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Catalogue for the last show I did at the Columbia Museum of Art, one of by best ideas ever. Set a record for attendance.
That's Riza Royce on the cover. Who was at the time married to legendary filmmaker, Josef von Sternberg. She was also having an affair with Macdonald-Wright. Justifiably upset, von Sternberg accepted an offer to go to Germany and work on a film with a virtually unknown young actress, Marlene Dietrich. Von Sternberg divorced Royce, and made Dietrich famous. So, in a way, the world owes the discovery of Marlene Dietrich to Stanton Macdonald-Wright and his profligate ways.
The greatest American landscapist you never heard of.
Next to mormons, the Lake is the best known thing about Utah, and for good reason.
The first Utah artist to study in Paris in the 19th century, the first to show at the Salon, and an indefatigable worker. Harwood loved nature inside and out and set a generation of Utah painters on their way, including Mahonri Young and Lee Greene Richards.
A lovely book, however much a pain in the ass to write.
Done in an ongoing effort to introduce California art to the world.
A superb draftsman.
Bing Davis--if there are saints who walk this earth, he is one.
Written in a period of non-stop artiness, about an institution that helped shape the sensibilities of a city.
This entire collection burned to the ground in the Oakland Fire of 1991.
Wrote this book on a dare. We were all drunk at Junior's in Salt Lake City, talking about the strange connections between Utah and the Outside World. Going over stories bizarre but sometimes true. I said I'd write them down. Then, hell, I had to.
An extraordinary photographer.
Doug Snow may well have been the last of the serious Utah artists.
An obscure project, but one dear to my heart. The few artists making prints in 1930s Utah did so for the sheer love of the process. Along the way, they spoke volumes about their State.
A project that should have been a whole lot better.
The story of the Art Students League of Los Angeles. Worked with wonderful people on this, all the while thinking how exciting it would have been to be alive then when artists were actually striving for something other than personal recognition.
Started this show in the early 90s when the internet was fledgling. Numerous antique searches indicated that no exhibition had yet been done on a single color. Was that true? I haven't gone back to look, preferring to think that it was.
Another immigrant to America who helped to make America great before the assumed necessity that it had to be made great again.
I had been reading heavily in the cognitive neurosciences throughout the 1990s, and this show was the result.
A highly political exhibition. It felt like, at the time, the show impacted local discussions of how and why art mattered in our perceptions of right and wrong. A lively time for all involved. It culminated in BYU banning Rodin's "Kiss" from campus, giving this show a public relations push money could not have bought.
Guy was J.T. Harwood's friend and eventual roommate in Paris. The art world was, and in some ways still is (though less so), an awfully small place.
A fascinating story of how one person can make an enormous difference in the life of a community. Ivy would no doubt be stunned if he could see how morally retrograde North Carolina has become.
George was a great friend and personal supporter of mine. He was also the kind of gentleman who no longer exists in this world of incessant lies--dignified, kind, honest, self-effacing and striving to help build a vibrant and experience-filled place. Just knowing George inspired people to be better--better friends, citizens and artists.
Mabel was a student of Stanton Macdonald-Wright's and became a confidante of Morgan Russell's. Morgan's transvesticism freaked her out a bit, but Mabel accommodated her own fears and went on to have a vivid career.