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Interview with Marcia Marcus, March 1980

Q.: When did you become interested in an art career?

I didn't think of painting until I went to college....After my first drawing there was no question left in my mind about {my car[[strikethrough]]r[[/strikethrough]]eer.]
[[margin]] no space that I wanted to be a painter.
I had always been interested in art, and [[strikethrough]]out[[/strikethrough]][at a lower level that was readily available to me, such as field trips to watch a cartoonist [[strikethrough]] s [[/strikethrough]].]
[[margin]] wanted to be a costume designer. [[/margin]]
I studied at Cooper Union [but I didn't like that. After I left Cooper,] and a good friend who was in my class [who] knew the owner of a gallery in Greenwich Village suggested I be in a show [[strikethrough]] there [[/strikethrough]], so I [actually] showed my first painting in 1951. [I have been in invitational shows since 1953.]

Q.: What special experience did you derive from your studies with Edwin Dickenson?

I went to learn to draw. I had been working on my [[strikethrough]] w [[/strikethrough]]own for some time and felt that my drawing skills were not very good. I didn't study with him for very long--just for a month, but [[strikethrough]] b [[/strikethrough]] very concentrated.  He was an incredible teacher, he never came down to [[strikethrough]] h [[/strikethrough]] your level, he brought your up to his....He took me more seriously at that point than I took myself and it was a turning point in my life. [It was a crucial month for me. I went for a specific purpose, got that and left...] We worked on the model all session all week long. [I didn't paint in the class, I just drew.]

Q.: What was the Cedar Bar and how did that influence your career?

It was very exciting because it was a kind of informal equivalent of graduate school. It was a place where both people at my level and very well known artists people and those in between met together and talked about art....It was a very narrow situation. The mature artists [the Abstract Expressionists] were [[strikethrough]] just as n [[/strikethrough]] not totally accepted and were just as concerned about what was going on in art and talking about it as the younger artists were, [who of course were trying to formulate their way of doing things.] It was this wonderful combination. You could sit and talk to DeKooning and someone [[strikethrough]] h [[/strikethrough]] your own age and someone who had no [[strikethrough]] th [[/strikethrough]] talent at the same time. There was more than the Cedar Bar, there was also the Club,*which sponsored endless 
[[margin]] panels [[/margin]] [debates] for a year and a half on "Has the situation changed?" It was interesting simply [[strikethrough]] fo [[/strikethrough]] from the point [[strikethrough]] ffq [[/strikethrough]]of view of meeting a [[strikethrough]] b [[/strikethrough]] variety of people because they invited dealers, artists and people from other disciplines to be on the panels as well...Naturally, no graduate school could assembel such a group [of artists] today [as passed through the Cedar Bar--the major art bar in New York at that time.] Everyone [[strikethrough]] ke [[/strikethrough]] knew [[strikethrough]] v [[/strikethrough]] everyone and there [[strikethrough]] wete [[/strikethrough]] weren't as many galleries. Today the art world is too big for this to happen.  

*Marcus related that The Club started early in the fifties.  It replaced a cheap cafeteria where older artists had met to have discussions over coffee. The artists decided to rent a space in an apartment house for discussions. The membership was quite exclusive. As a female, Marcia had the advantage of being able to pretend an invitation had been extended to her in order to attend the debates, followed by dancing and drinks.  [[strikethrough]] no man [[/strikethrough]] Young male artists had no such luck as there were few female members

Transcription Notes:
All good except from spelling mistakes like 'New Yrok'