joyful chaos

In 1949, just as the art world’s center of gravity was shifting from Europe to the U.S., Shirley Jaffe went in the opposite direction, on a ship bound from New York to Paris. The move might seem ill-timed, but it proved pivotal to Jaffe’s eventual career as a painter. While for decades she got less recognition than she might have had she remained in New York, the transatlantic translation ended up allowing her to develop her vision away from the domineering influence of the New York School. Jaffe remained in Paris for the rest of her long life, quietly and continuously working on her own unique style of abstraction, still active as an artist at the time of her death at 92 in 2016.

Jaffe’s decision to become an expatriate wasn’t made in a mood of outrage or rejection of America, as with some other artists. As she recalled in an interview, she and her husband, Irving Jaffe, one evening “suddenly decided to investigate what ship would be leaving for France and then proceeded to make