Interview of Annita Delano

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 21, 1971

MINK: I thought to begin with this afternoon, Annita, we would discuss your early life. To begin with, when were you born?

DELANO: Well, that was quite a long time ago. October 2, 1894 in Hueneme, California.

MINK: How long had your mother and father lived in Hueneme?

DELANO: They didn't live there; they were just down on a fishing trip. They had wonderful fishing there off of the wharf (it wasn't a town; it was just a few houses), and they rented a little house just to have a picnic. And I just came; that's all.

MINK: You came unexpectedly.

DELANO: Probably sooner than they expected. Anyway, I was born there. They really lived in Saticoy, which, again, was just a small place. At that time, any of those places around Ventura County could have gone on and might have enlarged and might have become a large town, but Saticoy didn't develop. It's just more or less part of the orchards around there at this time. But the time my father wanted to go there, they were developing lemons and crops of that nature and walnuts, and so a young man could just get a job in the farms around there.

MINK: Is that how he happened to go?

DELANO: That's how he happened to go there. Beyond that, he had bees. He always kept an apiary, and there were good places to have your bees in those hills roundabout. When he didn't have to work on the bees and take care of them, he could get some money some other way.

MINK: Your father's full name was?

DELANO: Thomas Abisha Delano.

MINK: And your mother's full maiden name?

DELANO: Margarita M. Hefner. A German name.

MINK: The Delanos date back in California history, and many of them were sea captains.

DELANO: Yes, that's true. Yes, they were. My grandfather came as a young boy only sixteen years old with his father, who was Charles Abisha Delano and was a captain. He — that is, my great-grandfather — had a vessel which came several times to California around the [Cape] Horn. He brought my grandfather with him in 1849, and both of them searched for gold. After they landed in San Francisco, they took a little boat up the Sacramento River and started to find gold, just as many other people did.

MINK: Of course, by the time you came along, they were either very old or dead.

DELANO: Yes and no. I knew my grandfather — not very well, but I visited in the house he built in the Bouquet Canyon. They called it the East Canyon at that time. It was actually right at the mouth of the Bouquet Canyon, northeast of Saugus, California.

MINK: This was a farm?

DELANO: Yes, they called it a rancho, and they built an adobe house there. Originally he built a New England- type house in what they called the Pueblo of Los Angeles after he married his wife.

MINK: Whose name was?

DELANO: Her name was Soledad P. Vejar.

MINK: She was of Mexican descent.

DELANO: Well, Spanish, from Mexico. Actually, her father, Juan Vejar, and his two brothers, Ricardo and Ramon Vejar, were born in San Diego just at the beginning of the time the Mexicans were coming up to, or were immigrating here to, California.

MINK: From the time that your father was very young, he grew up in Los Angeles?

DELANO: Yes, he went to the first school there in los Angeles. I think they called it the Spring Street School. They lived in the New England-type house that my grandfather Delano built. It was a two-story house. I'd have to look up the street, but it would seem to me it was on San Pedro and Seventh. They had pear orchards and vineyards round about the place, and the children that were born there went to the Spring Street School.

MINK: And so your father, during all the time that he was growing up and then later, was involved in farming?

DELANO: Yes, working with his own father: that is, they lived in Los Angeles and made a living in different ways. Then they had a smallpox scare, and lots of people felt they could make a better living if they would take up farming. So they went out into the hills someplace. Lots of them left at that time, or sometimes they kept two places going. So my grandfather went up near the top of the San Francisquito Canyon, and built an adobe in there, and then built the roads leading down to the San Francisquito Canyon. And the stage stations came through that road, the earliest stations going to San Francisco back and forth. They maintained a station in that adobe house. I don't know just how long--I think maybe over a year or two--they lived in that place, and then they decided to build a bigger place and go to ranching and have a stage station farther down. So they went on farther down to the mouth — well, actually to the foot of the mountains at the place called Castaic.

MINK: Castaic Junction, as it's called?

DELANO: Yes, Castaic Junction. But it was in the mouth of one of those canyons near the highway now.

MINK: That would be near where the present Sheriff's Honor Farm is, then?

DELANO: Yes, they had all of that land. They took out homesteads and fanned land all around there. And they built an adobe there, too; some children were born there. I don't know how long they maintained that place, but I guess if you're going to have a homestead you have to maintain than a certain length of time. Then his idea was to take out more homesteads as the boys got older. So they got adjacent pieces of land, built another adobe, and this one was quite large — I remember going to that one at the foot of the Bouquet Canyon.

MINK: So your father was involved in this enterprise and grew up more as a rancher.

DELANO: As a rancher with his father.

MINK: I see. How was it then that he decided to come to Saticoy?

DELANO: Well, now, there were numbers of years in which he and his older and younger brothers, if they were old enough, worked at everything there was to do on that ranch near Saugus. They farmed; they bought farming implements and farmed for other people; and they had their own vegetable garden and orchards. They raised cattle and everything to maintain a place like that, and developed their own water, and even some mining — they took out a mining claim.

MINK: What kind of mining were they doing?

DELANO: Gold. I have the papers on that. I don't know how much gold they took out, but they did do that. And I don't know if at one time my grandfather wanted to take out a claim in the borax mines, too. And I think there's a story about that, but I don't know too much about it. Anyhow, my father was just one of the many sons.

MINK: How many sons do you remember there were in that family?

DELANO: Charles, Will, Fred, my father Thomas, their sister Mary, Frank and George all lived and I knew them, but they had about six other children that died in one week with some sort of plague. They called it German measles, but nobody knows; they didn't have a doctor. They all died within a week's time. Then when my father, who helped his father with all his other brothers — and even to the point where they couldn't go to school very much after they left the main pueblo.... They learned to do all kinds of things. They made wagons; they kept the harness in shape; they made the houses; they dug wells and maintained them — self-sufficient.

MINK: Totally self-sufficient.

DELANO: Yes. And sort of a New England thing from the Delanos, you see. They were not only shipmen or had ships--it seemed like there were a lot of them that had ships — but they also were farmers back there in New England, because some of the old letters written out to the family here complain about their not going back to New England and "Why was it?" Well, here they were trying to make a living out of these sort of desert-like hills that we have here.

MINK: And how was it that your father decided to go over to Saticoy?

DELANO: Well, he had bees when he was a young man before he was married, and he had his own homestead. He had to build a house on it and live in it as anybody did in those days. I think they had certain rules about having a homestead and proving up on it. So he had an apiary and sold honey from there as a young man before he married. Then when he did marry, he heard that there were good places for bees in Ventura County, so they hauled the bees up that way and settled at Saticoy. He had a brother-in-law who had worked for his father Delano, and he married — well, he married my aunt, my father's sister. And he had bees also, so that the two of them were sort of companions and decided to go to Saticoy. That's why. They worked together more or less.

MINK: Then you grew up in Saticoy and attended the schools there?

DELANO: No, no, because they moved around with the bees. The weather wasn't very good sometimes — they'd have dry years and the bees wouldn't make honey. And they even moved up to Bakersfield at one time with the bees. I remember that journey. That was something.

MINK: How did you go?

DELANO: We went on a big wagon, and most of the furniture was piled on that. There was a second smaller wagon. My mother baked a lot of bread and put it in a great big tin can, a sort of a squarish can--I've never seen one like it since, but I can remember that with the good fresh bread in it--to last a week. We went on up over those mountains around through Tehachapi. This was a terrible road to get up into Bakersfield--the horses and everything they had, the apiary. This other man who had married my aunt--that is, Frank Teachout--he was up there, too, with his bees. They thought they'd make a lot of honey up there because there were new settlements and orchards going in. That didn't last too long, and so they came on back to Newhall and found places for the bees in the hills around Newhall. Then I was getting old enough to go to school, so they thought, "Now we'll have to move to Los Angeles because Annita's old enough to go to school."

MINK: Were you the first?

DELANO: I was the oldest of the children.

MINK: The oldest of the family.

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Maybe right now it would be good to say how many others.

DELANO: There were five of us altogether there. All of them were born in Saticoy except me. I was born in Hueneme. I had one brother and three sisters.

MINK: So you were in Newhall, and you were getting old enough to go to school.

DELANO: Yes. They weren't actually in the town of Newhall. They traded there in that famous old store called Campton's where his father and my grandfather had traded for so many years. Yes, he had bees and established an apiary there. Then they decided to come to Los Angeles. Now, there was just one road through those hills near Newhall, and my grandfather built that. He was the roadmaster and built that cut. I think Beals had something to do with it, too. Anyhow, I have the papers on how he supplied the workers for making those roads and have that little map that shows where they made some of the roads in through there. We had to come over that steep wagon road with all our belongings again. We had a couple of wagons, everything piled on them, and they had to have big blocks on wheels to keep the whole thing from going down too fast and running over the horses. I can remember that as a child. At least it seemed to me it was dangerous. They finally got on down to San Fernando and then down on what they called the San Fernando Road. It is still called that, isn't it?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: We stopped to stay all night at Sam Hunter's place. Sam Hunter's wife — that is Sam Hunter, Sr. — was my mother's aunt. So we stopped there. They had a nice big house at the turn of the road, and it stood out in those days because they owned all the property around there. The Hunters were meat people. They had packing houses in there on Tropico Road — I think it was on Tropico Road — in those old days. Anyhow, I can remember camping, if you please, back of this house on the edge of the Los Angeles River, and it was running smooth and clear — just beautiful, lots of watercress, a lovely place to camp.

MINK: And how long did you stay there?

DELANO: Just one night?

DELANO: My father had gone down to investigate to find a place where we could rent a little house to get started, to find out whether we wanted to stay. We took a little house around the bend of those hills. I just don't know what street it's on, but I remember it was below Jim Jeffries' s — the prizefighter's--home up in those hills. It was in there close to Sycamore Grove, maybe not that far out but somewhere in that region.

MINK: Near Arroyo Seco, then?

DELANO: Yes, it was, the avenue--I'd have to get a map — Avenue 28.

MINK: Somewhere in the Highland Park area.

DELANO: Highland Park. That's what you call it. They didn't call it that then because there were just a few houses. We only stayed there one semester, then my father bought a place on Sierra Street, which is now a ghetto. It ' s a run-down place called Happy Valley now. But in those days there were little farms--oh, five or six acres. This appealed to him, so he bought this place from a man named Riddick. We stayed there most of the time that I was in grammar school. In fact, I went to the same grammar school all the time; that was the Gates Street School in East Los Angeles.

MINK: These were mostly farmers, then?

DELANO: Just farmers in through there.

MINK: Some merchants?

DELANO: Well, yes. In fact, the Los Angeles mayor when I was a child--[Reuben Wiser] Dromgold was his name, I believe — just lived a few blocks from where we lived. There were some very nice houses along on what they called Downey Avenue and is now North Broadway. But it was called Downey in those days. And then the Woolwines lived pretty close to us — Martha Woolwine was a girl who went to school when I did, at this same school — and I think Woolwine had a lot to with the early business of Los Angeles. I don't know whether he was a supervisor or what, but it was quite a noted family. You had no idea that it would ever become a place like it is now.

MINK: How big a school was the Gates Street School?

DELANO: Well, I was thinking of the principal. We called her Old Lady Rat's-tail. [laughter] Isn't that awful? Because she wore a pleated skirt that was long, and she carried a big bunch of keys on her belt, and her hair was frizzled — everything as children we thought we didn't like. And she strapped the children unmercifully. You could hear them screaming in her office. Oh, that's all gone out of the schools.

MINK: A lot of whipping going on.

DELANO: A lot of whipping.

MINK: Did you ever get called in?

DELANO: No. I was scared to death. I'd do anything to keep from getting one of those lashings. I think most of the girls — well, I don't know whether she whipped the girls.

MINK: This was a ...

DELANO: ...typical grammar school.

MINK: It was a desegregated school? There were boys and girls?

DELANO: Boys and girls. There were Negroes in our school then.

MINK: There were?

DELANO: Oh, yes.

MINK: Quite a few?

DELANO: No, just a few. We didn't have too many in the city anyway, I guess.

MINK: Any Orientals at all attending?

DELANO: I can't remember any. There was a Chinatown, but it was small compared to what it developed into later.

MINK: How did you feel about the education you received? Did you think it was sufficient, or did you think anything about it at all?

DELANO: Well, I thought they gave us a lot of drill. I can remember the writing lessons, where you'd have to make so many copies and just drill and drill to develop a certain skill in it, of course. I remember one teacher named Miss Hagerty (she's from the old Hagerty family in Los Angeles, had the Hagerty stores later on). And she would give a little talk — this was in the sixth grade- about self-control. And I guess I needed it because I never forgot it, for some reason. Then I can remember Dr. Moore coming to visit the school. He was the superintendent of schools.

MINK: Ernest Carroll Moore.

DELANO: Yes, Ernest Carroll Moore. He seemed like a big man to me then, and he sat up on a chair in front of the room and listened to the children recite.

MINK: Did he ever speak to the classes?

DELANO: I can't remember that he spoke, but he did speak to the teachers and I guess give them some advice. He hadn't been called to Harvard yet, where he went later to teach philosophy. But I do remember him when he was the superintendent of schools in the Los Angeles City Schools.

MINK: And you continued in the Gates Street School then through the eighth grade?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: After you graduated from there, did you go to Los Angeles City High School?

DELANO: Yes, I went to the first, the beginning of Manual Arts High School.

MINK: You mean by "the beginning" it was the first year?

DELANO: I think it was the first year. I'd have to check that. But I believe it was in the early years of that school. But my family only stayed long enough so that I only finished one half-year and then they moved to the San Joaquin Valley after that.

MINK: Where did they go?

DELANO: To Terra Bella, which was a new town where people were going to plant orchards, especially oranges or grapes. There were some Los Angeles businessmen who put money into the town and helped start it, like the Hellmans, for example. My father got some acres there and planted an orchard. You know, back on that farm in the Bouquet Canyon when he was a young boy, I found out that they were always sending to the government for literature on everything: how to grow this and that, how to take care of bees. They depended so much on the government for their know-how. And of course they believed in doing everything for themselves. If they would have to have a well, you put in the well. And so he carried that out all his life. It was only recently that I realized why he was able to do so many things.

MINK: In the matter of going to Terra Bella, he saved up the money to buy the property as a result of farming in the Los Angeles area?

DELANO: He was going into real estate business before he left for the San Joaquin Valley. And so when he went up there, he continued to sell ranch lands, and it seemed to be the only thing he was interested in doing, aside from his ranching.

MINK: Then in Los Angeles he not only ranched, but he also sold.

DELANO: You mean the place on Sierra Street?

MINK: Yes, when you lived in Los Angeles.

DELANO: No, he didn't sell anything from that place; it was too small in a way. He just worked in real estate. I guess there were some bad years, too, where you'd have to look for a job; and he liked to do carpentering, and he could do it very well. I think he worked on the first Occidental College buildings at one time, when they were first building the colleges there.

MINK: But he did have the money to buy the land?

DELANO: He kept his bees going all these years, and he'd have to leave the city and go up and take care of them in the Newhall area. But the land in the San Joaquin Valley, I don't remember whether he paid outright for it. I mean, he had enough down payment at least to start the place there and have it equipped. He bought nursery stocks, nice oranges. But in 1913 there was a terrible freeze, and the people in the citrus business hadn't developed the means they have today to keep things from freezing; so in one night we were wiped out. In 1913 Southern California endured one of those dreadful freezes. Everything was knocked out in one night. He came right back — I mean he continued--to try something else. He put in grapes and did raise a lot of nice grapes.

MINK: So you went to high school...

DELANO: ...up there in Porterville, yes. That was twelve miles away from Terra Bella.

MINK: Did you go back and forth every day?

DELANO: Back and forth on the train, and I'd always be half an hour late, which wasn't too good. But then my father got one of the first automobiles up there at that time. But he was using it for real estate business, and so he bought me and my sister Margie a buggy. We had a horse for the buggy, and we drove back and forth to high school every day.

MINK: What was the high school like there? It was smaller, I suppose, than in Los Angeles.

DELANO: Yes, they had a more or less classic attitude towards everything and courses which would prepare you for college. For example, I thought I was an artist when I was a child, and they only had one half-year of art. As I look back on it, it didn't amount to very much, but it wasn't inspiring, anyway, to me.

MINK: Were those the first art lessons that you had?

DELANO: Except what occurred in the Los Angeles City Schools under — gee, I've forgotten whether it was Miss [Mae] Gerehart then or not. I overlap in time with Miss Gerehart, who was a noted supervisor of art in the city schools. She possibly might have been the supervisor at that time, because we did have a lot of drawing, painting and design in the schools.

MINK: At the Gates Street School?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: As well as at Manual Arts?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: You said you had developed an interest in art even as a child. Does it date back to the beginning of your memory as a very young child?

DELANO: I think so. But I remember one incident. Now this may sound childish, but when we were living in East Los Angeles--and I mean by that not across into Boyle Heights, but the part around what was called Downey Avenue (or North Broadway, now) — we had a house up on a hill. We moved down closer to that school, so my father built what they called a bungalow in those days — the beginning of so-called bungalow buildings. There was a man painting up on the hillside under the eucalyptus trees, and I thought, I just had a feeling, that that's what I want to be: an artist. So I crept up near him. And I thought I wasn't disturbing, but he turned around and said, "Little girl, get out of here! " [laughter] I was just watching him paint, and I felt so thrilled. I still feel that attachment to the idea of painting. that that's what I wanted to be. Of course, I wasn't through grammar school then. I must have been, oh, maybe seventh grade, sixth or seventh grade.

MINK: Did your parents encourage you at all in this?

DELANO: Yes, they got paints for me and any equipment that I wanted. I just kind of went on my own, and when I was looking for what to do after I got through with high school, I wanted to go to an art school. There were very few. There was just one that I remember up in the Arroyo Seco called Judson's Art School. If you wanted to become an artist in those days, you had to go to an art school or an art academy, and you didn't go to a university. Then I heard about the Normal School.

MINK: How did you hear about the Normal School?

DELANO: Well, I just don't remember now, but somehow I found out before we moved to the San Joaquin Valley that the Normal School had an art department, of course, and that you could have teaching. And that way you might have a job and continue with your art anyway. So that appealed to me, and I thought I'd investigate.

MINK: Were your parents able to help you to go to the Normal School if you could go?

DELANO: No, they were having a hard time. See it wasn't — what year was that? Well, I graduated from high school in 1914, and I came down to the Normal School and lived with an aunt of mine to go there first.

MINK: They remained up there at Terra Bella?

DELANO: They stayed in, yes, up there.

MINK: So it was through your aunt you heard about it?

DELANO: Well, no, I just can't remember how I found out about it. Maybe some of the teachers in the high school — they must have known.

MINK: And so you moved down with your aunt to Los Angeles?

DELANO: Then I went on my own. I got a job while I was studying and earned my own living from that time on. I wasn't dependent on anybody.

MINK: What did you get a job at?

DELANO: Well I worked for Miss Halem, who was a home economics teacher in the Normal School. I really learned a lot about cooking and housekeeping and everything.

MINK: Oh, you kept her house for her?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Then you got this job through the Normal School?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: That was shortly after you came down?

DELANO: About a year, I stayed with my aunt [Mary Grace Delano]. But it was so far. [She] lived out in Eagle Rock, so it was a long way. You had to go on streetcars — there was no other way--and change cars several times to get out to the Normal School. And now this was not what was called the old, or first, Normal School.

MINK: This was the new one?

DELANO: This was the new one, when it first opened on 'Vermont Avenue near Melrose.

MINK: On Vermont?

DELANO: On Vermont.

MINK: Right. So there would be a long changing of cars. You'd have to go down to Los Angeles and then come out.

DELANO: That's right, clear out to a place up in Eagle Rock you had to go on the Red Cars.

MINK: I see. You came to the Normal School to start there, then, in 1915?

DELANO: Fourteen.

MINK: Nineteen fourteen. [tape turned off] So you entered in 1914; and at that time, I guess, as we've been mentioning while the tape recorder was off, it was a two-year course.

DELANO: It was a two-year course when I first entered, if I remember correctly.

MINK: And I notice that Nellie Huntington Gere was the chairman of the department. Can you tell me what was she like? What did she look like at that time?

DELANO: She was a very forceful woman who was practical and also very interested in the students, and you might say she had a warmth to her personality. But she was especially anxious to have the theories that she had obtained in Columbia University [New York] carried out.

MINK: Was she of the Howard school?

DELANO: No, no, I don't know a thing about the Howard school. It was Arthur Wesley Dow, head of the art department at Columbia.

MINK: Yes, excuse me, the Dow, the Arthur Wesley Dow school. She was of that school?

DELANO: Yes, decidedly, yes. It seems that Mr. Dow had been quite a leader and inspired people to go out almost like evangelists and spread the gospel.

MINK: This was from the Teachers College?

DELANO: From Teachers College in Columbia, yes.

MINK: Could you explain what m essence the Dow school embodied?

DELANO: Well, Mr. Dow wrote a book called Composition, and he tried to give simplified terms to students of art who would go out in the public schools and try to bring art into everyday life. This was one of their concerns. Now the reason he wanted to stress that was that the industrial period had started in this country and in Europe, and the textiles were ugly, the furniture was apt to be ugly--anything that was mass-produced was ugly at the turn of the century. So it didn't seem to have the quality that you find in art that had been done by hand most of the time for the objects that we live with, all the common everyday objects — the ceramics, the pottery, the furniture and textiles. A lot of stuff came out mass-produced and inexpensive. People crowded their houses with it, and there was no art in their surroundings.

MINK: Now, this would have been the ending of the art nouveau period, wouldn't it?

DELANO: Yes, it sort of overlapped with that, yes. But I mean his principles of art, he enunciated to go along with certain elements of art: you must learn these elements and principles. To my mind they were oversimplified, and I soon was clashing about it with other people in the department .

MINK: These were the types of principles that you were taught at the Normal School?

DELANO: Yes, and there were six principles that he enunciated. Do you want me to give them?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Proportion, symmetry, rhythm, subordination, opposition, and transition. Now, there's a strange assemblage of words there, that were worked out in different exercises that they maintained in the work at Columbia University. And then these teachers that trained under Mr. Dow went all over the country to bring the same thing into their schools.

MINK: Here they were stressing more teaching you how to teach others art, is that correct?

DELANO: That's right. But there were some things that didn't follow in the bare outline of the theory, because, for example, in order to help people in their houses and, say, with textile design and so on, design was the big word — that you had to learn to design--and these principles helped you there. Then maybe the next afternoon after you've had a design course, you go out in the fields and paint. There you are drawing something, and it doesn't seem to conform with the things you learned in design class, and yet they wanted to structurize it, to make it, to force it to go — in other words, a kind of a formalized style of teaching. Their exercises became formalized in your mind, and you were supposed to search out the principles first and then make your application. It's like asking whether the egg came first.

MINK: Were there many like you in the art classes in the Normal School at that time who were not so much interested in learning how to teach others art as interested in learning in art as an expression and in painting?

DELANO: I don't think so. I don't know why I was disgruntled with some of the theory right away. I thought the method was too formalized or absolutistic, really. But as I read in later years, read books that Dr. Moore introduced me to and philosophy and so on, I found that there was a good explanation for this: because many fields of learning used an absolutistic method, or tried to, even in the sciences. They could really explain art — which is a very complicated thing — much better if they'd let go of that rigidity of concepts and institute something that's ever so much more applicable to the person, the personality involved, much more imaginative, and able to recognize changing art as it comes along. This was the main trouble. I got myself into hot water right away because I went to Europe and I was terribly interested in the first so-called modern art at that time--I mean, where 's the end and the beginning of modern, after all? But at that time I there was a change from the type of thing which had been pointed out in most of my classes as a student. And I reveled in it, naturally. But it wasn't to be the end and all. Who knows? Perhaps an artist in that situation would want to paint with a lot of brushing strokes like Renoir. But you weren't supposed to do that. You were to flatten it. Your space was to be more like Manet's space, let's say, because that was the vogue at the time. But Mr. Dow never explained that to the teachers, and they went out to give it like a gospel .

MINK: Did you find the pictures that you painted — because I'm assuming now that you did go out and paint landscapes when you were in your training school — were being criticized by your teacher?

DELANO: Yes, they were. But I found that Miss [Helen C.] Chandler, who was my teacher (and by the way I was the only student in one of her landscape classes at the time, the department was so much smaller in those days, you know), I found that she was really wanting to be an artist and had to work because her father died when she was young and a brother died and she had no way to earn a living unless she'd go to teaching, and she did.

MINK: Was it she that did most of the criticism of your early painting?

DELANO: No, but you see Miss Gere held what was called a criticism class. All the students had to bring their work in.

MINK: How many would go to that class?

DELANO: All the students who were in the whole department. And she would criticize everything from design to painting, you see. She was the critic with these principles.

MINK: And she criticized everything according to these Dow principles?

DELANO: That's right. Now, going back to those Dow principles: that's another thing I didn't find out till later. I mean I absorbed this and I got A's in everything, I think — I found out later, because they didn't give us the records at that time you know. We had no grades when I was a student. They kept the grades; they never showed them to the students. Anyhow, I did understand everything they were giving and living through it, but later on I found out that these principles were very old, indeed. Those words came from the Greeks, most of them, and some of them came from the Orientals, but Mr. Dow never mentioned this. I mean, in other words, why didn't people go out and become leaders in their own right instead of following somebody, you see? It reminds me of the way people run down the road in China holding up the little red book and mouthing Mao Tse-tung.

MINK: What did Miss Gere have to say about your early painting? Can you remember any times in these classes?

DELANO: The classes came more after I started to teach there in the department.

MINK: I see. Well, before, now.

DELANO: Before? Well, I hadn't read as much to find out why I was a little disturbed by some of the formal training we had. So I really conformed, I guess, to everything, and my work just passed along with the rest of the students. I remember one project. You see, those buildings on Vermont Avenue were new, and the painters for the interiors had to come along and find colors for all the rooms, all over the campus. So they gave this project to the art department, and everybody painted sheets of paper for all the different types of rooms — from the assemblies to hallways, and science rooms, art rooms and so on, all over the campus. Then the papers were signed on the back and numbered with a key so we could tell just exactly where they were to go. When the art faculty walked as a committee, with several teachers they put up these samples on the particular walls where they were to be used. Every one that was chosen was mine, Even when there was a conflict — they didn't know whether to choose this one or that one — they were both mine. Now, I can't account for that, except for my feeling for color. And Miss Gere — I will never forget — they just thought that I had some gift about color, I don't know how else to explain it.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 21, 1971

MINK: First of all, was Miss Gere amazed when they chose all your colors?

DELANO: Yes, she was.

MINK: Was she annoyed or amazed?

DELANO: No, I think she was amazed, but I didn't know how to take it. I remember I walked at the back of the group, and the girls were sort of jealous of me, and I felt like I was isolated. I didn't belong any longer. I couldn't quite cope with the attitudes people took towards me. There were great stacks of papers with colors on them because we had to have different lighting situations, different work going on; and I really worked on the project because I was interested, I guess. I'm not downing the Dow principles, but there weren't enough of them to encompass the whole range of so many art activities. They were very good for simplified areas and shapes; but, you see, he had three elements--he called them line, dark and light, and color. Now, he didn't include space, and that's a great mistake because an art department such as ours would be working with space, the space arts. Still, it should be an element or factor. (It should be something you measure, that you conceive of. In a painting you may not measure it, but it's there. It's either deep space or flat space. It has some dimension in the work. And yet if you don't plan it, then it's unrelated. You're just planning lines, dark and light, and color. And actually dark and light is a part of color, too, so that's the way in which I felt it was oversimplified.

MINK: Now, you also mentioned, while I was turning the tape, this business of the grades.

DELANO: Oh, yes. They never gave us our grades while I was a student there in the Normal School.

MINK: Did they ever give you any explanation as to why?

DELANO: Well, we had an education department with people who were enthusiastic. It was a new campus with new buildings, and there was something about the fervor in the air over education. People were trying out new things. This was--how many years ago now? — back before the twenties that the Normal School, for a period, didn't give grades to the students. They kept the grades, and you either passed or failed. So if people are bringing that up today, it isn't something new. It's been done before, and it has some justification; I mean, you're working for your own objectives without thinking too much whether you're just working for a grade or not. But the school was small in student numbers, you know.

MINK: Besides Miss Chandler and Miss Gere, you certainly must have taken courses from some of the other faculty. What about Miss [Esther Mabel] Crawford? Did you take any classes from Miss Crawford?

DELANO: Let's see. I just can't remember any courses from her. What did she teach? Do you have it there? Nineteen fourteen or '15?

MINK: Yes, this period when you were there.

DELANO: Let's see. Have I said enough about Miss Gere? Perhaps not. One thing I'd like to mention as I think about it now....

MINK: Except later on you will talk about Miss Gere in connection with the development of the department.

DELANO: Yes, I will. All right. There was a Belle Whitice, who was listed as a manual arts teacher, and then later became crafts and so on. She was an excellent craftswoman and she made fine leather work and textiles and all sorts of things that students felt they should have if they were going into the grades to teach. I wasn't very good at that. I remember one course in bookbinding, I guess I would have failed if she hadn't been so kindhearted. Anyhow, I wasn't very good at crafts. Then there was Bessie Hazen. I didn't take any courses with her. She was a lovely person, from Canada, I believe, originally. And she had a BA, not in art. You see, you couldn't get degrees in art. That's another thing. People had to go to art schools when I started to get my training, or in the Normal School. That's about it. Then we had a woman named Anna Pamela Brooks; later she became Mrs. Wycoff. Anyhow, she was one of the Columbia Dow people. So was Miss Hazen; so was Miss Whitice. I'm not sure about Miss Crawford. But Miss Brooks especially--she taught the teacher training for the art people in Columbia University.

MINK: You got along okay with her?

DELANO: I got along just fine with her, yes.

MINK: Just parroted back everything she said?

DELANO: Absolutely, because it's the way with something that's a sort of formula you learn. And it works for certain things. This is complicated to talk about, but I think I could explain it. Then Mrs. Sooy came in that year, but she was Louise Pinkney at the time--a very striking looking woman, very tall.

MINK: Young?

DELANO: Young and unmarried then and blonde, very good looking, very interested in clothes and making an impression with clothes — to the good, I mean — well-groomed and so forth. Anyhow, I took courses from her, and I liked her stimulation. She thought you should be imaginative and strike out in all directions. She had taught at different places in the country but had always been at the top. And I think underneath she wanted to be at the top in the art department; but Miss Gere was there, and so there was a little tension that I didn't understand or know anything about till later years. Mrs. Sooy was the type who fell back upon this Dow system to a great extent, and if you departed the least bit or criticized it, then you were to be watched.

MINK: You were suspect?

DELANO: You were suspect; you were a rebel, yes. We had Doris Rosenthal, but she went back to New York. Then Miss Chandler. Helen Clark Chandler, came in, and I seemed to like her very much right away as an instructor because she was an artist in her feelings--maybe much more introverted. Mrs. Sooy would be one that you would say was an extrovert in her actions and attitudes. Let's see, who else taught there? Dr. Millspaugh, I think, was the head — Jesse Fonda Millspaugh. What do I remember about him? He held a kind of little session in the assembly hall, I think every day, in which there was a prayer given and he would talk about some ideal that you should reach in teaching and the high regard that people should have as a teacher and so on. And I think very young people — I know I was impressed with it — are impressed with that sort of thing.

MINK: Pep talk.

DELANO: Kind of a pep talk — that's what it was. [laughter]

MINK: And that was his role.

DELANO: That was his contribution. That's what I remember.

MINK: Did you take any courses from people in the education department?

DELANO: Yes, from a man named Dr. [Arthur Amsden] Macurda. I've forgotten. I think there is a subject matter very relevant to teaching in many of the education courses, and I think they've been brushed off for so many years that we have people who don't know how to bring out the other person. They think they are to impose their own ideas on the student instead of bringing out the student, really educating them, so that we had, in those early years, some people who brought that to our attention — and to this idea: How do you question people? How can you question them to bring them out? Actually, in some of the courses that I had later on at Columbia and other places, you'd hear somebody give a lecture and they'd just drone along till it was sort of something you could get out of a book yourself, perhaps. But this thing of inciting a student, bringing him out and questioning him in such a manner that doesn't just evoke an answer you want him to give, but something that'll make him think....

MINK: Did you think that the education you received in the Normal School was at that time something new and inspirational?

DELANO: Yes, it was. And I think there were a lot of people who were grasping this idea of relativism in the different fields instead of something absolutistic, something that was too formal.

MINK: Did you sense that Jesse Fonda Millspaugh had a decided role in this and encouraged this?

DELANO: No, I don't remember much about him. I got it mostly from Dr. Moore.

MINK: You think that Dr. Moore did it.

DELANO: Dr. Moore was the one, really. He was the one that I remember most as bringing out these ideas of breaking away from. . .

MINK: ...the traditional?

DELANO: The traditional thing that was too hidebound. Not that you just break away from everything — I still believe in much of this traditional — but rearranging it so that it takes its place. It shouldn't be put in such a high place that you look at it as a guide — without criticism, in other words.

MINK: Do you remember this spirit coming in with Dr. Moore, as a student or later as a teacher? I realize that this is very close in time.

DELANO: Well, I'm jumping a little ahead in time now. We hadn't gone up to Westwood. We had left off here talking about the teachers in the Normal School, and then it became a part of the university, and this was due to the vision that Dr. Moore had. Shall we continue on that just for a minute?

MINK: First of all, though, when you graduated you went immediately to teaching?

DELANO: No. I insisted on another year. You see, they were discussing this whole thing in whether the Normal School should have another year or not. When Dr. Moore came in, he insisted that the people have it. As a student there — at least at the moment that I finished the first two years — it seemed that you got a certificate to teach, and then if you went another year you'd get your secondary certificate to teach in high schools or colleges. We didn't have too many of them then in California.

MINK: So you decided to take the third year?

DELANO: Yes, to go into the third year. Then when I finished that, I thought I'd look around for a position or maybe try commercial art.

MINK: Who did you go in with?

DELANO: Well, there was a woman, Anna Desmond, of the family that has the Desmond stores — an old-time family in Los Angeles — and Anna was a striking woman who had some of the verve, I guess, that her father had had in building the Desmond stores in California. They had a lovely big house, old house with all the cupolas and the ornate trims and so on, on Hill Street. I wish I'd made a painting of that. It was on Tenth and Hill, and had barns and everything in that style. Anna Desmond got the idea that she could build up an art shop of some kind and hire artists to make things and sell them. She had money behind her, and so this is what she did. She came to the art department to find somebody who could design for her, take charge of the thing; and Miss Gere thought that I could do it, so I did. The outcome of that was to design a lot of things. We used the old house down there on Hill Street behind what's now the May Company, out there on Tenth and Hill.

MINK: What type of designing work did you do?

DELANO: Well, she thought that she could get Mexican workers to carry out embroidered bags, for one thing--a line of bags. At that time people were carrying sort of textile-made bags, the way they are today — it's coming in again. So we would plan those. Then I learned how to make batik; and that, again — isn't that strange that after fifty years or so it's returning again? The hippies today are using it; a lot of other people are using it. Anyhow, at that time it was new, although it was a very old thing in Java. But we had some people in Hollywood, a Dutch lady taught me how to make the actual batik.

MINK: Do you remember her name?

DELANO: No, I don't remember her name, but they had an importing company and sold beautiful Javanese batiks. I learned to do the real thing, you know, with what they call a tjanting, which is a little metal instrument that has a spout to heat the wax and put it on the cloth. I designed many things, and we decorated them with this batik pattern, as it were — "resist" form of dyeing is what it is — then Miss Desmond took samples all around the country and took orders for them. Then we'd have to reproduce them there with the Mexican women.

MINK: And you had charge of the women?

DELANO: Yes, and doing everything. Miss Desmond wanted to the business side.

MINK: Was she paying you a salary?

DELANO: Yes, very little, but to me, I thought it was great.

MINK: How much was she paying you?

DELANO: Golly, I don't remember. I'd have to look it up, I've kept all those old records. But it was very little. (I haven't finished. Should I go ahead a little bit on that?) She was a very ambitious woman, you know, and she thought maybe she could land a big job of decorating. Sure enough, the Ambassador Hotel was to be built, and she knew people, through all her connections with her family and so on, and got the job of making the main decorations for the Ambassador Hotel, in the lobby and in the tea room. So I fell heir to planning and designing and carrying out all the curtains in those two rooms.

MINK: She was picking your brains for so much a month.

DELANO: Yes, well, you could say that. Oh, dear, I don't remember how much.

MINK: That's all right.

DELANO: I know it wasn't very much. In the tea room we had, oh, twenty-eight curtains. We had to buy this beautiful white silk, hand-woven silk from New York, wide enough to cover the windows, several widths to a window, and I think the silk was five feet wide. It was sort of unusual. You couldn't go down to any store and buy it. It was certain silk companies in New York that sold this kind of silk. And I worked over a year on those curtains with this batik method. I made a sample, and they liked it, and then I went ahead and made different patterns, and yet they'd work together all across the windows in this tea room. Then it had some patterned areas above the main curtains. Anyhow, it took over a year to do them. And the thing that was fascinating to me was that as you'd cover each curtain with the wax you'd finally have almost the whole thing covered, and I didn't know for over a year whether they were going to come out all right or be failures. I just had to sort of know by intuition that the color was right and that I left it in the dye long enough. I had big tubs. I rented a little room on the second floor way downtown near the plaza. Women could go anyplace then and not be assaulted, and I worked at nights even to get these darn curtains done. Then you had to get the wax off at the end of the year. I don't know whether I've explained enough to have you realize that you're dyeing the first color on the thing, then you're covering all that you want of that, but you're doing it over all twenty-eight curtains. Then you wax the next, and each curtain was a different design, and so I you wax a lot of it freehand. At the end of the year you were to remove the wax. If one is right, they're all right. And they were all right. [laughter] I look at it now with sort of amazement. I don't think I could do such a thing now.

MINK: Were you confident at the time?

DELANO: Yes, I was very confident, probably cocky, I don't know what you'd call it. They thought they were beautiful. There's something in the paper lately about where they found some of these things from the Ambassador in the basement, and somebody said they were museum pieces. Well, do you know I was sick at the time. I couldn't go down there to see whether they were those curtains or not, but they must have been. Then in the lobby there was a different kind of curtain. Miss Desmond scurried around and she found some unusual monk's cloth. Now you can buy monk's cloth in all kinds of beautiful colors, but she had some especially dyed because you couldn't get it on the market at that time. They had to be--oh, I can't remember the dimensions now, but they were very high — so I planned a sort of appliqued unit for each curtain. And it had Oriental figures sort of danciug arouno cind then it had little appliqued pieces of batik, and then each piece was embroidered. This the Mexican women could do, and I did all of the batik parts.

MINK: Were you involved at all in any of the upholstering for the furniture?

DELANO: No, no, but Miss Desmond had the job of assisting the general decorator that they had for the hotel then. This was the only handwork at that time.

MINK: Did you meet the general decorator?

DELANO: I don't remember seeing who it was at all. I don't think she really had too much to do about that. Oh, and the lampshades — that's something I forgot. See this batik business worked into lots of fabrics and also lampshades. We found some people who made frames for lamps and wire frames, and they could make them up to anything I designed; and then we would get these Mexican women again to put the cloth over the frames, sew it neatly and so forth. Not only that, but then there was a parchment paper that I learned to make, and this could be decorated with oil paints so that when the lights were turned on you got all the colors through the parchment paper.

MINK: You actually made the parchment paper?

DELANO: Yes. I don't think the Fire Department would allow us to do that today, because I went up in one of those turrets in that beautiful old house there on Hill Street and fixed the paper up there, and I had to watch it every few hours — to have a little stove going nearby, and heat the paper so that the linseed oil would soak the parchment paper through and through. Eventually the paper would clot so that you had this parchment-like effect on it. After that you had to dry it and work with it with absorbent cloth, but you had to be very careful not to have too much friction and rubbing it so you wouldn't get a spark and set everything on fire. But I made all the paper. Miss Desmond bought the secret of making the paper from some man that she heard was doing it, and that's what we did.

MINK: Here in Los Angeles?

DELANO: Yes. And then these lampshades were put in the Ambassador Hotel when it first opened. We sold some other places — San Francisco. The last time I went to San Francisco I saw some of those same shades still working.

MINK: How long did you work for Miss Desmond?

DELANO: Well, I worked possibly a year and a half to two years, because after I started teaching I still worked for her on all the extra days I had. Before we finished the Ambassador job, she wanted me to sign a contract and go in with her, and I felt that I didn't want to stay with commercial art. I remember one reason was that she wanted me to make fakes. We had a lot of plaster figurines made from original Chinese figures, the figurines she bought in San Francisco, and these were nice ceramic pieces. She wanted me to imitate those, to make fakes, so to speak, and use them for lamp bases. And I was so idealistic that I thought, "Well, I just can't do that." I did it, and they sold, and they're still around. But there was something at the root of it that just bothered me.

MINK: The ones she bought in San Francisco were originals that had been imported?

DELANO: Originals, yes. I have one out there in the front room you can see. And I could imitate those so you didn't know that they were made out of plaster. You know, we had a lot of European craftsmen in Los Angeles at that time who worked on various crafts, and they knew a lot. It was easier to get around and know everybody that was making things.

MINK: I wonder if you could tell me some of those people that come to mind, that you felt were outstanding.

DELANO: Making things?

MINK: These craftsmen, yes.

DELANO: Oh, I was just thinking then about those figures and, gee, I can't recall just exactly. Architects who had been trained in Europe and... Oh, I knew an artist, Gjura Stojano, who later I got when I worked for Miss [Eleanor] Le Maire — this was on the side, outside of my teaching — who had come from Europe. He knew wonderful things about murals — how to work different crafts into the murals, but working with plaster with these little figurines. I knew somebody over in Mission Road (and now I can't remember the name), but I had a lot of consultations and learned how to harden the plaster so that if you dropped your lamp base it wouldn't break. I've even forgotten some of those processes now. After you'd get your little figurine. . . . You see, you could make many of them. That was her idea: to cast them from an original.

MINK: So you made the molds for the casting?

DELANO: Yes, and then it would be hardened. Then, after that, it would be painted and then varnished or shellacked or something put on the outside to preserve the paint. We had somebody who was a lighting fixture man who would work it so they could be attached to the lamp base.

MINK: Did you work on any other special jobs with Miss Desmond besides the batik...?

DELANO: The batik, the dresses, the bags — oh, yes, parasols. She got the idea one year that if we decorated the Oriental parasols, that they would sell; and so she went up to San Francisco and bought a lot wholesale, brought them back to Los Angeles — had them shipped down here, by the way — and then the Fire Department wouldn't let her store them there in the old house or in the barn. So she had to build a brick building in which to put the parasols .

MINK: On the property?

DELANO: On the property there, yes. It extended from Tenth down to Pico, more or less. I don't know how much bigger it was in the early days with the ranch there. But anyhow, the parasols then were decorated, and you know what they look like — they're made out of a paper that has a lot of varnished or oiled black paper on it, you know, shiny, and some that's a brownish color and so on, just in tlie concentric circles more or less, and bamboo. So we decorated those. I did most of them in brilliant colors — just a few bold designs. She said, "Now we have to sell them. Why don't you try selling some things?" she said to me one day, "Take them up to Bullock's." At that time there was only one Bullock's. That was on the corner of Seventh and Broadway. Of course, we're back -- where are we now? — in 1919, more or less. So I took about seven of them under my arm--that was about all I could carry — and walked up the street to Bullock's store. And I didn't want to do it; I was scared to death. [laughter] So I got up there with these things and I asked where the manager was. They told me [he was] on the mezzanine floor, so I went up there and I was speechless, I was so frightened. I didn't do anything but open one umbrella, and he said, "I'll take them. How much are they?" [laughter] I didn't have to sell them. I got a big kick out of that afterwards. I still remember how afraid I was, anyhow.

MINK: Did Miss Desmond try to sell any of the things through her own store?

DELANO: Well, no, it was an old house, and we just used it as a studio.

MINK: No, did she try to sell anything through her own stores?

DELANO: Oh, through the Desmond stores. No, because it just dealt in men's things then.

MINK: Men's things, yes.

DELANO: There wasn't a Westwood then, not at all, not till after 1929.

MINK: And so did she continue, after you started teaching and left her, to do these things?

DELANO: After the Ambassador Hotel job, it stopped, because there was a westward trend, and the family owned a canyon in the Hollywood Hills, and she decided to hire some architects and engineers and build houses up in the canyon, which she did. The canyon was, I don't know — it might have been Franklin Canyon. But they owned that from the early days.

MINK: So she sort of closed up the art....

DELANO: Yes, It was a Catholic family, and I know she did a lot for Loyola in later years. I should have kept track of her, but I don't know what happened in the end.

MINK: Was she important socially as well as commercially, or not?

DELANO: She didn't take any part in her brother's store. The family owned it, and there was just one brother, it seems to me, as I remember, and a lot of women in the family. She had a lot of sisters and they didn't marry, except one sister married a Mr. Shields, I think, in San Francisco. I think he had money. She was backed. She was an aggressive type and had ideas and just thought some of this art should be put to good use.

MINK: Were there other things that you can remember that you did for her? You did no painting for her?

DELANO: No. She was just interested in these things on the lampshades. And you know the strange thing: here it is now when I go around to the stores or some of these boutiques, I see all the young kids buying the very things we were doing fifty years ago, more than fifty years ago.

MINK: Cycles.

DELANO: It's a cycle. Exactly. That explains it.

MINK: When was it that you were first approached by the Normal School to begin teaching there?

DELANO: When Miss Desmond wanted me to sign a contract, I thought I would give it up or at least find out if I could get a teaching position. So I went back to the art department and told them how I felt.

MINK: Who did you go to see?

DELANO: I saw Miss Gere, who was the head, and told her what I felt about the commercial art and what I had been doing. And she said, "Would you consider taking a place in the art department?" And I said I would.

MINK: You never had any idea of teaching art in the public schools?

DELANO: Well, yes. I thought as the last resort, in a way.

MINK: But you never approached anybody in the system to teach?

DELANO: No, I didn't.

MINK: So Miss Huntington Gere, Nellie Gere, was willing to offer you a job?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: So you never really applied for a job at the Normal School; you just got one?

DELANO: No, just got one, because it was expanding and they needed the teachers. Doris Rosenthal, who had been teaching in 1915, left; others, I guess. I don't remember, but there was a need for a teacher. Anyhow, she couldn't tell me for sure that I could have the job, so I was dangling between Miss Desmond and the Normal School at the time.

MINK: And Miss Gere.

DELANO: Yes, Miss Gere. So then I remember this all too well. The first week of enrollment came along and I was to come up there, and Miss Gere was very troubled because Dr. Moore wouldn't pass on the idea that I should teach there. He didn't think we needed another teacher — something to that effect. She said, "Why don't you go over and see him?" I went over, and before I could get into his office I had to pass by Harriet Dunn. She was a character. She was in the outer office, and the faculty — as afterwards I found out — always felt that she was really a watchdog there. So you had to explain to her what you were going to do. And she said, "I don't think Dr. Moore will see you." I was just a little ol ' mouse I guess or something in her eyes--I don't know what. But anyhow, she didn't want to let me in, and I said, "But I've got to see him. Miss Gere said that I should see him" — or something to that effect. So then she let me in. Dr. Moore was very kind and nice. I explained about what I had been doing, and when I would pause he wouldn't help me on or say anything, you know. I didn't know what he wanted me to say or explain; I just thought I'd tell him about what I'd been doing in commercial art and that Miss Gere wanted me. And then I said, "I think that I should know because Miss Brooks wants me in the training department. She wants me to teach a course over there in teacher training. And I should know this week because I'd like to get things ready." And he said, "Let's go talk to Miss Gere." I'll never forget this walk across the campus. We had that big open space with all that row of eucalyptus in the center — I think they're gone now — and beautiful fountains and flowers planted. It was a lovely new campus. I walked down with him, and I was twisting my hands and feeling all upset. We got over there to the art department office, and he said, "Miss Gere, we want Miss Delano." [laughter] Just like that. Well, I don't know how to explain it except that I think a man with a head like that likes to feel he has a part in it, that he's talked to the person that's applying and to find out what you're like and so on. Perhaps that explains it.

MINK: So it was at that point that you became for the first time a member of the faculty.

DELANO: First time a member of the faculty.

MINK: What were the first courses that you were assigned to teach?

DELANO: Probably design and some of the crafts. They wanted me to teach that batik and tie-dyeing. I learned how to do the tie-dyeing the way they do it in India, really. The way the hippies are doing it today, they just take these big splotches, you know, of about six or eight inches across, and it has nothing to do with the fine craftsmanship that they used in India years ago, which is what I was more interested in because it was a beautiful texture.

MINK: 'Was the idea that you would teach teachers how to teach this to students in schools? Was that it?

DELANO: No. There were separate classes. You had what was called art education, which is one course I taught, plus the creative courses. I don't know; I had probably four at least. I don't remember what my first assignments were. I would think I've taught just about everything that was given in the art department throughout those early years.

MINK: You had never been a teacher.

DELANO: But we had teacher training, you see.

MINK: So you really felt perfectly competent to go ahead and teach these classes?

DELANO: Well, yes, because we had education courses in general and we had practice teaching.

MINK: Oh, you had done practice teaching?

DELANO: Oh, yes.

MINK: Where did you practice teach?

MINK: Right in the Normal School?

DELANO: Right in the Normal School.

MINK: Teaching younger students?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: High school students?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Oh, you taught in the training department?

DELANO: The training school, which we had over there at that time.

MINK: Did you know Dr. [Charles W. ] Waddell then? I suppose you did.

DELANO: Yes, yes.

MINK: Did you have any classes with Dr. Waddell?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: What was your opinion of him as a man?

DELANO: Let's see. I can faintly remember what they were talking about in education at Columbia. You see, there were different theories about education even then. People were experimenting — like this business with no grades, you know. That was something. Other than that, the training methods- -those who were following John Dewey, for one thing, and I sided towards that direction, I guess through the influence of Dr. Moore more than anybody.

MINK: Did Dr. Moore have personal talks with you?

DELANO: Yes, there was a young woman who came to the art department as a student, named Barbara Morgan. Later she taught in the art department also. Well, she took a course from Dr. Moore in philosophy, and Dr. Moore thought she was the brightest student in philosophy that he'd ever had. Through both, I got well acquainted with Barbara Morgan and have kept up a friendship with her all these years. She was Barbara Johnson at that time, as a student. But, you see, I was young then, and the students that came to me as an instructor in those first early years before we came to Westwood were so close to me in age that I've kept up with many of them to this day. There's something strange that happens to you.

MINK: So you were not only their teacher but their friend?

DELANO: Friends later on, and it was a small department, and there was a close tie between the teachers and the students. I'll say one thing about this uniformity of thinking and theory: you have a kind of a sheltered feeling, you know, that you're all in harmony with each other, and there is something to it. You fall back on the security of it. When you're branching out on something and sticking your neck out like a rebel, I don't know whether you feel very good. You know what I mean about that? There is that to it. At that time there was a great uniformity in the department.

MINK: So that it was through Barbara Morgan that you really got. . .

DELANO: ...got more acquainted with Dr. Moore. And then when they were building the Westwood campus — now, this is jumping up here; you haven't asked me anything about moving out there, but I'll come to that. But since you asked about Dr. Moore, when they were building the UCLA campus buildings — you see, we were able to move in 1929 to the library. We were housed on the top floor of the library because they didn't have the Education Building at the time. They had a little lunchroom right on the top of the hill there, and the faculty went out there to eat amongst all the dredging and dust and building that was going on all around the campus. You'd just run into anybody--the faculty, students — all in that one little place. If Dr. Moore was there and there was a chair beside him, you might sit next to him. It was very intimate, very different from the way this colossal thing works out now. People can hide in their own department and never get out of it today. In those days you really knew people all over the campus.

MINK: So you very frequently had lunch with him?

DELANO: Yes, and he'd talk about different things. And then another thing: he had a different kind of what he called an assembly, where the students had to come, maybe once a week. He'd have a speaker there, and I used to enjoy his introductions because he always involved something that had to do with the background of the person, perhaps something philosophical because that was his main interest, anyway. One day I said to him I thought his introductions were excellent, that I learned a lot from his introductions. He said, "Miss Delano, do you know I just work on those introductions. It doesn't come easy to me at all to get up there and talk like that." I learned something from that; I thought that a man that's a head of a big school and really does homework on his introductions — that it pays off.

MINK: Did you, while you were still on the Vermont campus, have an opportunity, oh, for example, to meet Dr. Moore socially? Did he invite people to his home?

DELANO: Yes. Mrs. Moore was a very interesting woman. It was the both of them that I got acquainted with more directly.

MINK: Are we talking about Dorothea Moore?

DELANO: Dorothea Moore, yes. She was making an art collection, and so they invited me to their home several times.

MINK: What was Dorothea Moore like?

DELANO: She wrote for the Los Angeles Times, and she was a very knowledgeable person, I thought. She wrote editorials, I can't remember just what her main subject was as she went along, but she had a great interest in the Indians out in New Mexico. Her first husband was [Charles F.] Will Lummis, who had been a writer, in fact an editor, for the Los Angeles Times, until he got sick and had to go to New Mexico for his health. She was married to him. Should I say anything about all that?

MINK: Sure, go ahead.

DELANO: Well, anyhow, out there in New Mexico, Will Lummis fell in love with an Indian girl who was working for them. Dorothea Moore told me this herself. She said that as long as this was going to happen there was no use making it hard for Will, so she decided to help train the girl so she would be a better wife for Will Lummis. And then she stepped out of the picture.

MINK: And that's where we're going to have to stop because if we don't the tape is going to step out of the picture. [laughter]

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 22, 1971

MINK: Last time that we were talking, at the end of the last tape, you had finally given up full-time work with Miss Anna Desmond. And this afternoon you said you were going to speak a little bit about some of the faculty that were there [at the Normal School] . But first of all I had a question, and that was this: we notice that when you joined the department it was called the fine art department; but about three years after you joined it, it was changed to the art department . What was the reason for this? Were you in on any of this change?

DELANO: I probably was because Miss Gere, who was head of the art department, was fine about having all the faculty, even if you were just an assistant, in on the faculty meetings and contributing and listening to the whole thing, And I think perhaps, as far as I can remember, there were people outside the art department in the academic fields who felt that fine arts implied just painting and sculpture and that if you had other subjects such as applied design or crafts or teaching that this should be, well, in a way, discriminated against — in other words, develop something that's either just fine arts and the history of art or leave out all these crafts.

MINK: In other words, if you were going to have these crafts, then you'd better change the name to art department, period.

DELANO: Yes. I think. Now I can't recall, but I do remember when the department was changed to part of the university, we were called a part of the Southern Branch. We were called the Southern Branch instead of the University of California.

MINK: So somewhat the same.

DELANO: The same idea that we weren't settled about things. People were called assistants, and then they were called associates, and then they were called instructors. They played around with this. They didn't know what to do, in other words, with people who were not in the rank and file of actual academic fields like history or English, languages, mathematics.

MINK: You said that Nellie Huntington Gere was very good about inviting everyone to the faculty meetings. How often were the faculty meetings held?

DELANO: Oh, I think we had faculty meetings once a week throughout the time because it was a new campus, new buildings, an enlargement of student body and of faculty each year. So the curriculum had to be modified, changed, and it was continually being changed as we went along to adapt to the outside, to the growing needs of Los Angeles and building of schools and so on. Should I talk about Dr. Moore?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: He came in — I'm just trying to remember the date.

MINK: That's all right. We can look it up.

DELANO: He wanted to expand teacher training, and he had ideas. He thought that we should have junior colleges — I know he worked for that. I think when people notice how many junior colleges we have all over, they forget the part that Dr. Moore played in that development .

MINK: He actually went off the campus and crusaded for this idea, then?

DELANO: Yes, through the legislature, to install or to build junior colleges. We had one in Pasadena early, and the original Normal School was part of the Normal School based in San Jose, California.

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: I think there were just two, and there were very few colleges. Students might attend a private school like Claremont or Pomona College, or go up to to the University of California. In fact, they couldn't go within their own region and find a school the way we have it today, Dr. Moore thought that a two-year college would satisfy the needs of great numbers of students everywhere who would have a little more training and yet were probably not developed enough to go on and finish university work.

MINK: To come back to the faculty meetings again: was Miss Gere willing to let everyone speak up and have their way, or did she lecture to you about what she was going to do?

DELANO: I felt, in my own situation, quite free to develop my own courses, write the descriptions for the catalogue, and plan the courses any way I wished. I felt very free with this, under her jurisdiction. Gradually I shifted my emphasis from teaching classes in design and crafts — not all the crafts, you understand, just the textiles we talked about last time, because of the work I'd done outside on my own. So I shifted more into the painting and drawing .

MINK: Last time you had begun to talk about some of the faculty, and you said you wanted to talk a little more about some of these faculty members that were there in that period before the Southern Branch became the University of California at Los Angeles.

DELANO: Before we moved to Westwood, in other words — all during the twenties there.

MINK: First of all I notice a roster of the art department for 1923-24, And I was wondering if you could comment on, for example, Natalie White.

DELANO: Natalie White was excellent in her theories about teaching. She went to Columbia University. She was one of those who was urged to go under Miss Gere's suggestion, I guess. She had theories in education, however, that went along with Corinne Seeds, who built up that wonderful training school. Natalie White, I think, cooperated there in a fine manner all through the years, developing curriculum for them and trying out experimental work in art education especially. The students learned to do things directly, less theoretical work, things that were more interesting to them directly, I think. Then, too, she was very, very fine as a craftsman. She did weaving and fine textile work.

MINK: I notice that she is listed on the roster for the department as being an instructor in industrial arts.

DELANO: I think in the city schools at that time they called certain activities industrial arts and students learned to handle tools and equipment that might lead into applied forms — for the boys probably more heavy tools and woodworking and so on; and then, of course, if they had limited materials they could all work with paper and wood. They would form objects and learn to build, I think that's the general idea.

MINK: Well, then, she was involved in training in this area?

DELANO: Yes, so that the students who went out into the city schools could fit into the curricula there.

MINK: The same would apply to Olive Newcomb. What do you remember about Olive Newcomb?

DELANO: She taught the first ceramics we had in the department and had to see to it that we get a kiln and equipment in the building so that we could make ceramics there.

MINK: Did ceramics flourish under her?

DELANO: Well, I think her ability was somewhat limited. She didn't develop her own type of work to the degree that we find later in some of the other graduates we've had in later years.

MINK: How do you mean that? She just taught sort of a set thing?

DELANO: No, I can't remember the influences she had in her early training, but her work was rather crude and lumpy and she'd work in the coil method and be satisfied if the thing was quite crude in fashioning. There wasn't the refinement or the variety in the types. And it may be that there was an effort to bring it down to a very young student's level. Perhaps that was it. I think perhaps many people in a so-called teacher's college or teacher training or normal school might be held down by that idea.

MINK: Sort of a constraining factor, and if you can't develop your own style, you'd have to....

DELANO: Yes, it seems to me the students should develop their own style and go as far as they can, and you'd be a better teacher. You would be wrong in method if you just tried to impose your own kind of development onto the students. You should know simple and more complex processes .

MINK: Was she sort of a disciple, too of the Dow method?

DELANO: I don't remember about that, if she went to Columbia or not.

MINK: What about Belle Whitice?

DELANO: Miss Whitice was a typical craft, teacher. She was excellent in bookbinding, leather work, some textiles, early photography, and was also a disciple of the Dow method. She went to Columbia University.

MINK: Birdie K. Smith?

DELANO: Birdie Kirk Smith. She had more training towards fine arts — so-called fine arts, drawing and painting and sculpture--and was quite gifted, but she didn't push her own development and didn't stay with us too long. But I felt that she was an inspiring teacher, and she also followed along in the Dow methods.

MINK: Pretty much Dow method prevailed in the department.

DELANO: Yes, it did; it really did. I should clarify that somewhat. A student could utilize the simplification of the method where it applies but not lean on it just as it came out of his books or his training as the only way; it seems to me there would be more principles and really more elements involved than what he gave. Perhaps it was the fault of the teachers who were trained under him who just took it as gospel and took it out without adding their own contributions in later years as art changed. For example, in the early years when most of these instructors went to Columbia University — and I should add Miss Chandler was one of those who went through and so was Mrs. Sooy — they were training there at Columbia in the early part of the century at the time that art in Europe---let ' s say painting, for example — was being modified somewhat from the traditional Renaissance type of realistic painting: that is, there were painters who were flattening their work, like Manet; and a sort of Orientalism swept through; and there was two-dimensional space; and we had work like the earliest so-called modern painters, like Matisse, who would flatten his work and maybe outline the edges. So when you said you were just proportioning an area, you meant a flat area, not a rounded, graded, lighted and shadowed area.

MINK: Another person that I was wondering if you could comment on was Clara Bartram.

DELANO: At the time that she came to the art department she was Clara Bartram and later Mrs. Humphreys. She was a graduate of Occidental College and felt that she had fine training there. I know that she didn't have too much, or any, art to speak of, because I don't believe they had a full-developed art department at that time. She went to Columbia, and again — like Miss Gere and Miss Chandler and Mrs. Sooy — worked out courses that worked into the teacher training, especially on the high school level, secondary training, and continued in that sort of thing all the way through the time she spent in our art department. She was interested in sociology, I guess you called it then — I don't know what you'd say today of the sort of interest she had. She did a lot a work for YWCA.

MINK: Social work?

DELANO: Social work, yes. It's interesting — if I may just depart from the time that we are talking about now, which was in the twenties in the art department on Vermont Avenue— that when she retired much later, she devoted her whole time and energies to the idea of aging and what to do for people who were aging. She was asked by the city of Los Angeles to investigate this, was given a certain amount of money, and she went all over the country looking over the main cities where they had advanced ideas or none at all. In other words, she made a survey for the city of Los Angeles. She even visited Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt at the time because she was so interested in that kind of thing. And so there is a printed report, a book in the annals of the city of Los Angeles, Then the consequence from that work I think was very interesting, because she was asked by the Congregational — they didn't call it the church; it was really the Congregational Church, but there's a name for the association, Maybe it was that. It was interested in building a new home for aging people — they didn't necessarily have to be Congregationalists — and they wanted to build it out in Claremont. So Mrs. Humphreys had a very important part in the building of a wonderful set of homes out there in Claremont, or actually Pomona, but it's close to Claremont. It's called Mount San Antonio Gardens.

MINK: So many people from UCLA have gone out there and retired.

DELANO: That's true. Yes, they have. They've found it excellent. She was instrumental in urging many of them to join. Since we're talking about some of the early faculty. Miss Chandler went out there at the same time Mrs. Humphreys did, right after they opened it — moved out there and was very happy. Mrs. Humphreys died within a little bit over a year after she went in there, and this was quite shocking to Miss Chandler. I think she never quite got over the shock of that. She had a series of heart attacks and is in the hospital out there now. But they have wonderful care in that hospital. Yesterday, or the day before, she was ninety years old and they had a little celebration for her and a birthday cake.

MINK: I think you've made reference to her, but perhaps you would like to say a little more about Bessie Hazen. She later, I believe, became chairman of the department, didn't she?

DELANO: Yes, at some one time there I think she was. It was a short time; I can't recall just who was absent. Miss Gere had been the chairman for a long time. Perhaps Miss Gere took some time off. Anyhow, Miss Hazen was a very genial person and a very kindly, very good teacher. Her students always spoke well of her and felt that they got a great deal from her training. She had an ability as a landscape artist and was instrumental in helping to build up the California Watercolor Society in the twenties in Los Angeles.

MINK: Well, then, you must have been fairly close to her because you were also involved in that same organization.

DELANO: Yes, I was. I joined it at her instigation in the first few years — maybe not the very first year it opened. It started as a sort of branch of the California Art Club, and I had already joined that; so then the people that wanted to work in watercolors formed a separate organization, and it's really a national now. Yes, I still am a member of that, and for many years I contributed paintings, and then as I went on into more painting in oils and that sort of thing — and murals — I just didn't submit as many watercolors. But I did for many years, and I think Miss Hazen had a part in urging me to join and become a member. She was older than I was. You see, I start as a student with most of the people we've been talking about.

MINK: Did she play a dominant role in the decision making in the department?

DELANO: No, I think if I would relate to anyone more than the others, I think she had the same attitude I had: that if you were first of all a painter, an artist, while you were interested, your teaching was not to be minimized. I mean, I found a great satisfaction in developing theories and working with the students, and I think she felt that way, too; but we still felt that our main objective was to express ourselves through our paintings.

MINK: You've made some references both on and off tape to Louise P. Sooy. In fact, I think the last time we were talking, you described her coming to the department and how young and dynamic, and what a fine dresser she was. You also mentioned before the beginning of the interview that she frequently took upon herself certain projects, the purpose of which being to "get ahead." And you mentioned particularly this matter of the development of the stagecraft program. I wonder if you could talk about her in connection with that?

DELANO: Yes. First, the city schools were expanding and trying to have more art in the curriculum for the students in the elementary schools as well as in the high schools, and our graduates were needed in the high schools particularly at that time; so it was felt that if they could have some training in stagecraft it would be a whole expressive field there for them. So Mrs. Sooy got acquainted with Wilhelmina Wilkes, who was the director of the theater downtown — I've forgotten what the name of that theater was.

MINK: We can fill it in later.

DELANO: And the main actor just died this year. He was Edward Everett Horton. The two of them together agreed to teach a little group something about producing plays and especially pantomime plays, something that art students could work out imaginatively and creatively. I joined the group and we went down once a week to study under Miss Wilkes. We learned to produce little plays and something about acting and what would be involved in furnishing this stage and the costumes. Mrs. Sooy then worked out courses in costume design and wanted me to work out courses in the stage backgrounds. So we really did cooperate in that. She worked out some pantomimes; and, of course, they were quite decorative and involved a lot of craft work; and most of the department worked on these creations. Miss Wilkes and Mr. Horton would come up and see them in rehearsal.

MINK: What was he like at that time?

DELANO: He was quite a young man. I've found some pictures- but I don't know where they are right now — that were interesting then. He was very enthusiastic, and I remember one time we went out to his home — he had his old mother there — it was interesting. Let's see, what is it? You wanted to know a little bit about Mrs. Sooy's relation there to the development of that?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: I think there was a lot of criticism later of these pantomimes because they didn't have enough substance. They were decorative and romantic and charming, but a lot of people wanted a little more. You know, if you'd go to a play such as these were as they were given there in Royce Hall, you would just have a succession of decorative scenes and elaborate stage sets, but not much happening except a sort of a succession of pattern. Some of it was based on Greek themes. Dr. Moore was very interested in the Greek ideas, so the art department worked with Miss Thomas.

MINK: Evalyn Thomas?

DELANO: Evalyn Thomas. The art department fixed the backgrounds for the Greek plays which she produced, and made the costumes and the backgrounds, just as we did for these pantomimes that Mrs. Sooy produced.

MINK: You spoke about Wilhelmina Wilkes. What sort of a person was she?

DELANO: She was an outstanding woman for her time. To think that she was given the chance to produce plays at the — was it the Belasco Theater?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: It seems to me it was.

MINK: Was she quite young?

DELANO: Yes, she was young; she was dynamic and very successful. I think there were a chain of these theaters. I've forgotten the history.

MINK: And she's still living?

DELANO: No, I don't think so. She was older than I was at that time, you know. She would be in her eighties, maybe, now.

MINK: If she were still alive?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: The question of Mrs. Sooy's getting into this: you had pointed out that perhaps she was overly anxious to build this program up.

DELANO: Perhaps at the expense of the other work in the department, you know. She wanted to carry out her own ideas, and when you have the whole department turned over to making these elaborate sets and very little equipment — for example, we'd buy yardage to cover the whole back of the stage there in Royce Hall and curtains that had to be decorated and dyed. It was a dreadful job because we didn't have the money to buy the special equipment that we should have had. I know how difficult it was because I had charge of making all the scenery. Then when she wanted to have it transported to Pasadena, we had a dreadful time there because all of the sets had to be cut down to fit the stage in the little playhouse over there where Gilmor Brown was starting the little-theater movement. (There was this little-theater movement around the country at that time.) We didn't have television. It was just the beginning of movies in Hollywood, and that was another incentive besides the city schools. People in the art department could go into the art side of the moviemaking, which some of them did, and [they] are in there to this day.

MINK: You mentioned that you had quite a bit to do with Gilmor Brown in this work.

DELANO: Yes. The most successful pantomimes that were worked out were taken over there to Pasadena several times and adapted to the stage and produced. Students went over. He would arrange for us to eat over there after the plays were given, and we had a good time. It was rather exciting, but it was also very hard work. I guess the fact that the staff was young and students were young, too--we really worked, really got it done.

MINK: What other activities did the art department engage in, say, outside of the regular curriculum, like this?

DELANO: Well, landscape trips. After painting started to develop beyond just the original first two or three years, we would take special trips during the school year. I'm not talking about the summers now, because from, my standpoint that was something else. I held that as sacred time for my own development in painting and landscape trips.

MINK: You didn't take summer sessions or teach in the summer?

DELANO: Once or twice, maybe two times I taught in summer session, but I just felt that I couldn't develop as a painter unless I gave my time to it. And without promotions or without a way to get ahead in the art department, there seemed to be a dead end; and so you either took your own time off or tried to do it in the summers, three months at a time. So I did spend every summer, except those I spent in Europe studying in the museums. Back to the question, now. What was it you asked me?

MINK: The various other extracurricular activities.

DELANO: Oh, the painting trips. On weekends sometimes.... Now Miss Gere and Miss Chandler, especially, in Columbia University, did have enough training in painting to feel interested, and if they had not been involved with teaching- let's put it that way — perhaps they would have gone on to make marks for themselves as painters. So they had that in their background. And they would take these trips on weekends, and several of us who were students at the time would go with them. And then later, when I started to teach in the art department, I remember taking a lot of trips. One thing I want to recall is kind of interesting now. The equipment that we had as artists in those days was mostly imported from Europe — our easels, especially the sketching material. If you'd go in an art store to buy something, it was very expensive, because they were imported. Our paints were imported: I bought Windsor Newton's paints from London, or French paints. When I was in Paris one time, Matisse brought out his palette for me, and I bought all the paints, the types of paints that he used, in Paris. I remember Miss Gere had an umbrella which was attached to the easel, and there was quite a lot of paraphernalia you could get that was routine in Europe in the sketching. So when you see a picture of Cezanne painting out in the fields, you can examine the detail and it's exactly like the stuff Miss Gere had. Then I bought some of the same things later, but they were all imported. Nowadays people don't go out in landscape painting with an umbrella and that kind of thing.

MINK: What else did she buy besides an umbrella?

DELANO: There were interesting little paint boxes worked out in miniature so that you could carry small canvases. They were put into slots. This gave me an idea for some of my later trips out, on my own painting trips. I had special equipment made right here. For example, if I wanted to carry wet oil paintings and I was out in New Mexico and a rainstorm would come up, I had boxes fashioned so that they were dustproof, rainproof, and so that the paintings couldn't move. They would go into slots, and I carried paintings that were fairly large, large as the top of the car, with a box on top especially made for that. In fact, I had Paul Williams make me a whole series of boxes. I shouldn't really get off the track here, but he was a student in these first courses called industrial design. The desk that I have right here in the studio is one that he designed and fashioned, and he made a great deal of furniture for the opening of Bullock's Wilshire — in fact, all of the special pieces. He had all of his design from me, and so he felt so grateful for what he had gotten that he really did a wonderful job fixing my car, equipping my car with special boxes to carry everything I needed out on trips.

MINK: Paul Williams went on and made quite a reputation for himself as a designer.

DELANO: Yes, he did, but there were two Paul Williams[ es] . There was a Paul Williams who was an architect, a Negro. This man I'm talking about was not; he was a man from Glendale and worked in bent plywood especially. That was his specialization later.

MINK: Was this technique something that he picked up from you ?

DELANO: Well, I went to Europe in 1928 and was especially interested in everything modern. I went to all the exhibits I could find and all the modern architectural shows as well as to buildings in different countries and tried to find out especially what it was that made a significant difference in the furniture of the past and what was going on in Europe at that time. I went to the Bauhaus — that was in Germany, but now that's getting on a little ahead. But the Bauhaus influence was something that had a great influence on me — the people I met there.

MINK: Besides the landscape tours and trips and so on-- and you mentioned several other areas — were there any other areas where the art department worked outside the area of general teaching?

DELANO: Let's see, I mentioned having little plays. This even involved the faculty. We would have an art department Halloween party with the students and the faculty, and we would make special costumes and masks or whatever we needed. The faculty would put on a little skit. I don't think we have much of that sort of thing going on today. I don't know whether the faculty even know each other.

MINK: Was it true that the other departments also did some of these social things in a very much more intimate way?

DELANO: Yes, I think so because I got acquainted with these years, and I treasure it very much. For example, the anthropology department. At first it wasn't a department. Dr. [Ralph L.] Beals came here (and I don't know whether I should develop this theme here right now, but you asked about this idea) and was put in with the psychology department some time before he could get enough faculty together to form an anthropology department. But in the meantime he developed what was called the Friends of Anthropology, just a little grouping of people interested. Well, I was interested because of going out to the Indian country to paint in that wonderful landscape, so I joined that group in order to learn something about the past of the Indians in New Mexico especially. We met in the homes of the people who were in that first group. They would tell about their research, and we'd have some refreshments, and it was a lot of fun. I treasure the friendship of Dr. Beals to this day. Dr. [Harry] Hoijer and others who were involved there. Kenneth Macgowan was a member.

MINK: Dr. Hoijer and Dr. Beals — did they also do in the area of anthropology what Nellie Huntington Gere did in the area of art, that is, have field trips?

DELANO: Oh, yes. Dr. Beals, as I remember, started to get the students interested in research here in the Los Angeles area. He conducted the Rainbow Bridge -Monument Valley expedition, the trip that they had out there and had a special dig in fresh ground that nobody had ever dug before.

MINK: Did the friends' group join any of these activities?

DELANO: Oh, I think some of them did, yes. I didn't. I was painting, but I joined up with some of their excursions during the summers — like one that was put on by the Peabody Museum, and there were some people from the anthropology department involved with that, too. It was out on a Hopi reservation.

MINK: And you went out there?

DELANO: Out there, and I camped right beside them and absorbed as much as I could, because they were unearthing beautiful murals there on the Hopi reservation. It was on a site that had never been excavated. They found kivas that were untouched just lying with these murals, but they had been painted in a succession of layers, one over the other, through the years. So their problem was to try and get them off intact if they could, and they did. They had sort of little penknives, and they scraped them off and put them on to a sort of linen cloth and then had to reverse them to find what the actual design was. I think these can be seen in the Peabody Museum today. One reason we were interested in that was that one man who was involved with it came to the art department to find out something about terminology--what terms we used in analyzing patterns, for example, on pottery for the decorative appeal, what made it a work of art and so on--and to see if there was any cross-reference where we could use, or whether you might use the same terminology or invent something that would describe it. I was interested in that and helped formulate some of the ideas. This went on for the work at the Rainbow Bridge [Monument Valley] expedition also.

MINK: You had mentioned that you met lots of people outside of the art department who became life-long friends. Besides Dr. Beals, were there any other areas that you wish to comment on?

DELANO: People in the psychology department. Dr. [Grace M.] Fernald and Dr. [Ellen B.] Sullivan, who's not living now, and also Dr. Moore, the wife of Dr. Moore — let's see, what was her name?

MINK: Dorothea?

DELANO: No, not Dorothea. The second wife. [Kate Gordon]

MINK: Oh, yeah, the second wife.

DELANO: She taught not exactly aesthetics but something in the philosophy department. Anyhow, these people in the psychology department were interested in surrealism, and I was, too. So we had a little group, not involving the people in the psychology department but the people from Caltech who were interested in Freud and Jung, and we had some books translated, and we got together when they first came out and loaned these translations so we could analyze them. We met quite often to discuss them. Then Dr. Fernald wanted me to come over to a meeting to be held some night, whenever I wanted to have it, and discuss surrealism, from the point of view of art. I did that. It was called a colloquium. It was very interesting because I never got a chance to give my whole talk as it were, because they kept cutting in and asking about everything that I said — what did it mean? You know. I'll never forget that; it was very interesting.

MINK: But it was through these people in the psychology department that you got introduced then to this group of people. Did they also meet in people's homes to discuss the works of Jung and Freud?

DELANO: Yes, yes, but they never contacted people here at UCLA.

MINK: How did you get in with them?

DELANO: Through art. I knew this modern architect, John Weber, the Swiss architect, and his wife, Alice, both Swiss — let's see, how was it? Well, I know now. It was through Otis Art Institute and the people in charge there. They would have these evening sessions and meetings and parties. They got interested in psychology, or especially in psychoanalysis, and so they invited these people from Caltech to come, and that's how we formed it. I taught at Otis on my extra days for a number of years.

MINK: And there you taught painting?

DELANO: Yes, I taught painting and theater costume design- different subjects. I can't remember. It was before Disney started, and I had a man in my class who was the right-hand man for Disney later on. In fact, the two of them got the idea for their motion pictures by fooling around with little papers that they could push off by hand and see a succession of movements.

MINK: Were you involved in that in any way?

DELANO: Well, no, not directly, but we did furnish some people from our department — a girl who became the main colorist for many years. I don't know whether she is still there or not. Other people went over to help in the drawings from the department. And then we were entertained by Disney. We went over as a group to see what he was doing in the early years, the formation of this new form, new art.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 28, 1971

MINK: You were telling me last time about the group of people that you joined at Caltech. Do you remember?

DELANO: Oh, yes. Now, that wasn't a formal group in any sense of being organized at all. It just met at different houses for a while if they had time, you know, to come in the evenings, and it was to discuss psychoanalysis. One or two people in the group were being analyzed by a Jungian at that time, but they were reading Freud's books and Jung's. Back in the twenties, this was.

MINK: And I think, didn't you tell me that...

DELANO: Dr. [Paul S .] Epstein was one.

MINK: ...you had become acquainted with these people through your work with the Otis Art Institute?

DELANO: I did, yes, because Karl Howenstein, who was the head at that time, was being analyzed, and so was his wife — both of them, I guess, had been.

MINK: And didn't you tell me that it was largely that one of the things that you derived to benefit out of these discussions was the book that dealt with personality types that Jung had written?

DELANO: Yes. Well, I would get books, buy them, because I didn't want to bother with the library. I wanted to be able to read and study them at my own convenience. So I was never analyzed. I didn't think you should be unless you're sick or can't work or something. Maybe I should be; I don't know. [laughter] But at that time, back then, it kind of helped me to see the difference between Mrs. Sooy and me, you know, because I was having trouble with her.

MINK: What exactly was it that Mrs. Sooy had done to you? You told me something about that.

DELANO: She had written — well, she really wanted to get rid of me.

MINK: Really?

DELANO: Yes, because I had been to the Barnes Foundation, and she felt that I would be steered away from Mr. Dow, and I had already expressed things before I went there that gave her a notion, you know, that I wasn't keeping to the narrow path. She had to go to Honolulu to be the head there because her husband was there. You're not recording this, are you?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Oh, no.

MINK: It's all right, because I said we were going to start to review some of those things.

DELANO: Well, her husband was in Honolulu, and they were starting a new department in the university. It was just very young then, and they wanted someone to build it up. So she wrote to me — and I still have that letter--but I didn't get it directly. She had two letters: one in the mail for me, asking me to come and take that job and build an art department; and the other to Virginia Woodbridge, who was teaching in the art department at the time and a very close friend of hers. She got these letters mixed up, and I got Virginia's letter, so then I knew exactly what Mrs. Sooy felt about me. She said, "That Annita won't take the job at Honolulu. She's just interested in modern art." And she put two big black exclamations on the page, and was very furious at me for not getting out of this art department.

MINK: Did Mrs. Sooy subsequently return from Honolulu?

DELANO: She came back, and I don't know who took the job then.

MINK: Was she on sabbatical? Was that it?

DELANO: No, I don't think so. No, nobody had sabbaticals in those early years.

MINK: She was just on leave?

DELANO: Just on leave, yes.

MINK: And was this the only problem that you really had with her? Or did you have other conflicts too?

DELANO: No, I think a fundamental conflict in ideas about painting and art. I didn't care for the way the Dow theory narrowed the thing down to an oversimplified thing. Now, she taught interior design, for one thing, and her idea was to have the students learn period styles and furnish their houses or rooms with some period. It's all right to learn periods in anything; everything has a history, so one way is to learn something about the background of each art. It leads to a good appreciation. But where were the students going to go with new ideas? Especially if they were led to feel that there was nothing good in any modern art. So there was an attitude towards modern architecture there--for a long time, they just didn't [acknowledge it] — and I was very interested in modern architecture because I was asked to teach a class called Industrial Design. Miss Chandler, I think, had started that and didn't want to go on with it, so they asked me to develop it. I had nothing to do with naming it, but then I thought that if I had to teach that I felt that I better learn on the job something about it. That's what made me get very interested in modern architecture, because I felt any oncoming creative new architecture would be the thing that our students should know about, as well as the background of past periods.

MINK: But there was a feeling against modern architecture in the art department?

DELANO: Yes, there really was.

MINK: And would there be outspoken comments against such people as [Richard] Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: And others of that period?

DELANO: Yes, there was. And this part of Los Angeles was a great place to study modern architecture because Neutra and [Rudolph] Schindler came here to work with Frank Lloyd Wright, and we had some of the most outstanding examples of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture right here in the city. Now, maybe I was just resentful of any criticism, because in later years they would just ease into it and accept it, create in a modern sense. But at that time it was quite a thing.

MINK: It's awfully difficult for people to accept new things.

DELANO: To accept new things, the newest creative things, or a change in what they've been taught. They lean back on something instead of studying into the future with something new.

MINK: Would you say that these people went out of their way in their classroom lectures and so on to deprecate modern architecture?

DELANO: Yes, and modern painting. Now, before we moved to Westwood--that was in the twenties sometime — I had been to Europe on my own to study modern architecture all over the different countries and to go to the Bauhaus in Germany, and so I was very eager to bring back some of the things I found there. I had given certain problems to my classes to work out, and then Miss Gere, who was head of the art department — together I guess with some of the others who were there — got their heads together and felt that what I was teaching shouldn't be taught. As you look back at it now, it seems very innocent in a way; you know, it was somewhat abstract. So they asked me to put it up and that I should never teach it like that anymore. Well, that rankled in my mind.

MINK: They asked you to put it up?

DELANO: To put it up so they could criticize it. And because the thing had no exact resemblance to, say, a realistic object like a figure or a house, but was more abstract (in fact, I'd asked them to look at moving lights at night in the streets, and shadows and so on, and then we were going to work out a whole series of things; they were balanced, they were composed, they were interesting but somehow shocking to this group), I was asked not to teach anything like that.

MINK: Who asked you?

DELANO: Miss Gere, the head of the art department.

MINK: And what did you tell her?

DELANO: Well, you see, we had no tenure, and you just had to swallow a thing, although I think later on I had more nerve to really say what I felt and come back with ideas. But at that time it was quite a blow, you know.

MINK: What could you say to your students?

DELANO: Well, I'd just tell them how I felt about it.

MINK: Did you let them know that you'd been told not to teach this?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: What were their reactions?

DELANO: Well, they just waited to see what would unfold, because all around we had exhibitions of modern painting. For example, Galka Scheyer came to Los Angeles about that time, and she had the Blue Four exhibition. I helped her put it up in the art department, and I don't think they liked it. But there were things that were very imaginative, like the things of Paul Klee — that whole collection that's over in Pasadena now, you know. I think that there was a great reluctance to change the kind of problems that Mr. Dow had worked out in Columbia University and most of the staff had taken under his headship.

MINK: Did you try to remonstrate with some of these people about this and to get something through to them?

DELANO: Yes, through the years, a little bit. Miss Chandler was the first one that I could have any confidence in, feeling that she might change her ideas. You see, there was something charismatic, I guess, about Mr. Dow and his teaching that those of us who didn't contact him, go there to study. . .

MINK: ...didn't have the truth?

DELANO: Didn't have. But they really felt that it was something like a gospel to be transferred over into any situation. And it did have its effect all over the country. It was not the only group that...

MINK: ...rebelled?

DELANO: Rebelled.

MINK: Against modern art?

DELANO: Against modern art.

MINK: Well, how was it that you were able with Miss Chandler?

DELANO: With Miss Chandler — I saw her more often and visited in her home, and of course she was stubborn about change, too. Still, I was able--well, I hate to say argue — to talk to her about what made the difference in my outlook.

MINK: She was reasonable and would discuss it, at least?

DELANO: She would at least discuss it. But, you see. Dr. [Albert Coombs] Barnes and Dewey had already written articles in the twenties, when the Barnes Foundation was formed, against a great deal of the way art was taught in the schools all over the country. John Dewey knew Mr. Dow at Columbia University, and so his ideas were very familiar. As I see it, John Dewey's general idea is that there is in all the fields a knowledge, a knowing; there is a tendency to search for something that's absolutistic, and especially back in that period and down through the ages before that. In the last fifty years, this philosophy has changed so much in trying to accommodate to a way of knowing which would accommodate to all of these fields, which are vastly more complicated than something that you could put under one principle. It was as though you could say, "Well, now, this is unity, this is beauty. What we're searching for is beauty." That sounds innocent enough, but when you come down to practical matters, the students were left high and dry with problems that didn't come down to the more realistic thing of fashioning, designing, planning, working out something that had beauty in its whole context.

MINK: And you finally got Miss Chandler to accept this?

DELANO: Well, after she could overlook the problems — I mean the written diatribes that Dr. Barnes wrote about the Dow teaching — I tried to point out to her that Dow did not put in enough elements. If he were trying to make a basic theory that would fit all the arts, he didn't have enough to fit all the arts. It was just ridiculous. For example, he said that the basic thing would be line, dark and light, and color. Well, he left out space, and space is something if you're fashioning a house, a building, a painting, a piece of sculpture. You're spacing material, you're designing, you're planning, and that is incorporated with the other elements. And then he should have mentioned texture as an element. I guess if they worked with him they didn't feel any disruption in this thing because, after all, he painted, but he tried to simplify his own paintings. And he was being influenced by the experience he'd had with Oriental art, so his paintings were flat. He didn't have to know too much about deep space to organize them, but he wouldn't like a Renoir, for example, which is very deep space or a student that would try to work in a rounded way.

MINK: Miss Chandler was the first one, really, in the department to break away from the Dow principles?

DELANO: Yes. And many years after some of these things happened and after I came back from the Barnes Foundation — a whole year there and in Europe, studying under their plans — Miss Chandler asked her classes to read one of Barnes's books — which was a great concession, I felt on her part, because she knew Mr. Dow very intimately and his wife. And he was a fine person--there ' s no doubt about it — but it's just how rigid a certain philosophy can be which doesn't reach out to encompass the next generation, let's say, you know, coming on.

MINK: Apparently Natalie White had not been taught the Dow principles. She really learned more about the Dewey methods.

DELANO: Well, Dewey was in Columbia. I've kind of forgotten the history there, but that's very easy to look up. He had a school — isn't it somewhere around Chicago?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: And resigned from that. And then he had many offers to teach, and so he went into Columbia, and I'm sure he must have been teaching educational principles there. That was in the philosophy department.

MINK: Yes, when Natalie White went back there. And I mentioned quite briefly before the interview some remark that Corinne Seeds made about Natalie White, and how she had had Mrs. Humphreys as her assistant in the training school for art, and how she wanted to take on Natalie White instead. And she pointed out that Mrs. Humphreys was "the pillar of the art department."

DELANO: Well, I don't know how to reconstruct this in the light of a training school. You see, the training school is a place where all the teachers practice their teaching and have some direct contact with Miss Seeds and her staff. Mrs. Humphreys was doing that job for our department, that is, I mean she was cooperating with Miss Seeds to teach art education. The department itself had a course in theory and practice, and this was always carried out the way it had been in Columbia University. I don't want to forget to mention another thing that happened to me when I went to Columbia, too. You asked about Natalie White. I don't even know what she took at Columbia; as you say, she took something with Dewey, and I think it must have been educational principles. I think if you want to study some of the early writings of John Dewey and right on up to the time he dies, you can see a change in his own work. So at the beginning it was a great effort to try to open up the vision of people who were working in the schools, to radical changes, in a way, something that people rebelled against because they had been fixed in sort of a routine and going through courses that were ingrained and habitual. I don't know what made me think of the fact that he'd been asked to go to China, you know, to help them break away from their hidebound traditions. He was asked to go to Russia, and I think he had to invent or make up a kind of new psychology about habits. If I can remember — this is a long time ago — I guess the first book I read of his was Human Nature and Conduct, in which he analyzes how painful it is to break up habits. This is what we're talking about, it seems to me, here. I knew people like those who were in the art department, and others, briefly, like Miss Seeds, who had worked in Columbia University, been introduced to Dewey's thought there; and I think this was quite in the limelight all over the country educationally. He had a great influence. Dow was only one of a great many people in other areas who kept to the older ways, although he introduced some things that meant a change in the homes, the everyday things. You could take his simplified problems, and that was fine. I mean, you could learn how to put a picture on a wall and space it. But if you were going to make a painting with a great group of figures in them in deep space, then it didn't apply.

MINK: Well, you can't remember then, or you don't feel then, that Corinne Seeds's rejection of Mrs. Humphreys in favor of Natalie White created a rift between the training school and the art department that lasted?

DELANO: Oh, no. I never heard about that. It seems to me that the art department went right on with its training of art teachers. They were asked to take courses in history of education, and the students would have different training teachers. So I really don't know too much about that period, but as far as Mrs. Humphreys, I think she probably felt like Miss Gere, Miss Chandler, Mrs. Sooy and Miss Brooks — as she was at the time, later Mrs. Wycoff — they all had this feeling about a crusade.

MINK: So that probably that's why Corinne Seeds....

DELANO: She probably felt that, Miss Seeds probably did feel something about that.

MINK: Whereas Natalie White would have been more. . .

DELANO: ...probably didn't get into that because I think it was the painters that had more trouble with swallowing the whole thing in its limited sense than did others.

MINK: Who were involved more in the arts and the crafts and design.

DELANO: Yes, that's right. Does that clear that up?

MINK: Yes, I think so. One of the things that you were mentioning the other time when we were talking was the question of your actually going to the Barnes Foundation, and you had sort of recounted for me the circumstances under which you actually met John Dewey and Dr. Barnes at the dedication of the buildings. I wonder if you could run through that for me.

DELANO: Reminisce on that time. I don't know whether we recall the date for that or not.

MINK: Nineteen thirty is the dedication of Royce Hall.

DELANO: Well, then, I remember that John Dewey gave a lecture, and after the talk he came around to the campus with Dr. Barnes. I didn't know at the time that was Dr. Barnes, but later they walked over to the library building and Barbara Morgan was with me at that time. We followed them over and had nerve enough to ask if they wanted to come over to the art department and see the students' work. They said yes, they'd like to come if they could get rid of their robes, and Dr. Moore, for a minute — that's what they said, just in jest. So we walked across the campus and went up the three flights of stairs to get to that little gallery we had in the Education Building, where the art department was housed at the time.

MINK: Which was now on the Westwood campus.

DELANO: On the Westwood campus, yes. This is digressing from what you were asking me, but we moved out there in '29 and lived in the top of the library for a while — for a whole year, in fact. Nothing much was said as we walked around the gallery and saw the students' work. It was the year-end exhibit, I guess. I don't remember what month this was. June, probably.

MINK: Was work of all students, all teachers exhibited?

DELANO: Yes. The exhibits always looked nice. You know, they were well arranged.

MINK: What I mean to say is: Mrs. Sooy's students were there; yours were there?

DELANO: Oh, yes. Painting and design and so on. We have to remember that the Barnes Foundation was more devoted to painting and sculpture than anything else.

MINK: So Barnes would have been more interested in the painting?

DELANO: He would have been more interested in the painting, yes, and have sympathy for it. Well, I guess he didn't like it because he didn't make any overt comment at the time, but afterwards he went home--he went to Dr. Moore's home with John Dewey — and they must have discussed a great deal there because the next day Dr. Moore called me up and said that Mr. Barnes didn't like the students' work and he felt somebody teaching there should study at his place, and he wondered if I would get Mrs. Sooy and take her out to the department, and [also] Mrs. Morgan. The three of us got out there and met Barnes and Dewey. There was discussion; then afterwards I was called again, and Dr. Moore said to me the next day, "Barnes feels that if some of you want to come and study there that it would be fine." I didn't give it much of a thought. I didn't think I had the money to get over there, and I didn't want to be under obligation to anybody; and so I said I would if I could, and that was that. Then I prepared to go out on my regular painting trip to New Mexico and Arizona, and while I was out in the Hopi reservation north of Flagstaff I got this telegram from Dr. Moore saying that if I wanted to I could go there for a whole year, twelve months, at $100 a month, and I'd have to decide what to do. I packed up my belongings and drove home and tried to see Dr. Moore, because it meant a great deal to me. I felt that the department was already — that is, the older members of the staff were already--against my attitudes towards modern painting and that sort of thing, and that if I gave up my job, there was no way I could get it back if they didn't v:ant me because there was no tenure then for most of us. Besides that, I had been to Europe in 1928 and saved on my own to go to study the modern architecture all over Europe. And I didn't have a cent. I didn't have any money to get across the country. This $100 wouldn't start until I got to Philadelphia.

MINK: Do you think it was anything to do with your work in Europe that convinced Dr. Barnes that you were the one that ought to study?

DELANO: Well, I like to think that I said one thing, at least, that intrigued him. You see. Dr. Barnes had really amassed a marvelous collection of paintings. When I was there, there were twenty-seven galleries filled with priceless things, beautiful things of many periods, and especially the modern of that period. You see, now, this is a generation later. This is fifty years afterwards we're talking about, and he, at that time, had early Picassos that are just priceless today, many of Matisse's paintings, many so-called primitives of Europe, lots of Negro sculpture which he promoted and made popular — the whole panorama of impressionist painting including literally hundreds of paintings (I have a list somewhere that I made of what was there when I was there) by Cezanne, from early to late, and of Renoir — all the great impressionists were included.

MINK: So you made it clear to him that you had been to Europe and studied these paintings?

DELANO: I had been to Europe, and I'd gone through all the great museums in the countries where I visited, and I was especially looking at modern architecture, making great effort through letters that I had — that's another story, but I also had letters to people who had private collections. And one of them was to Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur in Switzerland. I just happened to mention that to Dr. Barnes, and his eyes lit up, and he said, "I haven't been there, but you haven't seen my collection." And I feel that was the moment that he thought I should see his collection. I didn't dream anything about it. At the time, I didn't know that he had such a wonderful collection.

MINK: You had no idea of knowing why he thought that either Mrs. Morgan or Mrs. Sooy were not as good candidates as yourself?

DELANO: Well, Mrs. Morgan and her husband were just about to leave for New York, because he had taken a job for the Leica camera to develop the first little camera in this country. Then that led to his position on the first staff of Life magazine. He's been in the publishing business ever since. So she was going to resign her job and go to New York V7ith her husband.

MINK: So she really wasn't a candidate?

DELANO: She wasn't a candidate, no.

MINK: What about Mrs. Sooy?

DELANO: Well, I think Mrs. Sooy would like to have gone, but after Dr. Barnes talked to her, I guess he felt that she wouldn't really study — because, as I think back on it, after all, she didn't develop as a painter. Her main idea at first was the theater, the art side of the stage sets and costumes.

MINK: Which we were talking about last time.

DELANO: Talking about last time. And interior design. Costume and interior — that was the main thing, not painting, although she'd been taught some painting courses in Columbia University. She might have been a painter if she'd wanted to be one.

MINK: She resented, you think, the fact that you went?

DELANO: I think she resented it because I think she felt then that I would be influenced by some other theory.

MINK: You would be brainwashed.

DELANO: I would be brainwashed, yes. Well, I did write an article while I was there, a sort of a long-winded business about what was wrong with art education in the country, and I did try to pin it down to the experiences I had had and where I felt it had shortcomings.

MINK: Was this article published?

DELANO: It was published in a little magazine called Dark and Light . Mrs. Sooy was the editor at that moment. Mrs. Morgan had started the thing and had been the first editor, and then when she left for New York, Mrs. Sooy took it on.

MINK: Well, Mrs. Sooy then must have read your article.

DELANO: She read the article and placed it at the back of the magazine, and she had two or three other articles warning people that they had had good training and the reason they could go into modern art was because they had this training under Mr. Dow. There was a great deal of lauding of the man as a great leader and a person who had methods that were very fundamental.

MINK: So she published your article, but she sort of set it in a setting which took away from it?

DELANO: I'd sort of forgotten all about that.

MINK: The article in your hand. What year was it published?

DELANO: April, 1931.

MINK: In Art and Education.

DELANO: Art and Education. It used to be called Dark and Light.

MINK: You also mentioned a minute ago that you were worried about getting back, and precisely for things like this—this article.

DELANO: Yes, I trembled in my boots, because even though I was getting very little money there, I felt that I had to have a job. There was nothing I could turn to; I had to work. So when I left I discussed it with Dr. Moore and said that I felt that Mrs. Sooy would not want me to come back.

MINK: Was he surprised at this?

DELANO: No. He said, "We need people with other points of view." He supported me. And at that time, you see, he was greatly in favor of John Dewey.

MINK: Did he guarantee you, then, a job?

DELANO: Yes, he told me not to fear — that it would be all right. I could get back there even though Mrs. Sooy might not want me to come back into the department.

MINK: Well, for the time being we'll skip that, because I hope that you will talk about your experience at the Barnes Foundation in another hour recording. I wondered also about another thing you mentioned to me the other day, and this had to do with the relationship between Dr. Moore and Mr. [David C.] Allison and the development of the new Westwood buildings — the design, the architecture, You had mentioned that the art department strongly advised not using the Renaissance style in the development of the Westwood campus. Is that correct?

DELANO: That's true. Yes, that's correct. It seemed to me, as I remember, the Berkeley campus had a hand in that. They had a department of architecture up there, and so they were called upon to mediate in the building of the new university down here — this was to be called a branch--and to act in the selection of an architect. But Dr. Moore knew the Allisons, and they had designed the buildings on the Vermont campus, and so he decided that Allison and Allison — -two brothers, probably — were to design the Westwood campus. I think Dr. Moore had a romantic feeling towards the buildings in Italy, even though they weren't made of brick like the Westwood campus; still, he glowed when he talked about some of the great structures there in Italy of the Romanesque period. So perhaps between Dr. Moore and the Allisons they decided it should be, and he said these buildings would be there for a thousand years.

MINK: Didn't the art department, you were telling me, have a decidedly different point of view about this?

DELANO: Yes, you see there had already been a wave of new buildings in Europe after the First World War. We had had Frank Lloyd Wright here. There were a lot of new styles and structures and creative buildings made in Europe and in this country, so that we could have had a choice of some modern man to build this campus. We thought, at least I think that as I look back on it now, that certainly somebody like [Walter] Gropius might have made a finer school and would be considered functional. Whereas a Romanesque building functioned as a church, as a cathedral and that sort of thing, With entirely different kind of structure--which resulted in the thick walls and little glass because of the way they had to build the buildings in the Middle Ages — these modern buildings would have been ever so much more appropriate for our day.

MINK: Well, were such recommendations made by your department?

DELANO: Yes. I don't remember how formal they were, but I know that we had some reply from Berkeley that we didn't know enough. I don't remember just what the wording was, but it was something quite insulting.

MINK: Like "Mind your own business"?

DELANO: Mind your own business. Yes, something to that effect. Well, you know, that was typical in architectural schools. USC at the time was very much against introducing anything modern. I happen to know an architect who is modern — now, that's a relative term, but he was creative in his ideas. He graduated from USC, but he said he had to be very careful not to allow anyone on the staff to know that he was interested, even, and that he had to learn to be a period-style architect at that time.

MINK: His name?

DELANO: [Raphael] Soriano, I believe, was his name. He's just typical of one I happen to know. Later, the whole department, the whole country went modern, but it was this beginning period of bursting out of centuries of other attitudes towards creativeness in architecture, especially in this country. If we built a state house, it copied classic styles — no attempt to make it modern.

MINK: Well, this would have been the time in Los Angeles, in the late twenties, following the building of such buildings as the Biltmore Hotel and some of the other office buildings in the Los Angeles area.

DELANO: Yes, they all had a non modern facade, even though their functions were something of this day and age. The structure itself was not suggestive of what was to take place inside.

MINK: And apparently the people, the founders of the university, didn't think of this. \

DELANO: No, even though we would debate with them and discuss it, it made no difference. We couldn't break through.

MINK: I think we were also talking something about the inscriptions that were put around on the various buildings, and I had mentioned that it seemed to me that Moore had quite a hand in this and that no one much dictated to him. And we were particularly mentioning the inscription that appeared in Royce Hall, the one: "Education is learning to use the tools which the human race has found to be indispensable."

DELANO: Yes, I remember that sentence up in front of the auditorium, yes.

MINK: And I think you were remarking to me that there was some reaction to this even at that time.

DELANO: Well, we wondered where the sentence came from. I wondered perhaps it might have been from [Josiah] Royce. But it seemed to belie the whole trend that Dr. Moore stood for in his philosophy. He didn't go for anything creative in the architecture, and it seemed that this sentence implied that everything had already been found, you know. What room is there, what incentive is there in that sentence for what might come?

MINK: We also were wondering what John Dewey might have thought about it.

DELANO: I never heard John Dewey discuss the sentence, but it seems to me that it doesn't work in with his whole train of thought, because it's as though.... Well, we learn from tradition — there's no doubt about that — but as I recall something from William James where he used the metaphor of a tree, that there's this inner core that's the more or less static thing in man's development. We would have all of this heritage and tradition, and it's there; but it's this active place between the bark and that inner core where all the organic, new, changing growth is coming, and that this is what we should stimulate.

MINK: And you don't think that sentence....

DELANO: The sentence doesn't suggest the new creativeness, but that if you just teach what's happened — in fact, the tools that are indispensable. I think we need new tools. How could we have gotten to the moon without new tools? This is the thing. And another thing: let's take a principle — that's a tool, but it should be sharpened. It shouldn't just be exalted like a little god, you know. It's just a tool, that's all it is, in my mind.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 28, 1971

MINK: Some of the other members of the department that were there in this period of the twenties — people like Clara Bartram, for example....

DELANO: She was Mrs. Humphreys later.

MINK: She was Mrs. Humphreys later, and she was the one that was in industrial arts. Have we discussed her? I believe we have.

DELANO: Yes, in relation to Miss Seeds 's work in the training school.

MINK: And Belle Whitice — I think we discussed her last time. I think we discussed these industrial art people.

DELANO: Miss Chandler.

MINK: Yes, you did mention to me that you want to say some more about Miss Chandler.

DELANO: I feel that Miss Chandler wanted to be an artist- painter, in that sense — and I think she was repressed in her outgoing attitude towards painting a little bit unconsciously by the whole theory here. I think she would have developed into a person with a great deal of feeling for drawing or landscape. I feel that since she was one of my teachers, and so was Mrs. Sooy, that really Miss Chandler influenced me in those early years when I was a student there in the department. Miss Gere taught the art appreciation and history. Of course, she analyzed the things she showed in slides, which all had to be in black and white — we didn't have colored slides in those days — but she analyzed them with the very words that Mr. Dow used in his classes at Columbia University. I feel that there were a great many people that derived benefit from this type of analysis. Those were in the early years here in Los Angeles when — I don't mean real early but in this period we are talking about — the movies were starting and there was a chance for graduates to go into those fields. In schools they could put on little plays and different kinds of theatrical exhibits — like puppetry, for example. Many outlets. And some design that would apply there to the costume, the sets and so on, would work in. There was nothing from the Dow theory that would dislodge any of their ideas. I mean, this would just go on for the better because of having trained under him. But other things like — it seems to me — sculpture and painting might have been hurt by it .

MINK: I notice that in the report that Miss Gere made to Provost Moore for the fiscal year of 1923-24 which she submitted in June, she said among other things that we need a museum in connection with the art studios.

DELANO: Oh, yes. Now, that's a thread that's developed right up through the years. It was felt from the earliest times that the students should see fine works of art and that we should have collections, but there was no money for such an idea. Yet the teachers hauled in all kinds of things for the students to see, or they would take them out to the Los Angeles museum, which was quite a distance, difficult to get down to that; but they were asked to go and see things, or spend their own money to get to Europe to see things, or go to New York or Chicago where they could see actual works of art. Then when we did move out to West Los Angeles in 1929, we had an exhibition room that was on the top floor of the Education Building--no elevators- and this was dreadful, for how many years we toiled there to take things up and down by hand and get them in to that display room — and at great risks, sometimes. I remember going to Pasadena to bring a collection of fine Oriental porcelains back to our campus, and I brought it in my own car. Now, if something had happened to that car and I had broken those things, I guess I would have been in debt for the rest of my life because they were priceless objects — no insurance.

MINK: Was this from the collection of Grace Nicholson?

DELANO: Grace Nicholson's collection, exactly right, from Pasadena.

MINK: Was she considered to be quite a fine collector?

DELANO: Yes, of certain things, yes.

MINK: Did she ever come to the school to lecture or to meet with the classes at all?

DELANO: No, I don't remember that she did. I don't think people in our department knew her personally. In fact, I don't remember meeting her even for the selection of that exhibition. Perhaps she was older then.

MINK: Well, for example. Miss Nellie Gere says that "We were told within a few weeks, just within a few weeks, by a well-known discriminating collector that if we did have a museum she would be glad to leave her collection of paintings to the Southern Branch." I don't suppose you could tell me who that was?

DELANO: Well, that might have been Galka Scheyer, who had the Blue Four. She had collected Kandinski, Paul Klee, [Alexey von] Jawlensky, and [Lyonel] Feininger especially — others, too — in Europe. She was instrumental in bringing this collection, not only the things she owned herself but others that the artists loaned her, to California, where she showed it in different cities. She was located, for a while, in San Francisco, and then she got Richard Neutra to design a house for her in the Hollywood Hills. I arranged a number of exhibits for Galka Scheyer. It was most stimulating to have the originals. At that time those artists were not as well known as they are today. And imagine — well, I was just speaking about getting up to the third floor. I remember putting up an exhibit for Galka Scheyer. She came with some other friends; a man helped her with these priceless paintings. We had no insurance or any guarantee that anything would [be done] if anything happened to them. We had Paul Klees; I put them all over the classrooms and up in that third floor — most of the classrooms were up on the second floor — and we had these originals all over the galleries, and the students could look at them directly.

MINK: There never seemed to be any problem in those days of theft?

DELANO: No, it seemed the students were well behaved. We didn't have riots, it was unthinkable. But here were these beautiful things for them to study.

MINK: I suppose this is what Nellie Huntington Gere meant when she was asking about a museum.

DELANO: Well, a museum in another sense would mean a building where you could have regular exhibitions and money enough to keep a staff to work it out, and, see, this did come about finally — shall I speak about that now?

MINK: The development of the Dickson Art Center?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Later, I think you should talk about that.

DELANO: Later, yes. We should remember about that, because it has to do with the galleries.

MINK: The interesting thing I was noticing here among the things that she reported for 1924 was about the alumni association of the art department, which was known by the name of the Arthur Wesley Dow Association.

DELANO: That's true.

MINK: Of all things.

DELANO: Yes, it was.

MINK: And they held an exhibition of paintings and crafts in the gallery during the month of April. "It was particularly gratifying to see the art staff and work and the progress that they had made." I was wondering about this Arthur Wesley Dow Association. Do you know how it got started?

DELANO: Well, when I came into the department as a student, I think it has already been started. I suppose it ' s a matter of record that one could find out, but it was no doubt started by the members of the staff who had been chosen because they had had Mr. Dow's training at Columbia University. That would have been Miss Gere, Miss Chandler, Miss Hazen and Mrs. Sooy — Miss Brooks especially.

MINK: Did you ever have much involvement with this association at all?

DELANO: Yes. I went to all the meetings after I became a student — I think after I started teaching there.

MINK: And what kind of activities did they engage in generally?

DELANO: There would be discussions and maybe a speaker. There was a movement all over California to have the schools get together on art. There were graduates from Columbia — and many other cities, too. We had exhibitions up and down the state. There was another society formed, and that was called the Pacific Arts Conference. So we had exhibits in San Francisco. I can remember hauling students' work up there, and we'd go at quite an expense on our own. They never paid for this; I mean, we had to pay our own train fares at that time.

MINK: You had to go to these meetings and they didn't pay your way?

DELANO: Well, to take the exhibitions up, say, to San Francisco for the Pacific Arts Association. No, no one paid our fares; we had to go on our own. And we had an exhibition in the old fair buildings — let's see, was it 1915 buildings that were built there in San Francisco?

MINK: Yes. I notice that in the later twenties there was an effort to bring one Miss Shirley Poore to the department. Can you tell me anything about her and her work?

DELANO: I think they had disagreements, but I'm very vague about it. No, I couldn't really tell. She went on down to Long Beach to teach, I think.

MINK: She didn't stay with the department?

DELANO: No, she didn't stay. There was a sort of feverish building up. Students came and soon filled the classrooms. We had to have more courses in the subjects we already had and the building up of an added year. The curriculum was advancing. There was commercial art. We've mentioned the work that Mrs. Sooy taught- — that was the stage, the costume and the interior design; and Miss Gere, the history. There were people who taught commercial art, for one thing, and drawing, design, painting, perspective. [tape stopped]

MINK: You had mentioned that when the university changed from the Normal School into Southern Branch, some of the older members of the staff were automatically given titles of associate professor and assistant professor.

DELANO: That's true, yes.

MINK: There was a large group of you that remained just as assistants or associates for many years?

DELANO: For many years. There was this uphill grind and no way to break it, somehow. Various people headed the department from time to time during all this period, but the original two or three who came into the university when we changed from a normal school were not able to have promotions even though they might have asked for them for us. Mr. [George James] Cox came in after Mrs. Sooy retired as head — not retired from teaching but was not the head any longer. Mr. Cox came in from Columbia University. He was there, it seems to me, about eight years and did not make changes. Now, all this time it was very agonizing for the people on the staff who had no tenure or status or much of a salary; and yet we were expected to be doing a lot of outside work, and no one seemed to be able to break the deadlock for some reason. I know some people would say, "Well, write a book. That's all they'll recognize. You get academic people on your promotion committees, and they just look for a book. " As I look back on it, it seems to me that one thing that happened was that the whole university in Los Angeles was developing very rapidly, and we were bringing in people from all over — different universities — and when they came here, if they happened to be in our department (and I think in many other departments the same thing was true), they tried to bring along the experience they had in their own schools. For example, we had a man named Dr. [James H.] Breasted [Jr.] in our department for a while, and he wanted to cut out the creative courses— the actual painting and design, all those courses — and just have history, the way they had it at his time in Princeton. So we had that to cope with. Then people from Europe would come in here and they had experiences with art schools where they had all kinds of subjects — even more than we attempted to give — and so they would feel it's all right, but they didn't have degrees. This was the way it went along, and nobody seemed to do anything about it. But I finally decided to do something about it, and I thought I'd go to Dr. [Robert Gordon] Sproul, even though it meant that I might lose my position. This was the way I felt about it. So I did go. And at the time, I remember, I knew how many people were there without positions — I mean without academic rank — and so I asked him why it was we were kept there without promotions and why didn't they fire us. We didn't give degrees for advanced work in painting or sculpture or anything like that at that time, and we had already pioneered to get a so-called master of education degree; but this was just for the students who were there now, and the staff came from other schools where art wasn't recognized as an academic subject. I asked him why it was they gave full professorships to people at Berkeley, and we didn't have them down here. I happened to know Professor Perham Nahl, who was a full professor at Berkeley. He had seen my paintings in San Francisco and the galleries there, and he thought that if I had been working at Berkeley I would have been a professor at the time. So he said, "Why don't you go to Dr. Sproul or try to do something about it?" This is really what happened. I told Dr. Sproul that many of us had been doing creative work all along, and nothing had been done about promotions for us, as far as we knew. He said, "I'll see what I can do about it." He immediately talked to Mr. Cox, who was chairman of the department at the time — and by the way, he came from Columbia, where they had given professorships without degrees. It wasn't the tradition to give it in the arts, music or anything at that time. He had really set the department back by not keeping the budget up or by getting these promotions or breaking the deadlock, as I call it. He was furious that I had gone to Dr. Sproul about it without saying anything to him . Dr. Sproul called me in and said that the chairman was not behind me. He said, "I'll see what I can do about it." The first thing you know I had an ad hoc committee to work on my case. Dr. Sproul asked Dr. Flora Scott, from the botany department, and several others to be on it. I heard from Miss [Fanny] Coldren [Goodwin] in the library department, first of all. She said, "Annita, bring over some of that material I've been seeing in the papers about you, or anything you can find." Well, I did have material that I kept as an artist because an artist has to have a record of what he has been doing with his pictures and something of that kind, you know.

MINK: I suppose credits, exhibits.

DELANO: Yes, exhibits and prizes and that kind of thing. I scurried around and found what I could and brought them over to the library, and they organized it that night and fixed it up, and in no time at all I was promoted. [laughter] And it sort of broke the whole deadlock, I guess. Along that line we got a change of chairmanship, and that was after Mr. Cox. We got Mr. [Robert S.] Ililpert in there, and he got promotions right and left, immediately, because everybody had been just in anguish over the situation for so many years.

MINK: How was it that Mr. Cox left?

DELANO: He died here. He had certain attitudes, I think, that were not good for the department.

MINK: How was he different, say, from Miss Gere and Mrs. Sooy as chairman? How did he operate?

DELANO: He had been trained in England in the Royal School or something — I've forgotten — and he had a great respect for applied design and for illustration and realistic work and so on; but he sided with Mrs. Sooy against painting. In fact, he would write against painting. Mrs. Sooy wrote an article against painting, too. This is something that John Dewey and Dr. Barnes read in Philadelphia and thought was just terrible, but Mr. Cox sided with that idea, too. So as painters we didn't think we'd get very far under Mr. Cox. Also he felt that we shouldn't spend money on exhibitions and on museum ideas, so we lost part of our budget. We never had very much, but he didn't advance it over a period of eight years.

MINK: Did he hold departmental meetings?

DELANO: Oh, yes. We always had departmental meetings.

MINK: You didn't feel, though, that he gave you the voice in the running of the department, say, that you got when Miss Gere was there?

DELANO: You mean me, personally, or any of the rest of us?

MINK: How you felt about it, yes.

DELANO: Well, he wasn't a dictator, but his attitude towards some subjects wasn't holding up the vision that most of us had of the art department. If we had a field of study, an area like painting, we wanted to advance and build it up.

MINK: What areas was he interested in advancing?

DELANO: Asked in that way, I don't know what to say, but he gave one course in sculpture because he liked to make some sculpture himself. I think he liked commercial art. I don't know, asked in that way, just what he liked to develop in the department, but I know he wrote little articles in the school newspaper and here and there which poked fun, ridiculed the field of painting.

MINK: I notice that, for example, in Nellie Gere's letter to Dr. Moore with her recommendations for promotion to take effect in the fiscal year 1926-27, that you're first on the list, really. There is mention, for example of the winning of a prize of $250 from the California Watercolor Society, for a painting, Virgins of the Red Rocks, which had been presented to the Los Angeles County Museum's permanent collection.

DELANO: That's true. It was really a Henry E. Huntington purchase prize. There was a very good jury that year. I'm not proud of the painting now, but at that time it was something that was appealing to S. Macdonald-Wright, who was chairman, I believe, of the jury, and a man named Geritz. I can't remember who the third one was. That was in the permanent collection and is still there.

MINK: You say you're not proud of it now.

DELANO: Well, my work has changed so from those early years. I don't know, an artist always feels his latest work is the thing he likes the best, unless you can get farther away from it that it seems impersonal, maybe. I'm not sure about that. It was something that I made that was quite imaginative. I made it before I went to the Barnes Foundation. I think the Barnes Foundation had a great influence on me because I went to so many countries and analyzed the paintings directly. That box over there is just filled with detailed analysis of paintings in the major museums and some small museums in the different countries.

MINK: So you think you would have been disappointed in this picture right after you had been to Barnes, as far as your later work is concerned?

DELANO: Well, if I can look at it impersonally, I think that I was influenced by Orientalism to some extent at that time. But I love brilliant color, so there's nothing of the muted tones that you find of Japanese prints, say, for example. [It has] bright colors, and the space is flatter and more abstract. I've always liked bright colors. There was something there that you were asking me, and I was going to ask about.

MINK: Oh, yes, what I was going to ask you. She's also pointed out that at this time that you had also been represented strongly in exhibitions of the West Coast artists? How did you get connected up with that?

DELANO: West Coast artists? You mean as an organization?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Well, there were several organizations.

MINK: Oh, it was exhibitions of the West Coast artists — the Modern Art Workers, for example.

DELANO: Oh, she mentions that? Well, that was a little group. In a way we were rebels at that time. Now it looks so tame, but at that time most of these artists couldn't get into the Los Angeles museum show. The local artists especially were invited to show their work at the Los Angeles museum, and anything that smacked of so-called "modern" at that time, in the twenties, was turned down. So S. Macdonald-Wright, who had just returned from Europe, formed a little loosely organized group. Me met in his studio down in Los Angeles near the Plaza and talked about it. We decided to find another place to exhibit, and we found a place in Hollywood and really organized. Mr. Wright was the power behind the thing, but we had another person as president. After that first year of showing under that name, our work was allowed to go into the museum.

MINK: You don't think Mr. Wright had anything to do with that?

DELANO: Mr. Wright?

MINK: That the work then was allowed to go into the museum?

DELANO: Well, I think perhaps it takes a little rebellion now and then along the line to move people who are.... Well, I mean, things had happened even there in the Los Angeles museum. I remember there was a woman, Henrietta Shore, who was asked to come there in front of the California Art Club or one of the groups of painters, and she was just literally insulted because her work was supposedly crude and awkward and so on. In the twenties, after all, the cubists had already been going ahead — Picasso, Braque before that, and Matisse. People had been to Europe, she had been to Europe, and there was something about the leadership of some of the artists in Europe that you felt aligned to, more than you did to some of the traditional work going on in this country.

MINK: When you say that she was insulted, did this have to do with the reviews her exhibit received in the papers?

DELANO: No. It was just within this meeting where they really called her down for painting the way she did. It was down at the Los Angeles museum. Of course they were closer to the artists then; in later years they refused to allow local groups to show in the museum as such.

MINK: There was also another organization which is mentioned, and that's the Painters and Sculptors Club.

DELANO: I don't remember under that name. I did join the California Watercolor Society, which was made about that time, and the California Art Club. That arose under the leadership of the Otis Art Institute.

MINK: Maybe she's referring here to the California Art Club rather than the Painters and Sculptors Club. Can you tell me something about the organization of the California Art Club?

DELANO: Well, that was major going concern in the early years. It became pretty traditional as years went by. I refused to exhibit in it after a while, but in those earlier formative years it was one way in which you could get your work shown, if you were chosen that year — if you were allowed to show that year. You became a member, and then they'd find a place to show, usually in the Los Angeles museum. The Watercolor Society formed in that period, too, because while most of us were members of the California Art Club, still we wanted to show our watercolors aside from the oils. That's how it started. I think Miss Hazen from the art department was one of the first presidents. Not the first: Henri De Kruif, I think was the first president, and then Miss Hazen, It's now a national body. We have meetings.

MINK: I think you have mentioned it, and I am wondering if there were among the people that were in that organization, then, some people that you remember particularly who became prominent watercolorists later in this area.

DELANO: Oh, yes, quite a lot of them, because this took in people from Chouinard Art Institute, Otis, and the university, and there was quite an upsurge in interest in watercolors all over the country. Perhaps it germinated from the stress in using watercolors in lower schools, but this was a little bit out of the ordinary because it hadn't had much prominence in Europe. It did in England. There are a lot of landscape artists there who used the watercolor medium. But this country really promoted it, and we had that one strong organization that's become national now, with artists like--well, I can't think of them right off the bat.

MINK: I wondered, were you acquainted with Mrs. Chouinard at this time?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: She was considered to be quite an eccentric, wasn't she?

DELANO: I never thought of her that way. I don't know. She, like Miss Gere, had a vigor about the idea of building an art department — and in her case an art school — and there was a nice friendship established between our department and Mrs. Chouinard. Of course, these art schools tended to train students in basic subjects that would later lead into commercial art as a rule — so they could get a job, for one thing. In our training we didn't always stress that commercial side of it. There was that difference.

MINK: How did this friendship manifest itself between Chouinard and the school?

DELANO: Well, there would be parties or meetings back and forth. I remember giving talks on the modern architecture at the Chouinard School after I came back from Europe. I gave a talk on modern architecture to the California Art Club, and a lot of the people that belonged to it — like Mrs. Chouinard — were there.

MINK: Then she invited you to come and speak at the school?

DELANO: I can't remember what the subject was. I probably have it in my records somewhere, but I know I talked there after. It might have been about the Barnes Foundation or about modern architecture at Barnsdall Hill in the Frank Lloyd Wright house where the California Art Club met. I know Richard Neutra was there. He was very interested. We got acquainted with him personally when he first came to Los Angeles, and so all through the years we followed his work and he was a great inspiration to me. There were others, like [Rudolph] Schindler, too, who came to work with Frank Lloyd Wright in those very early years.

MINK: Apparently some of your students also won prizes. I notice that one Miss Mildred Erwin won a $100 prize for a jewelry design that she did. It was awarded by the Art Center of New York.

DELANO: Yes, well, you see, for a number of years, until the art department grew quite large, I did teach a variety of subjects. This so-called industrial design didn't always minister to the idea of mass production, but it was how to design objects that could be built, or constructed; and so I usually devoted some of the time to jewelry because we did have a course in jewelry making in the department. We also had ceramics, so part of the time was spent on designing ceramics and then introducing a background so they would see fine examples, pictures of some of the finest things that had been created in the past, plus the modern. Yes, there were many other prizes that students took. I know when Monel metal was first being introduced as a building material, we entered this contest for designing sinks, and one of my students took a prize there. And then Gordon Nunes, who was one of my students at the time, won a prize in designing a stove for the Magic Chef. [laughter]

MINK: In your work with the students, did you feel that you had a role in this, really? Or was this really just a matter of encouraging their own creativity?

DELANO: It's a matter of encouraging, above all, their own creativity, but in leading them along the line. For example, if we were going to design a stove, we'd start from the beginning and go to someplace here in the city where they built stoves and put them together, and perhaps take our plans there and have them criticize them, and then, over and above that, design something new that hadn't been done before, something contributive — the same attitude a painter would have. You may follow along some of the traditions and be something like — well, perhaps, belong to a school. If I had been living at the time that Cezanne painted, I probably would have painted in that trend, like many other artists did in his time. But you'd add something of your own.

MINK: Do you feel this was true of the rest of the faculty?

DELANO: Yes, I think some of them, very much so, yes. In spite of theories, let's say. And especially as time went on. [laughter] Mrs. Morgan was especially creative in her attitude towards teaching.

MINK: What were some of the things that she used to do?

DELANO: Going back in her earliest work, she taught a course in puppetry and was good at that. That was one of the early courses. She was good at print making and developing original attitudes towards it, drawing, painting, and she's followed these ideas right through her life. She's still at it. Her main life has been devoted to photography, and she's made a name for herself on that. Speaking of things that influenced her and the rest of us, Edward Weston was here in Los Angeles in those earlier years in the twenties, and he was starting with his whole new approach in photography as an art. So we gave him one of the first exhibitions he'd ever had of his work, in the old Los Angeles Normal School on Vermont Avenue. We arranged an exhibition there.

MINK: Did he come to the campus frequently?

DELANO: Well, we saw him in different ways, socially, and it seems to me that people in the arts saw more of each other — and some of the different arts, too.

MINK: Were these social affairs really an opportunity to sort of cross-pollinate, so to speak?

DELANO: Yes, yes, very stimulating. Well, when I decided I'd go to Europe to get some background in the ideas of modern architecture as a background for my industrial design classes — I felt that's the matrix more or less — I'd have to go and see originals at that time. It was no job at all to get letters of introduction to some of the finest architects in Europe at that time, people who had been noted all through these years for their work.

MINK: Who did you get letters from?

DELANO: I got letters here from Mr. Neutra and John Weber. John Weber's the Swiss architect. He studied under a master in Zurich who stimulated him to go out and do something creative and new and different. He worked on the Swiss building in the New York World's Fair in '34, I guess it was. I had letters from a man who was a sculptor, Ken Weber, who is another one.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

MINK: Now, this afternoon you said that you wanted to discuss some important aspects of your work, namely, some years that you spent away from the university. These are important because of the things that you learned and the things that you brought back to your teaching. First of all, I think you suggested that we might talk about the trip that you took to Europe in 1928. I suppose that this was taken as a sabbatical?

DELANO: No, it wasn't. There were so many of us in the art department that did not have promotions.

MINK: You didn't have sabbaticals?

DELANO: So it wasn't a sabbatical leave. I had to pay my own way .

MINK: How did you go about requesting that you might be able to go? Whom did you talk to?

DELANO: This was a summer trip.

MINK: This was a summer trip, so there was no need to get permission from anyone?

DELANO: There was no need to leave my position, no.

MINK: Did you have to save up money to go?

DELANO: Oh, I had to borrow money because I went clear across Europe to Prague and Berlin and so on and visited many countries.

MINK: Were you encouraged to go on this trip by anyone in particular, or did you decide on your own that this was the thing that you needed to do in order to help with your teaching?

DELANO: I decided on my own to do this. I felt that I needed preparation in the way of understanding more about modern architecture because I had already taken a great interest in it here in Los Angeles, since Richard Neutra was here and was a very good friend and I had followed his work from the very beginning when he first came here. Before that, Frank Lloyd Wright was here and had built many buildings which I studied. I felt that architecture was a background for a course I was teaching in the art department.

MINK: Which was?

DELANO: It was called industrial design at that time.

MINK: I suppose that you went and talked then to some of these people about your plans to go?

DELANO: Yes, I did, and I had marvelous letters from several friends who were from Switzerland, from Richard Neutra, from John Weber, who was a Swiss architect, and Ken Weber. I think I mentioned once that he designed the Disney studios.

MINK: In essence, what was the purpose of these letters?

DELANO: These letters were introductions to people who were creating these new tendencies and trends that happened in the fine arts and industrial design after the war. It was permeating the work in Europe, and there seemed to be a drive in all directions to change, to get away from the older traditional types. It happened in advertising arts. Especially in Germany, the old types were so much in use and so ornate that it didn't seem to fit the modern period, and so they changed there the layout of pages. And there was a whole theory about that which seemed to work in. So this ferment was what attracted me.

MINK: Did you discuss with people like Neutra and Wright your attitudes about the more or less fixed and, shall we say, nonprogressive kind of approach there was in the art department towards art at UCLA at this time?

DELANO: Yes, I did, especially with Neutra. You see, he had the same experience. If you read his last book about himself, he tells about all of the troubles that a creative architect has in going along with new ideas. He was also interested in very detailed parts of a larger whole. For example, most architectural styles of the past had a lot of decoration on them, and they sort of covered up the structures. While there's a long tradition about it and there are a great many buildings that are very beautiful, this new outlook was appropriate for the difference in structure in the buildings, where now we have a lot of glass and had concrete (although it wasn't the first use of concrete — that went back to the Romans and beyond). [The new outlook involved] cleaning up the surfaces more or less and building a structure which was based on steel rather than thick masonry walls.

MINK: Did you ever ask Neutra to come and talk to your classes?

DELANO: Well, I arranged an exhibition in the art department which I spent four months preparing. I was up there all summer.

MINK: Up where?

DELANO: In the art department, collecting work from the modern architects who were here in Southern California and had already produced, and also materials which showed the structure, and filled all of the galleries of the art department .

MINK: How did you go about collecting these materials? Did you just go from one to the other?

DELANO: Yes, and hauled them in my own car and had students help me. It really took four months to install it. But each architect gave me [something], including Frank Lloyd Wright and Neutra and Schindler and many others. I don't have all the names in front of me now, but I filled the main gallery with panels of their work. And some students that I had prepared very ingenious panels which work three- dimensionally on the walls, and each architect had a space for himself. Then I had some classes work out the history of modern architecture. Miss [Laura F.] Andreson was teaching design at that time. She's our renowned ceramist now; at that time she was teaching design. We filled one end wall with a map made in textural substances glued to the surface, and this showed the location of modern structures in Southern California — a sort of a firsthand history of where these buildings were.

MINK: Presumably to encourage students to go and visit them .

DELANO: Students to go, yes. Then we had the modern architecture in Europe, also, at the other end of the gallery. And Mr. Hull prepared that for me. I gave him all the material, and he drew up the photographs, and I worked them into a design at the other end which showed the most important modern architects in Europe at the time.

MINK: Did some of the modern architects from around the city come to visit the exhibit?

DELANO: Yes. We had a large crowd that came to some of the main lectures which I arranged.

MINK: Who did you arrange to come and lecture?

DELANO: Well, for one thing, Douglas Haskell, who was the editor of the Architectural Forum at that time in New York. He came and gave a lecture. Neutra. I think I'd have to look up the programs, but it more or less covered everything. And Frank Lloyd Wright's son [Lloyd] — I believe he was there. I just can't remember the exact grouping.

MINK: What was the attitude of other members of the art department towards this kind of an exhibition?

DELANO: Very favorable. They didn't realize what I was doing [laughter] or why I was spending so much time on it. Of course I was up there three months in the summer and every day, because this was a very difficult thing to assemble. I had all the classrooms to use, [all] the walls. I planned built-in things that worked with gardens and wall coverings and all kinds of features that went into the modern architecture.

MINK: You say they didn't realize what you were up to?

DELANO: No. You see, there were courses in interior design, and I was in conflict with the attitude there because they based it all on period styles, and yet the costume was modern. I mean they couldn't expect the people to wear period styles in costume. But here in architecture and in interiors, they depended upon a student turning out designs which were based on past styles. It was all right to learn the history and work out something creative, but there was some opposition to the whole idea of stimulating an interest in modern architecture and the interiors that go with them.

MINK: Did you get encouragement from Ernest Carroll Moore on this?

DELANO: Dr. Moore wasn't the chancellor then.

MINK: Oh, this was later.

DELANO: This was later. I think Mr. Cox was chairman of the art department then.

MINK: What was his attitude towards this?

DELANO: Well, he had a long background of tradition in England and didn't have a great deal of sympathy for the modern, when I really recall many of the things he talked about and the things that he wrote against modern paintings sometimes and so on. But he thought I did a good job. I remember especially Dr. Sproul gave me great encouragement and wrote me a letter about how nice he thought the exhibition was. I spent a good deal of my own money buying samples of new materials in New York and other places to incorporate in one room.

MINK: Well, then this all more or less came about as a result of your trip, didn't it?

DELANO: Yes, the result of my trip.

MINK: Well, suppose we go back then and talk about the trip itself. How did you go from here?

DELANO: I just found these this morning. I don't recall, but I had to borrow money — oh, no, I borrowed the money to go back to the Barnes Foundation. I had to scrape up everything I had to get to Europe to look at the modern architecture and to go to the Czechoslovakian exhibition of art in industry, a convention really.

MINK: You couldn't have flown.

DELANO: No. I had to go on the train to New York, and then I went on a German ship, I believe.

MINK: North German Lloyd Lines?

DELANO: I can't remember. I think it was called the Hamburg, of all things. I went to Europe, and I visited people I had nice letters to in Paris, like Robert Delaunay and his wife, Sonya.

MINK: What did you do in Paris?

DELANO: In Paris? Well, there were buildings to see there and many exhibitions of fine craft work. And everything that I could find that was the most modern at that time.

MINK: What in particular interested you?

DELANO: I was interested in everything along the line of ceramics because the courses I taught in design were involved in teaching design in ceramics, in jewelry, in furniture, in metal work, in wall -hangings, and then, of course, [in] modern painting.

MINK: What impressed you most?

DELANO: Well, the modern painting was most important to me personally because that, I felt, was my most creative outlet for my own personal creative work. But do you mean what impressed roe most amongst the exhibitions?

MINK: The things there, yes.

DELANO: I remember firsthand, of course, the things that Robert Delaunay was doing at the time. He's not living now, but he was just beginning to become famous together with the others who initiated cubism. And he was with that group. Matisse was also there.

MINK: I suppose you met those people, didn't you?

DELANO: Yes, and I met them again when I went to the Barnes Foundation and to Europe on that second trip.

MINK: Well, what impressed you most about Delaunay when you first met him?

DELANO: The theoretical side of cubism. I had a chance to talk to some of the people like Albert Gleizes, and go to his studio, and see his work, and see the first work that these early cubists were doing at the time. They took me to a meeting on the Left Bank, a kind of informal meeting, where most of the way-out artists met every month. That was great. I loved that because they thought a girl from California was something. And they liked the modern architectural photographs that I took with me, and also some pictures of Indians that I had from the Southwest. That seemed to go with Europeans everywhere I met them. They just loved the idea of somebody amongst the Indians in New Mexico.

MINK: Did you find these people to be articulate?

DELANO: Well, I can't talk French, but I found many women could talk English, and some of the wives would interpret for me. I gave a little talk at this meeting. Marc Chagall was there, and I had met him earlier someplace through Madame Scheyer. She's another one that gave me letters and met me in Europe and took me around to wonderful exhibitions in Dresden and other places later, and in Prague. Galka Scheyer — she's the one that assembled the Blue Four and collected their work.

MINK: What did you talk about to the people on the Left Bank?

DELANO: I told them that Southern California was a place that was very, very conducive to creative work in the arts, that we had many modern examples of architecture--Frank Lloyd Wright (they all knew about him), and the work of Neutra. And I had pictures, small, like camera pictures that I could carry in my purse without any trouble, that I passed around without any trouble. I didn't know I was going to be asked to say a word. I didn't talk very long, just a little bit about that. Marc Chagall was able to talk some English, so that I had an interesting time there at that party, I thought.

MINK: Where did you go from Paris?

DELANO: Let's see. I went to Switzerland, and I met this Dr. [Fritz] Zwicky who I had known here--he is a physicist at Caltech — and I met him several times in Europe. He gave me a marvelous letter to, or introduced me to a man in Switzerland who knew, Oskar Reinhart. And Oskar Reinhart was a very wealthy man who lived in Winterthur, Switzerland, and had amassed a marvelous collection of modern painting and old masters, wonderful sculpture, beautiful sculpture garden, and had also been instrumental in building a big museum for the town of Winterthur. I believe that's the town where they did make locomotives and fine engines at the time I was there. So I took a train and went out there to Winterthur, and he was wonderful. He met me at the train and took me to his home — and we had tea — and showed me the collections. I thought that was great. That was in Switzerland.

MINK: You were particularly interested in the modern paintings, of course, in that collection?

DELANO: Yes, yes, and then all of it.

MINK: Who in particular had he collected?

DELANO: Well, he had a great many Renoirs. He had a number of people from the different school of paintings like the impressionists. He had enough to fill out a representative idea of the painting of the school of the impressionists, for example. He had Toulouse-Lautrec, Kokoschka, Courbet, Delacroix; and then amongst the impressionists he had Renoir, he had many Cezannes, Manet, Monet, and so on. Gallery after gallery. It was tremendous.

MINK: This was his own private home?

DELANO: His own private collection in his home — a palace- like structure up on the side of the mountain, beautiful.

MINK: What do you think the most valuable thing that you got out of that visit was?

DELANO: The idea of making a collection: how the appreciation developed over a lifetime, and how a man with money could choose things that were significant and beautiful, and beautifully arranged in his garden as well as in his home. He took such an interest in public art. He helped build the museum that was downtown, and he arranged to have it opened for me. I was there on a day when it was supposed to be closed. These things that somebody would do for you, I thought, were just out of this world.

MINK: When you left Switzerland, where did you go next?

DELANO: I went on to the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. I had heard about this and I wanted to see it and meet the people there. The buildings were designed by Walter Gropius. He made the main school and designed houses for the faculty. Paul Klee's house was amongst some beautiful pine trees, and I went out there to see his house. In the school itself they had a very rounded curriculum which included many crafts, such as weaving. I counted twenty- seven looms with students working on them. We had a course in weaving at that time in our department, but they had to scramble to have any time on the few looms we had. But up there with twenty-seven going and different kinds of inventive new tapestries going, they had different kinds of weaving. They had wonderful workshops for metal and for ceramics. Then the faculty was very stimulating to meet, very stimulating to me to meet.

MINK: Did you speak German at all?

DELANO: No, I didn't, but again there were so many who could speak English that I didn't seem to have any trouble. The painters were Paul Klee (some that I remember); Kandinski taught there. Of course, he wasn't there in the summer at that time.

MINK: Was Paul Klee there when you were there?

DELANO: Paul Klee was there. The school wasn't in session- I mean not all the subjects. Some things were going in the summer, but they didn't have a full thing going. They had what they thought would attract students from other places in the world who had heard about the Bauhaus and wanted to go there. Walter Gropius was the head. Let's see, I was speaking a little bit about the faculty. Josef Albers had initiated a new course in what he called — well, it was design, but he had a new theory and wanted to involve factors which had been left out of some of the traditional theories in basic art.

MINK: What did this theory actually embody?

DELANO: He wanted to incorporate materials together with the more or less abstract factors which had been used before; while those would still be inherent in considering an analysis of a work of art, still he included other things. For example, he had structure and massing, if I remember, and some word--I believe Faktor in German — which had to do with material. He had a way of analyzing with these four — and I'd have to look that up again to remember just how he worked it out — but as he gave the problems, it took in new ideas in massing materials and getting new kinds of textures. Texture was the fourth one, I think, that I tried to recall. Of course, so many of the Germans, it seemed to me at that time, were given to analysis and technical jargon about everything, and especially here in a school of that kind. But it was needed. For example, metal work or pottery or textiles were not appraised in an art form because they had risen more or less in handicrafts from peasant days on, or from the primitive societies. Now, brought up into the industrialized societies that we were part of, it was necessary to find terms, some terminology which would incorporate all the factors. Have I given you an idea of that now?

MINK: Yes, it's very interesting.

DELANO: [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy took over Josef Albers's work after that, and Moholy-Nagy wrote books on it — so did Josef Albers- — and they influenced arts and crafts, in the technical sense, all over the world. We had better theater design because of them, better advertising design, and I noticed that when I came home that even our magazines, such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, changed their type entirely and the page layout. That was due to this Bauhaus influence. I don't think there's been a revolution like this since, that there's been anything come up with such a revolutionary change. For one thing, to have a photograph or a band of lettering come right off the page was something new.

MINK: What they call, I think, bleeding.

DELANO: Bleeding, yes. And then the change of type in the German layout was something.

MINK: The use of heavy type as opposed to dark type in juxtaposition?

DELANO: That's right. Let's find the pages here that have y to do with using the fundamentals of type itself applied to design.

MINK: Unfortunately we don't have a camera.

DELANO: Getting away from a rounded border, I mean a border around the page, and a heading at the top. Instead of that the massing — see, that word came in here — was spread in different places in the page and still balanced, sometimes quite asymmetrical in layout. Now that was quite revolutionary, especially for this to happen in Germany.

MINK: How long did you stay at the Bauhaus?

DELANO: Oh, I was there about a week in the summer and then some of the same people who were there went on to Prague, and so did I because there was this large exhibition and I would be able to see the students' work from the Bauhaus there on exhibition. They had a whole room devoted to it.

MINK: Before you go on to talk about Prague, didn't you tell me that you also brought to the Bauhaus some examples of the work that your students had been doing for people on the faculty to see there?

DELANO: Well, to Prague.

MINK: To Prague. Did you show examples of work of our department here?

DELANO: Of our department, yes.

MINK: At Bauhaus?

DELANO: No. No, they were shipped directly from the art department to Prague.

MINK: In a way it's sort of too bad that you didn't.

DELANO: I met them in Prague later, and we walked around the exhibition together.

MINK: What did some of the faculty at the Bauhaus think about some of the things that they saw of the things that our students were doing here at that exhibition?

DELANO: Well, there was a good deal of interest in the early design classwork and later — design stood out, they thought. Mr. Cox, I met there for the first time — George Cox, who later became the chairman of the art department. He wasn't chairman at this time that I'm talking about. He brought an exhibit from Columbia University, and so we compared notes on that. Then there was someone on the general program, later, who talked about the work from the art department of the University of California and gave it high praise, really thought that it was outstanding.

MINK: Was this our department or the university as a whole?

DELANO: No, it was just the art department.

MINK: At Berkeley or at UCLA?

DELANO: No, just UCLA. I don't remember any exhibit from Berkeley. It might have been there, but I've forgotten.

MINK: We stood out?

DELANO: We stood out in, oh, the rendering for one thing. I remember this man talking in the program about the exhibits, because, you see, these were exhibits from all over the world in various subjects from art departments everywhere.

MINK: Wasn't it a problem to transport all those original things that the students had done?

DELANO: Yes, it was. One thing we did for the design — and I'm talking about the work from my classes in industrial design, since that was the theme of the convention — I took some of the best renderings of full views that were worked up in three dimensions, without the working drawings, just the colored renderings. We made them into a book; we bound them with leather bindings — by the way, Laura Andreson made the books.

MINK: And did the binding?

DELANO: Large books.

MINK: Did she do the binding?

DELANO: She did all the bindings.

MINK: Did you just carry these along with you?

DELANO: No, those were shipped.

MINK: In advance?

DELANO: In advance, yes.

MINK: Could you tell me something about the problem of selecting? Was it all up to you or did you have jury in the art department who tried to select this?

DELANO: It was very informal in those days. We didn't have many on the faculty. Miss Gere was the head, and Miss Chandler was there, and Miss Hazen, Mrs. Sooy, and maybe one other, and I — Mrs. Morgan and I. So we'd get together and decide, yes. Of course, at that time the kind of design was, you might say, influenced by cubism, because the students and faculty alike would go along with what was most creative and be influenced to some degree. Today I don't know if I would like to see those things again, perhaps. But at that time they seemed very good.

MINK: You would not want to see them now?

DELANO: I've kind of forgotten just what the students made.

MINK: What kind of designs were these designs of?

DELANO: They were designs for ceramics, for jewelry, for some furniture, I believe.

MINK: Household implements?

DELANO: Household utensils, yes. Fireplace tools. I've sort of forgotten. That was back in 1928.

MINK: What happened to these exhibits? Were they brought back?

DELANO: They were shipped back.

MINK: You were talking about the sort of critique that went on at these exhibits and the talks about them.

DELANO: Yes, there was a great deal of stress on the idea of bridging the gaps between fields of endeavor — such as what had once been called the fine arts, and having them off in a sort of isolated spot — and the objects that went along now with the different kind of architecture and the modern age. There seemed to be a chance now to do something, and especially after that dreadful war, because there was a big strip through Europe from east to west that had been devastated by the war, and the designers and artists that were left and came up after that seemed to work into a clean idea of something different and new and something where they used modern materials, for one thing.

MINK: As you look at it now, and in looking back in retrospect, do you think that the things that came out of our department and were exhibited there stood up pretty well to what they had in Germany?

DELANO: Yes, they did. This man that was on the program — now, if I can find it — talked about it, and especially the way they were presented and the rendering and the kind of design — that is, the new feeling in it. And there was a man from Egypt who also remarked upon it.

MINK: It must have made you proud.

DELANO: Well, I don't know.

MINK: Well, these were your students, after all.

DELANO: This little side note: I went over to the exhibits every day, of course, and the people in Prague were just charming. They called it Pra-ha. The president [Thomas Garrigue Masaryk] was so genial and nice, and he came to the exhibit several times and just walked around. I remember it was a warm summer day one day when I saw him dressed in a white suit, and he had just one person along with him. He arranged wonderful parties. I was a delegate to this convention. I was sent by the California Art Club, and now I remember they gave me a little money.

MINK: The university wouldn't do a darn thing for you?

DELANO: No, I didn't have anything from the university, no. But the California Art Club that met in the Barnsdall House up on Olive Hill had meetings, and I belonged to the club, and they wanted me to be a delegate. And so I had some kind of credentials to show when I got there, and I was invited to all these wonderful parties.

MINK: Was that because they knew you were going, or did they ask you? And was that a reason for your going?

DELANO: No, I wanted to go because of my own interest in building up the background that I felt I should have to teach these subjects.

MINK: So when they found out you were going, they asked you to . . .

DELANO: ...asked me to be a delegate. And then I gave a talk when I came back, and this led to a lot of interesting developments later on that I won't go into now.

MINK: Well, I think you could for a few minutes. Let's think about it, because after all it was part of this whole trip and the result of it.

DELANO: Yes. Let's see, the president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk, was there at the exhibit. There were so many interesting people from all over the world, and people were so genial, and you could get acquainted with them. We had meetings every day for a week at a large convention hall. There was plenty of room for exhibitions. Then there were these great parties in the old palaces. You could walk across the Charles Bridge and over to the palace where they had parties for us. I'm just getting into it. It's all in here. I just found my notes this morning. Let's see if there's something else I can think about.

MINK: At this convention, did you have an opportunity to make any presentation yourself?

DELANO: No, I wasn't asked to speak, but Mrs. Smith was. She was from our art department. She went her own way, and we met up with her in different places in Europe. She was going to the convention because they arranged to have her speak at the convention.

MINK: How did this come about, that they didn't ask you?

DELANO: I don't know. I don't remember.

MINK: Was she actually the representative of the university?

DELANO: Of the art department. I think she gave quite a bit on the Dow business.

MINK: Oh.

DELANO: That we've talked about before.

MINK: Oh, I see why you didn't get asked.

DELANO: If I gave my ideas, I don't think I could have gotten in, then, as a speaker.

MINK: Because of your different point of view.

DELANO: My different point of view. I felt that I had a lot to learn from what I saw there in that convention and getting acquainted with different people and some of the things I noticed. For example, the people from England seemed to be kind of backward about adopting anything new at that time, and the work seemed a little dowdy. I don't know just why; maybe, again, the people who select the exhibitions, or the people who speak, have a certain point of view. And it all depends upon those at home who get these things together, I think. But the leaders were the people at the Bauhaus, and my entrance there to meeting some of these people was through the people here in Los Angeles like Neutra. Neutra is such a wonderful person and so gifted in so many directions, and he knew people like Freud. I had a letter to go to Freud's house and I did, but he was ill and I couldn't see him. But I met his son. He had worked, of course — it seems to me Freud's son was an architect, I believe, and that ' s how he knew so many people in Vienna. I met other people, like Frau Dr. Czinner, who worked for Freud. Did I mention this before?

MINK: No.

DELANO: And I went out to her house and was wined and dined and taken on trips around the city of Vienna with Dr. Czinner. Dr. Sidi Fischer was another person. These people were psychologists and they were friends. I met than on the ship going over. I talked to this Frau Dr. Czinner quite a bit, and we had a lot in common. She had gotten her doctor's degree, which was unusual for a woman in Europe to do at that time, in the university in Zurich. Her son was studying at the same time, Richard Czinner. She was a very brilliant woman. She'd been called to America to be honored by — let's see, I've forgotten — some foundation for outstanding work in science. Psychology, actually. Would it be all right to say what she was doing?

MINK: Sure.

DELANO: You see, after the war there were a great many people who were in hospitals and who were sort of mentally wrecked by the First World War and were being cared for. Freud and other people in Vienna were terribly interested in helping these people. They wanted to find ways of getting them on their feet again, and some of them could be rescued. Dr. Czinner had many of them help her out in her laboratories where she had great libraries. And her idea was to publish the work of doctors, people who were working on creative research in the field of medicine and psychiatry all over the world, and have that published so that anybody who was starting a new project could look it up and see whether somebody was already there — not work for years and then find that somebody published it ahead of you. This was what they did.

MINK: Cooperative research.

DELANO: Yes. And then she took Freud's patients to help there. So I saw this project in motion at that time.

MINK: Maybe you could speak a little about this and say, if you would, just exactly what kinds of techniques they were using. Was this analysis mostly?

DELANO: Freud's work? Freud's work was analysis.

MINK: I know.

DELANO: Dr. Czinner 's work?

MINK: Yes, in helping to rehabilitate these people.

DELANO: When I saw them working, they just seemed so normal. It seemed that there was nothing wrong with them. But she had gotten her doctor's degree in psychiatry, too, in Switzerland, and knew types. I think she worked with a famous.... I don't remember whether it was Jung or who she worked with in Switzerland. I think she had a very understanding mind and [was a] very brilliant woman, and so she was able to help these people very much.

MINK: Were these what you might call elite people?

DELANO: You mean the patients?

MINK: Yes, the patients.

DELANO: That were working for her? I have no idea. I didn't find out. I don't know. I think they were people who were able to balance themselves, that is, to cure themselves.

MINK: And I suppose a lot of it was actual sessions of therapy sessions.

DELANO: Yes, meeting with the doctors there. Let's see, I met a doctor. Vienna is such a wonderful place for medicine, and some of our greatest psychiatrists have come out of there, people in psychology. It was at that time. I don't know what happened since the Second World War.

MINK: After you finished in Prague, did you continue to tour in Europe and to go to more exhibitions?

DELANO: Yes, yes, I did. Of course, before we left Prague we heard wonderful music. There was something new in music and dance. Somehow during these years there was a change. You felt that you were finding a new expression in all the creative arts. And it was great to be with people who were bringing it about. Dr. Josef Albers gave a talk; Madame Scheyer gave a talk at the convention. She's the one that collected Kandinski, Paul Klee, Jawlensky and Feininger, and brought the Blue Four to America. Now she was there at this convention. She gave a talk about the way she taught children here in Los Angeles. She thought that was worthwhile.

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

MINK: You were talking about Madame Scheyer and particularly about the talk that she gave about her experiences in teaching art to the students here in the Los Angeles City Schools.

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: What did she tell the convention that interested you particularly?

DELANO: Of course, I had seen Madaine Scheyer here in Los Angeles. She came with the Blue Four collection that she owned and borrowed from the artists, and I helped her arrange it in the Los Angeles [County] Museum [of Art] . So I got acquainted there. She gave different talks. Then she wanted to stay in California and decided to make a little money by having a class for children. She would stimulate them with ideas which brought about childlike painting, which has such refreshing and new ideas. She collected a great many paintings and drawings made by children under her ideas for development, took them to the congress, then talked about how she did it. Of course, I didn't see too much that was different from some of our own children in the training school under Miss Seeds, who was also able to get wonderful paintings from children. In fact, I think in the city schools, too, up to about the fourth grade, you get marvelous things that are extremely creative, and then there seems to be something [that] happens to the children. I don't think it's particularly the teaching; there's a moment there when they sort of retrogress a little bit. Then if they haven't "bad teachers" — in quotes — they might come back again and continue as a creative artist later on. Madame Scheyer really collected some very interesting things. She had them do self-portraits, and of course that's a favorite theme. Teachers use that from kindergarten on up through the university courses. She brought in her ideas of psychology at the time, as there was a great interest in psychology and art.

MINK: Could you recall some of the points that she made on this?

DELANO: I think she was quite interested in Jung and Freud, and there seemed to be an effort to interpret the paintings in terms of the psychology of the child and what it inferred. We had a man here in Los Angeles in the Otis Art Institute who was also interested, and I think I referred to one of those early informal groups that met on interpreting Jung and so on. Madame Scheyer, I forgot to say, was part of that group, too, at times. So when she was in Prague she brought in some aspects of that development in her own work. She took an interest in my painting, and wanted me to show it in Oakland, and made the arrangements; so I had an exhibition in Oakland Art Gallery. Then I met her in Europe in Dresden, and she took me to some private collections. So here, again, having friends in Europe — people who originated in Europe, you know — just meant a great deal to me because I saw very interesting collections of people who had already collected modern painting. When I got up to Berlin after the Prague exhibition and the week of talks and conferences and so forth, I went to visit Moholy-Nagy. As you know, perhaps, after Hitler rampaged throughout Europe, the Bauhaus was ruined, and a lot of people--like Moholy-Nagy, even Gropius and Herbert Bayer, and most of the staff and the artists who were teaching there — came to America. So we fell heir to a lot of people here, and they were taken up in our universities in the East and some of them out here. Moholy-Nagy was one of those who came to America and established a new Bauhaus in Chicago, if I remember.

MINK: Well, what was interesting about your visit there in Berlin with Moholy-Nagy?

DELANO: He was at that time very excited about his new ideas and how to make this basic changeover from the old ways — the traditional forms of printing particularly stood out in his mind, and photography. Some of these people like Moholy-Nagy were great in changing the trends in photography; so we owe a great deal to them at that time because the Bauhaus had a worldwide influence. People were asked to go there to teach, and many people went there to study, even if they had just a short time to see new ways. In fact, I got so interested I joined what was called the Friends of the Bauhaus, and I continued to have magazines sent to me throughout the years until Hitler destroyed the school.

MINK: Most of these people were anti-Hitler?

DELANO: I don't think they really knew too much about Hitler then. He was on the rampage, and I remember people, young masses of students, young people preparing. He was going to use them in certain ways, and every railroad station had a collection of boys who were drilled in the mountains and brought down. The young people from the plains were sent into the mountains and back and forth, so you saw this going on but didn't realize what it signified.

MINK: Even then you saw the evidences of Hitler's rise to power?

DELANO: Yes, and I remember arriving in Munich late, and about the only place we could find that was open was in a cellar, the rathskeller.

MINK: Rathskeller?

DELANO: Yes. I met one of the men from the Barnes Foundation — well, let's see, I'm getting mixed up here. In 1928, they had people marching around. Hitler was forming his ideas. But this rathskeller thing, that goes later when I was — shall I tell about it and finish it, or not now?

MINK: Well, you might as well.

DELANO: It's kind of out of order. [laughter] But you asked about Hitler and I thought about that. I better just finish the incident.

MINK: Yes, you'd better finish it.

DELANO: It was down in this big restaurant. It seemed like there were rows of murky beer barrels lining the edges, and you could hardly see, and there was not enough light. This man from the Barnes Foundation and I had met on the train in some other city and had traveled there to study in Munich. We had dinner and thought nothing much about it. Then we looked up and we saw all these people staring at our food. They were so hungry they were just about to pounce on it, and Herbert, the man who was with me, decided to just let them have it, and so I did, too. I wasn't too hungry. So we just pushed our dishes and they just gobbled it up in an instant. They were so hungry. They looked hungry. They were gaunt. It was, you know, around nine o'clock in the evening. Going back in sequence where we were, getting around through Europe during the Prague convention — what I remember about that in reference to Hitler was that there were many Germans coming back to Germany, the Fatherland idea. And they were singing on the sidewalks, and they'd just knock you off — two women walking on the sidewalk didn't have any place. You'd just be knocked right off because they were going along in a boisterous manner and singing. I wanted to see those beautiful horses in Vienna and had tickets, but I didn't go because I couldn't get into it even with the tickets because these men had preference, these fellows that were being called from all over the world. They were going to have a get- together and sing, and they had been drilled in different cities to sing, and they'd been given formal instructions. Then, without any rehearsals, they got together in this enormous place in Vienna and sang under one leader, and yet they sang together.

MINK: Did you witness any of this?

DELANO: No, but I witnessed what they were doing on the sidewalks and the streets. But we stayed clear from the actual meetings because — well, we met it on the ship going over. We went over on a German boat, and they started this boisterous thing right away. It was as though they were the favored race in the whole world.

MINK: You mean right on the ship?

DELANO: Right on the ship. The minute we got out into the ocean from New York, they started to sing these German songs and drink and carry on.

MINK: March around the deck?

DELANO: March around the deck and show off. We met it everywhere — in the trains.

MINK: Was it mostly younger men?

DELANO: Yes, mostly younger men.

MINK: Had they brought their wives along with them or were they mostly single people?

DELANO: Yes, but I just remember men. I can't remember particularly seeing many women involved in this; they were mostly men. One other thing in Vienna: when we got there, we didn't have our reservations, which had been guaranteed by a good travel company; and so the stationmaster in Vienna took us to his home. These men had just preempted everything, you know, because they were going to have the songfest there.

MINK: I think these songfests were an early. . .

DELANO: ...just an early idea of generating the Fatherland.

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: They were, I think.

MINK: German nationalism.

DELANO: Yes, that's what it was. But the people at the Bauhaus didn't seem to be carried up in this, at least those that I [knew] .

MINK: Do you think that they were sort of oblivious to it?

DELANO: I don't know. I never got into politics particularly.

MINK: You never talked about it?

DELANO: No, never talked about it at all.

MINK: Were there any places in Berlin where you did? For example, you said you went home with the stationmaster . Did he ever make any comment?

DELANO: That was in Vienna.

MINK: In Vienna, yes.

DELANO: No, no. He was busy. We talked to his wife, and he had a servant there that took care of us, and he gave us a nice room in their home. We just gave up some of the things we wanted to do in Vienna. Of course, the main thing I wanted to do was to see the architecture. See, I was stressing that particularly. I did go to the museums and look at the paintings, but that came on my next trip where I specialized only in paintings. Oh, there was one thing — back to Berlin now — in relation to architecture. They had a marvelous exhibition, or what would you call it — a sort of a travel tour. You really have to hand it to the Germans sometimes for arranging details and being so careful in their plans. For example, they had a tour arranged, so that if you wanted to see modern architecture in Berlin and in the surroundings, you signed up at a hotel about six or six -thirty in the morning. You were supposed to have had your breakfast. And then you got back late in the afternoon, very late, close to dinner time. All that time, you were taken from the center of Berlin to see the earlier premodern architecture--not the old but what would correspond to Frank Lloyd Wright's part in the movement here — and on around the city.

MINK: Did this include private residences as well as buildings?

DELANO: Public buildings and private residences as well, yes. We had a map which we could follow, and then there would be some talk, both in English and in German. They were very considerate. This is what I mean by this careful planning. Round and round and out like a spider web, and we finally went out to the hillside, as I remember it... (What happened then? It's been a long time. I probably have it in my notes somewhere. )... but a hillside that had these same dark cypress trees such as I had seen in the Black Forest, and they were quite stunning scattered over that mountain — well, sort of, not exactly a mountainside. In there were these white gleaming houses by Gropius, just the way we'd seen them in Dessau, Germany. I don't think people can appreciate what that means today when you think of a new trend, entirely different. What a revolution this kind of architecture was because architects had been trained in this country and in Europe to go along with traditional styles.

MINK: I was thinking as you were talking that while you were seeing this, the period in Southern California architecture was so strongly influenced, as I remember, by the Spanish, and you had miles and miles of these Spanish bungalows, many of them very stereotyped in their construction.

DELANO: Yes, you mean those that were built around the twenties and earlier around in there, yes. Yes, well, that was sort of a romantic revival of the Spanish days of California.

MINK: What a stark contrast.

DELANO: A stark contrast, yes, to these stuccoed walls and the wrought iron and the tiled roofs and so on, curved windows in some cases if they had enough money to build them. And some of the better ones....

MINK: Were these very linear?

DELANO: The Spanish?

MINK: No. I'm speaking now of the...

DELANO: ...of the modern architecture in Europe at that time. No, people thought they were stark and ugly, really. They thought these smooth, quiet walls with no decoration-- they really thought it was ugly, the people who were tradition-minded. And they didn't accept it. They talked against it and so on. I can remember buying a magazine which I brought back for use in my classes. It had to do with the defense of the modern architecture at that time, and trying to get people to look beyond the surface of the walls and to realize that the integral structure of steel with concrete and with glass walls that you could have now — instead of heavy masonry walls — that this is what should be reflected in what you saw; and [to appreciate] the feeling of space that you had within instead of the heavy, sort of cloistered, old traditional buildings. This man talked about the ships, how a ship dances around on the ocean. And you have lightness and you have a different structure, and yet you accept a ship. Why don't you accept the modern architecture? There were many other articles like that at the time that I tried to find. Then I put on that exhibition of modern architecture in Los Angeles to promote the whole thing a little better here. But I had wonderful cooperation with all the men that were shown in the exhibition and the speakers that chime here, like Douglas Haskell, from New York, who was editor of the Architectural Forum. He was writing on modern architecture.

MINK: How soon after you returned from Europe did you get together this exhibition? [tape turned off] We have been talking, reviewing some of the work, and we discovered that the modern architecture exhibit that you referred to earlier, as a matter of fact, wasn't really given up until 1940, the one that you described in some detail earlier on the second side of Tape III. In conversation while the recorder was off, you had mentioned a point in talking about modern architecture, the anecdote relating to the Union [Passenger] Terminal in Los Angeles. How was it that you found out about the kind of architecture that eventually went into that?

DELANO: I always had some courses in painting that I was teaching, and especially landscape as well as design, industrial design, so-called. Anyhow I had my landscape class painting down around the Plaza region — and to think that we could drive down there in just a few minutes; we didn't have the traffic we have today. We went down to watch the progress of the building of the railroad station, and because, when it was in the steel stage and painted red, it looked miraculous against the old buildings around the Plaza. That was one subject. Then there was a very old house from the Spanish days — not an adobe. but a frame house that is still standing where the architects had their work spread out--and I was bold enough to go up there and talk to these men, and the main architect was a Mr. Marcus, I remember, from San Francisco. He was originally from training in Europe, had training in Europe, so he was very interested in art students and the fact that my students were painting around there and took an interest. So we went up to visit. I brought my class up and he showed them what the architects were doing. So we got acquainted and we went out several times. And then I thought, why not have them exhibit the plans, and that the students would get a great deal out of it, and that we could have talks and plan on an afternoon. They were taken with it and helped in every way they could. They assembled samples of large tiles that had been done by Herman Sachs, for the main lobbies, and the original plans, because I wanted the students to see what the plans looked like and how they were rendered for a large project like that. The woman who did the Harvey House dining room was one who had done interesting Harvey Houses out in New Mexico and Arizona. I can't think of her name. We had those original plans so they could see how they looked on paper before they went onto the walls, and then the plans for the wrought iron and samples, then structural plans, the architectural colored renderings and models, the mechanical plans. There were three types of plans that had to be integrated. Also, in talking to these men, we found out that the railroad companies were so backward in accepting modern, they wanted the romantic idea of the adobe effect, and yet it couldn't be real adobe, it had to be a modern structure and look like just a conglomerate idea of mission-style architecture with a tower. They talked about that and bemoaned the fact that it couldn't be really modern, as it should for a railroad terminal. But it has nice patios and has served until now, when the trains are almost going out of existence. But we had a very interesting convention with these men who built the terminal depot.

MINK: I mentioned back earlier the starkness of the houses in Berlin that you saw that Gropius had designed, for example, as compared to the Spanish architecture that had developed in the tract setup in Westwood.

DELANO: All the sorority houses.

MINK: Beverly Hills.

DELANO: Beverly Hills, yes, and around Vermont Avenue. It went way up near the planetarium, and I know of a house up there that cost a great deal because the man who built it had a great deal of original tile work put into the house and spared no money in the bathrooms and details and fine wrought- iron work. So there were different degrees of quality in these houses, although, when you look back on it, they were copies; and I imagine it happened because of the interesting people in coining to California and the romantic idea about the past.

MINK: Do you remember in this period when these houses were being built — because you were here then teaching — what the general attitude of the people in the art department, besides yourself who were in architecture, was toward this kind of construction?

DELANO: Well, you see, the modern I'm talking about in relation to the German Bauhaus, the work of Gropius; and then of course there were others — Le Corbusier in France; and there were people in Holland and in England; and in this country, Neutra, right here. The people here who were connected with the art schools in USC and in our department, most of them thought that just a revival of some period was the thing to do in architecture. We've had that for a long time in this country. Most of our main town halls are in classic styles, the capitols of most of our states and our country are in classic styles, and so this had such a clutch on people.

MINK: So I imagine that the people like Mrs. Sooy and Mrs. Andreson and some of the others — Miss Gere — thought that the kind of houses that they were building were just fine.

DELANO: Yes. I don't think you should include Laura Andreson, because she was very young then and she had been one of my students. We were great friends from the very beginning. I tried to encourage her to go into pottery — I mean, to develop her sense of design that she had. I don't know how conservative Laura would be in her attitude towards architecture, but I don't think she would've made an issue of it. I think she was interested in ceramics and didn't carry on too much about architecture.

MINK: I wanted to ask you, too, in conjunction with your visit to Prague and observance of architecture, were you at all aware of the Danish influence or the Swedish influence?

DELANO: Oh, yes, the Danish and Swedish and Norwegian, all of those countries in the north there, and Germany, too, and France, seemed to come out with very fine examples of furniture in new styles — not just to be new but to adapt a creative attitude towards objects that would go into these homes or public buildings, for that matter, where the function would be analyzed again and plans revised instead of just putting on sort of a surface decoration to imitate or emulate some older period. It went all the way down to the small objects. I was led into this great interest in the architecture because I felt that there were so many objects that could be designed by our students that would go into homes of the future or into public buildings or into parks — it might be a fountain, anything. Why should you just look to a period style which is so traditional? And now you think of it, I believe almost every architectural school and design school or fine arts department works towards some modern, more creative — I think they've all changed. I don't think you find the same holdback that we had in those years.

MINK: It certainly is true — I would say, wouldn't you? — of Berkeley's School of Environmental Design, where they have left the walls totally bare except for the bearing structure and allowed the students to go around and do their own thing wherever they wanted to.

DELANO: You mean mural making?

MINK: Murals and tiles. In the School of Environmental Design at Berkeley.

DELANO: Yes. Oh, you see, this is after all a lifetime that's passed. This period we're talking about this afternoon has to do with what happens when quite a revolution takes place. And the main thing, well, there was a book put out by an American man who gave a little history of the modern. He went back to some of the older periods and showed what elements in the structure carried on and how it entailed a certain mechanical function in the building and yet was covered up with these trappings. This was the thing that you had to stress. I think one thing perhaps, if I generalize on this now, is that in philosophizing about any great change in the arts, we have the new and the old mixed and [we should] come clean with it. It ' s a process that's rather difficult because of the changing of habits and workmen and so on. Bullock's Wilshire here in Los Angeles is a very good example of this kind of conflict. The architects were somewhat traditional who built that building, Bullock's Wilshire on Wilshire Boulevard. It was finished, I believe, in 1929. The store was particularly interested in having traditional rooms, so they first hired a man who would do all the interiors in traditional modes. Well, he died before they had a chance to build the building. And they knew about a woman named Eleanor Le Maire because Mr. [Percy G.] Winnett, who was president of Bullock's, had traveled to New York and gotten Miss Le Maire to come out and do a job for Bullock's before 1929. That was to do with modern objects that might be sold in the store. I was hired in my off-time to help Miss Le Maire find things in Southern California because Bullock's had a policy of trying to utilize local talent. I spent all my extra days going about, taking Miss Le Maire in my car to visit modern architects and designers, and some of my own students included, who were doing things, to help them on the store.

MINK: The man who designs furniture.

DELANO: Yes, Paul Williams was one of my students that Miss Le Maire liked — I mean she liked his work — and he was very creative, planned a lot of things for the Bullock's store that was built in 1929. He specialized in bentwood, and he finally had to expand and build a sort of a little factory in his backyard where he made beautiful bentwood furniture. When the store was built, the new store, they took Miss Le Maire — and by the way, she wouldn't take the job unless she could have it all modern. She gave way in just one detail: she thought the women's wear on the second floor could be in a period style just to placate some of the people in Bullock's, so that was done in a Louis XV style or something. But the rest was all very modern. I found people for Miss Le Maire, like John Weber, who helped her do many of the rooms, Jacques Peters for the entrance hall or lobby — whatever they called it there in the entrance. It's still good today. New carpets were designed, new draperies that went together, and new ideas where you could look through the store and look out through the windows. I really collaborated with Miss Le Maire for over a year in this work and really was a friend until she died last year. That was the biggest modern store of that type in the world. But you went back to this scene and some of it was not so modern. The general exterior has the trappings on the outside that the architects put on.

MINK: I was thinking about the Richfield building, too, which came along about that same time.

DELANO: Yes, that's right.

MINK: Would you say that represented a...

DELANO: ...maybe a fusion of a kind of — well, what I'm getting at, the general principle that one would go for here, would be to see that if there is any enrichment of the surfaces, that it really integrates and isn't just something slapped on. Now I had a big argument with Richard Neutra on this, and I thought it was too bad that murals were left out of some of these modern buildings. So I wrote him a letter about it. I had been asked, I had already done a sgraffito mural for one of John Weber ' s modern buildings in Oxnard, and I didn't know anything about sgraffito. I had to do a lot of research to find out how to do it, and I did it. Then I wrote this letter to Neutra to give me a statement about what he thought of murals in the modern architecture today, at that time — this was way back. He gave me permission to quote his letter, and I incorporated it in an article that was published by the University of California. We had a magazine; what was it called? It was a literary review, or something of that kind, and I had that article on sgraffito and how it could be used in modern architecture. Mr. Neutra agreed; he said, "We've swept the walls clear, and now it's up to the artists to make murals." He thought a type of expressive mural could be put on buildings that would be much more appropriate to our day and time and give color. He was very much in favor of a lot of color. He had visited Mexico. He saw what Diego Rivera and others were doing down there and came back very enthusiastic about murals. So there was a chance.

MINK: What murals did you have an opportunity to do after you did the one for the building in Oxnard?

DELANO: Yes, well, I was just trying to think in sequence.

MINK: It doesn't matter if it's in sequence.

DELANO: Let's see, I spoke about Miss Le Maire, let's see, getting acquainted here throughout the time she was devoting her time to Bullock's Wilshire. By the way, that building has been ruined, since, inside. The people that have come on and tried to keep the store going and looking nice have just ruined it. I'm glad Miss Le Maire didn't see it after they ruined the interiors.

MINK: How did they ruin it?

DELANO: Well, for example, in the tearoom they brought in just knickknacks and flowered rugs that were entirely out of place, and they took off the very beautiful glass ceiling that concealed the lights. There was a curved glass — bent glass, this was called — ceiling that had been made for the lobby in the top floor that they took off. They tried to make it look like a ladies' boudoir. It was just terrible and is today. They couldn't spoil the lobby because Jacques Peters had incorporated beautiful marble, and the texture of the marble was there, and they haven't ruined that. But everyplace else, wherever they touched it was the wrong thing. Another thing about murals there in that store: Miss Le Maire wanted a mural somewhere, and I had introduced her to Gjura Stojano. He was a Gypsy from Rumania that I knew, or from one of those Balkan states, and a very creative person. I took Miss Le Maire to see what he was doing at the time. She hired him to do a mural in the sports section on the first floor of Bullock's Wilshire, and it's there today and untouched, and it's just beautiful. The colors are soft and yet rich enough and contrasting enough. He had inlay, he has little glass and different kinds of metals put in, and wood; and it ' s a beautiful accessory to that part of the store. So you can see parts here and there in the store that remain the way it was originally in 1929. That was a credit to the people in Bullock's and to Miss Le Maire for working it out at the beginning like that. But I think you just get window drapers in the recent years, you know, to come in and put in a new carpet, and the choice is terrible.

MINK: This certainly was a contrast, then, when they built the Bullock's store here in Westwood.

DELANO: Yes. It was. You don't mean the one now? You see, there have been two.

MINK: Would you talk about the first one?

DELANO: The first one? I didn't have anything to do with that, and Miss Le Maire didn't either, but it wasn't too bad and it wasn't too good. I mean, it wasn't an outstanding thing that was written up all over the country and known in Europe, [like] this other store, because it was ahead of its time, you see. There were restrictions in the Village. The Janss people had restrictions all over the Village. You had to sort of fit in whatever you built here, and again it was traditional. They laid out the Village in a very poor way. They didn't provide for parks, and there's a great deal you could quarrel about in relation to the buildings and to the layout — to the streets, to everything about it.

MINK: Then I take it you don't feel so sorry now about seeing some of this being wiped out?

DELANO: No. Again, it was in collaboration with Dr. Moore; they wanted — well, let's see if I can remember — sort of a romantic feeling about a village, "a village that had cowpaths" is what we used to say. They would have a period--well, like Ralphs [Supermarket], the only store we had at the beginning in Westwood. That was like a sort of fortress, like something with stones, you know, and yet it was a fake, style. By the way, going back to sgraffito, there was one Italian that knew how to make sgraffito in Los Angeles as far as I could find out. It had been in his family for a long time in Europe. It had been a secret and he wouldn't tell me a thing about it.

MINK: Do you remember his name?

DELANO: No, I have it down in notes somewhere; I had to do research in the library and have some articles translated. Fanny Coldren---I think she took a great interest and helped me. We got everything we could find on it. My trouble was that all the recipes for combining cement plaster and things that went into the surface layers was in European scales and descriptions.

MINK: Measurements.

DELANO: Measurements, yes, the measurements, for material quantities. Finally, I went to one of the main cement and plaster factories downtown and got a lot of help there in making samples to try out my own way of doing it, to make the first one on the house for this Swiss architect who built a house for Dr. [H.R.] Rey in Oxnard.

MINK: Is that house still standing?

DELANO: Yes, the murals are there.

MINK: What is the name?

DELANO: The house? It was Dr. Rey, but he died and the lady has since married, so I don't know her recent name. Dr. Rey had a hospital up around Ventura someplace for something to do with the way children are born, a better way to have them born. I've forgotten what it was — some kind of a method. A noted Swiss doctor.

MINK: Natural birth?

DELANO: Yes, something like that. John Weber, the architect — now, he's an example of one who had been trained in Europe in Zurich, came here at the time that what you were speaking of, this Spanish, was revived. He could revive anything. I mean, he designed any period that he had to, you know, to get along, to make a living. He was married to a nice Swiss lady.

MINK: He could be a hack if he had to?

DELANO: Well, he hated it. He was very outspoken like so many European people are. But what could you do? You can't just starve, you know. So he did at least some nice Spanish revivals. Then I got him this job with Miss Le Maire, and so he went along with her and did many parts of the Bullock's Wilshire building, especially the beauty salons that he planned. He had a strength in the way he designed things — they weren't just pretty, but they were very good looking — and modern inventions that he made on the equipment for the place. These people in Europe had wide training. Then he went along with her to New York and worked with her until he died just last year. He did Neiman-Marcus ' s store — he was the main architect for the Neiman-Marcus store, under Miss Le Maire. Of course, her name is what goes down on all of this. It's too bad now that I know about the people in relation to some of these things. It's just too bad that she didn't put his name down with it at the time, because he was the main architect and she was the person who had the money and the business know-how and could work with people. I think teamwork is one of the most essential things in all of this we've been talking about, all the crafts that have to do with new techniques and art that goes into buildings. If people can't get together and work as a team, I think it's just too bad — we'll have ugliness everywhere. So with Miss Le Maire, she worked beautifully with people, but I think people have to have recognition as they go along. John Weber was the one that didn't get any.

MINK: Did you find that people felt this way about it then? That she didn't recognize their part?

DELANO: Well, she should have had his name in right in the beginning. Now if I had known what I know today about such things, it seems to me I could have helped in that situation, because as years went by, John Weber burnt up. They'd do a building like Neiman-Marcus and his name wouldn't be there. It would be Eleanor Le Maire. It's just a shame. This man I spoke about, Douglas Haskell, was a main writer for modern architecture for so many years in New York, in the Architectural Forum, and that other one, Architectural Record. He was well known. He was burnt up about it, too. He wanted to write up John as a separate person because he was so furious that through the years he didn't get the credit that he should have had. So there are many people I think that are not involved in this teamwork. Nowadays, or even in those days, they said, "Eleanor Le Maire and Associates." Well, that still doesn't get his name up before the public. So I think there's a lot that students should know about — here's the old teacher talking again — should know about teamwork, how to work together.

MINK: Did you try to teach your students along this line?

DELANO: I discussed things with them wherever it came in. I had a seminar up here at my house when there was nobody in the design area to give it--this is jumping up to recent times and after Gibson Danes was here. I had this seminar on design, and I had been teaching just painting for so long that most of the people in design didn't even know that I knew anything about design. Well, the students just ate it up because I could talk in generalized philosophical terms so that everything that I said about the different areas and the way people in the design areas would have to cooperate to bring about great beauty in interiors, in planning, just as they do in science.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

MINK: You've already talked about meeting John Dewey at the dedication in 1930, and how he and Dr. Barnes went with you to see the work that was on exhibition that your students had done up in the art department in Moore Hall, and how finally Dr. Barnes wrote to Dr. Moore and told him that if you wanted to accept a scholarship at the Barnes Foundation, he would let you come and pay you — what was it? A hundred dollars?

DELANO: A hundred dollars a month, yes.

MINK: So what I'm wondering now is if you could begin to tell me something about going, your experiences. I think you said you had a rugged time at first.

DELANO: Yes, I did. Before I launch into that I would like to say that Dr. Moore said that it was really quite a big scholarship to accept. I didn't know the significance of Dr. Barnes at that time, or the extent of his collections, or anything about his character, for that matter. I knew a little about John Dewey but not too much. I had some of his books, and that's how I got interested in reading things about the Barnes Foundation — through what Dewey had already said at that time. Dr. Moore, I started to say, wanted me to accept the thing.

MINK: He thought it was important?

DELANO: He thought it was very important and that I should therefore perhaps have a different point of view from what had been engendered in the art department up to that time. Well, I said I didn't have any money even to get across the country--we had such low salaries without status at that time — and that I had saved up and taken all the money I had to go to Europe a year before that, and so now I didn't have any. He said, "Do you have any insurance policies?" I said I had some but not very much. He said, "Why don't you borrow from one of those?" I took his word and borrowed some from one I had; I really should have cashed it in because it was very difficult paying it back and the interest all those years. Anyway, I got across the country and left my job, but I did have an agreement with Dr. Moore by word of mouth that I would be able to get my job back in case Mrs. Sooy, who was then head, didn't want me to come back to the art department. I went across the desert in the train. I love the desert, not just as a painter of the desert, not that sort of thing, but it has always attracted me; and I looked at everything as we went through the Mojave and on finally to New York. I stopped briefly to see Mrs. Morgan. She and her husband had already gone to New York, and finally I got on down to Philadelphia to go to the Barnes Foundation.

MINK: You said you got a room in Philadelphia.

DELANO: I got a room in a hotel and felt that I couldn't keep it very long with so little money in hand, so I got out to the Barnes Foundation by train out to Merion. I had to walk quite a little ways from the station to get there. It was through a beautiful wooded country and big estates, and you could hardly see a house because they were in their own parks, so to speak, in that area. So I found the foundation and saw Dr. Barnes right away.

MINK: What did he say to you when he saw you standing on the doorstep?

DELANO: The building itself is very beautiful — it has beautiful soft warm-colored marble and large sloping grounds, lawn and beautiful trees, and they were in flower at that time, some of them. And there wasn't much of a conversation at that time. He brought me in, and there was no one else around except Dr. Barnes just then. He took me around through all of the galleries, and I really was swept off my feet. It was an enormous place. I think they had twenty-seven galleries, if I remember correctly, filled with wonderful paintings. In the first big gallery, there were many paintings by Cezanne, Renoir and many impressionists and old masters. I should really go into this a little later on, but it was just the overwhelming greatness of the collection that took me by surprise right at first. Barnes didn't say much, but he introduced me to a young man who came in a little later, and that was Herbert Jennings. He told Jennings to take me back to Philadelphia and try and find a place where I could live where it would be less expensive than in that hotel.

MINK: Then you told him that you couldn't live in the hotel, that it was too expensive?

DELANO: Oh, yes. It really was. I couldn't stay there. Besides, I needed the hundred dollars he was to give me because I didn't have too much in my purse, really, because it took all I could get to get across the country. Herbert and I looked all around, and we finally found a room with a girl named Hope. She was writing for Curtis Publishing Company — she wrote a column on music. She happened to be interested in music and had a boyfriend who was going to the Curtis Institute of Music. That was lucky because all of his friends and her friends came together every week and we'd listen to fine music and go to hear [Leopold] Stokowski play. So that was nice. And the room I got with Hope was a nice large room but. . .

MINK: Hope...?

DELANO: Hope, I've forgotten Hope's last name now. But the bed I had to sleep on was just a cot with, believe it or not, a sort of a tick filled with straw. Well, I just about wept that first night because I'd never slept on a thing like that before in my life. I had a few things in my trunk after I got that from the express train; I put up a large Chimayo blanket — which seemed to give something to the room, so I didn't feel so badly after that. The next day I made my way out to the Barnes Foundation. It was too expensive to go on the train, so I took a subway and an elevated and a surface car — and I don't how how many changes I had to make to get out to Merion — and then walk[ed] a couple of miles at the end of the road. I did this all through that whole year, except for the time that I was in Europe under the Barnes Foundation. I went in snow and chilly weather, and I guess when a person is young it doesn't matter.

MINK: You always had to do all these connections every time?

DELANO: Yes, I couldn't afford to go on what they called the Main Line, a big train that went out west from Philadelphia and stopped at Merion. That was the only other way to get out there. My encounters with Dr. Barnes throughout the year were frequent, and I didn't know at the time what kind of person he was, and I don't know to this day just what you would call him. People have mixed emotion about him. There was a series of articles written for the Saturday Evening Post and it ran for several weeks. It was called "The Terrible-Tempered Dr. Barnes." When he found people writing about art and disagreed with them, he could be unmerciful in his criticism, and he wouldn't spare any money or time to try to debate with them or write about them in one way or another. So some people feared him, some hated him — there were all sorts of opinions, and you heard lots of gossip. Of course, I didn't know that when I first went there, and I was told by some of the young men who were in some of the classes I was in that it was best just to keep quiet, and I found out that it was, until you could understand a little bit more about his nature. He was associated with John Dewey from the beginning, or before he really built the foundation. He liked what he saw in some of Dewey's writings and then joined his seminar, and they became fast friends and remained so for the rest of their time. John Dewey was given a certain amount of money to come down there — I think this was at one time during the beginning of their friendship. He always had a room where he could stay in their home.

MINK: Would Barnes give Dewey money to come down there?

DELANO: Yes. I think I found that in some book that was written about him. I could look that up.

MINK: No, that's all right.

DELANO: Yes, but it ' s a matter of record. At one time, I think it was rather early when he had been in Chicago and he had a school there and was testing out his progressive theories of education, he left the place and was without a position for a time there; and I think that's when Barnes brought him down to the foundation. I may be a little wrong in that but I could find out. Dewey was a person, I would say, that was quite different from Barnes. I once used the idea of extroverts and introverts. I don't think anyone could be labeled by just a word, but if you wanted to use that in this case, I'm sure Dr. Barnes is an extrovert as compared with John Dewey. On the other hand, when you think about the enormous amount of writing — it would take a book to just list the things that John Dewey has written. He was active, extremely active — not an introvert in the sense of going inward, but he was extremely active all his life.

MINK: But he was generally quiet.

DELANO: A very quiet, gentle person. In fact. Dr. Barnes thought he was a saint. He looked up to him in every respect all his life.

MINK: He was probably just everything that Barnes wasn't.

DELANO: Just everything. They complemented each other. In respect to what was later called progressive education, people took Dewey's ideas and misapplied them all over the country. They would call it progressive education, and it just seemed to be something that wasn't the real thing.

MINK: I wonder if you would give your opinion of whether you felt that Corinne Seeds, in what she said — you know, the application of the Dewey principle at UES — misapplied the teachings of Dewey, really?

DELANO: Well, I didn't investigate the training school very much, but I wish Corinne Seeds had really studied John Dewey. She always seemed to slough him off as someone who didn't talk very coherently.

MINK: I always thought that she was really gung-ho about Dewey.

DELANO: Well, I thought she was, too. But, for example, the Barnes Foundation was a place where there was no nonsense, none of this thing of everybody doing whatever he pleased all the time, but a very methodical place. And Dewey has given it the greatest praise — I want to tell about that some time while we're having this interview---where he thinks that it applied his theories better than any school, even better than the science schools.

MINK: Do I interpret you, then, when you say at the Barnes Foundation there was no nonsense and people weren't just allowed to do what they wanted all the time, that you were referring more to the principles that Corinne Seeds applied in the elementary school, where kids could just do their thing?

DELANO: Well, if they were doing their thing, each one at a different time and place, without license, so to speak — I mean, with some discipline — then that's fine. As I said, I didn't investigate the school to any great degree, but I felt that perhaps Dewey's way of talking and writing kept people from understanding him to some degree. But I think if people would read and take from it at the time something that seemed to apply to the experience they would be having at the moment, and then read and reread, study the parts that seemed to apply to what they needed....

MINK: Well, then, you said that Dewey felt that at the Barnes Foundation — to go along with what you were going to say — that he had applied it there to the best that anyone had applied his principles.

DELANO: Yes, he said this in the preface to Art as Experience; he said that "Whatever is sound in this volume is due more than I can say to the great educational work carried on in the Barnes Foundation. That work is of a pioneer quality comparable to the best that has been done in any field during the present generation, that of science not excepted. I should be glad to think of this volume as one phase of the widespread influence the Foundation is exercising." And it was widespread. Dr. Barnes had many philosophers come there and lecture, and students from all over the world . He never had great numbers; he couldn't be bothered with them. They had to come on their own and lead their own study. I was just making the point that even in the lower grades the Dewey system — I don't like to call it a system, but Dewey's ideas on education---would not lead to this wild, sort of helter-skelter business, and that the children would come out not knowing mathematics or this or that. I mean, they believed in a certain amount of drill and really hard study, but at the same time they didn't want this thing to be like studying by rote where something was sort of drilled into people. In other words, you have some lead that's carrying you on and it's very individual. — how to get individualism into the schools without having this random sort of lack of discipline.

MINK: You were really describing, weren't you, what came to be known as "progressive education" and had such a very bad name, and for which UCLA, as I understand it, got rather a bad name because they tried to apply these principles in their education department in teaching teachers.

DELANO: Yes, not in the education department as a whole but in the training school. I don't know that they even called it "progressive." No one wants to get rid of a word. The word "progressive" is good, and I think if we don't progress in any field then we're sunk; but I think that people had a wrong idea about Dewey ' s ideas. And another thing: if one could just note the difference in his ideas as they developed and changed.... He was one of the first to change his ideas, but maybe people got started with one of his first books in education, then they didn't bother to go on with any of the rest of them to see how they varied or how it was applied, or even to find out what was being done at the Barnes Foundation.

MINK: Could you give me some examples in your day-to-day activities there that illustrate what Dewey was saying about how he thought his principles were there best applied?

DELANO: Well, the students were allowed to come in if they had a real purpose and could use their own initiative and work on their own projects, develop whatever they wanted to for the situation in their own school or wherever they came from.

MINK: What did you decide to do?

DELANO: I decided, first of all, that being an artist I wanted to study paintings to advance my whole person as an artist and then to use that in my teaching.

MINK: And what did Dr. Barnes think? Did he think this was a good project for you?

DELANO: He never asked me what I wanted to do. [laughter]

MINK: He never asked you?

DELANO: No, I didn't have to put down in writing or anything. Of course, I had read a couple of the first journals that he wrote before he published his book Art and Education, journal of the Barnes Foundation. This is one thing that led me to be interested in that place. They were little journals published in Merion, Pennsylvania, back in 1925 [that] contained articles which were scornful of public school education in Philadelphia and different ways in which people taught art. He felt that the education was really obstructed by the methods they used. Barnes, [Thomas] Munro, Dewey, [Laurence] Buermeyer, and Mary Mullen all wrote articles in this magazine, and then later different books came out — or right away.

MINK: You must have at least discussed with Dr. Barnes the project you planned to pursue at the foundation.

DELANO: Yes, in the sense that they saw me working every day. I was there on time and I stayed the full length all day long — I brought my lunch — and I had my own notes and was analyzing paintings in my own way. Now, he didn't say: analyze this today, do this today, and so on. I went my own way. I sought out the paintings that interested me most to begin with. And I had decided in my own mind I would try their methods. You see, there was another class or two given by some young members of the staff. They would put up a painting and analyze it, and it was all in Barnes's type of analysis. Then Barnes himself would have an afternoon in which he would lecture on, perhaps, the relations between music and painting. Miss [Violette] de Mazia, who was on the staff, sometimes lectured, and so I thought I would try out their method. It differed from what we had been taught at UCLA years ago. I think I said something earlier in this..,

MINK: ...in reference to the analyzing of those paintings.

DELANO: Yes. Mr. Dow, back in the nineties, had originated his book. I think he published it later, but in the early part of the century, he had been lecturing on criticism and appreciation and creative arts using what he called six principles.

MINK: Yes. You discussed that.

DELANO: I discussed that. And my criticism way back there was that I felt it didn't get at painting enough, because they applied it more or less to the flat patterning of things and to details which had to do with, well, perhaps, Japanese prints and Oriental art, which was in vogue at that time. Space wasn't mentioned. Here, they used line, light, space, and color — four. You see, they mentioned the space, and this was a positive thing to be analyzed. It could be analyzed, and you could show how these various elements related to one another in a painting.

MINK: Perhaps in order to demonstrate to me, and for the record, exactly, could you take a picture that comes to mind from the collection and tell me how you analyzed it?

DELANO: Yes. Any painting such as, say, Cezanne's Card Players, which was at the end of the big gallery and comes to mind, you could start in with any one of the four. It didn't matter. One is basic to the other. If you want to say that line is basic, that you can't paint without line, you can't; but you don't have to start with that, because all four elements are integrated. That is, you couldn't paint a picture like that without involving a linear composition, a spatial composition, a color and a light composition; so that the artist is integrating all four. When he gets through, you're, not aware of how he did it exactly, but you see things in the real world in this manner. You see linear, spatial, colored, lighted forms in space. The way he worked his deep space was not in the traditional sense.

MINK: Cezanne.

DELANO: Cezanne, I'm talking about. So this would be one of the things I'd want to say about it, because as you focus upon a painting and you work with it for a long time, you're really seeing into it in a much deeper sense than just walking by in a gallery or just giving it a few minutes, you see.

MINK: How long do you sit and look at it?

DELANO: Well, that'd depend on where it comes in relation to what you've done before. If I were going to give a full analysis, in painterly terms, of this painting, perhaps it would take me an hour to go through that. I'm just guessing.

MINK: And how would you do it?

DELANO: V7e'd start in with, well, say, line, and tell about the arrangement of the lines, how they are working in the composition, how they are made — that is, I don't mean the mere paint but are they fused on the edges? Are they sharp and delineated? Are they worked into the form so that you're not conscious of them and yet there's a blurred edge? Or how are they working? And then if you think of another artist of the same time that you can contrast with it, then that is brought in at that moment. For example, when I said a fused edge, I might think of Titian, where his edges are fused and blurred; there's no imposed outline anywhere in a Titian. Whereas in a Cezanne, there might be a single line that seems not to be imbedded into the form itself — in other words it blurs, maybe on an edge, or is sharp in places, or maybe even detached, because Cezanne was not following in the older traditions of the Renaissance. I might plunge into space first instead of line. Perhaps if I were talking about space, I would have to say what the colors were doing in a spatial sense. Perhaps there are cool colors like a bluish color or a purplish color or a greenish blue, and these colors have a spatial relation to, say, the warm colors — such as a lemon yellow or an orange — and these colors would be separated in the effect they gave to you. Some colors would recede, in other words. And that relationship would be set up and would be spatial. When I have space in my mind, in my eye, I'm seeing it in the painting and I'm seeing it all over. I'm seeing the painting whole hanging there on the wall. I'm not making a diagram of it. I am seeing interrelationships. This is what I want to get to in the long run. Space also might be considered in terms of perspective. Where are the objects? Are they deep in space? Do they seem miles away? I might turn to one of his landscapes. We might be right nearby there in the room and notice a mountaintop that seemed very far away, yet it wasn't done in the traditional sense. So you're getting all kinds of ideas while you're analyzing one painting, and the more you know about the traditions, the more these relationships come up. I was saying something about the deep space in a Cezanne painting that would be worked out not only by the way the lines bend and form into relationships in generating a shape in space and the intervals between, but it would also have something to do with the way the lights are worked. There might be whole areas of shadow and light, so that the near highlights would come toward you. Does this give you some idea now? I mean, I'm just making up an idea. I don't even have the painting in front of me.

MINK: Well, I understand this now. Would you then be required, or asked, or volunteer, to present your analysis of the painting to the class or a group once you had done it?

DELANO: No. One time when I was walking in the gallery — I was analyzing something by Cezanne, I guess; I can't remember- Dr. Barnes wanted to see what I was doing. So he read a little bit, and I think he criticized the words I was using. Well, I guess my words were very meager at that time, in a way — this was right near the beginning — and I guess he wanted to see exactly what I was doing, but he didn't criticize me very much at that time. No. You were on your own to work. And I think they had ways of telling whether you were. Well, you were there every day working. They could see you in the gallery.

MINK: Your physical presence would be... .

DELANO: You were there, yes.

MINK: ...an indication of your devotion.

DELANO: Yes, indeed.

MINK: What was the sum total and purpose of these things, that you sat there day after day?

DELANO: You stood there. There were no seats, no places.

MINK: Analyzing these paintings one after the other? What was the objective? Was there any physical objective in the end? Did you write a resume or a summary? Was anything required of you?

DELANO: No, you were completely on your own for your own project. You see, I was one of possibly six people who were allowed to be on their own. Other people came into the lecture classes. I sat in on all of their classes. You didn't have to hand in anything or take part in the lecture or anything at all.

MINK: The others did but you didn't.

DELANO: I didn't. There were about six of us that way on our own, and he sent us to Europe besides. These people were on their own. Most of them in other years I found out were writing books, like, say, Thomas Munro. Their purposes in life were a little different, perhaps. I, as an artist and teacher, felt that I wanted to get all I could out of that year. I think one provision that Dr. Barnes made, now that I recall, was not to paint during the whole year.

MINK: Oh, you couldn't do any painting?

DELANO: No painting.

MINK: That must have been sort of a stultifying thing for you.

DELANO: Yes. I had been on my own painting trips, and doing a lot on my own before I left, and still I felt that it was right since I was only to be there twelve months. That was little enough time in which to see the great masterpieces in Europe and go through the history of painting in Europe. That's what I did there in four months' time. I went to eight different countries and studied the interrelationship of the traditions: that is, I tried to follow from early to late in the work of one artist, let's say, and then as I went along to integrate his work with traditions before and after his time as I'd see it and try to evaluate or criticize the work as I went along. I'm getting into Europe. I know this is jumping out of place a little bit, but it gives you an idea of what I decided from the beginning to do. My project was to study and use the analytical method which they had worked out there in front of the paintings.

MINK: I presume that Dr. Barnes put this stricture of no painting on because he felt that you needed all of the time.

DELANO: I needed all of the time.

MINK: Right. But did you do your painting at home?

DELANO: No, I didn't. No, I brought my paintings along, but I never showed them to him. I showed them to some of the teachers there that I knew real well, like this young Herbert Jennings.

MINK: What did they feel of them?

DELANO: Well, they thought that they were great, I guess. I don't know. They liked them. But I guess I might have been a little afraid of Barnes at this time. I didn't show them to him. I thought maybe in the future sometime he could see my work. I didn't really try to show them to him.

MINK: Well, did you ever get a taste of the terrible temper?

DELANO: The terrible temper? Yes, I did.

MINK: Could you describe it for me?

DELANO: One that came to mind: you know, Mrs. Sooy wrote an article about "Painting Is Dead," and John Dewey and Dr. Barnes had seen this article and they just thought it was dreadful for anyone to down painting. I didn't know about this, and right in one of the early weeks while I was there, he was talking to me about my work and whether I was getting along all right and having a pleasant conversation. Then he said, "Well, you know, you just came from the sewer." This just shocked me so, I burst out in tears. And I laugh, but it really shocked me and I didn't know but what he meant "s-e-w-e-r," but he didn't. He meant "S-o-o-y-e-r, " Sooy — Mrs. Sooy was the "sooyer" because she had written that article. And even that was shocking. I still felt like crying. But he said, "Oh, well, don't pay any attention to that. That's just what Dewey and I decided." I was in a position without money. I couldn't come home and give up the whole thing, but I thought if I was going to be blasted like that at every turn, I just didn't know what to do. I talked it over with some of the young men who were going to the foundation on my way home that day, and they told me that he was like that, that you just had to learn to take it. Barnes himself said — this helped me to get over a little bit of this state of mind — "You shouldn't be so tender-minded. You've got to learn to be tough-minded." He said, "Read William James." So I did. I got a copy and decided I needed to get over being tender -minded. And he told me to read [George] Santayana and James — and Dewey, of course. Those three, those were the great ones — Santayana, too. Santayana was one who wrote so poetically about the arts. I sailed through his books and just loved them. Dewey, like Miss Seeds said, was difficult — and is still difficult to me. Much of it I don't understand, but the parts that I do, I feel that there's been no one more influential in my whole life than what John Dewey worked out.

MINK: Was Dewey there at all while you were there?

DELANO: Dewey was there every week. He was under the influence of Dr. Barnes in respect to being on time and there, and he worked. It was a wonderful year to be there because John Dewey was writing. Well, first he was writing lectures to be given at Harvard every week, so that was why he was down there; and then he turned it into this book, Art as Experience . And so I had the benefit of listening to Barnes and Dewey on practically every chapter in this book. The firsthand, sort of, working out of a chapter.

MINK: Would they discuss it between themselves?

DELANO: They would discuss it. They'd go right back to something real new and early in experience — oh, like when they were discussing deep space, or what it is to have an experience. So this book seems very much more intimate to me than most any of the other books. I don't know of any other philosopher who has written this much about art. Most of them, if they write on the arts, illustrate it with literature or music, but John Dewey really wrote more about paintings than any other art. That was his field, in art experience.

MINK: Well, can you remember any interesting anecdotes if you were listening to Barnes and Dewey?

DELANO: Yes. I spoke about space. It makes me thing about one day when he was going to give his lecture up there at Harvard. Barnes brought out a painting by Corot and put it on the floor against a chair, and he started talking about it, just the way he would write about or analyze a painting, starting to say something about the way space was utilized in the picture. He was kind of droning away, and Dewey was sitting back looking wide-eyed at the painting and rubbing his forehead. And Barnes thought, "He's not listening to me," so he said, "Don't you see that deep space?" He sort of pounded his hand on the chair. [laughter] And Dewey said, "I guess I'll go write." I never forgot that. It just said something to me because it was so personal the way they reacted one to the other. In other words, I think Barnes was really a spur to John Dewey in this book. He took him to Europe — they analyzed paintings together in Europe — and any time that Barnes wrote a book, every chapter was gone over by Dewey, and they helped each other this way.

MINK: Were you the only witness of this scene, or were there others there?

DELANO: I can't remember if there were any others. There would only be two or three — perhaps this Herbert Jennings and Decius Miller.

MINK: Well, I find it a little difficult to get in my mind a picture of how this was. Did people just wander in and out, and conversations might be going on, say?

DELANO: No. There was just absolute quiet in this room. The students were to be seen and not heard because something very creative was taking place. You didn't want anybody to interfere. Now, these two were creating together, I feel. That's my impression of it.

MINK: And you were allowed to watch?

DELANO: Right in the creation, exactly. Do you see now? That occurred in Europe, too, when they were writing the book on Matisse. I think the year that I was there was really one of the most marvelous years to be there.

MINK: Why do you feel that?

DELANO: Well, not only because Dewey was there and writing his book Art as Experience, which came out a little later — his lectures were put together in the form of this book — but also because Matisse was there. Later in the year, I think it was possibly in May or June, there was the largest exhibition up to that time of Matisse's work held in a big gallery in Paris — several galleries, not just one, a succession of galleries. Barnes took advantage of this because the pictures had been gathered from all over the world. He was writing on Matisse and he liked Matisse's work — he collected it; he had a great many fine examples. But he wanted to be over there to analyze every day, so the foundation staff and the secretaries would assemble at this gallery. They would be there in the morning before anybody else was allowed to come in. We had special passes. I still have my pass and the catalog in which Matisse wrote to me. Anyhow, we'd assemble there early in the morning and those of us who- — I think there were just four of the students who were on their own in my category — would stand around and listen. Again, you'd find Miss De Mazia and Dr. Barnes analyzing the painting, whatever it was, and there would be secretaries taking down every word. When he'd wear out one, there 'd be another one to take her place. And I really mean that. It was fast and furious, and there wouldn't be a detail left out of the analysis in the painting. If they were comparing, say, with something in other traditions — maybe a Persian miniature, for example — he would send Ed Dreibelbis, who was one of the students in my category, over to the Louvre to check so they'd be absolutely right about the detail they were going to put in that book on that piece. I tell you, by the time you were through from nine to twelve in that gallery, everybody was worn out — even those who were just listening.

MINK: You said that Matisse was there, and I wondered if you recall any interplays between Matisse and Barnes — for example, the way that you recall the one between Dewey and Barnes?

DELANO: Well, that's a matter of record. Matisse was brought over here to be on some large jury, some national or international jury for some exhibition that was to be held in this country; and so Barnes immediately had him come down to the foundation and asked him if he would do a mural to be placed over the lunettes — that is, these enormous windows that were, oh, maybe ten or fifteen feet high. They were separated by a certain wall space between. There were, say, four windows, as I remember, and three spaces between the windows; and above the windows there was a space in the wall that coved up into the ceiling — a very dreadful place in which to work. But he wondered if he could put a mural in there spanning the whole width of the wall and up between the windows and up into the ceiling. Matisse pondered on it, and he decided he thought that he could, something that would work with the architecture and with the exhibitions in there--because this main gallery was two stories high. You see, there was a mezzanine floor up around, so you can imagine how high it was. It looked out onto some beautiful grounds. So Matisse was there a number of days. I was introduced to him. This is just a little aside — I don't know why I noticed it--but he doesn't shake hands. You'd take his hand, and it's just like a fish. He doesn't respond; I don't know why. Later I found out it was because he had so much arthritis or something, because it was really strange. I had never taken anybody's hand before and felt this difficulty.

MINK: He didn't have a grasp?

DELANO: No response. No, he didn't grasp your hand. He seemed to be restrained. He didn't talk much. De Mazia was around all the time; of course, she spoke fluent French. Barnes spoke a little, but they didn't carry on many conversations--while I was around, at least. They were in this main gallery quite a bit, and I hung around to see what I could see or hear. Let's see, as far as hearing anything else from Matisse: when we were over in France, they held a wonderful reception for Matisse. Now, like most artists, he didn't like to attend these social affairs. He was reluctant.

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

MINK: One of the things that I was wondering is, you had said that Matisse gave you his palette. Is it a natural thing for a student to ask a great artist to write down the colors on his palette? Is this an ordinary thing?

DELANO: I don't know. I just don't know. You see, in the case of Matisse, the colors he used were so brilliant. An artist is always interested in the technical means. In Barnes analysis, after the painting is finished there isn't anything said about the type of color used, but I was interested because I had been using the Windsor- Newton paints from England all my life in painting — if I could afford them — and found them very satisfactory. I thought maybe this would be a chance to find out what kind of paints they used in France, and, when I got home, whether I could get some of them.

MINK: You were speaking on the other side of the tape about this reception given for Matisse. Was it here that you asked him for his palette?

DELANO: No, it wasn't at the reception. No, I'm sorry. That was at one of those morning sessions. He didn't come there every morning, but he was around the gallery at times, and at one of those times I asked him about his colors. He worked out a set of colors, and I found them very much like the Windsor-Newton ' s. That is, for example, emerald green was a color he used in a painting such as, say, Woman With a Hat. That was shown there in the exhibition. It would be used almost directly from the tube. He was fond of bright purples and red purples, so I thought it would be interesting to buy a few of those colors before I left Paris and [to] take them home — especially these brighter reds and greens and purples. What we call earth colors, any brownish colors, or where it would be the same here as it would be there — the cadmium orange--would be something like the Windsor- Newton's, in fact, maybe inferior. But that's all. I was just interested to know what he used.

MINK: And he just very willingly gave it to you?

DELANO: Yes, he did. He had somebody there in the gallery type it out and then make several copies to give to Herbert and some of the others that were in the small group going to the Barnes Foundation. You see, I might explain here that Barnes allowed a few of his students to go to Europe, and he paid their way if they couldn't pay their own. He'd let you burn up before you'd find out whether he was going to pay your way or not. I didn't know what I would do those last four months, unless he could give me some money or get my tickets for me . So I had to ask him, and then it was just a day or two before the boat on which we were all going was to sail. I already had a passport from a previous year, so it didn't take very long to write for my passport, and he paid my way on the ship, third class. I didn't mind because Herbert and some of the others were going. We got over to London on our own. Barnes and his, I'd say, retinue — all his staff and these secretaries he took along and his wife — they all went directly to Paris; and then the rest of us followed and joined up later on, in time for this exhibition. After we were through with the exhibition in Paris, I was to get my railroad tickets and go on my own from there on, and I didn't have the money for those, so I had to ask. I mean, I was a little embarrassed to do a thing like that. I don't know why, but it just seemed distasteful, you know. But that's part of Barnes's nature. He wanted to make people suffer, I guess — I don't know what it is.

MINK: Sadistic.

DELANO: He was in a way. Yes, he was.

MINK: You'd think he would have had all this planned out with you in advance and discuss it.

DELANO: Yes. So he sent Miss Mullen — one of the Mullen sisters — to me to find out why I was so jittery, and I had been sick in Holland eating such terrible food, because I didn't know how I was going to make it on a hundred dollars a month and travel on it. I thought I'd have to buy my own tickets, you see. So Miss Mullen talked to me, and I said, "Well, I didn't have anyone to fall back on, and I really was worried and I was anxious." She said, "Well, all you need to do is to write to the Barnes Foundation. " She wrote me the address in Paris and said, "We'll take care of you if you get sick." Well, that just relieved me so much that I was a different person from that time on. Then she went to the railroad ticket [office] with me and got the kind of ticket where you can stop anywhere you want and take as long as you want in a certain town and go on. You didn't have to have it point by point, you see.

MINK: Did they give you money for hotels and food?

DELANO: A hundred dollars a month, that's all. That was for my hotel and all my expenses and any other way — food and everything.

MINK: Even while you were in Europe?

DELANO: Even while I was in Europe, yes,

MINK: Were you able to make out all right with that?

DELANO: Yes. I did have five dollars left over in Italy, in Florence, and I spent in on a necklace. [laughter]

MINK: Did you feel sinful about that?

DELANO: No. [laughter] I didn't feel at ease during this time. I think it is something to understand a person like Dr. Barnes. He got into all kinds of fights with people. He would bawl them out unmercifully for things they said or didn't say about paintings and museums, and I think he was his own worst enemy. He wanted to do so much for people with his money — he had a great deal of money. He wanted to initiate a new way of looking at paintings--not altogether new, but at least have people study. Yet he antagonized so many people that I think it was too bad.

MINK: Was Mrs. Barnes all taken up in this?

DELANO: Mrs. Barnes was on her own, too. Maybe you can justify all of this by saying that he just wants to be surrounded by people who are creative, on their own, and doesn't want to be bothered to tell them, "You do this and you do that." Not at all, but as long as they're creating and he is stimulated by it, people all working around him, he's happy. Mrs. Barnes had charge of the arboretum. I didn't mention this at the beginning, but I should have. These beautiful buildings were placed on a twelve-acre site, and the man who had owned the property before had been a botanist and had developed an arboretum there. Mrs. Barnes went on with this.

MINK: So botany was her bag?

DELANO: Yes, she worked it into a wonderful place. I remember one incident. I ran into her on the grounds and I was a little bit early that day. She said, "I want you to see something that's in flower down this path." So I went on down with her, and she said, "You know, when I try to get the doctor" — she called her husband "the doctor" — "to come down here, he just turns around on the paths and says, 'Isn't the foundation beautiful today?' He looks at the buildings, and he doesn't look at the flowers. "

MINK: So he was never interested?

DELANO: Oh, he was interested and very proud, but he was so wrapped up in his own work, I think, that he--well, he wasn't a man of many words, in a way, as far as I could judge.

MINK: Did you ever have any scuffles with him as far as temperament was concerned, besides this one Louise Sooy incident you spoke of?

DELANO: Yes. One thing was about the dance. When I was home here in Los Angeles, I took dancing lessons for many years with Mrs. Morgan and others from the art department under Bertha Wardell. She had been a dance teacher at the Normal School of many years ago. Then she had this dance school on her own. We went down there as a group of artists who were interested in the dance — not to perform. but there was something very fascinating about it. In that way we learned something about the traditions of dance. Well, Barnes said something about dance in one of his lectures, in analyzing paintings, that made me feel that he hadn't thought very much about dance; so I burst out with something about the fact that if he wanted to analyze the dance why didn't he search for the factors involved and go through them just as he did with paintings: instead of saying that it was just a sort of a rat-tat- tat, or a movement, or a rhythmic series of sounds, show something involved the way we have it in painting or music. In a way I thought I'd have my head cut off at that time because he started to argue with me and I just kept still. I never could tell whether he liked to have you interfere; I had a feeling that he didn't, that it was his privilege to go on and think in front of the group. I felt that Dewey was that way, too: they were thinking and you were privileged to get to listen in on it. And once I took that attitude, then, you see, it wasn't like a teacher -class thing at all. You were privileged to be listening to this creative work going on, the writing of books; and that's why they wanted it quiet there — no interference. Originally — I was told by some of the young men who had been there many years — he had allowed people to come in from the University of Pennsylvania, and there was noise and a lot of talking going on and people couldn't think and couldn't work the way they wanted to; and so he just stopped it. And once he made up his mind, that was it. He had feuds with the University of Pennsylvania all through his life. He was always having troubles there. He wanted to leave his pictures to the people, but he wanted the work to be carried on in a serene way where people could look at paintings and not be disturbed.

MINK: You told me sometime earlier that there was one young man during the time that you were there that he really just cut off.

DELANO: Oh, yes. There was a Russian Jew from Chicago named Ivan Donovetsky — if I can remember — and he was allowed to come and was given forty dollars a month. Well, in Ivan's terms that was magnificent. He could live on forty dollars a month, knew how to do it. I didn't. I mean, I had a hundred dollars and that was hard enough. Anyhow, Ivan was allowed to go to these classes. He wasn't to come every day the way I was because he was just a young kid getting started as a painter. I got acquainted with him pretty well because in order to make out with our food we formed what was called a "supper club. " Five of us met at Hope's every day except Saturday and Sunday to cook, and we pooled our money so that I think it was a dollar and a half a piece that we could put up in the kitty and be able to eat.

MINK: A dollar and a half a week?

DELANO: A week, yes, a dollar and a half a week. This was during the beginning of the Depression. They were selling apples on the street in Philadelphia at that time. Ivan was in on this group. It was Hope, and myself, and Hope's boyfriend, who was the music graduate at the Curtis Institute, and Herbert, I guess — that was the five. Ivan was just having a wonderful time. Then he thought he'd like to go back to Chicago during the Jewish holidays, so Barnes gave him the money to go and he was to be back on a certain day. Well, he was a day late, and Barnes just put him out — no excuses. That's how severe he was — just absolutely no tolerance. Mrs. Morgan and her husband came there the summer after I was there or sometime soon after I was there, to photograph many of the things in the collection. Barnes allowed them to photograph anything they wanted — the Negro sculpture, the painting, everything — and he did a wonderful job. Mrs. Morgan was pregnant and Barnes treated her marvelously. He just thought it was something out of this world, you know. He even wanted to help her up a stair, or anything, you know, to be gentleman. We both felt that because he didn't have children this was one of the things that made him the way he was — that he craved to have children. And he wanted to warm up to the students who were there, but he didn't know how, you know. I had this feeling about him because I had another encounter. I don't know how to take encounters — I guess I have something to learn there.

MINK: What was that other one?

DELANO: The other encounter involved children.

MINK: A confrontation?

DELANO: A confrontation, yes. A confrontation. I don't know what brought it up, but I was roaming around doing my analytical work and studying the paintings in the foundation. He caught up with me one day and said something about, "You know, Dewey and I were discussing about the public schools, and," he said, "we just think some of the work that's going on is terrible." I said, "Well, if you had a child, then you wouldn't want him to take art in the schools?" And he said, "No. I wouldn't let any teacher get at him." And then his eyes filled with tears, and then I knew that the man was really sad inside about things.

MINK: About the fact that he didn't...

DELANO: ...didn't have children. That was just perhaps a little insight that might account for some of the things. I've never heard of anybody else that felt this.

MINK: Can we pursue this for a minute? I think that you mentioned also that, really, because of Louise Sooy ' s education according to the Dow method, he was not interested in having her there on a scholarship. During the time that you were there, was there any discussion of the Dow principles by Dewey and Barnes? And do you think it was for your benefit, perhaps, that these discussions went on?

DELANO: I can't remember whether this was before or after that Barnes wrote a criticism of the Dow method. This was what infuriated Miss Gere, Miss Chandler, Mrs. Sooy and all of those who had graduated from Columbia University. Of course, Dewey knew Mr. Dow there at Columbia. Coming back to words again, I think that a lot of writers put out something for the immediate circumstances of their school or whatever it is that they're doing, and they find a series of words that just seem to stress what they're after. I don't know whether I'm going into this too much or not, but at the time that Mr. Dow was writing he wanted to have people express beauty in their surroundings in every detail — the placement of anything on a shelf, on a wall, on the floor, in their surroundings, in the garden, in the city, wherever — that art would permeate. He was greatly influenced by the Japanese sense of beauty in their surroundings, and there was a writer who had put together some of the principles that he found in the Oriental traditions. So there were principles put down by [Ernest F.] Fenollosa. There was another writer, [Laurence] Binyon, if I recall correctly, who wrote about the Oriental traditions. These principles had been in favor for centuries. One was rhythm, and sometimes they call it rhythmic vitality, if I can recall. Also the Greeks had words. But Dow didn't explain this to his students. He just gave it out as though he were originating them. I think in all innocence Miss Gere and Miss Chandler — and I got more intimate with Miss Chandler on these matters, since she was the only one who seemed to see the difference there — they just came out feeling that Mr. Dow was the one that had originated these things. And they weren't called on to take courses in philosophy or to read philosophy, so they just came out without anything of a background in that respect. Yet what Mr. Dow said really applied to teaching all over the country; and it did help teachers, but he might have aroused them to investigate a little more. He probably never thought about it.

MINK: The reason I bring this up is because you mentioned that Dr. Barnes came to you and made this statement about "Dr. Dewey and I have been discussing art" as it was taught in the public schools and how terrible it was. It occurred to me that of course art was probably being taught primarily in the public schools by the Dow method.

DELANO: Yes, it was. But, you see, here's something again that I found in my whole experience there of one year with Barnes: I think he had a blind spot to all of this part that I just recall about art in everyday things and objects in the home, in the school, everywhere in the surroundings, in the city.

MINK: You think he was more confined to...

DELANO: ...just painting and sculpture.

MINK: To the appreciation...

DELANO: ...appreciation of painting and sculpture. The Dow thing kind of left that out. If you went into painting at all, it was flat like Japanese prints, again, or like Manet's painting at the time, or even Matisse at the time — not even abstract in Dow, there. So these teachers came out of Columbia, came to us, a whole group of them, and inculcated that trend in the work of their students. I remember I took painting from Mrs. Sooy; she wanted me to flatten everything I saw, and it kind of disturbed me. I was interested in deep space, but I thought, "This is it. I've got to paint flat." So I painted trees flat. Then Madame Scheyer came along in Los Angeles, and she brought along the Blue Four. This kind of German expressionism at the time was sort of flat with accented outlines, something like Japanese prints again, and so I was just along in this trend. But if one had had a wider experience, as Mr. Dow himself probably had.... He'd taught appreciation and history in Columbia and perhaps never realized that his way of bringing out these things tried to cover too much or make a difference. And the same with Barnes. He tried to make flower arrangements while I was there, and I thought he was very naive about it. After I left, I noticed in some of the magazines I found in later years that he bought some property and a house where he put in a lot of antique old Dutch furniture from around Philadelphia. He bought them in other places, too, and he made a beautiful place. So little by little, he did learn to apply art in other forms, but not while I was there especially. It was all painting and sculpture and manuscripts, painting on walls, everywhere from the beginning, early paintings and Chinese paintings and so on, but not particularly art in everyday objects.

MINK: Do you think your experience when you were in Europe with the Barnes Foundation really rounded out, so to speak, your earlier European experience?

DELANO: Yes, it did, because the first time I went on my own to Europe — as I explained, I think, last time — I was focusing on architecture for the class I was teaching in industrial design, and so I looked at so many exhibits all over Europe, especially the modern, in reference to textiles and pottery and that kind of thing. I did go to the great museums and look at the great masterpieces, but I wasn't stopping and analyzing them the way I did the second time. The second time I devoted myself to that. I was there four months in eight different countries and feel that I was advancing in my own knowledge for my own teaching as well as my own work as an artist. And I could tell when I came back on the train after twelve months away, I could see more in those same desert views than I had seen before. I think it's the way a person in music would do: if you didn't listen for, say, years at a time, I think you'd get a little dull. You have to keep these perceptions rounded out and deepened.

MINK: Did he require you to report to him, say, at the end of this twelve months?

DELANO: No, he didn't say a thing about it. But I came back and. . . .

MINK: Well, tell me something about your departure. What did he say? "Well, your twelve months are up now. Bye-bye."

DELANO: Oh. Oh, let's see. Barbara Morgan was with me. She and her husband were working. He was working for Life magazine and was down in Washington, so they met me in Philadelphia and we went together to the Barnes Foundation office on Spruce Street; and I showed him a bundle of all these notes that I'd made in the eight different countries. They were on a small notepaper and made in front of the [paintings], and he said, "Well, I guess you've been working." He didn't read any of them. I told him I'd had a wonderful. experience in trying to apply their type of analysis, and that I felt that as time went on I'd make my own evaluations of them, and that I would compare my own analysis of certain paintings with his after I got home because there were several books written by him. The first one other than ones I've already mentioned — the journals and Art and Education, where there's a series of writers — the first one was The Art in Painting . That's where he really rounded out his attack on painting: how to criticize, how to evaluate, how to appreciate the paintings. He thought it was a very active process. He used four main factors. He'd start in with the line, the space, the color, or light, and work them all as I explained a while ago, and integrate. Now the Dow people would start with principles. They would say it is proportionate. Do you see the proportion? Do you see the rhythm? Do you see the transitions from part to part? Do you see subordination? And so on--the active thing that is moving and changing and working in a picture, whereas Barnes starts with, you might say, the substance, the factors involved. If you are in chemistry, what are the elements? He starts with the elements.

MINK: What did Barnes say when you told him that you were going to compare his criticisms or analyzations with yours?

DELANO: Well, there wasn't any big confrontation. I suppose in his mind he might have thought, "Well, I'd like to see it," I didn't think I was any paragon of wisdom with reference to men like Barnes and John Dewey [who had worked] together so long. The thing I would suggest now is that I felt there was a lack in his applying the same kind of intense work to art in other forms, yes. Like, well, I'll go back to John Dewey: he had a chapter that influenced me a great deal called "Qualitative Thought," Philosophy and Civilization, I think. [He stated] that art as an experience is pervasive. And so this tied in with what Dow wanted, but I thought Dow didn't emphasize painting. I thought painting and sculpture at the Barnes [were emphasized], but he wasn't delving into architecture or all these so-called minor arts and their relationships. It would take very little to close the gap and make a more rounded study.

MINK: Did Barnes give you any admonitions about what you ought to do when you got back to UCLA in the way of teaching?

DELANO: Well, let's see. There was a new chairman. Mrs. Sooy had been relieved of the chairmanship, and I think that was due to something that Barbara Morgan had told Dr. Moore. There was some difficulty there.

MINK: Would you be willing to explain it?

DELANO: Well, I can't remember the details. I guess I wanted to forget it. I think I really ought to check with Barbara Morgan on that. I can't recall, but it was very serious, something about: the outlook for art education should be towards just the appreciative and critical side and not the creative side. And that's where we really differed. I differed with her on that, and we ran into difficulties all the time.

MINK: So she was really downgrading the creative side of the art department and Dr. Moore.

DELANO: Well, she probably wouldn't say that in just such words, but she had arguments with Mrs. Morgan, who was doing such a wonderful job in her teaching and leading students to be extremely creative, and there was disagreement between her and Mrs. Sooy also. So Dr. Moore asked Mrs. Sooy to find somebody else to be a chairman — preferably a man, he said. So she called on Professor George Cox from Columbia University. By the way, I found a statement that Mr. Cox had made in the convention I was talking about last time, in Prague — art and industry. He downgraded painting there also, very much so in the speech. I found my own original notes on that — and that ' s before I ever had anything to do with the Barnes Foundation — where I thought that Mr. Cox was not doing justice to the arts when he downgraded painting. Even if he was trying to be facetious, I just don't know; but later when he came to us to be chairman, he wrote little articles here and there, and in many of his talks he downgraded it. And he said that he agreed with Mrs. Sooy; he would carry out her policies. I remember that very well at the beginning when he started.

MINK: Well, one of Mrs. Sooy's policies was to downgrade painting, after all, so he would be carrying them out.

DELANO: He did, yes.

MINK: So when you came back to UCLA after the year at the Barnes Foundation, were you able to initiate any newer kinds of teaching experiences and so on through this experience you had at Barnes?

DELANO: I was met with one thing that seemed like punishment. I hate to recall these experiences, but I was given a course to teach called Illustration, and after looking at so many wonderful paintings it just seemed I couldn't enter into the scheme of teaching illustration and advertising art. That was completely out of my feelings at that time. I told my class about it, and they were very respectful, and I said the only thing I feel that I can do, since it's printed now and all that, is to bring you examples of some great painters who were illustrators, but I cannot go into this sheer commercial side of it. So we spent the semester discussing theories, and what made great illustration, and the difference between that and just well-designed advertising. It wasn't my field at all, and Mrs. Sooy had put that on my program, and I felt it was something of a punishment. Perhaps she didn't, but I did. Other than that, I sailed along in teaching painting and landscape. I didn't make any headway. I gave one talk to what was called the Arthur Wesley Dow Association and tried to tell them something of the Barnes Foundation experience and how it differed from the Dow. I also remember saying that this didn't take away from all that Miss Gere did to make a fine art department and [to] lay down some of the main themes on which a department could build. (And they're really good. They stand to this day. When I was writing the history of the art department not long ago, I discovered that first statement that was put down by Miss Gere, who really started the art department years ago.) Other than that talk, I don't think people were interested. I gave some talks outside the university to artists' groups and California Art Club and different people outside.

MINK: Did you find that people here were very much aware of and interested in the Barnes Foundation?

DELANO: Well, I gave one talk to a group of artists, and one man — I don't remember his name now — knew about the Barnes [Foundation], but he was one of those opposed to Barnes because he'd been denied access to the foundation. Barnes made enemies because he didn't allow people to go unless he thought they'd study. He didn't want them to go traipsing through otherwise. And I can see that now. They were writing books, they were seriously studying and thinking; and you couldn't have a thing like the usual museum. He could have done that in the summers. Usually he left the foundation in May and went to Europe to write his books or finish them up, books on Cezanne, Matisse, the French primitives and their forms — which by the way is, I think, one of the most excellent ones- — and many other books on painters. If he could have left the foundation open during the summers for teachers, I think it would have been wonderful. As I said a while ago, he was his own worst enemy in that respect. He wanted to spread this deeper thinking and appreciation through the way he'd analyze, and he might have been much more successful if he could have allowed more people to come. And I think with Dewey it's the same thing. They just don't read his work.

MINK: At this time had you any association with the Barnsdalls?

DELANO: Oh, Miss Barnsdall? Oh, let's see. Well, you know, again I don't know why I was interested in architecture so much, except as it would relate to teaching design, but Aline Barnsdall got Frank Lloyd Wright to build one of the first homes here in Los Angeles up on Olive Hill, they called it. It was an excellent building, and I got to go into it while she was living there and to see how she lived in this house.

MINK: What kind of a person was she?

DELANO: Well, she was a strange person in some respects. I don't know why this would come to mind, but... she wanted children but she didn't want any man to get hold of her money; so she had an affair with a leader of one of the symphony orchestras — I forgot who it was, whether it was from New York or Philadelphia, not Philadelphia — and had children by him, but she wouldn't marry him. This was all in the papers, a matter of record. Well, this might have been all right from her standpoint, but the children had a miserable time. They went to private schools. There was a John Dewey school, or a progressive school — I don't know what it was called — in Hollywood, and the children went there. I happened to know one of the teachers, and she said that they, especially the girls, suffered tremendously from that fact that children had gotten hold of the fact that she didn't have a father, you know. I think that was pretty terrible. Aline Barnsdall said she would allow the California Art Club to meet in the building after she decided she'd go to Switzerland and stay, and when she wanted to come home she would live in the smaller house on the side of the hill and the California Art Club could use her big home. In turn, she expected them to do certain things. She wanted a mural placed in one of the alcoves, and this was to be done by some artist in the club. Now Frank Lloyd Wright used a big Oriental painting in that area. He formed the room around this painting. Well, she was going to take this out and wanted some painters to put something in there. Well, no one had the nerve to step up and say they would put a mural in there, and the thing dragged along. Finally she came back one year and just stormed, literally stormed back and forth in front of the group wondering why they didn't put something there in that wall space. She reminded me of a circus master, you know. If she'd only had a whip, she'd have whipped them. Really. And here she was a delicately built woman, very beautiful and attractive, and yet she had this manner about her. I really don't know too much about her. She asked me to meet her in England when I was over there. That was on ray first trip, in '28. I just couldn't follow up with it. I don't remember; well, I remember talking to her about it, but I didn't see her there. I guess that's about all I can remember. She had these fights with the public for many years. I know she had billboards out on Vermont Avenue, and she would put down things about her politics. She'd scold the community for not doing this or that, you know. She really had her ideas.

MINK: But you never had any personal conversations with her where you got her point of view about art?

DELANO: No. We just talked about architecture. She was crazy about Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and got him to do that beautiful building for her. It was called the Hollyhock. Mrs. Morgan and her husband took wonderful photographs of it. I was up there all the time.

MINK: In talking with Frank Lloyd Wright, did he ever relate to you any experiences that he had with her in regard to the building and any problems?

DELANO: They did have — I can't remember now whether they were in the paper, some of the squabbles they had, or what. He hired Schindler. You know, Schindler and Neutra came to Los Angeles to work with Frank Lloyd Wright, and I was privileged to know them right away within the first year after they came here. It seems the architects, designers, painters, sculptors got together. The city was so much smaller. That's one thing about a clustering of people — and people from Caltech, too, in this group. We met in a Frank Lloyd Wright house — that is, the Freeman house in Hollywood. It was tremendous to have this get- together with people who were creating. And that's how I got interested. Frank Lloyd Wright came to the California Art Club — that was in his own building that he'd built for Aline Barnsdall — and I'll never forget that. He was a little like she was in temperament, too, you know. He would castigate. He was very egotistical. He wore a broad cape, and he'd swing it around and hold up his head and really downgrade just about everything in his mannerisms. Of course, he had some right to. I mean, as he would look around and see so much ugliness in the architecture that's put up, it made him sick.

MINK: You're talking about the kind of architecture that he saw here in the twenties?

DELANO: At the time, yes.

MINK: The Spanish revival.

DELANO: Yes. They had a new art school put up for USC, and I went down to hear him there; and, again, he just raved against the architecture of the building he was asked to come and talk about. People took it, though, because, just like with Barnes, they would listen to him. He always attracted big crowds, you know. He had a sort of a way of lashing, too.

MINK: What were some of Frank Lloyd Wright's main objections.

DELANO: Well, he thought there was a principle of organic architecture, like a young student starting in should learn to build with his hands, to begin with. He should actively participate and know all of the things involved. Even though he made a large building, he didn't do every bit of it, but he should have more feeling for the total activity involving building. He called it something organic, as I recall. While no one can really get away completely from tradition, yet a great innovator who builds with the materials that we have at hand, like Frank Lloyd Wright did, [can develop] new forms and qualities in his building that we hadn't had before. And they had men in France and in Germany who were comparable to Frank Lloyd Wright. That's one thing I learned on that round trip around Berlin that time: there was a man named [Peter] Behrens who was comparable to Frank Lloyd Wright. And in France [Auguste] Perret, I think did similar work. He was a great figure.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

MINK: This afternoon for a while, Annita, you said that you wanted to talk about your association with Eleanor Le Maire. You've already spoken about your association with her in the interior design of the Bullock's Wilshire to some extent, but you felt that you had some other things that you wanted to discuss. So why don't you begin, and I'll ask you questions as we go along.

DELANO: All right. Well, I knew Miss Le Maire in the twenties when I worked for Bullock's --I think I said something about that--in helping her to find designers and people who could help Bullock's in the building of this new store. Miss Le Maire, going back to her beginnings, was first educated in California, born in Berkeley, I believe. Then she attended Columbia University and took up an architectural course: that is, full-fledged architectural design. And her work has always tended to be more architectural. It isn't just a mere designer who covers the surface, but who works with the architects and brings out the whole wall from the beginning surfaces of the structure. As she developed through the many years I knew her, she hired architects and worked with other consultants and designers who could help her achieve these jobs. At one time, I think in about 1951, I was in New York, and she had thirty-eight architects working under her at that time. John Weber, who is also a friend of mine and a Swiss architect who worked here in California — I got acquainted with him — was with her all these years and [was] the head of this architectural team.

MINK: He was right under her, then?

DELANO: Yes. In other words, she got the jobs and was the organizer and worked out many of the plans in the rough, and then these architects finished them. In fact, she built whole stores towards the middle of her career. The most notable one, I imagine, is the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, Texas. She did Burdine's, the whole store, and I think that's in Miami. There are issues of a magazine called Interiors which list her achievements. I noted some of them. She started in, in the beginning, to work for some movie companies — I believe it was either Twentieth Century-Fox or MGM — and they wanted a set of costume models made from originals in Europe; so they sponsored a trip for her to go there and make these original costumes from museum samples throughout the period styles of costume, and that she did. She had worked in the theater after her graduation from Columbia, notably in organizing unusual theatrical shows like the Chauve Souris, a Russian play or entertainment that she brought into Mexico City; and she organized exhibitions and seemed to go out in different directions preliminary to the actual architectural work. In the twenties, Bullock's in Los Angeles wanted to have something brought into the store that was much more modern in the furnishing department, so she took over several floors.

MINK: In the downtown store?

DELANO: In the downtown. Seventh Street store. At that time I guess it must have been about 1927 or -8.

MINK: And that's where you first became acquainted with her?

DELANO: That's where I first became acquainted with her. In fact, she heard me talk about modern architecture in Europe. I had just come back from the trip to the Bauhaus and to the international convention that was held in Prague that we talked about last time. And [she] heard me talk then about modern architecture and its relation to homes and planning and as the new direction seeraed to be worked out in European buildings. She thought she'd like to get acquainted with me and have me help her, since I knew so many designers and architects here in Los Angeles. Again, I think I've mentioned that being a smaller town at that time, you were acquainted with the various artists, and it was easier to know everybody in these fields. So I gave of my free time while I was working at the university full time. I gave hours to Miss Le Maire at Bullock's to take her around and introduce her to these artists and architects and designers I knew, and in this way she collected a group she felt she could work with, and people who would help her on Bullock's Wilshire. Jacques Peters was one. He did the main lobby in the store. John Weber, the Swiss architect, was another, and he had a lot to do with various parts of the store. And there were sculptors and others. One muralist was Gjura Stojano, who did, I think, a very handsome mural in the sports section of Bullock's which is intact today. Nothing is disturbed. It gives a very rich beautiful background for that section of the store where they sell the best sports clothes. She had at that time a woman named Winifred Jacobus working for her who was excellent in color. Along with Miss Le Maire's ideas for color, the two of them, I think, all through the years, really gave distinction to whatever they did because of the colors. It was Winifred's job to see that it could be really carried out. Then Miss Le Maire went back to New York and took an office in the Squibb Building. And she kept enlarging throughout all the years and remained there until, I think, when I visited her in that place in 1951, she occupied several floors in the building with all the jobs that were going on all over the country. She didn't just stick to homes, but she rather took on all types of jobs, and I thought the variety was very interesting because she wrote me all through these years about whatever she was doing.

MINK: Did she ask you for advice or just to tell you what she was doing?

DELANO: Well, it would vary. You see, I'll come to this later, but I did take her on one of my camping trips. She loved the Southwest and places where I took her to camp and the landscape and the Indians and so on, and the colors out there influenced her all through her years of work. I was mentioning something about the variety in what she did. She would make large stores like Bullock's Wilshire in 1929, which cost $5 million at that time. She made sets for Hollywood films and for the legitimate theater. She did do private homes. There were show windows for men's clothes in the store in Miami at one time, in which she instituted a new style in show window design that had to do with humor. She did a club in Berkeley. These were in the earlier years.

MINK: What club was that?

DELANO: It was some women's club in Berkeley.

MINK: Maybe the Berkeley Women's Club.

DELANO: Yes, her mother belonged to it, and so she did that for them. There was some little story about the women not liking the dark room they had for their meetings, so Eleanor even had the piano painted white; and the women had a fit because they'd never seen a white piano, but the more they lived with it the more they liked it. She had to use white and gold primarily because they required that as their color scheme. And so she worked out a handsome room for these women.

MINK: Did she have any influence at all on stage design in the legitimate theater here in Los Angeles in the 1920s?

DELANO: Well, I don't know. I don't have a copy of just exactly what she did. There are some magazines that listed all of her achievements.

MINK: I was wondering if you may have worked with her in any kind of set design here.

DELANO: No. That was before I knew her, I think. When she was in Europe doing this job for one of the movie companies, she found some Louis XV decorative arts or fragments from a molding; and she found that on the back side there was a brilliant blue, and that's the way it had been originally. From that time on, whenever she did at period-style room, which she had to do occasionally — and of course, she'd been well grounded in all the periods— she used blues in backgrounds. This was an innovation in the periods going back into the Louis. I think this quotation that I noted about her attitude towards period styles is rather interesting in relation to what I had said about our work at the university in early years in interior design. She said, "I saw that each period has something individual to contribute to art — not necessarily as later generations interpret it. I've been not a modernist, but a contemporary colorist. I light with paint and I paint with light." In Bullock's Wilshire — if I'll just interrupt the quotation here — this was very important. It was the first time that the backgrounds in the windows, behind the windows, were left out and you could look right into the store. That was really an innovation. People don't realize how stiff the stores were in earlier years. The show windows were little boxes out in front and on the facades of the stores around the streets. But now she opened it up and this gave a sense of space and depth and light to the inside of the store as well as to the windows. She went on and said, "I am eternally grateful for my knowledge of the past eras, but I use it only as a springboard for my own work with color today. It has taught me fascinating things. For instance, if I make a wall a lovely atmospheric blue, I know people will walk towards it instinctively. I know that red is a neutral color that teams with anything, that men hate chartreuse and women love it — I don't know why — and most men like blue. Maybe they're just conformists. They can be adventuresome in financial affairs but not with colors." That was a quote she made back in the forties, I believe, in the New York Times . She made a large showroom, or really did over the place, where Goodall's worsted fabrics were shown. You know there was a movement in the forties for wholesale people to fix up their rooms. Heretofore buyers would go and have to just look over things without any idea of trying to present them well. So there was a movement for sales to have these wholesale places fixed up so they'd have a showroom. Miss Le Maire was at the front of that movement, and she did one for this company that had been in business fifty years, anyway, and presented a special background that showed off the materials to good advantage, ways of displaying and presenting the materials. And at that time — I think this was in May, 1941, in an article I found in the New York Post -- She had them show Dorothy Wright Liebes's work. Dorothy Wright Liebes was another California girl, and one of our most noted and talented textile designers.

MINK: Did you know her?

DELANO: No, I never did meet her, but I read about her work and collected samples. In fact, one of my large chairs in my living room today has a Dorothy Liebes special fabric. You can only get small amounts of yardage for certain uses. She was especially the leader in improvising textural surfaces in the woolen materials she made and in the use of varied fabrics put together. Of course, I haven't followed her work too well in the later years, but she was a leader back there in the forties, and Miss Le Maire found her and decided that this Goodall worsted company should show her work. So they fixed up an exhibition. December 14, 1955, there was an article in the Christian Science Monitor in which they were telling about her designing interiors for two ships. They were mariner -type cargo liners. One was the President Jackson and the other was the President Hayes, these two ships. Since they were cargo ships, there would be only about twelve people go at a time in these trips up to the Orient, to Europe, or in other places. But she arranged beautiful backgrounds that they liked. And then I come into the picture here just a little bit. This is in 1955 that she did those ships. She wanted to use the colors of the Southwest, derived from landscape and the Indian arts, Indian costumes and dances, and so on. These I had introduced her to when I took her on a painting trip with me one year before that. In one of these ships she wanted to use Hopi Indian masks and kachina dolls, so I helped her by finding a very large Hopi kachina doll that was mounted against what we call a stepboard, in the colors she wanted and so on. I was out on one of my painting trips and looked everywhere and finally found one at the Hopi House in Grand Canyon.

MINK: Were those sort of things for sale?

DELANO: Yes, yes. Now the Indians make lots of beautiful things for sale, and if they're extremely cautious about something that they're superstitious about, they might even sell it, provided they don't quite complete it or something satisfies them.

MINK: Would they get as much as they thought they needed for it?

DELANO: What?

MINK: Did they sell it very cheaply?

DELANO: No, not that. I didn't mean that. I mean that suppose they have a great reluctance to sell or show anything that's very religious in their ceremonies and then you perhaps can't get a hold of it. But if they wanted to make a mask or a sacred kachina, they could make it like the original without certain little parts, you see — whatever is most sacred, like the heart or whatever is in the design of the thing. They could leave that out, and that satisfies their conscience, I don't know how much that was done, but I've heard that the Indians would do that occasionally to sell something. Of course, they had run-of-the-mill stuff for tourists, you know — small kachina dolls and all kinds of things that weren't very nice; but to find a really fine old one or a modern one that was beautifully colored and so on was rather difficult. I think she had placed about several dozen of the kachina dolls on one wall and then this large one in the center. She had hoped to have a large mask there because I had told her about one, but it wasn't for sale; so she had to go use a doll. Should I continue on with some of the things she's done and finish that part?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: She says about her work that, you might say, her design philosophy is, "Understatement, simplicity, restraint and integration," and that color is the greatest thing in her work. She carried this out in many very commercial stores like Hollander's store. That had been a very old store in New York for many years and they were going to build a new one. This was just before the Depression period. I think there were five stories, on perhaps — maybe it was Fifty-seventh Street — I've sort of forgotten. I was on my way to the Barnes Foundation, and I stopped off in New York first to see Barbara Morgan and Miss Le Maire. So Mrs. Morgan and I got together, and we were walking down towards Miss LeMaire's office, and we saw John Weber, her chief architect and old mutual friend of ours. He said, "You're just the people we want!" He said, "Come in here. We're doing this store." This was Hollander's store. They were, of course, going to work it out in beautiful modern style, and it was almost ready to open. In fact, I think it was to open the next day. And he said, "Miss Le Maire and I have just been looking everywhere for somebody to paint a mural on the fifth floor." And he said, "You can do it tonight." [laughter] So John was quite excited, and Eleanor came, and they cut the ribbon across the door so we could go in. Then John said, "There's only a few minutes left, I'll race off to a paint store and get some artist's materials for you. What do you want?" he said. Here we hadn't caught our breath. He dashed off, and he bought a lot of oil paints and brushes, the right size, that I suggested. It was to be done on a plastered wall, and he could do anything to the wall that I wanted because he'd made a beautiful wall at Bullock's Wilshire all ready for this Stojano that I told you about, I guess. And it took nine months to do that one.

MINK: Not overnight?

DELANO: Not overnight.

MINK: Well, did you do this mural?

DELANO: Yes, I did, overnight.

MINK: Did you work all night long on it?

DELANO: All night long. Well, first of all, Barbara and I both competed. We took sane paper while John was out for the paints, and she had some watercolors, so we used some watercolor paints and made our designs to scale — smaller scale, of course, than the wall. Then they had a committee, the people for Hollander's, the architect — that is, John Weber — and Miss Le Maire. We didn't have our names on the designs, and so there wasn't any favor itian there, but they did happen to like mine best for the spot; and I told them if they'd take the design and hold it up at a certain length, walk back, and then just get this sheet of paper to fit the wall, they could judge how it was to look. So they did take mine. Previous to that incident, Barbara and I decided that whoever won would help the other so we could get it done that night. So we went right ahead and put the mural on. It was an abstract head that I worked out, sort of cubistic type. This was in 1930, while I was on the way to the Barnes Foundation.

MINK: At this point, you hadn't actually joined the Barnes Foundation, so you were not restricted from painting?

DELANO: Oh, no, no, no.

MINK: Then did you get some money for this? That must have helped you.

DELANO: Oh, yes, it did. It helped me very much.

MINK: How much did they give you to paint the mural?

DELANO: I think $250, But that seemed like a fortune to me at the time. It really did.

MINK: For one night's work, that's quite a lot.

DELANO: Well, it was in the Depression period.

MINK: Unless you were a highly paid prostitute. [laughter]

DELANO: Now, listen, James. [laughter] This was in 1930. Well, it was a most interesting experience, I will say. I related the colors to the room as a whole and what they were going to sell in that room. There were high-priced women's clothes, the best sort of evening clothes, and that kind of thing. There was a sort of little step up and platform, and, of course, models could display clothes there. I had that in mind, too. So there were sort of rhythmic swirls to this design and colors which accented the colors in the room and yet acted like a magnet to draw the attention to that wall. There were windows on either side, and it was altogether a lot of fun to do it.

MINK: Approximately how long did it take you?

DELANO: Well, it went on into the next day. We could look out and see the moon and the stars and a beautiful clear night — no smog in New York at that time — and then time went on, and John kept bringing us food, and everybody was watching us. And then, finally the store opened, and these wealthy women came along with their lorgnettes, and they peered at us and: "Oh, the artists are working," they'd say. They kept watching us, and so we were an attraction there making the mural, you know. We went right ahead. Eleanor had gotten us some smocks, and we'd taken off our shoes. We were very comfortable and just went ahead until we finished the thing, which was around noon the next day.

MINK: Then you went to bed .

DELANO: Yes. [laughter] That's right. Let's see. Now, where was I? I've been telling about what Miss Le Maire did. Now, I don't have a full list, but just to give you something of the idea of the variety in her work: I think I did mention the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas was designed by her firm, Eleanor Le Maire and Associates, I think it was called by this time. Now, that meant they did the whole building. John was the architect for the building as a whole. They carried out Southwest ideas there. Mr. Marcus, by this time, had become very interested in our Indians, the Navajos and the Pueblo tribes, and he had a beautiful place there in New Mexico which was furnished with all kinds of Indian arts. So Miss Le Maire fell back on the experiences she'd had with that one painting trip with me. You know, she never forgot that. Letter after letter I've had right up till last year, when she died, she kept reminding me of how much she'd gotten from that one trip. Then she did — well, I mentioned Hollander's store. By the way, that store didn't last beyond the Depression very many years. It went bankrupt because they had pushed into a large structure — I think it was five stories high or more, maybe seven stories — and it just didn't survive.

MINK: So your mural didn't survive?

DELANO: So my mural was — well, I don't know what happened to that. Then Miss Le Maire did the interiors for the Studebaker automobiles one time. They built Burdine's, the whole store, in Miami. Now, some of these stores were not kept in the effects that she achieved because in later years someone gets the idea they should do over this room or that room, and so often they spoil them; but at the time they're all integrated. That was her idea. She did Elizabeth Arden's shops. I might say she had started to work for Elizabeth Arden before she went on that camping trip with me. Elizabeth Arden loved birds, and she collected little sculptured birds of all kinds, and so Eleanor was always looking for those for her. And she tried to make her shops, where she had anything to do with them, coordinate and not be too superficially sweet, but to have some strength to the style in which she carried out the shops. It went on even down to the making, to the designing, of new containers for her cosmetics, a whole line. Once when I was in New York, when they were working on that job, I went to the factory with them so that they could check on the tubes and containers that were being made. This was good for me; you see, I was terribly interested in this, too, because I was teaching a one-year course on design that had to do with designing all kinds of objects, and the students might even go into industrial design, and we were attempting to give them some background for the art incorporated in these objects. So to go to a factory where they were actually making tubes and see how it was done was great for me. Then she did the Busch Stadium that was the home of the St. Louis Cardinals. She did that. She did a store for Gunther Jaeckel in New York, and for Conrad Hilton she remodeled an old hotel called the Hotel New Yorker. That was remodeled by her. She did banks. There were all sorts of banks like, I think, one on Fifth Avenue and Forty-third, the Manufacturer's Trust Company, called the "glass bank" because she really got them to put in more windows than any bank had before. She gave it light and airiness and the quality that she liked to get into architecture. Should I tell a little bit about the trip that she took with me?

MINK: Yes, I think that obviously this must have had a great deal of influence on the decoration that she did, and therefore it would be interesting as a sidelight to her career as well as to your own.

DELANO: She had heard me talk about these painting trips that I took out to New Mexico to paint landscape and wanted to go sometime. This particular year — I think it was, perhaps, 1934, probably in June-- she had just been working on a large project for Du Pont, one of the first shows of man-made synthetic materials and how they could be used. So it was quite an elaborate job, and Jon Weber had a lot to do with it, naturally, being her main architect; but there had been some kind of a disagreement between Jon and Miss Le Maire, and Jon left her right at the end of the job, hoping that she might fail. I think I mentioned something about this last time.

MINK: Was this, again, as you pointed out, due to the failure of Eleanor Le Maire to give credit to the work that was done by her associates?

DELANO: Yes. Now she actually appreciated the work, but it started with this name, her name only in the firm. After all, her husband was there. His name was Louis Britwitz, and he had as much to do with everything you know.

MINK: Might as well have been Glutz. [laughter]

DELANO: Yes. And this wasn't even her maiden name, you know. It was a name, as I remember correctly, she had from her first marriage when she was very young, a man named Le Maire. She annulled the marriage and never told her mother because her mother was a strict Catholic — Irish Catholics they were, you see. That's why there was sort of a mystery about Miss Le Maire. And then later she married Louis Britwitz. Miss Le Maire was Irish and Mr. Britwitz was a Jew.

MINK: What was his line?

DELANO: Well, his line was really the financial part of it and the know-how for conducting a firm that went into much more complexity than it had at the beginning.

MINK: So he supplied the business sense, and she did the artistic work?

DELANO: Well, that and the work she did with customers, talking to the people involved, getting their idea, and even I remember back — now, this helped me in my career at different times. I'll never forget the time of Bullock's Wilshire. You see, we have to think back to '29. That store was the first in the world to be that size, to have modern interiors. They called the exterior modern, but it was a kind of a decorative type and she had nothing to do with the exteriors. But at the beginning on the interiors- not the way it is today, years and years later, but when it was first opened — it was written about in papers and magazines all over the country and in Europe, and people came out to look at that store. She learned something very worthwhile there. There were, as she expressed it, three different groups: the store management, the personnel, her own group; in other words, all the different people involved would have meetings about every step of the way. She would have her plans and whatever she was presenting. Then there would be a lot of fighting go on. And she said that there would be groups that were very reluctant to go modern because originally Bullock's wanted to have it in a period style, and they hated this modern, so to speak. Yet when you look back, it was very simple, and it was like some of the work of Gropius at the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier in France, and others in Holland and England, and something emerging that was away from the older period styles. Anyhow, these people would all jump at her from different points of view in these meetings, and she said at first it just would kill her — she didn't know how to take it. So she just got this funny little idea one day. She felt that all they were saying, all these jabs and so on at her and her work, were just going over her left shoulder. And she said, "That just left me so calm. They could just fly by, and I could just go right ahead and in a calm voice, and it didn't matter how much they wanted to strike down at my ideas; I could carry them out." She said this influenced her all her life. I tried to let it influence me; I don't know that I was very successful. I think I backed out more times than not when I had my confrontations. But that gives a little insight as to her character. She was a beautiful-looking woman. She had very rich, warm, auburn-colored hair and green eyes, believe it or not — more towards green than blue — and so she was very striking.

MINK: You had mentioned, I believe, that she had done an exhibit for Du Pont.

DELANO: Oh, yes, the Du Pont Company for their man-made materials, synthetics, and they were all plastics and so on.

MINK: And so at the end of this project John Weber had left her.

DELANO: Had left her, and then she had determined to finish that regardless. Now I didn't know that this had happened at the time she decided to come on the camping trip with me, but I think she wanted to come for two reasons. The main one was to see that wonderful country she kept hearing me talk about. She had flown over it many times on her journeys, but she really wanted to get down in there and camp. Then, the other reason was to confess to me what had happened between her and John.

MINK: Did she think perhaps that you might be able to intercede and get John back for her?

DELANO: I don't know what she thought, because she didn't talk about it right away. First of all, she kept wiring me one wire after another about being in Los Angeles, and always she was very considerate that it was my trip, that I was going painting, she didn't want to interfere in any way — the most considerate person I'd ever known. I'd been on, oh, I guess, twenty trips camping, and it's sort of difficult to find people who have an attitude towards you and your outfit and not interfere with your work and still have a happy time-- -someone you could really work with on a camping trip for three months. Anyway, Eleanor kept telegraphing and changing her time because she was desperately trying to get this job done and over. Finally she said she'd made all the arrangements and I was to meet her in Burbank at that time on a certain flight to pick her up. I found her, and then I said we must get some hats, we have to have Stetson hats. There was a Stetson company down near the plaza in Los Angeles, and we went down there and got fitted for a certain kind of hat that we liked to wear with our outfits. I told her about the outfit that I would have and the changes to go with it so we would be comfortable on our trip. We had velvet blouses made somewhat like the Navajo Indian blouses, then we had skirts just about to the knee, and high boots. Now when I find pictures of me today they look very much like what the girls are wearing now, strangely enough. I got my idea for this outfit from the Harvey personnel. They had what they called couriers out there in Mexico to take, say, people from Washington, D.C. — government people — out on trips into the back country and so on. These Harvey girls, I thought, looked very elegant with their Stetson hats and skirts, not too wide but very nicely tailored, and the high boots. Of course, the boots were essential. It wasn't just for the purposes they have today in wearing boots, but we were going out in rough country. And another thing: women didn't wear pants out there the way they might today, and I wouldn't have worn them anyway at that time because the Navajo Indians didn't like women to wear long pants. Anyhow, these skirts and blouses and hats--she liked the idea. She wanted to be right in with whatever we wanted to do. As far as this costume is concerned, when we were all through with the trip, we came back to Los Angeles and made an appointment with the people at Bullock's; and Mr. Holt and Mr. Winnett, who was in charge of Bullock's, met us at the store and they were greatly delighted to see us there with this outfit. Mr. Holt, by the way, wrote us nice letters while we were on the trip. We got our stuff into the car — and by the way, I had my car made up with boxes to take everything; all my equipment was sorted into piles of objects to be used for certain things, like when would we use the bedrolls and when would we have the tent. They were packed according to the convenience of using then. And the food and equipment so we could have a quick lunch or an elaborate dinner or whatever we wanted — everything was stored in its proper place in reference to how we wanted to use it. Then I had to have dustproof boxes for my paints and for my canvases, waterproof boxes, and I prevailed on Paul Williams to do all of this for me. So we had a ball. I was fixing up my car for weeks out in Glendale before this trip took place. And you know Paul Williams — I think I mentioned him once before — who made this furniture for Miss Le Maire, for me and many people, furniture for Bullock's Wilshire. I took Miss Le Maire back out to Paul's and we had everything stored. I had taken it little by little to his shop and I got the car ready. And I said, "Now, we must go tonight no matter how far we get." We were both just dead tired, but we got to Pasadena, from Glendale to Pasadena. Then I thought, well, let's just stop here and go in a motel, which we did, and she can use her sleeping bag even though there are beds here. We had a room with twin beds, but I thought it would be a good idea to just see how it works because she had bought everything at Abercrombie and Fitch, if that's the name, in New York, where they have outing materials of all kinds. So she, I guess, was a little flustered, but, anyhow, she broke the zipper on this very expensive bag, so that was a frustration. But she right away wrote back to Abercrombie and Fitch to send a new one to Gallup, New Mexico, because we thought that would be the best town, although we weren't going there right away and she'd get along with the bag in that condition. And we hoped it wouldn't rain. From Pasadena the next morning before sunrise we got out again and hurried out into the desert, and by nightfall we got to this awful place — I don't know if I remember what it was called--but it was so hot and yet it was past Needles and up on the side of the mountain, and we found a little spot where we could just rest. We didn't think we could get a room but just a place to rest. There was an outdoor sort of shower, and the water was so hot it just scalded us. Before we knew it we were in hot water. I wanted to push on because our objective was to get down to White River in Arizona where there was to be a marvelous Apache Indian dance. I thought above all. Miss Le Maire's got to see that dance.

MINK: How did you know in advance that it was going to be there?

DELANO: There was a woman named Bertha Wardell who taught dancing and I had been in her dancing classes for seven years. She and her companion had been out there to see the Apaches dance, and she wrote to me that it was going to be on the night of the Fourth of July. That's why we were racing out there. We rested a while in this place and then we went on, pushed through past Flagstaff and then finally to Holbrook, and I think it was at Holbrook where we turned south to White River. We got out there, and we were still in the dark — middle of the night — and one of our tires went flat. Well, there wasn't any sign of people.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

MINK: Before I turned the tape, you were saying that you'd arrived outside of Holbrook and. . .

DELANO: ...turned south to go to White River.

MINK: And you had a flat tire.

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Well, go on .

DELANO: You know how dark it was. There wasn't any moon, rather scary and frightening, and you could see forest trees on either side and no sign of lights in any direction. Well, I could change a tire, and, of course, I only had a small Chevrolet at that time, and I was going to go on ahead and change it; but suddenly a light came down the road, and there were a couple of men in it, and they were very glad to help us. But they thought we were nuts to be out there on this road all by ourselves in that dark forest. But anything to see this Apache dance. We went on and we got down there and found my friends. Bertha Wardell and the girl that was with her — I guess, Marjorie Butler. They had rented a room from the government officials there, the head of the Indian Agency — that's what it was — at White River. Marjorie and Bertha said we could have their room to rest up a bit before we go out, and we did that. We didn't really dare go to sleep, because we thought if we did we'd never get to see what was left of that dance. It had been going all night and it was still night when we got there. We managed to get over to the dance and it was just fascinating. The Apache Indians are different from the Navajos in their dance steps and in their costumes. The details are different, that is, the dresses that the women wear are bright, lightweight fabrics because the country is warmer down there than where the Navajos live. In other words, no velvet or thick cotton skirts. These were lightweight, sort of breezy, and they had square yokes with little ruffles around them and all kinds of bright colors. They showed up in the night around the fires. They had huge bonfires. They had two or three kinds of dances during the night. One episode is done with dancers who are called devil dancers, and they're sort of frightening. They have terrific masks and large headdresses that spread out in branching formations. They have jingling bells and different kinds of musical instruments that are played — drums and rattles. Then there's another part of the dance which is the most spiritual part of it. There's a girl who dances all night long. She is just coming into puberty. It has something to do with these rites, in which they choose one girl to represent the tribe at that time, and she is supposed to dance all night through without stopping once, and in some way they are to call on the sun in the morning as a sign. The sun is to rise and strike the brilliant dangle that hangs on her forehead, and this will be a sign for fertility, not only amongst the people but the crops and the animals and everything. I guess there's a lot more to it than that, but we found out that much. They don't like the white people to come too much to these ceremonies, but if you're sort of self-sufficient and camp on your own and appreciate what they're doing, I think they welcome you. I never had any trouble. We saw that part of the dance, and then towards the end when the sun comes up, the uncle of the girl has a medicine man's basket, and in it is pollen. There's enough pollen there, sort of damped down a little bit, to throw on the crowd by the handfuls and if it happens to strike you, that's good luck. So we got some pollen and felt fine about that. Then, after the sun comes up, they have what's called a social dance, and the men and the women dance together. They don't go in pairs the way we do, but it's an entirely different formation. Anyhow, it's called a social dance. It was so unusual, so beautiful, with all these colors — this was one of the things that influenced Miss Le Maire's work all through her career from that time on. She mentioned it so many times in letters to me. After having a glimpse of this thing just like a dream, we went back to the room, where the girls made us comfortable, and went to sleep. It was such a deep sleep, they weren't able to arouse us for hours, but after a while we were up, and then we went on with them . They had a camp outfit also on their car, and we went up into the high forests and cooked a meal and had a good time. I wanted to get out to Gallup because there was another dance out there I wanted Miss Le Maire to see, so we headed towards St. John and then across to a very kind of wild Indian country and north to Gallup. Then I went out to Church Rock. That is a place about twelve miles east of Gallup, and I have friends there who have been running this trading post for years — at least two or three generations, running this Navajo Indian trading post. Every year I've been able to camp there. I use two hogans, two old hogans, the old style, built with great logs of cedar and made in what they call the old style.

MINK: What is the old style?

DELANO: They're kind of mound-shaped, and they're covered with dirt and rocks and bark and what-have-you accumulated down through the many years in which they've been standing there. And when you go inside through a very low doorway that's always facing directly east, you see that the thing has been made, more or less, with eight sides, and there logs standing up all the way around up to about, say, four feet. Then they start to weave then around to make a domed ceiling, more or less. At the top there's an open hole. This is to let the smoke out. And just below that hole, of course, is the fire pit. When I used them, I would have to clean them. They were always full of debris from the year's time — the cattle, the sheep and the stray goats and horses even, or cows who'd get in these hogans — they're Navajo Indian hogans in what they call the old style. I'd have to clean them up and it was a horrible job. When Miss Le Maire first asked to go with me on this trip, I told her at the time I didn't think she'd have the stamina to go.

MINK: Not if she had to clean out all of that dung out of the hogan.

DELANO: Exactly. And so she said, "Oh, yes." She said, "My brothers and my father, they were all engineers and I've been camping with them." And she said, oh, she knew she could stand it. We cleaned this one hogan, got it all ready and had our bedrolls spread out and mosquito nettings put up and the rest of the camp equipment — the Coleman stove — all ready on my little folding table and so on — dishes, everything, water bags, little foot tubs. Everything was ready. Then Eleanor said, "You know, I feel so relaxed — I've got to lie down a minute." So she flopped on her sleeping bag and just seemed so peaceful, and she went to sleep immediately. But she didn't wake up. She didn't wake up for hours, for a whole day, all that night and on into the next day. I became quite alarmed, so I went up to the Richards' trading post and brought Mrs. Richards down to look at her and see what we could do about it. She wouldn't wake up with any sound or patting her face or anything at all. So we thought, well, maybe she's just so exhausted, we'd better just get her into the bag. So we got her clothes off and those stiff boots and everything and got her into her pajamas and into the sleeping bag and put the net over her, and she slept for all that night and clear into the last of the next day. I really was worried. I thought when she does wake up, and if there isn't anything terribly wrong with her, she'll want to go back and leave me. But she woke up and didn't know what had happened — she was just so exhausted. Then I didn't worry after that; she told me that very often on those big jobs, they are so sapping of energy that in those early days she used to go to the hospital right after she'd finish a job and rest. So then I didn't feel so badly about it. She was a wonderful sport. She chopped wood and cooked and did anything, just worked in with whatever I wanted to do, But in the letters after that she kept referring to what hard work it was, that I should have help, that I should be able to go out there and paint and not have to do all that hard work. Of course, I didn't think of it as hard work; I loved it. And she seemed to, too, at that time you know, but I guess in years to come it might have been better if I had had more time on my own to paint. I don't know how that would be.

MINK: Didn't you have quite a bit of time?

DELANO: I had a good deal of time. You'd have to dodge between showers. I would work until the first raindrops started, and it practically rained every day in the summers. That's why I had to have the special equipment — so I could stash away my watercolors or paper and/or my oil paintings — whatever I was working on that day — to be able to save them.

MINK: Were there many other artists painting up there? Did you ever see or encounter anybody else painting in the time that you were out there?

DELANO: Well, in the Hopi villages, sometimes there would be painters watching the dances, and I'd get acquainted with some of them. Very interesting people like the doctors from Johns Hopkins were out there studying Navajo medicine, and we met some of them. I don't know just which years, but different years out there, I'd meet anthropologists.

MINK: Was Santa Fe the art colony then that it's become today? Was there some of that?

DELANO: Oh, yes. But after the first year I never painted around Santa Fe. There were too many tourists. I preferred the Indians around north of Gallup and east of Gallup. But I would go out in different directions to see pueblo dances like those of the Zuni pueblos or to the Hopi pueblos. Even if I had to go 250 miles from where I was camping, I would pack up the essentials for, say, a week's time or whatever it would take, counting on the time it would take if you were caught in the rain — I mean bogged down with your car or something like that — but have enough stuff with you so that you could survive.

MINK: We were talking about Miss Le Maire. You said that she observed that it was hard work.

DELANO: Oh, yes. I was thinking about all the responsibility of the car and the tires and so on. You had to be self- sufficient. And in order to see some of the grandest landscape, you had to go off main roads. People today can go on paved roads to all of these places I went to in the early years, but at that time I'd have to just streak out across the rabbit brush and over into wagon roads. I wanted to see the Monument Valley, for one thing, and that was really quite a hazardous undertaking to go up there, where there were no main roads, in order to see the way the Navajos lived — almost the way they were from the first time they came into this country. Even to get to the snake dance — that's amongst the Hopis — you'd have to go on just wagon roads and count on thundershowers and quicksand right away, going and coming. I was always self-sufficient with my equipment and everything I had to survive, to eat, to get out of the quicksand, and whatever it takes, you know, to do this sort of thing. It was worthwhile because I got to see marvelous scenery, and that's what I was painting, I loved to look at the Indians, but I wasn't just painting Indians per se. I wasn't a portrait painter; I wasn't just out there to paint a realistic thing, but more the spirit of the country — the color, the formations, the trees and so forth, the light. Let's see. I told about Miss Le Maire's collapse, but she got all right and just went ahead just wonderfully. We pushed on to Santa Fe. I wanted her to see that, and, of course, at that time there weren't the great hordes of tourists that you find today. They're just ruining the town. I was in there last year, and it was just amazing to see the thousands of people packed around that beautiful little plaza. You couldn't move, there were so many tourists in there. In these days, the days I'm talking about — let's see, she went with me in the thirties — we could see this town, which was very much like a Mexican town in the remote parts of Mexico — beautiful plaza, and little adobe houses around, and a big cathedral. And the people acting in it just as they had for years and years.

MINK: Had the big Harvey Hotel been built there at that time?

DELANO: Yes, yes, the hotel was there, so we didn't have to camp. But I did camp in one old adobe house on the famous street where artists and writers lived, called El Camino del Monte Sol, I believe. I found an old adobe house there and we thought this would be just fine; we'll rent this, and just bring our equipment in, and we can cook and sleep in here, and roam around and paint. Well, the first night was something. I heard some little scratches and woke up, and here were rats on top of the table where I had any food. I had a big oilcloth over the whole table, but they were trying to bite through the cloth and get in underneath to get at the food. I jumped up. I told Eleanor there was a rat on the table, and she was frightened to death; so she covered herself up with her sleeping bag and put her head down under, and I got out with a broom. Well, I killed the darn rat.

MINK: With a broom.

DELANO: She thought it was just horrible. She got out of the bag and went to the car. I must have been a devil, because I took that rat out and hung it up by the tail to show to her. She almost quit on me then. [laughter] It was terrible. She never got over that. I don't know what made me do it, but I guess I had a mean streak in me somewhere. Oh, boy. You couldn't stop the rats, so we had to move out of that place. Then we went down to that beautiful hotel where we could get good baths and everything. Of course, we'd gotten baths every day anyway in the little tubs that I bought for these trips. I always found little tiny tubs. They were big enough and you'd have hot water and so on, take a bath everyday. She enjoyed going into all the beautiful shops they have there in Santa Fe and found fine old jewelry. She bought a squash blossom necklace for me that I treasure. It was a beautiful old one. Of course, we got to see quite a number of dances. Then we went back to Gallup and camped again, because I wanted her to see the ceremonials at Gallup. This is a great event. It takes place every August — or has taken place, ever since the twenties. I think I heard something about that they were going to change the location because I think there's a freeway going through Gallup that's going to change everything. At this time they had a nice big auditorium and a big building where the Indians could sell their crafts and arts and have demonstrations, and we of course wanted to get in there right away. By the way, we had Indian costumes made out there. Miss Le Maire reveled in that. We had the same materials they used — the velvet for the blouses; and the thick heavy cotton, sort of a shiny-surfaced cotton, for the skirts, with the wide ruffles and the braid and so forth, silver buttons, and moccasins made to fit. We had these costumes for the ceremonial. We were going to dress up like all the rest of the white people there in Gallup and go to the ceremonial— you know, something like what they do in Santa Barbara to promote the idea of the Spanish days.

MINK: The Fiesta.

DELANO: Yes, the Fiesta. They put on a costume of those days. So that's what we were doing out there. All the storekeepers, everybody, all the men wore brilliant shiny satin shirts and cowboy outfits, more or less, and the Stetson hats, or a bright scarf around their heads, and so on. It made a very, very interesting effect in color. We had nice seats for the ceremony, box seats right down in front. When we were in a big wholesale store I introduced Miss Le Maire to an old man there who had built this store, and his name was Clinton Cotton, C. N. Cotton. Now this man was a character. He came out in the early days and built the first trading post to the Navajos at Ganado together with Mr. Hubbell. They ran that post for some time, and then Mr. Cotton moved down to Gallup and what he called his wholesale building, this big, store that was right on the railroad tracks. He had a door from the building which would open out to the boxcars, and he could just dump the rugs from the store right into the boxcars. That was his idea. It worked through all those years because he was a wholesaler for the Navajo rugs. In fact, he contributed something. He felt that the Navajos were not paid enough for all the time they put in making those beautiful rugs, and he thought part of the cost in time — as we see it, of course — was time they spent in collecting the native dyes from the plants. So he thought, "Why not get the Diamond dye people to put up packages of dyes with simple illustrations of how to use the dyes, not in English but just pictorial steps of the dyeing process so they could use them." This was done way back in the nineties sometime, I believe. Of course, it had its drawbacks because if you can't boil the dye into the wool, then it's not going to be permanent, but with the other dye products that the Indians collected by themselves from plants and so on, it seemed that that was more permanent. Colors weren't brilliant like the aniline dyes. But anyway, this was done, and at least it was helpful to the Indians. There were things at this ceremonial that were for sale, collected by the dealers, and you'd hurry over there to buy them. Indian pottery: Maria, the so-called famous Maria from San Ildefonso, was showing her work then, and I bought a lot of pieces at the time, and they were very inexpensive. You could get a large plate — I have several — that must be about eighteen inches across, flat plates with designs on them made by her husband, Julian, that I probably paid not more than five to eight dollars apiece. Now they're just priceless. Large jars made by her and by her husband .

MINK: Did this pottery that Maria made have a special quality to it? I think you were saying that obsidian was used to a great extent in the clay.

DELANO: They fired it with dung.

MINK: Oh, that was it, yes.

DELANO: Which made a hotter fire than just ordinary wood, no matter how hard the wood was. It would make a white heat, and so it literally burnt the pottery.

MINK: And this dung, did that help to give it that black look, or was that just to burn?

DELANO: Well, it would burn without breaking. And the rest of the pottery, that wasn't in this blackware, was made out of exactly the same clay; so it was in the burning process, as I understand it, that it turned black. Then they would put a slip on — that's a sort of a glaze — and polish it. It would be a part of the pattern if the piece were patterned, that was opaque, a sort of a mat portion of the design, and the rest would be shiny.

MINK: It gives a beautiful effect.

DELANO: A beautiful effect. She became famous for the forming and shaping of her pottery.

MINK: Did you ever see her do any of her work?

DELANO: Yes, yes, she was, in those earlier years, like this is when I'm talking about Miss Le Maire was with me was in the thirties, and she was making pottery there in demonstrations at the ceremonial. In later years she was older and didn't do that, and she was famous by this time.

MINK: So her work has not continued?

DELANO: I think she's passed away now.

MINK: But was her work continued by anyone?

DELANO: Well, she has a grandson. The last time I was out there in New Mexico and I was building a house, I went to her place in San Ildefonso. Her grandson knew that I had some of her pottery, and he said anytime I wanted to sell it back he'd be glad to have it.

MINK: But they weren't making any more of it themselves?

DELANO: Oh, the Indians go on with it. There was a woman named Rose that thought her work would be superior to Maria's.

MINK: But it never was?

DELANO: But it never was, no. She didn't have the sense of sculptural shape to get into her pottery that Maria had. There are several books written about her, and of course she's mentioned in many other articles and books about her work. The first one she did was, oh, I imagine back in the twenties. It was a, large piece. It's in the Santa Fe museum. It was a large jar. . You see, the people along the Rio Grande River made interesting black jars like those I have here from Santa Clara and other pueblos.

MINK: Those look like handprints.

DELANO: They represent a bear's claw, a bear's claw, which is sort of a sacred image. But those two large jars I have were given to me by Santa Clara Indians. I was saying that they had this tradition of the blackware, but Maria was the first one to make an imposed design that we just described. She made one of these large jars and placed a dragon image around the neck of the jar. She took it to the museum, and the woman there told her she had something, that that was really an original and very unusual idea, and why didn't she go ahead and make some others. Maria donated that jar to the museum, and she went ahead and just became a well-known figure in the ceramic arts amongst the Indians, one of the great leaders.

MINK: You were talking about the celebration at Gallup that you and Miss Le Maire were attending.

DELANO: Yes, that's right. We went to the ceremonial buildings where they sold all the Indian arts and crafts, and there was another place where she could buy rugs and jewelry and pottery and see demonstrations. Then, in the afternoon, they had rodeos and different sport events put on by the Indians, and this entailed displays by many tribes, not just the Navajos alone but many tribes — Pueblos as well as Navajos, Apaches, Comanches, and Plains Indians, and so on.

MINK: [tape turned off] You were talking about the ceremonial at Gallup.

DELANO: In the evening we had a chance to see beautiful dances from many tribes and the singing, and everything was quite authentic. Of course, if you went out to the Indian reservations to see a dance that was put on not for show but for some real purpose, some ceremonial rituals connected with healing or whatever the occasion, that would be something else again, you know, to see it there. I did that quite often. Whenever I would hear of a dance, I would streak out across the mountains or wherever we had to go to see it .

MINK: Were those dances quite different from the dances that they put on in the ceremonial?

DELANO: Well, they're different in the sense that you'd see them in their own background against the houses. For example, if it were at Zuni, it would be down in an inner plaza surrounded by these beautiful pink adobe buildings you see at Zuni. Or it would be in a pueblo where they had a large plaza, but still surrounded by the adobe houses of the Pueblo tribes; or out in the Navajo reservation, it would be in some wild canyon where hundreds of people would gather from all directions in the enormous reservation the Navajos have. They'd get together for this ceremony that lasted all night.

MINK: Well, at this time when you would streak out, so to speak, across the desert and see these dances in the tribal areas, were there many white people in attendance at these dances?

DELANO: No, now sometimes I would be the only one there. Through the years they'd get to know me and let me in without any trouble. In some cases, you couldn't get to see some of the Zuni dances without knowing the medicine man. Other dances, it would be all right. In fact, they didn't mind because maybe you'd buy a few things from them. But they had some things that were so sacred that they didn't want you to be in on it. And you couldn't photograph. Now this was something I learned the very first year. I was tipped off by old-timers not to take a camera. I was so intrigued with the Zuni dances that I learned to memorize them. Of course, I had training in my earlier years with a teacher who believed in Oriental methods, and there was a way to memorize, to observe so intently, then go away and do it. I used that method down at Zuni. I learned to take in all kinds of details, everything beginning with the headdress down to the moccasins. Of course, you'd have to memorize the movements if you were going to put it together in a composition. I'd observe certain times when I could figure on a way I'd like to present the dance. Another thing you could count on — these people would repeat these episodes over and over again. I'd go back to my tent and try to reproduce a part, and if I found that I wasn't getting the spirit of it, I could go back and look at it again--or even see it the third day, for that matter.

MINK: Because it would go on.

DELANO: It would go on and on for days, some of the rituals. I saw one dance that hadn't been put on, they said, for sixty years. And it was a wonderful thing. You see, only the old people could teach the new people coming in to do the dance, so you got a little of that episode where they were training the young ones to go in and do a certain part, and so it was a mixture of young and old . The Zunis have mud dancers. Of course, that isn't the Zuni word for it, but the traders and the white people who've seen these dances call them the mudheads simply because their bodies are covered with pink mud from Zuni. They have a kind of a sacking material put over their heads with little knobs — almost look like potatoes — stuck up around on this head. They are grotesque, like masks, only they fit the head closely instead of being a built- out, elaborate affair like the rest of the headdresses. These mudheads are a sort of a go-between, to go between the spirits of the gods — the underground gods and the people who represent gods — and the ordinary people; so the mudhead has to come in between parts of the dance and entertain the people. Then all of a sudden, they may pick out somebody in the crowd in Zuni people and chastise them in front of everybody else for some misdeed they carried out during the year.

MINK: Well, how would they chastise them?

DELANO: They'd flog them, or give them a scolding, or just punish them in some way.

MINK: What did they use to flog then with?

DELANO: It was a kind of a made-up whip, made out of some kind of switches, I guess, tied together. The Hopis do that also at certain times, certain dances. Miss Le Maire was with me. After we went to the snake dance, we went over to another pueblo and we just happened in on a Hopi dance, and we were the only white people there. I knew one of the men and his family just a little bit because one woman who went with me four times had many friends amongst the Hopis. So I fell heir to some of her contacts, and we were welcomed and allowed to sit in front of their house, and they gave us piki bread, which is a magical kind of bread that they give only at the ceremony.

MINK: What did it taste like?

DELANO: Corn. It's made out of blue corn and it's made in very thin layers, and it's sort of cooked on a hot stone. The layers are so thin, they're like a piece of paper, and the woman has to put her hand on this hot rock and pull it off, and it flattens and dries stiff like a piece of paper. But they have to roll it first before it hardens, and so you have a piece of rolled layers that are about six or seven inches long and I would say two or three inches in diameter.

MINK: What's the purpose of giving this bread at this ceremony?

DELANO: Well, I don't know, but it's some kind of bread that's blessed and used as a part of the ritual. But this thing we saw was rather terrifying. First they had the kachinas come in, and they were all dressed up in their marvelous headdresses, very much like some of the kachina dolls, you see. I never did find out what they represented. You see, every kachina represents something, like even the snake dancers' kachinas have one thing. But these kachinas, I haven't seen anything in the books about them. I don't know what they were. They came, and they had certain dance steps, and there was a mass of Indians singing and using the drum, accompanying the dancers. It was very beautiful. This lasted quite a while and then they'd go off over the rooftops and disappear, and then some boys came on, young ones — I guess this would be an initiation rite from all I could tell — and these boys were in two groups, one group fighting the other. It seems that they would sort of move back and forth and slash at each other with sticks. Then a large bull came in — that is, a couple of boys, I suppose, Hopi Indians, with this bull skin over them, with the head and the horns and so on — and they would make a lot of passes at the bull, and the boys were fighting with it. Finally, when they hit the genitals and broke them, that was it — the bullfight was over. Then some of the men from rooftops came down and they beat the boys and they dragged them through the mud. I don't know what it signified, but it really must have been something way back in their past that had to do with sex, I suppose. Then the medicine man came up on the rooftop — this was just one episode — and he brought a bloody rag out to the edge of the roof and had a long harangue. He talked with everybody there — it was all, of course, in Hopi language — and then he threw it down to one of the helpers in the dance who put it in a pot of water. Then these young boys who were being initiated had to drink that water with the bloody rag. We didn't feel much like eating that night, I'll tell you. [laughter] Some of the things you see out there are just unbelievable. I don't know whether you could do that today or not. I mean, you see, I was self-sufficient. I had everything in my car and was equipped to go, with plenty of food and extra gasoline and extra water, and so if I'd get stalled with anything at all I could carry on till somebody helped me out, if I got stuck. I know Miss Le Maire had a wonderful time that summer seeing these dances. I guess I could wind up this part of it by telling you that when we were at this trading post where the old man, Cotton, was selling his rugs and where he had wonderful collections of silver and all sorts of things. Miss Le Maire, being the type of person she was, made friends with him right away. I think I was always a little backward about meeting new people.

MINK: She was definitely an extrovert?

DELANO: She was more of the extrovert, in terms we've used before. Anyhow, he invited us to come over to his house and meet his daughter. Her name was Barbara Seymour. We were so glad we did. He was everything to the town of Gallup, this old man Cotton. He had the bank, the merchant's bank; he had this big wholesale rug place — just about the head of the town in every way you could look at it. He had an enormous adobe house. It had twenty-seven rooms in it and went around a square. In fact, the back side of the square, towards what would have been a back alley, was a series of rooms with an enormous garage. There were old Cadillacs in there, and wagons, and things from each period of transportation. Then there were washhouses on the back. But along the sides there were many, many bedrooms, an enormous kitchen and a large dining room, and then across the front, two enormous sort of living rooms, each with fireplaces. In fact, almost every room had a fireplace, and they were made of adobe. Something in the bricks made them hold together. They didn't wash away. Well, it was well kept up, you know, throughout all the years. Of course, he had some of the most splendid blankets and rugs and things gathered from the Indians throughout many years. Mrs. Barbara Seymour was a very charming person and she liked us right away. This made a friendship that lasted down till Mrs. Seymour died. Mr. Cotton died first and then Mrs. Seymour, although she wasn't very old. Something happened that she died young. Anyhow, from that time on, every time I went out on those trips up until '56, she entertained me in her home. That was marvelous, because there would be people from the Southwest who made it a habit of stopping there at the Cottons' house — everybody who had written on Indians or were anthropologists or historians, they were at that house during the ceremonials. You'd meet wonderful people that way. When Theodore Roosevelt went out to see that part of the country, he stayed at the Cottons' home. The Cottons had imported furniture from France, these wonderful old mahogany bedsteads with carving that had been imported from France. And the bathroom fixtures had all come from France, funny little bathtubs and bowls and so on. Mr. Cotton was a storyteller. He could just tell you everything that Theodore Roosevelt said on his trips out there, and they were marvelous. He had a sense of humor and he could paint a picture. I'll just always remember the times at the Cottons' home.

MINK: Maybe in the next session you can tell us some of the things that he told about Roosevelt, and about some of the stories that you remember that impressed you the most. I'm afraid the tape is just about at its end.

DELANO: Could I tell one episode if there's time?

MINK: Yes, go ahead.

DELANO: Well, Miss Le Maire: on a consequent trip I was there with some other people and I got struck with lightning. All four of us in the hogan were knocked down and almost killed, and this young boy that was traveling east with my friend Ilse Haman — she was going to another job and he was going back New York City — well. he was almost killed when this lightning struck. We were all unconscious for we don't know how long, until one of them woke up and went up to the trading post. But there's a long story to that. I doubt that there's time to finish it.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 26, 1971

MINK: Continuing from yesterday, you were going to talk some more about your experiences with Miss Le Maire on this New Mexico trip that you took.

DELANO: Yes. Well, Eleanor Le Maire was really great on this one camping trip she had with me because she brought in something that I wasn't able to do. For example, she made friends with Mr. Cotton — I think I mentioned that already, but I wanted to say that I personally probably would have been reluctant to make this acquaintance. In other words, when we first met him, he was to us just the man who owned the wholesale Indian store there, the very large place there on the railroad, and yet Miss Le Maire recognized the significance of a man like that and thought that we should get acquainted with him. I think I mentioned that we went up to his house to meet his daughter, and she was delighted to have us come because I think they liked to meet outside people and Miss Le Maire had already established herself as a national figure in designing stores.

MINK: Did they know who she was?

DELANO: It came out in the conversation. Not at first, no .

MINK: They knew who she was.

DELANO: I don't know. Mrs. Seymour — that is, Barbara Cotton Seymour — had been educated here in Los Angeles at a private girls' school and had a fine education. She had married but wasn't living with her husband when I knew her. I guess they were divorced. She had one son, and they were all living there with her father, who practically ran Gallup, as we were saying last time. Barbara was anxious to have her come and see her any time that she wanted to stop off in Gallup on her many trips. Likewise, she wanted me to stop every year and visit with them. So I did that, because it was marvelous to go to this wonderful big home. They had, I think I was mentioning last time, the large adobe house that had the twenty-seven rooms and wide porch in front. Since my main objective on going on these trips was to paint, I had made paintings of the places the Cottons liked very much; so they bought several of my paintings, and they were hung in the house. Likewise, I made a mural for them in the bar. I used Indian figures, Navajo figures, in sort of an abstract combination of detail pattern with the Navajo figures. The Cottons entertained everybody of importance that came out to Gallup, New Mexico. They were something like historians, in a way, because the travelers and the writers and all these people from Washington would stop at the Cottons' home. I felt privileged to be there in the evenings when the ceremonial was going on, because everybody knew about the Cottons and were introduced one way or another or they were old friends. So one night when I was there, Dr. Hodge from the Southwest Museum. . . .

MINK: Frederick Webb Hodge?

DELANO: Dr. Hodge was there, and that was a notable evening, because he was a historian while Mr. Cotton was a storyteller. These two men would reminisce, and everybody just sat in silence listening to them, because what one would give in the history the other would fill in with the life of the period or the times, you know. And it was just great. They got to reminiscing about Theodore Roosevelt. It had happened that Mr. Cotton was chosen to take Roosevelt out to the Grand Canyon and up through the Hopi mesas. Mr. Cotton was telling about how they got out into the Hopi mesas and before they came to the villages. (I don't know just what part this was now but probably near Indian Wells. I don't know just which way they went; maybe they went through Ganado, I imagine.) Anyhow, Mr. Cotton has a sense of humor, and I guess he thought this would be funny. He told the group that they were out of meat. There were a couple of Hopis coming down the road, and they decided to ask them if they had any meat. They said they'd get them some. Pretty soon they came with some fresh meat, and then they stopped and camped there and made a meal. And then after everybody had had this delicious meat, Mr. Cotton told them they were eating Indian dogs. [laughter] I don't know how that went over with Roosevelt, I don't even know whether it was a true story, but that was the sort of incident Mr. Cotton was interested in telling. He told a story one time — I don't know whether I can recall every bit of it. They got down to the Grand Canyon, and of course in those times I'm sure they didn't have the crossings they now have to get over to Angel Canyon down the Grand Canyon. And I don't know just where they made the crossing, but they were supposed to take their horses across, swim across. So he told about how some of the horses got lost from the riders and had to swim, and he said he had a real good horse because, he said, "When I tried to help one of the fellows that was in the water, I got him up to my horse. I have a certain sign that I make to my horse, and when I say that word the horse lifts his tail, and then you can get a hold of it and he'll pull you up out of the water." [laughter] So that's the way they made it. One time, I was out there on one of my trips, and I had gone off the side to get up to one of the painting sites where I was working. This was east of Gallup. The highway had a steep bank on both sides, and it had rained but it looked pretty dry. Of course, I've driven out there so much and I know the country, but it can fool you sometimes; and I thought it was all right to go down this little place where other cars had gone and get across and get up the hill so I could go ahead with my painting for the day. Well, the place was slippery, and my car fell halfway over — not all the way down, but, mind you, there were two of us in it. There it was hanging sort of half over the edge and might have gone on over on its top. There was a car coming behind me that noticed our trouble, and who was it but Mr. Cotton and Juan. (Juan was their houseboy. He had been with them since he was seven years old. Now he was an older man; he just did everything for the Cottons.) By this time, Mr. Cotton was elderly so Juan was driving him that day for an outing. They saw us go over the edge — and lucky for me, because they knew exactly what to do. They had long chains, and so they attached them to my car and asked me to get in and start it up at the proper moment. Well, I never knew whether I was going to go over anyway, because the ground was really muddy underneath the dry crust. The other girl got out who was with me, and luckily we were able to be pulled along, and Juan brought us up to the highway. Mr. Cotton could tell you about yarns, tell yarns about all kinds of hazardous things, like crossing the San Juan River years and years ago. He had a new Packard, I believe it was, at that time. Well, they took that car across the river, and it got stuck, and it was full of sand, and it was just ruined forever — they never could fix that car up. So I guess he was kind of a wild driver when he was young, because nobody would think of going in the raging river the way he did. I got stuck often. Every year, practically, I was pulled out by Indian ponies or just tied to a rope. That's why I had small cars, because I figured if I had to be pulled out, it wouldn't be so bad. Besides that, the early Model A's and Model T's — those Fords, you know — were high and just like a grasshopper. You could just go over the rocks and over the bushes and rabbit holes and pull out. I was usually driving in second to make these trips out in the rabbit brush country. Then, one time, I was pulled out by the government tractor: I got stuck in quicksand. Here I'm off the track now, but it made me think about Mr. Cotton and how people who are old-timers and pioneers in a country like that are used to all sorts of hazards. They're energetic, and they know how to get out of a hole, they know what to do. Nowadays, when you see all of these paved roads and people go whizzing through this wonderful country, they don't realize what we were up against, even in my time. I started in the twenties to go out there. But I want to come back to Mr. Cotton's home. The walls were arranged with paintings, etchings, and lots of things that were done by artists they knew who would come to that country. They stayed and made friends or they stayed with the Cottons. They loved to have artists with them. Then, when Mrs. Seymour was living with her husband — this was after she gave up her first marriage — she took on the home and continued to brighten it up and rearrange the furnishings, and yet it had the character of one of these fine adobe homes of that period. One little incident that shows what they thought about living out there: when Mr. Cotton married, there wasn't a railroad all the way to California. He said that it stopped, I believe, at Wingate [Station] . So he lifted his wife, his new bride, off the train, and little did she know she was going to come to such a wild country. They continued to go on with the niceties that she was brought up with in the East. After they had their home built there in Gallup, they decided to go to the table arm in arm; that is, to be quite formal about having dinner in the evenings, you know. So whenever guests came to the home, dinner was announced. They always had a maid, and they had Juan, who was the houseboy. And they would announce dinner, and it would be quite a formal seating and so on — which I thought was wonderful to find out there in that kind of dreary-looking town of Gallup. Then of course, as I said, we met all kinds of interesting people there. That was a pleasure. Miss Le Maire and I decided to invite Barbara Cotton Seymour to dinner out in the camp. Well, of course, the Cottons knew all about camping; after all, they had lived at Ganado before they built the big house, and they had learned Navajo. They were really outdoor people. We thought she'd get a kick out of coming out to our camp. I was then located at the Outlaw Trading Post. I usually made a camp there every year. This time, Eleanor thought she would cook the main dish, so we got us a chicken in Gallup, and she wanted to soak it for an hour or two in milk and garlic, of all things. But she said it would taste good with a lot of other flavorings and oregano, I guess. I don't know what else she put in it, but it was going to be quite elegant. But it attracted the flies, and we didn't know what we would do. We were hoping a little wind would come up before she came out for dinner that day. But no wind, and the flies were just dreadful. You could hardly put anything down but what there would be a flock of them. And if you tried to cover it, it seemed just like that rat I told about that wanted to get under the cloth to get to the food. Eventually we had a nice dinner, and I had a big wand that I kept waving over the table so we could eat. This was right out in front of a hogan. I had two hogans out in front of the Outlaw Trading Post, and I was cleaning than up and swept out and got rid of as many bugs, but you couldn't help it if there were flies once in a while. That's what happened that day. The people there at the trading post — there was an old family named Richards that, when I first started there in the twenties and made their acquaintance, were very kind to me. Mrs. Richards made homemade bread, and whenever they killed a sheep they'd let us have some lamb. (We hoped it was lamb. I don't know, it never tasted exactly like lamb at home. But anyhow we enjoyed having it.) They had a lot of children, a lot of boys and two or three girls. They were quite little when I first went out there. In fact. Miss Le Maire met them and was fond of them. They had one daughter named Westa, who was a cripple from childhood. She had polio, and her father sort of nursed her back to what she is today; that is, she can walk with crutches. But otherwise she wasn't able to go to school after one or two years and had to be educated by the family more or less, and was a smart girl but very handicapped. Well, Miss Le Maire took great interest in doing whatever she could for Westa and sending her presents throughout the year. Westa was a good seamstress and she made costumes if people wanted there . I had two costumes made, and Miss Le Maire had one or two Indian costumes, the Navajo style, you know.

MINK: She knew how to do it.

DELANO: She knew exactly how to do it, because sometimes she'd make them even for the Indians and the Indians were very careful about their skirts. For example, the skirt has two or three ruffles and they have braid sewed on the skirt on top of the ruffle where it joins the skirt. Now, that has to be very well done. If it misses a stitch or two or something, then it might catch on the brush, because they wear these skirts out in the brush when they're with the sheep. Even when they're dipping sheep, they've got to have something that won't get caught on things, so they have to be well made. Westa knew exactly how to make them because the Indians had taught her how. And the blouses had to be lined just so. The sleeves had a cut under the arm because Indians didn't know anything about deodorants — this was their method. So that had to be well bound. Then little silver buttons put on the cuffs and around the neck, down the front of the blouse, a short opening in front, and the collars. Everything about it just really would take somebody with some skill to do the sewing. So Westa was very glad to do it for us, and we paid her, of course. We picked out material off the shelves of the trading post. You know, one of these costumes that I have is down in the Los Angeles museum now on one of their figures. It doesn't have the belts — the silver belts, the concho belts — that it's supposed to have, because they said they'd put one on and they never have. It gives the wrong impression of the costume because the Indians always had a belt, unless they were sloppy or something; out doing some sheep dipping, they may not have the belts on. But I think if it's to be in the museum, it ought to have the belt, so I think I'll have to give them a belt or go down and see why they haven't put it on. Besides the silver belt, you have a woven belt that makes the thing complete. (I didn't mean to go into this. I just wanted to show you how Miss Le Maire had a wonderful time working into this.) And the colors of these costumes, you see, fit into the landscape. They were always dark and rich — that is, the Navajos' skin is dark and their hair black — so they tended to have the dark colors, dark velvets, especially in those days when I was there in my first early trips. As time went on, I noticed they got away from what you'd call the old costume. Of course, I don't mean very old. These costumes I called the intermediate. They were adapted from the Spanish costumes. Earlier than that, they had handwoven cotton and wool, and they looked a little more like Pueblo Indian costumes.

MINK: At this point in time, they were not supposed to want the store-type dresses, the ready-made dresses that would be available.

DELANO: No, they weren't. They wore the typical Navajo wide skirt that would have yards and yards of material in it and deep flounced with braid, and the velvet blouses. You see, I'm talking about the Navajos in general — they are north of the big highway that runs through the country. Is that [U.S.] 66?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: And it's high altitude. It's from 6,000 [feet] or more high, and it's rather chilly in the evenings and downright cold in the winters, naturally. So they can wear that and be very comfortable, whereas if you go to the Apache reservation south of the highway — I think I described something about that dance when I took Miss Le Maire down there — those Indians live in a hotter climate. And they adapted a wide skirt from the Spanish and a big yoke surrounded with ruffles and beadwork and so on, but it's all out of thin materials, thin cottons, quite a different effect. And it comes tied up around the neck so they look like colored bells floating around when they're dancing, whereas the Navajo has more of a sweep to the way they move; and when they are dancing, when they are on horseback, they have a graceful, rhythmic walk. In fact, I had a lot of fun with different women who went out there with me and wanted to have costumes made. Westa would make costumes, then the girls would put them on, and they couldn't walk like a Navajo. It seems the Navajos put their feet in front of each other as they walked — more in a straight line, one foot ahead of the other, and there's a grace to it. I just can't explain how to do it, but most of the girls didn't look natural in them at first. I figured that the Navajos were on horseback, or they were walking with sheep, or they were sitting on the ground. They had no chairs in these hogans at that time. Even if they could buy them, they didn't want than. Everything was low down on the ground — the campfire — and you could only stand up in the center of a hogan unless it was what they call a double hogan for ceremonial purposes. But you were down with the campfire. That meant you were in a kneeling position or seated on the ground or lying down. And I think that made for a great deal of grace because you'd have quite a bend to make to get from the floor to stand up, whereas, when you think about it, we sit on chairs; and we don't have that kind of exercise unless we deliberately do it. Then the horseback riding, too, is something that made them more graceful. I didn't see the Apache women riding very much. Of course, times change and... I don't know — their life was different, anyway, from the Navajo Indian; and, of course, these two tribes were very different from the Pueblo tribes. But we were interested in relation to their costumes and the beauty of these Indians in the landscape. That's what I loved to watch and to paint. I didn't have any Indians just pose for me very often. I had some once in a while, bat usually I memorized what I'd see. I did that for the dances also. Once I thought I saw a Navajo woman coming on a horse over in the midst of the pinon trees and junipers up on a high hill, and I thought, "My, if I could just get her to pose for me." She understood just a little bit of English, and she said she'd pose. And I said, "How much?" She said, "Fifty centavos." So I thought. "Okay, I'll pose." I had some small canvases all prepared — I was working in oils that day — so I started in. She'd keep creeping forward on the horse to look and see what I was doing. Then after a while she stopped. She broke the pose, and she said she wanted fifty cents more. This went on, and finally I told her no more because I could memorize whatever I needed after that. I got the main elements of the painting into it. While I'm on posing — this is sort of running off our general theme here, but it makes me think also of another time — the Indians arrive in Gallup for a ceremonial. These ceremonials started in the early twenties just about a year or so before I started going out there. And every time the people in the town made an effort to round up more and more Indians and get them interested to come, and after a while, it became quite a thing, something like the Fiestas in Santa Barbara and that kind of business, It included more and more tribes from all over the country. They'd come out there for these big ceremonials that lasted a week. One time I thought I'd get permission to go out into the fairgrounds, and maybe I could sketch some Indians firsthand. I saw there were just hundreds of them moving around, and camping, and eating, and waiting for the rodeo to start. I thought I'd ask a man I saw there [who] seemed officious if he could find somebody who could pose for me. Right away, he pointed to an old man and said, "Why don't you paint him?" I said, "Well, will you make the arrangements, or can he talk English?" He said, "I'll see if he wants to pose." And sure enough he did . I got my paints out, and I had a little campstool I was carrying around with me, and I got all set up to paint him in watercolors. He didn't know how much to charge, so than I suggested that I would paint two paintings, and he could have either one. He could have one if he would pose for me. This was fine with him, and he had a beautiful face. It was wrinkled but swarthy, beautiful- colored skin and whitish-gray hair — and I'll just never forget him. I thought he was gorgeous to paint. He had on a cotton shirt. It was just a light gray-blue. And he took out a badge from his pocket that he was carrying with him, and he put it on his shirt, and he was very proud of it. He wanted to see that I got that in the picture. I asked him what it was, and the man interpreted and said it was a badge he got from the American government for fighting against Geronimo. He was a Navajo Indian fighting against the Apaches. So this badge I must get into the picture. I started in and I got him about half-length — that is, the pose was taken in what we'd call a half length. I went along, and I had to paint two, and I worked pretty fast. There was a likeness in both. They weren't both alike, but they were pretty good. But while I was working, he was so anxious to see what I was doing that he kept creeping up closer to me and moving a little closer. And he was chewing tobacco, and he was spitting all over my legs, and he never knew it. I had short socks on and sandals — we wore bobby socks then. It was a hot day. (I also wore boots, as I told you, out in the wild part of the camping, but there in town I had on sandals.) And so my bare legs were just covered with tobacco juice. He never noticed anything about it. When it was all over, I gave him a picture, and I always wondered what happened to it. The other man was his son-in-law. They wrote the name on the back. That was one example of my having Indians pose. Actually, what I did when I'd go out to get paintings of dances, I would memorize them in a sort of Oriental method — I'd been taught by Miss Brooks, who later became Mrs. Wycoff, in the art department; she was my teacher on that method of memorizing by intense viewing or looking and then going away and putting down what you could remember. Usually she worked it on into lines, but in my case I memorized everything about it — the whole arrangement, the details. I found it worked if you'd concentrate. I'd go back to my tent in, say, Zuni, where I might have been painting a dance, and put down everything I felt that was in the spirit of the thing. And then if it didn't work out — I mean, if I felt I was not painting with the same rapture I felt when I was looking at it — I'd quit and go out and look at it again, because it's repeated day after day and you could work it out that way.

MINK: I was going to ask you, since we were talking about painting of subjects: these two pictures that you have on the wall in your den here which are still lifes of pottery, of dried peppers, squash, pears — were these paintings that you did in this time?

DELANO: These paintings were done right here in this house. I think that experience in New Mexico ... . (And I think I should come back to this often because the main thing about my life is painting. And we're talking about friends — and they had a great effect upon me and my teaching. But my painting is the thing.) And I must say that that country, its wonderful color and contrasts, just gets into your bones and works in you in every way — the lighting out there and so on, and the objects, so like squash and peppers and things that you see out there. Well, then, when I work here in the house, I have things in my collection that I like to paint, and you're attracted to it. What makes you choose this or that? Well, I realize that I'm affected by the paintings of other artists, what's gone on, and things that I've seen in museums, and the great movements of art in our time like cubism and that kind of thing and surrealism. This enters into you, too; so when I sit down to work, or stand up or whatever you're doing, working on an easel, I find myself working in different ways in different years, just gradually. When I get two pictures such as these in contrast to each other on the wall, I realize there's a certain abstraction and a certain realism in the other one. [tape turned off]

MINK: See if you could speculate and tell me if you can what you think the state of your painting was, and your attitudes were, when you first began to paint in the Southwest.

DELANO: Yes, that's a good question. Well, of course, as a student, I was subjected to the same general training that all the students had in the Normal School.

MINK: The Dow.

DELANO: The Dow. Well, the people that came from Columbia University had soaked up his training, and then we fell heir to the same thing. To me, it was excellent for anything that happened to be more or less flat, like conceiving of arrangements of walls and what's on the wall or on a shelf or a facade of a building. The work of painting which might be flat — for example. Oriental prints were in favor, and many people who went out to the Orient brought back paintings that had this stylization. This affected many European and American artists. There was a stress on the line edges. I think some of my first paintings went in that direction. In fact, we had to copy Japanese prints when I was a student.

MINK: That sounds like a tedious sort of thing.

DELANO: Yes, it probably was, but you caught on to a certain type of coloring in the Japanese prints — a minimized grayed effect — dark grays and greens, and yellow- greens and so on. Also in Europe, the painting in France, especially the French schools of painting, influenced American artists. The work of the early cubists, the work of Matisse and others — Matisse had a certain decorative brilliance of color and Orientalism in some of his work. And this seemed to appeal to me unconsciously. I wasn't aware of it especially, but I remember now back in, oh, perhaps the thirties, I decided to send some paintings to apply for a Guggenheim scholarship. Well, Miss Le Maire helped me out on that. She asked me to send the box of paintings to her place, which was in the Squibb Building, 745 Fifth Avenue, and I sent this big box of paintings. I just looked over the list of what I sent. Well, there were pictures of cattle that I made out on Indian reservations, and they were done something like an early Matisse, really; now that I look back on it I hardly realize that I did them. There was a sort of exaggerated brilliance of color, and of subjects incorporated, landscape detail, some Indian dances, and that kind of thing. Perhaps now I wouldn't like them. They're sort of exaggerated color. I don't know. I mean, I haven't looked at them for so long, because I think I changed after I went to the Barnes Foundation and had a chance to go to Europe. I'd been to Europe and I'd looked at paintings, but this time the training there was of such a different character that you really came away with something that stayed for a lifetime.

MINK: Are you trying to say that you think the colors in your paintings after the Barnes experience tended to tone down?

DELANO: Yes, because they were fused with light. You see, the Dow theory didn't mention space as a factor in the painting, and so it was flat space, more or less. Maybe he, in his own experience in teaching of art history, never realized this, because he probably was rounded in all of it, because he was a great leader. But the people that studied with him came away with the idea of flattening out the space. You know, people who have theories are often misquoted or misunderstood in later dealings. Anyhow, at least that's the way I came out. I felt that I wanted everything to be flat because I was taught that way. Then as I went on, I realized that all the time I wanted to paint something in deep space, with perspective and with lighting.

MINK: Do you think then that the exaggeration in color that you used in painting paintings where you were more influenced by the Dow method and therefore flat, the exaggeration of color there was an actual striving to represent space?

DELANO: No. Those exaggerations were possible in a flattened space. You could put a color in its full intensity. But if you want to round a thing, if you were going to use color, you show it through lighting, and that organizes with the color. That means in the shadow there will be a different kind of color, and so it modifies as it goes around; it changes, whereas on flat space you can have an exaggerated area of color that would be without light exactly. There would be values — the colors always have values — but lighting is another factor imbedded in the color that you can recognize in everything that we see except when it's pitch black. But I mean you can make a more or less abstraction of any subject if you wish to and flatten it and not have lighting on it, you see. Am I making myself clear?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: So the minute you begin to put round bulging forms on an object that you're depicting and a form behind a form, then you have to use lighting to bring this out. That means you tone the colors down. They can be bright in what we call an area between the highlight and the shadow. There will be brighter places. But the whole thing now becomes ever so much more complex when you involve lighting.

MINK: You know, this doesn't seem to me to be anything new. It's just that, you know, you look at many of the landscapes that were done in this period and people that worked in Southern California and elsewhere, they all have a spatial quality and depth and shading, and yet you say that ....

DELANO: Well, there's been a tradition for hundreds of years; the Renaissance tradition had come right on down. And then we always had more or less what we'd call a representational or realistic painter who'd depict the objects pretty much as he'd see them in space.

MINK: Well, but the Dow principle didn't....

DELANO: They didn't exactly say no, but they were trying to encourage--well, say in the drawing, very often the drawing would neglect the depth, although our department taught perspective. I'm talking about the kind of painting which was put out. And we have many painters to this day who will work in flat areas, area painting, more or less. That means then you can have a stress on the edges; you can have a sheer, imposed outline, and you can do all kinds of things with the edges. But if you are going to light them and work in deep space, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be realistic in the sense of going out and taking a photograph of things. It can be very imaginative, even though it has lighting involved in it. For example, the surrealists often paint in very deep space, and yet the objects they're painting are imaginary shapes and forms—say, like Salvador Dali, for one, has very deep space in his work.

MINK: Well, do you think then that when you first began to paint in New Mexico, to paint landscapes, to paint people, figures and so on, that this is when you first sort of had a breakthrough from the kind of thing that you had been taught in the Normal School?

DELANO: Well, not right at first. The things I sent to New York to try to get a Guggenheim — and I didn't get it that year — were overdramatic in their contrasts, and there was some lighting but very little. It was like some of the early work of Matisse, if I may say so, then. Then after I went to the Barnes Foundation and had a chance to spend four months in Europe, with very close, detailed, analytical studies of the greatest masterpieces anywhere, I really think I changed. I don't know if it hurt me or not or what I would have done if I had never done that. I felt that I was able to assimilate these traditions to my advantage and to my own way of working, because after I built this house and didn't go on my landscape trips, I found that I was painting other things and my style of painting changed. I would revert often to this earlier period of overdramatization and stress on edges and lines and I would today if I felt like it, but then I think something happened to my pleasure in painting deep space forms in light. This showed up in landscape and especially in still life. There's a whole series of still lifes in a place down on La Cienega that are still life paintings with fruits and vegetables and they're pretty well lighted, and yet they are quite imaginary. I think they are, at least. One thing I did out in New Mexico and in Arizona is landscape with great contrast of light, especially when I worked at the Grand Canyon. This was a great experience because I could go back to the same sites year after year and study the lighting on these magnificent forms. And the colors, to begin with, were bright in certain lights, and I'd watch them in the early mornings and late afternoons — different times of day — and so these appealed to me extremely because I loved the rich colors. But I also loved this light that came out, and this was something you could spend a lifetime on. Some people might think that it was crazy to think you could paint the Grand Canyon. Well, it isn't that way. You go, or at least I would go out there, and find a site off of the main road where tourists might stop. There's just lots of places where you can be to yourself and never see another person for hours. There you could study those shifting forms, especially on a cloudy day, and see all kinds of things in the colors. It was just tremendous to watch this. You weren't doing the whole canyon; you were doing a detail. You were doing a certain formation. Now, after a while, after years of painting on the edge of the Grand Canyon, I found out that it was quite familiar to me. You would learn the names of certain points and certain formations that people in the past have given to the Grand Canyon, and so they were familiar. There were no two alike. You know, when you first look at it you're sort of awestruck with the wonder of it and the variety in it, but after a while it's familiar, especially if you work with it. I always longed to go back there again and do some things. Dean [David F.] Jackey has some of my Grand Canyon pictures that were carried along where I felt I got something of what I was working for. There were some things that some people bought last year that I liked. But you know I have very few of those left now. The Grand Canyons seemed to go.

MINK: So does the tape.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
MARCH 11, 1971

MINK: This afternoon, you have been going through files from the chancellor's office which pertain to the art department, and the reports, correspondence, and so on. And now you have said that you would like to comment some on the history of the department with relation to these documents, and from time to time I will have questions I would like to ask you, too. You said, I think, first you wanted to talk about some of the earlier heads a little bit more in detail than you have already.

DELANO: Yes. I would like to say something about Nellie Huntington Gere, who really made the art department in its earliest years, starting with what we call the old Normal School down where the public library is today and then going to Vermont Avenue. There, there was quite an enlargement starting with the new buildings. The art department progressed in every way, with the faculty more or less chosen from people who had attended Arthur Wesley Dow's courses in Columbia University, New York. There seemed to be a great stimulus from his kind of teaching. [tape turned off] As the students kept coming in and as Dr. Moore got this vision of doing more for training of teachers, we had this as the background for our development; that is, looking forward to an enlargement of all curricula, and an extension from a three-year school to four years and finally to degrees. This struggle from smaller outlook to a larger was something that extended for many years in the development of the art department. Now Miss Gere's part was quite notable. The students adored her. She was from New England originally; there was a sort of Spartan quality about her. And she was very logical and very appreciative of the arts--a real organizer. She brought her cousin, Helen Chandler, into the department in those early years — this is after 1915 or about that time.

MINK: Apparently at that time there was no rule against a relative working in the same department?

DELANO: No, I don't think it ever applied to cousins particularly. But Miss Chandler was quite a painter, and she attended Columbia University also. Mrs. Sooy was another one that came in about that time, and she came from Columbia. Mrs. Sooy was an entirely different type, and this shows Miss Gere's attitude towards bringing in a balanced faculty of people of different temperaments and ideas even though all of these people I've mentioned had the Dow training in Columbia. And in that, they really stuck together throughout their whole time in the university. Miss Gere's main subject was art history, but one must bear in mind that all of the courses were developed in reference to teaching, especially in the grades and in high school. In that respect, the collections that were amassed as the student guides — the illustrative matter, the slides and so on — were put together with this in mind, and especially for appreciative training rather than detailed historical analysis.

MINK: There was not at that time, then, the great growth that is to come in the later years of the art history?

DELANO: No, there wasn't. But the great masterpieces were shown in slides of all periods. Miss Gere gave courses in Oriental art history — China, Japan. She had traveled to those countries and seen things firsthand. She had been to India, and so on. So there was a worldwide attitude in reference to it. There were slides on the arts of ancient Mexico and Peru, of the islands--the cultures of the various island groups of people — all of the Western tradition from early to late.

MINK: So she was really the major art historian?

DELANO: She was really the first art historian. And it included the history of architecture, the history of painting, as well as the minor crafts and arts. There was special stress on this part because it would have an effect on the everyday life of the average student, whether he was in the lower grades or in high school. Really, there was such a development of schools and of population in the late twenties and thirties all over Southern California that many new colleges and schools were built, and our graduates were asked to come in and form art departments, and they stayed until they retired. An example of one would be John Herbert in Fresno — built up a wonderful art department. Miss Gere was really a model type of person to inspire one in building a department.

MINK: Well, let me ask you, during this same period would you say that the influence of, say, the USC art department upon the growth of art education in Southern California was negligible compared to UCLA's?

DELANO: Yes, I would say so. There was just a beginning year of course in ceramics by [Glen] Lukins. There was quite a developed school of architecture — I suppose they called it a school. However, they were against modern. This I found out — I think I mentioned it once — in this series of talks.

MINK: But they really weren't teaching....

DELANO: They were not teaching teachers, but they did later, I think--I may be wrong--when they started this sort of thing .

MINK: So at this time UCLA was really the major teacher training for art in Southern California.

DELANO: And when we acquired Dr. Moore as the head of the whole school, he changed the attitude towards the extension and lengthening of all courses — that is, I mean, adding years so the teachers would be trained in a better way. I remember that he told Mrs. Morgan and me one time that he carried a letter of resignation to the regents in his pocket, that he would resign unless they developed teacher training. So now that we have full teacher training with the degrees, it just seems almost impossible to think back to earlier periods when a normal school, all over the country, was supposed to be the end and all for the ordinary teacher in the schools. Now, degrees are asked for. There is a specialization about it, but it seems to me it's very necessary. There are many things about the history of education and about methods and development of teacher training that is greatly needed for teachers.

MINK: You were talking about Miss Gere and her part in all of this.

DELANO: Yes, as a building of art departments. I mentioned Mr. Herbert at Fresno, and we had people in Pasadena. They built the college there and all of the people they hired for their art teachers were from our department. Long Beach — I'm speaking more of the earlier years.... And some of our people taught at San Jose and San Diego. See, then the junior colleges — that was something that started, and they needed art teachers. So almost every graduate found a place right away in a college. One is never finished with an education. They can learn on the job, they can travel, and they can certainly get together in conferences over development of students' work; and I think this happened to a great extent in California during those years. We had not only art teachers' associations in localities like Pasadena, Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego and so on; but we also had what was called the Pacific Arts Association. This met every year either in a large city like San Francisco or Los Angeles, sometimes San Diego or Fresno, and delegations would go from all the other places, and everybody made an effort to get there and bring students' work for exhibition. Then there would be profitable discussions as well as major talks. People came from all over the country to give these talks. There was a great stir in the air about recognizing the arts in the schools. In other words, if we don't have art we have a backward culture, it seems to me . I might say that other people from Columbia were accompanying Miss Gere in all of this effort to make an enlarged art department. We had Miss Hazen; we had, oh, a number of others--I can't just recall now — from Columbia. Then when the department moved along with the rest of the university to Westwood--that was in 1929 — we had to meet on the top floor of the library. The Education Building wasn't finished, so we had to be up there. The people in charge were flexible enough to steer the students through an entirely different experience. Instead of painting in studios, we had to ask them to paint at home, and this meant that the students came for one-hour classes for criticism. They'd bring their work there. There was perhaps one or two large rooms where they could do a little drawing and painting, but not under their own separate teachers for each class. This went on for a year, and then finally we moved into the Education Building. We occupied almost the whole first floor and some of the rooms on the upper floor. This included a gallery, no elevator except a sort of dumbwaiter in one place — but we were expected to have exhibits up there-- and then a large studio for ceramics and sculpture. Otherwise, the place on the top floor was occupied by home economics and by the music department. So things were crowded. Anyway, there was a period here when Miss Gere was nearing the end of her period of time. She had reached the age of sixty-five, and there was a unanimous effort on the part of the staff to have her remain until she was seventy if she cared to. And she did, because she had spent her own money to travel around the world to gain firsthand experience for these courses in art history. She just devoted her life to the department. First of all, Mrs. Sooy had been chairman of the department while Miss Gere traveled. Then she remained in that post for a number of years till there was a time when there was an undercurrent against Mrs. Sooy for not liking certain people or doing the best for their development, and so one way or another she was asked to resign as chairman and to choose somebody for chairman. She chose Professor Cox from Columbia University. I might just say a word for my own personal opinion right here. Mrs. Sooy had studied to be a painter as well as a teacher in Columbia University, but I think she gave up the idea of becoming a painter and went into costume and interior design as the main subjects she was to teach in the department. At the same time, I think I've explained about her personality that grated on some people — the idea of ridiculing or downgrading people if they didn't follow the Dow ideas. Perhaps if we had known how to confront someone else on an equal basis, this might not have occurred, but as it was, I think she didn't want me to be there and didn't like Barbara Morgan who was also, as I explained once, quite a thinker in her work. And we had differing ideas. So when Dr. Moore asked Mrs. Sooy to find another chairman, she chose Mr. Cox from Columbia. Now, he had written against painting, also. In various ways he downgraded painting. There were times that he would look up to it and call it one of the arts and show slides in his courses in art history and what he called Art and Civilization and so on. Yet anyone who was vitally interested would, I think, sooner or later, run into this bias which he had. In fact, I heard him talk in 1928 at the International Conference of Art and Industry in Prague, and in that speech he downgraded the fine arts and said, "Let's get to the little things." Well, that's fine, but why downgrade something? You know, this type of argument which you have to kill something to make something else — it's so negligible. It's, to my mind, not thinking straight about the whole thing. That was the first inkling that I had of perhaps having trouble, when he was brought into the art department. When he came he said that he would follow Mrs. Sooy in everything that she said about the art department, and then this led to many encounters where we were somewhat unhappy about his attitude towards the painting. There were other things. See, the war came along, and this made a sort of a running background of the ideas that you must save money. That's fine. But in the management of the affairs of the art department, we had much to criticize with respect to Mr. Cox, because he seemed to get all mixed up in the finances of the department. Somebody would be hired and then maybe they would be given more classes. For example, Mrs. [Ida] Abramovich, I remember, was asked to teach, I think it was, half time; but sooner or later she had a whole-time program and there was hardly any increase.

MINK: And a half-time salary?

DELANO: At a half-time salary.

MINK: How ridiculous.

DELANO: Yes, this is something that went on. The excuse for it was, "Well, it's the wartime, and we have to conserve," and all of that. But when Dr. Sproul or Hedrick or whoever was the chancellor — I don't believe they called them chancellors then; it was a provost or whatever — would hear about it, then there was some mistake. And these mistakes kept going on and on in reference to the art department, and we were losing our money, our budget, as it were, for the art department, getting all mixed up. Then it was very disheartening about Miss Gere, of course, for we have a great many letters from the whole department about her. Finally, this was straightened out, and Miss Gere was asked to come stay on, and she was given a promotion.

MINK: Well, what happened? I mean did Mr. Cox just tell her that she would have to retire?

DELANO: Yes, he was very blunt. I think in his mind, he felt that he had inherited an art department that had a lot of women in it. This was another thing. He would sit with the faculty men in the dining room and just regale them with jokes about his department. We'd hear about it through friends of ours that, well, were amused by it, but it was rather cutting.

MINK: What kind of jokes?

DELANO: Well, belittling about women. He seemed to have this characteristic of making jokes and ridiculing people.

MINK: Women?

DELANO: Well, women in general, yes.

MINK: Was he married?

DELANO: Oh, yes, and Mrs. Cox was devoted to him. She worked to have these wonderful parties that he gave for the men, especially, then she'd have to step aside. She'd just work two days making all sorts of fancy cakes and things for the party that he was to give — stag parties they called them. Well, I guess — this is just my personal opinion — I suppose some European men have that attitude. He certainly wasn't very nice to his wife in later years. He said that she was losing her mind, and I know he came to me to find a place where she could be put away. Mrs. Hely, a friend of mine that lived next door, and I had been down to a desert place which had lovely rooms and meals and all, and he'd heard about it, so he came over to us to see if he couldn't take his wife down there. Well, there was nothing wrong with Mrs. Cox.

MINK: Except Mr. Cox, perhaps.

DELANO: Mr. Cox, yes. And the people that took care of Mrs. Cox while she was down there said there was nothing wrong with her. So everybody else in the department took Mrs. Cox's side, and I don't know whether I should be telling this, but he just went into some kind of attitude that just didn't seem to have reality about it. You know, he died very suddenly with a massive heart attack. He didn't believe in going to doctors. He might have been doing something about it, but this just happened so suddenly. He went down to his garden to pick roses, and just fell there and never recovered. I don't know whether this has something to do with it, but in the last years all these little troubles about getting mixed up might be explained as part of his heart troubles. There were letters to the president or to whoever was provost at the time about the errors in art department reports, and it just could be something, you know, with his memory not being what it should be in reference to detail. Mrs. Cox took charge of the funeral for him. She arranged all business transactions, sold the house, and went back to England, where they both came from. She built a beautiful house on the Isle of Wight. Many of our ex-students who knew Mr. Cox and Mrs. Cox— and liked her, too, very much — went to visit and found that she had a charming place.

MINK: How was he with the students? Was he pretty good with the students? Did the students like him?

DELANO: They seemed to like him. Again, like the faculty men, there were these running jokes that went along in his lectures and they seemed to like that. Now, certain things in light of many years passing up to now, you would see that he hated to see the billboards along the streets, and he would rave against Whittier Boulevard as one prize example. Or some of the hideous things in the city like the Brown Derby Restaurant — the making of a hat to represent a brown derby on Wilshire Boulevard. And so he had a number of photographs of these things.

MINK: Was he against the Van de Kamp's windmills, too?

DELANO: Yes, he didn't like those or any of the signs and so on. Well, neither did most of us, but there was a running argument that would show up in almost all of his lectures. This was the great thing, the axe to grind. But instead of getting at primary causes, I don't know even today what good does it do just to talk. I mean, it seems to me something behind the scenes has to be done. It's a part of the whole system. What can you do about advertising and not have it carried to these extremes?

MINK: Of course, I suppose in these times Foster and Kleiser were the great culprits.

DELANO: They were the great culprits at that time. Yes, they were.

MINK: And they were a private organization, a private business?

DELANO: Yes, that's right. We had wonderful long roads with plenty of open country. It wasn't like the amazing growth which we've seen up through the years, with, now, a sense of being closed in and of our open spaces disappearing. I remember when Westwood Village was built, especially by the Janss people, it was laid out in the form of cowpaths, converging paths leading to the Janss building. He screamed about this time and again, and I think he was right: the fact that they didn't leave any parks in Westwood. Again, why didn't he talk directly to the Janss people? This would have been my idea, to get in there at the beginning and see that they put in parks. Sometimes those of us in the universities, I think, are so remote from the actual happenings, that that's one reason the art that we love doesn't permeate all of these expressions in the surroundings, in the design of a city, and in our homes. This is important, but I don't think it needs to kill the so-called fine arts. You give a lecture on all of this part of the city beautiful; at the same time, say we don't need to study painting any more. Or to have somebody on the other side downgrade the design area. Men came from Europe to teach who didn't appreciate painting and would want to stress design expressions. Some thought an art department should consist of courses in history of art.

MINK: Who was that?

DELANO: Well, we had Dr. [James] Breasted [Jr.] for one. Well, he's an American but he had studied in Germany, had most of his training there.

MINK: Incidentally, you mentioned there was an important letter concerning Breasted that you found in the file.

DELANO: Yes, where he ran down the courses of applied design, which would get to the heart of the matter. Great numbers of objects being designed that would be ugly, and perhaps people would find them in the stores; there would be no possible way in which they could be organized or integrated into the homes and used in a fine way — which goes back to appreciation running through everything. He would downgrade these courses and call them courses that belonged in a trade school. Now, he was working in Princeton or had studied there. (Let's see, did I get him mixed up? I'll have to check whether he was really in Germany or not. One of the men we had was from Germany. ) But Breasted came from Princeton where most of the courses were at that time in art history, and so he was very naive about the design of an object and its place in an ensemble. He could go through many books and cull from them what he thought was a work of art because somebody else said it was, but to have the genuine beginning appreciation which would select on its own experience. . . . That is, for example, he would be backward in appreciating modern, what would be the modern at the time, the most recent expressions of architects or designers or painters and sculptors, because they weren't in the fold yet. Somebody hadn't written about them. I mean, this is just my way of explaining what I think was in back of his training. Not only that, but to a historian of his type, the idea of dating of things was most important; it wasn't how fine an art it was. And so the students had a certain kind of so-called scholarly attitude, but a neglect in what I'd call the vital, appreciative side of it, from a man like Breasted. I find, in going over these records, Dr. Breasted was one who put doubts in the minds of the administrative leaders. I didn't find that Dr. Sproul fell for this at all. I think he had a fine idea of a rounded art department. And our plan had been something like the thing that Miss Gere first laid out — to have the different arts and crafts and painting and sculpture and teaching of art and art history integrated as a department. But if you find somebody coming in from another school that has had no experience with this rounded concept, and worst of all, if you have somebody at the head without this idea. I think it takes a genius to overcome that. We had an example outside the university that I can recall. Down at the Los Angeles [County] Museum [of History, Science, and Art] they had trouble, too, finding a man who would head the museum at that time, where they had history, art, and science. You would have a man trained, let's say, in one of these branches. Now what would have to happen to his attitude in order to organize and expand something that goes in three directions mainly? Well, they had man after man there and had trouble. In fact, when Breasted left the art department — we had so much trouble with him, and I haven't finished on that — he went to the Los Angeles museum, and there he antagonized almost everybody that worked in the museum. He couldn't allow them to go in their own way; he didn't appreciate what they had done, and so they just got rid of him in a couple of years, I think.

MINK: How was it that he was out at UCLA?

DELANO: At UCLA, he officially stayed a little longer than he did at the museum, simply because the war came along and he had to go to Washington and was in some capacity there that had to do with the field details — I don't know, planning new uniforms or something of the kind. So he wasn't around all that latter part of the war, and then he came back. But before that, before he'd gone to Washington, he wanted the university to house a collection of books, a library which his father had amassed. You see, he was the son of James Breasted I, the archaeologist, the historian who had specialized in Egyptian history. So this James II had been with his father on those trips. In fact, he told me one time, "Annita, all my troubles have been due to the fact that I'm the son of a great father." He knew that he had troubles getting along with people. He antagonized people in our department, and he antagonized them down there at the Los Angeles museum.

MINK: Just by belittling, by criticizing?

DELANO: By criticizing. Now firsthand, he'd give a wonderful impression. He was good looking and enthusiastic and [had a] well-ordered way of thinking about things, but was very unaware of the missing gaps; that is, the real- life vitality of the arts and perhaps the understanding of people. He wanted this collection brought into the art department, and this cost a great deal of trouble. For months and months, they haggled over bringing that collection in there. In the first place, the art department had to find a room. We had weaving as one of the courses taught by Miss Whitice. She was asked to give up the room . It had a special arrangement for closets and sinks and so on where the students had to dye materials and so forth. Well, the place was already being crowded out. There was no other large room she could go to, so they put her in the attic, with inadequate light and heat and no air conditioning in those days in the Education Building. It was just dreadful. Of course, Mr. Cox had a bias against Miss Whitice to begin with, and so I don't know whether he wanted to discourage her, but the letters she wrote about this were just terrible. I mean, it made me feel very sad to think that she had to do this.

MINK: Did she every try to speak up, fight back, to go to [E.C.] Moore?

DELANO: Yes, finally she fought back. She wrote to Sproul. And copies of the letter were sent to Hedrick (or whoever) and to Moore, I guess, and to the head of the art department at the time — about this mistreatment and the summary way in which Mr. Cox wanted to fire her. I'm getting mixed up here. I haven't finished Cox, and I haven't finished Breasted.

MINK: That's all right. It comes about the same time.

DELANO: It comes at the same time. I was speaking about moving Miss Whitice out and what troubles that caused. And then Mr. Breasted wanted steel shelves put all around the room where he could put this collection up of his books, and he wanted them bolted to the floor and to the walls. So there was quite an expense. Not only that, but he wanted the university to pay for the shipping of the books from Chicago, where his father had built up the collection, and pay the insurance on the whole thing. It was not to belong to the university. The thing he said was that the university could use them, but they couldn't take them out of the room. So, you see, it was all at the expense of the art department or the university in general. They had to rake up funds to do all of these things. This sort of maneuvering went on and on and on, and I know that Dr. Sproul and Hedrick were quite provoked at times. Then there was a coin collection which had been loaned to him from a man that had made collections of very ancient coins, and Breasted wanted to study these. Well, then, about that time he was sent to Washington for the war, and so he wanted the university to pay an insurance on the coin collection. He had the department, as well as Dr. Sproul, feel that we hadn't any benefit out of the coins because the insurance was not forthcoming. Anyhow, it seemed very difficult to understand his maneuvering in this thing.

MINK: He was somewhat of an opportunist, it would appear.

DELANO: Well, something. Personally, I never was in his way, so to speak, I didn't have to have my classes removed because of his wanting to take the room or anything as difficult as that. But he moved his family into the house that was adjacent to the lot at the place where I lived. I lived on Ohio, and there's a street behind this — Selby, I believe it was — and the Breasteds took this house. He was married to a lovely woman, and they had, I think, a couple of children. His wife was a sister to Mrs. Hocking. Dr. [Richard] Hocking was the young philosopher. He, too, was the son of a great philosopher, and so he came to UCLA about the same time the Breasteds did. So I got acquainted with Mrs. Hocking by chance. I can't remember now how I first met her, but she was just a charming person, and she wanted to go on a camping trip with me, painting, wanted to me to go out to Zuni, especially. Well, Dr. Hocking was going, and Bob [Robert Tyler] Lee, who was in the physical education department at that time. He was an art graduate, and he was doing stage sets and plays and dramas. I don't know exactly which department, but he cooperated with two or three departments to put on those large dramas. Bob Lee knew I went on my trips, and they tried to get me to go. Well, I figured that I would just be doing all of the cooking; I wouldn't get any painting done. It wasn't the kind of painting trip I wanted to take, with these people, although I think I would have enjoyed talking to them and getting better acquainted. But in those various encounters, Mrs. Hocking told me that she didn't see how Breasted was going to get along in the art department because he had never had a creative art course in his life, that it was all through books and he hadn't even taught art history. He would just bone up on it, I suppose. Sure enough, it just didn't work out, not only the personal thing — he would go over the head of anybody in the department (I guess anybody has a right to do that; I know I've done it) — but to run down the thing without discussing it, I think, was something that was deplorable. So he did go to the Los Angeles museum, and eventually he wound up in a type of boys' school in New England.

MINK: Boarding school?

DELANO: Kind of a boarding school, yes. And it seemed very sad. He had gotten, oh, I don't know, perhaps two or three times the salary at the Los Angeles museum that he was getting with us, and he had the chance to become a full professor later if he had been able to really cooperate with people in the department. So this went on. And then, Mr. Cox — did I finish with him?

MINK: Not yet, I don't think.

DELANO: It seems to me I left off something there — the way he treated Miss Gere, and how the faculty had to get together and finally see that she had her place. She needed the money. There was one other thing in explaining Mr. Cox. This is just my opinion; I don't know whether others felt this or not. He had a way of mentioning all the time that people were egotistical about their work, or that they were showing off. This seemed to bug him so much of the time that you often just wondered what to do. For example, in our work at the university, we are supposed to be working on things outside of the art department, outside of our teaching. We are supposed to do some kind of creative work, and if you're not writing a book or articles, you're doing creative painting and exhibiting-- specific things which count as the creative work in lieu of books. Each year, you are to hand in something, or to go to the office and tell about it and so on, and get it down in black and white. Then if you do, you might be criticized by Mr. Cox. This came out with Miss Whitice. He accused her of not doing outside work. Well, she was a very quiet craftsman. She wasn't in the limelight, but she taught the students to make beautiful things, with quality. When she was just sort of brutally asked to leave the next year, she sent this letter to the president and to the head of the department as well as to the provost and said that she would do more in the way of advertising her work. But here was an example of somebody who was truly modest; and yet Mr. Cox then, in the letter to her, accused her of not producing creative work on her own, you see . In my case, one time I said, "Mr. Cox, what are we to do? If we tell you that we've done something, then you criticize us as being a little egotistical about it." I was a little disturbed, you know. I was getting to the point to get up my nerve to go to Sproul about why we weren't promoted, and I did say something about, "And I think another thing, Mr. Cox, you run women down. Now I guess if you want to cut my head off, you can." And everybody at the meeting really laughed. I don't remember exactly what I said, but we did have discussions along these lines. It was a habit, you see, that he had, of harping on it so continuously that the people were somewhat repressed. And yet there were a lot of things that went along. I noticed in the file that there were exhibitions from time to time assembled with hard work by the staff to fill that gallery. We had no funds for hiring. I mean, now they have thousands of dollars behind the museum in the art department, but we had nothing in those days. And you brought things in at your own risk. We wanted to have a going concern. Well, I had assembled that exhibition of things from the Union Station and put it up, and it cost me a lot of time and effort and running around to get that stuff together. Well, he wrote a note to President Sproul and never mentioned who got the exhibit up at all. There were other cases like that, but he wrote about his own exhibition and put in a little file. So, I mean, maybe we were just mixed up about what he really intended, but it wasn't a very pleasant experience and there was much talk about it. Then losing money for the department--this was another thing that happened with us and Mr. Cox. Bring up this example: Columbia University, in the art department, didn't have nearly the amount that we had, he used to say. Well, money values had changed; and besides that, our art department was quite different from Columbia. I went to Columbia one summer and poked around to see what they had in their collections, and I found that we did have a much more going concern, much more modern, too.

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
MARCH 18, 1971

MINK: At the close of the last session, Annita, you were talking about Professor Breasted and how he came as a member of the art department.

DELANO: Yes, to teach art history.

MINK: To teach art history. And how he was soon out because of the unwarranted use of the university, taking advantage of it in so many various ways, and just generally being objectionable. You wanted to go on to talk a little more about some of the things that brought about Breasted's departure.

DELANO: Yes. I don't know the exact details of just why he finally left the university, but after his period in Washington with the war duties in the army, I believe, he returned to us, and then he had this idea of more or less eliminating the art department, or so most of us thought.

MINK: What was he going to put in its place?

DELANO: Well, he wanted to have just the history of art and put it in the Letters and Science. He degraded the art department, more or less, by calling it a vocational school, as though everything we taught there was vocational, I doubt that he ever went to a real vocational school to see the difference--like, for example, to go down to one that we have here in this city.

MINK: The Wiggins School?

DELANO: The Wiggins School, yes.

MINK: Would you say that this stance of his was due perhaps more to his background in history?

DELANO: Yes, it certainly was. He was from Princeton, as I remember; and they had, at that time at least, no creative courses, say, in painting or sculpture or design or crafts.

MINK: It was all just the history of art?

DELANO: It was all just the history of art — well, history in general, I guess.

MINK: No art department with history of art per se?

DELANO: His background was in the history of archeology. No, I wouldn't say exactly it was just the history of art. He had training with his own father in Egypt, and one would really have to go back and look at his references.

MINK: Was he really more like his father, an Egyptologist?

DELANO: While he was with us, he was working on a book having to do with the slave figures from Egypt, the ancient miniature figures that wore put in the tombs. He finally did bring out quite an interesting book that was delayed during the wartime, but I think it came out later. So most of his interest was on Egypt. Anyhow, this attitude which he had, he outlined in a letter to Provost Dykstra.

MINK: Which you saw in the files?

DELANO: Yes, this I saw in the files.

MINK: What was the date of that letter?

DELANO: That letter was May 16, 1945, Breasted to Dykstra, in which he said, "At Berkeley the need for a split between vocational-liberal arts aspects of the arts has long been recognized by establishing the School of Architecture, the Department of Decorative Art," and he puts in parentheses, "(largely vocational), and the Department of Art (mainly humanistic) "--that' s also in parentheses. Now, actually a committee from Berkeley stood up for our art department. At different times, committees, I noticed, with men on the committees from Berkeley — sort of university-wide committees — whenever it came to reorganizing a department, they stood up for what we had. So had Dr. Moore and various people of the administration. They recognized the value of our art department with the pattern which we had — which was to carry on with the actual creativeness in the arts and to make it as deep and as broad as we could. But so often we had people like Breasted who came along and wanted to emphasize the history at the neglect of these other subjects, calling them vocational, as he did in this case.

MINK: Wasn't there any opposition in the art department to what he wanted to do?

DELANO: Yes, indeed there was. I didn't find anything in letters to the administration at the time about it, but there certainly were discussions in the faculty meetings.

MINK: Can you tell me something about the people that were most vociferous and about the discussions that went on?

DELANO: Well, there was always a feeling of reluctance on the part of some of the staff in the art department to get up in discussions--that is, with the administration-- because they probably thought, "Well, most of us don't have our doctor's degrees." For example, they didn't give doctor's degrees for the creative arts, so that put them in a lowly spot to begin with. But if we had someone like Mr. Cox who had to speak for us, he had a chip on his shoulder about the creative painting and sculpture. He wanted to have it mostly the decorative arts, so there was a split there. So all of these different, I think you'd call them, dichotomies in our thinking were a disadvantage to the uniqueness of the art department, trying to keep it as a whole.

MINK: I guess what I was trying to figure out is, was there anyone there who was bold enough to be a spokesman for the whole group, to sort of try to put these people in their place — like Cox and Breasted?

DELANO: I can't remember any one outstanding person who did go against them.

MINK: Did everybody just sort of lie down and let him walk all over there?

DELANO: Well, I don't know if they did that. I know that Breasted talked so much against the art department that friends that we had from other departments told us about it. Then the discussions came on, and he probably was quite sincere in thinking that it should be a divided department or banish it altogether. He had no understanding of it. This is the sort of a thing that I gained from his sister-in-law.

MINK: This is Breasted or Cox?

DELANO: This is Breasted.

MINK: Oh, you gained this from his sister-in-law?

DELANO: No, not altogether.

MINK: Who was his sister-in-law?

DELANO: Well, his wife's sister was Mrs. Hocking.

MINK: Oh, that's right. You spoke about that in the other interview, about how she said that Breasted was really not equipped to teach.

DELANO: Not equipped to fit in with the ideals that we had in the art department. Of course, I didn't question her very much on that, but we'd already had some troubles. He had arguments with different people in the department, like Kenneth Kingrey, I remember, had quite an argument with him and thought that the kind of art he was teaching shouldn't be taught in a university. So, he was sort of running down the different separate fields that we tried to cover.

MINK: Where was Kingrey?

DELANO: Kingrey, now? He's the head of an art department in Honolulu.

MINK: Yes, but what was he teaching?

DELANO: He was teaching, I believe, design in the advertising arts.

MINK: This was considered by Breasted to be vocational?

DELANO: That's right. He called the historical field humanistic, as though all the rest had nothing to do with people.

MINK: All the rest was inhuman.

DELANO: [laughter] Inhuman, I guess you'd say. He was trying to divide the art department. He said that the university is far behind the other ranking state-supported institutions. Well, we got busy and found a great many examples of curricula from other institutions and found that he was wrong about that. There were many schools, including Harvard, that included the painting and design and various courses of the kind — that is, what might be called practice art courses. I looked to a sort of theme that runs through a great deal of the troubles we've had in thinking of the courses or the curriculum, the layout of the department, the theme of a certain connectedness in the arts, where in any rich, deep, and broad study of a field where art is integrated is worthwhile; and that, for example, if we'd call some courses design, there could be all sorts of objects that students might be designing or interested in working out. These have their far-reaching effects in everyday life, all sorts of objects that we use; and, especially in a period when we have mass production, we need leaders who can carry on design because it's so far-reaching. We can't just look to a vocational school per se to carry out these ideals. So it's most valuable.

MINK: I suppose it's somewhat parallel to the situation that's going on now in the university where, for example, they're talking about the fact that speech and journalism are not central to the main objectives of the university. And you notice, for example, that there are articles in the [Los Angeles] Times. I noticed an article by Art Seidenbaum just recently in which he stated that perhaps it isn't the role of the university to teach journalism, to teach people how to become commentators, but the whole problem area of communication, which has been more or less crystallized by Vice-President Agnew's tirade against the media, for example, pinpoints or highlights the problems that exist today in the area of communications.

DELANO: Exactly.

MINK: And this is really a logical area in which the university should be concerned to train students at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels. And I think maybe that's somewhat similar to this experience you're talking about in art.

DELANO: Yes. It's the same problem we met in earlier years — I think during the wartime — that they decided to have the School of Medicine or the hospital and training of nurses and doctors on the campus. This was resisted by the same type of people. So many of them came from Europe, and I just wondered about that. I wondered whether it goes back to some of the insistence on the German philosophy that's in so many of the universities, where the earlier philosophies concerned more with conceptual knowledge — perhaps I could put it that way — had to do with what was thought was the most sacred kind of training. I found some quotations from Dr. Ernest Carroll Moore, who had been the provost and who originally had the vision for building UCLA and for adding years to teacher training. I found that in a book called Education and Society by members of the faculty of the University of California, done in 1944 and printed by the University [of California] Press. It was the seventy-fifth year of the founding of the university, and they asked people from the education department to put together a series of talks. Dr. Moore led by giving one on what he called "Out of the Living Past. " He speaks of these dichotomies and disparagements which are nearly endless. "Plato's preference for conceptual knowledge and his decrying of sense information was, and is, a long -lasting entailment upon the activities of human beings." Then he went on to say that some of these dichotomies are still with us where one makes a "distinction between what is called liberal and illiberal education, the education which belongs to a free man and the education which is fit only for a slave. " They made a differentiation there, or pure and applied science. May I interject a thought of my own there? I tried to keep track of instances of this sort of thing just as you've brought in about journalism. I remember about science when Caltech had this sort of thing to prove, and I know the head of Caltech [Harold Brown] came out with the whole idea that there was no way in which a scientist could be a scientist without doing the actual work and working in teams together to accomplish anything. He couldn't see any way in which you could just divide a so-called pure science, as though you shouldn't dirty your hands by having to erect machines or do things that might be called impure. There was a whole newspaper article by him.

MINK: Well, it's quite true that this whole matter of pure versus the applied permeated, for example, the physics department. It's been discussed by Knudsen in his interview.

DELANO: That's interesting, the theoretical against the practical.

MINK: The practical against the theoretical, and how this actually split the department and caused people to be downgraded, and to be fired, and all of this.

DELANO: Exactly.

MINK: And I think it's somewhat similar to the experience the art department had.

DELANO: Yes, and they may be having it today. Then one strange thing: we had people who were Communists in the art department--students, some of whom later became professors; and they were always trying to find anything they could tie onto to divide the department. Divide and conquer was the cry, I guess. So any of these ancient divisions that were likely to come out were pounced upon and promoted, like one of these men got up at a city conference that we had on art teaching and said that design was dead. Well, you know, earlier Mrs. Sooy had said painting was dead. These silly sort of antagonisms, you know, for different purposes, arising throughout the years to split. Who are they conquering when such things take place? We need the whole rounded experience no matter whether a person is just beginning or whether he intends to go on as a great genius in the field. He needs to get the grasp of the whole, no matter what he is training for . Then, of course, some people tried to divide it by calling it — well, we said vocational against liberal — and disparagement, by contrast with the spiritual. Material against spiritual — this is another thing that some departments run up against. All these dichotomies have left their mark on the art department. We have had them from time to time, and I guess we are still having them.

MINK: What success did Dr. Breasted have in trying to persuade the president that his theories with regard to the department were correct?

DELANO: I never found out exactly what took place, but he was asked to leave the art department, and yet I find no documents about it. Everybody was glad when he left. He took a job at the Los Angeles museum.

MINK: You don't know why he was asked to leave?

DELANO: No, except that he antagonized the members of the art department by this thing of trying to take the history out of the art department. We had had history in reference to the types of curricula we had. Earlier years, say, when it was a normal school, the same department gave what was considered a type of history for people who were there for that number of years. And it did range from over all the world of art history — Oriental, American, Indian, South American, Mexican and so on, and island groups, as well as the whole outlay of early Mediterranean cultures on through European art history and so on. So it was worldwide.

MINK: Well, now, you mentioned this in connection with Nellie Huntington Gere, and how she traveled to collect all this information. . .

DELANO: ...and amassed many slides for it...

MINK: ...and what thanks did she get for it, but then someone was saying, "Well, after all, she was sixty-five, and she was supposed to retire; so really the university wasn't giving her the short end of the stick."

DELANO: Well, the whole staff was behind her, wanting her to go on until she reached the age of seventy, if she liked. So the administration was thoroughly behind her. You see, that incident was when Mr. Cox was head. He taught some of the history courses, but he had this hang-up, shall I say, on a certain harangue over the way people lived and the art that was expressed in their surroundings, the towns, more or less the art of the cities. This was the thing that he thought about, whether it was in the Middle Ages or. . . .

MINK: You mentioned his disgust with Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles.

DELANO: Yes, in Los Angeles. But it's like today. We see great wrongs but how much good are we getting out of the harangue over it? It seems to me someone who can really go to the people who are dividing the property to begin with, like Westwood, and putting in a park — we suffer from lack of places — and understand the system. Perhaps the Janss people — let's just put it bluntly — maybe they didn't want a park because they'd have that much less money. They could sell more lots by not having a park. But if a group could have been organized by Mr. Cox, since he wanted beauty everywhere, and had forced them to put in a park, then we'd have it today. This is just my opinion.

MINK: In other words, too much haranguing and no action?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Put your mouth where your money is. Something like that.

DELANO: Or the kind of argument where you kill something to do something else. Why bother with the fine arts? This is what Mr. Cox used to annoy me with, because he would say, "Down with the fine arts and up with the art of the city." This is wrong, it seems to me. It shocks somebody, those would tend to lose, and perhaps they don't realize that their words are taken by students especially as something that should be taken for gospel, almost .

MINK: Well, after Mr. Breasted left....

DELANO: I think I spoke about it last time. He went to the Los Angeles museum, and he had what seemed like a well-thought-out plan, but he couldn't work with the people there. I heard from Frances Nugent, who was working there then (she's passed away since, but she had been a former student of ours and taught art history for a while, and then went to the Los Angeles museum in the educational program which they have down there), and she told me that Mr. Breasted was just insufferable. They couldn't get along with him. He antagonized a great many people. I knew Mr. [Albert Arthur] Woodward, too, who was in charge of the history — the museum then was history, science and art — and I had heard him talk a great many times in the anthropological association which I belonged to, and I'd been to many of the meetings that Dr. Beals had formulated for the beginnings of anthropology on the campus. So I knew Dr. Woodward. He, too, just thought that Dr. Breasted was so difficult to work with. He couldn't allow people to carry on their own ideas without inflicting them with the idea that they knew little. He just, in other words, didn't know how to encourage people or to really be a good administrator, in the case of the Los Angeles museum. So, in no time at all, he was asked to leave there. Then I saw him after that. He told me that he suffered; he knew that he had a difficulty in getting along with people. Well, let's see. Did I mention about Mr. Cox coming, and then how President Sproul relieved him of the chairmanship of the department, finally? I think it was due to the fact that he had a great deal of trouble in keeping track of the finances of the department, letting money go from our budget, not building it up. And having difficulty in having classes meet and there would be no instructor; and there would be a great many ex-students hired so that long lists--I could look them up but I did see a great many who were recent students hired at very little money to come in at the last minute, you know, and fill in for these classes. He was not a good administrator. Let's put it bluntly. Now, there were some nice things about him. I'm speaking now of Mr. Cox. When the department was smaller and we were on the Westwood campus, we had a woman, Olive Newcomb, who taught ceramics. She was a good soul, something like Miss Gere and Miss Chandler and that early group, sort of the salt of the earth, you might say. Well, Miss Newcomb had many friends outside the department, and one day she had a group over to her house, and in this group was Miss Chouinard, who had built the Chouinard Art Institute. And they were having a little session and making some pottery or doing some kind of extra decorating on ceramics, wherein they had to have melted wax. Miss Newcomb had a little kettle of wax heating on the stove, and rest of the group outdoors. The thing caught fire, and in her eagerness to do something about it, she grabbed the handle with her bare hand and it burnt so that she dropped it and this boiling was splattered onto her neck and face and arms. It was just dreadful. She screamed and they came running in; and, of course, they got her to the hospital, but she died in a few days. It was so unnecessary. Mr. Cox was greatly touched by this, so he arranged for a little memorial service for Miss Newcomb. He put out a little leaflet with the picture of one of his vases, a Greek vase which he drew — he liked to draw delicate detail in black and white. So he had this memorial for Miss Newcomb. He had hymns and chorales, different songs and so on. I think she was a Christian Scientist, so there was some hymn by Mary Baker Eddy incorporated in this. The friends who came were greatly touched by this service. The art department was there, the students, Dr. Moore, and so on. There was something along this line that we didn't have from some of the other people who were heads of the department. And I think the administration got a kick out of Mr. Cox sometimes, because he was an artist from the old country. He wore these fancy blouses with ruffles at the wrist, and it was a sort of traditional sculptor's blouse that had come down through the ages, I guess, in England. I think he gave one of these smocks to Laura Andreson, who later took on the ceramics work. The administration got a kick out of his telling of stories and making poems out of almost anything. But to come down to practical matters, you know, the art department was running behind, and we didn't have our budget, and we didn't have promotions. It was about that time that — I think I've mentioned it — I went to Sproul about why the artists didn't get promotions in the art department. Then Mr. [Robert S.] Hilpert was named as chairman to come in, and right away he got promotions for people, just one after the other. He brought the department up to where it was on a going basis. I noticed the difference in the letters. Mr. Cox's letters were all carefully hand printed in black ink to the administration, and Mr. Hilpert' s were everything that business should be. He didn't just pen his letters, but he wrote them so that you could understand exactly what he was up to. And if he didn't understand about the different titles, whether we should have an associate or an assistant and the basis for all this, he soon found out from the administration. There wasn't any of this monkey business going on anymore. One thing that Mr. Hilpert did right away was to bring S. Macdonald-Wright into the art department. He thought we needed somebody who had a name as a painter, and so Mr. Wright was brought in. Later he was a little sorry. Mr. Hilpert called him a prima donna in the art department. He didn't want to have to do any of the necessary things that instructors have to do. He didn't even want to do the grading or anything. He just wanted to be the great mogul to stand up and lecture a little bit to his classes and that they'd all kowtow to him. He had to use rooms that other people would use after his hours were finished. For example, Mrs. Abramovitch, who was teaching there then, had her class in there just ahead of his, I believe, and when he came in he would throw her work into a corner. Her work was piled neatly on her desk, and he had a desk on the other side of the room. Well, he wanted to use that desk, so he just threw her work in a corner on the floor. This just about brought her to tears. The poor woman was already in a dreadful state of mind. She actually had a nervous breakdown over the plight of the Jews under Hitler. This preyed on her mind so much that she just had to quit teaching. She just never got over it. She is still at home and does her own painting and her work, and she taught children's classes; but she couldn't put up with somebody like Mr. Wright when she was already in an agonized state of mind. Actually I don't know what you would have to be, but you'd have to be tough-minded to be around Mr. Wright.

MINK: Did you have any trouble with him?

DELANO: Well, I learned something about his character long before he came to the university.

MINK: Through your work with the people at Caltech?

DELANO: As painters, as a painter. Did I tell you anything about that once?

MINK: No, I don't think you did.

DELANO: Well, you see, Mr. Wright came back to California sometime, let's say, in the early twenties, and he gave a talk about Cezanne. But he was so arrogant, I marked him right then as somebody who thought he was the only one that had been to Europe, and who was arrogant about what he knew of the art at that time. Well, it happens there are a lot of people who had been to Europe and knew about Cezanne's work. He gave some courses in painting, private courses, and he had Fannie Kerns and Vivian Stringfield, two art teachers — Mrs. Kearns was from Pasadena- and these people organized the classes for him. It seems he was always lucky to find some women who would do the work for him, and he didn't have to turn a hand, just stand up and talk the way he said his master talked in France.

MINK: And he figured he was in that role.

DELANO: He was the master. And so these women would come to his classes, mostly women and just adore him.

MINK: Drool.

DELANO: Yes, just drool over his demonstrations of the way Cezanne painted. Well, I remember just looking in on one of these classes, and I decided it wasn't for me. I didn't need a teacher like that. So I don't know whether he ever liked me in the beginning, because I sort of saw through some of this. But at the same time, he rather liked somebody who would stand up to him, and I know when he came to the art department, I said something that made him laugh, because I sort of saw through what he was doing. In other words, if he could bully you into a position, then that was what he loved to do.

MINK: What did you say to him?

DELANO: Well, I can't remember the incident, but it was just something about our courses. I just don't remember, but I do remember that I crossed him. I said, "Now you can cut my head off if you want to," and I kind of drew my hand across my neck; and he laughed and thought it was the funniest thing that I had the nerve to contradict him, you know. He did have this sort of arrogance about his talk — it sort of got over to a lot of people. And Mr. Hilpert, of course, saw through him, too, and he called him a prima donna. But some of the students adored him and got a lot out of his courses. He went into a sort of Orientalism in later years where he, I guess, wanted to be a Buddhist. Perhaps he is one, I don't know. He was a colorful figure, let's say that.

MINK: You were going to say something about a little footnote that you had mentioned to me at the beginning of the interview about Professor Hungerland.

DELANO: Mrs. Sooy went to Europe one time on a leave, and on the way back--this was kind of, I guess, towards the end of the Second World War, she met this handsome man, Helmut Hungerland. He was coming away from Europe because, I think, he'd been in a concentration camp.

MINK: Was he Jewish, then?

DELANO: No, he wasn't Jewish, but the Nazis didn't like his way of thinking and his teaching and so on. That was what he told Mr. Cox. He wanted to get into an art department, and so therefore he made up to Mrs. Sooy, and she thought he'd be just great. His background sounded just fine; he'd had all kinds of experiences and he seemed to be modern and progressive in outlook. So she arranged to have him come to the art department to be looked over as a possible person to teach art history. So he came.

MINK: The records, incidentally, there indicate that although he was hired in as associate professor the budget didn't really provide anything more than enough for an assistant professor.

DELANO: That's right. It was a mistake of Mr. Cox. Mr. Cox had to correct it, and he actually asked him to come in as an assistant professor. This would mean that he wouldn't be permanent unless he went before another committee and was tenured. But, you see, Mr. Cox would get confused. He'd put in the wrong title or the wrong amount of money and so on. This happened with Hungerland, too. But then that was corrected, and he did come in as assistant professor. He seemed to fit in and was liked. He made friends with a lot of the students in the stagecraft courses and with people who were carrying on the theatrical plays, like Bob Lee, I remember. There was a whole group of young people that he ran around with, and they seemed to have a good time. It wasn't long that he was asking the office if he could have a little leave of absence to get married. There was a very attractive young woman teaching in the home economics department. I believe. He wanted to go to Hawaii, where she had a contract to teach for the summer, and so that arrangement was made. He had a few days off and then had to come back. In the fall of that year, they rented the house of Dr. [Franklin P.] Rolfe, I believe it was, of the English department — people I knew. We had a sort of a housewarming for the Hungerlands, and the Rolfes were to go away on a sabbatical. At that party, Mrs. Hungerland announced that she was going to have a baby, and Dr. Hungerland threw a fit. He just rolled in the ground and bit his arms and just thought it was dreadful. He didn't want a baby. Nobody seems to know what went between them, but Mrs. Hungerland was frightened to death of him, and Mrs. Sooy hid her away where Hungerland couldn't find her. There was more gossip that year than anyone could ever imagine on a campus, going on about these personalities. It seemed that then Hungerland started to be seen in public with Dr. Isabel Creed, who taught in the philosophy department. Since it was public, I guess it's all right to speak about it. They were seen in the tearooms around the [Westwood] Village, and then in the summer of that year they went to Mexico together. After that, Mrs. Sooy helped Mrs. Hungerland get a divorce. Mr. Cox and the head of the philosophy department. Dr. [Donald A.] Piatt, decided that it would be for the good of the students and the courses that these people were teaching if the two would just leave the university. So they did. They went to Berkeley. I know that Mr. Hungerland was active in the Journal of Aesthetics — that's a magazine devoted to aesthetics and he took part in that — and his wife, Isabel, wrote articles through the years. I guess they're still up there. There was more excitement during the previous year to the time they went to Berkeley so that the students were greatly disrupted and put on about.

MINK: Mr. Hilpert was well liked by the students and the faculty then?

DELANO: Yes, he was a very good chairman. I'll say that one of the most outstanding things about him was that he immediately corrected the situation that the art department was in and had been in for many years during the whole period of the thirties and the forties when no promotions had been given by Mr. Cox. He seemed to have such trouble in that. He was sort of against women. And, oh, yes, there was a thing about Warren Cheney. He wanted get some more men in the department, so he hired Warren Cheney. Even in the middle of the year, Cheney was put out.

MINK: What was Cheney's problem?

DELANO: Cheney was a fine teacher of sculpture. I don't know whether there was some jealousy there between Cox and him or what, but when Cheney came in, he heard all of this gossip about no one being promoted and what we were going to do about Mr. Cox. So he decided that he would take it on his shoulders and go to the administration and tell on Mr. Cox. But somebody told on Cheney before he had a chance to go higher up, and so Mr. Cox got rid of him that day and told him to leave. This doesn't appear in any of the notes or anything, but this is the understanding that all of us had. Mrs. Sooy, being the one that couldn't be put out, the only one with tenure, went to the administration on the whole thing and told them that Mr. Cox had allowed the money to go and didn't make promotions and so on; and so then Dr. Sproul said, "Well, I'll fix this." And he did tell him one time at a party, one of his stag parties, why didn't he stop being the chairman and he could go back to his own work and not have to just put up with all of these tedious letters and hiring and firing of people and so on. And so that's what happened.

MINK: Apparently that appealed to him.

DELANO: It did. There's a letter in here in which he expresses himself very well on that whole point about going back to creative work and so on and not having to pen any more letters. [tape turned off] Dr. Sproul wrote a letter to Mr. Cox and suggested that "In accordance with the policy rotation of departmental chairmen, which is encouraged throughout the university," he said, "I am proposing to relieve you of the chairmanship of the Department of Art on June 30."

MINK: What was the date of this letter?

DELANO: This letter was written May 23, 1944.

MINK: This was really just sort of a polite follow-up to what he had already told him at the party, then.

DELANO: Yes. And he said, "And in your place I'm going to appoint Mr. R. S. Hilpert, who discharged the duties of the chairmanship in a most satisfactory manner while you were away this year. May I take this opportunity to thank you most heartily for your long, faithful and successful leadership of the department. I hope and believe that Mr. Hilpert will carry on in the tradition of harmonious cooperation that you have established. With all good wishes. Sincerely."

MINK: Well, now, you said that his letter to Sproul really gave him some heat.

DELANO: The reply to this gives somewhat the picture of Mr. Cox. "Without attributing or claiming any telepathic powers, I am convinced that your letter of May 23 is an answer to some questions that of late have risen up to plague me. The recent vacation had discovered long dormant, underneath the lush verbiage of departmental correspondence, a few creative energies still struggling to unfold. These neglected growths had disturbed the nice equilibrium established between the pedagogue and artist and revived desires to quit the chairmanship and concentrate upon teaching and creating art."

MINK: He's very flowery.

DELANO: Oh, he was always breaking out into poetry — just give him the chance.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
APRIL 1, 1971

MINK: Last time we were talking about the end of Cox's administration in some detail and about some of the people that came around that time, and you wanted to continue on in about this same period.

DELANO: What I would like to bring out is the difficulty in the understanding of a person like Mr. Cox, who had a background so different from the American plan of education. He had been brought up in England; he went to a royal academy of art; and he had certain traditional points of view. Then, when he came to this country, he took the job at Columbia University under Mr. Dow, and apparently Arthur Wesley Dow was a person who charmed everyone that came within his influence. Mr. Cox was one who agreed with his general plan of art education. But the personal qualities that Mr. Cox had in relation to the department I think stood in the way of the development. Now, this was a young university. It was just a mere beginning. And yet the people that came here brought certain backgrounds, let's say, including all these people that came from Europe; and somehow there usually was a core of training and attitudes and principles which the department itself had already worked out before it became a part of the university. Those were so basic.

MINK: I wonder if you could respond to a question that has always interested me. It seems that the university, as you said, was such a young university. It really hadn't obtained the academic stature or the rank, say, among colleges and universities that it now has, like eleventh of the great universities in the country. And yet in this early period we were able to attract many of these noted scholars from Europe. Art is just one field in which we were able to do this. There were many other fields in which we did it. If our institution had the same relation to total educational picture that perhaps some small state college in Wisconsin might have at just about this time in 1971, you wouldn't see these scholars going to some small town in Wisconsin. So I'm wondering if our climate here and the beauty of this region was a sort of carrot that we could hold out to these scholars to draw them here; and they were willing to come as much for that as they were for coming to the university.

DELANO: Yes, this was very true. I think many that I know about in the art department came at lower salaries, even. Some of them left their places where they had been promised, in the case of Mr. Hilpert, a full professorship there if he'd stay in Minnesota. He came here at a reduced position and salary, although he had been promised to be put ahead. I'll come back to that in a moment. Mr. Cox was made a full professor at Columbia University, and yet when he came here, he raved about the beauty of the surroundings of Westwood — of course, it was very much more undeveloped as far as houses and buildings were concerned, a lot of open fields and the hills in their natural state and so forth — but I remember his making remarks about hearing mockingbirds sing on the campus, and he'd think of the contrast between that and the buildings of Columbia University in the heart of New York.

MINK: On Morningside Heights.

DELANO: Yes, where he felt that you couldn't have that natural effect. He would have done very well, perhaps, today, with all of this interest in the environment. I was talking about Mr. Cox's personal behavior in relation to the faculty. It seemed that he had a way of arguing that if people said anything about their achievements or what they'd been doing, he almost felt that it was egotistical. Everybody on the staff had this feeling about him, and if you brought up — well, like, suppose you had published a book, you hardly said anything about it because he might think you were showing off. This applied especially to the painters and to others. I know Mr. Hilpert felt it very strongly because, while not exhibiting or painting — although he had been trained in a broad way in his art education — still he had been offered this position and in fact had been working on the Carnegie Foundation. This was a national place that he had, the committees that he worked on. They'd been doing that before he came. Nobody on our staff knew much about what he had done beforehand. Mr. Cox never told about it.

MINK: Did Cox know pretty well?

DELANO: He certainly did, because I have the letters here which Mr. Hilpert, for some strange reason, put into his own files before he died. They are the personal letters between Cox and Mr. Hilpert where he enticed him to come out here.

MINK: What did he hold out to him?

DELANO: He didn't hold out anything. He was so fickle in the way he talked about what he might get and what he might not get here, till you didn't know where he stood. Mr. Hilpert was extremely loyal. He was that sort of person, with almost a religious attitude about everything he seemed to do. He was loyal, and he finally came; but he gave up so much to get here, and then he didn't get a promotion right away. And yet he played along. Finally, when he went back for another summer, I guess, in Minnesota, he thought he'd write to the president about what he thought his chances were of getting ahead. And then there's a letter from Hedrick to Dr. Sproul...

MINK: These are in the chancellor's file that you have been examining?

DELANO: ...yes, in April, 1940, in which he tried to pin Mr. Cox down to whether he really wanted Mr. Hilpert. Again, the only way I could explain this sort of thing is because it happened with so many other people that he could not praise a person without at the same time slamming him. These busy men like Sproul and Hedrick, it would just put a doubt in their mind: Does Mr. Cox really want Mr. Hilpert? This is the sort of thing. And so here it comes out just exactly what we had to put up with for eight years with nobody getting promotions. He asked him whether he really wanted him, and Cox said, finally, when he was pinned down, that he did want Mr. Hilpert, that he couldn't get anybody that would do the work as well, and so on. But he had to just sort of squirm around, you see, before he'd really come out all for someone. This happened to many people.

MINK: You said that you didn't really discover these things about Mr. Hilpert's background until it came time for you to write his memorial.

DELANO: Yes. Mr. Cox was with us many years. He wasn't the chairman the full time, but he came as chairman when Mrs. Sooy was released from the chairmanship, and then he stayed on until he died, which was maybe a couple of years after that. So maybe he was here ten or twelve years, let's say. We had this sort of equivocal attitude towards people and subjects. We didn't know where you'd stand. He would write a little newspaper article against painting, and it would be against sculpture; and yet he was making sculpture and he had painting in the department. But he never came just straight out for things. And it was a mannerism. Mr. Cox didn't let the rest of the faculty know about the attainments of Mr. Hilpert before he came here.

MINK: Because he couldn't praise anybody.

DELANO: He couldn't praise anybody. That's putting it in plain words, yes. And so I was really surprised to find this in the records.

MINK: How was it that you were selected to write his memorial?

DELANO: For Mr. Hilpert? I don't know. I don't remember now who was the head of the whole committee. They pick out somebody that knows the person.

MINK: I see. And they just asked you to do it?

DELANO: Yes, and I wrote really three of them for art people who died. But the people who were on this committee with me — well, say, Mrs. [Archine] Fetty, for example, I asked her if she would help on it; and she was very busy and I really did all of it. She said, "Well, Mr. Hilpert didn't do anything." All this time she knew him, too, and we just didn't know what he did.

MINK: Mrs. Fetty was...

DELANO: ...was on our staff. Still is.

MINK: You haven't talked about her too much.

DELANO: She comes in later years. She is a full professor now.

MINK: But at this time she was just an associate or an assistant professor?

DELANO: I'd have to look it up. She was one of our former students in interior design. I just gave that as an example.

MINK: Were there others on the faculty who felt the same way as Mrs. Fetty about his achievements?

DELANO: Well, I don't know. He was well liked in this sense: that as soon as he became chairman he was very much more businesslike in conducting the affairs of the department and in building up our money again, our budget, which had been allowed to go down to where we didn't have enough money to hire people at a level where we could really build a department. And if the people who were retained in the department weren't promoted, as they weren't for so many years, then there was something wrong. Well, Mr. Hilpert really looked into this and found out and it comes out in many of the files here from the provost's office, that people could be promoted for their creative work, such as in painting, or sculpture, or design accomplishments, and so forth. And they didn't have to write books.

MINK: I think you said that while Hilpert was responsible for getting promotions and this was to his credit, however, he brought into the department — didn't he? — a group of people who subsequently — and we've discussed this — you learn, in various ways, were card-carrying Communists. Do you think that Hilpert was a person that was easily dissuaded or persuaded by people, and that these people took advantage of him?

DELANO: Yes, I think they might have. I think that maybe one or two were so much more skillful in their blandishments and in their attitudes towards others in appraising exactly what attitudes to take towards people, to get on the good side of them. Yes, I think that he might have been taken in by them. Yes.

MINK: You don't think that he was aware of their persuasions or of their plans to disrupt the department or to disrupt the university?

DELANO: No, I don't think the things they did were that overt at the time. It started in the thirties, just about, when there was what they called the United Front. There were so many organizations formed all over the country; this wasn't just here.

MINK: During the Depression times.

DELANO: Yes. And you were urged to take part, and there was a lot of activity in organizations of all kinds — in the movies and in the writers' organizations and so on; in the artists, Artists' Equity for one. There would be perhaps a few left-wing people in most of these organizations, especially there to get converts. Also they would be in the university because they would like to entice young people of that age to get into the party, or young teachers.

MINK: Well, now, we've said that there can't be any naming of names in this interview, but that you had agreed to talk in sort of general terms about how this group went about doing these things and some of the things that happened, and how you feel that they were responsible for this, to show and demonstrate how they tended to disrupt the university.

DELANO: Yes, I might say something in general about this if we can keep to a general trend. There was this little group with one man who I know was especially a member of the party because his card fell on the floor in my office where he had a desk.

MINK: Accidentally or on purpose?

DELANO: Accidentally, I imagine, because I don't think he wanted me to know that he was a member, although he tried very hard to get me to become one, so I did know that way. But he never told me that he was a full-fledged member. He organized meetings outside the art department and it had to do with the painters' group. He enticed a number of the younger ones close to his age — although I think he was the oldest of that group, they were all young — to meet outside. I went to Mr. Hilpert and told him that I was left out of these meetings that had to do with the painting, and they v7ould come back to the department and announce a whole lot of things about policy, running the affairs of the painting group because it had become larger by this time (and so had all the other areas), and that I felt, now that Miss Chandler had resigned, that I was the senior member in the painting area, as a painter and I ought to have some say.

MINK: And yet you were left out?

DELANO: Yes, I was left out. Then Mr. Hilpert told them that I must be included, so I went to one of their outside meetings, and there was a strange hush all that evening. Just my being there, I felt, was something they didn't like.

MINK: Would you say that you had a self -consciousness about it because you knew that you had gone to Hilpert and said that you wanted to be included, and you thought they might have known that you had done this? Or do you think that they purposely were excluding you, unaware of what you' d done .

DELANO: Well, they didn't know where I stood. They knew, by this time, that I wouldn't become a member. Back in the thirties it was very difficult to find out much — at least it was for me, I didn't know where to turn to find out — about what communism meant. Later I found books that I could buy and did buy quite a number of them, and I bought the originals. This is where I really started to find out for myself. I was astounded, for example, at the first things I read about their attitude towards history and their manipulation of what I considered history. That was one of the first things that struck me about it. And then I was greatly influenced by an article which John Dewey had written for the Forum magazine, I believe it was called, which he titled, "Why I Am Not a Communist." And I think that influenced me more than anything I ever read.

MINK: I think that's a famous article.

DELANO: Yes. And I did find, after he became ninety years old, that they published a thick volume of Dewey — many other books about him, too, many of which I've bought throughout all these years since the thirties. But this thick volume that came out when he was quite old has a thick chapter, a part of the book, that contains a listing of all the articles and books that he wrote. That would form a little book in itself, there's so many. But it takes his whole development. I didn't want to get off on John Dewey; I want to get back to this group and their doings. Back then, I didn't know; I mean, I was confused myself because I knew that John Dewey had been a socialist. But after I knew him better and what he stood for, and went to the Barnes Foundation in the early thirties, you know, I found out that his views were very much modified. So it was difficult to know where to stand. I wasn't really a person greatly interested in politics anyway. I wasn't certainly going to follow communism or anything that extreme, and yet I didn't consider myself just too conservative. So then there was another meeting.

MINK: What transpired at this meeting in which you were, or felt you were, excluded?

DELANO: They just didn't talk; they didn't do anything. They just had some tea and coffee.

MINK: So it wasn't a policy meeting, in other words?

DELANO: It was a policy meeting without discussion. Then, later, there was another one at Mrs. Brown's house (Dorothy Brown, who was in the department at that time; Mr. Hilpert had gotten her in to teach). And one member of this group came with a list of the committees. It must have been the beginning of a semester. I remember that he put himself on seven and he put everybody else (who was there from the group of painters) on committees but didn't put me on one. Not that I cared to be on these committees particularly, but I was a senior member. Miss Chandler had been, previous to my time, and had decided within this small group what the painters should do and so on in reference to the department as a whole. And here I was left out, and being eased out, as it were. Yet all of them had been my students. I had had them in my classes. I sort of was amused by it; at the same time, I thought it was a little dangerous. I didn't know what to think. I could take it if they didn't think I was good enough to have ideas, but it was sort of a ruthless barging ahead with some kind of behind-the-scenes idea of having a policy. This went on clear along into later times to the point where they wouldn't attend the faculty meetings. I remember one particularly. This was after I'd gone to the Barnes Foundation and I came back, and I think I heard that Dr. Sproul put Dean Jackey in charge of the art department. So Dean Jackey was leading the faculty meeting. I was there and one member of this group that I'm talking about was there, and the rest were not. Dean Jackey was furious and he wanted to know where they were, and he sent the other one out into what we called the sink room in those days, in the Education Building where the art department was holding fort, to find out why they didn't come to the faculty meetings. So they all came, and he bawled them out for not attending. And then we had a faculty member, Dr. With...

MINK: Karl With.

DELANO: ...Karl With, from Germany, on the faculty. And he had come over to get away from the Nazis and that sort of thing. He was on our faculty, and he was a very outspoken person. I remember that he got into a fight with Dean Jackey in front of everybody, almost to blows. Now, these things had been sort of promoted behind the scenes.

MINK: What was the controversy, really?

DELANO: The controversy?

MINK: What was the main thread of the controversy that was going on?

DELANO: I don't know. It was something to do with the policy of the art department. I'd have to review notes or something. There was this sputtering and fighting. I know that Dr. With stood by most of the policies of the art department. He liked the design areas; he wanted to teach a course which had to do with the interrelation of the arts to other fields; and he had ideas for modern art and art history and art appreciation and so on, and that kind of thing. He wasn't interested so much in teaching the actual painting, drawing, or designing. It was more lecturing that he liked to work on. As I went over Europe several times and looked into art schools and big academies in various countries, I found that so many of them were broad, that they had training in design and in history and in painting and in sculpture and that most of it would be incorporated in one large art school. Especially in Germany, you had this broad background. So I don't think we had any quarrel with Dr. With on that thing. I just can't remember what it was that made these people get on edge with each other. Dean Jackey was the kind of person who was like a little old schoolteacher that loved to just get after people if they weren't just toeing the mark. I was fond of him. I liked the way he explained things, and yet this was something that the group we were talking about made fun of. They thought that when he'd go to the blackboard and draw a little plan — this is what you have to do to train a designer, this is what you have to do to train a sculptor — that it was just a little bit childish.

MINK: Precious, perhaps?

DELANO: Yes. Well, not so precious, but just a little too simple. I thought that Dean Jackey had a great many qualities that stood for him; for one thing, he had a practical angle that many people lacked. He had his doctor's degree in vocational education. I don't know just where he got that, but it was vocational education. Of course, that gave him, maybe, a black eye in terms of itiany other people, like this Breasted, who came from Princeton and would look down on anything with the word vocational in it. Now Dean Jackey often said, "Get your doctor's degree — it's your calling card." That didn't make much sense to me, because if you had to get a doctor's degree in some field other than painting, where you can't get it even today in many universities, then you might just as well not try to do anything in the university. For many years, they have been giving full professorships for the creative painting even though they don't give a full degree in that. And of course we had to work-- I think I've talked about that before — to get even the beginning degrees for this, whereas they'd give it in art history. This is what I'm talking about. People from Europe, like Dr. With, had this some sort of thing — Mr. Hilpert — none of them had doctor's degrees for just the creative thing, you see.

MINK: Were there other ways that you found that this group was disruptive?

DELANO: Yes. In finding out about people's promotions: it seemed that the moment somebody was or was not promoted, they would know immediately. Now, how did they find out? And then they would make it difficult for this person by all kinds of practices that seemed to me not honest or loyal .

MINK: You cited to me off tape an example — and again keeping it perfectly anonymous — of an instance in which you felt that the committee on which you had served, information had leaked out.

DELANO: Yes, immediately. This person was not allowed to stay with the university. He was up for promotion to associate professorship.

MINK: In other words, up for tenure, right?

DELANO: Yes, for tenure. The real reason for his not being allowed to stay on was because there were so many complaints stacked up in Dean Jackey's office against this person's practice of intimidation of both students and faculty. These people had gone to the dean and complained about these tactics.

MINK: What did these tactics consist of?

DELANO: Well, going into classes, making fun of the students' work while the teacher was there, making faces at it, walking around the room, looking down at it, and also making fun of the work with the student after he had perhaps come to his class. It was infuriating, you see. These students would be so amazed that they'd go to the dean and complain about it. I know of another instance where a student was called down in front of the others in such terrible words that he went to the dean about that. And so there were various instances--I didn't even know about them---and that's what really put him out. Because I was a senior member and was on this promotion committee, they thought that it was my fault, that I should ignore everything that happened, that I should sign, and that he should be promoted.

MINK: In effect, though, you were fully supported by the committee in your decision not to give him tenure?

DELANO: Yes, after I saw what the dean brought in.

MINK: Was the dean there, too?

DELANO: He was brought in as soon as this came out. Our committees are composed of five people, one from your own department. This person had been passed as far as his teaching, which was very good — and I talked for it, being the only member from the department there — thought his teaching was very good, and his own creative work was progressing. He was having exhibits and getting recognition. I had been on his first promotion committee and got him through. So here was this next one for tenure — appraisal committee, it was. But when all of these things came in from the dean's office, then we went over everything again and decided he shouldn't be on the faculty if he was going to cause this kind of disruption. In fact, I remember his coming into my classes and making fun of work. It's as though they had talked it over, what technique to use to intimidate people. So that was one. Another example was in this particular case, when they found out the person wasn't promoted, they knew that I must be on the committee some way or other and sign the paper, because it came late into my office. This person sat on a chair backwards — that is, he got hold of the back of the chair and was so violent that he broke the chair. Now this was a little hardwood chair with a cane seat we'd had in the department from the Vermont campus days.

MINK: It was oak, in other words.

DELANO: Yes, it was oak.

MINK: That's about the hardest wood there is.

DELANO: And he broke that, he was so angry, and said that I would never see the end of this. Now he was intimidating me right there. And I said, "You don't know anything about this — who was on it, or who signed it, or anything."

MINK: The committees are supposed to be secret.

DELANO: They are supposed to be secret. But he rattled off almost everything that was in the report, but with mistakes. So apparently it was like somebody had read it — maybe a secretary — very rapidly. And so I didn't say anything. I was backed into a corner. It was about five in the afternoon, late, nobody around. I was terrified for a while. I really was, I talked to somebody in the history department who had had a similar experience.

MINK: What advice could they give you?

DELANO: Well, it was just up to you to withdraw from any dealings.

MINK: You mean not to serve on promotion committees?

DELANO: Oh, I wouldn't do that; oh, not that. But be a little cautious in regard to them. And of course, I never was a friend after that to this particular person. You see, if you knew them and liked than and went along and you were friends, then you found out that they were holding a whole system of ideas which have to do with conspiracy. How can you deal with it? What can you do when they're right there? They're in your office; every day you see them. Well, it was strange. This person left in the middle of a semester and I just don't know the long-range effect of making the department divide. Certain antagonisms were brought out, it seems to me, and you'd never know whether a lie was placed there in the mind of somebody and no one would take it out--no one would contradict it. You'd have these high tensions going on all the time, and they go on today. I didn't know what to do. I did talk to a man in the education department who had a lot of trouble that way. (He's not living now.) He thought you just had to go right along and believe in what you believe in. Of course, there was one time when a man came in and they felt that he wasn't doing exactly what they thought he was going to do in the department, so they had an all-night meeting where they brainwashed him. This was something terrible. I was called in to go to the meeting. I don't even know why they wanted me to go, when they knew I was against so many of these tactics. But I did go, and I really saw what brainwashing meant that night.

MINK: Without naming names...

DELANO: I don't want to.

MINK: ...can you describe what went on at that meeting?

DELANO: Well, the whole group was there plus graduate students.

MINK: The whole painting group?

DELANO: Yes, plus graduate students.

MINK: Who were also in the painting area?

DELANO: In the painting area — painting or sculpture, or printmaking. This person was again back in a corner. They just spent hours going over the things that they felt he didn't do, that they expected him to do when he came here. Especially one thing — I can't mention it--it seems to me a minor thing, but it was just to get some point that they could hang on him, you see. They would go over and over, and even these students would come out with such things. I didn't take part in the discussion. I was back in another corner. Finally they turned to me and said something about the people in the design area. They had tried to divide painting and sculpture — you know, divide and conquer. Say that you could get hold of some of the older traditional things that did divide areas, perhaps for some other reason, but now use it for your political advantage. So why not turn the design people against the painters? And they were pretty successful in that, in getting the personalities at war with each other. They asked me something about that and I stood up for them. I said, "I taught design, too, for many years, and most of them took courses from me in design, and I felt that we taught it as not only a practical course but as something which gave a background that permeated our lives with the qualities, the beauties that we would see in all our surroundings. These people are concerned with that, and you are using fallacious arguments here in trying to divide the department." Even arguments like that came out during the night. But they turned to this man, and it was as though they were lashing. He didn't defend himself. He just stood there. He just sat there — he'd stand up some of the time. Finally he said to the leader, "You will have to go. I'm going to arrange a meeting with the provost, and you can tell him what you've been telling me." The meeting was arranged for a Wednesday, I think, and there were other people there from the design....

MINK: Other than those who had attended the meeting.

DELANO: Yes, who had high ranks. Every one of the professors and associate professors was there. This man who had been beleaguered all night took the floor and never asked any of that group to say a word.

MINK: He must have changed his mind.

DELANO: I don't know what happened over several nights. But the provost said, "We don't need to have any of you people teach painting or sculpture. We can get new people if you don't cooperate. And this department is not to be divided. "

MINK: Was this Dykstra?

DELANO: No, this was Murphy.

MINK: Murphy?

DELANO: Yes, it was.

MINK: Oh. You've carried this on up.

DELANO: I carried it way past the period from the thirties. If I've done anything, what I'd like to do is just to give some inkling of the devious ways in which they used this thing to divide and conquer. And I think I ought to tell about a student. Should I?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Another one, who wasn't on our faculty but who was a member of the Communist party, joined it during the Hitler war when she went to Philadelphia. She went to the Barnes Foundation, but she didn't last there very long because she got into this other thing and she wasn't studying. And the people at the Barnes Foundation, while they didn't tell you what to do — you were to be on your own — still, they knew if you weren't working. It was the most strict place I've ever heard of. So she didn't last very long there, and she spent the rest of her year one way or another working with the Communist party. Now I didn't know this until she came back, and she had already been teaching out in the schools. I had known her family background, and she was very talented; and she wanted to go on a painting trip with me. Of course, I went every summer and so many of the students, after they'd know me wanted to go on these trips. I never wanted to be bothered with somebody that might not be a good camper in the first place, and maybe I couldn't get along with them camping. I didn't know. But finally this young woman persuaded her parents to let her go, and I told her mother and father that if we couldn't get along painting and drawing out there in the Indian country, then I'd just bring her home. But she'd have to be on her own. Well, we didn't get very far out into the desert that she started to talk communism to me and make me become a member. I had already had some of these experiences with the group I've been talking about, so I had read many of the original books and made up my own mind. I told her that she was like the others I knew. You couldn't really discuss it directly: that there was sort of a closed, blank wall in their minds; that they were so enamored of it as a system that after a while you just get to a point they couldn't even listen to you. You couldn't really take up one point after another and discuss it. We quit talking about it, and then we went on, and we had a good time painting and just dropped it. She has had a dreadful life. Later she married a young man when he came back out of the war, and he wasn't allowed to go on and become a physicist at Berkeley, because, perhaps, of her background--I don't know. But this entered into their lives. They had a boy, a child, and in late years he committed suicide up there at Berkeley. I think this horrible thing of having a mind divided--trying to live a normal life, at the same time carrying on a conspiracy — I just don't see how they have the strength of mind to do this for all those years.

MINK: Because, after all, once they are members they are committed.

DELANO: They are committed . And I learned a great deal from this young woman because she told me about the cell meetings they had in Pasadena and South Pasadena, different places where she met the people who went there. Even one of our greatest scientists, [J. Robert] Oppenheimer, was supposed to be in love with this girl. She read the letter where he turned her down, and said he was a Jew and she was not, and the marriage would be impossible. The party had sort of told her that she'd go out and get a scientist, marry a scientist — this is what they want. Not get him to be a member, but marry him. Now this is long before he was investigated by the government, you know. But he was in Pasadena and she knew him . I was invited, in fact, to their house for a New Year's dinner once. I didn't go.

MINK: Well, this must have been an awful strain on you personally.

DELANO: Well, it was. Where could you turn to find out what to do? Why would they come to the art department? Why so many there? I don't know whether there were more than in other departments or what it was. Of course, I know this young woman was not too stable. In later life, she did break down and was sent to an institution in San Francisco or someplace in the north. Her husband divorced her and her son committed suicide. Perhaps all of this extreme division within her mind created this. I've tried to get her in later years to go back to her painting, because she was talented, and save herself. I don't know. I hear from her at Christmastime and so on, but I feel extremely sorry. And this man who was the leader of this group back in the thirties went from school to school .

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
APRIL 9, 1971

MINK: We've been talking, the other day and to some degree this afternoon before we turned on the tape recorder, about the idea that after Ernest Carroll Moore resigned as provost of the university, the emphasis on education, which he had particularly espoused, began to decline. This was particularly true when the College of Education was organized into the School of Education. I wonder if you could talk this afternoon for a while about the effect this had on the art department. Was there just generally a deemphasizing of teaching teachers, or teachers of art?

DELANO: Well, no, I don't think it was a deemphasizing, not at this time, for a while. You see, there was a twofold growth here. There was the university as the whole, or as an academic institution, expanding at a great rate. The art department, along with many other departments, had come in from the Normal School, and they were spread out in various departments under whatever it happened to be — Letters and Science or what. The training of teachers was carried out under a Teachers College for some time, and they gave BE' s as degrees — bachelor of education. So Dr. Sproul, in a letter to the regents in the chancellor's files for 1938, wherein he feels that the Normal School procedures on the Westwood campus be discontinued and have in its place a School of Education in the College of Applied Arts. The other fields or areas of education that had been under the School of Education would go into a college called a College of Applied Arts. The art department went along with that.

MINK: There was no objection, generally speaking, in the art department?

DELANO: It didn't seem to do much to the teacher training. It was a matter of getting a higher quality degree, you might say, for trained teachers. Of course, the training had lengthened in time, anyway, for teachers, and this kept on going, until in recent years they had many more years added to their general training. Just on the side a little here about those meetings that we had about the whole idea of a College of Applied Arts: The dean at that time was Dr. Jackey. Dr. Jackey had been a man very much interested in vocational education. He was a very practical man, and he felt that we were loaded down with a lot of extraneous areas or subject fields that seemed to be collected under the idea of the College of Applied Arts, and that they had no business being there, but what were you going to do with them?

MINK: What in particular? Do you remember?

DELANO: Mechanic arts, physical education for men. physical education for women, home economics — especially those subjects- And military science. All of these tag ends that had been part of the Normal School training and were felt essential for teacher training.

MINK: And originally they were under the School of Education.

DELANO: No. Before that the Normal School.

MINK: I mean the College of Education.

DELANO: No, it was called the School of Education. There's a difference between a school and a college, if I remember. First it was called a School of Education, then we changed it to a College of Applied Arts. No, wait a minute. First it was a Teachers College, I'm sorry--a Teachers College, more or less like Columbia. And then it became a School of Education.

MINK: Right. And those things that you were mentioning, you know, like military science and so on, they were all part of that old College of Education.

DELANO: And previous to that, the Normal School — three different names.

MINK: They came over, along with the School of Education, into what they were organizing as the College of Applied Arts, of which the School of Education would be one department.

DELANO: Applied arts came later. They just took on then some of the subjects. That is, in other words, at that time, in 1938, from that time on, the students who came to an art department did not have to take teaching as they did before. Now they could get a BA without having to get a BE to get the art training they wanted.

MINK: Were they doing more, then, for it after this reorganization, or did they just go on about the same as far as what they wanted to do?

DELANO: In '38, there wasn't so much expansion, but the war came along and it was later that it expanded terrifically, and you can tell by the files that everybody in each department had trouble getting enough money for the expansion of students. They needed faculty, and so this was the battle cry all along the lines, you know, for the expansions there. I can remember some of these meetings that Dean Jackey had, where he tried to keep everybody informed of what was going on, as the dean of the College of Applied Arts, and even as to the selection of the name. You see, if you say "applied", that right away has a stigma in the minds of some academic personnel. This has kind of persisted right along down through the line. At present, if you say "College of Fine Arts," then you remove that. Change the wording, and it doesn't have that stigma. I suppose it's come all the way down from Greek philosophers, trying to belittle the things that were done by hand-- just something of that — and that the most lauded subjects are those that are in the classical trend of so-called humanities. But what could be more humane than the arts? That's the way I look at it.

MINK: What were some of the other names that Jackey had in mind besides "applied arts"?

DELANO: We wanted to have it "fine arts," even at that time.

MINK: I see.

DELANO: But we didn't know what other word to use that would cover all of these tag ends, like mechanic arts and physical education and home economics. They were all in one whole college.

MINK: Nobody brought up such a title as "vocational arts"?

DELANO: He was vocationalist, but he had already been hit over the head by many people, I guess, for being a vocationalist. You know. Dr. Moore was really practical also in that sense, but being a philosopher and having taught philosophy at Harvard, he usually resolved everything in a philosophical way, it seems to me. His attitudes weren't quite as earthy, let's say, as Jackey' s. I thought that might be interesting to mention here, to keep in mind that there was a flexibility about all of these schools and colleges and the development of the academic world around about these different studies. We felt these different lines of tension going on down through the years. Not only that, but we had this growth problem that came along, and a lack of funds, and the very difficult problem of finding people to take on the new jobs as the thing developed. Then there was another problem related to all of these, of interrelationship between the different departments and schools. The art department long ago felt that we should give a history of art curriculum in Letters and Science. There were many people in Letters and Science who approved of it, but just how to get it formulated and really practical and as a going concern, you see.... I think some people might have been put on committees and felt that they had the most to do with it. But as I look over these files, there were a great many people, in the art department and outside the art department, who had a great deal to do with it. In about the early forties, after Mr. Cox died, there were people who were brought into the university. One man--like S. Macdonald-Wright came in. He was an artist first and foremost, I would say, and had worked in Paris, studied there, and had his first beginnings and recognition there in France.

MINK: Now you spoke about him before and said that he was rather an egotistical man.

DELANO: Did I? Well, perhaps so. Some people might even have called him arrogant because he had a way of talking to people that would make you feel that he'd been the only one that had ever been to France or knew anything about modern art- It's common knowledge that one of his exhibits which he had — I believe it was at [Earl] Stendahl's gallery because Mr. Stendahl was the one that took him on as a. . .

MINK: ...protégé?

DELANO: Yes, to show his works through the years. And in his catalog, S. Macdonald-Wright talked about his own work as being so superior. I can't just remember what was in that exactly, but I was rather shocked at an artist being that egotistical about his own work — the way he praised it, anyway. I can remember going to little meetings in his studio where he had told about his kind of training in France, where they had the idea of the great master — who would come in, and the students would listen to him say a few words, and then he'd leave. There was this thing there where the master didn't have to do any of the tedious jobs that are usually associated with teaching. Well, when Mr. Wright came to us he still had this idea, and it made a great deal of trouble in the art department for those who had to use the same room or tried to use the same desk. Then he wanted a place to paint and he wanted to use some of the classrooms, you know, instead of going home like the rest of us did. The university didn't provide any place for our own work to go on. And I think I mentioned some of the other people trying to use the same room. Any of us might feel that it would be wonderful if we didn't have to make reports or grade or do any of these things, or come early for registration. Now Mr. Wright didn't do his part in any of these jobs if he could help it. I guess he had to give his grades, but he was there first on half time; and Mr. Hilpert had a great deal of trouble, called him a prima donna in this respect.

MINK: He never went before a promotion committee and got rated on poor teaching, then?

DELANO: Yes, his records were sent to promotion committees.

MINK: Were they turned down?

DELANO: No, he wasn't. He became a full professor. And the irony of this was that he was on so many committees of promotion for people.

MINK: Well, that's really beautiful, isn't it? [laughter]

DELANO: With all his bluster and all, I think he was on one of my earliest promotion committees — not the first one, after I went to Sproul and complained about the artists not getting a fair deal.

MINK: And Mrs. Coldren got your materials together from the library.

DELANO: She did, from the library, and I'll always thank her for that. She's not living now, is she? She passed away. She and Mrs. Humphreys got together. Mrs. Humphreys wasn't on my committee, but she told Mrs. Coldren that I had a lot of articles published and the art department wasn't doing anything about seeing that I got promoted. Well, that's beside what I was talking about, Mr. Wright was hired for about half time and was just teaching Oriental and modern art history, but as he got a little bit more familiar with the art department and the whole academic procedure, he wanted to become a full professor of art. So Mr. Hilpert wrote a letter to the administration wherein he complained about Mr. Wright not doing his part, and that he felt that he'd have to do all of these little odd jobs that we all have to carry on.

MINK: If he wanted to become a full professor. [laughter]

DELANO: If he was going to have full time. Mr. Hilpert had not gotten after him for escaping from all of these little jobs in his half-time part of it, but he's the only one that I know of that ever got away with it. But he did for some reason. Then there was this idea at the time to get somebody in, because there were several people leaving. Mrs. Abramovitch — I think I spoke about that before--was ill and had to leave; and Miss Chandler resigned, and part of it had to do with the troubles they had had under Mr. Cox, and a feeling of discouragement in general. I think it was one of the low periods.

MINK: In the history of the art department.

DELANO: Yes, before Mr. Cox died. Mr. Hilpert recommended William Bowne to come in and take some of Mr. Cox's classes.

MINK: What was his background?

DELANO: He'd been a student with us.

MINK: I see.

DELANO: Now, this is kind of piecing together, if I don't lose the trend here, some of the things that perhaps displeased the general administration with Mr. Hilpert's selections. I can understand Mr. Hilpert' s side of it, too.

MINK: Is that that this would displease the administration- in other words, sort of what you call in-breeding?

DELANO: Yes, that. And he took a shine to William Bowne and to [E.] Clinton Adams at the same time.

MINK: Who was also a student?

DELANO: Yes, that was their only background — which is fine in a way.

MINK: Were they California people?

DELANO: Yes. I had both of them in my classes and they were excellent students. The personality in these two men, I would say, was very different one from the other. Bill Bowne — we called him Bill — was very warm and affectionate and everybody seemed to like him. He had a great deal of reserved force you could feel about him. Clinton Adams was like crystal. I mean, he was extremely agile in his mind, he could keep track of many administrative details, and he always wanted to be a head of something. I think he wanted to be the head of the art department right away. Mr. Hilpert perhaps told him that — I don't know — because he told me once that he wanted me to be head of the art department if he had a choice. Well, I had been offered to be head of different departments, like Scripps — I think I mentioned that once earlier--and over to Honolulu and down to San Diego, and one other--Northwestern, I believe. I have a series of them in my stuff. But I never wanted to be head of an art department; I felt that that would ruin me as a painter because I felt dedicated to painting. I was already releasing part of my energy to teaching, which I loved, and working with students; and the subject of teaching these different art courses broadened me. As I look back over the years, it was a life, you see. But I felt that if I had to take on administration besides, it would just kill me. I think I could have done it, and I proved it to myself when I put on that big architectural show which was very involved — that I could work with a lot of people and manage the thing, which I did over a period of a year. When Mr. Hilpert told me that, I said, "No, I don't want to be head of an art department. That would ruin my painting. It's borrowing time, anyway, the way I'm working it out now." Well, he must have told Mr. Adams that, because I'm sure he had a feeling that he would boss everything he would come in contact with. Mr. Hilpert said, "Mr. Adams is a splendid teacher as well as a serious artist." I agree with that, too, because all of his students did like him.

MINK: He was primarily a painter?

DELANO: Felix Landau* took on a bunch of our ex-students like Clinton Adams and John Paul Jones. Clinton did become a head of a department in the East after he left us, and he went from one school to another; and I think he's at Albuquerque now. I don't think you hear of him much as an artist because, again, he'd have to divide his energies between painting and administration. [*name supplied during edit review ]

MINK: But the proprietor of that art gallery on La Cienega, who we will remember some day, took him on to exhibit his paintings?

DELANO: Yes. And others like John Paul Jones. I think Frank Perls, was the best. Perls did take on some of our teachers, too, you know. He took on [Samuel] Amato, [Jan] Stussy, James McGarrell, and William Brice.

MINK: What does it exactly mean when you say "take on"?

DELANO: Well, you become a member of the group exhibiting in that gallery under a dealer, in other words. It's just a commercial dealer.

MINK: And he sells your paintings?

DELANO: He sells the paintings, yes. Supposedly. There's a whole story in itself that Los Angeles is not a center for selling. People in this country--I mean collectors — want to go to New York. Well, there's a whole bit about selling paintings, and I think that all of us from the university art department, teachers and the students who have graduated there, are lacking decidedly in understanding much about this whole area of dealers and what they do.

MINK: The crass, commercial world of art peddling.

DELANO: Yes, and New York isn't much better. The people who have had most experience would be in London and in Paris, I feel. And I've seen some things, writings from people from Paris, where they have now gotten things under the laws of inheritance some way or other. That is, people cannot just disregard an artist's paintings and sell them for just a small amount of money maybe as they go along, and then wait till they die and get wealthy from selling their paintings. From now on, they have to divide it with the people who inherited even if the artist is dead.

MINK: Well, Mr. Adams — what part did he play in this whole matter of the department expansion and so on, after 1938?

DELANO: After Mr. Hilpert ceased being the head of the art department, we got Dr. [Gibson] Danes in, and Dr. Danes made "areas," he called them, wherein each area was organized under a chairman. The painters and sculptors and printmakers were under one chairman head, had their own private meetings to organize what they'd do and to come to the general art department faculty meetings with any ideas. Then the design area was another. Those were the two principal ones. And history, third. And art teaching. In fact, it went on, finally, until there were seven, when I think about it, gradually, under the seven different heads. Industrial design was one that expanded greatly under Dr. Danes. We had our new building. Well, I'm getting a little ahead here. You were talking about Adams, and I see him through the years, you see, from early times when he was a student--and a very good student. I remember his getting A's in everything he took from me, for one thing, and I was on his first promotion committee. I don't suppose I should tell that, but he got his assistant professorship in that committee meeting. And Mr. Hilpert's the one that proposed he come up for promotion; and Mr . Bowne came up at the same time on another committee, and he passed also. So they were on the academic ladder, as Mr. Jackey says, to get in there somehow. I might as well finish with Professor Adams. He was ready for an appraisal committee, and at that time he had had several exhibitions, was doing well, and his teaching was very good. The students seemed to like him, and he had passed the promotion committee. But there were things brought in from the dean's office about his treatment of other faculty members and students in other classes, and this was too much for the committee to take, and so ho was asked to resign.

MINK: What had he done?

DELANO: He would go into certain classes — like Mrs. [Madeleine] Sunkees' s classes, for example — and make fun of the students' work. I don't just know what were in these things, but what came from the dean's office put him out — complaints from so many students and faculty about his treatment of running them down or making fun of their work — that kind of thing, the tactics he used to discourage them. I didn't know much about all of this. I was astounded to see how much of it had piled up in the dean's office. I wasn't aware it was going on. I know he had kind of made fun of some of my students' work at times, but I just passed it off as a part of his personality. He didn't like, you see, the costume appreciation courses, as they were called. And he'd send a student in there perhaps to make fun of it, but the teacher involved would be so infuriated that they went to the dean. There were many of these complaints.

MINK: And that would be to Dean Jackey.

DELANO: To Dean Jackey, yes. They decided that if he couldn't get along with people, he didn't deserve to be in the art department. They put him out on those grounds. I had passed him along without a word about that side. I knew from my own experiences some things, but I wasn't going to say a thing about it. But when it all came from the dean's office, this put him out. I heard later that it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. He went to other schools and was moved from one school to another — he didn't stay very long at first, I think he went to Kentucky, and I don't know just where now. He finally landed in Albuquerque in the University [of New Mexico] and I imagine he's done very well, because he was brilliant. But this thing of not getting along with a colleague just because they weren't philosophical or brilliant in some field — I just didn't understand it. There were a lot of people that had fine talent that were liked by the students, like Mrs. Sunkees, since I've mentioned her. I know she was one. In a way it was a difficult decision, but it was made and he left. That same year, Mr. Bowne left in the middle of the year, too.

MINK: Why was that?

DELANO: I don't know. Nobody knows. He just got up and left.

MINK: Where did he go?

DELANO: He went to New York, and the first thing we knew about him was that he was teaching in a high school there. He finally turned up in San Diego, and I believe he is there now. I don't know how far his painting progressed. There was something I found in the notes from the office about where his painting was shown — that was before he left us — in Glendale. Somebody wrote a letter to the university about it, thought it was terrible and didn't do any good for the university. And there was a fine letter written back to this person from the administration saying that perhaps they didn't understand that it was modern art, defended Bowne. Another thing I might say as long as I'm talking about Bill Bowne: he was asked to be the head of the department there at a moment when Mr. Hilpert was ill and Mr. Cox had died. This was in the early fifties, I think. I know I was away at that time at first when he was head--I was having a sabbatical leave--but judging from what I discerned here in the papers from the office. he was very businesslike in asking for increased funds which we needed for everything — -more teachers all the time, more space, more this and that. He did a very businesslike job of that and people liked him, but I understand there were a lot of fights that year, too. I heard about it; I don't know just what the ruckus was. We had trouble with some of these people who had been trained in Europe and couldn't seem to adjust, like Dr. With, you see. He came in for art history and was a blustery type who couldn't get along with people, or perhaps he wanted to be the kingpin in every situation. I don't know what it was, but he seemed to have trouble too. Mr. Bowne was level headed about understanding people and seemed to soothe them, it seems to me. He was a warm and affectionate type of person. Another thing, as far as losing people in the late forties after Mr. Cox passed away: Dr. Breasted--I think I mentioned him last time — was teaching art history and then suddenly he seemed to have a new job at the L.A. museum where he was offered a great deal more money and he just couldn't turn it down. He went over there, and that meant that his library that had cost the university so many hundreds of dollars, or even thousands — I don't know how much--to get it installed in place (and then, you know, the war came along and nobody could use it) and then now it was being taken out again. Behind the scenes, the people that had to carry out all these little jobs, I think, were rather glad, because they were trying to raise money to catalog the thing for insurance. The insurance people wouldn't insure the collection. He wouldn't give it to the university and yet he wouldn't let anybody take books out. If they wanted to study they could come there in that room. When he went to the museum, I think those people behind the scenes were greatly relieved they didn't have to find the money now to catalog them so that they could get insurance. I think I might have been talking about Mr. Breasted the last session.

MINK: No, you did talk about him, though, earlier.

DELANO: And about how he left the museum in a short time?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: He couldn't get along with people.

MINK: How he alienated people.

DELANO: It's a strange thing, isn't it, to have people go along in a job where they have to deal with people and yet they can't deal with them for some reason, either with the students, or the faculty or colleagues around them, or the administration. I don't know whether I've said enough about Dr. With or not. I noticed in some of the recommendations from other schools, or jobs that he had before he came to us, that they felt that he was a little difficult to get along with.

MINK: Temperamental?

DELANO: Temperamental . It might have been in his background. After all, he left from Germany, too, you see, from Hitler's business, and he came to Pasadena and was there in a school of design for a while. He had been the head of different museums and had fine jobs there in Germany before he came to America. It's difficult to understand these people who've been uprooted to such a degree, I think. Breasted was different. He was an American citizen, born here and so on, but he was trained in Germany. He told me at one time that he felt that there was something about his training. It was difficult to work here, and being the son of a great man was another trouble with him.

MINK: Could you give me some background on With? Did he cause a great deal of trouble in the department?

DELANO: Well, the fights that he had with Dean Jackey — he seemed not to admire people if they infringed in any way on his field. That is, he felt he was an authority on museums. You see, while he was still with us, over a period of years we developed a museum on the campus, and he probably felt hurt that he was not put in charge of it.

MINK: The gallery?

DELANO: The gallery. Previous to that time, we had this little gallery on the third floor, you know, in the Education Building, and he didn't have much to do with that. Of course, we didn't have the money; everything that we did there was brought in by the teachers and paid for by very small funds--I mean, we'd just more or less beg for exhibitions. There was no elevator, and it was very difficult to show things. When the first new art building was planned, Regent Dickson saw to it that the building would be built earlier than had first been promised. I think we had been promised a building and there were so many to be made ahead of us-- we were forty-second or something on the list--but when the Willits Hole collection came to the university and it didn't have a home — it was just put in the library for numbers of years — that's why Dickson saw to it that the building for the arts was built earlier. That's how we happened to get that new building.

MINK: Did Dickson become personally involved with the faculty in planning the building? Did he come to any of the meetings?

DELANO: I don't remember that. We had a Paul Hunter architect who designed the building. And it was a pleasing building, the proportions, and he seemed to cooperate very well with the faculty.

MINK: Were you involved in any way in the planning of the building?

DELANO: Well, each area had to plan what they needed. This was before Danes came — I speak of areas now because I think it was a very good word; but earlier than that, we thought of our subjects and everybody had to put in requirements. The requirements we had for many of the classrooms were not so involved. Laura Andreson, who taught the ceramics at that time, was very much concerned to get a good ceramics department; so I remember one year before the building was finished, Laura and her mother and I and Mrs. Hely, a friend of mine who lived close to me, went to Mexico between semesters. Laura had to plan the ceramics department — it was just put down on her duties to do this within a matter of days and get it back to the campus. We stopped along the way before we got down into Old Mexico--I guess it was at Phoenix — she drew up a working drawing of the floor plan and details of everything. She had the measurements of what she thought she needed, the space for the different kinds of things--equipment, how much space it would take, and the shelving and everything else — and planned the ceramics department. It was such a rush job, but it was fine. It just worked out, and it was built in the basement. You know, the basement wasn't finished at first, along with the building. They found that the whole department had increased to such an extent that we had to have the basement developed after the building was built, and this is what they did. Gradually, they put in a sort of an L- or U-shaped basement area in which we have the ceramics, the jewelry section, the place for the industrial design with special equipment, and a place for weaving and for textiles and so on down there. I had mentioned something about art history and trying to have that developed so that it would be approved by Letters and Science. This went on for some time. The administration appointed overall committees, at different times, to help the art department find somebody. This was a tedious job, because they would hear about somebody or investigate someone from the East who had a long history of publications and achievements, you see, that they felt would be a leader, and maybe even to be the head of a department. All this time, Mr. Hilpert was chairman, and then eventually when he was not put on the committee, his feelings would be hurt. I could just see between the lines that he felt that he should have been on a committee. After all, it was the art department, and why should somebody be on there like Lily Campbell, for example, or Professor [Kenneth] Macgowan? That would be better: Macgowan, after all, was in the arts; but Lily Campbell was not in the fine arts. She was in literature but not space arts, as we call it. Or [Cesar] Barja. And they did put S. Macdonald-Wright, who had no sympathy for the design areas in our department. I remember having conversations with Mr. Hilpert about it at the time, and this is probably one of the things that made him sick. Another thing: he was greatly wrapped up in teacher training; and he could feel that this wasn't liked by other people who were strictly Letters and Science people. That was another reason. Jackey was the kind of man who could turn this sort of criticism aside, even though he believed in vocational education. He called a doctor's degree a "calling card," so to speak, and he didn't mind the criticism. But someone as sensitive as Mr. Hilpert, I'm sure, felt badly. Another thing, with all of the squeeze on money, we never had enough, even for typewriters. The faculty would be using their own typewriters or giving them to the department, and they never had enough people to do all the stenographic work that we needed. The squeeze for money: Mr. Hilpert had the feeling, how can they spend a whole lot of money for somebody from the East, bring them here at a great salary, and he can't even have a typewriter? This is the way he reasoned. To me, it seemed he was sort of a tragic figure.

MINK: Who was it, do you think, that was pushing for some distinguished person from the East? Was this people from the art department, or was this the administration, like Sproul?

DELANO: Sproul and Dykstra. When it came right down to them they were very practical, too, but they wanted to be on a level with other universities as far as Letters and Science, and they wanted a big man. But when they would choose somebody — even Dr. Moore picked out somebody that I don't believe the art department would have gotten along with, you see. He asked Dr. Barnes to head the department. Dr. Barnes told me that; I don't think anybody in the art department ever knew that. Barnes turned it down; he said he didn't want to be bothered with the details of teaching. But this would be an impulsive kind of action that didn't take everything into consideration. Or, if they got somebody from Princeton, like Breasted, who had most of his training there and earlier in Europe in the German point of view, you know, the university ideas, Heidelberg, I believe — well, if they took on the art department, they don't have the sympathy either for the arts that we had built up. But when Danes came to us, it was an entirely different story. [Vern] Knudsen had been appointed as chairman of a committee to pick out at least three people — and they worked over all of the material that had been handed in by three people — and then Knudsen went to visit them in the East, and he came back with a report about them. His first choice was Gibson Danes; and when he told us about all three, we decided from just word of mouth that Danes would be the one we could live with. He certainly was. Through the years he proved to be a wonderful chairman, at least in my opinion. He expanded the art department; he saw these troubles that we were having, the tensions; he understood people; he made everybody feel cooperative. I just couldn't say anything more in praise of someone than Dr. Danes, of his cheery attitude. One thing that I remember Dr. Knudsen said at a faculty meeting — and Dr. Jackey was the one who wrote a letter to Knudsen and asked him to come over and tell the art department how he happened to put Danes first of the three.

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
APRIL 9, 1971

MINK: Where we left off on the other tape, you were describing how Knudsen had came to a faculty meeting to tell you about the three people he'd looked over, and his recommendation, of course, was for Dr. Danes. He was describing him to you.

DELANO: Yes, the first. He had three people in mind, but he put Danes as the first; Bernard Myers, from New York University, second; and Lawrence Schmeckebier, from Cleveland, third. And he did describe all three. I have lasting impressions of how he described Danes and why he put him first. Danes was teaching at the University of Ohio and Knudsen said that Danes would walk down the hall and would say, "Hello, Mary. Hello, Henry." Everybody was called by his first name, and they all seemed to be so enthusiastic when they'd see him. He said that struck him as something quite different from what you usually see in an academic hall. That was one thing. He thought his scholarship was very high. He felt that he had published a lot of things, and that he'd be excellent for the department. As I've just said, I felt, too, that he made one of the greatest contributions, because he came at a time when so many people had left or they had been working under such high tensions. We were in a new building, and it took this kind of vision. He just didn't take the attitude that there was no money; he proceeded to enlarge the department. How can you carry out a vision and make it real? You might say in the future we are going to have a whole department of industrial design. There had always been a sort of a year course of industrial design — I happened to teach it. It was aimed more towards the teaching of it and appreciative side and being as practical as we could, and that's what led to my interest in architecture. I think I've talked about that. For someone to come along and really find somebody who'd had industrial design experience in getting things manufactured. I had only had a couple of years in outside work, before I ever started any teaching, in getting things made up. That didn't compare, let's say, with this young man who Dr. Danes brought in there who was John Maguire — I believe he was the one.

MINK: Where did he find him?

DELANO: Goodness, I don't know. I'd have to look it up. Right away, he decided to build that whole area up, and he saw to it that the rooms were equipped with all kinds of specialized material or machines or whatever they needed in equipment to carry out models. This, to my mind, was one of the greatest things that happened. Then again, what he did was to continue the gallery and make it possible to find funds and to bring Mr. [Frederich] Wight. I think that was a great achievement that Dr. Danes carried out for the art department. He brought Mr. Wight in from the museum in Boston, and he has been an outstanding person to put the university on the map. You see, there were people in the rest of the university who criticized the whole idea of ever having a gallery on a campus, and now it took these men, these two together, to say we needed it, and it would be fine for the surrounding community, and it would put it on the map, and it was a going concern.

MINK: Edward Dickson, of course, never took an interest — or did he? — in trying to see who they could get and trying to get distinguished people. Because he was pushing art; art was his personal favorite, I suppose.

DELANO: You mean for teaching the art history, for example?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: No, I don't think he took any part in that. No, there were several committees appointed by the chancellors. You see, this ran over a period of time, and I think I named some of them a while ago, the first one. Then they reactivated these committees in time because, still, the whole Letters and Science thing had not been resolved yet. The committees would bring in names from time to time, like Rensselaer Lee, for one thing. It would take months to go over; over a period of months they would be corresponding, or people from here would go and see them in the East, and maybe he would be in Europe, trying to entice him to come from Columbia University, to head up our department and teach some art history and help. Then these people from the East would probably dally along before they could make up their mind, and time went on. You can see how that would be. Then there was a man named [Charles] Seymour [Jr.] they tried to get. Sometimes these people would just be corresponding with them without ever saying anything to the art department about it. This was what sort of burned up some of the faculty.

MINK: And that would be the administrative committee, or the committee appointed by the administration?

DELANO: Yes, with just S. Macdonald-Wright on it.

MINK: Would he consult with the chairman of the department?

DELANO: No, I don't think so. It was in Letters and Science except for one from the art department — and that not the head of the department. This is what Mr. Hilpert, I'm sure, felt.

MINK: S. Macdonald-Wright and Hilpert — were they friendly?

DELANO: Mr. Hilpert brought him in. He thought it would add luster to the art department, and I guess it has through the years, in one sense. I think I've explained however. Wright was a difficult person to work with as far as detail, getting the job done. He would want an assistant to do all of his work. He wanted to be a big master and come in. Well, he was very knowledgeable and a great reader, and all of that, and a very able speaker, and claimed to have originated a new form of painting with color while he was still in Europe. He had an original mind. He had Mr. [Joseph William] Hull, for one thing, doing all the little dirty work for him, Mr. Hull came from England while Mr. Cox was living. He came from the war, pretty torn up about it because he'd lost all of his records. I remember working on Mr. Hull's background to try to get him into the university with credit. (This is digressing a little when we're talking about Mr. Wright, but these are also involved.) Anyhow, Mr. Hull had to prove that he had had what corresponds to our high school training. He had to take tests in all these subjects because he had no documents. They had been burned up in the war, the bombing of London. I admired him greatly for having gone through this whole tedious process of taking all these tests. Finally, he got into the university here. He went through our art department taking many courses and getting a degree here. Then Mr. Cox brought him into the art department to teach, and very soon, he kind of helped him along to get a little textbook published on perspective, which he did. Then when Mr. S. Macdonald-Wright came, there was this whole breach here. We didn't have these professors for art history all of a sudden. We lost Breasted, and we lost Hungerland. Mr. Wright, I guess, thought he'd make up some new courses, which he did right away. He didn't know how to go about organizing detail that would fit in with making curricula. I don't think he'd ever heard of curricula. That's just my assessment of his difficulties in relation to Mr. Hilpert and the department. So Mr. Hull was the one who tagged along and, I think, did all the dirty work. Of course, he couldn't go on these committees when Mr. Wright was appointed to represent the art department in an overall committee to try and find somebody that would head the department. It's not to say he isn't brilliant enough to decide, but I think so many of the people in the department felt put down by him, you know, and undeservedly in many cases. Finally, Knudsen was put at the head of this committee, and that's kind of winding this whole thing up about finding a chairman. That's how we found Danes, and I have tried to give an inkling of how great I think he was, in stepping in at this moment, making people feel like they were accomplishing something, expanding the art department, adding different areas and enlarging them, and bringing Mr. Wight here. Should I say something now about Mr. Wight?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Frederick Wight. I think that it was marvelous to have him--and he's still with us — because someone with the kind of experience he'd had in museum work, and especially in America, was great, you see. Now he'd had training in Virginia, got his BA there. Another thing: he had sympathy with the rest of us who didn't have doctor's degrees because he wanted to become an artist and a writer, but there were no doctor's degrees — as I've explained, I think — very early. When he was on committees for promotion, he did promote people even though they didn't have doctor's degrees. Mr. Wight studied in Paris and finally got his master's in Harvard. There, he took museum courses. He wound up in 1946, I think it was, for numbers of years, in the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, There, he had a wonderful experience, you know, in putting together shows on different artists, writing the catalogs, and writing, making books. They were just endless, some of them having to do with some of the world figures like Louis Sullivan--he wrote about his genius in a show he put together and organized. About Le Corbusier, the great French architect (really Swiss). There was a book called New World of Space, and I think Mr. Wight helped as editor of the book. He wrote about American painting in our century. He wrote about Feininger, Walter Gropius, another world leader in architecture. So it wasn't just always painting, you know; it was architecture and different forms of art.

MINK: So he was very well versed to teach art history.

DELANO: To teach art history, too, yes. He taught the modern art history after he came here. His first and initial job was to get that gallery going, you see, get funds for it and put on shows here which were to travel all over the country. Imagine getting the regents to agree to all of this.

MINK: Was he very good at this?

DELANO: He was very diplomatic. I hate to say just "politician," but let's say "diplomatic" in the widest, best sense: to get people in the neighborhood and in the town, and his friends everywhere he went, to help on these projects. Eventually here we had money to really equip the gallery. It had to have expensive lights and lots of work done on it before it was ready. The Hole collection had already been installed when he came here. That's a whole story in itself. Finishing along here with Mr. Wight, he published books, hardcover books, about some of the exhibitions he put on here. Then those exhibits were made to travel to the Museum of Modern Art. Imagine this originating in Los Angeles! I think that's a feather in the cap of the art department to have somebody who is capable of doing that.

MINK: He was well liked in the art department?

DELANO: Well, I think so. I know I was fortunate. I might just tell this little incident--maybe I'm prejudiced in liking him, I don't know. One time we were having a sort of a reception in the art department gallery — and by the way that had a kitchen that was well equipped so we could have functions at these receptions for every exhibit. We were having that, and I was in the kitchen washing dishes. The faculty was putting it on--I don't remember what it was all about. Mr. Wright and Gib Danes came marching into the kitchen, and one of them grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around and said, "Annita, you've been promoted to full professorship!" It just about knocked me over. Mr. Wright had been on my committee. Of course, I know we're not supposed to tell this, but I guess everybody that has good news to tell will tell the person involved. I think I was very fortunate, but he thought that I had done a lot of different things that he could appreciate, you know, like that architectural show that I did. He was, I think, the first person who really appreciated it. He knew what work went into that kind of thing, that I'd worked for a year at least — every spare moment. And I don't particularly think he liked my paintings but.... When you were invited to an exhibition, say, like in the Palace of the Legion of Honor, those letters would be in your folder, and nobody in the art department would know about it but somebody on your committee. And they never hear about it, you know. He appreciated that because he thought it was one of the great galleries.

MINK: Was Danes good about seeing that recommendations were sent in for promotion?

DELANO: Yes, he did. And if they were not, he had a nice way of telling the people that he thought that if they'd look for a job someplace else then he'd help them to find a job. Like, for example, Marybelle [Bigelow] Schmidt, had been asked to come in and teach illustration courses or commercial art of some kind, and she'd had several things to her credit and achievements; but it seemed not to be enough, and he told her so. She was greatly shocked by being asked not just to leave — she could have stayed on and tried for another time to come up for promotion — but she did find a job down at San Diego State College. I understand she's a full professor now. She kept on in her creative work and is much happier down there than if she'd stayed with us. But Danes was the one that would tell people.

MINK: Got her a job?

DELANO: I don't remember about that. Kenneth Kingrey was another example, but it worked the other way. Kenneth was discouraged with the treatment he'd been having. He had been one of our students — so had Marybelle. Kenneth was an elegant teacher, and had great finesse in his own work and in his feeling for what he was going to do in the future as a young man, you know. His students liked him very much. He was really going places with this whole field of commercial art that he was developing. In fact, the students made covers for Fortune magazine. Anyhow, he was not in a safe category. He was whatever they called them at that time — associate or whatever it was — just the way many of us had been for so many years. I think I spoke about that. This sort of category was still going on. I think they've abandoned it now. This meant that if he wanted to take a year off, which he did and went to Europe, he would have to lose his appointment. They could promise to ask him back, but he had no guarantee that he would [be asked] .

MINK: He had no claim on it, in other words.

DELANO: He did come back and took his job, but at a lower salary; and then he seemed to go on and they didn't put him up right away. He was having a bad deal. So then he took the city examination, if I remember, and passed first and would have been taken into the City College in Los Angeles at a much higher rank, much higher salary, too — almost twice what he was getting here. At the same time, the University of Hawaii in Honolulu asked him to come, and so he took that job. He just resigned. He wouldn't stay on. Gib tried every way he could to make him stay.

MINK: Did he try to get a higher rank for him?

DELANO: Yes, he tried, but this started before Gib came, you see.

MINK: I see.

DELANO: Going back to Dr. Danes, I just can't begin to say how he worked diligently and in all interrelationships. It comes out in every letter I read — the relations between the administration, the students, faculty, and then the building up of this group of patrons for the art department. It's called the UCLA Art Council, which is still going on. Danes and Mr. Wight really worked that out. This went on over the years. Now, you know, it' s a growing concern. They make thousands of dollars for scholarships for the art department and have sponsored the thing. Hansena Frederickson and Ann Sumner helped in the very beginning there in taking quite a part in working out this Art Council.

MINK: Were you involved in that in any way?

DELANO: Yes, in the beginning. I was on the first organizing committee. Eventually, it became much more social, and I guess I didn't try to play a part in it. I reneged on getting too involved with something that would take too much time. It just sort of fell into the hands of the people in the neighborhood, many wealthy people, and it still goes on today, you know. They have what' s called the Thieves Market every year, and they raise thousands and thousands of dollars now for the art department. Most of that, I think, goes to scholarships plus paying for some expensive exhibit — that is, expensive to ship and insure and all of that — that the art department perhaps couldn't afford unless they had extra funds. It's not paid for by the state.

MINK: Was Gustave Arlt involved in all of this too?

DELANO: Yes.

MINK: Very much so?

DELANO: Yes. He was on that committee. Well, not with the gallery. Is that what you meant?

MINK: He was involved with the Art Council, wasn't he?

DELANO: Oh. I was going to say that I think that this overall committee that was trying to look for art historians so that we could get a doctor's degree in Letters and Science — that thing, he was much involved with that. Dr. Arlt — I think he was quite involved with that and perhaps with the Hole collection. I don't know.

MINK: You said something a moment ago about the Hole collection, that it was a story all in itself.

DELANO: It certainly was.

MINK: And maybe you have some recollections of that that you'd like to record. Of course, we know that in the dedication of the Art Building, the old Art Building, that Karl With used a four-letter word to Mr. Dickson to describe the Hole collection and said they were nothing but s — t. Dickson, I guess was infuriated about this.

DELANO: He wasn't the only one. There were many people who wrote furiously against the Hole collection. This was over a period of years. After the collection was given to us, it hung in the library above the stacks, in the old first main library, for years.

MINK: In the big reference room upstairs.

DELANO: Upstairs, yes, where you could hardly see them. And unless you made a special effort to go there, I don't think anybody paid much attention, but in the will they were supposed to hang them right and take care of them. I remember going to the first showing of those after they were hung in the library. That evening it had rained so dreadfully that everybody got soaked, and we had to go down into the basement to dry off our shoes. even if we had rubbers on. People weren't wearing boots — at least, women weren't at that time. I remember going down the receiving line. Dr. Sproul was there, and he introduced me to somebody in the line, and I can still remember my feelings because I had just come fresh from the encounter I had had over why we weren't promoted. So when he introduced me to the next person, he said, "This is Annita Delano, a well-known artist from Westwood." Or something to that effect. [laughter] I just swallowed real hard.

MINK: At least you were well known to him.

DELANO: I don't know. It seemed that he had a hard time getting it out, too. It's funny how these things happen.

MINK: Were there people in the art department on the faculty that felt that this collection was sort of foisted on them and they could have cared less?

DELANO: Oh, yes. It seemed to me that the immediate art department wasn't consulted, but this was something to the glory of the administration if they could put it over.

MINK: Well, this was really Dickson's doings.

DELANO: Dickson's doings, I guess.

MINK: Yes. He's the one that got the collection.

DELANO: In the files that you brought to me there are numerous letters and everything about this whole collection and the actual newspaper write-ups, and from magazines, too. I read all of those, and I really hadn't seen quite that many when it was happening.

MINK: I would have thought that with your interest in studying paintings, and so much of what you've told me about how you studied paintings, classical paintings, you knov7, over in Europe...

DELANO: Yes, that's right, of all periods. Yes, that's right.

MINK: ...and at the Barnes Foundation, that you would have been fascinated with the Hole collection.

DELANO: Well, I wasn't fascinated with some of them, and I had read so many books about how wealthy people had been cheated in collecting, you know. And I know this: that it was very difficult in modern periods to find really authentic old masters of the periods that people like the Rindges collected, the Hole collection, or Huntington out in San Marino, too. There are books written about how people who sold the paintings to these collectors, those in Europe, for example--these men with a great deal of money would depend upon their judgments, you see, and buy the paintings, and then maybe it was a hoax. But again, you have to look at it this way: there are many of the greatest museums in the world with fakes in them, and sometimes they hang for years before they find out that they are — for example, before they had ways of testing, the X-rays of the pictures that they have now. The Barnes Foundation makes minute appraisals of every detail in a painting. They count more on experience with the actual paintings and analysis of the finest details, so that when you immediately look at a picture you can tell, almost, whether it's false or not.

MINK: Well, you're bringing up an interesting question.

DELANO: We weren't asked in the art department about whether we wanted the collection.

MINK: Yeah, but when the thing came, were there people in the art department that the moment that these things were uncrated, the moment that they were first visible — were people on the faculty certain right then and there that they were largely fakes? Immediately?

DELANO: Yes. You can tell, but it's like a sensitivity in any field. If you were a musician, it seems to me you have to be in tune all the time, and if you neglect it for years you come to it and you're not so sure. Well, if you have just been from the Louvre, let's say, or from Rome, where you've seen some of the great collections, and then come upon one that's supposed to be a da Vinci, your sensitivity will tell you whether it is or isn't. Of course, you also have to take into consideration a picture could be extremely dirty, and these have to be cleaned and so on.

MINK: Let me back up and come at it another way. When was the first time you...?

DELANO: I didn't see them until they were up there in the library.

MINK: Okay, when they were up there in the library and the faculty on the art department looked at them and you looked at them, did you hear people say right off the bat, "Well, these are a bunch of fakes"?

DELANO: No. No, I didn't.

MINK: When was the first time you ever heard anybody on the staff say they were fakes? Maybe "fakes" isn't the right word.

DELANO: Well, yes, there were some that were. And there was a battle that went on. I think a great deal of it was exaggerated because, finally, when Danes came here, he got somebody from the Huntington Museum in San Marino to come here, and they paid him a lot of money to go over that Hole collection — the man's name was [Theodore] Heinrich; he's now in the Metropolitan Museum — to authenticate the pictures, and they worked a long time.

MINK: So up until that time there had been no attempt?

DELANO: No real appraisal of them. And they knew that some were fakes from just a casual judgment. But now [William Reinhold] Valentiner was down at the Los Angeles museum for a time, and he has passed on some of them as good paintings, authentic. I think the more recent ones in the collection — that is, I mean some of the American paintings — were all right, and there were a lot more that were not fakes than were bad. What we tried to do then was to have the labels taken off so that the public wouldn't be misinformed. They'd say "In the school of...." This sort of thing you see in all the great museums of the world. They are copies and they'll put down "Copied" or "In the school of...." That's what had to be done, instead of saying it was a real El Greco or a real da Vinci or a Raphael and so on.

MINK: There really weren't any real paintings of the great masters, such as you've been mentioning, like Leonardo or Raphael?

DELANO: I never did follow up on Heinrich's final thing because this went over the years, even till after I left. It may still be going on, for all I know. I don't know. It took several hundred dollars for each picture, to have it cleaned, and then to have it appraised and authenticated. They did have documents for all these pictures, but [Arthur] Millier, I think, in his article, said that these were a dime a dozen. There was some woman — I forgot her name — that wrote for what was called Fortnight, a magazine, and she condemned them terrifically, and she scorned the university and called them down — I mean called them to shame. It seems to me these men involved, from the president on down, would be mightily disturbed by it; and they were, you know, because it became public, and they said we were fooling the students, and how could they learn, you know. Well, heck, even the schools in Europe may have great masterpieces right there in the town and then they'll just use a black and white or a slide. They don't all work from the originals.

MINK: Did the art department think it was a waste of money, really, to have the collection?

DELANO: A great deal of money had to be raised after it was brought in, because the building had to be built — that's how we got that building at that time. It was because Dickson moved it up from the forty-second place, [on the budget] or whatever it was, till they built it in '51, I believe, or '52. We got the building, and then they finally worked some details out, like that we could have the gallery — which is a beautiful gallery--two months of the year for other exhibits. Of course, we didn't know we were going to have another new building so few years ahead of that.

MINK: But now the Hole collection is in storage.

DELANO: Nobody goes to see it.

MINK: It's not even shown, really.

DELANO: Isn't it? Well, there are two months that it doesn't have to be. But I think by the will they have to show it the rest of the year. They had to spend a lot of money on lighting and painting the gallery walls. And the staff under Danes really cooperated to see that everything was in tip-top shape. I think they really wanted to have a collection, outside of this vicious sort of publicity. It isn't that I'm not back of the collection 100 percent, but I'm trying to show what the administration is up against. I think if they hadn't been so quick in accepting it, and then not particularly consulting the art department--even somebody in the art department might not know. You'd have to get somebody in the biggest museums to really find out, and it would cost you money. But these wealthy men who assembled pictures in the late years are up against the whole problem of finding authentic pictures. Why don't they go in for modern art? That's what they should have done.

MINK: Huntington was lucky in that he had Duveen to help him, and he was able to get Gainsboroughs and authentic ones.

DELANO: Well, some of the later pictures were authentic and all right in the Hole collection.

MINK: Late eighteenth-century [paintings].

DELANO: And some of the copies are very good. Now, large museums show copies and, if it's a good copy, it's better than having just a color reproduction, you see. I think some of the letters that I found from Danes about all of this was very good.

MINK: Well, then, let me ask you this question about the Hole in juxtaposition to the Arensberg . I think you've already mentioned that you felt that Dickson didn't like modern art and therefore he wasn't interested in the Arensberg collection, and I pointed out that there is also something to be said for the fact that there simply wasn't the money--it was an administrative matter. Did the faculty, after the Arensberg episode, say, "Well, gee, we really should have had this. Instead of having this stupid Hole collection, look what we could have had."

DELANO: Yes, we were always saying that — that is, if the whole deal had been worked out, it seems to me, by the actual people in the art department instead of all these other people getting in the act, you see, just wanting something to do with the problem of getting these pictures as a gift to the university. So there was Kenneth Macgowan--he was not in the art department. Just because he knew these people, and everybody thought, except people in the art department, that if they were friends at all, that they could urge them to give it. But why didn't they get the Arensberg over here? I just don't know the inner details, but I happened to go the Arensberg home several times with the Department of Anthropology. I think I told you about that. I had seen the collection numbers of times and thought that it would be wonderful if we could have it, and I did say that several times to the Arnsberg's. But that wasn't like having an official sort of push, let's say, from the people as a group. It was all sort of undercover.

MINK: You think Arensberg would have done it if they'd really pushed him?

DELANO: Given it to the art department?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: I kind of think if it would have been handled differently that we might have gotten it. And why should it go to Philadelphia, you see? This is what we could never understand. Whether it was Dickson, I don't know. I do know this: Mr. Dickson was there one night when I was there at the Arensbergs, and Mr. Arensberg asked me to go along with him and try to talk to him about how fine those pictures were. I did my best, but he was not in the least interested. As we walked up the stairs to the second floor, he wanted me to go into the small room where the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy was carried on — I mean the books, the library about this controversy that Arensberg had been interested in all his life. And that is what Dickson was interested in, not in the paintings, As he looked out at, well, let's say a Picasso, he could care less about it. He just didn't like it. I know from my own experience with my painting. When our new building — not the present building but the first building we had as a department — was opened, the second exhibit was a one-man show of my paintings. Mr. Dickson came to it. He walked around with me and he said, "Now, this is the kind of painting I like, Annita,"

MINK: Were you on a first -name basis with him?

DELANO: That's what he called me, and I don't know why. But Marjorie [Harriman] Baker was quite a friend of theirs. I don't remember in what respect, but she was a great friend of Paul Hunter, and she was teaching in our department. Ann Sumner and Hansena were in the Delta Gamma sorority, and I had been asked to be the faculty advisor many years ago. So there was all of this kind of background.

MINK: So Dickson said, "This is the kind of painting...."

DELANO: Yes. He said, "This is the kind. If I were going to buy one of your paintings, I'd buy this." It was back in the northeast corner, and it was a large watercolor painting of landscape, in kind of cool tones, clouds and trees. I've been interested to do these very well, I'd say representational types for many years; but most of my work at that time — this was in the fifties — was going in a little different direction, and he'd just brush right by them. Yes, he involved me in quite a conversation over that painting that he liked.

MINK: What did he say about it?

DELANO: Well, he liked it.

MINK: Did you think he was going to buy it?

DELANO: No, I didn't think he was going to buy it; he just said that. He said, "If I were going to buy one, this is it." No, I don't know anything about their home, whether they collected pictures or not.

MINK: Oh, yes.

DELANO: They did.

MINK: He was very much interested in art.

DELANO: Well, Majl Ewing and his wife, Carmelita, came to the exhibit, and she liked one of a triad. I had three large oils on the north wall, and in the center was one which was the sort of key to the other two on the sides. She was crazy about that. She told her husband about it, and so one day he saw me on the street in Westwood going into the bank, and he said, "Say, Annita, Carmelita loves that picture of yours. Would you sell that one out of the triad, the central one?"

DELANO: I said, "Yes, but I don't know what to ask for it." Well, I didn't have any dealer, and so I just asked a nominal sum and they bought it. He gave it to her for Christmas.

MINK: What was the nominal sum?

DELANO: I don't remember — $125, probably. It was a large oil, framed. Oh, well, the problem of getting dealers.... I did have one in the very beginning in San Francisco, but the woman died that was in charge. Well, that's another long story. The Ewings had that painting up until they both died, so I don't know what's happened to it now. It was sort of an abstract from the adobes of the Indians out in New Mexico. I think that's why she loved it. Her whole living room was built around that picture.

MINK: Did you ever had an opportunity to have him see any of your other pictures, other than that exhibit?

DELANO: No. No, I never had another one-man show there. I finally joined up with a gallery on La Cienega where at least two dozen from the art department showed their work. A lot of us went into that gallery. I never thought of sending him a brochure, I guess. I didn't know he was that interested in art.

MINK: I just don't think he was interested in the kind of art that you painted.

DELANO: No, he wasn't.

MINK: I don't think so.

DELANO: No, I don't think so.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER IX, SIDE TWO
APRIL 22, 1971

MINK: At the end of the last session we were discussing the one-man show that you had at UCLA in the gallery there. You had mentioned that you had not had any other one-man show at UCLA. Or did you?

DELANO: Yes, I did, before we had this building that we're concerned with at that date.

MINK: The old Dickson Art Center?

DELANO: Yes, the first building that the art department occupied as a whole. We felt that the art department really had a home and we really had a place to exhibit, whereas before, when we had the exhibition room in the third floor of Moore Hall, it was a very difficult place-- as I think I've mentioned before--to place arrangements. I had several one-man shows there throughout the years.

MINK: But after this one-man show that you had in the art gallery of the old Dickson Art Center, you had no more one-man shows at UCLA?

DELANO: No, I did not.

MINK: I think you mentioned at the end of the hour last time that you hadn't had a dealer except quite a long time before in San Francisco and that she died, and that was another long story which you wanted to talk about.

DELANO: Artists in relation to outlets for their work and how, perhaps, to become successful in that sense: Most artists paint regardless of what happens to their paintings, because it's such an expressive part of their lives; and yet they always have hopes of releasing some of at. It's as though you were composing music and no one ever heard it — so [the artist seeks] some way to have it shown.

MINK: Is it so much the money, really, in a sense? Isn't just the fact that you have a satisfaction in your mind that your paintings are hanging on walls of houses or institutions and so on?

DELANO: Yes, I think that a person has a feeling that if their paintings are appreciated it means a lot to the artist.

MINK: Wouldn't it be sort of like: as long as a faculty member has a whole bunch of manuscripts of a book in his office which he hasn't published, why, he isn't as satisfied as though they were published and available in the library? Is that the idea?

DELANO: That's it, yes. It does a great many things to him, perhaps. It tests, perhaps, the qualities in his work, if people appreciate them. Of course, artists vary so from the more gifted, creative and types of artists who bring in entirely new movements. You could say. looking back on some of the late French history and painting, that a person like Picasso was innovative all through his life, much more so than many other artists. Then many artists took what he gave to painting, the innovative parts, even though he can be traced back to other artists and so on; yet others took it and added their own. Any artist has to have something of his own. qualities in the work, but the one way to test it, and one thing that makes an artist feel good about his work, is the fact that someone with taste and individual sensitive perceptions would like his work. This would be more gratifying than almost anything else.

MINK: 'Annita, I was wondering, in this sense — I was making a comparison with a faculty member who has the manuscripts, you know, in his office — were the painters ever judged as far as promotion was concerned on how many paintings they had released to public institutions, or sold, as opposed to how many they'd actually done or shown?

DELANO: Whether they sold them or not I don't think ever entered into it, unless you had a committee, a whole committee, that had that idea that success meant selling. Then, maybe, you were sunk because there aren't too many artists who really sell their work unless they're world- known .

MINK: But placing them, say, in a museum....

DELANO: Well, that's the highest honor, I think especially if you've been invited. That's why I hate to feel like I'm just pushing myself or something, but way back when Mr. Cox was chairman I had been invited — I just don't know how it came about — to show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. They didn't have that big downtown gallery at the time. That was the place to show modern painting. And I filled two galleries.

MINK: Was it the place on the West Coast at that time?

DELANO: Oh, yes. Other artists, later, friends of mine in New York, said it was a great honor to be invited there by the two men who were in charge.

MINK: It would be a greater honor though, of course, to be asked to show them in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

DELANO: Yes. Yes, it would.

MINK: And you were.

DELANO: It was the center.

MINK: But you did show later there, too.

DELANO: Well, I showed in the Metropolitan during the war. There were a lot of paintings collected from all over the country and only about 276, I think, shown.

MINK: That one that I have, The House of the Yesteryear, was one.

DELANO: That went with the California Watercolor Society. It traveled throughout the country with what we call our traveling show. Then, when it got to New York, somehow or another the critics in the New York Times wrote it up, and several magazines, and it was during the period a lot of artists were interested in the old houses and architecture. That was sort of a theme that just recurred throughout for a period there, sort of a nostalgic interest in those old houses. Now people are saving them, literally; here in Los Angeles, they have that society, or whatever it is, to save those old houses. But the artists were doing these things. It was a wave of interest back in the late forties or fifties — I've forgotten when. Then these things sort of died down. Something else takes its place.

MINK: Did this find currency among the painters group in the art department?

DELANO: Yes, yes. Bill Bowne, Dorothy Brown — let's see — well, those two and Clinton Adams and I went down to the old part of town and painted houses on the top of the hill.

MINK: Bunker Hill?

DELANO: Yes, on Bunker Hill. That's where one that you have that I called House of Another Age was at the time. When I painted that, it was during the war, and Buffy Johnson, another old student of mine — well, she wasn't old, but I mean long ago . . .

MINK: ... in chronology.

DELANO: In chronology, yes. She came out here to marry a boy she knew that was going off to the war, another ex- student of mine. Buffy went out to paint, and we got up there on that hill and chose that house to paint. But, you see, that was just a little later than the period — well, I mean, it was in the same period but a little later in years. It was four or five years that many artists painted those houses, or parts of old towns. And then something else takes its place. I've noticed back in periods in France--in the earlier moderns, say, during the development of impressionism — many artists would do almost the same thing in subject matter. But they had been trained to paint still life, landscape, figure, and draw from all kinds of things-- everything visual that interested them. The subject matter once in a while comes up just the way it does, say, if there's a large convention or World's Fair. I remember one time one in Spain, and all the arts sort of reflected something Spanish; even costume design took on the idea of Spanish influence. The painters sort of went along with it, even unconsciously. These are sort of minor stimuli, and then the artist goes back to his own condition of whatever he wants to paint most.

MINK: Did any of the faculty, including yourself, ever have any paintings that became, say, the permanent exhibits of a Museum?

DELANO: Yes. I had one that's in the Los Angeles museum. I'm kind of ashamed of it now. I hope they don't ever show it. But it did get the Henry E. Huntington prize and is in the permanent collection.

MINK: Had you painted it with that idea in mind?

DELANO: Oh, no. I was arranging still life in the art department before we ever moved to Westwood. I think I had a red dish, a glass dish, some brilliant blue-green and some other things. The color scheme of the still life was very dramatic. I imagined a composition of figures floating down a stream and had some rocks in the picture — I don't quite remember now. The qualities of that thing, the arrangement that I made for the students, just stayed with me, and I made up this imaginary thing. Now I remember. The people who chose it as first prize, or purchase prize, for the museum: the committee was made up of S. Macdonald-Wright and a man named Franz Geritz. I don't remember who the others were.

MINK: S. Macdonald-Wright wasn't, of course, at that time on the faculty.

DELANO: He wasn't on the faculty, no. This was in 1925, I think, and I was just beginning. I think my work was influenced way back there by the Orientalism that we had been exposed to by many of our teachers that I had--I mean, when I was a student there in that department — plus the violent color that we were exposed to when we saw German expressionism. Madame Galka E. Scheyer came to Los Angeles and brought a collection of German paintings, I think it was sort of a melding of these qualities in my work. Until you look back, you don't know what' s influencing you. You think it's a brand-new thing, but you can even trace the qualities in your own work, which amount to something new if it's truly integrated, I guess. But you were asking about the galleries.

MINK: Yes, and you said that you did have a woman who handled your paintings in San Francisco and she died.

DELANO: Yes. It was called the East-West Gallery. I did run across her name, but I've forgotten.

MINK: We can put it in the record later.

DELANO: She had seen my work at the museum there in San Francisco...

MINK: At the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

DELANO: ...at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and wanted to handle my work. She came down here to look at it and was impressed, so she thought I could send a one- man show to her gallery, which I did. They were all different paintings from what I had there before. She sold some for me, and things were just going along fine. The paintings had to be shipped by express freight in those days, and it was quite a costly thing.

MINK: Did you have to pay for having them sent up there?

DELANO: No. No, I didn't. That was one wonderful thing. I don't know what backing she had, or whether she was a wealthy woman. I really didn't get a chance to know her very well. It was about a year or two that we had correspondence back and forth, but then she died very suddenly. Of course, I joined the Watercolor Society. It was a new organization, a part of what was called the California Art Club in those days, and this seemed to be a very good outlet and very good for a beginning artist to get started, to know some of his own colleagues who are painting. I enjoyed that very much. We had shows that were organized across the country and back, and that is kept up even to this day. Now it's called the National Watercolor Society. I've kept my membership all these years. As for galleries here, say, during the twenties, thirties, forties, there were very few that persisted down through the years. There was the Hatfield Gallery, and it moved around from place to place, but it had been in the Ambassador Hotel for some time. I believe his son carries on there. What was that other man that handled S. Macdonald-Wright' s paintings? And he collected Mexican primitive art. He has a collection of the primitive things and he had the gallery for many, many years, too, and it persisted. Then there was this wave of excitement about many galleries opening on La Cienega, all about the same time.

MINK: Was this about the 1950s?

DELANO: Yes, way up there in time. They instituted this thing of opening the galleries on Monday night so people came to see the openings and the exhibits that had opened previously, possibly. Everybody had their doors open, and a lot of students and people interested walked up and down the avenue to go into the galleries there. That was quite exhilarating. One could say that the people who opened the galleries were very seldom really schooled in being gallery directors. There were some exceptions. Perhaps [Felix] Landau was, second to Perls. Perls wasn't on La Cienega, but he would be a good example of a dealer who is closer to the European type, or even the New York galleries, where he has some knowledge about the history of painting and taste and so on. Mr. Perls was showing drawings of old masters and recent modern paintings and so forth. About this time that we're talking about on La Cienega, he took on some of the people from UCLA. One had been a recent student of mine. Of course, he'd studied with everybody else in the department, but I think I helped him there in the beginning because he came from a teachers' college in the East and didn't have much sense of direction with his color. I think I helped him there. He prospered with Perls. And Perls took even his student work, he thought he was so gifted. This was James McGarrell, and his work was shown all over the country through the kind of promoting that Perls could give a young artist, you know.

MINK: He took, in other words, things he'd done at UCLA.

DELANO: Right out of my classes and some of the other classes that he'd had there. He thought a lot of his work.

MINK: What did you think of it?

DELANO: Well, I thought he was gifted; but I don't know, I didn't think at the time he had matured. Of course, I'm sure Perls didn't either, but he gave him the opportunity to show in what I considered the best gallery. This was over in Beverly Hills, a little farther over in the center of Beverly Hills. Very soon he took on several others from UCLA. He had Bill Brice. Of course, that was sort of natural for him to take Bill Brice. Fanny Brice, Bill's mother, had helped Perls hang a show one time, and I think Perls wrote a book about Fanny Brice. It's terribly interesting about how she had a feeling for art. Her son, you know, came to us. (I think that Danes was chairman at the time; I'm not certain what year he came in there.) Bill Brice went to Perls, also Sam Amato and Jan Stussy.

MINK: Who were on the faculty.

DELANO: On the faculty, yes. And then these other galleries up and down the street: I think to my mind, the best one on La Cienega then was Landau. He took some more of our faculty — Clinton Adams for one, and John Paul Jones. John Paul Jones had been brought in to teach and to make a whole area of printmaking under Danes. Danes had been the chairman then. Everybody was finding a gallery. Then we had a student, Cecil Hedrick, who was a very quiet, sort of introverted person.

MINK: He wasn't related to the Hedricks of Earle Hedrick?

DELANO: No, not that he knows of. He came from South Carolina, and his father had been a coal miner, and he was very interesting. I've been friends with him and his partner ever since those days when he was a student. The other young man that came with him from — would you say the South or the East? — North Carolina or South Carolina was Jerry Jerome. They made their way across the country, and Cecil went to the university and got through the teaching curriculum there. And the two made quite a contrasting pair. Jerome was the kind who knew everybody, and especially the people in the movie industry; so when he came back from the Korean War, he wanted to become an actor and studied in Pasadena. Raymond Burr had graduated there and saw to it that Jerry got in. Somehow or other he didn't go on, and then he got the idea of opening a gallery together with Cecil. Cecil quit his teaching. By this time, he was teaching in a high school. I don't know why I get wound up with this, except that this gallery that they opened became a haven for about twenty-four — it seems to me, if I counted correctly — painters from the art department at UCLA. Some were very young and just beginning as assistants, or something of the kind, and they had a chance to go over and see the graduate exhibits and pick out people they liked and show them in that gallery. First they had a little nucleus of Mexican artists — I mean the Mexican derivation. There was [Roberto] Chavez and [Edward] Carrillo. There was Louis Lunetta, and then later there was Les Biller, who married a Japanese girl. There was a very interesting collection of people in there, and, as I said, about twenty-four. Then, later, instructors or professors went in. The galleries up and down the row have a hard time, unless they have a great deal of money behind them some way or other. I don't think they sell enough paintings. People in Los Angeles just don't seem to support the artists by keeping a consistent trade going in the collection of paintings. So something has to happen. I know some of these other older dealers had sidelines. I know one man who made candy upstairs and sold that in order to pay the rent. I don't know what Hatfield did, but he was well located in that hotel.

MINK: Had you, from the time of the death of this woman in San Francisco, whose name we'll find, had a gallery?

DELANO: No, no . I joined up with what they call the Ceeje Gallery.

MINK: That was Cecil and Jerry.

DELANO: That was Cecil and Jerome, yes. They combined the name and made the gallery. They had a lot of fun. We'd have openings, and all this young group--I thoroughly enjoyed being with them. I was, you'd say, the senior member. After all, I don't know how they tolerated me, but there was a lot of life going on, and I guess that lured me in there. The exhibits were well liked, I think. There were a lot of interesting ones, and everybody had a chance to show several times; but as the years went along it was harder and harder to make a living through this, and so in late years the boys decided they'd try to buy the building and open a restaurant upstairs and rent out all the rooms downstairs. So, in the future they might open a gallery again, but until they can get the thing on a paying basis I guess they won't. They're just not having a gallery.

MINK: Well, did you have any luck with them in selling your paintings?

DELANO: Well, we sold some. I didn't get paid for them until a little bit recently, even, because the restaurant is really paying for itself as it goes on, I think they're trying to make up some of these back debts. They seem to owe a great many of the artists for paintings they would sell and then not pay them for at the time. I guess that's sort of common. Some people have a strange attitude towards the artist. They feel that his work is just there: that you're selfish if you just don't give it away. I think this is something. I don't know where this notion comes from. Paris has proceeded along entirely different lines. They have had so many more generations of noted dealers who come on down with the tradition, and now it's arranged so that if an artists' s work is sold, if their work is left after they die and the work goes up in price, any proceeds and profits on the sale of these paintings will go to the heirs. This is what ought to happen here. But you know, our people are so naive and so unschooled in any of this sort of thing. Not a word is said about any of this side of it at UCLA in the classes that I know of. I used to sit around soirietiraes at the gallery when there was an opening, or be down there for one reason or another, and we had a young man who was an artist, quite gifted, and instead of going into teaching he's been working at the Getty Museum. Well, his background in history of art and so on really makes him eligible to work in a job like that, and he was a very sensitive sort of person. Well, you know he wanted to show his work at this gallery, so he brings it down, spreads it out there against the walls to see what Jerome thinks about it. Jerome is a very extroverted type, and he's so untrained in art, but he has the enthusiasm of a child, let's say, in relation to art. For him to pass judgment on this work, a boy that's been through the department and is working with Getty Museum and all that — for him to just wait for this fellow to say something about his work just sort of kills me. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here, but then there was a dealer farther on down whose background had been interior design. Well, there's nothing against interior design. Many people in that area could be great in the appreciation of painting. But this particular woman that I knew about years ago didn't have any particular training in the appreciation of art.

MINK: Who was this?

DELANO: Oh, I don't remember her name now, but she still has a gallery there on La Cienega, and so perhaps where she'd be lacking would be in this respect: that her judgment would be concerned with the decorative painting.

MINK: The type of painting that would blend with the kind of interiors she was interested in designing.

DELANO: Yes, that's right. I think she kind of gave that up. I don't remember the incidents about her life. But the idea, anyway, of having people run galleries who are not trained or have no art background: this is the thing. Of course, it entails a special kind of person, somebody who has administrative ability and some business, but a special liking for the artists and whether there's something new coming along. I mean, this other kind of person could just be fooled by anybody that comes along the street, like maybe trying to sell some fake drawings. Just like the Hole collection that we talked about, you know. There are all kinds of people that sell fakes. Of course, in this respect these younger people running these galleries now don't have to worry about that if they're dealing with the living artists. That's something else again. My plea this afternoon is to suggest that we're far behind, that we could train dealers or people who will know what to do with the artist and his work, and how to develop it, how really to promote it. I think it would be terrible if it got into the hands of people who promote the art of the movies and that kind of thing. In my mind, it shouldn't go that way, but something which is a little more stable and sincere, and something that doesn't just ruin the artist.

MINK: Well, let me ask you this. I think this may be a movement that is prevalent throughout the country, but it's certainly a movement that is prevalent here. It lends itself to this area because of the mild climate. There are so many flea markets, where the artists themselves will go of a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday afternoon, and they'll have their paintings. People can simply walk through and buy them. My guess is that they usually are selling these paintings at a far cheaper price than you would find in a gallery, where there would be a commission involved and there would be a reputation of a practicing artist of some note at stake. Has this, do you think, tended to water down the market for the more prominent and stable, longtime artists in the community?

DELANO: No, I think you have these collections along the streets in Paris and other places, but people seem to know that the better exhibits would be in a gallery someplace. I don't think that waters it down too much.

MINK: Well, even in the 1930s, as I remember, you could drive up in the desert, and you see somebody with a trailer and a bunch of paintings.

DELANO: Well, yes, or up in the Grand Canyon. I remember a man up there who got permission from the government to use a little building that was right on the rim at one of the points where everybody stopped. People that were on busses or in their private cars would go out to that point, and this man would be painting there very prominently. His name was Fieldstone Fairchild. [laughter] Isn't that a wonderful name?

MINK: He was really grinding them out.

DELANO: Yes, he was. He has a gallery now in Phoenix, but at that time he was painting there where everybody stopped, and he'd have what he'd painted from the previous days standing around in that little cabin. I suppose he sold some there. It isn't to say that you couldn't find a good artist doing that. You might, you know, because if you're painting out in landscape, people will always stop and watch. For some reason they seem to be interested. It's one of the things I enjoyed as just a minor side attraction. It never bothered me if people were looking over my shoulders; I guess I got used to that in teaching. But I wanted to say one more thing about the outlets. You see, here in Southern California, as far as the artists' getting their work before the public, we had these early clubs: the California Art Club first; and then the Watercolor Society was made up from members of that club and then went on its own besides and is still in existence. Then there are other schools. UCLA, I guess, took the lead in building a museum. There was quite a fight over having exhibits from the faculty in there, and I remember before we had that building, the first new building where we could be by ourselves, that I'd been promised to have a one-man show after I came back from my sabbatical leave, the only one I had — that was in 1951. I was promised this exhibit. It cost quite a lot to get new pictures framed from beginning to end, and it took a lot of time and so on. Well, I was getting this ready and Mr. Bowne was head of the department then, and I think I mentioned something about the squabbles that were going on. There was an intense sort of undercurrent going on with different personalities involved, like Dr. With. I don't know, I never did solve what was at the bottom of this, but for some reason a new gallery committee had been appointed, and they'd decided that they didn't want me to show in the new building right away. It was first to be a show gotten up by Mr. [Warren] Carter and several people — ethnic art that they borrowed from Berkeley — and then mine was to be the next show, so it was the first painting show in the new gallery. Well, I'd been promised this and looked forward to it. There had been other paintings, including my own paintings, shown in our previous gallery, so I didn't see why we couldn't have it. Not only that, but when writers produce articles or books, they can have it printed in the university press. I couldn't see any difference. This is your research. It's going out as an expressive collection of things, and it's just like getting it printed, You have to have an exhibit to show what you've done. I made a plea for the fact that artists from the art department should be shown. There was no reason why they should not. But I had to say that I was going to President Sproul with it if they didn't let me. [laughter]

MINK: You usually got something done when you went to Sproul.

DELANO: Once in a while. With this that you're pulling out of me, it seems to me I have been too reluctant to say things at times. But when I do, I think I get over my point. Very seldom I don't.

MINK: Who did you have to try to convince in 1951?

DELANO: Well, this was Bill Bowne and Dorothy Brown. She was the head of the committee, and they just didn't want to cooperate with me. I don't know what was at the bottom of it, I really don't, because now Sam Amato had a big exhibit — he's still teaching there and he didn't particularly have a sabbatical to get ready for it or anything. There have been a lot of them have their exhibits — Les Biller and so on. And I think it should be that way.

MINK: Well, was your exhibit the first one, then in the new building?

DELANO: Yes, the first painting exhibit.

MINK: But you had to give way to the ethnic exhibit?

DELANO: The first one was this collection of ethnic art from Berkeley, from the collections up there. Who was it that got it together? Warren Carter, I think. But now I don't know that this should be a policy, but I think we should consider that the university press will print articles and books for the faculty. The people that write the books, I guess, don't make any money off of it.

MINK: The press has never considered itself, I don't think, to be an outlet for the publication of the faculty per se.

DELANO: No, but if they want to.

MINK: There has to be a certain standard of excellence, naturally.

DELANO: Oh, yes. That's right.

MINK: And it has to be the type of thing the press would want .

DELANO: That's right.

MINK: But there is a comparison, certainly.

DELANO: Yes, that's right. After all, the gallery should meet a standard. It should have a policy.

MINK: Did it ever happen in the art department that there were people who were there but whose work really wasn't up to the sort of thing that they could really get together and exhibit? And did they have then to be told that they couldn't exhibit?

DELANO: No, I haven't heard of anything like that. Laura Andreson just had an exhibit of her pottery, a beautiful exhibit. I think she could have been known all over the country if she'd had the right promotion. She's been making wonderful pottery all these years, and it goes off in a ceramic sale at the end of the year just before Christmas; and so these wonderful things disappear into the homes of people that appreciate them — and that's wonderful. But if she could have had some kind of showing.. The last thing she's had is a retrospective, and she had to borrow from hither and yon, and it doesn't really show the great bulk of her work, you know. This would have been encouragement. She did have one show once in the Paul Rivas, another ex-student of ours, who opened a gallery down there on La Cienega. That kid was so — excuse me, boy, young man — kind of slow-moving, I don't know; maybe he was ill or something. He neglected to put her show up in a good fashion. Most of it just sat around on the floor. That was no showing, no way to show Laura's work. Then she did show wonderful things in the Syracuse ceramic shows. That is, she's been showing little groups or single things within collections of showings---Claremont, for example. Most of the staff down there for years were graduates from our department. [Richard] Petterson, for one, made beautiful pottery. He had been one of Laura's students. He was head of the department for a while and so on. But some outlet, and I think some of the colleges now, besides the university, are having shows of the faculties here and there and inviting them. I've been honored to have shows at the [Los Angeles] City College just two years ago.

MINK: Was that due to one of your students that was down there teaching?

DELANO: Yes. Well, she'd always liked my work. She'd been in this Ceeje Gallery.

MINK: Who was this?

DELANO: Olga S. Kooyman. She'd been an ex -student and was showing her work in the Ceeje Gallery and liked my work. She's teaching now in the [L.A.] City College, and asked me to have an exhibit there. They have a new building .

MINK: So that's another way that faculty can get outlet.

DELANO: Recognition and outlet.

MINK: Are other faculty members shown in other schools by students who have known them?

DELANO: Oh, yes. That isn't always just through having some student know them. One thing, I had a one-man show put together and shipped to New Mexico, and I was asked to have this by Vernon Hunter. He's not living now. I had known him as a colleague instructor and teacher at Otis Art Institute when I was teaching there. So during the WPA projects, Vernon was in charge of making one of the large folders on Indian art for the WPA project. It was printed by the government, you know. Then he was in charge of a whole western region to have exhibitions, and he had a lot to do with the opening of a new museum in New Mexico. So he asked me to get together, oh, about a hundred pictures or whatever it was — I don't remember now; several crates of them, I know, with glass, very heavy — and send them out there. He had them sent all around, from the Santa Fe museum to a lot of different towns in New Mexico.

MINK: Were any of them sold?

DELANO: No. That's one thing about having them in a museum. It seems to be more of an honor. They could be sold, but nobody thinks of buying them. They walk in a museum, they never think the things are for sale — no signs or prices or anything like that, you know.

MINK: When you do an exhibit, are you asked to prepare the brochure, or do you leave that to the person?

DELANO: Well, sometimes they have money for that expense, or sometimes you do it yourself and pay for it. When I had that show at the Ceeje Gallery (by the way, I was very flattered to think that practically all the faculty came, the dean and everybody concerned with the art department; it wasn't just the design people; they came, but the painters came, too, and I was so impressed), I paid half on the colored reproduction of the painting we had on the brochure. I don't know what Mr. Wight's policy is in reference to painters that show in the gallery now, but I know he was director of the galleries when Laura's show was on; and Amato' s and Les Biller's, I can think of just recently, were shown in the gallery and Mr. Wight was chairman. I think that most of the people would like to have a regular dealer who would know his business and how to really sell it. But I guess we don't have too many collectors who look for paintings here. They go to New York or Paris. That's about the way it works out. I heard June Wayne on television the other day. I heard that twice. It was repeated on channel 28.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
APRIL 22, 1971

MINK: You were talking about hearing June Wayne on television, and you were telling me something about her criticism of the training of artists.

DELANO: Yes, She felt that people couldn't train artists and she seemed to be complaining, and even mentioned UCLA. She said, of course, the university gives them a good job and it ought to be thanked for that. But I think she's really off in her appraisals, because I've taught so many, many years, and I think about students coming in there just very raw with hardly any background, many of them, and sensitivity. There's a great deal of training that can take place. It isn't that you give them the talent. That's not what one is saying. They come to bloom there, to be brought out. That's what education really is. I think it was dreadful for her to say that, because there are always enemies of the arts in an academic situation.

MINK: You said Clinton Adams was quite involved with her.

DELANO: Yes, he was. He was our student, and then he was taken on there as a teacher and professor, and he was right in with June Wayne in the beginning when she got this idea to form a Tamarind workshop where they could make prints, lithographs and all that kind of thing.

MINK: Did she herself go to UCLA?

DELANO: I don't think so, no. In a way, you don't blame her for being a little sour on the academic world, but we are trying to have the artistic world in there, too. I think it all depends on the kind of teachers that the students would have. But there is a great deal of training that can take place to bring the student out. That could be very bad training, also. You don't make an artist but you certainly can get him to grow. A background and skills and techniques are the minor part--but the encouragement and development [are major], so that by the time they have gone through four or five years, whatever time they spend there, it seems to me they're getting a far richer development of their whole personality.

MINK: Coming back to the history of the art department now, just a little more on Karl With, because he was important in shaping the thing: what kind of influences, philosophically, do you think that he imposed upon the art department and upon the painters' group in particular?

DELANO: Well, I think he had this sort of absolutistic idea of philosophy that sort of runs through the training of a lot of professors we've had from Germany, particularly, There is a feeling that they're looking for something constant all the time in the arts. This goes counter to the germinating of real expressive, creative work. Then there's an attitude of looking down on this creative work, that you should be looking for the principles instead of thinking of a whole total personality. This is the way I look at it, at least: that the personality that is expressive and creative and is working in the arts has the ability to do, to think and create in a most difficult kind of expressive language, either in literature or in painting, or music, or whatever it is. I think there's been a great burden carried on by these people who are somewhat suppressed, you might say, whether they know it or not, with this kind of absolutism. The newer philosophies, as I see it, like the training I had at the Barnes Foundation, bring this out. I remember one book particularly that I was introduced to right away. Martin Schutze wrote this book in the University of Chicago, a book called Academic Illusions [in the Field of Letters and the Arts], and he traces through two sections of the book something about the dialectical absolutism, he calls it, as opposed to an integrated personality and the kind of creativeness that comes out in the creative arts. These other people, their work would consist of a search for constants; that is, for compilations of notes on the history of the arts. There would be little sensitivity to the emerging, new qualities in the arts. I think, if I remember, he said there would be very few people in most of the English departments who would have recognized Gertrude Stein when she first started to write. That would work for the painting, too, and the sculpture, and so on. Dr. With did have a more creative attitude towards what he called the utilitarian arts. Then there's this other part of it. He did praise the German expressionists very much, and when you look at them in relation to the French expressionists -- if you want to call them by a school, a name, a group---the Germans were ever so much more extreme in their coloration and in what at that time seemed very crude in drawing and so on, like Emil Nolde, let's say. He extolled this kind of art, and I think it expressed something in the whole German nature. It was burdened with this kind of philosophy, if I analyzed it correctly. In order to get away from this suppression, it just came out in these extreme form of coloration and compositional grouping and so on that they used in their paintings. They call it German expressionism. Now, when Dr. With talked about it — I heard him talk a number of times, and he had this way of orating which was appealing, I suppose, to a great many people — sort of stentorian tones, you know.

MINK: Very authoritative.

DELANO: Very authoritative, that's right. And because he ran a museum in Germany and had a good deal of training in that sort of thing, when he came over here.... (I guess he fled from Hitler. I don't think he was Jewish — I'm sure he wasn't, but more of the idea that his ideas didn't fit in. )

MINK: Do you think that a lot of people in the art department thought he was sort of a windbag?

DELANO: Well, a lot of them didn't like him because he seemed to have no place for the other people to prosper — everybody that we tried to bring in. You see, we were trying to build up art history and were trying to get a major in art history, and as I look back on it, it seems to me so many of them felt that their way was right and that nobody else could do it. Then when we wanted to build up the museum or have the new building, he wanted to be the chairman of the galleries.

MINK: He was the chairman of the department for a while, wasn't he?

DELANO: No, he never was, that I know of. You know, sometimes in a summer session a person might be placed in charge.

MINK: Maybe sometime as acting chairman or something.

DELANO: I don't think that he was. He made enemies fairly soon with his attitude. I think he was probably jealous, perhaps, of people. We had this young man. Dr. [Carl D.] Sheppard [Jr.], come in to teach art history, and he just took a murderous dislike to that young man, and he finally left because of it. It broke out in faculty meetings. This was no secret.

MINK: And Sheppard finally had to leave because of with?

DELANO: Well, I think he did. He looked for a different job. But he was promoted and he was going ahead. He was a very fine person, had lovely children and wife, and I'd been to his home. It just seemed outrageous that Dr. With didn't want him to be in the art department. Then we had other people that had been trained in Germany, too. Breasted, of course, was an American, but he was trained in German universities. I think he had this trouble. Many people to this day think that it's great training, very methodical, and a great deal of reference work goes into it and so, you know. But when it comes to being right there within the real living art, there seems to be a lack, you know.

MINK: In other words, his approaches were more lifeless and cold?

DELANO: That's right, yes. When we had Dr. Danes, his training had been so different, you know. He'd been in American universities and finally got his doctor's degree at Yale, and there was a likeableness about his character, and everybody liked him. He was outgoing. He was also very interested in Mexican art, did a lot of work down there in Mexico and wrote about many of the artists involved. He had at one time written articles for encyclopedias on the modern movement in Mexico.

MINK: Well, he and With...?

DELANO: They clashed. Yes, they clashed terrifically, Laura Andreson told me about a meeting at Dr. With's house where Danes and Laura came to dinner and Dr. With was pleading with Danes to get rid of Fred Wright. Dr. Danes just wept over the thing. Mr. Danes had gotten Fred Wight to come in and run the galleries, and I don't know whether he even knew that much about what Dr. With had done before he came to us, you know. Here was a chance for this whole new gallery, for someone to run it, and yet he resented having Mr. Wight in here. Fred Wight was now the director, has been for many years. Danes had to fight to have this thing quieted down so Fred could go ahead; and I know that perhaps they would appraise it in a different way from what I'm sensing through this thing, but it's probably due to some of the troubles they had in Europe at the time, you know--the great anxiety, the feeling to achieve something, and with the kind of philosophy that sort of loads you down with an authoritarian attitude. Yet I found that in some of the writings and letters from Danes, as well as Fred Wight, that there was a great deal they overlooked in a person like Karl With. He did arrange some exhibits in the new gallery.

MINK: Were they well done?

DELANO: I don't remember them now. I know he put on, I think, an Oriental exhibit. (Maybe I was gone then. I had a year off.) I just can't remember especially what happened to that exhibit he was supposed to do. It was on Oriental art. Then I should say something about Mr. Wight. I don't know whether I spoke about him last time or not.

MINK: No, I don't believe that you did in too great detail.

DELANO: Well, he's a remarkable person to have, it seems to me—just the right person at this time to come in here and develop the gallery because it took a great deal of cooperation on the part of Danes, and whoever was the chancellor, and Mr. Wight to promote the whole idea of having a museum on the campus. Once it's accomplished, people think it's always there, but they had to work year after year to get the funds. And to think of the great amount of equipment it needed!

MINK: Well, the initial gallery would have been during the Allen regime in the fifties.

DELANO: Yes, early fifties.

MINK: What kind of an attitude, or do you ever remember hearing, had Chancellor Allen towards art—being a medical man , you know?

DELANO: Was Allen a medical man?

MINK: Yes, he was an MD.

DELANO: Murphy was, of course, but he was interested in art, too.

MINK: Yes, Murphy was interested in art.

DELANO: I don't know so much about Allen. He wasn't there too long, was he?

MINK: Fifty-two to '59.

DELANO: Mr. Wight—I wanted to see if I could find something here in the notes about him. I was saying that he was the right man at the right time and place to develop the gallery--first the equipment, and it didn't come with the building, you know, the lighting and everything, and we had to equip a kitchen in there so that teas and receptions could be held. There were several galleries. It wasn't just the Hole collection gallery, but others, where we could have student shows as well as invited shows—several small galleries. All of that had to be equipped. Mr. Wight's office had to be equipped and changed from where it was—all of this mechanical side of it. Of course, they involved the chancellor to build up what was called the Art Council. That's still a going concern where they raise thousands of dollars for student scholarships. They put on some invited show that costs a lot of money to bring from Europe or America or wherever it's coming from, and to pay for the big bulletin or brochure or book that goes out with it. That's a going concern, and it took a great deal of insight, it seems to me. We'd never had anybody that could do that for the art department. It just happened. We have people now, and we had people before them, that perhaps saw the department as a whole, but they didn't go out in the community the way these two men did and attract a lot of people, and also to get the money. This was terribly important. It's just amazing to see a little review of what went on in Mr. Wight's background before he came to us. I found this in the notes from the office. At the time, we were to promote the idea of getting a PhD in Letters and Science for art history, so this was in 1955. Mr. Wight had already been working in an art situation—not only in teaching, but he'd been the director of a Boston museum and so on, and he organized exhibits for them and he wrote many of the brochures or booklets that went out with these exhibits. It was quite varied: for example, The Genius of Louis Sullivan; New World of Space , Le Corbusier ; American Painting in Our Century; Walter Gropius. Here it involves painters as well as architecture, and judging from the books he's written since he's been with us, I think it's very discerning writing. He seems to grasp the personality of the creative person, whether it's an architect or a painter, and he takes trouble to find out something about their background—goes to visit them, for example. And he really writes a book, many of them in hard covers and fairly large. When he came to us, he put on a John Marin show, which is remarkable; and it's quite a catalog. That was in '55, I think. Then there was a [Charles] Sheeler retrospective for UCLA; and in the Cleveland Museum, a Feininger show where he wrote a book; and so on. He had ever so many articles, one called "The Revulsions of Goya" in the Journal of Aesthetics. I could just go on and on. Then he had sort of novel -type books, one on the life of Van Gogh, and one on Modigliani which he called Verge of Glory. He had his own one-man shows. Here's a man that is certainly versatile in his creative work. He writes and puts on shows of his own paintings, and he teaches. I think perhaps his main endeavor has been in the instigation of great shows, together with this material from across the country, and to put on shows that I had always thought of as equal to any of the shows that were started by the Museum of Modern Art. Not only did he put them on here, but he arranged to get the money so they could travel across the country, from here, say, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For the art department, for this campus to do that, I think, is terrific. It's wonderful.

MINK: Well, it seems to me that you have two men like With and Wight, both with gallery backgrounds, both with art history. How was there room for both of them in the same department?

DELANO: Well, I don't know. Of course. With had tenure and he went on giving these lectures till he had to retire. I don't know how old he was when Wight came on.

MINK: So he's, of course, retired now?

DELANO: Yes. But there was a little overlapping in time. This morning I did find a note, a very nice letter from Mr. Wight, the gallery director, to the chancellor, trying to get money for With to put on this show that he was going to put on--not in the building we're in now, but the other building--this Oriental show. I think there are people who learned to cope with these violent emotional outbursts that people have. Maybe it's the sort of thing I had with the gallery, you know. You have to learn to take it and still go on. You know, Danes was such a practical man and such an appreciative man at the same time. It was just remarkable. He was businesslike in his correspondence with the administration; he got the money to make the department a going concern; he had a big spread in full color in Life Magazine about the art department that came out one year while he was here. It's no wonder that Yale University wanted to grab him. The university is slow about things like that. Instead of just saying, "We can't lose him," they just let him go—instead of matching the salary that they were going to give him to get him away from us, so he could build up Yale. It's just remarkable. Well, we have this period then of looking for another chairman, and we get Dr. [Lester D.] Longman.

MINK: Was he still there when you were there?

DELANO: Dr. Longman was. Yes.

MINK: Were you involved in trying to find him?

DELANO: No. There was a committee. I don't know Who was on the committee. It [met] during the summer. I think maybe Laura Andreson was on it, but usually she's gone during the summer. I was away every summer painting. I don't know who was on it—probably Dr. Arlt, I'd just guess, because they seemed to have people from the different departments.

MINK: You'd commented about this and said that you had wondered if it was right to have—not only on committees that are looking for prospective faculty but on committees that are involved in promotions—people from other departments who had no understanding of the department's point of view.

DELANO: Yes, the point of view is terribly important. I think you retrogress—you go backwards, in some respects whenever you find someone that comes in and everybody is disappointed in the outlook of the person. He might be ever so sincere. But again, to go back to this great division, as I see it, in modern philosophy, which accepts the findings of science and the way it's going and the world as it is, rather than a look to the past with the absolutistic standards which didn't seem to explain the world as well as modern philosophy does. ... We had men like [Abraham] Kaplan, for example. He wrote an introduction to Western philosophy which takes all the living modern philosophies that are influencing the world today, the main ones; and he has a chapter there on pragmatism, which I think is what most of the faculty, at least a nucleus, had in the background of their training, right on down. Then if you get someone in who's absolutistic— I keep saying that word, when many others would explain it—a type of training where they're not so close to the creative, actual making of works of art, or they'll even look down on it.

MINK: I was wondering about such people as Kenneth Macgowan being on the faculty.

DELANO: He was more practical, and I wouldn't mind his being on a committee. They did have him on some committees, I think. I don't remember just what. He had a practical art training, and worked in the movies for a long, long time, and wrote books on theater and masques and anthropology. He was versatile and very stimulating. I liked him and his wife, Edna, very much. She was an artist. Where were we? On Longman?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: He came to us in '58 from Iowa. He gave a talk on art in Russia to the whole university, and he seemed to show the kind of painting they were doing there, which was in step with the whole outlook of Marxist philosophy. The paintings were pictorial and very functional in relation to their type of government, and he talked a lot about how the artists would have places to work and all of this; but he never once made a note on how free our artists were in comparison. It seemed to me that he was all in favor of the Russian situation, and it seemed that many of the younger painters in the painting area were enamored of him, and we had meetings at his house and different places. Eventually they were furious at him because he wouldn't do something they wanted.

MINK: What did they want him to do?

DELANO: They wanted a sprawling art department on the knoll where the president's house is now.

MINK: The University Home.

DELANO: The University Home, yes. At first there were mixed ideas on what would happen with the new art building, whether they would have a spread -out form or go up in the air. When Murphy said that he wanted to have the old home, then they had to give up the whole idea and go up in the air with the building, because we had to have so many square feet, and that meant seven stories or more. This little group felt that it was Longman's fault and Mr. Wight's. Mr. Wight was on the committee at the very first. They had lots of committees to find out what we wanted in the art department.

MINK: Were you on any of these committees?

DELANO: Yes, you always had to be on committees for your own area. This thing of whether it was to be a tall building or a spread-out building was something that nobody in the art department could do anything about; that was because when Murphy came here he wanted that building— he wanted the former building as it was. I don't know what they would have done with the old building, maybe tear it down and spread the department around. Of course, there are many things to be said both ways, if you could have had your own ideas there. Some of the planning was bad as it was, functionally. For example, I was close to retirement, so I don't even remember now what I was supposed to do on the committees, but I know whoever had charge of the art building forgot to do anything about the elevators. They had no large elevators, so if students wanted to make great big paintings, they'd have to haul them seven floors up by hand on the stairways, and they couldn't get them in the elevators. That was an oversight. Somebody should have seen to that. I never taught in that building, you know. I quit just before they were ready to move over there. They turned against Longman, and this I never did understand. I don't know what was at the root of it. Finally he was not chairman. Let's see, who came in next? I'll have to look that up.

MINK: Was Longman chairman when you retired?

DELANO: I think so. Yes, I think he was chairman when I retired.

MINK: Could you comment for a few minutes on your relationships and attitude towards the art department since your retirement? To be quite honest with you, I feel that you have a feeling of not wanting to be involved or—not that you got a raw deal from the department but simply that it doesn't go nowadays according to your ideas of what it should be. Maybe I'm wrong about this; I don't know.

DELANO: Maybe I've emphasized negative things. I know that it seemed to me that everybody flourished under Danes, whose personality could make everybody come alive. But for years, since I've left, when you talk to somebody, there is this feeling of being depressed about the department. I don't know what it is. I think you have to have a leader who will enliven people. If you're too involved with your own creativeness, writing or whatever it is, maybe you don't see the whole, you know. Now it takes vision; let's just put it in a cliche. I was thinking again of Danes—what he did. The subject of industrial design was one close to my heart. You know, it's strange. Way back there, when they were just training teachers, we wanted a broad background for teachers, so they would perhaps not have enough of every subject but they had enough training to do a good job for high school and elementary training. Many of them went into colleges—we've said that numbers of times—and they would develop on the job. Or they'd go to Columbia and get a master's there. Well, I was asked to teach what was called industrial design years ago, before I went to Prague to that industrial design convention they had there in 1928. All those years, I developed an idea of how a whole kind of project should be carried out even though it's in a short time. I couldn't see just doing a fragment, but designing objects, which they didn't do in some of the other classes. It could be pottery. Then these people could get jobs in factories and they did—many of them did, if they didn't teach. I was also interested in architecture, and I think all along through the years I saw that. When Danes came along, he thought that industrial design should be carried on, but it could be made into a whole area. This is what he did. He created a whole curriculum, and he got John Maguire to come and teach, and worked out a master's degree in it. And before he left they were even maneuvering to get a building, to get General Motors to pay for a place where they could make mock-up models as big as a train or a bus or whatever they wanted to do. They didn't have space for it in the new building. This takes vision, and it's a marvelous subject, you see. It permeates so much of our lives. Well, now, if you have somebody come along that has no vision for it, he can just knock it out. I have my likes about the subjects—and the students, who all along were just wonderful. I suppose I buried my life in relations with the teaching of students, and my own painting and trips, and building my house. It's agonizing to have people administer a department and you feel that you're going to lose your subjects. This is what disturbs me greatly. You're teaching in fear—they are today, and they have lost subjects.

MINK: And they're talking about it now, of course, in terms of the budget. I'm wondering if maybe it is a more difficult department, say, to administer and mold into one forward-looking vision direction because there are so many divergent groups in the department. It would probably be true of music that this is true, too.

DELANO: Is it?

MINK: Well, I don't know. I say it may be.

DELANO: It could be.

MINK: But I just wondered what you thought about that.

DELANO: Well, it is. It does have its divergent things. The reason that we came along with it was because of teacher training.

MINK: That was the thing that held it together.

DELANO: That was the thing that held it together originally

MINK: But once the teaching, the teacher training was gone. ...

DELANO: Well, it isn't gone.

MINK: Not totally, but de-emphasized.

DELANO: Now a student can go there without taking teacher training, so teacher training is one whole area. We call them areas or divisions within the department, just as you can take teacher training or some of the other subjects, you see. Maybe they don't teach all of the phases of teacher training now, but I think they have a department of education, don't they? A school of education or something now? It's gone through different developments.

MINK: When you retired, do you feel that they gave you your just dues? Did they give you a big party?

DELANO: Oh, yes. [laughter] Well, I don't think it's dues, but.... Yes, it was a marvelous party that they put on. Everybody was there, and the dean was there. I invited my doctor, and I remember Josephine Reps didn't know him but she went up to him. She was one of the hostesses for the afternoon, and she went up to him and shook hands and said, "And who are you?" He said he was my doctor. She just burst out, and she said, "Why, I think that's wonderful." She said, "I would never think of inviting my doctor to come." He's on the campus. He does research. A very shy sort of person. He was there when Dr. Moore was there. I've liked him very much down through the years, and many on the faculty have had him. He's sort of retiring now. There were students and ex-students of mine from different places — like Rodney Walker, that's done such beautiful houses and did this house for me. He came down from Ojai with his wife. Lennox Tierney and his wife — both were students of mine years ago — came from Pasadena. And just all around, just so many. It was very gratifying. I think the life with the students — it's interesting. When you start, you're close to their age. Some of my oldest friends are from that period, like Barbara Morgan. She's a person you just love; she was so creative and so stimulating to be around. But I would say--I'm digressing; I almost forget what you asked me — but the people I've known have influenced me, and books. Maybe I've had my training by having some of the things just rub off on me. Barbara Morgan was great in literature, and so when she was around before she went to New York with her husband, I was terribly interested in literature and poetry and that kind of thing, and sort of felt that I kept up through her influence. Then there were some people in those early years who were great readers of German philosophy, so I was almost steered into that direction. Madame Scheyer came from Germany and brought the Blue Four, and I got acquainted with her; and so I found myself reading Goethe and I visited Goethe's home in Europe. There was sort of a rubbing off. Dr. Moore influenced me to study Dewey, so that's how I got into the Barnes Foundation. Of course, John Dewey was there, and so I had to do a lot of reading of many philosophers while I was there — Santayana and so on. You asked me one day what they did to find out whether you were working. It' s a place where you do your own research on your own terms, but you have to be working, and they have a way of finding out if you are. That's the whole thing.

MINK: Just by having conversations with you, I suppose they see if you have been reading or working.

DELANO: Yes, that's right. And they gave no degrees. They didn't want to bother with any of the mechanics of that sort of thing. But many people had a start of creative work, especially people who were writing books. I knew that I didn't want to write. As long as I was going to teach, I thought that was enough of a division of my labors, having the painting. So my whole attitude was analyzing paintings to help me in teaching and in my own work. Well, now I got way off the track.

MINK: This was more or less winding up your formal connections with the university, and I asked you that one question — perhaps it wasn't quite fair, maybe this really isn't your attitude. But I know that you said that you never had wanted to take an office on the campus or be involved, so to speak, in any of the work, the way that many of the emeriti do, to continue their research.

DELANO: So many of them can do their research in an office. You see, painting, the way I paint, I spread out in all directions. I might want to go out to landscape or do things. Since I've built this house I've taken the different interest, and I want to get into someday on what your different experiences do. You know, I read Santayana's life, three volumes. Persons and Places, and I felt close to him in some ways. He didn't want to get involved with the mechanics of running anything.

MINK: This is one of the reasons then that you never took the chairmanship of the departments even though it was offered to you, or took chairmanship of other department?

DELANO: Other departments, yes. They wanted me to build up a department in Honolulu in the university there when they were starting. And Scripps. And Ohio.

MINK: And then here they wanted you to be chairman of the department.

DELANO: No . .

MINK: You never were asked?

DELANO: Well, Mr. Hilpert said one day that he thought I'd make a good chairman. I said, no, I didn't want to put my interest in that direction. You'd be just so absorbed with it. I think I could have done it, because when I put on that show of architecture in Southern California, it involved a lot of administrative work. I worked four months on that and I could have done it, but there wouldn't be any time, I felt, left over. And it didn't appeal to me as much as the teaching and the painting work together.

MINK: Maybe we should then say that this concludes the formal part about the history of the university and then go on to talk next time about your career in painting, about the many trips that you took out to New Mexico and some of the things that you did in that area, and also about the work you did in the area of Europe.

DELANO: Yes, I could do that.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
APRIL 29, 1971

MINK: This afternoon, before we turned on the tape recorder, you had mentioned about your friend Barbara Morgan. I think you've had occasion to refer to her from time to time in these interviews, but this afternoon you said that you thought that you would like to say a little more about her just in continuity.

DELANO: Yes, I would, very much, because she connects with the students we had in the early years. It's very interesting that the students who were closer to you in age might become lifelong friends, and this is what happened with Barbara and me. She was not married when she came to the art department; her name was Barbara Johnson. We always liked each other, from the very beginning. I did say before that Dr. Ernest Carroll Moore thought she was the best student he had ever had in his courses in philosophy. This is one of the earliest indications of how brilliant she really was as a beginning student. She also had been, I think, majoring in English, and she loved to write poetry. She had a great deal of interest in reading, especially certain literary books — poetry, and books in Oriental philosophy, and that sort of thing. I've noticed, as I think back on all we've been going through here, that the friends I have — or had in those earlier years, right on down through the period we're discussing--had a great influence on me when I read. I read independently, but I also would be introduced to certain fields of literature because of my friends, I think, I hadn't noticed that, but I think it's true. Barbara would be an example of one who sort of kept me going in reading fresh, provocative people who were writing poetry or writing about the V7cst and that kind of thing. Also, our mutual interest in the Oriental appealed. Barbara, I think, went farther with that than I did. I had a certain something, perhaps, about my personality. Possibly we were attracted to each other by this thing I talked about at the very beginning. I hate to put it into just opposite terms, but we were talking about introverts and extroverts. She was an extrovert, I think, compared to what I was. Or you might say certain periods — the words that James used, like "tough-minded" and "tender-minded" — that I would be easily hurt, tender- minded; I didn't know how to face the world, let's say. Barbara was a much more extroverted person and tough- minded. This kind of balances up, and maybe that's why we were attracted to each other, one of the reasons.

MINK: Did you also have in common the shared feeling that the Dow methods, as taught at the university, were perhaps lacking in totality?

DELANO: No. You see, Barbara came to us when I was just beginning my teaching. I think she started to teach, or to train, when she was a student in the university in 1919. It wasn't the university then; it was the Los Angeles Normal School.

MINK: That's the year it became the Southern Branch.

DELANO: Oh, it did? Well, in 1919, we became friends because she had been in my classes, and we seemed to click as far as our standing was concerned, in some respects. I think the Dow thing was current in all of the classes I had taken--because I had been a student there, too, you see — and all that Barbara had taken. I don't think I've ever felt that it was a scourge or something to be eliminated, because I think I've emphasized that it has its positive values; and at that time it was for teacher training and you wanted something you could look back on. But I think all philosophy was affected by this older attitude of looking for absolutes. This is the thing. It wasn't just common to Dow but to scientists and many other fields. You fall back. You can find it in religion, a certain kind of trust in these, almost in a word. You think of beauty as a word, and you're lulled by it, you see. The opposite would be to analyze, not to put your trust in just a word, but to act out experiences which would have perhaps more words to enlighten one, and procedures. I didn't know at the time that I was differing, and I wrote a little article in those early years, making a question out of whether we should trust in systems. In other words, I felt that there was something too systematic. Maybe if I had been a student under Dow himself, I wouldn't have had this thing, but the people that inherited the whole thing from him almost made a system out of it. This is what disturbed us. I think Barbara felt the same. Then we had a dancing teacher; we were taking dancing outside from Bertha Wardell. There was something about the whole creative business of dancing, reading poetry, and painting, and the whole world seemed to be so alive with all this endeavor. Well, Barbara seemed to be the kind of person who found beauty — if you want to put it in a word--everywhere she looked. She could look at a hillside and be down in the grass looking at flowers or weeds or something and make a poem out of it. This was good for me because I seemed to be more practical in some ways than Barbara was. So this thing went along. We had a musician friend, Shibley Boyes, who came to the art department at that time. She wasn't in for credit because she was too young — she hadn't graduated from high school yet — but she wanted to go into music. She didn't finish her formal training, and came into the art department, and could have gone on with art training because she was talented. Instead, she went into music, and she's still with the [Los Angeles] Philharmonic orchestra. Shibley Boyes--she plays the piano. Well, Shibley and Barbara and I were very close friends, and we just loved romping through the hills and going on picnics. It was all that period of youth, I guess you could say, with its excitement and its saturation. I don't know whether I should tell this on those two or not, but one time some quarrel was going on between Barbara and Shibley. Just to show how young people act — I guess it's true everywhere — we were going down through the fields to the end of the Red Car line. That's the only way you could get out of that area there on Vermont Avenue, where the Normal School was, in the beginning of the university art department. These two were fighting about something — I don't remember now — but they suddenly dared each other and really pitched in like two boys and hit and pulled hair and just did everything they could think of to try to get the other person down. Finally, Barbara won over Shibley and really gave her a pounding. In retrospect, it seems terrible to think that these things would happen, but they did. Then there was a later year when Shibley and I paired up in my car. Barbara had married, and so her husband, Willard D. Morgan, and Barbara and Shibley and I set out on a camping trip to Lake Mono. And speaking of fighting, Shibley was the kind that was an only child; and so on this camping trip she teased everybody, especially Mr. Morgan, because he was a giant of a man, you know. He was, I think, about six feet seven, if I remember, and he had been a great athlete out at Pomona College. Anyhow, Shibley was always hitting him and cutting up, so finally Willard, or "Herc," as we called him — for Hercules — got hold of her and put her right over his knees and gave her a real spanking. That took some of the wind out of her sails from that time on, as far as hitting Herc was concerned. I only put this in because I think it levels off some of the things that happen to you as you grow older and all of this spirited thing seems to disappear. I think perhaps some of the turmoil that goes on amongst the students today, a lot of it may be just that exaggeration of youth that comes in. To go on with Barbara just a little--I don't want to take too much time on this — there was anxiety about going ahead with painting. We were both trying to get our pictures into exhibitions, and we did. There was, as I said, a great deal of mutual understanding between Barbara and me and her husband later. We had exhibits hither and yon, in all kinds of group shows, and she is one person that I had had as a student that I kept up with through all of my life. Then, when I got this chance to go to the Barnes Foundation, and I was out camping and painting, I accepted it; and at that same time, Barbara and her husband decided to take up this thing with the camera in New York. He wanted to take this job with the Leitz Company and develop the Leica camera, these little cameras. He went from one job to another, first the Leitz people where he made these inventions. I think the man who invented that camera came to America from Germany and gave him a much higher salary and decided that he should go all around the country advertising the Leica. He got up quite an organized plan and they thought it was wonderful. He went to Washington; he went as far west, I think, as Chicago, and many other cities in between, and had so many slides and pictures from the West from his life out here that he was able to illustrate for all kinds of groups — whether they were farmers or whether they were just regular camera fans or whether they were people working in the government and trying to take pictures of farmlands, for example. Now the thing has gone so far, and I think Mr. Morgan through all his life from that time on — this is '31 I'm talking about — has been greatly responsible in developing these cameras and what they can do, because he devoted his life to it. But before he finished this campaign, the people in Germany decided that he was really gifted and that he did something for the camera by inventing things. Barbara and I used to think, well, anybody from the West has a more creative, inventive spirit than the people here in New York that we see. After all, he was brought up on a farm in the Imperial Valley and knew how to mend fences and everything, so she said she thought that was why her husband was able to think of these inventions that would help on the camera.

MINK: Do you happen to know any of the things that he did to improve the camera?

DELANO: They are probably recorded in the early books that he wrote together with [Henry] Lester. Morgan and Lester went into partnership on that. Then Herc gave up his position with the company. There was a man named Trager that worked for the Leitz Company, from Germany. Anyhow, he didn't like Trager, for some reason, so he joined up with the first Life magazine and became the photographer for them. Of course, he'd been taking pictures out here, and he took pictures with the Leica, and, as I say, he helped to perfect it. Of course, they went on and on, and finally he went on his own. He bought out Lester and had his own publishing business and made an encyclopedia. All that he accomplished has been written about since he died last year. Of course Mrs. Morgan is available. She is living in Scarsdale in the house they built there. What was that question you asked me? I was telling about their going ahead with the camera and developing it and it led into publishing businesses. Then Barbara and her husband made a publishing business called Morgan and Morgan. Barbara would write — they both wrote for all kinds of things in photography and for the encyclopedias and so on — but there was this separate thing that they really made most of their money on. They were able to keep their kids in school and plan for the future, you know, by making what they called a Photo-Lab Index where they have loose-leaves, and people who buy it can keep adding each year for all the technical stuff they want to know about cameras and photography. This became worldwide in its outlook. Going back to Barbara and her personality, I might just stress that a little bit. She had this sort of wild abandonment in her that would want to just streak out in all directions, and yet here was her husband, who was a man with Welsh background and some of the feeling for poetry that she had, but also with a very practical German mother. His middle name was Detering. He was very good for Barbara because he kept her from going out at all points and catching on to every trend. Besides, they both struggled, after they gave up partnerships with Lester, to make enough money to pay off this other man and have this business for themselves, which they did. So Barbara had to give up just painting alone and go into photography herself, and try to work it out as an art expression and I think she did through all those years till now. It was against the grain at first. She hated the technical part of it, but finally she coped with it, and she made this beautiful book, I think, about Martha Graham. She had Martha Graham and her dancers come out to her studio and really dance there, where she could photograph them under the proper lighting, to her satisfaction. In fact, she had taken dance here under Bertha Warden — for seven years, I think, we had those classes. She was able to photograph dance in a way that it had never been photographed before, anticipating the motion with the light to bring it out. It was really different from, say, photographs of Isadora Duncan. If they only could have had some photographer like Barbara to have done that earlier.... They've been exhibited all over the country, and the book's out of print. Now she's working on a reprint. Then there was all of this business of raising your children. She had the two boys — one born in the early thirties, the oldest boy, Lloyd; and the younger boy, Douglas — and how to keep them in school and send them to this outdoor Camp Treetops, where Douglas Haskell and his wife were in charge. This was a wonderful couple of friends. I met them; I stayed in their apartment one summer when I studied in Columbia University. When I went to the Barnes Foundation that year, I also saw them again. Throughout the years, the Haskells have been friends to Barbara and to me, and Barbara and her husband. I had to go to Camp Treetops; that's, I think, at Lake Placid. Barbara would be there whenever she could, and she'd photograph the children all through their play and activities in the camp. She didn't really know she was planning a book, but she was, underneath. I found some of her old letters that go way back to 1919, letters she wrote to me, back to the twenties and so forth, and I can see that playful streak in her and response to the earthy things around, to the plants and the bugs and the air and sky. Her early poems were all about skies. Well, then, perhaps she would be astounded to realize how much of this went into her own photographs and into her paintings. In late years, that's right up now when she had an exhibition at the Ceeje Gallery a few years ago, she had some paintings in there with these great arcs of light, like rainbows intersecting. This goes in, this expressing space and light. Sometimes we think we're getting a brand-new idea, but it goes way back into your life, the things that attracted you in those days. I think the same way with the photographs she was taking of her children in these periods of play at Lake Placid. Finally she put those photographs together in a book called Summer' s Children. As I recall, she used this sort of rainbow thing--just like Indians have used the rainbow, you know — on the jacket of her book of Summer' s Children. I think of her tinging her philosophy with much that came out of Orientalisms, like Buddhism, possibly. I don't know whether that's the one she falls back on most but possibly it is. You know, I read many of the earlier books, too, because Miss Gere and Miss Chandler had been studying under Mr. Dow, who had gone to the Orient with Fenollosa, and they together worked out a lot of these theories from the Orientals. The Orientals had six principles, too — that's the early Chinese, way back — and so did the people from India. They had six principles. They didn't correspond exactly, but it would be interesting to study why Dow said that there were six principles, and how much did he take from all of these people. Or you could look at Greek philosophy, the philosophy of aesthetics under the Greeks, and find out what prompted them to put the whole idea together in words like symmetry and rhythm and so on. They are worldwide, and nobody has a right to say that they just brought it out, perhaps in different words. They're human ways of creating. I think tradition enters in. You use these words, and they get sort of hackneyed, and you have to rediscover them. Children can discover them; children don't know words like "rhythm". Barbara, I think, fell back on a lot of these expressions from the Oriental way of looking at things, and possibly that's what happened to a lot of artists on the West Coast. S. Macdonald-Wright is a good example of that sort of emerging--perhaps done rather consciously, but there it is. It seems to take place.

MINK: You said you were going to try to describe--and I think parenthetically you have already — some of the experiences that you had on these many, many trips that you took out into the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico over the years, because you never would stay at the university and teach. You always took off at the end of the spring semester and came back for the beginning of the fall semester. Now you've spoken about the trip that you made with Miss Le Maire and about some of the people that you became acquainted with over the years in Arizona and New Mexico. You certainly took more than just that one trip, didn't you?

DELANO: Yes, I think twenty-eight summers.

MINK: Twenty-eight summers.

DELANO: Isn't that terrible? [laughter] Twenty-eight summers.

MINK: Well, to begin with, what do you think it was that kept drawing you back to the Southwest?

DELANO: Superficially, if you'd asked me that, if I'd only started a few years ago, I'd say I wanted to get out of the smog.

MINK: Yes, but it wasn't smoggy then.

DELANO: There wasn't smog in those days. Let's look at the superficial thing that might draw you away: living in cramped quarters, where you couldn't paint very well, over a garage for years and years, and my mother and father in relative poverty off and on. I had to take care of them — I built a little house for them — but I had no place for myself. I had to get out and paint, and I'd get this terrible feeling of being cooped up in that little apartment all those years. So that's underneath. Sometimes these little things have an effect on your life that you don't think had any effect, but they do. Then I was teaching landscape for many years, and I think this had a great effect on me, because I had to look for landscape sites all around the university--and before that, of course, down around the Vermont campus. When we came out here to this part, there were relatively few buildings, you know. It was quite wild country; it had been farming country. In fact, to the early Spanish days, even my great-great-great -grandfather on one side had cattle all over these hills. (When we had that fire — I'm kind of digressing now — called the Bel-Air fire here, my house half burned up, and all of the trees and brush and what we call chaparral here in these foothills had burned away, and you could see the old cattle trails. I have a neighbor here who took pictures of them. It was quite astonishing to see them 'round and 'round under the sumac and brush. It had almost been cleared away by the cattle in those early days. ) It was easy to find some things worth painting around the university. I'd take my students on well- planned trips. We went to the sea coves; we painted rocks; we painted waves, water, sand. We went to the wharves where the boats were docked, and that kind of thing. There were animals nearby, a lot of riding stables, so we could draw horses. I was terribly interested in animal drawing and painting, and so I think I improvised a way in which they could not be disturbed by the moving animals and yet get movement. I worked this up with my students to such a degree that I had the nerve to take them down to the polo grounds that existed at one time close by, where Will Rogers Ranch runs on down to what we call a canyon and on past Sunset. There used to be polo grounds in there. I'd go take students down there, and we'd sit as close as we dared on the edge of the field, and I'd try to get them to just memorize what they were seeing in this movement and then put it down. Some of them made some very interesting drawings and paintings. Then we would go out to the old Veterans' Home in Sawtelle. It's called West Los Angeles now — everything's been updated or something. [laughter] They had remnants of the older way of doing things when that was just a locality by itself, isolated from town. There was no town except what the government made around there. They had a lot of old, worn-out horses that they still used on parts of the grounds. The grounds stretched from Ohio Street all the way up to Sunset and included sort of little canyons and rolling hills. I went to the main officer in charge and got permission to go on the grounds so that students could paint and draw horses. Before they got started and organized their cars to go out there, I would tell them that the horses were going to come in: they were going to drink at the big troughs, and then they were going to roll. I wanted them to watch the horses roll and see if they could memorize it. This was a little Oriental training that we'd had, you know: the way the Orientals draw and capture the movement. It worked. I especially had one student named Frances Baxter who I'll never forget. She was so fascinated — I don't know whether it was the way I introduced the theory of intense watching of movement or what it was. I wanted her then to feel that they were like slates, and then it would be just ingrained. She watched that way, and I watched her. I was so fascinated with her look and how she watched so intently. The next day she came back with a wonderful drawing of these horses rolling. They weren't all captured by this idea — many of them were, but not all. Students had to be reached in so many different ways. You asked me about going out on these trips.

MINK: Well, I think you were explaining, more or less, the way background helped the kinds of sites that you used for watercolors.

DELANO: Yes. And being with these students on close contact like this was very interesting. Then I wanted to go on my own personal trips, and I owe a great deal to a couple. A woman had been in my classes named Judith Howard. She had a husband who was a writer, Eric Howard. I don't know what's happened to them in later years, but way back there, I think maybe in 1927 — I don't remember what year it was — they decided that I should get up a whole camping outfit and go along with them and find somebody to go with me. So I did. I found Eve Gilmour. She was a woman older than I was, but she, too, had been in my classes. She and Judith had sort of linked up and thought we could all get along together. So I equipped a new Ford with everything I needed. And that was the Model T I had, and they had, a new Model T, so we got them all fixed up and bought all the necessary equipment. We didn't have the kind of equipment you can buy today. In those days, instead of a beautiful kind of sleeping bag, you got funny sort of rolls that just didn't last too long. They weren' t rainproof the way they are today. I got a wonderful one later, in later years, one that you could use in the Arctic, that had down filling. It was great. Anyhow, we got these little cars equipped, and we started out across the Mojave Desert to go to Needles. It took us a week — can you imagine that? — because there was no pavement in that year. You had to grind through the sand. We had a terrible sandstorm that made us stay over one night. They didn't have the nice little motels you can go into now. Entirely different it was in the twenties. We got out to Arizona and had our first breather under pine trees near Flagstaff. These people had friends who were writers in different little towns like Gallup and especially Santa Fe, and I appreciated all that they did for having us go along and teaching us how to do this. Of course, it came natural to me because my father had kept bees when I was a child before I set out to go to grammar school. We were always in the hills, and I just loved it anyway. I think that summer I would call it a reconnaissance trip, because we just went over what they called the main beautiful sites: Indian villages; we went as far east as Santa Fe. It was a reconnaissance trip. We went up to Mesa Verde National Park. We saw something of the great ancient civilizations, and I never got over being interested in this, so every year I'd go to many of these sites and see Indian dances. But I really learned how to conduct a trip. These people, the Howards, had some friends in Gallup named Mr. and Mrs. Turner. Bill Turner was what I call a dude wrangler. He was the kind of person who would take people for the Harvey Company out into the Indian country. Well, he liked the Howards, and we stayed in their house and got fixed up for a trip to go to Mesa Verde. Bill went with me and Eve in my car. It was pretty crowded, but we learned a lot from him. I watched the way he drove my car, and I never forgot it because I was able to take these little cars — and I also had a new Ford every few years so I wouldn't have breakdowns, if possible--and I learned how to go over rabbit holes and through the brush. I didn't have to have a road, just go like the Indians with their cars, just head out into the wilds. If you really want to see things out there, in those years you didn't have paved roads. You just had one road paved here and there through Arizona and New Mexico, and that's all there was to it. Now there are pavements everywhere. You had to have your own gasoline, your own water, pretty much on your own, and change your own tires. I learned to grease those little cars. I would go to the garage when I was getting them fixed up here before I left, and I took lessons on how to grease it. I'll never forget the first time I had to do it alone, and that was at a place just next to the Colorado River at Needles, Topock. Anyhow, I got out, and that song "Get Out and Get Under" was what they were singing then. Well, I got out and got under, and I really greased it; but I also learned to swear there. I never forgot that because it stayed with me ever since — all those hazardous things you had to do on camping trips. It seemed like swearing helped. I don't know why. [laughter] Anyhow, we went on, and I did get some painting done that year, but I think it was just sort of a guide for the rest of the trips. After that, I went on trips with different people. I always had to have a companion, until in later years, finally, I learned to go alone. I would go and stay longer in one place an order to get more painting done. I had one woman with me that I got acquainted with at Otis Art Institute. Her name was Lela Law at that time — her first marriage [was] to a man named Mr. Law, who was a nephew of Aline Barnsdall, the woman that owned Barnsdall Park, you know, and built the Frank Lloyd Wright house. That was an interesting connection, and I got acquainted with Aline Barnsdall. On these trips with Lelah, I learned so much from her. She was like the Indians herself. She had lived with Mr. Law on the Rio Grande River in an adobe house that she and her husband and the Santa Clara Indians built. She had learned so much from them and was such a trusted friend; and then when I went into any of these villages, all the way from Zuni, the Hopis, and all the Pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande River, I'd be with Lelah, and they would take me in as a friend. So I stayed in many Indian homes and learned a great deal this way — you know, treating them as friends, not as just curiosities to peek in their windows and that sort of thing. Once when Lelah and her husband had been down to Zuni, they earlier years, they got snowed in and had to stay with one family. Here, I was with Lela — she and her husband had divorced when I knew her — but we went back down to Zuni; and the old man was a beautiful man, a Zuni with these white cotton pants tucked into moccasins, and his beads and turquoise and his coral beads, his hair tied in a knot at the back — not like the Navajo, a little different — and a band around his head, and a beautiful swarthy skin. Well, he saw Lela coming in--we didn't notify them we were coming or anything — and he was so impressed to see her again after so many years that he wept, and he embraced her in what I call sort of a typical Indian, maybe Oriental, type of embrace, where they get hold of each other so one head is on the other's shoulder— you know what I mean?--and embrace. And he wept and he wept. He wanted to know where Mr. Law was. When Lela told him, he was so disgusted that he just couldn't understand why a man would want to divorce Lela. Well, that's another story, but, anyhose, going back to this embrace: you know, just because I was with Lela, he embraced me that way, too. I'll just never forget the depth of feeling. Then Lela said, "And where is your wife?" And he said, "She's dying over in that room." You know, so matter of fact. And he said, "We have been together all our lives, and we never had quarrels like that." Well, from what I learned about Mr. Law, I think it was a strange sort of trouble on his side where he felt that he wasn't getting ahead, but he doted on this aunt of his who always sent him money, and he didn't work. That's really what happened. So it was the best thing for Lela that she left him finally after ten years. This was something wonderful that she had, what she learned from the Indians. And then I took it on to a degree, you see. So any time that I went into the Zuni pueblo I could stay with them, and I often did to see special dances. Because I knew them and had friends, I could see dances that a lot of other people couldn't see. They wouldn't allow them to come into the village in those years you know. That was one companion, Lela. I think she went four times with me. And another thing — we weren't afraid. I sort of took that on from her, too. We would go out into the wildest places. Like one place for example: we wanted to go to Acomita and then the next day we'd go over to Acoma to see the villagers there, the Indians. It was a beautiful pueblo on top of a great butte. We went into Acomita and to this family where Lela was known. It was fairly dark when we decided to find a place to stay that night. We didn't want to stay with them because they had a large crowd of people in there, their friends and relatives. They were going to have some kind of celebration. They were all making tamales. (By the way, I think that the Indians out in the Southwest were the masters of tamales. They had nothing to do with the Spanish people — they just learned from the Indians. Everything about making tamales belongs to the Indians. It's made with the chilies, and the red chilies came from them, and the way they fix the corn--everything . ) Anyhow, we left the nice warm house and went off to look for a place, and we went up along the cliffs. It was so dark, we were just using flashlights. We should have left early — this was our rule, always to get into camping before dark — but in this case we went up there and we found some caves. They weren't too deep, just so if it rained at night we could be sheltered without having to put the tent up. We put out our sleeping bags and had a wonderful rest that night, and the next morning when we woke up we found that we had put our bags in the place where the Indians fired their pottery. Everything was full of ashes. We were just gray from top to bottom. Our sleeping bags — we just never did get the ashes out of them. That's just an example of one little incident. Other friends I had.... My sister went with me about four times, my younger sister who's not living now. She loved it. She was talented, but married so young and never had a chance to really go ahead. She could draw better than I could. We had a lot of fun together. I loved my sister. Then Miss Le Maire, I think, was the next person. I've talked about her and the trips we had. I was always painting; the whole object was to paint. I did accomplish, I think, quite a bit. I want to talk about that a little bit. If it's all right just to go ahead with a few of the people, I think I learned from them. Betty Forrest was one. She was a writer friend of mine. She made me aware of things in the Indian country from a writer's standpoint. At that time, I think [John] Collier was the person who was looking after Indian affairs, and they were doing a lot about erosion and trying to have demonstrations so the Indians could save their land. It was being overgrazed, and they had a lot of trouble. So we learned a lot. Perhaps I wouldn't have stopped and observed all this if Betty hadn't been interested to write it up. That was one example of what happened with a certain companion. Then there was Sal Hely, or Lucile Hely. She was my neighbor on Ohio Street for many years, and we are friends to this day. I'm sad to say that she's in the hospital now. She went on several trips with me and was delightful to have along. Then William Blanchard. He'd been an ex-student of mine. He went along with Mrs. Hely and me in his own car, but we camped together and had a lot of fun. When he went to the navy and came back, he went on more trips. I found a great deal of interest in the companionship I had with all these friends that went on trips with me. There was one girl, Sara-Kathryn Smith--I think I did mention something about her before — she was incapable, from my standpoint, of camping.

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
APRIL 29, 1971

[Side Two was not utilized for recording.]

DELANO: I was talking about Sara-Kathryn Arledge and finding that we couldn't camp together very well because my time was limited, I felt. Even though I was out there for three months, I felt that I had to get something done on my painting. I didn't want to be hampered by doing all the work necessary in a camp outfit like this and cooperating. If you have someone with you who breaks everything she touches, or if somebody comes along and can't keep a campfire going or breaks a gasoline stove or whatever you're working with, you know, it's just a little too much of a hazard. So when we got to Gallup I decided that we would stay with the Cottons; and Barbara Seymour, Mr. Cotton's daughter, thought it would be great if we would stay there. She let us have a nice room, and we ate with them whenever we could. Most of the time, we took our own lunches and stayed all day painting, I will say Sara-Kathryn was an elegant companion as a painter. She was devoted to painting, she had talent, and she had been one of my students. I had refused to take her in earlier years on trips because I didn't know whether she would be a good camper. Of course, I found out. She loved the country and is still someone I call up occasionally to see how she's getting along. But she didn't devote her life to painting, which I think is too bad.

MINK: I was looking at this most interesting document. You told me that Barbara Morgan had encouraged you at one time or another to write a book about your experiences painting in the Southwest. She actually designed a cover for it and provided you with folders. . .

DELANO: Captions.

MINK: ...and captions for the book; and you were supposed to fill it in, but you never did.

DELANO: Well, I had talked it out to her on trips all around the city and to various relatives in the surrounding towns in very recent years, when she had an exhibition of her painting and photography at the Ceeje Gallery.

MINK: During my interviews have you talked about the Wetherills at all?

DELANO: No .

MINK: They were very well....

DELANO: They were up at Kayenta. Now, he was one of the first traders to the Navajos. Clinton N. Cotton was one of the first traders. Mr. Hubbell was also an early one. They were all about the same time, before there was a railroad or anything out there. The Wetherills had a trading post at what's called Kayenta. And for all those years until very recently there were no paved roads or roads that were kept up, just Indian country, Navajo country. I didn't know the Wetherills personally. I'd met them at the Cottons, some of the descendants of the earlier family, but there were just stories I was telling Barbara, about what I'd heard out there about the Wetherills. Is that what you wanted to know about them, what I knew about them?

MINK: I just wondered if you'd ever known them personally.

DELANO: No. It was the Cottons I knew more. But there was a story about the Wetherill daughter. Would you like to hear that?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: She, of course, was brought up just like a Navajo. All those early traders, like the Cottons' children — Barbara, the one I knew especially, and there were several sons of the early Cotton family — they all learned Navajo because they were brought up by Navajo nurses, you could say. They had servants in their homes or in these trading posts, Navajos around all the time, so it was very natural they all learn Navajo. The Wetherill woman--it wasn't the original first wife of the first Wetherill, but their daughter I think--was taken into the Navajo tribe and had to go through initiation. She describes this in some article I read. Someone wrote it for her, I guess. She also tells about a medicine man up there in what we call the Four Corners — Monument Valley, in other words — where Kayenta is. This medicine man was high and mighty. He could cure everybody. But then his power started to fail, and the Indians started to whisper about it. He'd lose a case now and then, and they thought his power was diminishing. They thought they could cure everything — and I guess they did, in some way. Anyhow, this man then lost one more case, and he shouldn't have taken this case, perhaps. That's the way they kept their power, to steer clear of certain cases they knew they couldn't cure, perhaps. Anyhow, this fellow thought he could cure it, and he worked on this case with the medicine, mysticism that they use in the sand painting, and all the things that they incorporate into a cure. Well, this woman died, and so now the Indians in that part of the reservation were sure that he had failed. His wives deserted him — he had about four — and all the Navajos wondered what they should do about him. The man himself knew now that it was very serious, so he tried, like some of the characters in the Bible stories you read, to cure himself. He went off into a cave where he could meditate and communicate. This didn't work. He stayed there a long time. He took off his robes and had what would amount to sackcloth and ashes, more or less--that idea, you know. Finally, the tribe decided that it was time to take him out of the cave and apply the ultimate test. They took him down into a canyon — and these canyons are just beautiful in that area, you know; and I can just imagine where it might have been, any one of the places where I've painted — and they had four men on horses. The Wetherill woman was allowed to see this thing happen. They took this medicine man and made him a sand painting on the bottom of the canyon floor, and they stretched him out on it, and all day they waited. They waited for some sign of bluebird's feather falling from the skies — any sign, maybe a little cloud, anything to save his life. No. Nothing happened. And then the sun went down — that was the end. So they tied him arms and his legs to the four horses, and the riders went off in four directions .

MINK: They pulled him apart.

DELANO: They pulled him apart. Then they were to take all of these parts and scatter them to the winds. This was another part of the ceremony. This was something that the people in the early days were never allowed to see, unless they were really a part of the tribe, and this Wetherill woman describes it in later years after it's safe enough to do it .

MINK: I was wondering if you could speak about some of your experiences in Canyon de Chelly.

DELANO: Well, that was on my very first trip with the Howards. But the Howards didn't go with me in this trip. This cowboy-type man that I've described, Turner, went with Eve and me on that tour, and we got all our stuff ready in Gallup because it wasn't too far to go out with my Model T Ford that I had and get up to this canyon. We didn't take the tents along because he said we could just sleep with the sleeping bags and get the car as light weight as possible. So we got up to the mouth of the Canyon de Chelly — where now there's a government station, and nobody can go in there on their own the way we did in those years. It was after 1925. I had read this article in the National Geographic about the Canyon de Chelly and I was terribly interested to get in there. I just was lucky enough to have a guide like old Bill Turner to go with us, otherwise I never could have done this. Everybody got out of the car and we decided just where we were to take it, what line to take over the sand, because there is a river of sand without a break in it, between the red walls of the Canyon de Chelly. It seems that every once in a while, the floods would come down and scatter the sands, and there was no possibility of finding a roadbed there. It was just sand, fine sand. Bill said that if I got in and drove the car and kept it churning, and Lela and Bill would push whenever necessary, or push all the time, we could get through the mouth of the canyon this way.

MINK: Once you got through the sand and the mud...

DELANO: ...then you would be in the regular canyon and the stream coming down. See, the stream went underground there. But there was quite a little distance to pass, and I don't know how to estimate what it is — I'd say a block, possibly, to go over. No possibility of finding anything the wheels could catch on; you just had to keep going and churning. We did it and didn't get stuck. We got across. Then we decided to go up the Canyon del Muerto. That was I don't know how many miles — ten or twenty miles — up to the cliff dwellings, and we had to twist and turn through that canyon, ever getting narrower, and churn through the stream bed . There was water flowing in it. We didn't get clear up to the cliff dwellings that first day. We slept in our sleeping bags near an overhanging cliff on one side. That evening before we got to bed, some Navajos came to sit by our fire. Bill, of course, knew what to take as gifts to these people, because he was very friendly with all the Indians, especially the Navajos. He had helped in the government project of trying to get Indians to come to Gallup and take part in the ceremonials that were started about those years. Some big squaws came and sat down on the ground with us as we were preparing our camp meal. Bill had tobacco along, chewing tobacco, and this big fat squaw took the chewing tobacco and she just spit regardless of where she aimed, you know, right at our meal spread out there, and just was so fascinated with the chewing tobacco. That was what she wanted more than anything else. We offered them food. They were just more curious to sit along, you know. He could say a few words, and so they were friendly. I learned some things, like yatah ha. Now that is two words that if you inflect certain ways it means, "Get out of the way." Like if a dog jumps up at your car you say, "Yatah ha! " And if somebody comes and you want to greet them, you might say it in a softer way. It was really interesting. You only had to have, he said, just three or four words, and you could get along in a Navajo country. Of course, I had a funny little dictionary along with me that had a few words. Some of the Indians knew Spanish, and most of them, of course, knew English; but they wouldn't use the English unless they had to. I had an experience — should I digress a minute?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: There was a time when I had crossed the Colorado River at Lees Ferry and my car had broken down in the mountains up there, and I was having a terrible time with a broken spring. Well, when I got down into a gully and the car stopped there, I yelled "Yatah ha! " There was nobody in sight — I didn't see any Indians. Finally I yelled some more. Then I gave what' s the beginning of one of their songs. I had just sort of imitated the sound, the way it sounded to me. I didn't know what the words meant. And then about three boys appeared on horseback in the distance. They saw my car down in this big deep gully--you know, just dirt roads, nothing paved, nothing like that, just wagon roads. They made out that they didn't understand. We kept saying in English that the spring was broken, and if we could just get it pushed up out it would go. It wasn't stuck into the tire, but it almost did. I guess I was going so slowly that it didn't quite make the grade to get up out of that hole. Finally one of the boys said, "What's the matter?" in English. This was the first word he had spoken. He just wanted us to explode, you know, and they knew all the time what was the matter. They had a little strawberry roan horse, and tied it with a rope to the one wheel, and just gave this horse a slap on the hind end, and it just pulled the car right up out of the ditch. [laughter] That was an example of how the Indians will sit around. I imagine those Navajos who were sitting around that campfire in the Canyon del Muerto knew what we were saying all the time. They just made out they couldn't talk. And we had a lot of fun, anyway. Then we went on up the canyon, and the next day we got up to the foot of the cliff dwellings, this beautiful set of cliff dwellings. This was before it was made a national monument, I believe. We camped there all night and spent the day collecting objects from the debris. They'd thrown stuff over the cliffs for centuries, possibly, I don't know how old — to the ninth century, if I remember, in those periods. Well, I picked up beautiful sandals with feathers worked into them, pieces of hand-woven cotton. Before white people ever brought in any of their goods, the Indians made cotton cloth, wove it. They had rabbit cloth--rabbit fur worked into blankets--and there were pieces of all this stuff in the trash, the debris: pieces of pottery, lots of shards everywhere, prayer sticks and arrowhead points. We went into all the kivas and explored and so on. I brought back quite a bundle of this stuff, which I gave to the university. Dr. Beals came finally and was trying to start a department of anthropology. I think I once told you about how he had to go into the psychology department. Did I tell you about that?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Well, I gave all of this stuff that I got out of that canyon to the anthropology department. The whole idea was to try to get people to give things to start a collection. This was probably one of the early things. I don't think they've ever had them on display because they haven't had a place, perhaps. I know Dr. Deals went into that country with the Rainbow [Bridge] expedition in later years, and they brought back magnificent pottery. I displayed that, or helped them, anyway, put it up in the old art department, the original one on the campus. That was years ago. Going back to the Canyon de Chelly and the Canyon del Muerto. . . .

MINK: Did you go up into the cliff dwellings?

DELANO: Oh, yes. We went into the kivas — and those are the round ceremonial chambers that are built beautifully, exquisite stonework, you know, and the typical window shapes and doorways and so on. It' s a magnificent ruin, built into the caves. This is where the soldiers had shot Indians who were hiding in there from the Americans years ago. It's a shameful chapter in our history. We went up to the White House, which is in the other canyon. You see, these two canyons come together at the mouth there. They both share the same narrow place between the cliffs. The Canyon de Muerto comes as you face up; that would be on the left and another river comes down. The White House, so-called, is a much larger ruin right near the juncture of these two streambeds, you see. I don't know now how it is, but you couldn't take the car up there then. You would just have to dash across the sand to get out of there, but we walked up to this White House to look at that. By the way, when the Morgans made their trip, the year that they went East, in '30 or '31, Mr. Morgan climbed into the White House. He threw a rope — you know, they had already had this experience with a rope down onto the Rainbow Bridge where he had thrown his wife overboard just to take photographs that were thrilling. She could have been killed — who knows? — it was terrible. They didn't have any experience with rope throwing. He did a crazy stunt there at the White House. He threw a rope up over a protruding beam. You know, they were centuries old. How did he know whether that would hold his weight, a big man like that. But he did it and climbed up into the White House. Of course, now, all of that is so guarded, you can't go in there the way we did in the twenties to see these ruins. And I never would have done it on my own without Bill Turner's help.

MINK: You didn't go up into the White House?

DELANO: No, I didn't go up. No, we just looked at it. I was just telling that incident about the Morgans going in there. Barbara didn't climb it either, but her husband did. And he took pictures of these things. They have a labyrinth of photographs of all this kind of thing. I don't think she's ever done anything with them. We'd gone back to Gallup and then set out to see an Indian dance at Zuni, or one at the Hopis, a snake dance every year, and dances all over the pueblos along the Rio Grande. And I had other companions. I learned a lot from taking them along and from all the experiences of camping . I want to talk sometime about my own paintings and the development I think I got by drinking in the wonderful country out there — the Indian dances, the landscape itself, and the color and the light together. Santa Fe became so much of a tourist town that after the first few years I hesitated to go back there, because I'd be caught up with the swirl of things happening in the town itself. While [it was] wonderful and interesting and I loved it, still I couldn't get the painting done that I accomplished in other parts of the reservations. Then when we had the gasoline control during the war, that had an effect on me. Up to that time I didn't paint in the Grand Canyon because I wanted to get away from tourists. I don't know what was the matter with me.

MINK: Did you consider even at that time that the Grand Canyon was highly over painted, anyway?

DELANO: I don't know whether it was over painted. People always thought it was too awe-inspiring, I think, to paint. Artists as a rule would avoid it. I didn't have the gasoline to get off into these wild places where I loved it more; so, rather than not paint at all, I'd go to the Grand Canyon. Finally, I came to change my ideas about it, and I found that you become familiar, or at least I became familiar, with certain peaks and formations. They're all named, you know. If I look at a picture of the Grand Canyon now, I know just about where people stood to take the photograph, and whether it's morning or noon or afternoon — the lighting. So I felt after a while that I could isolate myself very soon from the crowds. Most tourists would go there on busses, you know, with guides, look from prescribed points; and he told a little story, and off they'd go. Well, you can go on the same road and then escape very quickly, a little ways to go out, from the tourists. I loved to paint in the Grand Canyon, finally. Of course, it was easier than what I call the roughest kind of camping because there would be water faucets, there would be campsites. And if I didn't feel like cooking, if I'd stayed out late, I could eat at the hotels there or at the cafeteria. Of course, I'm talking from early to late trips. This goes back in time; at a later time, you know the changes that came about — more facilities, and maybe I had more money than at the beginning. I don't mean I ever had too much money, but I mean in the early days when I look back at the early expense accounts that Lela and I had on the early trips, you know — or Eve, at first — the dollar went so much farther in those days. I was also earning so little. But through the years we could have just a little more comfort in the camping, but I always had a small car because that's the only way I could get around in the rough country. I bought a Chevrolet after the first two Fords. I didn't like to have a second car very often, and yet the only way I could make it to the Monument Valley was to have another car along. I spoke about Bill Blanchard's going out. I knew his mother and his brother. One year my sister May was with me and we were out camping, and Bill Blanchard was in summer school. I can't remember now whether this was before he was in the navy or after, but anyway he wanted to get to the Monument Valley, too. So he teamed up with a friend of our family, a man that my sister married later, Gene Lewis. They were to meet us at Flagstaff after summer school, and May and I were still camping out around Gallup. They wrote us and said they'd be in Flagstaff a certain day, and they would leave a note in the post office so we'd know where they were camping. It took some time for me to pack, and May knew all about it because she'd been on several trips with me, so we made haste. Anyway, we just covered the ground from Gallup to the edge of Flagstaff. I was trying to get to the post office before it closed, so we were just going through. Something caught my attention, some kind of motion, something I heard to the left as we went along the road, in the big pine trees just before you come to the city. It was sort of a park area, a place where tourists could stop and camp. I saw this man running and yelling — and it was Bill Blanchard. Luckily, I was able to stop and not have to go all the way into town to find out where they were camped. They'd been watching for us all this time. Anyhow, they had some stew going on the fire, and we had a lot of fun that night. Of course, having the two men along, we had to put our tent up. Usually, when I was with just a girl, like my sister or another woman companion, if we were just going along we wouldn't put the tent up unless there was a rainstorm or something of that kind, but with the two men along we had to put the tent up every night. Bill and Gene had a big white ridgepole tent, and it took a lot of space, so we always had to look for a camping spot to take the two tents. We had a lot of fun doing it. We decided to go to the Monument Valley up through Tuba City, streaking out across the Navajo country, and finally getting up there. There's a big trading post right on the edge of some of these marvelous formations, and the trader there let us camp and put these tents up on one of the ledges very close to the trading post. This was kind of unusual for him to allow people to do that, but we did it. Then we bought food from him. This time, that particular year, they ran out of food. Mr. Goulding, who was the trader, had sent a worker he kept around there to go to Bluff — I believe that was the town — and bring some food back. It's just a regular trip. They had to supply the trading post for the Indians. Well, the man didn't come back, and we kept buying whatever supplies we needed up until the time that Mr. Goulding said, "Everything is disappearing. We can't let you have any food anymore." Our food was gone, all our canned goods. Both cars had been stocked with big slabs of bacon, and we each had our own supplies; and then we pooled them and went in together and had a lot of fun making up our meals and painting in there — not Gene Lewis, but Bill and I painting, and May, my sister. Here we were in quite a quandary. We didn't know what to do, because there was no food. Then Gene, who doesn't like the Indian country — he doesn't even like Indians---was just having a miserable time. He wanted to get out of there. But he had a gun, so he decided to go out and shoot rabbits, and he shot some every day, and that's what we existed on. We had rice with them for a while, and then finally the rice gave out. We had rice with raisins, and raisins with rice, and then rabbits, till finally we were just so tired of this, we didn't know what to do. After several weeks this man did come back with the food; and, you know, there's something about smelling a fresh vegetable, even a potato — I just felt like crawling up on top of these trading post counters. You know, these counters are always high, so the Indians almost have to peek over to see what's there. The trading post has then because the Indians used to steal. We climbed on the counter to smell this fresh stuff come in — peaches that were just heavenly. I'll never forget that. I'll appreciate them more because of that. So we didn't have to eat the rabbits anymore. We saw, while we were there, one of the most wonderful sand paintings that I've ever been privileged to see, because it was to be for a real ceremony. Mr. Goulding made all of the arrangements. We paid ten dollars apiece to be allowed to go with him. We had to go with him in his car because the Indians trusted him.

MINK: Ten dollars was a lot in those days.

DELANO: Yes, it really was. This was after the Second World War.

MINK: Oh, I see.

DELANO: Not back in the twenties or thirties. Maybe it was just ten dollars. Well, I remember paying ten dollars; I don't know whether they all had to pay ten dollars. But he had to have ten dollars for the medicine man, and then we had to pay something for groceries we gave them. So we had to go down there before sunrise in a certain hogan and be there. Well, you know, we repeated that three times, because the condition wasn't right. I think they were waiting for certain signs. Something had to happen, and they didn't start the ceremony. Finally, they were successful. Whatever signs the medicine man had to have were there, and they decided to have it, and we were a part of it. Before he started his singing and ritual, the Navajo girls were cutting up sheep to feed everybody that was there. This I had never seen quite so closely before. I'd seen them fixing food and had been in many hogans — in fact, I always fixed a hogan out there to use for myself and all this — but I'd never seen them preparing the sheep for a large crowd. These girls were so clever. They would have that thing skinned and cut up in no time at all. They had on their velvet blouses and their long skirts with the ruffles and their jewelry, and they never seemed to splash blood around or anything. It just went off like clockwork. And they used every bit of the sheep, even the intestines. They cleaned those out, and I don't know what they used the intestines for. That's something I'd have to find out. One of the things: they made a kind of blood pudding right away, and the old folks would drink some of that. Then, when they started to roast the lamb or mutton — if it was too old, I'd call it mutton — they would roast the vertebrae so that they could pull the marrow out, and this was a delicacy. They all tried to have a bite of that, you know. Going back to the ceremony: it was called the Red Ant ceremony, and it started outside the hogan. The sick man was held up by two other men, and there were about five or six men lining a pathway, on both sides of the pathway, and these men were in pairs so that they held branches of different kinds of trees, and they were arched so it made a crossing set of arches. There would be, say, three pairs of crossing arches, and this was a way, a walk, for this man and the medicine man had to walk under these arches. When they came to the first set of arches, the medicine made a little animal-like, three-dimensional sand painting, and the sick man would have to stand on it and erase it. Then they'd take the next step. It seems that whatever the ritual was, they went in steps. They were all singing--not all the Navajos all over, but I mean this particular group. Finally, they'd come to the hogan, and in the hogan was another great sand painting, a three-dimensional one, and it represented the home and the gods of different kinds — whatever they were appealing to, to cure this man. We were allowed to go in that hogan, which was very rare. Mr. Goulding said that if it hadn't been a dry year, we never would have been allowed to see this. But we went in.

MINK: They needed the money, in other words.

DELANO: That's right. The women sat on one side and the men on the other. This is customary in all hogans. If you go in to visit, the women have to sit in a certain place. We got in there, and then they went through a lot more ceremony, and they laid the man out over this sand painting, this three-dimensional thing, which was beautiful. It was in sand colors — yellows and blues — and was sort of a tortoise shape; and it had symbolic significance. The man was stretched out over it, and it had to be erased by sundown. We found out that the man had tuberculosis, and we never found out whether he was cured by this process or not; but apparently the whole tribe is renewed when they go through a ceremony like this. There's something very exalted about the way they looked and acted and the belief in this ritual and in the significance of it. So that was the Red Ant ceremony in the Monument Valley — I found out later from a woman that copied sand paintings in secret and then had them published. She had an old medicine man named Tclaw who helped her — that is, they didn't break any of the Indian rules. She would watch this just the way I watched Indian dances, to memorize them and then go put them down later from memory. She would watch the painting as the Indian made it, and then go away and put it down, and then go back and look at it; and then Tclaw would look at it finally and tell her where there were mistakes in it. These were published. I don't remember now who helped her publish those, but I could find out very easily. Very few times have other people been allowed to witness this sort of thing . They will do a sand painting for the public. At Gallup when they had the ceremonials, they'd put down a sand painting, but they always left out some of the important things. They usually had Yebetchai, which is a god. They had male and female gods, then they have things designating earth and birth and all the great mystical things that have been incorporated in these primitive religions. There have been a lot of books written on them. What was this Walters book? I don't see it up there, but it's two books he wrote about these earlier religions. Barbara Morgan just got hold of them last year. She got hold of them and thought they were marvelous because she could see a tie-in with the Orientalisms that she was more familiar with. I think that's interesting, too. I think the name of the man was Walters.

MINK: We could get it into the record.

DELANO: We could get it into the record, yes. Other people have written about it. In Santa Fe there is a museum now. I think this same medicine man that I'm talking about was urged to help them put up some replicas---but probably something significant left out Going back again to another idea about the sand paintings: there was a woman named Mrs. Coulter, if I remember, who worked for the Harvey Company. One of the first Harvey Houses put out there was in Gallup, and Mrs. Coulter got some Indians to decorate the inside of that old famous Harvey House with Indian paintings, sand paintings. Again, they are very much like the originals.

MINK: Except there's something left out.

DELANO: Something left out. That satisfies their conscience because it's supposed to be completed for rituals.

MINK: Well, after all, it's really a religious thing. It's not a decorative thing.

DELANO: That's right. And if you go into the Harvey House- if it hasn't been destroyed, hasn't been taken down with all the railroads giving out, I don't know — they had a beautiful one on the landing. It had a lot of Yebetchai gods. Of course, all tourists going through that country and going to the ceremonial in late years — since the twenties, in fact--would see those; and you could also see one in the ceremonial building there in Gallup when they have all the dances given. But to see them when they're really curing something — this, to me, was very wonderful.

MINK: That was the only time that you had an opportunity to witness that?

DELANO: No, I had seen them before. There was a time when I had Betty Forrest with me. And of course she was, I'm sure, just greatly intrigued, too. I'd go to an Indian dance or a "cure, " even if it were a hundred miles away, if I heard about it in time. Sometimes if it was way back in the hills and I knew I couldn't find it, I'd take an Indian boy with me. This time there was one out near Jeddito, if I remember, which is north of Winslow on the way to Ganado. It was out in some wild canyon. and there were hundreds of Navajos there. They come in before dark and will spend quite a time, you know, maybe days together there, night and day. I, of course, always had my water and supplies and everything and my camping outfit. Now, Betty didn't have a sleeping bag that was proper, but she bought some Navajo sheepskins and fixed herself up. She had a sleeping bag, but it wasn't comfortable; she got these extra skins so we could stay up all night and watch the ceremonies. This time, they had a beautiful sand painting done inside a hogan, and we were allowed to see it. It was beautiful, but it was not three-dimensional. By three-dimensional, I mean that he'd put the sand in such a way that he had sort of a turtle rising up, and he had different formations that were not just flat. In this one I'm thinking about now, it was on the flat ground inside the hogan, and just by campfire you couldn't really see the colors very well. But in the morning they had a ceremony I'd never seen before where all the Indians kept watch.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
MAY 6, 1971

MINK: To continue from where we left off last time, you said you wanted to talk a little more about some of the sites that you found to do landscape painting, beyond the immediate area here in Southern California, Los Angeles and the sea coast.

DELANO: With the students?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: Well, I can remember several. We organized a group that would be able to stay a weekend up in Red Rock Canyon. Of course, we had a few tents (so the girls could have one for fixing up, getting ready, and so on, to stay all night) and sleeping bags (people had to have those, of course, to stay and organize the food) and cars. Quite a group went up to Red Rock Canyon, because that's one of the nearest sites to UCLA where one could get acquainted with marvelous red formations, red and white and other groups of rocks, sand and cactus — the kind of growth that you don't have around here, the typical Mojave Desert material. Not that we were after anything literal, but to be exposed to it and see what could come from it. We had very interesting trips to the Channel Islands. There was one of our students from Pasadena who later became the head of the art department there. That was Lennox Tierney, who was quite capable of organizing groups. He invited teachers in art from Pasadena — many of them had been our students--and I was privileged to go along with these groups from UCLA, students, friends of theirs, and a group that could get along together. We managed to go on Easter vacation time.

MINK: How did you get up to the Channel Islands? Did they have a barge?

DELANO: We'd go to either Ventura or Santa Barbara, and he would arrange to have a boat meet us. We'd get there around midnight with our sleeping bags and all the food and the tents and all the equipment we intended to have for a week. We'd get on this small yacht, or boat of some kind, big enough to take the group, and there would be maybe up to fifteen, sometimes a matter of maybe eight or nine. We did this several years. We'd go across the sea to Santa Cruz, and by morning we would be there at the island. There was one wharf made by the early family that lived on the island. That was Justinian Caire at the time. He was the descendant of the original family that owned the islands. He had a lot of sisters who lived in San Francisco, and they didn't want to do anything about helping him on the cattle ranch which they had maintained all these generations there on those islands — that one island, anyway. I think most of these trips we took were during the war period, or in the forties, possibly, if I remember. They were having a hard time with the cattle. They couldn't keep up with the prices. They had wonderful cattle from that island, but they couldn't keep up with the added expense of shipping it across the channel to Ventura or Santa Barbara; and so at that time they were thinking of giving up the farm, especially since the girls wouldn't come down and help Justinian.

MINK: Did you get to know Mr. Cairo pretty well?

DELANO: Yes. He was a striking gentleman. He was half-Spanish and half-French, I guess. He was tall and handsome, and he was always on a white horse, a Palomino of some kind, and thought we were sort of crazy, I guess, to come out there and camp on the edge of his island. We liked it because we could be in the open and study the plants and formations and really paint. Not everybody in the group painted, but most of us did.

MINK: What would the others do?

DELANO: Well, on one trip there was a man who later married my sister May, Gene Lewis. He liked to hunt. Nobody else in the group would handle a gun, but he wanted to go hunt and get wild boar — which he did one night. He got a wild boar, and we had to go and help him bring it in. It took all night to bring that in.

MINK: Was it good?

DELANO: Well, I thought it was. It wasn't such a young animal, but they eat such good wheat and wild grass that grows there on those islands that they're very well nourished, and it's not tough even if it's older meat. This one weighed hundreds of pounds. Gene knew, of course, how to take care of it, dress it and so on. When the group went back, to help him bring it into the camp, most of them wouldn't watch him cut it up. I was the only one that helped him. They were just sickened by the idea of watching him cut it in two and then haul all the entrails out.

MINK: Maybe you had a little sadism in you. [laughter]

DELANO: Maybe I have. I don't know what it is. [laughter] But I wanted to see how it was done. My mother had given me a recipe about how to salt the meat down and what to do about it if we ever did get a wild boar there. Of course, Gene was an old-time friend of our family. He knew all about farm life and that kind of thing. Most of these other people in the group were younger than Gene, and he had to prevail on them to help carry it in. They didn't even want to take it back to the camp. The reason he cut it in two was to tie the hind legs together and then the front legs together, and then the boys could put a polo through, and two boys carry one end and two boys carry the other end. You see, it was difficult because we had to go up and down these canyons that sort of serrate the whole side of that island. Then, eventually, we'd get up to the top, a sort of a mesa, and follow the trail in the moonlight. Eventually, by sunrise, we got back to camp. Many times, the boys wanted to drop the whole thing. They could care less whether we had fresh pork or not. When we got back, I helped Gene go on with the procedure and prepare it. The navy had an outdoor grill. It was built with concrete, and there were iron grills. It was just a marvelous place to roast meat, and all we had to do was to go up to the edge of the cliffs there and pick up great big knots of oak wood that were hanging from the edges where the erosion had caused trees to die, you see. The roots were still left there, so we could just pull them down and have a big bed of coals. Oh, I'd say the whole grill was maybe something like eight feet long and three feet wide. It was just terrific. We had it all roasting there over these white coals. We could just use the choicest parts. None of them wanted to go ahead with salting it the way my mother wanted them to fix it and bring it back, so we let that go. The next day, we fixed our lunches, and we had everything organized beforehand, before we left the mainland. We knew exactly what we were to have for every lunch and dinner and breakfast. We took the fresh pork that had been roasted, and we had celery and I don't know what else, probably apples and cookies. We put these in sacks. We had our sleeping bags and we went inland to the old ranch and then to the right, that is, down the road that carried us to the upper end of the island. There we found the most interesting, very old adobe house with wrought iron railings and one old man living there. He'd been a castaway of some kind, and [was] practically out of his mind but very interesting. He had a few pigs, or wild boar, that he'd tamed, and he had them in pens. He had them named. One was Eleanor Roosevelt. [laughter] Gene Lewis knew what to do for the old man. He took him a bottle of wine, and the fellow just thought that was great. Then he told us a lot of stories about the early days on the islands, and he was there taking care of that end.

MINK: Do you remember anything he told you?

DELANO: Well, about the people that would come — today we would be very upset about it — they'd come in there and just shoot the seals or the sea lions down at that end of the island, and wreck a house if they got up to it, and so on. But there was a little telephone to the main house in the center of the island, so they could get back and forth if anything happened like that. I later got a little book about even earlier than that. Somebody published a little book about this ranch and the Caire family. It was all very interesting. They had a chapel, and they had Peruvians come up to make wine and help with the crops every year. I found one of the black hats that were worn by the Peruvians, and I gave it to my father. He looked just great in it, because he was a very tall man, and he just loved that big black furry hat. He wore it all the time. Anyhow the old house had a lot of beds with iron, and some vs'ith different metal headboards, you might say, made of wrought iron. These were done by artisans from Spain in the very early days. All those things were just going to ruin. The glass was all out of the large rooms, the rats went all through, and we had a hard time sleeping that night. We had our bedrolls all stretched out in the biggest room, but we were bothered by the noises of the rats running around. This old fellow lived in the dining room and the kitchen part in the lower story. He had a lot of skins fixed that he arranged around the dining room, and I thought they were quite picturesque. But living alone like that, an outcast--I don't know, he said something about arriving there on some ship, so perhaps he was running away from some crime. Anyway, the people on the island hired him. In the center of the island they had some of these old adobes, and out there by the wharf there was a beautiful adobe that I liked to paint. Several times I worked at a painting of that old adobe. It had beautiful wrought iron work on it. It seemed to be quite intact, but of course, again, the windows were all gone. The Caire family used these adobes just as storage houses, so sometime or other, in the early part of the century, they could care less about the adobes, and they built these houses, with the curlicues and all the wooden decorations, in the center of the island. That's where they finally were living when we saw the place. It was an idyllic place, marvelous vistas of rolling hills, and lots of oak trees, and alternate canyons with nothing but cactus and dry brush. Then again there'd be these grottos with ferns and the oaks. So we loved it. It was very fine fishing. All we had to do was just almost pick the fish out of the ocean right where we would camp on the edge. Laura Andreson went on one of the trips with us, and this group from Pasadena. Altogether, we had a lot of fun as well as good painting.

MINK: Were there any other places that you went, besides the Channel Islands and Red Rock Canyon, with students?

DELANO: With the students? Of course, these would be kind of special extra trips, you see. Nobody had to go on them; they just loved to go if they were able. I can't just think of any offhand. My painting trips with the students that were in the regular courses of landscape — I always taught a year course — I would work out a schedule and plan, and of course we had to go by the weather. Say we planned to go down to Palos Verdes, for example. That was quite a trip. It'd take an hour to get down there. But we managed to eat down there or work it out so that we'd have time to really paint while we were there. Again, that was one of the closest places where we could find some high bluffs and rock formations. The Malibu was another place where we could go. Through the years, as the traffic increased, it was just impossible to go to these places. We managed to get down, of course, to Santa Monica and the wharf there, and that was interesting for them.

MINK: One of the other things that you said you wanted to talk about was some of your own landscape painting over the years, and perhaps how your painting style and your ideas have changed about things.

DELANO: Yes. If I could preface that by saying, as I look back over the years, that there are large themes that seem to be evoked by the experiences you've had in certain areas, and a certain desire to go back again and again to some of them where they are interesting you and they are promising. So, as I was thinking of the places I've been, I could scarcely outline all the places, but I certainly have gone all around California and even down into Old Mexico, and north as far as San Francisco, and inland to canyons like Yosemite, and up to Arrowhead and Big Bear — all these places where I could go with my car, take my paints, and work. The very earliest camping trip was to Morro Bay. There, of course, I saw this one great rock that intrigued me. I don't know why I was interested in painting mountains, but in the early days, that appealed to me. Morro Rock didn't have much color, but the formation there was interesting. Then the rolling hills and the rocks along the coast, the waves and so on. Barbara Morgan went with me on one of those trips up there, and our dancing class went along, too, one summer, later. Laguna Beach was another one in the very early days. I think I studied the movement of the ocean and the small detail along the coast, not so much the larger spatial aspects of the thing. Another trip was up to Lake Mono. That was still another early trip.

MINK: That should present some very interesting formations.

DELANO: Yes, it did. This got me into a more abstract point of view; but I hadn't been to the Barnes Foundation yet, and I had just been more or less influenced, you might say, by a flatter type of painting, and my painting came out in that type of stylization; and also I'd been influenced by the Blue Four that Madame Scheyer brought to Los Angeles. So as I look back on those early paintings, they were somewhat flatter than what I developed later. In the Mono Lake area, there were the craters and the volcanic edges of the crater of the lake itself, and the vistas taking in the Sierra Nevada mountains up there, where one could see enormous canyons and see them under cloud shadows and different aspects of light. The close- by tree formations didn't seem to enter in too much then, but the rocks, the craters, the lava, and the glassy surface of the lake. That was interesting. I camped there a month. I had Shibley Boyes with me. I think I mentioned something about her when I was talking about Barbara and her husband, who were also along on that first trip to Lake Mono. I painted at Lake Tahoe one summer, not a very long time. There I was interested in the small detail, the growth of brush and interesting plants that I found right along the lake, as well as some of the largest trees and the lake itself. I think my most provocative trips came from going out to the New Mexican landscape, Arizona and New Mexico. This is what called me back again and again and again to paint. I think I said, once, twenty-eight sttramers, if I count them correctly. Most of the time three months at a time. Only once or twice I taught summer school, so then I'd go out one month, those two years. Death Valley was another place. This interested me too because it had these eroded areas that reminded me of the Grand Canyon country. And once I painted from Zabriskie Point. I had that painting here. The landscape painting would alternate with what I was doing at home. I was studying figures and drawing and making all kinds of paintings that had very little to do with landscape. I had a drawing and painting of Maudell Bass, who was dancing in our class with Bertha Wardell. I asked her if she'd come and pose for me, which she did. Then I put some of this landscape that I'd had in Death Valley around behind her, and it seemed to have something in relation to her — at least I thought it did, her beautiful black skin and the colors that I found in Death Valley. By the way, Diego Rivera got her to pose for him. If you see any books on his painting, Maudell Bass featured in some of them. She had an abstract figure, if you want to call it that. The rump was so extended, it reminded me of some of the figures in Barnes Foundation Negro sculpture, where they extend from kind of a cylinder- like body, exaggerated. Then the legs taper way down to tiny little ankles. I looked at her in that relationship, and she didn't know how to pose at first. I sort of really broke her in. It was the first time she'd ever posed in the nude. She didn't know what to do, finally, and she put her hands behind her head and said, "Ah, Miss Delano, ah just doesn't know what to do." So I said, "Well, just hold that pose." [laughter] So I painted her that way. I noticed Diego Rivera did something similar, and he also had her down on all fours, so he must have seen this strange, sort of animal-like figure which she had, you know — very lithe and yet these great enormous rumps. They didn't remind you of someone that was overweight, they just seemed to be...

MINK: Exaggerated?

DELANO: ...exaggerated, yes, in a strange sort of way. And her palms and the bottoms of her feet were very pale orange in contrast with the black skin. I remember that. You know, in those days.... She had her arms in back of her head and just sort of gazing out. She kept talking to me as I painted and she said, "Ah wants my freedom." This was before we had any of this racial thing out in the open. I always remembered that. She talked about [how] she wanted to revive African Negro dances. I don't know whatever happened to her, because she was an interesting woman. Anyway, I put her in Death Valley. The colors were alive and the exaggerated detail of erosion contrasted with the solidity of her body. At least, that's what I had in mind. I don't know whether I succeeded or not. Going back then, I could say, in order not to get too involved with this state or that state, that I'd just call it the Grand Canyon country, because so many of the places where I painted were in the tributaries of the Grand Canyon, as well as in the Grand Canyon itself.

MINK: So you were on both ledges — north rim, south rim and all around.

DELANO: Yes, that's right, the tributaries have the same formations, geological and otherwise. On my first trip, maybe the second trip, I had gone out to Zion and Bryce Canyons. Those are national parks, and they contain some of the same formations that you see in the Grand Canyon. So I was introduced to it there in those canyons.

MINK: I wondered if you were at all particularly attracted to or influenced by the formations that you find in the area when you're making the long transition between the south rim and the north rim, what is sometimes referred to as the Little Grand Canyon, you know.

DELANO: The Little Colorado?

MINK: Yes, the Little Colorado.

DELANO: Yes, I painted there quite a bit. Tuba City is the Indian trading post down on the lower level, closer down. And as you leave the Grand Canyon south rim...

MINK: ...on your way to the north rim.

DELANO: Yes, yes. I've gone across it from the north to the south and the south to the north in various trips back and forth, you see. The first time I went to Zion and Bryce, I got an idea of those deep canyons and the difference in them, too, and the kind of erosion and the forms that were made, say, in Bryce; Bryce Canyon occurs at a higher altitude, so the colors are different and the detail in the erosion is different than Zion National Park. Zion is lower down in harder rock, and it' s a darker red. I was always finding contrasting geological layers of dark red or light red contrasted with different kinds of whites, and these interested me. There would be vertical cliffs, more or less vertical, and then there would be these serrations, in infinite detail. At first, you'd look at these things and think somebody's crazy to try and paint these. Little by little, they become familiar and they're like friends again — you know them when you go back. If I see photographs of this country, I know whether I've painted there, or whether it's down the canyon, up the canyon, or wherever it is. It's just familiar. The real thing that's interested me in all of that Grand Canyon country — and I include, of course, places like Zion and Bryce, and the north rim and south rim, and places like the Little Colorado, clear out even to Gallup country, and there, too, because the river that runs through Gallup eventually winds up in the lower Colorado and into the Colorado River, taking in New Mexico, Arizona, parts of Utah and so on — that I see these same colors and formations. The thing, as I said, that interested me so much was the spatial aspect and the lighting and many more things — these things at first. It took years to ponder, to get at it in a detailed fashion, to study it and to see whether I'm getting my ideas. Perhaps they looked somewhat realistic, made on the spot; but when I'd get home, I'd try to abstract what I was feeling about these things . I don't know whether I was ever successful in getting the wonderful lighting effects that captured my fancy there in the Grand Canyon. You would look at a great burning cliff, maybe in the full sunlight, and it just seemed to explode. There was no way in paint to get it right on the spot, but perhaps when I would get back I could do something with it. By the way, Dr. Jackey has one of those paintings that I think had a little bit of that in it. I don't remember what I called it. Most of my Grand Canyon pictures are gone. People have them, and I think now it would have been so interesting to have had an exhibition of just the Grand Canyon studies.

MINK: Alone.

DELANO: I didn't realize that it was affecting my life as much as I did one time when I had an exhibit down at Whittier in a gallery there. When I saw it around the walls, I realized that even the house that I'd built was influenced by Grand Canyon experiences. I mean Grand Canyon in the large sense, because I painted more at Gallup, in the red rocks east of Gallup, than almost any other place. I went there every year. The colors, the textures, seemed to go all the way from dark browns and blackish colors and all through heavy earth reds and on into opalescent pinks and radiant colors and turquoise and blue — the general overall colors that influenced my work.

MINK: Are you talking about how that went into the house?

DELANO: How it went into the house, yes. Now, there is a strange thing — now, if Barbara Morgan were saying it, she'd probably think that it was something kind of mysterious and mystical that came out of the East in union with the West. I had a little Oriental dish that had a turquoise lining and a dark orange outside glaze. These two colors were extreme colors that I would use in my house, so in many places I used the turquoise in brighter colors under the eaves of the house that were turquoise. The Indians used it, you know; they loved that color. And why? It contrasts with the marvelous canyon reds and the oranges. So every time that I painted the house inside or outside I still liked those combinations, those contrasts. You could use browns, you could go to all kinds of different reds and eventually into the muted blue-greens as well as the lighter blue-greens like the turquoise itself. I've enjoyed living with it, just seeing the influence of my colors, especially if you think of ranges of colors — not just two colors, but many colors in between these intervals. If they're cooler, they suggest a light and light values; like the ceiling all the way through the house — it's a version of blue-green, but it's in a light value. Of course, it has reflections and it warms and cools. So all day long, wherever I look, I'm sort of living in the Grand Canyon. [laughter] That may sound silly.

MINK: Do you think that your style changed radically as a result of your work in the Southwest? It seems to me that so many of the paintings that you've shown me — I'm talking about landscapes now, still — there is a great deal of openness to the paintings, a great deal of...

DELANO: Perspective.

MINK: ...perspective, with less attention to detail.

DELANO: That's true, yes. And yet, how to get distance through intervals. You know, many of the artists today are breaking away from all tradition. They'll paint a huge area and you just stand there and look at it. It seems so vacant, but I don't mind the detail, the intervals that carry you into infinity. I don't mean in the same way that perspective was achieved in the Renaissance type of space. There are other ways in which, it seems to me, one can bring these juxtapositions into working order within a painting. It is the utilization of the suggestion of shapes and forms lighted in different ways that carries you on, I began to glimpse a little bit of what this meant when I painted first, of course, in Death Valley, and then out in the Grand Canyon itself, where you could see, say, a great parametal formation with vertical cliffs and then slanting canyons. If you tried to count them, you'd just be exhausted, but there they were, you know, just so many, so that you had the feeling of up and down and across with all of these eroded conical shapes working in through the great formations one after the other. It was simplified because you'd see a certain color, like Navajo sandstone red, that ran through, and you were familiar with it because you'd seen it back there in the Zion National Park, or you'd seen it out east of Gallup in the formations there. Then you'd see the contrast of a whitish layer, that was probably white sandstone, or you'd look in the bottom of the Grand Canyon and see this black stuff that was molten and came out so glisteny black in places where the Colorado River runs. Then you'd see these squeezed pinks of tortured-like vertical shafts that ran up through this black. That was just so abstract to me, when I'd come home I'd paint them. And I even took colored inks several times and painted that black stuff and the pink that I saw in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I think in the women's faculty room of UCLA in the clubhouse [Faculty Center] they have a painting there of mine, that looks abstract but actually is almost realistic, of the bottom of the Grand Canyon looked at from above. This pink stuff, what's it called? I've forgotten now; there's a name for it, and that's what I called the painting. And it's realistic. Some people were offended by the picture, especially Mary Holmes one time. She gave a talk to the Faculty Women's Club — I wasn't there that night but friends told me--why she thought it was a terrible picture. I don't know what she wanted, but she didn't like it. It was realistic, and if that's her criterion, which I believe it is, then she didn't know the Grand Canyon.

MINK: Do you think that the painting that you've done since you've stopped going out to the Southwest has changed?

DELANO: Yes, it's changed considerably. I want to speak sometime about something else of the painting of Indian dances, but since you asked that question I'd better answer it before I forget it. Yes, since I built the house I haven't been out to stay any length of time in that area that I love so much. I'm still going over it, you could say. But I've also found that I've painted other things here, and I think they're just as right for me to do. For example, the still life: the things you accumulate as you go along. If you have a room, as I did for so many years, just a single room to live in, you have a few things and they mean something to you. You don't know why you have selected something, but it meant something . As I accumulated more things, and I had a house in which I could put them, I found myself making still life all over the house. Some of them I painted; and then in some years when I wasn't painting so much, I didn't paint them, but I loved them. These things, too, had a great deal to say to me, so I worked them into paintings — the colors, the shapes, the formations, everything about them. The garden that I built around the house influenced me enormously in the last sixteen years, because I think you work as a whole person in painting. Digging into the dirt, watching the seeds and the multiple growth that came up everywhere, the sprouts of all kinds of things, even things I'd never planted, and working there with my hands — I had something that I wanted to express. I think my stuff went towards surrealism, almost, in one sense, from the garden. I painted a picture which I called Garden Theme. Someone suggested that that'd be a good name, but it really is the theme of this life and death in the garden. I tried to express something of that idea, the dying and the living that I felt right in the mud and working with my hands. I did that until I couldn't do it anymore. I had too many troubles physicaD.ly to do it, but it's still with me — the whole experience, in other words, of the garden, the seeds and the growth, the things that were dying and things that were living. And so I made an elaborate still life of this particular garden theme. I don't know whether I called it Number One or Number Two .

MINK: Number One .

DELANO: It was a setup that was about five feet high. It started from the floor in my studio and went up to about five feet. It involved whole clusters of succulents and a strange wooden bowl — well, it's strange in the painting but it's not a strange thing. If I tell you what it is, it will probably spoil the painting. It was an old mortar that I got from Miss Chandler. It had been in her family. That old wooden thing just somehow struck something in me. Then I put a white bowl on top of that, and then on top of that this great succulent. Then I would see these writhing, living forms and buds, and things that looked like embryos and figures and heads and skeletons, and things at the bottom that looked underground, and so on. I would get into a frame of mind where these things were evoked by what was in front of me, yet I didn't copy them at all. I went on that idea for quite a while. I did it with iris, and people have always liked those pictures that I did here in the house. I don't have too many of those left. I'm only realizing lately how there are these cumulative processes that come from a more subconscious origin and are woven in with the other things you've done.

MINK: What have some of the critics said about your paintings? Have they been well received?

DELANO: I don't know whether to be sad about it or not, but I did have hopes for that gallery that so many of us went into, you know. I just don't know what to say about the Los Angeles galleries in relation to artists. It seems sort of hopeless; at least it has to this day for me. There were write-ups about that exhibit where this Garden Theme was shown along with some others. That was about two years after I built the house. It was written up in a national magazine by Rosalind [G.] Wholden, a very nice review with pictures from it--not this particular picture, which I liked better, but another one. Of course, you know, an artist is showing pictures at least out here, in group shows all the time. This went on dozens and dozens of times that one would show, and you'd get write-ups with the group. One-man shows that I've had in different colleges — I've had nice reviews there, and down in San Diego museum and the Palace of the Legion of Honor and things that I sent East. So, yes, there's quite a lot of writing, but I don't think they have the techniques for furthering the artists here that they have in France, let's say — even New York. Is that what you meant?

MINK: Yes.

DELANO: About the Indian dances in New Mexico and Arizona — that was one of the themes that interested me tremendously. I was studying here at home all along in those years by going to the anthropological meetings. I joined the first group that Dr. Beals formed on the campus. V7e'd go to their homes. Did I mention that?

MINK: Yes, you did.

DELANO: Well, that fed in to what I'd see out there, and, I think, gave me some background, which I loved to have because I could see these dances. Most of the dances I was interested in were so sacred you were not allowed to photograph, to draw, or paint while the thing went on. But I'll go back to that Oriental method that one teacher I had — Miss Brooks — years ago, taught us. That was to memorize feeling fully, and I passed that on to some of my classes. I think I described about how the girl was able to do a rolling horse. Well, I applied it in my own work, and I'd watch these dances where the massing of the groups was very intricate when you'd see many figures come out .

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
MAY 7, 1971

MINK: When we left off yesterday you were about to describe how some of the dances that you witnessed in the Southwest — the Hopis, the Zunis, and so on — had influenced your painting.

DELANO: I wanted to mention that I did try to paint some of the dances from memory. This was possibly in Zuni, for one thing. I went down there on many camping trips. Sometimes I stayed with the Vandewagens. This family had lived among the Zuni Indians for several generations. The original older people that came to that country first came as missionaries belonging to the Dutch Reform Church. That's how they were down there. The family I knew best spoke Zuni and was just such a part of the pueblo that it was marvelous to have this contact, because I stayed with them and never had to put my tent up down there in that pueblo. This way I got to see a lot of things and sacred dances that the usual tourist couldn't see. In fact, they never advertised or allowed people to come down from Gallup unless they were old-timers or somebody they knew. Well, you would go out to the housetops or in the central plaza where they intended to have the dance and get a place to sit down if you could. In this case, often I had a chair to sit on because the Vandewagens would know a family, and we'd go up to their roof, and it'd be very nice. We wouldn't have to face the sun, and we could watch the dance in the plaza below. Now, when I say "plaza," it wasn't very large, but sort of an open square surrounded by adobe houses and made of pink mud, so that it was a beautiful color to begin with. There would be colorful Indians seated all around the rooftops. There would be some on the ground, perhaps holding a child, or people in the windows and doorways. Then you would see a group of dancers come in. They had probably assembled and gotten dressed with their ornate costumes down in a kiva off to the side of the main part of the plaza — outside the main buildings there's this ceremonial chamber which is underground. The group would come in, and they would have a group of musicians with drums and maybe a flute, depending upon the ceremony, and this music would vibrate through the ground. You could feel it right up wherever you might be sitting or standing. There was singing along with the drumbeat; then this long chain or group of dancers would come in, and they had a part in the chant also, depending on the ceremony, whether it represented a corn dance, or had to do with a prayer for rain, or whatever the theme was. The costumes were worked out accordingly. They always had very beautiful headdresses, often with the turquoise, mask-like part-cylinder over the face, and then maybe a black beak extending like a bird's beak out from the mouth section of the mask. The lower part would be fringed usually with black, and it might have a false black hair mask going back over the head. Sometimes there would be radiating feathers that formed a sort of crown effect, or perhaps something extending from the ears- might be horns — and, again, these headdresses would be symbolic . These were the more solemn godlike figures that would come into the square and dance, almost in place, after they once came up to the medicine man who was the head of the group. He'd be facing them, and then they would dance, and then they would retreat a bit and then forward again and carry on a very solemn dance within this square. I had a chance to memorize by intense viewing of many details. I would see if I could remember exactly what the headdresses were like, what the positions were like, what the details of the costumes consisted of, including the leggings and the moccasins and the shell ornaments and beads and so on — whatever they had at their wrists, what they carried in one hand possibly, and so on.

MINK: In the course of trying memorize this as you observed it, were you told by your friends the meanings of certain things that they understood or knew about?

DELANO: Well, sometimes, yes, because they knew Zuni and they knew the significance, especially of the more common dances, yes. There was one dance that I was privileged to see that had not occurred for sixty-five years. Mrs. Vandewagen, who was sitting next to me at that dance, said that even she did not know, and there were only a few older people who knew anything about it.

MINK: What was that dance?

DELANO: We didn't know the significance of it.

MINK: What ceremony?

DELANO: One thing that I remember about it that was so different was the group of costumed women. These were the old costumes — not the everyday costumes they wear around the pueblo, but the dance costumes. These consisted of very thin, homespun, white, blanket-like effects for the skirts, and some hair ornaments and other details. The Zuni bowl was filled with some kind of stew. I was seated above, I could look down; I could smell it. I don't know whether it was lamb stew or just what it was, but they were in bowls as large as this one I have here on the shelf- that type of bowl . That's a ceremonial bowl.

MINK: Certainly larger around than a foot, maybe fourteen inches in diameter.

DELANO: Yes. I would say so.

MINK: And at least eight to ten inches in height, tapering down to a narrower bottom, about a diameter of six inches or less.

DELANO: And the bowls had patterns which represented the beaks that occurred on the headdresses, on the outside. There would be flower designs inside that represented something which had to do with their crops and the lightning — in other words, a sort of prayer for rain. This food was carried into one of the rooms, and we understood later that the highest hierarchy of priests or medicine men in this tribe were allowed to eat from these bowls after a certain long ceremony took place. They had young girls costumed in very brilliant ribbon-like affairs that stretched out over the capes they wore, and beautiful headdresses. These girls would march up towards the main dancers, the long line that came in after the women presented the food. Then the girls would retreat and then march forward again. You see, this sort of restricted dance had to take place, because throughout the centuries, I guess, they'd been performing in this plaza. They had to restrain it to a restricted space. The place wasn't large enough to go, say, half a block, like they did in San Ildefonso, where they have a large plaza, more open and less restrained. It was very beautiful, I thought, in this respect, because the steps were up and down, and back and forth, and then across in different directions, but they wouldn't span much distance, as it were. You had this movement, and men in the line would turn so you saw different sides. You could see the right side, then you could see the left side. This was good for me, because I could memorize the thing. I didn't try to memorize the composition; I memorized the details, so I could feel free to put the figures in later in a dance shape, and make it up, more or less. When the solemn part of the dance was over with, there would always be a group of koyemshi come in. The common name among the white people for koyemshi is mudhead. These are clown-like figures that come in to entertain the people in between the solemn part. But they have different functions: I've seen them talk, watched them talk to the group, and single out some one person who had to be chastised for his sins during the year. Then everybody, perhaps, would laugh--maybe it was something not too bad that he'd done, or maybe it'd be a child; but they carried out this function sometimes. Most of the time it was entertaining. They'd have beanbags and play beanbag. They'd have bags of seeds and scatter them, throw than to the children, and altogether a kind of a relief from this higher type of dancing that went on . Another thing about all these dances in Zuni — and this goes for the Hopis and many of the Pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande River — is that they repeat these dances sometimes for days at a time. This was something that made it easy for me in that I could go back to my tent or back to the Vandewagens' home and put down what I could remember and sketch it. If I felt it wasn't in the spirit of the thing, I'd go back and look again. That way I came away with sketches, usually in color.

MINK: Watercolor sketches?

DELANO: Yes, watercolor.

MINK: And then you wouldn't try to do anything with those until you got them home?

DELANO: Not until I got home, because it was against their religion to have anyone photograph some of these sacred dances, and the Zunis wanted to be to themselves — they treasured this freedom. Even Navajos don't want any intrusions either in some of their sacred work; but, on the other hand, if they have a hard year, they'll accept a little cash now and then. I thought the dances, even though one didn't understand the significance — you could find out about some of the common dances, but even if you didn't, you had some inner feeling for these things. I think we all have memories that may go back into ancient times. I guess mysticism is not too far away from so-called civilized man. I think a medicine man standing there and thinking that through his self-actions he can control the rain or the weather or whatever the affairs of the village might be, that he is the medicine man, he intercedes for the gods. There's something that is rather attractive to behold when you're watching dances like that. Then the form of it is certainly beautiful — the color, the movements, the music, the singing; and I tried to put down some of that in an imaginative way after I got home. I made several oils. I can't say that they're very successful, but I enjoyed doing them.

MINK: Were these paintings sold or exhibited?

DELANO: Well, some. I have one of the Apache dances that was in oil that I made after I got home from memory, and it gave the spirit of the whole night thing. I had the episodes is rows, in compositions that went horizontally across the picture, and also they worked up and down — abstract in a sense. It was bought by this woman in Pasadena, and then she gave it to [Los Angeles] County Hospital in memory of her son. I don't know whether I mentioned that before.

MINK: No, you didn't.

DELANO: That was an Indian dance. In my first year out there, I made a sort of a reconnaissance trip all over New Mexico and parts of Arizona to watch Indians and see their country; I tried dances — the basket dance I can remember, in Santa Fe, New Mexico — and other ceremonies. I can't just recall now. In Gallup, New Mexico, they have a ceremonial that took place every August, and I made an effort to see that because it included many tribes and you were allowed to see parts of very sacred dances at those ceremonials. They weren't always finished. It was like what I said once about the pottery and the rugs and so on. They'd leave a little important part out, perhaps, so as not to offend the gods, I suppose. In that way you'd see butterfly dances, deer dances, the hoop dances. A lot of them were sort of dolled up in recent years, because they wanted to make a theatrical presentation, and probably didn't follow the ancient restrictions. One would see these beautiful costumes and groups of figures against the mud walls. In Zuni, I thought the pink color was a wonderful color for the background because sometimes it seemed cool pink and sometimes it seemed heavier and brown, depending upon the light on it and which wall happened to be in the background. They got their colors from the mesas nearby, and, of course, this same material runs all through the Grand Canyon country, and you'd see the same formations in the Grand Canyon. Of course, the country, the landscape around the Indian pueblos — I never stopped to paint that too much in those places, because usually it was raining and one would have to hurry up and get out, back to a town or to set up a permanent camp. If I wanted to watch sacred dances, I felt that I'd have to stay with a family. I didn't want to be just a tourist that came and looked and then rushed away; I wanted to really absorb it if I could. I found that this method of penetrating memory, of viewing and seeing deeply into the thing, was a very good way to get the spirit of the thing. Out in San Ildefonso — that's near Santa Fe — it's a very impressive place to watch an Indian dance, and I think a lot of tourists go there. Maybe they've ruined the place, I don't know, but in earlier days, when I went out, they had this large plaza and they had the kivas right down the center of the space. You saw the dancers come up the ladders and out onto the square — or rather not a square, it was a long rectangular space — and here, again, you'd feel that vibration of the drum and the pat of the feet on the hot earth, and there's something about the singing that's just hypnotic. I don't know whether everybody gets that effect or not, but I loved to go to an Indian dance. The Navajos have such different dances. There, again, they're more like the Apaches, in that they have all-night dances. When I'd hear of one, I'd drive a hundred miles or more to see it and be able to camp right along with them, I had my own outfit and my food and my sleeping bag, so I could watch all night and stay up with them. In those dances, you had what they call social dances, where the men and women danced with each other — just the unmarried girls with any man. It could be a married man, because originally they could have several wives; so there was no restriction about whether the man was married or not. There was a certain form to that social dancing that was interesting to watch. Another thing about the Navajo night dances — they always had two bonfires. They built up enormous fires in an elliptical form or shape. I mean, people ringed about these great fires, the full side of the ellipse, of this elliptical shape. They would have horses on one side with riders, with their heads turned into this elongated circle, and the people squatting on the ground and standing behind them, great masses of people. Then one by one a girl would go out, or a man, and find a partner in the crowd and start dancing, and pretty soon the whole area would be filled with dancers. The social dance went on for hours. Then they would have some other important healing dance that might take place during the night, too. There were all sorts of phenomenal things that one could watch. This sort of thing just penetrated my experiences out there. It seems to me it was a part of something that I've tried to get into paintings. Then the country itself — I don't know whether I've talked very much about that — the shapes of mountains, the rocks.

MINK: I think you did the last time.

DELANO: Yes, and the serrations and the infinite variety of lighting effects that one gets in the landscape. And then there are the trees. I might just mention in passing that some trees appeal to me tremendously. They have junipers which are coming up out of the hard rock apparently, and have twisted forms, and they sort of suggest — or whether it's that I read into it — this feeling of their struggle against the elements. Usually, I'd find these marvelous trees on the edges of the canyons and loved to draw them and paint them, put them in the foreground of pictures. They had a twisted shape which appealed to me, and not too much foliage especially, because of the fierce winds and the rains and the snows. Then there would be other places where there'd be forests of pinons, or the trees which sort of peppered the hillsides or the sloping parts below the buttes. These made interesting patterns all over the more distant parts of the landscape. Then, again, you could once in a while find an Indian who'd pose. You could draw or paint a woman on a horse, or memorize it. And I loved watching the horses and the sheep. You could follow them around with the car. I think I told you how I learned to drive right out in the open without a road, then just keep the car in second and hop around to follow the horses, because they'd always move as soon as you got a little close to them, you know. Nevertheless, there were interesting horses to paint because they were sorrels or they were mixtures of so many colors, pintos and so on. They weren't always elegant in shape — there was a bony structure, you know, that was nice to do. And the sheep — they were nice.

MINK: One of the other things that you said that you were going to talk about in this winding-up session was the murals that you did for other people's homes, as well as the one that you did for your house here. [tape turned off] One of the things that I think should come first in any kind of description of the murals that you've done is how you became interested in doing murals. Was there anyone in particular that influenced you?

DELANO: Yes, indeed — John Weber was a Swiss architect who was living in Southern California. I got acquainted with him early in the twenties, and with other Swiss friends. It seems like people seek each other out, and so I got acquainted. He had Swiss friends in Oxnard. There was this Dr. Rey who ran a hospital up there. And so they had Weber design a very modern house for them and they wanted a sgraffito mural on it — this was something that was done in some of the European buildings. Both the Reys and Mr. Weber knew about them and they thought that that'd be interesting to have incorporated somewhere in the house. John came to me, and he said, "Annita, I want you to do a sgraffito for the Reys' house." "Well," I said, "I don't know anything about it. I don't know how to do it." "Well," he said, "find out." Westwood was new in those days, and I went along Westwood Boulevard from the campus gate on down to Wilshire and looked at all those buildings. And I saw two or three buildings that had ornamental decorations like bandings on the surfaces in several places, and it seemed to be three-dimensional. I went into one of them and asked if I could go out on the balcony and look at this mural, and sure enough, it was in two colors. It was on the east side of the street near Ralphs. And it was a mural. Then I found out who did it, and it was an Italian artist, but he wouldn't give me any notion of how to do it. Then I went to our library, and whoever was in charge then just really helped me a great deal, because we looked up everything we could and there were some things in Italian that had to be translated. We got articles. So I had an idea of how it was done. I studied the English methods and the Italian methods, then I went down to the place where they had the finest plasters and sands and that kind of thing in the wholesale district. The people there were very interested, so they gave me some backs, I guess you'd call them, or prepared backgrounds, so I could experiment and mix my own batter and spread it on and carve it up and see what could be done. John thought he remembered how to do it. He thought I should put on a layer, and it could dry, and then put another layer over it and then cut. But that wasn't the way it was to be done. You had to have a prime coat first. That could be way down on top of the prepared wall. Then, on top of that, you'd put this prime in a color, if you wished like gray or black or brown or something; and then when you'd really start to do the mural, you'd have to be all ready to work in the wet. You know, in making painted murals in the Renaissance and later periods, you'd have a fresco, and that was wet plaster. With this medium you have to have a wet plaster, and it hardens in eight hours. It's just as hard as a rock after that. So you plan to do just what you can in eight hours, more or less — that's the way I worked. You'd have to get a man that knew how to put on plaster and be willing to experiment. I found a man up there in Oxnard who put this first layer on in one panel. I broke my design up into several panels so I could purposely stop at one spot and go on the next day. Anyhow, we put on the wet plaster and then put the second coating right over that, not allowing anything to dry. So here you have now a thickness that might be anywhere from three-quarters of an inch to half an inch thick on the wall. Now, if you have tools you can carve away the top part and leave this undercolor showing. That's the whole essence of the thing. You plan some dark and some light colors. I had a dark red, Venetian red, underneath and a lighter value on top of that, so that I used figures coming across alternating panels of dark, and then some stripes and inverted pyramid shapes (triangular shapes) formed some patterns above and below. This was in a semicircular, recessed wall. The dimensions were roughly about four by seven. As I say, I used the figures. The linear touch is very important. And I had to devise my own tools. You couldn't go down and buy any tools; nobody knew anything about sgraffito, especially as a mural decoration, you know. So I had to make my own tools, and I got metal pieces and made handles. Some them were broader and some wider, so that you could scrape into this wet plaster and leave a line, and also so that you could have feeling in it that is wide, and then taper off, perhaps, or whatever I wanted. This was for background around a fountain on the outside of the house.

MINK: What were some of the other murals that you did besides this first one?

DELANO: Well, then I built my house, and my nephew, my sister's son-in-law, was also building his house. His name was Stanley Miedecke — that's from that old Medici family, the German form. He said one day, "Now, Annita, if you make and put on a mural in my house, I'll put the material on your wall and help you with all that physical part of it for your house." He built this big house in Avenal, California — that's an oil town, a very small town up near Coalinga. He had a strange sort of place; that is, it was in a family room that extended, oh,'way up in height and he had four stairs that went up to a higher level where the kitchen and dining area was. In this family room, you'd have areas for the mural that were quite high. It was four feet from the top of a brick wall, and then above that, the mural went up, oh, I can't remember now just how many feet, but I probably have it somewhere in the dimensions. The problem came up, what should I make for them? Well, they had three children at that time, and Dorothy, my niece, said she'd like to have Indians. I'd been out in the Indian country, and the kids were studying Indians in school; why didn't I do something with the Indians? It occurred to me I'll make Zuni Indians. I had to go back for school, and I told him I'd have it all designed, and I'd have the cartoons made and come up there in between semester; and he should be all ready for me, and I'll do the mural then. It takes more time to design something, unless it's something you've dealt with a lot and you're making another variation. In this case, it didn't take me too long to design it because I was so familiar with the Indian dances of Zuni. I've been talking about them to you. That was a great experience, because Stan knew how to plaster houses and put the plaster on beautifully because he'd learned something about carpentering in earlier years. He put a dark color underneath and a light color on top. I think, if I remember, it was a sort of a dark rose, brownish color, and then a paler color over that. So there was a good contrast. I got ready, and the people in the town cooperated. They'd heard about it, because it's such a small town, and one man brought over a wonderful scaffold. It was so lightweight, and yet you could go anywhere on it and adjust it. It had a number of legs that could be adjusted to stairways, like some legs could be on a stair and others could be on a different level, and anybody could manipulate it. It had a broad walkway that I could get onto without fear of falling off and so on. They cost, at that time, around $700, I believe, for a scaffold like that. All these pictures that I have don't show the thing as a whole. It shows me carving and cutting and on the scaffold. I was going to say the people came to watch, and that was kind of interesting. I got a kick out of that. There was a lady that wrote for the Fresno Bee, and she wrote it up in the paper. We had a kind of party for the opening of the house, and there were some of my ex -students that taught over in Fresno — they came over and we had a lot of fun.

MINK: To wind up on murals, there are just a couple of things that I'd like to ask you. One is about your home and the inspiration for it. And then in general, after that, how many people around Southern California at this time were doing that kind of work?

DELANO: Could I answer that last question first?

MINK: Sure.

DELANO: I don't think anybody, particularly, was doing it.

MINK: At this time?

DELANO: No, I don't believe it's something that any of the architects pushed. I did have a chance, that was finally blocked, to do a mural on the university buildings.

MINK: I think you spoke about that.

DELANO: Yes. Did I speak about it?

MINK: In connection with your discussion of the Ceeje Gallery, I believe you discussed this.

DELANO: That was to be sgraffito, and those architects involved with it thought that it'd be great to do one there, you know, because it's so fitting with the brick that we have there on the campus, and with the colors. As you see, you could get earth colors, so you'd get a nice contrast with some dark color and a lighter color.

MINK: But, generally speaking, people around Southern California haven't incorporated these things.

DELANO: No, not like they have in some cities in Europe, and especially during and after the Renaissance.

MINK: Well, I think your own, the one you have here in your house, is probably the roost interesting one I've ever seen. I was wondering if you could discuss just for a while, as a conclusion to these interviews, how was it that the idea came to mind for it and what you wanted to incorporate into it.

DELANO: Well, I loved this lot on this hillside.

MINK: And I might add here, just parenthetically for the record, that the photograph that appears of you in the front of the volume that we plan to make of the interviews when they are finally transcribed shows you seated against this mural as a background to your picture.

DELANO: Well, it has weathered well, and I think you can find that it looks well from the outside as well as from the inside. I had a slanting wall that went at an angle from the general floor plan because of the way the carport stretched out towards the street.

MINK: You said something about the rolling hillside.

DELANO: Well, I started to say that the house goes out over a canyon, and it has a whole sense of space. I loved this lot because of the feeling of the wild brush and growth and trees that it had in the beginning. I thought growth was the feeling I wanted to incorporate. You know, at that time everybody was talking about Picasso's Guernica . In that, you wouldn't say growth, you'd say it was some great tragedy. The lines suggest the abstract essence of feeling of tragedy. This kind of movement. With this, I wanted the idea of living things, and still I didn't want it in a literal sense; I wanted it to suggest that and still to go with the architecture. I found that the colors of the Grand Canyon suited me best, so I had a black in the background.

MINK: Just as you spoke yesterday about the colors of the Grand Canyon blending into your house.

DELANO: That's right. This is part of the house. At the bottom of the Grand Canyon was this black schist, sort of, material and then this pink, stuff called magma coming up and pushing through. These color contrasts were in my mind, and I thought also of an oblate diamond- shaped form which would move. They weren't aligned horizontally. They ware horizontal, but the points didn't come together. In other words, these long triangles gave movement from side to side across the long space which was over sixteen feet long. And the height was over seven feet high. We--that's my nephew and I--spread a fine coat to dry over a very well prepared wall. When it was time for him to have a vacation, he came down later and decided to put the coats on over a two-week period, to take whatever time we needed to make it. I had all of these cartoons ready, and those took quite a time. Of course, designing took quite a while. I spent more time designing it than anything. Naturally, I took the last one I made; I liked it best. Anyway, I had to get that to scale, and then I had to prepare the cartoons: I had to make eight of them and they all had to be in scale. They were made on cartoon paper, just like they used in the fresco painting of the Renaissance. All the outlines had to be pierced with a special tool that we used for making murals, preparing a cartoon. Then the plaster was laid on in about a four-foot square space, three wet layers, one over the other. My nephew had to mix the cement, which he got in Riverside — fine cement and sand and the dry colors — in batches big enough to cover the whole area. But then we'd only use enough for one four-foot square in one area at a time for a day. Then I would get my tools and start scratching away the top surface. I forgot to say I'd have to get an outline on there with these cartoons, and to do that you have a little pouncing bag filled with dry powder in contrast to the upper layer, and you'd pounce through this cartoon, through those pricked holes. Our problem the first day was that the wind was so strong, and it took several people to hold a big frame; otherwise, it touched the wet plaster and you'd be sunk — you'd have to start all over again. We got enough of an outline on that I could just go ahead and do it fairly freely, get a quality in it. You have to have a cartoon because your head is up against a big space and you can't keep running back to see what you're doing. That's why something of an outline is very necessary. Anyhow, we had all three colors on, and we started carving. I did any area or part that had to do with quality in the lines. Stan, my nephew, would cut away some of the big blocked areas, but otherwise I did almost all of it. I found that the tools used in ceramics were excellent. They were steel, but they'd wear away in one day's time, and some of them cost eight dollars apiece. They'd wear away because the sand was so hard. Finally, after eight days, I got it all cut. The fire we had about ten years ago seemed to bake the colors in a strange way. It looks now like some old monument. I don't know. I've often thought of sort of sprucing it up a little bit and darkening the black where it's cooked, but, still, I don't know.

MINK: It has an interesting quality that the fire gave it — an added quality.

DELANO: That's what people say. I've had some of my friends from the university — Dr. Danes was crazy about it, I think. He liked it. And it's worn well. You can sit in the room where it can be seen as a whole, the living room and the dining area, and it all seems to be there as an interesting wall, background, and colorful — also from the outside of the house. I think it has this sense of growing. There are three great units, and they're partly figure-like. Then there are plant-like forms, and birds, clusters of birds, in it. I didn't know I was going to have so many wild birds around here until later years, but I did get some birds into my mural.

MINK: So the birds in the mural and the wildlife scene intermingle .

DELANO: Work together.

A TEI Project

Interview of Annita Delano

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 21, 1971

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 21, 1971

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 22, 1971

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 28, 1971

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 28, 1971

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 26, 1971

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
MARCH 11, 1971

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
MARCH 18, 1971

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
APRIL 1, 1971

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
APRIL 9, 1971

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
APRIL 9, 1971

1.18. TAPE NUMBER IX, SIDE TWO
APRIL 22, 1971

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
APRIL 22, 1971

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
APRIL 29, 1971

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
APRIL 29, 1971

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
MAY 6, 1971

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
MAY 7, 1971

A TEI Project

Interview of Annita Delano

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE JANUARY 21, 1971

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO JANUARY 21, 1971

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE JANUARY 22, 1971

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO JANUARY 28, 1971

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE JANUARY 28, 1971

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 26, 1971

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE MARCH 11, 1971

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO MARCH 18, 1971

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE APRIL 1, 1971

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO APRIL 9, 1971

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE APRIL 9, 1971

1.18. TAPE NUMBER IX, SIDE TWO APRIL 22, 1971

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE APRIL 22, 1971

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO APRIL 29, 1971

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE APRIL 29, 1971

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE MAY 6, 1971

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO MAY 7, 1971

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 21, 1971

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 21, 1971

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 22, 1971

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 28, 1971

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 28, 1971

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 11, 1971

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 18, 1971

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 25, 1971

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 26, 1971

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
MARCH 11, 1971

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
MARCH 18, 1971

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
APRIL 1, 1971

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
APRIL 9, 1971

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
APRIL 9, 1971

1.18. TAPE NUMBER IX, SIDE TWO
APRIL 22, 1971

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
APRIL 22, 1971

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
APRIL 29, 1971

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
APRIL 29, 1971

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
MAY 6, 1971

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
MAY 7, 1971