Peter Selz (35 page)

In his monograph, Peter saved that question for the final chapter, where he attempted a response beyond the more obvious, and cynical, explanation that Sam Francis had a prosperous Japanese father-in-law and had resided in Japan for a while, and so enjoyed easier access to the Japanese art market. Peter's own answer to his question touches on seemingly unrelated, but very important, issues about American culture that, to a degree, still set us apart—almost schizophrenically—from the rest of the world. Maybe these issues are part of Peter Selz's larger “political” agenda. “What I suggested in the final chapter is that the simple beauty of his [Francis's] work did not appeal so very much to America. We can [appreciate] Dante's
Inferno
much more readily than his
Paradiso
, and Beethoven has always been more popular than Mozart. The sheer idea of beauty and pleasure has been put down to some extent by American Protestant culture.” Peter concludes with his overall assessment of the book: “This was a beautiful book, perhaps the most beautiful book I've ever done.”
⁴⁶
From a Selzian political imperative, perhaps it is appropriate to introduce the idea of a “politics of beauty” or “political aesthetics.”

Peter relates with fond pleasure his acquisition of the large Sam Francis painting that hangs above his sofa, dominating the north wall and the entire living room with its powerful colors:

 

We were doing the book, back and forth. I spent a lot of time working with Sam in Los Angeles and sometimes up here. We became very good friends. I told him about this modern dream house I hoped to build: “Well, the last plan is terrific, but I don't think I can afford it.”

And Sam said, “You really want to do it? Will it have a large wall?”

I answered “Yes, one is planned.”

Sam
said, “Well in that case if you build the house you can select a painting of mine to put on that wall.”

I selected it and lived with it untitled for a long time. There was a demand for a big exhibition and Sam was sitting on this couch: “I think we should give this picture a title to go with the exhibition.”

He thought for a while, looked at it, and said: “Let's call it
Iris
. Not the girl's name but the eye—the open eye.”
⁴⁷

Although Nathan Oliveira was just as far removed from politics as Sam Francis was,
⁴⁸
Oliveira's influences and vision lie very close to those of his friend Peter Selz, and with him it is easier to see the connection between artist and writer, which are made even more apparent in Selz's 2002 book
Nathan Oliveira
. In fact, Oliveira and Selz fit together in several ways. Oliveira shared Peter's affinities for Goya and German Expressionism, which were important sources for his art. Max Beckmann, Peter's touchstone, was a major influence on Oliveira, as was Symbolist ambiguity, as in, especially, Odilon Redon. Some of Oliveira's best work, notably his monotypes, derives directly from these sources, which are among Peter's great interests. Understated and mysterious, such images speak to the spiritual qualities that Peter includes within a greater understanding of politics and ideological values. Under this particular construction, the big idea is to use the means available to change perception and the way people engage the world. But is it political? Well, just possibly—at least in Peter Selz's worldview.

Oliveira's interests did indeed parallel Peter's, as both acknowledged. Oliveira saw his project as centered in and around humanist expressionism, with Germany and the painters Selz so admired as a starting point: “Whether it was Beckmann or the German Expressionists, or Giacometti, eventually Peter could attach his views to these people. And certainly I shared that sympathy with him. I wasn't as obvious with the politics as he was, but certainly the ‘humanization'—the humanist expression of what I was doing—was enough for him. The fact that the figures in my work were not just painted figures but
about
something. Loneliness— some kind of internal aloneness. Isolation. Yes, the existential condition. I think that appealed to him. And that's the way Peter interprets my work.”
⁴⁹
Writing in
Nathan Oliveira
, Selz echoes his subject's words by placing his work squarely within tradition, with constant reference to
the great expressive achievements of the past. In this Oliveira occupies the creative space that most attracts Selz and informs his view of modernism within a historic framework:

 

Nathan Oliveira has not sought dramatic change in his art. Instead, his passion is for continuing an inner-directed artistic tradition attached to the human subject. His art represents a
response
[italics added] to artists, both past and present, an ongoing dialogue with artists from Rembrandt and Goya to Munch, Beckmann, Giacometti, and de Kooning—whom he recognizes for their insights into the human condition using the visual means at the painter's disposal. The evocation of mystery that the viewer experiences . . . derives from a depth of feeling refracted through artistic tradition and transmitted to the spectator by the artist's hand.
⁵⁰

This apparent resistance to change (at least for its own sake) and actively looking to the past for inspiration and expressive forms would seem, to some, to run counter to the modernist credo that we must break with the past. However, Oliveira's original interpretation of his influences and sources seems to have freed him to create his own “modernist” figuration, in practice giving form and tangible substance to Selz's ideas. No wonder the two appreciated and admired each other.

Oliveira, in an early interview that Selz quotes in his monograph, acknowledges his artistic debts while endeavoring to explain his objectives. Listing the artists above along with other important influences, Oliveira proceeds to describe his tradition-derived modernist position:

 

Goya, Beckmann . . . all these artists, really make up part of me . . . I'm not interested in altering the course of the art world, to be so current, so immediately at the leading edge. . . . I readily admit my influences and those people who are important to me, and in some sense, I'm a composite, as are all artists who are really good. . . . I happen to choose those artists who deal with mystery and if you want to call it that, the supernatural . . . those elements of great mysterious forces—not that I actuate them—but I think of painting as a vehicle. Visual art is a vehicle for creating worlds that are non-existent.
⁵¹

Finally, Oliveira explains the course of Peter's life journey in terms of creative life force. According to Nathan, people—women especially—
provide the energy that fuels this force and the artistic productivity that results, a phenomenon with which he personally identifies.
⁵²
Despite the “handmaiden” connotations, the notion that the woman's role is to enable greatness in men—the idea of the muse—dies hard.

•    •    •

Peter Selz's unflagging loyalty to the art and artists and the ideas in which he believes remains consistent. Oliveira pinpointed it: “He maintains that loyalty. It's something that is unshakable with him. He's like a bulldog. That's one of the great, endearing qualities with Peter.”
⁵³
The same can be said of his loyalty to his earlier writing and exhibition subjects, especially their historical, national, and political components. And as with Sam Francis and Nathan Oliveira, Peter's enthusiasms are often enabled and supported by enlightened art dealers. Among the most important in that respect is Paula Kirkeby, director of Smith-Andersen Gallery with its associated graphics shop. Kirkeby also played a key role in the career of Sam Francis, whom she represented for twenty-five years. Paula thinks of these three closely interconnected friends—Selz, Francis, and Oliveira—in the fondest personal terms. As she recalls in a 2010 e-mail: “In 1969 I opened my first exhibit of Oliveira's monotypes. Peter Selz was right there to see them, as always very enthusiastic. I knew Peter through Adja Yunkers [Dore Ashton's first husband], so there was a small relationship between us prior to the Oliveira show.”
⁵⁴

She goes on to tell of an early interaction between Peter and Nathan: “I remember a party at our house, lots of Stanford people, Nate included as well as Peter. One of them was wearing a red shirt, I think it was Nate. Peter said he liked the shirt and the next thing I knew they disappeared and returned to the party with Peter wearing the red shirt and Nate Peter's shirt! They were reliably playful guests.”

Paula also remembers the more unlikely connection between Sam Francis and Peter: “Sam Francis and Peter were very close. Whenever Sam and family were around, Peter was always there. I always felt it was more about family than anything else.”

She concludes by saying: “On different occasions, either here [Bay
Area] or in Los Angeles, when I would go to museums or galleries with Peter, people would recognize him and come and say hello. Some were young unknown artists or students, and Peter was unbelievable with them. . . . He had the time and interest. Wonderful quality in someone who had tremendous power in the art world.”

Another important ongoing gallery connection is Jack Rutberg Fine Arts on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Selz and Rutberg have a rapport that embraces not only their interest in individual artists, but also, and perhaps even more so, the political and social passions that these artists manifest. In that respect, there could hardly be a more powerful example than the Swiss American artist Hans Burkhardt (see
Fig. 22
). When Rutberg first met Peter in the early 1980s, he had already been representing Burkhardt for about a decade, convinced that Hans was “among the most extraordinary painters of our time.”
⁵⁵
Peter had a limited awareness of Burkhardt, but no real exposure to his work. Hans Burkhardt was not
just
a Los Angeles–based artist; he had New York credentials also as a studio mate of Arshile Gorky from 1928 to 1937. Willem de Kooning visited frequently. Burkhardt, however, seems to have been the cannier of the two, being careful as he swept the studio floor at the end of the day to save the rejected drawings that had been tossed aside. Burkhardt arrived in Los Angeles in 1937 with the largest collection of early Gorky works outside the artist's own holdings.

Carole long before had tried to interest Peter in Burkhardt; she had some of his political posters, and her mother was a neighbor of his in the Hollywood Hills. But finally it was Rutberg who brought Peter to Hans's Jewett Drive studio to see the sixty paintings composing the
Desert Storm
series, his response to the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91. Peter was astounded by his first meeting with the artist. It seemed almost unfathomable that Hans, at age eighty-six, could have created the works in the span of a few months. But Peter understood such passion and immediately set about making it known. The first step was to read a paper at the International Congress of Art Critics titled “The Stars and Stripes: Johns to Burkhardt.” Anthologized in
Beyond the Mainstream
, the essay served as the text for
Hans Burkhardt: Desert Storms
, the 1991 exhibition at Rutberg's gallery. Peter, with his friend and, in this case, accomplice, Jack
Rutberg, set out to retrieve an accomplished artist and powerful political voice from relative obscurity. Included in that effort was another
Desert Storms
exhibition at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Rutberg recalls attending the exhibition of treasures from the Hermitage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Peter: “The excitement of discovery was animated and contagious as we moved through the exhibition discussing and critiquing works. We turned a corner and came upon a small Van Gogh painting of prisoners in a courtyard. It was a magical moment for Peter. This painting . . . was the very image in a postcard that Peter, as a young boy in Munich, so loved and had pinned to his bedroom wall some eight decades earlier.” In 2000, Peter and Jack attended the LACMA opening of
Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900–2000
. According to the official statement of purpose for this ambitious exhibition, it “would not be a traditional art historical survey, nor would it attempt to establish a new canon or identify certain types of artistic production as distinctively ‘Californian.' Rather, it would investigate the relationship of art to the image of California and to the region's social and political history.”
⁵⁶
This thematic promise raised high expectations, and the history of the show's reception was largely one of disappointment, despite the enormous staff effort and a degree of democratic process involved in early conceptualization. In a way, the show was bound to come up short. According to Rutberg, Peter Selz judged it harshly: “It's a terrible show.” In response to which Jack said, “It's time for you to write your book. After all, you've been writing it all your life.”
⁵⁷
Both Peter and Susan Landauer have different versions of how the book came about, Susan citing an exhibition that they intended to co-curate at the San Jose Museum of Art. When the exhibition was canceled, the museum withdrew as co-publisher. But all three agree that Peter's essay in
Reading California
, a companion to
Made in California
, the catalogue for the LACMA exhibition, did indeed provide the impetus for his award-winning study of political art in California.
⁵⁸

Whether or not a museum conversation was the literal beginning of
Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond
, the story underlines the importance to both men of the social and political dimension of art. Another artist they have discussed in these terms is the painter
Jerome Witkin (brother of photographer Joel Peter Witkin). Whereas Hans Burkhardt is the observer of human inhumanity, of holocaust in general, Jerome Witkin focuses on the Nazi Holocaust specifically, in paintings of such brutality that they are almost unbearable to examine. A March 2007 article by Selz in
Art in America
introduces Witkin as one of the greatest examples of figuration in the service of social conscience in recent art. This is exactly the territory where Peter Selz thrives.