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A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906-1953
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The Legacy of the Art Students League: Defining This Unique Art Center in Pre-War Los Angeles
Essay by Julia Armstrong-Totten
When Stanton Macdonald-Wright took over the Art Students League in the spring of 1923, a small brochure was printed to advertise his new role as director.[24] The opening paragraph described the seventeen-year-old institution as a "non profit cooperative organization of artists and art students."[25] Macdonald-Wright immediately began implementing some important changes, such as charging monthly fees and offering regular classes and monthly lectures to the students, which helped re-establish the place as a school again. Although the League was originally intended to be a formally structured school offering evening and Saturday classes for those who worked and therefore could not attend regular art classes,[26] after the departure of the charismatic Rex Slinkard in 1913 it had gradually become more of a loosely organized weekly sketching group. Over the next ten years it survived only because of financial assistance from two of its devotees: Val Costello, who watched over the school as a guardian angel his entire adult life, and Nicholas Brigante, who became its most vocal historian. The latter nostalgically created a number of images of the Main Street studio, which culminated in his partially abstract Memories oil painting of 1950 (Memories of My Art Students League Years - 1913-1923, fig. 1).
Under Macdonald-Wright's direction the League developed into a sort of graduate school for the students, a place to refine their drawing skills and their appreciation of color. However, one consistent idea found throughout its history, despite changes in the structure of the organization and the style of leadership, was the importance of the friendships formed among those who attended.
It is known from a 1907 article in the Los Angeles Times that one of the original goals was to give the League students academic training in drawing and painting while allowing them the freedom to develop individually, and another was to provide a place for students to study.[27] Because none of the official documentation has been located concerning the school's formation in 1906,[28] it is necessary to look elsewhere for possible sources of inspiration. It seems highly unlikely that the founders, Antony Anderson and Hanson Puthuff, started an art school they called the "Art Students League" without some sort of outside inspiration, and the more established Art Students League of New York, dubbed America's "first independent art school,"[29] probably served as their model. In order to understand why certain issues, such as friendship, were important at the Los Angeles school, a brief background of the New York organization and what made it so different and worth emulating is called for.
In June of 1875, a group of approximately seventy students attending the National Academy of Design in New York rebelled against the academy's decision to close down the school for six months due to financial difficulties. They also thought that the institution was being unsupportive of its younger members in a number of ways, such as by denying students access to the academy's library and consistently favoring the more established members in exhibitions.[30] These students rallied together, found a sympathetic instructor to teach them at a new location, and set about establishing some guidelines to follow. Highlights in their manifesto included:
The constitution of the New York school developed out of these basic ideas and they are still followed today. Since Antony Anderson attended the Art Students League of New York from 1888 to 1891, it makes sense he would propose using some of their ideas when establishing the Los Angeles school.[32] While it is uncertain how closely Anderson and Puthuff followed the structure of the New York school, they adopted its sophisticated practice of using a live nude model in class,[33] which made the Los Angeles League unique among the various art schools and sketching groups in the city at the time.[34] Nudity was still frowned upon in Southern California art schools, and having a nude model consistently available was initially one of the League's biggest attractions, since working from a cast was a sore point for many artists.[35] Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), for example, was completely disgusted with this practice; in his autobiography Benton recalled that "Old Jean Paul Laurens at Julien's looked scornfully at my efforts to draw, and, to the snickers of the young internationals about, waved me away toward the casts -- the same damned casts that had repelled me in the [Chicago] Art Institute."[36] Archie Musick echoed this attitude when discussing what he disliked most as an art student: "Drawing from the cast...was the worst thing I had to do."[37]
There were other similarities with the New York school; at some point the Los Angeles League formed a study library, although today only a partial selection of books has been located from this collection,[38] and it appears that the idea of promoting friendships among students was embraced as well. Because of the negative way in which the National Academy of Design had once treated its students, camaraderie and emotional support were given high priority by the New York League and then inherited by those following its standards.[39]
One further piece of evidence regarding the importance of friendship at the Los Angeles League appears in the circa 1945 statement of purpose from the Art Students League started by Hideo Date and Benji Okubo in 1942, when they were interned together in the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming.[40] The two artists knew one another from the Los Angeles League and artistically they thought alike, both being products of the school and Macdonald-Wright's teaching. In addition, Benji Okubo had been the last pre-war director of the League in Los Angeles and presumably he wrote this manifesto from memory. The first rule given was "to promote art and cultivate friendships among members," so the idea of encouraging friendship among the members was at the top of the list! The subsequent rules must be similar to those established in Los Angeles, but one unusual category to note is the "special members." They were defined as "the moral supporters and those interested in the art[s] but not actually taking the course at the Art Student[s] League."[41] These members were not allowed to hold offices in the organization but they were allowed to vote for officers and on any issues. Although none of the names of the Heart Mountain special members appear anywhere in the document, some known from Los Angeles include Jack Wells, Frank L. Stevens, Lee Jarvis, and model Henry Clausen.[42] Apparently this idea was unique to the Los Angeles and Heart Mountain Leagues, as nothing like it ever appeared in the New York constitution.[43] Since there is no mention of the special members during the League's earlier years in Los Angeles, quite possibly Stanton Macdonald-Wright established this practice when he became director as a way to include his cronies, especially Wells and Stevens, in the group without having to deal with criticism from other members.[44]
These special members contributed to the Los Angeles school in numerous ways, but first and foremost as patrons. All of them formed collections of work by League artists, and in the case of Jack Wells, this may have been done primarily to support his friends; Macdonald-Wright claimed that Wells rarely hung anything on his walls and that most of his collection was to be found under his bed or in his closets.[45] Wells and Stevens were also generous to the organization; Wells, who worked for the utility company, made certain the electricity was kept on when the school could not pay its bills, while Stevens purchased several books for the League's library,[46] provided groceries for the school, and often secured tickets for the students to attend the Hollywood Bowl.[47] Lee Jarvis acquired works by several of his League friends, and Henry Clausen was responsible for introducing new members into the organization; he also had a collection of their work, although these may have been artists' gifts to their model.[48] Other patrons included Vivian Stringfield, Dr. Marcia Patrick, Anne Evans, and Wilma Shore, but all of them studied at the school. Patronage was very important to League members, especially during the Depression, since most of them were struggling to survive as artists at a time when society was not overly supportive to the profession.
But there were other ways in which those involved with the League supported one another. Since these artists often lived together, traveled together, and socialized together, they offered emotional and practical assistance to each other under a variety of circumstances. For instance, at the height of the Depression, when Donald Totten developed a life-threatening illness, Kirby Temple took him home, nursed him back to health, and eventually secured him a job at the beach where Temple worked as a lifeguard.[49] James Bolin took homemade soup to Hideo Date when he was ill with a cold and rooming at a Japanese boarding house.[50] In fact, in various correspondences Hideo Date recounted that he had lived with six of his friends from the League between 1927 and 1942, while he was attempting to paint and remain independent from his family.[51] Hideo Date recalled other kindnesses from his League colleagues. For instance, Bolin's grandfather generously offered to store all of Date's artwork when he was interned from 1942 to 1945. The artist moved to New York directly after his release from the Heart Mountain camp, but he had no means to collect his work and have it shipped east. So Albert King, one of the founders of the Art Center School, arranged for an exhibition of Date's work there in 1947 and for the school to send everything to New York afterwards.[52]
League members organized other memorial and retrospective exhibitions for their friends as well. In June of 1940, eight months after Ben Berlin's death, Lorser Feitelson organized an exhibition of Berlin's recent work at the WPA Southern California Art Project Gallery,[53] and Albert King organized a retrospective show of James Redmond's work after he was killed at the Battle of the Bulge on December 21, 1944. This exhibit, held in July of 1945 at the Los Angeles Art Association, contained twenty-seven pieces by the artist, including one titled Siamese Cat that art critic Arthur Millier claimed was his finest piece.[54] In November of 1964, a decade after the demise of the school, Leslie Baird organized a retrospective exhibition of Donald Totten's work at the Esquire Theatre Gallery in Pasadena, a few months after Totten suffered a debilitating stroke that ended his career.
They were part of each other's lives on more joyous occasions as well, such as the intimate wedding, in June of 1932, of League members Gwain Noot and Fred Sexton, in which Herman Cherry and John Hench were the witnesses (fig. 2), or the wedding of Lee and Ida May Jarvis, held at Kirby Temple's house in Palos Verdes in 1946. Most of the guests were friends from the League and Henry Clausen was best man. They did favors for one another too. There are, for example, numerous instances of students posing as models for each other as well as working together professionally (fig. 3). Carl Winter and Albert King assisted Stanton Macdonald-Wright on his sets at Santa Monica Playhouse in the late 1920s, and Frank Stevens was a partner for one year, in 1933, at the Lotus & Acanthus ceramics studio owned by Albert and Louisa King. The friendships established at the League provided networking avenues that most in this profession desperately needed throughout their careers.
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