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 Robert Longo conducted 2009 January 30-31, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art, at Longo's studio, in New York.
Longo speaks of his Italian heritage, his family and growing up in Long Island, New York; the role magazines, television, and movies played in artistic inspiration; his dyslexia; his interest in sports and music in high school; moving to Denton, Texas to attend the University of North Texas before being expelled; moving back to New York and enrolling in Nassau Community College; traveling to Italy to study art history, where he discovered his desire to become an artist; attending Buffalo State University where he met Charlie Clough, Michael Zwack, and Cindy Sherman, with whom he created Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center; Robert Irwin, Sol LeWitt and Vito Acconci's involvement with Hallwalls; moving to New York City with Cindy Sherman to begin their careers as artists; working at The Kitchen and his performance pieces of the period; the child-like, punk, and corporate influences and the process of creating his "archetypical" Men in the Cities series; his relationship with Gretchen Bender; the formations of Metro Pictures gallery by Helene Winer and Janelle Reiring; the Combines, sculptures, music videos, and short films created in the 1980's and their mixed reception and mixed success in the difficult art market; his works cast in aluminum and metal; his first retrospective held at the LA County Museum of Art in 1989 and feeling lost in his own work; creating "bad art" in the process of attempting sobriety; black flag imagery and his success in Europe, which served as inspiration to move to Paris for several years; meeting his wife, Barbara Sukowa, a German actress; how having children changed his perspective and how they act as antennae to the world; his directorial role of the 1992 film, "Johnny Mnemonic"; and the slow progression, and continuity, of imagery in different bodies of work from the mid-1990's through the present, including the Magellan series (drawings of 366 different images), Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud's offices, and series of waves, bombs, roses, planets, sleeping babies, and sharks. Longo also recalls Leonora Fink, Phil Malkin, Rick Zucker, Les Krims, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Paul McMann, David Salle, Matt Mullican, Diane Shea, Alanna Heiss, Kasper Konig, Konrad Fischer, Brooke Alexander, Dominic Ranieri, William Gibson, Keanu Reeves, Emilio Mazzoli and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Longo (1953- ) is a painter and sculptor in New York, New York. Judith Olch Richards (1947- ) is former executive director of iCI in New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound discs. Reformatted in 2010 as 5 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 54 min.
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 Barbara Bloom conducted 2012 October-2013 January 31, by James McElhinney, for the Archives of American Art, at Bloom's home and studio, in New York, New York.
Bloom speaks of growing up in Brentwood, California; her first experience with art; her childhood and exposure to creativity; the influence of art and philosophy; going to museums as a kid; living in Monte Factor and then Los Angeles; her creative process, influences, and life as an artist; art mentors and art lessons with Cathy Herman; traveling with her family; her mom being an actress; attending Bennington College in Vermont, the 1960s, the and collage aesthetic; attending CalArt; the changes in art education at the university level; drugs use; Fluxus; John Cage and attending 4'33; living in Europe and specifically Netherlands, Germany, and Holland; books and love of reading; her daughter; the post-studio era; film and meta-movies; making "The Diamond Lane;" images and objects' connection to meanings; The Gaze; undressing the wall; Homage to Jean Seberg, Godard, Berlin; East Germany; being agnostic and Jewish; Venice Biennale; collectors; cycle of shows; MFA programs; The Tip of the Iceberg; surgeries; hospital visit, personal training, and recovery; The Seven Deadly Sins; her father; Tellus Magazine; Judaism; fabrications and drawings; archives; relationship between the artist and the viewer; her husband; 010011.net; recent show; and As It Were, So To Speak. Bloom also recalls Monte and Betty Factor, Ed Kienholz, Ron Kappe, Robbie Robe, Ray Kappe, Matt Mullican, Eric Orr, Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, Total: digital recordings; Claire Steinman, Rosemarie Trockel, Ash Grove, James Lee Byars, Frances Rey, Sidney Tillim, Norman O. Brown, Paul Cotton, Paul Brock, Buckminster Fuller, John Baldessari, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Serge Tcherepnin, Simone Forte, Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young, David Salle, Eric Fischl, Marcel Broodthaers, Susan Sontag, Tim Maul, Caroline Tisdale, Marcel Duchamp, Laura Mulvey, John Berger, Oscar Wilde, Ed Ruscha, Isabella Kacprzak, Octavio Paz, Leo Castelli, Allen Ruppersberg, Jay Gorney, Claudia Gould, Susan Bronstein, Donald Judd, Robert DuGrenier, Pistoletto, Anthony Coleman, Mel Bochner, and Ken Saylor.
Biographical / Historical:
Barbara Bloom (1951- ) is a photographer, designer, and installation artist in New York, New York. James McElhinney (1952- ) is an artist and professor 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.
Occupation:
Designers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Photographers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Installation artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Alex Katz theater & dance contributions by Charlie L. Reinhart with Laurence Hobgood, David Salle, Robert Storr, Jacqueline Terrassa, Jennifer Tipton, Diana Tuite
David Salle and Dodie Kazanjian. Interview with Barnaby Furnas and Interview with David Salle, 2006 June 22-23. Dodie Kazanjian papers, 1949-2017. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
David Salle : drawings : Gagosian Gallery, New York, March 26-April 25, 1992 ; Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, July 31-September 13, 1992 / text by R.H. Fuchs
