Interview with Carmen Cicero and Mary Abell by Avis Berman

Interview with Carmen Cicero and Mary Abell by Avis Berman, Jan. 8, 2018, Robert Motherwell Oral History Project, Dedalus Foundation Archives, New York.

AB: This Avis Berman interviewing Carmen Cicero and Mary Abell for the Dedalus Foundation, on January 8, 2018, in their loft in New York City.

Carmen, I'm going to start with you, and I start this way with everyone. Would you please state your full name and date of birth?

CC: Full name, Carmen Cicero, date of birth August 14, 1926 -- a long time ago.

AB: Right. But still very much kicking. Now I see that you have a list of things that you might want to talk about.

CC: Yes. These are just reminders.

AB: Would you like to start with those?

CC:  Whatever.

AB: I can start with a little bit of background about you, too. Did you want to be an artist, as a boy?

CC: Well, I was always interested in painting and art, but I was more interested in music when I was young. I studied with New York's best teachers, and I became a classical clarinetist. Then I went into jazz, and I played, literally, thousands of jobs with some people who were world-class players. I made a couple of CDs. Then, at one point, when I got out of the army, I just went to the nearest college. I could probably have gone to Yale or whatever, but the nearest college of Newark State Teachers College. I didn't know what I was doing. So I went to Newark State Teachers College, which happened to have an excellent art faculty. I became very interested in painting, and the very first painting I sold was to a museum. I realized that some of the musicians that I worked with, who were far better than I was, were starving. So I said, "Hey, I seem to be doing well as a painter," and so I became more and more serious about painting. I got into galleries, I was with the Peridot Gallery. They had Louise Bourgeois, who was in that gallery, and Philip Guston was in that gallery, and several other people -- I can't think of their names right now -- that you might know. Then I was with Graham Modern.

AB: And Paul [Resika] was with Peridot too.

CC: Baziotes was with Peridot.

MA: And Paul was with Graham Modern

AB: Now were you in World War II, or did you just miss it?

CC: Yes. I was in World War II. I was headed out of -- I was going to be one of the people to invade Japan [laughs].

AB: How horrible.

CC: On the way, the war ended, and we made a right turn to the Philippine Islands, where I had a seventeen-piece jazz band. And because of that, I had a happy time in the army, one of the few. I saw some horrible things, but on the whole I loved being with musicians. I enjoyed the company of jazz musicians more than any other kind of people.

AB: When and how were you first exposed to abstract and Surrealist art?

CC: Through school. Through the teachers at the college. I was very resistant to modern art. Very. I thought that Picasso was a charlatan. That's how naïve I was. But when I saw a book where I saw the works of Pablo Picasso as a young man -- which were remarkably beautiful and accomplished -- I said, "There's a conflict here. How could this man do this, and this terrible modern art?" So in order to prove to my teachers that they were wrong in accepting this man, I looked and looked and looked, and studied and looked and studied, and the next thing you know I said, "Whoa, this is a great artist. A remarkable painter."

AB: Were you going to New York galleries at that time, in the late '40s?

CC: Yes, I did. And I was instantly attracted to Abstract Expressionism. I understood Abstract Expressionism instantly. I said, "This is great. This is remarkable." I said, "This is like me. This is what I can do." And I was an Abstract Expressionist painter. I was painting in the Abstract Expressionist way in 1954. I sold a work to the Guggenheim, that I guess you would call Abstract Expressionist work.

There's a very interesting story by the way. Miró saw that work and admired it, and I sent him a drawing. And he sent me a drawing back. So I had a work from Miró with my name written into the drawing.

AB: Great. Those were the days. Well, artists, as a rule, are pretty generous people.

So how did you become aware of Robert Motherwell?

CC: Well, as I remember, it was one of two pictures that I saw for the first time. I think the first one was The Voyage. I was just struck by that painting. It was either that or one called Western Air, which is owned by the Museum of Modern Art. Robert Motherwell told me how much they paid him for it. I've forgotten what it was, but it was a meager sum compared to what his art is now. I just loved those two works, and I just became more and more interested in his work.

AB: Would that have been at Peggy Guggenheim?

CC: No, I think I saw Western Air at the Museum of Modern Art.

AB: I'm not checking the dates -- which is why I was guessing. So from there, how did you learn about Hunter College and studying -- all of that?

CC: That was through my fellow artists. There was a group of artists that I was hanging around with, and they heard that Motherwell was teaching at Hunter College. I thought, "Well, I have to go there." We went, and it was very interesting. This was a long, long time ago, but you asked somewhere, in the notes that you gave me, did you have to have a portfolio? No, you didn't. And it was a painting class, but there were several people in the class who really just wanted to see Robert Motherwell. I must say this. Everyone in the class admired him enormously. They were awestruck by him. He was an excellent teacher. Excellent. He didn't always want to teach. [Laughs] He said to me once, he said, "Carmen, I'd pay a thousand dollars not to be teaching today." And I know how you feel -- because I taught all my life. I taught at Sarah Lawrence. I've taught at many, many places, and just as with Robert Motherwell, there were times when I didn't want to teach. I would pay a thousand dollars, if I had a thousand dollars, not to be there.

But he was a marvelous teacher, and just in a very simple, casual, ordinary way, he would say things that were very penetrating about my work and about everybody else's work -- which was very memorable. We all admired him enormously.

AB: Can you remember or reconstruct any of the kinds of things he might have said to you?

CC: What he would do -- not very well -- but what he would do was he would look at a painting, and he would offer about maybe seven or eight highly descriptive words about the work. I remember, at that time, my work was quite different. He said, "Oh, it's very suave. It's very this, it's very that. Very ba-ba-ba," and every one hit the mark perfectly. In a paragraph, he would say more than I would get in an entire course in another context, in an art class. He was wise. He was very perceptive. He could see. I admired him enormously.

AB: Was this one semester or a whole year of two semesters?

CC: For me, it was just one semester.

AB: Did you have any other courses with him, or just the one?

CC: Just that. I don't know why he was teaching. I mean, he seemed to be a man who had means and was well-to-do. Why he did it, I'm not really sure. I should have asked him that question, when I got to know him personally.

AB: By then he had at least one child. In other words, he was married, he had a child, and I think they wanted to live well, so it probably helped. And he had a first wife, and this was the second. Maybe he had alimony. I don't know that myself.

CC: [Laughs] That's true. Yeah.

AB: There were always a lot of people he was supporting. Let's put it that way.

CC: I don't know if his salary was higher than the general because he was a distinguished painter. That may have been. I'm not sure.

AB: Do you happen to recall if it was '52 or '53? I ask that because I looked at several --

CC: I don't know. It's in my book. I have a book written about me.

AB: Okay. And how many people were in the class?

CC: I don't remember. It was modest in size. I would guess maybe fifteen or eighteen.

AB: And were you painting in the class, or would you bring things in?

CC: I never painted in the class. I couldn't paint in class. I would paint at home, and bring my work in. I think that's what most people did.

AB: Then he would critique.

CC: Yes. He would critique the work.

AB: Obviously, this was like independent study, I guess, because this was a graduate course? It was a graduate course.

CC: Yes. It was a graduate course. I wasn't interested at all in a grade, or this or that, or adding it to my biography. I was just interested in meeting this man and seeing him, and knowing him and hearing what he had to say about anything.

AB: Did he lecture at all?

CC: Only in the sense that he would start talking to someone, and people would gather around and he would continue talking. I guess you could call that a lecture. He didn't come prepared to give a lecture. In a way, it was totally unnecessary, and I'm glad he never did because the remarks he made and the talk that he did give were spontaneous and relating to what prevailed at the moment. It was always very interesting and very compelling.

AB: So he never corrected anything that you did.

CC: No.

AB: I'm just separating him from some more traditional practice. Did he ever give you an assignment?

CC: No. Not that I can think of, no.

MA: It was '53, according to your chronology.

AB: Okay, '53.

CC: He wasn't a formal teacher. Everything was just very natural. What was needed at the moment was what was provided.

AB: You were students, but he was pretty much treating you like artists, is what I'm guessing.

CC: Yes.

AB: What do you think were the most important things that you learned, that maybe translated into your own work?

CC: That's hard. I don't think I can say anything specifically. No. I just can't answer that question.

AB: Also, your work changed, of course, too.

CC: I never painted like Motherwell. That wasn't my nature. I never wanted to join any school of painting, and I don't think I ever did. I painted like an Abstract Expressionist -- look. This is the closest I ever got to Motherwell, but that is close to him.

AB: There is a figure in there.

CC: Yes. Exactly. See. That's the closest I ever got. Then I went to this, and to this. You can see. And this.

AB: Yes. Exactly. Did any other artists whom he knew visit the course? Did he introduce the students to other artists?

CC: No, but sometimes he would talk about artists, as I remember. He would tell funny stories -- not funny stories but interesting stories. It's not very relevant, but he said, "I had to hang a show with Baziotes, and we went together, and we were working together. Baziotes said, 'Are we crazy?'" Baziotes was looking at his work, and hanging it on the wall, and said, "Are we being silly?" Motherwell was telling this story. And Motherwell said, "Gee, I don't know, myself, to tell you the truth. Sometimes I wonder if we're not crazy here." For some reason, I remember that story. Oh, yes, and about Rothko. He was very good friends with Rothko, and Rothko was a highly depressed guy. Motherwell would say -- Rothko would talk to him and say, "I paint in the morning. How do you get through the afternoon?" He would talk like this to Motherwell, and Motherwell -- who could be, as you probably know, kind of somber and kind of depressed himself -- but when something struck him funny, his face would light up and he would laugh like hell.

MA: Didn't he say, with Baziotes, "Bob, if it's no good, you can tell me?" And he didn't know what to say, because he didn't know himself. [Laughter]

AB: And did you study with other artists at Hunter?

CC: No. I really wasn't interested.

AB: Now were there other students in the class, that you recall, who became painters or really kept in the arts?

CC: A few. Let me see. The only painter that I know was in the class was a painter named Babe Shapiro, who made a modest success in painting, in as much as he had -- he had several New York galleries. I forget which ones they were, but they were pretty high up. I think he sold a couple of paintings to museums.

AB: His first name was Babe?

CC: Babe. Yep. Actually, it was Seymour. I don't think he liked that name.

MA: But he put together the whole graduate program for the Maryland Institute.

CC: Oh, that's right.

MA: So he taught for years at the Maryland Institute.

CC: He was a very accomplished teacher.

MA: He would go back and forth.

AB: The question is -- from your knowledge, can you tell if Motherwell -- to what extent did he think that art could be taught?

CC: He never revealed his thoughts about that point. For some reason -- a thought just popped into my head -- one of my favorite sayings of Willem de Kooning. He said, "The only definite thing I can say about art is that it's a word." [Laughter] There's a lot of truth in that. And the way Bob taught was pretty much the way I taught, which is you reveal what you know about something. You reveal all that you know about something, and try not to direct the person one way or another. And the last thing that you should do is say, "Paint like me." Because the job is to find out what the inner expression of the person that you're teaching is. That's your job -- to let their inner truth come forward.

AB: I can't imagine that he would have wanted a lot of little Motherwell clones running around, anyway.

CC: I doubt it. As I said, I had only the very slightest influence, and that was that one picture that I showed you.

AB: Did Motherwell talk about Picasso?

CC: No. I never heard him talk about Picasso. I got the impression somehow that he admired him. Oh, yes. He said one thing about Picasso that I do remember. He said that when he was in Paris, he sat at a table and Picasso was not far away. And he said that as he watched Picasso, Picasso was looking at the table, and there were objects on the table, and he constantly was moving them around, so that they would have esthetic relationships. He said that he kept watching Picasso move these things around, and he said, "I think that gave rise to my interest in collage." I thought that was kind of interesting.

AB: I think so too. Since you've brought this up -- this was later in my questioning. But I was going to ask you -- since you made collage and so did he -- did the two of you ever discuss collage or compare it or anything? Because collage was so --

CC: No, my collages, to just this day, were tiny little collages -- his were big and bold and so forth.

AB: I thought I might as well ask. 

CC: I'd like to say something about Bob's sense of humor. [Laughs]

AB: Please do.

CC: Bob had a fantastically good sense of humor, and I doubt that many people knew about this. You know, when people in the gallery said, "Oh, I didn't know him very well," just remember -- all those guys were in the gallery for seventeen years, and we had a meeting about once a week. So how could they say, "I don't know this man?" And, on top of that, we would get together on other occasions -- have a party here or a party there or a party somewhere -- so we knew them very well. There would be one time where one artist would be closer, or another artist would be closer. And there was a time when I was kind of close, I think based primarily on I had -- and have, and all my life have had -- a good sense of humor, and I was capable of making people laugh, including Motherwell.

In fact, one day -- this is interesting. I hadn't thought about this -- one day I was talking and kidding around -- he had just given me a big hug and a big squeeze, which was sort of out of character for him. He was kind of a somber guy a lot, and so forth.

AB: Kind of shy, maybe.

CC: And one time [laughs] we began to talk about the members of the gallery, and we were starting to make, I guess you would call, verbal cartoons of each one. We were rolling, and Motherwell was excellent at doing it, by the way. I won't tell you what we said, under torture [laughter]. Each one -- he was more on the button than I was, but we were rolling, really holding our stomachs, and talking about the people. It wasn't mean-spirited at all.

AB: If you could remember anything about the dead ones, not the living ones, that would be interesting, about what he thought or what he said.

CC: You know what? In all truth, I can't remember much. I know that he likened [ ? ] to Humpty Dumpty, and I'm telling you [laughs]. I shouldn't be talking about his. 

AB: Okay. All right.

CC: Let's put it this way. He enjoyed laughing. Oh. I'll tell you another very interesting story about Bugsy. Bugsy was always doing funny things, and Motherwell found him very amusing. One day Bugsy came in -- we made a poster, so we each had some proofs of the poster. So Bugsy came in and he said, "I made an improvement on the poster." This was when we had a meeting, and everyone was there and we said, "What did you do, Bugsy?" What he had done was he took the poster and he meticulously cut everybody's work out of the poster except his own. [Laughter] Well, Motherwell started to laugh like hell. We all did. It's one of those stories that, you know when people say "you had to be there." Well, this is one of those stories where you had to be there. Because everyone knew Bugsy. They knew his humor. They knew it was a very intimate kind of play with these particular people. And Bugsy would do this sort of thing a lot.

Another thing I should tell you that's very funny, that we enjoyed -- we would have a meeting. How often? Once a week, honey?

MA: Well, every couple of weeks, usually.

CC: We would have a meeting every couple of weeks, and the purpose of these meetings was to figure out what the next show was going to be, and who was going to have this show, and so forth. And, by the way, Motherwell was more interested in the camaraderie than in the showing, because if somebody said, "Gee, I like that," he'd say, "Take mine. Take my spot."

AB: He didn't need it.

CC: There was nobody there who could buy his work, because it wasn't that kind of a market for his paintings. Prints, okay.

So they started where we would talk about the show and so forth, and the next thing you know -- there was a lot of camaraderie, and we would start having a lot of laughs. So then we'd start having food at the meetings. Then we started having drink at the meetings. [Laughs] And I think it was Mary who suggested that we have some very inexpensive champagne.

MA: Renate had started it.

CC: Was it Renate who started it?

MA: Renate, yes, she started it.

CC: We had this cheap champagne.

MA: She'd always have this inexpensive champagne.

CC: And we'd all get looped.

MA: And then all the openings would have this inexpensive champagne, so the refrigerator would be filled with it all the time [laughter], and when they had meetings.

CC: It was riotous. The meetings were riotous. We'd be laughing, and we'd get stoned. We'd start laughing and carrying on and so forth.

MA: And Robert was used to drinking a lot of champagne with Renate, too. [Laughter]

CC: Those meetings, they were truly remarkable and a lot of fun. Because the people in that gallery were remarkable people. They were remarkable people, aside from the fact that they were good artists.

AB: It was the best gallery up in that whole -- the whole upper Cape there.

CC: Another thing. This is very interesting. Most of the galleries were envious of the Long Point, and Robert Motherwell was very wise in this. He said, "We should have largesse." And what he would do would be, he would invite one of the artists from outside the gallery to show.

MA: But this was all agreed to, at the meetings. He didn't do anything independently, without discussing it.

CC: Yes. That's what I'm saying. Or he would have a show where he would honor Stanley Kunitz, and that would get into the New York Times. One of the things he said was, "With art, you've got to go first class." And he would always take the highest road. First we honored Stanley Kunitz, then a composer named Arthur Berger, and then I think somebody else. I can't think of it. But every time, every act that he took had excellent results. He was a pretty good general, I'll say that. 

MA: Well, it brought the art community and the literary community and all of the art communities -- you'd get musicians -- together, at Long Point. It was like a group of like-minded spirits, really.

AB: Before we get back to Long Point -- after you left Hunter, did you socialize or did you have a relationship with Motherwell again, before Long Point?

CC: No. I wasn't important enough for that.

AB: So Long Point was what made --

CC: Long Point was where I established, I would say, a good relationship with him.

AB: Okay. Let me ask you something else, because you studied with Hofmann, right?

CC: Oh, right. Just for a short time. Just for two meetings.

AB: Oh, really? And when was that?

CC: You know, I don't remember.

AB: Okay. Because I was going to ask you if you had a sense -- and this would probably also go into Provincetown and all, too -- if you had a sense of the relationship between Motherwell and Hofmann.

CC: I don't think they had much of a relationship. I mean, Hofmann was not Motherwell. In fact, this is what happened. I went to see Hans Hofmann, and I already was an accomplished painter. I kind of went, almost just to see him and talk to him. So he took a look at my work and he said, "Well, you’re an accomplished painter." So he said, "Give me $25.00, and you can come as long as you want." I said, "Gee, that's great." So I think I came twice, and I guess I was in a class where a lot of the students were kind of beginners and semi-beginners and so forth. I think I already had a gallery. I'm not sure. I don't remember the time.

AB: It was a little too late for you. The classes were too elementary for you.

CC: Yeah. He was there, and I wanted to meet him, so it was more of that than being his student.

AB: Okay. Because I wondered if you were aware of what Motherwell thought of Hofmann, or anything like that.

CC: I never got any inkling.

AB: Also, when you finished your course, did Motherwell help you? Did he give you a recommendation or do anything like that at all?

CC: No. At that point, my relation to him was strictly teacher-student. Nothing exceptional happened between us than that relationship -- teacher-student.

AB: Okay. Well, let's skip, then, to Provincetown. When did you start going to Provincetown?

CC: Oh, boy. I don't remember. I really don't remember. Because I went up there a couple of times just to visit. Then I went a couple of times where I just stayed a while.

MA: When were you married to Carol Baldwin? Do you remember the year?

CC: I can't really say. It was a lot of years, I don't know -- forty or fifty years of going there.

MA: Because that's when you started going up, right? Because she introduced you to Cape Cod. That was his first wife.

CC: You know something? This is interesting. When I was asked to join the Long Point Gallery, I didn't want to. Remember, we talked about that, honey? When I was there?

MA: Oh, yeah. You weren't sure, because you were fishing all the time.

CC: You know why I didn't want to join? I had a boat, and I fished every day. That's all I did, was fish. I loved Cape Cod Bay. I was passionate about it. I just loved being out there, and I didn't want anything to interfere with that experience. [Laughs] So I was reluctant. I think Budd Hopkins asked me. And then when they said that Robert Motherwell was going to be in the gallery, I said, "Oh. Okay. I changed my mind." [Laughs]

AB: I wonder if he was a magnet for other people. In other words, once he was in --

CC: The way it started -- who were the originators, honey? 

MA: It says you began to summer in Provincetown in 1963. You married Carol Baldwin that year.

CC: Oh. Okay. Nineteen-sixty-three. [Laughs]

AB: That's about the same time that Motherwell began to go up there too, although you wouldn't have --

CC: No, it was only through the gallery that I got to know him.

MA: And then it says you studied briefly with Hans Hofmann that year too.

AB: Right. So you were already a mature artist. So you were recruited by --

CC: Who started the gallery? I've forgotten. Was it Leo?

MA: It was Leo.

AB: Leo Manso, and I guess Fritz Bultman was involved too.

CC: Yes. I think Budd Hopkins came up and asked if I wanted to join the gallery. And I think I said, "Well, let me think about it, because I've got some fishing to do." [Laughs] The way it started was, it wasn't that Motherwell attracted anyone. It was that Leo and Budd, I think they just selected people that they thought would be good for the gallery. I forget who decided to try Motherwell. No one really thought he would do it, because we were good artists but we didn't have the status that Motherwell had.

MA: Tworkov was invited, but didn't accept.

CC: Who did?

MA: Tworkov.

CC: Tworkov didn't accept?

AB: Was he invited before or after Motherwell?

MA: I don't know. That I don't know.

AB: Someone who was also up there, who was a good artist, was Myron Stout. 

CC: That's right.

AB: Was he invited?

MA: I'm not sure about that.

CC: I'm not sure about Myron.

AB: Because, obviously, he would have --

MA: Yes. Right. Absolutely.

AB: I think this is the time to introduce Mary Abell Cicero, because we are now in 1977. And you emailed me that that's when you met Motherwell and Carmen.

MA: Well, I met Carmen first, that summer. That was the first summer of Long Point.

AB: So Mary, would you please state your full name and date of birth?

MA: Okay. Mary Ellen Abell Cicero, November 2, 1949.

AB: And were you up there because you are an art historian? I think you did your dissertation on Edwin Dickinson.

MA: Yes.

AB: Were you researching Dickinson? Was that why you were there?

MA: No. I was actually an English major at that point, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I had spent some time in Provincetown. A group of us had actually, after Kent State, dropped out of school and moved to Provincetown for a couple of years. I went to Europe, and then I went back to school. Then I came up that summer. I graduated in '78 from college, and that's where I met Carmen. I was working as a waitress at what's now the Black Fish in Truro, and I met Carmen there. Then he started taking me to some of the events at Long Point, and I started meeting some of the artists.

AB: Of course, there were other people -- Edys Hunter and other people.

MA: Edys, yes. Sam Hunter's wife.

AB: Edys Hunter. Right. Exactly.

MA: I'm pretty certain she was staying with Robert and Renate. Then she was asked to be the director of the gallery -- at which she was just wonderful. She stayed at the Kibbutz in Provincetown?

AB: The Kibbutz?

MA: The Kibbutz. It was called the Kibbutz. It's still there, on Commercial Street.

AB: And it's called the Kibbutz.

MA: It's called the Kibbutz. Yes. So Edys would, you know, she -- for quite a few years, really, she was the director.

AB: Evidently, she would also have parties and gatherings in New York during the winter.

MA: Yes. During the winter she would have a meeting or two with the group, which they tried to do, usually, once a winter, anyway, to discuss what was going on, and the financial situation of the gallery, and upcoming shows, and finalize what they had been thinking about the summer before. Because they would be throwing ideas around.

AB: Did Motherwell ever back the gallery more than the regular dues? Did he contribute more?

MA: No, I think he felt that his contribution was, with the poster and with some of these, what was a print portfolio -- everyone pretty much knew that Robert's print would sell the portfolio. So he definitely contributed that way. And he was very generous with his prints, both with Cherrystone Gallery. Sally Nerber in Wellfleet had a very warm relationship with Robert and Renate, and with Long Point too. They would send us prints from his studio, and then we could also order prints from Ken Tyler and other sources as well. And that made a significant difference in terms of floating the gallery.

So Robert's contributions were really important, but he never gave, monetarily, more money than anybody else. He and Judith Rothschild and the Frombolutis, who had more means than the rest of the artists, were very firm about wanting to keep everything, really, more on egalitarian terms than not. Supporting it more than the rest of the artists.

AB: That was probably a wise choice. Now when did you become professionally involved in the gallery? Sometime in the '80s?

MA: Yes. Let me see. I was the assistant in the '80s, and we had another wonderful director. His name was Robert Gill, who had been associated with the Martha Graham Company. I don't know exactly what his title was with the company, but I know he was a really important mover with the Martha Graham Company.

He became the director, and, unfortunately, he became ill. We're talking the '80s here.

AB: He must have had AIDS.

MA: He did. So everybody became very concerned about it, and it wasn't an easy thing for people to deal with -- and particularly with Robert, who had come from Texas. I think his father had been a Texas ranger, and his grandfather. I mean, it was really rough. So what the gallery members decided to do was just to tell Robert, "Go home and get well, and we will pay your whole salary for the summer." So that's what they did, as his assistant, then I came in and assumed responsibility for it. I did that, and then at the end of the summer, Leo asked me, "Would you want to continue?" I didn't know whether that was a good idea, because I was with Carmen at that point -- whether that was appropriate. I spoke with some other members, particularly Tony Vevers, and they said, "Well, go and talk to Bob, and see what he thinks."

I remember approaching him in the parking lot. He was getting into his car after a meeting, and I just said, "What would you think if I were to be -- ?" Oh, he thought it was a wonderful idea. Then he continued with the fact that what he liked about Long Point was that it was not a commercial gallery, and that he enjoyed the fact that -- he didn't say it in these words, but what he really meant was that I wasn't a professional art dealer. He liked that. But for his New York galleries, he had really serious businesspeople, but in Provincetown, he didn't really want a serious businessperson to be the director of the gallery. So it was fine. He thought I would be great.

So it was very congenial.

AB: I think, as Carmen said, he liked it for the company. It wasn't about him making a killing in the Provincetown art market.

MA: Right. No, he really didn't want that.

AB: It was probably a great relief to him, that it was the way it was.

MA: Carm? Do you want to talk about what Robert talked about -- that he thought his New York dealer, I guess Knoedler, at that point, was maybe a little jealous of Long Point, of his affection for the gallery? [Laughter]

CC: One of the galleries, I forget which one -- Knoedler was one of them --

MA: It must have been Knoedler, at that time.

CC: -- was a little bit jealous of the fact that Robert was in another gallery, or maybe for business reasons or whatever reasons, and that's when the gallery was changed to "Long Point: An Artists' Place." So it wasn't a gallery anymore, it was an artists' place. [Laughter]

MA: I think it had something to do with Stiegliz and An American Place.

AB: An American Place. Right. Exactly. Now once you got to be friendly with Motherwell -- besides his sense of humor, what other qualities did you notice about him?

CC: Well, of course, his intelligence -- well, his fame, his intelligence. I read a lot, and we talked about books sometimes. I talked about it with Judith Rothschild. We talked about books and music and musicians and so forth. Renate, of course, was very interested in jazz -- by the way, if you're interested in jazz -- here. You can have this. [Laughs] These are big, big-time musicians. They played with the Boston Pops. This guy plays with Tony Bennett. She, the gal, sings with Tony Bennett. These are all big-time guys.

AB: I would love to have this. Now tell me, was music something that you communed with, with Motherwell?

CC: No. I don't know that he had any depth of -- I don't know. As I said, I know that Judith did, and we talked about books a lot. Judith and I talked about books and music. Robert and I -- he read a lot. His taste in books was slightly different. He knew all the French poets, and so forth. I liked Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad and people like that. I had read all the classics, and I loved them all. But his tastes were a little more esoteric, I think.

AB: I also think he was a classical music buff.

CC: Really?

AB: Yes. He may have liked jazz too, but I know from somebody else that he was interested in Bach and Mozart.

CC: I didn't know about that. Because I am. I listen to music constantly, and classical music -- I know classical music, I play classical music.

AB: At meetings in general, besides cracking up or laughing, what did you observe as to how Motherwell thought and conducted himself in the meeting? Would people be deferring to him?

CC: Yes -- and not to the extent -- if you've met some of them, they were all people who were self-contained and had their own way of looking at the world, and would not always agree with him. And when they disagreed with him, he accepted it, in a very natural way. Most of the time there was a degree of -- he was significant. That was always present, but not to the degree that it would be to ordinary people. If there were ordinary folks and there was a meeting and Motherwell was there, they might be in awe. Budd Hopkins, who wrote books, and Judith Rothschild was a millionaire, and lived in a big, beautiful place. She owned Picassos. So she was not easily intimidated or whatever, and so forth and so on. I think one of the reasons he liked being there was the fact that he was, to some extent, treated as an equal. He could be relaxed and be himself, and not have -- in every other contact I saw him in, people over-admired him, and I think it made him slightly uncomfortable.

AB: When you were in the meetings, Mary, did you think he was listened to more seriously? Or how did you observe the dynamics?

MA: Motherwell definitely was first among equals, I'd say [laughs]. Somebody once used that phrase. I think that's probably it. But there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie and discussion. There were lots and lots of discussions, and people would disagree. They'd say, "Well, Bob, what about this?" and so on. Like when they did the framing for the Long Point print portfolio, it needed to be framed, to be able to be displayed for sales purposes. Just the discussion of what the edge would be -- whether it would be -- because Motherwell knew more about printmaking than anybody else. I don't think any of the other gallery artists had made any prints, or they had just maybe made a few.

CC: Well, they had.

MA: So there were endless discussions about whether there should be a deckle edge, and how much of a float there should be. Because you're talking, now, thirteen artists, and you had to get everybody to agree as to how large the edge is going to be, and whether it should be floated or not floated. So this was like -- everybody would talk about their work individually, and everyone listened to everyone. So this went on, I would say, for a couple of hours, on just how it would be framed. And that wasn't unusual. 

AB: That's it. Because you had to frame thirteen different sensibilities similarly, as opposed to a show in which everybody brings something framed separately, and that's how you accept it. So I can see that --

CC: A framer friend told me about Motherwell framing a picture, and he said it was unbelievable. First of all, he would never touch anything. First they'd start with the molding. "No, that's too red. No, that --" This went on and on. "That's too dark. That's too light." Then the matte. No, that's too gray, that's too light, that's too warm, that's too dark, blah, blah. Then the space between the matte and the picture. "That's too wide. No, that's too thin. No, that's --" It would go on and on and on, and it had to be exactly perfect, every aspect of it, from top to bottom.

MA: And then the color of the frame was another issue. [Laughter]

CC: The color of the frame, oh my god. But it had good results.

AB: To me that just seems normal. Because I just know many artists -- Ellsworth Kelly was like that -- absolute perfection too. Well, he had a vision. He knew how he wanted his work to be seen. And, frankly, that's good. Because if someone tells you exactly what to do -- and the artist's eye is better than mine or the framer's. So, to me, that's --

CC: Well, I would imagine someone like Ellsworth Kelly, because it's all about precision with him.

MA: But Motherwell liked other people's ideas. Like Budd Hopkins had some wonderful ideas for shows. Robert, he just thought they were great -- like "From the Studio Wall," where all the artists would pin up -- well, they would just transport what they had on their studio walls during the winter, and then they brought it into the gallery, and they took some representative work. Then they put around it what they had up on the wall, and it just gave rise to all sorts of discussions. The artists were amazed at how many of them had a Piero della Francesca up there, or a Picasso. And Motherwell just loved that. What was another one of Budd's? A personal favorite. Oh, compatibility. You'd ask an artist whose work you felt was opposite to yours, but had shared similarities. That was another one of Budd's ideas. So Robert put up a Sol Steinberg cartoon next to one of his works, and they were opposite, but he would talk about that he saw similarities in terms of some of the -- I don't know -- esthetics, some of the underlying ideas. Or "Homeric Themes" was another one that he and Judith both, mutually, were big fans of Homer. Both of them had worked off of Homer as inspiration in their work -- Robert, with some of his prints, and Judith, as well.

CC: Who came up with that idea, that poet that was -- for an insurance company?

AB: Oh, Wallace Stevens -- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." 

MA: That was before I was director, so I'm not sure who did that. But there were just so many shared sensibilities among the artists. Most of them had been summering in Provincetown for a long time. They had deep family connections. They had shown at other galleries. They had known similar people in the art world. So there was a comfort level there, and this love of Provincetown, I think too, was something. Then this reverence for the modernist tradition, which was so important -- James Joyce, which was a love, of course, of Motherwell's. Most of the artists in the gallery loved Joyce. I'm surprised there wasn't a show of Joyce, actually, at the gallery.

AB: What about Motherwell's relationship with Fritz Bultman, that you observed?

CC: He said something -- I remember one thing that he said about Fritz: "He would have been great, if he had played his cards right."

MA: Because Fritz was one of the Irascibles too. He just didn't show up for that picture. But he was first-generation Ab Ex.

CC: And he was irascible! [Laughter]

AB: What do you think he meant by that -- "if he didn't play his cards right?"

CC: I think what he meant was that Fritz had a temperament that worked against him.

MA: He'd just get angry. He's lose control of himself.

CC: He would lose his temper and do stupid things. At one time, he hit Beauchamp on the head with a wine bottle.

MA: Yeah. Beauchamp ended up having to -- I don't know whether it was the hospital -- it was serious. Or chasing Gloria Nardin around the room with a broom. You remember that? He got angry with something she said. [Laughter]

AB: Jeanne must have been a saint.

MA: I think she was.

CC: Beauchamp was really hurt.

MA: Yes, he was hurt. [cross talk] Nadine knows that story. I've forgotten what it was.

CC: What was his wife's name? I've forgotten.

MA: Nadine Valenti.

CC: No, Fritz's wife.

AB: That was Jeanne Bultman.

CC: Jeanne Bultman, yes. She came over filled with apologies and tried to smooth the thing out. [Laughs]

AB: Also, Motherwell first met Judith Rothschild when they were in school together or something. They had a long relationship too.

CC: I didn't know that.

AB: And I think Fritz was a studio mate of Motherwell's in the past too, I think. And now, from what you're telling me, I don't know how long that lasted.

CC: Well, Fritz was a good painter.

MA: He was a good painter.

AB: Yes. And I guess Leo was close to Motherwell too?

MA: Leo was a great admirer, and his work, I think we could say, was influenced by Motherwell's work. Would you say that, Carmen?

CC: Definitely.

MA: But Leo had his own sensibility too, very influenced by tantric art and other things.

CC: Leo was just a sweet guy, and he had a son who was not a sweet guy. I shouldn't be saying this. Do you know Peter Manso.

AB: I know the name. It's so familiar. 

CC: He's written a book about Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando.

MA: And Andretti. Mario Andretti.

CC: He's an excellent writer.

AB: Yes. I just never knew he was related to Leo.

MA: Leo and Robert would go for lunch together, at whatever was Pucci's at that point, and they had wonderful talks. I know they were good friends. 

AB: And how about Tony and Motherwell?

MA: I don't know as much about Tony's relationship, but probably Elspeth Vevers could speak to you about that. And Lise would know too, because Lise was a childhood friend of the Vevers kids. So they would see one another, the kids would see one another, because they were East End kids.

CC: You know, Lise and I got along very well. We would have long, long talks about psychology and books and such as that, and I liked her a lot.

AB: Both of them are grounded. Jeannie, as you know, is a painter, and Lise --

CC: Lise has this very calm atmosphere around her, very calm and thoughtful. And we would have these very long -- it wasn't party talk, it was intellectual discourse. I enjoyed it.

AB: What about Sidney Simon and Motherwell?

CC: Nora said something very amusing about Sidney. Did you ever talk to Nora, or hear her speak?

AB: I met her many years ago through Katharine Kuh. Katharine Kuh was a friend of mine.

MA: You wrote on Katherine Kuh.

CC: I loved Nora. She had this voice that talked like this. [Laughs] I'll tell you a story about Nora and Frank Lloyd Wright. Do you want to hear a story about Nora and Frank Lloyd Wright? This is a fabulous story.

Nora was a nudist --

MA: Her whole family was.

CC: The whole family were nudists. And Nora knew the people who bought Fallingwater, that home, Fallingwater, and one day they invited Kaufmann.

MA: The Kaufmanns. 

CC: -- Frank Lloyd Wright to visit the house. So Frank Lloyd Wright came in, and they were all nude. So, supper time came, and they all went up and got dressed, and down came Frank Lloyd Wright stark naked! [Laughter]

MA: He remembers Kaufmann had on lederhosen. 

AB: In other words, Nora was visiting the Kaufmanns, or Nora and her family were.

MA: Family. Yes, they were family friends.

AB: Right. So the Kaufmanns were nudists?

MA: Yes, according to Nora. [Laughter]

CC: I don't think that's a well-known story. But believe me, it's not apocryphal. I got it right out of Nora. [Laughs]

MA: Nora was always was an exhibitionist. [Laughter]

CC: One time she came to a ball, and do you know how she would dress? In her birthday suit. So I said, "Nora, is that right?" And she said, "Yes. I always was an exhibitionist."

MA: That was like at the Artists' Ball. [Laughter]

CC: Sideo, I think, was a little embarrassed with that.

AB: I had asked you about Sidney Simon and Motherwell.

CC: I can't think of anything specific.

AB: What about the idea of having people and audiences for the gallery? Was that something that the artists were interested in having? For all your enjoyment of each other, was having people in, the audience -- ?

CC: Oh, sure, we all wanted that, and we all enjoyed it. And it was a very popular place. The intelligentsia of Provincetown showed up, and I want to tell you -- I won't mention names, but there were some people who owned galleries who did not like this very much. And no matter what you tried to do to ameliorate that situation, it couldn't be done. Motherwell was good at it, in as much as he would invite some of the artists in from the community. But there were some nasty things said.

MA: That was '75. For artists, it was seventy-five years old. And everybody knew all of them, because they were of the same generation, who were invited to show at Long Point. Fine Arts Work Center had initiated a fundraising activity with a group of artists associated with F.A.W.C., making prints. I remember [ ? ] Sandman was one of them. So that print portfolio was exhibited at Long Point to bring attention and help with fundraising activities for the Fine Arts Works Center. Also, the Provincetown Museum -- P.A.A.M. -- there were often donations. The Long Point made donations of posters and prints and so on, to AIDS auction and P.A.A.M. and the Fine Arts Works Center, and a lot of those. Castle Hill.

CC: I think Motherwell was responsible, to a great extent, for the museum always taking the high road.

MA: You mean for the gallery, always.

CC: I'm sorry. For the gallery always taking the high road. Because there were people in the gallery who, under certain circumstances, would get a little competitive and a little negative and a little cynical and so forth. But, in the context of the gallery, their behavior, I think, was lifted.

AB: I think Paul had said to me that he felt that Motherwell and Judith Rothschild kind of lifted -- made the atmosphere more intellectual. Lifted the tone.

CC: I agree.

MA: Do you want to talk about the Hindu, Carm?

CC: Oh, yeah. What did he do? You talk about it.

MA: That was the tenth anniversary, he and Renate -- where he invited Long Point members, but also close friends -- let's see. I know Stanley was certainly there. There are some pictures somewhere, I think. And he asked them all for a sail, a 5:00 sail, sunset sail, on the Hindul, which was a really large schooner that was still operable in Provincetown in those days. So he had Ciro Cozzi of Ciro and Sal's, who was a well-known restauranteur, cater it. Of course, there was champagne and beautiful hors d'oeuvres and so on. Afterwards, he had all the Long Point members come to the Flagship. I was working as a waitress at the Flagship, and Carmen was working as a musician at the Flagship. So he asked Carmen if he and his piano player would play, and then we had a lobster -- what was that? A clambake. We had a clambake and Carmen played. It was really just a lot of fun.

CC: Do you know the Flagship in Provincetown?

AB: No, and I've been there a number of times.

CC: It was a fabulous place.

AB: Is it still around?

CC: We had wonderful, wonderful times there. 

MA: It's been turned into a private home now. But it was routine. After meetings, Edys would always stop at the Flagship, Paul and Blair and their kids were always at the Flagship. Leo and Blanche would come.

AB: Who is Edith?

MA: Edys.

AB: Oh. Edys. Edys Hunter.

CC: The more I think back at those days, the more I see how really wonderful they were. They were just remarkable days. Filled with fun and good times. Really.

AB: Just before you said the intelligentsia of Provincetown would come to the gallery -- who would you characterize as the intelligentsia?

CC: Well, there was Stanley Kunitz, and there was Arthur Berger, and even Norman Mailer would show up.

MA: And was it Vivanti? Arturo Vivanti?

CC: Oh, yes.

MA: And let's see -- oh, gosh.

CC: Who were those people who were writers? I can't think of their names. One guy wrote for the New York Times.

MA: E.J. Kahn?

AB: Oh, Ellie -- Eleanor Munro.

MA: Eleanor Munro was married to E.J. Kahn, so they would certainly come. And I'm thinking too of -- what is his name, who taught at Harvard, Carm? He was Austrian.

AB: Erich Fromm?

MA: No. Well, of course, Robert Lifton would come with his wife. They were definitely there. Jerry --

CC: -- Holton.

MA: Jerry Holton and his wife were there.

CC: She was a Harvard teacher.

MA: And Jackie Rothschild would come. She was married to Lee Henry. Lee Falk, a really well-known cartoonist, would be there.

AB: Oh, of "The Phantom" series.

MA: Yes. That's right. His daughter -- Valerie still --

CC: And, of course, my friend Wolfgang Spitzer --

MA: And Wolfgang Spitzer was at Sarah Lawrence at that time --

CC: -- who was one of the most remarkable men I ever met in my life.

MA: Yes. It was really quite the -- of course, they would all come to see one another. [Laughter} And because Long Point was generous. I don't think we ever ran out of champagne.

CC: What was it that we had? The chicken legs?

MA: Renate would bring the chicken legs from Pucci's. Chicken wings. And then cheeses. Then when we had a woman -- Georgie -- who would make all sorts of hors d'oeuvres. So it was quite a nice spread.

CC: Peter Manso would be there --

MA: And Peter would be there, right.

CC: -- with a frown on his face.

MA: Ranalli, who was head of the BU Arts Administration program. Jeannie Motherwell worked for him for a long time at BU, I remember.

It wasn't just the Provincetown intellectual set, but it was Truro and Wellfleet.

AB: All the shrinks go to Wellesley every summer, and a lot of the Harvard people too.

MA: Then Arthur Berger had been -- he was a long-term friend of Motherwell's. I'm trying to think of the story. He was at Brandeis for many years, and his wife, Ellie -- she was a child psychologist, I remember. They lived near us in Truro. But he did something important for Motherwell, Carmen? I'm sure it's in the literature somewhere. What was it? He's the one who told him about the Meyer Schapiro program and art history at Columbia. Something. Anyway, I know he was really instrumental, and Motherwell always credited him. 

So Arthur and his wife would always be at the openings.

AB: I would be very interested in any memories, because they lived so close to each other, and I don't think he was ever interested in Norman Mailer in Provincetown, because they were close. Of all the things that Mailer was interviewed or wrote about, Motherwell was not one of them. So any scraps would be interesting.

MA: Well, Chris Busa would know more about that than we would. You've met him. 

AB: Sure.

CC: I don't think he had a high opinion of Norman Mailer. He made some sarcastic remarks. [Laughs] I don't remember what, but I got the feeling that his tone was --

MA: -- Right.

CC: He didn't think he was really well educated. Something like that.

MA: You would have thought that they would have been friendly. But no.

CC: In a way, no. I can almost see --

MA: -- that they wouldn't be.

CC: Norman was kind of this rough-and-tumble kind of guy, who used to enjoy boxing. His books were filled with sexual happenings, almost a wise-guy intellectual type of guy. Motherwell was much more refined and thoughtful, and much more high-minded.

AB: Maybe it's high-minded. Because Norman Mailer was certainly an intellectual who read and understood -- the interest in literature could have connected him, but maybe Motherwell was more quietly cerebral. Let's put it that way.

CC: That would be an accurate way of putting it.

MA: What was incredible -- when Robert would speak -- I don't think I've ever really been with somebody where I was so conscious of the fact that you could almost transcribe everything out of his mouth. It's like he considered -- you'd ask him a question, and he would consider it all, and the words would be very carefully chosen. I think it was Budd Hopkins who talked about an unspoken thought with pauses -- when Motherwell would talk, you would ask him a question, and there often would be a long pause. You could hear him, you understood that he was thinking.

CC: Yeah. It could go right from his mouth into a book.

MA: -- and then it would be very precise. It was extraordinary.

CC: I taught at Sarah Lawrence for nine years, and there was a man there with two doctorates, a bright guy. Joseph Campbell was up there. And this guy, when he spoke, you literally could put it on tape and it would be perfect literature. He just spoke with this wonderful, intellectually accurate, rhythmical kind of speech. And Motherwell had that to a certain degree.

AB: Did you two visit his studio up in Provincetown a lot?

MA: We certainly visited --

CC: -- his house.

MA: Yes, his house. But we didn't go to the studio.

CC: But not his studio.

MA: That was on the second floor.

AB: He painted at night, which was also an interesting thing.

And do you recall, in terms of politics or the events of the day, that he may have been stirred by --

CC: Well, he was obviously a liberal. But the only thing that I heard him say that could be thought of as political was, "Always be on the side of civilization." [Laughs] But other than that -- I mean, you could tell by his whole demeanor and the way he thought about the world that he was a liberal.

AB: I just wondered. Because you think back to the events of the '70s -- clearly, this was after Watergate, Kent State, and all these other things -- but we had Reagan coming in, and we had a lot of financial news and all of these things. I don't know how much he was tuned into the events of the day, or if he discussed them or not. Or science, for example, or anything like that.

CC: You know, there was hardly any political talk -- which I'm glad of, because sometimes my views weren't consistent with the views of the other members. I'm a political independent, and sometimes I actually agree with some conservatives. So - [laughs]

AB: That was a good idea, to keep out of it.

Now Mary, how did he treat you? You weren't an artist. You weren't a man. How did he treat you as a person?

MA: Very warmly. There's a poster that I have here that he gave me, that he signed to me.

CC: With some nice words.

MA: With some nice words. Obviously, I was a lot younger than he was, and I felt intimidated around him, certainly. But there were always wonderful feelings. When we would go over to their house, we were always welcomed with a great deal of warmth and affection. It was an interesting thing with Long Point. It was kind of like a family. And I, being with Carmen, was a member of that family. So there was just a sense of trust, and you felt very relaxed around people. If it was just one-on-one with Robert I would be nervous, but with the whole group I certainly felt --

AB: -- accepted.

CC: Remember Peter Manso, who wrote a book about Provincetown and got in a lot of trouble. He came over to the house, if you remember, and he was asking us about the Long Point. We kept saying, "It's really a great place," and so forth and so on, and he kept pushing both of us for some dirty work, some nasty stuff, something. And I said, "You know what? If there was, I'd tell you. But really, everyone gets along very well. I'm sorry we don't have any dirt for you." But that's the way it was. [Laughter]

MA: I think, too, all the artists at Long Point had New York galleries. They were established. Versus more local artists at the Cape, who were trying to make their reputation in Provincetown. They were living there year-round. Most of the artists at Long Point were teachers, so they had summers off. They raised their families in Provincetown in the summer, and there was nothing to prove, really. As a lot of the artists would say, they used Long Point as a safe haven for trying out new ideas or trying out summer work, and they would run off -- they would see what the other members of the gallery would feel about it. Robert never liked to come to the openings later, as his fame got spread and more and more people knew him. He would come for the openings in the afternoon. Well, actually, it would start at 10:00 in the morning and it would usually go until 3:00 in the afternoon. The hanging committee would be there, and we always had coffee and so on, and Robert would often come in then. He would speak to the members, and that's when they would connect, and then at the meetings, rather than at the openings in the evening, and so on.

AB: Now you two met in '77. When were you married?

MA: Well, we moved in together in '79, but we weren't married until seventeen years later. We weren't married until 1995.

AB: Oh, okay. Because I was going to ask you if he had given you a wedding present, or something like that. But no.

MA: No.

AB: Other than the poster, did he give you any works of art?

MA: No. We have some posters, of course, from the gallery, communal posters. But, really -- this he had given us --

AB: You're talking about the poster.

MA: Yes, the poster. But I can't think of anything. He didn't give us any original work.

CC: No.

AB: Just checking. Because there is the catalogue raisonné, but when they update it's always --

CC: I wish he did. [Laughs]

AB: And was your relationship with Renate --

CC: Oh, very good. I just got a card from her. Look at it. She kind of put it together, you see?

AB: Right. It's a little collage. 

CC: She loves music. I gave her a couple of CDs, so she put that little thing there, and this here.

AB: Isn't that lovely.

CC: Then "Peas on Earth."

AB: That's wonderful. [Laughter]

CC: And this other thing that she sent to us. You put it in your hand and it tells your fortune. It's quite silly but, anyway, you put this thing in your hand. If it curls up, it means one thing. See, it's curling up. [Laughs]

AB: Oh. From the heat. Oh, isn't that funny? From the heat in your hand. That's terrific. And the fish is live. 

We're looking just a couple of handmade cards and curios that Renate Ponsold Motherwell still sends you. Why was she good for Motherwell? What do you think?

CC: Well, he often said, "I couldn't do without her." I don't know. I guess, though she wasn't what you would call your typical wife, she did wifely things that were, for him, very important.

MA: I visited her a few years ago, and I happened to come on a certain day. She picked me up at the Greenwich station. I think this was when I was working on the Long Point show at the Provincetown Museum, so it was around 2012. She picked me up at the station and she brought me back, and she said, "It's Robert's birthday, and I always made him roast duck on his birthday. So it's in the oven," and we had that for lunch. She was a wonderful cook. Of course, he was too. He had trained in the Cordon Bleu. You probably know.

AB: Yes, I did know that. Lise always said he could cook whatever was in the house. He could make a meal out of.

MA: Dionne Lucas. I had taken a class with Dionne Lucas and her school here in New York. Then she was just really funny. She was -- and still is -- very responsive to life, to things. She sees things, and gets totally absorbed in what, to somebody else, might not be really that particularly interesting.

CC: Wasn't her father some important figure in Germany?

MA: I think he was a really well-known forensic doctor.

CC: That's right. Yes.

MA: But she talked about how terrible the conditions were in München. She grew up in München during the Second World War. It was really dire, in terms of food and the cold, during that terrible period. But she's a very happy-go-lucky kind of person, I think.

AB: And she's an artist, too.

CC: She's a photographer.

MA: She's a very smart person. I don't think at first when you first meet her you realize that, but she's very astute, very smart. I think she reads people pretty clearly. So I think she just delighted him. I can see where he tended to be a much more, as you say, kind of a shy person, perhaps, and not as comfortable going out among people. Whereas Renate was very comfortable in terms -- and, of course, a beauty.

CC: When she was young she was really --

MA: -- really beautiful, and really talented.

AB: And she already had a solid career as a photographer.

MA: Yeah. She has funny stories of when she was working for the Museum of Modern Art. What was that? I think one of the famous photographers was flirting with her in the darkroom -- I've forgotten which one it was [cross talk, laughter] --

AB: That would now be called misconduct, since it was the darkroom. {Cross talk, laughter]

AB: Carmen, you have your notes there. I want to make sure you've gotten to everything that was on your sheets, because we should cover it.

CC: [ ? ] 

Just a few things -- I think I covered -- wasn't trying to cover all of this, but I did. Yeah. I got everything that's on here. Quite a bit came out.

AB: I have more questions, but I just wanted to make sure. And is there anything that you -- ?

MA: You had asked about people who perhaps weren't artists in Provincetown that Robert would have known. There was a couple who lived across the street from them -- you might have heard -- Jack and Lynn Kearney. Has that name come up?

AB: Yes, but not in a detailed way. I just know that they have to do with Provincetown.

MA: Right. I think Lynn was on the board of trustees, originally, of the Dedalus Foundation, when it was first formed. But Jack, who is an artist, he's a sculptor -- he's since deceased. Lynn is still with us. They're from Chicago. But they were in and out of the Motherwell house frequently. Jack was a kind of gregarious, really nice fellow. He used to hire ex-convicts to help him as studio assistants in Chicago. He was just a wonderful guy. And Lynn was a very good friend of Renate's in Provincetown, when they were there. They would go out antiquing together, and were together quite a lot -- comparable ages, I think. Jack's an artist, but not an Abstract Expressionist. He used to make bumper sculptures. In fact, when you would drive into Providence, for years, one of the Kearney's bumper sculptures of animals was the first thing you would see on the left, going through Providence.

Then I'm thinking about when Motherwell had a boat that he called the Ahab. We were out in it a couple of times, I guess. And Renate, of course, would make these wonderful lunches. She's the first one who taught me not to over-cook your eggs, your hard-boiled eggs. You'd want to soft-cook those so the centers were still malleable. He got to the point, though, where he realized -- I remember we were sitting, we were having a drink. He always had it anchored out in the harbor, and he said, "I'm finding that I just can't go out." This was when he was getting sick at that point. He would come into the gallery, and he was noticeably weaker and sick. He said, "I don't know what to do with it," and he offered it to Carmen.

CC: Of course, I had boats and I love boats, but it was very costly to maintain --

MA: -- and it needed some work, I think, at that point.

AB: Probably, it was a fancier boat than what you -- [cross talk]

CC: Yes.

MA: And he ended up giving it to Todd, who was the guy who had the local filling station -- right? -- where Commercial Street and Bradford meet, right there at that filling station.

AB: Yes, I know. Because the last time I was there I stayed at that hotel that's right next to the gas station there, the kind of modern motel. Because I was up for a couple of days, and the good places don't let you stay for just two nights in the summer. [Laughter]

MA: So Todd had repaired that boat, and I think --

AB: Just for the tape -- what is Todd's complete name?

MA: I don't know. It's somebody else's filling station now, but for years he would work -- that's why Bob just ended up giving him the boat. 

AB: Todd was his last name?

MA: Maybe it was, yes. Anyway, those were a couple of people I was thinking about. Another funny story -- Renate would go down to get Robert his Sunday Times. I'm forgetting what the name of this was then. It's right on Bradford Street and Howland. Long Point was on Howland Street and Commercial, so you'd just go down Howland Street and you'd run into that store. It was a convenience store.

CC: The Colony, I think it was.

MA: I don't know if it was The Colony. I'm forgetting what it's called now.

CC: Whatever.

MA: But it was the same name for years. 

CC: They'd sell newspapers.

MA: Renate would go down to get him his Sunday Times, and she would always say, "I have to get him his Twinkie." [Laughter] Twinkie!

AB: I guess that truly defines the phrase "guilty pleasure." 

MA: The poison of the Times, and the sweet of it too.

AB: Yes, right. Also, it's so funny -- everybody has got some little junk food or -- but someone who really had the palate, who would eat a Twinkie --

MA: A Twinkie! I guess that's why it was so funny.

CC: I don't think I've ever eaten one!

AB: Exactly. I'd like to know where he learned to eat, or was exposed, to a Twinkie! Maybe one of the girls was exposed at school, and it was something that the kids liked.

MA: But it's funny. [Laughter]

AB: Yes, this will be a very important addition to the historical record: Robert Motherwell liked Twinkies. It will be footnoted in here.

CC: I can imagine an advertisement on a billboard: Robert Motherwell holding a Twinkie laughter]. "Famous artist eats Twinkies." 

MA: Let me see. So Lynn Kearney might be somebody.

AB: She's actually on the list.

MA: Is she? Okay.

AB: But we're just kind of defining her position a little bit more easily for me to know.

MA: Because she and Renate were close for years. Then I think there became more of a falling-out. I think political stuff with the foundation. I don't know what it is, but I just kind of gather that there was a falling-out.

AB: It's well before my time, because I just started really doing this in November 2017. But I guess the Foundation did go through some roiling, shall we say, ins and outs that, thankfully --

MA: I don't want to know, really.

AB: I don't want to know either. Whatever it is, is done and it's ironed out.

MA: And there's Rosalind Pace.

AB: You mentioned Motherwell beginning to be sick. Can you remember the last years, the last contacts, and what that was like?

CC: Well, I remember his shoulder. Remember? He came in, and his shoulder --

MA: He would be holding his arm all the time.

CC: He would come in and he would be holding his arm, and he'd say, "I can't paint."

MA: Oh, boy.

CC: I remember he said something interesting when he became well again, something like a sailor coming back to the sea. I forget, but it was some interesting way of phrasing it, when he was able to start painting again.

AB: Maybe like coming home, or something like that.

CC: Some words to that effect. I can't remember. They were very appropriate, but I can't exactly remember what they were.

AB: I know he had a stroke. Are we talking about bursitis, for example?

MA: I'm not exactly certain how that went down at that point. He died in '94 --

AB: No, '91.

MA: Oh. It was '91? Wow. Okay.

CC: I will say this -- this just occurred to me. There was a kind of memorial right on the beach, in back of his house. I remember that what Lise said I found the most touching and the most poetic and the most impressive of anybody who spoke. There were periods in their lives, Lise and Motherwell, where they didn't get along very well.

MA: Well, she has spoken about that at the Provincetown Museum. She's really worked through a lot of that. I don't know whether she's spoken to you about it, but she's given at least one big talk on that subject.

AB: I have not interviewed her about her father yet. How I met her was I interviewed her about Helen Frankenthaler.

MA: That would be a very interesting interview.

AB: It will happen with both of them. But that is so big -- in other words, that's going to be something that will go over several days, and would involve so much preparation, for both daughters, that I'm not --

MA: She's written a lot of it out. And she was really accessible.

AB: And she was estranged from Helen for a while too, and then she made it up, both her and Jeannie. And I'm sure it was -- because both of those daughters -- if you think about it, he was married four times, but their mother was married four times. So they went through four divorces on each side -- or actually three, eventually -- so it was always, "Here's your new step-mother," or "Here's your new step-father," on both sides. It's wonderful that they're both highly functional human beings and they're happy.

MA: It's true.

AB: Therefore, it would probably have been rough for anybody, and you would have anger, no matter what. So I will be interviewing them eventually. But Lise started my whole Dedalus interviews.

MA: Then there's Rosalind Pace. While I was director, she was the assistant, and there was a year where we were co-directors as well. So she was around the gallery, even though she was officially director after Robert passed. She was in the gallery for quite a few years too.

CC: Another thing that was interesting. Remember how we thought about whether or not you wanted to be the director. We had a big long discussion about that. We didn't know whether you wanted to do it or not.

MA: Well, I didn't know whether it was appropriate, and how the members would feel. Since I was your significant other at that point.

CC: So we both hesitated about joining the gallery.

AB: At different times.

MA: Yes.

AB: You probably didn't hesitate about becoming an assistant there.

MA: No. That was fine. That felt totally comfortable.

CC: And there were other reasons. One of the other reasons was that it would occupy too much of your time. Because we enjoyed the Cape, and we wanted to enjoy it. We didn't want to be working. Because it was a lot of work, going back and forth.

AB: It was a real job.

MA: It was. And it was a split-shift, so you had to go back two different times. When you were open, a lot of times you really couldn't get the work done because your job was to socialize with the people. You would do some of that in the afternoon, but it was a lot. But the best job, absolutely.

AB: Right. Great people, great cause.

MA: It was wonderful. It was my favorite job, it really was, although I much enjoyed teaching. I spent twenty-three years in the classroom, and I thoroughly enjoyed that as well. Not the administrative part of being in a school, but the students were wonderful.

AB: I thought what was interesting around his death was that he clearly wanted to die in Provincetown.

MA: Well, yes. Well, Ed had the most to do with that. He's probably spoken to you about that.

AB: But why don't you tell me what you remember?

MA: I was in the gallery when it happened. We heard about it, and Tony said, "We need to go over --" 

Because he was president. "We need to go over to the gallery and be there, if anyone is going to be calling with questions or whatever. Which we did. But I wasn't aware -- I just know that Robert was taken in an ambulance, that he had a heart issue, and he died in the ambulance, but I didn't know the specifics. He knew that he had come up. I knew that The Blue Guitar was in the gallery, but he didn't come to the opening and he didn't come to the hanging, so I didn't see him just before he died. 

AB: Not just to show that collage -- but I don't think he wanted to die in Greenwich. Let's put it that way. Maybe he wanted to see Provincetown for the last time. Now I'm projecting myself onto that. But it's something I just feel.

MA: I think it was the only summer that he hadn't been up, spending the summer in Provincetown, since he first started. So that would have been going back forty years or something. Because he made that conscious decision to switch from East Hampton to Provincetown, and that was the first summer. I guess he really needed to get back. He needed to be there.

CC: He said several times that one of the things he liked about Provincetown was that it had street life. He said, "I always enjoyed the street life." Provincetown is a remarkable place. Because here you have this very beautiful town that's pretty much kept intact, and so forth and so on, and you see this gorgeous bay on the one side. Then you have street life, all these people running around, crazy types, gay people and straight people and all kinds of people. It's a remarkable place.

MA: He said he loved Provincetown because of its egalitarian nature, versus East Hampton. This is all famous stuff that he's quoted -- that sitting on his deck, looking over the bay or the harbor, was like being in a Paris café. It was like café culture, Provincetown, where everybody could just sit their with their drink and the world would pass by. That was a real community up there. People knew one another in the east end, and would be hailing you. They wouldn't always be coming up, but I'm sure he had plenty of --

AB: You could wave to the people on the beach, and you could be outside. And, certainly, it's a very tolerant place -- not just artists but gay people and that. You could pretty much do what you wanted.

MA: Right. And, of course, in the '70s -- you talked about being in New York, and I'm from that period, too --

AB: We are contemporaries. The exact same year.

MA: Oh, that's interesting. [Laughs]

AB: You're five months younger than I am.

MA: That's interesting. Well, I figured, when you were talking about being in New York in the '70s. But it was very anti-commercial, as we know, and I think Robert really loved that, although he had his fancy cars. He had a Bentley car. You remember some of his fancy cars.

CC: A Bentley and something else.

AB: Did he have a Rolls? I'm not sure about that. But he loved cars.

CC: Yes. That's exactly what I would have been doing if I had had the dough. I don't object to that at all.

AB: He always certainly lived well. I think he had a tailor make some of his clothes and things like that -- things that you don't normally think about doing.

MA: It was a rule, though, that you did not call the Motherwell household before noon. That would have been disastrous.

CC: Taboo.

AB: Did Renate sleep late, too? Did she work at night, too?

MA: I'm not sure, exactly. I remember, though, she was about once being in Greenwich and there was a car accident. The police came and they said, "We have to call your husband?" "Oh, no! You can't possibly! It's 10:00 in the morning. You can't call him until it's noon!"

AB: Yes. And that was sexist, because she could take care of it.

MA: It was funny.

AB: The memorial -- do you remember anything else besides Lise? Or any other sense?

CC: I thought it was kind of peculiar. It was appropriate in one sense -- because he loved the Cape, and he loved to look out on the water, and so forth. On the other hand, standing there in the hot sun --

MA: Low tide.

CC: I was very uncomfortable. Because the house is way up there. The situation was appropriate, in one sense, but not in another sense. It was just really uncomfortable, and I just --

MA: You couldn't always hear everything.

CC: You couldn't hear what everyone was saying. It wasn't well organized.

MA: I remember Jack was there.

CC: It was probably a good idea that somebody had.

MA: I think Motherwell would have liked it.

CC: Yeah. It would sound good, unless you were standing out in the sun.

MA: Well, where else would you have had it? Because there were at least a thousand people.

AB: Really?

CC: No. No.

MA: No? You don't think so?

CC: No. Nowhere near a thousand. 

MA: Okay. Well, it seemed like a lot. Some of the pictures -- you see some of the pictures.

CC: No, no.

AB: So it was too many people to have it in the gallery.

MA: Or the museum, even. Where would you have had it? That's the problem.

AB: P.A.A.M. would even have been smaller, then.

MA: P.A.A.M. was smaller then.

CC: I guess that was the only place. But for me, it was hot and uncomfortable.

AB: I'm sure there was a New York one at the Metropolitan, or something like that.

MA: There was, yes. And that was where the area where the Christmas tree is. I remember it. And that was very nice.

AB: So anything else that you've got in your notes, that we should -- ?

MA: Let me see. Oh. Cathy Mosley. Have you spoken to her?

AB: Not yet. His printer.

MA: Printmaker. Because she spent a lot of time with him in Provincetown. Because he had his studio right next to his house.

AB: Right. I guess most artists didn't have their own printing presses.

MA: No, they didn't. I would add, too, that once Long Point started, other group galleries started -- well, the group galleries started another cooperative gallery in Provincetown, this gallery. Gallery Strand, more recently. But also, the whole cooperative spirit, really, came out of the generation, too, of the Tenth Street galleries, and so on. So it was very compatible. Leo had been a member of the 256 Gallery, which was cooperative, on Commercial Street, prior to that, with Peter Busa, I remember. So it came out of their generation, but also out of the Provincetown artistic tradition.

AB: Here's a nice picture that they have in the Motherwell archive. This is the two of you, in 1989.

CC: Oh, my god.

AB: I'll give you the photocopy, so you can have that.

CC: Yeah. I like that.

MA: Oh, isn't that great. Yeah.

AB: Obviously, you can have that. And this is -- oh. "Photo: Lynn Kearney."

MA: Lynn Kearney did it. 

AB: And it says "August, 1989." Anyway, this is a nice picture.

CC: I look like a young hound.

MA: Can we get an electronic copy of that? Is that possible?

AB: I think it's probably possible. Let me make a note of that. And these you've seen. This is a good Long Point picture.

CC: Was this taken at his house?

MA: Probably. 

AB: I think you sent me some of these. But these are some of the other ones.

MA: Yes. I sent you that one.

AB: Right. This is classic. 

MA: That was by Renate.

AB: Then, did the two of you ever show together? 

CC: You mean at the Long Point?

AB: Yes.

MA: I don't think you had a two-man show, did you?

CC: I don't think I did.

AB: I just wondered if you remembered. Because the way it was not exactly by lot, but sometimes it wouldn't happen.

CC: I don't know how the hell we figured out who went where.

AB: I think you just started, and there was a rotation.

MA: That's right.

AB: And then at some point it changed, because then the same people were having the shows together over and over, and then they changed it.

CC: Before all of this started, did you know anything about the Long Point Gallery?

AB: I learned about it through Resika, through Paul. That's how I first learned about it, when I was working on this narrative chronology of his. Then I had to learn about it. So it was nice to pick it up again, and I thought, "Okay, I don't know as much about Motherwell, but I do know about this gallery." And I knew a bunch of -- I knew Bugsy and Ed, and I met the Frombolutis through Katharine Kuh a long time ago. And I met Judith Rothschild once.

CC: Oh, you met her?

AB: Once. It was really just a couple of months before she died. Anyway -- any other foibles or amusing things about him, or anything else we should talk about?

CC: [Laughs] Except the Twinkies.

AB: Would he hang his own show at Long Point -- ?

MA: Well, he would come in as his show was being hung. But most everybody left it up to the Hanging Committee.

AB: Really.

MA: Yes.

CC: And they were good.

MA: They were very good. Sometimes Sidney would have a problem, because he said that painters didn't know how to light sculpture. So he would often come in after the Hanging Committee had finished, and he would light his work. And I think he was right, you know, because they were used to this solid, uniform lighting, and with sculpture you need it coming in from the angles.

CC: The other thing is, people were coming for the hanging -- people would come in and socialize. That was one of the things we would do.

AB: Just like in the nineteenth century, when they had varnishing day. That was a social occasion for artists.

MA: He would basically leave it up to the Hanging Committee. He would socialize, but he's not going to say, "Hang this here," and "Hang that there." He would leave that to him.

AB: It was probably nice for him not to be the -- he was the center of attention, but really not to be, or just leave it. Also, I think probably, as you said, not being in a business situation really pleased him.

MA: Yes. I think it did. Then everybody was so comfortable with one another.

AB: And he probably wasn't in a situation where twelve or thirteen other people would sit around and make jokes and laugh and do all that sort of thing.

Okay. Thank you very much. This was terrific.

Oh, wait a minute. Before we stop -- did you have a couple other little things you wanted to show me? You had the notes, but --

CC: Not really. No.

AB: We did it already. Okay. I just wanted to be thorough.

END OF INTERVIEW