Peter Selz (34 page)

Peter Selz, in his writing and curatorial endeavors, expresses strong feelings about the artists he favors. In his retirement years he has been largely free to pick and choose, and in doing so he has formed close personal relationships with his subjects. And these have not been limited to living artists. He considers, for example, Ferdinand Hodler and Lyonel Feininger “close to my heart,”
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though the greatest attachment of all is Goya, followed by his other all-time favorites, Max Beckmann, Mark Rothko, and Sam Francis. He has been typically most devoted to, and emotionally invested in, artists whose work places them outside the mainstream. His commitment to artists and movements that he feels have been insufficiently recognized is the hallmark of his long career.

San Francisco artist Carlos Villa, a noted activist and champion of multicultural diversity, described as well as anyone Peter's impact on and contribution to the Bay Area art scene and, above all, the artists. He recalls how Peter Selz quickly attached himself to the bohemian artist crowd
that gathered around Pete Voulkos at his studio by the railroad tracks on Gilman Street in west Berkeley. For ten years, everybody knew that there would always be a party there, around the clock. “Pete would be gambling, doing coke,” and holding court: “Pete Voulkos was the man.” And Carlos considered Pete (along with his other mentor, Harold Paris) one of his best friends. He also came to admire Selz, in no small part because the art historian had chosen
his
world: “Pete [Voulkos] was head of the sculpture department, and he would have his faculty meetings after a poker session. He didn't even have to go to school to get a salary. And Peter Selz had to have gotten swept up with the tide. He could not have been the ruler of the [Bay Area art] world in his new museum without being side by side with Pete Voulkos.” He added, “You know, the thing was that Peter Selz was very much part of the art scene. He wanted to be not necessarily the anchor, but he definitely was part of the underpinning.”

Carlos went on to express admiration for Selz's insistence on pursuing his own new regional view—notably by creating his personal Funk “kingdom” as a way to identify what is original about the Bay Area: “Peter had his own view. He had his own lens . . . to what everything was. And that's what made the Funk show.” Peter wanted to be authentically part of the local art scene. In that, his interests seemed to Villa to go well beyond personal and professional ambition. And his political interests are authentic, providing the willingness to look past his learned Euro-American prejudices about the idea of the “other.” Villa credits Selz with being one of the most open of art historians around, one who goes beyond stylistic and formal issues: “It isn't the idea of ‘isms' . . . or whether or not figurative art is more eternal or more humanistic—as opposed to de Kooning making marks. It's not about that anymore. It's about the immersion in the human spirit.”
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Given their deep commitment to group and individual diversity, it carries considerable weight when politically sophisticated artists such as Carlos Villa—joined by Rupert Garcia, Enrique Chagoya, and others— use the words
generous
and
inclusive
to characterize Peter Selz's approach to art and artists.
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Chagoya sums up the sentiment and expresses gratitude for Peter's contribution: “In the Bay Area I feel a sense of belonging to a community of artists, dealers, writers, and cultural activists unique
in the world. Many come and go, but what really matters is that some of them devote the time and energy to record and analyze artistic events and their connection to the social and political context. Peter, in his research and writing, is the kind of historian who has continued to do just that important task. For his dedication of mind, and especially his appreciation of individual artists, Peter is most special to all of us.”
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Villa, Chagoya, and Garcia, like Chillida in Spain, attract Peter with their social and political ideals and commitment. As it turns out, Garcia is one of the most enlightening exemplars of the union between Selz's ideas and the artists he writes about. In
Beyond the Mainstream
, Peter begins his discussion of Garcia by quoting and then providing a rejoinder to a Hilton Kramer review in the
New Criterion
in which, in Selz's words, Kramer takes “umbrage with a number of political exhibitions and publications.”
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Although Kramer's hostility toward left-wing political art is not directed at Rupert Garcia per se, it would certainly include the artist's well-known graphic statements such as
Attica Is Fascismo
(1971) and
¡Fuera de Indochina!
(1970). Kramer takes a staunchly negative position on the question of whether moral and political opinions have a place in making art: “We are once again being exhorted to abandon artistic criteria and aesthetic considerations in favor of ideological tests that would . . . reduce the whole notion of art to little more than a facile, pre-programmed exercise in political propaganda.”
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To this Selz responds with his own question: “Does Mr. Kramer, a most political animal himself, actually believe that artists can live and work in total isolation from the political context? What are these ‘artistic criteria and aesthetic considerations'? And what was Mr. Kramer's own socio-political milieu in which he acquired his ultra-conservative views?”
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This is classic political Selz, an absolute and unbending position, which one sympathetic UC Berkeley colleague, law professor Richard Buxbaum, describes—with more than a bit of liberal admiration—as “his unambiguous approach, that black-and-white bluntness of vision.”
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Garcia himself, however, in talking about his studies and eventual collegial friendship with Selz, downplays, almost ignores, the political component that is the focus of Peter's writing about him. Instead he sees it as a kind of “progressive” intelligence which they naturally share—and if Peter did not care about such things, Rupert declares, “I wouldn't waste my time.”
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His
view of their friendship, why they are important to each other, is actually more nuanced than Peter's emphasis on the political “bond.” Garcia's affection for Peter comes from a different place.

Rupert came to Berkeley in 1973 to earn a Ph.D. in art education. When he took a course with Peter Selz, however, he decided to switch to art history. Peter supported his application and he was admitted. He took seminars from Selz and Herschel Chipp, and in the process “got to know them well. The relationship with Herschel was intense, but it was cool. And then with Peter it was intense and warm.”
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As much as he enjoyed the academic life, Garcia finally had to make a choice between being an artist and writing a thesis.
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Being an artist won out, a decision that both Selz and Chipp supported—which Rupert interprets as coming from “trust” based on his performance in seminars. Rupert remembers the first time Peter and he interacted outside the classroom, at a symposium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art about art and social engagement. Rupert criticized a statement Peter made about artists in general, ignoring the fact that, in Rupert's words, “white artists do something, and it's considered profound. But when artists of color do something, it's considered to be culturally bound. I was thinking, what's with this double standard, man? It was the real world, real life, and Peter never shied away.” Rupert looks to that exchange as the beginning of their relationship: “Real friendships are built upon being open to criticism and not taking umbrage against the other person, saying, ‘You're out of my life because you don't agree with me.'”
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At that point, Garcia said, he and Selz were establishing a connection based on intellectual and creative equality. That was important to Rupert, but he is a realist: “I mean, it would be folly to have great expectations of someone like Peter. I have great expectations for myself, but for nobody else.”
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Rupert came to appreciate Selz's importance beyond the classroom, and specifically to the Bay Area:

 

I would say that later in his career when he started to get involved with local artists, I cared [more] about him. Previously I only cared about him because of the book on German Expressionism. That's a fabulous piece of work. I really love that book. So I always knew this guy was very serious. I knew that he was here and that he was at MoMA, and he did
New Images of Man
.
That was a fantastic thing to have done—he brought that with him. So I knew there was this stimulating mind and presence in the Bay Area.
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Despite his independence and artistic self-reliance, Garcia is grateful that Peter wrote favorably about his work in several publications, including
Art of Engagement
(2006), one of Selz's two major books of recent years and the culmination of a career-long dedication to political art in the service of humanity. This supportive friendship continues right up to the present. Peter offered to read the manuscript for Garcia's proposed book on Surrealism and Mexican modern painting. Even though sometime earlier he had observed that he was “running out of steam,” he read the entire manuscript. “He edited the whole damn thing,” said Rupert. “Every page, even the notes.”
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Rupert ended by saying, “Peter is a friend. I consider him my friend. I can talk to him about anything, say anything I want. I feel no need to edit when I talk to him. And I call about anything that I think is important.”
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Anne Brodzky of Meridian Gallery in San Francisco is another sympathetic colleague, similarly dedicated to progressive goals and humanist values. She and Peter share a deep rapport, one that underlies their collaboration at the nonprofit gallery. In 2005 he joined the board of the Society for Art Publications of the Americas, the nonprofit parent of Meridian Gallery and its innovative program of new music concerts and internships for at-risk, inner-city teens. Located in new quarters in downtown San Francisco, Meridian has an ambitious exhibition program that draws heavily on the knowledge and experience of Peter Selz. Starting in 1995 with a nationwide traveling exhibition,
About Drawing
, Peter has organized shows of the work of Robert Kostka, Robert Colescott, and Kevan Jenson, as well as a Morris Graves exhibition that was on view in the spring of 2010. Brodzky speaks fondly of her association with Selz:

 

I've worked formally and informally with Peter Selz since our mutual friend Dore Ashton brought us together in the early 1980s. As my mentor, Peter continues to challenge my assumptions about seeing, particularly when it comes to direct work with him on an exhibition. His swift calls are always the adroit, the telling, ones. Peter has continued to
provide guidance to the director and staff, to curate shows and produce catalogues for each of the exhibitions at Meridian's Powell Street location. Above all there is a stunning shared congruence between the gallery's mission and Peter's belief in cultural diversity and the power of significant art to effect change.
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Selz's retirement activities, his writing and exhibitions, and his attraction to individual artists are in large part determined by political considerations. But this is not to be understood in a narrow polemical or activist sense. Peter's political view encompasses much more, really constituting a philosophy of life that he applies to art. For him, art must somehow tap into the human spirit. Certainly artists like Rupert Garcia and gallery directors like Anne Brodzky, firmly committed to social change, comfortably meet that requirement. But what of other Selz favorites, such as artists Sam Francis and Nathan Oliveira, Californians whose work is not overtly political? Francis could easily be described as a formalist, a quality that Selz holds as suspect. In his view, formalist art typically lacks human presence. Nonetheless, Sam Francis (see
Fig. 20
) figured among Peter's closest friends and is the subject of one of his major monographs. Dore Ashton describes
Sam Francis
(Abrams, 1975, rev. ed. 1982), along with his studies on Chillida and Beckmann, as “indispensable to art historians and those who desire to know.”
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Speaking about Peter's writing, Ashton further clarifies Peter's unique political-
cum
-philosophical position, one that encompassed artists representing a broad range of subjects and styles: “I could never write about Mel Ramos, for instance. To me he's just a Pop artist—and Pop is not interesting to me. But Peter can, if he's talking about social, political, and cultural aspects of a subject. And that's what he did in
Art of Engagement. . . .
But he's done very good work other than that, like the monograph on Sam Francis. I think it is excellent.”
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Still, the question remains: just how does Sam Francis fit into the Selz idea of significant art? Fortunately, Peter himself provides a partially satisfying answer in his account of his planned retrospective at MoMA. “Why Sam? Because I thought his work was truly beautiful. The whole strong feeling for color. They talked about color painting later on. But at the time it really was this essence of the soul of color, and the color of soul. I felt his paintings were just a great pleasure to look at—which was
the opposite of what I presented in
New Images of Man
.”
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Yet “beauty” can, in capable hands, skillfully disguise the merely “decorative,” something Selz disdains as eliminating the human presence or, put another way, the realm of ideas. But as he goes on, his reasoning becomes clearer: “Abrams [the publisher] wanted to do a book on Sam Francis. I wondered why has Sam, who is acknowledged in Japan as one of the great painters of our time, received little recognition in his own country— even been ignored? Why do his canvases hang more prominently in museums in Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Basel, and Berlin than in American museums?”
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