Stettheimer

By Paul Campanis

  "For Itself.  Art of Florine Stettheimer"

 

    Florine Stettheimer is private in feeling.  She guards it even though

she is what today we call a party animal     in high-life New York City.

Around World War one and the beginning of the next one.

    I am looking for someone to read a poem to.

    She says, leyei in Greek, leyei e kuria, says the honored woman,

    " Occasionally

    A human being

    Saw my light

    Rushed in

    Got singed

    Got scared

    Rushed out

    Called Fire

    Or it happened

    That he tried

    To subdue it

    Or it happened

    He tried to extinguish it

    Never did a friend

    Enjoy it

    The way it was

    So I learned to

    Turn it low

    Turn it out

    When I meet a stranger

    Out of courtesy

    I turn on a soft

    Pink light

    Which is

    Found modest

    Even charming

    It is a protection

    Against wear

    And tears

    And when

    I am rid of

    The always-to-be-Stranger

    I turn on my light

    And become myself."

Art is everyone writ, says I. Every human one time or another senses
what this supreme laborer, Florine, does.
A delicious aloneness, paid with a terrible price. Stettheimer is an
individual craftsman. She is alone in the universe.
Lacy, neat, fussy, beautifully coiffed, but she's a tiger, a warrior, a
resister. In other clothes. She seems nice, petite, but she's not. She
has the artist's supreme power.
She says, does, what she feels and says she can't do anything she
doesn't want to. Florine doesn't apologize for her life. The high life
suits her.
But she works hard all the time to understand the world. Someone said
she was a " damn swell, fine artist."
She flows in this poem.

"My attitude is one of love
Is all adoration
For all the fringes
All the color
All tinsel creation
I like slippers gold
I like oysters cold
And my garden of mixed flowers
And the sky full of flowers
And traffic in the streets
And Maillard' sweets
And Bendel's clothes
And Nat Lewis hose
And Tappe's window arrays
And crystal fixtures
And my pictures
And Walt Disney cartoons
And colored balloons."

She created a new kind of art. No-one before her or after painted like
her. Her figures slide and shimmer. Is a grand colorist, one of the best
ever in America. She speaks in them of the growing consumer culture.
It does not repel her as crass materialism which it is, but engages her
in a reflection of the social world. She put the scene there for me to
learn and enjoy. She is an artist.