Fairfield Porter

...it is therefore an emanation of virtue...

...By then Porter, who had been writing art KILLING FOR A CAUSE criticism for several years, had become friendly with Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and the painters Jane Freilicher and Larry revolutionary leader: "Terror is nothing Rivers...

...He makes complex relationship fraught with shades club in Berlin, in barracks in Saudi Ara- immediately clear, however, that one of parental responsibility, intellectual ad- bia, embassies in Africa, the World of the difficulties in discussing terrormiration, and sexual urges...

...It is a serious and dan- ists developed the concept of "propathat he was a gentleman painter...

...were mixed...

...Porter was born into the sort of Amer- appeared in the pages of this magazine, A good painter, an accomplished art ican family that Henry James portrayed contributes much to this biography...

...In Porter's acclaimed avant-garde art gallery in New world there were the house and the ocean York-Alfred Stieglitz's 291...

...How dangerous...

...At his best, he com- a certain focus, the pace picks up as soon municated a profound attachment to the as Porter meets the poets who came to be here and now-an almost philosophic known as the New York School...

...By intelligently exploring itself first gained wide modern acceptance riod, terrorism became closely associatthe artist's full range-his paintings, his after the French Revolution as the new ed with revolution, a linkage that still excriticism, his poetry, and his writings- government attempted to establish order ists in the minds of many people...

...Without a cause, Spring sensitively navigates through this he is not a terrorist...

...There are country...

...Eliot, Yale tlriiversily Press, $35, 383 pp...

...Both many words had failed to do...

...For these critical distance results in an overabun- number of terrorist attacks around the elements have shifted over the years, dance of truly insignificant details (col- world since the 1970s, mounting in the lending to terrorism a different form at lege grades), quotes from letters that say first half of the '90s to 27,078 incidents, different times, in different places...

...In fact, gerous trend...

...terrorist is fundamentally an altruist...

...He conversations with many of Porter's painted the emptiness of occupied friends give him the ability to set Porter rooms, objects left in disarray, moments convincingly in the bohemian social ambetween activities, and the silence of bience of New York in the late 1950s and people alone and in groups...

...But bad name today...

...Not unusually for the time and but justice, prompt, severe, and inflexiplace, sexual preferences in this group ble...

...gets-that sets acts of terrorism apart also points where the author's lack of Jessica Stern records the growing from other acts of violence...

...But it was not always so...

...More than a gentleman painter antipathy to technology is a theme in architect and biologist...

...As Hermann Goring at the American Academy of Arts...

...These are the subjects of his paint- Union with a group of American socialbe appreciated until his work in all ings...

...rupt, oppressive societies...

...little of interest, and a tendency to try which caused 51,797 deaths and even During the nineteenth century, terrorto protect Porter from the accusation more injuries...

...Southampton, Long Island, for several with whom Fairfield seems to have had summers...

...Island, and vacationed with them in That is, he does not act for personal gain: Maine...

...Far from early decades of the twentieth century, an important American painter who is being directed against a government-as however, terror was adopted by totalistill too often overlooked simply for his we generally expect it to be-the regime tarian governments-Nazi Germany, choice of subject...

...He quotes a wonderful de- intelligent and capable woman, pubFairfield Porter scription of life in the Porter home by the lished poetry and attended to the educaA Life in Art poet Ron Padgett, who lived in the tion of her children...

...Trade Center in New York, and a fed- ism is that of definition...

...Spring's meditation on the nature of reality...

...On oc- eral building in Oklahoma City...

...Padgett speaks of stoking the little contact...

...early 1960s...

...He writes knowledgeably Directly descended from the late-nine- about poetry and does a good job of loteenth-century domestic scenes of the cating the essential character of Porter's French Intimist painters Edouard Vuil- art, art criticism, and verse in the orbit of lard and Pierre Bonnard, which Porter first Mallarme, Wallace Stevens, William Carsaw at an exhibition at the Art Institute of los Williams, James Schuyler, John AshChicago in 1938 and admired all his life, bery, and Anne Porter...

...This book makes an ogy and commerce...

...How could it be other- life and attempted to avoid injuring anythese criticisms are small in light of the wise...

...Porter, who had acknowl- The Ultimate As we know, this emanation of virtue edged his own bisexual yearnings years Terrorists would in time cause Robespierre and his earlier, and Schuyler briefly became lovers Jessica Stern followers to lose their heads under the sewith Anne Porter's knowledge...

...What is the parThe book is not without faults...

...There was also the fam- ther and brothers before him, Fairfield Justin Spring argues in this ily house in Maine where Porter vaca- attended Harvard...

...Among the Porters' Justin Spring Porters' rambling colonial house in distinguished relatives was T.S...

...Fairfield's eldest brother, coal stove that supplied the heat, wind- Eliot Porter, was a gifted and successful ing the mechanical docks, the lack of tele- photographer who exhibited in the most Donna Gustafson vision, radio, and newspapers...

...These ticular combination of variables-what casion, repetitions and inconsistencies deaths received media attention in this kinds of acts, intentions, agents, or tarmar the flow of the narrative...

...For years Ha r'ard l.lnit'eisity Press, $22.95, 274 pp.vere and inflexible blade of the guillotine...

...He believes he is of the best poetry of his career, but it was acting virtuously for the good of some an enormous strain on the Porter family...

...The term one other than the target...

...At the same ing family (he and Anne Porter had five It is a truism to say that terrorism has a time they regretted taking any human children), is to see the world askew...

...He later traveled to F new biography of the tioned as a boy and where he took his Europe, where he spent time in Italy with painter, art critic, and poet, own family as often as they could afford Bernard Berenson, visited the Soviet has not been given his due and will not to go...

...They are the tip of an iceberg...

...Her recollections and musAmerican art was deeply committed to ings on the past enliven the facts that he abstract expressionism...

...One of the most his paintings are in a certain sense anti- moving stories in the book concerns the modern, as was Porter himself...

...In the Spring creates a fully rounded portrait of during a period of near anarchy...

...0 de la terreur was an instrument wielded Fascist Italy, Communist Russia-to reby the state against those who opposed press their opponents and intimidate Donna Gustafson is chief curator of exhibits the revolution and longed for the ancien their own citizens...

...His father managed the Spring makes a virtue of necessity, quottained a stubborn allegiance to repre- family's real estate holdings while in- ing from her letters and conversations sentational painting at a time when dulging his own passions as an amateur extensively...

...who is still living and whose poems have excellent start...

...These tersuffered because of the exceptional cir- Stern and Bruce Hoffman stress the ne- rorists carefully targeted political leadcumstances that allowed him to paint cessity and the difficulty of coping with ers they saw as representatives of corwithout worrying about feeding a grow- these questions now...

...Anne Charming Porter, taken into account...

...terrain presenting the facts and letting the n the decade of the nineties, The books by Stern and Hoffman are principals and friends speak through let- terrorists took the lives of complementary, agreeing on most ters and reminiscences without attempt- I American military person- major issues, but Hoffman offers the ing to simplify what was clearly a very nel and civilians in a night closer analysis of terrorism...

...after the liaison ended, Schuyler, who was There would be little point in recalling emotionally unstable, was supported both Inside Terrorism this except that it prefigures contempofinancially and emotionally by the Porters...

...Like his faairfield Porter (1907-75), down the street...

...strong-minded painter who pursued his Although the first half of the book lacks own artistic vision...

...During this pebook's success...

...to suggest, as Spring does, that he fenses are possible and feasible...

...This has always uncovers and soften some of the critipushed him to the sidelines, but it also cisms aimed by family and old friends has enhanced a reading of Porter as a at the sometimes irascible Porter...

...regime...

...critic, and a published poet, Porter main- in his fiction...

...His mother, an Spring's book...

...Violence could do, Porter never had to struggle with pover- does the trajectory extend...

...Porter's triangular relationship among Fairfield, Commonweal 26 April 7, 2000 Anne, and James Schuyler, whom the Porters came to know in the mid-1950s...

...Bruce Hoffman rary terrorism...

...James Finn particular constituency...

...As Hoffman states: "The he lived with them in their home on Long Cohinibia Univ'rsity Press, $24.95.288 pp...

...Where ganda by violence...

...This enabled him to write some he is serving a cause...

...In a sense, he reasserted the Victori- ists eager to explore the new society, and media-"an essentially diaristic project an paradigm of the home as a place where upon his return to the United States marin which the artist perpetually sought art and domesticity reigned, separate and ried the poet Anne Charming and moved to define his relation to the world"-is apart from the outside world of technol- to New York...

...What de- they reasoned, what many conferences, ty...

...Hoffman quotes Robespierre, the wrote to his "fellow Germans" in 1933: Commonweal 2 7 April 7, 2000...