A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  Those were the toxic years. Her whole body revolted against Jack’s art. She suffocated on the fumes of his paint media until her face swelled, her eyes closed, and she broke out in rashes. Did Jack resolve the problem? Indeed, he did his best, and as he soared creatively, he was eventually able to move his work into a large studio downtown. And as his pictures got bigger, so did his life.

  Yes, they kept the house. And because guilt and resentment have a way of running through marriages like a river, Jack assumed the mantle of guilt for having put Mabel through such difficult changes. He was already known for his self-effacing, modest ways, and these traits became only more pronounced as time passed, almost as if he needed to balance the bliss and passion he was experiencing in his art, lest those newly released emotions overwhelm him and others. But there were social occasions, especially after a few drinks, when his joy about painting would break through unbridled and his whole being would quiver with it.

  Those were the breakthrough years for Jack, as the paintings avalanched out of him and he began to show in New York. Mabel continued to accompany him on his visits, but, although she slowly adjusted to their new lifestyle, it seemed to me that she stopped being as spontaneous and took a step back from being a full participant at Jack’s side.

  Jack was an art-world anomaly, a painter who flowered in middle age after years of juggling an increasingly incompatible day job. And so was Mabel an anomaly, an artist’s wife who found herself thrust into a life she didn’t want or understand. Jack grew up fast in those years. He enjoyed his recognition and success. It seemed that each time I saw him he was more confident and at ease. Why not? He was finally living the life he was meant to live. And then, in 1977, at sixty-eight, he died suddenly of a heart attack. As with many other artists’ wives, in due time Mabel assumed a new role as Jack’s widow. I was happy for her. With her characteristic grace and beauty, she represented him well and seemed to enjoy taking on the tasks and functions associated with his art. Perhaps she saw herself as a redefined homemaker, this time of Jack’s posthumous career.

  I once told the Bushes that I thought we four were like the Ricardos and the Mertzes. They laughed and we argued about who was who. Clem was miffed because he didn’t know what we were talking about. And we laughed all the more, telling him he was probably the only person on earth who had never heard of I Love Lucy. But I was serious. Of all the people Clem and I hung out with, the Bushes were the only couple who had ever made me feel that I was part of a foursome. Compatibility times four.

  CLYFFORD AND PAT STILL

  AT NIGHT our living room was as dim as a cave, even with two table lamps, a standing lamp, and Clem’s green-glass desk lamp. As small as the room was, there was never enough light to fill its veiled corners. Perhaps it was the high ceilings. Perhaps it was the dingy white walls that every day got dingier with the grime of Hudson Street that seeped through the old window frames. The walls were jammed with small paintings and one large one, a six-foot square abstract that Clem painted, dusky rose shapes billowing around a vortex highlighted with gold. Along one wall was a row of bookcases painted white. A few small sculptures perched along the top, while sprinkled in front of the books were an assortment of highly- polished silver candy dishes and the like, that cast a glimmer or two. They were the small fruits of our wedding that I had hoped would spiff up the place. They didn’t. Instead they made the room look incongruously fussy. On every surface was a much treasured ashtray, small white china ones, swiped by Clem from bistros during his European trips in 1939 and 1954. Add to that a tattered and frayed Oriental of diminished reds and yellows, two small tables, two upholstered chairs, two weary Windsor chairs, and Clem’s desk, and that was that.

  I had not met Clyfford Still before, but that winter evening in 1958 he had come to our Bank Street apartment, a rare house call for this reputed recluse, who had moved to Baltimore. With him were his wife and one of his two daughters.

  He sat in one of the armchairs—the bilious green one with the springs that poked through. Whenever anyone sat in that chair, I watched them wince. As bony as Still was, he didn’t. Maybe he was invincible. He was very tall, with luxuriant white hair. His face was expressionless and gaunt. His friends—did he have friends?—called him Clyff. Tonight, Clem called him that, his wife called him Still; I called him nothing. On his right, on a Windsor chair, sat his wife, a small dark ramrod, barely leaning back, barely sitting at all. The daughter sat near the door on the other wooden chair, huddled. Across from the Still family, Clem was by his desk; I was in the other small armchair, faded orange, a hand-me-down from my mother. There they were, lined up, in Puritan grays and blacks. We were as we were.

  As I looked at Still, I wondered if I was seeing him or the self-devised myth that preceded him. I had heard that he would set himself up as the supreme moral arbiter and pass out judgments from on high. His way was white, “their” way black. I imagined that the darkness he saw “out there” was as dark as his towering paintings, with their spires that clawed at the sky. He had recently walked into the painter-collector Alfonso Ossorio’s house in East Hampton and “reclaimed” one of his paintings. He had cut it out of its stretcher, rolled it up, and taken it home. The reason? He didn’t approve of Ossorio’s having sold a Pollock from his collection, and was protecting his picture from a similar fate. And although Ossorio owned the purloined picture, he did not protest.

  Still’s astonishing work empowered him to hold curators, dealers, and collectors hostage. Having shown in the forties with Peggy Guggenheim and Betty Parsons, he had had no regular dealer for years and personally controlled every aspect of his marketplace. Purportedly, no collector ever chose a painting to buy. Still vetted the collector, selected the picture he would be permitted to buy, and set the price. And Still’s reputation, prices, and myth grew. And the more he tested people, the more they sucked up, and the more they sucked up, the more he held them in contempt.

  Had Still visited Clem before? I thought it unlikely. In an early review he’d written in the forties, Clem had marginalized Still as being “slack,” “undisciplined.” It wasn’t until 1953 that Clem had had an epiphany and made his reversal official in 1955 in “American-Type Painting,” saying he was “. . . impressed as never before by how estranging and upsetting genuine originality can be . . . ” and called Still the “ . . . most important and original painter of our time.” When I met Clem, he was reveling in his mistake. That was Clem’s way. Still would always be Clem’s touchstone when he talked about how important it was to look hard at art and even harder at the art you didn’t take to at first. Now the touchstone was in the living room.

  Still joined Clem in another drink. The wife and daughter drank nothing. I didn’t know why they were here. It was obvious to me that this was not a social call. I somehow knew not to pull out my scant repertoire of social amenities and smiles. The occasion had taken on all the earmarks of a summit meeting where the agenda remains obscure. The men spoke. Still spoke a lot, using complex words to embellish simple opinions. The wife, being the wife, leaned in, drinking in each word. That was her way. She was the tape recorder, the note-taker. What was the daughter’s way? Perhaps to be as unobtrusive as possible. I knew how to do that, too. I leaned back and tried to remove myself from this company, tried to think of anything but what was going on.

  The Stills did not look at the art. They did not look at me. None of them spoke to me. They were as one. Finally, I ventured a word to the wife. I ventured a word to the daughter. There was no response, lest a word that passed between the men be missed. Nothing unusual, but never before to this chilling degree.

  The voices went on—no banter, no chat. Still talked of polemics and issues and enemies. He reminded me of Barney Newman, that other painter of big pictures with big talk that could also numb my brain, but this man made Barney sound like a pussycat. I watched the women watching Still. Like chameleons, they had absorbed his coloration.

  And then the conversation took a jolting
turn to the personal. Now I, too, straightened in my chair and leaned in. Still was describing their living situation in Baltimore, his studio and their living quarters, his daughter’s “room,” separated from theirs by a curtain. He was proud of this austerity. I learned that the daughter was his, one of two, and that his wife was their stepmother.

  I looked at the girl, noticing for the first time that she was not really a “girl,” but rather a young woman. Could she have been close to my age? I was twenty-four. They were so strange to me, this family. How did she manage with only a curtain between her and her father and her stepmother? I thought of my own stepmother and quaked. Before I could stop, I was in the anger of my own past. How had I ever managed to live in the same room as my brother when I was eight and he was thirteen? And when I was ten, how had I managed to share a room with my mother for the next three years? And I hadn’t even had a curtain.

  My self-pity disgusted me, and so I tried to refocus on these people in the room. It was difficult. I didn’t want to identify with this daughter, but I did. I didn’t want to hear this talk, but I did. I could see the curtain. It was not thick enough. It was rough homespun, but it was too thin. I looked at Still and he became a righteous crusader flailing at injustice, all the while mowing down those closest to him.

  They had arrived at five and would stay until seven. They left on the dot, as if the time had been prearranged. I was surprised that they had even stayed that long. They rose as one. They didn’t say good-bye to me. I don’t think they knew my name. Nor did I know the women’s names.

  Later that night Clem and I went out with David Smith, a girlfriend, and Bill de Kooning. We hit the Five Spot to listen to jazz and met up with more people and then headed off to some parties. Bill drifted off, probably to the Cedar. We four wound up the night at the Chelsea Hotel, where David often stayed when he was in town from Bolton Landing. This time he had one of the penthouse rooms, huge and shabbily grand, and on an oversize low table, in a bowl as big as a salad bowl, was grass. Clem and I were new to all that, but we gave it a try—I more scared than excited, Clem ready to try anything new.

  David made a production of rolling a joint. I was fascinated by his big beefy hands, hands that could weld monuments of soaring steel, now so deft at such a delicate task. He lit up and earnestly demonstrated how to inhale. We passed the joint to one another. I liked that ritual. It bonded us. I felt close to David that night. I had not been able to feel that way about him before. The more I inhaled, the more I swore over and over that I felt nothing. Everyone laughed, so I laughed, too. The more Clem inhaled, the more he muttered over and over that booze was better. Everyone laughed. Clem was miffed. I sank back into the couch and drifted into thoughts of the couch I would have if we could afford a couch, big as a boat and soft as a bag of marshmallows. And I thought of the room I would live in, big and high and open to the air and to the light of the moon and the sun. It seemed like years later when Clem unearthed me from the couch, and I made my polite goodnights to David and his friend, thanking him for his hospitality. That was my way. Still going on about the grass and how we didn’t see what all the fuss was about, we ambled our way home. There in the small foyer of our building was a dead-to-the-world drunk. I got a bit dithery and Clem reassured me that drunks were harmless; it was the junkies you wanted to stay clear of. I laughed. Clem, again, didn’t get the joke. I couldn’t stop laughing.

  Why have I always remembered that? I don’t remember David’s girlfriend, or what went on at the Five Spot, or the parties, whose or where they were. But I remember the grass. And the drunk. And that it was all part of the same night that the Stills had come to visit, and how they had eaten up what light there was in the room and then left their shadows.

  In an old Still catalog, I recently came across a long letter Still had written to Clem in May 1961—the tone dark and ominous. In it, Still dismisses Art and Culture as “. . . purveying downright lies, or worse—malevolent ignorance.” He later lumps Clem with Barney, writing, “There is something rotten in your impotent souls” that motivates you to tear down “. . . the work and purposes of your betters.” He concludes his litany of charges by referring to a dossier he has compiled that he will reveal at his discretion “. . . to correct your pedestrian perversions of the truth.’” The letter was signed by his wife, Pat Still, though for all the world, it would seem to have been written in tongues. Clem had never mentioned the letter to me, perhaps because it didn’t surprise him.

  Still died in 1980. True to form, his will was, in effect, an audacious challenge couched in stringent and labyrinthine terms. He bequeathed his enormous art estate, numbering some 750 paintings and 1,400 drawings, to the city that would build a museum dedicated solely to his work and maintain it in perpetuity, no deacquisitions permitted. He specified the required size of the museum, a minimum of twenty-five thousand feet, and even the number of paintings and drawings that must be displayed on a rotating basis. For Still’s widow, that patient guardian of the flame, it would take twenty-four years for the right suitor—the city of Denver—to appear and the terms to be met. She died a year later, and it would take another six years for the entombed oeuvre to be finally disinterred. I am sure Still will continue to manipulate the strings from above. With him, things had a way of never running smoothly. But then, he liked it like that.

  FRANZ KLINE

  FRANZ STAYS WITH ME. Yes, there are those raw, gut-wrenchingly honest paintings that when I first saw them made me gasp, the slashes, like black lightening, sending a shock down my spine. Oh, those pictures. But it is he who stays with me as well. Whenever I see one of his paintings or hear his name, I think of his dark-haired paleness, his deep melodious voice. And his soft brown velvet eyes with a smudge of sadness under a mesmerizing widow’s peak. A romantic view. And why not? With his black fedora, thirties movie-star mustache, and flower-in-his-lapel ways, he certainly projected that image.

  Franz’s beginnings are so stark and bear so little resemblance to the man I knew, not well, but somewhat, from 1955 until his death in 1962. As so often happens, those who people our lives have stories we never hear until they are long gone. Only later would I think of the disparity between the open, fun-loving Franz, the Franz who was wild about dancing and took such bold strides that he took my breath away, and the Franz of the harsh early years. I looked for clues to link the two, but apart from that smudge of sadness, it was as if his past had left no trace. But, of course, that couldn’t have been true.

  His story rings of the gothic: extreme poverty, the father a dollar-a-day worker on the railroad who committed suicide when Franz was seven, and an orphanage in Philadelphia until he was fifteen. His interest in art started early, and after his mother’s remarriage he was able to study at college and in England. While there he married Elizabeth, an elegant dark-haired woman who “dreamed of being a great lady.” Arriving in Greenwich Village in 1938, Franz became part of the impoverished artists’ world, worked and lived in a small studio underneath Bill de Kooning’s, and survived on coffee laced with sugar. Elizabeth, sucked under by hardship and isolation, withdrew and took to her bed, until, in 1946, Franz had to put her in a state home for the mentally ill for the next fifteen years.

  By the time I met Franz in 1955, he had already been for several years with another dark-haired woman, Betsy Zogbaum, the ex-wife of fellow artist Wilfred Zogbaum. Lively, strong, beautiful, she became his life partner. And in 1950, at age forty, Franz achieved “overnight success.” Evidently, one day he said to Betsy, “I’ve got it.” He had started his series of black and white paintings. He is also purported to have said, “I don’t know what to make of them.”

  Clem had played a pivotal part in Franz’s career when, in 1950, he included him in the first show he ever curated. He and Meyer Shapiro picked up-and-coming artists for a show called “Talent” at the Kootz Gallery. This first showing of a Kline black and white picture garnered a lot of attention and got him his first uptown gallery, the Egan Gallery, whe
re he had his first one-man show in 1951. In a rare gesture, Clem contributed a blurb for the show that dubbed Kline the “most striking new painter in the last three years.” He was also acclaimed by his fellow artists.

  However, Franz, like all first-rate artists, would have to wait a while for most critics, museum people, and collectors to catch up with his work. Another critic of stern stuff who was not won over was Kline’s mother. Evidently, upon seeing the show, she said to him, “Black and white—you always did choose the easy way.”

  Whether from the establishment or from one’s mother, acceptance was hard won in those decades. The better, the more honest, the work, the higher the wall of head-shaking skepticism. That came to be the standard. And the reverse was also true. Early in his career, I recall Ken Noland after an opening of one of his shows at Tibor de Nagy as he walked down the street, downcast because people had liked the pictures; he had concluded that the work wasn’t very good. How soon that would all change when the art scene moved into a time of newness for newness’ sake. No more time delay as collectors, afraid lest they miss the next “star,” paid top dollar. Wonderful for artists, but thoughts of Kline and his slow but sure success at age forty made me hanker for a more discriminating time.

  Clem’s earlier familiarity with Kline’s work might have suggested a more than casual relationship between them, but if that had been the case, it was no longer so by the time I came around. Not that Franz and Clem didn’t get along—everyone got along with Franz. But, as with many artists, I was content with liking him from afar as our paths crossed and recrossed. That said, there would be a few exceptions.