The Painter - Part 1

Fairfield Porter’s first solo painting exhibition in New York took place at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in October 1952. Though not a dramatic debut, the show was generally well received.  In a Christmas letter to his sister-in-law, he commented on this exhibition and his first year of writing for ARTnews concluding:   “From feeling way out of things for years and years, I suddenly feel on the inside.  It is naturally a good feeling.”   His affiliation with the Tibor de Nagy gallery would last for eighteen years with Porter exhibiting almost annually.  Over the course of those years he affirmed his place on the “inside” of New York’s art world.

At first, sales were slow.  But this situation changed toward the end of the 1950s when members of the Rockefeller family began to buy his paintings. The imprimatur of such a well known name was significant. From that point on Porter enjoyed consistent support from private collectors. To take advantage of this new momentum,  he resolved to devote more time to painting, stepping away from writing criticism that had to meet publication deadlines. 

During the last 15 years of his life, Fairfield Porter’s career flourished. Between 1959 and 1967 his work was selected to appear in five Whitney Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary Painting.  In 1966 he had his first museum retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts.  In 1968 he was one of ten artists chosen to be included in the American exhibition, “The Figurative Tradition in Recent American Art,” at the International Biennale Exhibition of Art in Venice.  He was featured in national publications and in demand as a speaker and teacher. Museums began to acquire his work. Porter was the exceptional painter who only got better as he grew older.  Toward the end of his life he was creating some of his most beautiful paintings.  His artistic achievement was widely recognized and he enjoyed the financial rewards that accompanied that recognition.  Fairfield Porter died in 1975 having attained his goal of creating a life as a professional artist in the United States.

From the vantage point of 1968, Fairfield Porter looked back on the first decades of the 20th century and stated bluntly:  “I don’t think anybody in America knew how to paint in oils at that time.” French painting was the standard against which he judged all American painting including his own. In this comparison, America came up woefully short.  But the deficit was perfectly understandable. In France, the Ecole National Superieure Des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1671 by a minister of King Louis XIV.    The North American continent at that time was largely wilderness.  In the United States, museums and schools of fine art only began to be established in the 19th century.  Training opportunities for painters in the United States remained haphazard for many years to come. Left to pursue a career with little training, American painters often produced art that, in Porter’s estimation, was “provincial and imitative.” 

As with all aspiring artists in America, Porter accumulated his studio skills from a variety of sources. His first lessons in painting were from a private tutor prior to going to college.  At Harvard, he was introduced to the techniques of the old masters. At the Art Students League he studied with Thomas Hart Benton and Boardman Robinson.  He saw important exhibitions of modern masters such as Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and Vuillard.  He learned from contemporary painters who were his friends, most notably Willem De Kooning. Porter made copies of paintings while touring Europe and continued to make copies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1945 he attended a painting class at Parsons School of Design taught by Jacques Maroger who had been head of the technical laboratory at the Louvre Museum. Porter said he “learned a great deal from him.” Especially significant was mastering the use of Maroger’s distinctive paint medium. Having cultivated the eye of a connoisseur, Porter recognized quality in painting.  He understood that “prolonged training” was indeed necessary to achieve excellence in his art. While painting a portrait of the poet David Shapiro and his wife, Porter declared: “Very few people know how hard it is to paint a really good painting.”

Mastering the technical skills that enabled an artist to make a good painting was a challenge for Americans.  But they also carried an even more fundamental burden that was unknown to Europeans, the need to justify their life’s work as valuable.  American society did not place a high priority on supporting the fine arts and was generally skeptical that “artist” was a credible profession.  Fairfield Porter had encountered that skepticism when he was a young man and it made a lasting impression.

When I decided to study art, art was considered of peripheral importance; the artist or poet was thought to be outside of the mainstream of life. I remember a neighbor whom I respected very much, who was disturbed by my decision, and told me so. This man was a businessman, and at the same time an inventor and a poet. He told me that his first reaction to anyone’s wanting to be an artist was the thought that this meant deciding in favor of triviality.

Some uncertainty about his career choice persisted until WWII when he was employed by an industrial designer “…who was considered to have a connection with the real world and engaged in a really useful activity.” But the work done in that man’s office did not strike Porter as particularly significant.  Unimpressed by this experience in “the real world”, he “never felt guilty again” about pursuing a career as a fine artist.  He could proceed with new confidence and energy. His painting skills were rapidly improving. Equally important was his earlier resolution of yet another fundamental dilemma faced by Americans : what should one’s art “be about”?

In 1936 Fairfield and Anne Porter and their two young sons had moved from New York back to the Chicago suburbs to live in what had been his grandmother’s house across the lawn from his parents.  The house, empty since her death, seemed a logical solution to their desire for more space to accommodate their growing family. They only lived there for three years.  But this sojourn outside of New York had a significant impact on Porter’s career as a fine artist.  Here he explains how a single exhibition shaped his future as a painter.

Another reason I paint the way I do is that in 1938 we were living in Chicago and in the Art Institute in Chicago there was an exhibition of Vuillard and Bonnard, both of them. I had never seen so many Vuillards before or maybe so many Bonnard’s before. And I looked at the Vuillards and thought—maybe it was just a sort of revelation of the obvious and why does one think of doing anything else when it’s so natural to do this.

When Porter saw this exhibition, he seems to have been facing a dilemma about the future direction for his work.  Evidence of two possibilities he was considering can be found in his entries to The 42nd Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity (1938) hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago. The paintings have been lost, but their titles appear in the exhibition catalogue :  Annunciation and Landscape by the Lake.  As a young man, Porter aspired to paint like the old masters. Choosing a traditional religious subject for one of his entries seems to have reflected that goal. The second entry, however, offered an entirely different possibility, to simply focus on capturing the look of his world. The Vuillard and Bonnard exhibition apparently tipped the scales in favor of that direction. By the time Porter and his family moved back to New York in the fall of 1939, he had decided what his paintings should be about.

Porter’s years in Chicago were important for many reasons.  His decision about the future focus of his art was perhaps the most significant consequence of that brief period. However, relationships initiated at that time also had long lasting ramifications.

Prior to leaving for the Midwest, Porter had begun to make his presence felt in New York’s intellectual circles. Partisan Review editor Dwight MacDonald was “…told that he was worth knowing.”  So MacDonald made a point of meeting him during a visit to Chicago. This was the beginning of Porter’s long association with the writers and editors at Partisan Review.

Many Germans fleeing Nazi Germany had relocated to Chicago.  Among them was Paul Mattick, a leading figure in a group known as “Council Communists.” Porter’s friendship with Mattick and his associates offered him a first hand perspective on Europe’s revolutionary politics that prompted him to reevaluate his own views. Porter ultimately gave up what had been a significant commitment to political activism.  Art was his first priority and he had concluded that paintings were simply not efficient vehicles for instigating social change.

Photographers Walter and Ellen Auerbach were also German expatriates who chose Chicago as their first home in America.  There they met and developed a friendship with Fairfield and Anne Porter. This relationship continued when both couples relocated to the East Coast.  The Auerbach’s eventually moved to New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, a hotbed of artistic activity.

Via the Auerbach’s the Porters continued to expand their social and intellectual circle meeting photographers, writers and painters including Willem and Elaine De Kooning. The De Koonings influenced Porter’s life in important practical ways.  Elaine recommended him for the editorial associate position at ARTnews.  Willem’s enthusiastic support for Porter’s art convinced John Meyer to agree to exhibit Porter’s work at the Tibor De Nagy gallery. But it was the revelation of Willem De Kooning’s paintings that had the most profound impact. De Kooning’s art seemed to spark a synthesis of the diverse elements of Porter’s long and multi-faceted education in painting. He was now fully prepared to make his mark in New York’s burgeoning art world. His first criticism was published in 1951; his first solo painting exhibition occurred in 1952. His career, developing gradually, was one of continual ascent.

Fifteen years after his debut at the Tibor De Nagy gallery, Fairfield Porter’s reputation was such that he merited a long article in the March 1967 issue of ARTnews.  “Immediacy Is The Message” was written by James Schuyler, a member of the first generation of  “The New York School of Poets”.  His writing style is witty and conversational, consistent with the attitude of all the writers of that group. Membership in this unofficial school had provided him with an insider’s knowledge of the philosophical and artistic debates that dominated New York’s art world at mid-century.  Even more important was the knowledge he had gleaned from his long personal relationship with Porter.  Their lives had been intertwined since they met in the early 1950s.  Porter himself had attested to the reliability of the poet’s understanding of his art. 

Though the tone of Schuyler’s article is glib, its content is an authoritative summary of Porter’s life and career.  Biographical information is combined with a description of the evolution of Porter’s painting technique.  Schuyler also broaches his own assessment of American art history and Porter’s place within it.  He correctly identifies the ill conceived criticism of Porter that is based on political rather than artistic criteria, i.e. Porter and his art are “bourgeois” thus disqualifying him from a significant place in the contemporary American art world. All of this information is presented in order to clarify Porter’s intent as a painter. Approaching his conclusion, Schuyler writes:

What we are given is an aspect of everyday life, seen neither as a snapshot nor as an exaltation.  Its art is one that values the everyday as the ultimate, the most varied and desirable knowledge.  What these paintings celebrate is never treated as an archetype: they are concentrated instances.  They are not a substitute for religion.  They are an attitude toward life.  Their value is not one connected to class.

The point of Porter’s art is summarized in the title of this article. Schuyler states it once again in his conclusion. The concern of Porter’s paintings “…is with immediacy: ‘Look now.  It will never be more fascinating’.’”