Tom Wesselmann © Harvey Stein
After moving to New York in the late 1960s to attend Columbia Graduate School of Business, Harvey Stein grew disenchanted with the corporate world and decided to pursue a career in photography. Entranced by the various art scenes in Soho, the East Village, Midtown, and the Upper East Side, Stein began to develop relationships with various artists, and decided to embark upon a project to learn about how they lived and created, and what inspired them to work, in order to see what lessons he could discern for his own burgeoning practice.
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Between 1980 and 1985, Stein made the rounds, photographing and interviewing more than 165 New York artists for his project, Artists Observed, which was published the following year by Abrams. Featuring Christo, John Cage, Lee Krasner, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Bourgeois, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, and Marisol, Artists Observed is filled with bon mots from some of the most luminous artists of the era. Here, Stein shares his memories of these iconic encounters, along with the wisdom those artists offered him for the book.
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Keith Haring, 1982 © Harvey Stein