“Every true publisher builds up, knowingly or otherwise, a single book consisting of the all the books he publishes.”
P ublishing is a lot like art collecting. The publisher acquires stories, titles, authors, and literary content with themes that are of personal interest as well as, hopefully, having a substantial appeal to a wider audience. As the late Milan-based writer and publisher Roberto Calasso has said, the true publisher builds up over the years a single book that reflects his or her lifelong interests and inspirations. The publishing house would thereby acquire a specific quality and character, an individual expression in an almost autobiographical manner. This feature is especially evident in the case of the publisher and art collector known for producing top-notch art and illustrated books, Robert E. Abrams (widely known as Bob), son of the renowned artbook publisher Harry N. Abrams.
Dropping out of school in 7th Grade to help support the family shoe business, Harry went on to establish one of the world’s most acclaimed art-book publishers, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. He sold the company in 1966, but stayed on for some years as chairman and CEO. In 1976, after leaving the eponymous firm he had founded, Harry co-founded with his son Bob the equally prestigious art-book publisher, Abbeville Press in 1977. Named after a London street where Bob’s brother Michael lived at the time (and as Harry pointed out, “Abb” had the advantage by coming before “Abr” in the phone book), the new company produced lavish volumes, such as The Vatican Frescoes of Michelangelo (1980), and a facsimile of Audubon’s Birds of America (1981). While periodically producing extravagant volumes as these, the company’s principal aim was to make the highest quality art books available to all, and particularly to those who may not have had the advantage, opportunity, or privilege of visiting museums like the Louvre, the Prado, or the Tate Gallery, London. Abbeville Press, still in operation today, has kept up the tradition of luxuriously illustrated art books, such as the monograph, Larry Poons (2023), to which I contributed an essay. Inheriting a love of art and art collecting from his father, Harry, Bob Abrams amassed an art collection over the years that has a singular, extraordinary character built upon multifarious visual and conceptual ideas about art and a firm belief in the sometimes underrecognized central position that visual art holds in American culture.
The collection contains major works by American artists of the twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Robert Indiana, Frank Stella, Alex Katz, George Segal, and Helen Frankenthaler, a number of whom were subjects of Abrams monographs. It also contains fine examples by artists such as Marisol, Ray Johnson, Bob Thompson, Larry Bell, Lucas Samaras, and David Simpson, plus European and Latin American greats such as Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu, Chryssa, Jesús Rafael Soto, Claudio Bravo, and Fernando Botero.
Andy Warhol, Mechanical (Andy Warhol photobooth self-portrait with Mike and Bob Abrams photobooth portraits), circa 1964. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.3.5391. Image © Courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum. Art © 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Two Bob and Mike Abrams paintings by Andy Warhol in the Abrams family home. Art © 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
International in scope, the collection is diverse and eclectic. It is also highly marketable, certainly, but, according to Bob’s widow, Cynthia Vance-Abrams, it was uncalculatedly so. “Bob inherited a love of art and collecting from his father, Harry”, Vance-Abrams told me in a recent phone conversation. “Bob always said that he and his father collected art without a concern for boundaries—the range and diversity of the collection is not a performative act.” There were no aesthetic boundaries—in terms of abstraction versus figuration, for instance, nor gender, racial or nationalistic guidelines for acquisition. The only unifying factor was in terms of quality, and for the artwork to have a meaningful, personal significance. Bob Abrams knew personally many of the artists whose works he collected, and was lifelong friends with several. Bob’s parents, Harry and Nina, frequently entertained artists for lunch or dinner. A well-known family story goes back to the early 1960’s, when Andy Warhol was among those seated around the large, round dining room table, and he gathered up Bob and his brother Mike because he wanted to make a gift for them. Cynthia shares, “The story goes that they took a taxi to Times Square, and Andy put the boys in a photo booth and started feeding it quarters. Looking at the strips as they dropped from the slot, he just saw a pair of teenagers goofing around, so on the last quarter, Andy asked them to do a few ‘serious’ poses.” The result was three remarkable and haunting 20 by 16 inch canvases of the brothers, which remain cherished by the family.
When she met her husband, over thirty years ago, Vance-Abrams knew she was entering “a great family story, and a love story” —a familial love of art that has carried over from their father, Harry to his sons Bob and Michael, and to Bob’s five children including Bob and Cynthia’s son, Nathaniel, who grew up surrounded by art. An actress with a theater background when she met Bob, Cynthia was attuned to the creative instinct and the passionate appreciation for visual art that was a principal attribute of the Abrams family. Long before she met Bob, she would wander into the Art Students League in New York with a sketch pad and charcoals under her arm, just as Harry N. Abrams had done decades before. She realized that it was not her talent but found the activity meditative and relaxing, as she recalls Bob later sharing with her: “Harry realized that being a visual artist was not his calling either! Fortunately for all lovers of art, Harry turned to the path that would lead him to publishing about it instead.”
“Collaborating on a home for Bob and Cynthia and their art has been the high point of my career as an architect. Bob’s keen publisher’s eyes have educated me over the decades as we’ve focused together on various architectural projects, the greatest of which is their “Art Barn.” The structure’s relation to its promontory, its soaring interior spaces with posts and beams, its planar expanses for big important canvases, are the manifestations of years of original thought, my iterative drawing, their perspicacity, and our generous time together just enjoying the process of creation with Cynthia, Bob, and Nate.”
The Abrams home was filled—floor to ceiling—with art. Vance-Abrams recalls that her husband would walk around the house with their infant son his shoulder and calm him by drawing his attention to the colors and shapes of individual pieces. On display in one area of the house was George Segal’s classic Man Leaving a Bus (1967), featuring a life-size white plaster figure emerging from the iconic metal frame of a yellow school bus, which is integral to the sculpture. In another area, Marisol’s similarly imaginative and striking The Bicycle Race (1962-63) features two large, highly stylized wood figures mounted on playfully constructed bikes. In contrast with these figurative pieces, Richard Anuszkiewicz’s rigorously abstract painting Viridian Sanctuary (1965), with bright orange-red and green lines and geometric forms pulsate on the wall, a prime example of Op Art. Isamu Noguchi’s marble Study for Energy Void (1971), with its topological design and infinite structure, and Christo’s Package on Luggage Rack (1963-90), could instill a sense of wonder in any youth—or any adult, for that matter. Also, at once challenging and delightful, Robert Indiana’s proto-Pop- art painting Ballyhoo (1961) offers an arresting fusion of bold, hard-edge geometric shapes and imposing text that was formally and conceptually far ahead of its time.
“One of the most fun times at home,” Vance-Abrams recounted, “was when we would rotate works in the collection and hang new pieces.” She very much enjoys the process of making new arrangements of the works, and creating surprising correspondences between and among the pieces. These reinstallations of artworks by artists with wildly dissimilar mediums and imagery would spark new visual ideas and unforeseen thematic relationships that were—and are—thrilling. Eventually, what initially seemed like a disparate or incongruous array of works would reveal itself to be surprisingly cohesive, and part of an expansive singular vision. “I’ve thought deeply about my part in the story,” Cynthia told me, “and I suppose as it’s steward, I see this as an opportunity to celebrate my husband’s life and passion, to tell this love story, and invite new stewards to be a part of it.” Without a didactic aim, Vance-Abrams clearly conveyed to me that a deeply felt reverence for art is a hallmark of the Abrams family. As a publisher and art collector, Robert E. Abrams certainly created a singular book, an autobiographical story told through art that truly reflects a boundary-less impulse and a boundless mind.
TEXT © DAVID EBONY 2024
