ORAL HISTORY of MARTYL LANGSDORF Interviewed by Betty

ORAL HISTORY OF MARTYL LANGSDORF

Interviewed by Betty J. Blum

This manuscript is hereby made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publication, are reserved to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries of The Art Institute of Chicago. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of The Art Institute of Chicago.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface iv

Outline of Topics vi

Oral History 1

Selected References 211

Curriculum Vitae 213

Index 215

iii

PREFACE

At the risk of repeating the often-quoted words of the eminent art historian H. W. Janson about Martyl's work, I do so because it expresses the distinctive path Martyl traveled during her long and multifaceted career. Janson wrote, "The house of modernity has many rooms. I am grateful that Martyl has chosen one toward the garden, rather than the overcrowded discotheque."

Martyl was born in St. Louis in 1917 into a family in the arts––her mother was a painter and her grandfather, father and her brother were photographers––she was "to the manner born." Martyl's youthful work attracted attention at which time she was acclaimed to be a child prodigy. This auspicious beginning has followed her throughout a long and individualistic career that has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards and honors. Today Martyl's work may be found in major museums, galleries, and corporations; and in important public and private collections.

During her career, at no time did Martyl seem to be troubled being a woman in, what was considered to be, a man's profession. Today, at 90 years old, with her abundant energy and probing creativity, Martyl continues to exhibit her work and recently opened an exhibition of watercolors at her downtown Chicago gallery. The story of the trajectory of Martyl's rich career, issues of the day, personalities she knew and events she experienced is what Martyl enthusiastically shares in her oral history. Because Martyl's career spans many decades, each one bringing its own distinct configuration, it is our hope that her first-hand account will shed new light on the many permutations in the history of art of the recent past.

To record Martyl's densely woven story of people, ideas and events we met in her studio in Schaumburg on November 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 2007. Surrounded by drawings and paintings indicative of the on-going diversity of Martyl's interests of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we recorded nine hours of her recollections on six ninety-minute cassettes. The transcription has been minimally edited to maintain the spirit, tone and flow of Martyl's original narrative and has been reviewed for accuracy and clarity by

both Martyl and me. Selected references that I found of particular interest about or by Martyl are appended to the narrative. Martyl's oral history is available for study in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art institute of Chicago as well as on Internet on The Art Institute of Chicago's web page.

I am grateful to Martyl for her complete cooperation throughout this project: for her willingness to give the time it took for me to look through her carefully compiled multi- volume scrapbooks and records, for her thoughtful reflection in addressing topics and her complete candor when speaking about sensitive moments in her career. Without doubt, Martyl tells it like it is!

Thanks go to our cooperative transcriber Susan Crapo, to Mary Woolever, Art and Architecture Archivist at The Art Institute of Chicago, for her good humored and thoughtful counsel, and to Jack Perry Brown, Director of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago, for funding this oral history.

Betty J. Blum July 2007

OUTLINE OF TOPICS

Family Background 1 Study at Provincetown with Hawthorne 6 Ste. Genevieve 12 During the Depression 16 Painting Murals 25 Back to School 30 Exhibitions 39 Evolution of Work 41 Study at the Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado 43 What I Learned From My Father and Others 47 More Exhibitions and Competitions 51 Picasso and Cezanne 54 Alex and Moving to Chicago 62 Museums and American Artists Exhibitions 74 Modern Art 85 Collectors 90, 99 At School with Tennessee Williams 97 The Harris Bank Affair 102 Arts International 111 A Fellow Traveler in the World of Science 114 The Doomsday Clock 120 The Political Atmosphere of the Day 127 Galleries and Chicago Artists 132 The Press and Critics 137 More About Collectors 143 The Schweikher-Langsdorf House 145 Travel 162 Music and Art Intersect 174 Darkness Into Light in Evanston 178

Teaching 186 On the Boards of … 193 Family: Issues and Gender 198 Reflections and Looking Ahead 207

vii

Martyl

Blum: Today is November 13th, 2006 and I am with Martyl, in her home and studio in Schaumburg. Martyl, you’ve been known to say that you think you were almost born to be a painter, and that you couldn’t think of doing anything else. You were ambitious, and you set the bar very high when you said, “I want to be one of the best women painters in the United States. In a male- dominated world, they expect women to do 'little anemic things'.” Your very long and ever-changing career was launched when you were only eleven years old. At that time, you were called a prodigy. You were recognized as an outstanding painter, not only regionally, but nationally and internationally. This was quite remarkable at a time when men were expected to do great art, and women were expected to do graceful and charming little things. This is the story that we’re here to record: your professional career blended with your personal life—your family: your husband and daughters. So, before we begin with questions, let’s set the record straight. Your name, you use one name.

Martyl: My name, my real first name is Martyl. M-A-R-T-Y-L.

Blum: That was your first name?

Martyl: That was my first name. It was invented by my mother, after my father who was named Martin. She made it up, she said.

Blum: Was this your birth name or a nickname?

Martyl: This is my real name. She apparently had thought it up before I was born, because she just loved the name.

Blum: Were you the first child?

Martyl: I was the first child, and my mother wanted a daughter, and so my name was always Martyl. And then she gave me another name, Suzanne. Her mother’s name was Susan, but she made me Suzanne, S-U-Z-A-double N-E. And my family name was Schweig, S-C-H-W-E-I-G. That’s it.

Blum: And you had a brother.

Martyl: I have a brother, Martin Jr.

Blum: So it's Martyl, Martin, and Martin Jr. And your mother's name?

Martyl: Aimee. Aimee.

Blum: Another bit of information that I have come across in the literature, that I believe is in error—and that is the year of your birth. Invariably, the literature says that you were born on March 16th, 1918.

Martyl: It was March 16th, 1917, to be perfectly accurate.

Blum: Why was this mistake…

Martyl: Because of the fudging of, perhaps, my mother, who was innumerate, the way I am.

Blum: You are…

Martyl: Innumerate. That’s a quality of numbers meaning absolutely zip. And also, I remember the Art Institute, when I had an exhibition there, they not only got the date wrong but the curator added on several years. Some people just get dates wrong. I mean there are all sorts of slips.

Blum: And the dates that are given, when they are wrong, are perpetuated.

Martyl: They can be. Now it’s even worse because of the electronics of the Internet, e- Bay, and all the misinformation that gets out. My name has proliferated into four names, in any order that it suits; and it’s a bit of confusion, when actually, I started out my career using one name.

Blum: One name: Martyl.

Martyl: Martyl, which I sign my works with, which I’ve always used to the irritant of the media, because they always ask, “What’s your other name? You have to have another name.” The press, particularly the print press, has to have another name. And that’s beleaguered me for a long time, even though there have been actresses, and all sorts of other people who have used one name. It’s common now. Nobody asks, “Who’s Madonna?” I used the one name so I could change my other names any time I pleased, and it wouldn’t be confusing. But you see what happens anyway, it follows you—the confusion. It’s part of our society.

Blum: Well, then for the record: you were born March 16th, 1917, in St. Louis. And St. Louis is a city that has had a difficult time giving you up when you moved to Chicago. Twenty years later it was amusing to me to read that they were still claiming you.

Martyl: Try forty, maybe fifty.

Blum: Whatever was published in St. Louis often said, “Our former St. Louisian.” It seems you were right when you said that you were predestined to be a painter. Your father was a photographer, and your mother, a painter.

Martyl: My grandfather was a photographer.

Blum: Oh. And your brother: a photographer.

Martyl: And his son.

Blum: In this atmosphere, how could you have considered another career?

Martyl: I did, briefly.

Blum: What was it?

Martyl: I was going to be the world’s greatest violinist. When I was three years old, I used to pick up sticks, and play with them as if it was a violin. And there were movies made of me when I was three, playing with sticks—which have deteriorated. But then I did study the violin and the piano. I was going to be a musician.

Blum: And when did you give that up?

Martyl: When I went to Provincetown, I was eleven, and decided that it was much more creative to be a painter than to repeat composers' music.

Blum: You were surrounded by such a strong heritage of the visual arts, especially photography. Did you ever consider photography as your career?

Martyl: Photography? No. I didn’t.

Blum: Did you ever watch your father at work?

Martyl: Maybe it was just too much photography around. I did have summer jobs with my father.

Blum: Doing what?

Martyl: He was a photographer well-known for lots of different disciplines, particularly weddings and children. And I think his studio photographed every prominent person in the city of St. Louis, from symphony director to CEOs.

Blum: Did you ever watch him work?

Martyl: Oh yes. I had a summer job with a Speed Graphic camera. That was the instrument that the press––that was the quick flash photo, the Speed Graphic. It was big and heavy, and it had a flash apparatus on it, like all press photographers. My father used to make a story of the wedding. He used a spiral-bound album to tell the whole story of a wedding; that was one of his innovations. It’s hard to believe some things start when they start, but he did. He made the whole story of the wedding: the bride, getting dressed, and the church—everything from the beginning to the cutting of the cake, to the couple leaving, the rice throwing, all that.

Blum: Wedding albums became very popular.

Martyl: It became very popular; and my father was the first to do that. He had something like twelve or fifteen weddings a day, in June for example. And so, I got a summer job, I think, I’m not sure whether it was one summer or two summers; but then I decided that I wouldn’t be a photographer. Never again! Because I had harrowing experiences, you know, the candid camera… You have to get the bride walking down the aisle, just at the right spot, to

take the picture. And it was nerve-wracking. And you know then I had to get on my knees outside, and get a picture of the bride in the car, and all that stuff; and it just seemed to me to be beyond the pale. But that was an experience. Sometimes the flash wouldn’t synchronize, and I didn’t know what to do with it, except hit or kick it. I did have that happen. I hit it against a radiator in the foyer of a church, and it worked, and I managed to click the shutter at the time the bride was coming down the aisle, having just been married. And so my big thing was: Don’t cut off the heads! I learned how not to do that.

Blum: And you gave up photography. After your career in photography, you gave it up to follow the path your mother had chosen.

Martyl: Yes. Gave it up.

Blum: What kind of work did your mother do?

Martyl: We started together, my mother and I.

Blum: Tell me about that.

Martyl: Well, she was interested in painting and she started out painting china, as all proper young ladies did. She was a china painter. And I had some of the plates, and my children have some of the beautiful plates—Art Deco, I guess.

Blum: That your mother painted?

Martyl: That she painted.

Blum: Then how did she go from china painting to Provincetown to study painting with Charles Hawthorne?

Martyl: Well that’s it, you know. I was born and then––there’s a lot of area I don’t know about. As a baby I just remember her painting at night when I would go to sleep. I don’t know what she was painting––copying things, or whatever. Maybe she got a commission or two; I don’t remember. However, she wanted to learn more, really how to paint. And so she went to the famous Cape Cod School of Art, which she heard about. I don’t know how she heard about it.

Blum: To study with Charles Hawthorne?

Martyl: With Charles Hawthorne, who formed the first art school, I’m told, on Cape Cod, in Provincetown.

Blum: Was this a year-round school or a summer school?

Martyl: It was just a summer school. And he was the last of, I would say, probably the nineteenth century master school of art, in the tradition of Robert Henri. He’s a very famous painter, and he was in every museum in the country. People came from as far as California, artists from New York who wanted to brighten up their color. He taught color, really, in the summer school.

Blum: How did you happen to go there?

Martyl: Well my mother decided to go there, and took me along. I didn’t know anything except that he was well-known, and quite a master; and the set-up was such that he was––I’ve never seen it since––a maestro, as well as a master. He had assistants. I’d never seen that, you know, any place before, nor anybody else. There was this huge Cape Cod-style building on the dunes, right by the ocean, in Provincetown. And artists, as I said, came from all over the country to study with him.

Blum: Did practicing artists come?

Martyl: Students and professional painters also, who wanted to learn about color. After all, I guess it was the residue of the Impressionists, in the progression of art, and freedom, and getting bright colors from nature, rather than things kind of grayed down, when you worked in the studio all winter. Most portrait painters have that problem. And so there were well-known artists in that class, from New York; and then there were artists, as I say, from California. And one of them I still remember particularly, one of the assistants of Hawthorne was so good-looking. I don’t know whatever happened to him, but I was so impressed with these two good-looking boys, who kept Hawthorne's palette clean, who kept his brushes clean. These were the assistants who stretched his canvasses; and I mean there must have been in that class at least a hundred.

Blum: A hundred students?

Martyl: At least, and from all over the country.

Blum: Did you paint mostly out-of-doors?

Martyl: Out-of-doors, in the sand, on the seashore, in Provincetown.

Blum: How did it work to learn alongside your mother?

Martyl: Alongside my mother, and all these other adults. I was the only child in the class.

Blum: How were you treated, being the only child?

Martyl: It seemed to be just fine. I was particularly well-treated because I didn’t have anything to forget. Whereas all the other artists had been in school, or were

professionals and they were there to, you know, to liven up their work, to learn a new way of looking at things. I didn’t know any other way to look at things, so I got all the good criticisms, which everybody wrote down. They wrote every word that Hawthorne said and they’ve been published in books. I contributed mine, which I apparently saved.

Blum: What did he say? What were some of the things you remember?

Martyl: Well I just did what he said. I followed his methods, so I did everything the way he wanted it to be.

Blum: He was a color specialist?

Martyl: Yes. The idea was to make a figure with solidity against a background of sun and sea. And that you didn’t see objects; you saw the shape of color. If you put the shape of the color you saw, it would form the object. So…

Blum: And you didn’t sketch it in?

Martyl: You didn’t draw anything in. You did the shape of the color. That stayed with me my whole life. You see things in color rather than linearly or in volume. When you put the shape of the color, and the nuances of the color, the shape comes. Well that’s what he taught. And at one point in my life, I resented it, because it seemed so impressionistic, you know. But then, the essence of it stayed with me, and so I learned about color.

Blum: Is it with you still?

Martyl: Yes. I would say so.

Blum: How do you remember Hawthorne as a person?

Martyl: He seemed old to me. I remember the school being on top of a dune. His school and studio had a loft; it was like a big barn, with the gray shingles that you see in New England. And the steps up were considerable, I mean really steep. Maybe it isn’t as steep as I thought, but it seemed really steep. And he had a little scotch terrier; and the scotch terrier would follow him up the steps, and appear in the door, where all the students were seated with bated breath. The dog came first, and then the master would appear. He seemed to me, of course, an old man, and of course, he wasn’t. But he died soon after, maybe three years after; he died at the age of fifty-eight.

Blum: You were there in 1930.

Martyl: I guess. If you say so.

Blum: And Hawthorne died late in that year.

Martyl: Well then it was probably that year. But I’m not sure that’s correct. I don’t know though. I told you I was innumerate. But at any rate, I remember he died, and also that he liked my mother a whole lot. The only time I ever saw him when he was with her, driving down Commercial Street, and waving to me. My mother was a very good-looking woman.

Blum: Was your mother his star student?

Martyl: I can’t say. I don’t know. He picked her out of all those people. And later years, I always wondered about that, but I never really knew what that was all about.

Blum: After Hawthorne died, Henry Hensche took over.

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: How did he approach your instruction?

Martyl: Well he became a friend, and he came to visit us in St. Louis, I remember. And he was the assistant to Hawthorne, and took it over, I think, until he died. I’m not sure when he died.

Blum: Did he bring anything new to your instruction?

Martyl: No.

Blum: Did he just follow Hawthorne’s…

Martyl: Yes, he carried on Hawthorne's method. He did a wonderful drawing of my mother. And I remember he stayed in my mother’s house. And this is––it’s so trivial, but it’s one of those childhood memories––I remember looking into the room where he was staying, and peeking into his closet, and he had shoetrees in his shoes.

Blum: Wooden shoetrees?

Martyl: Yes. And I was so impressed. Isn’t that stupid?

Blum: It’s curious, the things we remember.

Martyl: Well it’s just an observation. Pay attention: that’s my theme. I decided that was one of the most important things in life: paying attention.

Blum: What do you mean by that?

Martyl: Well it’s self-explanatory.

Blum: One of the things you did say––I think it’s related to Hawthorne and Provincetown––you said, “Painting is exhausting. You must be happy doing it. Don’t be afraid of color; draw by planes, not lines. Keep big spots of color apart.”

Martyl: I said this someplace?

Blum: You said, “Landscape must sing of the out-of-doors.”

Martyl: Yes, I think that’s true. Well, at least I’m consistent.

Blum: There’s been a lot written about how you and your mother took classes together, exhibited together, did things side-by-side.

Martyl: Is that what the press says? Yes. But we did not paint side-by-side.

Blum: You did not?

Martyl: No. We shared because we were quite different in many ways; and we were like best friends. And we looked like sisters for ever so long. Sometimes we passed as sisters, and sometimes, you know, it was fun. I guess I was born old, with rings under my eyes, and she was youthful. Something like that.

Blum: Well, we have pictures of you that disprove that.

Martyl: We did have a joint exhibition, but quite rarely. And we did go to Provincetown and spend summers; and then there were the Ste. Genevieve years. We were only side-by-side maybe physically, in the same studio, but…

Blum: How did Ste. Genevieve come into being?

Martyl: Well that came into being because the Depression came into being in the United States and the world, actually. And going and spending a summer in Provincetown and even getting there was costly. And that’s what I remember about the origins of Ste. Genevieve as an art colony. The painters who discovered it as a paintable place, were two Missouri artists, who found Ste. Genevieve intriguing. And they were also eastern painters: one was an artist named Bernard Peters, which I vaguely remember in my youth. He painted on the East Coast, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. And I don’t remember the others. I think one was Jesse Rickly, who was a St. Louis painter. She and my mother were friends, and they discovered the town of Ste. Genevieve. Since my mother knew everybody they brought her to see Ste. Genevieve, and… So artists went there because it was picturesque; it was a pocket edition of the looks of New Orleans, floods and all. The town was moved from being right on the Mississippi River to a mile inland. But the river followed them, from time to time. At any rate, so it was its paintable quality that designated Ste. Genevieve as a place for artists.

Blum: Was this art colony born out of necessity? Is that what you’re saying?

Martyl: Yes, I’m saying that. It was out of necessity. It was close by St. Louis in the Middle West and very accessible.

Blum: In a book about the Ste. Genevieve art colony it is written that in 1932 the art colony was founded by your mother and Jesse Rickly. How did the Ste. Genevieve art colony differ from Hawthorne's model in Provincetown?

Martyl: Well it differed in location: the lure of Cape Cod and the ocean; and at Ste. Genevieve, the Mississippi River and a picturesque town.

Blum: And the instruction?

Martyl: The instruction… I don’t quite remember what happened––my mother made the school important. And there was always controversy. When there’s something controversial and personal, it never is correct publishing personal things; and it was always left that people would ask me in later years, “Whatever happened?” Because it’s my mother that put the school on the map, because she brought in Tom—Thomas Hart Benton—and Fred Conway, and Joe Jones. All these people were her friends. There was a jealousy problem between my mother and Jesse Rickly. But it was Jesse Rickly who got all upset––you know, she was just a nice lady––and I never knew the details, except that I would hear she was insanely jealous of my mother. And the reasons were one of those things that happened with people that are charismatic: when one is, and one isn’t, it becomes difficult.

Blum: What this book said was that Jesse left because she was a free spirit, and she needed to move out.

Martyl: Well, that’s the nice way to put it.

Blum: Who were the instructors at Ste. Genevieve? Were there instructors?

Martyl: Let me see. The ones I remember—of course, Joe Jones was a very instrumental influence in my life. He started out as a personality in St. Louis. I think he was the son of a house painter, or he was a house painter, in East St. Louis; and he was a starving artist, so to speak. And so lots of people in St. Louis helped him out, by having him paint portraits, and by buying his paintings, and collecting clothes and things. And he was a very talented man; he was famous in St. Louis. He was very, very vital and outspoken; and left- wing, and proud of it. He was also good-looking. And so he was dominant. And he was head of the school at one time. And then Tom, Tom Benton came several times. The Bentons were friends of my parents, so we’d go to Kansas City and visit them. I have great recollections of the Bentons. Rita, the wife: very shrewd woman that took care of all of Tom Benton’s affairs, even after

he died. And they had two children. I remember one son was a musician and I think there was a daughter, but I don’t remember. I was too young. But both were influential in my life, in funny ways, particularly Tom Benton, who was such a character, and so full of fun and life. But he told me such rubbish frequently.

Blum: What do you mean, rubbish?

Martyl: Well, first thing he said, “Don’t ever go to Paris.”

Blum: Don’t ever go to Paris?

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: Why did he tell you that?

Martyl: You’ll be corrupted and you’ll be ruined. All the artists that go to Paris are influenced by whatever, and it’ll ruin you. Okay.

Blum: So you remembered that. Did you follow what he said?

Martyl: Well not until later. But I mean that was the sort of thing he said. And then he said—he was down on French painters. He was down on a lot of things; and he was always in the press, because he said these provocative things. One was to me that "This whole French art thing is just beyond…” He said, “You know this artist Raoul Dufy? Well that’s not his real name; he’s really an Irishman named Ralph Duffy.” Just a preposterous kind of thing. You know.

Blum: What was the basis of his antagonism to French art?

Martyl: It was disdain for Impressionism. He also had a disdain for museum directors. He called them "a bunch of thin wrist fairies." That’s all in the press

but I remember it quite well. One of his claims to fame was that he was always saying things like that, some of which were true—but half-truth, you know.

Blum: And you remembered some of what he said. Did it guide you?

Martyl: No, but Joe Jones did.

Blum: How did that happen?

Martyl: Tom Benton: I mean I liked him, I found him absolutely fascinating. And we went on all these activities, you know, I mean he loved the whole Ste. Genevieve experience. It was great fun. He played the guitar, and we’d go to bars in Ste. Genevieve. There was a huge marble quarry there in Ste. Genevieve. And we used to have picnics, and it was really hot, you know. In the St. Louis area, the Midwest went through a series of sizzling years. Weather’s changed somewhat now, but if they didn’t break a record for a hundred and eight degrees, you know, it wasn’t worth recording.

Blum: How did you get through the hot weather?

Martyl: So we would go to the marble quarry, where it was cooler. There’s some wonderful photographs of Tom Benton that I took in that marble quarry.

Blum: You said Joe Jones left a strong impression.

Martyl: Well he was younger than Benton, and he would urge me about going to New York. He was affiliated with the A.C.A. Gallery. And at that time in our history during the Depression…

Blum: You’re talking about the thirties.

Martyl: Yes, I’m talking about the Depression era, when I grew up. I had no personal idea of the Depression. That was the era when financial things were usually secret, kept from wives and children.

Blum: From families or women?

Martyl: Women. Well they never discussed such things. And so my life was just idyllic, you know, I went to Mary Institute, which is a private school. I’m sure it was a hardship, but it was never obvious to me. But Joe Jones, coming from poverty, so to speak, became very leftist, and joined the Communist party. He was proud of it and used to talk about it; which was a real bold thing to do for middle-class St. Louisians. Decades and decades later, it was Leonard Bernstein who coined, or somebody coined the phrase about him—what is it?—left-wing radical chic?

Blum: How did Joe Jones’ philosophy influence you?

Martyl: The influence was in the art world. He didn’t influence me politically, except that if you had any brain at all, you leaned toward the left at that time in history. You were a bubblehead if you didn’t have any social conscience. And most artists did, and most people I knew did. I would hear that over and over again in reminiscing. Even in Switzerland, where we would visit our friends, the Smithers, people would talk about that era. I met Louise Reiner in Vico Morcote, several times. She was an actress, and she was, I think, at one time married to––Waiting for Lefty, who was the author? [Clifford Odets]. That’s a play he wrote. He was a famous playwright, and he’s had a revival recently. She had several famous husbands; and we talked about that. She said that everybody that had any sense at all sympathized with the leftist cause, because the alternative was so terrible, which was the Nazis and Fascists, in Germany and Italy and Spain. So, you know, artists reflect, and are sensitive to things like that. So Joe Jones was provocative in that sense, but also my parents were socially conscious. They weren’t leftists at all, but

they were very sympathetic for poor people. And I can remember, in my youth, beggars would come to the back door—the kitchen door, and my grandmother always said, “Never turn away a hungry person.” And I would stand at the screen door and peek out at who was sitting there, you know. It would be a man. We’d give him coffee and bread and he'd sit on the back porch and eat.

Blum: Well St. Louis was a southern—almost a southern city.

Martyl: A borderline city. Missouri’s a borderline state.

Blum: Was that the custom?

Martyl: Still is.

Blum: Were they just poor people, or were they African-American poor people?

Martyl: They were poor people of every color: CEOs were as poor as working people. They were selling apples on the street. I mean anybody that didn’t live through the Depression simply can’t imagine, in our affluent age, that anything like that could happen. And I can remember another point, that I’m always called a WPA artist. That's an erroneous statement, because the WPA was created for artists who were sort of left out of the picture, when it came to just the working poor, artists are poor workers, too, but I mean the art, you know, separated them. And it was our government that decided to allocate the Works Progress Administration, the WPA. They swept, they cut, they made the parks, they planted trees, you know, they had this huge program that benefited the whole country. And so the artists were included; they were assigned to paint and those paintings were put in schools, and in public buildings. I was a supervisor, believe it or not, in St. Louis.

Blum: How old were you?

Martyl: I can’t remember. I must have been either just out of university or still in it.

Blum: You were pretty young to be a supervisor.

Martyl: I was young, but I already had a reputation, and that reputation comes from, I don’t know, probably my youth. It’s still a big deal. Youthful painters are much more exciting, and have potential than, you know, some old painter.

Blum: What did you do as a supervisor?

Martyl: I supervised all those WPA artists that had to be on time, and see what they were doing, and allocate where the paintings went, things like that. I had an office/studio. And I looked out of the window, there were queues on the street to get surplus food that the government gave out: potatoes and apples, and surplus whatever. I did some drawings of that, from out my window. There were black, white, every kind of poor person, with bushel baskets, anything to carry something in. I found out that when I was in St. Petersburg, on a recent trip to Russia, that during the Russian Revolution, during their dictatorship regime, people carried sacks and baskets all the time— anything—in case there was a queue, so they could get any kind of surplus. It didn’t matter what. That reminded me of the Depression days in St. Louis, where the hardship was so great and consumer goods were rare.

Blum: You talked about having a social conscience. Some of your paintings reflected that.

Martyl: They did. But that was in the air. I mean everybody—I say most artists drew things of that nature. And that was one of the things that Tom Benton did. Now that I remember, he did emphasize: “Paint what you know.” And so did Joe Jones. So, that precludes painting things you don’t know. I don’t know how to explain that, except that the things that you don’t know, that’s

realism. That’s a point of view that has to do with vision, instead of imagination. That would preclude imaginative, it would preclude a lot of artists, like Redon, and Miro, and all kinds of imaginative artists. At any rate, from the visual at that time, because of the hardships of the Depression, everybody suffered, including artists. Tom Benton painted many wheat fields, and farmers; and he did some allegories also, but he also used real people as models. And so I painted what I knew, which was around me; which were scenes of Ste. Genevieve.

Blum: Did you ever paint the men at your back door?

Martyl: No. I didn’t. I was too young for that. But later on, I did roam around the streets of St. Louis. I had an occasion recently to give a talk on landscape at the University of Missouri about landscape as history. I brought up this very subject of how artists do landscapes particularly, or cityscapes. I roamed around those old buildings, brick buildings in St. Louis, where all the poor blacks lived and I told the present citizens of this open audience that St. Louis was a very segregated city. Below Grand Avenue—everybody knew that street—the prejudice was so great; but the fact is, that it was as safe as could be. It always smelled of barbeque, outdoor cooking. I used to roam around those marvelous old buildings; and I did a lot of painting of those buildings, which are no longer there. That’s what I mean about being historic. It’s a record. And it turns out that the Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri has one of my paintings of that era. The St. Louis Public Library has one of those paintings. I didn’t know this. I always gave them cryptic titles, like Sun Valley, which was a well-known resort in Idaho. But this was slums, with the sun coming into this courtyard. I did figurative painting then too. So all these paintings are around, and they show that whole era of the Depression. Certainly I wasn’t the only painter that did that. But I think I succeeded better than most in a way that advanced my career more widely than just in St. Louis. I also have to add that whenever I had an exhibit, I had the support of the press. That’s very important to artists, because that’s the

only way they become known. And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch then was a great newspaper. It was a crusading newspaper; they were conscious of the arts and particularly because of Joe Pulitzer Jr., who was art conscious. So all of that sort of boosted my career.

Blum: Did you think that by painting scenes of injustice, or unfairness, or poverty you would, in some way, not only reflect the time, but maybe encourage the times to change?

[Tape 1: Side B]

Martyl: To a different life? It seemed to me that to point this out would be just a point of interest, and also it was what was around, everyplace. But of course the rich were not affected. One of the paradoxes that I recall is the fact that I always had a proclivity for selling my paintings. I never quite understood that, because the poor miner’s children, and the poor of all sorts of subjects, I recall, were bought by very wealthy people, and hung in their houses. I never understood that.

Blum: Paintings that you painted during the Depression?

Martyl: Yes. Executives at the May Company had my painting of poor miners’ children in their house. I was happy to sell the paintings, but I always thought it was strange that they wanted to have that subject matter. I have never yet figured it out.

Blum: Do you think the descendents of those families still have the paintings? I know you keep pretty good track of your paintings.

Martyl: Well, I have eighty-five percent tracked. I tried to make it a hundred percent, but it turns out not quite…

Blum: Well, eight-five is pretty good.

Martyl: But after many generations, anything can happen to paintings. They get auctioned, they get given, or they’re too big for the descendents. They get rid of them in all sorts of permutations of what happens to a painting. But it has a life of its own; and that’s really interesting, how they go from family to family appreciated, and end up someplace else, in some library, or some other collection. It’s a dynamic situation, which the modern age has provided.

Blum: Well, to do a provenance on some of your paintings would be an interesting project. At that time during the Depression years, there was a very important exhibition held in Chicago in 1933, 1934—the Century of Progress Exposition.

Martyl: That was the world’s fair, wasn’t it?

Blum: The Century of Progress, yes. Did you and your family come to Chicago, to go to the Century of Progress?

Martyl: Yes, we did come. I remember: it was one of those sizzling midwestern summers. It was hot as can be. But I remember coming with my brother and parents. I have vague recollections of a man that later became an amazing friendship. I found out the story about why that was such a successful fair.

Blum: Why was that?

Martyl: It had to do with color.

Blum: Will you explain that?

Martyl: Well, then there was a committee for the world’s fair, of which Robert Harshe, director of the Art Institute, was chairman of the committee, or a

member of the committee. I don’t know who the others were. But they decided where to have the fair and I’m sure there’s a record of it. I don’t remember. I didn’t know Chicago that well, to say exactly where it was. Where was the fair?

Blum: Well, it was on the lakefront, near where McCormick Place is now.

Martyl: It was Lake Shore south of the Loop. Yes. The 1893 fair was further south.

Blum: That’s correct. Near the Midway.

Martyl: Well the committee wanted vivid color; and they wanted to do it cheaply. And there was a student at the Art Institute named Ramon Shiva, who was a Spaniard from Santander. Mr. Harshe came to Ramon Shiva, and said, “Why don’t you bid for the fair?” Ramon trained as a chemist in Spain, was interested in art, and was studying painting at the Art Institute on a scholarship. He had a colorful career, which is too long for me to tell you now; but he told about the fact that he was making casein paint. That was unknown commercially. It’s subsequently, because of modern chemistry, now known as acrylic paint which everybody uses now. But then casein paint was a water-based paint that Ramon was able to mix up for people like Francis Chapin, another artist in Chicago. He bid on the color paint for the fair and won the contract for the whole fair. He had no building, no commercial way of producing color on a large scale but he managed to do it. He created the Shiva colors, as a consequence of that. But it started with the world’s fair, and that’s why I remember this fair for the color. It was Ramon Shiva’s colors that painted that fair, and made it so memorable. Because there never was anything that brilliant before and was that inexpensive.

Blum: So he was the person who supplied or designed the color; and he made it and sold it. Did he remain the manufacturer and seller of that product after the fair?

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: That’s where I’ve heard the Shiva name.

Martyl: Yes. It’s famous and was until another economic crisis came along in the annals of economic affairs, and the factory moved to the South. I don’t know where it is manufactured now.

Blum: Do you mean they moved to a southern state?

Martyl: Yes, because it was cheaper to manufacture in the South. But he created it here, on the North Side, the most marvelous oasis. I’m sure there’s records of Ramon Shiva, lots of stories about him.

Blum: Oh, I’m certain. Sure. How did you meet him?

Martyl: That’s a good question. Sometimes I don’t remember exactly where, people remember meeting me, and I’m always bewildered, can’t quite tell the circumstance. Julio de Diego introduced us and we became very close friends. Shiva built his dream palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we visited him there many times. We met other artists in Chicago before I moved to Chicago. There were two Chicago artists that won a mural award—and this is getting back to the WPA: differentiating from the PWA and the General Service Administration; those are things that most people get all mixed up, like my name.

Blum: The WPA is the Works Progress Administration. The PWA is…

Martyl: I don’t know. I think it is Public Works Administration. I can’t remember it exactly.

Blum: And GSA is the General Service Administration.

Martyl: Yes, General Service Administration. And it was the GSA that had to do with all the murals in these public buildings, the big projects.

Blum: With which agency did you have jobs?

Martyl: I had jobs with the Works Progress Administration, and Public Works Administration, and General Service Administration.

Blum: But you did some murals and were a supervisor.

Martyl: Way back. Oh, it was way before World War II.

Blum: But in 1940, you were not supervising; you were painting murals.

Martyl: Well that’s a five-year leap there. As you know, I went to college, to Washington University, and did a lot of stuff in between that, before the 1940s.

Blum: Well just to connect it in content to what you were talking about before. Where did you paint murals?

Martyl: Yes, in post offices and in a building in Washington, D.C. and in a high school. I did a mural in Clayton, Missouri, in a high school.

Blum: How did you get these jobs?

Martyl: General Service Administration had national competitions. Today they’re all appointed. I mean it’s all done by local agreements. But then it was done from Washington. The administrator was well-known to every artist; his name was Ed Rowan. And he was wonderful––I never met him personally,

that I recall––but you get to know a person through all the personal correspondence and it was remarkable. He sort of got to know you as an individual, and your family, and your kids, and your husband. It was quite remarkable for an agency administrator to do that. But he knew all the artists. Well, at any rate, the specifications went out to all artists nationwide and then I think it became more regional, for the buildings that were in that region, to attract the artists in those areas. And so then they were awarded by a jury. You would submit what you thought was appropriate for the building and then you got awarded the commission.

Blum: Do you mean you submitted sketches?

Martyl: You submit all that, yes, it was very circumspect…

Blum: Did you submit an essay describing the project?

Martyl: No. They gave you the specifications.

Blum: Did they tell you what the subject had to be?

Martyl: No, they didn’t tell the subject. But they told you the size, the place, the building, and how it should be done, the method, the process.

Blum: And then it was up to you to figure out content?

Martyl: Yes, to create the subject matter, the content, and how it was designed. The selection was based on what you were going to do. And so I was awarded the commission based on that.

Blum: Did the fact that you were a woman have anything to do with getting, or not getting, one of those jobs?

Martyl: I think it had absolutely nothing to do with it. And that’s because of my name. I only used Martyl.

Blum: Do you think you were taken for a man?

Martyl: Yes. And for decades I would get, when in doubt, Mr. Martyl.

Blum: Mr. Martyl.

Martyl: So they couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. And I just accepted that. It never occurred to me that there was anything to it. It was just funny, to get Mr. Martyl, because they couldn’t tell.

Blum: But now you understand it at a little deeper level.

Martyl: But when in doubt, it was always Mister, never Miss. And that’s an indication of the time.

Blum: Someone said your paintings were man-sized jobs. Man-sized: not woman- sized, but man-sized.

Martyl: Well there used to be one-man shows that everybody had.

Blum: What are they now?

Martyl: They’re called either one-artist shows, solo exhibitions, one-person––did I say that?––one-person show, one-artist show, solo show. The one-man show is gone, even for a man, I think. So we got even.

Blum: When you were doing mural commissions, in 1941, you said that murals were a real opportunity to bring art to many more people than you could with an easel painting in a private gallery.

Martyl: Quite true. Yes, I had a fantastic experience with these murals. I’m grateful to the government for that, for my learning process. I was awarded the Ste. Genevieve mural, because it turned out I had all those ties in Ste. Genevieve, as well their liking the subject that I chose. I was always very good at ideas, if I may say so.

Blum: What was the subject?

Martyl: Well, one of the things there was the Guignole, or the Guigonet, which was a French custom. It was a village group activity of celebration. And it derives from the French provinces. Ste. Genevieve, was a French town to start with, founded by the French-Canadians that came down the Mississippi, Father Marquette and Joliet—as they say Joliet [pronouncing the T], instead of Jolie- ay [with an A sound]. So that I thought that would be a proper subject. I mean it would be festive, and it’s one of the traditional things that they still do. It’s sort of revived. The mural made a big impression. But to me, the challenge was that I painted the mural in-place. Now a lot of the murals that the government specified dimensions for, were painted in the studio. Then you took it to the place and it was installed to their specifications. Hindsight shows––pretty terrible method––because they required white lead to be troweled on the wall to affix the canvas. Well I never troweled it myself, I always hired somebody. In fact, I hired somebody for an artist friend that did a mural in Clayton, Missouri, and as a favor, I had it installed for him in the Clayton Post Office. Well, getting back to the experience of doing it, the people never saw or knew what a mural was. They used to call it a "muriel,"

Blum: A muriel?

Martyl: A muriel. And everybody, the whole town was agog at an artist painting this big thing in their new post office. So, they, being the townspeople, got to learn a lot. And that was interesting for me, because I was there on a scaffold,

and my whole experience painting it was one of interaction with the people. I did it, I think, in the winter. I can’t remember exactly; but I remember being cold in the house that my mother had. We only used it in spring and summer and early fall; it wasn’t all-year-round, cause it was too cold. No central heat. We had a stove. And so, I would work late in the day. I would get up early, because I’m an early riser, but the post office was never open early enough for me. I can remember freezing to death in that house, and it never occurred to me to keep my clothes on. I thought of this later. How stupid can you be? I should have never undressed. You know, I’m so used to undressing and putting on nightclothes, but I could have avoided that freezing part.

Blum: You were a sheltered child.

Martyl: I was! I was always taught to make my bed too—to this day, unlike lots of artists.

Blum: There was a celebration not too long ago, in more recent years, for the restoration of the Ste. Genevieve mural.

Martyl: I restored that mural but, there again, maybe fifteen years ago now. A postmaster wanted a light over a desk for, you know, writing or stamping, or whatever, in the lobby. So to put in an overhead light he had to go through the mural. And I guess it was there for some time. I didn’t know about it, because I hadn’t been back in decades. Then the present postmaster wanted to spiff up his building, and got in touch with me through the government grapevine to come and restore it. And so we corresponded. He had the scaffolding made and everything. The light was taken out and I had the hole plastered. I matched the canvas, and painted over it, and restored the mural. And that was another experience because after all those years, people came back to watch me work. They were all old now. All the young people that watched it being painted years ago now were old. They came doddering in to see what I was doing.

Blum: That must have been a really exciting town event.

Martyl: Yes. Well, it was. It is really amazing how art can carry you in all sorts of situations. And so I went back rather recently, at the request of the historical society and to visit some friends. I did an oral history there, a video in the lobby of the post office. And I couldn’t believe what a good job I did, cause you couldn’t see where the hole was. And the hole was really big; it was something like eight inches in diameter. But that’s an example of vandalism in art, which is a whole subject in itself.

Blum: Well maybe it’s also an example of helping a lot of people understand art, and bringing it to them—as you said about murals.

Martyl: So that was a learning experience for them and for me, because it was a sociological thing. It was really fascinating.

Blum: May we go back to where we left off chronologically? You said you went to Mary Institute. Was that a girls’ school?

Martyl: A girls’ school, yes. It’s from K to 12.

Blum: Did you complete twelfth grade there?

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: Then you went to Washington University.

Martyl: Yes. The Mary Institute was named after Mary Eliot, not the Mary you’re thinking of.

Blum: And how did Mary Eliot connect to…

Martyl: She was the daughter of the William Greenleaf Eliots. Well the Eliots were connected with T.S. Eliot and the illustrious Eliot family from Boston and Harvard Divinity School. Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, the Unitarian minister, came to St.. Louis from Boston and was a founder of Washington University in 1854. Mary Institute was founded in 1859 and named that. In fact, I just came across a diploma, a series of diplomas, that I was told by Betty Blum not to throw away, and so I put it in a box. What do you do with old diplomas? And in it, it said Mary Institute and then it said Washington University underneath it.

Blum: Was it like the lab school at the University of Chicago?

Martyl: Something like that. It was a Latin school, a preparatory school for girls. Now it’s amalgamated with the St. Louis Country Day School for Boys. So you know, it’s together but separate. Now there’s a big play for separate schools, girls’ schools again.

Blum: When you were attending Mary Institute, did you have any art, or drawing classes?

Martyl: Yes. Yes, we did. They had craft jewelry making, and there was a wonderful character who was the art person: Miss Bribach. I still remember her, because she insisted, she told my mother that I should go to university, not an art school. I wanted to go to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts when I graduated. You know, like all teenagers I wanted to go away to school. I wanted to go but the elders prevailed.

Blum: And you went to Washington University.

Martyl: I went, yes. But I had experience in the art world already. When other kids went to camp, I went to summer art school. I studied sculpture under an old

world character named Victor Holm. And I took a summer course and then I decided I couldn’t be a sculptor or ceramicist because of the clay. You worked in clay, and then it was cast. There was no stone carving. And I didn’t find it pleasant. My hands got dried-up in clay. It was not a pleasant feeling. But I learned quite a lot from Victor Holm because he had a big sign on his studio wall—a two-story studio there, at Washington University.

Blum: What did it say?

Martyl: And it said, “Do not waste time, because that’s the stuff life is made of.”

Blum: Now, years later, you know the wisdom of his words.

Martyl: Yes. I have never forgotten that all these years.

Blum: Did you have any drawing instruction?

Martyl: Not really, not then. Subsequently I went to Colorado Springs, to the Fine Arts Center and studied drawing with Boardman Robinson. He was a great drawer.

Blum: To go back to Washington University for a minute, what was your degree in?

Martyl: History of Art and Archeology.

Blum: Archeology?

Martyl: That was the name of the course: History of Art and Archeology under George Mylonas, the archeologist who worked at Mycenae.

Blum: And that was your degree?

Martyl: But there were other History of Art instructors. So that was the degree. I didn’t do any archeology. It was only the study of discoveries, no archeology, no fieldwork, or anything like that.

Blum: Was this the time in your in your life, when you were a champion fencer?

Martyl: No, I learned fencing from my French professor at Mary Institute. We had fencing there.

Blum: And you were on the team?

Martyl: Yes. And I started there under Madame Jeanne Vical.

Blum: Did you ever think of taking up fencing seriously?

Martyl: To be a professional fencer? No. I just thought it was a neat sport. However, I did continue the sport several years after graduating because I got involved in it. I was a member of the women’s fencing team. I must have joined an organization of fencers, and there was a team, and I was in several tournaments. And there was a marvelous professional fencer, in saber and foil, as well. I think Magyar was his name, M-A-G-Y-A-R. Is that Hungarian? Anyway, he was quite a free spirit; and that kept me going in a flurry of fencing. I won a few medals that I never even wore on my pajamas at night when I went to bed!

Blum: That must have been very impressive. You mentioned earlier that you went to the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs. Was this while you were in college, or before? It was the summer of 1935.

Martyl: I was eighteen years old. I was a sophomore, I guess. I was out of high school when I was sixteen. I started early, that’s the reason for that. I started school

when I was three years old. I, apparently, was quite active and my mother–– this is an amusing, true story––if you want to hear it.

Blum: Yes, I do.

Martyl: There was no pre-school in that era. There wasn’t anything like that, I mean pre-school, or whatever is it called.

Blum: Pre-school? Nursery school?

Martyl: Nursery school didn’t exist. There was only kindergarten. And my mother discovered that since I was so active, I should be doing something. Her sister, my aunt, was a kindergarten teacher in the St. Louis public schools. She was a really, really good one. But I apparently needed more challenge. So, my mother knew about Principia. Principia is a Christian Science school in St. Louis. It was very well-known. And there is Principia College, in, I think Alton, Illinois. It’s in the––can’t remember what the name is of colleges that belong to a certain college circuit––but anyway, Principia had this pre-school before kindergarten. So my mother became an instant Christian Scientist.

Blum: So you could go there?

Martyl: So I could go there. They never knew this, I guess. Now they’ll know. I don’t know what she had to do to become a Christian Scientist, but I think she had to probably go to those testimonial Wednesdays. I have no idea what she did about that, because I just don’t. How would I know at three? So she became a Christian Scientist. And then after the first grade, well, I went there two years, two or three years; then she gave it up.

Blum: She did what she had to do.

Martyl: Yes. However the experience is so vivid in my mind: that school, and the room, and everything about it and even the teacher.

Blum: Did they allow you paints and crayons, and things to draw with?

Martyl: I guess. But they had a store. And everybody had to bring, you know, an empty food tin with a label on it from home. And they constructed a store, and everybody had to take their turns at being the cashier or, you know, selling the canned goods and whatever.

Blum: I’m surprised you didn’t turn out to be a merchant because that experience made such an impression.

Martyl: Those things were so vivid to me. And the sun coming in through the big arched glass doors, floor to ceiling, in this big sunny room. And the teacher, I see her in sepia.

Blum: Do you dream in color?

Martyl: I guess I do. But the thing is that she wore a lace collar that went all the way up to her jaw, and I thought it was nailed into her neck. Actually, there were, I guess, stays in the lace but I thought the lace was nailed in.

Blum: You have a remarkable visual memory and imagination.

Martyl: Yes, I guess so. She always wore a brown dress with her hair up. And then my father, being a photographer, had these fabulous life-size animals that he used to take photographs of children. And so I know he presented an elephant to the school, and some other big animals. I mean being a little kid, they seemed enormous, life-size; It wasn’t an elephant life-size, but it was really big.

Blum: Do you have other memories of those early years?

Martyl: They were very happy times. One of the things I remember that my mother brought home from the Christian Science church was a suede-covered book, a lovely book with gold all around it. It was sort of green suede, and it was embossed in gold, and said The Scriptures. You opened it up, and on India paper inside was “The Scriptures According to Mary Baker Eddy.” The arrogance was unbelievable. You know Mark Twain wrote about her in a devastating way. I tried to get the book out of a library once, and I think I read it after hearing about Mary Baker Eddy. Mark Twain called her a con- artist; she would be successful in any enterprise she entered into. And I tried to get that book, and it was hidden way back in the back of the library in the stacks.

Blum: You mean when you were young, or more recently?

Martyl: Sometime or other when I was still in St. Louis, I tried to get a hold of that book by Mark Twain. Well that’s my Christian Science story.

Blum: And your nursery school story.

Martyl: So I was ahead, you see. Then in a brief interim, I went to a brand new public school in St. Louis, in the West End, where all the good teachers went. We knew that because of my aunt. It was called the Hamilton School, and every well-known family sent their kid there because they had this fine nursery school. I’ll tell you something else that’s so recalcitrant and unbelievably archaic.

Blum: What is that?

Martyl: St. Louis public school teachers could not be married, and they were all women. That was a law. Ever hear anything so goofy in your life? That’s true.

Oh well, now that's the way it was in 1492. It was a long time ago. You know I started my first grade from the kindergarten after two years from Principia…

Blum: The year would have been 1920.

Martyl: Probably. Is that it? Yeah. I went to the Hamilton School. Hamilton was a new public school where the best teachers taught. And everybody from that class, of my class, went to either Mary Institute or John Boroughs School. It was a kind of a West End elitist public school, you know. Gosh, when you think of those times: most democratic and undemocratic––the dichotomy of Americans––you know they believe in public schools but they want private. They believe in public parks but they want them just for themselves. You wanted exclusivity, but you want everybody there as well.

Blum: There was a lot of contradiction.

Martyl: That’s the word: contradiction. I called it a dichotomy.

Blum: At what point in your schooling did you begin to favor art: drawing, sketching?

Martyl: Well I did a lot of art in school. I was the artist in Mary Institute. And I always drew.

Blum: What projects did you do?

Martyl: Well, whenever there was a poster, or any kind of anything, I was called on to do it. So, I would. I was an artist then, as one is in school, you know, because I could draw better than anyone else.

Blum: When you were eleven years old, you won an award for a competition.

Martyl: It was the St. Louis Museum. Yes. I came across the drawings. I must have gotten them when my mother died. She kept them, and she must have had them in her studio cause I came across them recently. And the old, tattered, gray paper that they gave out…

Blum: The drawings for which you had won an award?

Martyl: Yes. I’ll describe it: all the little children came on Saturday mornings, to study with Miss Powell, very grand lady who was the supervisor of education at the St. Louis Art Museum. She would decide on a masterpiece that she chose out of the collection of the museum. Then she would tell about it; and then you were given paper and pencil, and you would draw it, copy it. Which, on the face of it, sounds kind of unimaginative but actually it did two things: it familiarized you with the collection; and it also, in copying it, made you train your eye and your hand to go together. And I can remember my mother would take me to the Saturday class sometimes, and then she would look at what I was drawing and she’d say, “Well you didn’t get the thrust of that arm right,” things like that which was, in a way, very helpful. And in that way my mother was not really instructing, but, you know, just…

Blum: Helping you along.

Martyl: Helping along, things like that.

Blum: Was she a good critic?

Martyl: I think she was, yes, her whole life. We didn’t always agree in the later years, because sometimes, well, the way art has developed, sculpture off the pedestal, and painting not painting and things like that. She had a hard time accepting extremes.

Blum: How would you categorize her work?

Martyl: Well she was a wonderful figure painter, and she did a lot of portraits, which is a whole different thing.

Blum: Did you paint portraits?

Martyl: I did portraits too, when commissioned to do so.

Blum: If you look back at your work: I know that you spoke about a social protest in your subjects at one point, when you were at the Ste. Genevieve art colony. And I know you’re often cited as a landscapist. How would you categorize the evolution of your work?

Martyl: From figurative, you mean?

Blum: Yes, from or to figurative.

Martyl: Well that’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s hard to see one’s development objectively. I don’t know when it happened; it’s gradual, I think, to when I left out the figure because I did put it, I did do figurative things. I frequently had a figure in landscapes in those Ste. Genevieve days; but it was gradually disappearing as I recall now as we speak. I had an exhibition in New York at the instigation, the prodding I should say, of Joe Jones. Getting back to the Ste. Genevieve days, Joe wanted to push me to New York. He said, “That’s the only way you’re ever going to make it, is go to New York! So don’t think about staying in St. Louis.”

Blum: Were you in St. Louis at that time?

Martyl: Yes. And so, because of him, I could drive straight through from St. Louis to New York, without stopping. I did that any number of times. And I did go to

New York a lot. He told me he was with the A.C.A. Gallery then; and he said, “You’ve got to go, that’s a good place for you, Martyl.” He said, “They have a yearly competition; and you must enter that competition, because the award is a solo exhibition in New York.” So I did.

Blum: How old were you at that time?

Martyl: I was twenty-three when I had the show in New York. I’m pretty sure. Something like that, early twenties cause I was out of school. I just don’t think in terms of numbers, and what dates were what because I never ever look back. And when people ask me when, I say, “I haven’t a clue.”

Blum: Did Joe give you good advice, to go to New York?

Martyl: Well yes, it was. I won that competition and so I was at the A.C.A. Gallery for some years, and I got to know all the artists there. That was a great experience. That’s when that editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was written. Not many artists have an editorial written about them in a newspaper. That was sort of a send-off, and good luck as I recall. Something like that was written by the Post-Dispatch, for my first exhibition in New York.

Blum: You got very good coverage in the Post-Dispatch.

Martyl: Well, that show had a lot of social commentary. I remember many people bought those paintings. And that’s one of the reasons that my story appeared in Newsweek because I think the exhibition almost sold out. The subject matter reflected grim times; and I think the color from Hawthorne didn’t show up very much in that exhibition. It was all very somber, as I recall, somber subjects, which were just up the alley for the A.C.A Gallery. They had marvelous artists, and I got to know them when I went to New York; people like Philip Evergood, and David Burliuk, Robert Gwathmey, and who else?

That sculptor, oh gosh, I’ll think of it in a minute. [Chaim Gross] There was a whole bunch of wonderful artists; they came to my exhibitions and I got to know them.

[Tape 2: Side A]

Blum: Martyl, you said you wanted to say more about the evolution of your work.

Martyl: I was thinking about how much drawing I did. I was so motivated to draw everything that I saw. And I still keep looking out the window. I mean it seems like looking out the window is terribly important. And I always did that, certainly in the present time, the present decades more than ever. But before I left St. Louis, I used to walk around all the streets in the poor areas with interesting people. Remember it was during the Depression and that lasted five years, at least five years, so that was enough to get people really down and somber, and unhappy. And that whole atmosphere was one in which you couldn’t help but notice the people. So my visual and mental consciousness of what was happening was sharpened. I was quite aware of, and I paid attention to it. So that I used to just go out on my own in St. Louis, and draw. And then I would go further than that. I remember going on sketch trips by myself in southwest Missouri. I think this was all influenced by Benton, and Jones because they emphasized to me how important it was to paint the things around you, and the things you know, and that kind of thing. They influenced me then and so I did that. And I went off on a trip to southwestern Missouri, where I’d never been before, in the corner of Missouri, which is all hard-scrabble land where people live in "hollers."

Blum: In what?

Martyl: Hollers. H-O-L-L-E-R. Instead of hollow, they’re called hollers. They’re these hills, and then there’d be somebody living behind each hill; and then there’d be another hill. I read about a woman and her family who lived in one of

these hollers in southwest Missouri, and I drove there. I wanted to draw the place and the people, which I did. When I think about it, I don’t know how I ever did that. I saved one of the drawings just because it was so historic.

Blum: Did you make a painting later after the sketch?

Martyl: I made a drawing right then.

Blum: You did a drawing on the spot.

Martyl: Yes. I used to do that quite a lot, I think, still do it. But this was of people, see, it was of people and not so much the landscape. But I went there to draw the people, the woman had eighteen children, and their name was Lee. I’ve never forgotten that. I went there and I found the farm and Mr. Lee was there. The state of Missouri had to—or the county had to build a whole school just for that family. There were seventeen…

Blum: Because there were so many children?

Martyl: Yes. And so when I got there, Mrs. Lee was out cutting railroad ties but the husband was home. And they had built their own cabin, and all the children lived there. So I drew a picture of him holding his youngest son, which I have still. I said, “What is his name?” And he said, “Rocky Joe.” I said, “Well why would you name him that?” He said, “Because the soil is so rocky.” He built the cabin; but he’s the one that looked as if he had eighteen children; because the wife came at noontime, over the hill, and she was a replica of my physical education teacher at Mary Institute. She was incredible! I couldn’t get over it. Anyway, I drew a picture of Lee holding his little baby.

Blum: Did any of these drawings ever become paintings or did you use it as subject matter for a painting?

Martyl: Yes, but I just drew them. She insisted that I stay for an opossum lunch, but I begged off. That’s what they were going to have––opossum stew. But that was quite an experience. I was able to draw people like that, quite rapidly. I’m not sure I would do it today.

Blum: And the condition of the people, in their lives?

Martyl: Yes. Then I even drew all sorts of things around the city, the farms, and the rural life, and farmers making hay, and cutting their wheat, and all that.

Blum: Was this subject matter what you painted, as well, but not necessarily from these drawings?

Martyl: Yes, I did paint some.

Blum: Focusing on the condition of people at the time?

Martyl: I did some of that. Then I did even more when I went to Colorado. I remember it was my last year of college at the university and I drove to California with my grandmother, who wanted to visit her brother. We rented an apartment in Los Angeles and I was there for two months. But I drove across the country with her. I went via Colorado Springs, where I saw, I thought, the most beautiful art center I’d ever seen in my life; which now is, of course, a famous Art Deco building, designed by John Gaw Meem. It’s still a gorgeous building. It was an art center, and it was well-known at the time, because of the eastern artists that were there. The director was Boardman Robinson. The other half of the art center was a museum, which is called the Taylor Museum of Art. It had an enormous collection of American Indian art.

Blum: Was it on this trip when you…

Martyl: Well I said: I have to go back there, because it’s too wonderful.

Blum: And you went back as a student?

Martyl: Then I went back as a student, to study drawing, and to be there for the summer. And then, when I returned again I went all around the state of Colorado, drawing the ghost towns. I was in Aspen before Walter Paepke ever heard of it. It was a ghost town. And I went there with other artists that are quite well-known––American artists from the East. There was Doris Lee, and Arnold Blanch, Fred Shane, Boardman Robinson, and who else? David Friedenthal, Adolf Dehn. Those were all well-known artists then; some of them have gone into obscurity.

Blum: Were they there as instructors?

Martyl: Yes. They were there as instructors and assistants, and it drew people from all over, as well. It was a marvelous place. So, then the next year I was invited back to be an assistant instructor, because I was so good, I guess. I worked harder than the others. And apparently, I went back years and years later, and they still remembered how I used to get up at five in the morning and go out to the Garden of the Gods, and walk into the mountains, and draw and paint before anybody ever got up. Artists have a tendency to sleep late, most of them. So I did a day’s work before anybody got started. Apparently I made a big reputation doing this out there, because they told me about it many years later.

Blum: When you went to the art center in Colorado Springs, was there any new influence on your work, as a result of being there?

Martyl: I think a lot, yes. I learned a lot about drawing. But drawing is mostly doing it; it’s the viewpoint somehow that you get from other artists. One of the things that I think was intuitive with me, was always to select something that

had some drama connected with it, and that was reinforced when I was in Colorado Springs. I mean you just don’t choose a mountain, and draw it. I mean there has to be some reason for me to choose the subject matter; and then the choice would have something unusual about it. In other words, not to repeat what we would call today a cliché. So I always found it fascinating to look and look and look, and spend all kinds of time until something would just ring a bell, and I would know how to rearrange nature to make a good composition. Those are things that come: some of it intuitively, and others you train your eye to notice, to pay attention, and move nature around. And that’s one of the great fascinations and challenges of being an artist. You can move mountains!

Blum: In this setting, was nature the inspiration for much of what you did?

Martyl: Yes. I think that’s one of the sources. Absolutely. So that could be perhaps the transition: nature superseded, people gradually receding. I did draw miners and cowboys. I used to go up in the mountains. Today it would be unthinkable. I roamed around as a single girl, up in the mining areas of Colorado, and drew miners, who were always very friendly. I did a whole series of miners in their miner’s hats, and would talk to them. I did poor children in tatters in the villages. And then I went on sketch trips with Doris Lee; and Adolph Dehn was also a good friend. He’s a New Yorker, a well- known watercolorist. We had good times together. We’d go on sketch trips. Arnold Blanch and Adolph Dehn were great fly fishermen, so I’d go with them. I’m not a fisherperson, but that was their excuse, so I would go up into the mountains, and the lakes and rivers of Colorado. I’ve been all over the state of Colorado, drawing.

Blum: What was Doris Lee like?

Martyl: Oh Doris was great fun. She turned out to be a close friend; and visited me and Alex in Chicago several times.

Blum: At the Art Institute, we have her painting, Thanksgiving, which is very timely right now as we approach the holiday.

Martyl: She was great, great fun. She was crazy about my husband, everybody was. And as a matter of fact, he gave a lecture at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center on science and art. They invited him to do this. They were really impressed, and in some awe of him, because he was on the cutting edge of nuclear physics then and they were interested and fascinated.

Blum: One of the things that I have read was that Arnold Blanch taught you how to mix tempera and oil, to give a luminosity to the work.

Martyl: Yes, that was a technique called mixed media then. Mixed media now can mean anything. But then, it meant mixing oil and water, which is a trick.

Blum: How do you do it?

Martyl: It was a technique that was taught there. I don’t really use oil paint at all anymore but, as I mentioned, Shiva had developed the casein paint, casein meaning a milk product, you know. Egg tempera is an egg product. But casein is an emulsion made from milk. And so then, the technique was to start with a thin water-based casein. Oil is fat medium and the other is lean and you don’t mix the two. You never put the lean over the fat. You have to learn how to do that. You do the lean paint, the casein or the tempera or the water paint, and you put the oil, as a glaze, over that, but never the other way around. Otherwise, the expansion would crack it all. So, it was a technique that was taught there, and I learned to do that and I did it for a while with Damar varnishes as a glaze. I stopped the oil painting. It’s toxic, and it also darkens. That’s one of the things about oil painting. So that’s why Rembrandt is much darker today than he was originally. All oil painting darkens over time.

Blum: Permanently? Or can it be restored?

Martyl: It cannot be restored. It oxidizes. But tempera paint, whether it’s casein or egg, from medieval times, it’s as bright as the day it was painted. You can see that in any museum. Acrylic paint was developed, which was a new polymer. It came from World War II from the development of scientific products in material science. I switched to acrylic paint then, because it never changes in color, and it’s non-toxic, and it’s water-soluble. So I’m one of the early painters––the mural I painted in the Evanston church was the largest–– that was in early 1960s. That’s all acrylic. I bought it in huge quantities. The Liquitex Corporation should have given me a lifetime supply for how much I publicized their product.

Blum: You have said that the photography of your father, and working for him and just being aware sharpened your visual… You said, “He taught me how to see.”

Martyl: Well, I guess he did it by osmosis. I mean it was just there. I was always intrigued with the set-ups they had. He had this very large studio that his father, my grandfather, had built in St. Louis, which was an Art Deco building. Unfortunately, before the conservation movement gathered any momentum, or even was thought of, that building was mutilated. But I believe the architectural plans were saved, and are in the Missouri Historical Society. But the building is, I think, gone by now. I can’t say. But it was a magnificent building. The tile above it, I remember it said "Art Nouveau" written into the tiling at the top of the façade of the building. I paid attention to that, because it’s very vivid in my mind––that wonderful oak balustrade that went to the second floor where the big studio was, was in the form of arrows carved in the wood, for example. The tiling and the marble, and the balconies, it was all Art Deco. Well that was the studio. And then I remember the scenic backdrops. And of course, my father photographed me all the time.

They had all sorts of things, children’s toys; all of that was part of my heritage, I’d guess you’d say, from childhood. And there’s an amusing photograph of me in a bathing suit, when I was three years old, sitting on a stump in the middle of the ocean. I mean it’s one of my… it’s in the family someplace, it was enlarged… Oh goodness. But they had all these kinds of backgrounds. And my father’s father was a very fine technician, and a photographer, a well-known photographer in St. Louis brought him from Germany, way back at 1900, maybe 1898 or something, before that perhaps. I really should look up the date, I’m not sure; but it’s in the 1800s. Because he was such a marvelous etcher of glass, you had glass plates then, and everything was etched. So I think this photograph when I was on a stump, and I think the etching on glass was the ocean in the background. It was an incongruity, but still and all, that’s the way they did it then.

Blum: In later years, was your family’s photography studio run like Stieglitz's photography studio?

Martyl: This was a very successful commercial studio. The museumification of photography came in the last couple of decades. That’s a recent phenomenon.

Blum: How did that affect your father and brother’s studio?

Martyl: It was a very successful commercial studio. They did weddings and children, and portraits. It was a business, but they were artful in doing it. I mean they were the best there was. So my father, being of a German family, he was the eldest son, and the eldest son of a German father does what the German father says. They were all like Kaisers. Well that’s what I remember, being antithetical to a free spirit. My father really wanted to be a doctor, and taught himself Latin and Greek.

Blum: That’s impressive.

Martyl: But his father said he had to be a photographer, because his father had made this successful business. There was one brother that rebelled, and went into business and made a whole lot of money. So he refused to do what his father said. But that was a younger brother. So you know, my heritage is certainly one of visual and skillful pursuits.

Blum: And you were certainly on both sides of the camera.

Martyl: Yes. Oh yes. Well you know a first-born, such as I was, was photographed every week, according to my brother. Never saw so many negatives of me, as a child.

Blum: In your environment, considering the visual training that you either absorbed naturally, or actually were formally instructed, combined with Hawthorne's and Arnold Blanch’s input, were you…

Martyl: And Boardman Robinson, because I learned a lot about drawing from him. Even though I thought I knew how to draw, but you know, I learned from Matisse, his own drawings, but not himself, you know. I mean one pays attention.

Blum: Did you ever go through a time when you copied? I know as a child, you said you copied in school. But was that part of your training?

Martyl: No. None. No, just the opposite actually. I mean this is part of finding something that was unique; it was being original. If you don’t have something unusual to say, nobody’s going to listen. You just keep repeating the same stupid stuff all the time.

Blum: Do you think with all the input from these various sources: schools and individuals; were you adequately prepared for your career?

Martyl: Well I never thought of it as having a career, I mean it’s just what I did. It was my life. I couldn’t think of doing anything else. My husband was the same way too. When you think of young people today, sometimes they can’t find what to do. I knew what I was going to do, and so did my husband. He knew he was going to be in science. There wasn’t any question.

Blum: And you had all this support from your family.

Martyl: To begin with the support, that’s terribly important to have a cultured family that has high standards. That’s terribly important. And the encouragement not only of your family, of the parents, but the community, that gives support. I mean when I look back, I think you just can do the best you know how, and then when people appreciate it, it’s encouraging; and so it’s accumulative. But even with all the training, and all the observations, and all the heritage and you’d think you can’t miss. You can really know how to draw and paint, but it doesn’t work that way. Every single thing to this day is a struggle to do it right. There’s no formula. There’s just no formula. It’s just amazing.

Blum: When you did launch your career? After having been to Colorado Springs, after receiving your degree from Washington University, did you have a master plan? What did you think you had to do to achieve success?

Martyl: Things always came along. I never thought of it that way. As I said, each single thing I would do––not singly, but I did multiple things at the same time, several pictures at the same time and drawing all simultaneously–– along with living, social life, and so on; it gets complicated, so I never really thought quote, unquote, career. I just lived my life, and that’s the way it went. And something always came up. I always had a project. Also, I don’t know where we are in this chronology, but I did a lot of traveling, it turns out. And travel with my husband, I have not introduced yet.

Blum: Chronologically, we haven’t married you off yet but we're getting there.

Martyl: That’s right. I’m getting ahead.

Blum: One of the things you did do was have more than one painting in the 1939 World's Fair art exhibition. How did that occur?

Martyl: Well, in those days, the art world was much smaller than it is now. Most artists that had some success knew each other; you knew who they were. You knew them in the East, and you knew…

Blum: Did you know people in the arts in Chicago before you moved here?

Martyl: Yes, I did. And because of the two Chicago artists that won the largest competition that the federal government had ever sponsored for the St. Louis main Post Office. That commission was won by two Chicago artists, and it was headlines all over the U.S.A. This means that this competition was national, and that all the things that came out of Washington that supported the arts, or the museums in New York, or whatever, all had competitions. They were all either regional or national whether they were drawing competitions for special exhibitions of American art, it was emphasized, always on American art. So, there would be a jury, and the notices would go out all over the country, and the artists would submit. So it was always very selective. There was always a jury. And in the Metropolitan Museum, I submitted a painting, and so did my mother.

Blum: To be exhibited in the 1939 World's Fair in New York?

Martyl: For that, yes. And we were both accepted. And we went to New York. I remember meeting Mayor LaGuardia on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, entering the museum for the opening of that exhibition.

Blum: You said there were two Chicago artists who were selected for the St. Louis Post Office. Who were they?

Martyl: It was Edward Millman and Mitchell Siporin, S-I-P-O-R-I-N. They won this huge… it was the largest competition that ever happened, for true fresco. I don’t know how many panels, but it was very large, and it was, I think, in the six figures. Have to look up to see what it was, but it was the biggest competition. And so it was enormous; to do true fresco at that time, was quite a coup actually, in the art world. And so they did that. So they were there for a couple of years. And in those years, a lot of their friends came down, and I got to know them all, because I was one of the main artists then in St. Louis. I say the main one, I mean I was well-known.

Blum: This is in the late 1930s.

Martyl: The date of those frescoes, is that when it is?

Blum: I don’t know the exact date of the frescoes.

Martyl: Well that would be in those years, yes, it would be 1940 to 1942, because it was right then that they were doing those frescoes. And so there were lots and lots of parties, and going back and forth from St. Louis to Chicago. One of the artists that came from Chicago was Julio de Diego––J-U-L-I-O––Julio de Diego. Well that was his name. He was quite a character. He subsequently married Gypsy Rose Lee. My mother became friends with Julio. He came back with Gypsy Rose long after I moved away. I went to a party with Gypsy Rose Lee. She was visiting. Joe Jones had a loft in St. Louis—he was advanced in his living facility, now lofts are so common, but he had a loft in an industrial area and he had a big party. I remember it was in summer and it was hot. Gypsy Rose Lee appeared; she was in some show in St. Louis. I was invited to the party and she was there, and she had on a mink coat with nothing underneath it. It was warm in St. Louis.

Blum: Very sexy.

Martyl: Oh, so that’s how I met all these artists who now I know, and through Julio de Diego, through these Chicago artists, I met Ramon Shiva. That’s how that came about. And so we became very good friends. That whole story about Shiva was related to all the Chicagoans who knew him. So then, and before that interim from 1938 to 1941 was one of great activity.

Blum: In St. Louis?

Martyl: Yes. I was still in St. Louis.

Blum: You received commissions, or you received jobs, by competition. What about private galleries?

Martyl: Yes, I had several exhibitions in St. Louis. There was a private gallery called Elinor Smith Gallery––E-L-I-N-O-R––I had several exhibitions with Elinor Smith.

Blum: How did you tie up with that gallery?

Martyl: They came to me. She came to me. I would tell you that competition wasn’t as great as it is today. There were fewer people in the world then.

Blum: But she still had to select you.

Martyl: Well yes. But then I was one of the best then.

Blum: What kind of arrangements were you obliged to make with the gallery, for them to carry your work?

Martyl: The arrangement was thirty-three and a third percent of the sales.

Blum: For the gallery?.

Martyl: Yes. I’m pretty sure it was a third. Now it’s fifty percent. Their cut was a third then.

Blum: And how long was this arrangement for?

Martyl: Well, for several years that she had the gallery there. And then I had also an exhibition at what was called the St. Louis Art Center, and Tom Benton came to that. That’s when he told me that story about Ralph Duffy and Raoul Dufy. He went around looking at my work.

Blum: You were with the Smith Gallery for two years?

Martyl: Well for as long as she was there.

Blum: Well your connection with the A.C.A. Gallery in New York began in 1942.

Martyl: Well then it was up to then.

Blum: Is there any truth to what I read that when you were finished with Washington University, you wanted to study with Picasso?

Martyl: Well that was before. I was still going to Ste. Genevieve with my mother, and living at home, but that’s what I said, I remember.

Blum: How did you decide to do that?

Martyl: My mother said, “Well write to him, and tell him you want to do that.” And that was the big frustration.

Blum: Were you serious?

Martyl: I was serious. But I was much younger. I think I was still in prep school. I remember asking to do that, because I thought he was so wonderful. She said, “Well write him a letter, and tell him so.” But I didn’t, cause I shouldn't have written in English. I was frustrated I guess, because I felt I didn’t know enough French or Spanish. It’s one of the great frustrations of my life is the lack of languages, it’s hard enough to speak good English. But my frustrations came out in my children; they all speak many languages. So I didn’t write to Picasso. However, when the first big Picasso show came to the St. Louis Museum, I was asked by one of the newspaper's art critics to go with him around to see the exhibition.

Blum: Was this the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer?

Martyl: No, I think the writer was the art critic named Reed Hynds, R-double E-D— he was also the music critic––H-Y-N-D-S. I think he was with the other paper, the St. Louis Star Times. Anyway, it was Reed Hynds. He was a remarkable guy. He invited me to go around to see this Picasso exhibition, and then I said, after we walked all round it, I said, “Well, when do you want to start the interview?” He said, “I’ve already done it.” He had instant recall, and he remembered everything I said. And I remember there was a headline in the paper about that. I called it something like a blockbuster in art. I was just wowed over it.

Blum: I read that article. One of your comments was that it’s ugly, but it has such power.

Martyl: Did I say that?

Blum: Yes, you did. You said, “It may be about the Women of Avignon, it may be famous, but I don’t like it.”

Martyl: Oh. I guess I said it.

Blum: Is that how you felt?

Martyl: Well you know it reminds me of Marge Simpson of "The Simpsons" because she went around looking at Picasso, and she said, “Well that’s when he was in his ugly, jerk period.” With those multiple image things that famous painting was the turning point in abstract art. Well, it was very powerful, and I still think that. And I still think some of it is ugly, but then what’s ugly? Ugly doesn’t mean that it’s not important.

Blum: Did you try to absorb his style?

Martyl: No, I felt that was alien. That’s another interesting thing with abstraction, it was in the air like social consciousness was in the air. There’s a German word for that, called zeitgeist. Things are in the air, the influence of the European which Benton was so against—you never see one hint of any abstraction in his work, if you look at it. So this breaking up of planes, and so forth, is an intriguing idea, and I think it’s had a ripple effect all over the world. At any rate, it influenced me in a mild way. But when it came to the non-objective art––and that was a whole New York movement––I said, “I can’t be something, I can’t do something that’s not me,” just because it’s a style that happens to be "in." It is now called the New York School, it wasn’t called it then, but all these European and American artists were in New York. That was sort of a phenomenon that took place right after World War II. I said, “I won’t do that, it wouldn’t be me.” And he said, “But you have to will it.” That was his very words to me: “You just will it. You just say, ‘I’m going to do that.’”

Blum: Who was saying this to you?

Martyl: He was a New York artist who came to teach at Washington University, and became a good friend of my mother's. He was of the same generation as Carl Holty. What was his name? I’ll think of it—Paul Burlin. I can just see him in front of me, saying, "You have to will it." Well, I was not to be a non-objective painter. But I did view landscapes more abstractly, trying to find a more unique way of making a painting, instead of reproducing nature, in the sense of being representational. I’d like to mention the fact that when I would go to New York, I saw at Wildenstein’s Gallery three floors of Cezanne paintings. There was a big Cezanne show that threw me for a loop. I thought that was just the greatest stuff I’d ever seen in my life. Well Cezanne was a big influence. Picasso I had to learn. I remember the Museum of Modern Art was just beginning to be a force then, and the Museum of Modern Art had a lot of color prints. I was a member of the Museum of Modern Art. They had a lot of publications and a lot of color prints. I remember having that print, the woman looking in a mirror, which is about as off-the-wall as you could imagine then. Now it’s quite tame, cause it’s so well-known. But I thought if I looked at it long enough, maybe I’d get to like it. And there is something in that.

Blum: And did prolonged viewing work?

Martyl: I didn’t dislike it, no. Then I admired it, you know, the color, and the boldness, and the idea.

Blum: One observation you made was that the challenge of pre-war artists was to get exposure—to become known; and the challenge post-war artists faced was to absorb modernism.

Martyl: You’re asking me about that? Well, I think it’s an ongoing phenomenon that artists have to be known; otherwise, you’ll accumulate a thousand pictures.

My feeling is that I always appreciate when others like, and want, what I do. The better known an artist is, or any creative person, the more valuable your work becomes and you make more money. That has nothing to do with the act of creating, but it helps.

[Tape 2: Side B]

Martyl: As I said earlier on, my work was always something that appealed to viewers and collectors of my work.

Blum: Speaking of collectors, is it true that George Gershwin collected some of your work?

Martyl: Not exactly in that way, at all.

Blum: What is the story?

Martyl: Well, George Gershwin came to St. Louis to conduct a benefit concert for the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony; I think that was why they brought him to St. Louis. And that’s when I had my first exhibition, so I was eighteen years old. And I had drawings of all the things around me; there were drawings of Ste. Genevieve. I used a lithographic crayon. I remember I did a lot of lithographic crayon drawings, but not on stone, they were just on paper. And I did some drawings of various subjects, such as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. I went backstage for that, because one of my close friends knew all the main dancers. My exhibition had been advertised in the paper, or listed someplace, when Gershwin came. He stayed in the Coronado Hotel, which is one of the fancy hotels near the symphony. And I got this telephone call and I’m living at home so he found out where to find me. But I didn’t believe it was Gershwin on the telephone. Thought it was one of my college friends.

Blum: Playing a joke?

Martyl: Playing a joke. I mean can you think of that? “Hello, I’m George Gershwin.” Yeah, I’m the Queen of Sheba. Who is this? He said, “George Gershwin.” He said, “I’m in town for the rehearsal, and you have an exhibition that I’d like to see. How can I see it?” Well, I remember it was on a Saturday. At any rate, the building was closed. How could that be? Maybe it was a Sunday and the building was closed. I remember there was a Doubleday Bookstore on the first floor; maybe it was Saturday afternoon, after hours, or something like that. The building was on Maryland Avenue. I don’t know how I did this, I’ve forgotten the details, but somehow I got that building open. And I remember the Junior League galleries, they had the whole second floor of this building. They had to get somebody there, so that was all a big deal. But I managed to do it and met him there. And so, we went over the whole exhibition, just me and George. He chose the drawing that he liked the best, which I kept in my studio. I kept it for that reason. And actually, it was done in the French provincial church of Ste. Genevieve. It was the pulpit. He liked it particularly. Also in that exhibition, fortuitously, there was a drawing, and it was called Gershwin Chord in Trees.

Blum: In trees?

Martyl: That was the name of the drawing. It was a group of trees that looked like a Gershwin chord on the piano.

Blum: Was this drawn before you met him?

Martyl: Yes. Fortuitous and serendipity both at the same time. Isn’t that weird? Well, so that was some experience! Then he took me back to his hotel, and played all of his music that he was going to play the next day with the symphony.

Blum: Well having been a musician yourself, that must have been a very exciting experience.

Martyl: Well, it’s one of those things in life that you just never can imagine. You told me that it was in print once so I must have told the story before. Well, I don’t know, didn’t you tell me you knew about this?

Blum: About Gershwin, yes.

Martyl: But he didn’t buy. To set the record straight, he had a friend named Blake, Robert Blake, I think, in St. Louis. I didn’t know who this was. But he went to the exhibition and he bought the Gershwin Chord in Trees and gave it to Gershwin for his collection. And where that is now? I have no idea. It is probably floating in cyberspace somewhere.

Blum: What was George Gershwin like?

Martyl: He was an artist himself. He used to do watercolors. He told me he had a compartment in those days. Then he used the train all the time. And he used to do watercolors in his compartment; and he told me he was very interested in the arts. Then while he played his music, he would stop and say, “Gosh this is so hard!” meaning his own music, you know and then he made me feel the strong muscle in his arm. Then he said, “I had a rehearsal with the symphony, you know, being a conductor.” He had to conduct his music with the symphony, and he was afraid his arms would get stiff in rehearsal. So we took a walk, and he was telling me, he said, “When you come to New York–– you’ve got to come to New York––I know so-and-so and so-and-so, and I will do all this for you, cause you’re such a talented person.” As we walked down to Grand Avenue from the Coronado Hotel, there was a drugstore. I think it was a Walgreens drug store, where they had a little radio playing. We went in there to buy a heating pad for his arm so it wouldn’t stiffen. As I said, there was this radio playing and he did a little dance to that music. We went

and asked for the heating pad, and the guy brought out a pink one and a green one. So Gershwin said to me, “Which one should I take?” And I took the green, cause I had a thing about pink, but later I learned to love pink. At any rate, so we took this long walk, and I can still remember the sparkling granite of the sidewalks on that part of Lindell Boulevard. Well, that summer I was in Ste. Genevieve, working in the studio and on the radio—it was around noon, I was listening to the noon news. It was an overcast day, I remember and it was announced that George Gershwin had died. I remember the skies opened up. This was so weird! It was such a big downpour then. It said that he died suddenly of a brain tumor, and that his doctor was sailing out on the Chesapeake Bay and they couldn’t get hold of him. And they didn’t know what to do then for such a thing. And so that’s the end of my story.

Blum: And that was the end of your hope that he would introduce you to the New York art world.

Martyl: Well, certainly that I would see him in New York. But it was quite a memorable six or eight hours. This all happened before Elinor Smith Gallery. There were some, what we would call old-fashioned, old masters-type gallery in St. Louis, where they would sell older paintings. You know, I viewed the gallery with disdain. I wouldn’t even go there. I did go to an exhibition there once, I remember. I think that gallery is still in existence. Not to say that it didn’t have quality, you know, expensive frames, and quite an old-fashioned gallery; and it’s still sustained, I think, to this day. There was some Russian painter––I used to know his name, but I think it’s long gone out of my consciousness––but it was all about winter scenes, and winter mountains, and snow. And it affected me so, because I could feel the coldness in the painting; it was extraordinary. That’s the only time I went to that gallery, and it was quite unusual. There was nothing to be seen.

Blum: 1945 was generally acknowledged to be a new period in art, in the world, with the end of the war. And the few years between, in the early 1940s, were years of change for you. In 1941, you were married.

Martyl: That’s correct. Yes.

Blum: Soon after you and Alex married, you moved to Chicago.

Martyl: Well those were quite exciting times, because I’d met, through my parents— the conventional way of meeting your to-be husband was through family. My family knew the Langsdorf family, because the Langsdorfs were very prominent St. Louisians. My mother was a well-known artist; my father was a well-known photographer in the city. The Langsdorfs: Alexander Senior was dean of engineering and architecture at Washington University, and his wife, Elsie Langsdorf, was a well-known––I guess you’d call it a suffragette. She was on the boards of all the social things in St. Louis: the League of Women Voters, and all the women’s things. Well not exactly women only, she was on that board of the NAACP, and everything connected with it. She was one of the leading women in St. Louis in the social, not society, but social conscience. And you could say society; it was one and the same. Edna Gellhorn, Elsie Langsdorf, Irma Stix and Luella Sayman: those four women were the movers and shakers in all those wonderful organizations that were trying to be proactive in human rights.

Blum: How did that connect you to Alex, or Alex to you?

Martyl: They were all members of what was called the Ethical Society in St. Louis, which was really fundamentally Unitarian. St. Louis was a special brand of The Ethical Society. There is the famous school in New York called the Ethical Society School K12. I’m not sure of the exact name. So, one Sunday morning, on the steps of the Ethical Society, I was introduced to Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., who had just come back to St. Louis. Mind you, the families

were friends, so there were friendly greetings. He had just come for his first job, to build a cyclotron for the Mallinkrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University, for cancer research. And so that’s where we met, for the first time. I didn’t know him before, he’s six years older than I. He had already graduated from M.I.T. and became a national research fellow in Berkeley. So he was in the famous Ernest Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, which has become the "rad lab," as they called it. So he knew most of the well-known scientists. His professor was J. Robert Oppenheimer, amongst other notables. So that opened up a whole new world for me.

Blum: Was it love at first sight?

Martyl: No. Not really. Because in that time, I had a lot of other friends—boyfriends, but we didn’t use even the word boyfriend then. The whole social structure was very different. You went out on dates on the weekends, Friday nights and Saturday nights, always with a different young man, you know. I mean it was called playing the field. Well that’s the way it was done then. I mean it was a quite strict social order when compared to today. I mean it’s quaint to say “living in sin,” that was the phrase. I mean that just wasn’t done. I was on the edge of the ending of the Victorian era. There were still things called chaperones. Yes.

Blum: Really?

Martyl: Well that existed not so long ago. Young people in high school from the 1960s had chaperones for their dances and activities. And still the word chaperone was used. So I went out with a lot of different boys, and I had half a dozen maybe that narrowed down to four. So Alex Langsdorf was just one of the many to start with.

Blum: Well, I read that you had some friends who thought you had been seeing him long enough and they gave an engagement party?

Martyl: Oh, that was my closest friend from St. Louis. Yes. Well that was my best friend Dojean Sayman, who turned out later to be Lady Smithers. Well, we had a whole lifetime of friendship. She was my friend from the seventh grade at Mary Institute. She was one of the wealthiest, but interested the arts, and for some reason, we became close friends. She was an only child, a daughter of an eccentric, but famous St. Louis character. He manufactured a vegetable compound soap, or something like that, and all sorts of salves. I think he went around with—who was that famous American cowboy that sold snake oil around the country? It’s one of the folklore of the American scene. It wasn’t Kitt Carson, but it was Buffalo Bill! He was called Doc Sayman.

Blum: I didn’t know Buffalo Bill sold anything. But he did bring some Native Americans with him for his show.

Martyl: He had a whole big show, all over the U.S.A. It’s one of the annals of the history of St. Louis and the Wild West. Well anyway, the daughter of this man and his wife Luella became one of my closest friends, until she died this year. And she went on to have a career beyond belief. Of all the graduates, they say that I and Dojean Smithers became the most famous in the class of 1934 at Mary Institute. She never graduated but she went on to speak five languages, and she went from school to school. Went to Europe, lived in Paris, and so forth.

Blum: Now this was the friend…

Martyl: And this is the friend who said, “It’s enough already. You’ve got to announce your engagement to Alex." Well I was painting a mural for Washington D.C. for the Section of Fine Arts in the General Service Administration, for the Recorder of Deeds building. I had won that competition. And I was working on that. And this young man Alex, who was taking me out, was building a cyclotron for Washington University. So we were both very busy. And then

we’d have, you know, a social life: we’d go to dinner, and whatever. He took me on one of the boats on the Mississippi dinner dancing. That was the big thing then, you went to dinner, and you went dinner dancing. It’s back again. That was what you did on a date. You went to the movies, and then you did one or the other, or both. So love kind of grew, so to speak. And so we did see each other. He was so well-liked by everybody in my social group. And of course, Dojean, which is a contraction of Dorothy Jean, she was called Dojean––D-O-J-E-A-N, she would give these grand parties, and she lived in a grand house with her mother. Her father had died long before. So we called it the Winter Palace. They also had a big farm, and she would show horses, and they had a big swimming pool out on the Belle Fountain Road. And so there were lots of parties. Alex Langsdorf was not only handsome, but he was a good swimmer, and he was doing all this exciting work that nobody could ever imagine. It was, as I said, cutting edge science then. And so, she said, “I’m going to give an engagement party for you, so you’re going to have to do something about getting married.” And that’s been recorded in a book of photographs. It’s quite remarkable.

Blum: And so you did.

Martyl: And so I did.

Blum: On December 31, 1941.

Martyl: December, New Year’s Eve, actually. And she was my maid of honor. By then the war was on full blast. And there were all sorts of unusual happenings, living in St. Louis with Dojean when she came back from Paris. Now, St. Louis, as you can imagine after our discussion, was a rather conservative, borderline, segregated city, with certain formalities, I would call it. Well, as we say, even looking back now, I think it was Martha Gellhorn, who was the daughter of Edna, that I mentioned—Martha Gellhorn became a well-known writer and was one of the many wives of Ernest

Hemingway—Martha said she was so glad to get out of St. Louis. She didn’t like St. Louis at all. She said, “The air is even slow there.”

Blum: Well, you know you gave St. Louis a real boost when you said, “I’m a St. Louis woman, and I’m satisfied to be.” I think that was published in Newsweek or Time, in the large article about you.

Martyl: I did say that. Yes.

Blum: So you, too, were loyal.

Martyl: Yes. Like my mother, she loved St. Louis until she died. Well I do too. Martha was quite a radical. I mean she was, in every way—promiscuous as all get- out, for one thing. An Englishwoman wrote a book about her, and then published her letters. And I just couldn’t believe it, because that was a friend of mine. I couldn’t believe all the stuff she did. Yeah, all the men she slept with, oh my God. You know, she left St. Louis because of St. Louis stodgy. Anyway, Dojean comes back from Paris with a French blue car with a chauffeur with a blue outfit to match, and it blew St. Louis away.

Blum: Are you saying that St. Louis was extremely provincial or that Dojean was way out?

Martyl: Well, yes, both. So you can see how from then on, I was someplace else, other than St. Louis. And so when the war came, we moved to Chicago because of the Manhattan Project. We stayed an extra year in St. Louis. Because the Manhattan Project that had been organized in Chicago, all the famous physicists and chemists from all over the world were there. I didn’t know it at the time but Alex stayed to run that cyclotron for the Manhattan Project that then became secret. Lots of activity back and forth with a chemist from Chicago, and so on, back and forth St. Louis to Chicago. Well that’s why we

stayed an extra year in St. Louis. They were doing something with plutonium.

Blum: Well the dates that I have picked up are that you were married in 1941, and it wasn’t until 1943 when you moved to Chicago. Is that correct?

Martyl: Yes. Well actually, New Year’s Eve of 1941 means it’s really almost 1942. 1942, that’s right, we stayed an extra year, because that’s when the chain reaction happened. Otherwise, Alex would have been under the stands at Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

Blum: How did your new domestic arrangement, being married, affect your career?

Martyl: Well I don’t think it affected it at all.

Blum: Did you continue to paint as before?

Martyl: I just continued as before, you know; it was just another dimension. Marriage changes your life, of course, in lots of ways. But then I was always around a lot of people and something about being married actually changes one’s life. But it didn’t change my art life, so to speak. It only enlarged it, actually, because it opened up a whole other area not only of friends, but of thinking and understanding, and learning from Alex. And I have to say that I’d made up my mind never to marry another artist. That was purposeful. I’d been around too many of them, and it was important that I married somebody very smart; and I guess that’s what I never recognized in a lot of artists. They weren’t smart enough in lots of ways. They were too––now that I think about it––I never really thought about it before; but the fact is that I felt they usually were too one-dimensional. I mean there’s more to art than technique, that’s why I was happy to go to a university, and not to an art school, because there were many other disciplines. I studied not only the history of art. I don’t say this is for everyone, it seemed to be right for me because, you know, you can

be successful and not go to any university. That depends on the person. But I’d been around artists, you know, my whole life up until then. And knowing artists, and knowing the instability, and what would be the tug of war between the two; it’s the competition, I guess, or the jealousies, or whatever, between artists and their wives and their many wives, or vice versa. And it seemed to me to be too narrow an existence.

Blum: Well it seems that Alex brought a whole new dimension to your life and art.

Martyl: And so the whole new dimension came with him. In school I studied everything from political science to English literature, and all kinds of other things that I felt were more important.

Blum: After you were married, and you continued to paint, did you have a studio, or did you work at home?

Martyl: Well, I had a studio. Before I moved, I had a crucial year of me doing that mural, and Alex with the cyclotron, and all the visitors. All the scientists at Washington University had gone off to war. And there was a huge laboratory on the north side of the physics building and the head of the department offered it to me as a studio. It was this huge, empty north-lit space. So for a whole year, I had a studio at Washington University, with one Chinese scholar in a cubicle down the hall from me.

Blum: Was this before you were married?

Martyl: We were married. Alex was working the cyclotron, you know, making this plutonium. And I was painting for my exhibition in New York, the first one. I was working on all the paintings.

Blum: Your exhibition was to be at the A.C.A. Gallery?

Martyl: Yes. And I had Chia San Pao as my studio neighbor, my Chinese friend, Chia, C-H-I-A, capital S-A-N, capital P-A-O. He was the most brilliant graduate student that they ever had at Washington University. And he stayed there doing whatever he was doing. And we became very good friends, because there were only three people in the building. He would come to me, having troubles with his project. He had all this high-energy equipment and he’d come to me and ask me what to do. I said, “I don’t know, but just turn it off.” I mean we just became such good friends. He used to watch me paint. The glass blower, Rosie, the third person in the building, was still in his shop. He would make these elaborate contraptions for Pao. And then Pao, being absolutely uncoordinated, would drop it on the way to his office. He was an interesting person, and we learned a lot about him. He became a life-long friend. He made the mistake of his life because he went back to China, he told us long after the war. He came from a very wealthy family in China. The revolution over there, under Mao, had taken his family's house away and he wanted to see about his family. But then decades later, he came back to visit us; and he told us about living through that revolution. It was absolutely ghastly. I remember for three days, I felt like somebody was standing on my chest, just hearing about his and other's travails. Well, at any rate, we became pals. And just being around a physics lab, by osmosis I picked up the lingo. I knew about radio oscillators, and I knew where the beam went in, and where it came out, and what was bombarded. And I used to take visitors through.

Blum: Did any of this come through in your work?

Martyl: Yes, it did.

Blum: Can you give an example?

Martyl: Well because I found that the objects were visually fascinating. Mind you, I called myself all these years "a fellow traveler in science," because I never had a physics course, really. But when we moved to Chicago, we lived near the

Museum of Science and Industry. And I would go there every day, trying to learn Newton’s Third Law, and all these other demonstrations that were there. All the fundamentals you could learn in physics. The only thing I retained was Newton’s Third Law: every action has an opposite and equal reaction. So that was a big learning experience; besides meeting all these unbelievable brains.

Blum: These were all Alex’s colleagues.

Martyl: And just being around them all; and then what with the social life, it was very hard on poor Alex, because I had this tremendous social life, and he was trying to do this high-powered stuff, and so it was always exhausting for him.

Blum: Was maintaining a social life part of…

Martyl: Well, because I was always trying not to go places in the daytime, cause I was working. I had that rule for years, up until… But then I had friends like Dojean who said, “I’m sending my car for you, and you will do so-and-so.” You know.

Blum: Well this was in St. Louis.

Martyl: That’s still in St. Louis. Chronologically I’m still there because of this cyclotron thing. We were close friends with Joe Pulitzer Jr. and, you know, that kind of wonderful friend and social life.

Blum: You said that one of the reasons you got such complete coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was because of your friendship with Joe Pulitzer. What was your connection?

Martyl: Well, his father was running the paper. The connection was all the various people on the staff of the Post-Dispatch were interested in art. There was the music critic, Thomas Sherman, and then he became the Sunday editor. But we were friends with many editors; there was Julius Klyman, who was the editor of the magazine section; there was the editorial writer, Ernest Kirschten. I mean we knew them all, because that was the life; that was the social milieu. These were editorial writers and editors plus Joe Pulitzer. I don’t know what he did at the paper, I don’t think he had the authority; he wouldn’t say, Go do this. I mean everybody knew what Alex and I were doing, let’s put it that way. And I guess you could say we were well-liked, and so we were always invited. It was always and is still a problem.

Blum: Did you find that you received coverage, similar to that when you moved to Chicago?

Martyl: Well, when I moved to Chicago it never occurred to me. There were three newspapers then.

Blum: In Chicago?

Martyl: In Chicago. There were two in St. Louis. Every city had three. New York had seven newspapers. Television didn’t exist. Think back how it used to be when there was just newspapers, magazines and there was the radio. Well since I always had a dealer, or a gallery, as they say, and had exhibitions, I sort of never noticed the lack of press until it gradually grew that way, over the years. There was less and less and less coverage because of the state of Chicago.

Blum: Well at the same time, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was covering you, and identifying you as a “former St. Louis artist.”

Martyl: When I was here. Yes. Well they kept track of me quite a lot. And then when I had an exhibition in New York that was successful, so I guess you’d say I was just accustomed to coverage. I never had any problem.

Blum: How did the Chicago art scene impress you?

Martyl: Well, you see I already knew quite a few of the artists, as soon as I came. Moreover, my friend from the museum in St. Louis, the former director––you see, it was during the war, and a lot of the art people went off to the war–– and Perry Rathbone became head of the Boston Museum. Perry Rathbone was a very close friend, and he was head of the St. Louis Museum; he went off to the navy. So I mean everybody went away. But those that stayed back were Charles Nagel, whose father was in the cabinet of one of the presidents of the United States. He was a good friend, and a great friend of Robert Hutchins and Maude. So Robert Hutchins and Maude came to St. Louis, and we were invited to dinner, before we moved to Chicago. So you see, there was a big liaison between…

Blum: You already felt pretty comfortable?

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: How did the Chicago art scene compare to that of St. Louis for you?

Martyl: Just moving to Chicago was like a liberation, as I mentioned. Oh well, yes. It was more like New York, compared to St. Louis. I mean I remember we moved to Hyde Park by the University of Chicago; and so with the elevated, I could go any place.

Blum: I suppose St. Louis had a hard time giving you up, because you were called their favorite artist. You exhibited with your mother at the Carroll Knight Gallery.

Martyl: Oh yes.

Blum: You also exhibited with a group that was called Group 15. What was that?

Martyl: Group 15. Well it was fifteen artists, but I’ve forgotten about that group. It was probably something that sounds as if my mother started it. But I’m not sure. There was a Group 15, and I was one of them. I have no way of telling you about it except that artists do that from time to time.

Blum: They group together, and give themselves a title, and…

Martyl: Yes. And have an exhibition. And they were the most prominent artists at the time.

Blum: I thought maybe there was a commonality in subject matter, or technique.

Martyl: I don’t think so. No. Let’s see, Group 15, who would that be? Miriam McKinnie maybe, and gosh, I’d have to look it up. I’m sorry. But I do know that artists do that all the time; they get together, as you say, with some thread between them, but I don’t remember what that was.

Blum: Group 15 exhibited at the Carroll Knight Gallery in St. Louis.

Martyl: Well that was a gallery formed by two rich ladies in St. Louis. Mrs. Knight, interestingly enough, was the wife of Harry Knight, who was the backer of Charles Lindbergh. We got to know them much later. All these friends were older. They were at least ten years older than we were. I mean we always had older friends; they were all establishment people.

Blum: You and Alex?

Martyl: Yes. So that’s why there were all these distinguished people that already had reputations. And that was true when we moved to Chicago. You know what they say, that ten years in a scientist’s life is like a whole generation.

Blum: Why? Because everything moves so quickly?

Martyl: Yes. So whereas, say my husband was twenty-nine, Enrico Fermi was already famous. He already had Dupont stock, a Nobel Prize and things like that, and lived in a big house. So there was a big disparity between youth and establishment. But that didn’t preclude close friendships––never did.

Blum: How did you find the gallery situation in Chicago, when you moved here?

Martyl: You could count them on one hand. There were hardly any. There was one gallery on Michigan Avenue called the Alice Roullier Gallery.

Blum: I understand that she dealt in works on paper.

Martyl: Well I wasn’t in that gallery. I mean that was a gallery that was of repute. When I moved here, I can’t remember any gallery. Except soon after, the Triple-A, the Associated American Artists Gallery, came about, which was a branch of the one in New York. And I think that happened right then in the 1940s because it was during the war, or right after the war. On Michigan Avenue there was a wonderful Chinese rug company, and it went out of business because of the war. And that space was taken up by Associated American Artists Gallery.

Blum: And museums, what was their situation?

Martyl: The Art Institute was the place. I mean there wasn’t anything else.

Blum: What was the attitude of the museum towards current, living artists?

Martyl: Very much aware of artists. They had important exhibitions of American artists.

Blum: Living American artists?

Martyl: Yes. It was ongoing American artists.

[Tape 3: Side A]

Martyl: I was saying that one of the interesting things about museums, not just Chicago but other museums that I mentioned, like the Metropolitan and the Whitney, there would be national exhibitions of American art. And the Art Institute was also a participant; they’d have an American exhibition every year. That was done by the curators and the director going to the artist’s studio to select the work. And that was done for years. The other thing that was interesting to me was that it was an American show; and if you were in it, you were an American artist, you weren’t a Chicago artist. And that was a very important distinction that was made then, by Dan Rich [Daniel Catton Rich]. When I came to Chicago, Dan Rich was the director. And Fred Sweet [Fredrick A. Sweet] was the curator of American art. Katharine Kuh was also there, but she wasn’t a curator yet. The situation has come full circle, because in the interim the attitude of the Art Institute regarding American artists changed. Those artists who were in these major exhibitions, became Chicago artists. The full circle is that James Rondeau, who is the present curator of contemporary art, voiced that same idea to me recently in 2006.

Blum: Which was?

Martyl: He asked me, why are Chicago artists deemed Chicago artists, and not American artists? He thought it was very provincial. And I said, “I can tell

you why. Because it started After Dan Rich and Katharine Kuh left the Art Institute. The attitude changed.” And it was kind of interesting to hear a young man, after all these years, voice the same opinion that was held way back when. I feel the same way about all art. I don’t believe in boundaries: I don’t believe in women’s art, or men’s art, or black art. I mean artists are artists; and dividing people up that way is arbitrary and I feel unnecessary.

Blum: You spoke about the Chicago show. But it was, you say, first an American exhibition. I thought that was titled “Chicago and Vicinity."

Martyl: Yes, the “Chicago and Vicinity" show came later. I don’t know what the dates of the origin of that but it was one of the major exhibitions at the Art Institute. And there were also very important American exhibitions sponsored by the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and they published a very substantial catalogues that are in the archives. It was very, very important for several decades. And they had a committee that went to every artist’s studio that they were interested in, nationwide.

Blum: At the University of Illinois?

Martyl: Yes. And it was under Allen Weller, who was the chairman of the department, an extraordinary, fine man.

Blum: Was your work selected for any of his shows?

Martyl: I was in that exhibition many, many years. The Whitney had an American show, the Pennsylvania Academy, many institutions did. Well, it got to be too cumbersome. Curators got lazy; they didn’t want to go to visit all the artists’ studios. And of course, there are more artists now than before.

Blum: So what took its place?

Martyl: Well, the "Chicago and Vicinity" show became the main exhibition. In the case of the Chicago art institute, Katharine Kuh, I believe, by this time had become a curator in the contemporary art department. She wore many hats there: she was in publicity, and then she was in education, or maybe all at the same time, but then she became curator of contemporary art. And I think it was her idea, but I’m not entirely sure, that Fred Sweet and she––she probably contributed too––but it was Fred Sweet that made the selection for the Room of Chicago Art. It existed because the Art Institute, itself, and the director, felt that they had an obligation to the artists in the community.

Blum: An obligation to local artists?

Martyl: The "Chicago and Vicinity" show was more the surrounding community, which took in, I think, the vicinity. I think the radius went all the way to Milwaukee and had a jury of selection.

Blum: So the Room of Chicago Art was organized by Katharine, and Fred Sweet.

Martyl: Yes. It was Fred Sweet who did the selection of work and Katharine probably selected the artists.

Blum: Your work was exhibited in the room in 1945, 1946.

Martyl: Was it?

Blum: There were two exhibitions: one with another artist and the other was a solo exhibition for you.

Martyl: Yes. Well those were drawings. It was paintings in the Chicago Room.

Blum: And how were you selected? Do you know?

Martyl: I was selected because I was one of the important artists in Chicago. Well, that’s what they said. I won’t disagree. I mean there were a number of artists who were. Also, they felt a very strong respect for artists that they considered good artists. I’m talking about “they” being the Art Institute staff. And they did a lot of things to try to promote interest; one of the things they did early on was a television program, in the early days of television.

Blum: The Art Institute was on television?

Martyl: Yes, the Art Institute selected––I’m sure it’s in the literature someplace––Dan Rich was persuaded to do this program that was originated by a young woman on the, I think, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was a very talented writer. She came up to Chicago and talked Dan Rich into this, much to the disdain of Katharine, I believe, because the woman was young, and bosomy and attractive. And she was the hostess on the program. And they selected half a dozen artists, I’m not sure of the number, but I was one of them. And television was very new. Well the idea was… The artists that were selected were to choose their favorite works in the museum's collection, and talk about them. Then do some performance art. I mean do something, painting or drawing. They had a mirror and a slanted board, I remember painting or drawing something, and also talking about the pictures that I had selected. I still have those reproductions that were made of my works and those from the museum. Reproductions of my paintings were from collections from California to New York.

Blum: Which Art Institute paintings did you select?

Martyl: Well one of them was a Renoir of the two little circus girls; [Jugglers at the Circus Fernando] because they were like my two girls, the same age at that time; a Fernand Leger; an African mask; and a Bellini portrait.

Blum: Would you make the same selection today?

Martyl: I guess. When I look back at it now, I don’t think I would have chosen them. It seemed to be of interest then. Another was Uccello, Paolo Uccello, one of his battle scenes. And another was Christ in Gethsemane by Giovanni di Paolo. There are two small paintings by this artist that are absolutely fabulous, very early Renaissance.

Blum: So you selected two older Italian paintings, and one more current French painting.

Martyl: And there was another one. Maybe it was Sheeler, or something like that. I’d have to look it up. But that’s what comes to mind. At any rate, it was before they taped shows, or had anything like that. Television was big cables, and so there was no record of it, except the printed fliers that they used for publicity: who the artists were and something about them. And I remember Katharine looked at us on TV and she liked mine. She said mine was the best because I talked back to the interviewer. The interviewer said to cut me off because of the time and I said, “No, no, no. Wait a minute. I’m not finished yet.”

Blum: Well you did have a lot to say in those days, and it often would get into print.

Martyl: Because all the others were, you know, more circumspect.

Blum: Well what a good marketing idea for the Art Institute.

Martyl: I don’t know what the repercussions were but it seemed like it was good for the artists. And I don’t know. I just remember Katharine not liking it on account of…

Blum: You know there was another exhibition that took place every year, and then every other year, after a while.

Martyl: Oh, the “Chicago and Vicinity?”

Blum: The “Chicago and Vicinity” show. Your work was often in these shows.

Martyl: I was in almost every one.

Blum: In 1947, they banned student work.

Martyl: Well, I can say unequivocally about the Art Institute…

Blum: What’s that?

Martyl: In defense of the Art Institute: because every time they had the show, I think, every year for a while. And then there was such a row from the artists that were not selected every time they had it. They tried every permutation possible of putting on that show. First they had a jury, and the jury would be selected by the director, and that was objected to. Then they’d get another jury that only liked a certain kind of art. Then they didn’t like that, so then they––I mean the artists in general––they were critical; and the critics were critical. And then the Art Institute gave prizes, and there was lots of honor attached to those prizes. It was the Logan Medal and Prize––there were any number of prizes, I don’t know, maybe a half-dozen. It got so that they had so many specific prizes in the end, that you had to be a female artist who lived on the South Side and had brown hair. Well, then they tried a No-Jury. Nobody wanted to jury the selections. Then they tried no artists, but only museum people, then only artists. They tried everything you can imagine to keep the show going. There was always such criticism. They tried every kind of combination. And then they had the No-Jury exhibition; that was the most famous of all. I say famous, because it had no jury, and it was open to everybody who considered themselves an artist.

Blum: Oh, it must have been a huge show.

Martyl: And it was huge. So they hung everything. It was one mile each way, of art. And then, but you see what happened was, that the Art Institute wanted to make a selection anyway. You know, they had the show at the Navy Pier, then they had a jury of selection that showed a few paintings to be brought back to the Institute, and that toured Europe.

Blum: As the “Chicago and Vicinity” show? They toured Europe under that name?

Martyl: Well, I know they published a catalogue and, I’m not sure, maybe it was just “Chicago Artists.” I don’t know the title that they used for that traveling show. But that’s how they were selected in the end, anyway. But there were the wildest things there. I remember there was a portrait of Eisenhower made out of sugar cubes, and Albert Einstein made out of matchsticks, and all kinds of goofy stuff, outsider art, insider art. Well, it was so cumbersome. I mean it was so huge that the jurors who made the selection had to use wheelchairs to go up and down the Navy Pier. I remember that. Fred Sweet told me that.

Blum: Well the flap that I read about was that in 1947, for the “Chicago and Vicinity” show, student work, because it was taking so many of the prizes, was banned.

Martyl: Well they didn’t allow student work for years. I didn’t know it began then.

Blum: Local artists, apparently objected to the ban of their work in 1947.

Martyl: Well it would only be students of the Art Institute.

Blum: Yes. The "Exhibition Momentum" grew out of that.

Martyl: Could be. Yes. I’d forgotten that. It was another spin-off because of the disaffection of the “Chicago and Vicinity” show. There was the Independent Artists Association, and then there was this Momentum group. I don’t know who organized it; I was not in that. But then I was three or four times prize- winner in that vicinity show, so I was pro-Art Institute. I won the Logan Prize, the Armstrong Prize, the Bartel Prize, I forget all the names. So I didn’t see anything wrong with that exhibition.

Blum: Well your point of view was a little different than had you been a student at the Art Institute.

Martyl: Well, yeah. Students are not very much allowed. They don’t have these national shows anymore, so it’s not a problem.

Blum: How do you remember Katharine Kuh?

Martyl: With great affection, I remember her. For many years we were friends. She had a St. Louis connection, but I didn’t know her then, or know exactly what it was. It came out in conversations. I think it was just our friendship with everybody, an awful lot of people on the staff of the Art Institute, and it was a natural association, and we hit it off. We were friends with Mies van der Rohe’s daughter Waltraut, she came right after the war. And it was Hans Huth––that’s spelled H-U-T-H––Hans and Marta Huth—we were good friends. He was the curator of decorative arts at the Art Institute after Meyric Rogers, and started to do a catalogue of the whole collection. That hadn’t been done before. Then there was Fred and Esther Sweet. There was Harold Joachim, Dan and Bertha Rich, Peter Pollack…

Blum: Was this your social circle?

Martyl: Part of the social circle. I also had a scientific social circle. And they used to get together once in a while, through me.

Blum: Did you ever bring the two groups together?

Martyl: Constantly. But it wasn’t easy.

Blum: Was it a success?

Martyl: Not really. More with Katharine, but then that was mutual. Katharine had an understanding and curiosity. But you have to remember that during those times, I was in and out of Chicago a great deal. I knew a lot of the artists and I traveled more than most, because of my husband. He was always going away to meetings, and invited to go hither and yon. And I was too, for various projects, and all sorts of things. And so I wasn’t around all the time, in Chicago. So there were art activities for which I wasn’t here. I mean, you know I’d be gone––well, lots of artists were gone––in summer either to Oxbow or to Martha’s Vineyard, or various places. But I’d be gone in the winter sometimes too. So my recollection is that I traveled lots more during those post-war years than other artists. Took a while for artists, financially and otherwise, to get their acts together. But in those days, scientists had all the money.

Blum: What was the source of the money?

Martyl: The grants, and the government. And when it came to the 1960s, they had a lot of money. And that was also the halcyon days in the art world too. But before that, it was less and less so. We were able to go out to Santa Fe and Los Alamos; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Brookhaven, New York; and all these places where there were scientific programs.

Blum: Did you know Katharine’s gallery?

Martyl: No. That had closed before I reached Chicago.

Blum: Oh, she had closed it by then?

Martyl: She had closed it. But I certainly heard about it and she would tell tales from time to time. But I must have had an eye, cause when we first came to Chicago, there were certain things that I thought were fantastic. We lived right around the corner from the Robie House; and across the street and one block away from the Robie House, was a reproduction of one of the Williamsburg houses that Florence Pullman lived in with her husband, who was a doctor at Billings Hospital—as it was called then.

Blum: Florence Miller?

Martyl: Yes. Mrs. Philip Miller. And I used to walk by those two places. One was authentic Williamsburg, and the other was the Robie House, right at the corner. And I used to look in that garden of the Miller’s house, longingly. And it was two and a half decades later that I met Florence Miller. And Florence said, “Oh Martyl, you must come and visit me, and sit in my garden.” And I had to tell Florence that it was too late, I’d moved away. However, she did invite me. She bought a drawing of mine, a watercolor drawing. And she and Philip invited us over for dinner to see it. And she had it framed so beautifully with gold leaf; she spiffed it all up, and I couldn’t believe I did that. It was something I painted in Mexico. It was the entrance to the Chapultepec Palace with some figures in it, I think. At any rate, that was two of the beauties of the architecture, which I admired, and didn’t really know much about, because I just arrived in Chicago. And subsequently got to know Meyric Rogers, who was the curator of decorative arts. Meyric was connected to the Arts Club and we were good friends with Meyric and his wife Ann.

Blum: I think Paul Schweikher was on the board of directors of the Arts Club.

Martyl: And therein accounts for a lot of the social gatherings on holiday seasons: New Year’s eves, and so forth, memorable events. And that’s when Susie Morton Zurcher Davidson would come, when she was married to Victor Zurcher. And I got to know them. And then what did Zurcher do? Up and married a Paepke daughter. Yes.

Blum: Oh. I didn’t know that.

Martyl: Little social annotation. So that certain benefactors, or trustees, and certain staff of the Institute would socialize. I mean it’s a natural combination; they work in the same building. You know there’s a symbiotic relationship, but not as good as curators would like it to be. Very few trustees considered the staff one of them. Their attitude was: they work for us. And the attitude, I’m told, is still that way. I’ve been told that, and that’s recent. It’s just one of those strange things.

Blum: After the war, after you were established in Chicago, did you feel that there was any resistance to modern painting—contemporary non-objective painting?

Martyl: Resistance? Yes, there was, when it came to the purchase for the Art Institute. In the “Chicago and Vicinity” exhibitions, where there was a more local focus, the artists, I think, were selected on merit. I was told, for example, when they invited Ivan Albright to be a juror on some exhibition at the Art Institute, thinking he would represent a more representational view of art. He was absolutely the opposite. He voted for everything that was non- objective. I’ve never forgotten that, because it just shows you, you can’t rely… There’s no way you can be sure of critical choices.

Blum: At the Art Institute, who were the champions of contemporary art?

Martyl: Well Katharine Kuh, mainly. I mean in the obvious way, when she proposed works of art for purchase. Well, are we talking now in the 1940s or the 1950s?

Blum: 1940s and 1950s.

Martyl: In the 1940s, there were still barriers to the various styles; there was more of a representational style across the nation, you could almost say. There were a few artists that came from Europe. The ones that were refugees from the war in Europe were in New York; except for [Jean] Miro, who I think did a mural in Cincinnati.

Blum: Yes. In one of the hotels that SOM designed.

Martyl: But mainly they were in New York. And the abstract artists had an organization that was formed then, in New York. Carl Holty, my friend, was one of the organizers; he was active in that.

Blum: Do you think he found acceptance was difficult as an abstract artist?

Martyl: Well, you see the interesting thing is that they weren’t all non-objective at that time. De Kooning did figurative things. I mean he did murals also for the Federal Art Project.

Blum: But the paintings he’s best known for are not figurative.

Martyl: No, it isn’t. But everybody, you know, in their youth, I’ve never forgotten Hans Hoffmann, for example, who was in Provincetown when I was there. He came from Germany and started a school; and everybody in the Hawthorne school, or the Cape Cod School of Art, called him the crazy man, because he was doing the modern German kind of art. And that was, you know, in the late 1930s. He was still there. Well Hans Hoffmann became a prime teacher, and exponent of non-objective art. And I saw a major

exhibition of his at the Whitney; and none of his early work was in it. It only showed all of one piece. And I remember being very disappointed, because I knew he did all sorts of figurative things––did a lot of Cape Cod scenes, and things that were recognizable, and stylistic. But there was none of that. So it was selective. But the public didn’t know that unless you knew Hans Hoffmann from the beginning.

Blum: At the Art Institute, was Fred Sweet a supporter of contemporary artists?

Martyl: Well he was the curator of contemporary art. But his real love––and it seemed to me, knowing him for so many years––was John Singer Sargent. He knew all the pedigree of every one of his sitters, and did a major exhibition on Sargent, and on Mary Cassatt. Fred wrote a book about that. But he liked my work a lot. He always selected me for various exhibitions.

Blum: What was the nature of your work at that time?

Martyl: Mine? I was doing landscape painting. Dan Rich selected one painting that I did from my St. Louis days, First Day of Spring it was called. My First Day of Spring today has to do with blossoms in my orchard. But back then it was black people baring their laundry in the sun on a balcony.

Blum: So you were still doing social commentary in your painting in the 1950s?

Martyl: It was in an American exhibition. So you see, the transition was one of several decades.

Blum: So what you painted, your content, as well as your technique, changed over the years.

Martyl: Yes. Well that’s natural, because people change anyway. Well, some artists do not change. I have artist friends that do the same thing over and over and

over again; but that’s not my nature. I get bored doing the same thing, and as I look back, I can see I had several series of subjects. I’m told by others that you can always tell it’s me; but it’s an entirely different subject matter, and totally different ideas, to me, quite different. Every time I have an exhibition, they say, “Oh, you’ve changed!” Well I really haven’t changed that much, but I just don’t repeat the same thing over and over again.

Blum: When you came to Chicago and became familiar, did you link up with a gallery, or did you continue with your St. Louis gallery?

Martyl: I guess there was some St. Louis connection. My father and brother had a gallery in connection with their photographic studio where I've had various exhibitions. I’ve had hundreds, hundreds of exhibitions, too many to recall.

Blum: I know. I’ve read pages and pages of exhibition catalogues.

Martyl: I can’t recall every one; but I did have a gallery immediately, because when the Associated American Artists gallery was run by two women that I mentioned earlier on Michigan Avenue, there was another gallery on the South Side, started by a wealthy woman that had it in her house. Her name is almost on the tip of my tongue––Pokrass. Can’t believe I remembered that, P- O-K, Pokrass Gallery. She was an energetic woman that had an exhibition of my work. And then there were artists like Felix Ruvolo; he was another Chicago artist. We exhibited together at her gallery on the South Side. But then these two women from the Associated… one of them went on someplace else; but the other was named Elizabeth Nelson. She opened a gallery on Oak Street. That area was the Gold Coast, by the Drake Hotel, where it had all the fancy shops. And she opened a gallery there. She immediately asked me to join it. And that was then in the late 1940s, I guess.

Blum: So were you under contract to her?

Martyl: I had an exhibition immediately. I can’t remember whether we signed contracts then. It’s obsolete now, but she handled my work; and that was one of the good galleries in Chicago. Then I was there for a long time, till she closed, Then, well there was always another gallery. But then there’d be a few more galleries. Then another gallery opened on Walton, the Charles Feingarten Gallery. It sort of slowly proliferated into more galleries. But it started there on Walton Street. Perhaps that’s why the Art Institute decided they didn’t feel, like today, any responsibility to Chicago artists, because there are enough galleries now. I was told that by Katharine Lee. That’s what killed the art rental and sales gallery also. The Art Institute felt that there are enough galleries, and enough places for artists, local artists, to show their work; and the Art Institute didn’t feel they had any obligation to us. So that went on for years.

Blum: Isn’t that what brought the MCA [Museum of Contemporary Art] into the picture?

Martyl: Well Chicago is a big enough city that would allow another institution. But I think the reason it came about was the recalcitrance of the Art Institute to exhibit enough contemporary work. I mean there wasn’t enough space. They still don’t have enough space to show even their own collection, let alone take down everything, and have another exhibition. I mean it’s a major project. Then they also were restrictive in their selection of trustees. There was always a tension. It’s less now perhaps, but there was always a tremendous tension between trustees and the working staff. I think this is true of any institution. And for some reason, that was always a thing at the Art Institute. It was always money. The curators worked overtime and didn’t get paid enough. The trustees didn’t know enough and liked mostly to have their dinners and their meetings, you know. And that’s the way it is. And most people that are on boards, and most people that are in institutions will, if push comes to shove, agree with me. But that’s just the way it is. I mean collectors like to collect but it doesn’t mean they know much about art. And

there are very few people that really know; they collect for other reasons than the art.

Blum: What about collectors? How did you fare with collectors after George Gershwin?

Martyl: I believe fairly well nationwide. The art collectors proliferated, but so did the corporate collections. And the rise of the corporate collection had to do with the rise of economic success, and their need for cultural surroundings and activities, other than just their own cold money grubbing focus, I suppose.

Blum: Do you think you sold more paintings to corporate collections or private collectors?

Martyl: I wasn’t being personal. It’s just a comment that corporate art came to the fore as a patron for the arts and some had very large collections. They either hired a curator, or they hired somebody that knew something to buy the art work. But collectors by themselves, whether they collect painting or sculpture, they usually buy whatever they happen to be talked into by the dealer. I feel that they don’t know that much, but some learn perhaps. But it’s complicated. There are only a few people that everybody would agree that really knew, that had a real sense. One of them was Morton Neumann, who didn’t have any art education, but had a nose for art that was formidable. I mean he bought the best Picassos, the best Max Ernst, the best whatever. Nobody knows how he knew it, but he did. Other people would buy Picasso because of the name or whatever was popular. And art, I must say, is stylish; it goes along with fashion design; and I didn’t know that until much later in life, when I found out science is the same way. There are fashions in science. Interesting. But it’s true. There’s a certain kind of a thing that seems to be of the moment or of the decade.

Blum: What would you say about Joe Shapiro as a collector?

Martyl: He was a true collector. Absolutely.

Blum: And he was so eager to learn that he organized a group of collectors and they formed a study group.

Martyl: Joe Shapiro was a longtime friend and he collected my work, much to my amazement, because he collected Surrealist work. I found out later that he sold a lot of things before he died, but he kept three of my drawings. They were in his show at the Art Institute––that tribute to Joe Shapiro. I also have kept a watercolor of mine that I just gave to my daughter. I kept it all these years because Joe Shapiro wanted it desperately; I wouldn’t sell it to him cause he wanted it too cheaply. And I kept it in my drawer, thinking, Joe liked this a lot. Just like I kept the Gershwin drawing, cause he liked it a whole lot. And then I did two drawings when I visited a Polish concentration camp in Mexico. I kept a drawing of an old Polish woman refugee. I still have that.

Blum: They must mean something more than the usual to you.

Martyl: Well I’m also amazed that I did the following: I remember a little drawing I made. When I was still in St. Louis I was asked by the president of a businessmen association of St. Louis, a big CEO, who had invited Fiorello LaGuardia to come and speak; he was mayor of New York then. So they called me up, and said, “Martyl, come, I want you to draw a picture of Fiorello LaGuardia while he speaks to us.” You know. I would do it. I did it and it looked exactly like him; and then the head of the corporate group gave everyone a reproduction of the drawing I made of him. I remember it being very good, but I don’t know if I could do it on the spot like that today. You know you’d think they’d get the cartoonist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or somebody like that. But artists like to be asked to do things. And I was always asked and I rather enjoyed that.

Blum: Were any of your paintings selected by the group of collectors that Joe Shapiro organized for the purpose of learning more about American art?

Martyl: No, no. I had nothing whatsoever to do with that.

Blum: If I'm not mistaken, that group became the support group Friends of American Art.

Martyl: I don’t know, a study group with Joe? I don’t remember anything about that. He’s been here many times for dinner, he and Jory. I introduced him to a poet friend of ours, Elder Olson, who was a professor at the University of Chicago. They became fast friends, really close friends. I have his books. But the Shapiros always were indebted to me for that friendship. Joe was an exceptional person, and I knew him from the very beginning, cause he had a sidekick named James Salemme. James Salemme was a lawyer. He was Italian and had the stature of Fiorello LaGuardia, the same type. He and Joe were fast friends. Jim Salemme and Joe Shapiro were both passionately interested in art, and they started out with reproductions. They told me that. And we became friends of both of them. Salemme had a partner but I can’t remember his name. At any rate, they started out together and then Jim Salemme bought my work from time to time.

Blum: For his own collection?

Martyl: Yes. And Joe Shapiro: I always said he should have been a trustee of the Art Institute. But he was never voted to be one.

Blum: Why?

Martyl: Well, there was this strange situation. I know it from the Art Institute, but I’m sure it’s happened other places; it’s not unique. There was always a rivalry

between Russian Jews and German Jews. And that was true at the Art Institute. One hears a lot of gossip that the Art Institute was really prejudiced. Well, the Blocks were trustees, and so was Florine Marx—Sam and Florine Marx. They were German Jews, and they disdained and looked down upon people like Joe Shapiro. That’s just how people function socially; and that was a fact because I knew them both. I knew all of them. And when people would say that the Art institute was anti-Semitic, I just think it was outrageous. Joe Shapiro, of all people, knew more than the Blocks ever would know. Well, Mary Block was smart. He was… I’m letting out a lot of the gossip; but I’ll tell you Mary was the smart one. Leigh was the stupidest of the two brothers, and was the bottom of the trustee barrel. He was the final trustee of that era to be made chairman. He really was just unbelievably stupid. But he had a dozen Paul Klees in his dressing room out in Lake Forest, and stuff like that. And Mary would tell him what to say. Now I knew Mary, because of the Women’s Board.

[Tape 3: Side B]

Blum: Martyl, what was Mary like to work with?

Martyl: Well I didn’t––quote, unquote––work with her directly; she just was managing all sorts of activities at the Art Institute, such as Women’s Board activities. And so I had occasion over the years to know her: her methods and her attitudes. And she was a very positive person, and very savvy, full of confidence and had a rivalry with Florine Marx, both being collectors.

Blum: Were either or both of them collectors of your work?

Martyl: I don’t think so. I was friends with Florine Marx, but she had the reputation of being very imperious. So did Mary because she’d come into the Feingarten Gallery on Walton and go straight to the back. I remember this distinctly.

She’d say hello, if I was there. She'd walk straight back to the office in the rear, which some dealers used to call “the rape room.”

Blum: The rape room?

Martyl: Where they used to get the collector in there, all by himself. I remember that’s what it was called and maybe it’s still called that, for all I know. Anyway, she never looked on either side; because it usually was an artist she didn’t know about. So, I remember that, and we always remarked about it. You know if you’re really, really interested in all art, I should you think you’d look. You don’t have to buy, but you look! No, she didn’t look. And Mary was always managing her husband. They used to dream up activities for the Women’s Board.

Blum: Such as?

Martyl: They formed the Women’s Board for the activities. Like all supportive boards for various departments, this was a supportive board of all the social ladies interested in art, to raise the image of the Art Institute, and to bring people in. It’s a big deal, and it still is, to bring in hordes of people. They started by doing that. So they involved local artists, like me.

Blum: You were on the Women’s Board for a while. How did that happen?

Martyl: Well that was in the very beginning, when it was formed. I’m not privy to the machinations of who they decided on, but they were mostly well-known socialites. And they made a decision that they needed an artist on the board that was a prominent artist, so they could take advice from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Well, I was on it for about a few months; and I found out it turned out to be mostly a lunch party organization. And so after I’d been to everybody’s apartment, and had all these fabulous lunches, I ran into Katharine Kuh, who said, “How can you do this?”

Blum: Did she think it was a waste of time?

Martyl: She thought it was a terrible idea. And so I, sheepishly, said, “Well, I don’t know; I thought maybe they wanted advice.” But she was much more sophisticated; and said, “They’re not going to listen to you! You’re just there for window dressing.” So I resigned. She was quite right.

Blum: But you lasted about four years on the board.

Martyl: Are you sure?

Blum: I read that in some of your bios, yes, you lasted about four years. However, there was an exchange of letters before you actually threw in the towel.

Martyl: Really? It’s hard to believe.

Blum: They said in a letter, written to you, that you had to attend three out of four meetings, and if you didn’t come to the meetings, you have automatically resigned.

Martyl: Oh. Well, you remember the detail. Yes.

Blum: By not going to meetings, were you were showing your…

Martyl: Disdain for the whole thing. Well, I guess I just stopped going. I didn’t realize that I carried on that long a time. Obviously, they were not interested in advice from an artist, but it seemed like a good idea. And it took a while for the Women’s Board to get going; and then they met in this wonderful room that Susie Morton Zurcher Davidson––and there’s another name in there that begins with an H, it’s Hamill––but the members’ room was so beautiful. It

was in the lower level, and was filled with her choice of furniture, and was a lovely lounge, for some years.

Blum: Well they had, before construction, a beautiful boardroom, the women’s boardroom. And they did go on to sponsor the Junior Museum.

Martyl: But this was a members’ lounge, not the Women’s Board, or the trustee room. No, no, this was, you know, open to the membership but it got abused. Like all things, it shrunk and shrunk till it doesn’t exist anymore, except for three chairs in front of the dining room.

Blum: Well maybe our current expansion plan will include such amenities.

Martyl: But people take advantage, you know. They spent the whole day there: brought in their food, and read all the literature. It got to be a burden.

Blum: Well that speaks to it being comfortable. You said you had an experience in St. Louis that you wanted to include. What was that?

Martyl: Well it is an observation. The first and interesting thing to me is that sometimes when you are good at something, and you start out in lower middle school, high school, the proclivity for whatever talent stays with you for your whole life. And that happened to me. I know it happens to others. When I was at Mary Institute, I was the art editor of The Chronicle, their publication. And then, when I went to Washington University, I was the art editor of The Eliot, the magazine. And then, when I came to Chicago––and that is a big story in itself––I became art editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Interesting thing there is that it pursues you somehow; something you just fell into it. Well, it just is a use of a talent, which is just fine. I remember there was also an episode, which was highly publicized in the English department of Washington University.

Blum: What was that?

Martyl: Tennessee Williams was a member of the famous class of playwriting. I don’t think you asked me about it, but I’ll tell you, cause it’s interesting, and I’ve given an oral history about it to various authors. There was one class in the English department at Washington University, called English 16. It was taught by William Glasgow Bruce Carson. I took that playwriting class. In the class was a sallow looking young man named Tom Williams. So the interesting thing about it was, he must have been known to Mr. Carson, because he was not in my college class. He just took this class in playwriting and he sat in the front with the teacher, facing the class. That’s my observation. I always thought it was strange, but I think probably Carson thought he was a talent. The exam at the end of the year was to write a play. So we all wrote a play. Williams wrote a play. I remember he read it out loud, before the final one. I remember doing my zoology homework during his reading because it was so dull, and he had such a whiney voice. I paid no attention to it, but I know it’s on the list of his plays now. Well it turns out, my observations about him––I was probably seventeen or eighteen, no, I was older than that; I was graduating, so I was twenty––well even though at twenty years old you have a different attitude toward boys. I was always very critical anyway, that’s just, I guess, part of my nature, and he was not attractive. I remember him wearing a brown suit the whole year that turned sort of purple and shiny, because he never changed it. He had a whiney voice, a sallow complexion, and tight curly hair. Well, the final honors at graduation were the awarding of the best plays. It was a big deal at graduation at Washington University. And the young man that won the first prize became editor of the Kansas City Star. The second prize was Martyl, and the third prize was Tennessee Williams, then known as Thomas Lanier Williams. He had a quite a row with professor Carson, I was told later. The awards were a kind of a distinguished thing. The play I wrote was about an experience that I witnessed in Ste. Genevieve, and it was called—gosh, what was it called? "Carnival." Well, it just goes to show you, you never know.

There was one other close friend of mine, who was the editor of The Eliot magazine, when I was the art editor, his name was Ed Mead, later known as Shepherd Mead. That was his writing name. We were close friends. And his great hit play on Broadway was "How To Succeed Without Really Trying," the first play on how to do without really trying. There were a whole series of books like that. Well that was Shepherd Mead. He moved to England, and we lost track of one another.

Blum: It seems you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Martyl: You mean about Tom Williams?

Blum: Yes.

Martyl: Well, yes. He turned out to be quite famous.

Blum: Martyl, you’ve described him visually. What was his personality like?

Martyl: Well I said he had a whiney voice, and he had a row with the professor, cause he didn’t get… I mean I had a prize beyond him, you know.

Blum: Did you ever have any contact with him outside of the class?

Martyl: No. Never. He’s the kind of guy you never want to date. It turns out he was gay to start with, but in those days, it was all closeted. And he had a loony tune of a mother, who lived in the Gatesworth Hotel, that turned into the Gatesworth Manor, where elderly mostly populated it. It would be called a senior residence now. Actually, it was an Episcopalian… But that was a long time ago. They were the first to do that. They bought a lovely hotel called the Gatesworth; and it was populated with ex-deans, ex-professors, stockbrokers, and assorted socialites of certain age. His mother was in there. It’s amazing.

Blum: Are there other collectors you would like to speak about?

Martyl: The other person, when it came to collectors, and discussions of Picasso, had to do with Vladimir Golschmann, who was a very close friend, he and his wife, Odette. And he was the conductor of the St. Louis Symphony for years. A very attractive, French couple.

Blum: What did he collect?

Martyl: He collected mostly Picassos. And his way of getting them was: after every concert on a Saturday night, he would go out to the Westwood Country Club and play poker with some of the trustees, or benefactors and win. And all his winnings went into Picassos. So when he showed me his things that he would acquire––it was in that ugly, ugly jerk period of Picasso that I referred to before. And so he and I would have big discussions about that period.

Blum: Did you tell him how you felt about that period in Picasso’s work?

Martyl: Yes. I didn’t use the word “jerk”, it was hard to define ugly, to me it was brutal. Well, as I see it, it was really a monetary thing. Golschmann died a long time ago now; but Picasso is the only artist that has kept his value, and greatly increased, probably more than any living, modern, contemporary artist in the whole world in the history of art.

Blum: Have you had the experience where a painting of yours, or a drawing, sold at one price and three or ten years later, it had either dropped significantly, or risen in value?

Martyl: It has never dropped; it’s only risen and doubled and tripled. Part of it kept pace with inflation, and the other has just increased.

Blum: How do you feel about things of yours, for instance, selling for fabulous amounts, and you not getting any part of that increased value?

Martyl: You get half of it.

Blum: In the first sale. But do you get half of it when it resells?

Martyl: Oh, no. Are you talking about long-term or are you talking about the modern electronic e-bay? I get nothing. That’s one of the problems of even jazz artists, and theater people, and so on.

Blum: How do you feel about this situation?

Martyl: About residuals? There’s no union to protect artists, Artists Equity never… amongst the visual artists, other than New York, never caught on. I spent some time trying, fighting the good fight. There’s something about the nature, or the individuality of artists––certainly in the Chicago area––that their attitude was: What’s in it for me? They could never see the big picture. New York artists were more sophisticated. I’m not sure now whether it exists. But Actors Equity, everybody knows how important that is; that protects the actors. But unions have suffered. And no, there’s no residuals. Never.

Blum: How do you feel about this situation?

Martyl: There was a law that was passed to cover that but it never got anywhere. I remember the dealers had to do something. I remember but it was so impractical. You couldn’t keep track of it. If you bought a Henry Moore in England, and you brought it to this country, and then you resold it, Henry Moore was supposed to get a percentage of that sale.

Blum: Only because it came trans-Atlantic or because it was resold?

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Martyl: No, just because it was resold. Meaning you’d have an ongoing interest in the work of art. And that, I’m told, only happened in New York and L.A. It does not exist and that law is a state thing now. It should be federal. But there’s also a law that says an artist can never give his works, and take a tax deduction. That’s a well-known stupid law; and Ted Kennedy’s been trying to change it for decades. And it was ruined by––I don’t know who knows this story; I think it’s quite well-known, but I’ll tell it to you about the Baroness [Hilda] Rebay, in New York.

Blum: With the Guggenheim?

Martyl: She was the consort of Simon Guggenheim. And she was a painter; and she got him to turn over his mansion on Fifth Avenue for a public museum. I used to go there, in my youth. She had him buy Kandinskys, lots of Kandinskys. The first non-objective works that I ever saw were there. I remember I thought then, the incongruity of playing Bach’s music with this wild painting.

Blum: Was his house open to the public?

Martyl: Yes. It was his house as the museum. Well she was an artist and he bought her work as well. She made the fatal mistake of taking a huge tax deduction herself, for having sold at her inflated prices. I mean she charged a hundred thousand dollars; in those days, it would be ten thousand because he was a very rich man, and so she gave the works to the museum. And so the heavy hand of the IRS law came along, and said, you can’t do that. Nobody else can do it either. That’s how it started. She took advantage.

Blum: Do you think artists are treated fairly in this way?

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Martyl: No, I don’t think so at all. Rothko was an example. He could have given his work to a museum and taken a large tax deduction. It turned into a terrible row with the dealer, Marlborough Gallery, that tried to make money. I guess you could call it plain fraud. Many people don’t seem to be too upset about it in the art world. As soon as anything, whether it’s science or art, gets into the megabucks, the government steps in. Lots of people want to make money. And money gets to be of such ongoing importance that I find it just kind of pathetic.

Blum: Well there was an incident in your career that gained notice of many people; it certainly was in the newspaper. You had been commissioned to paint a portrait of a bank executive at the Harris Bank.

Martyl: Yes. Well that’s a famous incident.

Blum: Please tell the story. I just read about it; you lived it, so you tell the story.

Martyl: Well, I’m not sure of the exact dates anymore. But it was between 1978 and 1981. The president of the Harris Bank––all presidents of banks get their portraits painted. At the 1st National Bank, all those presidents' portraits seemed alike all hung in a row along the wall. Katharine Kuh was appointed to make an art collection for the 1st National Bank. The example and tone was set because the Chase Bank in Manhattan—I believe it was the Chase that was the first to have a significant art collection, of famous artists. So the 1st National Bank in Chicago decided to do the same. Gaylord Freeman, who was an enlightened president of the bank, and his wife, persuaded Katharine Kuh, who was then the curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute, to form a collection, which she subsequently did. They published a big book about it. I tell you this because it was the Russell family, his name was Paul Russell but he was called Pete Russell. He was a trustee of the University of Chicago. He was also president of the Harris Bank and they wanted a portrait painted of him.

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Blum: Was this the Harris Bank, or was this the 1st National?

Martyl: Harris Bank. I’m telling you this because it was Katharine Kuh who recommended me, as the painter. They looked around and didn’t know who to hire and so they went to Mrs. Kuh, Katharine, and she recommended me. The idea was in my contract that I didn’t paint photographic portraits, that the style of my painting was such that it would be a work of art, not photographic. And that was agreeable. And so I was given a tour of the bank, I remember. Banks at that time were very luxurious. Their boardroom and meeting rooms had period furniture, and I don’t know what all. I remember being taken on a tour of the Harris Bank, where they had brought over from the U.K. a whole drawing room, paneling and all, with a full-length portrait, which I was shown of an English gentleman but he was cut off at the knees. The portrait had to fit into a certain area. And whoever the decorator was–– probably somebody you and I know––but the legs shouldn't have been cut off to fit the dado of the room. And then I remember saying to my host, “Do all bankers wear black suits?” And he very seriously said, “No. They sometimes wear navy blue.” Well this is the prelude. I had met Paul Russell, and I knew his wife and his kids and maybe that influenced the family for me to get the commission. So I painted the portrait, to make a short story, a long story shorter, I should say. I painted the portrait and the family was thrilled. The bank was happy. Everything was fine. I was paid. And it was a good painting, as well as having a likeness. I’m able to do that. I don’t see any point in getting an artist to paint your portrait if it has no resemblance. But I can tell a footnote: Ellsworth Kelly did a portrait of Joe Pulitzer, Jr., and there’s no connection to him at all. But, you know, his name is on it. It could have been my poodle. Anyway. Everybody was happy with my painting at the bank. Six months later, I get a letter from Stanley Harris, “Could you please come down? We decided to put all the portraits in the boardroom, side-by-side. And your painting stands out from all the others, so will you come and match it with the others?” When I read that, I mean I thought to

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myself, I must answer this letter. And instead of being upset, I thought I’d give him a little bit of a history of art lesson—how things like that simply aren’t done. But mind you, he was one of Chicago's cultural leaders. Stanley Harris was pretty dumb, but that’s what he asked. So I wrote a very, I thought, a very nice letter, giving him a suggestion, “Hang the Russell portrait in another room.” All the bank portraits were distributed. That was one of the interesting things, every one of those previous presidents was in a different setting, in a different room, so they were dispersed. But somebody had the idea to put them all together like a rogue’s gallery, all in a row, in the boardroom. So I told them it couldn’t be done. Never heard an answer from him. Weeks and months went by, never heard anything. One of the Russell sons, Harold Russell, was at a cocktail party someplace; and mentioned, “You know, Martyl painted a portrait of my father, and I want to take my kids to see it, but they never know where it is. They said, ‘Oh, it’s a big bank; we don’t know.’” And some other person piped in, and said, “Oh, I think I heard that that painting was sent out to be fixed.”

Blum: Fixed?

Martyl: Fixed. Now that came back to me through the Russells, which enraged them and me no end.

Blum: Were the Russells still happy with the way the portrait was painted?

Martyl: Oh yes. They were quite upset at this rumor. So I remember, in my studio, on a given day, I phoned the bank. My husband was home and I remember he left the room, because of my telephone conversation.

Blum: Why? Because it was so feisty?

Martyl: I was so irate. But I have to take a few steps back. In order to find out who was in charge because they had many other pictures. I had to find some kind

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of caretaker. Since all banks were having art collections, there was somebody who was in charge of the art at the Harris Bank. I didn’t know who so I tried to find out.

Blum: Did they have a curator for the collection?

Martyl: Well apparently, they did. But through a friend of mine, named Joan Baretta, B-A-R-E-T-T-A—she was a vice-president, an important vice-president of the Harris Bank, and I knew her because I belong to the Chicago Network. It was formed with all the successful women at the time when the old boys’ network kept out women. And so the Chicago Network was formed with everybody that was prominent in Chicago: college professors, executives, a few creative people, heads of universities—all women. Joan Baretta was the president. And it is a wonderful organization; but being a network, I called Joan to ask who is in charge of the art at the Harris Bank. Well, she wasn’t quite sure, but she found out. That’s one of the cardinal principles of the Network, you must always answer a phone call or a message and return it. That was one of the rules of the Network. She found out. So I made a telephone call to this person; and I said, “I was told that the portrait of Paul Russell was sent out to be fixed. And that I couldn’t imagine anything like that, was this true?” Well, I can’t remember my exact words, but she was so upset she didn’t know how to handle this so she said, “Here, let me turn you over to my supervisor.” And I remember saying, “Who are you?” to this man. He said, “I’m a vice-president of the Harris Bank.” I said, “There are three hundred and twenty-six vice-presidents of the Harris Bank. What do you do?” He turned out to be in charge of furniture, a vice-president in charge of furniture. So I asked if the Russell portrait was sent out to be fixed. He said, “Yes, I think it was sent out. Yes, yes, it was fixed.” And I remember, I was going to California the next day; and I said, “Well, I’m going away, but may I see the portrait when I return?” “Oh yes.” We made a date. And I went in to the upper floor where they had a storeroom, with all kinds of objects

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and pictures sitting around; and he said, “This is where we have it.” And I looked around, and didn’t even recognize it.

Blum: What had changed?

Martyl: It was that… I mean it was that altered.

Blum: Dramatic change?

Martyl: He said, “This is it.” Well, needless to say, I lost it. I never have. I mean I’m pretty much in control but I yelled and screamed and carried on. And those two, the woman, who turned out to be Stanley’s girlfriend, (who walked through the Art Institute once), she was in charge of the art at the bank, I found out. I remember them standing there and smiling, like, the customer is always right. And so, I think I cried. The painting was so mutilated. I just—I was so upset! That’s the first time I ever heard of anybody doing such a thing. You know, when you work so hard on something, and have it mutilated, I said, “The least you can do is to have it restored, back to its original. And if the bank doesn’t want it, give it to the Russell family.” Well they agreed, because I was just so irate. They were in this mode of, you know, being very nice, and smiling. And I’m just yelling and screaming and crying. And so, they said, “Yes. Well yes, that’s a good idea. We’ll have it restored. Who do you recommend to do this?” And I said, “Well I’ll give you three names of conservators who would do that.” Maybe two, I didn’t know three—two. “I’ll give you two names.” And one of them was Louis Pomerantz, who was the conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago; and the other one, I don’t remember, but he was a bona fide conservator. Well, lo and behold: They chose Lou Pomerantz, much to my surprise and thankfulness, because he was a close friend of mine and they chose him. When he found out what had happened, he, of course, was frightfully upset. I mean this was unheard of! Over the past centuries, there’s been restoration and in-painting. People change things, and there are books about that; but to have this happen

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with people you know is pretty ludicrous. So the bank sent the painting out to Pomerantz's studio, which was outside of Chicago. He used to be in Evanston, but he moved and had a laboratory, I can’t remember where. But at any rate, they delivered the painting to him; and they signed a contract with him. One stipulation in his contract says that, “I photograph every step of restoration, and I will use it for educational purposes.” That’s in his contract.

Blum: Did he want that provision or did the bank want it?

Martyl: Pomerantz wanted that. So they signed it. Fine. Well, after a few days, Lou calls me on the phone and says, “You’re not going to believe this, but I made some tests; and the painting has been sanded off, it has not only been painted over. I can’t restore it. I could remove the top layer; but it was sanded off, and so you’d have to repaint it.” I said, “Well I’m not going to repaint it.” I mean that would be out of the question. He was just horrified. “Who would do such a thing? Where would you send a painting like this, to be sanded? I mean what kind of a person would do this? What kind of a technician of anything?” So, of course, the painting had been photographed in color by the family.

Blum: Before it was fixed?

Martyl: Yes, before it was mutilated. And so, Lou left it like that. I mean it can’t be restored. I have to say that after I had that fit and I saw the painting for the first time, I had a pre-arranged date, which I did once a year, with a friend, who was on the staff of the Chicago Tribune, named Carol Kleiman.

Blum: I wondered how news of it got into the press. You'd think the bank would not want any publicity.

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Martyl: K-L-E-I-M-A-N. She did a column for years, under her name, Carol Kleiman. First it was called “Working Woman.” Anyway, we would meet once a year for lunch at the Art Institute. Just happened I came from the Harris Bank to the dining room at the Art Institute where I had the date with her on the very day I had the episode at the bank. She said, “Well, Martyl, how are you? What’s new?” I said, “I’ll tell you what’s new.” And I told her the whole story that I’ve just related. Well, she sympathized and what she did was to march herself back to the Tribune, go to the editor of the business section, not the arts section, but the business section.

Blum: Where the bankers were sure to see it?

Martyl: Yes. And as a matter of fact, the Harris Bank had a big advertising program on with––was it a bear? No, no, it was a tiger, or…

Blum: A lion?

Martyl: A lion.

Blum: The Harris lion.

Martyl: Yes, the lion, where they gave away big lions for free, big like a teddy bear, it would be a lion, a stuffed animal. Yes, big stuffed animal. This was right in the midst of that campaign. So, of course, everybody that heard about it said, “You’ve got to sue them! You have to sue them!” And this is where I found out a lot of legal stuff that I didn’t know about.

Blum: What measures are in place to protect the painting?

Martyl: None.

Blum: Or to protect the artist?

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Martyl: Well, you know, everybody in the art world, and other worlds read the story and many said to me, “You must sue for such vandalism.” And I thought, Yeah, Martyl will sue the Harris Bank. I couldn’t quite see that. But then I had also a very good friend named Calvin Sawyier, who was a partner in the law firm, Winston Strawn. Governor Jim Thompson was the lawyer connected with art for Winston Strawn, that’s the firm that’s doing all the free stuff for Governor George Ryan. Anyway, Cal Sawyier looked into it for me, so I had legal advice.

Blum: What advice did he give you?

Martyl: He found out that an artist in Illinois, or any other place other than New York, does not have an ongoing interest in their work. In New York, you do. That means here I would have no legal stance. My name was signed but they sanded it off. So there is no legal connection to me. They weren’t misrepresenting my work anymore, because the name had disappeared. I informed Pomerantz about this forthcoming article in the Chicago Tribune by the head of the business section, a very nice man. He called me and I said, “If you would hold off your article, I can get you a picture from the conservator.” Because you see, in his contract, he said, “I take pictures all along the way.” And he had pictures of everything. Pomerantz tried to find out from the bank, from anybody in the bank he could talk to, to ask where this painting was sent. And they stonewalled it. They never would say. To this day they never said.

Blum: Did you ever find out?

Martyl: Never. Never.

Blum: That was a well-kept secret, wasn’t it?

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Martyl: Yes. And whatever happened to the painting, I have no idea. I had nothing more to do with it.

Blum: Well it wasn’t your painting any longer. Yours had been destroyed.

Martyl: I don’t know what they did. I have no idea. As it turned out, the editor said he would wait for Pomerantz's photograph. I said, “Just wait a few days, and I’ll give you the before and after.” So he did wait, and Pomerantz sent him the photograph; and that started the big row in the newspapers against the Harris Bank.

Blum: It was very well covered.

Martyl: It was well covered nationwide; because I remember when I went to Santa Fe soon after––and everybody there reads the financial page of the Tribune–– everybody in Santa Fe knew about it. That I knew.

Blum: But it does raise a larger issue?

Martyl: A much larger issue. Various magazines picked it up, in the art world. It had a ripple effect, in that sense.

Blum: Did any benefit ever come from this exposé?

Martyl: No legal benefit whatsoever, because there’s no organization to do that. There’s no Artists Equity; it never took off in Chicago; and there’s no representation for artists.

Blum: Why do you think Equity never worked in Chicago?

Martyl: I think because artists are mostly individuals thinking of themselves all the time. “What’s in it for me?” And they couldn’t see any benefit. Well, you

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know, what are the benefits? My portrait would have been a benefit. I worked very hard for Artists Equity, at one time. I was on the board, and there were lots of dedicated people; you couldn’t get the well-known artists on board. They didn’t need Artists Equity because the successful ones made money. And the so-called, non-successful ones, the ones that didn’t have extra funds, didn’t want to pay any dues. “What’s in it for me?” They couldn’t understand why they should belong to it. Artists can be very shortsighted.

Blum: And as you point out, artists are such individualists. Maybe that played a part.

Martyl: Basically I think that's correct. It played a big part in it. They’re individualists. Well, so are actors and writers and they have their protective societies. Other than the reason you gave, I think that’s the kindest to say is they don’t see the big picture. Painters in Chicago didn’t want to see things in a collective way. And of course, much art now is collective. It’s like science. Everything’s done in groups. But Artists Equity got nowhere. And that was one of the episodes of my past in art. But there are all sorts of fraudulent things that happen. There was this brief phenomenon in Chicago called Arts International, well now there is a similar promotion called Starving Artists; but back then, there was Arts International and it was on the stock exchange. It was owned by Jack Solomon, who had the Circle Gallery on Michigan Avenue. They sold all this crap on a side street. There's an interesting story about that.

Blum: What is it?

Martyl: I think that would have been in the 1960s, perhaps. Have you not heard of Arts International?

Blum: No.

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Martyl: Well, I mentioned my friend Carl Holty, who was a New York artist who taught at Brooklyn College and at various other university art departments. He happened to be in Oklahoma and he had a very talented Chinese student. And so Carl told him, “When you go to Chicago, call Martyl.” He called me on the phone, and…

[Tape 4: Side A]

Blum: Where did you say he was living?

Martyl: On Burton Place in Chicago. I thought that was a pretty fancy address for a young art student. And I said, “Well what are you doing?” And he said, “I work for Arts International. I make much money for them.” “Oh,” I said, “I heard about them.” And he said, “I want to buy a car, and come out to see you.” I thought there was a language barrier there; but he did buy a car, and come out to see me. And we became friends. And his name was John Chi, C- H-I. Johnny Chi. He was a lovely young man; and we had quite a nice though rather brief friendship, I guess for a couple of years. Well, he invited us to dinner, in that area, where you cannot park your car. And it’s still true. There’s nowhere to park in that area.

Blum: Do you mean on Burton?

Martyl: On Burton and Astor and all those streets. He lived in a house on the second floor. And we asked him about the parking, and he said, “Oh it’s no problem parking, I pay the police.” So my husband, being very straight, said, “But John, you’re not supposed to do that. That’s terrible!” And he said, “Oh, my father is chief of police in Taiwan. And I know, policemen need money.” So, you know, he’d go there, and all the police would say, “Hi Johnny!" He found always a place to park our car, his car. And then we saw what he was doing. He made much money for Arts International because he had paintings

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piled under his bed, in his bathroom, under the rugs, everyplace! And my husband calculated how long it would take him to paint that many paintings. It was something like ten or twelve and a half minutes a picture for ten dollars a picture. And of course, the Arts International sold these at seventy- five dollars including a cheap frame.

Blum: Did he copy other artists?

Martyl: No. No, he did all sorts of original stuff. But I mean he was talented, so then I said, “Johnny! How can a talented person like you do this?” He showed me this Chinese painting. He was doing some Chinese motif for bathrooms. He said, “Oh, I writing in Chinese. This is very bad painting.” And that was his way of compensating his conscience. He was a fascinating young man. But you see, there’s these people making money out of bad art. Now they’re called Starving Artists, and the promoters rent rooms in all the hotels around the suburbs, and you see it advertised on television. People that don’t know are buying in places like the Woodfield Shopping Center. They have a gallery, they pay high rent, for those who want to buy pictures and don’t know what they’re buying. They spend money on very mediocre art.

Blum: Well what are legitimate artists trying to do about this?

Martyl: Something like that? They can do nothing. Oh, there was an exposure on Channel 7 a few years ago, by a friend of mine from the network who isn’t there anymore. She was an anchorperson. I told her about this and she investigated. And it was a big scandal, the exposure on the television. Well of course, that got nowhere. It was an interesting story. It showed the fraudulent scam. They called it French paintings, but they’re made in China and other places, where they get copied. The network went over there, and they had photographs of an assembly line. One person would paint a tree, another one would paint the sky, another one paint… It was an assembly line product sent to this country. I dare say it’s still going on. We just don’t know

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about it. It’s in another orbit. But I happened to know about it through Johnny Chi, who was madly in love with a Chinese movie actress, an absolutely gorgeous girl. And he moved to New York, got a degree, and she dumped him. And he committed suicide. And that’s the end of my story.

Blum: Tragic ending. Can we move to something in your career? Can we go to a time in your life when you were, as you said, a fellow traveler?

Martyl: Well now we’ve come to Chicago. My husband came first, because Enrico Fermi brought him for the Manhattan Project. But there was a shortage of places to live, so I would come and visit. Besides, I had to finish that mural for the Recorder of Deeds Building, in Washington. So he was here first. And then we finally got an apartment that was large enough for me to have a studio. It was Edward Teller’s apartment, when he went to Los Alamos. Then I proceeded to do a makeover to our way of thinking.

Blum: You made over the apartment?

Martyl: Yes. Rearranged it, and it was very good-looking. If I have to say so, because a Chicago apartment, in itself—I came from a city where everybody I knew lived in a house. St. Louis was called a city of homes. I never knew anybody that lived in an apartment. I guess there were some in St. Louis. But during the war, there were some, and some of the faculty lived in an apartment. But everybody I knew lived in a big house. And when I came to Chicago, I found people who’d lived their whole lives in an apartment. I couldn’t believe it.

Blum: You were very sheltered.

Martyl: I guess. But I’ve been around. I’ve been all over. You know. But Chicago was like that. And so, we were on the third floor of 5723 Kimbark. I say the place because not only was Edward Teller’s apartment there, but also Edward Shils, S-H-I-L-S, famous sociologist, a sociology professor, lived there. He

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was famous. He was on the first floor. And he had five thousand books in his apartment, like living in the stacks. He was also on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. And so we were very good friends.

Blum: Was Alex on that committee?

Martyl: No. Alex was doing all this secret work, where you couldn’t say when we were going, who was coming to see you, and all that. So it was a rather closed group of very famous people. And I’ve told about this in fragments, I’ve done an oral history on Leo Szilard, for example. Somebody wants me to do an oral history on Enrico Fermi, which I can do. I've been asked about this in the more recent past. I made a list of our close friends who had won Nobel Prizes, and there was something like seventeen.

Blum: That is a rarified atmosphere.

Martyl: Well I never ever sat down and thought of that, yes. So that’s why I’m telling you this. The bar was very high on brains, I guess you’d say. And that’s where I've always had a hard time with most artists. It’s just that those were two different worlds, and they needn’t be. And it’s still a struggle.

Blum: You wanted to bring them together.

Martyl: Yes. But you know, it’s like one side of the brain and the other side of the brain, and it was really, really difficult. I tried socially to do it, desperately, and had some interesting results, at least stories to dine out on, as a result of this.

Blum: But you’ve also said that this influence…

Martyl: It was a big influence on me, personally.

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Blum: And your work?

Martyl: And my work.

Blum: An example of what grew out of this blended environment is the synapse series.

Martyl: It did grow out of it, but much later. I mean I was talking about the secret times when the bomb was dropped and the Manhattan Project was revealed. The scientists worked night and day, everybody worked really hard, and that’s all been documented. And there was just so much that went on. There was Edward Teller, who I subsequently called Dr. Strangelove. I did not admire him though lots of other people did, because he was so brilliant. But he did not win a Nobel Prize. He was a very abrasive character, and very brilliant. He’s the one that was responsible for the tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer. So this association with so many scientists opened up a whole other world, not only for me, personally, and it broadened my vision. I said fellow traveler because I really never studied physics, and as I said earlier about that, I was innumerate. I can’t do arithmetic. But then I felt very good because when I announced that I’m innumerate, I learned that the head of mathematics at the Argonne National Laboratory could not do arithmetic either.

Blum: Oh, you were in good company.

Martyl: It was very heartening, yes. There’s arithmetic, and then there’s mathematics. I can’t do either one. But I know all the words. I know the names of particles, and I was familiar with all the wonderful accelerators, and so forth. And then it developed after I had drawn and painted these apparatuses. I had this exhibition in New York of radio oscillators, and all kinds of cyclotrons and stuff. It got more interesting.

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Blum: Was this something that was in the air?

Martyl: It was not in the air. Nobody was doing it, well, Leger did. It was visual and unusual, paintings of men and machines.

Blum: Well I’m not talking about the secretive part. I’m talking about later when we were so consumed with science.

Martyl: Yes. Well, I say Leger was one of the early artists to do that, in Europe. And the Germans, they all saw where man related to, or was antithetical to machines. And when you mentioned the synapse; well, when I started doing that series, I called it that. People didn’t even know what synapse was. They didn’t know what the word meant. So, it was premature.

Blum: Your work was premature for people to understand?

Martyl: Yes. For the subject matter. Nobody knew what the hell they were looking at. I took the liberty to learn. I found out what electric circuits looked like––and they were quite visible and large––Los Alamos developed the electric circuit for computers, and it was in huge rooms. Now it’s microscopic. So you see what’s happened in sixty years. That’s what’s happened to technology. But when I would see these objects, they seemed morphic. They had human shapes to them, these machine parts. They were quite related, like all of nature is related. You know if you get an airplane view of the Mississippi delta, it looks exactly like a piece of irradiated Plexiglas. If you put an electrode in it, you couldn’t tell the difference. Nature has its way of branching like trees. There are these repetitive forms in nature that are so fascinating. Science fits into that too. And these shapes of various parts of electric circuits are quite similar to our insides. Humans are all made up of electric circuits. The heart is electric, and so forth. So are all these connections in the brain. I thought this was the best idea that ever happened, since white

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bread; and that I would do it for the rest of my life. But then I’m good at ideas. It’s carrying them out that’s the big thing.

Blum: You did a synapse series.

Martyl: I did a whole lot of them.

Blum: How were they received by collectors, by dealers?

Martyl: Well, some collectors, yes, they sold well. Janson, for example, bought one of them. This is H.W. Janson, Horst W. Janson, the art historian.

Blum: You've called him Peter.

Martyl: His nickname was Peter. His real name was Horst. The Benjamin Collection, that went to Yale, they bought one. Anne Rorimer has one. The Bentons have a folding screen from that subject, and so do the Weissbourds. Remember Barney Weissbourd of Metropolitan Structures?

Blum: I didn’t know him, but I know his name, and I know his connection to Mies’s office and Joe Fujikawa.

Martyl: There’s going to be an exhibition of [Myron] Goldsmith's work at the Arts Club. Isn’t that neat?

Blum: Oh yes, it's overdue.

Martyl: Isn’t that great? I’m so happy.

Blum: So the synapse subject matter was not too esoteric for some people. It sold.

Martyl: Yes.

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Blum: What was your gallery at the time?

Martyl: Well, the interesting thing is that I was with the Fairweather Hardin Gallery. Sally Fairweather didn’t have a clue, didn’t understand. But Marianne Deson, that was the Deson-Zaks Gallery––they separated; but they started together. Marianne Deson, D-E-S-O-N––had a flair. You know, she was much more visually imaginative; and she thought the synapse series was really terrific. And so she had the exhibition of that, for which there was a series of postcards published, and so on. And I always had an endearment for her, to have recognized that. Also, I have to say, that I started out doing it in the traditional manner, acrylic on canvas. And they were in the exhibition. But somehow, I felt uneasy about the material. I mean you know, this was an ongoing thing. I had the idea.

Blum: Uneasy because you used traditional materials with avant-garde subject matter?

Martyl: Yes. And then I got the idea––I got it, actually, from my husband––because he used real electric circuits. He brought them home from his laboratory. And they’re quite beautiful. They’re two-dimensional, and they’re done with sometimes silver and gold, and all these interconnections of things. They are the real thing. And I asked about the material. And you know, they’re done on Mylar, a lot of it was on Mylar.

Blum: What was on Mylar, your work, or some of these circuits?

Martyl: No, the electric circuits are on Mylar. Well, I became an authority on Mylar. I found out all about it. I went to Cadillac Plastic, and found out about all the various weights, and what kind of Mylar, and so forth. So I bought a lifetime supply of the heaviest that’s made. I can tell you also that before the electronic age, the fashion industry used Mylar for their patterns. And

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Charles Benton told me that the film industry would have used Mylar, but it’s so strong that it would have broken the machines. So they didn’t use that Mylar, they used another kind of film. But it was developed post-World War II, and it’s a polyester film. And I chose the kind that comes aluminized, and it comes translucent. So when I changed to that medium, it seemed that it was in keeping with the subject matter.

Blum: So you updated not only the content, but the material too?

Martyl: And so the success came with people buying it in Mylar, rather than on canvas. It’s interesting. I have the canvases here in my studio. I’ve never shown them again. It’s just in an archive. There must be one large one, and maybe ten paintings on canvas, that I have. The Mylar works were shown in the State of Illinois Gallery, as a room by themselves. The curator of that exhibition was so intrigued with it, they had a special room for it. And it is special. People say, “Well you can tell it’s Martyl.” But it’s not me looking out, it’s me looking inward. It’s an introspective, conceptual idea. That’s my conceptual period. That exhibition was in more recent times, like 1990.

Blum: What determines the material you use: watercolor or oil, or acrylic, or Mylar? Do you do it in a series, or a single painting? What determines these variables?

Martyl: Well certain things just lend themselves to just the way, size too. How do you choose the size?

Blum: And size too. Yes.

Martyl: You know, it depends, of course, on the artist. Some things lend themselves to drawing. I’ve always have done drawings, and filled up sketchbooks. Drawings… then I can do a drawing from a drawing. I can do a watercolor from a drawing. I do a painting from a drawing.

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Blum: And a series of related work?

Martyl: Yes. It’s an inner feeling. Instinct dictates I must do this in a larger size. The color is important, and things like that dictate, for me.

Blum: So each piece is an individual choice?

Martyl: It’s arbitrary, depending on… In fact, I had so many drawings that I’m going to have a drawing show. Dealers usually don’t show drawings, unless they’re an old master or, you know, old stuff. Well I say this unequivocally, throughout the decades dealers always find that color is more saleable. And they color things that even shouldn’t be colored, just to sell them. Decorators do that a lot. Most people don’t know about drawings. You have to have a more sophisticated feeling about drawings, and about line, and things like that. And most don’t appreciate it unless it’s a famous drawing. And if you look at enough of them, you get a feeling for it. But most, I mean, I’m talking about the contemporary galleries that aren’t the famous ones in New York that have all the blue-chip artists. I don’t mean that. I mean across the U.S.A., you’ll find that drawings are very scarce in exhibitions. But they’re shown more so now. It’s in the air, as we say.

Blum: You mean they are popular now?

Martyl: Yes. I would say so. So that’s why I had a whole drawer full of drawings. Nobody ever wanted to see them, other than admire the sketchbooks, or something like that, which were the origins of the watercolors and the paintings.

Blum: As we began the session, you spoke about being the editor of several bulletins, magazines and one very important one. That was the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

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Martyl: That’s the one and only, actually. I mean I was an editor throughout my life in those different areas of high school, college. And now, having moved to Chicago, and the Manhattan Project being completed––having dropped the bomb––and there was a whole lot of anxiety about that. There were certain scientists who felt that it should not have happened. It’s bad enough to make the bomb, which was in competition, they thought, with Germany, the enemy. But that turned out not to be so, subsequently, but they didn’t know that. So there was this frenetic effort to get it. Germans were known to be highly technical, and they were sure that Hitler would have not only made the bomb, but would have used it, in desperation. Well it turned out he didn’t. And so there was the bomb. The history of its creation is all there for those who want to read about it, about Potsdam, and all the great heads of state that got together and formed the Cold War. Although Russia was our ally, we had this love/hate relationship with Russia that still continues, based on fear, well, the fear of the bomb to destroy people. This had never been done before. I mean armies fought armies, and army installations. But to destroy innocent people was what we did with the bomb. And my husband was in the group of sixty scientists––I’m pretty sure of that––who wrote a letter and signed a petition to President Truman. There are some stories that say he never received it, that it was intercepted by the Secretary of State. There was a group of people that thought that was a horrendous thing to have dropped the bomb twice. It should have been demonstrated because they thought that Japan was ready to…

Blum: Capitulate?

Martyl: Yes, to capitulate. Anyway, the other side of the story is, it saved fifty thousand American lives. They picked that number. Probably both were true. But at any rate, the fact that there was a group in Chicago that was adamant about that bomb: Nobel Prize winners, and smart professors, including my husband. What happened was that they formed a group that organized a

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publication, first, of a pamphlet. As I said earlier on, this atmosphere of brilliant people all gathered in Hyde Park around the University of Chicago was formidable. Besides, the university itself drew all kinds of people; and the Committee on Social Thought was formed by Robert Hutchins, and that brought all sorts of interesting people. So a cross-section, and an interdisciplinary quality of the highest order was prevalent then. And I’m told it’s never been equaled. I mean you think, Oh, the good old days. You know, that’s how it was. Well apparently, that’s been dispelled, because everybody has told me, even recently, that that era has never been duplicated. There have never been that many unusual geniuses in one place. So the petition was ignored. The bomb was dropped twice: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So there was again this social consciousness that came to the fore by a genius of a man, who was a professor at the University of Illinois. He was Eugene Rabinowitch-W-I-T-C-H-originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, which he always called St. Petersburg, never Leningrad. He knew Latin, he knew Greek, he knew three or four other romance languages, and could speak marvelous English. And he and another man, who was the roommate of Isaac Stern in New York, named Hy, H-Y Goldsmith. And they were writers as well as scientists, and they were trying to corral people with the idea that there was this unleashed force that people didn’t know anything about. The idea was that they should be informed. It shouldn’t be in the hands of the army, it should be in the hands of civilians. There were all these issues that thinking people with a social conscience tried to articulate. And they did. And they published this first pamphlet, and then it proliferated more and more important issues. Then they came to me, they wanted to put it in a magazine form, because just being in a four-page mimeographed pamphlet was not adequate. It had a growing audience. And so they asked me–– being the so-called resident artist in the scientific community––to do a cover for the magazine-to-be. Well, they set certain parameters. It had to come out every month, had to have a list of what was inside. And they had no money, and so what kind of cover could it be? So the rest is history.

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Blum: This was in 1947. Would you describe your design for the cover?

Martyl: So I used my smarts and I invented the Doomsday Clock, which turned out to be with my name attached to it, all these years. It’s a phenomenon in itself. The clock has a life of its own now. It’s amazing. You do things in your youth, you never know what comes back.

Blum: This was the cover for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. And you designed the clock face.

Martyl: Yeah, and that’s all been documented.

Blum: But there was meaning to the design.

Martyl: Well I chose the clock face because of the urgency and that time of the essence. That was the idea. Then I fooled around trying to do something literal, and then take away. That's the way I work. Now that’s what abstraction is. An abstract is something from reality. So I started with a clock, you know, with the hands and the numbers. And it gradually got into something very simple, and graphically good-looking. And then the only way, with no money, is to change the color of the paper. Get a different color every month. And then they could overprint what was inside, you know, the authors and the subjects on the outside. And that went on until this day, where it’s proliferated to be quite an important magazine. It still survives, sixty years later. And they make quite a to do, and the history channel did a whole story on the history of the Doomsday Clock, and things like that.

Blum: Was it built into the initial concept that the minutes to midnight changed, as the danger changed?

Martyl: That developed. I did not dream it all up in the beginning. It started out, you know, year after year, and then crises kept coming up, and it developed. And

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then one other crucial time in my contribution to this was, I was at some dinner or luncheon and I remember sitting at a table with a white tablecloth in a university building. One of the young men editors came out from a meeting, and spotted me and came over. He was Jamie Kalven, K-A-L-V-E-N, son of a famous law professor at the University of Chicago, who was the world’s expert in the First Amendment. Jamie Kalven. Well, we had a greeting, and, you know, “What are you doing here?” And he said, “Oh, I’m attending this meeting that’s going on. We’re trying to find out what direction the Bulletin should go, after all this…” The importance of the Bulletin, I must add, was that it’s not done by journalists, it’s done by the scientists themselves. In other words, it’s source material for editorials worldwide. It’s knowledge from the horse’s mouth. It doesn’t filter through people that write. You know.

Blum: When you were editor, you put this all together?

Martyl: I didn’t do the paste-ups, as they used to call it then. But I did the drawings to break up the monotony of the text. I did that. And then I had to read. That’s another thing, I had to read the ones that the editor would select that they thought should have an illustration. They’d send those to me and then I’d read it and decide if it was interesting or dull. Mostly dull. But some of it must have brushed off on me a little bit, by osmosis, you know. I got the gist. And so then I would find something succinct to illustrate. And I did that for a long time, for free. And then they decided as the magazine got more successful, they paid me. Then I got Rainey Bennett and various artist friends that would do drawings. Rainey, particularly, he loved it. He had the personality and the humor, and he lived in Hyde Park, so it was great. So Jamie Kalven said, “Oh, I’m in this meeting, and they don’t know what direction the Bulletin should go. You can’t be conjuring up fear, and we’ve got to do something. They don’t know what to do.” He explained to me what they were talking about. And I said, “Well, it’s obvious to me. You put the clock on the world.” “Oh my God,” he said, “that’s fantastic!” He went into

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the meeting and that solved the problem. And I tell you this story because you can see where an artist can have an impact, or input, if asked. They’re not used enough.

Blum: Well, you were pretty well connected too.

Martyl: Yes. But there’s no reason why other artists can’t be. That’s me, but I think there are more now.

Blum: Did you feel when you were editing the Bulletin that you were sort of stepping into Alex’s world?

Martyl: Oh, not at all. No, this is the art part. I didn’t have anything to do with the text. Except one year because of my influence, and another wonderful professor from the U.K., named Cyril Stanley Smith. We did an exhibition at the Renaissance Society, and there was a special edition of the Bulletin, called “Art and Science.” And that has great importance, documentary importance. And I wrote some of the introduction, I guess, and got all my friends to contribute, my artist friends. Janson, for one, did. You can look it up on the Internet; it had a lot of interesting articles. I looked over it recently. And it’s just as vital now as it ever has been. And of course, I think now, when I went to M.I.T. recently, there are a lot of young people that realize that science has just gotten much more of a grip on society. It’s hard to believe but you had to start impacting on society more than it ever did. As soon as things became billions of dollars, everybody takes notice. So it’s into the politics now and it’s into everything. And artists find great beauty in the microscopic biological world. And it’s quite common now.

Blum: Well you were a pioneer, in your idea that you so casually gave to the Bulletin.

Martyl: And they benefited by it.

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Blum: You designed it, and it was a gauge worldwide.

Martyl: With all these crises through history, they’ve moved the hands of the clock seventeen times. And there’s a whole history now of the movements of the clock, corresponding to certain things in world history, that they published.

Blum: Yes, I’ve seen that.

Martyl: That’s the fun part of being an artist. I mean when I look back, and am asked, “How do you feel when you…” Well, you know, when I see something I did that I really like in the past, a painting, I think, I’m glad I did that. It’s really good. I must remember to do that again sometime.

Blum: As I was reading some of the material in preparation for this oral history, I read a letter that, at first, I just didn’t understand. Let me read it. It was from Herman Baron, and dated 1950.

Martyl: Herman?

Blum: He writes, “Because of the political atmosphere, and the kind of work Alex is doing, I couldn’t be sure whether you wanted to show here. And so this summer, as I prepared the schedule, I left you out with real regret.”

Martyl: Well, I’d forgotten about that letter. And I can tell you about it, yes. And there again, dear Katharine Kuh. I should sue the State Department, or whatever. You know that’s the first thing to do.

Blum: Why?

Martyl: Well, I will explain, because it interfered with my career, actually, because of the Cold War. I have to tell you that my husband's dossier must be at least

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three or four inches high, or more. The FBI, the CIA, and all the other secret agencies then in the 1940s, spilled over into the 1950s with McCarthyism. And so because I was an artist, I was suspect although my husband had what was called Q clearance, it was the highest clearance you could get.

Blum: What kind of clearance?

Martyl: Q, the letter Q. Q clearance. Oppenheimer was removed of his Q clearance, in this great historical debacle, tragedy, I would say. Anyway, he had Q clearance. But I was the suspect, because I was an artist. You know, that’s kind of an idea that artists have too free a spirit, I suppose. And my friends were leftists, some of them. I was vindicated by all my rich friends. Artists that were leftists, too leftist, like Joe Jones, a Communist. This whole instigation of fear, of the instability of people, I don’t know whatever that is. But they followed us around wherever we went. And the only reason we know it is because our friends would tell us. It’s very intimidating to have the FBI come and visit you. And so they’d be all upset, and then tell us about it. That went on from the Manhattan Project up through the McCarthy era. The ineptness of the FBI and the CIA is legion to this day. Everybody knows now what they do and how inept they are. They were then too. So you know, so what’s new? They spent all this money and time following me around. Can you imagine? You know that’s just absurd.

Blum: Did you realize you were being followed?

Martyl: I was always told. No, I didn’t see anybody over my shoulder. You know. Actually, an FBI agent was thrown out of the Art Institute of Chicago by Frederick Sweet.

Blum: Because they were following you?

Martyl: Because they came to see him to check up on me.

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Blum: Oh, my goodness, to check up on you?

Martyl: And to check up on Alex, I guess. Sweet was so incensed, he told us about it. He told them to leave his office, to get out of there. They wanted to find out whether we were honest, and I don’t know what all. That’s the only thing I remember.

Blum: Do you think that had any impact on…

Martyl: Well I’m going to answer that, about the letter.

Blum: Yes, the letter.

Martyl: Well, the FBI started hanging around the A.C.A. Gallery, which had leftist artists in it. It was a, you know, leftist, radical; they called it a den of radicalism. Well, I’ll tell you what happened in 1941, now that you brought it up. Way back when the A.C.A. Gallery represented me––and I have to tell you, some of the greatest things happened to me when I had a gallery in New York. A lot of wonderful things happened in my career, through them. I was in all the big exhibitions in the East.

Blum: Was Herman Baron responsible…?

Martyl: He and his wife, yes. Herman Baron owned the A.C.A. Gallery. It’s still in existence and they used the name because it was so well-known. But here’s one of the reasons: there was a radical publication called The New Masses. Well a lot of well-known artists had drawings in it. I mean, you know, it was a journal, a leftist journal. I don’t know who published it, but it was known. There were a lot of well-known artists in it, everybody from Rockwell Kent to Ben Shahn had drawings in it, you know. And I never read it. Well, the A.C.A. Gallery, through this publication, put one of my lithographs on the

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cover of The New Masses. So that would be like saying I was, according to the FBI, a card-carrying Communist. I didn’t even know about it. But they put it on there thinking, that’s great to be on the cover of a magazine. It was workers. I did a whole series of drawings and watercolors of a western circus and these were pile-drivers putting up the tent. That was what was on the cover. Well, the FBI had a fit, I guess. That was one of the reasons, I guess, they were hanging around the A.C.A. Gallery. And this was very uncomfortable for the gallery. They didn’t want that. And that’s their sweet way to avoid it. I love those two.

[Tape 4: Side B]

Blum: The letter was very friendly.

Martyl: Oh we were close friends. They had a party for me every time I had an exhibition there. And they were beloved by lots of people and everybody knew them. One of the funny things I didn’t know really much about them, you know, I lived here, and they were there, and that’s one of the difficulties of a career. Unless you have a lot of assistants and secretaries, it’s very hard to have a gallery in New York, or some other place, because they forget about you, in a way, unless you have an exhibition. Well, the artists in New York are there. They’re the ones that keep hammering away. So you know, it’s not the most ideal, and it’s also quite expensive, sending a whole show to New York, and all.

Blum: Who pays for that?

Martyl: The artist. Always. Well that’s why I was always happy to sell my paintings, because it all went into buying the paints, and all the expenses of having a show, and all that stuff. The gallery does some: they do the invitations; sometimes they do the catalogue, which is important. I will never have an exhibition without a catalogue.

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Blum: Martyl, I have a question about not only the McCarthy era, but was it generally thought that abstract work was equivalent to Communism?

Martyl: No, I don’t think so.

Blum: Have you heard that before?

Martyl: No, because a lot of the leftist artists do quite representational work. I mean, I don’t think there was any connection. The representational, or subjective painting then, as I recall, had to do with subject matter rather than the expression of it, versus non-objective things. I don’t think the political forces knew enough about art to distinguish techniques or whether it had to do strictly with guilt by association. And still is, as far as I know.

Blum: Do you think that the attitude in the early 1950s injured your career?

Martyl: Well it cut short my New York connection with a gallery, which is not easy to obtain if you’re outside of New York. And it put a terrible strain on the A.C.A. Gallery, having these lurking agents hanging around. They told me that. I, of course, never ever saw them. But they said that there were FBI agents hanging around and that made it very uncomfortable in the gallery.

Blum: Well that’s understandable.

Martyl: And that would be understandable. And of course my friend Katharine Kuh was irate about it. She’s the one that said it impinged on my career, and I should do something about it, but I never did. I don’t know what there was to do. But everybody was having trouble that had any association—guilt by association. One of our closest friends, Martin Kamen, who discovered Carbon-14, a very distinguished physical chemist, actually was maligned in California. It was guilt by association in the beginning of all this. And

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actually sued not only the Chicago Tribune, and won, but the State Department, because they took his passport away and he won. One of the reasons he did, his wife was a writer for Time magazine, and that certainly helped. But those were very difficult times for any kind of thought that wasn’t conforming to… I don’t know what!

Blum: Did you know any other artist who had a similar experience?

Martyl: You mean harassment? Well I can’t speak for the harassment of those in the Communist party, cause I wasn’t privy to that in my life in St. Louis and also in Chicago. When I moved here it was all secret, everything. So there was no way to know what was happening. At least my life at that time was secret, in that you couldn’t say who came and who went. Any goings and comings were not to be talked about.

Blum: You were saying that galleries in New York were hard to get connected to if you didn't live there. In the 1950s, Dan Rich is reported to have said, “Chicago is a graveyard for artists.”

Martyl: He did say that?

Blum: Yes, he did.

Martyl: In a way he’s correct. And it’s still true.

Blum: Could you explain that?

Martyl: Well I would say that New York is still, in spite of everything, New York is still the cultural art center of the country. L.A., Los Angeles has taken some of that glitter away from New York, but the Midwest still suffers being the Midwest. And I think some of my success in St. Louis was the fact that I had success in New York, and the same in Chicago. I came to Chicago as a New

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York not a Chicago artist. I was here long enough that people, many people that should know, think that I went to the school of the Art Institute of Chicago which most artists that have stayed here did. But I never did. I taught there.

Blum: What about Chicago collectors? Where did they buy?

Martyl: Well, they went to New York, for several reasons. One: bigger choice. Two: it’s much better and more fun to go to New York than it is to go to what was then the art center here on Oak Street. Then it moved. The center of the Chicago gallery is more dispersed now; in 2006 it’s all over the place. But in the past, there were just certain areas, certain streets, where there were galleries. In fact, I can remember that the gallery owners would get together and talk about: Do you think if we move over here, will the critics come over there? Or should we stay here, because the critics…? The critics are like three. So you know, when you think about it, it’s quite provincial. But steadily and surely, it’s gotten better, because of the various international art fairs. I mean things have improved somewhat. But it isn’t an emphasis on Chicago, it’s what’s brought in from outside.

Blum: So you think there’s a more cosmopolitan climate?

Martyl: There’s a slight improvement.

Blum: Do collectors still go to New York?

Martyl: Oh absolutely. Well there’s a gallery here that represents New York artists. St. Louis also has a gallery that only takes New York artists, and they have to be famous New York artists, which in the slang is called blue-chip. This means they’re international artists, all the ones that are well-known now, they represent. So that you don’t really have to go to New York; but they also are bankrolled by very wealthy backers. Money enters into the art world in a

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big way, big time. Always has, nothing new about that. Everything is the same since the popes.

Blum: Yes. Are you saying that there’s a New York market, somewhat of a Chicago market, and a West Coast market?

Martyl: And a western one, which is off the radar. Big western market for people from Texas, who own ranches and big oil. But that’s a whole other world of highly-priced, representational art work.

Blum: Have you ever sold to that market?

Martyl: No, no. No. That would be almost in the realm of that terrible popular artist; there’s almost one every generation. A long time ago there was somebody that did children with great big black hollow eyes. And there were galleries all over, in every city. Well that blew away. People bought it, and collected it. And then there’s another one now that does these terrible representational cottages with flowers all around. [Thomas Kincaid]

Blum: Are you saying there’s fashion in art?

Martyl: Well this is kitsch. This is, as I said, off the radar. This is another world, but there’s big money in it.

Blum: There was a time in your career when you were represented by several galleries at the same time. Is that unusual?

Martyl: Perhaps it is.

Blum: How did the gallery owners, or the gallery directors work that?

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Martyl: Well it got very casual. I mean the general arrangement is that for what sold in a gallery, they get the commission, or if they get me a commission to paint, whatever the activities of that gallery. If you go someplace else they don’t mind.

Blum: Were they in competition with one another?

Martyl: No, I don’t think so. They weren’t in the same cities. And I have also had an agent that does not have a gallery, which is Thea Burger, who represents me to all her clients, commercial and otherwise, and sells my work without a gallery. She doesn’t have exhibitions. This is called an artist’s agent. That’s become very popular.

Blum: When you sign a contract with either a gallery or an agent, do they have exclusive rights within a certain area?

Martyl: Personally, with me, no. I had lots of galleries, in fact, I’ve had more than three galleries at one time. One was in the Merchandise Mart, one was in Geneva, the St. Charles area, and another one was in downtown Chicago.

Blum: You said you would never have an exhibition without a catalogue because that’s what lasts after the show has come down. Is that your paper trail?

Martyl: Yes. More of a documentation.

Blum: In one of your catalogues, Janson wrote, “The house of modernity has many rooms. I’m grateful that Martyl has chosen one towards the garden, rather than the overcrowded discotheque.” What did he mean?

Martyl: I think he probably meant that there are many different styles of painting. There’s, you know, the non-objective and the subjective, the surreal and the

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representational and given that, many, many different expressions and my particular one is just as significant. I guess that’s what he meant.

Blum: Did he infer that maybe you were more moderate in the way you treated abstraction?

Martyl: Probably.

Blum: Towards the garden––that conjures up a beautiful peaceful setting.

Martyl: Well my method of expressing in drawing or painting is to start from the representational and then abstract from it. In other words, take away rather than starting with the abstract and bringing out images. It’s just a reversal in thinking, and it’s the way I prefer to do it.

Blum: Well the reason that comment seems important is because there were many essays in catalogues that followed this one––this was an early one, in the 1940s––and they repeated Janson's statement. And they continued to repeat it. So it must have held true for them, across time.

Martyl: Well of course it was on the rise, that’s because of the rise of Pop Art, for one thing. And for non-objective––the New York School of non-objective art, which was championed by Harold Rosenberg, who was a rather interesting person. Art historians and art critics, journalists, like to think––and I think they’re probably true in thinking it––that they direct the way art is accepted. In other words, they love to turn a phrase, the sound bite like the Monster School, things like that, they make up. And then it’s pursued for the rest of art’s eternity.

Blum: Do you believe in their capacity to direct?

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Martyl: Well it’s just the way it is, because the press is important. I mean we all have to have it. It’s a communicative thing. And they’re earning their living. And so they, particularly in the New York School, if you read the history of it, they called it the Jewish mafia in New York, because there were the three famous art critics that championed the movement, you know, [Harold] Rosenberg, Clement…

Blum: Greenberg.

Martyl: Greenberg. Clement Greenberg, and––who was the third one? Oh dear. [Hilton Kramer]. And they actually put those artists on the map. You know, I mean they just did. Plus some other factors that came to play. Part of it was the timing in our political situation. Through the State Department I was privy to the information of that. I remember that was in 1960 because I was in Europe at the time, and had met State Department people who were talking about the fact that finally we have our own art in America, instead of aping the Europeans. That was the theme. But it was not entirely true, because they were all Europeans that were doing that.

Blum: Because Europeans had fled Europe?

Martyl: And came to New York. But you know, it was this American thing. We don’t have to look to France anymore, who was the arbiter of taste for so long. This was a resurgence of being American. That was part of it, not entirely all of it.

Blum: You talked about the critic. And I know that you have scrapbooks, many scrapbooks, of articles that were written about you and your work. Do you think that what was written about you was mostly fair?

Martyl: Yes, I think so. I think it was.

Blum: Do you think critics helped your career?

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Martyl: I’m sure they did. Well that’s one of the anomalies. I mean you have to have the press, and if you don’t I mean you’re like the wildflower along the road that blooms and nobody sees, smells or hears. It’s sort of essential. I mean the days of the lone genius, starving in the garret, and being discovered, is, I think, pretty remote. Not that it never would happen, but it’s not likely. It’s the same in other fields too, in all creative fields.

Blum: In 1965 you had a dispute with the Los Angeles Times, because Henry Seldis called your work that of a dilettante.

Martyl: I’d forgotten that. I remember my dealer, Charles Feingarten, was upset by that.

Blum: You must have been too because you wrote a letter to the editor.

Martyl: I don’t remember that.

Blum: You didn’t let anything get by you.

Martyl: I guess I was not used to that.

Blum: You wrote a letter to the editor, saying that Seldis misinformed the public and he should be made accountable.

Martyl: I did?

Blum: Yes. What was that story?

Martyl: I guess I was upset at being called a dilettante, because that certainly was not true. But I don’t remember that particular retort. Is that all I said? That’s not so bad.

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Blum: Well that’s the essence of what you said. Of course you didn’t say it in just two lines. Along those lines, there was another problem with the press. In 1956 you took issue with an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the Illinois State Fair barring abstract paintings. And because they had that restriction you told your dealer not to submit your work.

Martyl: Perhaps that’s where some of the information that’s floating around that I identified as an abstract painter comes from, perhaps. I don’t know. I don’t remember that.

Blum: This was in 1956.

Martyl: No, but those things do persist. I’ve been called an abstract landscapist. Well, you know, it’s not exactly right, but then drawing and painting is beyond words, in my view. I mean you can’t really describe…

Blum: Well I think the rest of this story is that this was a juried show. And Eleanor Jewett…

Martyl: Was she a juror?

Blum: She was one of the jurors. And you said…

Martyl: Something critical, I’m certain. She was a very, very reactionary critic.

Blum: Yes. You said that this is like judging pigs, and not paintings.

Martyl: I said that?

Blum: Yes. And of course, with her being a juror, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran the article and she got angry with them.

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Martyl: I see. I started stirring the pot a little. Well, yes. Probably it was worthwhile. She was known as that.

Blum: Well she was very supportive of the sanity in art approach.

Martyl: Yes, well. She was a zealot for being very, very conservative. I remember when I came to Chicago there was an art critic named C.J. Bulliet. He wrote a book about conservative art, I think. But at any rate, this has to do not so much with the personalities, but the attitude. The attitude, the reason why the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was so kind to me––not just to me personally, but to art in general––was the fact that the leadership of the paper found that was important. So that when you had an exhibition, it was important to write about it, or report on art. Because the editors were interested in art. We moved to Chicago, and I found out that the press here was not supportive, that they poo-pooed everything that was done. And I remember the phrase that was used––it could be by C.J. Bulliet, but I’m not sure––every exhibition in those years from the 1940s to the 1950s was put down. And anything that looked like Picasso they called pee-wee Picassos and midget Matisses. I remember the phrases.

Blum: It's hard to think that Bulliet said that, because he was a supporter of modernism.

Martyl: Well then it was somebody else. I thought it was Bulliet, but it could have been another critic. But that phrase is a metaphor of the attitude of the press in Chicago. I think it’s true today, the papers do not think it’s important. In fact, I knew as an acquaintance, one of the editors of the Chicago Tribune, and this is rather recent, well, last year, but I didn’t know she was the managing editor, or I wouldn’t have been so vociferous. But I knew she was at the Tribune, and I told her I didn’t get the Tribune, I only got the New York Times, because they took art seriously. Taking things seriously has to do with the

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leadership. Their argument––they, being the papers today, which have a hard time competing with television and radio, and other communication, and computer––they claim that nobody reads the Chicago papers. And on television, nobody listens. They do it as a public service on Channel 11, on educational television. But generally, if it’s not some aberration like somebody standing on their head and painting, or something unusual, such as a theft of art, something like that is reported. But they don’t, in Chicago, take it terribly seriously. And it’s an impediment. Now that’s not to say that there hasn’t been some support, certainly Mayor Daley of Chicago has tried very hard to support projects like when they saved the [Chicago] Public Library. It was going to be torn down by leaders of the community—mostly lawyers and real estate people salivating at the value of the real estate in Chicago—but it was saved. I mean it’s just unbelievable that people would even think of tearing down the building with its Tiffany glass, and mosaics, and things like that. But I heard it straight from the people themselves, what they were planning to do. I remember standing up above at the club on top of the Prudential building. There was a club there, the Mid-America Club. I was looking down, and these lawyers said to me, “See that? That’ll be gone soon.” I’ve never forgotten that. Well, it’s now the Chicago Cultural Center. And the mayor appointed somebody, Lois Weisberg, who did a really good job, nutty as she is. She must be given credit for starting the programs of art in Chicago. But still and all, you know, it came from outside pressures. The mayor decided it’s good for the city. And the emphasis always is on how much money it brings into the city when you have these fairs twice a year, or do anything that is civic in the city. It’s good for tourism, and it’s how much money it’s going to make for the city. In other words, it isn’t just for the love of the art, or supporting creativity; it always has to sell itself, because of the dollars and cents. And in the case of art critics who write about art, or promote it, the papers claim that nobody reads it. That’s why they have two sports sections on special days. But the statistics show that more people actually go to museums than they do to sports stadiums. That’s what I’ve read, I don’t know for sure.

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Blum: Do you think the pendulum has swung a little bit, in favor of the art being reported, and critics being taken seriously?

Martyl: Well I think it’s listed, the art events are listed; and there are a quite few now. So, like everything else––it’s like shelf space in the grocery––it depends on how much space you give it. Because now there are so many galleries, and they open and they close before you even get to them. It’s very difficult to run a first-rate gallery these days, because of the expenses; and there’s so many, the competition is great. And the knowledge about art has proliferated into definitions of art that are so bewildering, that they say, Well, what is art? Well art is what an artist says it is. That’s a definition. If an artists says it’s art, it is.

Blum: Going back to the catalogues that you say you wouldn’t be without when you have an exhibition. You had quite a remarkable list of essayists in your catalogues, such as: Harold Joachim, Esther Sparks, Daniel Schulman, Anne Rorimer, Katharine Lee, the list goes on and on. How were all of these very important art historians engaged to write essays?

Martyl: Well they were all known to me, as friends. And some volunteered to do it, as the recent catalogue that’s coming out in March. Robert Buck and Suzanne Folds McCullagh are the essayists, and Robert Buck initiated it. “I’d like to write about your drawings.”

Blum: Do you have a favorite collector?

Martyl: Living or dead?

Blum: Either.

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Martyl: Because a lot of them are long gone. Well, one of my favorite collectors is Robert McDermott.

Blum: What about him makes you…?

Martyl: Well because he collects my work, and he has a wonderful collection of it.

Blum: Is he a Chicagoan?

Martyl: Yes. He’s a founder of McDermott Will, a law firm that's national now.

Blum: Does he buy through a gallery?

Martyl: Through the Printworks Gallery. He also commissioned me to do some work for his sons and daughters in the East. And then there was Niesen Harris, he was a trustee of the Art Institute. Niesen Harris is the brother of Irving and Joan Harris, who were always civic people in the city of Chicago. But Niesen Harris was the real collector of art. He really looked. He really was an art lover. And he, over the years, collected I don’t know how many, seventeen or twenty, of my works. But he only came to my studio. He would never go to a gallery.

Blum: So did he buy directly from you?

Martyl: He bought directly from me. He’s the only one.

Blum: Were you permitted to do that, under a gallery contract?

Martyl: I didn’t have a signed contract. They drew up a contract that anything that is in the gallery is controlled by the gallery, but anything out of my studio is my own affair. And I don’t do that very often, hardly at all. But Niesen Harris was very, very special. He was a character. He was a Rolodex of dirty jokes.

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And I had a big vegetable garden—I mean really big for just two people, it was absurd. It was forty-eight feet by forty-eight feet.

Blum: What did you grow in such a huge plot?

Martyl: We grew everything from tomatoes to all the vegetables you can think of. And so one of the amusing things was that when he would call me on the phone from his offices in Northbrook, or Northfield, I’ve forgotten which one, it was Pittway Corporation. It’s on the stock exchange, one of their many businesses: fire alarms, and other things. I don’t know what all he would bring me.

Blum: What would he bring you?

Martyl: Oh just for fun. Once in a while he'd call and say, “You need a this or that, or the other.” He’d bring it to me. He also knew a bagel place, and he would bring me bagels. He’d call on the phone and say, “Martyl?” I still hear his voice. “You got something to show me?” And he’d say, “How about tomorrow? Is your husband away?”

Blum: Was he hoping he was, or wasn’t?

Martyl: Yes. That he was away. Well that was his humor. He was just so funny! Well, he loved zucchini, and he loved fresh tomatoes. So when they were in season, and he would come, I’d give him a bagful. And I remember if I’d forgot, he’d remember it. I remember him hauling out shopping bags full of produce to his car. And I said, “What you have to do to sell a painting today, is really…”

Blum: Well it sounds like it was more than a business arrangement. Sounds like a friendship.

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Martyl: Well, it turned out to be that, over the years. But he would come, and wanted to see everything, everything that I was working on. And the one piece that he did buy and gave to the Art Institute––I remember him sitting for the longest time, looking at this painting, and looking at it, and looking at it. And it’s quite remarkable. I had, over the years, lots of nice letters from rich CEOs that appreciated my work: Hirshhorn was one, and Arnold Maremont was another, and Niesen Harris was the third.

Blum: Well you certainly had a very impressive list of collectors who bought your work. In 1953 you did something very important, and that was buy a house in Roselle, the house and studio you have today. In 1954 you wrote a letter to Janson, and you said and I quote “We’re in the real country, surrounded by rolling farmland, and in a house designed for, and by, Paul Schweikher. He went off to be the director of the Yale School of Architecture. It’s all glass and redwood, and every time I take a bath I feel like Susanna and the Elders.”

Martyl: I said that?

Blum: And then you went on, in parentheses, “The tub is a Japanese wooden sunken one, five by eight feet.”

Martyl: Well, that was all true.

Blum: How did you come to find and buy this wonderful house?

Martyl: Well, it’s a bit of an interesting story because we’d lived by the University of Chicago, when we moved to Chicago, exactly ten years. We were five years in an apartment; and then we bought a house in Chicago, actually, because by this time we had two daughters, and there wasn’t enough room in the apartment. So with the pressure of the university, and our friend Meyric Rogers, who was curator of decorative arts at the Art Institute, and a couple of other professors there was a movement to develop the south side of the

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Midway at the University of Chicago. And so they lived over there, and because we had friends there, we were persuaded to buy a house there, which we did. So we were in that house for five years. It was built in 1893.

Blum: The year of the World's Columbian Exposition.

Martyl: Yes. And it was the end cut of a row house, and had another lot attached to it with an enormous garden. That appealed to my husband, whose hobby was gardening. So in time we converted it to our way of thinking. I remember I actually was able to get the same varnish on the floor that Mies van der Rohe used in all of his apartments––this black varnish, to make these really dark floors––that was the house on Woodlawn. But then, by this time, the war was over, and the Argonne National Laboratory had been formed, and my husband was a physicist there. The Argonne Laboratory was administered by the University of Chicago. It was about twenty miles west, due west of the university, near a town called Lemont; it had its own thousands of acres. And that’s a very important science center. It’s called a multi-purpose laboratory. We lived in the city, in Chicago, so there was this big commute, over seven level train crossings that made it very, very difficult to commute. They did it during the war, with all these scientists that would meet at Eckhart Hall, at the university; that was the physics building. And then they would be taken out to the Argonne, Enrico Fermi and all the rest of the eminent scientists that were around, to do all the work. And they would go out on a bus called the “blue flash”, with a drunken bus driver. My husband would come home with these harrowing tales of driving up on the sidewalks, and cutting corners, and, you know, with all this brainpower in this bus. Well this went on for the early 1950s, until it was rather intolerable; and logic would say that we should live near the Argonne Lab. And there are many suburbs there: there’s Hinsdale, La Grange, Glen Ellyn, a number of them; so we started looking. And I looked at a hundred houses. We both did, at least a hundred houses. We were not suburbanites, and the houses were all mostly ugly; and I remember none had bookshelves, and it was just thoroughly depressing. And

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I would voice this wherever I went. Meyric Rogers heard it, and he and his second wife were in Aspen. Meyric had inaugurated the first design conference in Aspen. And driving on the way back, he stopped, in what was then Roselle, to see his friends, his good friends Dorothy and Paul Schweikher. Just at that moment, Schweikher told the Rogers, “I’ve decided to take the job at Yale. It’s like as if it’s a calling in the architectural world. You don’t turn it down. And we’ll have to leave and move to New Haven.” On the way into the city, Rogers said, “That’s the house for the Langsdorfs.” And when they got back to their south side apartment, they called on the phone. And I remember it very distinctly, because I had changed the geography again in this house, and the biggest room was my studio, which was what one would call the master bedroom. It was on the second floor, and it was the largest room with lots of windows. And I had a phone there, and I answered it. It was like nine o’clock at night. They had just gotten back to their apartment, they said, “There’s this really neat house for you since you’ve been looking and looking.” And told me about it. Well we had met Paul Schweikher through a musician friend, socially, and I remember an exhibition of Schweikher and Elting's work at the Renaissance Society. I remember it was extremely beautiful because it was installed in wood, and…

[Tape 5: Side A]

Blum: Has living in this house affected the way you see things, your subject matter?

Martyl: Yes. I would say so.

Blum: Will you give an example?

Martyl: Well because I’m affected by my surroundings, as most people are. And this wonderful planting around the house, and the landscape has sharpened my vision of the seasons. And because of the design of the house, it’s made life easier. My studio is ideal.

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Blum: Your studio was Paul Schweikher's drafting room. And we’re in it right now.

Martyl: Right. Yes. Of course during the era of huge paintings, and large drawings–– which I still do––I always felt that it wasn’t big enough, it’s low-slung. I often had thoughts of not destroying the lines of the building, but digging down maybe, to make it larger. But I solved that by standing up on the ledges, and looking down on the floor, and doing large things anyway. I found a way to do it, either outside or inside and standing on tables. Because the beauty of the house is such that it has its own power somehow, it insinuates itself into your psyche such that you have a feeling you don’t want to change anything. And that’s also a definition of a work of art, that any change made is so important that it would be a detriment, so you don’t change anything in a work of art. And I think this house, I didn’t quite understand it when we moved here how not only how important it turned out to be, but we had an intuitive sense, my husband did too, an intuitive sense of its intrinsic beauty. So that with everything we did, we didn’t destroy the main thrust of the house. We didn’t do much, but in lighting, and any kind of maintenance was with that in mind, not to change much. And that turned out to be significant, because subsequently the house was made a national landmark because we did nothing to destroy it. And many people do have architectural works that are fine, good architects have done them, and then they, the word is “trash" them. They’ve added on all sorts of things that destroyed the original beauty.

Blum: Well, in a parallel way, you had that happen with the portrait you painted for the Harris Bank.

Martyl: Yes. That’s when the vandalism is extraordinary.

Blum: This house was designed by Schweikher after a trip to Japan. There’s a lot of Japanese overtones to this house.

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Martyl: Well, as is in Frank Lloyd Wright also. But I can say that any artist that goes to Japan, particularly an artist, is influenced. It’s one of the remarkable things about Japan, their art.

Blum: Sounds like you not only took on the care of a house, but you were the caretaker of the integrity of the house.

Martyl: Well, yes. My husband as well, cause he was an experimental physicist, so he was very good with his hands, and he did a lot of, I guess you’d call it, restoration. But in those days, the conservation movement hadn’t even begun. And so our timing was pretty good, actually, because even the outdoor conservation of streams and clean streams, and so forth… There’s Salt Creek that runs by the house.

Blum: Paul Schweikher gave this house a name. On some of the drawings that the Art Institute has, the house is called South Willow. Where did that name come from?

Martyl: The name––I think Paul or Dorothy invented it––came from the fact that there were willows all around. Being by a creek, willows are a natural tree. And there were some magnificent willows. And there was one, when we first moved here; it was here for at least twenty-five or thirty years, but it’s no longer with us. It was a weeping willow out front. And it was a beautiful tree there.

Blum: Was that the south willow tree?

Martyl: And that would be the south willow.

Blum: The tree that gave its name to the house?

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Martyl: I think so. And I remember we have the very large mailbox that Paul had, out at the road because the house is set far back, like the farmhouses are, never at the road, unless a road was put there. Usually farmers want to be back in the field. And fortunately he designed the house, and he had a big mailbox. And he had a design on that mailbox of a willow in a red circle.

Blum: Oh. That was the little emblem he had on some of the drawings as well.

Martyl: That was the little emblem. Yes. And I thought we should keep it, and call this place South Willow. I guess it will be again. But my husband, for some unknown reason, thought it was too pretentious. And so he won out. We didn’t call it that. And we didn’t have stationery printed. But I think it will be called South Willow again.

Blum: In its renaissance.

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: You mentioned the garden. Franz Lipp originally laid out the garden. Did you have any contact with Lipp, any drawings left by Paul?

Martyl: Unfortunately there were no drawings. I found this out only in the last few years, because there was an exhibition at the Art Institute on Franz Lipp’s work, and there were no drawings of the Schweikher house. But he came here two or three times during my life in the Schweikher house, to take a look at what he’d done. I think he was a good friend of Paul Schweikher's, and laid out the planting. It was very amusing to me because the two or three times he came, he had a new wife every time.

Blum: Franz Lipp?

Martyl: Franz Lipp, even though he was quite old. I remember that quite well.

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Blum: One thing that Schweikher said about Franz Lipp was, he said he, personally, had a goal to simplify everything in his house design. And he said one of the reasons he was attracted to Franz Lipp's work was because he, too, did that in the garden, and in the landscaping. He wouldn’t add more plants, he’d remove plants. Just as you were saying about your work, how you arrived at something abstract.

Martyl: Taking away. Yes. Well perhaps he did. I know that the design is quite formal, that would be the Japanese influence. One of the things, it has a back patio, and a Zen garden in the inner patio. Lipp particularly said he was against the elms out at the road. That was Paul’s idea. He said, “I will not take credit for those elms. That’s a messy tree, and it grows fast, and it was a screen from the road that Paul insisted on.” And I can say that there was a blight of all elm trees, but these elms were a particular kind of elm that didn’t get the disease. And so it’s been a wonderful screening. But my husband was so afraid that the elms would not last very long, so he planted slow-growing but dense yews in back of the elms, anticipating traffic on the road. He could always look ahead, almost further than anybody. And planted, then, another series of arbor vitae back in the fields, to shield the house. They’re not in Lipp’s plan. He didn’t want the choice of those trees at the road. And then he planted the Russian olives down by the creek, and they died. He said that was a mistake. They don’t grow here.

Blum: Are they not native to this area?

Martyl: Perhaps not.

Blum: Well olives, you usually associate…

Martyl: They were blue-green. It was a beautiful color. And they were here when we moved here. But they died. And I remarked to him about it. The Austrian

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pines, there are two of them in the front of the house, which are major design factors for the house.

Blum: The one just to the left of the carport?

Martyl: There are two of them there.

Blum: Oh, they are breathtaking.

Martyl: Yes. But there’s a national Austrian pine disease, and they’re all suffering from all kinds of diplodia and I don’t know what all. And we’ve spent lots of money over the years trying to keep them alive. When we first came they were about the height of the house, sort of bushy. And then Paul Schweikher would come to visit from time to time, and remark about the trees growing.

Blum: What did he say?

Martyl: He couldn’t get over how large they were. You know, you don’t anticipate that.

Blum: Did he ever have any comment when he came back in later years, any comment about the house? About what you’ve done with the house?

Martyl: Oh yes. Well we found out later, much later, he said, “Well, you know, if it wasn’t for Martyl and Alex, I could never have taken the job at Yale.” It only takes one person to buy a house. And this house was so unusual that it would be very hard to sell. We found that out when we couldn’t even rent it when we went to live in England in the late 1950s, 1959-1960.

Blum: Why do you think people were not comfortable living here?

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Martyl: Oh, lots of reasons. I got so I resented… we advertised nationally for it, in the Saturday Review of Literature, and all sorts of places. People would come, and they’d criticize it. “Who ever heard of open shelves in the kitchen?” That was a detriment. “Too much lawn to take care of. Where are the neighbors?” There are none. “Where’s the shopping center?” There wasn’t any.

Blum: I get the picture.

Martyl: So we let a friend stay here, who was an assistant to the architect, Paul Schweikher.

Blum: Oh, I see. And now that you have lived in the house for more than fifty years…

Martyl: Our kids grew up in it. We’ve grown our tomatoes here. And now the house is an integral part of Schaumburg.

Blum: Well it’s now on the Register of Historic Places. What is the future for this house?

Martyl: It hasn’t been determined. But I’m working on it.

Blum: Do I understand correctly that you gave it to the village of Schaumburg?

Martyl: No, we did not give it.

Blum: You did not. What did you do?

Martyl: What happened was, an autonomous organization in Cook County, called the [Metropolitan] Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, they condemned this house and its property.

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Blum: They condemned it?

Martyl: By eminent domain. You know, there’s a law that says you can. And so they decided that they wanted more land, and this house is on seven and a half acres. And they just sent a registered letter, and said, “We want your house and property.” Well, they just thought there was just this couple here, and you know, we can steamroll that one easily.

Blum: What year was this?

Martyl: When they condemned it? 1989, I think. I think so, because through the friendship of John Vinci he was always urging us to do something about saving this house, because of the impact of the suburbs. Earlier we spoke about Roselle. Roselle was the nearest town, three and a half miles west of this house, and that was the nearest town. And our address was Roselle for a long time. But then, some developers in Chicago bought land. A farmer’s widow had some six hundred acres, or some large amount, and unbeknownst to everybody, the widow sold to this group of F and S Construction Company, it was called father and son. And they built a whole lot of houses. And I remember, you know, we were surrounded by three- hundred acre farms, you don’t see what’s going on. And I remember sending my husband, I said, “What are those rooftops over the horizon there? What is that?” He drove over there, and he said, “Well, there are a thousand houses on the other side of that.” And this was called Hoffman Estates. It was a bedroom community for Chicago, with no means of transportation. It was in the middle of nowhere, which is a typical developer’s shortsightedness because it had no tax base, no nothing. And so, Schaumburg was formed to contain Hoffman Estates, and they bought all the land they could, to keep it from spreading. And so it became Schaumburg. Schaumburg was no place; it was the corners of Roselle and Schaumburg Road that farmers had designated as their place.

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Blum: What happened with the condemnation?

Martyl: So then the Water Reclamation District, when Schaumburg was formed, had bought this land, because this was a developing area, you know, just west of O’Hare. It was considered to be in the O’Hare Field, over the development. And so they needed a lot of acreage. So they just sent this letter of condemnation. Well, that was a blow, believe me. So we decided to fight it. And so we proved that you can fight city hall, and win. We hired a lawyer, and…

Blum: By that time wasn’t it landmarked?

Martyl: Oh yes. John Vinci was after us to do something about getting this house landmarked.

Blum: Which gave it a measure of protection.

Martyl: A measure, but the point was that it is not an easy thing to have done. I mean you know, all of a sudden it wasn’t old enough. There’s a law that says it has to be fifty years old before it’s considered.

Blum: And how old was it at the time?

Martyl: And it was about forty-eight or forty-seven. Oh, but you know, they stick with such things. We got around it, but you know that was the law. And so we took John’s advice, and could see that the houses were coming, the houses were coming, just like Paul Revere. So we had it landmarked. Susan Benjamin was the architectural historian that was recommended to do the work. I was too busy, my husband was too busy, and it took a whole year of intense letter writing, and getting all the papers in order. I mean it was a

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tremendous job. And Susan did a fabulous job of doing that. And there were hearings, and all kinds of things. And so the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District didn’t know a thing about this naturally; and so we became landmarked, a great triumph in the hearings. And all voted to be landmarked, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t fifty years old yet. We had the help of Landmarks Illinois, with all the agencies, state and city, and so forth. And that was 1987. Two years later, 1989, I remember the district, it was called the MSD, that was the acronym, was kind of furious that this had happened. Being a landmark, that threw a wrench into the works for them. And at any rate, they wanted everything. So we hired a lawyer, not a local lawyer, a big one downtown, that knew where all the bodies are. He’s now a judge. His name was Gardner, Sheldon Gardner. He lived in the 860 building of Mies van der Rohe’s, so he had a sensibility. And I remember Gardner used to love to come out and talk art and architecture, but we weren’t hiring him for that. My husband was always trying to get him to get to the point. It took a lot of cajoling. I mean Gardner worked and worked with the lawyers of the MSD, which I guess he knew. But there isn’t a single agency, or group of people, that don’t absolutely abhor the MSD because to work with, they are an autonomous, awful group. Half of them are in jail. There were two women on it at the time. One was Joanne Alter, who everybody knows in Chicago. She was voted to be on that board. And the financial director, I can’t think of her name at the moment, but we were sort of friends. I testified at the MSD. I went down there, and spoke before them. And if you’ve ever seen that place, it’s like the Supreme Court, with all its fancy wood, and the big honcho at the top, and the lawyers are all on each side. You had to sit in a certain place. And it was unbelievable pretension.

Blum: Well what were you doing? Pleading the case to exempt the house?

Martyl: Yes. I did everything possible. It takes a lot of time to do this. And it hasn’t ceased. I went down there and I invited all those guys to come out and visit the house to see what they were voting on. It was a work of art, and they

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shouldn’t condemn it, you know, the whole bit. And just to get on their agenda is something. So I did this. And then, it seemed like it was endless. And they came out here. The lawyer came out here, and Gardner was here, and they negotiated, negotiated. And of course, they had us over a barrel, because they owned all the land around us, and there’s nothing you could do about it. And so we tried. I remember one of the negotiations was about these gorgeous trees and this planting. So they sent out an appraiser and the terrible part about it is that the appraiser, any appraisal is based on what is in the neighborhood. If you recall, that’s the way appraisers look at things. And here’s this unique work of art. It has no connection with these tacky little houses that are along Meacham Road, or Hoffman Estates. But that’s where they set the price for.

Blum: That doesn’t seem quite fair.

Martyl: No. What’s fair? You know. A lot of things aren’t fair. But Gardner did the best he could. You know, I mean it was terrible. So they bought it from us.

Blum: The Metropolitan Sanitary District bought the house from you?

Martyl: But there was a big contract. We were able to stay in this house, that was important, and they had certain duties about this house, fiduciary duties.

Blum: For instance?

Martyl: Any major repairs, like a new roof, and all kinds of…

Blum: They pay for?

Martyl: They pay for. And we would do the housekeeping, so to speak––I mean the smaller items. It’s really not small items, but I mean in their view. Well it turned out they were not very good. It was a terrible battle. And finally, a

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letter came from their lawyers, just terrible, I mean I can’t begin to tell you. It didn’t start out that way. To take a few steps back, they had a marvelous head at one time, and he was so good but he was saddled with a bunch of crooks and they got rid of him. If you look up the history of the MSD, you’ll see that that’s true. He wrote to us––the letter must be in the correspondence somewhere––he wrote that this was going to be a park, and later the MSD was going to demolish all this wonderful stuff.

Blum: Was he going to allow the house to remain?

Martyl: Yes, everything was going to be wonderful. So there was a halcyon time. But then he was gone. And see, that’s the trouble with such things. He was out of there. Then there was a series of various people. But the head of it was a very nice man, always, you know, saying, “Oh, we’ll take care of it.” That’s their famous words, “We’ll take care of it.” meaning, We won’t take care of it. You know, because they had all these political patronage people down the line that do the taking care of. And so it was a terrible sort of battle to get anything done. Well, as fate would have it, this lawyer who was just so terrible––he was a lawyer there for twenty years, and still was an assistant–– so you know. Well he wrote the famous letter that said, “We’re not in the business of taking care of landmarks, so we want to tear it down.”

Blum: By then was the village of Schaumburg the owner?

Martyl: Well, no, we were living here under the arrangement made by Gardner. Those were fighting words, because we had the help, then, of the mayor of Schaumburg; he was very sympathetic. And by this time, the house had had a lot of publicity. It has been in books, and it’s been in the press, and there have been a lot of stories, and feature articles on me.

Blum: And there were exhibitions of Paul Schweikher’s drawings at the Art Institute.

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Martyl: And the fact that it is a landmark. It would be a feather in the cap of Schaumburg. The present mayor, Al Larson, is one of the more enlightened mayors. And so I give credit to him. He said, “We’ve got to get it away from the MSD.” So they bought it from them.

Blum: Schaumburg bought it?

Martyl: Yes, the village of Schaumburg bought it.

Blum: And what is the status of the house today? Owned by Schaumburg, but occupied by you?

Martyl: Yes. I’m the manager, I mean unofficially so. They took over the contract completely. Because I had my friend, Cal Sawyier, from Winston Straun–– that’s the law firm of my friend who was so helpful about the portrait as well––he knew that you can’t sue, and all that. And Cal Sawyier looked over the contract, and said it was legit. It was okay. They just took it over from them, so we still have the fiduciary, but Schaumburg has been very responsive, and very responsible. And they consider it a real asset, and getting more and more so.

Blum: What do they intend to do with the house when they fully occupy and own it?

Martyl: Well now that’s the next phase. That is in process from my energy.

Blum: What would you like to see happen to it in an ideal world?

Martyl: Well in an ideal world, when I check out, that was the point, what’s going to happen to it? It’s also influenced by the fact that if the present regime in Schaumburg changed, and they know that. I’ve instigated some meetings,

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and hearings, by the village, the mayor, the village manager, the head of the committee for the arts and the Plans Commission. I have a very good friend who’s on the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and they are also on the board of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, and also on the board of Mies’s house in Plano, the Farnsworth house.

Blum: Oh, Farnsworth house.

Martyl: And so I set up a meeting with—his name is Chris Straus, he’s an M.D. at the University of Chicago Hospital.

Blum: His name was what?

Martyl: Chris Straus, S-T-R-A-U-S. And he and I had this first meeting. And he was absolutely brilliant, explaining to the village people, to get committed to the future of this house, and that they should be interested in having Landmarks Illinois [Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois] have some say in it. We did it very, very strategically, so that they thought it was their idea. Because, what it’s called is an easement, and that would mean that it would be monitored by Landmarks Illinois. And that’s what the easement is, and they have about a hundred and fifty of those in the state of Illinois. Well, just recently, the second meeting was set up, because they were so interested in the first one. And then this time, David Bahlman, the head of Landmarks Illinois, and his specialist, Suzanne German, who is in charge of easements, came out to explain what that was to the village. And they were so interested because it’s not like inventing the wheel, there are all these other places that know how to do this, to make this either an architectural museum or some kind of use that would not stress the house because it’s fragile. You can’t have heavy usage. It could be special use, and used as an educational tool. And it’s for the future heritage of the work of art of the period.

Blum: How would you like to see it used?

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Martyl: I would like it to be an architectural museum. I would like to see it used educationally. We made some moves through my friend Jeff Whyte, I call him the resident architect, because he has his drafting room in what was Paul Schweikher’s model shop. He’s turned it into a drafting room. He’s been very, very helpful. And he actually got the head of the high school system here to come out so the students could use the grounds, to identify the plants, and learn about the fields, the wildflowers, and all that stuff.

Blum: Oh, what an interesting project.

Martyl: And I’ve met her. She’s a lovely black woman, actually, who thought it was a great idea. But it was premature, you see, it was too soon. But that sort of thing is easily done really. And then there would have to be a support board and an endowment, and they want to know what is the budget for running a house like this, and things like that. And that’s in the process of happening. So they said, now this is November 2006, and the mayor said, “Let’s have a meeting next month.” So it’s in the works, to sort of ensure that the future has some promise.

Blum: To ensure that there is a future.

Martyl: That there is a future. That’s a good way to put it.

Blum: Well you have been a remarkable caretaker.

Martyl: So that has made inroads into one’s time too. It takes a lot of time.

Blum: Do you know that Paul considered this house to be his best work?

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Martyl: I think so. And he certainly was grateful to us. He always said, you know if it wasn’t for us they wouldn't have moved and he always asked about Betty, Betty Blum. Every time he’d call on the phone, “How’s Betty? Tell her hello.”

Blum: Well, they were lovely people. And do I understand they have come home for their final resting place?

Martyl: Yes. Paul Jr. has requested that their ashes be scattered on the land, which it is, as is my husband Alex Langsdorf; as is my black poodle named Atom. But I think that’s about it. I don’t want the grounds to turn into a cemetery.

Blum: Many wonderful memories in and around this house.

Martyl: Yes. Lots of famous people have been here. It has a big heritage. So it should be preserved, in a way. And some people have said and I agree with it, that it should be called the Schweikher Langsdorf house, officially because of how much my husband has put into it in lots and lots of ways, and because he was distinguished as well, probably more so than I will ever be.

Blum: Well it is a wonderful house. And it’s a wonderful experience just to visit it, to sit here, and enjoy it.

Martyl: So it’s brought a lot of interesting people here, just for the house; I mean that the house alone has had its own life. So, I’m privy to several lives running concurrently.

Blum: One of the big elements in your career has been work that has been created because you have traveled to various parts of the world. And one that captured my imagination was the trip to Egypt when you were invited to accompany an archeological group from Brooklyn.

Martyl: Oh, the Brooklyn Museum? That’s more recent.

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Blum: What was the first one?

Martyl: Well I did two before that, which is why I probably was asked to do the third one. Well the first was the Greek experience. I was asked by George Mylonas who was in charge of Mycenae, and he led a group of St. Louisians on a cruise. Part of it was money raising for Mycenae, of which he was the director, and for the archeological work. And it became very successful over the years. He was a great money raiser. He was a professor at Washington University. But I was here in Chicago, and so his idea was to invite Alex and me on this cruise. I would be the resident artist, so to speak. It’s the only cruise I’ve ever been on, except going by boat to Europe, I mean a real honest-to-goodness cruise.

Blum: What was expected of you as the resident artist?

Martyl: I could draw and paint anything on this tour, which turned out to be Athens and all the northern islands.

Blum: Was Crete one of them?

Martyl: That’s a southern island. We went to the northern islands, which is Samothrace, and all the northern islands, where most people don’t go. I had an exhibition of all those works and it spawned a whole lot of other exhibitions. The first was in the Steinberg Gallery (now Mildred Lane Kemper Art Institute) at Washington University. Naturally the first exhibition was held there. And an awful lot of the paintings sold, mostly because of all the cruise members I suppose. I don’t remember. But it was a big exhibition.

Blum: What a fine souvenir for them.

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Martyl: And you know it was quite an experience. That was the first trip. Then I went back to Greece twice again visiting the Mylonases. He was then the American scholar in the America house [American School of Classical Studies] there, in Athens, a marble structure at the foot of Mr. Lycabettos. And so I visited them there. And then I went again. But the initial visit was to do all those paintings.

Blum: On the cruise?

Martyl: And that is the reason, I guess, I was asked, because as we might have said before, I am able to get a sense of place. In other words, when I paint or draw Greece, it’s not Schaumburg. I mean it is Greece. There’s a certain quality of the landscape that is Greece: the light and not just the ruins. So I did lots of Parthenons, and lots of Epidaurus, and lots of Olympia, and all the places. And there’s a kind of a texture of Greek stone, and Greek light, that’s unique. Well, based on that, I had an exhibition in Chicago at the Kovler Gallery. And that’s when Janson wrote another piece in a catalogue.

Blum: Well Janson wrote many introductions to your catalogues.

Martyl: I don’t remember that one. But Marjorie Kovler was keen on doing a catalogue, and having him write it. And there’s some reproductions of the Greek trip. So Robert Braidwood, who was a University of Chicago anthropologist at the Oriental Institute, came to the show. We were friends. He came to the show at the Kovler Gallery. And then he had it in his mind for me to come to his excavation in eastern Turkey. Well, it was a few years until I did almost the same thing, because I had a sense of place. So Alex and I were invited there. And we lived in a tent in eastern Turkey.

Blum: A tent?

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Martyl: Well, because the Turkish school that was supposed to have been leased by the expedition was impossible to live in. That’s one of the interesting things about Europe. Well, it was a private school near the town of Çayönü. You had to fly into Ergani. Eastern Turkey would be like our Wild West. I mean it’s Kurdish, and so, somewhat scary. I mean they have their own traditions in that no cameras… You know they’d smash your camera. You have to be very surreptitious.

Blum: Did you use cameras?

Martyl: No, but lots of people did. I just cite that as an example. If they saw that, they would come after you. I’m trying to think of the name of the town. But the school, the private school that they leased was filthy and the little children wore English suits. It’s hot. It was so hot there. And you know, it becomes the desert. They have ties and shirts, and English suits; and they lived in absolute filth. The school had garbage on the floor of the cafeteria. So Braidwood and the group bought a whole bunch of tents.

Blum: And that’s where you lived?

Martyl: And we lived in a tent.

Blum: And what was your work?

Martyl: And my husband’s contribution to all this was to rig up a shower, an outdoor shower, so that everybody could take a shower. So we lived in this tent and that was an experience. And so I did my thing, which was to draw and paint, and do whatever I wanted to.

Blum: What interested you as subject matter?

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Martyl: Their excavation had to do with prehistory. Robert Braidwood is famous, and his wife Linda––Robert and Linda Braidwood––for excavating the area where human beings decided not to be nomadic, and started to stay in one place.

Blum: And plant crops.

Martyl: And they planted corn, well it wasn’t called corn, it was maize, and various grains and they stayed in one place. They have evidence of that.

Blum: How did you visually document that particular moment in time?

Martyl: Well I didn’t, I mean I wasn’t documenting, I just drew the landscape.

Blum: So you drew the place.

Martyl: Yes, the place, because nobody knew what it looked like over there. So in a way, you know, it was a document in that the landscape showed the mountains there, and everything about the area. And then I had an exhibition of that work at the Oriental Institute, with great fanfare. So then, after that, some years passed, and then I think it’s like every decade, I got invited some place. The next was Egypt. And that was by the Brooklyn Museum. Based on my prior two other experiences in exhibitions.

Blum: Was it unique for an artist to do that? Were other artists doing it?

Martyl: I’m the only one that I know of. There must have been others that have done this but under the auspices of these institutions, I don’t think so. I mean it’s sort of interesting, now that you ask the question. I don’t know. There have been artists in Egypt. The museum curator wrote about it in the catalogue that was published on that trip. It’s really interesting, cause it has a history of artists that have gone to Egypt, just the way artists have gone to Japan. You

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know, it’s a trip of a lifetime. So was Egypt. They’re all alike in that it influences your life.

Blum: And I suppose it’s perfectly apparent that travel influenced your work.

Martyl: Yes. I guess that would be the end result.

Blum: What were your work habits like in the desert?

Martyl: Well, getting up early and drawing.

Blum: Walk us through a typical day.

Martyl: Well I’m an early riser. And so it meant I could do, I guess, a bit more work. I’d always had long days. I thought of that recently. An eighteen-hour day is nothing for me. So in that length of time, you can live your life, and also draw. I mean, you know, there’s time for living. Life gets in the way lots of times.

[Tape 5: Side B]

Blum: You were going to tell us about what a typical work day was like for you when you were on-site in Egypt.

Martyl: Well I can speak about that specifically, but one’s work habits change over the length of a lifetime.

Blum: What were they like then?

Martyl: They change according to one’s living. Living in Egypt was very different than living in Turkey. This time I requested from the Brooklyn Museum of Art when I decided to do this project, and if they were sending me, they had

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to raise money because I had to go first-class, knowing what the Middle East is like. And there’s nothing in between, it’s either poverty or first-class. And they agreed. So my living was luxurious compared to the various scholars that had a little stipend to go do their project. They would come to my first- class hotel; they put me up in was a French-owned hotel in Luxor. And my friends came to take showers in my suite. And so my work habits were really pretty fantastic because after that, getting up early in the morning, let’s see, there were several ways that I had to operate, depending on where I was staying. At first, my husband came with me to Egypt and spent several weeks sightseeing, because it is a trip of a lifetime. And then he went back home, and I stayed for another several months, enough to get a feeling of the country. Three months is the minimum time to get into the feeling of a country.

Blum: How long were you there?

Martyl: Three months, and the same in Japan. But not that long in Turkey. I don’t think I could have survived there any longer.

Blum: That’s where you were living in a tent.

Martyl: Yes. And with all the dust, and all the animals. That’s why I requested I had to have a driver. Luxor, you know, is up the Nile, far from Cairo, and it’s very different from Cairo. Cairo’s a great big bustling city, full of everything from tourists, to camels, to fancy cars. I mean it’s just the loudest, unbelievable city. Everybody honks their horn. Can you imagine a million horns? You know it’s outlawed in most big cities. It was so bad, that we requested––this was when we first went there, before I went to Luxor to stay—we requested a room in the back of this wonderful hotel. It was run by the Hiltons then. It was a beautiful, beautiful hotel. In the back of the hotel, because on the corniche—is what it’s called, the big lakeshore drive, as we know it in Chicago—the corniche was just as noisy as could be. So we did all

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the sightseeing and then I settled down in Luxor. And I would have a driver who would come every day, and take me out to draw.

Blum: To the excavation site?

Martyl: To the excavation sites that were being excavated, and all the tombs, and the landscape, and everything. I mean you have to get around.

Blum: What were the requirements, if any, that you were to fulfill for the Brooklyn Museum?

Martyl: My requirements were just to be there, and draw and paint, at the site of their excavations and other people’s. There are quite a few countries that are excavating there. The Polish government was excavating Hatsheptsut’s tomb, the great female pharaoh of Egypt. The French, English, the Americans all had projects there.

Blum: Was the Oriental Institute involved in any excavation?

Martyl: Oh yes. Yes. The Oriental Institute has Chicago House there, very important. I would have stayed there probably, but they were all booked. And I knew all those people quite well; I went there many times. The season for Egypt is really early in October, November, and then February, March and April. Otherwise it’s so hot, that when Linda Braidwood left her sneakers in a closet in Chicago House, they melted.

Blum: They melted. Oh my, that was hot.

Martyl: That will give you an idea how hot it gets. And that’s true of the Middle East, in general.

Blum: So how did you handle weather like that, in terms of your day?

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Martyl: Well when I was there, the weather was good. I was there in the season of its optimal weather when all the work is done. And so I visited the site. It was a marvelous life. Everybody worked hard all day, and I filled sketchbooks, made drawings. At the end of the day, sometimes Ray Johnson, who’s now the director of the Oriental Institute’s Chicago House and projects, he and I would have a drink at the end of the day and talk about everything.

Blum: What did you do with all the sketches you made during the day? Did you use them for paintings?

Martyl: No. I just filled sketchbooks, and did all the drawings; I brought them back to my studio.

Blum: All the drawings came back here, and is that when they became paintings?

Martyl: And then I did all the work in my studio. The big triptych, and all the drawings and all the watercolors, and all the paintings were done in my studio. Because it’s too difficult to do there, because there was so much to see, and so much to do. At the site, I would go and spend the day drawing, and getting all sorts of ideas. I didn’t know very much about Egypt before I went. I relied on my instincts. And they were pretty good, because one of the things that I spotted immediately were these sculptures that were excavated over the decades of Mut, M-U-T, the goddess Mut. And also they had another name, the Sachmet.

Blum: Was Sachmet another figure?

Martyl: That’s a seated woman’s figure with a lion’s head. Most of the time the head was off, but a lot of times they aren’t. There are several, the Brooklyn Museum has a gorgeous one, so does the Metropolitan Museum. Every once in a while they’re lent for big Egyptian exhibitions. And that, to me, was an

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important figure, so important; I didn’t know how important. It was just my instinct. And I just drew a lot of them. Some were buried, and some had been excavated. And there are a lot of them, sitting around, in various states of disrepair, the result of time’s ravages—of time.

Blum: Did that image find its way into your finished paintings?

Martyl: Yes, very much so. And so much so that it became a poster published by Playboy. Christy Heffner wanted it as a poster for the Oriental Institute, at the University of Chicago, which they still sell after all these years. It was a ripe subject for Playboy, the lion-headed female, seated figure. Well, only the head showed but it’s a poster. So it was very inspirational. And I drew the tombs and the landscape, and excavated pots right out of the earth; they were 3rd millennium, they weren’t Egyptian, things like that. And so every day was marvelous.

Blum: Taking a long view: of what value was travel? Whether it was an excavation in Egypt or living in London, or traveling to Japan, or sketching on a cruise ship?

Martyl: I didn’t sketch on the ship. It was when the ship landed, and I went to the landscape.

Blum: Oh, okay. But it took you out of your home, away from your familiar home surroundings. Of what value was all that travel?

Martyl: The value to me, personally? Well, it makes for an exciting life, for one thing because each culture is so unique, and the landscape is so unique. I haven’t been to New Zealand, for example, but I’ve seen pictures of it, and there’s certain geological landscapes that remind me of New Mexico. In other words, there’s some overlap in the geological phenomenon in the world. Mother Nature has her own designs for things, and that’s one of the things that travel

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has shown to me, the marvelous, timelessness, of life. And when you asked me before about the figurative, when did people leave my work? I think it had something to do with that. Gradually, I got more interested in the timelessness of nature, instead of having people in it.

Blum: So nature became much more important.

Martyl: Yeah, I mean the figure, if you put a person in, or any kind of figures in a painting, it takes it on a narrative that has not much to do with the awesomeness of mountains and islands, and things like that. So I think that is one of the reasons I got interested in leaving out people. This year though, I actually put in some cows.

Blum: Cows?

Martyl: And I’ve been on ranches, I’ve visited. Yes, cows, Black Angus, for example. Well, I usually don’t. But I spent so much time in the West, and on the ranch I visited so often in New Mexico. Once in a while, a Black Angus would appear, but not very often. Never people. I did put my dog in one of my paintings. That’s it. But then those aren’t people.

Blum: No. But you’re really expressing a broader concept.

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: Than say, a man working in a specific mine, or…

Martyl: Or making a social comment. Because it seems one’s views change. And one of my theories––which I’ve never really voiced, or written about––but one of my theories about non-objective painting is that it came at a time when the world had become so horrible with all its wars and everything, that it gets beyond comprehension, or expression. That is my untested theory.

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Blum: Can you pursue this idea a little further?

Martyl: Well the absence of any objects at a time when the world was in such a horrible state hasn’t changed, when you think about it. It seemed to breed introverted art, cause looking out is so grim. The wars have gotten worse. Society has sides and the evil side has bubbled to the surface. And it’s just very hard. I think Picasso and his Guernica probably symbolized, way back, the war in Spain, which started the whole bloody business of World War II. He probably expressed it as best could be. And I remember the antipathy of Tom Benton who also did something about the war. It was so terrible, in my view. It was just awful. It was a series that I think was produced in Life magazine, or something. He painted the actual burning, you know, literal, ships going down, burning and smoke. You see, to me, Picasso’s Guernica is so much more powerful, because it is timeless. And it’s abstracted from reality.

Blum: And you think your development, your change, followed that kind of a path for some of the same reasons?

Martyl: Well I guess, deep down, it’s probably influenced me. But I think I mentioned before, I was not an admirer, except for the technique, of Tom Benton. His literal expression—compared to the translation of reality—seems to me to be much more creative. Not to say that he wasn’t creative. Because I remember one of my elders told me once that if you know a technique, if you know a method, that’s important. Then you can do all sorts of expressions. And I think that’s what one learns in school. You should learn techniques in art school. You learn techniques. You can’t teach talent. You just have to try to develop the imagination that comes from childhood. That’s a whole other subject. But to have a childlike view when you’re an adult, it’s not easy. And that’s what artists usually try to do.

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Blum: You chose art as your career. But in doing that, you left behind the music that could have been your profession.

Martyl: Could have been. I thought about it, and I always liked it, so I kept it as a running second interest.

Blum: You were commissioned to do some twenty-two abstract illuminations that were projected at a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s music. Would you talk about that? How did that commission come to you? It’s so unusual.

Martyl: Well the whole thing was unusual. First place, there was the Fine Arts Quartet, which was a well-known, nationally known quartet, based in Chicago, and then in Milwaukee. Anyway, the Fine Arts Quartet and the North Shore Symphony, I’m not quite sure, because I’m not privy to all the ins and outs of North Shore musical life, except there was a refugee named Herbert Zipper, who, I think, knew Schoenberg. He had all the qualifications of being a very interesting man. And it was his idea to recreate the Pierrot Lunaire, music of Schoenberg, by illustrating these episodes. Now there was a French poet who did the text for Schoenberg. The French poet Albert Giraud did, let’s see, three times seven. There were seven episodes of three––I have to look that up.

Blum: There were twenty-two episodes.

Martyl: Well, there were twenty-one illustrations, and the Pierrot itself, that I designed. So the seven episodes, of which there were three segments was punctuated by the image of Pierrot, to divide the segments. So somebody recommended me, I guess, because they made an appointment to come out and ask if I would be interested, and brought a tape that the Juilliard School had done of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. And I never heard such cacophony of noise in my life before, couldn’t make any sense of it at all. Couldn’t

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possibly see what his vision was. Well, he said, “I’ll leave the tape with you, and you can play it.”

Blum: Who was Mr. Zipper?

Martyl: Herbert Zipper, yes. And so I played the tape. And I said it would be an interesting project, and I’d give it a go. I played it and played it and played it, so often that it made such clear sense. There’s a lesson in this because it sounds extra modern to people, you know, because of its dissonance, but it’s straight out of the nineteenth century. This is one of the remarkable things that familiarity with a work of art does. It got so I could whistle Schoenberg. And so could my children, who also were here, and had to hear it over and over again. And I proceeded to do this. The idea was really an interesting one, because it not only used the Fine Arts Quartet, plus piano and flute, but it had a singer, a well-known singer and an album had been produced. It gives all the details on the album, the Sprechstimme—that’s what the German word is, sprechstimme. That’s a sing talk kind of a technique. And so it tells the story of Pierrot Lunaire, and the moon, by this French poet, translated into the German. It was really a fascinating project. So I became really, really involved in that. Now I have to mention that one of the ideas that Zipper had was to have a performance of the music, and then my interpretation of each segment projected on a screen. Then this technique was invented but now it’s very common in the theater. It was newly-invented then by somebody at Yale University. Instead of showing slides everyone’s familiar with, from the front you’ve got the screen, and you see the projection from the rear.

Blum: Was this like an overhead projector?

Martyl: Wasn’t overhead, it was in the back of the theater, some way. It projected from the rear. That’s all I know. And then, there was an operator that knew the music, somebody in the music field that would operate a reostat, which

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melded one image into the other. Instead of slides which are shown one after another abruptly, from one to the other. This eased one image to the other. So it was fascinating and projected on a large screen on the stage. I think it was the Studebaker Theatre, as it was called then. I don’t believe it exists anymore with that name. A theater is there, but has another name. And so it was a big performance. And after I did all the works, I think there was an exhibition at the music school. I know it was Zipper’s idea that one of the patrons of the North Shore Music School should buy the whole lot, you know, as a unit. That was his dream. But didn’t come about.

Blum: What did happen to your work?

Martyl: The paintings were all sold individually, almost all twenty-one.

Blum: Was it a one-time performance, and a one-time showing?

Martyl: Well, at the Studebaker Theatre. But then it proliferated into other performances, and they published an album, of which my Pierrot is on the cover with the slides that went with it. It was a whole package deal that was marketed, and it went all over the country. And for years, I would get requests for those slides from various universities’ music departments. That has ended. I do remember it was a sort of an interesting thing, I guess you would call it a visual aid to the music. And it was pretty abstract, in a way, but you could recognize what the subject was.

Blum: Was that a one-time experience for you?

Martyl: Yes. Well that was the only time. Arnold Schoenberg was an artist himself. He was also a watercolorist, like Gershwin. So he thought in visual terms.

Blum: And you could receive it in musical terms, because of your background.

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Martyl: Well I translated; yes, I guess that’s true. That’s the interesting thing. From childhood I loved music, and took piano lessons for years. I was really quite good at piano. But it was the violin that I was serious about. And I studied with a violinist in the symphony, St. Louis Symphony. I did until I was about… well, all through school. I was really pretty good at that too. But it was the repetition of it that became monotonous. I suppose if I’d learned composition, that’s a whole other thing, that’s creating music. But interpreting somebody else’s is another vocation. But I learned a lot about music. And one of my close friends was the pianist for the St. Louis Symphony. And she was really, really a pro that knew—musicians like in any field, you know your peers nationally—she was that good, being in the symphony. Her name was Corinne Frederick, a remarkable musician. And of course, every time a musician came, famous ones came to the symphony, and if it was really interesting, she’d call me on the phone, and, “Come and listen to the rehearsal.” So I got to listen to Nathan Milstein, and chat with him. He was a famous violinist. And then decades and decades later, I was invited to the University of Chicago when Arthur Schnabel, who was a pianist, came. And I drew pictures of him. But the most interesting and important to me, of all, was when my friend Corinne Frederick accepted a position to be head of the music department at a small wealthy girls’ school named Monticello. I think it was near Principia, on the bluffs of the Mississippi in Illinois. Principia has a college there. Monticello is over there too. At any rate, she knew that Bela Bartok was in New York, and was absolutely starving, he had no money at all. And she arranged, because she was head of this department in this wealthy girls’ school, to bring him to this college for three or four days to play. I’m sure those girls didn’t know what in the world they were listening to but that wasn’t the point, it was to give him a job. And he came with his young wife, who was his pupil at one time; she was his second wife and his pupil. She didn’t speak a word of English. So my friend called me, and said, Would I escort him around, and drive him around, and take him thither and yon?

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Blum: Did you have a common language with him?

Martyl: Certainly not. He spoke a little bit. It’s like a lot of the artists, you know, Max Beckmann came to St. Louis, and he pretended he didn’t know any English, and so he talked German most of the time. But he knew English quite well. My mother knew him and his wife, quite well, when he lived in St. Louis and taught at Washington University. So that was really a fabulous experience. And I took some photographs of Bartok, really the last good photographs, which I’ve given to various musician friends of mine, as a present. He was absolutely ethereal looking. He was quite handsome, but he was very thin, cause he was so poor, I guess. That was my interpretation. But he was extra thin with an absolutely an angelic look, big blue eyes, and regular features, and wisp of white hair. And so he gave a concert that I went to, a piano concert at this school. The interesting thing was that there was a wonderful sculptor that was on the staff there. He was, I guess, you would call it mute, couldn’t speak. But he could see and appreciate everything, but he couldn’t express himself except in sculpture. They put a pole from the piano, through the floor to the space underneath the stage of that school, and he listened to the whole concert by holding onto that pole.

Blum: Because he could feel vibrations?

Martyl: Yes, from the vibrations he heard the whole concert. That was a unique experience.

Blum: Very interesting. Martyl, in 1961, you got amazing press for a commission you did. And that was the large mural for the Unitarian Universalist Church in Evanston, designed by Paul Schweikher.

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: How did that all take shape?

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Martyl: Well that was an amazing kind of a situation. First with Paul Schweikher, the architect, who was selected to be architect of the church. I was brought up in the Unitarian tradition and church, and when we moved to Chicago we joined that church. It was the nearest; everything was twenty-five miles away.

Blum: That was in Evanston. But you lived on the South Side.

Martyl: No, we were right here, in Schaumburg. And we were here already. Yeah, 1953 we came, I remember. And this was already 1961, we had been here quite a while. But in 1953 we joined the church, when we came out here. And our kids went to the Sunday School, which was one of the purposes. When we first joined, it was in a small English parish church designed by somebody well-known [Marion Mahony]. A well-known person did that church; it looked like an English parish church. But horrors of horrors, do you know, I wasn’t aware of what was happening because we were sort of newcomers to the congregation. Actually it had already happened just as we joined it. There was a brilliant minister of that church, named Homer Jack. He was a friend of Albert Schweitzer and Gandhi, and all those folks, and would talk about it. And he also was intellectual, and so my husband would haul himself on a Sunday eighteen miles to hear him speak. Well, that church, that very wonderful little church, they tore it down for a parking lot. So you see what happens with people that have some sensibilities? I read about that. I didn’t know it at the time, that that’s what was happening.

Blum: Where was this church located?

Martyl: It’s on Ridge and Greenwood. Greenwood? Yes, I think so. Well at any rate, Paul Schweikher was asked… they interviewed a lot of architects apparently, and asked them, “Why do you want to build a church?” I was told this. Maybe it’s in the record. But they interviewed Frank Lloyd Wright first,

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because Homer Jack wanted Frank Lloyd Wright, absolutely. Well, Wright said, “I’d be happy to do another Unitarian church in the Chicago area. If you will just deposit two million dollars in the nearest bank, I will begin immediately.” You don’t ask a Unitarian for two million dollars. I exaggerate the amount, at that time it was probably five hundred thousand. You know, money has changed, but it would be the equivalent of two million dollars today. Well, needless to say, that was a bit beyond any kind of consideration. So then they interviewed some other architects. And then there was some member of the church that was with Paul in the navy, and he was intrigued and impressed with Paul Schweikher. And so he had an edge on it. But I remember, Paul, I think, told me this, that when he was asked, “Why do you want to build a church?” He said, “Because I like to build.” Everybody else gave, you know, some kind of theological stuff. And so, he got the job. And it was unique. He was a partner with Winston Elting then, and he’d already gone to Yale. And of course, that was one of the problems. Everybody wanted Paul Schweikher to do the design, so it was very difficult having Elting for a partner because he was an architect too, but clients always wanted Paul. And so it got to be very awkward, as a relationship. But Elting got all the commissions, cause he was very well socially connected. As Dorothy Schweikher said, “He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Or a fork, I don’t remember. And so it was very helpful, in that sense. Elting also built a house for himself that his wife always called the [Paul] Schweikher house. Remember that?

Blum: I do.

Martyl: So he had originally designed a wall in the church that required… well, let's take a few steps back. It started with a controversy, the church and its building, because the congregation didn’t have enough money. And they were trying to nickel and dime Paul Schweikher to death. And the unique construction of the church was designed to make a very large sanctuary without any posts. They had a method for folded slab construction with

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bents; they poured the concrete, and they made the sides all in one piece, and then put it together.

Blum: Oh, like in a form?

Martyl: Yes. There’s a name for that, folded slab construction with bents. It was a unique method. And he had designed it as a rectangle. And I can remember hearing about the fact that they cut down several bents to be cheaper, you know. Paul was so disgusted, he walked away from the whole project. Did you know about this?

Blum: No, I did not.

Martyl: Yes.

Blum: I knew he designed the church.

Martyl: He was just fed up with it. You know, I mean they were altering the design to make it square instead of rectangular. That’s major. And so he was just, you know, he said to hell with it. Well, it turned out that the man who was head of the project changed. The organization of the church changed which I wasn’t privy to because I wasn’t involved in all that church stuff. But a good friend of mine was appointed to be in charge of this. His name was Howard Cook, and he was a hospital administrator. He was head of the Chicago Hospital Association, so he knew about organizations, and whatever. And he was well-liked there. But he and his wife were long-time friends of ours with St. Louis connections. And so he talked to me about the church, and the fact that Paul Schweikher was no longer involved. And I talked Paul Schweikher back onto that project, because I knew that Howard Cook would be a good person to work with, and understood a lot, and so forth. And he said, “Okay.” Well, in that design, he had a very large wall that separated the sanctuary from the rest of the church, which was absolutely beautiful. When

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he designed that in the style at the time, I remember, what modern architects were doing: a roof with cookie-cutters, and everything looked like one of those huge grocery markets. But his building really was a modern church. And I still, to this day, think it’s absolutely beautiful. It was very controversial, you know.

Blum: Was your mural built into this process at an early point?

Martyl: Yes, I’m getting to that. So there was this wall. And when Paul was thinking about it in the beginning, before he got aggravated, he was thinking about the artist that he worked with before, Josef Albers. He had envisioned Albers doing it. I think I’m right about this. He thought about it. But then after our association he said I should do the mural there. I said, “Well, it sounds interesting.” I mean it was just a casual conversation. And there was this great big blank concrete wall. So, I think he suggested it, and then insisted that I do it. It was really interesting because he had done a school in Schaumburg for the farmers, an elementary school. Paul Schweikher did the design for free, with fieldstone. And so when we moved here, my kids went to the Schweikher school, we lived in the Schweikher house, and then they went to a Schweikher church. It’s amazing. So he was very influential in our visual delights.

Blum: Did his church design influence your mural design in any way?

Martyl: Well it certainly did. It was two stories high, for one thing. And then, I have to say that my father died right then. And I was devoted to my father. He was very, very hard-working, I mean an unbelievable photographer, in that he did many, many kinds of photography. He did the Lindbergh documentary, for example. He did all sorts of documentaries. And as I said before, he specialized in weddings and children. I mean he just did a whole lot of things, but always had time to play handball every Sunday morning, which he did. And then bicycle ride with me through Forest Park. And gave

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me space in his studio to paint, in that Art Nouveau building of his. Well, he died. So I made an arrangement with the church that I would do this mural as a memorial to him. And they thought that was fine, naturally. But they paid for all the materials—that was the agreement—they paid for materials and the apparatus, and everything connected with that, and expenses.

Blum: How did the design of your mural, that is called Darkness Into Light, how did that evolve?

Martyl: Well, as I look back and think about all the things that I’ve done, I seem to get good ideas. I did some thinking, and I know that the Unitarian-Universalist theology is such that we don’t worship any iconography at all, so it precluded that.

[Tape 6: Side A]

Martyl: Well I read quite a few things about the cosmology of the universe, and thought that was probably appropriate. So I made some sketches. And being a tall building, I thought, well it has to do with Genesis, and the creation of the world. Of course, now that modern science has decided that Genesis is an abstract story about the Big Bang—the way the universe started—my Big Bang came at the top of this mural. Because of the height of the mural, and the story of Genesis—that’s where the Darkness Into Light comes from. You know, when the Lord said, “I will create…” And so I started dark at the bottom, and ended light at the top. With no particular objects, it’s just radiation of bright colors at the top, rather abstracted.

Blum: In a newspaper review of the mural, I saw a photo of you working and it was as if you were using Jackson Pollock's drip method. Because it was so huge, you were working on it on the floor.

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Martyl: Oh, I have to explain that. I wanted to do it in place. It had to be done in place. The whole story of that mural is significant in that it’s one of the first times, and I don’t know if it’s ever been repeated that an art conservator worked hand-in-hand with the artist. And I’ll explain. But in order to paint a mural twenty-one feet high, or something like that I had to do it flat on the floor. Because you’re quite right, if I did it vertically, it would drip plenty. So my husband designed an A-frame that was constructed in the church. It operated by pulleys so I could pull it up to look at it, but I painted it down on the floor. And that’s probably one of the pictures you saw, this A-frame that was constructed to his design. It was quite remarkable because you know, I had to see what it looked like vertically, but having painted it, I learned how to paint flat on the floor with large paper works too, in that method. I worked on that mural for one whole summer.

Blum: What did the conservator do?

Martyl: Well, this is what the conservator did. The idea to paint right on the wall is dangerous, because churches get torn down, and things get rearranged. So it was Lou Pomerantz's idea. He was my friend who was the conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was able to obtain this wonderful Belgian linen, a complete size. The Art Institute is privy to that sort of thing; in the conservation department they know where to get things. From Belgium, that’s one solid piece of Belgian linen. Also, he was privy to the design that had just been invented, I think, of making the panel, which would be attached to the wall. So if there was any change, if the church moved, or whatever, the mural could be removed. And so it has, in the concrete, what is called Z-bars, three or four, I don’t know how many now are imbedded in the concrete. And then the construction of the panel was like a sandwich. You could conceive of a sandwich with this craft like a beehive, craft paper that had been manufactured to make it very strong, but very light. And so you can conceive of this beehive paper thing in between two pieces, and then the canvas on top of that attached to the wall, which means it can always be

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removed. Now that whole thing becomes, you see, a collaboration already. My husband did the A-frame, I did the painting, Lou Pomerantz did the construction. And then the church elders, who were interested in this, helped in all sorts of ways. I remember projecting it onto this huge wall space. I did a design, and I made a slide of it, and then it was projected on the wall. And then I just had the bare outline. And it was coordinated in a remarkable way, actually, because of Howard Cook. It was an experience for him and the whole church. Everybody took pictures. It was a big project. And I think it turned out quite well, because I’ve cleaned it over the decades. They made a scaffolding and I cleaned it.

Blum: With what did you clean it?

Martyl: With distilled water…

Blum: And a Q-tip?

Martyl: No, little tiny dabs of cotton. Because in those days, people smoked and, you know, general atmospheric wear and tear. And it got sort of dirty. Not really dirty, but dingy. It was also that people had to learn how to behave. It went from the ground to the top, and people would put all sorts of things there. So there were big stones. This was another conservation idea, you can’t just put guard ropes around it, but they built a huge a trough of these stones in around it, so that psychologically, you know, you can’t really push anything up to it. And there have been people who have enjoyed it all these years. I hear about it from time to time.

Blum: Was it accepted by the people in the church as soon as it was finished?

Martyl: Oh sure. Yes.

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Blum: Well you certainly got good press about it. And, as a matter of fact, in 1962, it was awarded an honor award by the AIA [American Institute of Architects].

Martyl: It was, wasn’t it? Yes. So was the church, at one time, wasn’t it? I know it was for the mural. I have a document.

Blum: You have had a multi-faceted life. And one facet we haven’t yet spoken about was your teaching.

Martyl: Oh well, yes.

Blum: You taught at Midway Studios for quite a while.

Martyl: Well I would teach more critique in all the other places. The University of Chicago Midway Studios was more of an honorary position. I accepted that, only in the good weather semester, cause I didn’t want to drive back and forth, so I did it in the summer. And then I was invited to many other places to do more as a critique in a series of sessions in Oak Park, Wayne, where else? I can’t even remember all the places.

Blum: You taught from 1964 through 1971. And those were years of great transition, years of unrest. Many important things happened during those years.

Martyl: Well mostly it was the attitude of the students.

Blum: What was it like?

Martyl: I remember, and then I quit because of it. Because I didn’t really need that. Well, the attitude was no work. It was a bit complicated, because of the attitude of the university toward art, and toward Midway Studios. There was an undercurrent.

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Blum: What was the university’s attitude?

Martyl: The first, well I can tell you specifically, the university had a dean of humanities, named Karl, K-A-R-L, Weintraub, W-E-I-N-T-R-A-U-B. As far as I’m concerned, he was my nemesis. He saw no purpose or reason for art, the visual arts, to be in a university. He told me this to my face. Worse than that, he was also on the board of the School of the Art Institute. But see, that’s a separate school. The department of humanities thinking was based on the Oxbridge attitude. You know, Oxford and Cambridge always had The Music Professor but not for the visual arts. Well I don’t know where Weintraub got the idea, but that’ll give you an idea of the attitude. The university wanted to tear down Midway Studios. You know, it had been the studio of sculptor Loredo Taft. Listen, they would have torn down the Robie House too. That just goes to show you what intelligent people are capable of. There’s a blank spot in people.

Blum: So the art department was treated like a stepchild?

Martyl: Yes. And it was Ed Maser who became chairman of the department. Edward Maser saved the Midway Studios from being destroyed. So I mention this as an undercurrent adding to the fact that students were also a kind of—I don’t know what history calls it—they were rebellious for no reason. Rebels without cause, as far as I could see, at the time. This is connected with the fact that the curriculum didn't matter if you could talk. It was all talk. Never mind what you did. It was all talk. Now this influenced, I think, the attitude—I don’t know, by osmosis or what—but this was one of the problems. I had students who wanted a grade, but they never wanted to show up to class. And you know, I mean it’s an impossible situation. And I had one incident when I gave a failed grade, I gave a D, to a woman, a girl who never showed up but then wanted a passing grade. And of course, if you don't get that a passing grade, you don’t graduate. It was something

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terrible. And I got phone calls at home, and all kinds of pressure. Imagine the attitude—don’t do any work, but give me the grade.

Blum: Do you think the student was picking up on the official university attitude towards Midway Studio?

Martyl: I think it permeated the whole situation. Even today, if I meet somebody that teaches there, I hear the same complaints. It’s almost as if it was an orphan. Well now I think that is all changing. They’re going to have a fine arts complex now, and a building. They finally have some new people that are enlightened. And in the works is a big new fine arts center. Now finally catching on to places like Yale, Princeton, and other schools. And even M.I.T., which is, you know, big in the visual arts.

Blum: Was the university's attitude a surprise to you?

Martyl: Oh yes.

Blum: What did you feel was essential for you, as an instructor, to transmit to a student?

Martyl: Well, my viewpoints. And I had a certain structural thing at the time. I can’t relate it to you, but I did come across some of the various notes and outlines that I had for the students. Any faculty wife could also audit the class. The whole purpose of the Midway Studios in the beginning was to teach techniques to the art professors, in the art history department, so that they knew what they were talking about, to first-hand understand the techniques. They knew what secco fresco would be, by doing it. I mean by the visual artist at Midway Studios showing us how to do it, or they could do it themselves. To get the technique of what etching was, all the different kinds of etching. And from fresco to watercolor, to all the various techniques, so that art historians knew what they were talking about instead of being

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completely abstract. That’s my understanding of the beginning of Midway Studios. And so the fact that you could go there and have some pleasure during an academic recess of some sort, seemed to be beyond Mr. Weintraub’s vision. [Ruth] Duckworth taught there for some years, longer than I did. And so did Virginio Ferrari. He taught sculpture. And the academic side always gave him a hard time. I mean it was their livelihood.

Blum: Did you enjoy teaching?

Martyl: I did. I did from time to time. It gets structured in my thinking, and being able to verbally project what…

Blum: Did you ever teach at the School of the Art Institute?

Martyl: I substituted for George Buehr's watercolor class one year. He went off someplace.

Blum: Would you have liked to continue teaching there?

Martyl: No, not really.

Blum: Why?

Martyl: Well, because I have so many responsibilities of my own work. I don’t need to teach. I’ve been very lucky in that sense. To my amazement, still, there are people that buy my work. I don’t know why I’m amazed, but I always am at the reactions of other people, and that they still sell. So I always sold work. And I had a husband and two children and a big house. And that took a lot of doing. And so teaching, you know, was just to keep my thoughts and my oar in the water. I would do it occasionally.

Blum: How did you juggle all these responsibilities: your career, your family?

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Martyl: I juggled them all my life. I always said my life was like hamburger. It’s chopped up in small pieces. And I learned to live with that. And so, when you ask me about how did I work, it was actually under those conditions. Just like the hamburger metaphor. I worked in between all sorts of things. I was able to do that. And having been blessed with a whole lot of energy apparently, which I think is the genes from my father surfacing. I would get a second wind in the night, and I'd work at night a great deal.

Blum: You painted at night when your household was asleep?

Martyl: Yes. And because I decided that when my children were very small, I mean babies, and you know, that changes one’s life enormously. You never are quite the same, never, ever again. And I knew a few mothers that were frenetic about all that, how to juggle a job, and a work situation, with small kids. Had to give up one or the other, or don’t have children. I was in a social situation that that’s what people did. The single mother was only an indigent mother. A single mother was very unusual. So I decided not to worry about that, just take care of the kids. So that when everybody was put to bed, and fed, and so forth, I’d get the second wind, and then I would work at night. So I was more relaxed, and not worried about the daily routine, you know, being frenetic about getting work done, and not to be disturbed, and all that kind of stuff.

Blum: Were you living two lives, one during the day, and another at night.

Martyl: Yeah, probably.

Blum: You said that you only taught at the Art Institute as a substitute. Did you ever go to Oxbow?

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Martyl: Yes. I refused to teach at the Art Institute. I was asked by the head of the painting department, Paul Weighardt. He was married to a sculptor who taught in Evanston for years and years. He tried to get me to teach painting there, on several occasions. But I felt with my lifestyle, this is all I could handle. I couldn’t do a full-time job in the city. And so I never did that. And then, Oxbow: years later when my children were more grown, I was invited to be an artist-in-residence for x-number of weeks one summer.

Blum: Well in spite of the fact that you did not teach in the school, and you had limited exposure at Oxbow, you were the first honoree at an annual fund- raiser for Oxbow.

Martyl: Was that the first? I don’t know. It surprised me.

Blum: How did that happen?

Martyl: I don’t know how that happened. Oh, because maybe I had been there, and they decided that I was well-known, or something like that. It was a great event, I must say. Well by this time, you know, that’s a rather recent event like last year, or two years ago.

Blum: Yes. That’s right.

Martyl: And so that was a very gala affair. They told me just make the date, you know, six months in, to just be there. And then they had a small exhibition of my work and some of my accomplishments on a large wall.

Blum: I was questioning why they selected you because you had, over the years, only limited contact with Oxbow.

Martyl: Well, like I say, it was artist-in-residence. And then I worked for a noble cause, I was on the board there too for a while. And I used to get teachers for

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the program. I got Ed Paschke. I had to talk people into living under primitive conditions. Now it’s all, you know, under the aegis of the Art Institute of Chicago, and they’ve raised a lot of money. They have different boards just like Ragdale. They proliferated where they get the right people in the right place, and the right things all coming together. And they raise a lot of money. But more than that, one of the great benefactors of Oxbow died, the Burkes, and in their will left a couple of million. But they were always giving money. He was the treasurer of Oxbow; they were just so great. But my contribution was to talk various people––I got Ed Paschke to teach there one summer, and I got Ruth Duckworth to teach ceramics one summer. And I got Will Petersen to teach printing one summer. You know, that sort of thing. Couldn’t give heaps of money, but I did what I could do. And I was on that board. And the vicissitudes of being a board member is a whole other depressing subject.

Blum: You were also a fellow at the Tamarind Institute, at the University of New Mexico.

Martyl: Yes, well that was also a wonderful experience. And that was based on the whole series—I think, it was based on subject matter that I became known for—which was the synapse series, a conceptual art done on Mylar. At least that’s what the head of the department was intrigued by. And so I was invited to go there. And that was for several months, as a resident.

Blum: Was this mostly printmaking?

Martyl: It’s a famous print studio at the University of New Mexico. And Tamarind, itself, was started by June Wayne, in, I think, Los Angeles.

Blum: What does Tamarind mean?

Martyl: I think it’s a kind of tree. And it’s the name of a street in L.A.

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Blum: You had many memberships, both social and professional. As you’re describing, you were on the board of Oxbow.

Martyl: Well they were good causes, you know. I always thought it was a wonderful summer place for artists in the vicinity. It was on a lagoon there, and to work and be with other artists, and the whole idea was wonderful. It was always limping along with, you know, no money, and cottages that were… I remember I had a house to myself, a cottage to myself; visiting artists had those perks. And there was a faucet that was dripping all night. I can’t bear this. I remember going to the front office. I didn’t know of their financial sparsity, the Spartan, I should say, thing. And I reported this. And they said, Oh yeah, they’d take care of it. And I just say that as a placebo. Whoever reads this will laugh, because…

Blum: It’s still dripping?

Martyl: As of this last three years, it’s not dripping.

Blum: Another kind of board membership was with the Arts Club.

Martyl: Yes, well the Arts Club, again, is a special place, and has a unique history that’s quite well-known. Rue Shaw was the director of the Arts Club. And Rue Shaw, when she demanded something, everybody came to attention. And she’s the one that put me on the board; she said I had to be on the board, absolutely.

Blum: Did they want a representative artist on the board?

Martyl: I don’t know what it was. It was just me. I don’t know. Because I have a broader view, I suppose, than most artists.

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Blum: How would you describe Rue Shaw?

Martyl: She was a very positive, imperious woman. And if she liked you, everything was terrific. And if she didn’t, you were gone. And she had an unbelievable eye, as the record shows. And it always amused me, because I think she was a woman of means, but she knew how to squeeze a nickel beyond its… And that’s how she got all these works of art. She got the Brancusi, and she got the Calder, and all the treasures the Arts Club has. And she was just a very remarkable woman. And I didn’t think I had a lifetime appointment, but according to her, it was. I could never get off the board as long as she was there. And then the subsequent people wouldn’t let me off either.

Blum: Are you still on the board?

Martyl: I’m still on it.

Blum: It was a lifetime membership.

Martyl: But I must say, it’s been an enjoyment, because it’s self-sustaining; it’s not out to raise money all the time.

Blum: But did you find you made connections that, either immediately or after, somehow benefited you in the form of a collector or commission?

Martyl: From the Arts Club?

Blum: Through the contacts you made at the Arts Club.

Martyl: Well I think that’s true of the club in general, yes. Certainly met marvelous national artists through the club. And that’s one of the reasons that the Arts Club is so terrific, because the visiting artists that I got to know; they seem to invite me more than other artists, I don’t know why, but they do. Mostly

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because, I guess I have more conversational skills than a lot of others. I don’t know. I find it absolutely inspirational, and also broadening. I mean some things that I learned to like that seemed, on the face of it, you know, bewildering. I mean I don’t have to like it. That’s not the point. You know, you see what’s happening, what’s going on, and some other points of view, and try to find some basis for admiration, if possible. So it’s been very, very inspiring. I think in the last I would say, in the Arts Club has been very beneficial. And I like to think it was both ways, cause I had some input, in the exhibition part, I must say. The board is one of those boards that loves the lunches and the dinners, and votes on things. But the exhibitions—I want to qualify that—are the thing that interests me in the art end of it.

Blum: Well it is nice that the exhibitions are open to the public, whether you’re a member of the Arts Club or not.

Martyl: Yes. That’s a tax thing. But it is still important. That’s why John Vinci designed it, I think, in a brilliant way. Because you know it has a very subtle way of cutting off the membership part from the public part, with the Mies van der Rohe staircase.

Blum: Well, you have taken many, many honors. You were elected the outstanding artist of the year. You won the Logan Prize. You were the artist of the year for the American Federation of the Arts. You won the Outstanding Achievement Award in the Arts. These are just the tip of the iceberg, because there are pages and pages of the awards you have won. Which award, or awards, has been the most meaningful for you?

Martyl: Well it's always nice to be rewarded. Can’t deny that. I mean everybody likes to be appreciated. So, in that sense, you know it’s always a surprise. I can remember one particular prize that was just so exciting to me. I heard about it on the phone. It was the first Walt Disney Purchase Award for a drawing, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

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Blum: This was in 1944.

Martyl: I guess. Well, yes, I guess. So that was given an award and LACMA has it in their collection. I mean it was a purchase award. I’ve been reading about Walt Disney lately, somebody’s written a book on him. Nobody has before, and it’s some recent book—it shows how he struggled. He didn’t make a dime for a long time, not until he opened that amusement park. And you know what he created with his drawings. But he gave the money for the purchase. The reason I bring that up is that he didn’t have any money then, really. But he believed in the museum, and put up, I’ve forgotten how much, it was some cash award. It was called the Walt Disney Purchase Award, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Blum: And were you the first recipient of it?

Martyl: Yes. I mean that’s very vivid to me. Other awards, you know, are always nice to receive. The Logan Prize [Frank J. Logan Medal and Prize] was also, because that was a medal.

Blum: A medal and prize?

Martyl: Yes. Which I have. It gets polished from time to time. The thing is that the Art Institute used to have those special exhibitions, and a lot of international organizations give prizes. But the Art Institute quit the prizes, and they had all this money. I don’t know what’s ever happened with all that money, I have no idea. I’m sure it’s put to good use. But they used to give all these named prizes: the Logan Prize, the [Frank] Armstrong Award, the [William] Bartels Award, all of which I've won. Other prizes were more specific: some woman who lived so-and-so, and somebody lives here, or a man that’s forty years old. I mean all sorts of contingencies were connected with municipal

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art. Well they’re gone. They don’t do the show anymore and they don’t do the prizes anymore.

Blum: Did this mostly come out of the “Chicago and Vicinity” show?

Martyl: Yes. So perhaps the money doesn’t exist anymore. I mean it just disappeared, without any explanation. And artists are pretty docile these days, when it comes to things like that unless you have an organization like Artists Equity, or such things. Things like that just happen. Most of the time when things change, there’s usually a reason for it. And I sometimes defend it. I know the Arts Club had an exhibitions committee for years, a big committee that would have lunch, and you could propose various artists, and it went on and on and on. And then people didn’t carry out what they said they would do. And then the director of exhibitions was left with all this committee stuff, you know. Well finally after all the years they got the right person. The various people on the board love the camaraderie. That’s not the point, the camaraderie. You can do that someplace else. The exhibitions were the important thing. So now they have an exhibitions director that most everybody is in full admiration of her because she knows her stuff. She consults a little bit, you know, here and there. She knows what’s going on, and gets these wonderful shows that are just what the Arts Club should be doing. You don’t need all that committee stuff. And I found out that that’s when my impatience kicks in. I mean if you’re on a committee, you have to wait till everybody… It gets so democratic that it goes nowhere. And stuff done by committees are always a little bit difficult.

Blum: Well you said that was why you left the Women’s Board at the Art Institute.

Martyl: Well, yes. That was a social lunch thing. I left the board of Oxbow, because… Then there was the New Art Examiner, another good cause, a wonderful magazine that was for I don’t know how many years, decades here. Everyone seemed to be money raising. I think I was probably put on these because it

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gave prestige, and I know a lot of people, a whole lot, more than most artists, because of all sorts of obvious reasons, I suppose.

Blum: I know that you followed in your mother’s career footsteps. Did either of your daughters follow in yours?

Martyl: In a different way. My youngest daughter, Alexandra, was a math major. She got that from her father, and translated the art part into weaving. And she’s an authority on weaving, became a very fine weaver. She had three children, and I don’t know how she juggles it all. But she did a museum exhibition in California, in the San Jose Museum, I think on weaving, the history of weaving. And she’s been to Peru, and all that. And she knows all that, it’s related to mathematics. The first computers were weaving machines. They used cards way back then. So that’s what she went into. It’s a different form of the arts. And she has a good eye, and a wonderful color sense, and all that. My other daughter, Suzanne, wanted to be a dress designer. She started in France. She was educated abroad quite a bit and she speaks fluent French. We sent her to schools in Europe. Well she’s turned out to be a sewing whiz. And instead of designing clothes—which she can do—she’s a quilt designer. She’s big in the quilt thing, using her color, and the needle skills, which she did not get from me. I have no interest; I can’t even knit. I’m temperamentally unsuited to that.

Blum: So your career in the arts was picked up in other ways by your daughters.

Martyl: Well they didn’t become professional. They ended up having it as an avocation. Suzanne moved to Washington, D.C. and was a legislative assistant to a congressman, several congressmen, one from New York, and one from Indiana for years. And she’s very good with people; she inherited her sweet personality from my husband, not from me. She ended up in a job in a law firm, and she’s able to understand and fire people quite nicely.

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Blum: That must be a skill.

Martyl: And my husband was like that. He could listen to people with their troubles, and not give a recommendation. Well you know, I’m more outspoken. I couldn’t work for anybody. I really couldn’t. When I think about it, I couldn’t be in an army either. I thought of that many times. If I was drafted in World War II, I would be in the brig. I mean this is terrible, but I think I resent authority, I suppose, unless it’s me.

Blum: Then you found a perfect career and a perfect husband.

Martyl: Yes, it’s really true.

Blum: Which you’ve said in print also.

Martyl: I did?

Blum: Yes. How he took care of the children when you were busy working, and things of this sort.

Martyl: I guess he did. He was very supportive. And that’s one of the things that has made my life so interesting and easier, was having a supportive family to start with, and then a supportive husband, and a supportive community. I mean that’s about as perfect as you can get. The other thing, I decided, was that it was worth having kids. We thought about it. My husband wanted children. And, Oh my God! It’ll interfere with my career. That was my first reaction. Well, you know, now that I’ve thought about that…

Blum: Now that you reflect on it…

Martyl: Well I’ve known a lot of artists that have done that, by artists I mean even musicians, who have sacrificed everything for their career. Well, in the long

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run, it’s not a good idea because in the long run, you know, the ideals never really work out the way you started with it in your brain. I remember there’s a Chicago artist that’s loved and known. She’s the wife of, well, her name is Eleanor Coen, C-O-E-N, the wife of Max Kahn. And she saw that I was able to manage two children. And she told this to my husband, and she told it to me too and she decided that she could do it too. So she had two children.

[Tape 6: Side B]

Blum: You were her model.

Martyl: Well, she said this, that she could see it. It can happen. And so, I mean she became, you know, well-known in Chicago, and a good artist. So they have two splendid kids, one of them teaches at the Art Institute, I think, Katie, Katie Kahn. And their son is an architect. So, you know, it can be done. But when I think about my lifestyle and we talked about the artists’ community, and certain promiscuousness of the art community, as I saw it all my life. I read so many books subsequently about artists. Knowing the time that I grew up in, you know there’s this dichotomy of attitude, like the good girls and the bad girls, or the good boys and the bad boys, when I was growing up. Maybe that’s why, when I think about, when you reminded me about being called a dilettante, it reminded me of the sort of life of the good girl. You know, you get the ring, the husband, the house, the kids or whichever… That’s the good girl.

Blum: In whichever order they come. And the other girl?

Martyl: Then there’s the other girl that goes off to New York, and sleeps with every famous guy. And that’s literal. I mean that’s not a fantasy I’m announcing, you know, there's lot of evidence of that. So that somebody like me can be called a dilettante, because of this middle-class kind of a life, and she paints. You know, that sort of thing.

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Blum: You know there was another battle that you were in, by virtue of the time in which we live and that is that great art was a man’s profession. Do you think you have succeeded in a man’s world?

Martyl: Well I guess I did.

Blum: Were you ever aware of a struggle on that level?

Martyl: I wasn’t so aware of it at the time. I just thought that’s the way that life was. I was always very healthy, and everything came my way, and I thought that’s the way it was. It just seemed to be. I never thought about gender, in that sense at all. My mother was quite successful, and she had a husband that appreciated her. And she managed, but later in her life than I did in mine. I started right out of the box. And that’s an advantage. One of the reasons I believe for my not being concerned about the gender, is the fact that using my name, my one name, Martyl, is rather neuter. Nobody could tell whether it was male or female. And I would, I think I’ve mentioned this before, when in doubt, it was always Mr. Martyl. And also when paintings were sent, there were a lot of national exhibitions where people just know the name. They didn’t know me personally, and it would be for many, many exhibitions, hundreds. And it never occurred to me. I mean I usually was accepted, hardly ever rejected.

Blum: But do you suspect that you were accepted because they thought you were a man?

Martyl: But there was always juried exhibitions and you’d send to exhibitions. That’s virtually disappeared out of the art world, where a museum would hold an exhibition open to American artists with some qualifications, regionally, or whatever they gave money prizes. And you know, there was always this, for decades that went on. And so, either the dealer or the gallery associated

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would send the paintings, or the artist would do that, in hopes of being in the exhibition. If it was an important exhibition, they published a catalogue. They gave prizes. And it was this whole method of promoting art in every community. Well, from my name, you couldn’t tell what it was. So it wasn’t like Mary Jane, or Eleanor, it wasn't obvious. So I never had that problem until the women’s movement started. Not that it was a problem, but it was pointed out to me when I went, this must be over twenty years ago now, that my friends put on Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Did we speak about that?

Blum: Not yet.

Martyl: It was rejected by the Art Institute and other places, for all sorts of reasons. It wasn’t technically good, and whatever. Turned out to be a pretty good idea by this woman who, people didn’t like, whatever all the reasons were. It had a hard time. And so a group of women in Chicago rented a place—I don’t know where they got the funding—they didn’t come to me.

Blum: Why do you think they didn’t?

Martyl: I don’t know. I think they didn’t think I was committed to the women’s movement maybe. I mean I was not into that.

Blum: Would you have supported The Dinner Party?

Martyl: Well I went there to see it, with Ruth Duckworth, who’s the ceramic artist. And of course The Dinner Party was all ceramics. But you know, if you remember, there was a place-setting for I don’t know how many famous women throughout the ages. Each person had a unique place-setting. And of course, it was rather large. And they rented some place. Anyway, when I went there with Duckworth, she hated the pottery. She didn’t like it all, because it was not technically… the ceramics weren’t good enough. But even the weaving, the placemats were woven. It was a big project, by this woman

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artist. I met a person there that came up to me, and she said, “I understand you knew Janson.” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Well that big chauvinist pig. He hasn’t got one single woman in that book, that big book on the history of art.” I said, “He doesn’t?” Well, I came home, and I got out his book. And I looked, and she was absolutely right—not one. Now imagine I was friends with Janson, for decades. And we had this big party when his book, History of Art, this five-pound baby came. And it still never occurred to me. Can you imagine? I didn’t know.

Blum: And it’s a highly respected and much used book in classes.

Martyl: But now, of course, it’s been revised by one of the sons, Tony Janson, and they put in some women, the well-known ones: Georgia O’Keefe, Mary Cassatt, they’re all in it now.

Blum: But the first edition was the climate in which you grew up.

Martyl: Yes. And it’s worse than that because I’ll tell you what happened. Peter Janson, he was professor at NYU, and when he would give lectures across the country he'd always come and stay with us. When the book came out, he brought it to us. I saw on the inner jacket, it says, H.W. Janson along with D.J. Janson, that’s his wife, Dora Jane. I said, “Oh, Peter. I didn’t know D.J. had anything to do with this.” He said, “Oh, her name is only on there for tax purposes.” That’s a quote—an exact quote.

Blum: How did you feel about that?

Martyl: And I accepted that too. And years later, Peter died on a train in Italy. I would always stay with them when I went to New York, and I stayed with D.J. NYU owns most of Washington Square now, and the Jansons had an apartment in one of the buildings. It was full of books and paintings, and

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several of mine, and other famous people. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, not other famous, but…

Blum: I understand.

Martyl: I mentioned something, just in a conversation, that was, to me, quite innocuous. D.J. and I were talking about something in the past, some social event we were both at. I think it was at my house or something, and I said, “Oh,” to her, “Were you there?” And that lit a fuse and she blew up, which was long pent-up animosity at being unappreciated. Just think about that, Were you there too? “Only you paid attention to Peter. That’s all you ever…” You know, and all that. And it was just awful! And I just didn’t know. I was just flabbergasted. It was just too painful. But when I think about it, it was pent-up emotion that finally exploded because she did half the writing of the book. I mean she did a lot.

Blum: Well that certainly demonstrates the need for a women's movement.

Martyl: And to tell that to me, that it’s just there for tax purposes. It’s hard to have friends that… I mean but that’s the way it was. He was a European fellow and that was their attitude.

Blum: Was that the accepted climate of the day?

Martyl: Yes, I would say so. And she collected Art Nouveau jewelry. I have to say that it was Janson’s book that made Abrams Publishing. They were a struggling publisher. And the first book Janson did was A History of Art for Young People, in which he wrote a dedication to my kids. And that was his first book. And then he worked all the years on this. And he had unusual slides. I mean it is an unusual book. There’s no doubt about it. And it was the first major history of art book of any consequence in this country. And he was the only scholar that ever made over a million dollars on a book then.

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Well, Abrams, in its editions and everything, made buckets of money out of Janson, revised and otherwise. So D.J. had all this material and this wonderful collection of jewelry. She wanted to write a book, have it published by Abrams and they rejected it.

Blum: That must have been a slap in the face.

Martyl: That was a terrible blow to her. So all in all, I really have a sad feeling about that, because she was very talented, and could write very well, but never was appreciated on her own. That’s often the problem of being married to a famous man. The woman has a hard time.

Blum: Well, you managed it well.

Martyl: Well, I managed it, cause I didn’t know.

Blum: Martyl, can you look back and think of what was your greatest opportunity?

Martyl: The one greatest opportunity? I had a series of opportunities. I had no one great opportunity. Well, everything that came, I considered it wonderful… Let’s see, a great opportunity. Well every time I was invited to something out of the blue, as I’ve described to you, to me, that was a wonderful opportunity. Every single thing I decided to do, to take on. One doesn’t supersede the other, except maybe marrying Alexander Langsdorf. I think that probably was the most influential thing in my life. I was asked by the group in Ste. Genevieve that also honored me—I was the guest of honor— this was a couple of months ago. They arranged an exhibition of my paintings and drawings. I think I’m the sole survivor of that whole enterprise, the Ste. Genevieve Summer School of Art. I’m the sole survivor. Anyway, at Ste. Genevieve, they have an annual art festival, and La Guignolee is a big tourist attraction now. They have a visitor’s center, you know. And they’ve got all this information about the mural, and it’s all a big deal. Well I

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was the guest of honor. I didn’t want to go there. I’ve already had so many things this year to do, and I wasn't able to go and do that. How do I get out of it and not hurt feelings? I did. I did get out of it. And they went scrounging around for paintings of mine: some from my brother, some from a gallery in St. Louis, and some in their own domain there. The library has my work, and it's in various other places. So they had the exhibition. They put out a catalogue that’s so full of errors. I haven’t corrected it yet.

Blum: When a catalogue is readied to accompany an exhibition, do you review it before it goes to press?

Martyl: No. It’s usually done by other art people without me. Where they got this information, and scrambled it all up, it’s beyond me. But anyway, they did this. I couldn’t go there. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, my daughter Sandy, who’s, I guess, more like me—Suzanne wouldn’t be diabolical at all.

Blum: What did your daughter do?

Martyl: Well, use the old card.

Blum: What’s that?

Martyl: I said, “I’ve never done that before.” The old card. Well, she told me to say that I have limited energy. So I…

Blum: Oh, because of your age?

Martyl: Yes. “So I have to choose…”

Blum: They don’t know that you get up in the middle of the night to paint and do more in a day than most women half your age.

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Martyl: “So I have to choose my projects.” Which is true. I went to Russia, and I went to London, you know. I’m not going to go to Ste. Genevieve for this. And she said, “That’ll end it.” And I’ve never done that before. Well it did, sort of, but not completely. So they called, and they said, “Well would you make a video?” And we had a meeting and, “If we give you ten questions, will you answer the questions?” One of the questions was, “What do you consider your greatest achievement in the arts?”

Blum: Well, how did you answer it?

Martyl: I said, “My husband and my two children, who have become very successful, and turned out to be great people, and have great lives. And their kids have the same. And so I consider that a really major achievement.”

Blum: That’s beautiful. Last question. What’s ahead for Martyl? What does tomorrow look like for you?

Martyl: More of the same. Well, what’s tomorrow? Oh well, probably working on some drawings. I have an exhibition coming up. I'm happiest when drawing or painting, creating something satisfying to my inner voice.

Blum: Are you currently handled by Printworks Gallery?

Martyl: Printworks in Chicago, at the moment. Yes, and Thea Burger.

Blum: Does Printworks show a preponderance of prints?

Martyl: No, that’s a misnomer. The gallery uses that name, Printworks, but it’s to designate works on paper only. Sometimes it’s off-putting, because people think it’s just for prints. They do sell a lot of prints: original prints, etchings, and lithographs. But they don’t ever show oil paintings, paintings on canvas. It’s a small, very good gallery. They have high quality art there, and the men

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that run it are really, really wonderful. But that’s what that is. And they have an exhibition of my drawings, black and white drawings, scheduled to open on March 2 [2007]. I have an exhibit there every two years.

Blum: A solo exhibition of your work?

Martyl: Oh yes. I remember I had an exhibition once at The University of Missouri, in Columbia, Missouri of drawings of mine, which got lost in transit. They had scheduled the opening, and all kinds of things. And about two or three months later, the drawings were found on a siding in a boxcar. In those days, things went by Railway Express, instead of UPS [United Parcel Service].

Blum: Well that must have been a big unpleasant surprise to everyone.

Martyl: No opening, no nothing. But they subsequently had the exhibition, drawings only. And then I had another drawing exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. This is the fifth one. But drawing exhibitions are very few and far between. The Brooklyn Museum had drawings, black and white drawings. Oriental Institute also, because they show that. And I’ve also had my sketchbooks on exhibition, which have the drawings in them. Drawings are more like the handwriting of an artist, you know. I mean it’s a direct expression. I’m very good at drawing. I remember one kid came up to me once when I was drawing outside in some city or other and this kid came up, he said, “Are you a drawer or a sketch artist?”

Blum: So is tomorrow going to be more of the same in your art?

Martyl: Well I work on things for some time. Remember, I told you my time was like a hamburger? I do this and that, and pick up somebody at the train, and talk to my favorite people, like you, and pet my dog and hold my dog, and do all those things. And then I look at a drawing and I see what’s wrong with it.

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And then tonight I’ll do the same. And my whole life has been like that. I have paint, a little bit of paint, or something, on every piece of clothing I own.

Blum: When you were honored by the Oxbow group, you delivered an address that was just beautiful. I wonder if you would end our session with it. Will you read it please?

Martyl: Written by Hokusai?

Blum: Yes, by Hokusai.

Martyl: Well, yeah. It has been one of my favorite quotes for a long time, and I thought it was appropriate, for me. It’s sort of what I would write if I could write. I would have done this.

Blum: Would you put it on tape? It seems so perfect to end our sessions with.

Martyl: [reading] “Since the age of six…” Oh by the way, this was written by Hokusai, the Japanese famous artist, when he was seventy-five years old. He said, “Since the age of six, I’ve felt a desire to paint everything I see around me. By the time I was fifty, I had already made public countless paintings. I wasn’t content with my work. Only now, at the age of seventy-three, have I partially understood the real shape and character of birds and fishes and plants. At the age of eighty, I shall make further progress. When I’m ninety years old, I shall penetrate to the very essence of things. When I’m a hundred years old, I shall reach a high degree of perfection. And at the age of a hundred and ten, everything I shall create, every point, every line I draw, will be life itself. I invite everybody who will know me at this age to convince themselves of the truth of these words.” Isn’t that excellent?

Blum: Does that express some of your feelings?

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Martyl: Yes, that’s the way I feel. I’m not the sort of artist that thinks everything I do is marvelous. There are artists that do think that. I know some. But I’m not like that. You know, I always think the next thing’s going to be really, really—that it will be the masterpiece. It’s always the next thing.

Blum: Well, Martyl, I want to thank you. Oh, before we end the session, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you would like to speak about?

Martyl: Well, I have to think about that. We spoke about almost everything, haven’t we? Have we?

Blum: We've recorded a representative sampling of your experiences.

Martyl: We got the major things, I think.

Blum: Martyl, thank you very, very much: for the Art Institute, for myself, and for the all the future readers who will have this interesting oral history in your own words to consult.

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SELECTED REFERENCES

Bonesteel, Michael. "Martyl." The New Art Examiner. October 1983. Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum. Site Drawings by Martyl: The Precinct of Mut at Luxor. Brooklyn, 1986. (Exhibition catalog) Chicago, Fairweather Hardin Gallery. Martyl Paintings. Introduction by Anne Rorimer. Chicago, 1983. (Exhibition catalog) Chicago, Fairweather Hardin Gallery. Martyl: Works on Paper. Essay by Esther Sparks. Chicago, 1981. (Exhibition catalog) Chicago, Kovler Gallery. Paintings and Drawings by Martyl. Essay by Horst Woldemar Janson. Chicago, 1967. (Exhibition catalog) Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago. Landscape Drawings by Martyl. Essay by Harold Joachim. Chicago, 1976. (Exhibition catalog) Chicago, The Oriental Institute, The University of Chicago. Martyl Paintings and Drawings from Turkey and Iraq. Introduction by Robert Braidwood. Chicago, 1969. (Exhibition catalog) Dick, R. H., and Kerr Scott. An American Art Colony. St. Louis, Mo.: McCaughen & Burr Press, 2004. Elsner, David M. "An 'Out of Place' Portrait of Bank Executive Stirs Furor." Chicago Tribune, 6 July 1981. Golden, Gayle. "'Doomsday Clock' Gains Time." Dallas Morning News, 18 December 1987. Janson, H. W. Martyl Recent Paintings and Gouaches. A.C.A. Gallery, 1945. (Exhibition brochure) Kuchta, Ronald, ed. The Provincetown Painters 1890s––1970s. New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1977. Langsdorf, Martyl Schweig. "The Cliches of Art, Old and New." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 March 1967. Langsdorf, Martyl Schweig. "A Criticism of Modern Art." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1 May 1957.

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Langsdorf, Martyl Schweig. Papers. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. (Microfilm reels 1364, 2992-2994) Langsdorf, Martyl and Cyril Stanley Smith. "Science and Art: Introduction." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. February 1959. O'Hara, Delia. "Reflections of the World." Chicago Sun-Times, 19 January 1987. Rogers, James G., Jr. The Ste. Genevieve Artists' Colony and Summer School of Art 1932–– 1941. Ste. Genevieve, Mo.:Foundation for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve, 1998. Ruth Duckworth/Martyl. Essay by Debora Duez Donato, with an introduction by Katharine C. Lee. Chicago: State of Illinois Art Gallery, 1990. Skinner, Olivia. "Martyl's New Two-Story Abstract Mural." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 October 1961. Start, Clarissa. "Her Paintings are Man-Size Jobs." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5 June 1940. "St. Louis Woman." Newsweek. 21 December 1942. Taboroff, June. Martyl and the Precinct of Mut." Aramco World, September/October 1988, 23-27. Weller, Allen S. "Chicago's No-Jury Experiment." Arts. May 1957.

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MARTYL LANGSDORF

Born: 16 March 1917, St. Louis, Missouri

Education: Cape Cod School of Art, Provincetown, Massachusetts with Charles Hawthorne Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado with Arnold Blanch and Boardman Robinson Ste. Genevieve Summer School of Art. Mary Institute, St. Louis, Missouri Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Selected One-Artist Exhibitions: A.C.A. Gallery, New York Art Institute of Chicago Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Steinberg Art Gallery (now Mildred Lane Kemper Art Institute), Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Murals: Clayton High School, Clayton, Missouri Municipal Center, Schaumburg, Illinois Post Office, Russell, Kansas Post Office, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri Recorder of Deeds Building, Washington, D.C. Unitarian Universalist Church, Evanston, Illinois

Teaching: Artist-in-Residence, Tamarind Workshop, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico Artist-in-Residence, Oxbow School of Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Saugatuck, Michigan Instructor, Art Center, Evanston, Illinois Instructor, Art Center, Oak Park, Illinois Instructor, Art Center, Wayne, Illinois Visiting Instructor, Midway Studios, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

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Selected Honors and Awards: First Prize, Kansas City Art Institute Two First Prizes, St. Louis Art Museum Walt Disney Purchase Award, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Frank Armstrong Award, The Art Institute of Chicago William Bartels Award, The Art Institute of Chicago Frank Logan Medal and Prize, The Art Institute of Chicago McMillan Purchase Prize, St. Louis Art Museum American Federation of Arts "Outstanding Artists of the Year Museums Acquisitions Exhibitions." American Institute of Architects Honor Award, Chicago, for Excellence in Fine Arts Allied with Architecture Honoree, for a Prolific Career, Oxbow School of Art, Saugatuck, Michigan

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INDEX

A.C.A. Gallery, New York City 16, 40, Burliuk, David 40 54, 129-131 Albers, Josef 182 Calder, Alexander 194 Albright, Ivan 85 Cape Cod School of Art, Provincetown, Alter, Joanne 156 Massachusetts 6-12, 86 Art Institute of Chicago 74-75, 77-82, 85, Carson, William Glasgow Bruce 97 89, 92-93, 208 Cassatt, Mary 87, 203 Artists Equity 100, 110-111, 197 Century of Progress Exposition, Art Institute of Chicago, Room of Chicago, Illinois 22 Chicago Art, 77 Cezanne, Paul 57 Arts Club of Chicago 84, 193-195, 197 Chapin, Francis 23 Arts International 111-113 Chi, John (Johnny) 112-114 Associated American Artists Gallery Chicago and Vicinity (exhibition) 76-77, (A.A.A.), Chicago, Illinois 74, 88 80-82, 85, 197 Chicago House, Luxor, Egypt 169-170 Bahlman, David 160 Chicago, Judy 202 Baretta, Joan 105 Coen, Eleanor 200 Baron, Herman 127, 129 Conway, Fred 14 Bartok, Bela 177-178 Cook, Howard 181, 185 Beckmann, Max 178 Benjamin, Susan 155-156 Daley, Richard M. 141 Bennett, Rainey 125 Davidson, Susie Morton Zurcher 85, 95 Benton, Charles 118, 120 de Diego, Julio 24, 52 Benton, Rita 14 de Kooning, Willem 86 Benton, Thomas Hart (Tom) 14-16, 19, Dehn, Adolph 44, 45 20, 54, 56, 173 Deson-Zaks Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Bernstein, Leonard 17 119 Blake, Robert 60 Disney, Walt 196 Blanch, Arnold 44-46, 49 Disney, Walt, Purchase Prize 195-196 Block, Mary 93, 94 Doomsday Clock 124-125 Block, Leigh 93 Duckworth, Ruth 189, 202 Braidwood, Linda 166, 169 Dufy, Raoul 15, 54 Braidwood, Robert 164-166 Brancusi, Constantin 194 Eddy, Mary Baker 36 Bribach, Carrie 31 Eliot, Mary 30 Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, Eliot, T. S. 31 New York 166-168, 170, 208 Elting, Winston 180 Buck, Robert 142 Ernst, Max 90 Buehr, George 189 Evergood, Philip 40 Bulliet, Clarence J. 140 Burger, Thea 135, 207 Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, Burlin, Paul 57 Illinois 119

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Fairweather, Sally 119 Janson, Tony (son of H.W.) 203 Feingarten, Charles, Gallery, Chicago, Jewett, Eleanor 139 Illinois 89, 93, 138 Joachim, Harold 82, 142 Fermi, Enrico 74, 114, 115, 146 Johnson, Ray 170 Ferrari, Virginio 189 Jones, Joe 14, 16-17, 19, 39-40, 52, 128 Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado 33, 43 Kalven, Jamie 125 Frederick, Corinne 177 Kamen, Martin 131 Freeman, Gaylord 102 Kelly, Ellsworth 103 Friedenthal, David 44 Kincaid, Thomas 134 Kirschten, Ernest 71 Gardner, Sheldon 156-158 Klee, Paul 93 Gellhorn, Edna 62 Kleiman, Carol 107-8 Gellhorn, Martha 65-66 Klyman, Julius 71 German, Suzanne 160 Knight, Carroll, Gallery, St. Louis, Gershwin, George 58-61, 90-91, 176 Missouri 72-73 Giraud, Albert 174 Kovler Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 164 Goldsmith, Hy 123 Kovler, Marjorie 164 Golschmann, Vladimir 99 Kramer, Hilton 137 Greenberg, Clement 137 Kuh, Katharine 75-79, 83, 86, 94-95, 102- Gross, Chaim 41 103, 127 Guggenheim, Solomon R. 101 Gwathmey, Robert 40 LaGuardia, Fiorello 51, 91-92 Langsdorf, Alexander, Jr. (Alex, husband of Harris, Niesen 143-145 Martyl) 45, 46, 50, 62-68, 70-71, 74, 112, 114- Harris, Stanley 103-104 115, 122, 129, 146, 149, 154, 162, 164-165, 185, Harshe, Robert 22-23 199 Hawthorne, Charles 6-7, 9-12, 40 Langsdorf, Alexander, Sr. (father of Heffner, Christy 171 Alex) 62 Henri, Robert 7 Langsdorf, Elsie (mother of Alex) 62 Hensche, Henry 10-11 Langsdorf, Suzanne (daughter of Hirshhorn, Joseph H. 145 Martyl) 198, 206 Hoffmann, Hans 86-87 Larson, Al 159 Holm, Victor 32 Lee, Doris 44-46 Holty, Carl 57, 86, 112 Lee, Gypsy Rose 52 Hutchins, Maude 72 Lee, Katharine 89, 142 Hutchins, Robert Maynard 72, 123 Leger, Fernand 117 Huth, Hans 82 Lipp, Franz 150-151 Huth, Marta 82 Logan Medal and Prize 80, 82, 195 Hynds, Reed 55 Mahony, Marion 179 Independent Artists Association 82 Manhattan Project 66, 114, 116, 122, 128 Maremont, Arnold 145 Jack, Homer 179-180 Marlborough Gallery, New York City Janson, Dora Jane (D.W.) 203-205 102 Janson, Horst W. (Peter) 118, 135, 136, Marx, Florene 93 145, 164, 203-205 Marx, Sam 93

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Mary Institute, St. Louis, Missouri 17, Rabinowitch, Eugene 123 30-31, 33, 37, 64, 96 Rathbone, Perry 71 Matisse, Henri 49 Rebay, Hilda 101 Maser, Edward A. (Ed) 187 Redon, Odilon 20 McCullagh, Suzanne Folds 142 Reiner, Louise 17 McDermott, Robert 143 Rich, Bertha 82 McKinnie, Miriam 73 Rich, Daniel Catton (Dan) 75-78, 82, 87, Mead, Ed (aka Shepherd) 98 132 Meem, John Gaw 43 Rickly, Jesse 13-14 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 146, 195 Robinson, Boardman 32, 43, 44, 49 Mies van der Rohe, Waltraut 82 Rogers, Ann 84 Miller, Florence Pullman (Mrs. Philip Rogers, Meyric R. 84, 145, 147 Miller) 84 Rondeau, James 75 Millman, Edward 52 Rorimer, Anne 118, 142 Milstein, Nathan 177 Rosenberg, Harold 136 Miro, Joan 20, 86 Rothko, Mark 102 Momentum (exhibition) 81-82 Roullier Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 74 Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Rowan, Edward Beatty 25-26 Chicago, Illinois 89 Russell, Harold 104 Mylonas, George 32, 163-164 Russell, Paul (Pete) 102-3, 105 Ruvolo, Felix 88 Nagel, Charles 71 Nelson, Elizabeth, Gallery, Chicago, Salemme, James 92 Illinois 88 Sargent, John Singer 87 Neumann, Morton G. 90 Sawyier, Calvin 109, 159 Sayman, Dojean (Lady Smithers) 64-65, O'Keefe, Georgia 203 70 Olson, Elder 92 Sayman, Luella 62 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 63, 116, 128 Schnabel, Arthur 177 Oxbow School of Art, Saugatuck, Schoenberg, Arnold 174, 176 Michigan 83, 190-193, 197, 209 Schulman, Daniel 142 Schweig, Aimee (mother of Martyl) 2, 6- Paepke, Walter 44 8, 10, 12-14, 34, 36, 38, 39, 51, 54, 66 Pao, Chia San 69 Schweig, Martin (father of Martyl) 1, 5, Paschke, Ed 192 35, 47-49, 88, 182, 190 Peters, Bernard 13 Schweig, Martin Jr. (brother of Martyl) Petersen, Will 192 2, 88, 206 Picasso, Pablo 54-57, 90, 99, 140, 173 Schweig, Morris (grandfather of Martyl) Pokrass Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 88 48-49 Pollock, Jackson 183 Schweikher, Dorothy 147, 149, 180 Pomerantz, Louis 106-7, 109-110, 184- Schweikher, R. Paul 84, 145, 147, 153, 185 158, 161, 178-182 Powell, Mary 38 Schweikher, R. Paul and Dorothy Printworks Gallery, Chicago, Illinois House, Roselle, Illinois 143, 207 See: South Willow Pulitzer, Joe, Jr. 21, 70-71, 103 Schweikher, Paul, Jr. 162 Seldis, Henry 138

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Shane, Fred 44 Shapiro, Joe 90-93 Shaw, Rue Winterbotham 193, 194 Vical, Jeanne 33 Sherman, Thomas 71 Vinci, John 155, 195 Shils, Edward 114-115 Shiva, Ramon 23-24, 46, 53 Shoemaker, Alexandra Langsdorf Washington University, Steinberg (daughter of Martyl) 198 Gallery (now Mildred Lane Kemper Siporin, Mitchell 52 Art Institute), St. Louis, Missouri Smith, Cyril Stanley 126 163 Smith, Elinor, Gallery, St. Louis, Wayne, June 192 Missouri 53, 61 Weintraub, Karl 187, 189, 191 Solomon, Jack 111 Weissbourd, Barney 118 South Willow (aka Schweikher house) Weller, Allen S. 76 149, 150 Whyte, Jeff 161 Sparks, Esther 142 Williams, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) State of Illinois Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 97-98 120 Winston Strawn 109 Ste. Genevieve Summer School of Art, Ste. Works Progress Administration 18-19, 24 Genevieve Missouri 12-14, 16, 20, 28-29 205 Wright, Frank Lloyd 149, 179-180 Ste. Genevieve, Missouri 13, 16, 20, 28, 58-59, 97 Zipper, Herbert 174-176 Stix, Irma 62 Zurcher, Victor 85 Straus, Chris 160 Sweet, Esther 82 Sweet, Frederick A. (Fred) 75, 77, 81, 82, 87, 128 Szilard, Leo 115

Taft, Loredo 187 Teller, Edward 114, 116 Truman, Harry 122

Unitarian Universalist Church, Evanston, Illinois 178-186 University of Chicago, Midway Studios, Chicago, Illinois, 186-189 University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, Chicago, Illinois 166, 169- 171, 208 University of Chicago, Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois 126, 147 University of New Mexico, Tamarind Workshop, Albuquerque, New Mexico 192

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