Oral history interview with Harold Tovish
odd: label: General
content: Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 9 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 42 min.
name: label: Interviewee
content: Tovish, Harold, 1921-2008
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
label: Names
content: Pineda, Marianna, 1925-1996
topic: label: Topic
content: Sculptors -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- Interviews
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
creator: label: Interviewee
content: Tovish, Harold, 1921-2008
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Harold Tovish (1921-2008) was a sculptor in both Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 3 Items (sound cassettes (4 hr., 42 min.), analog.)
label: Extent
content: 94 Pages (Transcript)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1997 November 13-1998 April 7
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.tovish97
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Pages
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Interviews
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Interviews
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Interview of Harold Tovish, conducted by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution on November 13, 1997 at his home and studio in Boston, Massachusetts.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Tovish speaks of his kinetic sculpture of the 1960s; his return to kinetic work in the 1970s and early 1980s; his creative process; acceptance of death; his confidence in the role of art and his own work, despite the lack of a traditional broad base of support; his experience as a sculptor-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome, 1966; slow working procedures; his disenchantment with most modern art that employs technology; admiration for the formal economy of Minimalist art and its influence on him; the absence in his work, for the most part, of overtly political themes, yet the presence of moral stances stemming from his Depression-era background and anti-Vietnam War protests; his left wing political views; the artificiality of exhibitions; the desirability of artists organizing for mutual benefit and discourse; the transitory nature of fame; avoidance of friendships with museum curators; comparisons of his teaching experience at Boston University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; his 1990 exhibition at Boston University and Terry Dintenfass Gallery, NYC; self-portraits and variations on them; prints and drawings curator at the Boston Public Library, regarding Boston artists; the neglect of Boston area artists by other Boston art institutions; his 1988 retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art; the importance of a balanced and frank working relationship with his late wife, the sculptor Marianna Pineda; the professional mores that infused their generation of artists; the major change in his sculpture in the early 1980s; a subsequent period of drawing in the late 1980s which was triggered by attacks of vertigo; interest in anatomical parts; the infrequency of sculpture exhibits; a consistent thread of "darkness" or apprehensiveness in his work; and his acceptance of his first commission, a monument to the painter John Singleton Copley for Boston's Copley Square. Tovish also recalls Hyman Bloom, William Zorach, Sinclair Hitchings, Philip Guston, Doris Lessing, and others.