Diane Arbus, Penelope Tree in her Living Room, N.Y.C., 1962
(This JPEG illustrates a print made later by Neil Selkirk, under the auspices of Diane Arbus's daughter Doon's administration of her estate. It was part of the Berman Collection and was auctioned at Christie's in 2008 for $15,000.)
It was my friend Jim Schley who taught me that reading a book is an event. Just because a book exists in a kind of stasis, containing all it contains unchanging and waiting with infinite patience for our attention, doesn't mean that it's not an occasion for us when we experience it. I've been so busy lately that I'm making my way very slowly through my current read, An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus, a "psychobiography" of Diane Arbus. But the book is getting better and better. It's possible that it's best to read this one very slowly, a bit at a time, because it's dense with complex insights and not easily skimmed.
One frustration is that the book is not illustrated. So the author will remind us verbally of a picture and then proceed to describe it and analyze its elements. It's frustrating, because of course you need to see the picture. So I end up illustrating the book myself by trying to find the pictures on the Internet. It leads to some odd tours of old pictures...an image search for "penelope tree" is like a short tour of '60s fashion photography, for instance. It's like reading a book that's illustrated by the photographs you need to see and then several thousand more at random.
Here's what author William Todd Schultz has to say about the picture above:
Another shot externalizing Arbus’s sense of herself as a small girl, and the feelings she was expressing with too little frequency, is 1962’ s “Penelope Tree in the Living Room.” [...] Ms. Tree, who later became a model and the ultimate sixties "It” girl, seems on the verge of violence. She’s livid, arms akimbo, bangs perfectly snipped , enraged apparently by the bad luck of being so spectacularly rich. [Penelope Tree was Arbus]—just another side. Even the biographies match to a startling degree. Tree was rich, her father a confidant of Winston Churchill, her mother an American socialite who represented the United States at the United Nations and who famously predicted for herself a life of “parties, people, and politics.” There were servants, butlers, maids, cooks, chauffeurs. Mother was never around, Father was secretly bisexual. Also like Diane, Penelope was “virtually ignored. It was a buttoned-up household; nothing was talked about.” It was “poor little rich girl,” Tree says. “It really was. It was a funny way to grow up—but the visuals were good.”
Tree was thirteen when Arbus shot her for Town & Country magazine. She can’t recall how the two came into contact. “It was torture,” she remembers, “the whole thing. Now I know why everyone in her pictures looks like they do—because they have to spend three hours with Diane Arbus staring at them.” It was a hot day in August. Tree was dressed in riding gear at one point, though in the printed shot she wears a pleated skirt and penny loafers and stands on an ornate rug just to the right of a chandelier. “Now I know what she was trying to get,” Tree continues. “Spoilt rich kid looking absolutely desperate in her native habitat.” In other words, what Arbus was trying to get once again was herself. The shot is another in a long list of examples of Arbus working hard and at great length to coerce a subject to act out a drama less her own than Arbus’s.
(Schultz, William Todd, An Emergency in Slow Motion [Kindle Locations 768–784]. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Kindle Edition. )
That quote is telling—"It was torture, the whole thing. Now I know why everyone in her pictures looks like they do—because they have to spend three hours with Diane Arbus staring at them."
Schultz's book, like everything I've ever read about Arbus, is ultimately unsettling. At times it gives me a sort of antsy, clammy feeling like I want to get away. Penelope Tree's quote reminds us of the surprising thing Arbus's famous subject Jack Dracula said of her after finally succumbing to her relentless pursuit: "She had no personality whatsoever."
Diane Arbus in 1949 by Allan Arbus
Oddly, I almost never make it to the end of photographer biographies, although I have several dozen in my library. I'm only a quarter of the way through this one and not making much progress, so we'll see. Sure is interesting though.
Mike
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
James Sinks (partial comment): "Your closing comment rings true for me. I just cannot read 'art books' of any stripe...despite having shelves full of them. Ultimately, my problem is that I despise speculation presented with authority."
Nick Van Zanten: "I too can relate to the unfinished biography syndrome. I think for me, though, it is curiosity about the subjects' beginnings, how they became who they were. Typically, I already know how the story ends. Thanks for the book tip though, I intend to start it."
Rod Graham: "Re 'It was my friend Jim Schley who taught me that reading a book is an event.'
"To me, this was the most interesting part of this post. I don't think it's just simply an 'event.' but it is also a 'creative' activity. When I read words, I 'see' images; I guess everyone's brain works a little differently, but I have a constant flash of pictures through my head as I read. To me, these words create a unique experience created by the written words on the page.
"I used to feel that day hikes through the countryside were creative experiences—what I saw, what I felt, how it impacted me—were all unique to me and that memory 'created' something. Maybe it was only something I could appreciate and feel, but it was something in my life that wasn't there before. Is that not 'creation'? Reading a book seems to be something of the same thing—an experience that is unique to me and that wasn't there before. Am I rambling here? lol"
Mike replies: You're rambling creatively. :-)
Richard G: "I like a man who won't necessarily finish a book just because he started it. My patience for this author disappeared with his misuse of 'akimbo' for that crossed-arms posture of Miss Tree."
Mike replies: That's being a bit hard on an author, to insist that every single word be right. It may be that he was describing the picture from memory. I do that a lot, when I don't have time to laboriously go find it to refer to it directly again. Lee Friedlander has an old picture taken from a moving car of a distant outdoor wedding, which I once described as being of a funeral. It had simply been years since I saw it and my memory was wrong—what I remembered was that it was a ceremony and it was outdoors in view of the road, which more often describe funerals than weddings—it's not that I don't have eyes to see or don't know the proper word.
I can see recalling the picture at the top of the page as a posture of hands-on-hips rather than arms-crossed. The attitude could be very similar and that might be the salient feature if you were just recalling it in your mind.
Here's Penelope Tree recently, talking about her modeling career and Dick Avedon and Diane Arbus and others:
Penelope Tree from Barneys The Window on Vimeo.
s.low: "In those three hours of torture Arbus made a better portrait than all those glam photographers that photographed Penelope Tree in decades after that. And who would know Jack Dracula if Diane Arbus had not made that famous picture of him? I just came back from an exhibition of the Howard Greenberg collection in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The best of the best American black and white photography. Amongst all those big names for me Diane Arbus really stands out. All her images are iconic. Not only is do you recognize her work immediately as typical Arbus, but also once you have seen one of her photos you will never forget it. Locked up in your brain forever."
Nick D: "I've never liked Arbus's pictures, because I always felt (like many) that she exploited her subjects. All photographers do this to some extent but she took it to a new level. She is one of the few photographers whose work I actively dislike (as most I either love or they leave me completely unmoved) which says something about her power. The interesting thing is that the experience didn't put Penelope Tree off modeling!"
Mark Layne: "I did some work for Penelope Tree's father Ronald when he was building Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados. Oddly enough just around 1962."
Sorry to be a twit, but akimbo means hands on hips, not crossed in front.
Posted by: Chris Vickery | Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 06:08 PM
Your closing comment rings true for me. I just cannot read "art books" of any stripe--outside the occasional catalogue raisonne--despite having shelves full of them.
Ultimately, my problem is that I despise speculation presented with authority. Facts and figures and technical minutiae and historical context are worth reading, but the moment someone begins speculating about the meaning of a work or the motivation of an artist, I stop reading. Unless the author was there and has inside knowledge, or is quoting people who were and do, they should shut the hell up and let the art do the talking.
I long for the day when art book publishers are brave enough to start publishing art books that have nothing but a just-the-facts-ma'am introduction followed by page after page of uncluttered, unguttered, respectfully margined, usefully captioned (i.e. title, date, medium, catalogue number) reproductions.
Posted by: James Sinks | Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 06:51 PM
Your quote from the book illustrates why I rarely read any "psychobiograpy" books. How much of the "analysis" applies to Arbus, and how much is it the author's own psychological projection onto the image and the subject(Arbus)? Far too much of such literature is more descriptive of the author than the subject. However, if its a good read, and you don't take it too literally, read and enjoy.
Posted by: Richard Newman | Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 07:57 PM
Patricia Bosworth's biography of Arbus is more informative, but Mein Gott, what a name-dropper. No pictures in it, either.
Posted by: Bill Mitchell | Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 09:15 PM
A great artist bio can turn you into a major fan of the artist. Ever since I read Lawrence Weschler's "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," about Los Angeles artist Robert Irwin, I've sought out Irwin's work whenever it's shown. I recommend the book.
Now excuse me while I go find a copy of Emergency in Slow Motion.
Posted by: Joe | Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 11:07 PM
My rule of books I don't need to read but get bored with - skip bits and move forward - if I get interested again, I tend to go back and fill in the gaps. If I don't, then back on the shelf it goes.
Posted by: Michael Bearman | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 03:22 AM
"Ultimately, my problem is that I despise speculation presented with authority."
I couldn't agree more.
Posted by: hlinton | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 03:27 AM
I actually like reading biography, but am suspect of any that have been written while the person was still alive, or shortly after. Too much spin to get at the truth, it's almost like you have to wait until just before the people that knew them best, die themselves, before the facts come out.
I'm totally interested in the paths peoples lives have taken, people who I really have an interest in their art, or production, or way of living. I think it's a huge disservice to publish anything about any artist that does not focus on how they were able to survive while creating, what paths they took to paying the bills. Perhaps the photo industry wouldn't be filled with so many disgruntled people if they realized a lot of their heros were trust-fund babies, or from ages-old wealthy families, or were bleeding (or supported by) a spouse to accomplish what they did. Bios that don't contain this info are worthless.
Art and photo students think their modern heros were producing work and people were throwing money at them, well, at least enough to live. Ha...
Posted by: Tom Kwas | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 08:53 AM
Her photos say more than any "psychobiograpy" book about her can. She was perfect in her imperfection.
Posted by: Don Henderson | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 09:14 AM
You can view Arbus's body of work not only as a window into a troubled person's psyche, but also as a window into where photography was, at that particular moment in time- branching out, exploring its own possibilities in how it could relate to and communicate with the world at large, artistically and otherwise. It was testing new waters, and as with any growing child, sometimes may have taken certain parameters a bit too far- how any person or medium grows.
Arbus was a true pioneer in exploring various venues to degrees not taken before. They may sometimes seem somewhat less than ethical by today's standards, but thankfully, we have those very images, iconic as they are, to initiate and examine those very issues today.
Posted by: Stan B. | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 01:37 PM
Thanks for posting this.
Posted by: William Todd Schultz | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 02:31 PM
Dear Mike,
I haven't read that book, but the passage exactly fits my impression of Arbus and her work, just from her photographs. Exploitive, nasty, laughing at. I quite detest it. She might be a masterful photographer, but my reaction is that'd be like saying some schoolyard bully is a masterful torturer. Not exactly praise.
pax / Ctein
pax / Ctein
Posted by: ctein | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 05:03 PM
Sorry to be a pedant, Chris, but the word is pedant, not twit (at least not in UK usage).
Posted by: Ed | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 05:59 PM
I like to read photographer biographies. I have bought all I could find in traditional book shops over the past twenty years. I have less than a dozen. I am really curious what those several dozen are on your shelf. Can you post a list when you have the time? This is not criticism or doubt, but genuine interest to see what I have missed and what I should be looking for. I have never ordered a book from Amazon. Maybe I have to take a look.
I have the Bosworth biography. Usually biographies have at least a few and usually a lot of pictures by the artist but that biography explains that they tried but did not get rights to use any Arbus pictures.
Posted by: Ilkka | Friday, 19 September 2014 at 07:27 PM