Peter Selz
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The professor was interested in museums, loved art objects, and cared about students. Cartwright was attracted to the biographical approach to art as a way to understand the sources for ideas, forms, and creative process in the artist’s life. Selz was a natural storyteller, and artists such as Christo and the late Jeanne-Claude were among the colorful and often exotic subjects of his anecdotes. As it happened, at that time Selz was the project director for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence project in Marin and Sonoma Counties, and Cartwright remembers that Selz spoke about the artists from the perspective of a personal friend. He also recalled the excitement of seeing that cloth fence snaking west across the landscape from Highway 101 to the Pacific Ocean.
In an interview, Christo and Jeanne-Claude provided the background for their collaboration with Selz and his artist assistant and companion at that time, Lynn Hershman (now Hershman Leeson):
I believe it was 1973 when we got in touch with Peter Selz. We told him that we had a project in California called Running Fence—and we needed a project director. Would he be able to recommend someone? Jan van der Marck [Walker Art Center and later the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1969] had been the project director for Valley Curtain, and he told us that Peter Selz in California “knows everyone.” Peter came to see us in New York and we expected a list of names and telephone numbers. Instead he said, “I’ll do it.” But first he asked, “How much do you pay?”5
Peter disputes Jeanne-Claude’s memory on this point, but what matters is that he accepted and served Running Fence as a well-connected figure in the art world. He was ideally positioned to introduce the artists to people they needed to meet to navigate the difficult process of getting permits and winning over a suspicious group of landowners and envious artists. There were eighteen permit hearings (according to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Selz attended only one or two), and a big part of the challenge was to convince the opposition—which was led, ironically, by artist and writer Mary Fuller McChesney and her artist husband, Robert, who lived the bohemian life atop Mount Sonoma—that the project was a temporary art installation, not a “front runner” for developers. As Peter, appreciating the irony, relates the situation, “A committee of disgruntled local artists tried to stop the project, complaining that a bunch of foreigners—a Bulgarian artist with a French wife and a German project director—were about to get national, even international, attention by doing a stunt on their territory.”6 At the hearing, Christo maintained that opposition was an essential and expected part of the project.
Among the best-known supporters of the project were artist Bill Morehouse and, especially, director Francis Ford Coppola. Jeanne-Claude described the process: “The most difficult part of all our projects is to obtain the permits. So the part which Lynn [Hershman] was so good at is the art of getting permits. Meeting each one of the fifty-nine ranchers and their families, explaining the project, trying to get them to sign the contract allowing us to place a part of Running Fence on their land. And for that she was fantastic.”7 Hershman’s contribution to the project notwithstanding, Jeanne-Claude recognized the great value of having Selz aboard: “In my country, France, we say he had a long arm, and Peter used his.”8
Many of Selz’s students maintained contact over the years. Particularly close is Gary Carson, Selz’s self-described “aide-de-camp,”9 who found a special way of joining for the long haul in Peter’s life. Selz describes Carson as his “son,” and Gary reciprocates by acknowledging a “sort of father/son relationship.”10 Even more significant is his designation as “artist agent.” The latter term reinforces the idea of Selz’s identification with artists. Among Carson’s responsibilities has been ensuring that Selz stays in touch with the art friends his welcoming personality has attracted. A significant handful of students made a point of staying in touch over the years, encouraged in this by Peter himself. In Gary’s case, the close relationship goes back almost thirty years.
Carson was interested in Dada and Surrealism and related modernist movements that had the potential to change not just art but society as well. In 1973, he independently sought out Selz in his office, and in 1975 he enrolled at Cal. Gary remembers one of his first papers for Peter was on Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, one of the great examples of folk art as an expression of the human creative spirit in a way unparalleled in mainstream modernist art. Peter, with his few years spent in Southern California, knew of them and appreciated their significance. This assignment convinced Carson of Selz’s “comprehensive view of art as a living phenomenon,” an individual but synthetic approach to creative activity.
The key qualities that drew students to Selz as a mentor were, according to Gary, careful looking and original thinking—art history from lived experience, popularization at its best. In this intuitive approach, Carson observes a connection to the art historian and renowned creative thinker Robert Rosenblum—whose method Selz admires, if not always his taste. But as Carson put it, both were “open to new perspectives and phenomena,” moving comfortably across media.11
Carson’s and Cartwright’s undergraduate memories of Selz as a professor hew closely to those of other favored students, prominent among them art historians Kristine Stiles, Moira Roth, Terrence Dempsey, and Susan Landauer and artist Rupert Garcia. For them, Peter Selz was an influential, even inspirational, presence. All have become, in one way or another, collaborators with Peter in both his and their own pursuits. This “working with friends” seems to be a hallmark of his professional modus. Though each had some specific criticism of aspects of Peter’s working habits, these former students all expressed an affection and loyalty that defined the relationship.
In 1980, undergraduate Susan Landauer, a studio and art history double major, took Selz’s lecture class on contemporary art. As just one of two hundred students, she had no personal contact with her professor. But a friend in the same program did have what Susan described as a more “direct experience,” and as a result she became “wary of him.”12 As she remembers it, Peter stood out in two distinct ways for his female students: many of them tended to avoid him outside the classroom because of his reputation as a womanizer, but at the same time they were attracted to his undeniable energy in his approach to art. In her admiration Susan was apparently typical, holding these two seemingly contradictory views.13
After graduation from Berkeley, Landauer went on to Yale; there she wrote a pioneering doctoral dissertation on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism, which later was published as an influential book.14 The first personal contact she had with Selz came in 1989 with her return to the West Coast, their paths crossing at openings and other art events in the Bay Area. Since then she has collaborated with him on several publications and exhibitions, most notably in her former curatorial capacity at San Jose Museum of Art.15 Her introduction to Selz’s 2002 monograph on Nathan Oliveira, a surprise bestseller, offers important insights into his approach to an artist whose work he has championed since the late 1950s.
Landauer points to Selz’s passion for “underdog artists” such as Peter Voulkos and Nathan Oliveira as among his most attractive qualities. Their world is his world, the place where he chooses to live. But she also suggests another aspect to this attachment, seeing in the license that is often granted to creative individuals—“Well, what do you expect? He’s an artist!”—justification for libertine and otherwise self-absorbed behavior. She remembers a meeting at the University of California Arts Club at which she expressed concern about Marcel Duchamp’s “kinky, predatory sexual behavior.” Selz responded, “Who cares? It’s all about the art.”16
From the standpoint of an ongoing publishing collaboration, Kristine Stiles, a professor at Duke University and formerly Selz’s doctoral student at Berkeley, occupies a unique position. Stiles met Peter in 1973 and entered graduate school the following year. She credits him for her switch from Etruscology to contemporary art studies. Why did she change? Stiles offers the following partial
answer. She describes Selz the teacher as having “wonderful descriptive powers,” although, she laments, “Unfortunately, he could not explain to me when I asked him what it meant to have his ‘great eye’ for art—and how one could achieve such vision. Also, [academically] non-ideologically driven, albeit politically left. Open to new ideas but resistant to those that differed from his own (Pop Art). Taught material that no one else in the U.S. was teaching at that time—particularly art and technology coming from his deep involvement in Kinetic Art.”17 Stiles found Selz, as a writer, to be critical, but without a contemporary theoretical foundation. That is not to say that he was uninformed. Rather, he remained invested in existentialism and the philosophical thinking of the 1940s to 1960s. Above all, and against the academic trend, Selz resisted Stiles’s interest in critical theory—semiotics, structuralism, and poststructuralism—chiding her for using the related jargon. “We argued about this.” Now she allows that in this judgment of her youthful dependence on these theories and their languages he probably was partially correct.18
Stiles offered one anecdote from her experience as a research assistant that speaks to both his strengths and his shortcomings. While working with him on his book Art in Our Times (Abrams, 1981), she lobbied for the inclusion of feminist artist Carolee Schneemann. His final response was “Okay, but you do it.”19 Most likely, Selz could not have written the entry on Schneemann at the time; in his acknowledgments he mentions Stiles’s contribution to the more recent sections of the book.20 As time went on, Selz retroactively came to fancy himself a feminist. Rather than asserting a political position, what he may really have been saying was that he liked women—but he still had no real understanding of women’s issues of the time.21 However, Kristine Stiles, who was there, now insists that Peter was “always supportive of the women’s movement.”22 The two discussed feminism, especially with regard to Art in Our Times. In her view, for some people Peter’s personal interest in women unfortunately clouds the concurrent social and intellectual support his female students received.23
Moira Roth, a committed feminist and prominent women’s rights advocate, had Peter as her doctoral advisor, and although she could easily have taken issue with Peter’s perceived flaws, in a recent conversation what she mainly recalled was Peter’s friendship and support. It is surprising that this dedicated feminist made no mention of the criticisms of Peter’s treatment of women, both personally and professionally, that had been leveled at him during many of his years at the university. But his genuine concerns and advocacy for marginalized individuals and groups, especially artists, evidently has corrected some of that history. Moira’s 1974 dissertation was on Marcel Duchamp, and Peter was supportive of her oral history method, an unorthodox approach in academia at the time. She was impressed with his firsthand knowledge of European art, as reflected in his famous New Images of Man exhibition at MoMA. In addition, “Peter had a passion for art, more so than other art historians. It was so impressive how much he looked at, touched, works of art. He was putting order into disorderly contemporary art. And he was comfortable with artists, and they with him.”24
Selz’s interest in “marginalized” and nonmainstream artists and expressions influenced Roth, or at least pointed the direction for her own engaged art history. She has nothing but accolades for his award-winning Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond (2006). “Wonderful,” enthused Roth. “Nobody else would have done it!” With a twenty-page section devoted to “The Women’s Experience,” beginning with the feminist movement, Selz had come a long way. Whatever his blind spots in connection with earlier feminist art, he made up for them in this book. He also cast himself as an enlightened supporter of women artists in his 1999 Abrams monograph and much earlier (1973) UAM exhibition devoted to sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud. He proudly proclaims that the Berkeley show was among the “first solo shows in this country on a woman artist of color.”25
That may well be the case, but it would not satisfy the objections to Selz’s earlier exhibition program made by artist Eleanor Dickinson and her colleagues in the West East Bag (WEB, predecessor to the College Art Association of America [CAA] Women’s Caucus for Art [WCA], founded in 1972). A respected Bay Area painter, teacher, and activist, Dickinson played a prominent role in the movement to remedy underrepresentation of women artists in art museums and books. Especially in the early 1970s, with the rise of feminism in general, gender inequality in the art world radicalized her and many other California women artists—prominent among them Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Arlene Raven, Sheila de Bretteville, Rachel Rosenthal, Suzanne Lacey, Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, and Moira Roth.26 The two most influential consciousness-raising figures on the national scene were critic Lucy Lippard and art historian Linda Nochlin. The latter’s famous 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” inspired women—Dickinson among them—to challenge this perception and fight for greater recognition.
Eleanor was particularly angered by what she describes as Peter’s poor record in this regard at the University Art Museum. In 1973, she participated in a WCA/WEB picket that led to a meeting with Selz in his office; he was “shocked” at the grievances and agreed to “mend his ways.”27 But, as Dickinson reports, although there was in fact 50 percent representation the following year—a great improvement—all the artists shown were “pretty young women.” In her view, the letter of the agreement was observed, but not the underlying spirit. For his part, Peter points out that when Eleanor and her fellow feminist protesters appeared at his office, the Barbara Chase-Riboud exhibition was on view at the museum. His comment: “Either they didn’t see it, or they didn’t care.”28 Moreover, Selz furthers his claim to supporting women artists with an account from his first year at Berkeley. He was invited to attend art practice faculty meetings, and in discussing names for a new painting faculty appointment, Peter suggested a woman. His colleagues responded, “Peter, you’re new here. You don’t know that we don’t seek women artists.” Peter asked why, and the response was “Margaret Peterson O’Hagan.” The teacher of Sam Francis and Jay DeFeo, O’Hagan was dismissed when she refused to sign the loyalty oath. O’Hagan was on faculty from 1928 to 1950.29 The implication was that the loyalty oath of 1949 imposed by the university regents had served as a convenient means to get rid of unwanted faculty. Margaret O’Hagan was adamant in her refusal to sign, and uncompromising in her reasons. It may be that such a strong female personality had not been a comfortable fit for her male colleagues. In any case, no woman had been on faculty in the art practice department from her departure up to the time of Peter’s suggestion.
In 2003, Dickinson was honored by the College Art Association of America, specifically by the Women’s Caucus for Art. No doubt contributing to her Lifetime Achievement Award was the famous interview she conducted at the CAA annual convention in 1979 with H. W. Janson, author of the art history text that through many editions has served as the basis for most undergraduate instruction in art. History of Art, with presumed authority, declared what art was important and which artists had “changed the history of art”—Janson’s criterion for inclusion in his book. At the time, not a single woman artist appeared in the book. Janson did not hesitate to inform Dickinson that there was, so far, no woman— not one—who met his standard. He even seemed amused when she asked if he was aware that the Coalition of Women’s Art Organizations was launching a national boycott of his book. He laughed as he replied: “No, but this is a free country and they are certainly at liberty to do so.”30
Selz was far less dismissive of Eleanor’s objections. And it is worth considering how similar he and she were, not necessarily as colleagues, but as kindred spirits. Dickinson understood the conflict between his professional life and bohemian inclinations. An example of Peter’s personal independence is his posing nude for Eleanor’s 1987 Crucifixion series, a group of large-scale works for which several friends agreed to disrobe. The unveiling of his portrait was the occasion for a performance in El
eanor’s Belcher Street studio in San Francisco. An exotic dancer seductively removed her seven veils, floated each in the air, and, one by one, let them settle on Peter and Carole Selz as they sat on a low couch, watching. At the conclusion of the dance, Peter’s nude crucifixion portrait was revealed to “oohs” and “aahs” from the delighted audience. Peter and Carole were as pleased and amused as was the audience.31
Before he became one of the models, Peter had written a review of an exhibition of the Crucifixion series at San Francisco’s Hatley Martin Gallery for Art in America: “The Crucifixion series from which this show was drawn is based on the religious premise that all men (and women) carry their own crosses through life. The individuals who served as Dickinson’s models for these large (6-to-10-foot-high) pastels on black velvet are people whose emotional concerns and spiritual life are known to the artist, and indeed, in rendering the bodies of her sitters who came to her studio ‘to make their statements,’ Dickinson seems to have captured their feelings and thoughts as well.”32
Peter’s closest friends and colleagues resemble him in their views of life and art. They tend to be independent outsiders, sometimes fiercely so. And to a person, they are politically aware and engaged, on the left side somewhere between liberal and radical. Yet as Kristine Stiles and others have pointed out, Selz was never polemical in his teaching. “Maverick” may not be the most appropriate term for Peter himself, but his favorite collegial friends, including Agnes Denes, Dore Ashton, Wayne Andersen, and former student Rupert Garcia, could very well be so described. Carole Selz dismisses the term in connection with her husband, pointing out that he cares too much what people think of him.33 In short, he wants it both ways, to be a friendly and much admired insider-outsider hybrid.