A few days ago, when discussing the Mera Rubell talk at the Katzen, and her selection of 16 DC area artists being dubbed by the Washington Post as the "Sweet 16", I suggested that it would be a good idea for a DC glossy, like DC Modern Luxury for example, to hire a sharp photographer to assemble us 16 and re-do a modern version of the pose in Life Magazine's famous "Irascibles" photograph.
The photograph was taken by Nina Leen (January 15, 1951), and appeared in Life magazine. This very famous photo, known as the photo of "The Irascibles " shows 15 of the 18 Abstract Expressionist painters:
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)The photograph caption reads:
Barnett Newman (1905-1970)
Willem De Kooning (1904-1997)
Clyfford Still ( 1904-1980)
Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974)
Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967)
Robert Motherwell (1915-1991)
Mark Rothko ( 1903-1970)
William Baziotes (1912-1963)
James Brooks (1906-1992)
Jimmy Ernst (1920-1984)
Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997)
Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-1953)
Richard Poussette-Dart (1916-1992)
Hedda Sterne (1910)
IRASCIBLE GROUP OF ADVANCED ARTISTS LED FIGHT AGAINST SHOWSomeone once told me that originally there were only men in the group, and the photographer (I think) insisted on having a woman as well, and Hedda Sterne, who throughout her career maintained a stubborn independence from styles and trends, was brought in for the photo shoot, even though she wasn't one of the signers of the letter to the Met.
The solemn people above, along with three others, made up the group of “irascible” artists who raised the biggest fuss about the Metropolitan’s competition (following pages). All representatives of advanced art, they paint in styles which vary from the dribblings of Pollock (LIFE, Aug. 8, 1949) to the Cyclopean phantoms of Baziotes, and all have distrusted the museum since its director likened them to “flat-chested” pelicans “strutting upon the intellectual wastelands.” From left, rear, they are: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne; (next row) Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst (with bow tie), Jackson Pollock (in striped jacket), James Brooks, Clyfford Still (leaning on knee), Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; (in foreground) Theodoros Stamos (on bench), Barnett Newman (on stool), Mark Rothko (with glasses). Their revolt and subsequent boycott of the show was in keeping with an old tradition among avant-garde artists. French painters in 1874 rebelled against their official juries and held the first impressionist exhibition. U.S. artists in 1908 broke with the National Academy jury to launch the famous Ashcan School. The effect of the revolt of the “irascible” remains to be seen, but it did appear to have needled the Metropolitan’s juries into turning more than half the show into a free-for-all of modern art.
Thus my brilliant marketing idea of the "Sweet 16" recreating the above photo for a DC magazine. I got dibs on Richard Pousette-Dart's cool pose on the second row from the back.
cool idea
ReplyDeletehope the photographer uses a cool classic camera....with B&W film
Will all the artists wear coat and tie?
ReplyDeleteHedda Sterne, an Artist of Many Styles, Dies at 100
ReplyDeleteBy WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: April 11, 2011
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Hedda Sterne, an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100.
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Nina Leen/Time & Life Pictures- Getty Images
The now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the Abstract Expressionists’ leading lights. Hedda Sterne is in the back, standing.
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X,” by Ms. Sterne, from 1948.
Her death was announced by Clara Diament Sujo, the director of CDS Gallery in Manhattan.
Ms. Sterne, who was the last surviving artist from the Life photograph, shared few of the stylistic or philosophical concerns of the Abstract Expressionists, nor did she cast herself in the heroic mold favored by many artists in the movement.
She did, however, join with 17 prominent Abstract Expressionists and other avant-gardists in signing a notorious open letter to the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1950 accusing it of hostility to “advanced art.”
The letter, with signatures from the likes of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, caused a stir. The artists were dubbed the Irascible 18 by Emily Genauer, the chief art critic of The New York Herald Tribune, and 15 of them were gathered by Life magazine for a group portrait by the photographer Nina Leen. Ms. Sterne, who arrived late, was positioned on a table in the back row, where, she later said, she stood out “like a feather on top.”