Joe Walentini / Writing  

 Page 3 / Conversation with Philip Pavia...

PP: They didn’t talk to us but we would talk to them. But we were still outsiders. They only wanted artists dedicated to Surrealism.

JW: That’s fascinating to me that you were considered the outsiders and yet they came here from Europe.

PP: They were refugees; that was a big thing. Pierre Matisse’s (the art dealer) son gave them a number of shows and so did Peggy [Guggenheim]. They kept the art scene busy the five years they were here. Then they all went back. But they had terrific shows while they were here. Without the shows or publicity, we Americans were maturing an abstract art.

JW: So, once the Europeans left did you feel as though the terrain had opened up for all of you?

PP: Absolutely. We were just jokes to them and we felt inferior too. We used to see Mondrian and would stand ten feet away and were afraid to talk to him. But the Surrealists ignored Mondrian too.

JW: In spite of the Surrealists co-opting the contemporary art scene during the war, did you get a lot of strength from an intimate sense of community even while you weren’t getting the kind of attention you wanted?

PP: Yes it did help a great deal because we were confused. But Abstract Expressionism and the Club came out of a great deal of discussion. We liked the privacy and we liked the spoken word. The whole idea of dialogue was a hint to me. We started the Club with about 20 to 30 members. By 1952 there were 150. the Club got bigger and bigger and they pushed it all [the leadership] on me - including the abuse.

JW: Running the Club, and subsequently creating and producing It is, were very time consuming. You didn’t return to making art full time until you had finished with both. Was it hard to back away from making art?

PP: It depended on whether you were an activist; there was a lot of activism. People like Duchamp and Kandinsky wrote a lot. It is was an example of non-writers trying to get ideas into a publication.

JW: What would you say is the major difference between the artists then with artists of today?

PP: We were concerned with sensibility then; its refinement of the senses. Today there is no sensibility. You might see someone using a lot of color today, but one guy could make a masterpiece out of color back then. Sensibilities create beauty.

JW: Yeah, that makes me think of Ray Parker in particular and of course, Rothko. What was it like to exhibit in those early days?

PP: We used to call them our torture chambers. There was a lot of talk about moods of the sensibilities

JW: Really?

PP: Well, you couldn’t be an artist in the middle of Ohio for example. You’d isolate yourself too much. You really needed someone to kick you. It was a way of teasing moods out of the sensibilities.

JW: In the fifties the critics like Clement Greenberg had a great deal of power over the careers of artists. How did they fit into the dialogue?

PP: Greenberg? He brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: “Art critics are superior artists”. He wouldn’t write anything about Abstract Expressionists because it wasn’t his kind of work.

JW: Do you think that’s because he couldn’t control it?

PP: Yes, he didn’t want anything to do with it - he hated The Club! Its invention of expression with abstraction. Greenberg recommended a whole generation of artists to review the Bauhaus as he hated Pollocks pristine abstraction.

JW: That’s what I mean, that there was too much diversity to control. But then the classic dilemma is having one group of individuals making the art while another group writes about and critiques it.

PP: We tried to counter the problem with It is and a message of freedom for the inner sensibilities.