Page 30 - Studio International - March 1965

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charm and wry wit fill the house with irreverent com­
mentary. They are sudden and surprising like the rare
birds that abound in the house. There is an excellent,
if small, deKooning; a rich and colourful oil by a
painter too little known in Europe, John Little; there
is an elegant hanging sculpture by Claire Falkenstein.
Through the French doors that lead to the terrace and
Georgica Pond, with its proprietary swans, stands an
imposing welded steel sculpture by Wilfred Zogbaum*;
on the lawn is another. Near an alcove one discovers
a rare, early Lee Krasner black and white oil.
There are, indeed, discoveries everywhere: old glass,
bits of Americana, fine volumes, everything conceivable,
in fact, to delight the eye and engage the imagination.
There are, as well, some surprising absences. Several
of the most important and influential painters of the
New York School (it isn't really a ·school') are not
included. When I enquired about this, Mr. Ossorio
acknowledged the omissions and admitted that they
were artists with whom he felt no personal affinity.
And this is evidently the fact since he has chosen to
collect in depth the work of those artists towards whom
he finds himself profoundly attracted; artists such as
Pollock, Still, and Dubuffet. These are the painters most
important to him and he has preferred to surround
himself with their work.
It would be unfair. I think, and fundamentally false
to discuss the Ossorio Collection without more than
passing mention of the works of the artist himself:
they accent the collection powerfully and magnificently.
It is interesting to note that there is no conceivable
connection between the work he admires by others and
those he creates himself. It is difficult to think of Ossorio
as painter, sculptor, or constructionalist, although his
great, glowing pieces participate in all three techniques.
I, for one. prefer to think of him as a magician, since
his art partakes of a special and wondrous magic.
Their richness and profusion defy category and the
technique they represent is unprecedented. Using a
plastic ground, usually of high colour, applied to a
wooden armature. Ossorio embeds objects selected
for their intrinsic beauty. One is first struck by their
overall gorgeousness; he is then invited to look more
ful Black and White. painted in 1952, is among the closely and he discovers their elements. renewed and
results. Tightly, almost compulsively, contained, it revitalized. Thus he will discover new magic in a
moves in an inward and circular direction. Pollock, pheasant feather, a lovely shell, a fragment of glass.
never an easy colourist, abandoned colour entirely an artificial gem, a glass eye, a branch of weathered
at this time in favour of a direct statement of forms. wood. a faded photograph, a stone. Occasionally a
That those forms related to human-or animal-shapes grotesque face will appear and flicker an instant like an
distressed many of his admirers who sensed a reg­ aphorism, then disappear into the total picture.
ression to the earlier 'She Wolf or 'Guardians' phase. More recently Ossorio's armatures have assumed
Ossorio was among the first to perceive the strength fanciful shapes, with open areas. A particularly wonder­
and purity of the new direction; Black and White is ful piece hangs against a window in the solarium­
only one of several examples in the collection. a tropical room filled with birds and plants. Its colours
The lovely horizontal Number 10, 1949, which and textures are as rich as the glass in Sainte Chapelle
Ossorio has sagely installed high and free hanging is and the effect is heightened by the fact that Ossorio
another of the uncontained, poured paintings (it is a has utilized actual glass through which the subaqueous
popular misapprehension that Pollock dripped his light of the solarium glows. The illusion is at once eerie
paint; he used brush, knife, and, in his most famous and oddly sanctified as if in some sea-drowned chapel.
period, poured directly from the can, but he seldom Alfonso Ossorio is clearly a man who has dedicated
dripped), as is the splendid, vertical Number 5, 1948, his life to the principle of beauty. He has both created
which is nearly as impressive as Lavender Mist. it and acquired it. 'The Creeks' is an essay in perfection.
1 Additional Stills are to be found in the sunken drawing It is more than the sum of its parts. it is a thing in itself
Jackson Pollock, 1912-1956 room. where the height of the ceiling gives them suffi­ with autonomous existence. It is. after all. the house of a
Dancing Head. 1 944
Oil and sand on Masonite cient space to exercise their full authority. In the dimly mag1c1an. ■
19½ X 16 in. lighted upstairs hall a predominantly black Still
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Jean Debuffet materializes slowly and ominously from the gloom. *At this writing I have learned that Wilfred Zogbaum is dead in East Hampton.
Jubilation of leukemia. His death. at the age of forty-eight. is an irreparable loss to American
( Portrait of Francis Ponge) There are Dubuffets everywhere. Their grotesque sculpture.
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