Question:
How did you happen to go to Hofmann’s school?

Lillian Orlowsky:
Well, I was on the WPA in 1937 on the mural and then the easel division and we used to wait for our pay every week at 110 King Street. And the artists would get together and talk and they spoke about the exhibitions and the different teachers.

Hofmann wasn’t here that long but still, his name popped up and a lot of them had adverse feeling about him. Some of them were favorable. I also read the Primer of Modern Art by Sheldon Cheney, which had a sentence there about Hofmann and his school. I thought Hofmann was still in Germany, but at that time he was at 52 West Ninth Street. And I went there and I liked what saw. I knew Bill Freed and I said to him, you know, I think you should come up there and take a look. You’re really going to like what you see. And he said he’s through with schools, he’s had it and so forth. Anyway, he came up and he said, “I’m only gonna go for a month.” Well, we know what happened. He never left. So that’s how I heard about Hofmann. But Hofmann never had a commendable reputation. There was some kind of resentment against modern art, especially amongst the social realists and the representational painters. And we had to remember that in those days, we didn’t have many galleries or many books or many exhibitions about modern painting in the late 1930s. There were very few modern painters, American modern painters. And the literature was few and far between regarding modern painting.

Question:
Why were you drawn to it?

LO:
Well, I was drawn to it in a rather peculiar way because when I studied, I started to study at the Educational Alliance and there was a young lady there that came from Europe. And she did some very strange drawings, much different than the kind of drawings we did- the very academic stuff at the Educational Alliance. She happened to be Louise Nevelson.

Question:
Once you got to the Hofmann school-

LO:
That was a real real problem because I had to learn how to see nature differently. I had to really begin to see, whereas before I just imitated. I tried to imitate rather than try to experience what I see and transform it on a two-dimensional plane, this three dimensionality. Hofmann was so well-versed in Cubism, and Cubism was a major factor to be able to see the space and the volume and planes, and also take into consideration the positive and the negative space, which we never did before in relation to the picture plane. It presented a complete reorientation of thinking and seeing and experiencing. A reality was transformed to a new reality on the picture plane, so the appearance was rather different than what I thought I saw.

Question:
Did it take a long time to get used to?

LO:
I’m still trying. It’s really a lifetime, because we experience nature differently each time. I work from nature still to this day. Hofmann would not look at a work- he would look at it, but he would not comment or criticize work outside of the still life- of the object you were working from. So when I would bring in something that I did in my studio, he would say, “Where is the subject?” and I would say, “Back there.” So he would say, “Ah, yes. Show me the one that is done from the object.” Some of his students came in as academics and became abstract, and some of them came in abstract and remained abstract.

The wonderful thing about Hofmann was that he criticized in relation to your work and your ability, and just how far you could go. It was not a program that 1,2,3- we followed a course.

Question:
What were some of the pros and cons that you were hearing about the Hofmann School, and why was it controversial?

LO:
The Hofmann School was controversial in the sense that nobody felt that abstract painting could be taught. Anybody could do it. Nobody was aware of the fact that there is a formal background. Abstract painting does have certain basic principles that you have to be aware of, but the general feeling was that it wasn’t necessary because anybody can paint in the abstract. The time when I was at the Hofmann School, abstract painting was not accepted. It was mostly representational art that was accepted: the Ashcan School, the Hudson School. Even Picasso and Cezanne were not accepted that much.

Question:
How many years were you at the school?

LO:
Well, I was there around 10 years but I would say a lifetime. You know, I don’t know how to identify time. I still feel like a student. I still work with the ideas. I think we all do.

Question:
Who were the students that were there at the same time as you?

LO:
Oh, Bob De Niro was there, Lee Krasner was there… I looked up to Lee. When she came in, I thought she was a master. She really did some work and I was hoping some day I’d be just as good. There were quite a number of students there at the school,

Question:
What was Robert De Niro like in those days?

LO:
Very dedicated. Very emotional. Typical bohemian in those days. Hard worker. We were together in Provincetown. His studio was just across the way from mine. Virginia Admiral married Bob De Niro. They came up with the little Bob with their carriage, you know, to the Hofmann School. I remember Virginia coming over to Hofmann while he was washing his hands and saying, “We would like you to be his godfather.” And Hofmann chuckled while he was washing his hands and he would say, “How much will it cost me?” She said, “No, nothing. We just want you as a godfather.” Whether he did or not, I don’t know. But I thought that was interesting.

Question:
Were you there when he said he thought Bob De Niro was one of his best students?

LO:
Whether he said it or not, I don’t know. Because he said all his students are good. One of the things I do quote that he said was when he was in Berkeley teaching and he had to grade his students. Hofmann marked “E” for all his students, and the chairman came down and said, “Professor Hofmann, we know you’re a great teacher, we know you have great students. But not everybody merits ‘E’ for excellence.” And Hofmann said, “They merit ‘E’ for effort.”

Question:
You went to school both in Provincetown and New York.

LO:
Yes, but basically in New York. I did attend as many critiques as I could when I was in Provincetown. I loved to watch him criticize. To see how he transformed somebody’s work .

Question:
Would you give me an example of a Hofmann criticism?

LO:
Well, you can’t say how Hofmann criticized because everything was in relation to the kind of work the person does. Sometimes Hofmann would say, “I like this not so very much.” See, the first part you say, oh, gee isn’t that great and then all of a sudden it finishes with “not so very much.” And then Hofmann would make little drawings on somebody’s work and you see how he transformed those little drawings to show where the student’s work fell short or could have expanded or expressed it in a greater degree.

Sometimes Hofmann would tear the drawing into different segments and then redistribute these different elements- the head in one place, the figure in another. And then suddenly you see that there was another approach to the work. It would all come together and you couldn’t realize how Hofmann was able to create this magnanimous figure from what you did. The one thing I know is that you always had to have a box of charcoal, fine charcoal, a good new kneaded eraser, and chamois and extra paper because when Hofmann was through, you had none of the above. He used up the charcoal, the kneaded eraser was gone.

In Hofmann’s view, black was a color, white was a color and gray was a color. So all of these were an integral part of the drawing that you were working on. Charcoal drawing is really like a painting in black and white and gray.

Question:
But you’re talking about someone whose paintings are filled with color and color motivates him…

LO:
Well, that’s why Hofmann was able to use the color. Because he didn’t think in terms of dark and light but he thought in relation to color. And it was color light that he was thinking of. So he transformed it.

You don’t experience in Hofmann’s paintings an element like a photograph which is light and dark vanishing. But you feel an experience that each color has a life of its own and each color can go back and can go forward, both ways. Whereas, the academic point of view was that dark was a shadow. Well, the dark could be light if you’re using it as a color. So it depends what the relationships are to each other. Hofmann’s colors move back and forth, which we call a “plastic relationship” of the picture plane. They kind of revolve and rotate around the surface. You don’t feel that anything sticks to the surface. It’s always moving.

Question:
Did you wee Jackson Pollock’s painting at that time?

LO:
Yes, He exhibited his work. I think the first time we saw Jackson Pollock’s work was at Art of This Century. I think Hofmann had a show there in 1944, as did Motherwell. I remember that one of the last shows that Jackson Pollock had, with the drip paintings, he was very successful. But when he started to change his concept and to move away from drip, he complained to Freed that he couldn’t sell. The gallery people wanted him to go back to dripping. And he was very unhappy about that. Soon after that, he crashed his car and was killed. He was very unhappy about the fact that the gallery wanted to control his work and that the critics were very unkind to him in his change of work.

Question:
Did you see a relationship between Hofmann’s paintings and Pollock’s? Some people have said that Hofmann dripped first and that Pollock saw those paintings.

LO:
I had a watercolor of Hofmann’s in 1944 that was drip. That’s way before Pollock ever dripped. But I think it’s ridiculous to question whether Hofmann dripped or didn’t drip or whether Pollock dripped or didn’t drip; you’re talking about a concept. And dripping is only a means. It is not the painting; it is not the creative process. It’s a technical approach and I don’t consider that an important issue to work with. Is the painting pictorially satisfactory? Has it made a contribution to whatever you’re trying to do?

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