Therese Schwartz, An American Artist

by Nancy K. Ford

As a Brooklyn girl, Therese Schwartz visited museums eagerly and learned at her parents' knees about the integration of life and art. Her mother and father were active, idealistic Socialists, her father an immigrant from Russia who had learned during the time of the Czars to be a master carver of ornate picture frames. In this country, he supported his family by creating elaborate frames for the most important paintings at the nation's top museums and private collections. Schwartz was thus imbued with respect for the highest forms of art and craftsmanship, and for the basic rights of all humankind, a combination of forces that continues to shape her vision. She recollects, "When I was about five, I remember arguing the case for striking coal miners to my mostly unconvinced kindergarten buddies. Heated political discussion was just day-to-day talk in our home, but the value of art and artists was never questioned." When she was a child, she remembers, her father would "park" her at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Sunday afternoon, while he worked at his frame shop nearby. She spent many happy hours at the Met, engrossed in the richness of the works available to her. She discovered El Greco on one of those Sunday afternoons, she recalls with a smile.

She continues to collect new facts, images and sensations: "I am curious about the look of places and things, especially those not actually around me...visual facts.... I think that as I see, I am also recording everything somewhere in my conscious or subconscious mind. I am an open-shuttered camera." Recently, Schwartz has been using actual snapshots she has taken - in the subway, at country flea markets, at the zoo - in her American Places collages, some of which are pictured here.

From the American Places - Subway series
New York City Subways: Times Square and West 72 Street, 2000.
Stonehenge paper, acrylic paint, French crayon and
photographic prints. 22 x 30 inches.
Image courtesy Therese Schwartz.
Copyright Therese Schwartz 2001. All rights reserved.

"The subway is no paradise for anyone, but the thoughts and
feelings of each rider are different." -Therese Schwartz

During the 1960's Schwartz began to write, hoping that the printed word would have more of the expressive impact on politics and thought than art had been able to do for her or her colleagues. She edited a newspaper, created and run by artists, The New York Element. By the early 1970's she had had enough - "I was disillusioned with words, giant demonstrations and loud voices. I made a decision to merge the two parts of my life. I wanted my work to be witness to what was going on around me...." She began with collages of newspapers, their words and meaning obscured by washes of paint.

From the American Places - Free Markets series
Flea Market on Eastern Long Island, NY, 2000.
Stonehenge paper, acrylic paint, French crayon and
photographic prints. 22 x 30 inches.
Image courtesy Therese Schwartz.
Copyright Therese Schwartz 2001. All rights reserved.

In the mid-1970's, at the request of Brian O'Dougherty, then editor of Art in America, Schwartz wrote a series of articles called The Politicization of the Avant-Garde. Twenty-five years later, she updated her art-world survey with a four-part article for this publication, in the summer of 1999. Entitled The Year that Was: Marching to the Millennium, the series addressed some of her concerns about the role of the artist in post-industrial, post-mass-reproduction society, while taking a specific look at one entire year's contemporary art exhibits in New York City galleries.

From the American Places - Sunday in the Park series
Polar Bears at the Central Park Zoo, 2000.
Stonehenge paper, acrylic paint, French crayon and
photographic prints. 22 x 30 inches.
Image courtesy Therese Schwartz.
Copyright Therese Schwartz 2001. All rights reserved.

"These American Places series are my own visual recordings
of where I was, what I saw and what I thought."
-Therese Schwartz

By nature impressionable, and by experience a collector of new visual and intellectual information, Schwartz makes choices with these small collages, combining drawing, photography, painting and layers of hand-tinted paper to bring us these works, each one a distillation of her life as an American artist.

 

Also in this Issue:

Therese Schwartz's own artist's statement about her American Places series, with more images of works from the series, can be found in this issue of the Newsletter.

About the Author:

Nancy K. Ford has contributed previously to the Newsletter, in articles about distance education using videoconferencing http://www.arts4all.com/newsletter/issue6/wissinger.html, and about the Alexander Technique for actors, dancers, musicians and civilians http://www.arts4all.com/newsletter/issue12/fordmoraine12.html. Ford lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she teaches and writes.

The author wishes to thank Richard Humphrey for his kind permission to adapt excerpts from his interview with Therese Schwartz, as it appears in his catalogue essay, Therese Schwartz: Artist as Witness, published by Humphrey Fine Art, New York City, in 1993.

About the Artist:

Therese Schwartz is a painter and writer who exhibits extensively in the United States and abroad, and whose work is in the permanent collections of many museums and corporate collections.

She has also been a regular contributor to this Newsletter. In summer 1999, for the first four issues of this publication, her article, The Year That Was: Marching toward the Millennium, surveyed a year in the life of the New York City contemporary art scene. The series explored art, artists and the gallery system, and their places in society at the turn of the century, updating by 25 years a series, The Politicization of the Avante-Garde, she had written for Brian O'Dougherty's Art in America in the 1970's.

Her writing on the Whitney Biennial of 2000 appeared in the Newsletter, as have her film reviews. Findit in the Newsletter Archives at http://www.arts4all.com/newsletter/findit.asp#author