| Mercedes Matter (1913-2001) |
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Jeanne Carles (Mercedes Matter) Arthur B.Carles
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Mercedes Matter (far left), Konrad Wachsmann (third from left), Breuer
(fourth from right), and Alexander Calder (far right), circa
1940
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Charlotte Brooks, Jack Tworkov, Mercedes Matter and James Brooks at the Cedar Bar New York circa 1960-61 |
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| Autobiography |
My career was determined at the age of six when my father, Arthur B. Carles, bought me a small paint box and took me out into the French countryside to paint by his side. At the age of 12, I returned to Europe and lived in Italy for two and a half years. During a summer in Venice, I fell in love with Giovanni Bellini, drawing innumerable Madonna’s when not painting Venetian cityscapes. A time in Assisi, the discovery of Giotto and Cimabue was also important as were Rome and Florence. Those years were my primary education in art history. At Bennet Junior College in Millbrook I studied sculpture with Lu Duble and during vacation joined the first art class in New York under Maurice Sterne. In the summer of 1932 I studied with Alexander Archipenko. The following fall I joined the class of Hans Hoffman at the Art Students League and studied with him off and on until 1935. He brought the consciousness and excitement of the Paris avante-garde to a New York where many young artists were avidly hungry for what he had to give. Although I never studied formally with my father, what I learned from Hoffman made me better understand my fathers criticisms of my work and his conversations about art. Thanks to the W.P.A. I had the opportunity to paint for several years without having to get a job. On the mural project under the administration of Burgoyne Diller I had the chance to work with Fernand Leger on a projected mural for the French Line. Later I worked with him again privately on another projected mural. I was an original member of the American Abstract Artists with which I showed annually. In 1938, through Leger, I met my husband, photographer Herbert Matter. The following years, as a result of the war, were very lively in New York because of the influx of European artists. Contact with them was important to me and for a year Leger shared our apartment and studio. In 1943 we moved to California, where raising my infant son under difficult wartime circumstances curtailed my work. Back in New York in 1946, I found my friends again and a climate that was intensely stirring. De Kooning’s Attic at the Whitney Museum had a profound impact. During the next ten years I showed in various group shows including the annual Stable Gallery exhibitions. The Artists’ Club was formed in which I was the one female original member in a very male dominated situation. However, the Club became a most unique and wonderful thing including artists of the widest divergence from Edwin Dickinson to Phillip Guston, Bradley Tomlin to Joan Mitchell, with the composers and writers as much a part. The Cedar Bar during those years was perhaps the best part of my education. As de Kooning said, “Art is something you can’t talk about and you talk about forever.” I always worked long on my paintings - months, sometimes years - and often pushed them beyond their high point into total destruction. Although I feel this took me further than if I had stopped short, it was not helpful toward productivity. When, in the fifties, Leo Castelli offered me a show, I did not feel ready. Later his gallery defined itself in a direction very alien to mine. In 1956 I had a one-person show at the Tanager Gallery and showed there in group shows. In 1953 I started teaching at the Philadelphia College of Art (now called the University of the Arts) where I taught for twelve years, and then at Pratt Institute for ten, also for several years at N.Y.U. I was a visiting critic at Antioch, Brandeis, Cincinnati School of Art, Kansas City Art Institute, Maryland Institute, Yale University, Skowhegan and American University in Washington. In 1963 I wrote an article for ARTnews scathingly critical of art education in America as I had experienced it. The idea in writing about it was to get the problem off of my mind instead of which it involved me in something that had a decisive effect on my life. Inspired by my article, my students at Pratt joined by some from Philadelphia, asked me to help them make a real art school, a genuine situation in which they could actually work all day every day, and where they could study with authentic artists. I agreed, so we made the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. Although the faculty of the School was always diverse, there was an accord as to basic premises and processes of study from perception. There was compensation for the toll the school took on my life in that it embodied my beliefs and because it played a role in a New York where the art world was becoming more and more dominated by trendiness and commercial concerns. The first 15 years when I devoted much time and energy to the School - first as founder and chairman of faculty, then as dean - were nevertheless important years in the development of my work. In the late seventies I started making my large drawings in charcoal on canvas, on which I work for long periods, so that they become majors works. During these years I used all the time I had for my work, giving little thought to matters of career. In 1979, I suffered a serious illness after which my husband became terminally ill. We had moved to Long Island. He had designed a house with two studios and a living space, but he never got to use his. He died in 1984. The only way I could cope with his death was to immerse myself in an intense period of work which became a sort of harvest of all the years of effort. That brings me more or less up to the present. I live in East Hampton the year round. Every other week I teach at estates School and remain much involved in its development. Otherwise there is my work.
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