Masterclass

Arnold Newman
 william a. ewing
With a preface by Todd Brandow
and contributions by Arthur Ollman,
David Coleman and Corinne Currat

Masterclass Arnold Newman

With 210 illustrations, 22 in color
page 2 adolph gottlieb, artist,
Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1970: work
print, with Arnold Newman’s instructions for
C ontents
the printer

page 4 Excerpt from a handwritten note by

Arnold Newman, c. 1970, justifying the choice
of one particular frame among a half-dozen
contenders
10 Preface
page 5 lilli palmer, actress, New York,
1947: contact sheet
todd brandow
page 6 barnett newman, artist,
Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1970

12 Arnold Newman: Student
william a. ewing


24 Plates I

90 Arnold Newman: Master

william a. ewing

First published in the United Kingdom in 2012 by notes to the reader

Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181a High Holborn,
London wc1v 7qx Unless otherwise stated, all photographic
110 Plates II
Masterclass: Arnold Newman copyright © 2012 Thames & works in this publication are black-and-white
silver prints.


Hudson Ltd, London
Preface copyright © 2012 Todd Brandow In the plate sections, captions are minimal.

172 A Photographer’s Life: Looking Back at Arnold Newman
“Arnold Newman: Student” and “Arnold Newman: Master”
copyright © 2012 William A. Ewing
For more detailed biographical information,
please consult the selected biographies on
arthur ollman
pp. 257– 64.
“A Photographer’s Life: Looking Back at Arnold Newman”
copyright © 2012 Arthur Ollman
“‘A Positive Story’: Arnold Newman’s Great American
All display quotations are by Arnold Newman, taken
from an interview with curator Will Stapp; see p. 265 184 Plates III
Faces” copyright © 2012 David Coleman for further information.


All photographs by Arnold Newman copyright © 2012
Getty Images /Arnold Newman 246 “A Positive Story”: Arnold Newman’s Great American Faces
Design concept and sequencing by William A. Ewing This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition
Masterclass: Arnold Newman, organized by the Foundation for
david coleman
the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, and curated
Biographies translated from the French by Jill Phythian
by William A. Ewing.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, Venues include: 257 Selected Biographies
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording March–May 2012: C/O Berlin, Germany
or any other information storage and retrieval system, October 2012–January 2013: Fotomuseum Den Haag, corinne currat
The Hague, Netherlands
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
February–May 2013: Harry Ransom Center, The
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data University of Texas at Austin, USA
A catalogue record for this book is available from the June–September 2013: San Diego Museum of Art,
British Library San Diego, California, USA 265 Notes
ISBN 978-0-500-54415-0 268 Selected Exhibitions and Publications

Printed and bound in [ ] by [ ] 270 Acknowledgments
To find out about all our publications, please visit
271 Index
www.thamesandhudson.com. There you can
subscribe to our e-newsletter, browse or download
our current catalogue, and buy any titles that are in print.
 Preface
todd brandow

During the second half of the twentieth century, there was no architectural details and cityscapes, these are sadly few and
portrait photographer as productive, creative, and successful as far between. A posthumous retrospective is a real occasion for
Arnold Newman. For sixty-six years he applied himself to his a reappraisal.
art and craft, never losing his appetite for experiment. He was Moreover, the rich archive of Arnold Newman “raw
rewarded by the regular publication of his work in the most materials” at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center
influential magazines of the day. He was much interviewed, had yet to be adequately examined. Luckily for us, Newman
much quoted, and much respected, accumulating no fewer was a highly efficient manager and archivist (though who can say
than nine honorary degrees. Several major solo exhibitions how he would have fared without his dedicated wife, Augusta,
paid homage to his achievements during his lifetime, and his at his side), and he kept accurate records of every one of his
work can be found in many of the world’s most prestigious sittings. Exhibition prints, work prints, reference prints, contact
photography collections. No historical overview or book prints, negatives—they are all preserved: We know when each
of iconic portraits would be complete without one or two print was made, and for whom. His contact sheets bear the
Newman masterpieces. Every decade or so, this industrious traces of his decisions: to cut out this minute detail by cropping
photographer managed to produce another impressive book, two millimeters on the left, to cut that tiny sliver of sky by
adding a layer of new work to the rich strata of the old. It three millimeters off the top… Today appreciative curators
therefore seems reasonable to ask: Why, then, do we have need can pore over the contact sheets at the Harry Ransom Center,
of another book and exhibition? following frame by frame Newman’s relentless pursuit of the
Firstly, because he is no longer alive. The exhibitions were “perfect” picture. Our retrospective has benefited immensely
ephemeral, of course, and are long gone; the books may be from such study.
permanent, interesting, useful—but they are hardly complete. Newman was a great teacher, and he loved sharing his
Newman was, as the saying goes, a control freak, and it was knowledge. He was blunt but direct, mitigating tough criticism
next to impossible for a museum director or a curator to prevail with good-natured banter. He had principles in which he
in the choice of what was to be included or excluded. Strangely, deeply believed, and he seems to have known how to impart
Newman was ultraconservative in his editing: Hundreds of them. Thankfully he gave many interviews, which have been
quite marvelous portraits were excluded on the grounds that transcribed, and what he had to say was consistent in its
arnold newman, self-portrait,
Philadelphia, 1938 the sitter was not important enough, or had faded from public essentials from the first to the last. It was these “lessons” that
consciousness. His businessmen, bankers and leaders of industry led us to the concept of “Masterclass”; the idea that, even
were often a match for his painters, writers and musicians, but posthumously, Arnold Newman could go on teaching all of us
they are rarely seen in his books. His strong group portraits —whether connoisseurs or neophytes—a great deal.
are virtually never included, and as for his abstractions,

11
 Arnold Newman: Student
william a. ewing

“I came to New York on a train and I saw the skyline of Manhattan

across the flats, and I knew it was the right time … in 1941.
And I didn’t know anybody.”
—Arnold Newman

When Arnold Newman began his life’s work in that same

year—1941—portrait photography was almost precisely one
hundred years old. Photography had essentially begun as portrait
photography, for reasons easy to understand: To people seeing a
photograph for the first time in their lives, a photographic likeness
was a truly incredible thing. People spoke of a “magic mirror,”
a “mirror with a memory,” and “a mirror of nature,” and there
was something truly amazing about a mirror that could capture
one’s image and freeze it for posterity. Moreover, real mirrors,
at least ones of high quality, were still relatively rare in 1839, so
many people holding a daguerreotype in their hands were seeing
themselves with a clarity they had never before witnessed.1 Some
could not even recognize their own faces: The great nineteenth-
century portraitist Nadar tells us that clients occasionally left his
studio perfectly satisfied with their portraits—that is, before the
photographer had to run after them and explain that they’d been
handed someone else’s portrait in error! 2 (Nadar also observed
that “the response of almost everyone else, on seeing themselves
photographed for the first time, was disapproval and recoil.”) 3
Another contemporary source noted that there was a healthy
business in wilfully selling people portraits of someone else, “on
the assumption that, with few mirrors around, there were many
people who did not know what they looked like.” 4
This fascination with one’s own likeness meant that other uses
of the new medium—landscape, architecture, documentation,
scientific applications, artistic expression, and so on—were
decidedly of lesser attraction. Right across the social spectrum the
One of Arnold Newman’s
first priority was to see how one looked. Just as one turns a mirror early darkrooms, 1940

12 13
 this way and that to get a rounded view, so photographers were to protect, along with substantial investments in equipment, He had imagined keeping his painting up in the evenings,
obliged to photograph their clients from every angle. Already by labor and premises, stressing the artlessness of their amateur but little by little photography supplanted these attempts.
1850 a photographer could joke, “Every possible view of the face competitors was shrewd strategy. They knew that their At lunchtime he began to train his borrowed camera on street
has been tried. Our only chance of pleasing now is by trying a clients wanted portraits that did not look like something they scenes close to the studio; on weekends he roamed further
portrait in which the face will be entirely absent.” 5 With the themselves could do at home. Sitters wanted “art” for their afield. Luckily, he fell in with a group of young photographers
new medium, there was also the hope of glimpsing something money, and the great “temples” of photography that graced who were passionate for their medium, and he tagged along
hitherto secret: The daguerreotypist in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s metropolitan boulevards and even the “photographer-barbers” as they roamed the streets of Philadelphia in the night. Many
The House of Seven Gables, written in 1851, claims that his camera or “photographer-beersellers” of the backstreets were happy to years later one of them, Louis Faurer, baptized the group “The
“brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter provide some trappings of it.9 Philadelphia School,” which in retrospect seems a little grandiose
could ever venture upon.” 6 It was a widely shared view. This is not to say that the portrait didn’t evolve; technical for the reality, but does communicate a sense of a shared credo.
“ I was thrown to the wolves.
For the first hundred years, however, with rare exceptions, advances would make change inevitable. The making of a Its “members,” to varying degrees, would go on to leave quite
The next person would come in, how one looked meant how one was supposed to look: portrait in the darkroom at the end of the nineteenth century an imprint on twentieth-century American photography.
Photographic portraits were both stiff and rigidly formulaic. was a very different thing from what it had been in mid- Ted Croner, Irving Penn, Sol Mednick, Izzy Posoff,
smile, Bam! Next, smile, Bam! Conformity was prized; individuality and eccentricity were century. But generally speaking (and excepting the rich vein Ben Rose, and Ben Somoroff shared an admiration of the
… and out… I had to learn very discouraged. For the first fifty of those years, portraits were of experimentation in the amateur domain),10 there were no great Russian émigré art director Alexey Brodovitch, whose
made almost exclusively by professionals in studios, which radical departures in the taking of portraits until well into the Philadelphia design/photography workshop had become a beacon
quickly how to adapt to people, meant a reliance on standard commercial props and backdrops. twentieth century. In its essence, the professional’s approach for aspiring photographers and art directors.12 For Newman,
how to get them to adjust to Exposure times, though growing shorter and shorter every of 1940 was not very different from what had been done in the fellowship represented a questioning, liberal, photographic
year, required posing without movement, which was easiest the studio fifty or even a hundred years earlier. And it was in education far removed from the stultifying environment of the
the camera. But the experience done sitting down. So common was the position that one just such an enterprise that Arnold Newman embarked on his commercial studio. Nevertheless, he was still pragmatic enough

was fantastic! ” exasperated critic of 1890 wondered how “ladies and gentlemen remarkable career. to turn those confines to his advantage, negotiating with his
alike are yet wholly unable to maintain that erect position which Newman would learn all about professional studio boss the right to use the darkroom after hours.
is supposed to be the privilege of humanity.” 7 Unlike today, photography from the inside out, one might say—the All in all, Newman’s work for various studios in
when the expression of individuality is paramount and the face mechanics, the economics, the logistics, and the psychology. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Allentown, and West Palm Beach
is therefore dominant, early portraits privileged the full figure His first serious jobs were in portrait studios that cranked out lasted for a period of several years, during which he learned
and in proportion faces appeared minuscule. Clothing was an standard fare at rock-bottom prices and absolutely discouraged everything that could possibly be learned in the darkroom—
indicator of social status, as were “gentlemanly” or “ladylike” innovation. At up to seventy portraits a day, there was no room “a blessing in disguise”—while his every free moment was
poses versus the artless postures of working men and women. for experimentation. (Once forgetting this, he suggested that given to experimentation with documentary photography,
As for the professional backdrops used in most studios catering a family group be lit “in the manner of a Frans Hals,” only to largely inspired by the gritty work of the Farm Security
to the bourgeoisie, like the “view of gardens such as might have be chastised by his boss: “Don’t try to be an artist, just take the Administration, and the perusing of books in the public
belonged to the château of a French marquis,” our critic of 1890 pictures the way we tell you.” ) 11 So monotonous was the work, library.13 Newman later recalled a formative moment when
comments sarcastically, “What can a man desire more?” 8 particularly the laborious retouching of pimples and wrinkles, he chanced upon two pictures of Teddy Roosevelt in a book.
However, the constraints and pretensions found in the that one might have expected the young photographer to turn One was a stiff official portrait, while the other showed him
professional studio did not affect the rapidly growing class of his back forever on portraiture. Fortunately, it would eventually “with a foot on a rhino he’d just shot … grinning like hell,
amateurs, who late in the century began to take photography— have the opposite effect, convincing him to make portraits the his hands on his hip with a gun.” Newman was impressed by
literally—into their own hands. Their “portraits” were more way he thought they should be made. But before Newman came the stark contrast: “… suddenly the man came alive. I knew
spontaneous and personal, and, in a sense, more credible, which to that decision, as with most young artists, his path would the pictures I wanted to do.”
posed an existential threat to the hide-bound professionals. meander for a while, with vigorous curiosity as his guide. In fact, Newman didn’t have much knowledge of the history
Happily for the latter, formal portraits continued to be required Newman had originally planned to become a painter, but of photographic portraiture when he consciously started out on
in many areas of social life, and as professionals had livelihoods had to give up art school when family fortunes deteriorated. his own, for the simple reason that such an account had only

14 15
 been sketchily written. (He was particularly testy later in life worked, no conscious effort to bring it together into a creative This critical attitude extended to people. Newman was fond
when a critic proclaimed that the great German portraitist, whole … to make it say something as well as being a visual of saying that he had been brought up in the hotel business, by
August Sander, had been “the father of us all.” Newman hold.” With only a close-up of a face or a head, “you are not which he implied that he had encountered a wide spectrum of
protested that no one in 1940s America had the remotest idea of saying a bloody thing except showing what a man or woman humanity in those transient places, and had developed a pretty
who Sander was. This was true: Sanders’s celebrity in America looked like… But every artist is a different human being, shrewd grasp of human nature. He wasn’t going to be taken in
was to come much later.) 14 But this did not mean Newman a different kind of person, a different kind of personality, a by impeccable reputations, nor by impressive first appearances.
lacked respect for the predecessors he did know about. His different kind of psyche, and all this the photographer should No wonder, then, that his favorite form of reading was
personal collection is telling in this regard: In it there were reflect.”15 Looking through portraiture of the past, one does biography. “If I hadn’t become an artist,” he would tell friends,
a good number of American daguerreotypes. Their subjects, find photographs of artists in their studios: Hoyningen-Huene’s “I’d have become a psychiatrist.”
paragons of stiff rectitude, had absolutely nothing in common pictures of Calder and his circus; Steichen’s pictures of Rodin Newman was often called the father of “environmental
with Newman’s comfortable sitters (or so they seem), nor with or Brancusi among their sculptures, and so on. The turn-of- portraiture,” meaning that he would usually situate the person
the style of realism he would pioneer—but the fact that he the-century work of Lewis Hine also bears mention: Hine’s in their library, living room, laboratory, studio or office.19 But
acquired and preserved these relics is evidence that he still saw portraits were always contextual, or environmental, in ways he himself was never comfortable with the term (which is just
his own work rooted in a great historical tradition. that evoke the Newman approach. Still, the Hines weren’t about as well, since today its ecological connotations ring jarringly in
The young Newman made a point of familiarizing himself exceptional individuals, as the Newmans were; they were about our ears). He thought the “environmental” label did not give
with portraiture of the past. He traveled to New York’s ordinary human beings—mostly children—trapped in the roles enough credit to what he termed his “symbolic portraits,” such
Museum of Modern Art to ask guidance from curator Beaumont into which society had slotted them (a miner, a factory worker, as his famous study of Igor Stravinsky (pp. 134–35)—hardly
Newhall. With his Philadelphian friends he talked of past a newsboy, etc.). Hine’s subjects were types, not sitters; strictly “environmental,” as it was made in a borrowed space with a
greats appreciatively, even sometimes ecstatically, as in the speaking, the photographs were documents, not portraits. As borrowed piano. Newman also complained that the label was
Daguerreotype from Arnold Newman’s
personal collection: anonymous photographer case of Alvin Langdon Coburn: “… that Coburn portrait of for Sander, who, like Hine, showed his subjects in context, simply too restrictive: “People started calling me the father of
and subject, date unknown Ezra Pound, I can’t forget him!” He discovered the work of “artists” were only one of seven sections of his life’s work.16 the environmental portrait,” he explained, “[but] the moment
Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emerson and Henry Newman was right in concluding that none of his predecessors you put a label on something there is no room to move. And I
Peach Robinson, whose composited allegories appealed to the had adopted the approach he had in mind, systematically and never thought in such terms, and I refuse to think in terms of
craftsman in Newman despite their moralizing kitsch. profoundly, as he now resolved to carry it out. labels…” Sometimes, for example, he homed in on a sitter’s
A keen reader of illustrated magazines such as Harper’s He had managed to achieve two years’ study of art at the head or face, or face and hands, to the exclusion of everything
Bazaar and Vanity Fair, Newman cut out portraits by artist- University of Miami before his family’s financial problems else (see pp. 138 or 187). There were also collaged portraits,
photographers including Lusha Nelson, George Platt Lynes, forced him into the working world, but, whether in school made from torn fragments of several different portraits (see
Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Hoyningen-Huene, or out, he was determined to make up his own mind about pp. 176 or 241), which were fictions, something between
and Horst P. Horst. Of Edward Steichen and Man Ray in what art he liked and which directions he wished to pursue. the environmental and the symbolic. “It’s whatever the hell
particular, he acknowledged, “They opened my eyes.” That In 1938 he wrote a letter to Life magazine, commenting on you want to call it,” he once said with exasperation. “I’m just
Steichen was also highly paid did not go unnoticed by the an article they had run on abstract art. While other readers looking for each time to go on out there and find a new way of
aspiring photographer. For someone who never lost his feelings wrote indignantly of Georges Braque’s “products of insanity,” expressing it, for the fun of it.” Yet there was a grain of truth in
of financial insecurity, it was no small consolation to see or said they preferred Mae West to “horrid things like these,” the adjective “environmental.” The majority of his portraits did
that a portrait photographer could become the highest paid Newman enthused: “For the past two years I have been studying show people in their usual settings, and even if Stravinsky was
photographer in the world. art … and not until your May 2nd issue could I admit that I saw sitting at a borrowed piano, the instrument was still a very real
Still, Newman concluded that Steichen and his kind were anything in abstract art. The clear and basic manner in which part of his world.
not doing what he wanted to do: They photographed artists, you presented your material deserves real credit.”17 The Life There is a certain irony in Newman’s reputation as, first
or their studios, but seldom the artist in the studio. Such editors could not have known that the young man would be and foremost, a photographer of artists. To hear Newman, it
photographs missed a vital dimension in Newman’s eyes; there contributing his own art to the magazine in a “clear and basic seems as if necessity was the mother of invention. “Who else
was “no conscious effort to show where they lived, where they manner” within a decade.18 did I know? Who else did I know about?” he admitted. But

16 17
 ›› Booklet of contact prints sent by A rnold while he had respect for everyone he photographed (though
Newman to his friend M ilton Wiener,
c. 1940. Note the early fascination with
the “respect” he had for the industrialist and arms dealer
abstraction and the torn image, themes to which Alfried Krupp was of a different order), visual artists were his
Newman would return throughout his career.
heroes, and throughout his long career he never passed up an
opportunity to photograph them. And he certainly did “know
about them” early on, as a letter he sent to a friend in 1943 tells
us. On the walls of his room he had hung “a Léger, a Stuart
Davis, a Jacques Lipchitz drawing, a Julien Levy watercolor,
a Raphael Soyer painting and one Moses Soyer, a Max Ernst
drawing, a Kuniyoshi print, a John Groth painting, a Chagall
self-portrait, and original photographs by Atget, Abbott, Levitt,
with two stinking schlemells by Rose and Newman.” Those
self-deprecating remarks about his own work, and that of his
best friend, photographer Ben Rose, also reveal something
interesting—that he saw Rose and himself as the equals of
the others, or at least as worthy of their company. In his book
Faces: A Narrative History of the Portrait in Photography, author Ben
Maddow summed up Newman’s oeuvre (in 1977, when the
photographer still had many years before him) as the product
of “a brilliant and very twentieth-century mind.”20 No better
evidence of this open, intelligent mind could be given than
that letter’s list of artists and artworks revealed. Later in life
Newman would note that “great artists have always understood,
appreciated and allied themselves with photography, long before
the general public.”21 It was his way of reminding people that
his chosen medium was, indeed, a fine art.
Newman never lacked for good teachers among his
friends and acquaintances. One remarkable person was the
suave Morris Berd, a Philadelphia painter who taught him how
to look profoundly at any accomplished work of art. “‘Look
at this, Arnold,’ he said of a Walker Evans street scene. ‘See
the way this line works … this shadow falls and goes … and
this picture, the line comes this way … or the light across the
texture of this building with the store front with the flaps in
front of it…’ And he began to open my eyes to not so much the
light but how to look for it, and more importantly you could
anticipate it, and wait for it, and put it together…”
Ben Rose also expanded Newman’s horizons, showing
him how styles of art evolved: “Ben said, ‘Well, you take a
mountain, this huge mountain, and somebody will make a very
beautiful line that goes across maybe another line of the lower

18 19
20 21
 › Booklet of contact prints sent by A rnold hill … the next artist will come and do a monumental painting
Newman to his friend M ilton Wiener,
c. 1940. The only portrait in the booklet shows
showing this huge bulk, this massive shape, and just almost
the formal rigor that Newman would develop. abstract … and the next guy will come and do a very realistic
mountain, but with impressionistic lines, and the next guy will
come and use the texture of the mountain as a take-off and the
texture of the clouds, and flatten it out’ … and suddenly in just a
few moments he opened up my eyes and I could see modern art!”
Rose had particularly benefited from his close association with
Brodovitch, who had constantly pushed for originality, the taking
of risks, and the innovation that results from sheer accident.22
Newman also learned a lesson from another of Brodovitch’s
collaborators, Erwin Blumenfeld, who was rapidly becoming
one of fashion photography’s masters. Newman had gone to
Blumenfeld’s studio in search of a job, and one was duly offered,
but astonishingly Blumenfeld advised Newman not to take it—he
would be better off remaining independent. (The older man may
have been ruing his own loss of freedom: Having begun as a free-
spirited Dadaist, he had found himself trapped in a lucrative but
spiritually vapid profession.) 23 Newman recognized the potential
loss of independence, and took Blumenfeld’s advice.
Newman’s friend, Milton Wiener, who would go on to
become a brilliant art director in the advertising industry, also
noticed the impressive intellect described by Maddow. Wiener
had asked for and received a rough little booklet of Newman’s
pictures, and set about offering criticism and encouragement (see
pp. 19, 20, 21, and opposite).24 “A swell Miro painting,” he wrote
next to a clever abstraction. Another bears the annotation, “Not
as good as the others,” and yet another, “You can do better.” But
these criticisms were followed by a clear vote of confidence in
the work, as one picture is suggested as “a good cover for a spiral
bound book of your best photos.” The ultimate accolade comes
on the final page: “Arnold, I would very much like to have prints
of the ones I’ve checked.” Assuming his friend delivered, Wiener
would be among the first of many highly appreciative collectors.
The main thrust of the booklet is architectural abstraction—
only one portrait makes an appearance—but, perhaps as a result
of these explorations of abstraction and still life, the backgrounds
of Newman’s portraits would never be secondary aspects of his
compositions, nor accepted uncritically as givens. From the day
Newman decided to devote himself to portraiture, his work
would have a masterful command of both sitter and setting.

22 23
Plates I
 “ ‘Photography?’ my father said.
‘Great. It’s a business, it’s an art.’
He said, ‘You’ll never go broke,’
and he was right. ”

Ph iladelph ia, Pennsylvania, 1941

26 27
 ‹ moses soyer, artist,
New York, 1942
› ben rose, photographer,
and mickey, New York,
1944: contact sheet

28 29
 josef albers, artist and
›
teacher, New York, 1948

› alexey brodovitch,
photographer, art director,
teacher and designer,
New York, 1946

30 31
 ‹ helen curtis, science writer,
New York, 1946
› hanya holm, choreographer,
and son klaus, New York, 1956

32 33
 Philip Johnson’s Glass House,
New Canaan, Connecticut, 1949

34 35
 tom armstrong and
›
flora miller irving,
Director and P resident,
Whitney Museum, New York, 1979

› alfred h. barr, jr., and

dorothy miller, Director and
Curator, Museum of Modern A rt,
New York, 1950

36 37
 ‹ pietro belluschi, architect,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962
› david rockefeller, businessman,
New York, 1962

38 39
 ‹ Storefront, Daytona Beach,
Florida, 1989

Boot Hill Saloon interior,
‹
Daytona B each, Florida, 1989

40 41
 ‹ w. averell harriman,
politician and diplomat,
Yorktown Heights, New York, 1954

› paul hornung, football player,

and businessmen, Green B ay,
Wisconsin, 1962

42 43
 “ There are ce­r­­tain things
which you find automatic­ally
with a minimal a­mount
of deliberation.”

major robert michael white,

military aircraft test pilot, with X-15,
California, 1959

44 45
 ‹ dr. arno penzias, scientist,
at B ell L abs office, Murray H ill,
New Jersey, 1985
› robert oppenheimer, scientist,
B erkeley, California, 1948

46 47
 ‹ West Palm B each, Florida,
1941
› isaac stern, conductor
and composer, New York,
1985

48 49
 saul steinberg, artist,
and his wife hedda sterne,
artist, New York, 1951

50 51
 ‹ chaim gross, sculptor,
New York, 1942
› marc chagall, artist,
New York, 1942

52 53
 ‹ lee krasner, artist,
L ong Island, New York, 1973
› william baziotes,
artist, New York, 1959

54 55
 “A good portrait is first and
foremost a good photograph.”

max ernst, artist,

New York, 1942

56 57
 ‹ andrew wyeth, artist,
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 1976
› eva rubinstein, photographer,
Rockport, Maine, 1977

58 59
 john sloan, artist,
›
New York, 1941
› sir frederick ashton,
dancer and choreographer,
Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, L ondon, England, 1978

60 61
 ‹ marc blitzstein, composer
and playwright, New York, 1945
› dr. james watson, scientist,
Harvard, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1964

62 63
 ‹ i. m. pei, architect,
New York, 1967
› louise nevelson,
sculptor, New York, 1972

64 65
 manufacturers hanover g.a.b.
department, group portrait for A nnual
Report, Hanover, Germany, 1977

66 67
 helen frankenthaler,
›
artist, New York, 1989:
reproduction made exceptionally
from 35mm negative
› dr. harold edgerton,
scientist and engineer,
Massachusetts I nstitute
of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1962

68 69
 brassaï, photographer,
›
New York, 1976
› henri cartier-bresson,
photographer, New York, 1947

70 71
 “ The artists gave me the visual
material to experiment with…”

raphael soyer, artist,

New York, 1941

72 73
 Key shop sign, New York, 1942
›

› alexander calder, sculptor,

New York, 1943

74 75
 Lightbulb, Venice, Italy,
›
1979: work print with
crop marks
› salvador dalí, artist,
New York, 1951

76 77
 ‹ manuel alvarez bravo,
photographer, New York, 1987
› West Palm B each, Florida,
1986

78 79
 lucas samaras, artist,
›
New York, 1980

› roberto matta, artist,

Paris, F rance, 1960

80 81
 philip guston, artist,
›
New York, 1947
› roy lichtenstein, artist,
S outh Hampton, New York, 1976

82 83
 Window, Yehiel Shemi’s
studio, K ibbutz Cabri,
Israel, 1982
Shaker Village, interior
›
with stove, Hancock,
Massachusetts, 1983
› piet mondrian, artist,
New York, 1942

84 85
 eero saarinen, architect and
furniture designer, New York, 1948

86 87
 ‹ sir cecil beaton, photographer
and designer, Broadchalke, S alisbury,
Wiltshire, England, 1978
› truman capote, writer,
New York, 1977

88 89
Arnold Newman: Master
william a. ewing

“I’m like a businessman who gets up in the morning and if he doesn’t he’d achieved, never quite convinced that he was really “making Until the end Newman never slowed his pace: Well after
find his name in the obituary column, he goes to work.” it.” He was hard on himself, as he could be with his darkroom a normal retirement age he could write, “And here I am about
—Arnold Newman 1
assistants. “The worst art director I ever met was me,” he to reach 73 and I’m working my ass off… And Gus [Augusta,
told Will Stapp. “I’ve never knocked off a shoot.” As for many his wife and close collaborator] and I say—too bad we work
If Arnold Newman wasn’t the “inventor” of “the environmental photographers of the period, it was extremely difficult for this hard, but the alternative is death.” He considered a recently
portrait,” or any other such genre in portraiture, it is 2
Newman to balance the demands of art and commerce, so taken portrait of dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp (see
nonetheless a fact that no one else in his time made so many uneasy was the relationship between the two: Success in one p. 211) one of his best pictures ever, declaring proudly, “So
fine studies of painters, sculptors, novelists, playwrights, poets, domain could actually jeopardize one’s chances in the other, and you know in my 70s I haven’t lost it!”
journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists, architects, there was a natural inclination to take sides. For one moment Technically, portraiture is a question of mastering camera,
businessmen, politicians, and statesmen. There are more than in the 1970s, Newman the artist thought he had the ultimate lighting, film, and print. Newman was a great believer in using
eight thousand portraits between those held by the Arnold consecration in hand: a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum the right camera for the right task—though he also believed an
and Augusta Newman Foundation in New York and those at of Modern Art, proposed, he maintained, by photography accomplished photographer could make do with the “wrong”
the Newman archive in Austin, Texas, and there are a great
3
curator John Szarkowski. But the opportunity evaporated for camera in a pinch, as he once did at the White House.8 The
deal more unpublished variants, many of which are equally reasons never explained, and Newman would forever lament 35mm camera was ideal for fast-moving events, but the 4 × 5-
as interesting and successful as the ones he chose to present that he “was a success in every place all over the world but the inch view camera, mounted on a tripod, was much better
to the world. What distinguishes Newman from both his
4
Museum of Modern Art.” 5
suited to his particular approach. The large-format 8 × 10-inch
predecessors and his contemporaries, therefore, is the breadth Newman learned to balance the many strands of a career was also useful for elaborate, highly detailed compositions, but
and depth of his work. Indeed, the pleasure of each new book quite typical of photographers active in the post-war period: it was generally too cumbersome for someone who traveled to
of Newman’s portraiture (published at the rate, more or less, portrait commissions for magazines, portrait commissions his sitters rather than having them come to him. Interestingly,
of one per decade, beginning in the 1970s) is seeing the iconic for corporations, his independent portraiture, advertising Newman described cameras in a painter’s terms: “One is like
pictures repeated (Stravinsky, Mondrian, Hopper, Graham, assignments, gallery sales (scant by today’s standards), museum a watercolor, one is like a sketch, and the other is like an oil
etc.)—which hold up remarkably well over time—together exhibitions, magazine assignments, and book publishing. If painting… An 8 × 10 is like a mural where you nail the camera
with a refreshing selection of more recently made pictures. MoMA remained elusive, he had other irons in the fire, other down and arrange everything.” 9 He expressed frustration with
Each book recalls familiar faces, and also introduces new ones. prestigious institutions to take up the cause.6 He learned with various cameras whose useful features were betrayed by bad
Nevertheless, as one can see in this book, Newman kept a fair his book One Mind’s Eye, published in 1974, that a single well- design. Asked if his Linhof was well built, he replied, “Yes…
number of these “friends” to himself during his lifetime. conceived publication could have a huge impact. With this [but]… Look: it’s over-heavy, over-built, and over-priced.”
Newman was the quintessential New Yorker: hard-working, particular book, his first, he felt that his achievements had He felt that all too often cameras were built by engineers for
ambitious, opinionated, never quite satisfied with the position truly been acknowledged. 7
engineers, rather than for photographers.

91
 Cameras with large formats made for contact prints on
which one could readily perceive minute detail (unlike the
35mm format, which involves some guesswork even when
working with a magnifying glass). Typically, Newman would
take the thirty-five to forty negatives he might expose at a
sitting, contact print and scrutinize them one by one before
deciding on “‘the one’ … analyzing and at times rethinking
and changing my original composition, often to a hair-splitting
degree.”10 Just how subtly those hairs could be split is evident
in a comparison of two frames of one sitting with Picasso (left
and opposite). A notation indicates Newman’s preferred shot is
frame 57, and a comparison shows why: The awkwardly placed
arm has been removed, the smile is more generous, and the
gaze is direct (whereas in frame 54, Picasso seems absent or
bored in the photographer’s presence).11 A similar example of
how a minute difference can be of great significance is seen in a
comparison of two takes of the painter Lilly Michaels (overleaf).
In the right-hand frame her expression seems almost pained.
Once the best picture was chosen, Newman would
pencil in the cropping marks he wanted his assistants to
follow. He might tilt the frame ever so slightly; “zoom” in,
sometimes dramatically; or shift the subject to the right or

pablo picasso, artist, Vallauris,

left in the frame, or up or down. It exasperated him that
F rance, 1954: contact sheets certain photographers had made a fetish—as he saw it—of
the uncropped image, which was supposed, somehow, to be
more purely photographic (perhaps because it seemed the
equivalent of the spontaneous gesture in painting). Interestingly,
Newman does not seem to have seen cropping as a distinct
post-production operation, but simply an extension of the issue
of framing that began when he was first confronted with the
sitter. He was particularly irked when people would assume
his treatment of Philip Guston, with its white background and
printed frame (p. 82), had been inspired by Richard Avedon.
He felt that his use of the graphic device had pre-dated Avedon’s,
and that to create a style relying on it alone was simply too
limiting. Intriguingly, he explained that he was “still using the
edges—you’re just not aware of it.”12 Elsewhere, discussing his
famous Mondrian portraits (see p. 85), he explained how he had
come to the composition “by following what was in the inside.”13
In other words, the making of a picture was not a question

92 93
 of a discrete split second (like a fly in amber) but of a lengthy fantasies.” If the sitter was paying, the photographer was in a who had introduced Newman to a sitter as “my photographer,”
studio and darkroom process unfolding over time, allowing for sense at their mercy: “The subject is more or less the director,” he snapped, “I’m not yours or anyone else’s.” He saw himself
decisions to be made, adjusted, and refined. Overall, he wanted was how Newman put it. But if a third party was paying, the as an equal to his sitters as well, in the sense that he was as
his Mondrian picture to appear “stiff, linear and very formal, terrain was level. And better still, if the photographer had professional and successful in his domain as they were in theirs.
like the man.”14 requested the sitting, he retained the edge. This was an ideal If he felt that they were not taking the sitting seriously, he
As for lighting, Newman preferred it to be natural, “with to strive for, often undermined by circumstance, but Newman would suggest packing up and coming back another time—
all its delightfully infinite varieties, indoors and out.” In could take satisfaction that a good number of his pictures were a shock tactic that usually worked. But he would also make a
practice, however, he was usually obliged to add light. The the result of his own initiative.15 point of reading up about the sitters beforehand, so he could
first solution was to augment natural sources by “bouncing” Any portraitist has to deal with “the mask”—the face engage them in casual conversation. “You don’t go in to see
light via reflectors, but if he was adding actual lights, he’d use we wear in public to reveal our strengths and conceal our Watson [together with Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning
floods and one or two spots. Strobes would be used only when weaknesses. The conventional concept of a “good” portrait proposer of DNA’s double-helix structure] and say, ‘Hi, I
absolutely necessary. Newman was at pains to point out that is when we feel it reveals something the subject is trying to understand you invented the band-aid!’” The interest in his
lighting should not be limited by rules and habits: Lighting hide, or at least reveals something about his or her character accomplished subjects was absolutely genuine on Newman’s
technology was changing constantly, and the artist had to or personality that he or she may not recognize in themselves. part, but it was also a clever ploy. It got their attention: People
keep abreast of developments and change, too. “Lighting is a But Newman questioned this assumption, and saw the issue in who are given the opportunity to talk about themselves are less
personal tool, and I keep experimenting.” And he added with more down-to-earth terms: “I never even think of [the face] as likely to become restive during the preliminaries.
relish, “I’m a great light man—I can do tricks with lighting a mask. I just think of it as something very self-conscious about Newman defended the art of portraiture as something very
that no one else can.” being photographed.” 16 He admitted to feeling exactly the same complex, the synthesis of many factors. “You work primarily
As for the issue of “the studio,” or rather the setting, way when he was in front of someone else’s lens: It is a fact from instinct,” he explained. “But what is instinct? It is a
Newman craved the stimulation of another person’s natural that one is powerless and vulnerable in this situation, relatively lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge,
habitat. A sitter’s house, apartment, office, classroom, or speaking. Part of Newman’s tactics was to somehow let the seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking
lilly michaels, artist, library gave him additional “biographical” information: He felt person know, with expressions and actions, that he was “on a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you
New York, 1959: contact sheet he could understand the subject better. He grumbled that his their side”; empathy, not sympathy, was called for. One way to work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.” We could be
contemporaries, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, had it easier relax his subjects was to fiddle and fuss with his equipment, or listening to a manifesto of contemporary American painting,
because they never strayed from the familiar terrain of their to tell jokes. “Sit still or I will kill you,” he was fond of saying 17 reminding us that Newman had begun with such aspirations
studios. But the fact was that he relished the challenge of new (though not, presumably, to subjects such as Haile Selassie or and always had many painter friends.
environments. Best of all he liked the artist’s atelier, especially the string of American presidents who sat for him). One thing easily overlooked in an assessment of any
the vast lofts of Manhattan, where he could put his camera Another way of relaxing the subject was to ask them to photographer’s work—in any domain—is the enormous
some distance from his subjects and fashion them as elements move around and try various settings. Contact sheets from an effort that often has to be made simply to gain access; great
of the composition (see pp. 37 or 59). In fact, he loved the extensive session with the artist Lucas Samaras, during which resourcefulness may be required. Newman was particularly
craft aspect of the job as much as he did the aesthetic challenge the artist playfully tries all kinds of poses and costumes, show proud of one occasion involving a Life magazine commission to
… or the psychological angle. a session that simply was not gelling—until Newman spotted photograph at the Louvre. On arrival, after weeks of careful
Newman understood that a portrait was a transaction a transparent floral shirt draped over a chair. Hanging it tautly, preparation, he was blocked from doing his work by a haughty
between two people (and sometimes more, as editors, like a screen, he posed Samaras behind it, lining up the iris of a woman in charge. (“When you mentioned her name, half the
publishers, handlers, agents, and so on also had a vested interest flower with the center of Samaras’s eye. The resulting portrait photographers in France would faint,” Newman recalled, “and
in the outcome and often attempted to interfere). It was (p. 80) neatly reflects Samaras’s own rather Byzantine style. the other half would bleed.”) Controlling his rage, he asked
therefore important to establish trust, and, just as importantly, In every situation, it was imperative that the photographer what could be done to gain access, and was told that only the
respect. The problem with portraiture, as he saw it, was that a exuded authority, and this meant fighting against the all-too- celebrated André Malraux, the Minister of Culture, could
portrait could all too easily be “an image deliberately distorted common assumption that the photographer was a technician, make a difference. Furious, Newman returned to his hotel,
and altered to flatter a subject’s ego and to cater to his or her and decidedly secondary to a writer or an editor. To an editor called his editor at Life to explain the situation, and suggested

94 95
 they play the Kennedy card (he had just photographed the success, becoming one of Newman’s most iconic portraits and the responsibility of both teacher and student. A young
President for the magazine, and felt that he had established an most lucrative photographs. photographer’s relationship with the past had to be balanced
excellent rapport). Within days Malraux had a telegram from Newman’s magazine visibility led to another source between a healthy respect for its achievements and a
the President, requesting that Arnold Newman be admitted to of revenue: advertising. “I’m one of the best advertising determination to forge one’s own path. The past should be
photograph “the glories of France.” Newman immediately sent photographers around,” he was able to boast. His a “springboard into the future.” One should build on it, and
the woman a dozen roses, requesting a second meeting. He correspondence with clients, detailing every aspect of the job hopefully add something to it. He told his students to look at
tells the story with relish: “I went back … and I said, ‘Well, at hand, is amusing in this respect. Some of the assignments books and exhibitions. He was not impressed with what he saw
we can start the story.’ She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, must have made him wonder whether he was becoming an in the schools of New York (he was aghast, for example, to find
‘He said it was alright.’ I played with her a little bit. She said, impresario or, worse, a circus master. One such assignment, that students knew little of Edward Steichen). He liked to give
‘What do you mean he said alright?’ I said, ‘The O.K. is on for New England Life, arrived accompanied by a drawing of New York’s Flatiron building as an example of something that
“ What’s the truth in a portrait?
your director’s desk’… She went into hysterics … picked up the people at an airport. It would require “happy expressions” on had been photographed over and over again (Steichen had set the
Who do you believe? Sometimes phone and dropped it, and tried to dial the director… She just the faces of two men (these were partners, it was explained, bar high early on), yet could always be photographed afresh; or
turned white. She actually turned white.” This time, access was with one of the men seeing the other off on a business trip). The he exhorted his students to go out and find “their own, modern-
you cannot determine this in just granted. The cat had his mouse. instructions went on: “[But] we do not want to use air travel. day Flatiron building.”21
one picture… The only way to Sometimes the transaction between sitter and photographer We want to use a ship’s gangplank instead, retaining same mood It was not just a question of looking for new angles. One
was literal. The Buchholz Gallery in New York, which and situation as depicted in the sketch… At the dock you might had to think about what one was doing. On the one hand,
determine whether you believe it or represented Jean Arp, wrote to Newman on April 18, 1949, want to introduce secondary people, as deck officers, stewards, Newman railed against “pompous and pretentious” theorizing,
not is to look at my other pictures.” informing him that Arp was pleased with the portraits Newman etc. to add color … the men should be wearing business suits but on the other he was annoyed if photographers didn’t have
had made (see p. 113), and was offering a collage in return. The and topcoats. We are interested in OKing people to be used as an intellectual framework for their efforts. He gave as much
manager asked if he might also have one of the photographs to main characters… Order is enclosed.”19 importance to the creative mind as to the tuned eye: “You go
hang in his office, “as a reward for the suffering on a certain It was easier (though probably less interesting) when the out with a purpose, and you go out with an eye.” Photographers
afternoon in my gallery.” What that suffering entailed was not commission was for routine portraits of executives. Newman had opinions and should not be afraid to express them.
made explicit, but Newman’s notation says, “I called Curt V. informed Avon: “I will photograph the group of approximately Newman’s fierce defense of the photographer as a professional
and said I also suffered — he agreed and then we worked out a twelve men for the fee of $2,000.00 and all expenses. The equal in status to editors and other professionals required a
swap for six prints for a beautiful Arp collage.” 18 expenses will include my two assistants at $50 each, all color serious commitment: The photographer should read and think
Newman was what was commonly known at the time as a and Polaroid film [tests], processing, bulbs, taxis or limousines, about his subject before engaging in the work.
magazine photographer. He worked for prestigious publications whichever is required. The photograph will be done in color and As a teacher, one had a responsibility to guide a young
that were seen—if not necessarily read—by millions of in a 4 × 5 size unless circumstances dictate another size camera. person along the path of their natural inclination, not to
Americans: Holiday, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, The photograph will be for annual report and public relations use produce clones: “If all the students came out looking like
The Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, Horizon, Look, Collier’s Town only—advertising use is not included. In addition, you will assist little Arnold Newmans, I’d have been like a total failure as
and Country, Popular Photography, and a slew of lesser titles. us in getting in and out of the building.” The authoritative tone a teacher… Rules and regulations only make for repressive
The closest thing he had to “a home,” as he put it, was Holiday, reflected years of experience. It ended with a confident flourish: schools,” he argued.22 Newman taught courses at Cooper
though he was never on staff there or at any other magazine, as “I foresee no problems. I am off tomorrow as planned, but will Union in New York, at Santa Fe Workshops and Palm Beach
were many of his rivals. He acknowledged that this arrangement telephone you on the 12th for last[-]minute arrangements.”20 Photographic Center, and for thirty years, beginning in
was financially precarious at times; he also had to admit that If he was obliged to accept such uninspiring commissions, he the 1970s, he taught at the Maine Photographic Workshop
some of his best work resulted from commercial assignments. would at least execute them as efficiently as possible. (filling the unofficial role of artist-in-residence while there).
His famous portrait of Stravinsky, for example (pp. 134–35), In the domains of both art and commerce, therefore, His former assistant, Elizabeth Greenberg, who became the
was actually a failed assignment: It had been commissioned Newman had much to impart to younger photographers. director at Maine, remembers another of Newman’s assistants
for Harper’s Bazaar by Alexey Brodovitch, but was inexplicably He enjoyed teaching, whether structured courses over commenting, “Arnold won’t teach you anything, but, if you
rejected. Ironically, it would enjoy, if belatedly, an enormous time or week-long workshops. He had clear ideas about listen, you’ll learn a lot.”23

96 97
 As the photographer’s career blossomed, the demands of
travel made it difficult for him to take on regular classes. This
left the workshop model, which simply required a free week,
easily enough scheduled a couple of times a year. Newman much
enjoyed the intensity of these events. He liked to give a talk on
the first day, when he could spout his own “pompous theories,”
then send the students off on assignment. Mid-week he’d give
a demonstration, showing how lighting could make or break a
portrait. On Friday the students would bring in their portfolios
for a critique. Throughout the week Newman would be available
for consultations, and would challenge students—sometimes,
he admitted, a little unfairly: “I like to get into arguments with
them.” Last but not least, the perfect workshop would end “with
a steak and lobster dinner, and on Saturday everyone goes their
own way.” It gave Newman great pleasure when, years later,
photographers would tell him how they remembered solutions
to problems learned in those workshops. He liked to tell the
story of one student who had stubbornly resisted an assignment
with the 8 × 10, which she considered irrelevant to her practice.
dan flavin, sculptor, New York,
1967: contact sheet But he insisted, considering it indispensable “at least once” in
› alfried krupp, industrialist, a student’s learning. Years later Newman ran into her in an
Essen, Germany, 1963 airport, and she said, “Damn it, Arnold, on account of you I
›› dr. claude e. shannon, scientist, drag an 8 × 10 all over the world!”
Massachusetts I nstitute of Technology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962 Newman really did challenge students, telling them “they
don’t know what they don’t know,” which meant they had to
keep asking probing questions of themselves and others. He
would warn them of teachers who would tell them, “This is the
way.” If they heard that, they should “run like hell.” He believed
that an artist had to teach himself, and that much could be
learned from associations with one’s fellows, as he had benefited
first from the Philadelphia Group, and later from friendships
with Ansel Adams, and even younger colleagues. Asked by Will
Stapp if students had to study painting, he replied, “Absolutely
not!” before adding “but it can help.” He also counseled aspiring
artists not to look down their noses at commerce. He would
show them Paul Outerbridge’s iconic advertising photograph,
“Ide Collar,” reminding them that it was a pure product of
commerce, yet had an undeniable aesthetic power.
Newman’s lessons were not limited to the workshop setting.
He would tell his students to scrutinize people on subways and

98 99
 buses; to watch how they sat, how they moved. And he was de force of Mondrianesque composition. But these were still
happy to share the hard-won lessons of his own experience— exceptions to the rule.
indeed he hammered these home: the importance of reading up Another area in which Newman was not always on firm
on the subject beforehand, and the necessity of projecting total ground concerned women (see also p. 182). He made occasional
confidence during the sitting. nudes, none of which was anything other than conventional,
For students hoping for careers as artists, he warned them and few of his portraits of women achieved the power of his
to “prepare to get slammed” by the critics. In Newman’s view, best male figures. This is not to say that some female portraits,
the critics “got together and said, ‘Time to knock them [certain most notably of Martha Graham (see p. 121), have not achieved
artists] down a peg or two.’” You could not let a bad review iconic status, but, again, the exceptions prove the rule. Notably,
get to you; on the other hand, you had to be tough on yourself. there is one portrait—and I will question the legitimacy of
You had to know what was passable—what you could get away this word—that strikes a jarring note in almost every one of
with—and what was good, even great. When looking at other Newman’s books. It concerns Marilyn Monroe (overleaf).
artists’ work, he advised them not to let reputations intimidate: The picture is a blow-up of a section of a 35mm negative. The
Look first at the art, then at the name. frame itself is one from several rolls of film exposed at a private
To his credit, he sometimes recognized that his guidance party, at which the principal guests were Monroe and Carl
was simply wrong for the direction a particular photographer Sandburg. The actress is shown across the series as relaxed
was taking. To a brilliant small-town newspaper photographer and playful, though a little tired, and the intimate relationship
from Virginia who asked to be shown how to make a formal she enjoyed with Sandburg is evident and touching. However,
portrait, he replied, “No, and I’ll throw you the hell out none of this is shown in the selected fragment. One can easily
of class.” She had shown him what he described as “minor imagine a magnificent Monroe portrait by Newman—one that
masterpieces” taken of buildings and people on the street, as would have become a famed icon—but the photographer never
well as good sports photographs, and he was not going to clip succeeded in getting the star to pose for him. The blow-up was
her wings. not a portrait in the classic sense. It was not reciprocal; it was
Newman’s strengths are evident and widely acknowledged, not an exchange. Where, in Newman’s approach, the legitimacy
his weaknesses less so—possibly because a weakness in a of cropping from a 4 × 5 or 8 × 10-inch format was implicit, the
Newman photograph still made for a pretty successful picture. same cannot be said of cropping from a casual 35mm negative.
He worked in color as well as in black and white, but, with The close-up is uncharacteristically grainy and bears no
a few notable exceptions, his color work never achieved the resemblance to the studied compositions of all Newman’s other
same brilliance. He simply did not have an equivalent feeling works. Here, we may have evidence of the corrupting influence
for it. He seems to have recognized this himself, as he often of celebrity. Newman could not pin Monroe down, so he took
printed his color negatives in black and white, and they are his opportunity to fabricate a “portrait” from the scant materials
often stronger for it. However, his great study of the German at hand. Ironically he did not need to do this. The contact sheets
industrialist Alfried Krupp (p. 99; one of the color pictures are extremely compelling as they are, telling us far more than
he also printed in black and white) did benefit from color, the chosen fragment. Newman actually had his great portrait!
with its eerie green glow well suited to the demonic, infernal When he was making a true portrait, he was able to pose his
atmosphere Newman wished to impart, while his portrait of subjects elegantly and naturally. However, as he himself freely
the light artist Dan Flavin (p. 98) was inconceivable without the admitted, he was incapable of transferring his skills to the arena
element of color. His study of the electronics engineer Claude of fashion (a female domain of photography, at least during
Shannon (opposite), who is cleverly integrated into—or perhaps his time): “I was also assigned to do fashion, which I happily
we should say, ensnared by—his scientific apparatus, is a tour dropped.” He could make portraits of people in the world of

100 101
 fashion—the couturier Christian Dior (p. 159); even the young
Italian woman dressmaker Maria Bianca Mazzarini Stronati
(p. 158), to give two examples—and yet curiously he would
freeze up, so to speak, when it came to making the clothing
the subject. Perhaps it was because he had to find the person
interesting to make a successful picture, and with a bland model
he could not locate that spark.
Another area of weakness is due to no fault of Newman’s
own. Ironically, it concerns the very category of photographs
that signaled he had arrived at the pinnacle of success: This
was the category of statesmen and royalty—kings, presidents,
chiefs, and the like. “Weakness” may seem an odd word to use
when talking about portraits of great historical figures such as
Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson,
Ronald Reagan, Hailie Selassie, and so on. Mere access to
marilyn monroe, actress and singer, persons of such stature was an indication of Newman’s own
B everly H ills, California, 1962: portrait
extracted from frame 37 of the contact status. No other twentieth-century portrait photographer,
sheet opposite with the exception of Yousuf Karsh, had so many feathers in
› marilyn monroe, carl sandburg his cap (and Karsh hunted them down like big-game trophies,
and henry weinstein, B everly
H ills, California, 1962: contact sheet and showed them that way as well—stuffed). No, the weakness
lies elsewhere, in the genre itself. Kings and presidents can’t
be asked to pose behind a floral screen (as Lucas Samaras did),
or peek out from a wall as if afraid of the sitting (as fellow
photographer Robert Doisneau jokingly did; see p. 170), or
agree to be photographed with their eyes closed (as Bill Brandt
did; see p. 153). Nor is it possible to imagine a dignified Truman
or Eisenhower being subjected to Newman’s impertinent collage
technique, which was reserved for free-thinking artists (see pp.
183 or 241). Statesmen have to be posed with all the obvious
attributes of decorum, power, and prestige: chandeliers, marble
columns, great desks… In other words, Newman was severely
constrained by the requirements of officialdom. Although it
cannot be denied that the portraits leave nothing to be desired
as official portraits go, they are seldom extraordinary (we can
argue that his study of David Ben-Gurion is one of perhaps a
handful of exceptions; see p. 109).
On the other hand, we can only lament the fact that
Newman did not have more opportunities for a very different
genre of photography—landscape—where he showed an acute
sense of spatial composition (see pp. 106 or 107). He did find

102 103
 Seascape, Naples, Italy, 1954:
contact sheets and selected
cropped frame

104 105
 Florida landscapes, 1946 :
contact sheets with crop marks
indicating final choice

106 107
 the time, however, to make a good number of fine cityscapes
and architectural studies throughout his career (see pp. 48 or
79). Intriguingly, they virtually never have people in them,
as if they were a much-needed respite from the psychological
engagement portraiture required. Newman preferred to
use the term “abstractions” when talking about these other
photographs, and he was at pains to remind curators that he had
always been fascinated by the issue of abstraction, and indeed
had not started out as a portrait photographer at all. “If you look
at my book, One Mind’s Eye,” he reminded Will Stapp, “you’ll
see, at the beginning of my career, I did pure abstraction and
collage. I’ve never really deviated from that.”24 Ultimately,
Newman was seeking recognition as an artist who had decided
that photography would be his tool. While portraiture was his
primary focus, he did not want to be pigeonholed. He hoped
people would say of his pictures that, first and foremost, “These
are great photographs.” He always wanted to know why it was
john f. kennedy, senator, that some succeeded while others failed. He remained a student
Washington, D.C., 1953
all his life, and he will remain a teacher well beyond it.
› david ben-gurion, P rime M inister
of Israel, Jerusalem, 1967 In the final analysis, Newman is best seen as a photographer
who found a fertile corner of a vast field—portraiture—that
had been overcultivated (with many a barren patch), and coaxed
a magnificent crop from it. Believing in the technical and
aesthetic progress of his chosen medium, he saw his contribution
in hybrid terms: the “mixing of a spontaneous snapshot aesthetic
with the traditional posed portrait.”
Like wine, most photographs age well, slowly acquiring an
exotic sheen as the evolving culture leaves them behind; even
a banal snapshot of Times Square today will look fascinating
a hundred years from now. A great deal more will be true of
Newman’s portraits. Almost all of his illustrious subjects have
now passed away; even the youngest of his sitters are nearing
the end of their careers. But much of what they did with their
creative energies—their paintings, photographs, buildings,
compositions, novels, and plays—will remain living in our
culture. Those of us curious to put a face to a name, or to
see where this or that artist worked, will be grateful to visit,
virtually or in person, the massive archive of portraits that
Arnold Newman left behind.

108 109
Plates II
 “ My portraits are not all
‘environmental.’ The
word was inflicted on me.
They are often symbolic. ”

jean arp, artist,

New York, 1949

112 113
 ‹ philip evergood, artist,
New York, 1944
› stuart davis, artist,
New York, 1957

114 115
 ‹ julio le parc, artist,
New York, 1967
› marcel duchamp, artist,
New York, 1966

116 117
 ‹ john guare, playwright,
New York, 1995
› leonard bernstein,
composer and conductor,
New York, 1946

118 119
 ‹ Clapboard houses, West Palm B each,
Florida, 1940: three-dimensional
collage made in 1988
› martha graham, dancer, choreographer
and teacher, New York, 1961

120 121
 “ Form, feeling … structure
and detail … technique and
sensibility: it must all come
together. ”

alfred stieglitz, photographer,

and georgia o’keeffe, artist,
New York, 1944

122 123
 ‹ lilly michaels, artist,
New York, 1959
› isamu noguchi, designer
and sculptor, New York, 1947

124 125
 george grosz, artist,
B ayside, New York, 1942

126 127
 “ The thing is, with Penn or
Avedon, they control totally
the situation in the studio,
and I’m always taking a
chance, wherever I go.”

giorgio de chirico,
artist, Rome, Italy, 1957

128 129
 john f. kennedy, P resident of the U nited States,
with his advisors, White House, Washington, D.C., 1963

130 131
 ‹ anthony caro, sculptor,
L ondon, England, 1966
› marcel duchamp, artist,
New York, 1942

132 133
 Violin shop: patterns on table,
Ph iladelph ia, Pennsylvania, 1941
‹ gil evans, composer and conductor,
location unknown, 1960
› igor stravinsky, composer and
conductor, New York, 1946

134 135
 ‹ Studio still life, New York, 1944:
contact sheet
› charles sheeler, artist and
photographer, New York, 1942

136 137
 ‹ c. p. snow, writer, L ondon,
England, 1966
› kurt gödel, mathematician
and scientist, P rinceton,
New Jersey, 1956

138 139
 “ I think you’ve got to teach
yourself for the most part;
your own thing. ”

charles eames, furniture designer

and architect, Venice, California, 1974

140 141
 ‹ paul strand, photographer, and his wife
hazel, New York, 1966
› henry moore, sculptor, Much Hadham,
Hertfordshire, England, 1966

142 143
 ‹ edward steichen, photographer
and curator, New York, 1955
› w. eugene smith, photographer,
New York, 1977

144 145
 ‹ mitch siporin, artist, New York,
1946
› menashe kadishman, artist,
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel, 1978

146 147
 ‹ joel peter witkin, photographer,
Rockport, Maine, 1988
› max yavno, photographer, L os A ngeles,
California, 1985

148 149
 ‹ francis bacon, artist,
L ondon, England, 1975
› dr. harold edgerton,
scientist and engineer,
Massachusetts I nstitute
of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1962

150 151
 “ You show a certain kind of
empathy with the subject —
I don’t want to use the word
‘sympathy’… You sort of let
them know you’re on their side. ”

bill brandt, photographer,

L ondon, England, 1972

152 153
 ‹ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1941
› philip johnson, architect and
curator, Connecticut, 1949

154 155
 ‹ joan miró, artist,
New York, 1947
› willem de kooning,
artist, New York, 1959

156 157
 ‹ maria bianca mazzarini stronati,
dressmaker, Rome, Italy, 1954
› christian dior, fashion designer,
Paris, F rance, 1956

158 159
 ‹ Jerusalem, Israel, 1982
› jasper johns, artist, Stony Point,
New York, 1980

160 161
 “ For me the studio is a sterile world.
I need to get out; be with people
where they’re at home. ”

agnes de mille, dancer and

choreographer, New York, 1955

162 163
 ‹ milton avery, artist,
New York, 1961
› alex katz, artist,
New York, 1993

164 165
 ‹ georgia o’keeffe, artist,
Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, 1968
› sir peter pears, tenor and musician,
England, 1978

166 167
 “ To go back to the old saying:
Why is it that the best accidents
happen to the best photographers? ”

edward hopper, artist, and his wife jo,

Truro, Massachusetts, 1960

168 169
 ‹ robert doisneau, photographer,
New York, 1981
› ernest trova, artist, Pace Gallery,
New York, 1971

170 171
A Photographer’s Life:
Looking Back at Arnold Newman
arthur ollman

I met Arnold Newman in the early summer of 1981. Ansel Adams other major US museums, followed by five in Europe and two and it gave the world one of the greatest portfolios of portraits
had asked both of us to join him and two other photographers in Japan. ever made. He was able to visit thousands of the world’s most
to teach in his annual Yosemite Workshop. I felt comfortable In curating an exhibition there are dozens of negotiations, powerful and successful men and women, in many cases people
with Arnold upon meeting him, though he was a world-famous both large and small. I thought my negotiating skills were who were famous for their control in all matters, and in each
photographer and a true celebrity in my world, and I was a reasonably strong, but they were as nothing to Arnold’s. If case he was able to get something from them.
34-year-old photographer having a first intoxicating taste of my I wanted a particular image in the show, to Arnold that was He was stubborn, dogmatic, insecure, and a worrier. He
own success. One afternoon, all of the Workshop students and not a very important image. If I wanted to exchange one of was also generous, loyal, sweet, and sensitive. He was famously
teachers went to the High Country around Tenaya Lake. Students our selections for another, I was trying to remove the central domineering and at times very rough on his assistants, many of
were spread out through the forest and along the lakeshore with photograph in his career. He never tired of arguing his point whom felt that he taught them to be demanding of themselves,
every sort of camera and, as I wandered among them, I noticed and would call me several times every day. to be perfectionists. Every one of them has Newman stories,
Arnold seated alone on a log. He looked abandoned and out of most with funny endings.
Ollman: Hello.
place in his sleeveless sweater and sport-coat. Arnold was the When Arnold was a child, his family found that the
Newman: Arthur, I’ve been thinking…
commensurate New Yorker and substantially out of his element economic ladder to prosperity was more akin to a greased pole.
O: Arnold, do you know what time it is here? It’s 5:00 am.
in the wilderness. I had spent five years on a commune in the His father failed as a merchant in the Depression. He moved
N: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was 11:00 there. I always
Maine woods and was nourished by the pristine landscape. the family to Atlantic City, where he managed small hotels,
get mixed up with the time zones.
Arnold seemed to be hoping a taxi might come along to return and then found a similar situation in Miami. Arnold and his
O: Arnold, New York is 8:00, California is 5:00.
him to the Lodge in Yosemite Valley. I sat down on the log with two brothers never went hungry, but they were acutely aware
N: Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll call back later, get some more
him and began a very close 26-year friendship. of their tenuous circumstances. Arnold received a painting
sleep. But, look, as long as you’re up, I was just
At times Arnold seemed like a father to me, offering scholarship to the University of Miami in Coral Gables. He
thinking about the Milton Avery image…
advice, encouragement, and inspiration. Other times he was drew well and had a fine facility with paint, but after two years
O: Arnold! I’m sleeping. Call me later.
like a son, needing someone to provide counsel or simply to he had to leave school to work and make money. He never felt
N: Yeah, OK. But just one thing…
hear him kvetch. After I became the founding director of the economically secure, even decades after he had, by any objective
Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego in 1983, Arnold We had built a warm relationship, filled with bagels, debate, measure, accumulated substantial resources.
agreed to produce his first large-scale traveling museum show, and playful teasing. One day it occurred to me that Arnold His first job after leaving college—working in a
and, for the next year and a half, we worked on Arnold Newman: would never have been able to make the pictures he made had he department-store photography studio in Philadelphia, making
Five Decades. It opened in June of 1986 and traveled from my not been a champion manipulator of people. It is not usually an 49-cent portraits by the hundred—offered little opportunity
institution to the Chicago Art Institute and then on to seven attractive term to use in describing a dear friend, but it was true for variation, but, through the assembly-line approach, he

173
 learned much about lighting and processing images and a famous curmudgeon and could be heartlessly cruel to those harsh. Arnold, learning early not to be intimidated, identified
quickly relaxing and posing his subjects. In his lunch hours who sought his approval, was encouraging to Arnold. In the fall their characters well.
he took to wandering around the city, and he began to make of 1939 Arnold took a more lucrative job in a portrait studio By the late 1940s, as his career materialized, he was in
photographs. He photographed anonymous people on the streets in West Palm Beach. In the summer of 1941 he again visited great demand. It was always emotionally hard for him to turn
of Philadelphia, primarily African Americans. He generally New York and was further encouraged by Stieglitz as well as down an assignment. Magazine work propelled him around the
asked for and received permission to photograph the people Beaumont Newhall, who purchased one of his images for the world and provided the opportunity to work with hundreds
in his pictures. These were not sociological studies, nor were collection at the Museum of Modern Art where Newhall was of extraordinary people. In 1948 he met Augusta Rubenstein,
they political documents, but they linked him with so many the director of the newly formed photography department. On a brilliant and beautiful young woman who was working for
artists of the time in a sympathetic social realism blended visits to New York Arnold began to make portraits of artists and Teddy Kollek, who, years later, became the long-time mayor of
with clean modern formalism. These are largely successful to trade their work for his prints. These were the years when Jerusalem.1 They were raising money and organizing shipments
pictures that quote Walker Evans images. Arnold had seen New York was receiving wave after wave of brilliant artists, of illegal arms to Palestine for the underground armies who were
Evans’s book American Photographs and was powerfully taken writers, scientists and scholars, who were fleeing the Nazi trying to end the British Mandate and establish the new state of
with it. Along with several other young photographers whom expansion. Arnold was aware that New York was becoming the Israel. This was dangerous and clandestine work. Augusta and
arnold newman cropping he had befriended—including Irving Penn and Louis Faurer, all power center of the art world. Arnold were married in 1949. Teddy Kollek was their best man.
sheets of F rancis Crick, 1979
studying with Alexey Brodovitch at the Pennsylvania Museum In 1941, after he had only been making photographs for Two sons followed: Eric in 1950, and David in 1952.
School of Industrial Art—Arnold felt Evans’s gravitational three years, his gestural street portraits of people in their own Arnold never quite believed his good fortune in marrying
pull. The group understood the complex and nourishing environments began to blend with his beautifully balanced Augusta. She motivated, organized, and inspired him. She
interaction in Evans’s work between social statement and a more formal compositions of found objects and urban textures. He helped run the studio that has been characterized as a “mom
dispassionate gathering of facts. In Evans’s photographs people began photographing people where they lived their daily lives, and pop” business. She calmed his insecurities. She provided
are often seen as indivisible from their environment, and that in carefully structured compositions, stressing their connection a compass when he was lost in emotional turmoil. She was his
environment helps to explain who the individuals are. Arnold to their place. Hybridization occurred. The resulting style— memory. If one spent any significant time with the Newmans,
understood this idea immediately, from the influence of Evans a straight-on, frontally organized plane, enlivened by the one heard, “Gus, what was the name of that painter we met
and other photographers, and reinforced by looking through his portrait—identified the joining of these two imaging ideas, in Italy a few years ago when we were with what’s his name?”
own lens. Around this time he had also become aware of the and this formula stayed with him his entire career. Or, “What year did I photograph De Gaulle?” And the answer
Farm Security Administration photographers, notably Dorothea In early 1942 he tried to enlist in the military, but was given would invariably be there.
Lange, Russell Lee, and Arthur Rothstein. a medical deferment. For the next several years he returned to Arnold more often than not worked in the personal space of
While roaming the streets with his camera, he encountered New York periodically to continue making artists’ portraits. his subject and he entered always with the respectful attitude of
forms and subjects that he had not considered before as potential Many of his most famous images were made in these first few a guest. The subjects were in their element. A supremely skilled
subjects for art: dilapidated clapboard houses, discarded years between 1941 and 1946, including portraits of Max Ernst observer, Arnold quickly assessed the room and the person,
machinery, old cars parked in front of older warehouses with (p. 57), George Grosz (pp. 126, 127), Marc Chagall (p. 53), Piet taking in the light, the scale and configuration of the space, the
weathered industrial brick and peeling paint, obsolete signage. Mondrian (p. 85), and Alfred Stieglitz with Georgia O’Keeffe objects in the room that might be useful, as well as the body
He began to see these things not only as signifiers of a sense (p. 123). By 1945 he had been offered his first major show, titled language and gestures, and the expressions of the individual.
of place, but also as interesting compositional elements. As Artists Look Like This at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The He had generally taken the time to research the person’s life
a student of painting in college he had confronted the blank entire exhibition was purchased by the museum. The national and work. From this mix of information he could begin to
rectangle of the canvas and he recognized that the visual attention this show received and the new income from this conceptualize and manipulate the scene and the subject.
structure of an image provided the “place” in which a subject large sale encouraged him to move to New York permanently in During a shoot, Arnold could command, charm, bully,
might exist. And the character of that space depended on the 1946. He was soon getting assignments for national magazines cajole, bungle, or flatter to get his subject to reveal something
tensions he could create within it. such as Harper’s Bazaar, Fortune and Life, which assigned him to deeper than their usual “camera face.” It was not that he wanted
In 1939 Arnold took some of his work to Alfred Stieglitz at photograph Eugene O’Neill and Igor Stravinsky (pp. 134–35). to attack or scuttle their self-presentation, he just sought
An American Place Gallery in New York. Stieglitz, who was Both of these men were at times frighteningly demanding and something more authentic, more honest, more revealing, and

174 175
 less practiced than the face that the famous have learned to head cocked slightly and his eyes squinted as if to focus more session with composer Aaron Copland shows the subtlety of
present. Some of his sitters were performing artists, and the clearly on what was transpiring. He lifted his hand to cradle the photographer’s process (overleaf). Over the span of eight
postures he employed with them often refer directly to their his chin. Instantly the shutter tripped, and the exposure was exposures Copland alters his posture and expression very little,
work. His image of Martha Graham (p. 121) was constructed made. Arnold, responding to the changes in Geisel’s face but the difference these alterations makes is extraordinary.
of almost empty space—a dance barre, a wall outlet, floor and posture, attacked with a cobra’s speed and precision. He At first he looks sleepy and his eyes are hidden behind his
molding, and the dancer/choreographer in a pyramidal had been softening him, entertaining him with clumsiness, spectacles. He is seated in profile, probably on his piano bench.
costume. The triangle, being the most stable shape in nature, waiting him out. As Geisel exchanged his “camera face” for By asking him to remove his glasses, to lean forward to change
is juxtaposed with a near vacuum on the right side of the frame. genuine bemusement, Arnold located a more authentic, natural the angle of his back a little, and put his lips lightly together,
The void seems to call Graham to unwind into it. In this way expression. Arnold’s final image (opposite), made of two prints Arnold makes Copland come alive, staring intently as if
Arnold shows us her choreography of stillness. torn and overlaid one on the other, magically captures Geisel’s listening carefully. His strong profile becomes animated. As the
In 1985 I arranged for Arnold to photograph the writer joviality and the animation that Arnold had observed. director of a collaboration, Arnold created a logical, balanced
Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss), who had been a patron of my museum. Episodes like this were unplanned and required Arnold to be wholeness in the proscenium walls of the picture frame. “I don’t
Arnold asked me to accompany and observe him at work, and remarkably observant. Any expression, gesture, or posture might take a photograph. I build it.” 2
to help carry his equipment. We met Geisel in his home in be useful. His portrait of the photographer Joel Meyerowitz A portrait session is always a constructed, synthetic
La Jolla, California. Arnold had purchased a number of Dr. in his studio (pp. 218–19) shows a wonderful combination enterprise. Two or more people are creating an artificial
Seuss books and asked Geisel if he would inscribe them to his of the subject’s playfulness and Arnold’s own formal ease. moment. The tacit agreement of one person to allow another
grandchildren. Geisel had often been photographed and knew The composition is nearly congruent with his famous Martha to scrutinize and represent them is marked, ironically, by both
what was expected of him. He leaned forward, propped his Graham image. Meyerowitz even strikes a dance-like pose. He cooperative and competitive interests. Regarding the subject
elbows on his desk, and rested his chin on his nested hands. gracefully extends an arm across his chest and makes a “back- of a portrait, Richard Avedon has famously stated: “We have
theodor geisel (dr. seuss) , writer
and illustrator, L a Jolla, California, 1985 He looked casual and approachable. Arnold rummaged through handed” exposure with his Leica as Arnold releases his shutter. separate ambitions for the image. His need to plead his case
his camera cases and announced that he couldn’t find his cable Meyerowitz photographs Newman as Newman photographs probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control
release. He checked his pockets and asked me if I could run out Meyerowitz. One can easily imagine Meyerowitz dancing into is with me.” Newman was not as overt as Avedon in his desire
to the car and see if it had possibly fallen out. I returned with no the blank right side of the frame. The image is a rarity in its to unmask his subjects, or strip their egos bare, but he was
cable release, whereupon Arnold exclaimed that he had found casual humor. Meanwhile, the crisp geometry of the Mondrian not interested in making images that simply confirmed what
it in his sport-coat pocket. Then, with his Hasselblad mounted portrait (p. 85) is constructed just as he built his art, squares we already know. He may have manipulated the subject into a
on the tripod, he began to have trouble locking it into a secure and rectangles carefully placed. There is no sense of animation; particular posture or expression, but only very rarely did he
position and it kept drooping downward. Finally that problem only the artist’s wrist and hand delicately draped bespeak his allow himself the editorial pleasure of attacking a subject.
was solved and Arnold asked Geisel’s permission to remove his elegant stasis. Arnold’s image of Max Ernst (p. 57) is a virtual The famous image of Alfried Krupp is the best known of
jacket and sleeveless sweater, as the room was too warm for miracle of happenstance. The cartoon bird-like shape emerging the latter. Arnold illustrated his own disgust for this monster
him. He lifted his sweater and exposed several inches of his from Ernst’s cigarette smoke is identical to a repeating figure in of a man. A convicted war criminal, whose factory ran on slave
ample belly. I began to feel uncomfortable with what seemed his art, Lop Lop, who is Ernst’s alter ego. There is no sufficient labor making armaments for the German war effort, Krupp
to be Arnold’s ineptitude. Suddenly he shockingly dropped explanation for this, except that if you work long enough and trustingly faced Newman in 1963. The image Arnold made
his light meter, and fortunately it bounced off his foot and slid hard enough you are occasionally the recipient of a gift. is one of photography’s most famous character assassinations.
gently across the floor. As he reached down to pick it up, he Arnold relied on a number of postures if the sitter seemed Positioned in a concrete, bunker-like opening, overlooking
accidentally kicked it a bit further. He mumbled something unable to present something natural. He may have asked the a vast, ghoulish green assembly line, Krupp’s face is lit from
apologetic and I thought to myself that Arnold at age 68 was no sitter to turn in profile (Piet Mondrian, p. 85, or Marcel both sides, which creates a dark skeletal mask of shadow on
longer the pro he had once been and I was embarrassed for him. Duchamp, p. 117), or to prop his head with his hands (Pablo his angular features. His clasped hands create a chain-like
Geisel was losing patience as well. He began to fidget. He leaned Picasso, p. 93; Alfried Krupp, p. 99; Carl Sandburg, p. 237). pedestal to support his face. Dark shadows hide his eyes and
back in his chair and propped one foot casually on the edge of Another of his signature motifs is the subject contemplatively accentuate his remarkable beak-like nose. The image shows
his desk. His expression changed to one of patient doubt, his withdrawing into himself (Eero Saarinen, p. 86). His portrait a demon, a hellish gorgon presiding over a chilling domain.

176 177
 Among all of Arnold’s subjects, many readily recognizable
to the public, few were brought to public importance because of
their faces. Yet most understood that Arnold would draw from
their encounter something that might act as a form of currency,
a signifier of elite status. In most of Arnold’s portraits we see
his subjects in the setting of their struggles and victories, their
tools on hand, be they pianos, manuscripts, or brushes. There is
always the hint of conquest and pride in the celebrity portrait.
“I have been fortunate to photograph the great and the famous
and sometimes the infamous all over the world and in all walks
of life. But most of my subjects are not famous. And just what
is fame? One can be famous on one side of the ocean and totally
unknown on the other side, or in one country or city, but not
in another. And just how long does fame last? And what is fame
when it is used to describe a person of true accomplishment?
How is it different from the ‘celebrity’ syndrome created by
public relations as grist for the media and an obsessed public?”3
The people in Arnold’s images are never active. The painters
are not painting, the statesmen are not orating, the musicians
are not playing. All of his subjects are in the act of posing for a
photograph. They are conscious of being scrutinized and aware
of the artifice of the enterprise. They are participating in this
drama and the role they are playing is that of themselves. With
very few exceptions Arnold’s images identify one serious person
aaron copland, composer and
after another. A smile denotes a quickly passing moment. One
conductor, Peekskill, New York,
1959: contact sheet and selected cannot hold a convincing smile more than a few seconds before
cropped frame

it wilts and sours. Arnold felt a portrait needed to reflect the
seriousness of the endeavor; a memorializing moment, dignified
and timeless.
Importantly, he liked to find rhyming shapes within a
composition. A head may be counterpoised with a similarly
sized oval shape in a nearby painting, as in the 1942 portrait
of Marc Chagall (p. 53). Francis Bacon, who looks out from
the image, malign and disconcerting, stands under a bare bulb
that glows paper white in approximately the shape and size
of his head (p. 150). Jackson Pollock stares with indifference
toward us while the human skull on a rear shelf seems to take
inordinate interest in him (overleaf). These motifs are visual
hooks that Arnold built into his work, so that the sitter and their
environment were locked in clear dialogue. This strategy makes

178 179
 the images seem unchangeable; a perfect harmony between Elizabeth Greenberg, Arnold’s full-time assistant from 1991 at the instant of exposure, but each frame seems considered,
person and place. to 1994, and then part-time for the next six years, stated, “He carefully assembled. This consistently high quality testifies
Most of Arnold’s assignments were for editorial uses. had a way of reading a personality and could find a key to most to Arnold’s demanding, economical, and precise procedure.
He did far less advertising work than his contemporaries people.” She was with him on a 1993 trip to Tunis, Tunisia, Never cluttered, his images bespeak spareness of means and
Richard Avedon or Irving Penn. And after his first few years to photograph Yasser Arafat, the exiled leader of the Palestine his signature eloquent clarity. And they rarely contain more
as a professional, he rarely did fashion work. The latter were Liberation Organization, for Life magazine. Arnold was a deeply than a subject and a well-composed set of amplifying elements.
high-paying gigs. They required elegance, savoir faire, utter committed supporter of Israel, with close ties to its entire elite Arnold shot frontally, the space geometrically divided. He
command, and confidence. Fashion photography also provides political structure, yet he and Arafat charmed each other. rarely employed substantial depth, and depth was never the
access to a fast-moving, hip, and privileged world of the wealthy Not every session was a delight. Elizabeth recalls a portrait focus of the image. He was often required to shoot a group
and beautiful. Arnold was not of this world, nor was he at ease session with Ellsworth Kelly, at Kelly’s country estate. Arnold portrait, particularly as part of a corporate report. It is difficult
in it. He was interested in portraits and human accomplishment. and Elizabeth had been invited to spend the night, so they had to make such pictures interesting. We can all recall seeing
It was through those he encountered in making portraits that he packed overnight bags. Arnold took some time to compose the images of a group of corporate officers lined up like tombstones
learned about art, science, and literature. He did not consider portrait carefully. Before he could make an exposure, Kelly got around their boardroom table. While it is not true to say that
himself a scholar, in spite of his nine honorary Ph.D.s. Rather he up from his chair, walked over to the camera, picked up the Arnold made one extraordinary group portrait after another,
was an autodidact with a thousand teachers. tripod, and moved it to another spot, saying, “It’ll look better he did make some remarkably interesting ones that illustrate
He had a fluent and disarming manner with the famous and from here.” While Arnold never showed his fury, and completed the high level of his invention. Many more variables are in play
accomplished people that he photographed. He conversed easily the assignment, he whispered to Elizabeth, “Get the bags. We’re and the subject of the image is not really the individuals: It is
with them, and had hundreds of anecdotes about other sessions leaving.” He remained angry for hours on the way back to the the strength, or cleverness, or creativity of the company they
he had had with extraordinary people. Subjects might imagine city. Careful positioning and exacting composition were sacred represent. Arnold might, as he did with an image of Presidential
themselves in the company of royalty, Nobel laureates and famous to him. For Arnold, some sins might be forgivable. This was not aides to John F. Kennedy, divide a large number of people into
artists by having Arnold Newman photograph them. I was friendly one of them. smaller groupings, in this case in front of a portion of the White
with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle and was assembling a library Though precision marked his work, he continued to alter House. In this image, threesomes are clustered separately,
jackson pollock, artist, of photography books for her at her home and studio in La Jolla, an image in printing and cropping. Even after he had found the making a set of simpler compositional problems. Then he
L ong Island, New York, 1949
California. I put Niki and Arnold together for a portrait session. ideal configuration, he might go back and try to improve it. He assembled five groups of these threesomes by varying their
He arrived with a 1949 Life magazine cover that he had shot of a often repeated that Stieglitz had taught him that he could do positions. The result is a seemingly relaxed gathering of bright
19-year-old Niki accompanying a fashion spread. She was one of whatever he wanted to a photograph: The important thing was and attentive colleagues (a variant is shown on pp. 130–31).
several society debutantes wearing the latest designs. Niki barely the final image. Watching him move two mat-board corners to Over the decades Arnold made a few images of architecture
remembered that she had done such a session fifty years earlier and test cropping ideas was like watching a meticulous surgeon (see and landscape, a few industrial images, and, of course, his early
had no recollection that Arnold Newman was the photographer. p. 174). When he found the perfect balances he would mark the street photographs. A smaller subspecies in his portfolio are his
She was flattered and treated him like an old friend after that test print accordingly and make a new one. A final image would cut and reassembled collages that began very early in his career,
introduction. The session was relaxed and playful. be referred to each time that negative was printed. No matter around 1939. These experiments challenged the sacredness
In 1977 Arnold went to the New York apartment of who his darkroom assistant was, his prints were uniform, even of photographic prints. He cut them, tore them, taped pieces
the writer Truman Capote to make a portrait (p. 89). The when made twenty years apart. The organization of his negatives together, and pasted other materials on them. Each image is
summer day was inordinately hot, and there had been a power and prints was equally impressive. He could retrieve any item intrinsically unrepeatable. He often applied this mannered
blackout. Arnold had to climb the stairs, as the elevator was from his entire career in a minute or less, as well as identify the methodology to iconoclastic artists and writers—Andy Warhol
not working. He found Capote dealing with the sweltering heat date the negative was made. (overleaf), Larry Rivers (p. 241), Henry Miller (p. 242)—
by walking around in his undershorts. When he began to dress Astonishing consistency is also a mark of his shooting and to playful ones, like Dr. Seuss (p. 176).
for the shoot, Arnold, who was quite aware of Capote’s love of sessions. There are thousands of proof-sheets with literally Only a small percentage of Arnold’s portraits were of
eccentricity, told him to just relax on the sofa as he was, sport- no badly made pictures; no poor, imbalanced, or casually women. Women, of course, were not well represented in most
coat, hat and no trousers. Capote couldn’t have been happier. unconscious compositions. A subject may have blinked or moved industries, including the arts, during his most active years.

180 181
 andy warhol, artist, For several decades much of his work was assigned by magazine
The Factory, New York,
1973 editors. Indeed, one might profitably study the complex world
of magazines and their gender coverage from the 1940s through
the 1990s. However, Arnold also self-assigned, and so this
raises questions for me. The portrait enterprise creates a kind
of intimacy, a sort of seeing below the surface, penetrating
the mask of the subject. The figurative nakedness of the
subject heightens the photographer’s responsibility to treat this
vulnerability carefully. Arnold grew up with no sisters and had
no daughters. I believe that women were always mysterious
to him, that he was uncomfortable in stripping their personae
away. He had a more tenuous grasp of their psychological
workings. To Arnold, women were a species apart. It is as
though he expected men to be extraordinary; a successful
woman seemed to surprise him. Though his images of Martha
Graham, Ayn Rand, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Golda
Meir, Niki de Saint Phalle, and a number of others are quite
well known, they are vastly outnumbered by male subjects.
What do we get from viewing the faces and places of the
famous? A recognition that they have feet of clay? That they
are just like us? I don’t think so. We find ways of heroicizing
them regardless of what their feet are made of. Does it satisfy
simple curiosity? Perhaps, somewhat. In Arnold’s own words:
“Sometimes the portrait gives more than the likeness and more
even than the subject seen in person.” He goes on to say: “… it
provides a distillation, perhaps an opinion, or an interpretation.
No picture, of course, stands instead of an individual. One must
remember, no matter how fine the image and how copious the
information it offers, it is not more than a photograph. It may be
easily set aside.” 4
I believe our looking provides a degree of intimacy, a sense
that we have an inside view of someone we could never have
access to on our own. Arnold Newman was there, and was
able to get very close to these people who largely shaped the
twentieth century. And he presents that opportunity to us.
The advantage we have, aside from not carrying the equipment,
is that the person in the photograph cannot scrutinize us.

182 183
Plates III
 “ I realized you could be only one
thing at a time, and I had to put
all my energy towards one thing—
to experiment with photography. ”

eikoh hosoe, photographer,

New York, 1991

186 187
 ‹ claes oldenburg, artist,
New York, 1969
› ayn rand, writer, philosopher
and lecturer, New York, 1964

188 189
 ‹ West Palm B each, Florida,
1986
› ellsworth kelly, artist,
Spencertown, New York, 1992:
unretouched work print

190 191
 ‹ Lifta, Arab village, near Jerusalem,
Israel, 1982
› aaron siskind, photographer and
teacher, New York, 1976

192 193
 dr. edwin h. land, with group of Polaroid
employees, Needham, Massachusetts, 1977

194 195
 ‹ robert moses, architect and
urban developer, Roosevelt Island,
New York, 1959
› frank lloyd wright, architect,
Taliesin East, Wisconsin, 1947

196 197
 ‹ eli wallach and anne jackson,
actors, Julliard Theater, New York, 1984
› hans neleman, photographer,
New York, 1988

198 199
 “ I’d love to be able to use the
word ‘portrait’ without all
the old connotations and
barnacles attached to it.
That’s all. It’s very simple. ”

gore vidal, writer,

New York, 1946

200 201
 ‹ vicente wolf, interior designer,
New York, 1982
› henry geldzahler, art historian
and curator, New York, 1972

202 203
 ‹ yevgeny yevtushenko, writer
and poet, New York, 1993
› de angelo, restaurant proprietor,
Naples, Italy, 1954

204 205
 ‹ geoffrey holder, dancer,
choreographer and artist,
New York, 1986
› jerome robbins, dancer and
choreographer, New York, 1958:
contact sheet

206 207
 ‹ philip glass, composer,
New York, 1981
› david hockney, artist and
photographer, Paris, F rance, 1975

208 209
 ‹ Door of warehouse, West Palm B each,
Florida, 1941
› twyla tharp, dancer and choreographer,
New York, 1987

210 211
 meyer berger, New York Times
reporter, New York, 1951

212 213
 ‹ norman mailer, writer,
P rovincetown, Massachusetts, 1952
› david hare, sculptor,
P rovincetown, Massachusetts, 1952

214 215
 ‹ Palm Beach, Florida, 1986
› berenice abbott, photographer,
New York, 1986

216 217
 joel meyerowitz, photographer,
New York, 1993

218 219
 ‹ For “Top Brass”, commissioned article
on missile launcher, 1958
› Empire State antenna, New York, 1953

220 221
 “ There is a big blistering front,
and most people have it —until you
overcome it, or compensate for it. ”

rawleigh warner, jr.,

Chairman of Mobil Oil,
New York, 1978

222 223
 ‹ shelagh delaney, playwright,
Manchester, England, 1961
› sir john gielgud and
sir ralph richardson,
actors, Duke of York Theatre,
L ondon, England, 1978

224 225
 ‹ From an essay on Philadelphia, 1965
› leland hayward, film, television
and theater producer, New York, 1955

226 227
 ‹ arnold glimcher, art dealer,
Pace Gallery, New York, 1972
› franz kline, artist,
P rovincetown, Massachusetts, 1960

228 229
 ‹ Palm Beach, Florida, 1986
› mon levinson, artist,
New York, 1969

230 231
 ‹ New England barns, Tyringham,
Massachusetts, 1983
› robert moskowitz, artist,
New York, 1990

232 233
 pierre boulez, composer and
conductor, New York, 1969
‹ lisette model, photographer,
New York, 1980
› tony smith, artist, New York,
1967

234 235
 “ I must confess that I’m not as good
a journalist. My heart is not in it.
I’m basically interested in doing this
one thing that says a great deal. ”

carl sandburg, writer, poet

and journalist, New York, 1955

236 237
 ‹ paul auster, writer, Brooklyn,
New York, 1993
› New York skyline: buildings
from above 40 Wall Street,
New York, 1946

238 239
 ‹ frederick kiesler, architect, stage
designer and artist, New York, 1962
› larry rivers, artist, S outh Hampton,
New York, 1975

240 241
 henry miller, writer, L os A ngeles,
California, 1976

242 243
 “ People say, ‘What right do
you have to an opinion?’ Are
we supposed to go through life
opinionless? Then we’re nothing
more than automatic machines
taking pictures.”

arnold newman in his apartment,

32 West 67th Street, New York, 1974

244 245
Selected Biographies

corinne currat

berenice abbott (1898–1991), renowned American paul auster (born 1947), American novelist. After pietro belluschi (1899–1994), Italian-born
photographer, who also played a key role in preserving graduating from Columbia University, he moved to Paris American architect. After graduating from the
the work of the French photographer Eugène Atget. where he became a translator. He returned to the U.S. in University of Rome, he moved to the U.S. in 1924. He
She learned the craft of photography from Man Ray 1974 and began his writing career. His series of mystery studied at Cornell University and joined the architecture
in Paris, before opening her own portrait studio in novels, published as The New York Trilogy (1987), were office of A. E. Doyle. His first large-scale project was
1923. Famous names that passed through her studio critically acclaimed and feature one of the recurring the Portland Art Museum in Oregon (1929). In 1942,
included Jean Cocteau and James Joyce. Returning themes in Auster’s work, the question of identity. Moon he opened his own practice and achieved international
to New York in the late 1920s, she began a series of Palace (1990), Leviathan (1993), and Mr Vertigo (1994) are recognition with projects including the St. Thomas More
photographs documenting the city for the Works among his major works. He has also written screenplays Chapel (1941) and the Equitable Building (1945–48).
Progress Administration. These were published in 1939 and directed The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007). From 1951 to 1965, he was Dean of Architecture and
as Changing New York. She taught at the New School for Urban Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Social Research from 1935 to 1958. milton avery (1885/1893–1965), American painter.
In 1925, after living, working and studying in Hartford, david ben-gurion (1886–1973), Israeli politician,
josef albers (1888–1976), German painter, Connecticut, he moved to New York. From 1926, he militant Zionist, and prime minister of Israel from 1948
printmaker, sculptor, designer, writer, and teacher. devoted himself to painting. Often called the American to 1953 and 1955 to 1963. Born David Andrew Grün
He is best known for his series Homages to the Square Matisse, he mainly painted portraits and landscapes. in Poland, he became a leading figure in the Jewish
(1950–76) and his book The Interaction of Color (1963). His works from the 1960s, with their tendency to renaissance. Nicknamed the “armed prophet,” he was
A highly influential educator, he began his career at the abstraction, influenced the artists Mark Rothko, one of the few Jewish settlers in Palestine in 1906. In the
Bauhaus in Weimar after studying under Johannes Itten. Adolph Gottlieb (q.v.), and Barnett Newman (q.v.). 1930s, he stood strongly in favor of the creation of an
After the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, he emigrated Israeli homeland. In accordance with a United Nations
to the U.S. He taught at Black Mountain College, North francis bacon (1909–92), Anglo-Irish painter. resolution, he declared the establishment of the state of
Carolina (1933–49), where his students included Chuck Having spent time in Berlin and Paris, and worked Israel on May 14, 1948.
Close and Lucas Samaras (q.v.). He then became head of as an interior decorator, he devoted himself entirely
the Design department at Yale University. to painting after 1943. The human figure was at the meyer berger (1898–1959), American journalist.
center of his work, distorted and deformed, and usually For three decades, he was a senior reporter with the
tom armstrong (1932–2011), American art critic isolated. His shocking and powerful paintings are notably New York Times. He was best known for the column
and museum director. He studied painting at Cornell influenced by the works of Rembrandt, Grünewald, “About New York,” containing anecdotes about the city
University and museum studies at the Institute of Fine Van Gogh and the photography of Eadweard Muybridge. and its people, which appeared regularly in the Times
Arts, New York University. A specialist in American art, from 1939 to 1940 and from 1953 to 1959. In 1950, he
he served as director of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller alfred hamilton barr, jr. (1902–1981), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a report on a mass
Folk Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the American art historian and highly influential museum murder in Camden, New Jersey.
Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and director. He studied art history and archeology at
the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. He was also Princeton University from 1918 to 1923, then spent a leonard bernstein (1918–90), American
chairman of the Garden Conservancy. year traveling in Europe. While pursuing his Ph.D. at conductor, composer, and pianist. His major conducting
Harvard, he taught at Vassar College (1923–24), Harvard debut occurred in 1943 when he replaced Bruno
jean (hans) arp (1886–1966), Franco-German (1924–25), Princeton (1925–26), and Wellesley College Walter at a concert by the New York Philharmonic.
sculptor, painter, printmaker, and poet. Born Peter (1926–27). In 1929, he accepted the newly created He subsequently became music director of the New York
Wilhelm, he became a pioneer of abstract art and one position of director of the Museum of Modern Art, New City Symphony Orchestra, was invited to conduct at La
of the founders of the Zurich Dada group. He was also York. A key catalyst in making modern art acceptable Scala in Milan, and eventually became music director
an active member of the Surrealist and Constructivist to the general public, Barr also initiated the creation of of the New York Philharmonic. Also an acclaimed
movements. His interest in biomorphism and the MoMA’s permanent collection of modern art. composer, he wrote the musical West Side Story (1957).
concept of chance had a considerable influence on the
development of twentieth-century art. william baziotes (1912–63), American painter, marc blitzstein (1905–64), Russian-born American
associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement composer. Inspired by Igor Stravinsky (q.v.), then
sir frederick ashton (1904–88), British dancer by his shared interest in automatism, dreams, and fear. by Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill, he composed
and choreographer, who was a major creative force His first solo exhibition was held at Peggy Guggenheim’s symphonies, ballets, operas, and music for plays and
behind the Royal Ballet from its founding. Prior New York Gallery in 1944 and made his name. His works films. The political content of his works caused a great
to establishing himself as a dancer, he was already are populated by strange biomorphic creatures. deal of controversy. The Cradle Will Rock (1937), a musical
choreographing his first ballets, including The Tragedy allegory of corruption, was initially forced to close but
of Fashion. He danced with the Ida Rubenstein Company sir cecil beaton (1904–80), British photographer was later staged by the Mercury Theater Company in
(directed by Nijinsky’s younger sister, Bronislava and designer. He was the leading fashion photographer New York and ran for more than 100 performances.
Nijinska) and worked regularly with the Ballet Rambert for the publisher Condé Nast and Vogue magazine
before collaborating with the Vic-Wells Ballet, which from 1929 until the start of World War II, and also pierre boulez (born 1925), French composer,
became the Royal Ballet in 1956; he was its director photographed the British royal family. His passion for conductor, and teacher. In 1944, he studied under
from 1964 to 1970. Over his sixty-year career, he staging and architecture can be seen in his fashion Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1954,
choreographed more than a hundred ballets, including photography. After his collaboration with Vogue ended, he launched the Concerts du Petit Marigny in Paris, later
Symphonic Variations (1948), Ondine (1958), and La Fille he mainly worked on set and costume designs for theater known as the Concerts du Domaine Musical, dedicated
mal gardée (1960). and film. to modern music. He has served as chief conductor of

257
 the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1971–75) and as music His first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) was a huge her career as a writer after gaining her Master’s from charles eames (1907–78), American architect and theodor seuss geisel (1904–91), American (q.v.), he laid down the theoretical foundations of
director of the New York Philharmonic (1971–77). success, while his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) was Columbia University, and went on to collaborate with furniture designer. He worked in collaboration with children’s writer and illustrator. Under the name Abstract Expressionism in 1943. He is best known for
He was also the founder and director of the Institut de immortalized as a film directed by Blake Edwards and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the his wife Ray for forty years. They believed in designing Dr. Seuss, he published 46 books, including The Cat his Burst series, large-scale abstract paintings featuring
Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique at the starring Audrey Hepburn. Rockefeller Institute, and the New York NYU-Bellevue high-quality furniture that was accessible to all. The pair in the Hat (1954) and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). oppositions of shapes and colors.
Centre Pompidou (1977–92). An influential educator, Medical Center. not only made a mark in the history of contemporary A talented draughtsman from a young age, he worked
he taught at Harvard (1962–63) and at the Collège de sir anthony caro (born 1924), British sculptor furniture but were also pioneers of modern architecture in advertising and made documentary films before martha graham (1894–1991), American dancer,
France (1976–95). and teacher. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools salvador dalí (1904–89), Spanish painter, and built the famous Eames House or Case Study House publishing his first children’s book in 1936. He is choreographer, and teacher. A pioneer of modern dance,
in London, then an assistant to Henry Moore (q.v.) draughtsman, illustrator, sculptor, writer, and film #8 (1945–49), using prefabricated materials. From 1955 famed for his quirky characters and minimalist use she produced more than 180 works in her 53-year career.
bill brandt (1904–83), German-born British for two years, he is one of the pioneers of abstract director. Famed for his eccentricity, he was one of the on, they also produced short films. of vocabulary—sometimes only fifty different words Her innovative technique was based on breathing,
photographer, famed for his experimental photographs sculpture, using materials of all kinds, including wood, major figures of the Surrealist movement, his dreamlike per book. contraction, and release. Sets and costumes were also
of the 1940s that distort and manipulate women’s bodies. steel, bronze, ceramics, paper, and Perspex. In 1963, works filled with recurring symbols such as melting dr harold edgerton (1903–90), American carefully designed to amplify the dramatic power of the
He learned the craft of photography in Austria and then an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London watches and grasshoppers. One of his innovations was scientist and photographer. In 1948, he was appointed henry geldzahler (1935–94), Belgian-born movements. She founded the Martha Graham Center of
in Paris, notably from Man Ray. Inspired by André brought him attention. In 1975, he became the subject the “paranoiac-critical method” of artistic creation. Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts American curator and critic. For three decades, he Contemporary Dance in New York in 1926, where her
Kertész and Eugène Atget, he produced photo essays of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New In the late 1930s, the increasing commercialization of Institute of Technology. While he is noted for his occupied prestigious posts that gave him considerable pupils included iconic dancer Merce Cunningham.
on the streets of Paris and London, where he settled York. His work as a tutor at St. Martin’s School of Art his work and his refusal to denounce fascism led to his advancement of stroboscopy and electronic flash and controversial power on the New York art scene.
in 1931. His work was published in Picture Post, Lilliput, in London (1953–81) was also highly influential. exclusion by the Surrealists. photography, the biggest impact was made by his He was curator for American art at the Metropolitan chaim gross (1904–91), Austrian-born American
Weekly Illustrated, and Verve. photographs capturing sequences of movement that are Museum of Art, director of the visual arts program sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, and painter.
henri cartier-bresson (1908–2004), French stuart davis (1892–1964), American painter. He invisible to the naked eye: a splashing droplet of milk, of the National Endowment for the Arts, and then After arriving in New York in 1921, he studied at the
brassaï (1899–1984), Hungarian-born French photographer who founded the renowned Magnum was influenced by the works of the Ashcan School, then a bullet passing through an apple, and athletes in motion. Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City. Educational Alliance Art School and the Art Students
photographer, draughtsman, sculptor, and writer. agency in 1947, together with Robert Capa, David by his discovery of European modernism following the A friend to many artists, he was painted by several of League. A passionate draughtsman from a young age,
Born Gyula Halász, he took his first pictures in 1930 Seymour, and George Rodger. His book Images à la Armory Show in New York in 1913. In the 1920s, he max ernst (1891–1976), German painter, printmaker, them, including David Hockney (q.v.), Larry Rivers he nonetheless became noted as a sculptor. Wood was
when he had been living in Paris for six years. He first sauvette (1952) formulated the concept of the “decisive experimented with Cubism, but his subjects, taken from and sculptor, naturalized American (1948), then French (q.v.) and Frank Stella, and was also filmed by Andy his favored medium for depicting subjects taken from
found success with the publication of the book Paris by moment,” which shaped photography for three decades. consumer goods and advertising, prefigured the Pop Art (1958). A major artist of the twentieth century, he was a Warhol (q.v.). popular culture: the circus, holidays, and children.
Night (1933), a collection of images that capture an often His reportage work took him to Africa, Spain, Mexico, of the 1960s. Davis was a fervent promoter of artistic member of the Dada group before joining the Surrealists
somber world of cafés, brothels, and night-workers. Russia, India, and China, and he photographed some of freedom and the rights of the artist. He was an active in 1922. Keenly experimental, with a particular interest sir john gielgud (1904–2000), British actor, george grosz (1893–1959), German painter and
Outside of his personal work, he collaborated with many the most famous people of the twentieth century. In the member of the Artists’ Union from 1934. in automatism, he developed several art techniques director, producer, and writer. Recognized as the draughtsman (born Georg Grosz). A member of the
magazines including Minotaure, Verve, Labyrinthe, Lilliput, 1930s, he worked as assistant to Jean Renoir on three including frottage, grattage, and decalcomania. His greatest Shakespearian actor of the twentieth century, Dada movement, he is most famous for his caricatures
Coronet, Life, and Harper’s Bazaar. films, including La vie est à nous (1936), and he directed shelagh delaney (1939–2011), British writer. imaginative world is simultaneously fantastical, poetic, he gave definitive performances as Hamlet and Richard of German officers and the ruling classes. Enlisted in the
two documentaries for CBS (1969–70). After leaving school, she held a variety of menial jobs, dark, and threatening. II. Over the course of his seventy-year career, he also German army during World War I, he was profoundly
manuel alvarez bravo (1902–2002), Mexican but already believed that writing was her vocation. At brought memorable energy to roles in plays by Oscar affected by his experiences on the battlefield. Discharged
photographer. The father of art photography in Mexico, marc chagall (1887–1985), Russian-born French the age of nineteen, she wrote A Taste of Honey; she had gil evans (1912–88), Canadian-born American pianist, Wilde, Anton Chekhov, and Harold Pinter. His movie in 1915, he began to exorcise his virulent hatred of the
he took his first photographs at the age of twenty. In painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, ceramicist, originally intended it to be a novel but then adapted it arranger, conductor, and composer. Born Ian Ernest career was also prolific, with more than thirty films to army through his works. He emigrated to the U.S. in
1927, he met Tina Modotti, who introduced him to and writer. Originally known as Mark Zakharovich into a play. It was a huge success. Her later work included Gilmore Green, he became a great jazz innovator, working his credit. 1933 before Hitler came to power.
Diego Rivera and Edward Weston. Although he traveled Shagal, or Moses Shagal, he became a major figure in short stories, screenplays, and radio plays. with Miles Davis on his album Miles Ahead in 1956, with
throughout Europe and the U.S., his main sources of the École de Paris, depicting a dreamlike world filled Lee Konitz in 1980, and with Sting in 1987. He also philip glass (born 1937), American musician and john guare (born 1958), American dramatist. In
inspiration were Mexico, its people, and its folklore. with flowers, animals and loving couples, in glowing christian dior (1905–57), French couturier. One recorded several albums himself, including Out of the Cool composer, a pioneer of minimalist music. He studied 1964, after graduating from Georgetown University
He also documented the work of the Mexican muralists. colors. As well as for his paintings, he was internationally of the most influential designers in fashion history, he (1960). From 1984 to 1988, he and his band played every at the University of Chicago, at the Juilliard School in (1960) and Yale School of Drama (1963), he wrote his
His photographs were published in the journal Minotaure renowned for his sets for the Opéra de Paris and the presented his first collection in 1947, launching the Monday night at the Sweet Basil jazz club in New York. New York, and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud, before first off-off-Broadway play. In 1968, he won an Obie
and the magazine Mexican Folkways. Metropolitan Opera in New York, his book illustrations, “New Look” and creating strongly shaped female moving to Europe and studying with the musician and Award for Muzeeka, but it was his semi-autobiographical
and his majestic stained-glass windows. silhouettes with long, full skirts, narrow waists, and philip evergood (1901–73), American painter. instructor Nadia Boulanger. On his return to New York play House of Blue Leaves (1971) that established him on
alexey brodovitch (1898–1971), Russian-born rounded shoulders. The first Dior fragrance, Miss Born Philip Blashki, he spent several years studying and in 1967, he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. As well the international scene.
American art director, teacher, and photographer. giorgio de chirico (1888–1978), Greek-born Dior, was launched in 1947, and the first ready-to-wear living in Europe before returning to his hometown of as symphonies, concertos and operas, he has composed
Most famously, he was art director at Harper’s Bazaar Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. A founder collection in 1948. After his sudden death in 1957, he New York in 1931 and working for the Works Progress scores for films. philip guston (1913–80), Canadian-born American
(1934–58) and a pioneer of graphic design. He was of the Pittura Metafisica movement in 1917, along with was succeeded as head designer by Yves Saint Laurent. Administration’s Federal Art Project. A great supporter painter. In the 1930s, he received several commissions
also one of the most influential design teachers of the Carlo Carrà, Giorgio Morandi and Alberto Savinio, of social causes, he demonstrated with striking workers arne glimcher (born 1938), American art dealer, for murals that reflected his Marxist political leanings.
twentieth century, particularly through the Design he produced his most famous works between 1911 robert doisneau (1912–94), French photographer. and depicted their violent clashes in his Expressionist- film director, and producer. He founded the Pace In the 1940s, he turned to easel painting and abstraction,
Laboratory course that he led at the Pennsylvania and 1915 while living in Paris. He was a close friend He became interested in photography after studying style paintings. In the mid-1940s, he abandoned social Gallery, a prestigious contemporary art space in New and became a key figure in Abstract Expressionism.
Museum School of Industrial Art, and later at the of Guillaume Apollinaire, whose portrait he painted printmaking at the École Estienne in Paris (1926–29). realism and began to paint an imaginary world, often York, in 1963. The gallery now has four exhibition spaces After 1970, he returned to figurative works, which
New School for Social Research, New York. He was in 1914. It was Apollinaire who first used the term In 1931, he was hired as an assistant by the photographer with a strong erotic charge. in New York and another in Beijing, and represents evoked a comic-book aesthetic.
a mentor to many artists, including the photographers “metaphysical” (1913) to describe De Chirico’s work, André Vigneau. From 1934 to 1939, he was an artists of international standing, including Chuck
Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. and who introduced him to the Surrealists. advertising photographer at the Renault factory in dan flavin (1933–96), American artist, renowned Close, Jim Dine, David Hockney (q.v.), and Robert david hare (1917–92), American sculptor, painter,
Billancourt, near Paris. He first worked at the picture for his light installations. He initially studied for the Rauschenberg. For fifty years, it has been one of the most and photographer. Associated with the Surrealist
alexander calder (1898–1976), American sculptor. aaron copland (1900–90), American composer and agency Rapho in 1939, then rejoined after the war priesthood at his father’s wish, but gave it up in 1952 influential galleries in the contemporary art market. movement, he co-founded and edited the journal
He studied engineering at the Stevens Institute of conductor. Inspired by jazz and folk songs, he aimed to in 1946. His humanist images of Paris brought him to study art history and become a primarily self-taught VVV with André Breton, Max Ernst (q.v.) and Marcel
Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, before enrolling at create something different from the European classical widespread public popularity. artist. From 1961 onwards, his most notable innovation kurt gödel (1906–78), Austrian-born American Duchamp (q.v.) from 1941 to 1944. In 1948, along
the Art Students League in New York. Dividing his time tradition and develop a distinctively American musical was the creation of Minimalist works that incorporate mathematician. One of the most important with William Baziotes (q.v.), Robert Motherwell and
between New York and Paris, he initially created works aesthetic. A staunch supporter of contemporary music, marcel duchamp (1887–1968), French painter, fluorescent light fixtures, perhaps the most famous of mathematicians and logicians of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko, he became a founder member of the
using materials such as wire, cloth, and found objects. he lectured on his innovative ideas at the New School for sculptor, and theoretician. He was a pioneer of the which is entitled “Monument” for V. Tatlin (1964). he is most notable for his incompleteness theorem (1931). Subjects of the Artist School in New York, dedicated
His most influential development was the invention in Social Research in New York, Harvard University, and avant-garde, his experimental works linking him with From 1940, he worked in mathematics and philosophy at to the promotion of avant-garde art and Abstract
1931 of kinetic sculptures that he called “mobiles.” At the Berkshire Music Center. Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. helen frankenthaler (born 1928), American the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Expressionism.
the same time, he also created massive sculptures dubbed Nude Descending a Staircase created a sensation when it painter and printmaker, associated with Color Field and was named a full professor in 1953. Suffering from
“stabiles.” His first major retrospective was held at the helena curtis (1924–2005), American science was exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. painting. Inspired by the early Abstract Expressionists, hypochondria and paranoia, he stopped eating due to an william averell harriman (1891–1986),
Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1943. writer, who was a pioneer for writing science books In the same year, Duchamp invented the “readymade,” especially Jackson Pollock (q.v.), she painted on obsessive fear of being poisoned and died in 1978. American businessman and politician. Son of the railway
without being an academic herself. In 1968, her textbook the most famous and controversial example of which large-format untreated canvases, sometimes placed on magnate E. H. Harriman, he studied at Yale, then in
truman capote (1924–84), American author. Biology was acclaimed by the American scientific was a urinal entitled Fountain, bearing the signature the ground, and not always using brushes. Her most adolph gottlieb (1903–74), American painter 1922 established the bank that later became Brown
Well known for his writing, he was also known for his community for its factual accuracy and elegant writing “R. Mutt/1917.” In 1923, Duchamp quit art and devoted influential work, Mountains and Sea (1952), introduced and sculptor. He was an early member of the New Brothers Harriman & Co. In his diplomatic and political
eccentric personality and the Black and White Ball that style. It has now sold more than a million copies in himself almost entirely to the game of chess. the “soak stain” technique, which used oil paints to York School and was one of the founders of The Ten in career, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union
he organized at the Plaza Hotel, New York, in 1966. English and been printed in five editions. Curtis began create watercolor-like effects. 1935. Along with Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman during World War II, as governor of New York (1957),

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 and twice as an unsuccessful candidate for the Democrat of American Art in New York from 1977 to 1995. She is to 1963. His assassination in Dallas on 22 November julio le parc (born 1928), Argentinian artist. agnes de mille (1905–93), American dancer marilyn monroe (1926–62), American actress and
presidential nomination (1952 and 1956). the granddaughter of the museum’s founder, Gertrude 1963 was one of the events that shaped the twentieth A pioneer of kinetic art, he studied with Lucio Fontana and choreographer. During a stay in London, she singer. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she became one of
Vanderbilt Whitney. century. At the height of the Cold War, his term of office at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires studied dance under Marie Rambert, who gave her the greatest Hollywood stars of all time. She first came to
leland hayward (1902–71), American agent and was notably marked by the U.S. invasion of the Bay of (1942–54). A grant allowed him to travel to Paris, where the inspiration for her later career. In the U.S., she attention in 1950 thanks to a supporting role in The Asphalt
film, television and theater producer. After dropping out anne jackson (born 1926), American actress. She Pigs in Cuba and the Cuban missile crisis. A young and he met Denise René and Victor Vasarely. In 1960, he choreographed the ballet Rodeo (1942) and many hit Jungle. This was followed by legendary performances in
of Princeton University, he spent some time working trained in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse and charismatic president, he is best remembered for his became a founder member of the Groupe de Recherche musicals, including Oklahoma! (1943). In 1954, she Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire
for the press before becoming a talent agent to some the Actor’s Studio, making her Broadway debut in 1945 support of civil rights and racial equality. d’Art Visuel, along with eleven other artists. After 1960, founded her own company, the Agnes de Mille Dance (1953), and Some Like It Hot (1959). Her final film was
of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Fred Astaire, and her first movie in 1950. In 1948, she married the his works included two-dimensional “reliefs” and the Theatre. The Misfits (1961), co-starring Clark Gable.
Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn. actor Eli Wallach (q.v.) and often performed alongside frederick kiesler (1890–1965), Austrian-born “Continual Mobiles.” Light and movement were crucial
As a producer, his greatest success was The Sound of Music him, notably in the Broadway production of Luv by architect, stage designer, and writer. After studying aspects of his work. dorothy canning miller (1904–2003), American henry moore (1898–1986), British sculptor and
(1959). Murray Schisgal (1964). architecture, he worked with the architect Adolf Loos curator, art adviser, and consultant. After studying at draughtsman. His biomorphic sculptures in wood, stone
in Vienna before turning to theater and stage design. mon levinson (born 1926), American artist. After Smith College, she worked at the Newark Museum in or bronze, sometimes pierced by holes, made him one
david hockney (born 1937), British painter, jasper johns (born 1930), American painter, sculptor, He was in contact with the Neo-Plasticists and the studying economics, he was introduced to the world New Jersey from 1926 to 1929. In 1934, she began a long of the leading artists of the twentieth century. Based
printmaker, draughtsman, and set designer. A key figure and printmaker. A key figure in Pop Art, he is best Surrealists, and famously designed the Endless Theatre of art by Richard Huelsenbeck, one of the founders of and productive career at the Museum of Modern Art in around the human figure, his sculptures came to achieve
in British Pop Art, his works primarily depict the people known for his use and reappropriation of recognizable (1924). A year later, he designed the Austrian pavilion the Dada group. Levinson’s early works, entitled Knife New York. Initially assistant to the director, Alfred H. monumental proportions by the end of his life. From
and landscapes around him, and are full of references motifs such as targets and the U.S. flag. In 1958, his first for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Drawings, were followed by a series of experiments with Barr, Jr. (q.v.), she became the museum’s first curator, the late 1920s onwards, he received many prestigious
to popular culture. After a first visit to Los Angeles in solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery was hugely Industriels Modernes in Paris. He emigrated to the U.S. movement, transparency, and optical illusion. Working organizing groundbreaking exhibitions of paintings and public and private commissions. He was appointed an
1963, he made the city his home from 1978, but is now successful and he sold four paintings to the Museum in 1929. primarily with Plexiglas and creating moiré motifs, he is sculptures, including The New American Painting (1958) official war artist during World War II and his drawings
based in his native Yorkshire. of Modern Art, New York. Since then, his works have considered a precursor of the Op Art movement. and 16 Americans (1959). She succeeded in bringing of people sheltering in the tunnels of the London
become some of the most valuable in the world. franz kline (1910–62), American painter. One attention to a new generation of American artists, Underground reached a wide audience.
geoffrey holder (born 1930), Trinidadian dancer, of the greatest Abstract Expressionists, he was a keen roy lichtenstein (1923–97), American painter, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and
choreographer, and painter. As a teenager, he was taught philip johnson (1906–2005), American architect, draughtsman and studied illustration at Heatherley sculptor, and printmaker. He is famed for his use of the Frank Stella. robert moses (1888–1981), American urban planner.
dance and painting by his brother. In 1954, he moved to critic, and curator. He studied philosophy and history School of Art in London (1937–38) before beginning to imagery and printing methods of comic books. He taught For forty years, he played a huge role in shaping the city
New York, where he became principal dancer with the at Harvard. In 1932, he was appointed director of the paint. It was in the 1950s that he developed his innovative at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey, henry miller (1891–1980), American novelist of New York. A controversial figure, he was recognized
Metropolitan Opera Ballet (1955–56) before establishing Architecture and Design department at the Museum style, painting on large canvases with housepainter’s from 1960 to 1963. His first solo exhibition at the Leo and painter. He wrote with unsurpassed frankness on as a “master builder” by some, but to others he was
his own dance troupe (1956). He has performed in the of Modern Art, New York. A staunch promoter of brushes. His black lines or shapes against a white ground Castelli Gallery in 1962 was a huge success, and he has sexuality, Western society, and American puritanism. the “Power Broker” condemned in Robert A. Caro’s
theater and in films, and in the 1970s he choreographed modern architecture, he was co-curator of the landmark have a calligraphic quality. become an iconic figure within American Pop Art. His three autobiographical novels, Tropic of Cancer (1934), biography of the same name. He held the position of
and directed a number of Broadway shows, including exhibition The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939), were New York City Parks Commissioner from 1933 to 1962,
The Wiz (1975). In 1940, he returned to Harvard to study architecture willem de kooning (1904–97), Dutch-born norman mailer (1923–2007), American novelist, banned in the U.S. on the grounds of obscenity until the and among his most significant projects were the Jones
and opened his own practice. His masterpieces include American painter. A member of the New York School journalist, poet, screenplay writer, and director. One 1960s. They were published overseas, however, and did Beach State Park, Shea Stadium, the Central Park Zoo,
hanya holm (1893–1992), German-born American the Glass House (1949) and the Seagram Building from the late 1940s onwards, he was one of the most of the most significant American writers of the second much to establish Miller’s avant-garde reputation. the Westside Highway, and the Cross Bronx and Long
dancer and choreographer. One of the most important (1954–58), the latter created in collaboration with influential of the Abstract Expressionists. His paintings half of the twentieth century, he was the winner of two Island Expressways. In total, he built 658 playgrounds in
figures in modern dance in the U.S., she was sent to New Mies van der Rohe. used bold colors and violent contrasts, oscillating Pulitzer Prizes (1969 and 1980) and the National Book joan miró (1893–1983), Spanish painter, sculptor, New York City, 416 miles of parkways, and 13 bridges.
York in 1931 by her mentor, Mary Wigman, in order to between realism and abstraction. His principal subjects Award (1969). His first novel, The Naked and the Dead and printmaker. Although he was never a member of
open a branch of the Wigman School. Improvization was menashe kadishman (born 1932), Israeli sculptor included women and landscapes. The violence and the (1948), inspired by his own war experiences, was a the Surrealist movement, he shared the same interest in robert moskowitz (born 1935), American painter.
one of her key techniques. She directed her own dance and painter. A graduate of the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv, erotic charge of his works were shocking to many critics bestseller. In 1955, he co-founded the alternative New the unconscious and invented his own pictorial language He studied engineering at the Mechanics Institute of
company from 1936 to 1944 and choreographed ballets he moved to London in 1959 to study at St. Martin’s and audiences. York paper The Village Voice. to express it. From the mid-1920s on, he painted semi- Manhattan before enrolling at the Pratt Institute in 1956,
and musicals, including Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and My Fair School of Art. His body of work defies categorization, abstract works that had a major influence on other where he studied under Adolph Gottlieb (q.v.). His
Lady (1956). embracing everything from Minimalist sculpture lee krasner (1908–84), American painter. roberto matta (1911–2002), Chilean painter, abstract art. His homeland of Catalonia was an important first solo exhibition was held in 1962 at the Leo Castelli
through Expressionist painting to fabric installations. Originally Lenore Krassner, she is known for her printmaker, and draughtsman. After studying source of inspiration for his work. Gallery, New York. In 1979, he took part in the major
edward hopper (1882–1967), American painter, At the 1978 Venice Biennale, he exhibited a flock of Abstract Expressionist works. The most influential part architecture in Santiago (1929–31), he traveled to exhibition New Image Painting at the Whitney Museum of
draughtsman, and printmaker. Famed as a realist painter, living sheep, partially painted blue. He has lived and of her artistic training came from the Hans Hofmann Europe, where he worked with Le Corbusier (1933), lisette model (1906–83), Austrian-born American Art, New York.
he studied commercial illustration before discovering worked in Tel Aviv since 1972. School of Fine Arts (1937). From 1935 to 1943, she among others. At the same time, he devoted himself to photographer. Born Elise Felice Amélie Seybert, she
the work of the Impressionists during regular visits to played an active role in the arts programs of the Works drawing and began to paint in 1939. His first exhibition studied music and painting in Austria and Paris before hans neleman (born 1960), Dutch-born American
Paris. In 1924, he decided to devote himself entirely alex katz (born 1927), American painter, Progress Administration. In 1941, she met Jackson was held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, in teaching herself the art of photography, which she photographer and artist. After studying fine art at
to painting. His works are notable for their unusual draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. He is best Pollock (q.v.) and they married in 1945. 1942, and was a great success. It was praised by André refined while working at a photo-processing lab in Goldsmiths College in London, he went on to study
viewpoints and compositions, their isolated figures, their known for his figurative works, which he began to Breton and impressed the Abstract Expressionists. From Paris. In 1938, she moved to New York, where the photography at the Polytechnic of Central London and
interest in architecture, and their sense of melancholy. create in the 1950s, going against the tide of Abstract alfried krupp (1907–67), German industrialist. 1948 until the end of his life, his time was mostly divided photographer Ralph Steiner published her Promenade later at New York University. A sought-after commercial
Expressionism. A skilled portrait artist, he also painted In 1941, he succeeded his father as head of the steel between Paris, France, and Tarquinia in Italy. des Anglais series (1937). After 1941, she went freelance photographer, he has also pursued a successful artistic
paul hornung (born 1935), American professional flowers and landscapes. His images, with their spare firm Friedrich Krupp AG. For his crimes during World and her work was published in magazines including career. He has published three books: Moko: Maori Tattoo
footballer. Nicknamed the “Golden Boy,” he was both graphic style and bold colors, were compared to Pop Art War II, including the manufacture of armaments for the joel meyerowitz (born 1938), American PM, Harper’s Bazaar, Look, and Ladies Home Journal. (1999), Maori Silence (2000), and Night Chicas (2003).
talented and versatile, playing in halfback, quarterback, in the 1960s. Nonetheless, Katz has always distanced German army and the use of forced labor, he was tried photographer. Originally an art director, he became From 1951, she taught at the New School for Social
and placekicker positions. He joined the Green Bay himself from any movement. by the U.S. authorities (1947–48). He was sentenced a freelance photographer following an encounter Research, New York, where Diane Arbus was among louise nevelson (1899–1988), Ukrainian-born
Packers in 1957 and was their star player for nine to twelve years in prison and the forfeiture of all his with Robert Frank in 1962. He was one of the first her students. American sculptor, artist, and printmaker. Trained at
seasons, winning four league championships. ellsworth kelly (born 1923), American painter, property. He was, however, pardoned after three years photographers to turn to color photography in an era the Art Students League in New York and then at the
sculptor, and printmaker. An important figure in the and regained control of his company, which merged with when it was mostly restricted to amateur and commercial piet mondrian (1872–1944), Dutch painter, Hofmann Schule für Moderne Kunst in Munich, she
eikoh hosoe (born 1933), Japanese photographer. history of abstract art, he was a major influence on Thyssen AG in 1998. work. From 1971 to 1979, he taught color photography draughtsman, and art theorist (originally Pieter Cornelis produced Constructivist sculptures in the 1930s. In the
After studying at the Tokyo College of Photography Minimalism and Color Field painting. In Europe between at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science Mondriaan). Both his paintings and his theoretical 1950s, she exhibited large-scale wooden constructions
(1951), his first solo exhibition featured the series An 1948 and 1954, he experimented with the techniques edwin herbert land (1909–91), American and Art, New York. Since 1977, he has lectured in writings made him one of the fathers of the De Stijl that filled an entire wall. Compartmentalization, stacked
American Girl in Tokyo (1956). In 1959, he founded the of automatism used by the Surrealists and became scientist, best known for the invention of the Polaroid photography at Princeton University. movement and of abstract painting. After experimenting objects, and uniform coloring (black, white, or gold)
Vivo agency with six other Japanese photographers. interested in the concept of chance in art. In 1949, he instant camera. While still a student at Harvard with Impressionism, Cubism, Divisionism and Fauvism, were used to create poetic and playful assemblages of
In the 1960s, he published his best-known book, Man created his first abstract paintings with monochrome University, he designed the first light-polarizing filter. lilly michaels (born 1912), English-born American he developed Neo-Plasticism after 1912, heavily bric-à-brac. She also experimented with metallic and
and Woman, a series of images of the dancer Tatsumi geometric surfaces. He returned to the U.S. in 1954 and His invention was patented in 1929. He founded the abstract painter. Educated in the U.S., she trained at the influenced by theosophy, and aimed to create paintings transparent materials.
Hijikata and his troupe. In 1977, he began photographing produced his first sculptures. By the end of the 1950s, Polaroid Corporation in 1937, and the first Polaroid School of Painting and Sculpture at Columbia University. that were expressions of universal harmony. His most
the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. he had achieved international recognition. camera went on sale in 1948, allowing a photograph to She was active in New York in the 1950s, working with famous and fully realized works are made up of vertical barnett newman (1905–70), American painter,
be taken and developed within 60 seconds. The company sculpture and oil painting before developing a technique and horizontal lines in black, white, and the primary printmaker, and sculptor. He had a considerable
flora miller irving (born 1928), American john fitzgerald kennedy (1917–63), Democrat eventually fell victim to the digital revolution and twice based on scratching through layers of pigment to reveal colors (red, yellow, and blue). influence on developments in art during the second
executive. She was president of the Whitney Museum politician and President of the United States from 1961 filed for bankruptcy, in 2001 and 2008. the colors beneath. half of the twentieth century, particularly Color Field

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 painting and Minimalism. Commonly associated with Britten, who wrote many principal operatic roles for played a number of Shakespearian roles. After the war, from Rutgers University in 1959. An eclectic artist, to study architecture, then three years later worked for saul steinberg (1914–99), Romanian-born American
Abstract Expressionism because of his close links with him. Along with Britten, he was a founder member of he ran the company together with Laurence Olivier and he took part in the earliest happenings at the Reuben Frank Lloyd Wright and opened his own architectural draughtsman, painter, sculptor, and cartoonist. His hugely
William Baziotes (q.v.), Robert Motherwell, Mark the English Opera Group in 1947, and also founded the John Burrell. Gallery. From his Boxes series in the 1960s to his practice. From 1946 on, he taught at various institutions, popular drawings appeared regularly in the New Yorker for
Rothko and Clyfford Still, he is known for his large Aldeburgh Festival (1948) and the Britten-Pears School Polaroids in the 1980s, his works have frequently been including New York University and Hunter College, sixty years. After studying philosophy in Bucharest, then
paintings in bold colors, divided by thin vertical lines, for Advanced Studies in Music. larry rivers (1923–2002), American painter, self-referential. Since 1965, he has been represented by New York. In 1961, following a serious car accident, he architecture in Milan, he settled in Miami in 1942. His
which the artist called “zips.” sculptor, printmaker, poet, and musician. Born Yitzroch the Pace Gallery in New York. gave up architecture in favor of sculpture, and became drawings were first published in Italy in the satirical paper
ieoh ming pei (born 1917), Chinese-born American Loiza Grossberg, he was initially a jazz saxophonist, one of the founding fathers of Minimalism. Bertoldo (1939), then in the U.S. in Life and Harper’s Bazaar
isamu noguchi (1904–88), American sculptor and architect. Internationally renowned for his museum but turned to painting shortly after World War II. carl sandburg (1878–1967), American writer, (1940). In 1946, he was featured in the group exhibition
designer. Born to a Japanese father and an American architecture, he famously designed extensions for the From 1947 to 1948, he studied under Hans Hofmann, poet, and journalist. The publication of his Chicago Poems william eugene smith (1918–78), American Fourteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New
mother, he spent his childhood in Japan then went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1968–78), then at New York University. Originally an Abstract in 1916 established his reputation. An anti-academic, photographer. As a Life magazine photographer, he was York, alongside Isamu Noguchi (q.v.) and Robert
U.S. to study. In 1922, he was apprenticed to the sculptor and the Louvre in Paris (1985–89). He graduated in Expressionist, he turned to figurative art, influenced he wrote in free verse about America, its people, and responsible for many famous photo essays, including Motherwell. The first retrospective of his work was held
Gutzon Borglum in Connecticut. From 1927 to 1928, architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the work of Pierre Bonnard. In the 1950s, he its landscapes. He also wrote a six-volume biography “Country Doctor” (1948), “Nurse Midwife” (1951), at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978.
he lived in Paris, where he became Brancusi’s assistant. in 1940 and gained his Master’s from Harvard Graduate reinterpreted and parodied some of the great works of Abraham Lincoln, several anthologies of American “Schweitzer” (1954), and “Minamata” (1972). He was
An eclectic artist, he designed sets for some twenty School of Design in 1946. Two years later, he was hired of art history. During the decade that followed, he folk songs, and children’s books. He won three Pulitzer a staunch campaigner for the rights of photojournalists isaac stern (1920–2001), Ukrainian-born American
shows for Martha Graham and also designed furniture, by Webb & Knapp, Inc., a large American real-estate anticipated Pop Art by taking his inspiration from Prizes, for Corn Huskers (1919), Abraham Lincoln: The War and fought to maintain control over the publication of his violinist. He gave his first recital at the age of fourteen
including the famous Akari lamp. Another significant firm. In 1962, he set up his own practice with James consumer society. Years (1940), and Complete Poems (1951). own work. He left Life in 1959 and joined the Magnum and joined the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in
thread in his career was park and fountain design. Ingo Freed and Henry Nichols Cobb. He has completed agency the following year. 1936. His career took off in the 1940s, following an
many major commissions for governments, museums, jerome robbins (1918–98), American dancer and dr. claude elwood shannon (1916–2001), appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1943. He joined the New
georgia o’keeffe (1887–1986), American painter universities, and international companies. choreographer. Born Jerome Rabinowitz, he became one American mathematician and electronic engineer. charles percy snow (Baron Snow of the City York Philharmonic in 1944 and gave his first overseas
and draughtsman. In 1917, Alfred Stieglitz (q.v.), whom of the most important figures in the history of twentieth- A pioneer of digital circuit design and digital computer of Leicester, 1905–80), British writer and research performance in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1948. Later
O’Keeffe later married, became one of the first to arno penzias (born 1933), American radio- century dance. He first found success in 1944 with the theory, he is considered the father of the information age. scientist. Fellow of Physics at Cambridge University, he performances included a tour of the Soviet Union during
recognize the originality of her work and exhibited it at astronomer. After earning a Ph.D. at Columbia ballet Fancy Free and went on to choreograph the musical He worked at Bell Labs from 1941 to 1972, and held a wrote his first novel in 1932. In 1940, he began Strangers the Cold War and a concert in Jerusalem during the Gulf
his 291 gallery in New York. Her paintings, influenced University, he was hired as a researcher by Bell Labs in West Side Story on Broadway (1957) and on screen (1961). chair at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1956 and Brothers, a series of ten novels. During World War War. In 1960, he led a campaign to save Carnegie Hall
by symbolism, abstraction and also photography, took 1961 and worked there until his retirement. In 1978, he He ran his own dance company, Ballets: USA, from 1958 to 1978. II, he put writing aside and worked in several senior from demolition; its main auditorium now bears his name.
nature as their principal subject. From 1929 on, she and Robert Woodrow Wilson were awarded the Nobel to 1962, and for many years worked with the New York government positions. In 1959, he gave a controversial
found inspiration in the landscapes of the southeastern Prize for Physics for their discovery of cosmic microwave City Ballet. charles sheeler (1883–1965), American painter lecture entitled The Two Cultures, which criticized the hedda sterne (1910–2010), Romanian-born
U.S., working from her summer home in New Mexico. background radiation, which gave strong support to the and photographer. A founding member of the Precisionist division between the sciences and the humanities; American painter. After studying in Vienna, then
Big Bang theory. david rockefeller (born 1915), American movement in the 1920s, he was also a commercial it was published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Bucharest, she moved to Paris to study under Fernand
claes oldenburg (born 1929), Swedish-born businessman. Son of John D. Rockefeller and Abby photographer, whose work was published in Vogue and Revolution (1959). Léger. In 1932, she married Fritz Stern, later divorcing
American artist. Creating happenings, installations, pablo picasso (1881–1973), Spanish painter, sculptor, Aldrich Rockefeller, and grandson of John D. Vanity Fair. His favorite subjects for both painting and him but retaining his surname and adding an “e.” She
soft sculptures and monumental pieces, he has been draughtsman, printmaker, and theatre designer. The Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, he is one of the photography were the city, skyscrapers, factories, and moses soyer (1899–1974), Russian-born American emigrated to the U.S. in 1941. Two years later, a solo
an innovator since his work began in the 1960s. most celebrated and influential artist of the twentieth wealthiest people in the world. After World War II, he machines. His photographs of the Ford Motor Company’s painter and printmaker. Like his twin brother Raphael exhibition of her work was held at the Wakefield Gallery
Landmarks in American Pop Art, his soft sculptures century, he produced a body of work of astounding joined Chase Manhattan Bank (then JP Morgan Chase), River Rouge Plant in Michigan (1927) won him great (q.v.), he was an important figure in the realist in New York, and in 1944 she married the cartoonist
represent everyday consumer objects, including lipsticks, richness and invention. He spent most of his adult life a branch of the family business, and became its president critical acclaim, and also inspired a series of paintings movement of the twentieth century. In 1912, he Saul Steinberg (q.v.). Although her artistic career was
hamburgers, ice creams, and telephones. in France, where he produced his avant-garde art, in 1961. From 1981 to 1995, he was chairman of the that remain among his best-known works. emigrated to the U.S. with his family and studied art at diverse, she is best remembered for her association with
including the painting Demoiselles d’Avignon (1906–07). Rockefeller Group. Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Abstract Expressionist group in the 1950s.
robert oppenheimer (1904–67), American Famed as one of the pioneers of Cubism, he made major mitch siporin (1910–76), American painter, Ferrer Art School. In the 1930s, he painted murals for
physicist, considered the father of the atomic bomb. He contributions to art in every field in which he worked. ben rose (1916–80), American photographer. He spent printmaker, and draughtsman. An early theme in the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. alfred stieglitz (1864–1946), American
studied at Harvard, then at the University of Göttingen, his childhood in Atlantic City and was a friend of Arnold his work was the plight of the workers during the He also taught at the Contemporary Art School and the photographer, critic, publisher, and gallery owner.
where he obtained his Ph.D. at the age of twenty-two. jackson pollock (1912–56), American painter. The Newman, whom he met at the Boy Scouts. In 1938, he Depression. In the 1940s, he created several murals for New School for Social Research (1927–34). A seminal figure of early twentieth-century photography
He made important contributions to quantum theory best known of the Abstract Expressionists, he is famed graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School of the Works Progress Administration in Chicago and St. and a fervent believer in photography as an art form, he
and research on cosmic rays, positrons, and neutron for his monumental paintings and unusual painting Industrial Art, but returned there to teach advertising Louis. In 1951, he founded the department of Fine Arts raphael soyer (1899–1987), Russian-born American was a renowned pictorialist, then a disciple of “straight”
stars. In 1942, he was appointed scientific director of techniques. Using unstretched canvases, laid out on the photography from 1945 to 1950. He first exhibited his at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. painter. After arriving in the U.S. in 1912, he studied at photography. He co-founded the Photo-Secession group,
the Manhattan Project, set up by President Franklin floor, he applied paint by letting it drip or pour from work along with Arnold Newman in 1941 at the A-D Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the then opened and managed the Little Galleries of the
D. Roosevelt to develop an atomic bomb. From 1947 a brush, stick, or pierced paint-pot. In 1943, his first Gallery, New York. aaron siskind (1903–91), American photographer. Art Students League. During the 1930s, he worked for Photo-Secession, later known as 291 (1905–17), the
to 1966, he was director of the Institute for Advanced exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery, The Art of This In the 1930s, he was part of the New York Workers’ the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Intimate Gallery (1925–29), and An American Place
Study at Princeton. In 1953, he was accused of being a Century, in New York, brought him to public attention. eva rubinstein (born 1933), American photographer. Film and Photo League, then the reorganized New York A major realist painter, associated with the Fourteenth (1929–46). He published the magazines Camera Notes
Communist sympathizer and his security clearance was His most celebrated works were painted between 1947 The daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein and dancer Photo League, and worked primarily in documentary Street School, he is best known for his paintings of urban (1897–1902), Camera Work (1903–17), and 291 (1915–
withdrawn. His reputation was rehabilitated in 1963, and 1952. He married the painter Lee Krasner (q.v.) in Aniela Mlynarska, she was born in Buenos Aires and photography. In 1940, he left the Photo League and turned scenes and his portraits of middle-class men and women. 16). His galleries and magazines also served to publicize
when he was presented with the Enrico Fermi Award 1945 and was killed in a car accident in 1956. spent her childhood in Paris. She performed as a dancer to abstraction. In 1947, he began to exhibit regularly at In 1953, he became a co-founder of the art magazine the artists of the American and European avant-gardes.
by President Lyndon B. Johnson. and actress both on and off Broadway, then became a the Charles Egan Gallery in New York, alongside the Reality, along with his twin brother Moses (q.v.), Edward
ayn rand (1905–82), Russian-born American writer photographer in 1967 after studying the work of Lisette Abstract Expressionists. He served as a professor and then Hopper (q.v.), Ben Shahn, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. He also paul strand (1890–1976), American photographer.
lilli palmer (1914–86), Polish-born American and philosopher. Born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, Model (q.v.) and Diane Arbus. She earned a living as director of the photographic department at the Institute taught at the Art Students League (1933–42). A pioneer of modernist photography, he moved away
actress. Born Lilli Marie Peiser, she studied acting in she fled the Communist regime in 1926 and settled in through commercial photography, but her personal work of Design in Chicago (1951–71), then taught photography from pictorialism and embraced a “straight” style, with
Germany and made her stage debut there. In 1933, she the U.S., where she studied and then began a career as a was her main interest. at Rhode Island School of Design (1971–76). edward steichen (1879–1973), Luxembourg- an emphasis on the representation of reality and the
fled to Paris, and then to London, where she appeared in screenwriter. Her novels were a great success, including born American photographer, painter, and curator. use of the inherent properties of photography. He won
Alfred Hitchcock’s Secret Agent in 1936. In the 1940s, she We the Living (1936), The Fountainhead (1943), and Atlas eero saarinen (1910–61), Finnish-born American john sloan (1871–1951), American painter, A pictorialist, he was a member of the Photo-Secession the support of Alfred Stieglitz (q.v.), who exhibited his
followed her husband, British actor Rex Harrison, to the Shrugged (1946). She was a proponent of individualism architect and designer. Many of his furniture pieces printmaker, and draughtsman. A member of the group and in 1905, alongside Alfred Stieglitz (q.v.), founded the work at the 291 gallery (1916) and published images
U.S. Her Broadway and Hollywood successes included and “Objectivist” philosophy, expounding her ideas in became icons of post-war design, including the famous known as The Eight, and associated with the Ashcan Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, known as 291. from the show in Camera Work (1917). In the 1930s,
the film The Four Poster (1952), in which she co-starred the newsletter The Objectivist (1962–71) and The Ayn Rand Tulip chair. He was also considered one of the greatest School, he is known for his paintings depicting scenes During World War I, he was placed in command of the Strand temporarily gave up photography in favor of
with her husband. Letter (1971–76), as well as giving lectures. modernist architects of the twentieth century, with from urban life. After the Armory Show in New York in photographic division of the U.S. Army Expeditionary documentary filmmaking.
major constructions including the TWA Flight Center at 1913, he developed a more formal approach and began Forces (1917–19). In 1923, he turned to commercial
sir peter pears (1910–86), British singer. A talented sir ralph richardson (1902–83), British actor. John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, and the Gateway to paint nudes. Between 1916 and 1932, he taught at the photography and became Chief of Photography at Condé igor fedorovich stravinsky (1882–1971),
tenor, he studied voice at the Royal College of Music Along with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, he Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. Art Students League in New York. He was also a founder Nast. In 1947, he gave up his career as a photographer Russian pianist, composer, and conductor, naturalized
(1933–34) before joining the BBC Singers and touring was one of the most acclaimed British actors of his member of the Society of Independent Artists. to become head of the Photography department at the French, then American. One of the great composers
the U.S. In 1943, he joined the Sadlers Wells Opera generation. He was primarily famous for his theater lucas samaras (born 1936), Greek-born American Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he curated of the twentieth century, he had a huge influence on
Company in London. This was the start of a long and work, although he also appeared in films. In 1930, he sculptor and photographer. At the age of eleven, he tony smith (1912–80), American architect, sculptor, the famous exhibition The Family of Man in 1955. the development of music in Europe. In contrast to the
fruitful collaboration with the composer Benjamin began working regularly with the Old Vic, where he emigrated to the U.S. with his family. He graduated and painter. In 1937, he enrolled at the New Bauhaus musical aesthetic of the nineteenth century, Stravinsky

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 was a proponent of an objective style of music, stripped
of its capacity for emotional expression. His body of
rawleigh warner, jr. (born 1921), American
businessman. A graduate of Princeton (1943), he founded
Guggenheim Museum in New York (1943). As well
as practicing architecture, he also designed furniture, Notes
work can be divided into three stylistic periods: the the investment firm Warner Bard & Co. after World War taught, and wrote twenty books on architecture.
Russian period (c. 1908–19), the Neoclassical period II. He then worked for the Continental Oil Company
(c. 1920–54), and the Serial period (c. 1954–68). and for Socony Mobil Oil (later Mobil Oil). In 1965, he andrew wyeth (1917–2009), American painter.
became president of Socony and, in 1970, chairman and His father taught him to draw at a young age, and he is
maria bianca mazzarini stronati (date of birth CEO of the Mobil Oil Corporation. now most renowned for his temperas and watercolors in
unknown), Italian fashion designer. In the early 1950s a melancholy, realist style, capturing the landscapes of
she opened a store selling children’s clothes, named dr james d. watson (born 1928), American the Brandywine Valley and the Port Clyde region. In the
Simonetta (after one of her daughters), in the small biologist, zoologist, and geneticist. In 1962, along with 1960s, he also painted portraits, along with nudes after Unless otherwise credited, all quotations from Arnold which must have been handy for the then-popular post- 20. Ben Maddow, Faces: A Narrative History of the Portrait
Italian town of Jesi. By the 1980s the company was Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick, he was awarded 1971. His best-known painting is Christina’s World (1948), Newman are taken from a lengthy interview that took mortem portraits. Hannavy, op. cit., p. 14. in Photography, New York Graphic Society, 1977, p. 396.
flourishing within Italy, and since 1991 has been a the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for discoveries which depicts his friend Christina Olson, who was unable place in 1991 between Newman and curator Will Stapp
major international brand of luxury childrenswear. relating to the molecular structure of nucleic acids. to walk, lying in the grass some distance from her house. on behalf of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, 10. Although a group of serious and enlightened amateurs 21. Interview with Barnaby Conrad, in James Danziger
A professor at Harvard’s department of Biology from D.C., at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. strove to create photographic portraiture worthy of and Barnaby Conrad, Interviews with Master Photographers:
twyla tharp (born 1941), American dancer and 1961, he served as director of the Cold Spring Harbor max yavno (1911–85), American photographer. The unedited, unpaginated transcript is a goldmine for the fine arts from the 1880s onwards, their sometimes Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Cornell Capa, Elliott
choreographer. In New York, she studied art history at Laboratory from 1968 onwards. Between 1989 and Known for his black-and-white photographs of San anyone interested in the photographer’s life, career, magnificent work had no effect on the evolution of Erwitt, Yousuf Karsh, Arnold Newman, Lord Snowdon, Brett
Barnard College (1963), then dance at the American 1992 he was director of the National Human Genome Francisco and other Californian cities, he began his and vision of photographic portraiture. The dialogue mainstream portraiture. Nor did the earlier work of Julia Weston, New York/London: Paddington Press, 1977.
Ballet Theatre School under prestigious teachers Research Institute. career working for the Federal Theatre Project, a branch meanders a good deal, and Newman often loses the Margaret Cameron influence the professionals, who were
including Martha Graham (q.v.) and Merce Cunningham. of the Works Progress Administration. He moved to the thread, but the reader is amply rewarded by the scathing: “To expend serious criticism on them is a waste 22. Kerry William Purcell, Alexey Brodovitch, London:
She joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1963, and henry t. weinstein (1924–2000), American film, West Coast after World War II and took the shots that spontaneous, sometimes incompletely recollected, but of words.” Pam Roberts, “Julia Margaret Cameron.” The Phaidon, 2002.
formed her own company, Twyla Tharp Dance, in 1965. television, and theater producer. He is well known for appear in The San Francisco Book (1948) and The Los Angeles always revealing thoughts. The transcript—referred to Portrait in Photography, ed. Graham Clarke, op. cit., p. 60.
The choreographer of around a hundred ballets and dance having been the producer in 1962 of Marilyn Monroe’s Book (1950). below as WSI—is stored at the Harry Ransom Center, 23. See William A. Ewing, Erwin Blumenfeld: A Fetish for
performances, she also attained wider fame through unfinished final film, Something’s Got to Give, from The University of Texas at Austin. 11. WSI. Beauty, London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
musicals such as Movin’ Out (2002, based on the music of which she was removed after constant absences from yevgeny yevtushenko (born 1933), Russian poet,
Billy Joel) and her collaboration with the director Milos set. Weinstein gained a Master’s degree in drama from writer, dramatist, actor, and film director. Born Yevgeny 12. Alexey Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory was not an 24. This booklet is stored at the Harry Ransom Center,
Forman on three films, Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), and the Carnegie Institute of Technology before beginning Aleksandrovich Gangnus, he published his first poem arnold newman: student institution or location, but a class he started to give in The University of Texas at Austin.
Amadeus (1984). a career as a producer that lasted for forty years and in 1949 and his first book in 1952. In the era of Nikita 1. Véronique Nahoum, “La Belle femme, ou le stade du 1933 at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial
included the films Tender is the Night (1962), Joy in the Khrushchev, he became one of Russia’s leading poets, miroir en histoire.” Communications, No. 31, 1979, pp. Art; in 1940 he moved the concept to the New School for arnold newman: master
ernest trova (1927–2009), American painter and Morning (1965), and Runaway Train (1985). attracting large crowds to his poetry recitals. His poems 30–31. Anthropologist David Le Breton has also written: Social Research in New York. In Louis Faurer (London/ 1. Interview with Barnaby Conrad, in James Danziger
sculptor. Entirely self-taught, he began drawing and Babi Yar (1961), on Russian anti-Semitism, and The Heirs “No mirror would decorate the walls [of ordinary homes] New York: Merrell, 2002), the curator Anne Wilkes and Barnaby Conrad, Interviews with Master Photographers:
painting in 1946. He began his famous Falling Man major general robert white (1924–2010), of Stalin (1962), on the legacies of Stalinism, won him before the end of the nineteenth or the beginning of Tucker writes that “rather than aesthetic similarities Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Cornell Capa, Elliott
series in the 1960s and continued to experiment with American test pilot. After serving as a pilot during both national and international recognition. the twentieth century.” Des Visages, Essai d’anthropologie, the primary connections between the members of the Erwitt, Yousuf Karsh, Arnold Newman, Lord Snowdon, Brett
both painting and sculpture until the 1980s. In 2007, World War II and the Korean War, he became a test Paris: Editions Métailié, 1992, pp. 40–41. Philadelphia School were their careers as professional Weston, New York/London: Paddington Press, 1977.
a retrospective of his work was held at the Boca Raton pilot for the X-15 experimental aircraft program. On magazine photographers, the influence of Brodovitch,
Museum of Art, Florida. November 9, 1961, he flew the X-15 at 4,093 miles an 2. Nadar, Quand j’étais photographe, Arles: Actes Sud, the experience of growing up in or near Philadelphia, 2. In the Conrad interview, op. cit., as many times
hour, six times the speed of sound. On 17 July 1963, 1998, p. 48. and the friendships and professional collaborations that elsewhere, Newman vigorously contested the term:
gore vidal (born 1925), American author. A prolific he took the X-15 to an altitude of 59.6 miles, some continued for decades.” “The very word ‘portrait’ seems incorrect to me, too
writer, he published his first novel at the age of 10 miles above the atmosphere, making him one of the 3. Nadar, ibid., p. 45. incomplete, too limiting.” As for what could be called
twenty-one. His third novel, The City and the Pillar few “Winged Astronauts.” He was awarded the Collier 13. “To me the smell of books in the library [the “environmental portraits,” he knew that Lewis Carroll,
(1948), with its open treatment of homosexuality, was Trophy by President John F. Kennedy (q.v.) for his 4. John Hannavy, Victorian Photographers at Work, Princes Carnegie in Atlantic City] was the most wonderful Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton,
the object of great controversy in the U.S. Boycotted contributions to aviation. Risborough: Shire Publications, 1997, p. 43. thing in the world” (WSI). and scores of other accomplished photographers had
by the U.S. press, Vidal continuted to write under explored all potential avenues. Furthermore, Newman
pseudonyms, including Edgar Box. He also wrote joel-peter witkin (born 1938), American 5. Cited in The Photographic News, London, August 16, 14. August Sander, Citizens of the Twentieth Century: Portrait told interviewer Barbaralee Diamonstein, “I hate the
screenplays for film and television as well as successful photographer. He studied sculpture at Cooper 1861, p. 383. Photographs, 1892–1952, ed. Gunther Sander, text Ulrich word ‘portrait.’”
Broadway plays. A political activist, he opposed the Union School, New York, then photography at the Keller, trans. Linda Keller, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Vietnam War and the Iraq War. University of New Mexico. Since the 1970s, he has 6. Interestingly, John Berger says much the same about Press, 1986. 3. Prints from Newman’s estate were donated to the
been internationally famed for his black-and-white painting: “The satisfaction of having one’s portrait Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation. They are
eli wallach (born 1915), American actor. During a photographs of a harsh world filled with mythological painted was the satisfaction of being personally 15. See also the discussion of Arnold Newman’s housed jointly by Commerce Graphics and the Howard
seventy-year career, he featured in more than a hundred and art historical references. Challenging the limits recognized and confirmed in one’s position: it had nothing “portrait” of Marilyn Monroe, this volume, p. 101. Greenberg Gallery in New York. Sales of prints are
films. He took acting classes at the Dramatic Workshop of conventional notions of decency, he regularly tackles to do with the modern lonely desire to be recognized administered by KG Fine Arts, New York (profits
of the New School in New York, under the director the subjects of sex, death, and blasphemy. ‘for what one really is.’” “The Changing View of Man 16. Others were “The Farmer,” “The Craftsman,” “The provide funding for the Foundation’s activities). The
Erwin Piscator, and made his Broadway debut in 1945. in the Portrait.” Selected Essays and Articles: The Look of Woman,” “The Professions,” “The City,” and “The Last collection at the Harry Ransom Center, The University
He married the actress Anne Jackson (q.v.) in 1948. vicente wolf (born 1946), Cuban-born American Things, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1972, pp. 37–38. People” (marginal types). See “Public Faces, Private of Texas at Austin, includes approximately 238,000
International fame arrived in 1966 with the role of Tuco interior designer. Recognized as one of the leading Lives: August Sander and the Social Typology or the negatives, 60,000 transparencies, 27,800 contact sheets,
in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He also made occasional interior designers of his generation, he is the head of two 7. The Photographic News, London, February 28, 1890, Portrait Photograph.” The Portrait in Photography, ed. 2,000 enlargements (prints), and 6,500 Polaroids used
TV appearances. companies, Vicente Wolf Associates and VW Home, p. 161. The academic and writer Mick Gidley also Graham Clarke, op. cit., p. 72. for test shots; documentation of Newman’s career,
based in New York. He has also published several books, quotes an 1864 treatise on sitting versus standing, which including his original “sittings” (appointment) books,
andy warhol (1928–87), American painter, sculptor, has lectured in South Africa, Japan and Australia, and instructs people of sedentary work to be seated for their 17. Life magazine, May 23, 1938, Vol. 4, No. 21, p. 2. business files, correspondence, clippings and tear sheets,
draughtsman, director, writer, and collector. Born teaches a course at the Altos de Chavón School of Design portraits, whereas “statesmen, lawyers, clergymen and and more than 100 video and audio recordings of his
Andrew Warhola, he became a central figure in the Pop in the Dominican Republic. public figures generally should be taken in a standing 18. First story, “Eugene O’Neill,” October 7, 1946, speeches, lectures, and interviews; personal materials,
Art movement. He was an illustrator by training and first posture.” “Hoppé’s Impure Portraits.” The Portrait in p. 52. including early sketchbooks, photographic albums, some
made his name in the commercial field. In the 1960s, frank lloyd wright (1867–1959), American Photography, ed. Graham Clarke, London: Reaktion of the many awards he received during his lifetime,
he developed his own distinctive pictorial style, making architect. After graduating in engineering from the Books, 1992, p. 139. 19. “Arnold Newman has practically defined and cameras, darkroom equipment, books from his library,
use of seriality, mechanized printing processes, and University of Wisconsin (1887), he worked for Joseph established the twentieth-century portrait in America,” and various other personal effects.
impersonality. For his subjects, he used the imagery of Lyman Silsbee, then for Adler & Sullivan (1889–93). 8. The Photographic News, London, February 28, 1890, wrote Robert Sobieszek in One Mind’s Eye: The Portraits
the popular press and consumer society, creating works The house Fallingwater (1935), outside of Pittsburgh, p. 161. and Other Photographs of Arnold Newman, Boston: D. R. 4. In an interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein in 1981,
such as Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych put him on the international map, but his most influential Godine, 1974, p. xvii. Newman confessed, “At the time you make up the first
(1962). project was probably his extension for the Solomon R. 9. Another combination was “photographer-undertaker,” ones, you say, ‘I like this one best.’ And I can’t tell you

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