San Francisco Bay Area Writers and Artists, Elsie Whitaker Martinez
Son-in-Law: Ralph DuCasse, Artist and Teacher
BaumYour son-in-law, Ralph DuCasse, is also an artist, and one with a growing reputation. How did he and your daughter meet?
Martinez
To begin with, Ralph's father wanted to make a doctor of him and he persecuted the life out of him. The boy had every artistic instinct; he was quite a pianist, he had composed quite a bit, he had gone to summer classes in art and the teacher had told the father he was a real artist. He paid the bill, "You can't come here again." So he was thankful when the war went on and released him from his father.
Kai met him out at Fort Ord. At that time they used to send to us the artists and musicians who came to the U.S.O. We were the artistic branch. We got to know Ralph and this brilliant friend of his, who died in Normandy. That's where the romance started. He was in Intelligence, Japanese; they tested him at Stanford and sent him along, and they were engaged and married, and then he went the rounds. He was sent for four months to Denver and then four months in St. Petersburg.
Then he was sent to Warrenton, Virginia to study straight Intelligence there. He had the Japanese language, in the meantime, you know, with that new method which had been originally organized by the Jesuits because they have their missionaries all over the world. So, by the end of the year he was sent to the Philippines and he arrived in the Philippines just after MacArthur took it. Then he went, from there he jumped to Okinawa and then to Tokyo, and he was there after the war. When he came back he said, "Now I'm released and I'm going to be an artist."
Well, he went to the University of California and made a brilliant record there, took a master's degree in art there. Then he started exhibiting. And he's a hard worker. I never saw anyone work so hard as Ralph, but of course he worked so hard that family life couldn't be worked into it. I don't believe artists should marry anyhow. It wasn't possible. I stood up for Ralph with his family and with his friends, because I understood. Marty was the same. I settled into Marty's life when I was young, and when I got older, I couldn't take it. But with Ralph, he was so sensitive, everything upset him. Babies crying upset him. If they were hurt it upset him. If they were unhappy it upset him. So he just couldn't do anything.
And he was making quite a name for himself. Just at that time, Sweeney was sent out from the Guggenheim to pick the fifty young painters in America of the future. And he was one of them picked. And Sweeney came to see him. Of course it was splashed all over our papers and it came out in Time. So his father lived, fortunately, long enough to have that distinction, and he was so pleased. As far as his father was concerned you're in if you get into Time.
And then I said, "Ralph, what do you want?" He said, "Oh, Pelly, I want just one picture — if I can get a picture into the international show." That's the big event, of course, of the world. He not only got his canvas in, he got the fourth prize. Very few Americans have ever gotten any prizes at the international show. And he was young, he was just thirty-nine. And the other three were two old
Baum
He got peace because they separated, is that right?
Martinez
Yes. That released him like a balloon. And he's devoted to Kai, they're devoted to each other, and he loves the children. He plans, spends all the holidays with them, comes up regularly, and plans future things he wants to do for them. He has scholarships at Mills for them if they want to take it. They have to have a B average all through to be able to get the scholarships.
But he's really very remarkable — his sudden rise to fame. John Cunningham of the art institute in Carmel said to me, "You know, Pelly, I'm awfully glad that I knew Ralph. Every once in a while there'll be one of these spectacular rises, and I'd like to see and know the person who did that, and that's Ralph." In less than — I guess about eight years — he went right up to the very top. Then, of course, Mills College wanted him on their faculty, so he's been
Kai, of course, understands it too, but he said he could not have achieved it by trying to adapt himself to a form of life. After all, if you have a home and you have friends and you have this and you have that, you get entangled, you know. I understood him perfectly. His family was shocked and horrified. I sent and told them to come to California. I wanted to sit down and talk to them, and I gave them a good talking-to. Ralph says he doesn't know how he would have survived that period if it hadn't been for my backing. Kai understood, but it was rather a shock and a hardship for her, with two children. She wanted the perfect Catholic marriage, to be the perfect Catholic wife. For artists it isn't possible. I understood that and she understands it, too, and Ralph has made that spectacular success. But he had to have complete — there was nothing to interfere with his work. He's the kind of person who works all hours of the day or night.
Baum
Do you know anything about the Du Casse family background?
Martinez
Oh yes, it's a fascinating family. Ralph's grandfather was a French aristocrat who fled the Revolution and went south. He used to make fine gloves. It was the only thing he could do. He made fine
Walker
Do you think that Ralph DuCasse's accident improved his painting? It changed it very greatly.
Martinez
I haven't seen it just lately. Ralph told me when we talked a while back, he said he'd have to completely reorient himself. He wants to get from complete abstraction into an inbetween, which I think is right.
Walker
It's very interesting, he's developed an entirely new technique of painting since his accident.
Baum
What accident was this?
Walker
He fell through a skylight at the Mills gallery about five years ago and everyone despaired of his life for a long while. He was broken up in so many places.
Martinez
It's absolutely a miracle. Of course, we think we did it because we
Walker
It was horrible! You see, they were preparing for the student show and he and Tony Prieto went up to get something out of the attic and he slipped and went right through one of the panes of glass. It didn't look as if it were big enough for anybody to go through, and he went right through, on his face, with students all around, passing out. It was a traumatic experience.
Martinez
He was so startled he hadn't time to throw his arms out, because he could have stopped himself.
Walker
He has the sweetest temperament, he's cheerful ...
Martinez
And he went through it so superbly. I said, "Ralph, how did you" — he was a social boy — "how did you stand the army for five years?" He said, "Pelly, On my first trip to the Monterey Coast with Marty, I saw my first pelicans. I was excited by these deep sea birds. Then Marty remarked, "Elsie, your long thin nose is like a pelican's beak, so you will be pelican from now on." Harriet Dean shortened it to Pelly after she came to Piedmont. I made up my mind I had to go through this and I never thought about it. I went through it and got five years of art
Walker
Before he came to Mills the thing I heard about him that amused me the most was the story about his putting a canvas outside of his room when he was in San Francisco, and the garbage collectors taking it away. [Laughter]
Martinez
One of those grinder trucks, too. [Laughter] They had a law suit, you know. All these apartments had little doors with their garbage cans back of them, and this man was to pick up this painting for an exhibition. It was six feet tall, at that, and it was set against the wall, so there was no reason to have taken that painting. Well, it was ground up with the rest of the things. So, this lawyer friend says, "Well, you can't let that go, Ralph." Well, Ralph was kind of upset, because it was one of his good ones, so they started this suit. It was just as much of a scream, this suit was.
They had this little suit, and the garbage man said, we - ell, how could he tell anything about art? "It didn't look like anything to me."
Walker
I've got two cans outside my back door, one of which is full of newspapers to be burned, and we always burn every Saturday, and the other is the garbage, and they've taken the papers so often and left the garbage that I have to get up at 5:30 every Friday to protect myself.
Martinez
[Laughter] Ralph said that they couldn't quite understand why, and he said to the judge, "It's only three blocks away, if you'll come
The funniest story is about the time he was coming up from Los Angeles with four of his Ohio River series, exhibited in Santa Barbara. So we stopped on the way down to see the exhibit before Ralph would pick up his pictures. About two weeks later Ralph was bowling up from Santa Barbara, and he had one of those contraptions with suction cups on the top. He'd fastened the canvases securely on the top and was going along annoyed by a strong noisy wind that comes up daily in the Salinas Valley about three o'clock in the spring season. Ralph got so sick of the dull sound he thought, "I'll stop and have a cup of coffee and give my ears a rest." And when he looked out the window over his cup of coffee the top was gone and the canvases had disappeared. He was startled and told the café owner, "I've been sitting here so it didn't happen while I was here." The café owner replied, "I'll call the highway patrol." They talked with Ralph and told him they would look out for the top during their patrol and said, "We'll notify you."
The next morning a farmer reported the contraption and canvases intact on his land. Ralph rushed back and, to his relief, found them undamaged. The incident was reported over the radio. Ralph's mother phoned him that she heard about his mishap over the N.B.C. hook-up in Paducah!
I see our tape is running out. Thank you, Professor Walker, for joining us this afternoon. Mrs. Martinez, I hope this recording can serve as the autobiography of your very interesting life, though you could have added a lot more to it if you had written it.
Martinez
Well, I had planned to be a writer, but I was so interested in life and interested in ideas I never got around to doing too much work. It's hard work to achieve anything. If I had an idea I could chase I was not interested in writing at the moment.
I always said my distinction in life was that I was my father's daughter, I was Marty's wife, I was Micaela Martinez's mother, Harriet Dean's friend, and now I'm a DuCasse's grandmother. [Laughter] That's been the trail that I have traveled along in these up to seventy-two years. Now I'm the McCreary's great-grandmother, the children of Jeanne DuCasse, Bruce McCreary and Kenneth McCreary.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb6j49p1b8&brand=calisphere
Title: San Francisco Bay Area writers and artists : oral history transcript / Elsie Martinez
By: Martinez, Elsie, 1890-1984, Interviewee, Baum, Willa K, Interviewer, Walker, Franklin Dickerson,, Interviewer
Date: 1962-1969
Contributing Institution: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
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