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Unstill Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction
Awarded the 2015 Best Memoir from The American Society of Journalists and Authors
Luminous and revealing, a daughter's memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father. In 1958, soon after Gabrielle Selz was born, she, her parents and her sister moved to New York, where her father, Peter Selz, would begin his job as the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. What followed was a whirlwind childhood spent among art and artists in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Gabrielle grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the day: Rothko, de Kooning, Tinguely, Giacometti, and Christo, among others. Poignant and candid, Unstill Life is a daughter's memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father known to the world as Mr. Modern Art. Selz offers a unique window into the glamour and destruction of the times: the gallery openings, wild parties and affairs that defined one of the most celebrated periods in American art history. Like the art he loved, Selz's father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When her father left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz's mother, the writer Thalia Selz, moved with her children into the utopian artist community Westbeth. Her parents continued a tumultuous affair that would last forty years. Weaving her family narrative into the larger story of twentieth-century art and culture, Selz paints an unforgettable portrait of a charismatic man, the generation of modern artists he championed and the daughter whose life he shaped.
Luminous and revealing, a daughter's memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father. In 1958, soon after Gabrielle Selz was born, she, her parents and her sister moved to New York, where her father, Peter Selz, would begin his job as the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. What followed was a whirlwind childhood spent among art and artists in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Gabrielle grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the day: Rothko, de Kooning, Tinguely, Giacometti, and Christo, among others. Poignant and candid, Unstill Life is a daughter's memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father known to the world as Mr. Modern Art. Selz offers a unique window into the glamour and destruction of the times: the gallery openings, wild parties and affairs that defined one of the most celebrated periods in American art history. Like the art he loved, Selz's father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When her father left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz's mother, the writer Thalia Selz, moved with her children into the utopian artist community Westbeth. Her parents continued a tumultuous affair that would last forty years. Weaving her family narrative into the larger story of twentieth-century art and culture, Selz paints an unforgettable portrait of a charismatic man, the generation of modern artists he championed and the daughter whose life he shaped.
- GenresMemoirArtNonfiction
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2014
5 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Gabrielle Selz
2 books10 followersGabrielle Selz is the award-winning author of Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis. Her debut book, Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. It was listed as the best book of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Gabrielle has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine, Her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and Newsday. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.
She earned her BA in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MA in Writing from City College in New York. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Gabrielle is a member of the San-Francisco-based writing group North 24th Writers, whose members have published more than two dozen nonfiction books. She has an adult son and lives in Oakland, California.
Gabrielle has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine, Her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and Newsday. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.
She earned her BA in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MA in Writing from City College in New York. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Gabrielle is a member of the San-Francisco-based writing group North 24th Writers, whose members have published more than two dozen nonfiction books. She has an adult son and lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 29, 2014
It was with great anticipation that I read “Unstill Life,” Gabrielle Selz’s memoir of growing up in the celebrated and notorious art worlds of New York and San Francisco, from the early 1960s to the 1980s. The book’s protagonist is not Selz, but her father, MoMA chief curator Peter Selz, the man the New York Times dubbed “Mr. Modern Art.” He was a man who dominated rooms both inside and outside the museum, and around which his wives and daughters orbited. My grandfather—who was 15 years older than Peter Selz—moved in similar circles and though they never met, their paths crossed several times. I have an illustrated letter from Marc Chagall to my grandfather (the two became lifelong friends after my grandfather smuggled Chagall and his wife across the Pyrénées, out of Nazi-occupied France). Selz, too, worked with the artist whom he found difficult at times, and was himself a refugee from Munich, escaping the Nazi regime just before Kristallnacht. Like my grandfather, Selz was a man of immense intellect and charisma, a man who never sat down and stopped “doing,” a philanderer who demanded attention at all times but whose drive and intellect seemed to naturally deserve such attentions.
“My father couldn’t make art but he could ferret it out,” writes Gabrielle Selz, “dredge it from the deep unknown waters offshore and haul it to land. He could sing its praises and honor it. He could place it in history.” In fact, her father helped create history, fully aware of this feat in a way that only a narcissist could be. Gabrielle Selz’s childhood was enveloped in huge egos that produced great works: Rothko, deKooning, Pollock, Appel.
Selz’s early life unfolded during a truly amazing period in American history, and she deftly portrays the complexities of parents who embodied the age in which they survived, lived, and reigned. The “Mad Men” era of 1950s Manhattan was an age in which those reeling from the chaos and horror of war were trying to come to terms with the past and the opportunity to rebuild civilization. It is, sadly, now hard to imagine an America in which art and culture stood at the forefront of what we think of as civilization; a time when Jackson Pollock was known by not just “art world snobs” but by everyone: he was featured in LIFE, the colorful, popular weekly magazine. It was a time when the U.S. government developed a counter-Communism tactic that used art as a means of showing Soviet Russia what Democracy and freedom really meant.
But it was also, as Selz brilliantly recounts, a strange world inhabited by mothers caught between the post-war rigidity of female roles and the modern world of feminism, and how their internal conflicts irrevocably affected their children. Images of perfectly-coiffed, Pucci-clad women, cigarettes in hand, carting their children around coolly like accessories, populated and informed Selz’s early memories. It’s hard to blame these mothers: they were constantly swimming against a tide of a particular brand of chauvinism; the social and sexual antics of “The Boys” (DeKooning et al); deep-thinking artists who behaved like the worst kind of jocks. Their notorious drinking and antics make for entertaining anecdotes. But, like the film “Pollock,” Selz’s narrative deftly details glamorous but cringy cocktail parties and self-absorbed art-world banter, then shifts—in agonizing increments—to the tragedy of a marriage coming to an end with two little girls caught in the middle. When Peter Selz breaks down and sobs with young Gaby, as he’s packing up to leave (taking all the art on their walls with him), I felt my own chest tighten with despair and heartbreak. And when Mark Rothko takes his own life in a shocking and bloody act, the readers knows this glamorous life (“That Life,” Selz’s mother calls it) is not to last.
There is a Gothic overtone in “Unstill Life,” as Selz describes the unexpected twists and turns of her ever-darkening childhood and early adulthood. From the Brontë-esque Kinderheim in the Alps, where she and her sister are suddenly and unceremoniously abandoned, to the darkly bohemian artist’s colony of Westbeth in 1970s Greenwhich Village, where Diane Arbus committed suicide across the hall from Selz, her mother, and sister. At the heart of this tumultuous story are her father and mother (the gifted writer Thalia), and their decades-long love affair that lasted through four more of Peter Selz’s marriages to other women.
“Unstill Life” is, at its core, an excellent read, written by a great storyteller (Selz has won New York City’s famed Moth StorySlam). There is, amongst the intelligent commentary on various artists and art, a gripping narrative, an intricately woven tale that comes full and poetic circle by end. Witty, affectionate, poignant and harrowing, Selz takes the reader on a personal journey imbued with the universal: love and loss, art and life.
“My father couldn’t make art but he could ferret it out,” writes Gabrielle Selz, “dredge it from the deep unknown waters offshore and haul it to land. He could sing its praises and honor it. He could place it in history.” In fact, her father helped create history, fully aware of this feat in a way that only a narcissist could be. Gabrielle Selz’s childhood was enveloped in huge egos that produced great works: Rothko, deKooning, Pollock, Appel.
Selz’s early life unfolded during a truly amazing period in American history, and she deftly portrays the complexities of parents who embodied the age in which they survived, lived, and reigned. The “Mad Men” era of 1950s Manhattan was an age in which those reeling from the chaos and horror of war were trying to come to terms with the past and the opportunity to rebuild civilization. It is, sadly, now hard to imagine an America in which art and culture stood at the forefront of what we think of as civilization; a time when Jackson Pollock was known by not just “art world snobs” but by everyone: he was featured in LIFE, the colorful, popular weekly magazine. It was a time when the U.S. government developed a counter-Communism tactic that used art as a means of showing Soviet Russia what Democracy and freedom really meant.
But it was also, as Selz brilliantly recounts, a strange world inhabited by mothers caught between the post-war rigidity of female roles and the modern world of feminism, and how their internal conflicts irrevocably affected their children. Images of perfectly-coiffed, Pucci-clad women, cigarettes in hand, carting their children around coolly like accessories, populated and informed Selz’s early memories. It’s hard to blame these mothers: they were constantly swimming against a tide of a particular brand of chauvinism; the social and sexual antics of “The Boys” (DeKooning et al); deep-thinking artists who behaved like the worst kind of jocks. Their notorious drinking and antics make for entertaining anecdotes. But, like the film “Pollock,” Selz’s narrative deftly details glamorous but cringy cocktail parties and self-absorbed art-world banter, then shifts—in agonizing increments—to the tragedy of a marriage coming to an end with two little girls caught in the middle. When Peter Selz breaks down and sobs with young Gaby, as he’s packing up to leave (taking all the art on their walls with him), I felt my own chest tighten with despair and heartbreak. And when Mark Rothko takes his own life in a shocking and bloody act, the readers knows this glamorous life (“That Life,” Selz’s mother calls it) is not to last.
There is a Gothic overtone in “Unstill Life,” as Selz describes the unexpected twists and turns of her ever-darkening childhood and early adulthood. From the Brontë-esque Kinderheim in the Alps, where she and her sister are suddenly and unceremoniously abandoned, to the darkly bohemian artist’s colony of Westbeth in 1970s Greenwhich Village, where Diane Arbus committed suicide across the hall from Selz, her mother, and sister. At the heart of this tumultuous story are her father and mother (the gifted writer Thalia), and their decades-long love affair that lasted through four more of Peter Selz’s marriages to other women.
“Unstill Life” is, at its core, an excellent read, written by a great storyteller (Selz has won New York City’s famed Moth StorySlam). There is, amongst the intelligent commentary on various artists and art, a gripping narrative, an intricately woven tale that comes full and poetic circle by end. Witty, affectionate, poignant and harrowing, Selz takes the reader on a personal journey imbued with the universal: love and loss, art and life.
August 26, 2014
This was one of the most human and well-paced art world memoirs I have read. Gabrielle Selz, daughter of a trail-blazing and lustful art curator father and a writer mother was both a voyeur and a participant in the the tumultuous and exciting art worlds of mid-century New York and California. Its humanity was both touching and insightful, especially her experiences with Diane Arbus and Mark Rothko. More academic art history accounts are seldom as revealing when it comes to the darker side of artists' motivations and pain. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the early days of abstract expressionism, the contrasts of the East Coast and West Coast art scenes, and the evolution from Post-World War II abstraction to Pop Art.
June 5, 2014
Gabrielle Selz’s memoir “Unstill Life” is a story elegantly told, and a very engaging read.
The author recounts the relationship of her parents, one of deep love and heartbreak, which mirrors the relationship she in turn has with her father, a grand figure in the the art world. The world of art- its characters, movements, and masterpieces— is also recollected with affection by someone whose life is intricately woven within it.
She recalls growing up among the Abstract Expressionists, visiting with the Rothkos and other well-known figures such as Jean Tiguley, Karel Appel and Max Beckman. For those familiar with the artists and movements, she brings new and intriguing stories and observations, while those readers less familiar are also brought along with concise descriptions of their importance. At all times, Gabrielle balances her personal story with the larger historical narrative.
Her mother, a writer of fiction whose animated journals excerpts are included, comes alive in her own words as well as her daughter’s. One can see how Gabrielle carries on the legacy of both her mother’s literary aspirations and her father’s artistic devotion.
This many-layered novel ends with Gabrielle’s growing into her own—she is able to look back with the clarity of a witness, yet never loses the bittersweet emotional tone of one who lived through it all. I found it to be a moving coming-of-age tale as well as a firsthand historical narrative creatively told.
The author recounts the relationship of her parents, one of deep love and heartbreak, which mirrors the relationship she in turn has with her father, a grand figure in the the art world. The world of art- its characters, movements, and masterpieces— is also recollected with affection by someone whose life is intricately woven within it.
She recalls growing up among the Abstract Expressionists, visiting with the Rothkos and other well-known figures such as Jean Tiguley, Karel Appel and Max Beckman. For those familiar with the artists and movements, she brings new and intriguing stories and observations, while those readers less familiar are also brought along with concise descriptions of their importance. At all times, Gabrielle balances her personal story with the larger historical narrative.
Her mother, a writer of fiction whose animated journals excerpts are included, comes alive in her own words as well as her daughter’s. One can see how Gabrielle carries on the legacy of both her mother’s literary aspirations and her father’s artistic devotion.
This many-layered novel ends with Gabrielle’s growing into her own—she is able to look back with the clarity of a witness, yet never loses the bittersweet emotional tone of one who lived through it all. I found it to be a moving coming-of-age tale as well as a firsthand historical narrative creatively told.
August 26, 2014
Patti Smith's book "Just Kids" was all about the New York rock and roll and underground scene. Gabrielle Selz's "Unstill Life" is all about the modern art scene in New York and Berkeley from the 1960s to the 1980s. Reading about Selz's father, Peter, a curator at MoMA and the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, and her mother, Thalia, a writer, put me smack in the middle of those times. Wild parties, glamorous art gallery openings, outsized creativity, and casualties from the chaos ... Selz does a wonderful job bringing those days to life. Plus, we get close up views of some of the artists who are icons today: Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Diane Arbus, and many more.
August 7, 2014
NYC in the early 60 and the art scene loved this book !
March 12, 2018
From Goodreads: "In 1958, soon after Gabrielle Selz was born, she, her parents and her sister moved to New York, where her father, Peter Selz, would begin his job as the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. What followed was a whirlwind childhood spent among art and artists in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism."
What a wonderful memoir! Not only is the story of Gabrielle Selz and her father interesting, the backdrop of the art world of the 60's and 70's make this book a real gem. I highly recommend this one!
What a wonderful memoir! Not only is the story of Gabrielle Selz and her father interesting, the backdrop of the art world of the 60's and 70's make this book a real gem. I highly recommend this one!
November 20, 2014
I read this book concurrently with Paul J. Karlstrom's book: Peter Selz: Sketches of a Life in Art, and I suggest others do the same if they want a more comprehensive, less personalized, more detailed look at the life of Peter Selz, the great arts administrator and art historian. Both books are thoroughly engaging, absorbing and well written. I was afraid that Gabrielle Selz's book would be a spill the beans get even with daddy book, but it clearly was not. She does not over-sentimentalize or spew venomous revenge. In fact, her book clearly shows she made a strong effort to understand the workings of her passionate and brilliant father, with a non-judgmental, open mind and heart. She does point out his regular infidelities with women. It is understandable that this could be hurtful to a daughter, but his free spirited, open-loving of other women, seemed to go along with his very large personality and how he approached life in general as a spirited, seize the moment kind of man. I found Gabrielle's mother, Thalia, Selz's first wife, to be equally as interesting a human being as Peter Selz, and almost wish her own separate story could be told. Selz's story is that of a pull himself up by the bootstraps immigrant, escaping Nazi Germany, possessing great ambition, confidence and a never look back always look ahead attitude that helped him survive and thrive. His personality put me in mind of Bill Graham.
I met Peter Selz once in Berkeley. We both attended a poetry reading, and he gave me a ride home afterwards as it was raining. Although he introduced himself, I was not aware of his great accomplishments and notoriety. I told him I was a librarian, and he told me he helped oversee an art gallery. How sweet of him to not embarrass me with my lack of knowledge.
This book also gives a glimpse into how the other half lives: the European travels, the boarding schools, the in-depth visits to world class museums, the dinner and cocktail parties, the hobnobbing with the famous...a colorful world I have only experienced through books.
I especially enjoyed reading about Selz in Berkeley, my old home town...and his creation of the art museum there...a place I enjoyed, but never knew of its history or original director_Peter Selz. A great man in my book.
I met Peter Selz once in Berkeley. We both attended a poetry reading, and he gave me a ride home afterwards as it was raining. Although he introduced himself, I was not aware of his great accomplishments and notoriety. I told him I was a librarian, and he told me he helped oversee an art gallery. How sweet of him to not embarrass me with my lack of knowledge.
This book also gives a glimpse into how the other half lives: the European travels, the boarding schools, the in-depth visits to world class museums, the dinner and cocktail parties, the hobnobbing with the famous...a colorful world I have only experienced through books.
I especially enjoyed reading about Selz in Berkeley, my old home town...and his creation of the art museum there...a place I enjoyed, but never knew of its history or original director_Peter Selz. A great man in my book.
August 6, 2016
I loved everything about this memoir. The gossipy bits about famous artists are great, but the real story is the the matter-of-fact and accepting way that she deals with her parents' relationship. Despite the non-traditional nature of her childhood, there is not one ounce of self-pity or anger in her description of her parents. It's rare that someone can analyze such a complex relationship as parent-child and husband/wife with a dispassionate eye and yet still manage to capture the strong emotions there.
August 22, 2014
Excellent non-fiction about a mover and shaker in the art world…his relationships with artists and his family during an exciting era in art. Well written.
December 8, 2022
Beautiful memoir written by Gabrielle Selz, the daughter of museum curator and author, Peter Selz. I picked up this book in a local bookstore to quench my art interest, and I can say I am thoroughly pleased with the story. The writing is very tight and enjoyable, and the author paints an interesting timeline and narrative. I left wanting a little bit more about her mother, however, I can see why the focus was on her very eccentric father. I don’t really have an issue with this book, but at times I found her father a little bothersome, wrapped up in his own life without a ton of concern about the impact on family. I am definitely not passing judgment on the man, though, more of an observation of the events that occurred and how they are portrayed. Overall a beautiful book that I would recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2019
Seen through the lens of her family with its disruptions in the turmoil of the times, Selz offers a look at the art world in the US beginning in the late 50’s including inside encounters with a variety of important artists. If you’re partial to memoirs and interested in art and art history, this is a nice read. I wish the editing had been tighter, though; I found it ironic that an author who notes that her grandmother had been dubbed “Grammar” indulged in lazy sentence fragments and even some malapropisms.
March 7, 2022
I loved this book. Sensational and just so much fun if one is interested in abstract expressionism.
It answers so many questions with behind-the-scenes stories and the author's firsthand accounts of the art world, including the Museum of Modern Art in the 50s, Willem de Kooing, R. Diebenkorn, Diane Arbus, Rothko, 70s Funk Art of the Bay Area, Christo's Running Fence, etc.
Wonderfully written.
It answers so many questions with behind-the-scenes stories and the author's firsthand accounts of the art world, including the Museum of Modern Art in the 50s, Willem de Kooing, R. Diebenkorn, Diane Arbus, Rothko, 70s Funk Art of the Bay Area, Christo's Running Fence, etc.
Wonderfully written.
December 24, 2014
This memoir presents a wonderful mix of Gabrielle Selz's personal experiences growing up the daughter of interesting and creative parents, events in recent history, and a lesson in modern art. Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60s and 70s, I recall first hand some of the events she describes. I loved this book.
October 4, 2014
A fascinating tale/memoir of growing up in the art world surrounded by art and famous artists like Rothko and deKooning with a wildly erratic narcissistic father who was the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism.
October 11, 2014
A must read for art lovers and those who want to learn more about art, art movements and art history. Gabrielle Selz writes a wonderful story of her family and especially her father, Peter Selz, chief curator at MOMA and the man NYT named 'Mr. Modern Art'.
July 28, 2016
What a wonderful memoir to read about the art world! Selz's father, Peter, was the first paintings curator for MoMA. Their social circle included all the abstract expressionists. Lovely vignettes about life in the '50's and '60's.
Want to read
June 13, 2015Interviewed by Bob Edwards
July 20, 2016
Wonderful and smart memoir about art and the people who make it. Beautifully written and full of thoughtful observations.
January 17, 2016
Personable, raw, page-turner with notes on honest meetings with stellar artists. Also a real story of a daughter and her father.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews