This is the story of the photograph. This is the most famous photograph of the abstract expressionists. It is the only photograph in which almost all of the major figures that we now recognize, that we now know as the abstract expressionist, were together. There is a couple of people missing, Franz Kline, [Philip] Guston, but, for the most part, all of the major figures are here, and, as a result of that, whenever people need an image of the abstract expressionists this is chosen. So, this [image] has been reproduced countless of times, in countless books. And the interesting thing is how this photograph came to be, because most people assume that it was taken at some event—they themselves regularly held events, and organized lectures—but that is not what happened.
This is the result of a protest. In 1950, the Metropolitan Museum was going to open a show on Modern American painting. And, because the jury for that show was very conservative, a group of the artist—who met regularly for a symposium—decided to protest it, because they felt that they would not be well represented, because of the conservative nature of the juries. And so, they sent a letter protesting the jury to The New York Times. In fact, they hand-delivered the letter on a Sunday, knowing that that is a slow news day, and, therefore, it had a good chance of getting into the newspaper on Monday. And sure enough, it shows up in the front page of the newspaper, on a Monday morning. The editors at The Herald Tribune reacted to this in an editorial the next day, calling this artist irascibles. They thought they were being unfair, because lots of this people would have ended up in the show and they thought that their protest was unfair. So, they referred to them as the irascibles.
Life magazine was planning to do a big spread on the exhibition when it opened. And they decided that, when it opened, they would also include in that big spread in Life magazine a photograph of the irascibles. So, they contacted the artists involved, and they said: We would like a group photograph of you
. The Life magazine editors suggested that the artist bring their works and have a photograph of them on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. And the artists said: No, no, no. We do not want to do that. It would look like we are trying to get our works into the Metropolitan
—which of course was exactly what they were trying to do—but they did not want that picture. They said: No, we want a photograph, we will cooperate with Life magazine, if we can take the photograph on
. And that was the term they used, neutral territory
neutral territory
. Because they felt that Life magazine was antagonistic to them—which was very unfair, because Life magazine was not antagonistic to them. So, they negotiated that they would take the photograph on a particular day, at a studio that was owned by Life magazine.
And the person who took the photograph, a woman by the name of Nina Leen, says that what she and her assistant had done was in this space, in this room, they had set up some chairs and some benches, some higher benches, and they were afraid to tell people where to sit, because, she said: We knew that they were irascibles, and we were afraid to antagonize somebody, we were afraid if we told the major figures to sit on the periphery, that they would be upset.
So, we just said to them: Go, sit wherever you want
. And what happened is that this photograph is the result of them choosing where to sit. And the first person, Jackson Pollock, quickly moved into the center of the painting, and adopted a very studied pose. Jackson Pollock had recently been photographed for Life magazine and was very astute about how to be photographed. You can even see there, the way he is posed it is very studied, is very thought through, it is not a natural pose at all. Barnett Newman, who was a really very minor figure in the movement, just parked himself right in front of Jackson Pollock. And then the others filled in around them. And one of the last was Hedda Sterne, who just decided she would stand above the rest of them. So, it's a very, very interesting photograph, for all kinds of reasons. It then gets shown, it was then included in Life magazine, and since then it has been reproduced everywhere.
One of the most interesting people in the photograph is Rothko, because Rothko looks very, very uneasy in the photograph. And it has to do with the fact that many of them were very reluctant to have their photograph taken by Life magazine, because they had been very outspoken about not wanting to close what they saw as the gap between themselves and the public. They thought themselves as bohemians, antagonistic to middle class, to middle class values, and at that time, Life magazine was the very epitome of middle-class, middle-class publicity… He was very torn about whether he should be photographed, and you can see that in his face. He looks like really does know he should not be here.