Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art

Over 20 years in the making, art critic Stein’s full-length debut is an intricate biography of New York art dealer Richard Bellamy (1927–1998), written with a striking level of detail. The wiry, bespectacled Bellamy, called “the eye of the 60s” by critic Irving Sandler, possessed a remarkable ability to pounce on talented artists, among them James Rosenquist and Claes Oldenburg, before they made it big. He worked as the director of the edgy Green Gallery, which was financed by the art collector Bob Scull, though perhaps “worked” is not quite the right word: in Stein’s account, Bellamy’s tenure at the gallery was merely an extension of his everyday lifestyle floating among the scattered, brilliant, interconnected artists of New York in the 1960s. He lacked business sense, often skimming over financial concerns (he would even urge successful artists to take their work elsewhere for the sake of their careers); he conducted unorthodox scouting trips to studios where he would sometimes lie down in a drunken stupor and take a nap to better absorb the artwork. Bellamy nonetheless turned the Green Gallery into a central player in the development of pop art, lyrical abstraction, and minimalism. Stein outlines Bellamy’s life and career, and then fills that outline in—painstakingly and with plenty of color—using direct quotes and anecdotes woven seamlessly into her narrative. This engrossing story immerses the reader in Bellamy’s whole world—the “creative chaos” of the early 1960s New York contemporary art scene. B&w illus. (July)