Among his first direct contacts with American art methods on the
Atlantic coast was a competition for an equestrian monument to General
Grant to be placed in Washington. He devoted a great deal of time and
thought to the making of a model and worked it out in fine detail. Grant
and two other officers on horseback were mounted on a high pedestal,
Grant a little higher than the other two. Around the base of the
pedestal and extending out on both sides was a rich frieze of figures
more than life-size, showing events leading to the Civil War, the
struggle itself and the period of reconstruction.
Gutzon was told afterward that Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all-powerful in
the selection, had thrown out the model because he felt that no sculptor
in America could carve so elaborate a frieze and that he suspected
foreign help.
Subsequent steps in the contest are interesting as an indication of how
memorials were sometimes produced in those days. The jury could not
decide which of the two remaining models was best, so each sculptor was
asked to submit a second model. It happened that Solon Borglum had made
the horse on which the principal figure was riding in both models. The
two sculptors called for help and Solon said that he would do what he
could for whichever one got to his studio first.
The disappointed contestant went to Gutzon and asked him to provide a
horse, but Gutzon refused to compete with his brother. As it turned out,
the one who received Solon’s help a second time was given the
commission.
Neither of the brothers thought that Gutzon’s unwillingness to enter a
contest was anything but routine. Solon and he were devoted to each
other. Gutzon had called him away from ranch life to develop an art
sense that became remarkable. Gutzon had instructed him personally and
had helped to finance his career in Cincinnati. He believed himself
personally responsible for giving Solon a chance at a sculptor’s career;
he could never consider himself free to accept any commission in which
he thought that his brother might have an interest.
Only once again, in Cuba, did Gutzon Borglum enter a competition. He
steadfastly refused to accept attractive offers on the ground that the
principle was wrong. A sculptor, he said, should be selected for his
known ability to do what was asked of him and should be allowed to offer
a variety of designs, if necessary, until he produced one that was
satisfactory to the committee. He declared flatly that it was unjust to
ask an artist to risk his best effort on a gamble, to ask him to spend
his time, energy and money on something that might only be thrown away.
It is interesting to note that his ultimate declaration on this subject
was made after his Cuban experience. That was something that he failed
to talk about.
The question of talented artists losing their identity in work for other
artists, sometimes of less or even mediocre ability, was a grievous one
to him and caused many heartaches with which he frankly sympathized.
Often talented artists could not even _get_ a job in another studio, no
matter what their ability. Such a one was Paul Nocquet.
Paul Nocquet was a Belgian of real ability who had known Gutzon in Paris
and had come over to be near him. Eventually he lost his life in a
balloon ascension which he had undertaken in sheer despair. In an open
letter to the _Evening Sun_ he called attention to the humiliating role
played by unrecognized artists in this country, all of which gave Gutzon
Borglum new voice. Borglum wrote:
I have read with astonishment and pleasure the letter by Paul
Nocquet pleading for the sculptor’s art in America. It is no
exaggeration to say that a large part of the sculpture in this
country is produced under false pretenses. Much of it is from the
studios of celebrities, the labor, the thought and even the basic
ideas of poor devils who are paid so much a day.
That the abuses Mr. Nocquet speaks of exist, there is abundance of
proof. A glamor has been thrown about sculpture here that is not
deserved. For a century the bulk of us have ambled along timidly,
following a single lead, sniffing the trail, only to assure our
questioning souls that we were on the beaten path. We fear a new
lead. We placard our homes with safe, old sentiments. We permit no
passion, no action, nothing to disturb the even tenor of a
puritanism that has hardly warmth enough or blood enough to produce
great sculpture and that rarely ventures beyond the meaningless
nudes that disgrace our museums.
If this were not so, Mr. Nocquet would have no complaint. If
character and individuality were even tolerated in American
sculpture, our production by proxy would cease in a fortnight. Let
the people have what they feel the need of. There is something deep
in the souls of all of us which seeks the real thing. Then our
ideals, our lives and our passions will be expressed in our art.
When that is done each man will express himself, and a new value
will be placed on every work of art.
Such outspoken criticism inevitably brought from the caves all the winds
of controversy. They merged in a tempest in 1908 when the sculptor wrote
in _The Craftsman_:
With the passing of Saint-Gaudens the standard of good work was
taken from us.... Not _great_ work, for he was not a great artist
like Rimmer, Rodin, or Meunier, nor was he a great poet. Nor was he
a great technician like Falguière or a dozen other Frenchmen. But
he had a quality that persisted to the end and wrought, with few
exceptions, something beautiful, often noble, something that left
the whole world better because it was made. He gave us Farragut (in
Madison Square) and one or two other great statues. Then he dropped
to the architect’s standard, the lay figure, and there he remained.
Curiously his Farragut contains figures in the base that appear to
have been made years after the figure of the Admiral, so quickly
does he seem to have lost his youthful spontaneity.
Saint-Gaudens’ sense of refinement led to conventions, and his lack
of imagination to a repetition of these conventions. Another
thing--I do not recall in all his work one single group of creation
that may be called a “pipe dream.” In other words, I do not know of
one work of Saint-Gaudens that was not commissioned, that was not
suggested to him and produced for another.
I speak thus because I believe few people realize how little
sculptural art is shown in this country that is purely the output
of the sculptor’s imagination, produced creatively because the
sculptor has something he must say. Saint-Gaudens, master that he
was, was a great workman; he was not a creator. It is but natural
that his following should, in their effort to catch his spirit,
acquire only his style. His reserve becomes in their hands more
reserved, his architectural and impersonal manner more mannered,
and we have a pseudoclassic school which for dull mediocrity is
without a rival in the whole field of art.
This analysis of another man’s work did incalculable harm to Gutzon’s
position in New York art circles. The controversy became nationwide when
the newspaper headlines announced, “Borglum Attacks Saint-Gaudens.”
Partisans joined the argument with more zeal than discretion, and the
wrangling went on without end.
Another controversy that swirled about George Gray Barnard and his
undraped figures on the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg caught up
Gutzon in its progress. Borglum had a wholehearted respect for Barnard
and took up cudgels in his defense, thus further antagonizing the
“sourdoughs,” as he called the Academicians.
Long afterward when Barnard was excluded from his studio on the Billings
estate, which had been bought for a public park, Gutzon offered him his
Stamford studio to work in and, at Barnard’s request, appeared before
the New York City Board of Aldermen in an effort to iron out his
troubles with the city.
Barnard’s “Two Natures” and Gutzon’s “Mares of Diomedes” were the first
pieces of American art purchased for the Metropolitan Museum. Of the
former, the sculptor wrote:
“The ‘sourdoughs’ took ‘Two Natures,’ perhaps the finest marble in its
dimensions by an American in our country, and as quickly and quietly as
possible relegated it to the basement. Not long after my ‘Mares of
Diomedes’ followed the same descent.”
His antipathy to the National Academy was based on his observation that
there was too little fraternity about it and always a lack of _esprit de
corps_. It followed too much the general tendency of all academic
organizations against anything new, he said. It was probably his
undiplomatic manner of expressing his convictions that aroused the
enmity of the older set, who successfully kept him out of any monumental
work in New York City.
One grievance the younger artists did have. There was no place where
they could exhibit their work. In harmony with Gutzon’s desire to
establish a fairly representative American art was his crusade to obtain
a fair deal for young American artists. In 1912 he helped organize a new
Association of American Painters and Sculptors which would provide
exhibition space for new and unknown youngsters.
A novel feature of the constitution of the new society was that it
declared against juries. Every member was entitled to exhibit; only the
amount was to be decided by a committee. A certain amount of space was
reserved to invited work and no work not invited might be shown. Should
any member wish to invite the work of a nonmember and fail to get the
approval of the committee, he was permitted to give up some of his own
space to the stranger.
Gutzon was delegated to publish this statement of the principles of the
organization:
We have joined together for the purpose of holding exhibitions of
our own work and the best procurable examples of contemporary art,
without relation to school, size, medium or nationality.
We shall make our exhibitions as interesting as they will be
representative of American and European Art activities.
We have no canons but honesty and ability to express one’s self. We
do not believe that any artist has ever discovered or will discover
the only way to create beauty.
Unfortunately, at its first exhibit the association was split on the
very rock that was to have been its bulwark--the representative quality
of the work. This was the exhibition, at the Armory, made famous by the
“Nude Descending a Staircase,” in which neither the nude nor the
staircase made much difference. The painting was an orgy of color and
distortion.
Gutzon had no quarrel with that. He lived by Voltaire’s principle: “Sir,
I absolutely deny the truth of your statement, but I shall defend to the
death your right to make it.” What hurt and angered him was that, by
election, he was responsible for the exhibit, and that the committee had
rejected work which he had approved and had accepted work that he had
not even seen. Their excuse was, “We don’t care about the constitution.
We are trying to get up an exhibition.” Sadly the sculptor resigned
saying that no other course remained to him.
He came home to Stamford profoundly dejected. After a silent dinner he
remarked: “I wish I had a million dollars in cash.”
“What in the world for?” Mrs. Borglum inquired.
“I’d shut all those struggling young painters in a room and throw it at
them,” he replied. “It would keep them while they were hunting up
something to do besides art.”
He told of some of the studios he had visited while organizing the new
association and of the hard time some of the students were having.
Nearly all successful artists have been through such trials but not many
of them remember.
The National Sculpture Society had elected Gutzon to membership in 1903
shortly after his return from Europe. Here, too, he found among the
younger set a feeling of revolt against the older members. He suggested
changes in the constitution that enlisted strong support from some of
the members. However, President J. Q. A. Ward took exception to this
threat to his power and refused to let the report of the committee
favoring changes come to a hearing. Promptly the sculptor denounced such
tactics as “unfair and discourteous,” which did not add to their
friendship. Most of the reforms were later adopted.
With the National Arts Club his relations were more pleasant. When the
club had to move to other quarters he helped make the selection of the
Gramercy Park site and was given full charge of the food department
which had fallen deeply into debt. Under his personal management the
dining room soon showed a profit--a most difficult thing to achieve in
any art club.
Borglum belonged to the Salmagundi Club, to the Fencers, (where he used
to take lessons from a Cuban fencing master in the studio) and to
numerous flying clubs. His lifelong memberships in the Players of New
York and the Metropolitan of Washington gave him constant pleasure and
satisfaction.
He taught one year at the Art Students’ League in New York and returned
the fees he received for teaching as prizes to his pupils, several of
whom are now outstanding sculptors. At the time of the San Francisco
earthquake and fire in 1906, he joined with other New York artists in
donating works to a public auction for the relief of artists caught in
the disaster.
Through his old friend Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, he got
the fund through to California in record time. Another of his old
friends, Arthur Matthews, San Francisco painter, was the custodian of
the money. He did so good a job of spending it that a considerable sum
was left over. The balance lay in a bank for forty years until it was
turned over to a new committee by the State Banking Commission in 1946.
The chairman of the committee was William B. Faville, the architect,
another good friend. But by that time both Arthur and Gutzon were gone.
* * * * *
The sculptor became involved in so many outside matters that one wonders
how he could have found time for them. His answer was that life and art
are inseparable.
He wrote for a magazine in 1908 that the three elements absolutely
joined for the production of great art are sincerity, individuality and
reverence. He said:
Of reverence, I doubt if there is enough in all the United States
to build one great temple. I doubt if there are men enough in all
this land with unselfishness enough and love enough to build one
great and beautiful shrine for commerce or industry, for liberty or
art, for religion--from the bottom up, perfectly good, like an
altar upon which the most sacred thing in our lives shall be
offered to all the rest who follow.
Gutzon was a poet, but he seems also to have been an observing realist.
He continued:
Art applied to utilitarian purpose is, proportionately, a larger
interest in our lives than what have come to be termed “Fine Arts.”
I see no difference between them myself. I find in my study of art
that the real artist is nine tenths of the time a craftsman. It is
only in that small one tenth of his time that he rises to the
elevated position of prophet and master.
The question of art education in general involves what I call
“betrayal by democracy,” though perhaps I speak with the prejudice
of personal experience, being one of nine children who had no
college degree. When democracy came into the American world the
great mass of the people felt that the only advantage aristocracy
had was “higher education.” The world has taken that up in as blind
a way as it takes up so many other things. While higher education
goes on apace, machinery has to step in to supply the instant need
of many things that before were made by hand, and all kinds of work
that we used in the building of our homes has deteriorated.
In man’s essential world the water color has changed to the
lithograph, the drawing to the Kodak, and so on down through life.
Man no longer sees. His eyes no longer search the form, line and
color of any piece of work. His fingers no longer test the art and
finish found on old master crafts.
I never look at a spoon or a knife or a fork, a table or a chair,
but I wish to correct and improve it. I think our spoons are badly
made. The prongs of our forks are too long and the blades of our
knives are too long and badly shaped. It amazes me that such
utilitarian articles are not designed for the purposes that they
are intended to serve.
Some years ago I was sketching in California. A man wandered by and
watched me a little while. “Why do you do that?” he asked. And
when I wanted to know what he meant he told me. “I mean painting,”
he said. “Why do you do it at all?”
With reference to art, that is the most astute question I have ever
heard asked. _Why do we do it at all?_ I hope that those of you who
care anything about art will never forget it. That question ought
to be put to you in all you do in art, and it ought to guide you in
your work.... _Why do you do it?_
On the subject of art schools he wrote bitterly:
I have said, that the higher education we were promised has failed,
for it has taken away from the great body of the people their only
opportunity to express themselves. That is why I am hammering on
the value of craftsmanship for the real leaders in fine arts. We
have taken from the race that great body of workmen from whom
artists should come, and in order to supply a place for the man of
an artistic temperament we have built art schools--institutions
which, so far as I have been able to find any record, had no
existence at all in the time of Phidias or during the great period
of the Renaissance. We are teaching art as a fine art--a subject
that cannot ever be taught at all.
He urged reforms in art education--reforms that have since come about.
On this subject he wrote:
The art schools of this country turn out young men and women by the
thousands every year, and mostly they aren’t worth fifty cents a
day to any artist or sculptor. It is a very sad fact.
The economic independence of every human being who feels that he or
she wants to study art is something that we should not lose a
moment to assure. I think the sweetness of life is not so much
affected by any other dozen causes as by the present inability of
the race to express its emotions in a creative way. If sociologists
and humanitarians could help this great body of youths to put their
little heartaches into some beautiful, individual expression by
creating some article in daily use, this pent-up tension,
everywhere at the breaking point, would be used up at its source,
as are springs of living water. And their work, their contentment
and their power would be felt in every home.
The message seems important because so patently the truth. Gutzon
Borglum was certainly a master craftsman, from the design of tools to
the art that was his profession. It is significant that while he always
preached a doctrine of change and modernity and was soundly berated by
the academicians, he never produced anything cabalistic. Down deep in
him was the understanding of what people were thinking about and what
they could understand.
They understood him best, perhaps, when he was denouncing something. He
had a keen eye, a vibrant voice, and, undoubtedly, a fine vocabulary
with which to do the denouncing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
_VARIETY OF LIFE IN A STUDIO_
Gutzon’s first studio in New York was originally a barn that extended
across the rear of some ancient brownstone-front houses in Thirty-eighth
Street near Third Avenue. He transformed it into one large room with a
high skylight and a narrow balcony across the end opposite the entrance.
Under this, behind the spiral stairway, was a dressing room, then a door
leading to a little fountain and a storage place for clay and coal, and
finally an inglenook with built-in seats on both sides of the fireplace
and shelves above them for books and bric-a-brac.
To enter the studio you passed through a green door opening from
Thirty-eighth Street, along the old driveway bordered by geraniums to
the proper entrance which led into a small anteroom. On the street door
was a sign gruffly announcing that visitors were received “By
appointment only.” But it was easy to get to the anteroom; and no matter
how hard a secretary might try to carry out orders, Gutzon would
certainly call out a welcome to anybody who owned a voice he recognized.
His studio was only a step from Grand Central Station; so many of his
friends dropped in just to watch him work. And because he had decided to
love all mankind and knew that many of these people had come from a long
distance, he would never let them be turned away.
There was always something going on in this place until the day he moved
to Stamford--politics, social reform, park improvements, drama, and
sometimes sculpture. And in the background was a phalanx of New York’s
clever people, studio helpers, secretaries, models, friends and
acquaintances. They flowed in and out at all hours of the day and night,
and there seemed never to be any end to them.
Among his early helpers were Marian Bell, daughter of the inventor of
the telephone, and her friend Alice Hill of Washington. Gutzon probably
enjoyed making the pair of them sweep up the studio and mix clay. Once
he made them dye untold yards of muslin until their hands were
completely discolored. Art was difficult, he told them, because it was
made up of so many different, disagreeable things. But, somehow, they
liked his instructions, and they looked on the studio as a second home.
Alice was married there to Frank Harris, a musician and inventor of an
electronic pickup system to transmit music over the telephone. It was
demonstrated successfully before an audience in the American Museum of
Natural History in New York.
Other helpers developed into sculptors with independent studios of their
own. Among them were George Lober of New York; Merrill (“Bud”) Gage of
Santa Monica, California; “Bob” Garrison of Denver and New York; M. F.
Malin of Salt Lake City; and William Tolentino of the Philippine
Islands. Tolentino had been recommended by Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.
Malvina Hoffman, though never a studio helper, was a familiar
practitioner in it and often a guest of the Borglums. Gutzon gave her
occasional technical advice, beginning with her first attempt at
carving. She had modeled a head of her father on the end of a piece of
lead pipe with no proper armature, and was copying it in marble. Another
New York sculptress, Ethel Hood, whom he met later, impressed him so
much that he invited her to work with him in the Black Hills, but by
that time she was too busy in the East.
Perhaps the most indispensable worker and helper was Robert (“Bob”) A.
Baillie of Closter, New Jersey. Gutzon repeatedly called him “the best
marble carver in the United States.” He started in the Thirty-eighth
Street studio to work on the carving of figures for the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine, and remained there steadily for ten years. When Gutzon
began to be called away more and more from New York on distant
commissions Baillie’s work for other sculptors increased, and in time he
was one of the most sought-after assistants in New York.
The models, too, were interesting, but only a few are remembered now.
There was a man with a white beard who had posed for many sculptors,
including Mr. Barnard. There was Lord Methuen’s former valet who had
lost the weekly payroll while returning from the bank. Best of all was
sweet, gentle Julia Percy, who posed for some of Gutzon’s best marbles.
She married a sculptor who had worked in the studio and went with him to
California. Unfortunately the marriage was not happy and ended in
divorce. Long afterward, in 1947, she wrote a few recollections of her
life in the studio:
During my youth while working as a model for Mr. Borglum, his talks
to students talented enough to be invited to the studio were always
of a constructive nature. He gave advice as to their outlook on
life and conduct of living. The younger ones were told that they
could set an example in their schools and be a help at home. His
reverence and respect for womanhood were well known by all who were
acquainted with him.