Some of My Lives (33 page)
Authors: Rosamond Bernier
Contemporary art had a new role in national self-awareness. Modern Britain had for the first time a living artist of unquestioned international eminence, Henry Moore. John, who traveled abroad with Henry for several exhibitions, said that Henry was well aware of his reputation but was never the slightest bit pretentious. He was scrupulously attentive to the local artists when he was feted in foreign countries. If he thought someone would never make it as a colorist, he would say, “Black-and-white's your thing, you know. Black-and-white!”
John wrote, “Fifty years ago, the life of an established art critic in London was unhurried and hugely enjoyable. There were not too many shows, but we got in first to see them, and the dealers made us welcome, no matter what they privately thought of us, as did museum directors both at home and abroad. We had congenial colleagues. World-wide publishers sent us their new books. We travelled
throughout Europe at our employers' expense. I always felt I was being paid to educate myself.”
throughout Europe at our employers' expense. I always felt I was being paid to educate myself.”
John discovered and wrote about Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon (the subject of a book), Gilbert & George, David Hockney, Anthony Caro, R. B. Kitaj, Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkinâall of whom made us welcome when John brought me to meet them years later.
While still a British citizen, he was awarded the CBE (commander of the Order of the British Empire), the French Arts et Lettres, the Légion d'Honneur, and heavy crosses from Germany and Austria. We had quite a struggle adorning him with all of these to go to a white-tie dinner at the Royal Academy. I resorted to pins and Scotch tape.
I wrote earlier about John's appearance in the pages of
L'ÅIL
, and then in my life. Eventually, our previous attachments unraveled. I was about to move to New York, when John announced he had resigned from
The Sunday Times
. “I am a writer. I can earn my living anywhere,” he said, and he followed me, jobless, to New York.
L'ÅIL
, and then in my life. Eventually, our previous attachments unraveled. I was about to move to New York, when John announced he had resigned from
The Sunday Times
. “I am a writer. I can earn my living anywhere,” he said, and he followed me, jobless, to New York.
Within a week he was invited to lunch by Hilton Kramer and offered a job on
The New York Times
. John accepted immediately. “Don't you want to know more about it?” asked Hilton. “No,” answered John.
The New York Times
. John accepted immediately. “Don't you want to know more about it?” asked Hilton. “No,” answered John.
Whereupon he went right to the
Times
office and wrote his first article.
Times
office and wrote his first article.
His colleague Michael Kimmelman described John arriving at the office just before lunchtime one day, as usual in a finely striped British shirt, highly visible tie, and red socks (he loved color). While his colleagues were struggling to finish their articles, John sat down at his computer, dashed off his piece in his usual elegant prose, just the right length, and left for his lunch. His speed, facility, and wideranging frame of reference never ceased to astonish. He had the rare ability to write a finished draft on the first go-round.
Over here, his subjects in those first years included Willem de Kooning, James Turrell, Gilbert & George, Joseph Beuys, and Anselm Kiefer.
John flourished in his new country. He became a U.S. citizen and was amused to be asked if he could read and write.
He combined impeccable scholarship with a generous curiosity
about young artists and women artists, who had been somewhat neglected in the press until John came along. He was good nature itself, with a somewhat antic sense of humor.
about young artists and women artists, who had been somewhat neglected in the press until John came along. He was good nature itself, with a somewhat antic sense of humor.
There was still a telephone switchboard at the
Times
in those days. It was manned (an inappropriate word!) by an intelligent young black woman named Lucy. She wanted to continue her education with night courses, but there was a conflict with her schedule. Permission was not granted for a change of hours, whereupon John wrote to the managing editor that if Lucy was not allowed the time off for her studies, he would take her place at the switchboard, in drag.
Times
in those days. It was manned (an inappropriate word!) by an intelligent young black woman named Lucy. She wanted to continue her education with night courses, but there was a conflict with her schedule. Permission was not granted for a change of hours, whereupon John wrote to the managing editor that if Lucy was not allowed the time off for her studies, he would take her place at the switchboard, in drag.
Lucy got the change of schedule.
Having a huge reading public in a very large country after what John felt in the end to be the narrow confines and jealousies of writing in Britain was immensely stimulating. The
Times
editors gave him free rein and even sent him, as an onlooker from Mars, to cover the Republican convention in Texas in 1984.
Times
editors gave him free rein and even sent him, as an onlooker from Mars, to cover the Republican convention in Texas in 1984.
Over his thirty years writing for the
Times
(1974â2004), he cast his net wide. Besides covering exhibitions, he tossed off articles on such subjects as the color green and the fact that “wisteria” rhymes with “hysteria.”
Times
(1974â2004), he cast his net wide. Besides covering exhibitions, he tossed off articles on such subjects as the color green and the fact that “wisteria” rhymes with “hysteria.”
After settling in New York, in proper British clubman manner, John joined the Century Association. He drank its signature Silver Bullets and enjoyed the stimulating assortment of its members, so much so that he undertook to write the club's monthly bulletin. He went on writing it for twenty-five years, from 1981 to 2006.
Incidentally, I was one of the Century's first woman members.
Just as he had written that “the history of art, if properly set out, is the history of everything,” he managed to harbor the most varied and unexpected bedfellows in these pithy, witty dispatches.
Seurat found his place with Moselle wine, reflections on existentialism, macaroons, and the experience of driving on the Merritt Parkway. Incidentally, in spite of taking some driving lessons from the Smith Driving School in Connecticut, John never really mastered the intricacies of life at the wheel. He acknowledged this himself. When someone asked him who was the most courageous person he ever knew, he answered without hesitation, “My driving instructor.”
John was remarkably prolific. Besides reams written first for the
weekly London
Sunday Times
, then the daily
New York Times
, he published monographs on Seurat, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, and the conductor Erich Kleiber and travel books on Switzerland, London, the palaces of Leningrad, and Paris. He edited the correspondence between Henri Matisse and his son Pierre and translated several texts from the French.
weekly London
Sunday Times
, then the daily
New York Times
, he published monographs on Seurat, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, and the conductor Erich Kleiber and travel books on Switzerland, London, the palaces of Leningrad, and Paris. He edited the correspondence between Henri Matisse and his son Pierre and translated several texts from the French.
As he wrote of himself, “He published a slew of books that he cannot for the moment remember, much as he loves them all.”
As a critic, John never saw the point of going through life “snarling and spewing,” as he put it. If he didn't like someone's work, he simply avoided writing about it. But he could speak his mind. When his fellow Centurion Nick Weber was planning to write about the painter Balthus, John, who knew both the man and the work well, having curated a Balthus exhibition at the Tate Gallery, warned him, “As a liar, he is without equal.”
And as Philippe de Montebello pointed out at John's memorial at the Century Association, on November 14, 2008, John could sling it out:
When the art historian Albert Elsen wrote a quarrelsome letter to the
Times
about what I thought was a tempered review by John of Rodin's
The Gates of Hell
, when it was shown at the Met, John let him have it. Here is what John wrote: “I am well aware that
The Gates of Hell
draws a crowd. So would a public hanging, if it were allowed. There is room today for more than one estimate of the old rascal and his overblown activities. For the rest, I see less reason than ever to budge from my point of view, which is that
The Gates of Hell
is to serious art what a disaster movie is to
King Lear
.”
Times
about what I thought was a tempered review by John of Rodin's
The Gates of Hell
, when it was shown at the Met, John let him have it. Here is what John wrote: “I am well aware that
The Gates of Hell
draws a crowd. So would a public hanging, if it were allowed. There is room today for more than one estimate of the old rascal and his overblown activities. For the rest, I see less reason than ever to budge from my point of view, which is that
The Gates of Hell
is to serious art what a disaster movie is to
King Lear
.”
The Century has hung John's portrait, by the painter Marc Klionsky, over the stairway as one gets out of the elevator. It is heartening for me to see what looks like dear John's welcome: “Come on in and lift a glass.”
O
ne day in 2007, our friend Alex Katz told us he would like to do a double portrait of John and me.
ne day in 2007, our friend Alex Katz told us he would like to do a double portrait of John and me.
Of course we were delighted, but wondered if we were up to joining Alex's gallery of insouciant, unlined young people.
We showed up and posed, one after the other, in profile. Alex worked away swiftly, in silence. We were sorry that our moment of glory was over so soon.
Out of discretion, we asked no questions. Then, in June 2010, I learned that courtesy of Alex, we were entering the Metropolitan Museum.
The Met organized a little ceremony. Alas, I was the only one of the duo who could attend. There were hospitable drinks. Alex spoke. I spoke. And this is what I said:
A few years ago, John and I had the good fortune to be invited by Alex and Ada to visit them in Maine.
We went. It was blissful. We felt ourselves becoming Alex Katz personages, radiating well-being, not unlike the characters Alex immortalized in his cocktail parties series; as John described them: “No one has ever looked vicious, nasty, hungover, left out of the party or bored.”
We had the best company. We had our own little house with a view of the lake. There was a rustic bench and table just outside where I could spread out my texts and work on my next Met lecture. John, as usual, was reading.
Alex would disappear for long-distance rambles. We would meet in the evening for congenial drinks and Ada's delicious meals. We had our first-ever lobster rolls.
Alex and Ada had been coming to Lincolnville, Maine, for many years, where Alex, as he put it, became aware of “the great Maine landscape to be devoured.” They have lived in their present house for summers since 1954.
He became an intrinsic part of the Maine fabric when he extended his interest in Colby College with epic generosity. He gave a large body of his work to the college. The powers that be at Colby were delighted at this opportunity for the students to live with such quality. They built a new museum dedicated to the work of one artist, Alex Katz.
John esteemed Alex Katz, both the work and the man. For John, Alex was the archetypical American. He wrote: “If it turned out that in first youth he had been chosen for the United States pole vault team, we should not be at all surprised. Something of that is there in the work, if we know how to look for itâthe concentrated spring of the run-up, the delicate but decisive way with pole, and the well-hidden effort that takes the vaulter over the bar.”
John found Alex a champion verbalizer: “His abrupt and often astonishing phrases come at us one by one, fast and unexpected, the way the little black ball comes at us in the squash court. If we don't catch them on the bounce, they are gone.”
John wrote, “Alex Katz had looked a great deal at European Old Masters, and has an idiosyncratic âtake' on each one of them. (Who but he would have said: âTitian was a hired gun, and everything he did was cool. Whatever anyone wanted, he'd do it'?)”
Of Veronese, Alex said: “He's big and blandâno hot spots, he's just all over. He makes Rubens seem like he is kidding around.”
As it happens, “bland” is a word sometimes used for Alex Katz's own paintings by people who do not notice the surgeon's sharp knife, the ferocious editing, and the ever-present feeling of risk that go into those simple-seeming images. In those images, Katz himself appears quite often as founder-member, along with his wife, Ada, of the repertory company of human beings who turn up year after year. Unfailingly
tender with the others, he occasionally pushes his own full-length profile to the very edge of parody.
tender with the others, he occasionally pushes his own full-length profile to the very edge of parody.
John once wrote in a review of an Alex Katz exhibition for
The New York Times
, “If we had to be reincarnated, one of the better ideas would be to come back to life in a painting by Alex Katz.”
The New York Times
, “If we had to be reincarnated, one of the better ideas would be to come back to life in a painting by Alex Katz.”
We did the next best thing: Alex painted a double portrait of us.
When Alex told us about the project, we were surprised, touched, and pleased, in that order.
And I am happy that Alex has brought John and me together forever, even if it is only on canvas.
This is my foreword to the enlarged and updated version of my husband John Russell's
Paris
. This new version was published by Abradale Press, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1983. (It was originally published in 1960, in London.)
Paris
. This new version was published by Abradale Press, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1983. (It was originally published in 1960, in London.)
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W
hen I first read John Russell's
Paris
, I remembered particularly a very small room halfway to the sky in what was then my favorite Left Bank hotel. The rooms on the top floor of the Pont Royal are not as large as the ones lower down, but after trying some of the others, I decided to perch above, where each room had a small balcony and you could step out through the French windows and there in front of you was a clear view across Paris.
hen I first read John Russell's
Paris
, I remembered particularly a very small room halfway to the sky in what was then my favorite Left Bank hotel. The rooms on the top floor of the Pont Royal are not as large as the ones lower down, but after trying some of the others, I decided to perch above, where each room had a small balcony and you could step out through the French windows and there in front of you was a clear view across Paris.
You could look down to the right and follow the rue du Bac on its straight reach for the Seine. Eighteenth-century town houses with flat stone facadesânot yet sluiced clean on André Malraux's ordersâand elegant doorways lined one side of the street, rising to steep, humped roofs (gray tile, usually) bitten into by mansard windows with projecting triangular hoods. Across the river was the cluttered mount of Montmartre, topped by the ridiculous but endearing white fantasy of the Sacré-CÅur. To the left was the Eiffel Tower and, still farther, the gold-ribbed dome of the Invalides. Paris in my pocket.
This is where I came to live in the late 1940s, when an American magazine sent me to Paris to report on the arts. The Pont Royal was cheap in those days, and it was near to everything I wanted.
I was extraordinarily lucky to be starting a career at that time, when Paris was still a great center of intellectual and artistic energy. Art and life were beginning again after the long dark night of the
German occupation. As Cyril Connolly once wrote about French writers, “Intelligence flows through them like a fast river.” The river was indeed flowing fast. The great figures of twentieth-century art were still in full activity. There were new magazines, new books, new art galleries, new plays, new hopes. Even new music was beginning to make its way.
German occupation. As Cyril Connolly once wrote about French writers, “Intelligence flows through them like a fast river.” The river was indeed flowing fast. The great figures of twentieth-century art were still in full activity. There were new magazines, new books, new art galleries, new plays, new hopes. Even new music was beginning to make its way.
Writers, publishers, and art dealers from all over stayed at the Pont Royal or met there. Fred, the Swiss concierge, knew them all and kept a fatherly eye out for me. When I came home from work, he might tell me, “Monsieur Skira left this morning to visit Monsieur Matisse in Vence. Monsieur Matisse didn't sound a bit pleased when he telephoned.” (The Swiss publisher Albert Skira was chronically late and never answered letters, which infuriated the supermethodical Matisse.) Or he might say, “Monsieur and Madame Miró are arriving tomorrow from Barcelona for a week. Monsieur Curt Valentin is expected from New York Tuesday.” (Curt Valentin was the most imaginative New York art dealer of the day.) “Monsieur Stephen Spender came in from London and was looking for you.”
My room with its Turkey red carpet, brass bed, and nubbly white coverlet offered few amenities: one chair; an old-fashioned stand-up wardrobe; watery lights. The telephone was cradled uneasily on two metal prongs. Its function was mainly symbolic. Even the most exasperated jiggling rarely caught the attention of the
standardiste
. Often it was quicker to go out, buy
jetons
, and call from a café. Once, in a rage of frustration, I stormed down to confront the telephone operator face-to-face, only to find her standing in her cubicle, tape measure in hand, intently fitting a friend for a dress while her switchboard flashed futile appeals.
standardiste
. Often it was quicker to go out, buy
jetons
, and call from a café. Once, in a rage of frustration, I stormed down to confront the telephone operator face-to-face, only to find her standing in her cubicle, tape measure in hand, intently fitting a friend for a dress while her switchboard flashed futile appeals.
The bar, downstairs from the lobby, was conspiratorially dark and filled with deep and overstuffed brown leather armchairs and sofas. This was my club, a quintessentially Parisian listening post where you went to find out who's in, who's out, and who's gone away and will never come back. Publishers and authors negotiated over the new fashionable drink in France:
le scotch
. The painter Balthus, more Byronic than Byron himself, would drop by and give me news of Picasso. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were regulars. At that time their fame and the provocative aura that surrounded
the word “existentialist” (practically nobody knew what it meant) had made them objects of universal curiosity, and they had abandoned their previous headquarters at the Café de Flore for the less exposed Pont Royal.
le scotch
. The painter Balthus, more Byronic than Byron himself, would drop by and give me news of Picasso. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were regulars. At that time their fame and the provocative aura that surrounded
the word “existentialist” (practically nobody knew what it meant) had made them objects of universal curiosity, and they had abandoned their previous headquarters at the Café de Flore for the less exposed Pont Royal.
Later, when I had an apartment, I continued to see Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, though neither of them cared much for Americans in general. Once, when Sartre came to lunch, he gave an offhand demonstration of mental agility: without stopping the general conversation, he deciphered, one after another, the formidably difficult word-and-picture puzzles on my Creil dessert plates.
Although I moved from the Pont Royal, I never left the quarter. It was, and is, a neighborhood of bookstores and publishing houses. The grandest, Gallimard, is a few steps from the Pont Royal. I used to go to its Thursday afternoon garden parties every June; they were long on petits fours and short on liquor. Alice B. Toklas lived around the corner from my office and was always ready to receive the favored visitor with enormous teas. She was exquisitely polite, and even when very old she would insist on serving the guest herself.
In Paris, you are on easy terms with the past. I would nod to Apollinaire, a favorite poet, as I went by 202, boulevard Saint-Germain, where he lived after coming back wounded from the front in World War I. I liked going by the Jesuit-style Eglise Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, set back from the boulevard, where Apollinaire was married, with Picasso as witness. On my way to Nancy Mitford's, I would go by 120, rue du Bac, a handsome house from which Chateaubriand set off every afternoon to visit Madame Récamier. Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, George Sand, Madame de Staël, Voltaire, and Wagner (he finished
Die Meistersinger
in Paris) were among the friendly neighborhood ghosts.
Die Meistersinger
in Paris) were among the friendly neighborhood ghosts.
It is often said, and with some reason, that Parisians are not hospitable to the foreigner. But what an abundance of generosity and hospitality came my way! I remember Picasso rummaging through the indescribable chaos of his vast studio on the rue des Grands-Augustins to try to dig up some drawings I wanted to publish. Fernand Léger lined up his recent work for me and asked which canvases I liked best. Matisse received me with all the books he had illustrated, meticulously opened out so that he could explain in each
case what problems he had solved and how. The admirable, austere Nadia Boulanger (who taught so many American composers, beginning with Aaron Copland) invited me to her icy apartment on the rue Ballu to hear her latest protégé. The composer Francis Poulenc, a bulky, pear-shaped figure, was droll beyond words and yet indescribably poignant as he accompanied himself on a small upright piano and sang the soprano solo of a woman desperately trying to hold on to her loverâfrom his
La Voix Humaine
. President Vincent Auriol took me on a tour of the Palais de l'Elysée after a press conference to point out the famous Gobelins tapestry. And I remember the ultimate Parisian accolade: a great French chef, the late René Viaux of the restaurant in the Gare de l'Est, named a dish after me. It is reproduced in color in the Larousse
Cuisine et Vins de France
. He later became the chef at Maxim's, where I always got special treatment.
case what problems he had solved and how. The admirable, austere Nadia Boulanger (who taught so many American composers, beginning with Aaron Copland) invited me to her icy apartment on the rue Ballu to hear her latest protégé. The composer Francis Poulenc, a bulky, pear-shaped figure, was droll beyond words and yet indescribably poignant as he accompanied himself on a small upright piano and sang the soprano solo of a woman desperately trying to hold on to her loverâfrom his
La Voix Humaine
. President Vincent Auriol took me on a tour of the Palais de l'Elysée after a press conference to point out the famous Gobelins tapestry. And I remember the ultimate Parisian accolade: a great French chef, the late René Viaux of the restaurant in the Gare de l'Est, named a dish after me. It is reproduced in color in the Larousse
Cuisine et Vins de France
. He later became the chef at Maxim's, where I always got special treatment.
A few years after my Pont Royal days I was starting my own art magazine,
L'ÅIL
, in a minute office at the back of a cobbled courtyard on the rue des Saints-Pères.
L'ÅIL
, in a minute office at the back of a cobbled courtyard on the rue des Saints-Pères.
For the magazine, we needed good writers and got in touch with a young English art critic whose weekly column in the London
Sunday Times
was indispensable reading if you wanted to know what was going on not only in England but on the Continent as well. It was clear that unlike many critics, he loved art; he wrote about it with informed enthusiasm, and he wrote in crystalline prose. There was not a dull phrase to be weeded out in translation (French translation did wonders for some of our German, Dutch, Italian, and English-language contributors), and, what's more, he knew France and the French language very well.
Sunday Times
was indispensable reading if you wanted to know what was going on not only in England but on the Continent as well. It was clear that unlike many critics, he loved art; he wrote about it with informed enthusiasm, and he wrote in crystalline prose. There was not a dull phrase to be weeded out in translation (French translation did wonders for some of our German, Dutch, Italian, and English-language contributors), and, what's more, he knew France and the French language very well.
We corresponded. He sent in his articlesâon time. We met. Our conversations centered on ideas for features and deadlines. I had the intense seriousness of the young and the harassed, and I was producing a monthly publication on a shoestring as thin as the one Man Ray wore in lieu of a tie. In private life both of us were programmed, to use computer language, in other directions. Unlikely as it seems, I had no idea that while I was discovering Paris and the Parisians, he was working on a book about Paris.
Some eighteen years later, reader, I married him. Only then did
I discover John Russell's book
Pari
s (originally published in 1960). Here was sustained delight. No one else could combine the feel and the look, the heart and the mind, the stones and the trees, the past and the present, the wits, the eccentrics, and the geniuses of my favorite city with such easy grace.
I discover John Russell's book
Pari
s (originally published in 1960). Here was sustained delight. No one else could combine the feel and the look, the heart and the mind, the stones and the trees, the past and the present, the wits, the eccentrics, and the geniuses of my favorite city with such easy grace.
Reading this book, for me, was like sauntering through the city where I had lived so long. By my side was a most civilized companion who casually brought all the strands together and made them gleamânot forgetting to stop for an aperitif and a delicious meal en route. The book was long out of print, and I felt it unfair to keep this to myself. I showed it to a publisher friend. He immediately agreed that others would enjoy John Russell's
Pari
s as much as we did. He suggested it be brought up to date, in an illustrated edition.
Pari
s as much as we did. He suggested it be brought up to date, in an illustrated edition.
The author and I went to Paris to gather the illustrations. There was some confusion about our hotel reservation, and the receptionist at the Pont Royal apologized for giving us a small room on the top floor. Here the circle closes in the most satisfactory of ways: it was the identical room, No. 125, in which I had lived when I first came to Paris. The Turkey red carpet was now royal blue, the furniture was spruced-up modern, there wasâis this possible?âa minibar. And there was a push-button telephone that clicked all of Europe and America into the streamlined receiver.
We stepped out onto the little balcony. Deyrolle, the naturalist's, where I used to buy crystals and butterflies, was still across the street. There were some new chic boutiques, but the noble eighteenth-century facades still stood guard over the past. We looked around happily: there they were, our cherished landmarksâthe Invalides, the Paroisse Sainte-Clotilde, and the Eiffel Tower on the left, and on the right the former Gare d'Orsay, soon to be a museum of late-nineteenth-century art, the Sacré-CÅur, and the Grand Palais.
The huge open sky overhead had drifted in from the Ile-de-France. The bottle green bus bumbled down the rue du Bac. The tricolor flew the way it flies in Delacroix's
Liberty Leading the People
. I was back again, this time in John Russell's Paris.
Liberty Leading the People
. I was back again, this time in John Russell's Paris.
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