(Click on images to enlarge)

Pauline Gibling Schindler, 1920. R. M. Schindler photo. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

Pauline Schindler’s mercurial relationship with husband R. M., her penchant to surround herself with artistically-minded, leftist intelligentsia and the creation of a salon-like atmosphere at the Kings Road House are all well-documented in Robert Sweeney’s highly recommended “Life at Kings Road: As It Was 1920-1940″ in the 2001 MOCA exhibition catalog The Architecture of R. M. Schindler organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and Michael Darling from which much of the material in this post is gleaned. All references will be denoted by (Sweeney). Sweeney recreated a fascinating story from the lively and voluminous correspondence preserved by Pauline Gibling Schindler (PGS).

I hope to build upon Sweeney’s findings by concentrating more deeply upon PGS’s considerable efforts to promote and market the brand of modernism produced by her notable circle of avant-garde architects, composers, musicians, designers, dancers, artists, writers, gurus and bohemian and radical friends and acquaintances.Her importance to a wider acceptance and appreciation of modern architecture and the arts in Southern California is much under-appreciated as her Kings Road, Carmel and Ojai salons, editorials, articles, exhibitions and lecture bookings generated numerous contacts which resulted in important clients for both her husband and his erstwhile partner and tenant Richard Neutra and others fortunate enough to have been in her circle.

Other useful sources were: R. M. Schindler by Judith Sheine, Phaidon, 2001. (Sheine), The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume II: California, edited by Nancy Newhall, Aperture, 1961, (Weston), Dione Neutra’s Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932, Southern Illinois University Press, 1986, (P&F), Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, by Thomas S. Hines, (Sun-Hines), Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1982, (RN-Hines), and Esther McCoy’s Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys: Letters Between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, Arts + Architecture Press, 1979, (McCoy).

Pauline Gibling Schindler, from a prominent east coast family, studied music for four years at Smith College (see below) after which she moved to Chicago and taught music from 1916 to 1919 at Jane Addams‘ Hull House, a settlement house for the poor and center for social reformers and intelligentsia. During Pauline’s time at Smith, Addams and Emily Green Balch founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom for which both, on separate occasions, were to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Pauline’s mother Sophie became the Treasurer of the League. In 1919, Pauline met and married architect Rudolph Schindler, and moved with him to Taliesin, his employer Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Ironically, Richard Neutra would also briefly stay at Hull House upon his arrival in Chicago from New York in March 1924 where he taught children’s drawing classes to earn his keep. (RN-Hines, p. 48-9, P&F, p. 116).

Top center, Pauline Gibling and below center with cat, Dorothy Gibling, at a costume party, Smith College, 1915. (McCoy, p. 33).

Frank Lloyd Wright appointed Schindler superintendent of his office for the duration of his two year period in Japan supervising the construction of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. At the same time, with a large commission for the oil heiress, Aline Barnsdall, Wright set up office in Los Angeles, which is where the Schindler’s moved in 1920. The following year Schindler set up his own, independent practice and, in collaboration with Pauline’s college friend Marion Chace and her contractor husband John, designed and built the Kings Road House with financial support from Pauline’s parents. The Kings Road House, wrote the architectural historian Rayner Banham, “is perhaps the most unobtrusively enjoyable domestic habitat ever created in Los Angeles.” (Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 182).

The house reflected Pauline’s social philosophy, a place of simplicity where people from all walks of life could meet together. Pauline had expressed this kind of open meeting house in a letter to her mother well before she had met Schindler. She presciently wrote from Hull House in 1916,

During this period, the lifestyle embodied in the design for their house was observed by the Schindlers (and the Neutras after they moved in in March 1925) through diet and exercise, psychoanalysis, education, and the arts of music, dance, painting and photography. The outdoor courts were dining rooms and playrooms for their toddlers, who ran free under the sun year round. They slept in the open air, ate simple meals of fruits and vegetables by the fireplaces, and wore loose-fitting garments of natural fibers closed with ties rather than buttons. At their parties, the terraces served as stages for musical and dance performances; in the audiences were many aspiring California artists, actors and writers.

Edward Weston was one of the earliest visitors to the completed house. Weston likely met the Schindlers at the Walt Whitman School around 1921 where Pauline taught and Weston’s sons Chandler and Brett were enrolled. The Schindlers visited Weston’s studio in the summer of 1922 and later “when the evening was ripe” the group moved over to Kings Road. Weston “[was] of course very much excited about the house, and wanting to see it by daylight. All of it a fearfully stimulating evening…RMS and I couldn’t sleep, with the stimulus of the music, and Mr. Weston’s pictures.” (Artful Lives: Margrethe Mather, Edward Weston, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles by Beth Gates Warren, p. 253 and letter from SPG to family, July 1922). The Schindlers, and later the Neutras, would become lifelong friends and collaborators with Weston and his sons.

Former Neutra employee Harwell Hamilton Harris’s very insightful introduction to Esther McCoy’s Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys: Letters Between R. M. Schindler sheds much light on the Sunday evening open houses Pauline organized at Kings Road and the people who attended them, including himself after his first visit in 1928. His introductory comments were filtered through the lens of his wife, Jean Murray Bangs, who was a close friend of Pauline’s since her return to Los Angeles in 1921 from a radical foray in New York where she befriended idols of Pauline’s, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman and John Reed. (Harwell Hamilton Harris by Lisa Germany, University of Texas Press, 1991, p. 52).  He described, 

“Pauline – eager, ardent, ready for any new idea in any field – made an experience of everything and savored it to the full. … People who didn’t like her called her a poseur, which was unjust. She worked hard and did without almost all the things women commonly want, and did it with a grace few women in her position have achieved.” Harris continued, “The Schindler’s open house on Sunday evenings attracted the “arty” intellectuals of post-World-War I. … Hollywood drew them like a magnet. … Poets, playwrights, dancers, photographers and musicians were not the only visitors on these occasions. Socialists, reformers and intellectuals of all varieties were there. The talk was not chit-chat but about revolutionary ideas in all fields. The New, the Advanced. There were no fights because the participants, too, were advanced and so in fundamental agreement with one another. Most were locals; some were habitues; others were ones who came and went. Everyone felt free to bring a friend if he were interesting; it was a way to entertain.” (Two Journeys, pp. 13-14).

Harris then specifically recalled attendees Edward Weston, playwright and actor Maurice Browne, poet Robert Nichols, dancer John Bovingdon (see above), pianists Doris Levings and Max Pons, among others and finished with, “Whether the group was large, filling both studios and the garden, or small and restricted to one room or the patio, the place alone raised the common above the commonplace. It freed everyone’s expression. It was a tool Pauline and RMS used with imagination and skill and it deserves to be remembered.”

Thanksgiving at Kings Road, 1923. Clockwise from left, Herman Sachs, Karl and Edith Howenstein, Anton Martin Feller, E. Clare Schooler, unidentified, Betty Katz, Alexander R. Brandner, and obscured, Max Pons, to the right of Sachs. Not shown, the Schindlers and Dorothy Gibling. Photo by R. M. Schindler. From ”Life at Kings Road: As It Was 1920-1940″ by Robert Sweeney in The Architecture of R. M. Schindler, p. 97.

Despite the radical slant of most of the visitors to Kings Road, traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations were observed. The 1923 Thanksgiving feast seen above was attended by Herman Sachs, Karl and Edith Howenstein, A. R. Brandner, Betty Katz, Max Pons, E. Clare Schooler, Dorothy Gibling and others. Sachs, soon-to-be Schindler client and collaborator seen above left, established the short-lived Chicago Industrial Arts School at Jane Addam’s Hull House in 1920 and directed the Dayton Institute of Art in 1921-22 before moving to Los Angeles in 1923. Karl and Edith Howenstein (above back center) were also friends of the Schindlers in Chicago where Karl had also worked at the Art Institute before moving to Los Angeles to become Director of the Otis Art Institute. The Howensteins first lived in the Kings Road guest wing for two years between 1922-4.

Edward Weston, “Betty in Her Attic,” 1920. Betty Katz. Center for Creative Photography Weston Collection.

Former Kings Road tenant Viennese architect A. R. Brandner, who would later marry Katz in 1943, recalled, “Pauline made the gatherings but it was Schindler who enjoyed them.” The parties were, “…happy times, unique gatherings – the intelligentsia and desperate characters. Pauline preferred a serious party, but when Schindler and Sadakichi Hartmann got together it was glorious fun.” (McCoy, p. 14, 41). A multi-talented artist, writer, critic and actor, Hartmann played the role of the Chinese prince in Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad in 1923. (See below). He was favorably reviewed in a July 5, 1923 L.A. Times article “New Faces and New Angles on Favorites” by Edwin Schallert. (For an interesting sidebar on the discontent caused by the film caused in China see “The Thief of Bagdad Uproar” and my “Krisel and Alexander in Hollywood“).

Sadakichi Hartmann, 1919, Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

“Hartmann Reading Poe at Schindler’s”, pen and ink, Boris Deutsch, January 8, 1928. From the exhibition catalog The Life and Times of Sadakichi Hartmann, 1867-1944, UC-Riverside, 1970.

Sadakichi Hartmann in The Thief of Bagdad, 1923.

Announcement for a February 22, 1930 talk on modern art at Kings Road. From Sweeney, p. 107.

Noted English playwright and theater troupe organizer Maurice Browne, in his autobiography Too Late to Lament wrote, “And Pauline Schindler, brilliant, warm-hearted, bitter-tongued, who was trying to create a salon amid Hollywood’s cultural slagheap, invited me to her home to lecture on Keyserling.” Sweeney writes, Pauline was effusive in anticipation: “[the party]…is going to be huge. We have never had more than a hundred guests before … But this will be overflowing.” (Sweeney, p. 96 & PGS letter to her mother, [n.d.] circa October, 1925).

Pauline’s mother Sophie, a frequent guest at Kings Road wrote in a December 16, 1926 letter to her husband,”…when company drops in [Pauline] is a most fascinating hostess. Sunday evening it struck me again how much atmosphere, uniqueness and charm there is about her parties, and what interesting people she collects.” (Sweeney, p. 104).

The marriage was not a peaceful one. Schindler was truly a Bohemian and did not respect the institution of marriage, and behaved accordingly.Pauline had wanted to consider the marriage a legal formality to satisfy her family, but was much more conventional in her response to it than she imagined she would be. (From http://www.ex-tempore.org/ExTempore96/cage96.htm). The painter Conrad Buff, who gravitated in both the Kings Road and Jake Zeitlin social orbits and commissioned Neutra in 1927 to design the garage and entryway for his Eagle Rock house and studio, said of Schindler in his UCLA Oral History, “Schindler, besides being a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, was a very handsome fellow. He was quite a ladies’ man, and part of his business was to make love to all the ladles he could. He had a very interesting wife, but that didn’t bother him. There was quite a group of people that used to meet down at Schindler’s house.” (Buff Oral History).

PGS and RMS’s relationship finally reached the breaking point in late August 1927. Pauline packed up and left with son Mark in secrecy to avoid a confrontation. (Sweeney, P&F, p. 167). She had just weeks earlier written a highly favorable two-part review of tenant Richard Neutra’s Wie Baut Amerika? which was published in the July 30 and August 6 issues of the Los Angeles City Bulletin. This was about the time that Philip and Leah Lovell, RMS clients and Kings Road salon habitues, commissioned Neutra to design alterations for  Lovell’s Physical Culture Center in downtown Los Angeles and what would become his tour de force Lovell Health House which launched his distinguished career.

The Neutra’s had previously moved into the Kings Road guest-studio in March 1925 and the Chace wing about a year later. Galka Scheyer, Kings Road guest-studio tenant while studying modern architecture with Schindler for three months over the summer of 1927, was not only witness to Pauline’s departure but apparently facilitated the Lovell Health House commission by talking to Lovell, Schindler and Neutra about their mutual concerns of who would (or wouldn’t) be working on the Health House design. (Sweeney, P&F, p. 171 and “Braxton Gallery, 1928-1929, Hollywood” by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 87).

“Recalling Happy Memories”, Peter Krasnow, summer 1927. Galka Scheyer lecturing on The Blue Four at Kings Road. From Galka E. Scheyer and The Blue Four: Correspondence, 1924-1945 edited by Isabel Wunsche, Benteli, 2006.

Barnsdall, eager to start her own theater company in Chicago and produce her own plays, offered to build Browne and Van Volkenburg a larger, more modern theater whom she commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design preliminary plans for in 1915. Aline put the plans on hold as she moved to California in 1916 and opened a theater in rented space in Los Angeles. She then commissioned Wright to begin Hollyhock House on Olive Hill, the Schindler’s raison d’etre for moving to Los Angeles, originally planning to add a theater later which never came to pass. (From Frank Lloyd Wright: Hollyhock House and Olive Hill by Kathryn Smith, Rizzoli, 1992, pp. 21-23). When the Chicago Little Theater failed the next year, Van Volkenberg and Browne headed up theater troupes in both Seattle and on Broadway in New York to much critical acclaim. (NY Times Archives). Pauline coincidentally also knew Ellen Janson from her early 1920s involvement with one of the members of Aline Barnsdall’s experimental theater group. (Sheine, note 27, p. 283).

 

From Carmel-By-The-Sea by Monica Hudson, Arcadia, 2006. Carmel Pine Cone Office and later the Denny-Watrous Gallery, Dolores Ave., M. J. Murphy Builder, Lewis Josselyn photo.

 

 

The July 11th cover featured a photo of Point Lobos by Johan Hagemeyer and a feature story “The Good Neighbor” under Pauline’s byline on her erstwhile mentor Jane Addams and her Hull-House. Pauline also included a brief article “Maurice Browne in a Second Edition” reporting on Ellen Janson Browne and four-year old Maurice, Jr. passing through town and the whereabouts of Maurice Sr. currently producing a play of George Bernard Shaw’s in London. Pauline wrote of Browne, “In Carmel he remains a memory and an influence, for Morris Ankrum, George Ball, and many others here busy with the stage have had their first dramatic training under the direction of this intense and passionate artist.”

The July 18th issue featured a cover photo of Jane Addams and a headline announcement of her upcoming speaking engagement at the Golden Bough. It also included a letter “To Carmel With Love From Halcyon” from editorial board member Dora Hagemeyer who was spending the summer in the home of Ellen Janson and Maurice Browne and an announcement for the upcoming opening of an exhibition of the paintings of Henrietta Shore in the Hagemeyer Studio on Ocean Avenue. In her lengthy and insightful review of avant-garde pianist Henry Cowell’s performance at the Golden Bough which was illustrated with a Virginia Tooker woodcut, Pauline wrote, “The program was a study of the development of the tone cluster principle which used as a method by a versatile artist of unusually free imagination. Of these, some are small in range, and contribute a scintillating brilliance to simple diatonic material. It is as though the tones had passed through a sound prism, and been broken up into their parts and overtones.”

Shore’s “The Bull Fight” then appeared on the cover of the July 25th issue along with a poem by Dora Hagemeyer and an article discussing the financial crisis Edward Kuster was facing in his attempt to keep the Theatre of the Golden Bough open. Also in that issue, Pauline reported at length on the activities surrounding Jane Addams visit to Carmel. After a Wednesday luncheon in her honor at the Mission Tea House, Addams lectured on Sunday evening on “Governmental Steps Toward World Peace” to an overflow crowd at the Golden Bough Theatre which was followed by a reception at the home of Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter. Addams (see below) was on her way to Los Angeles for four days of speaking engagements and a banquet in her honor at the Biltmore Hotel and then to Hawaii for the Pan-Pacific Women’s Congress and Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  (“Los Angeles Will Honor Sociologist”, L.A. Times, July 26, 1928, p. I-11). It is likely Addams and Neutra’s paths also crossed during her Los Angeles visit.

Jane Addams, Los Angeles, July 1928. George W. Haley photo for the L.A. Herald-Examiner. Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

 

The August 1st issue featured Edward Weston’s “Shell” on the front cover, a review of Robinson Jeffers’ new book of poems Cawdor, and the marriage of Neutra and Schindler AGIC partner and Carmelite contributing editor Carol Aronovici. The August 15th number had Ellen Janson’s poem “Sirius” on the front page. The following week’s edition profiled San Francisco arts patron Albert M. Bender and reported on his visit to the Jeffers, Stanley Wood and the Steffens and his accompaniment by Mr. and Mrs. Ansel Adams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Carmelite, March 20, 1929. (From my collection).

Richard Buhlig, 1922. Margrethe Mather portrait. From Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration by Beth Gates Warren, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001, p. 97.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Carmelite, July 3, 1929, pp. 7 -8. (From my collection).

Henry Cowell, 1923. Margrethe Mather portrait. From Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration by Beth Gates Warren, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001, p. 111.

 

Dione Neutra in performance at Kings Road, 1928. From Nature Near: Late Essays of Richard Neutra, edited by William Marlin, Capra Press, 1989, p. 47.

With Richard just wrapping up the design for the Lovell Health House, the Neutra’s took a much-needed week’s vacation for the lecture and concert. They stopped on the way to Carmel after a delightful drive along the coast to observe “the strange inhabitants of Oceano.” (P&F, p. 206). The Neutra’s son Raymond recalls his mother Dione “talking about walking in the Oceano Dunes and coming across a naked hermit friend in his hut.” (July 15, 2010 e-mail message from Raymond Neutra to the author). Dione’s description of the two stormy night events in Carmel are recorded in a December 1928 letter to her parents. (P&F, p. 173). 

 

November 20, 1926 Los Angeles Times announcement from ProQuest.

In 1929 Hazel Watrous became associated the Seven Arts Press which printed The Carmelite. (See above). In 1935 Denny and Watrous established Carmel’s now-famed annual Bach Festival, a continuing highlight of the town’s social season.

 

The Bruton Sisters, Helen, Margaret and Esther (right). Imogen Cunningham portrait. From “The Brutons and How They Grew” by Dorothy Puccinelli, California Arts & Architecture, October 1940, p. 18. (From my collection).

Pauline published wood block and linoleum cut prints by Esther Bruton (see above 2 images), Carmelite staff artist and early Kings Road visitor Virginia Tooker, Carmelite contributing editors Stanley Wood and Ray Boynton, also a faculty member at the California School of Fine Arts (see below) and others. She published a Special Robinson Jeffers issue featuring his poetry, and also published poems by Dora Hagemeyer (see above front page), wife of photographer Johan Hagemeyer, long-time friend of Edward Weston, and erstwhile Schindler House tenants and briefly roommates Galka Scheyer (see below) and John Bovingdon (see earlier). PGS also published Scheyer’s article “Free, Imaginative and Creative Work in Drawing and Painting” in the June 26th issue on the work of her art students at the Anna Head School for Girls in Berkeley which was selected for European and West Coast exhibition tours sponsored by the American Federation of Arts. (For more on this see my Foundations of Los Angeles Modernism: Richard Neutra’s Mod Squad).

 

Raymond Boynton, circa 1940. Imogen Cunningham portrait.

 

Ray Boynton woodcut. The Carmelite, March 27, 1929, front cover. (From my collection).

Left, poems by Galka E. Scheyer. Right, an example of Pauline’s crisp ad and page layout. The Carmelite, July 3, 1929, pp. 5 & 9. (From my collection).

Pauline’s circle ran ads in The Carmelite which she took great pleasure in designing, as she did redesigning the front page masthead beginning with the May 30, 1928 issue, her first at the helm as editor. (see earlier covers above). The page layout and ad design in the July 3, 1929 issue (above right) includes ads for contributing editors Edward Weston and Stanley Wood and supporter Dene Denny.

Robinson Jeffers, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait from Weston’s Westons: Portraits and Nudes by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (From my collection).

Robinson Jeffers, Time, Vol. XIX, No. 14, April 4, 1929. Edward Weston cover photo.

In 1929 Pauline had a review of Robinson Jeffers’ poetry published in the prestigious literary journal Transition edited by Eugene Jolas in which she called him “a major American poet.” She was also likely responsible for the article “American Nature Photos” featuring Edward Weston’s work in the same issue.Pauline published a review titled “Poet on a Tower” of Jeffers’ latest book of poems, Dear Judas, in the April 30, 1930 issue of Survey Graphic. This period was the pinnacle of Jeffers’ fame as evidenced by Weston’s April 4, 1929 Time Magazine cover photo. (See above). Weston, (see portraits below) one of the earliest recruits to the Schindler’s Kings Road circle with his first enthusiastic visit recorded as being in May 1922, became a lifelong friend. (Sweeney, p. 92).

Left, Edward Weston circa 1940s. Ansel Adams Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/ Right, Weston portrait by Henrietta Shore, 1927. (From Henrietta Shore: A Retrospective Exhibition: 1900-1963, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, p. 48).

“Edward Weston on the Way” by Pauline Schindler, The Carmelite, December 26, 1928, p. 2. (From my collection).

Johan Hagemeyer Studio, Carmel. Photo courtesy OAC and U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library, Johan Hagemeyer Photo Collection.

 

Tired of city life, Weston moved to Carmel in early January 1929, trading spaces from a temporary stay in fellow photographer Johan Hagemeyer’s studio in San Francisco to renting his Carmel summer studio. Pauline’s article “Edward Weston on the Way” in the issue above announced the impending arrival of another friend from her Kings Road salons and soirees. Weston described the move at length in his Daybooks. (Weston, pp. 99-108). Pauline published Dora Hagemeyer’s poetry periodically in The Carmelite. (In 1923 Hagemeyer opened a portrait studio in San Francisco and also built a summer studio in Carmel which soon became a meeting place for artists and intellectuals. It was there that he met Weston, who encouraged Hagemeyer to further his career in photography). Weston and Hagemeyer had a falling out in late 1929 over the studio lease agreement. Weston then moved his studio to the Seven Arts Building upstairs from The Carmelite‘s offices in January 1930. (See photo below).

 

Left, Johan Hagemeyer, 1928. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/. Right, Johan Hagemeyer and Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, 1921. From Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration by Beth Gates Warren, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2001, p. 85.

In 1927 Lincoln Steffens and wife Ella Winter came to the U.S. and by chance to Carmel, where Steffens, looking for a quiet place to work, decided to settle. They bought a house from the artists Cornelis and Jessie Arms Botke on San Antonio near Ocean, which they called the Getaway. Steffens referred to it as a “refuge for any poor s.o.b. in a jam.” They lived there from 1927 to 1936. Typically, having avoided all of his friends by moving to a remote locality, he next invited them all to come visit. Their house became a gathering place for intellectuals far and wide. Robin and Una Jeffers and Edward Weston became their close friends. Winter and Steffens became contributing editors to The Carmelite beginning in 1928. Being used to the excitement of New York, Winter’s involvement with The Carmelite made living in “the sticks” bearable. Winter recalls in her 1963 autobiography And Not to Yield, “I became absorbed in the job. I was a journalist at last. It began to take all my time; when Pauline was away I did all her jobs.”  (For more on Winter and Steffens and Carmel in the 1930s see “Ella Winter: Gallant Fighter” by Connie Wright http://www.carmelresidents.org/News0505.html).

Ella Winter, 1932. Edward Weston Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

 

Describing Pauline’s impact on the village’s intelligentsia Winter continued,

 ”She was the divorced wife of an Austrian architect in Los Angeles she always called Aramess – later I discovered they were his initials, R. M. S. – and she was in many ways the moving spirit of the village…Pauline had to be modern about everything, but in her undifferentiating enthusiasms she sometimes saw further than the rest of us. When her friend Galka Scheyer came in 1928, with pictures by Paul Klee and the Blue Four that people laughed at and wouldn’t think of buying, Pauline said Klee could be understood in either poetry or music. She was the first to introduce us to Dada, surrealism, Schoenberg…This “crazy nut” as we thought of her, kept everything at a boil, the sensible and the ridiculous all mixed up. “

“But she’s crazy in the best sense,” Harry Dickinson maintained; and it must be said that Pauline achieved a good deal. She started our art gallery to show the work of local painters and exceptional photographers, Edward Weston, Edward [Johan] Hagemeyer, Ansel Adams; helped set up a music society that became celebrated, with international artists stopping on their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco to perform in Carmel; and it was Pauline the flibbertigibbet who sparked off our weekly, The Carmelite…The whole village was drawn into The Carmelite’s orbit. At studio parties they didn’t discuss psychoanalytical plurality or “the inevitable polarity of thought,” but the paper, its style and vocabulary, its make-up, illustrations, circulation.”

Ironically, Ella Winter would later become an avid collector of the Blue Four after marrying author, screenwriter and fellow communist David Ogden Stewart in 1940 in Hollywood. In a backhanded compliment to Pauline Schindler and Galka Scheyer she wrote in “I Bought a Klee” which appeared in the July 1966 issue of Studio International, 

“My relation to Klee had been non-existent. In 1928 a woman had come to the art colony-by-the-sea where I then lived with an exhibition of Die Blau Reiter. We were used in that colony to very modern music, ultra-modern design, avant-garde poetry, but the latest in painting had not yet reached Carmel. I looked at the pictures and with the rest of our jeering art population I’m afraid I jeered. Galka Scheyer, the Swiss woman who brought them, and an old friend of Klee’s, tried to explain them, but I don’ think it made any impact. She left with as many as she brought.”

In January 1929, contributing editor Lincoln Steffens tried to gain control of The Carmelite and turn it over to his wife Ella Winter. Pauline published Steffen’s letter to the editor in the January 23rd issue:

“There are rumors in circulation of a conspiracy…to oust me and my gang from the Carmelite. We are leaving of our own free, mechanistic will. You have always been glad to have us do all the work we would, as long as what we did was up to the high-flying standard you kept mentioning…” Taking exception to her lack of business acumen and flighty editorial style, Steffens continued, “I lifted up my highbrows and thought such an editor would be happier if she had the time to dance and sing and compose music and music criticism unhindered by and unhindering the mere business of journalism…” (Sweeney, p. 105).  

UPS staff writer Frank H. Bartholomew reported on the controversy which was picked up as far away as Pittsburgh. “The staff of the “Carmelite” has quit en masse, and the blanket resignation includes such prominent names as Fremont Older, Lincoln Steffens, Mrs. Lincoln Steffens (Ella Winter), Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field. Mrs.Pauline G. Schindler, the publisher, now holds the fort alone.” Pauline answered Steffen’s above diatribe thusly, “That staff tried harder to acquire the paper than to write for it.” (“Dispute Over Carmel Paper Amuses Coast”, Pittsburgh Press, February 15, 1929, p. 21).

Lincoln Steffens, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait from Weston’s Westons: Portraits and Nudes by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (From my collection).

A comparison these two mastheads indicates who Steffens’ “gang” members might have been. Left is from the December 26, 1928 issue and right is from March 20, 1929. The additions of trusted friends Edward Weston, Galka Scheyer, and Richard Neutra from the Kings Road circle after Steffens’ and Winter’s departure and financial help from her father gave Pauline the strength to continue publishing for eight more months, maintaining The Carmelite‘s undeniably high editorial standards and crisp graphic design and modern typography. (See example below).

“I, being on the editorial staff, had to listen in until after midnight though bed called me, having retouched all day. Village gossip about the divorce of the Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter. A letter from Una Jeffers, written on the train, again expressing their pleasure in the portraits. And a catalogue from Film und Foto – Stuttgart (see below): they reproduced my head of Galvan, and published my article, hung 18 of Brett’s photographs and 20 of mine. I sent 20 from each of us.”

Film und Foto was a very important avant-garde traveling exhibition in which Richard Neutra, through his European publishing and Deutscher Werkbund connections, was responsible for America’s contributions.

Weston writes in his January 3, 1929 Daybook entry,

“… Neutra is always keenly responsive, and knows whereof he speaks. Representing in America an important exhibit of photography to be held in Germany this summer, he has given me complete charge of collecting the exhibit, choosing the ones whose work I consider worthy of showing, and of writing the catalogue forward to the American group. … I have busy days ahead.” (Weston, pp. 102-3).

Weston wrote in his catalog section introduction “America and Photography”,

“I have written of photography as direct, honest, uncompromising, – and so it is when it is used in its purity, if the worker himself is equally sincere and understanding in selection and presentation. Then it has a power and vitality which moves and holds the spectator. There can be no lie in such photography. No human hand of possible frailty has in the recording lessened its pristine beauty, nor misrepresented its meaning, destroying significance.”

Neutra’s choice of Weston to make the American selections provided the entree for him, son Brett and friend and future Group f.64 member Imogen Cunningham (along with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, and others), to be included in this seminal show alongside the European avant-gardists. The below catalogue and exhibition poster as well as show installation were designed by El Lissitzky who also designed Neutra’s 1930 book Amerika (see directly below) which features a 1927 Brett Weston photo of a factory in Los Angeles in El Lissitsky’s cover photomontage and internal photos by both Brett and Edward. This was likely the first cover photo Brett had ever had published and it was also published in the Los Angeles Times as part of Athur Millier’s review of his first one-man show in July 1930 at Jake Zeitlin’s Book Shop. (Millier, Arthur, “”Photographs for Himself,” L.A. Times, July 25, 1930, p. III-12).

Amerika: Die Stilbildung des Neuen Bauens in den Verienigten by Ricard Neutra, Verlag Von Anton Scholl, 1930. 1927 Brett Weston photo of a Los Angeles factory included in the cover photo montage designed by El Lissitzky. From my collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film und Foto exhibition catalog and poster, 1929, Deutschen Werkbunds, Stuttgart. El Lissistzky cover design and Willi Ruge poster design. Film und Foto

Right, Manuel Hernandez Galvan, 1924. Edward Weston portrait from above exhibition catalog.

On September 16th, the Steffens “gang” finally wrested control of The Carmelite from Pauline. The meeting she called to hopefully garner badly needed financial support turned into a palace coup. The September 20 issue of the Carmel Pine Cone reported in an editorial titled “Torn From the Arms of its Mother”, “Coolly, almost coldly then, the deal was put through. New papers were drawn, strictly legal: a pen was placed in the shaking hand of Mrs. Pauline Schindler; “Sign on the dotted line,” came the command. And Mrs. Schindler signed.” The Carmelite folded for good in December 1932. (Sweeney, p. 105).

 

A September 20, 1929 entry in Weston’s Daybook references Pauline’s freelance work and a peek into the Carmel social scene she was undoubtedly involved in. “Up at 4:00 and in my darkroom straightening prints from work of yesterday and the day before: work which was strenuous enough to put me to bed at 8:30. At last I have been printing the peppers. I had to have an excuse to do them for conscience’s sake, for orders are still behind: the excuse was Pauline’s request for several prints for Vogue. But I notice that instead of printing just one, I found it necessary to print five, – for selection! Well, they are gorgeous, – the strongest things I have done, outside of some portraits… A big mask party planned for tomorrow night, which Ramiel [McGehee] is engineering. Over fifty invited from all walks of life: Pebble Beach and Highlands Society to Carmel Bohemians! I am in the excitement only as a spectator: until the night!”

Weston’s Daybook entry for October 27, 1929 reads, “…Dr. and Mrs. Lovell arrived wanting to take Brett and me to a football game. Another day lost, at least for work. Friends arrive here on their vacation, and in vacation moods. One cannot always deny them.” This visit occurred just four days after receiving the certificate of occupancy for their new Neutra-designed Health House near Griffith Park in Los Angeles.PGS left Carmel a short time later but returned to visit often, especially for exhibition openings such as Edward Weston’s at the Denny-Watrous Gallery.For example, her review of Weston’s July 1931 retrospective exhibition was published in the July 29th issue of The Carmelite indicating that she was still actively participating in Carmel events although no longer officially associated with her old pride and joy. (See the 1946 MOMA exhibition catalogue The Photographs of Edward Weston edited by Nancy Newhall, p. 36).


For a period of years she gravitated between the Theosophist communities of Halcyon and nearby Oceano and Ojai where Mark was in enrolled in the private Ojai Valley School from October 1932 to June 1937. (Sweeney, p. 111). The Schindlers and Neutras were both involved with people associated with the Krotona Institute of Theosophy headquartered in Beachwood Canyon until it moved in 1926 into a complex of buildings near Ojai, California, designed by Robert Stacy-Judd. (Krotona Colony in Hollywood). Renowned Indian mystic and guru Jiddu Krishnamurti also set up shop for his Order of the Star sect in Ojai the same year where he was visited by wealthy Theosophist supporter J. J. (Koos) van der Leeuw, brother of future Neutra VDL Research House financier C. H. (Kees) van der Leeuw in 1928. (See article below). Koos gave numerous Theosophical lectures around Los Angeles during visits in 1924, 1928 and September 1931. (Los Angeles Times). He could very well have crossed paths with the architect as his Industrialist/Theosophist brother had visited Neutra in Los Angeles during May 1931 to view the Lovell Health House and Neutra’s other projects and lecture on “The Future of Modern Factories” at an Electric Club meeting at the Biltmore Hotel. (See “Architecture to be theme of Dutch Speaker”, L.A. Times, May 18, 1931, p. I-3. See also Richard Neutra and the California Art Club for more on Kees and Neutra).

 

 

 

 

Standing from left to right: Koos van der Leeuw, AM Cochius (Leerdam glass factory director), D. Rajagopal, Kees van der Leeuw. Sitting: Nityananda (Krishnamurti’s brother), Philip Baron van Pallandt, Krishnamurti, Harold Baillie-Weaver (teacher Krishnamurti), Count Fabrizi Ruspoli and Miss. Cornelia Dilkraaf, National Representative of the Association in the Netherlands. Photo taken 09-30-1923. From http://www.landgoedeerde.nl/Krishnamurti.htm

 

The above group portrait of a 1923 Theosophical get together at Castle Eerde is important as it links the van der Leeuw brothers, Krishnamurti and D. Rajagopal. Rajagopal’s wife Rosalind later had an affair with Krishnamurti and commissioned Neutra in 1934 to design a remodel of her apartment in Hollywood. (Discussed in more detail later in this article).

Jiddu Krisnamurti, ca. 1920s. Photographer unknown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti

“The more I see of the reaction the so-called ‘modern architecture’ causes at large, the more I can perceive the confusion this new style is creating in the minds of the public and the experts. Nobody seems able to distinguish between sincere contemporary work and the atrocities of the fashionable fakers. It is urgently necessary to explain the real meaning of the movement and to give the public a vocabulary thru which to understand it intelligently … I am not a professional lecturer but find myself forced to undertake such educational efforts as a matter of self defense.” (From Framed Space).

Henry Braxton Gallery, 1624 N. Vine, Hollywood, R. M. Schindler, 1929. Viroque Baker photos. (From Sheine, p. 144). Note the Schindler-designed Braxton Chair in the right photo.

There is evidence that PGS was collaborating with Galka Scheyer’s efforts to market the “Blue Four” as the Braxton Gallery (see above) was consecutively exhibiting Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Feininger and Klee from March through May, 1930. R. M. Schindler designed the “ultra-modern” gallery next door to the Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant at Hollywood and Vine for art dealer Henry Braxton which opened in September 1929. (For much more on this see my Richard Neutra and the California Art Club). The nexus for the commission was none other than Pauline’s now close friend Galka Scheyer who introduced RMS to Braxton. Scheyer and Braxton had hammered out the details for a long-term collaboration the previous May in San Francisco. Scheyer probably knew Braxton through her connection to Edward Weston and art dealer Howard Putzel, as well as with Sam and Harriet Freeman, whose house guest she was in 1930 before staying again at Kings Road in 1931-32 in the Chace wing. Galka collaborated on the gallery design with Braxton and Schindler and helped plan the initial exhibitions in Braxton’s new space.

An agent without a gallery, the shrewd Scheyer was eager to associate with Braxton’s establishment, as she had with the Oakland Art Gallery in the Bay Area, to both mount exhibitions of the Blue Four and other avant-garde artists and to gain entree into Hollywood’s elite emigre circle, especially, Josef von Sternberg who had recently purchased 18 pieces from Braxton’s Archipenko show at his previous location. Schindler was also commissioned to design frames for some of her clients including Louise and Walter Arensberg. (See “Braxton Gallery, 1928-1929, Hollywood” by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 88).

The Blue Four Exhibition Catalogue, Braxton Gallery, Hollywood, 1930. Courtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.

Braxton and Scheyer had originally planned to open the new space with the “Blue Four” but their most important prospective client, movie producer and future Neutra client Josef von Sternberg, had already scheduled a trip to Europe. The duo substituted Peter Krasnow, close friend of Scheyer, Pauline and Edward Weston (see images below), for the inaugural show which included seven of his carved wood reliefs. RMS and Richard Neutra had recently collaborated with Krasnow on the design of a major commission for a ceremonial cabinet for Temple Emmanuel-El San Francisco described in a July 28, 1929 L.A. Times article “Krasnow’s Work Shown” as “an unusual thing of wood and glass which houses vestments and religious objects.” Krasnow carved the panels which were applied to the sides of the chest. Weston was shown the chest in December 1928 after which he wrote in his Daybook, “I take my hat off to you Peter, for a superb piece of work both in conception and technical execution. Tears came to my eyes,…” (Weston, p. 98). L.A. Times art critic Arthur Millier gave the avant-garde space a rave review with a September 15, 1929 article “‘Ultra’ Gallery Arrives: Hollywood Sees ‘Modern’ Spaces and Angles as Background for Art.”

An exhibition of Edward Weston photographs followed Krasnow and Scheyer’s “Blue Four” series of individual shows soon followed in March and April 1930 after von Sternberg’s return from Europe. All of the exhibits were favorably reviewed by Millier. Weston had a concurrent show open February 8th at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. It seems logical that Pauline and Galka coordinated their efforts to draw bigger crowds to, and enhance the impact of, their related exhibitions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left, Peter Krasnow, 1929. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/ Right, “The Photographer” (Edward Weston), lithograph, 1928, by Peter Krasnow. (From “Naturally Modern” by Victoria Dailey in LA’s Early Moderns, p. 78).

Schindler also was commissioned to draw preliminary plans for a beach house (see below) for Braxton and actress, author and screenwriter Viola Brothers Shore which never came to fruition possibly due to their move too New York not too long thereafter.

Henry Braxton and Viola Brothers Shore Residence, Venice Beach, 1928-30, unbuilt.

Not long after returning from Carmel, probably in early 1930, Pauline rented Frank Lloyd Wright’s Storer House at 8161 Hollywood Blvd. where she stayed for over a year. Galka Scheyer also stayed for a period of time and she also sublet an entire floor to Brett Weston where he established his first photographic studio. Weston wrote in his Daybook on February 21, 1931, 

“…it took me over an hour on the bus from Pauline’s, who lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house [Storer House] in the foothills. Brett has his studio there, so I stayed with him rather than Flora. Paul, I got to know and appreciate better than ever, to really love her.” (Weston, p. 204). 

 

Brett Weston portrait of Jock Peters, ca. 1930, likely commissioned by Pauline for her “Creative Contemporary Architecture of California” exhibition while Brett was staying at the Storer House. Image discovered by Melinda Gandara, archivist, UC Santa Barbara Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections, Jock Peters Collection. 

In note 31, p. 247 in his Wright in Hollywood: Visions of a New Architecture, Robert L. Sweeney writes, “Mrs. Schindler had earlier justified moving into the house to her father, who was supporting her: she was there as a caretaker, paying a nominal sum each month; the house was to serve as a “background” for work she was “planning to do, – which involves an active association with four or five modern architects here, and which has the purpose of selling their design services to the rest of the world.”

Brett Weston, 1931. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

In a  March 1, 1931 letter to Frank Lloyd Wright’s wife Ogilvanna from the Storer House (see photo below), Pauline wrote, “the room in which I sit writing is a form so superb that I am constantly conscious of an immense obligation to mr. wright. when my small son, – eight years old, – was feeling very tender toward me one day he said, “muv, i love you so much…as i love this room.” such superlative joy it gives us both. like a drama of sophocles, a violin sonata of haendel.” (Wright in Hollywood, p. 63). This letter could have been an attempt to mollify Wright after his refusal to participate the previous year in her “Creative Contemporary Architecture in California” exhibition and lecture series plans. It is hard not to see the irony (and the psychological interplay in her relationships with RMS and Wright) of Pauline’s staying in Wright’s Storer House with young son Mark so close to Kings Road.

Storer House, 8161 Hollywood Blvd., 1924, Frank Lloyd Wright. R. M. Schindler photo. From Wie Baut Amerika? by Richard Neutra, Julius Hoffmann, 1927, p. 61. (From my collection).

Pauline undertook another entrepreneurial venture while staying in the Storer House. She developed a line of stuffed animals called “Christopher Robin’s Friends” to hopefully take advantage of the “Winnie the Pooh” craze sweeping the country at the time. Her distinctive graphic design for the below ad appeared in the November 1930 issue of Toy World. An accompanying story by “Winnie-the-Pooh Rockets to Toy Stardom” in the same issue references “Pauline Schindler, Hollywood, maker of Christopher Robin’s Friends soft toys.” (Toy World, November 1930, p. 58). She more than likely was working with noted Stephen Slesinger, creator of comic strip characters and the father of the licensing industry, who had acquired US and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to Winnie-the-Pooh from A. A. Milne in the 1930s, and developed Winnie-the-Pooh commercializations for more than 30 years. Pauline might have learned a few pointers on the craft of toy making from erstwhile Kings Road salon habitue Barbara Morgan who was a renowned puppeteer, artist and art teacher at UCLA. (Annita Delano Oral History). Morgan’s husband Willard was also Richard Neutra’s photographer of record for his 1927 Jardinette Apartments and 1929 Lovell Health House. Pauline and Barbara shared interests in painting, theater, dance, exhibiting, puppetry, and music thus it is not a stretch to imagine her picking up some tips from Barbara on stuffed-animal making before she and Willard moved to New York in 1930.

“Christopher Robin’s Friends” ad, Pauline Schindler, Toy World, November 1930, p. 19. Courtesy of Timothy Schwartz, 10-7-2010.

Scheyer and Schindler likely continued to coordinate their exhibitions and lecture bookingsas their “Blue Four” and “Creative Contemporary Architecture of California” exhibits traveled the circuit of West Coast galleries and Western Association of Art Museums. (See “The Impact From Abroad: Foreign Guests and Visitors” by Peter Selz in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 102). As an example, either Pauline or Galka booked a lecture for RMS on the relationship of architecture to the Bauhaus at the Oakland Art Gallery in conjunction with Scheyer’s April-May 1930 Lyonel Feininger exhibition. (See “Modernist Photography and the Group f.64″ by Therese Thau Heyman in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 249). (For a fabulous John M. Weatherwax character study of Galka Scheyer with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in San Francisco at about this time, go to Diego, Galka and Toby).

 

Edward Weston’s Daybook indicates that on April 7, 1930, Galka Scheyer, traveling between the Braxton Gallery and Oakland Art Gallery Feininger shows with Mark Schindler, visited him in Carmel for two days and critiqued his print of fish and kelp from Point Lobos. Weston wrote that she [Scheyer] was a “dynamo of energy”; her insight was “of unusual clarity”; she had “an ability to express herself in words, brilliantly…she is an ideal go-between for the artist and his public.” (Weston, p. 151-2). Weston’s account of a February 2, 1927 costume party hosted by Peter Krasnow, is indicative of the closeness of his friendship with Scheyer. He writes, “…Galka Scheyer begged my leather breeches, putees, pistola and Texano, so I got in exchange her outfit even down to panties, and a marvelous make-up job to boot. As a ravishing woman I was a success with the women. (Weston, p. 3).

An expanded version of the Pauline’s exhibition under the title “Contemporary Architecture, Decoration and Store Design” was exhibited at the new Plaza Art Center (see photo below) in October 1931 in the old Italian Hall Building’s newly remodeled second floor gallery space run by the Plaza Art Club. (See “Roundabout the Galleries”, L.A. Times, Oct. 11, 1931). Austrian emigre and Kings Road salon habitue F. K. Ferenz was responsible for remodeling the building and commissioning R. M. Schindler to design plans for remodeling the building’s arcade shops and a restaurant. (See “Plaza Art Center to Open”, August 16, 1931 Los Angeles Times and“Embassy Restaurant and Arcade,” 1931 project, in Schindler by David Gebhard, p. 200). Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, after consulting with Richard Neutra and Sumner Spaulding on fresco techniques and materials, completed his Mural “Tropical America”, also commissioned by Ferenz, on the side of the building in 1932. (See photo below). (See my “Richard Neutra and the California Art Club” for much more on the Siqueiros mural. See also Eric Merrill’s excellent blog post for more on Siqueiros and Neutra’s involvement with the California Art Club. Thanks to Ellen Landau, Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve for alerting me to this link.). (See also the Ruben Martinez article “Uncovering L.A.’s whitewashed history” in the September 19, 2010 issue of the Los Angeles Times and “Bringing ‘America Tropical’ back to life” in the September 9, 2010 issue).

Italian Hall, Plaza Art Center, Olvera Street as it looks today. Note the 1932 David Siqueiros mural “Tropical America” on the side of the building.

The same participants were included in an exhibition at the New York Architectural League from April 18 to 25, 1931. Pauline’s curatorial work bringing together this group for the West Coast traveling show prompted Joseph Urban, who had been in contact with RMS since 1922, to write to show organizer Ely Jacques Kahn on December 12, 1930,

“Group of at least seven California architects, including Schindler, Neutra, Peters, Davidson, Webber [sic], Wright, are willing to send drawings for Architectural League Exhibition. Will be valuable stimulus to the progressive movement East. Can we give them a good room or alcove for them to show effectively together?” (Sheine, p. 256).

This show also preceded the 1932 MOMA exhibition by a year. Helping to grease the skids was Neutra’s presence in New York on a stopover during his world tour the date the letter was written. Three weeks later Neutra would have the honor of presenting an inaugural series of three lectures in Urban’s recently completed New School for Social Research Building’s new auditorium.

After initially agreeing to be part of the West Coast exhibition, and despite Pauline’s praise of his groundbreaking work and heartfelt recognition of his influence on her husband and Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright angrily requested to be removed from all future showings. He had apparently heard through son Lloyd, who had refused to participate, that the exhibition was being titled “Three Architects of International Renown” or as he later described it, “Frank Lloyd Wright middle, Neutra right, Schindler left” or as “Christ crucified between two thieves.” As Wright explained it in a letter to Lewis Mumford, “All novices, in the nature of the Cuckoo, have not hesitated to lay their eggs in my nest…” (Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, p. 393 and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water by David Hoffmann, p. 88).

About this time PGS wrote Edward Weston trying to interest him in doing a book of his photographs. He replied quoting from her letter, “‘Let’s do a book on Edward Weston.’ I do not think he has had the nationwide publicity to warrant a publisher’s interest. They are not in business except to make money. My love and greetings, Edward.” (McCoy, p. 59). (Weston’s first monograph would be produced by his friend and patron Merle Armitage in 1932). Weston presented Pauline a portrait of Diego Rivera made in Mexico in 1924, possibly around this time. (McCoy, p. 60, n.d.).

Diego Rivera, Mexico, 1924. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Rendering of Schindler’s Wolfe House on Catalina Island announcing Schindler’s lecture at the Denny-Watrous Gallery. The Carmelite, September 4, 1930, p. 1.

 

Schindler lecture announcement. The Carmelite, September 4, 1930, p. 4.

Pauline had also been trying to arrange lectures by Neutra and Schindler at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. Hazel Watrous guaranteed either a $25 fee, replying, “Schindler has a mastery and charm, Neutra has ideas about mass production. I’ll leave the choice to you…We have arranged with Galka Scheyer to have her exhibit here in June. Edward Weston has been showing his prints for several weeks.” (McCoy, p. 60).  PGS then booked a lecture for Schindler on September 6th. (See above). Still a frequent contributor since her ouster, Pauline introduced Carmelite readers to Schindler with an introductory article in which she wrote,

“Of the three architects [Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler] it is often said that Schindler is most the creative genius. He sees first the pure form. His designs are uncompromising as far as period architecture is concerned. Those who have wondered why the modernist does not build himself a “Spanish house” will have an opportunity to hear the basic principles back of modern building when Schindler speaks on Saturday. An opportunity for questions will also be given, and slides of Schindler’s and Neutra’s buildings will accompany the talk.” (Schindler, Pauline, “Schindler, Modern, Speaks on Architecture,” The Carmelite, September 4, 1930, p. 7).

Long-time family friend and still on the Carmelite’s editorial board, Edward Weston took great exception to the treatment Schindler suffered at the hands of his patron John O’Shea after his gallery lecture.

“Schindler bore himself with dignity, he was a gentleman, the others were not. I admit John O’Shea had been drinking, good, – one’s character is revealed with a few drinks. After the lecture he made disparaging remarks, even indulging in personalities in a loud voice standing near Schindler, head turned toward him, face in a leering mask. Disgusting! I sat down and wrote The Carmelite an article giving full vent to my feelings, not using names, but several offenders were plainly enough indicated.” (Weston, p. 187).

Weston’s angry letter to the editor presciently ended with,

“Always the new in art, science, philosophy, has been ridiculed. But this time the joke is on the persecutors, for the new architecture has long ago been accepted, is spreading all over the world. It is for those who live today. Future generations, looking back upon the beginnings of the American Renaissance, which we are in, and being so close cannot recognize, will point out such names as Wright, Neutra, Schindler, who in the face of smirks and guffaws, went their own way – building with foreesight, faith and hard work.” (Weston, Edward,  ”Schindler,: The Carmelite, September 11, 1930, p. 6.

Soon thereafter, John O’Shea invited Weston to a stag party which he tried to get out of but finally attended. He wrote in his September 17th Daybook entry, “I spent my evening trying to keep them off art and keep my temper. Dickinson said, “Weston is too serious!” But they were the serious ones – that [Carmelite] article had a sting! I was sober enough to sit back and watch the others, especially John: and his face revealed much. I saw a man, soured, cynical, negative. Perhaps he knows he can never reach the heights he tried for. A fine painter, but nowhere near a great artist. I feel sorry for him, but that does not excuse his childish nonsense.”

In April 1932 Hazel Watrous asked Weston to write a review for The Carmelite for the Denny-Watrous Gallery John O’Shea exhibit and he agreed writing, “I sweat doing it, – because to a degree I had to resort to evasion…” Hazel, Dene, John and wife Molly all asked him to do the review. “Each one of these friends has not only been very kind to me, but has helped materially to raise my economic status. Of course I am trying to excuse my guilty conscience.” (Weston, p. 211-2).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Carmel Hours”, Pauline Schindler, Touring Topics, November 1931. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

 

Pauline’s above 1931 slice-of-life story “Carmel Hours” with Edward Weston photos depicting a day in Carmel and surrounding area was published in editor Phil Townsend Hanna’ Touring Topics. (See my related post Phil Townsend Hanna). The article mentions many of her old friends and haunts and gives insight to her memorable days spent editing The Carmelite in 1928-29 where, in my opinion, she was at her creative best and was probably most happy.

John Varian, Halcyon, 1920s. Ansel Adams Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

 

Temple of the People, Halcyon, Theodore Eisen, Architect, 1925

 

Edward Weston’s Daybook provides another link between Cowell and Halcyon with this August 24, 1930 entry, “Last night to Henry Cowell’s New Operetta, “the Building of Bamba,” given at the Forest Theater: So poorly produced that one could hardly say whether it had possibilities or not. Many of the cast were from Halcyon, colony of mystics. I have my doubts about the esoteric when it does not include the aesthetic! I certainly would not have gone to an opera, disliking stage bellowing, – worse combined with acting, even if the bellowers are good: these were awful, – most of them, but I had hopes this might be a new note, or new music from Henry. But no, much of it sounded like old church hymns poorly sung.”

Another close friend of the Varian’s was Irish poet and mystic Ella Young who, after emigrating from Ireland in 1925 to escape imprisonment for supporting the Irish Republican Army, lectured widely across the United States and taught Celtic mythology and Irish history at U. C. Berkeley before settling in Oceano. Ella’s audiences were enthralled – not only by her great knowledge but also by the beauty and romance of her words. She became an important literary and spiritual figure in California, much as she had been in Dublin, influencing people like poet Robinson Jeffers, photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston (see portraits below), artist John O’Shea, and composer Harry Partch. She found her faeries again in the sacred land of Point Lobos and in the isolation of her cottage garden on the dunes of Oceano . http://www.thesunsraven.com/dsellayoung.html

Ella was responsible for introducing her lifelong friend and fellow Irish Republican Army supporter Gavin Arthur, grandson of former President Chester A. Arthur, to the Varian’s, through which he discovered the Oceano Dunes. (see below). Arthur settled in the Dunes in 1930 with the vision of forming a utopian society of like-minded individuals there. Ella would visit often and christened the Dunite settlement Moy Mell, Gaelic for “Pastures of Honey.” She could feel the rhythms of the Dunes and the vibrations in the individual coves.

Chester Allen (Gavin) Arthur III, Moy Mell, 1932. Photo courtesy of Dr. Rudy Gerber. (From The Dunites by Norm Hammond, p. 56).

 

 

Ella Young and Virginia Best Adams in Santa Fe, NM, 1929. Ansel Adams photo. From Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, New York Graphic Society, 1985.

On a 1929 trip to Santa Fe to photograph people and landscapes, Ansel Adams and wife were accompanied by Ella Young whom Adams described, “Ella was an event! Superficially an eccentric, she was a brilliant and sensitive woman with an imposing career in law and politics and had been dangerously active in the Irish Revolution. Feeling that she had fulfilled her obligation to society, she turned to poetry and Irish myths. Ella believed in the Little People and said that she communicated with them often, especially her indentured pixie, Gilpin.”

Ella Young’s cottage in Oceano, 2008. Denise Sallee photo. http://www.thesunsraven.com/dsellayoung.html

 

In the August 29, 1929 issue of The Carmelite Pauline featured a Helen Bruton woodcut and a poem by John Varian on the front page and a Dora Hagemeyer article “A Day with Ella Young” which described her home and garden and John Varian installing a bookshelf for her. Ella Young sat for both Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, both of whom were very impressed by her persona and beliefs.

In his autobiography Maurice Browne described Ella Young as “looking like a six-thousand-year-old Druid priestess who had just sat to Rider Haggard for her portrait.” He recalled a picnic with her and Ellen Janson on the sand-dunes where Young invoked a spell on a firm of Los Angeles realtors who were selling lots to far-distant Middle-Westerners. “She drew a circle in the sand…and for an hour within that circle performed rites and in a language unknown to me chanted incantations. When finished she erased the circle and said: “I think that we should hurry home.” We hurried home. Within ten minutes over those few thousand square yards there broke a storm unparalleled, it was said later, in living memory.” (Too Late to Lament, p. 281).

Some very interesting interviews indeed of Ella Young herself, and Gavin Arthur and Ansel Adams specifically pertaining to Young and her circle can be listened to at the following link. http://www.dunescollaborative.org/EllaAudio.html

Gavin Arthur invited part-time Halcyon resident and Kings Road habitue Ellen Janson mentioned earlier and  friend Pauline to be assistant editors of his new publishing venture, Dune Forum. Pauline’s first recorded visit to Moy Mell was in September 1933. (Sun-Hines p. 325). The initial six-page “Contributors Number” (see below) published in late summer 1933 included an opening one-page editorial by Gavin describing the Dunes, their psychological importance being halfway between the two West Coast metropolises of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the aims of the magazine and solicitations for contributions of material from like-minded individuals. Later in the issue he describes the Dunes lifestyle in much detail.

Oceano Dunes, Drawing by John O’Shea. Front Cover, Dune Forum Contributor’s Number, circa August 1933.

Editorial Headquarters for Dune Forum, Moy Mell, 1933-4. Courtesy Schindler Family Collection, Friends of the Schindler House. (Sweeney, p. 111).

 

Ella Young then described Gavin and Janson:

Ellen Janson is a recognized poet whose work has appeared in such magazines as the London Mercury, Harper’s, Vogue, Poetry. Born and brought up in Seattle, she is a westerner of the modern generation, tall, free, forward-looking. Although she has spent just enough time in London, Paris, Berlin, New York to be thoroughly cosmopolitan, her heart has always been on this Coast, her home in Los Angeles, her chief inspiration in the Dunes. Her exquisite taste, her sure sense of beauty, will bring to the Dune Forum a distinction of which it will have the right to be proud.”

Janson can be seen in the below 1948 photo on the deck of her Schindler-designed home during the most serious period (late 1940s and early 1950s) of their likely long-term relationship. Schindler apparently previously received the steep hillside lot in payment for design of the Laurelwood Apartments. (Sheine, note 27, p. 283). Janson also wrote the first significant Schindler biography in 1938 which was later included in a “book” he assembled compiling all of his published written articles, a map, notes, a directory, and a list of works which was sent to various publishers in the late 1940s, including Peter Blake at the Museum of Modern Art to try to promote interest in a monograph of his work. (Sheine, p. 265).

Ellen Janson, 1948, Janson Residence, R. M. Schindler. Photo courtesy of the Architecture and Design Collection, UC Santa Barbara. (From The Architecture of R. M. Schindler, p. 164).

 

Envelope for a letter from RMS to Ellen Janson, postmarked October 22, 1947. From LA Modern Auctions Catalog, February 10, 2008, lot 61, Rudolph M. Schindler ephemera. Lot included numerous letters from Rms to Janson spanning a 20-year period.

Letter from RMS to Ellen Janson, dated October 28, 1947. From LA Modern Auctions Catalog, February 10, 2008, lot 61, Rudolph M. Schindler ephemera. Lot included numerous letters from RMS to Janson spanning a 20-year period.

 

Arthur closes Dune Forum’s Contributors’ Number with acknowledgments to: John O’Shea who did the cover drawing, Ella Young, Leone Barry, and Harwood White; and for the promised co-operation of Jack Conroy, Lincoln Steffens, Robinson Jeffers, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Sara Bard Field, Charles Erskine, Scott Wood, J. Paget Fredericks, Marie Welsh, Roderick White, Stewart Edward White, and the many other good friends of the Dune Forum.

All seven issues of Dune Forum are available in their entirety in PDF format on-line at Dune Forum.

Pauline wrote the above article, “Oceano Dunes and Their Mystics” in the fall of 1933 and submitted it to editor Phil Townsend Hanna’s Touring Topics to hopefully help market Dune Forum. By the time it was published in February 1934, the magazine had changed it’s name to Westways and Dune Forum was into it’s third issue. The article describes the Dunes and surrounding environs and local inhabitants including Ella Young and Gavin Arthur and the impending publication of Dune Forum. I speculate that the two people saluting the sun on top of the Dunes are nudists Elwood Decker and Pat O’Hara who had to don bathing suits for the photo shoot. One of them, most likely O’Hara, wrote a “Rejoinder” to Loring Andrews’ article “Nudism – What Is It?” for the January 1934 issue under the nom de plume “A Goofy Nudist.” Maurice Browne expounded at length on the Dunites in his autobiography. “Near a tumbledown jetty jutting into the ocean stood a cluster of dilapidated hovels. Here for eight or nine months of the year lived the hobo commoners, … Unseen in the sand-dune desert, the hobo aristocracy [the Dunites] lived all year round.” (Too Late to Lament, p. 279).

Oceano Dunes, 1933, Brett Weston. From The Photographer and the American Landscape, Museum of Modern Art, 1963.

 

The January 15, 1934 issue of Dune Forum above featured a cover photo by Brett Weston and an editorial by Pauline titled “North South” in which she reports on a school to be designed by Richard Neutra and Krisnamurti’s impending visitation to Ojai. The issue also contained poetry by Ella Young and an article on Communism by Ella Winter, who continued to contribute to The Carmelite after Pauline’s ouster. Her page 5 contributor’s bio reads, “Ella Winter is known to many as Mrs. Lincoln Steffens. She is a writer and lecturer highly valued by the Communist Party. She is the author of “Red Virtue”, and represents The New Masses in California.”

 

 

The February 15th issue features a Willard Van Dyke cover photo of the dunes. Edward Weston, a longtime friend and mentor of Van Dyke and fellow Group f.64 member along with Ansel Adams, visited the Dunes with him for the first time just weeks earlier, more than likely through his connection with Pauline, to obtain cover photos for this and future issues.

 

Willard Van Dyke, 1932. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

 

The opening editorial reviews Ella Winter’s article in the previous issue, “In Carmel, Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter seemed equally convinced that unless every intelligent person throws himself body and soul into the Communist Cause we will soon have a Fascist Terror in this country that will put both Mussolini and Hitler into the shade…” and references composer John Cage’s first visit to Moy Mell and includes his “Counterpoint” to Roderick White’s critique on “Modern Music.” Poetry by John Varian was published posthumously. This may have been about the time Pauline’s relationship with Pat O’Hara temporarily ended and her affair with John Cage began. Cage stayed at Kings Road at the end of 1933 and staged concerts there which might have been where they met. (Sweeney, p. 110 and Sun-Hines, p. 325).

Cage attended the February issue editorial meeting at Moy Mell and possibly began the affair with Pauline shortly thereafter. Cage visited Pauline in Ojai on several occasions in early 1935 and dedicated his 1934 “Composition for Three Voices” to her. Their affair is documented in the letters at the following link. (http://www.ex-tempore.org/ExTempore96/cage96.html)The letters indicate a couple references to Pat [O'Hara] thus John was likely aware that Pauline may have been seeing him concurrently. They also discuss mutual composer friends such as Henry Cowell, Richard Buhlig, Schoenberg, Edgar Vardse and others.

The first letter references his February visit to Moy Mell and was written on the back of his “Counterpoint” typescript written for the February issue. It reads:

“Dear Pauline:

Gavin gave me Roderick White’s article and asked me to answer it and it somehow gave an impetus with the attached result. Hazel [Watrous] and Edward [Weston (most likely his first visit to the Dunes)] have not yet returned and Mary [McMeen, acting secretary to Dune Forum], Don [Sample, Cage's companion], and I are having dinner tonite at the Dunes with Gavin [Arthur]. Probably by tomorrow we will leave as Don is very anxious to get settled. Dr. Gerber was over last nite and proved very stimulating. Henry Okuda made sukiyaki. The pump stopped working according to Don, W.C.’s up the Western Coast cease functioning as we approach.

Love to you and Mark.

John.

How’s Mozart?

Don sends his love too and thinks of you often”About this same time Cage was introduced to Jawlensky’s work by Galka Scheyer and purchased on of his pieces on the installment plan. (From “It is a Long, Long Road.” John Cage and Galka Scheyer by Maria Muller in The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Kleen in the New World, p. 272).

John Cage circa 1935. Photographer unknown. From “It is a Long, Long Road.” John Cage and Galka Scheyer by Maria Muller in The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, and Kleen in the New World, p. 272.

 

 

Pauline also included in this issue estranged husband RMS’s seminal and oft-cited three-page piece, “Space Architecture” which defined his architectural design philosophy. He wrote that the modern architect would be “dealing with a new medium as rich and unlimited in possibilities of expression as any of other media of art: color, sound, mass etc. This gives us a new understanding of the task of modern architecture. Its experiments serve to develop a new language, a vocabulary and syntax of space.” After reading many of PGS’s other writings I speculate that she may have had a hand in editing this article.

 

 

The March 15th number features another John O’Shea drawing of the Dunes on the cover, another article by Ella Winter, “Outside Agitators” on farm labor activism, and an article by Henry Cowell, “Double Counterpoint” critiquing Roderick White’s and John Cage’s articles on modern music in the previous issue.  “Four Dune Poems” by Ellen Janson, and “Los Angeles: The Ugly Duckling” a love-hate critique by editor Dunham Thorp were also included. Pauline’s issue-ending two-page article, “The Guilty Liberal” was basically a call-to-arms for liberals to make their voices heard more loudly.

 

The April 15th issue cover featured a recent Edward Weston photo, likely his first published photo of the Dunes, and presaged his now iconic 1936 Oceano Dunes portfolio. Also included are poems by Gavin Arthur and fellow Dunite Hugo Seelig, and numerous articles by editor Dunham Thorp.

 

Ansel Adams, 1933. Willard Van Dyke portrait. (From “Modernist Photography and the Group f.64″ by Therese Thau Heyman in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 249).

The May 15th number, which would turn out to be the illustrious publication’s last, featured the above Ansel Adams cover photo. In this issue Pauline placed Richard Neutra’s three-page article, “Balancing the Two Determinates of Creation” which discoursed upon architectural functionalism. She was also likely responsible for former Kings Road tenant Dr. Alexander Kaun‘s article, “With Trotsky in Prinkipo” being published. Kaun commissioned Schindler to design a beach house for him in Richmond that same year. Kaun’s contributor’s bio reads, “Dr. Alexander Kaun is Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of California in Berkeley. It was last summer on his way back from the Balkans that he had this interview with Trotsky.”

Dr. Alexander Kaun. Portrait by Johan Hagemeyer, April 5, 1932. Photo courtesy OAC and U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library, Johan Hagemeyer Photo Collection.

Kaun Beach House, Richmond, 1934, R. M. Schindler. Uncredited photo. From “A beach house for Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Kaun, Richmond, Calif. R. M. Schindler, Architect”, California Arts & Architecture, May, 1937, p. 26. (From my collection).

Coincidentally, Pauline’s influence was beginning to pay off for both RMS and Neutra as Schindler’s Kaun beach house in Richmond (see above) and Neutra’s house for Galka Scheyer in the Hollywood Hills (see below) were being completed just about this time.

In his Daybook, Edward Weston mentions a January 3, 1929 dinner party he attended at Kings Road a week before his move to Carmel hosted by the Neutra’s which included Greta and J. R. Davidson and the Kauns,

“…I like Richard Neutra so much, and found Kaun and the others stimulating, so the evening was a rare gathering I do not regret. Even the showing of my work was not the usual boresome task. Neutra is always keenly responsive, and knows whereof he speaks, Representing in America an important exhibit of photography to be held in Germany this summer (see reference and covers of the Film und Foto exhibition above), he has given me complete charge of collecting the exhibit, choosing the ones whose work I consider worthy of showing, and of writing the catalogue foreword to the American group.” (Weston, p. 102-3).

 

Galka Scheyer House with painting by Lyonel Feininger, Hollywood Hills, Richard Neutra, 1934. Arthur Luckhaus photo. From RN-Hines, p. 117.

 

In his Neutra monograph Hines wrote that the Neutras surmised that Richard was chosen over RMS for the Scheyer commission due to the breakup of a stormy affair between her and RMS directly after Pauline’s departure in the summer of 1927. (RN-Hines, p. 116). In a 1970s letter to Diana Balmori Esther McCoy wrote,

“A woman professor of art [Peg Weiss] is doing a book about Galka Scheyer; we’ve talked on the phone several times. She is at Univ. of Syracuse. Tom Hines, discouraged at trying to find proof of Schindler’s affair with Leah Lovell (not true) he grabbed the next at hand—Galka Scheyer. U. of S. researcher says “no way” so do Galka’s closest friends. But it makes a racy story for Hines.” (Courtesy of author Susan Morgan who is currently working on Esther McCoy’s biography and has an Esther McCoy Reader scheduled for release this fall).

It is not hard at all for me to imagine the philandering Schindler having a fling with Scheyer as early as her three-month stay at Kings Road during the summer of 1927 upon viewing the below photo.

 

 

Galka Scheyer at Kings Road, circa 1931. (From Frida Kahlo: Her Photos, edited by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Editorial RM, 2010, p. 333)

 

Also during 1934 Neutra was completing a second-story addition to a town house in Hollywood for Rosalind Rajagopal, caretaker and secret lover of Krishnamurti and later founder of Happy Valley School, whom he met through C. H. van der Leeuw, financier of his VDL Research House.(See group photo of the van der Leeuw brothers, Krishnamurti and Rosalind’s husband D. Rajagopal earlier in this article).Rosalind and Galka Scheyer also became close friends at about the same time. Scheyer gave painting classes to Rajagopal and renowned ceramicist Beatrice Wood, also a big Krishnamurti follower, who later moved across the street from him in Ojai. Wood and Krishnamurti also played major roles in establishing Happy Valley School which was attended by Raymond Neutra and Erica Weston, Brett’s daughter. (July 23, 2010 e-mail message from Raymond Neutra, Happy Valley School and Lives in the Shadow With J. Krishnamurti by Radha Sloss, Universe, 2000, p. 136).

 

(From Beatrice Wood Biography)

 

Rajagopal Remodel, Gower St., Hollywood, 1934, Richard Neutra. Raymond Neutra photo. (Raymond Neutra Photo Archive)

The May issue also included an Ella Young review of John O’Shea’s April 23-May 21 one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Arthur paid Young a fitting tribute in her contributor’s bio, “Ella Young needs no introduction, having herself introduced the editors in the initial number. She it was who christened this oasis Moy Mell which in Irish means the “Meadow of Honey”—the part of the Celtic Heaven world set apart for poets. She is likewise the Godmother of the Dune Forum.”

Depression era financial reality finally set in and publication ceased after the May number. Gavin Arthur left Moy Mell shortly thereafter. The next place he pops up in print is the November 26, 1934 issue of Time Magazine in which an article, “Recovery: Utopians Eastward” reports on the whereabouts of Arthur and Dunham Thorp after Dune Forum folded earlier that year. They had moved to Utopian Society founder Eugene John Reed’s Greenwich Village apartment in New York. “Men strange to the janitor had indeed been climbing the stairs to visit the new tenants of No. 23 Barrow St., Apartment 4 C. Greenwich Village. The chief tenant was Eugene John Reed, 47, who was once a partner in an investment banking house in Denver. His co-tenants were Chester A. Arthur Jr., 33-year-old grandson of the 21st President of the U. S., and Dunham Thorp, onetime editor of a literary magazine (Dune Forum) in California. All three had taken up residence in Greenwich Village with a small table, some wicker chairs, a few cots. Thus did Utopia move East.” (Time Magazine).

The last significant event to take place at Moy Mell occured on Christmas Day, 1934. Although accounts differ somewhat, it appears that Gavin met world-renowned Indian mystic and spiritual master Meher Baba on a trip to Los Angeles earlier that year and invited him to come to the Dunes for a visit. Baba did indeed pay a visit with eighteen of his followers, including Norina Matchabelli, wife of Georges Matchabelli, known for the popular perfume brand. Norina had previously arranged for a special cabin to be built for Baba, but he chose instead to stay in Gavin’s cabin. Gavin, by then in New York was not there to host Baba and his entourage. (See below).

 

“Portia Once Screen Star: Trial Unmasks Olga Grey”, Los Angeles Times, Jun 10, 1935, pg.I-1, 8. From ProQuest.

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McCoy, Esther, “The Death of Dreiser”, Grand Street, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 1988. (From my collection).

Esther McCoy posing in the George P. Turner Residence, Flintridge, 1947 in one of her earliest architecture articles “Plans for Young Houses: The Turners’ own five-year plan,” Mademoiselle’s Living, Winter 1948. Maynard Parker Job No. 2412-18 from the Parker Archive, Huntington Library.

McCoy was also respected in the academic community for her work as a contributing editor for Arts & Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Zodiac, Lotus, Global Architecture, Domus, Perspecta, Journal of Architectural Historians, and many others. Following is a chronological walk down memory lane with a selection of some of her better known architectural exhibition catalogs and monographs.

McCoy, Esther, “Schindler, Space Architect,”, Direction, Vol. 8, No. 1, Fall, 1945. Cover design by Paul Rand. From Paul Rand by Steven Haller, Phaidon, 1999, p. 31. (From my collection).

McCoy began her career as an architectural historian with a piece on her employer titled “Schindler, Space Architect” which was published in the Fall 1945 issue of Direction (see above), ”a cultural magazine with a left-wing slant and anti-fascist bias” published by Marguerite Tjader Harris, the daughter of a wealthy munitions manufacturer. (Haller, p. 26). Interestingly, McCoy’s appearance coincided with the last of Paul Rand‘s 23 distinctive covers for the prestigious publication over a seven-year period. (Haller, pp. 26-31).

McCoy, Esther, “The Important House”, The New Yorker, April 17, 1948, pp. 60-64.) (From my collection).

McCoy was just beginning her architectural writings when she penned “The Important House” for the April 17, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It is a humorous, fictional account of a Shulmanesque architectural photographer staging a modern house for an important photo shoot. McCoy had begun collaborating with Julius Shulman for the first time a few months earlier for the article, “A Servantless House Meets Three Needs” on R. M. Schindler’s Presburger House for the November 23, 1947 issue of the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine.

The New Yorker article is important as it is a fine early example of  McCoy’s ability to harness her considerable literary talents to her new-found profession as an architectural critic and soon-to-be historian and must have been a big confidence booster for her. The L.A. Times article is also significant because it initiated a 40-year collaboration between the two Southern California modernist icons which resulted in close to 200 McCoy articles with Shulman photos appearing in a global array of publications, not to mention Shulman’s lion’s share of the images in the books discussed below. My related article, A Case Study in the Mechanics of Fame: Buff, Straub & Hensman, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy and Case Study House No. 20, is a good illustration of the fame-making capability of this dynamic duo. Every architect worth their salt in the 1950s and 60s knew that McCoy’s and Shulman’s skills and close association with Arts & Architectureeditor John Entenza could open many doors for them. Their joint work for Harwell Hamilton Harris disciple Gordon Drake has similarly kept his legend alive. (See also The Post-War Publicity Partnership of Julius Shulman and Gordon Drake: Gordon Drake: An Annotated & Illustrated Bibliography).

McCoy, Esther, “The Cape,” in The Best American Short Stories 1950 edited by Martha Foley. From Royal Books.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, while still transitioning into her architectural historian career, McCoy continued to write prize-winning fiction evidenced by her short story, “The Cape” being published in the October 1949 issue of Harper’s Bazaar and then anthologized in Martha Foley‘s highly prestigious The Best American Short Stories 1950 (see above). To be anointed with publicatio in either the annual O.Henry Prize Stories anthology or The Best American Short Stories anthology, started in 1915 under Edward O’Brien and continued by Foley from 1941 through 1977, was a major highlight of any writer’s career and must have given McCoy’s ego a huge boost.

McCoy, Esther, “The California House,” Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, July 19, 1953, pp. 12-18, 37.

Presaging her 1956 “Roots of California Contemporary Architecture” exhibition and 1960 book Five California Architects (see later below) in a July 1953 Los Angeles Times Home Magazine issue featuring the evolution of the California House (see above), McCoy illustrated Greene & Green’s Culbertson House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House, R. M. Schindler’s Kings Road House and Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House, all with photos by Julius Shulman. This was the first article in which she contemplated a chronology of the beginnings of California modernist architecture.  McCoy’s inspiration possibly came from Lewis Mumford’s Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (see below) which referenced the work of Greene & Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Richard Neutra. There is also correspondence between McCoy and Mumford beginning in 1953 in her papers at the Archives of American Art.

Roots of Contemporary American Architecture by Lewis Mumford, Reinhold, 1952.

Another likely source of inspiration for McCoy’s 1956 ”Roots of California Contemporary Architecture” exhibition and 1960 book Five California Architects (discussed in detail later below) was the 1951 “A Guide to Contemporary Architecture” (See below) compiled by USC School of Architecture graduate students Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger under the direction of Dean Arthur B. Gallion. The guidebook was a seminal publication as it was the first to focus solely on modern architecture, much of which was being produced by USC School of Architecture graduates. Likely to have served as a resource for McCoy’s initial exposure to most of the architects she later featured in her work, the guide’s introduction paid homage to the “roots” of California modernism with discussion of Bernard Maybeck, Greene & Greene, Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright, R. M. Schindler, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Gregory Ain, Raphael Soriano and the Case Study House Program. All photographs in the guide were provided by longtime McCoy collaborator Julius Shulman. The Alvin Lustig cover design also presaged McCoy’s 1984 highly ambitious Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980 designed by graphic designer Joe Molloy. (See much later below).

A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Southern California edited by Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger, Watling & Company, Los Angeles, 1951. Cover design by Alvin Lustig and all images by Julius Shulman.

Five California Architects, Praeger, 1975. Brett Weston cover photo of Schindler’s Wolfe House on Catalina. (From my collection).

McCoy’s work on California’s five pioneering modernists proved to be so popular that the above second edition was published by New York’s Praeger Publishers in 1975. Likewise, the ensuing scarcity of this edition prompted Hennessey & Ingalls to come out with yet a third edition with the same cover artwork which continues to steadily sell to this day.

Richard Neutra by Esther McCoy, Braziller, 1960. Julius Shulman cover photo. (From my collection).

Masters of World Architecture : Five Volumes : Water Gropius : Richard Neutra : Louis Sullivan : Oscar Niemeyer : Eric Mendelsohn

McCoy next tackled the Richard Neutra monograph published by Braziller in 1960. (See above). The richly illustrated essay length Neutra bio was included as part of Braziller’s second boxed set in the Masters of World Architecture series, fittingly alongside his early mentor Eric Mendelsohn, taproot of Los Angeles modernism Louis Sullivan whom Neutra spent some poignant moments with  in 1924, just before his death, and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, undoubtedly another strong influence on Neutra’s early develoment. McCoy’s Smithsonian Archives of American Art oral history contains some very revealing anecdotes regarding her troubles working with Neutra to get the book published. As an example, she was extremely frustrated and almost had a major falling out with him while working on the book.

“Well, he wanted–now, for another thing, he wanted me to put the date of the Lovell house in 1927, and I said, “That isn’t true.” I told him I’d had a check through the records at City Hall and got the date of when the drawings were filed and when the building permit was issued, and this was 1929. And then, finally, he said, “Yes, but I like 1927, that was the year that the Barcelona pavilion…” And then a couple of other things, too. He wanted it to be that yea.” (McCoy Oral History, Archives of American Art).

McCoy expands on this in her Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys. (See later below). One can’t help but wonder if these difficulties shaded her opinion of Neutra in her later work. New York Times critic Allan Temko said of Neutra and McCoy in his period review,

“And what shall one say of Neutra? Here, obviously, the editor faced a difficult problem. Neutra is one of the most sensitive designers in the world, and very early, when there was little modern architecture anywhere, he produced buildings such as ”Health House” and projects such as bis circular school that belong with the best work of the entire movement. Yet he ranks clearly below the great masters with whom he is placed in this series, and it is interesting to note that Esther McCoy, the very competent architectural writer responsible for this essay, has litte to say of their work in the Twenties and Thirties which far overshadowed Neutra’s. Furthermore, as another critic has remarked, Neutra’s “plateau” in recent years has showed signs of becoming a “plain.” Yet It remains a lofty plain dotted with handsorne buildings, and it is to this level now, at the very least, that our new architects must aspire with modesty but unshakable confidence.” (Temko, A., “Five Men Who Built on a Lofty Plain, New York Times, January 1, 1961).

Modern California Houses, Case Study Houses 1945-1962, Reinhold, 1962. Julius Shulman cover photo of Case Study House No. 22 by Pierre Koeni. (From my collection) .

Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy, Hennessey + Ingalls, 1977. Julius Shulman cover photo. (From my collection).

As mentioned above, I have not been able to find any McCoy writings citing her analysis as to why Schindler and any of the others Smith mentions in her essay were not included in the program. In Harris’s and Shulman’s cases at least, (and possibly Ain’s per Denzer) the invitations proffered by Entenza were turned down for reasons stated elsewhere herein. (See Smith, Elizabeth A. T., “Icons of Mid-Century Modernism: the Case Study Houses,” in Case Study Houses, Taschen, p. 9 and Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary by Anthony Denzer, p. 170).  I also hypothesize that Drake, an obvious candidate for the program because of his wide national awards exposure and international publication beginning in 1947, either was not invited or turned down the invitation due to his witnessing firsthand the 1940 Harris-Entenza falling out while in Harris’s employ. The evidence is compelling that Drake likely joined Harris’s boycott of Entenza’s Arts & Architecture despite the prestigious publicity he knew he would be forgoing. (See my analysis in The Post-War Publicity Partnership of Julius Shulman and Gordon Drake).

In addition to her California work, McCoy wrote extensively on Italian architecture for the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine and many prestigious architectural journals. She made several extended trips there during the 1950s and 1960s. She was curator of and wrote the essay for the exhibition entitled 10 Italian Architects (see catalog front cover above) which was on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from February 15 to April 2, 1967. The catalog includes work by Carlo Scarpa, Vittoriano Vigano, Gino Valle, Angelo Mangiarotti, Alberto Rosselli, Giancarlo de Carlo, Leonardo Ricci, Fiori and Conte, Albini and Helg, and Beldio, Peressutti and Rogers. In recognition of her research and writing on Italian architecture, crafts and design the Italian government in 1960 awarded her the Star of the Order of Solidarity.

An Exhibition of the Architecture of R. M. Schindler by David M. Gebhard, The Arts Gallery University of California Santa Barbara, 1967. (From my collection).

Gebhard came out with the first full-scale study on Schindler in 1971 which appropriately included a preface by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who professed a lack of understanding of Schindler’s work in a 1940 article  and who, along with sidekick Philip Johnson, chose not to include Schindler with Neutra in the seminal 1932 Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, dooming Schindler to play second fiddle to Neutra for the rest of his career. Hitchcock closing sentence in the foreword reads, “I am glad that this Foreword gives me an opportunity to make some redress for the narrow-minded approach to Schindler, and indeed to modern architecture in California more generally, of a generation ago.” (“An Eastern Critic Looks at Western Architecture”, California Arts & Architecture, December 1940, pp. 21-23, 40).

“In the meantime, after the death of Pauline Schindler, Kathryn Smith asked if I would abet her in removing Pauline’s papers to her place for safekeeping, as she expected to start a book on Pauline as soon as the one on the Barnsdall house was on the press. She especially wanted to keep them away from Tom Hines, for she considered that he would weight his sympathies to Neutra and away from Pauline. Kathryn still has the Pauline Schindler papers, which include material on Wright and also an unpublished novel, the protagonist of which is Schindler. Any [writer of a] study on Schindler as well as Wright should be aware of this material.”

The reader is directed to Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism, 1900-1970 by Thomas S. Hines and R. M. Schindler by Judith Sheine to compare the latest findings on the controversy from Neutra and Schindler scholars’ perspectives. President of the Friends of the Schindler House, Robert Sweeney‘s version in his delightful 12-page pamphlet, “The Lovell Houses” created in conjunction with a 2003 MAK Center tour of same reads,

“Lovell’s failure to continue with Schindler is likely to remain an enigma, though all parties attempted some form of explanation. Neutra recalled in his autobiography that there had been “some earlier unfortunate misunderstandings” between Schindler and Lovell and that “Both men steadfastly rejected even the idea of collaboration.” Dione Neutra tried to correct the record in her husband’s favor in her 1986 anthology of letters, but her scenario seems incomplete. Lovell himself was equivocal in explaining the circumstances. Leah Lovell, writing in 1958 to Esther McCoy, stated: “I could tell you things about the early days of Neurtra [sic] and Schindler as I knew them, but perhaps that would be better left unsaid.” Schindler interpreted Neutra’s actions as a matter of survival.” (Sweeney, Robert, “The Lovell Houses,” MAK Center, 2003, p. 5).

All the above, and numerous other scenarios, ring hollow to me in some manner as if the authors were beating around the bush to avoid offending living relatives. My personal choice for the version of the story that makes the most sense is put forth by Gary Marmorstein in his “Steel and Slurry: Dr. Philip M. Lovell, Architectural Patron” in which he theorizes that Leah Lovell, like her sister Harriet Freeman, was having an affair with Schindler during his preliminary design for the Lovell’s town house. Mamorstein wrote,

“The “whole story” remained a mystery to students of architecture for years, but its central crisis was, in fact, all too human. “Schindler had a habit of having the wives of clients fall in love with him,” Dione Neutra recalled in 1978, describing a not uncommon dynamic between builder and client. Leah Lovell fell hard for Schindler. Their affair dated back to the days when the Lovells were routinely at King’s Road and may have simply reached boiling temperature while discussions about the Los Feliz house were underway.

Whatever its genesis, the affair seemed to be just another conquest for Schindler and something far more painful for Leah Lovell. Compared with Dr. Lovell, who was usually the largest physical presence in the room, Schindler must have appeared small and arty. It doesn’t take an ounce of admiration for The Fountainhead, however, to acknowledge that an architect can be a powerful, highly sexual figure as he designs structures that make everyone and everything else appear tiny.

Dr. Lovell had no elixir, drugless or otherwise, for having been cuckolded. All he could do was turn his back on the preening Schindler and turn instead to Richard Neutra to build his house in Los Feliz. Neutra demurred-it was a thankless position to find himself in-and played diplomat as he persuaded the two factions to come together to talk. Grudgingly, Lovell was willing to accept Schindler again as principal architect, provided Neutra run interference.

That arrangement didn’t last long. Schindler, declaring he didn’t want the work but probably just fed up with the intensifying scandal, bowed out. He told Neutra, “If you don’t take the job, Lovell will give it to somebody else.” Vacillating, Neutra was finally talked into accepting the commission by the Austrian emigree Galka Scheyer, whose impressive art collection – Klee, Kandinsky, etc. – inspired a wide circle of Los Angeles architects. (According to Dione Neutra, Mrs. Scheyer subsequently became another Schindler mistress.)” (Mamorstein, Southern California Quarterly, Fall/Winter 2002, p. 254). 

This is also the version that longtime Schindler and Neutra friend Conrad Buff would have believed as he reminisced in his oral history,

“Schindler had built a house on Kings Road. Schlndler, besides being a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, was a very handsome fellow. He was quite a ladles’ man, and part of his business was to make love to all the ladles he could. He had a very interesting wife, but that didn’t bother him. There was quite a group of people that used to meet down at Schlndler’s house.” (Buff, p. 123). (For more on the relationship between the Buffs, Neutras and Schindlers see my “Richard Neutra and the California Art Club“).

Marmorstein’s version also coincides with my hypothesis that Pauline Schindler’s angry departure with the couple’s son Mark the same month all of the above drama was taking place was likely related to her witnessing, or finding out about a scenario such as this. She and Leah had met at Olive Hill where RMS was working on Aline Barnsdall’s Hollyhock House and had started and ran a school together in the early 1920s.  Likely already aware of her husband’s dalliances with Leah’s sister, and by then also an RMS client, Harriet Freeman, this could likely have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back. (Two Journeys, p. 39. See also my Pauline Gibling Schindler, Vagabond Agent for Modernism for more details).

Likely based on McCoy’s lengthy analysis of Neutra’s winning of the Lovell town house commission in Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys, renowned Neutra scholar Thomas S. Hines and noted Schindler scholar Judith Scheine agreed that Schindler would not have worked on the Lovell Health House design under Neutra’s lead under any circumstances despite reading Neutra’s August 24, 1927 letter to wife Dione, an excerpt of which read,

“…Now let me tell you a few facts about myself. I had a good talk with Lovell and proposed quite successfully an agreement with which he has, however, not yet signed. He wants to retype it with a few changes. He gave me in any case an adequate down payment. I have brought him now so far that he feels no personal grudge against Schindler and has nothing against it that he participates in the design. To be sure, he apparently wants me to be responsible for everything.” (See Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932, Selections from the Letters and Diaries of Richard and Dione Neutra Compiled and Translated by Dione Neutra, p. 168. See also cited in Hines, pp. 76-77 and Scheine, pp. 66-67).

Letter from R. M. Schindler, June 15, 1931 regarding settling of accounts from their partnership including Schindler’s significant work on the Lovell Health House. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum Architecture and Design Museum Schindler Collection.

The above letter from Schindler to Neutra regarding the settling of accounts from their partnership days before Neutra’s departure on his world tour seems to clearly indicate that Schindler did indeed perform a significant amount of design work on Lovell’s town house.  Schindler acknowledges receiving an $800 check from Neutra for partial payment of his design work on the project. The letter further strongly suggests that this commission was not the cause of the Schindler-Neutra schism. I contend that the real breaking point came out of Schindler not being included in the seminal 1932 “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and then having to witness all the publicity surrounding the show when it traveled to Los Angeles in conjunction with the 1932 Olympic Games. (See for example my Richard Neutra and the California Art Club for much on Schindler’s and Neutra’s 1931 joint classes at Chouinard and publicity surrounding the MOMA exhibition). Obviously influenced by her closeness to both Schindlers, McCoy either overlooked this very important letter while editing Schindler’s correspondence for this book or purposely did not mention it because it spoiled what she possibly believed was a better story, likely the former. Thus another McCoy myth was born.

McCoy’s narrative, selected illustrations and selected letters bring to daylight the struggles of these early Austrian emigres to gain a foothold in Los Angeles and their failed friendship and efforts to lay a foundation for the rich modernist heritage that we enjoy today. The Harwell Hamilton Harris introduction alone is worth the price of the book if you can find a copy. I cited from it heavily in my article Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936.

A. Quincy Jones: A Tribute exhibition catalog, Cal-State Dominguez Hills, 1980. (From my collection).

Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980, Esther McCoy & Barbara Goldstein, Arts + Architecture Press, 1982. Book design by Joe Molloy. (From my collection).

The above Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980 co-edited with Barbara Goldstein was the first of its kind to take a national look at modern architecture. The book was also published by Travers’ Arts + Architecture Press. The selections are divided by region and accompanied by images from professional photographers including Julius Shulman, Ezra Stoller, Hedrich Blessing, Morley Baer, Marvin Rand, and others. McCoy concurrently was on the masthead of editor Goldstein’s Arts + Architecture as Contributing Editor after Goldstein brought the magazine back to life between 1981 and 1985 and also contributed an essay to Goldstein’s Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years (See later below). Goldstein’s editorial offices happened to be in the Schindler Kings Road House(see below) where McCoy also worked as a draftsman for Schindler between 1944 and 1947. (See opening photo).

In the Harris chapter, in addition to the innacuracies surrounding Entenza’s acquisition of CA&A mentioned earlier, McCoy, chose to remain silent on the important role Harris and his wife Jean Murray Bangs played in providing the entree for Entenza’s temporary editorship of CA&A in February 1940. She also does not discuss their subsequent falling out with Entenza regarding his hostile takeover of the magazine from their dear friend Jere Johnson the following May which precipitated Harris’s post-war refusal to participate in the Case Study House program. Obviously knowing of Entenza’s rift with Bangs and Harris, one can’t help but wonder if McCoy held off publication of this book until after Entenza’s 1984 death out of loyalty or whether it was purely coincidental.

Again, McCoy’s virtual silence on the outspoken Bangs and her considerable influence on her husband’s career in this chapter is deafening. Similarly, despite having obvious insight into Entenza’s reasoning, McCoy chooses also not to discuss Ain’s overt omission from the Case Study House Program.

For further reading and research on the book’s subjects I recommend The Architecture of Gregory Ain by David Gebhard, Harriette Von Bretton and Lauren Weiss, Harwell Hamilton Harris by Lisa Germany,  Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary by Anthony Denzer and Raphael Soriano by Wolfgang Wagener. Germany must be credited with first shining light on Harris’s and Bangs’ facilitation of Entenza’s temporary CA&A editorship and Harris’s subsequent refusal to paricipate in his CSH Program. She also uncovered much new material on Bangs’ role in rediscovering the work of Greene & Greene and Bernard Maybeck. Denzer provides the most insightful analysis of Ain’s non-involvement in same. Denzer also tactfully seconds Germany’s findings on Harris’s refusal to participate in the program ”because of personal differences with Entenza’s business practices.” (Denzer, p. 169-170).

McCoy, Esther, “1945-1960, The Rationalist Period,” in High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design, Whitney Museum, 1985.

Due to her ever-increasing stature as a chronicler of West Coast modern design, the following year McCoy was honored with a request to include an essay for a major East Coast exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York, High Styles, Twentieth-Century American Design. McCoy’s chapter, “1945-1960, The Rationalist Period,” featured the work of her by then longtime friends, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Sarinen, R. M. Schindler, Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson, Case Study Houses from the pages of John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture, and much more.

Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, MIT Press, 1989. (From my collection).

McCoy’s last major piece was the essay “Arts & Architecture Case Study Houses” commissioned for the above catalog for the renowned Blueprints for Modern Living exhibition on the Case Study Houses which was mounted by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art with financial support from McCoy’s longtime benefactor, the Graham Foundation , the National Endowment for the Arts, and others.  This exhibition catalog was published in both hard and soft cover editions with the hard cover now being extremely scarce and is absolutely essential to any Southern California architectural history fan. It is a compilation of essays by McCoy, Thomas S. Hines, Helen Searing, Kevin Starr, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Thomas Hine, Reyner Banham, and Dolores Hayden published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name presented at the Frank Gehry-designed Temporary Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, October 17, 1989 – February 18, 1990. McCoy died in Santa Monica in December, 1989, just weeks after the exhibition opened.

See my comments above and article ”Steppingstone to Fame” for an analysis of McCoy’s perpetuation of the 1938 Entenza CA&A takeover myth in her otherwise excellent catalog essay “Arts & Architecture Case Study Houses” and catalog editor and exhibition organizer Elizabeth A. T. Smith’s similar collaborative errors regarding same in her also otherwise insightful piece, “Arts & Architecture: The Los Angeles Vanguard.” At the time of her death McCoy was widely beloved and recognized as the doyenne of Southern California architectural historians and her efforts continue to bring international recognition to California’s architectural legacy to this day. McCoy was recognized by the AIA for efforts on the behalf of architects with an Honorary Membership and received a Distinguished Service citation by the AIA’s California Council.

Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years edited by Barbara Goldstein, Essay by Esther McCoy, MIT Press, 1990. (From my collection).

Barbara Goldstein’s 1990 tribute to John Entenza, Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years was also in a sense a tribute to her friend, collaborator and mentor McCoy and was also financed in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation, likely through McCoy’s connections with Carter Manny. (Also see Steppingstone for more Entenza Myth analysis). Goldstein honors McCoy with a cover byline for her paean “Remembering John Entenza” and writes the following on her in the Ackowledgments, “I spent many enjoyable hours with Esther McCoy discussing, among other subjects, Arts & Architecture and John Entenza. She acted as my conscience and energy-source throughout the project until her death late last year.” This book was originally released in hard cover by the MIT Press and like almost all of McCoy’s work is still in print in soft cover with the same cover art work through Hennessey & Ingalls.

After reading the above, one might ask, “Why the obsession with the myths discussed herein, i.e., the date and circumstances surrounding Entenza’s takeover of California Arts & Architecture and Harwell Hamilton Harris’s non-participation in his Case Study House Program; that McCoy was the first to rediscover the work of Greene & Greene and Bernard Maybeck; the Ellwood Myth; and the Lovell Health House Commission Myth?”

Personally I have become increasingly dismayed with the fact that massive new magnum opuses are still unwittingly being published with much erroneous information, but mostly about the misstatements surrounding Entenza’s 1940 CA&A palace coup. I am hoping with this piece to spark discourse which will drive a stake through the myths’ heart and finally turn the tide towards accuracy in future publications referencing Entenza’s canonization and the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of California Arts & Architecture. The knowledge that Harwell Hamilton Harris’s (and his wife Jean Murray Bangs’) intimate involvement with CA&A and his witness to and unique insight of the details surrounding how and when the magazine changed hands and his subsequent refusal to participate in Entenza’s Case Study House Program is beginning to make a toehold in the historical lexicon thanks to Lisa Germany and Anthony Denzer but more work needs to be done to further elucidate and gain a wider exposure for the actual facts.

The above publications are all collector’s items and appear in any self-respecting Southern California architect’s library. Since most of McCoy’s work was indeed pioneering, her biases towards Entenza, Schindler and Ellwood and against Neutra in particular should be contextually cited and forgiven as she started the ball rolling on the historiography of Southern California modernist architecture and laid most of the foundation for others to build upon. I am currently compiling an annotated and illustrated bibliography of the published work of Esther McCoy of which the above work is just a tiny sampling which I hope to post in the not too distant future, so stay tuned. I have located over 800 articles to date.

Perhaps Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown sum up the essence of McCoy’s work best with,

“Gratuitous polemics, sensational substitutes for serious analysis that promote the writer’s cleverness over the subject’s talents, play no role in McCoy’s critical approach. Her architect-subjects have found a recorder and analyst who, despite her presence as a participant in their history, does not intrude on their story. By trusting the intentions of her subjects and becoming the servant of her art, she shows herself to be a profound critic and an exquisite artist. But perhaps the most significant contribution of her work here is its timeliness – and therby in the end, its timelessnesss.“ (“Re-Evaluation: Estehr McCoy and The Second Generation,” Progressive Architecture, February 1990, pp. 118-9).

There is good news forthcoming for Esther McCoy fans as author Susan Morgan is hard at work on an Esther McCoy Reader which will collect much of her literary fiction and non-fiction in addition to her architectural criticism. She is also laboring away on a separate biography which I’m certain will be a best-seller and further enlighten us on McCoy’s simply fascinating legacy. The extremely busy Morgan co-curated with Schindler House Director Kimberli Meyer the Esther McCoy exhibition Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design (see catalog below) which debuted at the Schindler House September 27, 2011 as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 festivities sponsored by the Getty.

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design by Kimberli Meyer and Susan Morgan, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2011.

Most would have to agree with renowned Los Angeles architect and former dean of the Yale School of Architecture Cesar Pelli’s assessment of McCoy in a 1984 New York Times interview that she was ”the pre-eminent writer of California architecture. Our knowledge of Southern California architecture has been primarily formed by her research, her first-hand knowledge and her writing, which is so precise and passionate.” (“Esther McCoy is Dead; Architecture Critic, 85″, New York Times, December 31, 1989).

Esther McCoy Resources

Esther McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art

Esther McCoy Oral History (research hint, download to Microsoft Word to facilitate searching and/or create a searchable pdf if you don’t have time to read the entire document).

Blueprints for Modern Living Exhibition

Being There: Esther McCoy, the Accidental Architectural Historian

Esther McCoy New York Times Obituary

Esther McCoy Tribute by Paul Goldberger 

Hennessey & Ingalls

A Case Study in the Mechanics of Fame: Buff, Straub & Hensman, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy and Case Study House No. 20 for a look at the fame-making capability of the dynamic duo of McCoy and Shulman.

California Arts & Architecture: A Steppingstone to Fame: Harwell Hamilton Harris and John Entenza: Two Case Studies for an in-depth analysis of the “Entenza Myth.”

Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936 (for the role Pauline played in McCoy’s career launch).

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design

The Dodge House, 1916 written by Esther McCoy and directed by Robert Snyder.

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Readers are referred to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buff,_Straub,_and_Hensman and “Buff & Hensman” edited by James Steele published by the USC Architectural Guild in 2002 (see below) for background material prior to the design of Case Study House No. 20, 1958, Saul Bass House, 2275 N. Santa Rosa Ave., Altadena.

The team of Conrad Buff III (USC 1952), Calvin Straub (USC 1943) and Donald Hensman (USC 1952) joined forces from 1956 through 1961 for a very fruitful span in their careers. Buff & Hensman had previously teamed up while still in their formative undergraduate days beginning in 1948. Straub, former Buff & Hensman instructor and mentor in the post-and-beam design vocabulary and now teaching colleague, recommended that they form the partnership to avoid competing for the same jobs. (Steele, p. 24).

Straub (with erstwhile teacher and partner, USC School of Architecture Dean Arthur Gallion) was the first of the team to use Julius Shulman’s services on his Sedlachek Residence at 3385 N. Beverly Glen Blvd. (Shulman Job No. 491, June 1, 1949).  By this time Shulman’s photos had already appeared 125 times in the L.A Times Home Magazine, thus he had no problem getting the work published under his byline in the November 27, 1949 issue with the title “The house with the swinging walls” which included 9 of his photos. (see below).

Straub’s personal residence on Sunny Oaks Circle in Pasadena completed in 1950 was also listed in the 1951 “A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Southern California” edited by Frank Harris and Weston Bonnenberger, with design by Alvin Lustig, and with all photography by Shulman. Shulman’s marketing skills were highly evolved by the late 1940s as were his relationships with a wide variety of publication editors. He had learned how to create a steady stream of income from his back-catalog of prints, especially for architects whose work he admired. His exposure to Richard Neutra’s masterful and relentless self-promotional techniques and contacts developed with editors Neutra courted all came into play as he resold the prints from many of his assignments to the same publications. 

Shulman later placed Straub’s Sedlachek House with Architectural Forum and again in the April 1952 issue of House & Home in a 4-photo article titled “On a Los Angeles hillside: three-level house.” This was the period that Shulman’s Raphael Soriano-designed residence was under construction so he was undoubtedly hustling everywhere he could to finance that project for which he reportedly paid cash. He had at least a dozen feature articles with his byline published in L.A. Times Home during the late 1940s and early 1950s before the sheer volume of his workload precluded continuing authorship.

Revered architectural critic and freelance writer Esther McCoy was a go-between with Shulman and R. M. Schindler during her days as Schindler’s draftsperson in the mid-1940s. Shortly after leaving Schindler’s employ, beginning in 1947, she and Shulman started collaborating on articles for such publications as Madamoiselle, Living for Young Homemakers, L.A. Times Home Magazine and Sunset. 

McCoy stated in her Smithsonian oral history that all of the Los Angeles architects wanted to appear in the L.A. Times Home and Sunset Magazines. (see http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/mccoy87.htm p.65). Through McCoy, Sunset commissioned Shulman to photograph Straub’s Brandow Residence for a June 1955 article titled “This is truly a garden house.” (Job No. 1877, 11-02-1954 and 01-09-1957). The article was later anthologized in Sunset’s “New Homes for Western Living” in 1956. Shulman pitched the Brandow house yet again to another frequent collaborator, Barbara Lenox, who produced  a 4-page L.A. Times Home Magazine cover story titled “This house was built to fit its landscape” which ran in the April 10, 1957 issue. (see below).

During this period McCoy highlighted two of the firm’s principals, Calvin Straub and Conrad Buff in her widely followed “What I Believe…A Statement of Architectural Principles ” monthly column featured in the L.A. Times Home Magazine in the mid-1950s. Straub appeared in her April 17, 1955 column which also included three Julius Shulman photos of his work. Her feature on Buff followed in the May 5, 1957 issue. 

The Brandow House was on display once again the following month in the highly publicized and well-attended “Arts of Southern California – Architecture” exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art. The 40-page exhibition catalog was a veritable “Who’s Who” of Southern California’s best modernist architects including Thornton Abell, Welton Becket, Jones & Emmons, Ray Kappe, Killingsworth, Brady & Smith, Carl Maston, Richard Neutra, Palmer & Krisel, Pereira & Luckman, Smith & Williams, Raphael Soriano and others. Again, two-thirds of the photos in the exhibition catalog were provided by Shulman. This must have been a heady time indeed for Straub.

All three partners were still teaching at USC at the time the Bass commission was realized in 1957. Braced with his previous publishing success with Shulman, it seems probable that Straub was instrumental in the firm hiring him to photograph the Bass House model as Buff & Hensman had not used Shulman prior to this. This extremely prescient commission was completed on August 25, 1957 as Shulman Job No. 2450. 

It is fun to speculate how BS&H and the Bass House caught the eye of John Entenza for use as House No. 20 in his Arts & Architecture Case Study House Program. Had Entenza been aware of the firm’s work through Shulman’s photos of Straub’s work, had he seen B&H’s work in L.A. Times Home Magazine with photos by others, had he seen Straub’s Brandow House in the above Home cover story, had Shulman and/or McCoy recommended the firm, had the firm approached Entenza, and/or did Saul Bass approach Entenza? 

In any event, recognizing the well-established relationships between John Entenza and Julius Shulman (listed as A&A staff photographer on the masthead since 1942) and Esther McCoy (frequent A&A contributor and listed on the masthead as an Editorial Advisory Board member since January, 1952), it can easily be assumed that when the invitation came to participate, BS&H leaped at the chance. They probably had very little trouble convincing well-known graphic designer Saul Bass and his wife to offer up their home to the rigors of what participation meant in the form of tours and public open houses.

Case Study House No. 20 was designed, scrutinized and publicized to the world through the pages of Arts & Architecture Magazine throughout 1958. The firm had gradually been making a well-respected name for itself but nothing catapulted the trio to instant fame like being featured as Case Study House Program architects in Arts & Architecture, the chic, avant-garde magazine of the era subscribed to by all the modernist leaning architects and designers of the day.

Photos of the model and a floor plan appeared in the January 1958 issue of A&A as the beginning salvo in Entenza’s well-orchestrated publicity campaign. (see below).

The Arts & Architecture roll-out continued with a two-page spread in July with 11 uncredited construction photos, a floor plan and rendering. (see below).

The next appearance was three pages in the September issue which included 5 Art Adams construction photos and a landscape plan by Eckbo, Dean & Williams (see below) and list of Merit-Specified products used in construction and furnishing of the house plus 3 pages of ads for various products.

The October issue included a Shulman photo announcing the upcoming public open houses. The A&A publicity reached a crescendo with an 11-page article in the November issue featuring 22 Shulman photos (Shulman Job No. 2675, 09-22/25-1958). Ads followed sporadically over the next year but by then the publicity baton had been passed by Shulman to other respected, high circulation publications.

November 1958 was a big month for BS&H with the above cover story also appearing in the November 30 issue of the L.A. Examiner Pictorial Living Magazine. Shulman’s contacts again paid off as he had previously collaborated with long-time friend Dan MacMasters on 13 feature stories in both the Times Home Magazine and the Examiner Pictorial Living going back to 1951. This 6-page cover story “Pavilion under the Pine” included 11 Shulman photos and a floor plan.

Shulman was also able to use his position as west coast contributing photographer for House & Garden to position CSH 20 on the cover of the February 1960 issue as part of a feature titled “New Life for a Cherished Tradition: Wood” for which he also contributed photos of BS&H’s Edwards Residence and others.

Published by Reinhold, 1962 (from my collection).

CSH 20 received a nice 12-page spread with 10 Shulman photos and other illustrations in Esther McCoy’s now classic groundbreaking compilation