Oral history interview with Suzanne La Follette, 1976 January 27

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Suzanne La Follette on January 27, 1976. The interview took place in Palo Alto, California and was conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom 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.

Poor audio during side two of the recording led to an abnormally high number of words and phrases being inaudible.

Interview

[00:00:03.67]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution—an interview with Ms. Suzanne La Follette at the subject's home in Palo Alto on January 27, 1976. Ms. La Follette is the author of Art in America, which was published in New York in 1929.

[Recorder stops; restarts.]

[00:00:32.83]

Well, Ms. La Follette, you're the author of one of the earliest general surveys on American art. That, of course, is Art in America, which was published in New York in 1929. Of course, before that, there were books on American architecture and American painting. But as far as a general survey, I really do believe yours was one perhaps one of the two earliest, not counting Dunlap which, of course, is back in the 19th century.

[00:01:05.68]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:01:06.34]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Before we discuss how and why you came to write the book, perhaps you could tell me a little bit of your own personal background, family background, early days, your education, and then perhaps your early interest in art, when that began. Could you fill us in on that a little bit?

[00:01:27.65]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I was born in the state of Washington. I spent my childhood in the Snake River Canyon. I never saw a picture that I remember, and I went on not seeing much in the way of art until my father was elected to Congress and then I was in Washington a good deal for about seven years. And there I met Freda Kirchwey. She died recently. She was editor and then later the owner of The Nation. And I met her through my cousin, Fola La Follette. And Fola sent me to The Nation. She gave me a job there— Freda gave me a job. And so I worked for The Nation for about a year. In other words, my first professional work was done in magazine publishing. It had nothing to do with art at all.

[00:02:37.97]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, this certainly was after your schooling.

[00:02:43.17]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, yes.

[00:02:44.09]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What was your educational background?

[00:02:46.10]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I went my early years to a little country school in the Snake River Canyon. And we had a lot of fun. We had school about four months a year [laughs] and the rest of the time—

[00:03:01.94]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That's wonderful.

[00:03:02.93]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, it was beautiful. And then as we grew older—we were a numerous family. My father, he sold the Snake River Ranch. It was a fruit ranch. He sold that. And he had a couple of other ranches up out of the canyon, but he rented those. And so we all went to Pullman, Washington, so that we could all go to school.

[00:03:37.46]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That's Washington State?

[00:03:38.90]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Washington State. And that is the home of the Washington State University. And I went to high school there and, in fact, had a couple of years in college there. Then my father was elected to Congress, and mostly we were in Washington, D.C., after that where I—well, I finished high school in Pullman, Washington, and went to college to the Washington State University for a couple of years.

[00:04:13.17]

And then after I went to Washington, I wanted to go on to college, but I didn't want to go back to the State College of Washington. And I met a lovely young woman and happened to speak to her about it. And she said, "Well, why don't you go to my college? I graduated from Trinity, and it is an excellent college." Well, that sounded fine to me. Trinity is a Catholic college which is run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. And it has its standing—it's right up with all the other women's colleges. So I said, of course I would go to Trinity. I went right over and enrolled, of course with the knowledge and consent of my family, that is to say the knowledge and consent of my father and mother.

[00:05:12.62]

However, not for nothing are we a family of Huguenot ancestry. And my father began getting very disturbing letters from relatives. "How could he allow his daughter to go to a Catholic college?" And my father wrote back and said, as far as he could make out, it was a very good college, indeed, with an excellent standing and he thought I'd made a good decision. So the relatives didn't get very far with their objections. And I graduated from Trinity in Washington, D.C.

[00:05:52.71]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And what did you study? What did you major in?

[00:05:55.97]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  English.

[00:05:56.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  English. Did you foresee a career as a journalist then, a writer?

[00:06:02.57]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No. I wasn't dreaming of being a journalist at all. After I had finished college, I worked for my father in his office of the House office building, for I guess about a year. And then I announced that I was going to New York. And I thought the family took it very quietly. I didn't learn until long afterwards that my mother was scared having me go off to this strange city. And my father said, "Let her do what she wants to. She'll be home in three months." So off I went to New York. And Fuller introduced me to Freda Kirchwey of The Nation. And that's how I got into magazine work—

[00:06:50.70]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I see.

[00:06:51.39]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  —through Freda.

[00:06:52.83]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  So you didn't have any real training in art or art history in college that you recall?

[00:07:00.21]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Not ever. Now let's see. it was in The Nation office not very long, of course, after I joined The Nation, I met Walter Pach, and he was writing on art for The Nation. And he very kindly took me under his wing, and he began to take me to art shows and so on. And that's what started my whole interest in art. Walter Pach did it.

[00:07:32.17]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you remember about what year this would have been? When did you go to work for The Nation?

[00:07:42.24]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It was around 1919, I think, because I was at The Nation for a few months and then Albert Jay Nock and Francis Neilson decided to start their own weekly magazine. Francis Neilson was an Englishman. He'd had an interesting career. He had become a member of Parliament. And he came to this country during World War I and stayed. And his wife had died. And he married in this country, one of its richest women, Mrs.—what was her name? How ridiculous. Well, one of the packing families of Chicago, you know, the packers. I can get the name for you easily.

[00:08:51.47]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Okay.

[00:08:54.24]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Anyhow, she and Francis Neilson were married. And so when Nock and Neilson decided they wanted to start their own magazine, they had Mrs. Neilson's millions to draw on. That's how they were able to do it. And they offered me a job with them on that magazine. And I left The Nation, and went on to Freeman with Nock and Neilson.

[00:09:21.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Before we move on with that, what were your duties at The Nation?

[00:09:28.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, General Editor—oh, I must tell you one thing. My cousin Fola said, I'm going to send you—she, by the way, was the elder daughter of the first Senator La Follette. And she was married to the playwright George Middleton. Well, Fola said, "Now, I'm going to send you to The Nation. And whatever you do, do not admit that you know shorthand." I had taken a special course after I left college, a special business course. And I knew shorthand. And I knew typing. And she said, "If they ask you, you may say that you can type a little."

[00:10:17.23]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  A little.

[00:10:17.50]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  But if you admit that you know shorthand, you'll be a secretary the rest of your life. [Laughs.]

[00:10:23.29]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, I hope you didn't admit that you knew shorthand.

[00:10:25.60]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I did not admit that I knew shorthand. And what was worse, I allowed myself to forget it, for which I've never forgiven myself. I used to watch Henry Hazlitt in my days when I was working on this magazine with him and Henry, of course, was a great expert. He'd been, I think, a court reporter at one time. And there would sit Henry, taking notes, things that he wanted. Somebody would be saying something, and he'd be taking shorthand. I had allowed myself to lose it completely, which was stupid.

[00:11:04.82]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, did you do any writing, any feature writing at all for The Nation, or was it primarily editorial?

[00:11:10.97]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I think I wrote a brief article or two, nothing special.

[00:11:16.82]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And besides, I gather you weren't there that long before you went on with the—

[00:11:21.53]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No. I was there only a few months. Just a few months.

[00:11:28.20]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  One thing that interests me, you mentioned that you met Walter Pach while on the staff of The Nation—

[00:11:35.45]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, you see he was doing art shows and so on, art criticisms and so on. That's how I met Walter.

[00:11:45.67]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And I gather you became friends. And you mentioned that he took you by the hand around to the galleries.

[00:11:51.61]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh yes. We became very good friends. And he took me to all the art shows. Oh, he educated me where art was concerned. I wouldn't know anything about art today, I suppose, if it hadn't been for Walter Pach.

[00:12:05.50]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you remember any of the shows that he took you to? In other words, what were his interests? I don't mean specifically, necessarily.

[00:12:17.40]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  His great interest was the Moderns. He had been instrumental in bringing over that big armory show. He had done wonderful work in introducing art to the American people. And he also translated Élie Faure's celebrated History of Art in several volumes. He translated that into English. Faure was his very good friend, and translated this work of his into English.

[00:12:56.73]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And so he really introduced you to the world of modern art— contemporary art, as it was—

[00:13:03.03]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes.

[00:13:03.38]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  —as it could be seen in New York.

[00:13:07.17]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I couldn't have had a better introduction, because he saw that I saw all the splendid modern painters—Seurat—and most of them were his friends. Oh yes. It was a wonderful opportunity.

[00:13:25.67]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you remember what he would say if you were in a gallery confronting a painting? Did he—was he talkative about it? In other words, did he talk about the work itself and point out things to you?

[00:13:42.92]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Undoubtedly, he did but that is gone. I couldn't repeat it.

[00:13:49.19]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, probably much of that appears really in your book, I suppose.

[00:13:54.38]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. Probably it did. [Laughs.]

[00:13:57.89]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did he introduce you to any of the artists in New York? He must have been familiar with—obviously, he knew a number of them.

[00:14:04.79]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. I knew a good many of them. However, you'll know one of them who became my very dear friend was Bertram Hartman. And Bertram just happened. He and his wife were living in the same building down in the village where I was. And that's how I came to know Bertram Hartman so well. He was a great friend of mine. And of course, through Walter Pach, I met the great John Sloan, who also became my very dear friend. As a matter of fact, Sloan and his wife Dolly lived next door to me in the Chelsea Hotel for several years. I moved from 10th Street where I'd been living, over to the Chelsea Hotel. And I lived next door to Sloan and Dolly, his wife.

[00:14:54.33]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you remember your first meeting with Sloan, or any of your contacts with him?

[00:15:01.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No. I don't remember how I met John. Well, I met him through Walter Pach, but I don't remember much about the early stages of my friendship with Sloan.

[00:15:13.08]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did he talk about art a great deal?

[00:15:15.42]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, yes.

[00:15:16.74]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Almost entirely?

[00:15:17.83]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  They all did. They all did. Walter talked about it all the time. Well, and, of course, he knew the modern painters so well. See, he had lived and painted in Paris, too. And he knew art. That's how, of course, he became such close friends with Élie Faure, who was not a painter himself at all. No. He was a doctor. But he was not only very much interested, but he wrote this history.

[00:15:52.99]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  When did you decide to write a book on American art? And what led you to that decision?

[00:15:59.48]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, let me see. It was along in the '20s. I wrote this book on women, which was published in 1926. I was with The Freeman until '24. It ran from '21 to '24. And when it discontinued, I wrote a book on women. And I can't remember what got me writing a book on women, but I wrote it. Oh, and Mrs. Neilson helped me to write it. That is to say she financed it. She was very kind. I didn't have a thin dime of my own, you know? And I could have asked my father, but I would have hated to. He had a few other children to think about. Anyhow, it was Mrs. Neilson who made it possible for me to write the book on women.

[00:17:03.25]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah. I'd like to talk later on a little more about that book, but maybe now we should continue with the Art in America.

[00:17:15.70]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, after I finished the book on women, it was Pach who inspired me to write the History of American Art.

[00:17:26.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did he suggest it?

[00:17:27.22]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I had seen a great deal of American art with him. I believe he did suggest it. He wrote the introduction to it.

[00:17:35.62]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yes.

[00:17:36.07]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And I think it was Walter who suggested that I write the book.

[00:17:39.70]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did he recognize the specific need for such a book at that time?

[00:17:45.32]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. Yes. He thought it was necessary.

[00:17:53.35]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, what did you use as a model? How did you choose the form that the survey would take, because it seems to me that your book, in many ways, was pioneering in terms of a study of the arts. In other words, you dealt with all aspects of American art rather than dealing just with painting or sculpture.

[00:18:16.54]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes.

[00:18:16.93]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  You include architecture. You discuss interiors, which I think is wonderful, sort of capturing the taste of the time. It seems to be very complete. How did you—what led you to take this rather comprehensive—

[00:18:30.64]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, I'm sure that that was Pach. I can say without hesitation that the scope of the thing was largely—he was largely responsible for it, I think.

[00:18:45.01]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  So really, you consulted with him fairly closely, I gather.

[00:18:50.17]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, not about the actual writing of the book, but about how to treat it and what to include, I would say he had lots to do with.

[00:19:00.92]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, were there any existing histories— not of American art, necessarily— that you used as examples or models for your own book?

[00:19:13.19]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I assume as I look back, that Faure's book must have quite an influence on me.

[00:19:25.53]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you start out with a specific thesis as you began to write the book—

[00:19:34.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No.

[00:19:34.95]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  —or did it grow as you researched?

[00:19:37.04]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I just thought of the idea of telling the story of how art developed in America.

[00:19:42.84]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, one of the distinguishing characteristics, it seems to me, of your book is the fact that you relate art, as I mentioned earlier, to the total American experience, or context. You bring in American history, political history, sociology, economics, all of these factors, and then show how the art grew out of these factors. There seems to be a very definite [inaudible]. It's in a way a social history, it seems to me, with, of course, using the art as documentation.

[00:20:22.55]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, not for nothing. I had been with magazines for several years. Magazines, the kind I was editing, are social history, you know.

[00:20:35.23]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And so you feel then, that your preparation, your slant, your avenue, say, of getting to the material, really did grow out of your magazine experience?

[00:20:47.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, I think so. I think so.

[00:20:50.89]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What were your, if I may ask, political views at the time? Did you have any strong political feelings, sympathies?

[00:21:03.61]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes, I did.

[00:21:08.32]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I mean, John Sloan and a number of the artists, of course, were Socialists to a certain extent.

[00:21:13.33]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. I never was a Socialist. I never was a Communist. In fact, I was always anti-Communist.

[00:21:20.11]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Nowadays, you realize it's safe, of course—I think anyway it's safe to say.

[00:21:24.40]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  What?

[00:21:25.06]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I say nowadays, unlike a while ago, a few years ago, I think it's getting safer to admit things like this to talk about.

[00:21:34.96]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  If I had been interested in Communism, I wouldn't hesitate to admit it. Why should you deny the things you've outgrown? [Laughs.]

[00:21:43.81]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That's a good point.

[00:21:44.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  But I just wasn't—I'm trying to think back to the early '20s. Why can't I remember?

[00:21:59.96]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, so you did really consider yourself, or at least in retrospect, a strong political creature.

[00:22:07.88]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I always had quite strong political leanings, largely in the beginning, largely it was La Follette Progressivism, because I was very closely connected with my famous cousin. And then, of course, my father was a Progressive Republican.

[00:22:26.24]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah.

[00:22:27.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  So more or less I inherited all that.

[00:22:33.26]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah. Of course, I'm asking this for a reason because a certain point of view does emerge in the book itself.

[00:22:39.11]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:22:40.79]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Walter Pach, as you mentioned, wrote the preface. And I remember I was very impressed with his words, with the introduction. He deplores the current state of American Art criticism, meaning, of course, the contemporary art criticism of the time, and points out that most writers on art were either apologists for America—felt that they had to apologize for it, or they were super patriotic: "an American art, it's the best kind, and it should be a national art," and so forth. He then went on to say that it's necessary to deal with American art in terms of European influences, to connect it with the tradition, the Western tradition, which, of course, is true. There's no question about that. I assume this then reflects your own view that was carried out through the book itself.

[00:23:44.10]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes.

[00:23:48.28]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you feel that this was a common view at the time, among observers of American art?

[00:23:54.31]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, it was among the people I knew—people like Sloan, for example.

[00:24:04.47]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, how would you describe the prevalent aesthetic or critical attitude of the 1920s, not necessarily that of your circle, those you knew. But if you, say, were reading the critics in the various newspapers and journals in New York, can you remember what the attitude was?

[00:24:29.13]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, you see, the Armory Show had—I think it was the famous Armory Show had had an enormous influence on the development of American taste in art. And so it was very important to the development of interest in art in this country, and art itself.

[00:24:52.72]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Of course, shortly after your book appeared, there was a strong—well, I suppose concurrently, there was a strong sentiment in certain quarters in America towards a regionalism, and towards basing American art on American landscape, American subjects, and trying to divorce it from European influence.

[00:25:14.68]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well—Yes. I never ran into that at all in all my experience.

[00:25:20.83]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, which writers on art and critics did you admire during this period in New York? Were there any figures that stood out?

[00:25:35.90]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, of course, there was Faure but he was French. [Laughs.]

[00:25:39.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did you read, oh, say Henry McBride, in The Sun? Do you remember?

[00:25:43.70]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. Yes, I did. Who was the other man, the columnist who was so good?

[00:25:56.71]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mumford, of course, was writing in The New Yorker, I think at that time.

[00:25:59.83]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Mumford began, yeah, during that decade. I knew Mumford quite well.

[00:26:06.25]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Was Karkasis [ph] writing as well? Karkasis—was he writing?

[00:26:10.33]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes, he was. But I never met him. I didn't know him. There was another man whom I admired greatly, and I cannot dredge up his name.

[00:26:30.01]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Let's see. Who might that have been? I assume sympathetic to modern art. I should be able to help you on that.

[00:26:42.37]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  What?

[00:26:42.79]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I should be able to help you on that, but I'm drawing a blank myself right now, because there were some very—

[00:26:50.14]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I remember Don Marquis very well. Delightful guy, amusing. My, so long ago.

[00:27:01.33]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah. It is a long time ago. We're getting down to the book itself and some of the ideas that appear in the book. One thing I wanted to ask you about, since the subject was American art, there is a problem that's kicked around a great deal, which boils down to what is "American" in American art. In other words, looking for some specific American quality, national character in the art. Do you feel that there was any special distinguishing national character to distinguish it from the European tradition?

[00:27:53.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  What was there I don't remember. Either I was unaware of it or I don't remember.

[00:27:59.69]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  But your attitude then or your view was that American art was essentially an extension of the European tradition, was drawn at that time on the—or had drawn on the European sources.

[00:28:14.52]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, of course, it grew out of Europe, and Pach had an awful lot to do with the European influence on American art. I don't think he did it. But I must tell you Mencken was very funny about it one time. I can remember—

[00:28:30.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mencken?

[00:28:31.77]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Henry Mencken. He said to me—[pause]— I shall renew my drink. Are you ready for a second?

[Recorder stops; restarts.]

[00:28:48.18]

"Why was it that Americans didn't have this vital interest in that—[inaudible]?" And it was true, of course. If you could go into a French home and they would move a table or something so that you could see a huge painting by one of the Moderns which was behind the table. There was, of course, especially I think more in the France of that period than later, there's tremendous interest in and fascination with art.

Well, so Mencken said, "why weren't Americans like that," or something? I said, "Well, you see, Mr. Mencken, Americans have been developing a continent. And they've had a lot of things on their minds besides art. And they are perhaps many of them are inclined to regard people whose interests go that way, as a little sissy." And Mencken said, "Yes, you are exactly right. Why, I feel that way myself." [They laugh.]

[00:30:15.55]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Sissy. See, well, that's the kind of sissy, of course, that we could use more of. That's an okay kind of sissy, no doubt.

[00:30:25.54]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  He was awfully cute.

[00:30:28.21]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What sources did you use in writing the book? Obviously, you did a tremendous amount of research in the preparation of that book. It must have taken you several years.

[00:30:41.42]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, it took about three years, I guess. But I worked on it for three or four.

[00:30:46.66]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And do you recall—I suppose you were going to the New York Public Library and so forth, and so on.

[00:30:53.45]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, I went everywhere.

[00:30:54.55]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did you—

[00:30:55.36]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I lived at the Metropolitan Museum, for example. Oh, I was there all the time. And they were terribly nice to me. And they had an awfully good library there. Their sources are really quite something.

[00:31:11.69]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  So you used, obviously—many of the examples you used throughout the text are drawn from the Met collection. You refer to the early American rooms, for instance, citing examples. And so—which is very helpful because, of course, many of your readers then could go see for themselves. Did you travel around a great deal in preparation of the book? Because you do mention other museum collections, in some cases. I doubt that it was always available in reproductions.

[00:31:48.91]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Of course, I went to—I saw the important collections. I went to Chicago, and I went to Boston, and, of course, to Washington. Yes, I did quite a little running around, looking at collections.

[00:32:10.62]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And what about—well, I assume that, of course, you chose examples to discuss certain artists from those things that you—those works you had encountered in the major collections. What about architecture—you spend a great deal of time, wisely so, I think—on architecture. But clearly, you weren't able to see all of these buildings you mentioned. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe you did.

[00:32:49.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I cannot any longer tell you how extensive my research is in that subject where—or exactly where I went. Now, that's a terrible gap, but I just I don't remember very well.

[00:33:15.08]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, and you did have some sources available to you. Everybody, when writing a book draws on other published material.

[00:33:23.39]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, yes.

[00:33:23.96]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And do you recall which you found most helpful at that time? There weren't a heck of a lot of books published in the field. Is there any one or a few that you recall as particularly sound and helpful?

[00:33:42.23]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, if I went back to the book I might know. I'd bound to remember.

[00:33:48.98]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  It seems to—

[00:33:49.82]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  —I remember just this way.

[00:33:51.84]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  It seems to me that perhaps Mumford would have been a source, although I can't remember the year.

[00:34:03.20]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Mumford was more or less just starting out, himself, in that time.

[00:34:06.05]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah, I'm not even sure when his—for instance, when the Brown decades first appeared. I think it was in the '20s. Well, at any rate, what about somebody like Fiske Kimball?

[00:34:18.53]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Who?

[00:34:19.07]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Kimball, his book on architecture?

[00:34:21.37]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Kimball.

[00:34:23.69]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I'm just trying to think of something more—

[00:34:25.15]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. Yes, of course. Oh, that would require a lot of dredging. A lot of dredging.

[00:34:35.75]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And then, of course, for painting, there was Isham—Samuel Isham. Well, as I say, there weren't that many published sources available at the time, anyway. But I was hoping that you could remember one or two that might have been especially helpful to you.

[00:34:56.91]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I should remember.

[00:34:59.60]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, of course it—

[00:35:00.68]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I should remember.

[00:35:01.88]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  —it does appear to a certain extent, again, in the book itself.

[00:35:06.66]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  If I could go back to the book, I probably—I would begin to remember things that are very nebulous in my mind at the moment.

[00:35:21.53]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, let me ask you this. Obviously, your own evaluation of different figures in the history of American art is extremely important in the book from the standpoint of the way you discuss them, and then the amount of attention that you would give an artist. I was wondering if—and again, this may be so much after the fact, it's difficult to answer. But I was wondering if you would change your evaluation of certain figures and developments—in other words, give more or less emphasis, or even perhaps eliminate some figures?

[00:36:07.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, there, I couldn't help you at all without really going to the book.

[00:36:11.34]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah. One thing that—just as an example that comes to mind, there are several 19th century figures—

[00:36:22.65]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It's been an awful long time since I wrote that book.

[00:36:24.78]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I know.

[00:36:25.38]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And I haven't followed art and architecture the way I would have been following it all these years if I had been writing about it. But I did things like investigating the Moscow Trials, which had nothing to do with art and architecture.

[00:36:41.91]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, just for the record, the two things that struck me—and I might ask for your response, if any, on this—two figures that I think, at the time you were writing, weren't—their stars weren't particularly high at the time, and have become much more appreciated in recent years, are William Sidney Mount and then George Caleb Bingham. And the interesting thing—as I said earlier, for the most part, the figures you introduce are those that I think I would introduce if I were writing a book, in many cases. But with Mount, you treated him not really in a negative way—and he certainly was treated—but treated him as—well, here's a quote: "His work is monochromatic and none-too-well composed."

[00:37:35.43]

And the interesting thing here is that in recent years, Mount, as being regarded as a great formalist—there's a recent book by Barbara Novak where she discusses him—one of the younger American art historians—discusses Mount as in the classical tradition. In other words, he was a composer, a constructor of pictures. And, of course, it's sort of unfair to ask you this because you—it was a long time ago. And you haven't, as you say been, reading up on everything that comes out. But I was wondering if you have any response to that—

[00:38:10.65]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No.

[00:38:11.16]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  —in terms of changing views of some of these artists, which is natural?

[00:38:14.64]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, well, of course, there have been fantastic changes. But just to reel them off, I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

[00:38:27.01]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Another example—and I don't want to belabor this point at all— an omission from your book was George Caleb Bingham. I didn't remember seeing his name mentioned at all, and he wasn't mentioned in the index. And, of course, now he's become sort of a pivotal figure—the painter of the Western scene.

[00:38:47.10]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes.

[00:38:47.52]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And I suppose at that time, maybe Bingham was not in favor at all. That's what I'm interested in getting at.

[00:38:56.44]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I just do not remember.

[00:39:00.21]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Oh, of course, it could have been an oversight. But—

[00:39:03.48]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't know. I don't remember one thing.

[00:39:08.25]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Throughout the book, you come back to a theme regarding quality in art. And that is—the way you put it—I think it's very apt—is "art that says something," that has something to say. And this is an expression that seems to be your own. I'm wondering if, again, reaching back, you could tell me what are the qualities of good painting that you saw too often lacking in American art? I think this is a general question. What were the qualities of good work that seemed to be missing, that seemed to be less encountered in American art than, say, European art, with its tradition and its background?

[00:40:05.49]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You see, art and one's reaction, it is such a subjective thing. It would be very hard for me to give you objective reasons why I liked this person's work more than this person's work—why I would be stuck as I went through the Metropolitan Museum with one thing and not with another—one's reaction are so subjective.

[00:40:38.43]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yes, that's true. Well, you did feel—again, this comes out quite clearly in the book—that Americans were, from the beginning, working at a disadvantage because of the fact that they were in this new country.

[00:40:58.47]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:40:58.90]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And that this was something that had to be overcome, and basically overcome by contact with the origins—with Europe and the European tradition.

[00:41:09.38]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes, and that is where Pach did so much in this—for art in this country. Because he had, I would say, in those years, more than any other one person, to do with the—educating the American public on the subject. And there is another thing that nobody knows about, which was—to me, as I look back, it was one of the most important things, I think, that could have happened in this country when it came to educating the American public in the subject. And that is that there was a man in New York—and I'll take my Bible oath, you never heard of him.

[00:42:02.22]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Okay.

[00:42:03.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  His name was Joseph Brummer. He was Hungarian. He had come— Pach knew him in Paris. And when Pach was there studying art and painting, he had met this little Hungarian who, I am sure, was the greatest art expert—all aspects—that this country has ever seen. And when Pach knew him, he was really living under bridges. And he was really coming to the classes at—like our art institute, you know? I've forgotten what it was called. You know, we had academy—

[00:43:05.33]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Right, right.

[00:43:07.70]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  —with his toe sticking out of his shoes. And Pach wouldn't talk to him in the beginning, because he thought that degree of affectation was just disgusting. And then as he went on going to the same class, or whatever you call it, this little guy would say something so damned intelligent that Pach finally overcame his prejudice, and became a very good friend of Joseph Brummer, who had come from Hungary to study art, and who was literally living under bridges because he didn't have a thing going. He had no money.

[00:43:51.68]

Well, Joseph—Pach told me that he never knew how Joseph got started. Of course, when he wasn't studying art, he was haunting the museums, which is, after all, the way to know about art, isn't it? See it. And he began to sell art objects. And he went on from that. And the first place he had in Paris where he sold was a sort of little hole in the wall—a little niche in the wall. And he went on, and he became a dealer in Paris. He never became an artist. He became a dealer in art. But he knew everything. He just knew everything. Then he came—well, then he moved his base of operations from Paris to New York. And he had a—when I first knew him—it was Pach, of course, who took me there and introduced me to him.

[00:45:24.15]

I'll never forget my meeting with Brummer. By this time, Brummer was occupying a magnificent house on 57th Street, and he had—oh, my god, he had the most magnificent things in that house that you ever saw in your life. Everything—paintings, sculpture, furniture. Everything. And at the top of the house, he had a gallery. And in that—it was two or three rooms—he gave art shows. Maurice Prendergast had his—I think it was Maurice's first one-man show, and he was an old man by that time—it took place in Brummer's gallery.

[00:46:25.02]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Was that the name of the gallery? Brummer's Gallery?

[00:46:28.35]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, no. I don't know what it was called. He never gave it a name, I think. But—oh, well, anyhow, what he did just to introduce American artists through showing their works—Maurice Prendergast had never had a show, and Brummer gave him this beautiful show. And that—what he did for art in this country was fantastic.

[00:47:01.14]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Do you remember when this happened—when he was operating, Brummer?

[00:47:10.69]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I can pretty well tell you. Let's see. It was back in the—I guess in the '20s—in the late '20s, early '30s. And Brummer —well, somebody should have written a book about that man. And now here, I'm stumbling along about the greatest expert I ever knew. If Pach were here, he would speak up and say, "Yes, Suzanne is absolutely right." Oh, he was absolutely terrific. And he knew everything.

[00:48:00.20]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Was his gallery well known? I mean, was it visited by—

[00:48:04.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Totally. Everybody went to Brummer. Everybody who knew anything about art [inaudible]. And then I remember my absolute astonishment when I took a couple of friends of mine—after I met Brummer, and became so enthusiastic about him, and about the magnificent things that I saw in this place, I took two—or recommended to two very rich friends that they get there just as fast as they could. And they did. And they bought, and they bought. They were enchanted. And then Brummer did a lovely thing. He gave me—now, this is of no interest to you. Brummer gave me the most beautiful thing I have ever owned in my life. He gave me a Greek necklace of the Second Century B.C.

[00:49:11.69]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Very generous.

[00:49:13.40]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, so beautiful.

[00:49:15.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I hope you still have it.

[00:49:16.70]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No.

[00:49:17.12]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  No?

[00:49:17.78]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, he said, I can't pay you, you know. But he insisted on giving me this. Oh, it was magnificent. Well—oh, no, I—before I left New York—two or three years before I left New York, I decided, no. This has been in safe dep—I had worn it once or twice. I remember wearing it once for Joseph's [inaudible]. But I was scared not to wear it because it was absolutely priceless. So I decided that I must divest myself of that treasure. And I had a dear friend who was the Associate Director of the New York Museum. And I thought they were doing an awfully good job there. So I gave the necklace to the Newark Museum. And it's still there.

[00:50:20.22]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I'm glad to hear that. Do you remember any of the other artists—you mentioned Prendergast—who showed at Brummer's gallery during this period?

[00:50:37.20]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I remember a French show or two that they had there.

[00:50:39.84]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  So it wasn't all American artists, just good artists?

[00:50:43.59]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Hmm?

[00:50:44.33]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  They weren't just American artists that were being shown at Brummer's—

[00:50:47.51]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, no. He just had those—that gallery to show anything in that he wanted to show.

[00:50:54.29]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Anything that he thought had merit?

[00:50:56.24]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes. And, of course, if he thought it had merit, it had merit. [Cross talk.]

[00:51:00.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, that brings me to another question. You say in your book that it's not so important that art be national as that it be good—

[00:51:14.39]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Of course.

[00:51:15.18]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  —which, of course, is true. But what led you to feel that you had to make that statement? I mentioned earlier a certain appeal at the time in America for a national art. Was this what moved you—

[00:51:33.08]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't remember what led me to make that statement.

[00:51:35.79]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Because it seems to be a response to something.

[00:51:38.40]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I see. I don't know. I don't know how I can say it. But I must tell you, the first time I ever saw Brummer, he was in the [inaudible]. Pach took me to his place. And we walked in back—to the back of the building. And there stood Brummer with a telegram in his hand. And Brummer didn't even say hello to Pach, and he didn't even look at me. He said, "This public call me stupid!" And Pach said, "Yeah, Joseph, what did you say?"

And Joseph showed him the telegram he had sent to a museum in the Midwest. I never did know the name of the museum, even. I haven't forgotten it. I just didn't know it. He had sent a few antique Greek sculptural fragments. And he used to—he had his contacts in Greece, and they would let him know that they'd found something, and then he would go and look at it, and then he would say, "Yes, I'll take it," and they'd smuggle it out, and it would appear. Yes, sir. Well, anyhow, he had sent these fragments of ancient Greek sculptures to this place that was giving a shout. And the telegram said, "Kindly send names of—no, titles of exhibits and names of authors." [Laughs.]

[00:53:32.78]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Oh, no. [Laughs.]

[00:53:35.21]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, and Joseph was furious. He was absolutely enraged.

[00:53:41.27]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  He should have made something up—some artist's name.

[00:53:45.62]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  He really should have.

[00:53:50.48]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, you seem to—

[00:53:52.19]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, yes. Well, I must tell you, Joseph did that. He had a couple of very beautiful Italian primitives hanging on the wall in one of his rooms. And the director of some American Museum—don't ask me which—had come. And he had said, "Oh, those are beautiful. They're very fine." They were early Italian—I think Florentine. "Oh, beautiful. Who did them?" And Joseph decided that if—who was it that invented that Amico di Sandro name—that if that guy could invent a name, so could he. And he said, without a moment's hesitation, "those are by Mino di Estoni." And the guy said, "Yes, I've heard of him." [They laugh.]

[00:54:57.25]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I think I have, too. He sounds like he had a great sense of humor.

[00:55:03.84]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, he had a wonderful sense of humor.

[00:55:07.03]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  You seem to favor French art in your discussion—French art of the 19th century. Clearly you use that as the standard.

[00:55:16.66]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And the early 20th. Don't forget.

[00:55:18.52]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  No. Well, I was just going to ask you, do you feel that applies to the early 20th? And again, I gather your response is yes, you do. You keep referring to the importance of a tradition. You feel this is where the Americans were lacking, and it was a game, really, of catch-up.

[00:55:45.15]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  We didn't have any tradition, of course.

[00:55:46.85]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  You're right.

[00:55:47.69]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You remember what I answered Mencken? We've been very busy developing a continent. We don't have any tradition of art.

[00:55:56.74]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, how do you—

[00:55:57.39]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Or didn't.

[00:55:59.67]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And this I think, of course, is true. How would you explain, given the lack of tradition, the eventual eclipse of the School of Paris by—of this very strong French tradition by, well, let's say the School of New York? Around 1945. In other words, the Abstract Expressionists.

[00:56:24.18]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  That, I cannot tell you anything about, because it's so many years since I was able to follow what was going on. So if Paris has been eclipsed by New York, it has been without my knowledge or consent.

[00:56:41.59]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Nor approval.

[00:56:42.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  [Laughs.] What?

[00:56:43.63]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Nor approval.

[00:56:44.74]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't know.

[00:56:45.34]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Because this virtually—this, in fact, is what happened. The—certainly around, well, let's say the end of the Second World War. Obviously, a war played a factor in that, too, because a number of the major intellectual figures—literary and artistic—became essentially refugees, and many of them came to New York. So I suppose I'm answering my own question.

[00:57:09.91]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I think you are. And you're talking to me now about something that I was totally out of touch with, you see. Because I spent most of the '30s investigating the Moscow Trials.

[00:57:24.34]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, which of—getting back then to the period when you were part of the art scene, or had an active interest—which of your contemporaries—and I mean artists, of course—did you most admire?

[00:57:39.67]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You should ask me now.

[00:57:41.02]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Sure. Some of them must stick in your mind. You mentioned John Sloan.

[00:57:45.58]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You mean Americans?

[00:57:46.39]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Americans, yeah.

[00:57:47.73]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Americans.

[00:57:48.64]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  You mentioned Sloan and Pach, of course.

[00:57:50.47]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  There was Sloan. There was Pach. There was Bertram.

[00:58:00.05]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Not necessarily those you knew personally, but—

[00:58:02.69]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No, I'm just trying to think of those I knew about, even. Oh, it's so long.

[00:58:08.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did any of them strike you as extremely significant or extremely important artists, forgetting that they were American artists at all? You mentioned Prendergast, of course. And I know, just to refresh your memory, from your book, you feel felt that he stood up very well.

[00:58:30.56]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Prendergast was pretty considerable, too. Oh, my god. I don't know.

[00:58:39.90]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What about figures like—well, let's see. This is late 20th—

[00:58:46.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You know, it's half a century since I was involved with art.

[00:58:50.16]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What about Georgia O'Keefe's early work? Somebody like that.

[00:58:54.36]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Pretty good.

[00:58:55.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative.] Because you reproduce—

[00:58:56.06]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I never thought she was great.

[00:58:56.91]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah. You reproduce on O'Keefe in the book.

[00:59:00.75]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  She was good. Very good.

[00:59:03.84]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What about the artists around Alfred Stieglitz's gallery? I'm thinking of Marin—John Marin, Abraham Walkowitz, apparently.

[00:59:16.86]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:59:17.46]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I don't mean "apparently."

[00:59:18.48]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I thought well of Marin.

[00:59:22.47]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Hartley, Dove—

[00:59:23.73]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  What?

[00:59:24.12]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Hartley and Dove and people like that.

[00:59:30.27]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Hartley?

[00:59:30.75]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah. Marsden Hartley.

[00:59:32.58]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Marsden Hartley? Yes, I remember him quite well. Well, they were some very good men—very considerable men.

[00:59:41.61]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Did you feel that they stood on a par with the French Modernists?

[00:59:45.27]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, you see, I, at that time, didn't know that. I was out of touch, pretty much, by that time with the—it has been maybe my misfortune that my attention has over the years skipped so much from one subject to another. If I wasn't saving Russia, I was saving America. [Laughs.]

[END OF TRACK AAA_lafoll76_5046_m]

[00:00:06.06]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Miss La Follette, side two. Well, before we leave the book, Art in America, I'd like to, if I may, raise a few questions that have to do with the sections on architecture and housing. And as I said just a moment ago, I found these sections in some ways the most impressive. And one of the reasons was you're dealing with the subject of architecture not in an isolated way, not in terms of individual houses and as monuments, not only as works of art, but in terms of their function—the fact that architecture should somehow satisfy the needs of the people.

[00:00:54.28]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:00:55.15]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And as I say, I found this extremely stimulating, and I think absolutely a very refreshing approach at that time. Architecture not so much as fine art, although, obviously, design is extremely important. But architecture as articulation of space that which surrounds the space in which we live. Let's put it that way. You mentioned that architecture is very much—certainly more than any other art form—tied to the basic economics of land, and the economic system itself. And as the cost of land rises, of course, then economically, you have to create smaller housing units so forth and so on.

[00:01:46.99]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yes.

[00:01:47.21]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I imagine that you still feel this way. And I'm wondering what puts you on that track other than common sense? Because in the book, you're quite strong on the subject. It's almost a crusader approach. Can you elaborate on that? [Cross talk.] Yeah. Shall we say spreading the spreading the truth and pointing out perhaps some shortcomings in an economic system that allows for this, or creates—

[00:02:28.45]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I suppose that goes back to—that particular interest would go back to the fact that I grew up more or less under the tutelage of Robert La Follette of Wisconsin.

[00:02:51.01]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You said, at one point, that you described the skyscraper as the chief sign of our system's failure to create a humane civilization. Do you still feel that way about?

[00:03:04.93]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Pretty much. I think it's too bad. I think it's too bad. But they did achieve marvelous results just the same. Marvelous results.

[00:03:26.66]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  How do you feel about the new skyline of San Francisco, for instance? How do you respond to it?

[00:03:33.15]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I like the early skyline better. I am old enough to have seen San Francisco without the high-rise.

[00:03:42.77]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, of course, you don't have to be terribly old to say that, because—

[00:03:46.35]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It's fairly recent.

[00:03:47.09]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Fairly recent. Not like New York where—

[00:03:49.73]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I'll never forget how beautiful San Francisco was. When I first saw it, I saw it from the water.

[00:03:55.67]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  When was that?

[00:03:57.58]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It's about the time of the—well, I can give you, I guess, the year, maybe. It was around 1915. Because I came down—that was the year—there was a World's Fair. It was in what is now the Marina—

[00:04:19.71]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That's right.

[00:04:20.49]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  —which is now filled in. And I came down. I had a very good friend who was living in—they lived in—I don't think it was Oakland. Well, right there. I had known her very well in Washington. Her father was in Congress and my father was in Congress. And the name was Noland.

[00:04:51.44]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:04:51.68]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  He was in Congress in California for some years. And that's where his daughter and I became very good friends. We still are, but I never see her. She lives in Phoenix, and I live here. Anyhow, also—so I knew the whole family quite well. And she had a little brother two years old, the most beautiful child. Oh, he was so beautiful. And he killed himself just after I arrived down here. Bill Noland.

[00:05:24.99]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yes.

[00:05:25.86]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You remember?

[00:05:26.45]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Sure.

[00:05:28.45]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, anyhow, that's when I first came to San Francisco, 1915. And I'll never forget how enchanting the city looked to me from the water as we approached it. So beautiful. No high-rises.

[00:05:47.05]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  You see the high-rise then as a dehumanizing force.

[00:05:53.02]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, yes I do, in spite of the fact that it is very spectacular. It's a spectacular thing. It's a kind of a pity that we have to go through all that.

[00:06:10.82]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, let me ask you this. Again, in your book, you recommend sort of a utopia of thinking of the needs of individuals, and I mean, the poor and middle-class people as well as rich, of having a little piece of land, very small, perhaps, and a garden. In other words, some contact with nature, which high-rises in the city and urban congestion precludes.

[00:06:38.43]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:06:40.35]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  On the other hand, the—oh, I would say from the postwar period with the move—tremendous population explosion on the West Coast, this is what attracted—this possibility was what attracted people, say, to Southern California, the Los Angeles area and, to a certain extent, the Bay Area. And so the result was urban sprawl. The suburbia and the neighborhoods where everybody has a yard and a garden, but it eats up the landscape. Would you, in some way, modify your original goal—your original desire for each family, each human being to have his little plot of land given say, the population explosion?

[00:07:25.77]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You know, I think I would modify it, because who could foresee the tremendous congestion of population.

[00:07:36.13]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Nobody. That's true.

[00:07:37.51]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Nobody could foresee it.

[00:07:38.59]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I don't know how much the American population has grown since 1929, the late '20s. But I wonder if it isn't possible that it's almost doubled?

[00:07:48.97]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, I'm sure of it.

[00:07:50.05]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Because we have what? 200 million people now. And maybe we—perhaps there weren't even 100 million at that time.

[00:07:55.84]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't think so.

[00:07:57.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  So, of course, well, we all have to change those views with time and changing circumstances. And I must say that if we did have fewer people, I would agree with you one hundred percent back in 1929. [Laughs.]

[00:08:09.93]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:08:12.57]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  As I said earlier, you have an obvious—reflected in your book, an obvious interest in architecture, and especially interiors. You built interiors of homes. And from the colonial period on up, you faithfully, during each period, describe typical interiors of the time, more so than in any book I've read, any general survey, which I think is wonderful, and shows a very well-rounded approach to American tastes and so forth. I was wondering if this interest in architecture and interiors and furnishings is also a part of the sociological interest, and perhaps, an index of taste. In other words, how we live, and the things we choose to surround ourselves with is very indicative of the taste of a given period, and therefore, finds its expression, of course, in pictures. Would that be a fair—

[00:09:19.30]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  That sounds pretty fair to me.

[00:09:21.24]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That sounds okay? You won't argue with me?

[00:09:22.92]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I won't argue on that.

[00:09:25.23]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Because I think it bears pointing out that your descriptions are quite extensive and quite complete of typical interiors of the various periods.

[00:09:39.34]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You know a lot more about what I've written than I do. [Paul laughs.] Let me tell you.

[Recorder stops; restarts.]

[00:09:47.20]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I was going to ask you—and you partially answered the question already—what your contact with California was? You said that you came to visit a friend.

[00:09:58.94]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah, that's the first time I was ever in—

[00:10:00.04]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  1915.

[00:10:02.47]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:10:03.40]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And the reason I ask this is that you mentioned several Californians in your book: Douglas Tilden, Arthur Putnam, I think.

[00:10:12.43]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:10:13.09]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And you also reproduced two buildings in Los Angeles, the Public Library the Goodhue Building and, of course, the Barnsdall residence.

[00:10:27.10]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, by the way, I knew Aline Barnsdall. Very well.

[00:10:29.14]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I see. Well, that's interesting. Could you tell me something about that?

[00:10:32.77]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, all I know is I knew her and that I knew—and I knew Frank Lloyd Wright slightly. And he designed that Barnsdall home.

[00:10:46.00]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. When did you know Aline Barnsdall? Did you ever visit her in Los Angeles?

[00:10:52.19]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No, I never saw that house.

[00:10:57.39]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Hmm. They're restoring it now, you know.

[00:10:59.43]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't believe I even saw the house. The only Wright house I remember seeing is that one on the road from—oh, my god.

[00:11:23.87]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  One of the ones in Chicago?

[00:11:25.78]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No, right out here in this part of the world.

[00:11:28.77]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, there's one right on Stanford campus. Is that—

[00:11:32.36]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No, no, it's in the country, and it is not far from—The river, the river, the river. Anyhow, I don't remember. Where was I driving, to where? There is a spectacular house by Frank Lloyd Wright and it stands on top of a butte. Now, where was this thing?

[00:12:21.75]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Is it around here?

[00:12:22.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  As you cross, it's on the Colorado, I think. It's not far from the Colorado River.

[00:12:29.01]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I don't know. Well, at any rate, you never saw the Barnsdall house, but you did know—

[00:12:39.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't think I saw Aline's house. And you did ask me how I knew Aline.

[00:12:46.38]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Yeah.

[00:12:47.07]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I knew Aline in New York, of course. That's where I met her. And I don't think I ever saw Aline in California. I saw her—I knew her in New York.

[00:13:01.45]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I see.

[00:13:03.33]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And if you ask me how I came to meet her in New York, I cannot tell you. You meet so many people in New York.

[00:13:11.22]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Absolutely. That's true.

[00:13:13.20]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  That's where I knew Aline Barnsdall.

[00:13:15.93]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, when did you—after that first visit to California, I mean, after all, you lived—you chose to live here in Palo Alto.

[00:13:23.49]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Oh, but I've only lived here three years. I lived in New York for 60.

[00:13:27.48]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, when did you—did you make other visits to California after that first one, before you moved here?

[00:13:37.48]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I can't tell you, because you see, I was here a good deal. I had relatives in this area.

[00:13:44.86]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  In what, in the Palo Alto area?

[00:13:47.10]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, no, I have a niece who lived for years in Menlo Park. Her husband died last February and she has now moved to a condominium somewhere in the Woodside area, I think it is. She sold her house. Well, I had that niece living here. I had some other nieces living in California.

[00:14:13.04]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  This is Mrs. Neuhaus.

[00:14:14.51]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  What?

[00:14:14.78]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mrs. Neuhaus, married—

[00:14:18.17]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Marilee Neuhaus. Yes, she came down here to live. But of course, she married a man that she knew in Colfax, Washington. However, he came down here and established himself. And he and Marilee were married. And various cousins, various roses [ph]. I have a very dear niece who lives in Portola Valley, or someplace like that. She's been here for many years. So they certainly had a way of drifting south to California. And I drifted after him and visited him in California.

[00:15:07.29]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I see. Well, then, so that's how you came to live here in Palo Alto, what, three years ago you say you moved?

[00:15:13.29]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I came, yes, three years ago.

[00:15:16.17]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And you were in New York.

[00:15:18.93]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Only 60.

[00:15:21.64]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Only 60 years.

[00:15:22.92]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  About 60. I moved to New York from Washington in 1919.

[00:15:31.30]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And then, you left New York to come here.

[00:15:33.67]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And I left New York to come here. So you figure it out. I'm not good at adding.

[00:15:37.84]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  I'm not good at sums, either, but we'll let whoever is reading this transcript figure that out to the year. Well, you mentioned that Art in America was really a second book for you, and that you several years before that published a book on women. And I would be very interested in hearing what you could tell me about that. Because certainly, women's lib wasn't current at the time.

[00:16:14.97]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I chose a time when nobody was even interested in women. [Laughs.]

[00:16:19.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, at least not in the way I'm sure you dealt women in the book.

[00:16:26.69]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I'll tell you one thing about that, which astounded me. I took it off the shelf, oh, I don't know, a year ago or so. And I found that there was only one thing in my whole book that I would have changed. Just one thing.

[00:16:56.15]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What was that?

[00:16:59.69]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I had taken the Soviet government at its word.

[00:17:05.75]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  There.

[00:17:09.41]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  In other words, at that moment, I was pro-Soviet.

[Recorder stops; restarts.]

[00:17:13.49]

So I go back to it.

[00:17:14.58]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  What's the title of the book?

[00:17:16.65]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  The title of it is Concerning Women.

[00:17:18.51]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Concerning Women.

[00:17:19.23]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:17:20.10]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And what does it concern about women?

[00:17:27.12]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It concerns women.

[00:17:27.27]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Can you be more specific than that? I'm interested. I haven't read the book, so you have to tell me.

[00:17:31.35]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, the—yes—I can give it to you in the words of the text, which I ran on the flyleaf. "Let there then be no coercion established in society and the law of gravity prevailing the sexes will fall into their proper places." Now, that's the theme of that book. No coercion.

[00:18:06.93]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Bravo.

[00:18:07.44]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Freedom. It's just a book about freedom. That's what it really is.

[00:18:14.96]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, obviously, you—

[00:18:16.46]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  And I got that lovely text. I can give you three guesses where the text came from. "Let there be no coercion," or anything.

[00:18:27.40]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And the sexes will form—

[00:18:30.01]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Hmm?

[00:18:30.40]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  And the sexes—

[00:18:31.45]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah.

[00:18:32.94]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  No, tell me.

[00:18:36.47]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  It's Mary Wollstonecraft. [Laughs.]

[00:18:41.71]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Okay. Well now, how did you develop this, what I would say is a very healthy, but in a way advanced interest at the time in, I gather, in women's rights, and so forth and so on? How did you develop this? You, obviously, were moved to write that book. Again, like there was a need for a book on the subject of American Art.

[00:19:07.56]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I don't know if there was a need to tell. I don't—as I look back, I don't know what made me think there was a need for that book. I had to write it. [Laughs.]

[00:19:16.68]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Had you run into, say, job discrimination or other perhaps more subtle examples of a woman's subordinate position in this society?

[00:19:37.32]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No. But you see, I was brought up by people who believed in freedom. After all, not for nothing, the elder Senator La Follette, was one of my chief mentors as I grew up. But there was Albert Jay Nock, there was—I was— through people who believed in freedom.

[00:20:08.93]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, what—do you remember what the response—how was the book received? Did you get fan letters from women who felt that you had told it as it was?

[00:20:25.61]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No. That book hardly created a ripple. It had some good reviews. And the readers—just absolutely dead [ph]. [Laughs.]

[00:20:48.43]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, I'm sure that wouldn't be the case now, but that's—

[00:20:51.23]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, it wasn't [inaudible]. It means we had in those days [inaudible].

[00:20:59.56]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, what about the period after the publication of the books? You mentioned that your interests changed. That you took on different projects.

[00:21:11.73]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I went on from that to the book on American Art.

[00:21:15.68]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Right.

[00:21:16.07]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  That was really inspired by Pach. Without Pach, that book would never have been written, because he educated me in art as it were. And he was a very good person to educate me because he had had more to do than any other individual, I think, with creating in this country an interest in modern art, which at that time was practically the monopoly of the French. They were doing magnificent work in it. He knew them all, you see.

[00:21:58.06]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  But what about the period after that? In other words, you wrote the book on American Art. And then, you say that you moved on to other things, and you became interested in Russia.

[00:22:12.16]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Other things. Well, about that time, a lovely man, [inaudible]. And the head of a company called the Magnetic Pigment Company. And he was a personal friend of Engels. And I don't know. But he wasn't he was a Marxist. Curious guy. Anyhow, he was an amazing guy. He wanted to start a magazine. [Laughs.]

[00:23:06.10]

He came to me and wanted me to edit this weekly magazine, which he would finance. Well, I had been one of the editors of The Freeman, which as I told you it was financed by Mrs. Frances Neilson from 1920 to '24. And he came to me and said he wanted to start a weekly magazine and would I edit it? So I said yes. And I started that magazine in—well, I think we started in 19—29, I want to [inaudible]. [Inaudible] was out of the way. And we ran about a year. [Laughs.] We had hardly started, when wham, came the Depression. And that was—you didn't live through it, I hope.

[00:24:18.96]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  No.

[00:24:19.32]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  You weren't old enough to realize—that was some Depression. And of course, the poor man had to give up the magazine, because he couldn't finance it anymore. So that magazine was a very—it was a very brief interlude in my life. It was called—well, I think we called it The New Freedom [ph].

[00:24:52.18]

Then, I don't remember. I did various things. And became the war—when the relief work. I ran relief programs for the American Federation of Labor. You know what? Labor federations did a great job during the war. I was running the relief job for—well, and helped a nice guy who was running the relief job for the CIO. We worked together throughout the war very amicably. And then, the war ended. When did that war end?

[00:25:56.54]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  '45.

[00:25:57.65]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Ended around '45. That's right. I remember that I—that was my experience of—almost the only experience I remember of being discriminated against because I was a woman.

[00:26:21.64]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. How was that?

[00:26:22.84]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Because when the war ended, they—I had a very dear friend who was—and I worked closely with her in our relief work during the war. She immediately went to Europe. And I had been doing all this relief work for AF of L during the war. I couldn't go to Europe, because those labor states who ran the American Federation of Labor, weren't about to send a mere girl.

[00:27:21.12]

So they sent this guy Leon. I liked Leon very much, but I knew Leon's failing. Leon's failing was this: he never [inaudible] worked for the organization [inaudible], it was his tic, or his pattern or something, I don't know. Anyhow, when they were—when the war was over and Leon was to [inaudible]. Because I wanted to go to Europe, I'd been running the AF of L. And I said to the man who headed our organization, "Of course, you know that Leon never works for the organization that pays him."  

Well, that made no impression at all. Some time later, after Leon had got over there—and he wrote me he was having a perfectly wonderful time. He was supposed to be there representing this labor organization. He was the CIO man. But he was doing some fool thing like getting the situation straightened out in— France's labor situation. Everybody at the head of our organization who had been instrumental in getting him over there said to me, "Suzanne, what's the matter with Leon?"

[00:29:26.19]

I said, "Precisely what I told you. Leon never works for the organization that pays him." And he was being paid. But he was getting things straightened out in France. That was very funny. [Laughs.] But I never was sent over, because Matthew Wolf [ph] was the head of our—They have a male organization. And Matthew Wolf wasn't about to send a mere gal over to France. [Laughs.]

[00:30:06.03]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, so what did you do after that? You didn't get to Europe through the AFL.

[00:30:19.13]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I left the AFL organization. They didn't need me anymore. And I went west to visit my family. Now, I can't remember what year that was. Had to be '45 or so. I am very hazy about those years.

[00:30:47.31]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  But clearly, your interests had moved on from art and your involvement with art. There had been a war.

[00:30:58.63]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I suppose I hadn't looked at the picture.

[00:31:02.41]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  That's interesting. That's interesting.

[00:31:05.05]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  No, I was saving the world in other ways. But I don't quite remember. I do remember I went west to visit my family. Then, we went back to New York. I had to do something, though I can't remember to save my life.

[00:31:29.75]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Whatever it was, you were in New York from that time, about '46 or '47 when you returned until—?

[00:31:38.53]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I lived in New York from 1919 until I came out here. That was my residence. And I may have gone to Europe during that period, because I was always managing one way or another to get over to Europe.

[00:31:56.10]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Good for you.

[00:31:56.80]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Yeah. And I probably—now wait a minute, I do remember—I got a letter the other day from a woman who said that she's trying to get together with somebody—Johnny [ph] McMillan, who had shown me around Glasgow in 1948. [Inaudible] 1948?

[00:32:29.44]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Must have been.

[00:32:31.44]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  Well, I began going through some what you might call diaries, partial diaries. I found this envelope, and out of the envelope came the diaries I had kept in Europe in 1948. And then, of course, I remembered that I had gone to Europe in January, I think it was, or February of 1948. I had a friend who lived in California, in Los Angeles. And her husband was a very rich man. He made his money in radio. And she got me to go to Europe with her, and she said that he would pay, because I didn't have a thing. And he paid for this trip. And we started at my suggestion. We started, I think, it was January. I said, let us go to Italy, and work north because we all go north with the spring, and we did. And so in January 1948, I would have taken my oath that I wasn't in Europe. In January 1948, I not only went to Europe, but I was there until autumn of 1948. [Laughs.]

[00:34:06.80]

PAUL J. KARLSTROM:  Well, these things do elude us after a while. As I say, I'm finding it hard to remember when I was where. And as you say, we should all keep journals and diaries.

[00:34:19.53]

SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE:  I really think so. Because if I hadn't found—I found an envelope there in an old—documents I've got stashed away. I found this envelope and I looked at it. And on the back of the envelope, it said "Diaries– 1948." And there were the diaries I had kept in Europe in 1948, and I had forgotten being there. And there they were.

[END OF TRACK AAA_lafoll76_5047_m]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]