Interview with Will Barnett, from the artist's studio in Manhattan, first published in Fine Art, January 2009, By Victor Forbes
Will Barnet: I knew Harold Weston very well and worked with him for many years. He was always forming one kind of organization or federation or another. He had a special name for the organization we were in. He put the shows on and tried to help artists a lot. Har-old was a very wonder-ful man, very kind, very considerate and did what he could to help people with their prob-lems in the art world. We put on some shows to exemplify the quality of work being done at the time, one big one at the Riverside Museum, all these things were going on during the height of our relationship, during the 1940s and 1950s. We were very individual artists and never allowed ourselves to be particularly influenced by any movement - we were just ourselves. On the outside you had all these other people doing more bombastic work, who had a lot more publicity. Some of us may have been on the sideline then, but time shows that works done by painters like Weston are more and more appreciated today.
I’ve been in the art world a long time, close to 80 years, so it is hard for me to tell you exactly the period things took place, but I can tell you the art world was always changing. There have been so many movements that I have been part of have that faded away and things are different. I was an early member of the American Abstract Group, that, began in the ’30s and the American Federation of Artists — two very different groups. The Abstracts were more hard-edged, the other was more literal work of subject matter they were interested in. There’s a lot of history but history changes. Then Expressionism and Pop Art came along and they kind of overwhelmed the artists who were not involved in them. Harold was a personal artist who had his own point of view, so on the art scene he became, you might say, less prominent. The situation was that these organizations no longer functioned as vitally as they did in the early years when the movements were not so strong. That’s the way the art world works. Harold was a very energetic person, he liked to put on shows and was very active in the Federation of American Painters, during the late 40s and early 50s, very active. We were on the art scene more, but then of course this thing began to become less prominent as all these other art movements took over. How vital the situation is -- a lot of great shows, exciting paintings, important painters —but they’re all gone so we have history now. Have to do a lot of looking to find out what ore we can gather
The artists of the Federation were all very individual, very different, had their own movement, their own way of seeing things, doing things, but were all bound by the Federation. Harold was very involved in that. I remember him picking up paintings for the show, they would pack 50 or 60 in the back of paick-up truck and drive them down from the Adirondacks. I helped him and all that sort of thing. We all were very individual as artists, there was no such a thing as a singular movement, like expressionism, Pop art --- overwhelming period of movements that were very prominent when you think of Andy Warhol, why should he be so important? He never even painted a picture. It’s a very peculiar thing to discuss what took place. I was there, I saw it all. I took my own individual point of view that was classic, more of a painter’s point of view. Harold was working with imagery, mountains of Northern New York and all that and mine was more the City and people, in terms of subject matter and treatment.
I started out in the Great Depression, 1931, a 20 year-old young guy from New England and I saw everything. It was an entirely different depression than it is now. Bread lines were enormous, soup kitchens were the order of the day. People were literally starving. I was one of the young men who saw everything and documented that in my work (There’s a book coming out by Basilla - sketches early 1930s) …my work was more or less involved with evictions, breadlines and people having a hard time getting by, but I didn’t try to do too much political propaganda in my work. I did it in more of a painting way. I was painting an image of a social scene that was taking place. There were great artists who were very influential then. The most complex Mexican muralist/artist José Clemente Orozco, he was very influencial. He did all these great murals, some at the NEW SCHOOL - MORE Social, what was going on. Thank God we had a great President who brought people out of the Depression by getting jobs for people who had hard times. Roosevelt went for the people, not for the banks or Wall Street. He dismissed banks and Wall Street and went for people. The WPA gave people jobs. I was one of the supervisors in the WPA graphic Department. It was my work during the 1930s, and I was also painting during this and developing myself as an artist. Great murals were done then, chronicling what what was going on in this country. They were fabulous murals. We were building a new society and for the first time artists were getting an income — 24 bucks a week — entirely different than bailing out banks. It’s all nonsense, and shouldn’t be that way. They should reach the common people who are having a hard time. The people around Roosevelt were also great, should be about bailing out common people who were in great trouble.
The 40s were another period when you had a different outlook. In the 1920s, painters became expressionists — there was a personal, splashing of paint — and they looked down upon social painting. Social paintings were thrown to the dust bin and a new group of people coming up some of then are very famous as you are familiar with - Harold was aware of all this but was always ¡his own man, not influenced by provocative things going on in front of the art works, in magazines and newspapers.
The 50s, of course, was another period when you had development of Pop Art and other ideas - My work is very individual and a very humanistic view of a human being, even in abstract - when I was very very young, 12, 14, masters people like Rembrandt, Goya great French cartoonist influential in my work. Harold Weston’s are rich and sensuous paintings. Heloved landscape and the air of light; he did what he wanted to do. He was involved politically, he was in a sense a politician, had some connection with Washington, asking for certain things so the arts got more money. He was beyond the big movements of publicity and celebrity, not an easy picture to be in as that keeps changing from generation to generation and each generation rejects the other generation. Study it very carefully and you’ll find out how generations have antagonism toward another generation, though sometimes they come together.
I'm involved with a show downstairs at the Club done by Academicians from another period, completely overlooked. We should appreciate the value of their work and what they were trying to do - more 18th , 19th century influence. It’s a big picture, complex, but can be simplified, too. Doesn’t have to be that vague. To re-define painting movements, memory is very important, history is very important. The 30s social, 40s self-expression, 50s pop art cartoon art - ended up with Jeff Koons today. (to be continued)
https://sunstormfineartmagazine.com/
