A Chat About Artsy Stuff Done
Pat Lipsky, Brightening Glance: Art and Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2025). Softcover. 180pp.
**
“For more than five decades, Pat Lipsky has been a leading figure in American color field painting. In loosely connected vignettes, this extraordinary book looks back on a life starting in 1970s SoHo: from her pioneering days juggling painting and single motherhood in a redesigned factory loft on Wooster Street; to Paris, where an enchanting friendship develops with the former director of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg…” This troubled me because such friendships would seem to be ethically questionable when this guy might be in charge of choosing or rejecting an artist’s work. References to him begin with a mention that he just dropped by her studio. Then, there is a critique that he hangs “pictures… too close together” (79). No explanations are provided for the nature of this friendship, how they became friends, or why this was appropriate. The next mention is that somebody is “Paul Rosenberg’s granddaughter” (he is a gallery-owner). It seems this is in reference to some other French woman who is a friend-of-a-friend. The preceding dialogue is too chatty to understand the relevance. The narrator is confused about these relationships too. She writes to this Louvre manager and receives a letter back in French: they discuss the lighting of paintings, instead of the artist who is the subject of this study. Then, she meets this guy in person: describing his appearance. There’s chatter about some artist, and commentary about this guy’s furniture. The guy seems to be flirting with the author, so he must have flirted with Lipsky too, returning me to my original question about appropriateness without an answer.
“…To her yearslong close friendship with legendary art critic Clement Greenberg; to a marvelous love affair with the charismatic art dealer Richard Bellamy.” Alright: finally, some directness. Bellamy is mentioned in gushing commentary: the author is delighted he was “coming to my studio.” The next mention is again about the author meeting this guy, instead of just type of affair he had with the artist. Ah, I’ve just figured out this is an autobiography. The blurb makes it sound as if this is a third-person account. I see: so, this artist was married when she met this “Bellamy” and had a casual affair with him after a few visits and drinks…. (125). Then, there’s a mention that years later “Dick Bellamy and I were in bed at his Chambers Street loft” when he criticized her “group” of “friends”: it’s unclear if this is because they are not pop enough, who this agent mostly preferred handling (161).
“We glimpse Lipsky’s first introduction to Cézanne as a child in 1950s Brooklyn and her studies with the mythic artist Tony Smith, who would become her mentor. There is a visit with Lee Krasner at her home in Springs and another at Lipsky’s Manhattan apartment, late-night, smoke-filled loft parties, and evenings at Max’s Kansas City where Lou Reed and Nico sing in the background while rival groups of earthwork artists, pop artists, conceptual artists, and color field painters pretend to ignore each other at the bar. Along the way we experience Lipsky’s emergence at the forefront of her generation of painters.” She “ponders why we love (and hate) the art world.”
This is the least informative, and the most casual bit of gossip and nonsense book I’ve read in a while. Yayks. Not good. Not good. This book sells itself as a rare case of tokenism where a lone woman succeeded, but it troubles me that it’s this particular type of woman who alone succeeds where stronger female rivals fail.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-summer-2025/