Serialization-- Chapter 2 "The Whole Town Was On A Party"--This Fantastic Struggle: The Life & Art of Esther Phillips (c Miles 2002) --
Chapter Two
"The Whole Town Was On A Party"
Esther was the only one in her family with an artistic drive, but she would shortly find community with plenty of others like herself. It had indeed become obvious to all within her home that "she had no inclination to do anything that would give her an income other than paint. She was so wrapped up in art nothing else mattered." (Note 2) She had been sparked from very early on at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement to search for beauty and meaning in life, and to access this through her own unique talent. But her striving to be a painter did her little good in the eyes of family. Though she scrambled to pay for the formal art education she wanted, and desperately tried to pay for art materials on her own, Esther's parents, and even her brothers and sisters, viewed her efforts to be an artist as a selfish act. They believed that she should make money but not for her own purposes--attending to her own needs and desires.
Esther’s parents would have spent any income she contributed to help send the boys off to college, the most practical investment, perhaps, for the family--or at least for the boys. The righteous sense that Esther should put back into the household in this manner was quite strong, though certainly not unusual for American families of this time. Esther would not buy into such self-sacrifice, however. She was beginning to run into the same impasses that many other artists, particularly women, faced. As Wendy Slatkin, author of Women Artists in History From Antiquity to the 20th Century states, "some cultures have demanded that women be demure, self-effacing, docile and obedient. These behavioral qualities, combined with socioeconomic restrictions . . . are not likely to encourage the professional excellence and independence needed for a woman to become an outstanding artist." (Note 3)
Esther later readily acknowledged the hostility she felt toward her parents and siblings while growing up, but she dealt with this bitterness by engaging herself even further in her work. Prompted by the wise urgings set forth by the Neighborhood Art School, as well as Carnegie Tech, urgings to throw oneself thoroughly behind what one enjoys and does well, here, early in life, Esther was claiming her due. She was already acting on that growing self-knowledge, the type of wisdom and action that many people never quite attain or come to do throughout their lifetime. But what of that knowledge, what of those capabilities and actions if not rewarded by family, or more importantly, as Esther would soon see, society as a whole? She would be extremely productive her entire life--painting. But what of that productivity if it brings little money?
Frustrated that she was expected to support others’ needs before her own, Esther began to detach from family at the end of her college years, and this detachment was not without consequence. It was an especially stressful time for her, marked by irritability and withdrawal into herself. Shortly after Carnegie Tech dropped her, she had a tonsillectomy and was treated for anemia, which recurred throughout her life. (4) She left her garret, her first home-studio, behind, when she moved out of her parent's home around 1923. She was twenty-one. Despite wresting herself from an oppressive home environment and moving toward a vision of a self-designed life, the lack of familial respect still bothered her tremendously.
Sybil Barsky, a sculptress, was one of the first persons Esther lived with after leaving the Highland Park home. The two women shared a third-floor attic on South Craig Street in Oakland. It was minimally furnished with a couple of cots, a card table, and a hot plate. (5) Sybil remembered Esther's repeated remarks about her unsuccessful attempts to work her way through school and her open grieving that her parents did not pay her college expenses. She especially recalled Esther's "terrible hatred of mother." She got the distinct impression that this woman strongly disapproved of Esther's lifestyle as an artist.(6) "She kept a busy social schedule, and she paint[ed] doggedly, though generally not in view of others." (7) As Esther's roommate, Sybil did witness some of Esther's painting, and she observed work in watercolors only. "Her movements were very quick," stated Sybil, who believed that Esther "couldn't sustain an oil canvas--didn't have the attention span," (8) but a later art review repudiates this, as Esther began working in oils, and with some success, shortly after this time.
"They were struggling," said Dorothy, of both Sybil and Esther. She tried to help her sister out during the time in particular that she lived with her artist friend. "Esther never had enough money, and she was always looking for an apartment." And an apartment for Esther had to be less a living space than a working space for her art. Dorothy herself was a young woman just out of high school. "I wanted to do the best I could, but I couldn't do much but hand her a dollar or two." (9) A telling story that surprisingly surfaces by many who knewEsther, friends and family alike, communicates her lack of frugality. Sybil's version, the most detailed, was that, at a rare time when Esther held an extra $15 in her hand (or $40, as the story migrated), "She proceeded to walk all the way downtown to Kaufmann's to buy a hat for the entire amount, and then to walk all the way back." (10) Later Sybil would say that Esther actually "did this lots whenever she got her hands on some money." (11)
Dorothy, becoming the family treasurer, admirably gathered family money together to pay Esther's rent while she lived with Sybil. Dorothy was working at the Warner Theatre Building in downtown Pittsburgh at the time. On her monthly visit to Esther, she would “give the $15 directly to the landlord." She felt that if she gave the money to her sister, who was still trying her hand at an assortment of odd jobs, that she would spend it at A. B. Smith, where she had credit to buy art supplies. (12) Though in need, Esther likely felt uncomfortable accepting this money from her family, from whom she had just made a break, and who disagreed so strongly with her choice of career.
At the same time she was trying to make it on her own, Esther, no longer a student, gravitated toward the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP), founded in 1910. Its purpose was to foster a love for the fine arts and to give the general public a better understanding and deeper appreciation of the work of Pittsburgh painters and illustrators. This certainly spoke to Esther. Fueled by frustration over familial disrespect and a real need to connect with other artists, she joined by submitting work for jury consideration. As a member, she began to enjoy and benefit from being around people with similar aspirations and frustrations.
Many Carnegie Institute of Technology fine art students were connected with the Associated Artists, elevating the professionalism of the group. Included was Mary Ballou Shaw, as Mary Shaw Marohnic (Esther's Carnegie Tech friend) was known then. (Due to several marriages and intermittent returns to her maiden name, she would be known as Mary Ballou Shaw, Mary Shaw Marohnic, and as Mary Shaw Horn, throughout her notoriety as a Pittsburgh artist.) Samuel Rosenberg, and younger teacher Bill Schulgold, both of the Neighborhood Art School, were also AAP members. Likely Esther's first involvement in a major show was in 1923, with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, held at the Carnegie Institute. She exhibited one work at this, their annual exhibition: A Portrait. (13) It seems she did not again exhibit with them until 1927. In the meantime, she was beginning to flower socially.
It was the time of Prohibition. As elsewhere across the country, speakeasies abounded in Pittsburgh, jazz was beginning to flourish, and women were asserting themselves socially en masse for the first time in American history. Mary Shaw, as she was most often referred to, was devoting time to Number 8 Center Court, a studio-gallery where she and friends Kathleen McGraw and Edith Rielly "entertained, and had a lot of people drop by."(14) (They showed and attempted to sell Pittsburgh art.)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette equated Shaw's studio to "a unique piece of Greenwich Village." And the proprietor herself--who would go on to be quite a colorful character in the Pittsburgh art scene for decades--was described throughout Associated Artists' archival material as "jocular" and "irrepressible." (15) Shaw had a wry humor not unlike Esther's, a sardonic wit still in evidence past the age of 90, peppering the conversation as this vibrant woman reflected back upon a way of artistic life. All of her memories of Esther and the times, that she would share while residing in the Marian Manor Nursing Home in the Greentree section of Pittsburgh, were emphatically meted out. (16)
"I want you to know I hadn't thought of these people for years." Shaw was sure to preface her recollections with this statement, as if to remain noncommittal as she conjured them to mind. The revelations that were to follow belied her assertion that she didn't give a damn about her past. Her commentary on Esther had actually begun, "She was sort of exotic and very interesting and very talented. She'd take something--trees and clouds--and interpret it, make it into something on paper."
Shaw's friends were a collection of underground artists, literary and theatre figures who, despite major public recognition, were leading "a very active, real life" as creative artists. "It wasn't anything fake at all. They were genuine people--not phonies. There were a lot of phonies floating around," says Shaw vehemently. She disgustedly states what most artists believe to be true, describing as 'phony' anyone who calls himself an artist, yet either is not diligently, consistently building a body of work or who creates work fit only for mass consumption, non-original, without real integrity, that simply sells out to mainstream taste.
Real artists, as Shaw is careful to explain, tended to know each other. Little matter that different artists had different individual tastes--as long as originalityprevailed. The struggle to attend to one's own unique creative aspirations, yet still survive in the world, was the common bond. Though the critics would rarely reward anyone with too eclectic an artistic vision, if it was apparent that an artistwas striving independently toward a personal voice, respect came from the esoteric band of peers. Artistic experimentation, in order to find one's voice, one's singular contribution, was very important. As Mary explains, her own philosophy so similar to many artists, "I never thought much about getting this or that painting done." If a work felt done, she proclaims, then so be it declared finished. But the creative process-ing itself, the experimentation, held significant meaning.
As is the case today in any city's artistic community, creative figures of Esther's time in Pittsburgh banded together at Shaw's Number 8 Center Court and similar art spaces to intellectually stimulate, emotionally support, and, if possible, financially support each other. As Gloria McDarrah explained in The Artists World In Pictures, "Artists themselves make an audience; they are true critics and best interpreters" of another's work. (17) With certainty, and also a bit of enjoyment, now that she is on a roll with her commentary about friends of the past, Mary Shaw includes in her recollecting that "there never was a Pittsburgh scene actually." She explains that those who frequented her gallery space were more or less underground artists with a minimal amount of Pittsburgh recognition but certainly no national attention. (She stresses that Pittsburgh was never seen as a place inhabited with valuable artists, though she and her friends of course knew differently.)
Her scene of artist peers would be differentiated, for example, from the circle of acclaimed artists from Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania that had congregated around Scalp Level in Somerset County in the mid 19th century. Their work was first brought to the public's attention through the J. J. Gillespie Art Gallery in downtown Pittsburgh. Wondrous works of realism, the paintings of this handful of artists, including George Hetzel, Aaron H. Gorson, Joseph Woodwell, and Alfred S. Wall, depicted the stark cliffs of Scalp Level, the surrounding countryside, and lush forest-scapes. The Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greensburg, just southeast of Pittsburgh, holds the exemplary work of this last Pittsburgh group that painted in the European tradition backed by the National Academy.
But Mary Shaw's gallery, and the creators and works themselves that peopled it, were quite different. The gallery itself was actually a house--"the last one on the end in the area that was in back of the Nixon Theatre" in downtown Pittsburgh. Like all underground galleries, the proprietors lived in the same minimal but amazingly resonant space as that given to friends' art. Esther was one of the many who frequented it. The taste of this sense of community was no doubt delectable to her. She had known peer artistic support from her early years at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement, but the 1920s opened up her artistic sensibility to a burgeoning social milieu at that critical time in her life when she had become very downtrodden by family dissatisfaction with her lifestyle.
Esther Circa 1925 (Luke Swank)
"It was a hardy spot, a roaring business"--Shaw describing less the success of selling artists' work to fellow poor starving artists than the triumph of camaraderie about her gallery. With a cackle, she defines her place in back of the Nixon as "a party--the whole town was on a party." The spot was "very popular because you could pop in at any hour of the night. We did have booze and stuff there. The people used to make it after the theatre, but"--Shaw insists, "it was not just a speakeasy." Creativity was the main focus, and cemented the bond among all those who set forth there.
"Our friends were very jovial and very friendly," says Shaw. "Nothing nasty about them." She fully discounts the common misconception of underground artist as dangerous punk. Though she had a reputation for poking fun at those around her, it was obvious that there was nothing harmful or offensive in the way Shaw was handling her friends and peers. There was no disdain here, in her account of her creative past. She fully embraced the characters and scenarios surfacing of a life lived with much passion, and ardently claimed the identity of artist she carried throughout her life. "I've always gotten rather involved in things . . . as well my friends. I had a great time mostly. I've lived a very busy life. . . ." This last utterance, spoke with a touch of hesitation, seems attached to a tangle of underlying feelings, and she concludes her memories with these words.
Mary Shaw described her gallery-goers as a lot of art people and theatre people, "and a lot of ordinary people who were interested in painters and pictures." It turns out, though, that a good many people who are truly interested in painters and pictures are hardly ordinary. Sometimes characters on this periphery are as colorful and flamboyant as the artists themselves. This was true of the interior decorators and designers who hung out at Number Eight Center Court. They frequented the galleries and numerous parties as much as the artists did back then, and some of these people hired artists for various work. One in particular would became a mentor of sorts for Esther--Harold Schwartz, an interior decorator with Kaufmann's Department Store in downtown Pittsburgh. He was the first to provide ongoing meaningful work for Esther, gainful employment based on her painting abilities. He hired her as a scenic painter for his interior sets and, of most interest to Esther, she painted views of his solo design work both for promotion and posterity's sake. (18) This started to take place circa 1927, as evidenced by her titling some of her fine art of the time as Interiors and at least one Department Store. Some of her paintings possibly appeared in the showcase windows of the downtown store. Perhaps it was the visibility associated with Kaufmann's and the nature of her work with Schwartz that later helped Esther land a solo exhibit in the Warner Theatre lobby, situated right next to Kaufmann's, and participation in the Gulf Building's "Better Homes and Buildings Exhibit," also downtown. Both of these shows were to come in 1933.
Schwartz lived in the prestigious Bellefield Dwellings, an apartment complex hovering over Center Avenue near Craig Street. This was part of the artsy section of North Oakland that included the area bounded by Forbes, Craig, and Dithridge Streets, and cut through by Bellefield, just up from the Carnegie Museum. According to Sybil Barsky, Schwartz lived there along with three other men--a talented dancer, the owner of a dance studio in nearby Johnstown, and apparently the son of a Pennsylvania governor. (19) Esther drew finely rendered cityscapes and painted watercolors of the neighboring buildings, sights of North Oakland, from apartments on the higher floors of this complex, and perhaps from the rooftop. In addition, she captured the lavish interior of this structure built by architect Carlton Strong. Still standing today, but as a senior citizen center, the Bellefield Dwellings have been stripped of their former opulence. The marble floors and brass elevators remain, but there is no trace of the lush furnishings that gave the individual apartments and public spaces of the building such richness of character they had when Esther conveyed them to canvas. Many of Pittsburgh's affluent resided there, including Homer Saint-Gaudens, director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in the 1920s (and son of renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens). Harold Schwartz may have indeed designed a great many of the living spaces. No doubt for Esther they were gorgeous images to capture in paint.
Mention of an "unhappy love affair," possibly in Pittsburgh, appeared in notations that Millie took of conversations with her aunt Esther, though Sybil Barsky would negate the possibility that this man might have been Harold Schwartz. In recalling their interactions, Sybil remembered the amusing relationship between Esther and Harold. She recalled Esther's teasing both him and his roommates with regard to her being fond of them. But as they were homosexual, nothing ever came of her friendly advances. (20) Though not with Schwartz, Esther did become intimately involved with men around 1927, and apparently had several boyfriends before leaving Pittsburgh. (21) Harold simply played a large role in her early life, and she thought dearly of him. He obviously liked her work and gave her an opportunity to profit from her talent. Esther affectionately referred to him as 'Schwartzie,' even later, when she would recall him to New York City friends of the 1950s.
Despite her new ability to earn some money from her art, the family still didn't view Esther's career choice as anything but frivolous. Reflecting family sentiment over the passing years, Dorothy would offer, "Esther never worked in any capacity on a salary basis, a skill of any sort." (22) She was indeed gaining confidence in her painting, though, come the late 1920s, due in large part to her work with Schwartz. By getting money for her art, and the respect of those who did appreciate her talent, she was finally finding affirmation as artist, and thus some measure of self-respect. She even began taking classes on and off once again at Carnegie Tech, from about 1926-1930. (23)
Esther took part in another show with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, held at the Carnegie Institute, February of 1927. (24) Also participating were Sam Rosenberg and Bill Schulgold. From this point on, she was no stranger to submitting works for critique. She boldly entered her paintings for consideration in the Carnegie Internationals, the celebrated biennials held at the Carnegie Museum of Art, drawing modern artists of worldwide success and recognition, as well as being open to all non-recognized artists. In 1927, she submitted the simply titled Interior and in 1929, Portrait. Come 1931, she tried for success with two: Nude, and Self-Portrait. Though never accepted into the Internationals, her submissions, records of which still exist, confirm a gutsy early belief in herself. (25)
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The formal name is "The Carnegie," the huge structure at Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh, sitting along the top of Panther Hollow at the west end of Schenley Park in Oakland--the structure that houses the Carnegie Library, the Carnegie Music Hall, and the Museums of Natural History and Art. The Museum of Art, however, and the entirely separate Carnegie Institute of Technology, on its own sprawling campus a little further up Forbes Avenue, where Esther went to school, were much entwined in the early decades of the twentieth century. Andrew Carnegie himself can be held accountable for what thus became both benefit to Pittsburgh artists and a confusion to anyone trying to follow exhibitions that those various artists took part in.
Carnegie envisioned students benefiting from the close connection between the museums and the college. The collaboration that he early insured continues through the present day. Use of some of the facilities of the museum is first granted to Carnegie Mellon University (modern-day Carnegie Institute of Technology), as in the case of their School of Music presenting concerts at Carnegie Music Hall.
The Smithsonian-like building is what Andrew Carnegie christened his ‘Carnegie Institute’ in 1895. But when ground was broken further east, near Schenley Park, for a college (the schools of engineering and design in the early twentieth century), Carnegie christened it with the similar “Carnegie Institute of Technology.” If one clipped the school's name, which many understandably did, down to “Carnegie Institute,” then confusingly there were two separate entities going by the same title. People thus referred to the “Institute” to mean either the goings-on at the school or at the museums. And equally confusing nomenclature was “College of Fine Art” being used to describe one part of the technical school and “Department of Fine Art” to describe one part of the Museum. Each of these began to be used incorrectly to name activities occurring at the other.
Luckily that distinguishing reference “Carnegie Tech,” though, soon came to be a Pittsburgh household reference to the school's activities. However, the behind-the-scenes of the two similarly titled yet separate entities were not completely un-entangled. They shared a common board of directors and many common benefactors, and collaborated on numerous exhibitions, most held at the Art Museum, with Carnegie Tech students and teachers, as well as independent artists, all taking part.
Programs would list such exhibitions as held at “Carnegie Institute, Department of Fine Art.” This was indeed the prestigious Carnegie Art Museum, though it might appear to be the school. Thus administrators who were weighing the merit of work done by international artists often did the same in exhibits of Carnegie Tech students, as well as various other Pittsburgh artists, independent and otherwise. This certainly would have been in line with Andrew Carnegie's vision of his art museum's purpose--to bring attention not only to known great artists working internationally, but also to local creative talent. But the Museum definitely got away from this mid-century and on.
One way to reach out to as many Pittsburgh artists as possible was to allow the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh to hold their Annuals in the glamorous halls of the Carnegie Art Museum. (This practice is still in pratice to this day, though many regard it as a token effort on the part of the museum to show Pittsburgh art, for it is not the work of the numerous underground artists within the city, but the work of a few--members of that one collective organization, now being of very commercial bent.) John O'Connor and Edward Duff Balken were two administrators on staff at the museum who were especially in touch with local artists, many of whom had studied at one time at Carnegie Tech. In the late 1920s, Balken was the Acting Assistant Director under Carnegie Art Museum Director Homer St. Gaudens, and O'Connor was Business Manager. Balken was also on the Executive Committee of the One Hundred Friends of Pittsburgh Art, an organization that made it possible for Pittsburgh Public Schools to acquire the work of local artists.
John O'Connor became personally acquainted with the local artists whose works were on show at the Museum either for Carnegie Tech, Associated Artists, or independent exhibitions. Mary Shaw remembered him as "very genuine."(26) Once he became familiar with an artist's work, he kept him or her in mind for special-invitation exhibitions jointly sponsored by Carnegie Tech and the Museum of Art. The museum even picked up any carrying charges and insurance for an artist to participate in such shows. O'Connor called upon the artists in their studios about town. As the museum's representative, he wrote collectors in attempt to market the work of young, unknown Pittsburgh artists. This personalized approach, hardly done today by major museums in search of local talent, especially suited O'Connor, who "worked hard to present local art shows," according to Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph reporter Dorothy Kantner. (27)
John O'Connor's commitment and compassion are very evident in a letter dated June 1936, to Mrs. John G. Bowman, wife of the chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. (O'Connor also knew and communicated about artistic with her son, John R. Bowman, and his artist wife, Melita Fils.) He wrote concerning the works of Pittsburgh artist Clarence McWilliams, whose work was on view at a late spring exhibition at the museum, where Esther would also be an invited artist: "I know the fact that his painting has been purchased is going to be great encouragement to Mr. McWilliams. I am wishing that more Pittsburghers would take a little interest in Pittsburgh artists."(28) Esther uttered this sentiment to an art reviewer in the 1930s; today scores of working artists in Pittsburgh still say it. But many talented artists are never really known far outside their circle of peers who know their work, and the process, the labors of creating that work, best. This was so for most of the Pittsburgh artists who frequented Shaw's gallery, who occasionally had their work temporarily hung, ironically, on the walls of their city’s prestigious art museum. These were Esther's friends, including Mary Shaw, Bill Schulgold, and a painter named Milton Weiss.
Weiss was about fifteen years younger than Esther, and of the “second generation” of students to have studied at what was the IKS Neighborhood Art School. Close to the age of eighty, he would graciously open up his canvas-filled apartment/studio in Pittsburgh's Shadyside neighborhood to talk of Esther and art. Like Shaw, the tremendous emphasis he placed on his remembrances was a testament to both his own intensity and to his investment in the creative life. (29)
Weiss credits Esther Phillips as one of the core group of early painters who brought the fundamentals and philosophy of the early art school from its establishment in the Hill District to the latter Oakland locale. (By 1926, what had been, essentially, the Hill District’s Neighborhood Art School had moved to Bellefield Street in Oakland, close to the Carnegie Museum. It became a part of the Jewish Y that would incorporate both the YM and YWHA.) Esther was still involved at the school, but no longer as a student by the late 1920s. She occasionally exhibited alongside Rosenberg, Schulgold, and other teachers there, most former alumni of the school themselves, as well as artists such as Milton Weiss, who were currently studying there.
The record of one such exhibit held at the new building survives from 1928. Esther showed seven works: Herman Greenberg, Sketch, Portrait of a Young Man, Sketch, Sam Filner, Girl with a Striped Sweater, and Study.( 30) She exhibited alongside Weiss at this exhibition, but that is not where he first met her. He knew her roommate Sybil Barsky better, and it was she who introduced him to the "erratic" Esther. "One day Sybil took me up to her apartment. . . ." Buoyed by nostalgia, Weiss' voice trails off, but his face glows, unveiling a reconnection with memories of a time still vividly alive inside him. That meeting was one of the few times he would spoke with Esther. But he would recall it, for it seems she made quite an impression.
She went her own way . . . Her art was better than a lot of people's art. Even just that one time I talked to Esther, I sensed what an individual she was. Somehow I wanted to paint a portrait of her. It was like a magnet--I wanted to do it. I must have known that she was fighting--painting against great odds. I must have been told that.
Milton Weiss, who like Mary Shaw would also come to be respected within the Pittsburgh art scene, continues his remembrance. "I knew her work and I admired it because by then I was starting to do much the same--creative work." Milton ended up painting a “flower piece” and indeed Esther's portrait in the apartment that day--the requisite for the latter simply being that "she was an artist and I was an artist."
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NOTES
CHAPTER TWO
1. (Chapter Title) Shaw Marohnic interview.
2. Rosenthal Conversations.
3. Wendy Slatkin, Women Artists in History, From Antiquity to the 20th Century, 2nd. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 2.
4. Barasch, “Abstract of Commitment.”
5. Shay, “Passion for Paint,” 119.
7. Sybil Barsky-Grucci as paraphrased in Shay, 119.
8. Shay, 119.
9. Rosenthal conversations.
10. Sybil Barsky-Grucci as paraphrased in Shay, 119.
12. Rosenthal conversations.
14. Shaw Marohnic interview.
15. The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh: 1910-1985. The First Seventy-Five Years, compiled, written, and designed by Teresa DallaPiccola Wood, Mary Brignano and Richard Brown for The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, publisher. Pittsburgh, PA., 1985, 26. (Hereafter cited as AAP publication.)
16. Unless otherwise noted, all of the information in the following passage is taken from Shaw Marohnic interview.
17. Fred W. McDarrah, with text by Gloria S. McDarrah, The Artist’s World in Pictures--The Photo Classic that Documents The New York School Action Painters. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988), 11.
Fantastic Struggle/Miles-465
19. Barsky-Grucci phone interview.
20. Ibid.
21. Barasch, “Abstract of Commitment.”
22. Rosenthal conversations.
24. From a small news clipping in the IKS Neighbors, February 13, 1927, that detailed an Associated Artists of Pittsburgh exhibit that opened February 11, 1927. Esther exhibited only one painting according to this article, though the title is not known, for the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh catalog of this year does not list her.
26. Shaw Marohnic interview.
27. Just this quote, from an undated article, was found in the Biography Files (under John O’Connor) of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society.
28. John O’Connor to Mrs. John Bowman, June 1936, Pittsburgh, PA. “1927-1936 Correspondence on Microfilm.” (Carnegie Museum of Fine Art administrative library; Pittsburgh, PA., text-fiche).
29. Unless otherwise noted, all of the information in the following passage is taken from Milton Weiss interview with author, March 1993, Pittsburgh, PA.
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