[00:01:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Write on Radio. I'm Eric. And on tonight's program, Josh talks with Kathryn Gertz about her art book, An American Outpost. The Minnesota art scene, 1840-1989. The early days of the Minnesota art scene were distinguished by impermanence and struggle. From this beginning, Minnesota artists built an established art scene that became an outpost of the American scene, following along with and reacting to the history of American art. And American Outpost tracks this narrative that defined Minnesota's art scene as both distinctly American and distinctly Minnesotan.
All of this and more. So stay tuned to Write on Radio.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Welcome everyone to Right on Radio. I'm Josh Weber. This evening I'm joined in studio for the first part of the hour with Katherine Gertz, the author of an art book released by Afton Press titled An American Outpost. The Minnesota Art Scene, 1840-1989. Minnesota artists were modernists, American Regionalists, postmodernists, and eventually punk and alternative artists in the Reagan era. American Outpost traces the lineage of Minnesota's art scene and the ways it was both distinctly American and Minnesotan. Gertz is an art historian and musologist. She is currently the curator and registrar of the art collection of the Hill Museum and manuscript library at St. John's University, where she works with pieces of art dating from the 15th century to the 20th. Catherine Williams, welcome to Radon Radio.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: So in chapter one, you discuss how early artists like Seth Eastman depicted Minnesota's landscape and indigenous people. How did these depictions shape the perception of Minnesota's art in the East?
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Well, Minnesota's art was pretty much non existent in the east, so or at least in the minds of the East. So that would be Seth Eastman's art shaping the idea of Minnesota in New York, Boston, Washington.
So it was.
And Eastman's work would shape the idea of Minnesota as kind of an untouched wonderland filled with people, indigenous people looking longingly at waterfalls, wandering through the prairies and wandering among the tall trees. But Minnesota, the idea that ARC could exist in Minnesota as a Minnesotan topic or a Minnesota product was pretty much non existent. It was all expected that Seth Eastman would go to Minnesota, paint some things, then come back and bring his paintings with him.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts was founded to prove Minnesota's cultural legitimacy. How did this aspiration compare to similar movements in other Midwestern cities?
[00:04:11] Speaker C: Well, it comes back to that idea that in the east there was no idea that Minnesota and the other cities of the Midwest could have art or that they had a cultural scene, cultural legitimacy of their own.
So Minnesota is a really good case study of this strong drive to prove that we are just as good as New York, just as good as Boston. Maybe someday we could be just as good as Paris. But it was hardly the only city, so the other big city in the Midwest that had that tendency going with Chicago and arguably it was maybe stronger in Chicago, although I'd say they just had more voices. Minneapolis was pretty vociferous with its small group of people. And then I also mentioned Cincinnati had pushed really hard for art and music and theater.
But it was pretty much across the Midwest, this idea that we have to prove ourselves against New York. And it's always New York.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: How did. So how did other fellow cities like Chicago or Cincinnati, how did they perceive then the Minnesota scene of art then? Did they see it as more backwoods, not nearly as modern or as developed?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Well, Cincinnati would probably was busy with itself. Chicago at times we were all. Before we could prove we were as good as New York, we had to prove we were as good as Chicago. And Chicago certainly understood that as well. So the idea is that Chicago's trying to prove they're just as good as New York, who's trying to prove they're just as good as Paris. And then Chicago also had the idea that Minneapolis and St. Paul should prove that they belong in Chicago as well. So it's this chain of proving you're just as good as the next guy until you reach Paris.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: How did the state's growing wealth from industries like flour milling shape the art scene and influence what was collected or displayed?
[00:06:08] Speaker C: To a massive extent. So.
Well, first it affected collecting because there was money in the Twin Cities. So you could. Where once you'd get maybe a work painted in New York or Boston maybe, or a copy of a work that was hanging in Europe. Now with the flower money, especially in Minneapolis, you could start buying actual works from the 16th, 17th, 18th century from Europe and bring them back to your homes. So tremendously increased the amount of real to real art in Minnesota. And then with that money, there also came money to buy things here.
So there became the art scene here.
The flower money preferred to go to New York and Paris, but they were willing to buy particularly landscapes and especially portraits. So you're not getting, if you're not James J. Hill or TB Walk, you're not getting your portrait painted by a famous French artist. But you can go and talk to Katharine Bacchus or who else, Nicholas Brewer, and get your portrait painted in Minneapolis or St. Paul. And then also it pushed Minneapolis far past St. Paul in the sense of how much art there is. So St. Paul had a small struggling art scene that most considered it part of the Minneapolis art scene. And they had James J. Hill, and then Minneapolis had all the collectors and they had all the studios. They had the art school.
So that's really because of the flower industry.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: So chapter three mentions how T.B. walker was instrumental in assembling a major collection of art. What set his approach apart from other American collectors at the time?
[00:08:01] Speaker C: Well, the big thing about TB Walker is he bought everything. If he liked it, he bought it. And he was arguably the richest man in the world at one point, so he could afford anything he wanted, so he didn't consult experts. So if he saw a painting and he liked it, he bought it, whether an expert could confirm it was real or not.
And the other really big collectors in the United States usually hired experts to tell them if their works were real or not, or if the works were a good buy. And that's a system open to cheating on the part of the experts. So TB Walker avoided some of that. But he also. When you buy what you like and you don't necessarily have an arts background, there's a long standing idea that his work, his collection, was mostly fakes, and maybe a lot of it was. But since he bought everything that he liked, it was so huge that had this massive. He had this wonderful collection of art that was undeniably really ancient Roman, really ancient Chinese, really major European artists.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Why does he have this aversion of not having experts tell him what he should buy?
Was it ego? What was the.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: It was ego.
Well, a lot of it was ego.
He was incredibly stubborn. He really loved art. And part of that, if he wanted something, he wanted to live with it. So his gallery was in his house.
He had a massive public gallery and the doors were open to the gallery. You could technically get into his house.
So he wanted to live with art and he wanted to live with art he liked. And then he also had this idea that he was going to single handedly bring all of the great art of the world to Minneapolis.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: So did this have any kind of influence on the cultural leap, this, this treatment of collecting art? Did this have any kind of impact on at all? Like the indiscriminate collecting of different pieces without having one? What did that.
[00:10:08] Speaker C: Well, people didn't really know that he was collecting indiscriminately. It's not like he told people, I. Well, he'd say, I buy whatever I like. But they assumed kind of that he was buying really good art.
So he had a reputation in the art industry as somebody it was very, very easy to get to buy something.
But on the local level, people just assumed that he had one of the best collections in the world. And arguably he had one of the best in the United States, even if up to half of it was fake.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Let's talk more about that. So how did Walker's focus on European masters contribute to the national, international and international reputation of Minnesota's art scene?
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Well, it got us into the international press.
So he would buy, at this point in time, that a collector bought a major European was international news. So especially works like Walker bought his famous Rembrandt, which turned out not to be a Rembrandt.
But that got him all over the world, all over the country. The New York Times did a story on it, a fairly long story on T.B. walker's collection. And then it showed up in the French papers and the English papers and the German papers, and ended up in Burlington's Almanac for connoisseurs.
So T.B. walker's name brought his acquisition of these works of art, brought Minneapolis's art scene into the press.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: So then how did the Walker Art center evolve from a private collection into a national institution? Is it due to the international press it received?
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Well, that takes up an entire book, more or less.
So the. Yeah, it's actually I start the Walker Gallery at the very beginning of the book, and by the end, it's the Walker Art center, major contemporary art outpost. So basically what happened is that TB Walker had his massive and important collection. It was a public gallery. He died and left it to the city of Minneapolis.
It kind of foundered for a few years. People were starting to realize that some of the works were not real. Famously, the Rembrandt came back. It was, in fact, not a Rembrandt. It was a 18th century painting.
So with this reputation of a kind of an embarrassment of a gallery, in 1930s, the Federal Art Project took it over and made it into the Walker Art Center. So it started as the Walker Art Gallery became the Walker Art center in the 1940s, and it was meant to be a part museum, part public arts education center. So the big ethos of bringing art to the public, beautifying the country, that was under the foundation Federal Art Project, the public works programs. So then for a while, it was the Walker Art Center. It started to slide more into being a museum than a public art center, especially as funding from the Federal Art Project went away. And then in the 60s, a few art historians Took over as director, and they had a major belief in contemporary art at the time, modernism. So they basically sold most of Walker's collection and bought major contemporary and modernist works. Suddenly, the Walker art center was no longer a public art center or the Walker, the T.B. walker Collection. It was a significant modern art collection that was starting to draw people to come to see the paintings and sculptures. And then they also had programs associated with that. So they would get artists coming in to do programs, major artists from New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo.
So they gained this reputation as a major contemporary art center. And then they had a few really influential programs. And that's basically how we got from 1912 to the 1980s.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Very good overview.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of grammar. Like I said, it takes a whole book to cover it.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: John Scott Bradstreet was known for blending European and Asian influences in his designs. How did this fusion impact interior design trends in Minnesota?
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Well, he was interior design trends in Minnesota.
So if you look at a lot of the houses that are extant right now, if Bradstreet contributed to them, you'll see his Japanese influence. And because he decided the taste in Minnesota, to a large extent, the furniture shops, the decorators that were not him, would also go with the flow.
So the Japanese influence was just kind of trickled through the upper reaches of the design scene, then down, and then at the same time, we had artists who had a Japanese influence.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Can you discuss why did the 1905 Minnesota State Capitol initially exclude art by local artists?
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Because Cass Gilbert didn't think any local artists were good enough.
That's really absolutely the reason. He thought that there weren't any artists that he liked enough in Minnesota. Actually, he never really looked, but that would contribute to his vision for his capitol. And he was incredibly controlling over the capitol. So we had tothe local art scene, had to fight for a single artist to be part of the capitol. And she only got one statue.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: What was his vision for the capitol, and why was that? Contrary to the artist at the time.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: In 1905 Minnesota, it really wasn't.
So his vision was he was a beaux arts architect. So his idea was kind of contemporary. 1905 contemporary, Neo Renaissance, neoclassical.
He had a color story going through the whole capital, through the marbles, and then with the art, she would be looking at art that was basically neo renaissance art influenced. And then when he got to the less, shall we say, dreamy and allegorical art, which is the war paintings in the governor's room, he wanted major war artists to do the civil war paintings there with Some varying levels of success.
So technically, there was an artist who had worked in Minnesota. Douglas Volk contributed painting, but he was back east by the time he painted it.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: How did the Society of Western Artists challenge the dominance of Eastern US Art institutions?
[00:16:57] Speaker C: Well, they tried.
So the Society of Western Artists was artists from the Midwest and going west, trying to gain interest in art outside of New York, Boston, Washington, all the cities of the East Coast.
So they had a few shows, but as a group, they didn't really succeed. They tried very hard. And as individuals, they were fairly successful artists in that group. But they were always artists who showed. A Minnesota artist or a Illinois artist who showed in New York. They were never successful in their lobbying attempts. So that idea that in New York, that the Midwest still doesn't count, lasted well. We won't say how long it lasted.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: How long did it last?
Well, does it last to this day?
[00:17:51] Speaker C: Of course it lasts to this day.
That is a major theme of the book.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Chapter six introduces us to the Handicraft Guild, who emphasized functional and decorative arts. How did its philosophy align or contrast with the broader Arts and Crafts movement in the US.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: So they were very much part of the. They were. They knew people in the Arts and Crafts movement. The people in the Arts and Crafts movement came here and influenced the Handicraft Guild. So their basic. Under their basic work, their basic philosophies were really completely in line with American arts and Crafts. The big thing about the Handicraft Guild is it came out of the work of women. So the original lineup was solely female. And there is some evidence that there were explicit feminist underpinnings to their philosophy. It's a little bit shaky, so I'm not quite comfortable saying that. That they're absolutely. That there are feminist underpinnings, but I'm comfortable saying there's a fair amount of evidence.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts was seen as a sign of cultural maturity for the city. How did it shape public engagement with the arts? In its early years?
[00:19:09] Speaker C: It was someplace to go.
So they had a big, beautiful, brand new building that was free that people could go and look at art. The T.B. walker Collection by then was getting a little less.
The rumors were flying about the TB Walker collection being not real, but nobody thought that about the mia.
So they had this beautiful building, newly built, filled with art. And the mia, especially in its early years and actually now as well, had an extensive program of things like lectures, tours, musical performances on the lawn, musical performances in the galleries. So actually, as World War I came along, that Was part of what kept the Minneapolis Student of Art going is the money they got from all of these programs.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: How did exposure to European modernism impact Minnesota artists who traveled abroad?
[00:20:08] Speaker C: You can see it in their paintings.
They have. People here had already had a fair amount of exposure to the modernist art that was coming out of out of Europe. But in Europe, they were explicitly trained in it. So they would go to Paris usually and study in the ateliers of major modernist painters and sculptors. So they not only had influence, they had direct influence from the stars of the Paris scene.
So really, you can see more simpler shapes, brighter colors, more twisting angles. All the things that the realists hated started showing up in Minnesota art.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: What controversies arose when these artists returned to Minnesota with new radical ideas?
[00:21:00] Speaker C: Surprisingly few.
There was a lot of infighting in artist groups, but it was mostly sniping words rather than full blown controversies. The real controversy was with Frances Cranmer Greenman.
She painted A portrait of Mrs. Charles Bowles. I believe the portrait is that the family refused to accept because it was too modernist.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Really.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: It is currently at this moment on the walls at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, if you want to see it.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: So what happened to the portrait then, if the family didn't accept it?
[00:21:36] Speaker C: I think it just stayed in her studio until it was acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Don't.
Probably. I think it probably stayed in the family. I don't know what happened to it. Anyway, it's at the Minneapolis Institute of Art right now.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: How did the Federal Art Project provide opportunities for Minnesota artists during the Great Depression?
[00:21:57] Speaker C: Well, they allowed them to stay artists and get paid. So the Federal Art Project, what it did is if you could prove you were an artist, you could prove that you were a working artist who was producing paintings, sculptures, or many other kinds of art, they would pay you a living wage by the painting or by the piece.
So that would be able to make artists remain art kept art a viable option in the United States and in Minnesota, especially in Minnesota, because the head of the Federal Art Project here was so busy.
And then not only did they pay by the art piece they had, they set up all of these things like art classes, lectures, all sorts of opportunities for artists to do work outside of producing art that they also got paid for. So a lot of artists were working and also working on their art and also teaching classes. And that was a big part of the Walker Art Center. So a lot of the artists, local artists, were also teaching classes there.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: How did the political activism of the 60s and 70s shape the visual arts.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Scene in Minnesota, I'm not sure.
So there are. There was very clearly some political. I mean, we know for a fact that there was a lot of political activism. There's examples. David Mason is one. Pretty well known Dave Mason, political artist. None of his works have survived that I know of. There was a pretty famous conflagration when a political work almost made it into the fine arts exhibition at the Minnesota State Fair. But I've talked to artists who were artists back then and I've gotten conflicting reports.
So a lot of them say that people were political activists, but they tended to work in the less, well, the avant garde movements of the time, but not explicitly political.
And some people say, I've also heard, oh, everybody was very political and our art was political, but they did not give me any specific examples.
So that is something. I'm still not quite sure exactly how it guided the art scene.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Could you talk a bit about what role the Twin Cities played in the development of experimental film and performance art?
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Well, we had. We had a fair amount of.
Actually starting in the late 1960s and early 70s with the anti war movement, we had extremely early experimental films. So Dave Mason scratched flowers on film strips and then played the film strips.
So we were kind of accidentally a very early adopter of that scene. The big thing is in 1972, the Walker Art center had a major program called Art on Videotape, where the major video artists of the time, actually three of them came here to judge the competition. There was a competition of video art. So that is one of the first major exhibitions of video art in the world was the Art on Videotape at the Walker. Then we also had two groups started in the 70s, UC Video and Film in the Cities, who were very into supporting video and later performance art, video art and avant garde photography. So not only did they support it here, provide space, exhibition space, a group to bounce your ideas off here, they also worked really hard to bring other artists from outside Minnesota here. So if you can think of a video artist who was a major player in the video art scene in the 70s and 80s, they probably came here.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: That's very interesting.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: It really is.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: My last question for you, Kathryn, what Legacy did the 1980s leave on Minnesota's art scene today?
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Well, there was a gallery, many people still remember it, called Rifle Sport. And that, I mean, there are many things that left a legacy of every. The 80s, video art was still big, performance art was big, avant garde was big, punk was big. Everything was everything that was weird and alternative was big. And Rifle Sports which was on block E in Minneapolis basically exhibited everything. So if you are in the right group of people now and you mentioned rifle sport, you might be there for quite a while listening to stories of the time that somebody drove a car into the building, the Chihuahua that used to live there. Let's see their art car show, their, their association with art police.
Basically the, the biggest legacy of the 80s is the memory of rifle sport.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: I think it's a good place to leave it off.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: That's good.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: This has been my time talking to Katherine Gertz about her historical art book An American Outpost, the Minnesota Art Scene 1840, 1989. Catherine, thanks so much for being on the program.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: And now this it.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: You have been listening to right on radio on KFAI at 90.3 FM in Minneapolis and streaming live on the
[email protected] I'm Eric Zimmerman. We would like to thank Katherine Gertz and all of our listeners. Without your support KFAI would not be possible.
