Transcript
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Jane Piper on January 16 and 17, 1988. The interview took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was conducted by Barbara Ann Wolanin 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
[00:00:02.71]
BARBARA WOLANIN: American art. This is Barbara Wolanin interviewing Jane Piper for the Archives of American Art on January 16, 1988, in Philadelphia. Can you describe your most recent paintings that were shown at the Mangel Gallery?
[00:00:19.72]
JANE PIPER: Well, I think in that show, that there were a lot of different type feelings. Some of them are very moody and quiet. Other ones are—like the one in the room here is—looks very direct, and simple, and spontaneous. Actually, it had been done after I had worked—had unsuccessful paintings, which were the wrong shaped canvas, the wrong—many things went wrong with it. So by the time I got to this one, it was able to be very—it was much more spontaneous. On the whole, the show is a mix of feelings of two years' work.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:01:18.34]
BARBARA WOLANIN: I understand it was one of your most successful exhibitions. You sold a lot of work, didn't you, and got some good reviews?
[00:01:24.16]
JANE PIPER: I did, which was very nice, indeed. And it was a new gallery, and I think a lot of people were for me.
[00:01:31.16]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Was it that Mangel Gallery?
[00:01:32.36]
JANE PIPER: Mangel Gallery.
[00:01:33.62]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Okay. Just about a year ago, you had a retrospective exhibition, which I helped put together.
[00:01:40.29]
JANE PIPER: Yes.
[00:01:40.31]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And I was wondering, did that exhibition tell you anything about your own work or your own development? Did you see anything from that experience of doing it?
[00:01:48.86]
JANE PIPER: Well, doing it was terrific. It was like—I felt as if I'd died and looked down on myself. But it did clarify a lot of things, in the sense of finding clues in the early work to what—and relationships to the later work. So that there was—you could see your own progression or regression at times. But it clarified it to me to realize that there was a great deal that was in the beginning is still functioning in a different way now, but that I never seem to quite lose. In spite of enthusiasms for other work and other periods of time, I still felt I there was something that was there that in the beginning and the end.
[00:02:44.14]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Can you pin down any of what it is?
[00:02:46.46]
JANE PIPER: Well, I think the main thing was the feeling for color. And—
[00:02:54.61]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You also always—almost all your paintings have always had white in them, haven't they?
[00:02:58.55]
JANE PIPER: No.
[00:02:59.11]
BARBARA WOLANIN: No?
[00:02:59.57]
JANE PIPER: No. The early ones didn't.
[00:03:02.77]
BARBARA WOLANIN: None at all? Or just little touches?
[00:03:04.61]
JANE PIPER: Just a little bit here and there. And there was always something—I've been always trying to get the sense of space that I wanted to correspond in the painting, something I felt about space. And I don't think until I started using white, that was a great turning point. Because it allowed me to break through certain things, to use the negative and the space and to shift it to organize the white in different ways, positively and negatively. But I was able to get the space better that I wanted, through using white—a lot of it.
[00:03:45.15]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So it's really more for the space than light?
[00:03:48.03]
JANE PIPER: Yes. Yeah.
[00:03:48.55]
BARBARA WOLANIN: In a sense. Why do you feel that you've always been attracted to still life? That seems to be another continuity. Some of your early work is landscape. I've never seen a figure piece by you.
[00:04:01.31]
JANE PIPER: No, you probably never will. Landscape seemed—I wanted to be—work more in landscape. But particularly in the way I've lived, it didn't seem natural. And still life, you can organize it, you can change it, you can bring moods in. You can control it a great deal better, and it doesn't change on you, which, being that I'm very much involved with placement and locating place, it's helpful to not have things move on you. It's fine for sketches, but not for [painting –Ed.]
[00:04:43.66]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Just sort of briefly—we'll be talking about these things later—What do you think some of the other artists that have been most important for you, in terms of your work? And again, looking back over your whole career in terms of some of the consistencies.
[00:04:55.57]
JANE PIPER: Well, I think the most important artist for me was Arthur Carles. And all my feelings before that was looking for something and not knowing what it was, hoping to go to—going to the Academy, going to Earl Horter's. Studying in Paris, it didn't—nothing clicked until I met Carles. And he answered a lot of questions that I didn't know how to ask or didn't know what they were. And the excitement of finding out and learning things about paint, about color, about the structuring with color was so exciting that every day, you know, I'd just bounce out of bed. I couldn't wait to get up to get back to work.
[00:05:48.95]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And do the things that he showed you or talked to you about still come back to you now as you work?
[00:05:57.03]
JANE PIPER: I still remember them, and I still find new applications to them and ways that they make very good sense today. The interesting thing was the period I worked with him—and I think it's so different from certain art schools—is that I never was involved during that time. I didn't think of painting pictures. I thought of what I was learning or what I was finding out.
[00:06:24.64]
I was not—there was absolutely no pressure to finish a picture, to—the word "finish" was like "kill." So that it was always a—it was always a sense of excitement of what you were learning, what you were finding out, and finding out about yourself, finding out about the media, everything. It was much more philosophical. But it was not a verbalized philosophy, in the same sense that Hoffman was, who Carles got me to go to in the summer. I didn't have the feeling that—to me, Hoffman had to do with a group and a philosophy and a point of view. And Carles was a much more individual instruction-instructor.
[00:07:13.88]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So he's really—you still would feel was the major influence.
[00:07:16.59]
JANE PIPER: Oh, yes.
[00:07:16.94]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What about other artists?
[00:07:18.08]
JANE PIPER: Well, the other main artist was Matisse. And, you know, he's always—to come back to him is a joy. And a sense of celebration there, I think, when people—it's kind of embarrassing today to say your painting is about celebration. But I think—I think that's what I want to do, regardless of how sour I may feel.
[00:07:45.41]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Matisse had that quote about wanting people—a businessman to come home and sit down and look at his painting, and it would give him the kind of relaxation, the feeling of an easy chair you can sit in.
[00:07:56.15]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. the other the other quote of, "I work so hard to make it look easy."
[00:08:04.31]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Where did you grow up?
[00:08:05.73]
JANE PIPER: I grew up in Philadelphia. And I spent a winter in France when I was nine and when I was 21. And when I was nine, I kind of followed around this old Scotch lady who was dressed in Victorian clothes. At that point, all—it was the period of flappers. But she wore skirts down to her ankles and laced-up boots. And I just thought she was marvelous. And she'd go out painting every day and doing watercolors, and didn't speak to many people. And I managed to follow her around. And every once in a while she'd ask me up to her room. And she gave me a sable brush, which I kept 'til I was about 18 when it wore out. And we wrote to each other.
[00:09:01.16]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What was her name?
[00:09:02.19]
JANE PIPER: Ms. McCall. We never got any more familiar than that.
[00:09:05.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: [Laughs.] Where were you in France then? Were you in Paris?
[00:09:07.74]
JANE PIPER: I was in Cannes. And at the same year, I had been in Paris. And in the rainy day, I had wandered into a museum to get out of the rain. And on the walls, leaning against the walls, were the Monet waterlilies, and it was the Orangerie. It was fabulous. I don't know—you know, it was just—I don't think I've ever quite gotten over that. So that when I came back to this country, I wanted very much to go to art school. And I went on Saturday.
[00:09:45.86]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Who was your teacher?
[00:09:47.45]
JANE PIPER: Grace Gemberling. I was fortunate in that she was very creative and free. She gave you—she was very strict about us having good habits in painting, like clean brushes and things like that. But she also would suggest titles for paintings, like "Jealousy," or—I remember "Jealousy" the most.
[00:10:11.79]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What did you paint for "Jealousy?" Do you remember? [They laugh.]
[00:10:15.34]
JANE PIPER: I wish. I threw it away about 20 years ago. I wish I'd kept it. I think it had money. It had bars. Now why would it have had bars?
[00:10:28.00]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You were about ten or eleven years old?
[00:10:30.08]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. Yeah. And she really taught us some good habits. But I tried that on the college students just to get them to try painting "Jealousy." And they froze on me. Absolutely.
[00:10:46.28]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Probably easier when you're ten than twenty.
[00:10:47.38]
JANE PIPER: Yes, it's much easier.
[00:10:50.03]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Were there any other early art teachers that you remember?
[00:10:53.18]
JANE PIPER: No. I had a teacher that I didn't get along with particularly well. And then when I went to the Academy, I really didn't get along with them particularly well. Daniel Garber, who taught cast drawing. And you had to stay in cast drawing until he okayed you. And he came in once a week. And he tore up my drawing without saying what was the matter with it. And I just learned to not cry. Usually, the girls would cry and then he would pat them on the fanny and then eventually pass them. And I just was stuck with rage.
[00:11:34.57]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What was wrong with your cast drawing?
[00:11:36.46]
JANE PIPER: I didn't—it took me a long while to get over that experience of drawing. And I kept thinking I couldn't, you know, can't draw. And Carles said, "What do you mean you can't draw? Every time you make a decision, which is a color decision between one color than the next, it's a drawing decision," which is probably perfectly obvious, but stunned me with pleasure, because I had been working very much in areas of color which had to be involved with drawing.
[00:12:07.95]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you draw a lot now?
[00:12:11.55]
JANE PIPER: Yes, much more. I think in about 1953, I almost—I had gotten so far out, I felt beyond myself in abstract work that I wasn't clear where the space was going. And I overworked things. And I felt a need to go back and work from nature and from—in the sense of drawing. And I particularly work from—I did figure drawings at night. And I worked from reproductions of Cézanne's, mostly still lifes. And later, I taught a lot from that.
[00:12:52.78]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You still start your paintings with drawing?
[00:12:54.48]
JANE PIPER: I still start my paintings with drawing with charcoal.
[00:12:59.67]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did your parents encourage your interest in art?
[00:13:01.84]
JANE PIPER: Not at all. They discouraged it. I was told—my father was an obstetrician, and he said no woman could possibly be creative except having children, which was a tremendous incentive to me. And at moments, still is.
[00:13:17.77]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did they pay for you to go to the Academy, or is that something you had to do on your own? They at least supported you that far?
[00:13:23.47]
JANE PIPER: My father had died at that point. And my mother wanted me to go to the School of Industrial Art. So in a way, I was bucking the rules. But I would have been better off, I think, maybe at the School of Industrial Art, because they had very good people at that point—Brodovitch and others. I dropped out of the Academy.
[00:13:43.82]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So you were there at the school—
[00:13:44.39]
JANE PIPER: At the end of the year. I mean, I didn't go back.
[00:13:46.25]
BARBARA WOLANIN: One year. And then where did you go after that? Who did you study with after [inaudible]?
[00:13:51.38]
JANE PIPER: I studied with Earl Horter. And I was still kind of a dud. I knew I wanted something, but I didn't know what it was. And then from Horter, I went to Carles. And the whole thing changed totally. I was really—he was dealing with me as a person. It was a very different experience than anything else.
[00:14:18.85]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Now, Horter was very interested in Cubism, wasn't he?
[00:14:21.43]
JANE PIPER: Yes, he was.
[00:14:22.21]
BARBARA WOLANIN: He had a very important collection of Cubist paintings.
[00:14:23.40]
JANE PIPER: But he wasn't interested in color. And he did think I had terrible color. And I did. But that was what I was the most interested in.
[00:14:31.42]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What was your color like at the time?
[00:14:32.93]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. My color was muddy. He said it looked like sour milk.
[00:14:37.96]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But it was muddy. You weren't using—
[00:14:39.44]
JANE PIPER: It was kind of milky, milky stuff. Very hard edged.
[00:14:46.63]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And then Horter and Carles were friends, right?
[00:14:48.88]
JANE PIPER: Horter and Carles were very good friends. And he said, "You really ought to go to Carles."
[00:14:56.00]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Now, did you—
[00:14:56.48]
JANE PIPER: Carles' sense of color—in the meantime, I had gone to Barnes [Foundation –Ed.]. From Barnes, I was even more aware—I did not know what the experience meant to me to see all that, the early Matisses, and the color in that museum. I was in tears when I got up to the second floor. I didn't know what it was. I mean, I didn't know why I was so emotionally moved. And the emotionalness really came from the color the most.
[00:15:30.12]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you go by yourself when you went to Barnes for the first time?
[00:15:31.99]
JANE PIPER: No, I went to a class, which I managed to get thrown out of.
[00:15:36.66]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Why?
[00:15:38.43]
JANE PIPER: I was—I couldn't go to one class, and then I returned when I shouldn't have been there. And then I got a threatening letter the next day for housebreaking.
[00:15:50.55]
BARBARA WOLANIN: I didn't realize you were actually in a class there. So that's when you saw the collection?
[00:15:53.50]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. That's the only way you could.
[00:15:57.21]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Because I think Carles did take students a bit earlier, before that.
[00:16:00.72]
JANE PIPER: Before, yeah.
[00:16:04.35]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you still go back to the Barnes?
[00:16:05.88]
JANE PIPER: Oh, I can go back. I take my classes. I took for years my classes back, and they let me—let them draw in this place. It was a different world there now. But the collection is still marvelous. And I like to go back at least once a year, if not more.
[00:16:25.71]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When you were—then you went from Horter to Carles. Where did you study with Carles? Where was this class?
[00:16:31.56]
JANE PIPER: On Chestnut Street. It was in the old Love Building. It was a fifth floor walk-up—or sixth floor, I guess. Had no heat. We had a potbellied stove. A great north light. And strangely enough, Carles didn't know how to—didn't set up, the setups weren't very good. He'd kind of bring in flowers and plunk them down in a vase.
And the one experience, he ignored me totally, until out of wild frustration—he had a harlequin jacket and a pumpkin on it. And the more I painted the pumpkin orange, the flatter it was, and the squares and the pumpkin just got flat. And in a rage of frustration, I put a big blue spot on it. And it all of a sudden gave it form. And then he started to talk to me. But before that, I guess he didn't think it was anything to say. It was so gloomy.
[00:17:44.94]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How many times did you go before that? Before [inaudible]?
[00:17:47.56]
JANE PIPER: I don't know. I went many, many times and he wasn't there. And I would wait for him all day. Unfortunately, I think that year he must have been drinking a lot.
[00:17:59.39]
BARBARA WOLANIN: That was, what, I think '39?
[00:18:01.35]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. I think so.
[00:18:03.44]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What had—so he had a still life usually set up. Did you have models?
[00:18:07.58]
JANE PIPER: He had models. We had some beautiful models. I have no idea where my paintings of that went. But again, I don't think we really thought of finishing the pictures. I mean, you know, the excitement was not about finishing the picture ever.
[00:18:37.22]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How many students were there? Do you remember any of the other people in the class?
[00:18:41.72]
JANE PIPER: Well, there was my friend who I had gone to the Academy with, Moy Downes, Moy Glidden now. And there was Maxine Patman. There were a lot of people that came to his class that didn't pay, and a lot of people at night that I guess—mixed. Both classes were mixed, with people who paid and people who didn't pay. And it was the height of the Depression.
[00:19:20.06]
BARBARA WOLANIN: He probably really needed the money, but he just—
[00:19:21.68]
JANE PIPER: He needed the money, but he also wanted the interesting people, which made a great deal of difference in the class. Of course, I much preferred the people that didn't pay.
[00:19:33.38]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So sometimes the class would just operate without him, and then he would come in—
[00:19:37.49]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, often he wasn't there, and Morris Blackburn would come in and set things up and monitor the class.
[00:19:49.44]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How about some of the other specific people? Can you remember any others?
[00:19:53.37]
JANE PIPER: There was an architect at night class and then there was a man who was a commander in the Navy, in the Submarine Corps, and he was kind of a fascinating guy. But on the whole, I don't remember that much.
[00:20:13.43]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How was Carles different from other teachers? You've talked about that a little bit.
[00:20:17.45]
JANE PIPER: Well, I was thinking of Hoffman as being tremendously inspiring to a whole generation, and very influential. But to me, Carles was so much more personally individual, and seemed much deeper. And Hoffman was a great admirer of Carles's paintings. I mean, Carles was trying to break barriers in painting at that point that nobody had gotten near.
[00:20:51.55]
And I think it was a tremendous stress on him. But he had so few people to talk to so that, at the end of the time, in a way, he was left with—I was in a fortunate position of being there to hear what was worrying him, what he was thinking about. And that's why I think many things that I still come back to or have flashed through my mind is with a new insight from way back then.
[00:21:25.38]
BARBARA WOLANIN: That's an interesting idea. If you had met him ten years earlier, he might have been in a different place in his life and—
[00:21:30.37]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. Right.
[00:21:30.78]
BARBARA WOLANIN: —wouldn't have given you as much as he did.
[00:21:32.55]
JANE PIPER: No, he was really struggling over the problems of constructing with color—the mood, the feeling, the organization of the painting, but with color—and as well as very involved. He would read to me Einstein. And when he was reading it, of course, I thought I understood it. When I tried to read it, it was a different thing, but he would make the connections involved with what he was doing—trying to do in his own work.
[00:22:05.02]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you remember any of the paintings he was working on then?
[00:22:07.34]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I do. There was one that's in the Academy now that was owned by Joseph Wood, and the last big blue abstraction.
[00:22:18.90]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So at that point, really, is when he was leading into Abstract Expressionism and working—
[00:22:23.29]
JANE PIPER: Right.
[00:22:23.42]
BARBARA WOLANIN: —getting away from the subject completely.
[00:22:25.10]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, absolutely, there was no subject, except I think he started from subject.
[00:22:30.73]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did he ever draw or paint with the class when you were there?
[00:22:34.23]
JANE PIPER: No. And never touched your work. Totally different from Hofmann.
[00:22:38.14]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Hofmann painted on yours?
[00:22:40.37]
JANE PIPER: No, he didn't touch my paintings, but he looked disgustedly at my drawings. And he worked on everybody's drawings. But Carles wouldn't touch your work, and didn't want us to see his work.
[00:22:57.49]
BARBARA WOLANIN: I understand that Carles had a fall, and that you were the person that found him?
[00:23:04.45]
JANE PIPER: Yes, he fell over. He'd been drinking very heavily before that time, and he fell over the banister. And unfortunately, at the hospital, where the police took him, they said, "Oh, he's just drunk." And I said, "No, he's not just drunk. He wouldn't have fallen over the banister." And they didn't admit him for two days. And by that time, his paralysis was pretty bad. And he never did regain his abilities to walk and talk.
[00:23:43.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You still stayed in touch with him, though, after that, didn't you?
[00:23:47.03]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, I saw him all the time.
[00:23:50.15]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And he was exhibiting work, or at least people were—
[00:23:54.32]
JANE PIPER: He wanted at that point to have—his work was supposed to be shown at Princeton, and he wanted Einstein to see it. And the problem was that nobody would accept the student's paper, and his family wouldn't sign the paper and be responsible. And none of his friends would sign the paper to be responsible, so that he never had the show.
[00:24:22.53]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But it was close to actually happening.
[00:24:24.12]
JANE PIPER: It was very close—a date and everything. And it was awful. I mean, I did my best to make people feel guilty. It didn't do any good at all. But years later, I discovered that Einstein had absolutely no sense about painting, and was only interested in music. [They laugh.]
[00:24:48.27]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When did you first exhibit your own work? Do you remember that?
[00:24:51.91]
JANE PIPER: When I was at Carles's, I had a show, oh, I guess, 1953, at Carlen Gallery.
[00:25:06.56]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And did Carles have anything to do with helping you get that?
[00:25:09.17]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I think he must have. I don't think I would have had a show there unless he had recommended me.
[00:25:14.14]
BARBARA WOLANIN: I've got 1943. Is that right?
[00:25:15.59]
JANE PIPER: I meant [1943 –Ed.]. Yeah, '53 is after the war. This was—well, Carles fell three days after Pearl Harbor.
[00:25:30.65]
BARBARA WOLANIN: All right, that was December of '41.
[00:25:33.52]
JANE PIPER: I think this must have been in November. I'm not sure at all of these dates.
[00:25:41.67]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Okay. I've got '43—we have on the chronology, but I might have to change it. What kinds of things did you have in the show? Do you remember your paintings?
[00:25:49.12]
JANE PIPER: Yes, they were, again, mostly still lifes and semi-abstract.
[00:25:54.61]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Intense, rich colors?
[00:25:59.64]
JANE PIPER: Strong colors.
[00:26:00.55]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Strong.
[00:26:03.12]
JANE PIPER: I'm not clear—not really clear at that point. I don't know. I mean, when I think of it, I don't think of it as a very outstanding show for a young painter. But it was advanced, I should say.
[00:26:22.24]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you get any reviews?
[00:26:24.46]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I did. I got some reviews in the New York magazines that was very pro the show, which was nice.
[00:26:35.29]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And that was in Philadelphia, right, the Carlin Gallery?
[00:26:38.23]
JANE PIPER: It was the Carlen Gallery. And it was reviewed in Art Digest, I guess.
[00:26:44.23]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you show in New York in the '40s?
[00:26:46.27]
JANE PIPER: I didn't show in New York 'til after the war, when my husband was going to Columbia and we were living in Harlem. And that, I guess, was a more—that was a difficult—well, it was a difficult time to paint, with—to be able to get back to painting—with the child and with the husband and not knowing how to cook, and a few other things.
[00:27:19.68]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did Carles ever meet your husband? [E. Digby Baltzell –Ed.]
[00:27:21.96]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:27:28.83]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Then you came back—after you were in New York, and he finished his degree—then you came back to Philadelphia?
[00:27:34.63]
JANE PIPER: We came back to Philadelphia, and I had another child. And we lived in the suburbs. And it was a very bleak period, really, for me. It was very hard. I only knew one person that painted, and people would come in the house and look at the floor rather than the walls. And I felt very alienated from the whole situation.
[00:27:58.60]
And fortunately, I got a job through Mercedes [Matter –Ed.] at the Philadelphia College of Art. And I would also—through Carles's daughter, Mercedes Matter, would go to New York and go to the Club and the Cedar Bar and see painters that were doing such exciting work that it was a terrific help. And it really was a great influence and a sense of hope, I think, that so much was going on.
[00:28:35.22]
BARBARA WOLANIN: This was in the '50s—early '50s?
[00:28:37.93]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:28:38.16]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So you would go and what, meet her in New York, and then she would take you—
[00:28:40.29]
JANE PIPER: I would go and meet her, and I'd spend the night and stay out all night.
[00:28:45.51]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Who were some of the artists that you met?
[00:28:48.12]
JANE PIPER: Well, mainly de Kooning, and Guston, and Kline, who later came and taught here. And de Kooning came and spoke at the museum here—which he loathed speaking—and Harold Rosenberg.
[00:29:04.02]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you meet Jackson Pollock?
[00:29:05.53]
JANE PIPER: I didn't meet Jackson Pollock, nor Robert Motherwell. Pollock, I think—I don't know whether he had died at that point.
[00:29:15.09]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Yes. So he died in 1946, that's right. So he wasn't there. [Pollock died in 1956 –Ed.]
[00:29:17.13]
JANE PIPER: I think he died.
[00:29:18.51]
BARBARA WOLANIN: That's right.
[00:29:19.26]
JANE PIPER: And I guess I knew Kline the most.
[00:29:24.30]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And did you—
[00:29:25.02]
JANE PIPER: But the work I admired the most was Guston.
[00:29:27.81]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did your own work show any—
[00:29:29.70]
JANE PIPER: My own work showed a lot of influences of Guston. And I think that's when eventually I felt that I had gotten lost.
[00:29:42.24]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Okay, we're going to turn—
[END OF TRACK AAA_piper88_6203_m]
[00:00:03.55]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you find it difficult to be a painter while you were raising your two daughters?
[00:00:09.10]
JANE PIPER: Oh, I think it's very difficult. I don't think there's any way around it not being difficult. One child used to wet her pants when I went into the studio, and the other child found a can of white paint and painted it out.
[00:00:25.66]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How old was she then?
[00:00:27.34]
JANE PIPER: I guess she was—the one was about three or four. And the other one was about five or six or seven. So they found their own way of objecting.
[00:00:37.66]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you take classes then, or were you painting just on your own?
[00:00:41.39]
JANE PIPER: No, no, I was painting on my own. Eventually, I started teaching at the museum. And then, at last, I got a job teaching through Mercedes Matter at the Philadelphia College of Art. And that was a great help because it allowed me to get out of suburbia and see other painters, which is what I did need.
[00:01:04.22]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you have any other painter friends or colleagues in that period?
[00:01:08.43]
JANE PIPER: I only had one friend that lived anywhere near me, Quita Brodhead. She'd been a student of Carles. Otherwise, it was very isolating in that kind of situation.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:01:23.57]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you think that it's any easier for a woman to be a painter today than it was in the '50s for you?
[00:01:30.23]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I do. I think it's much easier. And I think people accept it. Women have other jobs aside from just running a house. I think in every way it's easier for women today.
[00:01:45.75]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When you were teaching at the Philadelphia College of Art—that was from 1956 until very recently. What kinds of classes did you usually teach?
[00:01:56.97]
JANE PIPER: Mostly, I taught just painting, which would consist of a figure, still life, and landscape and sketching in the spring and fall.
[00:02:07.47]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So it was just a painting class.
[00:02:08.93]
JANE PIPER: It was a painting class. And every once in a while somebody would decide to push me into a figure drawing class. But I really did much better in just a painting class. And I think they accepted that at the end.
[00:02:24.07]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Was it a beginning class or did you teach different levels?
[00:02:26.05]
JANE PIPER: No, it was never—it went from sophomore to senior.
[00:02:30.93]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And how many students did you usually have in a class?
[00:02:34.09]
JANE PIPER: About 15 to 20—25 at the most.
[00:02:39.51]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How would you describe yourself as a teacher? Did you have any methods or ways of starting a class? [They laugh.]
[00:02:46.65]
JANE PIPER: I guess I had some methods. I mean, I didn't think I did, but I guess I did have methods. I definitely stressed color in the class. And in the '60s and '70s when people would come into class and say, "Is this a structured class?" I did lose a lot of students. I said, "It certainly is a structured class." And I did give homework of sketches with oil pastels to try to get the students interested in color and use the pastels a lot for sketching.
[00:03:23.92]
BARBARA WOLANIN: They really only came out—
[00:03:25.77]
JANE PIPER: They didn't come out until after the war.
[00:03:27.66]
BARBARA WOLANIN: —back then, didn't they?
[00:03:28.06]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:03:29.37]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So they would do, just do little sketches for homework assignments and then come back and paint them.
[00:03:33.99]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. Then come back and not paint it necessarily, but just keep a notebook of these sketches that would run through the year and try something, experiment with something with it.
[00:03:46.15]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Were they all working on one problem or one still life?
[00:03:49.13]
JANE PIPER: No, everyone—I think the main thing is, I did take up very much from Carles is that I am not a good speaker. And I did not talk to the class as a whole at all. And I talked to each person. And so that each person's problem would be different.
[00:04:04.78]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you see a change in the type of students over the decades you were teaching there?
[00:04:11.08]
JANE PIPER: Oh. [Laughs.] Very much. They would change all the time. And the '60s were just—I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what to do when the students would come in and sit on the floor and laugh. I didn't know that they were on drugs. I didn't know they were high on marijuana. I mean, I didn't know what had happened. But the students—some years they would be very good classes. And you can't tell.
[00:04:39.01]
BARBARA WOLANIN: It's kind of a chemistry, isn't there, to each class?
[00:04:40.94]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, I had very good Asian students at the end, towards the end.
[00:04:45.13]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Were there any special students that you've kept in touch with, or that you've—
[00:04:48.19]
JANE PIPER: Yes. I've kept in touch with a student who, when I first saw him, immediately had this sense of space that he was involved with and still is, Brad Thorstensen. And another student was Vietnamese. And I didn't understand what he was saying. I don't know whether he understood what I was saying. But he became an awfully good painter when it was mainly just pointing out pictures to him. And he got a scholarship to the New York studio school and is doing very well there now.
[00:05:26.57]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you enjoy teaching?
[00:05:28.76]
JANE PIPER: I did enjoy it very much, but I was always—I was always anxious about feeling ill at ease at speaking in front of a group and thinking I should and not doing it.
[00:05:46.21]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you usually—how often did you teach? It was, like, several times a week when you had a class?
[00:05:52.86]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, two or three times a week.
[00:05:56.77]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Then that period, then, were you still living out in Radnor, was that where you were living?
[00:06:00.95]
JANE PIPER: Yes. Yeah.
[00:06:01.75]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And then you later moved into the city.
[00:06:03.68]
JANE PIPER: Then I moved into the city. And that was very easy.
[00:06:06.79]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did that have any effect on your painting, do you think, moving?
[00:06:09.55]
JANE PIPER: Moving, yes, I do. I think the still lifes lost the sense of landscape, which bothered me. But there wasn't anything I could do about it because I live in the city. And just unconsciously, I think the space became much more interior space than it had been when we lived in the country.
[00:06:32.23]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Where's your studio now?
[00:06:34.15]
JANE PIPER: Well, it's at 3rd and Washington Avenue, which is in a very bad neighborhood in front, beside two projects. But I have very good space. And I have a small garden, and students that live above me. So that's excellent.
[00:06:52.98]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did you ever paint in your house at home?
[00:06:56.85]
JANE PIPER: I did, but my production went up—doubled after I got out of the house, which is, I think, a housewife problem.
[00:07:08.63]
BARBARA WOLANIN: [Laughs.] Are there any of the last few years—any artists, any of the major artists working, that you've particularly responded to?
[00:07:16.14]
JANE PIPER: Well, I think the person I admire, whose work I admire the most is Richard Diebenkorn. And it hasn't affected what I do. But I wish it did. He's involved with space in a way that I can relate to very much. And many of the people that are working today, I don't have that feeling.
[00:07:43.45]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Are there any artists that are representational or so forth whose work you like? You tend to be more responsive to abstract artists.
[00:07:54.12]
JANE PIPER: I think I'm more responsive to the struggle between abstract and representational the most. I think of a friend of mine, Larry Day, who was abstract and is now representational, but he's involved with space. He's involved with alienation in his work. I think about his work a lot. But on the whole, I don't really know. I'm not—
[00:08:30.39]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But during the period of Pop art, how did you feel about that then?
[00:08:36.90]
JANE PIPER: Ugh. [Laughs.] I thought it was too bad. It might have been amusing, but the literary had taken over. And I think the conceptual in art has a way of going way too much in that direction. I mean, there's always concept and perception. But I think what we're living through is a very heavy period of conception. Illustration ideas.
[00:09:04.38]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Does that apply, even, to some of the younger artists now that are painting abstractly and exhibiting their work?
[00:09:09.78]
JANE PIPER: No, I don't think it applies to them.
[00:09:13.92]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Do you feel that living in Philadelphia and staying in Philadelphia affected your career, your work as an artist?
[00:09:25.95]
JANE PIPER: It's very hard to not feel that if I lived in New York, I might have been able—I might have exhibited in New York more often. But I don't think that's the point. I think that living in Philadelphia, Philadelphia attracts a certain kind of painter. And they're more apt to be loners and not fit in a group.
[00:09:54.53]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Have you seen other people, as well as yourself, that would apply to?
[00:09:58.28]
JANE PIPER: Yes. I would certainly think it would apply to Larry Day.
[00:10:01.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Possibly even to Carles, as well, right?
[00:10:03.92]
JANE PIPER: Yes, very much Carles, who was very much against cooperating with a group.
[00:10:11.15]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You've had several shows in New York, haven't you?
[00:10:13.58]
JANE PIPER: Yes.
[00:10:14.48]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And but mostly, too—mostly in Philadelphia. You were with the Gross-McCleaf gallery for quite a while, right? Now you're with the Mangel Gallery.
[00:10:25.16]
JANE PIPER: Yes.
[00:10:25.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And you've actually exhibited very regularly, I would say, you had the opportunity to in Philadelphia.
[00:10:29.96]
JANE PIPER: About every two years, which is ideal.
[00:10:34.19]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When you're painting, how do you usually start to work? You go in your studio and then—
[00:10:39.50]
JANE PIPER: I really spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a setup that connects with how I'm feeling at this point. And I go to a lot of struggle with that. I went through a period of painting nothing but mirrors. So that gave me much more space. The still life would be on a round mirror. And then a square mirror would be behind it so that it gave you a great deal of spatial changes, which I liked and why I wanted to do it. When I start, I start doing sketches sometime, small sketches to get a feeling of locating things.
[00:11:21.71]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You mean oil pastel?
[00:11:22.89]
JANE PIPER: Oil pastel—and then oil pastel, and then charcoal on canvas. And then the painting starts off relatively representationally. And the longer I work on it, the more abstract it gets to make it clearer to the feeling I want to get.
[00:11:44.61]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So the particular objects and things that you're using are an indicat—
[00:11:48.30]
JANE PIPER: Are related to a feeling.
[00:11:51.10]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So that's part of it when you actually set up the piece.
[00:11:53.54]
JANE PIPER: Yeah, it is. I usually pick compost, which is an uplifting form, and flowers and forms that tend to lift, so to maybe symbolize a celebration. I don't know.
[00:12:14.14]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You usually have some kind of flowers.
[00:12:16.89]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. But that, again, is spatial, that even when the flower disappears in the painting, it will have affected the space sufficiently to make a difference. But just that having been there.
[00:12:30.69]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Now, when you set things up, they're in sunlight, usually?
[00:12:34.98]
JANE PIPER: No, artificial light.
[00:12:35.94]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Artificial light. And does the light usually stay the same as you're working?
[00:12:40.57]
JANE PIPER: Actually, I have worked mainly in the south light and the light does change. And I've just moved around the other way.
[00:12:52.06]
BARBARA WOLANIN: For a while, weren't you working in acrylics, and now you've gone back to oil? Is that—
[00:12:56.53]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I worked in acrylics because I reworked paintings. And I got them so complicated. And they kept peeling and chipping. And I went back. I went to acrylics. And I felt at the end of that time, I learned I was better able to handle the whites. So I didn't have to paint them out quite so much. And they don't peel and chip anymore. And I also wipe the canvas so that it doesn't build up. When I want to get rid of something, I wipe it out.
[00:13:28.84]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Rather than painting on top.
[00:13:30.08]
JANE PIPER: Painting on top of it, yeah.
[00:13:33.61]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Are there differences in the color that you can get with a white the type of color?
[00:13:38.35]
JANE PIPER: Yes. The trouble—what I found very difficult with acrylic was that when it dried, you would have a color relationship one day and then you came back the next day and it was totally gone, because the colors dry much darker. And even though they both dry darker, the relationship doesn't hold.
[00:13:59.11]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you tend to work, would you say, fairly quickly? Do you get an idea and then finish it right away?
[00:14:05.75]
JANE PIPER: No, I tend to work slowly. And unfortunately, keep adding and being ambivalent and putting something else in it and then having to clarify the whole thing at the end, which sometimes I can do it. A lot of times I can't. I destroy the canvas.
[00:14:22.63]
BARBARA WOLANIN: How many paintings, I mean, is there any percentage of ones you think don't work that you don't keep?
[00:14:29.72]
JANE PIPER: I would say about a third.
[00:14:32.43]
BARBARA WOLANIN: A third—that's a lot.
[00:14:33.65]
JANE PIPER: It's a lot.
[00:14:34.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: And you've also, I think, been known for even changing things after they've been published, I believe, right?
[00:14:39.69]
JANE PIPER: Yes, I'm afraid.
[Telephone rings.] [Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:14:43.04]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you think that feeling about not wanting to finish paintings, does that go back to Carles at all, do you think, in the way that he taught you to see the painting as a process going on?
[00:14:53.54]
JANE PIPER: It may, very easily. So I can see, when you say that. His idea was that—I think I picked it up very strongly—was that when you get a feeling of going in another direction, then the picture is already going with it, even though it may be destructive of what you started with. And I don't—I never have any sense that what I start with will have anything to do with what I end up with. It does, but I don't mean it to. I have no intention of painting a preconceived picture.
[00:15:38.01]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And I think that's something that was true of Carles, as well.
[00:15:40.89]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:15:41.16]
BARBARA WOLANIN: People said that he painted to see what the painting would look like. He didn't know before it started.
[00:15:45.36]
JANE PIPER: No, you don't know.
[00:15:46.69]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you have any period in your work that sort of is a favorite of yours, the time that you felt the best about what you were doing?
[00:15:54.05]
JANE PIPER: No. I'm anxious all the time. And something that's past, it's kind of surprising that it was there. But no, I don't.
[00:16:05.19]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So you're always involved with what you're doing right now. How much does your environment, like where you've been living or what your studio setup is—does that affect your work very much, do you think?
[00:16:17.97]
JANE PIPER: I can't really tell. I know that when we lived in—We lived in Spain for a year. And I had the perfect situation with a separate studio and maids. And I couldn't do anything. I destroyed most of the paintings I did. The drawings were the only thing I was able to do.
[00:16:43.77]
I think painters travel very badly. And it was very hard for me to adjust to a new place, even though it was idyllic in other ways. Where I am now is not the most idyllic place, but it certainly is for me. And when I went to the Virgin Islands, there was something that triggered in me very much a response of, almost I'd been there before, which may have been from being in the South of France, I don't know.
But it was the palm trees, the whole changing, shifting, light and space that I think people think my work is much more influenced by Cubism. And I think that comes much more from the seeing the light and shifting all the all day long in the West Indies, which it does. And the cloud formation forms and then changes and moves. And in the same way, I like to paint looking at the south light on the still life because it is shifting.
[00:17:57.43]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And you use, a lot of times, a lot of sort of palmy kinds of plants.
[00:18:01.58]
JANE PIPER: I use plants that tend to see through the space, see through the form.
[00:18:07.28]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So probably, that experience maybe was more lasting for you than later travels that you've done.
[00:18:11.64]
JANE PIPER: It was much more lasting.
[00:18:17.10]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Have you ever been a person who participated in art groups at all?
[00:18:21.49]
JANE PIPER: No.
[00:18:22.27]
BARBARA WOLANIN: No.
[00:18:23.58]
JANE PIPER: Very unsuccessful. No, I don't think I'm a joiner in any way. And there was one group that I did feel was particularly interesting a long time ago that was made up of painters and architects and a composer, George Rochberg, and the architect Louis Kahn, and a biochemist. And that was very exciting. And nobody took over. It was like, we met once a month. And it may have been once every two months. And people just talked and brought up ideas that they were worrying about. And you made your own connection. And that was exciting.
[00:19:09.43]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So you kind of presented what you were working on or what you were thinking of then.
[00:19:13.08]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. Different people would. And that was the only one that seemed to me to work. Otherwise, it's usually somebody dominated, taking a hold of it and running with it.
[00:19:24.87]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So that's been even true lately. When you were teaching, you weren't that closely involved with the faculty meetings and that type of thing because you never—
[00:19:31.83]
JANE PIPER: No. No, the biggest bore in the world.
[00:19:35.68]
BARBARA WOLANIN: What kinds of writers or people in other fields interest you particularly? Do you have any favorite?
[00:19:44.22]
JANE PIPER: Well, I'm particularly fond of Wallace Stevens. But I think most painters are, because he's such a—his poetry is so much involved with the visual. I like the films, the movies, television, all the movies. Not all of them, by a long shot, but I think there are tremendous, good films being made today.
[00:20:13.77]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you actually paint every day? Do you discipline yourself to?
[00:20:17.59]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. I wouldn't know what else to do.
[00:20:22.14]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When you talk about the feeling that you want to try to get when you set up the still life and when you're painting, can you talk about that any more? Is it—
[00:20:31.84]
JANE PIPER: I don't know. Because I think I may think I'm setting up something that connects with it. But even if you weren't, wouldn't that feeling, itself, come out anyway of what you do?
[00:20:47.44]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But you feel like you start with something.
[00:20:49.39]
JANE PIPER: I just try to set up something that really appeals to me. But I think no matter what, if—whatever you're feeling, it comes out unconsciously. And I think the unconscious is much stronger than the conscious in the affect on your work.
[00:21:10.05]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So would you call yourself an expressionist? Do you think that would apply to you?
[00:21:13.90]
JANE PIPER: No, because I may be limiting expressionism as having to do more with gestural painting. I don't think I'm particularly good at having the paint flow nicely. I admire it very much in other people, but I don't—I'm struggling, usually, for placement and space, and the color right, and getting the right relationships with the color. I don't know. I don't feel that—I fit more as an abstract painter than I do an Abstract Expressionist.
[00:21:50.40]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So the feeling you're trying to get somehow, is it something—a feeling that you have personally inside of you—
[00:21:57.01]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:21:57.18]
BARBARA WOLANIN: —or it's more something—
[00:21:58.86]
JANE PIPER: No, personally inside of me. Yeah.
[00:22:00.90]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But in relation to something that you're seeing so much into your own life?
[00:22:04.02]
JANE PIPER: Somewhat what I'm seeing. But I don't—I mean, whatever I've been experiencing, also.
[00:22:08.37]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
[END OF TRACK AAA_piper88_6204_m]
[00:00:06.13]
BARBARA WOLANIN: This is Barbara Wolanin interviewing Jane Piper for the Archives of American Art on January 17, 1988, in Philadelphia. I thought we would like to go back and expand on some of the points we made on the first tape. One thing I don't think we talked enough about was the use of diagonals in your paintings, which seems to be another consistent theme that goes back in your early work, and it's certainly very strong in your work of the '80s.
[00:00:38.63]
JANE PIPER: I think that the Japanese prints were—I was very interested in when I was about out of high school, and then I became interested in again about 20 years ago. And the sense of searching for drawing the diagonal—using the diagonal, I use it unconsciously no matter what. Everything seems to work on the diagonal. I'll set up a still life that's frontal, and it'll end up what I pick up is the diagonal. And the expert on the diagonal is a printmaker, a Japanese printmaker Harunobu. And that was a great help for me.
[00:01:24.30]
And I also wanted to go back and discuss a little more the importance of white, which is still mysterious to me, but it's the only way I seem to be able to find the sensations I want of complexity with simplicity and calm. And the white seemed to be able to—with white, I'm able to cut away more of the painting, of the complexities I get myself into while I'm working, and hopefully, achieve a calm and a wholeness.
[Recorder stops; restarts.]
[00:02:10.67]
BARBARA WOLANIN: I wanted to ask you about an experience you had told me about before, going to the exhibition—the first exhibition of De Kooning's "Women" in New York, I think, in 1950. What do you remember about that?
[00:02:23.54]
JANE PIPER: Well, I remember very vividly a sense of kind of shock. Everybody did not expect—I mean, we take it for granted now, but those women—filled with his anger at women, filled with the beauty of his brushstroke and the way he put on the paint. But the anger came through so strong. You had a great—I mean, I certainly felt very unsure of what I was looking at and almost frightened of that much anger. I think I may accept the anger, all kinds of anger much more easily now.
[00:03:00.81]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Did it shock you that he had the recognizable figures in the paintings? Isn't that what some people reacted to?
[00:03:05.97]
JANE PIPER: I think it was the recognizable, which we hadn't expected, the one on a bicycle.
[00:03:12.60]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. How do you feel about those paintings now? Do you still feel they're angry as much as you did then?
[00:03:17.67]
JANE PIPER: I just feel that they are about ambivalence, and they're beautifully painted. And they don't have any sense of—any of the sense of shock anymore.
[00:03:32.44]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Going back to your experiences with studying with both Carles and Hofmann. And this is in the year 1941, you were with both of them. Can you develop any more the comparison between them as teachers—their style of teaching, the kinds of things that they were talking about?
[00:03:55.75]
JANE PIPER: I feel as if that I'm unfair in relation to Hofmann because I was really so much more involved with Carles at that point that I didn't allow myself to take in a lot of what he said. I mean, I think that Carles was trying to do something that hadn't been done. Hoffman was too, of course. Hoffman himself was extremely impressed with Carles's work and thought he was the greatest American painter at that time who was really experimenting. But Hoffman was Germanic. It was well-organized class. He always came in a little bit late, but everything was done perfectly on time. It was a totally different experience than working with Carles.
[00:04:57.51]
BARBARA WOLANIN: When we started out the tape, we were talking about your latest show, and I think you said something about your latest paintings somehow being darker than some of the earlier periods. How does this relate to your stage in your life right now?
[00:05:11.82]
JANE PIPER: Well, I think with the problem of aging and the problem of sickness, that I have always tried to reverse my feelings, and certainly my feelings with both aging and sickness has been a lot of rage. But I don't necessarily want it directly to show in the painting. I don't want to show that aspect. Sometimes it shows, and sometimes it doesn't. But I try to really reverse it. And when I'm working or when I'm working well, I certainly feel a sense of pleasure and joy in the work and in working, which is what I would much rather show in my paintings, but it doesn't always come off that way.
[00:06:00.01]
BARBARA WOLANIN: There was an earlier period, wasn't it, which was a sort of a dark period when you were living in Radnor, and you did a lot of tree landscapes.
[00:06:06.75]
JANE PIPER: Yes. The color all went. I mean, I think as soon as your depression comes in, the color is the first thing that goes. You get involved with drawing, but the color, the sense of intuitive color, the sense of intuitive color like the Fauves could use, really has to do with youth. And it has depression; it will go immediately.
[00:06:30.34]
BARBARA WOLANIN: So just your feeling for how to use color is what goes?
[00:06:33.55]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:06:33.82]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Not so much—do you think you used cooler colors? I mean that whole idea of the blues and greens and purples.
[00:06:41.17]
JANE PIPER: I think you're more apt to use tonal colors or values.
[00:06:45.43]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Working more with lights and darks?
[00:06:46.80]
JANE PIPER: Yeah. And drawing you can keep with, but that transposing color, it doesn't happen in those periods. You're not able to really transpose color successfully with the spontaneity that it requires.
[00:07:11.26]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Also, I think in your latest work, as you mentioned, I think that you've gone back more, somehow despite yourself, more to representing objects. The objects are more recognizable than they were a few years ago when they were almost lost and just triangles and shapes of colors.
[00:07:27.82]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:07:27.91]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Do you think that's related to the depression? Do you think you can you see at all what that would come out of?
[00:07:32.93]
JANE PIPER: Not necessarily. I think that the—I think there's kind of an edge, again, with the battleground between the representational and the abstract, that at times, there's a tension that builds up between the two that I like. I had one painting that I particularly liked that had a picture in it that was very representational, and the rest of it wasn't. And somehow or other it worked, but it did give it an extra edge to the painting.
[00:08:08.35]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Do you have that—also in Matisse's work, don't you, where he'll go to something much more tight and much more explicit kind of drawings, and it'll go off and do something, just more color. And Carles did the same thing, kind of going back and forth in some ways.
[00:08:22.14]
JANE PIPER: Yes. I think they both did. I think Carles was much more—went much further with abstraction than Matisse ever did.
[00:08:30.60]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Even in the cutouts, Matisse's cutouts?
[00:08:32.04]
JANE PIPER: Even the cutouts, yeah.
[00:08:36.08]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Where do you feel you're going now? I think even the paintings you're working on right now have changed direction a little bit again. What are you involved with right this minute?
[00:08:45.53]
JANE PIPER: I really don't know. I'll only know when I see it. And I want to feel it when the paintings themselves feel right. Otherwise, I don't know where I'm going.
[00:08:55.11]
BARBARA WOLANIN: But your color has changed. It seems to be more—is it more optimistic now than it was, say, a year ago? You're feeling better and—
[00:09:02.28]
JANE PIPER: Yes. Yeah. And I think anger is a tremendously important emotion that gives you an impetus to work. It certainly works against depression.
[00:09:16.54]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Anger?
[00:09:17.09]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:09:18.10]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Admitting the anger and—
[00:09:19.03]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:09:19.18]
BARBARA WOLANIN: —working through it? Do the seasons—does that change your mood at all? I know a lot of times in the summers, you work on Cape Cod, right? Wellfleet. Do you still paint?
[00:09:30.49]
JANE PIPER: I don't work well there at all, unfortunately. I have a lovely spot to work on, and everything, and I work better after the winter solstice and the beginning—the days begin to get shorter again.
[00:09:44.56]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Shorter or longer?
[00:09:46.27]
JANE PIPER: Longer. Excuse me.
[00:09:48.05]
BARBARA WOLANIN: More light and more sunlight.
[00:09:49.58]
JANE PIPER: More light, more sun, more coming towards spring.
[00:09:52.90]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So that would be really your best time?
[00:09:54.86]
JANE PIPER: Yeah.
[00:09:57.25]
BARBARA WOLANIN: You think of anything else about your work that you want to get in?
[00:10:02.76]
JANE PIPER: I don't think so, at this point.
[00:10:04.37]
BARBARA WOLANIN: Okay. Thank you.
[END OF TRACK AAA_piper88_6205_m]
[END OF INTERVIEW.]
