A Footprint We Leave Behind
From early adversity as a student Paul Gottlieb '56 created a masterpiece of a career
My observation is that most people who succeed at anything encounter adversity of some kind and learn to transcend it," says Paul Gottlieb '56, museum trustee, president, publisher, chief executive officer, editor-in-chief of publishing house Harry N. Abrams Inc., and producer of a best-selling art catalog. Early adversity came while he was at Swarthmore, when a "paralyzingly good time" in pursuit of wine and women led to bad grades, a summons to the dean, and dismissal for one semester from the College. He returned to graduate with a major in political science. "Having experienced early failure," he says, "yet surviving and transcending that point of adversity, I gained strength and self-confidence."
Forty years later, with a career and reputation in the art world that are as colorful and impressive as any masterpiece, Gottlieb was the expert called to be on the spot when, in 1994, a collection of priceless paintings was brought out of hiding at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
With a father born in St. Petersburg and a mother from Ukraine, Gottlieb spent his New York childhood steeped in Russian culture and acquired native fluency in both Russian and English. His sensitivity to art also grew out of his background, where "a love of art, music, literature, and culture were part of the deal." All his life Gottlieb has been soaking up art history, visiting exhibitions and museums all over the world.
His actual career in the publishing world began in 1956 at the William Morris Agency in New York City, where he served as a literary agent. In 1959 he was one of a number of young bilingual Americans chosen to act as a guide and interpreter at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, the launching event of a cultural agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States. The State Department recalled him to Moscow in 1961 to serve again as interpreter, as the cultural exchanges between the superpowers continued. After holding a string of executive positions at the American Heritage Publishing Company, founding the American branch of the British Thames and Hudson Company, and running his own consulting firm, he joined Abrams as editor-in-chief in January 1980, taking over later that year as its president and publisher.
Abrams produces a list of titles, half of which is devoted to art and half to other illustrated subjects. The revelation in St. Petersburg was not Gottlieb's first experience of seeing hitherto undisclosed art. The excitement is still audible in his voice as he tells of a call he received 11 years ago from a graphic art publisher in Florida, who was talking to "someone who had just bought from Andrew Wyeth 240 works all about one woman." The buyer was Leonard Andrews, the pictures the famous "Helga" series, created in secret by Wyeth between 1970 and 1985 and stashed away until he revealed their existence in a 1985 interview. Gottlieb arranged to meet with Andrews to see color transparencies of the pictures. He said: "When you see something that's really unique, then the hairs on the back of your head really stand on end. Wyeth is still the most popular living American artist, and when I saw the Helga pictures, the feeling was just amazing." Andrews invited Gottlieb to arrange an exhibition of the pictures. He did so in 1987 in collaboration with J. Carter Brown, then director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The book Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, in which Gottlieb is credited with having "initially called attention to this group of pictures," was published by Abrams and was the first-ever art book to be chosen as a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Gottlieb describes the Hermitage event as another "dazzling experience and one of the most exciting moments in my life." Albert Kostenevich, a senior curator at the State Hermitage Museum, had told Gottlieb in February 1994 that something was afoot there. In July Museum Director Dr. Mikhail Pyotrov-sky informed him of an exhibit of spectacular Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings that had been removed from Germany by Soviet authorities at the end of World War II. He invited Gott-lieb to involve Abrams. Visiting the Hermitage in September, Gottlieb accompanied Kostenevich to an isolated section of the museum "through endless corridors, around corners, up and down staircases, and through long, long galleries," until they reached a room containing 74 paintings-by Monet, Renoir, van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Degas, Pissarro, Matisse, and others-all unframed and being worked on by a conservator. Taken from a bunker in Berlin, where they had been stored for the duration of the war, the paintings were then hidden as war booty in the Soviet Union. Gottlieb was the first person outside the Hermitage staff to see a trove that was to rock the art world once again.
Abrams was commissioned to produce the catalog for the Hermitage exhibit within a fraction of the time normally required to publish such a book. Gottlieb and his staff arranged for the photography, writing, translating the Russian text, editing, retranslating the edited English text back into Russian, design, and printing of a landmark book featuring all 74 works in full color plates and titled, like the exhibition, Hidden Treasures Revealed. Sales are predicted to top 250,000 books by March 1996, when the exhibition closes. It is the second-ever art book to be a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Decades have passed since Paul Gott-lieb was "tossed out of Swarthmore and forced to face reality." His reality is the world of art, and his mission is to make it accessible to the public. As he puts it: "Art is one of the few continuums of the human experience; when you look at all civilizations, each produces art; it's a kind of footprint we leave behind." Judging by the place he has forged for himself in that reality, he must have a pretty large foot.
-Carol Brevart
Community Focus
Newspaper ventures of Peter Bessen '84 bring a focus to minority communities.
Bessen says when the weekly paper first started out it was often able to get stories the mainstream press could not because Community Focus had Spanish-speaking reporters. And, if the larger newspapers did get the story, Community Focus often had a different angle on the news because of the respect it had in the community. Once the newspaper was flourishing, Bessen, who was then serving as general manager, slowly withdrew from the day-to-day production of the newspaper and gave more responsibility to community members. "The people in the community needed to run it independently, and it turned out to be a good long-term decision for me and for the people who live there," he says. "I think the Latino community saw me as an outsider, and my brother offered me an opportunity in a new business."
Bessen's new opportunity was as a software designer for large publishing houses and retail advertisers. The company, Bestinfo, which also employed Mike Ward '76 as its vice president of development and lead programmer, was started in 1986 and was so successful it was bought out by a larger firm in 1992. That same year Bessen put his share of the profits into creating the Philadelphia Business Review, a minority business newspaper, which was to be a forum for African American, Latino, and Asian American professionals and business owners in Philadelphia. The venture for Bessen lasted only one year.
The Ohio native, who now lives in Media, Pa., started the paper with a partner, and he says they learned important lessons from the publishing setback.
"I needed to test the market more than I did. I needed to target my list (of advertisers and readers) more to see how well it would be received. Also, know your partners and what they want," he says.
Bessen's idea to focus his publishing efforts on specific communities was influenced by what he learned in classes at Swarthmore.
"As a sociology major, I took courses that were about communities and the problems communities face. Those classes taught me theoretical thinking rather than being able to plan for a practical career, but they also taught me about the alienation of people on the periphery of society, aspects that sometimes relate to the Puerto Rican community," he says.
Today Bessen works as a senior publishing analyst for various components of TV Guide's publishing system. He helped create the system that is used to write copy for the magazine and developed tools to version advertising for network advertisers who buy ad space in all 120 of TV Guide's editions. But while his job, wife, and new baby son keep his life full, he has not ruled out other publishing ventures.
"I've considered trying to expand Community Focus to other Hispanic communities around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Other communities are not as concentrated as the one in Philadelphia," Bessen says. "I've never wanted to be a big publisher, but I have wanted to be an effective small publisher."
-Audree Penner
Bulletin Home Page /
Swarthmore College /
Swarthmore College. All rights reserved. 1996