Farber on Farber: in his more than 50 years as a film critic and painter, Manny Farber has brought an essentially autobiographical sensibility to bear on a wide range of visual idioms, from process-driven abstractions to rebuslike figurative studies. Here, he tells the story straight
Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Leah Ollman

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It was only supposed to be a semester, half a year. That was in our minds, and in the minds of the art department here. They didn't expect us to be here that long. I guess you could say I got intoxicated with teaching movies. It seems odd, but it's true. I hadn't had any formal education in movies when I was working on The New Republic and The Nation. What knowledge I had came from running to the Museum of Modern Art and seeing what movie they were showing that afternoon. Teaching about movies was a perfect way to educate not only the audience of students, but also myself. We were making these courses, Patricia and I. They were ways of making ourselves sophisticated in terms of movie history.

LO: When you came to UCSD, it was still a very young university, but with a strong visual arts department, already well known for being cross-disciplinary. Newton Harrison and David Antin were teaching there. Amy Goldin was there briefly, and Allan Kaprow, Eleanor Antin, Helen Mayer Harrison came on board, among others. What was it like for you when you arrived?

MF: It was hell. It was hell from the first moment to the last. It was a department that was supposed to be very advanced, but the type of literacy that we were involved with in New York didn't have any anything to do with what was admired or extolled at the University of California. It was a total shock to me to realize that this was what intellectualism was supposed to be out here. The way Patricia and I were used to functioning intellectually just didn't exist out here. It was like being shifted from one type of lunacy to another type of lunacy. We had no university experience, either of us. It was a total shock and remained a total shock. It practically paralyzed us. But economically, it was much easier for us, by a good deal.

LO: What courses were you brought there to teach?

MF: We came for me to teach painting and drawing, which was free. I'd been doing that once a week in New York. I was very comfortable, and it was a nice thing to do. But someone had the idea that I teach film appreciation, since I'd been writing criticism. And it seemed okay. We didn't realize it would become such an overwhelming job. The classes in film would have 300 students, instead of the 15 you'd have in a painting and drawing class. I was swamped.

LO: When you moved to California, you were still making those large, abstract paintings.

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