Open Book
Fustiness in the Fine Arts Department
Fairfield Porter '28 was a realist painter in the midst
of the abstract expressionist movement. He had an emotionally
complex life. Although he married, stayed married, and had five
children, he was bisexual; indeed, one of his lovers, poet James
Schuyler, lived with Porter and his wife for more than 10 years.
Porter died in 1975; in a Newsweek article in 1983, his friend
the poet John Ashbery '49 called him "perhaps the major American
artist of this century." A traveling exhibition of his paintings
will open at the Equitable Gallery in New York City on March 16
and run through May 27. As Justin Spring reveals in the pleasing,
illustrated biography Fairfield
Porter: A Life in Art (Yale University Press, $35), Porter
was not an overachiever at Harvard.
HIS DRY OBSERVATIONS
on fusty academicians continued in a letter [to his mother] of
December 10, 1925, after he attended an evening with the aged
and reactionary Denman Ross, a professor, art collector, and legendary
opponent of modern painting: "A few days ago Dr. Denman Ross
who is [a] high muck-a-muck in the Painting World...invited students
concentrating in fine arts to his house.... He is the man whose
theory of color design rules the teaching of painting at Harvard;
the theory which in brief advocates painting a picture with colors
which make a pleasant combination. But it is more complicated
than that...he is about 80 by his appearance, and he says that
he is just beginning to develop this theory, which has been going
on for no mean while...then a tutor asked him to give us his opinion
on modern art, and he said, 'I'm afraid they won't like my opinion,'
but he gave it of course. We were continually urged to ask questions
and, of course, dead silence reigned when he ceased talking. Finally
the same courageous tutor thanked him for us and we silently walked
out...."
Met with bemused indifference by the fine arts faculty, Porter
relied upon the literary set to shape his tastes. The decision
to let a writer or editor guide his artistic opinions followed
naturally enough from the Porter belief that literature, being
closer to intellect, was somehow more important, less trivial
than visual pleasure. The paradigm of literature also explains
why Porter's letters home to his mother are at once so detailed
and entertaining: they are a parallel form of creation, a reassurance
to his family that, despite his uncertainties about his artistic
project, he remains worthy and intelligent. If he couldn't get
anywhere as an artist or art historian, he could at least provide
his mother with an entertaining account of his failure. Comic
buffoonery was a lifelong strategy for Porter, a calculated way
of deflecting skeptical assessments of his talent. It informs
nearly all of his early correspondence and, according to his wife,
was an important aspect of his adult character....
None of Porter's intellectual development was reflected in
his grades. His academic insouciance during his sophomore year
resulted in two C's in art history and a B for freehand drawing.
Still, the tone of his letters implies sophistication rather than
cynicism, and engagement rather than indifference. Aware even
as a sophomore that no one in his department had a deep interest
in contemporary art (and beginning to sense that painting was
what he intended to pursue), he had clearly decided to enjoy whatever
education was available to him but not take the judgments of his
professors too seriously.
