In “The Slip,” Prudence Peiffer’s tenderly researched group biography, six visual artists in different seasons of life and seeking different aesthetic ideals met Barr’s challenge with an unlikely spirit of concert.
Beside him is his art school friend Jack Youngerman, painter of shaggy color fields in organic, almost floral forms.
Grown bored in postwar Paris, the Jersey boy and the Kentuckian relocated to the abandoned sail-making lofts of Coenties Slip, an old manufacturing block in the toe of Manhattan.
From 1956 to around 1964, an artist colony and some truly epochal art took shape there.
That scene has long fascinated critics but never been the subject of a researched narrative history until now.
Persons:
Prudence Peiffer, ”, Alfred H, Barr Jr, Jackson Pollock, Barr, Prudence Peiffer’s tenderly, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, Youngerman, Youngerman’s, Delphine Seyrig, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, Robert Indiana
Organizations:
New York, Museum of Modern
Locations:
Paris, Jersey, Manhattan, New Mexico, Minnesota, Chicago, Europe