"Judgment of Paris," Lorser
Feitelson, 1920s. Oil on canvas from the Macfarlane
collection.
SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. - The predominance of landscape paintings
in the California art scene during the late Nineteenth and early
Twentieth Centuries nearly eclipsed another major genre. This
summer, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's exhibition "Focus on
the Figure: Southern California Artists (1850-1950)," on view
through November 11, gives well deserved prominence to the
achievements of figurative painters and their struggle for
acceptance in the Southland.
Almost all the figurative artists who gathered in the artistic
communities of southern California during that time had studied
in Eastern and European academies which stressed the primacy of
the figure. Arriving in California, they faced two challenged in
the south, the dominance of landscape and the proscription of the
nude.
Conservative elements in southern California society opposed both
studying the undraped figure from life and depicting the bare
body in art. To counter the public censorship which inhibited
figuration's advancement, Hanson Puthuff began a class in his
studio for male artists only to draw from the nude. These
sessions evolved into the Art Students League of Los Angeles.
Despite obstacles, the increasing importance of the Art students
League helped figurative artists to persevere in the 1910s. The
arrival of Impressionists from the East Coast and from Europe who
believed in painting the figure encouraged the growth of
Impressionist figure pictures, including nudes and portraits, at
the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San
Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition (PCE) in San
Diego. Most southern California painters submitted landscapes to
the PPIE, except for Donna Schuster, John Rich, Helena Dunlap,
and Clarence Hinkle entered figural works. Hinkle painted one or
the finest figurative images of the year, a scene with a figure
dressed in Chinese costume.
In contrasts to the PPIE, half of the paintings at the PCE by
southern Californians were portraits and figures, and included
works by Mabel Alvarez, Rich Boris Deutsch, Stanton
Macdonald-Wright, and Ejnar Hansen. In 1915 for the first time
portraits equaled the number of landscapes accepted at the annual
exposition of the California Art Club (CAC) at the Los Angeles
Museum. Figuration went on to receive further acknowledgement
between 1915 and 1919, when the Los Angeles Museum mounted
individual shows for Guy Rose, Rich, Schuster, Dunlap, and
Edouard Vysekal.
The advance of Modernism in the late 1910s, was also a great
catalyst to the California figure painters. Several women were at
the forefront of the modernist figure painters including Dunlap
and Henrietta Shore who co-founded the Modern Art Society. In
1920 Macdonald-Wright organized an exhibition of works influenced
by Synchronism. For Macdonald-Wright, the figure became an
instrument through which he examined the expressive qualities of
color and explored eastern philosophy.
On a regional level, in the 1920s, the Santa Barbara School of
the Arts (1920-1938) was one of several schools in the Southland
to promote the figure. Under Archibald Dawson, its department of
sculpture achieved national attention when he taught a class in
bronze casting using the ciré perdu (lost wax) process. Two
sculptures in "Focus on the Figure," Donal Hord's "Stand and
Bow," 1926-1927, and "Dying Warriors," 1927, were created under
his direction.
The advent of abstraction together with other aesthetic trends
following World War II precipitated a retreat from both landscape
and figuration. These events in turn led to a disregard for the
formative period of representational California art. The renewed
interest in representation occurred in the late 1970s, yet until
now, curators and collectors alike have concentrated chiefly on
California's landscape painting heritage.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State Street, is open
Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm; Sunday, noon to 5 pm,
and Friday, 11 am to 9 pm. For information, 805-963-4364.
