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Breslin (James E. B.) Research Archive on Mark Rothko
2003.M.23
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: James E. B. Breslin research archive on Mark Rothko
Creator: Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970
Creator: Motherwell, Robert
Creator: Breslin, James E. B., 1935-
Identifier/Call Number: 2003.M.23
Physical Description: 18.7 Linear Feet(32 boxes, 1 flat file folder)
Date (inclusive): 1900-1994 (bulk 1940-1990)
Date (bulk): 1940-1990
Abstract: Archive assembled by James Breslin, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, as he researched and wrote Mark Rothko:
a biography. The Russian-born American painter's life and work are the central subjects of the collection, situated in broad
historical and artistic contexts with particular emphasis on Abstract Expressionism and the New York art world from the 1920s
through the 1960s. Materials include interview recordings and transcripts, correspondence, financial and legal documents,
photographs, clippings, assorted printed materials, and extensive notes.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Language of Material: English.
Scope and Content of Collection
Assembled by James Breslin as he researched and wrote
Mark Rothko: a biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), the collection addresses the same subjects as the book, but in greater depth
and detail. With files relating to Rothko's early childhood in Dvinsk, Russia, his family's emigration to Portland, Oregon,
his education, his troubled personal life, the development of his career, his artistic process, and his suicide, the collection
comprises a rich compilation of materials on the life and work of a key figure in twentieth-century painting. Like Breslin's
book, the collection situates Rothko and his work within broad historical and artistic contexts, emphasizing abstract expressionism
and the New York art world from the 1920s through the 1960s. Among the individuals featured prominently in the collection
are artists Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Milton Avery, and Max Weber, and critics Dore
Ashton and Katharine Kuh.
Included in the collection are audio recordings and many transcripts of Breslin's interviews with approximately 100 of Rothko's
surviving family, friends, fellow artists, collectors, dealers, curators, and critics, including ten audiotapes of interviews
with Motherwell. Much of the collection was photocopied from the personal papers of Rothko's friends, family and associates,
and archives at museums, galleries and historical societies. Photocopied materials include correspondence with Mark Rothko,
pages from his notebooks, vital, legal, financial, and medical records, documents regarding the commission, exhibition, and
sale of artwork, and assorted documents related to the lawsuit brought by his daughter against Marlborough Galleries and the
executors of Rothko's estate following his death. Photographic materials include slides, prints, negatives, and transparencies,
predominantly reproductions of Rothko's paintings, but also personal photographs reproduced from other collections, photographs
of the landscapes and landmarks of Rothko's childhood, and exterior views of his studios in New York City. Also included are
critical and art historical articles and theses, Breslin's original correspondence and extensive handwritten notes documenting
his research process, and materials related to the publication of his book. The dates provided for photocopied materials and
other reproductions correspond to the original documents. Undated items produced by Breslin, including his notes, are dated
within the years of his research, circa 1983 to 1992.
The archive is arranged in six series:Series I. Research files on individuals, 1913-1994;Series II. Research files on institutions
and organizations, 1922-1992;Series III. Topical research files, 1903-1991;Series IV. Photographs and reproductions, 1900-1994;Series
V. Book publication files, 1989-1993;Series VI. Audio recordings of interviews, 1985-1990.
James E. B. Breslin was born December 12, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1957 and
an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1959. In 1964 Breslin earned his Ph.D. from the University of
Minnesota, and in the same year joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Breslin's scholarly interests lay in avant-garde American poetry and art of the twentieth century, particularly in relation
to Modernism. In 1970 he published his first book,
William Carlos Williams: an American artist, followed in 1984 by his study of post-World War II poetry entitled
From modern to contemporary. His third major book,
Mark Rothko: a biography, published in 1993 after nearly eight years of research, was praised by Hilton Kramer in the
New York times book review as "a biographical classic" and "the best life of an American painter that has yet been written," December 26, 1993.
Following the publication of his Rothko biography, Breslin was appointed chair of the Art Practice Department at UC Berkeley.
He was completing an introduction to a catalog of Squeak Carnwath paintings with his second wife, Ramsay Bell Breslin, and
researching a biography of jazz great John Coltrane when he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1996.
Ramsay Bell Breslin numbered the folders and wrote an extensive inventory in preparation for the Getty Research Institute's
acquisition of the archive. Laurel McPhee began processing and arranging the collection and writing the finding aid in November-December
2003 and Andra Darlington completed the work in December 2005-April 2006. James Breslin's original order was maintained in
the alphabetical arrangement of files on individuals and institutions, and in the topical arrangement of other files; new
topics were assigned and documents interfiled as necessary. Original file folders were retained only if Breslin had written
notes on them.
Acquired from Ramsay Bell Breslin, James Breslin's widow, in 2003.
James E. B. Breslin Research Archive on Mark Rothko, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2003.M.23
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2003m23
Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted audiotapes and the Theodoros Stamos file, Box 32,
which will remain sealed until 2076.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Art, Modern -- 20th century
Artists -- Interviews
Abstract expressionism -- United States
Daugavpils (Latvia) -- History -- 20th century
Portland (Or.) -- History -- 20th century
New York school of art
New York (N.Y.) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
Correspondence
Interviews
Audiocassettes
Color transparencies
Slides (photographs)
Photographic prints
Photographs, Original
Weber, Max, 1881-1961
Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970
Still, Clyfford, 1904-1980
Motherwell, Robert
Newman, Barnett, 1905-1970
Gottlieb, Adolph, 1903-1974
Kuh, Katharine
Avery, Milton, 1885-1965
Ashton, Dore