Planting the Seeds of Modernism:
An Evening with Annie Cohen-Solal
Edith Kurzweil: I first want to thank Dan and Joanna Rose for their hos–
pitality and to welcome you to celebrate Annie Cohen-Solal's new book,
Painting American.
The French title is more provocative:
Un jour, its
aurol1t des peintres.
This was Matisse's verdict when he visited the
United States in 1933. Annie has written about the interchange between
French and American artists up to the end of World War II, and she will
finish by talking about Jackson Pollock. As some of you know, Annie's
first book was about Paul Nizan and her second one, which she was
writing when we met in Paris in the early 1980s, was about Jean-Paul
Sartre.
It
was translated into many languages, and Annie caught the
attention of Helmut Kohl when she spoke about it on television. He
mentioned her to French President Fran<;:ois Mitterrand, who soon asked
her to be the French cultural counselor in the United States. During the
time she was here, about ten years, many among you met her at the
French Embassy.
I
have read the French edition of her new book, which
won the Prix de I' Academie des Beaux-Arts, and
I
am sure that it will
soon earn her many more prizes. That's all I'm going to say now, because
Annie will talk in depth about her subject. She just told me she's work–
ing on another project, a book about the connections between intellec–
tuals and painters, and how they interacted with each other, much as the
so-called New York intellectuals and painters did. Now to Annie.
Annie Cohen-Solal: Thank you, Joanna and Dan, for welcoming me
here, and thank you, Edith, for introducing me and organizing this get–
together.
T
could not think of a better place to speak about my work,
because I find on your shelves so many of the books that I have in my
own Iibrary. I sense a sort of European-American atmosphere here.
This book took me five years to write, but altogether ten years to pro–
duce. I first thought about it when I arrived in New York to work at the
French Embassy. I had just completed a book on Sartre, and you know
talking about Jean-Paul Sartre in the United States is not a great assign–
ment, because apart from the
Partisan Review
crowd, who had met him,
he is not exactly a hero in this country, to say the least. I remember inter–
viewing William Phillips, Lionel Abel, William Barrett, as well as many
others. So, when I came here, I had in mind another project, which was
