Paula Cooper

SP

It’s known that you moved around a lot in your childhood. Were you ever lonely?

PC

No, it made me very independent. My father was in the Navy, and it seemed that every time we moved somewhere, it was two weeks after school started. I’d enter the classroom, and everyone would gape at me. When I was five years old, we moved from Maine to Charleston, South Carolina. I started first grade at the girls’ school, Ashley Hall. They had a lower school and an upper school with boarding students. I talked my way into having lunch with the big girls.

SP

How did you manage that?

PC

Well, I manipulated people. [Laughs.] They even celebrated my birthday at lunch, which absolutely thrilled me. In Charleston, we lived on the perimeter of the school, and I made friends with the school’s gardener, a young Black man. He was the first Black person I’d ever seen, and he was my first friend in Charleston. As time went on, I realized that Black people had to sit in the back of the bus. They had to drink from separate fountains. I couldn’t understand that at all. I would frequently see movies being screened for the German prisoners and go to the commissary with my mother. The German prisoners, who were very young, also worked at the commissary. All these things as a kid—segregation, war, prisoners, all forming the background of my life.

SP

Since you were an only child, were you very close with your parents?

PC

I realized quite early that had I had a brother, I wouldn’t have had my own baseball mitt. My father would’ve been playing catch with a son. My father was more philosophical. My mother was more practical. But I definitely was more my father’s daughter—you know, that relationship between girls and fathers. I probably was jealous of my mother a bit. [Laughs.] My mother was great because she was the adventuresome one. If somebody said, “Let's go to Machu Picchu,” she’d say, “When are we leaving?”

SP

Do you feel like you inherited an adventuresome spirit from her?

PC

I’m not so adventurous. It’s life circumstances that made me so active, which is fortunate. My mother would roll up her sleeves and do anything. She painted. When I was in fifth grade, she was studying with an older woman painter and sometimes I would go with her. I was used to oil paint and rags. I was also my mother’s mother in certain ways. I remember wanting her to paint. She would have loved to have been an artist. I sensed that, and I loved that, and I was very supportive of that in her.

Eventually we lived on Long Island, when I was a bit older, and my parents would drive me to New York City on Saturdays to take ballet lessons with a Russian woman. Afterwards, I would hang out and watch the real dancers, the big girls. While we were in the city, we would see a foreign film and have lunch. It was an introduction to my grown-up life.

SP

You spent time in Europe as a teenager. Where did you go first?

PC

Before Europe, I went to a boarding school in the States. I did high school in three years because I knew I was going to Europe. I wanted to go to Wellesley after. When I was in boarding school, I had a great young English teacher. I remember reading Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp when it came out because of her. I read lots of French writers in translation. I never read English writers very much at all.

The first year in Europe, I went to Pierce College in Athens and had a fabulous art history teacher, a Greek woman who had been born in Turkey. She was a great admirer of Atatürk. This was in 1954, ’55. Although I only spent a year and two summers in Athens, I returned to Greece often throughout my life. I took my children every summer. Artist friends of mine would come. Jennifer Bartlett came and visited. Lynda and Elizabeth came one summer. Lynda, who is part Greek, has a house in Kastellorizo, where my husband and I would frequently visit her.

In my second year I went to the University of Maryland’s Munich campus, which was situated on an Army base. Germany, at this point, was still recuperating from the war. I frequented the Haus der Kunst, which had recently re-opened. I was seventeen when I saw Picasso’s Guernica, which was traveling in Germany. It’s really weird to me that I did that by myself. I didn’t go with friends and I didn’t know that much about contemporary or modern art.

After Munich, I went to Paris, where I was supposed to be going to the Sorbonne, but I didn’t go to my classes that much. I spent all my time in the Louvre and in galleries. That’s when I really became aware of and fascinated by modern and contemporary art. First, I lived with a family in the 16th arrondissement, on Avenue d’Iéna. I was staying at the home of the ex-French president’s sister-in-law. There were two German girls there, but I didn’t become friendly with them, even though we had meals together. I did not make friends in Paris, so I lived in the museums and galleries.

SP

It sounds like you had already been going to museums in Munich, but galleries really came into focus in Paris. Did you instantly have a feeling for the art you liked?

PC

I loved the Impressionists. I loved Manet. I could tell you exactly where all those paintings were in the room.

SP

When did the realization set in that you wanted to work with artists? Was it always there?

PC

I think it always was, but Paris really did it.

SP

Were you also around working artists in Paris?

PC

I returned by myself around 1963. I was getting divorced from my first husband. By that time, I had already worked in a gallery in New York, and I had a good friend in Paris named Zuka, a Russian painter. I met Joan Mitchell through her and became friendly with Joan. She was feisty and generous and our friendship grew through the years. At the time, she was with Jean-Paul Riopelle, a Canadian artist. He was making some sculptures, which was unusual for him, and he took me to his foundry one day.

When I was first in Paris, I saw Queen Elizabeth on her first official visit roll by on the Champs-Élysées, and I was very aware that Farah Diba was a student. The Suez Crisis was shocking: the United States siding with Egypt against France and England. People were hoarding coffee, toilet paper, and slashing American’s car tires. Also, it was the year of the Hungarian Crisis. A lot was happening in Europe. There were constant demonstrations. In the beginning, I lived on Avenue d’Iéna, which is off the Champs-Élysées and there were demonstrations practically everyday.

Then I moved to the other side of Paris and lived with Madame Faure, who was a total feminist. She impressed me greatly because she was so independent. I met her son and his American wife. Years later, it turned out that the American wife of Madame Faure’s son was the art dealer Patti Faure. Isn’t that a small world?

SP

Very. It sounds like you were preternaturally independent. You always, even as a young girl, went out on your own.

PC

I was alone a lot. I had friends who were in groups, but I never felt like I was part of a clique. I was always friendly with other people.

SP

It seems like you’re friends with many of the artists you represent.

PC

I have a lot of friends who are artists whom I don’t represent. John Baldessari was one of my best friends and I never represented him.

SP

After living with Madame Faure in Paris, where did you go?

PC

I went to Italy that summer. By that time, my parents were in Morocco. When I was living in Paris, I went to visit them in Casablanca, and I met this lovely Italian woman, a friend of theirs. Her family was from Lucca, Italy and they summered in Forte dei Marmi. She invited me to go and stay with them and help with their three kids. There was a very well-known Italian artist, Ardengo Soffici, who was in Forte dei Marmi. His son and I became friends, so I met Ardengo, which was thrilling. The fact that I knew who he was—he was so impressed. There was a famous nightclub there, La Capannina. Johnnie Ray came, who was famous for this song named “Cry.” So, I lived with this family and learned certain things about vegetables. [Laughs.] I remember having steamed vegetables with olive oil. Every time I steam vegetables now, I unconsciously remember that. And the family, many of whom were professionally involved with the opera, loved Elvis Presley. Boy, we have layered memories. It’s funny, the things that impress you or stick with you, little silly things like that.

SP

Sensory experiences, like the vegetables or the singer at the nightclub, can make the deepest impression.

PC

Also, Johnnie Ray at the nightclub and the opera family liking Elvis are social, cultural things of a period.

SP

It speaks to the broader culture, but also what shaped your sensibility.

PC

Then I realized I had a big decision to make. Would I stay in Europe or would I go back to the United States? I thought, If I don’t go back to the United States, I will never go back to the United States. I don’t know what it feels like to be American, even though I’m definitely American. I feel a great connection to other parts. I am so glad that I did not spend my adolescence in this country.

I made the decision to come back. I thought, or my parents thought, I should finish school. When I came back, I couldn’t go to Wellesley because I had dropped everything. Wellesley advised me to go to Goucher, a girls’ college in Towson, Maryland, outside of Baltimore. Ugh, did I hate it. When I came back from Europe, I was all alone, of course, and I stayed in New York for a week before I had to go to school, and I took the train down. I was in a taxi and we’re going through this ugly little concrete town. I asked the driver, “Well, when are we going to get to Towson?” He said, “This is it.” I said, “Oh no.” [Laughs.] I thought all the rules were so dumb and these girls would be frantic about their grades. But the professor of Romance Languages was outstanding. However, the art history courses? Jesus, I’m looking at slides of all these paintings I’ve seen. I spent a lot of time at the Baltimore Museum. Museums saved me all the time. So I left school.

I went to New York not knowing how to do anything and wanting to work for a gallery. I hardly knew anyone, but through a Swiss friend who was here, I was introduced to a nice group of Europeans. My Swiss friend lived on Commerce Street. At the entrance, there’s an apartment there and an apartment there [Gestures left and right.] My friend lives here. There's a photographer who lives here. I go to lots of my friend’s parties, meet the photographer next door, and the photographer was Peter Moore, the most broadly important documentarian of the burgeoning performance art of the 1970s and ’80s. We now represent Peter Moore’s estate. Isn’t that weird? After having met him at these parties and going into his studio and seeing his work before I even worked in a gallery. I mean, it’s like meeting Patti Faure. I had no idea she was that same person who was dating Madame Faure’s son.

SP

It’s challenging to make meaning out of coincidences like that. Where did you live when you first came to New York?

PC

23 East 93rd Street on the first floor, front apartment. Every morning the horses would go down our block. I remember taking the bus down Fifth Avenue and observing the progressive construction of the Guggenheim. I had a period of precarious living situations. I lived in the West Village in the apartment of a German aristocrat. Then I lived with friends, Francois and Cynthia, who were keeping an alligator for their French journalist friend, who was in southeast Asia. The alligator was in a pen with water in the living room. I slept on the couch next to it. It would move and you’d hear the scraping.

I can’t even think of all the jobs I had when I first got to New York. How did I do all of that in such a short time? One of the most fun and interesting times was when I worked for the Japan Trade Center. I was a switchboard operator at Chanel. I promised I’d stay a year. The man who ran it was a very tall man, who obviously spoke perfect French, and was a great connoisseur of wines. People like Aly Khan and Jean Seberg would come in.

Then I worked part-time in a gallery that dealt with pre-Columbian art owned by a Frenchman. I knew nothing about pre-Columbian art. I also had a friend who was an independent dealer in pre-Columbian art. Marian Goodman had a big crush on him. That’s how I met Marian, who was recently divorced with two children.

SP

When and how did you start working at World House Galleries?

PC

So my close friend Karin Köhn, who was German, had worked there and she introduced me. Philip Bruno was the chief salesperson at the gallery and departing. When I started, Philip gave me a lesson in dealing with clients, even though I wasn’t hired to deal with clients. But you should always know everything, and in those days, galleries were small. World House was in the Carlyle Hotel and was designed by Friedrich Kiesler of Kiesler and Bartos. The gallery had partial Endless House elements. We showed Giacometti, Max Ernst, Fautrier, all Europeans. I learned everything there. When I set my gallery up, I kept my records the same way they did. When you work in a gallery you’re fortunate: you’re so intimate with the art. You pick it up, you move it, you look at it all day. If people only realized how lucky they are. It’s such a pure experience.

SP

Did you handle the art at World House?

PC

It’s not that I was handling the art, but it wasn’t off limits. That’s what you did. That’s what you lived for. That’s what you were there for: the opportunity to live with the work of art and look at it for so long. Look at it, look away from it, not look at it, look at it when you want to or you’re ready to. And there were great artists. Oh god, I just adored Giacometti. To live with Fautrier, Dubuffet, Ernst, I learned a lot. The first show I ever installed and was responsible for was a Morandi show. Henry Geldzahler, who was the Met’s 20th-century curator at the time, would stop by World House on his way to the museum. That was important to me because he’d tell me about what was going on in the New York contemporary art world, about ‘happenings’ and Claes Oldenburg. Castelli was right across the street. Perls Gallery was right there. Then I got married and lived in a house across from Hunter College. I turned the downstairs into a gallery because I was told I couldn’t work.

SP

I heard a strange story about the Walter De Maria show at that first gallery. Can you tell me about it?

PC

This was at my first home gallery on 69th Street. You had to walk through these long, wooden columns, and then you walked through a wooden arch. In the gallery, on either side, there were two big drawings, one in a gold frame and one in a silver frame. The frames were made of wood painted to look like gold and silver. I’d say there were maybe ten people at the opening. La Monte Young, Marian, Bob Whitman, and Simone Forti, and a couple of other people. All of a sudden, without anyone saying anything, it happened very spontaneously, everyone stopped talking and sat down on the perimeter of the room and sat there quietly for what seemed like quite a long time. That was the magic of Walter. 

SP

It does sound magical.

PC

After that marriage ended, I remarried and opened Paula Cooper Gallery. I had one child, Nicholas, and was pregnant with a second when I opened the gallery. It was October and Lucas was born in April. How crazy was I?

SP

At that moment, did it feel crazy?

PC

No, I wanted to do it then. I had no backers. I had asked for $500. The bank gave me a loan of $3,000, though I had $1,400 from the sale of a Mark di Suvero sculpture. I never borrowed a penny for the gallery and I never took any money of support from anyone else. I don’t believe in borrowing money. [Laughs.]

Now, many women are writing memoirs about having children. We just did what we had to do or wanted to do and didn’t make a big deal out of it. Now, I’m thinking, Wow, what I did was really fantastic.

Once, a collector from Chagrin Falls, Ohio named Frank Porter, who acquired work by young artists like Christopher Wilmarth and Alan Shields, came to the gallery late. I had to get home because the lady who took care of my babies left at a certain hour. I took him home with me. I gave him a drink, and I fed Nick and Lucas, who was in a high chair, and we chatted between bites.

SP

For you, opening a gallery and having a family didn’t necessarily oppose each other.

PC

Everything happens at the same time. You’re at your strongest point, at the time of your greatest strength and energy, at the time of childbearing. I was not young—I was 29. But I couldn’t do everything. You can’t have a husband, children, and a business. It’s a bit much. In those days, men didn’t do anything to help. My husband never even fed his children once. This is a terrible thing to say, but the man had to go.

SP

Did the women you worked with also have children?

PC

There were very few women I knew who had children. Elizabeth Murray was the only one. At the time, Jennifer Bartlett didn’t have children. Lynda Benglis didn’t have children, Jackie Winsor didn’t have children. They weren’t interested in that. They wanted to only make their art and be artists.

SP

Was it ever an isolating experience to be a mother and also run the gallery?

PC

No. I was very curious about having my body do everything that it could do.

SP

Did having children change your way of working?

PC

I had to support my children. So it made me more of a business woman than I would have been. I’ve always said I was a better father than I was a mother. [Laughs.] But I had to support all of us, and I did.

SP

You’re known for your taste. How did you develop your taste? And how would you define your taste in art?

PC

I know that space is very, very important to me. Physical space and visual space. I think that’s a big part of the way I see.

SP

You mean you appreciate how art interacts with space?

PC

Or how they are a part of space. It’s not about how art interacts with space. Art becomes a factor in space. When I install art, I will want to move something that’s a fraction of an inch—and it’s important.

SP

Paula Cooper Gallery opened in ’68. The anti-war and feminist movements were at their peak then.

PC

It was the time when women shockingly threw tampons all around the Whitney at the opening.

SP

And the first show at your gallery was a political statement against the Vietnam War.

PC

That show was organized by Lucy Lippard and Bob Huot. The political end of it was organized by Ron Wolin. The idea was that it didn’t matter what kind of work we showed. It didn’t have to be figurative work. These were non-objective artists who were against the war and that could make a stronger statement. That was Lucy’s thinking. They were all artists whom I greatly respect: Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt.

SP

It’s a crazy list of people.

PC

Now they are. At the time, they were only known in the art world and not beyond.

SP

What has it been like watching these people become absorbed into an art-historical narrative?

PC

I sometimes can be influenced by being impressed, but I’m not that impressed by things like that. I don’t think that way.

SP

What impresses you about an artist today?

PC

The uniqueness of an artist. For example, Cynthia Hawkins, a mature painter. Her color is so fresh. It comes almost off the canvas. It’s her own kind of liveliness.

SP

You’ve been friends with Lynda Benglis for a really long time. What was it like watching her continue to make work over her life, as a friend and someone who worked with her?

PC

She just kept so focused, so determined, and so obsessed. I’ve known her for so long and our lives have intertwined. She’s just done what she’s done. It’s kind of thrilling that she’s so successful.

I’m very happy for her. It’s also been very sad lately with so many people dying. A whole generation is disappearing. With Jackie Winsor, it was so sudden. I worked with her all her life. She was not interested in fame and fortune. She was very unusual and genuinely apart.

SP

People are so susceptible to fame and fortune.

PC

It’s about money, money, money. It’s horrible.

SP

You watched the art world become co-opted by capital.

PC

Everything has been co-opted by capital. In the art world, there’s always a fence you’re on: this side is money and this side is art. The luxury or cultural superiority part has always existed. But now everything is about money.

SP

How has the gallery dealt with this fence during your career?

PC

I think that we have maintained what we believe in. Our exhibitions are very clear about what we value. It’s a matter of wanting to help people to see, I don’t want to say educate, but we want to help them see and understand, which is good for the artists. The artists need people to understand their work or to appreciate it. I would say probably 95% of the people who see our shows are not collectors. They’re students or normal people who love art. It’s also a benign entertainment for some people to go around on a Saturday and look at shows.

SP

With your gallery, you also have always had performances, concerts, readings of Gertrude Stein’s The Americans. Obviously, that’s not about selling art, it's something beyond that.

PC

We are lucky. We have a good space and there are other arts which are in need of space.

SP

That’s a very pragmatic explanation.

PC

One thing I must say: I think visual artists are more open to other disciplines. Most visual artists read a lot. They listen to music. They attend films and dance performances, whereas not as many people in other fields seem to be as knowledgeable or interested in other disciplines. Except, perhaps more recently, writers.

SP

How did you decide to open 192 Books? And how do you see the gallery relating to the bookstore?

PC

Oh, my husband Jack—I never called him my husband when he was alive, isn’t that funny?—his life was publishing and my life was art. We did exactly the same thing. He was supporting, pushing, and bringing writers to the world. We had much the same attitudes about things, and that’s why we got along so well. We had this little building and bookstores were closing. Like so many of the things we did, it seemed easy to make the decision and do it. [Laughs.] It didn’t seem like a lot of talk or Sturm und Drang. He knew how to set up a bookstore. I did art books and fiction. At the time, good grief, there wasn’t so much in translation, and 192 became a place to find literature in translation. Two of the first books I remember very well were by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo and by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. Writers that I had loved back then, like Natalia Ginzburg and Thomas Bernhard, have become popular again. The Japanese writers Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata have been pretty constant, in terms of popularity. Now, there is a huge wealth of books in translation from every part of the world.

SP

Do you see a relation in how artists are remembered in the art world versus writers in the literary world?

PC

Well, the thing with books is that they’re usually accessible, whereas art is not. If museums, public institutions, don’t show works, how are you going to see things? Then, because it’s not viewable, people will forget it, cease to write about it, talk about it, remember it.

SP

Christian Marclay’s The Clock is being shown at MoMA after being at the gallery fourteen years ago.

PC

In 2010, there were people in line to the end of the block.

SP

Why do you think it reached so many people?

PC

It’s strange because it is real time. If you’re watching it at 10 o’clock at night, it’s 10 o’clock at night. It’s really at the very moment that you’re living in this time. In Ben Lerner’s 10:04, he describes going to see The Clock. It’s written in stanzas, not chapters, and you can tell he was inspired by the show.

SP

The gallery just opened a pop-up show in Shanghai. What was the gallery’s first venture outside of New York?

PC

In the ’70s, I went to Los Angeles. Riko Mizuno had a very well-known gallery, which was a house at 699 La Cienega, between Melrose Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, which she turned into a gallery and also lived in. She used the living room and the whole main part of the downstairs as the gallery. The kitchen was her office, and she slept upstairs. Robert Irwin designed it. There were no electric lights and there was a little terrace outside. I took the space for Paula Cooper because there were lots of New York artists who were teaching at CalArts and going to L.A. There was a phony sort of competition between New York and L.A., promoted foolishly by L.A. At the time, unlike today, there was little comparison. I had never been to L.A. in my life. Coming from the East Coast, you tend to go to Europe rather than going west. Anyway, I went. I met her at noon. She put a bottle of white wine on the kitchen table. I was wearing a skirt and high heels, and I never dressed like that in New York. Though people had warned me that Riko might be unreliable, she was impeccable, did everything that she promised. But I didn’t quite know how to balance a gallery in L.A. and New York. I had no one to work in L.A. The gallery had about four people working in New York and I had two children aged five and seven. At the time, I called my friend, Helen Tworkov, on a Friday night. I said, “Helen, are you doing anything now?” She said, “Not much.” I said, “Oh, would you like to go to L.A. for six weeks?” She said, “Oh, I don’t know. Let me call you back.” She flew out the next Monday. She lived in the house and took care of the gallery. She’s the daughter of Jack Tworkov, so the art world was certainly not foreign. But how we lived. [Laughs.]

In L.A., we showed Lynda Benglis, who was living out there at the time. Elizabeth Murray, Jonathan Borofsky, and Baldessari were teaching at CalArts. And Baldessari was a good friend. I would go out every other week and I would take one child with me at a time. I also exchanged galleries with Yvon Lambert in 1979 and 1980. I moved to Paris for six weeks with my two sons, ages ten and twelve. And Yvon presented an exhibition at my space in New York.

SP

Is there a show that the gallery has done that’s stood out to you or you felt very personally moved by?

PC

Joel Shapiro, Bob Grosvenor, Jonathan Borofsky, Lynda Benglis, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Jennifer Bartlett’s Rhapsody. Some group shows have been really important, too. Seeing work in relation to other work makes you see things that you wouldn’t ordinarily see. I’m a great believer in seeing things many times. A curator was doing a show somewhere and she wanted a piece. I suggested something and she said, “Oh, but that was shown.” I said, “You know, you can see something more than once.”

SP

There’s so much emphasis placed on newness or the next big thing. Sometimes it’s nice to return and have a durational experience with a piece of work.

PC

I remember I was at MoMA looking at a group of early Miró paintings with Bill Rubin, who had installed them. He was looking at this one painting and he got all excited and said, “Oh, I never noticed that before.” [Laughs.]

SP

Your gallery's program has been associated with the term minimalism. What does this term mean to you, if it means anything?

PC

It’s a very, very, very limited category of work. For Carl Andre and Donald Judd to be lumped under the same category is crazy. Carl Andre is so romantic and poetic. Don is about object-ness, about an object put into the world. It’s very insistent on itself. But Carl’s work is so poetic. I mean, you could look at a little small piece and it can become so vast and grand. And Sol LeWitt, you could take one little thing and say that’s minimalist, but he was so open and creative, always exploring and continuing with ideas. He was never afraid.

SP

It seems like you see all the artists you’ve worked with as within their own world.

PC

Of course. They’re all singular. Cecily Brown is an extraordinary painter and totally unique. Not an exceptional woman artist. But an exceptional artist. I never wanted the women I worked with to be in women shows, for example. I never cooperated much with those women shows.

SP

What about that do you object to?

PC

Segregating artists like that. Artists are artists—above and beyond anything else.

SP

I want to go back to the question of taste and how you conceive of your own taste.

PC

Judgment implies experience and comparison, whereas taste is innate. I believe in that a lot. I mean, I think I have good taste in writing. And how could I have that? When I first read Yasunari Kawabata, it was so beautiful in translation that I thought it must be sublime in the original Japanese.

SP

You say taste is this innate thing, but do you think your taste has changed as you’ve gone through your life? 

PC

Not that much. You learn and see, but my taste hasn’t changed from its basic quality. I think the same with writing. I was thinking about the relationship between space in writing and words, but also visual space and physical structure. My taste in writing is very much like my taste in visual arts: things that are occupying space in an ineffable way. It’s this thing that’s hard to really get to.