Joe Walentini / Writing  

A Conversation with Philip Pavia
From: Abstract Art Online, January 2001, Vol III, Issue 5

Phillip Pavia was an extremely active member of the Abstract Expressionists from their inception right on through to the 1960s. During the war years, the Waldorf Cafeteria on the corner of 8th street and 6th avenue became a convenient meeting place for those artists. As Renoir once did with the Impressionists, Pavia stoked the fires of contention and kept the feuding white hot among the group. The Waldorf group eventually became the nucleus of the 8th Street Club, which started in the fall of 1948 with an Homage to Arshile Gorky.

With the influx of returning G.I. artists Pavia eventually found it very difficult to contain the ever increasing, squabbling group in a cafeteria setting. In 1948 he organized the Club with a charter and voting members that included Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov, Milton Resnick and others. In a few months the Club also came to include Harold Rosenberg, Phillip Guston, Ad Reinhardt, Elaine de Kooning, Pearl Fine, Mercedes Matter, Philip and others.

Pavia was the chief panel maker for seven years and, according to Thomas B. Hess from a 1961 Kootz gallery catalog: “...He was the tutelary host until 1956. He arranged every Friday Night, symposia, parties, enthusiastic schism, revolution and vanguard skirmishes. A prime mover in the group and anti-group activities.”

Pavia resigned from the Club in 1956 to publish It is magazine where he was the sole editor and publisher. His intention for the magazine was for it to become an extension of Club ideas. In this he succeeded all to well as It is attracted all attacks against Abstract Expressionism. In 1960 he returned to making sculpture.

I met Philip Pavia through his wife Natalie Edgar whose work was profiled on Abstract Art Online last April. I was eager to discuss the magazine with him since, in some ways, I discovered parallels between it and Abstract Art Online. I found Philip to be gregarious and generous with his ideas, thoughts and especially with the oral history of those times. We recently got together to discuss the origins of It is.

Philip Pavia - Photo by Peter Bellamy

Joe Walentini: Can you give me a sense of the ambience of the times from which It is came into being?

Philip Pavia: Before and during the war [WW II] a few of us, Bill Dekooning, Franz Kline and myself began to meet informally at the Waldorf Cafeteria on 8th street. Two senior painters dominated the cafeteria: Aristo Kaldis and Landis Lewitin. After the war more people came and the group got bigger and bigger. We all lived on 10th street - I’ve lived within 2 to 3 blocks of here since I was 17.

JW: Was there anything special about 10th Street or this area in general?

PP: We couldn’t live in Brownstones and paint and here, there were nice studios and lofts, some with skylights. The artists worked here as the years went by but then they started getting apartments for their families. But they always kept their studios; Bill Dekooning kept a studio on 10th street for 20 years.