 1916 –1967 ), whom ed that my drawings made him look like he very much admired, had blazed an he was “on fire”—which was not alto - early trail as an artist that left him little gether untrue. With deep furrows in his room to pursue the same path. His loft brow, a thatch of sandy brown hair was filled with Anne’s work. After her (rapidly turning salt and pepper), a death in December 1967 , my father and strong nose that took a couple of wrong I went to Paris to collect her things. I turns from having been broken when he had met Anne only once, on a trip to was young, he bore a striking resem - France with my mother when I was blance to Giacometti (whom he had five. We stayed in my grandmother known through his family). Drawing Dorothy Dudley’s apartment on the rue Jason could be a little like drawing the de Seine. Anne was a quiet presence desert—almost too dramatic a land - whom I can hardly remember. She had scape to wrap oneself around. already begun a retreat into privacy. In his own drawings, he had a Her work, however, was not shy. If refined, crisp line, partially the result of Jason’s line was questioning and self- his training as a commercial artist. He critical, Anne’s line was extravagant could render easily and directly. It took and wildly inventive. him until he was forty to commit to In 1971 , Jason arranged a memorial being a painter, after a career working exhibition for Anne at the Robert in advertising and designing beautiful Schoelkopf Gallery. In a review of this handmade lamps. His drawings exhibition for Art News , Lawrence acquired a probing quality, a philosoph - Campbell (who had met Anne in Paris ical uncertainty that seemed to ask: in the sixties) described the dizzying What is this thing? How is it part of the qualities of her line: space around it? This was a part of the In her work one can truly sense what existential imperative that drove Jason’s the privacy of the expression “ tra - life in general. He wanted to understand vailler après la nature” can mean to his own nature and his relation to oth - an artist as withdrawn and secretive ers. The objects in his drawings emerged as she was. The act of trying to draw from a field of cross-hatching, like the grain of a board on the studio images out of the fog of consciousness. floor—her studio was wherever she Mercedes Matter at the Studio School was, indoors or out—unfailingly trig - top: Fig. 1 Brassai, Anne Har - told me how she admired his drawings gered imaginative responses. She saw vey , c. 1963 of the city. Jason had given one to a ben - patterns inside other patterns, and above: Fig. 2 Anne Harvey, 1 efit for the Studio School, that ended up these hair-like patterns became quirky Roses , ink on paper, 17 x 12 ⁄2 in. 4 fine ink lines—or in paintings, paint: included Giacometti and Helion, and meandering, eddying, dissolving, dis - described her work: appearing, then coming into focus . curious metaphysical still lives . elsewhere, as though the wood grain of copper pots, flowers and chimney pushed her ever deeper into a world corners, etc. (that) look conventional she could see as well as invent at the during the first few seconds of glimps - same time. For someone as addicted ing, but this effect is quickly replaced to drawing as she was, it is astonish - by a perception of the probing ing how broadly she was able to anguish of an almost Jamesian dis - paint. But it was always back to the secting eye. … A curious anxiety, tem - textures which never quite repeat pered by the exhilaration of her novel themselves, to the leaf which edges optics is the result. into a wall and a painting hanging on Partially as a way to deal with all the it, from there into a piano, into a materials he had inherited from his fam - tiled floor, into a jungle of line and ily, Jason opened up his loft at 33 Coop - hatching. No painter was ever freer er Square as an exhibition space, called from the clichés of modern French variously “The Last Sail” and “The art (although she invented a few of Alternative.” He showed his work, her own) or of style (which she had Anne’s work, my work, his girlfriend, in abundance, but it was entirely her Barvara Hush’s and that of friends and own). Her drawings and paintings neighbors. He painted the floor of his are filled with half-open doors and loft with a monumental abstracted fig - windows, but one can escape just as ure entitled “Homage to Humanity at easily through her brick walls or the Crossroads.” He brought together wooden floors. the three dimensional inventiveness of Anne’s work attracted a remarkable his lights and carpentry, cutting win - group of supporters. The English sculp - dows into the walls so that he could tor Raymond Mason, and his wife Jea - direct daylight to reflect off suspended nine Hao, were among her closest pieces of shiny aluminum. Eventually friends in Paris. Jeanine opened a gallery the Cooper Square loft became a kind of that showed Raymond’s work, and she fluid and shifting sculptural work of art showed Anne’s as well. Once, Giacom - unto itself. metti came to see an exhibition of Many works were sold without ade - Anne’s work at the gallery. Supposedly, quate record-keeping. This exhibition is he walked in, and after only a brief a first attempt to track down some of glance around the room, sat down to Jason’s and Anne’s paintings that disap - talk with Jeanine. Before departing he peared in the process. Aside from the top: Fig. 3 Jason Harvey, Cape Cod, 1967 pointed his thumb behind him and said exhibitions in his space, Jason rarely above: Fig. 4 Jason Harvey, Tree , July he’d take “that one.” The painting he showed his work publicly. Anne had a 1967 , ink on paper, 14 x 16 in. selected was probably Plant with Japan - handful of exhibitions during her life - ese Blind, 1955 (fig. 18 ) . time. This exhibition is the opportunity John Ashbery, in a 1966 Art News to revisit their individual contributions. I Annual article about American painters am grateful to the New York Studio in Paris, mentioned that her admirers School for providing the opportunity. 5 1 3 plate i Anne Harvey, Garlic and Wine , pastel on paper, 25 ⁄2 x 19 ⁄4 in. 6 Anne Harvey and Her World Henry Lessore THE PUBLIC FIGURE , toughened by Anne and Jason were born in Chica - biography of Debussy which Anne later exposure to life’s bumps and bruises, go. Their father Henry—or Harry— illustrated). Dorothy Harvey—‘Dodo’— knowing everyone and whom everyone Harvey, was in the advertising business, is remembered as one of ‘the Dudley knows, acquires a protective covering. but like their mother, Dorothy, was a girls’, the daughters of the rich gynae - In the end, what the public knows is writer too (it was he who wrote the cologist Dr. Emelius Clark Dudley of only a surface. The private person, on Chicago’s Near North Side, who so the other hand, remains without such a impressed their contemporaries with shell. Anne Harvey was a private per - their wit, brilliance and talent, and in son. To know her, one had to meet her particular their gift for poetry . through her family and friends. One Because these sisters were who they then found her admirably direct. were, the ‘atmosphere of writers and An immediate result of her openness, painters’ in which Anne grew up turns her vulnerability, even, was an appeal to out to consist of some of the best- one’s sense of chivalry. One was called known names of this century. Anne’s upon, not to take advantage, but to original talent alone would have made help. Another, more important thing her remarkable; it is the fact that from which went with this lack of protective almost the beginning it was surrounded armour was a corresponding openness and nurtured by genius which made it of vision. When she looked at some - something more than that. thing and painted it, there seemed noth - The schools to which the children ing between herself and it. Similarly, in were sent were progressive rather than her paintings, there seems nothing conventional. Jason’s notes on his sister between the thing painted and the spec - go on: tator. From her earliest years, she was Several comments which capture her drawing princes and princesses, characteristic quality, her strangeness, fairies and kings . she had a will of appear in the notes written by her her own . at six or seven . (in younger brother, Jason, at the time of school) . she insisted on building a her memorial show (Schoelkopf, New castle when asked to build a farm. York, 1971 ): Already, a little girl was against the She grew up in France in an atmos - order.

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