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Summary
Summary
A man with a preternatural ability to find emerging artists, Richard Bellamy was one of the first advocates of pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art. The founder and director of the fabled Green Gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street, the witty, poetry-loving art lover became a legend of the avant-garde, showing the work of artists such as Mark di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Donald Judd, and others.Born to an American father and a Chinese mother in a Cincinnati suburb, Bellamy moved to New York and made a life for himself between the Beat orbits of Provincetown and white-glove events such as the Guggenheim's opening gala. He partied with Norman Mailer, was friends with Diane Arbus and Yoko Ono, and frequently hosted or performed in Allan Kaprow's happenings. Always more concerned with art than with making a profit, Bellamy withdrew when the market mushroomed around him, letting his contemporaries and friends, such as Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis, capitalise on the stars he first discovered. Bellamy's life story is a fascinating window into the transformation of art in the late twentieth century.
Author Notes
Judith Stein is a Philadelphia-based writer and curator who specializes in postwar American art. A former arts reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air and Morning Edition, her writing has appeared in Art in America, The New York Times Book Review, and numerous museum publications. She is the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in literary nonfiction and a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. A graduate of Barnard College, she holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Pennsylvania.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An in-depth biography of influential art gallery dealer Richard Bellamy (1927-1998). Journalist, curator, and former NPR arts reviewer Stein has been working on this book since the mid-1990s. Her extensive research and numerous interviews provide a scintillating, detailed portrait of one of the "most influential and enigmatic American art dealers of the sixties." The author calls her subject "legendary" and says "the remarkable talent he unearthed was jaw-dropping." The Cincinnati native inherited his Chinese mother's "epicanthic eyelids," which gave him a tired look. An odd, aloof, enigmatic man who made little money, he was frequently homeless or lived in his galleries, where he would "artfully dodge posterity." After one semester at the University of Ohio in 1948, he went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he lived a bohemian life surrounded by artists. Bellamy now knew what he wanted to do: live fully in the art world, show art, and talk about it. The small Hansa Gallery in New York City hired him as their director; it gave him the opportunity to provide little-known artists with a place to show their works, maybe even sell somenot one of Bellamy's best skills. He was pure in the belief that it was the art for the art's sake, not the money, which often disappointed his clients. With the financial help of collector Bob Scull, he opened his Green Gallery in 1960. It quickly became an "extraordinary forum for any young artist." Besides popular "happenings," Bellamy featured the works of Marco Polo di Suvero, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, Larry Poons, Donald Judd, and a then-unknown Andy Warhol. A few years later, at his Oil Steel Gallery, he championed the work of Yoko Ono. Heavy drinking, drugs, and three packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day did him in. A man of shrewd and impeccable taste, Bellamy's role in promoting the often misunderstood art of abstract expressionism, pop, and minimalism was profound. This is an endearing and illuminating work of biography. A shadowy figure of the 1960s art world is gloriously revealed. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Richard Bellamy, director of the cutting-edge Green Gallery in New York in the early 1960s, has largely been overshadowed by the avant-garde artists he launched, including Mark di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Donald Judd. Yet as curator and critic Stein discovered during the 20 years she spent researching Bellamy's profoundly unconventional life, he is utterly fascinating in his own right. Born in Ohio in 1927, Bellamy was a target for prejudice as the son of a Chinese mother and a white American father, both doctors. Seductive, bohemian to the core, complex, and conflicted, Bellamy loved poetry, music, women, sculpture, and pranks. He had a karmic propensity to be in the right place at the right time as well as what he described as an intensity of perception. He was also an alcoholic who kept his true self carefully masked and an art dealer whose unerring genius for recognizing significant new artists was undermined by his aversion to commerce. Stein not only brings the elusive Bellamy into the light, she also surrounds him with an intriguing cast of artists and writers and fellow art dealers, most notably Ivan Karp and art collectors Robert and Ethel Scull. Stein's compellingly intimate portrait of a creative, passionate, and essential advocate for pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art doubles as a fresh and dynamic chronicle of a historic artistic revolution.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The 1960s was a revolutionary era, especially in regards to art. During these years one man strongly impacted the transformation of contemporary art and the emergence of pop art and yet kept himself somewhat hidden from view. Stein (editor, An Inside View: A Survey of Prints, 1954-2007; Picturing the Modern Amazon: The Hypermuscular Woman) brings Richard Bellamy (1927-98) into the spotlight. -Bellamy was best known as an art dealer, but he was also the director of the Green Gallery between the years of 1960 and 1965. His art space launched the careers of creators such as Claes Oldenburg, Dan Flavin, and Tom Wesselmann. It even featured work by Andy Warhol at one point. Despite the gallery's alignment with such successful artists, Bellamy was never quite comfortable with his role as tastemaker in the art world, and he suffered because of it. Stein explores Bellamy's troubled personal and professional lives in this semiauthorized biography that introduces a low-profile but influential figure who helped turn the art world upside down. VERDICT This is a must for anyone interested in the creative revolution of the Sixties.-Rebecca Kluberdanz, New York P.L. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Preface | p. xi |
Introduction | p. 3 |
Part I Gusts of Great Enkindlings | |
1 His Fated Eccentricity | p. 11 |
2 Provincetown, 1948-49 | p. 34 |
3 This Calling of Art | p. 41 |
4 Hansa Days | p. 58 |
5 Provincetown, 1957 | p. 71 |
6 Hipsters, Beatniks, Bohemians, and Squares | p. 81 |
7 An Era's End | p. 89 |
8 The Republic of Downtown | p. 97 |
Part II Living in Change | |
9 The Secret Sharer | p. 111 |
10 "Our Greenest Days" | p. 120 |
11 Seeing and Unseeing | p. 141 |
12 Pop Goes the Weasel | p. 163 |
13 Tomorrow Is Yesterday | p. 180 |
14 Dark Green | p. 188 |
15 Wrong Man at the Right Time | p. 200 |
16 Fade to Black | p. 215 |
Part III The Pleasures Of Merely Circulating | |
17 Goldowsky Days | p. 223 |
18 1973 and All That | p. 242 |
19 Bel Ami | p. 255 |
Postscript | p. 271 |
Appendix: Green Gallery Exhibitions | p. 275 |
Notes | p. 279 |
Acknowledgments | p. 343 |
Index | p. 349 |