For more than five decades, Pat Lipsky has been a leading figure in American color field painting. In loosely connected vignettes, this extraordinary book looks back on a life starting in 1970s SoHo: from her pioneering days juggling painting and single motherhood in a redesigned factory loft on Wooster Street; to Paris, where an enchanting friendship develops with the former director of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg; to her yearslong close friendship with legendary art critic Clement Greenberg; to a marvelous love affair with the charismatic art dealer Richard Bellamy. We glimpse Lipsky鈥檚 first introduction to C茅zanne as a child in 1950s Brooklyn and her studies with the mythic artist Tony Smith, who would become her mentor. There is a visit with Lee Krasner at her home in Springs and another at Lipsky鈥檚 Manhattan apartment, late-night, smoke-filled loft parties, and evenings at Max鈥檚 Kansas City where Lou Reed and Nico sing in the background while rival groups of earthwork artists, pop artists, conceptual artists, and color field painters pretend to ignore each other at the bar. Along the way we experience Lipsky鈥檚 emergence at the forefront of her generation of painters.
Brightening Glance offers a stunningly self-revealing portrait of the struggles and sacrifices, joys and excitement inherent in a modern painter鈥檚 life, and captures the evergreen allure of New York鈥檚 art world between 1970 and 2010. In stripped down, elegant prose, Lipsky summons a New York that no longer exists and ponders why we love (and hate) the art world. Ultimately, it鈥檚 a story of a contemporary woman, a mother, and a painter, who dares a career in a field where only a handful of women have succeeded.
鈥淎 portrait of the artist as a woman working and living in the heart of the downtown New York art world. Pat Lipsky鈥檚 book is a stylish, entertaining, and, above all, honest memoir of a painter鈥檚 life and times. If you wondered what it would really have been like to be an artist in the years when art was all about art, this book opens the door.鈥濃擫ouis Menand, contributor to The New Yorker and Pulitzer鈥揚rize winning author, The Metaphysical Club
鈥淗ow did Pat Lipsky pull off the near-impossible feat of breaking into the hyper-macho downtown art world? She tells us in Brightening Glance. With this memoir, Lipsky proves that she鈥檚 as brilliant, energetic, and brave a writer as she is a painter.鈥濃擫ili Anolik, contributing editor to Vanity Fair and Air Mail, author, Didion & Babitz
鈥淔rom fisticuffs at Max鈥檚 Kansas City between Andy Warhol鈥檚 flamboyant entourage and Carl Andre鈥檚 minimalist cadre to the secret confessions of 眉ber-critic Clement Greenberg, Brightening Glance is a shockingly candid art world expos茅 by a talented painter who has survived more than five decades of culture wars. As both protagonist and witness, Lipsky lays bare the vanities of the artists, dealers, and critics who made the late twentieth century art scene in New York the fulcrum of artistic innovation and ideological rivalry amidst chaotic private lives. Lipsky spares no one from her acid pen, least of all herself.鈥濃擬ichael Findlay, author, Portrait of the Art Dealer as a Young Man: New York in the Sixties
鈥淏rightening Glance is an intense, deeply moving memoir about the New York art world, what it was, what it鈥檚 become, and what it means to have a sensibility and talent that doesn鈥檛 always fit the age. It will touch anyone who loves painting and who can find salvation in the museums and the galleries. Filled with characters, incident, and the excitement of the city at night, Lipsky鈥檚 book is balanced at that place where life becomes art.鈥濃擱ich Cohen, New York Times bestselling author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone
鈥淗ere is an artist memoir of SoHo grit and thrown punches, of bad divorces and career reversals. What sets Brightening Glance apart is the sensitivity of its observations. A praised abstractionist on canvas, Pat Lipsky on paper proves to be a sensitive portraitist, with an astonishing command of the figures who surrounded her. Tony Smith, Lee Krasner, Clement Greenberg, Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, and Pierre Rosenberg, among many others, leap off the page in this bittersweet and at times challenging depiction of art, love, and life.鈥濃擩ames Panero, executive editor at The New Criterion
