In the Beginning: Alfred Henry Maurer

Alfred Henry Maurer (1868-1932) was an early American convert to European avant-garde modernism as practiced in the first decade of the 20th century, publicly proclaiming his conversion to The Cause around 1908. His Wikipedia entry is an odd, personalized piece that somehow escaped the "needs improvement" filter, so I suggest you try this link for a biographical sketch. His death was by suicide.

Nowadays Maurer seems to be an art history footnote, though he was known to the cognoscenti during his lifetime. Lewis Mumford, who I wrote about here, mentioned Maurer several times during his years as art critic for the New Yorker magazine; his columns have been collected in this book, which (pages 137-38) is my source for the quotations below.

"History knows him as the first American to return to this country animated by the new vision that was plaguing the Wild Men of Paris. (Before that time he had been in the line of Whistler and Dewing.) In 1908 Mr. Alfred Stieglitz showed Maurer's new work at '291' [Stieglitz's gallery] and at that moment American art began to move at right angles to its previous course."

"People knew that Maurer had talent. His flower pieces where charming, often brilliant; his elongated female heads, though a bit perturbing when repeated too often, were good. But though the notes were clear and the pitch true, the melody itself seemed limited. Had Maurer nothing else to say?"

"Of all the painters who developed abstract art during the last 20 years [this was written 1934-35], struggling for new symbols to express new states of mind and feeling, Maurer was one of a handful of genuine moderns who really felt these abstractions as experiences. His Cubist paintings are exciting and effective canvases; and if they were seen in the early days, one wonders that they did not attract greater attention. Nor was his success with these abstractions a matter of a momentary fresh vision that died out with repetition. The man kept on growing as a painter to the very end of his life..."

"Though it is too early to place Maurer -- if only because acquaintance with his work as a whole comes so tardily [Mumford was viewing a memorial exhibiiton] -- one can hardly doubt that he will count among the leaders of his generation rather than among the camp followers."

That said, let's take a look at examples of Maurer's work.

Gallery

Two Heads - 1929

Untitled portrait - n.d.

Head of a Girl - 1929
The images above are examples of Maurer's modernist treatment of the human form. he also did Cubist-inspired still lifes.

Below are examples of his pre-modernist painting. Apparently 1901 was an especially productive year for him.

Self-Portrait - 1896-97

Girl in White - 1901

An Arrangement - 1901

Young Woman in a Kimono - 1901

I think Mumford was correct when he stated that Maurer had talent and that he caught the spirit of early 20th century modernism well. Moreover, it is important not to forget the times in which Maurer lived. As can be seen, he was a very competent traditional painter by the time he was in his thirties. And in his late thirties he abandoned all that, taking a professional gamble that the Fauves (and soon the Cubists) would transform art and not become flashes in the art history pan. This took a lot of courage.

That said, I find Maurer's modernist works to be quite ugly. It astonishes me how he was able to transition from producing attractive images to those that were the exact opposite while maintaining the conviction that he was doing the correct thing. Or perhaps not; he did kill himself, after all.

Three Faces Along El Paseo

There are several small cities that punch above their weight where the presence of art galleries is concerned. I'm less familiar with the eastern and central parts of the USA than I used to be, but here in the west places that come to mind are Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico, Scottsdale in Arizona and Carmel-by-the-Sea in California.

Also in California is Palm Desert in the state's ritzy winter vacationland with its scores of golf courses, tennis clubs, time-share condominiums and nice restaurants. The heart of the Palm Desert gallery scene is El Paseo, a fancy shopping street where the galleries compete for the shopper's dollar with the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue, St. John, Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Escada and Gucci.

I was checking out the galleries recently, taking notes on artists whose work interested me in terms of blog subject material. Mulling things over, I thought it might be interesting to compare how three different artists dealt with the human face. Let's take a look:

Gallery

By Adrian Gottlieb
Gottlieb is a traditionalist who focuses on the human face and figure in near (but not quite) photorealistic style.

By John Erickson
When I "studied" art at the University of Washington, one of my instructors was John Erickson. But not the John Erickson whose painting is shown above. That John Erickson instructs drawing and probably other subjects at the University of Utah. Clearly Erickson knows how to construct a human face. But since he considers himself a modernist of some ilk and perhaps needs to feature a signature style to market his paintings, he adds bits to the basics. Such features include odd, unexpected colors, small geometrical patches such as you see here, and even small collage additions. Thanks to the generally correct underlying drawing, these add-ons can be tolerable in cases where Erickson restrains himself (which he doesn't always do). He also does abstract art.

By Vladimir Cora
Cora, a Mexican, does crude-looking expressionist near-abstractions, this one based on a face. I regard it as ho-hum modernism that offers me, at least, little of interest.

It should be noted that paintings by these artists are in major Palm Desert galleries and presumably have audiences of potential buyers. The range of styles is typical of the gallery scene along the Paseo.

Russell Patterson's Advertising Art

Russell Patterson (1893-1977), as his Wikipedia entry indicates, was more than just a cartoonist. Yet his witty and well-drawn Roaring Twenties flappers exemplified the era as much as the cartoons of John Held, Jr. and, to my mind, they were better than Held's (whose cartoon work I admire).

Moreover, Patterson's career didn't fade during the Great Depression. He tweaked his style, switching from pen to the more fashionable (in the 1930s) brush, and his popularity continued on its merry way.

Patterson also did advertising art. I located examples in the Art Directors Club of New York issues of the Annual of Advertising Art for 1929 and 1930. These were done for the New York Central Railroad and are shown below dated circa the year before the publication of the annual in which they appeared. Those images are spruced up photos rather than scans because I found the annuals in the stacks of a college library and it was most convenient to grab the images via digital camera; apologies for the less-than-perfect quality.

Here they are along with other examples of Patterson's work of that vintage to set the scene.

Gallery

Life cover - 28 September 1928
One of Patterson's better-known covers.

Life cover - 26 April 1929
The eyes on the flapper on the left remind me of the way Kees van Dongen did female eyes.

Cartoon - n.d.

Art for New York Central Railroad advertisement - c.1927
This illustration is similar to his cartoon style, but more dignified.

Art for New York Central Railroad advertisement - c.1928
No trace of cartoon here; a nice interior view of New York's Grand Central Terminal.

Sir William Orpen: Portraits, Women and War

I had hoped to do a posting on William Orpen (1878-1931) several years ago when I was part of the 2Blowhards blogging team, but co-blogger Friedrich von Blowhard claimed dibs on Orpen. Time passed and 2Blowhards closed down as a going concern (though as of when I write this, it can still be accessed) and Friedrich had never got around to doing that Orpen post.

Orpen's Wikipedia entry is here if you want biographical information. His background was somewhat unconventional, being a Protestant born in the Dublin area and sympathetic to Irish independence. His service as a war artist, as was true of many others in that work, was psychologically upsetting, though his effort led to his knighthood. Orpen died age 52 after a several months stay in a nursing home. It is suggested in this book (page 43) that Orpen was suffering second-stage syphilis.

His work was uneven, some paintings being sketchy with an expressionist overtone. On the other hand, his portrait work (aside from a number of quirky self-portraits) was usually very good. This was reflected in his earnings, which in the 1920s, were on the order of a million dollars a year in 2012 money.

Orpen's works are seldom seen here in the United States. A few years ago I did come across two portraits at the Fioli Mansion on the peninsula below San Francisco. They were nicely done.

Here are some examples of his work.

Gallery

Zonnebeke - 1918
One of the paintings he did as a war artist.

A Bloomsbury Family - 1907-09
Note the funny expressions on the faces of the children. The area on the lower right is cracking badly; click to enlarge.

Self-Portrait - "Ready to Start" - 1917
This apparently was painted around the time Orpen was to set off for the Western Front. For some reason, although he was a master draftsman, Orpen was almost never able to depict the British helmet correctly. This is one of his better efforts.

Self-Portrait - 1924
The regress of the mirror images is an interesting stunt, but I'm including this image because the palette suggests some of the paints he was using.

Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart - 1919
Carton de Wiart was a supremely colorful character as his Wikipedia entry indicates. He lost an eye and an arm in combat, was awarded the Victoria Cross, was a prisoner of war in Italy, represented Churchill in China and told off Mao Tse-Tung, among many other exploits. Orpen's portrait make Carton seem deceptively mild despite the small scowl.

Augustus John - 1900
Born the same year as Orpen, a fellow Slade School student and equal or superior as a painter of portraits, John also out-ranked Orpen as a seducer of women.

Grace Knewstub - 1907
Grace later became Orpen's long-neglected wife.

Gertrude Stanford
I'm not sure when this was painted, though the sitter's hairdo and clothing suggest the 1920s.

Mrs. St. George - c.1912
Evelyn St. George was Orpen's long-time mistress. Her social connections help advance his career.

Santa Barbara Biltmore: Inside Story

I sometimes wonder how many modernist hotels can be called lovable. Some are enjoyable because they function well or perhaps are in a really nice setting. But even though I might have fondness for them, I can't say I love them.

Certain older hotels are a different story, and it has to do with their architecture and interior decoration. One thing that was largely lost once modernism became the religion of architecture was a connection to deep levels of human psychology; pure geometric forms of glass and metal do not suggest comforting shelter to the extent traditional architecture does.

To illustrate the non-modernist side of this coin, consider the Santa Barbara Biltmore. Well, that's not its actual name: it is actually the Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara. And it's not actually in Santa Barbara, but in Montecito, a ritzy town just east of there.

The hotel website is here and the Wikipedia entry here. As Wikipedia indicates, the hotel was renovated a few years ago with an eye to restoring the Spanish Colonial style building as reasonably as possible to its appearance at its 1927 opening.

Almost every time we drive into the Santa Barbara area, my wife insists that we stop by the Biltmore (most locals don't use the Four Seasons name), and I put up no resistance to the request.

Below are some photos I took of some of the the public areas during our latest visit.

Gallery

The guy you see is Yr Faithful Blogger, camera in firing position.

Here is a direct shot of the hallway shown in the mirror above. In the far distance is the check-in desk with a map mural behind it.

Through the lounge window is the main dining area. Originally it was a garden, but it was roofed over many years ago. The recent restoration resulted in changes to the dining area, but not reversion to garden status.

The same lounge from a different angle; the window to the dining area is at the right.

The two photos above show some of the objets d'art found in the lounge.

Objects at the end of the hall shown in the first photos. In the mirror can be glimpsed the concierge desk and a mural of early Santa Barbara.

J. Allen St. John and the Worlds of Burroughs

The illustration shown above is from the 1921 publication of "Tarzan the Terrible" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). I remember it from my childhood. My father had come across a copy of the book which he read as a boy. I recall it being exciting and scary in parts: would Tarzan survive the scrape he was in?

The illustrations printed on slick paper were placed here and there amongst the text. I suppose I must have thought that they were okay, but incidental to the story. Still, upon seeing the one where Tarzan's Jane is being carried off by Mo-sar, recognition instantly clicked on and memories flooded in.

The Illustrator was J. (James) Allen St. John (1872-1957). A short Wikipedia entry for him is here and another short biographical note here.

St. John received formal art training and made a living painting portraits and other works until he began producing cover and interior illustrations for Burroughs' hugely successful adventure books about Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and others. His Burroughs work was not exclusive: he did not illustrate either the first Tarzan or first Carter books, but did most of the rest. Late in the game Burroughs, who liked St. John's work, brought in his own son to provide covers and other illustrations. In the meanwhile, St. John taught art and painted cover illustrations for the "pulp" magazine trade.

St. John's works were influential for other adventure and fantasy illustrators. However, since around the 1950s, most practitioners have taken the Frank Frazetta route of highly exaggerated depictions of humans. People in St. John illustrations were usually normal looking, though definitely fit.

Below are some examples of St. John's work for Burroughs books.

Gallery

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar - cover art - 1918

AT the Earth's Core - cover - 1922

Pellucidar - cover art - 1923

The Chessmen of Mars - cover art - 1922

The Warlord of Mars - cover - 1919

My take? First, illustration fashions of the times need to be factored in along with the subject matter. Around 1920, cover art was usually done in oil paints, permitting the artist to create fuzzy edges and be temped to overwork the surfaces of objects (including people) being depicted. St. John did all this and reproductions of his paintings often strike me as having too-fussy brushwork, though this isn't very evident viewing the small-scale images above. Perhaps the actual paintings, being larger, look better. Nevertheless, this style of painting was acceptable for illustrators in the period 1910-25 when St. John was doing his best-known work.

On the other hand, I find most current fantasy illustration to be too mannered in a superhero groupthink vein. No serious improvement over St. John's pioneering work, in other words. A few contemporary illustrators seem to be operating in the middle ground between St. John and the Photoshop set. I need to give all this more thought and perhaps write more posts on adventure/fantasy illustration.

Sergei Bongart: Forceful Painter, Forceful Teacher

Only because the timing fell into place given my various other commitments (including a lot of travel the past few months), I recently was able to attend a couple of free painting demonstrations at the Daniel Smith paints factory / art supplies store in south Seattle's industrial zone.

Both demonstrators said that they were instructed in the ways of something called Russian Impressionism. The term seems slippery, if a short Google session is any guide. For example, one hit dealt with a book dealing with Russian painters influenced by the French Impressionists; presumably this took place as early as the late 1870s. Another hit was for a Phoenix-area gallery with a collection of Soviet non- Socialist Realist paintings of 1940-1960 vintage. A third hit was to this page, which seems pretty comprehensive and dates the movement to 1930-1980.

On a more concrete level, the demonstrators had the habit of tucking a roll of paper towels under one arm to facilitate quick brush-cleaning. This practice was used by Sergei Bongart (1918-1985) and apparently continued by a number of his former students, one of whom taught the guy who did the first demonstration.

Bongart's Wikipedia entry isn't very useful, so check out this link to his widow's Web site for more biographical information.

The day after attending the second demonstration I was visiting the shop at the Frye Art Museum and noticed the book whose cover is shown above. Its Amazon link is here, but for once Amazon's price (about $150 per copy at the time of this posting) was greater than the shop's $95 tag (the publisher's price). Even though the cost was a lot more than I like to spend for any single book, I bought a copy.

It's a pretty good book. Plenty of illustrations and information about Bongart's life and teaching; besides selling his paintings he seems to have been a demanding, yet popular art teacher, having his own school.

Where the book falls down is the part dealing with his escape from the Soviet Union to the West. Bongart was born in Kiev in the Ukraine half a year before Lenin's Revolution. He seems to have been a prodigy and so studied art in the main Kiev art school. The Ukraine was quickly overrun by the German armies in the summer of 1941 and Bongart found himself behind the German lines for the next couple of years. Not explained is how a healthy 23-year-old hadn't already been conscripted by the Red Army. The book's chronology of how he left Kiev and wound up in Bavaria at the end of the war confused me completely. Passages treating the sequence of his dealings with American, German and Russian soldiers and officials do not jibe with my understanding of how the war unfolded 1943-45. This had little to do with his art, but I found it very annoying because the story would have been interesting on the personal level had it been related coherently.

Since this is an art blog, let's move on the Bogart's paintings which, like his teachings, are forceful.

Gallery

Bongart with actress Jeanne Crain - 1962
Bongart was a gregarious guy who made friends easily -- including people in the movie business, starting with James Cagney.

Still Life - c.1960
Bongart believed that if one could paint still lifes (especially those containing variations of the same basic color), one could paint anything. So his students usually started in the studio with a carefully composed still life setup before them.

Autumn Scene
He painted lots of landscapes, but I couldn't find many good examples on the Web.

Man with Turban - c.1965

Man with Cigar - c.1961

Girl with Red Shawl - c.1975
Bongart painted commissioned portraits, but didn't enjoy such work. The examples above might have been from demonstrations or maybe were simply recreational works.

Bongart liked to exaggerate color and paint in an athletic manner, thrusting his paint-loaded brush to the exact (in his mind) place where its color would relate to or modify those already on the canvas or panel. The resulting works tend to be a bit too sketchy for my taste, but I respect them because they are usually interesting to view and incorporate more accurate drawing than many modernists utilized. Bongart was no fan of modernism, by the way; I'll probably post some of his remarks on the subject later.