Oral history interview with William Ronald, 1963 April 18-June 2 Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with William Ronald on April 18, and June 2, 1963. The interview took place in New York City, NY and was conducted by Richard Brown Baker for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. This is a rough transcription that may include typographical errors. Interview Tape #1. Side 1: April 18, 1963. Side 1 is taped in Mr. Baker's apartment in New York City. Side 2: June 2, 1963 Richard Brown: This is Richard Brown Baker, April 19, 1963. I'm just going to talk to the Canadian-born American painter William Ronald. Bill, in 1957 in The New Yorker Robert Coates classifying you offhandedly, as he said, as an abstract expressionist wrote, "Ronald differs from the majority of the American exponents of the style in that his interest in design clearly comes first and is usually anchored firmly to the subject matter while the color is generally secondary, an adjunct rather than a compositional element in itself." That's the end of what Coates said. In the same year in the May issue of Arts a different reviewer commenting on that same first New York show of yours declared, ”The strength of his abstractions in oil lies primarily in his sense of color. The forms themselves however lack similar authoritativeness." Now it's rather obvious that these two gentlemen didn't see your work in quite the same way and if you can go back to '57 when you had that first show - William Ronald: Was that my first show? RB: In New York I think it was , yes. Would you care to comment on the two observations? WR: Well, it may come as a surprised to some people, but I think that Coates has been more helpful to me as a critic than anybody else so far. I find very few critics of any assistance at all. It's simply a method of publicizing us. RB: You told me once you almost never read criticism. WR: No, I do read my own criticism but I don't read much other criticism. I don't subscribe to any magazines or anything of that nature. I do have some art magazines at home, they're usually three or four years old before I get around to reading them. I like looking at the pictures because I'm primarily a visual person. As far as what Coates said about my show in '57 and about the color being secondary - is that what he said? - RB: Yes. WR: I think that when I lived in New York it was possible that was true because there's something about New York that makes a painter, at least it did at that time anyway, work sort of with black and white. There's something black and white about New York. Now that I live in the country I use black very rarely. But part of that is a conscious thing too. I got to the point where I thought black was becoming a crutch. And now I say I use it very rarely. But I do believe what Coates said was true because when I came to New York in 1954 or '55 I thought I was really something because in Canada I had sort of a name and was considered a radical. Here I found there were about 10,000 other painters like me. I was sort of painting in the all-over manner, using the full area of the canvas for my composition in a rather fragmentated way, rather like Tomlin perhaps, and it struck me that I had to arrive at something else. RB: You refer to Tomlin. This was an influence before you got here you mean? WR: Well, I was here in '52. RB: And he was still living, wasn't he? WR: Yes. I think he died the first year I moved here. RB: You saw his show and so on? WR: I don't think I ever did see a show of his. I saw reproductions and then I did see, I think, the one in the Museum of Modern Art at one time or other. RB: I'm catching you up on this because I'm surprised; I don't really see the relation between your painting and Tomlin's. WR: Not now. You haven't seen the canvases that I did. Some day I'll show them to you. There are only six or eight. RB: These were done before the show, were they not? WR: Yes, yes. Then I felt that in order to really have anything of any validity of my own I just had to force myself to come up with some-thing that was more individual, I suppose. And it was then that I first started to do the central image pictures that you know of. RB: Well, the central image pictures were certainly the ones in the first two shows perhaps at Kootz. I don't know, but certainly the show which Coates was writing about and this other man, were central image pictures. WR: And that's how that came about; that's all. Now as far as the other critic is concerned, I don't know; I think color is one of my strong points. RB: Well, that's what the other man said, that your strength was primarily in the sense of color. Quite the opposite. WR: Not in that show. I wouldn't agree. It's hard to say - I don't know. RB: Well, I'm not so interested in that particular show but it's just to begin our conversation. You were brought on the New York scene as what was generally considered an abstract expressionist. WR: Well, I never considered myself an abstract expressionist. I don't quite know what that is. RB: It's a difficult term but in the year 1957 that was the dominant mood of painting. Almost every abstract painter became, for the general phraseology, an abstract expressionist. You object to the term? WR: Well, I don't object; I don't care. But look at what you really call abstract expressionism. Not the leaders necessarily but the people that followed. I've got maybe one or two pictures that I would be able to classify as abstract expressionism. Perhaps they should be called "action painting" because there was movement in the paint quality. But I always think of abstract expressionism more or less as de Kooning. He's the man that sort of made it popular, I think. It's a fragmentated manner of painting and breaking up of space usually using the whole canvas… that is, working out to the four sides like Pollock worked out to the four sides, you see. But I never did. I always had a focal point and a solid, or more or less solid, almost flat image to began with, and then there was some movement in the paint. I don't deny the influence because, goodness knows, I was definitely influenced by them and respected them a great deal and still do. But I just don't feel that it was. RB: Well, I would say that you are confining the phrase too narrowly when you say primarily de Kooning or exclusively de Kooning. Certainly Mark Rothko and other painters who have denied they're abstract expressionists are quite right to do so. WR: Oh, definitely. RB: They are not in the least expressionists. WR: Yes. RB: But what I always felt at that time anyway that (the phrase "abstract expressionist" meant a non-objective painting) no specific subject matter but painted with a kind of vigor and emotional intensity that related to expressionism in the sense that the Germans are known as expressionists. And therefore I would think that the paintings you showed in that exhibit in 1957 came within the phrase "abstract expressionism." WR: Well now, we won't talk about this too long because I think you can get caught up in this sort of thing, but you use the term "non-objective" and "abstract expressionism" and all these terms. This is the irony of the whole term "abstract expressionism." You see, to me abstraction is when you start with a three-dimensional object and then work from it. I think that's the dictionary meaning. You work with forms and shapes and tensions that are created by the three-dimensional object such as a bottle or a figure or something of that nature in that space. Now de Kooning with the figure did do that. Therefore, that could be called abstraction and expressionism together, but then when he moved into the non-objective, if his were indeed non-objective - they may be considered landscapes, some day, you know. In fact more and more I can see the landscape painter. But - what was I going to say? - gosh sakes, where was I? RB: Well, you were attempting to analyze abstraction. WR: Oh, yes. Then you mentioned "non-objective." Well, you see, mine were non-objective and expressionistic so maybe they should have been called "non-objective expressionism." Because there's a difference. But anyway, I'd rather not go into that any further.