The Loft Generation

Starred review from August 30, 2021
The late artist and critic Schloss (1919–2011) brilliantly conveys her experiences as a participant in, and a keen observer of, New York’s “loft generation,” a community of American abstract expressionist painters, musicians, photographers, dancers, and artists who took up residence in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s. This posthumous book, thoughtfully edited by Venturini, combines Schloss’s personal memoir with her art criticism to provide a riveting firsthand account of the daily lives, complex social interactions, and marital spats of artists—including Willem de Kooning, John Cage (a “dry Protestant Californian” whose early concerts attracted more painters than musicians), Denise Levertov, Francesca Woodman (a photographer “ahead of her time”), and Cy Twombly—whom she encountered living in New York and Italy. In addition to her eye for detail and ear for dialogue, Schloss brings a feminist perspective to her recollections; readers learn as much about Elaine de Kooning (“no one... ever had such style or courage”) as they do her more famous husband, Bill, and many lesser-known female artists—including collage artist Lucia Vernarelli and surrealist painter Helen DeMottare—are treated with the same respect. Rich in granular detail and rendered in eloquent and captivating prose, this is an intimate look at a pivotal era in its formative stages and offers an invaluable source for the study of one of the great art movements.

October 1, 2021
An intimate portrait of artists and their worlds. From assorted notes and manuscripts, Burckhardt and Venturini have assembled a vibrant memoir by artist and critic Edith Schloss (1919-2011), Burckhardt's mother, who lived and worked in New York City in the 1940s and '50s and, after 1962, in Italy. Born into an affluent Jewish family in Germany, Schloss was sent abroad to school; by 1938, she found her way to London and, a few years later, arrived in New York. She enrolled at the Art Students League and soon moved to Chelsea, where artists had taken over cheap, barely habitable lofts--"huge stages for work and for a whole new free way of living." Her circle quickly expanded to include Fairfield Porter; William de Kooning (she was dazzled by his "absolute sunstruck power"); his acerbic wife, Elaine; photographer Rudy Burckhardt, whom Schloss later married; composers Elliott Carter and John Cage; poets Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch; and scores of others. At the time, most were aspiring rather than acclaimed artists. "In those days," writes Schloss, "nobody was anybody. Friends were friends, and they brought you their pictures," sometimes for criticism and encouragement, sometimes as gifts. But this splendid memoir is more than a who's who of famous figures. From Edwin Denby, Schloss learned to "look at the quotidian, look at the world around you," and "celebrate it the best you can." Shrewdly observant, Schloss conveys in painterly prose the spirited individuals whose lives she shared and the worlds they inhabited: Porter's bedroom walls, painted "milk blue or a raw bluey-pink"; Franz Kline, "Bogart-like cool and melancholy"; the "fugitive" sparkle of Denby's flashing eyes; and, not least, the creation of abstract art from "the marvelous movement of the loaded brush, the flow of paint on paint." The book is generously illustrated with snapshots and artworks and appended with a biographical essay and glossary. A captivating memoir of a life in art.

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Starred review from November 19, 2021

A posthumous memoir of abstract expressionist artist Edith Schloss, compiled by her longtime editor Mary Venturini. In 1942, German-born Schloss (1919-2011) moved to New York with her lover Heinz Lagerhans, also a refugee, to study at the Art Students League. She was soon embedded in the circle of talented artists who inhabited the loft district of lower Manhattan. They gravitated toward the area because rents were low, lofts were spacious and sunny, and to meet fellow artists, photographers, dancers, and musicians. Painter Fairfield Porter, a lifelong friend, introduced Schloss to fellow artists Elaine and Bill de Kooning. After the end of her marriage, Schloss moved to Italy in the early 1960s, where she lived, wrote, and painted for the rest of her long, productive life. By the time she died, she'd outlived her abstract expressionist peers: Cy Twombly was the last, deceased months before her. She'd written fragments in anticipation of writing a memoir of the loft years, but never completed it. Venturini fashioned the notes into a firsthand account of life among the artists who defined American non-representational art in the postwar era. With Venturini's editing, this book effectively tells the intimacies of its subject's life. VERDICT This account of one of the most important moments in the history of modern art is invaluable as well as fascinating.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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Starred review from October 15, 2021
"Details come back to me," writes artist and critic Schloss (1919-2011), and, indeed, this memoir-in-profiles about her life among seminal artists, poets, and critics in New York and Italy at the inception of abstract expressionism is zestfully precise and deeply knowledgeable. The context for Schloss' art adventures is established with a brief biography illuminating her Jewish family in Germany, her education in France and Italy, and her escape as the Nazis came to power. With preternatural recall, a discerning eye, keen ear, and hard-won insights, Schloss shares spirited, funny, wry, and poignant tales about Elaine and Bill de Kooning, Fairfield Porter, John Cage, Cy Twombly, and many others. She offers glimpses into her difficult marriage to photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, with whom she had a son, noting that she enjoyed assisting Burckhardt with lighting, "a good excuse for observant participation," but struggled with his entanglement with dance critic Edwin Denby. Schloss vibrantly describes artists' lofts as "huge stages for their work and a whole new free way of being," then reveals the true costs of their complicated lives. Thriving creatively in Italy after her divorce, she found love and new aesthetic revelations with experimental composer Alvin Curran. Intrepid, attentive, judicious, and radiantly expressive, Schloss presents an exhilarating perspective on a salient chapter in art history.

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