An interview with Allan Sekula conducted 2011 August 20-2012 February 14, by Mary Panzer, for the Archives of American Art at Sekula's studio and home in Los Angeles, California and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York.
Sekula speaks of his career and some of the mediums he works in; language and contemporary art; Roland Barthes; his relation to contemporary art; west coast conceptualism; genre switches; realism; documentary photography; Belgium and the industrial revolution; Meunier; minor figures; art history and marginalism; Roberto Matta; World War I; Homer Folks; Fish Story; historic cinema; economic factors of art shows and publication; galleries and the art world; growing up and his family; his father and moving; Ohio; his brothers and sisters; San Pedro; demographics of students at school; sports at school; Vietnam; protests; cross country and swimming; California; fishing; college; U.C. system; declaring a major; John Altoon; Ed Kienholz; exposure to art; visiting museums; Marcuse's classes; Baldessari's classes; course work and student life; student demonstrations; working in a library and exposure to books; father losing his job; science and working as a chemical technician; politics; his uncle committing suicide; moving away from his father; the draft; John Birch; Students for a Democratic Society; his mother; politics of his parents; Aerospace Folk Tales, autodidacts and scholarship; San Diego and Mexico; obtaining a camera and starting to use it; art school; CalArts; UCSD; Meditations on a Triptych; David Salle; Fred Lonidier; Phel Steinmetz; MFA and art training; poets; story of Allen Ginsberg and one of Sekula's sculptures; production and the audience; A Photograph is Worth a Thousand Questions, photography and the burden of tradition; pictorialism; moving to New York; Artforum; October; New York music scene; Captain Beefheart; Bo Diddley; Little Richard; Steichen and aerial photography; origins of October; New Criterion; Art Critic's Grant; teaching at Ohio State; television; technological historians; New York subway and getting a ticket for using French money; RISD lectures; Long Beach; photography; collages; Metro Pictures; New Topographics; School as a Factory; moral choice and the viewer; work method and the audience; Social Criticism and Art Practice; east and west coasts; Ed Ruscha; documentary; film, Los Angeles; cinema and social history; Ohio State Department of Photography and Cinema; Los Angeles Plays Itself; Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador; Ohio State campus, anti-Semitism; Ronald Reagan and protest; influences and colleagues; intellectual genealogy; Michael Graves and Ohio State architecture; Bad Ohio; tenure; University Exposed; AIDS issue of October; The Body and the Archive; making film; Korean War; collectors and images. Sekula also recalls Eleanor Antin, Jeff Wall, Terry Fox, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Paul Saltman, Marcuse, Baldessari, Sacvan Bercovitch, Stanley Miller, Jef Raskin, Paul Brach, David Antin, Howard Fried, Peter Van Riper, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Manny Farber, Ihab Hassan, Diane Wakoski, Jackson Mac Low, Martha Rosler, Lenny Neufeld, Joshua Neufeld, David Wing, Brian Connell, Max Kozloff, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Carole Conde, Karl Beveridge, Barry Rosens, Tom Crow, John Copeland, Harry Lunn, Hilton Kramer, Grace Mayer, Carol Duncan, Eva Cockroft, Richard Pommer, Rosalind Krauss, Sally Stein, Paddy Chayefsky, John Hanhardt, Mel Ramsden, Sarah Charlesworth, Jospeh Kosuth, Baruch Kirschenbaum, Robert Heinecken, Brian O'Doherty, Howard Becker, Jay Ruby, Jerry Liebling, Anna Wilkie, Ronald Feldman, John Gibson, David Ross, Britt Salvesen, Larry Sultan, Mike Mandel, Roy Ascott, Ilene Segalove, Paul Schimmel, DeeDee Halleck, Noel Burch, Joan Braderman, Woody Hayes, Thom Andersen, John Quigley, Ron Green, Kasper Koenig, Dan Graham, Jonathan Green, Christa Wolf, Catherine Lord, Ben Lifson, and Annette Michelson.
Biographical / Historical:
Allan Sekula (1951-2013) was a photographer, filmmaker, and writer, based at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. Mary Panzer (1955- ) is a historian from New York, New York.
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.
An interview of Sarah Edwards Charlesworth conducted 2011 November 2-9, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art at Charlesworth's home, in New York, New York.
Charlesworth speaks of growing up in Summit, New Jersey; her family members; her early decision to become an artist; her experiences in elementary, junior high, and high schools; attending Bradford College in Massachusetts; Douglas Huebler as an important professor and mentor; visiting her friend at Barnard College in New York City and being exposed to the art scene and museums; attending Barnard to finish her undergraduate degree; her college experience in NYC, meeting other artists, and visiting galleries in the 1960s and '70s; beginning to make money off of her photography; her relationship with Joseph Kosuth; the gender inequalities and dynamics in the art world and society and how it has changed; traveling to Europe; starting up The Fox magazine with Kosuth and others; participation in Artists' Movement for Cultural Change, other publications, and forums; continuing her education; her first shows in galleries; she discusses the series Modern History; the series Stills; the series Tabula Rasa; the series In-Photography; the multiple series Objects of Desire; the series Academy of Secrets; the series Renaissance paintings; meeting Amos Poe and getting married; having children and being a working artist at the same time; her teaching positions and experiences; her transition from "appropriated" images to her own photographic work; her process for creating works; her interest in the interpretation of visual language; her current work and lifestyle. Charlesworth also recalls Kiki Smith, Judy Hudson, Douglas Huebler, Carl Andre, Robert Rauschenberg Joseph Kosuth, Betsy Baker, Seth Siegelaub, Lawerance Weiner, Bob Barry, Barbara Novak prof, Roy Anderson, Meyer Shapiro, Fred Friendly, Amos Poe, Lisett Model, Lucy Lippard, Gian Enzo Sperone, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, Anthony McCall, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman, Jan Van (Vera) Cruz, Tony Shafrazi, Sara VanDerBeek, Pat Steir, Elizabeth Murray, Susan Sterling, Louis Grachos, Louise Lawler, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Sarah Edwards Charlesworth (1947- 2013) was a conceptual artist and photographer in New York, New York. Judith Olch Richards is a former executive director of iCI in New York, New York.
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.
Restrictions:
This transcript is open for research. Access to the entire recording is restricted. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Conceptual artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Photographers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
A compendium of interviews for a project created by Kit Schwartz consisting of responses by 45 artists to the statement "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones" and responses from 90 artists to the question "Describe yourself as a person." Materials include sound recordings and corresponding transcripts of each response in two scrapbooks. Participants include Carl Andre, Arman, Robert Arneson, Sarah Charlesworth, Dan Graham, Ray Johnson, Ivan Karp, Joseph Kosuth, Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, and others. Also included is a folder of background information on the project. The project was exhibited under the name "A New Portrait: A Semiographic Representation of Art During the Seventies" at the Marianne Deson Gallery, Ontario, Canada and the O.K. Harris Gallery, New York.
Biographical / Historical:
Kit Schwartz is a female author from Chicago, Illinois.
Provenance:
Transferred 2015 by Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery Library via Anne Evenhaugen, Librarian.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
Sarah Charlesworth, a retrospective / [organized by SITE Santa Fe ; curated by Louis Grachos and Susan Fisher Sterling ; with assistance from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego]
