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PARTISAN REVIEW
Gorky was admittedly the painter of modern agony, and Tomlin's
im–
pulse to elegance was profound.
The two books I have to review appear in conjunction with the
exhibition of Tomlin's work at the Whitney Museum this fall and that
of Gorky's at the Janis Gallery in December. Mr. Baur, the author of
the Tomlin book, is Curator of the Whitney Museum; Mrs. Schwa–
bacher is a painter, and for many years was close to Gorky as a pupil
and a friend. The book on Gorky is large and handsome, with seventy
black and white illustrations and eight color plates; its extensive text
alternates between criticism and biography, discussing individual pic–
tures as well as tracing personal and aesthetic tendencies. Mr. Baur's
essay is much briefer and the book has perhaps half as many illustra–
tions; its range is clearly more restricted; it also includes short but in–
teresting remarks about Tomlin by Guston, Motherwell, Duncan Phil–
lips, and Frederick Wight. Mr. Baur's
~iew
of Tomlin is less ambitious,
less complete, and consequently less diffuse than Mrs. Schwabacher's of
Gorky. She has painstakingly reconstructed Gorky's early life, collected
data about his first years in America, gathered memories and impres–
sions, family correspondence, details of his WPA and Newark Airport
projects, early reviews of his work, etc. She attributes a great deal of
importance to Gorky's Armenian origins, perhaps too much: if one did
not know his paintings, he could seem like a kind of Chagall. But she
has much less point of view about Gorky as an artist than Mr. Baur
does of Tomlin in the same role.
Although very different, the careers of Gorky and Tomlin show
certain similarities. Both died at the peak of their artistic power, Gorky
by suicide after a series of tragically destructive events, Tomlin of a
heart attack. Their work was not at all alike, but both developed their
true powers late, after long apprenticeship and submission to other in–
fluences. Tomlin had done commercial art and teaching, was closely
associated with the painter Frank London, worked in a realist and then
cubist style; the influence of surrealism, and of painters such as Gottlieb,
Pollock, and Motherwell, was combined with his own feeling for struc–
ture, to emerge into his late style. Gorky set himself Cezanne, Picasso,
and Miro as masters, as well as the Old Masters themselves; was for
years considered imitative, and then, through the influence of Matta
and of surrealism, was able to achieve the coherence of his last great
works. (It is interesting to see both painters being liberated by surreal–
ism, which increasingly appears as a remarkable and curious force,
capable of far-reaching effects, and more alive when not in the hands
of its practitioners.) Although both Gorky and Tomlin have their sig-
