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Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California FRED MARTIN ART DEPARTMENT ALUMNI AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interviews conducted by RICHARD CÁNDIDA SMITH in 2005 Copyright © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Fred Martin, dated September 14, 2005. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: “Art Department Alumni At The University Of California, Berkeley Oral History Project: Fred Martin,” conducted by Richard Cándida Smith in 2005, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2010. Fred Martin in 2005 Oral History Interview Discursive Table of Contents—FRED MARTIN Interview #1: September 14, 2005...................................................................................... 1 Audio File 1 ....................................................................................................................1 Preliminary discussion on the Berkeley emphasis on design over content—Martin had little contact with Worth Ryder outside one large lecture course on the history of art— Parents and family background—Growing up in Alameda, California—Development of interest in art—Entering Berkeley as a Decorative Arts major—Switching to the art department—Taking Art 2A with Erle Loran—Educating the student for an awareness of formal value, order, and structure—Learning to organize the world visually—Martin's resistance to Loran's perspectives—Developing a romantic understanding of art— Studying Kandinsky outside of class—Loran's sequence of exercises—How Loran's approach influenced Martin's teaching—Learning Chinese brush and ink techniques from Ray Boynton—Becoming enthralled with the work of Lyonel Feininger—Color classes with Margaret Peterson O'Hagan—Comparing O'Hagan's critique style with that of John Haley—Martin's breakthrough painting—Developing a personal palette knife technique—Student friends. Audio file 2 ................................................................................................................... 18 Class with David Park—Working with Glenn Wessels—The Berkeley art department and the California School of Fine Arts compared—Beginning to study Chinese literature and philosophy in classes at Berkeley—Chinese studies begin to reshape working methods with paint—More on studying with David Park—Becoming interested in Poussin and Lorrain—On art history classes at Berkeley—Curating an alumni show with Sam Francis and Jack Head as his assistants—Class with Mark Rothko—Class with Clyfford Still—A second breakthrough painting—On emotional intensity in painting—Emotion versus form—Assessing the limitations of the Berkeley approach to art training—Graduate studies in art—Involvement with the Six Gallery—Working at the Oakland Museum— More on family and its cultural background. Audio File 3 ...................................................................................................................34 Student social life at Berkeley—More on Erle Loran—Ninfa Valvo—More on classes with David Park, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still—On Carl Jung—On the relation of California-based artists to New York—Annual exhibitions of the San Francisco Art Association—Dorothy Miller—The Art Bank project—Reflections on how the Berkeley art program shaped its graduates. Interview #2: September 21, 2005.................................................................................... 46 Audio File 4.................................................................................................................. 46 Glenn Wessels discouragement as a teacher—Martin’s developing his own approach to teaching—Aspiration as an artist—On fame and success—Sam Francis—Galleries and their influence on art—Martin discusses individual works created since the 1980s and the development of his visual thinking. Audio File 5.................................................................................................................. 59 Use of text and words in Martin’s work—Mixed feelings about the Berkeley approach to art training—Studio notebooks—More on the Art Bank—Joey America and the farm form series—Going to the San Francisco Art Institute—Philosophy of administering an art school—Teaching art history for artists—Sharing work with students—The role of imitation in studio art classes—More on conflicted feelings Berkeley art students from his generation had about their training and teachers—Continuing connections with his fellow graduates—The postwar generation of young artists—Berkeley’s way of seeing—Berkeley’s unique contributions to art education. 1 Interview #1: September 14, 2005 [Begin Audio File Martin, Fred 01 09-14-05.wav] 01-00:00:01 Cándida Smith: DeFeo was taught that it didn’t matter what the content of prehistoric art was. Martin: Oh, really? Did she take a course? Or was this just told her in. 01-00:00:29 Cándida Smith: No, this was told her. Then she went to Lascaux when she was living in Europe. She did a lot of stuff with etchings and she went to some museum. I can’t figure out [exactly] which museum it was. It was probably the one in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. But she was able to do, put a piece of paper— Martin: Oh, rubbings. 01-00:00:56 Cándida Smith: Rubbings, yes, rubbings. Of these prehistoric bas reliefs. Martin: Jay did? 01-00:01:04 Cándida Smith: And then she did a couple of paintings while she was in Paris that were sort of based on the rubbings. Martin: I hadn’t thought about it. I took a course in primitive art. I never thought about that. Yeah, we counted the triangles in tapa cloths. That was it. At least that’s what I remember. 01-00:01:25 Cándida Smith: Primitive art in that case meant Oceanic, African, or Lascaux? Martin: I think it was Oceanic. It was nothing but design. There was no content. No, there was no content. Cándida Smith: So that was pure Berkeley. 01-00:01:46 Martin: Yes, as far as I was concerned. And that’s one of the things in my stuff, even then. I was abstract, but I knew what it was. I knew what these things were that I was painting. I could hear their names, I could write their stories, the whole business. Cándida Smith: I thought that was also Worth Ryder’s idea. At least he says so in his lecture notes. 01-00:02:14 Martin: See, I had so little of Worth Ryder, but I had one lecture course. Big lecture course. He was never this God-like figure for me. 2 Cándida Smith: I guess we’ve actually started. So let’s— Martin: So let’s start at the beginning now? Cándida Smith: At the beginning. Martin: All right. 01-00:02:34 Cándida Smith: So the first thing I’d like to do is find out a little bit about your family background, where and when you were born, and a little bit about your parents, where you were raised. 01-00:02:48 Martin: I was born in San Francisco. I think at St. Francis Hospital. My parents lived in an apartment on Geary Street, downtown. When I was one year old, they moved to Alameda. My father was an engineer for the telephone company, who designed PBXs, which were the old ways of doing business phones. My mother had been a secretary at the phone company, and that’s where they met. She came from—she was born in Soquel, I think. Down by Santa Cruz. Her family all came from down there. My father came from Upstate New York. Cándida Smith: Were they both college educated? 01-00:03:45 Martin: My father had a degree from the University of Toronto; my mother just was high school. When I was ten, we moved to Oakland, to East Oakland, to, I think, 64th Avenue, one block up from what is now International Boulevard— or East 14th Street. I went to elementary school and junior high and high school. I went to Castlemont High School. Cándida Smith: A public school? 01-00:04:20 Martin: Oh, yeah. And then— Cándida Smith: What about the levels of interest in culture amongst your parents? Were they—did they have a liking for art or poetry or music, or—? 01-00:04:44 Martin: My father had taught himself to play the violin, and to play the flageolet. We called it “Daddy’s flute.” He had taught himself to play these things when he was a kid. He was into classical music, particularly Mozart, Rossini and Mendelssohn. Well, so picking up from him, I was into classical music; but it had to be Tchaikovsky or Wagner.
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