Ezra Maas: An Oral History
Part One
Artists, writers, journalists, photographers, critics, friends, and others, who were around Maas during the years 1956 to 1996, give their impressions of the artist. Interviews by Daniel James.
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Jacob Tischbein, former Director at Akademie der Künste in the Hansaviertel quarter of Berlin, where Maas visited and worked at various points between 1968 and 1979.
JT: Seeing my first Ezra Maas artwork was like finding a new letter in the alphabet, or discovering a new colour. It was comparable to a religious experience, almost frightening, to see something so completely and utterly new.
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Francis Ross, a secondary school teacher who taught Maas as a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s before his departure to America.
FR: As I said earlier, he was a precocious young man. He was very interested in art history and spoke very eloquently on the subject, with a passion and a knowledge that belied his years. I remember him telling me once that radical artists were usually misunderstood in their own time, because the world was not ready to share their vision, but that it was their unique task to open people’s eyes to new ways of thinking and seeing. I remember Ezra talking about Marcel Duchamp’s contribution to art in this regard. He said that Duchamp’s real achievement was not his artwork, which I don’t think Ezra rated very highly, but his proposition that art could be anything, for as long as it was presented by the artist. Art was an idea, not a thing. Ezra believed this was an important milestone. Later, we would also talk about the relationship between art and power. Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Mussolini’s Italy. Art used to demonstrate the glory and triumph of power, art used to publicly bring to life the ‘theatre of power’, and art used as propaganda and cultural education. I probably don’t need to tell you how disconcerting it was to hear all of this from such a young man, but that’s just how he was; he had old eyes that appeared to have already seen too much.
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Gabriel Caldas, former personal chef to Ezra Maas, now working at Nerua at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
GM: Maas era un verdadero artista. Vivía para su arte. Es pues normal que haya rechazado la fama y la popularidad. Lo que más anhelaba, por encima de todo, era la libertad para crear su arte, más que el anonimato.121
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Henrietta Black, a neighbour of the Maas family in Oxford in the 1950s.
HB: I only remember him because of what happened to his family. You don’t forget something like that. The whole of Oxford was talking about it at the time. He lived with his crazy uncle until he died too, and then Ezra just disappeared. The house was boarded up and sat empty for years. There were lots of stories about what might have happened to him and where he went, but no one knew for sure. I know this sounds awful, but I remember people on our street being happy that he was gone. The Maas family were cursed, and death seemed to follow Ezra around in particular. After his parents and brother died like that, people would cross the street to avoid him.
DJ: Do you remember his parents?
HB: Not well – I was just a teenager at the time – but after they died, I overheard my mother talking about rumours they had been double agents with the SOE [Special Operations Executive] during the war, and that their car crash was no accident. It was probably just gossip, but no one ever seemed to know what was true, and what was not, when it came to that family.
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Mike Chesterton, a former member of the Maas Foundation between 1979-1994.
MC: Listen, I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation. You believe you’re looking for a missing artist, right? Well, that’s your first mistake. Maas is something else entirely. And because of that, you’re approaching this all wrong. At best, he’s a shaman for our times, like Gurdjieff, or the Maharishi Yogi. At worst? He’s a charismatic cult leader with a global organisation of fanatics at his disposal, he’s Charles Manson crossed with L Ron Hubbard, and even that comparison might be underestimating him. That’s the kind of man you’re going after, only much more intelligent and dangerous than any of those guys. Do you understand what I’m saying here? You’re heading out into very deep water.
END OF PART ONE
Note
121. Translates as: ‘Maas was a true artist. He lived for his art. There is no mystery about why he turned his back on fame and celebrity. These were things he did not want. What he desired, above all else, was not anonymity in itself, but the freedom to create his art.’ – Anonymous.