Ernest Briggs' Three Decades its help in allowing artists of the period to go to school. They were set of Abstract Expressionist Painting free economically, and were allowed to live comfortably with tuition and supplies paid for. The Fine Arts School would last about 3 years Ernest Briggs, a second generation Abstract Expressionist painter under McAgy. The program took off due to the presence of Clyfford known for his strong, lyrical, expressive brushstrokes, use of color and Still, Ad Reinhardt, along with David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer sometimes geometric composition, first came to New York in late 1953. Bischoff and others. Most of the students at the school, about 40-50 He had been a student of Clyfford Still at the California School of Fine taking painting, such luminaries as Dugmore, Hultberg, Schueler and Arts. Frank O’Hara first experienced the mystery in the way Ernest Crehan, had had some exposure to art through university or art school. Briggs’ splendid paintings transform, and the inability to see the shape But there had been no exposure to what was going on in New York or in as a shape apart from interpretation. Early in 1954, viewing Briggs’ first Europe in the art world, and Briggs and the others were little prepared one man show at the Stable Gallery in New York, O’Hara said in Art for the onslaught that was to come. in America “From the contrast between the surface bravura and the half-seen abstract shapes, a surprising intimacy arises which is like The California Years seeing a public statue, thinking itself unobserved, move.” With the entry of Still, the art program would “blow apart”. It was Clyfford Still who would galvanize the Fine Art school’s art Ernest P. Briggs, Jr. was born Decem- “When Briggs first started program. Mark Rothko would also arrive in 1949 to teach during the ber 24, 1923 in San Diego, California. painting he was painting in summer months. Still had been at the School for one semester teaching a He spent his childhood and youth in a figurative symbolic style, design and composition class, and by the time McAgy knew who he was California, and then served in the and not really knowing and more about him, Still turned the program over to those working Army during WW11. He spent about where he was headed.” 18 months in Tampa as part of the abstractly. Briggs would later recall that the real stimulation, the Army Air and Signal corps, where he excitement of the California School was the tension that arose when got to read Dali’s Secret Life. He would later serve a year in India. After David Park (and Elmer Bishoff) switched back to figuration. Still and the service he moved back to San Francisco. As a child, Briggs had Park were the central figures at the school, and although they socialized taken up drawing and design, and was exposed to and had met Mark together were not much in agreement on anything in their approach Tobey. His major influence early in life was that of Paul Klee’s work. to art. An interesting argument was set up between the disciples of He would carry Sweeny’s book on Klee around with him during his Still, Rothko, and Pollock and the new figurative artists. Park was a Army service abroad. But Briggs was totally lacking in any historical art taciturn, New England quiet person; Still was a hyper-Romantic, very orientation. After the Army, he had initially intended to attend articulate and historically oriented person. Briggs knew he had lucked Cranbrook, but because San Francisco was a beautiful city and out in the mix of the students and that this was the opening phase in his environment, and knowing there was an art school locally “up there commitment to painting. After one semester, Briggs switched to Still’s on the Hill”, decided not to leave the area. In 1946-47, while working class because he had a reputation for having something to say to the at Gumps trimming windows, he attended Rudolph Schaeffer’s School students. According to Briggs, Park would just come around, slap the of Design, managed by his uncle. But Briggs realized that something students on the back and disappear back into his private studio. psychological had occurred, and he knew he couldn’t fit in with those areas of graphic and industrial design. He inadvertently fell into an When Briggs first started painting he was painting in a figurative exciting situation in 1948 where Douglas McAgy had started a program, symbolic style, and not really knowing where he was headed. Park, one primarily for WW11 veterans at the California School of Fine Arts. He of his first instructors, said “We don’t have a model; we don’t have still Ernest Briggs, 1984, Maine, would study there until 1951. The G.I Bill cannot be underestimated for life; we just paint.” Among the 30 or so students, they all just painted Image courtesy of Bob Brooks. and didn’t look at anything, but they all influenced each other. It was in terms of personalities. Rothko was the epitome of the New York and wanted to move to New York. Alan Frumkin, a Chicago dealer, along with Pollock, de Kooning and Kline. Briggs would observe the a revelation to Briggs, as he had thought there had to be a “subject”, Jewish intellectual artist/painter who exuded an entirely different kind offered not only to include Briggs in a group show there, but also to “cold war mentality”, paranoia and anxiety – the very characteristic of as in the Ashcan or Regionalist style. The fact that one could include of energy. He was urbane, deeply intent, and a quintessential New pay the expenses of shipping his art to Chicago and on to New York in the individuals involved. However, nobody was really well served by all their own imagination as the starting point or as the interpretative or Yorker. This was a complete contrast to Still’s Puritanism, almost the fall of 1953. While landing in Hoboken, he and Edward Dugmore the conflict. dominant element and that one could just paint was liberating for him. Calvinistic manner. Rothko would pay attention to each student and would take a couple floors above a bar in the Fulton Fish Market. He One could start with a stretched canvas; paint big color shapes and his work, and would have something to say to each, whereas Still would was soon to have his first show at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in the Brigg’s 1954 Stable Gallery show was important to his career. Mark just feel one’s way through the process. The interaction with the other stand in the room and declaim. The importance of Rothko’s presence winter of 1954. Rothko, John Ferren, and David Smith, among others came to the open- students was sustaining in this. Students had come from New York, was his weekly lecture to all the students, not just the painting class, ing and were very supportive and gave him the recognition to establish Chicago, Seattle, and various parts of the country, and most of taking questions and getting into conversations with the students. In The New York Years him in the art world. Several of the pieces in his first show had been them had different kinds of experience in the service; it was an the studio, his attitude was very similar to Still’s. In 1949 there were done on the West Coast. By that time through a view of de Kooning’s extraordinary experience for Briggs. Students socialized and saw each no ideological programs yet in terms of their esthetics. It was more Briggs’ arrival in New York late in 1953, and early 1954, was work, he would become aware of the possibility of gesture and thinking other five days a week at school, and they worked after school and at in terms that they knew what they did not want. It was an attempt exciting. Fantastic things happened to him in a city where things in terms of the quality of color, and in trying to use color to eliminate or home. Some had very clear ambitions to get to New York as soon as they to eliminate, from their imagery and from their practice in order to can click and where one was suddenly swept into a whole milieu recapture and restore some kind of quality to his work that eliminated could. Others opted to eventually stick it out on the West Coast. About arrive at what was their big image, their big style. They were trying meeting dozens of new people in an art world that was very small. Philip and freed it from some of the decorative aspects. While reading much two dozen would go on to continue painting and sculpture. The Fine Arts to work away from the past, eliminate all temporal images, whether Pavia immediately helped him get a job to help with expenses, and literary criticism, and trying to educate himself in the activity of the art program would subsequently close due to its focus on abstraction, transparency, movement, or space. Still and Rothko were very tight and he also invited Briggs to join “The Club”. This was a scene where world, Briggs would turn completely away from any reference to the McAgy’s departure and Still’s move to New York. By this time, the were a tremendous stimulus to each other and each in their own way, artists were still fighting the battle of modern art, where there was a lot French School of Bonnard and Matisse.