To the Editors:
Only just now did I see Hilton Kramerβs piece on Fairfield Porter in your May number. Mr. Kramer quotes a paragraph from an interview the artist gave Paul Cummings that was published in the Archives of American Art. Every reference made to me in that interview contains errors of fact or is wholly fictitious in substance.
Porter did not introduce me to de Kooning, whom Iβd met several years before I ever set eyes on Porter. We were never in de Kooningβs presence together. Fairfield and I did see one another often, but far from βregularly,β in 1942, not at all before that, and hardly at all afterwards. We seldom argued, we seldom disagreed. Once, in the summer of 1942, we painted together.
This trivia to show Fairfieldβs relation to the truth. What isnβt trivial, at least for me, is his having me tell de Kooning (no acolyte of the truth either), βYou canβt paint figuratively today.β Thatβs dreamt up. You donβt talk that way to art or to artists.
Porter was a bit βtouchedβ; I have to come out and say that. There was something wrong with him, and not only in relation to the truth. I admired his art, but by the time he started showing Iβd acquired a distaste for his person that kept me from writing or even talking about anything that had to do with him. (There was one other instance in which I let my reaction to