Abstract
Artist John L. Moore discusses his life and art. Born on the east side of Cleveland in 1939, Moore attended East High School and took art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art before attending Cuyahoga Community College and later Kent State University, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art. The artist discusses his experiences at these institutions, including information about numerous individuals who had an impact on his artistic development. After high school, Moore joined the Army, serving in the 101st Airborne Division, an experience he credits with advancing his personal and artistic development. As a non-traditional art student, Moore also worked at Cleveland's General Motors (GM) plant to support his family and to pay for school. While at GM, he initiated an employee art program to highlight artistic works by GM employees; the program evolved into an annual judged exhibit. The artist also discusses his teaching career, as well as the impact of Cleveland on his art. Moore left Cleveland in 1985 to continue his career in New York City. Throughout the interview, Moore shares observations and insights on the dynamics of race in the art world, illustrating the meaning of race in the conception, production, and consumption of artistic works by African Americans. This interview was recorded by telephone.
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Interviewee
Moore, John L. (interviewee)
Interviewer
Busta, William (interviewer)
Project
Cleveland Artists Foundation
Date
1-13-2009
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
68 minutes
Recommended Citation
"John L. Moore Interview, 13 January 2009" (2009). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 901031.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/228
Transcript
William Busta [00:00:19] Just push the green button. Okay.
John L. Moore [00:00:20] Green button. You see the little-
William Busta [00:00:21] You see the little receiver?
John L. Moore [00:00:22] Right.
William Busta [00:00:24] I’m wondering if I should- We have- Well, why don’t I just call back? And so when we dial, we dial it right there. Yeah. You can actually just use these arrows to back up and put in a new number. 88. And one at the beginning to get outside.
John L. Moore [00:00:42] I think I have a missed call. So eight.
William Busta [00:01:06] So you better do that now. Yeah, I guess so. It still seems like too many numbers. Can we just hit the redial button maybe?
John L. Moore [00:01:38] Okay.
William Busta [00:02:02] They just called me from there. Maybe I should listen to the message.
John L. Moore [00:02:13] Hello?
William Busta [00:02:14] Hello, John?
John L. Moore [00:02:15] Yes.
William Busta [00:02:18] John, this is Robert Thurmer. We’re actually recording already. Is this a bad time to do the interview?
John L. Moore [00:02:25] Well, it is here at my apartment because they have construction work going on.
William Busta [00:02:31] Okay. When would be a better time for you?
John L. Moore [00:02:36] Well, I was going to go straight to the studio. I don’t know how long it might take me an hour to get there. A little less.
William Busta [00:02:43] Let’s see.
John L. Moore [00:02:43] Can you hear the noise going on here?
William Busta [00:02:45] That would be fine. No, actually, we don’t hear the noise. Bill Buster is here with me, and he’s actually going to be doing the interview. I tell you what, John, if the noise doesn’t bother you, we can’t hear it.
John L. Moore [00:03:01] Oh, you can’t? No, we can’t. I’m going into another room. Let’s see. Farther. Far as I can get from it.
William Busta [00:03:06] Okay.
John L. Moore [00:03:07] Maybe I can go to another room and close the door. Let me try something here.
William Busta [00:03:10] All right. Would you otherwise have time right now?
John L. Moore [00:03:15] Hello?
William Busta [00:03:16] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:03:19] I think this is. I’m in my bedroom now, the window closed.
William Busta [00:03:22] Okay.
John L. Moore [00:03:23] I can hear the noise, but you can’t hear it. Then that might be okay.
William Busta [00:03:26] It certainly is okay for us because we’re trying to, you know, we. We have other things scheduled, so to wait an hour might not be so good for us.
John L. Moore [00:03:34] Okay, so when you want to do this?
William Busta [00:03:37] We could start right now, if you don’t mind. It’s actually recording at this point, so I’m going to hand it over to Bill. He’s been doing the interview. So I’m going to be in the room here, but I’m going to let Bill do his thing. Okay.
John L. Moore [00:03:52] Okay.
William Busta [00:03:52] All right. Thank you, John.
John L. Moore [00:03:54] Sure.
William Busta [00:03:55] We’re. You do have the time? You have about an hour right now.
John L. Moore [00:03:59] With this work, I imagine It’ll take about 15 minutes, right?
William Busta [00:04:03] 15 minutes. Okay, we’ll do it in 15. We’ll do it in 15.
John L. Moore [00:04:10] I don’t have the time. But I imagine it shouldn’t take that long.
William Busta [00:04:13] We have the recording we’re doing is going to be archived at Cleveland State University and as part of its collections and have access to people who study art history as well as the general public. It becomes the property of the university. So let me start out. It’s with the question that I start with everybody, and that is, when did you first realize that you had artistic ability?
John L. Moore [00:04:49] Oh, kindergarten, of course.
William Busta [00:04:52] Well, that’s pretty late, considering some of the artists I’ve talked to. What did you. Were you drawing inside the lines or were you doing a good job of drawing outside the lines?
John L. Moore [00:05:05] Oh, man, I was making my own lines. No, I do have a remembrance of doing drawings on a chalkboard in kindergarten and being disciplined for it.
William Busta [00:05:19] So you were not being encouraged?
John L. Moore [00:05:23] Not at that moment.
William Busta [00:05:25] Was your family encouraging of you being an artist?
John L. Moore [00:05:29] My family was very encouraging. My mother was a poet and had done a lot of writing. My father really didn’t know anything about the fine arts. But I was enrolled in private piano lessons very, very young. For five years, I took private piano lessons. So that was an encouragement. And I took a drawing course. I forget what the name of it was, but it was one of those things you see in a comic book. You know, draw me now and they’ll send you these lessons.
William Busta [00:06:02] Right.
John L. Moore [00:06:02] My father paid for that. And that was all, you know, around 8 years old or somewhere around there.
William Busta [00:06:10] And where were you born, John?
John L. Moore [00:06:13] I was born in Cleveland.
William Busta [00:06:14] You were born in Cleveland. So you were born in-
John L. Moore [00:06:16] Yeah, in an area right above the Cultural Gardens, a street called Olivet.
William Busta [00:06:21] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:06:21] So I actually went to the museum, took classes there very early also.
William Busta [00:06:27] Was that in elementary school?
John L. Moore [00:06:30] When I was taking classes at the Art Institute?
William Busta [00:06:32] Yeah.
John L. Moore [00:06:36] I think I was around 13 years old. What is that? Yeah, I think that must have been elementary school, right?
William Busta [00:06:42] Yeah. What did you think about the museum in those days?
John L. Moore [00:06:48] I loved the museum. I loved being in there and looking at the works of art. And I went religiously to classes every Saturday. And we also, you know, my friends in that time, a good many of them who were incredibly talented as artists, we used to play football in the area not too far from the museum. So that area we lived very close to was the easy walking distance to it for us.
William Busta [00:07:16] So you thought of this as your neighborhood?
John L. Moore [00:07:19] Yeah, it actually was in my neighborhood.
William Busta [00:07:22] Right. Well, there was always that feeling at the time that University Circle was somehow separate from the neighborhood, that there was a sort of literally a cultural wall between it and the people who lived around it. Did you-
John L. Moore [00:07:43] I must admit that I didn’t feel that. I had no sense of that feeling when I lived in that area.
William Busta [00:07:53] When did you first start to have that sense that you were an artist?
John L. Moore [00:08:01] Well, to believe it, I don’t think I ever really thought early on that I was an artist. It was just something I was very interested in. And it excited me and it fed me. And I did come to understand I had a certain amount of talent and ability, which is a reinforcement you get from outside people, teachers and so forth. And I had been in a number of scholastic contests and so forth, and participate in the Cleveland Teenage May Show or whatever the title of it was at that time. And it was something that gave me pleasure. But at the same time, it was just one of the things, among other things, that you did as a young person, like playing sports and war games and all the other things.
William Busta [00:09:02] Was there anybody in particular that encouraged your artistic aspirations?
John L. Moore [00:09:09] Well, yeah, I remember very clearly an art teacher at East High when I was in senior high school. And I can’t remember clearly, but there was also a woman art teacher who was very encouraging me. They would collect my drawings and send them off to various contests and so forth. And- And I always joke that the way I graduated from high school, from East High School, was perfect attendance and art classes.
William Busta [00:09:40] You know, I’ve heard this from a number of artists that George Fitzpatrick told me that in elementary school, after a while they said, oh, go back into the back of the room and draw, George.
John L. Moore [00:09:59] Well, they didn’t quite say that to me, but I did take double art classes in high school, and I did have perfect attendance because the parents would not stand for not having perfect attendance and doing well in school. But I actually did the best grades I got was in my art classes.
William Busta [00:10:17] And your parents very much valued education then. This was very important.
John L. Moore [00:10:22] Yeah, absolutely.
William Busta [00:10:28] When did you decide to go to college or how did that come about?
John L. Moore [00:10:33] Well, when I graduated from. Or was getting about ready to graduate from East High, we started looking into where I could go to school. By that time, I realized that I wanted to do something in art. And so we were looking at art schools. And I think, if I’m remembering correctly, I had a partial scholarship to an art school in California, and I’d applied to the CIA, and it became very clear that we could not afford art school because although they would give you a scholarship, it would be a partial scholarship and you had to come up with the money. And I remember we went through all the finances of what we could afford, and I realized I cannot afford to go to art school. So that was 1958, I remember clearly. And so I was actually kind of embarrassed to fill out the forms asking for aid. And so I decided at that point I would join the Army. And I could fulfill my military obligations. And I could go to school in the army and would have benefits where, when I got out of the Army, I could also go to school, go to college. So when I first went into the army, it was to do two things. Fulfill my military obligations because they had to draft on those days, and to get an education. And I thought I could be a draftsman in the army and go to drafting school, at least. Because I really had no idea what you would do with art to make money. But that seemed to be a practical one. And also it was fueled by the fact that I used to look at the want ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in those days. And there were lots of jobs for engineers or draftsmen and people like that. So I thought, well, maybe that’s something I could do with art. And so it wasn’t until I got out of the service three years later, 1961, that I decided to go to college. I started off at Cuyahoga Community College, not for art, but to try to work towards a degree in social work. Because at that time, there were lots of ads in the paper for social workers. And also being brought up at that time, it was you could get a job where you could help people and so forth. And I just happened to take art classes as the elective. And so the social work thing didn’t last too long. I think it lasted one semester. And then I turned over to pursuing the art class direction.
William Busta [00:13:27] Do you remember who taught-
John L. Moore [00:13:27] I was encouraged by a couple teachers there, and that was Hopperman and Jerry Kramer.
William Busta [00:13:34] Both of them were teaching there at the time.
John L. Moore [00:13:36] Yeah, and there was another great artist there named Gary Dunn, who still lives in Cleveland.
William Busta [00:13:42] The cartoonist.
John L. Moore [00:13:43] The cartoonist. And we were in the same class. And I was always fascinated by how well he could draw and everything. And he was like the major competition, you know, for me in that class. I’ve always admired his. His drawings. And we became friends at that time. And we were, like, in my opinion, the two best artists in the school.
William Busta [00:14:06] Well, Gary, of course, later, he continues to work here, but got a lot of attention for his work for Harvey Pekar.
John L. Moore [00:14:15] Yeah, yeah, of course.
William Busta [00:14:17] But one of the things that’s interesting you mentioned those two teachers is that both of them studied. Both of them went to graduate school at Iowa and studied under [Maurico] Lesansky. Did you get any of that sort of second generational Lasansky influence in your work?
John L. Moore [00:14:37] Well, I don’t really think so at all. But I became very well aware of Lasansky and Haberman’s draftsmanship and so forth. And Kramer and I met some other artists friends that they knew that went to school there also. And I just never considered that or thought about that at all. I don’t think none of that influence came into my work.
William Busta [00:15:03] What type of work?
John L. Moore [00:15:05] Something to think about, maybe a little bit more.
William Busta [00:15:08] What type of work were you doing at that time?
John L. Moore [00:15:11] Well, at that time I was drawing and painting, but I was mostly doing figurative work. In fact, the first exhibition I had was a figure painting at Cleveland State University in an art show there that was organized by a woman named Evelyn Mitchell, who taught there, taught art history there, and I think studio courses. And she also lectured at the Cleveland Museum of Art, I think exclusively, I may be mistaken, on African art because I remember going to lectures on African art at the Cleveland Museum that she gave, and that’s how I actually met her. At that time, I was doing my BFA degree at Kent State University, 1962 or -3, maybe somewhere around there.
William Busta [00:16:13] You say you went about ’62 or ’63 after Tri-C. You went to Kent State right away?
John L. Moore [00:16:22] Yeah. Well, let’s see. Not right away. I graduated with a BFA from Kent State in 1972, I believe. So I went to Tri-C. I was going part time because I was working full time for General Motors. And I think I had two years that I transferred to Cleveland State. It must be like 1969. I went to Kent State in ’69. So I- And I went, yeah, okay. So I had, like. I’d gone to Cuyahoga Community College for like three years. And then I realized I had two years of credit and I could transfer that to Kent state towards a BFA degree. And so I did my last two years at Kent State.
William Busta [00:17:10] What did you do?
John L. Moore [00:17:12] ’72.
William Busta [00:17:15] What did you do at General Motors? What sort of work?
John L. Moore [00:17:18] Made automobile parts, ran stamping machines and big shears where you cut, you know, you have. God, what do we call it those days? You know, big stack of steel that you ran through a shearer.
William Busta [00:17:34] Right.
John L. Moore [00:17:35] And then I ran- Mostly I ran stamping machines, stamping out parts for, you know, smaller parts that go into making a car. But, you know, we worked on big stamping machines also. We made quarter panels. Yeah, quarter panels, hoods, you name it. Fisher Body Plant.
William Busta [00:17:58] Well, those jobs paid pretty well, particularly.
John L. Moore [00:18:04] The option ended up working For General motors, I have 11 years and four months. How do you say, credit? I get a pension from General Motors monthly, a very big pension of $101.30. And the most interesting thing, though, when I was at General Motors, I discovered that they had about 400 people that considered themselves artists out of a total of 4,000 people that worked at the plant. And so I decided that it might be a good idea for GM to look at those people, and it might be good PR if they would do an exhibition of the artists who worked at General Motors at that particular plant in Coit Road. And so we did that for two years. We did an exhibition of the employee artists at General Motors. And I had discovered there were a lot of artists who did watercolors and so forth that exhibited in competitional exhibits. And as I came to know them, I would find out, you know, one, and that person tells you about someone else. And there were like 200 or so, and they made paintings and drawings and wood carvers and, you know, so forth. So we did that for two years. And I got paid to organize it, to draw up the poster and worked on the show and got it installed. And we had a jury that gave out awards, which were ribbons, and there was a dinner. And we converted the inside employee parking lot into art galleries with walls covered with white. What was called headliner material. That’s the material that goes into the inside of the car roof of the car interior.
William Busta [00:20:09] Right.
John L. Moore [00:20:09] So we had white walls. And I had to. I was given carpenters and electricians to create a lighting system and to make vitrines for little sculptures and jewelry and things that went inside of cases. And I thought that would be a way of having an art career, work with General Motors and go around the world to the different plants and organize these things with the creative people in their plant. And it would be a good PR thing. Now, ask me where I found that idea from. I got it from reading. I learned a lot. And I came across an article that European plants had done similar things within their companies. It was a good pr, a good PR move. And so I suggested that GM for the Fisher Body plant in Coit Road do something like that.
William Busta [00:21:08] John, I’m going to have to actually step out of the studio because I have some pickups to do today. So I just want to say goodbye. And to Bill, I want to say, if you need me, you know, I have my cell phone number. Right? Okay, great. John. So when you were doing this, you had this sort of almost a joint identity. And I Imagine that you were trying to figure out how to sort of keep both of them going. Your impulse to make art and the income from the General Motors job.
John L. Moore [00:21:50] Yeah, briefly. I did that because I never really wanted to work. I shouldn’t let General Motors hear this, but I never wanted to work in a plant. I don’t know, for some reason I just never wanted to work at a plant. And it was one of the best jobs I got when I got out of the service. And the people in the plant were very, they were very nice to them in a good environment. And I had good supervisors. And I thought that was a good idea and they thought it was a good idea. And it was actually offered a supervisory position to go to another plant that GN was building. But I really didn’t want to do that. And I luckily then had been the only, I think at that time, part time employee that General Motors had. I worked a five hour workday because I was commuting to Kent State, working on my, I guess my master’s degree of it. So I commuted from General Motors, I mean from Cleveland to Kent, Kent, to come back and go to work at General Motors, work a five hour day until I took a leave of absence.
William Busta [00:23:07] As you were doing this, you started at Kent. Who was teaching? Were there any teachers who were influential to you at Kent State?
John L. Moore [00:23:20] Well, Horace O’Sickey was there at that time, Joseph O’Sickey, and God, there was a printmaker. I think the Kent faculty were quite supportive. And here again, I was an older student going to Kent and you know, working a full-time job or 5 hour day, week job. I probably didn’t know I was working a shorter work day. But they did know I was commuting and I took all the courses and I went to all the classes and I did very well. And it gets a little complicated because I was juggling a lot. I had a family, I had two kids. I had the GM job, but I then also had a full year of teaching as a replacement for, I think it was Jerry Kramer who went on sabbatical for a year. So I taught at Cuyahoga Community College for a year while I was on leave for General Motors. I took a leave from GM to take that position at Cuyahoga Community College for a year. And then I was teaching a Saturday class at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Teenage Drawing and Painting. And-
William Busta [00:24:46] You felt like you were going home when you got back to the museum. Or not.
John L. Moore [00:24:53] The museum was a comfortable place for me and it was an opportunity that was provided to me through Evelyn Mitchell, who was teaching the Faraday class there. And at some point she asked me if I would want to assist her in the class. And I said I could do that. She basically persuaded me to do it. And then shortly after that, like in a matter of four weeks, she quit. And I inherited the class.
William Busta [00:25:27] That happened.
John L. Moore [00:25:28] I did that for a number of Saturdays, a number of semesters, I guess as a part-time thing, job on Saturday teaching the teenage drawing and training class. And then eventually, while I was on a leave from General Motors and teaching the class at Cuyahoga Community College, I got a call to come in for an interview for a full-time job at the Cleveland Area Bar. And basically it was affirmative action.
William Busta [00:26:00] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:26:01] And so my year was up at Cuyahoga Community College and I started teaching, working at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the Education Department. I think it was 1974, full time, while I was still on leave for General Motors. And then I eventually had to tell General Motors I wasn’t coming back. You know the rest of the story.
William Busta [00:26:27] Right before we leave Kent State. Joseph O’Sickey was the person who was, I guess, the main person who was teaching painting at the time. And I know that Joe has very specific ideas about how a painting should be constructed. Did that influence. What was it about Joe that had an impact on you or not?
John L. Moore [00:26:55] Nothing.
William Busta [00:26:57] Okay.
John L. Moore [00:26:58] I hate to say it that way. No, he’s a really nice guy. And I just learned to paint the way he wanted us to paint at that time, which was very academic kind of painting and almost expressionistic figurative painting and very French, I would say. And so I just did what you needed to do in order to paint whatever we were painting, still life and working from the figure and so forth. But in my head, I didn’t really know what I would be painting, but I knew that there was something that I wasn’t. There was something that I really wanted to paint. And then I figured it out for myself. Prior to the last semester.
William Busta [00:27:53] What was it that you figured out you wanted to paint?
John L. Moore [00:27:56] Well, I wanted to paint a different way of experiencing the world than sitting in front of a model or painting a landscape as you saw it, or abstract New York School, Abstract Expressionism, you know, all the isms that I knew. I really wanted to do something different. I also, as a Black artist or as an African American, I didn’t want to follow the direction of the Harlem Renaissance artists, like subject matter, the life and all of that kind of stuff. I wanted to find a different way to express how I saw the world and things. That I had experienced or my way of somehow creating imagery that was reflecting the way I thought about things in the culture, society, history, and so forth. So I found that the first experience I had, which I thought was a unique experience that people might not know about, was how you experience the landscape after you have just jumped out of an airplane. Because I realized the most unique experience I had was my military experience Because I had been in the 101st Airborne Infantry. Parachuting was very unique thing for me. In fact, I had never even flown an airplane before I joined the Airborne, which I think for anyone 18 years old, probably most kids 18 years old, never flown an airplane either. You know, main mode of transportation for us, probably in the lower economic level, would be the bus or the. So that was a unique experience. And I never could get over. I was always excited once that parachute opened and I looked at the landscape and how different it looked, you know, from up there. Those were my first abstract paintings.
William Busta [00:30:14] Do you treat. Do you still try to get to the window seat on the airplane?
John L. Moore [00:30:19] Oh, yeah, always. Not much to see, but I always like the window seat. But it’s amazing to see out the window when you’re coming in to land someplace, right? Or nighttime over New York or Paris. It’s like incredible the way the lights, they have this abstraction of lights and shapes and colors and so forth. Incredible feeling.
William Busta [00:30:46] So was the parachute jumping, obviously. I imagine for everybody, it’s so scary when you start doing it. But were you looking. Was it something that was exhilarating, that you were looking forward to or very nervous about, or how did you feel?
John L. Moore [00:31:02] We were never nervous about it. But I have to tell you, I didn’t join the Army to join the Airborne. I joined the army to get an education and fulfill my military obligations. And I joined the Army. I had three equally best buddies, and two of us joined the army together the same day. And we stayed together and we decided to go airborne together. And we made a pact that if one quit, the other would quit, which didn’t happen, right? And we stayed together for three years, the same outfits. The guy’s name was Reginald Lundy. We went to school together. We were on the decathlon team and the cross country team and stuff together. And it just happened that one day we ended up volunteering to go airborne. And I don’t think it was scary for either of us. I think we were very fit. And I know we were a lot fitter than a lot of the other kids that came in at that young age. And we were just, you Know, we were good. We were good, good. We really excelled, I would say. And when we went to airborne, it was nothing to be fearful of, you know, because they really train you rigorously and condition you, and you look forward to jumping out of that plane. I never remember being scared at all, just anxious to get out. And I don’t think she would have ever been afraid or- You know.
William Busta [00:32:56] I have to ask this question. I mean, it’s one of those stupid questions, but it begs to be asked. The experience of jumping out of an airplane, did that give you confidence in life to jump into other things?
John L. Moore [00:33:13] Oh, yeah. Well, it’s two things. Growing up, our family always encouraged us to be the best we could be and do the, you know, work hard and so forth. And the army, and particularly the Airborne, is very rigorous. And it really puts you through a lot of stress, strenuous situations, put it that way. And they really do make you feel like you’re better than any five men, really. And nothing’s impossible to do if you put your all to it. So that just reinforced the kind of upbringing we had as kids. And I think I owe a lot to the experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I was lucky I was between wars. But it does sort of shape you in a certain way and as I say, probably reinforce the kind of upbringing.
William Busta [00:34:13] That we had shape you in a certain way, particularly because those are years in which everyone is shaped that sort of 18 to 21 years old.
John L. Moore [00:34:23] Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think kids, the little scrawny kids that would cry at night to turn out to be these very physically mature, strong, dependable kids. I mean, men who came out of maybe some troubled backgrounds home at a very young age. They would come in at 17, 18 years old, and three years later, it wasn’t the same person. Very mature, sure. Confident son.
William Busta [00:34:57] When you got to- When you were sort of finishing your master’s degree, you were working at Cleveland State. I mean, at Cleveland State, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Did you see an art- How did you see your art career ahead of you at that time?
John L. Moore [00:35:11] Well, I thought it had possibilities because, I mean, it was kind of interesting. I haven’t. I’m a very. You know, I was very curious about a lot of stuff, and I wanted to know a lot of information that you don’t get in your training in an art program, whether it’s a graduate degree in art history or painting or something. There’s all this other stuff that the art world’s about. And I think by working in the museum and having some good people around me, I realized there are a lot of other things you could do. Like you could organized exhibitions. You could actually talk to artists and so forth. And I wasn’t afraid to go into New York to talk to artists or meet people at galleries or so forth. And so what I started to do- I don’t know if this is answering the question, but-
William Busta [00:36:07] Sure it is.
John L. Moore [00:36:08] I started to go to Provincetown, for instance. And I remember going to Provincetown, and I looked up Jack Torkoff. And I just went over and introduced myself to him and spent a day with him. And then we came back the next day and I took Mo Brooker with me. And I actually did an interview with him, which I tape recorded, thinking I would do something with it later.
William Busta [00:36:31] You knew Mo fairly early then. I’m sorry, did you know Mo Brooker before he came to Cleveland, or-
John L. Moore [00:36:39] Well, I’m trying to think. I met Moe when he came to Cleveland. The CIA.
William Busta [00:36:43] Okay.
John L. Moore [00:36:44] And I don’t remember what year that was.
William Busta [00:36:46] Okay, so it was after that that you went to see Jack together.
John L. Moore [00:36:50] Right, Right. But I think I was doing things before that. I can’t remember exactly what years I’d done certain things in. But I remember I got to know Moet when he came to Cleveland. And then at the time, we were doing the Afro American Tradition in the Decorative Arts, which is a groundbreaking show at that time.
William Busta [00:37:13] John Michael, was it Vlach?
John L. Moore [00:37:15] Vlach.
William Busta [00:37:16] Mm-hm.
John L. Moore [00:37:17] Yeah, something like that. Vlach, I think. And I asked Mo to be one of the speakers, I guess we discussed it. And here was a black artist coming in. And it seemed like he would. It would make sense to have him as one of the artists on a panel that we had organized. And so that’s when I really first started getting to know him. And then later we did other things. I did the exhibition in Toronto, which he was a part of. And Craig Lucas and a number of people from Cleveland. It was a Cleveland show.
William Busta [00:38:02] The Cleveland Exchange.
John L. Moore [00:38:03] Yes.
William Busta [00:38:04] ’78, I think.
John L. Moore [00:38:06] Yeah. So I think that was around the time we did Afro-American Tradition in the Decorative Arts, too.
William Busta [00:38:21] So your ambition-
John L. Moore [00:38:23] I’ll try to stay on track.
William Busta [00:38:24] Well, no, that’s okay. So your ambition is. Always went beyond. Your ambition was not, I guess, ambition, but your path was always to sort of extend your opportunities, extend the horizons. Yeah, I guess so.
John L. Moore [00:38:40] Because, I mean, that’s what, you know, I guess the first big idea was when I did the show at General Motors. You know, I read about it and I thought, well, here’s this plant of Workers, and there’s all these artists. And then self-servingly, once I pulled that off, I said, well, God, maybe this is what I could do for General Motors. You know, this would be a way of doing something that I’m engaged in and it would take me off the production line. And it was a worthy thing. But see, that’s really going right back to the whole thing about social work.
William Busta [00:39:16] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:39:17] And so I started to joke about, well, I do art, social work, you know, trying to help artists do at exhibitions, you know, trying to recognize that in that case it was a good employee, good PR for them. And they took it that way and they made a big event out of it. For two years after I left General Motors, it ended.
William Busta [00:39:45] I guess that’s the way it always happens. Events are driven by people.
John L. Moore [00:39:50] But actually, at the same time, I’m sorry to go backwards, but when we did the GM show, I involved people from the community as the jurors. Like at the museum, there was Ann Lockhart, curator in prints and drawings. She was one of the jurors. Jerry Kramer, my teacher from Cuyahoga Community College, was one of the jurors. And, oh, God, there was this guy at the Cleveland public school, black artist. He was one of the jurors also. So it had to be them. I had community college and Cleveland public schools as the people in the, you know, the jury who gave off the ribbons to the artist. I could see the guy, I just can’t think of his name, but Hal, Hal Workman.
William Busta [00:40:38] Hal Workman, yes.
John L. Moore [00:40:39] Yeah, yeah. He was on the panel to give out ribbons to, to the GM artists for those years. Hal Workman. So that’s, you know, I kind of, that was like social work or something.
William Busta [00:40:55] Mr. As your career developed. Excuse me. I know that as you were developing as an artist in the 1930s, there was this, there were questions that were out there about developing as an artist in the development of African American identity. Developing as a Black artist. How did you respond to these different forces and this different language that was being used?
John L. Moore [00:41:34] Well, I think I was actually, I just took a view that I wanted to find my own way independent of all that. And I became very much aware of it. I understood there was a certain expectation of what an African American artist should do or be doing. I understood about the African diaspora and all of that. I knew what, what the purpose of the Studio Museum’s role was in that. I knew, I just was aware of it because you could not be aware of it. And I decided for myself, I just wanted to do Something that was more personal, more abstract, non figurative, non narrative, non- Dealing with the traditional way of dealing with slavery and the aftermath. You know, I wanted to deal with something. I just wanted to do it my way, you know, my own way, my own ideas. And that’s what I attempted to do. Although I deal with all those subjects in my work. But it’s dealt in a more coded, you know, more covert way. I didn’t want to be an illustrator, and most artists seem to be illustrators.
William Busta [00:43:02] You know, I understand that there’s- My career started with the South - coing a show - the South Dakota Western Artists Association. And there’s still- I know, on the other hand, a whole artistic genre of African American art and African American art shows that are devoted to that same sort of illustrative approach.
John L. Moore [00:43:25] Yeah. And they’re very good. There’s nothing wrong. Some of the best artists, I mean, I love the work of Carol Walker and how she works and so forth. There need to be people finding different ways. And there were people like Al Loving, who was doing something quite different, and Evan Saunders. In fact, I did a show with the Cleveland gym called- What was it called? Seven American Artists.
William Busta [00:43:48] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:43:49] And I remember getting criticized because. By the leading art critic, not Helen, but that art historian, very wonderful lady, Jerry Kiefer. Mandel.
William Busta [00:44:02] I think it was Mandel or Elizabeth McClelland.
John L. Moore [00:44:06] The whole point was that African artists or Black artists had something to say. And the whole thing was the African diaspora. And that was important. And why didn’t I deal with it? And I remember the show was in regard to Martin Luther King’s birthday. And so I did this exhibition and I thought I was doing something that was more in tune with what Martin Luther King’s message was all about. And in my case, I thought it wasn’t about having an all black art show. It was about integration. You know, be on an equal footing, which I thought was a black artist on equal footing with a white artist. And so I had two African American artists in there. Three. Three. But I also had an American Indian artist in that show. I had Frances Barth, a white woman painter, in that show, and Japanese artist, I think Border Hawaii was in that show. And everyone else was expecting an all black show, all black artists. The funny thing about that, I’m a black artist. I work at the Cleveland Zone of Art. We’re doing the Martin Luther King show for Martin Luther King’s birthday. And everyone expects it’s going to be an all-Black show. Even people coming in there, even years later, it’s kind of an interesting story. There was a Black artist who graduated from a Black artist who was in a graduate program at Yale, and he was a graduate of CIA. And he had the catalog 7American. I think it was titled Seven American Artists, Seven American Artists. And he had this teacher named Francis Barth, painting teacher at Yale. And he says, you can’t be the same Francis Barth in this exhibition in Cleveland Museum of Art. She said, yes, I am. No, you can’t be. So the mentality was, there’s a black artist, he’s confronted with a white artist who has the same name as this artist in his catalog and the exhibition he had seen. And he assumed, simply because black artists put the show together, he recognized Al Loving and Raymond Saunders, African American artists in the show, that everyone in the show had to be a Black artist. She could not believe that she was the same person. And she had to prove to him that, yes, she was, in fact, this white woman, this artist, this person teaching at Yale was the woman in that show. I thought that was quite funny and quite telling, also.
William Busta [00:46:51] Quite telling.
John L. Moore [00:46:55] That’s the story. Herself. That’s kind of amazing.
William Busta [00:47:00] Well, one of the things I-
John L. Moore [00:47:04] You know, I think I better not say this name. You’re recording, but you can edit things out, right?
William Busta [00:47:10] Yes, we can.
John L. Moore [00:47:12] I’m just thinking, was there someone named Jerry Keefer?
William Busta [00:47:15] Yes. Jerry Wino Keefer?
John L. Moore [00:47:17] Yes. Yes, that was the person. But at the same time, I can tell you this very directly. All of those. The Black artists that were in that show and the many Black artists that I had met, they really wanted to be considered. They really wanted to be considered artists on an equal footing and not a Black artist or just only have opportunities for African American art show. And I can tell you that a number of them, I can actually quote that some of them turned out to be abstract painters. In this case, a lot of painters I knew at that time who had traveled well and lived in Africa, had lived in Holland, in Paris, and they were young artists who were incredibly sophisticated. And they consciously made a decision to be an abstract painter so that people would see their work and not see their color, that they would see, this is an artist of equal standing. And these were artists that were influenced by Abstract Expressionism.
William Busta [00:48:32] Sure.
John L. Moore [00:48:33] So I was well aware of that. Yeah, there were artists that just wanted to be seen as artists, not easily identified when you see their work. Yeah, this is a Black artist. Because of the imagery.
William Busta [00:48:47] As I’ve been talking with artists for these interviews and other things in connection with the show, I think it’s fairly consistent that Almost all the individuals prefer, of course, to be regarded as artists. And in many cases, it’s more of a thought of what their personal identity is and how that personal identity is connected to group identities rather than as an obligation to a group identity. On the other hand, even as they see their primary identity as artists, they seem to be aware of what each other are doing. That. That is, that there’s a sort of a feeling of connection among other artists who are African American and who have careers. And they always ask me specifically, in whatever context, well, what’s Miller Horns doing? Or what’s Curly Holton doing? So is there that feeling of connection? I imagine that it’s less because of artistic connections than that there’s something that is shared in experience.
John L. Moore [00:50:04] Yeah, there is. There is that. And I just think, you know, it’s a lot going on in the art arena that’s really not discussed, but it’s very clear in a sense, just for instance. Nah, I don’t want to go there.
William Busta [00:50:23] Go ahead.
John L. Moore [00:50:25] No, no, no. That’s unnecessary. It’s unfair to the artist in some ways. But the reality is that if you’re going to. I mean, people. I mean, it’s just like there’s a famous artist, there’s a very famous artist who happens to be African American. And his quote is a quote that he gave me directly was, give them what they expect. And I’m always thinking, don’t give them what they expect. Hopefully they’ll accept what they. Something different. But you get people what they expect. And he’s a very successful artist. I mean, maybe the most successful of them all. But I think people do expect. You know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Palestinian artist or an artist from Turkey. There was a certain expectation of what that work should be, a sense of or have looked like and so forth. And it is easily identifiable. No different Chinese artists or a Korean artist, American Indian artist. You know, that somehow the diaspora, that culture has to be clearly visible in that work. And if you go through exhibitions, major institutions, just major institutions across the country, or even the regional ones, that’s what you mostly can see the higher percentage of. That’s the type of work that really directly, without any question, reflects the cultural background or leaning of that artist. I don’t know what that says, if that says anything.
William Busta [00:52:06] Well, I think it’s one of the problems with art interpretation in general. And as an art educator, you might be able to respect to this and have a better sense of it than I do. But I’ve always noticed that the museums interpret work by telling what it’s about. And people want to know in two or three sentences what it’s about. And what it’s about usually has more to do with the subject matter or what inspired the artist to do the subject matter. And there’s- At least to me, it seems that’s a little bit of misdirection. Because what makes it good art is because it’s good art, not because of what the subject matter is.
John L. Moore [00:52:49] Well, people need to know who made it, what’s the background, what’s the context. And that seems to be very important for a lot of people. And, you know, it’s kind of tricky because. I don’t know. I mean, because even from a collector base. Collectors. And if it’s. I shouldn’t be saying this stuff. Maybe you edit it out. If you’re a black collector, for instance, they primarily go for. They follow the lead of a number of distinguished people in the field. I’ll put it that way.
William Busta [00:53:31] Right.
John L. Moore [00:53:32] So the reflections have a, have a genericness to it. Oh, God. Gotta edit that out. A quality to it. A generic- Not that the work isn’t good work, but it could also become bad work if it has certain kind of- I don’t use that term, bad work. Good work. But it’s usually all good enough. Good enough for whoever’s buying it or wants it. So I don’t mean to say that, but the collections. Have you seen one collection? You almost have seen all the other collections.
William Busta [00:54:04] I’ve seen a couple of those collections. I said I’ve seen a couple of those collections. And it seems that there’s a very difficult time with some of the collectors of dealing with. Not of dealing with the subject matter, but of dealing, let’s say, with contemporary issues in art, that it has to be that the work in their collection almost has to be seen very specifically and very directly as sort of a lens of African American experience.
John L. Moore [00:54:36] Yeah, I think. See, I really think there’s- I don’t know how someone would approach it, but, I mean, that seems like an area that’s really right for me. Them educating a different kind of education towards collecting or something like that.
William Busta [00:54:51] Yes.
John L. Moore [00:54:52] That’s not putting anyone down that has a particular kind of collection that you find that it’s sort of, you know, like a lot of other collections. But it just- It takes- It just takes a different way of looking and a different kind of basically educational or somebody that’s thinking outside of the traditional box.
William Busta [00:55:14] Okay. One of the questions that I’ve asked everyone Is did living in Northeast Ohio affect you out in any way? And I guess I know you lived here until you were in your 40s, I think. Yeah, but was there something about the area itself or the culture of Northeast Ohio that affected your work?
John L. Moore [00:55:40] Yeah, and I think still does. I mean, you know, I think my work was very connected to the work around me. Yes, around me. And also my location and my thinking about my location. And I found that the work in Ohio. Well, even the whole state. Because I got to know the work of the whole state. It’s very fine work and a very interesting artist, very good artist. And one of the things. I always believed that these artists. Artists that I knew in Ohio were as good as any artist anywhere. Their work just wasn’t being shown next to other people. And I can realize there’s a certain kind of Midwest quality, too. That maybe is quite different than New York quality. Or what’s a. The major stuff you see in New York, but you’ll find it in upstate New York or across the border in New Jersey. But my work was very much influenced by. In many ways by just Ohio or Cleveland. And in a strange way, it was influenced by a lot that I saw with the Cleveland Museum of Art. I mean, I can name certain works of art that are very much influential to. To my way of thinking about art. And the kind of, you know, composition and stuff that, you know, from Harlequin with Violin, I think, in the collection. Or La Vie, Picasso Blue period paintings. Just certain works of the Baroque paintings in the gallery. They were all very influential. The Cubist stuff and the Baroque stuff for me. And the sense of drama in Baroque art theater, because I went to theater in Cleveland. And the Karamu and the Play House and the whole idea of theater sets were very influential. And I know those things go on universally all over. I was basically an Ohio boy.
William Busta [00:57:56] Is there something you would have liked to have accomplished as an artist that you haven’t. Or something that you accomplished that you feel that is a high point of your career. Or even what do you still expect to do?
John L. Moore [00:58:11] That’s a good question. Actually, I’ve been very lucky. Some people think I’m a successful artist. Not financially, of course, but there’s a lot of young artists and artists in their 50s that say, oh, John, you’re very successful. Only because, actually, now I’m in a lot of books, hardly collections. And I did have quite a number of reviews in the New York Times and so forth. And still now I’m showing in Europe, which is a recent phenomena in a way, not phenomena the way it works, but they’re just group shows. But that hadn’t happened earlier in my career and I like that that that’s happening. But I think, I guess to answer the question, I really think there’s still something ahead for me and so I’m working towards that. I have a one person show coming up in one of the Burrow art centers this fall and I’m working towards to make that the best show possible. So, you know, I’m slowed down for sure. I’m 70 years old or I will be in two weeks and- But I think I’m making some of the best work. Although a little strange, the new couple paintings I just did. And so I’m encouraged to keep working. I don’t have any grand expectations, but I don’t know, I don’t think I regret anything. I think I’ve just been lucky. I’ve able to have made enough work that was good enough for people to want me at their schools for visiting artists and maybe some of the top. Like I was at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] for three semesters. Distinguished visiting artists. I’ve been at Pratt, you know, I can’t complain. I didn’t still making art. A lot of people don’t end up making it after they stop making after a year or two or five or ten. It’s hard work. This art business is very hard work for the artists and I mean for everybody. For filmmakers, actors and writers. It’s the most difficult arena you could go into. I mean, because you’re always dependent upon someone else to publish you, to write about you, to buy your work, to fund your performances. You’re always like rehearsing or auditioning. Is that the word?
William Busta [01:01:07] And it’s not enough to have people to like your work, but it gets to be important to have people who have money to like your work.
John L. Moore [01:01:15] Yeah, yeah, of course.
William Busta [01:01:18] And those are two different.
John L. Moore [01:01:20] You know, I think Ohio was a good place for a lot of artists because I thought they did get a lot of local support and I thought with Progressive particularly who owned five of my works was very, you know, very supportive. And a collection that Hans Lozier has of Cleveland artists, I think it’s-
William Busta [01:01:42] Yes.
John L. Moore [01:01:43] And there were things like that going on there and I just thought somehow it just needed to be expanded outside of Cleveland. And that’s primarily why I moved.
William Busta [01:01:54] That was about what year, John?
John L. Moore [01:01:57] I took a leave in 1985 for six months and I moved to New York. It was in August. And then at some point I realized I’M not going back to Cleveland. And I stayed there. I mean, I came back after six months to finish things up at the museum and put in an official letter of resignation. But as soon as I moved to New York, I did as a curator, as a ghost curator, because I didn’t want to be known as a curator. I did two exhibitions mid career shows for the Studio Museum in Harlem. I did a couple exhibitions as curator for a couple other independent projects in New York. But before we moved there, Jane and I, I had done a show at the Sculpture center with artists from Ohio and some other things. I don’t know. I don’t know.
William Busta [01:03:02] As we conclude. John, is there anything else that you’d like to say about your career or about your work or about your experience here?
John L. Moore [01:03:12] My experience in Cleveland, Yes. Well, Cleveland was a great place for me. I just say. I have to repeatedly say I was very lucky. I was lucky that I had supportive parents. I’m lucky that I grew up in the neighborhood that I grew up in. Otherwise I might not have known about the Cleveland Museum of Art. I don’t know. I’m lucky that I had that museum there. And although I never wanted to work there in a museum, I was very lucky to have the opportunity to work in a museum because I learned tremendous amounts by working at that museum. And not only from the point of art and art history and I like to think connoisseurship of art objects, which seems to be something lost today these days, but the kind of relationship and friendliness and professionalism that I learned there under Sherman Lee and Henry Holly and the people in that museum was like family in a strange way. I mean, it was a very, very good, enriching experience. Experience for me and the support of people like Kramer and Haberman. You couldn’t ask for anything more. So Cleveland has been a very valuable experience and it’s really the place that shaped me. You know, I think there were a lot there. I mean, Margaret, Toby, Lewis, everybody was always very friendly, supportive.
William Busta [01:04:55] Well, thank you very much, John. This is for me. It’s been. Though I know we’ve talked together before and I know a lot about your work, there’s still parts of it that were really enlightening to me. The I suppose from my perspective that we both share with each other is that a large part of both of our arts education came from the direct experience of objects at the Cleveland Museum of Art. And I guess as I describe it, not only the direct experience of those objects, but the direct experience of those objects over time.
John L. Moore [01:05:37] That’s a very important aspect, the direct experience over time, when you really have the luxury to analyze and think and rethink, it’s not a quick look. And I also think with the new gallery, that also is an experience to see contemporary works and have look at them. It’s so easily available and go back numerous times to see things and understand things. Then you have people to talk. That’s something that. I don’t know how much that happens in that world. I mean, I’m always asking anyone talk about painting, you know. No, no one talks about painting. Painters don’t talk about painting. They just talk about what they like and dislike. So it’s kind of interesting. Robert Storr has a series that he’s going to start next week at the Met, Contemporary painting. I think I’ll go to it, see if I can learn something. Well, that’s.
William Busta [01:06:32] I guess that’s it. We’re always learning. Okay, thank you very much, John.
John L. Moore [01:06:36] Well, thank you. Okay. Bill. Yes, on another note, totally aside from this, have you been in touch with your niece Carly?
William Busta [01:06:48] No, but I have added her. I have added her to my mailing list for. I know she’s at Art Forum right now.
John L. Moore [01:06:55] Yes, yes, yes, I know she.
William Busta [01:06:58] And that seems to be very, very nice for her.
John L. Moore [01:07:02] Right. She’s very smart and a hard working person. She actually did an interview. She did. I don’t know if I ever gave it to you. She actually did an essay for a show I had a couple years ago, a solo show at the Boston. And she actually talked about some of the things I just mentioned about what people expect from an artist. And she mentions, I think a couple. Oh, she makes reference to a couple other artists, African American artists in her essay. Anyway, I just didn’t know if you knew she was doing something for.
William Busta [01:07:46] Yes, yes, I do.
John L. Moore [01:07:49] I haven’t seen it myself. I just heard it from James. Right.
William Busta [01:07:52] That’s just very- You know, those things are very encouraging. I guess there may have been some sort of something in the genes that both sides of my family that have included people who have been involved in the arts.
John L. Moore [01:08:07] So it’s-
William Busta [01:08:09] Guess it continues and it’s very nice. Again, thanks. I will be in touch before too long, John. But thank you very much for right now.
John L. Moore [01:08:18] Okay, my pleasure.
William Busta [01:08:20] Okay, bye. Bye.
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