Interview of Lorser Feitelson

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: . . . say, from the circumstances that are not theory, but actual experience. And since I've been here, not quite fifty years, but sort of closing in on it--I came to L.A. in 1927--I found that in all my experience in metropolitan areas, so far as the art world was concerned, the circumstances in Los Angeles were completely unrelated to the circumstances outside L.A. San Francisco was like New York or like London, or like any old city. There were sections where the artists were located: the more successful lived in one area, and the mavericks lived in another. The mavericks usually live in the area that at one time had been very respectable and now is no longer desirable; so you have beautiful old houses, and the artist moves in and gets it for next to nothing, and he fixes it up; then it becomes fashionable and the landlord pushes him out. It is the old business, like it happened in Greenwich Village, you see. And then you had the artists who really must let the world know that they are successful, in order to increase the prices of their pictures and to get better portrait commissions. I mean, it's a social business. Like the doctor or the lawyer--if he's in Beverly Hills, it's a different price. But here you had nothing of this kind, for the very simple reason that the nature of this city of Los Angeles was like a cancer spreading in every direction. It had no center. It was so many villages. You had a downtown district, which reminded one of New York City in a very small way, but even that wasn't centralized. There were new business areas--a cluster here, a cluster there--and it's only by their growth that they sort of met. By the time they met, whole areas were no longer stylish, and new ones had developed. Now, to give you an idea, so you'll get a very clear idea: in '28, a friend of mine, a sculptor, Ward Montague, was doing a job of some kind of stonecarving, in I don't even know what part of the building of the Bullocks Wilshire. That was considered a folly! Who in the hell would be crazy enough to build a department store that far west in L.A.?!

LUNDEBERG: Dear, which department store was this?

FEITELSON: Bullocks Wilshire. This is where [Jock] Peters and this other modernist — I always have a difficult time remembering his name-- [Gjura] Stojana, did their things. I lived very, very far west. I lived on Willoughby and--what in the hell street would that be? — east of . . . near Larchmont, somewhere, in the pineapple fields. And when I met Helen (in about the early thirties) , we went to a barber shop off Hollywood Boulevard, on Highland, there was no sidewalk there on Highland. You had to walk in the gutter and so on. So the city was very, very small, and at night it closed up. If you were out at ten o'clock, the cops would stop you and ask what the hell you were doing out so late. So if there were a couple of artists, and if you wanted to visit them, you had to take two or three days — one lives out here, another one very far in the opposite direction. Very few even knew of each other, or if they did, they never saw each other. There were no galleries of the kind we understand. There were places that did better than most galleries, selling paintings to those people who were building themselves beautiful homes in Beverly Hills at the time when the film industry was paying off. A cowboy actor becomes famous and consequently he builds himself a "great big place." And I'm not exaggerating. The architect tells him that he needs over sixty paintings: "Have you got sixty paintings?" says the actor to the dealer — just like that! And [Earl] Stendahl made the sale. All these people made money. There was no problem with "modern art"; there wasn't any modern art out here! Stendahl tried to push modern art. They had an exhibition of Chagall, and nobody gave a damn. You couldn't get anybody to come down to see such a show, anyhow. If you said, "Picasso," for them Picasso was the name perhaps of one of the Chicago gangsters at that time. It didn't mean anything. You didn't even have an adversary. They just didn't give a Goddamn about art! So for the few artists that were serious, when they came out here, they had no audience, no patronage, and if they liked it out here, they'd better paint for their own satisfaction! So they did their best work, because there was no competition. They didn't walk along Fifty-seventh Street or the equivalent, or rue Boetie in Paris or rue de Seine, to "see what is going on," or look in the art columns to see what is fashionable now, or who's getting the works, who's being lauded. It just didn't exist. You really had to love art. Therefore, you did the things for your own satisfaction, you worked on the same damn thing year in and year out until you got something to your satisfaction. And it ended there. This was the situation here. Therefore we never had an art community like up in San Francisco. So when I arrived here, this thing shocked me, and I loved it. For once I was free from competition. I never realized that I was living in a competitive world. Elsewhere, in the established art centers, the artists were wondering who the hell is doing what and who's getting a bit of publicity, who's selling; they liked a guy till he started selling--" I hate him now; he's sold out," or something like that. I went up to San Francisco, back again. It's the New York. ... If you're an artist, they even know you did it: this is a very sophisticated action that you find only in big cities like New York or Paris or so on. I went to San Francisco to see the museums, and I was put up at the Press Club, and there appeared in the S.F. Chronicle a nice little announcement by Margariette Salinger (the mother of the politician, Pierre Salinger) . She and a man by the name of Nelson Partridge had a little magazine — Argus? What the devil was it called?

LUNDEBERG: It might be Argonaut, I think.

FEITELSON: This was a "little art magazine," containing articles on Paul Klee and all the newest things. And San Francisco had little galleries, and "La Boheme," and an art community just like that on Montmartre, and so on. Even more so! They thought they were "doing Paris"! They all "did Paris." [laughter] So you had an entirely different structure here. First of all, you had people who were personalities coming out here, and they were grabbing whatever reclame it was possible to get, because there was a hell of a lot of money in this business, being a movie actor, building up all kinds of crap around these people who probably didn't even have a pot to wee-wee in when they were living in New York. The agents building up all kinds of personalities--that ' s the Valentino period we're talking about. The studios manufactured the character before they had the guy, you know. They give him a name. But art wasn't in that category at all. So if there was patronage, these people, who were shuttling between New York (Times Square) and Hollywood, between pictures, and making real salaries--well, if they were "putting on the dog," which meant they had to have pictures and have the correct people there and all that business, they were buying the things that were being acclaimed not in New York but Paris! That's before New York became the center (that's after the second war). We're talking about the twenties, late twenties and early thirties. So there were people who had their Braques and their Picassos and all the . . .

LUNDEBERG: Don't forget Utrillo.

FEITELSON: . . . and Utrillo, of course. You had to have an Utrillo. So this was the scene. And the artists themselves just simply found themselves in small groups, tiny groups. The man you should see, who can furnish you with more material than anyone else for that era (because he became a hermit in the beginning of the thirties) is Peter Krasnow. He's still alive. He'd be the same age as [Stanton] Macdonald-Wright; if he were alive, they'd be the same age, born about 1890. Others came a little later, not much later; about 1920, '22, was the time when they arrived here. Boris Deutsch. But Boris never really was in the swing. He was a loner; he did his own stuff. So his idea of the art world — well, whatever he would say would not be accurate, because this was a Narcissus; he was always seeing himself, and he couldn't care less about what the other fellow was doing. But Krasnow did know; he was in the swing of the few people that were the so-called intellectuals. [Richard] Neutra was just beginning his career; [R.M.] Schindler, the architect, his career. And there were many writers and poets, sincere people, and serious artists; [Edward] Weston was a friend of his-- you know, the photographer. Many of the people who later made their reputations and were identified with this area. But he was doing very well when I first came out here, and Krasnow knew that very small world. And Sonya Wolfson, who's still alive: she was writing art criticism for a local magazine called Saturday Night, or something like that, wasn't she?

LUNDEBERG: I don't know. Saturday Review?

FEITELSON: No, not Saturday Review. Saturday Night. About this size of a magazine. And she was making a living writing for the studios. We still run into her, the old girl; she wrote very fine art criticism for the kind of public you had in those days, and she was very sympathetic to what was considered then far-out art. But Krasnow knew that little world, and it was very small. Sadakichi Hartmann, who was quite a character, you know. And there were a few others whose names I can't even recall. He actually knew these people. He was in the swing of things. Well, in 1930, '31, I practically talked Krasnow into going abroad. He went abroad, and instead of staying in Paris, he went to some small town quite a distance from Paris. He stayed there for about two years and came back a completely changed man. No longer wanted to play the game. Just to do his own thing. And he's been doing it ever since.

LUNDEBERG: Now, you're talking about Krasnow.

FEITELSON: Krasnow, yes. He's a very, very intelligent guy. And he has a larger circle than most people think, people who buy his things regularly. The outside world doesn't even know of his existence. [Here] we have a structure that makes it impossible to find a format of what we call art activities, like in New York, where we have clusters. They "live together." The galleries are together. Everybody knows one another. We have many, many circles here that are not aware of each other, little in-groups, where they sort of feed each other with the same ideal; otherwise the poor guys would just be terribly lonely and probably get the hell out of town because they couldn't bear it, to be alone. Goes back to New York. And New York will have just the opposite. See, when Helen and I would get to New York, we were scared to death to say to a painter that we had just seen So-and- so. It seemed that nobody talks to another in New York.

LUNDEBERG: Well, you never knew who was talking to whom. So you were nervous about saying, "I just saw So-and-so."

FEITELSON: Even in the museum. Dorothy Miller, who was the right hand to Alfred Barr, would tell us, "You have to be careful, you know. Even with the curators. If you meet one curator, don't say you just talked to the other." Politics was — it wasn't even funny. They were killing each other. So you have less of this here. Perhaps if the artists were closer together, they'd probably kill each other. I'm quite sure they would. So in a way, I think the artist has a better chance here, or he did have until recently, until recently, when it became a business. And I'm talking about the business in the sense of following the format of [Leo] Castelli — I think I mentioned his name to you. To give you a very simple example why I mention Castelli: every time we'd get to New York, we seemed to get there always during openings of the Guggenheim. Without being aware of it, we'd always find ourselves there at that time. Dorothy Miller used to be our host-- she's our very dear friend — and she took us to an exhibition at Guggenheim's. I'll never forget this. There were some people there, said, "I want you to meet--this is Castelli, " and so forth. "Oh," he said, "you're from L.A.? I just came from there. I'm getting several galleries lined up to handle the things that I have out in New York." "Going to have an exchange of exhibitions?" I said. "That means L.A. is going to show in your gallery?" "Oh, no, they're not ready for that yet." That was their attitude. Well, needless to say, this really made me sick as hell. And then, this very gorgeous gal, Grace — what the hell is her name?

LUNDEBERG: Hartigan?

FEITELSON: Hartigan. Well, she was an attractive gal. Wherever we'd go, we'd run into her, it seemed. Out to the Bowery, one of those little joints with the jazz band, and so on. She was there with some guy, and they joined our table. She says, "How are things in L.A.?" (This is about 1960, '62.) I said, "Things are coming along very fine. The work is getting very good, and the local artist population is growing." So she says, "Well" — she kind of equated it with more Chinese being born every day. And I wondered what the hell she was trying to say. "I used to live in L.A.; I left in 1940," I think she said. I realized she was getting very hostile, and I just lost my temper, which wasn't very nice, but I said, "You know, the trouble with you people is that you are naive. We come from L.A. There they make stars; they actually manufacture them. All the publicity is manufactured here. The trouble with you people is that you believe your own publicity." That didn't make for very good relations, really. But just to give you an idea, immediately, how the attitude of New York was towards the artists elsewhere: they're yokels, and if their work is not seen in New York, it means it's never had any merit. They wonder why in the hell they called themselves artists. This was the attitude. And we saw a great deal of this.

DANIELI: Was there ever a time when you might have supposed they would have been more open? I don't know when you were traveling back and forth. Might they have been more open to art from the West in, say, the thirties or forties?

FEITELSON: Well, I left New York in '27 and didn't get back there until '46. It was a rather big span. But we noticed that this is an attitude that I think they still have. Of course, all the boys who have done very well there who came from out here certainly are not helping this area — they just disassociate themselves. Phil Guston was from out here; he ' s a Los Angeles boy. He was painting, went out there, the same painter, living there, getting in tune with the machine there, in your Cedar Bar, all of a sudden he becomes a personality. And this is true about many that went out there. The same boys, when they were around here, nobody even knew about them, not even their own little art world, let alone New York. And also, to show you how little they know, Helen Wurdemann, my Helen, and I went to New York — this was about 1950, '52 — when was it?--after that show down in Texas, I think it was.

LUNDEBERG: It must have been '54, then, wasn't it?

FEITELSON: Yes. Well, again, we're taken to the Whitney. And it's crowded, a million people. What was then the new Whitney, when it was right in back of the Modern, before they moved to their recent newer place. And Helen says, "A very tall guy seems to be looking at you constantly." I said, "Well, that's" — what's his name?

LUNDEBERG: That was Hopper.

FEITELSON: Hopper! I used to know him years ago. Jesus, God knows how long it is since I've seen him. Yeah, Edward Hopper. I knew him as a humorless, kind of very tall, very quiet. ... I came over to him. "Hello, Lorser!" he said. "Jesus, I read somewhere, long time ago, you had died, that you died somewhere way out in California!" I said, "Yes, I wanted to be buried in New York; I've been sent back here. That's all." It's a bad joke; it didn't mean a damn thing to him. But this is the New York attitude, Nothing exists out here.

EDIE DANIELI: The Castelli attitude.

FEITELSON: Yes, the attitude.

DANIELI: I thought it was interesting that even for the weather report, they only give it for downtown Manhattan, and that's it.

FEITELSON: Nothing really exists outside. Well, every time we get to New York, the old-timers that we've known there, we've never had any difficulty. I'm very chauvinistic about our area. They consider me a New Yorker; I don't consider myself a New Yorker. I've been here almost fifty years. And the things they see as a virtue, I dislike violently. To give you an idea of this antagonism, Abe Rattner has us down to his house, and he calls in — I have a difficult time remembering this fellow's name, but, Helen, what was the name of that painter in New York that Rattner had over at dinner, you remember?

LUNDEBERG: Carl Holty.

FEITELSON: Yeah, he's a very intelligent guy; you'd like him. He's a worldly guy and full of fun, and in art he's deeply involved, actively and theoretically. Well, Mrs. Rattner and we were talking about old times, and before you knew it, we were talking about different artists, these people here. When I became aware that it all was being taped, I thought, "What the hell am I getting into?" I planned to stay there another few days; I'd better get out of town. I really don't want to participate in this thing. She had put a little machine like yours--except that she had the old-time machine — under the table and recorded the whole Goddamned conversation. I could never get back to New York if any of those people heard what we were talking about, some of the people we used to know years and years and years ago. With all that rat race, and the dog-eat-dog, and the — horrible, horrible. Dorothy's still our good friend; we hear from her 13 constantly. Well, all the things that you see in that cabinet here in our studio — this thing is hers, and that thing is hers, and we have all kinds of art objects. She's always sending us little things. And she's one of those who promoted modern art in the big way, Dorothy.

DANIELI: Those shows. . . .

FEITELSON: Well, she got the Chase [Manhattan] Bank to buy the Rothko. She's the one who pushed it. She's the one who made — what's his name?--Pollock . She got the museum to buy it. Because it was hanging around. She's one of the loveliest human beings you've ever met.

DANIELI: Wasn't it her idea to inaugurate those shows of American artists?

FEITELSON: Yes.

DANIELI: [Rico] Lebrun was in one of those.

FEITELSON: Yes, she's the one. And her husband [Holger Cahill] was a wonderful guy. He's passed on. He was a great lover of folk arts. He was Icelandic. He was born in Iceland and brought up in Idaho, I believe. And a wonderful man. But she was responsible for much of what has made American art today — talking about on the international scene — and a real person. You don't have to try to interpret anything she says — there is no bullshit about her. She is a very loyal friend and a very beautiful girl. We haven't seen her for a few years. But just a wonderful person. But, to come back again. We'd been trying to make our area like New York, thinking, "Well, that's the model for success." There's no way it can be done. There are many, many reasons. One reason is that New York, if you like it or not, is a port. It isn't even America. It's a door. It's a door: people leaving for Europe or coming from Europe. And as you know, the galleries there — and I've been brought up in the galleries from since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. All the shenanigans and so on. And of course New York is easy for an artist, very, very easy for an artist, to make a career. It's not difficult to have exhibitions in New York. They have much more time for exhibitions than there possibly could be exhibitions. Two weeks for an exhibition, three weeks; well, a show dies in the last week of three weeks. You have so many galleries, and how many artists can you have that put on a good show, or at least a reasonably attractive show? And it's never been difficult. I look back at the old write-ups when I was just a youngster, show after show, great big blurbs, and so — and this is true for every artist I knew. It wasn't difficult to get showcased. Here in Los Angeles, an artist can spend his whole life out here, and he can't get showcased. I mean, one gets a show, but it dies when the next fellow has a show. This is one of the reasons that the artist goes to New York. And the European artists or the Paris artists want to showcase not in Paris but in New York. New York. And all the snobs buy it. New York does it. They will not buy this picture unless New York endorses it. You say, "Well, why can't we use the same devices?" [dog enters and is entertained for a few moments]

DANIELI: Can we go back to the gallery or dealer situation in the late twenties? Who was around at that time, Stendahl?

FEITELSON: Yes. Stendahl. [Dalzell] Hatfield was just getting into it. And there was a gallery called the Wilshire Gallery when I first came here. In fact, the first week I got my show lined up. It was on Wilshire Boulevard opposite the Ambassador [Hotel], one of the very, very plush places. The dealer was an old-timer.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

DANIELI: What was the guy's name; do you remember?

FEITELSON: Jackson. And Jackson had a man working for him. I'm just trying to think of the name of that actor. What was that kid's name, in The Kid, with Charlie Chaplin? He's now an old man.

LUNDEBERG: Jackie Coogan.

FEITELSON: His uncle was then a young fellow and was working in that same gallery. We never — we haven't any gallery out here [now] that's that plush. God, what a plush place this was, that Jackson gallery! Very wide, very high. I'm telling you, the things that we kid about-- walking into the place and the rugs up to your knee: you literally did that! The walls covered with deep red velvet-- that's what it was. And chairs that you got into — it took two elephants to get you out. [laughter] Everything was what you would say "plush. " And I saw these little paintings; they weren't bad paintings, but as a young fellow, my generation considered those things unburied years ago. And here they are. Now I said to him, "Could you sell these things?" You know who they were? [Thomas] Moran, and all these painters.

LUNDEBERG: No, really?

FEITELSON: Yes, yes. Morans. So he said — he looked at me. I realized I said the wrong thing; I offended him. And he said, "We cannot get enough of these things." And I thought, "Well, it must be the kind of thing, you know, cheapies. You got a hole in the wall? You fill the hole by covering — it's cheaper than plaster." But he started telling me — not hundreds but the thousands of dollars, each one cost. And he wasn't kidding. And they sell 'em by the dozens. The American Barbizon school of the seventies and the eighties and the turn of the century- those guys who were manufacturing these sort of pictures, cynical pictures, you know. Real Blakelocks, phoney Blakelocks, and so on. Those are the things. And they were getting it. I thought I knew all about the art business, and this is what shocked me. Coogan said, "God, I am having a hell of a time selling this, this. ..." And this other guy says, "You've got to see 'em, got to see 'em; don't show these things to anybody else until you show 'em to him." Now, here's how they operated: these were still the days of prosperity. They followed the newspapers for announced building in the plush areas. A half-a-million- dollar house is going to be built here. Or this great actor, Tom Mix, is building something. Or whoever it is. William S. Hart. They go right down, before there's even a plan, and ask, "How many pictures can you use?" It was all set. That's how they sold. They literally sold it. If I had told that story in New York, they would have laughed me out of the place. They'd have said, my God, I'm insulting their intelligence; such things don't exist. But this is how it worked in those days. So having a little gallery and waiting for people who are interested in art to come in, even to visit the place, to see the things, you'd get nowhere. We acted as mentors for exhibitions. We arranged a show of Juan Gris, and this is in the thirties — the Juan Gris show, what year would that be?

LUNDEBERG: About '35, I guess.

FEITELSON: All right. You had eight-five pieces. The highest price was $300. Only one was sold, to Josef von Sternberg, the guy was making about ten grand a week! The pictures came to us through [Howard] Putzel. He got them from Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was having a difficult time; he couldn't make a living, so he acted as an agent. And then we had an exhibition--you wouldn't believe this — of Jacques Villons, his brother's prints. The highest price was fifteen dollars. Not one was sold! Paul Klee, we showed about sixty works. Sixty dollars was the highest price for any of these watercolors; $200 for an oil that he had shown at the Biennial in Venice. Not one of 'em was sold. Not only that, you couldn't get anybody into the exhibition. And the German expressionists — Nolde, Kirchner, and so on; these watercolors — couldn't attract anybody to see the show.

DANIELI: Where were those exhibits held?

FEITELSON: On Hollywood Boulevard. In a bookshop called Stanley Rose. I designed the gallery for him.

LUNDEBERG: Those Klees were shown in that little Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art, on Hollywood Boulevard, which you, Lorser, directed in the middle thirties.

FEITELSON: That was then the Modern Art, after we pulled out of Stanley Rose's place. We put on all kinds of shows.

LUNDEBERG: Hollywood Gallery of Modern Art. If you go back in the Times morgue, you can find reviews of shows at that gallery.

FEITELSON: Sure. We had the surrealists — Dali, Arp, and all these people. We had Braques and others. To acquire them today you've got to be a multimillionaire. You could have gotten 'em for less than a thousand dollars. Nobody wanted 'em!

DANIELI: What about Scheyer? Did you know her?

FEITELSON: Very well. Dr. Galka Scheyer may have been difficult, but she certainly had taste. Often she seemed crazy as a bedbug. Some very cynical things have been said about her. When she would have trouble with her girlfriends, then they would start talking about her. Nothing about the morals. But the Paul Klees by Galka Scheyer. She was a dealer. There were Miro shows, great big Miros, a hundred dollars, no buyers. It was a desert, so to speak. There were a few people who loved art but couldn't afford to buy it, just couldn't afford to buy it. Most of them were artists ! I always collected it. I've been a collector ever since I was a young fellow. In fact, we're still collecting. Getting some things coming in from New York, coming in today. [Yves] Tanguys — big, beautiful. I had six Tanguys, six or seven. The only one I have left now is just the one that I gave to my daughter. I said I have a [Alexei von] Jawlensky; I had quite a number of Jawlenskys. Of course, when we buy, we buy by the dozens. We don't buy a picture; we just buy a batch of pictures. And the Tanguy is now in the collection of — he's very, very proud; I didn't know that he had it. He has a brother who collects futurist pictures, and I'll think of his name. Winston. The Winston family. I forget what his first name was. [Donald] And I ran into him at an opening. He came over and introduced himself, and says, "I wanted to thank you." And I said, "For what?" "For the Tanguy that you made possible for me to get." I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I said, "The only Tanguy that you're describing, the very large one, I sold to [Erik] Estorick." "Well," he says, "that was for me." And I immediately thought that that Erik is a Goddamned liar. He's an Englishman. He came to our place, one o'clock in the morning, said, "Lorser, I'm taking my plane two hours from now. I must have this picture; I've got a customer for it. What the hell are you going to be doing with this picture? I'll give you a fair price." I didn't know what to ask. I asked ten grand; I could have asked three times as much. And it was sold to this guy right away. I didn't ask him how much he paid. "I bet they took you for a lot." "Well," he said, "He took me for a lot of cash, plus a Picasso in the exchange." I just sold a [Rene] Magritte [The State of Man] . It's a famous Magritte, the study for that painting, The Cave, the cave with the little fire on the left and the canvas on an easel. You know who has it? Jasper Johns.

EDIE DANIELI: Oh, wow! That's great.

FEITELSON: And the dealer who bought it from me paid handsomely. God knows what Jasper Johns paid for this thing. And I've an [Auguste] Herbin, a very early Herbin. It's a historical picture. It was in the famous [Arthur] Eddy collection. He was the man that owned many wonderful paintings of the Armory Show. And I've got the original. It's Herbin. It's a very famous Herbin. I plan to leave it to my grandson. We have an old master painting by [Allessandro] Magnasco, a beautiful painting. And drawings, old master drawings. Well, I think one of the larger private collections on the West Coast. Someone said that [Terisio] Pignatti, who's head of the museums of the state of Venice (not merely the city, the state of Venice), is getting up a show on Venetian drawings, a selection of Venetian drawings in American collections. He came here, and I said, "I think these drawings here. ..." I have several drawings that to my way of reasoning come from the circle of Titian--studio of Titian, or Titian himself. And he was of the same opinion, And now they're going to exhibit.* I received a letter asking for permission to exhibit them. And let me see, what's the name, because maybe you know of this setup. I'll ask Helen. It's a sort of international exhibitions foundation; it's in Washington. You see, I just only answered it yesterday. They will pay for all the expenses and the insurance. And I didn't even know how much to insure. And I called up Ebria Feinblatt (curator of drawings and prints at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) last night. And we have quite a batch of quality drawings. The Fogg Museum [Cambridge, Massachusetts] borrowed one of my Tiepolos, and then the magazine called Master Drawings has reproduced three of our Tiepolos. What is the name of that institution that we answered yesterday? International what? *[Soon after the tape was made, I decided not to participate in his proposed exhibition. — L.F.]

LUNDEBERG: International Exhibitions — something or other. If you really want to know--I just put the letter in the files .

DANIELI: Did you buy these in Europe?

FEITELSON: I bought most of the things out here. I buy a lot in New York, and I buy a lot from Europe. We just get some catalogs when we're here. The prices are going up so high. It's getting difficult to deal with certain . .

LUNDEBERG: International Exhibitions Foundation, Lorser. It's Washington, D.C.

FEITELSON: . . . because of the taxes. Each country starts taxing whatever 's going out. Now, we could have bought things from Italy, but it's impossible. They throw a tax immediately on top of the sale. But coming back again to this area and its collectors. Has an entirely different setup in dealers. We haven't any dealers here. Truly. There may be one or two, but that doesn't constitute a dealer society. In New York, many dealers live by never selling to any outsider excepting dealers. They deal with dealers. The moment--all right, you're dealing with whatever kind of art, say, postimpressionist. He calls you up immediately, as soon as he gets the thing, even before he's paid for it — "Would you be interested?" There's all this going on. And all the collectors go directly to you. They don't bother--you're the guy that handles that kind of thing. "Oh, have you got any nice little drawings by Cezanne or a Cezanne watercolor?" They know where to go. And everybody in the field knows where to go. Now, here's the thing, and there's the big difference. That's the big difference between Paris and out here. And Paris sets the fashion for New York. In Paris, you walk in to the dealer and you have a folio. You say, "You think you'd be interested in this?" You open it up, and he says, "I'll take a look." Then, if he likes it, he may say to you, "What do you sell these things for?" He'll probably barter a little bit with you; no matter what you say, he's going to say [a little less] . Then he puts them aside and opens up his little purse, deducts his commission, and gives you a check. He buys it from you. He can sell it at any price he wants after that. You see the difference? No such situation exists in this city. I told this story a thousand times, about my seeing a sculptor coming in with a piece of wooden sculpture, roughly carved. The Paris dealer looks up. He excuses himself to me and so forth, gives the sculptor the money, and takes the thing. The sculptor goes out and takes his girlfriend to dinner, or he pays his rent. Where the hell could you do this here? Many of the American dealers live off the artist. And if they do sell the thing — try to get your money in this town. We can cite to you, my God. . . .

DANIELI: Get this down on tape!

LUNDEBERG: Anyway, you can get the same story from a lot of other people.

FEITELSON: Two galleries pulled the same little gag to two different people we know, people that — you may know their names. One went to gallery A (the artist told me the story) and said, "How about my money? You owe me x-thousand dollars." And can you believe? The answer was given: "Oh, it's impossible! We're building ourselves a house!" On whose money? And the other one, the same thing: "Well, we're refixing our gallery." Then they only pay when they're dragged into court. They make a little down payment, and then you gotta sue 'em again. That's why we will never have real galleries here. People who do good work don't have to put up with that kind of nonsense. They don't have to put up with that kind of nonsense.

DANIELI: Could you foresee the odds of a lot of private dealers dealing in terms of specialized material?

FEITELSON: It's inevitable. I see what's happening also. The artist is frequently the dealer.

DANIELI: What about areas or rooms in which to exhibit, then?

FEITELSON: Well, the artists who have. . . . Many artists who have been exhibiting eventually free themselves from a dealer. They say, "If you want to be my dealer, you've got to assure me of so many sales per year." Or, "I'll only give you so many pieces, that's how many. But you've got to still buy so many. I've got to be sure of so many sales. Otherwise I don't need you. It's easier for me to sell directly to the guy, without your Goddamned commission. Let the customer benefit by that." And this is what's happening now. Many artists are now just simply selling from their place. You don't have to sell as many, and there's a better relationship between the artist and the buyer. You know damn well if somebody went to the dealer, liked your work, and if the dealer thought that, well, he's got a few things he'd like to get rid of, before you know it he's steering the customer into something else. All he has to do is make a remark, which the other fellow interprets that the dealer doesn't share the enthusiasm for this guy as much as he does--all you need is just a little bit of that, and that's like strychnine. Kills immediately. Or disinterestedness. Or, "Let me show you a good thing. Those guys are really going places." Which would be an absolute lie. But it serves his interest. You're always at the mercy of the other guy, the dealer. The artists are so sick and tired of having the other people make their destiny. Because these people--many of these dealers, if you didn't have to deal with them, you wouldn't want them in your house; and if they were in your house, after they left you'd burn your house down! Now, I'm not exaggerating. I'm not exaggerating. There are just simply what I call pimps in the business, who do business with the other guy's merchandise. They don't invest a nickel in it. There are dealers who really like art. And there are many who are in the dealing business so they can get those things for little themselves. But they're very few in number. Those are the kind we love! Those are the kind we love! But the point is, most of our dealers should not be in the art business. They haven't any money. A good dealer would support his artists. They would say, "All right, I believe in your work. I'm going to give you x-number of dollars per month," or per week, or whatever it may be. "I guarantee you your rent plus so much money, and I'll take so many pictures against it." This is how they work the thing, most of them in Europe. It's got to be, in the true sense of the word, a partnership. And then they'd probably both hit it off nice, and they'd both make a living out of the damn thing. But most of the dealers wouldn't put a nickel in. They look at the work only one way: "Could this guy make me money immediately?" Or, the other thing: "How influential is he? How many collectors does he know? Once I have a few of his things on and they come down to see them, I'll sell them something else." In other words, they use the guy. So I maintain that many of the dealers talk about having a union and protecting each other: why aren't they accountable to the artist? Why don't they tell the world about their dealings with the artist? How many have "done" their artists? They talk about dealers' integrity. What integrity? Just backing each other up. That's all it is. Well, this situation's all over the world. Except in that it's been bettered, because the artists are much more independent today and also are much more active in denouncing a lot of these people. Made it impossible for a lot of these unscrupulous people to carry on. Just like the dealers have done in their way. They've gotten together and really discredited some very famous names I cannot use right here. Very famous people, who were known as collectors. Well, you and I can go out and collect anything if we don't pay for it. They put out an advertisement denouncing this guy as a deadbeat, and they could prove it. And it's a very, very famous collector.

DANIELI: When was that?

FEITELSON: Oh, this must have happened about five years ago, wasn't it? About five years ago. Very famous name — very, very famous name. But most of the dealers are scared to death of these people. They figure that these collectors move in that international multimillion-dollar society and that they say, "Well, Joe Schmaltz, who has the gallery — don't ever go there. He's a bastard! The things he says about his customers! Of course, the thing he says is true: the guy doesn't pay." And he's got an artist waiting for his money and he can't pay him. But the dealer's scared to death to dun the collector, because he doesn't want to offend him. So the result is those who have the money pay only when they want to pay. The dealer always goes along with them--"Well, we understand." And in his heart he knows Goddamned well he's being taken advantage of. And not only that: they'll hold the damn thing for several years, and then they'll send you a little, "Joe, you know, I'm sorry; I've had it for three years, and now I know I really don't like it." Returns it to them.

LUNDEBERG: It's a wonderful business.

FEITELSON: So what we call a healthy, at least an area of what we call a relationship, of the artist and his public, the artist and the dealer, and the artist in general, say, with all those people who are interested in art, people who write, people who read, the people who teach about art. . . . We haven't got what New York has. There, it's better integrated, and I still believe it's because of the physical closeness. The physical closeness. You go on the street, you can see so many exhibitions all at once. They'll never have it here. It's getting worse. It sounds funny, because it's so topical, but if this gas shortage continues, we'll have no art world [here in L.A.] . We wouldn't even know of one another, because of this transportation problem. Who the hell goes "gallery-hopping" in cars in New York? They just hoof it from one block to the other. There everybody knows what's going on, who's painting what. We haven't got this. All those people who are interested in art are also interested in certain phases of art, and those who are active in them, they're pretty up to the moment on it. They get down there, saying, "Let's see the thing; I'll take this, I'll take that. Can I take this home for a week or so?" This is the way it works. I wish we had it out here.

DANIELI: Why did you come to Los Angeles?

FEITELSON: Why did I come out here? Very simple reason. The oldest reason. I thought you knew this by this time. My late "ex" [Nathalie Newking] and I were living in Paris. And she became aware that she was expecting. I said, "We're getting the hell out of here, and let's get back to New York, because in case it's a boy, he's subject to military duties; he's a French citizen." Louis Bouche, the painter, I can remember him telling me this when I was at Daniel's (I used to be at [the Charles] Daniel Gallery, in the very early twenties): he fought in the first war, and a few years after that, about three or four years after that, he went to visit Paris. He had served in the American navy during the First World War. Well, you know, police card and all the records. But he was born in Paris, and, according to French law, he had to obey the mobilization order. He never did. But to the French government , it made no difference that he fought for America, on the side of the Allies. Well, that's a very, very serious offense. He got by very, very easily through the intervention of the American ambassador — gave him a week to get the hell out. So we thought we would avoid that. So we got to New York, the baby was born, and it was a girl. So we decided to come out to L.A. Her mother was living out here and had some property around Silver Lake Park. We thought we'd get away from the cold weather in New York. And we stayed here ever since.

DANIELI: Your late ex-wife's mother?

FEITELSON: Yes, yes, lived out here, in Silver Lake.

DANIELI: What was that area like?

FEITELSON: Oh, California was beautiful in those days. All the buildings were new, and it was so easygoing. When I came out, I thought, what the hell. . . .

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: ... I accepted students. Found that not difficult at all. Particularly private.

DANIELI: Where was that?

FEITELSON: On Highland Avenue, right above Hollywood Boulevard. And that was the center, because the northwest corner of Highland and Hollywood Boulevard was the old Hollywood Hotel, where all the famous movie people met. When the movie world was in its great moment, that was the place. All the shenanigans--that ' s where they all met. And that was the famous corner. Later it was Vine and Hollywood; that went to the dogs. And Beverly Hills was only just beginning to be built up. It was entirely different from the present scene — none of these people that you see on the streets today. Wasn't that at all. And I had that studio on Highland for several years. And then I did a lot of teaching when I had my studio on Western Avenue, and I taught for--how long was I at Stickney [Memorial Art School], about two years?

LUNDEBERG: Yeah, two, almost three years.

FEITELSON: It was always exclusively devoted to the fine arts. There was no real interest in commercial art. The commercial arts schools, like Art Center [College of Design] started about 1930. [Edward ("Tink")] Adams was a student, believe it or not, at Chouinard [Art Institute] . He had come out here for the same reason most people come out: either for the theater and the industries, to deal with them, or for health. He had been a TB, an arrested TB. He had been practicing his commercial art in Chicago, and then he went to Chouinard; he thought that at Chouinard the class in commercial art was bad, and he said so to Mrs. [Nelbert] Chouinard. Mrs. Chouinard--you know, she's a wonderful gal (she's gone now; she was a wonderful gal) — she had lots of affection, but she also could get mad. She had a lot of Irish (she's Irish) . So when he said that the school was a fake, or something like that, she said, "Why the hell don't you open up your own school?" And that gave him the idea! You see? But there wasn't any commercial art out here. There was nothing commercial out here to begin with, so most of the artists were working for the studios. I came out here and had beautiful letters of introduction. I had an appointment with Captain [Richard?] Day from MGM, and there was another Englishman who was a head of the Chamber of Commerce in Culver City. The head of the Chamber of Commerce asked what they can do for me in the studios. I said, nothing. I didn't look for a job. I never wanted to get a job in the movie studios. Everything's the old drag: who do you know? Well, these were influential people. But I knew immediately that this was a politically oriented organization. No one was safe up there unless he had the protection of Mr. Big, top guy. And it still is that way, as you know. So the students I had were mostly people with lots and lots of money who were in the industry. Eddie Robinson had been for many years a pupil of mine. And Mrs. Adolph Menjou. And Sidney Franklin, you know, who was one of the big producers ( Mrs. Minniver , The Good Earth, and all that) . And there were many, many others at that period. And of course Mr. Big himself, David Loew, and other theater people and so on (their holdings were tremendous) . So these are the kind of people that I had as private students. And I had small classes of students who were not so well heeled. But I was always independent 'til I got to the Art Center school.

DANIELI: When did you start there?

FEITELSON: In 1944. A friend of mine, Al King, who taught there, had been called to Washington — that was during the war — by the Bureau of Standards. He was a very good man in the field of color--a very, very well informed guy, and he was dealing with something in color, camouflage or whatever it was. And "Tink" Adams asked me to pinch-hit for him. Then when he came back, instead of my saying bye-bye, which I should have done if I had any intelligence, I took on some more art classes. And this is it. Now I'm retired, and I'm still there. They still have classes for me. And even more than I had before I retired ! But it's an entirely different mentality. The kids, during the last few semesters, they want just simply knowledge about art. They don't want the direction. They want to know about art, rather than to be told what is art at this moment, and what is good art, or what is the tendency. They couldn't care less. They want an unprejudiced view, a bird's-eye view, what the hell, and in certain areas in depth. So, many of the students have formed a group outside of the school, and I teach them every other Thursday night. They meet with each other; it's a beautiful camaraderie. Many of them have received their MFA degree. Many of them are exhibiting on their own. Some of them do some writing. Also, they've started a class, during the last few semesters, just dealing with the analysis of art, philosophy of art, pictorial structure, and, well. . . . Like, for instance, we're working right now on an in-depth study of Cezanne, the sources of his art, and the consequences. We're not saying this will be "the formula" — just like the chemist: whatever they'll do with it is their business; and that is how it should be (no one should interfere) . But they really want to know. So there's a terrific thirst for information; I've never seen anything like it until now. They want it straight from the shoulder, no hokum. The way the world is going to pot, killing and murder and so on, how could there be levity? These kids are paying such big fees. We just got from the Art Center today an announcement telling us about the rise in tuition rates.

LUNDEBERG: Well, another little raise in the tuition. And at that it's cheaper than a lot of other schools. To show you the bill: they listed the rates. It's eleven hundred a trimester.

FEITELSON: Eleven hundred dollars a trimester! Where the hell do the kids get the money? Most of 'em come from out of town. They have to live somewhere. And materials cost money.

LUNDEBERG: I don't know how these kids do it.

FEITELSON: How the hell do they do it? Unless their fathers are--I don't know — are thugs or something, or never pay their taxes. I don't know. Where do they get it? So you see, the kids are very, very serious. Where we used to see this, well, the affectation of "La Boheme" and so on, there's now a serious, almost a feeling of anxiety. A feeling of anxiety.

DANIELI: Did you know Adams before you started at Art Center in '44?

FEITELSON: Oh, yes.

DANIELI: How would you have known him?

FEITELSON: Oh, I met him. I'm just trying to think how the hell I did meet him.

LUNDEBERG: I don't remember, I have no idea.

FEITELSON: I knew him, I think, before I met you, Helen.

LUNDEBERG: You did?

FEITELSON: Yes. I think it was when he first opened the school; I can't remember what the occasion was. He opened it in 1930. And I got to the Stickney in the summer of 1930. It may have been 'cause I knew [Stanley] Reckless, who was teaching, and I knew [Edward] Kaminski, who was teaching there. In fact, they were partners of Adams. Reckless was a partner of his. And Kaminski did everything, practically — not practically, he did work for nothing. Not only worked for nothing, but he would hock his car every now and then so they could get enough money to pay the rent. They finally got to the point where they had almost as many students as they had faculty, you know, and they considered it a howling success. It was during the depths of the Depression. But the guy (Adams) had a strong will, and he made a great school out of it, for what he likes. I don't give a deuce about commercial art; I don't understand it. But I can tell you one thing: if I had a kid who was interested in commercial art, this is the place I would send him. And this is what's happening-- from all over the world. We have 'em from everywhere, literally from everywhere.

DANIELI: I think that was always a major mystery to me, what you were doing there and, say, not at some other school.

FEITELSON: Well, his idea was this. I asked him that, you see. And he said, "We want a pro in his field to teach what we need. We need this point of view. We will take care of what you give him so far as application is concerned. Don't you worry about application. Commercial art has always taken a great deal from the so-called innovations of the fine arts. So bring your experiences." So he was buying this experience and hoping that it could fit in. But it wasn't that easy. Because there are many aspects of art that have so many diverse avenues that I would say to myself, I could talk to 'em about this — regarding whatever the subject is, this, that, that — but this is the only one that seems to relate to what they are doing in commercial art. I found myself always choosing what I thought, maybe mistakenly, is of usage significance. So they really were not getting the fine arts completely. It even influenced me. Because I felt, I owe it to them. God knows they're paying a hell of a lot of money. They're not going out to be fine artists. They don't give a Goddamn. They want to make a living, and God knows they have a right to make security and to be able to compete in this very competitive field. And it was very difficult, making a living. So if we're going to give 'em knowledge, give 'em the stuff that has application, possible application. Even though the other is much more significant, as fine arts. There were, in the class, only fourteen to sixteen--there might have been sixteen--sessions a semester. And it's really a shorthand of a shorthand, what you're giving them. So this is the big problem. So now they're doing something which is even worse: they're teaching, in the so-called fine arts department, tendencies that are popular. But by the time we recognize they're popular, that means they're already passe. So, why not call it just that? Because there are so many "-isms" that have come, and they should have been called, we should have. ... If I were running the school and had more money, we'd have certain areas that have more than a two-months' life-span of popularity. Then [we'd] call in all the "new" artists in the "new direction." Here is a guy who is doing something that is very difficult to really understand, and we would present him without prejudice or rhapsody. We'll get this guy and he'll talk to these students. We've got to make sure they know what the hell he's talking about, that they're equipped to understand. And then they can say that they are exposed to his thinking. Bring in others. And then, if there is any usage, we have some people that could show 'em how it could be used in this, that, or the other thing. But at least the students have been given an introduction. But instead, the student gets one point of view for one semester, and by three semesters it's gone and buried, and the guy that's teaching it is a weak sister in that area. He doesn't do any good to that particular theory; if anything, he probably just damaged the thing. So I belong to the old school. I believe that if you want to know about anything, get the person, if it's possible to get him, who understands this and can give it to them. Or, if the person is going to talk about it, that he has spoken to this other guy and he can speak for him. But mostly this thing is just an interpretation of an interpretation, and it's so damn farfetched that it should be called just misinterpretations.

LUNDEBERG: Misinterpretation number one, two. . . .

FEITELSON: The interpretation's much more creative than the thing they're talking about.

DANIELI: You're not worried just having nothing but second- rank or second-rate people talk about the style, because they have to know it so well, you know, having assimilated it. Just have second-generation people talk about the original style.

FEITELSON: Well, Fidel, in art history, there's an area that interests me, and has always interested me very much. It sounds funny. It could be used with what I call misinterpretations, but you've got to be aware of it. Now, for instance, one of the most wonderful moments in the history of European art is where one culture influences another culture--a sophisticated culture, a more or less provincial culture — and these people think that they're doing the work of the sophisticated. Their own people think, "That's not ours, that's the other guy's work." But these original guys who are being imitated look at these in terms of, "What the hell are these things?" It would be like an American from, well, let's take Oshkosh, who's just fallen in love with Oriental art. He's never really been exposed to its principles, and he sees, for about six weeks, Oriental art. You see. Now he starts showing the influence, and he thinks he's sure that now his art is Chinese. The Chinese look at it and wonder, "What the hell kind of Western art is this?" His neighbors don't know what the hell: it probably comes from Mars, or it's the best Chinese art they've ever seen. But the art historian sees in this something very strange, a very creative thing, because it's the interpretation that he's made. And it's like the Dutch and the Flemish and the Germans imitating the Italians in the late Renaissance, or the School of Fontainebleau. Beautiful misinterpretations. In what state? It's very sincere. And maybe we should call that a kind of teaching, also. It's a creative act. It's a new kind of art. It's neither the thing they're talking about nor is it so damn new that it's opposite the thing that they're trying to show how different it is. And it becomes an entity unto itself. We ought to have collections of that kind of work. But since the class is supposed to be gathered together to get the truth of a certain historic style, then we'd better get as close as we can get. At least this is my old- fashioned notion. At least I know I like to get my information from what I think, or have faith, is source material. As we say, coming from the horse's mouth. But our schools are all having a difficult time. I see the terrific conflict, or the antagonism, between those who want real freedom, yet with some kind of an awareness of what the hell they're doing, or at least awareness of what exists (so they know how to evaluate what they're doing), and those who want to throw all of this out of the window and just go for discipline. They don't give a damn what it is, but they love the word "discipline." They let the student know, and every kid knows, he's going to get a D or something worse than that if he doesn't conform. That's a school I don't belong to at all. I still believe in exposure and as much knowledge as possible, and all the teacher would do is make available. He's not the keeper of all knowledge. He could possibly advise them where they can get more information in particular areas which the student seems to be intensely interested in. Or if in the teacher's experience he notices that this young fellow is doing some wonderful things, to give him some kind of guidance. But just discipline for its own sake? "Don't make one; make thirty of them." "You've got to use forty hours every day." I mean, it's some sort of a sadism. We had — I'll never forget--Virginia Legake said to me (this was about three, four years [ago] , no more than that), "There's a kid, we've got to get rid of him! He does painting; he's not in your class," So I don't know whose class he was in, because his work didn't resemble any teacher in the place. And this is what they held against him. So then I met this kid and he could hardly talk. He had a voice that sounded as though he was two blocks down the street. Very sensitive. I looked at those paintings. My God, I've never seen such an externalization of an individual in my life. Well, their idea was to give him a D to get rid of him. And I was the wrong guy to come to. I said, "He's the most wonderful kid we have here! I've just given him advice. I know you're not going to like it. I said, 'You get out of this damn place. Don't go to any school unless you find the school that could help you do what you're doing. You don't need any help.'" These were the most personal expressions; they were wonderful things. And it wasn't just an accidental one or two things. What he had to say, the content, and the form he gave it — they're absolutely his own and would look good at any professional exhibition. But they wanted discipline. What discipline? For what? I don't know what the hell discipline would do him any good. The only thing that I would say is if there were other artists that could feed him in his art, let's recommend it. We don't, that's it. Best thing to do is to tell him to go out on his own and get some confidence in himself, not to listen. Well, that's my philosophy. I still believe in it absolutely. The world of art has many, many examples for most people, and there's certain things that people want that even the world of art hasn't got. They have to work it out themselves. But they cannot be bullied.

DANIELI: I was wondering about groups of artists and your involvement with the [Los Angeles] Art Association.

FEITELSON: Well, that's why I'm there. Because in 1938 or '40, the Art Association, which was made up of all the stuffed shirts that you can possibly think of — Harry Chandler, the original head of the Times, was on the board, and even later Mrs. Buffy Chandler, and then even one of her sons, and what was that minister that was on the president's. . . ?

LUNDEBERG: Bishop [Bertrand] Stevens.

FEITELSON: Bishop Stevens. Some of the famous old writers and many of the very, very powerful socialites. They had a meeting as to what to do with the Art Association, and they called in Macdonald-Wright and myself. I'll never forget this. This is how I got involved.

DANIELI: Well, can I go back for a second? Did it start with the board and they wanted to create an association, or. . . ?

FEITELSON: Oh, no. The Art Association — it's fifty years. It was formed in 1924, wasn't it?

LUNDEBERG: I think so. I think it was like one of those art luncheon clubs, you know. It was a social. . . . And they put on that exhibition at The Town House; that was the last thing. . . .

FEITELSON: And they lost a lot of money on the damn thing, But at any rate, they asked for advice, and Stan Wright really showed intelligence: he got himself removed completely; he doesn't want to get involved in any of these things. But I said, "If you just try to open the door, let's do what you say the Art Association is supposed to do, outside of the invited shows. It's an organization that has only one reason for its being: it's got to fill a need. The need is to improve the knowledge of art, the taste of art in this area, and also of its own artists; and to make it possible to become a showcase of L.A. artists for the L.A. community so that they finally get their support from there. Therefore, we have to have an entirely different kind of a structure." Well, in the government projects my job was supervising murals, painting, sculptures, and all that, picking the artists, assigning them to work. And the first thing I did was to make little groups, because a lot of these guys wouldn't even talk to one another. We had very conservative artists. And even Mattox, Charlie Mattox, who's now having a show, was one of the artists on the WPA project. He was doing surreal things, and a little before that I think he worked in the New York project with [Fernand] Leger, some kind of a decorative mural. Well, my idea was to make "little groups": they can get together and encourage one another and show their works within the context of their communal idea. Those that don't belong to any groups we respected completely as "independent artists." But the motive was that we can get the best out of the artist if we give him a chance to do what he wants to do . He's already been screened as to his ability before he gets on it, because the number of people we could take was limited according to the budget, the money, the salaries. So we had waiting lists. They were passed by the jury, so we know that this is not a hack, this is not a phony, that he can do the job. We even had the primitive artists, wonderful. This gal, Josephine Joy — my God, what beautiful things she had done! Much better than Grandma Moses. I mean, more believable, more fanciful, and for her they were not fanciful. For her they were realism. There was a most marvelous painting she called (I think the Museum of Modern Art owns that picture now) The Garden of My Dreams. Every little leaf is not only painted in there, but she created her own laws of perspective. For instance, she had, if this would be the garden — [draws on table] — and here is the horizon, she had a well here, with that little structure from which the pail or whatever it is hangs down. So right in here--here's the pail, and here's the well — she made a sky in here. The fact that that--it didn't bother her a bit! It was marvelous! The real thing. She thought this was the most realistic thing. So each one was given the chance to really do his or her thing. Well, this is what the Art Association is based upon, to avoid aesthetic politics, in the sense that one group, because it has numbers, or strength of personalities, can bully the others who just don't know politics. So we try our best to practice "aesthetic democracy" at the Los Angeles Art Association.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: . . . those of us who are very conscious of our program. There is no one other organization in the country that is so liberal as we are about not having a dominant point of view.

DANIELI: What is the structure like in that group now? What kind of hierarchy or committees?

FEITELSON: Just as it's always been: we have a group of trustees that believe implicitly in what I'm talking about; otherwise I wouldn't back the thing up. They want democracy in the arts — not arts in democracy, but democracy in the arts. Everybody talks about the freedom of conscience; well, let's practice it. And this is exactly what we're trying to do. We have, of course, limitations, physical limitations, which are strangling us. We cannot put on exhibitions of large objects or hanging objects, because the gallery is small. We cannot have sculpture with these sort of things because there are people in this world who'll sue you for imaginary damage. And we've had things busted-- people turn around and knock things down. We can't get any more insurance; the gallery's having a tough time with getting insurance on account of pilferage and accidents. So while the walls are still the same size, the pictures are growing larger and larger. We haven't got any place even to store pictures. We find we have a very good interest in our gallery, so far as purchases are concerned. Well, hundred-dollar pictures, during the Christmas holidays, they sold over a hundred. And the street is practically empty now. But it means the percentage of possible buyers is higher. We used to have a lot of just curiosity-seekers, people looking for free entertainment. Now we have people who come in there, they're interested, they buy. The association is doing very well compared to most commercial galleries, because people can — the assortment is so great, there's always something you can find there, from what the modern artists call a potboiler to something that is pure Dada, or whatever you. . . . Some of you can't even give a classification. So the artists — like, for instance, we have a theme, and they all participate. You have a jury, made up of their own kind. And we always make sure that we have the best way of jurying. We're very proud of our system: it's the only system. I've been on more juries than any other person, 'cause no one would be that idiotic! And I've always found that at the end of a jurying, the jurors were most unhappy. Never failed. For the simple reason — I'll give you a very simple reason. . . .

LUNDEBERG: Well, state the kind of jury you're talking about.

FEITELSON: I'm talking about the art juries.

LUNDEBERG: The usual setup where majority rules.

FEITELSON: Yes. And when it comes to the prizes, it's got to be unanimous. Now, look what happens. I can show you what happens: supposing you have a jury of six — well, you got to get an odd number — say, five or seven or nine. Well, supposing we had the smaller, five of us. We'd find — when it came to the top people, there would not be a unanimous voting there. The one that you really think is the best, maybe. But the middle guy: you always say, "Well, he's not bad enough to be thrown out; he's not good enough to get the top prize." So all of us always voted as a group. So when it came to the prize, it was always the guy in the middle that got it. And none of us gave a damn if he was ever shown or not, really. So one day I started this, in the old Pasadena [Art] Museum. I said, "We're going to start something else. I'm unhappy, and we're all unhappy. What is the purpose of having a jury of five, or three, or whatever? Because we believe each one of these people knows his stuff in a certain area. All right. How many pictures are we going to hang? We going to hang a hundred? Let's divide this. Each one has a chance to pick out X- number . You don't need anyone to join you. When you express your taste on the first ten or the first twenty or whatever it is, it's in there." This is the way we are doing it. I don't believe in prizes, first prize — I don't like "dog shows," I don't like any of this. I don't see why the hell artists have got to be competing with one another. So what we do, if you're called in as a juror, is to say, "We're going to have a such-and-such show." We judge the size of picture: we can't get more than thirty. As a juror, if you enter a picture, automatically your picture is in because otherwise we wouldn't have you there to judge these pictures. Now you're going around, quietly walk around and just — after you get through, here's your spot; take all the pictures from the face of the wall, and that's your selection. If there happens to be any room for some addition, Helen Wurdemann or I will choose them. Now, very often we have found--and this is the only thing I don't mind telling you, because I am interested in mavericks; I've always been interested in mavericks. (Even in acquiring my old master drawings, I choose mavericks. They go back to the era of Michelangelo, some of the wildest things you've ever seen. You wonder how in the hell they were considered great artists in their day.) None of them would ever vote on some of the things we choose . Not that they're prejudiced; they don't even "see" them! They bypass a picture if it's not in their interest category. Nothing happens between the eye and the picture . I don ' t even think they recognize what is there. So we do a lot of what we call saving of good pictures. When we see there's a lot of this kind of mavericks that we cannot get the jury to accept, instead of saying ten from each one, we say only eight from each one, so we can save these things. This is about as close as we can ever get to this horrible, disastrous thing called a "jury." The other--I know the best way, but no one will ever follow it. It's what they call the dirty trick method. To all the artists that are known in the area, we say we're going to make a selection in which every artist participates, but they're not told what the system is. You call them by phone, and they've got to answer immediately: the names that appear most often amongst the first fifty, that's the show — only fifty pictures. "You name," you say to them, "ten artists who are better than you are, in sequence." That's all. So you can't have hanky-panky, "I'll say for you and you'll say for me." We won't do that. But it's impossible. Believe me, I've been on so many juries and I've seen so much hanky-panky. It's so corrupt that I'm dead-set against the whole thing. But still, how the hell are these guys going to get into a show when there aren't any places to show? And then, when there is one like ours, it's like trying to get one of those train cars for freight into a little garage this size. This is what we're up against. We're planning to do something, building above it. We can't do it because the earth there is swamp; La Cienega means swamp, you know. Yes, that's what it means. So when it rains for many days and the water cannot go down, it pushes up the tiles. Really, this is also swamp. We have the same trouble here. There's oil right beneath us. You see this bush? We never water this damn thing; it just keeps growing. From the water beneath the thing. So we were going to get a very good architect, Craig Ellwood, to do this. We don't know. We're sitting on pins and needles, because they're threatening to put that freeway through it. According to the original plan, where the Art Association is, and where Jake Zeitlin is, and down to Paideia Gallery — it's going to be cut right through. Now, where the hell can we move? There have been all kinds of ideas, where, what to move. And no one knows. This street is a natural; it took years. It grew naturally into antique shops, and it was a natural for going to Beverly Hills or going downtown. It's far enough from Los Angeles to be close to Beverly Hills. And if this thing is broken up, I can't think of any other street. And the rents now, they are terribly high.

DANIELI: How long have you known Helen Wurdemann?

FEITELSON: How long have I known her? Since the late thirties. Around 1938, around that time. Maybe it could be even a little earlier, when she was the secretary down at the Art Association down on Wilshire Boulevard. This occasion was some kind of dealing with the government. I was running the [WPA] projects in those days. I can't remember what it was. I would attend different meetings; I was on all kinds of committees, even the museum committees, and so forth and so on. She was then a very up-and-coming gal, doing a nice job. Coming from a very nice family. She never talks about it, but she's a baroness. She's a widow, you know, of an Italian baron. Baron [Franz] Guzzardi. She speaks an excellent Italian. Though she's from the Starkweather family. Her mother was a direct descendant of the famous Civil War general. Starkweather. And her mother was quite a powerful person in this town. She'd get on the telephone to raise Cain with the mayor, and things would happen.

LUNDEBERG: Yes, she was.

FEITELSON: Helen Wurdemann is a person that has ideas and sticks to her notions. Oh, every now and then we have people who would try to abuse the policies of the organization, would like it to be this, that. But actually we've had very, very little of this, where people have tried to alter it. Everybody's been very happy. We get immediate responses. (As a matter of fact, the building and the property's worth about quarter of a million dollars now, just the property.) We bought that property. What was his name, the Coca-Cola man? See, he was on our committee, too.

LUNDEBERG: Stanley Barbee.

FEITELSON: Stanley Barbee was an avid collector. He went after this property, and he got it, I think, for $45,000. As I said before, today it's worth at least a quarter of a million. Well, we didn't have the money. We had our place down on Wilshire, from which the association had to move because the building was to be demolished.

DANIELI: I remember that.

FEITELSON: Yes, and I remember we had a small meeting, just of the Art Association, and I did a pitch, just like I'm talking to you, about the ideals of the L.A. Art Association and that it should be supported. Pledged right there and then, $10,000! Then, later, we had a little auction, and there was another $10,000. So we had $20,000. Then more auctions. We never had any difficulty getting hardheaded businessmen behind us. And they were willing to do things for us, because they wanted to be part of something that is not corrupted in this Goddamned political-ridden world. And we had to fight once in a while about this with the outside — but not within our own committee. And these are all kinds of people, very successful people, lawyers and different civic-minded people. But it's a wonderful idea. I would have certainly helped any such organization. I'd like an organization that was going to do some good in this cock-eyed world. Here was a chance to do something for our artists. The only thing is we wish we had more money for a bigger place. And there's Helen Wurdemann, who was supposed to receive a salary — she hasn't taken a salary in years! The only one who gets a salary — it's a very small salary--is Shana Cruse. So this is really a project in which everybody pitches in, and they give up their time to help hang the pictures, and so forth and so on. There's less discord within our group--and people don't think alike — than in any group I've ever been associated with.

LUNDEBERG: Well, actually, Lorser, the members don't have to even see each other if they don't want to. It's not a "groupy" group, you know. Just, they're all members, and . .

FEITELSON: Well, you had the last lecture. I gave a lecture--what the hell was it? — on formalism or something like that. And we were surprised. June Wayne was supposed to take Louise Nevelson to see the last of that Islamic show at the L.A. Museum, which was a beautiful show. Then she said, "Oh my God, today's the day that Lorser is to lecture at the association." So Nevelson said, "C'mon, we're going down there." She went down there and started taking notes, and dragged us out to dinner after that, and so on. [laughter] She's a great gal.

LUNDEBERG: She's marvelous. Did you meet her when she was. . . ?

EDIE DANIELI: No.

DANIELI: I think I saw her on a previous visit, from a long distance.

FEITELSON: Well, just to give you an idea. . . .

EDIE DANIELI: Had you known her from before?

FEITELSON: No, we only met her once before. We were in New York, as I say, and this was the occasion when the Museum of Modern Art was celebrating a new wing. There were a million people there that night. Dorothy Miller said, "Let's get the hell out; we'll go somewhere." [I] said, "This is just your party, you know." So we stayed there, and then they started to say, "Let's go down to. . . "

LUNDEBERG: Well, you've mixed up your . . .

FEITELSON: Oh, no, that was an afternoon, yes . . .

LUNDEBERG: . . . cocktail party for the opening of a show by Jennifer Lamb?

FEITELSON: Lamb, yes.

LUNDEBERG: And Dorothy and Nevelson and some . . .

FEITELSON: . . . some guy from the Whitney Museum, and there was another guy from the Modern, I can't remember. . . .

LUNDEBERG: Well, I don't remember all the names, but anyway, we made up a party of about ten in the end, and Lorser and I . . .

FEITELSON: And then there was that lawyer — wait a minute, who the hell was that lawyer? — that just comes in [unintelligible] the crooks,* that said, "Come up to our place, after you. . . . We're all going to. ..." *[I can't recall exactly what I had said, but must have referred to an incident in which this lawyer (Robert Benjamin) "rescued" Nevelson from being cheated by a "crooked" dealer. [L.F.] ]

LUNDEBERG: Yes, he came to the opening party, but he didn't come for dinner. He invited us to come up to their apartment on Eighty-first Street.

FEITELSON: He ' s a very famous collector. Right opposite the Metropolitan Museum.

LUNDEBERG: Near Gracie Mansion.

FEITELSON: Yes.

LUNDEBERG: Well, we didn't get there until almost midnight, but they were very nice about it. I mean, this Chinese dinner party went on and on, one of those places where you bring your own bottle (they didn't serve drinks).

FEITELSON: And Louise, who had been on the wagon for two and a half years, fell off the wagon at that party. So we got up to this place. It was quite boorish: we were expected at eight o'clock, and we get there at one o'clock in the morning!

LUNDEBERG: No, about midnight, Lorser.

FEITELSON: We stayed, and there was someone from the French embassy there, in that crowd. I can't remember what the hell. . . . The party grew. And the collector had on the wall one or two of your [Lundeberg ' s] pictures, I can't remember .

LUNDEBERG: Two. I know one at that time; she [Mrs. Benjamin] bought one later, maybe. But anyway ....

FEITELSON: People we never met were there. The apartment was filled with wonderful little pictures. And they had beautiful [Paul] Delvauxs, and marvelous — apparently, they were very, very wealthy people. Well, when we got home-- or was it the hotel, that the telegram was. . . ?

LUNDEBERG: No, after we got back here.

FEITELSON: Yes. We got back here, and there is a telegram awaiting Helen, from Louise; she had seen Helen's picture. All she says: "You are a great artist."

LUNDEBERG: Wasn't that nice? EDIE

DANIELI: Very nice.

LUNDEBERG: You know, for whatever. . . .

EDIE DANIELI: How much feedback do you get, you know, from a fellow artist?

LUNDEBERG: She was taken by the thing that she saw there, and she took the trouble to send a telegram.

EDIE DANIELI: Yeah, that's really nice.

FEITELSON: But how many artists. . . ?

EDIE DANIELI: Artists are just not generous that way. Like you say, some can only see what they're interested in.

FEITELSON: And they hate everything else!

EDIE DANIELI: Absolutely!

FEITELSON: They go out destroying things. EDIE

DANIELI: Lorser, I remember you saying that the people that you've sold a lot of your paintings to don't even live in Los Angeles. A lot of them live like in Texas and . . .

FEITELSON: Yes. Banks. And they got them from people who represent them. These are modern edifices, and they were acquired through the recommendation of architects or decorators, often. This would be a New York concern. We don't know them. And they wanted these pictures. The same thing with Helen. We sell to different — what do you call 'em?-- corporative buying. Yes, we do an awful lot of that. And then people we've never met come here; they know that without the gallery they can get it for a little less. And my paintings (some of them) go to physicists. Helen has the largest number of her pictures with the no small-time millionaire, [Joseph] Hirshhorn, you know. He buys Helen's pictures by the dozens, literally. They're putting up his big museum, you know, right near the Smithsonian.

DANIELI: I'm surprised to see you without a cigarette.

FEITELSON: Oh, I cut it out many years, three or four years [ago] .

EDIE DANIELI: Oh, I remember him lighting the wrong end of the cigarette in so many lectures; it was beautiful. Also another thing, even better than that: you would have a way of exhaling into the cigarette, so it would flame up when you'd talk. It was just great.

FEITELSON: No, I'll tell you what this was. This was something--if you smoked cigarettes, you develop this habit, because it's very difficult to break the habit of not having a cigarette or the taste in your mouth. You have it. So they say, to prevent inhaling, exhaling, get fascinated by the act.

EDIE DANIELI: That was it! That's what you were doing!

FEITELSON: Yes. And there is a great deal to that.

EDIE DANIELI: I know there is. That's how I stopped, too. I stopped inhaling.

FEITELSON: Most of these people we've seen. I don't know if you remember Reckless when they cut half his head off, when he had cancer of the throat. Gee, that was enough to cure anybody. But it doesn't bother me at all. I used to cough my head off from smoking. I never liked it. I never liked it, but it just simply was a habit. I couldn't break the damn thing. Five and six packs — and I'm not exaggerating — a day. It's crazy, absolutely; it was nutty.

DANIELI: I was in one class of yours one summer, because I wanted to be there and see what kind of situation she was involved in at the Art Center, and it becomes a part of your performance.

EDIE DANIELI: Yeah, your style.

DANIELI: Part of lecturing, you know. It's like you can just use them as a prop; you can go through packs just as a prop.

LUNDEBERG: When Lorser was doing the television show, he was often enveloped in a lovely cloud of cigarette smoke. He got some great letters about that.

FEITELSON: I got dirty letters, that I was propagandizing for the tobacco companies. I said I hoped they would pay me for the damn thing, make my bad habit pay off. You'd be surprised, the amount of people who are — there are religious sects against smoking, you know. And on television, I'm coming into their house; I'm offending them.

DANIELI: Do you want to talk about the TV show? Because I thought that was a tremendous series ["Feitelson on Art"].

FEITELSON: Well, the TV show was based again upon the same premise, that I could talk about the arts, as I did at the Art Association.

DANIELI: Do I remember it was presented by the Art Association?

FEITELSON: They acted as a co-sponsor. They didn't really sponsor this thing. Because it's a public service, it has to have a sponsor. So we thought we'd give it to the Art Association because we're connected, and Tom was also a member of the Art Association board. He was head of NBC in L.A. Tom McCray.

DANIELI: Was the series your idea?

FEITELSON: Well, it wasn't my idea, it was his. He'd been a student of mine for many, many years, and one day he said, "How about trying for thirteen weeks. . . ?" I said, "I don't believe I could possibly reach the general public, because all my experiences are among people who are in art. Do you realize we talk in a private language? We talk in symbols. If I said to you, 'Well, he's going Courbet on us, ' 'He's going Malevich on us, ' it's a symbol. You've got somebody who knows what we're talking about." Later, to prove my point, when I used the word — you won't believe this thing — "dynamic," and I used the words "perspective" and "foreshortening," the program manager said to me, "Oh, Lorser, for heaven's sake, bring it down to earth." I said, "What in the hell? I'm bringing it down to idiots. "

LUNDEBERG: I don't think it was Tom that complained; it was the . . .

FEITELSON: No! It was the program manager.

LUNDEBERG: . . . who knew from nothing.

FEITELSON: "God," he said, "you used the word 'dynamic,' 'foreshortening.' Who the hell knows what . . . ?" So I said, "All right, next time when I use the word 'dynamic, ' to be redundant, I will say 'full of action.'" And I showed my finger foreshortened, and I said, "Like you're seeing my hand, and then you're seeing this." I bet a lot of people say, "Oh, no, come on." Then we cut these things out. So we tried it, and they didn't butt in anymore. As you know, the station regulations require that the script be read before the performer gets on. All I did was to tell 'em what kind of pictures I'm going to have there and how I would like to have these things, and we tried to work it out within the limitation of the twenty- six minutes. I knew that if I can get the gist of it by halfway or two-thirds, I feel safe; I don't have to run through it. Anything that's left over could merely just emphasize, in another way, what I tried to put across. Maybe it'll help clarify it. And then "tie it up." And to keep it very simple, give 'em an idea what's the reason for this program, and then the demonstration, and try to get 'em into the act, you know, the artist's act, what he was trying to do, not just simply talking about great pictures and bad and all that. . . . And we changed the format according to what I liked. Except that near the end, they had some kind of idea which practically ruined . . .

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: . . . but they must feel one thing: that they've seen an art program, and that they have gotten something out of it — as we say, gotten something between their teeth. And if we can do that ... No hokum, no baloney-- ' cause they know damn well if you're lying — just sincerity. No rehearsals (you cannot rehearse enthusiasm; you know what you want to talk about: get the pictures up, and this becomes your script) . All you've got to do is have a run-through before so the cameras will know that they can cover what you're saying, that they don't cast a shadow on whatever it is, or if the lighting should be rearranged or something. So this was the format. But essentially, to try to make the program as diverse as possible, using the theme that I've always used, and do still, the theme "Art is one, kinds a thousand," which comes from that old Roman motto. I think it's on Scribner's and Hachette's edition of A General History of Art. Now, somewhere, some Roman either had carved it into the stone or has been quoted as saying: "Ars una: species mille." But the sense is that art in the abstract sense is one thing; its forms are endlessly diverse. If we can get that across, then we're getting away from the academy. Seen in the context of the creator.

DANIELI: When were the shows done?

FEITELSON: They started in 1956 and ended at the beginning of 1963, I believe.

LUNDEBERG: Yeah, with a gap in between. And then that shorter series on drawings. But the original one went on for four years.

FEITELSON: And then I did a series just on drawings. And then they went throughout the country; then went around the country. We always got beautiful letters, and lots of them- but most of them from New York and Philadelphia and Boston. Beautiful, oh, lovely letters. And from some of the top people out here. Some of them are very, very funny. What was it, the president of Lockheed, Gross?

LUNDEBERG: Robert Gross.

FEITELSON: And Mrs. Gross; we knew her. His daughter [Palmer ] --she' s now Mrs. Ducommon — had been a private pupil of mine. And Mary, the wife, said that Bob tunes in, turns on the program (when they were replaying them, early in the morning), and he stops his shave: he's got to hear the program again, you see. I said, "Well, he's incurable as an art collector." [laughter] So I think the reason that it was a success was the same thing that we tried to do at the Art Association. And more and more people are buying this notion that art is a subjective expression--the number of artists, the number of kinds of artists. And to me this is something good. Because in my day this did not exist. [tape recorder turned off]

LUNDEBERG: What we own is an old Polaroid, and Lorser doesn't even know how to load it. He's had it for a year. I don't like working with a camera.

EDIE DANIELI: What about documenting? Do you have a photographer do that?

FEITELSON: Documenting? Yes. Well, this doesn't bother me. But an actual machine that has buttons--I hate it, right there and then, if it has more than one button. [laughter] If it doesn't do it automatically, I have a traumatic attitude. It just frightens the hell out of me.

LUNDEBERG: You just don't try, Lorser.

DANIELI: Would you like to talk about the support certain critics have given you, like Jules Langsner, and Henry Seldis?

FEITELSON: Well, you see, I knew Jules when he was a very young boy. He was a friend of some of the kids that used to hang around my studio, who were students or indirect students; that includes even what ' s-his-name , Phil Guston, and his wife, Musa, studied for a little while with me. And there was another kid that belonged to that group who had lots of talent — it was coming out of his ears — Harold Lehman. And there was [Reuben] Kadish, who was another pupil of mine. And Kadish was a very close friend of Jackson Pollock. And Jules was a very close friend of Jackson Pollock. And then they went down to Mexico and did the mural. They were just kids given this big wall, an enormous wall, at least the size of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. They were only about nineteen years old, you see. Jules knew the kind of thinking that I was involved in. Near the end of his life, he would come down here several times a week and propose that we work together to give a literary form to some of the ideas, and some of his own ideas on the history of art, internally, the structure of art. We worked, and he had some brilliant ideas, very serious. Did you know him well?

DANIELI: I didn't know him at all.

FEITELSON: A very serious fellow.

DANIELI: I knew catalogs from shows he had organized, but then, since I was a student. . . .

FEITELSON: He was highly respected around the world, because he knew. ... He was on the international scene, and he had worked on his--what was his thesis, on Oriental art (I never did know) when he went on the Guggenheim [Fellowship]?

LUNDEBERG: Well, I don't know, Lorser. He ended by going around the world via Japan, India, of course.

FEITELSON: Well, wait, wait, I think I can come a little closer. He was interested in the areas of Oriental art, not talking about phases, but important areas that had never been known to the Occidental world. So he made his seat of operation Japan and then moved westward from there. And in central Asia, he said, he was amazed: he saw things he'd never seen pictured, photographed. People were working in the fields and they don't even know what those things are — great, big monumental sculpture in central Asia. Don't even know the civilizations. Then, when he got to Greece, I think he got some kind of intestinal bug, which probably helped kill him. He was a very good writer, in the sense that he was a ponderer. He examined everything in the sense of, "Is this the correct meaning? What do you mean by this if you're going to use that word?" And he never tried to fit the other fellow's limited intelligence. If he didn't understand, then it was not for him; that's all. He was really what you call a critic's critic. Or a man whose interests are in scholarship, pure scholarship. And he really loved art. His real hobby was writing, I think, poetry. Though he once made a statement — and we never saw the evidences-- that also he's a secret painter. I never saw the pictures.

LUNDEBERG: No, it was secret, all right.

FEITELSON: This was a secret. Maybe he painted only in his mind. There's real concept art! [laughter]

DANIELI: Is there any kind of behind-the-scenes controversy over credit for the term "hard-edge"?

FEITELSON: Oh, he formulated it.

LUNDEBERG: Oh, [James] Fitzsimmons [editor and publisher, Art International ] gave him credit for coining the term.

FEITELSON: There's no question at all about it. The controversy occurred in 1964, something like that, when what 's-his-name, [Gerald] Nordland, had an article in some magazine, and there was a footnote there that he had coined the word in regard to some appreciation of one of my paintings, that when he used the word "hard- edge," that was the first time. It wasn't so. It wasn't so. I don't think he was grabbing credit; I don't think. And the word "hard-edge" has only been used to connote something that is similar but not quite similar — it was more of a blanket. If you think of the paintings of the early cubists when they were just being influenced by Cezanne, and instead of "modeling" the glass, they just take one side of it and give you the local color of the glass, a little bit of the local color of the environment; and you had a rigid edge, or a fixed edge. ... In the context of the art of that time, which was still impressionistic, dealing with atmosphere and Monet impressionism, this was linear. ... They didn't know if you could even call it a painting, so they referred to it as "hard." It was something denoting something a little — not a very complimentary — something you just tolerate. Well, it took place right here; we were talking right here in this studio. This exhibition ["Four Abstract Classicists" (1959) ] was being planned for the London Institute — what's it called? — the Institute of Contemporary Art. Lawrence Alloway invited this thing. The State Department was backing this thing up.* It was to take place in '59, starting from our museum, then to San Francisco, then from there to London, and from London up to Belfast. (I think we started the riots, I'm quite sore. [laughter]) So at that time we said the one thing we have in common, that the art has in common, is that it's calculated, it's deliberated, and it is anything but accidental. Therefore it's abstract classicism, rather than using the fortuitous. ... To make the comparison as quickly as possible. Then he said, "Fine, but I think we should also qualify it by bringing in a visual experience, by describing the thing, you know, the hard-edgedness, that severeness." And that's how we used this term, never feeling that it would ever be used any other way, just to describe the thing. Then [Lawrence] Alloway picked it up, and now it's used everywhere. It was, it was not anticipated at all. And most people would think, God, this must have been in existence since the time of the Greeks, the name "hard-edge." *[The "Four Abstract Classicists" exhibition was not primarily planned for the exhibitions in London (at the Institute of Contemporary Art) and Belfast, which were arranged later, through a correspondence between Jules Langsner and Lawrence Alloway. The "Four Abstract Classicists" were shown first at the San Francisco Museum of Art, then at the Los Angeles County Museum. Reference to "State Department backing" means that USIS (United States Information Service) sponsored the show in England. [L.F.]]

DANIELI: How do you respond to it as a label, say, capital H, "Hard-edge"?

FEITELSON: Doesn't bother me at all. I'm so used to labels that anything that will get them close to what you're trying to say is justified. I don't like classifications of an art, of art, when this becomes a religion or so, where people say, "Just because you're hard-edge, then everything else that isn't hard-edge should not exist." I don't believe that a bit. And I know even hard-edge, any kind of a movement, never ends in its original form. It influences others, or it grows into another. Everything's organic. Ideas are organic. Our concept, our visual concept — we start seeing this thing in different terms. But to fix the term, just "hard-edge, " and make a hard term out of that, I think, is a dangerous thing for the artist. Because he's trapping himself: he's creating a prison around himself. The implication always is that he has selected this thing because he believes this is the purest form. I still love it, but I'm not going to make out of this thing an oath, that this is art for me and I shall be faithful to it, all that sort of stuff.

DANIELI: What's your response to that term?

LUNDEBERG: Hard-edge? I have no objections to it. I guess I'm classified by this hard-edge, too, in my peculiar way.

FEITELSON: Yes, but, you painted this recently? Now this was painted--when was this painted?

LUNDEBERG: In nineteen sixty-something or other.

FEITELSON: Yes. You had a whole period, the geometric, and now she's gone back to this, at the same time. Here she's painting a still life [ One and One-Half ] ; [pointing to a hard-edge "Planet" on the wall] that's a silkscreen. But she'll paint little things that go between in atmosphere. There are revivals of some earlier period that she feels she's not finished with.

LUNDEBERG: Well, that's a combination deal, that one. Now, those are hard-edge in the sense that the edges are clean and all the areas are flat. There's no modulation or modeling. Labels are the devil, anyway. You always feel they don't quite fit you and the other party equally well. But what can you do?

FEITELSON: The first real opposition I had to my [hard- edge work] — I mean, expressed; there may have been lots of others of strong opinion, but they didn't express it to me--was from "Tink" Adams. He said, "Why the hell do you make these Goddamn flat things when you know so much about art?" and so forth and so on. And here, I paint these things [because] for me they are so beautiful. It's like the one I have right in the other room, painted about ten years ago, a little before that. I still like it. This one here. Come. [Untitled (1963), 72" x 60", large yellow form on white ground]

LUNDEBERG: Better turn on a light.

FEITELSON: I still love this. I never tire of it.

DANIELI: The thing's portable. [laughter]

FEITELSON: And when people don't see it, I don't say it to them. But I always do this, I cluck to myself, "Tsk, tsk, I feel sorry for you. You don't know what you're missing." "What the hell have you got on there? Just nothing, a lot of nothing." Well, how do you reach these people? You don't try to reach them. And I've had many people who've said this. Now, Helen makes a hard-edge. She goes with all kinds of nuance — well, that's what she likes. But it still is hard-edge. It's hard-edge. Here's an early one of hers that goes back to 1952. [ Silent Interior (1952), 30" x 36"] Here she's fooling around with the hard-edge.

LUNDEBERG: Yes, I didn't know what I'd done when I did that one, though.

FEITELSON: That's a historic picture.

LUNDEBERG: It scared me a little. I put it away for a while.

FEITELSON: It has a subjective implication; you can see interiors and exteriors and so on. They're just different things. I don't think that she did them with those tone things or postsurrealism. They go back — they're entirely different things. I don't see how one can compare them with the other. But there are many people who just cannot understand it. They're really offended by this Goddamned difference, where there's absolutely no mingling.

DANIELI: It's nice to see that photo. You used that in one of your paintings.

LUNDEBERG: Yes, I did.

FEITELSON: That's a photo of her mother.

LUNDEBERG: A painting called Selma. That was my mother about twenty years old. I think the pussycat wants to go out now, Lorser.

EDIE DANIELI: What's the matter? Don't you like our conversation? [laughter] [tape recorder turned off]

LUNDEBERG: We have unfinished business.

FEITELSON: Unfinished paintings, yes.

DANIELI: I was quite frankly impressed by that abstract classicism show that I did see. I've been surprised that that term wasn't picked up, or that term wasn't used, or that the four of you [Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, John McLaughlin, Frederick Hammersley] weren't promoted somehow, you know, picked up by galleries in New York.

FEITELSON: Oh, we had what's-his-name ; well, it's one of the big galleries that we were — we're no longer with them. Martha Jackson wanted to handle my work. But our local dealer at that time, Ankrum, made it impossible because of splitting the commission. Then [Andre] Emmerich actually took, asked to show one, and it was shown, a beautiful gallery and a beautiful reaction on it.

LUNDEBERG: I thought that was Howard Wise.

FEITELSON: Howard Wise, yes, Howard Wise. I know why I confuse them, because both of them deal also with pre- Columbian art. Howard Wise. We've had — we still have dealers who come around and want to handle our works, build special galleries. At our time of life, we couldn't care less. We couldn't care less. We're not looking for glory; we don't want competition. People who like our work — we get letters from all over the world, then we show them. They will buy these things. And we have plans about what we are going to do with the choice works that we have. But this business of getting involved in galleries: it's all right if you're young, [but] there are so many bitter disappointments. You're dealing with money. You're dealing with ambitions. And we have found some terrible things happening. The moment people see you as money, you no longer exist as art. They'll start taking in, exploiting your work, and then getting works that are not at all related to your work which they try to sell as — well, you know, you've seen it — like superficial works, in the style of. . . . Helen had a show, and immediately they got a guy from Finland who painted very soft pictures. Well, the layman cannot tell the difference. The dealer knows that the laymen liked Helen's pictures not for its formal structure or its invention, but what they thought was emotional or sentimental, which was very, very appealing, attractive, full of "poetry" — and as they say, "You can live with this thing." So why the hell should they be paying several thousand for Helen's when they can get the "ersatz" for $200? And the dealer can sell 'em like hot- cakes. We thought it's unique with one gallery, but it's not at all. Most galleries work that way. And perhaps they're driven to it because it's so damn expensive to run a gallery. The rents are so high. You feel that, well, you'll make a compromise here and a compromise there — before you know it, you're just simply compromising all over the place. So the artist who is dedicated to his work knows that if he's going to be with a gallery, he has to be a businessman. All right. You'll have this young fellow, not so young — you remember Shirl Goedike?--well, he's right in town now, and he's having an exhibition. Is the show still on?

LUNDEBERG: No, I don't think it's coming on until the spring .

FEITELSON: Oh, I see. Well, he sells pictures before the show opens! He gets big prices. Because he knows — he knows how to work it, and he makes no bones about it. He says, "I divide myself in half. I paint the things I like. ..." And he does paint — what he paints is what he really likes. But he happens to be fortunate: what he paints, what he likes, is what every bourgeois likes, every Beverly Hills bourgeois. He likes living in the south of France, near Picasso, and he's always in the Beverly Hills crowd, and he likes that. And they love him. We've seen exhibitions of his, the opening day, people coming around and buying, and even in those days (ten, fifteen years ago), $2,500 dollars for this, and $2,500 for that. And he says, "In the gallery, I'm a businessman. They pay me on time. I see everything is done the way I want it." Well, most artists are not like that. His mentality is merely--he loves to be in that world and to be an artist at the same time. Well, that's all right. That's like the guy who could juggle, walk on the wire, and perhaps cook a meal for you at the same time. Luckily he's a "schizo, " you see. But most of us cannot do it. And the lying that goes on there, and the dealing. They have you cut the price, and then you find out that they even sold it for a higher price than you've even asked, and gotten [it]. And these are reputable dealers. So we just couldn't care less. Had we been younger, then we could play the game. Probably end up by shooting somebody there, or shooting yourself [laughter], you feel so dirty with the whole damn thing. So what we really need out here are dealers who are really art lovers with lots of money and are performing some kind of a cause, you know, to bring out--and really love to do it. This is what we really need. Someday, there may be somebody who is daring.

EDIE DANIELI: I've always been surprised that somebody like that doesn't come out of the art schools. All the people that you've taught maybe don't turn into artists, but would turn into writers or would open a gallery. But that doesn't seem to happen.

FEITELSON: No, it doesn't.

DANIELI: It's always people from some completely different field, like shirt manufacturing, or something like that.

FEITELSON: Yes. Well, the Sidney Janises, they're exploiters. We know him. He's an exploiter. And not only that, he doesn't even build them up. He waits till the other galleries have built up the guy; then he gives him a better proposition and takes him over. He's what is called a raider. The art world's made up of that. [?] instead of thinking of pictures, while you're doing, these thoughts come into your mind? There are certain people who can stand it, and love playing games. I can't. I go to pieces. Helen couldn't stand this thing. We don't like people that we cannot believe. If we feel we're being conned, that spoils everything. The truth, you fear these people. And unfortunately, as I said, we haven't got enough of the right people. New York does have galleries that are run directly or indirectly by people who have money and believe in art, and they have a front to run the gallery. You can see how profitable it could be in a good sense. If the man collects art — say it's contemporary, or any area in art--he backs a gallery, but also he's going to buy through that gallery. He can get the things that he wants quicker, and for almost half the price. At the same time, he's doing exactly what he believes in, making. . . . Well, it would be like [Henry] Kahnweiler, who reopened that gallery for the cubists. Nobody knew what the hell cubism was. Very few even in Paris had even seen 'em, leave alone the word. And here was a rich man's son, and he decided he was going to make a gallery just only for the cubists. He didn't even want Matisse in it--didn't belong in that; he belonged to the Gauguin tradition. He wanted only structuralists. And he's lived a long life; he's about ninety now. It turned out to be very profitable from the money point of view. But the joy was doing what he wanted to do. And I'm sure there are people who've done just that, and I'm sure the hard-edge. . . .

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: I believe what Edie mentioned about some of the young people: the future is in their hands. Some of the kids who come out of school while they're still starry-eyed, and if they have money — some of them do have lots of money — it's these young people who could build a gallery with an ideal. And once that happens--say two of them are born — it becomes contagious. You'll find others who'll do it. What we call practical businessmen will start doing it. Or where you get a combine, where a lot of people put money into it. One fellow has a good idea, and he's trustworthy — there are many people, just like in the Art Association, who would put money into this kind of a thing. And if they're going to lose money, they can afford to lose money. They can always write it off. And also they can make money. And they can get the things they like for less through that. There's a practical side there for these people to carry this thing out. Otherwise, I don't see it. There is no other hope for it.

DANIELI: Can you now talk about the museums in Southern California?

FEITELSON: The museum situation that I think is sad is — there's no question in the world that it's become extremely partisan and very, very narrow. I believe that they should have departments for this kind of art, that kind of art, and the curators within that department. I'm talking about contemporary art, for contemporary art. We haven't got that. It's being run now by power-hungry guys: they're making careers out of their kind of selections; instead of serving art, they're serving themselves. It becomes like saying, [instead of] having a Picasso show, you're having a whatever-the-man' s-name-is-who ' s-running-it [show]. You get rid of one and then another guy comes, and sometimes you wonder if you should get rid of some of these monsters because the other guy may be even worse. We just learned how to live with this guy, hoping against hope that the light may someday strike him, and, . . . But I haven't got much hope for the structure of all museums. We're lucky when we get good guys. We're really in bad luck if we get a fellow who has the backing of one or two powerful trustees and is just a maniac, power-hungry, and has his own ideas on what art is and nothing else; he promotes different people, which means only promoting his own idea. Then I should call that a private museum. This guy should be employed by some very rich man who believes implicitly in his ideas, and he has such kind of shows. But to call this "American Art" or "Art of Our Time, " this I think is very, very pretentious, because such. . . . The exhibitions they put on are not "Americans, 1974." They're simply certain phases. Call it what it is! And make an expert comment on an exhibition of that. The guy believes implicitly in that — call it what it is! But don't let him take the stand that he's judging all art and making out of this the only expression. Because that's a dangerous thing; every critic loathes that. Only an idiot would undertake this kind of a stance. So I believe the structures of the museums have to change. I believe this had been done unwittingly a long time ago — I'm talking about the method — in the very early twenties, the Whitney [Studio] Club, before it became a museum. I was a member of it in those days. They would put on different exhibitions outside of their member shows. Now, here's how it would be: I can remember one exhibition, "John Sloan Selects Thirty New York Artists," or American artists, or East Coast artists, whatever it is. It's presented as John Sloan's taste — that's all. Then they have someone else present his selection. They're not saying these are the greatest artists there are. It's his taste, and he's responsible for the show. But the museums now are putting the curator in the position that he's getting firsthand advice from God. This is what we have. And then we even give somebody a star and give him the medal: he's the greatest artist of the day. The museum cellars are filled with those pictures; you can't even sell 'em for Blue Chip stamps. So in other words, what I'm thinking about — we talk about the twentieth century and the end of the twentieth century, and we talk about democracy, and we talk about the need for really creating a civilized world, and we have the Goddamnedest system when it comes to the art museums. It's medieval, and it's absolutely dictatorial. A guy is in there; God knows how he even got the job. How do we know we've got the best man, out of all the people that were available, for a large community like Los Angeles? I mean, it's a dangerous thing to put so much power — the guy becomes worse than even our president. And he surrounds himself — the first thing--surrounds himself with his own little clique. Two reasons: to help support him in his ideas, and also to help him hold his job. So when he says it's unanimously agreed upon, it's really the same guy with other kinds of names. We've seen this operate in this museum; it operates in almost every museum.

DANIELI: When we talked on the phone, you said if we were to discuss Los Angeles, even though my study had as a starting date somewhere around 1950, you said you thought it would be honest and fair to go back to immediately after World War II.

FEITELSON: Yes.

DANIELI: Do you want to say why? Because you have an interesting comment which . . .

FEITELSON: Well, actually, it's the critical moment in the whole of American art. I've been teaching this American art before 1920 — that's from the post-Civil War to 1920 (just sort of a fuzzy, 1922, '23), and then from then to art now. The crucial moment, without question, is the end of the war, 1945, when all of a sudden something took place, when the American artists started to look inwardly, or they were no longer so terribly impressed with the outside criteria of art and with this cult of art being an individual expression, that the modernism of Europe is great but it is not to be followed. It's not to become a model for art, but rather how they arrived at it, through that inner process. And the same thing — when I say "American art," I mean the total. You found these things happening in all the big cities. I think the formalism was being reexamined, Cezannism was being reexamined, cubism certainly was being reexamined, and surrealism was being reexamined. And then that area that we cannot put our finger on, which we call the magical form, which simply means a subjective object, that's all--that was the beginning. The moment the artist says, "I can see in this not a cookie (thinking of a painting by de Chirico) , but I can see other possibilities that are purely subjective. I cannot explain them; no one else can explain them; but if you see it and I see it, we're getting that same experience, and we can compare that to other kinds of experience. We can talk about great architecture, great monuments. But we're always talking about something that's beyond the vocabulary that we have. And yet it's a real experience within ourselves, that we always. ... We may use that word "presence." Well, when Rothko ' s works are referred to as having presence, we know exactly, if we like it, what that monumental, that beautiful thing that he says is almost temple like. ... To others it's just simply paint, objectively, that's all, stained and spoiled canvas, you know. And the same thing with certain objects. When the artists start playing with a surreal attitude toward objects, what you called magical form--I'm using the work "magic"; that's what I call it; they have their own terms, but we're all talking about the same thing — it's more than the original thing; we're questioning those things. All right, it's a cup--under certain circumstances. But we know that thing is the most beautiful object, as a work of art. If our attitude is towards that. And we've seen these things in different artifacts. I know Helen and I once saw an exhibition at the museum of a collection that we had seen in storage. It belonged to Stendahl. He had bought up the largest collection of Northwest Indian and Eskimo art. It came from the Roald Amundsen collection--the famous explorer. They had a private museum, and when he died, the estate sold it to Stendahl. And he had the foresight to know that this is real art. He loved making a profit, too. But he knew one thing: he wanted to deal only with the upper echelon in the art world when it came to taste. And those people understand this kind of art, from African sculpture or any kind of aborigine art to the most sophisticated work of art. Well, when they placed some of these artifacts on exhibition in the old L.A. museum — I'll never forget — the showcase was rather low, and there were some wooden objects there. I thought, "Well, that's beautiful." But I didn't know what the hell they were (as artifacts, they had usage) until we read the little statement: these were floats for fishing. It was a piece of wood that went this way, another piece that went that way, and another piece from which a hook extended, and when this thing started wobbling, they knew there was a fish there. Once I saw that, I didn't see the work of art anymore, you see. The information got in my way. But when it was removed from that, I said, "My God, this is a terrific work of art!" What was its purpose? Art! That's all. It needs no other purpose. Well, this is what every artist understands. He understands, and it's right in his guts. It's the thing that — well, it's not hedonism. He enjoys this assemblage without it being answerable to this thing called logic, or reason. Later, he creates a philosophy that sounds very logical to justify it. It can live very well without it. And this is the time when it all happened, this kind of attitude. I'm talking about not merely just a few people. It spread; it became a common language. And this is when this art emerged. I still believe — of course, we saw a great deal of it in the thirties, we saw it in the twenties, but I'm talking in the group sense — that it wasn't difficult to speak to your fellow artists about this. But before that there was no vocabulary. You couldn't use Cezanne for it, because you had to explain Cezanne by "organization"; you used the word "architectonic"; you used all kinds of things. You had to point out what this thing is, that this thing is not a design, that this is meant to be kinetics. And then you had a new kind of rationale. But there was always a brain-made rationale — that's the point. Even though once you approach it, it becomes--the key, it becomes the beautiful experience, it gives out. But this other side, we cannot — it was quite different. You can almost feel, if you sensed it, what the hell it's all about. And if you can't, you know, the rationale, fine; otherwise, you can enjoy it without it. Who needs it? It's like Maurice de [Vlaminck] said: "No one has to tell me why I should love my wife or how to make love to her." This is what he meant.

LUNDEBERG: Somebody would be glad to tell him now. [laughter]

DANIELI: In the development of your work, I can see the steps that lead to the magic space forms, but I'm also struck by the tremendous kind of jump it is to have gone from invented shapes in space to having flattened out that space, working both positively and negatively. I'm wondering at that point — somewhere, I guess, about 1951 — what led you to that.

FEITELSON: To the ambiguity? There were several canvases that led to it physically. There was one painting — it's not in very good condition — it's a 1949, and then the sketch for that. [ Magical Space Form (1949), 36" x 30" (oil on canvas) ] But it found its justification in something else, the magical form. The magical form already had ambiguity. I paint one thing, and it looks — well, this here, yes. [ Magical Forms (1946), 35" x 45" (oil on canvas) #21 in Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972] What I like about it is not merely its form; it also has a mood. It gives me this surreal quality. But there's another one — if I can have the book, I'll show you — that's slightly earlier than this one. Well, here, to show you the thing I'm talking about: this was exhibited at the county fair. [ Magical Forms (1948), 36" x 30" (oil on canvas) #23 in Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972] It was so successful — here where they showed pigs and all kinds of farm products, you have pictures by the county artists and so on — that the county fair administrators made souvenir postcards of it, and they sold more postcards of this Magical Form painting than anything else. Now, these are unsophisticated lay people, and they obviously liked this thing. I don't know what the hell they possibly saw in it. Here's some of these other Magical Form paintings in the catalog. These are things, and yet they are becoming living things. Not in the sense that they're from Mars and so on. The forms coming towards us are what I call the inexplicable. But in these pictures here, I was playing with these objects that have presence for me. But the word that I'm using now is ambiguity. It's more than--I didn't say I like it because it has shape alone. It has this other quality that is subjective, that I cannot explain. That determines my like or indifference.

DANIELI: Okay. Then I guess I'll use different words. In these, I can see a reference to space. Like one leg of a shape standing in the foreground and another seemingly very much farther back. I'm wondering what led you to the flatness, where you worked from edge to edge.

FEITELSON: Here.* You see, I started area-lighting and I made flat, leg like forms. I made. . . . *[See: #18 illustrated in Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972. [L.F.]]

LUNDEBERG: But it still doesn't explain, Lorser. . . .

DANIELI: I see all the traces. I want to know why you finally decided to work from one edge to the other, from the top to the bottom, and not do referential space at all, but flat shapes. Why did you do the flatness? What led to the flattening?

FEITELSON: Because instead of getting the ambiguity between a feeling and a feeling, I found that when I made these flat shapes, they were so beautiful, the ambiguity with the object that contained it, or made this thing possible, that I said, "Why can't I get something like this to play with this?" I don't need this illusionism. Now I'll create a psychological illusionism. " It's really not describing, but it fluctuates — it plays back and forth. But the key was ambiguity, that the forms already had two existences. It started with an old picture of 1944 that I called Tree Form. That Tree picture, that strange. . . .

LUNDEBERG: No, I was thinking of the first really absolutely flat one, which you could see two different ways, that one that I call "Napoleon's Hat."* *[Magical Space Form (1949/50), 45" x 40" (oil on canvas) We referred to it as "Napoleon's Hat" because it evoked that kind of allusion. This 45" x 40" canvas is the second version of this image. [L.F.]]

FEITELSON: Yes, well, it's the sketch for that one, which is in grayer tones. That really sent everybody. I was painting these geometric shapes with flat colors, and for me it actually had distance. But it became so abstract that people didn't see what I saw, these planes. They saw an appearance that is referential, as you accurately call it, to something in reality. They said it looks like the back view of Napoleon. It never struck me until somebody said it to me; then I could see it. But I prefer it when there is ambiguity, the spatial ambiguity.

LUNDEBERG: Well, it was ambiguous, although in the beginning you didn't intend it that way.

FEITELSON: But also it was magical, in the mood. I was then concerned with what I called the magical, that which I can never explain.

DANIELI: And what led you to paint in a flat way, without modeling, and without. . . ?

FEITELSON: If I'm going to create ambiguous space, I have to undo the object, because the object itself, if I painted it the way we can recognize it, automatically it has 3-D. I didn't want the 3-D. I wanted the 3-D to now be only purely psychological.

DANIELI: So there are not, somewhere in your history, versions of these with light and dark, or something, on them. You moved from that which is flatter, to that which

FEITELSON: Well, there are a few smaller things. I don't know if you know the way I work. I make sketches and sketches and sketches. I'll just give you an idea so you'll see. [walks out of range]

LUNDEBERG: Well, besides the modeling, he also eliminated modulation of the paint, any evidence of the hand that stroked the thing on and so forth. That's why he began using enamels, I think, because he could get an absolutely flat surface.

DANIELI: And I am wanting to pin this down, because for me I think they're real important paintings. I think they're a real important shift of direction and I don't know that anybody ... it just keeps . . . "That's Feitelson's art," you know, and nobody says that that period is very important.

FEITELSON: Many of these forms are deliberately in precarious balance. These go back into the forties, you see.* Then in painting I modeled all this, but this area I made a different color, flat. Absolutely flat. Then I became fascinated--this is the part that I like best. Now, I was looking for an excuse to eliminate this, and make it on this. And also you see from the thin, constricted form to the swelling form; even in here you see this. And this appears in my earliest drawings. This is something that is simply a built-in liking. *[I was referring to Plate #19, Magical Forms (1945), 30" X 40" (oil on canvas) , Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972. [L.F.]]

DANIELI: Now, were those shapes of your own invention, or were they abstractions of other shapes?

FEITELSON: No, these were just shapes, invented shapes, that could have reference. As I say, for instance, that one you're looking at there now: I call that "A Chicken." I call it a chicken — just to identify it. You see. Some call this other picture "The Skull of an Ox." But it has no meaning to me at all. It's just to identify one picture from another, if you don't know what picture I'm talking about, 'cause all the pictures are called Untitled or just Magical Space. But I was interested [whether] this is going to be a space between these two or this is the object. And to keep this play. There's a version right now at the Art Association that I made of this in pure line. It's unfinished. Steve Longstreet owned a version of that picture, a smaller version. The big version belongs to the Stendahls. The one belonging to Longstreet was stolen. [ Magical Space Forms (1951) , #28 in Lorser Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972 (listed wrongly as #27).] When Longstreet said, "I was very fond of it," I said, "I'll paint you one." So I made a version not quite like the stolen one. I think it's much more graceful. And it's on a square canvas. Why is it a square? Because that's the only canvas I had on hand. They painted in the [?], and I did something. There are no lines in here. The line is only the separation in these things. That one is a red canvas, and all of this is done in black line. But I plan to do just like what I have in two tones. I'm leaving that pure red, and this is going to be that same red, with just a little white in it, a little cooler, a little more pastel. The slightest difference, and still permit the black. I don't know what in the hell will happen to the picture; it may be a dud or may be very, very interesting. I've learned never to predict these things. That's what I meant; the picture tells you — it goes beyond your philosophy.* What I'm trying to say is, you see in these things here? There will be a little check and they turn into a painting. And [these notebooks are] full of these beautiful — in the other room there. This is how I work. I have books with just hundreds and hundreds of these variations. Among these little sketches for magical forms are studies of groups of figures made as analyses of some old master. These analytical studies are always presented in all my drawing classes. As you see in here, this is the way I work. And there are many, many things before I ever paint 'em, years before I ever paint 'em. Later I look at them: "My God, I should have painted this a long time ago," and I grab hold of them. So the people who are writing the histories--and everybody's now busy documenting what we're doing — they're going to be confounded and say, "How could that be? There must be a mistake in the date." There is no mistake in the date. I'm just starting another one of it, just like Helen is now starting something that she did back in the fifties. And I think this is really the way artists work. He gets back to, as Helen correctly puts it, unfinished pictures. You never really were through with it. *[All this must have occurred while I was showing and explaining some drawing and studies, etc. I cannot recall the moment nor the context of this verbal chaos, sorry! [L.F.]

EDIE DANIELI: Or that idea still has that much vitality.

FEITELSON: No, but the real inspired things, you see them in a new light. You see them in a new light.

DANIELI: A really surprising one to me was the stripes painting, 1953. [ Stripes, #30 in Lorser Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, 1972]

FEITELSON: Oh, we got lots of them. Yes, but I was teaching this when I first taught the form class at the Art Center.

DANIELI: Well, I didn't know of them at all.

FEITELSON: There's a young fellow by the name of Sinclair who did such a beautiful job — this is in the forties — and I was using the problem. The problem was to reduce the figuration, to the point where it has no interest at all to us, and to make a composition of uninteresting, or noninteresting (not uninteresting) , noninteresting shapes, and to get the greatest impact. This was the problem. And these are the things. As I say, I made these sketches, and sometimes I make a painting myself after that, years later, or during the time--small sketches. But here just parallel lines. All the spacing must be the same width. There's nothing terribly exciting about that kind of a figuration; wherever we look we see parallel lines. Now, we'll use a color that is going to be a constant throughout the picture. Supposing we start with a green — it could be any kind of a green--we're not going to change that green. First one will be green; next one, red; same green; pink; same green . . . etc .

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: .... so in walked that Dr. George Wayne, who was then the husband of June Wayne. He collects, and she collected, and we've known them for years. He looked and said, "Oh, my God, how much is that?" He looked at the back, whatever the price is--it meant nothing to him (the moment a person looks at him, it costs 'em more than a picture). . . .

DANIELI: This was Sinclair's painting?

FEITELSON: This is Sinclair's painting. And just as he was going to make out the check, he said, "Oh, no, no, no, I cannot take this picture." He says, "I have forgotten my patients. They're all disturbed people. This thing is too active." That's how successful the picture was, and from my point of view, that was a howling success. So when we're talking about the psychological activity with a minimal change in form, this was our problem. Sure, a nice thing could be made by the use of very interesting images, that we don't even know what the hell they are; they're just figurations. Say, by Paul Klee, or by Miro. But they're fanciful things. But how about creating impact? And also frustration. There's no beginning, there's no end. We did everything to work against all the doctrines of what a picture must have, only to discover, when we violate them, that we've really got a good picture. You see, this was the point, to teach the kids not to take things for granted. That's all.

DANIELI: Do I understand then that the stripe painting was invented originally as a class project, or as a class problem, by you as a teacher?

FEITELSON: Yes, like a lot of these studies. I have drawings of these things galore. It's like this painting that you see here. Here's one of the class projects that I made myself. Here--there ' s two of them now, here, that belong to that period, in the forties.

DANIELI: Coming to them at this late date, when I peeked in here, I wondered, quite frankly, whose they were. That's interesting.

FEITELSON: That's mine. Well, even — this is Helen's; this is about 1950.

EDIE DANIELI: Wow . . . wow!

DANIELI: Now, have you ever exhibited these?

FEITELSON: No. No, these here have been cleaned up and revarnished. They were in a hell of a state. I don't know if I can even save the picture, because they've been damaged, and so on. Many of the pictures. . . .

EDIE DANIELI: Looks real good though, from here.

FEITELSON: Well, we have some very large paintings with stripes, painted with matte paint, when we were interested in the different problems and also the division of the picture. Like you see in here. This interests us very much. The dichotomy of space: nothing on one side, and the other will have the action, even the design. So we played at a great deal. But all of our paintings are in the other rooms, where we have a little showroom there. Each room is about like this. And then we have a stock room that is up to our ears with things. And there are some very early pictures there. Oh, this may give you some idea. This [scrapbook] goes up to the Magical Forms. This is a very early--I got the exact size on a piece of cardboard, oh, I don't know, about 1916, around that time. And here, all these are early paintings. But I'll show you most of the space paintings and kinetics. This painting is right in the other room; it's a very small painting, but it's kinetics. Goes back to 1920, or a little before that, 1919. This is a very small one dealing with kinetics .

EDIE DANIELI: Oh, that's real interesting.

DANIELI: Yes.

EDIE DANIELI: Isn't it?

DANIELI: I've seen these.

EDIE DANIELI: You have?

DANIELI: Ones like them. They were in the Barnsdall show.

FEITELSON: This one [referring to a photograph] belongs to Hirshhorn. He saw it in a catalog and said, "I'll have it." And these — there's a gal from Turkey who is going to write on the tenebrism, my playing with lights and darks. Just on that subject. These are my tenebristic pictures. These really go back — 1918, around that time.

DANIELI: Now, I was wondering: did I misinterpret something, or did someone writing on you say that you had seen the Armory Show?

FEITELSON: Yes, I was a kid — fifteen years old. But I started very early, my dear fellow. Some of these things were stolen, and we got these pictures back. Here's from my old studio in New York. I've got this; it's only a watercolor. And this is very, very interesting. Hannah, what's the name of that guy?

LUNDEBERG: Schoelkopf (the New York art dealer) .

FEITELSON: Schoelkopf sent this* to me. He said — there must be another word missing — he says, "You must know something about this." And this is the actual size of this one here. He bought this thing, and they're all on silk. Mine is with charcoal and a bit of color. It has a date on it? One of the things has a date on it, 1920, 192- . . . *[A photograph of a sort of banner, made of small works on silk (sewn together) by about thirty New York artists of the early twenties. Amongst these was one of my drawings (1921). [L.F.]]

LUNDEBERG: Here. Doesn't it have a date? No, you can't see the date on it.

EDIE DANIELI: That one has a date on it.

FEITELSON: This is the one that has the date, but I don't know which is the earlier of the two. This is a very strange story. I wrote to him. He says, "Could you give me any information?" Because I identified, here, some of these works, by [William] Glackens, by [Alfred] Maurer, by [Henry] Schnackenberg, Niles Spencer. There's some things by Walter Pach. [George] Bellows. I said, "The only recall that I have was that John Sloan and his wife came up to the studio. I can remember [his] throwing a piece of silk on the table and saying, 'Make something, because we're getting up some kind of a ball for political prisoners coming out of Siberia'" — or something like that: I don't know what it was; and they were having some kind of a benefit ball — "so I must have made this damn thing." I said, "That's about the only thing I remember." A few weeks later somebody said to me — I think it was .... What the hell was that character who had the gallery? Tall, slim fellow, who (according to his wife) ran off with that little Japanese girl? You'll know if I mention it — he's quite a character. Raboff. [Ernest] Raboff! So that's how we. ... He said, "Gee, I like that drawing of yours, those very early things at the American gallery," whatever it's called.

LUNDEBERG: American Masters Gallery.

FEITELSON: We [had] never walked in there before. And this was a Monday night. So we walked in there, and this is just funny as hell. As we walked in, there they are. There 're two women looking at the paintings. One was . . . who?

LUNDEBERG: One was Martha Jackson, and who was her friend? I never remember her name--a collector, but I can't remember .

FEITELSON: A collector, a very famous collector, she and her husband are publishers. And they were buying these things, just like a [?] . And I said, "These are stolen pictures." So the gallery owner says (he didn't argue with me), "Then take them!" And they were framed. They had been in the custody of my late ex-wife — someone had robbed her of the art works stored in the garage and then set the garage on fire — and we never did know exactly what was in the garage. And these were some of the stolen works. You can see how this one relates to that one on the photo Schoelkopf sent me.

DANIELI: And how did these turn up? I mean, how is it that the dealer got the ones on sale?

FEITELSON: Schoelkopf didn't tell me. Somebody offered this thing. This is worth a fortune. It's a historic 1920 mini-collection. This was supposed to have been for some kind of benefit auction, you see. [moves to other side of room] And here's this different one. That one also was a stolen one. Very . . .

EDIE DANIELI: You have your own museum here. It's just beautiful. I can't believe it. I have things that date back ten years, but. . . .

FEITELSON: Here's one that I'm fond of. This is a very lovely drawing. [ Seated Figure (1920), 24" x 20" (oil on cardboard)] The large painting belongs to Hirshhorn — 1920, 1919.

DANIELI: Do you remember enough about the Armory Show to talk about it?

FEITELSON: Yes, but it'd be very interesting to show you what one remembers. Here it is, see? Even with the label — crossed it out. Took it right off the wall. He said [we could] have it frame and all. There it is.* Then there are some of these drawings that I made at that time, life drawings. *[This conversation pertains to the "recovered stolen drawings" mentioned above. [L.F.]]

DANIELI: I think when I've seen retrospectives of your work, more usually you show the chalk drawings, the multiple edges, the ones that are very brown and black. I don't know these at all, or I'm not familiar with them.

FEITELSON: You mean the kinetic phase.

DANIELI: Yeah, you usually show those, I think.

FEITELSON: Yes, the ones that I. . . . Well, this is the large one, and I have the small drawing. And also I went through a cubist period as a kid. Maybe this is it, 1919-1920. I have variations. I've got the pencil drawings I'm very fond of. And I love these kind of Klees. This is one I'm very fond of. Talk about ambiguity. See, ambiguity plays a very powerful role. Here's an arm, and a hand, and it makes an eye. And it makes hair.

DANIELI: I don't think I've seen that one before.

FEITELSON: Well, there are many here that have never been shown. When you see the actual painting, then you will know what it looks like. It's a picture I'm very fond of. [ Half Figure (1920), 24" x 19" (oil on cardboard)] I used to have it hanging right above my bed. Then this concept appears again, the idea, in a surreal picture, about 1934. And here's a 1934 surreal painting. This picture is having a rough time because it was painted on a piece of celotex with bad paint; that's what it is. [ Pears (19 34) 32" x 24", (oil on celotex) ] Here is another 1934 painting concerned with ambiguity. This can become a line, it becomes a female, self-love, Narcissus. It was a humorous picture, playing with these color patches of divisionism, but for mood at the same time. We were involved in every kind of possibility in subjective art at that time. The needlework, whatever you call it. . . .

LUNDEBERG: Needlework? Russell Lynes. What are you talking about?

FEITELSON: About the silk screen, how this thing had been inspired by the thing that was reproduced in the . . .

LUNDEBERG: Oh, Art in America.

FEITELSON: Art in America [May-June 1968] . All of a sudden I realized that when the thing is printed on an absolutely smooth surface rather than a canvas, that hard- edge really becomes beautiful for me. This is what I wanted to get and could never get on a canvas, you see? Then they reproduced that needlework design. Russell Lynes selected ten artists (I never met the guy) to make these designs for needlework. I don't know needlework any more than I know about an airplane that goes to Mars. I haven't the remotest idea. But I made one of these things, and then when I saw it reproduced I said, "Oh, my God, I wish my paintings looked that pristine." I said, "The print is for me." And I liked my silk screens, At first I didn't believe it would work, because of the limitation of size. I like a large area, where the eye [can] travel; on a small scale, the eye cannot do it. But the pristine quality of these things far surpasses the things that I've been able to get in paint. Because when you make a very large canvas, you're going to get all kinds of differentiations--I mean, chemically: the paint applications, the way it dries, the statement of the canvas, the wax, it's showing more here than there. And you really have a thing there, not only a color, but a textured thing. Whereas here, if you want a flat, uniform surface, you've got it.

DANIELI: Then let's get back to who you worked with. How did that come about?

FEITELSON: You mean Gill? Yes, Gene Gill. I said to Gene Gill, "Can you cut this screen just the way I made this design? You make a tracing, and just cut it on the line." And I didn't believe he could do it. Because I'd been working with these lines for so damn long, and to me the slightest little deviation becomes something else again. But he followed this thing--I'm telling you, if I could cut as well as he could, I could not do it as accurately. No deviation! And I liked that very much. And the colors: of course, I selected the colors. I made two versions of this one--one is the blue, one is a little greener, and the red is a little more orange. And they're two different things. And they were based upon some large paintings that I have in the other room, which I'm very, very fond of. [ Hard-edge Line Paintings (about 1970) ] But I made these here, and that's the end. I don't think I'm going to touch it for a long, long time. I still want to participate with my own hand in the painting. But the moment we did this thing, my God, we had people coming around and buying these works. And they were selling for a hell of a lot of money. Six hundred bucks, six-fifty. And I still would like this — I've never painted this on a large scale. I'd like to do this on a large scale. But I have painted some large paintings with these playful lines — what I call "waltzing lines" — and some that have not been exhibited. There I feel I must have size; it's got to go at least sixty inches. But I still think silk screen is the Godsend to hard-edge painters. And if I knew how to get that kind of effect on a canvas, I would do it immediately. The only thing that gives me a smooth surface — but you have to pay a very dear price — and that is enamel. Enamel, after all, is shiny, and instead of getting just the blue, you get a reflection of your room in the picture. So you cannot say, unless you say, "I'm fully aware that this is all blue. It's true I'm seeing this reflection in there and I'm seeing that reflection, but I am really not seeing it." You're canceling those things out deliberately. But here with a matte surface like that, what you see is what you intend the viewer to see.

DANIELI: As long as we've got the works out, as long as you've unwrapped them, can we go back and talk about them?

FEITELSON: Surely.

DANIELI: Now, why do you use the word "kinetic" to describe these?

FEITELSON: Because the movement, the shifting of the movements, plays an important role. For instance, in here--and it goes back very, very early in my work--look how this line will never meet this. I'm fascinated with the disconnection, and my eye has to move like pushing this line to this point. In here we have, for instance, this leg and that leg. Or this will never hit that shoulder; this is the shoulder and it bypasses it. And I like these distortions for the structure that it gives me in relationship to this. The whole thing's just angled in a truncated pyramid. It's not too exact in this and that. And then I have this, and then I have this figure playing a dual role: it's either for this pyramid, or this for that. It's like in my early painting of apples that Harry Carmean owns. I was fascinated by that shifting of line, because it isn't the figure that I'm interested in; I'm interested in the movement that this will give me to relate to these points. Certain lines here. I'm shooting this, I'm shooting that; and here's a very long, disciplined line, which wants to go down there. At least this was the reason that you see the shifting of the lines. Or I hope to attain the feel of movement that the eye actually does see as shifting — like you see this and it shifts to that. I find that even in some of my large paintings, my very large hard-edge paintings, there's always a desire to create a couple of lines that create a theme; then, all of a sudden, to take the couple of lines that you expect to do what you anticipate — and they don ' t do what you anticipate, but keep shifting. It's the shifting that always has fascinated me. Just like that early drawing, Three Figures ( Kinetics ) (1920), that relates to this picture, here. [Two Figures: Kinetic Organization (1919/20), 26" x 38" (oil on carton). Reproduced on page 73, in the catalog "Avant-Garde Painting and Sculpture in America, 1910 to 1925," Delaware Art Museum, 1975] It's the shifting of this head to become that other head, to become this additional head, to become also this head. By the time we see them, this back of the skull is uniting with this, uniting with that. There's almost a dance: this is a shoulder and it's becoming part of an entirely different kind of assemblage. Or the shifting here, the shifting there. And the same time they're different kinds of form. There's formalism and there's movement. I don't know if it works or not, but this is the thing that's interested me from the very beginning .

DANIELI: What about choices in color? Because I think all through this early period, and all through very much more recent works, your color sense has just been so unusual, the color selections or combinations.

FEITELSON: Well, my color selection--I've never been an adherent of any orthodoxy of color theory. Well, I don't dislike it. I don't want to say. ... I like, for instance, the colors in Botticelli; I love it. I like Helen's lyrical colors; they're mood colors. My mood colors are not her mood colors. I said I like things that are discordant and eccentric, almost Godawful, like in my collection of drawings. I've got some bizarre drawings that come from the studio of Michelangelo: some of his pupils go way beyond him. Or there's a guy--I'll show you a book, Die Dusseldorf er Skizzenbucher des Guglielmo della Porta (a friend of mine's father published it), on Gugliemo della Porta (1514/15-1577). You would never believe such distortions exist. Much more than El Greco, and this guy's earlier than El Greco. Then I like colors like that which you see in here. I prepare everything in here, then all of a sudden this has no rationale, has nothing whatever to do with the human form. But I like the discord that it creates between these two reds: the warm red, the cold red, and then a color that has nothing to do with the rest of the picture, as a surprise color. And this is what fascinates me. It's these things that are intellectually unaccountable but you love. Or the depth between here. I could have made depth up there--no, but it's here that it works. It goes beyond the rational. Everything else I can rationalize, almost like a mathematician. But art is not mathematics.

DANIELI: Because on the surface of it — say, in this one [ Figure (Ca 1919/20), 30" x 24" (oil on cardboard) #2 in Retrospective Catalog of 1972] --you do, well, it's a red and green combination. That doesn't explain the shift to the red-brown over on the right-hand side.

FEITELSON: Well, the shift is that they are dissimilar — one line doesn't become or resemble the other. So therefore, to whatever you see within the red area, you become much more sensitive. So if we had a shape-- just simply give this a shape; then you'd become much more sensitive to it. But, as to color, had I used this as something to be harmonious with the green, then you wouldn't see this in itself. In the picture, you keep seeing it constantly with that. And I don't want that to happen. I want this area to really be a field, so we can say, "This form is against that kind of field." Which will not participate in the area where I don't want it. So I don't want unity there. Unity or the antiunity becomes functional, for me, because then I can get this effect. For instance, to come straight up here is just like — this is like a fan; it radiates by all this here, not just to stay with any color. This would be nicer, perhaps, if it'd be next to that, but who the hell wants niceness here? I want movement. And depth. So sensual color I appreciate in others. I find myself incapable of doing it. I like it in others. I enjoy it in Gauguin. I love it. The beautiful colors in Redon, the little passages--it ' s just like a flowerbed to me. I can't for the life of me do these things, because the moment I start making images, I know damn well what my own response creatively will be, and it will be anything but that. But it doesn't stop me from appreciating these things in the works of others. So I see this in my earliest things, and I see this in the things that I like to collect, as I say, the old master things. Just to give you an idea, when I say "maverick": here is a book that was gotten up by Gebr Mann Verlag, given to me by a friend of Jules Langsner . It's that famous publishing company in Berlin. His father published this just to publish a good book; it has nothing whatsoever to do with sales. It is a replica of this famous sketchbook. I think--wait a second — I'm going to show you the strange drawings. I want you to look through this. Look at these figures. These were before El Greco!

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

FEITELSON: Jules Langsner had a housewarming, and he called and said, "Lorser, " he says, "We have a deep stairwell, and I want to borrow a picture of yours for that." I said, "Which one?" He said, "The one you were just working on." [ Shaped Red Line on Green Field (1965?) , 72" X 60"] I said, "I think it's dry." So he said, "Great, I will pick it up." The place was crowded that night. Marcia [Weisman] — and you know she has a tremendous collection of art — said, "Oh, I love this picture. Will you sell it to me?" He says, "I don't even own it. So you speak to Lorser." So this is how they got it. This is in Fred's office.

EDIE DANIELI: It's a really nice one.

FEITELSON: It's one of the size like the big painting on our wall.

EDIE DANIELI: I'm always amazed how you really can deal with the idea of classical art, you know, the figurative art, and how you still don't — there isn't any time conflict. Because the ideas are the same.

FEITELSON: I think it's also the way one is being conditioned. Because I was conditioned right from the beginning with lots of varieties of art at that time, you see. My father had a tremendous library of art books and magazines from all over the world. I saw art au courant, and I saw these things. He was a frustrated artist, the world's worst businessman. It became obvious to me that Greek art was Greek art; Chinese art was Chinese art. I saw no conflict. I always saw them separately as contained in their own boxes. I saw no antagonism. But I know there is a quality that always attracted me, something that has strength and at the same time is graceful. Not heavy, Germanic, nor overrefined. It should have both, and to have this thing called--the only thing we call it by analogy, you see, is "regal" or "majestic" "monumental." This is what I seek in art. And I think everybody has some kind of critical values. El Greco talked about "flame." Every artist has some kind of an image that he tries to see as a reference, to be what you call the closing of the picture: "Now I've got it. It's there. Now I can sign the picture. I'm through with the picture." Others like the expansive, like the picture to laugh or to dance, or some like it to be very severe, or whatever. And this is what I mean, the quality that's built in us. And the more I'm in the art world--no matter whose work — I can always see a thread of personal characteristic. Don't give a damn what kind of forms he uses. This attitude always keeps persisting through this man's work, or the gal's work, without any self-conscious awareness. This is the conduct of the mind, the psyche. And this is what they respond to or probably reject. I think that all of us are of one piece with variations; that's all. There's no use apologizing for these things, because we can't change it anyhow. We've got to live with it. [laughter] And for me it's a very desirable thing, because I look for that in everybody's work. I don't give a damn how beautiful it may be mechanically; I still want to see the guy. I like to see the guy in it. This happens to be my way of looking at art. So if things are eccentric, I believe that reflects the guy. Color to me has always been something that is an adventure, but it's an adventure of the artist and his responses, putting on the paint and then responding. I think this is one of the reasons that I find myself loving the little paintings by Paul Klee, the little watercolors, where he adventures — he probably doesn't even know what in the hell he's going to do at that moment. He puts on color, and he comes back and adds a little more color, and it becomes "wonderments." But this idea, the strange relationship, if we try to analyze it according to any of the accepted systems of color — it's not answerable at all to it. And it's far better. We never will know why it works. I literally, I really believe, there are certain things that are beyond comprehension. We are always accepting things that we can define; we're always looking for definitions. And that's why I believe that in what we call academic art, when art gets too Goddamn tied down to rules, it just simply is dead, nothing happens. It's like making a doll: it looks just like the baby, but it isn't alive. That's all it is. [laughter] Well, maybe you have some other [questions] . What is this beautiful thing?

DANIELI: That's what the tape comes in.

FEITELSON: Yes, lovely. I like that.

LUNDEBERG: It reminds me of that matchbox which used to be made with the Japanese sun rising, "Made in USA." You know that? They named a place "USA." I used one of those matchboxes. . . .

EDIE DANIELI: Each generation will see differently.

FEITELSON: Oh, yes. We cannot escape. Just like you say, [there's] the anatomy of their psyche, and that of their body, and then there's the total anatomy. We're part of it. We cannot jump out of the damn thing. Oh, I don't think anyone in the world will ever contest that.

EDIE DANIELI: You must be able to enjoy all that because you've been through so many artistic environments, kind of.

FEITELSON: But I see that as you expressed it. To me it's a dynamic thing, it's an organic thing, constantly changing. I believe Elie Faure, in a very abstract way, said somewhere in that book of his--I believe it's his last major book, The Spirit of the Forms. . . . Somewhere, as sort of a by-the-way, he wrote a little commentary, which to me is the real truth of the whole book, and I've never forgotten it. He says, "Man and his art obey one law. And it's the law of equilibrium. We're always living in change between this and that. And it's like the man" — this is the analogy — "on the raft, standing: he has nothing to hold on to, and the wave goes by, and he must constantly counterbalance. And this is what life is about. The moment you say, 'Well, it worked for this side; therefore it ought to work for that side, 'you hold on to the same pole, and it dumps you right into the ocean." And I think this is the dynamics of art. And that's why the stiff formulae of the academic, which probably were varied at the time they were formulated, made into laws — but things changed by the time they handed it to the kids. And it changed again and changed again. So if there is anything that is constant, it is change that is constant; and the counterchange, this is what he calls man's ability to create an equilibrium with the constant changes. And I think this is true; none of us could undo this. We're all caught in this damn thing. We've seen more rapid changes during a lifetime, during the last generation, but I think this awareness will become what you might call a natural wisdom. I think the student today sees this. Going to school. By the end of the fourth semester, he sees so many changes in this short period. He doesn't have to live a long time. He's living history. Next semester he sees a future he wasn't anticipating which becomes, the following semester, past history. And this is the way it goes. And I like that. I like that. Then I think, "We're living." Otherwise we're just simply like a brick, or something like that — fixed in a place and that's it.

LUNDEBERG: A vegetable!

FEITELSON: Vegetable. Well, a vegetable's still organic.

DANIELI: I was wondering why, at any point in your career, you didn't leave L.A. and go somewhere else to work.

FEITELSON: Everybody says that. Everybody says, "Why the hell didn't you stay in New York?"! Well, you know that I received good reviews in New York, right from the beginning, that were very lovely, very kind; and some, quite extravagant. But the New York rat race! Instead of being with myself, this constant conflict of ideas within the New York art world. Conflicts I don't give a damn to be in. I've got my own personal conflicts. And some of these conflicts, I'm going to confess — I like to be able to choose my conflicts. I know damn well that all the artists that have been disturbed by polemics. . . .And I can't escape the fact that all those who've actually produced significant things have had, at some time in their life, to retire to this invisible abstract condition called the ivory tower. To keep out all the things that are poisonous to the artist's kind of thinking. Or to have unnecessarily to defend his ideas. You wonder. Why the hell must you? The more people you know, the more people you have to convince that what you're doing — [not so much that it's] right as that it's not crazy, it's not a put-on. So the artist has to select the kind of friends that he has something in common with and respects completely, where he knows that it's mutual. And you see each other only when you want to see each other. Whereas in New York, they're practically in each other's lap. The closeness which has made it an art center is also its poison--they 're in each other's heads; they're in each other's minds. You can't do a damn thing without wondering what the hell Joe is going to say. He's coming down, and you know he's terribly against such and such thing. I saw this demonstrated by John Ferren; he's gone now. He said, "Gee whiz, I've got my big show coming on at the Stable galleries." He would come out here during the summer and work at--a good old friend, remember, Kaminski, had his studio there--he just painted a batch of pictures during the summer. And what is he worrying about? What his friends will say. He says, "Pete'll kill me for using this kind of stroke!" They have names for the brush strokes that they don't like. And then they have names for the strokes they all have in common, that they do like. And if you don't use that, they feel that you are now disloyal, you're just simply--that ' s treason, heresy. And I said to him, "This damn thing — you fellows are creating your own academy, if you like it or not, a new orthodoxy, if you like it or not. You're not painting a picture that you want to paint; everything on there is prejudged through fear ( 'What will he say?' 'What will that guy say?' so forth and so on) . What the hell? Why be a painter? Become a tailor. Charge 'em: 'Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you how much it's going to cost you.'" So sooner or later the artist has to retreat into himself, not just for the act of retreating, but just to conserve himself and to be able to do the things that he wants. And there is no escape-- I don't give a damn who it is. Every painter. When Braque and the cubist group were together, then there came a point [when] they started pulling away, living their own little lives, their wives and their painting, and seeing one another less often. Matisse saw this guy, and Picasso had his little friends. But how in the hell would Picasso have painted so many things if he had to live in the social life of Paris? And this is true about every painter. You cannot escape this situation. The guy must have lots of time with himself, or with his immediate little group. Here in L.A., the painters are lucky. We're lucky that we are both artists and we're always in the world of art. But if you had to have people, pointless. . . . Supposing you have a large number in this area: before you know it, you have hundreds of people that you know. Nice people, they're very nice people. But by God, if they had to get into your painting every day, you'd shoot each and every one over and over again. And you'd feel that's the most righteous thing you'd ever done. [laughter] So this has been a terrible problem, because many artists are unsure of themselves and must have affirmation and reaffirmation constantly. Which is quite different, from, say, you've done a thing and you liked it so well, the natural thing is, "Gee, I wish So-and-so was here; I'd like to share it with him." That's a different thing. You already know that you've done a good work, and you want to show it. It's a different thing when you're feeling this insecurity, "I wonder if this is as good as I believe, or am I kidding myself?" and so forth. The art of the past — take all these people that have given things which have come down to us with some kind of merit, even in this ever-changing world, and among our contemporaries, you'll find that most of these people are people who really must have their door shut in order to do their work. There's no question about it. I was just rereading some episodes from the life of Cezanne, because there has been a hell of a lot of confusion about this guy. He was a "loner," and yet he was not quite as alone as most of us believe. He had a little circle, near the end of his life, of people who liked his work on his terms. So there was no opposition there. In his immediate environment, they didn't know what the hell he was doing. They thought he was a crackpot, and they didn't mind telling him. He had his wife, who wasn't interested in art at all, as you know. But some people were commencing to see his work and commencing even to buy his work. And I came across a note — I told Helen about this; it rather surprised me--that in the 1890s (he died in 1906), at a little auction of paintings, one of his paintings fetched well over $1,000. You know who collected that? It was Monet, who certainly didn't paint like Cezanne. He stood for a different thing entirely. And there were others who were paying good prices for his works. He was just commencing to have patrons. There were quite a number--in spite of the terrible abuse. And all the time he was still always working, Cezanne, going out in the rain — it killed him, you know--to do his painting. Still to do his paintings. Stubborn bastard, you know. That was the virtue of this guy, his fanaticism! So his relationship with others, from an artist's point of view, is only a relationship on his terms. Meaning his art. He was a dedicated guy. Others were business relationships. This guy has got lots of money; he collects. Or he knows "Mrs. Gotrocks," and so on. Well, you know many painters who are shameless about it: "Art to me is a business. Instead of being a dentist or being a lawyer or a doctor, I like this better. And you've got to cultivate these people who are going to be your patrons." And these guys rather like it. They consider their success not by the quality of their work but the number of pictures they've sold. Well, there are people like that. Helen and I unfortunately are not like that. We wouldn't even know how to go about this damn thing. So the artist and the outside — or not even his audience, but just people — the artist's relationship with his audience is something else again. There are certain artists that do have an audience. It may be an elite, but it's an audience just the same. Now, how much is he painting for his audience? How much is he painting with the fear not to lose them? How much is this really a relationship based upon that? It's a difficult area. And there's no way you can say, like a light meter, "This is what I'm doing." "I'm selling myself down the river," or "I'm just simply a whore," and so on. Or, "They like me because I'm painting their picture." You see. This is a difficult thing. And no one ever touches that area: they're scared to death, because it's a very delicate area, and there's no way of proving that you're right or wrong. And yet we've seen this in the history of art. All of a sudden an artist is doing his best work and he's losing not only his audience but his patron audience, at the very time he's really doing his best work. They don't know what in the hell this guy is doing. So he is really--there was really no true communication. They were really not interested in the creativity; they only liked a certain phase of this guy.

EDIE DANIELI: Artists welcome change, but collectors have a tendency to be insecure. Change makes you very insecure.

FEITELSON: Not only collectors, but the dealers. As a matter of fact, that was one of the reasons that I left the Daniel Gallery in New York when I started making those "peasant pictures." He says, "I like the others. Why are you painting those things with those colors?" You see? And I didn't like that. Just the opposite. So this kind of dealer dictated to the artist that he work like a tailor. But there are people in this world who truly love art. They are few in number, but they do exist. And they do exist even amongst collectors. But they'll be frankly within a certain area. Like we spoke about Kahnweiler. He liked all the modern abstract or semiabstract painters who worked with rather sharp angles. Just like there is an entirely different kind of patronage for those who go for the florid line, a la Gauguin or Matisse. And those that went in just for pure black and white. And then those who went in for very sensate color like the Fauves. People just go for that--like for German expressionism. And I've seen people who just love these things. It means I'm missing the point. But I can see these people going out of their way; they'll hock everything to get "that" work, by [Oscar] Kokoschka, or whoever it may be. Or a certain phase of Kokoschka. And we've seen these little differences. Joseph Hazen, who has a tremendous collection (I don't know if you know of him), he was married to — what is the name of that?

LUNDEBERG: One of the [Walter] Annenberg girls.

FEITELSON: Annenberg, yes. They wanted to know if we'd have dinner with them; they had a little problem about a picture that he had just bought. Well, the picture was a Kokoschka, a very famous, early Kokoschka. You may have seen photographs of it: it's a doll, a life-size doll, in front, on a table, and he's [self-portrait of Kokoschka] sort of pawing her over. Well, she [Mrs. Hazen] didn't want that picture because of the artist's reputation--he used to make love to this mannequin.

LUNDEBERG: There's a story about this. That was his girlfriend for a while.

FEITELSON: Many stories. Fred Wight told us that famous story. And this is--that's his hang-up. Maybe he found it much better getting along with a doll than a woman, you see. It's much easier. It was less critical of him. But at any rate, Mrs. Hazen didn't want that picture in her house. She saw it subjectively. She saw it subjectively. And women are rather prudish about such things. So the Museum of Modern Art took it. And there was the other — I 'm thinking about that backview nude of. . . .

LUNDEBERG: Degas, that Stendahl had.

FEITELSON: It was a late oil by Degas. He called me, Stendahl, and he says, "You've got some rich friends. I've got a Degas, a beautiful Degas, and you can get it for, I don't know, seventy-odd thousand dollars." Well, we looked at it--my God, it's a beautiful Degas. It was in oil, and very late, which in itself is very rare for Degas (he was always working in pastel in his late years) . It's beautiful but not very large. The picture is of a girl seated on the edge of a bathtub; and you see her lovely fanny — she's turned away from us — and that's all there is to it. Was there a gal with a towel there? I'm not even sure.

LUNDEBERG: I just remember that one figure, you know, with the backview.

FEITELSON: Well, Lizzie Bliss had that painting (according to Stendahl) and turned it back to him. And it had a history. Women don't want a naked young girl standing in their house. Men, of course, love it--wonderful . I mean, you can hardly keep your hand from pinching the damn thing. But there you have the relationship. And Eddie Robinson bought a picture under the same circumstance. You know that famous girl, standing in that big flat tub. Well, there's a backview of her. The same thing, only the backview. Well, of course she's got her fanny right practically in your face, and it had the same history. Women didn't want the picture. And then Edward G. Robinson finally got this painting. It's a lovely painting. So there you get not only the artist and his public, but you have the work of art and the public. Just like Eddie Robinson had a chance to buy a Cezanne, a very early Cezanne — you know the picture, The Assassins. It's a very early picture. It's not a great picture, but it shows his early tendency, which was almost excessively emotional, quite different from his late works. [Robinson] put it in his house, but he said, "My God, I feel the way everybody else [does]: I can't have the damn thing around." Because of the subject. There are certain people who are too sensitive. So art as an experience sometimes is not accepted .

EDIE DANIELI: That's not really a negative statement against the work, either. The work is that powerful; people just can't live with that quality.

FEITELSON: Well, but maybe some people see this subject. . They like the painting, but they wish it were, instead of assassins, a love scene, perhaps, or the guy's giving flowers to the girl, or whatever. But I like the picture because I think, "This is the guy." This was very, very much in his system, because he painted a number of pictures that people don't realize. They always think of his art as mind-made art. His earlier work is very emotional. You had the picture of a white girl and a colored girl, lesbians, at that. He's had several erotic pictures, his Olympia, and bordellos, what have you. And he really had a fiery nature, which he tried to control. Well, what the hell, why control? I think these things are beautiful moments in his work. His paintings, they go into a category which I happen to like. See, I like eccentric paintings, like Magnasco's, the strange, weird pictures by this painter from Genoa. Just these paintings are what I like. Some of those very early black and white [are] almost Daumier, with a primitivism. It's a strange combination, a little bit of Grandma Moses, a little bit of Monet, a little bit of Daumier--but it all adds up to Cezanne. That's the thing. And I love it. I think it's great.

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

FEITELSON: Well, my activity in the art world as an artist--it just goes back, as I say, into my childhood. I was about four years old when we got to New York, but I was drawing as far back as I could remember, my father giving me the lessons, and having exposure to fine art magazines and books with pictures, and so on. And haunting the Metropolitan Museum and particularly the Forty-second Street library, which had just been opened and had a wonderful art department. They also had a fine collection of paintings, more or less, I would believe, of nineteenth- century English paintings, particularly Turners, and the English portraitists, Reynolds and [Sir Henry] Raeburn and Lawrence and Constable. But excellent paintings. And also, they had a very fine man who curated the print room, and he used to do a great deal of writing. I think his name was Kleinkampf, or something like that. [Frank Weitenkampf] He put on beautiful exhibitions of Rembrandts and Goyas and so on, Americans and particularly the English and some of the German avant-garde (for those days) . The exhibitions in modern art were very, very few. There were exhibitions that nobody seems to write about (I've often wondered why). And this went almost into, maybe 1919-1920. I don't know if it went on after that. I remember in 1919, there were still these exhibitions. Tom Benton, Macdonald-Wright and George F. Of [1876-1954], many of the so-called American avant-gardists, at that time, were showing in these settlement houses. I can remember seeing Tom Benton's work. And [George] Biddle — not Biddle, but [Maurice] Sterne. Many, many others. And there would be a reading room. Here were those pictures around the wall: nobody paid any attention; most of 'em laughed at these things, thought they were wild. And there was a guy by the name of Dr. John Weichsel, or something like that--I can't remember — a doctor, definitely or Germanic training, who had grand ideas. The world was full of this idealism, to bring the best of man's mental accomplishments and art accomplishment to the underprivileged. This idea was prevalent even in Russia during the Czarist time, in the first half of the nineteenth century--I came across this fact in some article dealing with art schools and art education, and I was floored. Like many of our youngsters go abroad to help the natives, the artists were bringing their art to the serfs. They believed that art must be shared, the mind must be shared. A beautiful idea. Many of these artists had no audience anyhow, so this is where they had exhibited. So the audience (which was very, very small) who liked modern art would gravitate to these little exhibitions, to see these things. So this was our exposure. And there were little magazines with articles on art--rather than the monographs (that were not yet being published) — on modernism. And the Germans were ahead of the French. If you wanted to know about the last word in modern art in France, the Germans covered it. You had certain magazines where [Julius] Meier-Graefe ' s articles appeared. He was a great scholar. But there were many others, Fritz Burger and others, who were writing on Cezanne und Hodler. These writers brought in everything, as early as 1912, and you saw youthful work by Picasso, 1912. Picasso was only thirty years old; that's all he was. These books had the stuff. Also books dealing with the erotic in art, meaning from a scholarly point of view, would include from the most prehistoric to the last word in modern art. And they were featured on the same art level. The Germans exposed me more to what we call the last word in art than did the French. If I wanted to know about French art, it was there. Then my trip abroad, which was just to satisfy my curiosity, my interest in contemporary art. Because I'd been schooled also in classic art, museum art. But I never could see any break. To me they were creative forms in different manners: art inspired by their older predecessors called primitive artists, cave artists. So it made very little difference to me what were the original sources or the impetus. I was only interested in the creativity of the artist, the culture that would get into his work, and how much of his own idiosyncrasies, or what we call his personality, got into it. This had been hammered into my head when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. There was no traumatic experience to me. People to this day say, "How the hell could you do this in your studio and still do that in your class?" For me, there is no conflict. You may like this or you may like that--that's your privilege, you see. But to me, it's the creative side that matters. It's just like what I call sterility in art, which is when art copies art, or even more so, when the artist copies his own work. Then I consider that it may be interesting, maybe as craftsmanship, but that's all. You're appropriating something; that is very nice. But it's not yours. At best it may reveal good taste, or very ugly taste. So right from the beginning, I was showing the work like this in Daniel's, after I got back from Paris. I had no difficulty with other galleries. Well, in those days it was easy to get an exhibition because there were very few young artists working in the modern manner.

DANIELI: Okay. Now can we do some dates on when you were in Europe and when you came back to New York?

FEITELSON: Yes. The first trip, my first introduction to Paris, was in 1919, I would say near the end of the summer. And the last was in '27. I would shuttle between New York and Paris. The longest stay would be about three years (I mean uninterrupted stay). But I kept my studio going all the time in New York, while I was away.

DANIELI: And then you studied at the Art Students League?

FEITELSON: I wouldn't call it study: I took a class in drawing, a summer class, conducted by George Bridgman.

DANIELI: I knew all that figure work had to come from somewhere. [laughter]

FEITELSON: No, no. Not from Bridgman.

LUNDEBERG: No, it didn't come from Bridgman. I had a taste of that style of instruction when I first started to study.

FEITELSON: No, it was the old masters, the High Renaissance mastery of the form. All he [Bridgman] taught was anatomy. Anatomy to me is interesting, but it's only--it's a subsidy, if you need this thing for better understanding. But art doesn't begin and end in anatomy, and he was not a creative artist. No one has ever seen anything by him.

LUNDEBERG: Lorser, he ruined some people. Remember Grace MacLaine? She never got away from that damn . . . mannered anatomy!

FEITELSON: And I disliked his teaching because there were three models that seemed to perpetually pose for the art students, names like Peretti or Pranetti, something like that. Italian models were very popular in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This was a family-- papa, son, and his grandson. They must have originally been in the circus business--wiry . Medium-sized (perhaps none of 'em weighed more than 125 pounds), but very wiry. And they exploited that, because they could make very good displays of anatomy. He says, "Show your bicep, your tricep, " and the students can see it, see the bones and so on, of the rib cage. Now, they were flat-backed. But when Bridgman drew, you could put a saddle or two on the fanny. Their legs were straight, but he would always bow the legs. So he was always converting them into a manner to suit his ideal. And feet he would make the size of tugboats. So I was wondering, "What in the hell am I doing in this class? At best I can learn to convert everything into this thing that I don't give a Goddamn about." He was making a personal interpretation all the time. But he was insisting that this become really an orthodox interpretation. I felt that from the beginning I was seeking mastery in every phase. I suppose today we can speak about it more rationally. We now realize the importance of the "context, " that everything has to fit the "context." You're choosing a certain kind of a context, or you're working in a certain mode, but you have to choose it yourself.

DANIELI: What was it that you were doing in that period in New York, let's say from — what? — 1920 onward? Were you painting on your own, or were you attending. . . ?

FEITELSON: I never attended schools. Excepting to learn sculpture, in about 1913, just for about hardly more than a year, with a guy by the name of Carl Tefft, who was a brilliant sculptor. Unfortunately, he had to ghost for some of the very "famous" (in quotes) sculptors who were getting the big jobs for big public buildings and monuments and so on. I think the man he worked for was Henry [Kitson] And Carl Tefft was responsible for a magnificent fountain, which was then in the botanical gardens in the Bronx park. It looks like something that you see in Versailles, with sea gods and nymphs in the water. He had found the solution of making water horses, which was praised by the then- great American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens as being the only answer — not even the Greeks and the Romans ever found the aesthetic solution. They would put, where the hooves are, the great webbed feet. Well, it looked too damn long; it looked like an open umbrella. He [Tefft] shortened all the anatomy of the leg, so by the time you got to the end of the spread, it was still in the same size, and it was proportionately harmonious. A very simple solution. But the facility with which he did this thing, you'd swear this is an eighteenth-century work of art, or even seventeenth century. And when it was dedicated, he was an old man of twenty-two. There's no question, from little things he was saying, he was using morphine. (Which, by the way, was very common amongst many of the artists. This was a hangover from the romantic painters: Delacroix and Baudelaire fooled around with morphine and opium and so on.) And sometimes you could smell the alcohol. He was a miserable man in his personal life. And therefore he was completely obsessed with art and art history and method and so on. He was absolutely the most magnificent fountain of information. He was a great, great teacher. As a kid, I showed him some of my drawings, which were made from imagination, which is a word you don't hear anymore: they used to call 'em "chic drawings," which is an ambiguous word. They used the word for clever drawings; it also meant drawings that are clever in the sense of ingenuity (you don't need the model to turn these drawings out) . And he [Tefft] was the one who was very, very interested in my work. I said, "I'd like to study form through clay. Not that I wish to be a sculptor, but for greater realization." And he thought it was a grand idea. So during that short moment I was there, I learned a great deal. But as in all schools--I don't fit, until this day, in groups. I can't think--I can't think, I can't work. I found, well, I probably sponged up, mentally more, than any of the kids in the class. Because they weren't as intensely interested as I was. And the people he talked about couldn't mean anything to these others. They were thinking of something they could apply. Many of 'em worked for Tiffany and some of the decorating houses at that time. Remember, that's before the First [World] War. So I went on absorbing from the museum, constantly the museum. I haunted the museum and the libraries. I'd get back to my studio and work, and I drew things and drew things. Whatever impressed me, I expressed in my way. And the format hasn't changed one bit during my whole life. For my personality, that is it. For somebody else, it may be no answer at all. As Helen knows, I don't like going to exhibitions, even in areas that I like. Because what happens, when I go to an exhibition and I see things there — I'm talking about museum exhibitions — I'll absorb almost by walking through, not examining. I'd never sit down and look at a picture, say, like some of my students will write to me: "I spent eight hours at the Morgan Library just looking at two works there." This, to me, is absolutely inconceivable. My mind doesn't work that way. It sponges it up, and after I'm gone, then it works within me. Then what I need is not the original work. Give me books with details; I can look at them at any time and study them better. So even when [they had] that great big cubist show here ["The Cubist Epoch" at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970] — as many know, I had been lecturing my head off on cubism, up to my ears, every facet, for many years. You know, Helen and I never went to see it? The thought of it was killing. But I have the illustrated catalog. I have the book! So it means my mind, in such a case, is the mind of what people call fixations. I hold on to it. I hold on to it. I don't jump from one thing to another, I love one thing today and tomorrow it's something else, and abandon that. I don't say it's right or wrong--this is the way my mind works. So I find myself constantly going back, seeing it whatever it is in a new light, meaning in the configuration of other ideas. And I never let go of the damn thing. Just like. . . . See the lines in here? — they appear in my pictures today, the attenuations. And how it first got into my work I cannot tell you. I can tell you the artists that I prefer — but why I prefer them, I cannot tell you. I discovered that these things had great meaning to me, but why? Nobody can tell. I don't say it's a virtue at all — it's an idiosyncrasy. At that time, if anybody would have said, "This is going to be the lifeblood of your work," I wouldn't have known what the hell he was talking about. Wouldn't have known at all. So there is this thing that we call permanence and change, and it's in every one of us. It makes no difference how, or what's happened. So I think the artist, when he talks about knowing himself, he doesn't--he should not go into trying to understand a style, or styles, in his work and try to explain it, but rather look for that which unwittingly always appears in his work. It's a constant: it puts on all kinds of different clothes, but it's there all the time, if he likes it or not. Then he says, "That's my work. I cannot escape this thing. I can never escape it." And I think every human being, in spite of all the variations, is of one piece, there. That's the call. And the sooner one realizes and makes peace with that, the easier it is for him to do his work. Then he doesn't have to worry about, "Am I going too far this way or that?" He can recognize, "Here it is." And then it's a matter of what is he going to take more advantage of, the thing he's appropriated from someone else, or to see new ingenuity and new power in the thing that's always with him? And I suppose this is how we measure people. I was reading a little review on Tom Benton in tomorrow's paper — I don't know if you've seen it or not. Henry [Seldis] was charmed by the guy but doesn't like his work. But I knew he didn't like the work. He called me one day, for something or other; he told me he's going back East to see the big show in Washington and to see also Tom Benton. He says, "I don't like his work. But there's going to be an exhibition, and there's no question at all, he's a historic figure. " But Seldis was trying to tell us that Benton is a limited guy, that his work has been caught in a certain mannerism and he hasn't gone anywhere, and that he's accepted it. Which Henry doesn't like — others may like it. Now, here again — Helen doesn't like it, and I can easily understand. It becomes a gimmick. And it's easy to teach, you see. Then the public thinks it's an affirmation of the value of the work because he has brainwashed a bunch of kids to do it. The public is kidding itself. These kids are all Tom Benton with different names, that's all. But maybe Benton realizes his limitation .

DANIELI: How did you get involved with the Daniel Gallery? Did you just take pictures, or did you know people there?

FEITELSON: The New York art world was very small then. I think I showed at the Whitney Club, and I used to get nice little write-ups, even at the Independent show in New York. I'd find the newspapers from Baltimore reproducing my work, always got nice write-ups. And we have a lot of these clippings. But as I say, it was a small art world. And they said some very nice things. And when I went to Daniel's, he knew — the world was small. And I simply said to him, "Maybe you'd be interested in seeing my works." I didn't say exhibit, just to see it. He says, "I will." And I didn't live very far at that time (I lived on Fifty-sixth Street then, for a short while) . So he came down; he says, "I like it very much." Then he asked me this strange question: "How much rent do you pay?" I thought, "That's a peculiar question." I thought, "He's prying. Why the hell is he prying?" Well, he wasn't prying at all. He would double that in making this allowance against the possible sales, to keep me going. Well, I wasn't in that position that I needed it. But I thought, that's very nice.

DANIELI: What sort of a person was he?

FEITELSON: He was a sort of a generously built guy, with a perpetual good smile on his face. And his friend who worked there--was his name--Alanson Hartpence? Yes. He was a very, very brilliant guy, and I think a poet. And he had a very sharp mind, very witty. Many people didn't like him, because they thought he was a little too sharp. I could easily understand people imagining that he was offending them. He was not like Daniel, who was easygoing and had been in business. I think he had a beer saloon, or something like that, with his brother; many of his artists used to hang out around that place, and it became interesting. He opened up this little gallery, and I can remember the gallery — I think it was on Forty-seventh Street, an upstairs place. The beginning of the Upstairs Gallery. I noticed when I was with him for a short time that he was interested in a certain phase in my work, and I was changing. I was going sort of toward my "peasant period." I had a few things that were anticipating it. And I was abandoning color. Later it comes out in my 1925 picture of the two peasant women. [ Two Peasant Women (1925), 30" X 24" (oil on canvas), #9 in Lorser Feitelson Retrospective Catalog, Illustrated] And he said something, that he prefers my previous style. I didn't say anything. But I said to my late ex-wife, let's quit Daniel and join Neumann (because she exhibited there, too) . There was also a gallery down below Daniel that wanted her work. The New Gallery.

DANIELI: Do that name again.

FEITELSON: Neumann? The [J.B.] Neumann galleries. What was his first name? Jakob? Something like that. He introduced the German expressionists in this country. He bought two of our pictures for his own house that he had just built on the beach. [But my wife] didn't care for his gallery environment for her pictures. She says, "My work is not German expressionist; they're beautiful things themselves, but I don't belong there." So she pulled out, and I went to [Joseph] Brummer; Brummer was interested. Brummer said, "My brother is in Paris, and he is the one who really runs the business. But we are interested." So in the meantime, I thought, "Well, I'm going to return to Paris. I'm going to go to another gallery" that was getting very good publicity, Dudensing. They were, I think, two or three boys and the old man. And when I came in, Leroy, I think it was, said, "Why don't you leave the pictures and come around about noontime, and we'll have lunch." My paintings were small, twenty by twenty-four, and maybe sixteen-twenties, little canvases. I signed a contract, which guaranteed one one-man show a year, and constant representation in one room in which they displayed their stable (maybe about eight or nine painters) , so that each artist has his or her work always on view. Also, the gallery had a brass plate outside of the door, just like any business might display the name of the company, and the artists' names were listed on it. Also, in the window, no matter what was featured, there was a list of the artists that they represented. The gallery claimed sole rights on the exhibition, sales, and promotion of its artists' works. Not a cent was asked from the artist. Well, we sold--we had no difficulty. And the responses were always very good. And then what happened? We were in Paris and we thought we'd better get back, because she was expecting and we didn't want the kid to be born there, because if it was a boy, he would have to serve in the French military (he'd automatically be a French citizen). We got back to New York, and it was a little girl. Then we came out here. We paid no attention to our contracts, to escape New York. We were supposed to be here for only six months, and I've been here now forty — how many?--forty-seven years.

DANIELI: The reason I was interested in maybe your recollections of that situation at Daniel's is that I found out that there was evidently very little material in the Archives of American Art--I was reading one of their journals — that evidently they have a thirty-page typescript from an interview with Mr. Daniel, Charles Daniel, and that's it. There are no gallery records.

FEITELSON: Well, I can tell you, near the end of his days, he was a sorrowful figure. Hartpence had passed on (he had some horrible kind of ailment), and Daniel became addled, had some kind of stroke. He was poor as a churchmouse — here, this man who had all these pictures that nobody wanted, the "name pictures," now famous American artists. Someone — let me see, who was it? — the brother of Dore Schary, Saul Schary, told me this — that Daniel would come around and peddle a picture, a watercolor, for five dollars or ten dollars. . . .

DANIELI: These were things that he still held on to?

FEITELSON: Yes, had a few — that meant nothing to the art world at that time, because of changing styles. He may have had some works by Preston Dickinson; or he may have had some things by, even--what the hell is his name?-- Niles Spencer and [Yasue] Kuniyoshi, and a few others.

DANIELI: I was going to ask you, then, because I have a list of some of the artists that showed at Daniel's — did you know any of those people?

FEITELSON: Yes, I knew these people. I've talked about them very often .

DANIELI: Okay. How about a Glenn Coleman?

FEITELSON: I only knew of him. I used to see him . . . I never really knew him. He used to make these primitive pictures of the Greenwich Village. He was a Greenwich Village character, and I believe he had been at one time a cop, a policeman. I think he died in the late twenties, or the very early thirties. But his paintings never deviated from what was then a very large school of primitives who were emulating Rousseau. Many artists were affecting the style.

DANIELI: What about Charles Demuth?

FEITELSON: Well, I knew him. Not very well. But I knew him even. . . .

DANIELI: What was the situation then, or how would you have. . . ?

FEITELSON: At the time — I'm sorry to say I was dead wrong — I didn't care for his work, nor Dickinson's work. And I told Daniel that. I'll never forget. I know he didn't like it. But what the hell? I didn't need Daniel and he didn't need me. And it's no use lying to any of these guys. Because I said that his cubism is pseudo- cubism: it's realism made with T-squares and good taste. But at best, it'd make a very nice illustration. You see. I'd been brought up with real Cezannism, and the boys who were really working their heads off. When they were disjointing a line, it had to earn its right to do it. If you're going to have a distortion, it's got to be better than before it's distorted. And if we're talking about plastic values and also this thing called impact, it's got to have it. And I saw this in the cubists, and all these other people, even the lesser lights in Paris. All for expressiveness. Some of the Germans, what they were doing. And I have some of my early work that I had done along this line. It's not a very important. ... I think I showed you--didn't I?--some of those little drawings when I fooled around with it. And I said, "These Demuth watercolors are to me very decorative, very lovely, very competent. And the very virtue — the thing I really like--I don't like." The beautiful color effects that Demuth would get by blotting the watercolor here, leaving it out. I don't see it that way now, you see, because we have a classic case of this called cubist realism. At that time there was no such term as "cubist realism." This is like the girl who says, "I am conserving my virtue by going out screwing for a buck," or so. We couldn't make sense out of that. So we couldn't understand this thing. And even [Charles] Sheeler I couldn't understand. I said, "To me, the whole work is sterile. It may be very competent as an idea, but as a sensate experience, nothing happens. And I'm thinking about the guys who inspired him, the early cubists. Whatever they did, it had a wallop. It had a statement. And you couldn't get the damn thing out of your mind." I was looking for those qualities, you see. I was looking for such qualities. I was forgetting --here in Demuth and Sheeler I was looking at an art that comes out of a heritage of New England puritanism. Those guys in Paris were painting with their balls! This whole New England attitude was wrong. They were thinking of a formula, the best they could understand it. What I'm expressing was expressed by many of my contemporaries. [Preston] Dickinson was always drinking hard, you know. He had his homosexual difficulties. In those days, it was not like today, where people take an attitude, "If that's his thing, that's his thing. What the hell has that got to do with his art? What right have you got to push him around?" And New York was a church-ridden town. Sunday everything closed down, theaters and so on. We're talking about fifty years ago or more. [Marsden] Hartley got himself into endless trouble. And of course, Daniel and his boyfriend — everyone knew that it was what you call a menage. But you never met a nicer couple of people in your life. And his ideas on art were rather catholic. The guy who really supported the gallery by sales was — what's that guy?--Lawson, Ernest Lawson. He was about this size, a hard drinker, a very good friend of Glackens. And he was painting sort of an impressionism with very strong strokes, building it up with lots of white or tints, packed with white and then glazing. It had a beautiful effect. Not cheap, not cheap at all. And Daniel would tell me, "Without this guy, I'd have to go out of business. He's the only guy that sells." And he told me this funny story (which Helen has heard a million times), one of the funniest stories in the world. Little Lawson, who was of Scandinavian origin — his daughter may still be living out here (she had a lot of his pictures; one could have gotten those pictures for next to nothing at one time--not today anymore) . Daniel had an exhibition of Lawson 's work. And the gallery was very small. The whole gallery wouldn't take up the space we have just up to here, a small, little square room. And his idea was never to make it possible for the visitor who walks around to be beyond Daniel's reach. Psychologically, you've got him. He had chairs in there, and when visitors sat in them they couldn't get out of the damn things. So here came this woman, Mrs. Gotrocks; she looked around, she enthused, and she said, "My God, he must be a wonderful man!" She used that word that we all use, "They're like crushed pearls." (And by God, that is a good description.) So the door opens, and in comes our hero. He's been in the tank for four or five days; he needs a shave; he's dirty; he smells to high heaven--he's been on one of his alcoholic binges. And Daniel had to rush him out and say to him, "The garbage is on the other floor." It nearly killed that sale. Daniel understood people, and he learned this from having a beer saloon. I mean, this was not a bar but a real saloon. He was the first one to hang pictures low, lower than eye level. All the galleries had plush walls and hung the pictures high, so you had to look up at the pictures. He said, "If you look up at the picture, you've already created a psychological distance from the picture." But if you look down at the picture (like we're looking down now) you will feel friendlier toward the picture. Daniel would place six or eight pictures on the floor against the wall, then other pictures pulled out of the racks were added to those on the floor. He said, "They only buy the things that are on the floor." And when he explained it, "the light came on." When you look up at this picture, when you look here, you're doing this — but when you look down at the picture, your formal attitude no longer exists. If you do this, you will love that picture. You never would like it half as well if it was high up there above your eye level. And he changed the old notions of formal exhibition arrangements. There's no question in the world--many galleries started to imitate. He was certainly a man who understood human beings. He was absolutely right. I don't mean to say he was a devious guy. He was anything but devious. He enjoyed this whole thing.

DANIELI: Well, do you know why he decided to show modern art?

FEITELSON: Because he was around these people. He used to hear their discussions in the saloon. Yes, at his place. Bunch of nice guys — they were nice guys. Much better than the bunch of alcoholics, these rummies around the place. And Daniel really liked art; there's no question in the world about it. He had a sensitivity. Also, I think Katherine Schmidt, the painter, who is still alive, was married, I think, at one time, to Kuniyoshi, who was one of Daniel's artists. I think she's a niece of Daniel.

DANIELI: And did you know Kuniyoshi?

FEITELSON: Yes.

DANIELI: What was he like?

FEITELSON: Well, Kuniyoshi was several years older than I was. He was a--he loved people, very gregarious. I think he was born in Japan, but he spent his youth here in Los Angeles. And then I could remember when he was at the Art Students League; he was just sort of working his way through, doing janitorial work. And he came to the Daniel Gallery after I was there, even though he was older. He was doing those very strange, almost caricature paintings, black, brown, and white, conventionalized, his own kind of convention. A little bit influenced, to a certain degree, by [Jules] Pascin. In fact, Pascin influenced that whole little crowd, Alex Brook and many others. And Kuniyoshi had a studio in Brooklyn Heights, in the building that belonged to Eastman Field, or something like that, who published The Arts magazine in those days. Hamilton Easter Field — that's right. The old Arts magazine. And there were quite a number of painters living there. I think it was called Columbia Heights or Brooklyn Heights, I don't know. It was right across the river in these beautiful old colonial buildings that the artists love. He was a happy guy; everybody loved him. And some of my friends would say, who lived in that building, that all of a sudden they would hear almost an insane laughter, and it was Kuniyoshi while he's alone in the studio — something struck him funny, and he'd laugh and laugh. He was a hell of a nice guy. He was very beloved in the Village. Very beloved. And a good painter in his style — there's no question in the world. Very, very individual. Let's give him a classification, the best classification, not cubist or expressionist--he was an independent artist. And artists gloried in the word. So you had a group there, a group of independent artists. Independent of each other's criteria of art. And they appreciated each other's independence.

DANIELI: What about Pascin?

FEITELSON: Oh, yes. He was in New York.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1974

DANIELI: And I don't know this person at all; how about [Edward] Middleton Manigault?

FEITELSON: I just simply know his name, because on some little photograph that I had, you know, the Manigault name is on one of them. I know the name. But that's all.

DANIELI: How about Rockwell Kent?

FEITELSON: Well, he was very active. I never knew him. I used to see him down in the Village. He used to hang out in just some little coffee shop, run by some gal. And strangely enough, Marcel Duchamp used to hang out in a place right next door to that that had a sort of a chess club. That was on West Fourth Street near Sixth Avenue. That was the Village. That was like the Rotunde and the Dome in Paris. I don't know what it's like today. I don't think any of those buildings are there.

LUNDEBERG: It's all gone.

DANIELI: How about Man Ray?

FEITELSON: Well, Man Ray, I never really knew him well. I mean, we knew him, even when he was out here, and so on.

DANIELI: Did you know him back there?

FEITELSON: No. Man Ray played no role at all in the New York scene, excepting as one of the New York followers of Duchamp and [Francis] Picabia. And no one — I never saw his work, excepting what we thought; we always mistook it for Duchamp. We knew him when he was out here--that's when I really knew him.

DANIELI: Evidently he did designs for some of the mailers and the brochures and the catalogs at the Daniel Gallery, so I didn't know . . .

FEITELSON: This, I didn't know. I never knew that Daniel had any fancy little things.

DANIELI: Yes. No, Nick had some Xeroxes. Did you know Brigante in New York?

FEITELSON: No, I never — I met him out here.

DANIELI: But you were in a show together.

FEITELSON: Yes, we were in an exhibition, yes. But I didn't know him in New York. He didn't belong to the little world that I was in. He was doing then a sort of a realism, Cezannism, which was not at all. . . . The snobbism of each group, you see? We thought the cubists had already shown us new ways .

DANIELI: I think in the same issue of the archives. . . . magazine, they mention about a person by the name of Peggy Bacon, who had given all of her papers and memorabilia to the Archives of American Art.

FEITELSON: Yes, Peggy Bacon was Mrs. Alex Brook. I think she's still alive.

DANIELI: She still is?

FEITELSON: She must be about, oh, I would say, seventy-eight, around that.

DANIELI: Did you know her?

FEITELSON: No, I just knew her like a lot of people that you know. You couldn't get away from the Whitney Club. We were all members of the Whitney Club, like Sheeler and all these people. But many of these people we didn't know very well . At that time none of these people had reputations . They were simply loners looking for a chance to show their work. Their difficulties were the usual ones: if the work was a little modern, people would merely say, "It's Picasso's art." You know how those things are. Because modern art had very few followers in this country.

DANIELI: Did you know Alexander Brook at all?

FEITELSON: Yes, yes, I know Alex. I think the last time we saw him was in New York, at a Whitney opening. What show would that have been?

LUNDEBERG: It was about 1952, Lorser. Well, you know what sort of thing Alexander Brook characteristically did.

FEITELSON: The American Scene Painting.

LUNDEBERG: American Scene: sad-looking Negroes in a swamp, and so on.

FEITELSON: Slightly inspired by Pascin.

LUNDEBERG: We went to this Whitney opening, about 1952, I guess, and there was a picture by Alexander Brook (at least it was so labeled) . It was the damnedest looking thing. He'd tried to go abstract and it looked like an anvil floating in space. It was a strange, awkward sort of . . .

FEITELSON: It was nothing. You know, the pitiful thing of jumping on the bandwagon. Abstraction was not for him.

LUNDEBERG: Well, like what happened to Emil Kosa, when he tried his hand at abstraction.

FEITELSON: It was pitiful, because he was very, very good in his own kind of realistic painting. If you liked it, if you wanted to have an example of that kind of painting, this guy would be really a champ there, you know.

DANIELI: Yes. I guess a lot of these people were described as being somehow the Woodstock circle, but I don't know. . .

FEITELSON: Well, New York still has — where the devil can you go to get away from that Goddamn sweaty city in the summertime but Woodstock? It has been an art colony for ages. I don't know why it has any special attraction for artists. They painted their bad pictures there, too. So what the hell good is it? [laughter] And the thing that always bugs me--these artists are always talking about (and you see this in French history of contemporary art) always dealing with addresses. I could never understand this thing. Manet and his group, they changed from this cafe to the Cafe Guerbois. Who the hell gives a Goddamn? The conversation was still the same. And Picasso moved from rue Schmaltz to rue God-knows-what . You see? And then they congregated in the Montmartre, and later went to Montparnasse. And he did this when he was on such and such studio. It's like a police state. You've got to report to the police where you are, you see. I have no curiosity and I can never understand this obsession with addresses, and the same thing was true in New York. These boys would be there, next time up in Vermont, then still another place. They're like a bunch of cockroaches. Clubs, you see. This never appealed to me. I get together with my friends when we have a need for one another, intellectually or any other way. Or if we need, actually need to see a guy, we go out of our way. But this whole business of having identification with places has been the death of these people. Because they automatically date themselves: "They belong to those guys that used to hang around there." As time passes (and every movement lasts no more than five years at the most, as I said) , they become automatically passe. For appreciation of that kind of art, one would say, "Why doesn't the artist show it to the boys in Woodstock?" Or something like that.

DANIELI: How about Dorothy Varian?

FEITELSON: Yes, I knew Dorothy Varian. She was a very good painter. And when Brummer had his gallery on Fifty- seventh Street, a very plush gallery, almost like a little palace (he was showing Seurat and all these wonderful things) , its formal appearance made it a forbidding place. She was acting as the curator. She was more or less a disciple of Kenneth Hayes Miller. Many of the "advanced" artists had been schooled by Miller, who was a very good teacher, better than he was a painter.

DANIELI: At the Art Students League?

FEITELSON: Yes, at the Art Students League. He'd been there forever. A very nice man, very nice guy.

DANIELI: Couple of teachers that were mentioned: Jonas Lie?

FEITELSON: Well, we only met him once when he was out here to pick pictures for the New York World Fair. He chose some of Helen's and some of mine. It was your print, wasn't it?

DANIELI: Are we back in '39 or '68?

FEITELSON: In '39. Jonas Lie — or as he pronounced it, "Lee" (I think he was Swedish) — he enjoyed a tremendous reputation as what we would today call an academic impressionist. Very much in the style, very free handling, like the Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla [1862-1923] . And I can remember, there was a painting of his, back before the first war, just a little before that, about the building of the Panama Canal, where you're looking down into the ditch, the smoke coming up — beautifully painted. When art was nothing else but performance, you see. Masterly performance. But in his taste, he was more catholic than most of the painters in that particular genre. And he was an excellent exemplar of American impressionism, now that we're looking back to the American impressionists (because he spent most of his life here and developed his art here). There's no question in the world that they stood up much better than their contemporaries in France or in Germany, especially in the work of that particular painter. In other words, what historically is called "the grand moment of realistic painting" was taking place in America! These are the guys. Now we're looking at these people: these were the boys.

DANIELI: How about Andrew Dasburg?

FEITELSON: Dasburg, who probably is still alive, was born in Paris, 1887. He spent early youth in Germany and then emigrated to the U.S. in 1892. I was always a great admirer of his work. As a matter of fact, before I left New York for this part of the world, I saw an exhibition of his at the Whitney [Studio] Galleries. (Now, they had changed the Club to the Galleries. They enlarged their place, and they were on Eighth Street.) And this was a Dasburg show. And he reminded me very much of [Henry Lee] McFee. He had gone through cubism and synchronism and been influenced by [Robert] Delaunay, and others--like all the young painters at that time. But when he got back to this country, the Puritanism comes out, even though he was German; and he was painting well-organized landscapes in the Southwest (I think New Mexico, wherever he lived) . And he worked with a minimum amount of color. The only objection that I found, and many of my contemporaries agreed, is that of his paint texture. Everything looked as though it was made of felt. Instead of the strokes being applied, he would pat them on. It's very nice, but everything looks like that, you see. But when you got away and took a view of it, he could organize, he could construct — that's the only word — he constructed a landscape. He was thinking of Cezanne, that the organization is the thing, except that he wanted a minimum amount of distortion. Just like McFee, who died out here. And Dasburg did beautiful cubist realism in the beginning; some things were almost cubism. So he was a damn good painter. And terribly underrated, terribly underrated. So if anybody offers you a Dasburg for twenty- five dollars, you give it to him. [laughter]

DANIELI: How about Dorothea Greenbaum?

FEITELSON: Doesn't ring a bell at all.

DANIELI: Okay. Irving White?

FEITELSON: Doesn't ring a bell.

DANIELI: Konrad Cramer?

FEITELSON: Konrad Cramer belongs to the early boys. He may have even been in the Armory show. Let me take a look. [gets up to get book] No, this was Edward Kramer. It's not the same Kramer. My mistake. These are New York artists?

DANIELI: Yes. This is from a list of names that I got out of that magazine [Journal of the Archives of American Art] . I realized that you were there and you would have known these people, too, and maybe this would supplement material that they have.

FEITELSON: What area is this? Is it after '26? 'Cause after '26, I'm not there.

DANIELI: No, it's during the twenties. It could have been just, you know, people who were further out in Peggy Bacon's group of friends.

FEITELSON: Well, let me check here in the catalog of the Armory show, with this source. Let's take Cramer first. The name Cramer rings a bell, Konrad Cramer.

DANIELI: With a C.

FEITELSON: Oh, with a C. Wait a minute. Geez, it ' s a good thing you mentioned that.

DANIELI: And it's Cramer.

FEITELSON: Cramer, yes, sir. There's something else again. No, he's not in here. Now let me look in this New York World Fair catalog of 1939, and we may find him among the graphic artists. Let's see if there's a Cramer. There's no Cramer there. Now let's look under the painters. No Cramer here.

DANIELI: Okay.

FEITELSON: Give me some of the other names that you just mentioned that we passed before. I'm just testing this index .

DANIELI: Well, let's see. We could go back to Dorothea Greenbaum . I'm willing to pass on, and we'll start on something else.

FEITELSON: I don't think these were — in what kind of a context did you find these names?

DANIELI: Well, they were friends of Peggy Bacon. They could be friends that you never knew.

FEITELSON: Yes, I see what you mean.

DANIELI: Now, this other one — I think it would be more interesting — the painter Louis Bouche.

FEITELSON: Yes, I knew Louis Bouche.

DANIELI: He turned over to the archives something like a two- hundred-page autobiography. . . .

FEITELSON: He was an enormous fellow. Oh, yes, he was a live wire. He would be maybe about two or three years my senior. He also ran a gallery for the Wanamakers on modern art. I can remember they had a very fine show, which included Picasso and [Giorgio] de Chirico, and other now historic moderns.

DANIELI: I wanted to ask you about that, because it's the Wanamakers' La Belle Maison. . . .

FEITELSON: Belle Maison was the exhibition room. The Belle Maison, this was really a surprisingly little room.

DANIELI: When they talk about anything in this Archives article, it's as if Daniel was either a great friend or patron of Bouche' s.

FEITELSON: Well, he exhibited at Daniel's. But again, as I wrote to these people in Delaware, every time we went to the Belle Maison, we were the only guys there. History writes about it, absurdly magnifying these incidents as great events. Meaning only that's the first time these things took place, and where it took place--that ' s on record. Now we look back, and these are great names. We incorrectly assume--God knows why — that people were breaking down the doors to see these shows. People were writing, but nobody gave a Goddamn about it. It meant nothing. These people weren't known.

DANIELI: And then what kind of shows did you see there?

FEITELSON: I can't remember every show they put on. I can remember a Picasso show, or group shows including Picasso, and I can remember seeing some very fine examples of de Chirico. I was always an admirer. Most people didn't care for de Chirico. They saw it as just simply a backwash of romantic symbolism, and for them it was also a kind of pseudocubism.

DANIELI: That's so interesting, because the negative things, like the negative things you felt about Charles Demuth and Sheeler, if you wanted to be very severe, yes, they could be seen that way. If you wanted to do a put- down, you know. . . .

FEITELSON: It was seen that way! The frame of mind that was making critical values of certain things that you accepted and that you had to fight [for] , that you had to fight to convince others of, immediately put you in a position to use those same kinds of greater values against the opposing views. And another man who was cruelly criticized was [Georges] Rouault. They said, "What the hell is this bast — what's so modern about him? He's a derivative if ever there was one, with the clumsy, big, fat lines just redundantly making the head of a clown, and then he puts the crown of thorns on it and calls it a Christ. He's a lousy painter, insensitive. His colors look like busted colored bottles. He's already created a mannerism — has no originality anywhere." All you do is think of the others that his work recalls. And they were sincere when they said that. When they had the exhibitions, they couldn't eliminate him because he was active, on the scene, so they put it where the door, when it opens, hides the picture. These are the truths that the kids don't get. And we may be doing the very same thing right now, and the historians of fifty years will say, "Don't talk about the wonderful moment. Then, they were kicking his brains out."

DANIELI: Here's that name you mentioned, Hamilton Easter Field.

FEITELSON: Yes.

LUNDEBERG: Who the devil's that?

FEITELSON: His protege was that sculptor — I'm trying to think--it was sort of a French name. I've got it — Robert Laurent. Hamilton Easter Field played a very important role with his magazine, and it was a good magazine, for those days.

DANIELI: That was Arts?

FEITELSON: The Arts, yes. It was a good magazine. God, we don't pay homage to these guys who really built up the whole thing — American art.

DANIELI: And Niles Spencer.

FEITELSON: Yes, I know, yes. I know Niles.

DANIELI: You say you knew him?

FEITELSON: Oh, yes.

DANIELI: What was he like?

FEITELSON: I think I pictured--Helen never saw him that way because he was already gray-haired when we were in New York. When I knew him, about 1919, 1920 — I don't remember what years it was — he was doing work very much like Matisse, very florid, and quite colorful, pen and inks. And I may have ruined him, in one respect. I've got a drawing here that's very, very interesting. He would come to the studio very — there were very few people that I had anything in common with. And he looked very much like the photograph of Edgar Allan Poe, the dark, brooding face, with a little bristle moustache. And he came from that same part of the world, from Rhode Island. And he had a problem with the bottle. His wife--I can't remember what was her maiden name — she was a very fine painter, painted very much in the manner, the ideals of Braque. Very fine. He was very sharp- tongued in spite of everything, and a very, very sensitive artist. And he was also a very close friend of friends of ours, the Cahills (that's Dorothy Miller and Holger Cahill) .

LUNDEBERG: That was later, wasn't it?

FEITELSON: That was later. And it was no different from the time when I knew him. He painted a single picture, endlessly. So I made a couple of drawings from my window, and he said, "Geez, I like that. Let me see your drawing." (I've got the original drawings. Very, very interesting.) And he made a very fine painting, I may add. Did more with the theme than I ever would have done with my notion. I was going through my black period at that time he came to the studio. You've seen that very large Bathers, which is in a hell of a condition. I don't know if I ever showed it to you. It's in the other room. Did you see that painting?

DANIELI: No, I guess I haven't.

FEITELSON: That was the picture that — was painted in 1919, 1920. You must see the picture, because then you'll see what I'm talking about. Niles Spencer said, "What the devil are you using?" And I had a great big pan filled with the blacking used for stovepipes in New York. I said the paintshop said that's the same damn thing that they put in tubes. It's lampblack, soot black. So I said to him, "For the price of a tube, I've got enough to paint the whole damn building." And I was going through my "black period," my Artist and Model [(1920), 45" X 45" (oil on canvas)]. And this big picture The Bathers, the one I just mentioned, which is sort of Cezannesque (it's quite a large one).

LUNDEBERG: Is that what you used on that painting?

FEITELSON: Yes. And also on the Artist and Model. At that time, I foolishly used the world's worst canvas. I think I had already painted something beneath The Bathers. That goes back to about 1917. Well, you know what it is that's beneath it? The picture that appears in the little old photo showing Kitty in 1917 standing on the studio roof, beside a large painting of two big nudes--similar to this small earlier painting, hanging here above the telephone — rather Matisselike.

LUNDEBERG: You mean this painting was painted over that?

FEITELSON: Yes. You can see the lines of the painting beneath. You can see this thing. I must show it to you. So we thought it would be an idea. And he got on the binge for black painting. I think I ruined that guy. It was cheaper, and so on. Come on, I'll take you in, because I want you to see this. You want to see it?

DANIELI: Not now.

FEITELSON: All right.

DANIELI: How about Robert W. Chanler?

FEITELSON: Oh, no, I didn't know him. I knew of him. He was the brother of that famous Chanler. Or maybe he was the Chanler. No, I think it was his brother. There were two brothers, multimillionaires. One of the brothers became famous: he was taken by his mistress, or he married her--I can't even remember--Madame Cavalieri, or something like that, was her name. She was a very famous beauty, a courtesan and singer or actress; I don't know. That affair was just bounced around in all the newspapers — everybody knew about that famous affair. But he spent a great deal of his time in Europe, and he supported quite a number of artists, particularly Isadora Duncan. A friend of mine — just passed on--knew him very, very well. Stanley Reckless knew him very, very well. And I think he lived for a while with this drunken lout, Isadora Duncan--she had become an awful mess. But he was very generous in his help, in his helping of artists. And his own work, which I could remember--the thing that I can remember better than anything else in the Armory show were these large. . . . What looked like screens, like Occidental interpretations of Oriental art, very, very decorative and probably done with some kind of paint that's in relief, glazed with beautiful colors. It was very exotic and very esoteric. And this was his art.

DANIELI: Walter Kuhn?

FEITELSON: Walt Kuhn, yes. Knew him. In fact, while he was active in New York I had not met him, but I met him out here — when I first came out here, up in San Francisco. I was taken to a studio — can't remember whose studio it was — and I was taken there by the mother of Pierre Salinger, Margaret Salinger (she used to have a magazine on art) . I can remember meeting Walt Kuhn, and then later we met him several times out here, through Arthur Miller. And then I had an experience with the bastard. He called me one day and said, "I'm in town and I've got a lecture that I'd like to present to the kids." He was a great big bastard. He said, "Could you make an arrangement at the Art Center School?" I said, "Sure." So the head of the school said, "Fine." Called all the kids in, and he gave 'em a talk. This was during those terrible days, about 19 — gee, it couldn't be 1950; it was earlier than that. There was a campaign in the Hearst papers against modern art as being a conspiracy against our culture — it was communism in disguise, and all those horrible things. Well, Kuhn had been one of the original guys behind the organization of the show which we called the Armory show. Little did I know that this guy made an about-face, and he was now working for Hearst. And he's not a guy you argue with. This giant--he had a fist this size, and he dressed with a cowboy hat. He must have looked funny: he was a friend of Pascin. Little Pascin was this size, you know, and then there's this great big giant. When he laughed you could hear in in Pittsburgh. And he was proud of being rough and ready and a circus man, you know, a lot of baloney, a barker and all that. So he went down and he charmed all these kids because he was "telling truth." I've even got a little book that he published, a little book on the history of the development of the Armory show. And he'd start telling — and all these things are facts. Then, when he gets through with it, he says, "Now that years have passed, I realize, with real experience, and with the good wisdom that only years can give you, that Cezanne was a great big faker, and that all these guys, the pioneer moderns, put one over on us!" He would laugh at his own jokes, and the kids didn't know — they'd laugh along with him. So after he left, I said, "I'm going to go to work and undo it, not only undo it but make it impossible for these kids ever to be taken in by this. Because we're going to talk about the truth. Why is he doing this? It's more than just simply for so many pieces of silver." And here's what happened--and this is absolutely the facts of the case. He and the so-called antiacademicians had one thing in common: "Let's put on the show in which we avoid the authority of the academy." That in itself is a revolution, an intellectual revolution. "We're going to bring in real independent artists." So they got all the representatives that they thought were important from Europe, and it was quite a project. And even men like — what's his name?- -Arthur B. Davies, who put up the money and lots of his time, got lots of people to put up money to get the show.

DANIELI: We're talking about the Armory show?

FEITELSON: Yes, the Armory show. Then something happened. When the show was on, they thought they would use that to open the doors to exploit their own work. No one would go for the extreme things, but something that is, as they say, "moderate." But it didn't work that way. Those who were interested in the new, who were antiacademy, went for Matisse and all the others, and pushed Kuhn and his New York friends out. For them, that was a very bitter pill. And the European moderns were selling. The American youngsters were now finding inspiration in the Europeans' work, not in Walt Kuhn. Kuhn and his friends had been brooding on this for many years. They thought maybe this defeat was only temporary. But it wasn't temporary. So Kuhn gets up there with his sermon and enjoys every bit of his bullshit. It was just as simple as that. These kids were innocent. They could think, "Sure, this guy is now having regrets — he's remorseful for the thing that he was responsible for." Pandora's box, you see, opening up. This was the last time I ever saw him. But I really didn't know the man. I know when Hitler was in the ascendency, before the war, he was very active in expressing his pro- German sentiments and his anti-Semitism. Something you very seldom find in the art world, or any such things, intolerance or racism.

DANIELI: Then you mentioned earlier than I had it here about the Penguin Club, What was that?

FEITELSON: Yes, that was right beneath me on East Fifteenth Street. It actually was a place for many of the artists who probably had been living in Paris and doing antiacademic work and had one thing in common: many of these artists who were migrating back to the States thought that by banding together and having this place. . . . Probably [they] rented it for about fifteen or twenty dollars in those days, and it was quite a long place--I would say the depth of the place could have been almost about a hundred feet. And as I said, it was right beneath me. On Fifteenth Street--10 East Fifteenth. Either 10 or 12 East — I lived at different times in these little red buildings. But I think it's 10. And nobody ever went there, excepting these guys. Maybe once a month, [they] would have some kind of a party there. And that was during Prohibition. Prohibition had already been established. No, no — let's see. Prohibition was 1918. This is 1917 I'm talking about. So this is about the time they opened it. And that's where Pascin and [C.R.W.] Nevinson and Wyndham Lewis, when he had his show (I always feel I saw that show in that place; I may be wrong. . . .) As I mentioned, Pascin. And there were many others who came to this country to get away from the war. But the way we talk about it — we're talking about a handful of guys.

DANIELI: They had exhibits?

FEITELSON: They had exhibits, and no one ever attended.

DANIELI: And would they be up for several weeks, or up for a month?

FEITELSON: Oh, the New York shows are always short shows-- three weeks. That was the first place I saw, for the first time--what ' s his name?--the sculptor we just mentioned. Gaston Lachaise. I was to know him a little later. But very few people went there. It's only now that history immortalizes it. And there was another place--and no one writes about it--on Washington Square South. It was called the Modern Art Gallery. [William] Zorach and many of these people were exhibiting there. I can remember there was a little ad there. I can't remember who talked — I think it was the same fellow. Dr. John Weichsel, or something like that. I can remember Stan's brother, Willard Huntington Wright, there. And Paul Berlin, and many of that particular group. But it was just only a handful, like a bunch of American refugees. And it was also used as a school. These people had no income whatsoever. They couldn't possibly sell their pictures. And right close by was the house, or the building, which I think they not only lived in but they owned, the Prendergast brothers. The better one, of course, is Maurice. They didn't enjoy any significant reputation. They were looked upon as decorators. And his brother did decorative panels — flowers with gold on them, and whatnot.

DANIELI: You told me about the Zorachs doing decorative things.

FEITELSON: They were doing very decorative things. My generation didn't give a Goddamn for their work. They looked like batik painters. I mean, the prejudice is ...

DANIELI: Now, they had a shop or something, and you described being in some situation where you saw a lot of their work?

FEITELSON: Well, that's the place. That school I just mentioned .

DANIELI: This Gallery of Modern Art?

FEITELSON: Yes. It was also a school.

DANIELI: Okay. I'm trying to think back to the last time we talked; you did a nice description of the kind of stuff Marguerite and William Zorach did during that time.

FEITELSON: Well, the things that I saw and can recall — that's before he took to sculpture — were very decorative, a sort of a primitivism, inspired by Gauguinism, in the academic sense (not imitating Gauguin) . Making these highly formalized kind of figures, pastorales, compositions, as they were called. They had really no subject matter. Sort of hedonism — the joys of living, conventionalized flowers, and so forth and so on. All with a two-dimensional plan. To most of my generation, they were not at all Matisse. When we thought of Matisse, those simple pictures that he painted took him months and months and months, and he was draining every possibility that his sensibilities could invent. And that again--that had terrific impact. You felt that the Zorach things were light and served a certain purpose, and that's all it was. They should have been shown as the highest form of arts and crafts — crafts. And many of these things could easily have been done with all kinds of dyes. Now, at that time it was the fashion to make batiks; everybody was making batiks in those days, beautiful things.

DANIELI: Want to give us a date?

FEITELSON: This would be during the first war. And the style — and I mentioned this — that was popular was peasant art. Today we don't hear that word at all. People were buying all kinds of fabrics with peasant designs, affecting the peasant art from about Czechoslovakia, even in furniture, painted furniture. Everybody was mad about it, and it was very attractive. And even the stylized figures, like little peasants dancing--this we felt in Zorach' s work.

DANIELI: Then did you know Marguerite Zorach when she came out here?

FEITELSON: No, never. Never really knew them very well As I said, we didn't belong to the same school. I can remember one conversation — and I think I told Helen — I spoke about Willard Huntington Wright. . . .

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

FEITELSON: I think we ought to have some more coffee.

DANIELI: If you can finish that sentence. . . .

FEITELSON: Oh, are you ready?

DANIELI: Yes.

FEITELSON: Well, coming back again to the conversation with William Zorach: when I mentioned Willard Huntington Wright, within the context, as one of the first literary figures to do something in America, in English, on the modern movement, he just threw a fit, spit on the sidewalk, and said, "That dirty bastard! That phony! Bullshit!" — all that sort of stuff. He said, "He hasn't got the slightest knowledge of art, and he and his Goddamn conniving brother are trying to rearrange the set of values by which we should judge all art, modern and the past. It's very easy: all you got to do is read their philosophy of synchromism. It starts with Turner and ends with the masterpieces of S.M.W." Now, it wasn't that he disliked Wright's work; he disliked this kind of a philosophy of a new and a worse form of academic dogmatism!

DANIELI: I hadn't heard about Stanton Macdonald-Wright ' s brother before.

FEITELSON: What? Are you kidding?

LUNDEBERG: Willard Huntington Wright. His pseudonym as a writer of mystery stories was S.S. Van Dyne. Did you ever hear of him?

DANIELI: Because Rose [Krasnow] was trying to remember that today, and I couldn't help her. I didn't know what she was talking about.

FEITELSON: Well, then you don't — you must know the story of his brother in order to understand Stan.

DANIELI: I'll be glad to hear it.

FEITELSON: All his life, Stan was emulating his brother. To his mannerism, to the kind of beard, to his pretense of vast knowledge of Oriental art — that was his brother. Even his clothes; he inherited his clothes. Even the mannerisms. His brother was a sharp, brilliant guy, who, when he was only nineteen years old out here, was the literary editor of the Times. And then — he was still a young fellow — he was the editor of the Smart Set magazine. He was brilliant. And he wrote these books on understanding Nietzsche, on the aphorisms of Nietzsche. He based his whole life on Nietzsche. And in a way he also emulated [Ezra] Pound, with his sarcasm, and downing everybody, and the superman, and the love for the kaiser and then of Hitler. He believed there are people who deserve everything, and the others are just so much rot. This was the philosophy of what the nineteenth century called "the dandy," the Whistlerian gesture, the fop. He could never talk about anything unless he could talk about it obscurely, to make sure you didn't know those areas. In other words, we called it "the impressor act." And there again you have the same things I said about Rico Lebrun. Stan Wright didn't need that. He could have been on his own without affecting. And everybody who knew Willard said, "This is a little Willard." And they almost looked alike. There was three years' difference in age.

DANIELI: But I hadn't heard until today, talking with Peter and Rose, about the relationship with Huntington. How are they related to. . . ?

FEITELSON: He claims that they're related. Stan had a great way of making good stories a reality. So I would never use it unless you can check with it. On his mother's side there seems to be some relationship — she was supposed to be a Van Vranken. I'm not sure. That's not even his father's name, Wright. It's supposed to be Van Vranken, isn't it?

LUNDEBERG: Gee, I don't know, Lorser.* *[The father of Willard and Stanton was Archibald Davenport, and their mother was Annie Van Vranken Wright. — Ed.]

FEITELSON: Yes, Van Vranken. Never understood how it was changed to Macdonald- Wright, to Scotch. And the joke is — this is very, very funny: Van Vranken is a very old, famous Dutch-Jewish family. And he was terribly anti- Semitic. That proves that he was probably Jewish, [laughter]

DANIELI: The writing that Willard Huntington Wright did.

FEITELSON: The first book on modern art was done by Willard Huntington Wright [ Modern Painting : Its Tendency and Meaning (1915)] in which he builds up everything towards synchromy. He was only twenty-five years old when he . . .

DANIELI: And he used that name?

FEITELSON: Yes, he always used his name. There was never any question about it — a very brilliant man.

DANIELI: Now, how did I miss him being the famous writer? I never knew that was. . . .

LUNDEBERG: Well, he was more famous as S.S. Van Dyne.

FEITELSON: Those detective stories. According to Stan Macdonald-Wright, he conceived this whole thing while he was recuperating from breaking the opium habit. He used to devour — same thing as Stan Wright — always reading detective stories. And he knew he could write a better one, but using an entirely different angle. Instead of a bunch of Fifth Street bums as detectives, he'd have a man who is a scholar of Oriental art. As he's tracing down the criminal, he stops to look at the Ming vase, and he says, "It isn't Ming; it's such and such period. And this jade. ..." And he gets into all that impressive bullshit that people don't know about, and they think they're getting an education. Foppery paid off!

DANIELI: What about other friends of yours in New York that I wouldn't know about, you know, maybe famous names that you came in contact with? Because obviously these lists are other people's lists. Did you have friends that you spent more time with, people who had studios near you?

FEITELSON: No, no, there were very few in the art world who were doing modern things. That's why I said we had no difficulty at all ever getting shows, and so on. [They were] the only thing that brought us together. As I've said, we had really no interest in one another. And we were all yearning for the larger environment, the source: Paris. "Let's go where it's made." And that's one of the reasons that the artists stayed there. But there they also suffered another condition: the French never accepted them. Never accepted them. "How the hell can an American be a good painter? He admits he's not a good painter, that he has to learn from us."

DANIELI: Last time we were together, we heard strange stories about the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

FEITELSON: Something like that, yes.

DANIELI: How did you first meet her?

FEITELSON: It was during the war. There were some of my friends, like I think Carlo Leonetti (I believe he is the father of Caroline Leonetti, the Leonetti people, and one of them is married to a banker) . Leonetti was a few years older, and he had a studio not very far from mine, just half a block away. But he never did modern work. He was just doing very clever painting, some kind of a derivation of impressionism. He would come up and we would talk about these things. And there was another Italian — Cesar Stea, I think his name was — who used to sing brilliantly. It was like La Boheme in that building. They said, "Why don't you come down? We have a sketch class down on Sheridan Square." There was some kind of an institution there (I haven't the remotest idea what that building was. I can't remember it; I'm sure it's gone now) . And I was told that Mrs. [Gertrude Vanderbilt] Whitney was backing this before she had the club. The room itself, in its square footage, couldn't be even as big as this. And we were drawing--not many, I think about six or eight of us. And there was this strange gal, which to me wasn't strange. New York had models that were posing here before Columbus came, the damnedest kind of things. But it was also very interesting. They almost looked like what [Egon] Schiele was drawing. Bones and muscles. We considered that beautiful. We thought, "Gee, she's great, full of bones and muscle, skinny face and hungry eyes." She started pontificating, and I must have said something rather nasty or made some statement, something like, "Even if it were true, how the hell would you know?" She thought, This is a nasty, cocky youngster. I found myself enjoying badgering her, because she was so arrogant, that we were all supposed to be impressed by her. But the truth was that we were all intrigued with this strange, rather frightening person. So when the little session was over, she said, "I know you must be good, even though I don't agree with you. But come, let me show you some things that I have made." I knew right then that this was a seduction act. (And I was then living in the Village with the gal who was to become my first wife.) So I went down to this place — and I can remember, it was one of those places you walk down to, just below the street level, meaning half of the place has windows that are above the street level, those old red-brick colonial buildings. And here was her little dog, Pinky, who starts snapping at me; and she made the statement, "He's very jealous. I don't know why, because I gave him a good fucking." Geez, I mean, what the hell kind of a gal is this? And here on the walls were shovels and all kinds of things. I said, "Marcel Duchamp. " She said, "Yes, I know him very well." I don't mean to say that she took it from him — and I'm not sure. She was playing around with "found discoveries." She would take the shovel and put it up against a background of some kind of a colored paper or materials. She had many such things, and they were wonderful. I found myself immediately reacting to things . But I could see she was. . . . The war was on, and according to the war, she's an enemy alien (German or Austrian) . And she was having a hell of a time making a living, though she was a nympho — made no bones about it. But no ordinary nympho. She "used" the guys and threw them out and probably robbed them when she got through with them. And also, if a gal looked at her, she'd use the girls. It made no difference — she was very democratic about such things. She would talk about how she was trying to seduce all these people, these poets and so on, and the disasters that she experienced. There was a friend of mine. Jack Hoffman, a great big Dutchman, an arrogant bastard, a bad artist, a commercial artist, that she insisted upon laying. And there was a guy who was out here, Karoly Fulop, who used to live in my building on Fourteenth Street, that knew her. She'd go up to a guy's place and she would demand the service, so to speak. And she was arrested many, many times for what they called indecent exposure, the way she dressed, in batik, with an opening there and dyed pubic hair, walking down Fifth Avenue. This fascinating thing, looks as though it stepped out of. . . . But she was an artist. She wrote poetry that was very shocking for those days, in a little poetry magazine which was the magazine at that time. And she had many people who admired her and many people who were scared to death of her. And it was easy to be scared of her, because she always took the initiative. She would come up and visit us, and she would put notes in the mailbox and would spell it like — I have one book here written in German, where they mention my name, and they have a different way of spelling it, with a V--V-e-i-t-e-l-s-o-h-n . And she'd bring up all kinds of — I think I told you this-- a cluster of pipes that she picked up right around the corner (they had razed one of those buildings) , dragging this thing up the stairs. [It sounded like] somebody was busting the building. And she said, "Isn't this grand sculpture?" And she wasn't kidding. Accident made this thing. What the hell difference does it make if the guy intended it or not? It wasn't difficult to convince us. Many of my crowd understood that very well. Or picking up banal things and saying they're great works of art. Makes no difference what the intention is. If it has the properties. . . .

DANIELI: There's something about a painting that you had seen on one of those. . . .

FEITELSON: Then I brought — my nieces wanted to see Greenwich Village, and that was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. (I'm not quite sure it's the worst, but it was one of the earliest.) And she had this panel--probably a little wider, about this wide, but larger, and with legs ...

DANIELI: A signboard.

FEITELSON: Signboard, yes.

DANIELI: From a gas station.

FEITELSON: . . . and this great big beautiful pink area, rather nebulous, and then shiny sequins and poetry, and little mother-of-pearl sort of things. I asked her what is this thing, and she says, "That is a portrait of mine asshole." That's all. But she wasn't pulling anybody's leg — that's the point. These were sincere things, and this was no dope. This was a very worldly person. She was way ahead of her time. People always remembered all those abominable things that she did that shocked the hell out of everybody; but only that kind of person would have had the nerve to do it. Had she been very thoughtful, as they would say, she would have said, "Oh, what the hell is the use of doing it? The reaction to the thing isn't worth it, even if I believe it." So she had to have this terrific conceit and faith in her convictions. And I still say you cannot talk about Marcel Duchamp detached from other people. And for me, the number one person is Alfred Jarry. Duchamp is nothing else but an extension of Jarry, for me. Jarry was the real thing.

DANIELI: Did you know Duchamp then, and Picabia?

FEITELSON: Never knew them. I used to see Duchamp in that little Greenwich Village cafe. Like you go to cafes and see people, you know--they have seen you many times, and so on. You'd probably know him better if you ran into him in Paris; there you would feel as though you always knew each other--you know, that sort of stuff. But during my days, he had no reputation. He was a has-been. The whole Dada movement was considered a disaster, an aborted movement. When I got to Paris, at one of the shows in the early twenties — I think I told you about this--at the independent show (or could it be the Salon d'Automne? it's in the same building) , we were in the grand stairway with a million people, the din of their voices, and so on. And all of a sudden there were these funny French whistles, like the conductors have there, and then somebody shouting, " Silence! " Everybody looked up, and there you saw on the rotunda a number of guys, shouting — they looked like a bunch of sophomores — "Dada, Dada, Dada, c'est morte . Dada, Dada ..." three times and that was it. They were announcing the death of Dada. All of us thought it died a long time ago. But this was official. [laughter]

LUNDEBERG: What year was that, Lorser?

FEITELSON: I would say that's '22. And I keep thinking of... This was the same time there was a painting which fascinated me, by Picabia, The Spanish Night. It looked like some kind of diagram, and the gal has all kinds of spots on her--you've seen that picture. One side is white, one side is black, and so on. It's a big picture. And there was something else, and I keep thinking it was a Picabia — a very large frame, an oversize frame, maybe this size, maybe larger, a very fancy frame with nothing in between excepting the string and a billet doux, sealed. That's all. And there were a number of things I tell Helen about which I could remember: a construction--and when I think back, I bet it was Russian-- made of metal (I don't know if they had aluminum in those days or not, or zinc or tin) tubes, and rather interesting, with wires and sheets of mica. You had to be careful, because you'd trip over the damn thing and then you'd get the shock of your life — all of a sudden, bang! and smoke. It was called La Guerre, with sound effects yet. So it was in the air; it was already in the air. But who the artist was, I haven't the remotest idea. But many of these people that we talk about on the level of humor, after the humor has wasted itself, we find we have something that's very, very important. I'm thinking about the baroness. You cannot dismiss that by just a personality. What difference would it matter if she were a nun and did this thing, and not the colorful character who ended by suicide? (Nobody knows how she died, if it was an accident or not, in Paris.) And there was another guy, yes, one of the guys that I knew was Van Empel, who I prophesied would hang himself. We used to talk and argue about cubism. He had that book by [Jean] Metzinger and [Albert] Gleizes, one of the first books. He was a man considerably older than I was (he could have been fifteen years older) . He looked just like Teddy Roosevelt. And he was of Dutch ancestry. And there was another guy, another Dutchman, who's still around, I understand (he's in very bad condition) -- Gerrit Hondius. He was doing modern things. I liked him. I probably was the only guy who could get along with him. He was a very belligerent fellow, and it didn't take him long to sock anybody. He also drank too much. But he had tremendous convictions about art. I tell Helen always that famous story, how we were talking, in complete agreement, looking out at night, looking at this damn thing — three o'clock in the morning, at one of those low buildings on Christopher Street. And this post, which I'll never forget, to which some wires were tied, or probably it was the support for a sign many years ago, almost lying on its side, kind of tilted, and I think there was another. We were talking about this object, and for us, that was the greatest piece of sculpture. There's no question: it had all the monumental quality of great sculpture. Now, how the hell can you talk about these posts in the terms of traditional art as we understood it? There was nothing in past concepts to accommodate it. These new concerns were in the air in those days. And there were very few people to affirm or give you comfort in your conviction. We were forced to be loners. We avoided a lot of people because we didn't want to place ourselves on the defensive. As we do to this day. We often meet people, talk about very familiar subjects that we're in up to our ears. And what do we say to them, the moment they start talking nonsense? "Well, this is a subject I really don't know too much about." To avoid antagonism, we have to always run ourselves down, to avoid having to argue with the guy. It' s always useless, and you have only frustration and bad feelings. If you like the person, you will wish this conversation never came up. What the hell do you say to a guy who's really a sculptor? He says, "All right, tell me, what do you see in this wooden post in terms of sculpture?" The only thing I can say to him, "If you don't see it as something more significant than a post" (you cluck, tsuh-tsuh-tsuh) "then you have my deepest sympathy!" Then he goes around telling his friends, "This guy's crazy." And when he tells the story, everybody believes him, too. This is what I'm talking about. The artist is forced into an ivory tower, so he could conserve his own beliefs. He's always looking for the guy who has some kind of understanding of the most valuable of his values. That's the only thing he's looking for, the understanding, to be appreciated on his own terms. That is the greatest reward; there isn't anything else. And unless someone has experienced these things, what we are talking about now doesn't mean anything at all. For them, glory and satisfaction take on some other kind of a material form. So there are many — and they're lost to history — people who were thinking about this at that time. Lost for one reason, mostly, this thing called survival--having to live. All right, what did Hondius do? Hondius would work at the Pirate's Den, together with Leonetti , at night, dressed up as pirates in front of this cabaret and getting their tips. Others were driving cabs, particularly at night, to whore- houses and getting big tips at both ends, from client and madam. In the daytime--the few hours left--they could do their painting. Van Empel. When I got back from Paris after a number of years, and I asked [someone], "What's happened to him?" (and you see, Van Empel and I saw each other often), I was told, "Don't you know? You told him one time that he's so Goddamn negative" — his philosophy was always toward nihilism — "you told him, 'You're going to rationalize your own demise.'" He says, "He did that." He says, "The bastard did the funniest thing: he had a little boat on the Hudson River, and he hanged himself from the top of the mast." He'd have been the last guy in the world — he looked what you call the wholesome guy, red cheeks and all that. There was no use continuing. This was the depressing atmosphere. And don't forget — things were happening. Hitler was rumbling through Europe, and Benito was raising Cain, and Japan was becoming the great military might, and so on. And all the Ku Klux Klanism in this country. It was a mess! And of course the artist gets kicked by everybody. At that time the artist had no way of supporting himself. At least today he can make prints and sell them. Nothing at all! He couldn't do a Goddamn thing! If he didn't have well-to-do parents, he was up against it. This is what happened to a man like Niles Spencer. He was living on the little annuities. Most of these people came from bourgeois families, what they call "good families," quote, which meant they had a bank account.

DANIELI: How did you make it?

FEITELSON: Well, my parents supported me. Like all my friends, or many of them, it got to the point, just like my father said, "You'd better get into the business, or else." Most of the artists of my generation had some kind of income. The plight was terrible for the guy who had no support .

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1975

FEITELSON: What was the last word?

DANIELI: Life was terrible for the guy that, I guess, really believed in. . . .

FEITELSON: Yes. I don't know if we have this situation today, because we have a huge population of artists, and art is now very respectable, and socially it's "in." All the newspapers and magazines play it up. And institutions of art are numerous. In those days, outside of the established art and the established art in the museum, there was no support. You had the Hearst collection, or whatever collection, and they were stored, and institutions had curators working for next to nothing; many of them had to be married to some rich woman (usually it was a social position), and they had to be able to support themselves. There was very little budget for their activities. These collections often were simply monuments to the wealthy families. And they were buying only what we would now recognize as name pictures, or what is called good securities. The interest in creativity, contemporary creativity, just didn't exist. Nobody would even think about this. It had no meaning. And the few artists that thought in those terms were equated with the people who dedicate their lives to the church. It was a deep conviction and worth all the sacrifice. And it was pretty hard. It was pretty hard. But he could do it easier than today, because he could live in any kind of a rathole of a studio. They were inexpensive. And the luxuries of what we call civilization didn't exist in those studios. They just had a great big room, cold water (if you wanted hot water, you had to heat it) , with the can God knows where, somewhere on the same floor. And they were lucky when they had this place. They lived just on the psychological warmth of each other. They didn't need the outside world. The approval of the work by just a few of their fellow artists--that was it! The press didn't pay any attention unless it was in an exhibition place. And we didn't have the star system of contemporary art in those days, because there was no money in it. So the artist who pursued it knew right from the beginning, he had to get his ultimate satisfaction out of his art. That's why you had the Arthur Doves, who were poor as church mice, and others of these painters, just dedicatedly pursuing their art. The Doves were married, and they apparently shared warmth and great love. They were bound by just this dedication to art. We don't have it today. Today it's becoming almost a super business for some of the younger artists. We have audiences applauding the picture before it's painted. Fabricated myths about the guy. And I'll never forget: this was during a pop art symposium that I believe was in the Arts magazine, and one of these young artists says, "In my early work of two and a half years ago" — he's now really practically writing his memoirs! This didn't exist. The artist didn't fool himself about glory. He didn't fool himself about being able to make a living. He didn't feel sorry for himself. He knew what the hell he was doing. And if you ask him, "Would you do it if you had to live life over again?" he would say, "More so. More so!" So the word dedication really had a meaning.

DANIELI: Did you see the Armory show?

FEITELSON: Yes.

DANIELI: Do you remember it enough to talk about that?

FEITELSON: Well, no. I can say this. The impression of the Armory show — I went there several times — I had a friend by the name of Ben Jetter, who was very cynical about all these things. For him, the decay in art started with Cezanne. He could appreciatively see the impressionists very, very well; he could understand a limited amount of distortion, like in Goya, "interpretation." Jetter could see some of the works of Cezanne before Cezanne really shattered the form beyond what he called logical recognition. He was a very fine draftsman, but also a very practical guy, who entered his parents' business and started doing very well (the old business, "I'll get back to my painting in five years, " which one never does; by that time his business was very big and every minute was valuable and he had a family, etc., etc.). The things that impressed me at the Armory show were, strangely enough, the drawings of Augustus John, the large painting by Gleizes, The Man on the Balcony ; the Nude Descending the Staircase (not as much as The Man on the Balcony ) ; and then some of the paintings that were earlier, the sort of Fauvelike paintings. I have no memory of Picasso's work. As a matter of fact, you look through the Armory show reviews: Picasso's very seldom mentioned. In other words, we weren't prepared. We didn't know what the hell to look at. The thing was thrown into our face. Yes, and of course, those great big screens, those decorative screens by what ' s-his-name. Bob Chanler.

DANIELI: Were you aware of the more conservative quality the American art had, and the more. . . ?

FEITELSON: Oh, yes. I knew the conservative art. You couldn't get away from this. New York was filled with these fine exhibitions, in galleries, of what we call American impressionism. And also, the last school of American Barbizon painting. Yes, they had them.

DANIELI: What I mean is, in that exhibit, was that a real clear kind of demarcation?

FEITELSON: No, no. This was the thing that puzzled me and puzzled many. There were many painters that we had seen in the context of where we thought they belonged. They were not very far removed from William Merritt Chase and [John] Twachtman and other painterly realists. And I think Twachtman may even have been in that show — I'm not sure. I'll look him up. Yes, he was.

DANIELI: I heard something about Davies and Kuhn and those . . .

FEITELSON: Davies was in the show. Kuhn must have been in the show, because he was one of the makers of the show. But there was [Pierre] Puvis de Chavannes, and many other painters, that you couldn't possibly understand why they were considered rebels. They were not beyond the official mainstream. They definitely belonged to the mainstream-- maybe near the periphery, but definitely to the mainstream. But certainly they should not be in a category with, say, Matisse .

DANIELI: Did you know many of those artists before they showed in America?

FEITELSON: No.

DANIELI: Was there a lot of discussion?

FEITELSON: Not as much as people make of this thing. The newspapers had a lot of fun with it. The young artists would row, I can remember. I'm just trying to think of this man's name. A man who must have been twice my age in those days. He was a schoolteacher who taught — yes, Wells. Can't make out his first name, but Wells. A very nice guy. And I can remember, we were in the Metropolitan Museum and we ran into him. I'd known him for a number of years. As I say, he was considered old, and I was with this young fellow, my friend. And Wells started panning first the picture by Augustus John, The Way to the Sea , which is a picture quite unlike most of his other pictures, closest to Puvis de Chavannes, and maybe a little bit inspired by the Nabis. It was a sort of confessional. These are his former mistresses and the child that was born to one of them. It was quite interesting, but it was more historic art reinterpreted than twentieth-century art. John was beloved by everybody, simply because he was a champion of the philosophy of "Be yourself." He was quite well known for his bohemianism, walking around with a great big earring and pretending he's an English gypsy, or something like that. Maybe he was; I'm not sure. And Wells took issue with our enthusiasm for John and Matisse. And I used certain expressions. I said, "Well, you can see from this to Matisse. ..." And we used that little catchphrase which was meaningless — I'm ashamed we even used it; it may have originated with Roger Fry; no, Clive Bell: "significant form." Which doesn't mean anything — significant in what respect? You see. But we understood what we really meant is that whatever he put on the picture was significant in the plastic sense, not the descriptive sense. Dealing with pictorial truths. It was pictorial truth! But our vocabulary was too limited; the modern art vocabulary hadn't yet been invented. And Wells badgered the hell out of us. That's what I can remember. And then there was a Matisse that was really a quiet Matisse, like maybe the self-portrait — I don't think it was that--or portrait of his wife, one of his early things. The only thing we would think about today as being offbeat is perhaps the use, for that time, of intense color, and perhaps a certain amount of simplification. But there wasn't any real distortion, as we think of Matisse, when he could really twist and so on. But at that moment, many, many people were just angered. The whole philosophy of modernism was considered really dangerous, nihilistic. Today we take pride in individualism, but at that time for the word individual ism- -they had another word for it: if you were outside of the circle, it meant only one thing, eccentric. And eccentric doesn't quite mean something very nice. They said, "He's a weirdo." We make a virtue of it.

DANIELI: Can you think back to why you liked the things you liked at the Armory?

FEITELSON: Yes. I think the kinetic implications of some of the works. While they were meant to be cubistic, they also had the kinetic properties, even whether they intended it or not. I'm thinking particularly of the Gleizes, the painting by Gleizes; to me, it had lots of kinetic properties — a lot of shifting and movement. And it wasn't difficult for me to admire it, because I was already admiring some of the eccentrics in the Italian school after 1520, and I'm talking about Parmigianino. I was brought up on that kind of work. Not the boys who were giving more perfection to the human form or to the grand style, but giving it extra kinds of qualities that were not at all in the vocabulary of classicism, and were considered eccentric by their contemporaries. So the manipulation, the distortions that you see in [Florentine] Rosso's mannerist work or in Parmigianino, or in-- what ' s his name? — Jacopo Pontormo and many, many others who even went further, as Francesco Salviati. And we have an extremist like this Guglielmo della Porta. My God, he preceded El Greco and makes El Greco look normal. These are the things I was interested in. When I saw contemporary art, distortions were not brand-new to me. The same delight that the mannerists experienced in making images beyond the normative was exactly what Matisse was experiencing in his way.

DANIELI: What about the drawings of Augustus John? Because I don't know those.

FEITELSON: Oh, what I liked about John's drawings, in those days (they don't appear that way to me now, even though I'm a great admirer. I have a nice John drawing a friend of ours gave me, the one he made for a portrait of the late director of the Metropolitan, Henry Taylor. And I have quite a number of prints of his; I like his prints) — what I liked about his drawings is that there is draftsmanship and not at all the draftsmanship that searches for what we call excellent anatomical rendering. It has nothing whatever to do with it. It's the--well, call it the calligraphic qualities that we admire in certain works of art. So it's an abstract quality. He distorted--the human form hasn't got those things. And it's not the distortion of a Cezanne or a Matisse. We will use the word interpretation . He's used a form as a springboard for personal interpretation. And yet, you know, he has authority. He could just as easily give us all the things that people are talking about- -accuracy . But he doesn't. And this is what fascinated me in this guy. It's like even one of these drawings by Matisse when he makes a lovely study, but you know, he doesn't stop — even in that study it doesn't stop just with rendering facts as a notation of what it's composed of. No, that work needs no apology. That's it. I'll never forget the remark that was told to me, of Matisse's, by Eddie Robinson. He saw him down in the south of France before he died. During the visit, [Matisse] was staying in this hotel and doing his work, even though he was dying from cancer of the stomach, from his wheelchair. Doing all these beautiful cut-outs and making little drawings. This was a very expensive hotel, with carved doors which were actual doors from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. And thumb tacked into the doors were little drawings of hands. And [Robinson] said, "Are these early drawings?" Matisse said, "No, no, I'm doing them now. I'll do a good one yet." He says, "I'll do a good one." But those things were beautiful things. "Those damn things give me a lot of trouble, you know." [laughter] (He was on in his eighties.) "I'll do it, I'll get it." The use of the word drawing should be defined — I partly unwittingly gave you my own definition — where the work is really wrestling for facts which will be an aid to a drawing which is going to be a creative act. Now, I have a few drawings that I made from the model which will give you an idea. In spite of my teaching life drawing for so many years, I very, very rarely paint directly from the model, or for my own work, make drawings from the model. I cannot do it. I cannot get into my picture. I must make my own interpretation. Yet here, I'm teaching all the facts and all the styles. But this becomes only an intellectual duty for the students. And this is just like gathering facts. Now I'm going to show you drawings that go back to the twenties. I have to go over there and pick up the drawings. [walks over to other side of room, then back] Here they are, the 1920s. These are little sketches. This is a sketch for a painting that exists in the collection out here. Here. Working from the model. These are about 1920. This would be a little more realistic. But see, I am converting it, according to a concept, at the time. Here was a sort of a cubist realism. And see, you find it in many of my paintings. This is a very early thing. Now, here's a straight drawing from the model at that time. Here's, again, a cubist realism. This is a little more factual .

DANIELI: They're real beautiful.

FEITELSON: Or here, just making a color study, from the model, very realistic. Color studies from the model. Now, these go back to that moment. These are just color studies. There's interpretation, interpretation.

DANIELI: Was this from the period when you were . . .

FEITELSON: Yes, 1920s.

DANIELI: Like in that sketch group?

FEITELSON: Yes, about that time. Or I would do this in Paris at the colarossi, in the sketch class, this sketch class with no teachers. Now I'm going to show you a drawing in which I am formalizing my forms. There was a painting along this line.

DANIELI: That's a real lovely one.

FEITELSON: That is. I rather like that. This is later. These are later. These are the kinetic studies that really go back.

DANIELI: Hm. What are those?

FEITELSON: June Harwood Langsner has one of the paintings that belongs to that early kinetic period. These all start with a realistic subject for leader and then change them into kinetic abstractions. These are sketches, kinetic sketches, very much like in this painting.

DANIELI: This was for that painting?

FEITELSON: Yes. And these are kinetic sketches. And these paintings are from kinetic sketches. And this is a sketch from one of my paintings. Geez, I don't even know why that's a still life.

DANIELI: I thought maybe it might be a sailor without a head, but that doesn't seem quite. . . .

FEITELSON: Yes, these are little studies in my Cezannesque moments. Very early.

DANIELI: Yes, that's real nice.

FEITELSON: This was just a straight realistic job. These are very early, 1917, Cezannesque jobs. That's the one I'm going to show you--here it is. Here's a sketch that I did from my studio window, and then Niles did his painting at the time, inspired by the same view. And this one went into a painting more like Matisse. And we still have it; it ' s a large picture.

DANIELI: That's really great.

FEITELSON: And some more kinetics. And this one I love, simplifying it and getting into minimizing the description of the form. I'm very fond of this thing. You do away with all information, just the essence of the form.

DANIELI: This all-white painting, with one red line on it. [ Red Shaped Line on White Field (1971) , 60" x 60", now in permanent collection of the Oakland Museum]

FEITELSON: But we have oodles of these things. I thought we'd give you some memorabilia of that early moment.

DANIELI: We'll turn this off, I think.

A TEI Project

Interview of Lorser Feitelson

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1975

A TEI Project

Interview of Lorser Feitelson

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO MARCH 2, 1974

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO MARCH 2, 1974

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO MARCH 2, 1974

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE MARCH 2, 1974

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO MARCH 2, 1974

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO OCTOBER 19, 1975

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
MARCH 2, 1974

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
MARCH 2, 1974

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 19, 1974

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 19, 1975