Born On this Day- May 4th... Impresario Lincoln Kirstein

I know more about dance & it’s history than most civilians because my boyfriend in college was/ is a dancer- the fabled Walter Kennedy. Because of him, I have an interest in dance & the Husband & I enjoy dance concerts. If I could have any talent, it would have been to be able to dance like Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly , Bob Fosse, or Baryshnikov. I am also a student of life in NYC in the 1940s- 1970s, & today’s birthday gay is an absorbing figure of that epoch.

He was a writer, impresario, art connoisseur & major 20th century cultural figure in NYC. Lincoln Kirstein's assorted attractions, ambition & attention to high culture, along with a small fortune, gave him a circle of accomplished friends: George Platt Lynes Jared French, Katherine Anne Porter, Barbara Harrison, Gertrude Stein, Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Walker Evans, & Sergei Eisenstein among many others.

Like my infamous sex diaries, Kirstein kept records, beginning in summer camp in 1919 until the late 1930's, making note of enjoying sex with men: Harvard undergraduates, sailors, street boys, in the showers at the 63rd St YMCA. He enjoyed long affairs with dancer Pete Martinez, artist Dan Maloney, & conservator Jensen Yow. Casual sex frequently grew into longterm friendships.

Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein by Pavel Tchelitchew, Portrait (1937)

In 1941, he married Fidelma Cadmus, the sister of one of my favorite artists- Paul Cadmus. Kiestein & his wife had an amicable but stressful relationship until her death in 1991. Some of his boyfriends lived with them in their East 19th townhouse; His wife was enormously fond of most of them. The NYC art world considered his gayness an "open secret," although he did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality until 1982.

Kirstein was the primary patron of his wife’s brother, buying many of his paintings & subsidizing his living expenses. Cadmus had difficulty selling his work through galleries because of the erotically charged depictions of working class men, which provoked great controversy.

Kirstein's tastes were clear & confident. He was an advocate for American arts. A man of culture, commitment & courage, he is best known for making possible the career of the choreographer George Balanchine in the United States. He dedicated himself to classical ballet in the USA for 60+ years. He was also a prolific writer on the subjects of dance & art, a poet, a passionate art collector, an organiser of cultural events, & an adviser to government.

Kirstein by Walker Evans (1930)

In Venice in 1929, while researching El Greco, he happened upon on Diaghilev's funeral. The event had a profound effect on young Kirstein. He studied the history of dance & took ballet classes. He came upon the notion of bringing a distinguished choreographer to found a ballet tradition in the USA. He was able through her to secure an introduction to George Balanchine, the choreographer whose work he most admired.

Kirstein founded & financed the School of American Ballet, as the center for Balanchine's work. Kirstein would remain the board chairman until 1989. He was also the backbone behind Balanchine's companies: the American Ballet Company, The Ballet Society, & the NYC Ballet, where he served as general director until 1989. Kirstein founded a touring group- Ballet Caravan, in order to stage ballets by American choreographers on American themes, including Eugene Loring's, Billy the Kid, one of several works with librettos by Kirstein.

Kirstein was instrumental in the development of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan, where the NYC Ballet was in residence. Not limiting himself to dance, he was a founder of the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre at Stratford, Connecticut.

During WW2, Kirstein served with the US Army in England, France & Germany. In 1945, he discovered & supervised the recovery of the huge collection of art looted by Nazis.

In his later years, Kirstein struggled from depression, & paranoia. He destroyed the studio of his friend Dan Maloney, & sometimes was in a straitjacket for weeks at a psychiatric hospital. His illness did not affect his professional creativity until the end of his life.

Kirstein involved himself in the civil rights marches in Alabama in 1965. He was also a firm supporter of Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem from its earliest stages.

Lincoln Kirstein by Jamie Wyeth (1965)

Kirstein requested that there be no religious service when he died, & that no religious words be spoken as his ashes were scattered across the pond near his country house. There were a only dozen mourners, & the wind blew some of the ashes back in their faces. He had lived that kind of a life.

Born On This Day... Paul Cadmus

My favorite book of 2010 was not a novel, a collection of essays, or a memoir, but rather the catalogue for unprecidented exhibit at The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, now showing through Februaury 12 2012. Hide/Seek: Difference & Desire in American Portraiture, surveys the presence of same-sex desire in American portraiture through a seductive selection of more than 140 full-color illustrations, drawings, & portraits from leading American artists. Starting at the end of the turn of 19th century, to Stonewall & the gay liberation movement in 1969, the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, & on to to the new century, Hide/Seek openly considers what has long been suppressed & ignored, even by the most progressive members of our society: the influence of gay & lesbian artists in creating important American modern art.

Hide/Seek shows how questions of gender and sexual identity dramatically shaped the artistic practices of influential American artists  Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe,  Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andrew Wyeth, Paul Cadmus, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, & many of my other favorites & introductions to artists unfamiliar to me. Gay artists were frequently not fully a part of the society they portrayed, often occupying a place on the outskirts, & from that vantage point they crafted innovative & revolutionary ways of doing portraits.

One of the artists featured is Paul Cadmus, a long time favorite artist of the Husband & mine. We have a “coffee table” book of his work that has had a great deal of attention & perusing. We have been thrilled at seeing many of his works in museums. I am hard pressed to choose a favorite.

Paul Cadmus' life spanned the 20th century, beginning with his birth on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1904, & ending, after taking his daily walk down his country road, & getting into bed with his partner of 35 years- singer Jon Anderson, where he died peacefully in his sleep, with no apparent illness, on December 12, 1999, 5 days before his 95th birthday & 11 days after 300 friends had gathered to celebrate. In between, his combination of meticulousness, classicism, & exuberance made him one of America's greatest artists, a "magic realist" in more ways than one.

In the 1920s, he traveled through Europe with his lover- painter Jared Smith. When they returned to Manhattan, they formed an informal group of gay artists including photographer George Platt Lynnes, for whom Camus was a frequent model, & Lincoln Kirstein, who founded New York City Ballet.

He became an unlikely cause celebre in 1934, when the U.S. Navy went berserk over The Fleet's In! a truly glorious epic scene of uniformed sailors that included prostitutes & a homosexual pickup, & led Secretary of the Navy-Henry Latrobe Roosevelt to remove it from a WPA showing. Because of that controversy, his first show, at Corcoran Galleries in Manhattan, attracted more than 7,000 visitors. "I owe that admiral a very large sum," Cadmus remarked 6 decades later. 
 
 

The Fleet's In! (1934)

 
With a beautiful posture, a life long lovely full head of hair & piercing blue eyes, Camus was as luminous as his paintings. From everything I have read about Camus, he sincerely cared about other people, which may sound like a small thing, but is actually quite rare among artists of his caliber. "He had a remarkable memory," says openly gay Josef Asteinza, an architect who lived down the road from Cadmus in Connecticut. "We brought scores of people there & he always enjoyed meeting them & he never forgot a name. Edith Sitwell said, `A gentleman is never unintentionally rude,' but Paul said, `I don't think a gentleman should ever be rude under any circumstances.” I can’t help but wonder how amazing it would have been to have been a member of his circle.
 
 

Jon Anderson, his last partner

 

The handsome artist in the late 1990s

 
Some things never change. A full month into the exhibition of Hide/Seek opened at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC last year, one video, by the late David Wojnarowicz, was removed from the exhibit. Crazy Conservative Christians called the video, with ants crawling over a crucified, bleeding man, sacrilegious. It’s meant to symbolize the suffering of AIDS, the disease that eventually claimed the artist. I could not be more excited. Hide/Seek open at the Tacoma Art Museum in March 2012, & The Husband & I will be able to see the exhibit!

Born On This Day- December 17th... American Artist Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus is a long time favorite artist of the Husband & mine. We have a “coffee table” book of his work that has had a great deal of attention & love. We have thrilled to seeing many of his works in museums. I am hard pressed to choose a favorite.

Paul Cadmus' life spanned the 20th century, beginning with his birth on the upper west side of Manhattan in 1904, & ending, after taking his daily walk down his country road, & getting into bed with his partner of 35 year- singer Jon Anderson,  where he died peacefully in his sleep, with no apparent illness, on December 12, 1999, five days before his 95th birthday & 11 days after 300 friends had gathered to celebrate. In between, his combination of meticulousness, classicism, & exuberance made him one of America's greatest artists--a "magic realist" in more ways than one. In the 1920s, he traveled through Europe with his lover- painter Jared Smith. When they returned to Manhattan, they formed an informal group of gay artists including photographer George Platt Lynnes, for whom Camus was a frequent model, & Lincoln Kirstein, who founded New York City Ballet.

He became an unlikely cause celebre in 1934, when the U.S. Navy went berserk over The Fleet's In! a truly glorious depiction of uniformed sailors that included prostitutes & a homosexual pickup, & led Secretary of the Navy-Henry Latrobe Roosevelt to remove it from the WPA showing. Because of that controversy, his first show, at Corcoran Galleries in Manhattan, attracted more than 7,000 visitors. ("I owe that admiral a very large sum," Cadmus remarked 6 decades).

With a beautiful posture, a life long lovely full head of hair & piercing blue eyes, Camus was as luminous as his paintings.  From everything I have read about Camus, he sincerely cared about other people, which may sound like a small thing but is actually quite rare among artists of his caliber. "He had a remarkable memory," says openly gay Josef Asteinza, an architect who lived down the road from Cadmus in Connecticut. "We brought scores of people there & he always enjoyed meeting them & he never forgot a name. Edith Sitwell said, `A gentleman is never unintentionally rude,' but Paul said, `I don't think a gentleman should ever be rude under any circumstances.” I can’t help but wonder how amazing it would have been to have been a member of his circle.