Fairfield Porter

Whitehead and Benton taught him. Meeting his friend Willem de Kooning made him realise that the art theory he’d been taught wasn’t deep (Elaine de Kooning recommended him for his first job writing criticism.) He met Marin through a neighbour, and bought paintings by Marin from Stieglitz, to whom he introduced his photographer brother Eliot. Katz and Rivers were among the artists he knew and continued to learn from. Padgett, Koch, O’Hara, Guest, Rexroth, Ashbery and Schuyler were among his poet friends: Schuyler, after a brief fling, becoming the Porters’ house-guest for over a decade, and a lifelong friend.