Artworks

The year 1963 is the last full year in which Avery worked, which might lead one to ponder the expression of ‘lateness’ in Avery’s work, which manifests differently in artists’ work when it manifests at all: some artists just peter out, stop working; and some go on repeating themselves. Edward Said wrote of late style as displaying ‘intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction.’ This seems to give one a key to Avery’s late paintings. Although Avery had always painted quickly, brevity – often a mark of late style – may here be aligned with practical necessity. We know that brief moments of intensity, of which paintings such as Avery Feeling Wild and Avery Feeling Crazy, 1962, are the result, were interspersed with periods during which the artist was unable to work. Whether Avery titled these most candid of self-portraits himself, or if Sally titled them at a later date, is unclear. Sally Michel Avery, in a 1967 interview, says: ‘I remember one day a dealer came to pick out some paintings and we were in storeroom looking at them and he [Avery] was feeling very bad. But we were in the storeroom about an hour and when we came out he had painted a picture while we were in there. A self-portrait of Avery Feeling Old or something like that. It was fascinating. It was a small painting but absolutely fascinating. And he had all the sort of terror and despair in this face. Though it had nothing realistic about it. It was just a terrific picture… I remember one day, one afternoon, he felt very, very bad. So badly that he asked me to call the doctor. I called the doctor. The doctor came and as he came in he looked into the studio and he saw this big painting on the easel — it was a 30 x 40 and he said, “God that’s beautiful. When did Milton do that?” And I said, “He did that this morning.” And it was true, he had done that that same morning. So that’s the way he was.’ Sally Michel Avery interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler (Archives of American Art, 1967)