John Russell and his wife, Rosamond Bernier
Photograph by
Trish Lewis
The last time I saw John Russell, the former NY Times art critic who died Saturday at 89, he looked frail, supported by his wife Rosamond Bernier, the arts writer and cultural raconteur, at the opening of the expanded Taniguchi-designed Museum of Modern Art. I asked him what he thought and, of course, he gave his approval. Ever the constructive force for encouraging creative endeavors and audience interest, he was not one to rain on artworld parades.
The Russell-Bernier wedding occurred in 1975 at Philip Johnson‘s Glass House, to which the couple merrily returned (see photo) in June 2007 for the Inaugural Gala Picnic celebrating the opening of the house to the public.
Russell and Hilton Kramer were the good cop, bad cop of Times art criticism. Hilton, frequently acerbic, if not vitriolic, was the more riveting read. John, erudite and even-tempered, almost always made nice. The Times obit, written by the paper’s former culture writer, restaurant reviewer, book critic, and now obituary writer, William Grimes, quotes Russell explaining his good will towards the artworld and artists:
I do not see my role as primarily punitive….It has never seemed to me much of an ambition to go though life snarling and spewing.
Once in a while, though, he was a bit too nice, as in his gullible endorsement of the so-called Michelangelo of Fifth Avenue. The ambitious attribution’s 1996 debut in a front-page article by Russell, along with the support of several scholars, gave traction for a while to the notion that an early lost work by the great Italian Renaissance sculptor had been hiding in plan sight just a stone’s throw from the Metropolitan Museum, in the lobby of the mansion that houses the cultural offices of the French Embassy.
It’s too bad that the Times’ farewell couldn’t have included a personal appreciation by an art critic who had known Russell well and had worked with him closely. Perhaps that will soon be forthcoming.