Imre Weisshaus, The Carmelite, August 28, 1929

I was just browsing among a selection of issues of The Carmelite and was struck by the below August 28, 1929 cover because of the fascinating story that could be woven around it. The Carmelite's salad days occurred during the 1928-29 editorship of Pauline Schindler whose interest in all things modern manifested upon the pages of the avant-garde Carmel-by-the-Sea weekly. Schindler took meticulous care on the graphic layout and incorporation of artwork provided by friends in her circle such as Edward Weston, Johan Hagemeyer and his sister-in-law Dora, Ansel Adams, Roger Sturtevant, the Bruton sisters and numerous others. The Carmelite's staff artist, former Kings Road habitue Virginia Tooker, provided a continuous stream of linoleum and wood block prints to illustrate and graphically balance the pages of the paper. Pauline used the paper more or less as an organ for a northern extension of her Kings Road salons. 

The Carmelite, August 28, 1929, p. 1. Wood block print of Hungarian pianist Imre Weisshaus by Virginia Tooker.

The above cover includes a wrap-up of the summer recital season discussing the last two performances by contributing editor Dane Rudhyar and visiting Hungarian pianist Imre Weisshaus. Also included are news items on the recovery of Brett Weston from a broken leg and Dan James from a serious auto accident.

Letter from Galka Scheyer to R. M. Schindler, ca. February 1929.

Letter from Imre Weisshaus to R. M. Schindler, July 24, 1929. 

Imre Weisshaus, 1929. Photo by Johan Hagemeyer. Courtesy Bancroft Library, UC-Berkeley.

Letter from Imre Weisshaus to R. M. Schindler, December 9, 1929. 

Letter from Imre Weisshaus to Charles Sumner Greene, December 10, 1929.

D. L. James Residence, Carmel Highlands, Charles Sumner Greene, Architect, 1924.

Dan James, 1932. Photo by Edward Weston.

Theodore Dreiser funeral. December 1945. Dan James, Berkeley Tobey, Charlie Chaplin, Leo Gallagher and others were pall-bearers.

The Carmelite, Pauline G. Schindler, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, 1928-29

The Carmelite cover images below courtesy of the Henry Meade Williams Local History Department, Harrison Memorial Library, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA, Ashlee Wright, Curator.

(Click on images to enlarge)

March 14, 1929 PGS to RMS letter soliciting material for the special Contemporary Architecture of the Pacific Coast Issue. Courtesy of the UC Santa Barbara, University Art Museum, R. M. Schindler Collection.

"Deborah Aschheim: Involuntary Memories: Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and the Nixon Years" - Great Park Gallery of the Palm Court Arts Complex of Orange County Great Park, April 27 - September 2

I am honored to host artist Deborah Aschheim's announcement for her upcoming show at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine. Material from my personal draft file is included in the show so I am eager to see it. For the Viet Nam vets and the people such as myself who had to jump through burning hoops to stay out of the conflict, it was cathartic to share our stories of those traumatic times with Deborah. Below is Deborah's statement about the show which we all, liberals and conservatives alike, really need to see to keep our country's historic actions fresh in our minds and in in proper perspective so that, hopefully, history won't repeat itself a third, fourth and fifth time.

Edward Cella, Tom Leeser, Deborah Aschheim and Meg Linton at the Edward Cella Gallery discussing Aschheim's "Nostalgia for the Future," September 25, 2010. Photo by John Crosse. (Author's note: I included much about the Anti-Viet Nam War protests at the Century Plaza Hotel in my review of this show, "The Kindred Spirits of Deborah Aschheim and Richard Bradshaw: Nostalgia for the Future: Deborah Aschheim at the Edward Cella Gallery Sept. 11 - Oct. 23, 2010" which we also discussed at the above Cella Gallery talk (see below for example).)

Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1967.

Deborah Aschheim: Involuntary Memories: Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and the Nixon Years

Washington, D.C., August 9, 1974.

From 2011-12, I was invited to one of the first Artists-in-Residence at Orange County Great Park in Irvine, CA, a new twenty-first century public space created out of the shuttered El Toro Marine Airbase. El Toro was a significant airbase for Southern California troop deployments during the Vietnam War, and President Richard Nixon used El Toro as his airport when he commuted between Washington and the “Western White House” in San Clemente, CA.  In my personal works on memory, I use my family movies and photos as what psychologists call “retrieval cues,” exploring the capacity of images to trigger my own emotions and memories. I decided to use this opportunity for public engagement to continue my exploration of the interrelationship between memory and place and this time, 40-50 years ago, that exists between memory and history, and I dedicated myself to triggering other people’s memories.

Washington, D. C., November 25, 1963.

For my Artist-in-Residence project, I made drawings of iconic images from the Nixon Era to serve as “retrieval cues,” inspiring park visitors to remember their memories into my digital field recorder.  Each week, I transcribed their stories and pinned them up on my studio walls.  I added new drawings based on the events they described until the studio became a continually evolving tapestry of verbal and visual memory. 

The conversations were candid, surprising and somehow transcended political divisions. People talked about the original dream of Irvine as a utopian American suburb, the creation of UC Irvine and William Pereira’s Master Plan for the city and the University, versus the growing escalation of the war in Vietnam and the rise of campus activism. People relived the day the President resigned and related their feelings of compassion or anger. A University of Southern California alumnus recalled his shock when his Sigma Chi brothers from the Nixon Administration were sentenced to prison for their role in Watergate. A middle aged U.S. Marine veteran told me about the last time he had stepped foot on the site where we were standing: he was an enthusiastic 18 year old recruit who had come with his sister and mother to board his flight to Southeast Asia, on what turned out to be the last normal day of his life. The project that evolved out of my site-specific residency, “Involuntary Memories: Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and the Nixon Years” documents this spontaneous narrative of optimism and conflict emerging out of the postwar period.

The Moon, July 21, 1969.

Washington, D.C., April 30, 1970.

The show will be an installation of drawings and text from transcribed interviews with visitors conducted during my artist-in-residence project in the park, along with 2 new sculptures, artifacts lent by park visitors The exhibition is guest-curated by Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions at Otis College of Art and Design, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalog with essays by Linton and Bay Area neuroscientist Indre Viskontas. The exhibition also includes a thirty minute DVD loop of excerpts from The Silent Majority: Super 8 Home Movies from the Nixon White House that was filmed by H. R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and Dwight Chapin which has been preserved and compiled by Penny Lane and Brian Frye - it is an excerpt from their feature film Our Nixon which is screening at South by Southwest and MOMA's "New Directors/New Films 2013" this month.

Our Nixon - SXSW 2013 Accepted Film from SXSW on Vimeo.

The Orange County Great Park is located off the 5 or 405 freeway at Sand Canyon and Marine Way in Irvine. For more information, please visit www.ocgp.org or call 949-724-OCGP. Great Park Gallery Hours are Thursdays & Fridays: noon - 4 pm and Saturdays & Sundays: 10am - 4pm.

Irvine, May 4, 1970.

For much more on Deborah and her work see my The Kindred Spirits of Deborah Aschheim and Richard Bradshaw: Nostalgia for the Future: Deborah Aschheim at the Edward Cella Gallery Sept. 11 - Oct. 23, 2010.

Click here to see latest Deborah Aschheim Curriculum Vitae:

"Threshold, Installation by Deborah Aschheim," Suyama Space, Seattle | January 21 - April 12, 2013

Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider Exhibition Catalog

Deborah Aschheim Press

Mexico and American Modernism by Ellen Landau, Yale University Press, April 8, 2013

Mexico and American Modernism, by Ellen Landau, Yale University Press, 2013.

Professor Ellen Landau, March 15, 2013. Photo by John Crosse.

Above is Case Western Reserve art history professor and noted Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner scholar Ellen Landau and her new book "Mexico and American Modernism" posing in front of the recently opened restoration of Siqueiros' "America Tropical." The mural sits atop the old Plaza Art Center where Pauline Schindler curated the exhibition "Contemporary Creative Architecture" (see below) not long before Siqueiros' mural was completed. 

"Contemporary Creative Architecture of California" exhibition curated by Pauline Schindler, various West Coast venues, 1930-1932.

"Mercedes Matter: A Retrospective" curated by Ellen Landau, Weisman Art Museum, Pepperdine Universtty, January 23-April 4, 2010.

I met Professor Landau while reviewing the Mercedes Matter retrospective she curated at Pepperdine's Weisman Art Museum a couple years ago (see above). She is retiring at the end of the academic year and moving to L.A. this summer. She just gave a lecture on her new book at UC-Santa Barbara Art Museum and is also consulting with the Getty on their restoration of Pollock's mural (see below) he did for Peggy Guggenheim now owned by the University of Iowa. For much more on Ellen's work see my "Herbert and Mercedes Matter: The California Years." 

Mural, 1943, 97-1/4 X 236 in., Jackson Pollock.

Don't forget to order a copy of Mexico and American Modernism which will be released next month, in fact you can preorder now at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Landau graciously gave me a preview of the book over breakfast last Friday and it is definitely a must for any modern art lover. It goes into much more depth on the cross-pollination between the Mexican muralists and American artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Robert Motherwell than I touched upon in my "Richard Neutra and the California ArtClub" on which we compared notes. I hope to do a review of the book after it's release next month.

For other books by Landau I recommend: 

Ellen Landau Publications

Firenze Gardens, 5218-5230 Sunset Blvd., William J. Dodd Architect, ca. 1921

Post Under Construction. Stay Tuned.

Firenze Gardens, 5218-5230 Sunset Blvd., William J. Dodd, architect. Photographer unknown, ca. 1922. From Los Angeles Public Library photo collection.

While in Los Angeles during July 1921, FLW stayed at the Firenze Gardens Apartments (see above) for a few weeks while checking on the status of his nearby Olive Hill projects and meeting with Barnsdall.  Firenze Gardens was designed by William J. Dodd whom Frank's son Lloyd had sporadically performed worked for between 1916 and 1921 as a landscape architect. (Lloyd Wright, Architect: 20th Century Architecture in an Organic Exhibition by David Gebhard and Harriette Von Bretton, Art Galleries, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1971, pp. 22-24). Lloyd quite possibly designed the landscaping for Firenze Gardens as he had just the year before designed the garden for Dodd's personal residence (see below). 

Garden for W. J. Dodd, Beverly Hills, Lloyd Wright, landscape architect, 1920. Gebhard, p. 7.

Dodd was possibly known by the elder Wright from his earlier days in the Midwest and was also known to Schindler as Wright had asked Schindler to deliver his mail and update him on the status of contracts at Firenze, "the place that Dodd Built." (FLW pencil note to RMS, Frank Lloyd Wright, n.d., from Correspondence With R. M. Schindler 1914-1929, Special Collections Getty Research Institute). (Author's note: Dodd had recently been appointed by the Governor to the State Board of Architecture replacing retiring F. L. Roehrig. "Architect Named; W. F. [sic] Dodd Appointed to State Board by Governor," Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1919, P. II-11).

Dodd was just finishing a palatial residence for Cecil B. De Mille and the Pacific Mutual Life during Wright's time at Firenze Gardens. (See California Homes by California Architects compiled by Ellen Leech, Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1922, pp. 12-13).

Dodd's buildings are to be found in the old downtown financial district around Pacific Center, around Hollywood in Laughlin and Hancock Park, to the west in Rustic Canyon, Playa Del Rey and Long Beach, southeast to San Gabriel, and possibly northeast in Altadena. Related to Dodd's Los Angeles work are residences in Oak Glen and Palm Springs.

From as early as 1893, and to the end of his life, Dodd was a mentor to talented younger designers who were new to the profession, designers with now well-known names like Lloyd Wright, Thomas Chalmers Vint, and Adrian Wilson, often outsiders without a developed practice and contending with a new client base and fast evolving licensing standards in cities enjoying rapid expansion as was Louisville after the American Civil War and Los Angeles after World War I. The architect Julia Morgan, a mostly free-lance architect from upstate San Francisco, and rare as a female in a male-dominated domain, formed a team with W. J. Dodd and J. M. Haenke as her LA facilitators and design partners for William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Building, a landmark downtown project completed in 1915.

 

Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams, UC-Santa Barbara Art Museum, April 13 - June 16, 2013 and "Smith & Williams: An Annotated Bibliography"

Whitney R. Smith, Alpha Rho Chi, USC El Rodeo, 1932. 

Whitney R. Smith demonstrating moké (rhymes with OK), a method of weaving plywood to form intricate designs from dwell.com.

Wayne R. Williams. Photo courtesy Communi-k Inc. via Architectural Record.

Smith & Williams office, 1414 N. Fair Oaks, South Pasadena, 1958. Photo by Jocelyn Gibbs, 2012.

Smith & Williams decisively shaped the modern vocabulary of architecture in post-war Pasadena and Los Angeles County. Working in the wake of the first generation of avant-garde architects in Southern California and riding the postwar building boom, the partners Whitney R. Smith, erstwhile Case Study House architect (see below) and Wayne R. Williams developed a pragmatic modernism that, through remarkable site planning and design, integrated landscape and building. Despite the significance of their work, “Outside In” is the first monographic study of Whitney Smith and the Smith and Williams firm. Co-curators Jocelyn Gibbs and Christina Chiang will draw on the extensive archives within the museum's Architecture and Design Collection.   

Case Study House No. 6, "Loggia House," Whitney R. Smith, 1946. (Project). From Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy, Reinhold, 1962, p. 27.

Whitney R. Smith, ca. 1962, photographer unknown (Julius Shulman?). From Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy, Reinhold, 1962, p. 208.

Besides his partnership with Williams, Smith also collaborated with A. Quincy Jones and Edgardo Contini between 1948 and 1950 on the Mutual Housing Association (see below) planned community in Crestwood Hills in Brentwood.

Mutual Housing Association marketing brochure, ca. 1949. From Crestwood Hills.

Robert Crowell Residence, Smith & Williams, architects, Sunset, May 1954, front cover. Julius Shulman Job No. 1611, October 27, 1953.

Outside In: the Architecture of Smith and Williams is part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.  This collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together several local arts institutions for a wide-ranging look at the postwar built environment of the city as a whole, from its famous residential architecture to its vast freeway network, revealing the city’s development and ongoing impact in new ways. The dynamic duo's work is finally being given the recognition it deserves with an exhibition Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC-Santa Barbara. The exhibition will run from April 13 to June 16.

Tract home kitchen by Smith & Williams for merchant builder George Buccola, House & Home, February 1956, front cover. Photo by Julius Sulman. 

Once I ran across the press release for this exhibition I remembered that Julius Shulman was the photographer of choice for this dynamic duo. Smith & Williams early on recognized the importance of good photography in marketing their modernist vocabulary of architecture in postwar Pasadena and Los Angeles County and commissioned Shulman for over 50 assignments during their most productive years between 1947 and 1964. Performing a Smith & Williams search in my 8,000 item Julius Shulman bibliography and 800 Shulman cover photos turned up 130 articles and numerous cover photos which went into the Smith & Williams bibliography below. 

McCoy, Esther, "What I Believe...A Statement of Architectural Principles," Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, January 8, 1956,  pp. 57-8.

Esther McCoy featured the duo's work in her monthly "What I Believe" column in the Los Angeles Times in 1956 (see above), a feather in any architect's cap.

Smith and Williams, Mobil gas station (Anaheim, Calif.), 1957, Photograph by Julius Shulman, Job No. 2202, May 8, 1956.

There is a companion show, "Gas Station Design, a Tour through the Collection, 1930-1965" which will run from February 15 through May 12 curated by Christina Chiang. 

Click on the below highlighted link directly below to access bibliography.

Smith & Williams: An Annotated Bibliography

Shelly Kappe Interview of Whitney Smith from SCI-Arc Media Archives 

Whitney R. Smith Interview by Obie Bowman 

For details of the exhibition see the following link: 

http://www.museum.ucsb.edu/exhibitions/upcoming