SOUND CLIPS

WNYC radio interview with Clara from 1951

An Excerpt  follows:

During a broadcast interview in New York, Ms. Klinghoffer had this to say about “abstract art in which one can hide so easily.”

“It would be wrong to generalize. Some modern art is definitely valid. My quarrel with abstractionism is its denial of an existing harmony in terms of humanity.  It is to abstractionists as if we are floating in a nebulous something.  They reject ‘our’ world, have no longer faith in the past and wish to fashion a new world – a world that cannot possibly hurt them because they think they are its masters.

“But it is a sterile world without a vista, without hope. Apply that same urge to distort anything and everything and long explanatory dissertations become a necessity. The ‘hidden meanings’ must be clarified, and thus made acceptable to the average onlooker. I’m not sure whether this hasn’t more to do with art therapy than with what the masters were engaged in.”