In this second part of Communications Manager Amber Thompson’s interview with Jean Reed Roberts, Paul Reed’s daughter talks about her father’s legacy and the retrospective exhibition.
AT What has it meant to you to be a steward of your father’s work?
JRR Well, one thing I had kind of gave up because of my eyes and my husband was ill, my law career, which I just loved. It gave me a whole new career. But I had started giving away his paintings in the late ‘60s. And at first he didn’t like it, and then he went along with it, and then he liked it. Then he got my brothers involved. But it was very important to me. It gave me a new mission, it gave me a different personality, a different circle to learn about. The art world is very different from the legal world, and it gave more purpose to my life.
And when I told him I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to law school, he said, “Why would you want to do that?” And my mother said, “Oh don’t.” She said, “I’ll buy you a car if you’ll just stay home and take care of those children.” So they didn’t understand my world, and it took me a long time to understand theirs. But I think it was very important.
He was on his third operation for cancer in [his] 90s, having a really tough time of it. And I sat, and I said, “It’s going to be okay, Paul, ’cause you’re my Picasso. And when I get done, you don’t have to worry about the paintings, they’re going to be everywhere.” And that sort of was just my promise to him. And he survived that and didn’t die till a couple years later. But no, it gave a different purpose to my life. The kids all make fun of me, and one friend said, I’m not listening to another word about Paul Reed, and I said “Okay!” [laughs] But I really focused in on it, and especially in retirement and through Covid and all that, it’s given me a whole new side to my life. And I hope, his legacy.
When I first met Maury [Ford, Director of Collections and Exhibitions] and Michael [Anderson, President & CEO], they were involved in the Matisse show. And they found me through the New York dealer Deedee Wigmore because they needed copyright and they needed permission on the painting that the Pompidou wanted to include in the Matisse show, and I was just so sorry my father had just passed and didn’t know that. It would have made his ending much happier to have that acknowledgment. And then they said they might take works and be a repository for his work. You know, that opened up a whole new world for me. As I said, this show, I’ve been thinking about working on for ten years. So this is a wonderful, wonderful day.
AT Are there other ways your relationship to his work has changed since his passing?
JRR Well, he can’t comment on what I do. [laughs] He can’t micromanage me. I’ve been freed to do it my way. So no, not other than that, no. You know, in the mid-sixties he came to visit my husband and I our children in St. Louis, and he just started, but he couldn’t afford to have anything framed, and my husband was a wonderful carpenter. He was a college professor, but his love was wood, and he framed all the paintings, including the difficult ones. And my mother and I, first we left just a fifth of scotch, then we left a half gallon of scotch and left for the day while Paul gave his vision to my husband, and my husband, who was like a rock, didn’t pay any attention to him [laughs] and did it the way he felt it should be done, and they would barter back and forth and negotiate painting after painting. But then he left with framed paintings.
So I don’t know, it’s just been such a continuum over the last fifty years. The difference after he passed was, well, it was done. It was over. It was now his legacy, not him.
AT When you think of his work is there a particular series or time period that your mind goes to?
JRR Well, of course the 60s, but then I really like the 2000s. He took all that color and all that experience, and his later paintings move. You know the first ones are just color blocks, they’re geometric pieces, but his later paintings have fluid and move, and I think they’re more interesting and more fun. You know, he’s famous for the 60s, but I think his art kept evolving. He kept experimenting. He kept painting. He painted until he was over ninety-five. His last painting was the Boson, which I had given to the Phillips and is in the show. He had a friend from NASA, a scientist, and he said, “An artist can see what a scientist can’t.” A boson is supposedly the smallest particle in the universe. And they haven’t found a telescope that sees it yet. And he painted four of them, and he was over ninety-five. At ninety, he wanted to learn about quantum physics and string theory, and I had to get all those things on audio book so he could study them. And once he stopped focusing just on the Color Painters and that work, his world exploded. I mean, when you look at his later work, it’s almost like you’re looking at something out of the stars or the universe because it moves, and it isn’t the defined shapes.
AT I’m wondering what you think might be a benefit to having this retrospective happening in 2025. What does that do for his legacy?
JRR I think it makes his legacy. I think his evolution and the variety of his work enhances all of them. I mean it shows what that color did for the whole art world, the whole world-world. [laughs] You know, you can go to Europe and see Color Field paintings. Well they came from this small group of men who were very innovative. And, Paul, part of being the solo, was also kind of released from the commercial end. It became very commercial at one point, of which he was left out of. But I think that also gave his art a freedom and gave him a freedom. I think [it] hurt his feelings, but you know. And if he didn’t like you, you couldn’t have one of his paintings. If he liked you, he’d probably give it to you. He gave away as much as he ever sold. If he liked you, you left with a painting. [laughs]
AT What do you think he would think about this retrospective?
JRR Oh, he’d be so happy. He loved David Gariff. If there was another person on Earth who really was his close friend, it was David. And anything David did was fine. He would be so pleased. And I’m just so sorry—course he’d be almost a hundred and twenty—that he’s not here. No, he’d not, he’d only be a hundred and ten. [laughs] But that he isn’t here to feel it and enjoy it. He didn’t usually like his openings, but he liked the one at the National Gallery, and I’m sure he would have liked this one. As soon as somebody said, “I think that green matches my sofa,” he’d be out of the opening. And that’s what he’d talk about. [laughs] It would just get him all upset. That people were trying to put his paintings in their little square holes. He would be, I think, extremely happy.
AT What is it like for you for the definitive home of his work to be here in Oklahoma?
JRR Well, you’re the one who wanted him. [laughs] That’s part of it. Big part of it. That they were already interested in him, and wanted him. And from the Matisse show, it’s just grown. And luckily, Michael and Maury have continued to be interested in him.
I also think his work is so different from the others because it is an evolution, not just one phase. Everybody else I think of as being in their Color School phase, period. You know, that’s what they did. But Paul had another fifty years, and he’s the only artist you could do that for.
AT It’s a very important part of our collection now.
JRR Yes!
AT You like the sound of that, don’t you?
JRR [laughs] It takes a huge burden off me. I said, “Okay, Paul, I’ve done it. Am I done now?” [laughs] So yes. And I brought my whole family. My kids all knew him growing up, and it’s just important they see, you know, the whole thing, because I think this is the glory point. This says as much as you can say about him.
AT Do you think his work has the ability to connect people to art who maybe otherwise would find it difficult to have an entry point? Does his work serve as an entry point for people?
JRR I think so just because it’s easy. It’s easy to understand. When you see it, you just see it for what it is, and you don’t try to think about what was he thinking about, what was he doing. You just see the color and the images and their interaction with each other. So you don’t have to be an art critic or know which way his strokes went—you don’t need to know any of that. You can just be joyful in the experience of the color.
When the Matisse show was here, I was here for part of it. And there was a mother and a little girl coming through, the little girl was maybe four, maybe five. And I said, “[gasp] Which painting do you like best?” And she pointed. She said, “I like this one best.” Her mother said, “She makes me keep coming back to this one.” And it was Paul’s. You know, even little kids kind of get the connection that there’s something happy there, there’s something going on there. And I thought she was my prize. [laughs] You’ve just said it all!
So, yeah, I think even a four-year-old can like it. And you can’t say that about a lot of art, you know. And I think each of the Color Painters did something different and brought something to the new art. But I think Paul kept going. And I think that’s the difference between him and the other ones. And I thank this museum for capturing it and appreciating it and wanting to do something with it.
