“A Blossoming of the Spirit”: William Carlos Williams, Emanuel Romano, and the Authenticity of Artistic Expression

Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, William Carlos Williams was close to the center of the New York School of painters, yet this geographic proximity did not result in a great deal of interaction with this younger generation of artists.¹ He did briefly correspond with Robert Motherwell and notably references him in “The American Spirit in Art” (1951). He never met Jackson Pollock. However, he does reference the famed painter in several writings, most memorably in Paterson, Book V. To my knowledge, he never referenced the works of important artists like Franz Kline or David Smith. At this time when American artists were emerging as central figures in the avant-garde, Williams was developing a close personal relationship with the Italian born painter Emanuel Romano, son of famed Jewish sculptor Henryk (Enrico) Glicenstein. The relationship started with Romano painting Williams’s portrait, yet it also resulted in Williams writing “The Portrait” (1951) and “The Broken Vase” (1957). Besides their commentary on Romano’s artistry, these essays and his interaction with the painter reveal Williams’s continuing interest in artistic experimentation and also his uncertainty about its meaning and direction within the contemporary art scene.

Some past critical explorations of Williams’s Romano essays have viewed them amid a broader art study. For instance, Henry Sayre briefly references “The Broken Vase” in The Visual Text of William Carlos Williams for what the essay says about Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism. In William Carlos Williams and the Maternal Muse, Kerry Driscoll convincingly argues that “The Portrait” is not so much a review of Romano’s art as it is an expression of Williams’s thoughts regarding portrait painting and “the complex relation which exists between a painter and his subject [ . . . ].” (16). She suggests that Williams does this for “two strategic reasons.” The first is that such an approach enables him to offer a more “honest” assessment of Romano’s work “without exaggerating its importance” (16). The other reason, according to Driscoll, concerns his mother’s proclivity for portrait painting and his then recent discovery of three medals that she earned at L ‘Ecole des Arts Industrielle. Such a reading offers a sound foundation for my own exploration of the essays, particularly for examining Williams’s broader thoughts about art. For my purposes, though, a closer look at the biographical, specifically Williams and Romano’s friendship, is essential for clarifying his thoughts about Romano’s work, as well as his thoughts about contemporary artistic trends.

To begin a discussion of Romano, it is necessary to discuss briefly his artistic heritage. Romano’s father was a well-respected sculptor of Polish origins who studied, according to historian ?ucja Pawlicka Nowak, at the Munich Academy and eventually won the Prix de Rome twice for his works Arion and After Work It is Good to Rest. At the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, his Cain and Abel earned a silver medal. According to an extended obituary in the New York Times, Glicenstein was “said to be the only sculptor to have exhibited jointly with Auguste Rodin” (23). He created busts of several famous figures, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Pope Pius XI, and Mussolini. Regarding Mussolini, Glicenstein told in an interview how the infamous dictator disliked cold steel and when having his head measured with compasses, stood up and shouted, “Corpo di Bacco!” Ultimately, a conflict with Mussolini triggered Glicenstein’s departure for the United States in 1927 (Zigal 75).

When he was in Rome in 1897, Glicenstein’s son, Emanuel Romano Glicenstein, was born. According to Charlotte Snyder Sholod, an Italian clerk suggested “Romano” as a name that would offer the child a symbolic connection to his birthplace (15), and upon his emergence as an artist, Romano used this middle name as a way of earning acclaim on his own merits rather than exploiting his father’s reputation. During his lifetime, Romano did garner artistic recognition and exhibited at several notable museums, including the Whitney Museum. Besides his portrait of Williams, Romano created portraits of Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and André Gide...