New York’s surprising homeland of surrealism is chronicled in a new book

It’s no secret that Surrealism influenced the development of Abstract Expressionism. Martica Sawin’s rich study, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginnings of the New York School (MIT Press 1995), described in detail the significant cultural exchange that occurred between 1938 and 1947, when Parisian artists fleeing Nazi Europe made Manhattan their home.

However, what has so far been largely ignored by art history – including Sawin’s account – is the mechanism by which this exchange took place. Surrealism was well known in New York City before World War II, but it wasn’t until its artists lived there that American art underwent a sea change. Where was it that Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and others saw surrealism in action? The surprising answer, writes author and art critic Charles Darwent, is a dirty little workshop run by an English printer.

The title of this book is perhaps a little misleading, for although in the course of an introduction and eight chapters, Darwent provides insight into the cultural overlap between the heavyweights of Surrealism and the burgeoning AbExers of the America, it’s basically a portrait of one man, Stanley William Hayter. (1901-1988) and his influential printing studio, Atelier 17. Founded in Paris in 1927, Hayter’s studio was at the heart of the Parisian avant-garde and essential to the renaissance of burin engraving in as a creative medium. Relocated to New York in 1940, she found refuge at the New School, becoming a melting pot for young American artists who rubbed shoulders with great European figures such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró or André Masson. As Darwent writes: “It would be easier to enumerate the avant-garde sculptors and painters who did not enter the studio doors between 1927 and 1947 than those, from Picasso to Pollock, who did.

Pollock formation

While it is true that Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and other founding American artists worked at Atelier 17 in the 1940s, the extent of his influence on their paintings is open to conjecture. The irresistible problem is that Hayter, despite being a master printer, kept no proofs and no record of his studio’s output exists. Rothko’s time at the studio is evidenced by only one extant engraving. Motherwell produced only a handful of prints there before giving up engraving for 20 years. And none of De Kooning’s prints have survived. Moreover, the self-deprecating Hayter did not want to take credit for his role in forming an artist. Nevertheless, Pollock named him as one of his two masters, the other being the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton.

Pollock’s six-month stint at Atelier 17 is the subject of an entire chapter (“Pollock Makes A Print”), which provides an illuminating account of how the artist’s experiments with a can of paint hanging from Hayter’s ceiling, coupled with his nocturnal explorations of movement and the intaglio line, directly shaped his mature style. So it was in a small room on the seventh floor of the New School at 66 West 12th Street that Pollock learned from Hayter, Darwent observes, “less a way of painting than a philosophy, a way of freeing the mind through cyclic repetitions”. movement… a way of working that seemed accidental while being entirely controlled”. Art critic Clement Greenberg saw Pollock’s new style as uniquely American and, curiously, flatly claimed two decades later that the artist had learned nothing from Hayter, despite the obvious parallels between the two men’s work. . As Darwent pointedly asks, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”

Although a significant proportion of Atelier 17 students are women, Darwent’s account leans firmly in favor of their male counterparts: in all fairness, he recommends that Christina Weyl’s exceptional study, The Women of Atelier 17 (Yale 2019), be read in conjunction with his. One woman who comes into his spotlight is Louise Bourgeois who, although not surreal, was heavily influenced by their ideas. Living in New York since 1938, she first visited Atelier 17 after the war, when the studio moved to East 8th Street. She obviously had an extreme dislike for Hayter. In 1947, he had helped her to make nine plates for her illustrated book, He disappeared in complete silence, which, much to her frustration, only sold a handful of copies – a failure she inexplicably blamed on Hayter and for which she never forgave him. Half a century later, she contemptuously referred to her name in the titles of several works, a move that ironically helped preserve her memory.

It is fair to say that few modern British artists have been as internationally influential as Stanley William Hayter. Yet, although well known to engravers, he and his studio were for many years quietly forgotten in the history of art. His importance, according to Darwent, was not primarily in his expertise as an engraver, but in facilitating a unique space where experimentation and a very particular kind of creative freedom were encouraged. Focusing on the artist’s activities in New York, this beautifully lucid and carefully researched book makes a compelling case for Hayter’s role in the revolution that took place in American painting during the 1940s. a stark reminder that art history remains a work in progress.

•Charles Darwent, Surrealists in New York: Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract ExpressionismThames & Hudson, 256pp, 80 color illustrations, £25 (hb), published 16 Mar 2023

• David Trig is a freelance writer, critic and art historian, and a regular contributor to International studio And Art Quarterly