Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules (Everyone Must Read!!!)

1] What you CAN NOT post.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is:
- abusive
- vulgar
- hateful
- harassing
- personal attacks
- obscene

You also may not:
- post images that are too large (max is 500*500px)
- post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or cited properly.
- post in UPPER CASE, which is considered yelling
- post messages which insult the Armenians, Armenian culture, traditions, etc
- post racist or other intentionally insensitive material that insults or attacks another culture (including Turks)

The Ankap thread is excluded from the strict rules because that place is more relaxed and you can vent and engage in light insults and humor. Notice it's not a blank ticket, but just a place to vent. If you go into the Ankap thread, you enter at your own risk of being clowned on.
What you PROBABLY SHOULD NOT post...
Do not post information that you will regret putting out in public. This site comes up on Google, is cached, and all of that, so be aware of that as you post. Do not ask the staff to go through and delete things that you regret making available on the web for all to see because we will not do it. Think before you post!


2] Use descriptive subject lines & research your post. This means use the SEARCH.

This reduces the chances of double-posting and it also makes it easier for people to see what they do/don't want to read. Using the search function will identify existing threads on the topic so we do not have multiple threads on the same topic.

3] Keep the focus.

Each forum has a focus on a certain topic. Questions outside the scope of a certain forum will either be moved to the appropriate forum, closed, or simply be deleted. Please post your topic in the most appropriate forum. Users that keep doing this will be warned, then banned.

4] Behave as you would in a public location.

This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being (i.e. be respectful). If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

5] Respect the authority of moderators/admins.

Public discussions of moderator/admin actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, and signatures. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private.

6] Promotion of sites or products is not permitted.

Advertisements are not allowed in this venue. No blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited.
This includes, but not limited to, personal resumes and links to products or
services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged
for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited.

7] We retain the right to remove any posts and/or Members for any reason, without prior notice.


- PLEASE READ -

Members are welcome to read posts and though we encourage your active participation in the forum, it is not required. If you do participate by posting, however, we expect that on the whole you contribute something to the forum. This means that the bulk of your posts should not be in "fun" threads (e.g. Ankap, Keep & Kill, This or That, etc.). Further, while occasionally it is appropriate to simply voice your agreement or approval, not all of your posts should be of this variety: "LOL Member213!" "I agree."
If it is evident that a member is simply posting for the sake of posting, they will be removed.


8] These Rules & Guidelines may be amended at any time. (last update September 17, 2009)

If you believe an individual is repeatedly breaking the rules, please report to admin/moderator.
See more
See less

Mougouch Fielding - Bohemian muse and widow of the painter Arshile Gorky [obituary]

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Mougouch Fielding - Bohemian muse and widow of the painter Arshile Gorky [obituary]

    The Times (London)
    July 26, 2013 Friday
    Edition 1; National Edition


    Mougouch Fielding; Bohemian muse and widow of the painter Arshile
    Gorky, whose work she championed after his suicide


    As Arshile Gorky's wife and muse, and for six decades his widow,
    Mougouch Magruder Gorky Phillips Fielding nurtured the work and
    burnished the reputation of the father of Abstract Expressionism and
    the man Robert Hughes described as "a kind of Bridge of Sighs between
    Surrealism and America".

    A bright, bold, patrician beauty, she had a genius for friendship,
    drawing devotees from New York's postwar Surrealists to the last
    members of the Bloomsbury Group. The travel writers Patrick Leigh
    Fermor, Robin Fedden and Bruce Chatwin were among her admirers. When
    her daughter Antonia married Martin Amis, his friend Christopher
    Hitchens summed up her provenance as "pure bohemian aristocracy".

    Agnes Magruder was the daughter of the East Coast establishment -
    Washingtonian John Holmes Magruder II, a US naval attaché (later
    Commodore), and his Bostonian wife, Ester Hosmer. She attended schools
    in Washington, The Hague and Switzerland. Aged 19, she went to
    Manhattan, where she enrolled at the Art Students League before
    quitting for a typing Job at a communist magazine.

    In February 1941 she was introduced to Gorky by her friends Elaine and
    Willem de Kooning. Tall and good-looking with an extravagant
    moustache, Gorky presented himself as a Georgian prince, a nephew of
    Maxim Gorky, an alumnus of Brown and a student of Kandinsky. Although
    she would not know it until a decade after his death, he was, in fact,
    Vosdanig Manoug Adoian, an Armenian refugee who had survived the
    Turkish genocide and landed on Ellis Island in 1920. When Agnes met
    him, he was eking out a living by teaching at the Grand Central School
    and selling the odd painting. His work was heavily derivative,
    brilliantly imitating Cézanne almost stroke for stroke, and so closely
    following Picasso that he would exclaim, "If he drips, I drip". He
    called Agnes "Mougouch" - little mighty one - a name which stuck. She
    would say, "When I think of Gorky, I think about my life beginning."

    They married, to her parents' horror, in September 1941 in Nevada
    before a JP, with a curtain ring from Woolworths. Mougouch moved into
    his Union Square studio where they lived on 64 cents a day. With his
    captivating wife by his side, Gorky's circle expanded.

    Mougouch charmed dealers and cooked deliciously for curators. The most
    dramatic effect on his work was three summers spent at the Magruder
    estate in Virginia. At Crooked Run Farm, with his wife and their
    daughters, Maro and later Natasha, his happiness spilt into his work.
    Somehow reconnecting with the country of his childhood, his pictures,
    like Water of the Flowery Mill and One Year the Milkweed, came alive
    in mesmeric forms, not unlike Miró but entirely his own. "Dreams form
    the bristles of the artist's brush" was how he put it. A New York
    Times critic described his abstract landscapes from this time as
    "bathed in autumnal Keatsian mist, their forms as pulpy and sweet as
    peeled ripe fruit".

    But in 1946 their life began to unravel. A fire in Gorky's studio
    destroyed 27 paintings, some portraits of Mougouch among them, and a
    lifetime of drawings and art books. Two months later he was diagnosed
    with rectal cancer and had a colostomy. A burst of painting followed,
    including the elegiac Charred Beloved, but he was, in turn, angry and
    depressed. A desperate, bewildered Mougouch had a brief affair with
    Gorky's friend, Edward Matta Echaurren - a serial seducer. As she
    recalled, "[I] ruined my life with one zip". Soon after, Gorky broke
    his neck in a car accident and his painting arm was temporarily
    paralysed. Mougouch returned to a demented Gorky. When he began
    hanging ropes in the garden she told their daughters he was making
    swings for them. After he pushed her down the stairs, his doctor
    advised she take the children away and they fled to Virginia. Days
    later, on July 21, 1948, Gorky hanged himself, leaving in chalk on the
    box he had stood on and kicked away, "Goodbye my loveds".

    After a decade married to another painter, the Bostonian John (Jack)
    C. Phillips, with whom she had two daughters, Mougouch moved to
    London. In 1961 she Joined the circle (and thus the diaries) of
    Frances Partridge, the last of the Bloomsburys, and David ("Bunny")
    Garnett. In 1979 she married the writer and Crete war hero Xan
    Fielding.

    All through her life she kept the flame of Gorky alive, lending his
    pictures for retrospectives and showing remarkable generosity and
    honesty with biographers. Among the results were superb books by her
    son-in-law, Matthew Spender, and her stepdaughter, Hayden Herrera. In
    2011 she appeared with Maro and Natasha in an extraordinary film
    directed by her granddaughter, Cosima Spender. Together they visited
    Union Square and the places of Gorky's birth and death. As she rolled
    her own cigarettes, 90-year-old Mougouch, still strikingly handsome,
    recalled in her low rich voice her life with Gorky. "He was so proud,
    and high and fine-looking. And he had a mighty paintbrush. I was
    smitten immediately."

    She is survived by four daughters.

    Mougouch Fielding, widow of Arshile Gorky, was born on June 1, 1921.
    She died on June 2, 2013, aged 92
    Plenipotentiary meow!
Working...
X