News & Events

 January 2007

 November 18, 2006.  HCC tour to “Old Pasadena”.  Another fabulous tour!!  The very full day included a visit to the private collection of Leslie and Nancy Waite that had the added feature of being housed in a 1932 home designed by Roland Coate.  Many outstanding antiques formed a setting for exceptional paintings by such top names as Guy Rose, William Wendt, etc.  Lunch was in a private room at Il Fornio Restaurant.  First tour after lunch was at the home of Nancy and Nick Alexander (of BMW – “Nick can’t refuse” fame) where the focus was early Pasadena.  The house was built in the late 1930s.  Next stop was at the Pasadena Museum of California Art where the group viewed the Hanson Puthuff exhibit, the first one-man show of this artist for decades.  It was accompanied by a brochure that reproduced many paintings in color.

 On Tuesday, December 5, the HCC held its Annual Christmas Party at the Irvine Museum.  Executive Director Jean Stern led a guided tour of the current exhibit, Majestic California: Prominent Artists of the early 1900s, which features major paintings from the collection of the Irvine Museum.  Wine and refreshments were served.  Mrs. Joan Irvine Smith, who recently completed her autobiography – A California Woman’s Story – donated autographed copies to the HCC.  Proceeds went 100% to the HCC. 

 Paintings by Ralph Love (1907-1992) are being offered by Lee Youngman Galleries, 1316 Lincoln Avenue, Calistoga, California 94515.  Love (according to Edan Hughes’s Dictionary) was born in Los Angeles and began his career as a sign painter.  He also served for 25 years as a pastor and evangelist.  He studied painting briefly with Sam Hyde Harris and Edgar Payne, but remained self-taught.  In 1940 he moved to Yucaipa, California and began teaching painting.  He later taught at the Laguna Beach School of Art & Design and other schools.  He made many painting trips to the Grand Canyon.  In late life he moved to Temecula, where he continued producing art, and he died in nearby Escondido.  See the website www.ralphlove.com.

 Twelfth Annual Los Angeles Art Show: Five Centuries of Art, Barker Hangar, January 24 – 28, 2007.  Presented by FADA (The Fine Art Dealers Association).  More than 70 distinguished international and U.S. galleries exhibiting thousands of works ranging from historical to modern and contemporary art.  See also the website LAArtshow.com

 American Eagle Fine Art, now located in Sunnyvale, California, sends periodic emails announcing new merchandise.  They are currently rich in watercolors by top names from the 1930s to the 1950s.  Their website is www.AmericanEagleFineArt.com.

 William A. Karges Fine Art has issued a brochure, Recent Acquisitions, on the cover of which is a painting by Armin Hansen of three fishermen.  Inside are works by Frederick Schafer, Will Sparks, Edgar Payne, Charles Reiffel, Gardner Symons, George Brandriff, Percy Gray, John Mottram, Lucien Labaudt, C. S. Price and Henry Lee McFee.

 Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts and Shawn Speck Picture Frames, both in the same building in Beverly Hills, held a holiday party on Saturday, December 9, 2006 from 6-9:00 p.m.  On view was Helfen’s new exhibit – California Modernism – Gallery Selections – and a selection of the California frames made by Shawn Speck.

 On December 3, 2006, Alice and Roger Armstrong held an open house at their studio: 23011 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills.  Guests were able to view paintings, mingle and chat, and partake of hors d’oeuvres.

 ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART – ORAL HISTORIES OF EARLY CALIFORNIA ARTISTS 

(Those available on-line appear in bold print.  The others have not yet been digitized.) 

See www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oral histories/.

Clinton Adams; Arthur & Jean Good Win Ames; Merle Armitage; Belle Baranceanu; Karl Benjamin; Eugene Berman; Edward Biberman; Dorr Bothwell; Nick Brigante; Helen Bruton; Benjamin Bufano; Conrad Buff; Hans Burkhardt; Jean Charlot; Herman Cherry; Medora Clark for Alson; E. Gene Crane; Ruth Cravath; Constance LeBrun Crown; Imogene Cunningham; Homer Dana; Frode Dann; Boris Deutsch; Phil Dike; Werner Drewes; Ray Eames; Louisa Etcheverry; Eugenia Everett; Claire Falkenstein; Lorser Feitelson; Alfred Frankenstein (art critic); Don Freeman; Merrell Gage; William Gaw; Campbell Grant; Philip Guston (Goldstein); Richard Haines, Edith Hamlin (Dixon); Stanley William Hayter; Donal Hord; Robert B. Howard; Olinka Hrdy; Everett Gee Jackson; Dorothy Jeakins; Sargent Johnson; Reuben Kadish; Albert Henry King; Dong Kingman; Gene Kloss; Dorothea Lange; Henry Lion; Erle Loran; Helen Lundeberg; Guy MacCoy; Stanton MacDonald Wright; Buckley MacGurrin; Fletcher Martin; Charles Mattox; John McLaughlin; Ivan Messenger; Ben Messick; Arthur Millier (critic); Lee Mullican; Otto Natzler; Peterpaul Ott; Emmy Lou Packard; Douglas Parshall; Reginald Poland; George Booth Post; Vincent Price; Anton Refregier; Paul Sample; Salvatore Scarpitta; Frederick Schwankovsky; Millard Sheets; Will Schuster; Louis B. Siegriest; Ray Strong; Edmund Teske; Wayne Thiebaud; Donald Totten; Harold Von Schmidt; Vaclay Vytlacil; Marguerite Wildenhain; Tyrus Wong; Beatrice Wood; Mireille Piazzoni Wood; James Couper Wright; Bernard Zakheim; Milford Zornes. 

It is interesting to hear artists speak in their own voices.  

 WALTER HOWLISON MACKENZIE (ZARH) PRITCHARD – Recently received information to supplement the catalogue published several years ago by Karges Fine Art.

 Around late 1950-1951, Peggy Sparks, a 21-year old mother of a two-year old boy, was living at 906 Josephine Street in Austin Texas.  She first met Zarh Pritchard when she was in the back yard hanging out her washing.  He lived over the garage in the yard that backed up to hers (possibly Jessie St.), and when he saw her there he would sometimes come down to the fence and chat. 

 Pritchard, Peggy recalls, was a gentle, tall, thin man who always dressed neatly but casually.  Most of the time he wore pants that were cut off above or at the knees.  (Only a few times did she see him in long pants.)  These were usually of a white soft cotton-like material.  He also wore a light linen shirt (a T-shirt without sleeves) and a scarf around his neck.  On his feet were socks or Japanese type shoes.  He had a mustache and once, she thought, he attempted to grow a goatee.

 Pritchard was then about 85 years old.  He had arrived in Austin in time to be listed in the 1949 city directory (at 3712 Hollywood Ave. N. E.).  This was only a couple of short blocks from Concordia University and several blocks from the University of Texas where he hoped to get a teaching job.

 Occasionally Peggy, whose time was fully occupied with housework and looking after her toddler, would take him food and leave it on his porch.  (He was busy upstairs painting.)  A few days later he would return the plates all washed.  Sometimes she accepted Pritchard’s frequent invitations for tea and cookies at which time she and her young son would climb the steps to Pritchard’s apartment over the garage. 

 The apartment consisted of a living and dining room – the only rooms that Peggy saw – and, she assumes, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom.  She remembers it as being spotlessly clean – the wood floors were highly polished -- and sparsely furnished, having only a few Asian pieces of furniture and objets d’art.  One of these was a shrine.  Large paintings covered the walls of the dining/breakfast room and living room.  

 The teas consisted of tea he brewed in a china teapot and cookies he baked himself – invariably a not-too-sweet, undecorated, vanilla “sugar” cookie.  Peggy recalls that the cups were small, like Japanese cups.  To make the tea more palatable for her young son, Pritchard added honey.  Their host would talk about his world travels and showed Peggy and her son his underwater paintings.  Specifically Peggy recalls he mentioned the appearance of his work in National Geographic.  He also showed her a drawing he had made for a huge, several-story aquarium for the palace of the emperor of Japan.  Her two-year-old son was fascinated with Pritchard, and Pritchard was intrigued with how smart the little boy was. 

 About Pritchard’s painting Peggy does not recall much.  Although he had two easels set up in his dining room where he would paint, she never actually witnessed him at work.  She does recall the work on the easel was canvas or linen rather than chamois.  Once, she interrupted him at his work, but he immediately put down his brush.  (He was not wearing any smock and she recalls his clothing was not spattered with paint.)  He never spoke about his goals in painting.  Peggy assumes, if he needed art materials, they would probably have been purchased at the local Bradford’s Art Gallery or from one of the shops near the University of Texas.  (Pritchard had a friend at U of T.)

 At 85, Pritchard lived a quiet life, rarely going out.

 Importantly he did explain how to look at his paintings.  Close one eye and with the other look through a hole made by one’s fist.  This made the undersea paintings look as if the water and fish were actually moving.  In his house was a landscape of a misty forest with water running over rocks, and when she looked at it in the way he suggested, the stream and the fog had movement.

 Pritchard had a great impact on Peggy.  As a child she was always drawing and swimming, but he brought out these talents in her.  One day he said to her, “I have a rose here and I want you to draw and paint it.”  She drew the rose and gave the drawing to him.  He kept it for week or so.  Then he said, “You need to find someone you can learn from in the art field.”  She was so flattered, because she didn’t believe she had any talent at anything.  Later she obtained a degree from the Texas School of Fine Arts in Austin, where she worked under Charles Berkeley Norman and others.  For the last forty years she has painted portraits and landscapes and restored paintings.  As for the swimming, for three years, after knowing Pritchard, she worked as an underwater synchronized swimmer in San Marcos, Texas.

 About 1951 or 52 Peggy’s house was sold and, she believes, Pritchard moved away shortly after.  (He is listed in the Austin City Directory at 705A Oakland Avenue.)

 Several years after Pritchard died, Peggy became curious as to what had happened to all his paintings.  An Austin art gallery suggested she contact the Texas State Archives.  A few days later the Archives got back to her that they did, indeed, have material by Pritchard.  She distinctly recalls a small sketchbook, c. 3 x 4 inches, whose sheets were held together with tape/glue.  It was filled with ornithological drawings made with either colored pencils or watercolors.  These were jungle type birds, and she recalled him once saying that he took walks in the jungle when he lived in South America.

 The Texas State Archives in Austin, Texas, currently owns six feet of archival material on Pritchard including correspondence, papers, clippings, and financial information as well as a few undersea paintings. 

 Joe Barbera, half of the Hanna-Barbera animation team that produced such beloved cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, died Monday, December 18, 2006.  He was 95.  The partners, who teamed up while working at MGM in the 1930s, then went on to a whole new realm of success in the 1960s.  Their strengths melded perfectly, said critic Leonard Maltin.  Barbera brought the comic gags and skilled drawing while Hanna brought warmth and a keen sense of timing.  Hanna, who died in 2001, once said he was never a good artist but his partner could “capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I’ve ever known.”  The pair received eight Emmys.  Neither Hanna, born in 1910, nor Barbera, born in 1911, set out to be cartoonists.  Barbera, who grew up in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, originally went into banking.  Soon, however, he turned his doodles into magazine cartoons and then into a job as an animator.  (by Sue Manning, from the Associated Press story)

 Jay Rivkin, designer, animator, artist, passed away on September 8, 2006.  After moving to California in the early 1940s, Rivkin became the first employee of the groundbreaking animation studio, UPA.  She also studied ceramics with Glen Lukens.  After the war, she and her husband formed Jay Associates, a design company, which used under-glaze painted tiles and wood in furniture, some of which was used in the Case Study Houses of California.  Rivkin also used tiles to create murals for over thirty buildings in Los Angeles, Nevada, Hawaii and New York.  After 1970 she turned to designing and illustrating childrens’ books and cookbooks.  Independently she produced collages, assemblages and drawings.  (From the Tobey C. Moss Gallery announcement)

 Aida Jane Cruz, teacher and artist, died in San Diego on December 10, 2006.  Born in Philadelphia on July 8, 1935, she also served in the Air Force.

 Harold Lehman, muralist and sculptor and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based group of Post-Surrealists, died at his New Jersey home on April 2, 2006.  Although Lehman worked for most of the last 70 years in New York, his artistic career began in 1930s Los Angeles.  Along with Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson, Lehman was a founding member of the Post-Surrealists.  Also in Los Angeles, he worked with the great Mexican muralist D. A. Siqueiros on several murals, and was a muralist for the WPA.

 Seymour Rosen, pioneer historian for California outsider art, died on September 20, 2006.  A photographer, with no expectations for personal financial gain, he became involved in documenting contemporary folk expressions in California (between 1952 and 2006).  These included low riders and graffiti before he came across the Watts Towers in the early 1950s.  He founded the Los Angeles based organization SPACES in 1978 as a result of his involvement in the successful campaign to save Simon Rodia’s famous Towers in Watts from destruction by the City authorities.  SPACES identified hundreds of self-built sculpture gardens and visionary buildings across the United States.  Rosen also helped preserve Art Beal’s Nitt Witt Ridge, in Cambria, Ca.  SPACES, now run by Jo Farb Hernandez, formerly of the Monterey Art Museum, has files on about 900 art environments that deserve saving.

 Helen Mears Gibson, artist and educator, died April 7, 2006 at age 90.  After graduating from Stanford University in 1937, she studied art at the Blocherer Art School in Munich, Germany.  Upon returning to Stanford, she taught art classes at Peninsula School and at San Francisco’s Presidio Hill School.  She was a member of several local art clubs and exhibited in the San Mateo/San Carlos/Palo Alto area.

 John A. Petersen, director of the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park, San Diego, died December 9, 2006.  Petersen was grandson of the attorney who set up the Putnam Foundation to oversee the collection put together by Anne and Amy Putnam.  He also persuaded the Timken family to fund the construction of a gallery to show it.  Under Petersen’s leadership, the museum presented a succession of stellar exhibitions and made significant acquisitions that cemented its international reputation as a leading small museum of European and American paintings.

 Judith Munk, artist and philanthropist, died May 19, 2006, in La Jolla, California.  Born in San Gabriel, she was raised in Los Angeles, and attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she worked under the modernist architect Richard Neutra and received a degree in arts and architecture.  Although she was stricken with polio just as she began graduate work, she became a student of sculptor Donal Hord, while living in her grandparents home town of San Diego.  She went on to design several buildings, including some at the Scripps Institute, where her husband of 53 years was active as an oceanographer.  Her grandparents’ home is now the University of California Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Marsh Reserve. 

 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.

  (See earlier Newsletters for exhibits that might still be on view.)

 Unknown dates.  Rolph Scarlett (1889-1984) Defining Genius: A Collection of Sixty Works, Ibex Galleries, New York.  212-368-4133.

 Through January 21, 2007.  Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, Part I: 1855-1969, Autry National Center, Los Angeles.

 Through January 21, 2007 (opened June 3, 2006).  A Point of Convergence: Architectural Drawings and Photographs from the L. J. Cella Collection, Palm Springs Art Museum.  Works on paper by worldwide architects, landscape architects and other artists, including a significant number of works by California residents.  As Le Corbusier said, “I prefer drawing to talking.  Drawing is faster and allows less room for lies.”  So also believes, San Francisco Bay-area collector L. J. Cella who likes to see the “hand” of the artist in the work.  Each artwork contains a narrative, a chapter in the history of the project, as well as a story of how the collector acquired the work.

 October 15, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  California Colors: Hanson Puthuff, Pasadena Museum of California Art.  First museum exhibition focusing exclusively on Puthuff.  Accompanied by a catalogue that reprints Puthuff’s autobiography.

 October 28, 2006 – January 7, 2007.  Allen Ginsberg: Beat Generation Photographer, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.  In 1956, San Francisco publisher City Lights Books first printed Howl, Allen Ginsberg’s poem for a restless generation.  Its release in print launched Ginsberg’s celebrity and brought national attention to the art and poetry being produced in the Bay Area during the 1950s.  This literary movement was called Beat.  This irrepressible urge to experiment spread to the visual arts.  What began in Northern California grew into a new, renegade creativity that defined American culture at mid-century.  During two extended periods, Ginsberg trained his eye through the camera lens onto the tightly connected group of writers and circle of close friends who came to personify the Beats.  Their bohemian, even reckless lifestyles fascinated Americans.  Included are images of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Peter Orlovsky and Timothy Leary.  The forty-seven black-and-white photographs come from a Pennsylvania private collection.  Each photograph is accompanied by commentary by Ginsberg.

 October 29, 2006 – January 21, 2007.  Millard Sheets in Mexico, 1932-1942, Laguna Art Museum.  This exhibit explores the artist’s work from the early part of his career, during the period when he was developing the art department at Scripps College in Claremont, California.  Mexico was the closest exotic locale to Southern California and formed a first step for Sheets’ post-World War II worldwide travels.

 November 14, 2006 – January 28, 2007.  East Coast/West Coast and Beyond: Colin Campbell Cooper, American Impressionist, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.  (For writeup, see below.)

 November 24, 2006 – March 18, 2007.  Peanuts Holiday Parade: A Celebration of the Art of Charles M. Schulz, Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco.  20 original Peanuts comic strips from the Cartoon Art Museum’s permanent collection, created over a 40-year period.  Other strips that include Snoopy in his classic Santa/Bell-Ringer guise are lent by the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.

 November 29 – December 31, 2006, Early California, Sullivan-Goss, Santa Barbara.  A visual history of the early 20^th century California landscape, including locales such as Carmel, Monterey, San Diego and Santa Barbara.  The show is accompanied by an eight-page brochure that reproduces in color works by Robert Wood, Carl Jonnevold, Lockwood de Forest, Chris Jorgensen, Colin Campbell Cooper, and Thomas McGlynn.

 December 2, 2006 – February 18, 2007.  Artistic Journeys: The Botke Family, Ventura County Museum of History and Art.  Works by Cornelis, Jessie, and granddaughter Kitty.

 December 9, 2006 - ?, California Modernism – Gallery Selections, Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts, Beverly Hills. 

 December 14, 2006 – January 6, 2007, 32 Works: American Art, Steve Turner Gallery, Beverly Hills.  (See “Books” below for information on the accompanying catalogue.)

 December 30, 2006 – January 31, 2007.  Watercolor Exhibit, Chaffey Community Art Association, North Wing of the J. Filippi Winery, Rancho Cucamonga.  Southern California watercolorists painting a variety of subject matter.

 January 2007.  Frederic Whitaker and Eileen Monaghan Whitaker, California Center for the Arts, Escondido, Ca.  Watercolor artists of San Diego.

 January 4 – April 1, 2007.  Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection, Skirball Cultural Center.  Movie posters, soundtrack album covers and title sequences.

 January 13 – March 11, 2007.  Grand!  The Art and Wonder of Arizona’s Magnificent Canyon, Desert Caballeros Western Museum.  Group show of historic works depicting the Grand Canyon.

 January 17 – March 25, 2007.  Painters of the Desert: The Arid Southwest, Wildling Art Museum, Los Olivos.  Curated by Marlene Miller, the show includes work by five artists: Conrad Buff, Maynard Dixon, Clyde Forsythe, Fernand Lungren and James Swinnerton.

 January 19, 2007.  Winery Architecture in the Napa Valley, Napa Valley Museum, Yountville.  Uses historic and contemporary images of Napa Valley winery architecture.

 January 23 – April 8, 2007.  Hunches, Geometrics, Organics: Paintings by Frederick Hammersley, Pomona College Museum of Art.  An overview of Hammersley’s modern works, many never before seen.

 January 24-28, 2007.  Los Angeles Art Show, presented by FADA (The Fine Art Dealers Association), 12^th Annual, Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, Ca.

 January 24 – April 29, 2007.  Who Was Sam?  The Art of Sam Hyde Harris (1889-1977), Pasadena Museum of History.  Born in England, one of seven children in a working class family, Sam Harris’s first art training came from an elderly local artist who noticed the boy’s talent.  Arriving in Los Angeles with his family as a teenager, he studied at several local art schools and entered a career as a commercial artist.  Among his clients were Van de Kamps Bakeries as well as several railroads.  On the side Harris pursued his interest in easel painting, studying for six months in Europe in the 1920s, and becoming friends with local landscapists.  Favorite painting sites were San Gabriel Valley and the San Pedro harbor.  At the age of 55, at the end of World War II, Harris divorced his wife of 27 years, married a second time, and moved his home and commercial art business to Artists’ Alley in Alhambra, where several painters of Western and desert scenes resided.  Friendship with James Swinnerton led him to paint around Palm Springs.  He also became more active as an art teacher.  The exhibit will contain approximately 250 artworks: 100 oils plus 150 items related to his career as a commercial artist.  (See the museum’s website www.pasadenahistory.org.)  The show is curated by Maurine St. Gaudens, who, with Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick and Gary Lang have authored a major monograph on the artist. (See “Books” below.)

 January 26-28, 2007.  22nd Annual Los Angeles Fine Print Fair, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA West Building, 5th Floor Penthouse.  Participating galleries that sell historic California prints include Annex Galleries from Santa Rosa, Roger Genser – The Prints & the Pauper -- from Santa Monica, and Tobey C. Moss Gallery of Los Angeles.

 February 2 – April 29, 2007.  Muybridge in Central America, Smithsonian American Museum, Washington, D. C.   California photographer, tropical views.

 February 3 – May 6, 2007.  Yosemite 1938: On the Trail with Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keeffe, Crocker Art Museum.  On September 11, 1938, Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keeffe and some friends began a 10-day trip through Yosemite.  Adams focused his lens not only on the majesty of the landscape but on his friends.  The result was three photographic albums annotated with personal notes and captions, which he gave to his fellow travelers.  Within them were early prints of what became his most famous images, including Glacier Point and Cathedral Peak.  This exhibit stems from the album given to the McAlpin family, which they recently presented to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

 February 10 – April 29, 2007.  Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875-1907, Monterey Museum of Art.  A survey of the artistic legacy of the Carmel/Monterey Peninsula.  The first in-depth examination of the region’s art.  Last of four venues for the exhibition that was organized by the Crocker Art Museum.

 February 10 – June 10, 2007.  San Francisco Psychedelic Posters, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  Rock posters of the 1960s.

 February 17, 2007.  Palm Springs Modernism 2007, Palm Springs Convention Center, 277 N. Avenida Caballeros, Palm Springs, Ca.  The show will feature more than seventy-five noted national and international decorators and dealers presenting all design movements of the 20th Century.  In association with the show, the Museum of California Design will present “The California Modernism of Architectural Pottery,” an exhibition of revolutionary modernist products from this groundbreaking California company.  Whenever you see a white cylindrical planter at an office building, a bank or a gasoline station you are experiencing the results of the large format modernist ceramic vessels introduced by Architectural Pottery.

 February 18 - ?.  Ansel Adams Classic Images, Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, Ca.

 February 25 – June 3, 2007.  East Coast/West Coast and Beyond: Colin Campbell Cooper, American Impressionist, Laguna Art Museum.  Curated by Deborah Solon.  Cooper’s career is defined by two periods: his education and maturity as an East Coast artist and his relocation, in later years, to the West Coast.  Already a significant Impressionist on the East Coast, Cooper visited Southern California in 1916, spending a month in San Diego.  He relocated to Santa Barbara in 1921 where he remained to his death.  A teacher at the Santa Barbara Community School of Arts, Cooper also painted the California scene, finding himself fascinated with California’s Spanish/Mexican architecture and its flora, especially its formal gardens.  65 works explore both his East and West Coast “lives.”   The show is accompanied by a major catalogue/book written by Dr. William Gerdts and Dr. Deborah Solon published by Hudson Hills Press. 

 March 2007.  Henry Chapman Ford: Paintings & Etchings of Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara Historical Society.

 March 4 – June 3, 2007.  The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it includes work by many California painters and photographers.  Among them is Gottardo Piazzoni, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams.  The show will address the strong, mystical attraction the region holds while providing a meaningful context for the West’s influence on American modernism.  (See also “Emily Ballew Neff, “The Genesis of an Exhibition,” LACMA Insider, v. 1, no. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 16-19.)  

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. 

 32 Works: American Art: 2006, Beverly Hills, Steve Turner Gallery, 2006.  70+ pages; c. 40 color reproductions.  Includes top work by California artists: Solomon Nunes Carvalho, Norwood MacGilvary, Henrietta Shore, Sargent Johnson, Knud Merrild, Charles Howard, Oskar Fischinger, Everett Gee Jackson, and Grace Clements.

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

 Hanson Puthuff, 1875-1972: California Colors, Pasadena: Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2006.  c. 62 pps.  Catalogue for the exhibition at the Museum.  Reprints the rare autobiography by Puthuff and reproduces approximately 30 works in color, along with some family photos.

 East Coast/West Coast and Beyond: Colin Campbell Cooper, American Impressionist, by Deborah Solon and William H. Gerdts, Hudson Hills Press, 2006.  Catalogue for the exhibit of the same name at the Laguna Art Museum and other venues. 

 Theodore Wores in the Southwest, ed. by Stephen Becker, San Francisco: California Historical Society, fall 2006.  $24.95   Paintings of Native Americans made by Wores between 1915 and 1917.

 Manuel Valencia: California’s Native Son, catalogue for the exhibition held at Hearst Art Gallery in the fall of 2006.  16 pp.  Approx. 15 color reproductions.  Available from St. Mary’s College of California.

 Roger Armstrong: A Life in Paintings – 8 volume set that chronicles Armstrong’s lifetime with the brush.  Reproduces nearly 300 of Armstrong’s paintings dating from 1938 to the present.  Copies can be obtained through Armstrong at rogersart@lworld.net.

 The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, by Daniell Cornell et al, San Francisco: de Young, Fine Arts Museums and University of California Press in Berkeley, 2006.  256 pp. 225 illus.  Asawa was active as a sculptor in San Francisco after 1950.

 San Francisco in Maps, 1797-2006, by Sally Woodbridge, New York: Rizzoli, 2006.  176 pp., 72 col. Illus.

 Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, by Ehrhard Bahr, Berkeley: University of California Press, due May, 2007.  368 pps., 28 b/w photos.  Hardcover.  $39.95.  In the 1930s and ‘40s, Los Angeles became a cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals – including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg – who were fleeing Nazi Germany.  During their exile they produced major works that addressed the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism.  This is the first book to examine as a group the work and lives of these artists and intellectuals.  Selected works are discussed to show Los Angeles’s influence on the artists and their impact on German modernism.

 Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930, by Richard J. Orsi, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.  637 pps. 58 b/w photos. $29.95.  The only major U. S. railroad to be operated by westerners and the only railroad built from west to east.  Explores the railroad’s development and influence – especially as it affected land settlement, agriculture, water policy and the environment.

 Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler, New York: Knopf, 2006.  912 pp.  79 illus.

 The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney, by Michael Barrier, Berkeley: University of California Press, due April 2007.  424 pps., 26 b/w photographs.  $29.95 hard cover.  A biography as well as a cultural history.

 A California Woman’s Story, by Joan Irvine Smith, Irvine, Ca.: Irvine Museum, 2006.  Autobiography of Joan Irvine Smith, a major collector of California art and the founder of the Irvine Museum.

 The Culture Broker: Franklin D. Murphy and the Making of Los Angeles, by Margaret Leslie David, Berkeley: University of California Press, due August 2007.  512 pps. 33 b/w photos.  Hard cover $34.95.  For nearly thirty years, Murphy was a dominant figure in the cultural development of Los Angeles.  Behind the scenes, Murphy used his role as confidant, family friend, and advisor to the founders and scions of some of America’s greatest fortunes – Ahmanson, Rockefeller, Ford, Mellon, and Annenberg – to direct the largesse of the wealthy into cultural institutions of his choosing.  Murphy, first as chancellor of UCLA and later as chief executive of the Times Mirror media empire, was able to influence academia, the media, and cultural foundations to reshape a fundamentally provincial city.  Murphy channeled more than one billion dollars into the city’s arts and educational infrastructure.  The sculpture garden at UCLA is named after Murphy, and he had great impact on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

 Irving J. Gill: Architect, 1870-1936, Layton, Ut.: Gibbs Smith, 2006.  240 pp. 222 illus.  Architect of San Diego.

 Big Sur Inn: The Deetjen Legacy, by Anita Alan, Layton, Ut.: Gibbs Smith, 2006.  176 pp.  281 illus.  Norwegian immigrant who built the Big Sur Inn from the early 1930s.

 Photo/Stoner: The Rise, Fall and Mysterious Disappearance of Surfing’s Greatest Photographer, by Matt Warshaw, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.  About Ron Stoner, staff artist for Surfer magazine in the 1960s.

 The Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts, by Stephanie Comer, et al., San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.  208 pp.  207 illus.  Photography teacher.

 Ansel Adams: Sierra Nevada – The John Muir Trail, by William A. Turnage, Boston: Little Brown and Co., 2006, republication of the 1938 book.  128 pp.  55 illus.

 The Triumph of Helios: Photographic Treasures of the California State Library, Sacramento: California State Library Foundation, unknown date.  32 pps. 40 illus.  $15.  Catalogue for a special exhibition held in the University Library Gallery of Sacramento State University.  Describes and reproduces a wide variety of early photographs (daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, mammoth plate landscape views, stereographs, etc.) by such masters as E. C. Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge. 

 Burgard, Timothy Anglin, “California Landscapes from the Willrich Collection,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 6, November-December 2006, pp. 76-83. 

 Jones, Harvey L., “The Art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 6, November-December 2006, pp. 84-93.

 Joyner, J. Brooks, “Legends of the West: The Foxley Collection,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 6, November-December 2006, pp. 104-115.

 Holmes, Karen, “Aurelius O. Carpenter: Photographer of the Mendocino Frontier,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 6, November-December 2006, pp. 130-33.

 “California Colors: Hanson Puthuff,” American Art Review, v. XVIII, no. 6, November-December 2006, pp. 146-47.

 Jennifer A. Watts, “Double Exposure: Ansel Adams’ Second Take on a Classic Photograph,” Huntington Frontiers, Fall/Winter, 2006.  Compares two printings of “Monolith: the Face of Half Dome” made 50 years apart by Adams himself.

 Emily Ballew Neff, “The Genesis of an Exhibition” [The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950], LACMA Insider, v. 1, issue 1, Winter 2007, pp. 16-19.  The exhibition explores the role played by the American West in the development of American modernism. 

 October 22, 2006.  Dick Smith: The Conscience of Santa Barbara County – panel discussion, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Fleischmann Auditorium, 4 p.m.   (Co-sponsored by the Wildling Art Museum in Los Olivos.)  Smith was a journalist, conservationist, naturalist, artisan and photographer.

 November 3, 2006.  Impressions of California, Parts III and IV, documentary on the history of California art from statehood in 1850 to the beginning of the Depression in 1930, will be shown at the Wildling Art Museum, Los Olivos, Ca.  7:00 p.m.

 November 11, 2006.  Yosemite: Art of an American Icon, tour of the exhibition led by Amy Scott, Curator of Visual Arts, Autry National Center, Los Angeles.  The exhibition includes over 140 paintings, baskets and photographs and examines how Yosemite’s picturesque image and identity have developed over time.  An activity of the American Art Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

 December 3, 2006.  Millard Sheets: Paintings from His World Travels, lecture by Janet Blake, Laguna Art Museum.  1:00 p.m.

 February 6, 2007.  Who Was Sam Hyde Harris?, by Marion Yoshiki-Kovinick, sponsored by the Pasadena Museum of History and held at the Neighborhood Church (301 N. Orange Grove, Pasadena) at 7:00 p.m.  $15 to non-members of the museum.  Reservations required.  626-577-1660, ext. 10.

 May 31, 2007.  Maynard Dixon, documentary film by Jayne McKay, premiere, Pasadena Museum of California Art. 

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.

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

 February 20, 2007.  California & American Paintings, John Moran, Pasadena. 

CaliforniaArt.com © copyright 2007 Dustin Publications.