"The part I knew, I saw as a neighbor"

I met Willem de Kooning on

the fire escape, because a

black kitten lost in the

rain cried at my door, and

after the rain it turned

out to be his kitten.

     Later, I saw in some Greek temples

     contradictory forces operating pub-

     licly at full speed. Reading the Il-

     iad, the poem at the height of reason

     presented the irrational and subjec-

     tive, self-contradictory sweep of ac-

     tion under inspiration. I had missed

     the point in [talks with de Kooning].

     The question Bill was keeping open

     with an enduring impatience had been

     that of professional responsibility

     toward the force of inspiration. That

     force or scale is there every day here

     where everybody is. Whose responsibil-

     ity is it, if not your own? What he

     said was, "All an artist has left to

     work with is his self-consciousness."

  Next week, the Library

  of America will publish

  an indispensable reclam-

  ation of contemporary

  writings from the heart

  of mid-20th Century art.

  Here, Edwin Denby is re-

  constituting the evolu-

  tion of his friend's art

  from the germinaton of

  its conceptual rudiments.

  I do not know a more ex-

  citing project in art

  history than the volume

  which has lately fallen

  into my hands. We are

  closer than neighbors,

  to such wonderful things.

Rudy Burckhardt

The Flat Iron

1973

Jed Perl

  editor

Art in America

  1945 - 1970

  Writings from the

  Age of Abstract Ex-

  pressionism, Pop Art,

  and Minimalism

Library Classics of the

  United States, 2014©