A pioneer of New Yorks loft scene gets a long-overdue introduction.
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There was something still and clear about the little thing … Id never seen anything like it.
Schloss was a disappointment, a mere art student.
But it was Schloss who got there first.
Youve likely never heard of Edith Schloss.
EvenRobert Rauschenbergmakes a fiendish cameo in the book, asking De Kooning to give him a drawing.
Years later in a museum I saw a blank page with some faint marks on it, Schloss remembers.
It was signed Robert Rauschenberg and titledErased De Kooning Drawing.
Later Schloss worked in collages and boxes, like her friend Joseph Cornell.
As she insists, an able artist-writer puts a probe into anothers well of creativity.
A familiar tale of artistic pragmatism; sometimes you just need a damn paystub.
The necessity became fortuitous.
Now I went to shows looking and looking but spoke only to my notepad.
It was a strange position to occupy, halfway between artist and critic.
And Schloss is strategic, cagey almost, about which intimacies she exposes.
Her father believed multilingualism was a great asset for a girl.
Ilse had come to America straight from a concentration camp.
One night, at the communal clambake, some of the Porters questioned her about her experiences.
… She said in a low voice, I cannot talk about that anymore.
It seems like a bad dream now.
It has to be.
I do not want to believe my own memory.
Otherwise I could not go on living.
Perhaps there are also stories we no longer tell ourselves to live.
We do know Schloss found her way to Brooklyn in 1942.
Burckhardt moved in; they wed in 47 and lived together there for the next 14 years.
Loft life was barebones; break-ins were common.
But the space lofts offered, with abundant storage for old paintings and fresh canvases, was indispensable.
What was the sacrifice of creature comforts to the opportunity to fashion an entirely other style of existence?
Creative fecundity was prioritized over familial and financial success.
Nevertheless, some among them attempted the juggling act.
The sport inside the picture was also the tale of the city.
The men of Schlosss circle have been exhaustively attended to by the cultural record.
(There have recently been retrospectives of bothJasper JohnssandPhilip Gustonswork in New York galleries.)
More provocative are her portraits of the women on the scene.
Of the music scene Schloss notes that I had learned already that it was a world of men.
She describes the artists wives as unobtrusive or otherwise not around often.
Hand in glove with this new style of living was an interrogation of conventional monogamy.
The women were offered scraps and set against one another.
In the beginning, she remembers, I didnt even like you.
When Schloss first met the De Koonings, she didnt recognize Elaine as anything other than Bills wife.
What he had was some kind of working-class unscrupulousness or realism, she remarks.
He took what he wanted where he found it; the rest is false sentimentality.
This was the way things were, and you made do or got nowhere.
Theirs was an in-between time, after the war but before the Pill.
A woman could have this or she could have that.
Those in Schlosss circle often appear wary, certain in their knowledge that their newfound freedoms were precarious.
In this scarcity economy, every woman was starving.
In the Italy chapters,The Loft Generationbegins to curl back in on itself.
For one thing, there is less to distract Schloss in Italy than thered been in New York.
This means were occasionally rewarded with greater (but not total) insight into her interiority and her bawdiness.
In 2010,Jacob filmed a videoof his mother giving a guided tour of her Roman apartment.
She was near the end of her life but still brimming with energy.
The lines in her face indicate a vastness of experience, a delight in pleasure.
