Oral history interview with Richard and Evelyn Pousette-Dart, 1992 Mar. 9
Pousette-Dart, Richard,
b. 1916
d. 1992
Painter
Suffern, N.Y.
Size:
Sound recording: 1 sound cassette (70 min.)
Transcript: 28 p.
Collection Summary: An interview of Richard and Evelyn Pousette-Dart conducted 1992 Mar. 9, by Stephen Polcari, for the Archives of American Art.
Pousette-Dart discusses his development and motivations as an artist; the influence of his parents; his early work in stone and brass; his opinions about and approach to art education; and his interest in poetry. He recounts his refusal of a Guggenheim fellowship in the 1940s; the effect that having children and leaving New York City had on his career; and his experiences working with gallerists Marian Willard and Betty Parsons. He mentions artists Mark Tobey and Morris Graves and discusses, in general terms, the other Abstract Expressionist artists of his generation. Pousette-Dart's wife, Evelyn Gracey, also participates in the interview.
Biographical/Historical Note: Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) was a painter in New York, N.Y. Evelyn Pousette-Dart is Mrs. Richard Pousette-Dart.
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Funding for this interview was provided by the Horace N. Goldsmith Foundation. In 2007, funding for the transcription of this interview was provided by the Smithsonian Institution's Women's Committee.
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Interview Transcript
This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Richard and Evelyn Pousette-Dart, 1992 Mar. 9, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Interview with Richard Pousette-Dart
Conducted by Stephen Polcari
March 9, 1992
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Richard Pousette-Dart on March 9, 1992. The interview was conducted by Stephen Polcari 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
STEPHEN POLCARI: You'll speak into it; I'll speak into it, and – let’s just take it from there.
Anyway, do you know the popular interpretation of Abstract Expressionism now?
RICHARD POUSETTE-DART: Who?
MR. POLCARI: The popular interpretation?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: What is it?
MR. POLCARI: You don’t, you wouldn’t – you don’t want to hear this. But the interpretation is that you were all lefty, political artists in the '50s, and then you became Trot – in the '30s – and then you became Trotskyists. And then you became art-for-art’s-sake artists in the late '40s and made a lot of money during the Cold War. The argument is that you really are Cold War artists.
You're smiling. [Laughs.]
That's the popular theory by sort of a French art historian – that essentially American art took over because it was a vehicle of the American Cold War. That you took over Europe simply because you illustrated the ideology of America in the Cold War, which was individualism.
Were you a political artist in the '30s?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MR. POLCARI: Did you know anybody who was?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MR. POLCARI: [Laughs.] Did you – you didn’t then become a, moving from a Stalinist to a Trotskyist? I'm giving you exactly what’s said here. You weren’t – you didn’t become a Trotskyist, uh-huh, and then you didn’t go into art-for-art’s-sake?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MR. POLCARI: No? I didn’t think so.
EVELYN GRACEY: Wait a minute. He wasn’t, you weren't involved in politics in the '30s, were you?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MR. POLCARI: No.
MS. GRACEY: No.
MR. POLCARI: All right, I'm just –
MS. GRACEY: But you mean somebody said that he was?
MR. POLCARI: I'm just giving you one of the popular explanations of why Abstract Expressionism has become popular.
MS. GRACEY: Oh, oh, okay.
MR. POLCARI: Well, because all of you – you were, allegedly, very heavily political artists who then essentially, gave up the idea of revolution for individualism, and to make money.
MR. GRACEY: Oh, that's so –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Don’t know anything about that.
MS. GRACEY: But Richard, but, but – when he – but you were interested in art-for-art’s-sake, because you left your family. You left your family in college, because you wanted to pursue your art.
MR. POLCARI: Well, no, no, that's just pursuing art. But I thought –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I wasn’t interested in art-for-art – I'm interested in art, period.
MS. GRACEY: Well, art-for-art is art-for-art’s-sake, it's the same thing.
MR. POLCARI: Well, no, "art-for-art’s-sake" means formalism.
MS. GRACEY: Oh. [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Which I don’t think you were ever interested in.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MS. GRACEY: Oh, I didn’t realize that's what art-for-art [inaudible]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I'm interested simply in expressing my experience in whatever materials I happen to be working in. And I'm not interested in representing something other than significant structures with whatever I'm working with. And – I really don’t care how anybody works, I'm not interested.
I really am not interested in abstract art. I'm interested in anything that has – that is wonderful, that is a miracle to me, that is alive. And it doesn’t matter whether somebody paints every hair on someone’s head or whether they paint circles and squares or whatever is true to them to do, as long as they do something that’s wonderful, I really don’t care. And I consider all art abstract, anyway.
MR. POLCARI: In terms of?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: From concerning, I mean, a moment that you draw a line, I mean, you – you know, you put a woman on a canvas, it's still not a woman, it's a ca– it's paint on a canvas. It's abstract, it has to hold up by the significance of the form.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Line, color, the elements in it, has to be wonderful as a structure within itself. And that’s my conception of Abstract Expressionism. It may be completely different from theirs. I don’t know what theirs is, I really don’t give a damn.
I mean, I'm interested in expressing my experience freely and as far as I'm concerned, every work that you do, whether it's painting or sculpture, takes on a structure of its own. And really defines, you know, I mean, I don’t believe in creating [rattling noise] – that a work of art conforms to some system or method. I mean, I think that a lot – you know, I'm bored with ideology, with art as ideas, or art as representation, or art as reproductive, you know.
MR. POLCARI: Did you ever have a representational phase, say, when you were very young?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think it's possible to live in our society or to be a human being without going through some of that. I mean, I did all kinds of drawings.
MS. GRACEY: He has thousands of them.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Of the figure, of a lot of very abortive things.
MR. POLCARI: Still, or in the beginning?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: In the beginning, but I still am interested in – I mean, I can conceive of, you know –
MS. GRACEY: You've done a few heads.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – doing things of human figures and faces and all that sort of thing, but not to reproduce the – not from any, I mean –
MS. GRACEY: [Inaudible. Speaking to the dog.] Out, out. One of –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I think that the sort of approach to the figure as in most art schools and so forth, is just horrendous and deadly. I mean, it's a stereotype and I –
MR. POLCARI: They’re drawing from the figure –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: In other words, I teach people to draw what they love, you know. The whole universe, everybody should draw, draw from nature, but everything is nature. Draw from what they love, what they care about.
The trouble is, you go into these art schools and you find thousands and thousands and thousands of drawings of the figure, you know, everyone is working from – there's no art, it's just these deadly things. I think most art education is a stereotype. It’s a –
MR. POLCARI: Your art education –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It's students teaching students.
MR. POLCARI: Your art education in your youth began partially with your family, and then, was it the Art Students League that you –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No, I never went to any school.
MR. POLCARI: None whatsoever? I didn’t think so. So, you learned, you were interested in being a sculptor from the very beginning, on your own.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Right.
MR. POLCARI: Right.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I don’t – you know, talk about self-taught. I mean, everyone is educated by the world, by society, by living.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I believe that the real university is life, you know. And – I mean, one is influenced and affected by everything around one. I mean, you go to, you walk in the streets, in the subway and you live in New York, or you live in the country, or you go to museums and so forth. You're affected by thousands of things. I mean, you couldn’t begin to calculate the things that affect one. You go through the Museum of Natural History and there's so many things that move you in so many different directions, you know.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But uh –
MS. GRACEY: Well, your father took you to museums.
MR. POLCARI: You must have discussed things, as a young boy, with your father.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I mean, I can’t remember any details of that, but my father was painting, and my father was a very serious person, a very serious artist, and a very creative human being. And – but both my parents were, to my mind, very wonderful in the sense that they completely believed in, you know, leaving you alone, doing your own thing, giving you freedom.
And I believe in that, I believe freedom is a great thing.
MR. POLCARI: Well, you seem to have developed in that way, in just sort of going your own path and really –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I mean, I believe, you know, in teaching. I don’t teach, I un-teach. I try to help people to get rid of things that have been put on them. And I believe, I try to move them and provoke them, and inspire them to do their own thing, to find their own way. To develop their own techniques. Not to learn techniques but to –
MR. POLCARI: Discover their own.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – discover their own way of doing things from doing, from working.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I feel that that is the only way that can develop originality in the creator.
MR. POLCARI: In the '30s, then, when did you decide you wanted to be an artist, as a young man? [Phone rings.] Virtually from the beginning, as far as you could remember, or was it –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t remember. Most of my, most of my young days and so forth, I mean, I never conceived of or thought of being an artist. I mean, I was around, you know, my parents and so forth, and home and so forth. But I was into anything but art. Into radios and cars and motorcycles and athletics and stuff like that. It wasn’t until I really, you know, left. The few months I went to college, that I seriously began to think about it. I came to New York and started to work.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I mean, I –
MR. POLCARI: But just, you seemed to be very interested in modern art virtually from the beginning of your creativity, and that was very rare in the '30s.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think that, you know, you could find drawings when I was seven or eight years old, that are almost similar to things I do today.
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh, do you still have them?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I have a few of them.
MR. POLCARI: [Laughs] You have a few of your childhood drawings?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah, I do.
MR. POLCARI: How interesting.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: For my father collected some of these things and –
MR. POLCARI: My wife has made such studies, between children, as they grow up, over the years, from the time they're in elementary school to the time they're fifteen and twenty.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I can show you upstairs a drawing of some trees. My father, you know, would pick these things up quickly. In fact, I tore up a lot of early stuff from – my father would go get it out of the ashcan, paste it together again. [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Oh, really?
MS. GRACEY: Well, his parents really appre– I mean, they realized, it’s really, he was very extraordinarily lucky.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I think people are very interestingly different. I mean, I think some people come to nature through abstraction, some people come to abstraction through nature. In their being, they're different.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I think some people, you know, just, just are abstract in their thinking and their being.
MR. POLCARI: I think there are some people who are very philosophical and searching.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: And others are like, sort of very analytic and perceptual, but not philosophical. And I think the difference is really striking.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But, I mean, people think of nature and abstraction as two different things, and they have very concrete ideas of what they are. But I think that, you know, everything is nature, and everything is abstract, really.
MR. POLCARI: When you were beginning, you were interested in being a sculptor, before being a painter. Did you have the idea of being both in the beginning, or was it primarily sculpture?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think it was primarily sculpture when I started out.
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I did, you know, I did drawings, watercolors and things. I don’t know –
MS. GRACEY: Tell, tell him about –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t know that I had a clear idea in my head.
MS. GRACEY: Tell him about going, where you got the stones.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Stones?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, the stones for your sculpture, out in Valhalla.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Oh, well, I can’t remember clearly, but there was a quarry over in, across the Kensico Reservoir there, and Evelyn and I used to go over there, and –
MR. POLCARI: This is in Valhalla, in Westchester?
MS. GRACEY: But also, you said you got them from the cemetery.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I used to drag stones back from there. And when I think of some of the stones that I – I mean, now, I can’t conceive of how I got them out of that quarry and across the dam and up to my house. I mean, but you know, I lifted, leverage and so forth.
MR. POLCARI: You were a stone sculptor.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I also used to horrify my parents by stealing footstones from gravestones and things, you know, to carve. [They laugh.]
MS. GRACEY: That’s terrible.
MR. POLCARI: Well, they probably were surprised.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs] Yes.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: [Laughs]
MR. POLCARI: Any important [inaudible]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I had strong feelings about the fact that – you know, I was interested in stone carving and then all of a sudden I thought what a terrible, terrible waste it was in all these cemeteries, it was terribly gruesome what they did with stones, you know. They should give all these stones to sculptors.
MR. POLCARI: Well, that makes perfect sense. [Laughs.]
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs] It does, in a way, when you think about it.
MR. POLCARI: So, you started working and chiseling and being a stonecutter in the beginning. But I remember your work as very much, sort of bronze-like.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I did a lot of early things in clay. They were all destroyed by my ex-wife, and she would destroy a lot of drawings and things
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm, mm-hm.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Paintings. But –
MR. POLCARI: But the work that I think is best known are these sort of partial figures, somewhat –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: The brasses, you mean?
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, the brasses.
MS. GRACEY: Well, there's stone sculpture out in the yard there.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah, they're very early.
MS. GRACEY: They're very early.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, the brasses grew out of –
MS. GRACEY: There's a little one.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah, the brasses grew out of –
MS. GRACEY: That little black thing. This one, this one.
MR. POLCARI: Oh, yeah.
MS. GRACEY: This is the plaster.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Really, I know I wanted to give my mother a present one time, and she loved the cross. And she had this cross, a lousy cross, and she said, “What I really would love is a nice cross.” And I went down to Gorham, in New York, and I looked around and I found a silver cross I bought her at Gorham, and I saw it.
Eah, it was better than what she had, but it wasn’t very good. And so, I really wanted to make a good cross. I got some brass and I made a – that’s the first brass I made, I made a cross for my mother. And since that time –
MR. POLCARI: How old were you?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t remember.
MR. POLCARI: A teenager?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I guess so.
MS. GRACEY: I'd say so.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I made a series of crosses and I've made, you know, all kinds of things from brass. I mean, I would like to do a book about, about the brasses, you know?
MR. POLCARI: Well, I might have –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: With edges, and living edges, and working with the hands.
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And people are always fascinated at how they're made, you know, and they think "Well, do you cut them out with a bandsaw? Do you make 'em – ", you know, "Do you – ?" They think you make, you use all these machines and things, you know.
And I had, I remember when I had that show with [inaudible] with Betty [Parsons Gallery] –
MS. GRACEY: No, it was with Marian [Willard Gallery].
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Betty, Betty was selling the brasses, and Marian –
MS. GRACEY: Marian.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – was selling too, but this was Betty.
MR. POLCARI: This was ’47, wasn’t it?
MS. GRACEY: No, this is before that.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t remember. It was one of the shows where I showed the brasses.
MS. GRACEY: He gets these mixed up.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And –
MS. GRACEY: It was with Marian, Richard.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: She – they were sold for practically nothing.
But I remember this guy, his wife had bought a sizable one. And she came back and she wanted to get a smaller piece because people would grab it and they’d say, “Oh, how wonderful,” and would whack it back and practically knock her out. [Laughs.]
But this guy came in and he said, “You know, you sold my wife this thing and it's just ridiculous, it isn't worth that much money, you know.” I mean, I [sold?] at that time, 90 or 100 bucks, I forget what it was. He said, “It's highway robbery, you know.” He said, “I can go down to the basement and knock these things out.”
And so, oh, five, six months later, he came back in the gallery. And he said, “You know, I want you to know that," he told the guy, you know, "You don’t charge half enough for these things.” He said, “I've been down in the basement for six months [laughs] trying to make these things, you know.” [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Ah, art education.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs] Yeah, right. [They laugh.]
MR. POLCARI: Yes, that's true.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But at that time, it was rather interesting, I had people that wanted to manufacture these brasses. I had people – I had one guy who had a machine, he was making machine guns, he wanted to turn over making art things.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs] A much better use.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I had another person that drove me up to a fantastic plant in New Jersey and he wanted to have me do a number of things. And I know it was a fantastic plant, I never saw such conditions in my life. They drove me up in a Rolls Royce and everything else. And they said, “Well, I mean, you make these things for everyone, we'll give you one percent.”
MR. POLCARI: One percent?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: One percent.
MS. GRACEY:Generous.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I mean, somehow, that didn’t turn me on. [They laugh.]
MR. POLCARI: Somehow. [Laughs.] Well, at least he had a sense of humor.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, I don’t think – I think he was serious about it.
MR. POLCARI: But this is interesting. I mean, you turn on to this in the '30s though, and also, you turned on to modern art when modern art was not very popular. You know, in the '30s, it was very unusual for a young artist to get interested in –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, very few people were interested in art. And when they were interested in so-called “abstract art,” I mean, they were interested in European art, I mean, and not American art.
MR. POLCARI: Yes, certainly.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And the artists that were having shows, I mean, they would have their shows – they wouldn’t know what to do with their work, nothing would sell. Nobody was interested. Buying work wasn’t even conceived of so, I mean, American work, I mean, they wouldn’t.
I remember artists coming up and saying, “What the hell do you do with this stuff after you have a show, you know?” I mean, I could have had you know, they [inaudible] how about swapping, you know? We’ll swap our work, and I could have had, you know, dozens of any artist you mention, for nothing.
MR. POLCARI: Well, still, you learned, and then you started making paintings in the early '40s.
MS. GRACEY: No, '30s he started making them.
MR. POLCARI: Was it the '30s? Yeah, that’s right.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It was the late '30s, yeah.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, late '30s. But from the very beginning, they were sort of not representational, certainly not social realist –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No, no.
MS. GRACEY: No.
MR. POLCARI: – not North American scene at all.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But, you know, it wasn’t abstract from attempting to be abstract, it was just the way I was.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Just, I mean, I've always been interested in forms in themselves, in relationships, and lines and intersection of lines.
You know, a child said, “A drawing is the dance of a pencil.” And I mean that, I still feel that way about things.
MR. POLCARI: But you were a very self-directed artist at that time, you must have been exploring, in particular –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I try, as I say, I try to un-teach people, because I feel that every – I mean, I really believe that everybody has their own genius, everybody has a genius.
And the trouble is, an education cuts people off from their roots, and they never have the opportunity to discover. They get all this stuff put upon them. And when I teach people, I have to sort of take layers and layers off them to get them down to themselves, to get them to believe in themselves, to get them to be able to make their own line.
They want, you know, to teach them how to make a line. You know, you don’t want to teach somebody how to make like a line, you want to get them to make their own line.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And everybody makes a circle, they make a different circle. I mean, people think, oh, circles are the same, or people – some of the artists in the art world have tried to coin the circular, coin the square, coin the pyramid or something. It's ridiculous.
I mean, everyone – take 10,000 people make a square, it's going to be different. If they're on the thread in their own creative being. The trouble is, most people walk out their lives like dead lightbulbs, they never find out how to get on the thread of their own creative beings. So, they're just products of art schools and products of mis-education. Of course, our whole society is so corrupt with mis-education.
MR. POLCARI: Well, also and people being products of this and that.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: You can be products of the Harvard Business School.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: Or you're products of this particular art history program.
MS. GRACEY: Right.
MR. POLCARI: That means you enter the world and regurgitate what you've learned.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs] Yeah, right.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: That's true. But it's very hard to find people that have a thought of their own.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – their own. It's just like, if they look at your painting, they don’t know, they have to ask somebody else what they should think about that.
And that's what, your art critics and your art historians and everything else. I mean, they – they can’t have a direct experience with that, they have to go to the books and find out what they should think about that or, you know? And that's the tragedy.
MR. POLCARI: I had a friend of mine who taught at Harvard who used to tell these stories. How the students always wanted to sort of learn what someone said about things. And that was their education, regurgitating what someone said.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I feel that I have the great message, really, of all time, and that is getting people on the thread of their own creative being, which has not to do with art education. It's got to be art inspiration. It's got to get people to –
Real education is making or creating a situation, a condition where people can teach themselves, where people can find themselves and so forth. And the trouble is that our whole system of education sits there and believes that they have something that they've got to get that kid to know, you know.
MR. POLCARI: To imprint on that kid.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: They've got to – first, I mean, they kind of say, "Well, first we've got to learn the fundamentals, you know, first we've got to learn the techniques." And that's so much crap, you know?
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. No, I mean, I agree, that's education, which is sort of the passing of knowledge from adults and authority into children as though they're a passive receptacle.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But of all the artists and many of them who have mesmerized our time, and other times too, so many of them are not original, creative human beings. They are people that have learned how to, to do something. They have been taught how to do something, and they've done it, and our society, maybe all societies, are so mesmerized by technique, by, you know, by the outward finish and the technique.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And it never dawns on them, the really creative thing, it just never enters their brain.
MR. POLCARI: Well, I think that exists in all levels. I mean –
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: – it exists in intellectual life and artistic life and personal life. And the truly creative, independent people of [inaudible]. You know, it's actually quite shocking, to find that out.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: You know –
MR. POLCARI: You would expect them not to be. That doesn’t mean that the other people aren’t talented or facile [bell rings] or creative in a certain way, but only within limitations. It's really quite striking.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But you know, I remember my mother was very un– she was a very social person if you got her with people, she loved people and so forth, and I think I'm very similar. But she was only interested in people to the extent that those people were interested in something. And first thing you know, when she got together with somebody, she wanted to know well, you know, "What are you interested in? What do you do? What are you thinking about?" you know?
And most people, or so many people, just don’t have anything that they're passionately interested in. And of course, this bored the hell out of my mother, and she just wasn’t interested in these people. And so – and I find I'm very much the same way. I mean, I – first thing I know when I get people, I want to know what are you interested in, you know? What do you do with yourself, you know?
MR. POLCARI: How do you fill your days?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, right, what are you thinking about?
MR. POLCARI: What are you thinking about?
MS. GRACEY: What have you got on your hat?
MR. POLCARI: Well, uh –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But it's amazing how people can come cum laude out of the finest universities in the country, with all the degrees and honors, and they get fabulous jobs and so forth. And they don’t know who they are, they don’t know what they love, they don’t care about anything, you know? They just are proficient at making a success in a corrupt society –
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – for corrupt reasons.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. I agree, I agree, you know. I live in the academic world, I could tell you the same stories.
MS. GRACEY: Oh yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
MR. POLCARI: I tell you the same stories.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: To go back to your beginnings then, when you in the '40s were working with, say, Symphony No. 1 [Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941-42] and those works, these were really developing of your interests, which were incredibly widespread at this time, with arts from all over the world. This interest you developed from the very beginning in art and culture from all over the globe is really quite striking. From Native American art to Oceanic, they're – how did you learn about that, did you go to the Museum of Natural History?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I, I mean, I –
MS. GRACEY: But Richard, I think –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: You know, I mean, you can’t live in society without being confronted with what’s all in the antique shops, in the museums, and a – I mean, I've spent a lot of time in the Museum of Natural History.
MS. GRACEY: And in the museums your father took you to, in the city.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean –
MS. GRACEY: His parents exposed him to a lot of stuff.
MR. POLCARI: But you developed a love for them on your own and went on your own. Did you ever go to the Indian museum on 155th Street?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Where?
MR. POLCARI: 155th –
MS. GRACEY: Up on 155th Street.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I only went very late, just you know, I never even knew that existed until very recent years, but –
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh, they're about close to move.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Is that the museum up there where they had the El Grecos?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, that's in the same complex.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, in the same –
MR. POLCARI: There's the, the Hispanic Society [of America].
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: They still have those dusty El Grecos up there on the –
MS. GRACEY: Is that still open?
MR. POLCARI: Yeah.
MS. GRACEY: Because they've been saying they're going to close it, or move it downtown. Is that, is – where they're going to move it has always been a big question.
MR. POLCARI: That they won’t move, the Indian museum they are moving.
MS. GRACEY: Is going to be moved.
MR. POLCARI: It’s going to be moved.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I mean, I was interested in –
MR. POLCARI: You were interested in form, but also it seems to me that you were interested in the meanings of these works, from the very beginning. Perhaps –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: The aesthetics of it.
MR. POLCARI: The aesthetics, the myth, the purposes of the art.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No, I would never in, say, African work and so forth, I'm never interested in what, you know – I'm interested in the aesthetic.
MR. POLCARI: The form and the expressiveness.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: – of it, as a whole. The shows –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, is it "ethnic," is that the word? I'm not interested in "ethnic." I mean, I –
MR. POLCARI: Ethnic background. But the meaning of the work is magic and ritual –
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, and spiritual.
MR. POLCARI: And spiritual, you must have been interested in that.
MS. GRACEY: Well, Richard, remember when you –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I never consciously was interested in that, as you say it there. But I mean, I'm interested in what moves me. Like, I mean, I'm interested in the –
MS. GRACEY: The aesthetic, it always comes down to aesthetics –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It's all a feeling and aesthetics – and intuition.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I mean, I love and am moved by forms. Whether they're in music or poetry or anything, I'm always moved. I mean, I – Gerard Manley Hopkins, I mean, moves me. I don’t really buy his Catholicism and so forth. But I mean, he has form in his work, I'm interested in. Anybody, Shakespeare, anybody who has form in their work, it doesn’t matter what.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And it’s aesthetic, it’s aesthetic.
MS. GRACEY: And –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And the trouble is today aesthetic is a dirty word. I mean, people don’t, I mean, they just don’t feel it has anything to do with art.
MR. POLCARI: I know –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It's such a joke! The thing that makes art [slapping sound] and is the only significant factor [slapping sound] of art, they don’t want to have anything to do with.
MR. POLCARI: Well, they want social theories. They want a lot of social theories, and to reduce the art to the social theories.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, right.
MR. POLCARI: And that is very strong. Yeah, there's a popular book out that's called The Anti-Aesthetic [Ed. Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture; Seattle: Bay Press, 1983] –
MS. GRACEY: Uh!
MR. POLCARI: – which is sort of the –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, the trouble is that the art world, as well as society, are just filled with horse’s asses.
MS. GRACEY: What is that Anti-Aesthetic, who wrote that?
MR. POLCARI: Well, a fellow named Hal Foster put it together, and it's basically an attack on the idea of modern art as anything aesthetic, and an attempt to – of course, aesthetic for them means [Clement] Greenberg.
MS. GRACEY: Oh.
MR. POLCARI: They don’t seemingly can differentiate between Greenbergian formalism and the aesthetics of art. They reduce everything to all form –
MS. GRACEY: God, what a limited, what a limited –
MR. POLCARI: It's very innocent in things.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I don’t want to be quoted, and I don’t necessarily want it on tape, but I think that’s a lot of – I mean, you know.
MR. POLCARI: No, we don’t have to –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: He is a, you know.
MS. GRACEY: Well, Richard, remember early on? You were very much – remember when you applied for the Guggenheim, to study, or to go out and research, or to go out and –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I didn’t apply, you applied for it.
MS. GRACEY: I applied, but that was for American Indian –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And we had to have a theme, and you said to go out and live in the Indian country, and look at the American Indian stuff. I never went.
MS. GRACEY: No, but you were interested in those –
MR. POLCARI: When was this?
MS. GRACEY: – in those aesthetics.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t know, way back.
MS. GRACEY: You were interested in American – Richard, you were interested in the forms and so forth, when I – you really were.
MR. POLCARI: Was this the '40s?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: Did you get it?
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, he got it, he got it.
MR. POLCARI: You got it, so you –
MS. GRACEY: I wrote it, he got it. I only wrote one sentence. [Laughs.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, but the point is that I –
MS. GRACEY: He got it, he – he applied –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Ten years before that I applied for it and they refused me.
MS. GRACEY: Right, he applied for it a couple times.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I went up to the Foundation and said – I really was outraged, and I said to whoever was the head there, I mean, I really said that I thought they had absolute security against anybody really creative getting this thing, you know. [Laughs.] And ten years later, I got it, but I –
MR. POLCARI: Well, this is interesting. I don’t think people were aware of that. Perhaps, we could get a copy of that some day, I mean, that would be interesting.
You must have had to make a statement, right? About –
MS. GRACEY: I don’t know where it is. [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Well, the Guggenheim keeps all applications.
MS. GRACEY: Oh, yeah?
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, keeps all applications there.
But what were you interested in reading in the '40s, as a whole? You obviously read widely.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I don’t know, you know. I would say practically any – a lot of different things.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, I read that you were very much interested in the Russian novelists, poets, –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Poets, philosophers –
MR. POLCARI: – philosophers, [Oswald] Spengler –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Spengler, [Henri-Louis] Bergson, you know, any – I was interested in the philosophers of –
MR. POLCARI: Read, did you read Read?
MS. GRACEY: Herbert Read.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Shakespeare, I was interested in. And Michelangelo’s sonnets.
MS. GRACEY: [Inaudible]
MR. POLCARI: Any [Joseph] Campbell or [Carl] Jung or –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
FEMALE YOUNG: Jung you read.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No, I didn’t know Campbell until after, when I was at Sarah Lawrence, he had been there, he had just left. I never knew him. And I always said, when I did meet him, I thought he was a pompous ass, you know.
MR. POLCARI: [Laughs]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But –
MS. GRACEY: He wasn’t so pompous. He was a touch pompous.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: He was so, he just was obnoxious to me. I mean, he was so pompous.
MS. GRACEY: I don't, I think that’s just, I think that was just a thing with him. I think he is, basically, a nice person.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I think he has some interesting ideas –
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I don’t think he is –
MS. GRACEY: But he at that time was pompous.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t think he, fundamentally, gets to things that interest me.
What was I going to say? Oh, I was – I read early on [George] Bernard Shaw you know, [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, [Walt] Whitman, you know, all that sort of thing. Thoreau. So –
MR. POLCARI: How about Ruth Benedict or –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Don’t know that.
MS. GRACEY: [George Bernard] Shaw, you read a lot of Shaw and [Immanuel] Kant.
MR. POLCARI: Patterns of Culture [Ruth Benedict, 1934], in the '30s, all those sort of anthropology things, you know.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: No.
MR. POLCARI: Frazer, and the rest. Frazer’s The Golden Bough [James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 1890].
MS. GRACEY: Oh yeah. Yeah, you had that.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: What is it?
MS. GRACEY: You remember The Golden Bough, right?
MR. POLCARI: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t –
MS. GRACEY: I got it, I saw it on your desk, that's where I first ran across it, in your studio.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t remember that.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, and you read a lot of what’s that other guy –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: [John] Keats, [Percy] Shelley, all that stuff.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, but I'm talking about – how long have we had these books here?
MR. POLCARI: An anthropologist, you're thinking of?
MS. GRACEY: No, no, he did not read very much in anthropology.
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh. [Affirmative.]
MS. GRACEY: No, this is more philosophical. Oh, hell.
MR. POLCARI: A philosopher?
MS. GRACEY: Well, he read a lot of Buddhism and Taoism and, yeah –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I still am interested in the point that the spear had the point that poetry gets to. But I think that poetry is in the same, sad mess today that the art world is.
MS. GRACEY: And also –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I think it's very hard to find any poetry. Get all the poet magazines together and you can’t find a poem, you know. It's just, it's just people telling very dull stories and thinking they're poets, you know.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, poetry is in a strange –
MR. POLCARI: So, you worked a number of years in the '40s and Marian Willard –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I think, but I think that poetry gets to the point of things. And I think in my painting is very close to poetry. I'm not interested in elongated treatises of any kind. I'm interested in acute, penetrating observations of reality.
I think that poetry – I mean, philosophers, often they go around, around, around, around. They sort of love avoiding coming to the point. But the poet goes to the point, and I like that.
MR. POLCARI: It seems then, for you, your painting is a form of poetry.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It is.
MR. POLCARI: And –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It's a form of, it's a form of –
MR. POLCARI: The economy and –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – poetic and intuitional thinking.
MR. POLCARI: That’s right.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I believe, I believe in teaching it, I believe in living it, I believe in whole thinking.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I think that the tragedy of our educational system is it does not get people on the thread of whole thinking. It does not – I mean, they think in hyper-development of aspects. I mean, and then they develop those hyper-developed aspects that they figure will fit into society and make a success for them, you know. They become a doctor, they study, and they spend their whole lives studying the big toe, you know. Or, you know, the lobe of the ear or something. There's no – it's hard to find a doctor who approaches the whole human being.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.] But you've been interested in the idea of sort of this – not unitary but, if you will, holistic person or feeling or pattern or whatever, to –
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, from the very beginning.
MR. POLCARI: – existence and to human beings, as though they're unified creatures in some way. I'm just throwing this out –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: As I say, I think that we all come from the same source.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I think that –
MR. POLCARI: What is that source?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t know. It is energy of the universe, it is something that – everything that we can conceive of is composing the universe, but I think that it has a mystical element. I mean, I don’t know, I think that – you know, the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know. And I think that – I mean, I believe in the cloud of unknowing, you know?
MR. POLCARI: Well, you seem to emphasize that and have developed an incredible ability to, I won't use the word “represent” that – to suggest that in your work, almost from the very beginning.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: From a standpoint of human beings being unified, I certainly think, as I say, I think that we all come from the same source. And I think that when we are created, of course, I do understand that we are not created equally in the sense that some mothers and fathers are sick and produce sick children and so forth.
But I mean, I think that children have a direct contact with the source, they come right from the source. And then, I think, the parents immediately start to impose their will, their stupidities on – and cut them off from their roots, so that they don’t have the opportunity to stay in contact and to function in their own genius.
But I think that in the sense of being unified, I think we are all come from the same source of the genius of life. And I think that, properly nurtured and cared about and loved, I mean, I think that this flowers into fantastic, miraculous things.
MR. POLCARI: Well, the miracle of life, I think, is one of the most striking things in your work.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah.
MR. POLCARI: This sort of absolutely magical beginnings –
MS. GRACEY: Right.
MR. POLCARI: – that is really quite distinctive.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, now you take a blank canvas.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And you approach it and you don’t know what's going to happen on there. I mean, you start to make marks, and those marks start to speak to you, and you listen to them.
But most people will, number one, they can’t make their own marks, but what I mean, if they make a mark, they don’t listen to it, it doesn’t talk to them. I mean, most people approach a canvas with a preconception.
It's just like somebody goes to build a house, they have to have an absolute plan. But, I mean, I like to see houses grow up where people are put in contact with the materials. You don’t know what's going to happen, you know? And you start to put a slab down here, and that suggests another angle or a slab, and you know, it starts.
You got to listen to that, it talks to you. And first thing you know, you have something that's original, not – you know, it grows. You got to listen to the materials. Because all materials have a voice.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, it's rather interesting.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: If you're working in stone, it speaks to you. If you're working in plaster, if you're working in leather, you're working in string, you're working in paint, you're working with words, you're dancing, you're moving, you know.
People are – I mean, people mostly are, are filled with fear. If you say to someone, “Dance for me.” They’ll say, “Are you crazy, I mean, I'm not going to dance for you, I mean…" You know, they feel self-conscious, you know. They're awkward and they don’t –
But if you take that same person, and say, “Well, now go in a dark room and move, you know, move to your own rhythms and so forth.” They'll do crazy things, right? In the dark, nobody can see them. The moment somebody can see them, they get very awkward and, you know, they conform.
But I think that people have just endless creativity in them and that’s why I believe so much in – makes me want to teach, because I feel that I can get people to do their own thing, you know.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.] I hate to use the word “religious,” 'cause it's somewhat banal, but you have this absolute belief in creativity –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Art is religion but religion isn’t art. I mean, I believe –
MR. POLCARI: Dogma is not art.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Pardon?
MR. POLCARI: Dogma is not art, religious dogma is not art, at all. But creativity seems to be almost a religious feeling for you.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, creativity is – I feel that the universe is religion, you know, is religious. I mean, you know, life is religious. But not in any church way, not in any –
MR. POLCARI: The cherishing of life, I mean, I think is just one of the wonderful things about your work, that this –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I think life is religion, you know. I think most people, unfortunately and tragically, live out their lives like dead light bulbs. They never find out how to get plugged into the electricity of life, they never light up. And I feel that an artist is a human being who illuminates, and expresses his own experience.
It's as simple as that. It's so simple, it's so right in front of your nose, that most people don’t listen to it.
MR. POLCARI: Well, the word “illumination” is a word I would use with your work. I mean, that you think this, but also that your art is able to convey this sense of growing illumination, almost a divine, spiritual illumination, I think is phenomenal, and one of the great characteristics of your work, and there from the very beginning.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think that art is the illumine [ph] of the world. I think that art is the intelligence of the world. I mean, I just think that – look, when you dig up civilizations, I mean, what has meaning? It's the art.
It’s – I mean, you know, most people conceive of art as something that you're going to do to communicate to this group of people or to this society.
MR. POLCARI: Or that class, or gender, or race.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Right, but – no. The only real communication is to the highest thing you know in yourself, that's what a real artist is. He works to the highest thing he knows in himself. And he knows that he's communicating with everyone and all time. He doesn’t need the critics to tell him.
MR. POLCARI: No, he needs the critics least of all.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, the critics can certainly make his life hell, or not economically with society, and so can the art historians.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm, well, we know they've done that.
Was Marian Willard – she was your dealer in the beginning – did she understand? Did she tap into your sense of magic at all?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think that all art dealers are similar, I think art dealers all serve, or most of them serve, a few people that they are very enamored of. I think that Marian was a good dealer for [Mark] Tobey and [Morris] Graves, 'cause she really –
[BREAK IN TAPE. END OF DISK ONE. BEGINNING OF DISK TWO.]
MR. POLCARI: Well, Marian, I guess, yes, did love those West Coast people a great deal, and [Mark] Tobey. I guess that’s interesting where they do have these favorites that they really key into, a great deal.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But I think that dealers get the – I remember Marian saying that art that was good sold. And right there, that's a very erroneous statement. And I think she believed that.
And of course, as I remember, she had [Morris] Graves at that time and Graves was very popular, and she was selling them like hotcakes. It's always a dealer.
MR. POLCARI: That was what was good to her.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: She loved this. And – the same way today with Pace or with any other galleries, I mean, they love their hot commodities.
And no, I think that our whole time has been – I can see so many of the artists of my time, I remember when they were doing work which was concerned with the path of discovery of themselves and expression. And I can’t think of any of them that, to my mind, were terribly found in themselves. But at least they were coming to grips with it.
But then there was a point when money came in, and success came in, and they seemed to wreak an order, and be more concerned with making a viable product for the market. And I think that's what has happened to most of them.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. Well, a market is very powerful, and now it’s very strong.
What do you think is the singular achievement of Abstract Expressionism in the history of 20th century art? What do you think's different about it? What unique position do you think it has? And have you all worked within that?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think it has the unique position of stark reality and basic fundamental truth. And I think that my work represents that.
MR. POLCARI: Is there one you think you're closest to, a colleague you're closest to, and a colleague you think you're very far from, farthest from?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I really don’t know how to say. I mean, I think, that probably, you know, I think of all of the artists of my time were doing their own thing and trying to develop.
But I remember in certain crisis situations, I don’t want to mention names, but I can remember one of them saying "You've got to be, you've got to really be careful, you know, you're going against the – you're rubbing people the wrong way, you know, you got to – you know, you're going to – " In other words, you don’t fight city hall.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I remember Betty [Parsons] saying that to me, you know, you don’t fight city hall, you – I was always fighting city hall.
MR. POLCARI: Well, in the end I think you've won, interestingly.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think in a way I –
MR. POLCARI: But you paid your price, as you know.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I paid, I' paid an economic price, yeah, I paid a price. But I have always been in touch with myself and happy in the end, [sneezing sound] within my being. And I have not made any compromises to the, to society or the commercial art world. And I can’t think of anyone else similar. [Loud rattling sound.]
MR. POLCARI: Well, you probably paid the highest price by leaving the city, New York, in the late '40s, was it '50, '51?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I would like to say that these artists were my friends, however, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that they – I mean, someone who was very close to them had, came to me several times and said, “These people are not your friends, you know they – "
I mean, I haven’t wanted to, but I've had to go alone.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I would love to have a dynamic relationship with my contemporaries, but I haven’t known how to do it, I guess.
MR. POLCARI: Well, when you left the city in the '50s, of course, things became hard for you, pretty much, I wouldn’t say – you were never a group but you sort of interacted in the '40s. But when you left –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I’m a non-joiner, I've never joined anything, you know, I'm a non-joiner, I react – I don’t like the negative a– But I'm a loner, I mean, not because I want to be, but because for my work I have to be. I have to, you know – I didn’t leave New York [sneezing sound] to leave the artists or what was going on, I left merely –
Hey [slapping sound], out, out. [Referring to dog. Rattling sound recedes.]
MR. POLCARI: Did leaving affect your work? Obviously, you rejoined the nature here.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, you know, I mean, I never felt it, but I think a lot of people felt that I should've been in there socializing, you know. And I know many people have said to me, you've got to get into New York and socialize and go to the parties and function, you know, if you want to get anywhere, I mean, and –
MR. POLCARI: Well, you had a family, you wanted to raise your family.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I know it was very much frowned on by Betty that I had a child. You know, she said, “You don’t have any right to have a child as an artist, I mean, you know, you have no right to.”
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, it is, it was rare to have children.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It was weird to have children in that time. I was one of the first to do it, yeah.
MR. POLCARI: I would think that many of them didn’t. If you go through the roster: [Jackson] Pollock, [Adolph] Gottlieb, [Barnett] Newman, did not –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And I mean, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t hang around the clubs. I didn’t, you know. I didn’t do any of the things I was supposed to do, to be one of the boys, to be one of the group, to – you know, I just didn’t function [loud bell rings].
MR. POLCARI: Well, there's been a lot of emphasis on The Club, in the meetings at The Club, and you went to a few of those.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I went to one.
MR. POLCARI: One.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: With my father, because he wanted to go, and he wanted me to come with him, and we went. I just sat with him, I don’t even remember what went on.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: But that was the extent of my relationship.
MR. POLCARI: Well, there were a few of them, but The Club went on for a number of years. I think it seemingly became sort of this party thing, in New York, you know, the scene to make.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I can remember, you know, sitting down with a number of the artists, you know all their names. And they were just plotting and figuring how to make it, you know, how to beat the rap, how to, you know –
I think they were a very calculating, hard-driving, in that sense, smart group of guys who figured out how to make it, and they made it.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And they didn’t have much use for me, particularly when I left New York. Quickly decided that they didn’t need me, you know.
MR. POLCARI: But you enjoyed it out here. Obviously, you still live in the country.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think that –
MR. POLCARI: As we were discussing Tuxedo Park first [bell rings] and then here –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: As I remember, a guy who was very successful in New York saying, “I spent 35, 45 years in New York unsuccessfully striving to achieve what would be a gift to me if I went to the country.” In other words, when you get to the country, you kind of get down to the bottom of things in a way you can’t in New York.
In New York there's a kinetic energy, there's something going on every minute. It keeps you up, and it also keeps you involved in all kinds of things. And when you get to the country, I mean, there's nothing, you get down to the bottom. In that sense, I like the country.
But I mean, I love the dynamics of the city, too. And I feel like I have a pretty idyllic setup right now with having both.
MR. POLCARI: Oh, that’s right, you have a place, so you can get into –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah, I can go into New York any time I want.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It’s a –
MR. POLCARI: But you go in for your own purposes, you don’t go into the opera or –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I only go when I have to, yeah.
MR. POLCARI: That’s right, and maybe a little shopping –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Evelyn likes it in New York, she'd like to be in there all the time, she'd like us to get rid of this place and –
She keeps saying, “Well, you know, you just made the biggest mistake of your life if you had a the loft in New York, people would come to you so easily. They come from Europe and all of these places, and they don’t want to go out in the country, they want to see you in New York.”
I feel that if anybody wants to see me, they'll find me.
MR. POLCARI: Well, that’s true, that’s true. But your work has shown a steady development over the years, the quality has been extremely consistent, it's really quite striking. And you seem to have made the transition from what was called the sort of semi-abstract work of the '40s, to abstract work. But these categories don’t seem to make any difference to you, as you seemingly move back and forth quite often, even today.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I think that if I start to do figures now, or heads, it would still be abstract. And I don’t understand how so many of the artists, and some of the most touted artists, have seemed to change with the fads and the fashions. When one thing is in, they're doing that, when the other thing is in, they're doing that. And they go from abstract to figurative, and when abstract is back, they go back to abstract. You know, I mean, they work –
MR. POLCARI: Well, there's a lot of pressure –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I personally think that an awful lot of them are unrealized students, you know.
MR. POLCARI: There's a lot of pressure to be up in the latest. I think "the latest" is one of the most destructive ideas there is, and it affects intellectual and art worlds in a sort of catastrophic matter, in that people truly change to be up on the latest. Everyone is afraid to be out of fashion.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: The latest fashion is always modern, great art is always now. Now is all time, there's no other thing.
MR. POLCARI: Yeah, that’s right. I get that in art schools. I also get it in, with young art historians. Like art history and with artists, art began the day they entered school. There's nothing beforehand. That it is really quite striking. There is simply no history, nothing of value beyond this present moment.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Anything that is real in art is always modern, it's always today. It's always now.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: It's only the non-art that dates.
MS. GRACEY: Go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom. [Talking to dog in background.]
MR. POLCARI: That is, if you are fashionable.
I hope you've written much of this down in your notebooks. I think it would be tremendous if they could be put out.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I think that – I think you would be fascinated with my notebooks.
MR. POLCARI: Absolutely.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I think there's much, I think there's – in my notebooks, I think there is the greatest wisdom of our time.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: [Laughs.]
MS. GRACEY: Nothing like being a little, you know –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I just think it's the truth, I don’t care.
MS. GRACEY: Funny. Your notebooks do have some marvelous things in them.
MR. POLCARI: But you think of it as wisdom. You see, that's interesting.
MS. GRACEY: Yes.
MR. POLCARI: I can't imagine a number of contemporary artists saying that they think their art is wisdom.
MS. GRACEY: It's true.
MR. POLCARI: You know, to see something as wisdom is to indicate that you value the idea of wisdom, of some kind of profound meaning and principle, or idea, conception of some sort that is useful to many, many people. And I can only – I mean I go, in my mind, go through all the contemporary artists and the idea of wisdom does not come to me [laughs] in what they're doing, at all.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, read my notebooks.
MR. POLCARI: I'd love to, I think it would be indeed terrific.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I think there's a lot of junk in there, but I mean there's a line of truth and a line of integrity and a line of –
FEMALE VOICE: [Inaudible, in background]
MR. POLCARI: There are a lot of poems there.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I've written some good poetry there.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, he's a good poet, very good. [Inaudible] I can testify to that.
In those notebooks, there is poetry and there's philosophy of life, philosophy of art. And then drawings, watercolors. They're very magical, really.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: You see people are always looking for consistency in an intellectual and a logical way. And in really creative people, there's no consistency.
I mean, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I mean, people, you talk to people and they say, “Wait a minute now, you can’t change the subject that way,” you know? I mean, a creative mind is all over the place, you know. But they want it to stay on the track, you know, people want consistency.
MS. GRACEY: Is it, you know that television program about English, is it Irish or English? He did a program on creation and invention, what's his name?
MR. POLCARI: Alistair –
MS. GRACEY: No, no, no. This is where they just do philosophy and science. And he was making the point – he was talking about the evolution of industrialization in science and so forth. And he was making the point that there is no straight line from one thing to the other. Creativity is universal, it happens, it's here, it's there, it's over there, it's all over the place.
MR. POLCARI: Well, interestingly this has been one of the new criticisms of, say, previous art writing, which has emphasized the evolution of style as though it went linearly, bing, bing, bing.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, right.
MR. POLCARI: Now, there's an emphasis on the idea, if you will, of these configurations. At different times, at different places, with different people here, which obviously a previous style may influence something as such.
MS. GRACEY: Oh yeah!
MR. POLCARI: But there really is no connect-the-dots in this fashion. That truly falsifies, and I think it's important also to note that about the artist too, that you can’t sort of categorize them A, B, C, D, in that fashion.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Would you excuse me for, and turn that off, I'll be right back.
MR. POLCARI: Okay.
[BREAK IN TAPE.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: The thing I speak of doesn’t come – it comes from me, but it comes from you, it comes from [dog barks] anybody, anyone who's on the thread of their own creative being.
MR. POLCARI: Well, you have to –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I don’t claim any uniqueness apart from everyone’s uniqueness. I mean, I just don’t believe there're flies on you, there're flies on me, there're no flies on Jesus.
MS. GRACEY: Oh!
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm. [Affirmative.] I haven’t heard that one. [Laughs.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: [Laughs.]
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, where did you get that, Richard?
MR. POLCARI: I haven’t heard that one. [Laughs.]
MS. GRACEY: Where did you ever pick that one up?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I mean, I think that –
MS. GRACEY: Where did you pick that one up? It’s funny.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: – everyone is differently the same, I believe everyone is unique. If they're not, it's because they haven't had the opportunity to develop.
MR. POLCARI: To further it.
Well, I mean you have this absolutely fantastic faith in creativity, but you also see that some people don’t realize it, but you still think it's the great thing. And it is – it’s a religious belief in the creativity in life –
MS. GRACEY: And being –
MR. POLCARI: – and being, I think it's extraordinarily rare. I mean, it's just rare. Unfortunately, the history of art ends up encompassing all kinds of things – unfortunately, of course. And the kinds of things that a creative, other people end up doing are really phenomenally different. It's really quite striking here.
This is almost a folk wisdom in your thinking.
MS. GRACEY: Well, you know, I think –
MR. POLCARI: It's sort of an elemental – I won’t use the word “primitive,” but it’s both intellectual and elemental at the same time.
MS. GRACEY: And intuitional.
MR. POLCARI: And intuitional.
MS. GRACEY: And even revelational. Revelatory.
MR. POLCARI: Revelatory. But it's his faith in all of this. I really, that's really quite striking. Because not all creativity is that.
MS. GRACEY: No.
MR. POLCARI: You know, I – you know, you think of the Pop artist –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I still think of, I mean, I believe in the truth of whatever I am confronted with. I still think that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, which is in the Bible.
MS. GRACEY: No, it's not in the Bible.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, it should be, if it isn't. [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: [Laughs.] Put it in the Bible!
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs.] No, it's either [Oswald] Spengler or, I forget, one of those guys. [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Really, Spengler? That's awfully optimistic.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, not Spengler, [Immanuel] Kant, I think it's Kant.
MR. POLCARI: Kant, oh, that's right. I was going to say, that's awfully optimistic for Spengler.
MS. GRACEY: Not for Spengler, no. I think that’s him – but anyhow.
Well, you got a good beginning today.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I also believe, I also believe very strongly of this period, or of any period, whether we realize it or not, all of these artists – me, you, everybody – we're all working on the same cathedral in the sky.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm, mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: And whether we acknowledge it or whether we realize it, we're all building together. We're all – there's a consciousness that we build.
MS. GRACEY: Well, I don’t know, Richard, some people don’t have that consciousness, and they're not building on it.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, maybe they don’t, but maybe they're not building it, maybe they're not realized enough to add to this structure. But anyone who is, is building on the same thing.
MR. POLCARI: All right, I think –
MS. GRACEY: Well, I – see, the thing, too, about Richard, is that Richard’s parents were, both of them, were so well-read, so very involved in art themselves, in literature and philosophy.
And he, of course he got – the other thing that is very interesting to me is that the sisters didn’t absorb it, but he did. Isn’t that interesting in a family?
MR. POLCARI: Yes, that is. I mean, really quite –
MS. GRACEY: You know, that's why, that's his uniqueness, and they realized this, and they nurtured it. All through his life, they nurtured it.
MR. POLCARI: Uh-huh, uh-huh, what are they doing now?
MS. GRACEY: Dead.
MR. POLCARI: They're both gone?
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I’ll tell you –
MS. GRACEY: They were both extraordinary people.
MR. POLCARI: They lived in this area?
MS. GRACEY: Westchester.
MR. POLCARI: Westchester.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: My greatest blessing is a great wife.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs.] Really, Richard. Put that in, turn it on! And –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: [Laughs]
MR. POLCARI: We have got a [inaudible]–
MS. GRACEY: Oh, you've got it on? [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: Yes, we got it [inaudible] –
MS. GRACEY: You can’t take it back, Richard! [Laughs.]
MR. POLCARI: That's right, we have it here, recorded for history and posterity.
MS. GRACEY: Yes, right. You can't take it back.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, Evelyn is a very marvelous human being.
MS. GRACEY: Oh, hush, Richard, please.
MR. POLCARI: Well, it makes all the difference in the world –
MS. GRACEY: Helps.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: True.
MR. POLCARI: – to have a partner, no question, no question. Dogs are nice.
MS. GRACEY: [Laughs.] Yeah, right.
MR. POLCARI: Usually a human partner is better.
MS. GRACEY: Yeah, right.
MR. POLCARI: Well, I guess –
MS. GRACEY: Well, you had a good beginning, you had a good beginning.
MR. POLCARI: No, I think that's very good. I think that's very good.
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Well, I feel this way about it –
MS. GRACEY: You have to take the car over to the garage to get it –
MR. POUSETTE-DART: Yeah. Like, I like to do photographs. But if I'm going to do a photograph of you, I really have to take exhaustive photographs 'til I get you in your own light.
MR. POLCARI: Mm-hm, mm-hm. [Affirmative.]
MR. POUSETTE-DART: I have to work at it. And I have to be willing to do that. And I think that in getting the truth of what anyone is, or who, you have to come at it many times.
MR. POLCARI: Oh, I think that's true, there's no quick take.
MS. GRACEY: No, especially artists. [Laughs.] Writers, any human being –
MR. POLCARI: Unless those who are mouthing the clichés of the moment, then there's not a great deal to get excited about.
MS. GRACEY: Pursue, right.
MR. POLCARI: Pursue. Well, okay, I want to thank you, Richard and Evelyn, on March 9, 1992, for this wonderful interview.
MS. GRACEY: But he can edit it, right?
[END OF TAPE. END OF INTERVIEW.]
This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Richard and Evelyn Pousette-Dart, 1992 Mar. 9, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
