Several letters from Marcia Marcus turned up in the loft.

monday, april 20 [1959] and
is it blue

as we all know i am my own worst enemy, like for instance i have been happily on unemployment insurance for a month and i ignore all telephone ringing except on code which means friends (other could be employment office) so there i am on wednesday last and recuperating from a long day at palisades amusement and circus and the phone rings, ordinary, and i answer so here i am back at a desk cause i couldn’t get out of it on account i worked here before and me he wants specifically so in between i have made 60,000 phone calls to everyone in n.y. asking if they know a sec’y who needs a job and if it works i open an employment office on the side on account if it lasts (this job) more than a week i will be so depressed it will be awful on account i was really beginning to get into a work time. typical self destructive type.

on saturday i was on a marathon party to galleries and hit a record 15 or so including world house where i exchanged pleasantries with phil bruno and the museum of contemporary crafts where i got caught in a cocktail party, being accompanied by a staff member of said museum (he washes dishes in the lunch room) and then on to french dinner and then coloseum where is collosal (how do you like my spelling this morning) art usa 1959 and then half our party went to a girlie show as a fitting climax and i went home to take a nap to meet them later at cedar but i woke up eleven o’clock in the morning so i had only a slightly social day. since you are interested i will tell you that in all our travels through the art world of today the only complete show that was really good was jimmy rosati and that was very good and being somewhat unconscious at the moment i can’t think of anything else and it might be there was really nothing else except lewitan has drawings at rose fried and that was good, also his paintings at art usa where is also kaldis whose show opened a couple weeks ago (no liquor but he told everyone there would be so they’d go to opening) and i ran into dickinson looking through his half glasses and told him i didn’t get anything he recommended me for but i was on unemployment so he was glad for me. he says he is all well now and he certainly looked energetic as ever. there was a movie on calder and one on pollack, first very arty but nice, second really moving because it had him painting and it was so beautiful to watch. so rhythmic and it partially explains his spacing of ‘figures’ because it was a pace usually and an arm’s reach. there was also some sound track, obviously done after while watching movie, somewhat blurred but good because so simple. for me it was the best part of the whole messy exhibition. there are so many potted ferns and palms you can’t see the sculpture. which on the whole is a good thing.

so how’s greece. send me information (government) because that’s one place above all others i would really like to go to since i have always wanted to be an ancient greecian (urn?)

across the street there is what looks to be something like a drafting office and there is a big painting which looks somewhat like avery unless it is all a reflection and my eyes can’t be trusted this morning because my life was enlarged last evening by the aquisition through trade of one old tv set, very good condition (channel 13 comes in very well) for my only (practically) drawing from provincetown (ha!) the black and white four figures on a beach which i don’t like anymore because they look like they’re wearing underwear. anyway life will be even more graphic from now on…..

bobbie beach selling like hot cakes (dane and schiff both bought in trying to keep up with each other i guess) judy bought my head (the grey one you liked) and when she is through paying she will start in on robert, who as yet has not heard from fullbright although gugg said no and probably hasn’t written to you yet which i understand because if it wasn’t for this trap i wouldn’t write either because it is as painful for me to write in longhand as it is for other people to read it.

have you turned abstract yet? i haven’t yet picked up the accident [Lennart’s street scene] from eddie it being hard to synchronize with him but i presume you heard that he slightly chipped it (something fell on the edge or something) you must pardon my language repititions but you know how it is early in the morning on your first day at the awfice. he’s really creepy but i saw a painting of his at the march and it was quite good so i am willing to forgive him slightly but not such carelessness.

so what else i knu? i can’t think but will keep going anyway since my boss has not arrived yet which is one consolation and i will write to all my friends so it shouldn’t be a total loss.

comment on irma [Kachadoorian] noted and agreed with. true cavewoman type with hollywood star personality. how’d that? that came off the top of my head i ran out of staem also steam.

am taking a small leave of absence on account of boss walking in.

o o
__

pm and better colored

off the hook! since i told my boss straight about my horror at working he has employed another for next week so i am free again. and will be careful in future by bell!

tues. feb. 24, 1959

deres-

well the most exciting news today is that bb [Robert Beauchamp] sold 1500 worth to chrysler. i have not many details except he sold 6, 4 old (i got that information this morning from another lucky sold) because when they called last night they were both so loaded (having gone to c’s house) that i even thought, until this morning’s call that it was another bob. so fulbright, gugenheim or not, he goes to urop.

i have heard nothing from prix and since i never won anything before, excluding a game of poker, i may never see you again, for two years anyway. i even didn’t get a mcdowell.

the cedar gossip may be there but no one ever tells me anything. there was a dismal meeting at the club which i don’t think i am up to relating in anything like a complete description, but pat moderated (so to speak) and milton was a real crumb, not only vituperative, i.e., he called john (who was drunk to the tops of his ears and making comments from the john until summoned forth, like ‘what about 11th street?) a counterfeit among other things, but he was just dull, stupid nasty. also steve wheeler who has nothing to do with anything and so what he said was mostly just incredible anyway, fairfield porter and a young writer you don’t know who didn’t get to say much since it was mostly milton-steve wheeler and milton-john (who if you didn’t know is getting married next month) (just call me catalist). anyway it was about the worst (if not the) of any meetings within history and the jist of it seems to be they can’t (pat-milton) stand the dispersion of the old order and the infiltration of the ‘new’ which as you know is hardly new except in cases so rare i can’t even think of any off hand. you may not know but i am out of the march after an unpleasantness with ray who didn’t hang my drawing for the christmas show and i am gald to (I meant glad, i was galled) be since it was getting grim and anyway i’m retired. (when i say jist re pat-milton, i mean that’s my interpretation, they were trying to love everything) you may have noticed that i have hardly sead (how do you like my creative spelling today?) said a word about painting.

i have hardly anything to say.

it was nice to get the etruscan card, now please send me an etruscan, my beat boyfriend having returned to san francisco and things being rather dull.

i should send you new american literature which is becoming popular since otherwise you will still think alan ginsburg is the newest thing when you come back. does anything interesting happen in italy? wolf was at that mess the other night and said that an italian he knows thinks american painters don’t know how to live, so what? the whole bit is really (the art world, what used to be ‘it’ anyhow) awful. i went to an alex katz cocktail party and just layer upon layer of unmoving people (you know how narrow his place is) and i couldn’t see anyone and i mean anyone i wanted to speak to but that could be me but I don’t think so completely, it’s all so family and you know what they’re going to say anyway and this must make the fifteenth anyway or anyhow in this letter.

goodby any.

o o
i
x

give me a blow by blow description of the
academy and send more postcards, also i never got wedding pictures of you.

Page 2, unexpectedly

it occurs to me that i am too hasty in my prose style but that is because of typing. i think and there may be all kinds of things you would like to know which i don’t tell you because of my whirlwind pace and so i will sit here quietly and think of little unrelated bits that may interest you.

do you know i have neighbors? they are very nice and one had a fulbright (friend of irma and zubel‘s), lee bontecou, sculptor, and the other, willie (wilhemina) van ness is trying for one, she’s a painter. we thought at first they were less but have now decided they’re not anything if you know what i mean. i provide them with baths and coffee when it gets too cold down there (they haven’t fixed up too much) and they’ve lent me a record player and records which is a wonderful thing to have and i’m becoming cultured. they are cleaner, so you see it is a neighborly arrangmt.

if you have not seen the seventh seal you ought, it’s magnificent, saw it twice when it was at the art and now i am in my mediavel period (how do you like my spelling?) my latest self-portrait could roughly be me as joan of you know where.

i am devoting this year to the self portrait. (o,o) and why not?

my hair is growing as part of my more serious frame of mind now that i get older and older every year. i think i will remail 30 for a while, like 5 years.

i work in an architect’s office but he doesn’t subscribe to the better magazines.

aside from the one new gallery on 10th which opened after you left there are at least two on 3rd (bet. 9 and 10) and another on the way.

life is just a cher of bollies.

this is a joke. a private plane crashed and there was one survivor who was taken out by a rescue plane. when they got to the airport the reporters rushed up as he was getting out and started to ask him question. he made the sign of the cross so one reporter asked him if he was catholic, ‘No’, he said, ‘I’m a Jew.’ ‘But you just crossed yourself’, said the reporter. ‘Oh, that!’, ‘No, i was checking eyes, watch, testicles, cigarettes.’…..

i was also rejected by the n.y. psychoanalytic institute so you see i can’t win any kind of scholarship.

i work only 5 hours a day but so fall all that has resulted is that i sleep later.

discipline, where are you?

kaldis is finally going to have a show, same place where nakian was (didn’t see it, though), new place.

and so forth, i’ve done my best (or at least all i can at the moment) and will now read, brittania mews, being in a historical mood.

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a decadent count will do, failing an energetic etruscan ……..00