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Interviewee:
Novak, Barbara, 1929-  Search this
Interviewer:
McElhinney, James, 1952-  Search this
Subject:
Aaron, Dan  Search this
Bochner, Mel  Search this
Bosa, Louis  Search this
Coremans, Paul B.  Search this
Davis, Meredith (Meredith J)  Search this
Duchamp, Marcel  Search this
Feldman, Morton  Search this
Ferber, Linda S.  Search this
Goetzmann, William  Search this
Hayes, Bartlett H.  Search this
Held, Julius Samuel  Search this
Hesse, Eva  Search this
Hopper, Edward  Search this
Hutchinson, Peter A.  Search this
Icahn, Belle  Search this
Karolik, Maxim  Search this
Kaufman, William  Search this
Krasner, Lee  Search this
Lane, Fitz Henry  Search this
Lawrence, Marion  Search this
LeWitt, Sol  Search this
McCoy, Ann Wyeth  Search this
Melkoff, Edward  Search this
Nevins, Kate Lockwood  Search this
O'Doherty, Brian  Search this
Presser, Josef  Search this
Rauschenberg, Robert  Search this
Reff, Theodore  Search this
Rothko, Mark  Search this
Rowland, Ben  Search this
Scharf, William  Search this
Shapiro, Marge  Search this
Smithson, Robert  Search this
Watts, Marissa  Search this
Wyeth, Andrew  Search this
Art Students League (New York, N.Y.)  Search this
Barnard College  Search this
Brooklyn Museum  Search this
Harvard University  Search this
Type:
Interviews
Sound recordings
Place:
Europe -- description and travel
Utah -- Description and travel
Place of publication, production, or execution:
New York (State)
Physical Description:
4 Items, Sound recording: 4 sound files (4 hr., 26 min.), digital; 89 Pages, Transcript
General Note:
Originally recorded as 4 sound files. Duration is 4 hr., 26 min.
Access Note / Rights:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Summary:
An interview with Barbara Novak conducted 2013 October 8-17, by James McElhinney, for the Archvies of American Art, at Novak's home in Manhattan, New York.
Novak speaks of her early art training; learning to draw at the age of eight with help from her uncle William Kaufman and later taking art classes with Belle Icahn; Edward Melkoff; Joseph Presser; and classes at the Art Students League; becoming Expressionist in her painting; her year in Europe as a Fulbright student from Harvard University; the powerful lectures of Julius Held at Barnard College that launched her career; feeling that she devised a system by which works of art can be understood through looking closely at their physical properties and how she tries to develop the individual in her students; her time as a docent at the Brooklyn Museum in the American art collection; which led her to becoming an Americanist; her book, "Alice's Neck" and the inspiring Utah landscape; the importance of Fitz Henry Lane's work; the embodiment in American art of Pragmatism and Transcendentalism; and being led to Luminism; her books showing how to understand American culture through art, covering formal, contextual, and spiritual elements; hosting the first television show on art, "Vision of Art"; her husband Brian O'Doherty's background in art; the importance of nature for Cole and Durand; that common sense should be used in describing works of art, rather than assuming current events influenced the artist; her education at Harvard; Margaret Fuller and writing "The Margaret-Ghost"; Marcel Duchamp; Andrew Wyeth; Edward Hopper; Robert Rauschenberg; Mark Rothko; and Lee Krasner; and that the most exhilarating time intellectually for her was the 1960s with a group that included Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Peter Hutchinson, Morton Feldman, Mel Bochner, and others. Barbara also recalls Mrs. Nevins, William Scharf, Paul Cormans [ph], Marion Lawrence, Marge Shapiro, Maxim Karolick, William Goetzmann, Ann McCoy, Ben Rowland, Bart Hayes, Ted Reff, Dan Aaron, Louis Bosa, Linda Ferber, Meredith Davis, Marissa Watts, and others.
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Barbara Novak, 2013 October 8-17. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Additional Forms:
Transcript available online.
Biography Note:
Barbara Novak (1929- ) is an art historian in New York, New York. James McElhinney (1952- ) is a painter and educator in New York, New York.
Language Note:
English .
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art 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 administrators.
Location Note:
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
Topic:
Art -- Study and teaching  Search this
Art, American  Search this
Expressionism (Art)  Search this
Luminism (Art)  Search this
Pragmatism  Search this
Record number:
(DSI-AAA_CollID)16149
(DSI-AAA_SIRISBib)366142
AAA_collcode_novak13
Data Source:
Archives of American Art
EDAN-URL:
edanmdm:AAADCD_oh_366142