the art of poetry
DAVID STOLLER
Child’s Play Some moderns obsessed Over the art of child’s play— Primal, unconscious, Valid in its suddenness … They yearned for that innocence. So they dripped and soaked, Pushed and pulled their lines and cubes Invoking nature To guide their hands as freely As a young child finger paints. My grandson, fearless, Assembles from the jumble Of blocks and tinkers A structure that pleases him— Pleased as well when it tumbles. The art of child’s play Embraces impermanence, Nothing is finished, Knows not the pathos of things … That the moderns knew so well.
The painting presented here, entitled Abstraction, was painted by Louis Stone (1902-1984), one of New Hope’s most important modernist painters. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art with Daniel Garber, the Art Students League in New York, and then in Europe with the legendary abstract painter and teacher Hans Hoffmann. In 1935, he moved to Lambertville, New Jersey. In 1937 he launched a painting project called Ramstonev Cooperative with Charles Ramsey and Charles Evans (Ramsey/Stone/Evans). This was their landmark effort to emulate the cooperative ad-lib process by which jazz musicians created their music—a visual “jazz session.” Their collaborative compositions, always abstract, were often a series of as many as 12 or more paintings—the last one of which would be deemed “final.” As is often the case with non-representational art, those viewing this painting have widely different ideas of what it might depict. I’ve always seen our floor strewn with toys, cars, planes, and tinker toy elevators, in a jumble that all makes sense—to our grandkids, having their own jazz session. n
Portrait of Louis Stone, c. 1923-1924. Image courtesy of the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, New York. 10
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David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner and co-head of Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet.
