An interview of Shirley Jaffe conducted 2010 Sept. 27 and 28, by Avis Berman, for the Archives of American Art's Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts project, at Jaffe's studio, in Paris, France.
Jaffe speaks of living with her family in Elizabeth, NJ and Brooklyn, NY; attending Abraham Lincoln High School, Parsons School of Design, Brooklyn College, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art; visiting the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Non-Objective Art (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), and The Museum of Modern Art; living on St. Mark's Place and in Brooklyn, NY ; her marriage in 1949 to Irving Jaffe; moving to Washington, DC and visiting The Philips Collection; moving to and adjusting to life in France; socializing with American artists in Paris, France; moving between New York and France; working and living in Berlin, Germany with a grant from the Ford Foundation; living independently in France; visiting the cathedrals and galleries in Italy; teaching undergraduate students; the evolution of her paintings and technique; her painting process and use of cellophane; painting on glass; murals; and her exhibitions and commissions. Jaffe also recalls Leon Friend, Morris Kantor, Pierre Bonnard, Karl Knaths, Max and Esther Gould, Jules Olitski, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Beauford Delaney, Sam Francis, Janice Biala, Hermine Tworkov Ford, Edwin Dickinson, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Kimber Smith, Jean Fournier, Al Held, Haywood Bill Rivers, Milton Glaser, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Shirley Jaffe (1923-2016) was an abstract painter and sculptor in Paris, France. Avis Berman (1949- ) is a scholar in New York, N.Y.
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.
Rights:
Transcript: Authorization to quote or reproduce for the purposes of publication requires written permission from Jerome Sternstein. Contact Reference Services for more information.
The papers of realist painter, Honoré Sharrer, measure 9.45 linear feet and 1.12 GB and date from circa 1920-2007. The collection documents Sharrer's career through biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, writings and notes, research and source files, printed and digital material, artwork, sketchbooks, and photographs of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, and artwork.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of realist painter, Honoré Sharrer, measure 9.45 linear feet and 1.12 GB and date from circa 1920-2007. The collection documents Sharrer's career through biographical material, personal and professional correspondence, writings and notes, research and source files, printed and digital material, artwork, sketchbooks, and photographs of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, and artwork.
Biographical material includes biographical notes and resumés, awards, paintbrushes used by Sharrer, and sales records, as well as comprehensive documentation, compiled 2004-2007 by her husband, Perez Zagorin, and her son, Adam Zagorin, of Sharrer's artwork in their possession. Included are digital images of Sharrer's artwork.
Correspondence is with family members including Sharrer's mother, Madeleine Sharrer, and her second husband, Reginald Poland; husband Perez Zagorin; son Adam Zagorin; and daughter-in-law, Mary Carpenter Also found is correspondence with artists including Peter Blume, Lester Burbank Bridaham, Gitta Caiserman-Roth, Kathy Calderwood, Mary Crutchfield, Betty Goodwin, Lincoln Kirstein, Mayumi Oda, and George Tooker. Other professional correspondents include galleries, museums, and other art institutions such as American Academy of Arts and Letters, Terry Dintenfass, Forum Gallery, Handmacher-Vogel, Inc., M. Knoedler & Co., Dorothy Miller relating to the 1946 Fourteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Women's Caucus for Art.
Writings and notes comprise drafts of several essays on art by Sharrer, preliminary notes for Tribute to the American Working People, and a mock-up for an unpublished book, "One White Christmas," written by Sharrer's grandmother, Honoré Sachs, and illustrated by Sharrer.
Research and source files consist of source material used throughout the course of Sharrer's career, including printed and photographic material used in the creation of Tribute to the American Working People, and later work dating up to, and including, the last decade of her life.
Printed material comprises announcements and catalogs for exhibitions and events featuring Sharrer, including a catalog for Fourteen Americans, as well as clippings about her and others, such as the Life Magazine cover story "Nineteen Young Americans."
Artwork and sketchbooks include studies for paintings and illustrations, and other preliminary sketches, as well as 14 sketchbooks of pencil and ink sketches dating from circa 1960s t0 2003.
Photographic material consists of photos of Sharrer, her family, friends, colleagues, exhibition installations, and houses. Also found are photos, negatives, and transparencies of Sharrer's artwork, as well as photos of artwork by Madeleine Sharrer and Lester Burbank Bridaham.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1941-2007 (0.44 linear feet; Boxes 1, 10, 1.12 GB; ER01-ER10)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1938-2006 (1.84 linear feet; Boxes 1-3, 10)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, circa 1940s-circa 1990s (5 folders; Boxes 3, 10)
Series 4: Research and Source Files, circa 1920s-2005 (3.43 linear feet; Boxes 3-6, 10-11)
Series 5: Printed Material, circa 1930s-2005 (0.85 linear feet; Boxes 6-7, 11, OV 13, OV 17)
Series 6: Artwork, 1941-circa 1990s (0.8 linear feet; Boxes 7, 11-12, OV 13
Series 7: Sketchbooks, 1960s-2003 (0.55 linear feet; Boxes 7, 12)
Series 8: Photographic Material, circa 1930s-circa 2000 (1.83 linear feet; Boxes 8-9, 12, OVs 13-16)
Biographical / Historical:
Realist painter Honoré Sharrer (1920-2009) lived and worked in New York, Massachusetts, London, Montreal and Charlottesville, Virginia. She was best known for her five-panel painting, Tribute to the American Working People, completed in 1951 and first shown at M. Knoedler & Co. in New York to wide critical acclaim.
Sharrer was born in 1920 in West Point, New York, where her father was an Army officer, and grew up in the United States, the Philippines, Paris, and La Jolla, California. She studied at the Yale University School of Art and the San Francisco Art Institute, and worked as a welder in shipyards in California and New Jersey during World War II. She moved to New York in the 1940s and lived subsequently in Amherst, Massachusetts, London, and Montreal.
Sharrer's Workers and Paintings (1943) was included in the landmark Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Fourteen Americans, in 1946, and her painting, Man at Fountain, was featured in the 1950 Life Magazine cover story, "Nineteen Young American Artists." Tribute to the American Working People, which depicted a factory worker surrounded by smaller scenes of ordinary life, was considered her masterwork, but in the years that followed it's unveiling at M. Knoedler & Co., Sharrer was noticeably absent from the art scene; between 1951 and 1969 she did not have a single solo exhibition. While many of her contemporaries immersed themselves in Abstract Expressionism, Sharrer continued to paint, in meticulous detail, the daily experiences of ordinary working people, and her later work often dealt with female perspectives and was imbued with humor and elements of magical realism.
In 2007 the Smithsonian American Art Museum held an exhibition titled Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's 'Tribute to the American Working People,' which was devoted exclusively to her most famous work, now in the Smithsonian's permanent collection, and the source material she used when painting it. Sharrer's works can also be found in the Metroplitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Sharrer settled in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the early 1990s. She was married to her second husband, historian Perez Zagorin, for 61 years, before her death in 2009. Her mother, Madeleine Sharrer, was also a painter who married Reginald Poland, Director of the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, following the death of Sharrer's father, Robert Allen Sharrer.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Perez Zagorin, 2007, January 17-18, and the Madeleine Sharrer papers, 1954-1988.
Provenance:
The Honoré Sharrer papers were donated in 2006 and 2007 by Perez Zagorin, Sharrer's husband. A small addition was donated by Adam Zagorin, Sharrer's son, in 2018.
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.
A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Accounting and Bookkeeping forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana
Scope and Contents:
Minimally covers the terminus of the wind-powered (sail) era and more fully documents the peak of the engine (steam) era of commercial cargo and passenger vesselsk, including freight and dockage services, maintenance and provisioning, ferry service, navigation (tug and tow) assistance, plus leisure cruising and touring. There is not a significant amount of material on battle or war ships. Includes both short distance routes such as lakes, rivers, and islets, and longer trans-oceanic crossings.
Documents within the collection consist of handbills, broadsides, leaflets, books, business cards, advertisements, insurance forms, wreck reports, passenger lists, baggage tags, freight manifests, rate cards, correspondence on letterhead stationery, booklets, newspaper clippings, postcards, menus, periodicals, manuals, photographs, engravings, woodcuts, sketches, bills of lading, receipts, catalogues, ledgers, journals, purchase orders, broadsides, brochures, custom forms, schedules, shipping and receiving documents, early steam guides, timetables, lithographs, announcements, etc. There are no navigational nautical maps. There is very little in the way of international import/export records. However, domestic and North American freight services are well-covered through invoices, bills of lading, manifests, and receipts for goods and services.
Some materials cover the history and development of steamships, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the iron screw replacing the wooden paddle steamer in the 1850s. The late 1860s brought the compound engine, which led to the steamship, previously used for the conveyance of mails and passengers, to compete with the sailing vessel in the carriage of cargo for long voyages. The 1870s brought improvements in accommodation for the passenger, with the midship saloon, conveniences in state-rooms, and covered access to smoke rooms and ladies cabins.
Ownership of specific lines and vessels was very fluid throughout shipping history, including the renaming of vessels. Mergers, dissolution, and absorption of fleets were frequent. Thus, researchers should independently seek out a more detailed history for any entity of particular interest.
The general maritime business series focuses on good and services related to maritime operations such as repair, shipbuilding, parts, ticket agents, chandlers, groceries, coal supply, dockage, wharfs/marinas, etc.
Operation records of named vessels contains primarily bills of lading and similar receipts for the movement of material goods or in-water services such as tow and tug assistance.
The largest series covering shipping lines and conglomerates offers a wide assortment of miscellaneous, nonexhaustive operation records for cargo and passenger lines and corporations, typically those with multiple holdings. These documents may include receipts, bills of lading, correspondence, and financial ledgers, plus promotional material for services and routes offered. Passenger sailings and luxury cruise documentation may contain menus, passenger lists, itineraries, shore excursion information, souveniers such as luggage tags, ticket stubs, and postcards. See also the subject category Menus, for additional examples of passenger and cruise ship menus.
When not associated with any of the above, general examples of materials related to the industry have been by arranged by their material type such as images, reports, and serial publications. More formal documentation, especially legal and reports, can be found here.
Narrative type materials related to lore, history, and building and design specifications have been sorted by subject. A scarce amount of material covers ships used for military service. Likewise, there are a few examples of maritime related material from the art world, mostly in the form of catalogues for exhibits or auction of paintings and scale models.
A note on vessel names: those used as contract carriers of mail and when in service, were entitled to unique prefix designations such as Royal Mail Ship (RMS.), otherwise, the ship name may be preceded by the more generic S.S. for single-screw steamer or steamship, SV for sailing vessel, PS for paddle steamer, RV for research vessel or similar type prefix. USS is the standard for the United States Navy commissioned ships while in commission, with HMS used for His/Her Majesty's Ship of the British Royal Navy.
Some of the major lines/companies represented in the collection include: American Line, American Steamship Company, Anchor Line, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, Cunard-Anchor Line, Cunard Line, Cunard Steam Ship Company, Limited, Cunard White Star Line, Eastern Steamship Lines, Furness, Withy & Company, Hamburg American Line (HAPAG) / Hamburg Amerika Linie, Holland America Line (N.A.S.M. / HAL), Inman Line, International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM), International Navigation Company, North German Lloyd (Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen), Panama Pacific Line, Peninsular and Oriental, Red Star Line, Royal Mail Steam Packet, U.S. Mail Steamship Company, United States Lines, White Star Line.
Arrangement:
Ships, Boats, and Vessels is arranged in three subseries.
Business Records and Marketing Material
General Maritime Businesses
Operation Records of Named Vessels
Shipping Lines/Conglomerates
Miscellaneous Business Records and Marketing Material
Genre
Keepsakes
Images
Ledger
Legal
News Clippings
Regulatory
Reports
Serial Publications
Stamps/Cigarette Cards
Associations and Societies
Images, Artwork, Racing, Technical Literature
Subject
Battleships, Warships
Destination Guides
Employment and Licensing
Insurance
Maritime History
Maritime Models and Art
Revue Generale Des Sciences
Warshaw Administrative Records
Related Materials:
Several other Warshaw Subject Categories may have closely related material such as Submarines and Transportation. For casual and recreational boating see Boats and Boating Equipment and Yachts. Other subject categories that may have related materials include: Canals, Dredging, Engines, Menus, Railroads (point of common transportation transfer), and Tours. .
Forms Part Of:
Forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
Missing Title
Series 1: Business Ephemera
Series 2: Other Collection Divisions
Series 3: Isadore Warshaw Personal Papers
Series 4: Photographic Reference Material
Provenance:
Steamboats [Ships, Boats, and Vessels] is a portion of the Business Ephemera Series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Accession AC0060 purchased from Isadore Warshaw in 1967. Warshaw continued to accumulate similar material until his death, which was donated in 1971 by his widow, Augusta. For a period after acquisition, related materials from other sources (of mixed provenance) were added to the collection so there may be content produced or published after Warshaw's death in 1969. This practice has since ceased.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Some items may be restricted due to fragile condition.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Ships, Boats, and Vessels, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
An interview of Sam Gilliam conducted 1984 Sept. 18, by Kenneth Young, for the Archives of American Art.
Gilliam speaks of his childhood in the South; discovering his talent and his early attraction to art; his education at the University of Louisville; how his philosophy of art developed; the influence of music; techniques and materials; early shows of his work; Washington artists he knew. He recalls Thomas Downing and Kenneth Noland.
Biographical / Historical:
Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) was a painter from Washington, D.C.
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:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Mostly photographs illustrating Leonard Karr's hunting and fishing activities in the Pacific Northwest; plus letters from Karr, photographs of his inventions, articles and other printed information, drawings and patterns for a kayak that Karr designed, clippings, scrapbooks, and albums. Personal materials relate to his personal life and his employment as a sign painter.
Scope and Contents:
The bulk of the collection consists of photographs illustrating in vivid detail Karr's hunting and fishing interests. The collection is approximately 3 cubic feet and contains photographs, correspondence, scrapbooks, albums and drawings and is divided into two series: Series 1: Sporting Materials and Series 2: Personal Materials. The collection is rich in photographic documentation of goose hunting and related sporting activities in the Pacific Northwest.
Series 1: Sporting Materials, 1930-1991
The first series illustrates Karr's interests in hunting and fishing and consists of photographs, decoy designs, correspondence, scrapbooks and albums. The photos are of particular value in documenting goose hunting and other outdoor activities in the Pacific Northwest. Also of interest to researchers are Karr's designs of his decoys, kayak, and a man-sized, goose-shaped hunting blind known as "Supergoose". Although most of the photographs are unidentified the bulk of the material seems to date from the mid 1930s through the early 1970s.
Series 2: Personal Materials, 1930-1995
This series contains photographs, correspondence, scrapbooks, albums, designs and drawing relating to Leonard Karr's personal life and his work as a sign painter. Of interest to students of advertising are the photos and scrapbooks that Karr maintained of signs that he worked on or found noteworthy. The majority of photographs are undated and unidentified, but presumably depict his family and friends.
Series 3: Motion Picture Film, 1951-1962
This series contains home movies related to goose hunting in the Pacific Northwest shot and edited by Karr between 1957-1962 with the exception of OF 762.1 which is a Castle Films production collected by Karr.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into two series.
Series 1: Sporting materials, 1930-1991
Series 2: Personal materials, 1934-1995
Series 3: Motion Picture Film, 1951-1962
Biographical / Historical:
Leonard Karr was born on December 25, 1913 in Yakima, Washington to John Ross Karr and Teakla Kohlman. He attended the Yakima district schools and graduated in 1931. Prior to World War II, Karr worked as a sign painter and designer for several sign companies in the Yakima area. During World War II Karr served in the military as a sign painter for the 216th Unit of the Army Air Force at Wendover Field in Utah. After the war he returned to private life as a sign painter and designer for the Sun Beem Neon Sign Company. He later moved to the Valley Neon Service and then in 1955 joined Dwinnel's Neon Central where he worked until his retirement in 1983. Mr. Karr was an ardent and successful fisherman and hunter, especially of geese. Karr designed a number of implements to assist in his hunting, including decoys, pit covers and a stake hole punch. In 1933 Karr designed and built his own kayak for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities. In 1954 he patented his 2-dimensional goose decoys (US 2,746,196) and marketed them to hunters in the American Northwest. Karr did not renew his patent after its initial term and after it expired his basic design was pirated. Karr died on March 13, 1995.
Related Materials:
The Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life), holds artifacts relating to Leonard Karr and his hunting activities in the Northwest, including a kayak with paddle and car roof rack, three flat metal decoys and stakes, and a three-dimensional, hollow, pit cover used for concealment during hunting.
Provenance:
The collection was donated to the National Museum of American History in February 2001 by Rayne Beaudoin, a hunting companion of Leonard Karr.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Roy De Forest, 2004 April 7-June 30. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of Roy De Forest conducted 2004 April 7-June 30, by Lynn Robert Matteson, for the Archives of American Art, in Port Costa, California.
De Forest speaks of an early interest in painting and drawing; acceptance to California School of Fine Arts; his time spent in San Francisco; working at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; studying and teaching at Junior College in Yakima, California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco State, and the University of California, Davis; his relationship with other artists including Allan Stone, Allan Frumkin, Jim Newman; gallery shows at Dilexi Gallery, King Ubu Gallery, Six Gallery; time spent in the army; teaching at San Quentin State Prison; his opinions on and influence of Abstract Expressionism in his work; the influence of Paolo Uccello, Guieseppe Acrimboldo, and Piet Mondrian in his work; having a traveling show through the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; West Coast versus East Coast artists; artists' interest in history of art; techniques in art; types of paint and motives of use, specifically between water-based paint over oil; paint technology; the durability of pieces as a result of using particular types of paint; art restoration; sculpture and frame constructions; the history of his casting period; pieces he was working on at the time of the interview; his work with tile and ceramics; his book, "Journey to the Canine Territory"; his period in scroll painting; references and iconography in his work and influences from previous artists, pieces, and periods; opinions on artists including Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, Cy Twombly, and Joan Brown; poetical influences and his poetic preferences; Surrealist elements in pieces; his use of animals in paintings; philosophical influences; the influences of technology such as television and computers; his printmaking career; scale and size in his pieces; painting "streaks"; the creation of characters and figures in his paintings; the influence of travel on his art; the nature and attitude of contemporary artists; modern architecture and museum spaces; architects including Frank Gehry and Richard Meier; his hobbies of model creation and woodworking; and his perception of himself. De Forest recalls Hassel Smith, Richard Crozier, Robert Duncan, John Guttman, George Adams, Robert Arneson, Lucian Pompili, John Humphrey, Peter Saul, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Interviewee Roy De Forest (1930-2007) was a painter and sculptor from Port Costa, California. Interviewer Lynn Robert Matteson (1939- ) is an art historian from Santa Barbara, California.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound discs and 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 10 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 17 min.
Microphone was not working during last session, 2004 June 30. Interview equipment was replaced with an analog recorder and the sound for the last forty-five minutes is not as clear as the rest of the interview. It is difficult to hear the interviewer during this session.
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:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Sam Gilliam, 1984 Sept. 18. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.