Abstract
Artist and art educator Joseph O' Sickey shares thoughts and details about his artistic and professional work.
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Interviewee
O'Sickey, Joseph (interviewee)
Interviewer
Mitchell, Tim (interviewer); Dean, Sharon (participant)
Project
Cleveland Artist Foundation: WPA Art in Cleveland
Date
10-25-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
91 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Joseph O' Sickey interview, 25 October 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 900014_901014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/855
Transcript
Sharon Dean [00:00:00] Testing, 1, 2, 3, 4. We're at the studio of Joseph O'Sickey. It is October 25th, Wednesday at 11:00 o'clock.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:00:12] It's like a sketchbook, you know, two sketchbooks. They may have things over a whole period of time because you pick up the sketchbook that has empty pages or if you do watercolor or a drawing and it's wet, you take another sketchbook. So the things get mixed in and they don't-
Sharon Dean [00:00:35] That's fine.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:00:37] And that's also true of my life.[laughs]
Tim Mitchell [00:00:43] I think we're ready now and we'll just- Are you- We're talking with Joseph O'Sickey at his studio, Twin Lakes, Ohio on Wednesday, October [25], 2006. Joe, thank you for talking with us again.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:01:08] It's my pleasure.
Tim Mitchell [00:01:09] Let's start by if you could speak a little bit about how you became employed by Western Reserve University in their School of Architecture and what you felt, what your role was there.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:01:32] I was employed by Western Reserve University because people had known that I had teaching experience and that I had taught a number of places. Oh, John Clegg. John Clegg had formerly been teaching the beginning design classes and I had taught design classes at Ohio State and also at the Akron Art Institute. And people had remembered that I had taught and many people had liked what I was doing. So I went for an interview and I wasn't sure that I would be right for it because this architectural school was very Miesian and most of the faculty came from IIT.
Tim Mitchell [00:02:39] What's IIT?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:02:43] That's a good question because that is the school that was formed by Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, an architectural school. And it also was designed by Mies van der Rohe and I admired Mies van der Rohe, but I was not a Miesian in. In the sense that I was familiar with other forms in architecture. And I felt that it was important for me to provide a broader experience for the students, which meant that. And also not an experience only in sculpture, but an experience that would allow the students to have an aptitude for model making and some of the things they had to do in architecture at the time I was associated and had an office next to Bob Little and we became good friends and I had a graphic design office and originally I formed the office when I got out of Ohio State for I went into business and I went into the business of hoping to persuade people that what I knew about perception was important for their graphic design. And it was true. But people liked talking with me, but they didn't particularly care about using me. So I went, felt it would be good for me to get back into teaching, at least in a limited way. And they agreed. I was hired by George Danforth and George Danforth was a charming man who did the drawings for the Mies van der Rohe book that was produced by the Museum of Modern Art. And in large measure, the presentations at the school were very Miesian and almost. I mean, imitation of Mies's presentation.
Sharon Dean [00:05:38] What do you mean by Miesian?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:05:39] By Miesian, they were presented in the same way Mies van der Rohe presented them and the way they appeared in that particular book. And I felt that wasn't the only way you could do things. And Mies did them with very. They were very elegant. But I. I saw that it was not necessarily applicable to other forms in architecture. There's no curved lines, you might say. And I liked a lot of things. Other things, I liked Persian architecture and I liked domes and I liked Nervi's work and I liked bridges, etc. Other kinds of structures and other forms because they interested me and they were elegant in their own way. And I had been an industrial design student with Vic Schreckengost. I was not a painting student at the art school except up to my sophomore year, But I took on the job and I designed a course that I felt suited the needs of the students, which was not exactly what was going on in the school. The school had its own curriculum and I was out in left field as far as they were concerned. So they examined me one, one day after school to explain to them what my course was about, which I did, and they listened carefully and they accepted it all. And I think it was much to their credit and to mine, incidentally, because I felt I knew what I was talking about. And I have. I haven't always been successful in getting reshaping curriculums in universities. And I think people have a knack at a university to teach the way they've been taught. And my feeling is that I had learned a lot from at other places and I learned a lot during my army experience. And I felt many things in Cleveland were parochial and that I didn't want to necessarily imitate my masters. And the reason I felt this is that I felt it was an obligation of an art school or a university or college to save the students time and not necessarily do your do things, repeat the things that you have done in your training. And it's possible to teach a course in art where the students are almost 100%, 100% of the class is successful and can move on. And it doesn't take a year for everything to be done in the university. It can be done in a number. Some of these things could be done in a few weeks. And mostly because it is. I've always felt that it isn't a way to draw or paint that you should be taught. It has to do with. And I learned this down at Ohio State. It was perception and seeing was the important ingredient. And. And the problem is not how to render in a particular way what you're seeing, but the problem is to be able to find the position of things. You have to get the emphasis away from the. The out there. And how do you represent what's out there to where is it? And make your own marks for where it is. Identify where things are. Then you have to be able to decide on the size of things. Then you have to. But meanwhile you have to put it. Record it someplace. So the drawing is a record of how you're responding. So that means the responsibility is where that's the responsibility for the byproduct is the students. And the student has to be completely into the project in order to be successful. And that success is what you build on. And you build on it seemingly slowly, but it goes very fast. And all students can do the first step. Oh, incidentally, you find out a lot of problems. You find out what the student's problems are in perception also, which pervades all their other activities, which in their learning. And they're also dealing with relationships right from the outset and not later in the third or fourth or fifth year in composition. Okay, so the composition is there from the first day, and that is extremely important that it's back in the response of the student. And the responsibility is his or hers. And that is refined by. How dark something is, how light is it, how what size, where, etc. What which things are like other things, which forms have things in common, etc. But they all go together and they're always in a whole. And that is a whole. W-H. Okay. And this way one proceeds and one proceeds into color the same way. Where things are, what size they are, etc., etc. So the student also becomes identified with his product because it's his and it's always unique. So you never have to worry about the style because the style is. Is a student style. Now, To motivate students and keep them interested, you change the medium for the student. So the student deals with drawing, chalk, hard pencil, et cetera, pen, brush, reed drawings, etcetera. Reed pen drawings, ink with brush, ink with reed pen, etc. All things that are easy to understand, simple. But the only reason to do the drawing is to have the student involved. But also it's the only evidence of involvement in perception that is very important. And this is why I kept trying to get at whichever school I was in, to get the faculty and get the curriculum changed from drawing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to. To the seeing problem. And that was the emphasis of all my work at the university. But it's very difficult to shift people who are teaching into a position or to shift, particularly the shift and an administration into a study of perception because we keep calling it art. And that is a mistake. So, you know, it's. I prefer not talking about how do you teach art? I do know you don't teach it as they teach things in the colleges of education all over the country, they are always teaching projects. What kind of project is the student going to do? Which project will motivate them? All this garbage. Because they learn how to do projects and that's what they learn to do when they go to go teaching somewhere else.
Tim Mitchell [00:16:51] So the key issue, really, not only as a teacher, but I imagine it comes into your work as well, is the another, am I correct in that, another way to put it is that some people look at a painting as an object, as an objective, and what you present and what I happen to believe. I mean, I happen to believe this, and this is why I'm asking it. But you speak of the painting or the drawing as the record of a perceptual experience.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:17:35] Yes. Now, a good many of the paintings that I have done, Those large paintings, and people say, well, they're garden paintings, was that I had a. I was practicing for myself, finding the position of things in my backyard and putting them on canvas. And I wasn't finishing the paintings. I was just taking the painting as far as I felt secure and that I was positioning things correctly for myself. And I was doing what I would ask a student to do. You know, I would find like, things like rhythms, etc. That would make my paintings different from other people's paintings. So I wasn't imitating the things literally I was taking. I was positioning responses. And I felt that was important in making my work better. But also I was not interested in what I called studio loft painting. Studio loft painting, where people were taking parts of other people's paintings and using that. I think I told you that Roy Lichtenstein and I and Algesa walked around the galleries once In New York in the late 50s and we went to 18 galleries and saw 18 Abstract Expressionist shows. And they were all patterned after. Jackson Pollock or de Kooning or oh, Franz Kline. And I didn't want to be a singalong with Mitch Persons.
Tim Mitchell [00:20:06] So there's actually- It's almost as if whether it's an architect or an artist, you have a choice of responding to other artists or you have, I guess you always respond to other artists. But what some of those shows were lacking as a response to experience or to lack of response to play.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:20:30] Yes, they lost their uniqueness, but also their personalities were subjected to outside forces. The other thing is that by teaching students, that is at a high school level or in a university level to start thinking about seeing the practice of seeing the seeing of things whole is one of the failures of our society and why there's so much garbage around. Because nobody knows that the position of things in architecture, the position of things in planning is of primary importance and their size is of importance and a very good example. And the art world will hate me for this is a university circle whereby everybody is so proud. But what has happened is that more and more things have been placed in. In poor positions. And it makes it. It's lost. It's lost the uniqueness of space or a ground for the position by the ground. The background for things has been destroyed or almost destroyed. I'll just qualify it a little bit so I am not castigated.
Tim Mitchell [00:22:44] I'm going to just push forward just a little bit to Kent State University when- You started teaching in 1964 at Kent?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:22:56] Yes.
Tim Mitchell [00:22:58] How did that come about? The movement from Western Reserve to Kent State?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:23:07] Rather it came about that I was asked by Elmer Novotny was on sabbatical and Kittner called me and asked me if I would be interested. And I, at that time I was doing graphic design. I had been doing graphic design for 18 years. Well, at that time it was about 16 years. And I was annoyed. I was doing a lot of annual reports and I was annoyed often where I thought I had done a very complete design and had it executed. And at the very last minute the photographs were changed, the products were changed and they were changed while the annual report was at the printers and was. And I had no control over the changes or I couldn't even see what was being done. And I was annoyed because my point of view about doing advertising design was that I tried to do. A unified piece, a whole. And I practiced. And when I was doing drawings, I practiced doing unified wholes. And I wanted. I use it. Practice for everything I did. And I wanted to practice my painting at the same time my painting eye and coordination. And so I. No matter how menial the job was, I gave them more than they recognized and often more than they deserved because I wasn't paid extra for taking the extra trouble. And so when I. So I took the Western Reserve job on the basis of getting myself away from things a bit and staying with what I truly believed in. And I decided I would take a shot at doing. In fact, I told Kit that I would try it for a year and see if I liked it and see if. So they gave me a big raise right away, which is always attractive. Yes. And promised me more. And I. So I commuted from Cleveland Heights for almost five years, actually. I guess it turned out to be four years because I became coordinator of that. The painting and sculpture and printmaking and cinematography department and had to be on campus a little bit more in order to do the programs, et cetera. Well, so we moved. And also my son graduated from Hawken and we toured what their advisor had suggested, the small colleges around the area, Hiram and Allegheny and other places. And my son's interest in chemistry. Yes. And. Okay, he went. He decided that he preferred. He was interested in the chemistry department and Kent was well equipped. And also he had an opportunity as a freshman to work the summer at the liquid crystal lab, which was just being pioneered. And so it was a good experience for him because they needed student help. And he went home. He went over. He somehow knew about it and he went over and was interviewed there and got the job for the summer. So that opportunity was fine. And his interest was, oh, he didn't want to go to a little college that wasn't equipped to do what he wanted to do.
Tim Mitchell [00:28:36] Right. And it must have been very exciting with the liquid crystal work, which is now the basis for so much today.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:28:45] Yes, yes, he loved it. And he's a chemist right now and he's in, you know, he's in charge of a- He's the- He has an assistant now, but he wasn't- He was the research and development person at a small company in Bryan, Ohio, for last, I guess, 15 years. And he's very good at it. He's very good at his job, which is nice.
Tim Mitchell [00:29:24] Did you move to this house when you moved to Kent?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:29:28] There were only two houses available and we didn't like either. One was made of striated plywood in Kent, which was very expensive. Also had common driveway and the garage was down in a hole behind the house, two-car garage. And we didn't like the interior at all. We couldn't see anything there, not even a place to hang a painting. And we didn't like this place because it was on Route 43. But Route 43 was a country road when we moved here. And I was tired of driving, you know, 30 some miles or 33 miles or 33-and-a-half miles to teach a class, especially if I had an 8 o'clock class. And driving early in the morning on Route 43 or Aurora Road as it was coming out here was very hazardous because there were a good many saloons on the way and there were a lot of truck drivers who made stops at the saloons before they got back in the truck. And they were often waving around the highway in the early hours. And I, I didn't, I felt it was hazardous because we had a fellow before me was run off the road by a drunk. And incidentally, he wasn't a truck driver, but he was, he was run off the road and I was behind him and I stopped the other. The car that ran him off the road ran off the road the other side and into a, a copse of trees, of saplings really, that stopped him. But I went over to his car and I couldn't find him. And I thought he had run away. Well, when the highway patrol came, we went back to his car to look for him and he called for a couple of other cars to look around to see if they could find somebody wandering around. Well, we looked under his dashboard and he was jammed in a corner under his dashboard. And he was moaning. And we saw that he wasn't bleeding or anything, he was just hunched up. So we took him out, the patrolman and I took him out and he kept telling the patrolman, boy, am I drunk. Kept repeating how drunk he was. And I said, you don't need any testimony from me, do you? He said, no, but he said, give me your phone number and I'll call you if you need you, but I don't think I'll need you. But that was that convinced me that I should make a move. And we did. We loved our house in Cleveland Heights. We were up on Edge Hill Road. And we had a lot of friends, a great many friends in Cleveland and both in the arts and social media. And we missed that. We've missed that right along. And Algesa said, it's gone back to Cleveland, you know, even run a gallery just to get back where she felt more comfortable. And we had. I could walk to the School of Architecture if I had to. And Roy and Isabel, who was Roy's first wife, had moved up on Overlook, down right above Little Italy. And so we saw each other very often. We had been seeing each other before then, about once a week they were. But they were first living in Cleveland on Bolivar Road in 14th, and then moved to Crawford Road or to Hessler Road and then to Crawford Road. And until. And Isabel was doing interiors at that time. And. Roy finally got tired of hanging drapery rods and stuff like that and went to east to Oswego, of all places. Well, I say of all places, because Oswego was the snowiest place, port off Lake Ontario.
Tim Mitchell [00:35:32] Well, when you moved to Kent and you have- Beginning to work at the school, that was a period in the '60s. The number of art students, as I understand it, increased very quickly in that decade.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:35:51] Yes, they increased because Kent State had. Well, Kittner was there, Novotny was there, both Shocks were there, and Mish Petersham was there. And. I did bring quite a few students with me. A good many students came because I was there. And the reason they came was because I had a gallery in New York in 1962, and I had already had two shows at Seligmann Gallery. And so I was the- I guess I was probably the first artist in Cleveland who had a gallery in New York, at least of my generation. And so that provided some interest for some of the young people. It also provided interest for the graduate students who were coming from Canton and Youngstown. People who were teaching in the public schools were there for their master's. And at one time, I think I had. When people had one or two graduate students, I had a class at night of about 35, and I was scheduled to see them twice a week, but I saw them once a week and asked them to have a work each week which we could see and talk about. I also provided a model that evening so they could paint and I could witness their working. I feel it's very important with students, which was not happening in a lot of schools and colleges. It was very important to see how the students respond because, as I say, I was interested in perception. And I wanted to see how they approached things, how they worked and what evidence there was of what they were seeing. And so I ran a graduate class as if it were a beginning class, okay? Because I felt that. That they were sophisticated, they were beyond something. They were beyond a lot of things. And some were very good painters. But this way they got to know. I wanted them to witness also what I was doing. With classes so they wouldn't necessarily be imitating how they were taught. And I felt there could be change in the system, providing there were enough teachers out there who could do something.
Tim Mitchell [00:39:40] You were there. As you know, we're pretty much, you know, the school expanded and the faculty increased a great deal. And so you, I imagine in the faculty committee, you participated in the hiring processes.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:39:54] Yes, I did. I did. And I did hire some people who did well. And I also made some mistakes.
Tim Mitchell [00:40:14] Do you care to talk about either of those?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:40:17] Well, I- Well, I had a good class in drawing, and I had about three very good students in that class. And one was Craig Lucas, and I helped him get some financial aid. And I also, as a graduate assistant, and I also, when we had an opening for an instructor, I hired him. But we. I don't think I'll talk about the one I hired who. It was a big mistake, okay? Because it was an embarrassment for me and it was an embarrassment for the college. Now let me just say something about when the Kent State started growing very fast. Right at the beginning, at the height of its enrollment, we had one dean in the college, one assistant dean and two secretaries, One for records and one for student service. As the years went on, the deans increased, the assistants, the assistants increased. Because every. If you had a new dean, you had two deans, you also got their secretaries. Each had to have his personal secretary. Also it became computerized. And all the records that were kept and handled by four people suddenly had a staff of about 10 or 12 and they couldn't handle it all. So I have no. And this was happening in all the colleges. And the cost of everything went up. And it didn't go into faculty money, I would say it went into new hiring. And the hiring was at supervisory positions with people who were not necessarily professional in any of those fields. Now, there were several good deans who had backgrounds in their field and were capable, and they did- Incidentally, the deans that knew something about. The arts and experience in the arts and were either performers sometimes and pursued their interests in the arts were better deans than the others that needed explanation for everything. So what happens in schools and universities is that when you have incompetent personnel, they, in order to show that they're doing something, they demand reports from faculty. And everybody gets busy with paperwork in order to satisfy and justify positions of supervisory personnel and. And initiatives at the grassroots level, which is the faculty always should decide on what the curriculum is. The faculty lost its say by being supported, by being supplanted by deans who asked what was going on. And people became very timid about things. And I got off committees and I worked on a committee for a semester and. And we- Okay, thanks, Sammy. We- Sammy cleans up after me. I worked on a committee and we got revised. We revised programs in the. In the College of Arts, revised some programs. And the chairman of the committee had heard that we were getting a new dean and the other dean was leaving. And the upshot was that she suggested that we table the program until the new dean comes in, which would be another semester, and submit it to his scrutiny. And I was against that. I said, we've done the work, we do things on time, and I don't have time to waste. And so I resigned. I let my director of the school and I asked him to take me off the committee. And I gave him the reason.
Tim Mitchell [00:47:27] One of the things that I noticed that occurred is that in the 50s and 60s, a lot of the faculty from Kent came from Northeast Ohio. A lot of them were trained at the Institute of Art. And starting in the late. In the '70s, I think there were more and more faculty started to be hired from other areas. Like Brinsley Terrell or Noel Reifel came here, or Kirk Mangus. I guess Kirk did come from. Wasn't from Western Pennsylvania. But there were more faculty from sort of a lot of different traditions coming into Kent.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:47:46] Yes. Well, at that time, one was hired by somebody who was on - by the executive committee - who were on in the summertime and when I was away. And subsequently a couple of others were hired when I resigned the position of coordinator. I resigned the position of coordinator because this is interior politics, but it's okay to put it on record. I resigned the position because I polled the faculty before I would submit a proposal. And I got a 100 percent affirmative vote from the faculty when I saw them individually. When it came time to vote on record, they welched. And they welched because they had another agenda by that, I mean, they had- It was upsetting some coziness with temporary faculty. And they had wives and friends, I will call them friends, teaching. And they didn't want to change the curriculum because I wouldn't have some of them teach in our division. But they were teaching around the school. And I felt that was unfair in two ways. That there was supposedly a mandate that wives were not and relatives were not to be hired. And some of these were wives and also some were more. I wouldn't say they were relatives, but they were relationships.
Tim Mitchell [00:50:23] Mm-hmm. Yes.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:50:24] Okay. And I objected to that. I objected that they live up to the letter of the law. And if we're going to hire somebody, the person should be suitably trained and understand the things that need to be understood to be a good freshman teacher. And so I lost that one. So I quit trying. I felt it was. They were unreliable and taught only what they. Only what they knew and what they wanted to teach. And it didn't fit any unified curriculum to help the students save time. I didn't think fly tying was necessarily to be done in printing class. And you know, okay, okay, I understand.
Tim Mitchell [00:51:45] But your career in this time at Jacques Seligmann, you continued to exhibit well, in New York as well as in Cleveland. Here, as a painter, it seemed to be very productive years.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:51:59] Yes. And I liked the gallery very much. When I was interviewed there. I had a choice for two galleries in New York and one was a. Oh, goodness, it was a more fashionable gallery. But when I was interviewed, I saw what they were showing, which I thought was second rate. Aand I went to the Seligmann Gallery and was interviewed there. And they had a Seurat drawing exhibition on and I thought there was. It's better to be at a classy place.
Tim Mitchell [00:52:51] What was your contact with Seligmann? How did you get an interview with him?
Joseph O'Sickey [00:52:55] Well, I got an interview because from introduction letter to the two galleries from Leroy Flint. Leroy Flint at that time was director of the Akron Art Institute. And. He was asked by the director of the American. By Mrs. Parker, who was the Director of the American Part of Seligmann because it was really French. And he recommended me. And so I talked with Mrs. Parker and she. And, oh, I couldn't go in. And Algesa was going to be in New York anyway, and she was with a friend, an old school friend who was a very attractive woman too. And so Mrs. Parker called me and said she can't resist these two envoys I sent in and for me to bring in a couple, bring in some paintings. Well, I had also made an appointment with that other gallery. What was the other. I'm trying to think of it because she died and the gallery went. She also was doing interiors.
Tim Mitchell [00:54:32] So that's a different type of place.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:54:34] Yeah. And when I went there, I had a couple of fairly large paintings and I couldn't handle them in a taxicab. And Roy Lichtenstein said, well, look, I'll take you in my car. And his car was a Morgan. So you know what that- [laughs] Tim Mitchell [00:55:07] I know how big a Morgan is.
Joseph O'Sickey [00:55:09] You know how big a Morgan is. You know, it's the size of an MG. Right? And so I was sitting up on a seat in the front holding these two sails in the back. And he took me there and then drove around the block. Well, I took them into this other gallery first and she wasn't much taken with my paintings, but she said how'd you get these here? And I said, well, Roy Lichtenstein brought me. Then she took another look at them. Okay. And so I decided that right then and there that I would go look at check in with Seligmann Gallery. So he took me there and I got out and I didn't say who drove me there or anything. I didn't have to say it because I just. I already knew that I would have accepted when I saw the show on the wall. And we became very good friends. Mrs. Parker and I became very good friends. Algesa and I became very good friends and we were along the way Mrs. Seligmann bought one of my paintings and with Germaine's approval. And Mrs. Parker told me that was the first painting in any of the American shows that she had that the Seligmanns had taken, which was, I was very pleased about. And then Germain died in, I think in 19. Oh, must have in 1978, think or not. And the gallery had a lease still going on and we had been invited to the sailing rounds apartment which had a marvelous collection. And Algesa was looking closely at a Braque in a case. And so Germaine asked Algesa if she liked the painting and she said oh yes, very much. And she said I like the, you know, I like the surface of this very much. So he took it out of the case and put it in her hands and she was thrilled to be holding a Georges Braque. That was really a very nice one. And. Germain died and, and the gallery, they hadn't closed the gallery, but Mrs. Parker was hard up for a show and I was at that time she had told me I should be looking elsewhere. Well, I was taken on by Babcock and, and Babcock Michael St. Clair called me and told me that I had my paintings in New York already for a show at Seligmann. But I, meanwhile, I had gotten tied up with Babcock. And Babcock lost. He lost his lease on Madison Avenue because the whole block was purchased by the Italian leather goods people and they were putting in shops there and, and they managed to break his lease. His lease was coming up or they bought him out. So he bought the old. He bought the Hirschl & Adler building, which was Adler's house and. Adler had died and his house was up for sale and it became Hirschl & Adler. Okay, yes. And they moved up the next block. Now, there was a woman, that Hirschl & Adler, who liked my work, but then she left and went to the Metropolitan. And so I lost that contact. But I took some paintings into. Babcock, but there wasn't any hanging space for my work there because it was a house. There were windows and you could only put small things between windows. And so Michael St. Clair said, you know, excuse me, he said, I know you have your paintings here and I don't know what to tell you. And he said, because, you know, obviously they won't fit. And I was thinking about it and I walked over to Seligmanns gallery and saw Mrs. Parker and she said, look, Why don't you bring them here and we'll hang them and we can say that, you know, this is in conjunction with Babcock. And so I showed them in Seligmann again, that was about 1978, I think. And then I didn't have a gallery for about five years, well, even more, although I had offers. I showed down in Soho once, a few things, and people wanted to take me on, but they wanted me in a group show. And I didn't want a group show. So I just didn't want to supply merchandise and, you know, to fill in something. And meanwhile, some of the people at Kennedy Gallery kept telling Fleischmann there that he should have this was for probably about over a five year period, that he should really look at my work. Well, it turned out I didn't know this. He didn't come over to look at my work when I was at Seligman, But I didn't know that he didn't owned the whole gallery. He bought his way into the Kennedy Gallery and he was from Detroit and he was a collector of American art and he owned some very fine Burchfields and very famous ones. So. What happened was that Will Barnett and his wife and Fleischman and his wife were very good friends and they traveled together. And Elena Barnett said, look, why don't you need some new blood in your gallery, Larry? So, they told him about me because Will Barnett loved my paintings. I got to know him because he came to see my shows in New York and so did Fairfield Porter. Fairfield Porter liked my work too, so. And at that time I wasn't very fond of his work. It wasn't mutual, but I liked it better because his work kept getting better. So I went to. I went to see Fleischmann and he wanted me to bring paintings, some paintings in, about three or four paintings. So I did, and Algesa went with me and. But Algesa stayed. She didn't want to go in. And he said, well, he wanted to meet my wife. He wanted to know about, you know, what the family was like and so forth. And Algesa was out standing outside, and. And Martha Fleischman said, don't stand out there, Algesa. My father can talk forever. Come on in. So she came in and. Larry was taken with Algesa. And then he asked me, he said, is she your second wife? Because Algesa looked so young. And I said, no. And Algesa had overheard this, and she said, oh, he thought I was a trophy wife, eh? So that was funny. And then he offered me a show right away. So that was 1985, I think. And then I showed and he was in that big space and I had another show there. And then he moved to another building because they kept hiking the rent everywhere, as you know. That was the last show I had at Kennedy. Don't you have another catalog?
Tim Mitchell [01:07:03] I probably do, but that's the one that I have in front of me. That's the one I have in front of me right now.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:07:08] Tim Mitchell [01:07:10] 1994.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:07:11] Yeah, I like the other one better because- What I objected to was that- I object to putting in a couple of things just because they're going to think they're going to be saleable.
Tim Mitchell [01:07:40] Okay. I'm sure I have the other catalog elsewhere. They did a couple catalogs.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:07:48] Yeah. I can get one right now.
Tim Mitchell [01:07:51] You can start. Joe, we're talking about the catalog for the 1988 show at Kennedy Galleries, and we have the catalog in front of us. You were going to compare that to the '94 exhibition?
Joseph O'Sickey [01:08:07] Well, yes, I hate to- I don't like being critical of people who help me. [laughs] Tim Mitchell [01:08:18] It helps us understand what the issues that you-
Joseph O'Sickey [01:08:20] Well, the earlier catalog produced a more unified exhibition, and so it looks more like they're by the same person and not like a group show. Now, what happens with all artists work is, is that over a period of time, the paintings change. So artists generally like the latest paintings exhibited. Always. Always. Right. Even though they may not be as merchandizable. But I like these paintings. And at the time when I was doing these paintings, my paintings were all with the same rationale. Now, over the years, my painting changed mostly because of the. Impingement of my childhood. And also by examining my earlier sketchbooks, I felt that I was. I gained something. But I also lost something, and I wanted. And this has happened to everybody, as you know, from Burchfield to Matisse. And so these paintings are from the earlier times. They're very, very complete. But the marks that I produced in them had a great variety to them and produce a surface that was very rich. And doing things that were flatter produces another kind of result entirely. Even though the rationale for organizing the material may be the same, it's a different product. And I didn't like them mixed up because it confused people. Now, the second one, second gallery, second thing. I was interested in introducing my drawings and sketches, and I wanted an emphasis on that and sent a good many drawings and sketches in. But there were some. And I wanted them tied up with my animal paintings, my zoo paintings. But the sketches. Got mixed up with some things that were. The white grounds in the sketches seemed to be. Produced a great deal of sparkle to the painting and produced a lighter painting on the wall. And the ones that became connected, where I connected them and worked on the paintings longer, they became. In one way, they became more solid, but they also became less lively. And I didn't want them mixed. And there was a mixture in that. And also I felt that some of the paintings were not as strong as I wanted. And I would have whittled it down a different way.
Tim Mitchell [01:12:46] Okay. I noticed that a lot- You know, you mentioned Burchfield, that it's sort of his career is always so interesting because he had such a fluid. Such fluidity in his early career and such a feeling of freedom. And it's always. It always looks to me, and I guess of some other critics, as if in the '20s and '30s, he lost his way by trying to paint too much like other people. And then he sort of rediscovered himself in the 1940s.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:13:15] I think that's been true of a lot of people. And sometimes people don't. People don't object to it, but they. I am getting a cramp in my thigh here. Let me stand up. Why don't we break for a second about. But it's. In some places, it's permissible to change. With Picasso and Matisse was permissible to change, but it wasn't permissible for some other painters, including Kokoschka. Well, let me give you an example. Kokoschka, of course, was a very famous expressionist painter. And his early paintings are very much prized. And I got this information from the people at Galerie St. Etienne because I had traded a painting with Art Feldman for a large book of Kokoschka, which was a lavish book of 50 signed lithographs in it. Now, I felt it was a very good trade, and Art Feldman couldn't sell the book, so he traded with me because I liked it. The drawings are beautiful drawings. And I had the book. I kept the book for a couple years, and I was worried about it because I had a. A leak in a roof over a closet, and it happened to be in there. So when I went to teach in France, I took it over to the Cleveland Museum and asked them if they would take care of it for me while I was in France. But then I thought it was too valuable to keep in a house here. And I took it to the Galerie St. Etienne, because I knew they handled Kokoschka and they handled German painters and German Expressionist painting. Klimt. And I saw Klimt show. And Nolde. Not Nolde, Klimt and Schiele drawings there and watercolors, et cetera. With. I used to go there regularly because they were interesting shows and they liked the book very much. But they said they also had one. There were only. I think there were only 50 copies of the book. And she said, but we can't sell it for what. Because we value it, but we can't get any money for it, and people only want early Kokoschkas. And so she. Well, there were two couples there, and they said, you know, you can put it up for auction and see what you can get. I decided to put it up for auction, and I got more than they said it was worth, and I got more money than Art paid for it. But it wasn't nearly enough for what it was because, you know, 50. I could have taken the book apart and sold it for, you know, 10 times what I got, I'm sure, because they were all signed and signed on, you know, the print, personally signed. They weren't. Wasn't written in. It was written in his hand. But I thought it was sacrilegious.
Tim Mitchell [01:18:05] Sure. One of the things you mentioned was that I find very interesting is that certainly both you and Burchfield were both taught by Keller, and you both wound up having large bodies of work at Kennedy Galleries. Some sort of an affinity there.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:18:24] Oh, well, one reason I was interested in Kennedy Gallery is that because Kennedy Gallery had other American artists handle the estate of not only Burchfield, but of John Marin. And Fleischman was a very good salesman. And also he loves American art. He really loves American art. And he. We went. Algesa and I went to Marin's home up in Maine couple times. We took. Well, three times because we. We took Janet Moore from the Cleveland Museum up there once because she. She wasn't driving. And she loved. Wanted to go. She loved Marin's work, but he painted on her property where she lived. And. And we also took the Pam and Steve Pace up there because they. Because I did the driving. And we found that Marins weren't. They couldn't sell the Marins there over at. Off from the studio. They were very inexpensive. And I didn't have. We didn't have money to buy them because I would have purchased a group. And I say purchased a group because it wouldn't take much money to have purchased a group. But when Kennedy started handling them, the prices went way, way up. And. The. I don't know. I'm tattling out of school. I guess that's what you're supposed to do. When Kennedy lost the account to one of the ladies who married into the Marin family and decided to handle that herself. Well, she didn't. She wasn't very skilled at it. And so she loaded the market with studio things, okay. Which did a lot of damage to Marin, okay. And also to Kennedy. And it was a shame because the. Because Marin, of course, was one of the few American artists who was living from his income as a painter. But of course, he was dead a good many years. But I liked his work. Go back in history a little bit. When Algesa was running the 1030 gallery, there was a Marin for sale in the gallery. She got an exhibition, a whole exhibition that was very interesting from Mrs. Halpert in New York, Downtown Gallery. And Mrs. Halpert liked Algesa. And she sent a whole show with prepaid freight. She paid the freight and she paid the insurance because she wanted to show some things in Cleveland. And this was a nice show at the gallery, the new gallery space, when we moved to 1515 Euclid Avenue. And there was a Marin in it. There was a Kuniyoshi drawing of a nude with an electric fan, which was nice, big drawing. And, oh, Stuart Davis and her stable and the people she handled. And it was an interesting show, but it didn't get much publicity in Cleveland.
Tim Mitchell [01:24:04] Well, you know, Joe, we're about to close up for today, but I wanted to just bring up one other topic because it wraps a lot of threads you've been talking about. And I like to draw the connection between your work and what I see as the. As early. As early. Not early American, but early American modern painting with people like Marin and Zorach and Burchfield. That there seems to be. First of all, you mentioned that his work was not selling for very much. There was a rediscovery, I know, of the early moderns from America in the 1960s and particularly in the 1970s. And they had been almost dropped off the market at that point. But your work seems to be, partly because I think of your, I'm guessing, your ties to the Cleveland, the old Cleveland School of art. But your work seems to be very much within that sort of tradition. Somebody I saw a show at the Akron Art Museum called the Expressionist Landscape, which was primarily of Canadian painters that Mitchell Kahan presented about a decade, 15, 20 years ago now, I guess. But how do you respond to that in terms of where your work's coming from or in what tradition that your work fits?
Joseph O'Sickey [01:25:42] I think it fits more in the French tradition, really. Actually, I- When I had- When I was in the Army, I went up to Chicago a couple times to see exhibitions there. And I was- When I was painting seriously, when I got out of the army, there were some interesting shows over at the Cleveland Museum. One show was very important was the Braque show. The second show that was important was the Modigliani and Soutine show. The third one that was important, Algesa, and I went to Philadelphia to see, which was the big Matisse show in 1948 and '49. And that had a lot of Matisse drawings and sculpture. And it was bigger than that than to show at the Modern later. And there was a- I saw the- Some of the Jazz issue of Jazz that Matisse did, and I liked that very much. I became very interested in Matisse, and people said my work was too much like his. But I got rid of Matisse the way I would do it with anybody. I started copying one, and I got about two-thirds along and I quit. And the reason was not that I couldn't do it. I could do it too easily. So I felt I would- I had to do something else. But I also decided that what I had to do for myself was and I think I told you this before was I had to broaden the base of my experience. And I did this by all the sketchbooks. And I felt that this was something absolutely necessary for an artist to do. So that what would come from that would be a natural style of responding to things quickly. But also it was a- It would- I didn't have to search for subject matter. But meanwhile, I felt I also had to learn how to paint. And I had, as I said, I was an industrial design student and I had painted in watercolor for many years in high school, I had hundreds of watercolors. But I also. When I got out of art school, when I was 21 and when I was 22, I was in the army for five years, almost five years, four years and 10 months. And I wasn't painting the way I wanted to paint. I saw a lot of things, so all I could do was some drawings. But I felt that was also important. So I was influenced a lot by North Africa and India. And I remember Stephen Pei seeing my drawings, and he said, you know, your drawings haven't changed much since India.
Tim Mitchell [01:30:01] Well, we're going to close now, but one of the things. And I think we can take off from this point when we go further, but it seems to me that what you've been saying to me is that you were trained at the Cleveland School of Art to be a designer, and then you taught yourself to be a painter.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:30:19] Well, I did, and I think everybody does or should have done. Okay, now, when you asked before about, you know, you're talking about Burchfield changing. Well, you know, you also see that Roy Lichtenstein changed, did a complete about face almost. And I felt badly for him.
Tim Mitchell [01:30:48] I liked the earlier paintings better. I liked his paintings better from the '50s. I'm probably one of the only people in the world.
Joseph O'Sickey [01:30:57] Well, he liked them, but, you know, he was- He was laughing at the paintings, too, himself. And I'll tell you, when you get a lot of approval, you believe it. You know?
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