Exquisite Corpse: Contemporary Conversations
Exquisite Corpse: Contemporary Conversations is a podcast series from the National Academy of Design featuring conversations between National Academicians. This podcast is a space for the artists and architects who have shaped this institution to connect, discuss, and ask questions of each other. National Academy Director of Programs and Series Host Adrienne Elise Tarver takes you into the organization that is contending with its almost 200-year history and finding its place in the 21st century.
Exquisite Corpse: Contemporary Conversations
Lorraine Shemesh NA + Frances Barth NA
In the third episode of this season of Exquisite Corpse, we hear from two visual artists, Lorraine Shemesh and Frances Barth. Though the two artists have very different visual styles, their background and interest in dance and movement in their early careers heavily influenced their work and visual language, and sensibilities. They discuss their working-class upbringing, painting as women in New York for decades, and the gender biases that continue to pervade the art world and culture in general. Both artists connect on the compulsion to make art, the difficulties in but ultimate importance of their educational opportunities.
Frances discusses her recent work Dreaming Tango, a film that explores Argentine Tango in the lives of six people. Lorraine talks about her ceramics and their impact on her work in paint. And despite all their differences, they connect over many similar experiences in their long and varied careers during which both artists worked in many different media and dealt with the challenges that presented. Finally, they explain what it means to them to be inducted into the National Academy by their peers and how difficult it is sometimes to connect with other artists.
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Hi, I'm Adrienne Elise Tarver, the Director of Programs and the host of the National Academy podcast - Exquisite Corpse. This podcast is a series of conversations between artists and architects, who've been elected by their peers, to the National Academy of Design for their extraordinary contributions to art and culture in America. These are the National Academicians and they are at the core of the oldest artist run organization in the United States. This is exquisite corpse. Welcome to the Exquisite Corpse Podcast. Thanks for coming back again. As you listen to the episodes, I hope you'll also take time to visit our website, National Academy.org. There you can learn more about the Academicians in the episodes and see images of their work. Now let's get started.
Sophia Neitsch:Hi, my name is Sophia Neitsch and I'm the National Academician Affairs Manager at the National Academy of Design. The National Academy of Design was initiated by artists and architects to fill a void in the American artistic landscape of the 19th century. But we recognize our history has excluded many communities and cultures whose lineages and practices must be included in this country's art historical canon. Indigenous peoples, people of color, queer and non-binary individuals and people with disabilities. We are committed to a process of dismantling the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and white supremacy. We are excited to move forward and have conversations that reflect the important questions and issues of today. We are the National Academy of Design and you're listening to Exquisite Corpse.
Adrienne Tarver:All of the Academicians are very different and have gotten to where they are and their own unique and interesting ways. And though, we may know them for the art form they were inducted into the Academy with, it's not uncommon for them to have many different practices or art forms that they started in or continue to develop alongside their most well-known practice. In the history of the Academy, there've been artists that were also inventors. Architects that were also artists. Academicians that make films or sing or act or dance or write. You may not notice it initially, but these interests and skills make their way into their work. I grew up dancing and playing the flute. And while, I don't do these things much anymore, they inform who I am as a visual artist. These other interests and skills may also be the things that help them find connections between each other. The work we know may be very different. But these creative people do not live or operate within the bounds in which people see them. This conversation is between two artists, Lorraine Shamesh, and Frances Barth. Frances makes abstract paintings with large colored shapes that are sometimes architectural. Lorraine makes large realistic figurative paintings using dancers as models, often in costumes or environments that complicate the relationship of their intermingled bodies. Their paintings are very different. They met once briefly through National Academy event. And though they're both painters, they connected over their experience as dancers. But that's not even the extent of their creative practices. Frances also makes films. And Loraine makes ceramics. They're multifaceted, as many artists are, and it was great to hear them connect over these different aspects of their work. We always offer the podcast participants the opportunity to share their work to see and discuss during the conversation. In this conversation, we shared images for a little bit. And in that moment, I'll pop in to give you an idea of what they're looking at.
Lorraine Shamesh:Um, my name is Lorraine Shemesh and I'm in Manhattan, in Midtown Manhattan, right underneath the Empire State building, in my loft, which is also where I live and work.
Adrienne Tarver:Thank you. And Frances?
Frances Barth:I'm in, uh, New Jersey. Um, many years ago, I was able to buy a, uh, a disused embroidery factory that nobody wanted because it was too small for a developer. And so, this is where I live in work.
Adrienne Tarver:So I want to start with you Lorraine, as I mentioned. Um, I reached out to you, uh, and asked who you would like to speak with on our podcast. And you, uh, picked Frances. I'm curious as to why? Why he made that choice?
Lorraine Shamesh:Well, you know, Adrianne, when you asked me to choose someone from the NA, uh, with whom I'd like to have a conversation, I thought, there were two ways to go. I could ask to speak with someone that I knew well already. Or an artist whose work I greatly admired and would like to know better. Like Frances Barth. And I figured that, since the premise of Exquisite Corpse, rests on the fact that the participants don't know the response of the other players until the end of the game, surprise would be generated by what we revealed as our conversation unfolded. And sometimes artist's work looks very different. Yet, oddly enough, the sources from which they spring are similar. That kind of connection is something I intuitively sensed speaking with Frances only once in person at the National Academy before things shut down. That single conversation propelled me to find more of her work to look at. And when I did it drew me in further because of its breadth, the multiple media that she has worked with over the course of a lifetime. And has created an open-ended conversation, presenting so many possibilities to the viewer. Looking at it made me want to talk to her even more. So here we are. That was how I came to want to speak today to Frances. And, that one conversation that we had was, uh, so open and meaningful to me. And, and you mentioned your early connection to dance. Which I share. Um, I came to the visual world through an very early experience in a dance class in New Jersey where I grew up. So, I would love to, if it's okay with you, begin with while you were in art school, you came to also work with Yvonne Rainer, the choreographer and dancer.
Frances Barth:First of all, thank you, Lorraine. Thank you. I'm just amazed at your generosity. And, uh, we obviously have the same energy level. It's a gift...
Lorraine Shamesh:It's...
Frances Barth:...or a curse. One or the other, you know?
Lorraine Shamesh:That's right. That's true.
Frances Barth:But I also remember that conversation. Because it's very unusual to just, like, meet a stranger and all of a sudden just sort of have an intense conversation, uh, that's not guarded at all, at all. So, I was in undergraduate college. And it must have been, maybe the last year or before that. Well, I graduated in 68. So it was before that. And I had gone to see the performance at the Anderson theater in the East Village that Yvonne Rainer was in and other members from Judson Church. And I was just blown away by it. Uh, I don't know. I, I had no, well, I had no experience for, for that. I had studied modern dance in college, as well as painting. And, uh, my parents, my father was an immigrant and he was very handsome and he was very athletic and, uh, he could kind of do anything. And he and my mother met in a social club and they danced together. And my father earned money teaching dance. So, this is totally working class. You know, this is not like, it was so bizarre because I was a kid and on the weekends, sometimes my father would play soccer in a pickup team. Because he was from Eastern Europe. And they had a dance hall and, uh, then we would all eat together at a table and they would dance. And so, we, I had that as some knowledge. But I don't know how I really wanted to go see this concert of Yvonne Rainer's. And the next day, I mean, I just loved it. I was just so, so excited. But I was just in a supermarket the next day. Which was around where we lived. And it was the Grand Union. And...
Lorraine Shamesh:I love that that's the name of the supermarket.
Frances Barth:Yeah, it's just the name of the supermarket. And, um, I was, I actually remember this so vividly. I was on the checkout and I was remembering, maybe this is too long a story, but I was remembering when my grandfather. Because he used to like sing Pennies from Heaven when I was a kid. And he was walking behind me and my brother and he throw pennies in the air so they land in front of us. And, you know, and we would pick them up and we would really think they were coming down from heaven. So, here I was on the checkout and Yvonne was behind me. And I looked at her and I said, oh my God, I've, I saw your performance last night at the Anderson Theater. And I just, oh, I love it. I love your work. And she said, would you like to come to a workshop? And I said, absolutely. So I went to this workshop. And then it were two other artists. Jo Baer...
Lorraine Shamesh:Two other, two other visual artists?
Frances Barth:Visual artists. Yeah. Jo Baer, the minimal painter, and Rosemarie Castoro, the sculptor. So, Rosemarie and I survived and, and stayed through more than Jo Baer. She left and it became time to do a performance at Lincoln Center. It became time to perform at the Billy Rose Theater, which was on Broadway. So that was a big deal. And Yvonne, I think paid us $60. She had gotten a grant. And of course, we worked very hard on this. And it was, it was one of the most exciting times of my entire life, you know? Because, to work with those people. And...
Lorraine Shamesh:Absolutely.
Frances Barth:Yeah. And, and I mean, they...
Lorraine Shamesh:And you were, you were in art school at this time.
Frances Barth:Yeah. I was, I was like a senior in art school and I was, I had pressure on me after all this to do my master's thesis on contemporary art, on modern dance in New York. But I didn't do that. I did it on Mattise and Islamic art.
Lorraine Shamesh:But there's a connection there too. I mean, when you think of the, some of the Mathias paintings that, he had a tremendous interest in dance.
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:And a lot of the way he dealt with the picture plane was very reminiscent of, there's a minimal use of the shapes. There's an extraordinary extraction of the gesture that he synthesizes into these miraculous...
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:...images that I think really affected some of the things you made visually.
Frances Barth:No, absolutely. Absolutely. And I was also aware, I don't know how I got there. I went by myself. It was the first Kabuki performance in New York. I went alone. And so I was very aware of, of the center of your weight being lower...
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:...in terms of Asian movement and performance. As opposed to ballet, right? Which was higher and went out from the body.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah. I, I mean the modern dance, the movement is downwards towards the earth.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:So it's this triangle. And ballet is the denial of gravity. And you're reaching up denying...
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:...gravity. And the triangle is the other way. So, I mean, if you can just show, um, I think on Frances' it's the second and third images. Because they really have that lower center of gravity
Adrienne Tarver:Here we're looking at a few installation shots of Frances' paintings. The first image is from Frances' first solo show show at Susan Caldwell gallery on West Broadway in New York in 1974. We see two very large, wide, horizontal paintings with triangular and rectilinear shapes in pale green, blue, and pinks. And in the background, a similar painting in darker shades.
Frances Barth:...with the history of, uh, early contemporary dance, I mean, it's like everybody in that picture.
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:I was just so...
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah.
Frances Barth:...so blessed to be able to be part of that. That was just a fluke, you know...
Adrienne Tarver:At this point, they're looking at a black and white image of a group of people, including Frances, all smiling at the camera. It's a picture of the Yvonne Rainer Dance Troupe that performed Rose Fractions in 1969.
Lorraine Shamesh:But, but they also, you contributed to the group, you know. I mean, the things you were interested, I'm sure affected them too. You know, I think in, the Grand Union. I keep thinking of that, that your experience meeting Yvonne in the Grand Union.
Frances Barth:Yeah. David Gordon, Becky Arnold, Steve Paxton, Douglas Dunn. I mean, like they're all there.
Lorraine Shamesh:You know, it's, it's a touchstone for your whole life.
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:I think, and, and for the work that came afterwards. You know, the, the way your paintings, I mean, I looked a bunch of them. There was many huge, horizontal paintings where, and then you worked vertically. So it's a very different feeling for the viewer. And I think dance, dance does that too. I always think of dance as drawing in space.
Frances Barth:Yeah, no, at the same time, I was, I was very interested in the difference between a human, human scale, even though like, Greek architecture as opposed to Roman architecture. So I was thinking very, very much about, like, portals and shapes that, even though they could be very large architecture. They still seem to have a human scale to them. And you know, those 18 foot paintings, you know, some were 23 feet wide. Everything that I drew, I hand drew. It was all hand drawn. So, I mean, it's totally on the point.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's drawn. It, it also has the feeling that, when you hand draw it, it's an extension of your body.
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:And the kind of line that you make really is determined by how far your arm reaches.
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:And, so these are enormous paintings.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:But I think they keep the viewer engaged because of the power of those simple shapes. You know, with, with a nod to minimalism. Uh, they, they also have, um, a weight to them that I think is, um, very memorable. Uh, it was for me, when, when I looked at them, I really thought, this is really a connection to modern dance. I mean, I, I can, I can see that. And, and, and I think the hardest thing is to extract the extraneous stuff. And, and get down to those simple shapes. Not so easy, simple as not easy...
Frances Barth:No. Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:Ever. You know, so...
Frances Barth:Thank you. So now, you're on the spot and you have to talk about, I mean, we had a similar upbringing. And, and we had, we both...
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:We both studied dance as little kids. You studied ballet.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:I more, more studied, um, tap dance and the aerobic kind of things. Right? So...
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes, I, I went to a local school not far from where we lived. And it, during that time, I was quite young. It became the center of my week. I just longed to be in that studio with the people that, moving across the space in a way that seemed gravity free. I mean, they leapt into the air and didn't seem to come down. And I couldn't get enough of looking at that. And I also loved that there was never recorded music. That it was a live piano. And I would run to the school early. Like, an an hour before the class began, and sit on the floor next to the piano. And I could feel the vibration of the piano in the floor. And I remember that sensation of just wiping everything else on my mind away. Whatever noise was in my head just left. And I was so present that it was just this amazing experience that I have been chasing ever since. You know, I, I think at a certain point, uh, the teacher told my parents, you know, this is a focused child. You need to take her to New York. So she can take class, uh, five times a week. And my parents both worked and they felt that was not going to be possible. That I couldn't, they couldn't take me there. And it was just too, my mother, I think, was afraid. I'd never read another book. And she said, you know, it's fine to do this once a week. But, I was so beside myself wanting to do this. And they let me, I was very upset. I remember it was a very, you know, important moment. And it was at that point that, to calm me down, they bought me a set of paints. A little box with colors and two brushes and two canvas boards. And they said, maybe you'll like doing this. And I reluctantly started to use the paints. And I was, I found that I had that same feeling of sitting on the floor in the ballet studio. And I use the whole box of paints in a week. And I said to my parents that, you know, I really liked this a lot. And now I, I need more. You know, like, so that's how it began for me. You know, I, my entry into the visual world came through the dance. But as a young person, as a young adult, wherever I lived, I began to take ballet class again. It was part of my life. Although, I never performed professionally. It was something that was important to me. And that I, that I just continued to do. It was like a connecting thread. Whatever city I found myself in, I found a ballet class that I could take. And through that experience, I met many professional dancers. Because they're always taking pickup classes and I knew when they were on tour and when they were back and had free time. And they began to be my models, eventually. Um, both in the paintings that I did, um, early on in the water. Because they have such flexible backs. That ability to, to bend creates a rhythm that I was very interested in, um, using as I was developing the images. So I, I often, um, at a certain point that, the dancers would come to my studio. And I put paper on the floor. And they lay on the floor. And I stood on a ladder to draw them. And, uh, so that view from above became part of the composition in the, some of the paintings that I did afterwards. Anyway, it's, when they're on a stage, they look like their bodies are just regular bodies. But when you're with them in person, their bodies are honed, um, and have a natural kind of ability to make a gesture that most bodies don't have. You know, when I would take ballet class, that, the teacher would often say to me, Lorraine bend back. And I would say, I am bending back. But the degree of bending is very different than in a professional dancer who really bends, the upper torso bends to 90 degrees from how their legs are. So, I really enjoyed that kind of flexibility. And, you know, I would often in the studio, show them drawings on the wall and they, those dancers would say, oh, those are better than what we can do. And I would say you're so wrong. You know, what you can do is so much better than what I can draw. And I don't want you to imitate the drawings. Just move from one pose to the next. And I'll tell you, uh, when to stop. So, that's how it, how it began for me. And continues, you know, that, the ballet has become more and more, you know, as I, as time has passed and I've become more comfortable with just, uh, the kinds of images I want to make, I've continued to use dancers as a part of, as an element in those images.
Adrienne Tarver:So what I find really interesting so far is how much you guys overlap in, sort of, early interest in where those, sort of, formative years of developing your artistic, visual artistic, um, language and skills and education overlapped with dance. And your work then diverges is in subject in that we've got the simplification of forms in Frances' has work and these, like, representation of figure and human body more clearly in Lorraine's work. So, I'm curious about, sort of, the paths of influence. Like, what you each took and how you, how you've, like, over the years related that back to that beginning interest in dance?
Frances Barth:I, I wasn't so influenced. I was influenced more by the ideas of timing.
Lorraine Shamesh:Sure.
Frances Barth:And presence in terms of painting. And one thing that really also blew me away was, it was in the sixties, it might've been 65. I don't remember, when Al Held had a made Greek Garden, which was like an 80 foot long painting. It took up his entire loft. And I was invited to go see it in his loft. And it was, outside there were all the Vietnam war protests. And so it was this very intense time. And I walked into this loft. And I just thought this painting was magical and... and it didn't strike me even as odd that somebody would take up their entire living space for one painting. I mean, he had made the painting the entire length of his loft. And so, right from kind of the beginning of my studying about art, it seemed to mean noble. Uh, it seemed to me, first of all, there was, no, it was not a career. It wasn't viewed as a career. It was, uh, you just, you did it, you know? It's, there, wasn't a reason why you did it. It's, there was no money involved. There were, perhaps two galleries in New York at the time. It just was very exciting. And also for me, it was always my safe space. Like, when I go to my studio, it's, uh, it's just something different from being in the world. I know that like, you know, you're very involved in, in the relationship of art to community at this point. But, for me, growing up working class and perhaps poorer than working class, it was a release from, just the world. And in it, I could invent anything. I could, I had a freedom. And I could explore my ideas or all kinds of ideas. It was the time of existentialism. So, we were taught not to ever refer to what we were doing is making pictures. Right? So, we were not object driven. We were, we were taught that we were painting. It was a verb. Yeah? It wasn't to accomplish something that was commercial or for other reasons. It was actually a way of being, and living and thinking. And that was just an enormous release for me. And I, I mean, I didn't like invite people over to my studio. I just did it. And, I at one point, was married to a painter early on. And he invited people to his studio. But I never did. And one time we were in Max's Kansas city eating, just the two of us. And Marcia Tucker came in. She came directly to our table and she said, Frances, I'm really pissed at you. How come I don't know that you're a painter? And I said, well, I just, you know, I paint, I just paint. And she said, I want to come see what you're doing. And I think this was in the, it was in the early seventies. And she came and she saw my paintings and she picked a 12 foot painting for, I think it was in 1972, Whitney Annual. It was an annual at that point. That's a whole other story that isn't going to be part of a podcast for an hour. It's, you know, just like the entire subject of women painting in the sixties and seventies. Not, you know, just being in a whole other world than the men. Who had a very different idea at that point of like, what should, they should achieve. Or what should be given to them, or...
Lorraine Shamesh:What was possible was presented very differently.
Frances Barth:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the fact that I made, like, you know, it's funny, I just came across something I wrote. It was an accident. I don't even remember writing this. But it's about, I had finished a 23 foot painting in my studio. And a couple who were friends came over and the man was a painter. And he was really angry. And I'm writing this. I just read this. And he said, why do you have to paint paintings that are so large?
Lorraine Shamesh:You shouldn't.
Frances Barth:And, and it was like, it didn't occur to me that I shouldn't paint paintings that were this large. And he, like the whole evening he was really angry at me. And I wound up having a kind of schizophrenic life married to this other painter, where all of our friends just never admitted that I was painting. And yet, I would have all these teaching jobs where other people really loved my painting. So, that went on for 14 years.
Lorraine Shamesh:That's a long time.
Frances Barth:Yeah, it's a long time.
Lorraine Shamesh:But to your credit, you continued to make the work. And I think that's the big divide. Is continuing to do the work in the face of people putting up walls that one has to continually push against or breakthrough, or go around or go over. You continued to do that. You continued to build. And often in those years, there wasn't a lot of outside applause because the expectation was different. Driven by gender. You know, it was just different. And you had to, I mean, I had, uh, a person, uh, you know, who was a well-known painter said, said to me very early on, you know, because of who you are and the way you look, you're going to have to be five times as good. And it's going to take you five times as long to get to where you want to go. He said, but I think you can do it. Uh, you know, I think... and I didn't quite understand what he was talking about in terms of the things that might be barriers. But I heard him and I dug in. And I so wanted to continue to work. That that was the driving force for all the decisions I made in my life. You know, I just wanted to be able to work. Not just on the weekends. Not just, you know, occasionally. But all the time. It was like a form of sustenance. Like a form of food. I needed to work. I needed to build. You know, during times, in the sixties it was a very tumultuous time in the world. Not unlike the way it is today. You know, there was the Vietnam War. There was the woman's movement. There was a lot of stuff going on that was very challenging. But I, I felt, you know, the energy to destroy. It, you can destroy so quickly. And it takes more time to build. But I was very invested in building. You know, in building in my own studio and trying to construct things. And trying to understand how things connected together. Even, you know, I was working in a way that wasn't the popular way at the time to work. Figurative art was not the thing that was the, the mainstay of what was being engaged in primarily. But it was something that juiced me and I wanted to learn how to do that. But it was thrilling, but it was challenging. Always not unlike the way it is now.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:You know, things are exploding... and you know, it's not enough that there's been a pandemic. Now there's a war. You know, it's just, it's, there are always these challenges. But if one is lucky, this space of time we spend in the studio is sacred. You know, it's, it's moments of sanity. Even when it's difficult. And even when things don't work. It makes me glad to be alive. You know, it makes me feel anchored in a way that I don't if I'm not able to work. As long as I can work, I feel like it's going to be okay.
Frances Barth:Yeah, absolutely.
Lorraine Shamesh:You know, so when I have looked at your work, you know, you've done that. It's manifest in so many different ways and while it was minimal in the beginning, the ability to communicate and tell stories in the work you've done later on, is very engrossing. And I find, you know, you're, you, you've taught yourself how to be a filmmaker, you know, in the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, that's kind of amazing. And if, if you know, I had the chance to look at some of those short films. And they're remarkable, you know? They're remarkable in terms of the way you're using hand drawn lines and animation, and, you know? I think the thing that all artists are drawn to are possibilities. You want to, I always want to look at somebody's work and then want to come home and work afterwards. Not imitate what they're doing, but it, you know, there's a kind of life force in that, that I find propels me...
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:...to go further. So, you know, I, I would like to know more about how, you were working on those very large paintings and then you began to make smaller images.
Frances Barth:Yeah, well, I had pressure on me all of a sudden, um...
Lorraine Shamesh:From?
Frances Barth:Well, I, actually, my mother used to say, oh, you were very famous in the early seventies. And then what happened? Um, I was very young and I got a Guggenheim. And, I, I had pressure to keep painting those paintings.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah. Right.
Frances Barth:They were in museum collections. They... people bought them. Corporations bought them. Um, I had a guy who had never collected anything before, who called me from a phone booth in Houston, Texas saying that he didn't have an apartment big enough. But because I had a show, I was in a show in the museum there. And he said, could I pay you off, like, some money every month. And could they hold the painting until I found an apartment big enough to put it in? And they said, yes. And I said, yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's my favorite kind of collector, when they build their house...
Frances Barth:Really!
Lorraine Shamesh:For the work, not the other way around.
Frances Barth:But then there was this pressure that like, and I had gotten this Guggenheim. And I decided to leave New York and live in, for the, for awhile in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. First I got a studio for free up in the Northern part of the Netherlands. And then I was in Amsterdam. And I was trying to see how I could go forward in what I was doing. And I always was interested in, could abstraction also tell some sort of a story. Maybe not literally a story. But could it act in a way that it wasn't just graphic? So, that drove me from day one. It drove me from my love of Giotto, you know, beginning. And the structure and Piero della Francesca. I mean, I, I loved everything about Piero della Francesca. But I wasn't going to do religious imagery. So I was called culturally handicapped. When I was in, when I was in school, in college, they didn't really want to let me into the BFA program because I come from a project in the Bronx, in the south Bronx. And they said I was culturally handicapped. But Tony Smith and another teacher said, my God, she's on the Dean's list. And she's like, nobody in the art school was on the Dean's list. And I was studying French and European history. And I, and so anyway, so they, they vouched for me to be in this. And then it was like, I was in Wonderland. I was Alice Wonderland, learning everything. I believed, like, I was taking Islamic art and the teacher was the curator at the Met. And he gave us an 80 page bibliography. And a, and a free pass to go to the library, the Met. And he said you have to read it off for this course. And I went like every damn day. And I was, like, cause I was so naive. And I just kept reading everything.
Lorraine Shamesh:But, but school that, that's the amazing thing.
Frances Barth:That's right.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's like door opens...
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:...and the light pours in. If, and if you haven't had that growing up, it's this...
Frances Barth:That's right.
Lorraine Shamesh:...miraculous lightening bolt that hits you. That the power of words and the power of text...
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:...and the power of ideas that you might not ever have, you know, butted up against, had you not had that opportunity to learn. And it's a powerful thing to have the chance to go to school.
Frances Barth:No, it's extraordinary. It changed my life. And then, you know, I, I had gone to see the first Matisse show at the, uh, in Paris. And the guy who had done it had lectured at Cooper Union. And he talked about how, if you're a painter, every painting you have to learn to paint all over, all over again. It's like, you didn't know how to swim and you had to jump into, say a lake. And you could drown. And you had to learn to swim over and over again for every single painting. And again, being this naive girl, I, I believed this. So I kept trying to generate that I wouldn't turn into a sort of, well, they used to be fights among the artists back in the sixties and seventies. Whether you were a serial painter or not. And you know...
Lorraine Shamesh:Right. Almost physical.
Frances Barth:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like arguments, yelling...
Lorraine Shamesh:Screaming. It was shocking, the first time I, I went to one of those. Um...
Frances Barth:Yeah, and of course, nobody cared about what a girl was saying.
Lorraine Shamesh:Absolutely not.
Frances Barth:And I was too dumb to even know that they didn't care what I was saying. So, I just kept talking. It's like, ah, but my...
Lorraine Shamesh:And making.
Frances Barth:Yes. Oh yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:You kept talking and reading and making. It's like the triumvirate.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:That's, and I think that's the key. To keep on making it.
Frances Barth:Yes, yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:You know, some people get so invested in the talking about it that the making stops. And that's where that's, that's a problem. So I think that was where the courage was.
Frances Barth:But it didn't seem like courage. No, it didn't seem, I just didn't know how to behave in any other way. I mean, it's not like I thought, oh, I'll just stop. I mean, I just, it never occurred to me. And I mean...
Lorraine Shamesh:And you also have to be willing to kill the piece...
Frances Barth:Yes, yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:While you're making it. You have to always not really know the answer.
Frances Barth:Yeah, that's right.
Lorraine Shamesh:And be willing to kill it in the process. And that's the act of bravery, is that, in my head. So...
Frances Barth:Ha, you know, it's funny because, over all these years, cause it's been more than 50 years at this point, yeah, it's, like, people say, oh, how can you just paint a painting like that? And I say, it's all sanded down multiple times. You know? It's like, so worked on. But I don't want you to see that it's all worked on like that. Right?
Lorraine Shamesh:You don't want to see the blood in the point shoe after the dancer has performed.
Frances Barth:No, no.
Lorraine Shamesh:You just want to think they can fly.
Frances Barth:Oh yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:But there is blood.
Frances Barth:So, then getting to my, I've been now married like 40, this is a 41st year I'm with my second husband. And he's, um, Japanese American from Hawaii, has a very different background. And he's an actor and a director. And early on, he said, how come there's no people in your paintings? I said, I don't want people to my paintings. Like, this is my studio. I'm not sure I even want people in my life, you know, given, given what my childhood was like.But, but I liked telling stories. And when I was a kid, I used to hang out in the Bronx with a street gang and they were very protective of me. I mean, you have to think, here's this convent school girl with long blonde hair singing backup for the Kids in Philly or sharp as or whatever, on a street corner in the Bronx, right? And I'm going out with this Puertorican singer. And I'm a Virgin. And like, nobody is pressuring me in any way. Partially because I was always very funny. I would just have them cracking up. So was sort of like Gracie Allen. So, like, my husband of 41 years at this point, he's like, oh, I crack him up, still. And, um, but, but I thought, you know, I have all these stories I like to tell. But I can do them if I'm a filmmaker. So, I started taking all these classes in editing, cinematography. I even just, last year, because of, COVID got a certificate degree from NYU in film and television. Because, you know, I'm here. I'm locked in. It's all online.
Lorraine Shamesh:A great use of your time.
Frances Barth:A great use of my time. And I can tell stories. Also because my husband is not Caucasian. He has it been typecast, basically. For his entire life. Now he, he grew up in Hawaii. And he acted in seven or so, uh, original Hawaii Five O's. So, there wasn't so, so caricatured. Right? But when he came to, to here, to the mainland, in the beginning, there was a real push to not be typecast. He actually was Richard Dreyfus' understudy for Othello.
Lorraine Shamesh:Wow.
Frances Barth:In Atlanta. And that's kind of the high point before it all disappeared. And then, you know, he's like, what are the calls for? And this is me saying it. It's not him saying it. But they're calls for, you know, the fake accent with the Korean grocer or the gardner who's a sexual or whatever. You know?
Lorraine Shamesh:The cliches.
Frances Barth:Yeah, the cliches. So, I mean, part of my, beside the fact that we've danced tango for eight years, I mean, he and I dance tango together.
Lorraine Shamesh:Is that where the germ for the movie came from?
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:Because he's in that and...
Frances Barth:He's in that.
Lorraine Shamesh:And he's wonderful. He's just wonderful.
Frances Barth:I love it. He's a really good actor.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's beautiful. The message of it, is really...
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:...um, I thought really just lovely.
Frances Barth:But I was going to, it was starting out to be a different film. I was, uh, because I adore our teacher. She has a, a real tango company. She's the real deal. Her uncle at the age of 14, used to play Astor Piazzolla's music. He had a band in Argentina. So I was doing, I decided to do a kind of documentary on Sandra, her partner and his partner. They're gay. And they started early on, gay tango that happens, you know, all over the world. But I couldn't get Walter and Leo to show up for things. And the Argentine embassy even gave us a space for free for me to shoot in. So, that didn't work out. So, then I thought, well ok, I had done all these interviews and there were stories. And then it gave me the idea to write a script for a whole different short film. And I'd done all this research. And tango was learned by men from men.
Lorraine Shamesh:Really?
Frances Barth:Originally. Yeah. Yeah, there was no, they weren't allowed to dance with women. They were imported to Argentina to work, you know, manual jobs. And they had to study tango for like three years before their teacher would vouch for them in so-, in society to be able to dance with a woman. So, for the three years, they learned how to follow and not to lead.
Lorraine Shamesh:Which is, which is a good skill.
Frances Barth:That's a very good skill.
Lorraine Shamesh:Isn't tango, isn't, there's an invitation...
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:Involved.
Frances Barth:Yeah. You have to know exactly, every second what's possible. Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:And. You have to really be present with the other person...
Frances Barth:Yup.
Lorraine Shamesh:...as you move.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:And, and, and, and it's wordless. You know?
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's the body language. So, and body language is such a powerful thing. But I think learning to watch. Learning to see. Learning to allow yourself to receive the invitation and then respond, is what's so compelling and moving.
Frances Barth:Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's not easy. And a lot of tango is not that.
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:A lot of tango is choreographed.
Lorraine Shamesh:But there's a difference.
Frances Barth:There's a total difference.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's stiff. It's not moving.
Frances Barth:But also the man is, is I don't want to say a abusive...
Lorraine Shamesh:It's mechanical.
Frances Barth:But oftentimes...
Lorraine Shamesh:It's controlling.
Frances Barth:Yes.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's, it's a con-, it's a control thing.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:And when, but when people are really doing it, It isn't.
Frances Barth:Yeah, no, it's not.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's, it's something that they do together. And It's...
Frances Barth:Yeah. So, so beside my being able to act, and I, I've never had money to do these things. So, I learned how to do every part of it. Right? So I edit it. I do the sound. I'm the director. I write the screenplays. It's like, and also I have diversely cast everything I've done.
Lorraine Shamesh:So, but that's so great though.
Frances Barth:Yeah. So, it's my way of saying, you know, in some ways, the hell with all you people, you know? These are all people, man. It's like...
Lorraine Shamesh:This is the world I want to live in. And here it is.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:Here's how we can live in this world together each contributing who we are in our own way. You know, I think that's, what's such a winning and beautiful thing, you know? And you feel that when you watch it. I did.
Frances Barth:Thank you.
Lorraine Shamesh:You know?
Frances Barth:Thank you.
Lorraine Shamesh:You're welcome.
Frances Barth:Thank you.
Lorraine Shamesh:I'm not just saying it, you know? I, I wouldn't say it. I mean, I wouldn't intentionally be insulting. But I would just say nothing.
Frances Barth:Oh God.
Lorraine Shamesh:Anyway, but it does that. It does that. And, and that particular film weaves together three stories. It's it's not just the couple.
Frances Barth:Yeah. And it's also look at, look at how old I am. It's also about an older couple.
Lorraine Shamesh:An older couple that are separated in a way.
Frances Barth:And they find their way...
Lorraine Shamesh:Back together.
Frances Barth:That's right.
Lorraine Shamesh:For the Grand Union.
Frances Barth:Exactly. Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:And it's very subtle. I mean, it's not, it's very subtle.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:But it's very, you really, the viewer feels, this viewer felt it. Anyway. So...
Frances Barth:Yeah. Thank you.
Lorraine Shamesh:You're welcome.
Frances Barth:So, Adrienne?
Adrienne Tarver:I, you, you caught me. I was just getting ready to pop in. Um, I wanted to ask, so, um, Lorraine, I was able to hear speak about her work a bit more when we did the Out of Many series. And one of the things that came up was, um, the beautiful ceramic pieces behind her and the paintings that, a connecting thread that I started to pick up on in the conversation, was this interest in fragility. And the fragility of the human being. And that fragility of this medium of ceramics and sort of that precarious, um, uh, existence. And I'm curious, for both of you, because you have spoken about how you have both moved through different mediums, like, where you've identified your connecting threads of regard, like regardless of how different the medium is that you're moving through. Like, what seems to be at the core of the interest or sort of the themes that perpetuate your series of work through, decades through mediums?
Lorraine Shamesh:Well, you know, I was drawn to clay because, um, it involves all the elements. It's, you know, earth, air, fire, and water. It's very, very primal. And clay can be very strong. But it's very effected by the atmosphere that it finds itself in. Uh, not unlike the human body. You know, the human body is very strong. But also vulnerable. So, I, I like the notion that clay is malleable. That it has a memory. You know, if you make a piece and you accidentally bump into it. And then you remove the bump. And you put it in the kiln, the fire, the level of heat will turn that little bump, when you open the kiln, into a gash. You know, it, it it's like a damaged childhood. Everything that you do to it becomes part of the finished thing. And, uh, you know, I, I think I mentioned in that earlier, um, Out of Many conversation that, the whole notion of perfection, and the search for perfection, can really get in the way of the process of making things and seeing where it takes you. And I had heard the Leonard Cohen song, Anthem, you know, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in and that's what I love about painting. You know, I have an intention when I begin. But as I, time has taken me along, I've learned to quiet my intentions and to look at what I'm doing and see what it needs. Not what I want it to do. But what it's telling me that it has to do. And I like, like Frances, often, the end of an eight hour day will sand the entire painting down to begin again. To keep it open, you know? To keep it moving. To keep it alive, because it wants to die, you know? It doesn't want to become luminous. It doesn't want to explode. It wants to just be mud, as does the clay. It wants to be mud. And I've learned not to fiddle with it. Just to work with my hands, see what happens, and then move on to the next one. And someone once asked me, how do you know when something is done? And I said to them, it's, it's never done. It's just that you get to a point with, you feel what's wrong with it, can't be fixed in this particular one. And I, my mind starts to wander. And as soon as it does, I know it's time to move on to the next piece. It's a conversation that I'm having with myself, you know? From my whole life, for all these decades, trying to answer questions that I don't seem to be able to find the answer to one way or another. And if I'm not finding the answer with paint, I will weave paper or work with clay or just draw, you know? I need to keep myself, um, a little uneasy and not knowing what the answer is, you know? So, I think that having a life is, every person you meet poses questions that you hopefully spend the rest of your life answering for yourself. I think that's a life, you know? In my notion, that's a life. And I, I, everybody I encounter sees things differently and has a different point of view. And sometimes I take it in and sometimes I don't. And, but then I ruminate about it later on, and some of it feeds into the work. And I've tried to just let go of control. Which is not an easy thing to do. So, you know, changing mediums for me, um, allows me to be uneasy and vulnerable. And I think you, one needs to be vulnerable in order to be an artist you. Have to be willing to be open. And you're not, I'm not making art on the conveyor belt, you know? Early on when I was looking for a gallery, when I was a very young artist, a dealer came in and he said, okay, I'm happy to give you a show. How many of these can you do in a year? And I said, um, just the one that's in front of you. I, I can't, you know, and he said, I will give you a show, you know? Bring me 10 of these. And, uh, and I said, I don't think this is the right circumstance for me. And he said, what are you talking about? You know, this is 57th Street. You're a young kid. No one knows who you are. I'm going to give you a show. And I said, thank you very much, but no. I don't think this is the right place for me. And the next day I met the person who became my dealer for 25 years, alan Stone. Who was totally, you know, different. When I had first show of, uh, the painted pools, which had done very well. And I went into him and I said, you know, I really like to work with clay. He goes fabulous. You know, he just, it was like, do whatever you want. You know, he never tried to tell me, bring me 10 of these in blue. Or we're going to match somebody's sofa, you know? So, can you do that in this size? I was like, this is the wrong place for me. So, you have to know who you are, uh, what you're willing to negotiate and what you're not willing to negotiate. And I was never willing to negotiate anybody telling me how to make my work or the kind of work I was going to make. And I've always wanted to make different kinds of things. Like I've spent four years making quilts and, with fabric and, you know, working with paper pulp and, you know, it's just, I was always interested in other things. I dunno if that answers your question. That was a long answer. But anyway...
Adrienne Tarver:It does. That, you also hit lots of other points, as well. That was great though.
Lorraine Shamesh:Good.
Adrienne Tarver:I'm curious about you, Frances, as well.
Frances Barth:I think the things, I mean, I know this is gonna sound a little bit, like a, what's that show that was, had all those scifi and weird things happening in it that was at night for an hour? It was Rod Sterling.
Lorraine Shamesh:The Twilight Zone?
Frances Barth:The Twilight Zone. It's going to sound like the Twilight Zone. But I really grew up with a much more mystical bent. And what I saw say, in what the Judson dancers were doing or what I hoped to see, and if I saw it in my paintings, that was when I would stop the painting. And the same thing with film. And it's, it's like, um, a moment where things come together. But are at the same time enigmatic. Uh, you know, they're, you can't nail it down. And so, I always thought of myself as I was an intermediary somehow. I never said, oh, these are my paintings. Right? It wasn't like I possessed something. It was like, I was always working toward it becoming something. I mean, like, I've spent my life reading and, um, and watching films. And every Sunday in church, they would actually tell us all the films we were not allowed to see. And my girlfriend and I would write it down...
Lorraine Shamesh:And run and see them.
Frances Barth:And we would immediately go see them, you know? And they were the, uh, the, you know, new wave films, and just before that. And they were always very enigmatic. And they were not, like, the meaning was in between everything that happened. And so, that, I don't know why. I mean, I just find that thrilling. Like Agnès Varda is one of my favorite filmmakers. And she even incorporated documentary with narrative, very early on. So, it's always been like that. That's what drives me. And I used to always, I mean, I taught for like 50 years. And I, I would say to people, well, what's going to get you up in the morning to go to your studio, you know? You got to want to go to your studio. If you're just kind of knocking out the same thing all the time, why would you want to get up?
Lorraine Shamesh:It's death.
Frances Barth:So, you know, that for me is also a driving thing. Like in the midst of all the horribleness of the world at any given moment, to be in my studio seems to me, almost an, some element of grace. It's not, it's not evil. It's not negative. It's not, and again, the minute that anybody tried to tell me do more of these paintings, I left. And, and then every once in a while, she would say, but I can now sell these. Why are you changing again? You know? And it would be because, because they were leading me places.
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:It wasn't like, I was just deciding, oh, I don't want to paint this anymore. I still, I love those paintings. I wish I, I, and I keep my whole life trying to get simpler. Like I would love to be a minimalist painter. But I can't. I can never do it. I've, like, tried to make a black and white painting periodically, you know? And like, all this color comes into it. So, my dealer for, at least 10 years was Susan Caldwell. And her space was 5,000 square feet. And I never knew when I was going to have a show. She'd come maybe once a year or so. And she'd say, oh my God, look at all this work. Do you want to have a show in three months? And I'd say, okay. And, and it would be 5,000 square feet.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's a lot.
Frances Barth:You know? It's a lot.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's a Lot.
Frances Barth:And...
Lorraine Shamesh:But the paintings were big. The paintings were big.
Frances Barth:Yeah, they were big. But, yeah, but I'd also have all these drawings...
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:...or some paper and they would be shown a separate room. And then people would go, why is she drawing? You know, it was like, she's painting. Why is she drawing? Or I set designs...
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:...for three ballets, that were a big deal. And, and, my dealer didn't want anyone to know I'd done it. And I thought, you know, guys...
Lorraine Shamesh:Secrecy was a big thing in those days.
Frances Barth:Yeah. But it may still be, you know? It's like, what's the big deal? I mean, Picasso, like, could deal with him doing anything, you know?
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:He made ceramics.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:He did drawings. Ellsworth Kelly, representational drawings and...
Lorraine Shamesh:Richard Diebenkorn. The figurative work and...yeah.
Frances Barth:Yeah, everybody. You know, everybody. Even Olitski.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah.
Frances Barth:It's like, what's the big deal? It's like, leave me alone already. And then I was thinking last night, of kid, there's always been an idea of a Renaissance man. But there's never been an idea of a Renaissance woman. It's like, there must be something wrong with her, that she just kind of keeps going.
Lorraine Shamesh:And that, you know, there was a point I had been making things and other mediums and never showing them to anybody.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:It was like my little secret. And then finally, when Alan Stone passed away and I, I was faced with trying to, uh, take my work out into the world again, I decided that I was going to choose a dealer by how they reacted to work in different media. And you know, when he died, people called me and said, we'd like to represent your work. You know, we'd like these paintings. And I was like, Hmm, I don't thank you for your interest. And then finally, uh, people came and said, you know, there's a dialogue between the paintings and the ceramics. And I was like, we have a winner, you know? I didn't want to have to explain it to them.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:If they didn't see it, I was not doing it. And I was perfectly happy just having the work, you know, just doing it and not showing it to anybody, you know? Cause it, it gave me a sense of being attached to the world in a way that felt productive and, and good, you know, the building. So...
Frances Barth:Yeah. But there may be, we, we may have a problem in terms of, you know, I was going back from Yale one day with another well-known artist. A guy, and he said, Frances, you know the problem with you and all the other artists your age, is that your dearlers did everything for you. And you never did anything for yourself. You know?
Lorraine Shamesh:It's not true.
Frances Barth:No, but...
Lorraine Shamesh:You, you taught yourself how to be, how to do all this stuff.
Frances Barth:Oh yeah, of course. But he meant in terms of marketing.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah. Ok.
Frances Barth:Yeah. So, then there was another moment where, I was like a guest artist on a board of a nonprofit. And there was this panel discussion. And it was all critics. And the, one critic said, you know, I don't respond to any artist who doesn't, like, come after me and tell me what his work is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And then, but on the same panel, there was another critic who had reviewed a major show in New York. And it, and said, well, I didn't even go see it. And I'm thinking, who are these people? These are like the middlemen.
Lorraine Shamesh:Oh god.
Frances Barth:And, and like, they're bragging that they don't even go see the shows they review. And they're telling, that it's all the artist's fault if they're not interested in the work. And then the third one said, oh, I don't mean you anybody unless it benefits my career. This is all in one night, you know?
Lorraine Shamesh:It's demoralizing. This is why I like to look at work, you know? This is, because it's not demoralizing. You know, some of it I'm drawn to more than others. But the, this other extraneous stuff that churns in our world, I don't have a very huge threshold for letting it in. Because it, it it's like a stopper. Instead of showing me possibilities. It just, it's like a game ender.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:And I always want that feeling of sitting by the piano, you know? I, I want that feeling of looking at something that makes me want to think differently. I want the visual experience. I don't want the fake, you're a brand, marketing. Someone said to me, you're a brand. I said, I'm not dish detergent, you know? It's concerning for me, that level of discussion that does go on. And people spend time thinking about it. But you can choose how you spend your time. And with whom. So, you can choose the artwork that you go and see. And it certainly doesn't have to look like yours. But if it juices you and makes you think differently, outside the box makes you want to be better, be uncomfortable, but in a good way. This other stuff makes me uncomfortable in a, not a good way. So...
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:That's, you know, I mean, some people enjoy it. They enjoy the fact that, you know, it's a kind of game. You have to, I guess, enjoy the game that you're involved, that you spend your time in. And time is limited. So, I think it's important to really decide which direction you want to go in in, in terms of how you spend your time. And, and my choice is to spend my time in the studio. And with people I really love and enjoy and learn from. Not always, sometimes the people you learn from most, you know, unforgettable people who make you think, sometimes make you very uncomfortable. But that's uncomfortable in a good way. And I think those are the keepers, for me but. Things that make me uncomfortable in a way that makes me not want to work, because it seems irrelevant, all this stuff. It's about ego rather than about, um, learning. I don't know. I, I think learning is something that's really precious. So...
Frances Barth:hmm.
Lorraine Shamesh:There, there a way, I mean, learning comes from unexpected sources. So, you don't want to shut yourself completely off. But on the other hand, if you're a maker, you spend a lot of time by yourself. So. I don't know.
Adrienne Tarver:I feel like, um, so many of the topics and things you guys are hitting on, especially in regards to the conversations. With dealers, or sort of how to move about the world as an artist, I wish I could, like, send it back to my 20 year old self in school and, like, reenter the world with some of those things that takes some experience to learn.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Adrienne Tarver:To understand that you can say no. Or this is how I work. This is how I think. These are all the different mediums I want to work in.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes. But it takes, you know, nobody can have your experience for you. And it's good for you to have the experience. To keep on doing it. And you learn in your own way. And you know, I think we all have things or people that are our north stars. And if you remember that, you know, if you remembered the dreams of your youth. I had, I had a fortune cookie once it said, remember the dreams of your youth. And, you know, I took it and it's pinned to the wall of my studio. You know, it's like 30 years old. But I think it's important, to, to remember. It sometimes when I'm making a painting, before I start, I choose a word as the title. Because it takes so many months to work on it that I sometimes lose my way. And if I don't have that word to shoot for, I forget what the essence of the thing was. And so, I think it's good to have the experience for yourself. Even if you had heard this conversation when you were 20, you still needed to have the experience for yourself. That's how you learn it. You know, we all meet various people in, in the course of our lives. And some send us forward in a good way. And some, it's a couple of steps back to get back on the path to where we're trying to go. So...
Adrienne Tarver:Yeah. So, I'm going to go rogue a little bit, but I'm going to come back to the question that I, you probably already know I'm going to ask you. Um, but quickly, cause you mentioned something that I'm curious about for both of you, since you both had aspirations or at least like interests in multiple areas when you were younger, would your younger self, and that could be, I don't know, 5, 10, 20, uh, what do your younger self be surprised by where you are now and what you're doing now?
Frances Barth:Uh, no, I don't think so. My, when I was five, this is the only time anything happened for me in relation to this. When I was five, my mother, to get rid of me on Saturday mornings, sent me to the second floor of the project to oil paint with this woman named Mrs. Putnam. Who gave us soda and stick pretzels. I still love stick pretzels. And I painted, she would like give, put all these photographs on the table and I was painting farm scenes. I mean, I'd never been out of the Bronx. I was painting farm scenes and Barnes and roses and all kinds of things. And my mother said to me that I didn't know how to sign my paintings. So she signed them for me. Ultimately, she threw all them away. But I have one painting that's of a, of a flower. And I loved going there. And apparently, sometime when I was very, very young, I told my mother I wanted to be a famous painter. I don't know how I possibly said that. Because the only thing in grammar school that we did was we had to choose between a Reynolds painting or Matisse's window. And we had to write something about it. I mean, that's the only thing. And I chose the Matisse. I didn't choose the more representational girl in the dress, you know? All flimsy and whatever. So, in some ways I think she would have been happy that I got to where I am.
Lorraine Shamesh:And my answer is similar. I, you know, I, I remember in the, in the fourth grade, um, we were to write a report on India. And I found a picture of the Taj Mahal, which in my young life was the most mesmerizing building I had ever seen in my life. I was especially drawn to the tiles and the interior, to those geometric patterns and the bright colors. And I remember I did 57 drawings of, they were little, but of the tile patterns and the domes of the building. And I was very proud of this. I mean, I think I pulled my first all-nighter in the fourth grade working on this report. I was just, and I bound it together with yarn. And I brought it in, I was very proud. And the teacher looked at it and did not want to be discouraging, but called my parents and said, you know, she obviously is very interested, but there's no text, you know? She didn't write anything. It's a report on India. I don't want to discourage her because she obviously has learned some things. But, so, my mother came to me and she said, you know, you need to write about India. I said, I've said, what I, what's wonderful about India. I've said it in, in a way that, my mother said, I understand, but what are the products? What are the, you know, talk about cows and the people. I said, I did talk about it. I, I, I showed with the pictures. And so, I think my young self would be thrilled that my life has unfolded as it has. And that the pictures, that in, in so many ways, the patterns have lived on. And, you know, I've been able to have a life doing this. It's kind of a, a miracle to me given where I came from. That I've had a whole life doing this.
Frances Barth:Yeah.
Lorraine Shamesh:I've, you know, the work that I've made. But, and the people I've met. The places I've gone... been able to go to because of, of the inquiry, you know? The visual inquiry of, that I was drawn to at the beginning. And I'm working on the text part of it still, you know? Still working on the text. But, you know, trying to get better at it. So...
Adrienne Tarver:Well, there's people around to help. That's what like, you know, curators and writers and critics are for,
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah, oh my...Thank God. Thank God. Because that part of it, I always clutch, you know? It's always, it's too long. It's too short. It sounds pretentious. You know, I'm, it's always a concern. But now I, I try, at least. I understand that it's an issue and that sometimes having a conversation is a good thing. So, like this, you know? This is not the kind of thing I would naturally be comfortable doing. But the pandemic has sent me to this place. And I, you know, I'm, I'm happy to have this connection and grateful to you for asking me to participate and, and to Frances for agreeing to come along.
Frances Barth:Well me, also.
Lorraine Shamesh:So...
Frances Barth:Absolutely.
Adrienne Tarver:So, before we get into our thank yous and all of that, I, because I'm deeply appreciative to both of you. But I'm going to hold my appreciation until I have asked my actual last question.
Lorraine Shamesh:Ok.
Adrienne Tarver:Which is, we are here all together under the umbrella of the National Academy. You are National Academicians. So, curious to know what that has meant to you? What it means to be a part of collective? To have these opportunities? Or what the, you know, your thoughts have been throughout the, understanding the history of the Academy. Good, bad, whatever.
Lorraine Shamesh:Do you want to go first Frances?
Frances Barth:I think neither one of us wants to go first.
Lorraine Shamesh:That's true.
Frances Barth:But, I was, you know, I was so, um, moved, in, I think I was, I think I was inducted in 2006. And I did not know who put me up for this. So I was really moved that somebody, you know, that artists, would nominate me for induction into the Academy. Yeah, that was, that was really a big deal. And then, when we all came together, like for that induction ceremony, Bill Viola was, was one of 'em. Christo was one of them. I mean, it was like, it was just amazing. And everybody was kind and, um, and just welcoming. And the, and the museum was so beautiful.
Lorraine Shamesh:It was.
Frances Barth:You know, it was, and, uh, I mean, it's been hard times for the National Academy since then. And, uh, like this is really special. That we could have this conversation. And also that I, you know, I've heard your other ones, and that you're doing that Adrienne. And, uh, and Anjelic. And, cause we don't get to talk to each other very much.
Lorraine Shamesh:No.
Frances Barth:And I, you know, part of it is also, for me, an age thing. I mean, back in the sixties, we used to hang out at cafeterias. And there were Horn & Hardarts and everybody, nobody had money. And we would just talk all night long. And in the eighties, when everything really shifted, there weren't those kinds of conversations anymore. And I taught at Yale for 18 years and I used to drive people home. And there were, there were like, unbelievably not interesting conversations. The people in my car that I was driving, it was like who they knew, how much real estate was, you know, things like that. But, before that, the old guys at Yale treated me totally above board. And we go to lunch, once a week, and the conversations were amazing. You know, the knowledge of art history. The love of painting. I mean, they would just be there at the, at these lunches. Uh, and so I was very grateful for that. And now here it is. And there's an opportunity to have conversation about art and painting, in a way that that really doesn't happen, I mean, also, like, not to be down about all this. But a lot of, of course our friends have passed away. And even like, you know, we, we also used to play poker before COVID. And there was one poker game that was hilarious because most everybody was the same age, except for one guy who had married a younger woman. And, like, these songs came on the radio. And, like, we're playing poker and we're all singing. And she's going, who is that? I haven't heard this before. And I was like, and my husband goes, you know, I don't know what I do if I wasn't married to you. Because, like, it's really hard to have a conversation if you don't have a lot of shared memories, you know? Or knowledge about stuff, like...
Lorraine Shamesh:Context. The context.
Frances Barth:Like we went, uh, I have a friend who loves, she loved going into the secondhand store. And it had a lot of sixties clothes. And the woman, who was very smart, and she was maybe 30 years old, she didn't know that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
Lorraine Shamesh:Wow.
Frances Barth:I mean, so like how could you not know that? And of course now with all these idiots banning everything in schools and getting rid of anything that is controversial or even compelling, you know, it's like, well, we're actually having a conversation. And, otherwise, I know my life is very hermetic.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yes.
Frances Barth:You know, my husband's is not, except for this COVID time. Because he's used to being with people because he acts in productions.
Lorraine Shamesh:It's communal. It's communal.
Frances Barth:It's communal. Yeah. And, uh, but now, like, there's hardly even any auditions or self-tapes yet.
Lorraine Shamesh:Right.
Frances Barth:It's very minimal. So, I'm very grateful for all you guys reinventing the National Academy.
Lorraine Shamesh:Yeah, I mean, it's, the imagination it's taken. And the expertise both conceptually and technically is, there are no words to describe how grateful I am for that. I mean, I, my experience at the cat, the academy, um, most such that, it was factionalized. Even when, you know, before the sale of the buildings. And clique-ish around aesthetic proclivity. You know, people tended to gravitate towards people who made similar work. And, I was very interested, always, in other kinds of work that looked different than mine. And was able to get to know a few people whose work I really admired. But I have to say, I mean, I, I miss having the museum and the shows, you know? A chance to gather during those times. But in the last year, I'm amazed by what you've done. And I, I feel more connected to the place now than I did. Be, because, you know, just being asked to have the conversations, um, you know, I'm honored to be a member. But I'm so pleased that you cared to hear my thoughts. And, and I'm, I'm so happy to get to know Frances a little bit better. Um, so thank you.
Frances Barth:Yeah. Thank you.
Adrienne Tarver:Well, thank you both. Um, I thank you for your very kind words. I like have goosebumps because it's everything that we want this to do, is to create, to reinvigorate the community. Cause if we're not creating the community by having programs. But we're, we're trying to, yeah, bridge that gap of the tumults of the history, recent history. But also the tumult of just sort of world history at the moment. Of being isolated.
Frances Barth:Right, right.
Adrienne Tarver:And so, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to create this kind of space for everybody to connect. And for your openness and, you know, willingness and wanting to have these conversations. Because I think it's a real gift and treasure. And becomes part of this archive of this, like I think really incredible institution with this incredible history. So, thank you.
Frances Barth:Thank you, thank you all.
Lorraine Shamesh:Thank you.
Adrienne Tarver:You're listening to Exquisite Corpse podcast. There are so many things I connected to in this conversation. I, too, have varied artistic interests, But also I've never liked being told what to do. Especially in my studio. I don't always know why I'm making what I'm making or why I might switch mediums or change subjects. But more often than not the end product, which is unpredictable, is better than if I had taken the obvious next step. The National Academy was founded by artists and architects in reaction to an Academy that was being formed by collectors and patrons. The origin of this institution is based on a group of artists not wanting outside entities dictating what or who was exceptional in their own field. They trusted their own judges. It's so important for artists to do things that feel right to them. Regardless of whether others understand why they're doing it. I loved hearing how Lorraine and Frances navigated their own varied interests. From dance, to painting, to ceramics and film, and made sure that they always made their work on their own terms. On the next episode, we have an architect who chose an artist to speak with. And they connect on the bridge between architecture and making art in the expanded field and how both of these things can affect social change.
Mary Miss:And that's what we're confronted with right now, whether we're talking about, you know, social situations, environmental situations, it is so complex. And, I really have the bias, any way, of believing that artists have the ability to take on complexity. That's, that's our specialty in a way.
Michael Maltzan:That idea of, of really trying to weave a net of individuals together and choreograph that in some way, to really grow a much bigger capability to affect change at a, at a cultural level, at a social level, at a city level is a very, very timely way of, of thinking right now.
Adrienne Tarver:I'm so glad you've listened. Please share the episode with your friends. Don't forget to subscribe, like and rate the podcast on your favorite streaming platforms. But most importantly, if you like what you hear, leave us a review. It really helps get the word out. Looking forward to having you back for the next one. Thank you for listening to Exquisite Corpse from the National Academy of Design. We are a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting art and architecture. And we rely on your support to make programs like this possible. To learn more and to donate visit National Academy.org. This conversation was recorded on February 25th, 2022, with the help of Anjelic Owens, Programs Assistant at the National Academy. Exquisite Corpse is produced, mixed and edited by Mike Clemow and Wade Strange at SeeThru Sound..
