Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Palace, Speaker 2 (00:02): We're fighting those same forces. Only now we baby boomers my age, realize that those forces have taken greater control and daggone it. We should have done something back then. Speaker 1 (00:27): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is author Ellen Everman. Just to kind of start, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Speaker 2 (00:54): I'm Ellen Everman. My maiden name is Everman, and that is my pin name. And I'm from northern Kentucky. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with an English degree and I have been an advertising throughout my life. My working years was an editor, former editor of Arts across Kentucky Magazine, and I teach creative writing at Baker Hunt Art and Cultural Center in Covington, Kentucky. Speaker 1 (01:22): Okay. Speaker 2 (01:22): Yes. And this is my second book. My debut novel was Pink Dice, of which this new novel Bellbottoms Tag Gucci is a sequel. Speaker 1 (01:33): Cool. Speaker 2 (01:34): So Speaker 1 (01:34): When you were working on the first book, did you know you're going to have a sequel already planned, or did it just kind of happen that way? Speaker 2 (01:39): It just happened, Speaker 1 (01:40): Yeah. Speaker 2 (01:41): Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:41): You just had more to say about the character. Speaker 2 (01:43): No, Speaker 1 (01:44): That Speaker 2 (01:44): Wasn't it. Speaker 1 (01:44): No, Speaker 2 (01:45): I was with a friend. We were driving up to Lake Erie and we were listening to Crosby, stills Nash and Young, and some of the old songs Find the Cost of Freedom Buried in the Ground, all these old really emotional songs that came out in the late sixties, early seventies. And I told my friend, while so many things happened back then, it was such a tumultuous, chaotic, colorful, exciting, sad, frightful era, and these songs captured it. And we got into a conversation, were the songs reflecting these things back to us or were they inspiring us? Some of these things inspiring us. We had an incredibly wonderful conversation and I thought to myself, I think there might be a book in this. So I thought logically I'll just make Patty Ray. She's 11 years old in Pink Dice. When you see her again in Bell-Bottom, UCCI, she's 19, she's just graduated from high school. She's a scholarship to uc, Berkeley, and she's at uc, Berkeley on Telegraph Avenue waiting to go into Cody's bookstore. When the story begins, Speaker 1 (02:51): I know you don't want to spoil it or anything, but tell us a little bit about what we need to know. If somebody started with this book, what would they need to know about this character and sort of where they've been? Speaker 2 (03:04): Actually both books stand on their own and I think it just would be a delight for those people who've read Pink Dice to think, oh my gosh, he or she is grown up and look what she's going through. There are several themes in the book, and the major theme is how a hippie became a yuppie. And when I wanted to explore that phenomenon, because it was such a common occurrence in those days, and very few hippies remained hippies. And so I wanted to show her transformation. And it is told in first person, and I wanted you to see her go through. She is groomed by us Bengali at uc, Berkeley, and his name is David. He's based loosely on the character Mario Savio, who was the kingpin of the civil rights and the free speech movements. And so anyway, he grooms her to be a campus protesting hippie, and she gets into all that. She's peace and love. She's totally ingrained in it, but then she graduates from college, she comes back home, she grabs at the materialistic carrot, she goes into corporate America, and that's kind of where it becomes semi autobiographical. It sort of takes on my life, but because the story starts in 1964, I had to do a lot of research. It was an exciting time, but it was so exciting to go back and especially online, to see the pictures, to hear the speeches. And when I ran into Mario's, I said, I have got put this guy in my story. Speaker 1 (04:35): Why? What was so exciting, Speaker 2 (04:38): Mario Salvia was from New York City. I think he was a philosophy major. He was very, he was timid, but when he found out that you could not discuss politics, the civil rights on campus, he just went ballistic. Speaker 2 (04:56): And there's the famous speaking on the cop car roof, and you can get online and see him talking on top of this police car, and he energizes the campus and it turns into a movement. It was called the Civil Rights and the Free Speech Movement. He was the kingpin of that. To see him, the pictures of him on the internet and to hear him talk as a famous speech he gives, it's called the Machinery Speech, and I replicate it a bit in my book. Everything that happens in the first part of my book is based on history and anything that happens to any of them happened to someone back then. So anyway, he just got everything going and it was an exciting time. And it was the mother of all the protests of the Vietnam era. It was the beginning of it all. Speaker 1 (05:53): Cool. Speaker 2 (05:54): And I wanted little Patty Ray to be there. That's my Speaker 1 (05:57): Name. Do you see any parallels between things going on today and things going on in there? I mean, are the things we're still working on that you think about or are there connections like that you were making as you were writing this book? Speaker 2 (06:10): You bet. Speaker 1 (06:11): I Speaker 2 (06:11): Did. Yes. Actually, when we were driving up to Lake Erie, I wasn't real happy with how things were going in our government, and I started listening to that music and I thought, dang gone. We were trying to change these things back then, but all of our heroes were assassinated. J F K M L K, then Bobby, Speaker 2 (06:30): And I think we were sort of mourning all of that at Woodstock in 1970. And we had the Summer of Love, I think, which is 68. We were restraining to save our brothers and our sisters and our cousins from death over in Southeast Asia. And we were agitating for change. And so many things were happening. The baby boomers did change much, but so much they could not change. And those things that they were unable to change are haunting us today. And yes, so I thought this book is going to be timely. I had no idea I would wait this long to get it published, but I'm glad I did because this book could not be coming out at a more perfect time because back in the sixties, the hippies and the protesting campus types were yelling fascist, fascist. They called the government fascist pigs. And this is my opinion, Speaker 2 (07:31): This is kind of where we find ourselves today. We're fighting those same forces. Only now we baby boomers my age, realize that those forces have taken greater control. And dang on it, we should have done something back then. So I decided to write the book and it is an ode to baby boomers to show what we did, how we strained, how we fought, but it's also a song of inspiration to Gen Zers who are taking on the same forces that we did and then the other Gen Xers and the millennials. But basically it's a song of inspiration to the Gen Zers because they're kind of going through what we did back then Speaker 1 (08:14): And since we're a museum. You mentioned to me earlier that there's some parts of the book that kind of relate directly to art too as well. And it sounds like you have a background in art as well, Speaker 2 (08:26): A little bit. Yes. Speaker 1 (08:27): And so that sort of became some inspiration for you. So tell us a little bit about that part of the book and how artwork has inspired part of this story. Speaker 2 (08:38): Patty, her name changes when after she becomes a hippie, she drops the ray, so she becomes Patty throughout the rest of the book, and that's sort of symbolic of her extreme change from a Midwestern innocent apple pie girl to a protesting hippie. So anyway, she meets an old member of Dutch Patroon from New York City, and he tells her about all these wonderful, incredible things about his family and how wealthy they were, and she doesn't believe him, and he represents, he's sort of like my Shakespearean clown. And he tells truths under the cloak and protection of his clownish ways, Speaker 2 (09:21): And he's an eccentric and he's very smart and he's very wealthy. But she first meet him, she thinks he's just handing her a line. Then the second time she meets him, she and her cousin are invited to his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. And that's when I decided to bring art into this because I'd already brought art up into another scene and I wanted to continue a little bit of a theme of art. And I brought up, I actually bring into the story a famous painting. It's actually a Modelo by Peter Paul Rubins and Peter Paul Rubins was an immense influence during the Flemish Baroque period. And he was quite the character. And then he meets another character from England, and this is the 16 hundreds whose name was Jos Vier, and he was known as the Duke of Buckingham. And they both were incredibly dynamic characters. And I thought this would be a good fit for this Van Ren, who is my Dutch peton. And the story, I thought it would be a good fit for him to have that painting in his Fifth Avenue apartment. And what makes it even more interesting is that this painting is no longer extant. It perished in a fire in 1949. Speaker 2 (10:54): The reason why I know about it, and I have a picture here in the studio, there Speaker 1 (10:59): It is Russell. So an equestrian painting with man, the top of horse, sort of your standard heroic pose with exactly the horse rearing up a man, an armor on it. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:11): The reason why I have that is when I lived in Arlington, Texas, I would go to the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth quite a bit. Speaker 2 (11:18): And my favorite painting was this Modelo. And I remember I thought it was the final painting because as you see, it's really quite finished. And I found out it was actually what they called a model, which is also called a sketch. And sometimes Ruben's, when he was dealing with some very high up noble men or princely patrons, he wouldn't just sketch with pencil. He would actually do a partial oil, and that is what this painting is. And when I saw that painting and I saw that it was only a sketch, and I saw that it perished in a fire, it saddened me. I went to the desk, I bought the postcard, I brought it home in college. Then I got this cheap frame. It's still in the same frame, but I bought later on, I bought an easel, a very ornate easel to put it on. Speaker 2 (12:09): The history of that picture has followed me with serendipity. Back when I started writing my book, I decided I needed a part-time job. Somebody said, why don't you chauffeur part-time? I went to work for executive transportation. They called me one night, one day, and they said, Ellen, we've got an artist, a musician coming in, and they're only going to trust you to drive him. Do you know who Van Clyburn is? And I said, well, of course. I used to live in Fort Worth. And we went to the piano competitions and they said, can you drive him tonight or today? I was supposed to pick him up in his private jet with his entourage. He was coming in to be inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame here in Cincinnati. Oh, Speaker 1 (12:53): Okay. Speaker 2 (12:53): Yeah. So anyway, so I pick him up and we're in a stretch on the scene. He's sitting next to me and everybody else is in the back, three other people. So we're talking, he tells me his mother is from Cincinnati, and I told him, I said, I love your piano competitions. My husband and I went to all this competitions we're down there, and I was thinking, what else do I like about Fort Worth? And I said, oh. And I said, I got to tell you something about Fort Worth that I love the Kimball Art Museum. He goes, really? I said, yes, and everything got quiet in the car. I said, yes, there's just a painting there that I absolutely adore, and I think of it every time and it makes me happy. And the man in the back pipes up and he says, what painting is that? And I said, it is the equestrian portrait of the first Duke of Buckingham. And so Van Kleber then looks at me and he said, Ellen, I would like you to meet the director of the Kimball Art Museum. That was the man who asked me. And he says, just because you know about that painting, I'm giving it to you. And then he goes, nod, I'm just teasing. And his wife, who is German, she got onto a for being so cavalier. Speaker 2 (14:05): But anyway, that's my little story about that. Oh, Speaker 1 (14:07): That's Speaker 2 (14:08): Okay. Yeah. So I would like to read a passage from Speaker 1 (14:11): Sure, sure. And before you do that though, I have to tell you, I'm so sad. We were talking earlier and I said, oh, we have this Reubens, and I wish we could go look at it. And our Reubens is also an oil sketch of another painting. So it's kind of funny that you're talking about this because ours is his oil sketch for Samson and Delilah. I've Speaker 2 (14:30): Seen it. Speaker 1 (14:31): Yeah. So it's sort of so funny that you were thinking about that too, because it would've been such a perfect fit. But it is currently off you. I'm not sure. It might be on loan or in conservation. I'm not sure where it is right now. Speaker 2 (14:43): Yeah, that's too big. Yeah, Speaker 1 (14:45): When we were talking, I was like, I kind of remembered not seeing it the other day when I walked through there, I was like, I think there's something new up. So yeah, unfortunately we can't take a look at it, but that would've been perfect, so we'll have to have you back to look at that another time. Speaker 2 (14:57): I would love that. Yeah. Speaker 1 (14:58): So anyway, so yes, please read to us a little bit from your book. Speaker 2 (15:03): And this is when she and her Patty and her cousin are invited to this gentleman's fifth Avenue apartment. A butler led us through a tiled foyer and into the lavishly appointed main room of Fillets fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park above a tuxedo sofa hung a Flemish tapestry, which I guessed to be more than a few hundred years old. Special ceiling lights billowed over its fragile threads. Philip shot past us promising a quick return. His butler was told to make our drinks when Philip reentered, he wore black and gold silk pajamas with the same velvet slippers he'd sported the night I'd met him at the oak room at the plaza. His butler, George was his name, brought him a dinner jacket that materialized from behind an oriental screen. We eye this production like a tennis match, Mary Lou and I, our heads moving in sync. Speaker 2 (16:00): It seemed rehearsed, or at least some corny part of a play that had been reenacted many times before. Mildly hypnotized sipping vermouth. I watched Mary Lou's primal feminine instincts kick in. I was feeling supremely safe for the first time in a long time. Nice dinner jacket. Philip Mary Lou bravely complimented him as if she were in her element. The night I met Philip, I was sure he fell into the category of a professional liar. Now it occurred to me he might be actually who he'd said he was. There was an effort to remember the story behind his wealth. Old Dutch who came to the new world, who bought up real estate along the Hudson and encouraged settlement or some such thing, shipping magnets. I couldn't remember. He fell like a child into another overstepped sofa across from hours to sleep per chance to dream. But no two beautiful women plainly here before my eyes and how happy you've made me. Speaker 2 (17:07): Thank you for coming. Thank you, Philip. Mary Lou heard for this last minute get together. She smoothed her Chanel jacket while heaving her breasts up as her back straightened. Cook tells me just another 40 minutes and she'll bring out the duck. Philip's soft hands came together in a slow sensual rub as if the dinner was really going to be us. It made me uneasy the tapestry behind you. I said, trying to maintain a feeling of control. Flemish, it's a goblin. Of course, of course. I restrained a smile designed by Joseph Vernick. I said to this as I hadn't a clue who this Renee was. Now, I wished I'd listened to him more carefully the night I met him. So many details he surprisingly shared with me in the oak room, of which I cannot today remember sadly, it is now like his address and the color of his eyes all gone at my first yarn. Speaker 2 (18:08): I remember him mercifully, bringing a long story to its end. However, he continued with a fresh intake of air. The painting behind you is my p Philip stood up to announce this, so we stood up too. His arms begged us to turn around, so we turned around. Philip almost left across the room to pull open a double antique satin drape that apparently hid a masterpiece from view. Its breathtaking. I whispered, looking at the colossal painting, once the drapes had been parted, I had to stand back a bit to take it all in. Mary Lou clasped my arm, relaying her shock. Not because of the size so much, I think, but because it bore the unmistakable style of a master, likely a rubens's, I thought. But I kept this to myself. Philip stood between us, his arms around our waists, the Duke of Buckingham. He announced as if the brightly painted gentleman before us were alive, a man of Stuart. Speaker 2 (19:16): Period. I didn't know. Most people think this painting perished in a fire back in the forties. Philip chuckled to himself. This is my great secret here, girls so sh don't tell a soul. It was then that I entertained a sobering thought, insanity. Philip would not have been the first descendant of wealth to suffer from it. I had to admit the Duke was mesmerizing, and I felt sure I'd seen it somewhere before, but where Philip couldn't pull his eyes away from it after he'd turned on the overheads, the bright, well-positioned delights revealed the pearly whites tracing the muscles of an attentive rif, the heavenly glow, a hallmark of Peter Paul Rubins. The Duke's red cape pulled back from his shoulders by force of wind hovered above the backside of his trusty steed in royal decoration. His unlikely gaze fell upon us in eerie familiarity. His silver armor shining his gauntlet hands, forgetting some battle before him in order to pose for the ages. Speaker 2 (20:30): Why is the horse rearing up? Is he trampling that woman? Mary Lou asked, pointing, but Philip was gone. He had fallen into a blind stare, irretrievably lost and roaming about somewhere else. In his mind, it occurred to me that he and the Duke met up often, no doubt, on some mysterious plane. I wondered if Philip a man of obvious unbridled passions became the Duke of Buckingham whenever he chose to pull back the drapes. But then Philip's lascivious smiles struck me. Perhaps he fancied. He and the Duke were soulmates or more complexly lovers. Dinner is served. The butler's word snapped. Philip back to us seeing our confused stares. He lurched forward like a madman, snatching the drape and shrouding the image once more with two pulls and a tug. Mary Lou and I stood still his death as if he'd shared something with us by mistake. Speaker 1 (21:34): Thank you. I was thinking there's something really romantic about putting a painting that was lost in a fire in a book, because your imagination makes it the best version of it it can ever be, right? Yes. Probably why you're so interested in this painting is that it's this idea that comes from the sketch is that there's this version of it that's even better and you can never see it. Yes. Speaker 2 (22:03): And it was a fantasy of mine. Bring it alive in your book. Yeah. Speaker 1 (22:10): And it's a perfect fitting for a book where obviously it also exists in your mind, and it's this thing that we, it's conjured from word, so it's the same idea. So it's really great. Well, I think we'll go into the gallery soon, but is there anything else you'd like to let us know about the book or anything else you want to tell us before we head out into the galleries? Speaker 2 (22:31): Yes. I would like to tell you about the signings that are coming up. Yeah, please do. Is that possible? The next signing will be August 7th at Joseph Beth booksellers in Crestview Hills. At seven o'clock there'll be a talk q and a and a signing, and this will also be for collectibles. And then August 23rd, the booksellers on Fountain Square, 1130 to 1:00 PM That's going to be a rush, but that's for the lunch crowd. And then September 18th, on a Wednesday, I will be at the Cincinnati Public Library at 7:00 PM talk q and a and signing. And that's for anybody who wants to stay in town and enjoy the signing. And then October 26th, that's also a Saturday books by the banks, which is a big deal here in Cincinnati. Speaker 1 (23:25): And Speaker 2 (23:25): That'll be from 10 to four, and I won't be signing my collectibles there. That will be through my publisher. Speaker 1 (23:31): Okay, great. Well, and I'll put all of those listed in the show notes, the podcast description for this episode. So if you missed that and you want to look back, just check that out there. And it'll be underneath the show description on the website too, so you can read that there too. So I'll also include links to other places you can get ahold of Ellen through her social media and other things too. Speaker 2 (23:55): Yes, a claim press. Yes. We'll Speaker 1 (23:56): Put that on there as well. So are you ready to go out into the galleries? Speaker 2 (24:00): Absolutely. Excited to get out there. I love this museum. Speaker 1 (24:03): Well, like I said, we don't have the Rubens to look up. So instead, I thought we would look at something that is a little bit more fitting with the time period of the novel, and we're going to look at something from the sixties. Speaker 2 (24:13): Oh, that sounds great. Yes. I look forward to it. Speaker 1 (24:28): We are in Gallery 2 31, and we are looking at a soup can in parentheses, cream of Mushroom by Andy Warhol from 1962. And when I was trying to think of pieces that at least kind of immediately to me look like what I think the sixties art looked like. This is the one that maybe more obviously looked sprung to mind, even though it may not have necessarily the things to do with the same sort of world you're capturing in your novel. It just was what immediately sprung to mind. And also, you mentioned you worked in advertising. Speaker 2 (25:09): Yes. Speaker 1 (25:09): Right. And so I immediately thought of when you said that it sealed the deal that we were coming to look at this because Warhol also started in advertising. Speaker 1 (25:18): He started as doing illustration for shoes and catalogs and things. And so he started as a commercial artist. What's interesting is his commercial art, I would say was actually more kind of emotional looking and actually very whimsical and fun. He did all these drawings of cats and things, and it was kind of not the sort of cold look we expect from Warhol, from his fine art. So it's a little bit of a flip. You would think the commercial art would be sort of more sterile, and it's actually the opposite. So I thought that was kind of interesting about him. But yeah, this is probably honestly one of my favorite pieces in the museum. But I know we were kind of walking up and we were talking about how, I'm sure this is not a lot of people's favorite piece. Speaker 2 (26:10): No, I think that this was done in 1962. I think Warhol had a jumpstart on the mentality that eventually came to exist in the US amongst the baby boomers of that era. And as you said, he had the ability to do whimsical things, and yet he creates this very sterile image. And he made, what, 32 of these soup cans. Speaker 1 (26:33): So this one is from that original crop of 32 soup cans, and they were displayed in the gallery in lines like they were on a store shelf. Speaker 2 (26:44): Right. Well, my feeling about him, and it's only my opinion, is that he was really more interested in creating a statement rather than creating art. Although the art is pretty, it is very commercialized, it's pop art. But to me, he just created a statement, advertising is repetitive. How do you get images into the minds of your market? You repeat the images, and perhaps that's why he did so many of them. But I definitely feel that Warhol was a statement, man, in the end, after all was said and done, Speaker 1 (27:22): What makes him interesting is that he was very sly about never telling you what the statement was. Speaker 2 (27:29): Oh, yes. Speaker 1 (27:30): Sort Speaker 2 (27:30): Of like Bob Dylan would never say he was a protester. Speaker 1 (27:34): Right? Right. So he never let anyone off the hook about what this stuff was about to him. And so I think that let it be open to interpretation. So everybody kind of has their own thoughts about it, and he never gave it away. So I certainly have, I know what I think it's about and what I think it's about, but other people might think of it totally differently. It Speaker 2 (27:59): Creates more of a buzz if you keep it. Speaker 1 (28:02): Yeah, totally. So I mean, when you look at it, why do you think he's painting soup cans? Speaker 2 (28:08): Well, I think the reason why he did this was to illustrate the era that we were moving into manufacturing, mass production. He was also making a very big statement in this kind of piggybacked on some of the beat poets of the 1940s who wrote about mass production and who wrote about our food changing. And I can't think of the particular Butte poet who wrote this wonderful poem about a grocery store going to the grocery store with, I think it was with the turn of the century, the poet who wrote Leaves of Grass, and I can't Speaker 1 (28:54): Think it, Walt Whitman. Speaker 2 (28:54): Yes. Speaker 2 (28:55): He goes into this grocery store with Walt Whitman and he goes, don't touch the cabbages, Walt, that kind of thing. And so what he is really making in that poem, he's making a statement. We have lost touch with eating food directly from the earth. We no longer go to a farmer stand. We no longer visit farms. We go to places that are cold and impersonal and have very little connection for us. And even though we are nature and we are part of nature today, now we're moving away from that and mass production of food, canned goods, whatever are separating us from Earth. And I think that to me, that was always what this was about. Speaker 1 (29:49): Yeah. When you said the thing about the beat poets, it made me think about other group of poets working around the same time. And this is going to make me sound like I really know a lot about poetry, but I really don't. Okay. I have to preface before anyone starts thinking, I'm really smart about this. I'm really not. But I was thinking, one of the things that Warhol actually reminds me a little bit more is the New York School of Poets and Fran O'Hara, and I don't know if you know this poem that's called, I think it's called Lana Turner, has fallen Down. Speaker 2 (30:21): Oh, I've never read that. Speaker 1 (30:23): But it's about a celebrity, and he's reading this headline from a tabloid or something, and it's this really kind of cool tone. It's a little bit different. I feel like when I think of the beats, I think of them as very, everything's passionate and it's full of, to me, the beats are kind of this painting right next to this Warhol, which is by Motherwell, which when I think about, maybe not this painting exactly, but thinking more about abstract expressionists or people, it's more of a polly kind of like, oh, I'm going to spray the paint around. And then somebody like Frank O'Hara was slyly observing the culture and sort of just mirroring it back to us. And here you are, what do you think about yourself? And that's kind of the attitude I always get from Warhol. It's removed and he's just sort of showing us ourselves. And then, is this what you want to be, basically? Speaker 3 (31:26): Do you want to be that? Speaker 2 (31:27): All of that? There could be many themes in this. Oh, totally. Yeah, totally. But I mean, he was way ahead of the kids. I mean, in 1962, we were still in the fifties. Culturally, we were still 1950s in 1962. It was still the 1950s. Speaker 1 (31:47): Somebody recently, actually, it was somebody who was a guest on the show, kind of pointed out something to me that if you think about the war ending in 45, and then you have, if you really think about the decades more, starting from that point that you go 45 to 55, 55 to 65, 65 to 75, they actually have Speaker 3 (32:07): A lot more cohesion Speaker 1 (32:09): Then I think you do. If you just think of the sixties because the beginning of the sixties and the end of the sixties Speaker 2 (32:14): Totally different. They're Speaker 3 (32:14): Totally different. Speaker 2 (32:15): Absolutely. Speaker 1 (32:16): Well, I'm kind of curious, I mean, again, I know this is a little bit outside of maybe probably what you're writing about, but is there anything else about this that kind of just to you encapsulates the sixties that you are writing about or looking at? Speaker 2 (32:29): Yes, the color. Speaker 1 (32:31): Okay. Speaker 2 (32:32): I mean, look at the bright, it's sort of a peach pink, and then the yellow is not real bright. And then you have a combination of yellow and black. The color in the fifties were very pastel. And then as we moved into the sixties, we got into the psychedelic colors. Speaker 1 (32:52): And Speaker 2 (32:52): This looks like it's sort of a transitional color wheel here that he is going from the pastels to a more bright color. And it definitely, those colors to me say sixties. Speaker 1 (33:05): Okay. Speaker 2 (33:06): Yeah. Speaker 1 (33:07): Well, I mean, I think you were looking at the label and talking about, I mean, one of the things I think a lot of people miss about this painting that I find to me is the most, my favorite part is that it's all handmade. And that's so interesting compared with, say, the Warhol, that's right behind us that we're looking at the Pete Rose Warhol, that's all screen printed, so it's screen printed, and this is all handmade. So when you get up kind of close, you Speaker 2 (33:34): Can see all the little pencil lines that he's painted Speaker 1 (33:38): It, and you can see. And to me, that's sort of so fabulous because he's really trying to paint a machine. He's trying to be remove himself. But to me, the most fun part is seeing the failures to see those little lines. And then he didn't feel the need to hide it. I mean, he could have easily gone in and painted over that, but he's leading it. Speaker 2 (34:01): Fascinating. Yeah, that's fascinating. Speaker 1 (34:03): So I don't know. Speaker 2 (34:04): That's what I remember. All of a sudden, I'm really hungry for a cream of mushroom. Speaker 3 (34:08): You might be the only person Speaker 1 (34:09): Who's ever said that, although Speaker 3 (34:13): I would eat some Speaker 1 (34:14): Cream and mushroom Speaker 3 (34:15): If we had Speaker 1 (34:15): It. So Speaker 3 (34:16): Unfortunately, the cafe is closed Speaker 1 (34:18): Today, or we could just go down and have a soup. I know. I was so looking forward to that, and I realized, oh no, it's Monday. I don't do anything on Monday. Well, we were kind of talking, and I wasn't really planning on doing this, but since we were kind of talking about this, there's sort of a piece directly across from it. And this one's from 62, and I want to just walk over here and let's see. I know it's close in time. I wasn't sure. But this is a piece by Joseph Albers from 1961, and it's pretty, in some ways, there's a lot of similarities in some ways. There's a lot of differences from the Warhol and Albers actually taught here at the Art Academy very briefly, I think. But he's all about color theory and the way colors sort of interact. That's kind of one of the things he's known for. Speaker 2 (35:10): Yeah, this is really early. This was done in 1961, but he attended the Bajas school in the 1920s, so he got a start on sort of modern expressionism. And so this was done in 1961. This is incredible. See, he also had a headstart. Speaker 1 (35:35): Yeah. Speaker 2 (35:36): These guys were way ahead of their time. Oh, yeah, Speaker 1 (35:38): Yeah, Speaker 2 (35:39): Totally. They understood we were going into a different era, an era of impersonal relationships for human beings. Things were becoming less and less humanistic and more and more mass productive Speaker 1 (35:55): Or automated. Speaker 2 (35:56): Or automated. Thank you for helping me on that. And then also this perspective, but he had the advantage of being in the Baja School, and so that is reflected in this as well. Speaker 1 (36:11): If people are unfamiliar, the Baja School has a lot of emphasis on breaking things down to their sort of fundamental geometric shapes. So I mean, this piece that we're looking at is completely nothing, no subject matter. It's just these sort of squares that gets smaller as we move into the center of the canvas. And it's, when you said perspective, it gives a sense of almost like a tunnel that you're looking through. Speaker 2 (36:40): This is what I think this is. If there was any message when he was painting it, that perspective is everything. And it's definitely giving you a direction in which to move into that painting. So I like this. In my early twenties, I was with a lot of people who were into abstract expressionism and modernism. So I like this. Speaker 1 (37:09): I would say in a way, both of these pieces you could actually look at as a reaction almost against the sort of abstract expressionism, Speaker 2 (37:16): Because Speaker 1 (37:18): They're kind of expressionless Speaker 2 (37:20): Structured, Speaker 1 (37:21): Highly Speaker 2 (37:22): Structured. Speaker 1 (37:22): This one, I think about it is if Warhol's using his kind of cold detachment to maybe make a statement, I feel like Albers treats art sometimes like a science experiment. Speaker 2 (37:35): It looks like it. Speaker 1 (37:36): And so tunnel Speaker 2 (37:38): Vision, Speaker 1 (37:39): Well, I'm sure one of the things he's probably interested in here is looking at the relationships between these colors and probably what the outer most band is very kind of what looks to us like a very pure orange. Speaker 2 (37:55): Orange. Speaker 1 (37:56): And then the middle is this very kind of bland looking brown. And then I'm sure that each of these levels has slightly different levels of each color mixed into it. Speaker 2 (38:08): Absolutely. Speaker 1 (38:08): So you look at the next level in, and it's a little bit slightly brown. One of the things I have kids do is actually sometimes when I'm in here with Sarah, like summer camp or something, is maybe to just look through your fingers at just that center brown without that orange around it. And if you look at it removed from other colors, it's a little more vibrant than you might expect. To me, it's got a lot more yellow in it than I think you can see, because compared to the orange around it, it just looks like brown. And so we're seeing it going in and in getting less sort of intense. But I think with Albers, he's always sort of probably measuring the amounts of paint that he's mixing, and he's probably doing this whole experiment. And a lot of times, I think for him it was sort of like the end result wasn't as important as the act of doing it and this experiment and sort of learning something about the colors by looking at them this way. Speaker 2 (39:13): It's fascinating. Today the clothing today has become less colorful than it was in the fifties and the sixties and the seventies even. And a lot of muted colors are being used today. The dyes are muted, and it doesn't matter what store you go into high end or low lowland, all the colors seem to be muted today, except for some specific designers, like the lily lady, I can't think of her name. And I love her stuff. As you can see, I like bright Speaker 1 (39:41): Colors. You like color? Yeah. You're wearing this very vibrant kind of turquoise suit here. It's very nice. Very nice. Yeah. I've Speaker 2 (39:48): Into turquoise Speaker 2 (39:50): And bright colors. But also, I think you could read this, I mean, if there's any symbolism in it, it's on the outer edges. We have the pure orange, and then as we add maybe different truths, the color, our perception becomes less clear and less vibrant, and it becomes a little more complex and perhaps darker. I mean, it's one way to look at it. And then you progress in to the dark beige and then the almost brown beige. And so this could represent many things by the end of your life with the things that you thought were wonderful when you were young, what has happened to it? I mean, that's just one way to look at it. That's a dark way to Speaker 1 (40:38): Look at it. I know. I love that you're going there though. That's Speaker 2 (40:40): Nice. And if you wanted to relate it to the sixties and sixties was a time of discovery and protest and agitation and wanting to change things. This 1961, as I said, he was way ahead. Speaker 1 (41:01): Yeah. Yeah. I keep thinking too about the way, when you were kind of talking about their perspective, I try to see this painting as flat, and it's kind of hard to Speaker 2 (41:11): Very difficult. Speaker 1 (41:13): And that's something that's really interesting. And so I think you're spot on about that aspect of it, because I mean, he's actually trying very hard to make this about as flat as it can get. He's trying to get rid of almost any brush strokes. And that's a real similarity with the Warhol in that they're trying to paint like machines, and he's trying to almost remove the hand of the artist as much as he can and make this very flat thing. But it's so hard not to give it depth because of the arrangement of those squares. So it's kind of fun to see those two things kind of fight against each Speaker 2 (41:47): Other and what you just said, it's about the impersonalization of the culture. We're getting further and further away from the earth, and this illustrates that as well. Speaker 1 (42:00): Yeah. Okay. Well, did you have any other last thoughts before we say goodbye? Speaker 2 (42:06): Well, I just want to thank you so much for inviting me over. This has been so wonderful, and I appreciate your time and letting me talk to your audience. Speaker 1 (42:17): Well, thank Speaker 2 (42:17): You. In the study art museum, Speaker 1 (42:19): Thank you so much for being our guest today. Speaker 2 (42:20): You've been wonderful. Thank you. Speaker 1 (42:27): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have your own conversations about the art. General. Admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking Special exhibitions on view right now are Kimono, refashioning, contemporary Style and No Spectators, the Art of Burning Man. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. 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