On page 97 of Mark Stevens’ and Annalyn Swan’s de Kooning: An American Master (Knopf, 2004), they state that de Kooning and Arshile Gorky met in 1929 at a social gathering at Misha Reznikoff’s studio. The two quarreled and almost got into a fistfight. Stevens and Swann say the details of the argument aren’t known. They also mention that de Kooning had given two dates for this meeting, his first meeting with Gorky—one in 1929, the other in ’30 or ’31.
Stevens and Swann were certainly aware of Matthew Spender’s From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky (Knopf, 1999). They state (p 644) that, “Most biographical information about Gorky comes from two recent biographies”—Hayden Herrera’s and Matthew Spender’s. Now, while repeating that the date of the two artists’ first meeting was ’29 or the early thirties, Spender nevertheless gives details about that argument, also, coincidentally, beginning on page 97. He writes that, “without preamble”, Gorky told de Kooning that he looked like a truck driver. De Kooning replied that if he looked like one he may as well act like one and maybe they should have it out. Gorky laughed and showed de Kooning how long his arms were. The shorter man had to be calmed down by his girlfriend, a tightrope walker who, Spender tells us, thought Gorky “looked like an interesting person.” We know from Stevens and Swann that that tightrope walker was named Nini Diaz.
Another meeting with Gorky is mentioned by Spender before the decisive one, the visit to Gorky’s studio that changed de Kooning’s life. It was at another social gathering when de Kooning tried to engage Gorky in a conversation about art and Gorky blew him off. Stevens and Swann don’t mention that meeting.
Why the divergence in accounts? Specifically, why do Stevens and Swann doubt the verifiability of Spender’s account? From page 98 of From a High Place:
Maro [Gorky’s daughter, Spender’s wife] and I met de Kooning only once, on December 4, 1975, many years before I thought of undertaking this biography. De Kooning invited us to his studio in East Hampton and talked to Maro about her father for ten solid hours. In the fortnight that followed, I typed out a detailed account of the conversation. I doubt if I have managed to write down his actual words, but of all my research, this text is the one for which I am most grateful.
If Maro and Matthew had had a tape recorder, if they had later published the conversation in a peer-reviewed journal, would that have satisfied Stevens’ and Swann’s criteria of certitude? Certainly the paragraph I have quoted reads like an intrusion of memoir into biography, understandable given Spender’s closeness to the subject. And it is unfortunate that we don’t have de Kooning’s actual words. But I see no reason why we should doubt the veracity of the account—oh, de Kooning may have said ‘duck hunter’, not ‘truck driver’—and I’m not inclined to. True, there’s a problem of form on page 98 of Spender’s book. This reader would like to know more about that meeting, and why it resulted in the information for which Spender was most grateful. But going any further in that direction would result in a different animal than a biography, it would indeed become a memoir. So the paragraph is at once essential and out of place. But Spender’s waffling of form does not cast doubt on the accuracy of his information. If I were writing the screenplay of Gorky’s or de Kooning’s life I’d use it for sure.
The Mockingbird Sings 