LS: I am here today on Saturday April 10, 2010 with David Zucca, an art collector of the Cass

Transcription

1 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 1 Interviewee: Mr. H. David Zucca Interviewer: Lisa M. Schell Transcriber: Lisa M. Schell Date: April 10, 2010 Time: 1:00PM Duration of Interview: 1:15:34 Location: Mr. H. David Zucca s home in Ann Arbor, MI LS: I am here today on Saturday April 10, 2010 with David Zucca, an art collector of the Cass Corridor Artwork from the 60s and 70s. My name is Lisa Schell and this interview is being conducted at David s home in Ann Arbor. LS: If you could just tell me a little bit about your background, your family, where you were born, where you grew up and we can start from there. DZ: My family, my father is from Connecticut and my mother from Detroit. My father worked for A&P Supermarkets, Vice President of A&P. They were married twenty years and never had kids and along comes David. Don t know what else to say, that I was born and brought up in Detroit in the Palmer Park area of Detroit. Went to Central High School, graduated from Central High School, graduated Michigan State University and then went to Yale for a Masters degree in Economics. Unfortunately, my father passed away while I was at Yale and I had to come home and sell the family business, I was an only child, I was responsible to sell the business, I was 21 years old and sold the family business. I went out looking for a job and in those days you could not get a job unless you had army, so I enlisted in the army and was in the military police. I was discharged because of very bad

2 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 2 eyesight, they didn t want me because I would be endangering the whole company if I lost my glasses. So I then came back to Detroit and started as a stock broker with a company called Watling Lerchen, I am now at Oppenheimer. I have had an over 40 year career. A lot of people that know me in the business, know me from work, my days from my days at E.F. Hutton, the old add at E.F. Hutton. But that s about it, I have no children, I was married very young, divorced very young, I have a very large family, can say I have a very long lived family. Right now I am 74 and I have six first cousins over 90, my mother was over 90 when she passed away. I find my business very interesting, very stressful and art has been my outlet to get rid of the stress--going to museums, going to galleries, buying art once in awhile. But I think the thing that really got me really interested is when I came back from New York in 1972, I had an office in New York. Someone told me about the Willis Gallery which was in the Cass Corridor. I don t recall the first show I saw, it seems to me it was Ellen Phelan because the first thing I bought there was an Ellen Phelan wax piece that the Detroit Institute of Arts also bought one. I think that was the first show, then there a gentlemen there by the name of Dan Moriarity and Dan Moriarity really did get me more involved with the artists, with the work, and then meeting the all of these artists at these openings and then at the end of the openings they would go down to Cobb s which was a bar on the corner of Cass and Willis and it was quite an interesting evening. It all reminded me a little bit of the New York artists, that the famous Cedar Bar where de Kooning, and that group, went and got bombed and had just a fabulous time just talking about art. Willis or the Cobb s is kind of like the same kind of thing, were a bunch of artists got together drank, got together and talked about art. There weren t many collectors of Cass Corridor work. The main collector that everybody knows is Jim Duffy, who just passed away.

3 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 3 Gilbert Silverman, believe it or not believe it or not there weren t a lot of collectors of the art. Then came along Jackie Feigenson, and Jackie Feigenson whose husband, Mort Feigenson, made Faygo pop company [whose family made], opened a gallery at the Fisher Building. She first, I think, she worked at the Willis, I think when Dan Moriarity left, Dan Moriarity was responsible for taking the Willis from Cass to the Fisher Building and then I think Dan Moriarity left maybe went to New York, I am not sure about this and Jackie Feigenson went in there and then she opened up her own gallery. I think one of the great misfortunes of the Cass Corridor, [there] are two things. It was a very important movement in this area, outside of this area, it wasn t well known. However, Sam Wagstaff who was working at the DIA at the time was very influential in New York City and he championed the Cass Corridor artists. In fact, I think one of them, Gordon Newton, was taken to New York where he had a show where either Nobler or Williamstein (not sure on the spellings here), I think [it] was Nobler. But Sam Wagstaff was only here, I think, three or four years and then left. I think if he had stayed, then the movement would have been known all over, not only in this area. LS: I am glad you mentioned that because, that was actually one of my questions. Cause I had read quite a bit about that. In the literature, that was the opinion of a lot of folks, that if Wagstaff had stayed on. DZ: Yes LS: then Cass would have been on the national map?

4 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 4 DZ: No question about it. DZ: I think that Jim Duffy was very involved with Gordon Newton, bought a lot of his work, out of Gordon s place, not out of the gallery. I think he bought some things out of the gallery. But very few of those artists really then went on to New York to make it to any extend. I mean Ellen Phelen did, Gordon didn t, of all the artists that left the city, just a few really. Susanne Hilberry who is a friend of mine has a gallery in Ferndale, and she has shown some Detroit art, I think, also at the time one of the major galleries in Detroit and maybe one of the major galleries in the United States at the time was the Donald Morris Gallery and [the] Donald Morris Gallery didn t show any Detroit Cass Corridor work. The fact of the matter is, they showed Robert Wilbert and they showed David Barr, and maybe one other person. But they did not do much of backing of the Detroit art, they were more international yet they were one of the great galleries and still are. LS: And where is that gallery? DZ: Donald Morris Gallery was in Birmingham and then they went private to New York. They are very big and big in New York but private. They didn t, they didn t encourage a lot of Detroit of Detroit artists to come to the gallery. Maybe Picasso and Matisse you know that type of work, it was really very high end of the art market. But the other bad break came not only Sam Wagstaff leaving early or only being here four or five years or maybe even less. Was Jackie Feigenson, Jackie Feigenson was, cause most of her

5 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 5 artists were in the Kick Out the Jams show and there were some other artists that were in the Cass Corridor that weren t in that show and a lot of people felt that it was the Jackie Feigenson s show because they were mostly her artists in that show. But on the outside, she died. Just as she was beginning to take a lot of artists, I think, even I mean, Gary Mayor (unsure on the spelling), who is this painting is in back here, she had a lot of young artists that she was starting to sell very well, wanting to put them outside of this area that were Detroit artists and she died. So there was another bad break, so I felt all along that Detroit got the short end of things. I mean, they had a lot of bad breaks for the humongous talent that was in this city at that time. Bad breaks all around. You know? I mean really. As an aside, a couple weeks ago I went to this exhibit in Mexican Town where Bob Sestok set up 30 artists that were from Detroit and he brought them back and had this marvelous exhibit really in an area that which I would of never of thought, you know gorgeous. And we talked about a lot of things, Bob. He would be a very good source of information if you want, his name is Bob Sestok. And I gave one of his pieces to Wayne University, Sestok. But its, the thing that disappointed me about it was that I saw this incredible talent and that the rest of the world didn t see it. Terribly disappointing because when you see talent like that, coming from New York. I saw talent. A lot of talent in New York is, a lot of artists, its almost a political situation, there is a lot of art there that is really just awful, that is being, lionized as masterpieces and all this kind of stuff. But the work that was going on in the Cass Corridor was equal or better than any of the stuff I had seen going on in New York at that time. Easily. And the only thing, when I was in New York, I bought two pieces. I bought an Andy Warhol painting from Andy Warhol, a little Flower painting and a Roy Lichtenstein piece that I have since donated. But man when I came

6 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 6 back here I got so excited because there was one terrific show after another. Bradley Jones with his, just [an] incredible artist, my favorite painting in the world is across from my bed [and] every morning I wake up, I see Bradley s painting. Killed himself. But also one of the first artists that I bought, when I came back here, was a woman by the name of Steen, S T E E N, (spelled it out) Carol Steen. She showed in New York at 55 Mercer, I don t hear very much about her. I talk to her maybe once a year and she lives in New York, I don t know, I don t think she has a gallery but that also was one of the first things I bought. She had a show at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a lot of people didn t know. In one of the wings, she had her sculptures and things that she had made. Which I ll show you later on one of the works that she did, and I bought a couple pieces of hers in New York at 55 Mercer, one of those went to Wayne University. She did what she called her Tool Pictures, but you see, Brenda Goodman also has been relatively successful in New York, but just so few, so few in relation to the, I mean, very, very discouraging. LS: If I could just ask, why do you think that this happened, I mean, what were some of the factors that were socially, politically, [and] maybe economically in place that allowed this renaissance or this blossoming of this art that just organically just really happened? What do you think contributed to that? DZ: I think most of these artists work is tough, its not pretty, pretty stuff. Its tough work and I think it mirrors the city. And like all art movements, its almost like they come out of the blue. Pop Art. Andy Warhol didn t know what Roy Lichtenstein was doing. Roy Lichtenstein didn t know what Kenneth Nolan was doing. None of these artists knew what each other was doing

7 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 7 and suddenly Leo Castelli, who had the famous gallery in New York where he showed the Pop Artists, and suddenly Rosenquist, they all came together and here they hardly knew one another. It was almost like a very strange think, like osmosis all of these artists suddenly come out of the abstract expressionists, the same thing. Most of them didn t know one another, they knew one another when they finally got together at the Cedar Bar. These people lived pretty close to one another. I remember Nancy Pletos, I bought a sculpture called Feather House that I gave to Wayne, it was in her refrigerator, she was storing all of her work in the refrigerator, lived in this loft on Cass were a lot of them lived in this building. It s just like it all came together. But I say that it would of gone much, much, much farther than it went, I mean, after awhile they all started to fall away and go to work in regular jobs and here I always said, this talent, this extraordinary, extraordinary talent, wasted. And me, I have no talent [and] to see the people to have a God given talent and.painting, where do you begin, what do you? So then I got very friendly with a few artists. Michael Joseph who was that painting up there, he was this guy who was on like the periphery of the Cass Corridor, lived in Ypsilanti, his wife Daphne Cox was very, very involved in books, making books, and things. And she married Michael, her first husband, his name was Cox, I can t think of his first name, she married Michael Joseph and he had a show at the Willis in the Fisher Building and Dan Morarity who at that time was the guy who was the head of it, thought he was the best of all of them. I am not so sure about that. But I thought that his talent was pretty terrific. He did spray paint on canvas or spray paint on board and that is what he did and later you get up and look at some of these things you ll see what I am talking about. He died here a couple of years ago. Moved out to Washington State. But I say, it was like osmosis, they all got together and they were coming out

8 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 8 of the woodwork. The stuff was very original. I mean Ellen s work, a wrapped chair was very, very original. Or her fans, or stuff like that, [that] was original stuff. Now you know you see some of it and some other artists doing it and you say Ellen did this. Now she married Joe Shapiro, who is the great sculptor and she s really in his shadow, I mean, I don t even think she has a gallery now. She shows at Susanne Hilberry, they are very dear friends. Like a lot of women artists who are married to male artists, they stay in the background. Its only when the male artists either dies or something, that their works starts to be looked at, like Nancy Spiro s work now is beginning to be looked at because her husband died. What was his name, oh God I can t think of it, but anyway, she s come out, I mean, a lot of women artists suddenly come out after the husband dies. LS: And why do you think that is? DZ: I don t know. There has always been a prejudice against women artists, period. I mean you look at all of these museum exhibits, the Whitney and all the rest of them they have maybe have two women artists or three women artists. You look at the Museum of Modern Art, how few, really few women artists there are at the Museum of Modern art compared to what the male situation, very few, Helen Frankenthaler maybe and Yayoi Kusama, but not a lot. And I think it s an absolute prejudice in the art world. Even old masters, you rarely see a women at the forefront, or the impressionists, how many women were better impressionists, important impressionists artists?

9 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 9 LS: Well that is a very interesting perspective which actually leads into one of my questions about, there was quite a bit of reporting done on sort of the nature of the art that was being generated in the Cass Corridor, and there was this famous quotation, I am sure you ve heard of it. That it was gritty and tough and defiant and aggressive and that it was often dominated by macho art? DZ: Correct LS: Could you just comment on that. DZ: Yes, oh definitely. I mean, that is what I said, tough, earlier when I said this was not pretty tulips and stuff, it was tough art. Yet, by saying that, I can honestly say that if you saw a Nancy Pletos work or you look in that magazine, and look at the women s work, it s pretty tough. I mean, you know everybody thinks well women make pretty pictures and pretty this and pretty that, and most of the women artists at that time were doing pretty tough art. You want macho? I think, yeah. LS: Interesting, you would say the same thing about the women artists producing the same quality of art or level of art. (both speaking at the same time, difficult to understand)? DZ: Absolutely. Yes, tough work, not pretty, you know not romantic and all this kind of stuff, people think women paint pretty pictures and stuff. I am not sure about, as I say, Frankenthaler, or someone looked at a Frankenthaler, wouldn t know that that was a woman who painted those

10 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 10 pictures. Not sure about that. Go back to Nancy Spiro too, I don t think any of her work is exactly what people think women s art is. Because I really don t think there is much difference, the only problem I have with it, it is such a male oriented business, even though there is a lot of great women art dealers but even the women art dealers didn t show much female art. And if you really look around, how many famous, really famous important big name women artists are there? I mean, I would be hard put to sit down here and name ten. And actually I bought a lot of art that were done by women. I would say, in the collection, there was a terrific amount of art that was done by women. The quality, I didn t see any difference. LS: So would you say, do you think that within the art world that that is reflective of what goes on in business, or education, or any other sort of major discipline? Or do you think in the art world it was particularly, maybe more bias than society or do you think it was more reflective or mirrors exactly of what goes on in other? DZ: No, I think it was more bias. LS: You think it s more bias? Ok. DZ: Oh yes. I do, I do, I really do. I think also, in art schools, most of the most important art teachers were men. LS: Interesting, ok.

11 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 11 DZ: I mean you go back and the so called great art schools, most of them were men that were the teachers, not women. LS: So thinking even beyond gender, how do you think that [that] played into race, because many of the artists were, as I understand it, were white. DZ: They were all white. LS: Yeah. How did that play into the maybe politics in Detroit coming off of the race riots of 67 and anything around that that you? DZ: No, I don t think that has anything to do with it. LS: Ok DZ: I think what happened is that these were all artists living in the area and as I said by osmosis and there were no black artists. Up to and here we go again in time, up to maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, black artists were non existent, very important black artists. I mean William Edmondson who was a sculptor, I think he had a one person show at either the Museum of Modern Art or at the Metropolitan Museum, way back in the 50s, or whatever. I am tying to think, now you got a lot important black artists showing. Who is the sculptor who is so terrific, who is incredibly wonderful but, I can t think of his name, a sign of age. But now black artists are now being recognized. I have a Bobby Thompson painting, who was a black artist at one

12 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 12 time, a very important black artist, now you got Basquiat [Jean-Michel], who is getting dead of course, who is getting millions of dollars for his work. But your getting now more recognition of black artists and that s only been, I would say [in] the last 15 to 20 years before, I think, before that, what did we have in Detroit? Charles McGee, black artist in Detroit, I think his name was Charles McGee, but very few come out of Detroit. LS: Could we just real quick go back to Bobby Thompson? DZ: Sure LS: Because I did find a quotation, you had done a little blurb about him, about him not being recognized and omitted and that he had a gorgeous body of work? DZ: Yes LS: And you would like to see more written about? DZ: Yes LS:. in the mainstream and it was from Black Entertainment in Can you comment more about that? What was it about his work that you really thought was outstanding?

13 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 13 DZ: What he did is a lot of his work was based on old master paintings, his interpretation of old master paintings, a lot of them. It was the color, it was just the modeling of the paintings, the idea behind it of his paintings was just.i can t explain it to you but Maurice Cohen who was one of the greatest art collectors in Michigan, who has since passed away, had a lot of Bobby Thompson paintings. There was something about it, that when you were in front of it, it held you. And he died at 27 and his wife, I think her name was Carol, [and] she carried on with it. A lot of his work was not in good shape but a lot of it and now it s being sold for, I mean, six figures and maybe even more. But his life and he was this, another one were Martha Jackson he was at the Martha Jackson Gallery, and Martha Jackson at that time was one of the very important art dealers in New York and she represented him. She brought him out so there was a black artist but there is so few, there were so few, but his work always grabbed me. I mean I really love his work and he had a show at the Detroit Institute Arts, they had a retrospective of his work at the DIA. I don t know how many years ago, again years, I have no consciousness of years. I think maybe it was between 5-10 years ago there was a major exhibit of his work at the DIA and he was very well known in this area. Ed Levine who was a Detroit artist collected his work extensively, and Ed Levine was [a] pretty well known artist in Detroit, he doesn t do work anymore but that is one of his paintings, it is called Homage to Roughan, Race Horse. So he s got of course the apple, the bunny, the horse shoe and the horse blanket. So Ed bought a lot of his work. But of all the artists that I have seen, he represents one of the ones that I always liked the best. I don t have any of his work but that is one artist that I just love. I never get tired of looking at his work and I will show you a picture of it when you want if you want to see what it looks like?

14 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 14 LS: Yes, of course. Now, I just want to go back to the scene of Detroit, so do you really feel that as if that what was going on in the black community or race relations in Detroit, did that, to you, was that a separate thing then what was going on among the artists? DZ: Totally LS: It really was a very segregated experience? DZ: Totally LS:..and you don t feel that the artists were influenced or impacted by that in anyway? DZ: I don t think so. LS: No? Ok. DZ: I really, I don t think it had so anything to do with race even though they were all white. It s funny for me to say this. I just don t think there were that many black artists in the city. The only one I can remember is McGee and maybe, I think, Lester Johnson, I think a Lester Johnson in Detroit, but I am not sure about that but the Lester Johnson in New York is the famous one. But there weren t many, why? I don t know. I don t know. I don t know if there is that many in art schools. I would suppose now there might be but then, no. Art was something that, at that

15 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 15 time it seemed [was] for white people. The DIA, I don t think there were any black people working at the DIA when I was a young fella, I don t ever remember it. That was what I called the Grosse Pointe Museum. The fact of the matter is, to show you how stupid they were, you talk about race, they missed out on all the great Jewish art collections. All the Jewish modern art collections, the Jewish people were the biggest collectors of modern art. And that museum, Morey Cohen didn t leave his work there. He had a collection that would of made that museum a modern art treasure. [A. Alfred] Taubman gave money to them but Taubman, a lot has gone to New York, I [can] go on and on and on. They were a Grosse Pointe Museum, Christian museum and it sort of reminded me of Albert Kahn who built the Detroit Athletic Club and they invited him as a member and he said well you have to open up to all my people, not just me. He turned down the membership and he is the one who built the Detroit Athletic Club. So there was that situation at the DIA and that really pushed away. And there are some Jewish people that give and all but, God did they miss out. God Albert Kahn s widow, what was her name? They missed out on that collection of Pollacks and oh my God, I just. Winston Malbon. I think it was Albert Kahn s daughter, had this unbelievable collection, she moved to New York, maybe the museum got one or two pieces. Sad, sad that the anti-semitism [of local museums and collectors] killed that museum from the standpoint of modern art. And thank god for Robert Hudson Tannehill and Hawkins Ferry and a few of these others, for their modern collection but my God that collection would have been the talk of the world. I mean Maurice Cohen s collection of Tiffany was the largest in the world, didn t go to them.

16 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 16 LS: So can you say more about that? In doing a lot of the research, pretty much everybody at one point or another who was involved in the Cass Corridor Project, left and went to New York and how do you think that impacted what was left and who stayed behind? DZ: There wasn t much left. LS: Not much left, yeah. DZ: And then when it broke up and when Jackie Feigenson died, she had a woman who worked with her, by the name of.she opened up a small gallery in Birmingham [and] tried to carry on some of Jackie s stuff but it didn t go. She wasn t well financed, she had some wonderful shows but it wasn t well financed and that just went away. Mary Preston was Jackie s assistant, who opened up her own gallery, she now lives in Traverse City. LS: Was there anything that happened in New York as a result of the Detroit artists going to New York that impacted the art scene there? DZ: No LS: Were they able to bring in some of the flavor? DZ: No

17 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 17 LS:.and the nuance that was happening here? DZ: No because the important artists like Gordon Newton stayed here. LS: Stayed here, yeah. DZ: And Bradley died. Some of them tried to do some work in New York, but as I said to you, but very few had any kind of success. And Brenda Goodman, you talk about macho, you look at some really Brenda Goodman paintings and those are painted by men, supposedly what men think men paint like. Those paintings are tough, great paintings. She went to New York, I don t know she made any success? I don t think so. I don t hear from her, and I don t hear about her. And I pretty well keep up with what is going on in New York, most of it is, pardon me, crap, that they hype as something stupendous. Jeff Koons and people like that are as far as I am concerned are nothing. They are lionized and millions of dollars for their work people think they are just wonderful. I was just reading in the Art Forum, a quote by some art dealer in New York, and he made a very interesting comment, we talk about old master paintings and things and he says, who is that British artist with the floating heads? Oh God he s..oh my God.anyway he had a show, an auction of his work where he sold like 50 million dollars of art or something. And this guy, this art dealer, says they are waiting for him to crash. Someone is going to get to him and find out that that isn t so fabulous. I think the one that most people thought would crash was Andy Warhol, most people thought that when Andy Warhol died that his work would crash and that people would then find out that he wasn t that terrific after all. But they were fooled. I remember having a conversation with Donald Morris about that and I said, this guy is

18 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 18 phenomenal and Donald used to say, well I am not so sure about that. His movies, incredible, if you ever seen an Andy Warhol movie, do, see it, go. And just generally, I think, he has influenced a lot of people. So I thought a lot of people were fooled about Andy Warhol and that was going to just disappear and I think, part of that was Andy Warhol. Cause people would say to him, what is that s stuff, and he would say isn t that awful. The critics could not get at him. They would say this is very benal, he would say, you know your right, it really is. They couldn t get at him, that s smart. Rather than getting irritated about it he kept going right on with his work. The pity was that he died, he shouldn t have died, it was a total mess up at the hospital in New York. LS: So real quick back to this tough art, I am just still curious about this word that you used. DZ: Sure LS: Again in preparing for this interview, one of the things that was so fascinating to me was not only the materials that were used to make the art but how it was created, in some cases, it was shot through and chain sawed. DZ: And found objects they used. LS: Say more about that.

19 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 19 DZ: They used objects they found on the street. These people were poor. I mean, I was buying work for 50 dollars, 100 dollars, I couldn t believe it. 50 dollars, 100 dollars? I can remember buying a Gordon Newton piece that is in my bedroom, for a hundred dollars and it cost me a hundred dollars to frame it and stuff like that, these people were living on the edge and maybe they would sell a couple of pieces every show. I think that was another reason why when the whole thing started breaking up they all went back and got jobs. They could no longer continue to exist. The Willis there were shows. Like Ellen Phelen had a show, I think, that was sold out, sold out, yeah. Bradley shows were pretty well [attended], he pretty well sold well, Bradley. I think, there were a few artists that sold well but then there were others that didn t. LS: So when do you think the Cass Corridor ended, for you? DZ: I think it all ended when the Willis closed in the Fisher Building, I don t remember exactly was but I thank that was when the movement essentially started to come down. Because Jackie Feigenson took Bradley Jones, she took Gordon Newton, and who else did she take? She didn t take many artists, maybe she did, I can t remember now. Those are the two I remember but there were others that she had taken. But then she didn t take Nancy Pletos, she didn t take a lot of these others, so it just scattered and that was it. Shame. LS: So what part of this era, or this generation, or this time period do you feel like you have helped put a stamp on, or your signature on, or in some way have contributed to preserving its legacy. What have you, obviously your very committed, your home is full of beautiful pieces. What have you done to support?

20 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 20 DZ: I have gone so far as committing to Detroit art because I bought Tyree Guyton s work, when no one was buying his work. And one piece went to Wayne, Bicycle Wheels. But these pieces are his, those down there, that behind you, right behind you, there is a birdcage and there is a birdcage in the kitchen. I have a lot of his grandfather s work, Sam Mackey. So it wasn t that I had given up on Detroit, when I heard something was going on, I was going to be there. I know this may sound strange to you, I never thought I was a collector. I never carried insurance, and the reason is if the place burned down and this stuff all went, the money isn t going to replace it. I can t replace these works with money. I can t get that work with money. I can t that work with money. This gentleman here, he had the place downtown, that he did downtown, Sergio DeJusty (spelling?). I can t replace these with money. The money. I can t have the pieces, so I never thought of myself as a collector, collectors get written up in magazines and stuff like that, I never wanted that, ever. I didn t want it. Most people didn t even know this stuff was here. It was giving contact with Wayne, you know what, I have heirs that are cousins and family that are not interested in art. So I have to begin to distribute the art. Michigan State University is building a brand new museum, they don t have any storage but I will be giving them some work, I will be giving Wayne some more work. I will give the DIA, if they would like a few pieces that they might be interested in. Here is Beverly Fishman, that piece over here, that wall piece, is now becoming famous suddenly, out of the blue, I mean Beverly Fishman. Susanne Hilberry had her show a couple of times. Now these ladies on Woodward and Ferndale, I can t think of their name, are pushing her work and now she is becoming quite. Now she is from this area and she is a professor at

21 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 21 Cranbrook. Again, I never thought of myself as a collector because I have an absolute love for the work. It s food for me. I tell people that if I go to Chicago, if I go to the Chicago Art Institute, there are a couple of Cezanne s in there that just absolutely blows my brains out, still lifes with apples and stuff, that just gets me crazy. I might be there for three or four hours and I walk out of there and I am not hungry. I go to an art exhibit, I go to Susanne Hilberry, who has the finest shows in Detroit, by far, very avant-garde work she brings in which I really like. Also not that pretty stuff but really good work. A gallery that should be appreciated that isn t. I must tell you something else, another secret, well its not a secret, I think its pretty well known. I think that the very big Detroit art collectors have an inferiority complex, and why I say this is, lets go back to the Donald Morris Gallery for a minute. Here is a gallery showing really great art, a story about that that a person, people who gave all that art to Cranbrook. Do you remember that story about this doctor and his wife that had this unbelievable collection of art that they bought in New York and kept in the crates and never took them out. [They] lived in a two bedroom flat near the University of Detroit. Donald Morris used to tell me that those people came in the gallery all the time and never bought anything. Everything they bought went to New York, bought everything in New York, yet Donald was showing the same work. Same with all collectors in Detroit, except Maurice Cohen, he had Donald Morris build a collection that was just unbelievable but he did. So those were things I knew on the inside. Here were all these great, rich Detroit people, who had an outlet here, but they go to New York and they d pay more, cause they bought it in New York. I bought it at the Pace. I bought it at the Williamstein. It is a Detroit inferiority complex of Detroit collectors. Even Hawkins Ferry, and all of the great collectors, those are different because they went back way back. I always found that fascinating.

22 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 22 Why were there just a few of us just collecting this art. Why? I mean Gil Silverman was a very wealthy builder and he went down there and he did a lot and Jim Duffy of course, and maybe a few others and but why just a few? In those days it wasn t exactly poor like it is now. You had a vibrant, rich area with a lot of very wealthy people. Fascinating, always fascinated me, how come Cleveland? How come Chicago? We were on a par with Cleveland and Chicago. How come these other cities that were on the same par as Detroit, how come those people stayed there? The Chrysler family, what happened? They moved to New York. Made all their money here, moved to New York. We have had such enormous wealth and such great collections that didn t come here. Amazing! LS: So do you feel that what was going on in the art collecting world also contributed to sort of this the bad rap, not bad rap, but the sort of the unfortunate aspect as to why it is not seen as a renaissance when it was, when it really was. So there were a lot of factors involved. DZ: A lot of factors involved. It always surprised me. When I go to Chicago and I see the names in the Chicago Art Institute, the people. The lack of those names of important people coming out of here at the DIA, the lack of great names, that makes me almost cry. I mean, that s why I think that a man like Jim Duffy was fabulous for the movement, for the Art Cass Corridor Movement. The only thing I have always said about that is, and maybe I shouldn t but I am going to anyway. He did make it easy for Gordon Newton and people, [he] to make their art and live here.

23 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 23 LS: Did you attend the funeral? DZ: No I didn t, but Ed Fraga, who is an artist and a friend of mine. He helped Jim quite a bit and in fact he did most of the work getting Jim s collection and he told me about it. Jim was a very difficult person. I liked him, but he was only child of parents and had inherited his grandparent s estate because his mother was an only child. He was an only child and got it all. But what he did in the way of giving money, supporting, incredible. What he did for Wayne University, was just incredible. Bob Sestok told me that Jim had boxes, and boxes, and boxes of Gordon Newton sending him postcards all of the time. LS: He wrote him daily. DZ: Just boxes of these things and I think Jim took care of him. Ok, which I am really glad about. But Bob Sestok and Gordon and can t think of the other gentleman and they hung around Jim and they really helped Jim, not Sestok, maybe Sestok, helped him with his collection and they really did bring him to a lot of work and he did buy a lot of work in New York. But then again he didn t buy anything from Susanne Hilberry. I don t think he ever bought anything from Susanne. I don t think he ever bought anything from Donald Morris. He bought everything from New York. It s Detroit, that s Detroit collectors. Look it, I live in one of the richest cities in the countries, Ann Arbor. Not one fine arts gallery. Alice Simsar, who closed down a few years ago back was the only fine art gallery and it was amazing that she stayed in business with all the money here and she showed top drawer New York artists. Named artists, great stuff and she made a living. But we have the Art Fair, the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which is junk. It s all what

24 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 24 I call kitch and people spend thousands of dollars for this, these pieces out here in July, there are booths where they are $2000, $3000, $5000, and you see people carrying them. What s going on? LS: What do you think it would take to turn that around? DZ: Ann Arbor is from my standpoint looks like it s a music city. That s what it is in Ann Arbor, is music. Hill Auditorium, music. Fine art no, uh no. Oh, yeah we have some fine art, local artists. But what I am talking about is artists from all over from California and from New York and from Boston and from Miami. What I call a Fine Arts Gallery, there isn t any. LS: Check the time. We got about five minutes left? So I just wanted to.. DZ: So anymore questions that you have? You got five minutes to go. LS: um. DZ: You can go further. LS: Yeah, I would like there is a few things um DZ: But by the way, I don t think anything had to do with race.

25 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 25 LS: Ok DZ: Ok. LS: Ok. DZ: That, no. LS: didn t mean to.. DZ: You can talk about a lot things happening in Detroit and have happened in Detroit that have been race. But I can t say in this particular movement or anything like this had anything to do with that. LS: Ok, great, great. And I hope that wasn t a leading question? I was just more referring.sure DZ: No I am just saying, a lot of people who think about Detroit think about race. LS: Exactly, exactly.. LS: So you know there is this great juxtaposition of you in terms of you being this stockbroker, this degree in economics, and this whole other side of you. This food that sustains you.

26 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 26 DZ: Yes [its] food alright. LS: So, I am little more curious around the heart of that for you. If you could comment a little more about that? DZ: I can blame it all on Andy Warhol. Why I am saying this is this. I didn t know very much about art. I was very close to some people in New York who were great collectors. I would go to museums and all that kind of stuff just for interest. I can t for the life of me to know why but I was invited to this party at The Factory and I walked in and it was all silver foil. Everything was silver foil and I thought my God this is unbelievable and the crowd of people. You get high walking in the front door because all it was, was marijuana and everything. And there was these little flower paintings everywhere and big flower paintings and what the hell, this is pretty terrific. I picked one up and I said to somebody, who did these? And they said the guy who is giving this party, his name is Warhol, he is over there in the corner the guy with the white hair. So I went over to him and said are these for sale? And he says yeah, 100 bucks and I said, I would like to buy one and he said well ok and I gave him a 100 bucks and I said would you sign it for me? And he signed it. Around 1964, so I got them home and I thought that was like one of the most interesting evenings I have every spent in my life anywhere. First of all, I met my first transvestite, which I had never known. I was sitting next to this most gorgeous woman, and we were sitting on.and he says to me what s your name or something (in a deep voice). I this kid am from the Midwest. And I said Woah, what s this? There was a guy in a closet, that lived in the closet and you knocked on the door and you talked to the guy in the closet and it was

27 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 27 just insane. That really got me going and kept the juices going. Somebody said and I said, where is a lot of this art? At a gallery called Castelli s up on 74 th street, up on the east side. I remember I went there on the worst, it was snowing and sleeting and I was really looking grubby. And it was a Roy Lichtenstein show and it was his cartoon paintings. I didn t know that at that time that you could buy a painting and pay it off. They were 900 dollars or something and one was a Mickey Mouse and oh my God is that fabulous. How much is that? Well, 900, oh I can t afford that, 900 dollars. But the interesting thing is I came in, I heard the girl at the desk tell Mr. Castelli, this man came has come in is really looking grubby and all that. And I heard him say, the weather is awful outside, leave him alone, it s terrible, let him stay. I thought well my goodness, isn t that interesting. Here is this man, I always felt that when they talked about Leo Castelli. Pretty neat guy, they always talked about New York snobs and New York snobbery and galleries. He was welcoming anybody to come in. Someone said 10 years later or 20 years later that you could of bought it for $50 a month and paid it off and so it went for 10 million dollars, four years ago. But anyway that is what really started it, it was Andy Warhol. LS: So the first piece you that every bought was from Andy? DZ: Exactly. First one. LS: Wow, that was quite an initiation, eh? DZ: First one, and it was. And I don t to this day, remember how I got there, how I got an invitation to go there. I will never forget it, I will never forget it. I think I was there maybe an

28 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 28 hour or two and I saw things I had never seen in my life. My whole world opened up like this now we are talking 1964, that s 46 years ago. Oh my God, I was 28, no, yeah. I was 28. I was this kid from the Midwest working in New York but I ended up coming back here when I was 37, I came back here. But that s what opened it up was Andy Warhol s fault. I thought that [the] Pop Art Movement was just so exciting. Nobody liked it. Did you know that at the time nobody liked it? They weren t selling, they weren t really selling. I mean the abstract expressionists. De Kooning and all those were the big, Pollack, that was the big stuff. Those pieces, those Pop Art pieces, people were laughing at. Jasper Johns with his Beer Bottles in bronze. Amazing, but exciting. So this was as exciting as that was when I came to Detroit and saw the Case Corridor. That to me was as exciting, as thrilling because it was so vibrant. I couldn t wait to get down there when I heard there was an opening. Oh my God, I would drop everything, I got to get down there. But I still don t think of myself as a collector. LS: So interesting. DZ: I really don t. I never have. Maybe it s because I never had children and these are my children. Because people have said to me, David how can you give away, how can you give away that work, how can you do that? I says, you don t realize the pain, you have no idea the pain as they go out, no idea at all and it s not. A lot of people, they are like acquisitive, they acquire things, and acquire things, and acquire things, and acquire thing, but everyone of these pieces has been acquired with a very deep emotional Here is a work up there of a lady who was in a Nazi concentration camp. Alice Simsar showed her work and it s just and even to this day, it

29 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 29 knocks me out because I have that piece and I have a box with a string of what she wore in the concentration camp. LS: Oh wow. DZ: And then I don t see anything I bought it. And then maybe 10 or 15 years later I am at the Whitney or the Guggenheim, I m looking, maybe it was the Whitney, this artist at the top floor and I went up and I saw all of these boxes. And now she is pretty well known and now I am having a senior moment I can t think of her name. It s that awful? These things grab me and hold on to me and when I say they are food for me. They re food because there is not one thing that hasn t been purchased out of an emotion. People will ask me, well what kind of emotion does that tell you? [inaudible comment] I can t tell you what it is, it is the way the metals been rubbed and the way the piece is there and the way the artist made it, it s not, and it s got some tension. [They say], I would never look at that like that. But when you see what I am looking at something, I am looking at it from a very emotional standpoint. It s like the Cezannes at the Chicago Art Institute, I get very emotional with those pieces. The way he does the perspective of those pieces, it s just insane. And now I know why a lot of artists have said that he is our father, Cezanne. He is my favorite artist by far, not even close. It just grabs a hold of me and now I understand why artists have talked about him being the father of us all. I can see it, I can see it, when I see a picture of his. I see Mont Sainte-Victoire at the museum, the DIA has a Mont Sainte-Victoire painting that he painted this mountain, oh God, it s just insane..tannehill left them that painting. Oh my goodness.

30 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 30 Now a lot of people make a great fuss over Vincent Van Gogh and I like his work. I am not absolutely insane about it like a lot of people are. I think a lot of people get wrapped up in the history of Van Gogh, he cut his ear off and committed suicide and did this and did that. I like his work, don t..but I am not that absolutely insane the way people are, Van Gogh this and Van Gogh that. Ok. And I like Matisse better than Picasso which is terrible and it s a terrible admission. I think Matisse was, and I think Picasso, if you read a lot about art, you read that Picasso was little bit jealous, so maybe I am not that far off. Do you know that the first Matisse to come into the country was at the Detroit Art Institute? LS: I did not know that. DZ: The first Matisse to come to an American museum was at the Detroit Art Institute, the first one. LS: Seems to be a theme in Detroit, there s a lot of unknowns, and unknown treasures in Detroit. DZ: I don t think people, again were going back, I think people do though to a pretty good extent. You ve got one of the greatest art museums in the world, right there. Even with this lack of what I called the modern art, the museum really should of had. I think that is one of the great museums in the world. My God, look at what they ve got there. They have one masterpiece after another. I mean they make a fuss over this British artist that just died here

31 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 31 back and we ve got one with the screaming, what s his name, the British artist? Oh my goodness, it s just terrible. [Edvard Munch] LS: I know, I would have to go back, I think it starts with an M, doesn t it? I know who your talking about. DZ: Yeah, terrible. But that museum was first known by the first director of the museum who really brought in a lot of the European art. They are very rich in European art. But I will say one thing though, I give them that, Van Gogh The Postman is pretty awesome, that is a pretty awesome painting. LS: So wrapping it up, as you know, part of the reason participating in doing this interview is to help to create a warehouse of oral histories that will be kept in a collection at Wayne State University s Library. I guess is there is any final thoughts or anything that you would like to share, that you would like future generations to know about Cass Corridor, that may not know something about it if they had not lived it, or seen it or been a part of it? Because essentially this recording along with many other people being interviewed will maintain the legacy of what happened in that very special time, and so is there anything you would like to make sure that researchers knew about? DZ: I think one of the important things is that the work continues to be shown. Not put it away in a basement and that s it, I think this is work that is very important and future generations will gear their attitude towards it by seeing the work. Seeing the work is all you have to know about

32 ZUCCA INTERVIEW 32 any kind of a movement of art. Like the Pop Artists seeing their work, the abstract expressionists, their work, just put in a cellar somewhere and nobody sees it. Also it should be Wayne State University should try to have to get shows outside of this area. Try to interest other museums in showing a movement that happened at a certain period of time in Detroit and bring that art out and let people in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Boston, California, see a movement that was in Detroit that was not well known outside of Detroit [to] look at the work. Look at what was done, I think that is all you have to do from a generational standpoint is keep it visible and not just disappear. LS: Right DZ: Because when artists disappear, they disappear. This guy in New York and he created a painting for that exhibit down in Mexican Town. Awesome, but doesn t do much. So you know that the talent is there but people have to eat, have to make a living and in this day and age, it s tough as hell. So from an artist standpoint, their given, unless somebody helps them or they get into a gallery or something, they need dealers, these people need dealers to deal their work. But I still think that the art should be shown. LS: So to keep the collections alive, keep it on the map? DZ: Keep it alive. Wayne University now has got a situation where Mr. Duffy has given them money, it s important to keep, keep the darn thing alive. Also and the interesting part is if any if any of these artists become world famous, well then the university got a couple of terrific pieces,