about his latest book, Fierce Poise, an exciting ride through the 1950’s New York art scene, as well as a fascinating portrait of maverick abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. My Q&A is below:

• Helen and your life crossed paths but you never actually met, a regret, you write in your book about Helen and 1950’s New York. What would you most have liked to say to her, if you had met?

I’d like to tell her how much I enjoy her art. A feeling of life on the wing, momentary sensations. The direct fearless, ecstatic portrayal of our feelings and the world in combination.

• Helen’s father died when she was very young- age 11. You suggest in your fascinating book that his premature death may have been what led Helen to become a serious painter. Please elaborate.

I think art saved her, art was a lifeline. Perhaps her absolutely steadfast devotion to art, and her very unusual seriousness about pursuing a career as an artist which started when she began to emerge from a crisis in adolescence owes something to that, the tenacity with which she overcame the darkness, found that which was beautiful, that which was light, that which offered a feeling of the quiver and excitement of being alive owed something to her father’s death.

• Can you explain Jackson Pollock’s influence on Frankenthaler?

Walking into the exhibition at Betty Parson’s gallery of his big drip paintings, as Helen said, it was a real moment of revelation for Helen because it said, anything is possible. Your imagination can be let loose. You don’t need to inhibit your creativity by making imitations of Picasso. There is another outlet for what you have inside you. You could put it under the word genuineness or fearlessness-some  kind of art that would explode upon the eye, a ferocious, gorgeous immediacy that felt right and true to her.

As Helen said, it was like she suddenly landed in Lisbon and didn’t speak Portuguese but she wanted  desperately to learn the language.

• And why, do you think, Pollock’s death was a release for her?

Although people were horrified and saddened by Pollock’s death, his death opened up the field for a lot of these artists, where this very imposing figure was no longer around. Many artists, not just Helen, tended to make some pretty extraordinary work in the time that followed.  My favorite paintings of Helen’s are almost all of them from after Pollock’s death.

• What are some of your favourites?

In the book I talk about Eden from 1956, Jacob’s Ladder from ’57, Before the Caves ‘58, Mother Goose Melody ‘59. There’s something even more direct and memorable, grand and intimate in these paintings as compared with the paintings she made in the first half of the decade.

No painting (no creative effort of any kind) is good intellectually”- What did Helen mean by this?

If you or I go to a museum, we’re looking at some big 17^th c. painting of a hunt or a religious scene, we might want to read the label next to it, and nod our head, but that’s small change. The real thing is the blast of the thing on the eye where it knocks you back without you even knowing who painted it or what the subject is or theme.

You can’t take your eyes off the horse in the foreground with the white mane. Or the fox snarling while the man with the spear tries to stab it. You can’t believe the bristling fur on the fox’s back. Helen would say, ‘That painting is terrific.’ And her much more bookish friend Sonya Rudikoff would say, ‘No, I want to learn about the politics of the time, the story of the artist.’ That was their dispute. All that stuff that Sonya was interested in was secondary (to Helen).

Her charge was meant to stay and stay, to unfold itself  after repeated viewings and gradual contemplation.” What did Helen’s nephew Clifford Ross mean by that?

The stay and stay – a good work of art is one that you don’t get tired of looking at. A bad work of art is one that you feel like you get it already, you don’t need to see it ever again.

The trick in making something in that Pollock-like spontaneous way is that you’re constantly judging what you’re making, and one of the things you’re assessing is how fresh it is and how enduringly fresh it can remain.

A great poem or a great passage in a novel, these are the things that only increase in mystery the more we know them. Whereas the vast bulk of representations whether in the so-called fine art world or popular culture they’re meant to be consumed in a moment and there’s nothing left of them because we “get it”.

         Can you tell us something surprising about yourself? 

(The American photographer) Diane Arbus was my aunt.

Thank you so much Alex, and for the rest of you, the remainder of my Q&A with Alex can be found here on 26. Enjoy!

October, 2021

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Lara is now an old friend. Not only does she have a huge heart, but she’s smart, curious, highly organised, resourceful, creative, uber-stylish and loves to have fun. These qualities, I discovered two months ago, earn her a new moniker – Madame Tour Guide Extraordinaire.

In May Lara took several adventuring friends and me to visit Lebanon, a 6 day trip that took her four months to plan.

To my generation, Lebanon conjures up images of bombs, beaches, tanks, night clubs, stray bullets and beautiful people. My financial manager urged me to update my life insurance plan days before I flew. “Just in case” he said. I remembered that when my ex-husband went to Beirut in the early  nineties, he slept in his running shoes.

The closest we came to stray bullets was seeing a now defunct Holiday Inn riddled with bullet holes from the Civil War (1975-1991).

Rather than being afraid, I was dazzled.  Modern buildings by star architects Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel and Herzog de Meuron dot the Beirut horizon. Meanwhile we stayed at the traditional  and charming Hotel Albergo, originally a 1920’s Lebanese house.

Fragrant fig and orange trees wafted over me as I relaxed by the hotel’s rooftop pool with views of the city, sea and distant mountains.

We swam in the sea one day, visited an ancient cedar forest bordered by snowcapped mountains the next.

Where else can you dance …

see ancient Roman ruins …

shop …

hike (contact: George Zgheib Guide  zgheibgeorge@hotmail.com)

hug a cedar

eat to your heart’s content

and contemplate?

What I  was most impressed by was how welcome we felt. The Arabic word for welcome when translated literally means “You’ve come to stay with my family.”

Lara’s colourful friend Aline invited the fourteen of us  over for lunch.

She’d been cooking for three days.

And for those who read my last blog about being obsessed by stylish interiors, imagine how crazed I was at Aline’s seaside villa:

As fellow groupie Charles told Lara,

As to the people, what can I say, except that, from now on, I will try to be more Lebanese? The warmth of the welcome from everyone was astonishing – all your enchanting family and friends of course. But also from the guides, the drivers, the ice cream makers, the dancers, the shopkeepers, the jewellers, the furniture builders, the restaurateurs, the hoteliers…

What not to miss:

The National Museum of Beirut is a must, ideally on day one. Opened in 1942, the museum is packed with ancient treasures, including mummies, sarcophaguses and gorgeous gold  jewellery that reminds me of Pippa Small’s designs. Lebanon has been occupied by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans and French, among others- so lots to see here.

This casual farmer’s kitchen El Tawlet is an ideal  Beirut lunch spot. El Tawlet was started by the entrepreneurial Kamal Mouzawak, who also created downtown Beirut’s first farmer’s market- Souk al Tayeb– held every Saturday. Women from different mountain villages cook their local dishes at El Tawlet every day, thus helping support their respective villages.  In Lebanon: Let Food Be Your Guide in Condé Nast Traveler recommends El Tawlet among others. Do not read when hungry.

For a big night out,  Em Sherif – with its mirrored tables and delicious cuisine is the place to go…

We shopped til we dropped in Beirut for everything from coffee tables at Nada Debs

to converted dentist chairs at Bokja

to kaftans at Artisans du Liban et d’Orient..

to bags at Sarah’s Bag. The bags are handmade by underprivileged Lebanese women.

Orient 499  is also worth a visit. The bullet-ridden Holiday Inn is across the street with very friendly armed guards.

There were too many shops and too little time. Lara’s suggestions for our next trip: jewellers Noor Fares, Nayla Arida,  Nada Lecavelier, Nada Zeineh, Saifi Village, and fashion designer Maison Rabih Kayrouz.

There is lots to see beyond the buzz of Beirut and nothing is more than a two-hour drive. We drove to the southern coast to admire the ruins in the antique Phoenician city of Tyre.

And sleep at the serene Dar Alma guesthouse – heaven…

We visited pretty Byblos, the oldest continuously occupied city in the world and where the word Bible comes. There, we heard simultaneously  the call to prayer and church bells….

A week was hardly long enough to get a taste for this fascinating, complicated country. I recommend Lebanon to anyone who appreciates creative, chic shops, excellent food, welcoming, sophisticated locals, nightlife, history-a-plenty,  and glorious nature.

For our return visit, Lara suggests: Sursock Museum, Mim Mineral Museum, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut Art Center. And the magnificent Roman temples in Baalbek.

ps-  for those who crave more of Lebanon, follow @livelovebeirut on Instagram.

July 2019

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Luckily for me, LAS founder Kate Gordon

answered my prayers with an  on-line site which is both informative and entertaining. If you want a quick fix- go to LAS Loves and see what Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dancing to at the Louvre in Paris, or what Wes Anderson and his partner author/costume designer Juman Malouf have selected as their top pix at the  Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.

If you want to go deeper – like I did recently after seeing “Obsession: Nudes by Schiele, Klimt and Picasso” at the Met Breuer,

LAS has five minute videos on specific artists, artworks, city tours and more. Pay a yearly, monthly or even a daily pass fee and you can watch over a 100 short videos hosted by screen-friendly art historians.

I  Beamed Me Up Scotty to  Vienna where LAS’s art lecturer Richard Stemp told me what to see, how to get there and where to get the tastiest  slice of Sacher torte, not to mention a few artistic tidbits about Hitler.

To complement the Vienna tour,  I watched LAS’s videos on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and Egon Schiele’s Nude Self Portrait, Grimacing. Both Klimt- a very modern painter of fin de siècle Vienna and Egon Schiele,  the scandalous and hugely talented painter, died in 1918. Schiele was just 28 and Klimt 55.

As it’s  the centennial anniversary of their deaths there are shows galore, (7 this year) including one about bad boys  Schiele/Basquiat at the Foundation Louis Vuitton now in Paris

and   Klimt/Schiele at the Royal Academy next month (November) in London.

If you can’t beam yourself up to Vienna, Paris, London or any major European capital for that matter, LAS’s videos are the next best thing to being there.

October, 2018

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Some background: I met Jane with fellow creative Anne Hardy (just as fun, by the way) who has known Jane for a few years. We three explored magical Washington Depot and Kent, Connecticut  for a story pitch. Anne chose the concept for the story, Jane brought her camera to her vision, and I chose what to eat for lunch. Actually, what Jane ordered looked a lot better than mine. And she’s a sharer,  my kind of gal.

We agreed on everything – like who we thought was cute – (a farmer did catch our collective eye), who we thought was not so great (top secret) and how Flirtation Lane deserved a photo – with said farmer please.

Yes, readers, I know. Just because Jane is lively and entertaining doesn’t mean she’s talented.  But she is. She has worked for Elle Decor, the New York Times, AD, Veranda, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller and a whole host of top tier titles. Just look at her web site if you want to see beautifully-shot interiors.

“Once we began to work together,” says Anne, “I realized what  I admire is the sense of place she brings to a shoot.  That is what makes her such an interesting creative to work with – she sees what she is shooting in context – which, I think, makes her work particularly resonant.

“Jane helps keep everything lively and fun”, adds Anne. “She talks about her work filling her cup. She fills ours.”

I asked Jane how she ended up in photography – a mid-career decision after working in fashion at Esprit. (note the stylish neckerchief)

“I grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, born to a painter mother. The house was full of paints and easels, but no dark room, which was a blessing, because I hated chemistry. But I  always loved art.”

Jane studied art history at the University of Michigan, spent spring breaks in Paris and New York City blissfully visiting museums alone and doodling Matisse interiors on restaurant placemats She enjoys doing both to this day.

When digital came along in the early 2000’s, Jane found her calling.

“I am a photographer who came of age as film ended and digital began”  She prefers shooting interiors, food and travel. Jane in action at The Flat in Westport.

I asked her to do a headshot of me for a magazine. She rarely does portraits, but made an exception. People often feel sorry for me. (Note: discuss with shrink)

Here are a few of her pics…

Not bad, eh? And Jane politely said they didn’t need much retouching. Love her!

September, 2018

Top photo of Jane with camera was taken by her talented teacher Elyse Shapiro at Silvermine Arts Center.

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Plus the image on-line appealed to me.

Ten minutes turned into two hours. I was mesmerised by these jagged rock fences  – a study in meditation, time and mortality (I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality recently, but that’s another blog and don’t worry, we’re all fine).  I also really enjoyed talking to the gallery owner Deborah Bell who has been dealing in photographs for thirty years –  as a gallerist in Chelsea then a  stint running Christies Photography Department. She opened her latest venture uptown because she enjoys how with all the museums in the neighbourhood, people tend to pop in, like I did. She also loves walking from her home in Chelsea through Central Park to the peaceful Upper East Side.

I asked Bell why she liked Cook’s work.

 I am drawn to Mariana Cook’s STONE WALLS because of the monumentality of the images, the mysteries and questions they conjure, the solidity of the compositions, and the timelessness of the structures themselves.  Plus, the prints are exquisite.

So I recommend that you all pop in. The show is on until October 27th.

PS. If Cook’s name rings a bell, that could be because she is well known for her work in portraiture:

Enjoy

September, 2018

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