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CHAPTER 1
Pivotal Decision
New York City, 1946–1959
In 1946, at age thirty-three, Felrath Hines left Chicago and moved to New York City to begin his life as an artist. Inspired by the relative success of acquaintance Charles Sebree (1914–85) and convinced, like many artists, that the city was the only place to truly "make it," Hines left the Midwest and never looked back. He most likely traveled light: a self-editing artist, Hines had destroyed any work done as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his marriage had ended in separation, freeing him of domestic encumbrances.
Although he was a savvy city dweller, Hines must have been astounded when he got off the Twentieth Century Limited in Grand Central Terminal in June 1946. At the time, the number of people who passed through Grand Central in a year approximated the total population of the United States. The sheer grandeur of the main concourse, 125 feet wide and 385 feet long and bustling with swarms of travelers dotted with the red caps of more than 400 porters, would have been breathtaking. Always visually attuned, Hines likely noticed the illuminated constellations of the zodiac twinkling in the vaulted blue ceiling and the shafts of sunlight from seventy-five-foot windows burnishing massive marble floors and walls.
A Works Progress Administration writers' guide to New York City, published in 1939, captured the city's excitement: "The din of motor and streetcar traffic on Forty-Second Street, the shunt and shuffle of pedestrians, the upward thrust of the buff and yellow sky-scrapers around the terminal, produce an impact not easily forgotten." Shouldering his duffel in the city heat, Hines's first order of business was to find lodging. He settled on an apartment in Harlem at 511 West 144th Street for eleven dollars per month, where he lived for the next four years.
Hines possessed the discipline and will to make art, traits that never failed him throughout his life. But moving to New York City to pursue an artistic career was a risky leap — "outrageous," as he later admitted. All artists face a life of struggle to be recognized, as well as the constraints of dedicating time and effort in making a living. Hines did not get his full due in his lifetime, primarily because the art world reflected society as a whole. Visual arts curators and critics insistently pigeonholed Hines's artwork into the category of "African American art." Despite his best efforts to compete in an art world based upon quality alone, his work was often viewed only through the lens of his racial identity.
Starting Over
Although the US economy contracted after World War II, the unemployment rate in the nation remained less than 5 percent. Hines never wanted for work in his early New York years, but the challenges of beginning in a new city were not worry free. "If I had [stayed in Chicago and gotten my teaching credentials] my life would have been a whole lot easier," he said. "I am not saying that it would have been better. I am saying it would have been easier, because when I finally did get to New York, it was a matter of starting all over again. Moving from one city to another, without anything to go to, it is like starting all over again. Outrageous."
Hines was not completely bereft of nearby family, since his younger brother, Elbert (known in the family as "Dick"), had settled in New York City after serving as a Tec 5 in the US Army. He worked as a clerk for the government, but it is unknown how much he may have helped Felrath, if at all, after his arrival.
By January 1947, Hines was painting gold bands around the edges of dinnerware at a factory in Brooklyn. On the assembly line next to him sat a younger man, N. Jay Jaffee (1921–1999), who later became a noted photographer. "We soon developed a repartee that included humorous comments about our imposing supervisor and the hopeless occupation we were engaged in," Jaffee wrote. Common passions for jazz and classical music cemented their lifelong friendship.
"Several weeks after our initial meeting, I invited [Felrath] for dinner at my house," Jaffee recalled. "(Years later, I learned that I was the first person who befriended him in New York.) I lived in what was then a somewhat rural area called East New York, bordering the marshlands of Jamaica Bay and Queens. From downtown Brooklyn, where we worked, we took the New Lots Avenue IRT [Interboro Rapid Transit] subway, which became elevated as we neared the last stop. At that moment, I took advantage of the available light and made one exposure of Fel."
Perhaps the most widely used image of young Hines, the black-andwhite photo shows a good-looking man with a thin mustache dressed in a wide-lapel, double-breasted overcoat, gloves, and cap. The soft, natural light captures the relaxed, faintly amused, straightforward gaze of a self-possessed individual.
Hines's dignified and fastidious personal appearance was mentioned in numerous interviews with family and friends. Even as a struggling artist, he insisted on wearing impeccable, high-quality attire. This attention to detail and refined sensibility served him well in his eventual career as a paintings conservator, and it is reflected in his mature artwork.
Neither Hines nor Jaffee lasted long at the china-painting factory. Nevertheless, Jaffee opened doors to social interaction with other artists and writers in the city. Hines, with his own creative goals always on his mind, found studio space and tried his hand at being an independent fabric designer, with little success. He began evening classes at Pratt Institute, where his previous experience (from design classes at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago) was noticed by one of his teachers, who also co-owned a fabric-design studio. Hines was offered a job there, which initially piqued his interest.
"You have to fit within a five color thing and there is a trick to it," he said about the job. "I finally learned the trick ... and then I quit. ... It is too commercial [and] I just can't do that. I'm not against being commercial or commercialism. It is just that to be a success [in fabric design] you have to have that commercial knack. The criticism that I got when I first tried to sell my [fabric design] work [was that] it was just a little too 'arty.'" Hines's experience as a textile designer, however, may have contributed to his facility in terms of reversals of pattern and color, a knowledge that enhanced his later work.
Focusing on his painting, Hines began studying with Nahum Tschacbasov (1899–1984). A Russian-American cubist/surrealist painter and printmaker, Tschacbasov, who was an instructor at the Art Students League, offered creative painting classes in his home at 222 West Twenty-Third Street in the winter, and Woodstock, New York, in summers. "I was attracted to studying with him because ... his biography said that he was interested in bringing out the creative expression of a student," Hines said. "And I remember one night that I had been going [for] months, working away. I did one or two paintings, and he never said a word. He just walked past. ... One night I left there and went to a bar across the street and I got drunk. I was so down and disgusted, I just sank to the lowest ebb. ... And finally I broke through and something happened after that. Those things occur from time to time. But nothing has ever been that bad. The feeling has never been as drastic or disquieting as it was at that particular time. Just incredible. ... You have to get rid of the stumbling blocks that are within you."
"I was still painting figuratively, with emphasis on line and color. Some of the work depicted a single figure; others multiple figures in generic interior or landscape spaces. All the paintings were done from imagination and memory," Hines said. His works on paper featured images of birds, boats, horses, and mermaids. Art historian Jacqueline Francis said, "[Hines's use of these images was] kind of like [the use of] clowns. Artists look for universal symbols — things that a lot of people share in common — universal across traditions" (see insert, plates 02, 04–06).
Hines was not a writer, and consequently only wrote about his artwork once, much later in life. On lined notebook paper found in his studio, a short, handwritten treatise about working abstractly showed his struggle to put thoughts on paper. With several false starts and crossed out paragraphs, he wrote that he "soon realized that rendering subject matter to look real had already been done far better than I would ever be able to. So why not paint abstractly and be creative, abide by my own rules and follow others of a like bent?" Although he continued to paint figuratively, sometime in 1950 he began to eliminate representational images and to create purely abstract work. Perhaps this was the breakthrough on that disheartened and drunken night after painting class that Hines remembered.
As a lifelong jazz enthusiast, Hines no doubt frequented the betterknown clubs of the day: the Basin Street Café, Cotton Club, Metropole Café, and Savoy Ballroom were all hopping nightly with music and dancing. It is also likely that Hines went to the Five Spot Café, an unassuming dive located at 5 Cooper Square in the Bowery neighborhood where there was no cover charge. Cellist and bassist Buell Neidlinger recalled, "I can remember the smell of it. There was a piano and then a wall, a very thin wall, and the urinals in the men's room were on the other side facing the piano. So basically that bandstand smelled of piss all the time."
Hines always made a point of attending art openings and visiting the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the latest shows. He looked at as much art as possible, not to copy but to understand the work.
Adding to his ever-expanding circle of acquaintances met at clubs, art openings, and galleries, Hines became reacquainted with Chicago "ex-pat" artists, including painter and Broadway dancer Frank Neal. Already known for his role in developing Chicago's Southside Community Art Center, Neal was instrumental in forming a casual group of creative black painters, dancers, writers, and musicians in New York. It came to be called the Neal Salon.
Frank and his wife, Dorcas, who enjoyed cooking and entertaining, hosted the gatherings at their second-floor apartment on Twenty-Eighth Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. "Every weekend night, and, often, once or twice during the week, insiders knew to convene at the Neal's parlor, no earlier than midnight ... There was always food: a pot of chicken and rice or ham and beans, plus a plate of sandwiches on the table, and Dorcas Neal kept everything coming as long as anyone was eating."
Regulars at the Neal Salon included Hines's Chicago colleague Charles Sebree; writer, James Baldwin; composer Lou Harrison; actor Brock Peters; historian Bill Coleman; choreographer Talley Beatty and his friend, jeweler Art Smith; Harry Belafonte; and, joining slightly later, composer Billy Strayhorn. According to Dorcas, "This was a breeding ground for a certain group of artists at a certain time when they had nowhere else to go. It was like Bloomsbury [an informal but influential group of English writers, intellectuals, and philosophers]. In this group, these people could be the artists they were and be dealt with like artists. They all faced a lot of the same problems and a lot of the same questions regarding their careers and their place in the world, which was white at the time."
Hines moved to 55 Bond Street, a two-story brick building in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in August 1950. To keep body and soul together, he waited tables. "I was pretty well filled with the idea of being a painter," he recalled. "I didn't know how far I could go, but at least I knew that I would be doing something more, that I couldn't be waiting tables for the rest of my life, and most of my friends were people who were doing something — musicians, writers." Hobnobbing with artists and entertainers at the Neal Salon no doubt galvanized his impatience to get on with his artwork.
His jobs as a waiter were often short-lived. Later in life, Hines told his wife, Dorothy Fisher, that if he was mistreated or disrespected by management, he would simply take off his apron and leave, never even returning for his back pay. He also worked part time in a gallery where the owner, John Heller (who represented Tschacbasov), recommended that he talk to Robert Kulicke, a frame maker who was just opening a new shop in 1951.
Although he was not likely framing his own work, since he had yet to show it, Hines visited Kulicke's shop at 43 East Tenth Street and managed to talk himself into a job more aligned with his intended career. According to Fisher, "He walked in [the frame shop] and said, 'I might consider working here.' They said, 'You're hired!' After a few years artists asked for him because he had good taste in framing, a skill noticed by Bob [Kulicke]."
In actuality, it was not quite that easy. When Hines was accepted on staff, he agreed to work as an apprentice for no pay to learn the framing business. He began as a mat cutter, joining a staff comprised of painters, jazz musicians, and sculptors. It did not take long, however, for Hines to be added to the payroll.
Called the "best frame maker in New York City" by Marty Horowitz, who worked at the shop twenty years later, Kulicke's frame designs were the epitome of taste and elegance. He was a master craftsman of ornate reproduction frames and also designed popular streamlined frames used by museums and well-known artists of the time.
Kulicke (1924–2007) had apprenticed himself to a carver, guilder, and mat maker in Paris under the GI Bill, after serving under General Douglas MacArthur in World War II. He later declared, "I've since taught hundreds of people these skills and always with the requirement that they never, never keep a secret." Kulicke also painted, regularly exhibiting small, precise still lifes of flowers, dollar bills, or one of his favorite subjects, a single pear.
It is easy to see, in retrospect, why Hines fit so well into Kulicke's world. His new boss said, "I believe in excellence, on its own terms and for its own sake, because nothing else is worth the trouble." Although Kulicke was considered by many to be pompous and somewhat crusty, he appreciated Hines, who was meticulous about his work and unassuming in his demeanor.
"It was the first job [in New York] that I had ever been on for more than a year. And I liked it. ... I worked in every capacity, from the lowest to the highest, whatever that was," said Hines. "[As] the manager of the shop, I did a lot of work with galleries outside. ... That is why I stayed at Kulicke so long [ten years]. ... I took care of a lot of people personally. ... Not only was I working every day, but [also] I was on the phone constantly. Some of those days would just be incredibly busy and frenetic and I loved it."
One day Robert Motherwell (1915–91) walked into the frame shop with a long horizontal drawing in an ornately carved frame. "Fel reframed the drawing and Motherwell gave him the elaborate frame, which he [treasured enough to] move from place to place," Fisher said. "[For several years] he framed one of his own simple landscapes in it. Later he decided to [hang it vertically and] put a mirror in it. He told the salesman he wanted the best quality mirror with no distortion, but they sold him one that makes everyone look thin."
Hines rented studio space wherever he could find the right price. One such place was a storefront that artist Merton D. Simpson (1928–2013) used for storage. Hines moved things around to make room to paint. "It was great space but it was in the bowery so there were drunks sleeping on the stoop and you would have to move them a little to get in," Fisher said. "One day Fel had an appointment with someone important, but they saw the drunks and went away."
Hines painted during every spare moment; he opened his first solo exhibition on February 19, 1951, at Creative Gallery, located at 18 East Fifty-Seventh Street. Mary Cole wrote in Arts Digest, "In his recent paintings, S. Felrath of New York, has experimented with many kinds of expression — from exotic figures to non-objective forms. At one pole is 'Missa Solemnis,' in which five dark figures with wide eyes and dressed in brilliant colors are portrayed against the gray Gothic arches of a church. At the other is 'Opus I,' the most formally worked out painting in the show and depending on the relationship between colored forms to a central area of white. In all of the paintings, Felrath has used pure, bright pigment as the chief component."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Life and Art of Felrath Hines"
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Copyright © 2018 Rachel Berenson Perry.
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