Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein, 1950
Oil on canvas
Kirstein sat for this portrait while he was in London for a New York City Ballet performance at Covent Garden and to organize the exhibition Symbolic Realism in American Painting: 1940-1950 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Portrait of a Woman, 1949
Oil on canvas
George Platt Lynes, 1935
Coloured ink on paper
Lincoln Kirstein, c. 1931
Gelatin silver print
Designs for the ballet Filling Station, 1937
Designs for the ballet Filling Station, 1937
Designs for the ballet Filling Station, 1937
Designs for the ballet Filling Station, 1937
Designs for the ballet Filling Station, 1937
Costume designs for the ballet Pocahontas, c. 1936
Costume design for the ballet Billy the Kid, 1938
“I have a live eye,” proclaimed Lincoln Kirstein, signaling his wide-ranging vision. Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern explored this polymath’s sweeping contributions to American cultural life in the 1930s and ’40s. Best known for cofounding New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet with George Balanchine, Kirstein (1907–1996), a writer, critic, curator, impresario, and tastemaker, was also a key figure in MoMA’s early history. With his prescient belief in the role of dance within the museum, his championing of figuration in the face of prevailing abstraction, and his position at the center of a New York network of queer artists, intimates, and collaborators, Kirstein’s impact remains profoundly resonant today. [source: MoMA]
Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern
MoMA, Mar-Jun 2019
March 15th, 2019
The Humble Fabulist 