The Leo Castelli Gallery

60s
THE
A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L
A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L V O L U M E 4 6 N U M B E R S 3 –4 FA L L 2 0 0 7
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the newly redesigned Journal

of the Archives of American Art. When I arrived at the Archives
a little over one year ago as the new director, one of my first
goals was to oversee a complete redesign of all of our printed
materials. As frequently happens in organizations, over the
years our newsletters, invitations, and the Journal have grown
visually stale and, to my eye, no longer convey the energetic and
intellectually engaged work being done by Archives staff and
the scholars and researchers who are our primary constituents.
Earlier this year we hired the design firm, Winterhouse,
headed by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, to help
us re-envision our publications and printed materials. They
have proven to be a perfect fit for the job. Their sensitivity
to intellectual and visual qualities of archival collections,
coupled with their ability to present the material in a fresh
and lively manner, have breathed new life into the Journal.
I am deeply grateful to them and their team for the patience
and thoughtful creativity they have brought to this project,
and for the intelligence and expertise contributed by Darcy
Endpapers inspired by a 1971 card Tell and Jenifer Dismukes.
from Richard Tuttle to Sam Wagstaff. It seemed especially fitting to launch the Journal’s new look
with a series of essays highlighting the Archives’ important
holdings documenting American art in the 1960s, a decade
that witnessed profound changes. Not only was this a period
of tremendous experimentation among artists, but it also
ushered in a fresh breed of curators, dealers, and collectors
who served as international cultural missionaries for the work
of these young American artists. I am indebted to the authors
whose essays so vividly capture the spirit of the era.
This issue closes with a new feature — a project by the young
artist Terence Gower. My intention is to invite other artists to
contribute to successive issues of the Journal. Although it is
their lives and work that are documented in the Archives, their
perspective on our collections is engaged far too rarely.
This project is a first step in rectifying this, and I appreciate
Terence’s enthusiastic involvement.
I hope that our members and subscribers are as pleased with
these changes as I am and, as always, I look forward to hearing
your comments and feedback.
CONTRIBUTORS
James Crump’s film Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam

Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe premiered at the 2007
Tribeca Film Festival. He lives in New York City.
Titia Hulst received a master’s degree in contemporary and

modern art from the State University of New York at Purchase
in 2006. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Institute
of Fine Arts at New York University.
Jonathan Katz is the founder of the Harvey Milk Institute, the

largest queer studies institute in the world, and the Queer Caucus
for Art of the College Art Association. His forthcoming book,
The Homosexualization of American Art: Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg, and the Collective Closet, will be published by the
University of Chicago Press.
Jessica Dawson is a freelance art writer living in Washington, DC.

She has written the Washington Post’s Galleries column since
November 2000. She received her master’s degree in art history
from George Washington University in 2007.
David McCarthy is the author of The Nude in American Painting,

1950 to 1980 (1998), Pop Art (2000), and H. C. Westermann at
War: Art and Manhood in Cold War America (2004). He holds the
James F. Ruffin Chair of Art and Archaeology at Rhodes College
and is currently researching modern American artists’ opposition
to imperialism and war.
Judith Wilson is an independent scholar who recently retired

after twenty years of teaching art history at the University of
California, Irvine, Yale University, the University of Virginia, and
Syracuse University. Her Ph.D. dissertation (1995, Yale) was on
Bob Thompson.
Marina Pacini is chief curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum

of Art. In collaboration with the Toledo Art Museum she is
organizing a Marisol retrospective, scheduled to begin its national
tour in 2010.
Cover: Detail of preliminary Terence Gower is a Canadian artist who works primarily with
sketches for Roy Lichtenstein’s
painting As I Opened Fire, 1964. strategies of representation in modernist architecture, with
a special focus on Mexican modernism. He has exhibited his
installations and videos in museums, galleries, and public sites
in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Canada.
He divides his time between New York City and Mexico City.
2 A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L 4 6 : 3–4
IN THIS ISSUE
Art of Acquisition:
04
The Eye of Sam Wagstaff
James Crump
The Leo Castelli Gallery
14
Titia Hulst
Reading Watchman Through the Archive
28
Jonathan Katz
Virginia Dwan Los Angeles
36
Jessica Dawson
Defending Allusion:
46
Peter Saul on the Aesthetics of Rhetoric
David McCarthy
Underknown: Bob Thompson
52
Judith Wilson
Tracking Marisol in the Fifties and Sixties
60
Marina Pacini
The Castle: Esther McCoy
66
A Project by Terence Gower
A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L 4 6 : 3–4 3
In his book Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens
muses on the character Alain in Roger Martin du Gard’s novel
Lieutenant Colonel Maumort. For Alain, “the first rule — he calls it
the rule of rules — is the art of challenging what is appealing. You
will notice that he describes this as an ‘art’: it is not enough simply
to set oneself up as a person who distrusts majority taste as a mat-
JAMES CRUMP
The Eye of Sam Wagstaff
Art of Acquisition
ter of principle or perhaps conceit; that way lies snobbery and
frigidity.” Alain implies that true opposition requires structure for
belief, intellectual preparation, aesthetic drive, passion, and true
conviction, traits useful to describe the twentieth-century curator,
collector, and aesthete Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr. (1921–1987). For
nearly three decades in the arts, Wagstaff constantly challenged
the status quo, first offering new ways of interpreting contempo-
rary art and later going against the current as a groundbreaking
collector and scholar of photography.
Wagstaff’s “eye” was anomalous. At different points in his
life, he also took up collecting, among other areas, African tribal
art, pre-Columbian art, Old Master drawings, and decorative arts
in silver, pursuing each of these seemingly disparate fields with
intensity and rigor. The decisiveness of his visual taste was based
on risk taking, iconoclasm, and authentic discovery, qualities that
also were manifest in his personal life — skating “where the ice is
thin,” he called it in 1978. As the auctioneer Philippe Garner elo-
quently put it, Wagstaff leaped first and “he let the rationalizing
happen later.”
For Wagstaff, “challenging what is appealing” was not the re-
action of a snob or a frigid intellect, though he was known to be
intolerant of those who didn’t share his passion or clarity of vi-
sion, and he occasionally displayed a “‘fuck you’ attitude to every-
one who didn’t agree with him,” as his fellow collector and friend
Clark Worswick remarked. Wagstaff’s impatience had rather more
to do with what was being edited out and what was being over-
looked by scholars and historians overly concerned with tradi-
tional notions about art — linear progressions that presupposed
excellence, refinement, and absolute taste. Far from being a grand-
stander, though, Wagstaff worked relatively quietly and deliber-
ately, on the “periphery,” as he once described it. He considered
majority opinion in the arts to be suspect, perhaps even anachro-
nistic. Audiences needed to be provoked, to be jostled from their
lethargy and complacency in order to open up fully the imagina-
tion and the psyche to vital new forms of art, to be “turned on” as
Wagstaff said, to receive the “pleasure,” and to feel the “kick” of
challenging art. As curator and collector, Wagstaff always knew
he was going against the grain and that some of his actions were
certain to cause “general outrage,” as he remarked about his 1969
Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition “Other Ideas.” “All art is an at-
tempt to make the viewer take a fresh look at everything,” Wagstaff
noted, “including himself.” Perhaps more than anything else, this Opposite: Portrait of Sam Wagstaff,
newsprint, hand colored and stamped
represents Wagstaff’s life credo as he negotiated the higher eche- by Ray Johnson. Photograph by Alwyn
lons of the international art world of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Scott Turner.
As one can gather by examining his correspondence and writings
today, much of it housed in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American
Art, Wagstaff’s was a rarefied world, where “high” and “low” col-
lapsed onto themselves and charting new territory as a curator
was tantamount to art-making itself.
Wagstaff entered the arts late in his career, having spent the
better part of the 1950s working in advertising for the Madison
Avenue firm Benton and Bowles. His was a somewhat privileged
background. He grew up on Central Park South in New York and
attended prep school at St. Bernard’s, the Harvey School, and
Hotchkiss before going on to Yale, where he studied classics
and theater. Completing her son’s application to Hotchkiss, where
she lobbied successfully for Wagstaff to be a “scholarship boy,”
Olga (Wagstaff) Newhall (née Piorkowska) wrote that in youth Sam
was particularly “talented at decorating.” Wagstaff later claimed
to have begun collecting as a child, when he put together a group
of miniature cacti while living with his mother in Palma, Mallorca,
before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. “All the Wagstaffs
have been collectors,” he declared in 1987, the year of his untimely
death from AIDS . “If they had a nickel, they collected with nick-
els. If they had a dollar, they collected with dollars.” After serv-
ing during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Wagstaff returned to
the United States. He made one of his first acquisitions by the late
1940s, when he bought a floral painting by the American painter
Charles Demuth.
In 1957, at the age of thirty-six, Wagstaff entered New York
University’s Institute of Fine Arts to study art history with the leg-
endary scholar Richard Offner. Wagstaff’s years in Offner’s or-
bit were transformative. Among the most important classes he
took — and mastered — were Offner’s courses in connoisseurship, at
the time a rapidly waning mainstay of art-historical research and
analysis. For Wagstaff, connoisseurship was not a hollow notion
but rather the touchstone for his prescient tastes. The traditions
of connoisseurship that he soaked up at the Institute may best ex-
plain his hungry eye, though desire played a key supporting role.
In these years, Wagstaff was tenacious in acquiring the visual
knowledge that later served him well as a curator and collector. If
he didn’t already have an amazing eye by the time he began classes
with Offner at the Institute, he certainly honed his visual prowess
there. Wagstaff’s first exposure to Offner’s work may have come
at Yale, whose collection Offner had analyzed in Italian Primitives
at Yale University. The author also of Studies in Florentine
Painting and influential essays on Italian Renaissance painting,
Offner used a noniconographic approach to evaluating works of
art, focusing instead on issues of style and technique, an approach
that Wagstaff relied on throughout his life.
Wagstaff’s range of interests and knowledge in the history
of art were diverse from the beginning. At Yale, for instance, he
had demonstrated an early interest in classical art and architec-
ture. Later at the Institute, one of the first courses Wagstaff took
was in ancient architecture with the renowned archaeologist Karl
Lehmann. In a period predating the specialization and narrow
focus of today’s art historians, Wagstaff in fact studied nearly ev-
erything. As his friend Richard Tuttle suggested, Wagstaff looked
at all art on its own terms, neither prejudicing nor privileging
one form over another. “Art is art,” Tuttle stated, and for Wagstaff
“whatever beauties he found in contemporary art were also what
he found in historical art.” In terms of his eye, Tuttle continued,
Among the gifted, there are also those at even the genius level.
Every eye needs development and if it doesn’t need development
it needs to become aware of itself, and how it becomes aware of
itself, and also the relation between creativity and seeing without
going through an intellectual process. . . . Sam had no trouble
looking at details.
Wagstaff found himself at a crossroads toward the end of three

years at the Institute. His dilemma was whether to go directly
into a museum job or accept a coveted David E. Finley Fellowship
(sponsored by the National Gallery of Art) to spend two years in
Europe. Both were exceptional opportunities, for which only elite
candidates were considered. Recalling his quandary, Wagstaff
remembered in 1975 that Offner emphatically suggested he go to
Europe and take advantage of the time to study and visit impor-
tant collections. Wagstaff’s other chief adviser, James Rorimer,
a well-known power broker in the museum world and founding
curator and later director of the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters,
took a more pragmatic view of Wagstaff’s future, telling him to
“go to work right away.” Rorimer had in fact already contacted the
Wadsworth Atheneum and its director, Charles C. Cunningham,
about Wagstaff, who was being considered for a curatorial posi-
tion at the museum as early as 1959. It was the kind of opportunity
that few students of art history have waiting for them before grad-
uation, but “I really wanted to go to Europe,” Wagstaff later said.
“I liked Charlie [Cunningham],” but, he suspected that they “might
kill each other.” Wagstaff departed for Europe in 1959, and typi-
cally, never looked back.
Offner had numerous contacts and directed Wagstaff’s trav-
els in Europe, opening doors and suggesting how best to spend his
valuable time. He likely introduced Wagstaff to legendary connois-
seur Bernard Berenson at I Tatti shortly before Berenson’s death
at age ninety-four. He also introduced Wagstaff to John Pope-
Hennessy, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
and a leading historian of the Italian Renaissance. For Wagstaff, Futzie Nutzle [illustrator Bruce
to be guided through European collections by the author of several Kleinsmith] to Sam Wagstaff, n.d.
important art-historical texts, including A Sienese Codex of the

Divine Comedy, Paolo Uccello: Paintings and Drawings, and Fra
Angelico, was an enormous opportunity.
The American museum network in the early 1960s hadn’t
evolved much since the first generation of directors graduated
from Paul Sachs’ museum training program at Harvard.
Wagstaff’s mentor Rorimer was a protégé of Sachs’, and together
with his fellow students Alfred H. Barr, Jr., A. Everett “Chick”
Austin, Jr., Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jere Abbott, and Kirk
Askew, he was part of a revolutionary guard that changed arts
know it would be this bad.

leadership in America. If there was a line from which Wagstaff
whole heartedly, but I didn’t
I knew I was going into it
descended it was these men — versed in the classics, medieval
painting and sculpture, and European modernism — who in the
postwar period were increasingly at odds with the “new” art that
was emerging in America. Wagstaff distinguished himself from
his mentors almost immediately, developing an expansive range
of interests that took him beyond many of his peers.
Though he was focused professionally on late Gothic and ear-
ly Renaissance Italian painting, by the late 1950s Wagstaff was
also cruising the Manhattan gallery scene whenever he had a free
moment. On Saturday mornings, according to Tuttle, Wagstaff
would wake up early and set off on foot, walking miles to visit
the most important galleries, making side stops at the studios of
artists he knew. The last five years of the decade were as exciting
as any previous era in the New York art world, with small and more
established galleries competing for the attention of a burgeon-
ing crowd of sophisticates. The Betty Parsons Gallery was show-
ing Ad Reinhardt, Ellsworth Kelly, and Agnes Martin; the Panoras
Gallery, Donald Judd; the Heller Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein; the
Martha Jackson Gallery, Louise Nevelson and Frank Lobdell;
the Sidney Janis Gallery, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and
Mark Rothko. Tibor de Nagy Gallery showed Larry Rivers, Grace
Hartigan, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, and Helen Frankenthaler;
the Stable Gallery, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, and Lee Krasner;
and the Leo Castelli Gallery, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschen-
berg.These artists were precursors to what lay ahead in the early
and mid-1960s, when Andy Warhol and Pop, Minimal, Conceptual,
and Performance art took the art world by storm, and Wagstaff
came into his own as a collector and curator.
In 1961, Wagstaff accepted a curatorial position at the
Wadsworth Atheneum, a museum with a lively and distinguished
past. According to Wagstaff, “The trustees [of the Wadsworth]
were very tired when they hired Charlie [during the war years].
Charlie wasn’t bored, but I think he was ready for more fun and
games. . . . He always wanted to do some things like [legendary
Wadsworth predecessor Chick] Austin. But [he didn’t] know how.”
Cunningham had taken over at Hartford when cultural activity
was reduced significantly. All through his tenure at Hartford he
endeavored to return to the excitement of the Austin years, and
he recognized in Wagstaff an individualist spirit who might help
fulfill this goal.
Wagstaff and the Wadsworth, it turned out, were the per-
fect match at the perfect moment. Wagstaff soon had heads spin-
ning with such innovative exhibitions as “Continuity and Change”
(1962) and “Black, White, and Gray” (1964). He often provoked
museum trustees, patrons, and visi-
tors by the sheer audacity of his aes-
thetic choices. “He liked to surprise
people,” renowned Museum of
Modern Art curator John Szarkow-
ski remarked much later. “ It was
part of Sam’s makeup to think that
what he did would drive others
crazy.” In New York and elsewhere,
word traveled fast that a tall,
handsome new curator with a
compelling intellect had begun to
stir things up in Hartford. It was in these
years that Wagstaff began his voluminous correspondence (now
in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art) with a diverse Postcard from Ad Reinhardt
range of artists working in painting, sculpture, Performance, and to Sam Wagstaff, 1964.
Conceptual art. They included Robert Motherwell, Josef Albers, Postcard from Robert Morris
Merce Cunningham, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Lee to Sam Wagstaff, 1967.
Byars, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Andy Warhol, David Smith,

Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Lee Bontecou, Donald Judd,
Nam June Paik, Richard Tuttle, Dan Flavin, Grace Hartigan, Philip
Guston, Tony Smith, Robert Morris, and Yvonne Rainer. But this
simple list hardly reveals the full range of interests and extraordi-
nary interactions found in the letters, Mail Art, and official corre-
spondence from this relatively unknown period of Wagstaff’s life.
What is clear from the cache at the Archives is that Wagstaff
enjoyed the lively exchange of letters during his years at the
Wadsworth, and later at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where he was
hired as curator in 1968. Not only are many of these missives help-
ful in gauging the activities of the people and personalities of the
time, but they also reveal Wagstaff’s enthusiasm and gamy play-
Opposite: Diter Rot [Dieter Roth]
fulness with those whom he admired or was courting profession- to Sam Wagstaff, 1967.
ally. The letters also show that many of those writing confided in
him to an extraordinary extent their ideas, aspirations, and plans.
Wagstaff in these years was known for his intensity, his
serious mien, and his buttoned-down Brooks Brothers appearance.
The correspondence found in Washington often suggests a light-
er, more relaxed side of his personality. Many artists seemed to
rely on Wagstaff for expert opinions and, on occasion, comic relief.
Humor is found throughout these exchanges, some of it hilarious,
as in the correspondence with the artist Ray Johnson.
Often struggling to make ends meet, in their letters to Wagstaff,
a number of artists begged him for the money he owed for works
either acquired for his employer or for his own private collection.
Unlike the present day, in the 1960s there were fewer perceived
conflicts of interest when a curator bought work he was simul-
taneously promoting within an institution. Wagstaff stretched
his personal resources and compulsively added to his own col-
lection throughout his years at Hartford and Detroit. “Could you
pay me before Christmas?,” Diter Rot [a.k.a. Dieter Roth] wrote in
an undated letter, adding parenthetically, “I [sic] poor and in need.”
”Dear Sam, could you please send 50 dollars toward the collage
you have already paid half for?,” Johnson queried. From the Union
Square West “Factory” (where he was shot in 1968), Warhol wrote,
“Dear Sam, can you send me the rest of the money for the Flower
paintings? We’re going to buy a building and we need cash right
away, Hugs, Andy.”
Wagstaff supported a broad array of art from the 1950s, 1960s,
and 1970s, acquiring several works by Warhol, Agnes Martin, Ad
Reinhardt, Philip Guston, and even Jackson Pollock, whose late
painting The Deep he acquired from the artist’s widow, Lee Krasner.
In an undated letter to the sculptor Tony Smith from around 1968,
Wagstaff wrote, “The Deep may be slipping away. It seems that
when Lee found out what Heller had sold one of his Pollocks to
MoMA for, she took all hers off the market prior to upping the pric-
es. Oh dear! I knew it was too much of a bargain at its price.”
Wagstaff stealthily acquired the painting. “I have been offered
$225,000 for The Deep,” Wagstaff wrote to Smith in January 1970.
“I paid $190,000 — but, I wonder if it isn’t worth more. Should I
keep it? I don’t need the money though of course I could always do
something with some of it. I don’t want to denigrate the picture or
the artist. Any ideas?” Today of course, the Pollock would fetch
many millions, but for Wagstaff the thrill was in the discovery. He
eventually dropped Abstract Expressionism for edgier art — Pop,
Minimalism, and even Earthworks — before his complete plunge
into photography in 1973, a year following his first meeting with
photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who would become his lover
and soul mate.
Artists often tend to be self-obsessed and narcissistic, traits
that Wagstaff also shared, and as a collector-curator he took part
in a number of revealing exchanges during this period, some car car-
ried out in letter-writing campaigns that went on for months.
Responding to Wagstaff’s thoughtful 1964 invitation to visit
Hartford, for instance, the sculptor David Smith jotted on the
typewritten original, “No Sam — I do not like to go places and I’ve
got too much work to do and I have no obligation to Hartford. It
even ended up in costing me money to exhibit with Wadsworth.
Greetings David S.” In an October 1969 postcard response to
Wagstaff’s invitation to do an edition of his work in Detroit, the
artist Carl Andre wrote, “I have never done graphics or multi-
ples . . . I have always thought such bore the same relation to art-
works as stock certificates do to the means of production.”
Criticizing the Documenta art fair, which takes place every five
years in Kassel, Germany, Walter De Maria wrote on 4 September
1968: “If you did not come to Europe — and missed Documenta —
I would say — you did not miss anything because outside of
J. Beuys there seemed to be no European of status and most of
the American work had been seen in N.Y.” A year earlier, De Maria
had begun to correspond with Wagstaff about “land projects,” in-
cluding his renowned Lightning Field near Quemado, New
Mexico. “Sam,” De Maria wrote on 20 November 1967, “I am afraid
that if much is written or spoken about projects none will be
done. This is my paranoia speaking.” On 21 January 1964, at the
moment he was breaking through with his radical light sculp-
ture, Dan Flavin wrote to Wagstaff that “Bob Rosenblum on see-
Card sent by Richard Tuttle to Sam Wagstaff, 1965. ing my fluorescent tubes said that I had ‘destroyed painting’ for
him. He was euphoric. He switched the light on and off several
times because he wanted to sense ‘the difference.’”
Perhaps the most touching correspondence in the Archives
is that between Wagstaff and Tuttle during Tuttle’s undergradu-
ate years at Trinity College in Hartford. Tuttle, whose letters are
marked by uncertainty about the direction of his life and work,
confided unreservedly in the older, more experienced Wagstaff.
The Tuttle-Wagstaff correspondence underscores how Wagstaff
enjoyed acting as a mentor. Wagstaff was in many ways a teach-
er of aesthetics, though he carefully chose to whom he would im-
part his knowledge. Taking an interest in many younger artists,
he remained dutiful in his support and friendship. His extant
letters from these years underscore a remarkable level of energy
spent simply giving encouragement and, sometimes, advice.
Wagstaff was the model for a number of later curators and
collectors. An aesthete with a firm knowledge of the past, he was
always changing course, staying open to discovery, and vehe-
mently marking out an ideal way of seeing and collecting that
made statements both about himself and about the destiny of art.
Collaged postcard from Richard Tuttle
to Sam Wagstaff, 1971.
Watercolor-and-ink drawing from

Richard Tuttle to Sam Wagstaff, 1971.
The correspondence housed in the Archives of American Art, a

veritable who’s who in the visual arts, suggests how in the years
before he met Mapplethorpe and started collecting photographs
Wagstaff contributed to New York’s growing dominance in the
international art world. His private and public acts, made in a
simpler era now past, continue to resonate in today’s frenzied,
self-congratulatory art market.
Quoted material is taken from the Samuel Wagstaff Papers

at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution;
from interviews conducted by the author; and from
secondary sources.
The Leo Castelli Gallery
TITIA HULST
Since the development of the modern art market in the late nine-
teenth century, the achievement of commercial success for new art
has depended on the activities of powerful dealers. In France, Paul
Durand-Ruel fulfilled this role for the Impressionists, Ambroise
Vollard for the Post-Impressionists, and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
for the Cubists. In the United States, this type of commercially
powerful dealer did not emerge until the late 1950s, when Leo
Castelli (1907–1999) brought a number of innovative business
methods to the art-dealing world.1 In fact, many of the practices of
powerful art dealers today are rooted in Castelli’s pioneering ef-
forts in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Leo Castelli was the first dealer to achieve broad commer-
cial success for American avant-garde artists, and he represented
many of the most important artists of the postwar period, includ-
ing Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol,
Donald Judd, and Bruce Nauman. Castelli’s promotional activities
had spectacular results. When ARTnews published its tally of the
“Ten Most Expensive Living Artists” in May 2004, six of them (Johns,
Rauschenberg, Stella, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra, and Nauman)
had been discovered, nurtured, and promoted by Castelli. 2 While
Castelli’s success has been widely documented, the methods
Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli, 1975. behind his efforts on behalf of his artists in the early years of his
Previous Page: Leo Castelli and his artists, gallery, which opened in 1957, are less well known.
1982. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Castelli’s singular ability to promote his artists effectively in
Europe played a crucial role in the postwar development of the
market for American contemporary art. His extraordinary pro-
motional efforts were, in fact, a crucial force in propelling New
York to the dominant position it has today by helping to shift the
center of the art market away from Paris. The conventional wis-
dom among art historians is that this happened concurrently
with the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s, but I
believe this is wrong.3 Contemporary accounts in business and
art magazines show that Paris continued to be the center of the
commercial art world throughout the 1950s. Castelli’s efforts to
promote American avant-garde art culminated in the success-
WAS THE FIRST DEALER ful campaign for Robert Rauschenberg to win the prestigious
TO ACHIEVE BROAD international Grand Prize for Painting at the 1964 Venice Biennale.
COMMERCIAL SUCCESS Rauschenberg’s award can be viewed as a signal event in the com-
FOR AMERICAN AVANT- mercial triumph of new American art and the international busi-
GARDE ARTISTS ness model developed by Castelli.
In the early 1950s, the Abstract Expressionists enjoyed signifi-
cant critical success, but they barely had a toehold in the market for
contemporary art. These painters had a very difficult time show-
ing, let alone selling, their work, and records show that sales in
the 1940s and early 1950s were at best extremely modest. Jackson
Pollock’s two shows at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery sold poorly, 4
and he fared little better at the Betty Parsons Gallery. Willem De
Kooning’s exhibitions at Charles Egan’s gallery were financial
failures. 5 Samuel Kootz, who opened his gallery in 1945 showing
William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Adolph Gottlieb, also
reported little in the way of sales. As Kootz
put it, “Quite frankly, we could not have ex-
isted unless I had Picasso shows. Picasso
paid continuously for the period of the first
ten years of the gallery’s existence. If we
had to exist on the sales of our American
men, we would have been dead at the end of
those ten years.” 6
As Kootz’s quote suggests, selling con-
temporary French art in New York in the
1940s and 1950s was not nearly as difficult
as selling contemporary American art.
Indeed, while the Abstract Expressionists
were struggling to make ends meet, the
market in New York for European art, es-
pecially French art, was flourishing as a
result of an economic boom during and
after World War II. Leo Castelli witnessed
the demand for French contemporary art
first hand. He had arrived in New York as
a refugee from Europe in 1941, and, af-
ter military service, actively catered to
the demand of American collectors of
European work as the North American
partner of his friend René Drouin, with
whom he had briefly run a Paris gallery
before the war. Unlike most of the expa-
triate European artists and dealers at the
time, Castelli quickly forged friendships
with the impoverished group of down-
town painters, including De Kooning, who
were loosely associated in what became
known as The Club. Because he could get along with both the up- Advertisement for the Leo Castelli
town art establishment, which included European expatriate Gallery, summer 1964.
artists and dealers, and the downtown artists, Castelli connect-

ed the old and new worlds. He remarked later, “I formed anoth-
er kind of bridge between Europe and the American painters: I
seemed to be the only European actually . . . who seems to have
understood them, and not only understood them . . . they were my
enthusiasm really.” 7
Castelli played an important role in The Club’s famous 1951
“Ninth Street Show,” which showcased the New York painters’ rev-
olutionary work and is now considered a defining moment in the
history of Abstract Expressionism. Not only did Castelli pay for
the paint on the walls and the printing of the flyer (designed by
Franz Kline), but he also helped select the seventy-five or so works
for the show and smoothed over the political infighting and re-
sentments that surfaced in the very diverse group of artists. By
Castelli’s own count, the show was hung and rehung about twenty
times, as many of the artists expressed dissatisfaction with the
position of their work relative to others.8 His exemplary manners
and his diplomatic approach defused the acrimony between the
artists, and the show gave Castelli his first taste of success as a
promoter of a significant new movement.
In 1954, the market for fine art received a significant boost
from the federal government when the tax code was changed to al-
low gifts of fine art to museums to be categorized as tax-deduct-
ible charitable donations (based on estimated market value) on
personal income tax returns. The new provision allowed donors to
take this deduction when they made their gifts known, while keep-
ing possession of the art works during their lifetimes.9 This made
collecting art an attractive financial proposition, and American
businessmen and investors took note. In 1955 and 1956, Fortune
magazine ran two lengthy articles about the investment potential
of art, ranking painters and collectors in terms usually reserved
for the stock market. Most notably, Fortune identified a new class
of American “venture capital” collectors who, as highly salaried or
prosperous lawyers, physicians, and businessmen, were willing to
spend up to twenty-five thousand dollars on a painting. Fortune
believed these people to be most plentiful in smaller capital cities
UNDERSTOOD THAT throughout the United States. 10
INCREASING AMERICAN For the most part, however, these collectors refrained from
SALES SUCCESS IN purchasing the new American art produced by the New York School
EUROPE WOULD BE painters, preferring instead the work of their European counter-
CRUCIAL FOR THE parts. The problem was that the venture capital collector was not
convinced of the investment potential of works by American avant-
DEVELOPMENT OF AN
garde artists. This could be attributed in part to the lack of a persua-
AMERICAN MARKET sive and single-minded dealer promoting these artists nationwide
FOR CONTEMPORARY and to the absence of support from important taste-making insti-
AMERICAN ART tutions such as the Museum of Modern Art.11 But most importantly,
the lack of investor confidence in the value of American avant-
garde art also reflected the fact that few Europeans were buying
American work. As Kootz noted pointedly in Art in America, “The
French artist has an undoubted advantage over the American in
that his work is saleable on the international market. As everyone
knows, the work of Americans is not.” 12
Leo Castelli had come to the same conclusion and was con-
templating opening a gallery in Paris with the express purpose
of promoting advanced American art. In a letter to Alfred H. Barr,
Jr., at the Museum of Modern Art, dated 26 October 1955, describ-
ing his idea for such a gallery, he expressed great concern that the
Abstract Expressionists were going unnoticed by European col-
lectors. 1 3 The letter makes clear that he understood that increas-
ing American sales success in Europe would be crucial for the
development of an American market for contemporary American
art. Castelli observed that
the American public itself is often reluctant to give its full

appreciation and support to U.S. artists who have not yet
received the European stamp of approval; and, while many
new arrivals from Europe — not infrequently watered-down
versions of trends which have originated in this country —
shown here by our museums and galleries meet with immediate
success, parallel efforts to promote American art in Europe
have had, at best, a succès d’estime. 14
Castelli believed it was essential that the gallery be located in

Paris because, in his words, “owing to longstanding habits of
thought, Paris still reign[ed] supreme in the world of art, both as
center and fountainhead.” The failure of Castelli to obtain financ-
ing for his Paris gallery showed the disinclination of the New York
art establishment to expand the audience for American avant-
garde painting. The largest dealers of contemporary American art,
Samuel Kootz and Sidney Janis, remained quite content to sell to
the handful of collectors interested in the American avant-garde
and supplement their incomes with the sale of works by the more
popular European artists.
Unable to find backing for the Paris venture, Caselli opened the
Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in February 1957 with an exhibi-
tion that included a mix of well-known European and American
artists as well as a few new European painters. He showed works
by David Smith, Pollock, De Kooning, and Jean Dubuffet, along with
works by more established modernists like Piet Mondrian, Francis
Picabia, Alberto Giacometti, Theo van Doesburg, Robert Delaunay,
and Fernand Léger. The show was the first concrete manifestation
of the dealer’s belief that American collectors needed to feel that
the American artists were on par with the Europeans.
Castelli’s skills at marketing were evident in the gallery’s first
year. To cite one example, he shrewdly hooked his audience with
his first “Collectors’ Annual” exhibition, which opened in December
1957. For this show, Castelli invited twenty prominent collectors
to select a “single work that they found significant or likeable,”
reported the Times, noting it as a “novel idea.” 15 The design of the
exhibition’s announcement listed the collectors, presented as a
solid block of names, much more prominently than the artists they
had chosen for the exhibition. With names like Richard Brown
Baker, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Neuberger, and Mr. and Mrs. Ben Heller,
the list was a who’s who of collectors of American contemporary
art.16 The design projected an importance, stability, and cohesive-
ness that was noticeably absent in the scattering of artists’ names
below the fold. Castelli’s announcement was a first indication of
the important role collectors came to play in the development of
American avant-garde movements, especially Pop Art, in which
the enthusiasm of collectors and their high profile in the press,
rather than critical appreciation, provided the basis for success.17
The “Collectors’ Annual” exemplifies the tactics Castelli was
beginning to formulate for the promotion and sale of vanguard
art. Not only did the show put him in direct and active commu-
nication with the most important contemporary art collectors in
New York, but it also publicized the fact that many of them had
Leo Castelli in his New York City gallery, been buying works from Leo Castelli. Although he later dismissed
1960. Photograph by Eliot Elisofon. it as “sheer propaganda, a social sort of Madison Avenue type of
Previous Spread: Crated American art promotion,” the exhibition was a significant preliminary to what
arriving at the Venice Biennale, 1964. can be considered, after the “Ninth Street Show,” one of the most
important exhibitions of the 1950s: the first solo show of Jasper
Johns’, the young artist Castelli had discovered when visiting a
group show at New York’s Jewish Museum. Johns’ 1958 show of
paintings of flags and targets, immediately followed by an exhi-
bition of Rauschenberg’s combines, was widely seen as a decisive
moment in the development of postwar art. Both exhibitions made
a clean break with the dominant Abstract Expressionist aesthetic,
and Johns and Rauschenberg greatly influenced the next genera-
tion of artists, including those associated with the Pop Art move-
ment of the 1960s.
Castelli had a strong ambition to make his mark on art his-
tory. After his arrival in New York in 1941, he had spent hours at
the Museum of Modern Art studying Barr’s genealogy of twentieth-
century art history.18 Castelli was determined to continue this
genealogy with his own artists. Having been closely associ-
ated with Surrealism first in Paris and then in his early years
in New York, and having been associated with one of the defin-
ing moments of Abstract Expressionism, Castelli felt he was well
suited to recognize, promote, and shape the artists who would
succeed the Abstract Expressionists. He believed that in Johns
and Rauschenberg he had identified key figures who could lead
American art into a new direction.
The success of the Johns exhibition and the failure of the
Rauschenberg show have been well documented over the years.19
Nevertheless, Castelli committed himself wholly to both art-
ists. He purchased a work from each show and started paying
each artist a weekly stipend.20 In return for these cash advances,
Castelli had the right (but not the obligation) to purchase their
work at a 50-percent discount of the sales price. While New York
dealers sporadically had used this patronage model in the past
(Peggy Guggenheim famously paid Pollock $300 per month), most
American dealers operated on the consignment system, which did
not require a financial commitment: the dealer merely agreed to
show an artist’s work in return for a percentage of the price of
works sold.21 Paying an artist regardless of his or her sales was
viewed as revolutionary in New York, and Castelli is often credited
with the introduction of this practice. While these stipends are
most often discussed as an example of Castelli’s generosity, they
actually also made good business sense. Such payments ensured
his artists’ loyalty, and they also raised Castelli’s credibility as
their promoter. He made sure that collectors (and the press) were
aware of his personal financial stake, thus underscoring the in-
vestment potential of the work.22
The switch from the consignment system to the stipend sys-
tem also had a powerful effect on the promotional activities
Castelli undertook on behalf of his artists. Because he purchased
his artists’ works outright, Castelli had a direct incentive to find a
market for their work, even at a reduced commission, so he could FORMED ANOTHER
recoup his investment. He realized that he would need to access KIND OF BRIDGE
the broader base of collectors spread around the country — for BETWEEN EUROPE
instance, the kind of venture capital collector described so aptly in
AND THE AMERICAN
Fortune magazine.
Castelli’s most instrumental contribution to the postwar PAINTERS
American art market was that he set out, quite deliberately it
seems, to provide the validation of American avant-garde art that
was needed to activate these collectors. By pursuing exhibition
opportunities in contemporary art museums nationwide; by pub-
licizing his artists, collectors, and their lifestyles in American gen-
eral-interest publications; and, very significantly, by selling their
art directly to European collectors, Castelli was able to convince
these collectors of the investment potential of his artists’ work.
Equally at home in Europe and fluent in most European lan-
guages, Castelli decided to pursue exhibition opportunities for his
artists in Paris, Italy, and Germany.23 Conditions there were ideal
for Castelli. Collecting art had been a European tradition for many
centuries, and sophisticated collectors were abundant. The market
for contemporary art had been blossoming in Paris. Prices for con-
temporary artists had increased sharply after 1950, and bold, rev-
olutionary work by young artists was in great demand throughout
the decade.24 Fortunately for Castelli, Europeans had tired of the
School of Paris well before the Americans did and were looking for
something new and different.25
Castelli’s efforts to expose European buyers to the work of
Rauschenberg and Johns quickly met with success. Only one year
after their first solo shows in 1958 at the Castelli Gallery, the dealer
managed to arrange one-man exhibitions for Rauschenberg in
Rome and Düsseldorf and for Johns in Milan and Paris. By con-
trast, it had taken Jackson Pollock nine years from his first exhi-
bition at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery to have
his first solo show in Paris. By 1962, Johns’ work had been seen in
Paris, Milan, Stockholm, Bern, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Houston,
Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.
Rauschenberg had shown in Rome, Düsseldorf, Paris, Kassel, São
BELIEVED THAT IF Paolo, and in Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland,
RAUSCHENBERG TOOK Denmark, and Japan. In the United States, his work had been seen
THE GRAND PRIZE in New York, Columbus, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Seattle, Dallas,
FOR PAINTING AT THE Des Moines, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Newport. This geograph-
ic span is all the more remarkable considering the costs (par-
VENICE BIENNALE,
ticularly crating and transportation) associated with exhibiting
IT WOULD PROVIDE
Rauschenberg’s large-scale work, expenses that had been consid-
THE EQUIVALENT OF ered prohibitive by the artist’s previous dealer.26
A EUROPEAN “SEAL This aggressive pursuit of exhibition opportunities for his art-
OF APPROVAL” FOR ists led Castelli to develop what can be called the global coopera-
CONTEMPORARY tive gallery model.27 Convinced that increasing the exposure of his
artists would help sales as well as establish reputations, Castelli
AMERICAN ART
reached out to galleries across Europe. Castelli made it financially
worthwhile for European dealers to promote his artists actively
by not collecting commissions on work sold by these dealers. This
flexibility was extended to American dealers as well. Irving Blum,
who ran Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, recalled
that Castelli was willing to split his commissions fifty-fifty, and at
times even go beyond that. Blum contrasted Castelli’s generosity
with Sidney Janis, who he said would “allow me ten percent which
would barely cover my shipping one way.”28
One indication of Castelli’s success is that some of the most
significant American art works from the 1960s are now part of
European collections. A 1995 Whitney publication documenting
the impact of American art on Europe in the early 1960s confirmed
that “any American institution mounting a retrospective of almost
any major American artist of these years has to borrow key works
back from Europe. This is a reversal of the earlier trend in which
American collectors snapped up vast numbers of the master works
of European modernism.”29 (The European appetite for American
art continued unabated throughout the
1960s and 1970s. In 1973, Castelli reported
that 70 percent of all his sales outside New
York were to European collectors.)
Castelli’s promotion of Rauschenberg
and Johns culminated at the 1964 Venice
Biennale. Not content to let their work sim-
ply speak for itself, Castelli marshaled all
the resources at his disposal to secure a
win for Rauschenberg. He believed that if
Rauschenberg took the Grand Prize for
Painting, it would provide the equivalent of
a European “seal of approval” for contem-
porary American art. After all, the award
had almost routinely been conferred on the
School of Paris artists popular with
American collectors.30 Castelli blitzed
Venice, orchestrating a special exhibition
venue for his artists’ work and an elabo-
rate marketing campaign that included
placing major ads in all international art
magazines, distributing photographs and
flyers freely to all visitors, and organizing
lavish banquets and private viewings for
jurors. Rauschenberg took the prize.
One year after Rauschenberg’s win
in Venice, the first auction ever dedicated
exclusively to the sale of contemporary
American art took place at the Parke-Bernet
Gallery in New York. The highest price,
$37,000, was paid for De Kooning’s 1955
Police Gazette. Rauschenberg’s Express,
from 1963, sold for $20,000 — a surprising
sum compared to the sales prices for the
established Abstract Expressionists Kline
($18,000) and Rothko ($15,500).31 Castelli’s marketing strat- French cartoon satirizing Robert
egy seemed vindicated by this extraordinary sales result for Rauschenberg’s win at the Venice
Biennale, summer 1964.
Rauschenberg; an independent auction market had come into
existence for contemporary American art following critical and com-
mercial success in Europe. American artists finally had the cred-
ibility they needed to compete fully in the international art market.
Popular acceptance and success provided for a dramatic change
in lifestyle for the new generation of artists. As Allan Kaprow ob-
served in 1964, now the best of the avant-garde artists were famous
and financially comfortable, unlike their Abstract Expressionist
predecessors. “If artists were in hell in 1946,” he wrote, “now they
are in business.”32 The prosperous circumstances of Rauschenberg
and Johns (Rauschenberg even drove a white Jaguar in 1960!)
stood in sharp contrast with the romantic trope of poverty that
surrounded the American artist in the 1940s and 1950s.
This shift in fortunes was met with suspicion by old-guard
critics. Harold Rosenberg, who had been an early supporter of the
Abstract Expressionist movement, lamented in an essay for the
New Yorker that “the necessity for an avant-garde has been re-
placed by the whimsicalities of competitive bidding.”33 Similarly,
when the critic and art historian Barbara Rose wrote that Castelli
“has helped to make the whole country art-conscious through his
cooperation with curators, critics, and writers,” she worried in the
same sentence, “whether the creation of a mass public for art is a
good thing or not is a question that troubles me.” 34
The ambivalence of the art world about this newfound com-
mercial success extended to Castelli. The avant-garde dealer had
long been seen as a sentimental type. As Steven Naifeh pointed out,
in people’s minds “a genuine picture dealer ought to be at the same
time an intelligent connoisseur, ready if need be to sacrifice what
seems to be his immediate interests to his artistic convictions; he
should prefer to fight speculators rather than join in their activi-
ties.” 35 As a consequence of his relentless promotion of his artists,
Castelli was often viewed as an unscrupulous manipulator, the
antithesis of this romantic notion. 36
In fact, Castelli’s businesslike approach to art dealing can
be seen as mirroring the artistic project of his young artists
Rauschenberg, Johns, and Stella, who all looked to break with their
predecessors’ practices. Rauschenberg, for example, had mocked
the romantic myth of the spontaneous brushstroke in Factum I
and Factum II, two paintings created with identical “spontaneous”
gestural brushstrokes in the Abstract Expressionist style. Stella
had posed as a businessman in his photo for the catalogue ac-
companying the “Sixteen Americans” exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art, denying any reference to the image of the artist as a
paint-spattered bohemian. 37
Auguste Renoir held the view that by the late nineteenth cen-
tury the market, not the academy or critics, was the final deter-
minant in the success of art. “Get this into your head,” the painter
reportedly said. “No one knows anything about it. There’s only one
indicator for telling the value of paintings, and that is the sale
room.” By that measure, Castelli achieved spectacular results, and
his single-minded pursuit of success for his artists created the
blueprint for art dealing as it is practiced today. 38
1 Famous New York dealers 9 John Russell Taylor and 19 The Johns exhibition sold 25 Telephone interview by 32 Allan Kaprow, “The Artist
Alfred Stieglitz and Peggy Brian Brooke, The Art Dealers out; only two works (including the author, 26 September 2005. as a Man of the World,” in
Guggenheim had a major (New York: Charles Scribner’s Bed, to Castelli) were sold Edy de Wilde was director Essays on the Blurring of Art
influence on the art world Sons, 1969), 70. from Rauschenberg’s show. of the Van Abbe Museum in and Life, expanded ed., ed. Jeff
of their time, but neither The collector who had Eindhoven from 1946 to 1963 Kelley (Berkeley: University of
succeeded in establishing a 10 Eric Hodgins and Parker purchased Collage in Red and the director of the California Press, 2003), 47, 51.
strong commercial market for Lesley, “The Great International returned it for a refund. Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam
the new art they championed. Art Market, II,” Fortune, Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall: from 1963 to 1985. De Wilde 33 Harold Rosenberg, “Adding
Sales of avant-garde American January 1956, 132. Robert Rauschenberg and the was credited with introducing Up: The Reign of the Art
art lagged far behind sales Art World of Our Time (New American avant-garde art to Market,” in Art on the Edge:
of European (mostly French) 11 Between 1940 and 1960, York: Penguin Books, 1982), 145. the Netherlands. See Machteld Creators and Situations (New
contemporary art, despite Jackson Pollock was the only van Hulten, “De man die de York: Macmillan, 1975), 274.
pre–World War II government New York School artist who 20 Castelli could not recall Amerikanen binnenhaalde,”
programs like the WPA, the had a solo exhibition at the the exact amount in his De Volkskrant, 26 November 34 Barbara Rose, untitled
general rise in prosperity of Museum of Modern Art (1956). interview with Paul Cummings. 2005. essay in Leo Castelli: Ten
middle-class Americans during Museumgoers were more likely Sidney Guberman reported, Years (New York: Leo Castelli
and after World War II, and to see French moderns, as the however, that in early 1960 26 Elinor Poindexter, who Gallery, 1967).
tax law changes in 1954 that museum mounted solo shows both Johns and Rauschenberg had taken over from Charles
favored the purchasing of art. by Matisse, Picasso, Léger, were receiving $75 per week. Egan, declined to continue to 35 Steven Naifeh, Culture
Rouault, Bonnard, Vuillard, Sidney Guberman, Frank Stella: represent Rauschenberg in Making: Money, Success and
2 Kelly Devine Thomas, Soutine, Toulouse-Lautrec, An Illustrated Biography (New the gallery, citing the cost of the New York Art World
“The Ten Most Expensive Seurat, Gris, Monet, Tanguy, York: Rizzoli International transporting his work. Tomkins, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Living Artists,” ARTnews, and Tinguely, among others, Publications, 1995), 45. Off the Wall, 131. University Press, 1976), 37.
May 2004, 118. in this period. See Rona Roob,
“The Museum of Modern Art: 21 This tradition resulted 27 Alan Jones, “Preface,” in The 36 It should be noted here
3 See also Deirdre Robson, Painting and Sculpture Loan from the nineteenth-century Art Dealers, 16. that everyone I interviewed
“The Market for Abstract Exhibitions, 1940–1963,” in import model, whereby stressed Castelli’s honesty
Expressionism: The Time The Museum of Modern Art New York dealers received 28 Interview with Irving Blum and generosity in his dealings
Lag Between Critical and at Mid-Century: At Home and paintings from European conducted by Paul Cummings, 15 with his artists. Castelli paid
Commercial Acceptance,” Abroad, Studies in Modern dealers on consignment rather June 1977, AAA. stipends regardless of sales.
Archives of American Art Art 4 (New York: Museum of than dealing with the artists Nassos Daphnis, for example,
Journal 25, no. 3 (1985), 19–21. Modern Art, 1994): 200–204. themselves. See Peter Watson, 29 Hayden Herrera, “Postwar was carried on the gallery
From Manet to Manhattan: American Art in Holland,” stipend system his entire
4 Jasper Sharp, “Serving 12 Dorothy Gees Seckler, The Rise of the Modern Art in Rudi Fuchs and Adam career, despite the fact that his
the Future: The Exhibitions “Gallery Notes,” Art in America, Market (New York: Random Weinberg, Views from Abroad/ works did not sell well.
at Art of This Century,” in Susan October 1955, 46–47. House, 1992). Amerikaanse Perspectieven
Davidson and Philip Rylands, (New York: Whitney Museum 37 The photograph had
eds., Peggy Guggenheim and 13 Leo Castelli to Alfred H. 22 A perfect example is of American Art, distributed by “dismayed” curator Dorothy
Alfred Kiesler: The Story of Barr, Jr., 26 October 1955. Alfred the caption in Life that Harry N. Abrams, 1995), 38. See Miller, who had wanted a more
Art of This Century (New Hamilton Barr papers, Museum accompanied a large color also the introduction by Fuchs. informal—bohemian—picture.
York: Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art (microfilm copy photograph of Castelli and See Caroline A. Jones, Machine
Publications, 2004), 300, 321. available at AAA, reel 218). his artists’ works. Under the 30 See Howard Devree, in the Studio: Constructing
heading “Gains on Young “Award at Venice,” New York the Postwar American
5 Mark Stevens and 14 Ibid. Americans” the caption noted Times, 22 June 1958, and Artist (Chicago and London:
Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: that “By taking a risk on www.labiennale.org/en/art/ University of Chicago Press,
An American Master 15 Stuart Preston, “Art: young, unknown Americans, history. Contrary to popular 1996), 116.
(New York: Alfred A. Collectors’ Choice,” New York Dealer Leo Castelli has made belief, Robert Rauschenberg
Knopf, 2004), 315. Times, 21 December 1957. gains for both himself and was not the first American to 38 William D. Grampp, Pricing
the artists. Here in his New win in Venice. Just six years prior, the Priceless (New York: Basic
6 Interview with Samuel 16 Announcement in “Leo York gallery he stands by five in 1958, Mark Tobey had won Books, 1989), 15.
Kootz conducted by Dorothy Castelli,” artist file, Museum prime investments.” Life, 19 the top award for painting; in
Seckler, 13 April 1964. Archives of Modern Art Archives. September 1960. Reproduced 1952, Alexander Calder had
of American Art, Smithsonian in Susan Brundage, ed., Jasper won the Grand Prize for
Institution (hereafter AAA). 17 See Barbara Haskell, Johns: Thirty-five Years [with] Sculpture. For the record,
Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Leo Castelli (New York: Leo there had been two other
7 Interview with Leo Castelli Minimalism, and Performance, Castelli Gallery, distributed by American winners: John Singer
conducted by Barbara Rose, 1958–64 (New York: Whitney Harry N. Abrams, 1993), n.p. Sargent, who had won a Gold
July 1969, AAA. Museum of American Art, 1984). See photograph on page 22. Medal in 1907, and James
McNeill Whistler, who captured
8 Ann Hindry, ed., Claude 18 In 1988, Leo Castelli 23 Alan Jones and Laura de the Murano International Prize
Berri Rencontre/Meets Leo donated Bed, the first Coppet, The Art Dealers, rev. in 1895 (the year the Venice
Castelli (Paris: Renn, 1990), Rauschenberg work he had ed. (New York: First Cooper Biennale had its first exhibition).
85. Accounts differ about the purchased, to the Museum Square Press, 2002), 98.
extent of Castelli’s involvement of Modern Art, noting the 31 Sanka Knox, “Abstract
in covering expenses and donation was “in repayment 24 Raymonde Moulin, Paintings by Expressionists
selecting artists, but all agree of a debt of gratitude I owe The French Art Market: A Sold for $284,000,” New York
he was the only Club member the museum and its founding Sociological View, trans. Arthur Times, 14 October 1965. See
who could have installed the director, Alfred Barr, for Goldhammer (New Brunswick, also Jennifer Wells, “Pop Goes
show since he was not an artist having been my great mentors.” N.J.: Rutgers University Press, the Market,” in Definitive
and did not have work in the John Russell, “Leo Castelli, 1984), 166–168. Statements: American Art: 1964–
show. See also Bruce Altshuler, Influential Art Dealer, Dies 66, (Providence, R.I.: Brown
The Avant-Garde in Exhibition at 91,” New York Times, University, 1986), 57.
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 23 August 1999.
1994), 154–159.
Jasper Johns, Watchman, 1964.
TZ
KA
AN
TH
NA
JO
Reading
Watchman
Through
The Archive
By their very nature, archives seduce through the promise of inti-
macy, seeming to offer privileged access to a subject finally laid
bare of artifice, dissimulation, and social performance — finally,
the real person, the private one. For those interested in under-
standing the import of same-sex sexuality to the development of
the American avant-garde, this form of unmediated access is
doubly significant, for throughout most of American history, same-
sex sexuality was defined as a criminal activity, and its signs and
traces were rigorously covered up. Yet far too often there is very
little same-sex intimacy to be found in archives; partners, friends,
or relatives have destroyed or refused to donate such material — if
it ever even existed — while historical figures themselves likely
took care to expunge such references from their possessions prior
to donation. In place of the unselfconscious declaratives that an-
nounce heterosexuality (everything from birth announcements to
anniversary cards to love notes), those inclined to members of their
own sex instead tended to mobilize an inventive array of codes,
ellipses, and not least, policed silences, carefully editing out any
references to forms of behavior and/or identity under siege.
A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L 4 6 : 3 –4 29
In the Archives of American Art, however, there are a few pre-
cious signs of same-sex intimacy dating from the period before
the rise of the modern lesbian and gay political movement. In the
grand scheme of things, these faint traces are really no more than
evidentiary hiccups, yet their very rarity gives them a historical
value far out of keeping with their scale. Some of the most impor-
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
in Rachel Rosenthal’s Pearl Street loft, tant, dating from the early 1960s, concern two key artists whose
1955. Photograph by Rachel Rosenthal. romantic partnership, while widely acknowledged, still isn’t per-
mitted mention in the bulk of the art-historical literature: Jasper
Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Ostensibly, the two have refused
to discuss their relationship, save once, yet their art is larded with
references to same-sex sexuality and to each other. 1 And in a sur-
prising admission in an interview preserved in the Archives of
American Art, Johns acknowledges that a key formal shift in his

work turns, as he puts it, on new “emotional or erotic content.” 2 I’ll
get to the full quote and its context momentarily, but for now, it’s
important to note that the mere reference to “emotional or erotic
content” should strike longtime Johns observers as a nearly un-
precedented invitation to biographical interpretation from this
most reclusive and self-concealing of artists. Through most of his
career, Johns has taken pains to deny that his art had any aspect
of the autobiographical. This quote is quite typical: “But I found I
couldn’t do anything that would be identical with my feelings. So I
worked in such a way that I could say that it’s not me.” 3
It’s important to note here that Johns is not just working
against his feelings, he’s telling us he’s working against his feel-
ings, thematizing this aspect of self-denial or concealment as
central to his work. He’s clearly not without feeling, but equally,
he once sought to work in such a way as to foreclose access to
his emotions. Analogizing this form of self-censorship to the im-
peratives of the closet restores something of the socio-historical
conditions that once, not so long ago, operated as a kind of brake
on the revelation of feeling in the work of same-sex-inclined
artists like Johns.
Yet the popular notion of the closet is as a binary construct
— one is either in it or not. The idea that the closet is as tight as
a bank vault, however, is manifestly untrue: indeed by definition
it can’t be, for if it were, it wouldn’t be perceived as the closet in
the first place, as a form of refusal, but would simply exist as the
unmediated real. The dominant metaphor for withholding frank
acknowledgment of homosexuality before the “in-or-out” notion
of the closet that came to prominence at the close of the 1960s
was one much more keyed to the circulation of illicit information
and encoded communication, the spy. As spies, homosexuals were
not trapped in the black-and-white binary construction that now
simplifies and confuses our thinking about sexuality, but were
acknowledged as adept at border crossings, at travel to and fro.
Profoundly stateless, the “spy” was nonetheless at home in a range
of territories, and sexuality wasn’t a simple out-or-not-out dual-
ism, but was conceived as a complex series of postures to be mobi-
lized or hidden as the occasion and audience demanded. Identity
here is not a clear-cut social declaration but a highly variable,
nuanced social performance — what Frank O’Hara memorably
called “the scene of my selves” — a metaphor much more in keeping
with the realities of lesbian and gay lives even today. 4
Jasper Johns’ iconic painting Watchman of 1964, in the col-
lection of Eli and Edythe L. Broad but recently on display in the
exhibition “Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955–1965” at
the National Gallery of Art, explicitly invokes this spy metaphor. In
a sketchbook note published in Japanese in 1964 and in English in
1965, Johns frames his painting in terms of the dynamic between
a spy and a watchman. His language is, typically, as cryptic and
dense as the painting, which features among other elements a cast
of a leg in a chair hung upside down in the top-right corner.
The Watchman falls “into” the “trap” of looking. The “spy” is

a different person. “Looking” is & is not “eating” & also “being
eaten” That is, there is continuity of some sort among the watch-
man, the space, the objects. The spy must be ready to “move,”
must be aware of his entrances & exits. The watchman leaves
his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember
& must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs
himself to be overlooked. The watchman “serves” as a warning.
Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named
Spy will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe
the watchman. 5
These complexly coded jottings, written over a sketch of the

painting in Johns’ notebook, tellingly reverse the usual dynamic
between the watchman and the spy, for now it is the watchman
who is being watched, and the spy doing the watching. Making a
parallel between looking and consuming (“eating” and “being
eaten”), the notes make clear that while the spy and watchman are
mutually implicated, it is the spy, not the watchman, who “stations
himself to observe.” The spy, and not the watchman, is self-aware
(“must remember himself & his remembering”) as if his very
identity is less his own than an elaborate, and largely fabricated,
social performance. While I’m certainly not interested in claiming
that the spy-watchman dynamic is exclusively a coded reference
to same-sex sexuality in a period of real constraint, it is telling
that this interpretive frame has never before been raised with
regard to this important painting, itself an image that succeeds
as a kind of spy, through camouflaging its intentions (or as Johns
put it, “design[ed] . . . to be overlooked”). At the very least, Johns’
sketchbook notes, with their clear recognition of the disciplinary
consequences of visibility, resonate with a pre-liberationist
understanding of sexual difference.
But it is in the interview preserved in the Archives of American
Art that Johns offers the clearest clue as to how fundamentally his
sexuality structures his work. The interview is in the form of a
vinyl record, since rerecorded onto a DVD, that accompanied the
exhibition catalogue of an influential 1963 exhibition entitled “The
Popular Image” at the now-defunct Washington Gallery of Modern
Art. In this important interview with his friend (and Rauschenberg
collaborator) Billy Klüver, Johns notes that his thinking is begin-
ning to change seriously. As this was around the time he began his
Watchman painting, completed the following year, the interview
helps make sense of the painting’s densely coded imagery. Johns
acknowledges that his earlier work was more concerned with
“questioning whether there are such things” as the iconic images of
flags, targets, and numbers that initially catapulted him to fame
(whether his famous Flag painting is itself actually a flag or merely
a painting of a flag). But he then goes on to suggest that his newer
work substitutes an emotional and biographical frame for this
once largely ontological form of inquiry. In answering Klüver’s
question about the nature of this changing content, Johns begins
his reply confidently, “It seems to me that the effect of the more
recent work is that it is more related to feeling or emotion or . . .
[then there is a pause of at least twenty seconds before he contin-
ues with] let’s say emotional or erotic content in that there is no
superimposition of another point of view immediately in terms of
a stroke of a brush.” 6
What does Johns mean here by the advent of a new “emotional
or erotic content?” A clue is provided in the Mitch Tuchman papers
at the Archives of American Art, which include correspondence be-
tween the filmmaker Emile De Antonio, an early friend of Johns’,
and Tuchman, who was writing a book based on transcripts of in-
terviews De Antonio completed for his famous 1973 film Painters
Painting. Tuchman used the word nihilism in the book’s intro-
ductory essay, and De Antonio takes him to task, reminding him
of the social context of the period: “Nihilism, as that word is un-
derstood, is not appropriate unless you write a short essay on it.
Homophobes used it about Cage, Bob, Jap [Jasper Johns], etc., and
gave their work as examples of decadence.” 7 Albeit simple and
Robert Rauschenberg,
Untitled (with Stained Glass), 1954.
unadorned, De Antonio’s statement, offered in a moment of protec-

tive concern for his friends, helps to lift the veil on how Johns and
Rauschenberg’s supposedly “closeted” sexuality was in fact com-
mon knowledge in the art world at the time.
This still doesn’t explain why Johns elected to include new
“emotional or erotic” content in his work at this particular histor-
ical moment, abandoning the hieratic, all-at-once impact of his
iconic imagery in favor of more subtle, part-by-part relationships
in dauntingly complex works like Watchman. But the archive does
offer a clue as to why in 1963 Johns’ work would acknowledge
emotional or erotic feelings in ways it hadn’t before. In a record-
ed interview between Walter Hopps and Alice Denney, the former
curator for the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and organizer
of “The Popular Image” exhibition, Denney happened to mention,
rather off handedly, that at the time of the exhibition, Robert
Rauschenberg “was already living with Steve Paxton,” a dancer in
Merce Cunningham’s dance company. 8
The dating here is important, for it suggests that around the
same time Johns’ work changed, he was also no longer romantically
involved with Rauschenberg. And indeed, close attention to
Watchman makes clear how profoundly the enigmatic image is
concerned with the end of that relationship. A prominent fea-
ture of the work is a wooden shelf appended to the bottom of
the canvas. Unprecedented in Johns’ work, it is in fact a nota-
ble feature of Rauschenberg’s very first
self-nominated “combine” — a work of
1954 entitled Untitled (with Stained Glass
Window). Johns and Rauschenberg first
became partners in the winter of 1953–54,
and Rauschenberg told his friend Rachel
Rosenthal — whose apartment, one floor
above Johns, he would come to occupy
— that Untitled (with Stained Glass Win-
dow) was painted “at a time of passion
for a friend,” presumably, at the time that
Johns and Rauschenberg were first falling
in love.9 The board attached to the bottom
of the combine captures all the drips and
squiggles of falling paint, an ironic gesture
toward the Abstract Expressionists, but
tinged with a distinct eroticism. But when
Johns echoes this same shelf in Watchman,
he inverts Rauschenberg’s precedent from
the beginning of their relationship; now,
the drips are aggressively scraped away,
leaving a stained wooden shelf in a clear,
almost violent gesture of erasure. Johns
even adds the scraping device, a wooden
shingle, to the shelf, leaning it in its scrap-
Jasper Johns, Untitled (Cut, Tear, ing posture against a ball. Clear marks in the paint further reveal
Scrape, Erase), 1964. Photograph by that the shingle has been aggressively pulled against the bottom
Michael Fredericks.
of the image, leaving a scar.
Watchman, bearing the marks of negation, reveals a solitary
performance that accrues meaning only in the context of Rausch-
enberg’s own “passionate” tribute to Johns within that first com-
bine. And it’s by no means the only negation of Rauschenberg’s
practice to be found in this picture: the three clear blocks of col-
or on the right — red, yellow, and blue — are themselves born of
another early Rauschenberg image, Collection (1954), the largest
image he completed immediately after becoming involved with
Johns. Collection betrays a division into three separate canvases
once clearly painted red, yellow, and blue. But in Watchman these
colors have been covered in a sooty gray wash. That same sooty
gray also entombs the words RED, YELLOW, BLUE, written on the
left side of the image in the same order as the color blocks.
More noticeably, Watchman contains an upended figure sitting
in a chair glued to the top of the canvas, its leg cast from life. But
the figure and the chair have been sawed in half. Below the savaged
torso, patches of orange, green, and blue paint roughly imitate
a human figure, as if lending completion to the cast form. What
does this spectral, upended human image represent? Of course this
must remain conjectural, but following so quickly upon the end of
his relationship with Rauschenberg, perhaps the upended half fig-
ure, part paint, part cast from life, is a totem of a life overturned
and split in two, a pale shadow or echo of what was once whole
1 My forthcoming book for 6 The tape-recorded
and is now in the process of destruction; scraped away, erased, the University of Chicago Press, interview has been
which I wrote thanks to the transcribed in Varnedoe,
covered in the gray wash of time. We do know that Johns regularly
generosity of an Smithsonian Jasper Johns, 84–91.
used his own body in mark-making at this period. And there exists American Art Museum
Senior Fellowship, is entitled 7 De Antonio to Mitch
a small drawing, formally unrelated to Watchman, that nonethe-
The Silent Camp: Johns, Tuchman, undated, box 1,
less remains a marvel of contained fury, transferred to, and trans- Rauschenberg, Twombly, Cage, Mitch Tuchman papers
and delineates this complex related to the book Painters
formed through, mark-making. Called Untitled (Cut, Tear, Scrape,
interpictorial dialogue across Painting: A History of American
Erase) and dated the same year as Watchman, the drawing of- some of the most iconic images Modernism in the Words
in American art. The single of Those Who Created It,
fers four vertical boxes, respectively labeled at the top “cut,” “tear,”
published acknowledgement Archives of American Art,
“scrape,” and “erase,” which then materialize their labeled activity of the Johns-Rauschenberg Smithsonian Institution,
partnership by one of the Washington, D.C. (hereafter
in the box below. Of course, the drawing is the ultimate in self-ref-
principals came in an interview cited as Tuchman papers).
erentiality, seemingly a closed system of reference and mark-mak- with Rauschenberg. See Paul
Taylor, “Robert Rauschenberg: 8 Alice Denny, interview
ing. But can’t these various violent marks, read in the context of
‘I can’t even afford my conducted by Walter Hopps, 13
similar cuts, tears, scrapes, and erasures in Watchman, also as- works anymore,’” Interview, May 1976, untranscribed, AAA.
December 1990, 146–148.
sume a more expressive, autobiographical cast?
9 Roni Feinstein, in her
If “The Watchman falls ‘into’ the ‘trap’ of looking,” are we the 2 Jasper Johns, interviewed unpublished 1994 New York
on a 33 1/3 rpm record included University Institute of Fine
Watchman, destined to “take away no information”? And if that is
with the exhibition catalogue Arts dissertation, “Random
so, then is Johns the spy, who “must be ready to ‘move,’ must be of The Popular Image Order: The First Fifteen Years
(Washington, D.C.: Washington of Robert Rauschenberg’s
aware of his entrances & exits”? And as Johns further inquires in
Gallery of Modern Art, 1963). Art, 1949–1964,” discusses
that sketchbook note, “Will the spy and the watchman ever meet?” Washington Gallery of Modern the comment made to an
Art records, Archives of anonymous collector on p. 185.
We admire Watchman, but we have no idea what to make of it, what
American Art, Smithsonian In a subsequent interview with
it “really” means. It seems so closed-in on itself, so private. In this Institution (hereafter AAA). the performance artist Rachel
Rosenthal, she confirms that
respect, perhaps, Johns should have the last word. In the transcript
3 Vivian Raynor, “Jasper she was indeed the first owner
of an interview with the artist, filmmaker De Antonio mentions so- Johns: ‘I Have Attempted to of Untitled (with Stained
Develop My Thinking in Such Glass), author interview with
cialism. Johns’ reply is telling in the depths of its hopelessness.
a Way that the Work I’ve Done Rachel Rosenthal, Los Angeles,
is Not Me,’” ARTnews, March 26 June 1991.
1973, 20–22.
Johns If everything were owned equally by everybody then
10 Jasper Johns, interview
everybody has to own the entire despair. . . despair. And I don’t 4 See Frank O’Hara, “In conducted by Emile De
Memory of My Feelings,” Antonio, n.d., Tuchman
think they will do it and there is no way to force ownership.
The Collected Poems of papers, 391.
De Antonio You’re moving from a material to a spiritual idea. . . . Frank O’Hara (Berkeley:
University of California Press,
Johns But stuff is that already. 10
1995), 252-–257.
5 Kirk Varnedoe, ed., Jasper

Johns: Writings, Sketchbook
Notes, Interviews (New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1996),
59–60.
Virginia Dwan
Los Angeles
J E S S I C A DAW S O N
In 1950s
Los Angeles . . .
all dealers had
to lose was
their money.
Thankfully,
Virginia Dwan
had plenty.
Only the foolhardy sold contemporary art in 1950s Los Angeles.

Given the city’s insular scene with its provincially minded artists,
unengaged collectors, and reactionary art writers, most dealers
didn’t even bother showing cutting-edge work. Those who showed
local artists traded in banality.
Yet creatively parched Southern California presented an op-
portunity. Renegades willing to shake up the community began
showing work coming out of San Francisco, New York, and Europe;
some, like the Ferus Gallery, incubated up-and-coming locals. By
the late 1950s, galleries sprung up ad hoc on a strip of North La
Cienega Boulevard west of downtown. The best known was Ferus,
but there was also the Felix Landau Gallery, the Esther Robles
Gallery, and a handful of short-lived venues. Together, they
tapped a minuscule group of collectors willing to learn about
new art, though even tutelage didn’t guarantee sales. As a result,
the galleries in these years could show whatever they liked — so
long as they didn’t mind losing their money. Thankfully, Virginia
Dwan had plenty.
Heir to the Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing fortune,
Dwan had deep pockets and a passion for art. When the young
UCLA art-school dropout opened her first gallery in 1959, in a
modest storefront on Broxton Avenue in Westwood, she was, by
her own admission, totally naïve. In a 1984 interview, she recalled
her relationship to the art business in those days as an “exciting
infatuation . . . I was totally open . . . to all this energy that we were
in the middle of suddenly.” 1 As a child growing up in Minnesota
she’d visited Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center and been moved by
exhibitions of Charles Sheeler and John Marin. After entering art
school, Dwan soon acknowledged that she lacked the chops to
be an artist. So she set out to learn the business of dealing from
Beverly Hills gallery owner Frank Perls while gallery-sitting for
him on Saturday afternoons. Though aware she would face strug-
gles for sales and critical attention, she sensed opportunity. By
November 1959 Dwan had secured the rented Westwood store-
front far from the North La Cienega strip but close to her new Clockwise, from left: Virginia Dwan,
husband, who was then a medical student at UCLA. 1969; Announcement for an exhibition
of works by Larry Rivers at the Dwan
It took time for Dwan to develop her own vanguard taste.2 Gallery, Los Angeles, 1961; Graphic
She passed her first eighteen months showing a roster of second- portrait of Lucas Samaras, used in
tier Abstract Expressionists imported from New York, punctuated publicity for “Samaras” at the Dwan
Gallery, Los Angeles, 1964.
occasionally by more radical artists like Larry Rivers or Philip
Guston. But by spring of 1961, Dwan was introducing Los Angeles Previous Spread: “New York, New York”
to some of the most important artists of the time —Yves Klein, at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, 1964.
Robert Rauschenberg, and Ad Reinhardt among them — and her

early naïveté was replaced by a nearly messianic sense of purpose.
“I was, I suppose, on a spiritual high with this gallery,” she said. “I
felt that what I was showing was not only for my good, but for ev-
eryone else’s and that it was a gift to the world.” 3 Dwan’s sense of
mission was felt by her artists. She funded them generously and
indulged their whims while asking little in return. For her, sales
were happy accidents, not foregone conclusions.
Opposite: Announcement for Yves
In 1959, Dwan had entered a scene in flux. The most cele- Klein’s Los Angeles debut at the Dwan
brated artist in Los Angeles of the 1940s and early 1950s, or at Gallery, 1961.
least the most salable, was figurative expressionist Rico Lebrun,
a charismatic man who taught for a time at Chouinard Art
Institute.4 His Italian roots, dramatic persona, and good connec-
tions secured buyers among the uninformed. Developing at the
same time, though less prominent, was the movement that came
to be known as Hard-edge Painting. Its originators were a small
group of California painters who reduced abstraction to strict
geometries and bold colors; four of the best known were show-
cased in a Los Angeles County museum exhibition “Four Abstract
Classicists” in 1959. Yet even John McLaughlin, the group’s most
celebrated member, was a tough sell whose dealer, Felix Landau,
found few buyers. Also popular in the 1950s was the ceramicist
Peter Voulkos and his Chouinard students Billy Al Bengston and
Ken Price. Though all found a measure of success — Price enjoys I felt that what
I was showing
excellent reception to this day — their reworkings of Abstract
Expressionism in three dimensions remained a largely insular
pursuit. Indeed, Abstract Expressionism lingered in Southern
California. As art historian Thomas Crow pointed out recently,
the movement’s “prestige among older West Coast artists (like was not only
for my good,
the Chouinard faculty) constituted a sure-fire recipe for unend-
ing provincial status.” 5
But by the mid-1950s, small centers of ambition had formed.
A community of Beat-influenced assemblage artists headed by
Wallace Berman and Ed Kienholz sprang up in Venice. Young but for everyone
else’s and that
Walter Hopps had come to UCLA, and his early gallery, called
Syndell Studio, enjoyed a brief life in Brentwood showing mostly
San Francisco painters. Soon Kienholz and Hopps were collabo-
rating, and in March 1957 the two opened Ferus, which soon be-
came the most talked about of the vanguard galleries. Kienholz it was a gift
to the world.
eventually sold his interest in the partnership to Irving Blum, a
consummate businessman who ensured the gallery’s place in
history. As an incubator for local talent, Ferus was second to
none — Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, and many others in its stable
went on to important careers. In November 1958, Ferus moved
to 723 North La Cienega near the Felix Landau and the Esther
Robles galleries.Together, the venues co-hosted the well-attended
Monday night art walks.
Tucked into the Westwood neighborhood near UCLA and
some miles from the burgeoning La Cienega scene, Dwan strug-
gled to lure gallery crowds. Her first year passed unremarkably,
its exhibition schedule given over to retreads of New York shows
(on consignment) full of the kind of predictable work that local
critics Henry Seldis, writing for the Los Angeles Times, and
Charlene Cole of the Beverly Hills Times/Westwood Villager ap-
plauded. At the time, Dwan jetted to New York several times a
year for studio visits and dealer meetings. With her French hus-
band, she summered overseas each year and got to know France’s
up-and-coming artists, the Nouveaux Réalistes. The connections
made during those visits, coupled with Dwan’s increasing savvy,
were reflected in her more daring exhibition schedule of 1961 and
1962. French provocateur Yves Klein made his LA debut in May
1961, just a month after his first American solo show at the Leo
Castelli Gallery in New York, when Dwan showed monochromes
in the artist’s signature international blue alongside brand-new
From top: Detail of a catalogue cover for an exhibi- sponge paintings and gold leaf works. Los Angeles was speech-
tion of works by Martial Raysse at the Dwan Gallery, less. Local artists, provincial at heart, hated Dwan for showing
Los Angeles, 1967; Announcement for an exhibition
of works by James Rosenquist at the Dwan Gallery, a Frenchman, let alone one many considered a charlatan. As for
Los Angeles, 1964. the critics, silence reigned, at least until Seldis, writing a small
item on Dwan’s Ad Reinhardt show, reassured his readers that
Reinhardt’s paintings were not the work “of a flippant opportun-
ist like Yves Klein.” 6
Dwan delighted in the controversy. “I really enjoyed show-
ing work which was so far in the avant-garde that by definition
anyone logical would have to say, ‘It can’t sell yet, maybe later
I really enjoyed showing
work which was so far in
the avant-garde that by
definition anyone logical
would have to say, “It can’t
sell yet, maybe later on.”
on,’” 7 she recalled. Dwan certainly had her share of unsalable

shows on the roster. Nine months after Klein, she mounted a group
of Robert Rauschenberg’s combines in what was his first West
Coast exhibition. Again, no reviews appeared. And again, collec-
tors balked — even after Dwan devoted a full eighteen months to
the sale of Rauschenberg’s 1961 combine First Landing Jump. As
she noted later, one person considered it, then another, then anoth-
er collector in Texas. Finally, with no takers in sight, she crated the
work for its trip back east. LA just didn’t get it. 8
Despite mounting frustrations, Dwan, in June 1962, opened
a new, custom-designed space at 10846 Lindbrook Drive, near
her first gallery. The move cemented her commitment to dealing.
She hired a student of Frank Lloyd Wright to design the space,
asking that it be modeled after Wright’s V.C. Morris store in San
Francisco, a building Dwan had long admired. The design included
a tunnel-like entrance that funneled visitors off the street and
into a large open space, physically reinforcing Dwan’s belief that
art was something rarified and sacred. Art “was to be approached
with a different part of [oneself] than the rest of . . . day-to-day
living,” she said. 9
Dwan inaugurated the expanded gallery with a show of
works by the French neo-Pop assemblage artist Arman, setting
off an important six-month period in the history of Los Angeles
Pop. The next month saw Andy Warhol’s first-ever solo show open
at Ferus; in September, Hopps’ “The New Painting of Common
Objects,” now widely viewed as the first exhibition of American
Pop, opened at the Pasadena Art Museum with works by Jim
Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol, Ruscha, Robert Dowd, Phillip
1 Virginia Dwan, interview
Hefferton, Joe Goode, and Wayne Thiebaud. Two months later, conducted by Charles F.
Stuckey, 21 March–7 June 1984,
Dwan mounted her own hand-picked Pop show, “My Country ’Tis
Virginia Dwan Interviews,
of Thee.” Like Hopps, she had noticed artists using everyday im- Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution,
agery that she thought shared a distinctly American theme. Her
Washington, D.C., (hereafter
striking installation included some of the most important works cited as Dwan interviews).
of the day: a 1962 Warhol Marilyn, Marisol’s 1962 The Kennedys,
2 We know Dwan best for the
and a Claes Oldenburg plaster and enamel coffee cup, which she eponymous New York gallery
that she ran from 1965 to 1971,
installed with nonchalant grace near the floor.
which became synonymous
Looking back at Dwan from our vantage point, at the very with the Minimalism and
Earthworks movements.
top of a market-bubble-turned-hot-air-balloon, the young deal-
Her underwriting of Robert
er’s conviction and generosity, extravagant as they were, offer a Smithson’s outdoor adventures
and her association with
compelling testament to the power of gallerists. Her story recalls
Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, and
a time when exhibition schedules were driven by dealer passion others have been exhaustively
documented in dissertations,
and taste, not bottom lines, hip young things, or collector de-
books, journals, and
mand. In early 1960s Los Angeles, dealers created taste, if only newspapers.
for the few who would listen. For Dwan, art was a spiritual offer-
3 Dwan interviews,
ing, a civic duty, and, if at all possible, something better left un- transcripts, 21 and 27
March 1984.
tainted by money. If selling hadn’t been an important aspect of
gallery ownership, it’s doubtful Dwan would have bothered. She 4 For this information and
large part of the Los Angeles
was a dealer who didn’t need — or want — art-world money.
gallery background, I owe great
Yet no amount of curatorial acumen made up for lack of sales. debt to the research of Anne
Ayres and Andrew Perchuk.
In many regards, both of Dwan’s Los Angeles galleries were more
museum than sales floors, and their mission was to generate 5 Thomas Crow, “November
1962,” Artforum, November
buzz and expose Los Angeles to exciting work, not to generate
2002, 72.
cash. Dwan’s discomfort with the gallery system — she asked
6 Henry Seldis, “Reinhardt
that her directors transact all sales — only underscored her am-
Canvases Worth a Second
bition that art be exempt from the everyday, including the laws Look,” Los Angeles Times, 9
February 1962.
of the market. Of course, neither artists nor gallerists can live
outside commerce — to do so is the stuff of myth. Yet the story of 7 Dwan interviews,
transcripts, 21 and 27 March
Dwan’s idealism, her conviction that art was a spiritual pursuit,
1984.
is precisely the sort of fable the art world needs right now.
8 Philip Johnson did.
He bought First Landing Jump
soon after it arrived back in
New York and then promised
it to MoMA, where the work
now resides.
9 Dwan interviews, 21
and 27 March 1984.
View of the exhibition “Fifteen of New York”

at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, 1960.
ELLEN JOHNSON TO
PETER SAUL, 8 JULY 1967
Have you ever thought of dropping some
of the specific allusions to your message,
thus making the spectator have to work a
little harder to get what you have to say?
I am just asking a question—not making
a suggestion that would be outrageous!
Equal parts explanation and justification, the painter Peter Saul’s

hearty defense of specific allusions and storytelling dates to the
period when he was intensely focused on the violence of the war
in Vietnam. In his
steadfast insistence
on clarity of meaning,
even to the point of D E F E N D IN G
AL LUSION
heavy-handedness,
Saul asserted a DAV I D M C C A R T H Y
strongly felt ambi-
tion to produce art
that communicated PETER SAUL ON
with audiences be-
yond that small cote-
rie of gallery goers
THE AESTHETICS
familiar with the de-
velopment of mod- OF RHETORIC
ernist painting.
This letter is one of several found in the Ellen Hulda Johnson
papers at the Archives of American Art. Artist and historian first
corresponded in the summer of 1964 as Johnson was writing her
catalogue essay for Saul’s solo exhibition at the Allan Frumkin
Gallery in New York.1 To facilitate her research, Frumkin put
Johnson in touch with Saul, who was nearing the end of an eight-
year stay in Europe. The dealer also sent her several of the paint-
er’s letters from the preceding year. When taken as a group, this
remarkable set of materials (which also includes exhibition an-
nouncements and photographs) provides invaluable documentary
evidence of Saul’s thinking and development in the mid-1960s.
PETER SAUL TO ELLEN JOHNSON, 12 JULY 1967
Dear Ellen Johnson,

Thanks for your interested letter & question *To return to your question: what happens
—certainly most of my best intellectual friends when an ordinary person stands in front of
have advised me the same as you — to take a painting that lacks ”specific allusions” is that
out specific allusions to what my pictures are he moves on to the next one, doesn’t do ”the
supposed to mean. I think this is because a work.” If I want a house I measure the floor space,
”high class” or ”educated” or ”intelligent” audience don’t crawl under the foundation. Same kind
wants to participate in the art work more than of thing. That’s why I’m trying to work towards
before. Also I’ve gotten real complaints on that a situation where the person stands in front of
from people who like art a lot, ”heavy-handed,” my picture and receives the meaning of the work
”spelling it out” etc. I don’t deny it, it’s my without participation or benefit of exotic
conscious direction that gets the complaint and I educational or social background. In spite of
would like to comply. However, there’s a problem: my work appearing heavy handed (rhetorical?)
*Who are these people who are going to ”work in your context, it’s still abstract & obscure in
to get the message”? That’s a certain group of so mine. When you’re ”talking,” or ”writing” in a
many thousands in a fixed number of cities in publication you have to spell every word right
Europe & U.S.A. In actual fact that is the audi- or it’s goof-off?? (I’ve always assumed)
ence for modern art, old art, rare books, jewelry *This position is increasingly untenable in
etc. etc. — understands, rejects, accepts, pays the this country, in this society. There is a tremen-
artist. Evidently, I can’t face up to this state of dous expansion of sophisticated audience due
affairs, that there is that audience for my profes- to improvement of the country and an accom-
sion. The way I see — or feel it — when a ”wealthy panying decline in the spiritual need for my
intellectual” (?) buys a picture I made he’s helping story telling art —which I am ”on fire” about,
me to live until I can make some contact with getting better at. Towards a ”flat-out” story
a more broad and ordinary group of people. telling, not literary allusion. In other words —
It doesn’t occur to me that the purpose of my the audience being the same group of wealthy
picture is to gain his appreciation. A person who intellectuals for me and all other artists, it
does is to me an ”artist’s artist,” catering to the doesn’t matter at all in a practical sense whether
moneyed or influential sector of artists and their I think I’m telling stories or making abstract
associates. If I were to take out specific allusions, pictures —money is paid to me for the degree
I would be an ”artist’s artist.” Just like there are of sophistication I show instinctively in my
architects who spend their whole lives doing the- reactions, in my actual work—but for the sake
oretical things that appear sensational to other of my pride its important that I make a more
architects but from the point of view of the con- honest contact with people. Hence I’m beginning
tractor ”blend right in” as minor improvements. to make a successful contact with Eastern
A ”profession” is an overheated, over sensitive Europe. Even in museum circles! sales! under-
group of people who want to make a buck. So standing of the meaning of my work —the whole
I can’t comply with this best advice. I can’t works! Accidentally started a few months ago
restrict myself to ”doing a job right.” Of course when some Yugoslavs saw my work in France —
this train of thought is imaginary, I haven’t I don’t know where it will lead — but I picture
personally met any wealthy intellectuals, and very big important pictures of mine speaking
only a handful of people involved with the arts there, big dreams. Soon?
on any level, and then only for brief periods *Anyway yours in haste, this should
like one hour. I just am absolutely convinced answer your question. . . .
without good reason, probably for personal
psychological reasons. — Peter Saul
48 A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L 4 6 : 3 –4
Although Saul shared with the artists of his generation a pro-
nounced commitment to form and composition, his emphasis
on subject matter differentiated his work from pure abstraction,
and his commitment to rhetorical style distanced him from the
cool sensibility of Pop art. In a letter that Johnson quoted from
in her catalogue text, he explicitly
linked topical subject matter to the
expressive effect he was looking for:
I have 2 new pictures of guys being

executed by electricity, a large green
sex crime and a large ptg of a cop on
w.c. that was a good breakthru. . . .
Criticism will be that life is not a

freak-show as I show it to be, but I’m
not showing life itself, but rather
diverting myself by letting my imag-
ination wander over scare-comics
and thrill magazines, specializing in
those subjects which are already the
most loved or looked at by millions.
By doing this I reveal big truths in
my opinion. Also I will show people
that what they want most to look at
is not the kind of thing that they will
enjoy seeing.2
Read alongside the letter of 12 July

1967, this earlier pronouncement
helps clarify Saul’s gambit. His strong
content held audience attention while
issuing a morality tale about human
behavior and people’s infatuation with
sensationalizing mass-media imagery.
In Saul’s paintings, audiences found
their tastes challenged, confronted,
and even rebuffed.
Saul’s emphasis on visual and
thematic intensity was inspired by
modern figurative painting he often
described as “humanist” in its consideration of the plight of modern Poster for Peter Saul’s exhibition
men and women.3 For Saul, the psychological drama of the British “New Pictures” at Sacramento
State College, 1968.
painter Francis Bacon and the civic awareness of the Mexican mu-
ralist José Clemente Orozco were important inspirations. Of the Page 46: Letter from Peter Saul to
former he wrote: “Bacon’s psychology seems to me the most real- Ellen Johnson, 12 July 1967.
istic since W.W. II — and I measure my own against it. Formerly Page 48: Partial transcript of
I was frustrated, but now with this group of ptgs I see good signs Peter Saul’s letter to Ellen Johnson,
12 July 1967.
that I will eventually be able to surpass Bacon in truth revealed.” 4
Of the latter, Saul confessed:
Peter Saul with his painting Human Dignity, ca. 1966.
I feel close to Orozco and I’d like to do for my country what he’s
done for his—if that isn’t too immodest. Making the way of life
intensely real, using specifics—not too general but insisting on
big meaning, that is social meaning which seems to me now very
important. To make it real, I’ve put it thru the wringer in this
“group” — the American way of life I mean — shown it in a
1 Ellen H. Johnson, “Recent
disgusting light — and why not? Being a decent person actually Paintings by Peter Saul,” in
Saul (New York: Allan Frumkin
involved at least with looking at it I can’t do anything else.5
Gallery, 1964), n.p. Reprinted
in Stephen Henry Madoff, ed.,
Pop Art: A Critical History
The paintings included in Saul’s 1964 exhibition wedded the
(Berkeley: University of
emotional drama of Bacon with the nationalist outlook of Orozco. California Press, 1997), 338–341;
and in Peter Saul: The Sixties
They took as their themes comics, commodities, violence, consum-
(New York: Nolan/Eckman
erism, affluence, and sexual perversion. With garish, acidic colors; Gallery, 2002), 5–11.
looping, biomorphic shapes; and densely packed spaces, the paint-
2 Peter Saul to Allan
ings provided a visual onslaught that effectively conveyed Saul’s Frumkin, spring 1964, Ellen
Hulda Johnson papers, Archives
jaundiced take on his home country. His concern would not abate
of American Art, Smithsonian
in the following years. Institution (hereafter cited as
Johnson papers).
In a letter to Johnson just before his return from Europe in
early fall 1964, Saul announced, “In subjects I am going to turn now 3 Saul to Frumkin, 22 April
1964, Johnson papers.
to crucifixion, war, & politics.”6 Once at home he began to modi-
fy the content of his paintings to increase the specific allusions. 4 Ibid.
The results of this new focus were on view by 1965, and remained
5 Ibid.
so through the decade.7 Aggressive in form and subject matter, un-
6 Saul to Johnson, 31 August
compromising in condemning overseas adventurism, and shocking
1964, Johnson papers.
in their suggestion that American soldiers were little more than
7 Among the venues for
thrill-seeking punks prosecuting a war of terror, the Vietnam
these paintings were the
paintings fully consolidated Saul’s position as one of the earliest Frumkin Gallery, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, the
and widely noted artists opposed to the war.8
Museum of Contemporary
Art, Chicago, and the Corcoran
Gallery, as well as several
educational institutions,
among them Reed College,
Sacramento State College,
Cornell University, and
Bloomsburg State College.
8 See Dore Ashton, “Art,”

Arts and Architecture,
April 1966, 6–8; and “The
Artist as Dissenter,” Studio
International, April 1966, 164.
Catalogue cover for the exhibition “Underknown,” curated by Henry Geldzahler at P.S. 1 in 1984.
In 2006 the Archives of American Art received a small but choice
collection of papers detailing the brief life and career of African
American painter Bob Thompson (1937–1966). Thompson moved
to New York to paint when he was twenty-one, and, in the years
just before the city became the center of the art world, he became
a much-loved figure in Manhattan’s downtown art scene and en-
joyed recognition in avant-garde circles to a degree that was un-
precedented for African Americans at the time. Scholar Judith
Wilson, who has written extensively about Thompson’s life and
art, sketches his story.
UNDERKNOWN: BOB THOMPSON BY JUDITH WILSON

In the summer of 1958, when he was still a student at the University
of Louisville, Bob Thompson made his first major sale, to the col-
lector Walter P. Chrysler in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Study-
ing there all summer, Thompson found a number of important
artistic mentors and allies. These ties soon led him to Lower
Manhattan, where within a few years he was photographed by
Robert Frank and Fred McDarrah, sketched by Larry Rivers, filmed
by Alfred Leslie (in a lost remake of The Birth of a Nation), and
included in Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts and Red
Grooms’ The Burning Building (both 1959).
Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1937, the
youngest child and only son of a successful businessman and a
schoolteacher, who raised him and his two sisters to aim high in
life. As a child, he frequently spent weekends visiting his sisters
in Nashville, where both girls earned undergraduate degrees at
Fisk University. Verbally gifted and accustomed to the company
of adults, the boy seemed unusually sophisticated, smoking cig-
arettes and listening to Charlie Parker records with his summer
camp counselors. His precocity and religious zeal, however, and
his paternal grandfather’s prominence as a Baptist deacon, led
some to consider the youth a prime candidate for the ministry.
Poster for the exhibition “Seven Younger Painters” at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, 1964.
HIS FATHER’S DEATH IN A CAR ACCIDENT IN 1950
permanently altered Thompson’s course. Stricken by grief, he suc-
cumbed to a wave of psychosomatic illnesses. Eventually the thir-
teen-year-old was sent to live with one of his sisters and her husband,
a Fort Knox cartographer whose love of art and jazz left a lasting
impression on Thompson. After graduating from Louisville’s Central
High School, he enrolled at Boston University, planning to pursue a
premedical program, honoring his mother’s wishes. A year of dis-
mal grades and personal distress, however, led him to take his
brother-in-law’s advice and return to Louisville to study painting.
From spring 1957 through fall 1958, Thompson attended
the University of Louisville’s Hite Art Institute, where his fellow
students included the artists Sam Gilliam, Kenneth Young, and
Robert Carter, and the future art historian Robert Douglas. These
young African Americans shared Thompson’s taste for modern
poetry, progressive jazz, and contemporary art, and they quickly
joined with former Spelman College art instructor Eugenia Dunn
to form Gallery Enterprises, an organization that showed murals,
held poetry readings, and gave “live” painting performances.
In doing so, they were inspired by Leo Zimmerman’s Arts in
Louisville House, a combination coffee house, art gallery, for-
eign film–jazz–poetry-reading venue; and by the legendary black
Beat poet, painter, and musician Ted Joans, who staged proto-
Happenings at a local black cinema and covered the walls of a
local bar with improvised abstract painting.
When he arrived in Provincetown in the summer of 1958,
Thompson found that his Louisville background had prepared
him well for the rudely emphatic brands of figuration practiced by
some artists he met there. Thompson’s college instructors had in-
cluded a pair of German painters, Ulfert Wilke and Charles Crödel,
who had strong ties to Abstract Expressionism, the Fauves, and
German Expressionism. Moreover, as one of Wilke’s advanced stu-
dents, Thompson had come in contact with Leon Golub, who was
then teaching nearby at Indiana University. Finally, while he at-
tended the University of Louisville, work by the Bay Area figura-
tive painters David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, as well as New
York gestural realists Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan, appeared
in several American Federation of Arts traveling exhibitions that
Thompson was sure to have seen.
Thompson found another inspiration that summer, when
he saw the work of the late figurative expressionist painter Jan
Müller. Müller’s brilliantly tessellated canvases combined a Hof-
mannesque understanding of color and spatial dynamics with
a fondness for archaic visual modes (German folk art and late
Gothic–early Italian Renaissance painting) and venerable liter-
ary sources (Shakespeare, Goethe, medieval literature, and pagan
folk tales). Müller’s work created in Thompson the strong desire
to make compelling visual narratives in a contemporary style.
Müller’s widow, Dody, impressed Thompson even more that sum-
mer with her advice to study the Old Masters.
Bob Thompson working on The Conversion of Saint Paul (1964).
Opposite: Bob Thompson, ca. 1960. Photograph by
Charles Rotmil for the cover of Kulchur Magazine, no. 2.
The brilliant arc of Thompson’s life in New York played out
in seven intense years. He arrived in the city in late 1958 or early
1959 and hurled himself into a downtown scene saturated with
jazz and Beat culture. Thompson became a personage almost im-
mediately. At first he stayed with the painter Jay Milder and then
with Red Grooms, both friends from Provincetown. He mingled
with and painted portraits of LeRoi Jones and Allen Ginsburg,
and listened to jazz at the Five Spot and Slug’s. He was close to
Ornette Coleman, and Thelonius Monk always greeted him warmly
when they met.
By 1960 Thompson was painting furiously for days without
resting and covering canvas after canvas, “hooked,” as he wrote
in a letter preserved in the Archives, “on pigment” and buried
alive in bright colors. He was also using heroin and drinking
heavily (sometimes to control his craving for drugs), a tendency
that betrayed a vulnerability that probably had its roots in
childhood. According to Emilio Cruz (who wrote a memoir of his
friend that is also at the Archives), Thompson “used dope as a
screen” that “took [him] past some inhibitions.” Throughout, he
worked and worked.
Thompson’s paintings quickly gained him attention.
Between 1960 and 1961, he had his first one-man show at the
Delancey Street Museum, and his work was included in several
important traveling shows and in group exhibitions in the city,
including a two-person show with Jay Milder at Virginia
Zabriskie’s esteemed Midtown gallery. In spite of the growing ac-
claim and his prodigious capacity for work, in the last years of his
life Thompson seemed increasingly beset by personal demons.
In spring 1961, funded by a grant from the stock analyst, art-
ist, and avant-garde filmmaker Walter K. Gutman, Thompson and
his wife, Carol, sailed for Europe. After a brief stay in London,
where he participated in a methadone program, they spent a year
at Glacière, an artist’s community in Paris. Then, in August 1962,
the couple moved to Spain, where the artist partied steadily but
continued to be almost superhumanly prolific.
On his return to New York that fall, Thompson signed with
Martha Jackson, one of the period’s leading art dealers. He had
solo exhibitions at her Fifty-seventh Street gallery in fall 1963
and fall 1965, as well as at Paula Cooper’s gallery in fall 1964.
He also gained representation by two leading midwestern gal-
leries: the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago, where he held solo
shows in spring 1964 and spring 1965, and the Donald Morris
Gallery in Detroit, where he soloed in spring 1965. During this
time the painter also collaborated with the novice filmmaker
Dorothy Beskind on Bob Thompson Happening!, a quirki-
ly evocative documentary filmed in New York in fall 1964 and
Provincetown in summer 1965. A soundtrack supplied by
Thompson, which ranged from James Brown, the Supremes,
and Thelonius Monk to Bob Dylan and the Beatles, provided the
only commentary.
Bob Thompson with his painting Family Portrait at his
one-man show at El Corsario Gallery in Ibiza, Spain, 1963.
THOMPSON WAS LOSING THE BATTLE WITH ADDICTION .

In November 1965, he and Carol went to Italy, where they spent a
month or two in Florence, visited Arezzo, and eventually settled in
Rome. The following spring, with his marriage in crisis and his
strength sapped by recent gall bladder surgery, the artist died of a
drug overdose after a night of partying with visiting musicians.
Thompson’s friends were devastated.
A service at the Judson Church in New York and a memo-
rial concert at Slug’s took place in June 1966, followed by a fu-
neral in Louisville a few days later. Benny Andrews, Mary Frank,
Red Grooms, Allan Kaprow, Al Leslie, Larry Rivers, and Raymond
Saunders were among the many artists included in a “Friends of
Bob Thompson Memorial Exhibition” at 12 St. Mark’s Place in New
York in spring 1967.
Admiration for Thompson’s work has grown enormously in
the decades since his death. Retrospectives have been staged at
the New School for Social Research (1969), the Speed Museum
(1971), the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1974), the
National Collection of Fine Arts (1975), the Studio Museum
in Harlem (1979), and the Whitney Museum of American Art
(1998). Prized by private collectors and treasured by his friends,
Thompson’s art has been acquired for many important public
institutions around the country, among them the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art,
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute
of Chicago, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Marisol in the
Fifties and
Tracking
Sixties
M A R I N A PAC I N I
Framing a chronology for Marisol (b. 1930) is a vexing but crucial

task for understanding her artistic development. The challenge is
not simply the reticence for which she is well known. Even from
the earliest years of her career, she sometimes provided interview-
ers with conflicting information about her life.1 Documents in sev-
eral collections at the Archives of American Art reveal some of
these inconsistencies and, ultimately, clarify some of the prob-
lems. For example, in the 5 June 1962 “Biographical Notes” [*]
prepared by the Stable Gallery, her 1957 solo exhibition at the Leo
Castelli Gallery was mistakenly identified as taking place in 1959;
in a subsequent version it was listed in 1958. Although such dis-
crepancies may appear inconsequential, they complicate attempts
to chart her artistic education and the experiments that led to the
development of her signature style. Despite the inaccuracies in
dates, the “Notes” do provide a working overview of her back-
ground, art training, and early critical and commercial success.
Marisol’s family led a nomadic existence. She was born in
Paris to Venezuelan parents who moved frequently between
Europe, the United States, and South America, a pattern she re-
peated as an adult. Her interest in art began at a young age, and
when her father settled in Los Angeles in 1946, she began paint-
ing classes at night at the Jepson School of Fine Art. After gradu-
Previous Spread: Marisol,
The Family, 1963. ating from high school, she traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, but she soon quit, complaining that her teachers
Right: Marisol, The Large
wanted her to paint like Bonnard. Most biographies identify 1950
Family Group, 1957.
as the year she took up residence in New York City; commenced
studying with a series of teachers, including Yasuo Kuniyoshi,
William King, and Hans Hofmann; and began absorbing a wide
range of influences.2 Throughout her career she credited Hof-
mann, who taught her painting, drawing, and composition, as
the one teacher who taught her anything.
After nearly a decade of training as a painter, Marisol switched
media and, between 1953 and 1954, began making sculpture. She
offered various explanations for the change, among them the in-
fluence of a pre-Columbian exhibition she saw in the early fif-
ties and a personal artistic revolt. There are two possibilities for
the revelatory pre-Columbian exhibition, a March 1952 exhibi-
tion at the Sidney Janis Gallery or a November 1953 exhibition at
the Carlebach Gallery.3 In either case, she was captivated by the
“earthy and artful portrayals of animals and people.”4 In a 1965
interview with the art critic Grace Glueck, Marisol noted that in
the early fifties she was mimicking Hofmann’s painterly style, but
as she wasn’t very good at it, she took up sculpture. “It started as a
kind of rebellion. Everything was so serious. . . . I was very sad my-
self and the people I met were so depressing. I started doing some-
thing funny so that I would become happier — and it worked. I was
also convinced that everyone would like my work because I had so
much fun doing it. They did.” 5
Marisol was right; by the winter of 1954, while still enrolled
at Hofmann’s school, she began exhibiting her sculptures at New
York galleries, to favorable reviews. Her earliest appearance was
at the Tanager Gallery, where she participated in several large
group exhibitions until the gallery closed in 1962.6 In 1955, she
also began exhibiting regularly in the “New York Artists Annuals”
at the Stable Gallery. John Ferren singled her out in ARTnews,
stating that her “old type-box peopled with little clay figurines is
a delight. There are lots of ideas in those niches and the very care-
lessness is appealing.”7
Laudatory write-ups probably partially accounted for Leo
Castelli’s early interest in Marisol’s work. In a New York Times
review of the May 1957 group show at Castelli’s recently opened
gallery, Dore Ashton cited Marisol for her “primitive carving of a
family group with curious undertones of both humor and anx-
iety.” 8 The advertising poster for Marisol’s November 1957 solo
exhibition at the gallery is illustrated with one of her roughly
carved, pre-Columbian–inspired animal figures, although welded
sculptures and terra-cotta boxes were also included. Again,
Marisol received a positive review in ARTnews:
[This] young Paris-born Venezuelan who has recently impressed

New York with tiny ritual-images in cubicles, appears in full
repertory for her first one-man show; in her case, this means
a search for identity that experimentally echoes both naïf and
primitive arts. Modernist lay-figures of Paris-New York lineage
take “family” form out of heavy, crudely carved and painted
wooden planks, the best of which seem private totem poles. . . .
[L]ately she has added abstract weldings to what can be termed
a creative pursuit of spiritual ancestors.9
Although non-figurative abstraction disappeared from her oeuvre

by the early sixties, the Castelli exhibition chronicled the begin-
ning of Marisol’s wide-ranging experimentation with materials.
Marisol with her work The Party, 1966. The author in ARTnews presciently highlighted issues of identity,
Photograph by Geoffrey Clements. the combination of fine and primitive art sources, and the subject
of the family, all of which became significant in her later work.
In the late fifties, taking flight from what she described as ex-
ternal and internal expectations, Marisol traveled to Rome.10 That
her thinking and art-making were sharpened by the hiatus is evi-
denced by the trajectory her career took upon her return. She was
included in the pivotal Museum of Modern Art exhibitions “The
Art of Assemblage” in 1961 and “The Americans” in 1963. From
1962 to 1964, Marisol exhibited at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery
to popular and critical acclaim. In a May 1962 letter, Ward wrote
to Jim Fitzsimmons, the editor at Art International, that Marisol’s
current exhibition “is an unprecedented smash. You will be hear-
ing about it, I’m sure.”11 Sculptures were sold to the Museum of
Modern Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the prominent col-
lector Roy Neuberger, among others.
Marisol was selected by the staff of Art in America for inclu-
sion in a June 1963 overview of young talent.12 A statement was
included, along with two reproductions, in which she described
her work, noting that even though combinations of forms seemed
incongruous, ultimately everything ended up where it belonged,
“a hand at the end of an arm—a nose on the middle of the face . . .
and a nostril inside the nose. . . .” 13 Her writing, like her sculpture,
was both factual and wry.
1 Marisol noted that her 4 “Wood Carvers’
The incongruous combinations were firmly rooted in Marisol’s
parents’ frequent moves made Comeback,” 59.
studies with Hofmann, as can be seen in The Family, which was it difficult for her to remember
specific biographical details. 5 Grace Glueck, “It’s Not Pop,
shown in her 1964 Stable Gallery exhibition. She took Hofmann’s
John Gruen, The Party’s Over It’s Not Op—It’s Marisol,” New
dictum of “push and pull” into the third dimension. Her figural Now: Reminiscences of the York Times Magazine, 7 March
Fifties—New York’s Artists, 1965, 46.
sculptures are ostensibly representational, but they could be equal-
Writers, Musicians, and their
ly well described as minimalist boxes with attached details. Critic Friends (New York: The Viking 6 Marisol described William
Press, 1972), 200–201. This King, one of the founding
Max Kozloff had noted how disorienting her work was because of its
seems to have set a pattern members of the Tanager
“assault not only upon the integrity of traditionally separate media, as she continued—and Gallery, as an important
continues—to be plagued with influence. Lawrence Campbell,
but its juxtaposition of the most far-fetched sources. . . . Not even a
trouble remembering dates. “Marisol’s Magical Mixtures,”
great awareness of current incongruities in assemblage adequately ARTnews, March 1964, 39.
2 The primary sources of
prepares one for Marisol’s beguiling sense of the absurd.” 14
information are Nancy Grove, 7 John Ferren, “Stable state
Despite her success at the Stable Gallery, in October 1964 Magical Mixtures: Marisol of mind,” ARTnews, May 1955,
Portrait Sculpture (Washington, 64. Figures in a Type Drawer
Marisol moved to the Sidney Janis Gallery, where she remained un-
DC: Smithsonian Institution (1954) is reproduced, 23.
til 1993. Immediately, her work was included in the “3 Generations Press for the National Portrait
Gallery, 1991), and Eleanor 8 Dore Ashton, “Art: A Local
Exhibition”; The Kennedys, first shown in 1962 at the Stable
Heartney, Marisol (Purchase, Anthology,” New York Times,
Gallery, was exhibited with works by Andy Warhol and George New York: Neuberger Museum 8 May 1957, 75.
of Art, 2001). Letters between
Segal. In 1966, her first Janis solo exhibition was, as John Canaday
Marisol, the INS, and the Hans 9 Parker Taylor, “Reviews
wrote in the New York Times, “Predictably, the most popular of the Hofmann School (in the Hans and Previews: Marisol,”
Hofmann papers, Archives of ARTnews, November 1957, 14.
exhibitions that opened during the week, . . . the new group of por-
American Art, Smithsonian
traits . . . is no disappointment.”15 Institution, hereafter AAA) 10 Berman, “Bold and Incisive,”
suggest that it was not until 59. Marisol went to Italy for
At some point between 1968 and 1970, Marisol trekked
1954 that she became a full- twelve to eighteen months
to Europe, Tahiti (where she took up scuba diving), and South time resident of New York. sometime between 1957 and
1960.
America. The exact travel dates and locations vary, but it seems
3 The specific date some-
telling that once again, when her career appeared to be almost times cited for the exhibition 11 Eleanor Ward to James
is 1951. See Avis Berman, Fitzsimmons, 15 May 1962,
overheated, Marisol removed herself from New York for a period
“A Bold and Incisive Way of Stable Gallery records, AAA,
and returned having taken a new direction. During the seventies, Portraying Movers and Shakers,” microfilm reel 5822, frame 965.
Smithsonian, February 1984,
she produced a series of fish sculptures inspired by her diving
58. Grove states Marisol saw 12 “Young Talent USA,” Art
experiences. Later in the decade she embarked on a series of por- the exhibition in 1951 and in America, June 1963, 51. The
began making sculptures in other artists included were
traits of artists, including Louise Nevelson, Willem De Kooning,
1953, Magical Mixtures, 12. painter James Rosenquist,
and Georgia O’Keeffe. Periodically, she would re-envision mas- There are, however, general graphic artist Jack Roth,
references to an exhibition that photographer George Krause,
terpieces in such works as the Mona Lisa (1962) and Self Portrait
took place in the early fifties, and architectural designer
Looking at the Last Supper (1984). Critics continued to acclaim Heartney, Marisol, 57. The Richard D. Hedman. Marisol,
earliest evidence of a Marisol who was nominated by
her work. Reviewing her 1984 Janis exhibition for Art in America,
sculpture is her inclusion in the Dorothy Miller, was listed as
for example, Robert Edelman wrote that “the tour de force of this 1954 Tanager Gallery year-end woodcarver, 46–57.
sculpture exhibition.
show, of course, is Marisol’s epic remake of Leonardo da Vinci’s
The 1952 Janis exhibition, 13 Ibid., 51.
Last Supper. . . . [H]er nearly 30-foot homage . . . [is] a compelling detailed in photographs
reproduced in anniversary 14 Max Kozloff, “New York
translation at monumental scale of a highly complex illusionis-
catalogues, does not appear Letter: Marisol,” Art Inter-
tic image into a dynamic spatial composition.”16 to include animal figures. See national, September 1962, 35.
“Wood Carvers’ Comeback,”
From very early on, works by Marisol were included in impor-
Life 14 July 1958, 59. The 15 John Canaday, “Art:
tant exhibitions, received favorable reviews, and were purchased unillustrated ARTnews review Constructions on the
of the Carlebach exhibition ‘Tensegrity’ Principle,” New
by museums and collectors. The public flocked to her exhibitions.
notes some “examples. . . York Times, 16 April 1966, 29.
She was appreciated for the humor and sophistication of her sub- wearing Egyptian-looking hats,
have wide snag-toothed grins 16 Robert Edelman, “Review
ject matter as well as for her craftsmanship. Although this article
or vaguely dreamy expressions. of Exhibitions: New York:
focuses on the fifties and sixties, her early promise, witnessed in . . . There are also bow-legged Marisol,” Art in America,
Tarascan terra-cotta dogs October 1984, 189.
the 1962 Stable Gallery “Biographical Notes,“ was borne out by her
[and] a brace of ducks”
long and successful career. (Lawrence Campbell, “Reviews
and Previews: Mexican Art,”
ARTnews, November 1953, 42).
[*] The “Biographical Notes” and other documents related There was a second pre-
to Marisol can be viewed online at www.aaa.si.edu, Columbian exhibition at
the Carlebach Gallery in
Keyword: Marisol. March of 1954.
A PROJECT BY TERENCE GOWER
The following artist’s project is based on

research in the Esther McCoy papers in the
Archives of American Art. Terence Gower
makes use of a selection from McCoy’s
interview with Mexican architect Francisco
Artigas. Gower uses the play format to
dramatize McCoy’s first encounter in 1970
with Artigas’ recently built “Castle,” shown in
the two double-page photographs.
SCENE ONE
Curtain Up.
Lights come up on the façade and
forecourt of an Italianate castle,
daytime. The architecture critic
enters from left stage with a tape
recorder and microphone.
Esther McCoy: (Gazing at the façade

while speaking into microphone)
The tower, a view of the tower . . .
It is . . . a square tower with hipped

roof . . . it is about 70 feet high.
Narrow, round-headed windows
facing south-west . . .
(Moving towards the entry) The

loggia — the entrance with glazing
on both sides — about 200 feet wide . . .
(pause) A doorway, 8 feet wide,
of 12-inch timber . . .
(Opening front door and peering

inside) The passage is covered with
wood, with glass at the sides . . . (pause)
Planting both sides . . . columns of
old beams carved with acanthus.
–4
SCENE TWO
Castle interior, afternoon.
Esther McCoy: (Turning 360 degrees,

speaking into microphone) It looks
closed but it is passageways between
hexagonal spaces . . .
(Looking up) These beams are from

an old church and the brackets are
from an old house. Beams . . . with
cord detailing . . .
(Stepping through the door leading

to terrace) Outside, a cold area . . .
a barranca off the terrace . . .
(Coming back into the Castle’s main

hall) The central hexagonal space:
a throw-away space, beautiful, with
a small Diana, is it a Diana? No, it isn’t.
A fountain in the center . . . A wood
paving fanning out from the fountain . . .
(Crossing to living room) The living

room, the same hex with sofas on
four sides steps down on the other two,
one leading up to the fire place.
Switches off tape recorder.
Lights Fade.
A RC H I V E S O F A M E R I C A N A RT J O U R N A L 4 6 : 33–4
–4 71
The photographs on the preceding pages show the home that the
Mexican architect Francisco Artigas (1916–1998) designed for
himself late in his career. The house was begun in 1968 and com-
pleted in 1970. The text is an extract from a five-hour interview of
Artigas conducted by the American architecture critic Esther
McCoy, whose papers are at the Smithsonian’s Archives of
Pages 68–69: Casa Artigas, exterior view,
ca. 1970. Architect: Francisco Artigas. American Art. McCoy was a regular critic for the Los Angeles
Photograph by Roberto and Fernando Luna. publication Art and Architecture and was instrumental to the
planning and dissemination of the Case Study House program
Previous Spread: Casa Artigas, interior
view, ca. 1970. Architect: Francisco Artigas. launched by the magazine in the late 1940s. She was a staunch
Photograph by Roberto and Fernando Luna. advocate of modernist architectural ideology and a guiding force
for the establishment of those ideas on the West Coast. McCoy
also traveled frequently to Mexico and other Latin American
countries, reporting back on the integration and sophistication of
the modernist movement in those places.
Mexico was fertile ground for modernist architecture in the
1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. While the United States was adhering to
a Soviet-style official architecture, Mexico — looking to express a
progressive new identity after its revolution — had gone entirely
Casa Gómez, Los Jardines del Pedregal modern. Starting in the late 1940s, public building projects — gov-
de San Angel, Mexico City. Architect: ernment buildings, schools, hospitals, and public housing — were
Francisco Artigas. Photograph
by Roberto and Fernando Luna. designed according to the logical economy of a stripped-down
functionalism. Interestingly, this desire for an expression of mo-
dernity extended beyond public architecture to the realm of the
wealthy and powerful. Francisco Artigas was an architect who
was happy to design private modernist villas and luxury hotels
for this sector.
The majority of Artigas’ projects were houses built for cli-
ents in Mexico City’s most exclusive suburb, Los Jardines del
Pedregal de San Angel, laid out on the south edge of the city by
Mexico’s great real estate speculator Luis Barragán. These photo-
genic masterpieces (for instance, Casa Gómez, 1953, pictured left)
made Artigas an icon of Mexican modernism. Esther McCoy — like
this artist — was an admirer of these houses and their creator.
Pedregal is a lava landscape, a brutal and beautiful setting for
residential architecture. The introduction of Artigas’ man-made
slabs into this landscape creates a very pleasurable visual
contrast. McCoy was so taken with Artigas’ Pedregal houses
that she wrote the introduction to the architect’s enormous 1972
monograph. (Curiously no reference is made to this book in her
published bibliographies.)
McCoy’s interview took place just after Artigas had shifted
his architectural style from modernism to a kind of fantasy his-
toricism, evident in the pictures of his own house on the preceding
pages. This shift was a capricious one, not unlike the modernist-
historicist shift in “styles” that occurred in the United States sev-
eral years later and became known as “Postmodernism.” McCoy Photograph of cassette tapes with
the modernist spends much time during the interview searching Esther McCoy’s 1970–71 description
of Francisco Artigas’ home.
for a justification for this shift, in perhaps one of the first twen- Photograph by Terence Gower.
tieth-century examples of a modernist critic or architect being
faced with a New Architecture that isn’t based on a grand theory.
In Artigas’ new work there is no manifesto, no justification, no
larger plan based on a new concept of social engineering: The
architect was simply bored with modernism. A kind of crisis reg-
isters in McCoy’s voice as Artigas calmly discusses his principal
inspiration for the new house: the Robin Hood movies he saw as
a boy. He confesses that since boyhood he had always wanted to
live in Robin Hood’s castle, and now at last, he could turn his
dream into reality.
Francisco Artigas was born in 1916. When he was six years
old, a dashing Douglas Fairbanks hit the screens as the pro-
tagonist in the costly Hollywood extravaganza Robin Hood.
Sixteen years later Hollywood released a second Robin Hood
film, this time with Errol Flynn opposite Olivia de Havilland’s
Maid Marian. It’s possible that both films fanned the flames of
Artigas’ Robin Hood obsession, and both are interchangeable
in a way. In both films, most of the nature scenes (Robin Hood’s
adventures in Sherwood Forest making up the bulk of the action)
were filmed outdoors in the Los Angeles area. All interior shots
were filmed in a Hollywood studio, mostly scenes of revelry or
pageantry in the case of the earlier film or interminable sword-
fights in the later one. All these scenes take place in fake castle
interiors or courtyards.
The design of the castle in the films is allegedly based on
Nottingham Castle, the key site of the Robin Hood legend. The
aesthetic provenance of Artigas’ castle is therefore an English
castle as interpreted by a Hollywood set designer, later filtered
through the imagination of a young boy. I should mention that
this is in no way an unusual inspiration for a Mexican house. In
the 1930s, certain of Mexico City’s architects-to-the-elite sought
inspiration in Hollywood. While most architects were exploring
art deco forms, these architects were looking at the Beverly Hills
houses of Hollywood stars, built in what is known in the United
States as Mission Style. These mansions incorporated the dec-
orative details of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Colonial
missions. This elaborate Spanish Colonial style, practiced by
Hollywood set decorators freelancing as architects, was reimport-
ed to Mexico, where it became known as “Hollywood Baroque.” All
of this is a testament to the density and richness of Mexican cul-
ture, seemingly able to absorb and digest just about every cultural
assault without altering its own character.
But why would Artigas choose to build a stone castle so late
in his life and career? My hypothesis is that he built it because
he could. What I did not mention in my introduction to this essay
was that the technological aspects of modernism never really
flourished in Mexico, a country with a very large pool of skilled
building labor, which made the mechanization of the building
trade redundant. For example, in the 1950s it probably would
have been less expensive to have workmen handcraft an I-beam
out of standard steel profiles than to fabricate it through an in-
dustrial process. The spectacular concrete architecture of Felix
Candela was probably only possible in Mexico, handcrafted and
tested by an army of workers. With this huge pool of artisan labor,
wealthy patrons in Mexico have been able to afford to build any
structure out of any material, including castles of solid stone. In
Mexico, Artigas had the luxury of rejecting the apparent economy
of modern building technology and indulging his childhood fan-
tasies to the fullest. He could incorporate handcut cantera stone
walls, handmade tile floors and roofs, and handcarved wooden
beams. It is just possible that rejecting modern building technol-
ogy could have been the easier route to take.
What Francisco Artigas’ project demonstrates, and what
seems to slowly dawn on Esther McCoy in her interview, is that
modernism in Mexico’s elite private sector was often practiced
as a style, symbolic of sophistication and novelty but divorced
from the progressive social philosophy at the heart of the move-
ment (and clearly at work in Mexico’s public sector, resulting in
good housing, schools, and hospitals for many of the less fortu-
nate). In McCoy’s interview, Artigas stresses that his ideas on the
distribution of functions, exposures, and siting had not changed
at all between his “modern” and his late work, nor were his ideas
significantly different from those of premodern (Colonial) ar-
chitecture. In other words, it was only the envelope that had
changed. What I detect in the tone of McCoy’s voice in the tapes is
a gradual realization that perhaps Artigas, an icon of modernism,
was not a modernist and perhaps never was. The question needed The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938.
to be asked: Was the modernist functionalism in his early work Photograph by Elmer Fryer.
largely some kind of aesthetic apparatus designed to display the

status of his clients?
There is a certain drama to this scenario — the edifice of mod-
ernism crumbling before the eyes of the idealistic architecture
critic. The drama is especially acute when McCoy lays eyes on the
Artigas “Castle” for the first time. She rolls the tape and begins the
peculiar soliloquy I’ve reprinted here in a tone of voice reminis-
cent of a news report from a disaster area. It is as if she is wit-
nessing the demolition of an ideal, expressed paradoxically by the
castle’s solid stones and sturdy beams. She is taking audio notes,
as she clearly is accustomed to doing as she tours a building for
the first time, but the various specs she is listing — “A doorway,
eight feet wide . . . wood paving fanning out . . .” — are colored by a
slightly frantic tone of disbelief. Like the narration of Joseph
Conrad’s protagonist as he travels up the river and into the Heart
of Darkness, Esther McCoy’s report sounds like that of a first
witness to the horrors of a terrifying new Postmodern world.
EDITORIAL
Darcy Tell, Editor
Jenifer Dismukes
Managing Editor
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Archives of American Art
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Full text of volumes 2–41 (1962–2001)
available online through JSTOR. Articles
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Historical Abstracts America: History
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American Art Journal are those of the
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D I R E C TO R
John W. Smith
PHOTO CREDITS
Cover: Roy Lichtenstein sketches for Pages 52–59: all images, Bob Thompson
As I Opened Fire, ca. 1964, Archives of Papers, Archives of American Art,
American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution.
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.
Pages 60–61: wood, metal, graphite,
textiles, paint, plaster, and other
Pages 4–13: all images, Samuel Wagstaff
accessories, 202 x 160 x 185 cm.,
Papers, Archives of American Art,
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester,
Smithsonian Institution.
New Hampshire. Museum purchase:
Page 15: gelatin silver print (24.5 x The Henry Melville Fuller Acquisition
22.7 cm.). National Portrait Gallery, Fund, 2005.12; art © Marisol/licensed
Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Estate by VAGA, New York, New York; Page 63:
of Hans Namuth © Hans Namuth Ltd. painted wood, 94 x 97 cm., collection
T/NPG.95.129.09; Page 16: © 2007 Andy of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, courtesy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ of the Corcoran Gallery of Art,
ARS, New York; Pages 17, 20–21: Alan Washington, D.C. Gift of Mr. and
R. Solomon Papers, Archives of American Mrs. C. M. Lewis; art © Marisol/
Art, Smithsonian Institution; Page 22: licensed by VAGA, New York, New York;
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; Page 64: Rudi Blesh Papers, Archives of
Page 25: France Observateur, 25 June American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1964. Alan R. Solomon Papers, Archives
Pages 68–69, 72–73, 74: photographs
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
© Roberto and Fernando Luna;
Page 28: oil on canvas panels with Page 75: Esther McCoy Taped Interviews
objects (216 x 153 cm.). The Eli and of and about Architects, Archives of
Edythe L. Broad Collection, Los Angeles; American Art, Smithsonian Institution;
art © Jasper Johns/licensed by VAGA, Page 77: Warner Brothers/Photofest.
New York, New York; Page 30: archives © Warner Brothers.
of Rachel Rosenthal, Los Angeles;
Page 33: art © Robert Rauschenberg/ Endpapers: Samuel Wagstaff
Licensed by VAGA, New York, New York; Papers, Archives of American Art,
Page 34: graphite pencil on paper; Smithsonian Institution.
collection of the artist; art © Jasper Johns/
licensed by VAGA, New York, New York.
Pages 36–44: all images, Dwan Gallery
Records, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.
Pages 46–50: all images, Ellen Hulda
Johnson Papers, Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Leo Castelli Gallery

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60s

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the newly redesigned Journal

James Crump’s ﬁlm Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam

Titia Hulst received a master’s degree in contemporary and

Jonathan Katz is the founder of the Harvey Milk Institute, the

Jessica Dawson is a freelance art writer living in Washington, DC.

David McCarthy is the author of The Nude in American Painting,

Judith Wilson is an independent scholar who recently retired

Marina Pacini is chief curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum

The Leo Castelli Gallery

Reading Watchman Through the Archive

Virginia Dwan Los Angeles

Underknown: Bob Thompson

Tracking Marisol in the Fifties and Sixties

The Castle: Esther McCoy

Wagstaff found himself at a crossroads toward the end of three

important art-historical texts, including A Sienese Codex of the

know it would be this bad.

Byars, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Andy Warhol, David Smith,

Watercolor-and-ink drawing from

The correspondence housed in the Archives of American Art, a

Quoted material is taken from the Samuel Wagstaff Papers

artists and dealers, and the downtown artists, Castelli connect-

the American public itself is often reluctant to give its full

Castelli believed it was essential that the gallery be located in

American Art, Johns acknowledges that a key formal shift in his

The Watchman falls “into” the “trap” of looking. The “spy” is

These complexly coded jottings, written over a sketch of the

unadorned, De Antonio’s statement, offered in a moment of protec-

5 Kirk Varnedoe, ed., Jasper

Only the foolhardy sold contemporary art in 1950s Los Angeles.

Robert Rauschenberg, and Ad Reinhardt among them — and her

on,’” 7 she recalled. Dwan certainly had her share of unsalable

View of the exhibition “Fifteen of New York”

Equal parts explanation and justiﬁcation, the painter Peter Saul’s

Dear Ellen Johnson,

I have 2 new pictures of guys being

Criticism will be that life is not a

Read alongside the letter of 12 July

8 See Dore Ashton, “Art,”

UNDERKNOWN: BOB THOMPSON BY JUDITH WILSON

THOMPSON WAS LOSING THE BATTLE WITH ADDICTION .

Framing a chronology for Marisol (b. 1930) is a vexing but crucial

[This] young Paris-born Venezuelan who has recently impressed

Although non-ﬁgurative abstraction disappeared from her oeuvre

The following artist’s project is based on

Esther McCoy: (Gazing at the façade

It is . . . a square tower with hipped

(Moving towards the entry) The

(Opening front door and peering

Castle interior, afternoon.

Esther McCoy: (Turning 360 degrees,

(Looking up) These beams are from

(Stepping through the door leading

(Coming back into the Castle’s main

(Crossing to living room) The living

Switches off tape recorder.

largely some kind of aesthetic apparatus designed to display the

SUBSCRIPTIONS & SINGLE ISSUES

Subscribe, or order single & back issues:

Opinions expressed in the Archives of

THE ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART , founded in WASHINGTON DC TRUSTEES

Huntington Library EX OFFICIO