It seems this experience of painting with Paul and Fairfield was one of the largest in my mind. One summer day we were all painting in Georges backyard. Fairfield didn't want to compete painting Paul's view so he turned around and painted the cars in the driveway.
I made my simple landscape and as I remember Paul made a grand landscape, he for ever showing everyone else up not that he needed to try-- everything was just a large gesture. It made Fairfield nervous, he was very quiet. I think Paul was making a portrait of Fairfield around this time.
The whole Porter family came to dinner. Well, just Anne and Lizzie and Bruno the dog. Bruno sat on my feet at dinner and I can't remember much of anything else. I was very young. I was infatuated with Paulette and this seemed the life. I was invited right in and we all would paint in the living room. Yvette and Lisette were the models as the Watergate trials played out on TV. It was this life and the art so intertwined. That's what got me.
Back in NY, I saw the big Whitney painting of all Paul's friends, come back home to Paul's studio. I don't think I saw the Biennial. Paul was working on a Taxi painting of Paulette exiting the car, to the protection somehow of her father-- the artist. The painting was somewhat corny but it is so expertly done with drawings, small paintings, enlarging into several versions and it just seems to unwrap itself. I say this as it is such a complex painting.
These were followed by a bunch of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and Kent State paintings, I think these were started in Louisiana maybe, which I helped to get up to Fishbach Gallery. Paul was making an assault on NY with these-- what could be termed awful paintings, all against the cool abstraction of the time. They had red frames and Nixon had blood on his hands.
He painted the World Trade Center being built and it was seen as a titanic type thing maybe Paul worked against as a friction. He always worked against something in NY and Tony Siani actually his best friend became the next target.
We all went to the Artists Alliance down on East Broadway and Paul and Tony argued about self conscious and unselfconsciousness. Paul was completely the second and he saw Siani as destroying art, or at least their friendship by being the first.
He made a painting called the Mugging of the Muse, a ridiculous law suit ensued which drew attention but never got far. Siani was suing for defamation of character. I thought it all pretty silly but it drew a lot of attention.
I started to be less interested in this all. I was now more interested in what was going on in the country, out on Long Island.
Paul went on furiously not skipping a beat. Supported by Lisette, making a large breakfast often from left overs of the last dinner, Paul would discuss everything on his mind and get to work. Paulette posing or maybe a hired model would be there. There would be a big lunch and I often was invited over.
We all sat there critiquing what he was doing. This was all thought of as a good thing and we all took part. Paul then, holding out one part of his painting with his hand, and then pronouncing it needed a little blue in the puddle. He would spit on a piece of blue he'd torn from a magazine and paste it to the bottom somewhere, and pronounce, "See!" This was a Hofmann idea to make the sky large and abstractly open the painting to a feeling of freedom. He had a bunch of ideas like this. They then would then take afternoon naps-- I think Lisette read a lot then. It was a regular thing everyday, helping to keep a schedule.
Paul would continue into the evening then with what he started. There would be a big dinner, and we would have large glasses of Vodka and pepper-- for a while that was a thing, with a jug of wine on the table, again the discussion was about the painting. This was what happened day after day.
He would get up to get a Titian or Bruegel book to show what he meant about the horizon line or some different kind of space. He would go off to the living room to watch the news-- it was one of these nights that Three Mile Island thing happened. Paul always joked that he was head of Health and Safety and we made evacuation plans. He usually he sat there with a book on his knee, watching the news and grabbing from behind him another book from the shelf, he'd be talking about El Greco and how the little stuff at the top of the painting was countered by the little stuff at the bottom.
Soon there was a pile of books on the floor. Everything was getting darker in the City. He seemed to feel the weight of these other artists. He thougth all painting was Modern in a sense and would pull out the Piero book.
He would toss a tennis ball to Hoppy, the poodle, who would run full stride across the brushes and palettes strewn across the floor. He'd wearily get up to wash his brushes in a ritual, which if we all were arriving to draw-- he would be doing. Lisette would be up at the top of the stairs to see who had rung the bell and make a greeting.
I looked forward again to the summer and that change into the ocean light.
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| Fairfield Porter |
I made my simple landscape and as I remember Paul made a grand landscape, he for ever showing everyone else up not that he needed to try-- everything was just a large gesture. It made Fairfield nervous, he was very quiet. I think Paul was making a portrait of Fairfield around this time.
The whole Porter family came to dinner. Well, just Anne and Lizzie and Bruno the dog. Bruno sat on my feet at dinner and I can't remember much of anything else. I was very young. I was infatuated with Paulette and this seemed the life. I was invited right in and we all would paint in the living room. Yvette and Lisette were the models as the Watergate trials played out on TV. It was this life and the art so intertwined. That's what got me.
Back in NY, I saw the big Whitney painting of all Paul's friends, come back home to Paul's studio. I don't think I saw the Biennial. Paul was working on a Taxi painting of Paulette exiting the car, to the protection somehow of her father-- the artist. The painting was somewhat corny but it is so expertly done with drawings, small paintings, enlarging into several versions and it just seems to unwrap itself. I say this as it is such a complex painting.
These were followed by a bunch of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and Kent State paintings, I think these were started in Louisiana maybe, which I helped to get up to Fishbach Gallery. Paul was making an assault on NY with these-- what could be termed awful paintings, all against the cool abstraction of the time. They had red frames and Nixon had blood on his hands.
He painted the World Trade Center being built and it was seen as a titanic type thing maybe Paul worked against as a friction. He always worked against something in NY and Tony Siani actually his best friend became the next target.
We all went to the Artists Alliance down on East Broadway and Paul and Tony argued about self conscious and unselfconsciousness. Paul was completely the second and he saw Siani as destroying art, or at least their friendship by being the first.
He made a painting called the Mugging of the Muse, a ridiculous law suit ensued which drew attention but never got far. Siani was suing for defamation of character. I thought it all pretty silly but it drew a lot of attention.
I started to be less interested in this all. I was now more interested in what was going on in the country, out on Long Island.
Paul went on furiously not skipping a beat. Supported by Lisette, making a large breakfast often from left overs of the last dinner, Paul would discuss everything on his mind and get to work. Paulette posing or maybe a hired model would be there. There would be a big lunch and I often was invited over.
We all sat there critiquing what he was doing. This was all thought of as a good thing and we all took part. Paul then, holding out one part of his painting with his hand, and then pronouncing it needed a little blue in the puddle. He would spit on a piece of blue he'd torn from a magazine and paste it to the bottom somewhere, and pronounce, "See!" This was a Hofmann idea to make the sky large and abstractly open the painting to a feeling of freedom. He had a bunch of ideas like this. They then would then take afternoon naps-- I think Lisette read a lot then. It was a regular thing everyday, helping to keep a schedule.
Paul would continue into the evening then with what he started. There would be a big dinner, and we would have large glasses of Vodka and pepper-- for a while that was a thing, with a jug of wine on the table, again the discussion was about the painting. This was what happened day after day.
He would get up to get a Titian or Bruegel book to show what he meant about the horizon line or some different kind of space. He would go off to the living room to watch the news-- it was one of these nights that Three Mile Island thing happened. Paul always joked that he was head of Health and Safety and we made evacuation plans. He usually he sat there with a book on his knee, watching the news and grabbing from behind him another book from the shelf, he'd be talking about El Greco and how the little stuff at the top of the painting was countered by the little stuff at the bottom.
Soon there was a pile of books on the floor. Everything was getting darker in the City. He seemed to feel the weight of these other artists. He thougth all painting was Modern in a sense and would pull out the Piero book.
He would toss a tennis ball to Hoppy, the poodle, who would run full stride across the brushes and palettes strewn across the floor. He'd wearily get up to wash his brushes in a ritual, which if we all were arriving to draw-- he would be doing. Lisette would be up at the top of the stairs to see who had rung the bell and make a greeting.
I looked forward again to the summer and that change into the ocean light.
