INTRODUCTION
1 Hilton Kramer, Introduction in Nevelson’s World, Hudson Hills Press and Whitney Museum of American Art, 1983, p. 15
2 John Canaday, A stimulating Show of Nevelson Art, New York Times, November 11, 1970, p. 36.
3 Jan Gelb, interview with author, June 26, 1976.
4 Louise Nevelson in Arnold B. Glimcher, Louise Nevelson (New York: Praeger, 1972), 19–20.
5 Nevelson in Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 193.
6 John Canaday, “Art: Nevelson’s ‘7th Decade Garden’; Group of 12 Sculptures Shown at the Pace,” New York Times, May 8, 1971, 25.
7 John Canaday, “Tribute to Louise Nevelson on the Occasion of the Award of the Edward MacDowell Medal,” The MacDowell Colony: Report for 1969, August 24, 1969.
8 Helen Meyner “In and Out of New Jersey” Newark Star Ledger March 30, 1967
9 Bernadette Andrews, “Showing the World Art Is Everywhere,” Toronto Telegram, October 19, 1968.
10 New York Times, April 18, 1988.
1. RUSSIAN ROOTS 1899–1905
1 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. According to her son, Mike Nevelson, his mother’s name was Lieken, not Leah.
2 Sholom Aleichem who had grown up in Voronko, a small town near Kiev, eloquently portrayed village life in stories such as “Tevye the Dairyman,” which begat the musical Fiddler on the Roof.
3 Celia C. Rosen, includes an interview with Nate Berliawsky, Some Jewels of Maine: Jewish Maine Pioneers (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1997), 59.
4 Louise Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown, ed. Diana MacKown (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 18.
5 Philip Isaacson, “Louise Nevelson At 67,” Portland Sunday Telegram, May 21, 1967, 7D.
6 Ibid. Philip Isaacson, “Louise Nevelson At 67,” Sunday Telegram (Portland, Maine), May 21, 1967, 7D.
7 “They Call me Mother Courage,” Jean Micuda, Arizona Living, March 17, 1972, vol 3 no 11.
8 Louise Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown, ed. Diana MacKown (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 14.
9 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
10 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
11 The Russian Empire is being used here to refer to what was sometimes called Russia-Poland, as well as the Lithuanian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Polish provinces of the Russian Empire.
12 “They bought the trees on the land and would saw it by hand.” Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976. The question of Jewish land ownership is discussed by Michael Stanislawski in “Louise Nevelson’s Self-Fashioning: ‘The Author of Her Own Life’” in The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend, ed. Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New Haven: Jewish Museum with Yale University Press, 2007).
13 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
14 Michael Stanislawski, “Louise Nevelson’s Self-Fashioning: ‘The Author of Her Own Life’,” in The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend, ed. Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New Haven: Jewish Museum with Yale University Press, 2007), 222. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at The Jewish Museum, New York, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young.
15 Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 10.
16 Ibid., 25.
17 Ibid., 32–33.
18 Ibid., 112. See also Steve J. Zipperstein, “Russian Maskilim and the City,” in The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and its Impact, ed. David Berger (New York: Columbia University Press, Social Science Monographs, 1983). The Haskalah movement was an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement among central and eastern European Jews, begun in Germany under the leadership of Moses Mendelssohn, designed to make Jews and Judaism more cosmopolitan in character by promoting knowledge of and contributions to the secular arts and sciences and encouraging adoption of the dress, customs, and language of the general population.
19 Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews, 187.
20 Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 66.
21 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
22 Jeffrey Entin, Descendants of Khatskel Berlyavsky, communication, November 13, 2013 Alex Berljawsky, communication, November 13, 2013 .
23 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 4.
24 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
25 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. He also recalled that this photograph was kept in the living room in a special Slavic red-painted area that also held a samovar and tea glasses brought to Maine from Russia by his grandparents.
26 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
27 Beginning on April 14, the confluence of Easter and Passover “sparked an explosion of violence that cut a destructive path through Jewish communities across the southern provinces of the Pale for over two years…. violence spread quickly to nearby cities, including Kiev and Odessa, and soon engulfed hundreds of communities…. 1881 inaugurated a new pattern of anti-Jewish violence in which national political events acted as decisive catalysts, and rioting occurred not just in isolated settings but across large regions, for months or years on end.” Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 186.
28 Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).
29 Judith S. Goldstein, Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 44.
30 Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 86.
31 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 4–6.
32 Barbara and Joel Fishman and Barbara’s parents, Sam and Ruth Small, descendants of Louise’s maternal aunt, interview with author, December 8–9, 2007.
33 However, recent research suggests that not all such “first-hand” stories of pogroms and marauding Cossacks are accurate. “This is largely a literary motif which is picked up very broadly and then became memory.” Michael Stanislawsky, communication with author, March 11, 2014.
34 Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 187.
35 Barbara and Joel Fishman, descendants of Nevelson’s grandmother, interview with author, July 2008.
36 Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971–92; 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), 15:768–69, s.v. “Pereyaslav-Khmelnitski.”
37 Monty Noam Penkower, “The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903: A Turning Point in Jewish History,” Modern Judaism 24, no. 3 (October 2004): 187–225. See “Jewish Massacre Denounced,” New York Times, April 28, 1903, 6; there were follow-up articles throughout May.
38 Penkower, Modern Judaism, 187–225.
39 “Jewish Massacre Denounced,” New York Times, April 28, 1903, 6.
40 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. According to Mike Nevelson, his grandmother Minna also kept silent about these frightening events. In the same way that many survivors of the Holocaust never shared their experiences, she did not talk with her children or grandchildren about the pogroms that had affected her or members of her family.
41 MacKown had intuited some of Nevelson’s traumatic experience as she heard Nevelson describe her earlier years in Russia.
42 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
43 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. This version of the story comes from Mike Nevelson. An alternative and revealing family story from Lillian is that Nathan, who had become rich and important in Waterville, wanted his younger “greenhorn” brother out of the way. So he bought Isaac a horse and carriage and sent him off to make his way on his own. Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
44 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 6.
45 Ibid.
46 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
47 Sigmund Freud, “Screen Memories” [1899], in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–74), 3: 322.
48 Sigmund Freud, “Leonardo and a Memory of His Childhood,” [1910], Standard Edition 11: 83
49 Sigmund Freud, “A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit,” [1917], Standard Edition 17: 149.
50 Eleanor Munro, Originals: American Women Artists (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 135, 136.
51 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, February 5, 2007.
52 Nate Berliawsky, interviewed by the author, July 12, 1976; Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976. “That’s where we played the most.” Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Ben Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
53 Ben Mildwoff, interviewed by the author, June 14, 1976. See also Alvin Sweet, “How Industries and Trades of Maine and Region Grew from Early Times,” Courier-Gazette, March 20, 1976, Trade and Travel section, 1.
54 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Ben Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
55 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 7.
56 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
57 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
58 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
59 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 27.
60 Judith Goldstein, Crossing Lines: Histories of Jews and Gentiles in Three Communities (New York: William Morrow, 1992). Between 1906 and 1917 Isaac Belofski/Berliawsky was listed as grocer and/or peddler in the town records.
61 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
62 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
63 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
64 Ibid.
65 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
66 Rosen includes an interview with Nate Berliawsky in Some Jewels of Maine, 57. See note 2, above.
67 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
68 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
69 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1977.
70 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
71 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1977.
72 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
73 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
74 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976. Mike elaborates on the story of his grandfather’s drunkenness, explaining that for many years Isaac could not become a U.S. citizen because of his record of drunk driving. “He was arrested for carrying a bottle of alcohol on Main Street and drinking. He used to fight with people all the time. He had a bad personality.” Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
75 “One of the finest gentlemen.” Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
76 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 10.
77 Ibid.
78 Nevelson in Roy Bongartz, “‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time,’ Says Louise Nevelson at 70,” New York Times Magazine, January 24, 1971, 12–13, 30–34.
79 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
80 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
81 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
82 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
83 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 10.
84 Ibid.
85 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976. From the 1940s through the ’70s, Nevelson would occasionally “disappear.” It was usually after working extremely hard preparing for an exhibition but before the show opened. She would have checked herself into a hospital with nervous exhaustion. Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 25, 2013. She would invariably reappear in time to finish the preparations for the exhibit.
2. ROCKLAND CHILDHOOD 1905–1918
1 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
2 Ibid.
3 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
4 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
5 Munro, Originals, 138.
6 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
7 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 10.
8 Ibid., 10–13.
9 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
10 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
11 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
12 Ibid.
13 William Ralph Kalloch in Laurie Lisle, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life (New York: Summit, 1990), 25.
14 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
15 Ibid.
16 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
17 Ibid.
18 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 6.
19 Beverly Grunwald, “Getting Around,” Women’s Wear Daily, November 18, 1976.
20 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
21 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
22 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976
23 Ibid.
24 Anita – quote about time to get dressed.
25 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
26 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
27 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
28 Barbara Rose, “The Individualist,” Vogue, June 1, 1976, 122–124, 156–157.
29 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 13.
30 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
31 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 13.
32 Ibid.
33 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
34 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
35 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 14. Glimcher gives a similar account adding the comment: “I didn’t know what ‘original’ meant … but it made me feel very good.” Louise Nevelson, 29.
36 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 24–25.
37 That Nevelson couches her recollection of her first crucial mentor in the context of that woman’s fashion sense is revealing. It was an indirect way of honoring her mother’s aesthetic sense, which was channeled entirely through fashion—fashion was usually a link to her thoughts and feelings about her mother.
38 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 25.
39 Edgar Crockett, interview with author, July 15, 1976.
40 Ibid.
41 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 24.
42 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 28–29.
43 Ibid., 28.
44 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
45 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
46 Munro, Originals, 139.
47 Ibid.
48 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 24.
49 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author in July 13, 1976.
50 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
51 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 14.
52 Ibid., 15. Here, as elsewhere, open-spaced ellipsis is in the original text.
53 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976; Diana MacKown, interview with author, August 25, 2008.
54 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 15.
55 Ibid., 27.
56 Henry J. Seldis, “Enchanted Forest of Nevelson Wood Sculpture,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1974.
57 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
58 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 7.
59 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
60 Emmett Meara, “Sculptor Louise Nevelson Resents Ostracism in Rockland as Youth,” Bangor Daily News, June 15, 1978, 5.
61 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 28.
62 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 28. She felt her arms and legs were biggish but not out of proportion to the rest of her body.
63 Ibid., 25.
64 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
65 Jan Ernst Adlmann, interview with author, June 16, 2012.
66 William Langley, “Maine in the Days of the Klan,” Portland Sunday Telegram, February 2, 1969, 4–5D.
67 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
68 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
69 Barbaralee Diamonstein, “Caro, de Kooning, Indiana, Lichtenstein, Motherwell and Nevelson on Picasso’s Influence,” Art News, April 1974, 48. Nevelson at seventy-five recalled an incident when she protected a younger girl from a bully—and she wasn’t even a friend.
70 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
71 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
72 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 25.
73 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977
74 Arnold B. Glimcher, “Interview with Louise Nevelson,” 1972, AAA.
75 Marius B. Péladeau, “The Gypsies in Maine,” (unpublished typescript, 1976).
76 “Gypsies in Maine,” New York Times, June 3, 1878, 2.
77 Irving Brown, Gypsy Fires in America: A Narrative of Life Among the Romanies of the United States and Canada (New York: Harper, 1924), 3.
3. MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD 1920–1929
1 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 24.
2 Rockland High School Graduation Photo, 1918, LN Papers, AAA.
3 Barbara and Joel Fishman, interview with author, July 2008.
4 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 30.
5 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
6 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
7 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
8 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 31.
9 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
10 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 30; Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984
11 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 31.
12 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
13 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 24
14 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
15 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 31.
16 Ibid.
17 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA. Her parents never became citizens.
18 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, June 1, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 26.
19 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
20 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 32
21 Both Anita and Lillian would soon move to New York, staying with the Nevelsons or nearby. Lillian married and raised her family there. Anita went to college and lived there for several years.
22 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
23 Ibid.
24 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 34.
25 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, June 1, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 26.
26 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
27 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
28 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
29 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 31; cf. Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 20.
30 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, June 1, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 25.
31 Lisle, Louise Nevelson, 56.
32 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 35.
33 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, May–June 1964, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript 208, 10.
34 Louise Nevelson, interview with Barbarlee Diamonstein, “The Reminiscences of Louise Nevelson,” November 3, 1977, Oral History Research Office, Columbia University.
35 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, December 8, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 1.
36 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
37 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
38 Ibid.
39 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
43 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
44 Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, interview with Laurie Lisle, October 29, 1982, AAA.
45 Gail Levin, “Forgotten Fame,” in Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art, ed. Gail Levin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 17.
46 Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, interview with Laurie Lisle, October 29, 1982, AAA.
47 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 36.
48 Abram Chasins, interview with Laurie Lisle, March 5, 1983, AAA.
49 Mike Nevelson, interview with Laurie Lisle, July 27, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA.
50 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 37.
51 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1977.
52 Anita stayed with them for a period of time until they moved to Brooklyn, where Lillian stayed with them, while Anita lived in a nearby apartment with her husband. Their next move was to 108 East 91st Street in 1929–31, again followed by Anita’s move to an apartment on 89th Street; Anita Berliawsky Weinstein and Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976. Anita had ostensibly come to New York to go to college, and she enrolled at Columbia University Teachers College. Lillian had studied teaching in Maine but worked on earning her teaching credentials in Brooklyn.
53 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
54 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
55 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976. The “International Theatre Exposition,” New York, February 27–March 15, 1926, was arranged by Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap. Several versions of the illustrated catalogue appeared, one of which was published in the Little Review 11, no. 2 (winter 1926). Nevelson’s two sisters remembered accompanying her several times to this exhibit.
56 “Fourth Dimension Plays for the Masses,” New York City World, March 15, 1926.
57 Norina Matchabelli and Frederick Kiesler in “Audience are Actors in Newest Theatre,” New York Evening Post, March 15, 1926.
58 Linda D. Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).
59 Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 339–340.
60 Max Weber, “The Fourth Dimension from a Plastic Point of View” in Camera Work, no. 31 (1910).
61 “Fourth Dimension Plays the Latest Wrinkle for Drama,” New York Review, March 27, 1926.
62 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
63 Norina Matchabelli, “Princess Matchabelli Speaks for the International Theatre Arts Institute,” October 3, 1926, Independent Theatres Dinner Program.
64 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
65 Ibid.
66 It is possible that while she was studying with Matchabelli and Kiesler, Nevelson also took some classes in “Body Education” with Dr. Bess Mensendieck, whose views she would have found equally compatible.
67 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
68 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 35.
69 Ibid., 34.
70 Lillian Berliawsky, Louise’s sister, married Ben Mildwoff and became Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff. Ben Mildwoff’s sister, Lillian, married Louise’s brother, Nate Berliawsky, much later and became Lillian Mildwoff Berliawsky.
71 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
72 Ibid.
73 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
74 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 38.
75 Jiddu Krishnamurti, “Truth Is a Pathless Land” in Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 1–9.
76 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 35.
77 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, November 10, 1912; Maria Nevelson, personal communication, 2010.
78 Krishnamurti, “Truth Is a Pathless Land,” 1–9.
79 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 35.
80 Ibid., 35–36
81 Ibid., 36
82 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
83 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 36–37.
84 “Accessions and Notes,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 23, no. 11 (November 1928): 279.
4. ART AT LAST 1929–1934
1 Louise Nevelson, Student Registration Record, Art Students League; The winter catalogue of the Art Students’ League of N[ew] Y[ork] (1929–30).
2 Stuart Klonis, interview with author, August 19, 1976.
3 Lincoln Rothschild, To Keep Art Alive: The Effort of Kenneth Hayes Miller, American Painter (1876–1952) (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1974), 58.
4 Edwin Dickenson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, “The Art Students League: Part I,” Archives of American Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1973): 9.
5 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
6 Precise information regarding Nevelson’s attendance is contained in the student files at the Art Students League, New York.
7 Stuart Klonis, interview with author, August 19, 1976.
8 Kenneth Hayes Miller to Louise Nevelson, LN Papers, AAA.
9 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
10 Lincoln Rothschild, To Keep Art Alive, 58.
11 Edwin Dickenson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, “The Art Students League: Part I,” Archives of American Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1973): 13.
12 Ibid., 60–63.
13 Carol Diehl, “Breaking the Rules: James Rosenquist, Louise Nevelson, George Segal and Nam June Paik on Their Personal Moments of Discovery,” Arts and Antiques, April 1988, 74.
14 Isabel Bishop, interview with author, August 19, 1976.
15 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 5, 1975.
16 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 4, 1975. Dehner met her future husband David Smith in Miller’s class.
17 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
18 Kimon Nicolaïdes, The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941). His book, published the year after his death, outlines his teaching methods.
19 Nicolaïdes, The Natural Way to Draw, 2.
20 Louise Nevelson, in Tal Streeter, “Unpublished Interview with Louise Nevelson,” November 25, 1959, LN Papers, AAA, transcript, 6.
21 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
22 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976
23 Ibid.
24 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 12, 1976. Her sister Anita had already left her husband and was living with her baby son at their parents’ home.
25 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 5, 1975.
26 George McNeil, interview with Irving Sandler, January 9, 1968 in “The Art Students League Part II,” Archives of American Art Journal 13, no. 2 (1973): 1.
27 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 32.
28 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 44.
29 Carl Holty, student records, Art Students League, New York. For accounts of Hofmann’s teaching, see “Hans Hofmann Student Dossier,” Museum of Modern Art; Irving Sandler, “Hans Hofmann: The Pedagogical Master,” Art in America (May–June 1973): 48–57; Hans Hofmann, Search for the Real, ed. Sara T. Weeks and Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (rev. ed.; Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1967). See also Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 44; Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 32.
30 Hans Hofmann, “Art in America,” Art Digest, August 1930, 27.
31 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
32 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
33 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 40.
34 Ibid.
35 Colette Roberts, Nevelson (Paris: Editions Georges Fall, 1964), 70. She cites the family allowance as late as 1964.
36 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
37 Charles Nevelson postscript to letter from Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, December 12, 1931, LN Papers, AAA.
38 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, December 12, 1931, LN Papers, AAA.
39 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, April 24, 1932, LN Papers, AAA.
40 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 14, 1932, LN Papers, AAA.
41 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, Tuesday, n.d., 1932, LN Papers, AAA.
42 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, n.d., 1932, LN Papers, AAA.
43 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
44 Ibid.
45 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
46 Ibid.
47 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976; Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976. Her son confirmed this account; Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
48 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
49 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
50 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, June 1, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 16–17.
51 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
52 Roberts, Nevelson, 70.
53 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
54 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
55 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
56 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976; Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 35; see also Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 47.
57 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 47.
58 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
59 Louise Nevelson, LN Papers, AAA.
60 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 50–51.
61 Poetry in LN Papers, AAA.
62 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, January 28, 2012.
63 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 38.
64 Ibid.
65 Louise Nevelson, LN Papers, AAA.
66 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
67 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
68 According to her enrollment record for 1932 at the Art Students League she was living at 39 East 65th Street.
69 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
70 Ibid. By the time they were introduced, Nevelson would have seen his exhibition of frescoes at the Museum of Modern Art in February and March 1933.
71 Ibid.
72 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
73 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976; Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976. For an account of Rivera’s Rockefeller mural, see Sidney Geist, “Prelude: The 1930’s,” Arts 30 (September 1956): 54–55, and Bertram Wolfe, Diego Rivera (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), 323–38.
74 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
75 Ibid.
76 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 41.
77 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
78 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 19, 1935, LN Papers, AAA.
79 Bertram D. Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Stein and Day, 1963), 333
80 Malcolm Vaughan, “Rivera’s Latest Series of Murals Nearly Finished,” and “The Artist as Propagandist,” New York Journal-American, September 30, 1933.
81 Printed notice: “Diego Rivera is painting a series of murals on American history at The New Workers School,” in library file on Rivera at MoMA.
82 Rivera gave public lectures each night of the “Three Day Public Showing of the Mural ‘Portrait of America,’” according to the brochure announcement of the event in the Museum of Modern Art library.
83 David Margolis, interview with author, June 11, 1976.
84 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, December 9, 1976.
85 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
86 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976. After he died, his daughter returned the portrait to Nevelson.
87 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
88 Louise Nevelson in Roberts, Nevelson, 16.
89 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976; David Margolis, interview with author, June 11, 1976.
90 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 57.
91 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
92 A farewell reception was given on December 5th to thank Rivera for his generosity. Aaron Copeland, Ben Shahn, Lewis Mumford and John Sloan were part of the group of “workers in the arts” who organized the reception.
93 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
94 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
95 David Margolis, interview with author, June 1, 1976. Margolis finished it.
5. THE BEGINNING OF SCULPTURE 1934–1940
1 Roberts, Nevelson, 70. Nevelson’s friend and dealer Colette Roberts wrote the book in close collaboration with Nevelson.
2 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 67.
3 Ibid.
4 Walter Sorell, The Dance Through the Ages (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967); Don McDonagh, Complete Guide to Modern Dance (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976).
5 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977. “She went to dance concerts almost every week.”
6 Though she had many opportunities to meet Martha Graham, just as she had with Picasso when in Paris, Nevelson only spoke with her idol in 1985 when they were both at the White House being honored by President Reagan.
7 Mary Farkas, interview with author, August 17, 1976
8 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 65–67.
9 Mary Farkas, interview with author, August 17, 1976.
10 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
11 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976. As Lillian recalled, “If you’re with Louise, you have to create.”
12 Mary Farkas, interview with author, August 17, 1976.
13 Roberta Brandes Gartz, “Building Empires,” New York Post, March 8, 1967, 47.
14 Bongartz, “‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time.’” See ch. 1 n78.
15 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 70.
16 Sigmund Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914), Standard Edition 14: 89.
17 Mary Farkas, interview with author, August 17, 1976. Richard Kramer, interview with author, November 28, 1975.
18 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 70.
19 David Margolis, interview with author, June 11, 1976.
20 Nathaniel Kaz, interview with author, June 15, 1976.
21 Richard Kramer, interview with author, November 28, 1975. Kramer was the father of Edith Kramer, the renowned art therapist who helped establish the field in the United States.
22 Richard Kramer, interview with author, November 28, 1975.
23 David Margolis, interview with author, June 11, 1976.
24 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
25 Alice Neel in Lisle, Louise Nevelson, 119.
26 Robert Cronbach, interview with author, June 23, 1976.
27 Not unimportant is the fact that most of these groups were men only, albeit men whom Nevelson had known and remained close to for decades, such as Gottlieb and Rothko (then still known as Rothkowitz).
28 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
29 Ibid.
30 David Margolis, interview with author, June 11, 1976; Joseph Solman, interview with author, September 12, 1976.
31 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976
32 According to Louise Nevelson—in an interview with author, July 7, 1976—her studies with Gross lasted two months. According to Chaim Gross—in an interview with author, June 1, 1976—the duration was two years.
33 Nevelson’s family’s interest in wood could have encouraged a positive response to his sculpture, which would be borne out in her work many years later.
34 Gross was awarded the Tiffany Fellowship in 1933 and his work appeared in Alec Miller, “Sculpture in Wood,” American Magazine of Art 21, no. 6 (June 1930); L. R. Davis, “American Wood Sculpture,” Studio 108, no. 501 (December 1934). See Frank Getlein, Chaim Gross (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1974).
35 Chaim Gross, interview with author, June 1, 1976.
36 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, who was present as a daily witness during these years recalls: “She switched from painting to sculpting in 1934 because she didn’t have money to buy paint and canvas.” Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
37 Brooklyn Museum, exhibition catalogue, Sculpture: A Group Exhibition by Young Sculptors (1935), 6.
38 Francis V. O’Connor, interview with author, August 16, 1976.
39 See Robert Cronbach, “The New Deal Sculpture Projects,” in The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs, ed. Francis O’Connor (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972), 137.
40 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, January 8, 1976.
41 Alexander Tatti, interview with author, New York, August 18, 1976; Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976. Tatti took over Basky’s workshop and has run it to the present under the name Alexander. See also Francis O’Connor, “Questionnaire for Artists Employed on the WPA Federal Art Project in New York City and State,” Artists’ File WPA/FAP, AAA.
42 Nevelson’s association with Basky and Tatti continued into the 1960s, and she consistently relied upon them for technical advice and labor.
43 Nevelson’s first recorded exhibit was at the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture: A Group Exhibition by Young Sculptors, May 1–7, 1935. Her contribution was a piece in plaster entitled Two Figures (which is probably fig. 65), catalogue in LN Papers, AAA. For Nevelson’s account of her experience teaching children, see Louise Nevelson, “Art at the Flatbush Boys’ Club,” Flatbush Magazine, June 1935, 3.
44 Francis V. O’Connor, telephone interview with author, August 16, 1976. According to O’Connor, the teaching would have taken up about fifteen to twenty hours a week and would have left the remaining time free.
45 “Mural Painting Classes At Flatbush Boys’ Club,” Brooklyn N.Y. Citizen, March 28, 1935.
46 Louise Nevelson, “Art at the Flatbush Boys’ Club,” Flatbush Magazine, June 1935, 3.
47 The WPA years were a time when women artists garnered almost equal respect and rewards to those given to male artists. Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker, eds., Art and Sexual Politics: Women’s Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History (rev. ed. New York: Collier Books,1975).
48 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 4 and 5, 1975.
49 Francis V. O’Connor, “Questions for Artists Employed on the WPA Federal Art Project in New York City and State,” New Deal Research Project, June 18, 1968, Artists’ File WPA/FAP, AAA.
50 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
51 Employment transcript, Louise Nevelson, General Services Administration, Artists’ File, New York WPA/FAP, AAA. Nevelson was employed as part of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration and the WPA continuously from
52 Emily Genauer, “Wooden Sculptures Lauded,” New York World-Telegram, September 12, 1936. Genauer later learned that these works were plaster. Howard Devree, New York Times, September 13, 1936, correctly identified the works as “water-colored plaster.”
53 “Artists Take Part in New City Show,” New York Times, July 1, 1936.
54 “The Critic Takes a Glance Around the Galleries,” New York Post, June 19, 1937.
55 “Federal Art Teachers Present Exhibition,” New York World-Telegram, July 23, 1938.
56 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976. Because she was so prolific, Nevelson always had a sizable amount of work from which to select for entry into various shows. She stored the sculpture she couldn’t fit into her studio wherever she could find someone willing to give her space. Her sister Lillian recalled storing her sister’s plaster and terra-cotta work in her basement for ten years or more.
57 Richard Kramer, interview with author, November 28, 1975.
58 Her work for the WPA was terminated on July 27, 1939. Employment transcript, Louise Nevelson, General Services Administration, Artists’ File, New York WPA/FAP, AAA.
59 Francis V. O’Connor, telephone interview with author, August 16, 1976.
60 Howard Devree, “American Water-Colors and Other Exhibitions,” New York Times, September 13, 1936, X7.
61 Emily Genauer, “New Fall Art Exhibits Featured by Tyros’ Promising Efforts,” New York World-Telegram, September 12, 1936.
62 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 59.
63 Bongartz, “‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time,’” 30.
64 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 64.
65 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
66 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art (1936; repr., New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1974). Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Museum of Modern Art, March 2–April 19, 1936.
67 For a useful discussion of this period, see John Elderfield, “The Paris-New York Axis: Geometric Abstract Painting in The Thirties,” in Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Geometric Abstraction: 1926–1942, comp. Robert M. Murdock (Dallas: Brodnax Printing Company, 1972); published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, October 7–November 19, 1972. See also Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (New York: Praeger, 1970), ch. 1. Lipchitz’s three New York exhibits were: Brummer Gallery, 1935; Buchholz Gallery, 1942, 1943; Laurens showed at the Brummer Gallery in 1938.
68 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, August 23, 1939.
69 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
70 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976. Some notebook pages of dreams from 1936 suggest that she saw the analyst that year. Louise Nevelson, “Dreams” (unpublished journal, April 21–June 21, 1936), LN Papers, AAA.
71 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1977.
72 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 72.
73 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 71.
74 Ibid.
75 “Germans Execute Hirsch, U.S. Citizen: Youth of 21 Guillotined Despite Repeated American Appeals to Hitler for Clemency,” New York Times, June 5, 1937, 1, 8.
76 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 72.
6. SURREALISM 1940–1946
1 H. D., “Sculptors and Others,” New York Times, March 10, 1940, 161.
2 Nevelson in Agnes Adams, “Behind a One-Woman Art Show: Louise Nedelson’s [Nevelson’s] Revolt as a Pampered Wife,” New York Post, October 16, 1941.
3 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
4 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 75.
5 Ibid.
6 Anja Walter-Ris, “Die Geschichte der Galerie Nierendorf Kunstleidenschaft im Dienst der Moderne. Berlin/New York 1920–1995” [History of the Nierendorf Gallery Berlin/New York 1920–1995] (Zurich: Zurich InterPublishers, 2003), 255. Nierendorf permanently devoted one room of his gallery to Klee and gave him many solo exhibitions (in one season alone he mounted seven Klee exhibitions) and organized a number of important publications about him.
7 See, for instance, “The Digest Interviews: Karl Nierendorf,” Art Digest 18 (November 15, 1943), 74.
8 See Peyton Boswell’s obituary “Nierendorf: Scholar-Dealer” in Art Digest 22 (November 1, 1947); as the headline of Boswell’s obituary indicates, Nierendorf was a rare combination of shy scholar and sagacious businessman.
9 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
10 Jan Gelb, interview with author, June 27, 1976.
11 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson August 29, 1941, LN Papers, AAA.
12 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 72.
13 Ibid., 76.
14 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, December 8, 1970, AG Papers, transcript. See also Karl Nierendorf, letter to Louise Nevelson, September 10, 1941, LN Papers, AAA.
15 Dido Smith, “Louise Nevelson,” Craft Horizons, May/June 1967, 75.
16 Jimmy Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life (New York: Pushcart Press, 1984), 150–51.
17 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 73.
18 Agnes Adams, “Behind a One-Woman Art Show,” New York Post, October 16, 1941.
19 Ibid.
20 Howard Devree, “A Reviewer’s Notebook: New Shows; Brief Comment on Some of the Recently Opened Exhibitions in Galleries – Water-Colors by Margules – Group Events,” New York Times, September 28, 1941, X5.
21 Carlyle Burrows, “Notes and Comment on Events in Art,” New York Herald Tribune, September 28, 1941.
22 Emily Genauer, “The Nierendorf Exhibit,” New York World-Telegram, September 27, 1941.
23 “Art Notes,” Cue, October 4, 1941, 16.
24 Sculptures by Nevelson (New York: Nierendorf Gallery, 1942); published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, shown at the Nierendorf Gallery, October 6–25, 1942, LN Papers, AAA.
25 “The Passing Shows,” Art News, November 1–14, 1942, 24.
26 H. D., “Modern Sculpture,” New York Times, October 11, 1942, X5.
27 Ralph Rosenborg, Interview with Irving Sandler, April 16, 1968. Ralph M. Rosenborg papers, AAA.
28 Joseph Solman, interview with author, September 12, 1976.
29 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
30 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1976.
31 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
32 Martica Sawin, “The Achievement of Ralph Rosenborg,” Arts, November 1960, 45.
33 Artist friends like Jan Gelb were surprised at how organized and even tidy her studio was. After seeing the seemingly careless way she worked with etching plates at Atelier 17 in 1953, they were expecting to find a mess in her studio. But it was always surprisingly orderly—another personality trait she shared with Ralph Rosenborg.
34 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1976.
35 Art News, November 19, 1942, as quoted in the Nierendorf Gallery catalogue of the exhibition.
36 Diego Rivera and André Breton (and, uncredited, Leon Trotsky), “Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art,” translated by Dwight Macdonald, Partisan Review 6, no. 1 (fall 1938), in Martica Sawin, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 22.
37 December 7, 1936–January 17, 1937. See Rudi Blesh, Modern Art USA: Men, Rebellion, Conquest, 1900–1956 (New York: Knopf, 1956), 177–78. As outrageous as many of the pieces in this exhibit may have seemed to the public, the installation of the show was quite traditional, with none of the theatrical effects of later surrealist exhibits in New York.
38 For a general discussion of Surrealist impact on American art, see William S. Rubin, Dada and Surrealist Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1968), 342ff.; Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 85ff.; Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting: a History of Abstract Expressionism (New York: Praeger, 1970), 29ff. See also “Concerning the Beginnings of the New York School: 1939–1943; an Interview with Peter Busa and Matta, conducted by Sidney Simon in Minneapolis in December 1966,” Art International 11, no. 6 (summer 1967): 17–20; “Concerning the Beginnings of the New York School: 1939–1943; an Interview with Robert Motherwell, conducted by Sidney Simon in New York in January 1967,” Art International 11, no. 6 (summer 1967): 20–23.
39 Jimmy Ernst, interview with author, July 29, 1976. Nierendorf was friendly with Seligmann and Wolfgang Paalen, publishing the etchings of the former and exhibiting the works of the latter. However, his affiliation with the German Expressionists made him unacceptable to the French Surrealists.
40 Jimmy Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life, 186.
41 A rare copy of the catalogue for this exhibit is in the Museum of Modern Art library, First Papers of Surrealism; hanging by André Breton; his twine, Marcel Duchamp. 14 October–7 November 1942 (New York: NYC Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, 1942). For a description of the opening night’s events, see Blesh, Modern Art USA, 167–170. See also Rubin, Dada and Surrealist Art, 342ff.
42 For Miss Guggenheim’s description of this unconventional gallery, see Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century: The Informal Memoirs of Peggy Guggenheim (New York: Dial Press, 1946), 318–21. See also “New Display Techniques for ‘Art of This Century’ Designed by Frederick J. Kiesler,” Architectural Forum 78, no. 2 (February 1943): 49–53; Cynthia Goodman, “Frederick Kiesler: Designs for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery,” Arts Magazine, June 1977, 90–95.
43 Kiesler and Duchamp had known each other since 1925 in Paris, and Kiesler had been suggested by Breton to Peggy Guggenheim as the best possible designer of her new gallery. The installations of Breton’s and Kiesler’s important exhibitions point to the congruence of Kiesler’s lifelong dreams as a designer-architect and Surrealism’s penchant for offbeat theatrical involvement of the spectator.
44 Press release MoMA, December 1942. “Museum of Modern Art exhibits gaily ornamented bootblack chair and accessories.”
45 “A Shoe Shine Stand de Luxe,” New York Times, December 22, 1942.
46 The shoeshine box of Joe Milone, also known as Giovanni Indelicato, was recently purchased by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY, and was written up in The New York Times: Eve M. Kahn, “A Shoeshine Box, With a Luster All Its Own, Emerges from the Shadows,” New York Times, June 9, 2014, C7.
47 Lou Nappi, “Great Contribution to Surrealist Art, Says Noted Woman Sculptor of Joe Milone’s Odd Shoe-Shine Box,” Corriere D’America, January 10, 1943. Nappi cites Nevelson’s words about Milone.
48 Henry McBride, “Women Surrealists, They, Too, Know How to Make your Hair Stand on End,” New York Sun, January 9, 1943.
49 Edward Alden Jewell, “31 Women Artists Show Their Work: Peggy Guggenheim Museum Offers Paintings, Sculpture of Fantasy Realm,” New York Times, January 6, 1943.
50 Ben Bendol, “Art Events,” Aufbau, January 15, 1943, 14.
51 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
52 Louise Nevelson, in Tal Streeter, “Unpublished Interview with Louise Nevelson,” November 25, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
53 Nevelson Drawings, shown at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, April 12–30, 1943.
54 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 93.
55 Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life, 242.
56 Maude Riley, “Irrepressible Nevelson,” Art Digest, April 15, 1943; Art News, May 1–14, 1943.
57 Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life, 240. Elenor Lust was the daughter of Dora Lust, Nevelson’s old friend—another wealthy divorcee—from her Art Students League days.
58 The Circus, The Clown is the Center of His World, shown at the Norlyst Gallery in New York, April 1943. Louise Nevelson’s humorous animal sculpture appealed to Ernst and Lust and they decided that its inclusion would enliven the exhibit (Jimmy Ernst, interview with author, July 29, 1976; press release, gallery announcement, LN Papers, AAA). The gallery announcement lists the titles of each piece included in the exhibit and groups them into the three categories.
59 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 7, 1976.
60 In 1970 Nevelson described this particular work to Arnold Glimcher and told him not only that she had destroyed all the work (which probably was the case) but also that she had not photographed any of the works (which was not the case). Six years later she told me she had not had money enough to photograph the works.
61 Jimmy Ernst, interview with author, July 29, 1976.
62 Maude Riley, “Irrepressible Nevelson,” Art Digest, April 15, 1943.
63 Art News, May 1–14, 1943, 21.
64 E. A. J., “Comment in Miniature,” New York Times, April 18, 1943.
65 Edward Alden Jewell, “Art World Victim of Circus Fever,” New York Times, April 23, 1943
66 Ernst, A Not-So-Still Life, 242.
67 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 88. Peggy Guggenheim’s collection of abstract and surrealist art was on permanent display. Part of the museum was reserved for temporary exhibitions, which for the next five years provided the leading avant-garde New York artists with consistent and exceptionally favorable opportunities to be seen and to see. Peggy Guggenheim sat in the front room, accessible to all visitors, and the gallery with its many openings and parties became a focal point during the years of gestation and first flowering of The New York School. “Here … in Peggy Guggenheim’s sublimated dollhouse, we saw the noble toys of a whole generation” (Blesh, Modern Art USA, 220). See also Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning (New York: Viking, 1972), 118–22.
68 Mike Nevelson, letter to Louise Nevelson, June 20, 1943, LN Papers, AAA.
69 One can imagine that Karl Nierendorf, a man of meticulous taste and culture, while admiring the wit of the earlier Circus pieces, might have found their crudeness repugnant and welcomed the more refined works that followed.
70 Robert M. Coates, “Art Galleries,” New Yorker, October 14, 1944.
71 Howard Devree, “A Reviewer’s Notes; Brief Comment on Some Recently Opened Exhibitions of Contemporary Work,” New York Times, October 29, 1944, X8.
72 “Art Exhibitions,” Cue, November 4, 1944.
73 Emily Genauer, Review of Nevelson Exhibition, New York World-Telegram, October 28, 144. Cited Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 57.
74 Nevelson saved these two works, and used parts of them eleven years later when she began to make and show wood sculpture.
75 Bronzes by Nevelson, shown at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, April 15–27, 1946. No exhibition catalogue.
76 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1976.
77 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
78 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976. Nevelson’s friend Marjorie Eaton was told a slightly different story—that the day she received her inheritance from her mother, Nevelson saw the ad for the house in the newspaper and bought it that afternoon.
79 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 96.
80 Anna Walinska, interview with author, June 25, 1976.
81 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
82 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
83 Ibid.
84 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
7. DEATH AND RESTORATION 1946–1953
1 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
2 “Reviews and Preview: Louise Nevelson,” Art News, May 1946, 58.
3 Ibid.
4 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Seckler, May 1964, AAA.
5 Karl Nierendorf to Louise Nevelson, November 25, 1946.
6 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 94.
7 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, September 2, 1976.
8 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
9 Even her brother, Nate, living in Rockland, who had always taken the side of his beleaguered mother, had trouble mourning their father.
10 Susan Nevelson, interview with author, March 4, 2013. Mike had married Susan Nevelson in January 1945.
11 Sidney Geist, interview with author, June 19, 1976.
12 Anna Walinska, interview with author, May 5, 1977.
13 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
14 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 89.
15 Nate Berliawsky, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
16 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
17 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976. Anita had wanted to be the patroness of an artist but Rosenborg turned out to be too expensive and a “nuisance.” “I was paying his room and board [in Rockland] and he was drunk all the time. All my life I had wanted to be good to some artist.”
18 Sidney Geist, interview with author, June 19, 1976.
19 Anna Walinska, interview with author, May 25, 1976.
20 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
21 Ibid.
22 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976. Louise liked to travel with Anita, but she was in fact closer to Lillian and saw her much more often, since they both lived in the city and were part of the downtown art world. The bookish Anita and the genial hotelier Nate were the two country mice, living their lives in Rockland.
23 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, December 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 5–6.
24 Ibid.
25 The possibility of exhibiting regularly in the annual group shows attracted such sculptors as David Smith, Alexander Calder, José de Creeft, José de Rivera, Ibram Lassaw, Isamu Noguchi, and Theodore Roszak (see Sahl Swarz, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition-Sculpture Center, March 15–April 18, 1953, exhibition catalog). Nevelson’s association with the Sculpture Center extends from 1948 through 1950 (Sahl Swarz, interview with author, September 1, 1976). See also Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 60–63.
26 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, December 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 5–6.
27 Dido Smith, “A Sculptor Works with Clay: A Visit with Louise Nevelson,” Ceramic Age (August 1954): 50.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 She described herself in these terms to journalists in “Creativity Through Clay Draws Adult Response in Sculpting Class,” Newsday, November 9, 1956.
31 Barbara Lekburg, interview with author, January 24, 1977.
32 Anna Walinska, interview with author, June 25, 1976. Anna Walinska claimed that she had persuaded Nevelson to paint her terra-cottas black.
33 Dido Smith, “A Sculptor Works with Clay,” 50.
34 By the time she arrived at these terra cottas, Nevelson had seen many more pre-Columbian sculptures—on her two trips to Central America in 1950 and 1951.
35 Louise Nevelson, unpublished notebook, 1942. Laurie Wilson archives.
36 Sahl Swarz, interview with author, September 1, 1976.
37 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. Lee Leary came from Rockland and her name growing up there was Leah Berlofsky.
38 Jan Gelb, interview with author, July 27, 1976.
39 Anna Walinska, interview with author, June 25, 1976.
40 Alexander Tatti, interview with author, August 18, 1976.
41 Sidney Geist, interview with author, June 19, 1976.
42 In 1953 Nevelson started teaching sculpture in the Great Neck (NY) Adult Program—working with children and their parents in the afternoon and a group of adults in the evening. She had taught once before, in 1935, as the only way to get the WPA stipend she desperately needed. Now she was teaching as a way to meet people in a prosperous suburban area to whom she could sell her work and who could help her make connections to wealthy collectors.
43 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
44 Terry de Roy Gruber, “Louise Nevelson: A Twentieth Century Journey of Achievement,” Flight Time, August 1977.
45 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 10, 1951, LN Papers, AAA.
46 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 1, 1953, LN Papers, AAA.
47 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 13, 1953, LN Papers, AAA.
48 Paul Kelemen, “America’s Middle Ages Seen Anew,” Art News, March 1944, 8–9, 24. Nevelson has explained that after seeing the replicas of these columns, she decided to visit the original site. For a detailed description of the site, see Sylvanus G. Morley, Guidebook to the Ruins of Quirigua (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1935). For a photographic record, see Alfred P. Maudslay, Archæology. Biologia Centrali-Americana, 6 vols. (London: R. H. Porter, 1899–1902). See also C. Bruce Hunter, A Guide to Ancient Maya Ruins (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), chap. 4.
49 Kings, queens, and ruling majesties are common psychological symbols for parents according to Sigmund Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Standard Edition 5: 353–54. It is intriguing to note that the Surrealists, who were well acquainted with this work of Freud’s, would have been aware of the symbolic meanings of royal couples.
50 Max Weber to Louise Nevelson October 7, 1950, LN Papers, AAA.
51 Max Weber, “The Fourth Dimension from a Plastic Point of View,” Camera Work (July 1910). Weber’s reference to the purity of the “primitive” calls to mind Nevelson’s own words about Joe Milone’s shoebox.
52 Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, interview with author, July 12, 1976.
53 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 105.
54 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, January 14, 1965, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript 207, 13.
55 Louise Nevelson in Roberts, Nevelson, 16. Emphasis added.
56 Bongartz, “‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time,’” 12–13, 30–34.
57 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
58 Ibid.
59 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 10, 1951, LN Papers, AAA.
60 Student Ledger book Atelier 17, documents Nevelson’s work from September 1952 through May 1953 and again in Fall 1954. Peter Grippe papers, Allentown Art Museum. Information courtesy of Christina Weyl.
61 Una Johnson, interview with author, June 23, 1977.
62 Louise Nevelson, interview with Colette Roberts, at New York University, 1968, Colette Roberts papers and interviews with artists 1918–1971, AAA.
63 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 107.
64 Jan Gelb, interview with author, June 27, 1976.
65 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, December 12, 1979, AG Papers, transcript, 38.
66 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, June 17, 1977.
67 Minna Citron, interview with author, July 26, 1976.
68 LN Papers, AAA.
69 The use of imagery from the archeological past, and particularly the use of such terms as “ancient” and “archaic,” often serves as a veil, conscious or unconscious, for the fantasies of childhood. The appearance of so many royal figures in Nevelson’s oeuvre suggests that her idealized childhood perceptions of her parents were never entirely relinquished.
70 In fall 1953, Nevelson exhibited a terra-cotta entitled Portrait of a Queen.
71 Hunter, A Guide to Ancient Maya Ruins, 112.
72 Sylvanus G. Morley, The Ancient Maya (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1946), 262.
73 Matthew G. Looper, Lightening Warrior, Maya Art and Kingship at Quirigua. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
74 Helena Simkhovitch, interview with author, May 5, 1977.
75 Sidney Geist, interview with author, June 19, 1976.
76 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 27, 1977.
77 It should also be noted that this is the only royal figure in the series of etchings to be accompanied by a child. Another version of this print obliterates the image of the child and seems to have been attacked with pencil markings (Figure [fig. 146], Brooklyn Museum; Print Collection, no. 65.22.27).
78 The sun and the moon deities in Mayaland are called by the native Indian population by such familiar terms as lord, lady, our father, our mother, our grandfather, or our grandmother. (J. Eric S. Thompson, The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959], 263.) It is still the current custom in Mexico among the Indians to address friends and strangers by the family appellation suited to one’s age. Thus all children are called son or daughter, and so forth.
79 Christina Weyl discovered these remarkable images. “Abstract Impressions: Women Printmakers and the New York Atelier 17, 1940–1955,” Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers University, 2015. Christina Weyl, “Innovative Etchings: Louise Nevelson at Atelier 17,” in American Women Artists, 1935–1970: Gender, Culture, and Politics, Helen Langa and Paula Wisotzki, eds. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016): 127–143.
80 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977. See also Dawns + Dusks Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 6.
81 Nevelson’s friends and acquaintances watched this activity with a mixture of admiration and dismay (Minna Citron, interview with author, July 26, 1976; Anna Walinska, interview with author, July 25, 1976; Helena Simkhovich, interview with author, May 5, 1977; Dido Smith, interview with author, June 21, 1977). The groups in which Nevelson was active in the early 1950s included: Artists Equity; Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors; Sculptors Guild; New York Society of Ceramic Arts; Creative Arts Associates; New York Society of Women Artists; National Association of Women Artists; League of Present Day Artists; and American Abstract Artists.
82 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 105.
83 Robert Cronbach, interview with author, June 23, 1976.
84 For a brief discussion of the Four O’Clock Forum, see Glimcher, Nevelson, 73. See also the article by Gordon Brown, one of the sponsors of the group, for some of the artistic positions and opinions of its most vocal members, e.g., Steve Wheeler, Will Barnet, and Peter Busa, “New Tendencies in American Art,” College Art Journal 3, no. 2 (winter 1951–52): 103–109. Press releases and notices of some of the group’s meetings may be found in LN Papers, AAA. For a brief history of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, see Dore Ashton,“The Federation in Retrospect,” in 35th Anniversary Exhibition: The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (New York: Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, 1976), exhibition catalogue.
85 Anna Walinska, interview with author, June 25, 1976.
86 Phillip Pavia, interview with author, June 17, 1976.
87 Robert Cronbach, interview with author, June 23, 1976. Though Nevelson was supposedly “not well known at the time,” she was usually among the few artists in group shows to be reviewed. She was in fact quite well known as someone who had won prizes and gotten positive reviews, off and on, since the mid-1930s.
88 Nathaniel Kaz, interview with author, June 15, 1976.
89 Pedro Guerrero, A Photographer’s Journey (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), p. 193
90 S. T., “Fortnight in Review: Louise Nevelson,” Art Digest, April 15, 1954, 24.
91 John H. Lichtblau, review of Murder and Mystery; Crime Without Punishment: The Secret Soviet Terror Against America, by Guenther Reinhardt, New York Times, November 9, 1952, Book Review, 62.
92 Guenther Reinhardt, letter to the editor, New York Times, December 7, 1952, Book Review, 38.
93 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, December 13, 1952, LN Papers, AAA. In a recent interview with author, April 11, 2014, Mike Nevelson once again brought up the issue of Nierendorf’s alleged shady political activities.
94 It is possible that the news about Nierendorf could have knocked him off the pedestal in her internal pantheon and made room for someone new to take his place.
95 Carlyle Burroughs, “Group of Sculptors,” Herald Tribune, January 10, 1953.
96 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
97 Nevelson gave a bronze version of this work to her son and new daughter-in-law as a wedding present. Susan Nevelson, interview with author, March 3, 2012.
8. A FORGOTTEN VILLAGE 1954–1957
1 “Reviews and Previews: Louise Nevelson,” Art News, January 16, 1954, 69.
2 Since the 1920s Nevelson had been aware of the importance of public relations. She had observed how Norina Matchabelli and Frederick Kiesler had mobilized press coverage for their new school in 1926. She had seen how Diego Rivera used his renown to make political as well as artistic points during his short stay in New York City in 1933 and how the politically active WPA artists and writers got the word out when necessary to take a stand in the late 1930s. And she was probably aware that both Noguchi and Jackson Pollock had used Eleanor Lambert of fashion fame to do their public relations in the 1930s.
3 Mike Nevelson, letter to Louise Nevelson, 18 March 1954, LN Papers, AAA.
4 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, New York, 12 August 1970, AG Papers; Anita Berliawsky Weinstein, Lillian Mildwoff Berliawsky, interview, 13 July 1976; Mike Nevelson, letter to Louise Nevelson, 15 November 1955, LN Papers, AAA.
5 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, January 5, 2013.
6 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
7 Three Four Time was evidently kept intact until some time in 1954, when it was dismantled.
8 Winged City, although submitted for exhibit and illustrated in the catalogue, is not mentioned in the reviews because it appears to have been replaced by two other wood pieces illustrated in the review: Little City at Dawn, Personages in the Black Forest (see Frank O’Hara, “Reviews and Previews: Sculpture 1955,” Art News, September 1955, 51; Robert Rosenblum, “Sculptors Guild,” Arts Digest, August 1955, 28). Nevelson: Sculptures, Sculpture-Collages, Etchings, Grand Central Moderns Gallery, January 8–25, 1955, gallery announcement, LN Papers, AAA.
9 Winged City is at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
10 Dido Smith, interview with author, June 21, 1977. Nevelson may have already have been working in wood before this time. In late January 1954 she exhibited a black-painted wood figure “as ceremonious as a Kabuki dancer” at the Stable Gallery’s 3rd Annual Exhibition. However, according to Smith: “She was financially very strapped. People don’t realize now how difficult it was to sell sculpture at that time. She couldn’t pay the corner grocer, for instance. And the wood was available. And she’d used it before. And, of course, with the clay, it seems as if it’s cheap, to some people, but then you have to have it fired. And that’s quite expensive…. Compared to just taking the wood and putting a few nails in it, and so forth.”
11 The exhibit was originally listed as “Nevelson, Sculpture, Sculpture-Collages, Etchings” in gallery notices and Nevelson was described as a Guest Sculptor. Later both Nevelson and Roberts began to refer to it as Ancient Games, Ancient Places or “Ancient Games and Ancient Places,” see Roberts, Nevelson, 16.
12 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
13 Ibid.
14 Louise Nevelson, “A Fairy Tale,” LN Papers, AAA. See also Roberts, Nevelson, 19.
15 Stuart Preston, “Recent Sculpture and Painting,” New York Times, January 16, 1955, X11.
16 S. B., “Fortnight in Review: Nevelson,” Art Digest, January 1, 1955, 21.
17 Louise Nevelson, “The Great Beyond,” LN Papers, AAA.
18 Dido Smith, interview with author, June 21, 1977.
19 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, 19 July 1977.
20 Colette Roberts, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970, Pace Gallery archives.
21 Dore Ashton, “Louise Nevelson Shows Wood Sculptures” New York Times, February 21, 1956
22 James R. Mellow, “In the Galleries: Personages at Sea,” Arts, February 1956, 52.
23 P.T. [Parker Tyler], “Reviews and Previews: Louise Nevelson,” Art News, February 1956, 48.
24 Colette Roberts, “Nevelson”, (unpublished draft for book), unnumbered page, LN Papers, AAA.
25 Roberts, Nevelson, 10.
26 Colette Roberts, “Nevelson” (unpublished draft for book), 2.
27 “Departure in dreams means dying. So, too, if a child asks where someone is who has died and whom he misses, it is common nursery usage to reply that he has gone on a journey…. The dramatist is using the same symbolic connection when he speaks of the after-life as ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ Even in ordinary life it is common to speak of ‘the last journey.’ Everyone acquainted with ancient rituals is aware of how seriously (in the religion of Ancient Egypt, for instance) the idea is taken of a journey to the land of the dead. Many copies have survived The Book of the Dead, which was supplied to the mummy, like a Baedeker to take with him on the journey. Ever since burial-places have been separated from dwelling-places the dead person’s last journey has indeed become a reality.” Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, in Standard Edition 15: 161.
28 Colette Roberts, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 36.
29 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
30 Louise Nevelson, “A Sculptor Speaks for His Time,” statement in LN Papers, AAA.
31 The photo shows the gallery as too brightly lit, for the purpose of clearly illustrating the individual pieces and their positioning in the show.
32 The Forest: Recent Sculptures by Louise Nevelson (New York: Grand Central Moderns Gallery, 1957). Installation list published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Grand Central Moderns Gallery, LN Papers, AAA.
33 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 128.
34 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arlene Jacobwitz, May 3, 1965, Brooklyn Museum Library Artists’ Files, for the “Listening to Pictures” Gallery, transcript, 2.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid. Cf. Louise Nevelson, interview with Colette Roberts, 1968, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript 207, 19–20.
37 Tender Being is in the Evansville Museum in Indiana.
38 Unfilmed material in the Colette Roberts Collection, AAA, courtesy of Richard Roberts.
39 Wedding Bridge and Black Wedding Cake were included in the press release for the exhibit, but did not appear in the later gallery list or installation photograph, see LN Papers, AAA.
40 Communication with Arnold Glimcher who owns The Wedding Bridge.
41 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
42 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 4–6.
43 Poetic fragment, LN Papers, AAA.
44 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
45 Ibid.
46 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, December 1956, LN Papers, AAA
47 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, January 10, 1957, LN Papers, AAA
48 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, July 19, 1977.
49 Dore Ashton, “Art: Forest Sculptures,” New York Times, January 8, 1957.
50 Hilton Kramer, “Month in Review,” Arts, January 1957, 47.
51 Ibid.
52 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, January 14, 1965, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript 207, 16.
53 Ibid.
54 Sidney Baldwin “Louise Nevelson, Sculptress,” Peoria Morning Star, September 5, 1957.
55 In March 1957, Nevelson exhibited a work called Shadow Box II at a Grand Central Moderns group exhibition and in May ’57 she exhibited Shadow Landscape at the Stable Gallery.
56 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 78.
57 Roberts, Nevelson, 21.
58 Ibid.
59 Baldwin, “Louise Nevelson, Sculptress,” Peoria Morning Star, September 5, 1957.
60 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
61 Colette Roberts, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 6.
62 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
63 “2,000 at Burial of Diego Rivera,” New York Times, November 27, 1957, 30.
9. MOON GARDEN BREAKTHROUGH 1957–1960
1 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 4, 1975.
2 “Art: One Woman’s World,” Time, February 3, 1958, 58.
3 Colette Roberts, lecture “Louise Nevelson’s ‘Elsewhere’” (1960s) 3, Colette Roberts papers, AAA.
4 Ibid.
5 Martha Graham’s dance Embattled Garden (1958) and Louise Bourgeois’ Fôret (Night Garden, 1953) were among the contemporary works.
6 Dorothy Sieberling, “Weird Woodwork of Lunar World: Sculptress Exhibits Her All-Black Moon Garden Landscape,” Life, March 24, 1958, 77.
7 Colette Roberts to Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 5. On the back of an announcement for the Moon Garden + One exhibition someone had written “blessings and love from Louise and Ted” LN Papers, AAA.
8 Colette Roberts to Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970, AG Papers, transcript, 27–28.
9 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 133.
10 Emily Genauer, “Abstract Art with Meaning,” review of Nevelson exhibit, New York Herald Tribune, January 5, 1958.
11 Emily Genauer, “Abstract Art with Meaning: Another World”; she is referring to Martha Graham’s famous dance Cave of the Heart from 1946.
12 Arts and Architecture 75, no. 3 (March 1958).
13 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 79, 84.
14 Hilton Kramer, “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson,” Arts, June 1958, 26–29.
15 Thomas B. Hess, “Inside Nature,” Art News, February 1958, 40ff, at 60.
16 Dorothy Sieberling, “Weird Woodwork of Lunar World: Sculptress Exhibits Her All-Black Moon Garden Landscape,” Life, March 24, 1958, 70–80.
17 Roberts recalled: “At the time of The Forest and Moon Garden Plus One, I recall very distinctly, Nevelson’s having a tailored suit in a sort of a soft weave, but extraordinarily stylish and what you would say ‘in vogue,’ [which she wore] during those two years, and only during those two years.”
18 “Art: One Woman’s World” Time, February 3, 1958, 58.
19 Ibid.
20 Louise Nevelson, interview with Colette Roberts, 1968, AAA. Roberts coined the word “elsewhere” to refer to Nevelson’s idea of the fourth dimension.
21 Nevelson Dawns + Dusks, 125–26.
22 Ibid., 126.
23 Stuart Preston, in his New York Times review of this exhibit, finds “narrow coffins, shadow boxes made like traps” (January 12, 1958). The importance this piece had in Nevelson’s eyes is evident from the fact that she submitted it later in the year to the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, December 5, 1958–February 8, 1959.
24 It is worth comparing Shadow City with Solid Reflections, an etching alternately titled The Ancient Garden and In The Jungle for funereal imagery. Some figures look like headstones.
25 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 145.
26 LN Papers, AAA.
27 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, 19 July 1977.
28 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, January 14, 1964, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript 207, 16.
29 Robert Rosenblum, “Louise Nevelson,” Arts Yearbook: Paris/New York 3 (1959): 137.
30 Gaudi, Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 18, 1957–February 23, 1958; Edith Burkhardt, “The Unfinished Cathedral and Antoni Gaudi,” Art News, January 1958, 36–37; Anthony Kerrigan, “Gaudianism in Catalonia,” Arts, December 1957, 21–25. For Nevelson’s expressed interest in Gaudí, see Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 99.
31 Robert Rosenbaum observed that: “If … her Sky Cathedrals and Moonscapes—can be simply described as a quantitative multiplication of these smaller parts, their over-all effect involves a more complex qualitative change. Traditionally, the fragile, private quality of Nevelson’s imagination implies … an equally intimate scale; and to see this personal world magnified to public dimensions is a startling experience for which perhaps only the architectural fantasies of Gaudí or the largest Abstract Expressionist paintings offer adequate preparation.” Arts Yearbook 3 (1959): 138.
32 With the smashing success of the Moon Garden exhibition, Colette Roberts knew it was time for Nevelson to work with a dealer who could invest money to help her reach the next level in her career.
33 Colette Roberts, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, August 6, 1970 and 1971, AG Papers, transcript, 18.
34 Ibid. 19.
35 Roberts continued to write about Nevelson’s work in her column for France-Amérique, the French-language newspaper in New York, and worked closely with her on Louise Nevelson, the first book on the artist, published in 1964.
36 Dorothy C. Miller, interview with author, September, 2, 1976.
37 Years later, Miller, by then Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, said: “She appeared like a comet in the American sky around 1958, and the world took notice.” Dorothy C. Miller, interview with author, September 2, 1976.
38 Dorothy C. Miller, telephone interview with author, September 2, 1976; and also Dorothy C. Miller, interview with Paul Cummings, April 8, 1971, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript, 298.
39 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff and Ben Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
40 “Spring St. House Bought,” New York Times, September 30, 1958, 50.
41 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
42 Martha Jackson had included work by Louise Nevelson in her gallery three years earlier, the earliest example being the Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, June 5–29, 1956. See letter from Martha K Jackson to Louise Nevelson, LN Papers, AAA.
43 Berniece Gill, “Brush Strokes,” Portland Sunday Telegram, May 10, 1959.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Press release, “The World of Louise Nevelson,” Martha Jackson Gallery, October 1959.
47 Roberts, Nevelson, 24.
48 The professional lighting by Schuler Watt may have made a difference, but judging only from the installation photographs, the four-sided reliefs of Sky Columns Presence were not so evocative nor as formally powerful as the boxed works lining the wall. While the reliefs added a sense of presence—figures coming to life, which matched the title—I find them less interesting formally than the work she was doing at the same time for Dawn’s Wedding Feast.
49 Dore Ashton, “Art: Worlds of Fantasy,” New York Times, October 29, 1959, 44.
50 Dore Ashton, Arts and Architecture 76 (December 1959): 7.
51 Dore Ashton, “U.S.A.: Louise Nevelson,” Cimaise, no. 48 (April–June 1960): 26.
52 Ibid.
53 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, November 6, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
54 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson July 15, 1959, LN Papers, AAA. He thanks her for the check and writes about his own sculpture.
55 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, October 4, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
56 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, October 16, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
57 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 101. See also Dorothy C. Miller, interview with Paul Cummings, transcript, April 8, 1971, Oral History Program, AAA. Miller evidently did not appreciate the accumulated intensity behind Nevelson’s twenty years of waiting for a serious offer from MoMA.
58 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 138.
59 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, June 2, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
60 Anna Walinska, interview with author, June 25, 1976.
61 Tal Streeter interview, November 25, 1959, LN Papers, AAA. The Sky Columns Presence exhibition at Martha Jackson had just come down and she was only three weeks away from installing Dawn’s Wedding Feast.
62 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 144.
63 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 107.
64 Marvin D. Schwartz, “New York Notes,” Apollo, February 1960.
65 Thomas B. Hess, “16 Americans,” review, Art News, January 1960, 57.
66 Dore Ashton, “Louise Nevelson,” Cimaise, no. 48 (April–June 1960): 36.
67 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 59.
68 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 147. One more instance of the complexity of Nevelson’s double identity is her remark upon learning that Giacometti won first prize at the Biennale: “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 148.
69 Roberts, Nevelson, 29.
70 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 144.
71 “Marcel Duchamp,” review of exhibit at Janis Gallery, New York, April 6–May 2, 1959, Art News, May 1959, 59. While Nevelson was not part of the Duchamp circle until the 1960s, she would have known of his work and activities through Colette Roberts and their mutual friend Frederick Kiesler.
10. GLITTERING GLORY 1960–1962
1 This quote comes from a friend of Jackson’s in her New York Times obituary: “Martha Jackson Dies on Coast; Gallery Aided Abstract Artists,” July 5, 1969.
2 “Martha Jackson Dies on Coast; Gallery Aided Abstract Artists.”
3 Rosalind Constable, “Martha Jackson: An Appreciation,” Arts Magazine, September/October 1969, 18.
4 Louise Nevelson in Harry Rand, The Martha Jackson Memorial Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 28; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the National Museum of American Art.
5 Martha Jackson to Richard Faralla, May 6, 1959, MJG Archives.
6 There would later be a dispute about this representation when Jackson had some of Nevelson’s wood pieces cast into bronze in Italy where she tried to sell them. Cordier objected and Jackson claimed that he had only been interested in Nevelson’s work in wood. Martha Jackson to Elliot Sachs, September 28, 1961, MJG Archives.
7 Martha Jackson to Daniel Cordier March 16, 1960, MJG Archives.
8 Martha Jackson to Daniel Cordier, December 14, 1959, LN Papers, AAA.
9 John Canaday, “Tenth Street,” New York Times, January 17, 1960, xii.
10 Lawrence Alloway titled his essay “Junk Culture as a Tradition” for the catalogue New Forms – New Media I (New York: Martha Jackson Gallery, 1960); published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at Martha Jackson Gallery, June 6–24, 1960.
11 Having discovered similar spiritual inclinations with Dord Fitz, the art educator, gallerist, collector, and all-around booster who had been responsible for inviting her, Nevelson often visited Amarillo to teach, to exhibit and to be one of his favorite New York artists. For more about Fitz, see The Broadcast Is Always On: The Area Arts Foundation and Dord Fitz (Amarillo, TX: Amarillo Museum of Art, 2008).
12 Susan Nevelson, interview with author, March 2–3, 2013.
13 Rosalind Constable, “Martha Jackson: An Appreciation,” Arts Magazine, September/October 1969, 18.
14 Stuart Preston, “Sculpture Display at the Stable,” New York Times, October 14, 1960.
15 Dore Ashton, “Louise Nevelson,” Cimaise, no. 48 (April–June 1960): 26–36; Colette Roberts, “L’Ailleurs de Louise Nevelson,” Cahiers de musée de poche, May 1960, 77–84.
16 Lillian Mildwoff Berliawsky, interview with author, July 13, 1976.
17 The term Jackson used for the largest room in the gallery.
18 Stuart Preston, “Art: On Action Painting,” New York Times, January 7, 1961. The Enormous Room at the Jackson Gallery was in fact a very large room in which the dealer could display large-scale works.
19 Charlotte Willard, “Women of American Art,” Look, September 27, 1960, 70–75.
20 John Canaday, “Whither Art?,” New York Times, March 26, 1961, X15.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Louise Nevelson exhibition time schedule, LN Papers, AAA.
25 Press release for the Royal Tides: An Exhibition of Gold Sculpture by Louise Nevelson, April 19, 1961.
26 Kenneth B. Sawyer, foreword to Royal Tides (New York: Martha Jackson Gallery, 1961); published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
27 Dore Ashton, “Art,” Arts and Architecture (June 1961): 4–5
28 Brian O’Doherty, “Art: Four Sculptors Manipulate Third Dimension,” New York Times, April 24, 1961.
29 Jack Kroll, “Louise Nevelson,” Reviews and Previews, Art News, May 1961, 10–11.
30 Royal Tide III was shown first in gold at Cordier’s 1960 exhibition. By the time it was placed in the Louisiana Museum in Denmark it had been painted black.
31 Rufus Foshee, telephone interview with author, July 12, 1979.
32 Rufus Foshee, e-mail to author, June 28, 2008.
33 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, July 21, 2008.
34 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 3, 2008.
35 Roberts, Nevelson, 31–35, at 33 and 35.
36 Louise Nevelson quoted in Nevelson’s World by Jean Lipman (New York: Hudson Hill Press with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1983), 144, 148.
37 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 144–45.
38 Dorothy C. Miller “didn’t like the quality of the gold because she believed that the gold paint wasn’t good enough. It was sort of cheesy. Like radiator paint. The color wasn’t up to the quality of the sculpture.” Dorothy C. Miller, interview with Paul Cummings, April 8, 1971; Oral History Interview with Dorothy C. Miller, May 26, 1970–September 28, 1971, AAA, transcript, 173.
39 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, July 21, 2008.
40 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, July 20, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
41 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, January 24, 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
42 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, February 7, 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
43 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, April 4, 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
44 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, January 6, 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
45 Memo from Martha Jackson, January 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
46 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, May 25, 2013.
47 Tom Kendall, note to Louise Nevelson, January 2, 1960, LN Papers, AAA.
48 Tom Kendall to Louise Nevelson, August 23, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
49 David Anderson, interview with author, August 25, 2008.
50 David Anderson to Louise Nevelson, February 24, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
51 Martha Jackson to Louis Pomeranz, March 10, 1960, MJG Archives. Jackson could also be the bearer of bad news. When a dealer and collector (Claude Haim) was incensed by what he saw as Nevelson’s bad faith in cancelling a proposed large purchase and refused to have any more to do with the artist or her work, Martha let Louise know.
52 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 4, 2010.
53 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, November 14, 2008.
54 Rufus Foshee, interview with author, July 12, 1979. See also Foshee, “Louise Nevelson: The Long Road to Acceptance,” Camden Herald, July 14, 1994.
55 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 4, 2010. While they were sitting shiva for their father, Herb asked his newly married youngest brother, Arne, what he would like to do—be an artist, be a beatnik, or run a gallery. Arne chose the last—it seemed like a rhetorical question. And the next day Herb went out to find a venue on Newberry Street and rented it. He thought that would give both his mother and youngest brother something constructive to do with their time.
56 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 24, 2008.
57 June Wayne, interview with author, July 26, 2008.
58 Arnold Glimcher, interview with author, October 4, 2010
59 She told Diana MacKown that she went to see Bergler because she was concerned about Teddy Haseltine, her assistant, who was becoming occasionally violent and increasingly unstable. Louise Nevelson, notebook from the 1960s, courtesy of Diana MacKown. Laurie Wilson archives.
60 Louise Nevelson, notebook from the 1960s. Laurie Wilson archives.
61 “Todays Living,” New York Herald Tribune, August 27, 1961, 4.
62 Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden. “Louise Nevelson,” September 24–October 22, 1961. Catalogue.
63 Dietrich Mahlow to Louise Nevelson, July 11, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
64 The work eventually landed at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.
65 The American Embassy in Bonn sponsored these exhibitions in gallery spaces under the U.S. auspices as part of the then current U.S. policy promoting a positive view of America.
66 John Daly to Tom Kendall, December 19, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
67 Livingness—“the quality of being alive, possessing energy or vigor, animation” is a dictionary definition—was a word Nevelson often used in describing her work.
68 Lipman letter requesting purchase during the show, LN Papers, AAA.
69 William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961), 118; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Museum of Modern Art.
70 Martha Jackson to Louise Nevelson, September 20, 1961, LN Papers, AAA.
71 Henry J. Seldis, “Summer Forecast: Warm, Variable Art Climate,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1962, A11; “More Art News,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1962, A29; LN Papers, AAA.
11. ICARUS 1962–1963
1 Memo of shipment of eight sculptures, Martha Jackson Gallery to Reed College, February 6, 1962, LN Papers, AAA.
2 Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1962, M24.
3 Rufus Foshee, “The Long Road to Acceptance,” Camden Herald, July 14, 1994, 9.
4 Rufus Foshee, e-mail to author, April 10, 2008; telephone interview July 12, 1979.
5 I.H.S., “Louise Nevelson,” Art News, March 1962.
6 Elliott Sachs to Martha Jackson, March 12, 1962, MJG Archives.
7 Louise Nevelson, handwritten note donated by Diana MacKown, Laurie Wilson archives.
8 Ibid.
9 David Anderson, interview with author, August 25, 2008. Decades later, Anderson said the Jackson Gallery “let Nevelson go because we had three people managing her—Tom Kendall, Rufus Foshee and me—and she was a way bigger expense than we were earning from the sale of her work.” He further noted that, “It had become nearly impossible to make an accurate record of her work.”
10 MJG Archives.
11 David Solinger to Martha Jackson, July 16, 1962, MJG Archives.
12 Rubin v. Kurzman, U.S. District Court, 436 F. Supp. 1044 (S.D. New York 1977); see also Rufus Foshee, “Louise Nevelson: The Magical Decade: 1958–1968,” Free Press, January 21, 1999.
13 Rufus Foshee, interview with author, telephone interview July 12, 1979.
14 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 3, 2008.
15 Ibid.
16 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, July 21, 2008.
17 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, November 4, 2008.
18 Dore Ashton, “Art USA,” Studio, March 1962, 94.
19 “Nevelson Art Now Showing at Museum” Van Nuys News, June 17, 1962. Royal Tide I was illustrated in “On View at County Museum,” Los Angeles Times June 16, 1962
20 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 147.
21 Dorothy C. Miller, interview with Paul Cummings, April 8, 1971, AAA.
22 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 147.
23 Ibid., 148.
24 William C. Seitz, Louise Nevelson (New York: International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, 1962), 5–10; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the XXXI Venice Biennale.
25 Michel Ragon, “XXXIst Venice Biennale,” Cimaise, no. 61 (September/October 1962): 26.
26 Milton Gendel, “The Venice Bazaar,” Art News, September 1962, 53–54.
27 “The Venice Biennale,” editorial, Apollo, August 1962, 428–430.
28 Guy Habasque, “La XXXIe Biennale de Venise,” L’Oeil, September 1962, 72.
29 Robert Melville, “Exhibition: The Venice Biennale,” Architectural Review, October 1962, 285.
30 Rufus Foshee, telephone interview with author, July 12, 1979.
31 Rufus Foshee, telephone interview with author, July 12, 1979. Rufus Foshee, e-mail to author, April 21, 2008. The available records of the Janis Gallery tell a somewhat different story. The first undated advance is for $7,500. The second is for $2,500 on August 7, 1962, and the last is again for $2,500 on October 24, 1962. After that, the listing only includes debits for moving and storage with Santini Brothers beginning February 18, 1963, running through August 6, 1964. The dates suggest that by August 1964 Nevelson had some of her works back in her studio.
32 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
33 Rufus Foshee, telephone interview July 12, 1979, e-mail to author April 21, 2008.
34 Rufus Foshee, e-mail to author, April 21, 2008
35 “Art: All That Glitters,” Time, August 31, 1962, 40.
36 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, September 26, 1962, LN Papers, AAA.
37 Arnold B. Glimcher to Louise Nevelson, December, 1962, LN Papers, AAA.
38 Hilton Kramer, “Art,” Nation, January 1963, 78–79.
39 Colette Roberts, “Nevelson at Sidney Janis,” France-Amérique, January 13, 1963, LN Papers, AAA.
40 Brian O’Doherty, “Spotlights on the Stricken Scene,” New York Times, April 7, 1963, X27.
41 Dore Ashton, “New York Letter,” Das Kunstwerk, April 1963, 31.
42 During the entire time she was represented by Janis, he only sold one work for her—months before the show—to an heir of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.
43 Rufus Foshee; e-mail to the author, April 14, 2008.
44 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, February 3, 2010.
45 Correspondence file, Martha Jackson and Louise Nevelson, MJG Archives.
46 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 123.
47 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, May 17, 1963, LN Papers, AAA
48 Martha Jackson to Louise Nevelson, May 17, 1963, LN Papers, AAA. Jackson and Nevelson had already worked out a deal about casting a group of six bronzes in Italy that long preceded the arrangement with Janis. Jackson had contacted Joseph Hirshhorn among other collectors and offered them good prices on these works if they bought early which some of them did.
49 Mike Nevelson to Louise Nevelson, May 21, 1963, LN Papers, AAA.
50 Ibid.
51 June Wayne, telephone interview with author, July 26, 2008.
52 Diana MacKown, interview with author, August 17, 2014.
53 In a case before the U.S. District Court on May 30 1977 about the Kurzman estate, Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy proclaimed that Samuel Kurzman was an attorney and “also a wheeler and dealer in real estate who, for his own personal reasons, often used nominees as record owners or mortgagors of the real estate in which he was dealing.”
54 Rufus Foshee, e-mail to author, August 9, 2008.
55 Diana MacKown, conversation with author, January 25, 2009.
56 Norman Carton to Louise Nevelson, March 3, 1964, Louise Nevelson papers, circa 1903–1979, AAA.
57 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, July 21, 2008
58 They would later be taken to Pace Gallery, where two of them would find their way into the homes of Arne Glimcher’s brother Herb and his mother Eva.
59 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 3, 2008.
60 Richard Solomon, interview with author, February 13, 2009.
12. ARCHITECT OF REFLECTION 1964–1966
1 Even so, the password didn’t always work. At her 1961 exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery, it was successful with Royal Tide I but failed with Royal Tide II..
2 Colette Roberts had been one of the few people to notice the importance of using boxes of equal size as a new direction when she reviewed the Janis exhibition. See Colette Roberts, “Nevelson at Sidney Janis,” translation of draft “Lettre de New York” for France-Amérique. Colette Roberts papers, AAA.
3 This was not the first time Nevelson had made walls with boxes of uniform size. She had constructed three—New Continent, Totality Dark, and Dawn—in late 1962 for the Janis show.
4 Mike Nevelson had probably been the carpenter who made those boxes.
5 “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson,” London Times, November 16, 1963.
6 Typed transcript of critics’ panel discussion on the occasion of Louise Nevelson exhibit at the Hanover Gallery, London, ca. November 12, 1963. Pace Gallery Archives, Louise Nevelson files, New York.
7 “A Construction that Squawks,” San Francisco Sunday Chronicle, August 2, 1964.
8 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 5, 2009.
9 Diana MacKown, interview with author, September 19, 2009.
10 Pace Gallery Archives.
11 Her poem made clear that Nevelson’s “religion” was not the issue. It was her cultural heritage as a Jew, who knew that her people could triumph against all odds only if they could escape death. Despite her estrangement from the formal religion of Judaism and her turn to a complex metaphysical belief system, she could, privately, embrace a Jewish “livingness” and “consciousness.”
12 Dorothy Dehner, interview with author, December 4, 1975. Dorothy Dehner had known Teddy years before, when he had come to study with her at Bolton Landing in the 1940s, hitchhiking every day from his home in Glen Falls.
13 Tom Kendall, interview with Laurie Lisle, January 26, 1984, untranscribed audio recording, LN Papers, AAA. Some of her other helpers who knew Teddy were shocked at what seemed to be her inhuman response to his death.
14 Diana MacKown was even more spiritually inclined than Teddy had been; she was also highly educated and well-spoken, all of which help explain why Nevelson was so articulate when she talked about the fourth dimension in her 1964 interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, an art historian and editor at Art News, and with K. O., an art-world interviewer, in 1963.
15 Nevelson, November 17–December 12, 1964
16 MacKown had grown up in Rochester where her parents taught at the Eastman School of Music and performed in the Rochester Symphony Orchestra.
17 It was not all classical because MacKown often played the Beatles, Diana Ross, and Aretha Franklin.
18 Emily Genauer, “Rouault as Mirror And Prophet,” New York Herald Tribune, November 22, 1964, 37.
19 Robert M. Coates, “Louise Nevelson,” New Yorker, December 5, 1964.
20 John Canaday, “Display at Pace Gallery Called Her Best Yet,” New York Times, November 21, 1964, 25.
21 Louise Nevelson to Richard Stankiewicz, 1973, Oral History Program, AAA. Albany panel. See Lisle, A Passionate Life, 244.
22 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, April 13, 2009.
23 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 24, 2008.
24 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 153.
25 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, August 8, 1979.
26 Louise Nevelson, interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, May–June 1964, Oral History Program, AAA, transcript, 208.
27 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arlene Jacobowitz, May 3, 1965, Brooklyn Museum Library Artists’ Files, for the “Listening to Pictures” Gallery, transcript, 6.
28 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, June 14, 1976.
29 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, April 13, 2009.
30 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, October 30, 2009.
31 June Wayne, “Louise Nevelson 1899–1988; Goodbye Louise,” obituary, Women Artists News (summer 1988): 23.
32 “Dame Edith Sitwell, Poet, Dies; Stirred Literary Controversies,” New York Times, December 10, 1964, 1, 44.
33 Ibid., 41
34 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, November 6, 2009.
35 The date December 9, 1964, is written on the gallery registrar’s card for the work. Nevelson would make at least five more works also entitled Homage to Dame Edith.
36 Diana Vreeland, editor in chief of Vogue, to Louise Nevelson, January 2, 1964, LN Papers, AAA. In order for Vogue’s article featuring Nevelson’s sculpture at Pace to appear at the same time as the actual exhibit, the models were photographed in Nevelson’s studio, against the background of the sculpture, months in advance of the show’s opening.
37 Since Nevelson created at least eight sculptures entitled Homage to Dame Edith, it is not clear to which one Roberts may have been referring. It must have been one of the works made in 1968, which was also titled Homage to Edith Sitwell.
38 Louise Nevelson, tape recorded interview with Colette Roberts, 1968, AAA, transcript
39 Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell, A Unicorn Among Lions (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. See also the Times obituary, 41.
40 “Dame Edith Sitwell, Poet, Dies,” 1.
41 It was Sitwell’s brothers’ closeness to the composer William Walton that led to the successful collaboration that culminated in Façade, Sitwell’s poetry set to Walton’s music.
42 Diana MacKown, interview with author, November 8, 2009.
43 Katherine Rouse, report of interview with Louise Nevelson, January 13, 1966, LN Papers, AAA.
44 “Mansions of Mystery,” Time, March 31, 1967, 68.
45 Angela Cuccio, “The Rebel Sculptor,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 21, 1967, 4.
46 “Fashion: The sculpture of Louise Nevelson—potent and arcane—photographed at the Pace Gallery with clothes for brilliant evenings,” Vogue, March 1, 1965, 134–49.
47 Ibid., 134.
48 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, November 4, 2008; Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 5, 2009.
49 Both women were wearing “snoods” they had bought in Egypt to protect themselves from the sand and sun. The head coverings looked remarkably like one worn by one of the Vogue models in the Gordon Parks photos.
50 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 5, 2009.
51 Ibid.
52 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, October 4, 2010.
53 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, November 14, 2008.
54 Steve Poleskie, interview with author, November 14, 2009.
55 There are at most five works in this series.
56 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 1, 2010. Though she did very well with her show at David Mirvish’s gallery, he was in love with David Smith’s work and that didn’t sit well with her. When she met the Dunkelmans and had a much greater rapport with them, she switched to the Dunkelman Gallery.
57 Harry Malcolmson, Toronto Telegram, October 23, 1965.
13. EMPRESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 1966–1968
1 When initially installed at the J. L. Hudson Gallery in Detroit, Albert Landry, the gallerist, arranged the hundred boxes in a triptych to work within the given space. The work could be set up in other configurations as long as the sequence of boxes remained the same.
2 “Detroit Gallery Shows Nevelson Sculpture,” Toledo Blade, May 15, 1966.
3 Louise Nevelson, interview with Jeanne Siegel for Great Artists in America Today, WBAI, March 6, 1967, printed in Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968). 66–69.
4 Ibid., 68.
5 Joy Hakanson, “Museum Speaker is Unique in her Personality and Art,” Detroit News, June 1966, 1.
6 George Francoeur, “Detroit,” Art News, October 1966, 58, 61.
7 Charles Culver, “Sight and Sound; Louise Nevelson: Art and the Machine,” Detroit Free Press, October 23, 1966, 5B.
8 Louise Nevelson, interview with Jeanne Siegel for WBAI, March 6, 1967 in Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s, 68.
9 Dorothy Seckler, “The Artist Speaks: Louise Nevelson,” Art in America, January–February 1967, 33.
10 Diana MacKown, interview with author, February 14, 2010.
11 Donald W. Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1980).
12 Irving Sandler, “Public Art #1,” in Sculpture in Environment (New York: New York City Administration of Recreation and Cultural Affairs, 1967); published in conjunction with the outdoor exhibition of the same name, shown citywide, October 1–31, 1967.
13 Diana MacKown remembers that Nevelson had been worried about the possibility that the vibration of the trucks rumbling by her house would break the beautiful pots she had carefully carried from Texas to New York beginning in the mid- to late 1950s. By the mid-1960s, “She didn’t need them anymore.”
14 Patricia Coffin, “Louise Nevelson, Artiste solitaire,” Single 1, no. 4 (November 1973): 42, 54–56.
15 Lipman, Nevelson’s World, 153.
16 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 147. Arne Glimcher said that “everybody was playing with Plexiglas at the time,” and “she was fascinated with Plexiglas.” At first, “She fooled around with dark-gray translucent Plexiglas,” but when she realized that it didn’t work because,”You couldn’t see a damn thing, she went to clear Plexiglas, because she liked that reflection would keep you out of the box or it would make it more difficult for you to enter the box. Nevelson wanted everything on her own terms—including your perception.” Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, April 13, 2009.
17 Elizabeth McFadden, “Master Industrial Craftsmen Playing Vital Part in New Renaissance Art,” Newark Sunday News, April 9, 1967.
18 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, April 13, 2009.
19 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 1, 2010. The small models in black Plexiglas for the early Atmosphere and Environment series do not always exactly match the large aluminum versions. In some cases “models” were made afterwards.
20 Atmosphere and Environment I was soon bought by the Museum of Modern Art. In 1967, Offering and Enclosure went on display at the CBS building at Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street, as part of the city-sponsored show, Sculpture in Environment, whose purpose was to put artwork in prominent urban sites
21 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 1, 2010. Magnesium was used to make it possible to deliver the work in one piece by helicopter to the Rockefeller estate.
22 I am indebted to Arne Glimcher for noting this remarkable equivalence of different looking works. Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 1, 2010.
23 Transparent IV was eventually made in an edition of twelve for New York State, to be used as rewards or prizes for various state events.
24 Like Atmosphere and Environment VI, Transparent Sculpture VII is on public display at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
25 Henry J. Seldis, “In the Galleries: Nevelson Turns to Greater Clarity,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1966, part V, 12.
26 John Canaday, “Nevelson Puts Green Thumb to Good Use,” New York Times, May 14, 1966, 20.
27 On December 19, 1964, Glimcher had written a letter to Lloyd Goodrich, director of the Whitney Museum, accepting his “proposal for a retrospective at the new Whitney museum.”
28 Dorothy Gees Seckler, “The Artist Speaks: Louise Nevelson,” Art in America, January 1967, 38.
29 Both Lipmans were influential board members and Howard Lipman was chairman of the board. Also on the Whitney board were Robert Sarnoff and Roy Neuberger, both of whom were Nevelson collectors.
30 Arnold B. Glimcher to Lloyd Goodrich, February 26, 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art Archives.
31 Louise Nevelson to Jack Gordon, January 14, 1967, Nevelson file, Whitney Museum of American Art Archives.
32 David L. Shirey, “She and Her Shadows,” Newsweek, March 20, 1967, 110–11.
33 Press release for Louise Nevelson retrospective, Whitney Museum of Art, February 21, 1967, 1.
34 John Gordon, Louise Nevelson (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1967), 8, from a tape of private interview with Louise Nevelson by Colette Roberts, spring 1965.
35 Louise Nevelson to John Gordon, January 14, 1967, Nevelson file, Whitney Museum of American Art Archives.
36 Christopher Andreae, “Nevelson’s Little Boxes—Or Are They Big?,” Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 1967, 10. Arnold Glimcher explained that some of the boxes with mirrors in Rain Forest wall were left over from the 1964 Pace exhibition. Having started to use blue light by chance with Moon Garden + One, Nevelson continued to create atmospheric effects with blue lighting for many decades; interview with author, October 5, 2009.
37 Grace Glueck, “No Little Flowers, Please,” Art Notes, New York Times, March 12, 1967, D29.
38 John Canaday, “Art: Moore and Nevelson Sculpture in Retrospect,” New York Times, March 9, 1967, 42.
39 Charlotte Willard, “All Around You,” New York Post, March 11, 1967, 14.
40 Emily Genauer, “Journal of Art, Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture Exhibition has Opening at the Whitney Museum,” World Journal Tribune, March 8, 1967.
41 Emily Genauer, “A Scavenger’s Black Magic,” World Journal Tribune, March 12, 1967, 33
42 Gregory McDonald, “She Takes the Commonplace and Exalts It,” Boston Globe, September 10, 1967, 24, 32.
43 Robert Pincus-Witten, “Louise Nevelson, Whitney Museum,” Artforum, May 1967, 58.
44 Dorothy Gees Seckler, “The Artist Speaks: Louise Nevelson,” Art in America 55, no. 1 (January–February 1967): 42.
45 Ibid., 41
46 Thomas M. Messer, preface to Guggenheim International Exhibition 1967: Sculpture From Twenty Nations (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1967); published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
47 Angela Cuccio, “The Rebel Sculptor,” 4–5.
48 Grace Glueck, “A New Breed is Dealing in Art,” New York Times, December 16, 1968, 58.
49 “Signs of Tomorrow,” Time, July 12, 1968.
50 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, February 24, 2010.
51 Nevelson was among the many artists who donated work to honor Martin Luther King Jr. to be sold for the benefit of the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation at an exhibition at MoMA in late October and early November 1968. Notice in New York Times, October 27, 1968.
52 According to Glimcher, Zag is the series she remained with the longest. Interview with author, March 1, 2010.
53 See, for example, Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 81.
14. MISTRESS OF TRANSFORMATION 1969–1971
1 Louise Nevelson, in Tal Streeter, “Unpublished Interview with Louise Nevelson,” November 25, 1959, which had been done as preparation for the landmark Martha Jackson Gallery exhibition in 1960; LN Papers, AAA. Cf. Dawns + Dusks, 177.
2 Betty Dietz Krebs, “New Logic for Nevelson,” Dayton News, May 25, 1969, 6.
3 Grace Glueck, “Juilliard Unveils a Wall Sculpture by Nevelson,” New York Times, December 19, 1969, 60.
4 Lipman, Nevelson’s World, 84.
5 Grace Glueck, “Juilliard Unveils a Wall Sculpture by Nevelson,” New York Times, December 19, 1969, 60. The night before Diana MacKown and Nevelson learned about the Lipman purchase and the wall’s ultimate destination, both women dreamt about the wall. Diana recalls that she saw the sculpture as musical and found traces of violins and cellos in its abstract forms.
6 James R. Mellow, “New York Letter,” Art International, summer 1969, 48.
7 John Gruen, “Art in New York: Silent Emanations,” New York, April 14, 1969, 57.
8 Lipman, Nevelson’s World, 80.
9 According to the exhibition list of the 1969 Pace show.
10 John Canaday, “Louise Nevelson and the Rule Book,” New York Times, April 6, 1969, wrote that the artist is “in a class by herself,” 182.
11 Patty Glimcher, interview with author, September 24, 2010.
12 René Barotte, “Nevelson, le sculpteur qui va … au-delà,” France-Soir, May 13, 1969.
13 Carol Cutler, “Art in Paris Trumpets for Nevelson, Kalinowski,” International Herald Tribune, May 3–4, 1969.
14 Michel Conil Lacoste, “Nevelson’s immaculate bric a brac,” Le Monde, June 11, 1969, 7.
15 Hilton Kramer, “Can We Place Them with Matisse and Brancusi?,” New York Times, June 22, 1969.
16 Emily Genauer, “Art and the Artist,” New York Post, October 18, 1969, 46.
17 Ibid. By little magazines she means specifically those not in the mass media.
18 Grace Glueck, “Deflecting Henry’s Show,” New York Times, October 19, 1969, D28
19 Ibid.
20 Hilton Kramer, “Ascendancy of American Art,” New York Times, October 18, 1969, 23.
21 Hilton Kramer, “A Modish Revision of History,” New York Times, October 19, 1969, D29.
22 Robert Hughes, “Sculpture’s Queen Bee,” Time, January 12, 1981, 66–72.
23 “Extracts from Miss Nevelson’s Response on Receiving the Edward MacDowell Medal, August 24, 1969,” The MacDowell Colony: Report for 1969 (Peterborough, NH: MacDowell Colony, 1969).
24 Mary Buxton to Arnold B. Glimcher, October 15, 1968, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Archives.
25 Ibid.
26 Mary Buxton, Cain interview at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), November 16, 2005, transcript.
27 Ibid.
28 Mary Buxton to Louise Nevelson, October 22, 1968, MFAH Archives.
29 Ibid.
30 Arnold Glimcher to Mary Buxton, March 18, 1969. MFAH Archives
31 Mary Buxton to Arnold B. Glimcher, May 27, 1969, MFAH Archives.
32 Mary Buxton to William Fagaly, June 16, 1969, MFAH Archives.
33 Nevelson had decided that for the Houston exhibit she wanted all the early works to be dated the same year—1955. It is very unlikely that all the works dated 1955 were done that year. Nevelson had only just returned to working in wood in 1954 with Bride of the Black Moon and Winged City. The styles of the eight sculptures dated 1955 are too various to be made in that single year; more accurately, they should be given a date range of 1955–57.
34 Fred Mueller to Mary Buxton, July 25, 1969, MFAH Archives.
35 Fred Mueller to Mary Buxton, July 31, 1969, MFAH Archives.
36 Mr. and Mrs. George Brown whose foundation gave the work to the museum.
37 Mrs. Frederick A. Buxton to Mrs. George Brown. December 8, 1969. MFAH Archives.
38 Pace to MFAH, October 4, 1969, MFAH Archives.
39 Mary Buxton to Louise Nevelson, October 8, 1969, MFAH Archives.
40 Mary Buxton to Arnold B. Glimcher and Fred Mueller, October 23, 1969, MFAH Archives.
41 Mary Buxton to Louise Nevelson, November 5, 1959, MFAH Archives.
42 Mary Buxton to Emily Genauer, November 10, 1969, MFAH Archives
43 Mary Buxton to Katharine Kuh, November 10, 1969; Mary Buxton to Anthony Bower, November 14, 1969, MFAH Archives.
44 Mary Buxton to Emily Genauer, November 10, 1969, MFAH Archives.
45 Ibid.
46 Ann Holmes, “Nevelson at Museum Sculptural Incantation,” Houston Chronicle, October 26, 1969, 8, s. 7.
47 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author. April 13, 2009.
48 Ibid.
49 This work travelled before it arrived in Philadelphia. It had been on exhibit at the Maeght Foundation in France, then in New York at the Seagram’s building on Park Avenue.
50 Jonathan D. Lippincott, Large Scale: Fabricating Sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010).
51 Lippincott, Large Scale, 14.
52 Roy Bongartz, “Where the Monumental Sculptors Go,” Art News, February 1976, 34–37.
53 Ibid.
54 Donald Lippincott, interview with author, November 16, 2012.
55 Donald Lippincott to Arnold B. Glimcher, April 15, 1969.
56 Lippincott Inc. invoice no. 102–247, May 7, 1971.
57 A careful study of the worksheets and accompanying photographs at Lippincott’s shop revealed this remarkable development.
58 Lippincott Inc. invoice No. 103–222, May 7, 1971, “Execution of 10 sculptures by Louise Nevelson in aluminum painted black” and accompanying worksheet.
59 Joyce Schwartz, interview with author, August, 16, 2010.
60 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 169–70.
61 Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 169.
62 John Canaday, “Art: Nevelson’s ‘7th Decade Garden,’” New York Times, May 8, 1971.
63 J. S., “Louise Nevelson,” Reviews and Previews, Art News, September 1971, 16–17.
64 Schwartz, interview with author, August 16, 2010; Glimcher, Louise Nevelson, 169.
65 J. S., Art News September 1971
66 Louise Nevelson interview, July 24, 1975, in Hugh Marlais Davies et al., Artist and Fabricator (Amherst, MA: Fine Arts Center Gallery, University of Massachusetts, 1975), 23; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Fine Arts Center Gallery, July 24, 1975.
67 Lipman, Nevelson’s World, 176. Lipman placed the quote across from an image of the largest steel sculpture in Louise Nevelson Plaza.
68 See Patterson Sims’s introductory essay in Lippincott’s Large Scale.
69 Ibid.
70 New York was at the head of such activities. Doris C. Freedman, the city’s first director of Cultural Affairs, established public sculpture as a necessary and vital part of city life.
71 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 171.
72 Elizabeth Fisher, “The Woman as Artist, Louise Nevelson” Aphra, Spring 1970 p. 31
73 James R. Mellow, “Nevelson, More Surprises Ahead” New York Times, December 6, 1970, D 29
74 George Gent, “Park Ave. Gets a Nevelson Sculpture,” New York Times, January 27, 1971.
75 Nessa Forman, “New Nevelson Sculpture Man’s Art Grows Beside Nature’s,” Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, May 23, 1971, Art section.
76 Emily Genauer, “Art and Artist,” New York Post, December 23, 1972.
77 Paul Todd Makler, Prometheus (Bound): Prometheus No.’s 1 to 33, 1961 to 1972 (Philadelphia: Makler Gallery, 1972), 11.
78 Ibid., 449.
79 Ibid., 311.
80 Ibid., 312. Hope and Paul Makler, interview with author, June 29, 2009.
81 “Mrs. Colette Roberts, 60, Dies; Gallery Director Wrote on Art,” New York Times, August 12, 1971
82 Israel Shenker, “Picasso, 90 Today, Assayed by Critic, Curator, 3 Artists,” New York Times, October 25, 1971, 42.
83 Richard Gray, interview with author, July 29, 2009.
84 Ibid.
85 Jane Allen and Derek Guthrie, “Black Marks for ‘White on White,’” review of Nevelson exhibit, Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1972, Arts & Fun 14.
15. LA SIGNORA OF SPRING STREET 1972–1974
1 In David C. Berliner, “Women Artists Today: How Are They Doing Vis-à-Vis the Men?” Cosmopolitan, October 1973, 224.
2 Eleanor J. Bader, “Women Artists Still Face Discrimination,” Truthout News, May 10, 2012.
3 “We asked 20 Women ‘Is the Art World Biased?’ Here’s What They Said,” Artnet News, September 16, 2014. The number may be slightly better than the reported figure indicating 86% of the art at the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum was done by men.
4 Philip Boroff, “Art World Bias by the Numbers,” Artnet News, September 16, 2014
5 Elizabeth Baker, “Art and Sexual Politics,” in Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker, eds., Art and Sexual Politics: Women’s Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 115.
6 Ibid., 114.
7 Friedan, Betty (1963) The Feminine Mystique, W.W. Norton
8 Baker, “Art and Sexual Politics,” 112.
9 Donald Robinson, “America’s 75 Most Important Women,” Ladies’ Home Journal, January 1971.
10 David C. Berliner, “Women Artists Today,” 216.
11 “The Truth About Woman’s Role Today,” “Do Men Treat You as an Equal?,” Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1972, E5.
12 Aphra 1, no. 3 (spring 1970).
13 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Art News, January 1971, 41.
14 Louise Nevelson, “Do Your Work,” in Hess and Baker, eds., Art and Sexual Politics, 84–85. Nevelson’s essay originally appeared in “Eight Artists Reply: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” “Do Your Work,” Art News, January 1971, 41–43.
15 Sam Hunter, “Interview with Louise Nevelson,” in Monumenta: A Biennial Exhibition of Outdoor Sculpture, ed. Sam Hunter (Newport, R.I.: Monumenta Newport, 1974), 38–41; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
16 “The Sculptor,” Newsweek special issue, “Our America: A Self-Portrait at 200,” July 4, 1976, 53.
17 David C. Berliner, “Women Artists Today,” 218–19.
18 Jean Micuda, “Louise Nevelson, They Call Me Mother Courage,” Arizona Living, March 17, 1972.
19 During the 1970s Nevelson was sending the increasingly large amount of correspondence and clippings that featured her to the Archives of American Art, which had recently (1970) become part of the Smithsonian Institution and would eventually be available to future scholars.
20 Review in New York Post, January 15, 1972, of Ralph G. Martin, Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, vol. 2, The Dramatic Years 1895–1921 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971).
21 The interview originally published in Changes but quickly sold out and was republished in Cindy Nemser, “Interview: Louise Nevelson,” Feminist Art Journal, fall 1972, 1, 14–19.
22 Cindy Nemser, “Interview: Louise Nevelson,” 15.
23 Cindy Nemser, interview with author, October 18, 2013.
24 Here, Nevelson might have been referring to Louise Bourgeois. According to Nemser, “Louise Bourgeois came to all the feminist meetings. At that time she was nothing, and she was hostile to anyone who was not a feminist. She liked to stir up trouble. [Bourgeois] was starved for attention, but because she lived long enough she finally got attention. She outlasted other artists who were much better than she was.” Cindy Nemser, interview with author, October 18, 2013.
25 Henry J. Seldis, “Nevelson: A Door to Perception,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1976, G1.
26 Katrine Ames, “Gothic Queen,” Newsweek, December 4, 1972.
27 Ibid.
28 Cindy Nemser, “Interview: Louise Nevelson,” 17.
29 Aphra 1, no. 3, 41.
30 Amei Wallach, “Sculpting a World to Her Vision,” Newsday, August 1, 1986.
31 Lynn Gilbert and Gaylen Moore, Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1981), 75.
32 “… And Some of the Women Who Have Made It to the Top in the World’s Toughest City,” London Sunday Times, November 12, 1972, 43.
33 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, June 11, 2012: “Lee Krasner invented this rumor. Lee was very competitive and Louise was too aloof and too Russian to bother denying it, but, trust me, Louise was a predatory heterosexual into her eighties … with younger men, of course.”
34 Edward Albee, interview with author April 16, 2012.
35 Diana Loercher, “‘Apolitical’ Artists Give for McGovern,” Christian Science Monitor, September 25, 1972, 6.
36 Lawrence Campbell, “Louise Nevelson,” Art News, December 1972, 11.
37 “A Work of Art for Scottsdale,” Arizona Republic, February 20, 1972.
38 Ann Patterson, “Sculptress Louise Nevelson – Excursion into Awareness,” Scottsdale Daily Progress, March 3, 1972.
39 Model Review of the Sculpture Commission, March 1, 1972, City Hall Scottsdale, AZ, LN Papers, AAA.
40 Ibid.
41 Jim Newton, “Sculptor Talks About Scottsdale Commission,” Phoenix Gazette, March 4, 1972.
42 Carolyn Younger, “Whim & Caprice: ‘The Haberdashery of Oddities in the Collection of Curious Things,’” Napa Valley Register, August 4, 2011.
43 The exhibit has retrospectively been titled Louise Nevelson: Columns, Dream-Houses and Collages.
44 Bill Katz, interview with author, December 14, 2012.
45 A sizable number of Nevelson’s collages have mistakenly been given much earlier dates. While she may have previously made an occasional collage, the summer of 1972 was the beginning of her work in this medium, which she would come to favor more and more. Five separate sources—including the artist herself, Diana MacKown, and Arnold B. Glimcher—confirm this time frame.
46 Helen Dudar, “The Eyes Can Touch, Too,” New York Post, December 9, 1972.
47 Diana MacKown recalls that Nevelson took the material for the collages up to Stony Point that summer with the idea that she would be able to work even though she was away from her studio and home.
48 John Canaday, “Art: Ingenuity of Louise Nevelson,” New York Times, November 4, 1972, 29.
49 Ellen Lubell, Arts Magazine, December 1972, 83.
50 Vivien Raynor, “Louise Nevelson at Pace,” Art in America, January 1973.
51 April Kingsley, “Louise Nevelson,” Artforum, February 1973, 87.
52 Louis Botto, “Works in Progress: Louise Nevelson,” Intellectual Digest, April 1972, 6–8.
53 Ibid.
54 Gilbert and Moore, Particular Passions, 3–4.
55 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
56 Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” New York, September 25, 1989, 94.
57 Marjorie Eaton, interview with author, August 25, 1976.
58 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
59 Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 28, 2012.
60 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
61 Maria Nevelson, interview with author, December 13, 2012.
62 The sculpture would remain on Fifth Avenue until a permanent outdoor location was found for it. It eventually landed at the top of a slight incline on the center mall of Park Avenue at 92nd Street, a site allegedly chosen by the artist and her dealer “as a kind of link between Spanish Harlem and the Upper East Side.”
63 George Gent, “Sculptor Thanks the City in Steel,” New York Times, December 15, 1972.
64 April Kingsley, “Louise Nevelson, Pace Gallery,” Artforum, February 1973, 86–89.
65 Giorgio Marconi, interview with author, May 24, 2011. Marconi explained to me how he had arranged for the five European exhibitions using works from the show in his gallery.
66 Giorgio Marconi to Louise Nevelson, May 17, 1973, LN Papers, AAA.
67 Giorgio Marconi, interview with author, May 24, 2011.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 The large Cor-Ten steel sculptures of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the Atmosphere and Environment series, were not translations from wood to metal. They were Nevelson’s first works in metal and grew out of the Plexiglas sculptures, not wood.
71 Martin Friedman, interview with author, July 15, 2011.
72 Don Morrison, “Nevelson’s Art Started in a Gutter,” Minneapolis Star, November 8, 1973.
73 Don Morrison, “Discarded Wood Transformed into Art,” Minneapolis Star, November 15, 1973.
74 Margaret Morris, news release, Minneapolis Tribune, November 7, 1973.
75 “Women at the Walker,” Skyway News, November 21, 1973.
76 “Artists on Watergate,” Changes, September–October 1973.
77 “How Has the Most Famous Third-Rate Burglary Affected Your Life,” New York, October 22, 1973.
78 Pace Prints is in the same building as Pace Gallery and had a collaborative relationship with it but was a separate entity showing and selling graphic work only, often by the same artists in Pace Gallery.
79 Irving Rabb, speech to Congregation Adath Israel Board of Trustees Meeting, Boston, December 20, 1972, 3. Archives at Temple Israel.
80 Greg Downes letter to George Abrams, May 10, 1973, Archives at Temple Israel.
81 Louise Nevelson in Fact Sheet for Louise Nevelson Sculpture Sky Covenant (Boston: Temple Israel Boston, n.d.).
82 Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, Fact Sheet for Louise Nevelson Sculpture Sky Covenant.
83 Lacey Fosburgh, “A Special S.F. Greeting for Sculptor,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1974.
84 Henry J. Seldis, “Enchanted Forest of Nevelson Wood Sculpture,” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1974.
85 Ibid.
86 Frances Beatty and Gilbert Brownstone, “The Permanence of Nevelson” in Louise Nevelson (Paris: Centre national d’art contemporain and Weber, 1974); published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
87 Jacques Michel, “Louise Nevelson au CNAC,” Le Monde, April 1974.
88 Carl R. Baldwin, “Louise Nevelson,” Connaissance des Arts, no. 266 (April 1974), 58–65.
89 Michelle Motte, “La reine des murs noirs,” L’Express, April 15–21, 1974.
90 Ivy Dodd, “Thorndike’s Louise Nevelson Room Pays Tribute to Rockland Artist,” Courier-Gazette, April 25, 1974.
91 Mary Sullivan, “Louise Nevelson, One of Art World’s Most Noted,” Courier-Gazette, July 18, 1974.
92 Hilton Kramer, “Art: Nevelson Still Shines,” New York Times, May 11, 1974, 25.
93 Barbaralee Diamonstein, “Louise Nevelson at 75 ‘I’ve Never Yet Stopped Digging Daily for What Life Is All About,’” Art News, October 1974.
16. LARGE SCALE 1975–1976
1 Arnold B. Glimcher, interviews with author, June 13, 2011, October 31, 2011. Though Nevelson and Glimcher did not make it to Sapporo, they had done a video that was available to the viewers of the show there.
2 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 148.
3 Dorothy Miller accompanied her to Venice in 1962, and Milly and Arne Glimcher were her travelling companions to Iran, India and Japan in 1975.
4 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, June 13, 2011.
5 Ibid.
6 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, December 9, 2011.
7 Kusuo Shimizu to Louise Nevelson, March 3, 1975, N Archives, FAM.
8 Robin Berrington (United States Information Service) to Louise Nevelson, March 12, 1975, N Archives, FAM.
9 Kegoro Kiji, “Louise Nevelson: Her Works and World,” Hokkaido Shimbun, March 25, 1975.
10 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, January 23, 2011.
11 The work is sometimes listed as Transparent Horizons though the correct name is Transparent Horizon.
12 I. M. Pei, interview with author, October 26, 2009.
13 Deborah Nikkel, “‘Transparent Horizons’ on the MIT Campus,” Christian Science Monitor, Arts/Entertainment, 1975. December.
14 “Marty Carlock Guidebook spotlights MIT art collection,” Boston Globe, January 9, 1983; Nevelson had a copy of this article and was obviously pleased that the prime photo was of her Transparent Horizons, which she underlined and directed and inserted an arrow with her name next to it.
15 Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, interview with author, February 15, 2012.
16 Adele Tutter, communication to author, January 30, 2011.
17 Diana MacKown, interview with author, September 19, 2009.
18 I. M. Pei, interview with author, October 26, 2009.
19 Joyce Pommeroy Schwartz, interview with author, August 16, 2010.
20 Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture, 123. See ch. 13, n11.
21 Ibid.
22 Larry Eichel, “Praise from First Lady,” Philadelphia Enquirer, January 14, 1976.
23 Louise Nevelson, letter to GSA Administrator Solomon, August 23, 1977 in Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture, 124.
24 Louise Nevelson “Bicentennial Dawn 1975” in Nevelson Bicentennial Dawn brochure, ed. Jack Eckerd (Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Services Administration, 1976).
25 Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture, 120.
26 The Fine Arts in Federal Buildings Program was revitalized in 1972 when GSA renewed its commitment to commission exceptional talented American artists to create artworks as an integral part of each new architectural design. The GSA has worked with the NEA to strengthen the program. See Jack Eckerd, Bicentennial Dawn.
27 Thalacker, The Place of Art in the World of Architecture, 120–25.
28 Emily Genauer, “Art and the Artist,” New York Post, January 17, 1976.
29 Nessa Forman, “1st Lady Throws the Switch,” Bulletin, January 1976.
30 Ibid.
31 Paul Makler, “Nevelson,” Prometheus, no. 43 (January 1976): 6.
32 “Louise Nevelson: The Stern Sculptor Who Does Boxes within Boxes,” Life, special report, 1976, 55.
33 In the interests of full disclosure this included some of my own interviews.
34 The artist vehemently claimed in her own handwriting on the frontispiece of the book: “This is not an autobiography. This is not a biography. This is a gift.”
35 Grace Glueck, “Art People,” New York Times, November 26, 1976, Travel section, C18.
36 Ad in Art News, December 1976.
37 Ivy Dodd to Susan Richman, December 3, 1976, N Archives, FAM.
38 Wendy Seller to Louise Nevelson, December 9, 1978, N Archives, FAM
39 I had interviewed Lillian Mildwoff three times during the summer of 1976, twice in Maine and a third time in New York. There was no evidence then that she was ill.
40 Ben had lent money to Louise when she was buying her new home on Spring Street in 1958. Soon afterwards he began to pressure her to pay him back. Once she did, she told him to get out and never come back. She was a champion at holding grudges.
41 Diana MacKown, interview with author, October 24, 2015.
42 Editorial, “The Moral Message from La Grande France,” Art News, March 1977, 31.
43 Grace Glueck, “Art People,” New York Times, January 21, 1977, C18.
44 Ibid.
45 It continued to be owned by Pace until it was sold at auction in 2001.
46 Hilton Kramer, “US Boycott Vexes French, New York Times, January 27, 1977.
47 Editorial, Art News, March 1977, 31.
48 Two years later, Nevelson was given an award by the Anti-Defamation League honoring her “commitment to human rights.” Louise Nevelson, your soul, your sensitivity, your genius and your courage have endowed our lives with a new dimension – in our appreciation of beauty and in our hope for that world of peace and of justice.”
49 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, February 11, 2011.
50 Ibid.
51 “A Tree Grows in a Lobby,” San Francisco Examiner, February 14, 1977, 6.
52 Ted Sylvester, “Fish ’n Chips,” Bangor Daily News, March 12–13, 1977.
53 Thomas Albright, “Art is a Conviction – A Way of Life,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 1977, 52.
54 “A Tree Grew at Embarcadero Center,” San Francisco Progress, February 16, 1977, 1.
55 Louise Nevelson in Jeffrey Hoffeld, Nevelson at Purchase: The Metal Sculptures (Purchase, NY: Neuberger Museum of Art Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY, Purchase College, 1977)
56 “Centerview Goes to A ‘Tree-Planting,’” Centerview 5, no. 3 (March 1977).
57 Thomas Albright, “San Francisco; Convulsive but Lyrical,” Art News, May 1977.
58 Robert Taylor, “Louise Nevelson: A Candid Creator,” Boston Globe, April 10, 1977, B5.
59 Judith Matloff, “Visiting Artist Louise Nevelson Discusses Sculpture and Life,” Harvard Crimson, April 1, 1977.
60 Ibid.
61 Robert Taylor, “Louise Nevelson: A Candid Creator,” Boston Globe, April 10, 1977.
62 Donald Lippincott, interview with author, April 25, 2011.
63 Luisa Kreisberg, “A Crop of Nevelsons Picked for Purchase; Nevelsons on Way,” New York Times, May 1, 1977, section Westchester Weekly, WC11.
64 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, June 11, 2012.
65 “Lifestyles: Museum Gala to Honor Sculptor,” White Plains Reporter Dispatch, January 31, 1977.
66 Jeffrey Hoffeld, Nevelson at Purchase: The Metal Sculptures, 3.
67 Donald Lippincott to Jeffrey Hoffeld, March 29, 1977, Neuberger Museum Archives.
68 “Nevelson Exhibit This Summer at Purchase,” News Report, Progressive Architecture 6, no. 77 (June 1977): 24.
69 Jeffrey Hoffeld, interview with author, February 4, 2012.
70 David L. Shirey, “Nevelson the Fantasticator,” New York Times, June 12, 1977, section Westchester Weekly, WC22.
71 Louise Nevelson, interview with Arnold B. Glimcher, March 3, 1976, on way to Atlanta memorial. In Louise Nevelson Remembered: Sculpture and Collages, March–April 1989, Pace Gallery and accompanying catalogue (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).
72 Hilton Kramer, “Art View,” New York Times, May 15, 1977.
73 Luisa Kreisberg, “A Crop of Nevelsons Picked for Purchase; Nevelsons on Way,” New York Times, May 1, 1977, section Westchester Weekly, WC1, WC11.
74 Charles C. Smith, “The Sculpture Factory,” Boston Globe, August 27, 1978, 35.
75 Nevelson, Dawns + Dusks, 167
76 Ibid., 171.
17. “THE NEVELSON” 1967–1988
1 Elizabeth Baker, interview with author, October 3, 2011.
2 Mary Blume, “Louise Nevelson in Paris: At 86, Finally Ready for Satin,” International Herald Tribune, January 31, 1986. The Life article was “Weird Woodwork of Lunar World,” Life, March 24, 1958.
3 Arnold Scaasi, Women I Have Dressed (And Undressed!) (New York: Scribner, 2004).
4 Roberta Gratz, “Building Empires,” New York Post, March 8, 1967.
5 Milly Glimcher, interview with author, November 14, 2008
6 Beverly Grunwald, “Getting Around,” Women’s Wear Daily, November 18, 1976.
7 Roberta Gratz, “Building Empires,” New York Post, March 8, 1967.
8 Eleanor Lambert to Louise Nevelson, February 14, 1977, N Archives, FAM; and press release from Eleanor Lambert, Inc.
9 “Here They Are Again, the World’s Best-Dressed Women But Who Says So and Why?” People, February 28, 1977.
10 Amy Fine Collins, “The Lady, the List, the Legacy,” Vanity Fair, April 2004. Lambert began the Council of Fashion Designers of America and was responsible also for setting up the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
11 Ted Cohen, “Sculptor Is Stunning and Family Stunned,” Beacon: The Boston Herald America, February 20, 1977.
12 Lillian Berliawsky Mildwoff, interview with author, July 14, 1976.
13 Barbaralee Diamonstein, “Louise Nevelson at 75.” See ch. 15 n95.
14 Iris Krasnow, “Close Up: Louise Nevelson,” New Jersey Daily News, March 23, 1986
15 Mary Engels, “Architect of Reflection,” Daily News, January 9, 1970, 50.
16 Gwen Mazer, “Lifestyle,” Harper’s Bazaar, April 1972, 112–13.
17 Barbara Rose, “The Individualist,” Vogue, June 1, 1976. 156.
18 Amei Wallach, “Sculptor Louise Nevelson – Hanging On, Crashing Through, Loving It All,” New York Newsday, July 15, 1973. For the Maine paper the title was changed to “The Girl from Rockland Who Made It.”
19 Barbara Rose, “The Individualist,” Vogue, June 1, 1976, 122–24.
20 Sarah Booth Conroy, “Nevelson at Eighty,” Horizon (March 1980): 62–67;
21 Eleanor Freed, “The Queen of Parts,” Houston Post, October 26, 1969, 12.
22 Bongartz, “‘I Don’t Want to Waste Time,’” 12–13; 30–34.
23 Ibid., 12.
24 Ibid., 13.
25 Louis Botto, “Works in Progress: Louise Nevelson,” Intellectual Digest, April 1972, 6–8.
26 Carol Kleiman, “Mastering the Art of Being Louise Nevelson,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1978, 1, 6.
27 David Elliott, “Jubilant Drawings upon the body of nature,” Chicago Sun-Times, November 2, 1978.
28 Charles Calhoun, Louise Nevelson’s Above It All, Palm Beach Post-Times February 12,1978, G-1
29 Charles Calhoun, “Nevelson: Teaching Us Fine Art of Survival,” Palm Beach Post-Times, November 10, 1979, B1–2.
30 Ibid.
31 Edward Albee, interview with author, April 16, 2012.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Richard Gray, interview with author, July 29, 2009.
35 San Jose Mercury, “Big Names on Big Books,” December 4, 1983.
36 Barbara Braun, “PW Interviews: Louise Nevelson,” Publishers Weekly, December 16, 1983, 76–77.
37 Franz Schulze, “Nevelson’s World,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 4, 1983.
38 Vivien Raynor, “Louise Nevelson at Pace,” Art in America, January 1973.
39 Philip Eliasoph, “Leading Lady of Sculpture Puts on Show at Whitney,” Advocate and Greenwich Time, January 18, 1987, D5.
18. THE CHAPEL AND THE PALACE 1977–1979
1 Easley Hamner, interview with author, October 17, 2011.
2 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, November 7, 2015.
3 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, September 16, 2010; Barbara Murphy, interview with author, October 15, 2011.
4 Barbaralee Diamonstein, “The White Chapel,” Ladies Home Journal, December 1977.
5 “Minister has High Hopes for Mid-Manhattan Church,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, August 9, 1974.
6 Easley Hamner, interview with author, October 17, 2011; Diane Brown Harris, interview with author, October, 25, 2011.
7 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, October 11, 2011.
8 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, November 7, 2015.
9 Barbara Murphy, interview with author, October 15, 2011.
10 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, October 11, 2011.
11 Diamonstein, “The White Chapel.”
12 Easley Hamner, interview with author, October 17, 2011.
13 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, October 11, 2011.
14 Diamonstein, “The White Chapel.”
15 Saint Peter’s Church, Life at the Intersection (New York: Development Task Force, 1971), 4–5.
16 Ibid., 10–11.
17 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, October 8, 2011.
18 Barbara Murphy, interview with author, October 15, 2011.
19 Ibid.; Easley Hamner, interview with author, October 17, 2011.
20 Easley Hamner, interview with author, October 17, 2011.
21 Ralph Peterson, interview with author, October 8, 2011.
22 Diamonstein, “The White Chapel.”
23 Diane Loercher, “Nevelson’s Pristine Chapel,” Christian Science Monitor, December 19, 1977, 27.
24 Diamonstein, “The White Chapel.”
25 Barbaralee Diamonstein, “Louise Nevelson: ‘It Takes a Lot to Tango,’” Art News, May 1979, 72.
26 Henry J. Seldis, “Nevelson: A Door to Perception,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1976, G1.
27 Hilton Kramer, “Nevelsons Enhance Chapel,” New York Times, December 14, 1977.
28 Easley Hamner to Hilton Kramer, December 22, 1977; Saint Peter’s Church archives, .
29 Diamonstein, “Louise Nevelson: ‘It Takes a Lot to Tango.’”
30 Ralph Peterson left the church in 1980, only a few years after the completion of the chapel. His vision of the church as a center for cultural activities had outrun the congregation. Nevelson and he had a vision of liturgy as movement, and both saw the arts as a way to understand what it is to be human. The conservative congregation couldn’t quite follow him. Though he felt that his work there was unfinished, his friendship with Nevelson endured, and she agreed to be the godmother of his son Christopher.
31 Laurie Wilson, essay in Louise Nevelson, Louise Nevelson: Atmospheres and Environments (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art with Clarkson N. Potter, 1980), 162–63.
32 Louise Nevelson, interview with author, August 8, 1979.
33 Munro, Originals, 132. See ch. 1 n50.
34 Robert Hughes, “Night and Silence, Who is There?,” Time, December 12, 1977, 59–60.
35 Lila Harnett, “A Chapel for St. Peter’s and a ‘Palace’ for Mrs. N: A Great Artist Creates Rooms for Posterity,” Cue, December 10–23, 1977.
36 Hilton Kramer, “Art: A Nevelson Made to Last,” New York Times, December 9, 1977.
37 Susan Nevelson, interview with author, March 4, 2013.
38 John S. Turcott, “Nevelson in Little Italy: The Artist as Godmother of a Community,” Villager, May 25, 1978, 11.
39 Bill Katz, interview with author, December 14, 2012.
40 Turcott, “Nevelson in Little Italy,” 11.
41 Diana MacKown, interview with author, July 11, 2010.
42 Louise Nevelson comments at the dedication of Louise Nevelson Plaza, September 14, 1978.
43 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, June 13, 2011.
44 When the pear trees she selected at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens arrived she worried that they would be too small. In time they grew so large that they obscured the sculpture, and, when the park was redesigned in 2006–7, the benches were changed, the sculpture rearranged, and new plantings installed. But the park was still “Louise Nevelson Plaza.”
45 Stephen Forsling, “Shadows and Flags: Louise Nevelson Plaza,” Downtown, November 1982.
46 Ibid.
47 Jan Ernst Adlmann, interview with Louise Nevelson, in Jan Ernst Adlmann et al., Louise Nevelson: A Loan Exhibition (Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1979), 29; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Farnsworth Art Museum; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Jacksonville Art Museum, Jacksonville, Florida; Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, Arizona. This attention to the view from above was confirmed by Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz who played an active role in the project and by Donald Lippincott who observed that while she was making the aluminum sculptures at Lippincott she was looking down at the model.
48 Saul Wenegrat, “Public Art at the World Trade Center, in Sept 11th: Art Loss Damage and Repercussions, Proceedings of an IFAR Symposium,” International Foundation for Art Research, February 28, 2002.
49 “Louise Nevelson Dedicates Her Sculpture at Trade Center,” New York Times, December 13, 1978.
50 Kitty Carlisle Hart, speech, “Dedication of Plaque in Honor of Louise Nevelson, 1 World Trade Center,” New York State Council on the Arts, December 12, 1978. N Archives, FAM
51 Emmett Meara, “Sculptor Louise Nevelson Resents Ostracism in Rockland as Youth,” Bangor Daily News, June 15, 1978.
52 Marius B. Péladeau, interview with author, June 5, 2012
53 Ibid.
54 Marius B. Péladeau, e-mail to author, February 27, 2012; Marius B. Péladeau, interview with author, June 4–5, 2012.
55 Press release, “Louise Nevelson Doyenne of American Sculpture, Richard Gray Gallery, October 9, 1978.”
56 Donald Lippincott, telephone interview with author, March 12, 2014.
57 Jo Ann Lewis, “Knockouts and Spellbinders Among a Wealth of Women,” Washington Post, February 3, 1979.
58 Diamonstein, “Louise Nevelson ‘It Takes a Lot to Tango,’” 72.
59 Jeffrey Hoffeld, interview with author, December 5, 2011. By January 2, 1978, Hoffeld had left the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, NY, and was co-director with Arne Glimcher at Pace Gallery from 1978 to 1983. He would play a continuing role in Nevelson’s life and work, even after she died.
60 Proclamation by Rockland City Council, July 12, 1976, LN Papers, AAA.
61 Marius B. Péladeau, interview with author, June 4, 2012.
62 Jan Ernst Adlmann, interview with author, June 16, 2012.
63 Jan Ernst Adlmann, essay in Louise Nevelson: A Loan Exhibition, 31.
64 Adlmann, Louise Nevelson: A Loan Exhibition, 37.
65 Marius B. Péladeau, interview with author, June 4–5, 2012.
66 Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 23, 2011.
67 “Nevelson Exhibit Stirs Excitement,” Camden Herald, September September, 1979.
68 Ivy Dodd, “Warm Welcome Home Given Sculptor Louise Nevelson,” Courier-Gazette, July 14, 1979.
69 Black Cat, July 1979.
70 Robert Newall, “Nevelson ‘Defies Time,’” Bangor Daily News, July 14–15, 1979.
71 Ibid., 10.
72 Meara, “Sculptor Louise Nevelson Resents Ostracism.”
73 Ted Sylvester, “Fish ’n Chips,” Bangor Daily News, July 14–15, 1979, 28.
74 Ibid.
75 Leslie Bennetts, “For Louise Nevelson, a Down-East Homecoming in Triumph,” New York Times, July 16, 1979.
76 Ibid.
77 Ivy Dodd, “Langlais Pieces Present for Nevelson Sculpture Project,” Courier-Gazette, July 14, 1979, 14.
78 Marius B. Péladeau to Louise Nevelson, September 25, 1979, N Archives, FAM.
79 Marius B. Péladeau, interview with author, June 4–5, 2012.
80 Ibid.
19. A BIG BIRTHDAY 1980–1985
1 Elizabeth Bumiller, “Louise Nevelson Breezes into 80,” Washington Post, October 31, 1979, B6.
2 Laurie Wilson, “Louise Nevelson” in Louise Nevelson: The Fourth Dimension (Phoenix, AZ: Art Museum, 1980), 7–19; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
3 Between 1993 and 2010 Pace Gallery was Pace-Wildenstein during which time the two galleries operated jointly.
4 Initially intended for a gatefold of Mrs. N’s Palace in Atmospheres and Environments, 1980, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library Archives, Whitney Museum of American Art.
5 Robert Hughes, “Tsarina of Total Immersion,” Time, June 16, 1980.
6 Richard Roud, “A Very Freaky Lady Who Boxes Clever,” Guardian (UK), August 1, 1980.
7 Edward Albee, introduction to Louise Nevelson: Atmospheres and Environments, by Louise Nevelson (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art with Clarkson N. Potter, 1980), 28–29. Full disclosure: the author wrote five essays for the catalogue.
8 Ibid., 30.
9 Soon after Nate was treated and his cancer arrested, Nevelson was moved to create a laboratory (Louise Nevelson Laboratory for Cancer Immunobiology) at Sloan Kettering which was aimed at defining and analyzing the cancer process so as to identify and destroy malignant cells to treat and prevent cancer.
10 Ann Cremin, “Contemporary Art from Around the World,” Irish Times, November 19, 1981, 10.
11 Esther Garcia, “International Herald Tribune, November, 1981.
12 Bill Caldwell, “Rockland’s Nevelson: Work of Art,” Portland Press Herald, November 23, 1981.
13 Ibid.
14 “Louise Nevelson to be Honored by Bond’s Manhattan Women,” Jewish Week American Examiner, February 28, 1982, 14.
15 Joan Shepard, “At 82 She’s Still Sympathetic to People Who Get Beat Up,” Daily News, March 19, 1982.
16 The deal had been brokered by Richard Gray and Arnold Glimcher with the developers Paul Beitler and Lee Miglin.
17 Alan G. Artner, “Nevelson’s Engaging ‘Shadows’—Intimacy in Monumental Sculpture,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1983.
18 “Nevelson Soars, Aldermen Sink,” Upfront Chicago, July 1983.
19 Artner, “Nevelson’s Engaging ‘Shadows.’”
20 The show included thirteen black- and white-painted wood sculptures dating from the mid-1950s to 1981 and another eighteen works including seven collages and eleven works on paper from 1979–1982.
21 “Tokyo: Louise Nevelson,” L’Oeil, no. 316 (November 1982): 88.
22 Paul Gardner, “Will Success Spoil Bob and Jim, Louise and Larry?” Art News, November 1982, 103.
23 Theodore F. Wolff, “American Art Is Doing Well—Although No New Big Ideas Are in Sight,” Christian Science Monitor, May 31, 1983, 11.
24 “Louise Nevelson”, New York Times, January 23, 1983
25 Eileen Putnam, “Louise Nevelson at 84: Profile of a Lady in Black,” Maine Sunday Telegram, January 22, 1984.
26 The artist must have had a collection of such spools since they are featured in most of the Cascades series.
27 Ruth Bass, “Louise Nevelson,” Art News, April 1983, 149–50.
28 Wolff, “American Art Is Doing Well—Although No New Big Ideas Are in Sight,” 11.
29 Amei Wallach “An Unmatched Pair of Great Artists,” Newsday, January 30, 1983.
30 Constance Schwartz, Nevelson and O’Keefe: Independents of the 20th Century (Roslyn Harbor, LI: Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, 1983), 16; published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
31 Constance Schwartz to Louise Nevelson, March 18, 1983, LN Papers, AAA.
32 Nicholas Drake, “Nevelson: If You’re an Artist You Don’t Lose It,” Festival Times Daily, May 23, 1983, 1, 6.
33 “Nevelson’s World,” Umbrella, January 1984.
34 Kelly Walton, “Louise Nevelson: In Black and White,” Scottsdale Daily Progress, April 3, 1985, 34–35.
35 Suzanne Muchnic, “Matisse, Nevelson, Bosch and Bacon: art book bounty” Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1983, T4.
36 “Architectural Digest Visits Louise Nevelson,” Architectural Digest, November 1983, 139.
37 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012.
38 An alternate story about Tobin, Nevelson, and Orfeo is told by Willy Eisenhart, “Foreword,” in Christoph Willibald Gluck et al., In Search of Orfeo (New York: Bouwerie Editions, 1984). Eisenhart notes that Tobin spoke with Bill Katz in summer 1976 suggesting that Nevelson design the opera.
39 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012.
40 Ibid.
41 Willy Eisenhart, “Foreword,” in In Search of Orfeo. 2.
42 Robert W. Duffy, “Louise Nevelson Lived In a Realm She Created Herself,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 1988, 3E, 15E.
43 Robert LaRouche, “Nevelson’s Set Pieces,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 9, 1984.
44 Duffy, “Louise Nevelson Lived In a Realm She Created Herself.”
45 James Wierzbicki, “Sculptor Nevelson Boosts ‘Orfeo,’” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 9–10, 1984, 9F.
46 John von Rhein, “‘Orfeo,’ ‘Bunyan’ Reverse Bad Luck of Opera Theatre,” Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1984, Arts 21.
47 Leighton Kerner, “Sic Transit Gloriana,” Village Voice, July 24, 1984.
48 John Rockwell, “Opera: Gluck’s ‘Orfeo’ in St. Louis,” New York Times, June 8, 1984.
49 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012.
50 Willy Eisenhart, “The Gifts: 1985; The Art of Nevelson at the Farnsworth,” Annual Report 1985 (Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1985).
51 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012.
52 Bill Katz, telephone interview with author, December 7, 2012.
53 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012; Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, December 15, 2012.
54 Richard Gaddes, telephone interview with author, December 8, 2012.
55 Ibid.
56 The agreement for the sculpture wasn’t signed until August 1, 1983, and Storm King didn’t pay for it until May 1984, when it was finished and installed. Information from Lippincott worksheet of hours spent on the sculpture.
57 From the video on the work at Storm King Art Center: 7 Modern Masters Reveal Their Creative Adventures, Sculptors at Storm King ©1992. Bruce Basset Productions, licensed worldwide by Reiner Moritz Associates Ltd.
58 Don Lippincott, telephone interview with author, April 30, 2012.
59 Communication with Diana MacKown, April 15, 2009.
60 Cindy Adams, “Nevelson’s nine floors of trash and treasures,” New York Post, May 3, 1983, 32.
61 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, March 25, 2011.
62 John Russell, “Profusion of Good Art by Women,” New York Times, February 22, 1985, C1.
63 Douglas C. McGill, “Louise Nevelson Giving 25 Works to Museums,” New York Times, March 18, 1985.
64 Micuda, “They Call Me Mother Courage: Louise Nevelson.” See ch 15 n18.
65 Douglas C. McGill, “Louise Nevelson Giving 25 Works to Museums,” New York Times, March 18, 1985.
66 Ibid.
67 Hunter Drohojowska, “At 85, Louise Nevelson Gets her Day in the L.A. Sun,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, June 24, 1985.
68 Kelly Walton, “Louise Nevelson: In Black and White,” Scottsdale Daily Progress, April 3, 1985, 34–35.
69 Ibid.
70 Paul Gardner, “New York: Diana Was Always There,” Art News, December 1990, 57–58.
71 “Louise Nevelson Talks to Joan Galway, Monumental Work With Thanks to No One,” Washington Post, November 10, 1985, D3.
72 Judd Tully, “Taking Care of Diana,” Nation, February 1990, 39.
73 Irvin Molotsky, “12 Are Named Winners of a New U.S. Arts Medal,” New York Times, April 18, 1985.
74 Irvin Molotsky, “Reagan, Bestowing Medals Hails the Free Artist,” New York Times, April 24, 1985, C14.
75 Ibid.
76 Sarah Booth Conroy, “The President’s Medalists: Art’s Night Out,” Washington Post, April 23, 1985, E1.
77 Mary Battiata, “Saluting the Arts Medalists: Reagans Present First-Time Honors,” Washington Post, April 24, 1985.
78 Rosenfield to Arnold B. Glimcher and Richard Solomon, December 20, 1984. Archives of the Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums.
79 Correspondence between Bok, Solomon, Rosenfeld and Glimcher, 1982–85, archives at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University Art Museums.
80 Fox Butterfield, “Volcker and Nevelson Honored by Harvard,” New York Times, June 7, 1985, D18.
81 Suzanne Muchnic, “More Space for Sailing the Nevelson Legend,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1985, F1.
82 Jody Jacobs, “Farewell to Gotham and Old Friends,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1985, H4.
83 Suzanne Muchnic, “More Space for Sailing the Nevelson Legend,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1985, F1.
84 Ibid.
85 Like Picasso and many other prolific artists, Nevelson reused elements she liked in different sculptures. Night Sail contains several such elements—some she had seen as recently as a few weeks earlier at Harvard, where one of the transparent sails and the snake-like vertical element can be found again in Night Wall I.
86 Drohojowska, “At 85, Louise Nevelson Gets Her Day in the L.A. Sun.”
87 Beth Crichlow, “Nevelson Returns Home for 86th Birthday,” Camden Herald, September 26, 1985, 8.
88 “Nevelson Gives Swatches of Fabric to Art Museum,” Bangor Daily News, September 28–29, 1985, 23.
89 “Nevelson Donates Orfeo Fabric,” Camden Herald, October 10, 1985.
90 Nevelson had been making jewelry for herself and a few friends to wear since the 1960s, but she had never created jewelry specifically for an exhibition. She designed the wood sculpture for the jewelry and had a craftsman cover certain segments or facets with gold or silver metallic overlay. The gold was a reflection both of the new jewels the artist had made for the exhibition, and the thrones from Orfeo which had been painted gold before she gave them to the Farnsworth.
91 Walter Griffin, “Rockland Recognizing Value of Nevelson’s Art,” Bangor Daily News, June 20, 1994.
92 “Louise Nevelson Talks to Joan Galway, Monumental Work With Thanks to No One,” Washington Post, November 10, 1985, D3.
20. THE END 1985–1988
1 Iris Krasnow, “I’m impressed with what I do: That’s living for me,” United Press International, February 23, 1986.
2 Iris Krasnow, “Close Up: Louise Nevelson,” New Jersey Daily News, March 23, 1986.
3 Krasnow, “I’m impressed with what I do: That’s living for me,” 3.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid. Mike Nevelson stated affirmatively: “There is nothing between Diana and Louise Nevelson.” Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
6 Krasnow, “I’m impressed with what I do: That’s living for me”
7 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014
8 Ibid.
9 Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” New York, September 25, 1989, 86.
10 Ibid.
11 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
12 Marius B. Péladeau, correspondence with author, September 5, 2015. Interview with author June 5, 2012.
13 Louise and Diana made three or four trips on the Concorde, to Paris twice and London once. Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, November 17, 2012.
14 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, December 15, 2012
15 Mary Blume, “Louise Nevelson in Paris: At 86, Finally Ready for Satin,” International Herald Tribune, January 31, 1986.
16 Don Lippincott to Arnold B. Glimcher, June 3, 1986, AG Papers.
17 It had been started in April 1984, completed in October 1986 but was not sold until May 1988. It resides at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
18 Amei Wallach, “Sculpting a World to Her Vision,” Newsday, August 1, 1986.
19 Carol Lawson, “The Evening Hours,” New York Times, May 23, 1986.
20 Agnes Martin: New Paintings; Louise Nevelson: Mirror Shadows The Pace Gallery Press Release September, 1986
21 William Zimmer, “Art: 31 Works by Walter Murch Being Shown,” New York Times, September 26, 1986.
22 Philip Eliasoph, “Leading Lady of Sculpture Puts on Show at Whitney,” Advocate and Greenwich Time, January 18, 1987, D5.
23 Nevelson’s first work to be acquired by the Whitney was Black Majesty in 1956. “One of the great joys is to know that the Whitney Museum has so much of my work.” Louise Nevelson, essay in Louise Nevelson: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987), 8. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
24 Philip Eliasoph, “Leading Lady of sculpture puts on show at Whitney,” Advocate and Greenwich Time, January 11, 1987, D5.
25 William Zimmer, “Works by Nevelson in Stamford,” New York Times, January 18, 1987, 30.
26 Maureen Mullarkey, “A Medicine Show and Some Others,” Hudson Review 40, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 109–11.
27 Louise Nevelson, “A Conversation with Barbaralee Diamonstein,” in Nevelson Maquettes for Monumental Sculpture, May 2–27, 1980, at Pace Gallery.
28 Theodore F. Wolff, “Metropolitan Museum of Art Big Lift from a New Wing,” Christian Science Monitor, February 2, 1987, 24.
29 Louise Nevelson, “Go Go Guggenheim,” letter to the editor, New York Times, July 1, 1987.
30 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, December 15, 2012.
31 Emily Genauer, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).
32 Emily Genauer, “Wooden Sculptures Lauded,” New York World-Telegram, September 12, 1936.
33 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, December 15, 2012
34 Brendan Gill, “Remembering Cousin Louise,” Architectural Digest, May 1990, 49.
35 Diana MacKown, telephone interview with author, December 9, 2012.
36 Emily Genauer, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered.
37 Bill Katz, interview with author, December 14, 2012.
38 Maria Nevelson, telephone interview with author, December 13, 2012.
39 Ibid.
40 Diana MacKown, phone interview, December 9, 2012.
41 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, June 11, 2012.
42 Arnold B. Glimcher, e-mail to author, November 24, 2015.
43 Diana MacKown, interview with author, November 22, 2015.
44 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” 90–91; Andrew L. Yarrow, “Nevelson Estate Is the Focus of a Battle,” New York Times, June 10, 1989, 15.
45 Maria Nevelson, interview with author, October 30, 2013.
46 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” 90–91.
47 Maria Nevelson, interview with author, October 30, 2013.
48 Diana MacKown, interview with author, December 9, 2012; Bill Katz, interview with author, December 14, 2012.
49 Fay Gold, interview with author, April 13, 2010. Fay Gold recalled selecting Nevelson works for exhibitions at her gallery in Atlanta. The works were all stored in Mike Nevelson’s barn in New Fairfield Connecticut.
50 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” 94.
51 Louise Nevelson, in “The Individualist,” Vogue, June 1976. Joyce Pommeroy Schwartz, interview with author, February 5, 2012.
52 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, July 29, 1977.
53 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014. Cf.
54 New York Post, December 9, 1972; Newsday 1973, June, 15, 1973; in Particular Passions, 75.
55 Some of them had been cast in 1985, and Nevelson had overseen the patina process. Bill Katz, interview with author, December 17, 2012
56 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” New York, September 25, 1989, 94.
57 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Yarrow, “Nevelson Estate Is the Focus of a Battle,” 15.
61 Ibid.
62 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” 84.
63 Yarrow, “Nevelson Estate Is the Focus of a Battle,” 15.
64 Rabinowitz “The Art of the Feud,” 87.
65 Ibid., 84.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., 88.
68 Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 29, 2012.
69 Rabinowitz, “The Art of the Feud,” 84.
70 Ibid.
71 Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 28, 2012.
72 Mike Nevelson, interview with author, April 11, 2014.
73 Yarrow, “Nevelson Estate Is the Focus of a Battle,” 13.
74 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, November 26, 2012 .
75 Estate of Louise Nevelson, deceased, Mike Nevelson, executor v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, No. 7754–92 (U.S. Tax Court, 1996).
76 Ibid.
77 Estate of Louise Nevelson v. Carro, 686 N.Y.S.2d 404, 406 (1999).
78 Jeffrey Hoffeld, interview with author, December 5, 2011; Judd Tully, “Nevelson Estate Moves out of PaceWildenstein,” Art Newsletter, June 11, 1996, 2.
79 Jeffrey Hoffeld, letter to Richard and Paul Gray, October 1, 2005.
80 Maria Nevelson, interview with author, December 11, 2012; Diana MacKown, interview with author, January 23, 2011.
81 Arnold B. Glimcher, interview with author, January 23, 2013.
82 Ibid.
83 Estate of Louise Nevelson v. Carro, 686 N.Y.S.2d 404, 406 (1999).
84 Diana MacKown, interview with author, September 19, 2009.
85 John Russell, “Louise Nevelson, Sculptor, Is Dead at 88,” New York Times, April 19, 1988, D31.
86 Wayne, “Louise Nevelson 1899–1988: Goodbye Louise.”
87 Grace Glueck, “Friends of Louise Nevelson Gather in a Memorial for the Late Artist,” New York Times, October 18, 1988.
88 The remembrances by her friends were variously dated, depending upon when they were written.
89 John Russell, “Lean, Muscular Energies in Late Nevelson Sculptures,” New York Times, April 7, 1989, C20.
90 Jean Lipman, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).
91 Diana MacKown, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).
92 Hilton Kramer, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).
93 Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989). In a recent interview with the author, Barbaralee added the second of the two reasons about how she managed to survive: “I was drunk a lot of the time.” Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, interview with author, October 25, 2013.
94 Arnold B. Glimcher essay in Louise Nevelson Remembered (New York: Pace Gallery, 1989).