BY DEBORAH J. CARR
CAPE WOMEN
WINTER/SPRING 2000-2001
After her years of activism, Anne Peretz remains optimistic and committed to her basic values. She is a refreshing reminder of the possibility of combining an artist’s vision, creativity and imagination with an activist’s ideals, values and energy.
Anne Peretz understands life cycles and timing. A bred-in-the-bone activist and determined believer in public service, she is an accomplished artist whose work was presented this past summer at Provincetown’s School House Center in the Silas-Kenyon Gallery.
The recurring themes in Peretz’s life have been her interest in art and her dedication to public service. The satisfaction she derives from each has allowed her to balance a commitment to both, but this summer’s exhibition in Provincetown, and her exhibitions at Salander-O’Reilly in New York, have marked a shift in Peretz’s energy. Painting is now her priority.
In a recent conversation, Peretz reflected on her dual interests, “I grew up in a family devoted to public service,” says Peretz, “and I’ve always had a sense of that commitment. I suppose it’s a sense of pay-back—a moral value or commitment to do something worthwhile.”
The family tradition of public service is long and distinguished. Her father, Henry Richardson Labouisse, was an American diplomat and international public servant. He was the Director of the UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), and, as the Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of UNICEF: His life’s work, which was fighting against “the slow attrition that poverty and ignorance waged against hundreds of millions of children in the developing world,” was a strong influence on Peretz. Peretz painted one of her first landscapes at age 14 while she was living in Paris with her Father during his tenure as Director of the Marshall Plan.
After graduation in 1960 from Smith College, where she majored in art, studying with Mervin Jules and Leonard Baskin, she was drawn to public service. Although she maintained her interest in art and continued her painting, she has devoted the last 40 years to various causes and human service programs.
Her years of political activism began with fervent involvement in civic rights and anti-war activities in the ‘60s. She formalized her early years of social activism after she received her M.S.W. from the Simmons School of Social Work. As a young social worker, she realized that the onus of change was usually focused on one individual—the mother. “I felt there was a need to focus on the family as a unit, as well as the circumstances within which families try to function,” says Peretz. It is this sensitivity and insight that has defined Peretz’s interest in “big picture” policy analysis as well as the delivery of individualized service. She is unique in her ability to analyze situations from a policy perspective without compromising the needs of the individual. Her ability to do one has not detracted from the other.
While some artists might have found it impossible to work creatively in a bureaucratic environment, Peretz focused on her desire to have the bureaucracy function creatively. Remarkably, Peretz not only balanced her two interests, but each one positively influenced the other. She brought creativity and innovation, if not artistry, to social policy and human service, and she did so without diminishing or disregarding the need for organizational structures. She would have been loath to invoke the “I’m an artist. I can’t be bothered with bureaucracy” attitude.
She has the capacity to see basic public policy paradoxes, but avoids paralysis. She relied on her painting as an antidote to the despair that many of her professional peers experience in the extremely complex environment of multiple problem families and deprived communities. After working in chronically distressed and deprived neighborhoods, where many young social workers become discouraged, Peretz was hardened in her belief that most families can be helped to become stronger. Perhaps it is her perspective as an artist that convinces her there are many ways to see the same picture. Remarkably, she doesn’t see negativity. “I believe almost anything is possible,” she says without flinching. She does not focus on problems or limitations and, knowing there aren’t simple answers, explores comprehensive solutions despite the complexity of distressed, multi-problem situations.
She solidified her commitment to families in 1982 when she founded The Family Center, a nonprofit, family-focused human service and community outreach agency located in Somerville. It is founded on her belief that families need help building on their own natural strengths. “We believe that all families, whatever their stresses or problems, can be strong, resilient and creative,” says Peretz. “For the last 18 years, we’ve been trying to create an organic organization that realizes a family’s needs and accepts that those needs may be different things at different times.”
Despite all the difficult social problems Peretz has encountered in her profession, she remains optimistic. Of the Family Center she says, “we are asking, not answering, questions.” It is both her humility and her strength that convinces her to keep asking questions.
In the past two years, Peretz has gone through a process of separating from the Center while simultaneously devoting more time to painting. After holding various executive positions with the Center from 1982 to 1998, she has, as she says, “worked herself out of a job.”
She feels the Center is relatively self-sufficient and, for her, the measure of its success has been the feeling that she doesn’t need to be involved any longer. “Each separating step has been difficult,” she says, and admits experiencing a sense of loss. Nevertheless, in an act of ultimate symbolism, she has finally given up her office. As she has separated from the Center, she has realized this is the time for her painting. “I always knew at a certain point I would go back to painting,” she says.
In her public service life, Peretz has been a tigress in her determination to help families. However, she is remarkably understated about her own contributions and of her sense of self. While there are many who have done less but demanded more of the spotlight, she is remarkably free of ego, or any need to embellish her accomplishments, and is known for her ability to collaborate.
While her creativity, optimism and daring have defined both her art and her activism, Peretz says she never saw the connection between her art and her public service career. The obvious connection is her ability to see with great clarity and feel with exquisite sensitivity. In both her policy innovations and in her painting, she “thinks out of the box.” Peretz’s paintings have been described as full of strength and passion.
Peretz, who has been coming to the Cape every summer since 1965, paints Cape Cod landscapes of wooded ponds where she swims or dunescapes which surround her home in Truro, “Being in this environment and painting has a spiritual dimension for me,” she says, and uses the landscape “as inspiration, solitude, and identity.”
Michael Carroll, the Managing Director of the School House Center in Provincetown, describes the work in Peretz’s recent exhibition as “conveying experience and power. Her work is never naïve, selfish or insipid,” says Carroll. “She has a monumental approach to her subject, her work is never about me.”
As a young social worker, she realized that the onus of change was usually focused on one individual—the mother. “I felt there was a need to focus on the family as a unit, as well as the circumstances within which families try to function,” says Peretz.
“This is a woman not afraid of the world. Peretz gets inside her subjects, her places and paints their power,” says Carroll, who believes she paints “perfect images of the elusive substance of the shifting Cape.”
Peretz says she was strongly influenced by Cezanne’s technique of bringing three-dimensional landscapes into a two-dimensional format. “It’s how I think,” she says. She has begun to focus on what she refers to as “painterly challenges,” and is currently interested in issues of texture and surface. “I’m paying attention to the things I didn’t pay attention to before,” she says.
“Peretz begins with some basic elements of traditional landscape painting then introduces unusual applications, creating a new beauty on canvas free from sentiment or story,” says Carroll. “She applies paint precisely, her gestures as loose as good American Jazz, yet completely essential. The colors are harsh, not pretty, compositions simple and tough, the architecture monumental.”
As Peretz reflects on her public service career and her painting, it is clear she has beenher own person. Despite her wide circle of friends, family, professional connections, and involvement with many causes and activities, she cuts a solitary figure. She shares an active and close family life with her husband of 33 years, Martin Peretz, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic magazine. They have two children, Jesse and Evgenia, and Anne has two children, David and Lisa Farnsworth from an earlier marriage. They have four grandchildren. And ironically, despite her impressive 40-year track record of involvement, she describes herself as “marginally” politically active. “The extent of my current activity is talking on the phone, `getting out the vote’ sort of things,” she says, in a typically humble understatement of her contributions.
She also does not view herself as “part of the art world,” and goes so far as to say she has “never really belonged to any community,” that she is not institutionally connected. That view is as much humility and independence as it is lack of interest in “group identity.” She is refreshingly free of any need of organizational relationships to define her self.
After her years of activism, she remains optimistic and committed to her basic values, a refreshing reminder of the possibility of combining an artist’s vision, creativity and imagination with an activist’s ideals, values and energy. During an era of waning respect for public service and an increased interest in self, Peretz maintained her individuality while she dedicated herself to her own family and a large community of families. She balanced her art and her activism.
To learn more about Anne and her role as founder of the The Parenting Journey, visit parentingjourney.org