Transcript
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Esther Robles and Robert Robles on August 24 and August 31, 1981. The interview took place in Los Angeles, California, and was conducted by Ruth Bowman for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The original transcript was edited. In 2024 the Archives retranscribed the original audio and attempted to create a verbatim transcript. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Additional information from the original transcript has been added in brackets and given an –Ed. attribution. Additional information from Esther Robles has been added in brackets and given an –ER attribution.
Interview
[00:00:07.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, here we are, and I believe that it's August 24, 1981, and I'm in the lanai of the house on San Vicente of Esther Robles and her husband—
[00:00:20.80]
ROBERT ROBLES: —Robert.
[00:00:21.39]
RUTH BOWMAN: —Robert, not Bob, but Robert. Okay. And we're sitting, conversing about the history of your gallery. What made you decide to go into the gallery business?
[00:00:33.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, there was no other way for me to go. I had a background surrounded by art. My mother was a professor of art. In fact, she established the first art department at Cotner University, which later became the Nebraska—the big university of the Middle West.
[00:00:57.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: University of Nebraska?
[00:00:59.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:01:00.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what was it called before?
[00:01:00.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was called Cotner University. I checked this with Norman Geske, and he said, yes, that's correct. And so my mother gave me a thorough training in arts and crafts, and china painting, and drawing, and design, and art history, the whole kit and caboodle. In fact, she gave me so much that when I was going to school, I didn't care too much about it, but I started making paper and started making things. And that seemed to be a little bit interesting, so I thought I would design. So I did a lot of designing. First, my gallery was a shop where I had maybe about eight people working for me. This was before Phyllis, before my husband. I called it Esther's Alley Gallery. [I was the owner of a successful business before Robert. –Ed.]
[00:01:54.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: Alley Gallery?
[00:01:55.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was in the back. [Laughs.] [I wanted people to think "back," not street. And so it was tables. It was brochures. Finally, it happened that I specialized in frames [and modern design –Ed.]. I felt that art was thin, so I was designing thin frames for a thin age. [Laughs.] There wasn't too exciting happening for me until this wonderful thing, Abstract Expressionism, came into being. And I noticed more and more of that work, and I saw more and more shows. And I was really excited about it.
[00:02:32.97]
RUTH BOWMAN: And this was during World War II or after or—
[00:02:35.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was after World War II, after World War II. And then I decided to open a gallery. The first show was showing the work of celebrities' children, and some of—Fanny Brice gave the prizes for the show, and that became a feature for about three years.
[00:03:00.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was because Fanny Brice's son was a painter?
[00:03:03.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he had nothing to do with it. He was just a little boy, and he was a very bad painter. [Laughs.] I didn't think he was too talented. Fanny asked me about it. But he worked. He worked doggedly. And I never did show Billy my gallery, but I always admired him and admired the way he was learning how to draw with Howard Bradshaw and with Rico Lebrun. He was really applying himself.
[00:03:30.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you ever show Rico Lebrun?
[00:03:32.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I've had his work. I've sold his work, but I didn't show him.
[00:03:38.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: But basically, your gallery was a transition from a design gallery—
[00:03:45.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:03:45.75]
RUTH BOWMAN: —or a design shop and a craft shop to an art gallery. When exactly—
[00:03:50.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was an art gallery, and that was in 1947, when I married my husband. And he felt that was an awfully good idea. I said, "All right, you take charge of the design shop, and I'll move to the gallery." So I—
[00:04:03.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: But prior to that, you were in the Carthay Circle as a book and gift shop.
[00:04:09.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, that was a long time—yes, I did have exhibitions. That was a long time—
[00:04:13.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where's Carthay Circle?
[00:04:14.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: Now, you see? You can't even talk about certain things like that. That was the major, most avant-garde theater where they held the premieres of the big, big roadshow movies. And Abe Lyman had his orchestra there. I think they had about a 40-piece orchestra there. And in the alley, I had my gallery, and my mother thought that was an interesting idea. I was pretty active, and I was doing a lot of things. She thought that might ground me a little bit. [Laughs.] So it was called Luester.
[00:04:57.76]
RUTH BOWMAN: Luester.
[00:04:58.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:04:59.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: I see.
[00:04:59.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: Her mother's name was Lucy, and Esther—she just put them together, and I thought that was fine.
[00:05:03.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I thought it was some variation on the word "west."
[00:05:07.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: And she designed some custom furniture. It was very beautiful. I think we called it "frozen music." It was very advanced for that time. It was Art Nouveau.
[00:05:16.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: You and your mother came to California?
[00:05:19.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, my mother came to California when she was a young woman, and she married my father, Dr. [Lloyd –Ed.] Waggoner [after the graduated from the University of Nebraska –Ed.]. My mother started the first PTA in the Middle West, the first PTA in Nebraska, with my aunt, Alta. The two of them did that together. And then we moved to San Diego, and my mother established the PTA in San Diego in a solo [endeavor –Ed.].
[00:05:52.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: So it was natural for you to work with her when you first got started?
[00:05:57.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, it was a very natural kind of thing. We were very close in the artistic endeavors, and she was a very hard taskmaster. It was never a thing about "wonderful little Esther," anything like that. I really had to work hard, and I had to come up to certain standards, which was fine.
[00:06:19.04]
RUTH BOWMAN: And when you married your husband, was he involved in the art world at that time?
[00:06:23.76]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he was not involved in the art world at all. He was simply in love with me, and I was in love with him. And he was a wonderful companion. [Laughs.]
[00:06:34.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: And he liked what you were doing?
[00:06:36.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: He loved what I was doing, and I loved him. So he thought it would be a wonderful idea to take the craft over and give me full freedom for the gallery. He's never interfered with any of my choices in the gallery whatsoever. He's done everything he could to be as helpful as possible. And believe me, he's been very helpful. [Laughs.] He hasn't wanted that part of it because—
[00:07:04.88]
RUTH BOWMAN: When you and he saw the work of the Abstract Expressionists that you wanted to shift gears for, where did you see all this?
[00:07:13.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: Coming through my gallery, coming through my shop. And he had nothing to do with shifting gears. I want this to be very clear because I am the gallery. [Laughs.]
[00:07:24.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: You were the gallery, and you saw the work of which artists?
[00:07:29.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, everyone. All of a sudden, it was just a blossoming of—
[00:07:36.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: You looked at works by—
[00:07:36.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Abstract Expressionism. I looked at works of everyone who came to the gallery who was painting, like Sunday painters. One of my shows was about Sunday painters and what they were doing.
[00:07:49.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you were you were in love with the style.
[00:07:51.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: I loved the style. I loved the style. I loved the color, and I loved the freedom. And so immediately after those shows, I started doing—let's see now—the children's show. And then I did a woodblock show of Paul Landacre, Stanley William Hayter, and Bradford and Graydon Livingston, who was a prize-winner there. And then my first gallery director was Martin Friedman. I think I told you that.
[00:08:32.03]
RUTH BOWMAN: Now, Martin Friedman was married then, or was he—
[00:08:37.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he wasn't married. He wasn't married. He was a student. Because I felt that I was too busy to do the work of the gallery, I wanted somebody who was really very bright, knew art history and so forth, and had recently been in school. And I called the school, UCLA, and I said, "Who is your brightest man taking his master's?" And they said, well, Martin Friedman was the brightest. And did he need a job? He did need a job. And so we had an interview, and he was the first gallery director. So right away I had the advantage of his knowledge, and it was extensive. And he was also painting. I have one of his paintings now.
[00:09:25.93]
RUTH BOWMAN: Martin Friedman, the Director of the Walker, was a painter?
[00:09:29.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: He painted, yes. [Laughs.] He will not admit to any of this, but it's all true.
[00:09:35.16]
RUTH BOWMAN: And how long did he work for you?
[00:09:37.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: He worked for me for about a year and a half, two years, and everybody in town at these shows wondered why I had just prize-winners. But Martin and I always saw eye to eye. We never had one disagreement. I just loved his choices, and he liked what I knew about art. He felt I was the only one in town who knew anything about art.
[00:10:00.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: This was installation that you agreed on as well as taste in works of art.
[00:10:05.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:10:05.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: When you put a show up, you did it together?
[00:10:08.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:10:11.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: You also had Martin do a series of classes at night.
[00:10:15.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. I did a lot with decorators, and I felt they were lovely people. They knew about furniture, and they dressed beautifully. But they didn't know anything about art or the reason for art at all, and I thought it would be a good idea for them to learn something about it. So I had classes for decorators, and Marty gave the lectures at a dollar a head. And it was not popular with the decorators because they thought I was nothing but an upstart to try to teach them anything. But anyway, Martin was absolutely terrific, the way he didn't care whether we had two or three people. He went right on with his lectures, and he gave just repeats of the lectures he'd had at UCLA.
[00:11:03.12]
And then also we had—Kenneth Ross [Director of the LA Municipal Gallery –Ed.] gave us lectures in the gallery, and Arthur Millier [art critic of the Los Angeles Times –Ed.] and Lorser Feitelson [with his wife, Helen Lundeberg, the leading painters of the area –Ed.]. And then we gave a show for the board of directors of the California Watercolor Society, Vanessa Helder and Douglas Parshall and Art Landy and William Wallet and Julie Pavlovsky. Then we had a big show of Paul Landacre, beautiful woodblocks. Have you seen those woodblocks of Landacre? They are amazing. Jake Zeitlin [the famous LA book dealer –Ed.] is representing the estate, and you can see them there. He was one of the really good print people.
[00:11:46.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: And this was in '47? All of this was—
[00:11:48.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: '48.
[00:11:48.76]
RUTH BOWMAN: '48.
[00:11:49.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: '48, yeah. This is sort of blending in '47 to '48.
[00:11:53.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: And where was it, your—where exactly was your gallery then?
[00:11:57.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: 665 North La Cienega, and I was there for 35 years, I guess. Werner Drewes, Brooks Willis, Sascha Brastoff.
[00:12:15.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Werner Drewes doing abstract geometric abstraction?
[00:12:19.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I wish I had some of those things now.
[00:12:22.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was a member of the American Abstract Artists. Were there any other members? Or were you aware—
[00:12:26.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: I wasn't aware of that. I wasn't aware of it. But anyway, that was an excellent show, the whole thing. The only weak part was Sascha Brastoff, but he hadn't gotten so decorative at that point. His work was a little bit better. He was doing carvings. And then I did the Artists Equity Benefit Exhibition—Emil Kosa, Loren Barton. And then I did old prints, 16th through 19th century. And one of the critics said it was the most complete show ever assembled in Los Angeles—300 years, Holbein, Salvator Rosa, Dürer, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Cruikshank, Rowlandson, Stubbs, Audubon.
[00:13:12.47]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where did you get them all?
[00:13:14.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, I got them from England, and I had some.
[00:13:19.01]
RUTH BOWMAN: What made you travel? [Cross talk.]
[00:13:19.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'd been collecting prints for a good many years. In fact, I think I have some of those prints. But I sold them back to England. I didn't sell them in town. I don't think I sold anything.
[00:13:29.54]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, interesting, many of the big shows you had you sold back to the people you bought them from originally at a profit.
[00:13:37.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. And another thing—I liked paper very much. My training in that was from the paper to the techniques and to the prints, and so I had learned how to judge old paper, which stood me in very good stead when it came to working with the antique prints.
[00:13:57.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: What caused you to be interested? Did you make paper?
[00:14:01.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: I made paper when I was in my teens. I was interested in paper. But I liked paper before that. I still like paper. I like the paper in old books. It doesn't have to have anything on it. [I enjoy paper for its own quality –Ed.]
[00:14:11.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: And you look at paper, and you study it. And you can date it, and you look at watermarks. And you know the difference between laid, and felted and all that?
[00:14:22.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. And I just sort of learned it by osmosis, really. I took—what was the name of that man I took from who was one of the great men on etchings in town? I have a book that he wrote for the English school. [Whitman's Print Collector's Handbook –Ed.]
[00:14:37.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: Stanley William Hayter?
[00:14:38.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not Hayter. No, before that. They were from the—oh, about the 15th century to the English people and the sporting prints—English sporting prints, the whole thing, the whole English school, the whole French school, the whole German school. [As well as engravers, Dutch etchers, 17th century, Albrecht Dürer –Ed.] I have a library of that. Well, anyway, these are things people didn't know about at the time. [Laughs.]
[00:15:06.66]
ROBERT ROBLES: When you did the Artist Equity benefit show, Hudson Walker wrote you a beautiful letter thanking you for donating all the sales and funds from the show.
[00:15:16.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was nice. We've had very nice recognition along the way.
[00:15:20.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was your gallery economic in the beginning?
[00:15:24.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: People always said that Esther was successful, and that's why the galleries came to La Cienega. Because I did good business, and they wanted to do good business, too. And I knew everybody in town, and I sold to about everybody in town. And they were pleased with what they bought because I knew what I was about.
[00:15:44.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: You mean the big collectors to La Cienega instead of New York that early?
[00:15:48.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:15:51.90]
ROBERT ROBLES: See, Esther's building was right across from the Turnabout Theatre at that time on La Cienega near Melrose. And she had the back end of this building, and she built an apartment at the end of the building. And so she lived in the building and opened the Alley Gallery in the back because she didn't have any front entrance. So she put an awning over the driveway, and she made sort of a circus kind of thing and put a—
[00:16:19.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was like a Turnabout across the street from the Turnabout.
[00:16:22.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: And she put a gate across the driveway, and so you had to walk through the gate into Esther's Alley Gallery.
[00:16:30.30]
ESTHER ROBLES: And this is where I brought my little son up. The reason I did that is that I used to drive home, and I always had someone, a nurse, to take care of him. And they were not always around or not always satisfactory, so I said, well, this must stop. And so this is when I did that—before I met Bob, this is when I decided that I would have to be all together. So I always had a maid that I could watch. And I didn't learn how to cook until after I married Bob, and he taught me. [Laughs.]
[00:17:00.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: That same area called the Alley Gallery later became a Rolf Nelson Gallery. Then later it became a Mizuno Gallery. No, Gallery 669, and Mizuno, and Eugenie Butler. And now it's called Roseman Felsen Gallery, that identical room.
[00:17:21.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: So it's a real historical spot.
[00:17:23.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's very famous. It's a very historical spot.
[00:17:25.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: And when did you move from there? Right away, in '47?
[00:17:28.93]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no, I just kept enlarging.
[00:17:31.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I see, moving forward.
[00:17:32.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: I kept moving up. I kept moving up, and I took the back of the building in the back. It was very successful. Lady Mendl said, "If you want to meet the important people in town, you just come to Esther's." We sort of held little salons in our gallery studio.
[00:17:45.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: So these were not just movie star and movie producer collectors?
[00:17:49.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no. It was an international group of people, [an artistic and intellectual group –Ed.].
[00:17:53.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: I always had the feeling that in Los Angeles a lot of people bought their art in New York.
[00:17:59.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, that's what the Los Angeles people said if they bought from me. They said they bought it in Europe, or they bought it in New York, because it wasn't fashionable to buy art in Los Angeles.
[00:18:12.64]
RUTH BOWMAN: But you carried a full range of historical art. You carried old prints. You carried Abstract Expressionism. You still haven't given me the names of the artists that were Abstract Expressionists. Were they New York artists or local ones?
[00:18:28.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, you see, I'm sort of going—one of the things that I did was, Anais Nin [and her poetry –Ed.] I gave her about three weeks, and [displayed –Ed.] the etchings of Hugo, [illustrating her writing –Ed.]
[00:18:44.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: John Hugo?
[00:18:45.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. This was the work that they did in the garage. They put those books together in the garage, and we got sort of the intellectual group of people coming in because of that.
[00:18:56.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was he the grandson of Victor Hugo?
[00:18:59.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know what that was, but I do know that Anais Nin—"Ana-ees Nih-n" is the way she said it—was the major person. Hugo was just there to help her in any way he possibly could, and I thought he did delightful etchings. And then we had—I took a lot of the prints of Lynton Kistler. Have you heard of him? He was the big print man in Los Angeles. And this was before Clinton Adams was even interested in prints. And Jean Charlot was the big print man.
[00:19:46.71]
But anyway, I did a list of artists. I did a show of Clinton Adams and Charlot and Feitelson, Jan Stussy, and Hans Burckhardt. That was 1948. And then I did a show of Vanessa Helder. I did several shows of Vanessa Helder, who showed with the old Macbeth Gallery in New York for a number of years, and then a Myron Nutting retrospective, who—he had portraits of James Joyce, Vedder, and he was in the 1913 Armory Show.
[00:20:29.95]
And then I did women in art, first time women had ever been featured, Andrée Golbin, Jane Krike, Jane Ullman, Adelaide Fogg. Now, you know Adelaide Fogg for what she does. She was one of the major people [in LA –Ed.] at that time. [She was a symbolist and was a remarkable teacher of children –Ed.] And their work was getting, at this time—it wasn't Abstract Expressionism, but it was getting to be surreal.
[00:20:54.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, Jane's sculpture is sort of Arp-like. It is still amorphic.
[00:20:58.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Arp-like, yeah. And then J.J. McVicker from Oklahoma is marvelous print man. Did you know him?
[00:21:05.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: I know who he is.
[00:21:06.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, and Ebba Rapp of Seattle did that show [a solo exhibition –Ed.]. And then Robert Daley and Graydon Livingstone, 1949. Graydon Livingston won one of the national prizes. Do you remember what that competition was, Graydon Livingston? And then at this time, I took the children's show to Palm Springs, to the Desert Art Center, and I lectured on children's art and Adelaide Fogg lectures on children's art.
And she looked at me, and she said, I didn't know you knew anything about children's art. [Laughs.] [I've always been interested in the art of children, at what age they lose their creativity, etc. –Ed.] Well, anyway, and then there were women working. There was the National League of Pen Women, and they had a lot of painters in that group. It was a national organization. And I gave them an exhibition, and my mother was among the people who were in my exhibit.
[00:22:05.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: What was your mother's name?
[00:22:07.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: Lucy Cone Waggoner. And then I gave Adelaide Fogg a show in April—
[00:22:16.47]
RUTH BOWMAN: This is 1949?
[00:22:17.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: —and Solomon, Joe Solomon from New York, and James Pinto.
[00:22:23.16]
RUTH BOWMAN: Pinto from the Barnes Foundation?
[00:22:25.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: Pinto, San Miguel de Allende. And he was quite prominent here, but I don't think he was as a part of the Barnes Foundation. He had a wife who did beautiful weavings. I hadn't heard of them.
[00:22:43.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: There were them there were three or four Pinto brothers, and Albert Barnes was the patron of some of them. But the first name is not familiar to me, so I just wondered.
[00:22:58.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then in 1949, I moved to the small street gallery. That's where Abe Adler is now.
[00:23:09.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what's that address?
[00:23:11.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: That is the real 665 La Cienega. [Laughs.]
[00:23:17.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: The real?
[00:23:17.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: The real. But I always used 665 for the whole thing [both galleries –Ed.].
[00:23:23.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was an indoor-outdoor gallery because the front room was disconnected from the back of the building, so people had to walk in the front door and then out into the alley, and then back down into the original Alley Gallery. So it was an awkward thing in one way, but it was beautiful because the people loved going indoors and outdoors and indoors again.
[00:23:48.76]
RUTH BOWMAN: California living.
[00:23:50.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think this name is wrong. I think that was Fritz Feiss who did those beautiful encaustics. [To Bob] Let's change it now.
[00:23:59.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: We're still assembling a lot of this.
[00:24:01.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: What you're doing is the outline of a book, and what I'm doing is asking you questions about the general outline of the book. [Laughs.]
[00:24:10.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: I guess so. Anyway, J.J. McVicker had a show, and Adelaide Fogg, another one, 1950. Now we come into the Abstract Expressionists. But these people were not well-known. Adelaide Fogg, Charles Gresham, Engelberg, Robert Tyler Lee—he's now the head of CBS Art Department. He lives in Greece now. Charles Gresham was an interesting painter, and he dealt in found objects. It a little bit like Schwitters, a little Abstract Expressionist, [a bit surreal –Ed.]. And I put him in the all-city show, which is like this show in Barnsdall Park, and he was the first-prize winner. I also put Emil Bisttram in the show.
[00:25:04.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Bisttram?
[00:25:05.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Emil Bisttram of Taos. He was the one of the founders of dynamic symmetry, one of the big [painters –Ed.] at Taos, that community. But anyway, the two of them were given the first prize. The prize was split. And then I [exhibited the Fellows from –Ed.] the Huntington Hartford Foundation. I was doing things for organizations. We didn't have too many galleries, and there weren't too many people doing anything. I felt quite a responsibility. If I saw talented people, I would want to show them, and I would do it to help out the foundations. I didn't make any money at it [nor did I ask –Ed.].
[00:25:45.31]
RUTH BOWMAN: The money came from sale and resale in your own gallery, and everything else you did as a philanthropist?
[00:25:51.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, a lot of it, I did. Sarah Millier, the wife of Arthur Millier, did the publicity for it. And I showed all of those major—then I did a "History of Framing" exhibition at the "Old City" show. It started with the caveman drawings, and they put a little thing around what they did with the bison or whatever it was.
[00:26:21.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you do catalogs at this point?
[00:26:22.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did [many catalogs during the years. –Ed.] I can show you the catalogs.
[00:26:26.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, all this information is down on paper as a result of all the brochures, catalogs, mailers that we have records of. In fact, that's part—
[00:26:37.15]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you have the exact dates of all these exhibitions, but the question is, beyond that, do you have the reviews? You have clippings from—
[00:26:46.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, I've saved the clippings. I gave them all to Bob, and he's organized them. And then I had this Mexican artist, Horacio, who did the wide-eyed children. We went to Mexico, and I bought the whole series of them and gave them a show. Those things, I think I paid $25 each for them, and now they're worth $6,000 each on the market.
[00:27:08.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: People really must still love them.
[00:27:10.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: They adore them.
[00:27:11.51]
RUTH BOWMAN: I see them all over the place.
[00:27:13.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: And you see the copies and copiers, and the copiers.
[00:27:15.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: And the adaptations. Less adorable.
[00:27:16.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. We still have two of them. And then one of the local people, Richard Klopfer, who worked in our gallery—we gave him a show, and it was pretty good. And then I did a show for Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. And this is for celebrities, Bette Davis and a lot of film celebrities.
[00:27:44.73]
RUTH BOWMAN: And they did their own work?
[00:27:46.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Miles White did the designs, the costume designs for Cecil B. DeMille. [He was a really skillful and gifted artist. –Ed.] And it was really very good. I showed that. I showed the Huntington Hartford Foundation in 1952, and then I changed the name [from] Esther's Alley Gallery to the Esther-Robles Gallery. And then Bob was more active helping me in the gallery, and I got a supervisor to do the craft things. That was 1952. Then I showed a group show of the original Lautrec, beautiful, beautiful drawings, Chagall, Archipenko, Lurcet, Ernst, and Hayter. It was a lovely show. And Ebria Feinblatt came in, wanted to know who advised me, and I said, "Well, no one." [Laughs.] I chose it for myself."
[00:28:37.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you see her, Ebria?
[00:28:39.69]
ESTHER ROBLES: I see her once in a while. She was not a great friend of mine. I was an upstart, you know, in Los Angeles. I wasn't supposed to do what I did. [Laughs.]
[00:28:53.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: You went to college.
[00:28:55.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:28:55.70]
RUTH BOWMAN: But you didn't have a master's degree or a Ph.D.
[00:28:57.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: I didn't have a master's degree or a Ph.D. No.
[00:29:00.63]
RUTH BOWMAN: And your credentials came from the world of commerce, which is very scary.
[00:29:04.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, it is scary. And then I'd also studied in Europe [at the University of Paris –Ed.], and I'd studied art monuments. [I had two years of art history at UCLA and averaged a B-plus. –Ed.] And they wouldn't talk art to me. Nobody would talk art to me.
[00:29:17.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: You think they were afraid of you? Or they didn't trust you?
[00:29:20.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think they thought I couldn't possibly know anything about art because I'd had a craft shop, and because I showed everything, I was interested in everything. I hadn't made up my mind what direction I liked in art, but I liked what people did. I was very interested [in individual expression –Ed.]. [Laughs.] I liked the creative impulse very much. Then I showed a Longstreet, the writer, and Elise Cavanna.
[00:29:49.73]
RUTH BOWMAN: Stephen Longstreet?
[00:29:50.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:29:52.19]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was a collector, too, wasn't he?
[00:29:53.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he collected [idea art, the working of art through the mind. –Ed.]
[00:29:55.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: And his brother was a bigger collector, George.
[00:29:56.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he collected Daumier [en masse –Ed.]
[00:29:58.50]
RUTH BOWMAN: Ah, yes, George Longstreet. Yeah. That was a collection that was shown in the county museum recently.
[00:30:04.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes. And then Elise Cavanna was the first major Abstract Expressionist in our area. I have one painting of hers.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6415_m]
[00:00:02.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: June Wayne has a work of—
[00:00:05.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: June Wayne would like to see Elise Cavanna eulogized, but she is not because of the silly kind of feud between Lorser Feitelson. And at least, he just felt that her name wasn't admirable.
[00:00:27.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: This was the show that you did in 1954 called "Functionist West."
[00:00:31.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did it the first show, "Functionist West."
[00:00:34.01]
ROBERT ROBLES: There were four artists, Elise Cavanna, Lorser Feitelson, Stephen Longstreet, and Helen Lundeberg. And they put themselves into a label as "Functionist West." And they advertised in ARTNews, Art in America, and they thought they could—
[00:00:47.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was before hard-edge.
[00:00:48.67]
ROBERT ROBLES: They thought they could do it, the thing, through advertising on the—from the West Coast, and make themselves international. But Feitelson, and Cavanna, and they all sort of didn't get along with each other.
[00:01:01.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, the thing that happened is that when Grace Morley [Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art –Ed.] came to town to see me, she wanted to see what I was doing and she'd heard things about the shows that I was doing.
[00:01:12.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: Grace was then the director of the museum in San Francisco?
[00:01:14.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, she was. Did you know her degree was in lacemaking?
[00:01:18.73]
RUTH BOWMAN: I knew that she had a strong bent toward the crafts, but I didn't know where it came from.
[00:01:24.71]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, she tried to keep that a secret. [They laugh.] But she'd admit it now.
[00:01:30.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: So she came to see you to—
[00:01:31.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: And she came to see me. And this is when she was doing the shows in South America. It was an exchange show in Sao Paulo.
[00:01:39.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: For the federal government.
[00:01:40.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: In Sao Paulo.
[00:01:41.31]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes.
[00:01:42.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: And she took Elise. And I don't think she took Lorser. And I don't think she took Helen. And Lorser felt that we were all his deadly enemies, I think, because of that. And it was too bad, because they were great—there was a whole group. They were great friends, and they just cut them all off.
[00:02:04.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, at that time, Lorser was not doing his really hard-edge. He was getting into it.
[00:02:11.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was doing what he called "kinetic news" at that time.
[00:02:15.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: They had done something that came out of Surrealism before that, classical something?
[00:02:21.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:02:24.86]
RUTH BOWMAN: And so Grace Morley kicked off the split?
[00:02:29.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yep.
[00:02:29.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: In effect?
[00:02:30.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, she didn't know it. I don't think she's ever realized that.
[00:02:34.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what has happened to Elise's art? Where is it?
[00:02:38.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, Elise died, and her husband died. Her husband had remarried, and he gave the work to [the University of Southern California –Ed.] with money because she had money. But the widow said that she had to have the money, and she had to have the paintings. She didn't want it to go to USC. And I think she has them all in her home. And I think she'd be a very good one to contact to—
[00:03:01.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: What's her name?
[00:03:02.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: Her name is—
[00:03:04.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: Jane Welton.
[00:03:04.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Jane Cortland Welton.
[00:03:07.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: Welton. Elise Cavanna was married to Jimmy Welton, who was a musician. And they formed a small record company, and they were quite well-to-do. Before that, Elise Cavanna was married to this writer. What was his name?
[00:03:28.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, Merle.
[00:03:29.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: Merle Armitage.
[00:03:30.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: Merle Armitage.
[00:03:32.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, so it's quite a large circle of people who have some vested interest in this art?
[00:03:38.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:03:39.21]
ROBERT ROBLES: And there are a lot of Elise Cavanna paintings that were left, and they have all—we know they've been all recorded and photographed, but we don't—and we think they're all in storage.
[00:03:50.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Uh-huh [affirmative]. And nobody, no scholar, has chosen to do anything?
[00:03:53.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: No one. In fact, I tried to persuade Jimmy to do it, and he went as far as to take photographs. And Betje and Bruce Hall—Betje Hall is one of the reviewers in town. And she was going to try to do the history and so forth, but that was all stopped. There wasn't money enough for it. This woman he married is not as interested in art as she is in music and money. [Laughs.]
[00:04:19.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, but if someone came to her with a proposal to do an exhibition—
[00:04:22.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, she'd love it. [She would then become a patron of the arts. –Ed.]
[00:04:23.99]
RUTH BOWMAN: I would think so.
[00:04:24.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: She'd love it.
[00:04:25.36]
RUTH BOWMAN: It would lead to money.
[00:04:27.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Sure, it would.
[00:04:28.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you like Elise Cavanna's work?
[00:04:30.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: I liked it at the time. I still like it. I've got a little painting that you can look at. She was very original. She was one of the originals. She was one of the [original non-objective –Ed.] space cadets, really, and she was a —Jules Langsner liked her very much. And I thought she was one of the most talented people in town.
[00:04:51.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: And a beautiful, outspoken person—really, right on. Unique, a unique person. You were captivated by her. She was very forthright in her language.
[00:05:02.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: So no wonder June liked her.
[00:05:04.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes. And then Orel Zell Tucker did the most exquisite drawings. I think we've got a few of them, gave him a show. And William Pajaud was a Black man, and absolutely exquisite work. And I gave him several shows.
[00:05:29.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: How do you spell his name?
[00:05:30.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: P-A-J-A-U-D. And I—what are you doing?
[00:05:40.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: What do you mean?
[00:05:44.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: I probably skipped a page.
[00:05:45.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: You did. You skipped your first showing of Emil Bisttram and his show.
[00:05:51.76]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Joseph Cotton, and his circus clowns, and the Kachina dolls, all those wonderful Kachinas, who were the clowns of the Indians. That was a great show. And then I have the "Functionist West," 1954—Cavanna, Feitelson, Longstreet, Lundeberg. And then Roland Strasser was a show that came in between them. He did [the Tibetan landscape—people, beasts of burden –Ed.]. And he did marvelous scenes of Mongolia.
[00:06:19.17]
And then a three-man show. Jack Horton was a great sculptor, and he was a little bit like Arp. And I don't know what happened to him. And then Charles Gresham, the prize-winner, and Orel Zell Tucker paintings. And then it was Joseph Cotton's Circus, and the Kachina dolls, and the clowns of Indian lore.
[00:06:39.21]
Then I did an Impressionist show. Johannes Schiefer was international, very nice Impressionist. And he's in a number of collections here. I don't know what happened to him. And then I did John Raymond, who was a local sculptor, quite well known. He did most of the ecclesiastical sculptures in our churches up and down the Coast. Great, handsome wood pieces. He's dead now. And Saito, the—
[00:07:10.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: S-A-I-T-O?
[00:07:11.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:07:11.61]
RUTH BOWMAN: Saito, yes.
[00:07:13.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Saito, the Japanese artist. [Very famous in Japan –Ed.]
[00:07:15.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: Abstract?
[00:07:16.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: Abstract, yes.
[00:07:17.75]
ROBERT ROBLES: Woodblocks.
[00:07:17.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Woodblocks.
[00:07:19.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: Marvelous.
[00:07:19.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: Beautiful things that show.
[00:07:21.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was a major show. It was a good show. [It was well-reviewed, and many bought his work –Ed.]
[00:07:23.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: Now, all this time, you were running the gallery with various assistants. You were advertising in local and national publications.
[00:07:34.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:07:36.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: You were contacting and developing collections for collectors?
[00:07:40.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:07:41.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: So that you were very, very busy. Did you have time to travel during this period in the '50s?
[00:07:46.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, I took time.
[00:07:48.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah? And you and your husband went abroad?
[00:07:51.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: We didn't go together. I went alone.
[00:07:52.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther went first in 1954.
[00:07:53.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:07:57.19]
RUTH BOWMAN: And did you make liaisons with other dealers abroad? Or did you—
[00:08:01.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: I worked directly with the artists. I worked with very few dealers. I worked very much. I thought of myself as being very alone. And I was living off my own fat, I thought, in this time. And I just did the things I wanted to do. I know that's not—that's frowned on now. You should be advised. [I worked from a gut instinct. –Ed.]
[00:08:24.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, no, the thing that is coming out in this outline of your early years, anyway, is that the point of view was that you didn't have an artistic point of view other than everything that you liked.
[00:08:39.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's it. That's it.
[00:08:40.66]
RUTH BOWMAN: And to have Joseph Cotton's Circus, and big-eyed Mexican children, and Lorser Feitelson happening at the same time must have been confusing to the people who had a single taste.
[00:08:55.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: I was the only one who wasn't confused. [They laugh.] [I was a complex person, changing. The world around me was changing rapidly. None of us were on a one-diet regime. –Ed.]
[00:08:58.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's true.
[00:08:59.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, this is a very interesting point of view because it's very hard for people to perceive, as I'm reading what you say, what to expect from you and, therefore, how to judge the decisions that you made. You forced people to think a lot.
[00:09:19.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, because I was growing. I was thinking. And when they look at me, that I didn't know anything about art, and I should leave town, and so forth, I said, look at my sign. It's a circus. I maintain a three-ring circus here. It's everything that we're hungry for, because we haven't had the international shows. I'm going to show as much as I can of what's actually happening today.
[00:09:41.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: It wasn't that expensive then to ship all the way to Los Angeles?
[00:09:46.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was very expensive for me, but I did it. I did without many things so that I could do the shows. And Bob was willing to sacrifice, too.
[00:10:03.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this Joseph Cotton's Circus, he had a lot of rare posters, European posters, that were just absolutely beautiful and large, like Lautrec posters. And he had unusual, rare coin toys. He used a coin, and that the hand would come up, you put the coin in the mouth and—
[00:10:24.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: So this was Joseph Cotton's collection.
[00:10:26.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, his collection.
[00:10:26.80]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was his collection, which he finally had too much of. And so he said to "Esther, would you sell my collection for me?" And she said yes.
[00:10:33.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: I see.
[00:10:33.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it was indoor-outdoor. It was fantastic. We put all the posters in the alley on the sides of the buildings way up high. So there must have been 30 or 40 posters all the way down the alley on both sides of the buildings outside. And then inside in the front room was this fantastic collection of beautifully built circus wagons. It contained the tent in one wagon. And the next wagon were all the poles.
[00:11:02.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was the Lipman collection.
[00:11:03.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was—
[00:11:05.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: It wasn't the Cotton—
[00:11:06.14]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was part of it, wasn't it?
[00:11:07.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: —part of it.
[00:11:09.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you sold all these to other people in Hollywood and—
[00:11:13.04]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not Hollywood. They didn't buy too much. I sold the Circus collection in San Francisco to the Sutro Baths. Why I sold it there, I don't know. [Jules Stein also collected beautiful, hand-crafted models, but he wouldn't meet my price. –Ed.]
[00:11:30.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: So this was in 1954. And then in the same year, Esther got in contact with Emil Bisttram.
[00:11:36.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: Emil Bisttram, I showed him. And the dynamic symmetry, how that happened, he was a luminary of Taos. I advertised it that way. And then I put him in a group show with Elise. He liked Elise very much and admired her very much. Then we go to Clifford Nelson. Oh, I did a show from Europe too, Fred Jessup, whose show is in town now, and Jean Jansem. That's when I went to Europe.
[00:12:09.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, Jansem.
[00:12:10.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:12:10.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:11.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, and I sold that to a number of Hollywood people. And Fred Jessup shows in town. His things are quite expensive now. I have some of his early things. They were interesting. He did—they're almost like monotypes. He did them on glass. He painted on glass, and then he did a print. And it would be one of a kind, quite beautiful. And I don't know if he's doing the monotypes anymore or not.
[00:12:45.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: No.
[00:12:45.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think he's doing oils, but I have those early monotypes. Then Clifford Nelson started the design show at the Pasadena Museum. He was doing—it was constructivist, beautiful things. Do you think Jane Ullman [sculptor, collector –Ed.] still has that Clifford Nelson?
[00:13:07.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think it's hanging in one of her rooms.
[00:13:08.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a gorgeous work. We've had some gorgeous artists who are undiscovered, you see. But I tell you what was happening, there were the critics and the people who knew all about art in town. And they were showing the things that were proper to show. It was almost like the Academy. Here I was coming out with all the exuberance, and all the things that were really happening right now, and all these different directions, and terribly difficult. [Laughs.] But not for me and for a few people. [I was looking for excellence and diversity –Ed.]
[00:13:38.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: We didn't know what to expect of you, is what you're saying.
[00:13:40.71]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:13:41.76]
RUTH BOWMAN: And this was hard on people who were competing with you and—well, you mentioned to me when we were talking before about being the first on the street.
[00:13:51.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:13:51.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: And then other galleries came in. When I came here in the '60s, there were a lot of galleries on La Cienega.
[00:13:58.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. Yes, I was the first.
[00:14:00.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: See, Esther's still talking about 1955. And at that point, there were—the only other gallery was, Felix Landau moved down the street in 1952.
[00:14:09.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he moved on the street because my business was good.
[00:14:13.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: You were across the street from him?
[00:14:15.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And then I went over to him once and I said, "Well, Felix, why do you think you have to take everybody I have? Why don't you have your own group?" [Laughs.] For instance, he took Pinto. He thought that was the thing to do. And when I went to New York to get to Avery, well, he was right behind me, trying to get Avery, too. He thought everything I did was okay.
[00:14:47.45]
And then we did the gallery lectures with Jules Langsner. Albert Hoxie—he's a lecturer at the museum—he was one of my teachers—Albert Hoxie at UCLA. And then Clifford Nelson was a lecturer, Stephen Longstreet. Lynn Fayman [an avant-garde photographer –Ed,] and La Jolla Museum trustee. He was one of the big trustees there. And he did abstract photography, and that was a beautiful show. And in fact, I have a lot of them, and I should give them to that museum [at La Jolla –Ed.].
[00:15:18.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's one of the first photographic shows that was on the West Coast, and it went unnoticed. And this man has since passed away, but marvelous photographer.
[00:15:30.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then I organized a show, a traveling show. It was called "30 Artists." And it went to Tacoma, Washington. It went to Sacramento, at the museum there, and the Stockton [Hagen Museum –Ed.]. Then Amalia Schulthess [one-man –Ed.]. Then I did a pre-Columbian show with a lecture by Lorser Feitelson. Now, Lorser Feitelson was the man who interested this pre-Columbian man.
[00:16:04.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: Stendahl.
[00:16:05.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: Stendahl. And something that Lorser Feitelson did with Stendahl—they would get those broken pieces, they go in the basement, and they take these pre-Columbian things, the dust [as well as the shards –Ed.], and they would do marvelous mendings. I think I've got one that is just utterly unique [almost as good as an original –Ed.]. I wanted a Renaissance drawing, and Lorser Feitelson had one. And I had a Max Ernst.
[00:16:32.26]
So I said, "If you give me a Renaissance drawing, I'll give you my Max Ernst," which was one of the insect series. So one day, Lorser and Helen came by my gallery. They didn't have a Renaissance thing, but they took my Max Ernst and they brought me this ridiculous looking pre-Columbian dog, which is patently a faked up man, a dog of many parts. [Laughs.] Well, anyway, all these crazy things had happened. [I am not too anxious to repeat. –Ed.]
[00:17:10.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a great pre-Columbian show. It was—I think Esther had about 50 pieces. And she had gotten some from Ed Primus, and some from Stendahl. And it was the first one in La Cienega, so a lot of people were interested in it.
[00:17:25.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Stendahl had a very important gallery on Wilshire Boulevard. I used to go there after school once in a while and see what he had. And he didn't have pre-Columbian at that time. He was earning money to have a gallery by having a candy store upstairs, and he made very good candy. It's so funny what happens. [That early beginning ultimately became successful. –Ed.]
[00:17:48.62]
And then Pegot Waring showed there. Pegot Waring was one of our early sculptors, showed there. But it was a very lucky thing when Stendahl met Lorser Feitelson, because Lorser Feitelson was interested in the pre-Columbian. And he got him interested in that until he became quite a scholar and one of the major salesmen [and authorities –Ed.] of pre-Columbian in the country. But anyway, I got very good pieces from them.
[00:18:15.67]
And then I get—Edna Reindel was one of our early artists. Ed Kohn was another early artist. And I don't know, this just—I've been over it so many times, I guess it's what has to be done. Who was the woman who wrote the book? She was in the Archives. And she came to my gallery, and she said, "There are a lot of surprises here." You can—
[00:18:52.14]
ROBERT ROBLES: Eloise Spaeth? No.
[00:18:53.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Spaeth.
[00:18:54.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: She wrote something about—
[00:18:55.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: She wrote a guidebook of galleries.
[00:18:57.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, and we're in there very prominently.
[00:19:01.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: But in '56, you really had lots of lectures. Jules Langsner [art critic at the Los Angeles Times –Ed.] gave two or three lectures. [He wanted to acquaint Los Angeles with what was happending at the Esther-Robles Gallery get people to attend. –Ed.] And [Esther] wanted to get something happening in the gallery and people coming, so [she] publicized the lectures every month [and sold tickets for the series –Ed.].
[00:19:15.93]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, you see, people didn't have the idea of visiting galleries in those days. Not so much.
[00:19:22.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: They thought you had to pay?
[00:19:24.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: They thought you had to pay, and they just weren't interested. So I wanted to do a program that was interesting, that if they didn't like one thing, they might like something else. And then they'd come and see what I had. And maybe they'd go to the museum. [We were an educational program –Ed.] I did a lot of spade work trying to get people to go to other galleries because I found that art was so rewarding and it's something everybody should enjoy [if properly introduced –Ed.].
[00:19:51.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did they have what New York had in those years, which was Tuesday openings where people at the end of the day—
[00:20:00.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. But what I did, I got together with another gallery on the street, and I started the Monday night openings [before the New York Tuesday openings –Ed.].
[00:20:07.90]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was in 1958.
[00:20:10.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: We're in 1957 now.
[00:20:12.67]
RUTH BOWMAN: I'll wait for '58.
[00:20:14.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: All right, one of the good shows I think I did was called "The Pulse of the City," with Burkhardt, Fogg, Stussy, Pegot Waring, Dorothy Brown [and Richard Campbell –Ed.]. Dorothy brown did a poem. And that's an interesting brochure. Katharine Kuh wrote me about it, and she did a show that was sort of based on it in a way. I took the neglected children of Hollywood people. I took the smog of Jan Stussy. I took everything that made Los Angeles [a psychologically complex city: smog, money, neglected children –Ed.].
[00:20:40.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: Jan Stussy did smog?
[00:20:42.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: He did victims of smog, smog victims. [Charcoal drawings of stiffs at the morgue. –Ed.]
[00:20:45.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: Why did I think he was a sculptor?
[00:20:48.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: His wife is.
[00:20:50.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh.
[00:20:50.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's Kim Stussy.
[00:20:53.20]
ROBERT ROBLES: Ex-wife.
[00:20:53.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: Ex-wife.
[00:20:54.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: His ex-wife She showed in the gallery too. I gave her a new name, MKS. I didn't want two artists with the same name in the gallery. But what do you do? [She used MKS on most of her work as her logo. –Ed.]
[00:21:10.20]
RUTH BOWMAN: So we're in 1957.
[00:21:12.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: We're in 1957 and—
[00:21:14.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: And most every—half the shows in 1957 were women artists.
[00:21:20.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: But I did show Shirl Goedike. And it was spelled with an "e" then. And everyone thought he was a woman artist, so I took the "e" off. He still uses Shirl Goedike. And we had the delightful experience of having sellouts. So I did that show with Ross Smith at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I did the Goedike show there, and it was very well liked. We have a glowing article by [Frankenstein –Ed.] who just died. Then I did small works by major artists in 1957. I used Will Barnet, Hyman Bloom, Lundeberg, Feitelson, Graves, Gorky, Tobey, and Hofmann—Hans Hofmann.
[00:22:14.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where did you get the art?
[00:22:16.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: I got it when I was in New York. I got it from Hans Hofmann. We visited with Hans Hofmann in—
[00:22:23.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: Provincetown?
[00:22:23.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: Cape Cod.
[00:22:24.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: Provincetown. Mm hmm [affirmative]. And they cooked—Midge cooked for us. And then he wasn't eating lobster at the time [on doctor's orders –Ed.]. He tried to [coach –Ed.] Bobby, watched him so hungrily, every bit of lobster he was eating. And this is when I met Bill Lieberman. I didn't meet him [in New York –Ed.]; I met him at Stanley William Hayter's Studio in Paris. But Bill Lieberman and I are great friends. And he introduced me to Will Barnet, and also this collector who did so much with the—
[00:23:05.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: Bing.
[00:23:06.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: Ensors. Bing.
[00:23:10.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: You mean Alexander Bing?
[00:23:11.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: Alexander Bing. Alexander gave us a cocktail party.
[00:23:14.17]
ROBERT ROBLES: Any picture Esther wanted to borrow for her show, he'd lend her.
[00:23:17.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: People lent me things.
[00:23:18.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: He lent Odilon Redon, and he lent all things to Esther.
[00:23:20.93]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Good collectors –Ed.] gave me beautiful things [to exhibit in our shows –Ed.].
[00:23:22.43]
RUTH BOWMAN: You met Bing in New York, but he—
[00:23:23.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. [He invited us to his apartment in New York with Will Barnet and William Lieberman. –Ed.]
[00:23:24.50]
RUTH BOWMAN: But he lived out here too, didn't he?
[00:23:26.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: He lived in New York. There's a Bing who lived here—his brother. But Bing is the man with the—at the Metropolitan Museum.
[00:23:40.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: Okay. We'll get there.
[00:23:40.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: And you also did a show called "Coast Meets Coast," where you had different artists invite different artists from the coast.
[00:23:48.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: I thought [the art public –Ed.] knew artists here, but we didn't know artists from the [East] coast [and vice versa –Ed.]. My idea was to try to make this more of an international center so I could get people from New York—the artists from New York—and I could get my artists there. But it was very difficult to get my artists there. I could get work in New York. And fortunately, I had good connections, you know. [It was almost impossible to get a West Coast show in New York. –Ed.]
[00:24:14.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: You took one whole show to New York, and rented a suite at the Barbizon Plaza, and put all the pictures on the wall, and invited Alexander Bing [of the Metropolitan –Ed.], and Bertha Schaefer [the gallery director –Ed.], and [Will Barnet and Isabel Bishop –Ed.]
[00:24:24.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: They liked what they saw.
[00:24:26.15]
ROBERT ROBLES: And they had a party. [Laughs.] This was 1957. And this is the year you gave Will Barnet his first show. And he came out here for the opening. And Esther thought, well, New Yorkers have their openings in the afternoon. So Esther had an opening in the afternoon, very poorly attended.
[00:24:45.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, Frederick White [former director of UCLA and his wife –Ed.] Joan came. [Laughs.] No, [Los Angeles gallery-goers –Ed.] didn't like the idea of showing the New York artists unless they were just really top artists [and well-advertised –Ed.].
[00:24:56.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: Will Barnet is getting good prices these days.
[00:25:00.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, I should say he is. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Then we did a show—we did a couple of Italian artists, [Pontini, industrial realist, Lucatello, heavy imports of Italian landscape abstractions –Ed.]. And then I did a show called "Artists Invite Artists." Dorothy Brown, one of our local artists, invited Isabel Bishop. Isabel Bishop, I met in New York. [She came to the cocktail party at the Barbizon. –Ed.] And Hans Burkhardt invited Lorser Feitelson. And John Von Wicht, who was showing in my gallery—
[00:25:33.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: Another American abstract artist.
[00:25:35.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. John Von Wicht invited Avery. And Eva Slater invited Lundeberg. Jan Stussy invited Stanton Macdonald-Wright. That was sort of an interesting show.
[00:25:50.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then you moved into a larger space in the building. Then you took over the whole front of the building, and it was a beautiful [light space –Ed.]. I think this was the first very major gallery on La Cienega for that space, and it was a whole building [from the street to the alley in the rear –Ed.].
[00:26:08.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: [One of the critics, Seldis –Ed.] called it an emporium. I think one of the critics called it an emporium, it was so big. It's not big at all now [according to our current standards –Ed.].
[00:26:13.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: And a man by the name of Stanley Barbee came to the first two shows that—in the new space. And he said, "Esther, he said, this is fantastic. You must have a major show here."
[00:26:23.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: "You have such a pretty gallery. You have to have pretty works."
[00:26:26.13]
ROBERT ROBLES: So he said, "Come to my house." And Esther went to the house, and he gave her—
[00:26:30.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: He let me choose anything I wanted. But now, there was a show before that. I was interested in calligraphy, very interested. And so I met Hodo Tobase, who was the head of the Zen Buddhist sect. He was the eighth Hodo in Japan, direct line. And so I did a show of his calligraphies. And that show was later done at the San Francisco Museum of Art.
[00:26:57.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: And at the opening night, Hodo sat and did the calligraphies for people. It was unbelievable.
[00:27:05.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were given. He gave them to everyone.
[00:27:07.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it was so beautiful.
[00:27:08.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: As a present?
[00:27:09.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: As a present. The Phillips were there.
[00:27:13.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: Joana and Gifford Phillips.
[00:27:13.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: I remember that. And Hans de Schulthess, who started the—who was one of the major people I introduced to Jim [Elliot –Ed.]. He was a [cultivated, affluent –Ed.] man. [Jim hoped he could [be a member of –Ed.] this collectors club at the museum. There were a lot of people [who attended the Tobase exhibition –Ed.], interesting, interested people. And we still have a Hodo Tobase. Then after that, I chose Jawlensky, and Klee, and Marquet Villon, and Picasso, Manet.] I [borrowed] them from the Stanley Barbee collection, and I got inquiries from the east for that.
I had a beautiful Picasso that you'd pay, maybe, about—oh, for that drawing today, you'd pay about $75,000. I had it at $3,500. And Eleanor Saidenberg wrote to me about it. And then she said I was a robber. Nobody would pay $3,500 for this Picasso drawing. Then I—oh, this is when that darling—in Pasadena Museum.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6416_m]
[00:00:02.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, with him.
[00:00:03.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was before Walter Hopps?
[00:00:05.01]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:00:05.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: Certainly.
[00:00:06.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: Oh, yeah, He's now back East—
[00:00:08.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: Cornell University. [Cross talk.] Tom Leavitt [was the director of the Pasadena Museum. Bob Ellis was an all-around assistant. Walter came later. –Ed.] Tom did an Italian show, and I liked it very much. I liked the grand personage that Mirko did.
[00:00:20.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, Mirko.
[00:00:21.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:00:23.15]
RUTH BOWMAN: There's a Mirko in the Barnes Foundation.
[00:00:25.71]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, is that so? [When I visited the Foundation three years ago I didn't see it. –Ed.] Anyway, this grand personage stood really quite high. And I said I want to show it in my gallery. I love it. And Tom Leavitt said, "Well, I don't know. You'd have to pay for the crating to New York. It costs about $300 to send it back." I said, "I don't care. I have to have it, and I like it very much." And so I had it in the gallery. And I sold it to Hans de Schulthess [a founding member of the LA Museum Contemporary Arts Council. –Ed.]. Hans de Schulthess wasn't in town, but his secretary gave me the private number. He was off on one of his lovely little [interludes—Ed.].
[00:01:04.05]
And so I told him he had to have it. And he said, "Well, Esther, I think I can live without it." I said, "No, you have to have it." So he bought it. I said, "If you don't like it, give it to the museum. I know they want it." And so I wanted him to give it to the [LA County –Ed.] Museum. He said he'd grown fond of it, so he didn't. But I think his wife [Amalia –Ed.] gave it to the Museum [after his death –Ed.]
[00:01:30.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this is when the—you did this major painting show of Bill Hayter's. And at Pasadena, Tom Leavitt did the graphics of Hayter. It was a combination show for the first time, a gallery and a museum—
[00:01:43.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's right. And Hayter, no one had ever exhibited his paintings before. And I liked them. I like that sort of stained look. And so Culler, was a director of the San Francisco Museum, took a Hayter show from me. And it was the "Four Seasons." And he took a small room. And it was a glorious experience. Those were huge, huge paintings. It was like the light coming from behind and shining through. Culler said it was just like walking into nature, being a part of it, being nature. Then, we did the Albino Lucatello show. We went to Italy and did that. That was the invitation of Shirl Goedike. Then, a Jan Gelb show—we went to New York and saw the Jan Gelb at the Ruth White Gallery in New York.
[00:02:44.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: I remember her.
[00:02:45.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I liked it very much. And we did a show of hers, and then we did a Hans Burkhardt, and then Paul Maze from England. Maze was an Impressionist, rather a delightful artist. And I did colored catalog for that.
[00:03:04.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: She designed—all the catalogs and all the brochures that went out of the gallery, Esther designed. She would sit down and draw the rough, and then go to a printer or a mock-up person and have them do exactly as you told them. And so every announcement you see from the gallery had been originated by Esther.
[00:03:24.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: Were they all the same size, or different size?
[00:03:26.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did a uniform size, and I numbered the uniform sizes for a long time. And the artists didn't like it. They wanted more variety [and a more personal catalog. I numbered each exhibition and year so one could read the code and tell the number of exhibitions held in the gallery. –Ed.] That's what all those numbers meant on the catalog.
[00:03:40.21]
ROBERT ROBLES: I know that, but you would always vary it by half-inch inch or an inch.
[00:03:44.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I would not. Phyllis Lutjean did one catalog when I was in Europe and I was very unhappy about it, because she varied it an inch at the top and an inch at the bottom, and a little smaller in the sides. The artist was delighted, but it was not uniform. And I thought, well, if anybody wants to change the size that much, it's all right with me, because it got a little boring, anyway. [Laughs.] [However, in retrospect, it was a pity to lose the continuity. –Ed.]
[00:04:10.35]
RUTH BOWMAN: When did Phyllis come to work for you?
[00:04:13.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Phyllis came to work for me—
[00:04:16.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: Just about this time.
[00:04:17.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: About 1959, I think.
[00:04:20.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, in 1958, you did the Paul Maze show working with the O'Hana Gallery in London.
[00:04:25.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, Phyllis wasn't with me then.
[00:04:27.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: And at the same time, a young man who was a lawyer who had been working with the William Morris Agency, quit because he couldn't take being a lawyer. And he came to Esther and he said, "I want to open a gallery, and I want you to direct it for me." So he had leased a place on Santa Monica near Doheny, which is now called the Troubadour. But before that, it was an automobile agency, and it was empty. And he put a coffee shop in up on the balcony. And on the first floor was this huge automobile emporium. And he said, "Esther, fill the place for me." And so Esther did three shows.
[00:05:10.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: What was his name?
[00:05:11.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: His name was Everett Ellin. And Everett Ellin was really a character –Ed.]
[00:05:17.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: You know him! [Laughs.] You know his catalog of art, of all the museums [Cross talk.]
[00:05:23.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: And what happened with Everett Ellin was interesting, because he came to Esther and he gave her a contract, a legal contract, because he was a lawyer. And Esther did the first three shows. And then, he came to Esther and he said, "I know all about art now. After these three shows, I've learned the whole system. So I'm going to do the next three shows by myself." And he did those. And at the same time, he saw an ad in the paper that said "gallery director wanted in New York City." And he applied in writing, and he got the job. And it was up above Sotheby.
[00:06:01.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Was it the Green Gallery?
[00:06:02.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, no, it was—
[00:06:03.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Furniture—furniture and paintings. It was something like that.
[00:06:05.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, it was a major gallery in New York City.
[00:06:07.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: It no longer exists.
[00:06:08.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Extrum?
[00:06:09.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not Extrum. No Extrum is there now.
[00:06:11.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was in that—
[00:06:11.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: But I think it was the Green Gallery.
[00:06:14.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: The Green was on 57th.
[00:06:16.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, no, this was in a building upstairs. And it was a major gallery. And they had Smith—David Smith. They had—and this is where Everett Ellin got to know David Smith.
[00:06:27.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: He got his training in the New York School, which was a really wonderful thing for him, because he had just gotten his feet wet with me. [Laughs.]
[00:06:35.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then he quit that gallery. I'll think of the name shortly. But he quit that gallery, and moved back here, and opened a gallery on Sunset Boulevard and showed Jasper Johns, David Smith, Arp.
[00:06:46.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: And was it called the Ellin Gallery?
[00:06:48.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: Everett Ellin Gallery.
[00:06:48.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Everett Ellin Gallery.
[00:06:50.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he did full page ads in the back of Art International for almost every show he had. He lost his shirt. He lost—I mean, he had to go out of business within a year, because he spent [so much money –Ed.]
[00:07:02.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: But these vultures in town who call themselves collectors when he was leaving—and he didn't have much money—came in, and they got these beautiful things for peanuts, just about his cost. You know the way collectors work.
[00:07:18.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: But this was the Everett Ellin escapade that Esther was instrumental—
[00:07:22.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: And then, he came back East and began the Museum Computer Network.
[00:07:26.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:07:26.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right. And we had lunch with him one day. He told me—
[00:07:30.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: I haven't seen him for years. I haven't thought about these people for years. It's strange.
[00:07:36.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: In the first of 1959, Esther gave John Von Wicht a major show.
[00:07:40.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: Now, he was an interesting man. He was the first man to use color in a print in a simultaneous process. And he was the first student at what became the Bauhaus in the Weimar Republic, with Baron somebody or other. And this is where they taught [inaudible]. They taught stained glass. They taught all of crafts.
[00:08:04.18]
RUTH BOWMAN: Von Wicht was at the Bauhaus?
[00:08:05.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:08:06.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's why his art looks like Kandinsky and Klee?
[00:08:08.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, because he was the old man. [He was the Duke's first students, where he learned the art of stained glass, and had a solid training in the applied arts. –Ed.]
[00:08:12.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: Von Wicht was on the WPA.
[00:08:13.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he was. And I have a lot of drawings of his. And we correspond quite a bit. I liked him. I called him my art-crazy old man.
[00:08:23.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: Every drawing—every letter he sent to Esther, he'd do a magnificent colored drawing across the top of it. And they're just treasures.
[00:08:32.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: When he was at the MacDowell Foundation [and Yaddo –Ed.], that catalog I did from him tells that whole story of the early days [at the Duke of Hessen School –Ed.] before it became the Bauhaus.
[00:08:40.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: Which was 1919, it became the Bauhaus. So you must be talking about during World War I, then.
[00:08:46.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:08:46.70]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was involved.
[00:08:47.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:08:48.20]
RUTH BOWMAN: There's a mural of his at the radio station at WNYC.
[00:08:51.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: I didn't know that.
[00:08:53.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: It looks like Kandinsky, a geometric Kandinsky.
[00:08:55.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Really?
[00:08:56.18]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah. He was a fine artist.
[00:09:00.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: I loved him.
[00:09:01.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it was during this year that Esther felt that people should walk on La Cienega. Esther was getting people in, because they would drive and come in, and she'd have to phone them.
[00:09:11.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'd never see a soul [walking on La Cienega –Ed.].
[00:09:11.75]
ROBERT ROBLES: She said people have to walk. So she went next door to the Ed Primus small pre-Columbian gallery. And she said, "Would you stay open one night a week?" And he said, "Well, sure, I'll do anything." And across the street, Bertha Lewinson had a gallery. And Esther went to Bertha Lewinson and said, "Would you remain open one night a week?" And Bertha said, "Fine." So the three got together and decided on a Monday night. [This became the enormously successful Monday Night Art Walk. –Ed.]
[00:09:36.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: We went to all of the galleries, but Landau would not join in on this at all.
[00:09:44.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: But the first time, it was just the three galleries that remained open.
[00:09:46.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I did ask Landau. Oh, yes. And he didn't want to do that at all.
[00:09:53.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the first Monday night—
[00:09:53.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Seldis. I went to Seldis and told him what was happening. And he said, "That gives the reviewers too much work. Don't do it, Esther." [Laughs.] Henry Seldis didn't want me to do it.
[00:10:06.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, the first Monday night, we only had two couples in. And one couple bought quite a bit of work. And we had a ball. We sat down, we had drinks, and we talked and talked. And they finally left it at like 11:00 at night, and they had bought a lot of things. It was a great success that first Monday. [Laughs.] Later on, it became something different.
[00:10:26.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: You know, I sent that John Von Wicht show to Santa Barbara Museum. And during the same time, I [exhibited] Jack Kennedy, who was really an Abstract Expressionist. He's in the Michel Seuphor Dictionary of Abstract Art. And we did that at the Santa Barbara Museum. And then, a fascinating show I did was "Kaleidoscope." And that traveled. And Gerald Nordland did the foreword.
[00:10:56.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was he here?
[00:10:57.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, he was here [for several years –Ed.].
[00:10:58.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: What was he doing?
[00:11:00.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was—I liked Gerald very much. I thought he was talented. He had a lot to say. But he was working for Phillips Frontier magazine. It was kind of a left-wing, [liberal –Ed.] sort of a magazine. And Gifford Phillips was the editor. And Gerald Nordland got a job as the art reviewer. Now, Gerald Nordland didn't have an art background.
[00:11:33.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was lawyer, wasn't he?
[00:11:34.70]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he was a lawyer. But anyway, he liked art very much. And he spoke well about it. And he was very—I liked him. In fact, I did a lot of agitating for him so that he would speak at different groups and so forth. But anyway, he wrote the foreword. And he was—Frederick White was in that show, too. And Gerald Nordland was trying to put Frederick Wight down in his foreword that he did. And I let Fred read it. And Fred just knocked out a word or two. And Gerald Nordland was utterly furious that I had changed the only thing he had was his mind and his writing. And I took that away from him. I didn't tell him that Frederick Wight had [red-penciled –Ed.] it. [Laughs.]
[00:12:29.13]
But anyway, Gerald has always been a little cool toward me after that. But one of the things he said in the foreword was he didn't know quite how Esther got all these good people together, because nobody else had heard of them. And they weren't the usual good people that one saw in Los Angeles. But anyway, there it was.
[00:12:55.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: This was another traveling show you organized.
[00:12:57.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: […] Ross Smith did the Shirl Goedike show.
[00:13:21.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did a show of Orozcos. And he worked with that woman—
[00:13:25.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: But anyway, I did the Orozco show [through a Mrs. Bogue. –Ed.]. That was a good show—paintings and prints.
[00:13:31.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where did you get that?
[00:13:32.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oddly enough, I got it from a woman who showed his work in Mexico.
[00:13:38.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: She was living with him, also.
[00:13:40.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh. [Laughs.] Made it easier for her—
[00:13:43.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the son came, too. Orozco, Jr. came. So she worked with both of them. And it was a major show.
[00:13:52.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Nothing sold.
[00:13:53.41]
RUTH BOWMAN: Nothing sold?
[00:13:54.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: And that was expensive, too.
[00:13:55.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: The prices were very high.
[00:13:57.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were high for us.
[00:13:57.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: A little thing was $5,000 or $10,000.
[00:14:03.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then I did the Robert Cremean, Goedike, and Koch show. Robert Cremean, the sculptor, was kind of a mainstay of the gallery. Then, I did a show of the leading Korean artist, Pak Jeung. P-A-K.
[00:14:17.80]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were staining canvases, sort of blue-like ink stained. [A little like sumi ink –Ed.] Very strange.
[00:14:23.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I did a traveling show called Taos Now with Bisttram and Brett, and the whole group at the Taos people. And then, we sent a group down there. And then, this traveled in Texas and across the country. I wish I knew all the things that had happened to that. Then, we did a Karl Benjamin show, Elise Cavanna. We're only in 1959. Just think, it's '81 now. Oh, my, my, my. And then—
[00:14:56.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, in 1959, an interesting thing happened. Esther thought she wanted to travel. She had been working very hard. So she said, "Let's take a three-month trip."
[00:15:08.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is the first trip you went with me, which was wonderful.
[00:15:11.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: So we laid it all out. And we talked to our son, and he said he would help run the gallery. And we talked to two close friends.
[00:15:19.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: And my nephew. And Phyllis was there then.
[00:15:22.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: Phyllis was there at the time working. And we talked to Sterling Holloway, who had started coming into the gallery quite a bit. And Sterling said, "Gee, I'd like to work in a gallery. I'm not working too much." So Sterling volunteered. And Betty Asher, who was starting to collect at that time, said she'd love to work. She wanted to get in and become part of an active gallery. So between our son, Sterling Holloway, and Betty Asher, we had three people working in the gallery. And when Sterling would work, he would come and stay in our apartment in the back.
[00:15:52.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Phyllis—we had Phyllis working.
[00:15:53.66]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Phyllis. So there was quite a group working. And we traveled in Europe. And our son said, "When you're in Europe, look up an artist named Appel, Karel Appel. He's really good, and I like his work." So we researched and found Appel in his studio in Paris. And we asked him if his work was available. And he said, "Well, I had a contract that just expired last week."
[00:16:17.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: With Martha Jackson.
[00:16:18.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: With Martha Jackson, and with [Gimpel Fils –Ed.] in London, and with so and so in Paris. He said, "So I'm free. Whatever you want, you can buy right now." And we had walked in at a moment when we could buy his work without any other gallery involved, and we went berserk. [Laughs.]
[00:16:33.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: I bought enough for a show.
[00:16:35.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is that how the big one got to the museum, the LA County Museum?
[00:16:38.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, that's something else. That was something else.
[00:16:40.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, that was indirectly.
[00:16:41.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Curtis—I'm glad you know about that. I don't know where they had that.
[00:16:44.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: That came about when Appel visited us the following year and was our guest for a whole month. And Esther arranged for Tony Curtis [inaudible] [cross talk].
[00:16:54.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: I called Tony Curtis. I said, "I'm mad at you. You haven't been in the gallery for some time. I've got something interesting for you." And he said, "Well, what is it?" And I said, "We have got Karel Appel here." And he said, "Well, bring him over. I'd like to talk to him." Before that, we sold him the Maurers, you know.
[00:17:14.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was that through Bertha Schaefer?
[00:17:16.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, through Bertha Schaefer.
[00:17:18.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther had a show of Maurer, in fact, in '58 or '59—
[00:17:22.82]
RUTH BOWMAN: Were those the heads that—
[00:17:24.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: The heads.
[00:17:25.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:17:25.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: The twin heads—there's one at the Santa Barbara Museum. And then, I also had still life. And Ben-Zion was another artist I showed.
[00:17:35.63]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, really?
[00:17:36.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, I don't even have that. A lot of this isn't even down.
[00:17:39.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, I haven't done this thoroughly yet. I might want still—some of those records—
[00:17:43.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you have Ben-Zion paintings, lithographs, and sculpture or just paintings?
[00:17:48.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: Paintings. I hadn't gone too much into the sculpture. And I—lithographs had to be very, very special or I didn't care for them, and they weren't so special.
[00:17:59.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: They were more narrative and illustrative than they were interesting. So anyway, so there you were with Tony Curtis and Appel.
[00:18:10.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: Tony was working on a movie about this Indian who became a drunkard and raised the flag at Iwo Jima or something like that. So when we got to Tony's home—
[00:18:21.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he was painting at that time, too. [Tony did nice primitives. –Ed.]
[00:18:23.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was still in his makeup. And Janet Leigh was there. And all five of us started drinking a little bit. And Appel saw this wall, which was the full length of the dining room. And he said, "It'd be great to do a painting there." And he said, "I can know exactly what I'm going to do. It's going to be my view of the trip across the United States."
[00:18:45.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: From ocean to ocean.
[00:18:47.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: He had driven across the United States in a Thunderbird. And he bought it in New York, and he drove out here to be with us.
[00:18:53.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, he said he drove fast, fast. He didn't know the rules. And we said, "Didn't you ever see a flashing light behind you?" And he said, "Oh, many times." [Laughs.]
[00:19:04.13]
ROBERT ROBLES: But he said they soon disappeared. [Laughs.]
[00:19:06.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: He would when he's making a right-hand turn, he'd really turn on the left. It was easier for him. This is the way he drove.
[00:19:13.15]
ROBERT ROBLES: But anyway, here we were standing in front the—
[00:19:14.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: Fast, fast.
[00:19:15.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah. Standing in front of this wall. And Appel said, "I know what I'm going to do." And Tony said, "Do it." He said, "I want it." So the next day, Esther picked up the phone with Karel and ordered the linen from New York, a special kind of linen, the paint from New York, everything. And the following day—
[00:19:36.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: Our son rented a store across [from Fairfax High School –Ed.].
[00:19:39.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Wait a minute now, Esther.
[00:19:40.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, all right, you tell it.
[00:19:42.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then the following day, Tony Curtis called up. He said, "My agent said we couldn't go ahead with this thing. I just can't do it at this time." And Esther said, "What?" And she got really mad. And she said, "Look, I've ordered the paint, the this. We're going ahead and getting a store, a studio for Karel. You can't." And Tony sort of backed down and said, "Well, I can't pay for it right away." And Esther said, "That doesn't matter. Karel's here. He's ready to go to work."
[00:20:08.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: So I called Jules Stein. And I said, "Look, I'm having trouble with getting my money." [Laughs.] I wouldn't do that for the world now. [Laughs.] So he saw to it. We were paid for it [first, before other creditors. He was a good friend to me. –Ed.]
[00:20:23.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: Our son went and went and rented a store on Melrose and Fairfax, a little, dinky little storefront. And all the material was put in there. So Appel said, "It's a shame." He said, "I'm just going to do one picture here." He said, "I'd like to do something else." And at that time, Sterling Holloway had been coming around. And Appel said, "I'd like to do a portrait of him. He'd be a great face to do a portrait."
[00:20:46.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: [His hair –Ed.] is like a golden tulip, [Karel said –Ed.].
[00:20:48.60]
ROBERT ROBLES: So we asked Sterling if he wanted to do it at a certain price. And Appel gave a price, which was very reasonable. So Sterling said yes. So here we had a commissioned mural to do and a portrait to do. So it was worthwhile. And Sterling came to town ready to stay for a week. And he walked in, and I—we have photographs of this. And he sat down. And Appel looked at him and did something like this, and there was a picture on the easel already. And he said, "Well, that's just my sketch." He said, "Now I'm going to do the painting." And he did it. And it was within two or three hours, he had done two portraits of Sterling Holloway. And they were terrific.
[00:21:27.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: But what Appel would do when he got ready to paint, he put complete concentration into the painting. And he worked furiously. And he was wringing wet. It was really a vision and an inspiration the way he was working in those years. It was '62 about that time.
[00:21:47.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: And that's when I met him.
[00:21:49.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then he did the Tony Curtis mural. And we had measured the wall, and we had allowed two inches on either side for a little strip of frame. And the height was, I think—well, whatever the height was. But I know it was like almost fourteen feet or seventeen feet wide. And that was finished.
So then, he did another small mural, which was five by ten feet just to be doing something, which we sold to Hans de Schulthess. But to get the Curtis mural in the house was almost impossible, because it wouldn't go through the front door. And a window had to be removed to go through the house, and then at a certain angle. Otherwise, it couldn't have gotten into the house. [Laughs.]
[00:22:29.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then, this was given at the time of the divorce.
[00:22:36.36]
ROBERT ROBLES: Curtis and Janet Leigh.
[00:22:41.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, you're right. Yeah.
[00:22:43.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Curtis and Janet Leigh's painting is in the County Museum?
[00:22:46.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, and it was in the dining room for a long.
[00:22:49.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: And that's what it is. It's the trip across the country?
[00:22:51.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:22:52.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes. ["From Ocean to Ocean, USA." –Ed.]
[00:22:53.04]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, it hung in the cafeteria—
[00:22:55.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:22:56.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: —of the LA County Museum in the early '70s.
[00:22:59.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's right.
[00:23:00.73]
RUTH BOWMAN: And it was getting splashed with one thing and another. And I suggested that it might be put somewhere else. But I haven't seen it since.
[00:23:09.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, I was wondering what happened. I haven't seen it since. And that was one of his major paintings. It should be in a place where it could be appreciated and seen. [Cross talk.] That particular—I'm not crazy about Appel—I'm not crazy about Appel now, but I really liked the work from '54 until about '64. He had a ten-year period, I thought, was great.
[00:23:30.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: Second generation or first generation Cobra?
[00:23:33.35]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:23:33.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:23:35.30]
RUTH BOWMAN: First generation, right?
[00:23:36.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: First generation Cobra.
[00:23:37.77]
ROBERT ROBLES: When he visited us in '60 or '61, he came with Machtel, who was a beautiful girl. She was a model. And they really were in love with each other. But a few years later, she died suddenly. And I think it affected Appel personally and changed his way of painting and everything about his life.
[00:23:58.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: She was his model.
[00:23:59.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: After you took the paintings from him to bring here, he went back to Martha Jackson, or he renewed his—
[00:24:07.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: I went to Martha Jackson. And I said, "I have a chance to do this show that will go across the country, a major show." And I said, "I know that you presented him here. And I think that you should join in on this show with me as one of the lenders, and so forth." And so I made an agreement with Martha, whereby she could show Appel there and I could show him here.
[00:24:37.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: And you organized—again, with Tom Leavitt—you organized a West Coast Appel painting and graphic—well, not graphics, but paintings and gouaches, a major show. And the catalog was done in Amsterdam by [W.M. –Ed.] Sandberg.
[00:24:53.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: By Sandberg, whom we knew.
[00:24:54.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: Willem.
[00:24:54.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Willem. We met Willem when we were—the three months we were traveling. Every place we'd go, we'd meet Willem. [Holland, Italy, and Switzerland –Ed.]
[00:25:02.43]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was peripatetic, he and his little wife.
[00:25:04.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, yes. They've been here many, many times. He was just a darling. And so when Appel got that $10,000 prize at the Guggenheim—you know, that international competition—this painting belonged in Europe. And it was supposed to go in a big European show. So I wrote to Willem. And I said, "I must have it for our tour." And he gave it to us, plus doing this catalog [in spite of the fact that he didn't have it in Europe to show. Friendships are wonderful –Ed.]
[00:25:33.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: And in color.
[00:25:35.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: And we borrowed from all over the world. I think I had 49 paintings.
[00:25:38.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a beautiful show.
[00:25:40.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: What year are we at now?
[00:25:41.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: '60.
[00:25:42.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: '60.
[00:25:42.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: We're in '60s.
[00:25:45.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: Because he was—Appel was also in the Seattle World's Fair.
[00:25:50.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:25:54.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: And in 1960, Esther decided to really do a wham-bang exhibition year. So she ran concurrently exhibitions in the main gallery on the street, and then she redid the third room and called it the collectors gallery. And so she would have a main gallery show. And then in the Collector's Gallery, she did shows like a drawing show of Magritte, Paul Jenkins water color show.
[00:26:21.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: École de Paris, Harung. [Cross talk.] Music, Poliakoff, Friedlander.
[00:26:28.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: And these were gems of shows in the Collector's Gallery.
[00:26:30.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: George Adam. Piza.
[00:26:33.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who?
[00:26:34.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Piza. You know Arthur Louis Piza?
[00:26:38.43]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you have anything to do with World House Gallery in New York?
[00:26:41.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. [I got the Adam and Piza from the La Hune, Paris. –Ed.]
[00:26:41.72]
RUTH BOWMAN: They showed some of those same artists.
[00:26:43.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: No.
[00:26:44.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: No.
[00:26:44.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: But in the main gallery, Esther had a [cross talk] [inaudible].
[00:26:47.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: Man Ray, I had a Man Ray show [in paintings and gouaches –Ed.].
[00:26:50.45]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was a great Man Ray show. [Cross talk.]
[00:26:52.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: I had a Hayter show with his wife, Helen Phillips and Stahly— François Stahly. And then, Karl Benjamin. And then, I did the "American Scene" [in December 1960. –Ed.] I went to[ John Baur –Ed.]And I said I wanted to have certain things in this show. And he lent me a [Charles Sheeler, "River Rouge Plant," 1932 –Ed.].
[00:27:21.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who was Donald Barr?
[00:27:23.06]
ROBERT ROBLES: John Baur.
[00:27:24.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: I mean John Baur. John Bauer. I get Alfred and John—Donald—I'm getting mixed up with him.
[00:27:31.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, so you borrowed from the Whitney? That was before they sold those early paintings.
[00:27:36.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:27:38.01]
ROBERT ROBLES: So it was a marvelous show. And Esther called it "The American Scene." And she did a catalog. And this was in 1960.
[00:27:44.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Evergood. Sheeler.
[00:27:47.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: So when Esther opened up down the street on San Vicente, twenty-something years later, she did a [similar –Ed.] show called "The American Scene."
[00:27:57.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: "Some Aspects of The American Scene."
[00:27:59.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then this show that she just did a few years ago [when we first moved our gallery to a high rise in Brentwood –Ed.], Henry Hopkins did a beautiful foreword for her.
[00:28:11.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you are a museum directors' art gallery?
[00:28:16.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: In a way.
[00:28:16.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah.
[00:28:17.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: In a way. [Fortunately, we've saved most of the catalogs. –Ed.]
[00:28:18.29]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Henry Hopkins remembered when he had an art gallery on La Cienega Boulevard.
[00:28:22.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: He had one?
[00:28:22.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:28:23.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: He tried to do one. And it was—
[00:28:25.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: The Huysman Gallery, from the aesthetician. [Laughs.]
[00:28:29.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: He called it H-U-Y-S-M-A-N.
[00:28:29.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's Huysman.
[00:28:35.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it lasted for about three months.
[00:28:36.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: Three months. He didn't know how to run a gallery. But he was real darling man. And he was the great white light of Frederick White. And he did a wonderful job at the Los Angeles County Museum and doing a good job in San Francisco, too.
[00:28:59.03]
ROBERT ROBLES: But in 1960, Esther also showed John Hultberg and Louis Le Brocquy, a Walloon painter from Ireland. I think Gimpels Fils handled him in London.
[00:29:08.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. Well, he's a very aristocratic painter of the original Walloons that traveled all over Belgium. And they were the real aristocrats of the early days. And they scattered. And his part of the family scattered to Ireland. [Cross talk.]
[00:29:29.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Hultberg here in Los Angeles?
[00:29:32.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Hultberg was here in Los Angeles for a short time only. And he studied at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts. A lot of these people did. Even Pollock was here for a short time. They were—they came in, and they went out. And Hilary Heron, Trevor Bell from England—
[00:29:59.02]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, that's the next year.
[00:30:00.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes. I get ahead of myself.
[00:30:01.54]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1960, you showed John Baxter and David Simpson, two San Francisco artists. And this was before David Simpson started doing his rainbows. But he was doing bands of color.
[00:30:12.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was a beautiful show.
[00:30:14.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: And John Baxter was doing found objects, which were quite handsome. He died quite early.
[00:30:20.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: [John Baxter gave us one of his assemblages, also. They both gave work to help us to defray expenses of the exhibition. –Ed.] He was an assistant curator of art at the San Francisco Museum.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6417_m]
[00:00:03.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: —tired?
[00:00:03.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-mm [negative].
[00:00:04.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Okay.
[00:00:05.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, you see, he's taking over so beautifully. [Laughs.] I can rest.
[00:00:08.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, I wasn't taking over.
[00:00:10.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, he's just helping along. You're still the authority. So Seuphor?
[00:00:18.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: Michel Seuphor.
[00:00:19.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Michel Seuphor became a great friend of mine, of ours.
[00:00:25.08]
ROBERT ROBLES: And these are his ink—
[00:00:26.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was a lovely friend of ours.
[00:00:27.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: These were ink drawings. They were beautiful.
[00:00:30.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: I didn't realize that he showed here.
[00:00:32.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:00:33.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: Two shows. This was the first show.
[00:00:35.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: You see, people don't know anything about my gallery.
[00:00:38.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: As a matter of fact, after this first show was, it was so successful that Seuphor wanted another show a few years later. And he did a 16-panel drawing, which is now the property of the County Museum. Esther gave it to the Museum [which he wished us to donate to them in our name –Ed.].
[00:00:48.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: I gave it to the Museum, and I wish you could see it.
[00:00:50.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: The Los Angeles County Museum—
[00:00:51.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a gorgeous thing.
[00:00:51.90]
ROBERT ROBLES: —owns a major one.
[00:00:52.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: They don't appreciate it. They don't know what they have.
[00:00:55.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: They put it up once, and they telephoned Esther about it. But it's 16 separate drawings that mount together to make one very large drawing. I think each page is about 18 by 30 or something.
[00:01:12.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: I still think this is a town of fads and provincials. I don't find very many serious collectors here.
[00:01:22.29]
[…]
[00:01:28.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: I think that people in the East are very curious about how Los Angeles dealers feel about their collectors here, their local collectors, because the collections do—some of them have great similarities.
[00:01:49.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, the dealers I know in New York, whom I like to talk to, I think are a little more knowledgeable than the dealers here, don't know what in the world to do when a Los Angeles collector comes in, because they're so ignorant.
[00:02:04.02]
RUTH BOWMAN: With some startling exceptions.
[00:02:07.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, we have good collections here, and they're not ignorant. But this is by and far the consensus of opinion. No, we have great collections here. What collection did you have reference to?
[00:02:24.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's great? There's a Gantz collection just right over there. [Joanne and Julian Gantz Collection –Ed.]
[00:02:31.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, they live over here. That's a great collection [in the opinion of some; not all in Los Angles concur. –Ed.]. And they had very good advice, and they've gone into that carefully. They don't buy from us any longer because they think we're a kinetic gallery. They bought kinetic things. I helped them to [donate their kinetic works –Ed.] to museums, [a Fletcher Benton –Ed.] but they're in an area I haven't been in at all. [It is not interesting to me personally. –Ed.]
[00:02:55.91]
[…]
[00:03:18.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: Anyway, when you were talking about the early '60s, had the policy continued? You didn't take a particular stance of one kind of abstraction over another, or one kind of figuration?
[00:03:32.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no.
[00:03:33.96]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. In fact, in 1961, the first show Esther did was William Scott, and she had gone to England the year before and liked what she saw of Scott's work and arranged with—was it the Hanover Gallery?
[00:03:52.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: Hanover Gallery.
[00:03:53.35]
ROBERT ROBLES: Erica Brausen, yeah.
[00:03:54.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: With Erica.
[00:03:55.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: And she arranged for a full-scale William Scott show.
[00:04:00.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: [I bought several paintings to show that I was serious. I also organized –Ed.] that show at the Santa Barbara Museum.
[00:04:02.66]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the only picture that sold from that exhibition in January of 1961 was one small gouache to Joseph Hirshhorn, and he bought it because Esther said, "Buy it." But outside of that, the only way that the William Scott show was successful is that Esther sold back the major works, a beautiful major William Scott, back to the Tate Gallery.
[00:04:24.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: —to the Tate Gallery.
[00:04:26.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, that certainly is one for the Archives. Oh, that's fascinating.
[00:04:34.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, it was a beautiful show and well-installed, and Esther did a great catalog, which—in fact, we have a number of Esther's catalogs that we're putting together. So with the William Scott show, it was a really—it had a good range, because it went back to his fried egg series up until the complete abstraction with the just the dots as a sort of color field.
[00:04:57.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: You could see how he got to his abstraction. It was the pans. It was the eggs. It was everything. And then it was so fascinating, that he had a mystical idea that when a pan was set on a table, there would be the trace of it in memory, the shape of it. And from that, he built his abstractions of the shapes, the rounded shapes and the square shapes. They were from kitchen utensils. They came from that early time.
[00:05:32.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then Esther did another English show in March with Trevor Bell and Hilary Heron. Trevor Bell was a young abstract painter, and Hilary Heron was a sculptor. She carved wood pieces. In fact, the only other person in town who owns a Hilary Heron is Fred Wight.
[00:05:50.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, Fred Wight. I gave our Hilary Herons, I think, to La Jolla Museum.
[00:05:59.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: You still own one wood piece.
[00:06:00.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: I own one? Oh, I don't want to give that away. I like that. [It was exhibited at the Venice Biennale –Ed.] But for one of their sales. We've given a lot of work to museums.
[00:06:10.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: So I'm beginning to surmise. I hope there's a record of all that.
[00:06:14.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know if there is or not.
[00:06:17.11]
ROBERT ROBLES: You've given William Scott to Santa Barbara Museum, a good one.
[00:06:20.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: I gave them a nice one. Well, they are very appreciative. They would like for me to do a record. They'd like for me to do a show of some of these top things that I handled. They think it's a matter of [history and should be done. –Ed.]
[00:06:37.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: One of the trustees has asked Esther to do a show that would be an Esther-Robles Gallery of selections of what she has shown or sold or whatever.
[00:06:47.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, it would be a dazzling show. [Laughs.]
[00:06:52.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: You could have a very good time doing that show in your head. Putting it together is something else. [They laugh.]
[00:06:58.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I'd have to borrow so many things back, and I don't know—things are moving so fast. Even the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C.—I think they have a beautiful and personal collection. I like it. They're trying to tear it to pieces in different reviews, you know, and think that his taste was fuddy-duddy taste, these young reviewers who know nothing about art, you know.
[00:07:35.47]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, it was beautiful review, I guess, by John Russell.
[00:07:40.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, John Russell is intelligent, and he does good reviews. In fact, we stayed in his house in—
[00:07:47.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: In New York?
[00:07:48.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: In London.
[00:07:49.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, in London.
[00:07:49.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: In London.
[00:07:50.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: His maisonette, yes.
[00:07:54.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: So there you were in the early '60s, when Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art were taking off, so did you have any—
[00:08:00.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: The Pop Art didn't interest me. [Laughs.] That's an awful thing to say.
[00:08:08.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: People like Tony Berlant and—
[00:08:11.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Tony Berlant didn't interest me. I didn't like those houses. I didn't like what he was doing.
[00:08:16.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: Tony Berlant started as a young collector. He came into the gallery with his parents when we had the first Appel show. And not only did he buy Appel from us, but he bought Alan Davie. And he encouraged his parents to do it, and he was just a young college student.
[00:08:32.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he really liked what we were showing, but other people in town got to him because if we were ever to put Los Angeles on the map in a forceful way, it had to be just a few artists, and it had to be an agreement who those few artists were going to be.
[00:08:51.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: You're talking about the conspiracy theory of how to sell Los Angeles?
[00:08:54.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. It's true.
[00:08:56.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah. And those artists were Bell and—
[00:09:00.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, and they were to group themselves together. They were to say that all galleries were crooks, and the only way a gallery could sell or be successful would be to be recommended by a museum director and sell directly to the collectors and just to be known as a group. It was a conspiracy. Some people called it "the mafia."
[00:09:27.60]
RUTH BOWMAN: This is a group of artists?
[00:09:28.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: But people wondered why Los Angeles? Well, you see, we don't attract collectors any longer, not really. We used to attract a lot of international collectors. But the artists coming along that I might have been interested in wouldn't show in a gallery, no matter how good the reputation, because they were afraid to break this very rigid set of rules.
[00:09:57.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: This wasn't an artist like Diebenkorn? He wasn't—
[00:09:59.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: Diebenkorn was independent.
[00:10:02.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: But Bob Irwin, and Larry Bell—
[00:10:04.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bob Irwin, and Bell, and DeWain Valentine. They would tell an artist who would come to town not to show at a gallery, and also, one of our curators at the museum would say the same thing, that there's nothing on La Cienega, nothing at all.
[00:10:29.88]
RUTH BOWMAN: There is a lot of bitterness, isn't there?
[00:10:31.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, of course, there is. There should be bitterness. And Jane Livingston came to me, and she said, "Well, they told me there was nothing like this in Los Angeles." She said it was the best group that she had ever seen.
[00:10:44.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: She did a foreword for—Esther did a movie, and Jane Livingston did the foreword for the movie.
[00:10:50.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: What movie?
[00:10:51.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was New Material. I was getting a show ready to travel for the Western Association of Art Museums of kinetic work and new materials. DeWain Valentine was in that. It was called Light—Reflected Light/Smooth and (Fuzzy) Textured Sculptures. Also, it had reflected surfaces of lacquered horizontal 10" x 4" highly finished in bright colors by Vasa. –Ed.]
[00:11:03.91]
ROBERT ROBLES: It's a beautiful movie.
[00:11:04.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: Because of the cast-polyester or whatever that is?
[00:11:06.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:11:08.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: It's a 27-minute movie in color and sound.
[00:11:11.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where is it? Who did it? I mean who distributed it?
[00:11:15.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did.
[00:11:16.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: I have to see this film.
[00:11:17.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'll show it to you. It's a very good film, even today. [Some say it gets better and more timely. –Ed.]
[00:11:23.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: So Jane Livingston was involved, in spite of the fact that she worked at the Los Angeles County Museum?
[00:11:27.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:11:28.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: She did it because Esther got to her within the first few months she was at the Museum.
[00:11:32.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: But she told me, "I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to review your shows any longer because they want me just to go to the artist studios and not to go to the galleries." You see, they wanted to separate the galleries from the museum, from this group of artists. And then this North African who lived in London—
[00:11:58.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: John Coplans.
[00:11:58.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: John Coplans took the idea of [Lawrence –Ed.] Alloway. He was just a pedestrian painter, Coplans, in England with old landscapes, everything. But when the hard-edge people went to London, he was on fire. So was Alloway. And this is when the English artists started copying the American artists.
[00:12:24.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you blame it all on Coplans—you credit Coplans and Alloway for what happened in England?
[00:12:33.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, yes. And they said that the Americans were crude. They were behind the Pop Art, too, but they said that Americans were crude and direct, and were producing an art that was crude and direct. And that was the only art that we could understand because of its crassness, and that was the Pop Art.
[00:12:55.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you feel Pop Art was a cynical movement?
[00:12:59.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes. They felt that in Europe too.
[00:13:02.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: And it was really an anti-art movement?
[00:13:04.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:13:06.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: But different from someone like Duchamp, for instance?
[00:13:10.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, the takeoff point was their artists getting together, artists discussing art, artists saying that the old art is gone, and so forth and doing something else. No matter how ridiculous, the public would accept it if the manifesto was strong enough and if the propaganda was strong enough, that the public are gullible. They'll accept anything. But it's a very perishable thing. It's gone.
[00:13:41.75]
And this was the time when Leavitt said that it would take us ten years to get over what had happened in Los Angeles. We were developing very nicely in Los Angeles. We had good collections, thoughtful collections. Now, anybody who has is buying anything at all has to be correct. He has to take these things that are backed by the museums.
[00:14:11.76]
RUTH BOWMAN: And the museum at that time—you're talking—we're already ahead of ourselves, I think, in time. We're in '62 now?
[00:14:21.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: We're in '61 still.
[00:14:22.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: '61. And that really didn't happen—Jane didn't get here until much later, right?
[00:14:28.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. Well, this is when things were flourishing. This was wonderful. I had Suzanne Valadon and—
[00:14:38.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: You were showing a very beautiful painter named Gerd Koch, who was from Ojai Valley. And he did beautiful exterior, large—
[00:14:44.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: We were developing some really fine artists, Gerd Koch, Irene Koch.
[00:14:50.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: Roland Petersen.
[00:14:51.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Roland Petersen was one of the first of the figurative people, and he would fit right into the Diebenkorn people. He was a discovered—Ross Smith had a lot to do with our figurative school, a lot to do with the development of Diebenkorn and Parks and so forth.
[00:15:13.39]
ROBERT ROBLES: Robert Cremean had another show.
[00:15:14.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Robert Cremean was really, really destroyed by the group in Los Angeles because they didn't like anything figurative or anything slightly surreal overtone, and he's one of our major artists. I arranged with Norman Geske—I did a traveling show for him, and then when Norman Geske was in charge of the Biennale in Italy, I called Norman, and I said, "What about your choice? Have you thought about Robert Cremean?" And he said yes. I said, "Come out and stay with us, and look at the work again, refresh your memory."
[00:15:52.90]
And so he invited Cremean as one of his choice with Red Grooms for the Biennale. And we had a very terrible thing happening there and bad publicity right straight through from the museum down. "Oh, don't go to see—don't go to see Esther. She has nothing but Robert Cremean in her gallery."
[00:16:31.71]
ROBERT ROBLES: In November of '61, you got a lot of stuff from Europe, with Fautrier, Valadon and Wols and [Julius –Ed.] Bissier. And these were all foreign to people here, and they were beautiful, little exquisite small show.
[00:16:43.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Fautrier won [first prize at the Biennale –Ed.], the international prize. They thought Hofmann should have gotten it. [Our American Pavilion was the best behaved gang under the direction of Breskin. Geske was the director of the Nebraska University Art Museum. –Ed.]
[00:16:50.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: There's a marvelous story about that. Remind me to tell you. Fautrier—and Wols was not known at all except through the Barnes Collection.
[00:16:59.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: And they were just beautiful, exquisite.
[00:17:01.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: There are a few people here who know Wols. We have the little Wols that's quite lovely.
[00:17:06.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Wolfgang-something Schulze.
[00:17:07.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. And then I showed Bissier. I showed Bissier.
[00:17:13.17]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a group show, and then right after that, you showed Streeter Blair's primitive paintings. We had been a friend of Streeter Blair for many years. In fact, he had been across the street as an antique dealer for a number of years in a building on La Cienega Boulevard, and he painted these reminiscences of his childhood. And they were quite good, and he would sell them to friends. But Esther gave him a full-scale show of his primitive paintings, and he was a—
[00:17:44.81]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was a genuine primitive, Streeter Blair. A marvelous feeling for space and so forth. And so I gave him a couple of shows, and he was taken up a little bit by the so-called "avant-garde." [Laughs.]
[00:17:58.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then following Streeter Blair, Esther had another Englishman, Alan Davie, who—well, we did fairly well with that show. You designed a good catalog.
[00:18:23.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. We showed Elise, Cavanna in '62, again. We showed Matta, a big show of Matta.
[00:18:30.35]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did Matta come here?
[00:18:31.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: No.
[00:18:38.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: And in 1962, you showed Victor Brauner. It was an amazing show.
[00:18:42.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: His big encaustics, beautiful show. [Mystic, colorful images –Ed.]
[00:18:45.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think you had a show—you had 40 works of Victor Brauner's, and they were absolutely fantastic. And I think only about three or four were sold.
[00:18:54.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, Victor Brauner is a sort of shocking artist, though, isn't he?
[00:18:58.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [Explicit sex, two-faced images, discplaced parts. –Ed.] And I did the Spanish show, Tharrats, who was a spokesman for this new group of artists.
[00:19:12.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: Tapies.
[00:19:13.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Tapies, and so forth. [A wonder that Franco allowed it, but he was anxious to show the "New Wave of Spanish Art" at the major internationals. –Ed.]
[00:19:17.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: And you went to Spain just prior to that to—
[00:19:20.01]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, you went to Spain. And so were you involved in this controversy that had to do with, "Is it a work of art?" You know? I think it was Burri that got stopped at customs because they said it was an old bag of rags.
[00:19:37.71]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, I know. It was Burri. No, I wasn't involved in that.
[00:19:42.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: You got everything through customs easily?
[00:19:45.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, sometimes I'd have a little trouble, but not with Burri.
[00:19:50.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you showed the whole Spanish group?
[00:19:53.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I showed the Spanish group, and Tharrats especially. He was very articulate. He was a spokesman for the whole group. And then the Robert Cremean bronzes—that was a lovely show, and then a nice show by Paul Granlund.
[00:20:16.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: And we did a summer program which Esther started in the early '60s with—and each year, during the summertime, she had a show running from two to three months with an invited group. And this group, Jerry Ballaine, Fletcher Benton, Gregory Kondos, Glenn Wessels. These were people from the San Francisco Bay Area.
[00:20:43.70]
ESTHER ROBLES: Roland Peterson, Don Reich. There were so many times reviewers say, "Oh, there's nothing happening in the summer. They'll do this or that, and they're not even worth reviewing, and so forth." So I thought, well, I have a busy program, and during the summer, I'm working. And I always want to put these shows on, so I'll have what I call a summer program. For three months, I'll get the best shows together I can. And I did, but I didn't get many reviews because they said it was too much work. They would review a one-man show or a two-man but—
[00:21:29.63]
RUTH BOWMAN: —not a group show.
[00:21:30.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: —not a group show.
[00:21:32.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: Sound like great reviewers.
[00:21:34.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were—they're still—terrible. [The writers on art in Los Angeles have not been profound as a rule. –Ed.]
[00:21:37.70]
ROBERT ROBLES: And following that, Esther—
[00:21:39.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh dear. [Laughs.]
[00:21:39.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: —did a show with William Copley's—
[00:21:45.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: And John Coplans was in that show. Karl Benjamin, John Coplans, Al Copley, Jules Engel.
[00:21:52.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: And John Coplans' paintings at the time were very subdued, hard-edged things. And he was struggling.
[00:22:00.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: He'd copied the American hard edge.
[00:22:03.08]
ROBERT ROBLES: He had been living—prior to that, he had living—or at that time, he was living in San Francisco with Charles Mattox in a loft.
[00:22:09.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: In an old firehouse. It was an interesting old firehouse. And they were fascinating men. They were idea men. And John Coplans came into my gallery. He said, "Esther, I have great plans for you. I'm an ambitious man. I'm a hungry man, and I need to be fed." And I said, "Well, what plans do you have?" Well, there are artists he wanted me to show and so forth. I said, "Well, if you're a hungry man, let's go out and have lunch." [Laughs.]
[00:22:41.72]
But I don't think I want to—I've always chosen my own shows, and I don't need to have you choose the people. And he thought I was crazy. He said, "Esther, I'm going to make Los Angeles famous, and there are only a few artists that I can talk about. And no matter how good the rest of them are," he said, "the point would be lost completely."
[00:23:07.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, so he was part of the conspiracy.
[00:23:10.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: And somebody else was—that little assistant director—he's in Berkeley now. He came to me, and he said, "Esther, you should be very good to me. I'm going to be an important man." And he said, "I'm forming a group now. They're going to speak with one voice, and it will be my voice."
[00:23:32.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: Jim Elliott.
[00:23:33.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yep. Well, you know, [laughs] you've heard this before. It isn't anything new.
[00:23:44.67]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, this is this is for the record, and we have to talk for the record. And if you had experiences like this in the early '60s, when all this was being formulated, and major museum collections were put together, and you were effectively selling to people who later gave to the museums, this is important. So I want to know as much as you have to tell.
[00:24:04.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, I see. [They laugh.] Oh, well, there's so many funny things that have happened along the way, and tragic things have happened, too, as far as I was concerned, because I wanted to have a pure gallery. I was absolutely pure in what I was doing, and I wanted to give as many artists as possible a chance to be seen, because they were talented people. And more and more I saw their opportunities were being closed up, because Jim Elliott would not have the survey shows any longer. They were too much trouble, and they gave him too much criticism. And it was interfering this little, tight group that was being formed.
And then another person at the museum was [Maurice Tuchman –Ed.] Our gallery was too important in the eyes of the collectors, and they didn't want us to have that authority or importance. And they would say to [our artists –Ed.]—specifically Karl Benjamin, this one curator at the Museum, said, "Well, no matter which gallery you go to, probably the Wilder galleries, yes, but don't go to Esther Robles. Nobody will have anything to do with you if you go to Esther-Robles Gallery."
[00:25:21.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: And how did you get that information?
[00:25:23.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: I got it from the artists.
[00:25:24.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: The artists came in and told Esther because the artists liked Esther.
[00:25:28.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: And they told you the curators of the museum were snubbing you?
[00:25:31.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, they told me the name of this particular curator [Marice Tuchman –Ed.] and the snub. And one time my name was taken off of an invitation list, and somebody told me and put it back on again—at the Museum.
[00:25:44.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: At the LA County Museum?
[00:25:45.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:25:49.51]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was during 1962 that Esther went to Europe and met Claire Falkenstein for a second or third time, and she suggested to Claire that Claire come out and do a project for us in our home, which we had just moved into. And Claire was excited about it, and Esther said she would be given carte blanche. She could live in our guest house and do whatever. So Claire came, and in January of '63, Esther gave Claire an exhibition in the gallery on La Cienega Boulevard, quite a good exhibition, and it was during that year that Claire stayed here and spent ten months building this fountain, starting with the water system first, and then—
[00:26:42.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: I introduced her to everyone in town. I gave her two to three parties.
[00:26:46.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: Every week there would be a major party here, and of course, the climax was when the fountain was finished and we had 350 people here, every collector we—but also during that time, there were weekly parties, dinner parties, sit-down parties and—
[00:27:00.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: With architects, everybody. We really promoted her. And she said she was beholden to me.
[00:27:06.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: She's a good artist, and she's a good graphic artist, isn't she?
[00:27:10.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: Very good graphic artist. She's not a good person. She's taken advantage of people who have befriended her if it isn't to the interest of her career, and she has to choose her enemies carefully so that she can act and react against them.
[00:27:35.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: The political side of the art world here is no different from any other city.
[00:27:40.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's like Paris. It's like New York. It's like every place.
[00:27:43.82]
RUTH BOWMAN: She learned her tactics in Paris because initially she told us things about Sam Francis that we couldn't believe, and she would start by saying, "He's my enemy." And it turned out it was a political—
[00:27:59.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's what she would say.
[00:27:59.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: —way of getting you on her side, or getting you thinking negatively about something. And we overcame that ourselves because we knew what—
[00:28:11.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: I have no bitterness at all. I know how it operates.
[00:28:15.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah.
[00:28:16.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not with everyone, because our artists are friends of ours, and they're always willing to come back. But the artists are pathetic. They're too hungry. They get themselves into terrible binds as far as being decent human beings is concerned. I think they have empty lives [as far as firm commitments to friends and family are concerned –Ed.]
[00:28:41.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, in 1963, Esther showed Claire Falkenstein in a major show and then Karl Benjamin in February. And in March, Michel Seuphor in his second show. And this was a show where he had this 18 or 16-panel drawing, which is absolutely stunning, and plus at least 20 other drawings that he did freehand ink. I don't know if you know the work, but it's quite handsome. And this was a very good show, and following—
[00:29:07.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Just as we write, he could draw. He was a marvelous artist.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6418_m]
[00:00:03.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: Here we are on August 31, 1981, continuing the record of the Esther-Robles Gallery in the same company as last session. So we were bouncing around 1959, as I recall, and sometimes hopping forward and sometimes hopping backward, but basically moving chronologically. And you were about to tell me about some of the things that we forgot.
[00:00:39.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, Robert, you dug out some of these files.
[00:00:46.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, there was an interesting happening sometime in the middle of 1960. We haven't researched the dates on it, but one evening, about 6:15, while we were having dinner in our back apartment, the front door of the gallery opened. And there was a bell attached to it, so we knew someone was in the gallery, which was unusual at that time of night. And we had forgot to lock the door.
[00:01:13.58]
And a young man walked in with a painting under his arm. And I ran up to the front gallery, which was quite a distance from the back of the apartment. And I was about to tell him the gallery was closed, and I saw he had a rather interesting looking painting under his arm. And he said he wanted to sell it. So we took it under consignment, and it was a Vlaminck, an early Vlaminck painting, probably a 1920 Vlaminck.
[00:01:44.00]
And it turned out that he had a father-in-law who had lived in Paris in the '20s, and who was a friend of Modigliani and all the artists at that time, who was a writer. And the father had started giving his collection to his various children—his three or four daughters. And this was one of the—and this was a son-in-law who lived up in the Carmel Valley.
[00:02:12.51]
So Esther took this painting of Vlaminck's and, of course, sold it immediately, and asked if there were other pictures. And we discovered that up in Big Sur was another daughter and her husband, who had three or four other paintings. So we went up, drove up to Big Sur, and in this little wooden building on top of a mountain, we saw Modigliani, Soutine, Vlaminck, Utrillo—
[00:02:46.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: Gauguin, a tobacco jar by Paul Gauguin, a carving.
[00:02:52.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: Gaugin. And it was astonishing.
[00:02:55.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who was the family?
[00:02:57.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: Brooks.
[00:02:58.35]
ROBERT ROBLES: Alden Brooks. [He was a scholar of Shakespeare and former professor if literature at Harvard. –Ed.] And we brought back with us in the back of our car two or three of the paintings, and immediately started exhibiting the Modigliani in different shows. Frederick Wight organized the Modigliani show. It's the kind museum put on. And then the picture went to Boston. During that time, we were vacillating as to where to sell it. We flew the picture. Next year, we went in April to Louisville, Kentucky to show it to a collector and decided not to sell it at the time, although we had an offer.
[00:03:43.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: What was the name of the director of the Boston Museum at that time? Rosen—do you remember? He recommended we go to see these people who wanted the—
[00:03:54.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: We have it in our records.
[00:03:55.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. [Perry J. Rathbone. –Ed.]
[00:03:57.36]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you went to Louisville.
[00:03:58.66]
ROBERT ROBLES: We went to Louisville. And it went to picture. And these people were—I think it was too overwhelming for them at that time. But eventually, Esther decided to put it at auction at Sotheby's in England, and it brought a record price. And with that record—
[00:04:17.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: I called Peter at Sotheby's.
[00:04:19.96]
ROBERT ROBLES: Peter Wilson.
[00:04:20.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: Peter Wilson. And he came out to see us, to look at this collection. And he was very, very much interested in it. And he wanted it at auction. Well, we didn't know if we wanted it to go to auction or not, but we talked it over with the Brooks family, and they thought it was a good idea. So we sent it to auction. And then I got a very excited call from Peter. And he said, "Esther, we had the sale. And you reached a record price at auction on your Modigliani, the 'L'Homme au Verre du Vin" [circa 1918 –Ed.] reached over the $100,000 mark." And that was sensational [for the time –Ed.].
[00:05:12.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: So the family was delighted. And we received other pictures.
[00:05:20.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is the one that was sold.
[00:05:24.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, yes.
[00:05:25.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'm going to digress just a little bit, because I think it's interesting. Gertrude Stein's—[cross talk].
[00:05:32.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: [Inaudible]
[00:05:33.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Gertrude Stein's brother—
[00:05:34.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: This is Gertrude Stein's apartment.
[00:05:37.04]
ESTHER ROBLES: Gertrude Stein's brother bought this apartment when the Alden Brooks came back to America. And this is where that famous collection was housed.
[00:05:48.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: This is Leo Stein.
[00:05:50.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: Leo Stein, that's right. Here's another picture.
[00:05:55.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this is part of the collection that we got.
[00:05:59.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: And this is another picture. And there was a diary. I think I had part of the diary where Mrs. Brooks said, "Oh, Alden has gone out and bought another Modigliani, and our children need shoes." [They laugh.]
[00:06:20.45]
ROBERT ROBLES: So the next—we sold some of the smaller Vlamincks. They were beautiful pictures. And then we had a man who was just beginning to collect who came to the gallery and saw another Modigliani and bought it. Within two months, he came back and said he didn't want the picture. He thought—he was advised [by Paul Kantor –Ed.] that it wasn't right. And we said, "On the contrary." So he ensued a lawsuit.
And Richard Brown, then the director of the LA County Museum, had seen the picture originally and raved about it. So he stepped into the picture and wrote a four or five page critique on the painting and how great it was and how original it was and authentic it was. And with this collector's lawyers and our lawyer, we sat down in Richard Brown's for practically a whole day and discussed it. And the man decided to keep the painting, but it put a blot on the collection. And he was a new collector, just beginning to collect. And he had been advised by another dealer in town.
[00:07:44.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: I might as well tell you the name. Paul Kantor wanted this collection, but he didn't get it.
[00:07:49.43]
RUTH BOWMAN: I see.
[00:07:50.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: But it turned out that Kantor had wanted the collection himself, and so his method was to darken Esther's reputation, and so to better himself—
[00:08:03.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: To discredit the collection.
[00:08:05.52]
RUTH BOWMAN: These photographs that were taken in Leo Stein's Paris apartment were taken by a man named Ivanov.
[00:08:11.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: Is that so? [Laughs.]
[00:08:12.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, just a footnote. So Kantor didn't get the paintings?
[00:08:19.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he didn't.
[00:08:20.88]
RUTH BOWMAN: He's still around?
[00:08:21.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he is.
[00:08:22.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: A private dealer, yes.
[00:08:23.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: So it made it awkward for the rest of the collection. We had a Gauguin wood tobacco jar, which is in the Gauguin book that we have illustrated. We had other major paintings, but the family then was so hurt by this thing—because Mr. Brooks himself, who was quite elderly, had to come down to Los Angeles and sit in on this with the photograph in his diary that he had written, because he kept a daily diary during those years in Paris. And it was quite an upsetting and emotional thing for him to be challenged, because he knew all these artists and he would buy them on a friendly basis with the artists. So the family had been upset by it. But Esther went ahead with another Modigliani that came from another daughter.
[00:09:23.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: "Le Garcon Rouge."
[00:09:24.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: "Le Garcon Rouge" was the title of it—a young boy in a sailor suit. And we decided to put it in at auction.
[00:09:31.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: The "boy in red."
[00:09:31.90]
ROBERT ROBLES: So instead of selling it here to collectors, she put it at another auction in England.
[00:09:35.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: And David Bright wanted that. And he got very mad at me, because I felt his price was too low. And I thought I could get more at auction. His offer to me was around $70,000, I think, which all right for the time. Was not too bad. [But I knew it was worth more. –Ed.]
[00:09:54.36]
RUTH BOWMAN: And this was all in 1960?
[00:09:56.15]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, this was—we covered a period of two and a half years with this discussion. The first contact with this collection was 1960. In 1961, we exhibited and sold the smaller pictures. It was in 1962, in April, that—
[00:10:12.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: We're in 1962, "Le Garcon Rouge," oil on canvas.
[00:10:17.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: —the major Modigliani was sold in England for a record price. And it was also in 1962 that this collector bought another Modigliani from us and decided that he didn't want it.
[00:10:30.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: You may be familiar with that.
[00:10:32.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I know that painting.
[00:10:32.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: You may be familiar with that.
[00:10:33.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah.
[00:10:34.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, this painting was sent to England. And Esther wanted a high reserve on it. And one of our dear friends, who was beginning to collect also, and who was head of one of the major movie companies here, wanted to buy it.
[00:10:48.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Edie –Ed.] Wasserman.
[00:10:49.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: But we were told by Edie Wasserman that someone in England and some dealer from Los Angeles—
[00:10:56.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: Paul Kantor.
[00:10:57.02]
ROBERT ROBLES: —had said the painting was not good, so don't bid on it.
[00:11:02.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Edie said they'd never trust me again.
[00:11:05.52]
ROBERT ROBLES: And so there we were again, faced with another thing. Well, Sotheby had Esther put a little lower reserve on the painting. And when the painting sold at auction, it sold for exactly what the reserve was, exactly, which was a little strange to us, because we didn't quite understand why a painting on a low reserve like that wouldn't go beyond the reserve. So it meant the painting sold. And we found out that within a month after the painting sold at this low reserve, it sold for twice that much to a private collector, and that the—
[00:11:47.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: And it was sold by [Klaus] Perl's gallery. And this other dealer told us that we got caught in the ring, you know, that the dealers got together and they decided they would buy the painting, share the cost, and one of them would get it. So the owners of the painting don't know this story. In fact, I haven't even told the story.
[00:12:12.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: So we were informed through different channels that we had been caught in a bind in an auction, which we had heard about before, and this was the first time it ever happened, and it happened to us—and that the painting was turned over for a double profit immediately. [Well over $100,000. –Ed.]
[00:12:29.69]
ESTHER ROBLES: The Guggenheim [recently exhibited it –Ed.].
[00:12:30.47]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's where I've seen it, in the Evelyn Sharp collection.
[00:12:34.04]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it was sold to this woman.
[00:12:37.16]
RUTH BOWMAN: Evelyn Sharp bought her entire collection from Klaus Perls, as far as I know.
[00:12:44.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right. Yeah, so we channeled to her collection by this group, with Perls as part of it.
[00:12:51.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I know it's something that's done. And it isn't supposed to be dishonest. But I felt it was very dishonest. And I didn't want to have anything to do with Sotheby's again, because I thought that they were in on it. They called the dealers in. I even got a call from this Kantor, who said I couldn't sell that. [Laughs.] And he made two visits to the gallery to tell me I couldn't sell this collection.
[00:13:27.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: The collection was very well documented. So with that, we returned this Soutine and two or three other objects. And then a year later, in 1964, Mr. Brooks died. And we haven't heard what has happened to the collection. But in that collection was also a van Gogh, a very great van Gogh that had good documentation.
[00:13:53.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: And this was before fakes were really being done. It was too early. It was too well documented. But they tried to do this thing to us, because we were a very prominent gallery, and we were getting good work, expensive work. And a few people didn't want this competition.
[00:14:14.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: What a story.
[00:14:16.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:14:17.71]
ROBERT ROBLES: This took place from late 1960 to '62. And it was quite a turmoil.
[00:14:25.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: Painful.
[00:14:27.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, terrible, because I'd always been known for being absolutely scrupulous in my dealings. But I found throughout the years, if anyone wanted to do anything really very bad to us, a double crossing us in any way at all, as we became more prominent, they would say, like Claire Falkenstein said to one of my friends, "Well, the reason I went to Martha is Esther didn't pay me." I always paid Claire. But what she wanted was for me to pay her a stipend every month, which I didn't do. So she felt justified in saying that. So you know how that would be interpreted.
[00:15:06.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: Good heavens.
[00:15:09.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: But during those years, Esther was very busy organizing multiple shows in the gallery, plus handling the Brooks collection and other things that came through the gallery. And she never—Esther organized shows without an idea of actually doing a show that was popular, but doing something where the artist's intent was—
[00:15:37.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: [I was not a "trend" gallery. ] I always said that I wanted the artist to be successful within their intent. And I felt that the shows that I did were shows that other galleries were not doing. And Los Angeles had not had the opportunity of seeing this kind of work. But they were always very good shows within their intention. And I didn't feel that my personal taste should be foisted on the public. I wanted to probably train connoisseurship, and I was successful in it. I wanted people to go to the galleries, make up their own minds with enough knowledge that they'd be able to make up their own minds, and not be advised like a bunch of sheep, because these people get very little pleasure out of their collections. It has to be a personal thing. It's one spirit to the other spirit. And this is the thing that I was really engaged in.
And I didn't care about making a reputation in any one line. I didn't care about making a reputation by hanging onto an artist as a stable. I didn't want the name of having a stable. I wanted the artist to go out in the world. And I wanted them to be known. And I wanted them to be appreciated. I felt that with our complicated age, that we had all kinds of cultural thrusts coming at us. And it would be asinine to like only one kind of art. And that's why I did what I did. All right. [Laughs.] I've done my preaching. [Laughs.]
[00:17:33.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, but that's exactly the kind of thing we want to hear about. And so you were still discovering new artists.
[00:17:42.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Of course.
[00:17:43.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what was shown in your galleries in those years in the early '60s, when Pop Art was exploding and Abstract Expressionism was not as visible as Minimal art, and so forth? What were you doing?
[00:17:58.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I was doing a—I was not following the trend. I was never—I never followed the trends, really. I liked Abstract Expressionism. It was very exciting. Some of the Pop Art was interesting. But I had already made up my mind about the younger people who were doing their own work along very original ways. Or there were people who worked earlier, for instance, from—well, from the Armory show on, the '30s and so forth, these were people who were the innovators of modern art. And a long time ago, I decided that they were very worthwhile, and worth staying with, so I stayed with them.
[00:19:00.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: Which artists?
[00:19:01.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I stayed with Milton Avery, Georgia O'Keeffe, Sheeler. I stayed with the—
[00:19:15.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you get work directly from Georgia O'Keeffe, for instance?
[00:19:19.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I didn't. I got some work through Halpert. I got some work through other galleries. I didn't work directly with her at all. And when I'd show Georgia O'Keeffe, sometimes I would borrow from a museum. For instance, I borrowed from Santa Barbara Museum a lovely O'Keeffe that they had. But I liked Philip Evergood. I showed him a long time ago. I think he has a very mystic, very interesting individual quality. I liked his work. I showed him years ago. I showed Arthur Dove, Milton Avery, Morgan Russell, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright through the years. I've showed them. Stuart Davis, through the years.
[00:20:04.34]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you know these artists?
[00:20:05.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: I [talked to –Ed.] Milton Avery [and Sally –Ed.], and I didn't know Stuart Davis. But I borrowed these from collectors, or I would—many times I've taken things from collectors that they wanted to sell, and sold them in my gallery.
[00:20:25.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: The one New York dealer that Esther did strike a very close friendship with was Martha Jackson. And Martha really loved Esther. They had something going together, a personality kind of thing. And when Martha would come out here, she'd stay with us. And when we went to New York, we'd stay in her apartment, which was her gallery, also.
[00:20:44.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: You fed the parrot?
[00:20:48.03]
ROBERT ROBLES: The parrot ate—
[00:20:48.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: I fed the parrot.
[00:20:49.73]
ROBERT ROBLES: Not only that, but when the parrot came here and stayed for a month, the parrot ate one of our gates right off.
[00:20:55.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: In fact, [Laughs.] Bob just fixed the gate—
[00:20:57.42]
ROBERT ROBLES: I just repaired the gate after all these years. But the parrot—she'd have the parrot—Martha would have the parrot sit on this wooden gate outside the kitchen. And it would just gnaw away at the gate. And eventually, the whole top railing of the gate was gnawed away. But Chuckie was—she called it "Chuckie," I think.
[00:21:12.81]
ESTHER ROBLES: Now, I borrowed from the Willard Gallery—the Morris Graves from the Willard Gallery, Mark Tobey from the Seligmann gallery, and the birds that I got in Seattle from people in Seattle and in Boston.
[00:21:29.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: The Graves birds, you mean.
[00:21:30.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. In Boston, Hyman Bloom—they have some Hyman Bloom drawings I gave them years and years ago.
[00:21:36.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: To the Boston Museum of Fine Art?
[00:21:38.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, to our LA—
[00:21:40.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: County Museum?
[00:21:41.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, to UCLA.
[00:21:43.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, UCLA.
[00:21:44.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:21:45.35]
RUTH BOWMAN: To the Grunwald Center?
[00:21:46.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. And Maurice Bloch really loves them. And we know Mrs. Stuart Davis. And we worked through her. And Josef Albers, I worked with a dealer in New York for Josef Albers. And Terry Dintenfass, I'm very close with her. I borrowed a lot of things from her.
[00:22:07.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's recent. But in the '60s, I think it was Martha who was the most familiar with, and who was friendly with Esther. In fact, we even traveled together. We went to one function in Chicago when—it was one of the museums.
[00:22:27.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: The Museum Association at the Chicago Art Institute.
[00:22:33.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: In fact, that was the time when Richard Feigen had a number of Cornell boxes. And we were going to buy something together, so we went to Richard Feigen's gallery, which was a house. And he had three Cornell boxes. And so Martha was haggling with him about the price, as she always does in a friendly way. And so finally he said, well, I'll sell you this one box for $600 and this one for $750, and this one, oh, maybe, for $700. And we were going to buy them.
[00:23:08.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I said, "I'll take them."
[00:23:10.73]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then Martha said, "Well, I don't know. She said, I think maybe we can do better. I don't know." And so she dragged on, and she wouldn't be decisive.
[00:23:22.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: I looked to her for a deal.
[00:23:25.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: So we passed that up, and then we went on to something else. So Esther bought with Martha a Francis Bacon painting, which we never saw, because we bought it together, and then it was shipped to Martha's gallery. And Martha called Esther within a week, and she said, "I've got it sold for a good profit, so let's sell it." [Laughs.]
[00:23:49.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, look, I saw that painting. I saw that painting.
[00:23:53.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: But this was in the '60s.
[00:23:57.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Martha didn't pay me for my part of that. So she said, "I'll trade you something." And I said, "Well, what have you got?" And she said, "Well, I've got a Nevelson. I'll trade you for it." I said, "Okay, I want to the "Golden Wall." And this is the mystery of the Nevelson that they have at the LA County Museum. And so Martha—I was doing the summer show. And Martha sent the golden box to me that I bought—the "Golden Wall." It wasn't a golden box. It was a golden wall. And I really was crazy about it, and I put it in the summer show.
And this is when Jim Elliot came out. They had found out about the new Louise Nevelson, and the collectors wanted a Nevelson. And so he was going to select the Nevelson. But he said, "Well, Esther, of course you couldn't have the best selection here. So I'm going to New York. And I'm going to go to see Martha Jackson, who has the best selection."
[00:24:59.58]
And did I tell you this story before? Well, anyway, [laughs] Jim Elliot didn't find a Nevelson there that he liked. And then Martha said, "Well, I've got some pictures of the Louise Nevelson walls. And here you are. You just look at them." And so he picked out my wall. And he said, "That's what I want." And so Martha said, "Well, that belongs to Esther Robles." [Laughs.]"You go see her, and you'll get it from her."
Well, he was pretty nonplussed. And he didn't get it from me. But Hans de Schulthess—I sold it to Hans de Schulthess. I said, I'll give you an interest in it, but I don't know if I want to sell it or not. But I did. Well, when Louise Nevelson came to the museum and she saw the "Golden Wall," she said, "Where is the other section? I made two." And she's never found out what happened to the other section. I got just one section.
[00:26:06.21]
And I finally sold the whole piece to Hans de Schulthess, because it was the first time that they showed their collection—the Collector's Contemporary Arts Collection—the first time they ever showed their collection that they'd been buying for the museum. And that was his contribution, was this wall. And this was when I bought this house.
[00:26:30.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think what Martha had done is broken up a wall. Louise really does a wall that's so many feet long and all. I think Martha had broken it in half and gave Esther part of it and kept part of it.
[00:26:41.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I didn't know it until I found out what Louise said about this. And Louise didn't know I had the wall, because Martha didn't tell her.
[00:26:53.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: So the piece as the county is only half a wall?
[00:26:56.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's half a wall.
[00:26:58.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: Fascinating.
[00:26:59.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: Isn't that interesting?
[00:27:00.66]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, that'll be good for some art historians.
[00:27:04.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Isn't that juicy? [Laughs.]
[00:27:05.31]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, find me the other half of the Louise Nevelson wall. Someone should ask Louise what it looked like. I wonder if she has a photograph of the whole thing?
[00:27:12.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: Wouldn't it be great if she had it? You might ask her.
[00:27:14.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah.
[00:27:15.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Because I said to Louise, "Don't you know that I really bought your wall?" This was the first wall in Los Angeles. She said, "No, I didn't know it." And she acted as if she couldn't believe it. [Laughs.]
[00:27:28.11]
ROBERT ROBLES: This was the year—this was 1963, actually. And this was a year that Esther also showed Alfred Jensen. And he had never shown in the West Coast before. And she had Louise Nevelson and Jensen in a show.
[00:27:43.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was the summer show. You know, I decided I was going to have really nice things for the summer show, you know? And I don't know if we got a review on that or not. I doubt it.
[00:27:52.33]
ROBERT ROBLES: I doubt it, also.
[00:27:54.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: These were early days. You said there were lots of galleries when you came here in 1960.
[00:27:59.67]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this was in 1963, also.
[00:28:01.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, '65 is when it was.
[00:28:02.76]
ESTHER ROBLES: 1965, because this was before then, and there wasn't too much happening. And our collectors were not very well formed [or informed –Ed.]. I've got some interesting letters […] of what the collectors—their indecision, and who these people were, who Moore was, and was he any good? One of our biggest collectors came to me and asked who he was, you know.
[00:28:30.53]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who Henry Moore was?
[00:28:31.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Henry Moore was. Did I think he was any good, this kind of thing. I had a great Henry Moore wooden piece years ago I got from Seligman in Seattle. And I couldn't get anyone to be interested in it. And when I packed it ready to go to Seligman, Jim Elliot said, "You know, we buy things once in a while." He said, "Do you have anything?" I said, "I have that great Henry Moore, that early wood piece." And he said, "Let me see it." I said, "It's packed, but I'll unpack it." He said, "Well, it doesn't matter. It probably wouldn't be worthwhile. I want something more worthwhile," you see. But he missed a chance to get a beautiful Henry Moore
[00:29:16.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: In '63, also, Esther showed Michel Seuphor, a charming—a beautiful show of drawings and ink drawings of his that—we visited him in his studio, actually, his apartment in Paris. And he had this small desk. And he would just sit at this desk. And on a 20 by 30-inch paper, he would draw these ink lines [free hand, and the drawing paper grew line-by-line as a succession of consequences –Ed.].
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6419_m]
[00:00:04.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: [In progress]—because this beautiful Seuphor drawing is one that I gave to the Museum. I don't know if they've ever had it on display.
[00:00:15.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: The County Museum?
[00:00:16.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, LA County Museum. I don't think they've ever had it on display.
[00:00:22.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think they displayed it once, Esther, when they left—
[00:00:25.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: So as you were being a dealer on La Cienega, the County Museum was building a new building. And there were a lot of—the visibility for art collectors—did you have any dealings with these collectors like the Brodys, or some of the other—
[00:00:45.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther dealt with David Bright.
[00:00:48.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: David Bright.
[00:00:48.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: Francine Brody was aware of us when we showed the Modigliani. And she came—she was very much aware of us. But I didn't sell her anything. I worked with David Bright and Janss. I sold his first—
[00:01:13.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: As a matter of fact, what happened was, Esther had a friendship with a woman in Malibu whose name was Dorothy Brown, who was a professor at UCLA and an artist. And she was giving a weekend party and asked us to attend.
[00:01:28.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: I didn't go to that party. You went to the party. I was in New York.
[00:01:32.04]
ROBERT ROBLES: And at the party, Dorothy Brown came up to me. And she said, "You know, there's a man over in the corner there you really should meet. He's a real estate developer. And he's just becoming interested in art. He's talking to me about art. And he would be someone to talk to, because he's a potential collector." So we struck up a conversation. And he was just a regular guy, kind of an outdoor-type man.
[00:01:59.98]
And he said, "You know, I've got a couple of things, like a Martinez," and something like that. I said, "Come out and see what we have." And he said, "What do you have? I said, "Well, we're just showing at the time an Italian artist. But we also have many other things in the gallery." So he said, "Oh, I'll be in in a couple of days." And he came into the gallery. And Esther had come back from her—
[00:02:28.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: I wasn't back.
[00:02:29.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: You weren't back?
[00:02:30.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: I didn't meet him. He said, "I'll be in the gallery. I'm going to New York first." And you said, "I want you to meet Esther." And he said, "Fine, I'd love to meet her." But he didn't give you the address, his address in New York. So I called several hotels in New York and just asked. And he was staying at the Plaza. And I said I heard from my husband that he was interested in buying. And there were some people I wanted him to look at.
[00:03:02.35]
One of them was Diebenkorn. And I'd gone to see Ellie Poindexter. And I found a beautiful Diebenkorn that I thought he might like. And so he said, "Well, I've never heard of him. But, anyway, if you say so, I'll go with you. Your husband seems to think so much of you." So Ellie wasn't there. But I talked to an assistant. And Janss sort of liked that. And that was fine. And then Janss got in touch with me. And how much was it?
[00:03:37.87]
And I gave him the price that I got for it, which was $4,000. And I was not asking for a dealer's price at all. But Ellie didn't want to sell to a dealer. She just decided she didn't want to do that. She could sell the Diebenkorns anyway. And so, she said, "Well, I'll send it to him." I'll send it to him. But I found out later, she charged him $5,000 for the Diebenkorn.
[00:04:07.98]
And Janss thought I had charged a great big commission. I wrote to Ellie. And I told her about that. And I said—this is backed up by correspondence. And I said, "I think I should have some kind of a commission on that. After all, I did sell it." So Ellie said, "Well, I think I can allow you ten percent on this. But it was ten percent of $4,000, not ten percent of $5,000." And then, Janss had thought I was just taking advantage of him.
[00:04:39.52]
RUTH BOWMAN: What was his first name?
[00:04:40.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Ed. Ed Janss.
[00:04:42.39]
ROBERT ROBLES: They're two brothers, Ed and Bill. But Ed was the first one. And at this time also, Esther took him around to other dealers.
[00:04:49.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Martha Jackson.
[00:04:50.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: To Martha Jackson. And Ed was the type of man, if he liked something, that was it. So he looked at a—
[00:05:00.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: Paul Burri.
[00:05:02.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: Antoni Tapies. And he bought it like that. He bought a Paul Burri like that. He bought—Esther was astounded. He bought—
[00:05:11.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: He bought everything I told him.
[00:05:12.43]
ROBERT ROBLES: Everything that Esther showed him, he bought it within one minute. I mean, he was just that fast. And he, you know—and this was his first—
[00:05:19.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: He had a good eye. And he trusted you completely.
[00:05:20.95]
ROBERT ROBLES: And these were his first purchases.
[00:05:22.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: He trusted me. He had a very good build-up from Bob, and also Dorothy Brown, whom he trusted, who was a teacher of art.
[00:05:28.76]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was an aggressive, good-thinking, clear-thinking man. And he was just, boom, he did it. And it changed his whole life. These purchases, when they were sent back to his home in Thousand Oaks, it changed him completely. Everything about him changed, his lifestyle. The man just, overnight, shocked people in what he was doing. And his personal life—
[00:05:53.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: His life changed. He started having girlfriends. He and his wife were divorced. And he was quite a high-stepping man. He really was. He loved the free thing that he found, the free way of life that he found in the arts.
[00:06:15.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: When Karel Appel visited us in 1961, we took him right to Janss's. We were driving up the coast to San Francisco. So we stopped off in Thousand Oaks because Ed said, "Stop off. It's on the way." And Ed Janss had bought an Appel, and he loved it. And so, we were talking. And so he said to Karel—so he said, "Any time you want, he said, come visit me. And, in fact, we can do it tomorrow."
[00:06:41.97]
He said, "We can fly over the Grand Canyon." He said, "I have a plane. And we'll just take a little flight." He said, "Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?" He said no. "I go there every once in a while," he said, "when I want to get away. I just got to get in my plane and fly over the Canyon for a couple of hours and come back." He said, "I feel like a new man." So he invited Appel to take a flight with him in his own plane. And these were—this was the way Ed Janss worked.
[00:07:06.50]
RUTH BOWMAN: When you said he bought a Paul Burri, does that mean you knew Lefebre, too?
[00:07:11.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Lefebre wasn't in it at that time. It was Martha Jackson.
[00:07:15.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: It wasn't Paul. It was the other Burri.
[00:07:16.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was Burri [Alberto, the Italian –Ed.], not Paul [the Belgian –Ed.].
[00:07:21.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Burri lived here for part of the year. Many people don't know that.
[00:07:26.04]
RUTH BOWMAN: Really?
[00:07:27.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: With Minsa Craig. His [ex –Ed.] wife was a dancer. [He has another household in Italy. –Ed.]
[00:07:30.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Burri had a little place, a hideaway up here on Mulholland Drive. And he spent many years here without anyone even knowing it. The last 20 years, he's been here.
[00:07:40.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he is the major artist in Italy now. That's a consensus opinion as far as Italians are concerned.
[00:07:47.48]
RUTH BOWMAN: According to the Customs Department, too.
[00:07:49.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, [laughs] that's right.
[00:07:51.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Ed went from buying and collecting these major works. In fact, he bought Alan Davie from us [inaudible], into supporting local artists here. He became a very good friend of John Altoon's and helped John out. And when John Altoon passed away, there was a gathering. And Ed Janss was the first one to get up in the audience and give a eulogy for John Altoon. It was very beautiful.
[00:08:23.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was an illuminating kind of eulogy on how Altoon has affected his life. In fact, Altoon affected the lives of many people in Los Angeles. I think he was a very fine artist. He was also an interesting man, and a man of great heart. I knew Altoon not so much because of his art, but I just liked him. And I liked his dog. He used to live around La Cienega. And we'd have conversations about everything except art, because that wasn't our major concern.
[00:08:58.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you weren't his dealer?
[00:09:00.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, no. No.
[00:09:02.93]
RUTH BOWMAN: A lot of people have talked about him in a very personal way.
[00:09:06.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: He would come in the gallery and be so warm and open, and he loved a certain work. And this was about 1963 or '64. Altoon came into the gallery, and he saw something he wanted. He really liked it. And he said, "I'm crazy." He said, "Why should I want something?" He said, "I'm an artist." He said, "I like that." And so I said, "Well, why don't we trade something?" So John Altoon got this work of art. And Esther traded him and got a picture.
[00:09:35.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I traded something very erotic, and I was very fond of it. But unfortunately, I traded that with one of my artists for another piece of work. These trades always go on, you know? [Laughs.]
[00:09:49.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who was that, the work that Altoon liked?
[00:09:53.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: He saw a Fletcher Benton kinetic work, one of the first early pieces that Fletcher Benton did of moving planes of glass that changed color. They moved in front of each other.
[00:10:01.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: Bonino was selling in New York.
[00:10:03.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, we were selling it before them.
[00:10:04.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bonino came to see me first [about my kinetic artists –Ed.] before she opened her gallery in New York [with her husband –Ed.].
[00:10:08.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther started Fletcher Benton. And the way it started was, Esther had come back from a trip, and had passed through New York and had two hours before a plane. And so, she went from the Kennedy Airport to the World's Fair. And in the World's Fair Pavilion, the American Pavilion, whatever it was, there was a small show of art. And in that were three small Fletcher Benton's, very crude, early pieces of Fletcher Benton. And I think this was in [1963 or 1964 –Ed.].
[00:10:39.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: But I showed Fletcher Benton when he was a portrait and landscape artist, because I showed this whole group of San Francisco artists.
[00:10:48.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:10:49.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: But Benton wanted me to show that work, but I didn't care enough about giving it a show. But I really flipped over this new art form, the kinetic art form being done by an artist who knew nothing about physics or electronics. But he saw the possibility of an art that belonged to our age, which was utilizing electricity in an art form. I still think this is an art form that hasn't been developed yet. But I think he's one of the genuine artists of that art form.
[00:11:25.60]
And so, I called him when I got back. And I said, "Fletcher, I'd love to show you. And it's kinetics." He said, "You mean you don't like my paintings? You really don't?" I said, "Well, the paintings are all right. But I'm really excited about this." He said, "Well, I don't know where anything is right now. But Hansen showed that work. And she must have something at her place in San Francisco."
[00:11:57.25]
So I went to Hansen. She didn't even know where it was. It was in the back room. And I found this little ticky-tacky piece that Fletcher had done, covered with dust. And I said, well, here it is. This is wonderful. This was one of the pieces that opened and closed like a stage. It was really very, very exciting, what could happen, you know? It was a whole performance without the actors. But you could visualize the whole thing.
[00:12:22.73]
And so I said, well, I want to show that. That will be marvelous. And he didn't know if he wanted to show or not. He was terribly nervous about—here he was, a painter and an artist, going into this area of art. But anyway, I showed his work. And we have a lot of the things, which I bought in order to encourage him in the work. I would buy these little pieces of kinetics. And so that made him go ahead.
And he was using chewing gum and rubber bands—rubber bands, masonite. You'd see a little kid running down the street with a beanie with one of these things that would whirl in the air. He'd look at that thing whirling in the air. How could he utilize it in one of his kinetic pieces? And he'd get the beanie away from the kid. [Laughs.]
[00:13:17.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: He had a house in a little street on a hillside in San Francisco. And in the garage, there was a little space about four foot square. And this is where Fletcher would work on these small pieces. And as he turned around, he'd knock one off on the floor or something. It was so small. And he didn't have the proper equipment, but he had the idea. And he told Esther that the reason he was so skittish at first was that he had this idea of wanting to make something that moved.
[00:13:44.00]
In fact, when he was growing up, he always did things with his hands. In fact, he worked his way through school doing lettering on sign windows, you know, the gold leaf lettering. And his first piece was a moving piece. He had painted a figure of two girls or three girls on a canvas, and then he carved some legs out, and he put a motor in the back, and he made these legs move.
[00:14:07.96]
And he liked the piece. It was corny. When he took it to a dealer, the dealer laughed at him. And Fletcher was so upset, because he got laughed at as an artist, that he just hid the piece. And that's why he was shy about his kinetic. But he then got rid of the object. And he just got into the geometric, the Albers-type thing. And he did these squares that moved, or circles that moved.
[00:14:33.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's really a hard-edge constructivist. This is really what he is. And then I formed a friendship with Howard Wise, who also pioneered kinetics.
[00:14:46.63]
RUTH BOWMAN: Just about that same time, June of 1964.
[00:14:49.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:14:50.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: And in this first show Esther had, I think both the Janss brothers bought. And, in fact, the show was a sellout.
[00:15:02.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: And the [Bentons –Ed.]. It was a tremendous success.
[00:15:04.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: And as Esther gave more money to Fletcher, he was able to buy better equipment, expand his horizons.
[00:15:11.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: Put stainless steel frames or chrome-edge frames.
[00:15:14.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then, I got the Lipman and the people from the Whitney—
[00:15:19.02]
ROBERT ROBLES: Howard Lipman came.
[00:15:19.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: —to come to the gallery and look at this work. And they selected Fletcher Benton and a number of other artists. And everybody was supposed to write a statement. And Fletcher said, "I can't write. I can't do a statement." So I said, "Okay, I'll sign your name to it, and I'll do a statement for you." So I outlined in that statement—I said that it has wonderful art possibilities. And I'm working now with small pieces.
[00:15:53.89]
But I can see a kinetics eight or ten feet tall and utilized in modern homes. I really would like to do a kinetic doorway, which would be a very, very exciting thing, in all the colors of the rainbow. But it will be geometric. And that was really fine. Fletcher has even forgotten I wrote it. [Laughs.] Anyway, later on—I want to tell this, Bob, because I was excited about it. It was something that I had dreamed up. And I thought, when Paul Mills was doing his new museum, which I'm very fond of—
[00:16:39.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: In Oakland.
[00:16:39.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: —in Oakland, I thought that Fletcher Benton should do a large kinetic piece. And Paul Mills said, "I do have a place that would be an opening, like a window or a doorway, that will open to the sculpture garden." And you could see it from inside, and you could see it moving very, very slowly. You know, we both got together on this. And we were excited about it.
[00:17:11.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: This is the same Paul Mills, from Santa Barbara?
[00:17:12.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Paul Mills, [the then-director of the Oakland Museum –Ed.].
[00:17:15.03]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was in Oakland.
[00:17:15.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's the one who really put Diebenkorn on the map, I think, as far as the figurative was concerned, [giant people in a flat landscape –Ed.]
[00:17:22.80]
ROBERT ROBLES: [Paul Mills organized –Ed.] the first San Francisco Figurative show back in the '50s. [He also presented it at LACMA. –Ed.]
[00:17:26.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bischoff and Parks, the first really major show getting these people together that looked so strange. But anyway, he was a very brilliant director at one time before he was so bogged down with administrative duties and so forth, and the politics that sometimes go with a museum. But anyway, Paul said, "Well, where will I get the money?" And I said, "Isn't that an aluminum company, Alcoa—isn't that right next door to you? Don't you know anybody over there?"
[00:17:56.65]
ROBERT ROBLES: Kaiser Aluminum.
[00:17:57.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: Kaiser Aluminum. And so, he said yes. I said, "Well, whom do you know? And can we go see this person? Maybe they'd be excited about it." So we did. We went over to see the head man.
[00:18:11.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: Hal Babbitt.
[00:18:11.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: Hal Babbitt talked to him about it, made an appointment with Fletcher about this. And I didn't want to be in on this appointment. I sent Bob because they were these mighty men, you know, who were talking big architectural stuff. And here was Fletcher in his little cramped garage workroom, [laughs] being overwhelmed with the idea that this was going to be a possibility.
[00:18:50.05]
I always visualized Fletcher as someone who was capable of doing big commissions. And that idea, that's all he's doing now—outdoor commissions. And so, they got together on this thing, completely together. They worked it out. The doors were installed. There, again, we left the business in the hands of Fletcher. And there was no commission for us, our trips to San Francisco or anything of the kind, or even any of a credit for thinking of it. [Laughs.]
[00:19:29.65]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a strange workings. Hal Babbitt came. And we brought him—had lunch and brought him to the studio, Fletcher's little garage. And Fletcher at that time had been encouraged to make a piece that was bigger than 12 inches. So he was working on a piece that was about three feet by four feet, of panels moving. And this was a prototype that Hal Babbitt looked at. And he said, "Well, that would be great. That's the idea." So they determined how much money could be spent. And it seemed like a fairly small budget. But Fletcher said, "Oh, I could do it for practically peanuts." It'd be easy to do.
[00:20:02.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was so excited about it [and he wanted to do it. He didn't care, at that time, about money. –Ed.]
[00:20:05.21]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were talking about a free-standing piece of sculpture. And what happened was that, along the line, it became incorporated as part of the building.
[00:20:15.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is what my idea was. [I've lived to regret it because of the building codes. –Ed.]
[00:20:17.04]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes. And as a result of being incorporated as a wall, structural engineers had to be called in. And money then became turned into the engineering concept of the wall itself, and how to reinforce the wall. So whatever money was available for the sculpture disappeared into the wall and the contractors' pocket, because they had to reinforce it differently. So, according to Fletcher, he didn't make any money. And, of course—
[00:20:50.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't think he did. None of us did.
[00:20:52.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: He spent the money on it. And no one got credit. And yet, today, at the Oakland Museum is this three moving panes of glass—
[00:21:01.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a fantastic piece.
[00:21:01.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: —that are incorporated into a wall, which is quite handsome when it's working.
[00:21:07.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: I don't think I've seen it working. So were there other kinetic artists that you took on?
[00:21:13.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:21:13.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Fletcher was the first one. And then, from that, there was a whole germination going on in the San Jose area due to Fletcher, who was a very forceful and direct person. He had a class. He taught at San Jose. And out of that class have emerged a number of very good artists, not all of them kinetic. But some of them are even painters today in the Los Angeles area who are making a name for themselves, but based on their early training with Fletcher, who got them into a [inaudible].
[00:21:47.04]
ESTHER ROBLES: He got a regular artist studio. He had an atelier, really.
[00:21:57.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Fletcher started Mike Cooper, who was in the Whitney Annual in, I think, '60—What year was that?
[00:22:08.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: We might be ahead of ourselves here. I don't know, but anyway, that's all right.
[00:22:11.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: But a lot—Esther did show three or four other kinetic people from that area, mostly in her summer programs.
[00:22:19.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: I organized several big shows about the people working in plastics and kinetic, anything that moved—the—which I didn't care very much—the neon. I felt it was dangerous to show in a gallery. And the artists who were doing animated things underwater, anything that would be moving. Charles Mattox, in 1963, was one of the first of the local kinetic people I showed.
[00:23:09.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Charles Mattox had been living with John Coplans in San Francisco. And Coplans was pushing Mattox. And Mattox was a very easygoing, nice guy who really didn't have great ambitions. But John Coplans had ambitions. And Coplans had told Mattox he'd put him on the map. And so he gave him articles in Artforum, and he put words in his mouth. And Charlie Mattox became a name in the art magazines. And later on, he became a teacher at New Mexico—University of New Mexico. And his students all like him because he's a nice, easygoing guy. But he doesn't produce—he never really did produce anything except the same idea.
[00:23:53.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Where is that catalog I worked out for the show I did in Arizona, at the—
[00:24:04.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: Arizona Public—
[00:24:05.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: In the public utilities.
[00:24:07.35]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther did a big show for them.
[00:24:08.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did a big show for them. Frank Popper wanted to rendezvous with me in Paris before he did the show in England at the Whitechapel Gallery about the kinetic people, at the Hayward Gallery. And then I did a show in collaboration with the Nevada University, the art department. And we had the kinetic people from South America, and from France.
[00:24:40.41]
RUTH BOWMAN: You mean Soto?
[00:24:41.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: Soto, yeah, people like that. [All the major exhibiting international artists. –Ed.]
[00:24:44.52]
ROBERT ROBLES: Vardanega, Soto. Gee, there was a whole list of them. It was a really exciting show. [I have a catalog –Ed.]
[00:24:48.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I did a whole—it was really like a book that was never published on that. I don't know where it is. [The first draft, completed, is among my papers. –Ed.]
[00:24:59.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you have John Goodyear?
[00:25:01.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I didn't have John Goodyear. [He was never in my group. –Ed.]
[00:25:04.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: He's strictly New York.
[00:25:05.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: No.
[00:25:06.39]
ROBERT ROBLES: But back in 1964, Esther showed Stanton Macdonald-Wright. And it was the first showing of his work since he hadn't had a show, I think, in maybe 20 or 30 years.
[00:25:25.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: 1965.
[00:25:28.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: In '64, in April. 1964 in April, you gave Stanton Macdonald-Wright his first—
[00:25:33.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: The watercolor show. Oh, I wrote him a letter about what he was doing. And he said, well, he was just looking out the window in Kyoto, and doing the rooftops, and doing the watercolors in Kyoto. And I said, oh, how nice it would be. Send me some watercolors that you did while you were looking over the rooftops of Kyoto. And we'll do a show. He was very excited about that. And he did send me the watercolors. And we did do a nice [exhibition of watercolors and oils –Ed.], which was a sellout.
[00:26:08.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah. Actually, there were three divisions in the show. The watercolors, he did out of the window. And then his return to synchromies, which had never been shown before. He returned to synchromy in, I think, what, what year was it, '50—
[00:26:23.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: In '54—'53 or '54.
[00:26:26.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: So Esther showed his first return to synchromy, and those paintings were not expensive, and they were very interesting. And a number of collectors bought those pictures.
[00:26:36.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was a pretty good, very successful show.
[00:26:39.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Macdonald-Wright was very pleased with it.
[00:26:43.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was he an easy man to talk to?
[00:26:45.02]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. Oh, he was an easy man to talk to, because he did all the talking. And he was fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
[00:26:53.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, I was in love with him. I adored listening to him talk.
[00:26:59.02]
[…]
[00:26:59.20]
And he would flirt with me, and I would flirt with him. I thought he was so wonderful, like most of the women did. I secretly thought his rival [laughs] might have been a better artist [Morgan Russell –Ed.]. But I liked Stanton. The only problem I had with Stanton was when he wanted me to take out a page with two other galleries in Apollo and Art International.
[00:27:30.82]
I felt [this coverage –Ed.] was very, very necessary. People didn't think he existed anymore. They hadn't seen his work. That was before the work that the LA County Museum had done. And so, we advertised. And it was very expensive to do that [in many ways other than money –Ed.]. And he started getting people directly at his home. And he didn't work through the gallery.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6420_m]
[00:00:03.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: And during the advertising, the big collectors would go to Stanton Macdonald-Wright's home and buy the paintings, and we wouldn't get anything out of it. In fact, we weren't able to sell at the gallery any longer. And so I had a big bill with Stanton Macdonald-Wright and I thought, well, I should take a painting to pay for the bill. And he didn't think I should. And so that was the problem I had with him.
[00:00:36.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did he really—is it true that he wanted his widow to destroy his art after he died?
[00:00:41.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Yes. –Ed.] We were there one night for dinner. In fact, we were there three nights in succession. This is while when he was trying to break off this relationship and he put—he cooked a lovely meal. […] So anyway, it was a lovely meal [French international –Ed.], and Stanton was crying his eyes out. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't drunk. There was no reason why he should be crying.
[00:01:14.53]
But he was crying and looking at me very closely, and looking at his wife very closely. And he was saying, "Nobody appreciates me. Nobody buys my work. I've devoted my whole life to my students, and to the public, and to my paintings. Nobody appreciates me at all." And he said, "I'll tell you what—" he looked at his wife directly—"I tell you what I want you to do. When I'm dead, I want you to take all of my paintings and I want you to burn them, and then I want you to go to a nunnery."
[00:01:50.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did. And it was a devastating evening for us because he also started telling stories about other artists—Delaunay, and—
[00:02:03.69]
ESTHER ROBLES: Marsden Hartley as a transvestite.
[00:02:06.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: And even his friend, Morgan Russell.
[00:02:09.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Morgan Russell.
[00:02:10.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then he got up to the contemporary people who were still around here in Los Angeles, like, Lorser Feitelson and awful things.
[00:02:18.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: About all these artists?
[00:02:19.70]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:02:20.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: Terrible things.
[00:02:21.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: So vitriolic and damaging. He was a very vicious and damaging man if he wanted to be.
[00:02:27.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: Are you the person who told Rose Fried this? I mean, it was—
[00:02:30.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: Rose Fried told me about Stanton when I was so crazy about him. She said, "Look, Esther," she said, "be careful." She said, "He's a Buddhist, and it works two ways." And she didn't tell me too much about it. She just warned me. And then Stanton was afraid that I'd gotten together with Rose Fried, and so he told me the most dreadful things about her.
[00:02:59.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: So he really was a very angry man.
[00:03:02.54]
ROBERT ROBLES: Every time we saw him. He would start off with these marvelous stories about Paris in the early 1900s, and how he would go to the different whorehouses. And I mean, really, stories that were sort of risqué, but not that bad.
[00:03:16.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: With Gene Nathan.
[00:03:17.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: And with all the different characters. And then later on in the evening, he would get morbid and down, and he would then start tearing people apart because of his own feeling of inadequacy and the fact that he didn't make it on his new paintings. It was return to synchromy.
[00:03:34.20]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Morgan Russell still alive by this time?
[00:03:37.51]
ROBERT ROBLES: Let's see. This was in the '60s, late '60s. I don't think he was.
[00:03:44.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: The interesting thing about Morgan Russell, there were some beautiful Morgan Russells in town. They belonged to a little old man who lived not far from Griffith Park. And we went over to see this man and we saw those paintings. And he said, "If I let you and Bob have these paintings," he said, "never let Stanton Macdonald-Wright get his hands on them." He hated Stanton Macdonald-Wright.
[00:04:14.43]
But for some way or other, when that man died, Stanton Macdonald-Wright got hold of those paintings, and they were exhibited with his work at the LA County Museum. And she still has those paintings, and I don't know how she got them. I really don't. I think there was some cock and bull story that Stanton said that they belonged to him, and it was believed when the man died. But I don't think that's true.
[00:04:46.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: This man was living like a hermit in a little home, like a little hovel. And here were these large canvases of Morgan Russell's. They were in pretty bad shape.
[00:04:57.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what was the man's name?
[00:04:59.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't even remember his name.
[00:05:02.14]
ROBERT ROBLES: I don't remember his name.
[00:05:03.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was the show that Stephanie did of the rolled up—
[00:05:06.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: The rolled up things. And they were rolled up under the house, and all over the place. And those paintings belonged to this man. And I don't think that they really—that Stanton Macdonald-Wright had any business having those paintings. Although, Stanton told us about the paintings, and he wanted to see if we could get them for ourselves. Now, I don't know what he would have pulled if we'd gotten them, I really don't.
[00:05:35.73]
ROBERT ROBLES: Because later on, we found out—I heard that Stanton had legally said that the painting belonged to him, not to this man. And so I don't know. We were not informed as what really happened.
[00:05:50.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know what the ins and outs were, but I have an idea that if they belonged to Stanton during that man's lifetime, that Stanton would have gotten them.
[00:06:00.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: Fascinating.
[00:06:01.59]
ROBERT ROBLES: But on more than one occasion, we sold a small Macdonald-Wright to a collector from Chicago, who then in the following—well, I don't know if it was a few months later—went to Macdonald-Wright's house and bought a major painting, a big, big painting. And Macdonald-Wright didn't pay a commission because we had sent the man up there just to say hello to him and—
[00:06:30.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: We thought it might be interesting for [the collector] to know [Stanton].
[00:06:32.54]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this took place on more than one occasion, so it got to be a little sticky. And we just said goodbye to him.
[00:06:38.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, you see, I said, these people choose their enemies very carefully for a reason.
[00:06:43.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the upshot of it was that Macdonald-Wright had a dentist that he liked very much. So he said to the dentist one day after we had given the paintings back to Macdonald-Wright—Macdonald-Wright said to his dentist, "Why don't you start a gallery and I'll give you my paintings?" And the dentist said, "Fine." And the dentist had a friend, likable friend, who he could—who would run the gallery.
So they began a gallery on Montana in Santa Monica. They called it The Tortue Gallery. And The Tortue Gallery started about 14th Street on Montana in Santa Monica. And they started with a small showing of Macdonald-Wright's paintings. And now they're—they own a building on Santa Monica Boulevard and they—
[00:07:28.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: They're really very nice people. [They select serious art to exhibit. –Ed.]
[00:07:30.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: But they no longer wanted to work with Macdonald-Wright because Jean—
[00:07:33.70]
ESTHER ROBLES: They can't stand [Stanton].
[00:07:34.91]
ROBERT ROBLES: Jean Wright has the—
[00:07:35.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Or Jean. [Mallory –Ed.] said, he'll never make anything because Jean managed the estate wrongly. But one of the things that Stanton did, he hated all dentists. This is one of his stories. So he had all of his teeth taken out and he wore plates. And also, he had Jean have her teeth all taken out and she wears plates [also, so that she wouldn’t be in the power of dentists again—no toothaches –Ed.]. [Laughs.] Isn't that wicked?
[00:08:02.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: The dentist is a very nice guy.
[00:08:03.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's a very sweet man.
[00:08:05.48]
RUTH BOWMAN: And he still has the gallery.
[00:08:07.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: He owns the gallery. Actually, it's a partnership. His friend—oh, and this dentist ended up buying Macdonald-Wright's house after Macdonald-Wright died.
[00:08:16.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is that the one with the murals on it?
[00:08:20.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:08:21.49]
RUTH BOWMAN: On what street?
[00:08:23.13]
ROBERT ROBLES: The house is in Pacific Palisades on [Bellino] Drive.
[00:08:28.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: And someone told me recently that it had just been bought by two men, and they were going to do something about that wall that he had made a mural on.
[00:08:41.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: They're going to erase it? Maybe they would. Maybe they're mad enough at him.
[00:08:49.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, it's—they added to the house. It was a nice house, because the view outside the back was of rolling hills. Of course, later on, a development bought, and started building houses. But we would visit Macdonald-Wright. It was a strange house because it was in sort of other groups of houses, but this was the last house in the street. And Macdonald-Wright had grown this planting in front of the house so you really couldn't see the house. And then you—to get into the front door, you had to walk across these little stepping stones. And the interior of the house was all Chinese. It was all Japanese. He had put the shoji screens up and made the house completely over.
[00:09:35.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: Does Wilford Bookey still live in Gaston de Haven, 1150 Fifth Avenue, New York?
[00:09:49.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: You don't happen to have the address of that house on—
[00:09:52.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: Oh, yes. Yes, we do.
[00:09:55.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: I was just looking for it, but I don't see it in this book.
[00:09:58.08]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, we have old books. And in fact, we have rather an extensive file with Macdonald-Wright. He wrote some fantastic letters to Esther and—
[00:10:05.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is that all going to the Archives?
[00:10:07.96]
ROBERT ROBLES: It will go to the Archive.
[00:10:08.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, I'll send it to the Archives.
[00:10:10.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think—I almost remembered Macdonald-Wright's address before.
[00:10:19.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: What I'm going to do with that is, as long as we have need of it, why, we will use the material [a book perhaps, special articles are possibilities –Ed.]. But there are some of these intimate letters that are just so fascinating, as you say, "juicy" kind things, that we'll turn over to the Archives. But some of them are so intimate, I don't want to do anything about it. When I die, Bob will get them, or vice versa. But anyway, one or the other will turn them over to the Archives.
[00:10:54.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: You know, you can give things to the Archives and put a limit on their use. I mean, you don't—they don't have to be used right away. There are a number of kinds of arrangements. If you'd feel safer having it microfilmed and then just say that "no access to this particular group" until, I don't know. I think June Wayne's doing it long after she's gone. But—
[00:11:20.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, you see, June and I both agreed there's no sense in bringing these things up now because we're all people, and things—strange things happen, because I wouldn't want to do anything while anyone's living. I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt anyone. It's not our way at all. But later on, it is historic and it is interesting.
[00:11:41.73]
RUTH BOWMAN: And just think of what all those graduate students will be able to do. [Esther laughs.] I mean, isn't it nice that you sat there with Stanton Macdonald-Wright? What other artists did you get to know that well?
[00:11:54.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: I knew a great—we knew a great many artists very well, indeed. I knew Helen and Lorser Feitelson very well. I knew Claire Falkenstein very well.
[00:12:05.43]
ROBERT ROBLES: In the early '60s, we got to know Karel Appel very well because he stayed with us for over a month and we would visit him quite a bit. But then we lost contact.
[00:12:12.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Herbert Bayer, I got to know him very well. In fact, when I showed Herbert Bayer, no one even knew his significance here. I went storming up to Artforum. I said, "Aren't you even going to review this show? This is an important man. Do come in. Doesn't anybody know who he is?"
[00:12:29.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: This was in November of 1965, and it was the first West Coast exhibit of Herbert Bayer. In fact, he wasn't even showing in United States. I mean, Marlborough hadn't picked him up at that time. No one had picked him up.
[00:12:42.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. The only time he showed here was in 1948 with a group of Bauhaus people at the LA County Museum. Now, who was the director at that time? Anyway, this whole group, a German group—
[00:12:54.93]
RUTH BOWMAN: Valentiner?
[00:12:56.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: Valentiner, perhaps, or maybe Jimmy Burns had something to do with it, because he was pretty alert, more alert about contemporary people than Valentiner. Valentiner was better on his Dutch and Italian, I think. Although—
[00:13:10.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: Herbert Bayer did the catalog in all lowercase, and it was a—
[00:13:16.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: His own typeface?
[00:13:17.21]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:13:18.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: He invented the lowercase. That was his invention. [The Bauhaus –Ed.] was a craft school, really.
[00:13:26.53]
RUTH BOWMAN: Herbert Bayer is being written about now by Arthur Cohen. And I think he'd be interested in this material. Do you have correspondence with Bayer at all?
[00:13:39.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not anymore. Not anymore. These things sort of come and go. Of course, Jan Stussy—we were very intimate with him.
[00:13:50.95]
ROBERT ROBLES Stanton Macdonald-Wright was Jan Stussy's godfather, in a way. I mean, he assumed that role. And every year, he would give Jan Stussy a couple of paintings and some drawings, or whatever. And they were very close with each other. And when Macdonald-Wright finally passed away, I think Stussy owned, maybe, a hundred works of Macdonald-Wright.
[00:14:20.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: We knew Louise Nevelson very well.
[00:14:25.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you still stay in touch with her?
[00:14:27.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-mm [negative].
[00:14:28.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: One of the artists we got to know very well because Esther began with him with his hard-edged paintings was Karl Benjamin. And Benjamin was in the first hard-edged show called "Four Abstract Classicists" that Jules Langsner wrote about. And they were John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley. Well, that's four, right.
[00:14:51.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's right.
[00:14:51.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: And this was shown at the Los Angeles County Museum when Richard Brown was director. And Esther gave Benjamin a one-man show every year.
[00:15:02.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Karl said to me, he said, "Esther, why do you keep on doing this? You're not selling my work." And I said, "Well, one of these days your work is going to sell, and I may even sell it. But people are really going to appreciate you one day, so you just keep on doing it." You know, Karl was a kindergarten teacher and he had the art program. And one day, he looked at what the children were doing with their blocks, and with their colored papers, and he got fascinated to think what they were doing, all those forms.
[00:15:36.98]
And he said he decided if he was going to go—he got himself some blocks and some colored papers and he thought he wanted to do something like that himself. And he started being an artist at that time, and he was inspired by the work these little children were doing. Now, I don't know if he'd admit to that himself or not, but he—
[00:15:57.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is he still around?
[00:15:58.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. He taught the primary grades only. He was not a high school teacher. [He had no credentials. –Ed.] They met in Pomona, where all the graduates had the portfolios, but Karl did not. And he was a little bit under a cloud. He's no longer under a cloud. [His credentials have been won by his art. –Ed.]
[00:16:19.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: If he had been living in New York, he'd be world-renowned right now, because he is a hard-edge geometric painter. And he used masking tape to mask his lines. Every painting he made, he matched—he mixed his colors. And when he finished the painting, he would secure the colors in a plastic bag and put it away so at any time in the future, if something happened to that painting, he would have the color already mixed up and it would be maintained.
[00:16:49.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'll have to get in touch with him. [His abstract paintings were critiqued because he used the ruler and tape to guide his "hard edge." –Ed.]
[00:16:50.80]
ROBERT ROBLES: His studio in Claremont was fascinating. We'd go there once a month for dinner or whatever, and see him. And he was—it was meticulous, because his work was meticulous. But what happened with Karl was unfortunate. Because in 1964, after having showed him for about six or seven years, Esther put him in a show, a two-man show. In the front room, she had Fletcher Benton's first kinetic pieces, which were hard-edged moving lines. In the next gallery were Karl Benjamin's static hard-edge paintings. Benjamin was at the opening and so was Benton. And at the opening, no one looked at Karl Benjamin's paintings. No one.
[00:17:37.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: He couldn't stand it.
[00:17:38.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were all fascinated by Fletcher Benton's moving hard-edge works. And in fact, Fred Weisman said, "You've got everything. You've got your moving Morris Louis, you've got moving—" and he was giving all these names. And Benjamin got so mad that he said, "I can't show these, Esther, anymore." He said, "You're showing Fletcher Benton," he said, "and nobody's looking at my work. What good is it?" So he became—this is just about the time he moved on, and he's now showing with the Tortue Gallery, as a matter of fact. And selling to all the—
[00:18:08.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a good place for him. I like the Tortue Gallery.
[00:18:11.03]
ROBERT ROBLES: [And selling, too. –Ed.] All the major museums are buying his work, in fact. Well, we sold them to the Whitney originally in the early '60s, and to a lot of major collectors.
[00:18:20.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: Joyce Treiman shows at Tortue.
[00:18:24.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, she did.
[00:18:24.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you ever show her?
[00:18:25.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I didn't. Although, I've always liked her work. We showed Fletcher Benton, Sy Boardman, Dale Henry, Glenn Wessels, Benjamin, Klix. Linda Levi, who was a kineticist.
[00:18:40.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: Sy Boardman is a New York artist?
[00:18:42.45]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:18:42.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:18:43.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, see, that was a show that in 1965 of Benton, Benjamin, and an artist named Klix. And this was when Benjamin became upset because the Fletcher Bentons were in the first room, and they were moving. And this was the summer show of 1965. Also, in 1965, Esther had a major show of Claire Falkenstein's, and she did the first catalog raisonné of Falkenstein's career, against Claire's wishes. Esther said, "I've got to do a book on you." So Esther did this.
[00:19:14.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: It wasn't against her wishes. [Claire didn’t want to be that accurate, as she was constantly changing facts, dates, and events. –Ed.]
[00:19:15.60]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, it wasn't—she just was reluctant. She didn't help—well, she—
[00:19:18.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: She didn't help one bit. I had the most awful time getting that material together, and she'd hardly look. But I think at this time, Claire thought that she wanted to move on and she didn't want all that documented at this time, I really think. But anyway, I documented it and—
[00:19:40.13]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was 28 pages with about—
[00:19:42.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: And people said she'd never had a catalog before in her life. And Claire would hardly look at it.
[00:19:49.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was 28 pages, and there were 26 photographs, and there was a complete raisonné of every exhibition Claire had had from the beginning.
[00:19:55.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: And every piece she'd ever had done. Later on, [Claire] tried to say that we took some of her work, which was utterly wrong. Well, I documented every piece. We've documented everything.
[00:20:07.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: But the interesting thing about this particular catalog was that it was so well done that Martha Jackson was giving Claire a show later in the year—
[00:20:15.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: Do you know why she was doing a show? [Cross talk.] Martha said, "I don't want anything to do with Claire. We know her in New York." And anyway, I said, "She's very worthwhile, and you do the show." And Martha said, "All right, you do the catalog and I'll do the show, Esther." Claire denies all of this. But anyway—
[00:20:31.03]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, she asked if she could use your catalog.
[00:20:32.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: But she wanted—no, I did a special catalog with her name on it. I've got that.
[00:20:37.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: You did the same catalog, but you changed the [gallery name and the dates –Ed.[.
[00:20:39.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Claire was very mad about this. She didn't want any connection with me because Claire said to Martha that, "Well, I don't want to be known as a Los Angeles artist. I'm international, New York International. And they won't think as much of me." And that's why Martha finally said to me after Claire got at her, Martha said, "Well, don't tell people she was from your gallery." She said, "because they'll think she's not any good."
[00:21:16.68]
And so Claire got Martha to do her card. And we were there—Martha invited us to stay with her and Claire, too. We got Claire in. We also—on that trip, we took her to Arizona and got that commission for her with the Arm Lewises. And that—she practically ruined that relationship for us because she wanted to take over and everything.
[00:21:43.51]
ROBERT ROBLES: She was a difficult artist, because she was—
[00:21:46.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: She—"me, me, me, me" all the time.
[00:21:48.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Esther did this major show, and the only thing she left out was Claire Falkenstein's birthdate.
[00:21:55.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, they have it in—
[00:21:57.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: San Francisco.
[00:21:58.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: —San Francisco. And I said, Claire, it was—Claire was born in 1908, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And I said Claire was born in 1918. I thought that was great. [She said people guess her age at 30, even if she was 50. –Ed.] And Claire was furious at me because I'd done that. Well, anyway, this is just those things that really don't matter too much, but—
[00:22:20.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, but this was one of the major books. You did a lot of major catalogs. You did—in fact, with the artist Robert Cremean that Esther started showing in 1959, every exhibition that Cremean had in a gallery, which was every year, Esther documented every piece with a photograph and a catalog. And so as long as Cremean showed and stayed with the gallery, his work was completely documented with—
[00:22:45.93]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he was very successful when he was in the gallery. But when Landau decided he was going to go to Venice, Landau got to Cremean and he said, "Well, look, you're not going to do anything just in Los Angeles. I can get you in New York, because I'm going to the Allan Gallery." He became a partner with Allan. And so he said, "I'll give you a show at the Allan Gallery and I'll be in Venice to represent you." And he gave Cremean an absolute snow job.
[00:23:22.93]
And Cremean came to me and he said, "Well, I have to go to a gallery where I'll show New York." And I said, "But Cremean, I got you in Venice. I got you a national and international showcase." But anyway, in the meantime, it had been done. And I was—this is one time I really got mad. I fought back. I'd never fought back with an artist. But a friend of mine liked Cremean. And I said, "I think I'm going to take all my money and I'll buy as many Cremeans as I possibly can just before—" I did have a contract with Cremean.
[00:23:59.39]
And by the way, that contract—in the event of a resale, I would give him a percentage. That was the first contract I know about. I still have that. But anyway, I went to this woman, and she said, "Don't do that, Esther." She said, "We'll buy it together." So we bought all of his work. In fact, the pieces I have now are part of that. And here, Cremean was left with only three pieces, and that's what Landau showed in New York. But I wouldn't have allowed those pieces to be shown in an upstairs gallery where you would have to go up the steps. And so the whole thing was wrong in the Allan Gallery to show someone—a becoming major sculptor [in an unsuitable space. –Ed.]
[00:24:44.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was that gallery ever called Allan/Landau or—
[00:24:47.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, it was Landau/Allan—
[00:24:48.49]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, he changed it. He changed it.
[00:24:49.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: And then he changed it back to Allan.
[00:24:51.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah. Allan couldn't take it after two years. He was—
[00:24:53.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was such a dear man. And Landau was a pirate. He really was. [Laughs.]
[00:24:59.53]
RUTH BOWMAN: Romantic figure.
[00:25:00.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:25:01.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: But, no, Allan is dead now.
[00:25:04.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. But he had a very good association with [Terry] Dintenfass. She helped him a lot.
[00:25:12.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: I remember that.
[00:25:13.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Dintenfass is a nice woman, I think. [And an excellent dealer. –Ed.]
[00:25:15.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, I think so, too.
[00:25:16.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: I like her very much.
[00:25:17.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is that how you happened to get involved with Bill King?
[00:25:21.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:25:21.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:25:23.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, Terry was a very nice person. In fact, just last month, we stayed in her apartment in New York.
[00:25:30.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: And stayed—
[00:25:32.03]
RUTH BOWMAN: It was on 68th Street.
[00:25:32.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, and stayed with her in England at the Russell [Maisonette on the West Side in London –Ed.].
[00:25:38.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: Suzi Gablik and Russell.
[00:25:40.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Gablik.
[00:25:40.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:25:41.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, her place.
[00:25:44.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1966, Esther showed Larry Calcagno for the first time.
[00:25:50.93]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, is he in New Mexico now?
[00:25:53.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know.
[00:25:54.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: He's in Hawaii, I think.
[00:25:56.02]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, really?
[00:25:56.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:25:57.30]
RUTH BOWMAN: I like his work.
[00:25:58.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Larry—
[00:25:59.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's really very poetic. And I like the man. He stayed with us.
[00:26:03.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: He's so nice. He stayed with us and he pruned all of our trees.
[00:26:05.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Our trees were so beautiful [after his sculptural pruning –Ed.].
[00:26:07.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did a job. I mean, he—
[00:26:09.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: Eleanor Phillips came to our house party. She's the editor of Vogue here. And she said she'd never seen anything as beautifully pruned as our garden was. Each tree was a poem.
[00:26:25.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Larry was a sweet, very nice guy, and it was a nice show.
[00:26:29.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's a very dear man. [I mean this not in the popular glib manner, but in a very sincerely felt way. –Ed.]
[00:26:31.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he always sends us announcements wherever he is. And I think the last few came from Hawaii. I know he had a show there.
[00:26:40.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: His parents had a ranch just over [the mountains –Ed.] from the Big Sur [on the valley side –Ed.], and he stayed there [alone –Ed.]. He was a very lonely boy. And he really did experience these sunsets, these beautiful sunsets. And he would stay there in long, lonely winters. And the people didn't like him. He didn't have any friends. And the only reading matter he had was an Encyclopedia Britannica. And he's very well informed on many subjects [as well as being deeply introspective. –Ed.]
[00:27:14.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: I knew him briefly in New York when I was at NYU. So you showed him?
[00:27:21.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:27:21.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you have any of his work still?
[00:27:22.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: We just have his catalog. Oh, Larry, no, we—with Larry, we have a couple of prints that he's done that were signed "Esther and Bob." [I have two cataloged shows we did. I believe I designed them. –ER]
[00:27:32.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: You didn't have any retail space now, do you?
[00:27:35.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. [Not space open to the public. But our collection is on view privately by appointment. Most of the art is actually for sale. We still maintain the Esther-Robles Gallery name in the West Side telephone book of Los Angeles. –Ed.]
[00:27:35.39]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, I didn't think so.
[00:27:35.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: We have just a large storage area. [Laughs.]
[00:27:38.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Very large storage. Then we did a Jan Stussy show, something about 73 pieces. That was a huge show.
[00:27:48.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: Very prolific artist.
[00:27:50.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then we did Clayton Pinkerton of San Francisco. I don't know if you know of him. He's such a good artist. And he was a very, very interesting artist at that particular time. And Robert Thomas, who is the leading artist of Hawaii now.
[00:28:08.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, that's Robert Thomas from Santa Barbara.
[00:28:10.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he's the sculptor. Yes. [But the painter is John. –Ed.]
[00:28:12.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: A sculptor who teaches at the University of Santa Barbara. Very nice person.
[00:28:16.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then Fletcher Benton, another show.
[00:28:19.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, this Fletcher Benton show was the one where we sold to Larry—he has a museum in Connecticut, Ridgefield, Connecticut.
[00:28:30.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: Aldrich.
[00:28:30.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: Larry Aldrich.
[00:28:31.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: Aldrich, yes.
[00:28:32.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: Larry Aldrich came in and flipped over the work so much so that he put him also in "New Talent" in Art In America, along with three or four other artists that were in gallery. But he bought a piece and the Guibersons, Allen Guibersons from the Texas bought.
[00:28:49.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: From Dallas.
[00:28:49.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: —from Dallas bought, and it was a major show. And that was a show, also, that both, I think, Ed and Bill Janss bought from. And later on—and we had—in the front gallery, we had a monorail that Fletcher did. He always had a project. And in this case, he had a suspended kinetic piece that ran along on a rail. And to make it even more effective, he built two false walls in our front room and cut out the object—the shape of the object in the wall, so that as the piece went, it went right through the wall and on around. And it was fascinating.
[00:29:25.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was fascinating installation, really fascinating. And we knew Fletcher very well, indeed. [He visited us in LA, and we stayed with his wife Bobby and Fletcher, before the children came, in San Francisco –Ed.]
[00:29:31.59]
ROBERT ROBLES: So that was an interesting show. Later, Larry Aldrich wanted a bigger piece, and he traded back the small piece he bought, which we still own ourselves, and got a major piece which—but he worked directly with Fletcher on that. And so we weren't involved in a commission on that at all. It was a kind of a strange deal.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6421_m]
[00:00:04.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then the summer show of 1966 that Esther did., she did a group of Karel Appel, Paul Jenkins, and Thomas Bang, who now shows with OK Harris in New York, Cremean, and John Levi. And Esther showed Johnny Levi twice, and Robert Thomas and—
[00:00:26.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Pinkerton.
[00:00:28.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Clayton Pinkerton again. Esther also showed another artist, a San Francisco artist named John Thomas, who was a figurative painter.
[00:00:37.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's the one.
[00:00:38.42]
ROBERT ROBLES: And John Thomas now lives in Hawaii and has been painting all the floral things of Hawaii and getting a major reputation in Hawaii.
[00:00:48.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's one of the major artists—or I guess the big artist in Hawaii now.
[00:00:54.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: They're huge, and beautiful, and colorful paintings. And he's changed his style completely. But he was a figurative San Francisco—figurative painter, landscape painter.
[00:01:03.41]
RUTH BOWMAN: And about this time, the Los Angeles County Museum had opened its new building.
[00:01:08.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1966.
[00:01:09.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: Right.
[00:01:11.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, it was interesting. Ric Brown [Richard Fargo Brown, a very good friend –Ed.] believed that a town couldn't be a major art center unless it had flourishing galleries. Jim Elliott also believed that—and just the bulk of galleries, whether they're good or not—and that would attract the collectors. They wanted to attract the collectors.
[00:01:36.37]
[The galleries –Ed.] were called to a meeting at the LA County Museum. And we were told that we would be given a chance to participate—all of us—and that they would see to it that we had a close liaison between the Museum and between the dealers, and that we would have a meeting place there, which was wonderful. And we were to give as much as we could.
[00:02:07.34]
I wrote a check for $500, and I wondered why that check hadn't been cashed and hadn't been cashed. And they just—finally, it was just returned. They decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with the dealers. And Bob and I had always gone to the museum parties, to everything. And then—this is when the caste system started in Los Angeles. There was a separation between dealers, and museums, and collectors. And we hadn't had that before. We were all working together.
[00:02:49.34]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you know who made the decision?
[00:02:50.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know who exactly made that decision. But anyway, one of the major people at the museum said to the girls of the Arts Council, "Well, Bob and Esther are really a wonderful couple. They're just nice at any party, but you can't have dealers at a party like this." And it's the first time I'd ever heard that thing, that there was a difference. I really thought that I was interested in my community and that I could certainly be welcome every place [at any time. In fact, the group always included one or two who would say, "It's an honor to have you with us." –Ed.]
[00:03:25.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: It's an interesting ethical conflict of interest concern that didn't surface elsewhere until much later. And it's an issue that I think hasn't yet been talked out. So you were—the door was just shut in your face. Did you keep your membership in the museum?
[00:03:47.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes. Yes. And then they did an interesting thing to separate the grapes from the grape juice. We'd all gone together as a group, certain people, for the opening nights, always. Then, they decided that it was going to be an alphabetical arrangement, and they'd have one week of openings. We couldn't all go on the same night. Well, our name, "R," Robles—we didn't go until the very tail end. We couldn't go until the tail end. And that happened to a lot of people. It separated a lot of friends by doing it in this way.
[00:04:33.90]
I digress a little bit, but I think it's interesting. I was one of the people who started—who helped to organize the Southern California Art Dealers. And it was not possible to get all of the dealers. And in fact, I felt a little bit bad that all of the dealers didn't want to come in. Gerald Nordland felt that we should all be together in this. But there was this thing of not being with the other dealers, even among the dealers. But I was also the first vice president. They wanted me to be president, but I didn't want to be president. I didn't want that much responsibility.
[00:05:16.31]
But one of the things I said that was wrong with us, is that we should do the very best shows possible, and even to spend money to do those shows, the kind of shows that would attract international collectors, and then it wouldn't make any difference. We would be very strong. Also, what we should do is to talk to the director of the museum. And certain people would arrange a meeting that we could talk this out.
[00:05:49.48]
And we did arrange a meeting at the LA County Museum. We had a nice talk with [Kenneth] Donahue and so forth. And I said that the dealers would be very pleased if we could come and be instructed when the docents were instructed when the new show would come in, because we did have a lot of people coming through who probably didn't go to museums. And it might help the museum. And I said so that we also would be informed, that we would appreciate it. And we were very humble about it. And we wanted—we also wanted to learn. Nothing was done about that.
[00:06:27.01]
And we went to—that man—who was it—Franklin Murphy with the same kind of story. We said we felt that there was a little discrimination, and we want to know if there any way that we could settle this, because it was dividing our community and was holding us back from an artistic standpoint. Nothing was done there. We talked to Agee at the Pasadena Museum. And I've been very great friend of Agee's for a long time. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. [No ideas about a meeting of the minds about a fair solution. –Ed.]
[00:06:59.19]
And the collectors' groups were getting stronger and stronger all the time. And they were not coming into the galleries at all. And so our sales were made in Europe, all over the country, and with the beginning collectors, but not very many of the formed collectors because they'd already been proselyted in another way with the background our gallery had of bringing the most fascinating people in the world to the attention of international collectors—
[00:07:33.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: So the museum was open. And there was a dichotomy now.
[00:07:37.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes.
[00:07:38.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: And did you find that there was any impact of the newly-constituted art museum on the way in which art was dealt with on La Cienega, for instance?
[00:07:51.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, absolutely. Because they had that very flourishing—that young group had their art calendar. This was in bulk, everything that happened. And this had a large mailing list. And this also attracted the international art crowd, because it was second. It was second as far as importance was concerned in America, where you could really see fresh new work.
[00:08:21.03]
RUTH BOWMAN: It was a publication?
[00:08:22.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: And it was a publication. Well, that was stopped. We no longer had that calendar. And it was simply a museum calendar. And then, the Museum—the girls in the Museum would have huge art walks on Sunday where we could show our work. And one time, we borrowed back some of the famous paintings that we'd sold. And we played "see what the boys in the back room were doing," and everyone had a little entertainment. It was really—the street was closed. It was marvelous. And the girls from the Museum put out flags [and banners they had made –Ed.].
[00:09:05.06]
And this is when our community was together. And I must say, for the other dealers in town, they're nice people. They're lovely people. And I haven't had any real experience with any sharpies as far as museum people are concerned. I really haven't. But our antagonism came from the artists and from the Museum. And it was what we touched on before. It was a very definite plot. It was what John Coplans had said to me. "Esther," he said, "I like your gallery. I like your artists. But unless you join me, unless you let me advise you, that you're going to be out. You're going to be out."
[00:09:54.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: But the '60s, through the middle '60s was very good on La Cienega. The galleries were flourishing. And as Esther said, this Art Council held walks yearly to raise money for their own museum.
[00:10:08.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: And we helped them to raise a lot of money.
[00:10:10.36]
ROBERT ROBLES: And these walks were fantastic. They closed off the street. They could get the street closed off. They had a huge attendance. And all the galleries stayed open. And there was—
[00:10:21.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: Banners and flags were made.
[00:10:22.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a good feeling, really an excellent feeling.
[00:10:25.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: We were together. It was a beautiful town then. You wouldn't hear stories then that you're hearing now.
[00:10:33.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: And then it all changed?
[00:10:35.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: It did change. It was a gradual changing. And it's hard to pinpoint what affected the change, really.
[00:10:44.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: But there were key people who spearheaded it. I'm sure of that. Because I was getting so I knew the signs. And then, they got to the press. And the dealers got together and the press—we tried to, because we tried to protect ourselves. And Everett Ellin made a chart of the dealers that had been getting the reviews. And it was found that [Felix Landau was –Ed.] getting more reviews than other dealers. And then, it was found that the [gallery who got the most reviews was paying –Ed.] a kickback [to Henry Seldes to Landau. Ric Brown suggested that we have another art writer to cover all the galleries. –Ed.] So we went through that. And then—
[00:11:45.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: It may have something to do with the fact that every few years, the enthusiasms change. I don't know. But we know that at one point on La Cienega, we could document that every seven years there was a change. Starting back from 1947, we documented sort of the rise, and then an ebbing, and then a rise again.
[00:12:07.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: I predicted that these people wouldn't always be an authority. And this is why we didn't say, well, we will really be militant about going after these patent wrongs, but history will take care of it. But this history has been becoming worse, as far as I'm concerned.
[00:12:29.14]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, there seems to be a trend also to forming a core of the group of artists who would be the top people that would be promoted similar to what took place in New York with the group in New York with Rauschenberg, Johns, Stella, you know, boom, boom, boom, and then a group out here, and letting the other artists who were good, but who didn't have the promotion behind them or whatever sort of flounder away. That may have had something to do with it.
[00:12:59.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: It made it very good commercially. The Germans were awfully good with our American artists, too, as far as a big commercial deal. You know all about that. You know who shows Castell, Germany, and so forth. And that's why they tried to close a lot of the shows in Europe. But you cannot make a commodity out of so many hundreds of artists or thousands of artists. You make your commodity out of a few top brands and put your advertising behind it. So this thing—art became commercialized. And the people of ability only had ability if they got the nod from the right collectors and the right curators or right directors.
[00:13:52.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: It may have been that John Coplans could have started the whole thing here, because he was a force, and a dynamic underground force. He linked himself up with Walter Hopps. And they would sit together for 24 hours and just talk and talk. And he—
[00:14:14.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Blum. And Blum.
[00:14:16.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he intimated to Esther about—
[00:14:19.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: He told me what was going to happen.
[00:14:21.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: Irving Blum?
[00:14:23.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Irving was not the smartest one of that outfit. Walter Hopps was one of the planning stage. Coplans was the planning stage.
[00:14:30.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Coplans was running Artforum at the time and was actually selling his influence openly to people like he was almost—he tried to tell Esther she had to do something or she couldn't do it. And he also informed one or two of our artists that if they wanted an article in Artforum, all they had to do was give them a painting or sculpture, and they could get an article. And this was openly done by him and brazenly done. And he seemed to be working—making it work at the time. And of course, he then had to—he then got into Pasadena Museum and sort of did things there, which we're not too aware of. But I think—
[00:15:15.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he wanted to get that catalog done. He didn't care about the shows. This is what he was telling me. He had a good catalog. The shows don't make any difference. And that's what he did at the Pasadena Museum, was to get the good catalogs promoting these artists, and just a few artists. And he couldn't do it for everyone. And then it was in print. And he spent too much money on the catalogs when he was at Pasadena where he was promoting John Coplans. He was promoting these artists. And then, when he went to—
[00:15:51.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: Irvine.
[00:15:51.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: Irvine. To Irvine, he did the same thing with the very expensive catalogs promoting just a few artists. And all of these major artists that you hear about in California were promoted by Coplans.
[00:16:08.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: We went to one of the first shows that John Coplans did at Irvine, and it was a pleasant, small show. But the catalog was an amazing, beautiful catalog. And so John Coplans said to Esther, he said, "This show will come down in a couple of days, maybe 30 days." He said, "But this book will always be there." So he was quite aware of what the printed word was in the book. And it was amazing.
[00:16:33.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: And it proved to be true.
[00:16:36.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: So he may have had something to do with the forceful change.
[00:16:41.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what was happening in your gallery in relation to all this art politics?
[00:16:46.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther doesn't let things affect her that much.
[00:16:50.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: I told Bob I'm not going to look to the right or the left. I'm going to go right ahead finding the artists who have ability, who are interesting to me, and will be interested in other people. And I'm not going to care if they sell or not. I'm not going to care if I'm on the bandwagon or not, because it doesn't last too long. I say, "Look at the history of Los Angeles." Look how long an artist lasts who's on this particular kind of a bandwagon. Three years is the average. Seven years is extraordinary.
[00:17:24.60]
And look at the artists that we had when we first came on La Cienega. How important are they today? Whoever hears of them? Nobody. Whoever hears of the dictators? Nobody. So I said we're not going to pay any attention to that. And I certainly don't want to deal with the crumbs, because I've had such a rich banquet of ability, rich ability, that this is what I want to work with. And I want to help to promote these artists.
[00:18:01.28]
And also, my artists are very grateful for that. Pecoraro, for instance, said, "Esther, I was looking over my background, and that was the most productive part of my career. I got more museum shows, more university shows. I was in more traveling shows just because of you." And that was—I worked very, very hard for my artists, because I believed in them. And you know, they're all good. They're good now. Maybe they're not the top of the heap, but they're good. And that's what I wanted to do. [However, some of them are surfacing to the top as lasting talent indicative of our times. –Ed.]
[00:18:30.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what other shows that you haven't discussed affected your lives at this point? What activities of the gallery?
[00:18:38.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, in '67 is when Esther she showed John Battenberg with his airplane wings. And it was an interesting artist. And Aldo Casanova, who did some large bronzes cast in Italy. And she then did this summer program of light with the film that she produced, where Jane Livingston did the foreword.
[00:19:02.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: Do we have that forward by Jane Livingston any place?
[00:19:06.91]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think—
[00:19:07.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: Jane told me she didn't think that these things happened here anymore. She was told that they didn't happen [by Artforum magazine and at the LA County Museum –Ed.], but she found out that they did in our gallery. [We were creating a whole new wave of reflected light and kinetic artists. –Ed.]
[00:19:15.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: She showed Sam Richardson in that year, an artist who did [three-dimensional landscapes. –Ed.]
[00:19:19.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Landscapes.
[00:19:20.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes. Marvelous. I showed them first. [Cross talk.]
[00:19:24.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: Sam's first [full-scale exhibition –Ed.]. And it was a beautiful show.
[00:19:26.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: I've got a film of that.
[00:19:27.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: And sold out, too. Some major collectors who really—
[00:19:31.54]
RUTH BOWMAN: Meticulous.
[00:19:31.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes.
[00:19:33.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: The Weismans bought. Polly Hirsch, Sterling Holloway, the Whitney Museum. Oh, we sold to the Whitney. We sold a major piece to the Whitney. We sold to the University of New Mexico. It was a terrific show.
[00:19:47.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was a San Francisco artist, or was he—
[00:19:49.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, actually, he taught at San Jose, and he lived in San Jose, but was considered a San Francisco Bay Area artist. As a matter of fact, a lot of artists from that area, Esther showed. And she showed John Hultberg again. He was probably—
[00:20:03.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: Celentano—we showed Celentano, and Jim Hayward, Kruger, [Chuck] Prentiss, Sam Richardson.
[00:20:09.39]
ROBERT ROBLES: But she showed Jim Hayward for the first time. And now, Jim Hayward had just shown in New York [at] Castelli.
[00:20:15.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: See, these artists are all good [and fresh developing talent for the time, who have continued to distinguish themselves –Ed.]. [Laughs.] This is what makes me so proud of them.
[00:20:20.48]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Jim Hayward at the time—it's so strange. Jim Hayward was a young UCLA graduate. And Esther showed his paintings. But at the time, he had difficulties with—this was the drug age, too. And he was somehow picked up on a drug charge, which I don't know if—it was probably unfounded. But anyway, he sort of disappeared for a while. But these were the first paintings he did.
[00:20:46.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Gerald Nordland wanted to know who advised me. And I said, "Well, no one." And I was interested in the artists whom other artists admired. [However, many artists wanted to do favors. –Ed.] I always wanted to see them [but most of the time it was disappointing –Ed.] if they had a special pupil or someone they'd seen [and liked –Ed.].
[00:21:02.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you talked to artists about their friends?
[00:21:04.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, of course.
[00:21:06.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther gave Bill Hayter another major show of his paintings, his large paintings.
[00:21:12.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then, wasn't it about this time that the California Arts Commission asked me to do a traveling exhibition?
[00:21:18.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right. Esther was always involved in that. And she did the first showing in California of a—
[00:21:25.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: A traveling exhibition of sculpture.
[00:21:27.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it was Robert Cremean's work. And they did a catalog, which Esther designed. I think it was another thirty-page catalog. And the show opened up in Marin County at the Frank Lloyd Wright Courthouse. They used the courthouse. They used the interior structure.
[00:21:44.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I didn't like the Frank Lloyd Wright wood, so I devised some screens so we could put screens up to cover his interior. And then, we did the installation of the Robert Creamean there. And it was really quite beautiful. And then, also, we went to Visalia with the show. I loved the idea of going to remote areas where they didn't have much art. And the only place where we could show was an old jail. And so I got the kids in town to come with their whitewash and go through the cells in the jail [to clean up –Ed.].
[00:22:30.94]
And there was the most marvelous graffiti, and poems, and art [that the prisoners had drawn on the walls of their cells, about nine by nine feet each –Ed.]. I wish I'd photographed it all [to remember this basic work –Ed.]. But anyway, it was covered over with whitewash. But it gave an interesting idea of life that had gone before in the jails. And then, they had—we had an upstairs and downstairs. And in some of the cells, we put drawings in the cells. And we put these—some of these huge pieces. It was a very big touring show. They spent a lot of money on it, too. [Visalia shared expenses with the California Arts Commission. –Ed.] And they were mad about the show. [The entire town was very proud of their efforts to bring up-to-date art to this community. –Ed.]
[00:23:07.58]
And these young kids would take care of the sculpture and wax it [lovingly –Ed.]. And I would give talks about the work. And then, the Federal Arts Commission—wasn't that what it was? Yeah, Federal Arts Commission wanted me to advise about some art, setting up some art in the San Bernardino County and Inyo County. And I sent the Cremean show around in a limited way. And then I took the Battenberg—John Battenberg show. Did you see The War Hero?
[00:23:47.32]
RUTH BOWMAN: Mm.
[00:23:48.19]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I started talking about the Battenbergs that were all around me. And then I saw these uniforms that they used. And they were actual uniforms that had been invested and cast with the sculpture. And the way the show was organized—I did install that show. It was so lifelike that I had the illusion that these people were still in their [bullet-torn –Ed.] uniforms. I couldn't talk any longer. Bob was beside me, the first time you ever talked. And Bob had to talk.
[00:24:28.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther couldn't continue.
[00:24:30.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: It was so eerie.
[00:24:31.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was so emotional to think that living human beings, young men, had been in those uniforms. It was so real. More real than real. [A moment beyond time. –Ed.]
[00:24:44.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then in 1968, Esther showed some more Battenberg. These were all World War I airplane wings, which he constructed himself in different sections. He even did one complete Fokker plane with the pilot sitting in it and the machine guns. And then, we attached it to the wall, so it came out of the wall.
[00:25:01.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: We had a lot of publicity on that show—[newspaper, photos, and stories in feature sections. –Ed.]. And then, it also went to Europe. The Overseas program did the show, behind the Iron Curtain, and several countries in Europe. We have tremendous publicity on that show.
[00:25:16.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther showed another show of Sam Richardson's. And she showed an exhibition of Ronald Mallory and his mercury pieces where you revolved them, the mercury change and moved.
[00:25:26.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: Do you still see him?
[00:25:28.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, he's sort of—he's had two heart operations. And he's been painting. I know we saw a painting of his at the Bonino in Soho, a big sort of abstract painting.
[00:25:43.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: He can't work with the mercury any longer. It poisons him. –Ed.] But some of those early pieces are beautiful.
[00:25:51.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did the work right here in town. And then her summer program that year, she put in—she had Boyd Medford, and Platnick, and Sedenis Sobrino, and Jon Van Saun, and Vardanega. She had—she worked with Howard Wise on a show and did a—
[00:26:11.64]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Boyd Medford working with sound?
[00:26:14.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:26:15.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: So she had a whole—and she had a young—first showing of a David Bottini, who now is getting quite a name in San Francisco for his constructions, and Carl Cheng, who did plastic pieces with photographs embedded, and Peter Bunnell—
[00:26:32.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, he came to see me. He came to see me [to discuss artists working in photography utilizing sculpture –Ed.]. And I showed him the work of Cheng. And he invited him for "Photography into Sculpture," [the Museum of Modern Art exhibition –Ed.].
[00:26:42.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I saw that show.
[00:26:43.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Wasn't that a nice show?
[00:26:44.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: I remember those pieces. They were marvelous.
[00:26:46.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Weren't they great? Julio LeParc.
[00:26:52.06]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Gerald Gooch.
[00:26:52.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bottini.
[00:26:53.20]
ROBERT ROBLES: Gerald Gooch was another artist who was known as a Bay Area artist, who was very interesting. He—
[00:26:58.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: Pat O'Neill.
[00:27:00.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: His name was made in one way. He did—things for TIME magazine, where he did the act of a pitcher throwing a baseball. And he always dealt with motion. He always dealt with the serial imagery. And some of the work was slightly erotic. And he got in a little bit of a jam on that.
[00:27:21.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is—oh, excuse me for interrupting. I really didn't mean it. I got in—this is the time that I did the show with Peter Meyer, who was the head of the Art Department at Nevada University. And I said it would be interesting if these students would come down and set the show up [and receive credits for it. –Ed.].
[00:27:44.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oops, that's the end of your two hours.
[00:27:46.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: Okay.
[00:27:46.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: So we can start with Peter Meyer next time? Is there going to be a next time?
[00:27:50.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, if you want to.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6422_m]
[00:00:02.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: [In progress] [Laughs]—for us.
[00:00:04.15]
RUTH BOWMAN: Whose right to fail was this?
[00:00:06.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Right to fail refers to one of my newsletters. All my artists were allowed a chance to try out their ideas. –Ed. ] Our gallery, my right, our gallery. It's this thing of not looking to the right or the left, [but to follow one's own ideas –Ed.]
[00:00:15.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you published a newsletter—
[00:00:18.09]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:00:23.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: —in the '60s or in the '70s?
[00:00:25.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: In the '60s, the early '60s. And that's before Kenneth Ross did it for the Barnsdall Park. He looked at one of my newsletters. And he said, that's a good idea. I'm going to do the same thing. But that's the way I could keep my group together in a way to—no matter what they were doing or what was happening to them, that we could all more or less keep in touch.
[00:00:50.85]
RUTH BOWMAN: So even if they were having a show out of town, you would put it in your newsletter?
[00:00:53.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: I would put in all of their accomplishments. And then it got so they were so accomplished, and they were doing so much, I just did one for the gallery. [I still continue with my newsletter. My last newsletter was done in 1981. –Ed.]
[00:01:08.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: It's interesting in this "24th Annual Exhibition of Advertising, Editorial Art, and Design in the West," that your Award of Distinctive merit has no date on it.
[00:01:21.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Isn't that something? A lot of times we don't have any dates on things.
[00:01:27.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, this was a poster catalog of light, motion, reflected light, smooth and fuzzy sculpture show.
[00:01:36.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's it, and that traveled.
[00:01:38.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: And where are the dates on that? I don't see any dates on that.
[00:01:41.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: Isn't that the craziest thing?
[00:01:46.03]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, it had to be in the '60s, because of everything on it.
[00:01:50.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, let's see if we've got it. Carbondale, the University of—
[00:01:56.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: Illinois.
[00:01:57.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: Illinois. 1969-1974.
[00:02:01.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was this, this one?
[00:02:03.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, this was centennial year. See?
[00:02:05.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I see.
[00:02:06.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is on this. Now, that wouldn't be all the dates.
[00:02:12.61]
RUTH BOWMAN: No.
[00:02:13.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: But at least we'd be coming close to it.
[00:02:18.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: Anyway, the one that won the prize with a light bulb and a rainbow in the middle of the light bulb—
[00:02:25.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: And with this statement—
[00:02:26.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Foreword by Jane Livingston.
[00:02:28.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: Jane Livingston.
[00:02:29.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: Which you think doesn't exist in most people's archives.
[00:02:33.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't think it does.
[00:02:34.72]
RUTH BOWMAN: It was organized by you for WAM [Western Association of Art Museums –Ed.].
[00:02:49.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:02:49.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: And it included—oh, had a film that you made.
[00:02:50.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, this was the film that we made.
[00:02:52.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: With Jules Engel.
[00:02:53.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Jules was the director, and I wrote the script, and my husband and I produced it.
[00:03:02.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: And that film still exists? Who's distributing it?
[00:03:07.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't think anybody is right now. I have one copy of it.
[00:03:12.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: Does Jules have a print? He must.
[00:03:13.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: He has a print. He has a print.
[00:03:17.99]
RUTH BOWMAN: So it's not like some films—
[00:03:19.28]
ESTHER ROBLES: He shows it once in a while. It gets better all the time. No, I mean, it does, because all of these things were so new we were working with that we really didn't know exactly what we had. But now in the annals of time, it seems to be quite acceptable. And then I did this show that was in the summer program of 1968, section three, "Reflected Light, Motion, and Extension of Film as Object."
[00:03:56.20]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you were involved with the avant-garde or documentary film community?
[00:04:00.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I did it by myself. [Laughs.]
[00:04:03.67]
RUTH BOWMAN: You did it by yourself?
[Side conversation] Oh, thank you very much.
[00:04:06.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not identified with the community at all. But Fred Wight wanted to borrow it. And so did Ellie Stern.
[Side conversation] Thank you, darling.
[00:04:23.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: Thank you very much.
[00:04:24.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: We seem to be overwhelmed with the heat and with too much material facing us.
[00:04:30.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, I brought three hours of tape. And we can use it all up or any portion thereof. We are now somewhere in the mid '60s, right?
[00:04:40.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think we are. I think—[Pause.] I don't know if you noticed or not that I clustered the same group for several exhibitions. And I would keep them together for exhibitions where their work would fit in that way. I talked about Herbert Bayer in 1965. And Stanton Macdonald-Wright—he did paintings out of the window [in Kyoto –Ed.].
And Robert Cremean—we had a show. And we were in with Lawrence Calcagno. We were talking about his sunsets. And then we came to Jan Stussy. And this is where we were, I do believe. And Jan Stussy would have a show with us every other year or so. I kept the artist in the gallery in group shows. And then once in a while when I thought they were ready, we would have a one-man show. And then I was always trying to find a common denominator as far as our Los Angeles artists were concerned. And it was very difficult for me to do that because they didn't seem to have one.
[00:06:02.95]
I talked to Arthur Millier about it. He'd been looking at our artists for a long time. And he said he thought perhaps it was a matter of light. We had a strange orange-violet light that appeared in lots of the paintings here. That was our smog. [Laughs.] They were picking up on that. But as far as I was concerned, these artists were so hungry to see the work of other artists that whenever ARTnews or any of the art magazines would come out with color illustrations, maybe three weeks afterwards, we had a lot of artists showing me their work. They were going to school, out of school, or practicing artists for a long time, who were picking up on those ideas, which is sort of interesting.
[00:06:52.64]
But I found that there was more of a cohesiveness in the art that was done in San Francisco. And there was a reason for that. There was Grace Morley, who was very militant and vigilant about her own artists from San Francisco. And she picked a lot of good ones. And there was MacAgy at Museum of [Modern Art –Ed.]. And he went to the School of—this new school of art. What is that called?
[00:07:30.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: The San Francisco Art Institute?
[00:07:32.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, that's it. That's it.
[00:07:33.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was Douglas MacAgy.
[00:07:34.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: Douglas MacAgy, yes. And, of course, there was Clyfford Still and Bischoff, Diebenkorn.
[00:07:45.64]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you show any of them?
[00:07:46.71]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no. No, I didn't. I'm out of time. I'm out of sync with all of this. But I found some very good artists. And one was Clayton Pinkerton, who used a motion. He was using a baseball. And you could get a velocity of the baseballs in motion. And they were quite lovely.
[00:08:11.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: Trajectory paintings?
[00:08:12.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: Trajectory paintings, yes. And we use Fletcher Benton. And we do use Richard Klix , who did—
[00:08:28.01]
RUTH BOWMAN: Klix?
[00:08:29.30]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Richard Klix. He did a very beautiful original work, which was an all-over pattern, like a gorgeous tapestry with maybe two or three colors. And he'd use an impasto with a raised line, so it would be like sculpture and low relief. And then we worked with Paul Jenkins, Karl Appel, Cremean again, Klix.
[00:08:59.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: All of this is '67?
[00:09:00.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: '66.
[00:09:02.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: '66.
[00:09:03.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: '66. And Julie Macdonald, a young sculptor who worked with animals—and we gave her a number of shows. [She died last year, 1982. –Ed.]
[00:09:15.65]
ROBERT ROBLES: She actually raised the animals that she would sculpt, whether it would be a wolf or—not a gorilla but a—
[00:09:23.69]
ESTHER ROBLES: Kinkajou. Or a cat. Cougar.
[00:09:28.13]
ROBERT ROBLES: She raised an ape. And she had a wild cat in her house. And we'd go to visit her. And we were quite frightened, because—
[00:09:35.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: We were overwhelmed when we went to for dinner one time. And this very lovely butler opened the door. But the butler had a lot of hair and a very lot of teeth. And he opened the door ceremoniously. And he was an ape. And then when we had dinner, this butler sat in his high-chair and ate while we were eating. And when he was finished, he took a mighty leap from his high-chair and the dinner table up to a plate rail and sat up on the plate rail.
[00:10:14.15]
RUTH BOWMAN: A chimpanzee?
[00:10:15.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: A chimpanzee—no, he was a small gorilla.
[00:10:17.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: A small gorilla?
[00:10:19.08]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, it was very overwhelming.
[00:10:21.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: They are so human. And she had to give this gorilla away when he was about three years old. He was too hard to handle. And she wrote a book about him.
[00:10:30.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Good heavens.
[00:10:31.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then she did a lot of sculptures of this gorilla.
[00:10:35.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: She was a very talented girl. Her animals were really collected by quite a few people. And she even did a zoo for children, where the animals were cast in concrete. I think it's up in Sacramento now.
[00:10:50.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's in Sacramento.
[00:10:51.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: How fascinating.
[00:10:54.21]
ROBERT ROBLES: She called it "The Concrete Zoo."
[00:10:55.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: The Children's Zoo in Sacramento. And she made these animals so the children could crawl over them, crawl inside. And they absolutely love it. Beautiful thing that she did. She's not well now at all. I don't know how she lasts—
[00:11:14.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: Her name again?
[00:11:15.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: Julie Macdonald.
[00:11:17.53]
RUTH BOWMAN: Julie Macdonald. Okay.
[00:11:19.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: And there's one of her sculptures in front of the Pan-American building on, I think, it's Eighth and Figueroa, isn't it?
[00:11:27.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, it's the TWA [Building] on Wilshire Boulevard near Alvarado.
[00:11:34.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's more correct. [Laughs.]
[00:11:38.85]
RUTH BOWMAN: You can fix up the script, Robert.
[00:11:41.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, you fix it up, dear, although I don't claim you otherwise. [Laughs.]
[00:11:55.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: You showed Thomas Bang and Homer Weiner. And Bang now is showing with the OK Harris Gallery in New York. He was originally sort of a hard-edge painter, but he began working with rope and other objects that would hang and drape from the ceiling or crawl through the room or whatever.
[00:12:17.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was invited to the show in Kassel, Germany—one of the people who did the "Hang Bangs"—I think it was Oskar Wiener who assembled that show. Phillip Morris, I think, put up the money for it to travel all over Europe.
[00:12:38.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: And what was it called?
[00:12:41.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: It had to do with objects that had an intrinsic feeling of their own within the material. For instance, the ropes had a quality of life to them because of the weight of the way they could hang.
[00:12:58.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: So there was belts and rope—
[00:13:00.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: And it had a tricky title. But it was an international show.
[00:13:05.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then I did a show. I think I called it "Bang Hangs—something tricky. [Laughs.]
[00:13:12.96]
RUTH BOWMAN: So it was spelled B-A-N-G?
[00:13:14.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:13:15.86]
RUTH BOWMAN: And who was that other artist you mentioned?
[00:13:17.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: Homer Weiner. And he painted stereotype movies, old-fashioned movie stars. I mean, but they were caricatures of Rod La Rocque or Valentino.
[00:13:29.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Valentino. They were the forerunner of Pop Art. I don't know what's happened to him. Life has a way of swallowing up these young people. They're so clever, but they can't make a living, I guess. And I felt very responsible about that. I wanted them to stay on and continue to work.
[00:13:53.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: And you showed Jules Engel again. And Jules started the show in Los Angeles in the '50s. He was actually an animator. And he started an animated company that was famous for its—it was not Mr. Magoo. But the little children—and I'm trying to think of the name of the company. It was something like Film Art or Film—but it was very famous because they won Academy awards for their original cartoons, which were a departure—
[00:14:34.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Clever man.
[00:14:35.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: —from the Walt Disney type. But he was a serious painter. And he was a hard-edge painter.
[00:14:40.99]
RUTH BOWMAN: He did Cubist kind of compositions early on.
[00:14:45.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:14:45.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes. And now, he's head of the film department—animation department at—
[00:14:52.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: CalArts.
[00:14:52.70]
ROBERT ROBLES: —CalArts.
[00:14:53.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: CalArts. That's right.
[00:14:54.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: People love him. He's such a marvelous person. But he was always a serious actor. But he made his income from this other source, which was—
[00:15:03.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was a serious artist. He was never an actor.
[00:15:10.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you showed his gouaches?
[00:15:15.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: His gouaches and paintings. [And later cardboard and plastic constructions –ER.] Esther gave him about five one-man shows over a period of ten years. And initially, they were small gouaches. And then they became quite large. He was very prolific.
[00:15:28.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: He went to Europe. And he did a series of the windows of Rome and the windows of Florence. They were done in browns and beiges. And our friend got interested in him, Hirshhorn. I don't know if he bought anything from him or not. This is when Jules married that lovely Eileen, this blonde girl. And so they went to Europe, and they lived in Europe. But he didn't have much success there. He was most successful as an animator. But I think he's one of [Los Angeles' –Ed.] most important—we would call him a non-objective painter then. And this was—
[00:16:13.52]
ROBERT ROBLES: Some of his early pieces that were done, I believe, in the '40s, really hold up still. They're beautiful.
[00:16:23.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Barbara Burns showed him in her little gallery on Hollywood Boulevard. And she showed Catherine Herman and Jules Engel. And she had one show, Claire Falkenstein, whose work was entirely different then. That was before these two people went to Europe.
[00:16:50.89]
ROBERT ROBLES: But over the period—starting from 1959 through 1970, Esther gave Robert Cremean a show every year. He, too was a prolific sculptor. And he would be ready every year with over a dozen major pieces. And they were mostly—with the exceptions of the times he went to Europe to do cast bronzes, he would laminate wood pieces together and carve out of that. Although his earlier works were what he called wood—what were they called, Esther?
[00:17:26.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: Laminated wood mortise.
[00:17:28.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: Wood mortise, where he mixed sawdust and glue together and old rags and then created the sculpture from that.
[00:17:36.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: We have a sculpture from that period. It's Little Christopher on the hobby horse.
[00:17:43.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I saw that, yes.
[00:17:44.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: I adore that. [Katharine Kuh said he was the most inventive sculptor in America in one of her Saturday Review articles on art. I think that must have been Cremean when he was a little boy. He said this little boy used to come and watch him work. But I think the little boy who watched him work was himself. Looks just like Cremean. Creamean was slightly fay, but absolutely adorable in those years.
[00:18:05.20]
ROBERT ROBLES: His most recent project has been purchased by the Newport Harbor Art Museum, a series of some twenty over-life-size figures that form a corridor. He calls it the "Vatican Corridor." And they're overwhelming.
[00:18:22.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think it's the progression of man's sensitivity from the time that he was evolving from the animal world into a human being. You can see the coarseness of the figures. And they gradually become more refined. And it becomes very meaningful. He would never do anything unless it had meaning to him. He was entirely against the all the art for art's sake, and following styles of any kind.
[00:18:58.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was he religious, or—
[00:19:00.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was a very intense person. As a matter of fact, he produced his work out of a fury. And when he would have an exhibition with Esther, it would be his excuse for getting away from his studio. So from the time he left the studio until he returned, he was at loose ends. And the first day he would arrive in Los Angeles, he would be just terrific, great. And then that night, maybe a few drinks and then a little talk with Esther until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. And then the next day, he'd get a little edgy. And we would have the opening. And then one more day, and he would be really torn apart because he wasn't working.
[00:19:41.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was filled with hate for everybody. And nobody would say the right things about his work.
[00:19:48.67]
ROBERT ROBLES: Whoever he was with, he would tear apart verbally and become very mean. And he had to get out of town. He had to go back to work.
[00:19:57.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where was this? Where was he?
[00:19:59.78]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was up in Northern California, a place called—
[00:20:01.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Woodacres.
[00:20:02.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: —Woodacres. And now he's in—well, he's in [Tomales –Ed.] now, which is near San Rafael. Or where they made a movie a few years ago called—in the town right near where he is. It's Bodega Bay, in that area. It's north of San Francisco, about fifty miles. And he has a about a thirty-acre ranch, very isolated. And what used to be the barn is his studio, which he reconstructed. In fact, the roof was going to fall in. And an architect said it had to be torn down. But Cremean went up and laminated this major beam that supported the whole roof. He did it with his own technique, which he uses in his sculpture. He laminated the beam together.
[00:20:50.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's a remarkable artist and man, this Cremean—very, very unusual.
[00:20:57.61]
RUTH BOWMAN: How old is he?
[00:20:58.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's about 42 now. He was a young boy, really, when he came to me.
[00:21:03.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: He first came into Esther's gallery back in '57 or '58. He had been showing at Paul Kantor's gallery. And they had a little bit of—
[00:21:13.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, Paul didn't pay him. And Paul wouldn't store his work. Paul would have paid him eventually. But Cremean wanted everything right now. I had an arrangement with Cremean whereby I gave him $700 a month, whether he sold or not. And sometimes he was ahead of me. And sometimes I was ahead of him. But that was the arrangement I had, which was a very good one.
[00:21:40.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: But it was interesting. The first time he came into the gallery, he was dressed in white tennis shoes, white pants, and a white t-shirt. And he came in and just stood leaning against the wall. And Esther noticed him. And he was then, about—I don't know if he was twenty. Or he was about—
[00:21:55.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: Twenty-seven.
[00:21:57.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was in his twenties, and very pixieish, and very—
[00:22:01.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: But this curly black hair, this snapping black eyes and all starchy and fresh—and he bounced in—you know the way babies have a lot of bounce when they come into the room when they wake up in the morning. That's the way he bounced into the gallery. It was just like a rubber ball. And he wanted to be in my gallery because it was such a pretty gallery.
[00:22:20.52]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther just said, "Well, I don't take an artist away from another dealer."
[00:22:24.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I never have.
[00:22:26.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he said, "Well, no." He said, "I'm leaving." And then—
[00:22:29.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I said, "I like your work very much." In fact, I'd gone to see his work. And there was a very arresting quality about it unlike anything else that I'd seen. And so I said, "Well, you make your peace with Paul Kantor. And if you finish that, and that episode is finished completely, then come to me. I don't care how long it takes. But I will take you as an artist of the gallery. I'm very much interested." And he was so great to work with for the first few years. And then he got mixed up emotionally with a young man. And the young man took over the management of his career, and it changed his outlook on everything completely. You know what can happen to human beings.
[00:23:24.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: But every exhibition he had, Esther photographed every work and did a complete catalog. So the work that he showed while at Esther-Robles Gallery is completely documented with catalogs and photographs. It's quite—
[00:23:40.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: When did this period end?
[00:23:43.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: With Esther—
[00:23:46.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: I bought all of his work. Landau thought he was doing so well with me that Landau thought it was just about time. He went to Cremean. And he said, "Well, you'll never get any place with Esther Robles. You'll not even get to New York." I had just arranged with Gesky that Cremean would go to represent America in the Biennale. But, anyway, Cremean wanted his show in New York. And so I arranged with a friend of mine to buy all of his work. And he had three pieces he was working on, and the three pieces showed in New York in an upstairs gallery. It was entirely unsuitable, the Allen/Landau Gallery.
[00:24:29.03]
I think I told you this before. Maybe it's even on the tape. We kind of got ahead of ourselves. But he did want to come back to the gallery after this experience. And so I said, "All right, what I'll do, I won't give you a show in the gallery. But I'll organize a show for you, and we'll take it. If they'll take it at Santa Barbara, they'd like to show your work. They bought that piece. And then Phoenix would like to have a show of yours. I'll do the same show for Phoenix." And so someone on the board of directors furnished the money for a catalog—and I did the catalog for Santa Barbara for Phoenix. But I didn't do a show for him after that. I just did it for an institution.
[00:25:21.04]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, and in other words, he left the gallery in 1968. But he returned to the gallery in 1973 and had a show in '73 and in '74. And then he left again.
[00:25:37.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, I guess I made this show up of what we had at the gallery. I'd forgotten.
[00:25:46.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1967, Esther showed John Battenberg again. And Aldo Casanova had a show. He was a sculptor who had been in Rome at the foundation. He had been with Dimitri Hadzi, and does very interesting and individual type of bronze castings.
[00:26:14.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: He has an exhibition in town now with Casanova.
[00:26:18.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: And one piece is now at the UCLA Sculpture Garden that was purchased. And he does very monumental pieces. And Esther then had a show called "Threshold," where she introduced some new people in March and April of 1967. And she showed Jim Hayward for the first time in—just last year, I think Jim Hayward showed at Castelli's Gallery in New York, the black paintings.
[00:26:50.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: Was that the first show where I had Richardson?
[00:26:53.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: Sam Richardson?
[00:26:54.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, you mentioned Richardson last time.
[00:26:58.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1967, she showed Sam Richardson and Jim Hayward, Chuck Prentice, and a boy by the name of Vincent Kruger, who was an architect who wanted to become an artist, who was actually covering forms that he would cut out of wood, covering them with fabric, stretching the fabric over these different forms.
[00:27:23.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: [It was] stretched canvas. [A first, I believe. –Ed.]
[00:27:24.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: And they were beautifully done. But he wasn't settled in his mind. He had been going through problems with his wife. And eventually, he worked and had a show at Esther's, and sold to some major collectors. But then he just sort of disappeared, one of those transitional things.
[00:27:45.76]
ESTHER ROBLES: He worked with one color. It was almost like a sateen that he'd use. And then he'd do indentations in the stretched canvas, which gave the appearance of vast areas of space and a change of color, which didn't happen at all. And then he'd take a little shelf, and he'd put in one of the deep recesses of that—there's an artist working that way now. He copied his work. It was quite popular now. Do you remember that?
[00:28:20.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: I remember Kruger's pieces. But I don't remember the artist.
[00:28:22.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: And remember that piece that Lou and Dick have? And she showed it to us. And the artist had some of his sculpture here [about the time we showed Kruger –Ed.]. And it was an exact copy—
[00:28:33.58]
ROBERT ROBLES: Oh, it was an exact copy of the shape.
[00:28:33.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: —of one of the Kruger pieces, [only in carton –Ed.]. Different material, the same effect. [The shell created a feeling of deep space in the recess. –Ed.]
[00:28:34.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: But the artist had done it in metal. It was phenomenal because we have the original covered piece here in our collection. And I wanted to take this covered piece over to this woman's house.
[00:28:50.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't want to. [Laughs.]
[00:28:52.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: Just to see—
[00:28:53.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: She's very happy with it. It's a very beautiful form. And I don't want to spoil it for her if it would be possible. No. [Let her feel it's an original concept. –Ed.]. [Laughs.]
[00:29:01.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then in April of that year, Esther showed another Fletcher Benton major show called "Synchronetics." And from that show, the Whitney Museum bought a piece. And, in fact, it was another sell out show of Fletcher Benton's works.
[00:29:21.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, Fletcher Benton then was invited to go to Europe. He was in several shows in Europe. And I've got it documented some other place.
[00:29:37.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: In June of that year, you showed Bill Hayter again with his paintings.
[00:29:42.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: And followed with John Hultberg.
[00:29:46.88]
RUTH BOWMAN: '68?
[00:29:48.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: '67.
[00:29:49.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: '67. And then a summer program, '67, "Light, Form and Motion."
[00:29:54.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: And during the summer program, Esther had gone up to Sacramento to see an artist named Mawry Baden. And Mowry Baden was doing huge pieces out of—
[00:30:07.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Resin.
[00:30:08.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: —resin and polyurethane in his backyard. And some of them you could walk into like a womb.
[00:30:14.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was like a playground for the children. It was a gorgeous piece.
[00:30:17.43]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he had these little children—beautiful children, who would run around without their clothes on and climb in and out of these things.
[00:30:23.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: A very natural—
[00:30:23.78]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you film it?
[00:30:24.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: —existence.
[00:30:25.40]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did you film it?
[00:30:26.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: I wish I had.
[00:30:27.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: We wish we had.
[00:30:28.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, I didn't.
[00:30:30.08]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Mawry wanted to show the work. So Esther said, well, the only piece that we possibly could show in the gallery was—she pointed to a certain piece and said, you know, bring it down. So he brought it down. And it wouldn't go in the gallery. It was too big. There was no way to get it in the gallery. So we put it out on the street. And this is the first time—
[00:30:50.67]
ESTHER ROBLES: A little plot of grass.
[00:30:51.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: —a piece of sculpture had been on La Cienega Boulevard, out in the street.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6423_m]
[00:00:04.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the piece was something like nine feet in height and probably four feet by four feet in a dimension. So there was a small grassed area in front of the window of Esther Robles gallery. And he put it right there.
[00:00:18.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: He looked like a squatting dinosaur.
[00:00:21.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: But someone else thought—
[00:00:22.56]
ESTHER ROBLES: It so humorous.
[00:00:25.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: But someone took offense at it. And we came home—we came to the gallery one morning, and there was a sign which was about two feet square. And it was wrapped around the piece of sculpture with a blue ribbon. And in bold letters it said, "Curb your Dinosaur." [Esther laughs.]
[00:00:46.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: And someone photographed that, no doubt.
[00:00:48.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was photographed by a newspaper, and they were too prudish to put it in the paper. But there is a photograph of that someplace. In fact, Bruce Howell photographed it.
[00:01:00.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:01:00.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he was very disappointed. He took the photograph before we knew it was there.
[00:01:05.80]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's funny.
[00:01:07.26]
ESTHER ROBLES: But all that was really humorous.
[00:01:10.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was it was really hilarious. And so Esther wrote to Mowry Baden to tell him what had happened and thought that the best thing to do was to take it away, because more and more people are being attracted to it. And there was no way to protect it in the evening. And so, the worst thing that did happen to it was the sign that was put on it and a few other people saying, "What is that disgusting object you have on your front lawn?" [Laughs.]
[00:01:37.16]
RUTH BOWMAN: What color was it?
[00:01:38.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was brown.
[00:01:39.81]
ESTHER ROBLES: Ugly, brown. [They laugh.]
[00:01:44.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: I've got something that says "Christmas Spectrum." It was January 3, and it opened. When was that, in '68?
[00:01:52.06]
ROBERT ROBLES: '67.
[00:01:52.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: '67.
[00:01:54.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: We're still in '67.
[00:01:55.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know. We've been there a long time, Robert.
[00:01:57.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: You did a lot of things in '67.
[00:01:59.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah. Well, anyway, we had "Plastics, Kinetic, Aluminum, Bronze, Wood," December 10 [1966 –Ed.] through January 3 [1967 –Ed.].
[00:02:15.34]
[…]
[00:02:20.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, we are. It takes a long time to get to Christmas. We had Fletcher Benton, John Battenberg, Carl Cheng, Jules Engel, William Haney, Joan Jacobs, Vincent Kruger, Richard Klix, Linda Levi, a kineticist, Ronald Mallory, Pat O'Neill, who now does wonderful films. Chuck Prentiss—he's a kinetic man who does infinity boxes [small lights, electroplated –Ed.].
[00:02:50.09]
Sam Richardson, DeWain Valentine, Vasa, selected works by Terry Allen, Thomas Bang, Aldo Casanova, Robert Cremean, Robert Fremont, Julie MacDonald, Courtney Moon, Amalia de Schulthess, graphics by Karel Appel, Alan Davie, S.W. Hayter, Louise Nevelson, Sam Francis, Vasarelli. And I was a little embarrassed by that show because I said, people have finally caught up with us. This is now fashionable. [Laughs.] I've been showing it for a long time.
[00:03:27.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: So, did you have a contract with Vasa?
[00:03:31.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, I had very few contracts. But Vasa did some very beautiful wood pieces. This was the beginning of the Fetish Finish in California. And they were wood pieces that were just put on the wall horizontally, and beautiful lacquer, polished lacquer. [Long before McCracken did his leaning boards. –Ed.] That was before he went into the plastics.
[00:04:01.59]
And then, he had another show of plastics with the Fligen-Palmer Gallery, which didn't last very long. And then he came back to me, and I said I wanted the big pieces. I wanted him to do a forest of plastic pieces. And Marcia [Simon –Ed.] Weisman put the money up for that, but she'd expected she'd have control of it. She didn't know that I had him do it for the gallery. But anyway, I don't know if it's ever been settled. But she was involved in that one. She said one time, "Well, Vasa is mine."
[00:04:39.48]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1968, after opening with a John Battenberg show, "Wings, "and he was still involved with this World War I attitude. And this show consisted of sections of wings of the Spad, Fokker, all the planes that were used during World War I, and he constructed them out of plywood.
[00:05:00.60]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, you mentioned that. The California Fetish Finish, Battenberg was the one the first to do it, you see.
[00:05:06.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: And in fiberglass, and then they were sanded, and painted many coats and hand rubbed. And they were absolutely beautiful. The finish on them was fantastic. And they were maybe just one section of an Aileron, or maybe one full wing section. And some of them came up horizontally, and some were vertically. Some shot straight out of the wall. And in one case, he had this wing section with a pilot, a full-sized figure cast in bronze, sitting on the wing, and coming out of the wall. It was just a beautiful thing.
[00:05:39.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Jules and I –Ed.] used that in the film, that particular piece in the film. And we also had an oversized red announcement that went with that show [which Battenberg designed –Ed.].
[00:05:49.99]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then the next show was Sam Richardson, where he had a fourteen-section piece, which he called the "Fourteen Views of That Guy's Land," "This Guy with the Northwest Corner of the Northwest Section." And the title was like two pages long because it dealt with each piece.
[00:06:09.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: "Sixteen Views of That Guy's Land" [was the exact title –Ed.]. [Laughs.]
[00:06:10.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: "Sixteen Views of That Guy's Land," that's right. Plus a lot of other pieces, which were section pieces, where you raise the sky away from the bottom piece, and you saw a lake inside. It was—
[00:06:24.86]
RUTH BOWMAN: You raised it like this?
[00:06:25.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes, in other words, they were—normally, you had—it was probably in three pieces with the ground and hilly ground with maybe a lake inside. And then the square piece on top was considered the sky. And Esther—we would have people demonstrate it every hour or so, where you could just actually lift off the top, which would be the sky, and then see underneath.
[00:06:48.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: People loved that show. And we did a film on that one too. We did a film—
[00:06:53.51]
RUTH BOWMAN: Again with Jules Engel?
[00:06:54.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no.
[00:06:56.31]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, this was a separate little film. It was about a three-minute film.
[00:07:00.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: Sam Richardson organized that film.
[00:07:04.73]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then the next show was a major show of Ronald Mallory. And Ron came out [to Los Angeles in Brentwood –Ed.] and did the entire show here, using our—
[00:07:13.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: In our garage.
[00:07:13.86]
ROBERT ROBLES: In our garage, and he lived in our back guest room.
[00:07:17.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did he leave any mercury behind?
[00:07:18.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he did.
[00:07:19.52]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did. He left mercury behind. And when he left, we said we saw him about a month later. And we said, "By the way, what did you do with the keys to our house?" He said, "Oh, I threw them in a gutter somewhere."
[00:07:31.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: Very strange person. Why did you ask about the mercury—did he leave it, did he leave it behind?
[00:07:38.59]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, I just wondered how responsibly things like that are handled. I'm curious about it.
[00:07:43.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: I am very much afraid of that mercury that's here. [I don't know what to do with it. –Ed.]
[00:07:46.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, it's in a very heavy type of bottle. We bought it. We bought the materials.
[00:07:53.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, that doesn't make any difference to me whether we bought it or whether he left it. We bought the materials for him that he was working on it. But I would much rather he had taken the mercury with him.
[00:08:06.41]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was it left to repair the things that get broken, or what?
[00:08:09.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, he was going to do other pieces.
[00:08:11.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he never did repair anything. Those lovely rings that he did—they didn't operate too long, and he didn't repair them. He'd rather make something new. And I don't blame him for that.
[00:08:23.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: Most artists don't like to restore their own work.
[00:08:25.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's boring. [Laughs.] The artists don't like—let me get you some more.
[00:08:30.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: The show was an eighteen-piece show. And half of the show were wall-mounted pieces that revolved. You could turn them on a turntable. And about maybe six pieces were motorized with a small motor in the back, turning so that you had a constant flow of the mercury. And it was a handsome show. And it was almost totally sold out. And he had quite an interesting following here, because he knew a lot of people in the movie industry here, too.
[00:09:03.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was fascinating. This was interesting time for us. Then one of our collectors was working with DeWain Valentine. He was teaching her how to work with polyester and resin and so forth. And she did sort of—she was more talented than people gave her credit for. Just because she was a patron of the arts, they didn't take her seriously.
[00:09:28.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who was that?
[00:09:28.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: Her name was Pauli Hirsch. And she did a series of graves with flags. And she was a diabetic, and used insulin [syringes –Ed.].
[00:09:48.72]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I went to her house and saw that material.
[00:09:50.93]
ESTHER ROBLES: You did?
[00:09:52.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Esther gave a whole show of that, which, it turned some people off. And it was—
[00:09:57.11]
RUTH BOWMAN: I'd forgotten about her.
[00:09:58.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: I haven't seen her. I don't think she's well. I haven't seen her for a long time. But anyway, she had an awful lot of enthusiasm. And she was one of the guiding lights of Contemporary Art Council. [A leader of the original group. –Ed.]
[00:10:09.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: Sort of Arman-esque.
[00:10:11.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes. She picked up from everything, everybody [but creative on her own before Arman –Ed.].
[00:10:16.59]
ROBERT ROBLES: But she was one of the first people to buy a Kline and an early Diebenkorn. And she bought a lot of major works before many people got ahold of them here.
[00:10:27.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: She was very aware. She was very good for this town as far as—
[00:10:31.71]
RUTH BOWMAN: I was taken to her house in 1975. And she wasn't well then.
[00:10:35.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:10:36.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. She lost one of her children with diabetes too, a handsome son. Then we're back into the summer program, Section one: Battenberg, Benton.
[00:10:51.85]
RUTH BOWMAN: We're definitely in '68 this time.
[00:10:53.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: We certainly are.
[00:10:54.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: '68, Summer Program.
[00:10:56.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Jean Galazan, Mallory, Prentiss, Richardson. Section two: Rita Abbey. Jessica Jacoby—she was working in neon. Linda Levi, a kineticist. Boyd Medford, who was very well known in the east as a kineticist. Peter Meyer, who was the head of the art department at University of Nevada. Earl Reiback.
[00:11:21.88]
RUTH BOWMAN: Earl, also with nails? Did he do nails?
[00:11:27.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: Earl Reiback?
[00:11:28.63]
RUTH BOWMAN: White?
[00:11:29.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: White?
[00:11:29.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: No white pictures?
[00:11:30.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, Reiback was lumia.
[00:11:32.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Lumia.
[00:11:34.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, that's right. A follower of Thomas Wilford.
[00:11:36.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:11:36.68]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right. Later on, he bought the Wilford estate. And he was very good friend of Thomas Wilford.
[00:11:42.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: Wilford saw his show at the Howard Wise Gallery. And he went every day. He thought it was absolutely extraordinary, what this man had done, carrying on his ideas.
[00:11:55.97]
And he looked him up. He looked Reiback up. And he liked him so much that he gave Reiback the use of his studio and all of his secrets. And then, he gave these pieces to him. And when the Corcoran in Washington D.C. gave a Wilford show, Earl Reiback put it together. I hear there's something disastrous that happened there. Maybe you know about it.
[00:12:26.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: Donna Stein wrote the catalog. And I never saw the show, but I do have a copy of the catalog. I don't know what happened. I interviewed Wilford years ago.
[00:12:39.18]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, you did? He must have been an interesting man.
[00:12:41.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: He's magic.
[00:12:43.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, how nice.
[00:12:45.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: He believed that art begins with darkness. And he also—he had the concept of tying music together. And Reiback had—I now remember a piece of Reiback's that was shown at NYU. And the students used to sit there mesmerized. Did you have that?
[00:13:05.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, we had a piece with music that was synchronized. In fact, we still have it.
[00:13:11.07]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, the Reibacks—we sold a lot of Reibacks here during that time. And some of them were quite good. He did a smaller—he finally did a smaller version, which he stopped doing later on.
[00:13:27.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: In this show, we also had Palattik. Sidenius, Sobrino, John Van Saun.
[00:13:41.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: Vardanega.
[00:13:42.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: Vardanega, Joe Steuben. They were all fantastic people. [All the internationally famous. –Ed.]
[00:13:48.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then the third part of your summer program—
[00:13:51.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: Julio Le Parc [from Argentina, featured at Denise Rene, Paris. –Ed.]
[00:13:52.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: You introduced some new people. Well, you had Julio Le Parc. But you introduced David Bottini, who now is quite a major sculptor in the Bay Area. And Claude Kent, it was his first showing here in Southern California. Now, Claude Kent is one of the major artists in Los Angeles who's coming up. At that time, he was just graduated from San Jose State University.
[00:14:15.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Pat O'Neal, of course, has gone into filmmaking. He's doing extraordinary films. All of these people were very, very interesting.
[00:14:24.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: You showed Carl Cheng and Gerald Gooch.
[00:14:27.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And most of them, capable of long life and enlarging inspiration.
[00:14:36.01]
ROBERT ROBLES: And out of that, you selected a three-man show for October with Carl Cheng and his photos in plastic, and Pat O'Neill and his rubbed plastic pieces that were quite interesting, and Gerald Gooch.
[00:14:53.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was an extraordinary show. Gerald Gooch did lithographs on Plexiglas. And he did the woman who—she was the striptease artist of San Francisco. And you turned the machine on, and the woman would walk forward in space and then walk backward in space. And of course, all the kids were just fascinated by that.
[00:15:18.20]
ROBERT ROBLES: He did a whole series of—we showed four of his different boxes, where he would lithograph an image on successive plates. And then the light would light up on successive plates in rotation so that it illuminated just that one section or one glass so that the figure appeared to move. And he did another one using a tennis ball, where the ball was actually made of that white substance. But there was a small light inside the ball, so the light was set up to light in succession so the ball appeared to be bouncing across the room.
[00:15:55.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's almost as if exploration in space were going on. They're coming to the foreground and now with the pictures.
[00:16:03.97]
RUTH BOWMAN: So the light came along the edge of the plate of glass and animated the image on it.
[00:16:08.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: Illuminated, because the glass was actually etched—the outline was etched into the glass. So because it was Plexiglas, the light source went to the edge of the—
[00:16:17.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: Right, got it. Clever, yeah.
[00:16:21.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Gooch also was an interesting man. Everything he did, he did in series. He did a series called "The Sheet," which was a series of seven lithographs that sold as a unit. And it depicted a bed, and with figures under the bed. And you looked at it, and you thought, well there are two—looks like two different figures under the bed. But you don't know what they're doing. You could guess, but you don't know.
[00:16:46.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: Which one are you making love to now? [Laughs.]
[00:16:48.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. But no, I'm getting at a point, that Gooch—
[00:16:52.54]
RUTH BOWMAN: I know.
[00:16:53.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: —Gooch was asked about it. And they said, what are those two figures doing? He said, "Well, you haven't looked at it closely. There are three figures." [They laugh.]
[00:17:06.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Very enigmatic kind of a man, but a lovely man.
[00:17:11.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: Is that a piece of the receding—
[00:17:15.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: This is—
[00:17:18.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, that's a Chuck Prentiss.
[00:17:19.51]
RUTH BOWMAN: The different colors in there?
[00:17:21.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And let me see—
[00:17:29.32]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then you did another plastic show following, with Linda Levi, where she did boxes made of Plexiglas with interior castings of Plexiglas.
[00:17:39.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were the prisms—it was the same principle, the prisms that you just outlined.
[00:17:45.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the announcement was a piece of Plexiglas that has was imprinted, and it was mailed out. It was a chip of Plexiglas with the dates of the show and the—
[00:18:01.13]
RUTH BOWMAN: A collector's item.
[00:18:02.81]
ESTHER ROBLES: Gerald Gooch did beautiful things as far as photography was concerned, which he incorporated in his lithographs. He would take—he'd do a drawing, and then he would take maybe 100 photographs of the drawing. And then he would do offset of this. And he was one of the people who helped to bring the offset lithography into the field of fine arts.
[00:18:36.96]
ROBERT ROBLES: In 1969 you had—
[00:18:38.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: Here we are in 1969.
[00:18:42.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: —a Jules Engel show in January. and following with the Thomas Bang show of wooden and rope objects. And then you had a kinetic show of young Mike Cooper.
[00:18:56.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's really talented.
[00:18:57.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: And there were magnetic pieces that were either covered with metal or wood. And because of the magnets that were inside, they moved and were attracted and repelled each other. And the Whitney Museum selected a rather major piece to show—at the Whitney Annual.
[00:19:19.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: We own a piece of Mike Cooper's. I'd like to get that out and show you one day. […]
[00:19:32.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: Were you selling to museums at this time?
[00:19:34.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, we were selling to museums. And Mike Cooper was in San Francisco. And he went into the making of bikes—racing bikes, beautifully machined and polished. They were works of art. They would also run. And from that, he went into gorgeously polished, laminated wood in racers, like the race cars. And one of these was in the racing car derby at the San Francisco Museum. All the artists were trying their hand at that.
[00:20:15.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was in the early '70s?
[00:20:17.21]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. And also, San Jose was a tremendous school—San Jose State. Battenberg was one of the teachers there. Mike Cooper was one of the students. Oh, this man with the views—
[00:20:41.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: Sam?
[00:20:41.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Sam Richardson. And also, the head of the Art Department [Fred Pratt –Ed.] was quite an intellectual. He was a good writer. He wrote for Art Week, a lot of times the editorials. And very innovative work of his own, I don't think he did too much as an artist. Do you remember his name?
[00:21:01.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, he we met him twice in New York. And lately, because he was trying to—
[00:21:08.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: I didn't show him, but I really liked his work. [I had too many prior commitments. –Ed.]
[00:21:11.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: Trying to become—
[00:21:12.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: A major artist. And his works now are, I think, monochrome sections of metal, solidly painted that maybe two or three or four of them that he puts together.
[00:21:25.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he was one of the catalysts for this whole San Jose school. And he was an idea man, a creative man. And he also got the other people to create, as Sam Richardson did.
[00:21:42.20]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, they had Fletcher Benton, Sam Richardson, and John Battenberg as the art department.
[00:21:47.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mad men. [Capabale and enormously talented, hard workers, with a great sense of fun as well as dedication. –Ed.]
[00:21:48.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: These were young, energetic, forceful teachers, who have produced a number of interesting students, some of them who are now in Los Angeles area and seem to be going along quite well, and in San Francisco, also.
[00:22:02.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: And in San Francisco, there was another interesting man, Arlo Acton, that I sent out in my "Light and Motion" show that went out across the country.
[00:22:17.71]
ROBERT ROBLES: Arlo Acton went to the surplus place and bought a series of large spheres that were made of titanium. There were war surplus items. And they were gorgeous. They were 18 and 14 inches in diameter. And with that, he added different types of stainless steel objects to them. Or he did things with them so that they became sculptural objects. And this was a show that Esther did. And one of the titanium balls, he hung from our eighteen-foot ceiling on a very thin wire and caused it to move so that it almost appeared to be a perpetual motion ball.
[00:23:05.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: Like the planetarium. But also, that same ball was used at the San Francisco Museum of Art. We saw it there. That space was wonderful for it. [It was arresting in my gallery, but needed the high ceiling of the museum. –Ed.]
[00:23:21.17]
ROBERT ROBLES: And there was a woman living in Paris named Alice Hutchins, who started playing around with magnets, taking a simple magnet and buying metallic pieces from hardware stores, and creating sculptural things that you could play with or you could move.
[00:23:40.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: This was "Playthings for Grown-ups." And the Louvre Museum did a show of small objects that would be play things for grown-ups. [This started a whole new trent of what to give a businessman for the top of his desk. –Ed.]
[00:23:51.75]
RUTH BOWMAN: When was that?
[00:23:53.03]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was in about 1969 or '70.
[00:23:59.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Realities magazine did an article on her using those pieces.
[00:24:04.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: She was a delightful person. She's married to an international attorney. And she had a great opportunity of traveling all over the world and looking for her bolts and magnetic balls. [Laughs.] She really was adorable, and I think quite an artist.
[00:24:29.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then there was a first that happened. Roy DeForest, who was a well-known San Francisco artist, interesting painter, teamed up with Robert Arneson, who was one of the top ceramic persons. And together, they made pieces that they both signed, ceramic pieces. And Esther showed 18 of their "Roy and Bob" pieces. They signed it, "Roy and Bob." And we don't know who did what, who did the glaze, who did the—but they say that it didn't matter, because they both worked on it 50-50.
[00:25:03.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was a remarkable show, very creative. But people in Los Angeles said, "Well, it was not for us in Los Angeles." It was more like the funk art of San Francisco. And they were very antagonistic to it. Now you find the Roy De Forest and Robert Arnesons in most collections, you know, the little ceramic things.
[00:25:27.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: And with that—in the second gallery—this was in the first front gallery, Roy De Forest and Robert Arneson. In the second gallery, Esther showed Enrico Baj's generals. He did some figurative works out of vinyl. And they were things that you could actually punch.
[00:25:48.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: And there were a lot of medals on their chests.
[00:25:52.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: And were three dimensional. They weren't collage.
[00:25:55.40]
ESTHER ROBLES No, no, they were three dimensional. And they were almost full scale, human scale. And that was his protest against war. And so the people were invited to go up and punch the generals.
[00:26:10.65]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were mounted on a spring on the floor, a heavy spring. So you could almost push them over, but they would swing back.
[00:26:17.51]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Baj in this country or in South America?
[00:26:20.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: I met Baj when I was in Italy at Galleria Blu in Milan.
[00:26:29.85]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then he came here.
[00:26:31.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know if he came here or not. [Later, perhaps. But he shipped the generals to me from Italy. –Ed.]
[00:26:34.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: What nationality was he?
[00:26:36.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Italian.
[00:26:36.71]
RUTH BOWMAN: Italian.
[00:26:41.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: Italian, oh.
[00:26:42.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think Chicago was the city that really showed him originally, with his generals that were made out of burlap and hair and everything he could stick on the canvas or the board.
[00:26:52.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: Chicago would appreciate that more than this place would. And then we did another Pauli Hirsch show. She did a mylar environment. That was in '69.
[00:27:07.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: The front gallery room was covered completely from floor to ceiling, walls, in mylar. And the front door was covered over in mylar. So you had to push your through a mylar curtain. And when you walked into the room, you were surrounded completely with mylar. And that was—
[00:27:26.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: Purely reflective, not printed or—
[00:27:29.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, no. [I was working, as you remember, in reflected light. –Ed.]
[00:27:31.09]
ROBERT ROBLES: So it was a—and our front gallery room was about 15 by what, 28 feet?
[00:27:36.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:27:37.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: So it was an interesting show that—people didn't know what to make of it. [They laugh.] And then that followed [telephone rings] with a show by Vredaparis, who did vacuum-formed—
[Side conversation] Hello?
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:28:05.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: They're so used to us not answering, they just hang up automatically. [Laughs.]
[00:28:11.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: Let's see if I got that—
[00:28:15.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: Vacuum-formed what?
[00:28:24.42]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, they were [blown into a vacuum mold, and they were expanded. –Ed.], by Vredaparis. She was married to the artist Paris.
[00:28:38.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: Harold.
[00:28:39.52]
ESTHER ROBLES: Harold Paris, who was very, very well known. But she was also a good artist. But it was hard for her to get any audience for her work.
[00:28:51.78]
RUTH BOWMAN: How did you spell her first name?
[00:28:53.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, she composed her name together. Instead of saying Vreda like V-R-E-D-A, she ran it together, Vredaparis, as one name.
[00:29:03.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh. Whoops.
[00:29:05.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: And the way she made these pieces—
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6424_m]
[00:00:02.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: So where we are with Vredaparis—
[00:00:05.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Vredaparis did these vacuum forms by putting polyurethane over a tube, and then forcing air through the tube in a rapid motion so that the polyurethane blew up into a ball shape, but never the same. It would blow up and be smoky inside, or be up lopsided or whatever, and it would form like a cloud. And then she would stop it and then seal it off. And then she would mount it on a black plexiglass base and then enclose it with a plexiglass case. And they were very beautiful. I mean, they were—
[00:00:46.92]
ESTHER ROBLES: We sold a few just on the strength of the work itself, not on the strength of the name. And then we followed this with the Olle Baertling show that we did jointly.
[00:00:59.34]
RUTH BOWMAN: With Rose?
[00:00:59.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: With Rose, yeah.
[00:01:01.30]
RUTH BOWMAN: Rose Fried.
[00:01:02.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:01:04.90]
ROBERT ROBLES: And that was a sculpture and painting show. So you had something like twenty of his paintings and four of his angular black line sculptures. And one of them is now at the Berkeley Museum.
[00:01:20.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: I gave it to Peter Selz for the Berkeley Museum. He was the only one in town who really was aware that this man existed. [Laughs.]
[00:01:32.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's the one?
[00:01:33.59]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, it's similar to this, where he was defining space.
[00:01:37.85]
RUTH BOWMAN: They defined space that—do you think they were anthropomorphic a bit?
[00:01:41.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: It could be. They could be. [However, the theory was that all space may be defined by the sign of the V. –Ed.]
[00:01:43.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: I always had that feeling.
[00:01:45.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:01:49.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was an interesting show. And as Esther said, the people here had never heard of Baertling and didn't know him.
[00:01:56.75]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did he come out here?
[00:01:57.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. He wanted to. In fact, there was a lot of correspondence. And at the last minute, about two weeks before, he had been given a major commission to do for somewhere in Europe.
[00:02:08.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, the Swedish Consul, they were here in full force to give him a send-off. But it wasn't the same, because I understand that this man is quite fascinating. I've never met him. And of course, our little friend in Paris was in love with him. In fact, she lived with him a number of years. And before, she lived with Vasarely.
[00:02:42.87]
ROBERT ROBLES: Then Esther followed up with a show she titled "Two in Soft Art." And there were two artists, one, Franklin Williams from the San Francisco Bay Area, who would do stitching and sewing and gluing on fabric and use them as a three—actually, just a painting surface, and Tamara Sloan, who—
[00:03:09.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: —was his wife. Well, she did soft art, too. She did the neckties and the pillows and different things, almost like a craft. But it was soft art. I think we've got one in our [living room –Ed.].
[00:03:20.28]
ROBERT ROBLES: She was married to Robert O'Dowd, who originally did the big dollar bills, painted dollar bills that were five feet by ten feet, or whatever.
[00:03:28.30]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were in Pop. They were about as close as we got to Pop. You know, it was part of the group. But they were not recognized then, not for the soft art or the dollar bills or anything of the kind. They're just doing, because they're trying to be born.
[00:03:48.24]
ROBERT ROBLES: And all during that time, Esther was doing newsletters. She would not only send out the catalog or the announcement, but then she would send a newsletter along with it where she would write something about the art or about art in general. And there's quite a file on those right now. They were more or less like public release—
[00:04:11.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Public relations, I guess. It was—not that I had all the time, but I had the energy and I wanted to do it. I wish I had half that energy now. [Laughs.]
[00:04:25.85]
RUTH BOWMAN: [Reading] "New to Esther Robles' Gallery, Annual Summer Group Invitational Exhibition Summer Program '73." So you were going great guns from '62 on with summer programs, it says here. But newsletters began in '69, right?
[00:04:46.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, she—no, she has some earlier ones—
[00:04:48.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, '68.
[00:04:48.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: —we don't have. Let's see, here's one from '68, the newsletter.
[00:04:53.16]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, I have one here.
[00:04:54.36]
ROBERT ROBLES: Summer Program 1968, section three, I think, with—
[00:04:58.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: June '68. Venice Biennale.
[00:05:10.05]
ROBERT ROBLES: Thought you did a whole page of notes by Esther Robles on phenomena of light and technology as art.
[00:05:17.07]
RUTH BOWMAN: Esther-Robles. Why do you hyphenate your name of your gallery?
[00:05:21.33]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's nice you asked that question. When I was married, I was "Esther," with quotes. And I didn't want to give up "Esther" at all. In fact, I was brought up to use my own name, and if I was married, not to use my husband's name. And that was just drilled into me thoroughly. So the best thing I could do—my husband, a male chauvinistic [they laugh] German background—the best thing I could do, I said, "All right, I'll hyphenate it. It's two people. It's Esther and Robles."
[00:06:10.51]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, I see.
[00:06:10.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: We were never "the Robles" under any way or circumstance. It was always "Esther" or "Robert." And I was absolutely horrified when people who were friends of ours called us "the Robles." And then, fortunately, nobody called the gallery "The Robles." And one of the things I did do inadvertently, but the gallery is sole proprietorship, and Robert is my assistant and my associate. We're married, but it's absolutely two people. It's been kept separate.
[00:06:48.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: It says here Esther Waggoner—W-A-G-G-O-N-E-R—Robles, Director of Exhibitions. Robert Holz Robles—H-O-L-Z—Director of Sales, in one place. And then it says Robert, Holz Robles Art Advisory Service. So—
[00:07:09.63]
ESTHER ROBLES: I thought I'd promote him.
[00:07:10.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: And "Head of Architectural Division" he is on another one.
[00:07:13.29]
ESTHER ROBLES: I thought I'd promote him. [They laugh.] Because I felt a little—that was sort of a strange thing for me, dichotomy in a way, because I was a very loving wife, and lots of friends, and so forth. And I had this background, both my mother and my father and my grandfather ahead of me who wanted women to be independent. And they were not supposed—they were supposed to have their own bank accounts and their own minds. And they were not supposed ever to cling to a man. I'm a real disgrace. They were not supposed to lose one bit of their independence.
[00:07:58.02]
RUTH BOWMAN: How did you get this logo with the three spears?
[00:08:01.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: And that's our child.
[00:08:03.51]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther, Robert, and Glenn. At one point, our son Glenn was going to be in the business with us. So it was "ERG," Esther, Robert, and Glenn. And the three arrows are the three of us.
[00:08:14.35]
RUTH BOWMAN: I see. And then it says "the first art gallery on La Cienega."
[00:08:19.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: It is true.
[00:08:20.33]
RUTH BOWMAN: That meant a lot to you.
[00:08:21.65]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:08:23.71]
RUTH BOWMAN: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Okay.
[00:08:26.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: In fact, the gallery was like my child, in a way. [Laughs.]
[00:08:30.70]
RUTH BOWMAN: Your child had to share with the gallery. Okay. I think I've clarified all that. [They laugh.]
[00:08:42.76]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's for posterity.
[00:08:44.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: Now we're back into the spring of '69.
[00:08:45.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, dear.
[00:08:47.59]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think we just finished '69, did we, with the Franklin Williams soft art and Tamara Sloan, Two in Soft Art.
[00:08:54.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: So we're now in '70.
[00:08:56.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:08:58.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: Starting off with a big group show of—
[00:09:01.15]
ESTHER ROBLES: You see, these same names show up all the time. Prentiss, Gilbert, Jeff Sanders. Helen Gilbert was a kineticist from Hawaii, and she had done a film, too. And we showed films many times in the gallery in the summertime. We'd show the artists' films right out in the driveway. And then we go to January, February. And John Kalamaris and Salvatore Pecoraro. They're in the Surreal category.
[00:09:36.75]
ROBERT ROBLES: Pecoraro was painting the skies and dating them. He would—actually, what he would do, he would photograph the skies daily, and started to select what photograph looked more interesting to him. And then he would do a painting with airbrush, and the title would then be "January the 4th, 1970," and it would be a sky painting.
[00:10:01.35]
And he got so interested in that that the following year, Esther gave him a show of 365 paintings. Each painting was twelve inches by twelve inches, and it depicted the year of 1970. And it was documented not only with these paintings that Esther hung in a chronological order—and we have a beautiful photograph of it—he also made a film out of the photographs. And then he made a film out of the paintings, and he would run them side by side. And the film only lasted like a minute, but you could see the whole year flash by. [They laugh.] That particular series of paintings was shown at, what, Oakland?
[00:10:42.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: La Jolla Museum [of Contemporary Art –Ed.]. It looked very beautiful in that space—the Oakland Museum, and in our gallery. That photograph in our gallery was really beautiful. I don't know where it is.
[00:10:54.06]
ROBERT ROBLES: I can get it for you. [Esther laughs.] And in February, Esther showed Max Finkelstein and his tooled aluminum pieces where he would create small designs on aluminum sections and put all the sections together in one big panorama.
[00:11:23.04]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then we showed carved acrylics. Jim Hill, an artist from New Mexico, and Carl Cheng, again, some very large kinetic pieces. This is when Peter Bunnell came and wanted Carl be a part of the show, "Sculpture Into Photography."
[00:11:46.50]
ROBERT ROBLES: In this show also, Carl Cheng did five major pieces. One had to do with perpetual motion of water. There was about an eight-foot-long, narrow tank, and at one end was a small force. And you'd have a wave of water go clear to the end of the tank and come all the way back. And then he did another machine which made noises as you approached it. But all with beautiful cut-out Plexiglas, and also photographs embedded in them. Then Esther did another show of Gerald Gooch's.
[00:12:32.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: That Gerald Gooch show was comprised of 14 drawings and five oils and six sculptures. And then we did a show for another artist from Hawaii—Kenneth Bushnell and Helen Gilbert. And they brought a film that they'd done together. That was in April to June. And we showed that film out in the driveway. And then about this time, I was invited by the Art Advisory Panel to join them.
[00:13:06.64]
RUTH BOWMAN: From the Treasury Department?
[00:13:07.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: IRS, yeah.
[00:13:08.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther received a phone call one day, and I think I answered the phone and I said, who is it? And he said, this is the Internal Revenue Service. Was Esther Robles there? And I said, "Oh." [Laughs.] So I handed the phone to Esther—
[00:13:21.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: I was in trouble.
[00:13:22.59]
ROBERT ROBLES: So Esther answered the phone. And the man on the other end said, "Would you like to come to Washington, D.C. and be on the Art Advisory Panel?" And Esther shouted, "Yes!" [They laugh.] And the man said, "Wait a minute."
[00:13:36.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Do you remember what I told you about it?
[00:13:36.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: He said, I haven't finished yet."
[00:13:37.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was Carl. [They laugh.]
[00:13:40.33]
ROBERT ROBLES: So then he proceeded to explain what it was about. And then he followed a week later with a marvelous letter to Esther outlining what the Art Advisory Panel was up to, and what they were going to do and how she would be part of it. And it turned out that Esther was the first woman—woman to serve on the Art Advisory Panel and the only woman. She was the only dealer, a woman dealer, and the only—well, there was two other people from the West Coast, but she was serving with people like Sherman Lee, and the head of the Chicago Art Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art. Bill Lieberman was on the panel.
[00:14:22.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Lou Goldenberg on that panel?
[00:14:25.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he was. He's a great friend of mine.
[00:14:28.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther has a complete—Esther has a list right here.
[00:14:28.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: I got this. There you have it.
[00:14:33.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: Of the panel?
[00:14:35.09]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:14:35.50]
RUTH BOWMAN: They printed it up?
[00:14:36.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah.
[00:14:37.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:14:37.99]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther right there—
[00:14:39.19]
ESTHER ROBLES: We were really treated like Washington people.
[00:14:42.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh dear, so many of them are gone.
[00:14:44.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: That's right.
[00:14:44.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: Isn't that terrible?
[00:14:45.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: Richard Brown, Charles Buckley, Tony Clark, Perry Kott, Charles Cunningham.
[00:14:50.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: All the nicest ones.
[00:14:52.34]
RUTH BOWMAN: Ken Donahue, Louis Goldenberg, George Hamilton, Bart Hayes. Interesting.
[00:14:56.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bart is such a darling.
[00:14:58.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: Sherman Lee, Bill Lieberman, Charles Montgomery.
[00:15:03.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: He didn't stay very long, because this was—
[00:15:06.61]
RUTH BOWMAN: He was at Delaware. I remember him.
[00:15:08.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, he was Delaware. [His speciality was early American pottery. –Ed.] He felt he didn't belong on the panel. But he was very useful when it came to some things. On the panel, they tried to get people who had specialties in certain fields. And I think my specialty was kinetics. [They laugh.]
[00:15:24.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: Frank Perls; Esther Robles—Mrs. Esther W., if you please, not hyphenated—Alexander P. Rosenberg; Théodore Rousseau, the Met; Merrill Rueppel, who was then in Dallas.
[00:15:37.19]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:15:37.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: Eugene Thaw. Did he stay on after he went to Boston?
[00:15:40.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: No. No. Gene Thaw got into a little problem with the IRS. I don't know what it was. Oh, yes, I do know. One time when we met in New York, he wanted this whole thing to be turned over to the Art Dealers Association, and there was quite an argument about it. And he left.
[00:15:58.92]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, I was talking about Merrill Rueppel. He went to the Boston Museum.
[00:16:03.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes.
[00:16:06.15]
RUTH BOWMAN: Ed Lubin, Hyatt Mayor, Allen McNabb, Charles Seymour, and Gordon Mackintosh. That was—that's good company.
[00:16:16.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: Very good company.
[00:16:17.63]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Esther loved it. She was—it was the most exciting time. For two years, she would go back to Washington, D.C. about three to four times a year. And prior to going, they would mail her 300 to 400 photographs for her to consider, and to research on to give her opinion of what she thought the proper values were.
[00:16:36.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: How did you learn how much to charge for art? How did you do that?
[00:16:44.44]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, first of all, you want to know what the art has sold for and what the value would be, and you get as many examples as you can. And you check with other dealers. You check with as many knowledgeable people as you can. You run down all of hearsay, all of rumors, and all of facts that you can. You run everything down. And I really worked, because I felt that the honor of women was at stake, you see. [Laughs.] And so I was pretty well prepared, whether it was my subject or not.
[00:17:21.79]
RUTH BOWMAN: These were mainly works of art that were proposed as gifts or given as gifts to museums.
[00:17:29.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: And we were supposed to judge on their authenticity and if the price was correct.
[00:17:37.04]
RUTH BOWMAN: That is the deduction they were taking.
[00:17:38.81]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, yes, if that was correct. Well, as far as the deduction they were taking, that was according to their income. But it had to be the true market value of a work of art, not replacement value. And it had to be pretty close to the time it was given. I've always been pretty good about locating fakes, because I've loved—I've lived—my time has been spent in museums and so forth. And there are certain giveaway things about a fake that has to do, if it's a woman, with the way the head turns, and with the slope of the shoulders, and different, different little things that you just get the feeling, well, that is modern. Now, you can't tell so much with things that were done ten years ago—too close to us –Ed.]. But things which were done in the last one hundred years [can be more readily spotted –Ed.]
[00:18:39.84]
RUTH BOWMAN: But you're talking about stylistically now.
[00:18:41.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: Stylistically. Stylistically.
[00:18:44.03]
RUTH BOWMAN: You didn't get involved with the chemistry, or the—
[00:18:46.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: I did a certain amount of conservation, and I could tell if things had been worked over or rolled over, if it was a pastiche, or just exactly what it was. I'd look at the photograph. I'd try to find something else in another book, try to match it up, like anybody would do. And then I'd look through all of the books, the auction prices, and do the best I could.
[00:19:20.09]
And I did uncover one fake—Peter Selz was caught in that—at the UC at Berkeley. And it just wasn't right. And I asked Peter, I said, "I want to look at that. It just doesn't come out." But it was taken out of the show immediately, and it was not accepted. So it was a fake. Because you can—and you do know. This is where experience comes into the picture. I think I remember a work of art very well. I remember the colors. There are certain things I have no memory at all for, but I seem to have for that. And the price that should be paid at a certain time, at a given time.
[00:20:21.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: The IRS went over everything that was worth more than $5,000. Is that it?
[00:20:25.78]
ESTHER ROBLES: The IRS even went over things that would come in. They'd spot check as little as $500 once in a while. It took a lot of time, but no one is safe. And you're not safe by that $5,000 mark at all. Because as a rule, they confine themselves to things that mean a lot of money to the IRS. And it's amazing. I got to knowing the collections in town, and I got to knowing when things were tabled. So I really don't talk—I don't talk about that because there are too many people involved.
[00:21:12.01]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther would never talked to me about it. I'd say, "What did you do today?" Because once in a while, I would go to Washington with her.
[00:21:17.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: Bob is very talkative.
[00:21:19.09]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther never told me anything that took place at those meetings. And I was never, you know—which was good.
[00:21:28.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: And they were pleased with me. I have a letter that they were pleased, and they wanted me to serve a second term. But I had an operation. I wasn't feeling well about this particular time.
[00:21:40.71]
ROBERT ROBLES: This is two years later.
[00:21:42.55]
ESTHER ROBLES: So I begged to resign. And they didn't want to let me go. But I do help them out once in a while when hey want to have a price on something.
[00:21:57.55]
RUTH BOWMAN: Or they know you're identified with, or that you might have had experience with. Is that the idea? Or they just send you something cold?
[00:22:08.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, they usually send something cold, because they know that I know how to dig something through. I know how to research. [Laughs.]
[00:22:16.78]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's great. So in '70, what else?
[00:22:21.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, in '70, Esther had another summer program with the—and this was the first time she showed holography. She had a man by the name of Martin Newman from Chicago. And Martin Newman came out and brought two holographic pieces that he had designed and built himself. And they were somewhat successful, all the light kept—
[00:22:48.73]
ESTHER ROBLES: He showed them at the Chicago Contemporary Art Institute [after my exhibition –Ed.] .
[00:22:57.88]
ROBERT ROBLES: And they were original. I mean, he did the original photography, and the whole thing, so that they were not the—you could buy at that time a holographic thing from some company in Michigan, which was very simple. I think it was like somebody marching down the street. But in this, he did two original compositions, and they were quite interesting. The show was jammed with people coming to see it, because this was the first holography on the West Coast, to our knowledge.
[00:23:25.84]
ESTHER ROBLES: Because nobody else is doing anything like this.
[00:23:27.61]
RUTH BOWMAN: Elayne Varian did a show at in New York. I can't remember the year. And she showed a film. Did you show a film?
[00:23:40.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know if I showed a film on this one or not. I would show films on individual people, but not on holography.
[00:23:49.45]
ROBERT ROBLES: You did have films during—most of her summer shows during this time, she did a film presentation at least one day a month for the three-month period, and it would be advertised, and she would put up chairs in the alley, because she still had the Esther's Alley section, which she had—
[00:24:08.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Which was very useful, and it was wonderful. They were lovely days.
[00:24:11.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: We would close off the driveway and have 50 chairs in the alley and have—and these would be at night. So people would come and sit at night under the stars.
[00:24:18.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then we'd show them the—we'd give them the show too. And it was very well patronized by everyone in town. And Al Cheney was an interesting artist. And he was one of the professors at the University of Texas at Austin. And he made a visual instrument. It was kinetic. And people could operate that at a distance, some way, somehow. Maybe you could tell more about Cheney's. He's not working anymore. You could play it like an organ. You could go several feet away from his kinetic piece—
[00:25:03.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: —and move through a charged area.
[00:25:06.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:25:07.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Like Howard Jones?
[00:25:09.47]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, a little bit like that. Yeah.
[00:25:12.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was a very clever boy. He's a—
[00:25:15.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: But he decided he didn't want to be an artist any longer.
[00:25:18.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was too difficult making a living. And he was very practical. Besides being interested in this type of art, he was also a practical man as far as living and creating a life for his wife and his children.
[00:25:29.75]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh. [Laughs.]
[00:25:30.62]
ROBERT ROBLES: So he stopped after a number of years.
[00:25:33.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, this is a tragic thing about so many of these talented people. We should have the had patrons for them. That's when I decided I'd have an organization. It was called Art Sponsors. I thought it was very irresponsible for people to just go and look at a show and go away. That if they enjoyed the show, enjoyed looking at it, then they had a responsibility to the artist in direct proportion to their response. [Laughs.]
[00:26:11.84]
ROBERT ROBLES: After that particular summer program, Esther had another show, John Battenberg. But this time, Battenberg had gotten away from World War I and had gotten interested in girls, to the point where he was casting right from their form. And he did a show in the gallery where the titles were "Bev," "Kathy," et cetera, et cetera. And the show, I think, was one of John's last shows with us. [Laughs.]
[00:26:51.83]
ESTHER ROBLES: Pornography never appealed to me very much. [Laughs.] And they were beautifully done. But it was so much like the work that was done in plaster by artists since then, you know, when it was an actual cast of the human figure.
[00:27:08.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, John changed to a degree. And lately, when reviewing or reading reviews on John Battenberg's exhibitions, the reviewers have written about bondage, and other things in relation to his work. And this was probably the first indication of where he was heading by himself in a very strange way.
[00:27:36.20]
So Esther did a December show back with Fletcher Benton and Prentiss, and Raibeck, and Ron Mallory. And she showed Tony King for the first time. And at that time, Tony King wasn't too well known, but he was doing large geometric pieces that had a three-dimensional quality to them. And now he's very successful in New York with the OK Harris Gallery doing those. But Esther showed his work and people responded to it very well here.
[00:28:07.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, we sold a number of them.
[00:28:10.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: Now, in 1971, Esther was busy with the Art Advisory Panel in Washington, DC, to an extent that I think we've only documented about four, three shows. And I know there are other shows. But I haven't gotten to our records to—
[00:28:27.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: These are records you're going to give to the Archives.
[00:28:30.48]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes. And we're still going through our records. Because at last count, I think I have 40 corrugated boxes of material. And they're loaded. I mean, they're really loaded.
[00:28:43.39]
RUTH BOWMAN: Where are the boxes?
[00:28:45.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: We have a three-car garage here, which is a huge three-car garage. We have not—besides this room we're in now, which is Esther's office, I have a back office in our house here, which is also loaded. And the records have been moved from La Cienega to here, and also to a gallery we had for three years on San Vicente here in West Los Angeles. And now they're all here. But they're somewhat of a jumble. And I have to—it takes time. I don't have the time. I haven't had the time. What we thought of doing was maybe even trying to apply for a grant of some kind to have someone help do the sorting and do that—
[00:29:27.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: You mean like June Wayne's grant.
[00:29:30.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:29:30.99]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah. She worked with Judy Hofberg to pull things together. Judy just finished.
[00:29:38.99]
ROBERT ROBLES: Because it's an enormous task.
[00:29:40.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: This is the woman you told us about you thought was very good?
[00:29:43.98]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah.
[00:29:45.38]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I think that's something we're going to have to do. Well, we showed Herb Elsky in February, and then we showed—
[00:29:54.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: Whoops. [Laughs.] We're going to run out of tape again.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6425_m]
[00:00:04.31]
RUTH BOWMAN: So—
[00:00:05.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well—
[00:00:06.53]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Herb Elsky was an artist working with cast resin. And Esther gave him a one man show in February of '71. He was a young boy who was just out of college and working with interesting shapes.
[00:00:23.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't think we cataloged these shows, dear. I think you put certain shows up. I was so busy, I didn't have time. And I think Herb Elsky was one of your selections. And then you chose his World War I posters. And that was an interesting show. And then we put up the Eversley and Vasa and Elsky and Prentiss and Raibeck. And then we went several months where it was just using gallery artists. And they were gallery hangings. I know I'd come in once in a while, and I'd help with the gallery hangings. And then in October, you arranged with Burkhardt, the "Homage to Picasso."
[00:01:07.57]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, Hans Burkhardt came to us and said, "I'd like to use do an Homage to Picasso." He said, "I have a great collection of Picassos." And I said, "Oh, you do?" And he said, "Yes." He said, "I can bring them in. And I'd like to use this whole wall because it's Picasso's 80th birthday," or something like that. I don't remember exactly. I think that's what he said. He said, "I'll do a poster—"
[00:01:31.68]
RUTH BOWMAN: Or 90th birthday.
[00:01:33.12]
ROBERT ROBLES: Or something. Yeah. And he said, "I'll do a poster, and I'll hang the show and everything." So we said, "Fine." So Hans Burkhardt brought in this 20 inch by 30 inch sheet with a lithograph on it—a photo-offset lithograph of Picasso's in it, with "the Homage to Picasso from the Burkhardt collection." And it was quite a mailer. So we said, fine. And he hung the show, I believe, something like on a Monday morning. And we came in and looked at it. And with exception of two pictures, most of them were reproductions.
[00:02:13.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: We told him to take them down.
[00:02:15.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: So Esther got very upset and she said, "Hans," she said, "these are reproductions. And this one over here is a limited-edition lithograph. But I don't show reproductions in my gallery." And she was upset. And Hans was upset because he was called on it. And the show came down like that. Boom.
[00:02:35.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: He's a minor master here, and giving everyone advice in town.
[00:02:41.70]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he was called on it. He had framed all of them. But—
[00:02:46.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: But you know, we've never gotten a playback on that from him. We've never had any complaints, whatsoever.
[00:02:53.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: He never said "boo" afterwards? And you still saw him and you still showed his work?
[00:02:56.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, no.
[00:02:57.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: Oh, no. No. Esther never showed his work after that. But in 1972, Esther did some very interesting shows. In February, there was an Italian artist who had been living in Japan for the last two years, named Paolo Carosone. And Paolo came over with some beautifully made kinetic instruments, more or less, or objects, or whatever you would call them—three-dimensional sculpture.
[00:03:28.14]
And one of them played a tune. And it played different tunes as you stood around it. And it beautifully made, painted and lacquered. And another one, as you turned a dial, a large dial, different colored pieces of sand would float down and change. And he did a series of lithographs, also. And it was a delightful show. And his mailer consisted of a linen sheet, about 20 by 30 inches, which he imprinted his name and the dates and the show. And it was rolled up and mailed.
[00:04:05.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: An interesting piece he did—I don't know if you would remember it or not, and I have a hazy memory of it—He did a large tank filled with water and with fish. And it was electrically motivated so that the fish would perform and light up.
[00:04:22.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: As the fish moved, they would generate something that would turn on another thing that would work. It was quite a complex thing. And it fascinated people.
[00:04:33.83]
RUTH BOWMAN: And interactive piece.
[00:04:35.73]
ROBERT ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:04:36.57]
RUTH BOWMAN: How interesting.
[00:04:37.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: But he was a charming man and an interesting person, besides.
[00:04:41.82]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he knew some very good Japanese restaurants in town. [Laughs.]
[00:04:45.32]
RUTH BOWMAN: And that was the last you saw of him?
[00:04:47.33]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes, what he was looking for was a teaching job. And he got a part-time one at Berkeley through this particular show exhibition. And then we didn't know what happened beyond that. And then this was the year that Vasa finished his forest of columns that were eight feet in height. And Esther gave him the show of these columns in one room. And the room had—I think there were 20 or 30 columns. And you walk through the room and in and around these different—
[00:05:18.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: I waited a long time for that show. But it finally materialized. And then it went to Yugoslavia, to the Museum of Contemporary Art, that particular show.
[00:05:30.09]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then in June, Esther did a show of tantric art from the Kumar boys. I don't know if you know Ravi Kumar or—
[00:05:38.34]
ESTHER ROBLES: In New York City. He has a gallery in New York. And also, one of the boys has a gallery in Paris—
[00:05:43.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: And one in New Delhi.
[00:05:44.25]
ESTHER ROBLES: —and then a gallery in New Delhi. Yeah.
[00:05:45.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: In New Delhi. It was a beautiful show of tantric art.
[00:05:58.19]
RUTH BOWMAN: All hangings. There were no sculptures?
[00:06:01.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. Oh, yeah—
[00:06:02.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, we had the stone pieces, phallic pieces.
[00:06:09.41]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah. I had about—oh, I think there were six or eight of them.
[00:06:13.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: But we didn't have any figurative at all. And this, of course, the tantric art was all the country art, revered, I guess, by the people. It wasn't the court art at all.
[00:06:26.49]
RUTH BOWMAN: Right.
[00:06:27.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: They were quite beautiful and—
[00:06:29.00]
RUTH BOWMAN: Folk religious.
[00:06:30.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's right.
[00:06:31.92]
ROBERT ROBLES: In fact, Esther I did a three-page newsletter—I don't know if it's on the table here—but all about the exhibition. It was quite interesting to do that.
[00:06:40.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: Did much of it sell?
[00:06:42.44]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. What happened was, true to their Indian personality, before the show, he said he would do a major show with us. And we saw the work. And he said the prices were going to be very reasonable. When the show opened, I kept demanding and asking for the prices from him. So finally, he gave us the prices after the show opened. And they were astronomical. And collectors who came to the show, really interested in buying, when they saw the prices, they secretly—they told us that they were wrong. They were—we were being had.
[00:07:21.54]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, he was depending on that in a very Indian way because he opened a little show in his own apartment. And he got in touch with the people who came to our show.
[00:07:29.97]
ROBERT ROBLES: At the same time, he moved in up the street from us, about three blocks, on a place—Fountain and La Cienega, and informed the people that he had to work up there, also. So it was—
[00:07:40.99]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then too, I gave him an evening. And one of the councils at the museum—the members of the council came for that evening, and he did a ceremony here. And he was really lining them up for his little apartment. [Laughs.]
[00:08:04.64]
RUTH BOWMAN: Was Padrita Pal in town yet?
[00:08:07.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: No, he was not in town, although he's a very nice man. And we lent some Stuart Davises to one of his master's students for a show of calligraphy. They included these Stuart Davises. And it was just lovely.
[00:08:31.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Esther did a major show of new pieces of Fletcher Benton's. And there were only four pieces. And the room was specially built to display each piece in a separate cubicle. And it was the whole—it was almost permanently built into the gallery. And that show then went to the La Jolla Museum or vice versa. Did it go to La Jolla first or come here?
[00:08:53.91]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't know which. But we had the same catalog. And I don't think I'd ever do that again because museums would resent it. I was beginning to feel that maybe galleries were not as highly considered as they should be. [Laughs.] I'd always gone right ahead during the museum shows of the university shows. And people have been happy to have it.
[00:09:18.91]
But now there was a little feeling among their collectors that maybe this shouldn't be done like that. They shouldn't do a show when a gallery had done the show. They may be right. I don't know. But anyway, that was that was an interesting show. And it turned a lot of the people on in La Jolla, to the idea that art can be fascinating, interesting, filled with life. Then we did a summer program July 10 to September 30. Don Rich, a beautiful sculptor, and Jan Stern—Jan Peter Stern, a sculptor in town—he does these big steel pieces—and Kenneth Stone, the son of a Stone who wrote [Lust for Life, etc. –Ed.]
[00:10:12.72]
ROBERT ROBLES: Irving.
[00:10:13.23]
ESTHER ROBLES: Irving.
[00:10:13.89]
RUTH BOWMAN: Irving and Jean Stone?
[00:10:15.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. And then [Jules] Worthington, a very nice artist, a kineticist—I don't know what's happened to him—Barish, a lovely artist, and then Finkelstein, who was doing the aluminum sculpture, Will Ragle, who was brilliant—did a kinetic piece, David Ogle, who's still doing some interesting things.
[00:10:40.25]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, he called himself "the Peanut Man," and consisted of casting a number of peanuts in bronze. And he did a show a few years ago where he wrote to everybody to lend their peanuts back to him for his show. And we had two peanuts.
[00:10:57.60]
ESTHER ROBLES: They're your peanuts. [Laughs.] They're not mine. And then Ernest Posey. Margaret Mallory has a number of Poseys in her home—[a semi-abstract colorist –Ed.]. He's a nice painter from San Francisco. And Jim [inaudible]. [Cross talk.]
[00:11:14.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: Margaret Mallory in Santa Barbara, you're talking about.
[00:11:16.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, Margaret Mallory in Santa Barbara, who's a great, great friend of ours. And then October 23, Bill Fedderson, a talented artist, was an assistant to Vasa, and David Bottini. It was really like a two-man show with two catalogs. And then the following November, John Battenberg—we did give him another show. December 4, Julie MacDonald, 21 pieces with animals in wood and marble. January, we did a print show—
[00:11:56.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: 1973.
[00:12:02.64]
ESTHER ROBLES: —Jim Saw and Tapies. And who was the other artist?
[00:12:08.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Larry Smith from San Diego.
[00:12:11.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: I don't remember him.
[00:12:12.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, they were hard-edge silkscreen, colorful prints, very large.
[00:12:18.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: We didn't show him again, though.
[00:12:20.11]
ROBERT ROBLES: No.
[00:12:20.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: He must have been one of your finds. [Laughs.]
[00:12:23.34]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, we sold them to architects, too. But you featured Antonio Tapies.
[00:12:28.36]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah, I was interested in showing Tapies.
[00:12:32.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: And then you gave a major show to Don Rich. And Don Rich at that time, was a very interesting—he had his own foundry. And he was the one who did the first castings for this boy here in town, who does these beautiful female figures that—
[00:12:52.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: John Graham? What's his name—John Graham? Robert Graham?
[00:12:56.69]
ROBERT ROBLES: Robert Graham.
[00:12:57.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Robert Graham. Mike Robert Graham.
[00:12:59.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: And Rich did all of Robert Graham's—they were first castings—because Rich was a perfectionist. In fact, the show Esther had only contained six pieces of Don Rich's. And they were strange, interesting pieces, very intimate.
[00:13:13.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Like the alchemy, if there were such a thing during the time of Egypt—just full of mystery and dead cats—skeletons of dead cats. [Once I'd done the news reports and catalogs, then it was off my mindand I was doing the next show. I usually worked about three months ahead. –Ed.]
[00:13:23.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther did a blue press release on that, which I don't know where it is.
[00:13:29.74]
ESTHER ROBLES: But once I'd done the news reports and done that, then it was off my mind, and I was ready for something else. [Laughs.]
[00:13:39.56]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, here we are. Yeah, the pieces were actually welded, bronzed, cast, and forged. In other words, they were just not pieces that were just cast from one thing. We have one, which is ours, where part of it is cast, part of it is welded, part of it is chased on a lathe out of a solid piece of little copper. And then he used materials that he would burn on to get different colors. He was very interested in his patinas.
[00:14:17.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: He used some of the space materials to get his color.
[00:14:20.42]
RUTH BOWMAN: I think your cat is being mesmerized by the little indicator in the tape recorder.
[00:14:29.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's a kitty pacifier. [They laugh.]
[00:14:35.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: It's very strange. [Laughs.]
[00:14:40.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: Don Rich did the casting, a lot of the casting, for Fletcher Benton's big pieces. Then we did a Jane Ullman show, 24 pieces, sculpture. I just saw her at the market today. She's a lovely little woman. She was in one of our first shows, years and years ago.
[00:15:12.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: I remember you mentioned it. Yeah.
[00:15:14.08]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then Max Finkelstein, another show, with the tooled aluminum. And then we did a fascinating show by Roy Schnackenberg, Chicago. Maybe you know his work. Then we did another show by Salvador Pecoraro; summer invitational; David Bottini, Michael Ashford Cooper, Roger Lintault, James McManus, and John Palmer. That was a show that the public liked very much.
[00:15:55.21]
And then September, we did a large group show. And I don't even have the names of the artists down on this. October, we did a Prentiss, one man. And then December, we did a Robert Cremean. And this work went to Santa Barbara and Phoenix. In '74—we're in '74 now—I showed two Polish artists. I still can't pronounce their names.
[00:16:29.30]
ROBERT ROBLES: Jan Płaskociński, seventeen pieces, and Witold Masznicz, sixteen pieces.
[00:16:34.68]
ESTHER ROBLES: And their work was also given an exhibition at Santa Barbara. And I organized this through a Polish woman. And this was not successful, but it was rather charming. And then I did a May to June 15, four artists—Ben Goo, who's a prominent artist in Phoenix, Arizona, and Betty Gold—I think you've met her. You've seen her work. Jane Ullman and Julie MacDonald, who did the animals.
[00:17:11.65]
Then I did the Sonia Delaunay tapestry show. She helped my son, when he was in New York and in Paris, to recommend him for various shows. A very lovely woman. And then in the summer we had a Cooper, Gold, Lintault, Nancy Lissaman. Nancy Lissaman was in the Pasadena Museum. This woman who is now at the Whitney, invited her for that show.
[00:17:56.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: Barbara Haskell?
[00:17:57.01]
ESTHER ROBLES: Barbara Haskell, yeah. And Gary Mauro, who was doing—it's like a soft sculpture, realistic figures—Irene Stern, Gary Slater. I organized a show with Gary Slater, who was working in Corton, and Betty Gold, for the Bowers Museum. Also at that time, I organized a Jane Ullman show for the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
[00:18:28.75]
RUTH BOWMAN: I went to see that.
[00:18:30.02]
ESTHER ROBLES: You did?
[00:18:30.65]
RUTH BOWMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:18:31.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: It looks nice, didn't it?
[00:18:33.17]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, it's big.
[00:18:33.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. But she's someone who's not appreciated enough for what she's done, darling woman. And let me see, the July summer show—Udinotti, from Scottsdale. Wilson? Where did he come from?
[00:18:52.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: Doug Wilson is from Colorado.
[00:18:53.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes. We've got one of his pieces outside. And then we did the Calder tapestries.
[00:19:02.41]
RUTH BOWMAN: Also in '74.
[00:19:03.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:19:04.30]
ESTHER ROBLES: Right, right. Now, we're way ahead of ourselves, aren't we?
[00:19:08.05]
RUTH BOWMAN: You're doing fine.
[00:19:09.32]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, now it's October, Arthur Dove, watercolors and drawings.
[00:19:16.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was a major show.
[00:19:16.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: And you're working with Terry Dintenfass on this?
[00:19:18.98]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes.
[00:19:19.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. I went to New York and chose them. We both went to New York and chose them.
[00:19:23.45]
RUTH BOWMAN: That was estate work and collectors work both, you showed?
[00:19:27.46]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:19:28.81]
ROBERT ROBLES: 1974, October.
[00:19:32.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then in October to November, I showed the John Thomas and the Hawaiian series, and then Robert Cremean again, in the large sculptures. So I guess we were on again off again there. Do you want me to close that door?
[00:19:53.71]
RUTH BOWMAN: No, that's fine.
[00:19:55.45]
ESTHER ROBLES: And then '75, we did Vasa spheres. That was new. We hadn't done that before.
[00:20:02.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were specially installed on different pedestals so that the whole room was a series of forests with large and smaller spheres. It was quite beautifully done. [Marcia Weyman put up the money to Vasa for the materials. –Ed.]
[00:20:12.77]
RUTH BOWMAN: What color were they?
[00:20:14.26]
ROBERT ROBLES: Multi. In fact—but in that show he had two of the first pieces, where he only did one color in the center of the sphere, so it almost floated. That was the first time we did that.
[00:20:28.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: It was an acrylic lamination?
[00:20:30.38]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, they were all laminated—
[00:20:31.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: Cast.
[00:20:31.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, no—
[00:20:32.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not cast—
[00:20:33.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: —laminate. Vasa never cast. People don't understand that.
[00:20:37.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: DeWain Valentine does cast work. So does Eversley.
[00:20:41.32]
RUTH BOWMAN: Fred Eversley. Right.
[00:20:42.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: But Vasa never does. It's always laminated. And as far as the glue is concerned, he worked with DuPont, with their chemists at DuPont, so it doesn't show a seam. It's absolute perfection. I don't know how any human being could conceive of the workmanship or put the time into it. And he trains his students—[Telephone rings.]
[00:21:08.15]
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:21:11.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: —students to do the lamination?
[00:21:13.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: He trains his students. And these are the most gifted students. And once in a while, he would try to get these artists shows. But it's wonderful to go to see the work that goes on in his atelier. Then you can appreciate this as a craft, when you see that, as well as a very interesting concept. Then in March, we gave a show of small works by major artists, Bissir, Arthur Dove, Sam Francis, Rene Magritte. And then we showed my ex-daughter-in-law, [Ameranth Ameranth –Ed.], in tapestries. And then we showed Roger Lintault and his acrylic pieces. He was a teacher near San Bernardino, was he?
[00:22:13.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: I think the Cal State University at San Bernardino. And his he takes the thin acrylic sheets, Plexiglas sheets, and cuts them on the bias or at an angle, and creates hexagonal-type wall sculptures or three-dimensional wall sculptures that are quite interesting. They're many-faceted. And he may just use one color and four separate entities that can be put together in different ways, so you can get either a square or a hexagonal or any shape.
[00:22:51.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a highly sophisticated technique. But he didn't go very far. And we didn't sell anything of his. Then after that, we gave a show to our son, Glenn Robles, nine pieces—nine paintings, and five drawings. And that show was invited to go to Bakersfield, to the College of Bakersfield. We were very happy about that. And the curator of the show bought one of Glenn's drawings. Then in June, we gave Gary Mauro, a dear, dear artist, a show. He's from New Mexico. And he did the cloth reliefs. These are wall hangings with nude figures. They were done in white. And he stitched those nude figures. Soft art, really quite nice.
[00:23:45.00]
Then I'm getting a little interested in that show we did July, August, and September. I called it "Art in Motion Summer Program." We used Benton and Agam, whom we met in Israel, and Mike Cooper, and Beckman Peccoz, who was a new artist. He's also showing in town now. I think the Newport Harbor Museum. Fascinating artist, does big things in kinetics. And then Beard, who did more or less of a copy of a third-generation Raibeck, and Elie Stern was in this show.
[00:24:23.06]
RUTH BOWMAN: Those were those spheres.
[00:24:24.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:24:25.69]
RUTH BOWMAN: So that one?
[00:24:27.43]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yeah. And then we showed Betty Gold in our garden, October. And then we did the double-sky image of Salvador Pecoraro on October 5. November 10, a group show of Cremean and Frederick Kahn, Charlo, Leonor Fini. And I think these must have been drawings by Cremean. And I think it must have been a drawing by Kahn.
[00:25:00.40]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, the Kahns were from the estate. And they were the earlier abstract paintings, which are quite interesting.
[00:25:06.50]
ESTHER ROBLES: I wish I could get in touch with that man. If you find out where he is—
[00:25:09.90]
RUTH BOWMAN: Who's this?
[00:25:10.96]
ESTHER ROBLES: Frederick Kahn.
[00:25:12.23]
ROBERT ROBLES: No. He died. And we had them from his [niece –Ed.].
[00:25:16.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: With anything about his works, his paintings, they got away from me.
[00:25:21.34]
RUTH BOWMAN: How was the name spelled?
[00:25:23.27]
ROBERT ROBLES: K-A-H-N.
[00:25:24.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: K-A-H-N.
[00:25:25.00]
ROBERT ROBLES: He had the Kahn School of Art on Melrose many years ago.
[00:25:28.24]
ESTHER ROBLES: For GIs. And he brought some of the original German feelings of the Bahaus here. And it introduced a whole generation of young artists to these concepts. And it was a really big step ahead for our artists at the time he opened that school. Then we had a nice little show of photography. I guess it was the last show in our gallery. No, it wasn't. But anyway, Werner Kreutin and Jaime Snyder. Now, Jaime Snyder is the grandson of Buckminster Fuller. And he did beautiful—that was a nice photography show.
[00:26:11.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: He went along with his grandfather on some world tour. Allegra [his mother, Dr. Allegra Snyder –Ed.] let him go, or something like that, about that time.
[00:26:22.57]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I know the last I heard of him, he went to Maine for the summer, with his grandfather. And then I think he was going to be with his grandfather for a year. But I hadn't talked to Allegra for a long time about this, or about her son. Then an artist from upper part of the state, Marin County, Ruby Morris collagraphs. They were nice, just folded matter. And then we moved. We signed a three-year lease for the space on San Vicente Boulevard [in Brentwood –Ed.].
[00:27:03.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: You wanted to be nearer your home?
[00:27:04.83]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yes. And then opened with this show, what Henry Hopkins did the foreword of.
[00:27:09.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: Called, "Some Aspects of the American Scene Paintings and Drawings, 1913 to 1976." And you still have arrows in your logo.
[00:27:19.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [The straight arrow is from Zen psychology. –Ed.] Now where is the one I did first in 1962? That was "The American Scene." This is it, isn't it?
[00:27:28.47]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, this is the one you did in 1976.
[00:27:31.14]
ESTHER ROBLES: 1970—
[00:27:32.10]
ROBERT ROBLES: But it was—
[00:27:33.48]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was 1962.
[00:27:34.77]
ROBERT ROBLES: It was a repeat of the show, this show, that you did.
[00:27:41.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, yes. I remember that.
[00:27:43.15]
ROBERT ROBLES: That was the original show.
[00:27:44.97]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, the American Scene. I see. So it's a reprise in a new scene. And the gallery was located at 11777 San Vicente Boulevard.
[00:27:57.40]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's right.
[00:27:57.97]
RUTH BOWMAN: Suite 501. Does that mean it was upstairs?
[00:28:00.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes. [On the fifth floor. –Ed.]
[00:28:00.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, the first one was December 1960. And the second one was October through December 1976. So that's sixteen years later. Very, very interesting.
[00:28:11.37]
ESTHER ROBLES: So I've been very faithful to some of my enthusiasms. [Laughs.]
[00:28:15.62]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, you have.
[00:28:15.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: There have been a lot of them.
[00:28:20.94]
RUTH BOWMAN: It's interesting to see the similarities between Arthur Dove and Stuart Davis and among Sheeler and Hartley.
[00:28:28.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes.
[00:28:29.04]
RUTH BOWMAN: That's interesting. Yes.
[00:28:30.12]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, there was a whole group of artists, enthusiastic and young, and sharing some of the same ideals, and sharing a vision.
[00:28:41.46]
RUTH BOWMAN: Marvelous.
[00:28:44.60]
ROBERT ROBLES: So Esther was in San Francisco. And she dropped in to speak with Henry Hopkins, and told him about her idea of opening a new gallery or changing a gallery location. And Henry said he would be honored to do a foreword for Esther in her catalog.
[00:29:02.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, my, my, my, my.
[00:29:05.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: And he did a beautiful foreword.
[00:29:06.86]
RUTH BOWMAN: And you were there for three years.
[00:29:09.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. In 1978, February to March, we did a Paul Burri show of prints and one wood sculpture, one of the early wood sculptures. And then June 23 to July 15, we did graphics of Avery Sheeler, Davies, Feininger. That was it. And then I did a show of Horace Pippin and a number of Primitives.
[00:29:42.54]
RUTH BOWMAN: Wait a second.
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6426_m]
[00:00:03.38]
RUTH BOWMAN: So you did Horace Pippin. Where did you get the Pippins?
[00:00:05.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: From Terry [Dintenfass –Ed.].
[00:00:07.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: Really.
[00:00:10.94]
ROBERT ROBLES: They were beautiful.
[00:00:11.90]
ESTHER ROBLES: Do you think anybody here appreciated them or bought them?
[00:00:17.87]
RUTH BOWMAN: This week's New York Times book review, there's a question from a young woman who's doing a book on Pippin.
[00:00:27.65]
ROBERT ROBLES: The one response we got was from the director—I'm trying to think of his name from of the Carnegie.
[00:00:37.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: Gordon Washburn?
[00:00:38.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: No, no.
[00:00:39.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: Not Gordon Washburn.
[00:00:41.99]
ROBERT ROBLES: He was the assistant to Gustave Von Groschwitz when—
[00:00:45.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: Von Groschwitz, when he was at the Carnegie.
[00:00:47.36]
ROBERT ROBLES: And I'm trying to think of his—
[00:00:49.85]
ESTHER ROBLES: But you know him?
[00:00:50.91]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yes, I do. Just a second.
[00:00:52.16]
ROBERT ROBLES: Yeah, I'll think of his name, too, because he telephoned—
[00:00:55.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: Leon Arkus.
[00:00:56.66]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, that's the one. So we told him to get in touch with Terry. It wasn't ours. Then the next show we did was Fairfield Porter, "The Late Years." And I thought that was a gorgeous show. I really liked it.
[00:01:13.09]
RUTH BOWMAN: And how was it received?
[00:01:15.13]
ESTHER ROBLES: Nothing.
[00:01:15.60]
ROBERT ROBLES: Nothing.
[00:01:16.06]
ESTHER ROBLES: [Nothing was sold, but Suzanne Muchonek wrote a glowing review on it. –Ed.] Nobody knew anything about him [except for a few Eastern people –Ed.].
[00:01:17.46]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther was so disappointed. She had this vision of having a gallery on a high-rise building, like New York galleries, and having people come up and enjoying the gallery.
[00:01:29.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: These really mature things, you know, none of that business of going with the young artists and so forth, but just the artists that were very enjoyable to me and doing these really, really first-rate shows.
[00:01:42.93]
ROBERT ROBLES: But we found that Los Angeles is not the place for a gallery in a high-rise. We know Frank Perls tried it years ago, and we visited him and he cried to Esther about how nobody came to see him.
[00:01:53.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: Cynthia Comsky.
[00:01:55.20]
ESTHER ROBLES: And Cynthia.
[00:01:56.19]
ROBERT ROBLES: Cynthia Comsky did it, and we went up to see her and she just said, "Nobody's here." We know that there was a gallery on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, and I can't think of the girl's name. We tried to go there once and it was closed. And she was on the second floor of this [inaudible]. And so Los Angeles is not a place for a gallery in a high rise. It's just—we had to drag people. We had to call them. We had to go pick them up to get them to the gallery.
[00:02:27.30]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, anyway, this is the problem of Los Angeles, and it's no longer our problem. [Laughs.]
[00:02:34.74]
RUTH BOWMAN: And when did you decide to close the gallery?
[00:02:38.10]
ESTHER ROBLES: That was in—we took our three years. The next show was Milton Avery, a painting show. You've seen pictures of that. And then Stuart Davis, we did [two of his color prints—the only colored prints he did, watercolors and ink as well as oil on canvas. –Ed.].
[00:02:51.71]
ROBERT ROBLES: The Stuart Davis exhibition was interesting, because Esther had met Roselle Davis and had borrowed some work earlier for her opening exhibition at the new space. And so we went to see Roselle, and Esther said, "We want to do a show with Stuart Davis." And she said, "The only person we thought could curate it would be you, Roselle." And Roselle was sitting there. She said, "I really don't know what I have." So she started—
[00:03:17.61]
ESTHER ROBLES: "I have nothing."
[00:03:18.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: "I have nothing." Then she started—she got up and she started going through these racks in her living room area, where Stuart Davis's last painting was still on his easel. And she said, "Well, here's a painting done in 1922, and oh, then here's another one done in 1923." And all of a sudden she had fourteen paintings.
[00:03:38.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: I saw the beginning of Pop Art, right laid out in front of me.
[00:03:41.37]
ROBERT ROBLES: All of a sudden, she had fourteen paintings on the floor in front of us. And Esther said, "That's the show." She said, "Roselle, you did it."
[00:03:47.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: She did a wonderful thing to pull those paintings out. It had never been done before.
[00:03:53.61]
ROBERT ROBLES: And so Esther wrote the foreword and giving Roselle credit for organizing the show in a sense. And we had all the work picked up immediately. Quick.
[00:04:06.17]
ESTHER ROBLES: I was fast.
[00:04:07.49]
ROBERT ROBLES: After the exhibition had gone out here, and Esther did the catalog, where every picture was fully reproduced—and I'll give you a catalog. It's a beautiful catalog. Grace Borgenicht heard about it, and she was so jealous about it because she had wanted to do that, but could never get [Roselle to do it –Ed.].
[00:04:21.51]
ESTHER ROBLES: She didn't know she wanted it. It's after I did it, she wanted it. [Laughs.]
[00:04:26.93]
RUTH BOWMAN: She's a good kid.
[00:04:27.98]
ESTHER ROBLES: She is a good kid. She really is. She always has been.
[00:04:31.02]
ROBERT ROBLES: So I think Esther sold, I think, four of the pictures, which is very good. And we still have a few of them and we sent some back to Grace.
[00:04:42.62]
ESTHER ROBLES: I'll tell you about Grace. As you say, she's a good kid. And I think she's very good for her artists, and she's very faithful to her artists. And I think she's been marvelous for Roselle. Roselle, I think, has had that very difficult time being alone.
[00:05:02.23]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, she had the kids, and it was complicated.
[00:05:05.31]
ESTHER ROBLES: It was very complicated for her. And so I think that Grace Borgenicht can do a great deal for all periods of Stuart Davis. Now, we could do a great deal if we had the most colorful paintings, those that everybody knows. But as far as a retrospective, a sort of sharing, a learning period, the excitement of learning, this doesn't seem to be the town for that, not the way I've been able to ascertain it.
[00:05:44.27]
RUTH BOWMAN: It'll be interesting to watch if it changes.
[00:05:48.41]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I hope it does.
[00:05:49.28]
RUTH BOWMAN: When the town matures.
[00:05:55.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, it hasn't been too long, really.
[00:06:01.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, you put in your time. That's 32 years.
[00:06:07.94]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think it's a long time. It's a lifetime.
[00:06:10.22]
RUTH BOWMAN: Yeah, 32 years as a dealer, that's a lot.
[00:06:15.74]
ROBERT ROBLES: But the Davis show was a very exciting show for us because it did have these—in fact, we had one museum man come in from San Francisco.
[00:06:28.97]
ESTHER ROBLES: Herschel.
[00:06:29.48]
ROBERT ROBLES: Herschel Chipp came in, and was completely floored by the exhibition. He said, "Esther," he said, "I've never seen anything like this." He said, "This show, this exhibition should be written up in all the major newspapers." He kept talking about it.
[00:06:42.77]
ESTHER ROBLES: He was excited. And it—
[00:06:44.82]
RUTH BOWMAN: He's a good art historian.
[00:06:46.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: You bet he is.
[00:06:48.29]
ROBERT ROBLES: So he was delighted to see the show, and was very impressed.
[00:06:51.75]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he insisted that I send this catalog to their librarian at Berkeley.
[00:06:58.82]
ROBERT ROBLES: I've got a catalog, I should have—
[00:07:01.07]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I documented as well as I could. I've always—I haven't had a great deal of money. I've never done exactly what I wanted to do, but I've done the best I could [laughs] under the circumstances. And it's nice. I've gained the respect of a few people along the way.
[00:07:21.56]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, certainly the Archives of American Art.
[00:07:32.16]
ESTHER ROBLES: Now, where are we now, dear?
[00:07:33.70]
ROBERT ROBLES: Well, you did a William King show. Let's see—
[00:07:36.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: And I'll do that in Palm Springs. And then—can you read that? And then I'll do a few of the Hyman Bloom things. And that's just about it. But in many ways, this town has been very good to us. We have many great friends. We've been able to sell some beautiful things along the way.
[00:08:12.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: Walk into the museum and look at something on the wall?
[00:08:16.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, yes, we can. Yeah. Yeah. Look at one of the Synchromies, which I sold to the museum.
[00:08:25.79]
ROBERT ROBLES: Esther sold this painting to the Los Angeles County Museum when Dr. Richard Fargo was director. And it was the most difficult sale, because it was made during the '50s and we had to wait, like, six months to get paid. And then no credit was given for Esther Robles, who sold it to the museum, in the publication. It was—
[00:08:53.00]
ESTHER ROBLES: And that Nevelson wall is due to me. There are a lot of things that are due to me.
[00:09:00.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: The Stanton Macdonald-Wright "Synchromy in Purple," right? Lovely. Oh, so you have the catalog of Fred Wight's The Artist's Environment, West Coast.
[00:09:13.80]
ESTHER ROBLES: It's a good little pebble.
[00:09:14.70]
RUTH BOWMAN: And he wrote—there was—there is a long catalog essay. Oh, interesting. This was 1962, '63. Amon Carter and UCLA and Oakland put it together, 1962 catalog. Well, this is—you're in here.
[00:09:43.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, several times. A lot of our group would be in that.
[00:09:48.97]
RUTH BOWMAN: Oh, yes. And you loaned them?
[00:09:50.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, something them from our own collection.
[00:09:53.08]
RUTH BOWMAN: Early, late—late and early Macdonald-Wright. I don't think I've seen that much late until quite recently. So—
[00:10:04.86]
ESTHER ROBLES: New Yorkers haven't.
[00:10:06.48]
RUTH BOWMAN: No. Interesting.
[00:10:09.18]
ROBERT ROBLES: But Esther is working with the Milton Avery estate now and the Stuart Davis estate and working with some of the top dealers in New York and some major collectors interested in that area where the art has a proven record right now.
[00:10:31.10]
RUTH BOWMAN: So what you're doing now is private dealing out of here?
[00:10:36.53]
ESTHER ROBLES: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:10:37.58]
RUTH BOWMAN: And is that your plan to continue doing that?
[00:10:41.27]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, as long as we're in the house, we probably shall. But it's not like a gallery at all. It's once in a while, if people want something special and they like my taste and they know that I get something for them, it's the right price and the right period.
[00:11:07.55]
ROBERT ROBLES: Our son also wants to go back into the art gallery business. So we plan—in Esther's mind is selling our house and opening a gallery, whether it would be in the Arizona area or in New Mexico or somewhere where Glenn can run it, say, nine months of the year. And Esther said she would still like to do three shows a year.
[00:11:32.89]
ESTHER ROBLES: Two or three shows, I'd like to.
[00:11:35.43]
RUTH BOWMAN: And where does he live?
[00:11:37.09]
ROBERT ROBLES: He lives in Phoenix right now and he loves it.
[00:11:40.29]
RUTH BOWMAN: Uh-huh [affirmative]. So you could go to Scottsdale and be out of all the smog and the flood.
[00:11:45.22]
ESTHER ROBLES: Which is the important thing. I really just lost—
[00:11:49.26]
RUTH BOWMAN: But Phoenix, you'd be out in the country, wouldn't you?
[00:11:52.88]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, I wouldn't be right in Phoenix, or even in Scottsdale, [in the hills –Ed.].
[00:11:56.39]
RUTH BOWMAN: We're sitting here in your in your study with the afternoon light streaking in and the door open and the birds chirping on a nice, dehumidified hot day. And it seems to me that you deserve to do whatever you want to do. [They laugh.]
[00:12:14.95]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, thank you.
[00:12:16.14]
RUTH BOWMAN: Both of you.
[00:12:16.87]
ESTHER ROBLES: Yes, I think that Bob has been heroic. [Laughs.]
[00:12:21.81]
RUTH BOWMAN: I'm sure that in the annals of the Archives, they've never had an interview like this one. And I'm most grateful to you for—
[00:12:28.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Thank you very much.
[00:12:29.70]
RUTH BOWMAN: And I realized that we could sit here for another three tapes and talk about your friends and all the people you know and all the collectors.
[00:12:38.22]
ROBERT ROBLES: She has anecdotes about Joe Hirshhorn, and about all kinds of people that—
[00:12:42.24]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, maybe we should do a final tribute to Joe, whose memorial service will be next Thursday. I think it's Thursday, or Wednesday, the 16th.
[00:12:52.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, the first time I saw Joe Hirshhorn was Christmas time. And I had arranged small works in one wall of the gallery on La Cienega. It was—I skied everything. And this little man walked in. And I don't care what people say; I watch their eyes when they look at art. And this man was very interested in what he looked at. He said, "How much is that wall?" [Laughs.] And I said, "What?"
[00:13:25.68]
So I thought, well, that's the question he's asking me. So I looked at everything I had on the wall and I figured it out quickly, and I told him how much. And he said, "But I'm Joe Hirshhorn." I said, "That's fine." And he said, "I always get a special price. What is the special price?" And I said, "The minute you walked in, I gave you a special price. And that's the one I quoted." And he took the wall, [no arguments. –Ed.].
[00:13:55.95]
RUTH BOWMAN: Everything?
[00:13:56.58]
ESTHER ROBLES: Everything.
[00:13:57.99]
RUTH BOWMAN: How nice. What a nice story. [Laughs.]
[00:14:00.39]
ESTHER ROBLES: And he's been a real darling to us throughout the years. We've met him in Europe and traveled with him a little bit, and he's been just very sweet. Before I got so old, I used to call him "Uncle Joe." [Laughs.]
[00:14:17.37]
RUTH BOWMAN: I guess a lot of people did. But there are other collectors here that aren't as colorful as Joe Hirshhorn, but who have managed to put together a nice collection.
[00:14:31.72]
ESTHER ROBLES: Oh, yes, they have. Yes. Oh, and in fairness to Los Angeles, there are many excellent collections here and there are many serious collectors. There's no doubt about that. And I appreciate it.
[00:14:48.21]
RUTH BOWMAN: I mean, the fact that you've been able to do business in your hometown, I mean, in your selected hometown for so long. And your thoughts about the move from La Cienega to San Vicente, is there anything in particular, other than never move into a high-rise in LA that—
[00:15:07.35]
ESTHER ROBLES: People were absolutely outraged to think that we would have a gallery upstairs in a high rise. And they were very articulate, and some of them were just mad. They didn't want to park in a building and they didn't want to come up on an elevator. And they didn't like one bit about it, which is strange to me, because I love to go to New York in an upstairs gallery. I think it's very private and very nice and quiet.
[00:15:36.64]
ROBERT ROBLES: The first time Wright Ludington came to the gallery, or the high rise gallery, he was incensed. He was so upset. He had driven all the way from Santa Barbara, and he had always loved coming into La Cienega. But as Esther said, he didn't like trying to park and in the elevator and the whole thing.
[00:15:53.47]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, perhaps it was because Esther and you had set up the expectations as you moved from the back gallery into the alley, into the front, that everything would have that sort of casual, random, I can stay two minutes or leave. There's something about going upstairs in an elevator which demands more time, and it takes the option away from the viewer who walks in off the street. I find that I feel differently on the ground floor of a museum from the way I feel on the upper floors.
[00:16:28.05]
ESTHER ROBLES: That's very interesting. And you feel it's encroaching on your privacy in a way if you—
[00:16:35.25]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, yes. Don't you think, when you go to the New York galleries and you do get upstairs, unless there's another gallery on the same floor, you feel obliged to stay a certain amount of time, no matter what the art is like?
[00:16:54.11]
ESTHER ROBLES: Well, I think that there is that compunction in a way, I really do. But I don't always stay longer if the show is terrible. [They laugh.]
[00:17:09.44]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, would you say that there was also a social ambience to what you had built up on La Cienega, and that people really didn't forgive you for giving it up?
[00:17:19.79]
ESTHER ROBLES: I think that's very true. I think we were supposed to be right there and be part of the community and not make any changes whatsoever.
[00:17:30.12]
RUTH BOWMAN: Well, it's the nature of the hospitality. It would be as if a friend of yours who had a big house or a house, moved to an apartment. It would feel very differently going to visit them in an apartment. I guess that Los Angeles has its reasons, but I can see why you moved. It'll be interesting to see what you do next. And I'm sure the Archives won't leave you alone. [They laugh.] Thank you very much. It's been lovely. I hate to end it. I have some things for you to sign, but—
[END OF TRACK AAA_robles81_6427_m]
[END OF INTERVIEW.]