The Park Avenue Cubists

Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911—1988) was born Estelle Condit Frelinghuysen in Newark, New Jersey. As granddaughter of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who served as Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur, and grandniece of Theodore Frelinghuysen, the second chancellor of New York University and a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Suzy enjoyed a privileged upbringing, surrounded by luxuries that she continued to enjoy in her adult life. Raised at Oakhurst, the family estate in Elberon, New Jersey, and in Princeton, New Jersey, the young Frelinghuysen attended elite schools and appeared in the society pages following her 1931 presentation at the Court of St. James. In 1935 she married the equally affluent and socially prominent artist George L. K. Morris. Unaffected by the financial constraints experienced by most Americans during the Great Depression, the couple divided their time between an elegant New York penthouse and a modernist home set in the tranquil woods of the Berkshire Mountains in Lenox, Massachusetts, which was outfitted throughout with frescoes painted by both husband and wife.

Although interested in art from a young age, Frelinghuysen did not choose the path of formal art training. Instead, she displayed a strong love of the opera, a world to which her wealthy parents exposed her both at home and abroad. At age eighteen or twenty she moved to New York City to pursue a career on the stage.²

Frelinghuysen's childhood pastime of painting evolved into a more serious undertaking, however, shortly after her marriage to Morris. Unlike her husband, Frelinghuysen was not a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA), but she joined the group in April 1937. It is likely that Morris influenced her deepening interest in painting at this time, encouraging her to work in a more abstract style. It was he who had assembled the art collection housed in their Lenox estate, which provided sources for Frelinghuysen's work. As Debra Bricker Balken has pointed out, Frelinghuysen's understanding of modernism was largely colored by Morris's aesthetic preferences.³

The same year Frelinghuysen joined the AAA, her work was shown at the Paul Reinhardt Galleries alongside that of Morris, A. E. Gallatin, and Charles G. Shaw. Although she shared their interest in Cubism, Frelinghuysen's oeuvre was quite different from the art of the three men. While her relationship with Morris led to greater abstraction in her work, Frelinghuysen never completely severed her ties to realism, nor did she abandon her own particular aesthetic sensibility. As art critic for such publications as Partisan Review and Plastique, Morris was theoretical and intellectual, while Frelinghuysen tended towards the personal and whimsical; her paintings and collages matched her youthful nature. Friend and fellow AAA member Esphyr Slobodkina once referred to Frelinghuysen, Ilya Bolotowsky, and Piet Mondrian as "the three childlike lovers of simple fun and frolic." Frelinghuysen was known within the group for her high-spirited pranks, such as listing Rose, the couple's Pekingese, under the name Junior Miss Rose in the Social Register.4 As Slobodkina has observed, "Suzy was the bahy of the Group, a position she obviously enjoyed."⁵ Indeed, as the youngest "member" of the Park Avenue Cubists, and the only woman in the group, Frelinghuysen found herself in a familiar situation; hack home in New Jersey she had been the youngest of five children and the only girl.

The decade following Frelinghuysen's initial exhibition with the Park Avenue Cubists was the most prosperous of her painting career. During that time, she exhibited regularly with the AAA, though she never sought the kind ot leadership roles that Morris assumed. Nevertheless, Frelinghuysen's artistic talent was quickly recognized and championed by those around her. In 1938 Gallatin acquired her collage Carmen, 1937 (fig. 16), for his Museum of Living Art; it was the first work by a woman artist to be shown there.⁶

Frelinghuysen continued to exhibit her work during the early 1940s, often to great acclaim. For the 1944 annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she submitted Still Life, 1944 (pl. xii). The painted collage was singled out as an "outstanding item of the showing," amidst "inept, uninspired and trivial pieces," while the canvases of Morris, Irene Rice Pereira, and even Arthur Dove were considered "close runners-up."⁷ Gallatin remained an important advocate, including her work in his 1945 exhibition Eight by Eight: American Abstract Painting Since 1940, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and planning what was to be her first solo show at his Museum of Living Art. Unfortunately, Gallatin's museum was forced to close before the exhibition could be mounted.

Throughout the early years of her marriage and the escalating success of her artistic career, lrelinghuysen continued her vocal training. Finally, in 1947, she obtained an audition with Laszlo Halasz, director and conductor of the New York City Opera Company. Halasz quickly cast her in the role of Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos, which opened on October 9, 1947, at City Center. Frelinghuysen took to the stage under her married name and became an overnight success. Her voice was characterized as a "sumptuous dramatic soprano," and her future as that of a "prima donna worthy of any opera house."⁸ The City Opera's 1948 spring season finale featured Frelinghuysen in the title role of Tosca (fig. 18), a performance for which she received rave reviews.⁹ She went on to have a brief yet successful operatic career, performing with the City Opera until 1951.

Suzy Frelinghuysen was a unique figure in the New York art world ol the 1930s and 1940s. Her affluent background provided her with a sense of stability that most artists of the period never knew, while allying her to the equally well-moneyed Morris, Gallatin, and Shaw. However, her private approach to art set her apart from the three men, who were much more vocal in their advocacy of abstract painting in America. Furthermore, although the time she spent onstage represented only a fraction of what she spent on painting, which she continued to pursue until her death in 1988, she considered singing her true profession. A formal portrait of Frelinghuysen captures the dualities of her life (fig. 11). The photograph presents her in a dramatic pose typical of an opera diva, seemingly emphasizing that side of her life. Yet it was taken by the prominent avant-garde artist Man Ray— reflecting the position Frelinghuysen held in the art world of her time. As in the photograph, Frelinghuysen chose to stress the correlation between her two professions: "In painting," she said, "you're concerned with the arrangement of forms. On the stage, which is your frame, you're concerned with arranging yourself. It's like a picture, only, of course, you're moving."10

1. Frelinghuysen's older brothers nicknamed her Suzy, and she continued to use this name throughout her life.

2. "New Diva," Talk of the Town, New Yorker, October 9, 1948, 21, notes that Frelinghuysen remembered attending a performance of Tosca at the age of eight years and moved "ten or twelve years later" to Manhattan.

3. See Debra Bricker Balken, "Interactions in the Lives and Work of Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L. K. Morris," in Debra Bricker Balken and Deborah Menaker Rothschild, Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L. K. Morris, American Abstract Artists: Aspects of Their Work and Collection, exh. cat. (Williamstown, Mass.: Williams College Museum of Art, 1992), 17, 20.

4. See Deborah Menaker Rothschild, "Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L. K. Morris: Aspects of Their Work and Collection," in Balken and Rothschild, 56, n. 14.

5. See Barbara Dayer Gallati, "Reintroducing Suzy Frelinghuysen," in Suzy Frelinghuysen, exh. cat. (New York: Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 1997), 12.

6. "Museum Shows First Picture by Woman Artist," New York Herald Tribune, November 19, 1938, 9, ill. Gallatin later traded this work for Composition—Toreador Drinking (fig. 18), which he gave to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1943.

7. Margaret Breuning, "Whitney Annual—A Provocative But Inconclusive Exhibition," Art Digest 19, no. 5 (December 1, 1944), 5-6.

8. H|oward| T|aubman|, "Debutantes Score in Opera 'Ariadne,' " New York Times, October 10, 1947, 33. On this performance, see also "Debuts in Manhattan," Time, October 20, 1947, 49.

9. See, for example, Robert Bagar, "New 'Tosca' Challenges the Past," New York World-Telegram, April 26, 1948; Noel Straus, "City Opera Offers 'Tosca' As Finale," New York Times, April 26, 1948, 26; and Olin Downes, "No Status Quo," New York Times, May 2, 1948, sec. 2, p. 7.

10. "New Diva," 22.

Suzy Frelinghuysen: Life