Contents and Arrangement Collection View
Description:

This series includes five decades of frequent and lengthy correspondence between second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) and Sonya Rudikoff. Letters are primarily from Frankenthaler to Rudikoff, numbering around 234 letters and 314 postcards from 1950 to 1997, including several letters addressed to Robert Gutman and the Gutman family after Rudikoff's death. Also present are a few letters addressed to Rudikoff from Frankenthaler's husband, the prominent first-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) and his daughters. Motherwell also often signed and wrote postscripts to some of Frankenthaler's postcards throughout the 1960s.

Correspondence from Helen Frankenthaler is arranged chronologically, with related materials at the end.

Description:

This series includes Rudikoff's personal and professional correspondence from 1949 through 1997, along with some related correspondence of her husband, Robert Gutman, following her death in 1997. The original groups into which correspondence was filed were preserved and are reflected in the three file groups within this series, which include two distinct alphabetical runs of correspondence, divided by function into editorial and personal correspondence, along with a group of Robert Gutman's correspondence, both with Rudikoff throughout their courtship and marriage, as well as his correspondence regarding Rudikoff and her work, after her death.

This series is arranged into three file groups, based on original order.

Description:

This series primarily contains Rudikoff's notebooks, papers, diaries, planners, assessments, clippings, and coursework from her time at Bennington College from 1945 until her graduation in 1948. Composition notebooks contain extensive notes on her Bennington classes in literature, creative writing, art, logic, Greek, and psychology, the margins of which are usually lushly decorated with small sketches and doodles. Intimate diaries describe Rudikoff's experience as a young female college student in the late 1940s. Rudikoff's academic writings demonstrate an early interest in modernist women writers and include several drafts of her senior project, titled "Gertrude Stein's Blue Guitar: Studies in Language, Form, Motif."

Materials within this series are not arranged according to any arrangement scheme.

Description:

This series contains writings and papers of Sonya Rudikoff, primarily unpublished works, including lectures and academic papers, often about Virginia Woolf, that Rudikoff presented at various conferences on Victorian literature, as well as typescripts of short stories and other fictional works. Of note is a typescript for a novel that portrays the life of a female Abstract Expressionist painter living in New York City in the late 1940s and early 1950s, possibly inspired by Rudikoff's roommate, Helen Frankenthaler. Although the typescript for the novel is untitled, an attached synopsis lists "Abstract Expressionism" and "Sybil, What Do You Want?" as possible titles. A curriculum vitae and bibliography of Rudikoff's published works is also included, documenting her frequent publications from the 1950s through the 1990s, which consist of literary reviews and essays appearing in major journals, including regular articles in The Hudson Review.

Materials within this series are not arranged according to any arrangement scheme.

Scope and Contents

The papers include writer and literary critic Sonya Rudikoff's professional and personal correspondence from the 1950s through the 1990s, along with notebooks, academic papers, and diaries from her time at Bennington College in the 1940s, typescripts of unpublished fiction and lectures, a curriculum vitae and bibliography of her work, and a small selection of her husband's correspondence after her death.

Most notable within the correspondence files are five decades of regular correspondence from second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) to Sonya Rudikoff. Frankenthaler and Rudikoff met at Bennington College in the late 1940s, where they both studied art with Paul Feeley, and later lived together in New York City in 1950, following graduation. Correspondence from Frankenthaler includes over five hunded letters and postcards, regarding Frankenthaler's artwork and art shows, as well as the artwork of her husband Robert Motherwell, a prominent first-generation Abstract Expressionist. Correspondence contains lengthy descriptions of Frankenthaler's thoughts about her work process and the evolution of her painting over time, as well as her opinions on contemporary and past art movements, family and health-related issues, personal relationships, travel, contemporary culture, and international political issues. Also present are a few letters from Robert Motherwell and his daughters addressed to Rudikoff, along with a group of invitations and exhibition catalogs related to Franklenthaler's art events and parties.

Other correspondence reflects Rudikoff's professional work as an editor, literary and art critic, and contributor to The Hudson Review and other periodicals, as a published writer and independent scholar on many topics, including Victorian literature, modernism, and feminism, and as a judge for various literary awards. Personal correspondence includes several decades of letters between Rudikoff and her husband, Robert Gutman, along with Gutman's correspondence regarding the posthumous publication of Rudikoff's book, Ancestral Houses: Virginia Woolf and the Aristocracy (Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1999), and condolence letters following her death. Materials from Rudikoff's time at Bennington College from 1945 to 1948 demonstrate her artistic abilities and early interest in modernist women writers, while diaries and planners provide a general view of the life of a young female college student in the late 1940s. Typescripts of various fiction writings, along with lectures and papers presented at academic conferences are also present, including drafts of several lectures on Virginia Woolf and her circle, as well as a full typescript of an unpublished novel about a female Abstract Expressionist painter living in New York City in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Arrangement

The papers are arranged into four series, following their original groupings: Series 1: Helen Frankenthaler Correspondence, Series 2: General Correspondence, Series 3: Bennington College Papers, and Series 4: Writings and Lectures.

Collection Creator Biography:

Rudikoff, Sonya, 1927-

Sonya Rudikoff (1927-1997) was a writer, literary critic, and independent scholar of Victorian literature, active from the 1950s through the 1990s. After studying at the Walden School and the High School of Music and Art in New York City, she attended Bennington College in Vermont from 1945 to 1948, where she met the Abstract Expressionist painter, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), with whom she maintained a close friendship and corresponded regularly for the rest of her life. After graduating from Bennington, Rudikoff and Frankenthaler shared a New York City apartment, where Frankenthaler introduced Rudikoff to Robert Gutman (1926-2007), later a professor of sociology and architecture, whom she married in 1950. After spending time in New Hampshire and Europe in the early 1950s, Rudikoff and Gutman settled down in Princeton, New Jersey, where Gutman taught and lectured at Princeton University in the School of Architecture from 1969 until his retirement, in addition to his position on the sociology faculty at Rutgers University from 1957 to 1996. While Rudikoff was also known as Sonya Rudikoff Gutman following her marriage, she continued be known professionally as Sonya Rudikoff.

For twenty years, Rudikoff served as an advisory editor for The Hudson Review, where she regularly contributed book reviews, arts reviews, and criticism on topics including Victorian and modernist literature and art, psychoanalysis, and feminism. She also frequently published articles and essays in The American Scholar, Commentary, The New Criterion, The Partisan Review, and several other periodicals throughout her career. She received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for creative writing in 1957 and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1980 to pursue scholarship on women writers. Rudikoff was also a judge for the National Book Award in 1977 and The Hudson Review's Bennett Award in 1986. An independent Virginia Woolf scholar, Rudikoff was also active member of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association and author of the book Ancestral Houses: Virginia Woolf and the Aristocracy, which was completed in 1993 and posthumously published in 1999 after Rudikoff died tragically in a house fire in 1997.

Acquisition:

Gift of John Gutman '83 and Elizabeth C. Gutman '85 in 2014 (AM 2015-40, AM 2015-46).

Appraisal

Nothing was removed from the collection during 2014 processing.

Processing Information

Some of the papers exhibit soot stains around the edges and other minor fire damage from a 1997 fire at the Gutman home, although their legibility is not compromised.

This collection was processed by Kelly Bolding in December 2014. Finding aid written by Kelly Bolding in December 2014.

Conditions Governing Access

Open for research/

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Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

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Credit this material:

Sonya Rudikoff Papers; Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library

Permanent URL:
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/9g54xk411
Location:
Firestone Library
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
(609) 258-3184
Storage Note:
  • This is stored in multiple locations.
  • Firestone Library (scamss): Box 1
  • ReCAP (scarcpxm): Box 2-7