15. Many recent books accept this idea of California cultural exceptionalism as a given, taking their lead from Carey McWilliams’s classic Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1973). In his introduction, McWilliams asserts that Los Angeles was different from the rest of the country, reflecting on his personal experiences from 1922 to 1951, when the region began to “make a real impact on national and world opinion” (xxi). See also Kevin Starr’s America and the California Dream series, especially Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) and Coast of Dreams: A History of Contemporary California (New York: Knopf, 2004). This sense of “difference” runs throughout the series, part one of which deals directly with art and culture, high and low. For a broader perspective, see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991). Kammen’s most relevant observation in connection with California may be that the concept of invention applies more productively to “developing nations” than to “established ones” (693).
16. AAA 1982, 57.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 59.
19. Ibid., 62.
20. Phone conversation with Peter Selz, September 2007. Anecdote published in the author’s introduction to the limited-edition exhibition catalogue, Tribute to Peter Selz (Sacramento: b. sakata garo, 2007), 21.
21. William T. Wiley’s account “Remembering Peter Selz . . while he is here . .” appears in Peter Selz: Limited Edition (Sacramento: b. sakata garo, 2007), 61. It was published in conjunction with the exhibition Tribute to Peter Selz held in the b. sakata garo (gallery), Sacramento, 6 November–1 December 2007.
22. Lucinda Barnes, “Collecting the Moment—The Berkeley Art Museum,” Chronicle of the University of California: A Journal of University History 6 (Spring 2004): 129–42. Barnes is now chief curator and director of programs and collections at the museum.
23. Phone conversation with Norton Wisdom, 25 November 2009.
24. Peter Selz, Directions in Kinetic Sculpture (Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1966), 6–7. Shortly before he joined the Bauhaus faculty (1922), László Moholy-Nagy with A. Kémeny published what amounted to a kinetic art manifesto (Dynamisch-konstruktives Kraftsystem) in the influential German Expressionist publication Der Sturm. An English translation appeared as Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947).
25. Richard Buckminster Fuller, quoted by Calvin Tomkins in “In the Outlaw Area” [Profile], New Yorker, 8 January 1966, 36; quoted by Selz in Directions in Kinetic Sculpture, 5.
26. Author interview with Fletcher Benton, San Francisco, 7 January 2008.
27. AAA 1982, 58.
28. Ibid., 59.
29. Ibid., 60.
30. Harold Paris, “Sweet Land of Funk,” Art in America 55 (March 1967): 94–98.
31. Author interview with Selz for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1999, 14. Published in Paul J. Karlstrom and Dore Ashton, Crosscurrents in Modern Art: A Tribute to Peter Selz (New York: Achim Moeller Fine Art, 2000), 20 and 27. What united Rothko and Conner with Nathan Oliveira was emotional content (“soul”).
32. Selz often featured Conner in exhibitions and articles and regularly describes Conner as one of California’s great artists, a figure of national and international significance. In his survey on modern art, Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History, 1890–1980 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Harry N. Abrams, 1981), Selz reproduces Child (1959–60) with the following text: “Bruce Conner’s disquieting necrophilic Child was created to express his outrage against the brutality of the death penalty. . . . The anguished, distorted, and desecrated head screams in torture. This is a work of unrelieved pain—meant perhaps as a talisman or votive object against unmitigated horror” (396). (Echoes from New Images of Man reverberate here.) When asked about the specific ways in which he promoted Conner, Selz starts with his including the artist in William Seitz’s Art of Assemblage (MoMA, 1961) with two works, Deadly Nightshade (1959) and Last Supper (1961). “This pretty well established him in NY, but he was never appreciated as much as he deserves” (e-mail to author, 16 April 2010). Peter also brought The Box (1960) to the attention of Alfred Barr, who bought it for MoMA despite the fact that it was a “gruesome assemblage . . . which was rarely shown” (ibid.).
33. Phone conversation with Bruce Conner, 20 June 2007. Famously elusive, Conner initially declined a request to be interviewed for this book. But despite his initial refusal to talk about Peter, he proceeded for almost half an hour to air his general grievances and express indignation about art institutions, most curators and writers, and above all art dealers.
34. Peter Boswell, quoted by Ken Johnson in “Bruce Conner, Beat Artist and Filmmaker, Dies at 74,” New York Times, 10 July 2008, C-13.
35. Phone conversation with Conner, 20 June 2007.
36. Interview with Paula Kirkeby for the Bruce Conner Oral History Project, conducted by the author, 26 April 2011, Palo Alto, Calif.
37. Notes from phone interview with Peter Selz, 2 August 2010.
38. Deborah Paris Hertz, e-mail to the author, 14 August 2010.
39. Author interview with Wally Hedrick, San Geronimo, Calif., 10 and 24 June 1974; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-wally-hedrick-12869. Hereafter Hedrick interview.
40. William T. Wiley in dinner conversation, Selz residence, Berkeley, 13 February 2009.
41. Hedrick interview.
42. Paris, “Sweet Land of Funk,” 57.
43. See Constance Lewallen, “Commitment,” Chronicle of the University of California, no. 6 (Spring 2004): 169–72. From 1979 to 1987, Lewallen was curator of the museum’s MATRIX series, established by director James Elliott in 1978. The program featured international and local Conceptual artists of the first and succeeding generations. Current BAM/PFA director Lawrence Rinder served as curator from 1987 to 1997.
44. Ibid., 169.
45. Ibid.
46. Conversation with Peter Selz at poetry reading (Michael McClure and David Meltzer) at Oakland hills home of Carl and Susan Landauer, 14 April 2010. This conversation was followed by an e-mail from Selz more fully describing the origins of the Funk exhibition at the Berkeley Art Gallery.
47. Phone conversation with Peter Selz, 15 April 2010.
48. Richard Cándida Smith, The Modern Moves West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 105.
49. E-mail to author from Sophie Dannenmüller, 16 April 2010. Dannenmüller is a Sorbonne art history doctoral candidate widely acknowledged as an expert on California assemblage art.
50. Deborah Paris Hertz, e-mails to author, 9 and 10 August 2010. Unless otherwise specified, these are the sources for all the information and quotes on the extracurricular recreational activities of Selz and Paris.
51. Deborah Paris Hertz, e-mail to author, 15 August 2010.
52. Terri Cohn, e-mail to author, 11 February 2010. Cohn, a respected and prolific oral historian, curator, and art writer, is a faculty member and graduate faculty advisor at the San Francisco Art Institute. She describes her training at Berkeley as “incredibly formalist”—valuable, but ultimately having little to do with the direction her artist-focused career eventually followed (e-mail, 15 August 2010).
53. Terri Cohn in conversation, 8 July 2010.
54. AAA 1982, 56.
55. Peter Selz, Selection 1966: The University Art Collections (Berkeley: University of California, 1966), 1.
56. AAA 1982, 63.
57. Ibid., 64–65.
58. Svetlana Alpers in Selection 1968 (Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1968), 77–78.
59. Typed anecdotal notes sent to author by Peter Selz, 12 December 2008.
60. E-mail from Rinder to the author, April 30, 2010. Larry Rinder earlier spoke to this part of the museum’s history in a conversation with Peter Selz, moderate
d by the author, Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, 10 July 2008.
Rinder is a true Selz heir in that he was hired to be the first director of a new university museum building—this one at a different campus location, on Oxford and Center Streets. Among other benefits beyond up-to-date earthquake construction, this building would have been more accessible to the Berkeley community. Unfortunately, the initial plan, featuring an exciting architectural design by Toyo Ito, fell victim to the economic collapse of 2009. New plans are afoot, but the financial trials remain an obstacle.
61. Memoir 1 (1 September 2005), 30.
62. Ibid., 31–32 and 66.
63. This account of the efforts to secure the Peggy Guggenheim collection appears in two interviews: AAA 1982, 65–66; and Memoir 1, 30–33. It is remarkable how closely the two accounts—separated by almost thirty years—duplicate each other.
64. Typed anecdotal notes sent to author by Peter Selz, 12 December 2008.
65. AAA 1982, 66.
66. Ibid., 67–68.
67. Barnes, “Collecting the Moment,” 34–35.
68. James Cahill, e-mail to the author, 2 May 2010. Cahill had no personal ax to grind regarding Selz; in fact, he enjoyed his frequent visits to Peter’s “spectacularly modern house. Those were good parties.” In the same e-mail Cahill described the early exhibitions at the Powerhouse: “Later it was discovered that the floor was too weak to hold a lot of people, and we had to stop using it—few faculty members turned up for exhibition openings.”
69. As listed in the Funk catalogue (Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1967), unpaginated. As early as 1967, the list of faculty curators read as follows: Svetlana Alpers, Baroque Art; Darrell A. Amyx, Classical Art; William R. Bascom, Primitive Art; James Cahill, Oriental Art (Cahill succeeded Selz as director for one year); Herschel B. Chipp, Modern Art; Alfred Frankenstein, American Art; Spiro Kostof, Architecture; Juergen Schulz, Renaissance Art; David H. Wright, Medieval Art.
70. AAA 1982, 68.
71. Ibid., 68–69.
72. For an insightful account of Norton Simon’s art and political involvement in California, see Suzanne Muchnic’s Odd Man: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
73. Memoir 1, 23–25.
74. Selz, e-mail to the author, 12 May 2010. Peter’s account is contradicted by curator Brenda Richardson, who independently cites Walter Horn as supportive of her professional “dilemma” within UAM. She also denies that she expected to become director or even sought that role and goes on to say that leaving Berkeley was personally difficult, but “the right move professionally at the time” (e-mail, 29 April 2010).
75. Brenda Richardson, phone conversation with author, 28 April 2010.
76. Ibid.; AAA 1982, 69.
77. Richardson, e-mail to the author, 29 April 2010. Perhaps the most revealing observation Richardson makes is that the entire process was “a travesty carried out by an academic administration eager to take Peter down. Little did he know that when he submitted a complaint about me to the Dean, it would end so badly for him.”
78. James Cahill, e-mail to the author, 24 September 2010. Other faculty members shared the view that Peter’s departure from the museum was involuntary, among them Loren Partridge, art history chair at the time, as well as artist and friend Karl Kasten (now deceased) and medievalist David Wright. Even fierce supporters such as Sheldon Renan of PFA acknowledge that Peter spent money whether or not it was there and/or authorized for projects he believed in. Others viewed the Selz style more positively: classicist Andrew Stewart— who arrived in Berkeley somewhat later—appreciated his enthusiastic embrace of contemporary art and artists as well as his willful independence. Cahill adds that he did “excite students, and draw lots of them.” Cahill also remembers that at his own hiring there were administrative instructions to move away from contemporary art toward “exhibitions and programs tied in with campus departments and organizations” (a strategic effort to secure university education funding for the museum); these were greeted with alarm by UAM staff members who found the direction overly academic. He recalls that Richardson alerted the San Francisco art critics, “who saw this, as did she, as a threat” (e-mail, 5 October 2010).
79. Jacquelynn Baas, e-mail to author, 29 April 2010. Jackie reports that in the middle of a budget crisis she talked with Clark Kerr and Roger Heyns about the museum’s financial situation, which provided insight into the earlier problems.
80. Tom Freudenheim, e-mail to author, 2 May 2010.
81. Baas e-mail, 29 April 2010. Jim Elliott was director from 1976 to 1987. Baas became director in 1988.
82. Richard Buxbaum, phone interview and e-mail to author, 7 January 2010. UC law professor Buxbaum met Selz shortly after the latter’s arrival in 1965. Buxbaum also followed Selz’s exhibitions, remembering especially the Funk show and their shared interest in art.
8. STUDENTS, COLLEAGUES, AND CONTROVERSY
1. Author interview with Norton Wisdom, San Francisco, 8 April 2009, 2.
2. Sidra Stich studied with Herschel B. Chipp and Svetlana Alpers; Selz was on her doctoral committee. Although she came to Berkeley because of the museum training program, when she discovered that the art history department was not interested in museum work as a professional career she concentrated on the more intellectual and academic strengths of the University of California. Her contributions to the museum included the highly regarded exhibitions and catalogues Made in USA: An Americanization in Modern Art, the ’50s and ’60s (Berkeley: University Art Museum and University of California Press, 1987) and Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art (Berkeley: University Art Museum; New York: Abbeville Press, 1990). Peter Selz considers the latter particularly significant.
3. Sidra Stich interview, San Francisco, 27 July 2009, 2.
4. E-mail conversation with intellectual historian and Berkeley professor Richard Cándida Smith, 16 June 2010. As with other writing projects, I am grateful to this friend for suggestions and information generously given.
5. Telephone interview with Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 27 June 2007, 3–4; hereafter Christo and Jeanne-Claude interview.
6. Peter Selz, Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 230. The same story was recounted to the author in conversation.
7. Christo and Jeanne-Claude interview, 11.
8. Ibid., 17.
9. Author interview with Gary Carson, Berkeley, 2 May 2007, 18.
10. Ibid., 17.
11. Ibid., 12. The late Robert Rosenblum made connections in thinking about art that were unprecedented. Peter Selz brings this same curiosity to his way of looking at art and is at least as willing to graze over the entire creative landscape.
12. Susan Landauer, telephone interview, 17 October 2009.
13. Susan Landauer, telephone conversation, 15 April 2010. Landauer, with her deep respect and affection for Selz, has been able to reconcile these “two sides.”
14. Susan Landauer was among the first to bring attention to Bay Area gestural painting as an independent analogue to New York Abstract Expressionism. Her book, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism (Berkeley: University of California Press; Laguna Beach, Calif.: Laguna Art Museum, 1996), helped to change the way California was perceived by the East Coast critical establishment. Peter’s friend Dore Ashton wrote the introduction. The book accompanied an exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum (27 January–21 April 1996) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (18 July–8 September 1996).
15. Susan Landauer was chief curator at San Jose Museum of Art for a decade, until 2009. Among the books and exhibitions that grew out of the Landauer-Selz museum collaboration were Nathan Oliveira (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) and Art of Engagement.
16. Susan Landauer, telephone conversation, 16 October 2007. Taken out of context, this response seems unlikely, even if one is little concerned with the judgment of others. However, it disturbed Landaue
r enough for her to relate it as an indication of Selz’s deficit in empathy for others, especially (as with Duchamp) women.
17. Author telephone interview with Kristine Stiles, 25 June 2008, 3; hereafter Stiles interview. Also “Notes for Conversation Regarding Peter Selz,” 25 June 2008, 1.
18. Stiles interview, 5, 6; “Notes,” 1.
19. Stiles interview, 15; “Notes,” 2.
20. In the preface and acknowledgments to Art in Our Times, Selz wrote, “I want to express my thanks to the friends, colleagues, and students who have helped significantly in completing this book. Above all I wish to acknowledge Kristine Stiles, whose suggestions were particularly helpful in the final chapters” (n. 7). The index does not recognize feminism as an art term, but many activist women artists make their way into the book, particularly in the chapters where Stiles was most “helpful.”
21. Selz typically tries to attach himself, often retroactively, to movements that gained favor later. His own complicated relationship to women, and his treatment of them, would speak against his being an early feminist. It is one thing to “like” women, but quite another to fully empathize and understand the professional and social obstacles they are struggling to remove.
22. Kristine Stiles, e-mail, 10 November 2009.
23. Ibid.
24. Moira Roth, telephone conversation, 15 October 2009.
25. Memoir 10B (22 April 2009), 24. Chase-Riboud monograph: Peter Selz and Anthony F. Janson, Barbara Chase-Riboud: Sculptor (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999).
26. Performance art, found to be a particularly effective means of conveying feminist concerns, was the subject of an anthology edited by Selz’s student Moira Roth, The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970–1980 (Los Angeles: Astro ARTZ, 1983). For the feminist art movement generally, see Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s—History and Impact (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994).
Peter Selz Page 30