ANNIE COHEN-SOLAL
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Annie Cohen-Solal: You're right. And I think it's ironic that painters
were stigmatized in American society for so long. I have memories of a
text by Thomas Hart Benton talking about his father, who was deeply
suspicious of intellectuals and artists, and regarded them as "pimps ." It
is that painter who pulled up the United States over Europe after World
War II. It's fascinating.
Ruth Bowman: It was interesting that the American Abstract Artists had
to
picket the Museum of Modern Art because they were not repre–
sented. Ad Reinhardt made flyers and handed them out with cartoons
making fun of Alfred Barr.
Annie Cohen-Solal: They attacked him for not giving enough credit to
the loca I artists.
Ruth Bowman: But the local artists loved going to the Museum of Mod–
ern Art and looking at the art.
Annie Cohen-Solal: Exactly. That is how jackson Pollock got his train–
ing in European art. By coming to New York in
1930.
Jules Olitski: It is interesting that Barr integrated all of European paint–
ing over here, even though the school of Paris had all of Europe there.
Is the aspiration of the American writer to be European? In the corre–
spondence between William james and Henry james, William james
always complained to Henry, why do you live in Europe? Why do you
write in what is considered a European manner rather than an Ameri–
can one? Both Henry james and
T.
S. Eliot aspired to be Europeans first
(they both ended up Englishmen), james li ving first in Italy and Eliot
also much in french cu lture. But the main idea was to be European.
Annie Cohen-Solal: That is very interesting. A similar example from the
realm of the visual arts is james Abbott McNeill Whistler. Born in
America and trained in London, he came to Paris and never returned to
the United States. For me, Whistler is the epitome of the modernist
American artist. Early on, he caught on to what an art market is, what
promotion is, and so on. And he a lso had a thoroughly European char–
acter, just like Henry james, who called him a cosmopolitan, educated
European-a kind of American aristocrat, with Sargent, Mary Cassatt,
and certain other expatriates.
