05. Duchamp and Friends
Duchamp and Relationships
The impression Duchamp gives is of a Taciturn and aloof personality and therefore it is reasonable to wonder whether Duchamp had any really close friendships.
As a person it seems he was not as cold and distant as the impression he gave and was an easy going an agreeable person who indeed had a number of close friendships. In many of his outlandish Art statements he was "assisted" or perhaps egged on by friends and acquaintances and without these perhaps some of the more provocative pieces wouldn't have been submitted. But it seems his close friends were few and carefully chosen.
I wish to mention one of the strange predilections of Duchamp that seem very odd and may have been even more strange to people back in these times.
One of the earliest examples of Performance Art in the visual arts is Duchamp's creation of a female alter-ego, one Rrose Selavy, in 1920.
There are a number of photographs of Duchamp dressed in drag, including a very famous one taken by Man Ray, an important photographer and friend of Duchamp's. As far as we know, Duchamp was not a cross dresser for the usual reasons. Rrose was created as an artistic act to explore the androgynous aspect of his personality. Her name was sometimes spelled "Rrose" (the double Rr is because in French the R is rolled) and sometimes "Rose." In either pronunciation, her first name sounds like "eros," which means love (or sex). Selavy is an Americanized pun based on the French term "C'est la vie," which translated from the French means "that's life." Her name then, in translation, is: "Love (or sex), that's life." Duchamp not only appeared in public as Rrose Selavy, but also created a number of works of art under her name.
Another ironic pieces by Duchamp relating to androgyny is a reproduction of "The Mona Lisa" called "L. H. O. O. Q." (1919). The famous painting by Leonardo DaVinci had been enhanced with a mustache and goatee, and at the bottom, the letters L. H. O. O. Q. had been added. Now why would Duchamp do such a thing and what could it mean?
Irony Upon Irony, the idea of a reproduction being defaced is itself, in turn reproduced in Art History Books! If any person you were to meet took a famous painting and drew something crude on it, how can this be called by any stretch of the imagination, a work of Art? And yet Marcel's piece of vandalism is almost as famous as the original!
We also have to bear in mind that he did NOT deface the original, he simply bought a print of it and "altered it". This idea of mocking such a "revered" image in Art was a sardonic look at the establishments endless repetition of a "unique" individual piece is an irony in itself. This idea was picked up again in the 60's by POP artist Andy Warhol with his repetitive recycling of familiar images.
Duchamp was well aware that art historians had developed a theory that the person who modelled for the "Mona Lisa" was not a woman, but a man. This theory is based on the fact that the original drawings, which served as studies for the "Mona Lisa" did not have drapery on the arms and the bare arms seem too muscular to be a woman's. There also has been some speculation among historians that Leonardo DaVinci was a homosexual. As you might guess, these theories appealed to Duchamp because of his interest in androgyny. So, he added the moustache and the goatee to make her more "male." Some may well use these ideas of Duchamp a kind of support for recent concerns about gender roles and sexuality today. But it appears he was more fascinated by labels and definitions along with visual puns and irony and subverting conventions and stereotypes, there is no evidence to suggest he had some kind of gender confusion.
Duchamp, like many people before him and after, was fascinated by the mystery of the Mona Lisa's smile. Many theories have been presented about her enigmatic smile, and Duchamp puts forward his own with the letters, L.H.O.O.Q. Although the letters stand for nothing, when pronounced in French, they sound much like a vulgar term that was used in France at the time, which meant that "she has a hot ass." In other words, his theory about the smile, in more correct terms, is that "she smiles because she wants sex." Irony only begins to describe Duchamps work. While influencing immense change in the art world, we can only imagine his amusement and satisfaction at forcing the Art world to take his sarcastic remarks about the pretentiousness of high Art to be taken seriously.
So was Marcel Duchamp aloof and anti-social? It seems he was not much of a socialite and although he had some romantic type relationships, they were few and far between.
This not to say Duchamp did not have close friends, he closely collaborated with Francis Picabia and Man Ray from the beginnings of early DaDa days. In New York probably his closest friend may well have been Walter Arensberg (1878 - 1954)the son of a wealthy Pittsburgh crucible company businessman.
He was one of the elitists who already wanted to get to know Marcel since the 1912 armoury show in New York. Brought up wealthy attending Harvard university and after graduation he spent the obligatory two years in Europe as did all wealthy Americans. Upon returning to the US he opted out of further education at Harvard and began a literary career in New York City beginning 1904. He was clearly a gifted writer and in 1921 at age 33 he published a highly controversial book about Dante's inferno in which he analyses the text in cryptographic and Freudian terms, which was deemed a shocking idea at that time.
But what is more interesting is his fascination for Cryptography in the work of Shakespeare and his belief that there was a connection to Francis Bacon. He passionately believed in the school of thought that Francis Bacon was, in fact, William Shakespeare and simply wrote all his plays under a pseudonym. He also claimed there were links to the Rosicrucians through the use of a "cipher key". The Rosicrucian and freemason connection in the Elitist families of New York was a part of his heritage and it is this connection that we see influencing the new ideas in Art.
In Bacon’s NEW ATLANTIS, religion plays an important role.
However, not in the conventional sense. Bacon's central idea is linked to the concept of man's worship of his own ability and intelligence. The umbrella term for this is 'science' and this is presented as the new civil religion.
In essence, this new Atlantis, was the world given a fresh start. Freed from the fetters of Old European Theocracy the principle was based on the enlightenment ideals in France. These were in summary, the idea that man can forge his destiny by the use of reason and science. In this ideal society, people of substance either with wealth or with intelligence or both are naturally raised to status of power and control and can make decisions for the betterment of mankind based on their collective wisdom. In this new Atlantis we will have a society built on pragmatism and reason rather than the hereditary right of kings and entrenched institutions such as the Roman Church. What better venue for the implementation of these concepts than the United States?
Walter Arensberg, was obsessed with Francis Bacon and believed he was the real writer behind all the Shakespearean literature, which is a very interesting study in itself. But suffice to say that these Elitist families of New York were very interested in the new ideas of European intellectuals on in so far that they continued the Jacobin tradition that had failed so miserably in 18th C France. Where the french failed, the Americans would succeed! The world of Art was for them not an end to itself but would be carefully cultivated as an expression of the new Modernity. These elitists were keen to build their new Atlantis with a totally new appearance, new architecture and new public and Artistic expressions to decorate the New style of Buildings that spoke of a total break from the ideals and conventions of the 'Old World'.
They needed Scholars (such as Clement Greenberg) and experts (such as Marcel Duchamp)to guide the creation and legitimacy of this new World Art. And then they needed auspicious exhibition halls in order to showcase these ideals.
The fact that the general public had no real understanding and did not relate to these alien looking objects was of no concern to the elitists who simply regard them as much beneath their lofty principles and were not really part of the club. Marcel was one of the "intelligent" who was afforded the "honour" of entry. This process and "insider" aspect of modernism was never more clearly visible that the "urinal" a piece of common plumbing that to the stultification of the general public had managed to attain "collectors museum status" and remained for some time a private joke among the elitists who were "in the know".
Marcel Duchamp's expertise in the "visual pun" put him in a unique advisory position that fans of modernism and collectors were very keen to tap into. Arensberg became a central part of the modernist clique in New York and contributed some symbolist poetry to Dada publications, probably under the influence of Duchamp.
When we say exploit this might be too strong as Duchamp was welcomed as an insider and the Arensbergs put their protective wings around him as he lived in their new York apartment in 1915 whilst they were away on their summer vacation in Connecticut. The respect the Arensbergs as well as other wealthy elites gave Duchamp must have emboldened him to carry on his nihilistic and provocative games with DaDa and Walter surely would have delighted in sharing the joke with Duchamp when he 'found' his 'Urinal' or 'Fountain' as it was facetiously named, contribution to the Exhibition of the Society of independent Artists. And also subsequently 'resigning in protest' when the urinal was not accepted.
In 1920, Walter Arensberg introduced Duchamp to an aspiring artist Katherine Dreier, and together with Man Ray they founded the Société Anonyme, Inc.: Museum of Modern Art 1920, which they initially intended as a “reference library” of works embodying the new movements.
Katherine Dreier
Dreier was of German descent, her father a wealthy German businessman who educated his son and three daughters in the most liberal and progressive ideas of the day.
Dreier was co-founder of the Society of Independent Artists and the Société Anonyme, which had the first permanent collection of modern art, representing 175 artists and more than 800 works of art. She tirelessly steered the Société Anonyme organisation though the 1920s and beyond, promoting concerts, exhibitions, lectures, and publications, to which she contributed her own artistic scholarship. During the 1920s and ’30s she lectured widely on modern art, including talks at the Berlin Bauhaus (at the invitation of Vasily Kandinsky) and Black Mountain College (with Josef Albers).
For Dreier the abstract was an expression of inner spiritual meaning. She credited Kandinsky’s writings in On the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911) with giving form to her “vague thoughts” while she was studying in Munich during the winter of 1911–12..
In 1923, the Société Anonyme organised Kandinsky’s first solo show in New York—also his first in the United States—and he became the group’s vice president in absentia, the cornerstone of a friendship with Dreier that would last until his death.
working relationship with Kandinsky and her spiritual leanings, including studies in Theosophy—which she defended in her 1948 lecture on the “intrinsic significance” of modern art—made her a natural ally of the equally staunch and spiritual Hilla Rebay, founding director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Hilla Rebay
Dreier met founding director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Hilla Rebay in 1930 encouraged both by Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. They continued to collaborate as scholars and collectors of nonobjective art in New York. Through the Société Anonyme, Dreier had also organized the first United States exhibition of Rebay’s long-time collaborator and partner, Rudolf Bauer.
Who is Rudolf Bauer?
Not a name well remembered today but during the early years of the Guggenheim museum he was pretty much touted as one of the great names in Modern painting.
So what happened to him and how did he fall from favour? It's a strange tale that could be an interesting TV series.
But the unfolding events exposed the real powers behind modern Art. The people who decided what was going to be accepted and what was rejected were not as invested in the skill of the artists themselves as in sending a message to the rest of the world using the Artists as heralds or spokesmen almost like TV reporters are today. The message was about the new kid on the block.
The new art was simply a cultural expression of a political shift in the power, the USA and not Britain or Europe as the leader of the modern world.
Were the Artists aware of this? It would appear they were not and regarded their work to be as significant a part of Art History that would ensure their own legacy as a part of it. Rudolf Bauer was for a time, certain of his legacy - but we will see just how fickle the makers of posterity can be.
Hilla Rebay
The story pivots around our main protagonist, Hilla Rebay. She was born into a minor aristocratic family in Alsace, then part of imperial Germany, and certainly there was old money in the family, but also, more importantly, connections. She was gifted certainly and spent part of her youth studying art at Académie Julian in Paris.
Also like many moderns of the day she was interested in exploring alternative philosophical and religious concepts such as Theosophy, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and astrology. It was these explorations that led her eventually to the philosophical treatises on Art by Wassily Kandinsky who she met in Zurich after being introduced by Hans Arp.
He also introduced her to the works of Klee, Franz Marc, Chagall and in 1917 she met . . . Rudolf Bauer at Der Sturm, an influential art group in Berlin, and smitten with each other, they subsequently shared a studio. In 1920 Katherine Dreier, arrived in Berlin with her advisor, Marcel Duchamp looking for new work, they met Bauer and bought several of his works Dreier wrote a very positive review and was keen to get him into the stable.
1930's
About 10 years later, Rebay decided to immigrate to New York where she met the Copper magnate and collector Solomon Guggenheim and painted his portrait. He later, travelled with Rebay and his wife Irene, to Berlin and was introduced to Bauer and Kandinsky.
Guggenheim also bought several of Bauer's new works and put him on a stipend, which allowed Bauer to open his own museum for his work and the work of other Non-Objective painters such as Kandinsky. He called his museum Das Geistreich, or "The Realm of the Spirit." He then travelled back to the US to be present at Guggenheim's exhibitions of 'Non-Objective' paintings.
Clearly, things were going extremely well for Bauer at this point
Marinetti and Rudolf Bauer at his Gallery - early 1930's
Back in Berlin
The Bauhaus had been closed down by the government in 1933, and artists such as Bauer were increasingly ostracised. Many had already fled the country. Rebay wrote to Bauer in August 1937 to report that she had visited the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, which featured many artists from their Der Sturm days, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy-Nagy, and, of course, Bauer.
Why Bauer lingered so long in this hostile environment remains a mystery. He was not Jewish, yet his patron was one of the richest Jews in the world. This association would not go unnoticed in Nazi Germany.
In 1938 he was returning from an exhibition in Paris and was arrested by the Gestapo as one of the 'Degenerate Artists' in Germany he was imprisoned for several months before finally and through much effort by Rebay and Guggenheim, was released and able to escape to the USA.
Watch this Movie Here. . .
There were rumours
Had Solomon had fallen for Rebay? When one considers just how much his wife Rene hated her, perhaps she may well have used her feminine wiles to encourage him to spend his fortune on a modern museum of Art with her at the helm. She could then promote and collect her favourite works including Kandinsky and Rudolf Bauer.
white caro -1938
If that was the case, Solomon swallowed it hook line and sinker, and the museum, opened in midtown Manhattan in 1939, became an important early U.S. showcase for such leading European modernists as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as some American art stars of the day.
Pink Circle - 1938
It was not merely a simple case of manipulation, Hilla was indeed a visionary and Solomon had the financial backing to make it happen, so where's the harm we might say?
However this was really a first phase of a much grander idea of Rebay's which in essence was New York, not Paris, was to become the world's fine Art capital.
In June 1943, Rebay wrote to the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright to commission a "museum-temple" to house the growing collection. The new Guggenheim museum was to be a modernist statement in itself as well as a home for the new Art of America.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Hila Rebay and Solomon Guggenheim with a model of the New Modern Art Museum
Hilla was now one of the leading figures in the world of New York Modernism and Rudolf Bauer was set to be one of the great Artistic stars of Modernism. Guggenheim loved his richly coloured and sophisticated geometric compositions, and filled his apartment at the Plaza Hotel with the artist’s work.
What happened?
The Guggenheim was finally opened on October 21, 1959, but poor old Solomon never got to see it, since in 1949 he had quite inconveniently, died!
His wife and his nephew took their chance to seize back control, and Hilla Rebay was asked to step down. They also removed all of the rival lover Bauer’s works from view, along with various other Artists championed by Hilla and Solomon, and the whole focus and narrative of the Art of the 20th Century was changed. The museum was opened in 1959 and Hilla was not even invited!
She never set foot in the museum she helped create. Embittered, she retreated from public life and spent her final years at her estate in Westport, Connecticut. She was never a force in Art again and retreated from public life and died 27 September, 1967 virtually unknown and forgotten.
It was Solomon's wife Irene who had much against Hilla, was it because she was sidelined and her influence and ideas were ignored in favour of Hilla? Was Solomon and Hilla involved romantically? Her behaviour towards Hilla certainly do give us some tantalising clues.
Peggy Guggenheim
What about Solomon's niece Peggy, the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim who famously went down to a watery grave with the Titanic. Given a Privileged and elitist upbringing she was home schooled and sheltered from the outside world. Peggy cultivated an independent and free spirited approach to life. She inherited a large sum of money from her family trust in 1919 and moved to Paris, where she began developing her fascination for a modern lifestyle fuelled with a fascination for anything avant-garde she began to collect the work of several artists.
Marcel Duchamp was called upon as an advisor when in 1938, she opened a gallery for modern art in London. She then formed a collaboration with famed English Art Historian Herbert Read. She then headed off to France and was busy buying up new work for their new Modern Art Gallery in London. But her plans were rudely interrupted by the Second World War and the German invasion forcing her to escape to the south with her Art purchases as well as a German surrealist she had fallen for, Max Ernst who she then took back to New York in the summer of 1941.
Herbert Read
There, in the following year, she opened a new gallery which actually was in part a museum at 30 West 57th Street.
Concave walls and furniture like sculpture in the surrealist room
It was called The Art of This Century Gallery.
Three of the four galleries were dedicated to Cubist and Abstract art, Surrealism and Kinetic art, with only the fourth, the front room, being a commercial gallery.
In the early 1940s, a small and largely disorganized group of artists found themselves without suitable venues to show their work, until the opening of Peggy Guggenheim's gallery. Sometimes called The Uptown Group by downtown artists who did not have gallery representation, its unofficial membership included Pollock, Lee Krasner, Adolph Gottlieb, Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ad Reinhardt.
Jackson Pollock
Peggy Guggenheim was perhaps the single most important cause of Jackson Pollocks's great acclaim at the time. As appeared to be the custom of the elitists she brought him into her orbit by paying him a monthly stipend, Guggenheim had first choice of the paintings he made. He was able then, to buy a home on long island where he was filmed making his 'action paintings'. She bought one of his paintings for her apartment and financed his first exhibition which was received favourably by notable critic of the day Clement Greenberg.
Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock in front of Pollock's Mural, 1943. ©
Peggy Guggenheim held important shows, such as the show for 31 Women artists, at the gallery as well
The Show for 31 women. . .
Well this was a great idea to promote women's art except for the one woman she ruefully joked about later, of the thirty one women invited, the 'one' was the one too many.
She was referring to a young surrealist painter, Dorothea Tanning. When Guggenheim dispatched Max Ernst, her husband at the time, to select paintings for the exhibition, one of Ernst's favourites was a self-portrait by Dorothea Tanning, which he named Birthday.
Ernst fell completely in love with Dorothea resigning from his advisory role at Art of This Century and inevitable divorce from Guggenheim in 1946.
10. The cult of Youth - The beginning of an idea that polarised the generations.
In any previous century young people would never have imagined being even remotely critical of the opinions and decisions of their elders.
But now, a line had been crossed, this long cherished tradition had crumbled away in the course of a few years. For the first time in Modern Western European History there arose a sociological fact, the youthful generation had lost faith in the incumbent one and actively sought to supplant it.
But not immediately, it still took a few generations to sink in. The world still had to deal with the rise of Communist Russia as well as the horrendous German backlash after the humiliating peace negotiations at the end of the first world war.
Dada in America?
Well according to Robert Hughes, it was the spirit of Dada that re-appeared the USA in the 1960's - of course there was the ground swell of the beat generation and Elvis and some important factors we shall explore. A youth revolution of 60's and the 70's may well have been born from the seeds of the Dada movement planted, all those years ago - just in time for the arrival of my own generation.
This was not the taciturn indifference of an intellectual whose cerebral exploits into the world of modern Art descended inevitably into the despair of nihilism and pointlessness, Marcel Duchamp, who deliberately lead modern art up a blind alley to commit suicide and then retired to focus on his one true obsession, playing chess. This was a branch of Dada that had survived Europe and tickled the fancy of the wealthy elitists who had been collecting artifacts of modernism since the armory show of 1912. They had welcomed Duchamp to New York where he was very well looked after and held in high regard as the leading prophet of modernism.
It was a very different avenue of the "spirit of Dadaism" that was as disconnected from new York modernism as the middle class was from the Guggenheim's, this was the spirit of protest and rebellion, very vigorous and passionate and a far cry from Duchamp's pathological detachment.
But if ever the ideals of Dada had a chance to work out a remodeling of the world and a complete change of system it was here in this spontaneous outpouring of youth culture in 1960's America.
Vietnam Protesters put flowers in the barrels of guns.
Peace, love and Unity . . .
The psychedelic hippy scene, what was this all about? How did it begin? Before the whole Vietnam War issue became such a powerful reason for rebellion and protest, what caused this whole ground swell of discontent and anger?
The impression Duchamp gives is of a Taciturn and aloof personality and therefore it is reasonable to wonder whether Duchamp had any really close friendships.
As a person it seems he was not as cold and distant as the impression he gave and was an easy going an agreeable person who indeed had a number of close friendships. In many of his outlandish Art statements he was "assisted" or perhaps egged on by friends and acquaintances and without these perhaps some of the more provocative pieces wouldn't have been submitted. But it seems his close friends were few and carefully chosen.
I wish to mention one of the strange predilections of Duchamp that seem very odd and may have been even more strange to people back in these times.
One of the earliest examples of Performance Art in the visual arts is Duchamp's creation of a female alter-ego, one Rrose Selavy, in 1920.
There are a number of photographs of Duchamp dressed in drag, including a very famous one taken by Man Ray, an important photographer and friend of Duchamp's. As far as we know, Duchamp was not a cross dresser for the usual reasons. Rrose was created as an artistic act to explore the androgynous aspect of his personality. Her name was sometimes spelled "Rrose" (the double Rr is because in French the R is rolled) and sometimes "Rose." In either pronunciation, her first name sounds like "eros," which means love (or sex). Selavy is an Americanized pun based on the French term "C'est la vie," which translated from the French means "that's life." Her name then, in translation, is: "Love (or sex), that's life." Duchamp not only appeared in public as Rrose Selavy, but also created a number of works of art under her name.
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| Rrose Selavy (Marcel Duchamp), 1920© Man Ray |
Another ironic pieces by Duchamp relating to androgyny is a reproduction of "The Mona Lisa" called "L. H. O. O. Q." (1919). The famous painting by Leonardo DaVinci had been enhanced with a mustache and goatee, and at the bottom, the letters L. H. O. O. Q. had been added. Now why would Duchamp do such a thing and what could it mean?
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| Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa altered and titled L.H.O.O.Q. 1919. |
Irony Upon Irony, the idea of a reproduction being defaced is itself, in turn reproduced in Art History Books! If any person you were to meet took a famous painting and drew something crude on it, how can this be called by any stretch of the imagination, a work of Art? And yet Marcel's piece of vandalism is almost as famous as the original!
We also have to bear in mind that he did NOT deface the original, he simply bought a print of it and "altered it". This idea of mocking such a "revered" image in Art was a sardonic look at the establishments endless repetition of a "unique" individual piece is an irony in itself. This idea was picked up again in the 60's by POP artist Andy Warhol with his repetitive recycling of familiar images.
Duchamp was well aware that art historians had developed a theory that the person who modelled for the "Mona Lisa" was not a woman, but a man. This theory is based on the fact that the original drawings, which served as studies for the "Mona Lisa" did not have drapery on the arms and the bare arms seem too muscular to be a woman's. There also has been some speculation among historians that Leonardo DaVinci was a homosexual. As you might guess, these theories appealed to Duchamp because of his interest in androgyny. So, he added the moustache and the goatee to make her more "male." Some may well use these ideas of Duchamp a kind of support for recent concerns about gender roles and sexuality today. But it appears he was more fascinated by labels and definitions along with visual puns and irony and subverting conventions and stereotypes, there is no evidence to suggest he had some kind of gender confusion.
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| MONA LISA Leonardo - circa 1503 |
Duchamp, like many people before him and after, was fascinated by the mystery of the Mona Lisa's smile. Many theories have been presented about her enigmatic smile, and Duchamp puts forward his own with the letters, L.H.O.O.Q. Although the letters stand for nothing, when pronounced in French, they sound much like a vulgar term that was used in France at the time, which meant that "she has a hot ass." In other words, his theory about the smile, in more correct terms, is that "she smiles because she wants sex." Irony only begins to describe Duchamps work. While influencing immense change in the art world, we can only imagine his amusement and satisfaction at forcing the Art world to take his sarcastic remarks about the pretentiousness of high Art to be taken seriously.
So was Marcel Duchamp aloof and anti-social? It seems he was not much of a socialite and although he had some romantic type relationships, they were few and far between.
This not to say Duchamp did not have close friends, he closely collaborated with Francis Picabia and Man Ray from the beginnings of early DaDa days. In New York probably his closest friend may well have been Walter Arensberg (1878 - 1954)the son of a wealthy Pittsburgh crucible company businessman.
Walter Arensberg
He was one of the elitists who already wanted to get to know Marcel since the 1912 armoury show in New York. Brought up wealthy attending Harvard university and after graduation he spent the obligatory two years in Europe as did all wealthy Americans. Upon returning to the US he opted out of further education at Harvard and began a literary career in New York City beginning 1904. He was clearly a gifted writer and in 1921 at age 33 he published a highly controversial book about Dante's inferno in which he analyses the text in cryptographic and Freudian terms, which was deemed a shocking idea at that time.
But what is more interesting is his fascination for Cryptography in the work of Shakespeare and his belief that there was a connection to Francis Bacon. He passionately believed in the school of thought that Francis Bacon was, in fact, William Shakespeare and simply wrote all his plays under a pseudonym. He also claimed there were links to the Rosicrucians through the use of a "cipher key". The Rosicrucian and freemason connection in the Elitist families of New York was a part of his heritage and it is this connection that we see influencing the new ideas in Art.
In Bacon’s NEW ATLANTIS, religion plays an important role.
However, not in the conventional sense. Bacon's central idea is linked to the concept of man's worship of his own ability and intelligence. The umbrella term for this is 'science' and this is presented as the new civil religion.
In essence, this new Atlantis, was the world given a fresh start. Freed from the fetters of Old European Theocracy the principle was based on the enlightenment ideals in France. These were in summary, the idea that man can forge his destiny by the use of reason and science. In this ideal society, people of substance either with wealth or with intelligence or both are naturally raised to status of power and control and can make decisions for the betterment of mankind based on their collective wisdom. In this new Atlantis we will have a society built on pragmatism and reason rather than the hereditary right of kings and entrenched institutions such as the Roman Church. What better venue for the implementation of these concepts than the United States?
Walter Arensberg, was obsessed with Francis Bacon and believed he was the real writer behind all the Shakespearean literature, which is a very interesting study in itself. But suffice to say that these Elitist families of New York were very interested in the new ideas of European intellectuals on in so far that they continued the Jacobin tradition that had failed so miserably in 18th C France. Where the french failed, the Americans would succeed! The world of Art was for them not an end to itself but would be carefully cultivated as an expression of the new Modernity. These elitists were keen to build their new Atlantis with a totally new appearance, new architecture and new public and Artistic expressions to decorate the New style of Buildings that spoke of a total break from the ideals and conventions of the 'Old World'.
They needed Scholars (such as Clement Greenberg) and experts (such as Marcel Duchamp)to guide the creation and legitimacy of this new World Art. And then they needed auspicious exhibition halls in order to showcase these ideals.
The fact that the general public had no real understanding and did not relate to these alien looking objects was of no concern to the elitists who simply regard them as much beneath their lofty principles and were not really part of the club. Marcel was one of the "intelligent" who was afforded the "honour" of entry. This process and "insider" aspect of modernism was never more clearly visible that the "urinal" a piece of common plumbing that to the stultification of the general public had managed to attain "collectors museum status" and remained for some time a private joke among the elitists who were "in the know".
Marcel Duchamp's expertise in the "visual pun" put him in a unique advisory position that fans of modernism and collectors were very keen to tap into. Arensberg became a central part of the modernist clique in New York and contributed some symbolist poetry to Dada publications, probably under the influence of Duchamp.
When we say exploit this might be too strong as Duchamp was welcomed as an insider and the Arensbergs put their protective wings around him as he lived in their new York apartment in 1915 whilst they were away on their summer vacation in Connecticut. The respect the Arensbergs as well as other wealthy elites gave Duchamp must have emboldened him to carry on his nihilistic and provocative games with DaDa and Walter surely would have delighted in sharing the joke with Duchamp when he 'found' his 'Urinal' or 'Fountain' as it was facetiously named, contribution to the Exhibition of the Society of independent Artists. And also subsequently 'resigning in protest' when the urinal was not accepted.
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| Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp at The Haven, her estate in West Redding, Connecticut, late summer 1936, with Duchamp's Tu m' (1918) above the bookshelf and the 'large glass' |
In 1920, Walter Arensberg introduced Duchamp to an aspiring artist Katherine Dreier, and together with Man Ray they founded the Société Anonyme, Inc.: Museum of Modern Art 1920, which they initially intended as a “reference library” of works embodying the new movements.
Katherine Dreier
Dreier was of German descent, her father a wealthy German businessman who educated his son and three daughters in the most liberal and progressive ideas of the day.
Dreier was co-founder of the Society of Independent Artists and the Société Anonyme, which had the first permanent collection of modern art, representing 175 artists and more than 800 works of art. She tirelessly steered the Société Anonyme organisation though the 1920s and beyond, promoting concerts, exhibitions, lectures, and publications, to which she contributed her own artistic scholarship. During the 1920s and ’30s she lectured widely on modern art, including talks at the Berlin Bauhaus (at the invitation of Vasily Kandinsky) and Black Mountain College (with Josef Albers).
For Dreier the abstract was an expression of inner spiritual meaning. She credited Kandinsky’s writings in On the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911) with giving form to her “vague thoughts” while she was studying in Munich during the winter of 1911–12..
In 1923, the Société Anonyme organised Kandinsky’s first solo show in New York—also his first in the United States—and he became the group’s vice president in absentia, the cornerstone of a friendship with Dreier that would last until his death.
working relationship with Kandinsky and her spiritual leanings, including studies in Theosophy—which she defended in her 1948 lecture on the “intrinsic significance” of modern art—made her a natural ally of the equally staunch and spiritual Hilla Rebay, founding director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Hilla Rebay
Dreier met founding director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Hilla Rebay in 1930 encouraged both by Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. They continued to collaborate as scholars and collectors of nonobjective art in New York. Through the Société Anonyme, Dreier had also organized the first United States exhibition of Rebay’s long-time collaborator and partner, Rudolf Bauer.
Who is Rudolf Bauer?
Not a name well remembered today but during the early years of the Guggenheim museum he was pretty much touted as one of the great names in Modern painting.
So what happened to him and how did he fall from favour? It's a strange tale that could be an interesting TV series.
But the unfolding events exposed the real powers behind modern Art. The people who decided what was going to be accepted and what was rejected were not as invested in the skill of the artists themselves as in sending a message to the rest of the world using the Artists as heralds or spokesmen almost like TV reporters are today. The message was about the new kid on the block.
The new art was simply a cultural expression of a political shift in the power, the USA and not Britain or Europe as the leader of the modern world.
Were the Artists aware of this? It would appear they were not and regarded their work to be as significant a part of Art History that would ensure their own legacy as a part of it. Rudolf Bauer was for a time, certain of his legacy - but we will see just how fickle the makers of posterity can be.
Hilla Rebay
The story pivots around our main protagonist, Hilla Rebay. She was born into a minor aristocratic family in Alsace, then part of imperial Germany, and certainly there was old money in the family, but also, more importantly, connections. She was gifted certainly and spent part of her youth studying art at Académie Julian in Paris.
Also like many moderns of the day she was interested in exploring alternative philosophical and religious concepts such as Theosophy, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and astrology. It was these explorations that led her eventually to the philosophical treatises on Art by Wassily Kandinsky who she met in Zurich after being introduced by Hans Arp.
He also introduced her to the works of Klee, Franz Marc, Chagall and in 1917 she met . . . Rudolf Bauer at Der Sturm, an influential art group in Berlin, and smitten with each other, they subsequently shared a studio. In 1920 Katherine Dreier, arrived in Berlin with her advisor, Marcel Duchamp looking for new work, they met Bauer and bought several of his works Dreier wrote a very positive review and was keen to get him into the stable.
1930's
About 10 years later, Rebay decided to immigrate to New York where she met the Copper magnate and collector Solomon Guggenheim and painted his portrait. He later, travelled with Rebay and his wife Irene, to Berlin and was introduced to Bauer and Kandinsky.
Guggenheim also bought several of Bauer's new works and put him on a stipend, which allowed Bauer to open his own museum for his work and the work of other Non-Objective painters such as Kandinsky. He called his museum Das Geistreich, or "The Realm of the Spirit." He then travelled back to the US to be present at Guggenheim's exhibitions of 'Non-Objective' paintings.
Clearly, things were going extremely well for Bauer at this point
Marinetti and Rudolf Bauer at his Gallery - early 1930's
Back in Berlin
The Bauhaus had been closed down by the government in 1933, and artists such as Bauer were increasingly ostracised. Many had already fled the country. Rebay wrote to Bauer in August 1937 to report that she had visited the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, which featured many artists from their Der Sturm days, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy-Nagy, and, of course, Bauer.
Why Bauer lingered so long in this hostile environment remains a mystery. He was not Jewish, yet his patron was one of the richest Jews in the world. This association would not go unnoticed in Nazi Germany.
In 1938 he was returning from an exhibition in Paris and was arrested by the Gestapo as one of the 'Degenerate Artists' in Germany he was imprisoned for several months before finally and through much effort by Rebay and Guggenheim, was released and able to escape to the USA.
Watch this Movie Here. . .
There were rumours
Had Solomon had fallen for Rebay? When one considers just how much his wife Rene hated her, perhaps she may well have used her feminine wiles to encourage him to spend his fortune on a modern museum of Art with her at the helm. She could then promote and collect her favourite works including Kandinsky and Rudolf Bauer.
white caro -1938
If that was the case, Solomon swallowed it hook line and sinker, and the museum, opened in midtown Manhattan in 1939, became an important early U.S. showcase for such leading European modernists as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as some American art stars of the day.
Pink Circle - 1938
It was not merely a simple case of manipulation, Hilla was indeed a visionary and Solomon had the financial backing to make it happen, so where's the harm we might say?
However this was really a first phase of a much grander idea of Rebay's which in essence was New York, not Paris, was to become the world's fine Art capital.
In June 1943, Rebay wrote to the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright to commission a "museum-temple" to house the growing collection. The new Guggenheim museum was to be a modernist statement in itself as well as a home for the new Art of America.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Hila Rebay and Solomon Guggenheim with a model of the New Modern Art Museum
Hilla was now one of the leading figures in the world of New York Modernism and Rudolf Bauer was set to be one of the great Artistic stars of Modernism. Guggenheim loved his richly coloured and sophisticated geometric compositions, and filled his apartment at the Plaza Hotel with the artist’s work.
What happened?
The Guggenheim was finally opened on October 21, 1959, but poor old Solomon never got to see it, since in 1949 he had quite inconveniently, died!
His wife and his nephew took their chance to seize back control, and Hilla Rebay was asked to step down. They also removed all of the rival lover Bauer’s works from view, along with various other Artists championed by Hilla and Solomon, and the whole focus and narrative of the Art of the 20th Century was changed. The museum was opened in 1959 and Hilla was not even invited!
She never set foot in the museum she helped create. Embittered, she retreated from public life and spent her final years at her estate in Westport, Connecticut. She was never a force in Art again and retreated from public life and died 27 September, 1967 virtually unknown and forgotten.
It was Solomon's wife Irene who had much against Hilla, was it because she was sidelined and her influence and ideas were ignored in favour of Hilla? Was Solomon and Hilla involved romantically? Her behaviour towards Hilla certainly do give us some tantalising clues.
Peggy Guggenheim
What about Solomon's niece Peggy, the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim who famously went down to a watery grave with the Titanic. Given a Privileged and elitist upbringing she was home schooled and sheltered from the outside world. Peggy cultivated an independent and free spirited approach to life. She inherited a large sum of money from her family trust in 1919 and moved to Paris, where she began developing her fascination for a modern lifestyle fuelled with a fascination for anything avant-garde she began to collect the work of several artists.
Marcel Duchamp was called upon as an advisor when in 1938, she opened a gallery for modern art in London. She then formed a collaboration with famed English Art Historian Herbert Read. She then headed off to France and was busy buying up new work for their new Modern Art Gallery in London. But her plans were rudely interrupted by the Second World War and the German invasion forcing her to escape to the south with her Art purchases as well as a German surrealist she had fallen for, Max Ernst who she then took back to New York in the summer of 1941.
Herbert Read
There, in the following year, she opened a new gallery which actually was in part a museum at 30 West 57th Street.
Concave walls and furniture like sculpture in the surrealist room
It was called The Art of This Century Gallery.
Three of the four galleries were dedicated to Cubist and Abstract art, Surrealism and Kinetic art, with only the fourth, the front room, being a commercial gallery.
In the early 1940s, a small and largely disorganized group of artists found themselves without suitable venues to show their work, until the opening of Peggy Guggenheim's gallery. Sometimes called The Uptown Group by downtown artists who did not have gallery representation, its unofficial membership included Pollock, Lee Krasner, Adolph Gottlieb, Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Ad Reinhardt.
Jackson Pollock
Peggy Guggenheim was perhaps the single most important cause of Jackson Pollocks's great acclaim at the time. As appeared to be the custom of the elitists she brought him into her orbit by paying him a monthly stipend, Guggenheim had first choice of the paintings he made. He was able then, to buy a home on long island where he was filmed making his 'action paintings'. She bought one of his paintings for her apartment and financed his first exhibition which was received favourably by notable critic of the day Clement Greenberg.
Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock in front of Pollock's Mural, 1943. ©
Peggy Guggenheim held important shows, such as the show for 31 Women artists, at the gallery as well
The Show for 31 women. . .
Well this was a great idea to promote women's art except for the one woman she ruefully joked about later, of the thirty one women invited, the 'one' was the one too many.
She was referring to a young surrealist painter, Dorothea Tanning. When Guggenheim dispatched Max Ernst, her husband at the time, to select paintings for the exhibition, one of Ernst's favourites was a self-portrait by Dorothea Tanning, which he named Birthday.
Ernst fell completely in love with Dorothea resigning from his advisory role at Art of This Century and inevitable divorce from Guggenheim in 1946.
10. The cult of Youth - The beginning of an idea that polarised the generations.
In any previous century young people would never have imagined being even remotely critical of the opinions and decisions of their elders.
But now, a line had been crossed, this long cherished tradition had crumbled away in the course of a few years. For the first time in Modern Western European History there arose a sociological fact, the youthful generation had lost faith in the incumbent one and actively sought to supplant it.
But not immediately, it still took a few generations to sink in. The world still had to deal with the rise of Communist Russia as well as the horrendous German backlash after the humiliating peace negotiations at the end of the first world war.
Dada in America?
Well according to Robert Hughes, it was the spirit of Dada that re-appeared the USA in the 1960's - of course there was the ground swell of the beat generation and Elvis and some important factors we shall explore. A youth revolution of 60's and the 70's may well have been born from the seeds of the Dada movement planted, all those years ago - just in time for the arrival of my own generation.
This was not the taciturn indifference of an intellectual whose cerebral exploits into the world of modern Art descended inevitably into the despair of nihilism and pointlessness, Marcel Duchamp, who deliberately lead modern art up a blind alley to commit suicide and then retired to focus on his one true obsession, playing chess. This was a branch of Dada that had survived Europe and tickled the fancy of the wealthy elitists who had been collecting artifacts of modernism since the armory show of 1912. They had welcomed Duchamp to New York where he was very well looked after and held in high regard as the leading prophet of modernism.
It was a very different avenue of the "spirit of Dadaism" that was as disconnected from new York modernism as the middle class was from the Guggenheim's, this was the spirit of protest and rebellion, very vigorous and passionate and a far cry from Duchamp's pathological detachment.
But if ever the ideals of Dada had a chance to work out a remodeling of the world and a complete change of system it was here in this spontaneous outpouring of youth culture in 1960's America.
Vietnam Protesters put flowers in the barrels of guns.
Peace, love and Unity . . .
The psychedelic hippy scene, what was this all about? How did it begin? Before the whole Vietnam War issue became such a powerful reason for rebellion and protest, what caused this whole ground swell of discontent and anger?
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