美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Old In Art School': An MFA Inspires A Memoir Of Age

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

At the age of 64, when some people would look at brochures for retirement¹ cruises, Nell Irvin Painter, the acclaimed² Princeton historian and writer, decided³ to go to art school - not just an adult extension course, but the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers to get a new bachelor's degree, then the famous Rhode Island School of Design for her MFA.

She is now a real-life, income-producing professional artist, too, and has written a memoir⁴ in her 70s about going to art school with students a third her age and how art school changed her view of what she thought she already knew. Nell Painter, who is also a Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton, joins us now from the studios of WBGO in Newark. Thanks so much for being with us.

NELL IRVIN PAINTER: Well, it's really my pleasure. I'm a big fan of public radio - have been forever.

SIMON: Well, thank you. We're big fans of yours.

PAINTER: Aw, thanks.

SIMON: Why wasn't just taking an Internet art course, let's say at Trump⁶ University, good enough for you?

PAINTER: (Laughter) You're talking to somebody from the New York area, here (laughter). Let's say, why not take a class at the Newark Museum? Well, I did. I tried taking a pastel class, but I found that I needed to do a different kind of art. You can call it contemporary art, if you wish. I didn't know what to call it at the time. But I knew that I wanted people to be able to look at my work for a long time and then discover what they were seeing - and what they were seeing didn't have to be what I had put in the work.

SIMON: Let me ask you about art school. The way artists look is something that you noticed.

PAINTER: Oh, yes. Well, personal beauty and ugliness have been an interest of mine for a long time, and how people look at other people. Self-fashioning - Sojourner⁷ Truth got me into it because she was very conscious of her self-fashioning. But at any rate, I had straightened my hair in art school. Nobody told me to straight - I mean, I have been wearing my hair natural, like, forever. And I'm wearing my hair natural right now. But...

SIMON: You're a child of the Age of Aquarius?

PAINTER: I'm older than the Age of Aquarius (laughter). I'm the age of Black Power and "Africa Must Unite." But at any rate, so I straightened my hair because I could kind of just feel, in art school and that world, my natural hair seemed kind of 20th century. It was like it was akin⁵ to my great handicap, which was my 20th century eyes. I really had to bring my eyes into the 21st century, which was a long-running process that is still going on. So I changed, and the way I look changed.

SIMON: You had hoped that art school would be an atmosphere that somehow transcended⁸ racism⁹, sexism, ageism.

PAINTER: (Laughter) Yeah.

SIMON: Well, that's why I ask. What did you discover?

PAINTER: Yeah, how innocent can you get? And for a little while, it did until it didn't. I think it's hard for a lot of Americans to face up to the fact that the culture we live in is inherently racist¹⁰ and sexist and ageist. You know, it always comes as a kind of nasty surprise. And it's silly of me to say it, but it came as a nasty surprise to me. I should know better. But then again, if I hadn't been surprised, that would've made me kind of a cynic, and I'm not a cynic.

SIMON: What happened?

PAINTER: The first thing that happened was I got put in one of those situations. Now, the situation today is a white woman on her phone calling the police because some black people are living or just being. So I went to the printmaking studio, and the little...

SIMON: This was at night, as I recall the story.

PAINTER: Yeah. Yeah, it was at night. And the place was empty. And the little monitor asked me if I was taking a class. It was something - it was a kind of obstacle that I recognize, and many other people of color will recognize, which says, explain or justify¹¹ why you are here. And it really annoyed me. And then once the scales fell from my eyes and I returned to my society, it seemed quite trivial. But it made a difference at the moment.

SIMON: How did art school and painting and making art and your experience as a historian all kind of come together to make you view the human figure differently, and how we represent and understand the human figure?

PAINTER: It hasn't come together finally. There's no end to this, and it changes over time. My relationship with history, as I used to write it, and as I sometimes use it in my work, that was something that took several years, actually, for me to feel comfortable with.

And as I continue to wrestle¹² with that and to deal with it visually, it's that I can do whatever I want with the figure. I can do whatever I want with history. As a historian, I had to be faithful to the archive. And I felt that when I was writing history, that what I was saying needed to stand for larger truths. I don't necessarily feel that way now. I hesitate there because 2017 changed my relationship with my times in my art.

SIMON: What would you tell people who think maybe they'd like to try a second serious career, but, you know, it's just complicated. It's time-consuming. It's a risk.

PAINTER: Expensive (laughter).

SIMON: Yeah.

PAINTER: Yes. I would say, first of all, how much can you tolerate? How much can you afford, in terms of money, in terms of time and in terms of energy? How's your health, for instance? Can you stand psychologically being totally ignored? (Laughter) So those are questions to ask, but they're so easy to answer.

And there's so many ways to do new things. You don't have to do it whole-hog like I did. There are so many ways. Yes, you can do it. But also know it can be very sobering because being old in our society, it's not for sissies.

SIMON: Nell Painter, her book "Old In Art School: A Memoir Of Starting Over," thanks so much for being with us.

PAINTER: You're very welcome. I've enjoyed talking with you.

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