Southern California Architectural History

From Carmel-By-The-Sea by Monica Hudson, Arcadia, 2006, p. 85. Note the multi-talented Kings Road salon attendee, actor and noted city planner Carol Aronovici on the left who, while wearing his City Planner hat, collaborated with RMS and Neutra on the 1928 Richmond, California Civic Center project and other projects under their Architectural Group for Commerce and Industry (AGIC) partnership.

PGS reviewed concerts and plays at the Theater of the Golden Bough, the Carmel Playhouse, the Carmel Theater Guild, and Forest Theater, exhibitions at the Denny-Watrous Gallery, published wood block and linoleum cut prints by artists such as early Kings Road visitor and now Carmelite staff artist Virginia Tooker (see above), Esther Bruton, Stanley Wood, Ray Boynton and others. Music was obviously one of her major focuses as she routinely reported on concerts, many of which she arranged, by major, avant-garde pianists passing through Carmel on there way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. She covered performances by dancers John Bovingdon, Ruth Austin and Grace Burroughs, pianists Imre Weisshaus, Dene Denny, future lover John Cage mentors Henry Cowell (see below left and center) and Richard Buhlig (see above right and center), violinist Albert Spalding, guru Jiddu Krishnamurti and numerous others. She reported on important events, exhibitions and concerts she attended in San Francisco such as her December 26, 1928 review of “The Blue Four” exhibition at the Berkeley Museum organized by Galka Scheyer.

In 1927 Lincoln Steffens and 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).

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

Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1928, pp. 1-2. From ProQuest.

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

Pauline lived in Ojai intermittently living in a series of rented cottages. From this base she continued to visit Santa Barbara, Halcyon and the Oceano Dunes settlement of Moy Mell. She also traveled to Santa Fe, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. During her periodic stays in Los Angeles she lived briefly on Hillcrest Road  and also occasionally stayed at Kings Road for brief stints between the comings and goings of tenants in the guest-studio and/or her wing.

In early 1930 Pauline submitted a six-page article, “Samuel House, Los Angeles, Lloyd Wright, Architect”, to Architectural Record which was eventually published in  in the June 1930 issue. She also submitted photos and an article on the Kings Road House to the same publication which was rejected. This prompted an angry letter of protest from RMS. Oddly, Kings Road, arguably the most iconic house modern house in the country was not published until 1932. (Sheine, p. 261).

PGS authored an article, “The Suburban Home Moves Out of Doors“, featuring RMS’s furniture designs which was published in the May 1930 issue of  The Small Home. Later in the year she had an article published in the highly-regarded literary journal Pagany: A Native Quarterly. Editor Richard Johns frequently featured the work of  Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and many other legendary poets and authors thus Pauline, as was her custom, was keeping famous company indeed.

In early 1930 Pauline decided to organize and curate a traveling exhibition of Contemporary Creative Architects (Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Jock D. Peters, John Weber, Kem Weber and J. R. Davidson) for the Western Association of Museum Directors, write a book featuring their work and act as their agent for booking lectures. She was likely coached on how to plan and publicize the exhibitions by Galka Scheyer who had organized a similar traveling show for her Blue Four in 1927 for the same venues, designed and prepared exhibition catalogs (see below) and arranged lectures in each locale. Nothing ever came of the book project. (McCoy, p. 58).

Catalogue for traveling “Blue Four” exhibition, Los Angeles Museum of Art, October 1926. Courtesy of Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.

The “Creative Contemporary Creative Architecture in California Exhibition” was on display at UCLA from April 21-29 and the related Symposium featuring speakers Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler and Kem Weber took place on April 27th. (See above exhibition poster featuring Pauline’s trademark typographic design). Los Angeles Times art critic Arthur Millier, also in Pauline’s salon circle, gave the important show a lengthy and generally favorable review, “Building for Our Age:  California Designers of Modern Style Architecture Distinguished From Those Who Imitate” in the April 27th edition. Pauline’s visionary curatorship of this show is extremely important as it preceded the New York Museum of Modern Art’s seminal and legendary 1932 “Modern Architecture” exhibition by a full two years.

Millier wrote, “…this exhibit at U.C.L.A. is not of a school of modern architecture, but represents the work of thinking artists each trying to design creatively for the present age. He continued later with, “…this is still an ungrateful field in which these architects are plucky pioneers. So far, in this country, there is no public demand or interesst in the modern house which does not borrow its style from a past period. They swim upstream and are men of ideas and ideals. Whether their work is good or imperfect it is honestly conceived and of a different breed to the imitation French-modern stuff that is issuing copiously, just now, from the draughting-rooms of academic architects who regard the whole modern idea as a temporary fad.” He adds insightful critiques of each man’s work and included a Will Connell photo of Kem Weber’s light fixture for the Sommer & Kaufman store in San Francisco, a Mott photo of John Weber’s auditorium lounge at Bullock’s Wilshire, a Brett Weston photo of the clock face at Bullock’s Wilshire designed by Jock Peters, the facade of the San Francisco skyscraper at 451 Sutter St. by Miller & Pflueger, an interior of Schindler’s Lovell Beach House and Willard D. Morgan photos of Neutra’s Lovell Health House and J. R. Davidson’s facade for the Hi-Hat restaurant on Wilshire Blvd.

An excerpt from Pauline’s opening statement for the exhibition, printed in “Modern Architecture Shown” in the April 20 edition of the Los Angeles Times reads, “Based upon the principle that form follows function; influenced by the work of Louis Sullivan and of Frank Lloyd Wright, and by the logic of the machine age, modern architecture strongly tends toward a structural integration, a freedom from applied decoration, a reduction of forms to their essence.” The exhibition would move to the California Art Club at Barnsdall Park in June 1930. From there it traveled to the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, The Portland Art Association and the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery. (Sheine, p. 256).

PGS organized a lecture series around the exhibition that was offered to a wide range of societies and clubs in the greater Los Angeles area in 1930 and the various cities the show traveled to. In Los Angeles, lecture announcements (see below), pamphlets and individual speaker letters were sent to the Friday Morning Club, the Ebell Club, the Los Angeles City Club, the Hollywood Women’s Club, the Engineers Club and likely others. The pamphlet reads: “A new architecture has come into being in our time and is moving toward fulfillment … It is not a mere style. It is profoundly based. But it is necessary that it be understood for an imitative pseudo-modernism blurs the clear line and confuses the layman.”

RMS’s letter read, “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)

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 Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine for art dealer Harry Braxton which opened in September 1929. 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 do 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).

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 to long thereafter.

Scheyer and Schindler likely continued to coordinate their exhibitions and lecture bookings as their “Blue Four” and “Creative Contemporary Architecture of California” exhibits traveled the circuit of 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 Lionel 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 N. Weatherwax character study of Galka Scheyer with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in San Francisco at about this time in 1930, go to Diego, Galka and Toby).

Edward Weston’s Daybook indicates that on April 7, 1930, Galka Scheyer, traveling between the Braxton Galleries 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 leaather 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). An August 16, 1931 Los Angeles Times article, “Plaza Art Center to Open”, mentions R. M. Schindler’s plan to remodel the building’s arcade shops. (Embassy Restaurant and Arcade, 1931 project, see Schindler by David Gebhard, p. 200). Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, after consulting with Richard Neutra and Sumner Spaulding on fresco techniques, completed his Mural “Tropical America” on the side of the building in 1932. (See photo below). (See Eric Merrill’s excellent blog post for more on Siqueiros and Neutra’s involvement with the California Art Club).

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.

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 he 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).

In an April 15, 1930 letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Pauline Schindler, in response to her letter asking him to participate in the exhibit in Los Angeles, Wright wrote, “While many of my sworn adherents and generous admirers have in the past profited considerably by my work and by my own clients, – I can remember no such instance ever happening to me concerning them or theirs. Richard [Neutra] is evidently gone head over heals, – Le Corbusier, Rudolph, too. It is a pity. But there is nothing to be done about it. I suppose I shall have to turn on them myself and show them up soon.” (Sheine, p. 42.). Much on the correspondence with Frank Lloyd Wright can also be found in Sheine.

In an April 30 letter Pauline asked Wright for permission to plan a lecture series for him in the West. She wrote, “Let me explain to you why I concern myself so actively with architecture: my own first contact with it was simultaneous with a central ecstasy, so that it has the equivalence and force with me of some critical emotional impression of childhood which dictates the direction of life.” (McCoy, p. 58). After turning her down she wrote back, “There is nothing I can say except that I love you profoundly for the majesty and meaning of your work, that I should have been utterly proud to serve it…”

A July 28, 1930 letter from her father Edmund reveals the financial state she usually seemed to be in. “What have you been doing young lady to bring about a ponderous flood of bills? Am enclosing August check and will send an additional $50 about the middle of the month…Let’s consider ourselves in conference going over your business affairs and analyzing present conditions and prospects. This with a view to whether any part of your plans need modification, or here or there reshaping.” (McCoy, p. 60).

Pauline had also written to Neutra while he was on his world tour after moving out of Kings Road asking for permission to represent him in a series of lectures. In a December 1930 reply from Cleveland near the end of his tour Neutra wrote, “Dear Ghibeline: Am ready to be managed by you and grateful naturally…Not usually interested in chapter AIA meetings. More in laypersons, who might be our clients…Richard.” She then successfully arranged for a Neutra speaking engagement in Chicago through a former Smith College classmate. (McCoy, p. 60).

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.).

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). 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.”

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.” (From Wright in Hollywood: Visions of a New Architecture, Robert L. Sweeney, 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 sun Mark so close to Kings Road and just scant years after possibly accompanying RMS on the below photo shoot.

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). Pauline then arranged for a Schindler lecture on September 7th. 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).

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).

Schindler continued to get mileage from her exhibition into 1932 as Creative Art’s editor Henry McBride published her “Modern California Architects” in the February issue. The five-page article included photos of RMS’s Wolfe House on Catalina, Neutra’s Lovell Health House, and The Bachelors, Ltd. Haberdashery by J. R. Davidson and also described work by Lloyd Wright, Jock Peters and Kem Weber. She wrote of Neutra, “His work is the coolest, the furthest removed from stylization or a conscious esthetic. It is the most closely related to the neue Sachlichkeit of contemporary Europeans.” Of RMS she opined, “Schindler’s work is particularly lyric, an utterance of a definite life feeling. It is profoundly organic, the parts moving into the whole by transition of an inner logic.”

PGS was successful in placing an early 1932 three-page article, “Group Offices for Physicians, Los Angeles; J. R. Davidson, Designer” in the August 1932 issue of Architectural Record. A January 8, 1932 L.A. Times article, “Printing Lecture Booked” announces a lecture, “Modern Typographical Design” by Pauline under the auspices of the USC Extension Division as part of a class in modern printing design. Examples of her work appear above in layouts in The Carmelite and her 1930 poster for the “Creative Contemporary Architecture in California” traveling exhibition.

Pauline’s activities were centered in Ojai between 1932-35. Mark was attending the Ojai Valley School between October 1932 and June 1937. She lived there intermittently in a series of rented cottages. From this base she traveled to Santa Barbara, Halcyon and the nearby Oceano Dunes settlement of Moy Mell. There were numerous connections between Carmel and Halcyon and Oceano which Pauline seemed destined to be involved with. The Neutra’s may have been the first to tell Pauline about the Oceano Dunites whom they observed on there way to Carmel in November 1928 for their previously mentioned lecture and recital. Pauline also reviewed concerts by avant-garde pianist Henry Cowell who frequently collaborated and stayed with John Varian (see below) and wife Agnes in Halcyon. Irishman Varian was an amateur musician, mystic poet and ardent Thesophist, prominent among the Halcyon sect known as “The Temple of the People.” (See below).

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 Arroyo Grande . 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.

Another interesting link between Carmel and Halcyon-Oceano were previously mentioned painter John O’Shea and his wife Molly mentioned earlier. They had a place in Carmel Highlands at which Edward Weston first met Ella Young on February 22, 1930 while doing the O’Shea’s portraits. The O’Sheas also spent a lot of time in Halcyon with their friends, the Varians. Weston wrote in his Daybook of the O’Shea sittings, “With them was Ella Young, who impressed me more than any of the party.”(Weston, p. 142). Young also accompanied Taos art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and her husband on a visit to Weston’s studio on February 25th. Luhan and Young visited again on March 25th after which Weston entered, “…Ella Young with her and I asked for a sitting, because I admire her and because her portraits may sell. Ella Young believes in fairies, – and of course that would appeal to me, anything unorthodox does…” Young sat for her portrait on March 31st. Weston wrote of the occasion, “Then I did that fairy-like person, Ella Young, with good results.” (Weston, p. 149).

Ella Young sat for both Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, both of whom were very impressed by her persona and beliefs. Some very interesting interviews 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.

Ella Young then described Gavin and Janson:

“Gavin Arthur will make a good editor primarily because he is so man-sided and has such wide views and sympathies. His life is colored too with memories of many people and many places; he has known labour leaders and royal dukes, has looked from the view-point of both, yet kept his mind free. Always an agnostic; poet, rebel, sailor, gentleman, vagabond; born a westerner; cosmopolitan yet proudly a Californian; eager to test, to experiment,— his whole life has been lived in the spirit which motivates this magazine. Such a project has been his life-dream.

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).

Janson also dedicated her self-published collection of verses, Poems, 1920-1949 to RMS, “For Michael, Who Makes All Things Possible.“  The book was printed in a small edition of 100 copies for distribution to her friends; with a short foreword by Ella Young, and with the book design by Schindler and dated “December, 1952″ on colophon. Copy 69 was sent to the Skolnicks, Schindler’s last clients, signed and inscribed by Janson on the colophon: “For Mr. & Mrs. Skolnick [sic] — In memory of R. M. Schindler, who built their beautiful house, and mine also, and who designed this book — Ellen Janson”. She sent the book to the Skolniks with a Christmas card in 1953 in which she wrote, “Dear Skolnicks [sic], I still haven’t told you how much I appreciated your kind note, after Mr. Schindler went; but I know you will understand why I have been so long in answering. It is very hard for me to adjust to being without him. Yet the wonderful inspiration that he always was to me still remains … I am sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the book of my poems that Mr. Schindler had printed during that last year of his life. He designed the cover himself, so it is especially precious to me because we made it together. I don’t know if you care for poetry, but I am sure you will like having it, if only for his sake. Sincerely, Ellen Janson”. The card had RMS’s last holiday note included on a blue 3X5 card which read, “From a snowy / mountain top / Best & Warmest Wisches [sic] / R M Schindler”. (From Vashon Island Books).

Arthur closes the 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.

About this time Pauline was having an affair with Los Angeles Daily News reporter Pat O’Hara. (See Letters from John Cage to Pauline Schindler). It is likely that she met O’Hara at Moy Mell. Pat was introduced to the Oceano Dunes through Dunite Elwood Decker, whom he met at a party in Ojai, where a number of the Dunites would periodically make there way to attend events by previously-mentioned Jiddu Krishnamurti. Pat had gone to Ojai to visit some nudist friends when he met Elwood at a party in late 1931. Elwood read Pat some of his poems about the dunes which inspired Pat to visit. Pat found his way to Moy Mell and quickly became good friends with Gavin Arthur around the time of the creation of Dune Forum.  Finding a ready-made Irish community of previously-mentioned painter John O’Shea, John Varian and Ella Young, an Oceano resident and long-time friend of Arthur from their days together in Ireland supporting the Irish revolt. (Gavin Arthur Interview About Ella Young)

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).

Pauline’s next modernism marketing activity was acting as guest-editor for the January 1935 issue of California Arts & Architecture. Editor and publisher George Oyer courageously entrusted her to select the entire content and verbiage for the twenty pages of material she included. She editorialized on the masthead page where she was listed as “Associate Editor of This Issue” and under a photo of the spec house in Westwood her parents commissioned from RMS, “This issue of California Arts & Architecture has for its special subject that contemporary movement in architecture which is called “modern”…Contemporary creative architecture*, which for lack of a truly definitve word we call “modern”, is organic, based upon principles of structure and spirit profoundly realized.” (See entire editorial below left). *(The same title Pauline used for her 1930-32 traveling exhibition mentioned above).

California Arts & Architecture, January 1935, Modern Architecture Issue, guest editor, Pauline Schindler. (From my collection).

This was the first issue of a magazine in Southern California dedicated entirely to modern architecture and also included work by Richard Neutra (Lovell Health House, VDL Research House, Koblick, Mosk, Beard and Sten-Frenke Residences), R. M Schindler (Oliver, Gibling and Wolfe Residences), J. R. Davidson (The Bachelors’ Haberdashery and Wilshire Blvd. Shops), Kem Weber, Lloyd Wright (Jobyna Howland Residence), Jock Peters (L. E. Sheperd and Gilks Residences with photos by Chandler Weston), Morrow & Morrow (Henry Cowell Residence), Hunter & Feil (Gude’s Shoe Store) and a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright, “Modern Architecture Acknowledges the Light Which Kindled It” by Pauline Schindler. (See above right). Harwell Hamilton Harris was featured with a two-page spread of his 1934 Pauline Lowe House and an article under his byline, “In Designing the Small House.” Pauline also included a slightly reworked version of RMS’s “Space Architecture” with two photos and floor plans of his Wolfe House on Catalina Island.

Publisher George Oyer’s editorial in the same issue titled “California – As We See It” reads, “For some months we have been considering the advisability of recording some of the work of our California modern designers. To the layman, the term modern applies to any house or building with dominating horizontal or vertical lines: to any shop front with polished aluminum or bronze wainscoting. The term modern applied to architecture and interior furnishings has but a vague meaning….It is quite impossible to show all of the distinctive work of our outstanding architects, nor are we able to include in this issue the work of all of our California modernists. In the selection of photographs and articles we are grateful to Miss Pauline Schindler for her able assistance. Whether or not you like it, is beside the point. It is here so we acknowledge it.”See my related post at the following link. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-arts-architecture.html

PGS was successful in producing an even more extensive guest-edited theme issue on “The Modern Movement in Architecture” for the December 1935 issue of Architect & Engineer which featured Richard Neutra’s Galka Scheyer Residence, VDL Research House, Ring Plan School and Corona Avenue School in Bell with accompanying articles “Comparative Studies on the Construction and Cost of the Activity Classroom” and “A Revision of the Concept of the School Building: A New Plan for California Schools” and Koblick Residence in Atherton with the article “Problems of Pre-Fabrication.” Work by RMS included the articles, “Furniture and the Modern House: A Theory of Interior Design”, and the Wolfe (with Brett Weston photos), Oliver and Buck Residences. This entree enabled RMS’s follow-up article “Furniture and the Modern House” in the March 1936 issue of the same magazine.

The Museum of Modern Art’s Philip Johnson finally recognizing the importance of what was happening in California, organized an exhibition “Contemporary Architecture in California” which ran from September 30 to October 24, 1935 which included work by Neutra, Schindler, William W. Wurster and others. The exhibition traveled to 20 other locations from 1935-1939. Still feeling the sting of being left out of MOMA’s 1932 Modern Architecture Exhibition, Schindler almost dropped out of this show when he read Arthur Millier’s September 15 Brush Strokes column in the Los Angeles Times , “An exhibit of models, plans, photographs, of recent work of California modern architects, with special emphasis on Richard J. Neutra, is announced by New York’s Museum of Modern Art for October 2 to 24.” Ernestine Fantl of MOMA reassured him that was not the case and he decided to remain in the show. (Sheine, p. 256). This show was undoubtedly influenced by Pauline’s 1930 “Contemporary Creative Architecture in California Exhibition” and triggered by the January 1935 California Arts & Architecture Modern Architecture Issue she guest-edited.

Pauline’s gradual shift from Socialism to Communism evident in her Dune Forum editorials resulted in her in 1935 writing for the Western Worker, “the Western Organ of the Communist Party USA” as she coined the publication in an August 30, 1935 letter to her mother. She had also just spent the previous month with Mark at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas which was subsequently investigated by the Arkansas House of Representatives as a “Communist” organization. (Sweeney, p. 111). Soon thereafter Pauline returned to Kings Road for good. She had finally tired of her vagabond existence and was ready to settle down. She would communicate with her ex-husband and house-mate RMS by letter for the rest of her days at Kings Road until his 1953 death. (Sweeney). At one time Pauline had expressed an interest in doing RMS’s biography but that would have been hard to accomplish communicating only via letter as they had chosen to do.

The Schindler’s led such interesting lives that even their divorce proceedings were influenced by people from their salon circle(s). RMS’s attorney was erstwhile actress Anna Zacsek, friend of Edward Weston (see portrait below) who likely introduced her to Kings Road in the early 1920s. Under the stage name of Olga Grey, Zacsek had a distinguished career in the Hollywood where she appeared in numerous films including D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” She als founded “The Actor’s Theater” in Hollywood where her troupe included the likes of Boris Karloff. Tired of acting and running her theater, on the advice of an attorney friend she decided to study law and passed the bar in 1932. She practiced in anonymity until 1935 when she was “unmasked” in the fascinating Los Angeles Times article cited below. It is easy for one to speculate upon an affair between RMS and Zacsek at some point in their friendship based upon his track record with other clients.

Zacsek commissioned Schindler to design her house in Playa del Rey in 1936 and it was completed in 1938 (see below), not long after divorce proceedings began in earnest in late 1937. In a December 21, 1937 letter to RMS Zacsek writes, “I suggest that you have assembled your income and expenditures. Not that I desire to look into your private life, but, it is truly necessary if we are to muzzle Pauline.” There is also 1938 correspondence in the Schindler Archive at UCSB from Pauline’s attorney, Morris E. Cohn, regarding child support. Cohn, like Pauline, was an amateur composer, thus they were also probably longtime friends from happier times at Kings Road. (I am indebted to author Susan Morgan for the above UCSB Zacsek-RMS and Cohn-PGS correspndence from UCSB. She also included the Zacsek portrait in her Edward Weston: Portraits published by Aperture in 2005. Morgan is currently working on Esther McCoy’s biography and has an Esther McCoy Reader scheduled for release this fall).

Zacsek Residence, 114 Ellen St., Playa del Rey, 1938. From R. M. Schindler by Judith Sheine, Gustavo Gili, 1998, p. 151.

The last, but not least, luminous benefactor of being in Pauline’s circle was Esther McCoy who began working for RMS as a draftsperson at Kings Road in 1944. She was introduced to Kings Road a few years earlier by Schindler neighbor Theodore Dreiser (see below), became intrigued by the house and befriended Pauline. She was encouraged to apply for the drafting position by Pauline who heard RMS had an opening due to his draftsman going off to war. (McCoy Oral History). In my opinion, this event turned out to be the symbolic passing of the baton from a writer who was trying to create history through her promotional work of the modern movement and chronicling its events as they occurred to another who was destined to be Southern California’s first serious historian of modern architecture.

RMS and Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Jefferson Art Gallery, Santa Monica, 1945. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

McCoy (see below) began her illustrious career with her apropos first article, “Schindler, Space Architect”, published in the Fall 1945 number of Direction and the rest as they say is “History.” (See “Being There: Esther McCoy the Accidental Architectural Historian” by Susan Morgan, in the Spring 2009 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal, pp. 24-26 for a more detailed account of McCoy’s genesis as an architectural historian and her first architectural article. Morgan has a McCoy biography in progress and is publishing an Esther McCoy Reader to be released this fall.)

Esther McCoy, 1944. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

PGS’s driving need to be at the forefront of progressive thought and salon mistress of all things modern in the arts and architecture landed her in some very interesting positions indeed and allowed her to befriend an extremely interesting and influential circle of artistic luminaries. Her wandering existence between 1927 and 1936 and Mark’s enrollment in at the private Ojai Valley School would not have been possible without the continued financial support of her father Edmund. He not only provided funds for land purchase and construction of Kings Road and loans when RMS’s clients’ fees were late in arriving, but also supported RMS with commissions for their Westwood spec house in 1925-28 and subsequent 1935 remodel and for two unbuilt residences in the 1940s.

Edmund also subsidized Pauline’s editorial efforts at The Carmelite. He helped with the rent for her stay at Wright’s Storer House and most likely all of the other places she leased while away from Kings Road. Thus the Giblings’ unflagging support of their daughter enabled her efforts to widen the understanding and acceptance of modern architecture, the avant-garde arts and progressive social causes. Her accomplishments were remarkable considering RMS’s constant string of infidelities and sometime lack of cooperation. The members of her inner circle, including RMS and Richard Neutra who received numerous commissions through her salon contacts, exhibitions and articles; Edward, Brett and Chandler Weston; Galka Scheyer; John Cage; Esther McCoy and countless others, benefited significantly as did we all for the rich modernistic tapestry she wove.

It is my hope with this post to spark further research into the life and times of the enigmatic free spirit of Pauline Gibling Schindler whose modernism marketing efforts and editorialism during the late 1920s and early 1930s are sorely under-recognized and under-valued. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this post and any leads to further related material.

Pauline Schindler at Kings Road, November 1941. Courtesy Schindler Family Collection, Friends of the Schindler House. From “Life at Kings Road: As It Was 1920-1940″ by Robert Sweeney in the MOCA exhibition catalog The Architecture of R. M. Schindler organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and Michael Darling.