only. Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern purposesdistribution. reviewwide or for releasedpublication for PDF Not Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern only. Samantha Friedman Jodi Hauptman purposesdistribution. with contributions by Samantha Friedman, Lynn Garafola, Michele Greet, Michelle Harvey, reviewwide or Richard Meyer, and Kevin Moore for releasedpublication for PDF Not The Museum of Modern Art New York Foreword Glenn D. Lowry 6 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction Samantha Friedman 10 Plates 18 Lincoln Kirstein: Man of the People Lynn Garafola 28 Our Ballet and Our Audience Lincoln Kirstein 36 Plates 37 only. Emulsion Society: Lincoln Kirstein Kevin Moore 62 and Photography Photography in the United States Lincoln Kirstein 70 Plates 71 purposesdistribution. Threesomes: Lincoln Kirstein’s Richard Meyer 98 Queer Arithmetic wide review Introduction to American Realists Lincoln Kirstein 106 or for and Magic Realists Plates 107 Looking South: Lincoln Kirstein Michele Greet 144 releasedpublication and Latin American Art for South American Painting Lincoln Kirstein 154 PDF Plates 155 Not The State of Modern Painting Lincoln Kirstein 180 Chronology Michelle Harvey 182 Checklist of the Exhibition 196 Index 206 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art 208 Lincoln Kirstein’s datebook for the week of Samantha Friedman April 20, 1942, reveals a typical agenda for the busy polymath (fig. 1). Names penned in ink— one struck through for rescheduling, two anno- tated with the hour—provide a map of the reach of this key connector and indefatigable catalyst who shaped and supported American artists and institutions in the 1930s and ’40s. Starting off the week was a meeting with George Root, who had welcomed Kirstein’s American Ballet Caravan to the University of Oregon’s “greater artist series” in October 1939.1 Several figures associated with Introduction American Ballet Caravan and the other fledgling companies Kirstein spearheaded in advance of founding the New York City Ballet with George Balanchine in 1948, also make appearances on the week’s itinerary. only. On Tuesday, Kirstein saw Eugene Loring, the dancer and choreographer with whom he had collaborated on ballets such as Harlequin for President (1936) (plate 66), Yankee Clipper (1936) (plates 64, 65), and Billy the Kid (1938) (plates 54–57). Perhaps they were discussing Figure 1 Jinx, the ballet Kirstein would attend on Friday, Lincoln Kirstein’s datebook, week of April 20, 1942. Lincoln Kirstein Papers, series 123, box 6, folder 27, purposes Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts distribution. April 24, presented by the Dance Players, the “all-American company offering dance plays on American themes,”2 of which Loring In the piece, Haggin cites Kirstein contrasting Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all items are housed at The was now director. The same Tuesday, Kirstein Balanchine’s use of musicality to that of wide Museum of Modern Art Archives. review was due to meet Ann Barzel, the Chicago- the choreographer Léonide Massine, who or 1 “Large Crowd Out to based dance writer who (according to New rose to prominence creating works for Hear Tibbet,” Eugene Register for York Times dance critic John Martin) was the Ballets Russes. (In many ways, Kirstein Guard (October 21, 1939): n.p. “generally to be found wherever there is fashioned himself after that celebrated (front page). choreography afoot even if it takes her half- company’s founder, the impresario Serge 2 George Amberg, Ballet in America (New York: Duell, way across the continent.”3 Indeed, Barzel Diaghilev.) Massine, now making ballets Sloan and Pearce, 1949), p. 165. had joined Kirstein’s itinerant Ballet Caravan, in America for Ballet Theatre—a rival to 3 John Martin, “The Dance: another of those fledgling companies, on Kirstein’s own enterprises—is on the docket Holiday’s End,” New York Times, releasedpublication the road, making films that captured perfor- for Thursday at six; if Kirstein’s annotation September 1, 1940. mances of ballets like Harlequin, Billy the “Domingo” is an indication, the topic at hand 4 See Anthony Tommasini, for Kid, and Filling Station (1937) (plates 39–48, was to be Don Domingo de Don Blas, the Virgil Thomson: Composer on the PDF see checklist pp. 203–4) Aisle (New York: Norton, 1997), . The composer of Filling ballet Massine would premiere in Mexico City pp. 355–61. Station, Virgil Thomson, was on the calendar the following September. Not 5 B. H. Haggin, “Music,” The for Thursday, April 23—about a month after Kirstein had launched the literary journal Nation (June 6, 1953): 489. he was arrested in an FBI raid on a gay brothel Hound & Horn as a Harvard undergraduate; 6 B. H. Haggin, “Balanchine: in Brooklyn, and just when tabloids were the poet Norman Macleod (also slated for Musician-Choreographer,” Dance starting to cover the incident.4 Over a decade Thursday April 23) was a contributor.7 Others Index 1, no. 7 (July 1942): 111–13. later, the critic B. H. Haggin (struck from from Kirstein’s Harvard years were penned 7 Macleod contributed two both Tuesday and Friday, but apparently on in for this week’s schedule: Agnes Mongan poems: “Turquoise Chant, a poem,” Hound & Horn 4, no. 2 (January– for Thursday) would call Filling Station “one (an intern at the university’s Fogg Art Museum March 1931): 255; and “A Russian of the classics of American ballet.”5 But in when Kirstein met her, and later the first Letter,” Hound & Horn 7, no. 2 this particular week in 1942, he and Kirstein woman curator and director there), along (Winter 1934): pp. 273–77. were likely discussing Haggin’s forthcoming with Jere Abbott, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Abbott article on Balanchine for the July 1942 issue and Barr would go on to be the founding of Dance Index—one of three journals Kirstein associate director and the founding director, established over the course of his career.6 respectively, of The Museum of Modern Art, 11 where Kirstein attended the opening of the 8 See Collection Description him,” the photographer Walker Evans remem- of David K. Niles Papers, held Wartime Housing exhibition that Tuesday. in Harry S. Truman Presidential bered, describing “a typical Kirstein switcheroo, Appearing on the show’s entrance wall, and Library & Museum (https:// all permeated with tremendous spirit, flash, www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/ demonstrating its nexus of art and politics, was niles.htm). dash and a kind of seeming high jinks that the text of a January 6, 1942, war production covered a really penetrating intelligence about 9 Lincoln Kirstein, “The Position speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. of Pavel Tchelitchew,” View 2, no. 2 an articulation of all esthetic matters and Kirstein’s Friday appointment was Roosevelt’s (May 1942): n.p. their contemporary applications” (fig. 3).16 The advisor David Niles—consultant with the 10 Symbolic Realism, April 3–22, dancer Jacques d’Amboise’s characterizations Works Progress Adminis tration, civil rights 1950, Edwin Hewitt Gallery, reveal the extent to which Kirstein’s ambition New York; and Symbolic Realism advocate, and, like Kirstein, a Jewish man from in American Painting, 1940–1950, and his anguish were two sides of the same Massachusetts.8 July 18–August 18, 1950, Institute coin: he was “a flawed genius who aspired to Wartime Housing was one of two exhibi- of Contemporary Art, London. be the supreme arbiter of all the arts in the tions Kirstein saw that Tuesday; the other 11 Both are housed in the Lincoln twentieth century” and “a wounded giant full Kirstein Papers, Jerome Robbins was Pavel (“Pavlik”) Tchelitchew’s show at the Dance Division, New York Public of holes in his soul.”17 That double disposition Julien Levy Gallery. An issue of the journal View Library for the Performing Arts led to Kirstein’s ultimately breaking almost as (founded by Tchelitchew’s partner, Charles (hereafter cited as “NYPL”). many friendships and associations as he estab- Henri Ford), to which Kirstein had contributed 12 Nancy Reynolds, “Diaghilev lished—never for lack of commitment on his and Kirstein,” in Lynn Garafola and an essay, served as the exhibition’s catalogue Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds., part, but on principle. “With Lincoln—well, you (fig. 2).9 As the diminutive nickname implies, The Ballets Russes and Its World know, there are the signers of the Declaration only. (New Haven: Yale University Press, Tchelitchew was an intimate of Kirstein’s, 1999), p. 311. of Independence?” Edward M. M. Warburg, a member of a circle of predominantly queer Kirstein’s Harvard classmate and fellow patron, 13 Nicholas Jenkins, ed., By With artists and aesthetes, dancers and designers, To & From: A Lincoln Kirstein Reader quipped, “well, Lincoln is a re-signer; he likes to whose connections can be seen in a series (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, resign from things.”18 of portraits, both drawn and—thanks largely to 1991), p. xi. All these characteristics colored Kirstein’s George Platt Lynes, whom Kirstein saw that purposes 14 Arlene Croce, “Century’s Son,” sustained engagement with The Museum of Thursday at 5:30—photographed (plates 12–26). distribution. New Yorker (January 22, 1996): 54. Modern Art: a complex relationship that is Many of the artists in this cohort worked in Figure 2 15 David Leddick, Intimate the subject of Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern. Over the manner of magic realism, an artistic mode View 2, no. 2, May 1942, “Tchelitchew/Tanguy.” Companions: A Triography of the course of Kirstein’s association with The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, combining fantastic content and precise form Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle MoMA, Alfred Barr acknowledged him in ways wide (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), that Kirstein championed, whether under that review pp. 79–80.