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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
Sketching trips and traveling abroad were extracurricular activities at the League, but they were another way in which the members bonded. Sam Hyde Harris recalled that in 1906 the League's first students participated in Sunday sketching trips to the Arroyo Seco, near director Hanson Puthuff's studio.[55] Puthuff sketched elsewhere with his League students and friends; he often traveled with Sam Hyde Harris throughout California and Arizona in the 1920s, and in 1925 he and Aaron Kilpatrick went with Texas artist R. S. Taylor on a two-month sketching trip to Mexico City.[56] A number of League artists made regular trips to Laguna Beach to sketch. Nicholas Brigante's first visit there in 1917 with Val Costello, Jack Wilkinson Smith, and Hanson Puthuff made such an impression on the young artist that he wrote about the adventure all around his first plein-air watercolor, Laguna Landscape (plate 2). Years later in an interview he described Laguna Beach as "a little nothing" and he recalled skinny-dipping with Val Costello because the beach was deserted in those days![57] In 1909 Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Jack Oakey left Los Angeles together to attend art school in Paris,[58] and in 1913 Sam Hyde Harris and Pete Purcell traveled together throughout Europe for six months to study the old masters. Other students, such as Rex Slinkard, Pruett Carter, and Bert Cressey, studied with the founder of the Ash Can school of painting, Robert Henri (1865-1929), in New York. A few of Stanton Macdonald-Wright's students journeyed east to study with or meet Thomas Hart Benton, and others made pilgrimages to France to paint with Morgan Russell; among the former were Herman Cherry and James Bolin, while Chalfant Head, Anne Evans, Wilma Shore, Earnford Sconhoft, and Fred Sexton were among the latter.[59] Russell's arrival in Los Angeles in 1931 and his short stint teaching at the League in 1932 finally gave all of the students who were at the League at that time the opportunity to meet and learn from this early modernist.
The League was also a social center, with exhibitions, receptions, and parties a part of the extracurricular activities. During the formative years exhibits were either held at the Blanchard Hall Gallery or in the studios of the League.[60] At a celebration of the organization's one-year anniversary, in April 1907, the gallery presented a number of accomplished drawings and paintings by League students. Six months later a number of students were again exhibiting their work at the gallery, the subjects consisting of portraits done in pastels and oils and drawings done from life.[61] By August of 1910 the curator of the Blanchard Hall Gallery,
Everett C. Maxwell (1884-1962), reported it was common practice for the League director to hold annual or biannual exhibitions right in their studio and that presently 136 sketches were on display in the larger gallery.[62] After the League moved to the Main Street studio in 1912, the artists sometimes participated in group exhibitions around town instead, such as one held at the Los Angeles Museum in June of 1921 that included the work of Nicholas Brigante, Val Costello, Lawrence Murphy, Edouard Vysekal, and George Stojana.[63] One of the most historically significant exhibitions of early modern artists active in Los Angeles was organized in January of 1923 by some of the League members, calling themselves the "Group of Independents" (some works were by artists, such as Stanton Macdonald-Wright, the deceased Rex Slinkard, Thomas Hart Benton, and Morgan Russell, not associated with the school at the time). This exhibition, held at the Taos Building on West First Street, brought together a number of pioneering modernists who asked their audience to respect the work displayed and try to approach it with an open mind, even if they did not find it appealing. Stanton Macdonald-Wright, who would re-establish himself with the League when the exhibition ended, authored the foreword in the catalog and later managed to stir up a fair amount of controversy by writing a critical review of the show in Antony Anderson's column in the Los Angeles Times.[64] Today this exhibition is recognized as one of the first in Los Angeles to feature experimental and abstract work by local artists, like Ben Berlin and Boris Deutsch, that even the more conservative artist Paul Swan (1884-1972) pronounced "fine, serious work."[65] Decades later Albert King recalled there was another exhibition of the "Group" in 1925 at the Hollywood Public Library,[66] although the catalog for the first exhibition had announced plans for a second much earlier, in June of 1923. Presumably the "Group of Independents" segued into the "Modern Art Workers," who exhibited at the Hollywood Library Gallery in 1925 and then at Exposition Park in 1926, since their goals were very similar and a number of League members were involved in both organizations.
In 1928 James Redmond and Albert King formed the League's own exhibiting club, called the Younger Painters. Many of the participants were students at Otis Art Institute and it is presently uncertain if they all attended the League as well. Supposedly the original group was made up of "certain brilliant students of...several art schools";[67] however, Hideo Date's recollection, which may have been accurate by the time of his participation in 1932, was that the group was exclusively made up of League members.[68] Their statement of purpose claimed that these artists were "young in a sense of growth,"[69] but it stressed that their work went far beyond that of students, as they included only more advanced and mature pieces. The group made it clear that the Younger Painters was strictly an exhibiting club -- not a social club -- that did not utilize a jury system. They noted that the establishment typically snubbed the work of younger artists, so they appreciated the support of the California Art Club, which hosted their first annual exhibition at the Barnsdall Park Art Center on April 2, 1928. The Younger Painters would continue to exhibit locally, at the Los Angeles Museum in 1929, at the Santa Monica Public Library in 1930, and finally at the Hollywood Library in 1932. By this time a local critic remarked that they were no longer young (although most were still in their twenties), and that their work was no longer "splashy," so the group disbanded.[70] While the exhibition at the Hollywood Library was their last, the Younger Painters Gallery appeared the following year at the Stanley Rose Bookstore in Hollywood, with Herman Cherry as the curator. Decades later Lorser Feitelson vehemently argued that he started this gallery, but Cherry consistently claimed credit for its founding and the Los Angeles Record documents his hosting a group of watercolors by Nicholas Brigante there in 1933, a couple of years before Feitelson became involved with the space.[71]
Parties were another League tradition that further strengthened the camaraderie between members. In the early years they were usually planned in conjunction with the exhibitions held at Blanchard Hall; about thirty students attended one such event, described as a "smoker," in 1907.[72] While the parties were typically group events, occasionally they were for an individual, such as Nicholas Brigante's farewell party given at the downtown restaurant Fioritalia when he left for World War I in 1917, or the good-bye party Benji Okubo organized for Hideo Date at the Dragon's Den restaurant when he traveled to Japan in 1936.
No doubt the most popular social events held at the League were the flamboyant "stag" parties that took place every other Saturday night after class. Frank Stevens said they were held on alternating Saturdays to work around the schedule of the Los Angeles Symphony, since some of the League members regularly attended those concerts.[73] The students usually took turns cooking, and everyone paid twenty-five or thirty cents for the meal.[74] Henry Clausen remembered that the food was "supplemented by Fazzi's grocery-store wine and buckets of good, lethal coffee,"[75] and Albert King noted that Frank Stevens often paid for those luxury items. The core group was generally made up of fifteen to twenty-five regulars who became a sort of "clan," according to Hideo Date.[76] Outsiders were welcomed to these intellectual events to spice up the mix -- members could bring one guest -- and the visitors often included musicians, writers, directors, actors, and art patrons, such as writer Sadakichi Hartmann, movie director Frank Tuttle, and actor Lew Cody. The League's big model stand was covered in newspaper and used as their dining table. The dinner would end with a ritual of someone putting a match to the paper and then the evening would progress into a sing-along, while others would play poker. The party typically ended around two or three in the morning, but sometimes it spilled over into a Sunday morning brunch at Jack Wells' apartment because of the intense conversations. Architect Chalfant Head, who attended these parties prior to and after his travels throughout Europe, reported to Morgan Russell upon his return to Southern California in 1927 that the "Art Students League has in my opinion quite gone to Hell! It has become a sort of inane 'arty' place. The famous old Saturday nite dinners end in dirty jokes and drivel about sex."[77] Herman Cherry found them intellectually stimulating; he remembered:
Hideo Date claimed that because of these intimate gatherings the group "became friends for life."[79] In fact, the League parties continued long after the demise of the school -- another sign of the lasting friendships. They were sometimes held at Robert Boag's house at Redondo Beach, as illustrated by two photographs, one of a party held in 1949 just before Fred Sexton revived the League, and another one held ca. 1960, although the core group had grown much smaller by this time (figs, 4, 5).
Despite the congenial atmosphere that permeated the League, conflicts were inevitable, especially with so many artistic egos involved, although the documented problems mainly had to do with the directors. Nicholas Brigante, relaying the League's early history to Carl Sprinchorn in a letter, described an incident between the sculptor Charles Cristadoro and the painter Rex Slinkard in which they struggled for control of the school. The students had handpicked Cristadoro as their director after the sudden death of Warren Hedges in January of 1910. Later that summer Slinkard rejoined the League, full of enthusiasm after his studies in New York with Robert Henri, and immediately their personalities clashed. Cristadoro greatly disliked the dynamic Slinkard, since his was a personality the sculptor could not control. Brigante described Cristadoro as the "quiet, retiring type [who] quickly gave up the fight and school to Rex" in 1911.[80] Throughout this episode another League member, Frank Curran, sided with Cristadoro, and Brigante recalled that these two were the only members he knew of who were ever antagonistic towards Slinkard. (Not everyone at the League was pleased with the new director's teaching methods, though. Conrad Buff quickly became disenchanted with the style Slinkard had learned from Henri and promptly quit.) Brigante noted that even Stanton Macdonald-Wright never said anything disparaging about his former colleague, perhaps because Slinkard was so much beloved by his League students that his presence and influence lingered at the school many years after his departure as director.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright, on the other hand, easily made enemies of both students and colleagues, because he was the "supreme egotist," according to Brigante, as well as being rather blunt about his dislikes. Another colleague claimed his attitude was fairly straightforward: "If he respected you, you got along fine with Macdonald-Wright; if he didn't, you wouldn't."[81] But he was reportedly very patient with even the least promising student, as long as that person was "cooperative and eager to learn."[82] In fact, he very cleverly managed the egos of the younger talent at the League by individually telling several of them that each was his most promising student, which also guaranteed their devotion to him. However, Hideo Date recalled a certain amount of backstabbing between Macdonald-Wright and instructor Lorser Feitelson -- not surprising, since they were quite competitive with one another, particularly after Feitelson's Post-Surrealism movement gained national attention.[83] Still, they managed to work together for a number of years, both at the League and elsewhere. Ultimately, the school survived these minor skirmishes and continued to thrive, meanwhile remaining sacred in the hearts and memories of most who attended.
Possibly one of the most amazing aspects of the League's history is that a unique intellectual and stylistic movement thrived there for about twenty years, but today very few scholars have acknowledged its existence. This "Asian-fusion" style lasted roughly from 1923, when Stanton Macdonald-Wright became director of the League, until 1942, when Benji Okubo closed down the school because of the forced incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans. The style is characterized by a specific formula that includes a delicate but emphasized flowing outline, perhaps copied from Persian miniatures, called "linear composition," flat areas of pure color, sometimes with stylized patterns of design found across the surface, and specific motifs from Asian art dominating the background -- typically a large tree, rock, or mountain surrounded by curving foamy water or clouds. Hideo Date's Still Life from this era is a good example (see fig. 13, page 10). Often all of this was combined with a skewed perspective borrowed from Cézanne and/or a Synchromistic palette gleaned from Macdonald-Wright.[84] So far at least twenty League artists working in this style in a wide variety of mediums[85] have been identified, and there were probably others. It originated with Stanton Macdonald-Wright, who initially combined his earlier Synchromistic theories and painting techniques somewhat randomly with Asian-inspired subjects.[86] While a formal manifesto has not emerged, eventually the artist clarified his goal, which was to blend "Oriental" influence with "Occidental" ideas to create an entirely new modern art.[87] Some of his followers intelligently reasserted their own belief in the merging of East and West; for example, in 1933 William von Herwig said:
Also, like their mentor, some of the non-Asian students immersed themselves in Eastern studies; James Redmond became fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, while Donald Totten studied Zen and other Buddhist philosophies the rest of his life as a result of this influence. Archie Musick found himself defending the movement's principles in 1932 when he left the Los Angeles League to study in Colorado with Boardman Robinson (1876-1952), who had said, "You're not a Chinaman, so why try to paint like a Chinaman?"[89] At one point even Hideo Date felt compelled to travel to Japan and further study his own culture, in order to better understand the developments in Los Angeles. Eventually he concluded that West Coast artists naturally turned to the Far East for inspiration, while East Coast artists had instead turned to Europe.[90]
Other artists associated with the League were interested in Asian art and sometimes original work was available for the students to study. Original Ukiyo-e prints were displayed at the Blanchard Hall studio of League instructor Leta Horlocker in 1910,[91] and Rex Slinkard kept a couple of exquisite Japanese screens as well as some fine Japanese prints in his studio.[92]
Although League cofounder Hanson Puthuff expressed an interest in Asian perspective,[93] Rex Slinkard was the first instructor known to have introduced Asian art to his students. His enthusiasm would send a young Nicholas Brigante on a quest to understand and capture elements of Chinese Sung painting in his own work, perhaps best illustrated in his masterpiece in watercolor titled Nature and Struggling Imperious Man (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Brigante, like the League's Asian-fusion artists, did not want to copy directly from his Eastern sources; instead, he wanted to find a balance between the art of past and present as a way to create something entirely new. Lorser Feitelson later described Brigante as the "father of Oriental Art" in Los Angeles, although he said others tried to claim the title -- presumably referring to Macdonald-Wright.[94] But it was clearly due to Stanton Macdonald-Wright and his beliefs that a much larger and more influential movement stemming from Asian principles flourished at the League and elsewhere in Southern California.
Another factor to consider in the development of this movement is that a number of Asian students attended the League throughout its history, and their welcomed presence no doubt further directed interest to the East. For instance, Asian elements appeared in Stanton Macdonald-Wright's post-Synchromistic work of the mid-1920s, but around the time Hideo Date studied at the Kawabata Painting School in Tokyo in the late 1920s, noticeable changes begin to appear in Macdonald-Wright's work as well. He had previously painted in a much looser style, almost crudely combining Synchromistic colors with some sort of Asian subject, as in the 1923 Chinese Valley Synchromy (see fig. 7, page 6). His later technique becomes more polished and adopts the compositional formula mentioned earlier. See, for example, his 1930 Dragon Trail: Still Life Synchromy (fig. 14, page 10). It is difficult to establish how much the student affected the teacher, and Hideo Date was typically modest about any influence he might have had on his mentor, but Date's refined, delicate style resulting from his training in Japan, as well as his newfound knowledge of the nihonga tradition of looking to the East and West for inspiration, possibly contributed to the changes in Macdonald-Wright's style, as well as those of the others involved with this movement.[95]
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