Early career
When I returned to New York City from California in the summer of 1965, I met Jenny walking on lower Broadway; I met two of my friends from Kansas City: Dan Christensen and Dave Wagner at MoMA and visited Michael Steiner at his new loft at 500 Broadway that he shared with Peter Young. That summer I shared a loft on 29th street and Park Avenue with Jenny sublet from her friends Tom and Bobbi Gormley. Green Gallery had folded. My next loft was on East Broadway near the Manhattan Bridge. One strange morning I ran into Dick Bellamy at a lower eastside cafeteria at around 6am, he was staggering around in a pre-dawn drunk.
When I returned home from California, ''Like a Rolling Stone'' had just replaced ''I Can't Get No Satisfaction'' as number one on the radio, and while I was listening to my new ''Highway 61'' album in my parents home in the Bronx, Michael Steiner called me and he asked me what was I into. I said "Color", Mike said he was into "Gray" and Louis Kahn. We met the next day at Mike's loft that he was sharing with Peter Young at 500 Broadway.
I hadn't met Peter Young before and he showed me his paintings. Peter had been married to Twyla Tharp and he was working fulltime at the Pace Gallery, compared to me at 18, he was an old man at 25. Michael Steiner was 20, Dan Christensen was 23, and we were a precocious group. I'd already made a lot of changes in my art and I had met several other important and serious young artists in New York, the Midwest and the West Coast.
After I left my loft on East Broadway in the fall of 1965 Michael Steiner and I shared a loft at 496 Broadway between Spring and Broome streets. I would paint all night long, listening to my Dylan albums and Rubber Soul by the the Beatles and December's Children (and Everybody's) by the Rolling Stones.
During that period I made several painted hard-edge free standing sculptures, and many hard-edge paintings. I experimented with found objects and painted sculptures on the floor, black and white hard-edge paintings, and hard-edge paintings in primary colors, and some in red and green and I began my 15 painting Series; on paper and on canvas.
In 1964-1966 I experimented with minimal art, sculpture, hard-edge geometric painting, found objects, and finally began a Series of 15, 9’ x 6' mystical, minimalist border paintings. After a serious setback in February 1966 when my loft at 496 Broadway burned down, I briefly moved to an apartment on E. 11th Street in the East Village, that belonged to my girlfriend Jenny; where I drew dozens of plans for new paintings and sculptures.
I began making lots of drawings on Eleventh Street and I spent more and more time there. One night inspired by Seldon Rodman’s book ‘’Conversations with Artists’’ I got the idea to try to contact Philip Johnson for help. In the book Johnson the architect was portrayed in several sections as a rival of Frank Lloyd Wright and as an art collector and I also knew he was an architect of a glass house, and on the board of trustees at the Museum of Modern Art. Peter Weinberg helped me compose a letter to Philip Johnson. After the fire Michael Steiner and Peter Young shared a studio on the ground floor at 94 Bowery. Michael lived with his wife Griselda and their daughter Michelle in an apartment on E. 18th street. Peter Young lived in the loft at 94 Bowery.
Philip Johnson asked to see me and we met at his office atop the Seagrams Building one morning in March 1966, Philip encouraged my work, Philip Johnson was enormously encouraging and inspiring and he suggested that when I made some paintings I show them to him and later that day I got a job in an advertising agency - Diener, Hauser Greenthal in the Fuller Building on 57th streetand Madison Avenue; working as a commercial artist. I returned to painting in April 1966 by sharing a loft with my former classmate and friend Dan Christensen at 4 Great Jones Street and a few months later Philip bought a 108"x72" painting and included it in a group exhibition of Minimal Art that was circulating from museum to museum in the Midwest in 1966. That painting is currently in the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska. Philip Johnson became my first important patron. Eventually Philip Johnson acquired more than a dozen of my paintings and his friend David Whitney became my first dealer. Robert Scull learned of my work through Philip and he asked Dick Bellamy to find me.
The Border Painting Series was completed in July 1966, and soon after architect Philip Johnson acquired a painting: Tan Painting for the permanent collection of The Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska. Robert Scull asked Dick Bellamy to show him my paintings; and Bellamy called my friend Michael Steiner - hoping to find me. Steiner called me at my loft on Great Jones Street and proposed that if I could get Philip Johnson to buy one of his sculptures he would get Robert Scull to get one of my paintings...I refused the deal; in fact I told Michael that I suggested to Philip that he see Michael's work - and Philip said that he knew his work but was not interested. Michael accompanied Dick Bellamy to mine and Dan's studio in the early fall of '66 to see our paintings - I had finished my 15 Series paintings and several more; and Dan had several of his new Bar paintings finished as well. Michael told Dick Bellamy that I was just a teenager and shouldn't be shown yet but that he should pick up Dan and Peter Young - to whose studio they headed next. I felt betrayed by my oldest friend. Ultimately Robert Scull purchased an important border painting of mine in early 1967.
In the fall of 1966 I was visited by Dorothy Herzka (Lichtenstein) who was the director of the Bianchini Gallery on 57th Street. Dorothy came to my studio to see my paintings. To my delight she invited me to curate an exhibition of mine and my friends paintings at the Bianchini Gallery in early 1967. I invited my friends Dan Christensen, Ken Showell and Peter Young to participate. Dorothy also included a painting by Peter Gourfain. The exhibition opened in March of 1967 and to my surprise we were all invited to participate in the 1967 Whitney Museum of American Art's Annual. Although I had moved away from the loft at Great Jones Street and I briefly worked at my friend Peter Reginato's loft on Greene Street I was looking for a new place to live and work. In June of 1967 Peter Young told me that the top floor loft at 94 Bowery was available.
In late 1966 through 1968 I began exhibiting my paintings and works on paper in important galleries and museums. I moved into my loft at 94 Bowery in July 1967 where I experimented with rollers, staining, hard-edge borders, and painting unstretched on the floor for the first time. On the Bowery I moved away from Minimalism and Hard-edge painting to Lyrical Abstraction and Abstract Landscape painting. In 1966 and 1967 my minimal works that were related to my Border painting Series were included in group exhibitions at the Sheldon Museum of Art, the Park Place Gallery, and the Bianchini Gallery. My painting The Howl of Terror was included in the 1967 Whitney Museum of American Art's Annual exhibition and that represented my public break with Minimal Art, and my move toward Lyrical Abstraction.
Briefly in 1967-1968`I worked part-time for Dick Higgins and the Something Else Press. In early 1968 I showed my painting Heaven and Earth at the Bykert Gallery, which was my first abstract landscape painting . During 1968 and 1969 I was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Studio Museum in Harlem,and group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Stanford University Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1969 Annual Exhibition amongst other places. During 1968 I began part-time teaching at Bennington College in Vermont as a guest of Larry Poons.
In 1967-1968 two drawings were reproduced in S.M.S. III by the Letter Edged in Black Press, (a series of portfolios assembled in protest of the Vietnam War), and I was included in New York 10 1969, a portfolio of prints published by Tanglewood Press, and an important article in Newsweek magazine about the new generation of artists, which featured a color reproduction of my painting Cheat River. In early 1969 I was awarded a Copley Foundation (Cassandra) Grant for Painting and In October 1969 I had my first one-man exhibition at the David Whitney Gallery in NYC. My works in that exhibition and from that period are partially inspired by Sung Dynasty Chinese Landscape painting and American abstraction.
My painting Diamond Lake 1969, 108 x 168 inches, was acquired from Philip Johnson by the Museum of Modern Art in 1972 and was installed in the lobby of MoMA for several months. My painting Elijah 1969, 108 x 55 inches was exhibited in Beijing, China for a few years in the early nineties. These abstract landscapes of 1968 -1969 and what followed constitute my most original and my most important contributions to the history of contemporary painting. During the late 1960s through the early 1970s, I was included in important exhibitions all over the country including at the Museum of Modern Art and the first Whitney Biennial in 1973.
