Peter Selz (46 page)

EXHIBITIONS

Pomona College

Museum of Modern Art, New York

University Art Museum, Berkeley

National and International Exhibitions and Activities

The debts incurred by the author of a book such as this are legion. This biography relies heavily upon oral history interviews to construct a nuanced picture of its subject. The complexity of any life may not be discerned from a single source, including and perhaps especially the subject himself, and so the interview subjects are deserving of the author's deepest gratitude. My own experience throughout this process of asking, listening, and recording has been one of grateful discovery. The net result is the illusion that I have come to know my subject intimately. That, of course, is not the case, but without the interviewees and others who have shared their own firsthand experiences and observations of Peter Selz, I would not have had the confidence to begin writing and certainly not to continue as the story became increasingly complicated and elusive.

For this gift of personal insight and knowledge I wish to introduce and applaud my main sources who were interviewed between 2007 and 2010: Wayne Andersen, Dore Ashton, Hildegard Bachert, Fletcher Benton, Gary
Carson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Fr. Terrence Dempsey, Agnes Denes, Eleanor Dickinson, Jane Daggett Dillenberger, Hannah Forbes, Rupert Garcia, Marianne Hinckle, Tobi Kahn, Karl Kasten, Jerelle Kraus, Susan Landauer, Charles and Zelda Leslie, Ronald Mallory, David McKee, Karen Moss, Nathan Oliveira, Ariel Parkinson, Jack Rutberg, Elizabeth Sandvig, Carole Selz, Edgar Selz, Gabrielle Selz, Peter Selz, Tanya Selz, Norma Schlesinger, Michael Spafford, Sidra Stich, Kristine Stiles, Mary Valledor, Carlos Villa, and Norton Wisdom.

Another category of informants falls somewhere between a proper recorded interview and a phone conversation with notes taken. Often the voice contact was followed by e-mailed accounts and further phone clarification of important details. Among this important group of individual sources to be thanked are Svetlana Alpers, Jacquelynn Baas, Birgitta Wohl Baer, Kyra Baldwin, Anne Brodzky, Richard Buxbaum, James Cahill, Richard Cándida Smith, Derrick Cartwright, Enrique Chagoya, Dion Cheronis, Terri Cohn, Bruce Conner, Sophie Dannenmüller, Lorna Price Dittmer, Tom Freudenheim, Peter Gay, Nancy Genn, Mark Harrington, John Held Jr., Deborah Paris Hertz, Kevan Jenson, Mark Dean Johnson, David Jones, Paula Kirkeby, Tom Luddy, Susan Matthews, Michael Meyer, Achim Moeller, Ursula O'Farrell, Loren Partridge, Sheldon Renan, Brenda Richardson, Lawrence Rinder, Andy Stewart, William T. Wiley, and David Wright. I also thank the many others with whom I have spoken, even casually, about the project and who have made comments that, though not recorded, have shaped some part of my thinking on the subject and the time period. In fact, I owe special gratitude to those many friends and other generous souls who indulged me over the past several years as I took advantage of their good nature to give regular updates on my Selz progress. Several individuals read early versions of chapters and made useful, frequently significant, suggestions. Chief among these were Peter Gay, Ellen Heath, Leo Holub, Carl Landauer, Susan Landauer, Peter Mendenhall, Barry Menikoff, Michael S. Moore, Ilona Staprans, Raimonds Staprans, and David Vershure.

There were also several generously supportive funders for this project, specifically for the research and writing. For this I am particularly grateful because the book could not have been realized otherwise. Among the project funders, all friends and admirers of Peter Selz, in addition to one anonymous donor, were Douglas Adams (Graduate Theological Union), Fletcher and Bobbie Benton, Charles and Glenna Campbell, Tracey Freedman and Michael Hackett (Hackett-Freedman Gallery), Paula Kirkeby, Russ McClure, Harry Y. Oda, Harold and Gertrud Parker, Jack Stuppin, and the Hans G. and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation.

The transcriber for the entire Selz Oral History Project, Debi Devitt of
Pioneer Transcription Services, Penn Valley, California, took on a prodigious assignment consisting of fifty-five sessions. Included in that figure are eleven generally shorter sessions with Peter Selz conducted over the duration of the research phase. These were undertaken to augment the major oral history I conducted in 1982 for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art's renowned oral history program. That key transcript, along with those for my subsequent Selz interview of 1999 and the official interviews conducted by Sharon Zane in 1994 for the official Museum of Modern Art Oral History Program, constitutes the primary source material for the biography. Ms. Zane's excellent and informative interviews with several other MoMA staff were most valuable in augmenting my own interviews. My treatment at the Museum Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was most hospitable. For that I have to thank associate archivist Michelle Harvey, who graciously and efficiently assembled the relevant archival materials I requested, including papers of individuals as well as the Zane transcripts. Ms. Harvey was coincidentally preparing a thesis on Selz's main associate at MoMA, William Seitz. Her subsequent and thorough handling of a key photograph inquiry seemed to me to go beyond what might ordinarily be expected. Others who were helpful with photography requests were Stephanie Cannizzo (Berkeley Art Museum), Eleanor Dickinson, Robert Emory Johnson (Chester Kessler Estate), Sue Kubly, Dennis Letbetter, Peter Mendenhall, Achim Moeller, Richard Nagler, and Jack Rutberg. Final choices for inclusion in the book came from their offerings and from Peter Selz's own albums and scrapbooks.

Throughout this long process Peter and Carole Selz were encouraging and patient, guiding me back to the main biographical highway when I found myself tempted by picturesque side roads. Peter's daughter Gabrielle from the outset was taken with the project, which she helped to launch as subject of the first interview in the Selz series other than her father's. Throughout the research and writing she was available for consultation and confirmation of a wide range of family lore and facts. She also made available the tapes her mother, Thalia, and Peter recorded in 1993 and 1994 in New York and Berkeley. Their reminiscences about their life together and the failure of their marriage in New York constitute the most emotionally stirring and character-revealing documents of the entire project. Gabrielle herself was the subject of two separate interviews, one conducted in New York and the other in Berkeley. Thomas B. Selz was helpful in arranging an interview with his father, Peter's older brother, Edgar, who died some months following at age ninety-three. Edgar was the last remaining direct link to the Selz brothers' shared Munich past.

This brings me to the critical editorial phase of the writing and my greatest debt of all. As I was struggling to bring together the complicated components
of a hybrid biography—seeking a way to effectively join multiple interview quotes with the many people, events, times, and themes that provide the context for Selz's life—my wife, Ann Heath Karlstrom, took notice and, with spousal compassion along with an understandable measure of trepidation, stepped in. As editorial consultant and book development editor, she brought to the project the considerable experience of her years as director of publications at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as well as having patiently listened to me as I narrated the progress of the research. As her colleague at the University of California Press, Deborah Kirshman, the guiding light of this endeavor from the beginning, told me, “She is exactly what you and this book need.” Deborah was, as is usually the case, right on the mark. I am grateful to Deborah and to her colleagues at the press: Kari Dahlgren, Sue Heinemann, Eric Schmidt, Claudia Smelser, Heather Vaughan, and Jacqueline Volin. Also, Anne Canright provided a welcome and thorough final edit of the manuscript. The book owes a great deal to the professionalism of these individuals. Finally, Jeff Gunderson, librarian at the San Francisco Art Institute, deserves special appreciation for agreeing late in the process to prepare the selected Selz bibliography and exhibition history.