Transcript
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Ida Kohlmeyer on May 17, 18, 19, and 20, 1989. The interview took place in Metairie, Louisiana, and was conducted by Avis Berman 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.
Interview
[00:00:06.59]
AVIS BERMAN: This is Avis Berman talking with Ida Kohlmeyer at her house in Metairie, Louisiana, on May 17, 1989. So Ida, I think we'll begin with the beginning. And if you could start with your whole name and your birth date.
[00:00:26.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: My name is Ida Renee Rittenberg Kohlmeyer. However, the Renee has been Francophiled. [Laughs.] It was on my birth certificate, Rainy, R-A-I-N-Y. I was born in New Orleans, November 3, 1912 of Polish immigrant, Jewish parents. My parents had four children—two sons, Leon and Philip, and my sister, Mildred.
[00:01:16.94]
AVIS BERMAN: I'm going to stop you because I'm just going to run it back for two seconds—
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
Okay. And then now I can see I don't have to shriek at you. Now, it seems that New Orleans made itself felt immediately that your middle name was Francophiled, whether your parents wanted it or not?
[00:01:41.76]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. However, it was probably my brother Leon's doings. He, in a way, became third parent. He was twelve years older than I. And my brother Philip was nine years older. My sister Mildred, six years older. So I was the baby of the family. And Leon took a great deal of the familial decisions—not upon himself, but certainly discussed it with my mother and father. And he died very young, and I dare say because of all the responsibility put upon. He died at 47. My other brother died at 51. My sister had a long life, and I certainly am having one.
[00:02:45.28]
AVIS BERMAN: So as you say, maybe there were a lot more pressures on the men in the family.
[00:02:49.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I think so. Definitely.
[00:02:51.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, why was it that your brother, even at a fairly young age, became, say, the third parental figure, or the man of the family?
[00:02:59.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, my mother and father both came over to this country quite young. My dad was about eleven or twelve. Came alone. You know, it's the old story. Nothing very new about that. But what he and my mother achieved in their life together, I think, is also the American story. But because of their lack of education, they needed to be helped. And Leon was a very bright man and serious.
And I think he wanted for himself and his siblings—sisters and brother—excuse me—what he wanted for himself. And sometimes, I really don't admire some of the things he wanted. I think, Leon was anxious to be in the social swing of things. And this wasn't certainly his main characteristic. And it's probably terrible of me to choose to talk about him, first off, in a negative way. But when you asked me why my parents needed this assistance, it was because they lacked all of those abilities—educational, social, and that sort of thing.
[00:05:10.35]
And Leon, who was a Harvard graduate, my brother Philip, also—I mean, my parents were remarkable people, as were all, I suppose, all ethnic immigrants in those days, and perhaps still, I daresay still, South Americans, surely. But Leon loomed very big in my life. Philip was perhaps one of the great loves of my life. We looked alike. He, however, was six feet tall, with red hair, and freckled, and white eyelashes, which, of course, I have and strive very hard to overcome. But Philip was easygoing. You know, life was just wonderful. And he was one of those sweet people.
[00:06:16.16]
My sister and I were, I suppose, unhealthily close until the schism. Mildred, although she was six years older than I, was in some ways led by me. In other ways, we were disconnected. For instance, she was a model. She was very beautiful, but it seemed that as she grew into a more mature person, she began to realize that her life was a bit without meaning. And so I became sort of the person she wanted to either be, or to be like—be like. So I was an awful good athlete in my youth. And I was a basketball player, baseball player, tennis champion, golf champion. And it was my life before I became an artist. So Mildred began to be a golfer. Am I making this too long?
[00:07:48.45]
AVIS BERMAN: No, no. Please, there is no such thing as too long.
[00:07:53.52]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Okay. And she was, let's say, just a fair golfer. When I went in to the art school and served four years as student, and nine years as teacher, she began to look toward that to occupy herself with. And it was a most awful move that we both made. I recommended that she come and take one of my classes at the Newcomb Art School of Tulane University. Well, from that minute on, our relationship just deteriorated. And it was painful, absolutely painful to the point where she underwent therapy. And one evening when she was talking to me—and this didn't happen too often around this period—that was the schism—she said, "You know, I hated you so much, I could have killed you. I wanted to kill you."
[00:09:18.85]
Well, that was pretty heavy talk. And she wasn't that kind of person, really, never with anyone else that I knew of. And she wouldn't allow her children to talk to me. Her husband didn't talk to me. And this went on until she died. And it's one of the very sad things in my life, that I couldn't make her understand that art, number one, isn't competitive; and number two, that it wasn't me she should be grappling with. It was her own self, to produce her own art. Well, that's the story of that.
[00:10:32.48]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, did she have an ability as artist?
[00:10:38.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was during the Abstract Expressionist period, and she had the confidence to take a brush and fling it at a canvas. She mimicked my work a great deal. And one day I said, "Mildred, whose name are you going to sign on that painting?" And she made as if she didn't understand me. But she knew. But then, she sort of fell in love with—who is this painter who—I think a Spanish painter, who just—
[00:11:25.49]
AVIS BERMAN: It wasn't Tapies?
[00:11:27.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, it wasn't Tapies—with a very broad brush. [Later, IK recalled that it was Soulages. –Ed.] Anyway, she was courageous. I don't think she was inventive. I don't think—I think it was more the outside, exterior of the thing that interested her.
[00:12:00.91]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I think it's interesting. Obviously, she picked up early on when you say she could be led by you, that you had a strong or different personality. Perhaps she knew it before you did, and perhaps she wanted—maybe she didn't understand that in art, you can't let somebody lead you forever, and you can't be a follower. Maybe it—also, I don't know, as you said, you served a long apprenticeship. I don't know if she was willing to—maybe she wanted to come in at the top.
[00:12:30.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, that's exactly right. I think you understood it. I have thought that and known that, but I didn't think to say it just now. But that's so true. She wasn't willing to put out and really work. And then I think she had the wrong idea about the whole thing. She wanted a claim, and she wanted to be—well, she just—she worked toward the wrong things.
[00:13:06.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Now that you had broken a bit of ground on this—
[00:13:10.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It looked easy to her, you see.
[00:13:12.56]
AVIS BERMAN: Or at least attainable, whatever. These things are always difficult.
[00:13:23.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Terribly.
[00:13:23.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Especially with the loved ones. You want them to succeed, but on the other hand, the anger can be so different, too because—
[00:13:31.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I mean, imagine her saying to me, "I wanted to kill you." And that was pretty heavy stuff.
[00:13:42.31]
AVIS BERMAN: Of course. And also, being the youngest child, she must have resented you being the baby, too.
[00:13:50.10]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Up until that point, though, Avis, I think she really loved me with a deep love, you know, and real caring. I think I was the most important person in her life, which is extraordinary, being that much younger.
[00:14:05.68]
AVIS BERMAN: And of course, that's another twist with the art, is something—this was taking over. This was pushing out everything else.
[00:14:14.27]
IDA KOHLMEYER: So much so that once I went to the rabbi of our temple and said, "Rabbi Feibelman, I think I've lost my belief." He said, "I doubt it." He said, "You're so involved in something else that it seems to be pushing everything else aside, but everything will again find its place." Which I thought was a pretty wise statement.
[00:14:45.62]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess. Yes, he didn't try to make you feel guilty because you obviously already did.
[00:14:52.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, that's right.
[00:14:53.39]
AVIS BERMAN: Or you were just confronted by force that you were not familiar with or ready to understand at that point, yeah. Well, I want to go back to how your parents ended up in New Orleans.
[00:15:15.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: All right. My dad had come over a few years before my mother. And he traveled around the country, selling pencils or anything else he could get to sell, and making enough to feed himself. And he started in New York, of course, went to Chicago, went to San Francisco, and then came South. And he loved the South. He was that kind of gentle person. He liked the life. It was less harried. My mother, on the other hand, was not what you'd call a very—excuse me.
[00:16:05.94]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Jane says that the TV people are going to be at the office tomorrow at 11:00.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:16:11.55]
AVIS BERMAN: You were about to say that, I guess your mother was less comfortable with the South?
[00:16:15.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, not the South.
[00:16:17.39]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, okay.
[00:16:18.24]
IDA KOHLMEYER: She was a tougher individual. She really was the head of the family. She worked harder than my dad. She was far more of the family person than Papa. He was the one who'd kiss you, and hug you, and say, "Go to bed now." But Mama was the one who took all the tough nuts to crack. And she was a remarkable woman.
[00:16:57.96]
When I was studying for Wellesley, which I did not go to, because they decided with Philip and Leon away at college, it was not for me to do. She was being coached by my coach for entrance exams to read and write English, you see? And I was born when she was 35, I think. No, she had to be—yes, I guess she could have been 35 about then. But she didn't really have—I'm not excusing her, but I don't think she had time for this before.
[00:17:42.10]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, she had four children, and she worked for—
[00:17:44.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Exactly, that's right.
[00:17:45.90]
AVIS BERMAN: —with your father too?
[00:17:46.10]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Exactly.
[00:17:47.15]
AVIS BERMAN: In the store?
[00:17:48.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's right.
[00:17:52.11]
AVIS BERMAN: And had the language barrier to overcome, evidently.
[00:17:56.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's right. But she was a very proud woman. And incidentally, the two of them made quite a mark In the local scene, in their local scene, which was certainly the Orthodox Jewish group. And it was, I mean, New Orleans in the South can be pretty hard, because when I married my husband, some of the members of his family wouldn't talk to me. And you could imagine how they cold-shouldered my mother. Well, she wasn't about to have any portion of that, for which I have never blamed her. And I have felt very, very proud of her for it.
[00:19:00.44]
AVIS BERMAN: So were you observant Orthodox Jewish?
[00:19:03.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no. We were raised—my brothers had the traditional Orthodox training. My sister and I, never. We were confirmed in the Reform congregation. And Mama kept pushing us this way. But when we got there, she wasn't very happy about it. You know? It's convoluted, and I'm sure you've heard the story many times.
[00:19:37.18]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, I guess there was the tension of how American to be.
[00:19:40.52]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Well, they were so American, loved this country so much and this city so much. And were so grateful for everything. They, I think, failed to realize how much they gave.
[00:19:57.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, now, did you ever feel, or did your family feel excluded from things here by being Jewish?
[00:20:04.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, you see, that's where Leon was our precursor. He did everything exceptionally well. And he was accepted by some Gentile society. As a matter of fact, his wife, was a Jewish girl, but from the top echelon of Jewish society. My brother Philip married the same way, a Chicago girl. My sister married the same way, a Detroit man. And I married that way, so that so much of the Jewishness was washed off.
[00:20:52.82]
AVIS BERMAN: So actually, it was the, say, the more assimilated, or Jews who got here before the Kohlmeyer family were a little bit snobbish.
[00:21:01.48]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, absolutely. Not a little bit, but very. They were the German Jews, and to this day, I don't talk to some of Hugh's family. And, Avis, today, they would love to talk to me. And you're beginning to get part of my character, I'm sure. [Laughs.]I'm very unforgiving. In that way, I think, I'm very Jewish.
[00:21:38.94]
And I think part of a great deal of my perseverance, determination, involvement is due to the treatment of my mother. I wanted desperately to be looked up to. But then, in the meantime, that must have been secondary to the tremendous hold this work had on me. Because when I started art, I could have kept on playing golf.
[00:22:34.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Everyone probably would have been a lot more comfortable with that too. [Laughs.]
[00:22:37.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative]. My so-called old friends—I have so few of them. I haven't lost them through death, I'm happy to say. But they still don't believe that I'm serious about this work. Can you believe that, after 40 years? They just don't want to believe it.
[00:23:04.73]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it's a rebuke too, in a way. Because they didn't—people who think like that—
[00:23:10.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Of course. Yeah.
[00:23:12.30]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you identify with your mother?
[00:23:15.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I adored her, Avis, to the point where she—As she grew older, she had palpitations. And I could tell when she had one. And I would hold her pulse until it nearly drove her crazy. And this went on until I was about 37 years old. I remember it so well. And I had gone over to see her. She lived just three or four blocks from here. And she was lying in bed. And we were just talking. And I said, "Mom, I don't think you really love me." And she giggled. I guess it was such a surprise comment. She didn't know what to say or how to respond. She never did respond. And I think from that day on, I was released. I was no longer a slave.
[00:24:24.49]
AVIS BERMAN: But the portrait you painted of her is very, very interesting. It's tough, but it's sympathetic.
[00:24:30.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yeah, yeah. Her children—her love for her children—I mean love—started at the top. Leon was her life. Philip, I'm not so sure. I think Mildred might have come next. She was so proud of Mildred's looks. And because Mildred wasn't so attentive, I think she wanted her attention more. I was always available, you know?
[00:25:07.19]
AVIS BERMAN: Desire for what's unattainable or—
[00:25:10.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:25:10.78]
AVIS BERMAN: It would be a greater conquest.
[00:25:12.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And of course, she lived to see both Philip and Leon die. And that's when she went just absolutely berserk.
[00:25:22.81]
AVIS BERMAN: But she must have been proud when you paint—I mean, she—What did she think?
[00:25:26.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you see, I had just started. She died in '56.
[00:25:29.88]
AVIS BERMAN: I see. So you were on the cusp.
[00:25:32.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I had gotten my master's that year, and had gone off. She was dying. I waited until she did die. And then I went to Hans Hofmann's school. But up to that time, you see, all she saw was student work. And she laughed about that. She thought it was the biggest kick in the world. You know, "Why are you doing this?" And I couldn't give her a good answer.
[00:26:10.99]
AVIS BERMAN: What were the expectations that you felt, as a child, that the family had for you?
[00:26:19.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Maybe none. I was the fourth child. And I was—they really didn't have to worry too much about me. I was a good student. I did everything I was supposed to do, you know, and they never had problems with me in school. And I just sort of went along in the tracks of the others.
[00:26:51.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Sounds as if they were, in a way, more relaxed about raising you.
[00:26:54.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They were. They were, indeed.
[00:26:56.26]
AVIS BERMAN: That's what happens when you have three or four.
[00:26:59.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:27:02.48]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, now let's talk about—of course, we know you weren't thinking about being an artist then, but did you ever draw or were you interested in anything like that?
[00:27:11.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I had had one art history course in my undergraduate years. And the only thing I remember was The Blessed Damozel. And that has stayed with me 'til today! But what really brought me back to school and to doing something I felt was really worthwhile with my life, was the First World War.
[00:27:43.36]
AVIS BERMAN: Second.
[00:27:44.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Second World War, excuse me. Yes, the Second. Up 'til that time, you know, life was just to be played.
[00:27:55.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, that was probably the feeling of the times. But were there anyone, to your knowledge, in your family that had any kind of artistic, or literary, or musical talent, or anything like that?
[00:28:08.58]
IDA KOHLMEYER: None that I know of. Now, there may have been, you see. I didn't know. Although my dad eventually brought over his sisters and brothers, and my mother's. But among them, there were no such people.
[00:28:33.44]
AVIS BERMAN: Had you displayed an ability early on, do you think it would have been encouraged, or—
[00:28:40.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, I don't think it would have been noticed very much. I think it would have been just of small interest and not really understood, Avis.
[00:28:53.90]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it just seemed, from what I've read, that you excelled at everything, I mean—
[00:29:01.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I have a tremendous drive to do, you know, the utmost that I can do.
[00:29:13.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it sounds as if maybe you were competing with your brother a little bit.
[00:29:16.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Could be; could be I was competing with him. As I say, I was trying to build this world where everybody would respect me. And "me" really being my mother. I know that now is the truth.
[00:29:35.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you feel that you gained her respect at any certain point?
[00:29:40.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I always had her respect, but I never felt that I had as much of her as I wanted.
[00:29:54.85]
AVIS BERMAN: In your in your parents' house, was there art? Was there anything on the wall?
[00:29:59.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There were. In the house we moved to when I was four years old, which was one of—I'll show it to you—on St. Charles Avenue. You know, great, big, wonderful mansion, really. There were three Drysdales in the house. I'm sorry to this day that I don't have one of them. But there was no art. The furnishings were, as I remember, the dining room, heavy oak, coiled chairs. But there was a piano. Mildred played pretty well. And I took lessons, but she was better than I. And I didn't pursue it.
[00:31:01.72]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you were an English literature major in college, so you must have loved to have written. You must have loved to read.
[00:31:07.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Love to, to this day. I have a horrible fear of losing my sight more for the reading than for the painting. Now, that's an admission, but it's true.
[00:31:22.48]
AVIS BERMAN: What sorts of things were you reading as a young girl growing up?
[00:31:27.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The usual. English major. It was English, too. And how sorry I am, but maybe I'm very glad that I've found the Americans. Not today, believe me. But so much was excluded by taking that course as a major.
[00:31:55.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, also with when you were—I don't know what you remember of this, but I guess when you were about twelve, you went to Europe?
[00:32:02.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:32:04.62]
AVIS BERMAN: And what sorts of things did the family do?
[00:32:07.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, they took me with them because they had no place to leave me. And I remember Mildred and Philip were on this trip. And they had the most glorious time you can imagine. They were 18 and 21. And I was you know, a kid. They would have someone from the hotel stay with me and they bought me a puppy. And that helped ever so much. But my mother never liked dogs. And she did away with this dog. That was one of the great sorrows of my life, you could imagine.
[00:32:57.70]
AVIS BERMAN: It happened to my mother, the same thing.
[00:33:01.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Really?
[00:33:01.31]
AVIS BERMAN: Her mother did away with it. It comes were very—mother came from very similar background. Same thing happened.
[00:33:08.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Really?
[00:33:08.69] […]
[00:33:31.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But you see, Avis, we didn't go to museums on this trip. I remember most vividly, in Warsaw, we went to visit my—I don't know whether my mother—they came from the same town, Bialystok. But they said they didn't know each other there. That's hard to believe, because I always think of it as a tiny little village.
[00:33:57.93]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:33:58.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: A Chagall village, you know.
[00:33:59.64]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, you think, and not only just the village, but the shtetl part.
[00:34:02.50]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Exactly, sure. But they said they didn't. But we visited some relatives and they were living in a basement cellar. And this mother was bathing her child in an aluminum tub and drying it with newspaper. I had never—it was shocking, just remembering that. Then I remember we all went out to have lunch somewhere, and Papa left a tip on the table. And I saw one of the—somebody in the group, take the money off the table. And that has stayed with me. Hugh—
[00:34:51.56]
HUGH KOHLMEYER: I just want to say hello.
[00:34:52.12]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Come meet Avis. This is Hugh Kohlmeyer. Avis Berman.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:34:56.72]
[In progress]—pogroms, and my daughters cannot really understand it. But I had it first-hand. She had it first-hand. I had it second. They're having it third.
[00:35:11.48]
AVIS BERMAN: Did your parents expressly leave to escape the pogroms?
[00:35:15.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, definitely. Papa, to escape military duty. And—
[00:35:21.49]
AVIS BERMAN: [Inaudible.]
[00:35:23.27]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. And mom worked at a shirt factory in Chicago when she was a young woman. And that's really about all. They lived in Chicago, but somehow or other, they migrated to San Francisco. My parents were married there in 1900.
[00:35:49.19]
AVIS BERMAN: But you wanted to go to Wellesley, or—
[00:35:55.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I didn't, really. I was 16. In those days, you were 16, or maybe 15, when you graduated from high school. And this was another one of Leon's propositions.
[00:36:09.13]
AVIS BERMAN: The Seven Sisters.
[00:36:10.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Right, exactly. And I don't know really whether I would have gotten into Wellesley. I did awfully well in Latin and in English. I didn't do so well in a couple of the other subjects. So we didn't pursue it. But of course, Newcomb was very available and it was home.
[00:36:41.76]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what kind of a school—what was the reputation of Newcomb in those days?
[00:36:45.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Newcomb had an excellent reputation. And when George Rickey came, it must have been about '54 or '55, because he stayed here six years. And I went to work teaching in '56. That was the year—no, the next year Rothko came. What was your question?
[00:37:20.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, well, it was Newcomb's reputation.
[00:37:22.48]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, it was excellent.
[00:37:25.32]
AVIS BERMAN: Tulane is always kind of good.
[00:37:27.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Very good, yeah.
[00:37:28.02]
AVIS BERMAN: And Newcomb was on the same level?
[00:37:29.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, this school was.
[00:37:33.72]
AVIS BERMAN: And in school—I guess I should say, what did it open up for you to go to school? Or what did it—I mean, did it matter? Did you want to go to school? Did you want to go to college? I mean, did you know what you wanted then?
[00:37:50.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: My second go-round?
[00:37:52.47]
AVIS BERMAN: No, now we're still—
[00:37:53.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We're still after high school.
[00:37:56.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:37:58.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Of course I wanted to go. It was just the thing. It was expected. You just did it. And I was used to school. Yes, I guess I wanted to, but I don't think it was my choice to make.
[00:38:17.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, that's what—I guess what I'm trying to find out is, did you ever rebel?
[00:38:21.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Never. Never. And I know what you're asking me, because you're going to meet one of my daughters. The other one's out of town. But this one is Jane.
[00:38:37.17]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:38:37.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And she rebelled so—just, well, normally, as a teenager. Now I have to say, "Jane, you're giving me too much of your life." And she's trying to pay back for those years, I'm sure.
[00:38:57.68]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, isn't that maybe the same pattern, that you gave a lot of your life to your mother, too?
[00:39:03.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, but it was a sort of rebellion very late-on, you see? It was just the opposite.
[00:39:14.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So I also saw that you were at the, I guess you went to the Chicago World's Fair, the Century of Progress, and in a beauty contest?
[00:39:24.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, that was a big surprise. One of—in those days, we tried to have as many boyfriends as we could. And we'd have dates. And you just didn't, you know, shack up with one. You stayed home until you got married, which I think might be a pretty good idea, but who knows? Anyway, one of my boyfriends sent my picture in. It was to the Chicago Tribune. They ran it. And when I was called, I thought it was a big joke, and I just hung up. And this person kept calling back until I realized there was truth in it. It was a great experience.
[00:40:17.58]
AVIS BERMAN: And so you went to Chicago?
[00:40:19.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: So I went to Chicago. Mildred and Mama came along. [Laughs.] And I was terribly freckled in those days. Of course, you could blank that out in a photograph. And I remember using freckle cream, pounds of it, you know? And trying to stay out of the sun, which was a real effort for me, because I was an outdoors person. And it was certainly an experience I well remember.
[00:40:55.40]
AVIS BERMAN: How long were you there for?
[00:40:56.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We were there about a week. And there were 51 of us. And the young lady from Britain was the Queen, and the Maid was French. I think they tried to make it as international as they could. And the other 48 or 49 were Americans. But it was fun.
[00:41:23.57]
AVIS BERMAN: And all this time, you've gone to Chicago, gone to Europe, maybe you're going to New York, maybe, but you never felt I'm going to leave home or anything?
[00:41:32.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Avis, I must tell you that I sound like a goody-goody, but I really wasn't, you know? I was just like the other girls. Everybody in my group acted the way I acted.
[00:41:49.61]
AVIS BERMAN: And then how did you meet Hugh?
[00:41:52.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He was my brother Philip's best friend, and he was—Philip told me the only guy I couldn't go out with was Hughie. Well, of course, that was a challenge.
[00:42:07.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Why weren't you supposed to go out with him?
[00:42:08.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, he was a bon vivant and ten years older, and, you know, he was one of the boys. And a brother would normally want to protect his little sister from that kind of thing. But they were great friends.
[00:42:30.64]
AVIS BERMAN: And so, he must have been tenacious during all these other boyfriends.
[00:42:34.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, well, I think it was just a time when he wanted to get married. He was 31. And I don't know to this day how he happened to say, "Will you marry me?" And I said, "Let me think about it." [Laughs.] And the next day I said, "Yes." You know? I think it was, again, something you just did. But it was the right thing.
[00:43:09.69]
AVIS BERMAN: It certainly was.
[00:43:11.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:43:12.22]
AVIS BERMAN: So just to go in the wider sphere, we're now in, say, '33 or '34, and I guess your parents had attained some wealth and position.
[00:43:25.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:43:25.26]
AVIS BERMAN: But what about the Depression? What effect did that have on you and your family?
[00:43:31.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: […] See, my father had a loan office, the typical Jewish pawnbroker. But he wasn't typical, in that he was truly a citizen of this city, and from the very beginning, was very sharing of all the good things that happened to him. So I guess they just had enough money to pull through, because when I was four—that was 1916, way before the Depression—but they were able to buy this big house and have servants. They seemed to always have help. Because my mother preferred being in the store than being in the house doing the menial stuff. She never did cook. Never taught us how to cook. We were just damn spoiled.
[00:44:39.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, did your parents—or I guess this also, you had said before they had made their mark on the Orthodox Jewish community.
[00:44:47.96]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, Papa was one of the founders of the first Orthodox synagogue here, and was president. You see, so they were very looked up to in their own sphere.
[00:45:01.48]
AVIS BERMAN: What was the size of the Jewish community?
[00:45:04.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You know what it is today? 10,000 to 12,000. I think it's been that almost my whole lifetime. I think many of the Southern Jews become diluted and slough off, many. Many more, I think, than in the East or West.
[00:45:34.39]
AVIS BERMAN: Probably so, just because, if there are more in those areas, there's just can just reinforce each other more.
[00:45:43.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Sure, of course.
[00:45:45.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Also, I think it's just interesting here, with all of the different ethnic groups in New Orleans. I think it must have been a very different experience than being elsewhere, I would think.
[00:45:54.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I remember across from my daddy's store, a couple of blocks away, there was a little Chinese neighborhood, and we used to go to get lychee nuts all the time. And there was a very big German community, Italians, and of course French and Cajun, and Spanish. Now we have so many of Spanish infiltrators, whom we welcome, of course, because we're losing so many people—from Louisiana anyway. Because it's so depressed. It's the funniest thing, Avis. Economically, financially, or whatnot, the state is terribly depressed. But the art business has been soaring. It's unbelievable. Except that the rich people still have money.
[00:46:58.85]
AVIS BERMAN: It seems to be—
[00:46:59.58]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They can weather it.
[00:47:00.29]
AVIS BERMAN: —a city very much of either very rich or very poor. I mean, of my one day's experience. [Laughs.] But it was just from looking at the neighborhoods and the houses and things.
[00:47:12.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative]. But we have, I think, a middle echelon, strata, who—
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4855_m]
[00:00:03.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, we were just briefly beginning to talk about [local politics –Ed.]. But what I wanted to ask you was, were you at all politically conscious as a young woman, or interested in it?
[00:00:16.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I think now I sound as though I might be. As a matter of fact, I was so disinterested that I never read the newspaper up until about five years ago. But I think Reagan infuriated me so much. And I really am a Democrat, and oh so deep that the things that have been happening in this country have just been so abhorrent to me that I've become very interested in politics. In fact, we look at CNN all night long, every night, practically.
[00:01:05.29]
AVIS BERMAN: I was also going to ask you if—I mean, a huge, big Louisiana personality, someone like Huey Long. I mean, there was someone happening right there, that would have—if someone like him would have had an effect on someone like you?
[00:01:24.72]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and in a very strange way. If you've heard this before, please stop me. But anyway, we were young in those days, and we were very fun-loving, and we went out dancing a lot. And one night, we were at the Roosevelt Hotel here in the Blue Room, which was the place to go. And Huey Long was there, and he kind of took a shine to me. And he introduced himself, which was, of course, not necessary. And we introduced ourselves. I was with Huey. And he said, "Oh, your name is Huey. What's the difference, one Huey or another?" And he said, "Come on up to my rooms. I want to play something for you." So we went up to his hotel room—
[00:02:23.84]
AVIS BERMAN: But you were accompanied by your husband, or—
[00:02:26.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. Oh, sure. And he played a record about Turkey Head Walmsley, who was a politician whom he was running against in some election or something. And he was very drunk, as usual. And that, I must have been about twenty then, and a night to remember.
[00:02:54.02]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes. No, I didn't know about this at all. I mean, it is rather—were you afraid of him? Or what was your reaction to him?
[00:03:03.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you couldn't talk to him because he was a constant talker. And we just felt it was just a terrific experience, you know? We didn't hate him. I never had, actually. He might have been dishonest money-wise, but he did an awful lot of good for an awful lot of people.
[00:03:30.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, that's what I was going to ask you, though. Did you feel at the time that he was doing good for the state?
[00:03:34.97]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, but then I didn't know much about it. I still don't know much about those times, although I read William Penn—it's not William Penn. Who wrote The Lion in the Street?
[00:03:45.66]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, right. Robert. Robert [Penn Warren –Ed.]
[00:03:49.10]
IDA KOHLMEYER: —Penn Warren. Right. That told me more about Huey Long than I knew, because I didn't, really. I wasn't really interested then. I was interested in myself.
[00:04:01.34]
AVIS BERMAN: But he did seem to—he was a champion. And I mean, of course, he was self-aggrandizing. But he did seem to get roads built and other things like that.
[00:04:09.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he did. And universities.
[00:04:13.18]
AVIS BERMAN: And just given how rural—and how the state was, and how unconnected by many modern conveniences the state was, it must have been.
[00:04:28.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And it seems that we're getting back into that same situation.
[00:04:37.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Were your parents political?
[00:04:38.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not at all.
[00:04:39.26]
AVIS BERMAN: Were they ever—were they ever like—Of course, they were very American and very patriotic. But were they ever socialist or anything like that?
[00:04:49.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no.
[00:04:49.36]
AVIS BERMAN: Closet?
[00:04:50.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, no. I don't know whether I've painted a true picture of them for you. She was a stronger character. I think Papa liked to play around a bit. And I remember sometimes loud voices in the house. I think my mother thought she was much more physically attractive than she was. She was a beautiful young woman. I have a very small color photograph of her. She was gorgeous. Six feet tall. But as she grew older, like everybody, she was no longer that great beauty. But she carried herself as though she thought she was.
[00:05:50.96]
AVIS BERMAN: Although she had four children.
[00:05:53.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Oh, yes. Well, there was a woman in the paper yesterday who had seventeen. [Laughs.] And she looked marvelous.
[00:06:03.43]
AVIS BERMAN: […] Since we're still in the '30s, I guess whether—although I don't know if you consciously began it as a collection—I guess this is when you went to Mexico?
[00:06:20.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We went to Mexico on our honeymoon, right. '34. I think I was attracted to the folk art then. I think I have some pieces from that. You know, small, inconsequential things. But so many of them are inconsequential money-wise, but otherwise so important to me. But the first real piece of art I bought, I bought from a graduate student at Newcomb when I was there because he had been to working at the Chicago Institute. And when they had too many of one type Pre-Columbian ceramic piece, they would sell off some. And then I bought a little piece from George Rickey. I bought a little piece of his, too, I remember, but I sold it. I sold it because I became disenchanted with him and his wife. That's another story.
[00:07:37.79]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay, but we'll get—we'll get to George Rickey a little later, or probably tomorrow, depending on how things—how they go. Well, how did Mexico hit you?
[00:07:49.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It hit me right over the head. And we went back and back and back. I really don't know how many times we traveled into Mexico. And it's one of the real—real and few sadnesses of my life, that my husband doesn't want to travel anymore. He was 86. And he is truly remarkable. Marvelous. I mean, up here, wonderful. But he doesn't—he can't take the pressures of travel, so we don't do it anymore. But how I would love to go back to Mexico.
[00:08:37.31]
AVIS BERMAN: Now did he feel this—was he as enchanted with it as you were when you went together? Was it a shared—
[00:08:45.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, it was, I think. Although I really believe that if he knows I'm happy, he's happy. I mean, that's been my great good fortune.
[00:09:01.80]
AVIS BERMAN: After you were married, did you—you were in Mexico. I mean, did you—now this, of course, is also the time of the '30s, and the "Los Tres Grandes," you know, the muralists, Orozco, Rivera. Did you see any of that?
[00:09:17.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Oh, yes, indeed. I'm not sure we saw it on the first trip or the second. But it's hard to miss the university with those wonderful walls. But you see, when I went to art school, then I began to search out things everywhere I went. But prior to that, Avis, I didn't even look at art when we traveled.
[00:09:50.64]
AVIS BERMAN: When you traveled, what did you do in those days?
[00:09:53.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: In those days, sometimes we went—we made several trips to Europe over the years. '56 was one of those years. But I'm way ahead of myself again. We didn't go to Europe until '56, so we won't—let's not talk about that.
[00:10:15.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. Let's—I mean, in other words, you may have seen art. You may have passed it by, but it wasn't relevant to your life at that point.
[00:10:21.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, not at all. We would go places where we could play golf. And matter of fact, we didn't have a great deal of money in those days, so we couldn't take fabulous trips. But we toured a lot, and that was wonderful. We toured throughout this country, and I love that. I still do.
[00:10:46.35]
AVIS BERMAN: Also seeing Mexico in those days, too—just really astonishing.
[00:10:51.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You could see the difference twenty years later, you know. I mean, that was really the time when there was no wonderful ethnic ethnographic museum. There was no Bellas Artes that was—you know. If there had been a Bellas Artes—and they might very well have been—I just didn't go to see it.
[00:11:20.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Now also realizing, of course, that you weren't involved in it—what was, say, in the 1930s when the New Orleans art scene or the cultural scene?
[00:11:33.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I haven't the vaguest idea.
[00:11:35.30]
AVIS BERMAN: So you didn't pay any attention to it at all?
[00:11:37.72]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no.
[00:11:39.83]
AVIS BERMAN: In general, has there always been—because of the importance of, say, jazz here, I mean, has that dominated the arts and all—
[00:11:51.17]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. We had an opera house. There's been a philharmonic many, many years.
[00:11:58.32]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. I meant to say, I guess, the musical—
[00:12:01.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Music. Oh, yes, I think. I can tell you about the first art gallery, but that comes later.
[00:12:13.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. So—
[00:12:14.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: So there's this great hiatus from the time I graduated from Newcomb until I went back to Newcomb in '50.
[00:12:24.95]
AVIS BERMAN: I know. That's perfectly all right. I'm just probing because I think it's important to be really thorough about this. It makes the post-1950 time so astonishing, even more astonishing, because you weren't encouraged to do this.
[00:12:40.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No.
[00:12:40.43]
AVIS BERMAN: And it wasn't an inkling, and it wasn't something you were thinking.
[00:12:43.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But I had a couple of—I guess three really tremendous influences in my life. Hans Hofmann, Pat Trivigno—I think you've read that—and Mark Rothko. And they all came bunched up at the same time. And—
[00:13:07.02]
AVIS BERMAN: Were there mentors at all in any—I'm not going to say not in art, but anyone else who acted as a strong female like that in any other field that you [inaudible]?
[00:13:22.63]
IDA KOHLMEYER: If I have to think this long, there couldn't have been. Yeah.
[00:13:27.96]
AVIS BERMAN: You also, well—you also opened a gift shop.
[00:13:31.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. Yes. The year—
[00:13:39.15]
AVIS BERMAN: That was '34.
[00:13:39.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: —we were married, '34. My brother Philip's wife and I, Kay, opened a gift shop—I mean, I think this is what's happened—in Godchaux's, which was one of the stylish, big stores down on Canal Street, the main business street. And we opened it in the elevator shaft. And—
[00:14:11.37]
AVIS BERMAN: I can't quite imagine that.
[00:14:12.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. It was a big elevator. Maybe ten by ten feet. And then a couple of years later, we extended ourselves to the second elevator shaft. Then in the seventh year, we went upstairs. But that was when it all broke up. But if you want to hear something very personal in those years, I fell in love with the young man who came down to manage the store. He came from Boston.
And he—I often think, Avis, if my marriage had broken up over this, what a horrible mistake it would have been. But at the time, I was so just absolutely struck between the eyes by this man, who was a married man with two children. Obviously, I didn't have a child until my eleventh year of marriage. So this went on. And there was never any sexual, you know, activity.
[00:15:54.79]
AVIS BERMAN: Consummation.
[00:15:55.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Consummation. Thank you. But I'm trying to see now—Hugh went to into the service in '41, and it was so distasteful to Mr. Godchaux, who confronted me with this. And I admitted it, and he evidently admitted it, too, that I was asked to leave. But before that, my sister-in-law had left. I think she wanted no part of it. And it was a very troublous time. I went to live with my—by myself for a while, and then with my sister for a while. And then Hugh—Hugh went to Fort Bragg. And suddenly I snapped out of this thing.
[00:17:11.01]
AVIS BERMAN: He was wise enough to hold on. In other words, he was letting you grow up.
[00:17:15.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think so. He must have been, because he took an awful lot, because I told him the truth. And it was very hard for him. So I went then to Fort Bragg. And I tried to learn how to cook. [They laugh.] And we stayed there for four years. He was the subsistence officer.
[00:17:42.41]
AVIS BERMAN: I had just—I don't want to probe any further into the area you're not that comfortable with. But on this store, I just wanted to ask you, did you did you feel you needed money? Or were you doing this for a lark? Or I mean—
[00:17:56.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was more a lark than anything else. But as I say, we didn't have a great deal of money. And my parents were able to help, and they did. Hugh's parents were really not able to help, but they were very comfortable. But it was something to do.
[00:18:20.76]
AVIS BERMAN: I mean, all of these things—I mean, maybe, of course, somebody you were smitten with, but you were trying to fill some sort of void there.
[00:18:28.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Evidently.
[00:18:29.38]
AVIS BERMAN: And you were floundering around. And these were early ways of filling the void before you found more productive ways, perhaps.
[00:18:38.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:18:40.59]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you sell objet d'art?
[00:18:43.47]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We sold household objects, which I think probably anybody could have lived without happily. [Laughs.]
[00:19:00.00]
AVIS BERMAN: I was just curious if you were exercising any kind of, say, aesthetic taste.
[00:19:03.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, we were. Yes, we were, actually. But my sister-in-law was really the number one girl. She knew much more about it than I did. She was really teaching me a great deal. And it was another slant on life. I'd never really been around working people. I made friends with people I would never have met otherwise, which is exactly what happened when we went to the Army.
[00:19:44.43]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative], and you dealt with the public.
[00:19:46.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:19:48.89]
AVIS BERMAN: You probably didn't work in the store, your parents' store, when you were growing up?
[00:19:57.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I was never, no. But I remember being there, and I remember it. And I remember swinging on the big safe once, and smashing my hand in the door. I still have a little scar from that.
[00:20:23.99]
AVIS BERMAN: [Inaudible.] So I guess Hugh went into the Army. And I guess—did he go before Pearl Harbor?
[00:20:41.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He went in '41.
[00:20:43.62]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So—
[00:20:45.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: So that was before Pearl Harbor. Yeah.
[00:20:51.30]
AVIS BERMAN: That was unusual to enlist before war was declared, I guess.
[00:20:56.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, he wanted to get away, I think. And it was such an awkward situation.
[00:21:04.31]
AVIS BERMAN: Did your family stand by you when you were going through this turmoil?
[00:21:07.47]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. My father did stop talking to me. My mom barely talked to me. My brothers—no, you know. And Mildred was very understanding. She was a haven for me. But my friends, because he was a married man with children—and he really, when I think about it, he's still living. Such a weak sister. I don't know. I mean, this was—
[00:21:40.85]
AVIS BERMAN: It's also very sexist that you were the one who was asked to leave, not him.
[00:21:45.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, he was, too. Oh, yes. He lost his job.
[00:21:49.42]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh.
[00:21:49.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And he came down from that wonderful store in Boston. But it didn't seem to bother him very much. Evidently, he was a very moneyed person.
[00:22:00.33]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, maybe he played around a lot more than you did.
[00:22:03.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think he did. I think he did.
[00:22:06.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Most philanderers aren't first offenders.
[00:22:09.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: [Laughs.] Well, it was my first.
[00:22:13.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. But I meant—
[00:22:14.97]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But you met male philanderers.
[00:22:16.52]
AVIS BERMAN: Male philanderers, He sounds pretty practiced, actually. [They laugh.] Even the small details. So you were suddenly in Fort Bragg with, I guess, a whole different class of people than you were probably—
[00:22:32.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, living with a Daughter of the American Revolution, Mrs. McKeithan, whom I think had never spoken to a Jewish man or woman in her life. She was wonderful to us. We boarded at the house. The food was so terrible I had to try to cook. [Laughs.] I wasn't very successful. But Hughie was kept there because he was valuable. They put him in the distribution of food, and food was his business. He's one of, as I've often said, one of the few people I knew of who was put where they should have been from civilian life.
[00:23:25.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, of course you were—I'm sure you were petrified that he would go overseas.
[00:23:29.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:23:29.54]
AVIS BERMAN: But he was probably—well, I suppose he wouldn't have been sent into combat because of his age. But I guess—
[00:23:35.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, they might very well have sent him. In fact, orders came a number of times, and his commanding officer would never release him. And I'm sure he did more good where he was than he would have, on his weak ankles, you know, carrying a gun.
[00:23:58.19]
AVIS BERMAN: [When he enlisted –Ed.] I guess he would have been about 39 then, I guess, and married.
[00:24:05.22]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, he was born in 1903, so he was 38 or 39, yeah.
[00:24:14.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what did you do every single day?
[00:24:17.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I had to work then. And play golf. We became very good friends with a pro and his wife. I heard from her a couple of years ago. It was [inaudible]. And Army life is a pretty busy operation. You know, a lot of entertainment. You had to do the same—
[00:24:49.40]
AVIS BERMAN: In other words, he was an officer.
[00:24:51.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he was. He was. When he went through whatever he went through, he was given Second Lieutenantship. But he came out a Major, and I'm very proud of him for that.
[00:25:09.50]
AVIS BERMAN: And I guess this was—you had begun to say before, this was the first real dividing line in your existence.
[00:25:16.12]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, absolutely. Our best friends were the veterinarian, who was a vet in real life, and his wife. And I just met people whom I never would have had the good fortune to meet had I just continued the way my so-called old friends continued all their lives. You know, you just met people from all stratas of life, and you realized how narrow your life had been, and also how precious life was. And of course, even being in the Army, we knew nothing about Hitler. Nothing about all those horrors. That was all kept so very secret.
[00:26:14.67]
AVIS BERMAN: Were your parents, by the way, before World War II, were they writing to relatives in Poland? Or did you ever—
[00:26:21.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. They had evidently brought over everybody who was left to bring.
[00:26:32.79]
AVIS BERMAN: So I guess anyone who was alive they brought over.
[00:26:36.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, that's right. And they did that very early on, you know, before Hitler ever appeared on the scene.
[00:26:49.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Probably in the teens and '20s.
[00:26:51.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:26:53.33]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, was it also—was it difficult for you just being away from New Orleans, where you'd been all your life? Was that an adjustment?
[00:27:05.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, what had gone on in my life had been so all-consuming. And I really was so glad—I guess I was. When I think back on it, I must have been glad to get away. And it was just—I remember when the train pulled into Fort Bragg, and I saw Hugh running down to where we would be getting off—just a deep sigh of relief.
[00:27:37.25]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess it was also [inaudible].
[00:27:39.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That he waited for me. I mean, that was extraordinary. And nothing like that has ever happened since. So I'm not saying that to tell you what a good person I am. The only other person who ever touched me that way was Rothko, and he wasn't fazed by me. [They laugh.]
[00:28:11.50]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess also a change of scene, where people wouldn't be talking about you was probably a great relief, too.
[00:28:16.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, sure.
[00:28:17.30]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, when you got back, you moved in with your mother, so I guess everybody was speaking to you again?
[00:28:24.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: When I got back— Well, you see, I had two children during those four years. So I was again a member of the family, and everything was beautiful. And—
[00:28:35.43]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you also had produced heirs, so—[Laughs.]
[00:28:37.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Yeah.
[00:28:41.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Didn't you felt by the way, had there been pressure on you earlier? I mean, did the families put pressure on you to have a child?
[00:28:50.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, and I think it was so good that we didn't. We weren't really mature enough to do it. And it was being away, and being on our own. Because Hugh's parents were adoring parents. I mean, he could do no wrong. He was perfection in their eyes. And we just had such an easy life. But we didn't have an easy life in the Army, as—so much easier than others had, I'm sure. Because finally we were put on the—what do you call it? Not the campus.
[00:29:32.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Barracks?
[00:29:33.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We were given a house on the main grounds of the camp. There's a word for that. Oh, I'll think of it later. But when we first moved there, we had a very small little half of a double. It was military quarters. But then we were given a house on the—two-story house. Big as this—bigger—that I had to take care of with a newborn baby. There was no help to be had. I almost had a nervous breakdown. In fact, I did. Mildred and Mama came out. [They laugh.]
[00:30:25.67]
AVIS BERMAN: They've also been a delayed reaction to the other tension, too.
[00:30:29.76]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, it could very well.
[00:30:31.54]
AVIS BERMAN: But maybe [inaudible]. Or it could have been even postpartum, or any of these sympathetic names we have nowadays for it. But as you said, Mildred and Mama came.
[00:30:43.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. [They laugh.]
[00:30:44.93]
AVIS BERMAN: Or maybe it was just all the stress of that housework.
[00:30:48.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was. It just—and I guess I was as compulsive about housekeeping as I've been with everything else I've done in my life.
[00:31:05.84]
AVIS BERMAN: When you were back in New Orleans, how had the city changed in ways that were meaningful to you in a way? Was it a different place?
[00:31:15.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, when I came back to have my second child, it was toward the very end of the war. And we had started building this house. So I was very occupied being pregnant and building this house, which was some 42 years ago now. And I just realized how empty my life had been, that I wanted to do something that had something worthwhile. So I went back to school.
[00:31:57.77]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, let's backtrack a little. Now when you were at—the house was being built, actually, you probably were extremely busy. But also according to the chronology, that in '47 you enrolled in the John McCrady Art School?
[00:32:14.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It wasn't in '47. I think it was—yes, it was, because it was what I found out I was pregnant with Joanne, yeah. And I stayed away from school until '50 when I signed up at Newcomb.
[00:32:31.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what was this art school that you went to? Who was John McCrady?
[00:32:36.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: John McCrady was a local artist. He was married to Mary, who had been a Newcomb student in my class. And it was held in the French quarter. And strange people like myself just fell in there, and I think twice a week. But when I realized I was pregnant and I was getting large, I just stopped going.
[00:33:17.05]
AVIS BERMAN: How long did you attend classes there?
[00:33:19.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Less than a year.
[00:33:21.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Was it helpful?
[00:33:23.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It must have sustained what little interest I—whatever was that drew me to this. It must have been interesting enough to me so that when I felt able to leave this job, I went right back to art school. But this time, more earnest.
[00:33:45.59]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess what I'm trying to find out is if it had any impact, or if it was in the relative scheme of things of what you felt you learned, or I mean, it had given you a taste for something. Or was it just sort of—was it for dabblers?
[00:33:59.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It gave me a taste, but it was for dabblers, the school was. It didn't destroy what drew me there, you know? It must have given me something, Avis, because I went back for more.
[00:34:23.93]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess what I would ask you, though, you decided that life is empty, but you didn't become a nurse. You didn't volunteer. You didn't think, I'm going to write. I mean, in the absence of ever being visual, ever drawing, ever searching out after art, why did this—
[00:34:45.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. I don't know. I really don't know. I had always had it—when I was a mature woman, I say from age 30 on, I just loved going to museums and looking at art, but just as a visual thing.
[00:35:14.05]
WHTINEY ANJERON: [Side conversation.] Well, it was nice meeting you.
[00:35:15.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:35:17.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: [In regard to Whitney Anjeron, who had briefly dropped by. –Ed.] He started the art department at Loyola University and defrocked himself. He's a character.
[00:35:28.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes well, I'll look for him.
[00:35:29.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You look for him. I think you'll enjoy him.
[00:35:31.46]
AVIS BERMAN: So you did—oh, well, I guess you had been going to museums since you were, I guess you said, thirty years old. What sorts of—where did you like to go most? Or what places were you going to?
[00:35:44.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, New York—the New York universities, any large city where I happened to be, and Europe.
[00:35:53.45]
AVIS BERMAN: So you did find your way into them at one point or another as a—
[00:35:57.02]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, uh-huh [affirmative]. I was drawn to looking at art.
[00:36:02.71]
AVIS BERMAN: So that's—well, I guess that's sort of the link, then. I mean, it doesn't explain everything. But that—
[00:36:09.25]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I tell you another thing. I know. I had just had—was it Jane or Jo? I think my first child. And Mildred, for a baby present, had this woman do my portrait. That's it! And I sat for her. And I remember I had to leave my evening dress open because I was so swollen still. And I became absolutely out of my head attracted to what she was doing. I have the portrait upstairs. And I guess I determined I'd like to do that. I'm sure that was it now, when I think about it. I think this is quite a revelation to me. [Laughs.]
[00:37:11.05]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I'm delighted that we're that we're poking it out because I just—that is interesting, as you saw—because didn't you begin by doing portraits yourself?
[00:37:21.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, indeed, I certainly did. I did portraits of children.
[00:37:26.86]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah. Was the McCrady School I guess—
[00:37:30.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I did one painting, which I have. It was of a church with green trees on the side of the red church. And the most unpromising piece of work you ever laid your eyes on. I won't even show it to you.
[00:37:51.18]
AVIS BERMAN: But you did it. You finished it.
[00:37:53.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:37:54.07]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, also, I think this woman—I don't know. Do you think it presented this portraitist as something you'd like to do, or the idea of being an artist, maybe?
[00:38:05.72]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I think it was something I'd like to do.
[00:38:09.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you—sorry.
[00:38:11.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I didn't know what being an artist meant, you know.
[00:38:15.44]
AVIS BERMAN: That's actually what I'm going to ask you, is when—why don't we just skip ahead for a minute? When did you begin defining yourself as an artist?
[00:38:28.50]
IDA KOHLMEYER: After I began teaching at Newcomb. And I had this call from Henri Ehrsam's daughter. Henri, who had a Washington—
[00:38:41.23]
AVIS BERMAN: A gallery.
[00:38:41.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: —really a gallery in Alexandria then. And she talked to me and she said, "My daughter has seen your work and thinks highly of it." Well, I almost fell out. "And I think I would like to handle some of your work." Well, that was the beginning, with the exception of the gallery—the Orleans Gallery—which started here in '55 or '56. And I was the first taken-in person from the little nucleus that started it.
[00:39:28.59]
AVIS BERMAN: Was that the first, shall we say, serious gallery?
[00:39:31.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, it was. The first serious contemporary gallery.
[00:39:37.29]
AVIS BERMAN: What sorts of galleries were there? I mean, were there any serious old master galleries or anything like that? Any?
[00:39:45.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. We specialize in furniture. Objet d'art, you know. And there are some galleries now, stores now who have early artworks. And some are quite good. I mean, they are legitimate. But I don't think you'd find a Rembrandt, you know, or ever would. Anything of that quality. We've never been known for that.
[00:40:22.02]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I think that the economy, or people probably just didn't collect that much.
[00:40:29.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. And as you said, really, music has been our forte. But it was this experience of having my own portrait done, I think, that pushed me in that direction.
[00:40:46.92]
AVIS BERMAN: And when you watched this woman, you became fascinated by what she was doing?
[00:40:50.32]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, absolutely. I wasn't allowed to watch her as she worked. And that was a great mystery to me. You know, how did it actually get from that brush in that way on that canvas?
[00:41:08.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Did she encourage you? Did you discuss this with her at all, that you were—
[00:41:12.81]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't remember anything, really.
[00:41:16.52]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, in between McCrady and Newcomb, and you had your child, did you do any drawing or painting at home during that time?
[00:41:23.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, none.
[00:41:28.11]
AVIS BERMAN: But the idea stayed with you.
[00:41:29.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Evidently. And going back to Newcomb seemed the most worthwhile thing to do.
[00:41:43.72]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, were you older than everyone else in the class?
[00:41:46.61]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, certainly. I was older than my teacher by nine years. Pat Trivigno, whom I've been so eager to talk about.
[00:41:54.55]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Now we're with Pat, we're at Newcomb now. Now, did you go full time? What was your regimen when you began?
[00:42:02.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: When I began, I took drawing and painting, with no intention whatsoever of working toward a degree. It was just a pleasant way to pass time. Pleasant and hopefully really intriguing.
[00:42:25.40]
AVIS BERMAN: It was almost like having bridge lessons or something. And you start—
[00:42:28.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Or French lessons or something. Well, I was so taken with it. That was the only other time Hughie and I almost divorced after I had been doing this a few years. And it really drew me away from him, and from the children, and from everything. And he began to drink. It could have been the real schism in our lives.
[00:43:01.06]
I'll tell you—well, just to hop forward a little bit. When he came to pick me up at Hans Hofmann's that summer and threw my work into the back of the automobile, into the rumble seat or whatever it was called then, I screamed. I screamed so loud. Actually, he had a slight heart attack shortly thereafter, but I'm sure that didn't do it. But anyway, I began to cry. And I was very emotional. And I think it was the first time he realized what all this meant to me, these six years of working with it.
[00:43:43.89]
AVIS BERMAN: He must have thought it was just a passing fancy.
[00:43:47.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. I think he wanted to think that, too, because it was something he knew nothing about. Nothing whatsoever. And it alienated me from him. My new friends, they kind of suffered him. He was a hell of a nice guy, a good drinker. You know, a pleasant man. But that was where my interest lay, and I wasn't about to give it up.
[00:44:31.19]
AVIS BERMAN: But when did he also—just to skip ahead, when did he really turn around and become proud or realized that you were exceptional, and that this was really—
[00:44:41.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think he's only realized that maybe in the last ten years. And maybe—I don't even know if I think I'm exceptional. I truly think that—I don't know. Anyway, I don't know whether he thought I was exceptional, but he knew that it was a serious matter to me. And then I began getting a little attention—and a writeup here, and something there—and my work began to sell. That always impresses a businessman.
[00:45:21.65]
AVIS BERMAN: True, true enough.
[00:45:23.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And he—he became very supportive. But for the first two years at Newcomb, I just took courses. I'd take an art history course a half semester, and I'd take a print course, and I did all the things that an undergraduate would do in an art school. And I was there so much of the time that they said, "Look, you might as well work for a degree."
[00:46:05.01]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, at the school, had they did they ever treat you condescendingly? Did they expect you to last? Or in other words, or was it difficult to persuade them to get in?
[00:46:15.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not at all. Not at all. I had the requirements, which was, I think, a B average, from 1933. And this was 1950. But they took me. And Pat was an inspiration.
[00:46:39.16]
AVIS BERMAN: Was he your only instructor?
[00:46:41.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no. He was my drawing and painting instructor, though, yes. And then Alfred Moir was the art historian. And Jim Steg, who was—
[00:46:56.16]
AVIS BERMAN: How would you spell the [Moir]? Is it M-O-Y-E-R?
[00:46:59.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: M-O-I-R.
[00:47:00.13]
AVIS BERMAN: M-O-I-R. And Jim S—
[00:47:02.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Steg, S-T-E-G. He's still at Newcomb. Alfred left to go to University of California in—I can't remember now.
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4856_m]
[00:00:06.26]
AVIS BERMAN: This is Avis Berman speaking with Ida Kohlmeyer on May 18, 1989, for the Archives of American Art at her house in Metairie, Louisiana. And as I said, where we left off last time was your signing up to take classes with Pat Trivigno at Newcomb College, which was a decided change from your former art instruction or what you had at the McCrady School?
[00:00:37.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:00:37.88]
AVIS BERMAN: And so why don't you talk about how Pat Trivigno conducted his classes, or what he was—and what he was able to give to you?
[00:00:48.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, let me first say that I was thirty-six or thirty-seven years old at the time, among—perhaps from sixteen to eighteen-year-olds. It was a beginning drawing class. I had never used a piece of chalk, or conte crayon, or anything of that nature, or ever tried to reproduce linearly things I saw. Well, for some reason Pat Trivigno, who was my instructor, did not put the fear of failure in my head.
[00:01:48.14]
Thirty-five or thirty-six to me now seems so incredibly young that spending time on that particular part of my experience at Newcomb at this time is very important now, because I'm sure I felt as young as the sixteen-year-olds. And he did not make me feel my age, because he, being ten years younger than I—nine years, actually—I thought of him as such a brilliant, advanced, knowledgeable, excellent man and teacher, that his juniorhood to me did not in any way diminish his authority.
[00:02:56.39]
I began working very hard from the moment I entered his class. I remember doing the homework, but not just doing the homework, doing maybe two or three times as much as was required. I also remember those early, early drawings, which he rather admired and actually did put into an exhibition at the school. Out of four of them, two were stolen. And I remember going through the wastepaper baskets, all through the building with him, looking to see if perhaps they had just been thrown away. Well, we never did find them.
[00:03:48.18]
AVIS BERMAN: Perverse compliment.
[00:03:49.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I really regret that. But he was very attentive to his students. He was not the sort of teacher who came in, as Hofmann did in his drawing classes, spend fifteen minutes giving the daily orders, then vacating the class and returning two hours later to say, "I'll look at these and we'll discuss them at the end of the week." So he was very much with us. And being such a young teacher, he had so much energy and so much enthusiasm, it was very easily influenced. Well, that influence came through very easily. And then I just remembered something else. In the first year of painting class, we were doing a little—first, a little still—a little still life. [Telephone ringing.]
And I had juxtaposed two colors. I was so new at this that just putting pink next to green was a moment of ecstasy, and I let out an exclamation so that the whole class turned around. And it was—it was so felt. And he knew what had happened. As a matter of fact, he was a very feeling, understanding and hard-working teacher. I'm tremendously indebted to him for not only being such an inspiration during those years, but for being my friend and continuing to be so until today. I think he's an extraordinary man.
[00:06:08.56]
AVIS BERMAN: Did he ever have any other students who went as far as you did?
[00:06:13.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, of course. Well, one that comes to mind, who was my student and also his, Lynda Benglis. But there weren't really—aren't that many that I know of. They may have branched off and gone into other art fields that, and I'm not aware of it.
[00:06:41.91]
AVIS BERMAN: But it's interesting. It seems to me that his feelings for you were entirely generous. He didn't seem—
[00:06:47.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Very generous.
[00:06:49.00]
AVIS BERMAN: —competitive or anything like that.
[00:06:52.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not at all. As a matter of fact, he's retiring this year. He has already retired as of two weeks ago. And his—many, many of his students have been asked to come back and draw or paint a miniature-something on a horizontal piece of paper that spread throughout the Newcomb Art Gallery, which I think he will enjoy because he will be able to roll it up and keep it.
[00:07:27.44]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. It's a terrific memento.
[00:07:33.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:07:34.50]
AVIS BERMAN: So now the other students, how did they react to you—say, the sixteen to eighteen-year-olds?
[00:07:39.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I wanted to say for the first two years that I was there, I was taking fundamentals—art fundamentals, and all the preliminary courses. And I had no idea about going into trying to get a higher degree than I already had, which was simply a BA. And Pat suggested that I work toward a degree, a master's degree, because I guess he had faith in me, and I was spending a great deal of time at the school.
[00:08:25.83]
So I said, okay, you know, what will that take? Well, I thought it would take two years, but it took four because of the two children. And as I think I say in that retrospective catalog, I wasn't the most promising student. And I needed that time, because I had missed a lot of the preliminaries. And I'm awfully glad I took the time.
[00:09:04.70]
Pat really was a classicist in many ways. We made our own pastels. We learned how to spell "tragacanth," and we learned how to do all kinds of things that are not gone into, I don't imagine, in most art schools today, nor is it necessary. But I'm glad he taught us perspective. I'm glad I know these things. I think whatever you learn is to your benefit, and then you learn as you mature, what you can discard and what you can keep.
[00:09:49.05]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it's certainly better to have to discard than not to have had it at all.
[00:09:52.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think so.
[00:09:54.09]
AVIS BERMAN: I think that bothered our friend, Rothko. I think the lack of foundation in drawing, I think, was very difficult for him later on.
[00:10:04.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Is that so? I wasn't aware of that.
[00:10:06.91]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, I think—well, according to what his friend Stanley Kunitz said later on.
[00:10:12.24]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Well, I've seen none in life, but I've seen many reproductions of his early works with figurative works. And they are not very impressive, and they keep reproducing the same ones.
[00:10:35.22]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Those are the best of what I would say, a mediocre lot. It just didn't work. He had to find something to work around his limitations. And he did it.
[00:10:46.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and he certainly did.
[00:10:47.46]
AVIS BERMAN: That's what he did. But later on, he wanted to do illustrations for book of Stanley Kunitz's poetry, and he couldn't do it.
[00:10:58.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That must have been devastating.
[00:11:01.05]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. He didn't—he could have made almost prints of the paintings, but he didn't. He wanted to draw and make designs and figures.
[00:11:13.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: When was this?
[00:11:15.78]
AVIS BERMAN: I think that was—I think that was the late '60s or something like that when his frame of mind was bad. I mean—
[00:11:25.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. He was already—
[00:11:27.21]
AVIS BERMAN: I would have to look.
[00:11:28.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: —troubled.
[00:11:28.92]
AVIS BERMAN: I may be wrong about that. I can't remember that. But I remember that from the Kunitz interview very strongly that he did. Well, what—
[00:11:39.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There was no one else at the school who affected me as a student the way Pat did. I don't think any of the others had as much to give. And if they had it, they weren't charitable enough to do it.
[00:11:59.13]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it takes a lot out of you to be a good teacher.
[00:12:01.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'd like to say something about George Rickey, if I may.
[00:12:04.83]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. Would you like to do that now, or—
[00:12:09.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not necessarily. I could—
[00:12:11.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, because I'm going to—I was just wanting to finish a little section over here was that—what ideas began to, you know, that were important to you about art during the first few years, working for the degree? What artists? What were you looking at?
[00:12:34.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: What art influenced me? What did I respond to?
[00:12:40.01]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:12:41.88]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think I responded to the same people I'm responding to today, plus those who have come very recently. But Van Gogh has always been an idol of mine and El Greco. Copley, today I respond to readily. But I didn't know artists' names. You know, I didn't know anything about art or artists. So I had a great deal to learn. And I ate it up.
[00:13:40.50]
AVIS BERMAN: And what did that early work look like?
[00:13:43.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: My early work was based on portraits of children. At least, I did my master's thesis—Portraits of Children—more the mood of loneliness than portraits of children. Now, of course, I had two little girls at the time, and they were good models for me. And I also went to a Protestant home here near the school and they would allow me to borrow the children to come and sit. And when I look back on those things, they seem so immature, so schoolgirlish, you know?
[00:14:39.26]
AVIS BERMAN: Were you surprised—I mean, were you surprised that you were able to get a likeness? I mean, did that happen quite early on?
[00:14:46.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. I was very surprised. And it was always such a challenge. And I was always so exhausted after I'd worked an hour or an hour and a half. It took everything out of me. It still does. I don't do it easily. It looks as though I do, I think. I think the work looks easy done, but I'm terribly tense when I work.
[00:15:17.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I don't think you'd want it to look labored or forced.
[00:15:20.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, and I fight it. Maybe that's why they do look easy.
[00:15:29.33]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, was there—you say, of course, you had children of your own and so you did have two ready models. But was there something that you found in children that you wanted to capture more than, say, adult models or adults?
[00:15:43.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There must have been, and this mood of loneliness. I don't know what started that, Avis. I don't know why I hitched on to that. Maybe as I drew them, that was what I saw subconsciously and that's what came out.
[00:16:04.72]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, because, you said loneliness as opposed to solitude or aloneness.
[00:16:08.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Or aloneness. Yes, it was strictly a mood of loneliness. It was sad.
[00:16:20.93]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Now, at this at this point, obviously, as you said, you were before you built your studio here. If you were painting there, you must have been at Newcomb—
[00:16:32.96]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I was.
[00:16:33.68]
AVIS BERMAN: —all—every day, all day.
[00:16:36.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. I had a very sizable studio and was very comfortable there. It was great. And I had someone to help me.
[00:16:58.35]
AVIS BERMAN: And did you—and speaking of loneliness and children, were you able to explain to your own children—
[00:17:03.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They were so young, you know, that didn't seem necessary. But I never drew or painted from photographs. I don't know why I didn't, but I just don't think I was drawn to the subject from photographs.
[00:17:26.40]
AVIS BERMAN: So you always used—
[00:17:27.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Always used a live model. I've got to leave it for a minute. Sorry.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:17:36.40]
AVIS BERMAN: We were just talking about children and painting or drawing from the model [telephone rings] which you were satisfied with.
[00:17:47.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It intrigued me. And I worked. I think I worked on that thesis a year and a half or two years.
[00:17:56.26]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I mean, it is the human figure, too. I mean, you just—
[00:17:59.65]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Which brings to mind how different it was at Hofmann's school. The model was placed before you on Monday mornings, and you drew that model in that same position for five days. By the end of that fifth day, you—well, fifth morning, you'd come up with something that didn't look very much like the original drawing.
[00:18:33.06]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. When you to know—well, I guess if you got to know the model or the form, you could permute it with confidence once you'd gotten the original form down, presumably.
[00:18:44.47]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. And it was so interesting. In the 30 students in the class, there would be 30 very different interpretations. That was what was so wonderfully interesting in that situation.
[00:19:02.43]
AVIS BERMAN: Assuming those were—those probably drawing from the nude?
[00:19:05.47]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. She was a huge fat woman with billows of flesh. And she gave you a lot to work with.
[00:19:19.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, why were you interested or did you do much drawing from the nude in the early '50s when you were working on the children's thesis or—probably not of children, but—
[00:19:32.76]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I did a good bit, a good bit. And then, as you know, I returned to the figure in 1969 for one year.
[00:19:44.20]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. But I guess this was you were probably concentrating more on portraiture, on face?
[00:19:50.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, face and upper torso, and seldom in groups—sometimes. Usually a single figure.
[00:20:05.49]
AVIS BERMAN: And then—now I'm going to talk about you as a teacher, because you began in '55 taking over some of Patrick's—
[00:20:14.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I took Pat's painting class over for one semester when he went on leave. And that was a grand experience. It gave me so much confidence that he thought, you know, that I was capable of doing it. And the response of the class.
[00:20:40.06]
AVIS BERMAN: And well, obviously you kept it up, too. And how, if at all, did being a teacher influence your own work?
[00:20:55.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't think it influenced my own work very much at all. There were there was no one—or there were no two students whose work I responded to so deeply that it affected me. But I was struggling with the fundamentals so much that I wanted to get a figure to look like, a figure, to be, well drawn, you know? And when I was able to do that, I felt that was a great achievement. I still think it is. You know, I think that's a tough thing to do, but. I liked being a teacher. I liked it too much. I could have stayed on forever, but I just had to make up my mind what I wanted to be.
[00:22:00.55]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, now, after you—just to skip ahead, after your work became abstract, did it become more difficult to teach the kind of fundamentals and what you were that you were teaching to the students?
[00:22:14.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not really. No. Although I think I brought much more to them than I had to give before I went to Hofmann's school. Heavens, yes. It was a whole new world. It was like having had one half and then to have been receiver of the other half.
[00:22:39.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, you were bringing them the news?
[00:22:40.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, it was a revelation to me.
[00:22:44.34]
AVIS BERMAN: And you were probably excited about that—
[00:22:46.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, very.
[00:22:48.30]
AVIS BERMAN: —and communicated it, too. Now what you mentioned, of course, when Lynda Benglis. Now, what was what was she like as a student?
[00:22:58.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Lynda was a sponge. If there were 30 children and people in the class, you talked to her. She was the recipient. And I think she has—I'm pretty sure she has maintained this wonderful questioning about things and art and life until today. And I imagine she'll go on that way. I'm very proud of her. And she's wonderfully, wonderfully grateful to me, which boosts my ego more than I can tell you. But it was just grand having her in the class. She stimulated the class.
[00:24:02.13]
AVIS BERMAN: So was she—so she had a great intensity then, or—
[00:24:06.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, she did.
[00:24:08.10]
AVIS BERMAN: And she wanted—she knew she wanted to be an artist then?
[00:24:11.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. I don't think she ever thought otherwise, because she went from Newcomb to another institution. I don't know where she went, actually, but she started on her career very quickly. And she kept climbing.
[00:24:39.08]
AVIS BERMAN: At the time, did you have a feeling that she wanted to go to New York or go elsewhere? Or did you feel she was going to stay in Louisiana?
[00:24:48.12]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I didn't—I don't think I really thought about it very much, you know. She didn't discuss her plans with me. She was just a tremendously alive individual. She wasn't there to play. She was there to learn; to work. And she did.
[00:25:15.97]
AVIS BERMAN: What did her work look like then?
[00:25:17.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I have two drawings in the hallway that you—I'd like you to look at. She gave them to me. And they're very delicate pen sketches, but she was not dealing in materials the way she is today. Pat was also her teacher, a main teacher, I suppose. And she speaks so highly of him, too.
[00:25:48.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Who are some of the other memorable students that you had?
[00:25:52.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I can't even remember their names, Avis. I remember more, much more, the ones that I taught at UNO [University of New Orleans –Ed.] from '73 to '75. But Newcomb was a girls' school. And I think many of the students came because taking art as a major seemed rather romantic. And very few of them were truly there to get a foundation on which they could stand for future life as artists.
[00:26:44.35]
There were older people there too, though. I should have mentioned this earlier. There were several married women in the four master's degrees, so I was not alone after the first two years, being by far the oldest student. And I suppose that—I don't think that mattered very much to me, as a matter of fact.
[00:27:19.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Did it frustrate you that you felt that most of the students weren't very serious?
[00:27:24.76]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, because I was very serious as a teacher. And there was one other student who is working today. She was sort of midway in age between the young people and me. I suppose she was about twenty-eight or thirty, and she does very beautiful work. It's classic and figurative, but I don't remember her very well.
[00:27:58.48]
AVIS BERMAN: How did you—what was your philosophy of teaching, and how did you conduct your classes?
[00:28:03.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I would always be prepared with a point that I wanted to put across. I never showed slides. I remember that distinctly. And I tried very hard to have the students indulge in their work emotionally. And that's a very hard thing to put over, you know, to put it down as you feel. And of course, Abstract Expressionism was coming in at the time, and I was so full of it that this is—I was pressing for this.
[00:28:54.69]
But I think I was already very bored with the work I'm bored with now. I'm not talking about Bellows; I'm not talking about Grosz; I'm not talking I'm not talking about any of the great painters. But the students who came to Newcomb—and I think it's fair to say this—were used to—what is the name of the painter who was always on the—40 years ago on the cover of newspaper magazine sections? You know, I mean, someone—
[00:29:37.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Like Wyeth?
[00:29:38.50]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not Wyeth. No, no. Not as good as Wyeth. Anyway, just very unimaginative, impersonal art.
[00:29:53.71]
AVIS BERMAN: You talking about someone like, say, Eugene Speicher or that type of—
[00:29:56.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no, no, no, no. I wouldn't put Speicher in that class. He painted the everyday life of Americana.
[00:30:08.11]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, you mean someone like Norman Rockwell?
[00:30:09.59]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Exactly, exactly. And I think this was their cup of tea. And to try to shake, especially Southern, mostly Southern ladies out of this kind of background was a hard thing to do.
[00:30:26.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes. I imagine they rebelled against, well, they must have—
[00:30:29.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They thought I was some sort of queer duck, you know. Some of them—I don't know, I can't stop to think, but I can feel that some of them thought I was really very quirky. I wasn't like their mothers, you know. And I was then almost, by that time, their mother's age.
[00:31:08.08]
AVIS BERMAN: So it really must have been a relief to have someone like Lynda Benglis in the class.
[00:31:12.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, indeed, indeed.
[00:31:15.55]
AVIS BERMAN: Instead of people who were fighting you.
[00:31:19.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. There was a resistance. I found that, too, at UNO, but there was a body of—a little enclave of students who responded immediately. And I had a wonderful time for two years out there.
[00:31:38.86]
AVIS BERMAN: But even in the early '70s, there was resistance to what the—
[00:31:42.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh sure, oh sure. Generally speaking, yes.
[00:31:45.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, at that point, 20 years later at a different school, what did these students want, the ones who resisted you?
[00:31:52.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They wanted—they wanted what most students want, which is to have their hands moved by you and absolutely shown how to do it. And I never would do that. And I bless Pat Trivigno for that, because so often you see a class, art class, and 25 pieces of work look like—the same, you know, the teacher's.
[00:32:21.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, how does one do that? In other words, being hands on, being there as he was—
[00:32:25.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: By doing what Hofmann did. He hardly ever talked about art. He talked about everything else: religion, literature, music, everything.
[00:32:39.10]
AVIS BERMAN: So when—that is going to of lead me into Hofmann, which is my next series of, well, actually we should do one thing, but where—I mean, besides learning drawing and painting, there must have been a point when you either found on your own or got an instruction that being an artist was sort of a way of being in the world. It was a kind of life that people led. And I imagine—
[00:33:07.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, we never did have the bars that the Abstract Expressionists had in New York. We didn't have all of that very juicy, wonderful—and if it did exist, which it didn't, I wouldn't have been a part of it, Avis. I was too old. I was financially comfortable. I wouldn't have fit in. I don't fit in today. I never have. You know, into—but we in New Orleans have never had that kind of fraternity.
[00:33:54.80]
AVIS BERMAN: Does it exist today at all for younger artists?
[00:33:58.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I don't really think it does. I think each gallery has its own stable of artists who sort of cycling together a bit, but—
[00:34:13.63]
AVIS BERMAN: That's interesting that—there's been no—at some point or another—huddling together.
[00:34:19.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The most huddling I ever did was when George Rickey was here, and his wife, and Pat, and a couple of people from Peter Hanson, from the music school, and Egydio ey de Castro, who was a pianist—well, come to think of that, we did have a little group.
[00:34:43.84]
AVIS BERMAN: How do you spell, is it, Egydio ey?
[00:34:44.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: E-G-Y-D-I-O-E-Y de Castro.
[00:34:55.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Just I know the transcriptionist will need that name. Well, what sort of—How did George Rickey turn up or show up at? Who brought him here?
[00:35:05.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Who brought him here? Oh, who was the man who had been—or went off to be the head of—oh, the guy who—at the Metropolitan, monthly put out these little pictures, stamp-sized pictures of great paintings?
[00:35:41.44]
AVIS BERMAN: Was that Hyatt Mayer or Henry Kent?
[00:35:44.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I could call Pat and—
[00:35:49.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, someone at the Met—
[00:35:51.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He went to the Met and began giving these series of lectures.
[00:35:55.74]
AVIS BERMAN: You're not thinking, well, Bob Hale in the American Department? Robert?
[00:35:59.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, he died very recently.
[00:36:02.64]
AVIS BERMAN: Are you talking about Jim Sweeney?
[00:36:04.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no. Did he die?
[00:36:06.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:36:07.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, I loved him. He was good to me. I'll find out and tell you tomorrow.
[00:36:16.07]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, okay, let's talk about George Rickey then.
[00:36:18.58]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, well, he came to replace the man whose name I can't think of and, I must say that he did. an exciting job as head of the department. But as a man, I don't think he was a great example for young people, old people, or middle-aged people. I think George was an opportunist. He was horrible to my dear friend, Pat. I think this had best not be made public. How can we do this?
[00:37:10.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, we can do. We turn this off for a minute? This section about George Rickey will be restricted and should be segregated physically from the rest of the manuscript and no one can read it without permission.
[Note: Restriction lifted in 2019. –Ed.]
[00:37:29.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: George, this is the first thing I want to say about him. He had a friend named Harold Carney who was, I think, somewhere in the East at the time, very young man, considerably younger than he, whom he wanted to bring into the school as a teacher. But he had to get rid of someone to make a vacancy for his friend, Harold Carney.
[00:38:01.83]
He did this by embarrassing a young man named Elliot Twerry who was teaching fundamentals at the time and also beginning painting. He would go into Elliott's class, intrude, make comments, embarrass him. It was hideous. Sure enough, the next year he fired Elliot Twerry. Eliot has been at another college, a top-notch college ever since, doing I'm sure, an expert job.
[00:38:46.55]
I knew something about this while it was going on, but it being none of my business, I couldn't—even if I had decided to, I couldn't. I would have had to go to the outside of the art department to the higher ups. And I was a nobody, and I didn't know really if they would even understand me or believe me. But he also almost castrated Pat, and that I have never gotten over.
[00:39:23.91]
He told Pat, who was a painter, that he should give up painting and stick to drawing. Well, you just don't tell anybody that. You just don't do it. And I must say, George himself drew like he had ten thumbs. I once owned an artichoke he drew, painstaking, very Germanic. And he demoralized Pat. He was not a very kind or a good person.
[00:40:07.84]
I guess there's one other thing that I hold very much against that family because I thought I was accepted as a real friend, certainly to Edie, his wife, but her mother was coming to visit. And she said to me one day, "Ida, I think you'd better not come while Mom is here, because she's very anti-Semitic." Well, sweetie, that was very hard to swallow. And I think from that point on—I know from that point on, I certainly didn't feel like a friend of the bosom, which I thought I was.
[00:40:57.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, also, you think that the two of them would have been enough to stand up or that they would—
[00:41:02.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But you see, this has followed them. They have spent more time in Germany in the last 15 or 20 years, I think, than they have in the United States, or equal time. And I just don't like that. I took it personally. And then over the years, I've heard from them, I've seen them. George is always very condescending. That's one of his attitudes. And Edie said to me once, "You know, George had to pay in taxes probably what you and Hughie earn all year." Well, that just froze me. I mean, really,
[00:42:04.11]
AVIS BERMAN: Pretty vulgar.
[00:42:05.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Pretty vulgar is right. And I don't know, this was our head of our department for six years. He brought—now we can go back.
[00:42:20.85]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay, this is the end of the restricted section.
[00:42:24.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: George brought to the Newcomb Art Department wonderfully inspirational visitors such as Mark Rothko, the sculptor, Smith, David Smith, the painter—there was a group of three who were teaching on the West Coast—Still, Rothko, and was it Tworkov? Tworkov did come here.
[00:43:08.32]
AVIS BERMAN: Tworkov, and I think Stamos also.
[00:43:10.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And Stamos came here? Yes.
[00:43:13.24]
AVIS BERMAN: And did they all did they all stay for about a month, or did they stay longer?
[00:43:17.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Rothko stayed for about three months. I don't know if I told you about—I think I mentioned that Mildred and I rented my mother's house to the Rothkos.
[00:43:30.49]
AVIS BERMAN: No, but let's do all the Rothko material together, because that's so important. But let's talk—so let's talk about the other people first.
[00:43:38.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, they would come for a very short period of time, give a few lectures, do a criticism or two and leave. But it was so exciting to have these people who were just appearing in TIME magazine in '55, '56, '57, and so on. And I must give George Rickey credit for broadening our sights down here.
[00:44:09.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Tell me, do these artists—do they had most of them—probably hadn't been to New Orleans. Were they interested in being here and the atmosphere or were they clannish or were they outgoing?
[00:44:19.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, they were not together. They would come individually. So they would have their classes, and then they'd go and have dinner with the president of the university. And, you know, students didn't see much of them other than that. But Mark stayed long enough.
[00:44:44.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Was Still responsive, or—
[00:44:47.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Was he responsive to—
[00:44:50.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, to the students or to being there, or was he—I mean, it would seem to me that these things would do someone like you a lot more good than it probably did the students.
[00:44:59.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I'm sure it did. And I'm sure it did Rothko more good than it did anybody else. But it was the thing for him to do. It's just hard for me to see him doing anything that isn't self-aggrandizing.
[00:45:13.99]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, I want to talk about the—so Rickey brought in the visiting artists and did he—and did he make innovations in the sculpture department that held or were they influential?
[00:45:34.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He was on my thesis committee. And the most I remember that I got from his criticism was that he hated the color purple. And that is true. That's as much as I got from George Rickey. However, he hired me. He was my boss. He knew what value I had. And he was—we were apparently on the surface, very good friends. But I never truly, after I got to know him—admired him. Not him or his work. His early works were Calders, which is understandable. And he did, I think move in a singular way, but I don't think it's that great. I think he—
[00:46:42.08]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, now I want to talk about your three months with Hans Hofmann. Now you've finished in '56, you had an MBA and now how did you hear about—what moved you to do this?
[00:47:01.27]
IDA KOHLMEYER: All right. I had just gotten my degree. My mother was very, very ill. She was dying. And I said to Clyfford Still—
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4857_m]
[00:00:02.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, if you would begin—that you and Clyfford Still were walking out.
[00:00:10.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and I asked Mr. Still, if he were I, and who wanted further instruction and inspiration, where would he go for it? And he said that he knew of one place and one place only. And it was already the late spring, beginning of the summer, and I wasn't at all sure that I would be able to get into the class. But fortunately—
[00:00:47.41]
AVIS BERMAN: He had said to you, there's only one place, and that was Hans Hofmann.
[00:00:51.61]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That was Hans Hofmann, yes, and that he had a summer school in Provincetown. And this was all news to me. But he so impressed me, in his praise of this man as a teacher, that I just didn't look any further. I immediately went to see if I could get myself included in that summer's course.
[00:01:27.86]
And as luck would have it, I was accepted. You didn't have to have a great background to be accepted in the summer school. I don't know about the winter school. And my mother died early in June. And I left a week after her death. Being in the atmosphere of this man, Hofmann—it was so exciting. It was so different than anything I had experienced here in New Orleans at Newcomb College. The people in the class were so different, one from the other. There were seventy-year-olds, and there were eighteen-year-olds. I think they did this sort of mix purposely.
[00:02:50.95]
I was able to get very comfortable accommodations in a boarding house. And in the house was another student of the Hofmann School—Nancy Fagg was her name. She was from Houston. And her father was ambassador to something, to somewhere. And she had her two children with her, and a nurse. And she was getting a divorce. But she was a wonderfully lively companion, at least 15 years my junior. But we had a really wonderful give-and-take time together.
[00:03:40.80]
She, I don't think, was very gifted, but she worked like a dog. And we spent a great deal of time together. But being there, drawing every morning, painting every afternoon and into the nights, praying that you might be one of the elect to be criticized on the Fridays that he had his criticism, there was absolutely no letup, and the time was so short. You knew you wanted to make the most of every minute.
[00:04:28.53]
[Side conversation] Benjamin!
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:04:35.04]
AVIS BERMAN: [Inaudible] Hofmann school.
[00:04:48.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: As I mentioned, Fridays was criticism day. And when Hofmann appeared, there were students and visitors stretched out on the grass with the whorls of paintings. And people came, as you know, from 100, 200 miles away for these occasions. And if you were chosen to be criticized, if your work was to be criticized, you really felt as though you had the kiss of the gods on you. And he took an interminable time to arrange the work, juxtaposing pieces that he wanted to talk about.
And it was very difficult to understand Hofmann, at least it was for me, because his accent was so heavy. It took me weeks, really, to understand what the man was saying. But in the drawing classes, when he stayed, which wasn't too often, you very well knew what he was saying because he would use black chalk to say it with. And you seldom had a drawing untouched by him.
[00:06:24.97]
He was, in every other way, a very gentle, large man. He and his wife, Miz, would go off to swim in the afternoons. She was a tiny little thing, and he a great, waddling, rather stout man. And he would paint a painting, or so he told us, every day. He said, if you weren't able to do it in a day's work, it wasn't worth doing. That was his theory. I remember Rothko saying, if a work or an idea was worth doing once, it was worth doing many, many, many times. Well, he certainly followed his own advice, didn't he?
[00:07:24.75]
But the two men were so different. I didn't attend the Rothko class because I was teaching at that time. That was my first year. But I did put my work up for criticism. And it was very valuable because it was very honest, and he praised my work. And that meant everything to me. I saw him cut students into small bits.
[00:08:05.86]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, are we talking about Rothko?
[00:08:06.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Rothko, yes. Hofmann was so ensconced in his own theories that he really talked in theories, which is another German quality, I think. If he liked something he was talking about, he could stay with it the whole period and keep finding things to say about it, that he really licked it up. He ate it up and loved it. And there might have been as many as a hundred or a hundred and fifty people on those Friday afternoons.
And you know, that was the summer that Jackson Pollock died in that horrible accident. He was not at the school, however. But I think Larry Rivers was, because I have a picture in my studio of the whole group outdoors during one of these Friday criticisms. And it's got to be Larry Rivers as a young man. Did he study with Hofmann, do you know? He did?
[00:09:33.68]
AVIS BERMAN: I think so.
[00:09:34.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Then it was he.
[00:09:35.42]
AVIS BERMAN: I will check when I go home. But I'm pretty sure. And did you hear the news of Pollock's death up there in Provincetown?
[00:09:41.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. But he was so, well, to me, unknown that I didn't grieve, you know. It wasn't a personal loss to me then.
[00:09:58.07]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, did Hofmann ever single out your work to be criticized?
[00:10:01.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he did. And that was delicious.
[00:10:07.88]
AVIS BERMAN: How many times did that happen?
[00:10:09.24]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Twice in three months. That's not a bad average.
[00:10:12.67]
AVIS BERMAN: No. Was it more towards the end? I guess I should say, before I ask—well, you arrived still as a portraitist, right?
[00:10:19.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Exactly. And overnight I became an Abstract Expressionist.
[00:10:24.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, when you say overnight, was that—
[00:10:26.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Within a week.
[00:10:29.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, what did you see that shook you, that I have got—I mean—
[00:10:35.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The dynamism of the work, the felt quality, the emotion, the freedom, like music. I was able to play rhapsodically, and didn't have to stick to two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. I'd been in prison. So it was a great awakening for me.
[00:11:05.86]
AVIS BERMAN: Was it his work that you saw or the other students' work that really changed it?
[00:11:09.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, it was not only his. It was his, but not only. There was a very small gallery in Provincetown at the time. I can't remember the name of it. But it was the only one. And Hofmann students' work was shown, and also professional artists. And I was shown one month, which was a great thrill to me. When I say shown, it was two pieces, you know. But I saw things that I'd never seen before. I mean, our museum here never had it. And of course, it was just coming out then, in '56.
[00:11:59.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. So with these two, were you criticized toward the end of the three months or at the beginning? Or do you remember?
[00:12:07.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I really don't remember, but I'm quite sure it couldn't have been in the beginning.
[00:12:11.77]
AVIS BERMAN: And can you remember the sorts of things that he would look at your work and say?
[00:12:20.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, he had the well-known theory of push and pull, and as we were talking about this morning, movement within the painting. And those principles have stayed with me 'til today.
[00:12:39.44]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, how about color? I imagine what you were doing before, you were much more involved with form—
[00:12:47.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:12:47.62]
AVIS BERMAN: —as you say, like this. Now, did Hofmann talk about—
[00:12:52.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He talked a great deal about line, about the two-dimensionality of the canvas, about tension. Tension was a big thing with Hofmann, and color. I think in freeing someone like me, from the theca, as he called it, everything was freed. But I really believed that I didn't begin using color, as one would do in composing a musical composition, until maybe 12 years ago. It took me a long time to be that brave.
[00:13:58.80]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it seems to me from the few reproductions I've seen, those pictures did look like derivations of Hofmann. But the color really was just quite snazzy, and really did move the pictures and was involved with the action.
[00:14:17.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Are you talking about my work?
[00:14:18.79]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, of the ones that I saw in the reproductions. And so he would come in, in the drawing class. And in the painting class in the afternoon, was he there or was there a—
[00:14:33.48]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He stayed a little longer in the painting class. But I don't remember him staying through a whole class.
[00:14:44.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, was there a model? Did they set up still lifes?
[00:14:47.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, in painting, you had to compose your own picture. And there was no model, no subject matter suggested. That all remained with you.
[00:15:00.38]
AVIS BERMAN: That must have also been new and challenging for you.
[00:15:02.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, it was. I remember staying up until midnight, starting in the morning at 9:00 and working, eating quick meals and going right back to a canvas. I just couldn't believe what I was experiencing. It was such a wide-open world.
[00:15:27.33]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you knew to seize it, of course. I mean—
[00:15:30.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I felt to seize it.
[00:15:34.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, you mentioned the age variation. Were there any other, besides possibly Larry Rivers, anyone else in the class that—
[00:15:44.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Who were of note?
[00:15:45.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, yes, or working professionals, or later emerged as working professional artists?
[00:15:52.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Why, it's very possible. But I don't remember them, truly.
[00:15:57.51]
AVIS BERMAN: Besides Nancy, who was your friend.
[00:15:59.48]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:16:00.17]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess I'm kind of asking if it was possible to form close friendships there or not.
[00:16:04.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not if you were an intense student, really, unless you lived in the same house and you went together to class and went back for lunch and that sort of thing. There was one young man who Nancy had an affair with, Stern—something Stern, who every now and then, you see in the magazines. And they ran off together. God, she was one of these wild, beautiful women. And she's living in Vienna now. And I still hear from her. We've kept up with each other. What else can I tell you?
[00:17:04.83]
AVIS BERMAN: Was Hofmann friendly with the students?
[00:17:11.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think he was with those he saw year after year. But I was a Johnny-come-lately and never went back. And I remember, though, going into his house there with the yellow painted floors and the orange painted furniture. And it was Hofmann personified into household effects. And I saw a lot of little paper pieces on the mantelpiece. And there was just stacks of them. And they were gouaches. And I was looking through them. And Miz said, "They're for sale." [Laughs.] I said, "How much are they?" And she said, "$375 for the pair." So I went through the stack and I picked myself a pair, which are in the dining room now, and paid for them over six months. But they have been prized possessions.
[00:18:28.15]
AVIS BERMAN: So were you prolific up there? I mean, you said you were working all the time. Were you working and working or—
[00:18:34.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, I was working. And I was painting with a knife. And I was painting very "Hofmann-esque" paintings. And it wasn't until—I painted in that manner almost a year until I realized that you didn't have to paint that way to paint the expressive, non-objective painting. And then I sort of went into another mood of loneliness in those early Rothko-type paintings. Can you imagine spending that time there, in Provincetown, and coming home to find Rothko here? You know? He came the next year.
[00:19:30.47]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, did Hofmann comment on that you were painting Hofmann-esque paintings?
[00:19:35.25]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I mean, they were so student-esque that he never mentioned it.
[00:19:44.62]
AVIS BERMAN: That—as you say, that must have been exciting to have been criticized. I mean, how many pictures normally did he pick out for criticism?
[00:19:51.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Usually maybe three or four.
[00:19:54.47]
AVIS BERMAN: So that was really an intense amount—
[00:19:56.47]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, indeed, it was.
[00:19:58.00]
AVIS BERMAN: And you could understand him enough—did it help to hear what he had to day?
[00:20:02.69]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I guess by that time I had gotten on to his lingo, but it was awfully hard.
[00:20:09.18]
AVIS BERMAN: I can imagine. Well, now we're at the end of the summer. Your husband comes to pick you up. And as you've hinted, he's probably annoyed because you've been away for three months, and as you've said, anyway, he did not like it.
[00:20:24.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:20:24.44]
AVIS BERMAN: But was he also rather horrified that you would go on from something rather accessible to what he may have thought were smears?
[00:20:31.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative], I suppose he was. But I think he was smart enough not to say it. In fact, I don't know if he even looked, Avis. In fact, I'm really not sure.
[00:20:46.01]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, when you came back preaching the Hofmann gospel, aside from probably Rickey, who was interested, was there—
[00:20:54.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. There were very few knew what I was talking about or thinking about.
[00:20:59.64]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, but you obviously had to have been impressed by Clyfford Still because you followed him blindly, though, when you—
[00:21:06.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, well, you know, a visiting fireman. We had been, I'm sure, shown slides of each of these people before they came. And they were the maharajas of the day.
[00:21:29.59]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, let's talk about Mark Rothko coming to Newcomb College.
[00:21:38.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It just shows, I think, how needy financially a man like that was at that time.
[00:21:47.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Definitely.
[00:21:48.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. And he had two children and his wife with him. Perhaps that's one of the reasons he accepted the invitation.
[00:22:03.42]
AVIS BERMAN: Because, yeah, I don't think that—the money didn't come until really probably after his Museum of Modern Art retrospective.
[00:22:10.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, which reminds me of an incident outside in the little outdoor cafe. What year was that, of his retrospective?
[00:22:25.45]
AVIS BERMAN: 1961.
[00:22:26.22]
IDA KOHLMEYER: '61. Well, as I told you, my mother's house was available for rent. And my sister and I rented it to the school, who then either rented it to Rothko—I really don't know how that worked—or let him live there. And that's, I suppose, one of the reasons I became a friend of his. I had entree into the house. And I was at school. And we would meet on social evenings. And he taught me—he didn't teach me, but I saw how he hung his canvases in the garage with those hangers that you saw in my studio. Did you notice?
[00:23:27.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, you'll have to show me. What were they like?
[00:23:29.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They're wooden and have hooks every six or eight inches. And you just hang the back of the frame of the canvas, the stretched canvas, on them. And it's just the most wonderful invention. I don't know whether he invented it or not.
[00:23:50.16]
AVIS BERMAN: So Rothko was here out in Metairie. That's where you met him.
[00:23:52.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: In Metairie, yes, just a few blocks from here.
[00:23:55.26]
AVIS BERMAN: And he was there for about three months?
[00:23:58.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:23:58.95]
AVIS BERMAN: And when he came, did you meet him immediately?
[00:24:03.17]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, because we had to show him the house. And I think it was either just before he came or just after that an article appeared in TIME magazine about these "crazy" painters. And that was the beginning of their public life. And Mark was one of them.
[00:24:32.74]
AVIS BERMAN: And were you bowled over from the beginning? Or did you hear him speak? Or what was—
[00:24:38.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He hung about four paintings next to the art school gallery. And I think I mentioned this in the catalog, they were under lock and key because he just couldn't take people looking at his work and turning away laughing. He couldn't stand that. Well, I walked in this room, and it was almost like Peter, this being struck over the head. I just don't think I have had that kind of experience. I can't remember another time. It just really knocked me out, just about four paintings.
[00:25:32.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Were these ones he had done here or ones he brought?
[00:25:35.02]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, these were ones he had brought. But he did paint here.
[00:25:40.42]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, I want to ask you about that, too. So you saw these. I guess they must have been very high-key color rectangles that you saw.
[00:25:47.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, yes, they were the typical Rothkos. And I think some of those early ones were some of the best. They usually are, aren't they? The best of a series very often are the beginning ones. They show indecision but resolving.
[00:26:12.00]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative], and it hasn't become too well rehearsed yet or it hasn't been quite—
[00:26:18.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Learned by heart.
[00:26:23.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Now, did you use to go—did you hear him lecture a lot? What kind of a speaker—
[00:26:27.49]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He didn't lecture, Avis. He sort of climbed up in a window and made remarks. And I remember one woman whose paintings—and would you believe she's still doing these things, branches—tree branches. Well, I mean, they are so false, so stiff, so untree-like, just really bad. Well, he said things about those—he said to her, "Why do you paint? Have you ever looked at what you've produced?" He was—well, if a devil could talk. He was so outdone by these—unfelt things. And she took it. She didn't understand what he was talking about. She wouldn't. And God, I'll never forget that. That is just like having knives just piercing you.
[00:28:00.44]
AVIS BERMAN: She was a student in the class?
[00:28:02.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: She was one of the older women, who is still working today. And she's never seen her paintings, I don't think. She's never looked at them.
[00:28:19.62]
AVIS BERMAN: And what did he say about your paintings?
[00:28:22.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't remember. He liked them. He just liked them. And you could sense it. Then—I only did this once. That's all I wanted to know, if he saw anything in them.
[00:28:42.47]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, actually, that was daring of you, because if he tore them down—
[00:28:45.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and I was teaching at the time, too. I know. I thought about it a lot before I did it. But he certainly wasn't fun-loving. But for me, it was just fun to be near him. I really loved him. But he didn't know that. I didn't let him know it.
[00:29:18.10]
AVIS BERMAN: What was it about his personality that—
[00:29:21.48]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That drew me to him? I don't know. He seemed so real. He could have been the butcher. He could have been a truck driver. He had the qualities of both—big, heavy fingers and hands that looked like a laborer's. And his use of words was not haughty. Very down to earth. He wanted to be understood.
[00:30:04.84]
AVIS BERMAN: But so touching and sensitive that you say that you say that his paintings were hung in a locked room because he couldn't bear that. I've never heard that before. But I think you're absolutely right that the idea of people—
[00:30:18.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And there was this same thing, which you told me about, his feeling of insecurity about his drawing ability.
[00:30:28.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you actually go in and see the paintings? Because you have to go get the key from him or someone else?
[00:30:33.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I guess I got them in the office right across from the room. But can you imagine that? And that was the gallery. He could have had a gallery show.
[00:30:48.09]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, did you see Rothko paint at all?
[00:30:50.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I don't think I've ever seen any painter paint.
[00:30:57.46]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I was wondering if you were visiting him in the studio while he happened to be working, or anything like that.
[00:31:01.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I never did that.
[00:31:03.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you talk technical stuff with him about materials or anything like that?
[00:31:08.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I mean, that I had learned. I didn't need that kind of instruction. I needed inspiration, and I got it.
[00:31:19.19]
AVIS BERMAN: So you would sort of see him at night—
[00:31:21.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:31:22.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Was he lonely? Did he miss New York?
[00:31:24.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, no. If he had Mel with him, his wife, he wasn't lonely. He adored her. Very beautiful girl.
[00:31:39.06]
AVIS BERMAN: And did you ever see him again after this?
[00:31:42.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, for my first show in New York at the Ruth White Gallery. He took me out to breakfast. This still kills me. And we had breakfast across from Central Park. What is that ice cream? Wonderful ice cream place.
[00:32:08.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, Rumplemayer's?
[00:32:09.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Rumplemayer's. And, well, it was a sort of like breakfast and lunch. And the gallery was open. So we walked to the gallery. That was 42 East 57th. And he came up and saw my work, which at that time, I felt was tremendously influenced by him. And I think it was, except that I didn't come out and broadly use his rectangles. But I was so interested in edge of shapes and floating color. But he was such a gentleman. He didn't mention that. But then, I said—while we were in Ruth's, I had looked at my watch, and I said, "Oh, my god, I'm late for a dentist appointment." I was having a toothache, of all things. I got so excited. I left him an hour before I needed to because I thought I was late for my appointment. I misread my watch.
[00:33:32.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Especially for, of all things, a dentist.
[00:33:34.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:33:36.21]
AVIS BERMAN: From pleasure to pain.
[00:33:37.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Right. I never saw him again. But Hughie did. Hughie visited him in his gymnasium studio. And after that, when he and Mel were separated, he took her out one evening, and she got so drunk he had to bring her home, poor thing. But the two of them just—I don't know what they did to each other, but it was just so sad.
[00:34:10.51]
AVIS BERMAN: Because, of course, while you saw him, he was happily married and happy mentally.
[00:34:15.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Sure. And producing.
[00:34:16.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative], so I guess the light, in a way, didn't matter to him if he could work in a garage.
[00:34:25.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, it was well-lit. I saw him in, I thought it was a gymnasium, of great open space. He had a horrible little office with a cot that looked like a bum and slept in it for a year. And he looked pretty bad, too.
[00:34:52.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, just out of curiosity, off the subject, because Rothko was nice or didn't mind that you were imitating him. When you see people—I'm sure you've seen people who have imitated or plagiarized your work, how do you feel about it?
[00:35:06.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I hate them. I loathe them. I can understand it for a short period of time. But when it continues, I could be ruthless in my treatment of these people if I knew that the laws wouldn't hold. That's the truth. Now, when I look back on what I thought were "Rothko-esque" works of mine, they're not, not at all. But I do think the spirit was there. Whatever that means, I don't know. But I would very often have a Rothko composition on the canvas, very often, and then destroy it.
[00:35:57.96]
AVIS BERMAN: Or maybe move on from there.
[00:35:59.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I never left it. I'd always destroy it and make it something other than that. But that certainly was the inspiration.
[00:36:09.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. But also, I imagine students may begin—I mean, student imitation is probably different.
[00:36:14.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, it's almost healthy for a short period of time, but it can become—
[00:36:23.95]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Because I've actually seen works that I thought were awfully like yours.
[00:36:30.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, yes. Uh-huh, I have, too. And, oh, one—did I tell you about this man in Birmingham?
[00:36:41.90]
AVIS BERMAN: No.
[00:36:43.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: His name is Dick Jemison. He was my dealer for eight years in Birmingham. And he is the most plagiaristic of all. He's in Santa Fe.
[00:36:53.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, is he signing his own name or yours? [Laughs.]
[00:36:56.83]
IDA KOHLMEYER: He's signing his own. And at first, I thought it was his wife pushing him. Although there, again, we were friends of a bosom. I adored them. And I thought they really loved me. And when Dickey started doing these things, I said to him—I remember we had a three-way conversation on the telephone. "Dickey, now, enough's enough. Get off my back." And she said, "Yes, Dick, I've been telling you now, go your own way." I think he is so weak, such a weak character that she could get him to do anything. And he is a very good painter.
[00:37:47.21]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it's easier, I imagine, when you don't have to think up the idea.
[00:37:52.32]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, well, it is much easier. Right.
[00:37:55.75]
AVIS BERMAN: Although, as you say, it doesn't probably look very "felt," as it were. Yeah, I want to talk about two galleries. First, we get the New Orleans, the first gallery in New Orleans.
[00:38:09.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Orleans Gallery.
[00:38:10.76]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. And how that came about and what happened to it.
[00:38:15.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I guess if there was a sort of fraternity here, it was the Orleans Gallery. And it was started by, let's see, two women and about six men. And it started the year before I got my master's degree. And as I told you, when I got my master's, I was invited into the group. So I'm like a founding member of it. And in the beginning, there was absolutely no money. We each put up ten dollars a month, I think, for the rent. And in fact, I'm pretty sure of that.
[00:39:05.93]
And at the end of each year, we would do a work of art, a little print of some kind as a giveaway to the people who had helped support us. And we had a director. We had a very good one, as a matter of fact. And we grew, and we grew, until—this was in 1957. And we would have one-person shows. And we disbanded because two contemporary galleries opened. It was a natural thing to happen. And you heard somebody mention Luba Glade's name today.
[00:39:57.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes. mm-hmm [affirmative]
[00:39:58.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, she was the first. And I went with her because I believed in her. And I still do. She's a good friend of mine today. All of this happened in the French Quarter, incidentally, on Royal Street. And a couple of years later, Simonne Stern opened—not a couple of years. Luba stayed, I guess, maybe five to seven years in business. And then Simonne Stern opened. And Simonne was a French woman who really didn't know whether she wanted to be an artist herself or open a gallery—one of those things. [Telephone ringing.] But she turned out to be one of the best directors I've ever known.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:41:03.42]
AVIS BERMAN: You were just talking about Simonne Stern.
[00:41:05.52]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, she had all the money she needed to run a top-notch gallery. And she was great competition to Luba. And Luba consequently closed. The city couldn't possibly support two galleries. So Simonne invited me to come to her gallery. And I stayed with her until she died. She was a very young woman. [Telephone ringing.]
But about the clique that started the Orleans Gallery, they were all well-educated art people. They were students. Maybe you have heard of Lynn Emory? Well, Lin was one of them. And who else? Perhaps she's the only other one you might have known of. But it was a real camaraderie. And it was very nice. I enjoyed it a lot.
[00:42:28.04]
AVIS BERMAN: Who was the director?
[00:42:31.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: A young woman named—Well, there were two who—isn't this awful? What was the other thing I had to remember? Oh, yes, the name of the man who was the director of the Newcomb Art Department before Rickey came. I'll get that tonight.
[00:43:08.57]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what kind of work was shown at the Orleans Gallery?
[00:43:13.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Let's see. There was one artist who worked at a variety of materials using gold leaf in some work. There was another landscape artist. There was Lin, who was doing stabile bronzes at the time. I was doing my abstract work. It was a variety.
[00:43:41.08]
AVIS BERMAN: And were these shows reviewed?
[00:43:43.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't know whether Alberta Collier, who was our critic, started as early as we did. But we certainly, as the years went on, demanded, evidently, an art critic for the newspapers.
[00:43:58.90]
AVIS BERMAN: I was going to say, was there any kind of responsible art criticism in the newspaper?
[00:44:04.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't know. I really don't think so. Although, this woman was with it for many years. And I think she probably grew on the job. Yes, I think she was as capable as some I read today, as a matter of fact.
[00:44:23.28]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, everybody, as you say, put in ten dollars a month. Was there any pressure on you because you were financially comfortable to give more?
[00:44:30.26]
IDA KOHLMEYER: To do more? No, no. Not among this group, because they were all pretty well off themselves. They had enough money to go to get a further degree in their chosen field.
[00:44:43.97]
AVIS BERMAN: Did this gallery have any impact on the New Orleans art scene?
[00:44:47.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, very much so.
[00:44:49.37]
AVIS BERMAN: How would you characterize that?
[00:44:50.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was the "in" place. It was the new place. It was the art place. And we had credentials.
[00:45:03.53]
AVIS BERMAN: And did it have any impact on the behavior of the museum at all?
[00:45:08.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, I think it did. Yes, I remember Burns was his name—Jim Burns was the director. And the New Orleans Art Museum has never been big on contemporary art. And that's not in my time, anyway. But they did have an annual national competitive show every year. And that's more than they do now. And it's such a pity, because these young people don't get into the triennial, you know. Old people, after they've waited for a break, you know—it is a big break to be shown at the museum.
[00:45:58.19]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm, so that—and Luba Glade opening her—you disbanded because Luba Glade opened her gallery. And did she take everybody from that gallery in?
[00:46:17.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Just those she wanted. And she was pretty choosy. She was a—she still is a [inaudible]. As a matter of fact, have you ever heard of the Ochsner Clinic?
[00:46:26.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:46:27.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, she's the PR woman for the Ochsner Clinic—very powerful little lady.
[00:46:34.56]
AVIS BERMAN: And was she showing—
[00:46:36.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: She was showing out-of-towners and in-towners.
[00:46:42.06]
AVIS BERMAN: How did she make a living? I mean, could she sell?
[00:46:44.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Her husband made the living. He was a CPA.
[00:46:48.96]
AVIS BERMAN: So in other words—
[00:46:51.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But she didn't have unlimited means. And Simonne did.
[00:46:56.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Was there anyone buying this work?
[00:46:59.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, I mean, you heard Whitney [Anjeron –Ed.] say he had bought a piece of my work for $25 or $50.
[00:47:06.18]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:47:07.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I'll tell you a sequel to that. A friend of mine called and said "There's a work of yours offered for sale in the newspaper. Maybe you'd like to call and find out what it is." I said, "Oh, yes, I'd like to."
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4858_m]
[00:00:05.77]
AVIS BERMAN: This is Avis Berman talking with Ida Kohlmeyer for the third time on May 19, 1989, in Metairie for the Archives of American Art. And before we begin our questions, you said you had a couple of things wanted to clarify.
[00:00:20.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, dear. I could not remember the head of the department who preceded George Rickey at the Newcomb Art Department of Tulane University. It was John Canaday. And then I also could not remember the names of the directors of the Orleans Gallery in its babyhood. And the first one was a young woman named Arlin Lovett. She was with us for a number of years and then left—actually eloped with a gentleman who was one of the artists in the group. He was a married man. They since have married and lived happily ever after. The other young woman who was the director after Arlin was Donna Llewellyn, who now lives in Houston.
[00:01:21.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Very good. Thank you so much.
[00:01:23.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:01:23.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, before we pick up where we left off, which was about with the Ruth White Gallery, which we'll get into in a minute, there were two questions I didn't ask you about your teaching—two kind of related questions. This is what—I guess to what extent can art be taught?
[00:01:51.72]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It's such a good question, and it's almost rhetorical. It can't be. It can't be taught—It can be taught. That's wrong of me. It can be taught. But if it is, it's the wrong kind of instruction. I think what can be taught are the technical things about the tools of the work. I think even to begin to talk about composition, structure, things of that nature, I think that's wrong. Today, I think it's wrong. Years ago, I didn't. But I think the less taught about how to make a painting, the better the maker will fare.
[00:02:52.60]
In other words, learning certain things like how to do something is intrusion. A person should never be shown how to use a paintbrush or a knife or a crayon or this or that. She or he should do that so naturally. And I think that is what is most important. Regardless of postmodernism, I think the most important thing, the most distinguishing feature about an artwork is the hand of the maker. And so often that is stultified and eradicated by bad teachers.
[00:03:52.08]
But what should be taught? Okay. Nothing. I can't think of anything. Because the thing—if you say to a student, "You must work steadily." Of course, I do say that to everybody. I believe in work. I believe things happen because of time spent at it. There's nothing, I don't think, to replace that. But I think, too, it's important that a student be told it's fine to admire another artist. In fact, it's nourishing. It's very fine.
[00:04:55.53]
And during the school years, I think it's very natural to imitate those who are around you. But I think it should be taught that as soon as the student begins to feel that he or she can fly with her own wings, tell him that that is a marvelous moment. Don't let it pass. Use it. Begin to take all kinds of chances. Begin to delve into yourself. Let things happen. Then step away and criticize yourself.
[00:05:55.15]
But this sounds like a jumble. But are you getting what I'm talking about? I'm sure that it's no news. And it's been probably said 100,000 different ways. But I think it's the most valuable thing a teacher can give a student. And that is to watch out for yourself. When you begin to appear, open the door wide, and be brave.
[00:06:30.08]
AVIS BERMAN: The reason I asked you, you said your attitude had changed because it seemed in the beginning you were someone who probably needed a lot of guidance, who needed a lot of instruction.
[00:06:41.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, definitely, yes.
[00:06:43.16]
AVIS BERMAN: And do you think that your progress was retarded by too much instruction or too much shaping?
[00:06:57.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't think it was retarded, actually. I think I advanced when one thinks of it, very quickly, considering that I was a complete novice, you know. And after six or seven years, I was already considered a professional in the professional world, not in the world I had been born into.
[00:07:31.64]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. Thank you. Now that answered—I just hadn't really wrapped that quite up. So we had talked about Mark Rothko. And we had briefly touched on that you were having a show at the Ruth White Gallery. And I think let's talk about that because that was a New York gallery.
[00:07:53.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, indeed. And you know how I got that gallery?
[00:07:57.15]
AVIS BERMAN: No.
[00:08:03.65]
IDA KOHLMEYER: James Johnson Sweeney had taken an interest in me. He had been down here and given me, I think, a first prize at one of the annuals at our museum. And he told me, and meant it, that when I came to New York, he'd like to take me around and show my work to a number of gallery owners. And he was wonderful enough to follow through on that promise. So I remember he took me to three galleries. One turned me down because my work at the time was too much like Frank Roth. Do you know Frank Roth's work?
[00:08:52.22]
AVIS BERMAN: No.
[00:08:53.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: An Abstract Expressionist who today is doing very objective paintings. And I can't remember the third, but he took me to Ruth White. And she was so impressed that James Johnson Sweeney had brought me—I mean, he could have brought Olive Oyl in there and she would have taken me. But we did have a very good relationship, she and I. She was a very nice woman.
[00:09:29.02]
And that was how I happened to meet Katharine Kuh. And she saw my work there. I think I had more than—I know I had more than one show; I may have had three with Ruth White. I'm not certain, but it's in the biography. And it was a very small gallery, albeit it was in a very nice location. And it was certainly a wonderful beginning for me, a very fortunate beginning for me. I saw Mr. Sweeney again in Houston when he was the head of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. And I went to see him one day. And I remember he was talking to Brooks. What is his first name? The Italian painter, abstract painter.
[00:10:31.35]
AVIS BERMAN: James Brooks?
[00:10:32.12]
IDA KOHLMEYER: James Brooks, yes. In a very burnt sienna, almost reddish suit, I'll never forget it, with a vest. And it was one of those 100-degree days. This is not interesting to you. But these are just things that pop into my head that you'll probably delete.
[00:10:51.06]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, we don't delete.
[00:10:53.12]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You don't?
[00:10:53.68]
AVIS BERMAN: No, because you never know, we never know what other people are going to be interested in.
[00:10:58.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, I see.
[00:11:00.25]
AVIS BERMAN: So we don't censor or make—It's just because there are so many different researchers. Researcher A may come in for Rothko, researcher B for Kohlmeyer, researcher C for Ruth White, or—
[00:11:14.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:11:15.47]
AVIS BERMAN: And so, I mean, we don't know. Or someone for New Orleans or, you know, anything. So we don't—
[00:11:23.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And so this will be filed in all of these different places.
[00:11:30.02]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what I do is I make a little index afterwards, not page by page, but I just write down a lot of the topics or the names of the people.
[00:11:39.83]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I see.
[00:11:39.88]
AVIS BERMAN: And then they make index cards eventually with that. But I listen, or I go over the transcript and pull out names for them to—you know, like a library card with subject headings that I think might be interesting. I mean, obviously not everything a researcher might—through, but I try to do that. Who are the other artists in the Ruth White Gallery?
[00:12:07.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There was one—I knew you were going to ask me this—there was one in great partic—Seligman.
[00:12:15.56]
AVIS BERMAN: Kurt Seligman.
[00:12:16.31]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Kurt Seligman. And I remember him because Ruth had a special appreciation for his work.
[00:12:26.49]
AVIS BERMAN: He was an interesting artist.
[00:12:28.26]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he was. I don't remember a single other one.
[00:12:32.03]
AVIS BERMAN: I was just wondering what the taste of the gallery was to your mind.
[00:12:36.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: As I say, no matter what it had been, all of a sudden it became Abstract Expressionistic when Mr. Sweeney walked in with me. That was—
[00:12:47.71]
AVIS BERMAN: I mean, you must have been on air. I mean, for him—I mean, you knew how powerful he was.
[00:12:52.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Indeed. And he walked with me to all these places. It was just very exciting.
[00:12:59.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, and he had a great eye.
[00:13:00.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. He had a great sense of humor. He was a typical Irishman. Wonderful sense of humor. Good drinker.
[00:13:11.80]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you feel—I'll just ask you about his personality—I mean, the man was obviously brilliant. Did you feel it with him, or—
[00:13:18.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yeah. And he was a poet. And I think his eyes chose poetry.
[00:13:27.82]
AVIS BERMAN: And who was Ruth White?
[00:13:31.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Ruth White was, I think, a disappointed artist who was a woman of some medium means, and had been married to a man who had accidentally shot to death some person in his office. I think he may have been working late one night. And an intruder—he came and he shot him. And I remember it was such an awful time for her. I'm not sure, but I think they subsequently divorced. She is living in Sarasota, Florida now and is doing some art work, and has retired
[00:14:28.94]
AVIS BERMAN: What caused the gallery to close?
[00:14:33.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't know. I don't know. Because I must have left maybe before the gallery closed.
[00:14:51.01]
AVIS BERMAN: Did she do well for you? Was she able to sell?
[00:14:53.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, she did. But—I know, I left the gallery because she was demanding a certain percentage of all my sales, wherever that might be. And I didn't think that was fair.
[00:15:06.04]
AVIS BERMAN: You mean, even ones she didn't make?
[00:15:07.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. As most New York galleries do. And I still don't think it's fair. And I still don't allow it.
[00:15:18.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:20.96]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I mean, after all, if anyone deserved it, it was Henri who was the one—who was the first one to notice me.
[00:15:29.38]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. And did she have your work all through the time of the '60s?
[00:15:33.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, yes, she did. Late '50s, actually.
[00:15:39.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, you had galleries in New York and Washington, which must've been pretty different from the average Louisiana artist or New Orleans. Did this cause trouble in the community, or jealousy?
[00:15:51.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you know, yesterday you asked me something about, was I asked to do more than anyone else monetarily in the Orleans Gallery. I wasn't. But there has always been this feeling that I had a head start simply because I had the wherewithal to buy the education I wanted and to buy the materials I needed without going without a meal. But it was a rather unfair thing, because, for instance, I would enter a lot of competitive exhibitions. And I had great good fortune. I would sometimes, and really I must say, rather often, win a prize. It wasn't the—I don't know whether it was money that I won or just first prize, you know, that's—
[00:17:03.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Exposure.
[00:17:04.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's it. And it was exposure. But at school, at Newcomb, the whole faculty would go together in one crate. I didn't have a special crate made or anything like that. So I was, you know, in that respect, accused of something that I didn't do. And one of the later critics who was a female and a very bitter woman wrote that I'd been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And I wrote back to her and asked her if she'd print it that I had been born with a gold spoon in my mouth. That was a remark that I thought was so uncalled for. I mean, after all, Frankenthaler was the daughter of a federal judge, isn't she?
[00:17:55.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Right well, I know a lot about [inaudible]. Well, also, I mean, there was some money, but I mean, it wasn't as if you were enormously wealthy.
[00:18:05.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, indeed, indeed not.
[00:18:07.91]
AVIS BERMAN: It wasn't as if you were a Rockefeller.
[00:18:09.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And then I remember my parents, I think, were helping Hughie and me out with $100 a month. Now, granted, in 1960, that was money. But it wasn't princely money.
[00:18:22.52]
AVIS BERMAN: No.
[00:18:25.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And two, I think artists who are less fortunate in this respect than I, think that I met every important dealer or director or curator who came to town. I only met those who wanted to see me. I have never, ever been pushy in that way. I don't. It scares me. I don't like it. I don't even like social things where there are very important people because I doubt myself in that I will say something. I don't know that I can say anything that will be interesting to them. I really have a fear of this, so I didn't take any of that advantage. I couldn't have if I wanted to, unless I invited myself places.
[00:19:25.05]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you also stayed here. You didn't move off.
[00:19:28.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I almost moved off.
[00:19:30.95]
AVIS BERMAN: Why don't you tell me about that?
[00:19:32.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, that would have been the breakup of my family, my marriage, my everything. It was about 1968, and I had won a Ford Foundation Grant at a corporate biennial. And incidentally, Pryor, who was the Director of the Rochester Memorial, had been the judge. And Goodman Vigdale was the Assistant Director. Herman—Mr. Herman was the Director. Herman Herman? Is that possible?
[00:20:23.75]
AVIS BERMAN: I don't—
[00:20:24.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Do you know who I'm talking of?
[00:20:26.20]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, I do. But I don't know what the name is.
[00:20:28.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, anyway, these were the people involved at the time of this corporate biennial. And Henri tried very hard to get me to move to New York. She said, "it's the only way you'll make it," in quotes. And I thought very seriously about it. And my children were up there [in age –Ed.] by then. But I decided against it for many reasons.
[00:21:07.26]
My husband's work was here. I was not looking for a divorce. I was so rooted in this community. And I loved New Orleans and the life. So I just sat back and said, if I am to achieve, I will, no matter where. And this business of the South being out of the general path faded away years ago, because I think all of the important directors have been through here and come through here and are coming back next month.
[00:21:51.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, certainly here. I don't know about maybe Houston and Atlanta, too, on the other—
[00:21:56.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:21:56.28]
AVIS BERMAN: I think it would be different if you were in Mississippi.
[00:21:58.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I think so. I think so. But at that time, we were pretty much off of the main track.
[00:22:07.11]
AVIS BERMAN: I'm sure you're right. In other words, you didn't consider going up to New York for, say, three months a year, or trying anything like that?
[00:22:17.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, that didn't appeal to me either. And I was a very sheltered female. And I suppose I was frightened. And I think that had a lot to do with it.
[00:22:33.38]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you resent her telling you that you should move?
[00:22:36.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no.
[00:22:37.81]
AVIS BERMAN: I mean, running your life.
[00:22:38.88]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Knowing Henri, she was a very ambitious woman. Well, so was I, but in a more tepid way.
[00:22:55.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, she was also being more ambitious for you, I suppose. Well, let's talk about this idea of this annoying appellation of regional artists, which it seems to me, "regional artist" means people in New York say that about anyone else in the country.
[00:23:12.81]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:23:13.91]
AVIS BERMAN: As opposed to people in—New York artists are never considered regional artists for some reason. Maybe they are by the rest of the country, but they don't. It seems to be it's an appellation that comes out of New York, and it's not a two-way street.
[00:23:29.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, it certainly is not.
[00:23:31.31]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what does one do, if anything, about that?
[00:23:36.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I have never been included in that appellation. I have pretty much been in the mainstream since I've appeared publicly anywhere. And this business of regional art I feel is justified in some areas and totally unjustified and others. I mean, like in the Midwest, Mexico—I mean New Mexico, Arizona, yes, indeed, there is home-grown paintings and sculptures that relate typically to that area. I think it's less true around here in the South. I think Texas has a regional look sometimes. But New Orleans, I think if there are any such artists who might be corralled together, there so different from each other that it's—I think it's a little more folk arty than it is regional art.
[00:24:58.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. So you would think of regional art, people painting the subjects of the landscape or the genre painting of the life around them in the area.
[00:25:11.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:25:11.79]
AVIS BERMAN: So you don't think, say, that abstract or non-objective art would necessarily be regional art.
[00:25:15.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I think that's pretty universal.
[00:25:20.13]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, is there any respect that you feel that your art is, shall we say, Southern?
[00:25:30.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. Now, I was on a panel a couple of years ago at Arthur Roger Gallery, and I was the moderator. And the question came from the floor to all the members of the panel, including myself, "Do you feel that your environment has in any way affected your work?" And everyone else said that they felt that it had in very precise ways. However, it came out so differently. It was a very interesting conversation. And when it was my turn to speak, I was very quick to say, no. I think if I were in Hawaii or if I were in New York or if I were in Alaska I would be painting the way I'm painting today. Well, after this hearing the other artists speak and I heard what I said myself, I said, that's not true at all.
[00:26:38.26]
I am affected by my environment. I am affected by my community and their mores. Because some of my small wooden sculptures are Mardi Gras floats, you know. And the color that I impose around myself—roses, ten, eleven months out of the year—I mean, that can't happen too many places. Of course, California it could. And jazz—I think my pictures are sometimes very jazzy, very syncopated. Not very melodic, but jazzy. But I had never known that until two years ago. Isn't that weird? I think it is.
[00:27:36.91]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, well, probably either you hadn't meditated on it or you were taking the question at a more face value as opposed to these more intricate ways that they were talking about. Well, let's talk about your gardening. I mean, besides the colors, the roses, the colors do reappear in your painting.
[00:27:59.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:27:59.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Is there something about gardening, working out there, planting, that it fits into your schedule or does something—
[00:28:06.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, it fits into my life so neatly because my studio has no windows. I'm not out in the fresh air unless I go out in the fresh air. And although I stand up painting on a wall, my canvas attached to the wall, still it's not the same kind of exercise as bending from the hips and stretching. But I didn't start it as an exercise substitute. I started it because I saw somebody's rose garden and thought how wonderful it would be to raise such things.
[00:28:50.29]
And now it's become a real passion with me. If I'm working on a piece in the studio and it's unfinished, I can't wait to get up to get back in the studio. But if that isn't the situation in the studio, I can have the same kind of desire to rush outside and see what's happened overnight in the rose garden. And then to care for them, it's like nourishing anything—animals, a baby, your own babies, or anything. It's a very exciting thing to do.
[00:29:30.45]
AVIS BERMAN: How does it relate to the art? If you're with your blocked in your art, do you go to the garden? Or do you look at—
[00:29:37.25]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, sometimes. It's a wonderful opposition and release.
[00:29:45.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, Monet was certainly one of the world's great gardeners.
[00:29:49.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he certainly was. Never thought about that. As a matter of fact, I didn't know he did any of the gardening. I thought he planned the garden, shaped it.
[00:30:02.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I think as he got older and it got more extensive, he had to have help. But—
[00:30:06.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, of course.
[00:30:08.20]
AVIS BERMAN: But it is a fascinating interaction.
[00:30:12.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But, you know, this rose garden business has brought me so many new friends. Friends of an entirely different type. Not necessarily uneducated people, but people with such different values than mine. I think it's been a very broadening experience for me.
[00:30:38.97]
AVIS BERMAN: Let's also talk about when you don't have a visitor or strangers, what is your typical schedule? What do you do?
[00:30:45.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'm in the studio usually by 9:30 in the morning. And I have pretty much decided what type piece I want to get at. I've pretty much decided that the day before, so that I know the size canvas I have to look forward to. And I go to work immediately. Because if I sat at my desk and started thinking of things I should do, I won't get to work. So I start working.
[00:31:27.75]
And I work until I'm slightly fatigued. And then I go to my desk. Well, that's lunchtime. And my two assistants and daughter, who is also an assistant, and I have lunch together every day, that is five days a week. And in the afternoon, after an hour of relaxation, I go back into the studio and work for probably two more hours. And then I usually go out and sit in the garden for an hour to rest. And in the late afternoon I garden. So it's a wonderfully full day.
[00:32:20.15]
AVIS BERMAN: And so the most important sort of thing probably gets done in the morning.
[00:32:23.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, probably. Yes. When I'm fresh. Yeah. And that has been the way it's been ever since, almost, since I've had the studio in the back of the house. Previously at Newcomb, you know, you run in and do your own work between classes. And you're so exhausted by early afternoon, you run home.
[00:32:47.48]
AVIS BERMAN: So since you've had this out here, you've probably been able to get a lot more work done.
[00:32:52.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes.
[00:32:52.85]
AVIS BERMAN: Not just because you weren't teaching, but because of the concentration and the—
[00:32:57.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. The quiet.
[00:32:59.52]
AVIS BERMAN: And you purposely have no windows?
[00:33:02.52]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I don't like daylight to paint by. It's so changeable. And then paintings are never seen in daylight. You don't hang a painting on the side of a house.
[00:33:17.15]
AVIS BERMAN: True. [Inaudible] too much [inaudible]. Now I'm going to backtrack again. We're going to go into that time that you were painting abstractions that took off from Rothko, shall we say, until about 1963. And later you say that you were influenced by him and that you wanted to break free. But was it so bad to be influenced by Rothko?
[00:33:56.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, I don't think bad is the proper word, if you'll excuse me. I didn't want to be that dependent on anybody. And I felt I had been. And but as I've told you, when I look back at the paintings now, I flatter myself tremendously when I say I think I was mimicking him. But there was a relationship. I even said it to him when he came with me to that show at Ruth White's. And his very thin, veiled color, his hazy edges, his—at that time, lack of line. I had no lines in my paintings; neither did he. And you see, I think what you leave out is just as important as what you put in, of people you are depending on. And of course, he was a leaver-outer.
[00:35:08.56]
AVIS BERMAN: But an expander of what he was going to concentrate on.
[00:35:11.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:35:13.18]
AVIS BERMAN: Well—
[00:35:14.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:35:16.63]
AVIS BERMAN: When you began to feel that this was a liability to be dependent, how did you break away from it?
[00:35:22.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I broke away by painting what I thought was the most absolute opposite of his work as I could think of. And instead of the large rectangles, I began doing circular forms and usually one single circular form, with a rather hard edge. It was almost painful to do it. I didn't like it. I didn't respond to it. It was as though I'd cut my heart out, you know? But that didn't last too long. I went on to something else. But it did, I think, achieve what I was after.
[00:36:22.93]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what were the sort of the pivotal, transitional paintings of this period or the important paintings for you that you did?
[00:36:31.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You mean individual paintings?
[00:36:33.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, that there was one that really was helpful, or meant—
[00:36:40.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The first one, I think, was a large, red oval. It's still inside of the oval had this sort of floating, rectilinear form. But eventually I got rid of even that, and just held on to the circle or the oval. And just with a change of brush stroking within the one form, said this is a complete painting.
[00:37:37.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Then actually things being very hard edged—those paintings like "The Crux" and "The Chrysalis," and that was—
[00:37:46.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Now those I think of as geometric, as they are geometric to me. Because they're so foreign to my usual composition.
[00:37:59.19]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, they were very foreign. It was that—
[00:38:03.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And I think they were the result of this one central image in the painting that I had gone to.
[00:38:16.85]
AVIS BERMAN: I also wondered if there was more drawing going on in some of the paintings.
[00:38:22.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Much more, much more. Yes, line became an important feature. And change of value of one color—not light to dark, by using naturally lighter colors. But actually making my own transitions in value from one color, which was no great discovery of mine, but to me it was new at that time.
[00:39:10.39]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, there seemed to be two related experiences, or two kinds of things that you were searching for, two things that you did. Let's talk about—you returned to the figure, and you began to draw, to paint the figure. And it looks like many of these are mostly in blacks, whites, and grays, which was also—
[00:39:39.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They were. With a very—which is interesting now that you mention it, because I've done a series of paintings recently that are so much less colorful than the bulk of my work. Yes, I did do what you just said. I used drawing materials on canvas a great deal.
[00:40:04.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Why did you decide to begin to do this again?
[00:40:08.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The figure?
[00:40:09.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:40:10.25]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I was dry. I just had—I guess the hard-edged geometric paintings were the most—and so were the figures—the work that was the most preordained in my own head. They were premeditated. And that is very foreign to the way I love to work. And I just got to the point where I didn't want to do them anymore. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was at a dead end at a real crucial moment. And I might have stopped painting at that time had I not decided to go back to the figure.
[00:41:14.22]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you feel it was an anchor, or it was something or it was something you had done?
[00:41:18.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The figure?
[00:41:18.97]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah.
[00:41:19.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was something I had worked so hard at as a student. And it was when I started doing it again, I really didn't know I was going to spend a year doing it. Slightly more than a year, I guess. But then I got caught up in it and did a lot of rather intricate, large compositions and—
[00:41:44.76]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, that again—it probably wasn't exactly fashionable. It must have—people now expected you to be one way and you were another.
[00:41:54.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Yeah. But it's interesting to me to see what the ones in the late '80s looked like compared to what they looked like in the early '50s.
[00:42:09.23]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah. Well, it also seems to me that another thing that you were [inaudible] were these—and I'm hesitant to call them sculptures—but they were these boxes of—
[00:42:22.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, the geometric, three-dimensional pieces, yes.
[00:42:25.52]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. That they seemed to be searching for. Did they serve the same function?
[00:42:29.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I suppose they did. I have always loved objects, as you can see in my surroundings here at home. And I guess I was searching for something new to do. And when you're lucky enough to have your whole life available to you for working in your field, you need changes like that, at least I do. Hello, darling.
[00:43:09.37]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SPEAKER: Hey. Sorry to interrupt.
[00:43:12.07]
AVIS BERMAN: No, that's okay. I'll just turn it off for a sec.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
We're talking about the objects.
[00:43:16.96]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. And I had never done anything three dimensional before. And it so happened that I had this young man who was working for me at the time, a young artist, and he was awfully good with wood. So I asked him if he would make these various objects. And he said, "Sure." And they were very simple, most of them. And he glued canvas to all. Covered them completely with canvas. And then I painted them with geometric configurations, very similar to my paintings.
[00:44:11.92]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, to me, I find those early objects interesting because they really seem to be dealing with very similar subject matters, although in a different way. I mean, obviously, you have full, fleshly female nudes here. And whether they are geometric or not, they seem to be they're organized in maybe three boxes. They're almost like figures in a crude way. And they deal with sexuality. Do you think I'm off the wall?
[00:44:44.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think so. [They laugh.] It never occurred to me. But I'm so often told that about my work. Recently, when Betty Moody was here, she said, "Ida, I can't tell you how flesh-like you're painted wooden pieces are, and how sexy." And I said, well, point out what you're talking about. Well, of course, it's very easy to see around a piece of wood painted that might have a human quality about it and the skin quality. But as far as the—object, I mean, the ideograms are concerned, I don't see it at all!
[00:45:34.23]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess I don't mean so much about the ideograms, but with these objects did have the way the paintings were—they had this orifice—orifice look to them.
[00:45:42.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, yes. I know now what you're talking about. And I can see what you mean. But truthfully, when I did them, I was not conscious of it. I know now what you mean. I have one upstairs, a chair that has such configuration.
[00:46:05.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. I think the recent sculpture is very erotic because things are always coming out of them. It's growing. I mean, you get the idea of growing. And so they're either tumescent or they're fertile and they're sprouting. [Ida laughs.] So I think you see that in a way. Because certainly they're organic and they're growing.
[00:46:24.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I think they're organic. Now, I'll go along with that. [Laughs.]
[00:46:28.76]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, some of them are erotic to me, and some of them are not. But they do have a real organic quality to me. And also because that feeling of movement or action also gets that kind of that sensation, too. Also, I think it's interesting that these were objects organized almost as totems, which leads me to saying maybe it was a precursor of how you were going to organize the grids. In other words, how you organize these sculptures.
[00:47:02.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Mm-hmm [affirmative], that could very well be. And again, a very unconscious thing for me.
[00:47:10.87]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, not—I mean, yeah, of course, it wasn't—that wasn't conscious. But in other words, you were looking for a way of organizing or doing something different and—
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4859_m]
[00:00:07.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay, I was saying that—how the grids and the Clusters, what came about, how that came about, what happened?
[00:00:22.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'm thinking back to the first Clusters. They were very simple, had no ideograms inside of the so-called boxes. The boxes were adjacent to each other and no activity within them. And then as I worked on them, they became much more ideogrammatic. And sometimes and very often they were not enclosed by four sides.
The reason I could stay with these all those years, I think, was that I varied the composition in as many ways as I could think of. I would sometimes have two boxes, sometimes three boxes. Some were totemic, some were loose forms next to each other in rows. Some were almost—you could almost see them as though you might read a page of script or print. But I don't know what started me on that. I just don't know. I would love to know.
[00:02:14.07]
AVIS BERMAN: Because as I said, with some of these sculptures, you know, you've got three squares in a row versus three or four squares flat.
[00:02:22.24]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:02:22.32]
AVIS BERMAN: And just wondered if it was just a way you began thinking about organizing your work?
[00:02:28.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It might have been. I don't know. But I don't think so, because I didn't do that many totems in three dimensions.
[00:02:42.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, how did you begin to—how did one—how did you start? I mean, what kind of idea would start a Cluster painting?
[00:02:55.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, an idea I would imagine that would cut down on a tremendously active painting with much movement, similar to what I'm doing right now. And what I was doing at the time didn't call for that kind of opposition. I hadn't seen anyone else's, to my knowledge, that—you know, that brought that image to me. However, after I had been doing the Clusters quite a while, I happened to go to, where was it, a university? Oh, yes, Kansas—Kansas City, I think. And I walked in the building and on the door was tacked [reproduction of –Ed.] a Joan Snyder painting. I almost fell out, because at that time, she was doing almost the same thing.
[00:04:17.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Just to throw this, do you feel that these paintings came out of Abstract Expressionism at all?
[00:04:28.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Maybe it was my way of trying to slow down Abstract Expressionism. You know what I mean? Slow down the unmonitored part of Abstract Expressionism, you know?
[00:04:48.28]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, when you were more fully so—were you using, I mean, were you ever an action painter? Did you use your whole arm? Was it physical for you?
[00:04:58.21]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, it was from the wrist, never from the elbow or the shoulder.
[00:05:04.69]
AVIS BERMAN: So you really, I mean—
[00:05:06.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Soulages—remember I told you Mildred was very taken with Soulages.
[00:05:14.28]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Pierre Soulages.
[00:05:14.50]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I didn't say it, but that was the name I was after. I never was quite that carefree and athletic.
[00:05:27.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, actually, that was more like—so you really were more like a field painter, like Rothko than a de Kooning.
[00:05:33.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I was.
[00:05:35.32]
AVIS BERMAN: Never a real gestural painter.
[00:05:37.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, yes.
[00:05:40.71]
AVIS BERMAN: The reason—
[00:05:41.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And another thing I got from Rothko, which I never have stressed very much, was the thinness of the paint. And I got it from him, I didn't get it from—
[00:06:00.11]
AVIS BERMAN: Morris Louis or something?
[00:06:01.49]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, or the woman who was the daughter of the judge?
[00:06:06.11]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, Helen Frankenthaler.
[00:06:06.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Helen Frankenthaler. Yeah. It was strictly Rothko.
[00:06:11.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Did the color field painters make a difference to you in your work?
[00:06:14.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, because I had already been ensconced in my way of working with thin veils of color from Rothko. And I was never attracted to—I very much appreciate the beautiful veils of color from the Washington painter, Louis, and I did not respond to the Washington painter, with a D—
[00:06:44.09]
AVIS BERMAN: Gene Davis.
[00:06:44.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Gene Davis. And those are the two that I remember most. No, I don't think they affected me much.
[00:06:57.51]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, let me let me throw something else out your way. And I'm not saying that this was an influence, or maybe just a coincidence. But I don't know if you were—got involved in the '70s following information theory or conceptual art. But I wonder if you began to build—of course, I don't know how you worked in the Cluster paintings, if you started and did left to right, down, what your procedure was.
[00:07:26.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Sometimes I wrote them. Sometimes I went from the left upper corner to the middle right section. I tried to vary all kinds of approaches so that the results would be varied.
[00:07:42.73]
AVIS BERMAN: So you would keep changing the variables.
[00:07:45.25]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:07:45.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Keep permuting the idea because that's actually—I mean, there were painters in the '70s—for example, Jennifer Bartlett was doing a lot of dot and information—and Chuck—and people like Chuck Close and people like Carl Andre, they all work in little units of information and they build up a painting—you know, they work on a square, and then they build it up. And so they don't always—I mean, they know they're doing a whole painting, but they're very involved in making one unit at a time and having it add up later. Was that—did you feel that was your approach?
[00:08:20.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and I'll tell you another thing, I couldn't wait 'til I had covered the area that I was supposed to cover so that I could really get into it and play parts against parts. It was almost a game. And it was sometimes a very tough game.
[00:08:44.33]
AVIS BERMAN: What do you mean, cover the area you were supposed to cover?
[00:08:47.10]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, usually I had a border on these paintings, which I think helped make them decorative. Sometimes I had no border, but when I did, the margin prescribed what I had to fill, and to get down the beginning remarks over these—that area, was very—I felt hurried, rushed to do it. I still feel that way when I'm working on any kind of painting today. I want to get that first beginning down. The beginning hurts. It's getting the beginning down and then working into it. Then it's like resolving a melody of—you know what I mean, variations on a theme.
[00:09:58.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you actually draw a grid on the canvas?
[00:10:01.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. Did I actually draw a grid? Oh, no. No, that's why they're all so crooked and—
[00:10:11.26]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes. How did you decide what colors you would use?
[00:10:18.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I never decided that until I was really working on the painting. I never decide that today, either. I never know what color will predominate or what will contrast.
[00:10:35.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Because I'm so curious about these paintings. There seem to be thousands of decisions within each square, one would think, or I mean, from where to begin or what. I'm trying to figure out how you compose them, I guess.
[00:10:49.97]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Almost layer upon layer, you know, of like activating the surface evenly, until finally when you get to that, the very last determinations when you really want the major tensions to come out. And that is the crucial part about those paintings, I think. There is always—contrapuntal?
[00:11:24.94]
AVIS BERMAN: No, contrapposto. Well, not contrapposto, but contrapuntal movement.
[00:11:28.59]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, at a certain completion of the work. But then you push it a little more and a little more until finally there are probably just three major things that need happening. And that's the salvation or the death of the painting.
[00:11:52.32]
AVIS BERMAN: It does move in and out.
[00:11:54.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, very shallow space, but it does move. They do move in and out of the space I think, a lot.
[00:12:03.29]
AVIS BERMAN: When you first began these—or when did when did you know that you had a really good idea, that this was sort of—
[00:12:10.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Because it was so satisfying to me. They were always a surprise. I did them for about eight years, not tiring of them. And I haven't yet stayed with anything that's lasted that long other than that.
[00:12:34.09]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, because you had—so you must have known that you would hit your key image. I mean, this was really—
[00:12:40.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Maybe so. But I hope that what I'm doing now is just as personal and there is much more variation, of course, in what I'm doing now. For instance, this is a maverick painting, [points to a painting on her living room wall –Ed.] but still it has in it everything I am doing now. It's just—composition, it's different. Color-wise, it's different. Even the line is different.
[00:13:17.16]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. And all this white space.
[00:13:18.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And all the white space, it's very unusual for me. I want to be able to do a painting and have it finished, not as quickly, but with as little said as I could do it. Sometimes I think I've done it. I go up out of the studio feeling exhilarated because I've done it. The next day I look at it, and I know it's not a finished painting. And then I go back into it, and have to work almost up to the same amount of completion as every other painting I've ever done. I don't know whether it's a legitimate thing to want to do, but somehow or other I want to do that.
[00:14:24.01]
AVIS BERMAN: On the Clusters, did you work on more than one at a time?
[00:14:27.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Never. I've never worked on more than one piece at a time, even if the piece was six by six inches. I have got to kill it or birth it.
[00:14:43.44]
AVIS BERMAN: How would you—if you came to a—if you ran into a problem on the Cluster and you dumped, what would you do? I mean, how did you work around it, or do you destroy paintings?
[00:14:55.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I do destroy paintings. I would either—well, when that happens to me today and it probably would happen then too, I try to resurrect it by washing out the area, which is so difficult to do because you just—it looks like it's been tampered with, either by washing out the area or by painting out the area with a solid color, or something of that nature. And it looks devised. And so I usually destroy it.
[00:15:45.93]
AVIS BERMAN: How do you know when to stop?
[00:15:48.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, that's a question that's—I think the only way I know is that when I do add something to the painting, and it doesn't help it, it hurts it, then I take that thing out and look at it again a very long time and know that there's nothing more I can do to it.
[00:16:17.39]
AVIS BERMAN: You mentioned before—you said that you felt your paintings have syncopation. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?
[00:16:25.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes I think color has a kind of a coming and a going at a different tempo. Sometimes a red will be pushed over toward an orange or to a lavender, depending on what's added to it. The values change. I never use the same color twice, exactly the same color twice in a painting. Now that stems back to 1950.
[00:17:03.25]
I remember Pat Trivigno saying, by changing the color ever so slightly, he changed the space it occupies in space, in visual space. And that kind of rang a bell to me that's never stopped ringing. I think that calls—I mean, that induces syncopation. That's what I mean by syncopation. Also very sharp changes of color like oppositions, like a strong pink and a kelly green. I mean, that just makes your body do it, you know?
[00:17:57.00]
AVIS BERMAN: So do you—Do you feel—and I don't know if you felt it when you were making them or not—the signs or the picture, pictograms, if they have symbolic meanings?
[00:18:09.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The pictographs?
[00:18:10.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:18:12.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, none whatsoever. And if ever I'm in a group and questions are asked, that is almost the first question because I think the viewer needs that literary mental information to help enjoy the picture. That doesn't mean anything to me. And I choose these shapes, usually because I need that certain axis to move your eye from one place to another in the canvas, on the canvas.
[00:18:58.94]
AVIS BERMAN: It always seems so to me that they were—I mean, I don't try to read the painting as a story, that most of the time it looks as if, oh, I needed a horizontal because I have these verticals, or I needed this circle form because—
[00:19:12.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Could very well be. And that is also syncopation.
[00:19:16.82]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And I mean, I don't read it, because they look—this is what this is what we needed, as you say, to move the picture along. But one sign to me really does, not so much as this painting on the cover, but the sign that really stands out to me all the time is the X.
[00:19:37.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you know, the X goes everywhere. It's not like a circle, which goes nowhere. And X will, depending on how it leans, will do an awful lot in directing the visual reading of the painting.
[00:19:59.64]
AVIS BERMAN: And I suppose an A would, too, but the X really—I don't know, it—maybe it also sort of almost says something like, as you say, direction, but it says "cancel" to me too. Or "no."
[00:20:11.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Really?
[00:20:11.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, it's got—
[00:20:13.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, maybe that's just your response to an X, whether it's in my paintings or elsewhere, right?
[00:20:19.06]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, definitely. But I think the movement is true, because you've got it, as you say, all ways. It reminds me of, well, someone like Stuart Davis, who—I don't—that used—well, he used words, of course, too. You never—I don't think you've ever used a word, have you?
[00:20:39.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I never have. I never have. I've never written—I mean, worked a word into a painting.
[00:20:52.50]
AVIS BERMAN: But he used certain letters often, too—I mean, I think he happened to use an X a lot, too. I mean, and I don't know why, but obviously—but he used signs and then he also used words.
[00:21:08.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Don't you think an awful lot of artists use X?
[00:21:15.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I mean, they use—of course, there's a cruciform, and there's a crucifix.
[00:21:19.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I'm talking about the regular, you know, X in the alphabet, or to X out something, or—
[00:21:28.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, there's also—there's cross hatching. I mean, you can form an X less consciously, not in your paintings, but my many artists' paintings—an X, it will appear. But I don't know—X is the—
[00:21:41.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: X's stand out to you?
[00:21:43.56]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes, in your in your paintings, I guess, because the way—I guess the way they take up—they don't fill the space or—
[00:21:52.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, there's vacancy around them.
[00:21:55.77]
AVIS BERMAN: So it just interested me as a sign. And also it's a sign that seems to be constant in the paintings and when you make the choices of the cluster paintings, that I guess the X is something that I notice a lot. They're thinner, thin, thicker, thin in different colors. Although, I mean, do you think your vocabulary of signs stayed fairly constant? Did you try to—
[00:22:26.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think they've become enriched. I think there's a great—there's much more variety now than when I started using the ideograms.
[00:22:44.77]
AVIS BERMAN: Who thought up the title "Cluster?"
[00:22:47.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think I probably did because of the flowers, the roses. Oh, incidentally, Hughie must have. He came in the studio one night, one day. And I was painting. And he said, "Red, you know what you're painting? You're painting rows of roses." And I was furious. I said, "Hugh, if you think that's as deep as my feelings and aspirations go for these paintings—" Oh, I just thought that was a terrible thing to hear, but I think that's probably where I got the word.
[00:23:33.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what about the Circus series?
[00:23:36.60]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, the Circus series, I've given up the grid, but I've enhanced the color. And the frivolous placement of shapes just seemed like circus life to me.
[00:24:03.44]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, and also there's—some of the squares have been enlarged. There aren't as many small things going on.
[00:24:13.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Maybe I was fooling myself and thinking I was getting away from the grid simply by changing the title.
[00:24:24.81]
AVIS BERMAN: Was this an allusion to something like Mardi Gras, or was it just a circus in general?
[00:24:29.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, really, the circus has nothing to do with our Mardi Gras.
[00:24:36.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I was wondering if you didn't want to name it Mardi Gras or anything like that, because you wouldn't have wanted to have such a specific title or a specific sort of thing.
[00:24:51.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Never thought about naming them Mardi Gras or anything to do with a carnival.
[00:25:02.82]
AVIS BERMAN: I always see people are always saying that this work looks very, very joyous, I guess.
[00:25:09.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:25:10.41]
AVIS BERMAN: And it gives you sort of a happy thought label to these pictures.
[00:25:14.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, I know.
[00:25:18.51]
AVIS BERMAN: What are your reactions toward that?
[00:25:21.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I immediately say I'm not doing the dipsy doodle when I'm working. It's as serious as if I were painting the "Raft of the Medusa." But it's hard to convince people. As a matter of fact, in Chicago—Did I tell you about this, Mr. Gunther of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art?
[00:25:49.74]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, [Bruce] Gunther, yeah.
[00:25:52.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Brought a group of about fifty people, Arthur told me, into his booth and nine other booths at the fair and proceeded to discuss the work in these ten booths. And when he began to talk about mine, he said, "You know, I've met this artist." I don't remember meeting Mr. Gunther. And I certainly should, but I don't. He said, "She is as happy as her paintings seem," which I thought was a very shallow thing to say.
[00:26:31.66]
AVIS BERMAN: Simple-minded.
[00:26:32.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Is he? [Laughs.] But then he went on to discuss them more seriously, I'm happy to say. And of course, the sculptures were there, too,
[00:26:52.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, do you think it's because—
[00:26:54.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you know—excuse me, but Goodman Vigdale, who over the years has been a wonderful friend of mine, wrote something in an early catalog that Luba Glade put out on my work. And he said, "Because there's seems to be no 'sturm und drang' in Kohlmeyer's work that it's taken sometimes very lightly. And he said, "But I can assure you that there is as much seriousness in her about her work as there was in any painter of a serious mind." I always appreciated him putting that in print.
[00:27:43.00]
AVIS BERMAN: It was almost as if you were being penalized for being a real colorist.
[00:27:48.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. And recently, the Christian Science Monitor critic Theodore Wolff, who happens to like my work a great deal, talks so much about its friskiness, which I think is a charming word. And I think perhaps in some of the Clusters, it's justified.
[00:28:16.18]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I also think that sometimes happens is friskiness often happens with older artists. They get more liberated in certain respects as time goes on.
[00:28:26.02]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Thank you, Avis. That is makes me feel a little less angry about the frivolous nature that people seem to find in my work, because it's not frivolous at all, as I'm sure you know.
[00:28:45.06]
AVIS BERMAN: No, I don't think it is. I don't think it is, either. I also wonder if people—and this is not fair, but they impose the fact that you are woman, or you are from the South. And I think that sort of thing—
[00:28:59.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. My early paintings, the more Rothko-type, people always thought I was a man because the colors were somber, always blacks, grays, burnt siennas, umbers, and ochres. And as I've grown older, it's quite true. I don't give a damn. I will put any color next to any color and revel in it, and find a way to make it so-called work. And I think that does not come easily to a beginner painter, or a painter who perhaps is much further along than a beginner. I think it takes a lot of courage to do that. And damn it, I think I'm going to say that to people. [Laughs.]
[00:29:55.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, don't you think it takes a long time to really master color?
[00:30:00.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I can't say that it does or doesn't. Someone might be blessed with a color eye like a music ear and never make an error. That's not so with me. I make lots of bad moves, but that's fine. You know, it gives you something to work against, then.
[00:30:26.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, have there been, actually something that you made that was really terrible, or it was a big—that actually turned out to be quite helpful because it was some awful accident that got you into a new way?
[00:30:40.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, sure, even applying the paint or eradicating—we were talking about mistakes, you know, going over passages just in an emotional fury, just scratching out, or wiping out or brushing out, something wonderful can happen.
[00:31:09.88]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, there's a lot of interesting scribbling in your work, I think. I don't know. I don't know when that came in, but I think it really activates the surface.
[00:31:23.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I don't know. I think you can never work too long that you don't find new things. That's one of the fascinating things about using paint. It's infinitesimal, the ways that it can be applied or activated.
[00:31:50.30]
AVIS BERMAN: Before you said people thought that you were a man because of the somberness of the early work. Did you—
[00:31:57.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They thought it was very strong.
[00:32:01.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you ever exhibit under "I. Kohlmeyer?"
[00:32:05.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Never.
[00:32:05.69]
AVIS BERMAN: You always used Ida?
[00:32:06.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:32:09.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Which was a pretty good indication that you were female.
[00:32:12.89]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Well, they didn't know me. They didn't—the name Kohlmeyer was most often used without the first name.
[00:32:25.24]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, I wanted to ask you, when we were just talking about this world of personal symbolism, which is maybe, as you say, maybe using the word "sign" might be better. But I was wondering if you felt that Paul Klee had influenced your work?
[00:32:40.78]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, not really. Although I admire him extravagantly. I love his work. But I think you can be influenced and never be aware of it.
[00:32:53.51]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, Klee had this wonderful seriousness and playfulness at the same time. You could read it among a different sorts of ways.
[00:33:03.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Absolutely.
[00:33:04.68]
AVIS BERMAN: It's so poignant and understanding, and Polaris was—I love the one at the Guggenheim, the "Viaducts Break Ranks" ranks, which I think is one of the funniest things, and he's also done in pinks and reds and lots of other sorts of things.
[00:33:22.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:33:23.68]
AVIS BERMAN: I'm very—I'm surprised, and maybe I'm wrong, that you have never gone into collage.
[00:33:29.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, not as a—for any prolonged length of time. Sometimes I'll cut up paintings and—but usually, I'll just select a portion of the painting. I actually don't like collages very much. They disturb me. I must say I liked Picasso's and Braque's very much, and also someone else working at the same time.
[00:34:08.72]
AVIS BERMAN: Schwitters?
[00:34:09.68]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Schwitters, I love. Yes. But that's taking collage into a rarefied area. He was so great at it. We have left this on.
[00:34:25.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, suddenly, it was getting a little louder.
[00:34:28.52]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Isn't it?
[00:34:29.59]
AVIS BERMAN: I'm fascinated to hear that collage work disturbs you.
[00:34:34.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It does. I've never wanted to—I don't like the surface. I just never wanted to work—I'm not a very textural person. And putting a cigarette butt on a painting doesn't appeal to me, particularly.
[00:34:59.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, most of your sculptures are smooth.
[00:35:03.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Smooth, yes.
[00:35:05.22]
AVIS BERMAN: That's the surface that—you want the smooth surface in the paintings, too.
[00:35:09.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:35:10.05]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess the only time you used impasto was in your Hofmann—
[00:35:15.11]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's right.
[00:35:16.61]
AVIS BERMAN: You discarded it. As you said, you wanted the thin—I guess the canvas was—are your canvases primed and prepared?
[00:35:30.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Pre-prepared, I used to prepare my own, but I found a canvas that I like very much. And I don't see a reason not to take advantage of some of our recent discoveries in this field.
[00:35:49.34]
AVIS BERMAN: I want to briefly—I want to begin talking a little bit about your sculpture, which one thing that interests me is that you've never seen to have been interested in traditional sculpture media.
[00:36:07.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No.
[00:36:08.15]
AVIS BERMAN: And why is that?
[00:36:10.22]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I suppose because I know nothing about it. I don't know how a bronze sculpture is made. I know so little about so many things, Avis. My training was, you know—as we've been through it, and I'm not going to go through it any more now, but it was very specific. I was taught to use—I mean, I studied the tools of drawing and the tools of painting, and not the tools of sculpture.
[00:36:55.07]
So what I love about the sculptures is they are on a par with me. They are occupying space. I can put my arms around them, I can hug them. I can walk under them. I can jump over them. They become much more powerful. That's not true. Not more powerful. But they're more on a par with me. I mean, I feel as though I'm—I have something I can—I don't know.
[00:37:45.23]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I just—I guess they're more tactile.
[00:37:47.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, definitely that.
[00:37:49.13]
AVIS BERMAN: And they seem to you all of a sudden more palpable or more like an object than a painting?
[00:37:54.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, definitely. Yes. It is just fascinating to me that I can make something that occupies space and not just, you know, lie on a wall.
[00:38:10.68]
AVIS BERMAN: So it probably the positioning. You probably enjoy the negative space as much as the positive space?
[00:38:15.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Perhaps so. And they're so dominant in an area. You know, if you walk into a room and there's a sculpture, it dominates the room. It dominates you. I love making a big flower, you know.
[00:38:38.40]
AVIS BERMAN: But you never—just to go back to my first question, trying to model in clay or do a little constructing or carving that wasn't something—you didn't want to get your hands into that.
[00:38:49.68]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I'm not a gifted that way. I haven't tried it, but I don't feel drawn to it. I did do some soft sculptures.
[00:39:04.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:39:06.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And those were very textural. And I love them. They were jazzy, again.
[00:39:13.69]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:39:13.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They were very New Orleans. And I called them Trans—well, I think of them as transvestites, really. "Ladies of the Night," that's the title I gave those. I think those were wonderful. I really enjoy them until today.
[00:39:33.39]
AVIS BERMAN: But you didn't really—you didn't pursue—
[00:39:35.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But I didn't sell them. I didn't stuff them, you know, I chose the materials and the colors and, and the shapes. I drew the object.
[00:39:48.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Did you—so did you work with a lot of other crafts people?
[00:39:52.32]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Just one woman who was a seamstress.
[00:39:55.80]
AVIS BERMAN: Did she get involved? Did she [inaudible]?
[00:39:58.02]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. Fortunately, she was not that kind of person. She took orders very well, and that is fine. So important when you yourself don't do everything every step of the way.
[00:40:18.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Was it difficult with sculpture, because that's certainly true more than painting to get used to having a lot of assistants, or having other people do things for you?
[00:40:28.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, it was. But it was so necessary, I either had to give up the idea or accept other people's abilities. And I've been so very fortunate. May I talk about my assistants a little bit?
[00:40:47.55]
AVIS BERMAN: Please do.
[00:40:49.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Andrew Bascle, who is a Louisiana boy from Bourg, Louisiana, of a Cajun family, has been with me almost 13 years. And he really is my backbone. Sometimes he breaks it, but he has been invaluable to me in that he can follow the meagerest little drawing and know what I had in my mind when I did it. And we waste very little time because of that.
[00:41:39.96]
He is himself has a master's degree and has been very influenced by what he has found in my home, these primitive art objects. And he is absolutely wonderful with materials, various materials. He's so opposite from me that it's remarkable that he can see into my aesthetic vision, you know, and—
[00:42:16.25]
AVIS BERMAN: He's a sculptor?
[00:42:17.81]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, he's an object maker, really. And he can paint. He can draw. He can do all the requisite things. And he he's very creative. Now, the young woman whom you haven't met because she's been on vacation is so bright, so intellectually bright, that she overpowers me sometimes. I seldom get into an argument with her because she always wins. But she is a painter, and she has the neatness I lack. [They laugh.] You know, she has the finishing. She is able to finish anything. Of course, now my hand is a little shaky and I will need her to touch up my wooden sculptures from time to time. And she does it so beautifully. She has far less to do with the creative part of the job than Andrew has.
[00:43:40.88]
AVIS BERMAN: And what is her name?
[00:43:41.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Jade Jewett.
[00:43:44.76]
AVIS BERMAN: And what does Andrew do? Does he help—I guess, does he help make the maquettes?
[00:43:51.17]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Yes. He's wonderful with his hands. I'm very awkward with my hands. And I think that's obvious in everything that I do in my work. There's that—I wouldn't say heavy handedness, but it's like I really have—it's like a most people say, "a child could do it." Well, Andrew tried to do it when he first came to work. I don't think he was very proud of himself coming here to help me. And as time went by and he tried to do a painting like mine, he realized that it just wasn't quite as simple as it seemed. And I have the trust and admiration of these people, which really makes me feel very good because I admire them.
[00:44:56.65]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Now, I didn't mention Steve Kline, who is the fabricator of the metal pieces. He is a sculptor in his own right. And he also works in aluminum. But it's very interesting. These people, these three people's work is so diametrically opposed to mine that there's no intrusion anywhere, on any—on either side, which is wonderful. And as I mentioned to you, I think Steve Kline is a Parisian dressmaker in metal. He doesn't take advantage of his own skill and his own work, which I think is very interesting.
[00:45:48.32]
AVIS BERMAN: I don't quite follow you.
[00:45:49.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: His own work is usually composed of cubes. The welded edges are marvelous, but there is no—well, nothing very suggestive or romantic or—so far. He's a very young man in his own work, but I don't think he's using himself yet. But he is able to reproduce what he is given in eight, ten, twelve, fifteen inches into a twelve-foot sculpture, which I think is remarkable, with the same spirit and the same intricacies and gentle changes in a maquette.
[00:46:44.12]
AVIS BERMAN: Where is the fabric for the big stone pieces—where are they fabricated?
[00:46:48.65]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Right here in New Orleans, about half hour drive from here.
[00:46:53.42]
AVIS BERMAN: Is there a good foundry here?
[00:46:55.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you don't really need a foundry, you see? Oh, for my work, is there a good foundry?
[00:47:01.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:47:02.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. No. Consequently, I don't know of anybody who works in bronze here in the city.
[00:47:09.38]
AVIS BERMAN: Isn't that interesting?
[00:47:12.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Although there is a woman named Ursie, who was—took care of the foundry at—
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4860_m]
[00:00:05.61]
AVIS BERMAN: This is Avis Berman talking with Ida Kohlmeyer, May 20, 1989, for the Archives of American Art in Metairie. Where we left off yesterday, you were talking about the various talents and abilities of the assistants that you have now, and I was curious if you had had a problem, or if you'd had difficulties finding good assistants for the kind of work that you need?
[00:00:31.83]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, I've been remarkably fortunate because Andrew Bascle has been with me almost 13 years, and Jade Jewett came about five years ago, just when I started doing the large metal monumental sculptures. And I don't know whether it's sheer luck, or they worked into the job, or—I rather think they're both very gifted, talented young people and that I've been fortunate.
[00:01:11.07]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah. Now I want to talk about, I guess, the—start a little bit with the soft sculpture that I guess you began between about '76 and '78.
[00:01:22.94]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Was it that late? Seems to me it was longer ago than that—
[00:01:30.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay.
[00:01:30.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: —but I don't think it's too important. Anyway, I think it was another—it's another instance of my environment influencing whatever I had to say. And as New Orleans is often thought, it's a tinsel town. It's thought of as a tinsel town, and we have an over-abundance of rather wild citizens and it's a—well, in every sense, it's a gay town. And I think this influenced me a lot, but I don't really know if it was the reason for my making these things. I wanted to see them. You know, I just wanted to put them into effect.
[00:02:41.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, how did—why did you decide to, say, work with cloth and stuffing them?
[00:02:47.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I never had, and I think that's always one reason. And there are so many possibilities with stitchery and textures and things to apply to the cloth, and it just seemed an exciting little, you know, adventure off the regular track.
[00:03:15.10]
AVIS BERMAN: Now how—what was the process of doing—of designing these? Did you make paintings? [Telephone ringing.]
[00:03:22.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I have to get that.
[00:03:23.79]
AVIS BERMAN: Sure.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:03:25.53]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Theresa is [inaudible]. When she comes back, she can answer the phone.
[00:03:32.32]
AVIS BERMAN: I was asking you the process, or how you made these soft sculptures.
[00:03:37.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I did drawings. I did drawings, rather detailed drawings. And as we—as with everything, Avis, that I've ever done, the thing sort of takes over and makes its own demands, you know? In this particular little project, sequins pep this up a bit, and a tassel did something else to that. And satin as opposed to crepe de chine, and that sort of thing.
[00:04:11.47]
AVIS BERMAN: Was it—now how did you, I guess, work with the woman or women or whoever was making these?
[00:04:18.04]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I would give her—show her the drawings, explain what I meant in the drawings, and she happened to be a very—I was lucky again—a very intelligent woman. And she took over the putting of it together. And where—and first she pinned everything, and I would look at it and readjust and—so by the end of that, she knew pretty well exactly what I was looking for.
[00:04:52.90]
AVIS BERMAN: How would you find somebody like this, to do this?
[00:04:56.88]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Just asking around. As a matter of fact, I've lost track of this person.
[00:05:05.99]
AVIS BERMAN: Why don't you tell me about the Louisiana prop piece then?
[00:05:10.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. That happened, I think, in 1975.
[00:05:16.04]
AVIS BERMAN: I have '77.
[00:05:17.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, '77. If you have that, that's correct. The New Orleans Museum of Art put together a show which was titled Five Louisiana Artists. I was not one of the five. I was the five and a half, [laughs] but Lynda Benglis was one of the five. The others were Keith Sonnier, Tina Girard, Tina Girard's husband, whose name escapes me, and I can't remember the fifth. But it was put together by Bill Fagaly, now the assistant director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. But Lynda Benglis, who I've already mentioned was a student of mine and has become a close friend, asked me if I would collaborate with her in her space.
[00:06:32.62]
Well, it was a strange thing. Bill Fagaly brought her over here. The two of them came to visit one day and we were talking, and Linda had the atrium of the museum to use for her work. And I think I just said, "Linda, wouldn't it be just wonderful to turn that into a carnival space? That would be such a New Orleans atmosphere, and it's never been done. And some of the stuff deserves to be looked on as art, or certainly folk art."
[00:07:11.20]
She said, "That's the most fabulous idea I've ever heard. Will you collaborate on it with me?" And that's how we got together on it. And we borrowed parts of floats. I remember we had birds; we had animals; we had effigies of human beings, and it was such a shocker. I think the community couldn't quite understand the idea of having such in their museum, because no one had—very few people see it as a folk art endeavor, and I certainly do. As a matter of fact, one of my assistants—ex-assistants—Mike Smith, is the art director for several of the parades. And some of his parades, I think, are almost high art. I've never missed them. They are—they're very different from the others. Some of them are commercial looking.
[00:08:34.19]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, if the community—you say they were shocked—what do they think of Mardi Gras as—
[00:08:40.13]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, Mardi Gras is a fun time. You know, it's a playtime. And I think most people here think of the Mardi Gras parades and the floats that comprise the parades are just simply a fun attachment to the whole thing. But Linda saw it as I did. She saw it as an artistic, aesthetic expression.
[00:09:12.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Creative.
[00:09:12.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: As creative. Exactly.
[00:09:13.45]
AVIS BERMAN: What was Lynda Benglis possibly going to do before this?
[00:09:18.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't know. I have no idea. She didn't mention, and this was well before the time for the installation of the work. So I'm sure she had ideas, because she is an idea woman. But we didn't discuss any other project.
[00:09:40.97]
AVIS BERMAN: No, I actually was—it was quite self-effacing to give up the—to show what would have been her own work.
[00:09:49.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh yes, it certainly was. But she can be that big, and I admire that very much.
[00:09:59.20]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I—
[00:09:59.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And I was very surprised at her invitation, and grateful.
[00:10:08.66]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, maybe she felt you were left out.
[00:10:11.83]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to talk about that.
[00:10:15.95]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. What did—what did this environment look like, because I've only seen one little piece of you two sitting there.
[00:10:22.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There were objects along the second floor banister, perched up there or hanging down, and we had grouped dissimilar creatures, and one was there to greet you as you walked in. You know, almost foreboding—forbidding. And they were simply placed strategically throughout the atrium.
[00:11:06.03]
AVIS BERMAN: So they were also arranged very differently than they would be on a float?
[00:11:09.27]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We also used lots of crepe colored papers to hide the underpinnings of the pieces, and did—tried to do that in a rather attractive way. And not to change the overall feeling that these were pre-made Mardi Gras creatures.
[00:11:36.69]
AVIS BERMAN: So did you end up stealing the show?
[00:11:40.67]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's not for me to say.
[00:11:42.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, all right. Well, I will ask you, what was the critics' reaction to this?
[00:11:49.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The critics. It was well well-received by the critics, and by the museum people. Because I suppose—and I don't remember this—but I suppose we had to have their approval.
[00:12:05.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Just off on a tangent, but something we haven't covered. Certainly, Ted Wolff has been a champion of your work.
[00:12:12.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, he certainly has.
[00:12:14.13]
AVIS BERMAN: But when did you begin to start receiving responsible criticism for your work, or knowledgeable criticism?
[00:12:27.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I really am not sure. I never have received a great deal, at least I don't feel I have. I think it's been through catalogs that my galleries have been good enough to do on my work and call in, like this recent one, Peter Frank. And you. I don't know how you happened to get in on the scene. You know, I don't know how that happened. But wherever I've had exhibitions in various cities, I've had critical reviews. Sometimes pretty critical, but other times very glowing. I like it when it's neither one or the other, but that it is a truly felt—
[00:13:29.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Thoughtful.
[00:13:29.79]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Thoughtful, thought-filled, yes.
[00:13:35.39]
AVIS BERMAN: I just—which leads me to ask you, as terms of critics, or what people have said about you, what do you think have maybe been major misconceptions about your work?
[00:13:50.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We talked a little bit about this yesterday. I think because the work seems happy, colorful—now I think the paintings perhaps are more feminine than they ever were, which I don't believe really makes sense because I don't think art can be feminine or masculine, really. But there seems to be from the general public, and very often from critics, this idea that the work is frivolous. And that really gets my goat. [Laughs.]
[00:14:47.38]
AVIS BERMAN: I don't blame you. Are there any other sorts of things that are—
[00:14:51.59]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I think—yeah. I think often, people think their children can do it. You know, that's the old gag. I'd just like them to have their children try. And I'm sure a child is more likely to do it well than an adult who has been schooled in art.
[00:15:21.42]
AVIS BERMAN: But what—was the was the prop piece just taken down afterwards and put in its component parts? Did it go back to—
[00:15:28.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It went back to the lender, who was the source of the parade, you know? Really, the manufacturer.
[00:15:39.90]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Now next time, I want to talk about—I don't know if I'm exactly right or wrong to put it in the sculpture, but you can correct me. Were these works, the works on canvas with the styrofoam—I'm fascinated by those. I think they're wonderful, and I want to know how you became fascinated, or all of a sudden there was styrofoam. What happened?
[00:16:11.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: When I was doing the grid, I always thought about what materials I might use to grid on the canvas. And one day, a package arrived at the house and it didn't only have the little curled—
[00:16:35.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Like corn curls or—
[00:16:37.17]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, shrimp-like shapes. They were all different shapes, and the shapes themselves were fascinating. And they related so much to the ideograms I was using, so I just said, wouldn't it be great just to grid these on a canvas? So I did a little one and used enamel, and the enamel—but of course, the pieces were already glued to the canvas and gessoed many times to protect them from what I might use as paint over it. And it was a very successful formula. It was safe. And I loved using the enamel, which was a new experience for me. Also, working with such tiny shapes. But it got very old, very fast. I loved the results too, Avis, but I just couldn't sit there. It's not my nature to be that patient. And—
[00:17:52.08]
AVIS BERMAN: When you worked on things that small.
[00:17:54.07]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:17:54.90]
AVIS BERMAN: So you maybe did five or six, or something?
[00:17:58.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think I did about five or six sizable ones, and then I did some things called—I called them Pralines. We just took the little pieces, glued them together in sort of a lump, and flattened them out a little bit in the shape of a praline. And I called them Pralines, and I painted those the same way. I loved those. And I did one Mardi Gras float, which I think I've destroyed. It could get very glitzy, very easily.
[00:18:45.56]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Those styrofoam, I think that one—Why did you call that one the "Boogie Woogie?" Now you said, "With apologies to Mondrian," which I understood to be "Mondrian K?"
[00:18:58.92]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That was because I had probably done A, B, C, D, D, F, G, H, I, J, K.
[00:19:07.03]
AVIS BERMAN: I see.
[00:19:08.97]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Sometimes I'd do that. I didn't do that many flat pieces, but probably all of them together, I did a dozen.
[00:19:18.81]
AVIS BERMAN: So do you use that kind of lettering?
[00:19:21.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. For paintings, too.
[00:19:24.07]
AVIS BERMAN: You know, as opposed to 1, 2, 3, and 4?
[00:19:27.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:19:27.74]
AVIS BERMAN: Is there a reason?
[00:19:28.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I might have started a Circus series 87-3, -4, -5, -6, -7. But I don't want to get up to 89, [laughs] so I switched to a little change of title.
[00:19:46.95]
AVIS BERMAN: I see. I guess when you were doing those styrofoam pieces, what were you after in that? In the series?
[00:19:57.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You see, I still think there's nothing wrong with art being simply an aesthetic experience. I know how old hat that is, but that's the way my work is. That's the way I guess I want it to be.
[00:20:17.47]
AVIS BERMAN: No, there's nothing wrong with it. I just want to find out what you think about things, so that's the question—that's the way I have to couch the question.
[00:20:24.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't do them so that they will be enjoyable to someone else. I do them because I want to look at them, and I hope other people will too. And it's as simple as that.
[00:20:44.16]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, it seems to me—I mean, one thing I find interesting about the sculptures that I'm seeing—I see everyday utensils; I see cast-off pieces of wood; I see the styrofoam. Is there, to you, a real interest in the aesthetic of the cast-off, or the everyday material?
[00:21:04.06]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not particularly. I can't say that. I don't feel the styrofoam pieces—I think they're part of our civilization today. I don't even feel they're cast-off. I think they can be used as themselves, over and over again. You know, they're pretty substantial creatures. No, I'm not really very textual. I have been for short periods of time.
[00:21:40.21]
AVIS BERMAN: Because so much—you have made non-art materials an important part of the various pieces of sculpture.
[00:21:47.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I think it's pretty exciting to make non-art material into what you feel is art, and it's a it's a real challenge.
[00:22:03.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Then let's talk about the "Krewe of Poydras", because that's sort of—that evidently was a very either a turning point in which—
[00:22:12.51]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That was a pivotal point. I don't know whether this is on tape already or not, about it being a competition.
[00:22:21.68]
AVIS BERMAN: No, we haven't talked about it at all yet.
[00:22:23.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, oh. I and two other local artists were incidentally—one was the man—oh, it wasn't you. Excuse me. I think it was Betty Moody. But Bob Tannen was one of three artists asked to compete on this thing, and he had come into the gallery the other day when we were together, and I thought I'd introduced him to you. That would have been a coincidence.
[00:22:55.41]
But the local corporation here asked these three invited artists to compete by designing five flags to be atop very tall poles, the tallest being 45 feet. And I had absolutely no feeling about flags, and no ideas for them. But I did think how exciting it would be to put actual sculptures up there that would not tear, would not have to be replaced every six months.
[00:23:48.93]
And so I offered this maquette of the actual designed pieces that I wanted to put into effect. Of course, that made it a much more expensive proposition. But happily, the people involved went along with it. And I learned so much doing it. It was my first real piece of sculpture, because the painted wooden—well, the painted wooden pieces, the found pieces, came after the "Krewe of Poydras". So it was really the first structural—
[00:24:52.39]
AVIS BERMAN: Certainly the sculpture you made afterwards was very different than anything before.
[00:24:55.97]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Very, yes. So I had to learn from the bottom up. I had to find the proper workmen to do each stage of the game. And again, I was terribly fortunate in coming across people who could fulfill my request. I did do some of the painting, but most of it, I did not. I did do all of the designing, and followed it very closely. And I suppose the unveiling of those pieces was one of the high spots for me, in my life. I think it—just the very size of them, you know. And their projecting themselves into the community the way they did. It was very important to me.
[00:26:07.13]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you are—yes, you are leaving your mark there, more visibly.
[00:26:10.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. And I think it will be a very lasting memory.
[00:26:16.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, just to go back to some details. You, of course, turned out a sculpture, and presumably the two other artists submitted flag designs.
[00:26:27.32]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's right. No, actually, Bob Tannen put—I think it was a wrecked truck up on the roof, which was a startling idea, of course. He is full of startling ideas, and I'm crazy about some of them. But evidently, this—this was not what they were looking for.
[00:27:00.22]
AVIS BERMAN: Is that T-A-N-N—
[00:27:01.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: N-N-E-N.
[00:27:04.89]
AVIS BERMAN: Because I was going to ask you if the other artists had submitted flags, because that's what they thought, if they were allowed to go back and resubmit sculpture ideas?
[00:27:14.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no. No. They were—the main people involved were very pleased with the model, and there was no second go-round.
[00:27:27.87]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, had they told you that the flag—what they wanted the flags to represent?
[00:27:34.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, no. They couldn't. I think they expected ours to be abstract designs.
[00:27:42.96]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And so it was your idea to call—was this when you submitted this? Was this your title, the "Krewe of Poydras"?
[00:27:49.17]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It so happened that the wife of one of the corporate members named it. And I thought it was just as appropriate a name as we could have found. It's a puzzle to many out-of-town people, but they usually ask, "What does K-R-E-W-W-E mean?"
[00:28:16.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I would have asked it had I not picked it up within the last few days. [They laugh.] Yeah. Well, actually, is there in New Orleans an actual "Krewe of Poydras"?
[00:28:27.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No.
[00:28:28.76]
AVIS BERMAN: I mean, obviously it's a street name—
[00:28:30.27]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:28:31.37]
AVIS BERMAN: I guess the Krewes are more likely to be named after gods or goddesses, I think.
[00:28:36.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, it seems so.
[00:28:38.07]
AVIS BERMAN: From what little I know.
[00:28:42.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's right.
[00:28:47.29]
AVIS BERMAN: I actually—I think your titles are very, very interesting. Do you think up—I mean, do they—do they come to you? Do you think up most of the titles yourself?
[00:28:55.90]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I think so.
[00:28:57.59]
AVIS BERMAN: Do you like titling your work?
[00:28:59.68]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'm not one of these people who spends a great deal of time at it. If I find a word—and it usually is a word, but not always. But I'll use the dictionary a lot and find synonyms.
[00:29:24.04]
AVIS BERMAN: Now Whitney, in his catalog, wrote quite—well, one, in the catalog in general, but also about the "Krewe of Poydras" about it. He felt that they were male and female symbols.
[00:29:37.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think that's simply Whitney. Do you feel they are?
[00:29:42.07]
AVIS BERMAN: No. As a matter of fact, I was going to ask you. He seems to put an awful lot of emphasis on these things, the symbols being, one, male and female, but being extremely personal symbolism. And I did not think they were so personal, and I was just curious about it.
[00:29:58.87]
IDA KOHLMEYER: On the "Krewe of Poydras"?
[00:30:00.04]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah.
[00:30:02.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I agree with you. I think they are more frozen symbols. I mean, they're more ordinary. They're not as personal, I don't think, as symbols that I've been using since then. And that's one thing that I am sorry about. That instead of a little oval, I hadn't used or made up—thought up more individual and personal symbols.
[00:30:48.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Because they did not seem to be, to me, male or female, or enormously personal.
[00:30:54.63]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, no. If they appeal that way to someone, I think it's because there's a preponderance of thinking along those lines of that individual.
[00:31:05.71]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. But just in general, though, he—in the catalog, attributed—and it's also probably his ecclesiastical background—a lot of male-female ritualistic symbolism to the work that I don't see, and it doesn't mean that I'm right, or he's right or wrong, but I don't see that—I guess I don't find these symbols immensely personal. I mean, maybe I'm wrong.
[00:31:36.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The more recent ones?
[00:31:38.79]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, the ones that—the Clusters and the Krewe.
[00:31:43.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative]. How about the Synthesis series? The more recent ones.
[00:31:47.70]
AVIS BERMAN: I think I do, because also they seem to be bigger. And because they are freed from the grid, they assume more of an importance.
[00:31:56.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: A personality. Each one, yeah.
[00:31:58.83]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. But I guess when I mean personal, I don't—I guess what I should say is autobiographical. He seems to find them more autobiographical. That's—I didn't mean personal.
[00:32:09.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That you do?
[00:32:09.94]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah. How do you feel?
[00:32:12.68]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I can't speak on this. I really don't know. They are so from a—not from a mental source. They are subliminal. And I think if there is a personal statement being made in my work, one of them is the ever-changing shapes and symbols that I draw. And as I told you, it's not always—it's never—that's not true. Sometimes it is a symbol that I feel I just want to use, and I have used previously. But other times, it's because the painting needs a shape like that.
[00:33:14.07]
AVIS BERMAN: I think one of the good things that Peter Frank said in his recent catalog is how it's wrong to try to decipher these things.
[00:33:22.64]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes.
[00:33:22.82]
AVIS BERMAN: And I thought he had some very good ideas in that introduction.
[00:33:26.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I did, too.
[00:33:28.35]
AVIS BERMAN: Very much. Well, I want to talk about this, maybe. You did take, for a lot of these wooden sculptures—which I find fascinating—"Semiotic Tree," "Semiotic Bush." Now, tell me your interest in—let's talk about your interest in semiotics, or your annexation of the term.
[00:33:52.76]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Really, I can hardly define the word. It just seemed to be a nice change from what other syntax or other titles I had been using. I don't think the word, although the word "semiotics" is kind of syncopated very much like that bush. You know, you see the things just kind of moving in your vision. But that's just—
[00:34:31.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I was curious because that seemed to me that word plus a noun—tree—which would have seemed to define wooden pieces, or an everyday object in which that you would embellish or added on, like the chair.
[00:34:48.15]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:34:48.30]
AVIS BERMAN: But I was curious. It doesn't seem to be within this group. Actually, I think that this semiotic bush here is a fascinating sculpture, and I was just wondering how you might talk about how you made this, how you put it together, or what the process was.
[00:35:11.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, you put the—it's like when you make a dress, you have the underpinnings, which is—what do you call that thing that is the torso? We had to put the cage on it together first. And then, the circles to enclose these shapes that form the tree. And then, the other small pieces were simply glued. And—
[00:35:54.93]
AVIS BERMAN: When did you—did you glue all the pieces of wood on before you began painting?
[00:35:59.55]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh yes, absolutely.
[00:36:00.82]
AVIS BERMAN: So you don't paint it and then think, oh, I think I need to—in other words, you don't paint the cage or the armature or—
[00:36:06.84]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, you see, I have a drawing, so that I'm well aware of the activity that's going to go on.
[00:36:15.57]
AVIS BERMAN: So you make the—you make drawings for all your sculptures first?
[00:36:19.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. With the exception of those I put together very much the way you told me that Nancy Graves puts her metal work together.
[00:36:32.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Which ones would be those ones that you fabricate out of elements? Which—
[00:36:42.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There's nothing here. Incidentally, this is a styrofoam piece. Were you aware of that?
[00:36:50.13]
AVIS BERMAN: Is that a harlequin?
[00:36:51.22]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah. Let me see. There might be one here.
[00:37:04.38]
AVIS BERMAN: Yeah. This is the—
[00:37:07.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: This one—
[00:37:08.38]
AVIS BERMAN: Which is a "Semiotic Maze" from 1987. Yeah, I was just reading for the tape.
[00:37:17.85]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And that is—oh, I'm sorry.
[00:37:21.49]
AVIS BERMAN: No, that's okay. It's all right.
[00:37:25.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That I never have felt was quite as successful a way to do it, but it's—it's rather fun.
[00:37:37.87]
AVIS BERMAN: So I guess—so you don't make preparatory drawings for your paintings?
[00:37:44.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. No, I don't. As a matter of fact, I try very, very hard to have a rather blank mind when I start painting. And I start with, many times, with closed eyes and left-handed. It's the same. I go way back to the '50s. That's where I'm from. And recently, I've done something I've never done before.
[00:38:26.61]
With some of these paintings that have so many moving symbols, I've taken a portion of the painting and blown it up. Blown it up, that is, either with a Polaroid or just by drawing onto a sheet of paper the portion I'm interested in. And then blow that up into a large painting. Now, that's only a way to start a painting. I might think I'd like to see that enlarged; I'd like to see that very big. But when I start doing it, I lose it because it's a confinement. You know, to have that already worked out.
[00:39:24.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess I'm going to ask you, why is it not a confinement in sculpture to have the drawing?
[00:39:29.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I think sculpture is so confined. It is—it has blood and guts and flesh, and it's filled up. It's three-dimensional. It's different. And I think they're getting more and more away from my paintings, certainly the ones that are made out of metal.
[00:39:56.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Definitely. So are these color sketches that you make when you make these drawings?
[00:40:03.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, they are not. Because I think that would take away the response from the work, to me, if I already know I'm going to put a pink there and a green there and a black there.
[00:40:21.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. They seem they seem very freely brushed, and that's why I was just curious of how one plans this or not. But in other words, all of these little wooden elements are on there before you begin?
[00:40:35.24]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, and they all drawn and pretty visualized before I start putting color.
[00:40:44.74]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. I mean, now when you when you draw on—I guess we're still talking about Semiotic Bush, taking one of these little hammer shapes or squares. In other words, you may draw that and then you have that cut out of wood?
[00:40:56.50]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Right.
[00:40:57.09]
AVIS BERMAN: In other words, you're not looking for straight wooden pieces here?
[00:41:00.06]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. I use—I don't use balsa. It's much too soft. There are two local woods that I do use, and they are—I can't remember right now, but I will let you know.
[00:41:31.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. How—I guess, let's go back to the "Krewe of Poydras" and the sculpture that has followed. How do you feel—the sculpture, as you say, is getting away from your painting. But what—how do you feel that the sculpture has affected or influenced the painting?
[00:41:57.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think it's more vice versa. I think the painting has certainly brought forth the sculptures, and I think there is a close relationship in form, in juxtaposition of shapes, in color, every way. But, you know, there was a period when I did these furniture pieces using unpainted, commercially-bought bought furniture—tables and chairs and mirrors, and I made a hat rack. I used an existing hat rack, and that was a very successful piece. I thought that was fun. But that—I only worked that way for maybe a year, and then I began doing more sculptural pieces. That's not what you asked me, is it?
[00:43:03.28]
AVIS BERMAN: No. Well, it doesn't matter. That's where it led you. No, I had asked you how you felt if the sculpture had influenced the painting, and you had said vice versa. But I didn't quite see the relationship of the furniture pieces to—
[00:43:20.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: There wasn't very much relationship. But as you were so interested in the basis of the tree, the Semiotic Bush, the chairs and the tables and the various objects I bought to work with was in the under-structure.
[00:43:47.65]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, they were the precursors.
[00:43:49.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Which I find interesting.
[00:43:51.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. This was almost like those old-fashioned things hanging from the ceiling to hang your pots off of.
[00:43:56.33]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:43:56.44]
AVIS BERMAN: It has that shape to it, so it has the useful or the plain object, household object shape that is—
[00:44:05.08]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But it was rather perverse of me, was it not, to make all the chairs unsittable?
[00:44:13.42]
AVIS BERMAN: Well—but then, of course, then they would have become useful again.
[00:44:17.74]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Then they would have simply been decoration, decorated pieces.
[00:44:22.85]
AVIS BERMAN: No, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot people like—there were sculptors like Ned Smith who play on this, and then Scott Burton who always makes furniture, who looks on furniture as sculpture, I guess, or chairs.
[00:44:38.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: But that was not my intention, you know? It was—and it wasn't my intention to be perverse. It just made for a more exciting, interesting visual image.
[00:44:52.41]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I think that what we want is to talk about now is that—and I don't think it's been spoken about at all, so I'd like to get it on the record—is the competition, the aquarium sculpture.
[00:45:03.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yeah. Well, this was a very large competition, because there was competition for seven different commissions. The aquarium being, by far, the largest and the easiest one for me to visualize. And besides which, we were given many hints. This was open to the public, as it was, nationally.
[00:45:50.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Artists around the country?
[00:45:52.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, exactly. And we were told that there would be columns, and we were told the positioning of the columns, and we were told the number of the pieces that they wanted.
[00:46:10.08]
AVIS BERMAN: And the pieces—were you told the pieces should be on top of the columns?
[00:46:14.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:46:14.97]
AVIS BERMAN: So that was really very strict.
[00:46:17.45]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It was, but it was also wonderful to have those certain certainties. And we had some interesting problems, such as, you know, what materials to make the model out of, and how large, because it was a very large submission—twenty pieces. It took up the whole wall of the room. And we decided the logical thing to do was to use forms that were—had a relationship to the purpose of the building, which were aquatic creatures. So we began to study fish.
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4861_m]
[00:00:02.41]
AVIS BERMAN: [In progress]—talk about that later. Let's—are you ready to begin again?
[00:00:07.23]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:00:07.58]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. Right, we were talking about the aquarium competition.
[00:00:13.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Where was I?
[00:00:15.20]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, you were talking about—you began to think about the aquatic forms.
[00:00:19.26]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. And we corralled a lot of books that had reproductions of real fish, and sea characters, and anemones, and all that sort thing. And that was really nice, because nature, of course, is so wonderful. And I began doing drawings and abstracting these creatures. And then I bought the aluminum sheeting and began cutting. And we had to find the least expensive way to design these things, simply because had we designed them in three dimensions, we could never have afforded them, because the welding would have been—you can imagine twenty sculptures ranging from six-by-six feet to ten-by-eight-by-four. That's an awful lot of welding if you're going to make them three-dimensional.
[00:01:55.27]
AVIS BERMAN: So as opposed to welding, they would—
[00:01:57.22]
IDA KOHLMEYER: As opposed to being cut and twisted, or bent, or formed just out of the flat material. Then, we had the problem of whether or not they'd get blown away. And we knew we had—of course, an engineer was needed. And thank goodness, because of the nature of these things, so that air will be able to get in and around and through, we haven't had too much trouble with the engineer demanding certain changes.
[00:02:39.84]
AVIS BERMAN: But the engineer came in after you won, right? Or this wasn't before?
[00:02:44.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes. Yeah. He is shown each piece the way we want it. Then he has on two occasions out of ten, added certain things like a pole, or a nuts and bolts, to secure them against wind. And you know we do have hurricanes down here. But these are being put on so simply that should a hurricane be in the offing, they can be removed and stored, and all will be well. We simply have a cap on each of the columns, as you saw, and just four bolts through the sculptures onto the cap, which is then screwed into the aggregate column. And we're assured that that's safe.
[00:04:06.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, will they take them down for the entire stormy season?
[00:04:11.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, no, no. I wouldn't think so. And actually, the same situation applies to the ""Krewe of Poydras"," except that the screws are put in sideways.
[00:04:23.22]
AVIS BERMAN: Those look quite protective.
[00:04:24.95]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, they are, but—they are pretty protective. But still in all, I think, for safety's sake—not just for the sake of the sculpture, but the people—that they have to be removable.
[00:04:40.74]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, just out of curiosity, I mean, given human nature—I mean, when people are scurrying around, will they do that? Has the ""Krewe of Poydras"" ever been taken down?
[00:04:50.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. Thank heavens, it's never been needed. And it's been six years now. But these would be much easier to handle. The ""Krewe of Poydras"" is welded sculpture. And the new ones on the aquarium will have very little welding.
[00:05:11.90]
AVIS BERMAN: How many—to go back to the beginning, are you aware, or have any idea of how many different artists submitted proposals for the aquarium?
[00:05:21.41]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I have no idea.
[00:05:23.63]
AVIS BERMAN: Did they—often on big commissions like this, what they will do is have an exhibition of the various maquettes or various—the finalists or the submissions.
[00:05:33.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, there were committees after committee, because these—this commission and the other six that are going to exist in the park, which will be in front of the aquarium itself, are being paid for by a group of citizens. There wasn't enough money voted by the people for this. But fortunately, we do have a nucleus of people in New Orleans who feel that art is a necessary thing for the public. And they had committee after committee. They called in professional people, and they did it very thoroughly, so that they wouldn't be criticized. In the end, it was very democratic.
[00:06:32.20]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess, I didn't mean quite that. But sometimes, they have the shows. They'll take all the finalists, and they'll have the maquettes, and people can see what came in. And I was wondering if they had—I was curious about the other entries.
[00:06:45.61]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, they had all of them brought in to one place. All of the submissions, not just from this commission, but for the other six.
[00:06:57.63]
AVIS BERMAN: And they were on public display?
[00:06:59.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Not public. No, not public.
[00:07:04.54]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, how long did it take between—do you feel that they were—
[00:07:08.61]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It took two months to make the models. And we simply bought tubing for the pipe for the columns, and baby food cans cut for the top of the columns.
[00:07:26.54]
AVIS BERMAN: And how long did it take after the deadline to hear?
[00:07:30.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: We took two months just to make the model.
[00:07:33.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, but how long did it take them to notify you?
[00:07:37.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: After the work was submitted, it only took about ten days. The members of the committee went in individually to look, and then they met together. And made their decisions.
[00:07:55.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Was it blind-judged?
[00:07:57.05]
IDA KOHLMEYER: What do you mean blind-judged?
[00:07:59.30]
AVIS BERMAN: Was your name on it, or were all the artists submitted—did they have the names of all the artists on there or did they—were they—
[00:08:06.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, I remember seeing Keith Sonnier, and Lynda Benglis, and a local—oh, and many local artists. Yes, they—if it were a painting, for instance, for the interior of the building, there would be a signature on the painting. Yes, everything was—actually, I don't think mine was, because it was not really a very easy place to put a name. I don't know. But actually, those things get out. When people hear, you know, what are you doing? And what are you offering? And pretty soon, everybody knows that you're working on that.
[00:09:00.49]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, the other thing is, is that even though it's—whether you see the name or not, if the person has a style you could often—I mean, you would recognize [their work –Ed.].
[00:09:09.03]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, but these were so off my style, because I don't do representational sculptures.
[00:09:17.39]
AVIS BERMAN: That's true. Was that was that difficult for you to even—they are abstract scenes of nature, but to—
[00:09:25.66]
IDA KOHLMEYER: To abstract them?
[00:09:27.15]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, as a point of departure.
[00:09:28.28]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You know, we took a lot of my own symbols and started with them. And I drew them into creatures. That was a terrific thing to do. I mean, it made it much more personal.
[00:09:47.91]
AVIS BERMAN: That's interesting.
[00:09:49.57]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:09:49.84]
AVIS BERMAN: [Inaudible]. So I guess, what have been the biggest challenges to date in figuring out how to do this commission?
[00:10:04.70]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, how to do it and not how to pauperize myself in doing it. And people have come up to me and said, I think in that rather false, caring way, "[Gasps.] It's going to cost you a great deal of money to do this commission, isn't it?" And I simply say, "No, I'm going to make money on it. And when it's all done, I'll let you know how much I've made." You know that kind of simpering, caring attitude—
[00:10:44.67]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, they're trying to get some information out of you.
[00:10:50.58]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah, I think so. But it does amaze me, too, that this abundance of just material, of aluminum, plus everyone involved in the doing of them, that I do look forward to making some money. But what it's also going to do is be something for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to point to and say, "My grandma did that." And that really—it affects me very deeply.
[00:11:31.99]
AVIS BERMAN: I mean, it's a real public sculpture. And it's public—not just in a place, but it's going to be in a public building. And it's going to be near the river.
[00:11:40.56]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And I wanted it, as I told you, I think, to be very appealing to children, but also to interest adults. And I hope that's achieved. And, of course, I can't wait to see them up there. Ten are already completed in storage. Yes, of course, you know. You saw the slides.
[00:12:08.02]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. I saw the slides. Now, is there any other sculptor that you have taken inspiration from or found—you've turned to in working on this?
[00:12:23.54]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'm so glad you asked me. No. I don't know of anybody who's working exactly the way I am. I know of another sculptor who is working in cement and slapping paint on. And Reginato, of course, paints metal, but I think our pieces are very different. There's no one I know of who is working exactly in this manner, because I think what the painting did for me was give me a manner of painting to carry over. That's why I think I said that the painting has influenced the sculpture more than vice versa.
[00:13:20.40]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, now, I want to ask you something about just—first of all, this is about when you had gotten—in the more recent work, the critics have used—this was, I guess, in the early '80s—they used the phrase that you "smashed through the grid."
[00:13:39.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes, because the grid was a jail. It really got to be so confining that I had to do something different. And strangely enough, what I did related back to what I had done in the mid-'60s. There's a painting in the den from that period—not the one over the mantle, the one on this wall—which was shapes floating in space, not in as shallow space as the grid, but in very atmospheric space. I don't think that's any great discovery, but it was very important to me.
[00:14:33.83]
AVIS BERMAN: In other words, you were tired of—
[00:14:35.82]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. I wasn't getting the paydirt back.
[00:14:42.22]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I was curious if working on the sculpture had—I mean, while working on sculpture through this time and making things and—
[00:14:50.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Out into space itself?
[00:14:52.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:14:52.36]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I don't think so, Avis. I don't think that had anything to do with it.
[00:14:58.41]
AVIS BERMAN: So now, it seems to me that the picture—because the grid isn't there, the shapes and the signs seem to float more. They're swimming through an environment or—also, it seems to me that you're more interested in the field.
[00:15:12.93]
IDA KOHLMEYER: In the atmospheric space—yeah, definitely. But as I say, that harks back to something I did twenty years ago.
[00:15:24.30]
AVIS BERMAN: Very much so. They do seem more freely composed.
[00:15:28.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I think I'm sure of myself in a way, but I don't think it's been a negative kind of being sure. I'm willing to take more chances now, and to work with them and against them, and feel that—well, I don't know. But I just think that—I feel a little more authority now.
[00:16:17.99]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, what are some of the real chances you feel you've been taking?
[00:16:22.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, in color. And I think this [points to painting on living room wall –Ed.] is a chancy painting because it lacks color—or not lacks color, but it's so much less colorful. And I think the space is exciting. I'd like to see myself do more of these. They scare me a little bit because I don't know how that happened. You know, it's such a maverick.
[00:16:51.61]
AVIS BERMAN: Just out of curiosity, since we're talking through the tape, when was this painted?
[00:16:57.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: About four or five months ago.
[00:17:02.01]
AVIS BERMAN: Is there a title, or do you just call it a Synthesis?
[00:17:05.98]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I really don't know. But I could find out by taking it off the wall. And I think we can handle that.
[00:17:12.14]
AVIS BERMAN: I don't think that's necessary.
[00:17:13.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Okay.
[00:17:17.14]
AVIS BERMAN: Okay. And I guess I would ask you about the title of the Synthesis—what do you feel it's been synthesizing?
[00:17:23.20]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I think after giving up the grid, I think I synthesized the composition with the color, with the shapes, adding line and all the components that make up a painting, I think, were synthesized into a whole.
[00:17:50.43]
AVIS BERMAN: I just want to go back to—I asked you before. I didn't quite finish it. I asked you—
[00:17:58.30]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Tupelo is one of the woods. And go ahead.
[00:18:03.61]
AVIS BERMAN: What was the—
[00:18:04.59]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Tupelo, T-U-P-E-L-O.
[00:18:06.26]
AVIS BERMAN: Oh, it was—
[00:18:08.34]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Tupelo is the wood, the wood used in my wood sculptures.
[00:18:12.50]
AVIS BERMAN: The wood. Oh, yes.
[00:18:13.80]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And bass.
[00:18:16.84]
AVIS BERMAN: B-A-S-S?
[00:18:17.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: B-A-S-S. They're Southern woods.
[00:18:23.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. I had asked a little bit about drawing before, and you make preliminary studies for the sculpture.
[00:18:38.38]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes.
[00:18:40.00]
AVIS BERMAN: Not the paintings. Do you also just—do you like to—or do you just also just draw to draw? Or do you have sketchbooks or—
[00:18:48.18]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No. No, I draw, usually—well, that's not true. I draw just to draw a lot. One day, I'd like to do very large drawings—like, very large paintings. I've never done that. I'd like to do that. And recently, I've done a series of very small drawings and very small paintings. And I'm getting itchy to try to use them as the source of very large works.
[00:19:31.19]
AVIS BERMAN: Are you referring to, some would say, the small works on paper at your show [at Arthur Roger Gallery –Ed.]?
[00:19:34.86]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Uh-huh [affirmative].
[00:19:35.83]
AVIS BERMAN: I like those.
[00:19:41.14]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I'd like to see what would happen if I have a preconceived idea, if they will be dead, or if I can keep them alive, at least the same life that's in the small pieces.
[00:20:03.34]
AVIS BERMAN: Because I was trying to—I was a little puzzled about the role of drawing in your work. [Inaudible] explanation. Let me see. I think I'm pretty much finished now. Is there something that you feel we should talk about that we haven't covered? Anything else about—
[00:20:25.43]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I was thinking the only thing we really haven't covered in great detail is the individual metal pieces. But we've alluded to them.
[00:20:39.88]
AVIS BERMAN: Which individual metal pieces?
[00:20:41.77]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, like the ones that are here now, on view at Arthur's, "The Conversation Piece," which is the very colorful one to the left as you enter the gallery, and the one with the bow legs, the flower at the top.
[00:20:56.64]
AVIS BERMAN: Yes.
[00:21:01.35]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And the striped one with the tusk in the middle, the red tusk.
[00:21:06.55]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, which I thought was a ski.
[00:21:08.73]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:21:09.45]
AVIS BERMAN: Now, that one, you're very—let's start with that one.
[00:21:12.42]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think that rather sort of relates to this painting, simply because it has less color in it and on it. But there's also the linear quality that relates to this. I don't know. I feel that that might be something new that's coming into my work.
[00:21:32.75]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, because you drew my attention to it. So you're very—you seem to be most preoccupied with that black and white piece with the tusk in the middle.
[00:21:41.39]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:21:41.50]
AVIS BERMAN: What is it—what's it saying to you, or what's it—what are you thinking about when you see it? Or what's it setting off in your mind?
[00:21:52.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Just a very satisfying visual experience. That's all.
[00:22:02.27]
AVIS BERMAN: Have you put those—those are also kind of—those freestanding pieces in metal are a departure for you?
[00:22:11.62]
IDA KOHLMEYER: No, but I've only been doing this work for five or six years. After doing the ""Krewe of Poydras"," I didn't do another metal piece maybe for a year. And I've done very few. I could count them on my two hands. So they're pretty exciting to me still.
[00:22:32.82]
AVIS BERMAN: So they're still really, a lot of it, in the almost experimental phase.
[00:22:37.00]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I think so.
[00:22:37.85]
AVIS BERMAN: So you've still got a lot to work out on that.
[00:22:40.46]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yeah.
[00:22:42.52]
AVIS BERMAN: And excuse me for floundering a little bit, but just because I'm not that familiar with them, it's a little difficult for me to formulate good questions about them, which is why I'm asking you to lead me a little bit here.
[00:22:55.01]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh. Well, the largest piece, the tallest piece I've ever had made is a fourteen-foot piece. And I love the idea of monumental pieces. They are—you know, they can really command the space. And that's exciting, like a very large painting. I think, many times, painters are criticized for doing large paintings, thinking that just through size, they can command attention. I personally much prefer working large. It gives me space to do things. And I'm not a person who is very good at doing detail, so naturally, that appeals to me. But I hope to do more very large sculptures.
[00:24:00.28]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, how did you arrive at the scale, the size of those, starting small, or was there difficulty in figuring out how large they should be?
[00:24:08.99]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Well, I kept thinking, in my mind's eye, how would they best express themselves, and whether they need be fourteen feet, or would an eight-foot sculpture make the same impact? So that's a very important decision, I think—the size of the piece.
[00:24:42.03]
AVIS BERMAN: Because it seems to me that they're very much key to human scale.
[00:24:46.75]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, these that you see here are. But there is the flower box, which is seventeen feet. Oh, I forgot about that height. Seventeen feet. And a couple of others that are twelve, which you haven't seen. But another thing I like about the black and white striped one is its breadth, its width, really, because no other one has occupied that much space on earth yet.
[00:25:27.68]
AVIS BERMAN: Not counting the public commissions, but have you had—has there been trepidation on any of your dealers' part to take them just because it is so much harder to sell sculpture than painting?
[00:25:41.91]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I haven't had negative response to it. No. As a matter of fact, I've had demands on me to make more. But this is something you can't hurry. And of course, I'm dependent on the fabricator.
[00:26:05.36]
AVIS BERMAN: I'm intrigued by that, because it would seem to me it's kind of a canard. It's always easier to sell paintings than sculpture.
[00:26:18.16]
IDA KOHLMEYER: The wood pieces, which are usually small and so—well, they can be used by almost any household without any trouble. But these large ones, I've often had people say, would you make me a four-foot one? And I said, "No, I won't. I don't think you'd like it after you saw it."
[00:26:48.11]
AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, also, I guess you don't—in what you make, by the way, you don't make editions.
[00:26:53.44]
IDA KOHLMEYER: I have made editions—up to three. No more than three so far. I have made a three-foot sculpture. And you notice "The Holy Man" in the studio, which is ten feet? I did make that in three-foot, a series of three. And they worked wonderfully. Now, that surprises me. Why would a three-footer work as well as a ten-footer? Maybe it even may have worked better, but I like the ten-foot one better because it's very humanoid, don't you think?
[00:27:39.90]
AVIS BERMAN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[00:27:40.71]
IDA KOHLMEYER: And it's sort of—it's almost a Christ-like figure.
[00:27:47.25]
AVIS BERMAN: Is it difficult for you to have three of the same to—I don't know what your process—
[00:27:53.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: They're never the same. They're never identical.
[00:27:55.46]
AVIS BERMAN: Right.
[00:27:56.37]
IDA KOHLMEYER: It's just that the shape of the piece is the same.
[00:28:00.88]
AVIS BERMAN: Right, because you've got to paint it if you're painting it.
[00:28:03.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Oh, yes, of course. And then I like to change it.
[00:28:08.70]
AVIS BERMAN: That's what I meant. There never—it would seem that, the way you work, there cannot be editions just as there is—there are no—
[00:28:16.09]
IDA KOHLMEYER: That's exactly right.
[00:28:16.87]
AVIS BERMAN: —editions of a Nancy Graves sculpture, because each—she takes—it's a one-of-a-kind piece, what the method is.
[00:28:30.19]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Yes. Uh-huh [affirmative]. Well, I can't think of anything else. I think I'm drained, Avis. [Laughs.]
[00:28:36.37]
AVIS BERMAN: Well, I hope you feel you're covered.
[00:28:38.29]
IDA KOHLMEYER: Covered? I'm very well-covered.
[00:28:40.70]
AVIS BERMAN: Very good. Well, thank you so much for your patience over the last few tiring days.
[00:28:46.40]
IDA KOHLMEYER: You're very welcome.
[END OF TRACK AAA_kohlme89_4862_m]
[END OF INTERVIEW.]