Was LA (not NYC) the Post-WWII Art Capitol of the World?

Crack open any standard text on modern art since the end of World War II and you’ll read how New York City took over as the art world capitol from Paris. From the rise of the MoMA and the Guggenheim to the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and pretty much every other modern movement, if it happened in art, it happened in New York City. But is that the true story? Starting next month and extending throughout 2012, Los Angeles hopes to rewrite the history books and wrest the title away from its East Coast Rival through an organized effort titled Pacific Standard Time that brings together more than 60 cultural institutions and more than 50 art exhibitions. Just when you thought you knew modern art history, Pacific Standard Time shakes up all your assumptions like a seven-point quake. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Was LA (not NYC) the Post-WWII Art Capitol of the World?"

[Image: My Lai, 1968, Hans Burkhardt. Oil assemblage with skulls on canvas. 77 x 115 in. Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles. © Hans G and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation. Part of L.A. Raw: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy at the Pasadena Museum of California Art from January 22, 2012 through May 20, 2012.]

Pop Divas

When you think of Pop Art, the art movement that dominated the late 1950s and early 1960s in America, you almost automatically cast up the wigged head of Andy Warhol. A few other names might rise up from memory— Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, or even the British artist Peter Blake—but even those names have in common one thing—they’re all men. Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia wants you to learn the names of the “pop divas,” the women who worked in the same culture-driven, irony-laced language as Warhol and others but were never heard, until now. Please venture over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Pop Divas."

[Image: John Wayne by Marisol, 1963, mixed media, 104 x 96 x 15 inches. Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Art © Marisol Escobar/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.]

[Many thanks to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for providing me with the image above from Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968, which runs from January 22 through March 15, 2010.]

Ladies Man

Of all the Abstract Expressionists, Willem de Kooning was always considered the most handsome, the most stylish, and the most debonair. (Val Kilmer played him in the movie Pollock.) Born April 24, 1904, came to America from his native Netherlands as a stowaway. Using his personal charm and growing artistic talent, he developed contacts throughout the New York City art world, the most important of which, at least early on, was Arshile Gorky. de Kooning painted in a very Gorky-esque style, full of the biomorphic figures Gorky is now famous for, into the early 1940s. By the 1950s, however, de Kooning had developed his own gesture-heavy style—a wild calligraphy of color. Some of the greatest examples of this style belong to the Woman series de Kooning painted in the early 1950s, beginning with Woman I (above, from 1950). de Kooning clearly has no desire to depict a woman realistically. In fact, he does everything possible to paint the figure unrealistically. Many people read misogyny into these paintings, extrapolating from de Kooning’s difficult relationship with his wife, Elaine de Kooning, and that’s certainly a possibility. But de Kooning also may be challenging the idea of portraiture and the figure itself, saying that we cannot get at the essence of humanity by painting the surface alone. Woman I, and her sisters, get at the heart of darkness within all men and women beating beneath our civilized exteriors.

In Woman II (above, from 1951), de Kooning almost seems to take a step back from the edge he approaches in Woman I. Although the heavy gestural style remains in effect, there’s a greater softness in Woman II in comparison to Woman I. Woman I’s big eyes and bared teeth seem almost animalistic. In contrast, Woman II almost seems to be smiling. It’s as if there’s a copy of the Mona Lisa buried beneath the broad brushwork. Dating the individual paintings in the Woman series is difficult because de Kooning moved back and forth from one to another over the course of several years. It’s possible that each of these versions represents a different mood (violent, tender, etc.) and that de Kooning would work on whichever version suited his present mood. Looking at them together, you get a sense of an almost fugue state in how de Kooning saw women, or perhaps just the specific women in his life.

Of the first three in the series, Woman III (above, from 1953) appears to be the most ready for action. She stands, whereas the first two in the series appear to be sitting. A smile seems to play upon her face. The big eyes of the first painting return, but with a less accusing look in them. de Kooning accentuates the breasts of this version even more, perhaps suggesting a sexual availability or aggressiveness not found in the first two. By a strange twist of fate, this version was belonged to the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art for many years. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, however, the new regime refused to allow such a sexually charged painting to be displayed. Fortunately, it was sold out of Iran in 1994 and eventually resold in 2006 for $137.5 million USD, making it at the time the second most expensive painting ever sold. Despite the abstract expressionist style, it was clear to any observer that Woman III is all about sex, something even more permissive societies, let alone a fundamentalist religious state such as that in Iran, would want to keep under wraps. de Kooning’s women continue to amuse, frighten, entice, and offend to varying degrees, displaying the same versatility that their creator demonstrated throughout his long, distinguished career.

Hidden Behind

Abstract Expressionism quite rightfully has the reputation of being a manly man’s art movement. Jackson Pollock dripped, cussed, drank, and chain smoked his way to an early death and lasting fame. Handsome Willem de Kooning objectified women and even destroyed them in paint in his Woman series before his long slide into darkness due to Alzheimer's disease. Behind both these men, however, stood strong women artists—Lee Krasner married Pollock and Elaine de Kooning married and stood behind (and beside, above, in 1953) Willem. Born March 12, 1920, Elaine learned to love art from her mother, who took her to museums and gave her art books to study from. Elaine had already begun studying to paint when she met Willem in 1938 and became his student. Five years later, they were married, beginning a tempestuous marriage that would result in his work eclipsing hers as she sought out her own artistic space, eventually finding some success as an art critic while continuing to paint. Elaine painted in the same Abstract Expressionist style as her husband, but separated herself from his influence by seeking a softer, yet still highly expressive style.

One way Elaine separated herself from Willem and basically all the other Abstract Expressionists was in painting portraits in the Abstract Expressionist style. Elaine first painted works based on photographs of athletes, using the energy of the brushstroke to mimic the kinetic energy of athletic bodies in motion. She later moved on to painting “still” portraits that moved with painterly energy, including a portrait of soccer legend Pele. In late 1962, the Harry S Truman Library commissioned Elaine to paint a portrait of John F. Kennedy. Not satisfied with painting just one portrait of JFK, Elaine created a series of works, the largest and most colorful being that above (from 1963). Sadly, JFK was assassinated as Elaine was completing this portrait, a shock that left Elaine unable to paint for almost a year. Aaron Shikler’s official presidential portrait of the brooding JFK, painted posthumously, captures the sadness of his death, but Elaine’s portrait wonderfully captures the vibrancy and color of the living man, who embodied the hopes and dreams of so many during that exciting time. Elaine’s portrait seems almost unreal in its untainted state. It’s hard not to think of Kennedy’s death when thinking of him, but Elaine’s portrait serves as a stunning reminder of what once so brilliantly was.

Elaine continued to paint almost to the end of her life. Bacchus #3 (above, from 1978) shows the continued energy of her brush even into her late 50s. As Willem became less capable of taking care of himself and his works, Elaine assumed the role of caretaker, ensuring that he and his art would not fall into ruin. Sadly, Elaine succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 70, the consequence of decades of chain smoking. Willem, deeply shrouded in dementia by that point, became the concern of their daughter, Lisa. Chaos and questions continue to surround Willem’s last years and last works, many of which may not actually be by his hand. It was as if once the support of Elaine disappeared, Willem could no longer stand. If it’s true that behind every great man there is a great woman, Elaine de Kooning was one of the greats of twentieth century American art.

Passionate or Pathological

“I always knew you were a bum,” Allan Stone’s father told him when he said he was giving up his law career to open an art gallery in 1960. Stone’s father, whom he called “Stoney,” didn’t speak to him for the next six years. Over the next 46 years, Allan Stone became one of the most visionary and influential gallery owners in New York City, as famous for his eye for new talent as for his insatiable hunger for collecting art himself. Olympia Stone, Allan’s daughter, chronicles this passionate often pathological mania for collecting art in her film, The Collector: Allan Stone’s Life in Art, newly released on DVD by Microcinema International.

“The art experience to me is like a narcotic,” Allan Stone says at one point, surrounded by the forests of African fetish figures populating his home, whose walls seemed to disappear beneath his paintings and drawings. As the camera pans throughout the home, claustrophobia sets in as the walls seem to be closing in, the artwork taking over every inch. At one point, Stone pulls a pastel by Wayne Thiebaud out of a closet, still in plastic wrapping, making you wonder what other treasures lurk in the dark corners of his home.


Even while working as a lawyer, Stone was an “art junkie.” When the sculptor John Chamberlain walked into his firm’s offices, Stone jumped at the chance to work with an artist. That personal association helped Stone make contacts in the New York art scene. When Elaine de Kooning searched for legal advice in her separation from Willem de Kooning, Stone came to her aid. Elaine, in turn, served as Stone’s mentor for many years, helping him find his footing in the tough art business. Stone’s first coup came in the form of Thiebaud’s unconventional paintings of cakes and pies (such as his Cakes, above, from 1963). Stone saw Thiebaud standing outside his gallery one day with some of his works under his arm. After inviting him in and looking at his work, Stone offered Thiebaud an exhibition in his gallery, a sellout show that launched both Stone and Thiebaud. Stone’s gallery develops a reputation as a “deeply personal place” with “totally its own character,” in the words of Michael Kimmelmann , chief art critic of the New York Times. This unique character creates an inviting space to introduce new artists such as Cesar and Kobashi to America and to launch the career of Richard Estes, Stone’s other major find. “Other galleries were reverent and pristine,” says the artist Lorraine Shemesh, “but this one was about the making of art.”

Olympia Stone doesn’t hesitate to show the other side of addiction—the price paid by the addicted and those around him. Through interviews with her siblings and her own narration, Olympia conveys a sense of affection while also making it clear that Allan’s art often formed a wall between him and his family. Jason Graves’ jazz score accompanies many of these vignettes, setting a mood that captures both the manic chaos of Allan’s collecting as well as the wistful regret over his first failed marriage and other personal opportunities lost. In the end, we see Allan Stone as himself an artist—a collagist building a grand work of art from the individual pieces done by so many others, a mosaic of his madness.

Olympia also places her father within the context of the greater art market, showing how the art auction boom of the 1980s damaged the art world by prioritizing the investment aspect of art over the aesthetic one. In the midst of all that, Allan Stone continued to collect for love rather than profit, a dinosaur among the Wall Street hot shots looking for the quick score, yet outlasting them all when the boom went bust, all while retaining his own integrity and that of the art he loved.

Allan’s father “Stoney” died in 1972, having told others but never his son how proud he was over Allan’s success. Sadly, Allan himself died in 2006, just weeks before the premiere of this film. In this film, Olympia Stone shows us how proud she was of her father, something he most certainly knew in his heart.

[Many thanks to Microcinema International for providing me with a review copy of The Collector: Allan Stone’s Life in Art.]