Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West by Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos

Abstract

Reviewed by: Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West by Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos Randolph K. Tibbits Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West. By Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2022. Pp. 341. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index.) From the late 1950s onward, Abstract Expressionism (Ab-Ex), which reigned supreme in the New York art world at mid-century but had begun to fade there, found renewed life and a new home in a seemingly unlikely location: the Texas Panhandle and surrounding areas. This development occurred thanks to a symbiotic partnership between a "closeted gay man" (2) and a number of New York City-based Ab-Ex artists, mostly women, who were underappreciated in the big city. That is one of the bold propositions advanced by the authors of this interesting and beautiful new book. [End Page 599] The Three Women Artists of the title, painter Elaine de Kooning, mosaic artist Jeanne Reynal, and sculptor Louise Nevelson, were not unknown in their lifetimes, but they have become the subjects of increased interest and regard in recent years as scholars and the viewing public have taken a closer look at the art and careers of women artists throughout history. Amarillo gallerist, teacher, and art promoter Dord Fitz, the closeted gay man, is little known, even to those who have an active interest in the art history of Texas. One of the valuable contributions of the book is its deft presentation of a rich and provocative story of "decentered" modernism, as the authors call it (2), in which important contemporary American art was as vital on the High Plains of Texas as in the sometimes myopic New York art world, with both places giving as well as taking as far the art itself was concerned. Fitz, an Oklahoman who had to reinvent himself after being fired from a plum academic job at the University of Kentucky following a 1951 arrest on morals charges, returned with his wife and children to Bannister Ranch in the western part of the state. He applied his experience in art and education to teaching art classes in northwest Oklahoma and surrounding areas of Kansas and Texas, fostering a patron base on which he could build when he opened his art gallery in Amarillo, and began showing and promoting avant-garde New York art. Through annual trips to New York, he established relationships with the artists he wished to show. He found De Kooning, Reynal, and Nevelson particularly responsive because he offered them the prospect of an appreciative public, and additional income from art sales and teaching, on a more gender-level playing field than they faced in New York, where male artists received significantly more attention. The authors assert that Fitz and the women artists who became his gallery stars meshed in part because of their shared experiences navigating gender and sexuality hurdles as they operated in male- and hetero-dominated environments. This is another of the refreshingly exciting threads of the story the book tells, one only recently being addressed in either Texas history or art history. Clearly Fitz thrived based on his connections to the New Yorkers, but the artists, and their art, profited too. All three spent time in Amarillo, where Fitz made sure they had the Texas experience. But in addition to entertaining visits, all three, especially De Kooning, who is quoted as saying, "I love Texas" (21), sold art, found new influences for their work, and developed mutually beneficial relationships with local patrons and students. This in a place that stereotypes often cast as indifferent, even hostile, to such things as abstract art. Von Lintel has already done a masterful job of showing how the Texas experience helped shape the art of the preeminent American Modernist, Georgia O'Keeffe. With this new volume, she and co-author Roos have made an equally important contribution to broadening our understanding [End Page 600] of Texas as both receptive home and active contributor to American art of this later era. Randolph K. Tibbits Houston Earlier Texas Art Group Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association