i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

116 / The New York Art NetworkO’Hara is angular and nervous, the heavy-jowled Crehan appears stolid,squared-off, holding his position. However, he is not as steady as he seems: hiseyes rendered glazed and unfocused by his glasses, his artist’s beret like theproverbial hangover’s icebag, Crehan is the thinker as macho-drinker. Crehan’sprizeƒghter image is an appropriate one, for indeed he went to the matfor her. In his article, Crehan provided biographies of many of her sitters andinsisted that “There is a place for this work. It is an achievement of portraiturein our time and I have no doubt that it will come to be recognized for its rightfulvalue.” 9 When Neel’s show opened at the Graham gallery in October1963, K.L. (Kim Levin) provided further support in her ARTnews review, statingthat this ƒrst New York show in over ten years was “long overdue,” and thatNeel’s work had “the stunning honesty of a Cassandra.” 10As critical recognition began to generate some buyers, Neel painted her patronsas well: Stewart Mott, whose portrait Thomas Hess and Harold Rosenberghad selected to receive the Longview Foundation prize in 1962; ArthurBullowa, lawyer and collector of both American painting and pre-Columbianart (1967); and Walter Gutman, a Wall Street writer (1965, ƒg. 106). Each exudesa conƒdence, even self-satisfaction, lacking in the critics. Of the three,the porcine Gutman is the least elegant-looking. The art patron whose ƒctionalcorporation “g-string enterprises” ƒnanced Pull My Daisy, Gutman isthe image of the self-made-man/art-collector, a Joseph H. Hirshhorn type. Asan art critic in the 1930s, he had the distinction of writing the only negative reviewof Ben Shahn’s Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti series at the Downtowngallery. 11 By the 1960s, he was a wealthy collector. Earthy and unpretentious,Gutman’s portrait suggests that his interest in art had little to do with careerismor social status. He is the relic of a different era.Even though Neel never made group portraits, she did paint artist couples,whose relationships symbolized the complex interconnections of the network.Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, No. 2 (1967, ƒg. 107) exemplify the two-careercouple under strain in the competitive New York market. The assemblage artist,Grooms, and the painter-poet, Mimi Gross, are linked by Grooms’s padlocklikegrip, but by nothing else. Like the later portrait of Benny and Mary EllenAndrews, they are visual opposites, almost Wolf„inian in their contrasts ofpainterly vs. linear, open vs. closed form that oppose not only their personalitiesbut their art. In coloration and eager stance, Grooms is a golden retriever,his orange tie a panting tongue, whereas Gross’s red shirt, which matchesGrooms’s, only points up the coldness of her grey-black hair, white face, andicy boots.On the other hand, The Family (John Gruen, Jane Wilson, and Julia) (1970,ƒg. 108) represents the quintessential artworld establishment team. Gruen, anart critic for the New York Herald Tribune in the 1960s, had written an article