cover image Material Witness: The Selected Letters of Fairfield Porter

Material Witness: The Selected Letters of Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter. University of Michigan Press, $35 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-472-10976-0

Thanks to Justin Spring's recent biography, Fairfield Porter: A Life in Art, the mid-century American painter got more of the attention that he deserves. Bucking the trends of the time, Porter worked in a kind of realist mode that has since been adapted by artists as diverse as Alex Katz and Albert York. Leigh's short prologue and section introductions give one a sense of Porter's epistolary friendships, and of the importance of writing itself to Porter, who also composed verse and wrote criticism. His most interesting correspondents were poets (Ashbery, Schuyler, O'Hara and Padgett), along with artists such as Larry Rivers, the critic Clement Greenberg and the photographer and galleryist Alfred Stieglitz. Many of the letters concern the sale or potential sale of paintings (money was often short), while others are filled with finely detailed observation. All the letters have a manner and grace that is part American patrician and part unique artist's sensibility, making them an absorbing joy.