Meg Nola's Blog
Posted by Meg Nola
For many artists, the creation of a unique persona and lifestyle is as interesting as creating the art itself. Never one to quietly accept what he’d been handed, the great James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) rejected the notion of being born in sensible Lowell, Massachusetts and instead invented more interesting backdrops for his coming into being. ("I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell….") While his actual and not fabricated childhood was in Europe, he found himself putting in an incongruous stint at West Point Academy following the death of his father. He then headed to Paris to pursue the whole bohemian artist experience before eventually making London his home base.
Robert M. Crunden’s book American Salons features fascinating characters like Whistler who reinvented themselves between the 19th and 20th centuries, and in the process changed the course of art, fiction, poetry, music and life in general. Here is an excerpt regarding Whistler’s painting method:
Nature gave him its inspiration, while the Japanese gave him intuitions about what to do with it…He had a large palette, a board two feet by three with a butterfly inlaid at one corner, on which he laid out his colors, the pure at the top. He then mixed large quantities of the prevailing color in the intended picture, producing results so juicy that he called it “sauce”…[h]e had to lay his canvas on the ground because the sauce would run if the canvas were in any way tilted -- sometimes it did anyway, and he often accepted the accidental results…He designed special frames, to make the whole a complete ensemble. He had to invent everything, for no one had ever proceeded in this manner before.
Art happens – no hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this. (James McNeill Whistler)
Posted by Meg Nola
I really enjoy the Federal Writers’ Project Historical Guide Series of the United States, commissioned as part of President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. First of all, employing writers and artists to enrich their country’s heritage was an exceptional concept at that time. Author Nelson Algren, who wrote parts of the Federal Writers’ Project Illinois guide, noted how the WPA kept the suicide rate down and “served to humanize people who…had…lost their self-respect by being out of work,” while allowing them to feel a sense of shared purpose. Even beyond that, the guidebooks of America have become historical documents within historical documents. Because they were written during the 1930s and because the American landscape has changed a great deal since then, reading about how things were when the guides were researched and developed is fascinating.
The 1939 New York City Guide gives interesting insights into such well-known neighborhoods as Little Italy, the Bowery, and the famed and free-spirited Greenwich Village. The Dutch hustled the Indians out of the original Village, then the British Navy settled in, followed by Manhattan’s well-to-do, who departed upon the coming of the Irish. Other immigrants arrived and created a diverse Village, but around 1910 another change took place. Struggling artists began to move in, finding “quiet, winding streets, houses with a flair of the Old World and cheap rents.” These painters, writers, poets, and general rebels of the day rejected the burgeoning culture of materialism and convention, opting for candlelight over electricity, free love over marriage, and endless talks about Freudian theory, Socialism and women’s suffrage. And from that point on, Greenwich Village became a nexus of bohemian living.
Sad to read is the description of the beautiful old Pennsylvania Railroad Station designed by McKim, Mead, and White (as in the notorious Stanford), “inspired by Roman Classical architecture…lined with shops, a marble stairway…[s]ix murals by Jules Guerin” and a “great glass-roofed concourse. “ Despite much protest by historical preservation groups, this structure was torn down in 1963.
Many of the WPA Historical Guide volumes have been republished and are available through Amazon.com, or you may be able to find the originals at your local library. Or click here for the online version of the New York City WPA guide (without photos), and learn about the exotic “Syrian Quarter,” the Planters Hotel, the Tenderloin, how Maiden Lane got its name, and what a day in the life was like in 1938 Chinatown.
Posted by Meg Nola
William Sidney Mount was born on Long Island, New York on November 26, 1807, back when Long Island was a very rural place. Mount went to art school in Manhattan and would find many patrons of his work in urban New York, but he decidedly preferred life in Setauket and Stony Brook, Long Island, finding the area less chaotic and more conducive to artistic inspiration.
Mount was one of America’s first genre painters, and while he had the chance to study in Europe, he opted not to. He wasn’t outrightly rebelling against European art and in fact kept many volumes on the subject in his personal library, but he was afraid that if he did travel abroad, he might never return. Mount wanted to show true American society in his own artwork, especially scenes of farming and barn dancing and the local color of the region he had originally come from.
Among the interesting facts about William Sidney Mount are that he loved to include musicians in his paintings and was himself an accomplished fiddler. He even invented a unique violin to be heard above the rowdy whooping and foot-stomping of barn dances -- the fiddle was called the “Cradle of Harmony” and had a concave or hollow back for increased resonance. Mount also wrote a couple of songs and came up with his own design for a portable studio/horse and carriage, to allow him to travel around the countryside in search of inspiration. He was able to enjoy a comfortable level of success and watch his work become popular, and one of his paintings -- Long Island Farmer Husking Corn -- ended up on actual bank note currency.
Mount died in 1868, following the pursuit of a life full of painting, drawing, reading, fiddling, flute playing, inventing and otherwise interacting with the world around him. Furthermore, before his death he claimed to be in touch spiritually with those beyond the grave, particularly the great Rembrandt. All of Rembrandt’s wisdom aside, however, Mount’s general advice to himself and other artists was to keep to one‘s true vision and “Follow the bent of your own mind—do not paint to order."
Posted by Meg Nola
American author Nathanael West (1903-1940) not only died before his time, but he also wrote before his time and never quite received the literary attention that he deserved. He was born Nathan Weinstein in New York and more or less bluffed his way into Brown University, then after graduation unfortunately found his writer’s dreams grounded by financial troubles. West worked the nightshift at a Manhattan hotel and used quiet hours on the job to produce his 1931 novel The Dream Life of Balso Snell. West then started Miss Lonelyhearts, another short novel about the downward spiral of a reporter assigned to the task of answering his newspaper's advice letters.
West first made his way to Hollywood by selling the movie rights to Miss Lonelyhearts, and through his screenwriting and experiences there came up with the material for his last published novel, The Day of the Locust. The Day of the Locust involves the strange odyssey of Tod Hackett, a young artist hired by a Hollywood studio to design sets and costumes. Tod hopes to paint a great masterwork called “The Burning of Los Angeles,” while he otherwise encounters the surreal visual and moral landscape of 1930s Tinseltown and its surrounding areas. The Day of the Locust is brilliantly twisted like Miss Lonelyhearts, but Miss Lonelyhearts has a more gray urban mood and not as many colorfully warped characters (they‘re definitely warped, but not as vividly so) as The Day of the Locust. West described the reception of The Day of the Locust in a 1939 letter to his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald as “Good reviews -- fifteen per cent, bad reviews -- twenty-five per cent, brutal personal attacks -- sixty per cent. Sales: practically none.” Fitzgerald was also in a less than celebrated place at that point in his life and could surely understand.
News of Fitzgerald’s death of a heart attack in December 1940 was reportedly troubling Nathanael West as West was driving back to California from a weekend in Mexico. West sped through a stop sign and crashed into another vehicle, killing himself and his wife Eileen. If West were alive and writing today, his dark, quirky Coen Brothers-like style would surely find a more commercially successful place in fiction or scripting movies and cable TV. Click here for a short biography of Nathanael West, to find out more about the film adaptations of his novels, and to connect Homer Simpson of the epic cartoon family with a character of the same name in The Day of the Locust. West’s collected works were published by The Library of America in 1997, and reading through the volume is a good way to acquaint or reacquaint one’s self with his writing, along with excerpts of letters and a brief biographical chronology.
"Except for his hands, which belonged on a piece of monumental sculpture, and his small head, [Homer] was well proportioned. His muscles were large and round and he had a full, heavy chest. Yet there was something wrong. For all his size and shape, he looked neither strong nor fertile. He was like one of Picasso's great sterile athletes, who brood hopelessly on pink sand, staring at veined marble waves." (The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West)
Posted by Meg Nola
Pretty much all of America saw the festivities for President-elect Obama in Chicago’s Grant Park this past Tuesday, an undeniably historic celebration with a theme of hope and change. And it also showed how far Chicago has come in terms of Election Night regaling. Jim Tully (1886-1947) was an author and journalist known for his tough, realistic yet occasionally poetic style, and he chronicled Chicago’s Election Night back a century or so ago in his 1924 "hobo autobiography" Beggars of Life.
Tully ran away from an orphanage when he was fourteen to ride the rails, work odd jobs, and pursue his dream of becoming a writer by hanging out in libraries and reading everything he could. He eventually made his way to publication, often recounting tales of his vagabond days. This particular glimpse of what went on in the Windy City post-Election describes the old Coliseum Building packed with ward bosses, saloon keepers, aldermen, powerful lawyers, pickpockets, minstrel show players and the boxer Jack Johnson. Also half-naked dancing girls and numerous other ladies of questionable reputation -- and of course all of those who had voted early and often:
The Coliseum was bedecked this night with flags and bunting…The floor was smooth as a looking-glass. The band played a waltz, and the dance was on.
Crowds of women from the red-light district were seated in boxes above the dancers. Red lilies they were in a carmine atmosphere, and they enjoyed it immensely...After them marched wine agents, keepers of bawdy houses, beefy saloon men, gamblers who resembled ministers, and members of local lodges….
Whiskey and champagne flowed along with racial and ethnic insults, while an electric moon beamed high above. Flags rippled in the air as drunken voices struggled to remember all the words to The Star Spangled Banner, and the evening ended with a speech on patriotism, freedom, and “how the stripes of that flag represent the pure souls of our women.”
Beggars of Life was made into a movie starring Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks, though parts of the book were toned down to fit Hollywood standards of the day. The book itself is an interesting historical read (though not at all politically correct) and a quirky odyssey of life on the road.
To find out more about Jim Tully, his writing, and the reissuance of some of his works, click here. Also, the 1928 movie Beggars of Life is noted as being a great Louise Brooks' performance and occasionally makes the rounds of film festival circuits.
