Existing comment:
Mercedes Matter, 1913-2001
Philip Guston, 1913-1980
The photographer John Cohen frequented the Cedar Tavern on a regular basis, finding the "concentration of good painters" to be "intense." Photographing the who's who of the 1950s American art world, he trained his camera on the painters Mercedes Matter and Philip Guston, seen here at one of the bar's booths. Guston had come to national prominence in the 1930s as a muralist for the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project.
In the 1950s, while living in New York City, he began to embrace Abstract Expressionism and moved in circles with the painters Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. Matter, also a regular at the bar, was a close friend of Guston's. When this photograph was taken, she had already forged a career as a painter and later founded the New York Studio School, in 1964.
John Cohen, c 1955 |