An interview of Nell Blaine conducted 1967 June 15, by Dorothy Seckler, for the Archives of American Art.
Blaine speaks of her family background; her competitive spirit; commercial art; becoming a "disciple" of Hans Hofmann; Hofmann as a teacher; the influence of Arp, Helion, Leger and Mondrian; the American Abstract Artists group; the Jane Street Gallery; jazz musicians; painting in Paris, Italy, Mexico, Greece, England, and elsewhere; her paralysis caused by polio; design work with Alvin H. Ross; her interest in color and light; landscape and figurative paintings; and the contemporary art scene. She recalls Leland Bell, Worden Day, Jane and Jack Freilicher, Wolf Kahn, Albert Kresch, Larry Rivers, Hyde Solomon, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Nell Blaine (1922-1996) was a painter in New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
This interview is open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Printmakers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Illustrators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
An interview of Alvin Ross conducted 1964-1968, by Dorothy Seckler, for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
Alvin Ross (1920-1975) was a painter and educator of Provincetown, Mass.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape and 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 15 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Occupation:
Art teachers -- Massachusetts -- Provincetown -- Interviews Search this
Correspondence, exhibition materials, writings, printed materials, photographs, sketchbooks, and scrapbooks.
REEL D114: Correspondence, including letters from students, friends, and institutions; sketchbooks; and scrapbooks. Correspondents include: Sperry Andrews, Benjamin G. Benno, Edith Brodsky, Alice Forman, George Grosz, Anita Hatofsky, Alvin and Helen King Hattorf, John E. Hubbard, Werner Koepf, Samuel M. Kootz, David Nathan Lund, Garnett McCoy, Walter Pach, Charles Allen Patterson, Rubin Reif, Alvin Ross, Sonia Sekula, Vaclav Vytlacil, and Franklin C. Watkins.
REEL 969: Correspondence, mostly concerning the exhibition and loan of paintings; exhibition catalogs and announcements; clippings; and photographs of his work with Kantor's notes analyzing them.
REEL 3784-3785 Biographical material; correspondence, including letters from Kantor's students, personal letters, letters of condolence to Kantor's widow after his death, and others; notes on painting and teaching, and drafts for lectures; business records, including statements from the Rehn Gallery, a record book of income and expenses, receipts and records relating to teaching and household expenses; art works, including working drawings, sketches and paintings on paper; exhibition catalogs and announcements; printed material; and photographs of Kantor and of his work.
REEL 439 AND SCANNED Photo of Kantor, taken by Kuniyoshi,and previously microfilmed under Photos of Artists I; it has now been scanned and returned to the Kantor papers.
ADDITION: A resume; a letter from Ala Story, 1972; ten notebooks and loose pages containing handwritten notes, essays, and other writings by Kantor; an account book, 1971-1973; photographs of the Kantor family, ca. 1905, photographs of Kantor, Kantor in his Welfleet, Mass. studio, his work, his New York studio at the time of his death taken by Lee Friedlander, and snapshots of the view of Union Square from his studio window; among the photographers are Peter A. Juley & Son, De Witt Ward, and Yasuo Kiniyoshi; exhibition catalogs and announcements, 1929-1971; reproductions of paintings by Kantor; and clippings, 1965-1974. Also included are letters from the Zabriskie Gallery to Mrs. Morris Kantor, 1976.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter; New City, N.Y.
Provenance:
Materials on reels D114 and 969 donated 1963-1969 by Morris Kantor. Material on reels 3784-3785 donated 1976-1984 by Martha (Mrs. Morris) Kantor and Syracuse University, which had been given some of Kantor's papers. The addition was transferred from the National Museum of American Art, 1997, which had received it from Martha Kantor for use in researching the large number of Kantor's works in the museum's collection.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm.
Occupation:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New City Search this
Topic:
Painting, Modern -- 20th century -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
0.4 Linear feet (ca. 1065 items (partially microfilmed on 4 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1940-1975
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence, printed material, photographs, a diary, financial papers, and writings.
UNMICROFILMED: Correspondence, mainly from Ross to his parents; a travel diary; photographs and slides of Ross at work and of his art work; a list of exhibitions; and exhibition catalogs and announcements.
REELS 1280-1284: Letters concerning Ross' teaching at Pratt and the New School, gallery correspondence, and invitations to lecture or write; recommendations, fellowships and awards; pocket diaries, 1948-1974, listing dinners and appointments; files on exhibitions and courses Ross taught; writings, notes and speeches; catalogs; and financial papers.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, printmaker, teacher, lecturer; New York, N.Y. and Provincetown, Massachusetts Born Vineland, New Jersey. Faculty member, Department of Art, Pratt Institute; lecturer, history of art and architecture, New School of Social Research and New York School of Interior Design. Painted in oil in the realistic style.
Provenance:
Material on reels 1280-1284 lent for microfilming by Lenore Ross, Alvin's sister, 1977. Unmicrofilmed material was donated by Alvin and Lenore Ross, 1975-1980.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Art teachers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Artists as teachers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painting, Modern -- 20th century -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The Dorothy Gees Seckler collection of sound recordings relating to art and artists measures 1.6 linear feet and dates from 1962 to 1976. Recordings include 17 interviews conducted by Seckler, one interview by John Jones, and 17 additional recordings of mostly contemporary art-related programs and interviews taped from radio and television broadcasts. Recordings are on 26 sound cassettes and 25 sound tape reels.
Scope and Contents:
The Dorothy Gees Seckler collection of sound recordings relating to art and artists measures 1.6 linear feet and dates from 1962 to 1976. Recordings include 20 interviews conducted by Seckler, one interview by John Jones, and 17 additional recordings of mostly contemporary art-related programs and interviews taped from radio and television broadcasts. Recordings are on 26 sound cassettes and 25 sound tape reels.
Interviews with Artists consist of 17 interviews by Dorothy Seckler with artists including Elise Asher, Fritz Bultman, Judith Rothschild, Giorgio Cavallon, Marcia Marcus, Jean Cohen, William Freed, Lillian Orlowsky, Shirley Gorelick, Hans Hofmann, Wolf Kahn, Raoul Middleman, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Olin Orr, Larry Rivers, Alvin Ross, George Segal, Jean Tinguely, and Niki de Saint Phalle. Several interviews are with two subjects at once. Many of these interviews were conducted in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and are referenced in her introduction to the catalog for the exhibition Provincetown Painters, 1890's – 1970's held at the Everson Museum and the Provincetown Art Association in 1977, and several interviews were conducted as research for articles Seckler wrote and published in Art in America. Also found are group interviews on specific subjects, including an interview with Julio de Diego, Marion Greenwood, Fletcher Martin, and Anton Refregier on the Woodstock art colony, and with Sally Avery, Boris Margo, Jan Gelb, Margit Beck and others on Op Art. In September of 1966, Seckler recorded some of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable in Provincetown, which includes a performance by Nico and the Velvet Underground, as well as an interview with one of the band's members, John Cale. A single interview conducted by John Jones of George Segal appears to have been copied by Seckler to prepare for her April 1966 interview of Segal.
Broadcast materials include sound recordings of television and radio broadcast programs taped off the air presumably by Seckler. Most programs are interviews, with subjects including Maxim Karolik, James Thomas Flexner, R. Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Alex Katz, Phillip Pearlstein, Roslyn Drexler, Barnet Newman, Saul Bellow, Ben Shahn, Marshall McLuhan, Isamu Noguchi, Andrew Wyeth, and William H Whyte. Other recordings include documentary programs related to contemporary art, book reviews, and a comedy performance with actor Peter Ustinov.
Photographs include 12 color slides from October of 1967 that appear to have been shot in Provincetown, Mass. Subjects include Dorothy Seckler and two other unidentified women.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in 3 series.
Series 1: Interviews with Artists, 1962-1976 (1 linear foot; Box 1)
Series 2: Broadcast Materials, 1962-1972 (0.8 linear feet; Boxes 2-3)
Series 3: Photographs, 1967 (1 folder; Box 3)
Biographical / Historical:
Dorothy Gees Seckler was an art historian, critic, journalist, and artist active in New York City and Provincetown, Mass. Born Dorothy Elizabeth Gees in Baltimore, MD in 1910, she completed the program in Advertising Design at Maryland Institute College of Art in 1931 and was awarded a traveling scholarship upon graduation, which she used to study in Europe. She later received a masters degree from Columbia University in Art History and Art Education, and worked during World War II as head of an illustration unit in the Army's Judge Advocate General's office.
After the war, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art as an art historian in the education office until 1950, when she began writing for ARTnews magazine, reviewing New York gallery shows for its "Gallery Notes" section, and exploring painters' processes in the "Paints a Picture" series. She later served as contributing editor for Art in America from the late 1950s through the late 1960s, where her published work included features on Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Nevelson, as well as broad surveys of contemporary art such as "A Folklore of the Banal" (Winter 1962) and "Audience is His Medium" (February 1963). She taught at New York University and City College of New York, and wrote a long essay on the history of the Provincetown's art colony, published in Art in America in 1959, and later updated for the catalog for the 1977 exhibition Provincetown Painters, 1890's - 1970's. Between 1962 and 1968, she conducted thirty oral history interviews for the Archives of American Art and served as one of its manuscript collectors.
Throughout her career as a writer and critic, Seckler painted and worked in collage, and her work was shown in several Provincetown galleries, and in the Provincetown Art Center and Museum. She married Jerome Seckler in 1937 and they had one son. Seckler received the American Federation of Arts Award for outstanding writing in the field of American Art in 1952. She died in 1994.
Related Materials:
Other related materials in the Archives' collections include several additional interviews conducted by Seckler for its oral history program, a full recording and transcript of the August 28, 1963 symposium on pop art, for which brief sound notes are found in this collection, and a transcript of the John Jones interview with George Segal in the John Jones interviews with artists collection, 1965 Oct. 5-1965 Nov. 12.
Separated Materials:
In 2012, several duplicates of recordings Seckler made for the Archives of American Art's oral history program were removed from the collection including: Peter and Riva Dechar (1965 and 1967), David von Schlegell (1967), Joan Mitchell (1965), Theresa Schwartz (1965), Paul Burlin (1962), Ibram Lassaw (1964), Jack Tworkov (1962), Allan Kaprow (1968), Edwin Dickinson (1962), Nathan Halper (1963), Louise Nevelson (1964-1965), Karl Knaths (1962), and Stephen Greene (1968). Joan Mitchell's 1965 oral history interview remains with the Seckler collection because reel 2 of this recording also contains a discussion of optical art that belongs in the Seckler collection. The oral history interview has been digitized and is available through the Archives' oral history program.
Provenance:
The bulk of the collection, including the interviews with the Provincetown artists, was donated 1995 by Don Seckler, son of Dorothy Seckler. The source of acquisition for the Seckler interviews with the Woodstock artists is unknown.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Art historians -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Alvin Ross and Dorothy Gees Seckler. Interview with Alvin Ross, 1974 August 22 through September 16. Dorothy Gees Seckler Collection of Sound Recordings Relating to Art and Artists, 1962-1976. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.