Marianne Moore and E. McKnight Kauffer: Two Characteristic Americans

Abstract

Early in nineteen-fifties, Marianne Moore wrote that few real artists are alive today, and listed among them E. McKnight Kauffer, graphic designer, along with Casals, Soledad, Hans Mardersteig, Alec Guinness and Lippizan horsemen. In a catalogue note an exhibit of Kauffer's drawings, poet wrote: Instinctiveness, imagination, and 'the sense of artistic difficulty' with him, have interacted till we have an objectified logic of sensibility as inescapable as colors refracted from a prism. In preceding decade they had become close friends, supporting one another in personal crises that were also times of spiritual renewal and growth. Moore once wrote to Kauffer of their common belief, despite affliction and suffering, in anastasis-the going forward, and in what John Fiske, American philosopher, had called the reasonableness of God's work. She wrote: So let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Meeting and corresponding frequently, two artists found stimulation in each other's thoughts about books, events and mutual friends. Often they expressed deep concern about one another's wellbeing. For example, Moore was troubled about her slender colleague's tendency, like her own, to neglect meals when he was preoccupied. With characteristically serious, genuine affection, she mailed ten dollars to Kauffer with instructions to go to Miss Hettie Hamper's restaurant for a meal (say once a day?) and you will like her food. Then, quoting Frances Steloff, of Gotham Book Mart, Moore told Kauffer: 'Her