one+-+artist's+portraits

I always wondered what artists look like so, I decided to incorporate their photo's. For the most part I find them to be normal looking people. There are no real outlandish styles especially early on. When the late 60's hit and some artists became Pop Stars the Look changed. May be it was Andy Warhol's fault or influence. He was insecure. He was different. And, he wanted to stand out so he had a whole act he would put on. But for the most part the artists look like everyday men and women. In the Forty's they looked like dock workers. regular working stiffs. Our poet laureate worked as a Ford auto worker until he graduated from college when he started teaching but his style never really changed that much. At 82 he still looks like a regular person. His name is Philip Levine. When I was in college we used to wear our studio clothes, paint smeared and splattered pants and shirts out. Part was laziness, part was we were poor and did not have much else and third, It gave us recognition as a group. We learned this from the upper classmen and they from looking at pictures of the Abstract Expressionist and Pop Artists. That was what we thought artist looked like soooo, that's how we dressed. Not all the time but a lot of the school time, classes and such. At some point vanity took hold and the crazier you looked the better. The question then became where did the art start and the artists begin or, were they one thing, the creator and created? I tended to dress down in the manner of Rothko or Diebenkorn, opting not to look like my art or draw attention from it. I learned this in part by meeting Milton Resnick a 2nd Generation Abstract Expressionist. He would guide me learning into finding out about the artist's lives. What they did, what they liked and did not like, who was an intellectual and who was not. This is when I started learning about art and making art because in the end art is made alone, in a studio and by a person. not a movement and it strives to look and be individual.

Frank O'hara was a friend to many visual artists, both the Pop and Abstract Expressionists. He wrote many poems about being an artist and being a poet as well as looking at art. Here are two that have to do with being an artist both visual and word.

Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. "Where's SARDINES?" All that's left is just letters, "It was too much," Mike says. But me? One day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be so much more, not of orange, of  words, of how terrible orange is  and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES. (1971)


 * [[image:http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Goldberg_O%27Hara_sm.JPG width="225" height="247" align="center" link="http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Goldberg_O%27Hara.jpg"]] || [[image:http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Johns_Skins_sm.JPG width="225" height="142" align="center" link="http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Johns_Skins.jpg"]]

Jasper Johns, Skin with O'Hara Poem, 1963-65 ||
 * [[image:http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Rivers_DoublePortrait_sm.JPG width="225" height="138" align="center" link="http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Rivers_DoublePortrait.jpg"]]

Larry Rivers, Double Portrait of Frank O'Hara, 1955 ||

Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara, Stones, 1958 ||
 * [[image:http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Rivers_Stones_sm.JPG width="200" height="171" align="center" link="http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Images/Rivers_Stones.jpg"]]

Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara, Stones, 1958 ||

At work on Stones; photo by Hans Namuth ||

A Step Away From Them
It's my lunch hour, so I go for a walk among the hum-colored cabs. First, down the sidewalk where laborers feed their dirty glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets on. They protect them from falling bricks, I guess. Then onto the avenue where skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates. The sun is hot, but the cabs stir up the air. I look at bargains in wristwatches. There are cats playing in sawdust. On to Times Square, where the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly. A Negro stands in a doorway with a  toothpick, languorously agitating. A blonde chorus girl clicks: he smiles and rubs his chin. Everything suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of a Thursday. Neon in daylight is a great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would write, as are light bulbs in daylight. I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of Federico Fellini, //e bell' attrice//. And chocolate malted. A lady in foxes on such a day puts her poodle in a cab. There are several Puerto Ricans on the avenue today, which makes it beautiful and warm. First Bunny died, then John Latouche, then Jackson Pollack. But is the earth as full as life was full, of them? And one has eaten and one walks, past the magazines with nudes and the posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which they'll soon tear down. I used to think they had the Armory Show there. A glass of papaya juice and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy. (1956)

Leonardo Da Vinci

Michelangelo



also Michelangelo



Albrect Durer

Rembrandt

Vincent Van Gogh

My Favorite- Claude Momet



George Innes George Innes

Munch

Egon Schiele Egon Schiele

Franz Marc Alberto Giacometti

Henri Matisse

Pablo Picasso

Frea Kalho

Morandi

An early portrait of the Abstract Expressionist, Willem DeKooning,Gottlieb?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Jackson Pollack,Clifford Still, Ad Rhinehart, Theodor Stamos, ?, Bernard Newman, ?, Marc Rothko

Hans Hoffman, The 2nd King after Monet and the first artist's exhibition I saw coming to New York For the 1st time 1970? Hoffman painting

Willem dekooning



Franz Kline always one of my favorites because of the boldness and simpicity and the ties to other cultures and "our" first marks as children. Kline was short, his paintings emmince. Helen Frankenthaller Her husband Robert Motherwell

Jackson Pollack 

Pollack painting the drips on glass

Pollack and the woman he owed his life too Lee Krasner, a great painter in her own write although she put her own career on hold to keep Jackson working.

Pollack's Studio which you can still visit E. Hampton, Long Island

Krasner

Mark Rothko



Milton Resnick Tapping his head and other 2nd Genration Ab. Exp.

The Goddess, Joan Mitchell She was a 2nd generation Ab. Exp. She left NYC moving to Paris following a man she was in love with. Her paintings are pure emotion to me which is why she is the Goddess. She was strong. She kept to her concepts about painting and art and her studio over looked Giverney, Monet's home.







Milton Resnick Piet Mondrian Milton Resnick These photos are of Uncle Milty in his later years. Milton Resnick and his then Girlfriend/Wife Early Milton Resnick early on in his studio

Richard Diebenkorn Frank Stella

Claus Oldenberg

Andy Warhol

Frank O'hara-the poet

Larry Rivers

Jim Dine



David Hockney

Jack Tworkov

Wayne Theibaud One of my all time favorites because he just painted what he believed in. He never considered himself a Pop Artist but that is how he was classified. Maybe yes? Maybe No? Wayne Thiebaud james Kentridge



Early (above) and present Susan Rothenberg