Ruth Fine Audio Transcript Invisible City Philadelphia
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Ruth Fine Audio Transcript Invisible City Philadelphia Sid: Today is July 24, 2015 and we're in the home of Ruth Fine. We are interviewing her for discovery grant from PEW Center for the Arts and Heritage. The grant is called Invisible City Philadelphia in the Vernacular Avant-Garde. You were born in Philadelphia, a native Philadelphian. What did your parents do? Ruth: My mother actually graduated from what was then the Industrial School of Art in 1935. My father on the other hand didn't graduate high school. He was enough of the feminists that in the early 30s wouldn't marry my mother until she graduated college. He was a furniture salesman. My mother painted all her life in she taught and she painted until she died at the age of 90. S: What neighborhood you live in? R: Initially I lived in Northern Liberties which is so trendy now. Then we moved to the Northeast and as an adult I lived in various places. S: Was there art in your home? R: There was art in my home and lots of visits to the museum. I started going to PCA at the age of 11 on Saturday mornings. It has been in the family for a long time. S: At that time it was the Philadelphia Museum School of Art? R: When I was in art school it had three names. It started out as the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, it changed to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and then changed to the Philadelphia College of Art. All during my four years which was from 1958 to 1962. S: Who were your teachers at that point? R: My freshman teachers included Aurelius Renzetti, who also taught my mother. He once said to me that he could have been my father. He sent me to the great Italian restaurants for my introduction to South Philly Italian food. Bill Perry and Lisa Langley were all three dimensional teachers. Bill Hag and Peter Pan co- taught a class when I was a freshman. George Bunker was my freshman printmaking teacher. He was the most influential person on me as a student. When I was a sophomore that was when general arts was started, up until then there is no fine arts major at the school. He was the most influential person. Edna Andrade was a sophomore teacher. Louis Finkelstein. In those days, and I don't think this is true today, all of the art history teachers were the studio people so Louis Finkelstein and Dennis Leon were probably the art history teachers. Natalie Carquet* just came back from the Fulbright and started teaching sculpture when I was a sophomore. She introduced me to Larry Day who later became my husband. In the interrim I took one painting class with him. S: You were a printmaker? R: I majored in printmaking because if you majored in painting as a junior you had to take two days of painting and one day of painting techniques. Whereas if you majored as a printmaker you didn't have to take three days of printmaking. You could take some days of printmaking and some painting. I wanted both. It has always been amusing to me that printmaking is thought of as a technical thing but it was because of painting techniques that I didn't take painting as a major. It was useful actually because fewer people took printmaking and so when I went to graduate school at Penn I was the only applicant for a fellowship so I got the graduate fellowship in printmaking. I helped set up the printmaking studio there. The school was tiny then. What was important about the school then was not who were your teachers because Paul King* was not my teacher but I got to know him. Doris Staffel was not my teacher but I got to know her. The school was small enough that you would walk through people's classes to get to your class. You just connected with them without having them as a teacher. In some ways that was one of the great things about the PCM. S: I can't imagine it being in the old building. R: Everything was in one building. The courtyard was not enclosed, it was an open meeting place it was fabulous. I loved every minute of it actually. It was an amazing experience. You didn't get to know only the people from your year, it in only get 10 people from your here, Mercedes Matter was my drawing teacher for two years. Ashley Bryan, who is in his 90's now and one of the great people of the world, lives in Maine was a teacher when I was a sophomore and senior. It was a fantastic place. I went to Skowhegan the summer of '61 and one of the interesting things was having this feeling of knowing students from all into the country and I really felt I was in the right place that there wasn't anything anyone said that made me want to be someplace else. S: During the time period of Matter and Finkelstein were at the school, he was writing for Art News. He wrote that essay on abstract impressionism and the abstract expressionist that were at PCA work were much more lyrical than the New York School. They were more nuance like Guston. R: Klein taught at PCA in the '50s. Larry and Klein were quite friendly. But Guston was the bigger influence and that was probably through Mercedes and Larry. His work I would say started out connected to de Kooning but at the end of the 50's when he was stopped being an abstract painter he was more connected to Guston. S: This is too early but in '52 and '54 Raymond Handler had a little gallery on Spruce Street. The gallery was basically his living room I think, but it showed San Francis' first show. Karel Appel's* first show in the United States. Shirley Jaffe's first show in the United States. He showed Pollock, Klein, and Guston. Most of the abstract expressionist including Doris Staffel and Bob Kaiser. Dubin Gallery another block away. R: At some point there was a de Kooning show at PCA because Larry always talked about the de Kooning show of drawings and they were just push pinned to the wall hundred dollars a drawing. I think Klein arranged for that. S: There was an issue of It Is, where they had a Philadelphia panel talking about abstract Expressionism. That was at the school. R: In '64 Duchamp was of course was at the school with Louise Bourgeois, Larry, and Theodore Stamos. It was a courtyard studio built in the middle where all kinds of events took place. S: That was the time period that Duchamp said in the future the artist will be underground. He was probably laughing because he was working on Étant Donnés at that time. Where you there for that lecture? R: Of course. S: At that time period the Duchamp's had come to the Philadelphia Museum. In '59 the Lebel* book had been printed. It was the first monograph on him. But he wasn't Duchamp like how Duchamp is today. For a long time the large glass was that the Dryer Collection in New Haven and the rest of the work was in Pasadena. R: But by the time I was a student it was here. S: He was somebody that people thought hadn't been doing work for a number of years. R: The Étant Donnés shifted that a lot. John's attention to Duchamp altered the attention that was given to Duchamp post Johns and Rauschenberg. S: Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn produces the Dada painters and poets. So that happens simultaneously with the Arensberg's collection coming here. Lebel publishes his book. Duchamp still hasn't had his retrospective and that doesn't happen till '64 in Pasadena. The work is there and Rauschenberg and John are were making pilgrimages to see the work. So when you were there hearing Duchamp was it like, wow there is Duchamp? R: Yes, it was like wow there is Duchamp. Art students were going to the museum. It wasn't until the Duchamp biography by Calvin Tompkins. I was asked at the gallery to interview Tompkins when it came out but I hadn't been to the Duchamp's room in awhile because I had been in Washington for 20 years. I was going up to meet Tompkins because I didn't want to interview him without meeting him and I never met him and I decided I would stop by the Philadelphia Museum. I realized I had grown up with that as ordinary. You go to the museum and see these strange objects which weren't straight because they were there. It was a remarkable place to have been so Duchamp was important here. S: I been asking artists and collectors about Duchamo and for other places and other historians they think of Duchamp's ideas but as an artist living in this city we have these objects. The objects are really, I mean they're the early Cubist things but then there are the large glass is cracked and it is made out of toothpaste and LimeWire. R: In those days the large glass didn't have a fence around it so you could really see it. It was a whole other experience. I don't think people realize what a difference it is to have the large glass with something keeping you away from it.