Buffie Johnson had quite the life.

[swag]

She died at age 94 on August 11.

From her obituary in today's NYT:

Ms. Johnson, who began showing her paintings in the 1930’s, continued to exhibit until the end of her life. In 2002, in honor of her 90th birthday, she was the subject of a one-woman show at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York. Last year, the gallery featured her work as part of its group exhibition “Betty Parsons and the Women.”

A woman of independent means, Ms. Johnson was by all accounts a woman of sociable temperament, and her life was intertwined with those of some of the 20th century’s leading artists, writers and performers. Over the years, she befriended, socialized with or otherwise brushed up against a cast of luminaries including Paul and Jane Bowles, Truman Capote, Willem de Kooning, Lawrence Durrell, Greta Garbo, Patricia Highsmith, Gene Krupa, Gypsy Rose Lee, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Gore Vidal and Andy Warhol.

In her work, Ms. Johnson was concerned with the intersection of spiritualism, myth and symbol. Deeply influenced by the psychiatrist Carl Jung, whom she also befriended, she wrote “Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals,” published by Harper & Row in 1988.

Buffie Johnson was born in New York City on Feb. 20, 1912. After studying at the University of California, Los Angeles, she embarked for Europe, where she trained with the noted painters Francis Picabia and Stanley William Hayter. In 1943, she was included in an exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s New York gallery, Art of This Century, which featured the work of 31 women.
. . .


- Karl Bissinger -
Buffie Johnson at Cafe Nicholson in Manhattan in 1949 with some of her friends. From left are the ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, the novelist Donald Windham, Ms. Johnson, Tennessee Willams and Gore Vidal.

[LostinVA]

1. You can see the resemblance between Vidal and Al Gore in that photo

I've never really seen the family resemblance until now. Hmmm....

[Blue-Jay]

4. I believe that any relationship between the two is a myth.

from: http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/politics.html

Vidal has long asserted that he's related to family of Al Gore, the former senator, former vice president and, if popular votes counted, 42nd president. Vidal's grandfather once wrote that he and Al Gore's father were seventh cousins, making Gore Vidal and Al Gore - well, some level of ordinal cousins or another. But a genealogist has constructed a very thorough genealogy of the family of Al Gore and finds no traceable relationship between Al Gore and Gore Vidal. The last three paragraphs of this genealogical chart discusses the matter. There's also another genealogist who asserts that his research can find no crossing between the two families whose name each happens to be Gore.

[wildhorses]

2. hey swag, is there any way you can post some of her work?

:loveya:

[swag]

5. I'll try to come up with some links to images that span her various

stylistic shifts after I get home from drinking beer with the dems.

For now, I can't resist posting this 1943 Edward Weston portrait of the artist:

[wildhorses]

6. thanks for that!! it will have to hold me over until you get home

have fun:toast:

[flamingyouth]

3. Great article

As a sidenote, even though it may sound weird, I enjoy reading obituaries, especially in the NYT, as they always have so many interesting ones.