Memoirous

Frank O’Hara, Poet Among Painters, Marjorie Perloff 1998, University of Chicago Press, with a new introduction O’Hara was about intense friendships. Actually he was about many things: art, dance, classical music, travel, gay theater, movies. He was about the exclamation point. It is the singular fingerprint of his work. How many of us grew up, in school being told the exclamation point was to be used rarely, in instances of the extreme. Indeed, I once sneaked a peek (okay, I was spying)at a roommate’s diary, a girl I didn’t like and liked even less when I saw the page covered in exclamation points. She was as shallow as I suspected, is what I told myself. The (exclamation) point is she probably was, exclamation points aside. So I planned to be careful, judicious, barely rising above a whisper. Early Jane Hertenstein work does not display an ounce of exuberance. Then I discovered Frank O’Hara, and the fun began. I could be playful, fey, charming, bantering a...

DeKooning’s Bicycle: Artists and Writers in the Hamptons Robert Long, 2005, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Group Shot, John Jonas Gruen (Back row): Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roland Pease (Middle row): Grace Hartigan, Stephen Rivers, Larry Rivers, Herbert Machiz, Tibor de Nagy, John Myers (Front row): Mary Abbott, Sondra Lee, Maxine Groffsky, Jane Freilicher, Joe Hazan Is a fun little read that puts you there—because who can actually afford the Hamptons in the summer?! Maybe it once was in the 1950s when artists and writers were moving there. Larry Rivers: he first thing I did in Southampton, Fairfield accompanying me, was rent from a Mr. Ralph Conklin a two-story eight-room house for $85 a month at 111 Toylsome Lane, down at the end of a long, muddy driveway. Alongside the house, fortunately, was a weathered no-doors, no-windows shed with enough space to carry on my life as an artist. There were trees all around and above the house, and one small lawn boxe...