An interview of Sidney Gordin conducted 1965 Sept. 2, by Dorothy Seckler, for the Archives of American Art.
Gordin speaks of immigrating to the United States from Shanghai, China in 1922; being the class artist in grade school; attending Brooklyn Technical High School; studying at the WPA art school at the Brooklyn Museum for a summer; attending the Cooper Union School of Art; encountering Cubism; working as a commercial artist and making cartoons; teaching at the Pratt Institute; and alternating, as inspiration strikes, between painting and sculpture; and Constructivist philosophy. Gordin also mentions Ralph Rosenborg, Tom Eldred, Carol and Wallace Harrison, Edward Alden Jewell, Pablo Picasso, Byron Thomas, Morris Kantor, Hans Hofmann, Paul Clay, Jackson Pollock, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Sidney Gordin (1918-1996) was a sculptor and educator from Berkeley, Calif.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 1 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are 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 others.
Occupation:
Art teachers -- California -- Berkeley -- Interviews Search this
Photographs compiled by Frederick K. Morris documenting his travels in China, 1920-1923; Mongolia, 1922-1923; and Japan and Korea, 1923 and 1925. The photographs were made or collected by Frederick and Florence Morris in Shanghai, Yokohama (after an eathquake), Tianjin, Beijing, Zhangjiakou, Kyoto, Nara, Nikko, Seul, and Kaijo, as well as various villages. They depict scenery, cities, clothing, transportation (including rickshaws, boats, and animals), fishing, peddlers, tradesmen and craftsmen, students, Pei Yang University, the tomb of Confucius, ceremonies and festivals, agriculture, and tourist sites such as the Great Wall and palaces. The collection also includes photographs of the Morris family, their friends, and personnel of the Third Asiatic Expedition. A few newspaper clippings, postcard, sketches, and souvenirs are also in the albums.
Biographical/Historical note:
Dr. Frederick Kuhn Morris (1885-1962) was a geologist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He first visited China as a visiting professor at Pei Yang University (Bei yang shi fan xue tang) at Tianjin from 1920-1921. Joining the American Museum of Natural History's third Central Asiatic Expedition (circa 1925) as the expedition's geologist, Morris assisted expedition leader Roy Chapman Andrews to collect natural history specimens in Northern China and Mongolia.
