CLEVELAND: a Cultural Center
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CLEVELAND: A Cultural Center WOLFS Gallery Cleveland, Ohio July 12, 2018 - August 31, 2018 Curated by Henry Adams With essays by: Henry Adams Marianne Berardi Grafton Nunes 13010 LARCHMERE BLVD CLEVELAND, OH 44120 (216) 721 6945 [email protected] WWW.WOLFSGALLERY.COM 1 LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION INTRODUCTION Anonymous private collections Collection of the late Dr. Robert Benyo Marianne Berardi and Henry Adams Gary and Rosalyn Bombei Robert Burns Daniel Bush Cleveland Institute of Art Thomas W. Darling Charles Debordeau Todd Gardiner William Sommer (1867-1949) Plowing, c. 1920 Judy Gerson Mike and Amy Hewett Cleveland: A Cultural Center is by no pages, an unusually great number of fne means a comprehensive survey of everything artists focked to Cleveland about a century Thomas Horner or everybody that has made (and continues ago. Cleveland artists were among the frst to make) Cleveland culture great. It is a look Americans to experiment with modernism as The John and Susan Horseman Collection of American Art through my particular lens in an effort to tell well as embrace the abundant talent within Richard and Michelle Jeschelnig part of an important story, one in which I’ve its sizable community of women artists. had the good fortune to be involved. Rod Keen and Denise Horstman The history of the Cleveland art has been More than forty years have passed since and continues to be inextricably linked in Joe and Elaine Kisvardai I became acquainted with the art of the every way to the Cleveland Institute of Art, Michael Lux Cleveland School. It took some years to a training ground for so many stellar talents realize how lucky I was to be knee deep in and a social habitat where contemporary Steve O’Donnell jaw-dropping artwork. What a revelation. No artists challenge and inspire each other. As auction house outside of New York, London, a “School,” Cleveland artists have created Tregoning and Company or Paris has had such a trove of works a compelling legacy of creativity and Dod and Annie Wainwright emanating from its own community for so uncompromising quality that continues to many generations. stand the test of time. Lawrence Waldman There was nothing simple about the So, with the help of good friends, brilliant Jeff Wasserman and Terri Wagoner Art Collection development of what we call the Cleveland scholars, and above all, a group of generous Roger Wilber School, which became quite an important and visionary Cleveland School collectors, component of Cleveland’s cultural scene. we have put together this modest tribute to James Woods As you will see unfold in the following Cleveland, a remarkable cultural center. Michael Wolf 2 3 Deco, the Jazz Bowl (fg. 79), an Egyptian-blue woman friends with grand homes on Euclid CLEVELAND’S ARTISTIC RENAISSANCE vessel with black lines scratched through by Avenue. Founded as the Western Reserve School sgraffto, whose imagery celebrated Radio City, of Design for Women, it’s initial purpose was to the Cotton Club, and the skyscrapers of New provide professional training for women which York. Just twenty-fve years old, Viktor made would provide them with a means of earning a largest city in the country at that time, Cleveland the piece for a woman in New York who wanted living other than prostitution or domestic service. seemed destined for a burst of growth that would a punch bowl with “a New York theme.” The One of the school’s frst graduates was one of the make it the rival of Chicago and New York. woman turned out to be Eleanor Roosevelt. As most gifted fgures in the history of American Art, versatile in his talents as Leonardo da Vinci, Viktor a major fgure in the international development It’s hardly a coincidence that this period was would go on to produce paintings, monumental of Art Nouveau, Clara Driscoll, whose role as the also the high point of Cleveland art, which took sculpture, stage and costume designs, and an principal designer of Louis Tiffany’s lamps (fg. 4), very diverse forms, but often refected the city’s enormous amount of inventive work for design for as well as the manager of “The Tiffany girls,” has industrial character. Several artists who worked in industry (fg. 118-122), including the frst modern only recently been disclosed. Cleveland, or started their careers there, became American dinnerware, the frst-cab-over engine fgures of national importance. truck. Over the course of his career he designed In its initial years, men snuck into the school by everything from artifcial limbs to streetlights, and posing as janitors. By 1906, however, the school A major center of manufacturing and industry, in some 100 million bicycles were manufactured to had been renamed The Cleveland School of population, Cleveland was one of the six largest his designs. Art, was coeducational, and have moved into cities in the nation at this time. Time (1923), a handsome Beaux-Arts building (sadly, later Fortune (1929) and Life (1936) magazines were How did this Renaissance of Cleveland art get demolished) on Magnolia Avenue, not far from all founded in Cleveland at this time, by two started? The frst artists of national signifcance in the site of the present Cleveland Museum of Yale graduates, Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, Cleveland emerged in the 19th century, starting Art. The school quickly became one of the best who conceived their business venture on the with Archibald Willard, who started his career as a and best-supported art schools in the United top foor of the city’s the Rowfant Club, the city’s coach painter, and was largely self-taught, and in States, and has provided a home base for many leading arts and literary club, and initially payed 1875 moved from Wellington, Ohio, to Cleveland, nationally known artists, as well as a long stream themselves a salary of $40 a week. Basing their to be closer to a publisher he worked with, James of gifted students. venture in Cleveland took advantage of the city’s F. Ryder, who made colored prints of his paintings large printing industry, and of the fact that large- of comic subjects. In that year, Willard produced In fact, there’s considerable variety in the work scale printing presses were manufactured there an image that became a huge popular success, of artists who taught at the school, among whom by Harris printing, and also made it possible to and is still a popular-culture icon, The Spirit of are the sculptor Alexander Blazys (fg. 67) and William Sommer (1867-1949) Adam and Eve, c. 1915 distribute magazines in record time by railroad ’76, showing three rag-tag revolutionary soldiers, the painter Carl Gaertner, who produced some from coast to coast. proudly marching together, to ffe and drum. Also of the best urban realism created national in Cleveland as an industrially booming city reached the ‘twenties and ‘thirties (fg. 98). Along with its height in 1930 with the construction of the noteworthy in this period was the folk painter One of the artists who beneftted from these Henry Church, a blacksmith out in nearby Chagrin its active role in fostering the careers of women, Terminal Tower, 771 feet and 52 stories high, new enterprises was Margaret Bourke-White, the school stood out for its emphasis not simply which was the largest skyscraper in the United Falls, whose The Monkey Picture has become Cleveland’s best and best-looking industrial one of the most esteemed examples of American on painting and sculpture, but on industrial States at that time outside New York—and was photographer, who brought the artistic aesthetic design, in part through the inspired leadership of the creation of the reclusive Van Sweringen folk art. A somewhat eccentric character, shortly of “straight photography” developed by Alfred before his death Church made a recording on a Louis Rorimer (whose son, James Rorimer, was a brothers, Otis P. and Mantis J., who had been Stieglitz and Paul Strand, to the task of recording “Monuments Man” in World War II and became consolidating the nations railroad lines, and wax cylinder so that he could preach the sermon Cleveland’s industries, such as Otis Steel (fg. at his own funeral. director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In were on the verge of creating something that 69). Henry Luce chose her photograph of the the 1930s, one of the school’s graduates, Viktor had never been achieved before, a single line Fort Peck Dam to serve as the frst cover of Life A major event in the development of an arts Schreckengost, who had returned to Cleveland that ran continuously from coast-to coast. The magazine, and she would go on to become culture of Cleveland was the creation of the to teach, established the frst modern industrial building served as a central hub for the nation’s arguably the greatest journalistic photographers Cleveland School of Art. One February 20th, design program in the United States there. transportation system, as well as the locus for of the 20th century. 1882, the English Aesthete Oscar Wilde lectured an extremely effcient streetcar system that ran in Cleveland and announced that the city needed Throughout the frst half of the 20th century, out to residential neighborhoods that the Van Arguably, Cleveland’s other most notable artist an art school. Just a few months later one had Cleveland was a major center of many art- Sweringens had developed, such as Shaker of this period was Viktor Schreckengost, who materialized, the Western Reserve School of focused businesses, such as furniture-making, Heights. Located at the heart of Cleveland, in came back to the city from study in Vienna and Design for Women, the creation of a wealthy clothing manufacture, wallpaper production, the Public Square, it immediately became the visual 1929 and promptly produced what is surely the widow, Sara M.