When Victims Rule (pdf)

MODERN ART
Visual Arts of the NEA, a close friend of many artists, and a friend and follower
of [prominent critic Clement] Greenberg.” [BURNHAM, p. 127]
Artist Jim Rosenquist really got his career started when someone “told Alan
Stone [about Rosenquist’s work] who told Ileana Sonnenbend, who told Dick
Bellamy and Ivan Karp and Henry Geldzahler and Leo Castelli who came down
to the studio in that order to see the picture.” [BURNHAM, p. 106] In the case
of prominent artist William de Kooning, his wife – Elaine Fried (both Gentiles)
– is credited by some for “largely creating and orchestrating the ‘de Kooning
myth,” including having sex with influential art critic Harold Rosenberg
and ARTnews editor Thomas Hess [both Jewish]. “When Elaine slept with
Hess,” claims an “unnamed elder statesman in the art world,” Bill got publicity
in ARTnews. When Elaine had an affair with Harold Rosenberg, he paid Bill off
with attention.” [GLUECK, p. 129] She herself eventually wrote art reviews for
ARTnews. And the dominant art critic of that era, Clement Greenberg? “Greenberg’s
compulsive womanizing … – often inseparable from his promotion of female
artists – has long been legendary … In the early 1950s he carried on an
affair with artist Helen Frankenthaler.” [LEWIS, MJ, p. 59]
Incestuous collusion, mutual back-scratching, under the table wheeling and
dealing, nepotism, and clique allegiance are intrinsic principles of the modern
art world. Another case in point was Bill Rubin, chief curator of painting at the
Museum of Modern Art in the 1970s. Rubin’s brother was a New York art dealer.
In 1970 Rubin set up an exhibition of the work of Frank Stella, a personal
friend, and an artist in his brother’s gallery. Rubin even exhibited at MOMA
two Stella paintings he owned himself. The show could be expected to automatically
raise Stella’s art prices, personally beneficial to both curator Rubin and his
brother.
In 1943 Sam Kootz became an adviser to the Museum of Modern Art; the
next year he was also a private art dealer, eventually selling works of art by Picasso.
When MOMA held a Picasso exhibition in the 1940s, Kootz was holding
a simultaneous Picasso exhibition as a private dealer. [BYSTRYN, p. 186]
Dore Ashton, an art critic for the New York Times, was once reprimanded by
her editor for choosing to write about art shows that included her own husband,
Adja Yunkers. She wrote that
“Of this trio, Adja Yunkers, showing heroic and sultry pastels at the
Emmerich Gallery, is the most romantic, stoking the fire of color and
shape to degree of thrilling intensity. Yunkers, who uses pastels with
verve and assurance, organizes restless compositions in a truly symphonic
way, summing up a complex infinite of shapes and color for the
majestic ‘scoring’ of these beautiful and impressive pictures.” [BURN-
HAM, p. 342]
During the mid-1960s, says John Conklin, “the price of favorable attention
by a prominent critic Clement Greenberg was the gift of one or two major
works. Critics have built up reputations of artists whose work they have personally
invested, and then profited from the sale of the art. Art historian Bernard
Berenson sometimes overpraised artworks in which he had a financial stake,
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