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News & Events

October 2006

 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Congratulations to Ray Redfern and Beverly Newton who will be celebrating their one year wedding anniversary on October 15!!!!!!!.

Harvey Jones, Curator of The Oakland Museum of California – subject of a biography in a recent Newsletter – suffered a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery.  On July 18, 2006, he wrote your editor with the news that he was recovering slowly, but well, and that he had returned to work full time.  Our best wishes go out to Harvey for a full and complete recovery.  He is looking forward to the opening of his major retrospective on the artists Arthur and Lucia Mathews that opens at The Oakland Museum in October.

Oakland Museum of California Receives Major Irvine Foundation Grant: $700 K from Artistic Innovation Fund to Revitalize Gallery of California Art.  (from a press release)  The Oakland Museum of California is among seven state arts organizations to receive six-figure grants from The James Irvine Foundation’s Artistic Innovation Fund, part of $16.6 million in new grants announced by the Foundation on June 15, 2006.  The museum’s three-year, $700,000 grant will enable the museum to make its Gallery of California Art more accessible and engaging to diverse family and community audiences….The funding will enhance the museum’s plans to reinstall the history and art galleries by 2009.  The renovated art gallery will offer visitors an Art Discovery Center, to encourage hands-on learning for visitors of all ages; thematic gallery guides for self-guided tours; pull-out frames with additional historical and cultural information on the artwork; pull-out discovery drawers, strategically placed throughout the gallery to give visitors smaller examples and preliminary versions of specific artists’ work; and interactive discovery boxes, with puzzles, games and activities for a multi-sensory experience….The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, inclusive, and successful society.  With assets of more than $1.5 billion, the Foundation expects to make grants of $69 million in 2006…. Other recipients of Artistic Innovation Fund support are the Armand Hammer Museum, the Japanese American National Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Diego Opera Association, San Francisco Symphony, and The La Jolla Playhouse.

Laguna Art Museum launches an e-newsletter.  To receive monthly information on the latest events, sign up on the Museum’s website, www.lagunaartmuseum.org, and clicking on “stay abreast of all the happenings at Laguna art Museum.” 

The Orange County Museum of Art announces in its summer 2006 Orange, that its permanent collection is now on line.  The announcement seems to be premature as I went to the website ocma.net and clicked on “collections”.  I cannot access the collection a-z, but a few of the artists the museum intends to highlight are there, including Stanton MacDonald Wright and Helen Lundeberg.  This will probably be a good feature when it is up and running.

Maureen Murphy Fine Arts has issued New Acquisitions of Fine California & European Paintings, a 3-fold brochure with 23 color reproductions – an Edgar Payne on the cover.  Inside is a flower picture by Mabel Alvarez and landscapes by Franz Bischoff and George Demont Otis.

Roger Armstrong is making the news lately.  HCC member and famous artist/teacher/cartoonist, he and his wife, artist Alice Powell Armstrong, were recently visited by the Laguna Art Museum’s Bohemian Club.  Armstrong, former director of the Laguna Art Museum, was presented with an engraved crystal denoting his key role in the development of the museum.  Janet Blake, museum registrar and curator of collections, took the opportunity to enumerate Armstrong’s many contributions to the world of art and to LAM.  Roger has also recently issued a book of drawings of nudes.  (See “Books” below.)

A feature article on Frank Goff, who runs the two Sullivan-Goss galleries in Santa Barbara and Montecito, respectively, is said to have been printed in the Santa Barbara Independent Newspaper, July 22, 2006.

Chouinard School of Art, the re-invigorated Chouinard Art Institute, regretfully announces it is closing its South Pasadena location.  See also www.chouinardfoundation.org.

Shawn Speck Picture Frames has opened a new showroom in Beverly Hills located at 9200 West Olympic Blvd., Suite 102.  (This is on the ground floor of the same building in which Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts is located.)  For further information on the company and its products, see www.shawnspeck.com or telephone 310-550-0523.

The murals that Stanton MacDonald Wright painted in the 1930s for the former Santa Monica library, have been returned to California by the Washington, D. C. agency that owns them, have been cleaned, and have been re-installed in the new Santa Monica library.  Your editor viewed these recently and was, frankly, disappointed.  The mural segments are odd shaped, designed to fit into the architecture of the former library.  Now they are hung high on a two-story reading room.  They have NO relation to the architecture.  And, by entering via the main stairway, one comes upon the series at the end.  While it is wonderful to have the works back in the Los Angeles area, their impact and story telling has been completely negated by the hanging.

Robert Livernois Fine Arts in Santa Barbara has, among its California inventory, works by Frank Peyraud, Marion Pope, Charles Crocker, and Antonia Greene.

There is a new website for Edward Biberman www.edwardbiberman.com.  (See also, the recent film on Biberman, below.)

The Archives of American Art announces an addition to the collection of the papers of James B. Byrnes.  Byrnes was a museum director, curator, and fine arts appraiser, while his wife Barbara was owner of the American Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles.  This collection contains letters, some of which are illustrated, from California artist Ynez Johnston, and items from illustrator Ernest Raboff, Lee and Luchita Mullican, Emerson and Dina Woelffer and others.

Also acquired by the Archives is an addition to the James Vigeveno Galleries Records donated by Tim and Lynn Mason.  The gallery was active from c. 1940 to 1956 in either Westwood or Brentwood.

NEW GALLERIES THAT HAVE COME TO OUR ATTENTION

Gary Spratt Fine Art in Mill Valley is among the newer galleries to carry California paintings.  Its website, garysprattfineart.com, reproduces views of the gallery showing paintings from the Tonalist and Early Modernist painters as well as by the painters of Early California and the West.  These hang on the wall above bookcases filled with books and Native American Indian textiles, baskets, pottery, and carvings.  Sprat’s P. O. Box is 2406 Mill Valley, Ca. 94941; his phone is 415-332-3057.

Josh Hardy Galleries, L.L.C., in Carmel is advertising a William Wendt painting in the most recent American Art Review magazine.  The ad states “Actively buying early California and American Paintings”.  Current inventory includes: Edgar Payne, Percy Gray, William Wendt, J. W. Smith, Clarence Hinkle, Bruce Nelson, Hanson Puthuff, Armin Hansen, Alfred Mitchell and others.  The gallery is located on 6th between Dolores & Lincoln in Carmel.  Mailing address is P. O. Box 148, Pebble Beach, Ca. 93953.  Tel is 831-625-4353.  Email is hardygalleries@gmail.com.  Website is www.hardygalleries.com.

 Westbrook Galleries in Carmel is advertising a Granville Redmond painting in the most recent American Art Review magazine.  The ad states the gallery is actively purchasing Early California, American and European Impressionist paintings.  In its list of artists currently on display, it names twenty historic California artists.  The gallery is located on the corner of Dolores and 6th in Carmel.  Mailing address is P. O. Box 793, Carmel, Ca. 93921.  Tel. Is 831-625-2288.  Website is www.westbrookgalleries.com.

South Coast Art Gallery in Newport Beach held a recent show of historic watercolors.  (See “Exhibitions”, below.)  Although the gallery has been operated by the current owners for seven years, it was only about two years ago, through contacts made with clients, that the gallery began to mount shows of work by historic California artists – particularly watercolorists.  The gallery also carries contemporary plein air art as well as sculpture and glass art and jewelry.  It is located at 3441-B Via Lido, Newport Beach, Ca., 92663.  Contact persons are Fran and Derby Williams.  Tel. Is 949-673-0771.  Website is www.southcoastartgallery.com.

 EDITORIAL

My dear fellow HCC members,

Thank you so much for the surprise tribute you tendered me at the annual dinner.  I have always been very pleased to be of service to people who are interested in historic California art.

I’ve been a little lax in getting this Newsletter to you, because this summer I have been working long days trying to finish some dictionaries and indexes on California artists.  They are still not completely ready for the printer, but I have a break of a few days to pull together something for you, before I start in on them again.

Newsletters from now on may be few and far between.  I am making some changes in my life that include an attempt to move out of the greater Los Angeles area to some smaller town (to the north) and an increasing interest in ecology and saving undeveloped land for posterity.  This past year, for example, much of my time has been spent on a piece of raw land I purchased near Porterville for a nature preserve, eradicating thistle and other non-native species in preparation for planting native species.

For these reasons, I am hoping someone will come forward and take over the job of editor of the HCC Newsletter.  Obviously that person would put their own stamp on the Newsletter, perhaps change the format entirely to give it greater relevance to members.  (My own obsession with minutia has a tendency to make people’s heads swim.)

Please contact me or Al Lay or Bob Ehrlich, and next time I put together a Newsletter I will show you how I do it.

Nancy Moure

 

 OBITUARIES

Ray Strong, artist of Santa Barbara, passed away on July 3, 2006.  He was 101 years old and still producing.  In the 1920s Strong studied at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and at the Art Students League in New York.  In the 1930s he was active in San Francisco, teaching, running an Artist’s Cooperative Gallery, and painting dioramas and murals.  He is known for his oil landscapes of undulating California hills dotted with oak trees.  From 1960 on he resided in Santa Barbara where he painted dioramas in the Museum of Natural History and was associated with the Oak Group of painters.  He died in Three Rivers.  Jayne McKay, who recently completed a film on Strong’s friend Maynard Dixon, may do a documentary on Strong.  Since she interviewed him about his friendship with Dixon, she has recently shot footage.  A lengthy obituary on Strong is said to have appeared in the July 22, 2006, Santa Barbara Independent Newspaper.

Henry Bumstead, an art director with the motion picture studios, died May 27, 2006.

 EXHIBITIONS

Permanent displays of historic (pre-1945) California paintings can be found at the following institutions.  (The websites for some of these institutions can be found at www.californiaart.com at the end of the ‘Galleries’ section.)  Arranged North to South.

 CHANGING EXHIBITIONS

(See earlier Newsletters for exhibits still on view but reported in earlier publications.)

Not dated.  Rolph Scarlett (1889-1984): Defining Genius: A Collection of Sixty Works by One of America’s Foremost Masters of Abstraction, Ibex Galleries, New York.  Scarlett was active in Pasadena c. 1930.

May 6, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  Artistry of the Orange: California Vintage Fruit Crate Labels From the Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, Central Library, First Floor Galleries.  From the 1880s to the mid 1950s, millions of colorful paper labels were used by California citrus growers to identify and advertise the wooden boxes of fruit they shipped throughout the United States.  These labels provide a rich visual history of society, commercial art, and California business.  This exhibit includes over 45 labels selected from the library’s extensive collection.

May 10, 2006 – January 28, 2007.  American Visionaries: The Collection at 80, San Diego Museum of Art.  This show celebrates five collectors who made major contributions to the museum’s permanent collection of American paintings.  In 1925, Alma Emma Spreckels donated 105 Arthur Putnam bronze sculptures to the museum, and in the current show they have been placed near some Putnam drawings donated by early artist Alice Klauber.  In 1938, Pasadena socialite Josephine Everett donated important 20th century American paintings by notables such as Mary Cassatt, Nicolai Fechin and Emil Carlsen.  In 1972, Earle Grant bequested the remainder of his collection of 20th century American art that included important works by John Marin, Everett Shinn and Max Weber.  Finally, there were many important American paintings by masters such as Roy Lichtenstein, Milton Avery, Stuart Davis and Georgia O’Keeffe, among the collection of European and American Modernism donated by Barbara and Norton Walbridge since 1962.

June 8 – August 2, 2006.  Dan Lutz (1906-1978), Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery, Santa Barbara.  After art study in Chicago and Europe, Lutz moved in 1932 to Los Angeles.  For much of his career he taught art – at USC and later at Chouinard Art Institute.  His earliest paintings reflect the social concerns of the 1930s but his works after World War II are known for their vibrant color, their rhythm and energy, and their rich painterly surface.  The show is accompanied by a 12 page stapled brochure that reproduces 11 works in color.

June 10-September 17, 2006.  Monterey Collects: Masterworks from Monterey County Collections, Monterey Museum of Art.

June 10, 2006 – May 20, 2007.  D&M Tile, Hispano-Moresque Tile, California Heritage Museum, Santa Monica.  This installation features hundreds of tiles, murals, tables, ceramics, and historic photographs from two little-known Southern California companies.  D&M Tile was named after John Davies and John McDonald who founded it in 1928.  D&M’s bright, Moorish-inspired tiles were used at The Mission Inn in Riverside and Balboa Park in San Diego, for example.  Hispano-Moresque tile was founded in 1927 by Harry C. Hicks.  (After the owner of D&M Tile died in 1939, Hispano-Moresque purchased D&M’s kilns, inventory and glaze formulas.)  Hispano-Moresque tile was used in many notable buildings, including Charlie Chaplin’s office on La Brea, Villa Aurora, and Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley.

June 29 – September 7, 2006.  Shifting Dimensions: Sculptors on Paper, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, L. A.  This show features the work of California mid-century artists Ruth Asawa, John Bernhardt, Bruce Conner, Jules Engel, Claire Falkenstein, George Herms, Ynez Johnston, Peter Krasnow, Rico Lebrun, Lee Mullican, Nathan Oliveira, Betye Saar, Beatrice Wood and Jack Zajac, among others.

July 11 – September 9, 2006.  California Landscapes, Michael Dawson Gallery, Dawson’s Book Shop, Larchmont Blvd., L. A.  A collection of photographs by such American photographic luminaries as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and William Dassonville.

July 16 – September 30, 2006.  Mid-Summer Revels: Paintings by Artists of the Bohemian Club 1870s-1920s, Christopher Queen Galleries, John Orr’s Gardens, Duncan’s Mills, Ca.  For a list of artists included, see the gallery’s website www.christopherqueengalleries.com.

July 26, 2006 – March 3, 2007.  The Big Picture: Panoramic Views of California, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco.  Photographs.  A few panoramas were made in the form of daguerreotypes, but most were done using albumen prints or gelatin silver prints.  Many of the spectacular images in the exhibition are the work of California’s finest photographers, including Eadweard Muybridge, Carlton Watkins, William Shew, and Willard Worden.  Images range from the rapidly altering skyline of San Francisco and the stark beauty of California’s gold fields to the terrors of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and the pre-Tinseltown torpor of Los Angeles pueblo.

August 1 – September 30, 2006.  Early California Watercolor, South Coast Art Gallery, Newport Beach.  The show includes works by Rex Brandt, Arthur Beaumont, Lois Green Cohen, Milford Zornes, George Post, Robert E. Wood, Jake Lee, Millard Sheets, Charles Payzant, and others.

August 3 – September 30, 2006.  The Missions and Early California Buildings, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara.  Accompanied by a 16-page stapled brochure reproducing prints and paintings of missions by such artists as Edwin Deakin, Henry Chapman Ford, Edward Borein, John Sykes, G. G. Symons, James Arthur Merriam, Emil Kosa, Nell Brooker Mayhew, Charles Ward, and others.

August 14 – October 29, 2006.  Window on the West: The Etchings of John Edward Borein, Santa Barbara Historical Museum.  Regarded as one of America’s finest cowboy artists, Borein’s images of the American West take their place alongside those of better-known East Coast artists.  Born in San Leandro, he began sketching at the age of five, and for many years served as a cowboy himself.  In New York, beginning in 1907, he pursued a career as an illustrator, but in 1921 he settled in Santa Barbara where he became an active member of the art community.

September 2006.  8th Annual Catalina Pottery & Tile Extravaganza, Catalina Island Museum.  Brightly colored tiles in the Spanish/Moorish style produced in the 1930s.

September 7 – 30, 2006.  Small Paintings, Redfern Gallery, Laguna Beach.  A three-fold brochure reproduces work by Marion Wachtel, William Wendt, Paul Lauritz, Hanson Puthuff, Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell, William Adam and Theodore Wores.

September 7 – October 29, 2006.  Ansel Adams in Manzanar, Honolulu Academy of Art.  Photographs of the Caifornia Japanese internment camp.

September 7 - ?, 2006.  Driven to Abstraction: Los Angeles and the Non-Objective World 1950-1980, Riverside Art Museum.  This historical survey begins slightly after the HCC’s interest period but does contain some early artists such as Lorser Feitelson and Leonard Edmondson.

September 9 – October 15, 2006.  Manuel Valencia (1856-1935): A Retrospective, Hearst Art Gallery, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, Ca.  More than sixty paintings from public and private collections.  Born on the family hacienda, Rancho San Jose, in Marin County, Valencia is from one of California’s earliest families.  His grandfather came to the state with the Anza party in 1774 and became the administrator of the Presidio.  Valencia attended Santa Clara College (now University), and later established a studio in San Francisco, where he briefly studied with Jules Tavernier.  After the 1906 earthquake and fire, his family moved to San Jose, but he kept his San Francisco studio.  He was a staff artist for the San Francisco Chronicle.  The exhibit contains nearly sixty paintings selected from public and private collections.  Guest curated by Julie Armistead, Hearst Art Gallery Collections Manager.

September 9, 2006 – January 13, 2007.  Majestic California, The Irvine Museum.  California’s early twentieth century landscapists proclaimed the beauty of California, frequently termed an “Eden” by early writers.  This show includes work by John Gamble, Paul Grimm, Edgar Payne, Granville Redmond, Guy Rose and William Wendt, some of the best-known artists.  Gamble is best known for his paintings of California wild flowers, Grimm for his desert scenes, Payne for his snow capped Sierras, Redmond for his majestic oak trees and fields of vivid poppies, Rose for his views of the coast, and Wendt for his ability to capture the spiritual beauty of green meadows and lush valleys.

September 9 – November 4, 2006.  Color Counts: Gladding McBean Commercial Pottery 1930-1950, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona.  Gladding, McBean & Company began in May of 1875 with the discovery of an exceptional clay deposit near Lincoln California [near Sacramento].  First products were sewer pipe, then roofing tiles and clay hollow building tiles.  With the acquisition of Glendale’s Tropico Pottery in 1922, the American Encaustic Tiling Company in Vernon and Hermosa Beach in 1933, and Catalina Pottery in 1937, they had become the largest ceramic products manufacturer west of Chicago.  Many historical buildings throughout California can still be found bearing decorative architectural elements cast in terra cotta produced by Gladding McBean.  Today, they are most remembered for colorful ceramic art ware, embossed hand-painted dinnerware, and fine china.  This exhibit is a nostalgic walk through 20th century commercially produced pottery, principally dinnerware and artware popular in the 1930s through the 1950s.  Solid color dishes, imaginative shapes, and clever designs.  The historical focus is two fold: How the history of California shaped the ceramics industry and how the manufacture of ceramics shaped California architecture, culture, and lifestyle. (from the website)

September 9, 2006 and two months following.  Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio De Chirico, Santa Monica Museum of Art.  This exhibit brings together two great artists of the 20th century for the first time.  Taking as its point of departure Guston’s initial exposure to de Chirico’s work when he visited the famed modern art collection of Louise and Walter Arensberg of Hollywood, Enigma Variations explores the influence of de Chirico’s distinctive vision on Guston.  (Guston, under the name of Goldstein, painted the post-Surrealist murals in the City of Hope.)  Early and late works will show how Guston developed his own style out of this inspiration.

September 10 – November 19, 2006.  Building the Legacy: 20th & 21st century California art from the permanent collection, Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard.

September 13, 2006 – January 15, 2007.  Peanuts on Ice, Charles M. Schulz Museum.  70 original strips that detail the gang’s adventures and misadventures on ice.  Two of Schulz’s daughters were professional ice skaters, giving him an intimate knowledge of the pitfalls of the sport.

September 15 – December 19, 2006.  Out on a Ledge: Photographs of a Comic Genius from the Harold Lloyd Collection, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  This exhibit features over 100 large-format photographs from Lloyd’s personal archive of production stills, behind-the-scenes shots, and family photos, many printed from the original negatives.  Lloyd was a Hollywood comic superstar active from 1912 to 1947.  In 1923 he started producing his own movies.  The images in this show provide a visually stunning, frequently funny, and largely unseen side of Lloyd’s life.

September 16 – October 28, 2006.  Werner Drewes: Paintings and Works on Paper 1930s through 1980s, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, L. A.  Drewes’ strong modernist roots developed at the Bauhaus under the tutelage of modern masters Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.  Drewes emigrated to the United States in 1930 and immediately turned to printmaking and the depiction of architecture.  His works have abstract qualities.

September 16 – November 11, 2006.  The California Modernist Portrait, Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts, Beverly Hills.  The four-fold brochure reproduces work by Dorr Bothwell, John Emmett Gerrity, Peter Krasnow, Otis Oldfield and Victor Arnautoff.

September 16 – November 26, 2006.  Saddle Up: Vaqueros, Cowboys & Charros: drawings and paintings by Edward Borein, Ventura County Museum of History and Art.

September 16, 2006 – May 29, 2007.  Belle Baranceanu: The Artist at Work, San Diego Historical Society.  A 64-page catalogue accompanies this show.  See the article in American Art Review.

September 22, 2006 – January 21, 2007.  Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, Part I: 1855-1969, Autry National Center, Griffith Park, L. A.  This exhibit examines more than 150 years of creative production, revealing the park as a place both real and mythic.  Included are works by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams and Wayne Theibaud.  This show is accompanied by a book by Amy Scott (see “Books” below).

September 23, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman’s Social Surrealism, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.  Norman’s highly detailed paintings are powerful critiques of modern life, painted in the hope of promoting change.  The atrocities Norman witnessed in volunteer service during the Spanish Civil War jolted his consciousness, and he began to express his experiences through drawings and the paintings from the 1940s to the 1980s.  With the belief that his paintings could act as agents of social reform, Norman pointed out the inequities, horrors and foibles of human behavior.  Most paintings were intended for public Institutions, particularly museums, where the artist thought, “all people could come and study them and contemplate.”  Norman’s canvases are monumental in scale and teem with clone-like figures that are constricted in their small urban spaces. 

September 30 – October 16, 2006.  Secret Paintings and Sculpture of Dr. Seuss, Vault Gallery, Cambria.   This exhibition of work by La Jolla based writer Dr. Seuss, has traveled the globe in exhibitions and is now available for purchase.

September 30 – October 28, 2006.  Cucamonga-Guasti Area Wineries and Vineyards: Past & Present, Chaffee Community Art Association.  Photographs.  Photographs of the local wine region, historic and contemporary.

October 7, 2006 – January 21, 2007.  Aurelius O. Carpenter: Photographer of the Mendocino Frontier, Grace Hudson Museum, Ukiah.  This is the first comprehensive presentation of the photographs taken by Grace Hudson’s father, a professional photographer in early Mendocino County.  His subjects range from views of work, such as logging and shipping, to pure landscapes of natural attractions or agricultural endeavors.  He also produced an important series of photos depicting Pomo Indians and their communities as well as local residents of European background.  Grace Hudson’s mother kept the business records while her husband often traveled as an itinerant photographer.  The show is based on a recent gift of some 700 Carpenter glass plate negatives and contact prints from local photohistorian Robert J. Lee.

October 13, 2006.  Pasadena will celebrate another Art Night from 6 to 10 p.m. during which time fourteen of the town’s cultural institutions will be open for viewing.  Shuttles run between.  Within the HCC’s interest is a tour of the Fenyes Mansion, built at the turn of the twentieth century and filled with art and antiques of the period, and the shows of watercolors and the work of Hanson Puthuff at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.  A curiosity architectural item is the special presentation at the Pasadena Public Library by Michael J. Kouri, author of Haunted Houses of Pasadena.  A famous psychic-medium, he will present slide lectures at 6 and 8 p.m. and autograph his books on his encounters with ghosts.

October 15, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  California Colors: Hanson Puthuff, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Side Gallery.  This is the first museum exhibition focusing exclusively on the work of Hanson Puthuff (1875-1972), an American Impressionist who painted primarily in California.  Organized by the PMCA, the exhibition will feature a selection of some of his best work drawn from Southern California collections.  The PMCA will also republish his autobiography in honor of this unprecedented exhibition, with an introduction by Irvine Museum Executive Director, Jean Stern.

October 15, 2006 – April 15, 2007.  California Style Watercolors: Collector’s Choice, Pasadena Museum of California Art.  The last in a series of four exhibitions of California Style watercolors in the Back Gallery, this exhibition presents yet another aspect of this interesting regionalist movement. Thirty works have been selected by thirty different collectors and represent their unique tastes and interests.  Included are works by artists such as Millard Sheets, Milford Zornes, Phil Dike, Emil Kosa, Jr., George Post, and Rex Brandt.  The selection process was conceived as a counterpoint to the museum’s previous watercolor exhibitions, which were organized by a single curator.

October 20, 2006 – January 27, 2007.  Theodore Wores in the Southwest, California Historical Society, San Francisco.  60 photographs taken by Wores.  Though best known for paintings, Wores painted Native American models between 1915 and 1917 – individuals he saw at the Santa Fe Railway’s ‘Grand Canyon of Arizona’ exhibit at the PPIE, at the Grand Canyon itself, and at Taos, N. M.  The exhibition will look at American artists’ and tourists’ infatuation with the Southwest during the early years of the 20th century.  A catalogue accompanies the show.

October 21, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  Lost and Found: California Pictorialist Photographs from the Dennis Reed Collection, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  This show focuses on those photographers involved in California’s camera clubs, including Los Angeles Camera Club, Camera Pictorialists, the Pictorial Photographic Society of San Francisco and the California Camera Club.  It showcases the photographic movement of Pictorialism, which was in vogue from around 1885 through the early years of the 20th century.  Such works used soft focus lens and posed compositions to create poetic responses to reality.  The 60 vintage prints were selected from a collection of nearly 700 prints gathered by Reed over a period of 25 years.

October 21, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  Alice Burr: A California Pictorialist Rediscovered, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  Approximately 27 of Burr’s strongest works borrowed from her family.  Independent and oriented toward the artistic development that later led to her painting, printmaking, and film, Alice Burr worked as a Pictorialist photographer for only a relatively brief time.  Rare, never-before-seen by the public, photographs.

October 21, 2006 – January 21, 2007.  Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875-1907, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  Organized by the Crocker Art Museum.

October 28, 2006 – March 25, 2007.  California as Muse: The Art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews, The Oakland Museum of California.  Organized by Harvey L. Jones, Senior Curator of Art, this major retrospective includes nearly 150 works by Arthur Frank Mathews and Lucia Kleinhans Mathews, creators of what has come to be known as the California Decorative Style, a unique fusion of artistic European influences at the turn of the last century with the ideals of the International Arts and Crafts movement, in a California setting.  Arthur Mathews was a teacher at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco when he met Lucia in one of his classes.  Their marriage was, at the same time, an artistic collaboration.  After the 1906 earthquake, they helped rebuild the city by designing and decorating new structures.  Their Furniture Shop produced items of their design and their Philopolis Press published a monthly magazine, books and ephemera, such as note cards, calendars and bookmarks, also of their design.  The exhibition includes a variety of media including paintings, murals, stained-glass, carved frames and furniture and graphic design.  More than two-thirds of the objects are from the museum’s collection.  Curator Jones recently completed a major monograph on the couple.

October 29, 2006 – January 21, 2007.  Millard Sheets in Mexico, 1932-1942, Laguna Art Museum.

November 11, 2006 – February 25, 2007.  American West: The Foxley Collection, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Ne.  Foxley lives in La Jolla, Ca. and collects California as well as Western art.

November 11, 2006 – February 18, 2007.  Ansel Adams at Manzanar, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles.  Organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, this show includes over 50 vintage prints from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions.  From 1943 to 1944, Adams made a number of trips to Manzanar concentration camp, located in California’s Inyo County too the east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  His photographs capture the stark lives and remain among the most powerful photographic records of the camp experience.

November 15, 2006 – January 20, 2007.  Highlights from USC’s Permanent Collection, USC Fisher Gallery, L. A.  This exhibition presents a wide selection of the museum’s finest works, organized around five long-standing art historical categories of painting: history, portraiture, landscape, still-life, and genre. A gallery will be devoted to each theme.  USC owns many works by California artists – whether any will be part of this exhibit will have to be checked out.

November 16, 2006 – March 4, 2007.  Intersections of South Central: People and Places in Historic and Contemporary Photographs, California African American Museum, Los Angeles.  Photographs show the changing landscapes of South Central Los Angeles since the 1920s.  Early views from local photo archives are contrasted with contemporary views taken by seven prominent black photographers.

November 18, 2006 – January 28, 2007.  California Impressions: Featuring Landscapes from the Wendy Willrich Collection, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.  Thirty beautiful California landscape paintings from the collection of Bay Area art collector Wendy Willrich, joined with selected works from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums, as well as additional collectors, show the evolution of California landscape painting from the mid 19th century to the mid 1930s.  Among the pioneering California artists represented are Thomas Hill, William Keith, Guy Rose, Granville Redmond, Selden Gile and William Clapp of the Society of Six.  The show is documented in a scholarly publication.

 BOOKS

The following antiquarian book dealers have substantial holdings of out-of-print books on California art: Arcana on the Santa Monica Mall (310-458-1499), Ken Starosciak in San Francisco (415-346-0650), and Muz Art and Books, Sacramento (no telephone; searchable on www.abebooks.com).  If you know a title, it can be searched on www.abebooks.com or www.bibliofind.com to get comparative prices from dealers across the nation.

Among dealers in new books on California art are the antiquarian dealers cited above, the bookstores of museums that specialize in California art (see list above under ‘Exhibitions’) as well as John Moran Auctioneer in Pasadena, Kerwin Galleries in Burlingame, George Stern Fine Arts in LA, Sullivan-Goss in Santa Barbara, and DeRu’s Fine Arts in Bellflower and Laguna Beach. 

Belle Baranceanu: The Artist at Work, San Diego: San Diego Historical Society, 2006.  64 pp.

Maurine St. Gaudens, ed., with essays by Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick and Gary Lang, Sam Hyde Harris 1889-1977, A Retrospective, A Pictorial Biography of His Life and Work, Schiffer Publications, 2006.

Gloria Gerace, ed., Urban Surprises: A Guide to Public Art in Los Angeles, Monrovia: Navigator Press, 2002.

Harold H. Ford, compl., Sculpture of Betty Davenport Ford, Claremont, Ca.: Padua Press, 2004.  This is a hard cover book covering the life and sculpture of Ford, who was active in the Claremont area.

Michael Quick, George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonne.  Michael Quick, former curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has produced the definitive work on the important East Coast American painter George Inness, who visited and painted in California.  The two-volume work is 1,274 pages long with 240 color and 1,477 black and white illustrations.  The list price is $400 but it can be obtained at a pre-publication price of $320 from Olana Gallery, Brewster N. Y.  Contact at 845-279-8077.

Amy Scott, Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, Autry National Center and University of California Press, 2006.  This book accompanies the show at the Autry National Center (see exhibitions above).

Roger Armstrong, Favored Nudes, Privately Printed, 2006.  This book reproduces 20 drawings/watercolors of nudes made by Armstrong.  Upcoming is eight volumes of books that reproduce nearly 300 of Armstrong’s paintings dating from 1938 to the present.  Copies can be obtained through Armstrong who can be contacted at rogersart@lworld.net.

Timothy Anglin Burgard and Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., et al., California Impressions Featuring Landscapes from the Wendy Willrich Collection, San Francisco: M. H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, 2006.  43 color reproductions of Willrich’s paintings.

Haggin Museum, Stockton, 75th Anniversary, Stockton: The Record, 2006.  Contains several essays on the history of the museum.

Martin Eidelberg, et al., The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design, New York: Museum of Arts and Design, 2006.  192 pp., 343 illus.

Ralph Shanks and Lisa Woo Shanks, ed., Indian Baskets of Central California: Art, Culture and History – Native American Basketry from San Francisco and Monterey Bay, North of Mendocino and East to the Sierras, Novato: Costano Books, 2006.  184 pp., 188 illus.

Catherine Grenier, ed., Los Angeles, 1955-1985: Birth of an Art Capital, Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris, 2006.  384 pp., 684 illus.  $90.

Amid Amidi, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation, S. F.: Chronicle Books, 2006.  200 pp., 413 illus.  $40.

Thomas Andrae, Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006.  340 pp., 46 illus.  $50.

Mark Nelson and Sarah Bayliss, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder, Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2006.  208 pp., 150 illus.  $35.

Isabel Wunsche, Galka E. Scheyer and the Blue Four: Correspondence, 1924-1945, Wabern-Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2006.  416 pp., 94 illus.  $50.

Tony Dalton, The Art of Ray Harryhausen, London: Aurum Press, Ltd., 2005.  240 pp., 373 illus.  $50.00.  Animated filmmaker in Hollywood in the 1940s.

Michael Richardson, Surrealism and Cinema, Oxford, Berg, 2006.  208 pp.

 ARCHITECTURE BOOKS

Robert Winter and Alexander Vertikoff, The Architecture of Entertainment: L. A. in the Twenties, Layton, Ut.: Gibbs Smith, 2006.  160 pp., 182 illus.  $39.95.

Barbara Bestor, Bohemian Modern: Living in Silver Lake, New York: HarperCollins, 2006.  272 pp., 362 illus.  $34.95

Stephen Tobriner, Bracing for Disaster: Earthquake-Resistant Architecture and Engineering in San Francisco, 1838-1933, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2006.  352 pp., 233 illus.  $30.

Raul A. Barreneche, Pacific Modern, New York: Rizzoli, 2006.  224 pp., 239 illus.  $45.00

Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Case Study Houses, 1945-1966: The California Impetus, Cologne: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 2006.  96 pp., 158 illus.  $9.99

Pierluigi Serraino, Norcalmod: Icons of Northern California Modernism, S. F.: Chronicle, 2006.  288 pp., 256 illus.  $35.  Proof that modern architecture flourished north of the San Fernando Valley.

Jolie Carpenter, Spectacular Homes of California, Dallas: Signature Publishing Group, 2006.  224 pp., 300 illus.  $39.95

 MAGAZINE ARTICLES

Gary Breitweiser of Studio 2 Antiques in Santa Barbara was featured in an article in Santa Barbara Magazine, February/March, 2004, pp. 69-70 + port.

Santa Barbara Craftsmen,” Santa Barbara Magazine, February/March 2003, pp. 59+.

Ojai Art Scene,” Santa Barbara Magazine, August/September 2006, pp. 109-113. 

“California Watercolors: Focus on the 1950s,” by Gordon McClelland, American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 3, June 2006, pp. 154-59.

William H. Gerdts and Deborah Epstein Solon, “Colin Campbell Cooper, American Impressionist,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 5, September-October 2006, pp. 138-151.

 Bram Dijkstra, “Belle Baranceanu: The Artist at Work,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 5, September-October 2006, pp. 152-59.

Spencer Jon Helfen, “The California Modernist Portrait,” Fine Art Connoisseur, reprinted on line at www.fineartconnoisseur.com/Article.

Nicolai Fechin,” Fine Art Connoisseur, May 2006.

Sam Hyde Harris,” Fine Art Connoisseur, February 2006.

“Hidden Collections: The Donald Head Collection,” Plein Air magazine, December 2005.

William Wendt,” Plein Air magazine, November 2005.

Ray Strong” and “Karl Albert”, Plein Air magazine, October 2005.

Maynard Dixon,” Plein Air magazine, August 2005.

Sydney Laurence,” Plein Air magazine, May 2005.

Sergi Bongart,” Plein Air magazine, February 2005.

Granville Redmond’s Tonalism,” Plein Air magazine, January 2005.

“Sitting on the Dock of the Bay: 100 Years of Photographs from the San Diego Historical Society, Journal of San Diego History, v. 52, no. 1 & 2, Winter-Spring 2006.

“A Gothic Architect in San Diego: Philip H. Frohman and the New St. Paul’s Church, 1906-1966,” Journal of San Diego History, v. 51, no. 1 & 2, Winter-Spring 2005.

 LECTURES, SYMPOSIA, VIDEO, FILM

July 29, 2006, 3-4 p.m.  Marshall Price, Associate Curator, National Academy of Design, New York, will speak at the Pasadena Museum of California Art on the art historical importance of California watercolorists of the mid-twentieth century.  Specifically he will reference works by Phil Dike, Rex Brandt, George Post, Nick Brigante, and Stanton MacDonald Wright.  This lecture is in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition, Focus on the Fifties, a show of watercolors.

August 26, 2006, 3-4 p.m.  Gordon McClelland, curator of the Focus on the Fifties show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, will speak with watercolorist Wayne La Com about his art and that of his fellow artists in the 1950s.

September 30, 2006, 1-3:30 p.m.  Curators and educators from the Getty Museum and the Autry’s Museum of the American West explore the art of photography in the lecture Ansel Adams/Robert Adams: Photographers of the American West, at the Autry National Center.

October 6, 2006, 7:30 p.m.  Impressions of California, Parts I and II, the landmark public television series produced by KOCE-TV Foundation in 1996 by Paul Bockhorst, will be aired at the Wildling Museum in Los Olivos.  Part of the museum’s ongoing program of screening films on nature or art on the first Friday of each month.  No admission charge.  Refreshments provided.

October 29, 2006, 2-4 p.m.  Kenneth Trapp, Independent curator/writer, will speak at the Oakland Museum on the Furniture Shop and Its Legacy.  In this shop, Arthur and Lucia Mathews designed and produced furniture and decorative items.

November 5, 2006, 2 p.m. and December 2, 2006, 7 p.m.   Harvey L. Jones will lead a Curator Walkthrough of the exhibition California as Muse: The art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews, at The Oakland Museum of California.

December 3, 2006, 1:00 p.m.  Janet Blake, Curator of Collections with the Laguna Art Museum, will speak on Millard Sheets: Paintings from his World Travels.

December 10, 2006, 2:00 p.m.  Tim Thomas, historian of the Monterey History and Art Association, will present an illustrated lecture – A Day on the Monterey Waterfront – 1909: The Photographs of Phillips Lewis – utilizing newly discovered photographs.  Lewis was an artist who came to Monterey to study under Armin Hansen.  The remarkable images, ca. 1909, of fishermen and working people on the Monterey wharf are believed to have been taken in late July or early August and give an authentic look at life on the waterfront before the sardine became ‘King.’  Following the lecture, at 3:00 p.m., there will be a curator’s walk through of the August Gay exhibit.  Monterey History and Art Association, History Theater, Stanton Center/Maritime Museum, Monterey.  For more information contact Tim Thomas at 831-372-2608 x 17 or by email: tim@montereyhistory.org.

Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman, a film available on DVD, was recently completed by Jeff Kaufmann.  (It is available from Kaufman himself at kaufman00@earthlink.net or 323-401-7266.)  A copy was sent to me and I found it worthy of screening on PBS and thoroughly enjoyable.  Biberman was active in New York and Europe prior to moving to Los Angeles in the 1930s.  He distinguished himself as a painter of stylized portraits, scenes of social comment, and semi-abstract views of Southern California architecture.  The film follows Biberman from his classic American immigrant background, through his youthful artistic discovery, a life-changing tragedy at the height of the Depression, a growing commitment to social justice, patriotic home-front service during World War II, and finally, a long period of artistic production.

William Keith: The Artist and His Times, Studio Miramar, 2005.  Video re-mastered to DVD.  Available from Saint Mary’s College, Moraga.  $14.95.

 AUCTIONS

For the websites of the many ‘bricks and mortar’ auction galleries dealing with American paintings, see www.Californiaart.com archived ‘News and Events’ for November 1999.  For the most up-to-date auction prices, see  www.artprice.com at $1.00 per entry or at www.artnet.com or www.askart.com if you are a member.  Auction Galleries that hold special sales of historic California art include Butterfields, which can be viewed at www.bonhams.com; or www.butterfields.com/calam; Christies at www.christies.com, and John Moran at www.johnmoran.com.

June 11, 2006.  Simpson Galleries in Houston, Texas, Looking West, the Best of California and American Paintings and Sculpture.  For further information on upcoming auctions that may contain California paintings, see www.Simpsongalleries.com.

June 14, 2006.  Christies, Beverly Hills, California, Western and American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture.  A reception and private viewing was held on Thursday, June 8.

June 20, 2006.  John Moran Auction, California and American Paintings, Pasadena.

August 7, 2006.  Bonhams & Butterfields, California and American Paintings and Sculpture, L. A. and S. F.

October 17, 2006, 6:30 p.m..  John Moran Auction, California & American Paintings, Pasadena.  Many excellent paintings have been consigned.  To see the latest lineup, consult www.johnmoran.com.

October 26, 2006.  Christie’s, California, Western and American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, Beverly Hills.  Viewing is October 20-25.

December 11, 2006.  Bonhams & Butterfields, California and American Paintings and Sculpture, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

 

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