The end of World War II unleashed energies pent up by years of Depression and war, and not just marriages, babies, home buying,college education, and even commercial aviation on a large scale. That was all expected but also and suddenly New York became the center of the art world; artists from all over converged on the city where everything was fresh, exciting, and controversial. The contrast with the pre-war years was stark: before WWII American galleries rarely displayed American artists. Abstract Expressionism influenced even the figurative painters of the period. In retrospect, some of the most interesting work being done melded aspects of both: flattened forms and an ambiguous relationship with pattern and decoration.
Looked at from left to right -
Jill Johnston (1929-2010), wearing a red bowler hat and holding an equally dapper cane, was born in England to an American mother and a British father; she grew up on Long Island.
Having earned an MFA, Johnston became dance critic for The Village Voice in the 1960s. Her column gradually expanded into a diary of her adventures in the New York art world.
In 1971 Johnston took part in a panel discussion at Town Hall "Battle of the Sexes" that, in retrospect, was bound for notoriety. Johnston was by then an announced lesbian, her fellow panelists included Australian author Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) who had only just been dubbed "saucy feminist that men love" by the mainstream American press, and Norman Mailer who was - well - Norman Mailer. Johnston became an early contributor to MS. magazine after it was founded in 1972 and her best known writing is contained in the book Lesbian Nation, published in 1973. Johnston published a number of other books and was one of the more intriguing practitioners of the New Journalism but her boldness was too much for most of her male colleagues and even editors at The Village Voice expressed qualms about her activism and her outspokenness.
In 1971 Johnston took part in a panel discussion at Town Hall "Battle of the Sexes" that, in retrospect, was bound for notoriety. Johnston was by then an announced lesbian, her fellow panelists included Australian author Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) who had only just been dubbed "saucy feminist that men love" by the mainstream American press, and Norman Mailer who was - well - Norman Mailer. Johnston became an early contributor to MS. magazine after it was founded in 1972 and her best known writing is contained in the book Lesbian Nation, published in 1973. Johnston published a number of other books and was one of the more intriguing practitioners of the New Journalism but her boldness was too much for most of her male colleagues and even editors at The Village Voice expressed qualms about her activism and her outspokenness.
Barbara Forst studied at the Art Students League in New York City where she would spend most of her adult life teaching theater and producing plays off-Broadway. She died in Washington, D.C. in 1998.
Marcia Marcus (b. 1928, New York, NY) looking over her shoulder at the viewer and wearing a patterned cape that suggests a familiarity with Gustav Klimt's portraits, also studied at the Art Students League and also at Cooper Union where her contemporaries included Alex Katz and Lois Dodd, also figurative painters during the high tide of Abstract Expressionism. Their work shared similarities, flattening forms, strongly articulated figures and attention to pattern. All these characteristics are represented in Frieze: The Porch painted by Marcus in 1964, three years after her stay in Florence where she immersed herself Byzantine art and Renaissance fresco painting.
At the far right is a grisaille image (in black and white) that Marcus painted from a photograph of herself as a child and her father.
Although Marcia Marcus no longer paints, as Frieze: The Porch demonstrates, she deserves the attention that has been lavished on her close contemporaries and fellow downtown art luminaries: Allen Kaprow, with whom she collaborated on Happenings in the late 1950s, Red Grooms and Bob Thompson whose Delancey Street museum featured her self-portraits (they received highly favorable reviews). Also, for a quarter of a century from the early 1950s until the late 1970s, Marcus spent her summers painting in a shack on the dunes near Provincetown. MA, another intensely art-centric locale. Marcus can claim an impressive list of exhibitions at such galleries as Pace, yet her name and her paintings have become invisible.
Image:
Marcia Marcus - Frieze: The Porch, 1964, Eric Firestone Gallery, NYC.
Marcia Marcus (b. 1928, New York, NY) looking over her shoulder at the viewer and wearing a patterned cape that suggests a familiarity with Gustav Klimt's portraits, also studied at the Art Students League and also at Cooper Union where her contemporaries included Alex Katz and Lois Dodd, also figurative painters during the high tide of Abstract Expressionism. Their work shared similarities, flattening forms, strongly articulated figures and attention to pattern. All these characteristics are represented in Frieze: The Porch painted by Marcus in 1964, three years after her stay in Florence where she immersed herself Byzantine art and Renaissance fresco painting.
At the far right is a grisaille image (in black and white) that Marcus painted from a photograph of herself as a child and her father.
Although Marcia Marcus no longer paints, as Frieze: The Porch demonstrates, she deserves the attention that has been lavished on her close contemporaries and fellow downtown art luminaries: Allen Kaprow, with whom she collaborated on Happenings in the late 1950s, Red Grooms and Bob Thompson whose Delancey Street museum featured her self-portraits (they received highly favorable reviews). Also, for a quarter of a century from the early 1950s until the late 1970s, Marcus spent her summers painting in a shack on the dunes near Provincetown. MA, another intensely art-centric locale. Marcus can claim an impressive list of exhibitions at such galleries as Pace, yet her name and her paintings have become invisible.
Image:
Marcia Marcus - Frieze: The Porch, 1964, Eric Firestone Gallery, NYC.
2 comments:
I will come back to read your two last posts, no time enough for the moment. (New adress for T&P)
Tania, I saw your new format; I left a message but couldn't tell if it registered. Interesting, as always.
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