WPI Oral History: Allan Rubin and Candy Spilner on Tom Wesselmann

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The WPI Oral Histories

Wildenstein Plattner Institute

25 episodes

17 hours ago

The WPI Oral Histories provide unprecedented firsthand accounts from art historians, archivists, gallerists, and others with close connections to WPI’s research projects. Issued in installments, each oral history will complement the WPI’s unique material. The Wildenstein Plattner Institute Inc. is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the study of art and to fostering the accessibility, cataloguing, and digitization of archival materials that support critical research in the field. Visit www.wpi.art for more information.

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WPI Oral History: Allan Rubin and Candy Spilner on Tom Wesselmann

The WPI Oral Histories

1 hour 32 minutes 26 seconds

2 years ago

WPI Oral History: Allan Rubin and Candy Spilner on Tom Wesselmann

Allan Rubin and Candy Spilner were studio assistants to Tom Wesselmann between the late 1970s and early 2000s. Both accomplished artists in their own careers separate from Wesselmann, the two met at Cooper Union in 1969 and have been a couple ever since. Their interview delves into many different aspects of labor in a studio setting: balancing one’s own creative aspirations with the necessities of financing them, fabricating work for another artist, the place of ego within art, and maintaining boundaries between one’s own artistic practice and their employer’s, among others. Highlights include descriptions of daily studio life in the 1980s, detailed accounts of working in the various mediums Wesselmann experimented with over the course of his career, and memories of traveling to accompany and install international Wesselmann exhibitions.

KEYWORDS: studio assistants, Great American Nudes, Cooper Union, Janis Gallery, Green Gallery, Standing Still Lifes, Monica Serra, Jeffrey Sturges, printmaking, laser cuts, three-dimensional sculpture, recordkeeping practices, ledger books, Ivan Karp, Jacques Kaplan