John D. Schiff. Portrait of Louise Nevelson, early 1940s. Photograph courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute
“Appearance is not skin deep. It is much deeper.”
—Louise Nevelson, oral history interview with Arnold Glimcher, January 30, 1972, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Nevelson’s move to the distinctive way she presented herself in public—the “persona” for which she became as famous as her art—was gradual. Its roots were in her early childhood, when her mother dressed her and her siblings for their Sunday promenade in fancy finery far beyond the acceptable garb for the puritanical town of Rockland, Maine. As a schoolgirl she continued the tradition by coming up with inventive fashion statements through hats she designed and ribbons she wore in unusual ways.
Louise Berliawsky Nevelson had gained many perks by being a beautiful young woman: marriage to a millionaire, funds to support her through the hard times after she left her husband. Eventually her good looks got her through the front door of her first art dealer’s gallery. When her beauty began to fade, what had come naturally when she was young required ingenuity and flair. As she got older she became convinced that in order to lift herself up above other talented female artists and become better known, thus making her work more salable, she needed a more arresting personal appearance. Being different, she decided, meant looking different. Thus began the development of “The Nevelson,” as her friend Edward Albee termed the persona she created and presented for public consumption.
Elizabeth Baker, former longtime editor of Art in America, acknowledged Nevelson’s magnetism, her special “persona”—but described it less as a gift than a Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil.1 It helped her develop her career and establish herself as a celebrity artist, but, like Faust, she paid a big price. Her splashy gypsy-sorceress self became standard fare in her press coverage and interviews, sometimes upstaging Nevelson the artist. Her charisma opened doors and she as the artist walked through them. But what she found on the other side was not always admiration and respect—but scorn, envy, and belittlement.
John D. Schiff. Portrait of Louise Nevelson, early 1940s. Photograph courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute
And yet, for a short period in her late fifties Louise Nevelson looked and dressed almost “ordinary.” Like many extremely attractive women, her fashion goals focused mostly on turning heads whenever she appeared in public. But in 1958, as she told a reporter, she decided to change her appearance. For an article in Life magazine, the photographer had her crouching behind her work with a witch’s hat and a touch of green. “I had felt I was glamorous,” she explained, “and then I saw the pictures, and I thought, Oh my gawd…. So I said to myself, ‘Look, do you want this [notoriety], or don’t you? If you don’t want it, stop it. If you do want it, forget it.’ And from then on I never had another problem.”2
By the mid-1960s, Nevelson began to show up in public in her increasingly original combinations of clothing, jewelry, and headgear. Her sometimes outlandish get-ups meant press coverage, and press coverage meant some attention would be paid to her work. And if enough attention was paid to her work, Nevelson was convinced that she would succeed.
In preparation for the 1967 Whitney retrospective, Arne Glimcher arranged for Nevelson to meet Arnold Scaasi, a well-known dress designer, and asked him to create some outfits for Nevelson to wear at art openings or when giving talks around the country. When the press met Nevelson, Glimcher wanted them to see a celebrity.
Scaasi initially had fairly conventional ideas about how she should present herself—as a distinguished, older but elegant woman. He started by showing her some “little black suits.”3 She abhorred that approach, and he caught on quickly, rethinking his plan. As far as Nevelson was concerned, Scaasi was a tailor, a dressmaker. She was the designer and the assemblage artist. Together they selected the extraordinary brocades and luxurious fabrics he would put together for her—following her taste for sumptuous designs. For comfort he designed fur-lined outfits for her to wear against the cold to which she was susceptible. With Glimcher’s support and encouragement, she could dress to the hilt and play the part of the “empress of art” for all it was worth without thinking about the cost.
By the time the 1967 Whitney retrospective had ended, Nevelson’s persona had been set: “With her Tiparillo cigars, false eyelashes, crazy hats and the unconventional fashions she has designed for herself,” wrote a New York Post reporter, “Louise Nevelson has clearly established that she is one of those marvelous off-beat characters who know they are characters, enjoy the image and never fail to live up to it.”4
The story of her famous furry fake eyelashes, which became a key element of her persona, has a modest enough beginning. Arne Glimcher’s wife, Milly, was wearing the newly fashionable false eyelashes one day in the mid-’60s, and when Nevelson saw them she insisted: “I have to have some of those.” Milly bought the artist several pairs to try out.5 As Nevelson later described the impact of her eureka moment to a reporter from Women’s Wear Daily: “A magazine sent some young man down to make me up for a photograph. I saw what he did to me, and I thought ‘This is insanity.’ Little lines here and there. I couldn’t stand it. So I got some lashes right away and I glued two, three pairs together. They just last forever and now I always wear them. I just love them!”6
No matter whether her work was admired or abhorred, Nevelson’s persona—including her feisty frankness—often got her into trouble with some members of the small but influential realm of art critics and journalists. But everything she did, every scrap of fancy clothing she wore, every dramatic entrance she made, every outrageous statement—all of it was to get people to look at her work. Which is not to say that Louise Nevelson did not enjoy dressing up. She obviously loved it. At sixty-six, secure in her position as the grande dame of contemporary sculpture, she proudly declared: “I’ve always been a little more radical than the rest.”7
The flair for fashion that was an essential part of Nevelson’s persona was formally recognized by the principal arbiter of the fashion world. On February 14, 1977, she received a letter from Eleanor Lambert congratulating her on having been named one of twelve women on the “International Best Dressed List of 1977.” In the press releases, Nevelson was described as a “77-year-old American sculptor with ‘immense personal style, who applies her own strong principles of art to her dress.’ ” The letter from Eleanor Lambert praised her for her “example of distinguished taste without ostentation.”8
Lambert, the self-proclaimed Empress of Seventh Avenue, was a publicity genius from Indiana who had single-handedly initiated two of American fashion’s most enduringly successful ideas—the forerunner to New York Fashion Week and an annual “Best-Dressed” List. During the 1930s she had been the first press director of the Whitney Museum and helped with the founding of the Museum of Modern Art. In the 1940s Lambert was a major force in elevating American fashion from rag trade to respectability, wresting the flag of fashion and haute couture from Paris and placing it firmly on the ground in New York. Her public relations firm, Eleanor Lambert Inc., had represented Salvador Dalí, Isamu Noguchi, and Jackson Pollock. A committee of magazine and newspaper fashion editors polled fifteen hundred international style experts to determine whose names would grace that year’s Best-Dressed List. Lambert kept close watch on the results, which were finally determined by seven women and one man in her office—all powerful fashion insiders.9 Tough, hard-working, and resourceful, Lambert’s imprimatur made a huge difference to a designer’s reputation. Being on Lambert’s Best-Dressed List meant instant round-the-world acclaim, which Nevelson was delighted to receive.10
“Sculptor Is Stunning and Family Stunned” blared the headline in the Beacon: The Boston Herald American on February 20, 1977. Reporting from Rockland, reporter Ted Cohen interviewed the artist’s brother and sister Anita about Louise’s latest honor. Reacting with astonishment to the news, Nathan Berliawsky said, “I had no idea she was a well dressed woman. I didn’t have the slightest idea. I didn’t really.” Her sister Anita was less surprised. “Whatever Louise wears is very expensive. I’d say she’s an unusually richly dressed woman with expensive furs. I’d say Louise is one of the 12 most unusual women, but I didn’t know that included the category of dress.” Anita then recalled having gone to a governor’s ball when she was traveling with her sister in Guatemala in 1951: “We didn’t have anything to wear, so Louise went out and bought material which we draped around ourselves. Louise had taste. We looked stunning.”11
Lillian had the keenest understanding of her sister’s fashion sense: “She had to feel attractive in what she was wearing. They could be rags, but she had to feel they looked good on her. She could pay three thousand dollars for a gown but won’t wear it if she doesn’t like the way it looks on her. And if she loves it, she’ll wear it to death, even when it becomes rags.”12
Nevelson had always enjoyed collecting exotic fabrics and clothes and was a master at putting together a costume that brought her attention—whether it was wrapping burlap around herself and pinning it together with a jewel, combining a caftan made of some priceless fabric with a velvet riding hat she had appropriated from her granddaughter Neith, or, more routinely, tying a babushka tightly around her head.
At first her public was fascinated and somewhat mystified by the appearance of “The Nevelson.” And the reasoning she provided for her fashion choices was often quote worthy:
“I’m like Charlie Chaplin,” she said. “If I’m not dressed right. I can’t talk.”13
“I learned to do this [stroking her scarf-wrapped head] so I don’t have to go to the hairdresser. Think of the years I’ve saved myself from not going to the beauty parlor and all that.”14
“Off came the maxi to reveal a black midi dress with a [man’s] Chinese mandarin smoking jacket topping it. ‘I did quite a bit of the embroidery work on it myself. To be different of course.’ ”15
“I enjoy the feeling of clothes growing older—developing a patina of wear—the clothes become yourself.”16
Sometimes she openly acknowledged her desire to be glamorous and how she used it to support her right to be the center of attention. Referring to a dinner party to which she wore a Scaasi gown of embroidered Indian silk with a brown jockey cap, Nevelson said:
“I thought my costume was grand; I wanted others to see it. I always say I’m building an empire—in art, in fashion, in life. I think that some of us are made for the grand gesture. I knew I had it, and it doesn’t take much encouragement if you know you have it.”17
“Glamour counts. I don’t like people to say to me, ‘Mrs. Nevelson, you’re a strong woman.’ I turn around and say, ‘I don’t want to be a strong person. I want to be glamorous.’ ”18
Everything Nevelson said about her personal style was a facet of the truth, if not the whole truth. Only twice, perhaps, did her fashion mantras reveal something deeper, not just a persona but a personality: “Art and life are the same thing to me, and fashion is part of life.”19 And “I am what you call an atmospheric dresser…. When I meet someone, I want people to enjoy something, not just an old hag.”20
The dichotomy between Nevelson’s reputation as an artist and her reputation as an attention-seeking fashionista could be fierce. A parallel dichotomy developed about her personality and whether she was portrayed as warm, generous, and charming, or vulgar, ostentatious, and totally narcissistic, depended on the sympathies of the writer.
In 1969, at the time of her triumphant exhibit at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, for example, her two divergent reputations were hard to reconcile. Eleanor Freed who wrote an article about Nevelson for the Houston Post, described her as: “Approaching 70, she is a vital, electric sparkling woman whose entire life has been geared to the art of communication in which her work is the nerve center…. She communicates on the fourth dimension. Once in a while you are really moved by a person and are electrified by space.”21 By contrast Mary Buxton, the curator of the Houston exhibit, was shocked and dismayed by Nevelson’s vulgarity, experiencing her as a hard-drinking, tough-talking, under-articulate exhibitionist, who was the epitome of excess and overdress.
In January 1971 The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story on Nevelson—“ ‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time,’ Says Louise Nevelson at 70” which presents a complex portrait of the artist honoring her contradictory tendencies and dichotomies.22 The article, written by Roy Bongartz, begins:
There is cloistered in a secret Manhattan castle a fierce, dreamy fairy-tale goodwife in knit hat and flowing robe who has been high on her own strange arts for half a century, a benevolent witch who juxtaposes within herself old hot coals of anger and new white wedding delights of love, an indestructible great-grandmother who is completing a highly spiced, rocketing, despairing and rejoicing life by starting it all over again every morning….
Nevelson’s great, labyrinthine walls of mystery boxes represent her spirit marvelously … the eerie sense that the collected whole is somehow always alive and growing combine to trouble a viewer deeply, as well as to surround him with a deep peacefulness at the same time.23
Then Bongartz notes what all the critics had been saying for years: “Within her are roiling unstabilized forces of arrogance and shyness, of selfishness and generosity, of disdain for the world and love for it, of anger and forgiveness, yet she contains an absolute identity in her person and in her work; even with all this going on she remains 100 per cent Nevelson.”24
The following year Nevelson was on the cover of Intellectual Digest, shown standing in her studio surrounded by recent work. The photograph emphasized the most alienating and grotesque aspects of her appearance.
The accompanying article by journalist Louis Botto, however, is respectful and explains her in a way that credits her contradictory tendencies. Before commencing the requisite description of her odd attire and striking appearance:
Nevelson … makes a startling appearance…. This very tall, very slender lady looks like a Mayan princess dressed for a Mardi Gras. She wears gold space shoes, a floor-length patchwork skirt of many colors and fabrics, a black blouse with a blue denim work shirt over it, at least a dozen necklaces (one created by her of cello tuning keys and the wheel of a child’s go-cart, all painted black) and enormous silver earrings that strike her necklaces and punctuate her conversation with a tinkling sound. Her hair is completely concealed under a green kerchief. Dusky skin and long, thick false black lashes swooping over her eyes like Fuller brushes give her an almost austere look.
Nevelson was portrayed as distinctly odd looking in both the cover photograph and Botto’s vivid verbal description. Nevertheless, he affirms her status as an artist “who may well be ‘the most distinguished woman sculptor in America’ and ‘one of the great sculptors of the world.’ ”25 Very likely she would not have been on the cover of the magazine or had the article written about her if she had looked like an ordinary seventy-three-year-old woman artist. One might assume that Nevelson’s strategy—drawing attention to her extraordinary work by calling attention to her extraordinary self—had succeeded, much as she had hoped it would.
Consider the laudatory reviews of Nevelson’s 1978 show at the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago by critics for the two leading city papers. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, “Mastering the Fine Art of Being Louise Nevelson,” Carol Kleiman sandwiches her acknowledgement of Nevelson’s elevated status as one of the great twentieth-century sculptors—putting her in the company of Moore, Calder, and Giacometti—in between reviews of the woman herself: “She greets people warmly, although the near octogenarian, just off the plane from New York, has only had three hours sleep after a ‘very late party I hated to leave.’ ” The predictable description of the exotic-looking artist came next, along with the customary giveaway lines: “Yet she is her own best creation. Her energy, that vast outpouring of creativity that is her daily life, permeates the respectful room.” Then, without discussing any of the works in the exhibition, Kleiman provides a series of quotable one-liners about Nevelson’s life choices—including, “I never should have gotten married. I wanted to make art my creative act, like some women want to make babies…. My work made me a total woman.”26
Basil Langton. Portrait of Louise Nevelson, ca. 1979. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photograph courtesy of Basil Langton/Photo Researchers.
Kleiman starts with The Nevelson, and never gets to the art. The review of the same exhibit by David Elliot in the Chicago Sun-Times, makes no mention of Nevelson’s persona but goes straight to her art and stays there. “Not very often have I seen a display of modern art that is so majestically assured and so ripe with the fullness of adult consolidation.” Elliot describes his favorite piece in the show, Rain Garden Zag VIII, as a “work of great sensuality and wit, but also grave and noble like a magnetized gathering of modern totems. It sums up a great deal of modern art by achieving both distillation of form for form’s sake, and also a tough unembellished strength of materials.”27
That Nevelson’s persona in combination with her art could trigger confusion in a critic’s response was, in at least one case, responsible for an art critic’s change of view. In early 1978 Charles Calhoun, the arts reporter for The Palm Beach Post-Times, had written a review of a Nevelson show at the Hokin Gallery in which he acknowledged Nevelson as “one of the greatest sculptors of her time and … a master of public relations.”28 Then, twenty months later, reviewing the Farnsworth exhibition when it arrived at the Norton Gallery of Art in West Palm Beach, Calhoun observed: “No one knows yet how closely tied the reputation of Nevelson’s work is to her personal celebrity.”29
Like some art-world insiders and critics Calhoun had evidently been turned off to Nevelson’s art by her persona and public-relations skills. He was one of many who felt they had been caught off-guard by their own enthusiasm about her work, uneasy in the face of the spectacle that accompanied it. And, after they recovered from their initial experience with the persona, Calhoun and others were confused. Could the work and the showmanship be separated? If she were that good an artist why did she need the showmanship?
“If her work can hold its own among the best sculpture of the mid-century, then it can stand up to some de-mystification.” With considerable candor Calhoun wrote that, “Partly as a result of the eccentric, mysterious sibyl-like persona she had created for herself in her later years, discussion of her work—and, even more so, of her career—is often obscured by a great deal of mush…. Some of the things I wrote two seasons ago … might qualify.”30
Like Charles Calhoun, Edward Albee, a longtime friend and a great admirer of Nevelson’s work, raised the following question in an interview in 2012. To what extent is Nevelson’s reputation as an artist linked to—and dependent on—her personal celebrity?
He explained it this way: “Most people have a public personality and a private one. Part of the public personality is defense. It’s a defense, but also it’s fun sometimes. When she had to go out and be ‘The Nevelson,’ she knew how to do it and was very good at it. It amused her. When I saw her for dinner and visiting she was never all dressed up, her hair was covered but she didn’t care about all the rest.”31
Noting that it had taken Nevelson over twenty years to be recognized as a significant sculptor, Albee spoke of the personal effect of this long-delayed success: It’s fine that it took a while to be finally “recognized for the value she had.”32 But being “in the art world wilderness” for “a length of time” also produces “reactions.” One was “her intense satisfaction…. The other was her anger.” Albee implied that, “as much as she knew how to use her public personality, the accumulated resentment could have fueled an exaggerated and overemphasized” version of it.
Albee is convinced that, “Louise the personality got in the way of appreciating Louise the artist. If you say ‘Nevelson,’ many people would not think of the work; they would think of the persona. She was out there selling the public personality more than anything else. That’s bound to do damage. People begin to mistrust the work because the thing that is in public view—the persona—doesn’t seem capable of doing anything of the value the work is supposed to have.”33
Though Albee could certainly see how Nevelson used her persona, perhaps he could not see why she was so attached to it. He did not seem to recognize that, without the help of her splashy glamour, her art might not have achieved the success it deserved, nor could she have overcome the longstanding bias against women artists.
Richard Gray, director of the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago, saw Nevelson differently. He was very savvy about the relationship between Nevelson’s persona and her work, and understood their aesthetic power. In 2009 he observed that, “At the time Nevelson was coming up in the art world, in order to succeed she had to have an elaborate persona and be an unforgettable character. She could walk down the street and 99 percent of the people wouldn’t have any idea who she was—but they would not not notice her. She was the flame surrounded by all the moths. You didn’t want to touch her.” He summed it up quite simply: “Nevelson was always costumed. But for her it wasn’t a costume; it was an extension of herself. Just like her work, which was a conglomeration of disparate stuff with different histories.”34 Gray was clear that Nevelson had made it possible for women artists today not to have to make a spectacle of themselves to get people to look at their art.
At the end of 1983, reviews of Jean Lipman’s large, lavish coffee-table book, Louise Nevelson, ranged from raves to pans, thus mirroring the art world’s response to the artist at the time. Despite the beauty of the book, or probably because of it, many art-world people who were fed up with the limelight-seeking artist didn’t like it. Its size and production values were seen as either appropriate (“the book is as glamorous as the artist herself”35) or an unseemly act of hubris by both author and artist. Another writer opined: “All the books so far on Nevelson … are by people who seem to share at least some of their subject’s mythical view of herself. [Lipman] is a close friend and avid collector of Nevelson’s work and she has created the ultimate official court biography.”36 Yet another noted that, “Sculptor Louise Nevelson emerges as the arrogant grand dame, apparently a good deal more at home in Harper’s Bazaar than in any serious forum of contemporary art.”37
The “too muchness” of Nevelson’s personality had exhausted many art-world people who otherwise admired her work. Vivien Raynor, writing in Art in America in 1973, noted that Nevelson has “become an instance of the artist surviving success. As we all know, one of the Catches 22 for 20th-century artists has been the premium rates paid for self-expression. It has so often made a mockery of their very inspiration, causing art lovers, if not buyers, to recoil…. To her, success has brought relaxation and more discrimination and, in consequence, the work no longer has to compete with the showbiz aura surrounding her and her lifestyle.”38
Why, Raynor might have asked, couldn’t Nevelson be more modest, more private, less in-your-face with a “show-biz aura?” More like Alberto Giacometti, who kept claiming that he was a failure. Or Georgia O’Keeffe, who had the good sense to live like a nun in New Mexico? But Louise Nevelson didn’t give a damn what people thought of her persona or her self-confidence. If it was good enough for Picasso it was good enough for her.
In 1987 at the opening of a solo show at the Whitney Museum branch in Stamford, Connecticut, she once again stole the show. “Alighting from her limousine, she entered with her entourage … in a manner associated with the miraculous arrival of the Byzantine Empress Theodora,” wrote a reviewer of the show. “Lights flashed from dozens of news cameras, hundreds of opening-nighters stared with awe, and a mystical moment of dumbfounded silence overtook the noisy crowd as She came into view. Swathed in a floor-length sable, layers of exotic caftans, shag-rug-thick false eyelashes, and capped with her ever-present turban, Nevelson succeeded in reducing the audience to kneeling supplicants. It was a memorable scene.”39
