Elaine de Kooning and Kaldis at loft--Early New York City no number 1953

This is Robert Frank’s photographic contact sheet showing Elaine de Kooning and Kaldis at her loft, probably made around 1953 in New York City. What I see here is Robert Frank, with the eye of a painter, documenting Elaine de Kooning as a painter. The many frames of the contact sheet remind me of the multiple steps and states of a painting. When I look closer, I see the performance of painting, the messiness of a life lived through art. I enjoy the way the photographs show the space around Elaine, other figures, the detritus of the studio, as if the painting itself is not the point, but part of something bigger. I can see the work of other artists within Frank’s images; it reminds me of the work of Rudy Burkhardt, another artist who documented the New York School. Both of them showed the intimacy and immediacy of the downtown art scene, and remind us that art is always a conversation, a way of living, rather than just an object.