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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
Through informal talks, class criticism, and weekly lectures, Stanton Macdonald-Wright introduced his students to the techniques he admired most in the old and new masters, particularly Michelangelo and Cézanne, as well as the purity of approach of, for example, Chinese artists. In a lecture series given at the League during August and September of 1925, Macdonald-Wright rather verbosely laid down his fundamental principles on the importance of balance, color, rhythm, and form in a work of art.[96] (He would also display images by the artists under discussion and even paint in their styles sometimes to illustrate a point.[97]) He concluded this particular lecture series by pointing out the necessity of a "deeper spiritual content" in an artist's work in order to make the work meaningful; later some critics thought that he abandoned this ideal in the Asian-fusion movement. In 1934 the ever-supportive Arthur Millier discussed the progress of this style in an article about the latest artistic developments in Southern California. He ardently claimed:
Two years later, when Macdonald-Wright and some of his followers exhibited their Asian-fusion work at the Carl Fisher Gallery in New York, Millier's comment that East Coast critics would not understand the style was corroborated when one reviewer interpreted it as decorative, another was openly unenthusiastic about it, and a third claimed that the idea of creating something modern by turning to the Orient was "far-fetched."[99] Obviously, these critics thought that something deeper was missing in the stilted but colorful style presented by the group. Regardless of the lackluster reviews, this pastiche style continued to flourish in Southern California and ultimately found a wider audience through the intervention of the United States government, i.e., the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project, hereafter called "the Project."[100]
In 1935, with Stanton Macdonald-Wright at the helm as district supervisor for the Project in Los Angeles (he later became regional director for Southern California), the style found a new momentum, since over thirty artists from the League participated locally, including many of those most active in the Asian-fusion movement. Some of the work created for the Project was even executed at the League, such as James Redmond's mural for the Compton post office, Early California (see fig. 12, page 9) and Donald Totten's Untitled easel painting (fig. 6).[101]
Macdonald-Wright would eventually be accused of favoritism towards certain participating artists, although some League artists recalled they had to submit examples of their work to a committee to be accepted on the Project. In any event, the Asian-fusion League artists were given the freedom to continue working in this style, as seen in the mural titled Landing of Cabrillo-1542, painted by Charles H. Davis for the Los Angeles County Hall of Records (fig. 7). The most ambitious mural done in this style was the mosaic titled Recreations of Long Beach, which Macdonald-Wright and Albert King redesigned in the Asian-fusion style (fig. 8). Other League artists were part of the larger group of artists who worked on this mural as well. So by this time, a good number of Macdonald-Wright's students truly had become his disciples, and they redirected their own beliefs to his ideals. Together they were working towards a goal of intelligently combining East and West in their work, although ultimately the movement would end around 1942.
The question of why it ended does not have a simple answer. First of all, this movement had never really caught on with either the critics or the general public, even though there were a few other non-League artists working in the style.[102] The end of the movement also coincided with the winding down of the Project; once again these artists had to sell their work. Since the style was not very popular, some may have turned to more mainstream subjects in order to survive. Possibly the rising anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast contributed to a move away from using overt Asian motifs. Most likely the end of the movement occurred because of the breakup of its most ardent followers. Many in this tight-knit group relocated immediately before or during the war. Benji Okubo and Hideo Date were interned from 1942 to 1945 in Wyoming, Donald Totten moved to Washington in 1942 for a year, and James Redmond joined the Corps of Engineers in 1942 and was killed during the war. Others, like Archie Musick and Herman Cherry, had previously moved east. Although some of the Asian-fusion artists directly readdressed Macdonald-Wright's color theories in their later work, apparently none of them ever returned to this unique style.
Ideas, both theoretical and stylistic, that had developed at the League would surface in the later careers of many students. This legacy is basically two-fold: there is the influence on an individual's personal style or philosophy, and the influence that they somehow incorporated into their post-League careers and perhaps even passed along to the community at large. Certain students responded directly to the school's charismatic leaders, particularly Rex Slinkard and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and they subsequently devoted considerable time and effort to thoroughly absorbing the lessons they were taught. Others responded emotionally to the congenial atmosphere, to a place that became a haven for them, and for some students it was a combination of all of these elements that they would somehow carry into future.
As previously noted, Rex Slinkard studied with Robert Henri in New York between 1908 and 1910, and six months after his return to Los Angeles the young, energetic artist became director of his old alma mater. Henri's dark, intense style influenced Slinkard's personal style as well as his teaching, as seen in his undated Reclining Nude (plate 6), with its dramatic contrasting colors, playing light against dark. It must be emphasized that Slinkard taught Henri's vigorous style and not his own mystical experiments with color to his League students. Those progressive paintings emerged later, when the artist was living on his family's ranch near Saugus. Slinkard had quit the League in 1913, after removing himself from Los Angeles society because of a hasty marriage to his pregnant model. He occasionally turned up at the school to visit and offer advice to the students, but he only mentioned exhibiting one painting throughout this period. Consequently, during Slinkard's lifetime the work he is famous for now was not publicly displayed. His poetical letters to close friend Carl Sprinchorn discussing the paintings and his life of isolation reveal a sensitive soul responding to the natural world around him. Perhaps this was an idea learned from Henri, although the darker elements apparent in some of these pieces may be linked to the artist's guilt over his scandalous marriage and pending divorce.[103] Nicholas Brigante always claimed that Slinkard's final paintings developed free of any outside influences and that his was the first true modern work produced by a Southern California artist. However, in the surviving letters from Slinkard to Sprinchorn, it becomes apparent that he was inspired not only by his surroundings, but by artists such as Puvis de Chavannes and Arthur Davies, as well as El Greco. After Slinkard's premature death from influenza in 1918, retrospective exhibitions were held in Los Angeles (1919) and New York (1920), and in both cities again in 1929. Ten of his works were included in the League's 1923 "Group of Independents" exhibition as well. It was probably these later exhibits of his mystical paintings that inspired subsequent League artists, such as Mabel Alvarez and Lawrence Murphy, to emulate his style. Obvious compositional and stylistic similarities may be seen, for example, when comparing Alvarez's study for the painting Dream of Youth to Slinkard's The Path (figs. 9, 10). Today it is unknown if either Alvarez or Murphy had access to the artist's letters, which address the motivation behind his symbolist style, or whether their response to Slinkard's work was purely visual. Slinkard's mystical paintings as well as his poetical writings describing an isolated lifestyle amidst the majestic California landscape fascinated other artists as well, particularly Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), who became enamored with Slinkard and his work. In fact, he and Carl Sprinchorn tried for years, in vain, to publish a biography of this early modern Southern California painter. Earlier, Sprinchorn had made the drawing Rex Slinkard RIP, reminiscent of Slinkard's linear style, to commemorate the passing of his dear friend (fig. 11).
According to Brigante, the spirit of Rex Slinkard remained at the League long after his departure, and he was certainly forever linked to the younger artist's memories of the Main Street studio. In 1922 Brigante did a series of pen and ink drawings in Slinkard's style to commemorate his time there; the series includes some interior views, the only known images of this space. Twenty-five years later, a nostalgic Brigante returned to this topic in three different works, perhaps because he had been absorbed in revisiting his memories of Slinkard and the school for Hartley and Sprinchorn. The first two were studies on paper, one done in 1946 and the other in 1947. In his first "memory" piece, Memories of the Old Los Angeles Art Students' League, Brigante lets his subconscious go wild, depicting abstract areas of compartmentalized boxes within boxes formed by bright colors, perhaps representing different thoughts about the school (fig. 12). In the second one he reworks his earlier drawings of the interior setup with easels (fig. 13). He wrote to Sprinchorn about the motivation behind his second drawing, in which he repeated the inside view of the studio but with a major change:
The artist left much of this piece incomplete, except for his two easel miniatures of Slinkard's self-portrait and Sprinchorn's portrait of a dancer, but even in its unfinished state one senses Brigante's poignant attachment to this place and time from his youth. Eventually these two studies were merged in his final painting of this subject, a semi-abstract landscape oil of 1950 (fig. 1). This time he combines the compartmentalized sections of vibrant colors found in the first study with the studio interior of the second, and together they represent different parts of his memories. For instance, in the upper right of the canvas is an Asian-influenced landscape, perhaps signifying the importance Chinese Sung painting held for him at one time, while below it the viewer is given a distorted peek inside the League studio on Main Street. Once again Brigante allows us a glimpse into the importance of the League in his life and career as an artist.
In 1919, when Stanton Macdonald-Wright returned to Los Angeles from New York and, before that, Europe, he inadvertently changed the style of many artists working in California. He was personally moving away from Synchromism, the movement he had cofounded earlier, in Paris, with Morgan Russell. After their Synchromist work was exhibited in Los Angeles and San Francisco, other artists in those cities copied the colorful palette, although few probably understood the theory of choosing color based on musical scales or "color chords."[105] Macdonald-Wright's students at the League would also paint in this style, although he apparently never encouraged them to copy it. Synchromism no doubt appealed to those interested in music or who were musicians themselves, such as James Redmond, Donald Totten, Earnford Sconhoft, and Hideo Date, all of whom had a basic foundation in place to help them understand its complexities. It lingered especially in the memories of Hideo Date, who was always frustrated with his earlier explorations, and so he decided, thirty years after he had permanently left Los Angeles and severed contact with his teacher due to political differences, to re-address Macdonald-Wright's color theories.[106] Never having seen Macdonald-Wright's hand-painted color wheels that accompanied A Treatise on Color, Hideo Date designed his own, adjusting their format to his ideas, and then he set about exploring the possibilities of color in relation to notes on a musical scale. Oddly enough, the paintings he produced from these experiments resemble Macdonald-Wright's later stylized Synchromist pieces (figs. 14, 15). So both teacher and student later returned to Synchromism and ended up producing hauntingly similar stylized versions.
Other League students, such as the Bay Area painter John Gerrity and architects Chalfant Head and Harwell Hamilton Harris, turned to classic Synchromism later in their careers. Gerrity, who was slated to head a branch of the League in San Francisco only to have it shut down after the stock market crash of 1929, continuously returned to exploring Synchromism throughout his career. For example, his earlier images of large, heroic nude females inspired by Michelangelo surrounded by a Synchromistic palette (fig. 16) would evolve into Cézanne-inspired pieces of intersecting lines and colors. By the late 1960s Gerrity had abandoned the figure for pure color abstractions, although the basic principle of color creating form was always evident in his abstract work. Chalfant Head returned to painting after retiring from architecture, and produced a small body of work that evokes the theories of Synchromism (fig. 17). Head was probably reaching back to his studies with Morgan Russell in France, as the formal arrangement of deeper color tones more closely resembles the expatriate's personal style. In a succinct analysis of Synchromism's influence on Harwell Hamilton Harris while he was at the League, architectural historian Lisa Germany points out that the lessons on color theory learned from Stanton Macdonald-Wright provided the foundation for Harris's understanding of architectural form.[107]Harris also referred to color chords when designing houses, using specific colors around the trim of doors and windows, for example, to create movement on the façades of his structures, thus transforming a two-dimensional theory into a three-dimensional practice.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright's abilities as a speaker were legen-dary and the topics of his lectures greatly influenced his students as well. They often mentioned learning about subjects never taught to them before, and said that he introduced them to a world of knowledge they would never encounter again. Movie director and actor John Huston (1906-1987) attended the League in 1923, at the time Macdonald-Wright assumed control of the school. Huston described the impact the artist had upon him when he wrote, "S. Macdonald-Wright furnished the foundation of whatever education I have. He steered me not only in art, but in literature...Personally, I owe such a debt of gratitude to Wright that I can't begin to express it. I wish I had done better because of him"[108] Obviously, Huston did just fine, but not as a professional artist, a career he abandoned in the late 1920s, influenced by Morgan Russell's constantly precarious financial situation.[109] Macdonald-Wright's distinct style of teaching drawing, with an emphasis on creating balance and movement, or contrapposto, was also noteworthy. John Hench, who started working for Walt Disney in 1939 as a sketch artist, eventually becoming senior vice president of the Imagineering division, introduced Macdonald-Wright's drawing techniques to the Disney sketch artists and called them "Mickey's Ten Tips on Drawing."[110] For decades, until his death in 2004, Hench was the official portrait painter of Mickey Mouse, and a Synchromistic palette may be seen in some of these images. Redmond, Totten, and Okubo copied Macdonald-Wright's drawing techniques and incorporated his stimulating lectures on art history when they assumed leadership of the school after 1932. Furthermore, Benji Okubo extended these teaching methods to his students at the Heart Mountain League between 1942 and 1945. He taught drawing as Macdonald-Wright did -- using the same number system to guide students to develop the balance and flow in a figure, he gave similar lectures on art history, and he organized exhibitions and parties for the students, precisely as had been done in Los Angeles, but within the confines of an internment camp.[111] Donald Totten subsequently taught studio and art history classes in Southern California, while continuing to paint and exhibit his own work. Many of Macdonald-Wright's ideas surface in Totten's lectures to his students, such as this comment:
When Totten turned to Abstract Expressionism in his final years he abandoned the ideals of classic Synchromism, but the theories on color that he learned from Macdonald-Wright and Russell were central to his mature style and personal philosophy. Color theory continued to be important to other League artists, like Albert King and Herman Cherry, as well as Academy Awardwinning costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, who applied both the drawing lessons and color theories she learned at the League from Macdonald-Wright and Benji Okubo to her exquisite clothing designs for countless movies and theatrical performances (fig. 19).[113] Albert King cofounded Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1931. He taught there for over twenty years and he was head of their color department. King became nationally known as an expert in color theory and applied his knowledge to a wide range of professions, from teaching camouflage classes during World War II to developing and rediscovering ceramic techniques for his Lotus & Acanthus studio (fig. 20). Herman Cherry, like some other League students, claimed that it took him a long time to let go of Macdonald-Wright's influence, but one lesson he never forgot was how Macdonald-Wright taught him to see color: it became the means by which he created form in his later abstract pieces (fig. 21).
From the beginning, Antony Anderson had seen the potential of the school when he speculated, "The league, it will be seen, is a school with an idea -- and that idea is also an ideal -- artistic growth for the individual man or woman who seeks its instruction, as well as the spread of appreciation and understanding in the community at large."[114] And though the story of the League was almost forgotten -- perhaps not an uncommon occurrence in a city famous for reinventing itself -- its influence was quietly spreading out into the world beyond the studio. One final thought to consider is that most of the artists who attended the League had the worst generational luck imaginable, since their early careers were wedged between two world wars and interrupted by the Great Depression. By the time the United States started rebounding financially from the Second World War, most of them were middle-aged, no longer youthful hotshots; there were, as there always are, younger artists with news ideas out to replace them. The dealer Irving Blum, codirector of the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, claimed that upon his arrival in Los Angeles in the later part of the 1950s, the up-and-coming artists were attempting to extend beyond and destroy, not absorb, what had previously existed in Los Angeles, and this attitude may have contributed to the League's disappearance from the local scene.[115] Ironically, those who attended the school and later achieved some level of financial success or prominence did so by moving on to another creative profession or leaving Southern California altogether. Costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, movie director/actor John Huston, architect Harwell Hamilton Harris, and New York-based painter Herman Cherry come to mind. Furthermore, as Arthur Millier noted, Los Angeles as a city had changed dramatically after the war. New industries brought about a population explosion that resulted in an urban sprawl extending farther and farther away from downtown. In fact, downtown Los Angeles was no longer the center of the city; it was just one of many centers, and it was no longer as popular as it had been during the heyday of the League.
Ultimately, the League was really nothing more than a studio and an idea, and it could have easily closed down numerous times throughout its history. Instead, in the spirit of the original New York League, it became "one of the prime movers and shakers"[116] in pre-war Los Angeles. Today the Art Students League of Los Angeles deserves to be acknowledged as an important and progressive center in the chronicles of the artistic development of Los Angeles.
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