Among the many lives connected to the history of Clausen Farm, the story of Hilda Clausen and Selden Rodman reveals another intriguing connection between Sharon Springs and the world of American art and culture.
On September 9, 1937, Hilda Clausen and Selden Rodman were married at the Municipal Building in Manhattan. Their marriage certificate records Hilda as 31 years old, single, and born in Sharon Springs, New York. Selden was 28, divorced, and already described professionally as an “Editor & Writer.”
Hilda, identified as Hildegarde in some contemporary records, was born in Sharon Springs in 1906, the eldest daughter of George U. and Marie Clausen. The 1930 New York Social Blue Book listed the couple and their daughters Hilda, Louise and Bertha at “823 Park Ave. & Sharon Springs.” The entry reflects the family’s life between New York City and the Clausen estate, which had served as a family retreat since Henry Clausen Jr. purchased it in 1890.
Hilda and Selden had known one another for several years before marrying. Yale University preserves correspondence between them dating from 1935 through 1948. Although some later biographical sources place their marriage in 1938, the original certificate establishes the correct date as September 9, 1937. The letters have not been published online, but their date range documents a connection extending across more than a decade marked by publishing, travel and the Second World War. Yale University finding aid
Their marriage eventually ended in divorce. The precise date is not included in the public archival chronology, although Selden married the writer Maia Wojciechowska in 1950.
A remarkably wide-ranging writer
Born in New York City in 1909, Selden Rodman graduated from Yale in 1931. While still a student, he helped establish the satirical magazine The Harkness Hoot. The following year, he and Alfred Bingham founded Common Sense, a politically engaged magazine that they edited until 1943.
During the Second World War, Rodman served in the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the Office of Strategic Services. He subsequently built an unusually varied career as a poet, playwright, editor, biographer, art critic, interviewer and travel writer. Over his lifetime, he wrote or edited more than forty books. Library of Congress · Poetry Foundation
His early publications included Mortal Triumph and Other Poems in 1932, Challenge to the New Deal in 1935 and A New Anthology of Modern Poetry in 1938—the year he and Hilda married. During their marriage, he published the verse drama The Revolutionists in 1942, followed by Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America in 1947 and Renaissance in Haiti in 1948.
These books demonstrate the range that would characterize his entire career. Rodman moved easily from poetry and politics to theater, biography, music, visual art and cultural history.
From Pollock and Rothko to Hemingway and Beethoven
Rodman had a particular talent for meeting prominent creative figures and drawing them into conversation. His 1957 book Conversations with Artists brought together interviews with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Willem de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Alexander Calder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, Jacob Lawrence and many others. Rather than writing a conventional history of modern art, Rodman allowed the artists to explain – and sometimes contradict – their own ideas. Tongues of Fallen Angels
In 1962, he turned from contemporary art to classical music with The Heart of Beethoven, created with illustrator James Kearns. The book connected Beethoven’s difficult personality and turbulent life to the emotional and revolutionary character of his music. Rodman assembled evidence from the composer’s letters, diaries, sketchbooks and conversations, while Kearns supplied dramatic charcoal illustrations. A contemporary New Yorker review called it an original study combining admiration with perceptive insights into Beethoven’s personality and work. The Heart of Beethoven
Other notable books included The Eye of Man in 1955, The Insiders in 1960, Death of the Hero in 1964, The Mexico Traveler in 1969, Tongues of Fallen Angels in 1972 and Geniuses & Other Eccentrics in 1997.
A Lasting Connection to Haitian Art
Haitian art remained one important strand of Rodman’s work, although it was part of a much broader intellectual life. He wrote several influential books on the subject, served for a time as codirector of the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince and helped introduce artists such as Hector Hyppolite and Philomé Obin to international audiences.
His later books included Haiti: The Black Republic in 1954, The Miracle of Haitian Art in 1974 and Where Art Is Joy: Haitian Art—The First Forty Years in 1988. A substantial part of his collection is now preserved at Ramapo College, where the Selden Rodman Gallery of Popular Arts presents Haitian and other self-taught art from the Americas. Selden Rodman Gallery
The Thread Back to Clausen Farm
Hilda Clausen’s place in Selden Rodman’s biography is usually reduced to a name and a marriage date. The surviving correspondence provides a fuller picture. She knew him before many of the books for which he became famous and was part of his life during an especially formative period.
Their marriage did not last, but it created an enduring connection between the Clausen family of Sharon Springs and a writer whose interests ranged from modern poetry and political debate to American painting, Beethoven and the art of the Americas.
It is one more unexpected story held within the history of Clausen Farm.
New York Times: Selden Rodman, Writer and Folk Art Advocate, Dies at 93
