2001 (2000) (2002) (1990-2000) (2000-2010) Table of Contents
Wanda Coleman* Mercurochrome: New Poems, Black Sparrow Press: Santa Rosa, 2001 See Text
Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, LACMA Press Release 2001 August 5 through October 28, 2001, 1973, 1950s, 1930s, 1920s, 1910s, 1900s See Text
Stanton MacDonald-Wright [1890-1973], Revised 1973 See Text
Ken Juran The 2001 Meguiar's Award Popular Mechanics, March 1, 2001, 1956, 1930s, 1909, 1907, 1904 See Text
Jim Ohlschmidt Liner Notes The Genius of Joe Pass*, Vestapol 13073 Video, 2001, 1990s, 1970s, 1962, 1960, 1960s, 1950s See Text
Kenneth Patchen Tribute, Grooves, Santa Monica Mirror, July 4, 2001 Readings, Performances, See Text
Robert Aquinas McNally Something in the Genes: Kaiser Permanente's Continuing Commitment to Research The Permanante Journal, 5, 4, Fall 2001, 1946, See Text
The Popsicle Moon, Mixed Media, Post Card 2001, See Image and Text
The Popsicle Moon, Mixed Media, Post Card, Advertisement, Unknown Publisher, KR, 2001 See Text
Teresa Rochester OPCO Tackles Architecture, Boulangerie Site and Homeless at Annual Conference The LookOut News February 2001, See Text
Santa Monica Planning
Division Santa Monica Landmarks Tour,
2003.
50. Craftsman style Residence, 1913 See
Text
Merrill Shindler and Karen Berk ZagatSurvey 2001 Los Angeles So. California Restaurants, Zagat: NY, 2000, 284pp., 2001 See Text
Documents
Wanda Coleman* Mercurochrome: New Poems, Black Sparrow Press: Santa Rosa, 2001
Wanda Coleman
To an Interloper
you are a foreigner here. this is my skin. it is made of wild Santa Anas raging through canyons and is as thin as a saint's aura. i wear the night in my hair, stars glistening there like rhinestones in a net of back silken naps. the heat that cracks and dries your consciousness is my breath on my lover's chest. you have no claims here. there is nothing for you to wax romantic about. you know nothing. you've invested nothing. heart sacrifice is the only sacrifice. lean into the blade, if you're so brave. no one survives here who still has a reason~~
No Justice-Just Us (after Kenneth Patchen)
We will probably shout & hallelujah when we die.
We are the insulted, sister, the desolate dames.
Ken Juran The 2001 Meguiar's Award Popular Mechanics, March 1, 2001, 1956, 1930s, 1909, 1907, 1904,
J.B. Nethercutt*, founder of California's The Nethercutt* Collection car museums in San Sylmar, is the Meguiar's Collector Car Hobby's Person of the Year.
"J.B. Nethercutt*, 85-year-old dean of the car-collector hobby, has been named the 2001 Meguiar's Collector Car Hobby's Person of the Year. The award was presented at a gala ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel on May 10, 2001. The Meguiar's Award honors individuals whose actions have had significant impact on the collector car hobby. This year's recipient was selected by a committee comprised of 22 prominent automotive journalists. Joe Oldham, Editor-In-Chief of Popular Mechanics, serves on this committee.
"Years later when I became successful in a business I had started, and we were affluent enough to afford one of those gleaming monsters we remembered so well, we found that most of them were in dreadful condition," said Nethercutt*. That was the beginning of a lifelong passion for Nethercutt* and his wife to preserve the cars from their youth. In 1956, the Nethercutts* decided that the only way they could get one of the cars they had so admired in the 1930s was to buy the best example they could find and have it restored. Out of this ambition has grown one of the finest automotive restoration shops in the world.
"Today, The Nethercutt Collection--also considered among the finest in the world--consists of more than 200 cars housed in two separate museums. To date, more than a million people have visited the original building. The second was opened just last year across the street from the famed Tower of Beauty in San Sylmar. "The collection is comprised of cars from the world over," explains Nethercutt*. "Now it's true that the very finest cars in the world, such as Lincolns, Cadillacs, Packards, Pierce-Arrows and Duesenbergs, are absolutely necessary in any worthwhile collection, but so too are the great European marques such as Isotta-Fraschini, Hispano-Suiza, Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce. They are equally important to the American cars."
"The collection also contains some of the most unusual motorcars ever built, a few of which are the sole surviving examples of their marques: a 1907 Westinghouse, a 1909 Gobron Brille and a 1904 Cameron. Thus, the Nethercutts* are considered automotive preservationists as much as car collectors.
"To ensure the future of the collection and the museums-which are open to the public free of charge-Nethercutt* has established a perpetual endowment for the museums. "Collecting and restoring old cars is more than a hobby, it goes far beyond that," he says. "It is a commitment to preserving the past for future generations."
"And that's why J.B. Nethercutt* is the Meguiar's Collector Car Hobby's Person of the Year.
"Tours of The Nethercutt* Collection are personally conducted and require two hours. Visitors should call or fax well in advance to make a reservation. The tours and the admission are free of charge, but The Nethercutt* Collection and Museum requests that all visitors dress accordingly (no jeans or shorts). Children under 12 years of age are not permitted. Tours are held on Tuesday through Thursday at 10 am and 1:30 pm. Call 818-367-2251 or fax 818-367-8013 Tuesday through Saturday, 9 am to 11:30 am and 1 pm to 3 pm, for reservations. For more information, visit www.classics.com/nthct.html."
Jim Ohlschmidt Liner Notes The Genius of Joe Pass*, Vestapol 13073 Video, 2001
[Compiled in this video are a series of performances from 1962 to 1982
. . . [by] Joe Pass*. Also brief interviews where Joe Pass discusses his origins
as a guitarist and his thoughts on his music. ]
" . . . "
"Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalaqua [1929-1994] was
born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on January 13, 1929. . . .
Joe's father . . . bought him a $17 Harmony guitar. . .
" . . . "My father . . . would hum an Italian song, I
would play it and then he'd say 'Fill it up!'"
" . . . his father . . . bought him a Martin flatop. . . .
"That was the first amplified guitar I ever
played. I put a DeArmond pickup on it and played that
guitar for many, many years. It was a fine instrument."
Joe also began taking lessons with a local music
teacher who played violin, guitar, saxophone and piano. . . .
"By age twelve [1941] Joe was playing with a group of local
musicians who gigged at the local V.F.W. hall. "We'd play
waltzes, pop tunes, standards, just about anything," . . .
We had drums, piano, tenor, trumpet, and guitar.
There was no bass player, and I played all of the bass lines
because the piano player was usually the local school teacher
who just read the song sheet. We played things like 'Stardust,'
'Christopher Columbus,' and 'Body and Soul.' I was twelve years
old and improvising. They gave me all the room I could take."
"At age 14, [1943] Pass was playing in a wedding band that
was loosely patterned after the Quintet of the Hot Club of
France. "We had a bass, violin, a rhythm guitar, and me"
Pass told Downbeat writer Lee Underwood. "We'd play
swing tunes like 'Honeysuckle Rose' and 'Lady Be Good,'
and I would play the melodies. . . . "
"Pass got his first taste of the road while still in high
school when he toured with the Tony Pastor Orchestra in
the summer of 1944. According to a discography
assembled by Tabo Oishi published in Just Jazz Guitar
magazine, Pass probably played his first studio date with
the popular East Coast dance band that year . . ."
" . . .
"It would seem that at age 20, [1949] with nearly six years
under his belt, Pass was the classic young turk poised to
take the bebop jazz scene by storm. He no doubt found his
way into some very interesting jam sessions, but he was
all too eager to adopt the hard-drug lifestyle of that
infamous nocturnal fraternity. Within a year Pass was a
junkie with a serious habit.
"Staying high was first priority," he told Rolling Stone
writer Robert Palmer in 1979. "Playing was second, girls
were third. But the first thing really took all my energy."
The next 15 years were the darkest period of his life.
"From about 1949 to the end of 1960, . . . I lived in the cracks," he
told Downbeat. As Palmer wrote in Rolling Stone, Pass'
drug-addled existence during these years "could have been
lifted from the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel." Pass spent
a year in New Orleans, where he lived in a "crash pad"
with several other musicians and author William Burroughs.
"In New Orleans I had a kind of nervous breakdown because
I had access to every kind of drug there and was up for
days," he told Palmer. "I would always hock my guitar."
After New Orleans, Pass hit the road and kept moving,
working an endless string of nightclubs in Las Vegas, Peoria,
Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas, where he was busted for
dope and jailed for five years. Lee Underwood wrote in
Downbeat that when Pass was released, he resumed his
habit and soon was, in Pass' own words, "out on the street
and not playing a note."
"It's unclear how Pass found his way to California that
year, but as Underwood wrote: "In 1960, he stood on the
steps of Synanon's Santa Monica drug rehabilitation center
holding a gunnysack full of onions, the only thing he owned.
No guitar. No money. No future. No hope. A sack full of
dusty onions and a broken life."
"According to Palmer's article, a former roommate of
Pass, pianist Arnold Ross, convinced him to get with the
Synanon program and clean up his act. It was a particularly
fortuitous decision for Pass: Not only was he in the
company of other jazz musicians in the throes of drug
rehabilitation, but Dick Bock, owner of World Pacific
Records, was one of the clinic's sponsors. Bock recognized
the considerable talents of Pass, Arnold Ross, trumpeter
David Allen, saxophonist Greg Dykes and several other
musicians recovering at the clinic, and featured them on
an album of seven instrumental selections called "Sounds
of Synanon" recorded at Pacific Jazz Studios in Hollywood
late in 1961.
"That album and the footage that begins this video
confirm that Pass' stay at Synanon quickly and irrevocably
turned his life around. Taken from a 1962 appearance on
a Los Angeles television broadcast called "Frankly Jazz,"
Pass (presumably accompanied by players featured on the
Synanon album) states the melody of "The Song is You"
and then launches into an extended flight of swift, melodic
improvisations played with alert, coherent authority.
"Sonnymoon for Two" finds Joe stretching out in a more
relaxed, bluesy vein . . .
"A lot of kids think that in order to be a guitarist they've
gotta go out and be a junkie for ten years, and that's just
not true," Pass told Underwood. "I can't credit any of that
time saying that was when I really learned. I spent most of
those years just being a bum, doing nothing. It was a great
waste of time. I could have been doing then a lot of things
I'm doing now. Only I had failed to grow up."
"1962 was a banner year for Pass. According to Oishi's
discography, he appeared on no less than seven albums,
working at Pacific Jazz Studios with artists such as Les
McCann, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Leroy Vinegar, Johnny
Griffin, Bud Shank, and others. By year's end he was one
of the busiest guitarists in Los Angeles.
"Although Pass coaxed a remarkably warm, fat tone
from the Fender Jaguar he played in those days, a fan
noticed that it wasn't the best instrument for Joe's style.
"Back in my Synanon days, I didn't have a guitar of my
own; all I had was a solidbody rock and roll guitar that
belonged to Synanon," Pass told Sievert in 1976. "I was
playing a gig at a local club with it when this guy named
Mike Peak came in and saw me playing jazz with a rock
guitar. A few months later, on my birthday, I came home
and there was this brand new (Gibson) ES-175 that he had
bought for me. He was in the construction business and
played a little guitar himself and just felt that I should have
the proper kind of instrument. It's the only electric I've used
since then."
" . . .
"His studio work during this time also included such
lucrative jobs as playing for several television series such
as the Woody Woodbury Show, Good Morning America,
and the Donald O'Connor Show. Although his work as an
anonymous studio musician gave Pass a level of financial
security most jazz musicians only dreamed of, it was a
realm he apparently was not entirely comfortable with. As
Pass told Lee Underwood in Downbeat: "You have to have
your regular guitar, a 12-strings guitar, a banjo, a mandolin,
a wah-wah pedal &endash; all the tools of the trade. When they
call you, they expect you to be able to do everything that's
contemporary. 'Can you remember what so-and-so did on
such-and-such a hit record? Well, we want that.' And if
you can't play that, they don't call you again."
By 1970, Pass was living comfortably in Southern
California, he was married, and had started a family. . . .
The Pacific Jazz label was defunct, and although
sessions that year with a group of progressive L.A. jazz
musicians including electric bassist Carol Kaye,
saxophonist Tom Scott and pianist Joe Sample (reissued
on a Hot Wire CD ironically titled "Better Days") showed
that Pass tried to adapt his well-informed and carefully built
technique to the new scene, his heart just wasn't in it.
" . . ."
". . . . Norman Granz, founder of Verve records
and jazz impresario behind the highly acclaimed "Jazz at
the Philharmonic" records and concert tours, had formed
a new label called Pablo, with world-wide distribution
through RCA. Although Pass was still unknown to most of
the jazz world beyond Los Angeles, Granz . . . recorded him
in a live set with pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Niels Henning
Orsted Pedersen at Chicago's London House in May of 1973. "The
Trio" album was a huge success for Pablo and won a
Grammy award the next year. . . .
"As a result, Pass' reputation skyrocketed throughout
the country and across the Atlantic, and his name began
appearing near the top of reader polls in Downbeat, Guitar
Player, and Melody Maker. In November and December of
1973, Pass spent several days at MGM recording tracks
for the most important Pablo album of his career, Virtuoso.
As Lee Underwood wrote in Downbeat: "'Virtuoso' startled
everybody: one man, one guitar, complex tunes, and a
display of technique that raised the short hairs on the back
of the neck." Released in 1974, the aptly titled Virtuoso
album. . . .
" . . . Richard Cook and Brian Morton wrote in The Penguin
Guide to Jazz, "Pass smoothes away the nervousness of
bop yet counters the plain talk of swing with a complexity
that remains completely accessible."
" . . ."
"In 1994, Pass told Acoustic Guitar magazine editor
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers that playing guitar with your fingers
instead of a pick was "the best and only way to play your
guitar, because you're actually in touch with the instrument
&endash; you actually feel it, like a horn player feels a horn in his
mouth."
In addition to developing an impeccable technique,
Pass adopted an a Zen-like attitude toward mentally
articulating the music while he played. As he told
Downbeat: "You have to eliminate your own consciousness,
because once you begin thinking about what you're doing,
you're not allowing the music to take on its own shape and
form and momentum. You're trying to direct the music.
The idea is to get away from directing the music, and just
allow it to flow out by itself. Sometimes I'm on the stand
and I feel pretty good, and the music just starts coming
out. When it's like that, I'm not making the music go places;
it just goes. I don't play the same tune the same way twice
. . . I never know where I'm gonna start, or where I'm gonna
end."
" . . ."
"In 1992 Pass embarked on a extended concert series
with flamenco master Paco Peña, classical virtuoso Pepe
Romero, and acoustic fingerstyle innovator Leo Kottke. . . ."
"Pass' role in the Guitar Summit was cut short late in
1993, when he left the tour due to increasingly debilitating
pain. Kottke, Romero and Peña continued the tour . . . On May
23rd, 1994, Pass died of liver cancer at age 65. . . ."
". . . "
20VESTAPOL 13073
Running time: 115 minutes • b/w & Color •
Cover photos by Tom Copi
Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,
© ® 2001 Vestapol Productions A division of
Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, Inc.
Kenneth Patchen Tribute Santa Monica Mirror Grooves, July 4, 2001
Readings, Performances:
"Carolyn See, Michael C. Ford, Aram Saroyan, Rod Steiger, John Thomas, Philomene Long, Elois Klein Healy, Deena Metzger, special guests at Beyond Baroque, 7/6, 7:30pm. The Mount Alverno Review, edited by poet Michael C. Ford, was conceived in 1968 as a tribute to Kenneth Patchen, his work, his life, and to raise funds to assist the poet, who died shortly after its publication in 1971. Funded by Ray Manzarek & Jim Morrison, The Review was a "tribute to Patchen's legacy of 35 years of prolific and steady production, including 40 books, chapbooks, portfolios of silk screen paintings, drawings, and postcard poems…Ford writes: 'Patchen sought to save us from the philistines, monsters of war and industry, who, with poisonous ambition and violent assault, at this very moment, continue to defile our home in rituals of blood and madness.'"
The Popsicle Moon, Mixed Media, Post Card, 2001
The Popsicle Moon, Mixed Media, Post Card, Advertisement, 2001
The Popsicle Moon, Mixed Media, Post Card, Unknown Publisher, 2001
Teresa Rochester OPCO Tackles Architecture, Boulangerie Site and Homeless at Annual Conference The LookOut News February 2001.
"Lackluster attendance didn't stop the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO) from taking on several meaty issues at its annual general membership meeting last Saturday or from electing five new members to its board of directors.
"Architectural styles in Ocean Park, the development of the Boulangerie site on Main Street and the homeless topped the agenda of OPCO's "Community Congress," which drew nearly 100 residents. Among those attending were four City Council members -- including Mayor Michael Feinstein* -- and members of a number of City board and commissions, as well as City staff.
"In a series of votes that saw little opposition, the organization's members filled five of the six open seats on OPCO's board of directors.
"One of the day's longer discussions centered on architectural styles allowed in the City's oldest neighborhood. According to City guidelines, only three styles may be used to construct or remodel homes in Ocean Park -- Craftsman, Modern and Mediterranean.
"The issue was placed on the agenda after Ocean Park residents protested the City's Architectural Review Board's approval of a project that was a mixture of the three styles. OPCO is looking at the possibility of having those guidelines revised and tightened to keep projects from slipping through the cracks.
"If you read it [the guidelines] it's pretty straightforward but others will say no it means this," said OPCO chair Rick Laudati*. "If there was a revision it would come from Ocean Park instead of the City."
"The discussion was led by OPCO's Design Standard Review Committee chair Mario Fonda Bonardi*, and included Susan Healy Keene* from the City's Planning Department and ARB member Joan Charles*. Laudati* said that any final decisions on the guidelines are still a long way off.
"Howard Jacobs*, who will develop the site on Main Street once occupied by the Boulangerie, presented scaled down plans of the project. Previous project designs had raised the ire of neighbors, who worried the project would bring too much traffic, is too big for the area and will cause major disruption while it is under construction.
"Laudati* said that although the project has been scaled back tremendously, "people still have some questions. It's not as negative as it was last year. I think there may be some kinks to work out."
"The issue of homelessness also was discussed at the congress. Joel Schwartz*, the City's homeless services coordinator, and Joe Gardner* of the SMPD's homeless liaison team, fielded questions and provided information on the City's homeless services. Members of the City's Social Services Commission also attended, taking copious notes during the discussion. "I don't know if we hit a lot of new ground," Laudati* said.
"Homelessness was named as one of OPCO three priorities for the coming year, along with developing the new Civic Center area and environmental issues.
" Elected to OPCO's board of directors were John Coluccio*, Joe Pipersky*, Laurel Roennau*, Bill Sunbald* and Fred Whitlock*.
" Laudati* said that OPCO has recently completed a survey for its residents and the organization plans to hold another Community Congress in the summer. In the past the events have drawn between 200 to 300 OPCO members."
Copyright ©2000 surfsantamonica.com.
Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, LACMA Press Release 2001 August 5 through October 28, 2001, 1973
"LOS ANGELES, APRIL 2001-The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) explores the art of one of America's early modernist masters, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, in the first in-depth retrospective of his work. On view to the public August 5 through October 28, 2001, Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism examines the evolution of his art from his important Synchromist works, continuing with his masterful Asian-influenced paintings, and offering a selection of the stunning synchromies painted in the final years of his life. The exhibition includes more than 60 works spanning six decades. This show was organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Synchromism
"Among his many accomplishments, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, along with fellow American painter Morgan Russell, fathered the Synchromism movement. Convinced that color and sound were equivalent phenomena and that one could "orchestrate" the colors in a painting the way a composer arranged notes and chords in a musical composition, they developed a system of painting based on color scales. The system entailed constructing form and depth in a painting through advancing and reducing hues. Their ensuing "synchromies" were some of the first abstract non-objective paintings in American art.
"Leaving his California home behind, Macdonald-Wright arrived in Paris in 1907 and immediately began attending classes at the Sorbonne and studying painting at several traditional academies. Feeling that these schools stifled his creativity, he soon abandoned them in favor of the radical new approaches of Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and Orphism that were being developed to challenge traditional art. It was at that time that he met Morgan Russell and was introduced to Matisse, Rodin, Percyval Tudor-Hart, a Canadian painter and color theorist, and collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein. Macdonald-Wright and Russell exhibited their new aesthetic first in Munich, then in Paris in 1913, and the following year in New York. Synchromism became the first American avant-garde movement presented in the international arena.
"As a result of World War I, Macdonald-Wright returned to the United States and settled in New York City. There he continued to exhibit his synchromist works at some of the most progressive galleries in the United States: Stieglitz's Gallery 291, the Montross Gallery, and Charles Daniel Gallery. He was also instrumental in organizing, in 1916, the landmark Forum Exhibition that helped establish the role of modernism in American art.
Macdonald-Wright in California
"Disappointed with the New York art scene, Stanton Macdonald-Wright returned to Los Angeles in 1918 and immediately plunged into a wide variety of projects that challenged a local art community still enthralled with Impressionism. He easily established himself as the foremost modernist in the region and, more than anyone, encouraged the development of a distinctively West Coast response to modernism.
"He taught at the Chouinard School of Art (later renamed California Institute of the Arts), directed the Art Students League of Los Angeles, lectured and published his ideas on art aesthetics and philosophy, and eventually taught at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Macdonald-Wright is also credited with organizing the first exhibition of modern art in Southern California, the 1920 Exhibition of American Modernists at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (the forerunner of LACMA). Throughout his life, Macdonald-Wright was one of the foremost advocates of modern art on the West Coast, organizing numerous shows of his work and that of other progressive artists.
"Macdonald-Wright's painting in Southern California reflected new influences and aspirations. Central to his work was his increasing absorption in all things Asian. In addition to his study of Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, he continued his Chinese studies, frequented Chinatown, and attended traditional Chinese theater. Inspired by Eastern art and thought, Macdonald-Wright's work was now characterized by more subtle and elegant compositions: his landscapes, based on California's many hills and valleys, are rendered in the delicate style of Chinese scroll painting and his still lifes feature formal simplicity and identifiably Asian motifs. He maintained that East and West were equal halves of an as yet unrealized whole, and that a harmonious union could only be achieved through the marriage of Western logic and technology to Eastern philosophy and imagination. He not only tirelessly expounded on the inevitable unity of the two cultures, but also attempted to fuse Eastern and Western elements in his own work. One of his most successful examples is Yin Synchromy, No. 3 (1930) that depicts an idealized nude female figure (based on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and Eve in the Sistine Chapel) floating within an evanescent mountainscape reminiscent of Japan.
"Not even the Great Depression could slow Macdonald-Wright's enthusiasm for work or his prodigious output. Under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, he painted the Santa Monica Public Library mural cycle, eight panels of which are included in this exhibition. The mural cycle was the most extensive such project ever undertaken in Southern California. Because of his significance in the area, he was appointed director of the Los Angeles District of the Southern California Region of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. In addition to promoting the project through lectures and exhibitions, Stanton Macdonald-Wright also designed numerous mosaics for local buildings.
Modernist to Ancient Sage
"In the final decades of his life, Stanton Macdonald-Wright revisited his beloved Synchromism, incorporating his life experience, his belief in Eastern philosophy, and a deep understanding of Japanese and Chinese art. These later synchromies, such as Liaison intime (Intimacy), 1955, reveal the subtle influence of Asian aesthetics on the design and color harmonies of his by now famous abstractions. Until his death in 1973 he continued to paint, exhibit, and write prolifically. In fact, Macdonald-Wright insisted that his later synchromies were imbued with a more vital, spiritual life than his more recognized early masterpieces. He traveled extensively, often to Asia. During these years, Macdonald-Wright transformed his self-image from maverick modernist to ancient sage.
"Although Macdonald-Wright's place in the history of American art was secure and remained recorded in histories about early modernism, the full breadth of his work has been virtually ignored. Three earlier retrospectives have been devoted to the artist (1956, Los Angeles County Museum; 1967, National Collection of Fine Arts; and 1970, Wight Gallery, UCLA); however, this exhibition will present the first balanced and comprehensive examination of his life's work. It will demonstrate not only the creativity of Synchromism, but also Macdonald-Wright's crucial role in the dissemination of modernism in Los Angeles. Featuring more than 50 important oil paintings, a wealth of archival material including an original copy of Macdonald-Wright's 1924 Treatise on Color (of which only 60 copies were published), catalogues from important exhibitions featuring and organized by Macdonald-Wright, rare photographs of the artist and contemporaries, and a selection of rare prints and works on paper, this exhibition presents a long-overdue acknowledgment of an artist whose achievements and aspirations established him as an early modern master and inspired several generations of artists.
Macdonald-Wright's mural in Santa Monica Public Library.
"When Stanton Macdonald-Wright arrived in Santa Monica in 1900, he and it were very young. He was 10. The little beach town had just marked its 25th year and had only 3,000 residents.
"Archibald Wright and Annie Wright moved to Santa Monica from Charlottesville, Virginia with their two sons, Willard, 13, and Stanton, 10, when Wright, having sold his Virginia properties, took a job as manager of the Arcadia Hotel, then said to be the finest hotel on the Southern California coast.
"A number of remarkable people have made their marks in Santa Monica, but arguably none is quite as remarkable as Stanton Macdonald-Wright.
"On August 4, the first full retrospective of Macdonald-Wright's work will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He was one of America's early modernist masters, and the exhibition (which will run through October 28), Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism examines the evolution of his art from his important Synchromist works, continues with his masterful Asian-influenced paintings, and offers a selection of the stunning synchromies painted in the final years of his life. Spanning six decades, the exhibition includes more than 60 works and much archival material.
Synchromism
"Macdonald-Wright, with fellow American painter Morgan Russell, fathered the Synchromism movement. Convinced that color and sound were equivalent phenomena and that one could "orchestrate" the colors in a painting the way a composer arranged notes and chords in a musical composition, they developed a system of painting based on color scales. The system entailed constructing form and depth in a painting through advancing and reducing hues. Their ensuing "synchromies" were some of the first abstract non-objective paintings in American art.
A Prince of a Boy
"Young Stanton believed that he was a prince, read voraciously, studied with tutors, caroused with other renegades, attended the Art Students' League of Los Angeles, worked briefly and unmemorably in a doctor's office and department store and, at 17, married the first of his five wives.
"His wife was older than he, and rich, and they soon left Santa Monica for Paris where he attended classes at the Sorbonne and studied painting at several traditional academies. But he soon abandoned formal study to explore the radical new approaches of Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and Orphism that were then emerging and challenging traditional art. It was then that he met Morgan Russell and was introduced to Matisse, Rodin, Percyval Tudor-Hart, a Canadian painter and color theorist, and collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein.
"Macdonald-Wright and Russell exhibited their new aesthetic first in Munich, then in Paris in 1913, and the following year in New York. Synchromism became the first American avant-garde movement that was recognized in the international arena.
"At the onset of World War I, Macdonald-Wright returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where he continued to exhibit his synchromist works at some of the most progressive galleries in the United States: Stieglitz's Gallery 291, the Montross Gallery, and Charles Daniel Gallery. He was also instrumental in organizing, in 1916, the landmark Forum Exhibition that helped establish the role of modernism in American art.
Macdonald-Wright in California
"Disappointed with the New York art scene and detesting the city, Macdonald-Wright returned to Los Angeles in 1918 and immediately plunged into a wide variety of projects that challenged a local art community still under the spell of Impressionism. Though he was literally penniless, in the midst of a divorce and overcoming an opium addiction, he quickly established himself as the foremost modernist in the region and, more than anyone, encouraged the development of a distinctively West Coast response to modernism.
"He taught at the Chouinard School of Art (now the California Institute of the Arts), directed the Art Students League of Los Angeles, lectured and published his ideas on art aesthetics and philosophy, and eventually taught at UCLA. He is also credited with organizing the first exhibition of modern art in Southern California, the 1920 Exhibition of American Modernists at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (the forerunner of LACMA).
"Macdonald-Wright's painting in Southern California reflected new influences and aspirations. Central to his work was his increasing absorption in all things Asian. In addition to his study of Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, he continued his Chinese studies, frequented Chinatown, and attended traditional Chinese theater. Inspired by Eastern art and thought, Macdonald-Wright's work was now characterized by more subtle and elegant compositions. His landscapes, based on California's many hills and valleys, were rendered in the delicate style of Chinese scroll painting and his still lifes featured formal simplicity and identifiably Asian motifs.
"He maintained that East and West were equal halves of an as yet unrealized whole, and that a harmonious union could only be achieved through the marriage of Western logic and technology to Eastern philosophy and imagination. He not only spoke endlessly of the inevitable unity of the two cultures, but also attempted to fuse Eastern and Western elements in his own work.
"L.A art critic Merle Armitage described Macdonald-Wright as "a formidable man." Distinguished director/writer John Huston, a most formidable man himself, once said, "S. Macdonald-Wright furnished the foundation of whatever education I have."
Macdonald-Wright's Santa Monica Projects
"Curiously, the Great Depression which seized America in the 1930s gave Macdonald-Wright a unique opportunity to create some large-scale works in Santa Monica. Under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, he painted an extraordinary mural cycle in the Santa Monica Public Library, eight panels of which are included in the LACMA exhibition. It was the most extensive such project ever undertaken in Southern California. At a City Council meeting to approve the project, about $950 was collected to pay for the requisite materials. Macdonald-Wright devoted 18 months to the mural which traces the history of the region from prehistoric times to the birth of the movies, for which he was paid little or nothing,
"As shown in the photograph on this page, the mural was far grander than its setting.
"When the old Public Library was torn down, the mural-which Macdonald-Wright had wisely painted on removable panels-was dispatched by the City to the Smithsonian Institution where it has resided ever since. Not long ago, City Councilman Ken Genser proposed that a place be made for the mural in the Main Library addition.
"Because of his significant place in the Los Angeles art world, Macdonald-Wright was appointed director of the Los Angeles District of the Southern California Region of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. In addition to promoting the project, Macdonald-Wright worked with the architects on various projects and designed numerous mosaics for local buildings-including the murals in the lobby of the Santa Monica City Hall, itself a WPA project, as well as painting the fire curtain mural and designing the mosaic in the lobby of Barnum Hall, the theater on the Santa Monica High School campus.
"The City Hall murals are done in petracrome, a process Macdonald- Wright* developed which combines cement with crushed bits of marble, tile and granite. One of the City Hall murals depicts the arrival of the Spanish explorers in Southern California and the Mexican settlement. The other features such 1930s elements as sailboats, airplanes and road races.
"Built in 1937, Barnum Hall is one of the finest examples of the elegant Streamline Moderne architecture which flourished in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Like City Hall, it was a project of the federal government's Works Progress Administration and Federal Arts Project.
"And so it was that in one of this country's darkest decades Macdonald-Wright* made bright and enduring works in Santa Monica's library, City Hall and high school auditorium. Today, City Hall and Barnum Hall head the roster of distinguished regional landmarks.
Modernist to Ancient Sage
"In the final decades of his life, Stanton Macdonald-Wright* returned to Synchromism, incorporating his life experience, his belief in Eastern philosophy, and a deep understanding of Japanese and Chinese art.
"He lived in Santa Monica for much of his life, though he decamped to an apartment on Pontius Avenue in Westwood for a while, and later bought a house in Pacific Palisades. Until his death in 1973 he continued to paint, exhibit, and write prolifically and traveled frequently, usually to Asia.
"Three earlier retrospectives have been devoted to the artist (1956, Los Angeles County Museum; 1967, National Collection of Fine Arts; and 1970, Wight Gallery, UCLA); however, this new LACMA exhibition presents the first balanced and comprehensive examination of his life's work, demonstrating not only the creativity of Synchromism, but his crucial role in impressing modernism on Los Angeles.
"Always an iconoclast, Macdonald-Wright set out on a singular road as a boy and never wavered. Self-educated, astonishingly self-confident, contrary, he not only created a diverse, singular and influential body of work, he changed the course of American art.
"His older brother, Willard Huntington Wright [1888-1939] is worthy of note, too. After being kicked out of Harvard for drinking absinthe in class, he went abroad to study in Paris and Munich. At 22, he became the L.A. Times' literary critic and was promptly labeled "the boy iconoclast of Southern California" for his assaults on L.A. (i.e., "Hypocrisy, like a vast fungus, has spread over the city's surface"). In short order, he was named editor of New York's Smart Set. He also wrote several books of art criticism. Then, after a bout of drug addiction and a nervous breakdown, Wright literally reinvented himself. Under the pseudonym, S.S. Van Dine, he wrote a series of mysteries about a sophisticated, even effete Manhattan sleuth, modeled on himself, Philo Vance, who was featured in 27 motion pictures
"The LACMA exhibit was organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art.
"LACMA is open Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from noon to 8 p.m., Friday from noon to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and closed Wednesday. Call (323) 857-6000, or visit the web site at www.lacma.org."
Stanton MacDonald-Wright [1890-1973] Artist, Educator, Administrator
http://www.tobeycmossgallery.com/macdonald_wright_bio.html
http://rhythmiclight.com/archives/timeline.html
Stanton Macdonald-Wright [1890-1973] Chronology
Robert Aquinas McNally Something in the Genes: Kaiser Permanente's Continuing Commitment to Research The Permanante Journal, 5, 4, Fall 2001.
" . . .
"At the end of the war, Kaiser Permanente was following two research tracks. One track began because Henry J Kaiser's son, Henry Jr, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Paul De Kruif, best-selling author of Microbe Hunters, directed the senior Kaiser to Herman Kabat, MD, ( -1997) a physical medicine specialist who was developing a new approach to treating MS. In 1946, the industrialist and the doctor together established the Kabat-Kaiser Institute, whose purpose-among others-was to conduct medical research in neuromuscular disorders. A series of Permanente Foundation Medical Bulletin research articles began in 1947.
" . . ."
Santa Monica Planning Division Santa Monica Landmarks Tour, 2003.
50. Craftsman style Residence, 1913
502 Raymond Avenue
Architect: Unknown
Designation: 14 April 2003
"The brick pillars on the front porch were restored in 2001, when the property was extensively renovated. The stained glass windows were not the original type used on this house, but are typically associated with the Craftsman style."
Merrill Shindler and Karen Berk ZagatSurvey 2001 Los Angeles So. California Restaurants, Zagat: NY, 2000, 284pp., 2001