A TEI Project

Interview of Frederick Hammersley

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
Fred, let’s start, I suppose, obviously, at the beginning, and even in your case the beginning goes back to your parents. Where do your parents come from and where did they meet and so forth?
HAMMERSLEY
My father [Harold Frederick Hammersley] was born in England, Silverton, I think, near London, and my mother [Anna Westberg Hammersley] was born in Stockholm.
WESCHLER
Do you have any idea what years they were born?
HAMMERSLEY
Gee, I don’t remember. That’s very interesting, I don’t remember. As a matter of fact, I was asking Susie [Susie H. Stone] when they died. I think they died in ’66. One was eighty-six, and one was eighty-seven when they died.
WESCHLER
They died in ’66. We can work it back. But anyway, so they met, you told me yesterday, on the boat.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. And so my father worked as a clerk in my grandfather’s— He was the head of the Robinson Soap Works in London, and he was a “clark” [clerk] as they say, and a friend of his got very excited about the United States, gold on the streets, etc. So Dad became interested. “Yes, that’d be nice.” So they planned to go, and at the last minute the friend backed out, and Dad, he decided to go. And when he got on the ship—
WESCHLER
Do you have any idea what year that was, roughly?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I don’t. [1906]
WESCHLER
How old was he?
HAMMERSLEY
That I don’t know either. But that picture of the Indian was like 1912, and that was in Montana, so it was the early 1900s. Now, let’s see. When—
WESCHLER
Don’t worry about it. We can figure it out. So he was on the boat.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Now, my mother had two brothers. Uncle Eric [Eric Westberg] was the oldest, and Uncle Sven [Sven Westberg] was— He stayed home and he was a writer, and Uncle Eric had been to the United States, and he was a party man. He was a social man. So when he came back— I have a feeling Grandma [Amanda] Westberg was rather a tyrant. She was a dress designer and had six—
WESCHLER
What city in Sweden you told me?
HAMMERSLEY
Stockholm. And she had six seamstresses, and she would design clothes for the theater and for royalty. And there was one, Princess Susie, that mother worked on, and she was so— This princess was so kind to mother that mother said, “If I ever have a child, a girl, it’s going to be called Susie. And that’s how that came about.But anyway, when Uncle Eric came back— Oh. Mother had to deliver the garment and then get paid, and so there can be difficulty when they’re not paid. Grandma Westberg was a very dynamic woman, evidently. And when the pressure got too great and these girls would cry, Grandmother would send out for coffee and French pastry, and then tell them their fortunes with cards. So every time I’d come home from art school, I’d say, “Mother, tell me my fortune.” So she’d lay out this thing and then lay out this thing.So I have a feeling the pressure was a little much, and then Uncle Eric was so pleased about the United States that I’m wondering if he talked to Mother, and Mother was ripe to go back to the United States together. So they went, and Mother was on the same boat as Dad, and they happened to meet each other, and they talked with a Swedish-English dictionary, which I have, and which—
WESCHLER
You to this day have the Swedish-English dictionary that they courted with?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. That book in that case. And Susie has a small watercolor— There was a painter on the ship that was looking down on these two people in deck chairs, holding a book, and that was the two of them talking.So anyway, I was surprised that mother ended up— Oh. There was some cousin in— New York? I visited him while I was in the army. I forget his name. And I don’t know what— I think Mother did kind of maid work or things like that, and Dad ended up, oddly enough, in Montana, and this was wild country. I mean, this is the opposite of—
WESCHLER
What was he doing there?
HAMMERSLEY
He was driving surveyors out in the field. And he said, “I didn’t know how to harness a horse.” And he said, “There was this kind man in the barn that showed me how to.” So then he learned to ride, and he would ride— He loved to ride the horse—he gave me the name—to the city for the mail. But they corresponded with each other. I have a love letter that my father wrote Mother. I don’t know if I showed you in my dictionary. He lettered rather than script. And then they were married in San Francisco, and I have the wedding picture.
WESCHLER
So how long was it before they were married?
HAMMERSLEY
Like eight years.
WESCHLER
It took eight years between—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, they were corresponding. And how they got together, I have no idea. You know, I would ask them things, and they would say, “Oh, I don’t remember.” They were not too interested in talking.
WESCHLER
We are. So we’ll keep talking. Anyway, so they were married, and where did they settle?
HAMMERSLEY
My father was in Washington, the state of Washington, I think, but I don’t know why he was there. But they were married in San Francisco [in 1914]. Mother had a very fancy wedding dress, and my father was all dressed up. And then they ended up in a tent in Washington, and Mother would serve six-course dinners in this tent with the workers.And he was with the government, Department of Interior. He ended up with what’s called the U.S. Indian Irrigation Service, which is a peculiar— For the Ninth Core Area, and that means the nine western states. He was like a special disbursing agent. He would write the checks and etc.
WESCHLER
How long after they were married were you born, roughly?
HAMMERSLEY
Susie was born [in 1915]. But Susie was the first.
WESCHLER
And then she was how much older than you?
HAMMERSLEY
Three and a half years.
WESCHLER
And you were born in Salt Lake City. How did that happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, now, evidently his office moved to Salt Lake City. And I remember we were— I was thinking about what you said last night, that I should prepare this. I’ll go backwards. The earliest thing I remember in Salt Lake City was some footprints, lightly snow on the ground, on the steps, some footprints coming in. Susie always tells the story that Dad said, “Now, see, that’s where Santa Claus came in,” and Susie was very impressed, but then later she thought, “But I never saw the footprints go out.” [mutual laughter] At this time I was about three and a half. That’s the only thing I remember. The first thing I remember was those footprints.My father took a six months’ leave from his job. They wanted to go home and see their parents. See, they’re married and they have two children. I was three and a half. Oh yes, I have a picture. Oh, here. Here’s the picture in London where Mother, Susie, and I were riding the elephant in the London Zoo.
WESCHLER
It says here in 1922.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. See, I was born in 1919, so I was—
WESCHLER
So you’re three years old.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So I was three and a half. I don’t remember the ship. We went to Sweden first, and the only thing I remember about Sweden is these old-fashioned train engines with the funnel— The smokestack was a funnel shape.
WESCHLER
It’s very funny that a child remembers the trains and Santa Claus. That’s basically what you remember.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
That’s a very child thing to remember.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then I remember Grandma Westberg coming in from the garden, and she would take off her wooden shoes and then walk up the steps, come in. And my father, he didn’t understand Swedish, but he loved the coffee cake and the cooking. The Swedish people are marvelous for decoration and for decorating the home and the food— What do they call the—
WESCHLER
Domestic virtues and domestic [unclear].
HAMMERSLEY
What’s that meal? Smörgåsbord.
WESCHLER
Smörgåsbord.
HAMMERSLEY
They’re great for that. Love food. Well, every race loves food. So that’s the only thing I remember about Sweden. And then we went to England, and I could show you the big house.
WESCHLER
Looking at your photo album here.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. This is Grandfather. This is Grandma. Here’s Grandpa Hammersley, and this is Grandma Hammersley. And this is the house.
WESCHLER
So they were well-to-do. Not well-to-do, but they were middle-class.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Good, solid middle-class.
HAMMERSLEY
The carriage met us at the docking place. The photograph of the carriage I have in the back room. Jack was the coachman, and they had two of these white horses, and I’ll never forget the sound of the gravel on the driveway driving out. I thought that was marvelous.Well, this is beside the point. I saw the movie of Finney last night or the other night, an Englishman, and he drove a small horse and a wagon, and I said, “We’re missing out on a lot.” What an ancient tradition, to have an animal pull your vehicle, or you get on the animal and you ride someplace. We’re being surrounded by adult toys, and the humanness is being pressed down.
WESCHLER
Oddly enough, the humanness is expressed in the horsiness and not through the mechanical automobile, in other words.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. Gosh.
WESCHLER
Well, let’s bring things forward. Tell me stories, when you look back, that give you any sense of anticipation that you were going to be an artist.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. I had no idea what I wanted to be. I had no idea—
WESCHLER
By the way, your childhood takes place all in Salt Lake City, or what happens? You move at some point?
HAMMERSLEY
When we came back to Salt Lake City— I was going to ask Susie. We were there maybe a couple of years, because I think I was like five or six, and we went to Blackfoot, Idaho. Now, this is a town of five thousand people, between Pocatello and Idaho Falls.
WESCHLER
Again, because of your father’s work?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. Our family never had a car. He would always walk to work. And Sundays, the whole family would go for a walk, and we would walk across the Snake River to see a farm family we knew. And there’s a picture of the horse. The first time I touched a horse, I was amazed how warm it was.But anyway, the household was very attractive. There were always flowers in the house. And one time Mother went away for a couple of days. She said, “Now, you be sure and cut the stems and change the water.” Well, it took me all morning. There were twelve vases. And I thought, “How did she have time to do this and then cook?” But anyway.
WESCHLER
Well, that suggests, by the way, that your mother had a whole aesthetic sense.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
You say your father did as well or more your mother—
HAMMERSLEY
Well, my father had an aesthetic sense as far as the photographs, and the shoes were always polished. And he insisted on a solid-color tie, and we would give him a spotted tie or a striped tie for Christmas. That just annoyed the hell out of me. He was very particular in his dress. We couldn’t come to dinner without dressing. In other words, if we were playing in the mud or playing in funny clothes, then you’d have to get—
WESCHLER
Properly dressed.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
By the way, your father’s job, he was map-making in some sense?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. He was more like checking out expenses, disbursing—
WESCHLER
I see. It was mathematical.
HAMMERSLEY
Disbursing agent.
WESCHLER
But coming back to you, so you were there in that town for the rest of your childhood?
HAMMERSLEY
No. Let’s see. Five— Yes. And by the way, when I was there, I remember someone came, some friends, and he was a ham operator— Well, I don’t know if they used that term. You know the crystal set years ago, radio? He had a crystal set, and he said, “I’m hearing some things from Hollywood, California.” And so Mother and Susie went over to this little shack in the middle of a field and heard our cousins talk. What a curious coincidence.
WESCHLER
What do you mean, your cousins?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I mean, on the radio.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
Uncle Eric had a family in Los Angeles. Uncle Eric had four children. You know, we had no radio, and I remember going to— There was really no motion picture theater, but I saw one in a hall. The first time I saw Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera, I was a small child, and I got so scared I had to sit in my mother’s lap.
WESCHLER
So on the radio you heard your cousins who were in radio? Or how did you hear them?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I don’t know what they were doing there. I mean, this man had a radio. He said, “Would you like to broadcast?” Well, what are they going to do? And they’d do it.
WESCHLER
So it was a ham radio, in other words, or it was—
HAMMERSLEY
A crystal set. And I remember making one in high school, and I could get it to work a little bit. Mechanical things, that sort of thing, is not me.
WESCHLER
But anyway, coming back, did you stay in that town till you were eighteen or—
HAMMERSLEY
No, I stayed in the town. I’d finished grade school, and I went into the sixth grade, which was junior high, and I was very pleased. And then my father’s office moved to Salt Lake City.
WESCHLER
Back to Salt Lake City.
HAMMERSLEY
Back to Salt Lake City. And here I was in the sixth grade in grammar school. So we were in Salt Lake City— I finished high school there. Oddly enough, as I remember, junior high was two years. West High School I went to, and that was two years, and after graduation everyone took what they called a postgraduate course. And so I took machine shop and copperware and descriptive geometry and typing, things I wanted to know. But there were no art classes.
WESCHLER
That question I was asking you before. What kind of anticipations that you would become an artist would you describe in your first eighteen years? Anything?
HAMMERSLEY
Nothing, nothing. I remember doing occasionally something, but—
WESCHLER
Did you enjoy drawing?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
Did you enjoy making puzzles? Did you enjoy geometric— You said you took a class in descriptive geometry.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, the block is this way. What does it look like three-quarter view. And I learned to do that.
WESCHLER
Did you enjoy that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I enjoyed that, because it was precise and neat, and it was fun to— What does that look like from the other view? Then the lettering, there was no problem for me with lettering. I was brought up looking at lettering.
WESCHLER
How so?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, my father always lettered. Have you ever seen an example? Would you like me to show you an example? It’s that dictionary behind you.
WESCHLER
Sure.
HAMMERSLEY
I’ll show it to you.
WESCHLER
I see. So it’s just very beautifully lettered, nicely— Your father was clearly very precise.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, it was. And then he was so surprised. When he was seventy-five, he started to paint, and he’d ask me, “How do I get that pergola to look like it’s going that way?” And I’d do it, and he’d say, “Well, that’s jolly good.” And then when he made a painting of his living room with my painting on the wall, I mean, with all this big bouquet of flowers from his garden, I took it back to Los Angeles, and I said, “I’ll frame it and watch when there’s an exhibition, and you enter it.” And I said, “Be sure you get the initials correct.”
WESCHLER
You say you didn’t have any particular artistic tendencies. Let me ask you some other questions. Were you a messy kid? Were you a neat kid?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I was obliged to be neat.
WESCHLER
You were obliged to be neat.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh, Christ. Mother was a very difficult lady. She was a very nervous lady. She was the head of the house. She ran the house, and I don’t quite— She’d get very tired and nervous, and she’d have to go away for a couple of days someplace to rest. When I got older, I realized she didn’t really like me very much.
WESCHLER
Oh, dear.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. She never asked— Let’s stay with when I was young. We had some good times. There’s places like in the summer we’d walk out across the farmer’s fields, and end up at, not a river, a small stream, and there were trees. And we’d have a picnic there. And that’s where this one picture is. Well, I can’t find it. Sorry. And so there were some good times, and the food was marvelous. The food was just marvelous.But I had to be very careful not slamming the screen door. “Where are you going?” That sort of thing. Terrible.
WESCHLER
But coming back to that, I mean, the thing that’s interesting about the neatness is this is going to eventually be a boy who grows into a young artist, who at the time of Abstract Expressionism, when people are being wonderfully messy, you instead go a different direction. You go very neat and very clean lines.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And what is interesting, you see—I think this sort of thing is the opposite of the geometric in one sense. The character of the shape is opposite.
WESCHLER
The more recent work.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. The gesture is freer. But it’s still neat. Well, I don’t complain about that.
WESCHLER
I’m just asking you to what extent do you think that that neatness grows out of that childhood, that childhood leads to it? Have you thought about that?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I haven’t thought about that.
WESCHLER
Does that seem sensible to you to think about that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I’ll tell you something else that happened. When— Let’s see. How did this work? Oh yes. When I finished high school— Susie was on the honor class in West High, and I wasn’t. Oh, I was in the ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] in high school, and I used the uniform of World War I. Do you remember the wrapped legs? Have you ever seen that?
WESCHLER
Sure.
HAMMERSLEY
And the collar was high.
WESCHLER
Right, right, right.
HAMMERSLEY
And I was the sergeant on the right side and I went in parades.
WESCHLER
What year was this? This would’ve been—
HAMMERSLEY
1935. I graduated in ’35, and I came back for ’36. And then the family went to—
WESCHLER
Let’s stay with that. So you were in the ROTC, and you are talking about in terms of the neatness—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So the army, I mean, that was no problem. And I loved shooting that Springfield rifle. Oh yes, and then the family went to Fort Hall, which is between Pocatello and Blackfoot.
WESCHLER
Again because of your father’s work?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, an Indian reservation, two hundred fifty white people, with stone houses, marvelous. And Susie and I played tennis, and the jail would be there, and you’d hear this chanting, as you’re saying, “Thirty-love.” This guy would be chanting. And the buckskin gloves that they would sell for a dollar. God, they’d last forever, and they’d smell like a campfire. Oh, it was delicious.
WESCHLER
Did you have much influence— Were you interested in the Indians, in the Indian culture?
HAMMERSLEY
No. No, it’s very odd. My father would go fishing with this half-breed, and they’d put this boat on the car. By Fort Hall it was called the “bottoms.” It just looked like green trees, low trees, but there was a stream that would run through this, and for a long time the Indian would bring back fish, and Dad didn’t. It was so interesting. And then after a while he could fish; he would bring in fish. But he went out like once a week with this half-breed, and he really enjoyed that.
WESCHLER
But were you at all entranced by the Indian art, the Indian artifacts, things like that at all?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
Nothing special?
HAMMERSLEY
No. I admired their beadwork. Oh yes. At this farm, at this ranch, at the Shoemakers’, they had a marvelous peony garden, and they’d sell peonies, and sell chicken dinners on Sunday, and she had an Indian squaw helping her. When I was in Salt Lake City, I went to the Shoemakers’ place for a week or something, just for a vacation, and this Indian squaw taught me how to sew beads on buckskin, and I was very impressed with that. And we were playing tag in the Whitney crab apple trees, playing tag, and I fell off, fell into the chicken yard, broke my arm, and I was so disappointed Mother never came out from Salt Lake City to see me. I was there I don’t know how long.
WESCHLER
What age were you then, roughly?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, that was before high school, as a matter of fact.
WESCHLER
I see. Okay, but let me get this right, now. So you graduate high school, and then your father moves back to Idaho, and you go with the family. You’re still with the family at that point.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I went back. Now I had to decide— I didn’t want to go to college. Oh, I wanted to—
WESCHLER
What did you like in school, by the way? Did you like anything in school?
HAMMERSLEY
School was frightening. See, when Susie and I were children, my father would write out division numbers, multiplication problems, and I would have to do these, and there were chores to do, and I did that every day in the summer, and every time there was a game— My father loved chess. The first football he gave me was a soccer ball. I didn’t know what the hell that was. And he treated it with fat, and he went out in the garden, and I couldn’t go past him with it. And he was a very strange man in that respect. He played tennis, and when he played anything, he was going to win. “To hell with it. If it’s my son or Susie, I’m going to win.” I mean, that was the result. He didn’t say it or his attitude was not that. He just enjoyed games. Oh, he played soccer when he was a young man in England. That’s right. He was a goalkeeper, and he was known as a good one.Oh yes. And then I didn’t want to go to the university. I was frightened of school. So I went to the southern branch of the University of Idaho in Pocatello, and I took again the descriptive geometry, and I remember this English teacher, if you made a comma fault, you’d get an F. And I admired her very much.Oh, and then, oh yes, and my friend—Raymond Lowe was his name—he was running for freshman president. And I looked at the signs, I said, “Ray, for Christ’s sake, I can paint better signs than that, because I grew up with lettering.” So I had a campaign, “Shift to Lowe,” for freshman president.And then I went down to the theaters. Oh yes. I took a class in sign painting at the university. Isn’t that peculiar? Painted on shirt cardboards. And that’s where the shaky hands started.
WESCHLER
What do you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, when someone would watch me do something, my hands would shake, and it’s been with me ever since. Terrible, terrible.
WESCHLER
When you do it for yourself, it doesn’t shake, but when somebody—
HAMMERSLEY
Sometimes it does. Now it’s unpredictable. But I remember holding the glass of milk, and the girl said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Oh, I guess—” I gave some excuse.So I knew how to paint signs, so I went to the theaters in Pocatello to see if I could get a job painting their signs. So I got a job. I would go to school in the morning, work in the afternoon, get a dollar a day. It was marvelous.
WESCHLER
Now, coming back, first of all, how do you paint signs when you’ve got a shaky hand?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, but if I’m by myself, then it’s all right. If you’re watching me, I have to key up and overcome that. See, it’s not like there’s a shaky hand where it shakes all the time. I don’t have that, happily.
WESCHLER
I just wonder because you are about to become a hard-edge painter.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, of course, I paint now with both hands. I mean, I have to hold the palette knife with both hands.
WESCHLER
But that’s it. Sign painting is the beginning of— I can see that leading in the direction that you’re going to go to eventually.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. And, see, if I worked on the chemistry class, the math class would suffer, and conversely. And I almost got thrown out. What did happen? What did happen? They didn’t throw me out. The grades were bad.
WESCHLER
This was in high school?
HAMMERSLEY
[No, the University of Idaho.( Added by Hammersley during his review.)] So I went to— Because I was painting the signs, I went to the art department. I have one painting someplace that I did at the university, the southern branch [of the University of Idaho] in Pocatello. And, “Well, hell, this is not difficult,” that sort of thing. So we were there about two years.
WESCHLER
It was not difficult, but was it enjoyable?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
Did you like art class?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
Talk about that.
HAMMERSLEY
I wasn’t too fond of the— Oh. The Chief Theater opened in downtown Pocatello, and there were some murals, and this instructor painted them. But I thought, “He’s not very good.” Isn’t that funny? We didn’t look at pictures. I don’t remember looking at pictures especially. But then when—
WESCHLER
If I had met you at eighteen, nineteen, would you have known who Vermeer was? Would you have known who Chardin was?
HAMMERSLEY
No. No, I don’t think so.
WESCHLER
Would you have known Whistler? Or anything?
HAMMERSLEY
I probably would have known Michelangelo and some of the old-timers, the Renaissance people.
WESCHLER
From having seen pictures in books or what?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, having seen pictures in books.
WESCHLER
Did your parents have art books in the house?
HAMMERSLEY
No, but there were magazines, you see. And when Susie subscribed to—this was later—subscribed to—I had a morgue. I’d cut out these marvelous reproductions in Vogue for my file, of Chardin or whoever. I loved images.
WESCHLER
And that’s when? Roughly three or four years later, you’re twenty or something?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, that was later. Now, let’s see. Yes, I was at the university two years, and then the family moved to San Francisco, and Mother was delighted.
WESCHLER
And you’re still with the family at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Living with the family.
HAMMERSLEY
But I had to finish up Idaho, and they were in San Francisco.
WESCHLER
Because of your father’s job again?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And after I was finished, I remember they met me at the ferry in San Francisco, and we took the streetcar home to just below— My memory—There’s a peak—
WESCHLER
Coit Tower?
HAMMERSLEY
No. With a cross on top. [Mount Davidson] We lived on Valdez Avenue. Anyway. So I had this art thing, so then I went to a cheesy— Well, that’s not fair. I went to an art school in San Francisco.
WESCHLER
What was it called?
HAMMERSLEY
Academy of Advertising Art. Oh, my hero then was— I forget how I saw that. Cassandre, the poster man. Do you know Cassandre?
WESCHLER
No.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, Christ. Remember the Dubonnet man pouring wine?
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s Cassandre.
WESCHLER
I see.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, the Museum of Modern Art has a small version of a poster I used to go by when I was going to art school on Wilshire Boulevard. If you can imagine a large human eye, you’re the audience, and here’s the eye. In the pupil there was a V-8, and it said, “Watch the Fords go by.” And I thought, “Boy, this guy—” He says it twice. And without— The pretty girl by the Chevrolet, hell, that doesn’t mean anything.
WESCHLER
This has an eye and has the word “watch” both together, and that excited you.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Yes. God, I just— So I wanted to be a poster man.
WESCHLER
So let’s go back. You’re first in San Francisco— And now, by the way, this must be 1938, ’39, something like that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, ’39.
WESCHLER
And you go to a place of advertising art. Was that what you were thinking of doing, advertising art or—
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And then for some reason, maybe the money— Pierre Vitier, Dulfer’s Printing Company. I started to work with this Frenchman designing letterheads, and that was no problem. I enjoyed that. I didn’t enjoy learning how to do the airbrush thing, but I enjoyed that. And then his wife was responsible for finding the house that my parents bought in Burlingame [California].Oh. In the meantime, when we were at Fort Hall— Susie had gone to Chouinard [Art Institute] one year. I didn’t get along with Susie, but when she brought back the folio, I was very impressed.
WESCHLER
So this is when you were still in Idaho, your sister has gone to Chouinard.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
She’s three and a half years older than you, so she spent a year in Los Angeles, came back to Idaho to show you this portfolio.
HAMMERSLEY
Show the family, see. I was incidental. So that summer of ’39, I think it was, Susie was staying with Uncle Eric, this home on Franklin Avenue, near Vermont.
WESCHLER
In Los Angeles.
HAMMERSLEY
In Los Angeles. So I came down to see the school.
WESCHLER
Where was Chouinard in those days?
HAMMERSLEY
Grand View Avenue, a block from Westlake Park. Do you remember? Do you remember where the State Theater— Oh, hell. Seventh Street this way, and the Art Center [School, later Art Center College of Design] was up here, and Westlake Park was here. Alvarado was there. One block away there was Grand View, and that was the Chouinard— It was built as an art school. Have you ever seen the building?
WESCHLER
Not that one.
HAMMERSLEY
I designed an alphabet. They used my alphabet for the brass “Chouinard” thing [on front of the building], and then one letter’s fallen off. It’s a church now.
WESCHLER
So this is 1939 or something. You go to visit—
HAMMERSLEY
Visit Susie and see the art school, and when I walk into the painting studio, there’s Keye Luke. Now, that’s before your time. He was son number one of [Charlie Chan] in the motion pictures. He was a Chinese detective, but [Warner Oland, the actor who played Charlie Chan] was Swedish, which was odd. Also, the early radio programs were wonderful, you know, Orphan Annie or— There are several others which I can’t think of. But I was so impressed with this bit player painting, and he was very serious. I mean, goddamn it, he was— So I looked around the school, and it was heaven.
WESCHLER
What was heaven about it? What I’m trying to get a sense of is what made you become an artist. What spoke to you when you walked in, in 1939, and you were just entranced?
HAMMERSLEY
As a matter of fact, whenever I see something lovely, I start to cry, like now. Of course, I did cry when I was younger. When I’m older now, I cry more often. If I see something just gorgeous, it just knocks me over.
WESCHLER
I should say you’re crying now at the memory of what it was like to walk in then.
HAMMERSLEY
Well—
WESCHLER
What has you crying right now?
HAMMERSLEY
Because I’m thinking of looking at wonderful things and what it does to you. The stuff was very good, and it was done by people like Susie, a kid, an older kid. And I thought, hell, I— So I was at this art school in San Francisco. So I made a folio. My grandfather died, and my father and I went to the bank, and I got $99 from his estate. The tuition for Chouinard was $350 a year. That was a lot of money. So I gave the $99, and Dad did the rest.So I sent this folio. I wanted to get a scholarship at Chouinard. I did not get one, and I worked like hell, but it’s all right. [I did get one the next year. (Added by Hammersley during his review)] So I went the first year, and I was on the exhibition crew.Pruett Carter, an illustrator, had a studio there. You’ve probably not heard of him. But I have a couple of his slashed paintings. I was on the sweep-up crew the first year, exhibition crew the second.
WESCHLER
The first year was what?
HAMMERSLEY
Sweep-up.
WESCHLER
Sweep-up crew.
HAMMERSLEY
And this janitor taught me how to wash windows, and you had to sweep things, and you earned your scholarship that way.Have you ever heard of Henry Lee McFee?
WESCHLER
Just in reading about you, that he was a teacher of yours.
HAMMERSLEY
See, there’s no reason you should. It was so long ago. But he was a marvelous— There’s a painting in the [Los Angeles] County Museum, Sleeping Black Girl, lovely, just lovely. And he said, “You should be able to look at a painting through your hand, and every part should be rich.”
WESCHLER
Just now you curled your hand into a circle like a telescope, and you were looking at it through—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and that’s very true. All the parts must be doing something. I mean, they must— What’s the Nude Descending a Stair[case] man? What’s his name?
WESCHLER
Duchamp.
HAMMERSLEY
Duchamp. He shocked me one time on TV. He said he liked the glass things that he had done because he didn’t have to worry about the background. He didn’t know what to do with the background. I couldn’t believe that. The background is just another part of the real estate of that canvas, and it’s as important as the foreground. As a matter of fact, when I teach my painting class, I put up a stool against a red ground or a bright-colored wall and a bright-colored floor, and I say, “You’re not allowed to draw the stool, just the red pieces and the yellow pieces that you see. You just draw those.” And that’s the beginning of abstraction in one sense. And it’s constructed. It’s marvelous. Circulation improves, and, well, it’s great.
WESCHLER
Tell me a little bit about your teachers and about the process of you becoming— Your first few years at Chouinard. First of all, describe Chouinard. You said where it was. What kind of place was it? How many students?
HAMMERSLEY
It was designed for an art school. You’d have to check in. You know, you just couldn’t wander around. You’d check in, and they would check off Weschler and then check off Jones and check off Hammersley, and then you’d come in the gate. And then you find out or you’ve already known what classes you’re going to, and you went to [Herbert] Jepson’s. He taught drawing. This marvelous Laurence Murphy taught composition. And you could take fashion, etc.Design class was crucial. It was interesting. We didn’t know that or use the word, but this gay man, [William] Moore, he’d studied with the [Rudolph Schaeffer] School [of Design] in San Francisco, and he was very good. He didn’t like girls, see. He was very pleased if he could get them to cry. I didn’t like that, but the son of a bitch, I mean, he had an eye, and you knew where you were wrong, and it was very helpful. It was money in the bank. Boy.
WESCHLER
So tell me about the other teachers who you had who you liked. You said McFee— What was his name?
HAMMERSLEY
Henry Lee McFee. Owings-Dewey [Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico] has one of his paintings or had—
WESCHLER
Well, tell me about him as a teacher. He taught painting or what—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, he taught painting, and he was a very fine painter. It’s interesting in those days there were very few painters. As I told you last night, there was only three galleries that I knew of, and—
WESCHLER
In Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
In Los Angeles, I’m speaking, yes.
WESCHLER
Which were they?
HAMMERSLEY
Dalzell Hatfield [Gallery] and two others which I don’t remember, and then the L.A. County Museum. So we could see some paintings.
WESCHLER
And that was almost all figurative work?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, exactly. Oh. At the Dalzell Hatfield, when Paul Klee came, that was kind of a shock.
WESCHLER
There was a Paul Klee show at that gallery?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, at one of these three galleries. And then Kandinsky was there. That was also a shock. But it felt all right. I mean, damn it, “I’d like to do— I don’t understand how— What’s he doing?”
WESCHLER
And this was ’39, ’40, something like that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. ’40, ’41. I went two years. ’40-’41, and ’41-’42.
WESCHLER
Okay. Let’s go back to— I want to have both a sense of the kind of stuff you’re doing in school, who your teachers are, and then I want to talk about what kind of impression Klee and Kandinsky would make. First let’s go back and talk about what you’re learning in school.
HAMMERSLEY
All right. Drawing was crucial, and I had trouble with drawing.
WESCHLER
Who was your drawing teacher?
HAMMERSLEY
Herbert Jepson, and then there was a beginning drawing class, [James] Patrick. Bless his heart, he died. I remember seeing a painting of his of grapes. God, what a daring thing to do.
WESCHLER
Jepson’s a quite famous figure in L.A. art. What was he like?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, he was— It was so annoying. I mean, he’d just sit down and draw a hand, and it was just lovely, and we would sweat or I would sweat to draw. This advanced student—I was a beginning student—[Roger] Hollenbeck, he was right next to the model and was drawing with one line. “Goddamn, that’s marvelous.”
WESCHLER
Tell me more about Jepson. He was older? How old was Jepson when you were studying with him?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, he was probably in his thirties, forties. You know, when one is twenty, and someone’s thirty, oh, bless their heart, that’s too bad, you know. [mutual laughter] I mean, he had a family, and two boys, I think.
WESCHLER
Was he a generous teacher? Was he a rigorous teacher?
HAMMERSLEY
He was very casual. It was comme ci, comme ça. He could care less. He just had money in the bank, but he didn’t know where the hell the bankbook was. It was a shame. And Rico Lebrun screwed him up. You must excuse me. Jepson was of the illustration school, marvelous draftsman. Rico was a marvelous draftsman, true, but he had a dynamic, and he was very strong, and marvelous drawings.
WESCHLER
Rico was also at Chouinard in those days?
HAMMERSLEY
He was there when Susie was there. Susie never took him, in ’39, but no, he never came back to Chouinard until after the war, when he came to Jepson.So there was Jepson. I was very impressed with Laurence Murphy. He taught me about teaching because he was very kind with a student. I’m going to cry again. This girl’s work was just terrible. He’d look at it, pause, and he’d say, “This is very nice paper.” Bless his heart.Oh, and I’ll show you this drawing. I was drawing, and then he showed me how to draw a bucket. He said, “Now, invariably the bucket will be to the right of you or to the left of you, and there’s the axis,” and he drew this bucket. And then he said, “Then you put something in front of it, and you put something behind it so there’s air.” And I had this marvelous little stage set of a bucket, simple, simple, simple, just “pffft.” So Laurence Murphy was a drawing and composition instructor.Oh. And then I took a lettering class, a commercial art class. Oh yes, Northridge, a very shrewd businessman, he had an art service or an art— What do you call them? Organization that sells artwork. You say, “I want an ad for my car.” Whatever. So he would get students, and they’d eventually work for him, you see. And he didn’t like— My problem was an ad for a microphone, and all the other kids had an idea, and I was— I didn’t have an idea— I was thinking. He said, “You should start working, get it done.” I said, “But I can’t do anything unless I have a decent idea.”So I was very slow, but I was very good. I mean, I can show you some photographs of my commercial artwork. I was very pleased with my commercial artwork. But they were not strong on color. I would ask him, “What about—? What about—?” And then I knew a good friend of mine just wanted lettering. He didn’t do anything but lettering. I said, “Damn, that’s nice. I mean, that’s nice. You know what you want to do.” And he did letterings for the motion picture theater, the credits, lovely calligraphy. Oh, lovely.McFee said, “Every painting student should take lettering. Every painting—” He did say that, but I realized when I was drawing this alphabet, it’s an abstraction. And I remember talking to a ballet dancer. There’s certain things that you’ve got to be clear about, and in lettering you’ve got to be very clear that it’s legible, for Christ’s sake. Jazz can just kill the designer. I mean, you have all the nonsense— Like you say, you have too many baubles and no theme.
WESCHLER
No arc.
HAMMERSLEY
You just have a bunch of stuff.
WESCHLER
Legibility is a very important thing for you, and very early on it became important for you.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes. And that started with the lettering and the commercial art. Now, let’s see. Oh yes. The first year, the war was on, and people were being drafted, and I got a notice to get examined. So I went to this doctor, and he said, “Do you want to go in the army?”I said, “No, I’ve got a scholarship now for the second year.”He said, “Okay. I’ll give you 4-F.” He was a gynecologist. [mutual laughter] So the second year I finished, and I went back home to Burlingame, and I wrote letters to try to get in the camouflage. You know, that had something to do with image making. And nothing happened. And then I eventually went to San Francisco with my little suitcase and was shipped to— Oh, someplace in California.
WESCHLER
Well, let me stay in Los Angeles before we do that for a second.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, sure.
WESCHLER
Some other questions. I want to get a sense of what it was to be an art student and to be in the art scene of Los Angeles in 1940. One question that arises to me is, I mean, 1940 is a little bit late in the day. Cubism has happened. Surrealism has happened. Things like that have happened.
HAMMERSLEY
Not in Los Angeles.
WESCHLER
That’s my question. I mean, when you’re studying at an art school in Los Angeles, is there any reference to Cubism? Is there a discussion of Picasso? Is he a presence?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, there is— I didn’t get Cubism. I didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
WESCHLER
But did people at Chouinard think it was important, or—
HAMMERSLEY
They didn’t pay much attention.WESCHLER. What you should be doing is nudes that looked like nudes?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. The point is, if you signed up for a figure-painting class, that’s what you got, those are very important. I’m very pleased to have that background, because I call it a measuring stick, as I mentioned yesterday. The Abstract Expressionists and hard-edge— You have no measuring stick. The observer, he doesn’t— And the dealer can sell you that it’s a good thing, but the disadvantage of the student, this time, these times—
WESCHLER
Nowadays?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, they’re kind of hanging loose. See, we had things, like I walked into L.A. County Museum, and I would see people I never heard of before. I walked in— Edvard Munch. For god’s sake, where— A Norwegian. And the older he got, the stronger and wilder he became. Christ.
WESCHLER
And that impressed you?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I felt marvelous.
WESCHLER
Even though it was more and more Expressionist, but that was exciting?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, it makes no difference. A lot of people influence me if a lot of those people are great. I don’t care what the image is. You know very well when it’s great, and you just— Wow. It just feels wonderful.
WESCHLER
Did you have that feeling when you saw Paul Klee?
HAMMERSLEY
No, not that great, but I was very impressed.
WESCHLER
Tell me about walking in, Klee and Kandinsky in 1940 in Los Angeles. What was that like?
HAMMERSLEY
We would take books out of the Chouinard library. Now, here I go around the bush. I admired it, but it was left— No, not left field. It was out of my league. It was not my taste.
WESCHLER
Out of your point of reference.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It was an oddball situation, but it felt good. Someplace in my books here I have a [a book by Paul Klee on the] language of image making, and he would say what a line was and say what a shape was. It was almost too complicated, the way he would say it.And Kandinsky, it was very interesting, but it didn’t move me or make me feel as good as a giant, looking at a giant. And there’s a little [Charles] Despiau head at the L.A. County Museum. Oh, Christ, it’s like Brancusi’s sister did it. It just— Oh. You could look and look and look, and it still feeds you. It’s just marvelous.[Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
We were just interrupted for a second, but what I want to ask you is, you welled up easily now, which is lovely. You well up when you talk about things that are beautiful. Did you well up in those days?
HAMMERSLEY
No. Just as I got older.
WESCHLER
Did you have—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. It’s because—

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
I asked you a second ago— We were talking about how you have this lovely welling-up at beauty and achievement and so forth, and I was asking you whether you did that when you were young. I don’t mean so much of it when you were a child, but when you saw things at the L.A. County Museum in 1940 that impressed you, did you get overwhelmed by them?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I wasn’t, because I was taught to keep my mouth shut, and my father was very proud in never getting angry: Oh, shit, that’s terrible. You know, he’d hit his thumb, and he’d say, “God—bless the Queen.” [Weschler laughs.] Big deal. And Mother, oh, to get angry, that would upset her very much. And so I just—
WESCHLER
But tell me the things at the L.A. County Museum when you would go, what impressed you, even if it didn’t overwhelm you? What excited you at the L.A. County, in 1940, when you would go?
HAMMERSLEY
Isn’t that funny? I can’t remember a show outside of—
WESCHLER
Or just things in the museum. Was it Renaissance work? Was it—
HAMMERSLEY
The Renaissance things, yes. The local people, Phil Paradise, bless their heart, I don’t mean to— He was a former Chouinard [teacher, maybe an early student (Added by Hammersley during his review.)], Phil Paradise, and two or three others. I can show you some catalogues. They’re top average people, top average paintings. Rico was above that.
WESCHLER
And you were aware of that in 1940 already?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, yes. And when we were at Chouinard, we’d walk over to the Art Center over on Seventh Street. See, that was a commercial art school, industrial art. Some motor company would pay them money to be able to design cars. And [Lorser] Feitelson was teaching painting there, and we felt above all that, because their painting, Christ, didn’t equal what they were doing at Chouinard. Chouinard had a gallery you could come in off the street and see what the students are doing.
WESCHLER
Was Feitelson a presence?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
Who were the big artists in Los Angeles in those days? If you were an art student, who were you looking up to?
HAMMERSLEY
[Francis] deErdely was a big— I didn’t care for him. He taught at Jepson’s later. I didn’t care for his things. Henry McFee was the big man that I knew of as a painter. See, Rico wasn’t there yet in the forties.
WESCHLER
What did McFee paint?
HAMMERSLEY
Still lifes. Oh, god, some complicated things. But it was clear. And this black lady in the L.A. County Museum, I wish you’d see that sometime. Oh, he liked Cezanne. So the area was rich, rich. It wasn’t just “pffft.”
WESCHLER
Cezanne was somebody who was talked about at Chouinard?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it’s a funny thing. I don’t respond to Cezanne, hardly at all, except I went to the— What’s that Fort Worth— Kimbell [Art] Museum? And there’s the Man with a Blue Smock. Goddamn, that was heaven. I mean, it looked like it was painted Wednesday. And I thought, “That is remarkable.”
WESCHLER
When did you see that?
HAMMERSLEY
A few years ago.
WESCHLER
But I want to keep you back in the 1940s right now.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, as I mentioned, the annual shows are very important, because you see what your friends and your instructors—
WESCHLER
What were those? That was at the L.A. County Museum?
HAMMERSLEY
L.A. County Museum.
WESCHLER
And how did that work?
HAMMERSLEY
How do you mean?
WESCHLER
What happened? You submitted things?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh, I would submit things. I wanted to get in shows. I wanted stuff— I wanted to— See that painting behind you? [Red, Yellow, Black and White, fourteenth in series, 1948]
WESCHLER
Right, the—
HAMMERSLEY
That was the fourteenth painting in a series. I made a straight still life first. [Red, Yellow, Black and White, first in series, 1948; Red, Yellow, Black and White, 1948, second in series; Red, Yellow, Black and White, 1948, seventh in series]
WESCHLER
What year is that?
HAMMERSLEY
1948.
WESCHLER
That’s too far ahead. Let’s wait a second. I still want to be back in 1940 right now.
HAMMERSLEY
Okay. I’m sorry.
WESCHLER
Were you already submitting things in 1940 to the L.A. County?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, because that got in a show in 1948, and it took me— I said, “Hell, this is easy.” I didn’t get a show until five years after that.
WESCHLER
That’s 1948.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
But in 1940, were you submitting things to the—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Did I ask you if you— You didn’t know who Brugger’s was. Brugger’s was a shipping company. If you had some paintings— There was a woman sculptor [Pegot Waring] near La Cienega that would teach a drawing class to Fred MacMurray and motion picture people, and she charged five dollars a session. Goddamn, that’s ridiculous. You can go to a painting class for fifty cents. She said she refused to send to shows because she didn’t want to have a painting next to a student. I said, “Well, that’s too bad.” But anyway, it was good to hang your work and see the instructor’s.
WESCHLER
And you were saying Brugger’s was a shipping place.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
So all the artists— This is 1940 still, or this is later?
HAMMERSLEY
No, in the forties to the fifties, and probably the sixties.
WESCHLER
And you described how all the artists would gather because they were shipping their stuff up to San Francisco for the invitationals up there?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. You know, you’d get a postcard in the mail, there’s a portrait show so-and-so. And I don’t have any portraits, so I couldn’t send anything. The landscapes. And it has to be here by— Within this week, and it has— So that was very stimulating. It was a lot of fun.
WESCHLER
And you would go to the shipping place, and all the other artists would be there as well, doing the same thing?
HAMMERSLEY
Each day, I mean, a different group would come. Discouragement can be devastating. You know, you get what you think is a good painting, and you don’t get in, but then you turn around and give it to another show, and you get in and you get twenty-five dollars. And you say, “Well, what the hell’s going on?” Now, if God were judging, it’d be fair. [laughs] I think. [Weschler laughs.] But it was very exciting, and it didn’t cost much money.
WESCHLER
Now, before we send you off to the army, describe what kind of an artist you were and what you thought you would be doing with your life in 1941, ’42, before you got into the army. What were you thinking?
HAMMERSLEY
I was picturing myself being in the advertising business, even though— That’s right, because I was taking lettering and commercial art at Chouinard, and I was figuring what I’d do with my door in my studio when I had this design business. Oh. And then when I was stationed in Paris, I tried to find Cassandre, and I couldn’t find him, but I find [Paul] Colin, who is an advertising man, very nice, but— I saw a lot of painters.
WESCHLER
Okay. Well, let’s get you there. When do you enter the army?[Doorbell rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
I was asking you to tell me how you got into the army.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. So I was drafted. See, after—
WESCHLER
What year, now?
HAMMERSLEY
’42, the end of ’42. And then we went to someplace in—
WESCHLER
You wanted to do camouflage, but they didn’t accept you for that.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I couldn’t make any contact. Some camp in California. And then I was shipped to Camp Crowder, Missouri, a Signal Corps outfit, Signal Corps.
WESCHLER
What does that mean, in practice, for people who don’t know about the army? Signal Corps are the messenger service, basically?
HAMMERSLEY
Morse code, decoding, truck driving, cooking, so on and so on. So I came to be interviewed, and there are seven or eight guys interviewing. One was Sarley, the head man, and one from Harvard, one an art student from Minnesota. And when I was through, they said, “Would you like to be an interviewer?” I said, “I sure would. Better than cooking or truck driving.”So I was an interviewer for a few months. And that’s my first experience of New Yorkers. They just walked right over me. [mutual laughter] I never experienced anything like that in my life.I said, “I’m sorry, Mac.”He said, “I’m a doctor in so-and-so.”I said, “Yes, I know, but there’s cooking and truck drivers left. If you’d come earlier, you could’ve got a code clerk or whatever.”So what happened after that? Then I— I was in the same camp, and I worked for a lieutenant doing some experiments with signs, black lettering on white at night with light, or white lettering on black.
WESCHLER
Really?
HAMMERSLEY
And then designing the dummy tank and that sort of things. He saw my background [on the G.I. record]: “art school.” And I think he was from the Campbell Soup Company. That’s a lieutenant. Now, wait a minute. How the hell did I get from this— Gee, whiz, that’s amazing. I can’t think of your name. I want to say Lawrence.
WESCHLER
You’re allowed to call me Lawrence. Go ahead.
HAMMERSLEY
So eventually, I was in the Signal Corps. Where the hell were we? Battalion headquarters of the Signal Corps, and these four or five New Yorkers had the good spots. This smart young man was in charge. I forget— He was the sergeant. And they were well placed in the supply, etc. And they would wake up in the morning in the dorm arguing. I didn’t understand that at all. Then we were—
WESCHLER
That’s New York for you, you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
People arguing with each other, that’s your sense of New York?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So then we were shipped overseas, and I was seasick for three days on this bloody ship.
WESCHLER
What year is this, now?
HAMMERSLEY
This was ’43, ’44.
WESCHLER
Before Normandy?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh yes.
WESCHLER
And you’re being shipped to England?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, we ended up in Scotland. And then we ended up in Bury St. Edmunds, where I guess they did— And the first night you’d hear— The food, we were hungry. Oh. And it was interesting, on ship, the first time we came down to breakfast, this steamy, wet smell came up of prepared kidneys. Americans didn’t eat kidneys. And I was sick. The boys who were good drinkers, they didn’t get sick. And I thought, “I must remember that.” [laughs]And they played cards, and the army is marvelous. What a life. They knew where the gambling was; they knew where the girls were; they knew where the cigarettes were; they knew how to get these things. Marvelous. Everyone has an innate talent.
WESCHLER
So you’re in Bury St. Edmunds , and what were you doing there?
HAMMERSLEY
Waiting to be assigned. And then we were eventually— This Signal Corps battalion was sent to Plymouth, England in an underground installation, and I was a draftsman then, and I designed— They said, “Give me a— Make a pass card so that it’s hard to duplicate.” We lived in the city or in the dormitory someplace— Oh yes, Ragland Barracks. I was very impressed with that. It was a British thing. And the building of the gate was marvelous, and there was a jail, too. And this enormous cement parade ground where they would march. And then the dormitories or whatever you call were here. We had three-decker bunks. What did they call that? Oh, Christ, what’s this funny name? They give you a burlap bag you fill with straw. That was your mattress.But that’s the first time I heard the expression “live entertainment” in town. That was the vaudeville. English vaudeville is wonderful. I mean, any vaudeville is— And French vaudeville is wonderful. Oh. I remember if you rode a train when you’re young, the smell of the cooking done by Negroes—we called them Negroes then—was delicious. This oatmeal smell. And the mess hall here had the same smell. These black men were cooking, and the food was very good.So we’d leave after breakfast and walk downstairs to this underground installation which would open up to what they called the Hoe, which is level with the English Channel. And the Hoe is where— Above the Hoe is a lawn. That’s where Sir Francis Drake was bowling when the armada came by, and he said, “Oh, hell. Well, you can finish the game. And we can attend to that later." So we’d take a break, and we’d walk out and have a cigarette and just stand by the ocean or the—
WESCHLER
This is in the months before D-Day?
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
And you were aware that there was an invasion in preparation?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. And I’ll never forget being in that office when they said— What was it? June 4?
WESCHLER
June 6, I think, right?
HAMMERSLEY
June something. That it had been done. And oh, Christ, I mean, we were—
WESCHLER
You knew it was coming, but you didn’t know when it was going to happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then the day that it did happen, and then it was a— Seemed like just a week later, we were shipped over, and everything was calm then. I mean, no fighting where we landed. We landed by some lovely French chateau, and these drinkers, the G.I.’s, would get the French cider, and it’d go right through them. [laughs] I’ll never forget it. God, I didn’t like it.But I walked by this house, and there was this one little window in the basement, and this lovely fragrance of the wine would come out. Oh, god, it was heaven.
WESCHLER
What were you doing there? Basically the American Army is on its way to Berlin, and what are you doing?
HAMMERSLEY
We’re doing nothing. We’re just waiting to be assigned.
WESCHLER
You’re still waiting?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh, you get very good at that.Okay. Because of my— Jeez, I’m kind of mixed up here. Oh, that’s right. So I was shipped— The people were being assigned, and because of my art school background, I was shipped to Paris to be with long lines control, which was French, British, and American.
WESCHLER
What does “long lines control” mean?
HAMMERSLEY
To know the communications of the three armies as they would advance. And I would have to prepare this diagram every week to show this corps or that, doing what.
WESCHLER
So, again, you’re involved in legibility, basically.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right, and when I had nothing to do, I’d draw a map of France and work on the lettering, that sort of thing. And we were in this lovely French telephone building. It was a gorgeous building with a brass balustrade.
WESCHLER
So this is the fall of ’44, basically?
HAMMERSLEY
’44. And when we got there, you’d hear small-arms fire. It had to be open all night long, this office. And you’d hear small-arms fire, and then you’d come out in the morning and some car was burning. We were isolated. It was very strange. And I was there three weeks before it dawned on me I was in Paris, because I’d hear the G.I.’s talking about the Folies-Bergère. And I said, “For Christ’s sake, Hammersley, what are you doing?”So I went to the Folies-Bergère, and it was— The comedians and the pretty ladies are just—
WESCHLER
Would you describe yourself at that point as a naïve virginal type, or were you a—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. That’s enough. I was a professional naïve man. Oh boy, I was from no place. Now I’m in no place. [laughs]
WESCHLER
"From No Place to No Place: The Hammersley Story."
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, amazing.
WESCHLER
Were you shocked? Were you charmed? Were you—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, it was lovely. It was lovely. I really enjoyed all this. And then Boulevard Haussmann.
WESCHLER
Let me, by the way—I've just got you in the Folies-Bergère. Had you been doing studies from the nude at Chouinard?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
So it wasn’t a shock from way back?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. The first time I saw a nude [in Patrick’s beginning drawing class (Added by Hammersley during his review.)], it was just unbelievable. I didn’t know what— I still have that drawing because it was just so funny. You know, in those days, the word pregnant was not used. You look at the Cosmopolitan magazine. It’s like a feminine Playboy. It’s unbelievable, the language. Well, anyway. [I was beating around the bush here because I was so flustered seeing a nude woman for the first time.( Added by Hammersley during his review.)]
WESCHLER
You were starting to say the first time you saw a nude model.
HAMMERSLEY
It was very— I was in this class, and these other G.I.’s— My friend was a marine, and he would go up to the model afterward and talk with her.
WESCHLER
But this is after the war.
HAMMERSLEY
Excuse me. This is before the war, the first time I saw a nude. But when in Paris—Where in the hell did we stay? Some hotel, I think. And Boulevard Haussmann was the USO Club. Eglise de la Madeleine was here. Rue Royale goes into Eglise de la Madeleine. You know that. And then Haussmann. And they would serve coffee and doughnuts downstairs, and all these G.I.’s from the front would come out. Oh, Christ, the poor bastards. They looked like hell. And there was a little notice on the bulletin board saying, “Visit Picasso's studio Wednesday at three o’clock.”
WESCHLER
What do you mean? In other words, it was a USO offering? Or Picasso had invited the USO?
HAMMERSLEY
No. Well, evidently Picasso had okayed it, but I saw this notice that it was possible to visit his studio, so this Red Phalen was in charge of the G.I.’s in this Long Lines Control, and he also loved his wife. I mean, there were two or three men that spoke highly of their wife. And he had a bar in Chicago, redheaded, deadpan man, he’d go to SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower’s headquarters] and win all the money from the sergeants playing poker.I said, “Red, I have a chance to see Picasso’s studio.”He said, “Who’s that?”I said, “Well, so-and-so.”He said, “That’s all right. Take off.”So I took the afternoon off, and I went to the USO, and there were four of us, four G.I.’s and a French lady, and we got on the Metro. It was across the river. We ended up across the river, and then we came to this place. Picasso’s assistant was kind of a cranky guy. I’ve seen the name written someplace. But he opened the door.Oh, and previous to that, I’d seen a show of his, Picasso’s show at Salon d’Automne, and all the Parisian students, children and adults three-deep and the gendarmes around to keep them— They were laughing and making fun of these terrible paintings, they said. Those paintings were in the studio when we came in.
WESCHLER
Now, were you impressed with those paintings?
HAMMERSLEY
I was impressed because it was Picasso, like you are obliged to like it.
WESCHLER
Picasso— Even in L.A., Picasso was a name you knew?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
But not something you had been taught to appreciate?
HAMMERSLEY
I had heard of Picasso. I visited Brancusi.
WESCHLER
I want to hear about all of that, but let’s stick with Picasso right now.
HAMMERSLEY
The painting studio was downstairs. By the window there was this easel, and his palette was a newspaper, for Christ’s sake. What in the hell? And then there was a glass case of things that he had selected or he liked or bought or something, little sculptures. And then upstairs was the sculpture studio. And that’s where we eventually saw him. Yes, he came out, and the French lady talked to him. “Bonjour, monsieur.” That’s my extent of conversation. And then we went past his bedroom, and this skinny Afghan dog was by the bed. And I was impressed because the bed had a black and white cow-skin cover. See, this is how he influenced me. I got some cow-skin-covered pillows later. And then we went by the bathtub, and all these bottles on the shelf. It was amazing. So we’re standing in the bathroom. He was talking to the lady, and we were just standing, looking at him, and he went out into the balcony and brought back the dove. He smiled, and he showed us this little dove. It was sweet. And then after a while—
WESCHLER
A live dove that he had?
HAMMERSLEY
A live dove. Oh yes. It was in the cage outside. And we walked around a little bit, and then we left.I went back there about four or five times. And the last time, there was a big group from England, and they took a picture of us, but he wasn’t there that time.
WESCHLER
Why did you go back?
HAMMERSLEY
I wanted to see more.
WESCHLER
In other words, what excited you about Picasso, or was it just that that was—
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I wanted to see more of his things.
WESCHLER
What was exciting to a boy from nowhere about Picasso?
HAMMERSLEY
It was a rare opportunity. I mean, my god.
WESCHLER
But you were beginning to appreciate it? On the third or fourth time, did you begin to appreciate something about Picasso?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I appreciated it the first time because he was a great man. I mean, he was thought of as a great man. I was puzzled by his work. The Guernica and the Demoiselles— What’s that called?
WESCHLER
[Les Demoiselles] d’Avignon.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I still don’t like it. Do you like it, by the way?
WESCHLER
I like Guernica.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I saw a small version of the Guernica, and I said to Susie, “Susie, I really don’t care for this.” I bought a couple of posters from [MusEe de] l’Orangerie, the period where he was doing girls, the sweet— It was nice. Fat figures, that sort of thing. But he was a remarkable man.
WESCHLER
What was on the walls? The things that had been at l’Orangerie, the things that had been at the museum that were now back at his studio? What was there?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t remember a single thing. There was some long figure. Oh, I remember that was hanging there. You know, it’s amazing. If I don’t talk about it or think about it, it disappears. I’m sorry.
WESCHLER
But what’s interesting to me is you didn’t think about it. It wasn’t that important to you.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Was there anything in Paris that was important to you as a young artist? You said you went to Brancusi. What else did you see? What about Brancusi? Was that interesting?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, he was the best. What’s Picasso’s friend?
WESCHLER
Braque?
HAMMERSLEY
Braque. He was right— Oh. I lived in the Les Etats-Unis building.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
You know, there’s a Spanish building, the German building, and a few blocks away was Braque’s studio, and there was the same notice. “Meet so-and-so. Come to Braque’s studio.” His house was immaculate. I remember the blue carpet on the way up to the studio, and in the studio there’s several easels with brushes in small jars of water, it looked like. And then there was a desk by the window, and the corrugated cardboard had been opened up so you could see the corrugations, and his pencils were in there. So I was sitting there looking at his notebooks, and he was talking to these other G.I.’s and this French lady, and the dining room table was polished and dark and this lovely ceramic woven bowl holding apples. I mean, everything was very attractive.Then when we left, I looked up and looked at the studio, and then I realized, “Oh, there’s another studio here. That’s the one probably he shows to people.” But nevertheless, he was working there. But I went there twice, but—
WESCHLER
Was his art more impressive to you or less impressive?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t care for Braque.
WESCHLER
He himself, was he—
HAMMERSLEY
Charming, charming man. Kind and—
WESCHLER
Would you describe Picasso as charming?
HAMMERSLEY
Dynamic.
WESCHLER
Dynamic. I see.
HAMMERSLEY
Those eyes are like drills. He’s a strong son of a bitch. I mean, boy. And that book, that [Françoise] Gilot book [Life with Picasso], he was a bastard with people. But when he talked about his own things— Use one brush and then you’ll have consistency in your painting. That makes sense. That’s very interesting. I thought that was very interesting. The composition of some of these art students or art teachers, so convoluted and so— Oh, Jesus Christ, just tell me what’s going on.
WESCHLER
You had mentioned that Brancusi was the best.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, he looked like a short Santa Claus in gray corduroy. And he came to the door.
WESCHLER
Another one of these things with the little notes on the door?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
“Come on such-and-such an afternoon”?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I asked you the name of that man who did the glass thing, and you told me, and I forgot.
WESCHLER
Duchamp.
HAMMERSLEY
Duchamp. What’s his brother’s name?
WESCHLER
There were several. François, Raymond Villon—
HAMMERSLEY
Villon, I think. Well, he was an image maker. There was that funny little house in the middle of a plowed field, and I just remember it was so odd, walking over these rows of tilled earth, and I don’t remember— They were small things, and it was a small cottage. And then—
WESCHLER
You’re saying Brancusi. Talk about him.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. There were like six of us, getting more now. And the room was filled with things, and he would bend down, and then after a while you realized the whole room was moving because this sculpture stand was slowly revolving.
WESCHLER
A mechanical revolving thing?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. The Fish. I could show you a picture here, The Crowing Cock. I didn’t see that for twenty-five years later. I took a picture of that. And so all these things were moving, and god, it was— Bird in Space was there.The lady said, “He’s going to show us some capitals he’s working on for a Turkish client.” So they went in a room nearby. So I took some pictures, and then when the lady came out, I said, “Would you ask him if it’s okay to take some pictures?”He got red in the face. “No pictures.”So, I’m sorry. I’m glad he didn’t see me take them, but they’re in here. I only saw that once, but those— Now, see, when I first saw the Bird in Space, it was kind of a shock, but nevertheless, it fed your eyes all the time. It kept on feeding. It was not like— Well, all the big people, they feed you. They feed you.
WESCHLER
Talk about that some more. What do you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
All right. I’ll go backwards. I taught children eight to twelve, and they can go anyplace, and it’s very fascinating. I have a folio. You can only have a child’s painting up for a couple of days. It’s boring. It’s charming and sweet and stupid and wild, but there’s no life, no length to it.
WESCHLER
No duration.
HAMMERSLEY
Duration. But you look at a giant’s, a quality thing— And McFee said, “When you go to a show, don’t feel obliged to look at every painting. Just go to the show and look at things, and some will stop you and some won’t. And then you rest a while and come back and look again.”So I’d go out and have a cigarette, and come back and say, “I don’t remember that. See, I remember the nose. I don’t remember that part of the side.” And then I’d come back and look at it again. I found I’d have to see a show six times. Then I felt comfortable with it. I was fed.
WESCHLER
And you had a sense of that with some of these Parisian artists, that they were feeding you?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, especially Brancusi.
WESCHLER
And talk about how Bird in Space feeds you.
HAMMERSLEY
The title doesn’t quite match but— Well, you look at an amateur, you can tell he’s an amateur when he draws a curve. A curve is a very difficult thing to draw. And those curves, there’s a variation of curves, and they’re all one piece. It was a real feast.
WESCHLER
And you knew that right away, looking at it?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, you kept on— I found myself looking. Oh. And then when he went to the studio to show this thing, there was this round head, and he pressed it. He said, “I’ll show you this thing.” I looked at this. It was called The Unborn Child, and it was slowly rocking. Oh. And the face was hardly there, you see. Goddamn. It was wonderful.
WESCHLER
So you were in Paris for how long?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, until the Battle of the Bulge. I don’t know when that was.
WESCHLER
The winter of 1944.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, is that it?
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
These two G.I.’s in the office said, “Marvin, let’s take our glasses.” We had to get a physical. And he said, “Let’s take our glasses.” I would wear glasses if I was doing small things. I left them at the office, and as a result I got drafted to the infantry, and because of the Battle of the Bulge, more bodies. So we were sent to Saint-Cyr. This was the French West Point. Talk about a dull point. I mean, it was unattractive. Enormous cement buildings with big, three-layer bunks, a palliasse. Have you ever heard of a palliasse?
WESCHLER
Those are those burlap—
HAMMERSLEY
Burlap bags that you fill with straw. And our teacher was a sergeant from the line. No teeth in front. And he said, “Well, the manual says something, but you got to use your goddamn head." I remember walking at four thirty in the morning to some exercise, and ever since I’ve had chilblain, my hands got so cold. It was a marvelous experience. I was so impressed by the time we were through, the last time over the obstacle course, I felt like a million dollars. And then we’d go to the woods and shoot things that would flip up. And that was with live ammunition.The thing I admired most about the G.I.’s is the one that had the combat badge. It’s a rifle on a blue field. That’s the only thing that counts. I don’t care for all this other salad. And this guy with no teeth, I mean— And so when I was shooting these things, I dreaded the idea of fighting, but I was very curious to see what it would feel like to have that man shoot at me, and I’ve got to shoot him first or— I’ve got to do something. I just would wonder what would happen. I would have an advantage to take a big step in my development. I would learn a lot. I never did.
WESCHLER
I was going to say, did you face combat yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
No. So after we were through with this six weeks’ training, oh, then the guy who wrote the manual came from the States, so, you know, had all the answers. “We’ve given you all the comforts. You’ve got to go now.” The comfort was they put straw in the bottom of these forty-by-eights. Remember the French boxcars called forty-by-eights? They had four wheels, by the way. They looked like a big toy. And forty-by-eights mean they’ll take forty men or eight horses.So I was with some officers. So we, the G.I.’s, weren’t as crowded as the other G.I.’s, and we traveled for three or four days going through France, Belgium, Holland, and we ended up in some mine, on top of some mine in Germany, and then we would shoot the German weapons. I was so impressed with this. And some of the adventuresome G.I.’s would go down in the mine. You weren’t supposed to, and the village nearby had hidden or— Yes, hidden their supply of shoes or their supply of drafting instruments, etc., because this one G.I. brought me back a compass with an ivory handle on it.And what I found fascinating was an enormous room with many parallel waist-high partitions, and that would be attached to a chain going to the ceiling, and at the end of this chain there’d be a hook. So the miner would undress and hook his clothes on the hook and roll his clothes up to the ceiling and then lock it down here.And in this room, well, it felt like the size of these two rooms. That was the shower room. And that’s where we’d have our showers.
WESCHLER
Meanwhile, the front is several hundred miles forward at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know where it was, but we were waiting to—
WESCHLER
And at that point you’re infantry? You’re no longer Signal Corps?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. I was in the infantry. Well, there’s nothing you can do. The army was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.
WESCHLER
How come?
HAMMERSLEY
I was in Europe, and to see these marvelous, beautiful things. Old, old. Grandma was knitting, taking care of her cows. The grass looked old. The three of them. Everything was— It was so unlike America. I just—
WESCHLER
Did you see a lot of destruction in Germany?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, Christ. When we first got to Britain, the planes would come over, and you’d hear the shrapnel fall in the trees, and it would hit you sometimes, and I saved some pieces, but what the hell. But I didn’t really see anything. Now, let’s see—
WESCHLER
I don't mean did you see combat, but did you see the aftereffects of combat?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, especially in Berlin.
WESCHLER
So at what point did you get to Berlin?
HAMMERSLEY
All right. Now, let’s see.
WESCHLER
You’re in that mine, and then what happens?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Then the German war stopped, ended, and so we were sitting there, like a lot of the other companies, you know, we were just sitting there. So everyone had to be reassigned, and then the Japanese war was still going on. So we were going to be shipped to France, and eventually go over home and then to Japan. But my company ended up in the Hôtel de Golfe on the coast of the English Channel, I guess, this lovely, big hotel that was posh, and the dining room was lovely, and we were living in this place.We were there about a week, and I got a cold or something that really, I couldn’t move, so I signed up on sick call. So to go to sick call, you had to get a jeep and go several miles to the village to where the G.I. doctors were. So I went there, and by the time I came back, it was six or something, seven o’clock, and my outfit had been assigned to go to Japan. But I wasn’t there, so I wasn’t on the list. Unbelievable.So I was there a couple of days, and so I was shipped back to Paris simply because I was an art student. And then— I forget what I did in Paris or how long I was there. Then I was shipped to Frankfurt, Germany to head a small art department. There were three other G.I.’s and myself, and I remember this WAC [member of the Women’s Army Corps]. She lives in Cambria now. And they were nervous. They didn’t know what the hell to do. They were ordered to make a painting for a poster. “We just don’t know what to do.”I said, “Well, I’ll make a poster with a bulldog.” I remember Rico Lebrun saying, “You should be able to draw a rabbit.” And then, “You should be able to draw a turtle. I mean, you’ve seen a turtle.”I said, “Well, I’ve seen a bulldog.” So I made one up. “That’s damn good, Hammersley.”So I was in Frankfurt for a while, and then that office moved to OMGUS, Office of Military Government, USA, in Berlin. Still another art— The same art department. And that’s when I visited Berlin. I was looking for art supplies.
WESCHLER
So, now, this would’ve been into ’45.
HAMMERSLEY
’45, yes.
WESCHLER
What was Berlin like? Berlin had been destroyed.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, god, it was marvelous. The feeling of— The smell when you came in, that was terrible, when we first came in.
WESCHLER
Terrible because of—
HAMMERSLEY
The dead people. They were invisible, I mean, but there was a terrible stench. Later, I think that’s the first time I felt greed, at the— Unter den Linden, that's the street. There’s a park on the other side of Brandenburg Gate. I can’t remember that—
WESCHLER
Starts with a T.
HAMMERSLEY
Tiergarten. That’s where the black market was. And talk about making money— A bar of soap you could buy in the PX for five cents or a package of cigarettes for five cents, one could sell the cigarettes for twenty dollars. And some people were writing home, “Sell my Chevrolet and send me some money.” [laughs] And you weren’t allowed to be on the black market, but you could get away with murder. And then there were AWOL Russians, dirty and smoking cigarettes. The paper was newspaper.
WESCHLER
So you were saying, though, that when you first arrived, there was this stench. The town itself had been pretty much obliterated.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes, but it still felt marvelous.
WESCHLER
How so? How could a destroyed city feel marvelous?
HAMMERSLEY
It still had an attitude of greatness, of a great metropolis. I would have loved to see it in the twenties. And I would love to see it— Did you say you’ve been to Berlin?
WESCHLER
I was there last week.
HAMMERSLEY
I wonder what it must be like now. It must be wonderful.Let’s see. How did this happen? We were living by a subway station which had shopping areas and theaters. Jack Benny and a lot of the movie stars put on shows for us. God almighty. I’m kind of mixed up here on the order of things.
WESCHLER
But when you say— Help me again. A destroyed city, and yet it had a feeling of greatness. How did that feeling express itself?
HAMMERSLEY
Because it was so large, and the streets were wide. Oh. I’m reversing myself. You asked me what impressed me about Paris. The thing that really impressed me about Paris, you’d look down the street, and you’d see a monument. And then I’d turn around, and I’d see the Arc de Triomphe. The same way with Berlin. There were things planned—
WESCHLER
The Brandenburg Gate.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
The columns.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And at the other end of Unter den Linden— Was it Frederick the Great’s museum on the left side? And then I went here, and there was a marvelous statue, enormous statue. And I took a picture of a G.I. sitting on the legs of the statue, and he was standing here, and I was across the street, and they looked like toys, they were so small. And then there was small-arms fire. The step had been chewed with small-arms fire. So I walked up behind this, and I took a picture of the head. It was a classic head. Then I was looking at this palace across the street with the arch, and a carriage went by, so I got these three things in, and I was very pleased with that.
WESCHLER
You mentioned sometimes that you were doing a lot of photography.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
As a hobby? Did you think you might become a photographer at that point? What was that about?
HAMMERSLEY
No. When I was in Idaho— How did I— I bought an Argus camera for twelve dollars and fifty cents, and I was taking pictures of Fort Hall and Pocatello, and then San Francisco. [Fort Hall was an Indian reservation. Pocatello was the town nearby where I went to the southern branch of the University of Idaho for two years. (Added by Hammersley during his review.)] They’re in there. So I took that with me. I don’t know why I bought this. Oh. A Voigtlander. I got rid of that. I have a German camera now. So I was using both of them. I was brought up with my father taking pictures. I mean, he didn’t say anything about composition. He didn’t say anything, that he liked this or that. He just took pictures and would send them to friends or family. My father was a record keeper, you know. If you bought that sweater, he’d write the date on it. [laughs] And I do the same thing.
WESCHLER
I know you do. But in terms of photography, was that a discipline for improving your sense of composition?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. It was record making.
WESCHLER
And yet you do have— I have seen your photographs. They do have a fine sense of composition.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. It became more focused when I came here and I knew the photography department and the head.
WESCHLER
In New Mexico.
HAMMERSLEY
In New Mexico, University of New Mexico, when I was teaching painting here. So I signed up to take the beginning photo class for the lab, how to make a print, and I was very impressed how difficult it is to make a decent print. My admiration went up more.
WESCHLER
That’s later. So anyway, you’re in Berlin. How long were you in Berlin?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I don’t know, but it seemed like a few months. Oh yes. Well, yes, it was an overlapping of the German war being over, and I had these various things to do, and then this WAC and I were looking for art supplies. Here I’m not answering your question.When I was in this gallery that had art supplies and books, I saw some George Grosz drawings I could’ve got for cigarettes. I didn’t like them. What an ass! But I bought three gorgeous Dűrer books that are just heaven, and when Laurence Murphy saw that, he looked at this head, and he said, “I could do that.” And I said to myself, “I’ll bet you could.” But anyway.
WESCHLER
You also, as I recall, bought the woman artist with her [colored steel engravings (Added by Hammersley during his review)].
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
What’s her name?
HAMMERSLEY
Merian, [Maria] Sibylla Merian. I’ll show you— Well, I have a clipping from Smithsonian magazine. I’ve seen several references.
WESCHLER
These are 1600s, right?
HAMMERSLEY
1690.
WESCHLER
And these are images of still lifes?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, insects and plants.
WESCHLER
And they are etchings?
HAMMERSLEY
I have a feeling steel engraving, don’t you think?
WESCHLER
Steel engraving with watercolor.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then I also have a costume thing that’s Italian. And that’s 1500-something. That was from the same studio.
WESCHLER
Now, were there museums up and operating at that point in Berlin, or were they—
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
They were still—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t—
WESCHLER
You didn’t do that?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
But you saw bookstores? You saw art supply stores?
HAMMERSLEY
I went to one bookstore, and we were lucky to find that. It was near that photograph in the entry was very hard to get supplies.Oh. In the meantime G.I.’s were acquiring enough points to be discharged, how long you had been in the army. I don’t know if action would increase your points. I think it would. And so I would see these records that three G.I.’s are going to law school in London, and so-and-so are going to architectural school or music, etc., etc., etc. And then one came in, "Two of them leave for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.” I looked at that. I said, “I’ll be damned.” So I went to the lieutenant, and I said, “Can I take one of those?”He said, “Sure.” [laughs] God. So I signed up, went to Paris. I forget where I was living. I was living in the Grand Palais. Do you remember the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais? This enormous glass door, and the guys would come in drunk and slam that door.
WESCHLER
Oh my god. Oh my god.
HAMMERSLEY
It was terrible. I forget the hotel I was living in, and there were several G.I.’s that we got together at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, wherever we signed up, and then we found a studio. It was like a little amphitheater. And then we’d visit the painting studios. We’d go there. But I mean, it was raucous . I mean, these were children. They were teenagers, and they were having a ball.I remember this delicious plump nude posing, and the French boy was standing, holding a piece of long wood, and it was burning on the end, and he was holding it by her back so she’d get warm. Oh, Christ. It was hard to get coal. We’d hire models and draw or paint. And once a week a painting instructor would come in and say, “C’est très bien.” Big deal.Oh, and the thing that impressed me at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was the museum of all the plaster casts, Greek and Roman, these gorgeous— Oh god. And occasionally— "Oh, there’s a student over there," and they would turn a chair upside down and put the drawing board in it and draw, and they used the inside of French bread: pressed it together and used that as the eraser.If you entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as young student, you’d have to spend a year in this museum drawing these casts.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
We just got to the exciting point where we’re in Paris, French students drawing, erasing with bread.
HAMMERSLEY
The students are. We were able to get PX things. But what impressed me, they’d spent a year in this marvelous museum. It’s an enormous building. There’s a little drawing or etching in my hallway showing the building. After the year’s up— You know, you see this old clichE with the Frenchman, the beret, and the blue smock? These two Frenchmen carrying the litter with the sculpture, going into the corner atelier for their test. The student would have to make a drawing. They’d spend one day on making a drawing, and the painting instructor would come in and say oui or non, and the poor bastard, if it was no, he would have to go back to the museum for another year. Or, if he got yes, then he gets in the painting studio.There was a small, seemed like a small room, filled with paintings twenty-four by thirty of all the Prix de Rome winners from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Very talented, marvelous paintings. I mean, they were so accurately done.
WESCHLER
Academic?
HAMMERSLEY
Academic, yes. And then you wondered, you know— I don’t quite understand. I’m unable to do this, make the step from a still life to what [Giorgio] Morandi’s doing. You see, it’s a still life, but it’s Morandi and the still life. I do a still life, and it’s a still life. Hammersley is not there much. I mean, I can’t— Or a Modigliani. I mean, it’s a nude plus Modigliani. I don’t understand. I’m not able to do that yet. And I admire it very much.
WESCHLER
"Yet" you say at the age of eighty-five. [laughs]
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
But one of the things that’s interesting is compared to Los Angeles, the level of education you’re receiving is a quantum leap, it seems like, don’t you think? Or would you say you were getting as good an education in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, because I was right in the middle of history, and seeing the streets and the buildings—
WESCHLER
Did you spend much time in the Louvre?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. I have a picture of the Mona Lisa. I mean, you could walk up and touch it in those days. When I was first there, all the paintings were gone, and only the sculpture was there, and I have always wanted to see the back of Venus de Milo, so I have a picture. The WAC was down the hall, this long passageway, and this Venus, the back view of her, and I took the picture, and the guard is standing by the window. But I love the sculpture.
WESCHLER
Did the paintings come back while you were still there?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, because that’s when I saw the—
WESCHLER
What did you like? Here you are, a boy from nowhere—
HAMMERSLEY
Isn’t that funny? I don’t remember a particular thing. I’m just impressed with this David or these— The size. It whetted my appetite. I’d love to see Velázquez. I’ve never seen him. And I was so impressed at Picasso taking four months off to copy Velázquez, and he ended up doing an abstract thing of this hand. I said, “I wish I’d done that.” Oh, god, it was abstract, of a hand.I don’t really remember— There was an article in the Smithsonian about the people whose profession is copyist. “I would like this Gericault, and it has to be—" The Louvre, you have to have it slightly smaller. It can’t be the same size. Clever. And these people are very accomplished, and this breathtaking— Goddamn it, when we were in Jepson’s [Jepson Art Institute], we would copy El Greco or some people, and this one boy, it was a very good copy. I said, “I’m going to try that.” And it’s very hard. [Watching El Greco, 1974; Copy of El Greco, 1950s]
WESCHLER
So eventually how long were you in Paris? When did you leave?
HAMMERSLEY
The early part of ’46.
WESCHLER
Did you come back to America?
HAMMERSLEY
Come back to America.
WESCHLER
To Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Wait a minute. No, to San Francisco. I took a trainload of— I don’t know why I was assigned to this trainload of G.I.’s from New York, and that’s where I realized that we’d see the landscape and that house looked like it’d been put up last week, and everything was brand-new. I mean, it was not Paris. I mean, not Europe. And I just envy these people. Well, it’s in another world, and we’re not in that world, and I envy them, but I wouldn’t want to live in Europe.All right. So the train would stop in these various places.
WESCHLER
In the new world.
HAMMERSLEY
In the new world, and we end up in San Francisco, and I remember carrying my— Oh. And then we were discharged and all that monkey business, signing papers. And I carried this enormous duffle bag home to Burlingame, and I was there until it was time to go to school, to Chouinard.
WESCHLER
So you were reporting back to Chouinard?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Now, here’s my question for you. Describe how the person reporting back to Chouinard was different than the person who had left to go to Europe, in terms of when you left to go to Europe, you were thinking that you would be an advertising artist. Was that still your thought, reporting back to Chouinard? How had Europe changed you, or had it?
HAMMERSLEY
When I came back, I go to Chouinard— Oh yes, I did take an advertising class from the lettering man which I’d had previously. But I was frightened of people. And I made a folio which I was very pleased with—
WESCHLER
Even after all your experience in the war, you were frightened, or because of your experience in the war?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, not because of. Because of Mother. Mother.
WESCHLER
So you were a shy kind of—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I was not— My family was not outgoing. My father was not aggressive. He was assertive, but not aggressive. Lawrence, I think of my cat. My cat will bring in a bird. She’s very excited. She doesn’t know what to do with it. Bless her heart. Her mother didn’t teach her to eat the bird. The first cat I had, I would see feathers often where she had had a meal of a bird. And you’ve got to be around people that— I’ve been thinking for years I’d like to write a paper about that chestnut “monkey sees, monkey does.” That is an amazing principle. You’ll become what you are around. The people that you are around, the things you look at, you reflect that. And if you’re with crummy things, you do crummy work.
WESCHLER
And if you’re with tongue-tied, shy or anxious people, you become that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I was a practicing neurotic. I was very good at that.
WESCHLER
But coming back to the question I asked you about, how had Europe changed you— Part of what I want to get to this morning is how you became an artist as opposed to an advertising copywriter or whatever.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I was suspicious of being an artist, because— Did I tell you, before the war, I was looking at Henry Lee McFee and I said, “This nice man, three-piece suit and a beard, a tie, isn’t that strange, a grown man spending his time putting paint on a piece of cloth? That’s absolutely ridiculous.” I mean, Christ, you don’t make a living— How can he justify that? That disappeared eventually. When I came back from the war and seeing all these paintings—
WESCHLER
Did that disappear in Europe? Is that where it disappeared?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I think it disappeared later. Oh, yes, it disappeared. Yes. I had the folio— I got in Graphis Annual [1952-53] with some cards I designed, and the folio is now in the archives. I got on my bike and started on Wilshire Boulevard downtown and visited the art services all the way up to Beverly Hills, applied for a job. And, you see, I didn’t want a job, and I was subconsciously— Subconsciously, I didn’t want a job, so I asked for a part-time job. That’s ridiculous. Who’s going to give you a part-time job? I mean, are you going to join the company, or are you going to— So I was let down, but I was happy. I didn’t have to work with people. With painting, you don’t have to work with people. [Weschler laughs.]So after the war, I went to Chouinard, and it wasn’t as good as it was. It was in another place, and then I heard Rico [Lebrun] was—[Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
First things first. Let’s correct. You’re eighty-four and not eighty-five. Okay. But you were starting to say that Chouinard, when you came back, was not as good. They’d moved.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I know my painting teacher would paint horses on commission for Texas people. I thought, “That’s a good idea.” I mean, that’s a good way to make business. Horses are gorgeous. And one drawing instructor, he wasn’t— A very good mouth, but no protein in his talk.
WESCHLER
So you moved over to Jepson [Art Institute]?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
[Herbert] Jepson had started a school at this point?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, he had started a school.
WESCHLER
Where was that?
HAMMERSLEY
On Seventh Street right near Ted Gibson, the art store. I designed the first sign for Ted Gibson, bless his heart. He was ninety-two when he died. Nice guy.But anyway— Oh. What was exciting about Jepson’s, they were mostly G.I.’s. You know, they knew they wanted a red sweater, I mean, or they knew—
WESCHLER
What do you mean, they knew they wanted a red sweater?
HAMMERSLEY
No, excuse me. They knew what they wanted to do. They wanted to learn about drawing. And they wanted some painting, and they wanted silkscreen.
WESCHLER
They had G.I. Bill money.
HAMMERSLEY
They had it, and that was sixty-five dollars a month. Hell, that was freedom. I was paying nineteen dollars a month— Oh. Yes. When I left home to go to Chouinard to sign up, Gladstone bag, for Christ’s sake, I took a train down to Los Angeles, got on the streetcar, came up and went to my— No. I called up from the phone from the train station.[Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
The question occurred to me, by the way, why did you go to Los Angeles to study art and not stay in San Francisco? Were there no good art schools in San Francisco, or you just—
HAMMERSLEY
I had been used to Chouinard. I knew Chouinard. I really didn’t think of going to a San Francisco school. I remember visiting the [California] School of Fine Arts [now San Francisco Art Institute], that big place, the one that has the [Diego] Rivera mural.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
You know that? I think that is the cleverest, marvelous, most imaginative mural, to see the back of him, clever.
WESCHLER
But in San Francisco you had [Richard] Diebenkorn and David Park. That scene wasn’t yet going on, but it was on the verge.
HAMMERSLEY
I didn’t care for those people. They were big names. I didn’t know any of the galleries in San Francisco. Oh, I would always— I would go to the three museums a lot. I liked the museums. I loved those Ecole des Beaux-Arts architecture and those old-fashioned buildings. Lovely. This crap they’re doing today—
WESCHLER
But you had no— You’d just go to L.A. If you were going to study art, L.A. was the place you wanted to be.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct, because I knew it and I expected it to be the same, and it wasn’t. But when I got to this train station, I called up Mrs. Harris. I said, “Do you have a room, Mrs. Harris? I’m going to go to Chouinard.”She said, “No, I’m filled up.” But she said, “You could sleep in the kitchen if you like.”And I said, “All right.”Can you imagine, coming down with no preparation? You write things first. It’s amazing what’s happened to me.So I got on the streetcar, came up. And it was very hard to do assignments on an oval table with a drawing board, you know. It’s like this. And after a week, she said, “Now that little room is available.” So a tiny little room here overlooking the parking lot.And then the Nuremberg trials were on. They talked about Hess or something. His jail cell was six by nine feet. So I did this, and it was six by nine feet, this room. Unbelievable, three dollars a week. And then I splurged and got a room across the street, second floor, for nineteen dollars a month out of the sixty-five. See, that was a lot of money.
WESCHLER
And you’re studying at Jepson now?
HAMMERSLEY
At Jepson.
WESCHLER
What’s that like? Rico Lebrun is there?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And what I liked is that all the G.I.’s were older. I’ve used the word civilians. There were two or three civilians that were out of it. They were just in the wrong— They were children. Here these G.I.’s were old.
WESCHLER
Did you feel like you were old?
HAMMERSLEY
No. No, I didn’t. But I felt how he felt, this young kid. And then there was a retired colonel.
WESCHLER
The G.I.’s you thought of as old were G.I.’s who had seen combat, basically?
HAMMERSLEY
No, who were in the army. Not necessarily combat, but had been in the army.
WESCHLER
Well, you had been in the army. You didn’t feel that way?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
You still felt a young nobody from nobody?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I was glad I had the army. I was very pleased to have had that. But I was not aggressive or assertive.
WESCHLER
Monkey not see, monkey not do.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. I was monkeying around for years. [mutual laughter] God, terrible.Oh. I was very impressed with Rico. He’d come in, and the class would be there, and he’d give a talk, and it was very strong and great. One student turned around, he said, “I have a feeling you can be influenced by this guy too much.” Then he turned around. Then Rico ended up in the little room and called the first student. “Bring your folio.”So you’d bring your folio, and he’d look at it, and then he’d say to the student, “What do you want to do? What do you want to do?”And they’d say, “Well, I want to go into fashion,” or, “I want to do whatever.”When it came to me, he looked at the stuff, and he said, “It’s very nice, Hammersley. What do you want to do?”I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t know what I want to do.”He said, “All right.” [laughs]And then this other guy came in, and he said, “What do you want to do?” “I want to make money.”He said, “Okay.” And this guy was in silkscreen. Five years later in the Saturday Evening Post, he was making $50,000 a year doing silkscreens for motels: Nice.So I liked that with Rico. “What do you want to do?”Now, toward the end, I started to teach when I was going to school, and he would sit me down, and the students would be around, and the model would pose, and he said, “All right, Hammersley, give me the left contour.” You think of the pencil as a knife. You have to look before you draw, so when you come to it, you’ll know what you’re going to do. And when the flesh is going over a bone, it’s a different contour than a flesh that’s hanging. When a stool is pushing against the buttock, it’s different than the leg which is down there. These curves had been influenced by the situation, and you’ve got to be a seismograph. And it’s very exciting.
WESCHLER
This is Lebrun talking or this is you talking?
HAMMERSLEY
Me. And you make a mark and you miss. What the hell. You make another mark. You don’t erase. And the dirty word is “sketch.” You don’t sketch. You either— Oh. One thing that impressed me about him, he said, “Don’t try to make a good drawing. Just tell me the facts.” Now, that’s true. I watched some of the people, and there’s a seductive quality about brushing, brushing to get— You know, it feels nice, and you listen to it, and you’re off the track.So anyway, I was teaching there and going to school, and then toward the end, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
WESCHLER
Now, you’re teaching figure drawing?
HAMMERSLEY
Figure drawing and painting. Seems like there was another class.Mrs. [Nelbert] Chouinard said, “Jepson is not a good businessman. He’s paying his instructors too much.” On the G.I. Bill, if I’m in your class, the G.I. Bill would give the school a dollar and the instructor a dollar— No, that’s what Jepson did. The G.I. would give two dollars per student for this class, but Jepson would turn around— If there were ten students in my class, I’d get ten dollars and the school would get ten dollars. When I had fifty students in my class, I got that fifty, and they got fifty. Mrs. Chouinard said, “He should pay a salary.” So the school died. He was not a good businessman.
WESCHLER
Who else was at the— Rico Lebrun was there.
HAMMERSLEY
And Billy [William] Brice and [Howard] Warshaw were teaching there.
WESCHLER
Tell me about them.
HAMMERSLEY
I was out of their league. I mean, I was not friends with them. I knew them. I knew Billy Brice at Chouinard before the war. See, most of the kids would take the streetcar or walk, and there were two rich kids, as I remember—I think I’m correct—and I think Billy Brice was one of them. I think it was a Buick. There was a car outside. All the other guys would bring their lunch and walk and take the streetcar. But Billy Brice was a nice guy, and he would look at things. He would look at things. And Warshaw, I didn’t care for his work. There’s a painting in the County Museum called Golgotha he did. He was a very energetic man. It seemed to me he was teaching in Santa Barbara or someplace.But anyway, let’s see. What other teachers— Oh, and F. Tolles Chamberlin. Have you ever heard that name?
WESCHLER
I’ve heard the name.
HAMMERSLEY
He was an academic. There’s an enormous book on California painters, and his painting, to me, is the best painting in the book. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s rich. Lovely, lovely. Rico got rid of him, the son of a bitch. I mean, he was a nice old man, and he would hold— Oh. When I took a painting class from him, all the time was spent in preliminary studies: we never got to the goddamn painting. I didn’t like that.Jepson said it was hard to go to lunch with Tolles Chamberlin because he would stop and look at the cracks in the sidewalk. He looked at things.
WESCHLER
You said that also of Brice. Talk a little bit more about Brice.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I don’t know much about him, except he came here for the Tamarind [Lithography Workshop] thing. He came over one evening, and then I would go over there, and we would talk. I envied him. He had a private tutor when he was a high school kid, and he’d spend a lot of time in the– “Louvre” I was going to say. In the Met. And I envied him. I remember seeing his mother in Frank Perls’ gallery on a [Rufino] Tamayo show, and later I learned that she had one of Tamayo’s watermelon paintings. I love Tamayo.
WESCHLER
So now describe the art scene in L.A. in ’48, ’49, and that would include are there new galleries beginning to open at this point?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, now, the [Paul] Kantor [Gallery] came in next to Frank Perls’, and there must’ve been other galleries. Oh yes, on La Cienega there were all kinds of galleries.
WESCHLER
So [Felix] Landau is in there at some point?
HAMMERSLEY
Landau, yes. And Ben [Benjamin] Horowitz. I went with him. And across the street was the Ferus Gallery.
WESCHLER
That’s not yet. That’s going to happen late fifties. But we’re in the late forties here and into the fifties. Well, let’s begin to orient ourselves towards the fifties now.
HAMMERSLEY
I’m trying to think what happened the latter part of the forties. I was going to school, started in ’46. Oh yes. When the school died, it so shocked me, I had no preparation. “How am I going to pay the rent? Hammersley, what in god’s name are you doing?” So I had an idea to make some silkscreen greeting cards, and I called them Hand Some cards, and I had a gadget made where the hand would be pressed into a seal, and that package ended up in Graphis. And this young lady was with me, and we tried to sell them. Well, hell, I mean, I had no business experience, and I spent a lot of time. It was interesting because I wasn’t involved with people. And then Jimmy [James] Grant, who was a classmate of mine— Now, he was a shrewd boy. He was going to Jepson’s, and [Francis] deErdely was teaching at— USC? No. What’s the school in Los Angeles? Well, anyway, Jimmy Grant went there to get a degree. Well, no one in Jepson’s— When I went to art school in Chouinard or Jepson, no one talked about graduating. You just went as long as the purse lasted. But he was clever enough to get an official document, and then he got a job teaching painting and drawing at Pomona College, and there was only one other instructor. That was Charles Lawler, a sculptor. Jimmy called and asked if I’d like to come out and teach. And that’s where I first met Seymour Slive. Do you remember him?
WESCHLER
Who’s he?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I was talking to [Louis] Grachos. He knew Slive. Slive was a Rembrandt man, and he was the chairman of the art department. There were only three in the studio at that time, and there were two or three historians— Fuller? Is that her name? And there was a marvelous man. That’s the first time I saw slides of ancient Greece and things in the lectures. I’d never had an art lecture, and that was marvelous.
WESCHLER
Well, it’s interesting. You describe yourself as this kind of hapless novice, but you’re obviously good enough to be the one person who they asked to be the teacher at Pomona. So what did you have going for you at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
I was a good draftsman. I was a good teacher. And I taught children at the Pasadena [Art] Museum. No, I love to teach. It’s so fascinating. You look at the eyes, and someone understands— Those eyes, god, no, they don’t get me at all. All right. It’s not your problem, kid. It’s my problem. So I’ve got to rearrange the words so they get it.
WESCHLER
It’s striking, because you describe yourself also as very awkward with people, and yet you were a good teacher.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it’s very funny. I’m very good with conversation, with strangers. I know how they feel. But I’m not saying, “Let’s go into business together. Let’s have a date.” It’s that kind of thing.
WESCHLER
But in anonymous or routinized relationships, you’re okay?
HAMMERSLEY
What does that mean, “routinized”?
WESCHLER
Teacher-student.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes. What is interesting, you see, I was copying Mother. I was in charge, and now that was simple. I was the teacher. One student made one remark which was worth the whole teaching period. I set up the still life. It took me a while. I was sweating this thing out. Yes, that’s all right. This girl said, “Mr. Hammersley, what is so significant about that still life?” [laughs] I thought that was just marvelous. So I said to myself, “That’s right, Hammersley. What is so significant about that still life?”
WESCHLER
And what was?
HAMMERSLEY
So I looked at it. I had to look at it. Why was I— Why did I feel comfortable after making that still life? And it was a family of straights to a family of curves. There are wine bottles which have a sloping shoulder, wine bottles which have a football shoulder, and there’s bowls, and then there’s an orange. It was a series of a variety of contours that were all related. It was all the same family, and that’s why it fit or came together. That’s what was so significant. But I’d never had a question like that.That’s the kind of question— As a matter of fact, Dick Saar was the only one that would ask questions to Rico Lebrun. I was afraid of him. But this guy, he would say, “Why do you have a beard? What’s the reason for—?” I thought, “Son of a bitch, that’s great. I wish I’d done that.” It was nice.So anyway, the teaching was—
WESCHLER
So that’s in the early fifties, you’re teaching?
HAMMERSLEY
I started to teach in Pomona. It’s ’53, and I taught nine years.
WESCHLER
Where were you living during that time?
HAMMERSLEY
I was living on Rampart, for goodness sake.
WESCHLER
So that was a long drive.
HAMMERSLEY
I would take the bus, take the streetcar, take the bus. And then I bought a Volkswagen and I learned how to drive, and I remember taking Rico Lebrun out to give a talk. So I enjoyed that driving. The driving was interesting, because it was a nice interval between the work and home, that things could settle down and you’d think about things. It’s like having a nap. A nap or lying down doing nothing is very important because it gives time for ideas to settle.
WESCHLER
Before we leave school— That was the work that you did at school; is that correct?
HAMMERSLEY
That was the end of Jepson’s.
WESCHLER
So let’s talk about it. What do you call that work again?
HAMMERSLEY
Red, Yellow, Black, and White. [Odds & Ends (Red, Yellow, Black, and White), 1947]
WESCHLER
And that was part of a series of fourteen?
HAMMERSLEY
That was the fourteenth painting.
WESCHLER
So talk about that.
HAMMERSLEY
When I was teaching at the end of Jepson’s— Oh yes, like I told you, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. No, I didn’t know what the hell was going on with painting. I would make a still life, and Mother would smile. Big deal. But I said, “There must be something more than this.” So in the alley I found this chunk of wood and a piece of hose and some things, and I put it together. I said, “That feels rather nice.” I can show you the painting if you wish. It felt rather nice.
WESCHLER
It was a traditional still life where you made it look like—
HAMMERSLEY
Traditional still life. Correct. And I looked at it, and I said, “All I need is red and yellow and black and white.” If I marry yellow and black, I get greens. Yellow and red, I get oranges; yellow and white, I get pale yellow. And then I take red and marry them, and have children. And then if I have all these offspring, and then if I take these offspring and marry them with other offspring, I get another gray series, but they’re still black and white, yellow and red. I’ve influenced more students with those four colors. The gray starts looking blue, because, see, there’s nothing blue around it, so it looks—
WESCHLER
Gray’s an amazing color to work with, anyway.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, it’s lovely. Gray is the diplomat that talks to everyone.[Sueo] Serisawa was a Japanese painter. In one of these annual L.A. County shows, there was a painting, pistachio green and magentas, these bright colors. How the hell does that stay on the wall? And then there was one gray square. I said, “You clever bastard. That’s very good.” If you have everything, you have nothing. But if I have got everything and something different, then I have a family.
WESCHLER
Talk again about— You started with this relatively figurative image of this group of objects. In another context, you called them actors, is that what—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
When you were showing me your painting, you called it— What did you say? You said that has several actors in it?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. The small, like that orange thing— [Checkered Career, 1949]
WESCHLER
Right, right.
HAMMERSLEY
There’s an actor with four parts, and then I have four actors that are doing different— They’re occupying different places on the stage, but they’re not repeating themselves. And then I would clothe them with different— Yes, I think of still life objects as actors. Oh. Another thing—
WESCHLER
In a sense, by implication, you think of yourself as the director of a scene when you’re doing a still life?
HAMMERSLEY
I never thought of that, but that’s true. The thing that shocked me when I left Jepson, and then I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I did a lot of self-portraits, and that’s where I bumped into hunch painting by accident, by seeing the shape—
WESCHLER
We’ll get to that in a second, but go ahead.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. I rented this little room over a garage, and it dawned on me, painters only use seven tools. I said, “Why the hell didn’t they say that in art school?” It would so relax the students—or me.
WESCHLER
What do you mean seven tools?
HAMMERSLEY
The elements that make up a painting are only seven elements. Line, shape, value. When I say value, it’s dark and light. Form, and when I say form, I mean three dimensions. Then there’s pattern and there’s texture. That is the only seven things there are.
WESCHLER
You’ve got six there, but there must be seven.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Color. [mutual laughter] That was so relaxing. Now, these become actors, and I think of Bette Davis.
WESCHLER
Each of those things become actors?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And you can’t have them all talk at once. It’s chaos. Then it dawned on me, shape is the daddy of them all, but I can’t have shape—and the next important thing is value—I can’t have shape unless it has some value. I can dispense with color and form and all the others, but the bones is shape and value. And that’s where that other thing I told you about last evening. [I went to Forest Lawn after reading The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh. I ended up in a long marble room, at the end of which was a stained glass image of a religious scene. As the speaker talked he raised the light to ‘high noon,’ then slowly dimmed the lights. The first thing I noticed was that texture left—disappeared. Then small pattern and—I forgot to mention it to you—form. 3D and color went, and what was left was the bones of the image—value. White to grays to black. So the end was shape and value! I was so impressed. I went home and looked at my paintings the same way. The good ones are good because the structure is clear, though not usually realized.(Added by Hammersley during his review.)] Now, then color comes. When I have color, I have value automatically, and then form, that’s something else. But then I started looking at all the Old Master things and realized they were using all the actors, but they’re very clever that they are using form— They’re selling that today. Mondrian, he’s interested in shape and color. He’s not interested in three dimensions at all. Just forget it. There’s implied three dimensions, but it’s not intentional.So that was a great awareness, and I was so surprised that no one talked about that. So I talk about it. Then I’ve embarrassed many graduate students. I’d say, “Give me a definition of line.” Now, shape is not too difficult to define. Shape is that which has two dimensions. Line is that which has length only. Isn’t that clever? And color is a complicated— I’m never quite satisfied with the dictionary—
WESCHLER
Now, let’s come back and tell me the story of those fourteen paintings as a story.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
So you sat down one day, and you drew— You liked a still life that you created.
HAMMERSLEY
And I don’t know quite why I say— Oh. Because the world, I guess, there were still lifes around me— “Well, I’d like to make a— Maybe I could boil this down simpler.” And I remember Rico making some drawings. It didn’t help a great deal because— Anyway, I kept on making drawings. And then when I got the drawing that was right, I said, “Fine. I’ll just use black and white and yellow and red.” Well, that’s not very satisfying. “So I’ll put them in different places.” Well, all right. “How about if I married them? Then I’ll get— Oh, that’s better.”So it took me a long time to— There’s one painting hanging in the back, the storeroom, where it’s the thirteenth painting, where the colors are brighter. So I finally hit upon— It started to look pretty good, and then it came to the thirteenth painting. That’s not bad, but it still— It’s not comfortable enough. And I was putting texture, and I was trying to use all the tools, but that has emphasized shape and value first. Color is second.
WESCHLER
That’s the fourteenth one, the last one you’re looking at right now.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
By the way, one of the things it looks like is somebody who has seen Cubism in Paris. Is that fair to say?
HAMMERSLEY
Give me an example of Cubism painting, the Cubist painting.
WESCHLER
Juan Gris or something like that.
HAMMERSLEY
As I remember, a definition of Cubism is like the showing— Picasso would show the side and the front at the same time. That’s Cubism.
WESCHLER
Yes, yes. Well, okay. Let’s not say it. But in any case, this is not— The fourteenth iteration of this series is not a literal-minded still life.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Something has happened. One of the things I would say is that shapes have flattened out.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. Exactly.
WESCHLER
And would you say that even though you’d seen things like that in Paris, you had to kind of do it yourself to get to it or was it influenced by what you’d seen in Paris, or was it influenced by what people were doing at Jepson, or where did you get— What is somebody in Los Angeles doing flattening out shapes in 1950, ’51, whenever this was?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that word stuck in my head. This image, this shape must relate to the canvas shape. There must be a tie-in. I can’t just put a face in the middle. It has to relate some way. And that’s where the thirds come in, where the eye would be right in the middle, and his hand would be under the eye, this Velázquez thing, so that— So anyway, I was trying to make it simpler, and to make it just flat, that’s going on, but then I jazz it up by putting texture and pattern on it. But it doesn’t interfere with the shape-value role. And as I say, that was the first painting I got in the San Francisco show [the annual show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]. And [Alfred] Frankenstein, the critic, gave me a paragraph, and I was so pleased. And then I never got in a show for five years after that.
WESCHLER
What year was this?
HAMMERSLEY
’48. Isn’t that amazing?
WESCHLER
So in terms of your own work, you’ve now reached this— Now, by the way, by the time you’ve done this painting, are you a painter? Or you still don’t know what you’re going to do with your life?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I was painting. I didn’t consciously think that I’m a painter. I was teaching painting and drawing. Oh, that’s another thing. Yes, that’s another thing. When— Oh, that’s right. I’ve lived a very strange life. After nine years at Pomona, I was up to my eyes, and I said, “I’d like to take a year off.” And this new chairman came in, and he said, “No.”So I said, well, I’d put aside enough money I could live on a year. So I took a year off, and then Chouinard called me. That was ’64. I started in ’64, and I taught till ’68 at Chouinard.
WESCHLER
So let’s get the dates right. You started teaching at Pomona when?
HAMMERSLEY
’53.
WESCHLER
Okay.
HAMMERSLEY
’62, I quit. Nine years I was at Pomona.
WESCHLER
Right. So putting these things in order, this painting here that we’re talking about was 1948.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right.
WESCHLER
Then you started teaching at Pomona in ’53. You teach there nine years, and then you teach four more years at Chouinard.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. The ’48 period, I guess I was— Yes, I was still teaching and going to Jepson’s. Yes.
WESCHLER
How were you making your living between ’48 and ’53? Part of it at Jepson’s?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. I worked for a— By god, that’s right. When Jepson’s stopped, I worked—
WESCHLER
Jepson’s stops when?
HAMMERSLEY
’49 or ’50. I had a— "What the heck? What am I going to do? This business of earning the money is terrible. You’ve either got to select your parents carefully or how do I do this?" So I got a— How this came about, I don’t remember. A printing company that did three-dimensional advertising things, the art director, and I was his next man. I’ll never forget. It’s amazing. I enjoyed the work, and I was very impressed, and he would take a brand-new piece of illustration board and cut it up and make the— Rather than me searching for a piece, you see. I was close with money. I had to be careful with money. Then I realized he’s saving time. He’s costing paper, but—And I had— There was a great big flower pot this big, with a post and a flag. The whirlpool brassiere, remember? He said, “Hammersley, make a spiral [on the flat area around the pole] that goes all the way out. Make a spiral a quarter-inch wide.” I was very pleased with this idea, so I got a brush the right thickness, and I tied a string to the post, and I started, and I walked around, and I slowly made the whole thing. Very good.And there would be a half-hour lunch. I’d go across to the high school lawn, have lunch for ten minutes and sleep for fifteen. In the army, you could sleep at the drop of a hat. You’re on exercise, and take a ten-minute break, well, hell, we’d all sleep for ten minutes. So I’d sleep for ten minutes, come back and work.Oh yes, and then the ’53 job came in.
WESCHLER
Now, during that time between ’50 and ’53, did you think of yourself as a painter who had a day job, or was that job pretty much consuming you?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I found it very difficult to work five days a week. That didn’t suit Hammersley, his attitude.
WESCHLER
And were you able to keep painting during that time really, on your own or—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t remember. Yes, I think so, because I rented a garage, a room over this little old-fashioned house, two-story house, and there was a garage. In those days, the garage was very small. The cars were small. And it must’ve been a maid’s room upstairs. You open the door and walk up the stairs, and here was this room with a slanting [dormer] ceiling, and the windows on either side. Oh yes, and when I’d do a portrait, the light would come horizontally, and I would see the shapes of my face, and the shapes were clear. I said, “Damn, that’s marvelous.”So I made a drawing— Oh, and I remember being in Paris and seeing the Modigliani paintings where he’d painted the ground pistachio green, and then painted on top. But he wouldn’t cover it, so you would see this green all over on the edges of the shapes, but it was very subdued. So I thought, “All right. I’ll want to do this portrait on white, on red, and on some other color,” the same portrait, the same colors, to see what happens to it. And that was very interesting. But it was an abstract head I was doing. It was Hammersley, but it was an abstract. Just simply because of the light coming in the windows horizontally.
WESCHLER
And that you’re doing in 1952, ’53, something like that?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right, between the— And then during this time, I think it was ’52 or ’53, where I mentioned this little painting, this time, I mean, it was a wash. I was thinking of Chouinard. You put sixteen squares, and then I’m going to draw a head. And I looked at the squares, and I saw blue. And I had an argument. No, I don’t want to waste a canvas. I was going to do a head. But let’s put the blue in. So I put the blue in. I said, “That feels good.” That shape is the yellow ochre. So I painted yellow ochre, etc. And the whole thing came without me thinking. I said, “My god, if I can paint without thinking, that’s for me.” [mutual laughter] I mean, it was just— Flowed through. So that started the whole business. That yellow folder I gave you, that was one of the last hunch paintings, the one to the far right.So I had different canvases, and this shape, this canvas felt green. I painted green, or I’ll leave it white. Then I’d look at this thing, and that was brown. So instead of spending time mixing the brown— I didn’t want to do that, so I got all kinds of colors, made color swatches by each tube, and I’d take the tube and squeeze it on this little palette knife and paint this round shape. And that round shape in this painting, that felt good. And then this band is going to go here. So I put that in. Those two, those three felt— And I thought, “This is great.” I never made a mistake, because I didn’t make a move until it felt right.This Chinese friend of mine that was in show business— Oh yes, he was in the radio business, and he came to Jepson because he thought TV would be important. He wanted to know about the visual, and he would come over and say, “Fred, aren’t you done yet?”I said, “No, it’s not done.”Then I’d do it, and he’d say, “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.”But that taught me faith. That taught me faith. Your feelings, you can’t miss.
WESCHLER
What year are we talking about right now, roughly?
HAMMERSLEY
’53, ’54. And then I made this series of hunch paintings. [By Ear, first hunch drawing, 1950; Garden, 1952] God. And I have one that was my favorite I don’t want to show because I’m so pleased with it.
WESCHLER
You know what we should do? We’ve covered a huge swath of information just now, and we’re right about at the point where I want to stop and take a break, and then when we start again, we have you right in the middle of action. You’re in the middle of your hunches. I think that’ll be a good place for us to take off. Okay?
HAMMERSLEY
All right.
WESCHLER
We’ll stop for right now.[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
Well, we both have just taken a little nap, and we’re quite refreshed, and we’re going to go back. We’ll take a little time travel now back into the late forties, early fifties, and move forward.Summarizing what we were doing before, we have you leaving the army, going back to Chouinard and then Jepson, and then having a job for a while, eventually getting your job at Pomona, where you’ll be teaching. And we were on the verge of the hunch paintings, and maybe we’ll start there. But it occurred to me, I’ve been looking around the house, and I’m in love with this one little drawing, or what is that—
HAMMERSLEY
Litho.
WESCHLER
Litho. And that’s 1949, so is that something you were still doing in— What is the name of this, by the way? Does this have a name— On the back here. It’s a little tiny thing that’s called Understudy, is that right?
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
Three inches by three inches, a litho, part of a series of them. [Checkered Career, 1949; Understudy, 1949; Scene Two, 1950] I’ve seen them around the house. This one is dated 16 April ’49. Talk a little about this.
HAMMERSLEY
When I was leaving Jepson and puzzling what to do, I’d always been fascinated by color contrasts, and I remember being a child at Christmastime and looking up at the tree or looking up at something, and green and red. Why are they so opposite? And it was fascinating, that oppositeness.
WESCHLER
You realized that already as a child?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So I thought, "It’s so strong that I think I’ll do some experiments. I’m going to balance some stripes of black and white with some stripes of green and red." And I was so disappointed and so surprised that black and whites always won out visually. I mean, the black and white, that’s when I mentioned that black and white catalogue. It’s the longest visually carrying image, black and white, that shock of the two opposites coming together far outdistances anything you could do. And I was very disappointed.So anyway, I made different sized lines, different shapes, and I have these panels still. So I was curious about the color, and then— Oh, I put it away. Then I did the— Oh, that you saw, part of the color squares in the back room. What happens if I— So I did the four colors going around the color wheel, and then I said, “What happens if I just use one color?” Green is a very— How do I say— It’s interesting that nature’s— It would drive us crazy if the bushes were red. The wavelength is so long it would disturb you all the time, but green is very pleasant—

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
We’re talking about the different diplomats and disturbers and less disturbing colors. So you were saying that blue is quieter, green is quiet, red is very loud or disturbing.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And so I thought, “What happens if I have just one color, green?” So I was looking at the color wheel, and green will go toward the yellow side, and the other side of green goes toward the blue side. So I had a bluish green to a yellowish green. And then the surprising revelation is when you look at this green field, you’re not aware of green. You’re aware of the blue and the yellow, the blueness and the yellowness of the green. And green, you don’t see green because there’s not a man saying, “I’m not green.” So that surprised me.
WESCHLER
By the way, were you aware of Josef Albers at this time and his color work?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. It was too— It was like Max Bill. Do you know Max Bill?
WESCHLER
Yes, sure.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s too bloody mathematical.
WESCHLER
But you were aware of them?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
Were they common knowledge, or was that something you had gravitated to from your—
HAMMERSLEY
I didn’t gravitate to them.
WESCHLER
But I mean was—
HAMMERSLEY
However, Albers looks better to me now than he did.
WESCHLER
But was Albers somebody the people in L.A. knew about?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh yes. They were around, and I saw him more then than I do the last few years.
WESCHLER
Where would you see Albers in L.A. in those days?
HAMMERSLEY
Various galleries or museums.
WESCHLER
They were showing him?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Obviously, the square thing. And Max Bill, someone sent me the catalogue. Oh. The Max Bill I liked was the half-doughnut sculpture. Goddamn, that’s marvelous. But other than— It’s too precise. It’s too mechanical. The lettering people taught me this. We had to do alphabets, sans serif and serif lettering. Now, if you make the edge with a ruling pen, that’s very straight. But if you paint that edge by hand, it’s straight, but it’s alive. It’s very, very odd. So I did lettering with a ruling pen, and I did lettering by filling it in, and the filling-in one was the better. So Max Bill is “pffft” done with a laser.
WESCHLER
The transcriber is going to have a hard time spelling “pffft,” but okay.So coming back, you were saying that the green and how green, if you do it by itself, it doesn’t register as anything but blue or yellow. Right?
HAMMERSLEY
You seem to— You’ve got to see contrast. One is impossible to comprehend. One. I’ve got to have one and thirty before I appreciate one. One plus something else is what I mean.
WESCHLER
Eventually I want you to get to this, but keep going.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I’m coming to that. The whole point is that it started with color experiments, and when I had these— Like in the back room, when I had the four squares, one, two, three, four, dark green to a different green, and move it to another place— After I finished this sequence [Square Color Trials, 1949], I said, “I wonder what would happen if I did the same thing in black and white.” [Open, 1950; Shut, 1950]Now, it happened that there was a litho machine at school that no one knew how to work, and so we kind of figured out what to do with it. A lot of disappointment. You screw it up and whatever. So I said, “All right. I’ll make it with lithographs.” Because I can make more than one image, and I can make several images and not too much— So I had a delicious stone about this size that—
WESCHLER
“This size” being about the size of a—
HAMMERSLEY
A business paper, business letter.
WESCHLER
Letterhead pad.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, letterhead pad. And I had a lovely blue stone that I would carry home. I would do two images on one piece of paper. Hardly any room because I didn’t have much good paper. So it started off with just having a dark black going to a white, four actors again, and if black was here— Nothing happened in this row, another black. So the second row, I moved the black down here, and the end one went over here and so on. Then I thought, all right, what happens if I cut it in half? This is cut in half once and this is two, this is three, this is four. That’s all right. What happens if I do one, two, four, and eight? And I was aware of these numbers, and then making squares rather than stripes. And all these variations.In the meantime, I’d done a design just with these two actors on this field of neutral people. This is neutral. But the variations were somewhat limited. Maybe it was too easy to see. That’s not quite right. Anyway, it didn’t seem satisfying enough as opposed to this field of four people, another group of four, another group of four on the stage. So that’s how the black and white came. And then I would print the black and white on a Vogue image of a girl’s head. I printed it on an orange piece of paper. I’d print it on— What’s another popular— Different magazines and different text, Japanese text, regular text, to see what would happen to these actors in a different field. Some worked out fine. Some, “That’s not very good, Hammersley.”
WESCHLER
By the way, were you a kook doing this, or were there other people doing similar sorts of things?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, I was the only one doing this. Because, you see, I was teaching and going to school, so I would take it home and draw it on the weekend or the evening, and then come to school on Sunday. Some of the kids would crawl through the windows to come in. I had the key to the door. So I could use the press and it was quiet, and I could get a lot of these things done.
WESCHLER
When you showed something like this to Rico Lebrun or to some of those people, how did they react?
HAMMERSLEY
Rico was very impressed. He said that— It’s like the story of painting. I learned a lot about painting doing these things. Now, if you ask me what I learned, I can’t tell you, but there is a— And I’m not interested in the golden— What’s the golden scheme of things?
WESCHLER
The Golden Rule? No, the golden mean?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. That’s perfectly all right. I don’t want to use any rule. A person is schooled in that. Christ, I don’t want to see their system. I just want to see an image, and inside there’s a hunch system or there could be a number system. And I was fascinated by numbers, one, doubling, a lot of work. But anyway.
WESCHLER
Are you synethesiate, by the way? When you hear a sound, do you see an image?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
One of the things that was striking to me when you were describing yourself already as a child seeing green and red and seeing them as opposites, that’s kind of like having perfect pitch visually.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I didn’t know that.
WESCHLER
I mean, I as a child looking at green and red would not have realized that they were opposites, but you seemed to have a very rich sense of that very early on, of just what are opposites, what are complements, all that kind of stuff.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
Not from textbooks. You experienced that. That’s just something you—
HAMMERSLEY
Right, right. Yes. I would lie in bed and look at these red and green, and I just was so fascinated.
WESCHLER
I mean, my grandfather had perfect pitch, and so as a result, there were things that he could notice about sound that I couldn’t hear.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see.
WESCHLER
And I think you are similarly gifted in a sense, given a gift visually, which is interesting. I’m just curious about this particular one. [Understudy, 1949] This one is just lines, but what’s interesting is the horizontal lines read as— Well, were there more lines, I guess, maybe just darker—
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. These two have to be darker than the field. This has to be lighter than the field. That’s why these are two actors, so to speak, and they’re on this neutral ground. [Two squares are dark with many lines. One square is pale with very few lines. The field is squares between-values of the other two.]
WESCHLER
There’s one lighter one, and there’s two—
HAMMERSLEY
Darker ones.
WESCHLER
— darker ones, and otherwise everything else is basically— I see. That’s fascinating.Again, I mean, for example, when I went to Santa Cruz in 1971, ’72, ’73, the people who were in the art school were doing things like this. People like Hardy— Do you know a guy named Hardy who was teaching? They were color experts, color people. They were doing— Your assignment is to take a stick and put different things of color.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
But that was not the kind of teaching that was going on at Jepson or at Chouinard?
HAMMERSLEY
Then there was Vasarely. Vasarely drives me crazy.
WESCHLER
But there were teachers, and they would say, when you asked them, that they came out of Albers and so forth, but that sort of thing was not a popular kind of teaching— There wasn’t pure color theory teaching going on in Los Angeles at that time?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I don’t think so. We heard about Albers teaching, some mountain, whatever it was.
WESCHLER
Black Mountain College.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. That didn’t interest me at all. I wasn’t interested in doing abstract things— I mean someone to teach me. Just leave me alone. Let me do it.
WESCHLER
Again, I’m just curious, just to finish that point, when you would show this to some of your teachers, “That’s kind of interesting,” they would say?
HAMMERSLEY
I didn’t show it to anybody, oddly enough. I don’t know why I showed it to Rico, but Rico went through a few of them. Oh. Oh no, that was the [unclear]. I did thirty-two different ones. I spent a year and a half on this black-and-white series.
WESCHLER
The ones that I’m looking at?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It started with this, and then this faded away, because it had not enough interest for me. The variables were endless. There’s one in the bedroom where they’re just values, but instead of a square, I cut a half of a square, and that’s black, and this is less black until it’s pale. Then I change it. Instead of putting the half up there, I put the half down here to see what would happen, and it’s amazing. An entirely different person, entirely different person.
WESCHLER
It’s interesting to hear you describe this, because Robert Irwin, years later, or a decade later, was doing his line paintings, and he would sit in a room by himself for sixteen hours a day, and he would take a single line, and he’d make it slightly longer, make it shorter, have two lines, raise them and so forth. He says that that’s where he became a painter, was learning— I mean that self-education of learning, intense absorption and long-time observing of how moving something from the top to the bottom changed things.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
That he grew up as a painter doing that.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Would you say a similar thing was happening with you?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I think so. It’s not something someone said— As a matter of fact, I resisted it, because that’s my mother’s "You should." I can’t stand the word should. I’m being imposed on. I was just entering another world, and I just let nature take its course.
WESCHLER
So you came out of that. Now we’re talking ’49, ’50, ’51, that general period, but you didn’t— For a few years you had that job, so you weren’t as involved in painting as you would’ve been in ’52, ’53, ’54, and you get your job teaching at Pomona in whatever that—
HAMMERSLEY
’53. And the hunch paintings were on the way then, you see. Then the show was ’59. So I had quite a body of work for [Jules] Langsner to select—
WESCHLER
Let’s go from this sort of thing, whatever you’re going to call these, the black-and-white things. We’ll just call them black and white.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, just small lithos.
WESCHLER
Small lithos. Let’s go from those to the hunch paintings. How did that happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. The lithos came to an end. Yes. I’d had enough. I’d had enough. I didn’t want to do any more. It seems to me, “Hammersley, I could do some more, but—”
WESCHLER
Do you talk to yourself like that? “Hammersley”? Is that what you call yourself when you talk to yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. [Mutual laughter] No, I [unclear]. And then, you see, then I went to my—quote—“studio,” this room over the garage, and, as I told you, do some self-portraits, and where the light came in sideways, and I saw shapes. And I said, “Oh yes. I never thought of that.” It could be that that shape thing, awareness of doing the portrait, stimulated— No, the hunch paintings were not deliberate— Well, the hunch paintings were shapes. First they were rectangles, and then— So, then a combination.
WESCHLER
I want to note here something interesting which we’ll come back to later on, but the series of self-portraits you did lead gradually to these hunch paintings, and then in 1980 you’re going to do a self-portrait that is going to lead to another change in your—
HAMMERSLEY
You see, I was not aware of that.
WESCHLER
But what’s interesting to me is that in both cases the self-portrait leads you in a new direction.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Well, because that head was available all the time.
WESCHLER
Okay. Let’s continue.
HAMMERSLEY
This Basil Pratt, by the way, that I mentioned, the Australian, that his family is in the Burke’s Peerage— Bless his heart, he’d come over sometimes to the studio and sit for me, and I would draw. I have a very nice— I like this drawing of the man just sitting down, with a suit and tie. [Basil Pratt, 1950]
WESCHLER
That’s in the garage.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, the room over the garage. And he was very kind. I often wondered what he thought. But I was like a boy, and he was very understanding. We both cooked. We were on the second floor, one, two rooms and the stairway, and then there was the table with the two burners. And he bought a tin box that he put on top so he could make pork roasts, and that’s how I made some pork roasts. Turn the gas medium, and you put whatever, and then you let it stand there, and the roasts were delicious.
WESCHLER
All right. So we’re going from portraits of him, portraits of your own face toward the hunches.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So I started doing the hunches, and I felt so wonderful doing these things, because there was no restriction and no— Well, I was in a frontier, so to speak. I never thought of that before. So I painted.
WESCHLER
Let’s start with there’s an empty canvas in front of you. What do you do?
HAMMERSLEY
I decide, am I going to— Does it feel like an orange field or I’ll leave it white? Okay. So I prepare first a lot of working areas. Leave it white, the ground. So then I’m finished with my— It’s interesting. I work best if my house is orderly. This is Mother. Mother’s place was orderly, but it felt good. I can’t bear a mess, and I was fascinated— Here I’m going— Bacon’s cover on an Art News, it looked like a picture of texture. And then you realized there was a man standing there, and there was a table filled with partly used tubes of paint, “lblblblbl,” like that.
WESCHLER
Leon Kossoff is like that also.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, is that so?
WESCHLER
His studio is just— It’s layers and layers of mess.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So what the hell is the difference? I mean, I love Bacon. By the way, Bacon is— He’s crazy good. Oh, wow! And his colors are delicious. Boy, those pinks. Some of these stupid people, I mean, they couldn’t get a passing grade in sandbox compared to this man, Bacon.
WESCHLER
So you’ve got a white— So you spend your time cleaning the room first.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and preparing first. All the canvases are ready to work on. So then I come in, and I look at this canvas. Oh, goddamn it, put it down. That’s an orange rectangle. So I squeeze the orange on the palette knife and put it there.
WESCHLER
By the way, always palette knife, not brush?
HAMMERSLEY
All of them are palette knife. As a matter of fact, all the paintings that you see are palette knife.
WESCHLER
Okay.
HAMMERSLEY
Then if there’s no sensation, I go to another canvas and see if there’s a sensation.
WESCHLER
By the way, when it’s a straight line, is it a palette knife and a tape?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no. I can’t stand a tape.
WESCHLER
So all these straight lines I see, you’re able to do that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I remember, [John] McLaughlin said he would paint with a palette knife, and he would try to split the pencil line by distributing the paint like this [vertically], like spreading peanut butter. See? And then after I spread it, I wipe the knife off and wipe it down, because in the old days if I would do that and it would produce a little bubble or a little ridge on the edges, and I would come— I was so young and daring. This shape was finished, and I’d turn it around and paint the next shape so it would touch the painted shape still wet, and these two little round beads. Then when I’d take a photograph, it would be a shiny line. So I had to get rid of that.
WESCHLER
So you were not using rulers, and all these incredibly straight lines I see around here are just—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, excuse me. Those and these were laid out with a ruler.
WESCHLER
I see. You lay it out with a ruler, but not with tape.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
But the hunches not? The hunches are laid out with a ruler also?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no. There’s no preliminary. There’s no preparation at all. There was a French color, that brown, I think that circle was the first thing to come in and the dollop is cobalt blue, straight—
WESCHLER
We just happen to have one hunch painting here, and just so we know what we’re talking about later on, it’s a 1958 painting called Growing Game. But go ahead. You were saying—
HAMMERSLEY
So I was very excited and pleased about this, and I don’t think I’d show them— I was by myself a lot. So I would have— One time I had fourteen paintings going, see? And I’ll never forget one day— And I turn away from the— They face the wall when I’m done, because I don’t want to tire my eye. If you make a painting, then leave it, and I’m going to the kitchen and I see it, it destroys something.
WESCHLER
So you work on it for a while, turn it away, and then turn it back when you want to. So you had fourteen paintings facing the wall when one—
HAMMERSLEY
I’m coming in to work another day. I took a painting, turned it around, no sensation. I went through the whole fourteen, and I got no sensations. So I went home. There was nothing to do.
WESCHLER
When you say you got no sensation, you got no idea of what to do next, or they didn’t excite you, even what they were.
HAMMERSLEY
No. Invariably, I would look at something— Oh yes. That’s right. The rectangle is over here. And I would paint that in. I would decide to put it there. It just— I could— You see it there.
WESCHLER
So, in other words, we’re looking, for example, at this here. You’re looking at a one-third completed image?
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
And one day you look at it, and you don’t see what to do next, you have no sensation. The next day, you come in—
HAMMERSLEY
And I might see something.
WESCHLER
And you see it before you put it there?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes. It has to be established. But I don’t make a preliminary drawing to make it— And it taught me— Let’s say I’d finished this thing, and I said, “Yes, Hammersley, that could’ve been an eighth of an inch over.” And then I learned a lesson: All right. It doesn’t make any difference because it’s a slight discrepancy, but the whole thing feels all right. See? You didn’t measure that three-eighths of an inch, and it’s only a quarter of an inch? I mean, that’s beside the bloody point.
WESCHLER
So, by the way, this thing here has a lot of action. I mean, there’s how many different colors? Fifteen, twenty different colors in that image?
HAMMERSLEY
I wouldn’t be surprised.
WESCHLER
And would you say that each color thing was a separate moment, or there would be some where you’d say, “I’ll put this here and this here and this here,” and those are the three things that show up at once, and you put them all on at once?
HAMMERSLEY
No. I don’t remember seeing two things at once, because— Let’s say there’s one shape, and I put a second shape down. That might stimulate the third vision, and then I put that down, and I’d be getting excited. Oh, god, maybe I’ll get another one. A good day was eight shapes.
WESCHLER
Really?
HAMMERSLEY
Eight shapes. Oh, I felt very pleased. There’s a lot of work done. But the thing that really impressed me was that I didn’t have to change anything.
WESCHLER
So you never— Once you put something down, you didn’t change it?
HAMMERSLEY
There was never any need.
WESCHLER
Was that a rule for you?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no.
WESCHLER
You would’ve if you needed to, but you never needed to?
HAMMERSLEY
No. That was so marvelous. I mean, I wouldn’t make a move until it felt right. Well, hell’s bells, how could you miss? Now, in this— Oh dear. The first catalogue, the four of us here— Let’s see. Let me— This one here. Now.
WESCHLER
Like Unlike. [1959]
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. This is red, and that’s black, and that’s white. See, this is different than that. [Now, 1961] The stop of this area of hunch painting— I was driving to Pomona, and I saw this in my mind’s eye. "Oh, that’s nice." I saw that whole painting in my mind’s eye. I came home and I put it in the book and I drew it. I said, “That’s ridiculous. There’s only four shapes. Oh, Christ. What the hell am I going to do?”So the secret I learned: let both of us age. You’ve got to sleep on it. So I don’t know how long I waited, and then I woke up one morning and I said, “I’m going to do that. That feels good. That feels good.”So from then on, the impulse or the painting came to me either altogether or part of it, and I’d draw it in a book. And then I would see another shape, and I would add it to that image in the book.
WESCHLER
Okay. We’re going to get to that. Let’s stay with the hunch paintings right now. The conversations you would have with yourself, “Hammersley, that’s good. Hammersley, that—,” were you friendly to yourself, or were you an angry person to yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
In those days, when I was painting and it was going well, I was friendly.
WESCHLER
And you and yourself were having a good time discovering things together?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh, it was wonderful. It was just wonderful.
WESCHLER
And again, you’re not showing these to too many people, the hunch paintings, at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
After the ’59 show—
WESCHLER
Okay. This is before.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. In the process of making— Yes, I showed some of them in the faculty show at Pomona College. Oh, I almost thought of that woman’s name. Have you heard of the name Carl— [Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
HAMMERSLEY
I have a painting I could show you, which I showed Rico Lebrun. I forget where he was living. I was taking it to Pomona College. [Now, 1961] It was an all-white painting with a yellow disc and two— Off-white background, and then two of them were white. And it was a very strong, quiet painting. Goddamn. And Rico said, he said, “Oh, that’s very good.” I don’t think I’ve ever showed that, because it’s hard to look at. I mean, if you see a Chevrolet or see something that “pffft,” then they’ll look at it, but if it’s quiet— I don’t have time for that.
WESCHLER
Let me, by the way, ask you— This is— now we’re talking 1954, ’55, ’56. This is the height of Abstract Expressionism, second generation Abstract Expressionism in New York, certainly. Is that what’s going on in L.A. also? Is there some of that Abstract Expressionism stuff happening there? Or there’s not that much of it going on in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t think so, but it existed. As I mentioned, Rico, I think, was disturbed by it, and— I was recently talking to [Louis] Grachos about that. When I went to the San Francisco School of [Fine] Arts, here this young girl was mixing something, and she was doing— I said, “How do you know what to do?” I mean, it disturbed me. What the hell are they doing? And she said, “Oh, I just do it by how it feels.” Well, I understood that in one sense, but— The images were unsatisfying. And De Kooning, I couldn’t stand those women paintings. Jesus Christ, terrible. Then I saw a big show of his at the L.A. County, and it showed early drawings, straight academic drawings, and it slowly moved into these— And then I enjoyed it. It was nice.
WESCHLER
When was that? That would’ve been quite a bit later.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Pollock. What did you think?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t care for that.
WESCHLER
Adolph Gottlieb, people like that, Barnett Newman? Were you seeing any of that yet at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, oh yes, we were watching— Is that Barnett Newman who did the MEnil thing, the Texas building [Rothko Chapel in Houston]?
WESCHLER
Mark Rothko did that.
HAMMERSLEY
Mark Rothko. I can’t remember the names. I did respond to these people. And then [Clyfford] Still in San Francisco—
WESCHLER
And by the way, were you seeing the paintings or you were seeing reproductions of the paintings?
HAMMERSLEY
Both.
WESCHLER
This is during the fifties, and then you obviously have the next generation, people like Norman Bluhm and [Michael] Goldberg. I mean, these were younger Abstract Expressionists. And that didn’t interest you?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know those people.
WESCHLER
This wasn’t a— I mean, in the history of art, what you’re doing would be described as a reaction against that, but that’s not how it was experienced?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
They just weren’t on your horizon, really?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. Someone says, “Well, he got tired of the Abstract Expressionists, and he was going to the opposite—” Hell’s bells. And I’ll never forget Maurice Tuchman. Do you remember him?
WESCHLER
Sure.
HAMMERSLEY
He came out here one time, and then he wanted Karl [Benjamin] and I to be interviewed at the museum with an audience, and Maurice looked at me, he said, “What was the people’s reaction after the ’59 show?” I said, “No reaction.” It was marvelous how consistent it was. Absolutely— I don’t need to look at these things.
WESCHLER
Well, let’s stick with this. By the way, when I’m looking at this painting here, the one European antecedent— It has a little bit of a flavor of Miró. Was Miró interesting to you or not?
HAMMERSLEY
Five or six in ten. One in ten. I don’t think he was a great painter.
WESCHLER
So this is just really you finding your own way to your—
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
An interesting question with this sort of painting is, how do you know it’s finished?
HAMMERSLEY
It just feels right. I mean, the last— See, this is where faith comes in. I was so astonished. I didn’t have to justify anything. I just listened to the body, listened to me, or the feeling. The mind, I don’t know what the hell the mind does. Maybe knowing when to pay the gas bill. There was absolutely no miss whatsoever. The last shape went in, I was done, and I had to leave the room, I was so excited. That sort of thing. Goddamn. It was— Or I would make an image in the book, and I’d have to leave.
WESCHLER
And by the way, was there a need for you at that point to share it with somebody else, or you were sharing it with Hammersley, and that was enough?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I wanted to be in shows, but somehow I was very good at not getting in shows.
WESCHLER
I’m struck that you don’t really have that many gallery shows during the fifties.
HAMMERSLEY
No, probably not. I was— Fifties. I was with—
WESCHLER
I mean, I was looking just now at this list of selected one-man shows, and the first one listed here is at the Heritage Gallery in 1961. Was that your first one-man show?
HAMMERSLEY
Evidently. And then—
WESCHLER
So, in other words, you had no one-man shows before the ’59 show?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, no, no.
WESCHLER
You had no one-man shows before that. Now, did you show these things to people like Landau and Perls—
HAMMERSLEY
No, I never went out to solicit— No, that was too dangerous.
WESCHLER
Why was that dangerous?
HAMMERSLEY
For a “no,” to get a “no,” to get discouraged. And what I—
WESCHLER
So, in other words, if you had shown something to a dealer and he had not done the show, that would’ve deflated you?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It would be very discouraging, because I thought they were good. That, by the way, Ben Horowitz got that— He went to San Francisco, and I got a one-man show at this [California Palace of the] Legion of Honor.
WESCHLER
Yes, because that’s 1962, so that’s later. I want to stay right now—
HAMMERSLEY
There was nothing after—
WESCHLER
So basically you were— If I had described you in 1958, I would’ve described you as a teacher at Pomona College, somebody who is doing a lovely body of work, but kind of privately, secretly, it’s not really known to the world.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s very nice of you to say that.
WESCHLER
Is that how I would’ve described you or—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
You had no particular public presence in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. Correct.
WESCHLER
Let’s begin to move toward how that Four Abstract Classicists show [Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art, 1959] happened, and one way to talk about it is, to what extent were you aware of the other three? The other three are Lorser Feitelson, McLaughlin, and Karl Benjamin.
HAMMERSLEY
It started, I think, with Karl.
WESCHLER
How so?
HAMMERSLEY
When I had— The first faculty show at Pomona College, the year of which I don’t remember, it might have been early fifties, there was the sculptor Jimmy Grant and myself. And I showed some hunch paintings, and Karl Benjamin, after he had walked around, he said, “I do this kind of stuff. Come over, and I’ll show you my things.” I said, “Fine.”
WESCHLER
Karl was also a faculty member?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no. He was teaching some grammar school in another city. He was married and had three children, liked to garden, had his own studio, and he would paint fifty paintings a year. I hate stories like that. [laughs]
WESCHLER
Tell me more about Karl Benjamin. What kind of person was he?
HAMMERSLEY
I enjoyed talking with him.
WESCHLER
He was older than you? Younger than you?
HAMMERSLEY
No, he was younger, five years younger. I think five. When I finished Pomona College, fourish, I would drive over to his place, and we’d talk.
WESCHLER
Where did he live?
HAMMERSLEY
In Claremont, just a few blocks from the school. And I enjoyed talking to him very much, because we’d talk about— We didn’t talk about— I didn’t care for his paintings too much. I don’t know what he thought of mine. I think he said, “Oh, that’s a good one.” That didn’t come up.
WESCHLER
What did you talk about?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, we talked about shows that were going on and our friends and the garden—stuff.
WESCHLER
Did you talk about painting itself?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. The paintings we liked, De Kooning or whatever. And then— Oh yes, Peter Selz— First there was Seymour Slive, and Seymour Slive went to the Fogg [Art] Museum, because that was the big Rembrandt man. I don’t know who that is.
WESCHLER
Seymour Slive was a teacher at Pomona?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, he was the head of the art department.
WESCHLER
Right, and he was a Rembrandt man himself.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And I was so shocked. In ’53, I got $7.50 an hour. It was heaven. And I would have three hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, whatever that—
WESCHLER
Of teaching?
HAMMERSLEY
Teaching, yes.
WESCHLER
So he went to the—
HAMMERSLEY
The Fogg Museum. And I forget. There was an interim director, and he would have meetings, and this is what really turned me off to committees. “Should we have the reproduction mounted on chipboard or should we have it mounted on—” And I thought to myself, “Well, for Christ’s sake, you’re the director. Why don’t you decide what to do? Why take my time? I mean, be a dictator.” The painters are a dictator. There’s no question about that. They dictate their own world. They don’t involve you. They involve my world. I mean, I involve—
WESCHLER
You are the director of your actors.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. So then Peter Selz came in. Do you know him?
WESCHLER
Of course. At Pomona?
HAMMERSLEY
He was the chairman of the art department.
WESCHLER
Describe him.
HAMMERSLEY
Sharp, out for himself. Well, I don’t mean to be unkind, but I mean he was—
WESCHLER
Ambitious?
HAMMERSLEY
Ambitious, yes. He wrote a very thick book on German paintings. Lindbergh— Not Lindbergh. I can’t think of the name. And that was a big coup for him. Then he went to— Now, stay here.Karl had the idea— Karl knew of Feitelson, and he knew of McLaughlin, and so I think, if I remember—
WESCHLER
What does Peter Selz have to do with that? Just that he was the head of the program at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Before we leave Peter Selz, I just want to describe his importance to you. Was it just because he was head of the program or— Was he supportive of you?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, because I was on the faculty, so he supported the faculty. I mean, it was not my personality or the way I cut my hair. I mean, that’s just the way it is.So Karl, he had the idea of going to Peter Selz. He went to Peter Selz and said, “Why don’t we have a show of four hard-edge painters.” And I think Peter liked the idea, and then it kind of hung there. And then either he or— I think it was him, talked to some man at the Long Beach Museum [of Art]. Is that right? And they were interested, but that kind of hung there. And this went on for months. And then I don’t know how Jules Langsner got involved, but he was interested in the idea, and so all of a sudden we had a meeting at Karl’s. Well, we did have meetings at Karl’s home, but we also had meetings at Feitelson’s home. It was formerly a store, and they had their living quarters and painting quarters. Lundeberg, his wife—
WESCHLER
Helen Lundeberg was Feitelson’s wife.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And we would have meetings there.
WESCHLER
Before we go on, an idea had happened, was taken to various people that there happened to be these different hard-edged painters painting in Los Angeles. We’ve talked about you and Benjamin. What about you and Feitelson? To what extent were you aware of Feitelson? To what extent were you aware of McLaughlin?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I’d seen McLaughlin, and I didn’t get it at all. I didn’t get his stuff. I didn’t like it at all. Feitelson, I was not too fond of that.
WESCHLER
Describe, first of all, what they were like.
HAMMERSLEY
McLaughlin was very severe, a square something on a white ground, and then one day, months or some time later, I was looking at McLaughlin, and it started to change. "Look at that. My god." So then I looked at more of his—
WESCHLER
Where would you see McLaughlin’s—
HAMMERSLEY
The County Museum and gallery shows and Landau.
WESCHLER
Landau was showing McLaughlin?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know who was showing— Oh. What’s that lady—I’m trying to think of her name—on Beverly Boulevard? She handled Clinton Adams’ work. But I think Feitelson was there. He was not in the big gallery. Oh, and then he had this TV show. Did you ever—
WESCHLER
No, let’s stick with McLaughlin for a second, and then we’ll go to Feitelson. So McLaughlin, at a certain point you suddenly realized there was something there.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. He was good. He looked like a British major, you know. There was a shot in the Times showing this other Claremont painter and McLaughlin, and he was playing golf.
WESCHLER
McLaughlin almost to me in photographs looks like Arthur Treacher or something.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, a cousin of the same wavelength.
WESCHLER
Did you know him personally?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
What was he like?
HAMMERSLEY
Very good.
WESCHLER
He was older than you?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Yes, I think just once Karl and I drove out to Dana Point to see McLaughlin, you know, just to talk and see where he worked and see his stuff, right near the beach. Isn’t that funny? I was so impressed with the beach because it had white stones, and I collected stones. So we’d look at McLaughlin’s stuff, and I don’t remember a thing he said.
WESCHLER
When you two arrived to see him at that point, you were two fellow artists? You were two young kids? What were you to him?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. We were just two young painters. That’s all. And I don’t think he gave a damn, cared much one way or the other.
WESCHLER
My memory of McLaughlin is that his wife worked, right? And he—
HAMMERSLEY
She had a dress shop. The name escapes me. Lerner.
WESCHLER
And basically he stayed in the garage and painted, or wherever he stayed, and she—
HAMMERSLEY
And he was in the G-2 [army intelligence]. He was in Japan. He was a linguist.
WESCHLER
And he was very much of an Asianist. There’s a lot of Zen stuff going on in his painting.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Was he like that as a person? Was he kind of centered, calm—
HAMMERSLEY
I was very impressed when he would write to a critic. And when I saw him, I asked if I could get copies of some of his letters. I haven’t looked at them for years, but I was very impressed with his letters.
WESCHLER
How so?
HAMMERSLEY
They were clear and to the point. He didn’t like something, he liked something, and he had reasons, etc. I mean, he was a good man.
WESCHLER
In person was he clear and composed and centered?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Did he have a kind of— His art has a kind of Zen silence at the heart of it. Was he like that in person?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, he was slightly on the quiet side. What is your opinion of the Zen quality?
WESCHLER
Just that in McLaughlin’s work, there is a kind of Asiatic— It’s like a Japanese rock garden, that kind of stillness.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Stillness is correct, yes. I can buy that.
WESCHLER
And self-possession, an interiority. It’s a breathing-in. An in-held breath quality. This is just my own take on McLaughlin. And I just wonder whether— For one thing, there’s a spiritual austerity also, a severeness.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s true, yes.
WESCHLER
If I were to describe the difference between him and your work, you know, side by side, his is severe, austere, whereas you have whimsy and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, exactly right.
WESCHLER
But I’m asking, was he like that in person as well?
HAMMERSLEY
I never got that close to him. I did go out to see him. I drove out once by myself, and I took slides and things. Well, it’s not important. He looked at this painting, two squares, blue, yellow, and there was a diagonal. “Hammersley, that diagonal is very seductive.” Now, see, I didn’t know what the hell that meant, that he didn’t like it. He never used that term “like.” And I realized later an oblique is very disturbing. You know, we’re in a place where there’s horizontals and verticals.
WESCHLER
And perpendiculars everywhere.
HAMMERSLEY
And if one of those areas became slightly oblique, we would leave. It would be very stimulating. So that’s the only thing I remember.
WESCHLER
So when he said, “That’s very seductive,” that was a criticism?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I think so. Yes. Yes. See, I was in another ballpark, and it’s not his game. I do appreciate that business of respecting the real estate that you’re in, which is— And he didn’t like a square. Now I like a square, and I was fascinated with the square, because the square disappears often. And his were always rectangles.There was a big show at one of the beach museums, and there were a couple of paintings I didn’t understand what the hell he was doing, a big white painting and two black things. Well, anyway, that’s beside the point. There’s bound to be things you don’t like. But I admired him very much. I admired him more than Feitelson.
WESCHLER
Okay. Now let’s talk about Feitelson a bit. Also older than you.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
How much older? A generation older than you, basically? Who was the old man of that group? McLaughlin was older than Feitelson? I’m not sure.
HAMMERSLEY
I’m not sure either.
WESCHLER
Okay. Go ahead.
HAMMERSLEY
I think they were fairly close together. Feitelson, the one thing I didn’t like about Feitelson, he had this TV show every week about shows and paintings, and he said, “Now, this new painter from New York, this guy called Weschler, he’s the best damn colorist in the world.”Now, I could understand if Weschler liked color and was very good at it, but please don’t give me those remarks. So I was a little put off by this. However, I turn it upside down, and he was with— Was it the Art Association? With this very pleasant lady. This was a marvelous organization. A young—
WESCHLER
The Los Angeles Art Association.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. A young student could give slides— [Helen] Wurdemann was her name, this lady. The two of them ran this art organization, and you could send some slides. They’d say, “All right. You can join the club,” so to speak. It cost you ten dollars a year. I don’t think there was much of a cost. But the point is, they were always welcoming new people, and then they would send cards out once a month that said, “At this place we’re having a show of landscape,” and I said, “I can’t do anything about that.” On another card, “We’re having a show of abstract paintings,” and I’d submit something. So he was always encouraging people, and I thought that was marvelous. It was one place, by god, where there was a chance.
WESCHLER
And you were welcomed?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes.
WESCHLER
Tell me more about Feitelson. I’ve never met Feitelson.
HAMMERSLEY
Feitelson was like that.
WESCHLER
Describe Feitelson to me.
HAMMERSLEY
He was a slightly pompous, overtalkative egomaniac.
WESCHLER
[laughs] But otherwise you liked him?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and he taught at Art Center [College of Design], taught painting at Art Center, this peculiar—
WESCHLER
Commercial—
HAMMERSLEY
Commercial art school.
WESCHLER
Would you describe him as one of the leaders of the L.A. art scene at that point because of his L.A. Art Association?
HAMMERSLEY
No, not a leader. He was a participant. I don’t know if there was a particular leader in that. I’ve never thought of that before, one person— In the 1940s, there were like two or three painters, and that’s all we knew about or heard about.
WESCHLER
And those would’ve been Rico Lebrun and—
HAMMERSLEY
And [Henry Lee] McFee.
WESCHLER
Jepson?
HAMMERSLEY
No, Jepson didn’t participate, bless his heart. There was some guy from USC [University of Southern California]. I can’t think of his name. [Edgar Ewing] And we were invited to go to—
WESCHLER
Millard Sheets—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, Millard Sheets was hot, but he was commercial. Laurence Murphy—Sheets went to Chouinard—I mentioned it to him, and he said, “Oh yes. I remember when he was my student, and his goal was to pay the highest income tax of any painter in California.”
WESCHLER
And he got there.
HAMMERSLEY
And he got there.
WESCHLER
And inflicted all the Home Savings [and Loan murals] and so forth on—
HAMMERSLEY
What was her name? [Susan] Sue Lautman [later Hertel] was the one that painted the murals. [Sue Lautman had a gallery in Santa Fe, in the ’70’s or ’80’s. Her paintings of horses were very good—showed she must have loved horses. (Added by Hammersley during his review.)] There was what we called a mural factory in Claremont up on some main highway. I never saw the building. But he would provide a rough, and Karl said it was always the wrong proportion. [laughs]But anyway, his landscapes were very— His watercolors were very attractive.
WESCHLER
Sheets?
HAMMERSLEY
Sheets. And Don Kingman, do you remember that name? He was like the eastern Millard Sheets, very lovely watercolors, juicy and clear and lovely. It’s interesting, the short lifespan. They were slightly— Millard Sheets was slightly—

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
We were just talking about [Millard] Sheets, and I’d actually pulled you away from talking about [Lorser] Feitelson. Why don’t you tell me more about Feitelson.
HAMMERSLEY
I really don’t know much— Oh. He was very kind when we had the meetings at his house on— Was that Beverly Boulevard? I don’t remember, but it was interesting. It was a storefront, and then behind that there were living quarters, and the both of them would paint in that place.
WESCHLER
What was she like?
HAMMERSLEY
Very quiet and hardly said a word, because she wasn’t in the meeting, you see, had nothing to do with the meeting. I remember that was the first time I’d tried raw cauliflower, which was unexpected.Coming back to him, he was—
WESCHLER
Was there a leader of the four of you?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
By the way, were you self-selected? [Jules] Langsner didn’t select you guys; you guys selected yourselves as a foursome?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
You gravitated toward each other?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And it started, I think— Karl [Benjamin], I think, was the one that started this. And one time we had a— Well, I told it to someone before. I forget. We had a meeting in Karl’s house at Claremont, and we were trying to find out what to call us, and that’s a very difficult problem. It came to this polysyllabic "abstract classicist." Oh. Rico [Lebrun] made a remark. “A classic work is everything is revealed. A baroque is revealed, concealed.” And I thought that’s very interesting. Very Giottoish. Classic. Everything is up there. No shadows.So we came to this name, and as I was walking out with Langsner, going to the car or bus or whatever, I said, “Langsner, don’t you find this a little bit pedantic and overly— Karl calls his paintings hard-edge, and I think that’s simpler." For Christ’s sake, it’s hard-edge. People understand that. My mother would understand that, too.He said, “No, I don’t think it’s descriptive enough.” After the ’59 show— Langsner knew this person in London— What’s his name?
WESCHLER
[Lawrence] Alloway.
HAMMERSLEY
Alloway. And so, see, abstract—
WESCHLER
Our title [on the cover of the exhibition catalogue] is small, but it says “West Coast Hard-Edge” in big letters.
HAMMERSLEY
Yeah, and that’s where the phrase started. I mean, by the public.
WESCHLER
Come back again. Are we finished describing Feitelson? Did you have anything more you wanted to say about him?
HAMMERSLEY
No. I mean, he was very kind and generous with the meetings. I mean, he didn’t lord it over. We had a problem, and so we talked about—
WESCHLER
And the problem was how to get this show—
HAMMERSLEY
And then how to get money for it. Then he was at Art Center [College of Design], so he had either one of the instructors or one of his design students to design the catalogue, and the bastard cut the paintings in half on the spine, you know. See this? Absolutely ridiculous. What the— Where is he? What is— And I made a remark about that, “Oh, bldlbldlbldl,” oh, just disappeared. I was the minor one.
WESCHLER
By the way, of the four of you, two of you, Feitelson and [John] McLaughlin, were shown artists. And Benjamin and you were— Had Benjamin had shows, one-man shows, at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I think so.
WESCHLER
So you’re the one person in that group that had not had a one-man show.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
You’re the junior varsity person on that spot.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. Karl was very— How shall I say? He was very good at promoting himself, and I don’t mean this disparagingly. I mean, he was out there— I forget what gallery— Bergamot Station later [in Santa Monica, California], he’s in the gallery there, or he was there, and he was always wanting to sell things.
WESCHLER
It’s interesting. I’m looking at this right now. I’m looking at the catalogue [of the exhibition Four Abstract Classicists, Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art, 1959], and indeed, if I look at the catalogue, Karl Benjamin is listed as having had, let’s see here, one-man shows— Well, let’s see. He’s had shows at the University of Redlands, the Jack Carr Gallery, the Orange Coast Gallery, Pasadena Art Museum, Occidental College, Long Beach Museum of Art. And Feitelson has just endless numbers of one-man shows, but in particular at the [Charles] Daniel Gallery in New York. He’s in a lot of different places.When I look at McLaughlin, he’s had Landau [Gallery], Pasadena Art Museum, Riverside. And now when I look at you, let’s see. It has no one-man shows at all for you, and it has various exhibitions that you have been part of, but not one-man shows.A question I would ask, were you the lesser of the four equals because of that, or were you received as a co-equal among the four when you were in that show?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, a co-equal. No, I was very proud of the paintings. They were substantial, and—
WESCHLER
And your colleagues knew that they were substantial?
HAMMERSLEY
I think so. And it made no difference that they didn’t. The point is that I was included.
WESCHLER
Now, Jules Langsner, we haven’t talked about him. What was he like?
HAMMERSLEY
Excuse me. May I make an interruption? After this catalogue was which I didn’t quite understand, he worked hard for us, and I gave him a painting, this decided— Oh. The San Francisco Museum [of Art] put up a thousand dollars, L.A. County Museum put up a thousand dollars to print the catalogue. And then this designer said, “Now, if you each put up a hundred dollars, you’ll get a color reproduction for each of you.” So we dug up a hundred dollars each, and that’s where that color reproduction comes from. [A hundred was a lot in those days. We all winced when we heard the amount. (Added by Hammersley during his review)]
WESCHLER
I see.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, what did you say?
WESCHLER
I asked about Jules Langsner. What was he like? He was the L.A. Times critic at that point, right?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. He was very— He was very open to everything. So I gave him a painting, and he said, “Now, I don’t want you to give this painting if it’s thanks for the show.” Well, it was thanks for the show. What the hell? I don’t see anything wrong with that.Well, anyway, he took it anyway, and I was glad. Then he would look at my things. He said, “Oh, that’s nice.” [Touch, 1963] Four constructions—made with illustration board, painted white. And he’d come over a couple of times. And then he married a young lady I think who taught high school. God, the name disappeared. [June Harwood] And she was a hard-edge painter, and she was in the second hard-edge show. And Karl knew a middle-aged lady, Florence Arnold, who was painting hard-edge, and she was in the show. And then that Englishman that you reminded me of that did the hands and body parts, the photographer.
WESCHLER
[John] Coplans?
HAMMERSLEY
Coplans, he was in the show. What was I talking about?
WESCHLER
Well, let’s talk about the 1959 show. So the show opens. When did it open? It has a date there.
HAMMERSLEY
Did it not start in San Francisco?
WESCHLER
It looks like it may have started in San Francisco and then come to L.A. Let’s say that happened. So how did that work? Did you go up to San Francisco for the opening?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. You see, I would come home for holidays, etc., and then come home for the show. And I had the Volkswagen, so I drove Mother and Father and Susie to San Francisco to see the show.Now, it’s interesting. Mother never asked me what I was doing in art school, and I didn’t realize this until I got older. When we walked through, she didn’t say a damn thing. Dad was [unclear], “Oh, that’s jolly good.” They didn’t understand this kind of painting. You know, they liked— I had a nude which my father liked. And afterward Mother said, “Well, nice color,” and that was the best I could get. What unnerved her was, I was in a legitimate organization, a museum in downtown San Francisco. That was off-putting for her. She didn’t quite know what the hell to do with this person—me. All right. Then it went to—
WESCHLER
Well, let’s stay in San Francisco. What was it like? Was it a happy opening? Was it well received?
HAMMERSLEY
I didn’t go to the opening. I just went afterwards.
WESCHLER
And was it received in San Francisco at all? Was there any kind of press coverage, or was there any—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t remember. I don’t remember. But what was interesting, when it came to L.A., Jim [James] Elliott— Who was the director? Brown? No.
WESCHLER
Jim Elliot I think was.
HAMMERSLEY
Was the secondary in command. I forget who was the one in command. They never took photographs of the show.
WESCHLER
Richard Brown was.
HAMMERSLEY
Richard Brown, right. And he eventually went to Texas.
WESCHLER
And Jim Elliot was underneath him.
HAMMERSLEY
And I went to the opening with some friends, and, of course, I enjoyed it very much. I was with— What was his name? I was with a little gallery on La Cienega [Paul Rivas] and he sold one of the paintings to [David] Bright, a rich man that had a collection. [The painting was Intro, 24 x 36, 1958, $275. I got $183.33. (Added by Hammersley during his review)] As a matter of fact, I think I was the only one that sold of any of the people in that show. It was a smallish painting. And then I was the only one to sell a painting in England to Dr. [H. P.] Widdup. [One & One 1/2, 1959]
WESCHLER
Were you selling many paintings before that?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, hell, no. I didn’t sell— The only way I’d make money is to enter— The sequence was, you entered a show and got rejected several times, and then you entered a show, you got honorable mention. You keep on going, and then you get third prize.
WESCHLER
And those are monetary prizes?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And then you keep on going, and eventually you get a purchase award, like Barnsdall Park. Do you remember the shows at Barnsdall Park?
WESCHLER
Yes.
HAMMERSLEY
I had a painting, I forget what year it was, a yin/yang sort of a thing, and [Howard] Ahmanson bought it. It was the purchase price, and that was lovely. I’d saved $450. I could afford to go to New York to see Peter Selz and [William C.] Seitz, to see if I could get a connection. Nothing. I was a good collector of lead balloons. [laughs]
WESCHLER
What do you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, no response. “Kkkkkkk.” Have you ever made a remark to someone, and it’s like you’re holding a lead balloon? [mutual laughter] Just no reaction.
WESCHLER
So how was the show received in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know. I don’t remember. My friends—
WESCHLER
I mean, it’s a legendary show now. Was it a legendary show when it happened?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, hell, no. I never did understand why. “Oh, that was the show in ’59—” I was impressed that we were the first people to have a hard-edge show in California. No one had done that before. And I thought that should mean something, but— They talk about it now, but they haven’t got my address so they know where to send the money. [mutual laughter]
WESCHLER
Was it thought of at the time that this was an L.A. kind of movement as opposed to the Abstract Expressionism going on in New York? Was that talked about, that L.A. was kind of cool, hard-edge as opposed to Expressionist?
HAMMERSLEY
I think the hard-edge show was just a fluke, just a bump in the road. All the other people were painting normal paintings. And it was interesting, the San Francisco painters would come down to L.A. to sell, because San Francisco had a history of not selling, and I was so surprised. I talked to someone recently and they said its still applies. Is that so?
WESCHLER
I’m told—
HAMMERSLEY
But, I mean, we were—
WESCHLER
So up in San Francisco, there was [Richard] Diebenkorn, [David] Park, [Elmer] Bischoff, people like that.
HAMMERSLEY
And the cake man. What’s his name?
WESCHLER
[Wayne] Thiebaud.
HAMMERSLEY
Thiebaud.
WESCHLER
Do you like his stuff?
HAMMERSLEY
Some of his things, yes.
WESCHLER
And in Los Angeles, as of ’59, there was what?
HAMMERSLEY
There was Feitelson, and what the hell is this UCLA man or USC man? Oh, dear. I can’t remember his name. [Edgar Ewing] But there were not many— Or at least I don’t remember many people. There’s bound to be.
WESCHLER
Right. We mentioned there was [Howard] Warshaw, and there were people like that?
HAMMERSLEY
Yeah.
WESCHLER
Lebrun and so on.
HAMMERSLEY
They had good reputations, and they were written up a lot, those people.
WESCHLER
Now, one of the things that’s about to happen at that point is that Ferus [Gallery] comes on the scene at that point.
HAMMERSLEY
What year?
WESCHLER
’59. [Possibly 1956.]
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. It was ’59. I see.
WESCHLER
Did you go to Ferus? Did Ferus sound like something new and exciting, or was this just another gallery?
HAMMERSLEY
No, it was avant-garde and new, because they handled [Edward] Kienholz. No one handled this far-out man. Then Karl was very annoyed at Bengston.
WESCHLER
Billy Al Bengston.
HAMMERSLEY
And [Robert] Irwin. They always got the good write-ups. There’d be a big show, and there’d be a lot of people— They mentioned these people because that was the favorite— That was the hot gallery.
WESCHLER
Did you like to go there?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh, I went to all the galleries. I liked to see what was going on. I enjoyed seeing what was going on.
WESCHLER
What did you think of some of those people? What did you think of Billy Al Bengston?
HAMMERSLEY
Terrible. Oh, dear.
WESCHLER
And what did you think of Craig Kauffman?
HAMMERSLEY
I forget. Did he do those pressed—
WESCHLER
Yes, molded things.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It’s all right, but I mean—
WESCHLER
Let me just stop you. John Altoon? Was that somebody—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, he was a very— He was a wild, a free— A free-goer. I mean, he could go anyplace. That I admired. The pen-and-ink drawings, those are nice.
WESCHLER
Right. Just trying to think off the top of my head. Ken [Kenneth] Price was a ceramicist.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. They were very fascinating, those funny little cups. And it’s so interesting what he’s doing now as opposed to then. It’s unbelievable. These great big amoeba.
WESCHLER
Biomorphic.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Just thinking off the top of my head some of the others. Robert Irwin, obviously.
HAMMERSLEY
And Robert Irwin, yes, whatever—those discs with the light on it—and it was very impressive. It was just a personal preference. I liked paintings. Paintings. Of course, Irwin did some still life—
WESCHLER
He did those line paintings, and he did those hand-held things, the boxes that were very—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t remember that.
WESCHLER
He started abstract. He was doing Abstract Expressionist work at Landau and then came over to—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I didn’t know that.
WESCHLER
Among the galleries, did you know Walter Hopps?
HAMMERSLEY
I know who he was, but I’d never spoken to him. I didn’t know him.
WESCHLER
And [Irving] Blum later on?
HAMMERSLEY
I knew who he was, but he didn’t know me.
WESCHLER
Of the other dealers around at that point— I’m just thinking [Paul] Kantor, [Felix] Landau—
HAMMERSLEY
There was an Englishman that had antique furniture. He was on the second floor. He was a bit player in the movies. Kind of a portly man.
WESCHLER
I don’t know.
HAMMERSLEY
I can’t think of his name.
WESCHLER
You have Streeter Blair in the antique shop in front of Ferus at one point.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I don’t remember that.
WESCHLER
Anyway, but the other galleries, Landau, Kantor, were those interesting galleries to you?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Oh yes. I found it necessary to see all these things.
WESCHLER
And yet you were not having shows at these places.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. The first time I had a show with— I forget. You mentioned the year. With Karl— Not Karl Benjamin.
WESCHLER
’61, there’s a Heritage—
HAMMERSLEY
Heritage Gallery.
WESCHLER
And what’s that?
HAMMERSLEY
That was when he had this gallery below Melrose. The galleries were up on La Cienega, and he was below, and I had my opening—
WESCHLER
Who was he?
HAMMERSLEY
What?
WESCHLER
What was his name? Whoever it was that had the Heritage Gallery.
HAMMERSLEY
[Benjamin] Horowitz.
WESCHLER
Okay.
HAMMERSLEY
On my opening, they had a fire in Beverly Hills, so there was no one on the street. I thought that was so— And then this happened several times, and I look at that. Isn’t that interesting? God is putting it off till later.
WESCHLER
What do you mean it happened several times?
HAMMERSLEY
I’d have an opening, and some big event would cancel it.
WESCHLER
Oh dear.
HAMMERSLEY
I mean inadvertently cancel it.
WESCHLER
From here the solo exhibitions, you begin having them now. Heritage Gallery; Pasadena Art Museum in ’61; the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in ’62; Occidental College in ’62; La Jolla [Museum of Art] in ’63; another show at Heritage in ’63. So you’re beginning to have the one-man shows. They come on rather— And what sort of work were you showing there? These were still hunch paintings, or they were beginning to move more to these geometric—
HAMMERSLEY
I think moving toward the geometric. Because I remember this diagonal thing was in the Heritage Gallery. I think I showed some hunch paintings to Heritage Gallery.
WESCHLER
Well, let’s talk a little bit about the move toward the geometric, and that brings us in part to these notebooks, doesn’t it? So talk about it. How do we get from the hunch paintings—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. What I mentioned, the one painting in the— The four of us—
WESCHLER
The four abstract classicists—
HAMMERSLEY
The painting where it had these two circles— [Like Unlike, 1959; Like Unlike, 1959] That was not a hunch painting, and that was the—
WESCHLER
That was one that had come to you all at once?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And that was put in a book. I’d never done that before.
WESCHLER
So describe what’s involved in doing that [circles drawn by hand].
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I would see an idea or a corner of an idea, and I’d come home and think out loud in a book like this—
WESCHLER
These are sketchbooks, basically.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. [With several images per page, each] the size of a stamp, let’s say, and I’d have an idea, and, see, that’s too much. I’d cut it down eventually, and some of these ideas didn’t work, but I put it down to see where it would lead.
WESCHLER
How many ideas were you putting down a day? I mean, three or four ideas a day or once in a while?
HAMMERSLEY
It would vary. Sometimes I’d get up in the morning and look— Absolutely blank. And then, "Oh, that feels good," and I would sit there the whole morning.
WESCHLER
Just spewing ideas?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Did it worry you when you were blank, or were you okay with it? Were you generous to yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
Now, what worried me is that when all the work stopped. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I had used up my fund. And no reaction whatsoever. This goes back to McLaughlin. McLaughlin had come to Los Angeles, invited to do a lithograph at Tamarind [Lithography Workshop]. He and [his wife] Florence were staying in a motel, so I called him up, and I went over to ask about this. So we talked. I said, “Now, John—” I’d gone two months with no painting, and I was nervous, and Karl would go through the same thing. He would get nervous if he didn’t paint.So I asked McLaughlin, I said, “Do you have an experience where you just can’t paint or don’t paint at all?”He said, “Oh yes, of course.”I said, “How long does it last?”"Well," he said, “gosh, it might last two or three days.”So I said, “To hell with this,” and so I left early. That guy was so disappointing. [laughs]
WESCHLER
You just said but your fund had been used up. Keep talking about that a bit. What do you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
All right. An idea comes to me to make a painting, and sometimes I can make another idea that that first idea breeds. It produces this child. And that child has some brothers and sisters, and two or three of those sisters I could use. The brothers I don’t care for. Whatever. So these were done. And then some other things come in, and it seems like ideas come in a cluster and this group. When I come to the end of the cluster, I’m done with the ideas. Zero. There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to do. And for a while it worried me, and then I realized that was just part of it. I’d used up that—
WESCHLER
That must have been a great thing when you realized that.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I should say. I didn’t worry quite so much. When I came here [to Santa Fe] in 1968, my paintings had come to a stop, Chouinard [Art Institute] was dying, and I didn’t know what to do. And then I got an invitation to teach at the university here. I didn’t know how to spell “Albuquerque.” So I came in the fall to look at this adobe university [University of New Mexico], and there was sand in the street. In those days there were fewer people, and the sand would blow. So it was the best move I ever made because—
WESCHLER
We don’t want to get there yet. Let’s hold that off. But stick with the point about being at the end of your fund. How does it come back? It replenishes itself secretly inside of you somehow?
HAMMERSLEY
I think so. Because, as I mentioned earlier, if I talked to you, as I look at that pale head against the chocolate sweater, whatever, and I look at the flower, I watch my cat, all of this information is being collected and sorted, and relationships occur. I don’t decide to make the relationships, but I think all these—
WESCHLER
Last night you described a librarian that was inside your head.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, my librarian is—
WESCHLER
Male or female?
HAMMERSLEY
Lady. And she’s putting this material together, and I have nothing to do with this, and then when there’s enough material or there’s a long enough rest of not working— That’s a painting principle. I can’t have something unless there’s a place where there’s nothing. Then I marry off— As a matter of fact, I worked one day, looking at my paintings, I said, “I’ll be damned. I’m painting a marriage of opposites.” And that’s a rather universal concept. Sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing, but I can’t have a good unless I have something that’s not so good. I mean, I don’t appreciate good unless I have something that’s not so good, or bright or have something— I’ve got to have something dull so that is bright.
WESCHLER
So it begins to percolate again.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh. So when I came here, the painting was dead, but in the meantime, Charles Lawler—
WESCHLER
Let’s hold off. I still want to keep you in L.A. for a little bit. I’ll bring you back here. Talk to me about— Let’s look through this black notebook. Do you have several notebooks like this?
HAMMERSLEY
I have the second one. Oh. This is notebook number— Oh. I have three others.
WESCHLER
And these are even— What year, roughly, would this be, do you imagine?
HAMMERSLEY
’71.
WESCHLER
Okay. So this is going to be later.
HAMMERSLEY
This is ’86.
WESCHLER
And this was more of your Los Angeles days still?
HAMMERSLEY
I think so.
WESCHLER
So this is the other one. This is the beige cover, beige clothbound cover.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. [There are seven notebooks, starting in 1959 and ending in 1998. I have two small ones for preliminary diagrams the size of a postage stamp, colored with pencils. The first one starts in the early 1960’s. Good ideas from those books would go to two larger ones drawn to size, e.g., 1/16 inch equals one inch. Most of my large paintings are 45 inches square. These are painted with oil paint, same as used for the actual painting. Then I have four notebooks with a record of first the diagram of the work, kind of stretcher bars, when the drawing was made first, coast of what paint and when, etc. I note when finished, when framed, photographed, and finally the title.]
WESCHLER
And so you would, for example— I’m trying to get you from the hunch to the geometric. Describe that transition.
HAMMERSLEY
It goes back to the father of them all was that one with the two circles. Now, what is interesting, if the painting had one or two circles— In the old days, I would draw the circle by hand, and it would be not quite round, but it felt all right. But then if there was four circles, I had to draw it with a compass. Have you ever heard of a beam compass?
WESCHLER
No.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s like an I-beam, and the pencil’s here, and this is the point. It can be slid or slide down these things. I have one that you can make a six-foot circle. And when you make the circle on the canvas, it is gorgeous. It’s going [unclear], but, I mean, the circle is gorgeous. All right. So if it’s a complicated circle painting, it has to be, for simplicity and timesaving, I’ve got to do it with a— Mechanically done. But if it’s one circle— This was drawn by hand. [Like Unlike, 1959]
WESCHLER
Really?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Those are two beautiful circles.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
It’s the red and white background with a purple and a blue circle. Those are beautiful. Now, were you doing these geometric things in Los Angeles, or you don’t really do them till you get to New Mexico?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh no. No. Wait a minute— The seventies I was here.
WESCHLER
What were you showing at the Heritage Gallery?
HAMMERSLEY
The early—
WESCHLER
Early Heritage would have been that sort of thing.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and the early— Where would that be? Oh. It’s in here. I’ll show you one thing. [Paired, 1961].
WESCHLER
This sort of thing.
HAMMERSLEY
This sort of thing. Now, this is the one that he said was seductive. Black and white—
WESCHLER
Called Paired, from 1961. This is McLaughlin, right.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. This is blue, and this is yellow. It’s a picture of opposites.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
The Santa Fe Museum [of Fine Arts] owns this now; and I was very pleased with that painting.
WESCHLER
But this is already what I would call geometrical.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
And you’re doing this in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
But it’s primarily rectangles—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, hardly— The circles disappeared.
WESCHLER
An occasional diagonal.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Not so much illusionistic. There isn’t a— Later on, when you start doing some of these ones I’m looking at, there’s a quality of things punching forward, punching back and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
See, I’m not aware of that when I do it. Later I say, “Oh, god. I don’t remember—” I was not aware of that happening, but it felt good, that group of shapes.
WESCHLER
So the shapes, as you do them, are flat?
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. They’re all flat. [Up with In, 1958; Fastened Rounds, 1958]
WESCHLER
So you’re doing these. Would you describe this as a simplification, a purification from your hunch paintings or—
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no. It’s—
WESCHLER
Another direction?
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
And to what extent is it about shape, and to what extent is it about color, or both, obviously?
HAMMERSLEY
I think they’re intertwined. Yes. I’m not pushing one beyond the other. I’m very fond of color, and I’m very fond of— As I mentioned, people don’t like brown, but I like brown. The color of an army blanket, it’s a lovely color. This is not—
WESCHLER
That one here is just more of a greenish—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, not a very pretty— Now, this is all black and white and grays. Oh. Here’s the [image of Now]— [Now, 1961] Now, see, this should be off-white so you can barely see this.
WESCHLER
This is the 1961 of three different circles.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
So this is stuff that you’re showing at Heritage, and you continue doing this sort of thing— Here’s another one, Match, from 1962. Again, circles, diagonals. I mean, for example, here there’s an illusionistic thing that this gray, if it were to go over this blue would be black like that.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And so you’re playing with those sorts of overlaps and translucencies and so forth, I suppose.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
[This was shown] at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And that’s where Ben Horowitz got the show for me. So I designed the catalogue and had it printed in Japanesetown downtown. It cost me $750 for 750 copies. Can you imagine? And I made all the color separations. What a hell of a job. Oh, Christ.
WESCHLER
Are you selling paintings at this point?
HAMMERSLEY
Very seldom. Very seldom. Ben Horowitz sold one to a professor at UCLA. I’m very pleased with that painting. Oh. He sold one to a black actor, Sidney Poitier or— No. One of those people. There would be the occasional sale.
WESCHLER
But mainly you’re making a living in those days still teaching at Pomona [College]?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And at Pasadena [Art] Museum teaching children that Bob [Robert] Ellis had.
WESCHLER
Right. Oh, really? Was that fun, by the way, teaching children?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
How so?
HAMMERSLEY
They’re so sweet and so unencumbered with “shoulds” or “should nots.” And I remember Timothy, he would come in with a drawing of what he wanted to do. And there were quarts of poster paint, big sheets of paper, and this shy little girl would use a big brush, god. Timothy would come in with the drawing, and then he had an idea— Oh. Then he would spray, but he moved the stick the wrong way so the spray would come in his face. So he went to the sink, took the thing off, and took the paper towel, put it under his hat, and felt for his eye, and then drew a mark, drew a mark, and then he cut a hole, put the paper back in, put his hat on, and then sprayed so he wasn’t going to get— And he was marvelous. So he made Big Ears and Her Daughter, a big whale and a little whale.I said, “Now, Timothy, I want to hang that up.”He said, “I’ll make you another one.”I said, “Okay.”So next week he came back, and he made me another one. [mutual laughter] I mean, god.And then one girl said, “I want to make a big bug.”I said, “All right. How big?”“But I want that roll of paper. I want to go out on the roof.”So it was like eighteen feet long. And she made this big bug. I said, “God, that’s amazing.”
WESCHLER
Where were you living during this period?
HAMMERSLEY
On Sanborn Avenue.
WESCHLER
On Sanborn and what?
HAMMERSLEY
It was below Hollywood Boulevard and a couple of blocks east of Vermont. Very quiet street. No smog.
WESCHLER
Can I ask you about your personal life? You never married?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
And no children?
HAMMERSLEY
No, unfortunately. Let’s see. Now, that was at Jepson’s. There was a Polish girl that I went with for a while, and she had a cute little girl, and I enjoyed knowing them very much. And I took photographs. Oh yes, I was taking photographs at this time, and I have a picture of this little girl.There’s a terrible thing that happens. This Russian girl that was in my art department at Berlin, when she was a child, her mother had hurt her somehow, and when Tamara had a child, she hurt her. I’d come to visit—
WESCHLER
Tamara is—
HAMMERSLEY
Tamara Webster was the WAC in the army at Berlin and Frankfurt. I cycled out to see her like around Westwood. She’d serve dinner or something, and then she’d take the plate in to the little girl so she’d eat in the bedroom. Oh, Christ, terrible. When the girl grew up, she left. Tamara hasn’t the slightest idea what happened to her.So, Virginia had been hurt, a Polish girl, hurt in Chicago, and I didn’t realize that she would hurt the piper, the child. The little girl would dance like a ballet, and the mother would say, “Whoever saw a ballet dancer like that?” It’s like sticking a knife in her.Now, I took a picture of this little girl, and years later I looked at it, and I could see the pain. Bless her heart.I have fifty photographs that I was invited to show at California State University at Northridge, and I was delighted to show these things, of people and Berlin and Frankfurt and here.So anyway, I knew this Virginia Yost. Let’s see. I was going to Pomona College. And then I was very fond of a wife of a doctor. She was taking a drawing class at Pomona, and we had had lunch on the lawn, and she was a college person, so I could ask her things about literature, and she always could tell me what that was, and I liked that.
WESCHLER
But you basically didn’t have that many relationships?
HAMMERSLEY
No. I was scared to hell. I was—
WESCHLER
Scared and felt bad not to have them, or you were just married to your work or were you —
HAMMERSLEY
I felt bad not to have them. No, no, in those days— See, I didn’t want to duplicate having a female wearing the pants and controlling me. Mother was that. So I associated that with— I helped a couple of psychiatrists through civilian life, and it started with the shaky hand, but I still have the shaky hand, but— When I first went to this one doctor in Westwood, the first early sessions, he said, “Tell me about your parents.”So I told him about Dad, you know, nice things, and my mother, nice things, and I was almost to the end, and I started to cry. And only later did I realize I’m showing the good things, but this is the bad things that hurt.Then when I came here, the psychiatrist told me— That’s the only two things I remember. He said, “Your parents taught you you couldn’t make it.” Son of a bitch. Awful.
WESCHLER
A second ago you were telling me stories about people who hurt children. You were hurt in that sense.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s true. That’s true.
WESCHLER
And you said that in response to my question of you of your own having relationships with other people. You basically didn’t have that many because you were shy and—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Didn’t want to get involved. I marvel at people that marry, to have another person in the house. I couldn’t work if there was another person in the house, you see. It’s like I would have to entertain them or take care of them.As far as my career, I made a mistake in not going to New York, because that’s where the center is, but I couldn’t— I was afraid of earning enough money, first to just pay my expenses, much less get enough time to work. And so to be invisible— Albuquerque is invisible, I think. I mean, it’s boondocks—
WESCHLER
By the way, how does Los Angeles feel in ’60, ’61, ’62, in terms of being peripheral? If you were successful— You were doing pretty well once you were having shows. Did you feel like you were a provincial artist because you weren’t in New York at that time?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. You’d hear talk in the galleries. If the collector had some money, he would go to New York. And they didn’t like that, the gallery people, and they felt better than San Francisco, because, assumedly, they were worse off. And some of my friends that taught at Pomona College ended up in New York. Richards Ruben? Have you heard of him?
WESCHLER
Sure, sure.
HAMMERSLEY
He was from Pomona College. A short, dynamic man. I remember he had a studio at Pomona. Rembrandt Hall was the studio. And he had a show, it was at Ferus? And the painting was too large. He couldn’t get it out of the door. [laughs] I thought, god, Ruben, use your head. He had to take it off the stretcher bar. Oh, dear. But anyway, I’ve never heard of the man since. I don’t know if he’s all right.
WESCHLER
So now I guess we can begin to move toward your move to Albuquerque. Or actually, we’ve talked a little bit about this with the imagery and how— Tell me a little bit more about these geometric paintings in terms of how the imagery would go from a notebook to the painting.
HAMMERSLEY
This I could, as I say, think out loud, make many things, with not a great deal of effort. The coloring with colored pencil, I mean, that didn’t take much time. And then later I started to use oil paint. It dawned on me one day, it was so silly to use colored pencil.
WESCHLER
Later on, you started using oil itself [in the notebooks].
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Now, like this one I made a painting of, and I made a painting of this one. And I think I made a painting of this one. And those have been sold.So when the idea felt good, and I would wait a couple of days to let it— You know, see if it still rings true. Then I would put it in here. The proportion of the stretcher bar I had. Now, my favorite shape was—
WESCHLER
So you would start by putting it here, and then you would put it in the black notebook?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. See, this is like for a forty-four- or a forty-five-inch painting, it’s like forty-five sixteenths of an inch. A sixteenth in this notebook would be equal to an inch on the canvas.
WESCHLER
I see.
HAMMERSLEY
Here’s that one that was turned upside down. [Sacred and Pro Fame, 1978] That’s the right size. The museum downtown has this. This is called Sacred and Pro Fame. See? "Pro Fame." I was for “pro fame,” not “profane.”
WESCHLER
That reminds me, by the way, that you also have these things of your titles over here. I mean, I’m looking here at an insane list you have, and you just went right—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. See, first it has to be framed properly so it’s practically invisible, but it must protect the painting, but then I couldn’t leave the house. It’s like your mother wouldn’t allow you to leave unless you had a name. And I don’t understand, and I resent it, when other people leave their paintings untitled. It’s like I’m mildly insulted. He spends time on the work, and it says Untitled Number 475. Well, hell’s bells.
WESCHLER
Have you ever made a painting called Hell’s Bells? [laughs]
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
Are the titles workings-out of names for a particular painting, or are they just free-floating titles that are waiting for a painting to be done that will match?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh no, no, no. The Pro Fame one, I’ve always thought of that title, and I’d like to get a painting to fit it. But it usually works that the painting is first. And see, I would draw the painting, and then I would keep on writing titles down until one fit.
WESCHLER
It’s kind of like a musician, the composer and the lyricist, basically. There’s a quality that there’s the painting, and then there’s the lyric of the painting that has to come along, the name.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s fascinating how if I let myself alone and just write words, “Santa Claus,” “gloves,” “two for one,” whatever, and all of a sudden I think, “Oh, that’s a good title. That’s very good.” See?
WESCHLER
For this particular painting or for a painting someday?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no. I never do something for some day. It’s for now.
WESCHLER
“What am I going to call this painting?”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, yes.
WESCHLER
You, by the way, like crossword puzzles too, right?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
So you’re a word— One of the things that strikes me about the paintings and the titles is their whimsy, their wit.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes. That’s unintentional. It’s just the way I’m made. I’m very fond of jokes. Jokes are like a poetry or a painting where it’s a two-for-one sale. And jokes can be so clever, so— I just marvel at it. They’re just—
WESCHLER
They can be precise and succinct and move—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and gives you things to think about. It gives you— Well, anyway.
WESCHLER
It reminds me, there’s a great line of e.e. cummings in the preface to his book called Is Five. He says that the poet is somebody who is inordinately fond of that precision which creates movement, as in the joke, “Would you hit a woman with a child?” “No, I’d hit her with a brick.” That precision which creates movement, he says, because the poet knows that two plus two isn’t necessarily four, but sometimes is five, which is why he called the book Is Five.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see.
WESCHLER
So the thing that happens in a joke— If you use that example—it’s a sexist joke and so forth—but if you use that example of e.e. cummings, “Would you hit a woman with a child?” “No, I’d hit her with a brick,” that little shift that happens in a joke often sometimes happens with your paintings, too.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, yes. And that’s what I saw happen with McLaughlin’s paintings, that unexpected shift, and I was so surprised, because it was just sitting there. So that’s the delight. That’s the pleasure that is just wonderful.
WESCHLER
Now, do you know it’s going to do that when it’s in this notebook?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh no, I haven’t the slightest idea. The shapes come together, and I’m watching it happen. And then later, "I’ll be damned, look at that."
WESCHLER
After it shows up on the canvas, or even when you’re looking at it here in the notebook?
HAMMERSLEY
No. The painting has to be done. It takes me a long time to see what I’ve done.
WESCHLER
Well, let’s bring you to the point where— This crisis where you end up leaving Los Angeles. You were teaching at Chouinard as well? So you were teaching at Pomona and Chouinard?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. I quit at—
WESCHLER
That’s right. You quit at Pomona.
HAMMERSLEY
And there was— Oh, god. Nordland called to say—
WESCHLER
Gerry [Gerald] Nordland.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. “Would you like to come and teach at Chouinard?” I said, “No. I’ve finished Pomona, and I want to take a year off to work.” And then later I don’t know if I called or they called, and then I came back in ’64 to teach painting and drawing.
WESCHLER
At Chouinard.
HAMMERSLEY
And Jepson had a crazy idea. If you took a class in drawing— That’s right. You’d sign up for a drawing class. That meant— I forget— I don’t think it was six weeks, but it might have been six. You’d go to the drawing class five days a week, morning and afternoon, just drawing. Well, now, something really happens then, that kind of concentration. Unbelievable.
WESCHLER
Did they do that at Chouinard also?
HAMMERSLEY
They did that at Chouinard, and the instructor would show up two of the days, and the other three days they were working on their own. I was somewhat puzzled by that. It was good, and it was difficult.
WESCHLER
Did you like teaching?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I enjoyed teaching very much.
WESCHLER
You were a good teacher?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I was a good teacher.
WESCHLER
Who were some of your students? Did any of them become artists?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Tom Wudl, handled by Peter [Goulds], and there was a girl. What the hell—
WESCHLER
What was Tom Wudl like?
HAMMERSLEY
He was a very inventive young man. His things now, I’ve only seen one show of spots on violins and kind of kooky things, but what the hell’s the difference? I mean, if that’s—
WESCHLER
But as a student did he stand out?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I mean, he was always trying something new, and I admired him for that. Oh. Who’s the one that played Dr. Kildare?
WESCHLER
[Richard] Chamberlain?
HAMMERSLEY
Chamberlain. He was my student at [Pomona College in the mid-fifties].
WESCHLER
Really? What was he like?
HAMMERSLEY
Very nice boy. And he made a remark one time. He loved to paint. I think I gave him a B. I read someplace that when he was in the dorm or something and he looked out and saw people, he said, “I don’t want to spend my life in a studio. I want to be with people,” and that’s when he went into acting. And I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I think he bought some property in Hawaii, didn’t he?
WESCHLER
Could be. I don’t know.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
But what did you like about—

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO JANUARY 15, 2003

WESCHLER
Go ahead. I asked you, what did you like about teaching?
HAMMERSLEY
The fascination of knowing something and wanting to give it to a kid, and to see him understand it and make use of it is marvelous. There was a daughter of a professor at UCLA. She just didn’t get it at all. It went for more than half of the term, and toward the end, it suddenly dawned on her, and she blossomed. I mean, god, she worked, and it was wonderful.
WESCHLER
It’s funny, when something dawns on a student—and I teach also—you are the sun.
HAMMERSLEY
I hadn’t thought of that, yes.
WESCHLER
And it dawns.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh, yes, yes.
WESCHLER
And you have that sense of sunrise.
HAMMERSLEY
I never thought of that. Yes. Also, if I were president, I wouldn’t allow anyone to teach unless he’d worked on his own, after he left art school, to work on his own for at least five years, because if I leave art school and start teaching, which I did, as a matter of fact—
WESCHLER
I was going to say, you’re guilty.
HAMMERSLEY
You’re mouthing what your instructor just told you yesterday. But I was working on my own, and I was mouthing some of these things which were very helpful.
WESCHLER
What sorts of things were your own things? Not that you were mouthing that other people told you, but what kinds of things would you tell people?
HAMMERSLEY
No one started with background shapes. See, I dislike the word negative and positive shapes. That background shape is a background shape. It’s not a negative. It’s a positive in a sense. So I wanted them to be aware of the real estate of the rectangle, and those places where the object is not are crucial. It’s important, too. And that realism has the seeds of abstraction inside. You don’t know that, but when you do the background shapes of a stool, you have these funny-shaped windows. And when I’m through with the windows, I’ve got a stool, and it’s the craziest stool I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of out of whack, but it feels like a stool. You don’t get that if I say, “Draw me the stool.” You have to be very careful.Oh. I wish I could show you. There’s a drawing in one of these women’s magazines of a woman with black hair and a blouse or something, and the line is very tentative. Oh, bless her heart. It’s well done, they know how to draw, but there’s no guts, no passion, no nothing. As a matter of fact, you must excuse me. [David] Hockney’s drawings of two people, they’re very charming, but there’s no passion or guts to it. The line is a line. But goddamn it, a line— Schiele—
WESCHLER
Egon Schiele.
HAMMERSLEY
Those lines, boy, there’re strong. And— Well, that’s enough.
WESCHLER
That’s interesting. Give me some other— You’ve mentioned an example of teaching people to draw a stool. What are some of your other favorite exercises you would give?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. I set up things. Now, there are five shapes on that table, right? Give me five shapes. Just paint those five shapes, or start with painting the background pieces so you end up with the five shapes.
WESCHLER
Those were abstract shapes that you put on the table?
HAMMERSLEY
No, they’re pitchers and jars and wine bottles, etc. And then they became more digestible and more agreeable to do. And then they weren’t allowed to use anything but black and white and red and yellow.I’ll never forget this little girl said, “Yes, when I put the yellow in the black, I got green, and I got scared, so I quit.” [mutual laughter] I said, “Yes, I know. The paintings surprise you all the time.” I said, “It’s all right.”
WESCHLER
What other sorts of things did you do as exercises?
HAMMERSLEY
I can’t thing of anything more.
WESCHLER
Maybe it’ll come to you as we talk.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Well, that was kind of difficult. I’ll give you an exercise. Rico [Lebrun] said— A model was sitting there. He said, “Show me the model, what she looks like on the opposite side from where you’re sitting. And then show me what the bird’s-eye view would look like. And show me what the worm’s eye would look like.” She stays the same pose. Now, that really makes you think. That’s a marvelous exercise. But you couldn’t do that unless they’d been drawing for a long time. But what else?[Telephone rings.]
WESCHLER
You think of them. I’ll answer the phone.[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
Interruption there, but now we’re continuing. Go ahead. You were saying?
HAMMERSLEY
The French magazine called Leonardo, and I don’t know how I got involved to write an article about— Oh, when I was doing computer prints—
WESCHLER
And that’s later on when you’re in New Mexico, right?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. You want us to save it for later?
WESCHLER
Let’s save that for later. We’re right now still talking about teaching.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes. I thought of something.
WESCHLER
Exercises that you would—
HAMMERSLEY
Exercises. Texture is not a vital part of painting, but some people like it a great deal. So I would collect objects on a table, and I would put a piece of fur or a tin can or a variety of objects, and cover it with a blanket, and they would put their hand under and feel this object. A requirement was to paint a square of how that texture felt, not how you think it looks, but how it feels. So they’d get some strange—
WESCHLER
Would they touch it first or just how it—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, no. They have to touch it. They have to touch it, because they have no information unless they listen to your hand. And that was very interesting.
WESCHLER
“Listen to your hand.”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It was very interesting. Oh. I would keep a journal. I have a journal, what I did every day for the teaching, and sometimes what the result— And then I have folios of student drawings and work for all my classes, and I don’t know what the hell to do with them.Oh. There’s one young girl. We correspond. She was in my painting class. Bardene Allen. But she was a crazy student, very imaginative, and I had some work, and I sent some drawings, sent it back to her, and I sent some drawings to another person. But anyway— But I wanted a record of the students’ work, and so I have a lot of this stuff.
WESCHLER
So you were teaching at Chouinard, and gradually Chouinard is running out of gas. What happened there?
HAMMERSLEY
It started, actually, Mrs. [Nelbert] Chouinard would hire bookkeepers that would—
WESCHLER
What was she like, by the way?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, she was— I don’t think she had very good taste, as a matter of fact, but she was a good salesman. As a matter of fact, she and “Tink”—was that his name? the head of Art Center [Edward A. "Tink" Adams]—I think in the twenties were working together. Then there was some disagreement, and whatever happened, and so they both had their own art school. She was very good at selling her school. She would visit high schools and things. When I was on the exhibition crew with Mort Traylor, we would get together a group of students’ work that she would take and show to this high school, etc. She was a very dynamic woman.
WESCHLER
Was she an older lady by the sixties?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. She was in her sixties. And then— It’s so funny. When I came back after the war in ’46, and I went back to Chouinard in the different building now, and she said, “What did you do?”I said, “Well,” so-and-so, “and I saw Picasso’s studio.”She said, “Oh, did he give you a drawing?”I said, “No, but he said ‘Bonjour.’” [mutual laughter]
WESCHLER
So in the late sixties, what was the trouble with Chouinard? What was happening?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. She ran out of money. The bookkeepers were running off with the money, but in the meantime, [Walt] Disney had helped her with money. Oh, long before Disney brought Rico out here to do drawings of animals’ bones for the Bambi thing.
WESCHLER
For Fantasia, too, I think. Right?
HAMMERSLEY
Maybe that was it. What was this magazine? Fortune? Do you remember something— Rank. A movie producer called [J. Arthur] Rank. The Englishman. Rico had drawn a picture of this man sitting like this with these hands clasped. And the drawing was marvelous. Now, what the hell was my point?
WESCHLER
We’re talking about Chouinard.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, right. So Rico worked at the studios doing this, and then he—
WESCHLER
And Disney gave money to Chouinard to help make animators, to help—
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. And then Chouinard combined with a music school [Los Angeles Conservatory of Music]. The music school wasn’t in the same building, but it was like the same organization. And then Mrs. Chandler or someone put up money that they wanted to be— And they wanted to be in the same category prestigewise as Caltech [California Institute of Technology], so they called it CalArts [California Institute of the Arts]. Sounded like a bloody leather company. Oh, Christ. Terrible. Chouinard, how do you spell Chouinard and that sort of thing?Anyway, so they were planning to move this school—
WESCHLER
To Valencia.
HAMMERSLEY
In Valencia. Where the hell is that? So the faculty was, “What the hell’s going to happen?” Well, the whole faculty would just go out there. Well, that’s nice. Then it developed no one went out there. And it’s a miserable school, as far as painting and drawing is concerned.
WESCHLER
It was very much a school for theory, for performance art.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with that.
WESCHLER
Happenings and things like that.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. But I get their mailing pieces, and they couldn’t get in first grade at Chouinard.
WESCHLER
It was because CalArts was on the horizon that there wasn’t an attempt to save Chouinard, that Chouinard was just allowed to kind of peter out.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly
WESCHLER
So that must’ve been a crisis for you, that that’s going on, and your own work had kind of come to a stillness?
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
What were you doing just before the stillness set in? Geometrical work, basically?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes. I was still painting and I would occasionally go to drawing groups. It was all right. And then I thought, “Boy, what the hell will I do?”
WESCHLER
By the way, this is also in ’68. ’68, as I recall, was a pretty turbulent year politically. Were you at all politically involved?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
I mean, Robert Kennedy is assassinated. Martin Luther King is assassinated. The Vietnam War. Did that really have any—
HAMMERSLEY
I forget. The sixties— So when I came here [University of New Mexico] in ’68, there was a lot of activity on the campus and stuff. The painting class started in the afternoon this particular day, and the girl said, “Well, aren’t we going to talk about the so-and-so and so-and-so?” I said, “No. This is a painting class. If you want to do that, then you go someplace else.” Why should I talk about some political thing outside? I’ve been employed to do this.
WESCHLER
Were you engaged politically outside of your work?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. I could care less.
WESCHLER
So we’ve got you at a crisis in 1968, ’67, ’68 in your life. Has Los Angeles itself gone still for you at that point? Are you getting tired of L.A.?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I wasn’t tired of L.A. It’s just that my situation had— I was tired of being blank.
WESCHLER
So what happened?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, because Robert Ellis, the man I knew at the Pasadena Museum, he was in charge of education at the Pasadena Museum. Oh, and by the way, I was so impressed—
WESCHLER
By the way, stop for a second. I realize we didn’t talk about the Pasadena Museum. What kind of presence was the Pasadena Museum in those days, in the sixties in L.A.?
HAMMERSLEY
It was very important. It was a long trip out there, but the building was lovely, and they had The Responsive Eye show there.
WESCHLER
Of which you were a part?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Whoa. Let’s stop the horses. How did that happen?
HAMMERSLEY
[William C. Seitz] came to my apartment. I have a reproduction of it, a white shape like this and two balls, white on black. That’s it. [That, 1964] Called That. I don’t like the title. Well, anyway, it was in the show. I didn’t care if they hung it in the men’s room so long as I’m in the museum. That would be nice.Pasadena was well thought of, and there was a gingko tree in the courtyard, which is a marvelous tree. Oh. When I first had the one-man show [in 1961], Tom [Thomas] Leavitt was the director, and I brought the paintings in. I don’t know how I got the show. I walked out, and then I came back. I said, “Now, you let me know, and I’ll help you hang the show.”He said, “Oh, no. That’s my business.”And I walked out. I said, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s his area. I have not a goddamn thing to do with those walls.”So he hung it in relationships I would’ve never done, but that’s fine. So I’ve always left it to the other person.
WESCHLER
Did you like the show there?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
Was it well received?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know.
WESCHLER
[laughs] Are you the kind of person, you open the paper every day to see whether the show has been reviewed, or do you not care?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, if I’m in a show, I’m looking for a review. Oh, you’re damn right. I have a good circulation in my ego.
WESCHLER
Anyway, just finishing up with Pasadena, so that was an important part of the world of L.A. art in those days, contemporary art?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, a lot of people were there. I mean, a lot of people were in Pasadena, as a matter of fact, and they were in shows.
WESCHLER
Was the Pasadena—
HAMMERSLEY
Excuse me. I’m sorry. I was going to say, one time a little boy wanted to make a funny horse, and we worked on that. He was a Rosicrucian, and later his father came to pick him up. He said, “Who the hell ever saw a horse like that?” And he just stuck the knife in the boy. I got so angry.
WESCHLER
This was one of your students at the Pasadena Art School?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, eight to twelve years old, eight to eleven. Bob Ellis afterwards started a class for the parents so they could experience what these children were experiencing, and it was frightening. “Oooh. Me, draw? I don’t know how to—” It was very good. I was very impressed.
WESCHLER
Was the Pasadena Art Museum more important than the L.A. County Art Museum?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, no, no.
WESCHLER
But for contemporary art in L.A.?
HAMMERSLEY
It was just another opportunity to look at paintings. They had some other— Oh. That’s what taught me. Bob Ellis said— Oh, [Jack] Tworkov. I saw a show of Tworkov there, and I was talking to Bob, and he said, “You know, like an ass, of all the good shows that have been here, I should’ve been taking pictures for slides for teaching.” And I said, “That’s a very good idea.”Oh, yes, it was too expensive hiring Serisawa to take pictures of my work or slides, so I knew a Frenchman who did commercials on TV. So he took me to a camera shop, and I bought a 1963 Minolta number one. No batteries. I mean no light meters. But it’s well thought of still. So then I started taking pictures of my own work, and when the County Museum opened on Wilshire Boulevard with Bonnard, a friend of mine went in, and we could take photographs, because we were teachers, and I took a lot of details of Bonnard. Bonnard is marvelous. And the little boy said, “Why does that lady always go to the bathroom with high heels?” You know that yellow painting? She has black shoes. I said, “I really don’t know. I wonder why, too.” [laughs]So I started to collect slides of paintings so I could use it to teach, and you never can buy slides— I can never buy slides that I liked that would be good to illustrate my point. I have seven examples of my seven tools that I pin up, and then I show slides. Words are very weak. Vision is strong.
WESCHLER
By the way, one thing I realize also, before we get out of L.A., you told me a story last night about Forest Lawn [cemetery].
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes, yes. That was a painting lesson that surprised me. I was reading a lot in those days. I enjoy to read.
WESCHLER
What do you like to read?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I told you about the [Encyclopaedia] Britannica thing on the Mormons, which I thought was—
WESCHLER
The eleventh edition of the Britannica.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, the onionskin thing, and this Bob [Cater]— He was a funny, odd man. He loved books, and we would exchange things, books. I started to read [Edith] Sitwell and then the two brothers [Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell], and then I came upon— Oh. The Loved One.
WESCHLER
Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One.
HAMMERSLEY
Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. And I was so interested, and he was talking about this funeral home which we knew, or we assumed it was Forest Lawn, and the love affair between the one man who was an embalmer, but he was very good at making the smile on the cadaver with a curved piece of cardboard he’d insert. [laughs] And his girlfriend was in a pet cemetery, so this combination.So I thought, “Well, I’ve never been to the Forest Lawn,” and it was very famous. So I went there, and all these big halls of all these crypts and all these men with white overalls taking down flowers. Down in the lower section, there was more crypts, I guess, where you would put your ashes or put the body. And the man was giving a talk about the advantages of being there, and he was standing in front of a cut-glass window that occupied the entire end of the room, which was like a long hallway.Then he started to talk about this stained-glass window, and he said, “As in life, there is the sunrise, high noon, and sunset, and I’ll show you.” So he turned off everything, and then he showed the sunrise where there was a little light, and then noon and everything. You’d see all the religious figures and the costumes and the colors and textures. Then he turned to the dusk, and I was so astonished that the least important elements of painting disappeared, texture and pattern, and then eventually color disappeared, and what was left was black and white, and that was the bones of the painting. And it was still clear what was going on, and I was very impressed with that.So I came home and looked at some of my paintings in bad light and, “Yeah, that carries all right. That’s good. Oh, I’m not sure of that one.”
WESCHLER
It’s funny, because a lot of people would take that story as an example of kitsch, but you really took it as if you could really learn something from that.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, yes, it seemed very obvious. I mean, the texture disappeared, the pattern disappeared, and then the color disappeared. I thought, Christ, that’s— Boy, that’s amazing. And just two important things in the painting are left, its shape and value.
WESCHLER
And they have to read.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Legibility again.
HAMMERSLEY
And you could find out whether the thing was done well. My father’s word, properly.
WESCHLER
It’s funny, because it’s often said that to look at whether a piece is well composed, you should turned it upside down, but in your case, turn out the lights.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. Then that ridiculous chestnut, the painting should work upside down, is absolutely ridiculous. There’s only one way to look at it. You could get some paintings where— I had a painting with a square in the middle. There’s no top. All right. That’s something else. But that’s nonsense. A painting— I mean, you don’t look good upside down.
WESCHLER
I guess you don’t like George Baselitz.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I don’t understand. I’d like to have someone tell me what the hell’s going on.
WESCHLER
It’s not going to be me. [laughs]Anyway, so let’s continue back. We picked up some loose ends, but now we still have you at the end of your tenure in Los Angeles, and how does this New Mexico thing happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Because Bob Ellis was working now— I was so surprised Bob Ellis left Los Angeles. He was a commercial artist and a painter. He designed a marvelous book on McLaughlin, a catalogue. I still have it. Very tasteful. For the Pasadena Museum. And he was married, and the wife, Barbara, was a real estate agent, and I think they did very well. I don’t know how he got into the University of New Mexico. But the point is, he was there, and he called me up and asked if I’d like to teach there. And like an ass, I said, “Well, let me think about it a week.” Come on. That’s so silly.
WESCHLER
Why is that so silly?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I mean, that’s excessive, because then [Van] Deren Coke [head of art department, University of New Mexico] called a couple of days later. He said, “Well, I have someone else in mind. I’d like to know what you’ve decided.” I said, “Hammersley—” So I said, “Yes, I’ll come.” So I came a few days before the fall session.
WESCHLER
Did you come with the intention to move here, or you came with the intention to just come for a semester?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, it was a full-time job.
WESCHLER
You were moving to New Mexico?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, because I had all my paintings and all— I’m very good at collecting stuff.
WESCHLER
Had you ever been here before?
HAMMERSLEY
Never. Never.
WESCHLER
So you accepted the job before coming here?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. No, wait a minute. Yes, I think I did. Yes. So I came in August to look at it, and the hotel room— Oh, Christ, one of the first hotels. I rented a car. The hotel was nine dollars a night, and I don’t think they changed the air in the hall.
WESCHLER
Los Angeles 1940s prices, basically.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And to see this sandy city and this adobe university really surprised me. I went to the art department and saw Bob Ellis, and he invited me to stay at his home a day or so, and I did. So then I flew back home. That was August, and I was to come in September to start the term. So I came, and then I looked for a place to live.
WESCHLER
By the way, in August, did you think you’d made a mistake? Were you looking forward to it? Was it out of the way, far from the middle of things? Did that worry you?
HAMMERSLEY
No, because I’d been in Los Angeles a long time. I’d been in this apartment nine years. God, that’s a long time, nine years in this apartment. So it was time for a move, and it was so ridiculous going to Albuquerque. That is not a wise place to go, for god’s sake. But I had a job, and I would teach morning, afternoon, and evening, and the altitude was such that I would teach in the morning, come home, have a nap, and have lunch, teach afternoon, come home, and have a nap, have dinner, and come home in the evening and go to bed. I was tired.
WESCHLER
What is the altitude here?
HAMMERSLEY
A mile high.
WESCHLER
A mile high here?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Well, describe some of the features of Albuquerque, the light.
HAMMERSLEY
The light is marvelous, and the sky is enormous, and the air is fresh. Then what was interesting was the three nationalities. The poor Indian is the low man on the totem pole, the Spaniard is the middle, and then the—
WESCHLER
The Anglo.HAMMERSELY: The Anglo. That’s slightly changed.But it was remarkable to drive out— Oh, and there was a couple of English instructors that were invited to come here for a term. They traveled all over the state, and I would ask them things about Tent Rocks or— A city of rocks. It was like God, before he produced Henry Moore, arranged these rocks in a blank area, and you could walk between these things, and they’re big as a sofa, as big as a two-story building, these lovely sculptured rocks.
WESCHLER
Where is that?
HAMMERSLEY
Between Silver City and Deming, the southwest corner of New Mexico. But there were so many things to look at here. Have you ever heard of Acoma? What was this man’s name? He was an Englishman. [Alistair Cooke] He had a program on the United States [that included the history of Acoma]. Acoma is a city on top of a mesa. It’s the oldest city in the states, I think. First they were on this mesa, and the thunderstorm had ruined the way up, and they had to move. Then there was two women left. Then the Spaniards came, and the Indians were forced to build this church. Then they got rid of the Spanish after a while. Then there was a window that has been there for three hundred years, that sort of thing. And the Acoma pottery is marvelous. Oh boy.
WESCHLER
Now, you sound like somebody who just fell in love with New Mexico.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Was it immediate and continuous, or was there a time when you were going, “What have I done?”
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. Never, never. It was the best move I ever made, because the decade of the seventies was the best, most productive decade I’ve ever had. I started in ’68, and then become seventies. I could be a visiting professor for three years, and then they wanted me to be on tenure, and that meant committees. That’s death, committees. I’d put money aside, so I said, “No, I’m going to quit.” I don’t know how I— Well, anyway.
WESCHLER
You told me parenthetically that you’d had a friend who was a good advisor with mutual funds and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. When I turned sixty, I was aware of dying, and I should have some income. So I was interested in how to invest some money, so if I had $5,000, how could I put that someplace so I didn’t have to go out and earn another five. So that was helpful.
WESCHLER
So you quit teaching in ’73?
HAMMERSLEY
’68 to ’71, three years.
WESCHLER
I see. I just, again, want to talk a little bit more about the quality of life here in New Mexico. Compare the light of Los Angeles with the light of Albuquerque. Compare the quality of light in the two places.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Quality of light. Well, it’s simply more intense here. When you asked me that— See, I’ve never really paid much attention. I know it felt good. And then the surprising thing, if it’s hot, I stand under a tree, and it’s cool. That’s not Los Angeles. If it’s hot, it’s hot. And here it was dry. That was very nice.Then I would visit the towns on the other side of the mountains. Golden, Madrid, and Cerrillos. That was another world. And when I’d be driving, I was the only one in the world. There was no one else around. Now, that’s not Los Angeles. It was very—
WESCHLER
Did you go to Santa Fe much?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, occasionally.
WESCHLER
Was Santa Fe already fairly chi-chi at that point or not that much?
HAMMERSLEY
It’s always been, I think, chi-chi, yes. I would go— You know, “Let’s go to Santa Fe.” Now I have to think, “Oh, I don’t want to go to Santa Fe. It’s too much work, driving.” But mainly, I wanted to see the museums and I wanted to see the galleries. Peter Goulds [of L.A. Louver gallery] told me that Santa Fe has the second largest income from art sales in the States, and I questioned that, and he said, “No, that’s true.” New York being one. Two hundred some-odd galleries on this canyon road. A lot of the galleries you don’t have to go in, but there’s some that are good. Early Indian things. Boy, beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. Santa Fe is a very strange city, but it’s very attractive to people. They love it.
WESCHLER
So, coming back— I have a sense of you getting tired. Are you feeling okay?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Want to go for a little bit longer?
HAMMERSLEY
God, it’s almost five. Incredible. No, let’s go as long as you like.
WESCHLER
We’ve covered a large swath of life here in one day. But continuing a bit still, you arrive, having come to the end of your tether artistically for a while in L.A., and you come here. What jump-started you? What got you going again?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. In ’69— I was thinking about painting. I made one painting in ’69. [A gain, 1969]
WESCHLER
While you’re here in New Mexico?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It was a small painting.
WESCHLER
Are you scared at that point, that you’re no longer going to paint?
HAMMERSLEY
Worried me. Let’s see. That was ’69. What am I talking about? Yes, ’68, there’s no painting, ’69 there was one painting, but ’69 I was here. That’s right. ’69, I was here. And then I forget what happened. Oh. I have a notebook where I start a painting, and I write down what the stretcher bar is and what the canvas is, and what the first coat of paint is, and that sort of thing. So that’s somewhere.
WESCHLER
You sound like you’re your father’s son.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
You keep records of everything.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. Oh. And then, so I was out of a job, so I looked for grants. How do I get a grant? So I found out how to apply for a Guggenheim [Fellowship], and so I prepared material and sent it. This is 1973. Then I got a grant. God, what’s his name? Starts with a “W.” He was on the committee.Anyway, it paid $8,500 for the year, and that was wonderful. I had to account for every dime I spent, and I had $200 left at the end of the year. So I said, “I’d better use it.” So I framed some computer drawings and sent the report in, etc.
WESCHLER
But that’s ’73. Had you started— You said you had painted one painting in ’69.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes. Then so in ’71 I started to paint because, yes, then after ’71, then the paintings started to come, because I sent a black and white painting to the Guggenheim. What is the name of this painter that was—
WESCHLER
What kind of painter?
HAMMERSLEY
You’d know him if I could think.
WESCHLER
Older? Younger?
HAMMERSLEY
Older person. He did Spanish something—
WESCHLER
Oh. Motherwell.
HAMMERSLEY
Motherwell. Right. He was on the committee. My paintings came back in better condition than they were sent. The wrapping was marvelous. [Weschler laughs.]So I had this money that lasted for a year, and then there was an interval, so then I tried for an NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] grant, and I didn’t get it. Then in ’75 I tried it, and then I got two NEA grants in that decade.
WESCHLER
Now, when do the computer paintings start?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, that was in ’68, the time I actually—
WESCHLER
As soon as you arrived here in New Mexico?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
How did that happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Charlie Maddox was a sculptor from L.A., by the way, married a rich lady in L.A., and then came here to teach sculpture. And he knew the computer engineer. The university, I think, had recently bought a computer, and [the head, Dick William] was curious to see what could be done with the computer for people who knew nothing about the computer and it wasn’t designed to do what they were doing.So someone had written a program, or this person, how to make a rectangle, how to make an oblique, how to make a circle, and then you could print one letter on top of another letter. I said, “Yes, I can picture an ‘I’ on top of an ‘H,’ but how do I know what a ‘Z’ would look like on top of this, or how would I know—?” So they said, “Well, you’d just have to—” “All right.” So I made a dictionary putting every letter on top of every other letter to see what values and what it looked like.
WESCHLER
Were you the only artist who was doing this?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. There were several on the art faculty that were doing it.
WESCHLER
Who were playing with it?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh yes. And the show, for goodness’ sake, went all over the States and went to Moose Jaw, Canada, and part of the things went to England, the Institute of Contemporary Arts there. I really enjoyed that, and I made seventy-two different prints. I have a folio showing the seventy-two. Two or three or half a dozen are very good, and others are fair. [Reproductions can be found in a book by Frank J. Malina on art and computers.] But I was very pleased, and oddly enough—
WESCHLER
You would program it and it would do it, or you would talk to a programmer who would say—
HAMMERSLEY
No, I knew how to punch— Oh. It was punch cards. I had to punch the information on a card, and that would be given to the computer man.
WESCHLER
And the information was I want this particular dictionary letter that you’ve created to go diagonally this way?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And then to be overprinted with so-and-so, and I would spend the morning writing out or punching— No, not punching the card. I couldn’t do that. I would write out what I wanted to be done, and then I would go to the computer center and look at the information and then type it out, resulting in punched cards. I’d give it to the little man behind the door, and five minutes later, I’d get this drawing back. I’d sit down and make a change and give it to him.
WESCHLER
How was that different from doing lithography or doing something like that?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, it was like eating peanuts. I mean, one thing would lead to another, and you just kept on chewing. And the delight was, there was such a short time between images. I could show you some more but—
WESCHLER
I saw that there was one over here. Let me bring it over, and we can talk about it.
HAMMERSLEY
And there’s a box under the chair. I wanted a sequence of values, light to dark. So, see, this has been printed once on top. See, a “T” is darker than dashes, but then if I put a dash on top of the “T,” it’s slightly darker. Then if I put an equal sign, it’s still darker. And this, I forget what’s on top of the “T.”
WESCHLER
This is like parallel vertical lines that go from light to dark and dark to light.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. See, and then that would look different if there was no interval between the columns. The columns help.
WESCHLER
Just taking a peek, as an example.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, I was fascinated— See, this is an apostrophe, and that’s a period. I didn’t jump and down. The machine was just printing this so it does like a yo-yo.
WESCHLER
That’s great.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, what is interesting—[looking at another image] Now, see, that doesn’t work quite as well. When these traveled, the Jewish university or Jewish organization somewhere in Santa Monica [the University of Judaism] bought two of these things. That was the only sale I made.Now, here’s where it’s apostrophe and periods. Seems ain’t is. I mean, it seems like they’re going up and down, but they’re actually in the same line.
WESCHLER
In the same line. That’s right.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, see, that’s yo-yo horizontally. But, still, the up and down, the periods and the apostrophes.
WESCHLER
Have you kept up with computers?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
You don’t have one here in the house?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
Why not?
HAMMERSLEY
I have no need for one.
WESCHLER
It’s not that you need them, but I imagine somebody who had fun in the early days of computers would have fun nowadays, the things that you could do.
HAMMERSLEY
There’s not enough time for me to do what I’d like to do. I never can get caught up, all the things I would like to do. You know, framing and taking pictures, and then now the energy has diminished, so I just can’t do it. It would be too seductive. I mean, it would be like— Well, that’s enough.
WESCHLER
You’re using that the same way as McLaughlin used it.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. [McLaughlin used the word seductive describing an oblique in my painting. When I used seductive in relation to computers, I meant that they could take you away from other things—seduce you.] I’m sure it would be great fun to work and to punch something to see what such-and-such painter’s doing. I mean, a friend of mine came here and punched my name in, and it shows the work that [Richard] Levy Gallery [Albuquerque] has. And that’s fascinating. Or if you have a cold, and you punch— And you find out about a cold, that’s marvelous. But I don’t need all that information now. It’s helpful, but I can only absorb so much or only do so much.
WESCHLER
It’s funny. I was talking to Robert Irwin, and he was saying, “The kind of thing I’m interested is going to take a hundred years to get there.”I said, “Well, are you talking about the kinds of things that computers can do? Are you talking about like if you were to put goggles on your face, you’d be able to see through computers?”He said, “No, no, no.” He said, “You don’t see by putting goggles on your face.”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
Technology is not going to get you there.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Yes, like there was an Englishman here, and he gave a talk, and he would get ideas from paintings. He’d put some information in the computer, and then see all kinds of variations, and then he’d select the third one. Well, I thought, “Hell, come on. Why don’t you use your own equipment and let your mind and your feelings do that?” Because it’s slightly synthetic to have a— Now, the business of getting variations, I’m sure there are situations where it’s appropriate and would save time and be good, but it’s nothing to do with creativity. Excuse me. I’m not sure of that. Well, anyway, it doesn’t appeal to me, because there’s too much— If I had two lives, I think I would spend it in sculpture.
WESCHLER
Really?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
I notice there are some sculptures around. [untitled sculptures done in the 1950s; #160, Ah Youth, drawing, 1951] When did you start doing some of those?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, when I was teaching at Pomona, the sculptor there, he was a very interesting man, and the first assignment for the student was to make a brick, and they would take a handful of clay, and they weren’t allowed to do more than take a lump the size of a peanut and put it on the platform, and then put another thing. So they’d slowly build this thing up. That one in the bedroom? Well, you look at all of them, and you see little clumps. I could have the radio on, and I could talk to friends, and the dog could come in, and it would never go out of control, because it was so slowly developed, and I liked that. So all these were done that way, and I happened to smooth that out. But previously, I just let it alone.
WESCHLER
Have you ever shown your sculpture?
HAMMERSLEY
Never.
WESCHLER
What’s the relationship of your sculpture to your painting in terms of how would I know it was the same person who had done them?
HAMMERSLEY
I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t know. I’d have to sign my name. Then they'd know. [mutual laughter]
WESCHLER
Talk a little bit about the transition from your computer work, which is what you were doing while you weren’t painting much, and then you’re beginning to start painting. How did that work?
HAMMERSLEY
I really don’t know, but I can just assume— I was satisfied with the computers. I was sated. I’d had enough. "That’s enough. I mean, I’m full now." And in the meantime, some ideas had come in. That probably is what happened. I don’t know for sure. I’d have to look in my notebook.
WESCHLER
I often think myself of— In terms of inspiration. You know, there’s that expression the brainpan—for the skull, a part of the skull is the brainpan. They even call it that. I have a sense it’s almost like it collects water. If there’s a drought, it dries out, and then gradually it just collects water, and then it’s full, and then you can create again.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see. I see. The water’s related to creativity.
WESCHLER
If you can imagine that, that time is necessary for it to accumulate.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Yes, I think you’re right.
WESCHLER
So when you started again, what kind of work were you doing? Now we’re coming to ’72, ’73, that general period.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, oh. I have to go back to ’64. Something happened there where the hard-edge painting stopped. I don’t remember why or how. But the motor was still running, and I remember reading— And someone knew this. Peter [Goulds] knew this. I had heard about a Jewish painter [Avigdor Arika] that would do a painting a day. If he was going to work on a painting, he’d finish it in a day. And I thought, “That’s very interesting. I understand restrictions. And if he wants to do it that way, that’s interesting. I’ll try that.”So, the hard-edge was gone, but I felt like working still, so I had some panels—sized panels—and I made marks with vine charcoal, erased, made more marks. One of my favorites was a child’s play. You know how they make circles, and then they fill in the spaces? I did that.Oh. Oh. Here’s how it happened. Ben Horowitz said, “Would you like to be a combat artist?” Here we’re out of the war in the sixties. Edgar Ewing. Edgar Ewing, have you heard of him? At USC [University of Southern California]. He was a painter. Did saddles. And so the two of us went out to Point Mugu to the navy. The navy invited us to do a painting that we’d give to them. And Ben said, “It’s a good idea. Then you have another wall, and you have a list, and the navy has one of your paintings.” We were out there a weekend, and we were given a photographer to photograph that piece and photograph this piece and so and so, and then we were to make the painting.So I made a painting of this— Blue Angels [1963]. And so I made this thing so it would relate to the ground and to the air. It was organic, and I realized— But I painted it with a palette knife, and then I did three other paintings, the same kind of organic things. But I said, “A palette knife doesn’t work with this many curves. It’s too damn tedious.” It relates to a brush. See? So I did organic paintings in 1964, maybe thirty or forty of them, one a day. [including Family Affair, 1964; Windfall, 1964] I still have some of them left. Then I don’t know if I told you, I framed all of them. I was all ready for a show. I said, “I would like to have a show.” And by accident, I found out that there’s common knowledge that none of the painters knew about, and that common knowledge was that museum over there has a committee that meets once a month to decide who they’ll give a one-man show. They’re reviewing material. I didn’t know about that.So I wrote to the Santa Barbara Museum [of Art]. I think I may have written to two or three other places asking when their committee meets to evaluate paintings for a one-man show. I got a letter from Santa Barbara said, “Meets in so-and-so time, and you send this kind of material.”So I sent the material. It came back in a short time. Said, “We like you. We’ll give you a one-man show in a year’s time.” Next March or whatever.

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE JANUARY 15, 2003 and JANUARY 16, 2003

WESCHLER
So you didn’t want to wait for a year to do the Santa Barbara show.
HAMMERSLEY
So I had this brilliant idea. I wrote the letter saying, “I thank you for the invitation, but, now, in case there is a cancellation in your schedule, I have a complete show all ready to go which I could bring up in a day.”A week later, they said, “Fine. Can you bring it up in three weeks?” It was marvelous.I said, “Boy, that’s one time things worked out.”
WESCHLER
So these are paintings you’ve done in one day each, and then you had a show in three weeks?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Good work.
HAMMERSLEY
So with my Volkswagen, I loaded some thirty-odd paintings, and then I took photographs of the show at the Santa Barbara Museum. I have all these photographs of all these paintings. Oh. And then I gave one of the paintings to the Santa Barbara Museum. It was a very good painting. I mean, I liked it. Some are odd. Some were not well liked. I remember this friend of mine I respected, she didn’t care for them. “Well,” I said, “nevertheless, I’m pleased with it.” That was the beginning of the organic hunch paintings.
WESCHLER
Now, you say that in response to my question when things started up again for you—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Now, excuse me. See, that was backwards.
WESCHLER
That was ’64.
HAMMERSLEY
That was ’64. We’re like in the seventies.
WESCHLER
We’re after you’ve done the computer paintings.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. After the computer. Oh, yes. After the organic ones, the hard-edge came to me, and they were fatter and stronger and bigger, and that one painting ended up in The Responsive Eye show. [That, 1964] After that, the paintings, they stood on their own legs. It was great. I mean, the ten years of the seventies was a very productive time. I’d look at my slides, and, god, I did a lot in those ten years.
WESCHLER
So let me get the order straight here. You did that little organic hunch spurt in ’64, and then after that you still had some geometric hard-edge, and then you kind of petered out. Then you come to New Mexico and you do the computer things, and what do you start painting when you start painting again in the early seventies? Hard-edge but thick hard-edge?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. And one of those paintings [You’re Just Like Your Mother, 1972] I sent to the Guggenheim, which the man you mentioned— Isn’t that funny? I forgot his name. The “W”?
WESCHLER
“M.” That’s why you keep forgetting. Motherwell.
HAMMERSLEY
Motherwell. It’s not important, those things. I’m sorry. So I was not teaching, and it was so— I was so rich in time. Get up in the morning, breakfast, do dishes.
WESCHLER
Were you living here in this house?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I’ve been in this house thirty-two years. Since ’68. That’s longer. Amazing. I just can’t— When I turned eighty, I don’t understand how I got here so quickly. It’s unbelievable. What the hell have I been doing?
WESCHLER
So you had the Guggenheim, and you were rich in time and momentarily flush in funds, and you just got up in the morning and—
HAMMERSLEY
And then just work, and there’s no side—
WESCHLER
No distractions.
HAMMERSLEY
Appointments. No places to go, no obligations. And it was heaven. If I have an appointment late in the day, it upsets the working period. I want to have it just open.
WESCHLER
Well, I tell you what. I think, actually, although we just started a new tape, I think we’ll probably stop for now.
HAMMERSLEY
Okay.
WESCHLER
And that’ll allow our brainpans to fill up for tomorrow morning. And tomorrow morning, I want to take you through that spurt of the seventies and up to today.
HAMMERSLEY
Okay.
WESCHLER
Okay. Does that sound good?
HAMMERSLEY
Great.[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
Okay. We’re continuing now, and we had a night’s rest, a good sleep, I hope.Did you have any things that you remembered that you wanted to mention that you had forgotten?
HAMMERSLEY
No. I mean, we’re working from Albuquerque on now.
WESCHLER
Yes, right. Is there anything that—
HAMMERSLEY
So I was thinking— No, except when I first came here, I traveled a lot around the state, and what was interesting, there was very little traffic. Now I’m jealous of the Californians and the New Yorkers that are moving here. There are too many people now. I don’t quite—
WESCHLER
Spoken like a Los Angeles person who moved here a little bit earlier before everybody. Even if they move in now—
HAMMERSLEY
But anyway, I don’t know if you’ve seen the towns on the other side, especially one town, but it felt like I was walking into Tom Sawyer’s place. I mean, it was a quadrangle, and—
WESCHLER
Which town was this?
HAMMERSLEY
Cerrillos. As I understand, they mine turquoise in that area. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of mines here. But Golden, there was a general store. And my sister would come here, and I’d take her out, because the jewelry was very good. This was ’68, ’69, and seventies, early seventies. And then we’d be talking to Mrs. Johnson, and the Indian would come and trade with her, jewelry for some— And then her rugs were very good. Then she always had a plant in the window that the cat could eat. I asked her the name, which I’ve forgotten, but the cat was a marvelous cat.And then across the street, there was a lady that collected— The front yard was filled with glass bottles, and most of them were purple. There was a year in which they stopped, or they added another element to glass so it remained clear. As a matter of fact, I have one that’s slightly purple. Then you go into the small store, and it’s like a sardine can of glass. It’s just amazing. I wonder if it’s still there. But anyway, that was the only thing there in Golden, just those two places.Oh, and then there was a church, and I took some photographs of the church. It was odd. It was kind of lonely, and I wondered who would come or where they come from.But then the next one was Madrid, where they used to mine coal, and you pass a long avenue. You’re on the highway or road, and these abandoned houses that are just dying, and then you go down into the main street, and then there were some antique shops with elderly couples. Now you go there, and there’s people your age opening gift shops and weaving rugs and jewelry. And then there was a baseball field on the end, and they would have jazz— I mean— I don’t know what they, the music— The kind of music today, that sort of thing there.Then beyond that was Cerrillos. There was one— You come into Cerrillos, and there’s a plaza, a big empty square, and there was a gift shop to the right, and you’d go down and there’s a marvelous antique shop in that corner, and then you’d just drive around here, and then you pass a church, and you never saw anyone. You never saw anyone except the man in the store.Then Burl Ives would trade at this antique shop, and he was interested in a four-poster bed. I was remembering when— You see this chair over here, that oval thing?
WESCHLER
Right, yes.
HAMMERSLEY
That was from some distant Swedish relative that lived near Franklin Avenue, my uncle, and the two ladies were moving or something, and they brought out this brass bed. Each corner had a brass head of a swan, and the foot was more elaborate and the backboard was quieter, but it was all brass. Uncle Eric said, “Now, you can unscrew all these things.”I lived in this funny little room, and it was a regular-size bed, and then that funny bed, just like wire for the mattress. And like an ass, I didn’t take it and just improvised. Because it was a marvelous— Oh, god.
WESCHLER
Do you think some of these shapes and textures— I’m thinking, for example, of Indian rugs and so forth. Did that have an influence on your—
HAMMERSLEY
Influence in that I enjoy it. You see that ochre square— I think that was the first rug I bought.
WESCHLER
I’m looking at the rug right here, and it’s brown, for one thing, one of your favorite colors, brown and black, squares and crosses, and a geometric shape.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And that lady, that Indian lady, she did squares. Now, I was here for two years looking at rugs, and I didn’t see anything I liked. Now, near Grants— I go west. I think it’s Grants. Well, somewhere in that area you turn off, and you go to a place called Ice Caves, and you say, “What the hell is that, Ice Caves?” Well, you go down, and there’s this general store, and they— I have a feeling you have to pay now. But anyway, they direct you. You go down a path. Then there’s a rickety stairway you go down, and this cavity in the ground, and then you go into this like an abandoned subway station, and it stops. The wall that stops you is a green ice. It’s extraordinary. All year long, it’s ice, because the whole thing is surrounded with lava, and it’s insulation, you see.Then you come out and go to the store. They had rugs. Then you could take another path. It was quite extraordinary. You walk up to the top of this crater, and it was brown-purple, and it was a just perfect cone, and there was an opening on this one side, then a couple of trees here. This purple gravel the size of walnuts. And it was— God.
WESCHLER
How far is that from here?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, maybe sixty miles.
WESCHLER
In the direction of—
HAMMERSLEY
West. You take the highway west. Ask your hotel people. That’s also— Oh, maybe Grants turnoff is— I’m mixed up here. Grants turnoff might be for the city of Acoma.
WESCHLER
Anyway, but this was in the context to telling me about the rug.
HAMMERSLEY
And the Ice Cave store. I saw that. It was so simple and so nice that I bought it.
WESCHLER
I guess in a way I’m asking, you had been blocked up in Los Angeles, and you’re about to launch out onto this huge, productive decade of the seventies. Do you think it had something to do with the change of place, with the amount of new vision you were having, the Indian stuff, the land? Did that kind of excite you in a way that got you going again, do you think, the change of place?
HAMMERSLEY
I think it was just a parallel. It was just a coincidence. Like, let’s say you’re a painter and you go to Yugoslavia, or you go to Spain or someplace, and you start painting. I couldn’t do that. I would go to Spain, and I’d be fascinated by just looking at what the things— And all those new things stop me from working, because I want to look. Now, what is odd—
WESCHLER
That reminds me of my grandfather [Ernst Toch], who had a beautiful view. I told you he was a composer and he lived in the Santa Monica Hills. He had a fantastic view out of his studio window, and somebody said, “Well, it’s easy to be a composer with a view like this.” He said, “When I compose, I close the curtains.”
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see. [mutual laughter] You can’t— It’s like I cannot have music when I’m working. I cannot have anyone in the house when I’m working. There’s an Indian painter, [Fritz] Scholder. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him. He was very popular some years ago and selling like mad. A couple of teepee things, you know the paintings. He’d take a jar of paint and throw it on the big canvas— "I come in the studio and I turn on the music—" What do they call music today? Rap or something,
WESCHLER
Hip-hop.
HAMMERSLEY
I can feel my energy going away from me when that music’s on.
WESCHLER
So, in other words, stimulation from the outside doesn’t— It doesn't stimulate you; it drains you. You need to be concentrated when you’re—
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. But this is entertainment, the traveling, and it was just a change of pace, and it was so un-California and so un-Los Angeles. Then the people said, “Yes, sir.”
WESCHLER
I have noticed that.
HAMMERSLEY
Still?
WESCHLER
Yes.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I’m surprised because I haven’t heard it so much anymore. And I thought, "Boy, that’s not Los Angeles." It’s very nice, that courtesy, that old-time form. It dawned on me one time. Form, manners—like Victorian age and my father’s generation—allowed you more room to maneuver.
WESCHLER
How do you mean?
HAMMERSLEY
When Maurice Tuchman came up to me and was talking, he put his hand around my shoulder— I didn’t know him. He said, “Now, Freddie, how about if you—” and so on. I was no place. I mean, it was too close. You don’t call me by a nickname if you don’t know me, and then you touch me. They don’t do that in my father’s time, and I was in my father’s time. Of course, I’m an old man in relation to your age.
WESCHLER
How does that relate to your painting? How does form allow more room to maneuver, manners and so forth?
HAMMERSLEY
I hadn’t thought of that relationship. I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.
WESCHLER
Because I think there’s a sense in which your painting is well-mannered.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
It’s precise. It doesn’t presume upon me. It impresses me in a—
HAMMERSLEY
Now, tell me what painting might impose— What did you say? Impose on you?
WESCHLER
It doesn’t presume on me.
HAMMERSLEY
Presume on me. What painter would do that? I’m thinking— I’m trying to figure out.
WESCHLER
Who would be an example? I’m just thinking. I mean, there’s, obviously, a partly— I would tend toward more explosively— Not Pollock, but some of the more explosive abstract stuff, expressionist stuff or, let’s say, well, obviously, something like Otto Dix. I mean, there it’s the subject matter that’s doing it. But there’s a— And, by the way, it’s not wrong. It just a completely different way of—
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
Whereas your work, it strikes me, has both a kind of sense of balance and a courtesy.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s very pleasant. I’m glad that you feel that, because the disadvantage in my work—I’m thinking of the lay person and my mother—is that it’s foreign. It’s not something that they can put a name to. I’ll never forget when Van Deren Coke gave me the one-man show at the university, and it filled that one— There’s a very nice room in the Popejoy Hall.
WESCHLER
Where? Here?
HAMMERSLEY
Here at the university [University of New Mexico], the art museum in the Popejoy Hall. It’s a big room, and I had a lot of material. You come through the door, and there’s a store, etc. You can walk down steps, and you stand there, you can see the whole thing. And I was in there taking photographs of my show. On the other end, there’s a small room where there are other paintings or little shows, and then there’s another gallery. In that back room, there were some lovely French sketches of almost before Impressionism, and they were charming.So this group of ladies came in, and they were standing on the stairs, and they looked around, and they looked back, and they said, “Well, we don’t have to look at this. Let’s go up into the back room.”And I said, “Oh, that’s right. That’s right.”
WESCHLER
Was that your mother’s attitude, generally, too, do you think? What’s the nicest thing she ever said about your work?
HAMMERSLEY
She never said anything. Oh. As I mentioned, when we were at the San Francisco show, toward the end, she didn’t say a word going through all the rooms. When we were getting close to the car, she said, “Well, the colors were nice,” like she had to acknowledge that her eyes were open. And then, see, I’d been brought up just to not make waves and to accept anything that went on, and then as I got older, the anger came out.
WESCHLER
When did she die, by the way, your mother?
HAMMERSLEY
I’d have to ask Susie. I have a feeling it was the late sixties.
WESCHLER
’68?
HAMMERSLEY
Somewhere around in there. I’m thinking Dad was ’66. Yes, somewhere in the sixties, the both of them. [Hammersley’s father died September 26, 1966; his mother February 18, 1971]
WESCHLER
Without psychoanalyzing you, do you think that had anything to do with your period of feeling empty in Los Angeles?
HAMMERSLEY
I think it was a great help that they died, that she died.
WESCHLER
Conversely, the explosion of the seventies had to do with her—
HAMMERSLEY
I wonder. I wonder. You know, the point is— I noticed one time when I was going to Jepson [Art Institute]— I’d come home and I’d lie down and rest and just put my hands on my chest, and I would just let my thoughts go wherever I wanted, and I was aware I’d feel my sweater. Then after a while, I didn’t feel the sweater at all. The sensation, you can’t do anything if there’s no movement. There’s no sensation. So then I’d listen to my hands, and I couldn’t hear a thing. No sensation. I thought, “That’s very interesting.” Now I don’t know what my idea is or what the point is.
WESCHLER
You were talking about your mother.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh. If you have a diet, if you eat a certain thing a long time— Oh yes. I thought of a pleasure principle. Oh yes. That’s right. Here. This applies, I think. Let’s say the pleasure principle is of eating. So you start with possibly a salad or something, and then you go to some beets and some vegetables, and it’s delicious. You just love it. All right. Now, without knowing it, the rheostat changes. You want some dessert. You keep on eating the dessert, and you’re maintaining this pleasure principle, pleasure level. So then you go through the desserts and the coffee or some wine or whatever, and you keep on going, and then after a while, to maintain the same level of pleasure, you’ve got to stop. And it’s such a pleasure not to have anything to eat. And I’m convinced that when you work a certain length of time— It parallels my comment— You use up your fund. I’ve saturated my sensory equipment in eating, that example, so the body just stops. I mean, the stomach says, “Enough.” You know that Business and Health magazine or Time magazine, they say if you eat something, “I really could have some more,” but if you wait twenty minutes, you find yourself feeling full. You know that.So I have a feeling the Los Angeles thing, the school stopping, the painting stopped, and all of a sudden there was a door open, and it was New Mexico. Then it took me a while to get used to this rhythm here.
WESCHLER
Also, you had all that stuff you wanted to look at before you started painting.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then without deciding anything, like in ’69 an idea came, and it was a little gesture, and then nothing happened. There was a lot of things to do. You know, just doing the dishes or shopping, that’s the disadvantage of being alone or not being wealthy. If you had someone to do it for you, it would be very nice. See, I could use that time by just sitting and reviewing my library reports.
WESCHLER
One thing I noticed you did in 1970, so that’s fairly early on, was you did these knee pictures. [Debbie’s Knees, 1970; Knee Portrait #2, 1970] Would you talk about them a little bit?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Oh yes. When I came here—
WESCHLER
For that matter, before you even get to those, talk a little bit about the photography in your work. I mean, to what extent do you think of photography as part of your opus?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, it came by accident, or it came by necessity, when I told you this Japanese photographer in L.A. charged a lot. It cost a lot of money to have slides made or black and white done, and so I finally bought a camera, and then I could take slides of my own paintings. Then I could take slides of a Bonnard show or of various exhibitions, and that was very exciting. Then I was providing material to support my mouth in teaching, because mouth by itself is not enough, especially for me. I’ve got to have the image. And that image by itself is not good—the sound combination is, I think, crucial.So, all right. The photography went for a long time, and I came here, and I was taking photographs of the snow, and etc., and then—
WESCHLER
Which you, by the way, thought of as part of your art, or not especially? The photographs you would take of the snow, was that in the form of just it was beautiful so you photographed it?
HAMMERSLEY
Right, right.
WESCHLER
Or it was an artwork itself, or it was an aide-mEmoire? What do you think?
HAMMERSLEY
It was a different dish set in front of me. Now, a parallel to that, I was teaching at the university, and the photo department was right across the street from the art building, and I would go in and look at what they had on the walls, and I said, “Boy, I don’t know anything about darkroom stuff.” And I remember my father doing it in the kitchen and drying the things on the dining room table. So I signed up for the beginning photo class of the darkroom.So then I took pictures of— Oh, and at that time there was a Spanish postman, and I said, “Louis, do you know of any babysitters in the neighborhood?”Louis said, “Yes.”I said, “I’d like to hire some so I can draw some heads.”So he gave me a couple of names. So this, bless her heart, this homely girl came over, and she looked sad. [Debbie, 1970] Oh. When Maurice Tuchman had a show of— I think it was hard-edge paintings, and then photos by painters, and Billy [William] Brice had something and so— And Debbie is on the poster. It’s filled with photographs. Also, it was like eating candy when I first got the camera. I bought a macro lens so I could take a portrait of your button or a raisin. I mean, it doesn’t look like a raisin.
WESCHLER
You just made the same gesture that Rico Lebrun did about looking through a telescope made out of your hands.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. So macro, that was another world, and it was fascinating. I have a lot of these slides.
WESCHLER
What’s funny to me, by the way, is that you would ask for a babysitter. Did you pay her what you would pay a babysitter, basically?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and that was a $1.25 an hour.
WESCHLER
So your idea of a babysitter was somebody who, instead of babysitting your baby, would sit there for you, and you would pay the same amount and you would do their face and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. So I forget how many times a week—maybe once or twice a week she’d come—and we’d sit there, and I’d draw— Well, in those days, I could draw for three hours, but these days I can’t.But then it was summer, and she wore shorts and something. I said, “Sit on this table on your—” I’m interested about the buttock, but in this case what happens to the toes in relation to the buttock when someone’s sitting on their knees. I said, “Let me see what happens.” [Debbie’s Knees, 1970]She said, “All right.”“I’ll take a picture of your face.”So that’s how that started.
WESCHLER
How did you end up, by the way, with that wonderful picture on the porcelain? Is that on a toilet or on a—
HAMMERSLEY
The picture on the what?
WESCHLER
Is it on the toilet or on the bathtub, where you’ve got the white— It’s just her knees, the one that you sent to me.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh. Well, that was a part of that series. I have a couple of other knees, which were not as successful.
WESCHLER
And there she’s sitting on— What is she sitting on?
HAMMERSLEY
She’s seated on a chair, and just one leg is crossed. [Knee Portrait #2, 1970]
WESCHLER
But it looks like a porcelain chair or something.
HAMMERSLEY
No, that’s the other leg. That’s the leg that she’s resting her left leg on.
WESCHLER
Right, right.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, so that was a short serving, hors d’oeuvres, and that was enough. Then, as I say, I did the printing. Oh, and then I have one box of Mother’s things, all kinds of odds and ends. That cabinet in the bathroom was Mother’s dollhouse, what she called a dollhouse, and I still have some scissors about that long.
WESCHLER
The length of your little finger.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, like actually cut. Mother took them to the cutlery shop in San Francisco to have them sharpened, and it’s unbelievable. But I still have those, and then I have a box of Dad’s things, a couple of Indian things and some diaries, etc. Now, why did I bring this up?
WESCHLER
Scissors you used to cut the pictures or—
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. It was just a plaything [unclear]. Why did I get over here? What was I— Oh, the photography.
WESCHLER
Right. Did you take photos of some of those things from that—
HAMMERSLEY
No, I never thought of that. Oh yes. Going through these boxes, I came across a cleverly bound folder that would contain the negatives of the postcards. I don’t know what size that— It was almost like four by six inches. And they were all filled with my father’s negatives. Some of them were— Well, they were not interesting. A horse being dipped for ticks, etc., two men with this trough and the animal’s in there and they’re poking him along. Or then sad things, just a couple of houses in this field in Montana, and he’d taken a picture of that. And then some pictures he’d taken in London, and then of Salt Lake City.These were large, and so I got a small— I can’t think of what it’s called, that you put the negative and then the paper and expose it to light to get a print. And it was interesting, because I didn’t have an enlarger. I could go to school at that time and use the enlarger. So I made a lot of contact prints, what is hanging up now.Then I came across pictures of Mother when she was young. And then when I was young, and I loved army uniforms, and I have this army hat with funny little— What was that underwear called? BV something.
WESCHLER
BVDs?
HAMMERSLEY
BVDs? BVDs, yes. So it was interesting, seeing these photographs. I would show Susie, and we’d talk about it. But what was still unexpected, and I never understood it, he never said anything about the photographs, whether, “That’s a good one” and “I don’t care for that one.”
WESCHLER
You’ve talked about your mother’s response to you. As a photographer, did your father respond to what you were doing any more warmly than your mother did?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t think he saw anything I did with photography.
WESCHLER
No, but I’m saying, since he had been a photographer, how did he respond to your art? You said your mother never said—
HAMMERSLEY
Same thing. Absolutely no interest. I have a feeling they were on another plane of being neurotic, as I was in my plane. And they were in their castle, and they would occasionally look out, but it was just amazing how— But, see, what surprised me— When I left home, what a delight to leave home. Then later I realized I still had home with me. I was still listening to the same script, and that really disappointed and shocked me. But those people, when they left their home, they still brought their systems with them, the cooking and the housekeeping.
WESCHLER
Do you feel that once you moved to New Mexico and they had died, that that noise began to dissipate for you, that it went away?
HAMMERSLEY
There was a change in that I was more open to want to know more about my shortcomings. See, I was very reluctant to show my shaky hands. I’d have to have a couple of drinks before I’d go out to dinner, that sort of thing. I still do. There’s a slight case of agoraphobia. I don’t like to go out. What did you ask?
WESCHLER
I asked whether after they had died— You had said you were disappointed after you left home that home was still inside of you. Do you think when you moved to New Mexico and they were no longer alive that that critical voice kind of dissipated for you and you were freer?
HAMMERSLEY
I think it helped coming away here, in that, “I’m going to do something about this.” So then I contacted someone to be a good— I called up my hygienist that I knew in L.A. “Who’s a good psychiatrist?” So he was the one that told me that my parents told me, “You can’t make it.”I remember once walking into his place a few blocks away one morning when it was 17 below zero.
WESCHLER
This is a psychiatrist you were seeing here?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then he retired, and I occasionally go to a psychologist. It’s like I think of art school, that, “I’ve got some drawings, but would you look at those drawings? I don't know what, what—” Then you would look at them and say, “Well, you see this?” “Oh. Oh.”So the psychologist now, if I’d known about the psychologists, the way they work— Of course, he told me— In those days, that’s the way— Psychiatrists don’t say a damn word, and he rocks his foot. I said, “Why are you moving your foot?” That sort of thing.
WESCHLER
“Why does it matter why I’m moving my foot?”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. Oh, Christ. So this guy will say, “Well, it’s just a habit I have. What the hell’s the difference? Let’s go on to the next subject.” That sort of thing. He said, “Now psychiatry is more like psychology, that they’re more open.” I didn’t know that, but I’m very pleased for the poor bastards that are going.
WESCHLER
And did it have the effect, though, talking to him and so forth, of loosening things up for you?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. The peripheral debris, like it’s easier to talk to you, for example. It wouldn’t be this way when I first came here. I’d be, “Oh yes?”
WESCHLER
Did that also help open up your art? We know that the seventies proved to be extremely vital for you.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I assume so. I’d never thought of that, but I’m sure it contributed. It seems reasonable that it would contribute, because it is like a painting. I’ll never forget [Herbert] Jepson saying, “If you have trouble with drawing, if you have trouble with the knee, don’t look at the knee. Look at the upper part of the knee and look below it, and start there, and then come to the knee.” That will usually— Where the trouble— Don’t concentrate on troubles. So the psychiatry, the problem— And it’s like a painting. If I have trouble here, go around to the other places, and if those work, then, oh, it directs the answer to this place.So, a marvelous feeling to get— Well, first, to talk to someone and you can say any goddamn thing you want. That is un-Hammersley, see? We couldn’t do that.
WESCHLER
So anyway, we’ve mentioned a variety of ways in which coming to New Mexico opened things up. So now let’s talk about what happened here in New Mexico. The painting you started doing in nineteen— Are some of the things we’re looking at on the wall here, these are from the seventies?
HAMMERSLEY
Now, that’s ’66. This is a later one, and I think that’s before I came here. That’s done in Los Angeles. [Paintings up to 1967 were done in Los Angeles. Those from 1967 on were done in Albuquerque.]
WESCHLER
But in any case, we have some of these sorts of things.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, this is Los Angeles, and this is Los Angeles, and here’s New Mexico.
WESCHLER
But I want to talk about the— Let’s see. I’m looking for some of the stuff that’s later. This sort of thing.
HAMMERSLEY
What’s the year?
WESCHLER
It says 1979 on this one.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, ’79. I didn’t know that.
WESCHLER
I’m looking at— But generally, it’s very strong—
HAMMERSLEY
[referring to a painting] Now, that I’m very pleased with. [Mate, 1980]
WESCHLER
The point is, these are very strong geometric things at first, with rectangles, squares, that sort of thing. It initially starts that way.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, you remember the remark about “That oblique is seductive”?
WESCHLER
Right, yes.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, I realize that’s a dangerous thing to do, oblique. You can’t have too much because it’s too excessively stimulating. But this painting that we’re looking at, called Mate
WESCHLER
Right. From 1980.
HAMMERSLEY
I was so pleased because there was no verticals or horizontals. Everything was oblique. And it was restful. It was a yin/yang, as a matter of fact. And I was delighted with that painting. Well, it’s called Mate. I told the owner of the gallery, Martin Muller, who is a— I can’t stand the man. He’s a nut. [I was a bit hard on him there.] But the printer was so good. He didn’t cut off the points. Now, that’s a marvelous cutting job and a printing job. That’s dangerous to ask to have that done. So anyway, I was very pleased with that.
WESCHLER
But this strikes me as typical of a certain body of the work of your seventies.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
And it’s large fields of geometrically straight color, fields of color that are consistent. They don’t blend into other colors and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
Right, right.
WESCHLER
Later on, you’ll be doing something which I think was more organic, the shapes and so forth, but for this first period, much of the work that, for example, is in these notebooks—
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. The notebooks are all geometric.
WESCHLER
Are all geometric. These notebooks are largely New Mexico notebooks?
HAMMERSLEY
They’re usually dated. ’74—
WESCHLER
’74, ’75. So let’s just take a look at some of these notebooks, for example. Remind me again of how the notebook would work, how a work would go from your— I want you to describe for me— You are now in your full blossom of that wonderful period of productivity of the seventies.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
So on a day-to-day basis, how would it work? You would have an idea? You would put something in your notebook? First you would put it in that—
HAMMERSLEY
First I put it in the small notebook. And then one feels good, and sometimes, without thinking, it would breed another one, a relative. And I’d put some down. Now, I felt good if I had three ideas that were likely or possible. So then I would leave the room. I would leave the room.
WESCHLER
An idea, by the way, let’s just define as a combination of shape and colors. That’s the idea.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. And it was materialized in this small shape here.
WESCHLER
In this beige notebook.
HAMMERSLEY
So if it was very good, I wouldn’t do anything about it, and I’d do other things. I always think of Churchill. He said, “I never took vacations; I change activities.” And I thought, “That’s very true.”So if something is very good, I never act shortly after that. I think it’s stupid to— You’ve got to let both of us age, it age and me age, at least sleeping one night. Now, two or three days is better. All right. Then I come back the next day— "Yes, okay, that’s fine. Let’s put it in the book." So then I put it in the book exactly the proportion I have the stretchers for, and I have the canvas ready. So then I stretch the thing, and I draw it, and then it gets very exciting.
WESCHLER
First of all, let’s look at this. In the book, how many of these would you do in a single day, for example?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, maybe three would be a lot. It’s often just one.
WESCHLER
And that’s in your black notebook, of which there’s like six to a page.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
For a while you’re using colored pencils, and then later on you started using paint itself.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct, correct.
WESCHLER
The paint that you would actually use. So, okay, you would do a bunch of these, and then what would happen?
HAMMERSLEY
Now, what is odd, the first thing that you were looking at [Hot Cross, 1994], the first thing you were looking at here— Now, this one was twenty-four inches square. Now, what I was amazed, and I still don’t understand it, there’s some relationships that work on a— Big to me is— That’s big to me. [Pre Prayed, 1981]
WESCHLER
Let’s mention, that’s—
HAMMERSLEY
Forty-five square. Now, the reason I like forty-five square is that I can comfortably pick it up. Forty-eight is slightly uncomfortable. It’s a little bit too hard for me to pick up.
WESCHLER
Does that affect how it looks, do you think? Or just the picking up? Can your eye tell the difference that it’s comfortable or not comfortable?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh no. I think the eye is more flexible than the length of my arm.
WESCHLER
Okay. Good. So anyway, you were saying—
HAMMERSLEY
So I have the idea— I have a blank canvas sometimes over there, and I have the idea. I look at the canvas. "No, that doesn’t work on that size. That doesn’t feel—"
WESCHLER
So even though it works in your notebook, it doesn’t work on canvas?
HAMMERSLEY
So then I get a smaller size. Oh, that’s right. It’s twenty-four, twenty. That’s right. Now, then the next step is the organic size, and I learned— It became conscious to me— Santa Barbara had a show Leonardo Visits Vinci. There was a small room. There were two of his drawings, where a seated man with a cloak on, and it was just the knees and this— You go this close to it, you see, and when I went that close, I’ll be a son of a bitch, it’s the size of my face, that shape. That drawing was the size of my face. So there’s a relationship. So the organic paintings are usually my face size, and then my arm size, and this [holds up hand] is snapshot size.
WESCHLER
The size of your hand, basically? [Twice Blessed, 1987; How Now, 1988]
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. You get a snapshot. Oh, that’s nice.
WESCHLER
It fits nicely in your hand.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And then you get a large painting, a large photograph. You have to be very careful. There was a painter in Los Angeles that would splash painting, and he made an enormous painting, and I remember seeing it at the Pasadena Museum. I turned around and looked at it, I said, “Oh, dear me.” It should’ve been small. It was not right.All right. So then this feels good on a twenty-four. So then I get the twenty-four—
WESCHLER
Talk about that just a little bit more, though. How do you know, looking—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know. It just feels.
WESCHLER
You just feel.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And you trust your feeling; you have faith in your feeling.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Well, I’m sure— How would I relate it to the word? There are some times that you need twenty words to describe something, and other times you need four. The poor writer, he puts eighteen words, and four is enough, and I get tired. I wander when he’s talking. Hell’s bells, please get to the goddamn point. It’s like— Where did I think of that? What do you want to do? “What do you want to do?” Say, “Well, I want to say it’s ice cold.” You don’t have to tell me it’s cold as the Eskimos in Africa or wherever. But anyway—
WESCHLER
So we’re looking right now, by the way, at a painting that is a drawing from your notebook which is black squares in the corner, blue between black squares on the vertical, and then the middle third is white and blue columns, vertical. [Troika, 1974]
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
So maybe people will be able to see that. And you decide that should be twenty-four inches.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. And someone has that here in town. The title is Troika.
WESCHLER
So you paint. Now, when you’re doing these paintings again, remind me, you don’t use tape. How do you make this? You draw—
HAMMERSLEY
This is drawn with a ruler and a pencil. Then I look at that drawing for a while, and then I decide, what’s the first color? Well, let’s get the black.I remember Henry [Lee] McFee saying, "When you start a painting, establish where the darkest is and then where the lightest is, so you have a reference—the value extremes." So wherever you’re going, you know that you’re not going to go darker than that or you’re not going to go lighter than that. Very clever. So I think I would start with the black.
WESCHLER
This is, again, with a palette knife?
HAMMERSLEY
With a palette knife. So I put the blacks in, and then I have to wait until it’s dry.
WESCHLER
One thing I’ve noticed generally, by the way, about your paintings is that they’re exquisitely smooth.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
Is that hard to learn how to do?
HAMMERSLEY
No. Let’s say, if you can picture spreading peanut butter with a palette knife— After I’ve cut the pencil line in half all the way around— I cut it this way, I have to turn the canvas and then spread the paint this way, and then turn the canvas. Then I just move the paint over that shape. Then I clean the knife and then distribute the paint this way, turn the thing four times and distribute the paint. So the application of the paint disappears. That’s the first coat. The first coat— You know that expression “fat on lean.” The first coat is the paint with a little turp in it, so it’s thin, lean. It’ll enter the canvas more. Because if I put another coat on top of it, I don’t want to put a lean coat on top of a lean coat. I want to put a fat coat on top of the lean. Now, if I want to put a third coat, then I’ve go to add some oil to the paint so it’s more fat on this fat one.
WESCHLER
The top coat is the fattest coat.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. Because if you reverse it, put lean on fat, after a while it’ll crack.
WESCHLER
That’s interesting. How many coats did you put on some of these?
HAMMERSLEY
But always two coats, except—
WESCHLER
I’m looking at the one behind you [unclear].
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, all the ones that you see are two coats. Yes, after the whole thing is done, one coat. And one coat of paint is not quite enough. A second coat follows. [Ambidextrous, 1967; There Now, 1970]

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO JANUARY 16, 2003

WESCHLER
You were talking that you were concerned about the aging of a canvas and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I want the thing to last, and I don’t want the thing— There’s always kinds of things that’ll happen that I don’t know anything— Like some people had a painting of mine. Oh, the Neutra house, and it was hung right in the sun. We were up on a hill, and the sun would come from the ocean side, and I saw them a few years later, and it was just filled with cracks. God, I thought, “Well, now, I wonder if that’s partly my fault,” the kind of white I was using. In the old days, I got whites from different companies, because white can be yellowish, greenish, bluish, or grayish. So I thought, “I’ll have a painting with just whites.” But the difference is not quite enough.There’s a Renaissance painting of the Annunciation where the angel is coming to Mary or someone, and the cheeks are pink and the shadows are pistachio green. So I made a painting, very close values, this pale green and this pistachio. Goddamn, those two colors were just marvelous. Here again, it’s the opposites, pink and green.
WESCHLER
So you’re talking about you’re trying to make it last. Also, the smoothness is very important to it.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I don’t want people to say, “I like the texture.” I don’t intend the texture to be seen. I want them to see that there is a shape sitting there, and it’s related to this shape, and that’s the sensation that I want them to— Now, there’s nothing wrong with putting texture, if that’s what they are working for, sure.
WESCHLER
If that’s what they want.
HAMMERSLEY
Nothing wrong with that.
WESCHLER
So you’ve described this process of with the knife you would go four times around, and you’d take it ninety degrees each time, and then you do it again, and ninety degrees, and the palette knife, you spread the paint around.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Generally, by the way, did the final painting look exactly as it was in the drawing, or did you sometimes change as you were going along?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, no, no. It has to be like the painted diagram in the book. Now, what was very strange, I did one painting— I don’t know if I can find it. I have a picture. [Common Courtesy, 1970] I liked the idea. When I made the painting, I said, “Oh dear.” No, wait a minute. Yes, I said, “That’s not what I thought.” But [Martin] Muller [owner of the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco] liked the painting. I wonder if I can find it.It was a black painting with a thin strip of white on the bottom, not all the way, and the thin strip here on top, and it was called Common Courtesy. I thought it was great, but when I made the whole thing, oh dear, I was so disappointed. Then five years later, I looked at it and said, “Oh, that’s not bad.” Now, see, it’s very strange. I’ve changed.Oh, here it is.
WESCHLER
There it is right there. We’ve turned to it right there. Okay. I see. Let me ask you, Sacred and Pro Fame [1978]—which was done in ’78, which is a terrific painting—
HAMMERSLEY
Black is top.
WESCHLER
You told me it’s upside down.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it was printed upside down.
WESCHLER
It was printed upside down in the mailer for Nouvelle Abstractions Américaines. How do you know? In other words, I mean, this is an interesting example. What makes one side right-side up or upside down? Let’s talk about this particular one, because it’s actually a very interesting one. It’s, by the way, a beautiful painting.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. All right. Have you looked at it right-side up?
WESCHLER
Well, let’s turn it upside down.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, do you feel a difference?
WESCHLER
It definitely feels different.
HAMMERSLEY
I found—
WESCHLER
I don’t know why I would describe one side as correct or not correct.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s personal taste.
WESCHLER
It’s a New Yorker cartoon where they have, “Oh, that’s upside down,” and then everybody makes fun of how can you say one side is right-side up or not.
HAMMERSLEY
But I could turn the thing upside down and say you, being a painter over there, would paint it this way, and you’d be satisfied.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s fine. I paint it, and I do it the opposite way. Now, what I found, that it’s more stimulating if the heavy is on top.
WESCHLER
I see.
HAMMERSLEY
There’s an innate tension.
WESCHLER
In this particular painting there, if you were to describe it as three boxes on top, three squares, they are completely filled in red, black, red, whereas on the bottom it’s red, white, red.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
So the black makes it more like— The white reads as emptiness there, so you would agree that it’s heavier, the three, the red, black, red, than red, white, red?
HAMMERSLEY
And this being on top is heavier than anything below it.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
And then there’s an odd thing—
WESCHLER
Why is it better if heavier is on top?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know why. It feels good. It feels boring or expected to have it on the bottom. But, I mean, so what? That doesn’t do it well. I don’t know why.And then another funny thing, to me, the oblique is more comfortable if it goes from left to right. If I turn it upside down, and it goes the other way, I don’t know if it works, it’s just not— See, it grows comfortably toward my strong side.
WESCHLER
When you have it upside down, indeed the oblique—
HAMMERSLEY
But the obliques are still going left to right. I’m sorry. It doesn’t work here.
WESCHLER
That’s not the deal here. By the way, this is a good example of one. This is Sacred and Pro Fame, where it can be looked at very illusionistically. In other words, it can read— And my point is precisely this is not your intention. But I can look at this and say, “Oh, this looks like two skyscrapers with red roofs and a black emptiness between them.”
HAMMERSLEY
Which is the skyscraper?
WESCHLER
It goes back and forth. You can imagine a white skyscraper with a red roof, right? With a black space in between them.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes. I see what you mean, yes.
WESCHLER
Or, conversely, you could flip it around and imagine shoeboxes coming toward you at the bottom with red fronts, and that’s red backs back there.
HAMMERSLEY
Right. Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
And that’s that kind of an illusionistic Necker cube kind of thing where they bounce back and forth and do that. But that’s not your intention?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
You have no interest in that illusionistic—
HAMMERSLEY
At the beginning. I’m fascinated to see it after I’ve done it, because I know if it feels right, there’s going to be dividends.Now, the thing I thought you were going to say, I don’t know what is the first thing you see, but often you see the two actors here, the black and white going together in this field, and then I can reverse it. Oh, but I see a cross on a red field, and that cross is busy. That’s another—
WESCHLER
Now, using again Pro Fame, if I look at this Pro Fame and I think of a red sky, then I see a very busy white cross with black shadows across the front—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. That could be black shadows. And then your point of being boxes coming toward, and then the boxes that are coming toward my head.
WESCHLER
Right, right. So it does all those different things, but you’re saying that at the stage when it’s in the notebook, and when you’re painting it, you’re not interested in that. You’re interested in flat, expansive space.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And it’s only afterwards that you begin to look at all that other stuff.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, and it surprises me because— Well, I think this is one thing that contributes to— Well, going to a Bonnard painting, I mean, there’s so many things to look at, and you can keep on making withdrawals. And here you can make withdrawals. First, you get one sensation. There’s a big thing with red, black, and white. That’s the first sensation. Oh, and then a cross. Then, if you keep on looking, it will show you, because you can’t stand— Your mind can’t stand still. You want to keep on exploring.
WESCHLER
As you were doing all geometric work, basically—these are all variations on things that you can do inside of a square that are in this notebook, six to a page and so forth—were you also going to drawing classes and drawing? Some of these drawings here, are those from that period, too?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. In the seventies, yes. There would be classes at the university, and I’d go maybe once an evening. Isn’t that funny, why I bring that up. So I would take my bench with me, and I would take a cushion because, as you get older, the padding diminishes. But it was good up to a point. I would simply concentrate— I mean, I was drawing. But the young children around me, after a while—"No, I can’t do this anymore." If they were like— See, in the old days, after Jepson closed, a group of us would get together and work in this girl’s attic. You would pose for twenty minutes, and we’d sit and draw you, and then I’d pose, and then Pat would pose. There was no coffee or tea. I hate that. You know, if someone comes to visit me, I never serve anything. I want to talk, and I want to hear what they say. I mean, well, like, we’re business now. We’re not having snacks, and snacks are a—
WESCHLER
So you’re describing how you would go— For a while, you were going to the university and sitting with the young kids and drawing the nudes?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And then that you felt that you were too old for that, or it was too social, or what was the problem?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, I don’t quite know, but I think— I don’t want to be with the young ones when they’re drawing. Bless their heart, I’d like to help them, but I want to draw, see?
WESCHLER
Did you do nudes here at the house, then, afterwards?
HAMMERSLEY
Never. I’d been thinking, now that Peter [Goulds] sold some paintings, I could— I wonder what the models charge these days. When I left L.A., and here, I think they were $10 an hour. Imagine, Lawrence, when I first was at Chouinard [Art Institute] in ’40, you’d come in, the drawing class, Jepson’s drawing, and the model would come in, and he would put a sheet on the model stand, either Jepson or he— He would take a pose— He was a boxer, let’s say, and— The bell would ring at nine o’clock, and he would start his pose. He would hold that for fifty minutes. Fifty minutes. The bell would ring at ten minutes to ten, he would take a break and all the students would take a break. At ten o’clock, the bell would ring. He’d take another pose for fifty minutes. Seventy-five cents an hour, and that was a good thing. I mean, they liked that.What’s so funny, I enjoy talking about it. It’s so ridiculous because in those days things were expensive. Now it’s expensive. There are just more zeroes, but it’s the same relationship.
WESCHLER
The reason I was asking you about the drawings of the nudes that you were doing is— You are painting rectangles. Did you ever have a— I mean you love Bonnard. Why did you not paint some of the things you were drawing? Or let me rephrase that. What was the relationship between what you were drawing and the kind of nourishment you got from drawing nudes and the rectangular—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it has nothing to do with the painting, the drawing. The drawing seems like it’s just to sharpen your eye. You see, the painting has nothing to do with skill in the hand manipulation. With the drawing, it’s mind-hand relationship. You know, you could see something, and if you don’t draw for a while, your hand becomes rusty. "Christ, that was terrible." If I were to start drawing, it would take me a long time to get into the rhythm.
WESCHLER
I see, for example— I’m now looking at the Visual Puns and Hard-Edge Poems catalogue. [Visual Puns and Hard-Edge Poems: Works by Frederick Hammersley, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, 2000] And there’s the Knee Portrait # 2, which is 1970. And then there is Yogurt , which is 1976-’77. I see a relationship between the forms in the two.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, because of the obliques.
WESCHLER
Yes. But, in other words, the painting feels to me very organic and informed by these kinds of lines and so forth.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I’d never thought of that.
WESCHLER
And I’m wondering whether that’s true of some of the— I mean, for example, what year is that?
HAMMERSLEY
’85.
WESCHLER
Okay. That’s ’85. That’s later, but if we were looking at a drawing, a nude from, let’s say, earlier— I mean, there I can see oblique. I can see a square of emptiness on the right. I can see an oblique and so forth. I’m just curious whether you’re playing with them, whether the two are cross-fertilizing each other.
HAMMERSLEY
I wouldn’t be surprised, because if I were to draw you, I’d have to look and see what’s going on, and I’m not going to make a list of the things I discover. I mean— “Oh, yes, it’s dark, and then the face is partly dark. Oh, there’s some light areas here, and I like the light areas and the dark,” and that sort of thing.And then you’ve got to put it somewhere on the page, and you’ve got to put it on the page so it fits into that real estate. That’s very stimulating. I never understood what Jepson meant, “You’ve got to relate to the page.” I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and I didn’t understand what he meant— I do now. When you do a still life, you become the still life. If you look at the bottle or you look at this bowl or look at the orange, it’s like you enter it. You’ve got to feel the contours of that orange or the contours of that beard or the contours of that knuckle. I’m the knuckle.You see, sketching, I can chew gum and have the radio on, and I’m making some marks. Hell’s bells. That’s not drawing. Now, I have to be careful. If people just like to sketch and play around, that’s fine. I mean, that’s their business.
WESCHLER
But it’s not drawing.
HAMMERSLEY
Sure.
WESCHLER
When you draw the square and the band of color and so forth, you become the square and the band of color in the same way?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t think that. I’d never thought of that. It’s very strange, this world. You know—
WESCHLER
The world of geometric?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I wonder why— Maybe my background was that I was frightened of people so I’m not painting people, and maybe that contributes to my being reluctant to start drawing people. I would like to draw people. I like Bonnard or Degas. God, those people are just heaven. What nudes? Modigliani I don’t think has the substance as— Well, anyway, some of the colors of Degas’ nudes are delicious. They’re marvelous.
WESCHLER
You’re having this incredibly productive period of painting and also a very productive period of drawing, these wonderful drawings. Did it ever occur to you to paint a nude?
HAMMERSLEY
There’s a lot of preparation for that, and the older I get, I’m aware of the time it takes for the preparation. And the making of the frames— See, I was not aware how much time it takes.
WESCHLER
But that’s true whether it’s going to be a geometrical thing or not.
HAMMERSLEY
Well, no, making the arrangement for them to come, and then get the material out to do it, and then they’re going to come, and then we do it. I think I’m making up excuses.
WESCHLER
I think you are.
HAMMERSLEY
But the point is there’s some reason I’ve not done it.
WESCHLER
Was there a time when you were thinking you might, and then you decided not to, or it never even occurred to you?
HAMMERSLEY
Many times I’ve thought about it, and then I would lie down until the feeling went away. [mutual laughter] You know that. It’s a very good device.
WESCHLER
So that’s why you didn’t do nudes. Why didn’t you do candlesticks, for example, or something?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, that wasn’t as interesting. See, that’s not organic. Now, like [Charles] Sheeler’s photographs of the Ford Motor Company or even Sheeler’s locomotive wheels, now that’s gorgeous, but it’s slightly oppressive. You know, it’s too bloody rigid. You see, it’s so funny, me saying that, and I’m doing this, which is rigid.
WESCHLER
But this is rigid and light.
HAMMERSLEY
This is rigid and fun. Now, see, this title, for example, I turned the title upside down. This title is Up Side Down. Now, that’s literal. Upside is down. It’s not upside down.
WESCHLER
Up side down.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
The reason that I’m pressuring you on this is that I notice— I wonder to what extent in the eighties you begin to move away from these rigid, even the playful, geometric things into a more organic shape.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, that was when— In 1981 I remember sitting there, and there were four paintings I was working on, and I was painting this painting— I was pleased with these paintings.
WESCHLER
These are geometric paintings out of the notebook here.
HAMMERSLEY
Geometric, correct. Out of the notebook. All right. I was painting this thing, and it suddenly dawned on me, “I’m not enjoying this. Oh, Christ, and I’ve got to finish those other two. Well, I’ve got to finish them. And then I’ve got to frame them. Oh, god, and then photograph them. Well—”So it was a chore from then on. And I finished the four. That was 1981, and it stopped. All the paintings stopped. Now, you’ve heard that expression, “Well, I’ve got so many photographs of the family. They’re in a shoebox under the bed.” You’ve heard of that. And then, “If I had time, I’d put them in albums.” Well, I said, “This is the time.” So I took out all my photographs, and they’re all in albums.
WESCHLER
That’s what you did during that period there?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. There were two years there was no painting. I cleared a lot of things away, and I did things that I hadn’t time for, and I forget what I did, but it was two years. And then the juice started to come, and I can show you the first organic. It was slightly timid.
WESCHLER
Do you have it here in the house?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Let’s go get it.
HAMMERSLEY
I’ll bring it, if you like.
WESCHLER
I’d like to.
HAMMERSLEY
Because it’s small. It’s not big.[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
We’ve just taken a break, and we’ve gotten ourselves a few pictures to look at. And you were saying that you had done two years of filling your photo albums and cleaning up the apartment, and suddenly what happened?
HAMMERSLEY
“Let’s try a little painting.” So this was a Masonite panel. I think it had already been sized, so I started drawing with vine charcoal. This was a delight in that it was the opposite of the geometric procedure, in that I could draw lines without thinking, just let the hand move, and then with a chamois erase, draw, erase, draw, erase some of the shapes. "No." "Right."The thing that was most pleasurable is that I would draw a series of shapes I’d never seen before but I understood. It was exactly right. All right. So then I would look at that. "Oh, that’s lovely. Now, that’s going to be brown." So then I’d mix the paint. This is painted with just one coat. I don’t know if it’s one sitting or not, like that Jewish painter I was telling you about, but that’s beside the point. I wasn’t into anything yet. I hadn’t started any rhythm.
WESCHLER
Now, by the way, in this case, one of the things I notice is that the eye following the line imagines that underneath this, if you’re telling me there was charcoal drawing, but this would’ve been one continuous line, and then there were lines—
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
And then this crosses this and came back like that.
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly.
WESCHLER
So you’ve created— I mean, the drawing underneath it is just flowing lines that intercept each other, that go over, that creates the shapes.
HAMMERSLEY
And then I may erase some of this. So it would stop and then pick up later.
WESCHLER
Right. So then you’re saying, “Okay. That’s going to be brown.”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Was brown the first one, by the way? You do love brown.
HAMMERSLEY
I wonder. Yes, I do like brown. I don’t remember. You see I like lavender.
WESCHLER
What’s the name of this painting, by the way? Let’s see. [The Same Address, 1982]
HAMMERSLEY
The Same Address.
WESCHLER
That’s a funny name, isn’t it? Even though you haven’t been painting for all these years—
HAMMERSLEY
But that came from the same address.
WESCHLER
It came from the same address.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I did keep records of the paintings as I painted. That has a number. I’m sure there’s a number two. That one was a few steps later.
WESCHLER
Let’s get the name of this one.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s No Doubt about It [1985].
WESCHLER
No Doubt about It. Okay. [laughs]
HAMMERSLEY
Now, this one I don’t want to sell. I’m very pleased with this painting.
WESCHLER
Why?
HAMMERSLEY
It just feels right. It’s mildly ridiculous. But, goddamn it, it just feels right. If I could analyze it, you see, it’s primarily like I was telling you about the tools. Oh. In the tools, by the way, there’s a principle that I learned in Chouinard, the design instructor, large—and we’re built this way—large, medium, and small.
WESCHLER
You’re showing the knuckles of your finger.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
The large one, then a medium, then a small, right.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. And this principle of large, medium, and small is crucial. It’s organic. It has grown that way. So if I say I’m going to use— In painting, it’s going to be primarily warm and less cool or the other way around, or it’s going to be mostly intense and then grayed, or conversely. That’s mostly warm, you see. And then the blue is not, and then the black is neutral, and the white is neutral. But the yellow, ochre, and the red, it’s a warm world.
WESCHLER
Are you painting with paintbrushes, or was it a palette knife—
HAMMERSLEY
Everything was paintbrushes now, because I learned, after I did that navy thing with a palette knife, it was too tedious. When I made three organic paintings, which are gone, and I thought, “This is too—” Oh. That’s what started the 1964 organics, painting with a brush. So I returned to the organic world, and then I got out my brushes.
WESCHLER
So this one also feels— No Doubt about It has a kind of anthropomorphizing thing that I associate— That those are two figures in relationship to each other in some way, that there’s a conversation going on between those two—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it could be, yes. You think that way, because it is like the two of them are talking together.
WESCHLER
One thing, though, you still have, by the way, in certain cases, you left the background—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, that will show sometimes.
WESCHLER
It will show between where the different bodies of color are.
HAMMERSLEY
The colors don’t touch one another. There’s a slight interval.
WESCHLER
There’s a slight interval in some cases, and some cases not. And then let’s go over to see this. Are you finished with that one?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. You can put it on the floor, if you like.
WESCHLER
Okay. Now, this one is called?
HAMMERSLEY
Basic Training [1985].
WESCHLER
Now we’re at 1985.
HAMMERSLEY
What was the year of the Doubt one?
WESCHLER
No Doubt about It is also 1985.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, for goodness sake. Now, see, that really surprises me. What was this? Oh, ’82. That was the first one.
WESCHLER
Right, right. ’82 was the first one, and these are a little bit later, three years later. What do we call this one again?
HAMMERSLEY
Basic Training. Now, I don’t know what was on either side of that, but I really enjoyed this, because first it was warm and cool, and there was one guy, just one guy, and the diet was very limited, and that’s basic training. Now, the frame is what I— I ripped up some molding in the house someplace. See, it’s a quarter round, and it’s been painted cream, so you’ve heard the word distressing in making frames. You take a bundle of keys on a wire and strike the thing. That’s what I did there.
WESCHLER
Now, let’s, by the way, talk about frames here. The knee photographs have these kinds of frames. I mean, your geometric things don’t have this kind of frames.
HAMMERSLEY
No, they’re aluminum.
WESCHLER
They’re aluminum frames.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
But now when you’re doing these sort of paintings, also your drawings you would frame, and it’s just characteristic of your work that a lot of your stuff, when I went back to your studio, you’ve done all the frames.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
And that’s a part of the work?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s exactly right.
WESCHLER
So talk about framing a little. We haven’t talked about it at all.
HAMMERSLEY
Framing to me is crucial, because, first, it must support the painting, enrich— All right. I’ll go backwards. I like space between the image and the frame so there’s a no-man’s land, and then the frame must go with the painting or fit with the painting. And I have collected wood from a big contractor in town. They would throw out scraps of wood, and my garage, the ceiling is filled with strips of wood, and then, as you see, in the workroom there’s all kinds of strips. Because if I put this painting on the table, and I take strips of wood and put next to it and keep on— Sometimes I have to put two pieces on top. See that marigold painting?
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
That was maybe close to thirty different pieces.
WESCHLER
Of?
HAMMERSLEY
Of different moldings. So I keep on moving these scraps of wood. And then you see— See, this is a rough cut, so I would make use of that.
WESCHLER
Do you, by the way, paint the wood yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Here I have a lot of odds and ends of paint. Silkscreen paint. I did silkscreening for a while, and I have a lot of these jars. I didn’t want to throw them away, so I used that.All right. After it’s framed, then I look at it a long time to decide what color is appropriate. It’s not attached to the frame yet, the painting’s not. After the frame is painted, then I attach the painting, and then I wax the frame three times with carnauba wax. I want a nice patina on it.
WESCHLER
Now, one of the things that also happens to the frames is that sometimes you have notched things.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Sometimes there’s—
HAMMERSLEY
All kinds of carving.
WESCHLER
There’s carving. Now, what’s that about, for example?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, you see, I think that’s One on One [1987].
WESCHLER
Let’s look at that painting there as an example. What is this one called?
HAMMERSLEY
Is it One on One?
WESCHLER
Let’s see. This is a wonderful frame. One on One, 1987.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Describe the painting first. It’s yellow with a blue stripe, black with a red column , or red figure coming out.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And it is floating. One of the things that happens is that you have a sense of the painting as kind of floating in this space, if that’s correct. It’s a deep frame.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And describe the frame here in this case.
HAMMERSLEY
See, this is just a piece of three-quarter-inch pine. I think it came in this wide. So I look at it while— And I also have samples of what the— All the carving is done, actually, with a rasp. You know what a rasp is, a wood rasp. It’s flat on one side, slightly curved on the other. So this is the curved part, and so I just start. “Oh, I know. I’ll just put grooves in the thing. Oh. And then why don’t I go around the side.”
WESCHLER
And this is, by the way, done after you decide— This is in response to this painting?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Oh, yes.
WESCHLER
It’s not that you’ve done these frames, and you’re trying to figure out which painting goes in it?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
The painting exists, and now you’re going to create the frame.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
Now, what in this painting suggested that it would be good to have these rasps—
HAMMERSLEY
This blue.
WESCHLER
That blue—
HAMMERSLEY
I’m just making this up. I’ve never thought of it before, because it felt, well— I want something to— Do you remember the Impressionist paintings? They have this French frame, which is a lot of jazz. Do you know what rotten stone is, the color of rotten stone? It’s kind of a bleached ochre. I think of the Impressionist painting as kind of ochreish, but it’s grayish. But all this jazz was just slightly subdued, and it’s subdued because they put hot gesso on it. Gesso is chalk and rabbit skin glue, and it’s thick. You paint this on this jazzy little knot, and it fills it up slightly, but the knots are still part of the— Then they have fancy corners.And I looked at these. "How in the hell can they put on such a jazzy frame with this gorgeous painting? Why doesn’t it compete?" It doesn’t compete. It helps the painting, and I just marvel at that. So I want a frame to do the same thing. I want it to help the painting, and then it becomes the extension of the painting. See, that painting is kind of mild, so the frame is kind of mild. Now, that was before I got more active, and this was more like—
WESCHLER
And by the time you got here, you’re really [unclear].
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Now, is the work of art the painting plus the frame? Could you imagine somebody— If somebody said to you— If you were to go to somebody’s house that had bought this painting, and they removed the frame and put a different frame on, would that in some way not be the painting that you had in mind? To what extent is the frame organic to the painting for you, is it continuous with the painting? If you want this work of art, this is what it is; it’s with this frame?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. I would be annoyed if they would take it off and put a new frame on, but I would certainly understand, because they want to get in on the act. [Weschler laughs.] And critics and the museum people I saw on TV, they were talking about where to put a Moore thing. He was there and whoever the director of this Washington museum was, and they were saying, “Yes, but we ought to—” We ought to. All right. Now, if they want to do something, don’t have any people around. Just do it.But this, I don’t want— This is the way it should be, that I think it should be. Now, I have no say— If you buy it and you say, “I hate that frame. I’ll put an aluminum frame,” that’s fine. That’s your business.
WESCHLER
But as far as you’re concerned, the work of art is the combination of this frame and—
HAMMERSLEY
Exactly. Exactly.
WESCHLER
I notice, by the way, for example, when you framed the nude behind us, there, instead of having stripes, you have dots or circular—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, what do you call that?
WESCHLER
You bored circular little holes into it. [Ego Lesson, 1992; Pleasant Tense, 1996]
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, like round cups.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
You see, sometimes I’ll cut dowels, so I’ll have this little button here.
WESCHLER
Right. That drawing there has some dowels in it.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
The drawing of the hill there.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Well, anyway, I’m fascinated with paint— Like see the ceiling, that’s called lath. You remember the word lath?
WESCHLER
Right, right.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s very rough, and I use that for many frames. I sand it down slightly, distress it a little bit, and then combine it with something else. And then it— Well, I’ll show you a painting that works that way.
WESCHLER
Okay. We’ll wait just a second while you get it.[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
This one here, what is this one called? It is Goal Rush from 1997. That’s an example of one that’s made with a lath.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, you see, the sawed marks of the lath are a series of straights, which relate to the few straights in that. But there’s a lot of rounds, so that I rounded corners, and put the half-rounds on the top and bottom. The lath is nailed to another piece of wood, four other pieces of wood. So I take these, as I say—
WESCHLER
By the way, when you finish a painting, do you immediately do the frame, or do you do a bunch of paintings and then eventually do a bunch of frames?
HAMMERSLEY
Right. I do it that way. When I have— I like to finish the paintings first.
WESCHLER
And have a whole bunch of them, and then think of how to frame them?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
I’m looking over here at a new painting of yours, and that does not have a frame yet.
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
And you’re thinking about it?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. There’s a frame in the workroom that’s leaning against the wall, and it had a round thing, but I haven’t quite decided how to do the carving yet.
WESCHLER
So that’s part of the thinking. Now, by the way, having these new paintings out here reminds me that there’s one more step. We’ve gone from geometric to more organic shapes, but at this stage, an early point of your organic shapes, they’re solid colors.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes.
WESCHLER
And then at a certain point, you begin to have what I call blushing of colors.
HAMMERSLEY
Blending, yes.
WESCHLER
Blending and blushing. When did that happen?
HAMMERSLEY
I wonder if I could find that painting, or is that gone? If there’s a little shape here, there’s a big shape here—
WESCHLER
What is it called? Do you remember?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I don’t.
WESCHLER
What year, roughly?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, it would be the late eighties, I think.
WESCHLER
Okay.
HAMMERSLEY
It came by— The blending came by necessity.
WESCHLER
Why?
HAMMERSLEY
Because if this hand shape is in a big jazzy shape here, but the shape goes under this one here, I start with the brown, but I don’t want to connect brown again. So I have to change colors. I want to change colors there.
WESCHLER
But you don’t want to make a whole new geometric shape?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I don’t want that shape to surround this thing, or else it went into some other place. I can’t give you a good— Oh, let’s see. Oh. All right. See, that shows blending.
WESCHLER
Okay. We’re going to talk about—
HAMMERSLEY
You can leave it there, if you like.
WESCHLER
Okay. Well, it’s called Inside the Temple [1988].
HAMMERSLEY
Do you remember Campbell on TV talking about myths?
WESCHLER
Joseph Campbell, right.
HAMMERSLEY
And he was talking about the word bliss, which I understand. He related that somehow to when you’re inside the temple. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember what he said, but I remember the phrase “inside the temple” was related to bliss, and that’s why that—
WESCHLER
And talk about bliss while we’re here. When you say you understand—
HAMMERSLEY
Bliss is arrival.
WESCHLER
Having arrived?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, to get what you want.
WESCHLER
Achievement?
HAMMERSLEY
Achievement. Goddamn it, that’s lovely. Lovely is bliss.
WESCHLER
It reminds me of something you once said, by the way— Before we talk about— The thing about bliss reminds me, I read once you said, “When you see something great, you see the seeds of greatness in yourself.”
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I see a common— There’s a common— I’d forgotten that. That’s right. I like to think, if I get something harmonious— Oh, let me tell you about the Indians later, Indians and harmony. See if you can remind me. Now, what was I talking about?
WESCHLER
You were talking about bliss.
HAMMERSLEY
Bliss.
WESCHLER
But here you were saying, “When you see something great, you see the greatness in yourself.”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Now, I like to think, if I get something that is bliss or I’m very happy about, harmonious, great, then I like to think Auntie Maude would look at this, hopefully Mother, or the person on the street, he would look at that and say, “God, look at that painting,” and he would feel it, too. And that’s what I mean.
WESCHLER
Yes, that was your experience when you would see Degas, for example? [unclear] had that experience, too, a feeling of pleasure, joy, etc.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
So at some level, the history of painting is the history of people gifting each other with bliss?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. It’s a lovely gift.
WESCHLER
Just now when you welled up with tears, I’m wondering, are you welling up with just the delight of that? You mentioned your mother. Your mother is somebody who didn’t—
HAMMERSLEY
No, no.
WESCHLER
She never got it?
HAMMERSLEY
No. Bless her heart, I wonder how she— Her bliss, I think, was finishing a job and getting the housework done, and her bliss was resting, to get it over with. I understand that kind of bliss, too.
WESCHLER
But anyway, you’re just saying that so the bliss is—
HAMMERSLEY
Well, you’ve been given something, and that’s the bliss. I’m looking at a Degas, or I’m looking at a Bonnard— Now, there’s some Bonnards I don’t like, but that’s beside the point. You’d look at something or you watch a horse move or you see an athlete move a certain way— Boy, it’s just great.
WESCHLER
Do you find yourself, by the way, when you’re by yourself watching an athlete move on TV, do you get choked up like this, or is it when you’re talking to somebody else you get choked up?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, no, I’ll look at TV and sometimes cry.
WESCHLER
It’s very sweet. Let’s talk about Inside the Temple.
HAMMERSLEY
All right.
WESCHLER
It’s an expression of bliss, as you were saying.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, see—
WESCHLER
By the way, this is 1988, so this is relatively early when you’re starting to do these.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. This was in the show downtown, when I was in a little gallery downtown. It was reproduced, and I didn’t want to sell it. It’s been a couple of times I didn’t want to sell it. Now, see the blue shape on top?
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
It doesn’t touch that lavender shape. I wanted the black there, but I didn’t want the black going to the right corner. So that’s where the blend comes in.
WESCHLER
Now, in the old days, though, you would’ve just had a straight line or it would’ve been black on one side and white on the other.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s true. That’s true.
WESCHLER
And why does it not do that? Why do you blend it instead of— I, by the way, love the blending, but I’m just asking how you came to it.
HAMMERSLEY
It would be too blunt, too sharp. See, the whole thing, there’s a certain relaxation, a certain softness to the shapes. I’m rationalizing here, but the blending seemed appropriate. Now, what I really was pleased to— Where the background on the bottom becomes a shape. Now, see, the second thing that happened, early painting— See the background shape to the left where it becomes a finger that’s going up?
WESCHLER
In other words, the gray background becomes a white thumb.
HAMMERSLEY
It becomes a shape, yes, I guess a thumb shape.
WESCHLER
I think what’s fascinating in this particular painting is that the shape that is black in the upper left-hand corner and white in the right-hand corner becomes red in the middle, and it’s all one continuous shape.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten the black goes into the red, yes. Yes, it’s one shape.
WESCHLER
It’s a delicious painting.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I’m glad you like it. Yes, I’m very fond of this painting.
WESCHLER
Were you excited when you started doing these blendings? Was that a whole—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I mean, it was necessary. I said, “Damn, that’s not bad.” Then the strangest thing. I thought, "Why is that?" People always mention it. They like it, and I think it’s because they’re not confined. They’re someplace that they could blend to something else. They can go to something else, easily travel.
WESCHLER
Well, and also, it’s how you go into the painting. In other words, the blend is itself a metaphor of your own giving yourself over to the experience, the aesthetic experience. You yourself are blending into the experience of the painting.Let’s look at this one, too, as long as we have it out. This is much later. Goal Rush is 1997.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, that was started two or three years earlier, and I came upon it. See those things leaning against the wall?
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
Those are all paintings or drawings that I started, but I don’t know what to do with them.
WESCHLER
Let’s bring them out just to look at them while we’re talking. I’ll bring out a few of them. Okay?
HAMMERSLEY
Look at it first. Sometimes it’s just a drawing.
WESCHLER
These are works in progress right now?
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Okay. What were you going to say about them? More paintings around, so just a second here.
HAMMERSLEY
I’ll start with this.
WESCHLER
Okay.
HAMMERSLEY
This is what the drawing looks like. Now, see, I have never erased anything of this.
WESCHLER
This doesn’t even have a name yet, because it’s just a drawing?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right. Now, I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with this. See, there’s a chance for a blending here, and there’s a chance for blending here. But I don’t know what colors. I just don’t know what to do. This has been sitting for like—
WESCHLER
I notice, by the way, that blendings generally happen at the necks, at the straits.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Where there’s a bulbous shape on either side, and there’s a kind of constriction.
HAMMERSLEY
A transition.
WESCHLER
Then you can blend in those places.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
That’s one of the rules, it seems like.
HAMMERSLEY
You see, it would be slightly boring— Let’s say, if this is red, the whole thing would be red. So the blending I showed you—"Well, hell, if this is blending, I could go into orange, but what’ll I do here?"
WESCHLER
So we’re having all these thoughts about what at this point is just a series of shapes, organic forms.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct. But that’s what the organic painting looks like before it’s anything painted.
WESCHLER
And then this here—
HAMMERSLEY
Now, that’s practically done.
WESCHLER
Does it have a name yet?
HAMMERSLEY
No.
WESCHLER
It’s another square one. Interestingly, by the way— This is your most recent work, right?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right.
WESCHLER
It’s got some what I call blushes, what you call blends, in places that are unexpected. For example, here at the edge of the— There’s a white finger that goes into the black shape, but then there’s this kind of blue bruise or blush—
HAMMERSLEY
On the outside of it, yes.
WESCHLER
Which doesn’t go across anything. It’s just a little locus.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
And similarly, on this one, the top of the black thumb turns blue at the end.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
Again with a blush, whereas this white finger becomes yellow at the bottom. So this is a different kind of blushiness that’s taking place.
HAMMERSLEY
That’s true. All right. Now, then I thought, "I’ll add an unexpected agent—"

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE JANUARY 16, 2003

WESCHLER
We’re in the middle of talking about blends and bruises and orange size and so forth. So go ahead. We’re now talking about your current work. Go ahead.
HAMMERSLEY
So, see, this I was getting ready to frame, but then I looked at it and I said, “I wonder if I should make the blue more pronounced and the yellow more pronounced.” But then I was in doubt, so I didn’t do anything. You know that old chestnut, “When in doubt, don’t”? It’s very important. Can be a very helpful principle. So I’m not quite sure what to do, so I just let it age.
WESCHLER
Now, we’d gone to look at all these, because we’d started out by talking about this painting down here that’s a finished one from 1998, I believe. This is Goal Rush, 1997. It says here 1997 to ’02, so this is really—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, two dates.
WESCHLER
1997 to ’02.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. See, that’s four years.
WESCHLER
Right. And so talk about that, for example. I’m just saying that that’s a recent completed work.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, you see, if it was— Four years ago, the attitude was more— Well, this was jazzier, concentric things, a lot of activity. And I looked at it, and I said, “Oh, forget it.” So I went on to other things. There’s another painting like this that is much quieter, and it’s called Hap and Stance [1992]. Hap and Stance. So I made another one—which never happens, make another one—but stronger, and this is called Second Stanza. [mutual laughter] I was very pleased with that title.
WESCHLER
And this one over here on the right is really new. Doesn’t have a frame yet.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.
WESCHLER
It’s finished, but you don’t know what to put on the frame, in other words?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Then I’m not quite sure of those two brown things touching one another on the left.
WESCHLER
By the way, how do you do the blending? Just technically, what happens? Because they’re very subtle. It’s almost like you can’t tell at any point where the blend has happened.
HAMMERSLEY
It’s the interval— Let’s see. All right. See the blue and red on the right?
WESCHLER
We’re talking now of Goal Rush.
HAMMERSLEY
The left painting. Goal Rush. Right. All right. I have a little pile of blue, and then I have a pile of red.
WESCHLER
On your palette.
HAMMERSLEY
On the palette. Now, if it’s that long a passage of blending, I mix the two colors so there’s a funny gray in the middle. So I take the red, and I kind of exhaust the brush up into the middle, and I exhaust the blue down into the middle, and then I pick up the middle mix and blend it on both sides. Then I wipe the brush so I don’t see any brush marks. Do you know the word sfumato?
WESCHLER
It’s a Renaissance term, right?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, and it’s to— Like da Vinci, the brush stroke disappears.
WESCHLER
It comes from smoke.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, how interesting. Can you pronounce it?
WESCHLER
I can’t pronounce it, either.
HAMMERSLEY
Sfumato or something. Anyway, now, with the small areas, the small blend, the black and white, the white and the black come close, but I put the black up a little bit, and I’d take the white a little bit. And then I’d wipe the brush, and then take the white into the black, and then I’d wipe the brush and take the black brush or go back into the white. Try to disappear or cause the strokes to disappear so I’d just have a smooth transition.
WESCHLER
Right. An organic transition.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
These feel to be organic not only in that the shapes are organic curving, you know, but that the blending also is another form of organicness.
HAMMERSLEY
And since people like it and point it out, you see, I get the feeling that they’d rather not have sharply defined shapes, like portraits or natural things. The shadows that occur on your coat are blends, and sometimes even the outline is not as sharp as it could be, depending on the light.
WESCHLER
It occurs to me, by the way, that there was a stitch that I dropped back there, which is a work that took place between the geometric thing here and the beginnings of these organics, that self-portrait of yourself that gets reproduced a lot, that About Face [1980].
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, the drawing in 1980.
WESCHLER
Yes. That occurs between the two. You had finished the hard-edge and you’d run out of gas.
HAMMERSLEY
But this was in ’81, so I was still painting the geometrics.
WESCHLER
When you did this, did you do a whole series of these self-portraits, or just this one?
HAMMERSLEY
I have another which I can show you where I was angry, but the drawing doesn’t look angry, and when I’m not angry, the drawing will look angry.
WESCHLER
This one looks—
HAMMERSLEY
Kind of severe?
WESCHLER
Yes, severe, right.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Let’s see. Oh, yes. Because of the marks—"Goddamn it, you know, I wish I could get a goddamn drawing," that feeling. So it comes out that way. No, no. Well, no, if I had that feeling— No, that’s kind of a middling one.
WESCHLER
You did a whole series of these self-portraits at that point?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, a few.
WESCHLER
This is 1980?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Let me get a couple of them here. By the way, [unclear]. I hadn’t realized that.
HAMMERSLEY
Now, here’s the angry one.
WESCHLER
Oh wow. [laughs]
HAMMERSLEY
Here’s my favorite. This is 1956. [Self Portrait, 1956]
WESCHLER
Okay. Let’s come back. I apologize to readers that it was my fault that I had forgotten to bring this up at the time, but we now have them in front of us. What I’m interested in, in terms of the— All through the seventies, alongside your geometrics, you had been doing the nudes and the figure studies, but then in 1980 you’re coming to the end of the geometrics. You’re almost out of gas on the geometrics, and you do a series of what I hadn’t realized were quite large facial self-portraits.
HAMMERSLEY
And also, in the ’80 period, I copied a lot of Velázquez heads, the pope and some of those heads, and it was amazing how hard— I have one where the pope, he looks like a dangerous bastard. [Copy of Velásquez Head, 1980]
WESCHLER
Francis Bacon liked that one, too.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, is that so? I got very close to him. I liked that drawing. You know, there’s a lot of activity in it. Now, I don’t have any name or date on this one, do I? Isn’t that surprising? [Other Side, 1983]
WESCHLER
On the back it says Other Side is the title. 1983 for this one.
HAMMERSLEY
And that’s ’80. [About Face, 1980]
WESCHLER
This one’s 1980. Right.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, the ’80 is on the front.
WESCHLER
So basically, the point I’m trying to make is that between the geometric and the resurgence of organic painting, in that period you did a series of these faces.
HAMMERSLEY
Correct.
WESCHLER
Which, as I recall, at an earlier time where you’d done a face, you’d done a self-portrait at a point when there was a transition between two—
HAMMERSLEY
The black-and-white catalogue. That’s why the drawing is called About Face.
WESCHLER
But one of the things that happens— Somebody who’d been doing geometric work takes a look at themselves, a serious look, the way you are in these two drawings, and comes out the other side doing organic work.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see. I’d not thought of that.
WESCHLER
I just wondered whether that had something to do with it. But you were just saying that there was Velázquez, and you were saying what’s interesting is that the 1980 picture, which looks severe, you didn’t have severe feelings as you were doing it, but 1983, which looks calm, you were more severe as you were doing it.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I was angry. I was angry. And I was almost going to throw it away, and I said no, because I’m fond of things that are not successful at the time of making, because they always have seeds of things possible that will come. And this, the more I look at it, the more I like it. The fact is, it’s so anti-Hammersley.
WESCHLER
What is Hammersley if that is anti-Hammersley?
HAMMERSLEY
This is Hammersley.
WESCHLER
He said, pointing to the geometric stuff. Or Hammersley is in control.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. Now, some young lady wrote an article called “Left Field.” [Kathleen Shields. “Paintings from Left Field.” Art in America, January 1991, pp. 124-27, 153.] I want to get into left field. I’ve been paying taxes on that real estate all my life, but I’ve never got into it— Left field is where I’m free. [Weschler laughs.] Baconish. See? So the organic is a small gate that I can get in there. That one there is an early stop momentarily in left field.
WESCHLER
1954. There’s a softness to left field. There’s a freedom to left field.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
I think you’re getting there.
HAMMERSLEY
And there’s a— That’s Hammersley. I’m wearing a different garment. A garment had been put on me, and that’s called Hammersley, but that’s not the real me.
WESCHLER
And left field is where you want to go. Are you still going there?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I hope so. Boy, I hope so.
WESCHLER
Looking at this painting that you just recently did, that we were talking about a second ago, that you don’t have a frame for yet, what’s the name of that painting?
HAMMERSLEY
Second Stanza.
WESCHLER
Second Stanza. Is that closer to left field?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. Well, I mean, the attitude, because it’s done the second time, so it’s a little bit more jump to it. Oh. I haven’t shown you the late paintings. I did some in the nineties. Then I realized the organics are getting too large, and they’re getting— I really shouldn’t say this. They’re—naivete is not quite the word. The directness or the unconsciousness has been lessened slightly and contrivance—
WESCHLER
They’re becoming too knowing. So how are you responding to that? What are you doing in response?
HAMMERSLEY
I stopped.
WESCHLER
And that’s why right now you haven’t been painting much?
HAMMERSLEY
That’s right.
WESCHLER
By the way, show me some of the ones that you said you haven’t shown me. I’ll stop for a second here and we’ll—[Tape recorder turned off.]
WESCHLER
Two paintings to look at, and the titles are Savings and Loan from 2001 and—
HAMMERSLEY
That’s On Time.
WESCHLER
And On Time also from 2001. You were saying?
HAMMERSLEY
I think these are getting too big. I’m pleased— As a matter of fact, there’s things in both of them I’m pleased— This is so unusual, so strange, that I like that. And this where the jazz is localized in just the left, that orange, I like. I have another one that’s even more— Very complex, but then I look at it and look at it, and it becomes better, so I’m canceling out myself. What do you think of this?
WESCHLER
I agree with you that they— I prefer the smaller, the one in between.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
About the size of Inside the Temple [1988].
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Because I’m going in another direction. Like I’ve exceeded— It was very strange, very strange.
WESCHLER
A second ago, I’d said they’re getting too knowing, and you responded to that. What about that made sense to you?
HAMMERSLEY
Well, No Doubt about It [1985] has a different attitude than the two big ones.
WESCHLER
The big ones look more professional, more—
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, more—
WESCHLER
Like an academy has been set up.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, they’re more accomplished.
WESCHLER
Right.
HAMMERSLEY
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t have the— What would you call the attitude of that painting? Naivete is not quite the word.
WESCHLER
Surprise. The freshness of just having arrived.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes, just having arrived. Yes.
WESCHLER
And your response, basically, you painted these two in 2001, and now you’ve stopped again.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. See, after they were framed, then I was done.
WESCHLER
But this is not a stopping for good. You’re just—A pause, you’re pausing.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I’m very curious to see— And you see, I hate to bring it up, because then I’m put on the— What’s the word? Maybe "To hell with the painting. Let’s try some drawings. I don’t want to draw, but I’d like to draw." That sort of thing.
WESCHLER
And you have no idea what’s going to come next?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I don’t.
WESCHLER
Does that make you scared? Anxious? Relaxed? Curious?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no, because now I’m used to it. I’m more used to it. The one thing I was going to say earlier, as I got older, you know, I told you about entering shows and getting rejected. And the discouragement was unpleasant. I thought, “Well, you know, when you get older, you get used to it.” It always comes brand-new. Discouragement always comes new. I don’t know if you experience that.
WESCHLER
Sure, sure. It’s always the first time.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it’s so amazing how it’s just brand-new.
WESCHLER
How you’re exposed all over again.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes.
WESCHLER
You’d asked me, by the way, to ask you about Indians and harmony.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. I’m thinking how un-American— It’s funny, because they’re the Americans. I read someplace where— I admire the American Indian very much. He’s closer to God than the white man. He sees God in everything that grows. I mean, that’s God out there. And when— How can I put this? He walks with harmony on either side of him, and he walks with harmony in front of him and harmony behind him, and that’s the way the Indian is. Now, if someone harms you, the Indian says, then you know he’s out of harmony, and you ignore him until he gets it back. Now, an American, the son of a bitch will hit you. You let him alone until he recovers. Boy, I think that’s great.
WESCHLER
How does it relate to your painting?
HAMMERSLEY
I haven’t the slightest— Oh, I’d like to— Yes, when things are going well, I’m in harmony. Yes. No, I’ve shown some harmony. Harmony’s in front of me, at least.
WESCHLER
Let me ask you this. Who do you paint for?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I paint for me.
WESCHLER
You were saying a second ago you get discouraged when people don’t like it and so forth, but at some profound level, do you care what other people think?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I like very much if they like it, but I understand if they don’t. It hurts a little bit, but it’s silly to be— If I were a child, I would be— The concern is greater when they don’t like you or like it, what you’ve done. But that lessens.
WESCHLER
I mean to what extent, when you are painting, are you concerned about whether you are communicating something clearly, and to what extent— If you’re painting for yourself, that isn’t an issue, right? Or is that an issue?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I don’t give a damn about communication. If I can give— What’s the word? If I can clothe my feeling with something that is the same as my feeling, I’m satisfied. And then I’d like to think the observer might get the same sensation. I’m so fascinated by having the thought and converting it into sound or in converting it to write a word. That is very difficult.I remember hearing a lecture— Oh, Agnes Martin.
WESCHLER
Do you know her, by the way?
HAMMERSLEY
No, I don’t. I was fascinated by the questions that people asked her. They were stumbling over— They couldn’t find the words to— “When did you start—” “Did your mother—” “How about the—” I couldn’t believe it. And I realized it’s like painting. It’s very hard to convert your thoughts or feelings into clarity. And then one girl held up her hand and she said, “Do you have music when you paint?” [laughs] It was so refreshing, and I wondered if the other people thought of this contrast. Zip and “bbllbbllbbllbbl.” God, it was marvelous. Talk about a clear painting.So anyway, the whole point of painting is another form of talking, and I’m talking to myself or I’m— Yes, I’m talking—
WESCHLER
You earlier talked about Hammersley. “That’s good, Hammersley." "Hammersley, that’s—”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I’m talking out loud. I’m talking with shapes. If it feels good to me, I’m satisfied.
WESCHLER
By the way, you’re always “Hammersley,” or are you sometimes “Frederick” to yourself?
HAMMERSLEY
It’s interesting. I don’t know why I use “Hammersley” more than “Frederick.” I very seldom say “Frederick.” Oh. When I was a child, I was mildly ashamed of “Frederick.” It was too bloody long. Someone was “Bob” or “Bill.”
WESCHLER
What about “Fred”?
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t like nicknames. [Weschler laughs.] It’s like I’m reduced.
WESCHLER
So “Hammersley” is what it is. So you’re having a conversation with yourself.
HAMMERSLEY
When I’m doing it, I don’t think I’m having a conversation. You understand. But I understand what you’re talking about.
WESCHLER
Let me take the role— We’ll bracket the fact that I really love this stuff and I’ve enjoyed it and so on. But I’m the creature from outer space. I’ve come down here. I say, “Well, I understand the plumber, what he does with his life. And I understand the architect, what he does with his life, and I understand the schoolteacher, what they’re doing with their life. But, you know, you’ve been applying paint to canvas— I mean, I even understand Degas, what he does with his life, because he’s making it look like a woman, and I can understand that and so forth. I mean, I understand. But you spend your whole life making these bands of color and geometric shapes. What’s the deal?”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, it’s astonishing. You’re talking about how I felt about [Henry Lee] McFee, how is it that a grown man can spend his time putting paint on cloth? I feel exactly the— When you bring it up, it is— It is— I’m flirting with the ridiculous.
WESCHLER
[laughs] And yet?
HAMMERSLEY
[sighs] I like it. But, yes, that’s what my father was uncomfortable with, or suspicious. I don’t know. Not suspicious, uncomfortable. And most of the people of my generation, painting was dangerous. Dangerous is strong. Painting is—
WESCHLER
Suspect.
HAMMERSLEY
Suspect. That’s the word. Now, if I’m a plumber, "Oh, I get you." Now, what surprised me and pleased me, when I was at Chouinard [Art Institute] after the war, there was a friend of mine that was in class, and I hadn’t seen him for some while, and then I saw him, and he’d been to Mexico. He said, “You know, it’s a funny thing. When I was on the streetcar, this girl next to me said, ‘What do you do?’” And he said, “I’m a painter,” and she said, “Oh, that’s wonderful.” He said, “Christ, no one on an L.A. streetcar would say that was wonderful.”And I thought to myself—Oh, which makes me think of, the Mexican and the Oriental are the only ones that seem to understand magenta. [Weschler laughs.] You know, magenta is an un-American color. But the Orientals and the Mexicans, oh, they understand that. The Latin people, they understand expression or— I didn’t know the Greeks were so emotional until I was in L.A. and I met a Greek, and then I saw that wonderful fat movie.
WESCHLER
My Big Fat Greek Wedding or whatever it’s called, yes, right.
HAMMERSLEY
Did you like it?
WESCHLER
Yes.
HAMMERSLEY
It was so— Have you seen the movie, obscure, Mostly Martha, a German film? And most of the shots were in the kitchen. She was a chef, and she was an orderly woman, not excessively orderly, but she was known as a good chef. And then this raunchy Italian comes in, a good chef, and they’re this way for a while, and then he said, “Where did you learn to be such a good cook?” He came out and— “You’re good.” That’s not American. But anyway, when he said— Well, anyway.
WESCHLER
You always choke up when you are either saying something is good or somebody is saying something is good to you.
HAMMERSLEY
Right.
WESCHLER
That chokes you up.
HAMMERSLEY
I have a feeling I’m not used to compliments. I had no compliments when I was a child, and I think that’s part of it.
WESCHLER
It’s amazing. Eighty-odd years, and it still matters.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Well, I wonder why it would not be.
WESCHLER
But coming back to this question I had for you a second ago, your first response is, “Yeah, this is faintly ridiculous.” But at another level, it’s clearly not ridiculous to you. It matters. It means something. In a way, I’m asking you to account for your life.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
It’s been a good life?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I wonder what I would’ve done if I had not done this. Conducting a business, I can see that would be very stimulating and very exciting. The number of colors on the palette would be enormous, the considerations, like Peter Goulds [at L.A. Louver], all the things he has to think about. At my age now, I certainly wouldn’t want to embrace anything like that. My god. But then I’ll go backwards, and I always envy the actor, the singer, and the dancer in that they’re the instrument. And what a sensation that must be, that they’re the instrument. But the disadvantage, they never get to see themselves in real like we do. They can see pictures and motion things. But by god, that— And when I see— Susie made a remark— They added to the Broadway prizes, and they added to those theater people. It’s different than the movie people. It’s realer.
WESCHLER
One thing that’s interesting is that you envy the actor but don’t think of yourself as an actor. You think of yourself as a director when you’re a painter. You, early on, told me that that’s an actor and that’s an actor and that’s an actor, in terms of the different shapes.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
Those are the actors.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes.
WESCHLER
But I could tell a story in which you are singing these colors, but that’s not how you feel about it.
HAMMERSLEY
Singing?
WESCHLER
Yes, in other words, that you are performing these colors. But you don’t think of it that way. You think of yourself rather as directing the actors, which are the colors themselves or the shapes.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I guess you could say that. I’ve never thought of it that way.
WESCHLER
You talk about it that way all the time.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see. I’ve never thought of it.
WESCHLER
You say, “There’s this actor. Let’s move this actor over here.”
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I think of them as—
WESCHLER
You think of them as actors, not of yourself as an actor?
HAMMERSLEY
No, no. No, no. I’m enjoying the participation of those actions. When I get the stage all right, I mean, it feels good. It feels good.
WESCHLER
I just want to keep pressing you on this to account for yourself. You spent your life in this fairly ridiculous activity, and yet it’s not just fairly ridiculous. It’s something more. By the way, it has— What to me is interesting about it is that it’s partly a completely private activity, a dialogue with yourself, but it’s also about sharing that dialogue with yourself with the outside world, in the form of exhibitions or, you know. If there wasn’t the possibility of showing it to the outside world, would you do it with the same—
HAMMERSLEY
I don’t know how I would feel. My first reply, "Yes, I think I would." Then I thought of Van Gogh. I don’t think he ever sold anything, but he loved painting and he just kept on making paintings. I don’t think he gave a damn. He just wanted to paint, period.When you’re asking these things, I think one of the elements is leaving a mark. See, you have an advantage. You’re leaving an offspring.
WESCHLER
A child.
HAMMERSLEY
You have a— This friend of mine that’s forty and finally had a child, and I was thinking, imagine, the child is formed inside of her, literally formed inside of her, and then she’s equipped to feed the thing when he comes out. That is really astonishing. And then the husband, what the hell is he doing? I mean, he’s just admiring and being thankful. But anyway, he has left a mark. When he goes, he’s there. And this is a secondary—
WESCHLER
These are your children.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, these are the secondary mark. Believe me, not compared to yours. I don’t think it’s as good as yours.
WESCHLER
Would you have wanted to have children?
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. Now that I’m older, it would’ve been marvelous. I always think of this friend of mine. “Yes,” he said, “but I just had to pay $800 when my son wrecked the car. You don’t know what it’s like." And I’m sure there’s a lot of problems. You just get out of bed and you’ll have problems.
WESCHLER
I notice in other interviews that have been done with you, also in here, that there’s often the language of seeds, of giving birth. In the interview that you did with the Chouinard guy, you do talk about the difference between a flower, how a flower’s a seed—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes.
WESCHLER
What you said about how a flower has a seed, and it just comes out as a flower— It’s a single—
HAMMERSLEY
Oh yes. I’m fascinated— I plant a garden most every year. I’m fascinated. It’s unbelievable. You can put a little speck in the earth, and later you can eat the result. Now, that is really quite remarkable. So plants— Then sometimes I worry, that, god, there’s no reaction yet. And then the little sprout will come up, and then it will just go all over the place. But plants are— The seed relationship of the size to the result, how did that much information be packed in such a small place? That is unbelievable.
WESCHLER
How does that relate to painting? The seed of an idea in painting, how does that—
HAMMERSLEY
That’s funny. The seed of an idea seems like— The idea comes as the big seed. It’s a big seed. It’s not as miniature, it’s not as small, as nature’s seed. However, it’s interesting sometimes— I’m fascinated in the teaching, I’ll be talking about things that I think are important, and some peripheral, incidental— Some minor rip in your coat was something that they’ll remember, and years later they’ll say, “I remember when you mentioned the rip in that guy’s coat.” Well, that was not important to me, but, I mean, that was important to them. So that’s fascinating. You never know how you’re going to be received.
WESCHLER
Let’s conclude by talking about that. You’ve got this incredible body of work in this house. I assume you’re going to still be working for another ten or fifteen years, but what is your hope or what is your desire for all this stuff after you’re gone? I mean both practically, but beyond that, more philosophically, what is your hope for—
HAMMERSLEY
[sighs] That worries me. I really don’t know what to do with it. The point is, Peter’s doing so well, the ideal is to sell them all. [Bror Julius Olsson] Nordfeldt— I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. Taos painter and lithographer. The Taos group, years and years ago, and he was very well known and he did some work at Tamarind [Lithography Workshop]. And years ago he had died, and I was talking to Van Deren Coke, who was the chairman of the art department when I first came, and then he was an amateur photographer— Well, I should be careful. He loved to take photography and he was good on the history of photography. And I said, “Van, what happened to Nordfeldt’s things in his house when he died?” He said, “Oh, there was nothing there. He’d sold them all.”Now, that’s my ideal.
WESCHLER
Okay. Short of that, though, would you—I mean, Vasarely has a whole foundation and a mausoleum to him when you go to France. You can see all the Vasarely in one place.
HAMMERSLEY
Oh, I see.
WESCHLER
If it were possible to have a lot of your work be in one place, would you like that, or do you like the idea of scattering your seed, as it were?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, my feelings are mixed. I’m thinking of the Barnes Foundation, all the trouble they’ve had. If I’m in charge, I can make mistakes, and that’s my business, but if Joe makes mistakes and I’m gone, I mean, I don’t like that. But it would be a nice idea to have— Like this house could be used to show my things. Someone has to take care of the house. But all right. Or let’s say I’d be able to sell most of them, and then I would give some to [Joseph] Traugott, the curator that gave me my first show, which started the ball rolling.
WESCHLER
In Santa Fe.
HAMMERSLEY
Then I would have to decide who and how to give them away. I’m really puzzled by this. If you have any suggestions—
WESCHLER
Do you think about it a lot or not especially?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, I do. What would you suggest?
WESCHLER
We’ll keep that off the tape, and I’ll think about what I suggest, but in a larger sense, to what extent would it matter that you be part of the history of art a hundred years from now?
HAMMERSLEY
I doubt that it would matter that much.
WESCHLER
You’ve had your fun?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. I’d like to have a couple of these someplace that— Oh, like— All right, I don’t have to go backwards. I made arrangements with the medical school at the University of New Mexico, if I drop dead outside, then there’s a card in my pocket that the body would be given to that organization and they can use the body any way they like. Then they called me up. “What shall we do with the ashes?” "Oh," I said, “I was in the army, so send the ashes to the military thing in Santa Fe.”So that’s taken care of. I don’t like the funeral world. Well, you know what I mean. So that’s taken care of. That’s very clear and simple, and I like it.
WESCHLER
But you’ve got a body of work. What do we do with that?
HAMMERSLEY
But this body of work, I would like to have it decided as simply as that. It would be lovely. But I just don’t know what to do. So I’ve asked people, and I said, "I’m open to suggestion."
WESCHLER
Has it been a good life?
HAMMERSLEY
Oddly enough, as I got older— I didn’t like the beginning, but I felt the last few years the best I’ve ever felt, which I’m very pleased about.
WESCHLER
By definition, that one definition of a good life, that you feel better and better.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes, yes. It’s interesting. I do things slightly different than I did before. Mother was a rusher. Hurry, hurry, and get things done, etc. You’re— I wonder if that’s typical of New York. You come on time. Now here, if someone says ten o’clock, they’ll come at least ten fifteen, and it’s a mañana thing. I don’t like that. It means it’s not very important.
WESCHLER
When you say you’ve been feeling better as you’ve grown older, how do you mean? Better in what way?
HAMMERSLEY
Less mental debris.
WESCHLER
Clearer?
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Clearer, yes. And I think that is, no doubt, the result of the psychologist, etc. That has contributed some, I’m sure.
WESCHLER
But also the work.
HAMMERSLEY
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. At the end of the organic field to begin with—in 1981 or ’82 it started—it was different and better than the ’64 organic area.
WESCHLER
Because?
HAMMERSLEY
Freer. I was going to say wilder. No, that’s too excessive. More open. Felt good, felt very good. That also felt very good. Of course, I was tied up in those days, so a little freedom felt very good.
WESCHLER
Well, anyway, this has been a lot of fun. Is there anything we haven’t covered?
HAMMERSLEY
I doubt it.
WESCHLER
Okay. Well, listen, thank you very much. This has been terrific.


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