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Abstract
Between 1953 and 1958, ARTnews in the United States included a series that focused on a particular contemporary artist who was interviewed while making an artwork. Amongst the artists, usually American, were de Kooning, Gottlieb, Diebenkorn, Mitchell and Lippold, and the series title used the artist's name, followed by ‘paints a picture’ or ‘makes a sculpture’ or some variant. Interviewers/writers included Fairfield Porter, Frank O'Hara, Thomas B. Hess and Irving Sandler.
As well as providing an informative survey of contemporary art practice in New York, the series was innovative in that it provided an insight into the artist's work in progress and his/her thoughts about creativity. The format enabled the artist and commentator to talk about a particular work in terms of its aims, theme, preoccupations and interpretations, and for the commentator to provide not only a formal analysis, but also to describe some of the decision-making processes of the artist — why the artist had made a particular decision and rejected other alternatives, and to what effect. Furthermore, a certain amount of detailed technical information about materials and methods was disclosed, as well as information about the artist's working environment, such as the size of the studio, whether the artist worked close-up, and whether the work stood on an easel or lay on the floor.
The overall result was to create a series that gave a reasonably intimate insight into the everyday creative processes of artists in the United States in the early to late 1950s. Rather than romanticizing the creative act, so giving yet another breathless account of the intuitive, inspired or tortured genius, the making of art is demystified by an openness about the making process, and a making explicit of what is usually tacit knowledge.
This article examines one of the ARTnews series — Fairfield Porter's 1954 article on Larry Rivers's Portrait of Berdie I, 1953, and evaluates its contribution in terms of a better understanding of how artists think about works they are creating.