A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  I had always thought of the art world as the family I had married into. Of course, as with any in-laws, our relationship had been rocky. But I had changed, the times had changed. I would be hard put to call today’s art world a “family.” Nonetheless, endangered though the old-timers may be, in the years after Clem died, there would still be a few family reunions where my past and present could collide.

  In 2001 I saw a screening of the movie Pollock, followed by a Q & A session with Ed Harris and the cast. All proceeded predictably until the final question. A man asked whether in the closing images Harris had intended to suggest that Jackson had committed suicide. Harris, as I can best recall, said that that was a question that could never be answered. There was a bit of back-and-forth, and I was getting ready to leave, when I heard Harris say the word murder in relation to Jackson’s role in Edith Metzger’s death. I let out a whoop of surprise, startling the people around me. Of course, Harris was not suggesting willful intent; he was speaking of Jackson’s ultimate responsibility. My surprise was that it was the first time in over forty years that I had heard anyone other than Clem use that word in connection with the tragedy.

  A few months after I had seen Pollock, I found myself sitting across from three women on a Madison Avenue bus. They had just come from the movie, and I listened to them commiserating with “that poor Lee,” who, as it were, had laid down her brushes and her life for “that man.” “Why did she put up with him?” They used the word suffocated. Oh, they were identifying, all right. What woman hasn’t thought at one time or another that her life has been consumed and detoured by a man? I was itching to interrupt them: No, you don’t get it. Not only did she choose that life, she had been on the prowl for years, and when she found him, she got him in her sights and bagged him.

  If the women and I had stayed on that bus all the way to Washington Heights, I might have told them about Lee’s early days at the Hofmann School in the thirties. About the three sirens, Lee, Elaine, and Mercedes. All good painters. All savvy to the near impossibility of a woman’s getting recognition in those years. It wouldn’t have been enough for our trio to hook up with any artist; he had to be a genius who one day would be the greatest painter in New York. Mercy, the raving beauty, would undoubtedly be deemed the also-ran when she married Herbert Matter, a fine photographer and graphic designer. The race between Lee and Elaine, who snagged de Kooning, would be hotly contested over the next decades. Bill would be the popular favorite, with his more accessible art and personality. He would have won the Most Likely to Succeed and Mr. Congeniality awards if the art press and his peers had been judging. Despite the odds, Lee’s genius pulled ahead in the final lap and she found herself in the winners’ circle.

  I could well understand that this take on Lee would be unacceptable to all women, whose knee-jerk response after seeing the movie would be to identify with Lee as the victim. In fact, they probably would have asked me, What about all those painful years in between? The sacrifice? I would have said, Again, you’re missing the point. She loved her life. She knew that with every Pollock that got painted, her faith in him was reaffirmed. And for every Krasner that didn’t get painted, Lee had a moment of glory as Jackson’s wife and then widow. She hugged her life to her chest and never let go. Well, only for a moment that summer of 1956, and look what happened when she did.

  What did I think about the movie? I thought Harris was extraordinary, right on target. I couldn’t say the same for the actor who played Clem. He delivered a caricature, from posture to delivery: the art critic who leans back, looks down his nose with a condescending sneer, and pontificates. Very un-Clem. As for Lee, I couldn’t find the Lee I knew in the movie. Marcia Gay Harden, by choosing to deliver a softened Lee, reduced the story to the overbearing man and the beaten-down woman. As I had never personally seen the soft underbelly of Lee, most of that would have ended up on my cutting-room floor. In my movie I would have portrayed a perfectly matched, toe-to-toe marriage. A win-win, lose-lose kind of marriage. As for Harden, she picked up an Oscar. Harris got passed over. The movie became Lee’s. But Best Supporting Actress? Lee would have hated that.

  For the most part, the time I write of was before all the mythologizing about the first-generation artists. To me, they were just the guys in Clem’s life. But Jackson, from the time he was dubbed Jack the Dribbler to the notoriety of the “death car,” had become the juiciest target for the myth-spinners. And then it got personal: Jackson the roaring drunk, who slugged this one and that, who ripped doors off hinges and pissed in fireplaces. Fortunately for them, once upon a time he did piss in Peggy Guggenheim’s fireplace. Sadly, for posterity, those are the myths that stick—like gum in your hair—and then get embellished. And what about the five-hundred-pound biography by “the two boys of the street,” as Clem called them—they, too, lived on Central Park West—who went so far as to try to make a case for Jackson’s being gay? It reminded me of the absurdity of watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant that little American flag on the moon. All I know is, Jackson, as the subject of so much speculation, is a stranger to me. I imagine how he would have hung his head even lower and retreated even more deeply inside himself. And, of course, it isn’t just Jackson, but all of the superstar artists. Myth-making explodes the truth and guts out of people. And to have known them in the day-to-day of our lives and then watch them be stretched this way and that sickens me.

  I shared an intimate evening with the past the night I was invited to a screening of a documentary of Hans Hofmann. In the small, dimly lit theater I saw rows of faces, aging faces, turn toward us. A few nodded as we found seats. I knew none of the faces by name, yet from the moment I walked into the room, I knew I was “home.” Soon, the film began and I was twenty-four, feasting on Hans’s world: Provincetown, Miz, the magical house of colors, his square feet in those sandals, his thick voice, his heat and intensity, the heft of him. As we all straggled out of the past and out of the theater, a few people greeted me. As always, I was surprised they knew my name. As I searched my mind for theirs, I hugged them close and realized the names didn’t matter.

  I think of a small birthday dinner given some years ago by my friend Edith Kurtzweil for her husband, William Phillips. It was there that I once again crossed paths with Roger Straus, renowned publisher and forever renowned in my mind as my first job interviewer. After dinner, I harnessed his attention—at his advanced age, quite an easy task, as he never left his chair. In a breezy, anecdotal way, I at last unburdened myself of the story of our early, brief encounter and the significance it had held for me. It was clear he didn’t comprehend much of what I said, but he was still as sartorially splendid and, with his abundant crown of white hair, as handsome and charming as ever. He took the cue from my delivery and nodded and laughed heartily at my story, before looking away desperately in search of rescue and another lemon tart. Both of which were soon supplied by his beautiful wife, Joanna, and I said my good-byes. He died soon after, at age eighty-seven. I was surprised. I had imagined him gracefully sauntering into his hundreds. But I smiled to think that he had been only thirty-eight when he had dismissed me with such finesse and sent me out of publishing and on into my life.

  I think of André Emmerich’s eightieth birthday party, a large, elegant event. This time I knew many people, but perhaps because of the formality, I found that I had suddenly reached the end of my thread of small talk. Had I really been saying the same things to the same people for fifty years? We had never moved on to new colors and textures. Had it been me? Or them? There would be no answer, but that evening, my words wadded up in my mouth and tasted bad. As for those I knew less well, we were like actors in a play with no plot and lots of loose ends. My attention was transfixed by the tiny bejeweled purses on the tables and the heavily veined, bejeweled manicured hands lying across them. Ah, I thought, the collectors. With some, we try to sort ourselves out as we smile and move on, but we are stymied by our inability to match the face with a name, and we wonder if we know each o
ther at all. And how could it have been otherwise? We had only had the polite latticework of small talk that had obscured the stuff of what might have been real conversation. I didn’t sleep much that night. Often, after these reunions, I don’t sleep much. Too many dreams of other nights and times.

  I think of one of Helen’s openings at Knoedler. In the crush, Gifford and Joanne Phillips greeted me. Their names floated to mind easily; they were like magnets bringing with them all the memories of our many times together. They were also outstanding collectors. We talked about Helen’s art—we liked that picture, that one not so much—the way people used to talk about art when qualitative judgments were still kosher. As we parted, Joanne said how fondly she remembered buying me “the little silver cup at Tiffany’s.” A moment of confusion, before I realized she thought I was Sarah.

  Just then, a young man with blond spiked hair said, “Jenny!” and grinned at me in passing. Who on earth . . . ? What a comedy it all was. As I left, I waved at Helen, seated in front of a long line of admirers waiting for her attention. As usual she mouthed, “Lunch. Call me.” It was the last time I saw her without a wheelchair. And there would be no more lunches.

  And I learned how proprietary I was about my art family when my real family and I were recently invited to Barbara and Ernie Kafka’s for Thanksgiving dinner. During the wonderful meal, conversation at the adult end of the table turned to the artists we had known in common—in particular, David Smith, Bob Motherwell, and Ken Noland. Their talk was not just idle gossip, but strong criticism of everything from lifestyles—all the girls and sex—to the management of families, careers, finances, and wills. As surprised as I was by their vehemence after so many years, I was more surprised by how defensive I became. As if I had a stake, as if I hadn’t plenty of my own reservations about those artists. But damn it, they were my family and no one could . . . As quickly and easily as that, I was overwhelmed by a groundswell of feelings for them that I had never acknowledged before. They might be out of my life, or long dead, but they were mine.

  Over the last decade I have often felt as if I were living in a kaleidoscope of art people. It seemed that every time I looked around, they had shifted from friend to acquaintance to a memory. Nothing mysterious—simply the drift of changing lives, old age, and death. I have come to accept it, just as I accept that, now and then, when I am with one of my “family,” I simply know that this will be the last time I will see him, or talk to her. As with Friedel Dzubas at a gathering after a small retrospective of his work. His voice soft, we huddled close on the couch to hear and be heard, his cold hand holding mine so tight, talking of Clem and the painting he needed to finish. As with Jules Olitski at a party at the Willard Boepples, at war with cancer, eager to retravel the roads of our past, not with nostalgia, but with warmth. His voice was weak, but we laughed long and loud. And there were too many others who had slipped so far away over the years that there would be no last word or touch.

  There was a different sort of good-bye when I went to my fiftieth reunion at Bennington. Rightfully, the place and I had outgrown each other. But the women of 1955, we would be sisters forever.

  And there was my last afternoon with my dear friend, the painter Yvonne Thomas, sitting on her black art-deco chair in her loft, the sun playing in her hair, so beautiful in her mid-nineties, still weaving stories for me across the rumor mill of seventy years. That day, my questions led her the Hofmann School during the summer of 1938, “ . . . and of course Mercy was having a mad affair with Hans.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes, he had quite an eye for all the girls.”

  “Did Miz know?”

  Yvonne shrugged in her French way. “How could she not? But things were different then, more comme il faut.” Ah, what a pretty way of saying open marriage. I felt again the force of the Hofmanns’ harmony and the harmony between Clem and me, and how, if one cared enough to go the distance, an open marriage could be an open door to any togetherness one chose. I adored the urgency and gusto of Yvonne’s repartee, as if the events had happened at a party last night, as if the people were not dead or past caring. And as the sun faded in her hair, I watched her devour her favorite coffee ice cream and chocolate cookies, so angry that she had outlived her time.

  Like any self-respecting relationship archeologist, I believe that embedded in the moments of Clem’s and my first year together—Jennifer’s party, Delaney’s bar, René Bouché’s studio, Bank Street, East Hampton—were all the clues of what lay ahead for us. My life with Clem introduced me to love, honesty, and trust. My life with Clem brought me swift and total submersion into the art world—a world of men, a world not of my making or choice—and it taught me to swim. It brought me our beloved daughter. It brought me an open marriage that allowed me to love Clem for a lifetime without resentment or anger. An open marriage that afforded me the chance to explore other worlds of my own that I might never have experienced otherwise. Clem loved me completely for who I was, not for what I did or might become. It was in his gaze that first night we met—not the love, not yet. But his wholehearted interest in me was there. His eyes into mine. I was caught, caught up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WANT TO THANK those who gave me the keys to unlock this book.

  Francine du Plessix Gray for introducing me to Carolyn Heilbrun’s astonishing book, Writing a Woman’s Life, before I even knew I was ready to read it.

  The friend who led me to the International Women Writers Guild and Susan Tiberghien’s seminar on memoir before I knew the time had come for me to write one. And thanks to the IWWG summer workshops at Skidmore College. Writing in the company of hundreds of women, I formed lasting bonds with Eunice Scarfe, Lynne Barrett, Marsha McGregor, Kathleen O’Shea, Linda Durnbaugh, Mira Shapiro, Judith Searle, and Kay Raheja. By example, they never let me forget that writing is an inside job where there are no rules and all things are possible. Thanks as well to our writers’ workshop in New York for inspiring me with their insights over the years: Veronica Picone, Anne Hollyday, Dar-lynne Devenny, Lenora Odeku, and Regina Kolbe.

  And to the early readers of the book: Sarah and Clementine Morse, Stephanie Noland, Ruth Mayer Bacon, Jim and Annie Walsh, and Amy Mintzer—thank you all. Your responses made me feel that my long journey had been worth every minute of it. And thanks to the incomparable Trish Hoard who, when I fretted that the book might be too long, in effect, said, “It’s your life story, it will be as long as it needs to be.”

  My thanks to all the photographers who documented our lives and provided us with a treasured archive. I am grateful to them—and their estates—for granting me permission to reprint their work. (Photographs without credits are from our personal collection.) I also thank Robert S. Warshaw, trustee of the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, for allowing me to reproduce the letters Hans wrote to Clem in 1961.

  I thank Jack Shoemaker at Counterpoint Press, a publisher who honors the books he chooses to print and the authors who write them. My gratitude to Kelly Winton, Laura Mazer, and Jodi Hammerwold for their help, and copy editor Annie Tucker for her thorough and thoughtful contributions.

  Closer to home, a special thank you to my daughter Sarah Greenberg Morse for her emotional and practical guidance every step of the way. And I thank my invaluable assistant, Emily Hoenig.

  At the Wylie Agency, my thanks to Jin Auh for her enthusiastic support of my project. And special thanks to her teammate Jacqueline Ko for being my infallible advisor through the process. I will always think of their belief in my book as a great gift.

  INDEX

  #1 Fifth Avenue

  12 Chatham Road

  101-Year-Old Woman

  A

  AA. See Alcoholics Anonymous

  Abzug, Bella

  Achimore, Steve

  Acquavella, Bill

  Actors Studio (Los Angeles)

  Actors Studio (New York)

  Age of Innocence

  Ahern, Nan

  Akropolis

&
nbsp; Al-Anon

  Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo)

  Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

  Aldrin, Buzz

  Algerian War

  Algonquin

  Alliance Française

  Alloway, Lawrence

  Amis, Kingsley

  An Actor Prepares

  Angleton, Jim

  Animal House

  Apollo II

  Apple Tree

  Archives of American Art

  Armstrong, Neil

  Arnold, Matthew

  Art and Culture

  Art Institute of Chicago

  Art International

  Arvin, Valerie

  As the World Turns

  Auden, W.H.

  Automat

  Avedon, Richard

  Avery, Milton

  Avery, Sally

  B

  Backer, Judy

  Ballard, Kaye

  Barney Greengrass

  Barr, Alfred

  Baruch School

  Bastille

  Baxley, Barbara

  Baziotes, William