Halsey-McCallum Foundation

Chapter 3

Bertha Schaefer gave William Halsey long-term representation in her gallery during a critical period of American art history. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a strong art society and market emerged in New York, inspired by the recent arrival of prestigious European painters and the simultaneous gathering of a group of American artists committed to inventing an original style of painting.(68) Postwar American sentiment, brimming with optimism and patriotic egotism, fueled the ambitions of middle-aged artists who wanted to seize the creative opportunity of the time and formulate a new art. These artists, calling themselves the New York School,(69) resided in New York and worked "at roughly the same stage of personal development."(70) Together, their individual works developed a "new artistic movement which managed to inject into an assimilated European modernism a new-found, native energy and confidence."(71)

The first new movement in art to emerge after World War II, this work incorporated "fluid elements of abstract form with intense personal emotion; the oblique reflection of a metropolitan locale, of its energy, dynamism, and human degradation, its visual confusion, functional order, and most significantly, the concept of the work of art as a liberating and vital action to which the artist is committed with his total personality."(72) Later called "Abstract Expressionism," this style of work employed bold, passionate brush work and expressive gestures in large-scale compositions that captured the "act" of painting--the direct and spontaneous process of brushing, slinging or dripping paint onto the canvas. Rejecting recognizable subject matter and controlled composition, these painters placed American art "at the forefront of the international avant-garde for the first time."(73)

Although preliminary works of the Abstract Expressionist group first appeared in the mid- 1940s, the movement gained momentum in 1947 and 1948. Simultaneously, William Halsey had his first exhibit at Bertha Schaefer's gallery in 1948 in the "Fact and Fantasy" group show which also included the work of Adolf Gottlieb, Marsden Hartley and Will Barnet. The opening of the exhibit brought Halsey to the city where he could see the innovative works of his contemporaries and encounter the widespread media attention that supported the modern art movement. Critics hailed the new artists' work and magazines published countless articles and reviews on Abstract Expressionism. Consequently, Halsey responded to the new style and began incorporating new techniques into his works, a creative decision that sometimes identified him as a follower of the New York School.

By 1950, Abstract Expressionist artists enjoyed a largely favorable press, ample exhibition space, and a supportive sales market.(74) Yet by this time, Halsey, like other young artists who did not reside in New York, was already excluded from the exalted circle of male painters who would dominate the American art scene for the next decade. With the exception of Clyfford Still and David Smith, outsiders who maintained strong ties with artists and galleries in the city, all of the major painters of the movement lived in New York and had been there since 1940. Although most were not from the city (only Newman and Gottlieb were natives), they had been working with and near each other for years, and most had studios on Tenth Street and Broadway in Greenwich Village.

Many of these artists first collaborated in the late 1930s, when Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, David Smith, and Mark Rothko all worked on Government-sponsored Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) commissions in New York.(75) Although these artists received minimal pay for their projects, the "government patronage offered artists dignity, a sense of value, and a place in American society producing murals, easel paintings, and sculptures for public buildings and parks."(76) Furthermore, the group art commissions also formed a stable community of artists for the first time, especially in New York.

The Abstract Expressionists in Greenwich Village met frequently to discuss art and exhibitions throughout the 1940s at organized artists' meetings, the Waldorf Cafeteria and the Cedar Street Tavern. In 1948, Baziotes, Motherwell, Still and Rothko organized the "Subjects of the Artist" School, where artists could lecture to students on Friday evenings. The school closed after one semester, but New York University professors Hale Woodruff, Tony Smith and Robert Iglehart reopened the loft to the public for lectures and discussions, renaming the meeting site "Studio 35."(77) It closed two years later in 1950, presumably because questions from the public made meetings monotonous; yet months earlier, an alternative and exclusive meeting group for artists and critics formed at 39 E. 8th Street. Known as "The Club," this discussion circle provided "a place where artists could escape the loneliness of their studios, meet their peers to exchange ideas of every sort, and find mutual support."(78) Charter members included Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt, Ibram Lassaw, Leo Castelli, Harold Rosenberg and Philip Guston.

Many of the artists who became Abstract Expressionists joined the Club, forming a large but select band of the "elite" artists of the day. But Halsey, separated by his geographical distance from New York and his late arrival to the progressive art scene, was never a member of these art societies. He had been a college student in Boston, learning perspective and color theory when the prominent artists laid the foundation of their New York School. He was traveling and studying on scholarship in Mexico, then working at a Savannah shipyard and giving art lessons to Charleston students when the pioneers of American Abstract Expressionism--Pollock, Rothko, Still, Hoffman, Motherwell, and Baziotes--had their first one-man exhibitions at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery between 1943 to 1946.(79) When Halsey finally began to exhibit with Schaefer and experiment with new painting styles and techniques, he was a latecomer to a growing crowd.

By 1949, "more than a dozen Abstract Expressionists achieved 'breakthroughs' to independent styles" which attracted critical response and widespread interest.(80 Halsey earned a handful of positive reviews from his first one man exhibition in 1951, yet the members of the first generation of the New York School were simultaneously "receiving growing recognition nationally and globally, to the extent that American vanguard art came to be considered the primary source of creative ideas and energies in the world."(81) Halsey enjoyed his participation in the New York art scene, but in the large scheme, he was only part of a small section of the contemporary gallery market of the early 1950s. While he was earning limited recognition in New York, Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko, were being elevated to "art history's pantheon."(82) Yet despite his absence from Abstract Expressionist artist groups and schools, Halsey did follow a parallel path of artistic development akin to that of the well known New York artists. He too participated in the W.P.A. projects of the late thirties, working in the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the few government sponsored projects in the state. Although W.P.A. projects were not as readily available to Halsey--fifty to seventy five percent of the W.P.A. commissions went to artists working in New York--he was nonetheless involved in the works that gave momentum, support, and unity to American artists.

Furthermore, in the late 1930s, just as Pollock, Rothko, Still and other young artists found inspiration and guidance from the great European artists and intellectuals such as Mondrian, Duchamp, Leger, Ernst, and Matta--who moved to or visited New York during the war years--Halsey also found direction from his European teachers at the Boston Museum School.(83) Karl Zerbe, who introduced Halsey to color theory and nominated him for the Paige Fellowship, was from Germany and had pursued a traditional academic program in Munich and Paris. Lewis Rubinstein, who instructed Halsey in drawing and design, had studied in Paris with Fernand Leger and Amedee Ozenfant.(84) These educators encouraged Halsey to explore European modernism and the art of other cultures, just as the older Europeans inspired the younger New York School. Consequently, their guidance led Halsey directly to artistic discovery in Mexico City from 1939-1941.

In Mexico, the Latin American and Pre-Columbian civilizations greatly influenced the young Halsey, who developed a unique passion for their culture, art and color schemes. He would later use symbols and calligraphic imagery derived from Mexico, just as many of the Abstract Expressionists used images of mythological figures and insignias of other primitive cultures. Halsey's interest in Mexican life and art, particularly with regard to his interest in fresco painting, was not uncommon for artists of the time. The painters included in the New York School were also heavily influenced in the 1930s by the work of Mexican artists, particularly by the murals of Diego Rivera, David Sisqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Andre Breton (working in Mexico). In 1936, Jackson Pollock worked as an apprentice in David Sisqueiros' Union Square workshop and learned experimental techniques using "unorthodox materials (Duca paint) and novel techniques of application, including the spraying, splattering, and dripping of paint."(85) Similarly, artist Ben Shahn worked with Diego Rivera on the controversial mural in Rockefeller Center, mastering methods of fresco painting and principles of large scale compositions.(86)

Rather than work as an apprentice for a Mexican artist, Halsey explored his own ideas and techniques while in Mexico, but his independent studies and observations led to later work which would reflect cultural influences. In 1952, he used his knowledge of Mexican murals and his experiences with fresco painting to complete the three-sectioned mural in the vestibule of architect Percival Goodman's Baltimore Hebrew Congregation Temple. This commission introduced him to an important movement in contemporary synagogue art--an architectural movement that incorporated works by some of the more prominent Abstract Expressionist painters. Robert Motherwell, Adolf Gottlieb, Ben Shahn, Helen Frankenthaler, and Ibram Lassaw also collaborated with Goodman in the early and mid 1950s. These artists primarily designed menorahs, tapestries, and windows, but Halsey, who worked on one of the architect's earliest designs, was one of the first artists of the postwar period to create a mural in an American synagogue.

While working on the mural, Halsey was also active in the gallery market, exhibiting in group and one man shows for Bertha Schaefer. As the newspaper and journal reviews illustrate, he received positive critiques in the early 1950s--particularly for his 1951 show. Halsey attracted less attention from the press in later years, but his reception was relatively consistent with the widespread critical responses of the time. The excitement from the press and critics that surrounded Abstract Expressionism peaked from 1945-1953, and after the mania subsided, reviewers paid less attention to works by new artists, and critics became less satisfied with the development of the movement. Although Abstract Expressionism was the dominant style of painting until 1960, critics began noting its collapse in the late 1950s. Clement Greenberg later said the movement ended in 1962, but began "to lose its vitality well before that."(87) Agreeing with Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg also commented that " Abstract Expressionism was, like Adonis. . . prepared for burial."(88)

Art critics and historians, weary of the "painters who converted [the movement] into a formula and gave it a professional finish and polish" soon opened their arms to the newest style: Pop Art.(89) Consequently, the Abstract Expressionist movement ended, and writers and art historians began to assemble the lists of significant artists, paintings, and sites of the period. In compiling material for this segment of art history, writers utilized the selective opinions of prominent critics, namely Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Assessing the art and artists they found most important and "original" for the time, Greenberg and Rosenberg consistently wrote about some ten to fifteen painters. DeKooning, Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, Still, Gottlieb, Newman, Gorky, Reinhardt, and Hoffman, later joined by Baziotes, Kline, and Guston, became the accepted founders and members of the movement.

Recently, art historians have begun to re-explore Abstract Expressionism and have expanded the list of players. Artists, like William Halsey, who participated in the New York movement but were excluded from the short list are now being examined. In studying the gallery and museum records of New York in the 1940s and 1950s, and attempting to restructure the meaning of the movement and reconstruct who was involved, these scholars have discovered the overlooked. Consequently, they--notably Ann Gibson and Michael Leja-- argue that art historians may have omitted important artists, artworks, and aspects of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

In studying the background of William Halsey and his participation in the New York art scene in the late 1940s and 1950s, it appears that he was actively involved in some of the important art events of Abstract Expressionism. It is apparent that he earned respect from critics and scholars, and found a place in the gallery market alongside well-received artists of the period. However, it is also obvious that after 1960 he attracted little attention from the press and became a forgotten artist, almost reclusive in his secluded home and studio in Charleston, South Carolina. Yet the potential importance of William Halsey's work should not be overlooked. Understanding his art, and the art of other excluded artists from across the United States, can provide an insightful and meaningful appendage to Twentieth-Century American art history.

In her 1997 book, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics, Ann Gibson investigates the lives and works of artists omitted from the art historical accounts: namely women, African- Americans, and homosexuals. Her research questions the established school of Abstract Expressionism and argues that "in its redefinition of styles and themes, Abstract Expressionism also neatly invalidated the products of those who were not among America's most powerful persons: white heterosexual males."(90) Gibson attacks the limited scope of the history of the New York School, which includes only white, middle aged male painters who worked in similar styles and techniques. Although she does not discredit the well-known Abstract Expressionists (their recognition is indeed well-deserved), she eagerly addresses the need for diversity in the Abstract Expressionist canon. Furthermore, she examines the viewpoints of the critics and historians who determined the "great" artists of the 1940s and 50s, analyzing the "goals of the institutions that enshrined their opinions and their works."(91)

Claiming that the scholars who defined Abstract Expressionism excluded artists of different backgrounds, painting styles, and interests, Gibson wrote:

The Abstract Expressionist rhetoric of presence was defined through resistance to language, methods designed to convey that the art they made responded to the thoroughness of their convictions, redemption of the decorative through monumentalism, the employment of feminine sexuality as transgressive, and the polyphony of multiple meanings. Formalism, coinnoisseurship, and existentialism shaped these practices, defining the structure of works and ways of thinking about them. Yet, at the same time, the success of these strategies and themes in affirming values that supported an aesthetic elite of white heterosexual males distorted the potential of those strategies and themes to empower work that affirmed other identities, other experiences, and other relations to power.(92)

Arguably, William Halsey's art, with its Southern identity, focus, and influence, could also be included in the group of "visually and thematically rich and challenging works . . . excluded from extensive consideration" in American art history.(93) His biographical background and artistic interests did not follow the established art standards. Like the women, African-American, and homosexual artists of the 1940s and 1950s, Halsey found his subject matter in his personal experiences--ranging from artistic exploration in Mexico to color studies of his beloved Charleston. Using the historical Southern town as his inspiration and motif, Halsey presented stylistically and thematically different expressions in abstract art. But his aesthetic interpretations of Charleston do illustrate a notable creative response to regional heritage. Furthermore, his bold color abstractions and collages present a strong, linear artistic development that matured aside from the pressures and distractions of the media and art markets.

Halsey pushed his artwork forward according to his own instincts and ideas. Disinterested in spending time selling, exhibiting, or promoting his art, Halsey focused himself completely (after 1960) on teaching and producing new work. Using the academic principles he gathered in his early career, and the inspirations he discovered and revisited in Mexican and Mayan cultures, he pursued an original and uniquely personal artistic development. Although this "unique" development did not attract critical attention during Halsey's lifetime, recent scholarship is beginning to rediscover the lives and works of regional artists like Halsey.

In the 1994 exhibit, Still Working: Underknown Artists of Age in America, Stuart Shedletsky sought out and presented the work of thirty-two older artists from across America who continue to devote themselves to producing art despite their lack of notable "success." Addressing the American prejudices that encourage art historians and curators to ignore and overlook artists over age sixty who did not work or exhibit in the traditional art localities, he wrote:

Nonmainstream developments can no longer be dismissed as having no importance for the art viewing public. It is not true that artists not in the mainstream simply failed to get in the mainstream. In fact, regional developments, isolated lineages, reconsidered positions, and late self-realizations are authentic aspects of American art. Refusal to acknowledge careers that developed and nourished outside media-approved developments or politically correct associations is to refuse American art its integrity.(94)

Without a doubt, William Halsey belongs to this group of unknown artists in America whose work should be re-explored by art historians in order to disclose the overlooked painters and sculptors who have contributed to modern developments of American art. Although his work cannot be said to have started a new art movement in the twentieth century, one can acknowledge its potential importance for understanding a broader context of American abstract art.

(68) Michael Leja, Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s (New Haven: Yale UP, 1993) 23.

(69) The first generation of the New York School generally acknowledged in art history texts is Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Arshille Gorky, Ad Reinhardt, and Hans Hoffman.

(70) Johnthan Fineburg, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (London: Calmann and King, 1995) 33.

(71) Sam Hunter, American Art of the 20th Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972) 231.

(72) Hunter, 231.

(73) Fineburg, 31

(74) Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record, Edited by David and Cecile Shapiro (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 23.

(75) Fineburg, 27.

(76) Fineburg, 27.

(77) Shapiro, 48-49.

(78) Irving Sandler, The New York School: the Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties. (New York: Harper and Row, 1978): 31.

(79) Hunter, 229; Leja, 20.

(80) Irving, ix.

(81) Irving, ix.

(82) Irving, ix-x.

(83) Hunter, 229.

(84) Severens, 12.

(85) Fineburg, 22-23, 88.

(86) Fineburg, 23.

(87) Shapiro, 24-25.

(88) Shapiro, 25.

(89) William Rubin, "Younger American Painters," Art International 4, No 1, 1960: 25.

(90) Ann Gibson, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1997) xix.

(91) Gibson, xxxvii.

(92) Gibson, xx.

(93) Gibson, xx.

(94) Shedletsky, 13.