Oral history interview with Fletcher Benton, 1989 May 2 - May 4

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 Fletcher Benton, 1989 May 2 - May 4, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Fletcher Benton
Conducted by Paul Karlstrom
At the artist's studio in San Francisco, CA
May 2, 1989

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Fletcher Benton on May 2, 1989. The interview took place in San Francisco, CA and was conducted by Paul Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

FLETCHER BENTON: FLETCHER BENTON
PAUL KARLSTROM: PAUL J. KARLSTROM

[Tape 1, side A; all tapes are 30 minutes per side]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Fletcher, it is a pleasure to sit here with you, to learn more about you and about your work. We’re sitting in a rather wonderful structure, a combination home/studio that you built over a period of years, absolutely gorgeous. And you’ve been also generous in making this space available for special events, including for the Archives members. So I’ll go on record right here as thanking you and Bobby for that. We’ve known one another for quite a while, and this is a marvelous opportunity then for me to ask questions through which I’m going to get to know you better. Above all, the thing that strikes me is that you, as a painter but particularly as a sculptor, have produced a distinguished and fairly visible—in terms of scale certainly—body of work. No question about this. You have this wonderful studio, you certainly have, you’re known in the art world, you have contacts—and I don’t mean just in the Bay Area—you have contacts, and yet somehow I feel that you and your work aren’t as well known as they might be. Now there certainly must be reasons for this. And these are some of the things that I would like to pursue. Kind of examine the situation, say why is this the case? Regionalism, the fact that you’ve chosen to work, live and work, in San Francisco, may be one of the issues involved. But as I was thinking about doing this interview, certain questions emerged. And one of them is who is Fletcher Benton? It’s a familiar name, but who is Fletcher Benton? How does he and his work fit into developments here in the Bay Area, and beyond that in American art, international art in general, over the last few decades? I’m really interested in getting to know you, and therefore your work, a little better. We were talking earlier and you said that you felt, in a way, that you had suffered through the damage inflicted by regionalism, that this is a factor that has an effect on artists’ work and certainly on yours. And then you also said you felt that to a certain degree you were a victim of a regional dealer. And I wonder what you mean by that? Why do you feel this way?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, in all fairness, the suffering has not been something I couldn’t handle. It’s been, it’s been a little bit a sideline view of a game that seems to be going on on the East coast that isn’t played out here, and. . . . I came to California by a flip of the coin. Truly. After I’d graduated, standing out in front of the school, flipped a coin with a friend of mine, and we headed west, largely because I’d been in the service here, and otherwise it wouldn’t even have been a consideration. I came out here not realizing I was going to stay. I have stayed here for 30 or 35 years.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What year did you arrive?

FLETCHER BENTON: I arrived here in 1956, so that’s 33, 34 years. And, but to answer your question, yes, I think anything outside of New York suffers from regionalism. Certainly if this were New Orleans or St. Louis, or Kansas City, Kansas, the damage of regionalism would be a lot greater than it certainly is in Los Angeles or San Francisco. But the very fact that New York still holds all the marbles, and they still look at the rest of the country as the frontier, and the power and control of the dealers in New York—they don’t want to relinquish any of that control to anyone else. And suddenly the West coast presents a threat very much now to the selling of American art. But in my case I’m perfectly happy on the West coast. I love it here. I’ve raised my children here. My lifestyle here has been bearable. I’ve been able to do things outside of New York in terms of space, equipment, heavy-metal deliveries, and using heavy steel that I could never have managed certainly in New York. And there’s been a sense of freedom here that puts pressure upon artists who go to New York. You can go to New York as a free soul and very soon realize that you aren’t going to make any difference at all unless you conform to what New York is, what they expect of their artists, what the dealers expect of the artists, what the mold is of the artist. I mean, you go there as one person, but if you’re going to make any difference at all, you definitely can leave New York as another person. I mean, it’s a controlling place. I’ve been there. I’ve had a studio there. I saw all the warning signs. And I am a very stubborn Welshman. I was not going to give into that. I mean, it was not something that I was willing to sacrifice for. I just felt—maybe it was an insecurity that caused me to leave—but I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and find my place, be left alone and do my stuff. The question, however, you asked me was how has this affected me now that I’m 58 years old, in terms of people hearing my name, or looking at my work, making some sort of aesthetic judgment. I wanted to give you that background in order to answer this question. I think it’s hampered me a lot, especially in northern California, where I have not fit it, never did fit in, and will never fit in. It is my residence only. I don’t fit the image here that I was just speaking of in New York, except out here it’s a more timid thing. You know, it was the funk art; it was the figurative school. But that was a very timid thing; it was not an all-encompassing sledgehammer like it is in New York. So to answer your question, I’m hoping that through this, through some things that will be going on in my life, that there will be more exposure to what I’m doing. I’m known in New York as a kinetic artist, as maybe one of the ten kinetic artists in the world that were working in the late sixties, and that’s been a long time ago, but they still know me as a kinetic artist. [chuckles] I’ve had no growth to them. Their minds have been closed to that, because when I had a New York dealer, that’s where they last saw me: doing kinetic art, showing at the Galeria Bonino on West 57th Street, right in the center of all the activity there. And regionalism constrains an artist’s opportunity for the rest of the world to know what he’s doing, and that is the damaging aspect of regionalism.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you feel that you—you uniquely here in the Bay Area, or at least as part of a small group—have been victimized by this regionalism? What I mean to say is that, from what you just said, you had the disadvantages of working in a region, working in the Bay Area, without some of the advantages that accrue, and those advantages ironically are part of the look of a region. A whole group of artists then will be put together and there is interest in them because their work and their interests match a view, often from New York, of what the Bay Area is like, whether it be funk. . . . I would agree with you. Just looking at your work. . . . I would never point to you and say, “Ah! San Francisco artist. Bay Area artist.” But I would probably look at you and say, “If it’s a Californian, he looks more like a Los Angeles art[ist].” We’ll get into that. But do you feel that you’ve sort of doubly suffered. You’ve elected to be in the Bay Area, to be based out of the Bay Area—you do have a well-known dealer—so you’ve been here and given up a few things by not having a contact or residence in New York. You also, because of the nature of your work, don’t match. So you’re not going to be noticed then for those qualities that are part of the area. Double out. Twice odd-man out. Is that a fair. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: That’s fair. I think all artists suffer from regionalism. But let’s say that outside of New York everything else is regional.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah.

FLETCHER BENTON: Unfortunately. So we all. . . . Suffer’s a tough word; maybe that’s too strong. We all get a little tarnished by that. In my case, which has happened to a few artists, I was going along at the age of 33, 34, trying to find out who I was, and all of a sudden became interested in kinetic art, not because it was kinetic art, but because I was looking for a way to take my painting, to express my painting in another way. So I was using motion for that. It never occurred to me that there was a big kinetic movement going on in Europe and South America. So all of a sudden I was swept into an international thing that was going on. It was instantaneous notoriety. With that, I had a very strong New York representation. I was even with Knoedler’s for a short time—very, very short time. But I was with Galeria Bonino and they had Paul Burri briefly, they had Ron Mallory, they had Nam Jun Paik. They had several South American artists, DeMarco, and they showed Otto Pienes, some Otto Piene things, and some of the German and Italian artists, kinetic people. So I had, in my thirties, this strong representation in New York. Then when I stopped doing kinetic art—by choice, I felt I’d gone as far as I wanted to go with it—I stopped completely making it and went ahead to deal more strongly with other concerns, such as what was the third dimension all about. I was perfectly aware that regionalism was going to be a strangling set of handcuffs that I hadn’t had before. Because when I was in New York, it didn’t matter where I lived. I could have been living in. . . . I mean, no one ever asked, “Where does he live?”

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: Or where he’s from. You know. It was never even something they were concerned about, because there I was, very much in New York.

PAUL KARLSTROM: They probably assumed, actually, that you were a New York artist.

FLETCHER BENTON: Exactly. I’ve had so many people shocked to find out I lived in San Francisco, of all places. Of all places.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [chuckles]

FLETCHER BENTON: So I knew very well that the chance of me having the exposure after I got out of kinetic art, and living here, was very slim. Most New York people know my name. [But] they have not the foggiest idea what I’ve been doing since 1972. They still think I’m fiddling around with kinetic art. It’s true. And that is where I think regionalism has been frustrating for me. If I hadn’t had that burst of recognition when I was very young, and attached to a certain movement, I may have been, like so many other artists, a victim of regionalism forever. I mean, at least I was out of it for a while, then returned to it. And where I am today, most people are not that aware of. At least on the West coast they are, but back East and Europe not so much. That’s okay. I mean, I’m old enough now that all that New York glitz doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t need it. If it comes my way fine; if not, big deal. I’m doing well here. I have the freedom to do what I want, and I have the freedom of choice here. And I never felt I would have had the freedom of choice in New York under any circumstance. And the guys who were my age that made it big there moved. Many of them are in Santa Barbara now. Many of them went on up into Vermont and what have you. They got the hell out of New York because it’s a killer place.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, I was gonna ask you—you said that you actually spent some time in New York, and I forget if it was a couple years on one occasion, one or two years, is that right?

FLETCHER BENTON: It was less than a year.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay. And when was that?

FLETCHER BENTON: It was in 1960.

PAUL KARLSTROM: All right. You mentioned that you saw the danger signs, I think is the way you put it, and then consciously made a decision to separate yourself from New York. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . and so many other artists feel obliged to participate, to live there, to work there. You gave it a try and then you said, “Whoa! Wait a minute. I see things that I don’t want for me,” and what were they. . . ?

FLETCHER BENTON: You know, in my case, let me say this, I think every artist that goes to New York has a choice. You either stay there and conform and tolerate the pressure that inevitably is put on you or you leave there and remain somewhat free. And to me I just wasn’t willing to give anything up to stay in New York. That’s not the way I do things.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What did you see happening that worried you, that you didn’t want to participate in? What was going on with some of the other artists, or with the art world itself, that gave you pause?

FLETCHER BENTON: The New York school was on a train leaving town.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Uh huh.

FLETCHER BENTON: You know, it was definitely on the way out. Stella and the whole new group were coming in. I got there just as Pop Art and all that stuff was, you know, coming up from under the ground, sprouting, and. . . . I felt such surges in New York. I felt it getting on the bus; I felt it going to museums. I felt a panic [power—Ed.] in New York, a surge. People refer to it as the energy in New York.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, yes, it is; it’s certainly energy. People are going somewhere. Everybody’s moving fast. But I think it was dangerous for me. Those were the flags. I knew that I had to adjust to the energies that were there, and the adjustment meant compromise, and I wasn’t willing to do that. I just simply wasn’t willing to live in some awful place, and schlep my stuff up and down five flights of stairs, and freeze my ass off in the wintertime, and get hit in the face with slush, and deal with the humidity in the summer. Because I grew up in Ohio. I’d already, I knew all about that stuff.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [chuckles]

FLETCHER BENTON: And on top of that, to have to change my personality, to have to change my freedom of choice to deal in certain areas that I knew had to be a part of the next wave. . . . I’ll just interrupt myself for a moment. I gave a criticism, you know, at Columbia [University] two years ago in the graduate program there. I had over thirty students. I spent two or three days visiting studios, talking to these people. And what I felt in 1960 I saw in 1986 at Columbia, or 1987 in the students. Complete dishonesty, in my mind. That these students, as graduate students, at Columbia, in art, were trying to find out what would sell in New York. And I don’t mean sell for the buck, but sell for the image. I didn’t see one honest student. They were all jockeying at the start of the horse race to get in a good position to the rail, to win the race.

PAUL KARLSTROM: How could you tell that?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, when you’ve taught for 22 years, you can.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I mean, was it in the critiques of the work, the work itself said that to you. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: The work itself.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . or the questions that they asked you, or what?

FLETCHER BENTON: It was. . . . Out of those 30 or so people, I would say maybe three or four of them were trendy. There were a couple Westermanns there, working in wood. There were some paper and string people. There were a couple of junk people who were working with coat hangers that they found down on a street corner. It was all somebody else, and it was all trying to deal with the shock factor that seemed to get attention in New York. [chuckles] But so many of them were dealing with rehash, you know. And those that weren’t were trying to find out what would click. What would get, what would be, what would be this year’s fashions in art. You know, what’s gonna noticed this year. What’s gonna get in the New York Times. What’s gonna get mentioned. It was all that Andy Warhol dealt with, and it’s all that Ultra Violet wrote about in the book, Famous for 15 Minutes, about Andy Warhol. You read that book, you know what the art energy is in New York. And you either fall into that formula and do whatever you can to get noticed in New York—and I consider that dishonest. Because we are what we are, and as artists we must work to develop who we are. We don’t manipulate ourself to fit in to a situation that we hope will get us known to the public through the press. And that’s the dishonesty that I’m talking about. And I think we can thank Mr. Warhol for leading so many minds to think that everybody’s going to be able to pull that off.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But is it the idea that the look, the image, is in fact the substance, so that there’s no difference between the two, and if you could capture the look then you’ll succeed? Is that part of it?

FLETCHER BENTON: If you could capture the attention, you will succeed.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, and you do that through the look of something.

FLETCHER BENTON: Through the shock of it all, through being noticed. I mean, however you want to do it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What about here? Do you find with the. . . . You’ve taught, oh, a good number of years, I think, at San Jose State, and you’ve obviously had a lot of contact with students, and you even have students assisting you here at the studio. Do you find then a fundamental difference between the younger artists, students, from here in the Bay Area specifically, but outside of New York. . . . Or do you find that some of those same aspirations and desires are there?

FLETCHER BENTON: They’re the same here. Largely because, you know, the way communications are. We’ve got art magazines all over the place. We’ve got specials on television. No, they know what’s going on.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Now something that didn’t happen to me in school, but I’ve seen it happen to so many students. I used to teach at the [San Francisco—Ed.] Art Institute, and it happened there as well. You’ve got the students who are extremely aggressive, and they try to find out what it’s going to take to make it. And they become aware of certain things that they have seen that have made it for other artists, and they work toward those goals. And in the process I think they lose their identity. Yes, definitely, you have that out here. Most of the New York artists, even today, that are getting funded, weren’t born and raised in New York—and they talk about New York artists. I mean, there’s less than what, 3 percent or so? Or nothing maybe?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right, yeah.

FLETCHER BENTON: I mean, it’s nothing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, that is true, and it’s something that’s interesting to consider. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: They go there because it’s the Big Apple, right? They know that’s where it starts.

PAUL KARLSTROM: They’re like residents or interns.

FLETCHER BENTON: They go to the temple.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Would you talk about—looking at the positive side of regionalism, which seems to be our issue of the moment, you talked about the freedom that you’re allowed—or one is allowed—in the regions. Perhaps less pressure, less temptation, less need to participate in this frenetic activity. The possibility of being yourself—and that is a positive factor. And I gather you feel that that situation here has allowed you to pursue ideas as they come to you, your own concerns, without the same kind or pressure to conform—or by that I guess we really mean to try to participate stylistically in something that is attracting attention, to get attention. So you’re better off for that. But do you feel that. . . . Let me back up a bit. Under no circumstances, as far as I can see, does your work show the stamp of the region. You’re not responding, as far as I can tell, to qualities that pertain to the Bay Area. I mean that is not one of the things that you’ve gotten from this soil, or this atmosphere, environment if you will. The freedom, yes. Do you suspect—this is speculative—that if you had stayed in New York. . . . In other words, if you hadn’t have made the decision to return, that your work would have been fundamentally different?

FLETCHER BENTON: To answer. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Have you ever speculated about that?

FLETCHER BENTON: Oh, yes, yes. I’ve thought so often about it. I don’t think I would have, I might have stayed longer, but I don’t think I would still be there. I mean, I just know my personality. I think I’m basically a shy person. I cover it up in lots of ways. Everybody likes to say they’re basically shy. I think I am as well basically shy, and I know how I try to cover it up. But I know that if I am challenged too much, I will not compromise. I’m a very stubborn Welshman. It’s gotten me in lots of trouble, but in the case of my work, it’s been my salvation. It’s been my escape. My work has been a place where I go that no one else can be a part of, and it’s a very nice place. I suspect if I didn’t have my work I might have some serious problems. But with my work it’s. . . . You know, it’s my love affair. And I have tried to say this to my students, that if you do not have a love affair—I don’t mean a marriage; I mean an active love affair with your work, that will, that is so exotic and exciting that you know that that will sustain you for the rest of your life, you should never become an artist. And this goes back to some of that dishonesty I was trying to tell you about that I saw in the eyes and the faces and speech and work of these students at Columbia. There was no love affair. It was a business deal. That was my feeling. So, to answer another part of that question, what has regionalism given, which I think was the question. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: I think so.

FLETCHER BENTON: [chuckles] Regionalism has given me a boudoir—just to be a little romantic about it—it’s given me the space to have my love affair bigger than it would have been anywhere else. It’s allowed me to be able to make my way in life, pay my bills, and still have the exotic freedom of this thing I do. And all of sudden, as I get older, I don’t need the carrot that’s dangling in front of people in New York. I don’t give a shit anymore. If they, you know, want to know where I am, they can look in the phone book. Because I am going to be no less and no more because of New York as an artist. They won’t make me anything more than I am able to make of myself.

PAUL KARLSTROM: It seems to me this question of regionalism, which indeed fascinates many people, is a complex one, because you in a way are defined by where you have chosen to reside. And I think it’s fair to say that regionalism for you is simply a matter of residence; it’s not a stylistic consideration. Here’s where the complexity comes in—and I’d like to pursue this and maybe we can exchange a few ideas. The confusion is this—or the complexity is this—in the case of your work, regionalism has not been a force in determining imagery. Stated simply, your work does not betray its locale, where it was created. It’s, if you will, international, or maybe somewhere else, or maybe combination of both. So you’re not a San Francisco or a California artist in that respect. And yet you do have ties, which we’ve pursued, to this earth. . . .

[Tape 1, side B]

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . interview, May 2, 1989, this is tape 1, side B. We were talking about the big issue, the complex issue, of regionalism, and specifically how it’s affected you and your work. It seems to me to have been both positive—as is always the case with anything [chuckles]—both positive and negative aspects. One of the observations I was making is that regionalism is not regionalism as a style, as a kind of imagery that reflects place. And this is often how the term regionalism is used. Really what you’re talking about is a matter of geographic location or residence. You happen to have residence in an area, that then is also described as regional, having certain qualities, none of which—as far as I can see—really appears in your work. It seems other. And so the impact of regionalism on you is more the result of being in that area and being removed from an area where there’s a more active criticism, where things are noticed, there’s more activity. It leaves you a little lonesome, quiet, and removed in some ways in terms of the activity of your career. One of the questions that arises—is what about the dealer, what about the instrument that is established to compensate for that distance from the New York center of activity. What you’re looking for, of course, is an audience for your work. I mean, this is natural and normal, and I assume that this is the case with you as well. No matter what it looks like and no matter where you live. The disadvantage of being here has been—and continues to be, I guess—that you’re a little out of the swim, and you’re simply not seen as much as you really need to be seen. But the fact of the matter is, you have a very well-known dealer, John Berggruen. I would say John operates on a certainly national if not an international basis with some very distinguished artists. I mean, you’re in what’s got to be the best gallery in San Francisco to achieve what we’re talking about: get you and your work out there.

FLETCHER BENTON: But that’s not the function of galleries outside of New York.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No?

FLETCHER BENTON: I don’t think. Not the big boys. Their function is to bring art to the community. . . . John certainly is the number one, maybe the number one on the West coast. He’s not interested in promoting artists. This is my evaluation, dear John, if you ever hear this recording. This is my opinion.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [chuckles]

FLETCHER BENTON: But he doesn’t really care about developing me or Nate Oliveira, or anyone else he handles. What he is concerned about is making money. And he brings to the community the young artists in New York that are doing this and that that have already proven themselves there, that have had good shows, good sales, and so forth. And if an artist—God help him; we’ve all been there, and I’ll certainly be there again—go into a slump or fall out of favor, well, my feeling about John Berggruen is he’s not going to shore that up [or] make the difference. The same is true of any other major dealer here.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, right, and we’re not going to single out John.

FLETCHER BENTON: No.

PAUL KARLSTROM: It just so happens that he is your dealer.

FLETCHER BENTON: It just so happens that our dealers today are operating as merchants. That’s their, that’s how they see themselves.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But isn’t it in the interest of a local dealer, whether it’s John Berggruen or anybody else, to find ways to make more visible their own artists, simply for business reasons.

FLETCHER BENTON: Not when they constantly bring in new, people who haven’t been shown here who they can sell to their collectors that may already have Nate Oliveiras or Fletcher Bentons. It’s much easier for them to do that than to spend great amounts of time developing the guys that have already sort of had their fifteen minutes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What if you had strong representation, consistently, over the years, New York city? Regardless that you happen to live in San Francisco. Your main representative now, your main dealer—I guess exclusive. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: [shakes head no]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Not exclusive, but the main one is San Francisco based. What if you had maintained a strong relationship with a New York dealer, even though your art then changed? You were known, as you say—primarily still are in some quarters—for kinetic [work]. What difference would that have made? Are you suggesting that you absolutely have to have one of the prominent New York dealers to get the kind of ongoing visibility that’s necessary to keep a career, well, at least in the public eye.

FLETCHER BENTON: First of all, I can answer that question this way: I realize that there is only one thing that an art dealer can give to an artist, and that is credibility. They’re not going to give you chicken noodle soup when you’ve got a cold. They, in most cases, are not going to finance your career—and if they do, you really are forever under their control. They will have your work out and try to sell it. So the more important dealer, the more exposure the dealer has, the more exposure the artist gets. That’s all you’re going to get. And especially for sculptors it’s quite often you could make more money without a dealer, once you reach a certain point. So a dealer gives one credibility. Now if I had a strong dealer in New York, who had continued to have my work out in the public eye, there is a danger in that as well. And in my case, I think my growth might have been stunted because of it. Dealers I think subtly do ask for whatever they’ve been selling well from the artist. And that may not always be where the artist is. And the danger of having a New York representation that’s strong is that they can support your work at auction—which for sculptors it doesn’t make much difference—and they will have a tendency to drive the prices up. And that is a trap, because for sculpture there’s a different commitment from the collector—and we can talk about that later, and I want to talk about that later—but I think that over the years my prices may have been driven up to such a point that the people able to pay those prices become fewer and fewer. And since sculpture has to occupy space, it is more difficult in many cases to sell than something that hangs on the wall. So it can be diminishing in that respect, too. Then all of a sudden you wake up someday and you realize, “Geez, I’m getting $175,000 for this piece, but selling one of those a year,” or two of those a year, or whatever. And the dealer’s putting pressure on me in subtle ways to do more of whatever’s selling for $175,000, rather than saying, “Keep on truckin’ with whatever you’re interested in, Fletcher, and we’ll see how it goes.” Those are the negatives of it all in New York. I think there comes a time for every artist when he adds to the stable of a dealer. When that happens—not to every artist; I mean, it has to a few artists who reach a certain amount of exposure and importance—and when that happens you then have something to say, subtle or otherwise. But if you’re a midlife artist and you’re sort of middle in importance, you know, your muscle is less.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Fletcher, you raise something of a dilemma here, it seems to me. Because you say on the one hand that by being removed from New York, or as we’ve been discussing, being located in a region not the main center, your career has in a sense been handicapped in a public way. Your dealer. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Wait a second. My career hasn’t been. I mean, I feel great about it. It’s just that what has been. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Visibility.

FLETCHER BENTON: . . . hampered is, from my point of view, is having my work evaluated. I mean, it hasn’t been. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, okay, the visibility then.

FLETCHER BENTON: Right, it really hasn’t been evaluated. It hasn’t had a chance to get in the horse race.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah. Well, okay, that’s what I meant. I know that in fact you have a very successful career, basically.

FLETCHER BENTON: As far as being able to pay my rent, I’m doing just fine.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right, right. And so that’s not an issue. But what seems to be an issue, though, when you talk about being, quotes, “victim” of regionalism and the regional dealer apparatus, I think you mean the frustration of not having the work as well known internationally as in the area—you would like to just get a response, a broader critical response.

FLETCHER BENTON: To have it looked at and to have people make some judgments about it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And so it’s difficult to think of a remedy though, frankly, Fletcher, because we’ve got a situation where you feel that less exposure because of where you’ve chosen to live, this has affected the situation. Your dealer, by virtue of being—it’s in the nature of the beast apparently, you seem to think: If it’s a local, regional dealer, they want to make money—so do New York dealers—but they’re not placed as well, in the same situation, and they do not end up performing that function, which is to expose the artist, to achieve exposure for the [young] artist. Okay, so that puts you in difficulties with your [other] agent. If you’re in New York, as you just said, there are other pitfalls, dangers, involved, having to do with—and one may be being stunted at an early stage, being required or encouraged to produce for a market. And one then wonders—for any artist, whether it’s you, anybody else—what is the happy medium? What is the answer to that situation? Because then it isn’t simply not being in New York that has this effect. You see what I’m driving at?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I think the answer to that is the one that is so hard for artists to grasp, because it’s so simple. I mean, it took me a while to really come to grips with this, and I’ve tried so hard to explain this to my students. That you’re working for yourself. You’re working for the addiction of your own pleasure. And if that’s something other people feel pleasure with you, can go along with that pleasure thing, then they buy what you’re doing. And it seems to me that an artist is truly walking down an unpaved road, with lots of water puddles and stuff, and it’s so easy to slip and fall. But if you . . . I hate to use the word—if you believe in yourself—I don’t know any artist that doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot of insecurity and doubts about what they’re doing, but that’s the exciting part about it, you know, that’s the High Noon [factor], you know, that’s great. That’s what keeps us going. But it’s very hard to explain to a critic, an art dealer, or a collector the absolute seductive joy, the heroin high that you get when you really have a love affair with your work. Because you’re constantly working for that hit. And it’s so self-serving. So I don’t know, maybe I got off the track here and didn’t answer your question.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, not really.

FLETCHER BENTON: But I think there are a lot of artists that miss, that have not dealt with that. You look at Wayne Thiebaud. Doesn’t matter if he has a New York dealer, whether he’s collected or he’s not collected, he has received such joy in painting. Anybody that’s got half an eye at all can look at a Wayne Thiebaud and know this guy had a hell of a great time doing that picture. Or on the other hand, if you look at Gorky or you look, ohhh, certainly not de Kooning’s later work, but even his figurative things. You can see there was a struggle there, there was a battle there, there was a, it was a one-on-one thing between the canvas and . . . Diebenkorn. As it is with Thiebaud and the canvas, but it’s a different thing. There was a fight, there was a slug-it-out, there was combat. Painters have and sculptors have certain of those, their works you can look at, and you can see, “This guy’s got a constant combat with this canvas.” Others you can look at and you can see a constant joy. Others you can see a constant sort of meditation, where it goes almost beyond, it almost becomes a mindless act. I’m thinking of the photo-realists. I mean, they’ve got to get to the point where they took this picture, they’re translating it to the canvas, and it’s got to be some sort of higher order in their brain, where they sit there hour after hours rendering something. So that’s perfectly valid. And I think you don’t have a love-affair with that and if you aren’t looking for those heroin highs, it don’t make any difference—dealer or not a dealer, collector or not a collector—then you don’t have that love affair I was talking about. Which bridges all of the puddles in the road, gets you through that.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right. Well, let’s assume a certain level of economic security for an artist. Thinking of the fate of artists in general, not just your case. Let’s assume that there has been achieved an economic security, presumably that the work is selling well enough to provide that—or maybe there’s another combination of things, maybe rich inlaws or something. Who knows. But there’s not that concern about just surviving. And that there’s enough for a studio, for space in which to work, materials. And that then provides this arena for what you’re talking about, whether it’s a struggle with the work, the confronting the canvas or the materials, or whether it’s just a joy in working—and this presumably is why artists choose to be artists. The best ones. You know, this is what they’re about, what they want to do. And I think that that’s valid, and I would like to think that’s true, that’s the view I have. But it’s still for most artists—and I suspect you’re one of them—that that rather introspective, rather private activity, working for oneself, whether it’s the joy of it, the need, the struggle—whatever—is given and fine up to a point. But it seems to me that many artists crave this relationship with the world.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: With the world. And it, so it isn’t enough, I mean, what you describe is why it’s done and what creates these things, these images, these pieces. But the concerns that you’ve expressed, and the whole terminology—victim—of being regional. . . . You certainly haven’t been victimized economically; you have a solid. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Victim, again, is a tough word. I don’t feel, I don’t feel I’ve been unduly victimized. I chose to be here, and by being here I realize that I’m going to have less judgments made of my work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So the goals, what we’re really talking about—this is what I was trying to lead to—is that the circle is incomplete, the scenario for the artist—certainly some artists, presumably you are among them—is incomplete without this serious attention, this relationship with an audience and preferably and informed, a critical audience, where judgments can be made, where there’s a response—and an articulated response. So it comes into the area of criticism, and thoughtful writing. What I’m suggesting—I don’t want to put words in your mouth—but what I’m suggesting is that part of what you are interested in, as an artist, is being a participant in a dialogue about art issues. And that your work then perhaps can add another perspective, an example of the bigger issues, and finally cultural issues, a dialogue in our civilization, our society. And if you’re not known, if you’re not visible, you can’t participate, no matter how much joy you have in making your work. Is that fair? Do you. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: That’s quite fair. My concerns, at my age, were not the concerns I had ten years ago, certainly fifteen years ago. I mean I always had my love affairs, that was from such a young age. I hope to God I can get it up and keep it that way with my art until I pass on. But I have, my commitment has not been superficial to my love affair. Everything that I’ve done has been for the benefit of that, for the benefit of my work, for the benefit of the freedom of choice. By the way, the freedom of choice—I just have to stop for a moment. Because you, in your questioning, it crossed my mind that I think artists become artists—those who stick it out—because they want to be totally, I mean, one hundred percent responsible for their actions. I mean, if you were a painter or a sculptor, you are totally responsible from beginning to end for every single decision. No person, no set of circumstances, no political thing—at least in this country—can, if you’re tough, can have any effect on your decisions in the conception, from conception to completion of a work of art. Those are all gloriously your own decisions—good or bad—and at the end you stand there, cross your arms, stick your finger up your nose, or whatever you do, and you say, “Well, that bunch of decisions taught me something, you know, it gives me a place to go next, go on to the next thing,” or “Those decisions I feel are totally wrong, and therefore I won’t make them again.” But in every case, the learning process is total. I mean, it’s a. . . . Do you know what I’m saying as an artist? I mean, maybe you understand this as a historian and a writer, and maybe you don’t. But artists have, that’s the gift. You know, they say, “Oh, this person’s very talented,” or “Oh, this person’s very gifted.” Bullshit! You know. What is really important is the artist is totally, totally, responsible for what he does. And where else in life is that true? I mean, even the writers don’t have that privilege. The poets do but the writers don’t. Because they’re edited, they’re knocked around, they’re, you know. . . . But an artist, a fine artist, is totally responsible for it. I find that incredible. I mean, to have that opportunity in my one life to do something that I start from beginning to end, it’s finished, and I stand back, and it’s all my stuff. To me, that’s just beyond words.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay, acknowledging that, which is I think a rather eloquent statement of why you do what you do. I don’t think you can improve on that very much. Nonetheless, I would think you agree—and certainly our conversation so far indicates this would be the case—that there comes a point when you want to move beyond your own experience of making the art, of the activity, of the freedom, everything else that’s part of this, and you want to communicate something, you want to connect with an audience. I gather that there has been in part of this total scenario a dialogue with the world. And if it isn’t jumping into the big question too soon, I would like to know how you see this dialogue, the nature of this dialogue—you know, what kind of a relationship. You talked about a love affair with your work, and that is a relationship. What about your relationships, through your work, with the audience?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, that’s a good question, and I’ll try to answer it—and maybe this is where I would hope someday to, you know, have some perspective, have my work put in some overall perspective by someone. I don’t think I am special. You know, it just so happens that I’m interested in doing what I do. I don’t think that makes me of a higher order than someone who doesn’t do it. And what gives me thrills, what gives me pleasure, I’m selfish enough to think it must give other people pleasure. I mean I truly believe that if I could find that kick, that thing I was talking about, that gives me great pleasure in this love affair, I hope to hell it’s got, it’s [universal] enough that others can respond to it in some way. And I really believe this firmly. I made a decision to work with geometry. I don’t want this tape to sound like I sat down and made a decision. I didn’t sit down and make a decision. The decision was made some magical way. I don’t know who makes them for me, but they’re made magically. That I was going to deal only with geometry. And so far in these pieces of sculpture, since the kinetic period, even that period, I’ve been dealing with geometry. I may fall out of love with that, but right now it’s my main concern. To me geometry represents the musical notes that. . . . Well, let’s take a piano for instance. You’ve got 88 keys, you hit ‘em and they do certain things. You combine these, they make different things. My bone pile—or my palette—is made up of geometry, of shapes that are fairly common to most all of us, as musical notes are common to most all of us. And I might digress for a moment and say that [what I respond to in the art] [is what I’m after] in my own work, in that there has been a common note struck, either through a stroke, through a sense of chiaroscuro, a sense of color, that is not intellectual—and I will go back to this intellectual thing more and more, because I firmly believe that there is very little about the art process that I know of that is intellectual. But to get back to the palette of geometry: I feel that my job is to take the keys of my piano and put them together in chords, with notes, with timing, with repetition, with crescendo, with beat, with all of the things that go into music. I believe that those same things can be visual. I know very little about music. I’m somewhat tone-deaf. Yet I respond to music in a way that I [think] is most common. And that is, if something is playing along, I may not know the song or the piece of music, and if a sour note is struck, I’m almost sure I can pick up on it. I’m aware of it, because it’s out of harmony with what’s going on. And in my work I try to arrange these geometrical forms and shapes in such a way that you can look at them and respond to them as you would respond to music. You know, you’re going to say, “Well, Jesus. That looks good,” or, “That hears good,” or, “That feels good.” There’s nothing more than trying to reach the highest order of getting these things together in a way that you as the viewer can respond to. And I don’t expect you to say, “Gee, the tragedy in that stack of cubes is more than I can handle. I’m about to fall apart.”

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right. [chuckles]

FLETCHER BENTON: Or, “The symphony of the triangle and the circle. . . “ You know, I don’t expect that.

[Tape 2, side A]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Fletcher, you were saying?

FLETCHER BENTON: If you were to say, “I like that piece, Fletcher,” and I were to say, “Well, what do you like about it?” First of all, I wouldn’t do that probably because it’d be very foolish of me. Because you really don’t know what you like about it. You might say, “I like the six cubes that are standing up there; they look like stairs, and that funny little thing sitting on there, leaning up against a shaft, and [shepherd’s] this and a [what].” But if I were to push you, you probably couldn’t really isolate anything. As would be true about a great work of music. I mean, if you get pushed too far, you can’t really discuss it; you can’t tear it apart into elements. Because what makes it what it is, is the total. And it’s really the job of the critics to say something about it, but if you were to say, “God, I don’t know what I like about it, it just makes me feel good,” you have said to me what I have tried [chuckles] to give you. Because there are certain things that. . . . I mean, I could do something very ugly too, and I could do it as an ugly thing, and if you were to say, “That’s very ugly,” I would say, “My god, that’s terrific. I’ve gotten to you. You say that’s very ugly; what I meant it to be was very ugly.” So it’s not like, for instance, analyzing Rodin’s sculpture—or maybe that’s a poor example—or the painters. I mean, it’s much easier for historians and critics to talk about painting. Because it’s, first of all, it’s two-dimensional, but secondly it’s all illusion to start with. It’s not something you can bump into or ignore. You can’t do that with sculpture. Sculpture is real, in space. If you walk through a room where there is a sculpture in daylight, and you come back through that same room at night with the lights out, you’re damn aware of that sculpture being in there. And it has a presence that goes beyond just the illusion that painting’s all about. So it’s not quite the same, but it’s a critic’s job to break down what the artist is trying to do. It’s not the artist’s job, ever.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So what is missing then, to a degree, is the critical participation in your career, that has been sort of a missing link. Because you, as you say here, it’s the critic’s job to try to identify these qualities, or try to verbalize, articulate, the reasons for these responses. You know what you want from your audience, or certainly part of it. You’re looking for a response, and you have ways of working with materials and with forms and shapes that you hope will strike those common notes.

FLETCHER BENTON: Exactly.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And yet. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: And either it’s going to or it’s not going to.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: You can’t hype it up.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But to complete that important relationship, then somebody else needs to reflect on the dynamic of what’s happening and try to explain it.

FLETCHER BENTON: Where I feel that regionalism has shorted some of us, a little bit—and I’m not crying in my beer. I mean. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: All right. It’s your tape [interview]. You can if you want to.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah. [chuckles] It’s your, we’re friends, and I’m more able to be totally free about things with you maybe than someone else. In the sixties, there was this great invitational surge among museums, and, you know, there was enough [art] floating around, they could have invitationals. They weren’t even juried shows. I mean, as I recall, you were invited to show. At the Carnegie or at the Whitney, during that time, it was a little more open to what was going on, and they weren’t always looking for the newest stuff. They were throwing a few of the old boys in there just to keep everybody honest—the Whitney, I’m talking about.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: And there were many other, throughout the world, other invitational shows, which were done to have the work out there, to have the people confronted with it, to have them talk about it. I think shows today are more a shock value, more a trendy value. A lot of the museums have a franchise mentality now. [raises voice as if speaking in a lecture hall—Trans.] I will say that again: A franchise mentality.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [laughs]

FLETCHER BENTON: And, you know, whatever is passing through New York gets on the train and goes out to the far regions of the uncivilized West. I think it’s bullshit. That’s all right, I mean. . . . But, we don’t have the opportunity—we—the artists on the one hand to be placed in a public view where we are there with many other artists and can be compared visually, discussed, torn apart, beaten up, whatever the case is. Those shows don’t seem to exist much anymore. I don’t know, unless you know something I don’t know, that there are many really invited group shows throughout the museum [structure], throughout the regions, throughout the vast city of New York, where the public has a chance to take the younger fellow’s art and say, “Well, how does this stack up to Diebenkorn?” or to whoever, David Smith, or whoever else. And I think that’s one of the biggest crimes of the late seventies and eighties. I hope to God it doesn’t go into the nineties, but I suspect it will. There are too many young curators and young museum directors out there that put more emphasis on their ability to be current on what is going on in the hottest corners of New York than on a total overview of what [really] has been going on. And I think it’s tragic. It again goes back to their function as a curator or museum director to serve the public—to promote and serve the artists and present them to the public. The dealers have become merchants, the museum curators and directors [are becoming a] bunch of trendy yuppies. But history weeds all that stuff out. [chuckling] I sound like I’m beating the drum because of some hurt that I have. I don’t have any hurt. I just think it’s a shame. I go to a museum, I can’t see what the hell’s going on in comparison to what has gone on anymore.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you feel that the. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: I mean, we get [Anselm] Kiefer over here. We get Kiefer here at the San Francisco museum, well, geez, that’s great. I would much rather have the money that was spent on the Kiefer show, in doing a survey show of, say, from 1960 to 1980, Bay Area [conservative] show. Or something that is really, puts things in perspective and allows those artists in those areas to be looked at.
[Interruption in taping]

PAUL KARLSTROM: We’re now picking up after a little break in the taping for lunch. When we stopped taping you were talking about something that you regretted, over the last two decades at least, and that’s the absence of the kind of exhibition, probably juried, but large-group shows where you have an opportunity to see a number of artists brought together and a chance really, I suppose, to get a better indication of what’s happening in current art. Probably a better idea for the critics and for the audience, but also I guess for the artists themselves, to see how they’re fitting in. And I gather from what you said that you felt that this, that the current situation, which takes place pretty much in the museum arena, traveling exhibitions, which are curated, as they say—the curators make the decisions, make the choices—that this presents a distorted view of contemporary art. Is this right?

FLETCHER BENTON: I think so.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Who do you feel is responsible for that? What does that mean about art of our times, and the way it’s being handled?

FLETCHER BENTON: I don’t know who’s responsible for it. I think that San Francisco is a typical situation, you know. We have a new museum director, Mr. Jack Lane [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art— Ed.], who came here to make a name and push his career further, and also get a new museum for San Francisco. He was brought here by very powerful people on the board. And I think that he’s going to try to fill in all the inadequacies of the museum based on their formula for a franchised museum, sort of like a Jack-in-the-Box, and the menu is fixed, the collection is fixed, and I don’t see it serving the community the way the museum has in the past. And even in the past the museum has slowly been divorcing itself from the community, from my point of view. I’m sure that people will argue the other way. But instead of San Francisco being a museum that is unique in itself, which brings in shows that are available, but also concentrates very heavily on formulating shows here, of people who’ve made a substantial reputation for themselves on the West coast. And sending these shows out. Those little and beautiful shows—not little, but beautiful shows that go out to other museums to show them what we contribute as West coast artists. They’re many, many artists here deserve that sort of thing. They intend to, from what I gather, focus more on the international aspect of a well-rounded franchise-type museum. I think this is very egotistical and. . . . The San Francisco museum can never compete with L.A. County, and for them to think that a new museum, downtown, and so forth, is going to compete with the Los Angeles art scene and LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art—Ed.], MOCA [Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art—Ed.], it’s just not gonna happen. There’s not enough money here to do it. There’s not enough openness. So we’re going to end up with just a nice, mediocre museum that reflects really nothing that you can’t find anywhere else in the United States. So I don’t know in these traveling shows, these curated shows, who is responsible for them. I don’t know how it works anymore. But I suspect the amount of shows that are floating around. . . . And most of that get to town here, were curated elsewhere. If you’ve only got four or five shows you see a year, curated by four or five people, you’re getting very narrow view of what the hell’s going on. You’ve got the view of four or five people.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you feel then that in the museum community, whether it’s the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or University Art Museum at Berkeley, Oakland. . . . Well, keep Oakland out of it a bit, because it has a pretty good record of focusing on local or on California; that’s its mandate. But some of the other local institutitions, do you feel that there is insufficient commitment to the community on the part of those who make the decisions, that in other words it’s really a professional tracking, and it just happens that their next post is at, like Jack Lane, at the Modern, to further his reputation, or perhaps move on elsewhere, but basically his role here is to, well, enhance the credentials and reputation of Jack Lane?

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And so the choices then are made entirely on that basis, or largely on that basis, rather than perhaps a sensitivity or openness to the local art community.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [chuckles] I’m giving your answers. Well, I was just checking.

FLETCHER BENTON: No.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I wanted to make sure I’ve got. . . . I don’t think we need to dwell on this right now, although it’s part of the whole regional picture that we’ve been discussing, but what about some of the other museums here in the area—over the past years, and right now? I mean, there’s some changes, important changes, afoot. That [is the case at] the Fine Arts Museums. And the fact you participated in the program, “The Eye of the Artist,” at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which [the series—Ed.] is devoted entirely to local artists and their work and their views, sponsored by the “Old Master” museum in this case, not the modern museum. Does that hold any special promise to you? I mean, candidly, what do you think that means? What’s happening?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, as far as I’m concerned, it holds the only promise. And I’m not going to mention names because it’s not even important.

PAUL KARLSTROM: _____. No.

FLETCHER BENTON: But many of the people who were dedicated to the San Francisco Museum that were here three directors ago, and who have contributed immensely in time and money to the development of California art for the San Francisco museum, and through the San Francisco Art Institute when it was connected with the museum, used to have the San Francisco Art Annual, I think it was called, big survey show. In due respect to all these people—not all of them; a large percentage of ‘em—have pulled out of the San Francisco museum and are saying, “Look, you guys at the Legion and DeYoung are trying to do something. Count on us.” And I’m one of them.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: I mean whatever I can do I’ll do it. I don’t intend to service the San Francisco museum as I have over the past any longer. It’s going to be a nice little boutique museum, and if that’s what they want, fine.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That really is an interesting shift here, and one that seems to be as a result, to a certain extent, of the personalities or interests of the directors. I mean, one has to think that that has played a major role, that it isn’t the mandate of the trustees in either case—entirely—because I don’t think. . . . Well, let’s put it this way. This is not an interview with me, but Harry Parker at the Fine Arts Museums—and it’s very true—his arrival here will mark a shift in the involvement of those established city institutions, vis-a-vis contemporary, or certainly recent art, and California art. Because Mr. Parker is interested in the twentieth century. It’s as simple as that. So he will be interested in focusing more on that. The changes at the DeYoung, especially in that respect, [involve] two things: much more concentration on American, and then also bringing the American [collection] really up into the twentieth century, with some interest in more recent art. I think [it] reflects entirely his idea, not the trustees. The trustees back him. What happened at the Modern, which is perhaps more germane to our topic? What do you see in looking over the years in the patterns of activity at the San Francisco Modern? What happened there?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I’m not really sure, because I’ve tried not to be too involved in the museum. I do know there were key people there, as they say on the college campus, “There were core people there,” that cared about the San Francisco art scene: Mary Keesling, Byron Meyer, Frank Hamilton, and there are many, many others. But from what I can see, the board of trustees has shifted to corporate minds working there that seem to think the [thrust] of our museum should be more national and international than local, so the concentration of money and effort is not used to serve the community through buying and exhibiting works from the community, but works from other places. The [implication] is: Let’s make it a strong international museum, the best we can. And I [also] get this feeling they’re competing with L.A.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: And that’s too bad, because they’re going to lose.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But do you think that’s entirely illegitimate? Could one argue, on the other side, that a vital world class, as you will, art center—or a city that aspires to be that—needs. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: I don’t think they’ve got the money to do that.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay. So you think then it’s a matter. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: And I think they’ve got a champagne appetite and a beer budget. And I don’t think they can do it. They’re starting too late.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Then it’s really a matter of the use of resources, with their inability to recognize the limits of resources that are available.

FLETCHER BENTON: My feeling is that if they wanted to be an outstanding museum, they have an opportunity to do that by dealing with the strong California people that are already here that they could present to the world. From Richard Diebenkorn on. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: . . . to Wayne Thiebaud, to you name it. [Robert] Arneson. Let’s see, Los Angeles people, many, many wonderful artists there. And then they would be a special museum. That could be a special thing. Doesn’t mean they have to close off the city limits to the rest of the world. We could still have good, strong curated shows coming in here. But that the main concentration and contribution would be unique. Yet it seems to me they don’t want to be unique; they want to be franchised, as I’ve said. And I don’t understand that at all. I just can’t see them competing with some of the great museums around. And I don’t care who comes in to direct it. I just don’t see how they can play catch-up ball. I mean, you’re in the museum business; maybe you could, you could say, “I don’t agree with that, Fletcher.”

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, no, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I wouldn’t say that I disagree. I would say this, though. The role of the Oakland Museum, of course, has been very close to what you’re suggesting. It truly is in Oakland; it’s not in San Francisco. And there’s limits to what they can do. But certainly they have attempted to carve out that area for themselves.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, but they didn’t have the money, they never had the great directorship, and it was a city museum.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: That’s totally different. San Franciso is a private museum. I think there is money available there to them now, but not if they’re going out on the open market to bid against paintings that are anywhere from, you know, $300,000 to a couple of million. I don’t know how they can do it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, that’s a problem of course a lot of museums face now. What about the cultivation of patrons here in the Bay Area by, well, by the San Francisco Museum, but then the response of—or lack of response by—patrons in the modern field in general. I mean, how would you characterize that?

FLETCHER BENTON: I can’t compare it to anything.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay.

FLETCHER BENTON: And I don’t really think I—excuse me—[should] talk about that. I do feel that there’s less of an opportunity in San Franciso than there is in Los Angeles for doing things, because San Francisco traditionally is a very conservative town. Those people who have a lot of money don’t particularly want to hang it out in front. They don’t make a big deal about it. It’s, you know, it’s respected to just sort of be quiet about your work. Well. And in Los Angeles, as you know, it’s kind of in reverse. You’ve got it, it’s hanging out there, everybody to see it. . . . I don’t see the money flowing easily in San Francisco.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, you’ve been—aside from the museums—I mean, you have been here long enough to observe—and in a position—to observe the nature of local patronage. And I am not thinking of museums; I’m thinking of collectors, those who were willing to invest in, show an interest in collecting contemporary art. How would you characterize it, and do you see any changes over the last. . . . Obviously there are people who collect your work. You have collectors and all that. What about the Bay Area over the last few decades in that respect?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I think it’s, there’s more collecting here. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Than when you arrived?

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes. There’s more collecting everyplace than there was thirty years ago, but, you know, quite frankly, I am not one of the people in the know.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, you know, we can talk about our impressions, and over the years certainly you would have developed impressions of, well, you know, just how good it is here. Is this a city that supports visual arts? Whether it be a museum or. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: In comparison to where?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, in comparison to the ideal, I won’t say that, because that would be good positive support of all the cultural institutions. In comparison to, I don’t know, a comparable regional center—maybe Los Angeles. You’ve talked about that. Can’t compare it to New York. I mean, we’re not going to ask that.

FLETCHER BENTON: I think there are a group of very serious collectors here. I think that there is some prejudice to what they collect, as a group. And that’s a general opinion that I have that may not be a fact.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What is that prejudice?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I think it’s very supportive of the Art Institute—what represents the Art Institute. I think it’s very much the California funk thinking and school, California figurative and landscape school. I think that they support that very much. A lot of people own my work here. So it’s not sour grapes for me. But generally speaking I don’t think the collectors here take any chances, except maybe through this Northern California Art Institute way of painting and thinking and. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you’re describing a situation where, interestingly enough, the regional qualities, the imagery, the style that’s associated with the region, is that which is collected locally and supported. You say that this is your impression, but among those who have collected art, if it’s locals, they’ll look for the, well, the Bay Area, the typical Bay Area expressions, the regional expressions.

FLETCHER BENTON: The Bay Area school. If you were to say. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: In the largest sense.

FLETCHER BENTON: In the largest sense, the Bay Area school is what’s collected.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Of which you are not a part.

FLETCHER BENTON: I am not a part of it. But that sounds like I’m playing my fiddle here when. . . . No, no, it’s okay. If I had to count on San Francisco for what has happened to me, I’d be in big trouble.

[Tape 2, side B]
[This entire tape side was recorded at a lower level than usual, so tape hiss masks much of the conversation. I especially had trouble understanding when both PK and FB talked at once.—Trans.]

PAUL KARLSTROM: We’ve been talking about regionalism, Fletcher, a subject which I think we haven’t exhausted but we can certainly move on to other aspects of it now. What I would like to do now is get some of your recollections of what it was like here when you arrived. In other words, what was the situation in which you found yourself? And I mean, of course, in terms of the art world. You were not in the beginning, I think, directly or intimately involved. Or maybe that’s a wrong impression, that, you know, it took a few years to begin to develop your own role within the community. What was it like here? What did you find?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I came here in 1956 and gravitated to North Beach. I heard about Nate Oliveira at the Institute; I knew that Diebenkorn was there, Joan Brown was a student at that time, over there doing some great paintings, Manuel Neri was around. There was a group of artists about my age that were over there, but strangely enough I never became a part of that group of people. I don’t know why that was. I guess it’s because I wasn’t going to school at the Art Institute, and I didn’t see them socially. They’d come to North Beach occasionally, but there was no interaction. They hung out in other bars. I hung out in the main bars up Grant Avenue: The Place, the Coffee Gallery, the Bagel Shop, Vesuvio’s. And most of the Art Institute students, at least if my memory is right, were hanging out in a couple bars down close to Bay Street, right down from the Art Institute. So our paths didn’t really cross. And I didn’t go to a lot of openings. I was not in the art scene.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you thought of yourself as an artist.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: I mean you moved here with a self—conception as artist. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: That’s right.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . to set up your career.

FLETCHER BENTON: And I painted signs in North Beach to make a living, and I showed my paintings in the Coffee Gallery and The Place, the bars out there.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, you did?

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah. I had my first one—man show with The Place where all the poets had blabbermouth night on Monday night. I had my first one—man show there. My second one—man show was at the Coffee Gallery the year it opened. I had the first show in there. And I was doing my best to paint every day, and I sold encyclopedias at night and painted signs for a living. Encyclopedias were. . . . Oh, that was black time, oh boy. But I did pick up sign jobs, and I was able to squeak by. Had no extra money, but I did have extra time. I had time. And I realized then that that’s all I would ever have is time. And not that that’s any great revelation, but I realized that, you know, whatever I did with my day, the more time I could save to do my art—or at least think about it or play around with it—-the better off I was going to be, so I didn’t really have a straight job. I worked as a janitor: Maxine Keetering’s coffee shop, right above Manuel Neri’s studio on Grant, the corner of Grant and Green. It’s still there. But I was not in what you would call the main hot stream of young artists, which was strictly Art Institute.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, did you know about them? I mean. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: I knew about them but I didn’t know them.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: And it’s interesting, now as I look back, I’ve never been. . . . I wasn’t a part of it then, which is probably in a way very helpful. . . . I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had assimilated over there. It’s very interesting. But I steered clear of that, and I remember seeing one of the art annuals, Art Institute annuals at the San Francisco museum, and I saw these paintings by Joan Brown that just knocked me right out of my socks. And I was at that time 25, 26. Joan must have been 22, 23, maybe. And they were so dynamic. There were [also] some Diebenkorns in that show, and some Bryan Wilsons—-and they were so dynamic that that left me perplexed.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What do you mean?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, it gave my work another perspective. It made me feel very insecure; it made me not want to deal with the Art Institute in any way, because in a way it became threatening.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You were intimidated?

FLETCHER BENTON: Intimidated. I was very intimidated, yes. So I continued to work even more so within my own self, my own shell. That kept me from having the opportunity of being closer to that whole scene. So here I am 35 years later, 34 years later, just. . . . I know all these people now, but I’m still just as isolated now as I was then. [chuckling] Also you asked me in general what was the art scene here. The art scene was very, very good. I can’t think of her name now, the woman who was the director of San Fransico Museum who went on to a directorship in New Delhi, India. She was. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Morley, Grace McCann Morley.

FLETCHER BENTON: Grace Morley.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah.

FLETCHER BENTON: I knew her not well, but I knew her. But what was going on then was foundation stuff. It was good stuff. It was straight—up ball stuff. I mean it was people like [Mary] Keesling, and all these people that were here in the community that, because of what’s happening now, have now drifted away from San Francisco Museum, were building the museum at that time. There was some charter thing where the museum and the Art Institute were under the same charter. I only know that when I was teaching at the Art Institute I was on the last committee that dealt with the Art Institute annual at the San Francisco museum, and that was the first year [Gerald] Nordland came there. I remember Jerry telling me their budget was, at the San Francisco Museum, was $75,000 a year including the elevator operators. That was the last year we had the art annual. And I remember feeling this sickness in a way. I was on the art annual’s committee at the Art Institute, as I just said, and we realized that it was time not to have it any more because certain political things were happening. John Coplans had come here and pulled a deal where he juried the show one year and selected, I don’t know what it was, five or ten or fifteen artists to show the following year as invited artists. And all of a sudden, there was a kind of a corruptness, a kind of a controlled competition, that a lot of the artists felt very badly about. John Coplans was not a contributor to the San Francisco art scene. In my estimation he was a user, and the only thing he really did that was positive was he was involved with the Artforum magazine, along with Jerry Nordland and some of the others. But. . . . So it was, that was the last Art Institute annual. And that annual was probably the most important show on the West coast, for—we never used the word then, but “emerging.” I mean, there were no emerging artists then. We were young artists. But it was a show where the young artists could be selected, juried in with some of the older guys, and it was wonderful. Because you could, as I grumped about on our earlier tape, you could see what was going on. You had some overview of things. And I don’t know, I guess [it was] after Grace Morley things. . . . John. . . . Oh my goodness. John. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Humphrey?

FLETCHER BENTON: . . . Humphrey was there trying to hold the thing together, and when Jerry came [Gerald Nordland], Jerry was able to remodel the museum, which I thought under the circumstances was a monumental task.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Because of funding?

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah.

PAUL KARLSTROM: _____ the money for it.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah, funding, money, opposition, the whole thing. It was probably a greater coup than them getting a new museum now, what Jerry Nordland did. So he stayed for a while and then Henry [Hopkins] came, and Henry left, and now we have the great corporate image running our museum, and we’re off on the generic—museum track. And. . . . So to get back to your question, it was a hot time then. There was support for young people. There was energy and vitality. And, you know, I think even what vitality and energy we have now comes out of the Collector’s Forum and a few groups around the museum that really are these same people who were doing it then, you know: Byron Meyer and. . . . That, again, that core group of people. God knows what’s going to happen when they go their way, or if they all abandon the San Francisco Museum, and I know some of them that have already done it. ‘Cause these people are old war horses, and they’re wise, and they’ve seen it from the seedling to, to maybe it getting all cut down into timbers now. So it was a different time. The art dealers were dealing in art through a dedication and an interest in the artist. And there was a camaraderie amongst everybody that I don’t think exists so much now. The artists don’t even congregate so much. The art biz is biz, biz only.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So even though you say that you, at least in the beginning, didn’t have a lot of contact with art students, I mean, the Art Institute group, in fact, or nonetheless, over time, after a few year anyway, you did feel part of a Bay Area art community, regardless of the direction your work was taking.

FLETCHER BENTON: It’s not true.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: [I, I’ve] never felt a part of the Bay Area artists.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, okay, then let’s clarify the. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Because my connection with artists was more social than. . . . And saying hello and recognizing each other. But to be, to move with Roy DeForest and Joan Brown and Manuel Neri and all those guys down the pike together with Bob [Robert] Hudson, Bill [William] Wiley, and the rest of them, I was not going on that road. I was never included in that sort of California thing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, but. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Or Bay Area thing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you did describe a situation which you found more positive than the situation now, and you mentioned, you used the term camaraderie, and that there were a group of collectors, there was Grace McCann Morley, there were the annuals, and so whether or not you were personally. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: But that was not a concentrated group or. . . . It wasn’t what they call the Bay Area art scene. When you say “the Bay Area art scene,” it’s like saying “the New York school.” You know, it really narrows itself down to kind of a given. What I was talking about was not a given, but the lack of a given. By the cameraderie meaning that the museum would work with the Art Institute, there would be juried shows where everybody could submit, and they would be juried and put in the San Francisco Museum as a juried show. And my memory is that those shows were fairly wide open, until Coplans came along and felt the need to tighten everything up, and then it just choked itself to death.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So the operative. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: They were introduction shows. It gave each young guy a chance to put his [or her] stuff up there—you know, if he was lucky. If he didn’t get it this year, he might get in the next year. But there was always that hope that it would get out there and get juried and everybody would get to see it. Not true anymore. Not at the museum level. There’s no such thing—that I know about. And there never was in Oakland.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So what you’re describing then is, when you talk about a positive situation here, at the time you arrived or shortly thereafter, it was really an openness. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . an availability of opportunities to show, whether or not you were part of the group you’re describing as the Bay Area school.

FLETCHER BENTON: The museum was serving the community.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay.

FLETCHER BENTON: It is not serving the community in that way now, nor will it ever again. It’s gone.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, how did you come to. . . . Maybe I’m making an assumption here, but you talk about some of these patrons and then collectors, those who are interested, supportive of Bay Area art—or art that was being produced here, and artists, emerging artists. . . . Presumably some of the people you’ve mentioned made connection with you at some point, whether it was Byron Meyer or, you know, anybody else like that. Did this come about. . . . At some point you were discovered or acknowledged, seen, as somebody working in this area.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you recall?

FLETCHER BENTON: Not exactly. What happened was, there were a few artists, there was Diebenkorn, Bryan Wilson, myself, and some Sacramento artists that were showing at Gump’s, at that time—and that was pretty much the premier gallery. . . . Then Dilexi [Gallery] came along, and Dilexi picked up the harder core, sort of what we know as the California group now, Roy DeForest. . . . Oh, gosh, it fails me right now, but the really avant garde. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, Ron Nagle, or [someone] like that.

FLETCHER BENTON: Ron Nagle, right. Those guys were showing at Dilexi. I did Dilexi’s gold leaf work on that first gallery.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You did?

FLETCHER BENTON: Designed their logo and painted on _____. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: So that was your _____ _____ [history].

FLETCHER BENTON: That was my closest connection. But out of the support groups in town, there was a hard—core group, the Mary Keesling/Byron Meyer group became a very hard—core group. And Rene DiRosa, and later on came into that as a hard—core supporter of California funk and northern California art. They never collected my work. To my knowledge they were never particularly interested in it. I didn’t fit into that, you know, to their collecting scheme, which is fine. But there other people in town that did collect my work. Names that have since passed by. The Haases have been very supportive.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm. Which ones?

FLETCHER BENTON: Evie, and her brother, and the children.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm, okay.

FLETCHER BENTON: Of course the Haases, without the Haases there would have been no museum to go generic. And I’m sure that. . . . Oh, no, and I’m not sure, but this [new developments at SFMMA] must be very enlightening to them.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is it possible for you to explain—or did you think about it at the time—why you and your work would attract the interest of certain individuals rather than others? It’s something you’ve thought about. Certainly you were looking for an audience, you were looking for collectors, I would guess, you were showing in a gallery.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I was a decent painter. And I think if I had stayed with it, I might have found my way as a painter of some note. But some events happened. Nineteen—fifty—nine I went to Europe after a semester of teaching at Arts and Crafts [College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland]. I stayed at the Cite ‘ University briefly in Paris, and then I took a studio outside of Paris, traveled all over Norway, Belgium, Holland, Germany, on a motorcycle, did all that stuff. Came back to New York, and I won’t go into those details now, because you may want to know about them later.

PAUL KARLSTROM: We’ll go into it later, yeah.

FLETCHER BENTON: Then I came back to San Francisco, had a show at Gump’s. First kinetic pieces. Show was taken down because it was considered to be obnoxious, obscene, whatever.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, we’ll talk about that in detail.

FLETCHER BENTON: And I stopped painting, I stopped everything. A year or so later I started doing the kinetic work, and all of a sudden I wasn’t in San Francisco anymore.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: I was lifted instantly out of here to an international status. And so I never had a large number of collectors here to start with. I had this big kinetic thing. A few [collectors] bought the work here, but not many.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: Certainly not Mary Keesling and Byron Meyer and those people. So then I came back to San Francisco, had another catharsis, stopped the kinetic thing and started doing my stuff that I’m doing now. I was doing just the opposite aesthetically of what the California Bay Area school was doing. Theirs was drip, splash, and bump, and I was doing shiny, bronze, highly resolved, machine—looking things. So I alienated—I was more and more [alienated] from the local group than ever before. And actually it’s probably only been [in] the last two or three years that my work has become a little more salty, you know, a little saltier looking. No matter what I did, I could never sync with what was going on here. I was always out of sync. And that’s okay, because I’m glad that I was not so influenced that I felt a need to fall in line with the movement that was going on here. And I didn’t deliberately reject it. I always carried on with what I was doing and I didn’t want to contaminate it by what might have been more beneficial for me artistically here in the Bay Area. Didn’t interest me.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, thanks for reminding that the period we’re talking about now. . . . Certainly after your arrival in the Bay Area you were operating as a painter. Because again, most of us tend to think of you as a sculptor, and this is something of course you’re gonna talk about later.

FLETCHER BENTON: I’ll tell you something that’s very interesting. I didn’t start doing three—dimensional sculpture seriously till 1978.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, that’s amazing.

FLETCHER BENTON: I bought my first welding machine in 1978. I did kinetic sculpture, but no welding; it was all glued together. They were considered to be wall pieces, two—dimensional. So from 1978 to, what are we now, ‘89?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: Eleven years. And it’s been an exciting eleven years.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, I think it’s important to remember that you really did start out as a painter, and through your evolution there—again, we’ll talk in much more detail this—but it seems that there was always a return, some connection to wall pieces, that your interest in paint, in color or _____ _____.

FLETCHER BENTON: Some of these [pieces] are two—dimensional.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm, yeah, exactly. But anyway, getting back to the situation here, you were almost abruptly, through opportunity and historical chance, moved into a different expression, one that moved you almost entirely out of the prevailing Bay Area setting—which in a sense precluded collecting by these very supportive patrons whom you’ve mentioned but that seemed to have a real interest in the regional expression. So it’s almost academic, you know, it wasn’t even a judgment. It seems to me there really isn’t much of an issue involved here. You went your own way. You went a different direction. And that determined probably to a large extent then much of your subsequent career in terms of your relationship to the Bay Area.

FLETCHER BENTON: Definitely. If that hadn’t of happened, and I had remained here, it would be interesting. I don’t know what would have happened.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You said you were interested Joan Brown, whose work you saw, and do you remember what it was? Do you remember what it was about the work that you saw that struck you that way? Because you seemed to, from what you said, you were. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Oh, yeah.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . it had a power. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Tremendous impact.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What was it? Do you recall? Was it something you could express?

FLETCHER BENTON: Oh, I do recall. First of all, I didn’t know Joan Brown very well then. I mean, I wasn’t even sure when I’d see her at openings that that was her. But she has these penetrating blue eyes, like the heavens, you know.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: She was always very attractive. [She] always made me stand a little straighter. Well, anyway. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Back to the work.

FLETCHER BENTON: She had a huge painting that was figurative and it was done with a palette—knife—a painting knife. It wasn’t a real palette—knife, it was a house painter’s scraping knife that she picked up these luscious gobs of paint with and put these palette expressions on the canvas to support and shape the figure. It was beyond David Park. Beyond. Park’s color was always a little dirty. This color was. . . . It was beautiful. It, you know, I want to say acidic. I guess it was acidic. The reds were acid. The yellows were acidic. It was rich, dynamic, big, powerful.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What year was this, do you remember?

FLETCHER BENTON: ‘Sixty—four, maybe, ‘2, ‘3, ‘4?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Where was the. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: I’m not sure.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Where was the exhibition? This was what, a one—person show with _____ _____?

FLETCHER BENTON: No, it was the art annual.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Art annual. Early sixties.

FLETCHER BENTON: I think it was the year Bryan Wilson won first prize, got drunk, made a fool out of himself at the dinner. I don’t know which year it was.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay. Anyway, you saw this work and. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Jay DeFeo was painting then.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sure.

FLETCHER BENTON: I mean all these people were there, at these annuals. Now if you could have had the experience of seeing one of these annuals, I mean, today it would be the most exciting thing that ever hit this town . . . the annuals that were happening in that period of four or five years. Dynamic work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What I’m trying to get at here though is your relationship either on. . . . On a personal level you’ve already said that you didn’t have an involvement with these artists for one reason or another. And so you would never describe yourself as part of that gang, despite the fact of course that you know many of them now, and some of them actually have been here in this very room, so that’s not an issue—but that’s a different thing we’re talking about, more of a social thing. And you also stated that you were really impressed by some of the work that was being done. And yet I gather you didn’t seek them [the artists] out or in any way feel that you needed to in your own work reflect these currents that were going on here. Is that right?

FLETCHER BENTON: That’s true, and I think if there was anything that caused me to hang up my brushes and get rid of everything—which I did literally; got rid of everything, slashed most of my pictures—was that group of young artists. Roy DeForest. . . . I’ve never told them that. Roy, Joan Brown, what Diebenkorn was doing, and Nate Oliveira, and all those people. There were days that I’d go to my studio and work and I’d see the finished product on the wall, and I’d compare it to what I saw at the annuals and, you know. . . . And I was in several annuals, by the way. And it was heart— breaking. I just finally said “to hell,” you know, “I can’t go any farther with what I’m doing.” And these people were booming on down the road, and doing what I would have liked to have done. And I just hung it up and went a different way. I probably would have done that anyway. I’m not saying that they caused me to be where I am today.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, I understand.

FLETCHER BENTON: But what they did was very inspiring and. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, inspiring, and I gather also discouraging to you.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes, discouraging, right.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Both at the same time, right. So I would have to, from the basis of what you said, I would have to say that the work that was going on, particularly of these younger people here in the Bay Area, had a very important impact or influence on you, and not quite in the way one usually suspects, which is then an attempt to absorb Diebenkorn’s _____ and imitate him. That in fact it pushed you in a different direction.

FLETCHER BENTON: Further away from them.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: It really did.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That’s interesting. So what was—I think we would have to say—what was a discouraging or frustrating experience for you, in fact turned out to be quite positive in your development.

FLETCHER BENTON: As we sit here and look back on it, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right, okay.

FLETCHER BENTON: I still have this wonderful passionate love for painting. . . . Oh, boy. Well, can’t do everything.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, we’ll talk later, at some point, about the differences between the two: the 2-D and the 3-D. But moving on—you’ve described a situation here in the Bay Area, mainly in terms of painting; what about, what did you find around you in sculpture, in three-dimensional work that you recall? What was the situation with sculpture? By that time I imagine some of the funk [art] was beginning to develop.

FLETCHER BENTON: _____, the ceramic things were going on. DeForest was doing his marvelous things. [Pete Voulkos and Bob Arneson.] [Jack] Zajacks was working around, but not close enough here to make any difference. Isn’t that funny, I can’t think of many sculptors. The names. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: Let me see that book.

[Tape 3, side A]

PAUL KARLSTROM: We were talking about the situation that you encountered when you moved here to the Bay Area. We talked a bit about painting and your relationship or, in some cases, lack of contact with the prominent features or communities here, your interest in painting. And you were beginning to talk about the situation with sculpture, what was going on here that you were aware of. And maybe you can recall some of the things that interested you? Presumably stimulated you to pursue some of your own directions.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, those are good questions, Paul. I suppose the hardest thing I have, the hardest question I would have to answer now is who influenced me. At this point looking back at my work, who influenced my work? I don’t know. To tie that in with your question, since I jumped from painting into the kinetic art thing, which was dealing with the surface of metal and the sterality of the. . . . Sterality, that’s not right.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sterility.

FLETCHER BENTON: . . . the sterility of color and space and time and all that stuff. My work was very highly polished, very finished, very machine-like. I don’t think any of the sculptors influenced me in the Bay Area. I liked very much what [Robert] Hudson was doing. I liked what [Wilfred] Zogbaum was all about. I liked very much Roy DeForest’s three-dimensional pieces. But there wasn’t any strong influence that I can recall.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you weren’t aware. . . . Well again, I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

FLETCHER BENTON: No. No, ask me.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Were you aware of sculptural activity, or activity in three dimensions, in the Bay Area?

FLETCHER BENTON: Um mm. [negative]

PAUL KARLSTROM: I mean, did you feel. . . . Was there anything that really struck your notice?

FLETCHER BENTON: No, not really.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you know of say Jacques Schneir, for instance, working over at Berkeley?

FLETCHER BENTON: No, I didn’t, until a few years ago. [chuckles] I kept hearing the name; I didn’t make any association between the name and work. No. I knew about John Battenberg. I knew Sam Richardson was doing some three-dimensional pieces in resin. Bruce Beasley was casting aluminum, and then went to some other type things. But these were more contemporaries. And at that time, from about 1963 to 1973, that period of ten years, what I was doing was so removed from they were doing anywhere, except for just a couple little pockets in the world. Not that it was that great. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: _____ _____.

FLETCHER BENTON: . . . but it was just odd what my preoccupation was. It was kind of a machine art. And there were people doing machine art pieces. There was the aesthetic of several artists, but they were mostly Italian and South Americans.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you, what you’re saying is that you were not stimulated by any sculptural activity here. . .

FLETCHER BENTON: No.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . to move you along in the direction that you took.

FLETCHER BENTON: I mean, Bruce Nauman. . . . Bruce and I showed in American Sculptures of the Sixties. That was the show of shows.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm, um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: And of course I’ve always liked the Claes Oldenburg things—less so now than then, but they were very dynamic then. And [Donald] Judd was doing his stuff, and you know, there was. . . . I wasn’t swept off my feet by any one particular person.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sounds to me like you were more interested in, more influenced or affected by, some of the painting of the people around the Art Institute—you mentioned Joan Brown—than by anything that was going on in three dimensions in sculpture here.

FLETCHER BENTON: True.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But I absolutely have to ask you about this, because we’re talking about what is known as a fairly historic time in connection with sculpture, certainly with ceramics in the beginning—and that was in 1959, Peter Voulkos came up to set up the [ceramics] department at the University of California. He had been down at Otis and that story is well known. A lot is made out of that. The official view is that he had considerable influence on the area, on the Bay Area. He came up here, and most of the initial work I believe was with ceramics, and it would have been fairly early on that he started casting in bronze and building some of these larger pieces. My question is: Did this have anything to do with you at all? Were you aware of it? Did it make any difference what Pete Voulkos did?

FLETCHER BENTON: I was very aware of his bronze pieces. I was very taken by that series. There were some that moved me very much. I do not care for the piece down in front of the jail [San Francisco Municipal Court, Bryant Street] down here.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right, that we drove by today.

FLETCHER BENTON: Right. The piece the San Francisco Museum has, very nice piece. The Oakland Museum piece, dynamite piece. I’ve seen a few of his maquettes. They just are so wonderful. And, yes, I think he is very important. But he was casting; I never cast. My things, I had one cast piece; I didn’t do it. My pieces were fabricated; it’s a totally different process. A different way of thinking. Pete is the artists’ artist. And he is, is still to this day, the man we all love and respect. I mean, he is the king. And, but no, I wasn’t close to that group of people.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you certainly. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: There were a few others working at Berkeley, but. . . . I mean, there was Harold Paris. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: Harold and I have shown together from time to time. I was not close to Harold, but we did see each other. We did talk. He was a very neat guy, you know, he loved to talk and have a good time, and tear ‘em up, and. . . . I think he was very innovative. I think he was frantic about being recognized. But that’s okay. So was Dali. [both chuckle]

PAUL KARLSTROM: That’s an interesting connection: Dali and Harold Paris _____.

FLETCHER BENTON: But I was not a part of the Berkeley school either. I mean, I really. . . . The more I’m pushed into the corner about where I belong, the more I don’t know where I belong. I’m all of a sudden becoming very interested to find out myself, and I’m sure if I’m asked enough questions and talk long enough I’ll find a spot, but I’m sure somewhere else [other than the Bay Area].

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, there are two parts to this and, you know, being aware of individuals and their work in no way says that that’s equivalent to your position, or that you have to necessarily fit with Peter Voulkos or Jeremy Anderson [chuckles] or anybody. But one. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Jeremy. By the way, Jeremy Anderson: dynamite. I liked his work very much.

PAUL KARLSTROM: He was doing some interesting things at the time, I believe.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah, terrific. The wooden pieces.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And there was actually, if one expands the definition of sculpture, I think there was really a lot more going on around here. It seemed to be a mixing of sculpture and painting to a large degree.

FLETCHER BENTON: Um hmm, yeah. And found object and. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: Which may or may not have something to do with your work. I hope that we can talk about that a bit. But it does occur to me that at least it’s a possibility that Peter Voulkos showing up here had to set some kind of an example, or call attention to—what’s the term we can use?—the physicality of sculpture, the assertiveness, its occupying space. And, you know, my chronology of his work isn’t all that good, but at some point he started doing some rather large-scale pieces which. . . . Well, I don’t know; there had been Benny Bufano. I was going to say it hadn’t been done before in the Bay Area. That’s not true. There is some tradition of large-scale sculpture here. And what I am asking you, what I need to know, is did his [Voulkos’—Ed.] presence and his work in any way, as a model or an example, of the possibilities in sculpture, have any effect on you?

FLETCHER BENTON: I think that he was doing these things told all of us that if the desire is there, it can be done, because Pete did it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm. Like a, sort of like a role model, in a way.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah, exactly. Even today he affects me that way. He is such a powerful person. The best.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, what we’re trying to do here—and it’s necessarily a slow process, because you. . . . Because you—let’s face it—you admit, you’re not sure how you fit in. You’re curious to find out.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I’m certainly curious to find out. That’s what I’m doing here. And it’s not exactly a process of elimination, but it’s a groping, and what we do is turn first of all to the most obvious things—and we may get a response there, may not—but the most obvious figures or developments. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: But could I just say one thing, that you can pick up on later if you like?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sure.

FLETCHER BENTON: I think what San Francisco and Bay Area has done for me is give me the freedom and the opportunity to be whoever I am. And I know that sounds maybe like a trite little statement, but I truly mean that. I was sitting here thinking, what if I had not left Jackson, Ohio—which we’ll talk about—probably the biggest influence on me was in a back alley in Jackson, Ohio, to set a scene.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Good! Boy, now we [take] _____.

FLETCHER BENTON: But if I had left there and gone to, for instance, Louisville, Kentucky, or maybe to Cincinnati or to Columbus or to Dayton or some, something within the compass of my realm at that time, would it have challenged me? The Bay Area challenged me. The very fact there was so much going on and so much good art challenged me not to be so much a part of that, but to push me to be whatever I’m going to be. Good or bad, you know. I was very aggressive about making some kind of statement. And I believe very strongly that the more I did, the more I would find out who I was. So I’ve been very prolific, constantly trying to get enough in front of me so that I could make a judgment on myself. San Francisco allowed that to happen.

PAUL KARLSTROM: One of the things that I believe characterizes the Bay Area, perhaps almost uniquely, is an enormous capacity for experimentation—often failing, by the way, coming very short of the mark, but nonetheless this wide-open, imaginative environment. And I would suspect that this alone—and this is really following up on what you’re saying—but this alone would serve as an enormous general influence without the specific influence of any individual.

FLETCHER BENTON: You know, I’m smiling because it’s like one big Bay to Breakers situation, you know, really. [laughing]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, that’s an interesting analogy!

FLETCHER BENTON: Yeah, it really is.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You can’t say that any of the runners or costumes in the race necessarily specifically had an impact or influence on you. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: And they don’t really compete against each other; they’re just sort of stimulated by each other to, you know, to get some, to get to the end of the race. [still laughing]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah. That is an interesting analogy. And certainly the spirit of Bay to Breakers. . . . Which I suppose certainly to whoever’s listening to the tape, because they may not know that this is this giant [annual] race that’s become sort of like a gigantic city party, street party, with some serious racing [runners] but basically San Franciscans just doing wild things. And anyway, this analogy seems very appropriate, very apt because there can be an environmental influence on any individual that isn’t tied necessarily to the breakthrough or the discovery of the work of any individual, but each of those individuals is contributing to this ambience.

FLETCHER BENTON: Um hmm.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And, unless I misunderstand you, you’re acknowledging that this ambience is probably critical to you as a creative person.

FLETCHER BENTON: It wouldn’t have happened in Dayton, Ohio. And it wouldn’t have happened in Columbus, Ohio. And I’m not sure it would happen in Kansas City. [laughs]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, I think not. I mean, I hope what we’re agreeing [to] here is that this quality of imagination and experimentation and sort of free-wheeling, gutsy, try-everything approach, which is characteristic of this area, made for a very fertile environment for you.

FLETCHER BENTON: You know, there’s a lot of attention given to San Francisco through the poets.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm, that’s right.

FLETCHER BENTON: And through the musicians that came through. I mean, it wasn’t just the Art Institute.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But basically, we see now that you really don’t feel. . . . If I asked you how do you fit in to this situation in the Bay Area—and I think you basically answered it—you would say, “Well, really not at all.” There’s no individual with whom you identify. You certainly weren’t collaborating with anybody. You don’t feel directly influenced in an important way by any individual. And so there it is: how do you fit in? Well, comfortably but not specifically, in terms of direct influence. You don’t fit in.

FLETCHER BENTON: I think that’s fair.

PAUL KARLSTROM: [chuckles]

FLETCHER BENTON: If we have to measure art in decades, and decades and centuries, and artists by their locality, regional or otherwise, and by their influences, well, I don’t know where I am. I don’t believe in that, by the way.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And that’s all right, anyway. There is another idea California art—even beyond this Bay Area art. And I think. . . . I [almost] hesitate to bring this up, because I think it’s something that we’ll grapple with throughout the interview—and this is not an attempt to put a label on you; I’m not interested in that. But we all draw from various sources and in different proportions, and the fact is that you’re associated with, you reside in California, you’ve made a conscious choice. You have connections with Southern California as well. And there is this idea of California art. For you, what is that? Whether or not you see yourself as part of it.

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, I can answer that very well. I know if I was doing sculpture in New York, it would not be like it is here. Because the very physical part of getting a sheet of steel from the guy that sells it to my studio was—ground floor or otherwise—is a major, major job. And the fact that, you know, I would probably be working with small pieces of metal, which are drops and so forth that I picked up from some fabricating shop. I would probably have very limited welding equipment. I probably would be doing mostly pedestal pieces. If I did do a big piece, it could only be done when I got a commission and I could have Lippincott build it. Whereas here, I have the luxury of calling up and having a semi-truck pull up in front of my studio, we get that steel off, we bring it in the building, and we can take those flat sheets and make anything we want out of it. I don’t think that’s true in New York. In fact, I am dead sure it’s not true in New York. Serra probably takes his paper maquettes to a steel guy and says, “This is what I want,” you know. “Make it happen.” I know Tony Smith did that. Because Tony told me personally he did that. He had models, he took ‘em to Pace, Pace took ‘em to Lippincott, and Lippincott built ‘em, and that was it. In fact one show Tony said he didn’t even know what was going to be in the show, and I said, “Why is that?” and he said, “Well, I don’t know. I gave the models to the gallery. I don’t know which pieces they’ll put in the show.” He had no idea what was going to be in the show. Because his control was gone soon as he’d finished the paper model.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Um hmm.

FLETCHER BENTON: And if you look at his work, you can see there’s no accident in it. I mean, it has to be what it is. There’s no chance for chance. Whereas in my work as I’m doing it, I quite often change it. There’s a little bit of chance in every piece I do, a little bit of discovery, little bit of that stuff, you know, that’s fun. It goes beyond model making and paper work and, and/or that sort of thing. I think. . . . That’s what California’s given [me]. It’s given me the ability to do whatever I can afford to do here with no restriction—or little restrictions, or not as many restrictions—as New York or Chicago or some other place.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, what you’re talking about there, of course, is very practical, the physical side of it. You know, what the environment allows you to do, and also the economics involved. The [time] and space.

FLETCHER BENTON: But that sometimes determines the direction artists take indirectly.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right.

FLETCHER BENTON: You know, it molds them into different. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: And this certainly applies in the area of sculpture where you’re involved in, it involves heavy material, space, the business of moving things around, and working materials. And obviously that’s very important. But what about something a little more ambiguous and perhaps spiritual, and that is the idiom of the art of California? Is there something in the, in California art—whether it be sculpture or painting—the expression here, that might differ from elsewhere. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: There is.

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . that you would respond to.

FLETCHER BENTON: There is. In California you don’t have the pressure and the restrictions of conformity that you have in New York. We talked about it earlier.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay.

FLETCHER BENTON: It doesn’t exist here. It does exist in New York. That, there’s so many people there. There’s so much going on. There’s all the art magazines, the powerful art dealers are there, the museums, and everything else is there. Therefore the pressure is equally geared to that. You don’t have that in California.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you don’t feel though that there’s any theme or type of theme that runs through expression in California art? I realize it’s not all the same.

FLETCHER BENTON: Yes, I think there is.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That would distinguish it from art produced [out of] state.

FLETCHER BENTON: I think if you took ten New York artists—and I think you would agree—and ten California artists, and you mixed ‘em up in a show, you can tell exactly which was New York and which was California.

PAUL KARLSTROM: How would you tell that?

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, with me it’s sort of just a gut feeling. It’s like visual Braille. . . . There’s a freer [sensibility in California]. A lot of people say, “Well, the light is different out here; therefore the colors are paler.” Well, I don’t quite go along with that. I mean, it, maybe there’s more color here. [pauses, thinking] Interestingly enough, one might say California is a casual place; therefore the art should be more casual. I disagree with that. I think the art is infinitely more formal in California than casual. You think about that. It’s a very interesting statement for you to think about. Ed Ruscha, typical example of what we were talking about earlier. If you look at his work, it’s highly formal.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yeah, that’s right.

FLETCHER BENTON: Billy Al Bengston, very formal. Chuck Arnoldi. If you really look hard, it’s very formal.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I agree, but of course you realize. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Now, in New York, it’s less formal.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I think I would agree, but it’s interesting that the examples you cite are all Los Angeles artists. . . .

FLETCHER BENTON: Well, that’s. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . and I wonder if you would say the same thing about the Bay Area.

FLETCHER BENTON: No, I would not. I’m. . . .

PAUL KARLSTROM: I think that’s interesting.

FLETCHER BENTON: I wasn’t even aware of.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I think it’s interesting, and I think it’s extremely revealing, because I would venture. . . . I would ask you, straight out right now, do you feel more of a rapport with the expressio