Buying pictures iv: The searing hue

Saul Leiter's famous portrait of the

shopping figure, receding from focus

and shape by the viewer's nearer dis-

traction, upper left, has about it a

swastika-like distribution of concen-

tration of pure black. It's difficult

when something spontaneous achieves

such eloquence and enigma in a single

shutter release; this represents, of

course, the gold standard of imagery.

It burns, to grasp it. The shopper,

unaware she is refracted, raises our

awareness of empanelment in seeing. 

The sulfurous qualities of the mi-

gration to black, in Smith's so-

cial-realist portrait of a steel-

worker, in the same period, wrest-

ling a cauldron of coke beside a

blast furnace in America, summon

remembrances of hideous hazards,

replaced by manufacture's extinc-

tion, by fossil fuels' condemna-

tion, by social marginalization.

This is the taint of the hour,

as all disdain the filthy ape.

But if this is an election fa-

voring the ambiguities, it will

come as a shock to the odds. We

see in this late masterpiece by

Mark Rothko an extraordinarily

sulfurous vitality in contra-

distinction with an almost ap-

pealingly emphatic black. Roth-

ko differs with Leiter, in re-

jecting the dark as an element

of style, and with Smith, as

an element of conditionality.

It is the stain of a certitude;

and it is laid upon that can-

vas for those who know it well,

over strokes more defiant than

pathetic, of violet, earth, per-

iwinkle, sand, and persistently

impertinent green. This is not

a portrait of processed cheese.

Even vitality can fail, as the

panels threaten. Even vitality

will be singed. We hear, that a

resistance to the dark is to be

mounted as an Edith Wharton dis-

dain to comment. Will no one of-

fer that candidate a visit to a

corner on Fifth Avenue, where a

Century of ferment has its home,

youth flock, all day, to feast;

and struggle shines from every

offset sight against complacency;

I never saw a branding fail more

effêtely, than the present jest,

fighting for us. Can no one re-

fer that candidate to the prepo-

sition of respect, that 4-letter

word, anathema to condescension;

Aversion to with is dark, already.

What on earth did they pay, to be

boasting of usurping our own cause,

as if indentured to their destiny?

Saul Leiter
Shopping
ca 1953
Greenberg Gallery
New York

W. Eugene Smith
Dance of the Flaming Coke
1955
Collection unknown

Mark Rothko
Untitled (Black on Grey Series)
1969 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
  Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation
  1986