From the Archives: Letter from Sue Thurman to Allan Frumkin, requesting the loan of Robert Hudson’s Diamond Back for the ICA Boston’s presentation of Selz’s Funk exhibition, May 26, 1967.
Without a doubt, Peter Selz’s 1967 exhibition, Funk at the University of California Berkeley, Art Museum made waves. It was an ambitious, era-defining group show by the recent California transplant (by way of the Museum of Modern Art, New York), seeking to set the tone for his tenure at the museum going forward. It was a paradigm shift by design: the artists were asked to fill out questionnaires about the “Funkiness” of their work, which were then published in the exhibition catalogue. Their responses are illuminating, few chose to answer outright and many openly question the premise of the exhibition. This sentiment was echoed in reviews at the time, none more critical than James Monte’s in Artforum that summer, subtitled “new images of modern funk monsters” - referencing other recent genre-defining exhibitions, including New Images of Man curated by none other than Selz at MoMA in 1959. In his lengthy review, Monte quotes several artists who take umbrage with Selz, calling his funk “fake” (Bruce Conner), questioning “why I’m in the show” (Bob Anderson) and suggesting that Selz should have included “genuinely funky work” (Joan Brown). Most agreed that the term ‘Funk’ was actually “Funky” and referred to artists working in the ’50s, not the ‘60s, as was most of the work Selz included. Moreover, many of the artists who epitomized the “Funky” style, such as Wally Hedrick, were omitted. Selz’s Funk was a “cleaned-up” version of a freer, messier art that came before it, as Fred Martin notes, which often used crude, ephemeral materials, and was generally seen as outrageous.
Even so, to many outside the milieu of the Bay Area art scene, the work in Selz’s exhibition WAS seen as outrageous, making it all the more surprising that its only other venue was at the ICA Boston. As this loan request from the director of the ICA, Sue Thurman, outlines, Selz never had any intention of the exhibition traveling beyond Berkeley; and the ICA certainly went to some lengths to ensure they could replicate the exhibition in Boston. If Thurman’s intention in bringing Funk to Boston was to shock the public, she succeeded. The show garnered a good amount of attention in the press, most of it in a sensationalist vein. Edgar Driscoll’s review in the Boston Globe ran with the headline: “‘Funk Art is Punk Art,’ Splutters One Boston Matron” and ended with: “The shortest explanation of all for most of Funk is "Ugh!” Words such as “vulgar” and “bizarre” appear frequently to describe the works, ironically echoing many of the artists’ gripes with Selz’s supposed omissions in his re-defining of Funk. One letter to the Globe in response to the review by a self-described “disenchanted ‘gallery-goer’” suggests that future such exhibitions could be sourced by the department of sanitation. Yet despite the persistent disagreements on what Funk actually was – regardless of its value – the common refrain from both supporters and detractors of the style converged on one point: “When you see it, you know it.”
Letter from Sue Thurman to Allan Frumkin, requesting the loan of Robert Hudson’s Diamond Back for the ICA Boston’s presentation of Selz’s Funk exhibition, May 26, 1967.
Image courtesy of the George Adams Gallery Archives.
Without a doubt, Peter Selz’s 1967 exhibition, Funk at the University of California Berkeley, Art Museum made waves. It was an ambitious, era-defining group show by the recent California transplant (by way of the Museum of Modern Art, New York), seeking to set the tone for his tenure at the museum going forward. It was a paradigm-shift by design: the artists were asked to fill out questionnaires about the 'Funkiness' of their work, which were then published in the exhibition catalogue. Their responses are illuminating, few chose to answer outright and many openly question the premise of the exhibition. This sentiment was echoed in reviews at the time, none more critical than James Monte’s in Artforum that summer, subtitled “new images of modern funk monsters” - referencing other recent genre-defining exhibitions, including New Images of Man curated by none other than Selz at MoMA in 1959. In his lengthy review, Monte quotes several artists who take umbrage with Selz, calling his funk “fake” (Bruce Conner), questioning “why I’m in the show” (Bob Anderson) and suggesting that Selz should have included “genuinely funky work” (Joan Brown). Most agreed that the term 'Funk' was actually 'Funky' and referred to artists working in the ’50s, not the ‘60s, as was most of the work Selz included. Moreover, many of the artists who epitomized the 'Funky' style, such as Wally Hedrick, were omitted. Selz’s Funk was a “cleaned-up” version of a freer, messier art that came before it, as Fred Martin notes, which often used crude, ephemeral materials, and was generally seen as outrageous.
Even so, to many outside the milieu of the Bay Area art scene, the work in Selz’s exhibition WAS seen as outrageous, making it all the more surprising that its only other venue was at the ICA Boston. As this loan request from the director of the ICA, Sue Thurman, outlines, Selz never had any intention of the exhibition traveling beyond Berkeley; and the ICA certainly went to some lengths to ensure they could replicate the exhibition in Boston. If Thurman’s intention in bringing Funk to Boston was to shock the public, she succeeded. The show garnered a good amount of attention in the press, most of it in a sensationalist vein. Edgar Driscoll’s review in the Boston Globe ran with the headline: “‘Funk Art is Punk Art,’ Splutters One Boston Matron” and ended with: “The shortest explanation of all for most of Funk is 'Ugh!'” Words such as “vulgar” and “bizarre” appear frequently to describe the works, ironically echoing many of the artists’ gripes with Selz’s supposed omissions in his re-defining of Funk. One letter to the Globe in response to the review by a self-described “disenchanted ‘gallery-goer’” suggests that future such exhibitions could be sourced by the department of sanitation. Yet despite the persistent disagreements on what Funk actually was – regardless of its value – the common refrain from both supporters and detractors of the style converged on one point: “When you see it, you know it.”