Aline Barnsdall: A 1920 Vignette

Aline and Betty Barnsdall, August 1921, passport photo.

During the planning and construction of her Olive Hill compound with FLW and son in 1920 Aline Barnsdall maintained an office in Room 715 in the historic Merritt Building designed by San Francisco's Reid Brothers in 1914 at the northwest corner of 8th and Broadway a few blocks south of the Wright's Laughlin Building office. It seems likely that she was still in town to meet Schindler in December before she was off to Europe and Wright was off to Japan.

Merritt Building, nw corner of 8th St. and Broadway, Los Angeles, 1915, Reid Brothers, architects.

Aline and daughter Betty, a later Taliesin Fellow (see two below), were then residing in a modest 1919 bungalow designed by architect C. H. S. Marshall on Stanley Ave. just south of Hollywood Blvd. half way between the future sites of Wright's Storer and Freeman Houses. Barnsdall also owned a ranch in San Juan Township in Orange County at this time.

1645 Stanley Ave., Hollywood, 1919, C. H. S. Marshall, architect. From Google Maps

Taliesin Fellows at Etta Hocking's market in Dodgeville before the first trip to Arizona, 1935. Front row (kneeling left to right) Abe Dombar, Iovanna Wright, Jim Thompson; 2nd row: Etta Parsons, Etta's mother, Etta's husband, Bob Mosher; 3rd row: Peter Frankel, Mabel Morgan, Bill Bernoudy, Jack Howe, Will Schwanke's wife, Mrs. Wright, Mary Thomson, Hulda Brierly Drake, Alfie Bush; 4th row: Cornelia Brierly, Don Thompson, Bud Shaw, Fred Langhorst, Benny Dombar, Will Schwanke, Bob Bishop, Mr. Wright, Betty Barnsdall, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.; last row: unknown, John Lautner, Edgar Tafel, Mary Bud Lautner, Bruce Sims Richards. From Tales of Taliesin: A Memoir of Fellowship by Cornelia Brierly, Pomegranate, San Francisco, 2000, p. 20.

For much more on Barnsdall's creation of the Los Angeles Little Theatre in 1916 and events leading up to the completion of her Olive Hill residence in 1921 see my "R. M. Schindler, Edward Weston, Anna Zacsek, Lloyd Wright,Lawrence Tibbett, Reginald Pole, Beatrice Wood and Their Dramatic Circles."

Alexander "Sasha" Kaun Beach Cottage, Richmond, CA, R. M. Schindler, Architect, 1935

Alexander Kaun, 1932 by Johan Hagemeyer. Courtesy Johan Hagemeyer Collection, Bancroft Library, UC-Berkeley.

One of the more fascinating lifelong friends in the orbit of architect R. M. Schindler and his wife Pauline was nationally renowned Russian art and literary scholar Alexander "Sasha" Kaun. The Schindlers befriended him in Chicago while the Russian born Kaun was studying for his PhB at the University of Chicago, editing and writing for the school's Chicago Literary Review while frequently contributing to Margaret Anderson's avant-garde The Little Review. (For much more on this see my "The Schindlers and the Westons and the Walt Whitman School").

Alexander S. Kaun, Cap and Gown, University of Chicago, 1916, p. 88.

The below obituary by his Berkeley colleague G. R.Noyes sums up his remarkable career in a nutshell.

"In the spring of 1913 he studied at the Lewis Institute in Chicago and in the fall of that year he entered the University of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1916. In the summer of that year he lectured on Russian literature at the University of Chicago. On January 20, 1916, he married Valeria Gretchen Tracewell, of Columbus, Kansas. Early in 1917 for the sake of his health he removed to Berkeley, California. In the summer he lectured in the University of California Summer School. He was appointed Assistant in Russian at the University of California for the year 1917-18 and at the same time enrolled as a graduate student. In 1918 he received the degree of M. A. in Slavic Languages and in 1923 the degree of Ph. D. After 1917 he spent his entire life as a member of the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of California, becoming Instructor in Russian in 1919, Associate in Russian in 1920, Assistant Professor of Russian in 1923, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages in 1927, and Professor of Slavic Languages in 1943. In 1942 he was appointed chairman of the department."

The Little Review, February 1915.

After the Schindlers completed their Kings Road House in West Hollywood in 1922 the Kauns were frequent visitors. Kaun often lectured at the Schindler's salons throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Kaun Beach Cottage, Richmond, 1935, R. M. Schindler, architect. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers.

Kaun and his artist wife Valeria were highly respected members of the UC Berkeley faculty and Berkeley arts and literary community as well. Valeria was instrumental in helping Schindler publicize his 1933 one-man exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Her work was exhibited concurrently in a companion exhibition (see below for example). This friendship opened many doors for the Schindlers' mutual friend Galka Scheyer, art dealer for the Blue Four while she was establishing a foothold in the Bay Area, especially Berkeley, in the late 1920s. (For much more on this see my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe.").

"Unfound Genius at Toil," Oakland Tribune, November 29, 1927, p. 4.

Noyes ended his heartfelt piece fondly reminiscing about collegial time spent at the Kaun's Schindler-designed beach cottage on a sandy cove in a Eucalyptus grove on Point Richmond.

"I like best to picture him entertaining our little Slavic Society, to which all the students of any Slavic language might belong - and most of them did belong - at his "private Riviera," a rather chilly little beach adjoining his cottage at Richmond. The boys and girls toasted wienies, bathed in the turbid water, played ball, were happy. And Sasha Kaun and Valeria knew how to make them happy; they mingled with them without affectation or condescension; they were boy and girl along with them." (Noyes, G. R., "Alexander Kaun," Books Abroad, October 1944, p. 322).

Kaun Beach Cottage, Richmond, 1935, R. M. Schindler, architect. From "House for Dr. Sasha Kaun, San Francisco Bay, R. M. Schindler, Architect," Architectural Forum, November 1936, pp. 422-23. Note Valeria Kaun standing in the doorway. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers.

Architect and Engineer, December 1935 guest-edited by Pauline Schindler. R. M. Schindler's Oliver House on the cover.

The Kauns next door beach neighbors, the Shaws, around the same time commissioned a similar cottage by fellow modernist William W. Wurster on their shared intimate cove on Point Richmond. Pauline Schindler featured both cottages in the December 1935 issue of Architect and Engineer for which she was the guest editor (see above and below). (For more details see my "Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism").

"A Beach House for Mr. and Mrs. Robert Shaw, Point Richmond, William Wurster, Architect, Architect and Engineer, December 1935.

It is perhaps with shared knowledge of Russia from Kaun that fellow Schindler clients and salon coterie Philip Lovell and Leo Gallagher felt emboldened to make a trip to Russia in 1931. In any event they would have compared notes with Kaun upon their return. This will all be rolled up into my below overarching work in progress, The Schindlers and the Westons: An Avant-Garde Friendship."

Lovell Beach House, Newport Beach, 1926, R. M. Schindler, architect. Photo by  Edward Weston, August 2, 1927. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers.

Weston-Van Vechten-Luhan-Draper-Covarrubias, 1930-34

Marjorie Eaton ca. late 1930s, Dorothea Lange photo. Courtesy Oakland Museum of California, Dorothea Lange Collection.

While researching Marjorie Eaton's (see above) time in Taos in the early 1930s for my upcoming "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe" I ran across the below photos of  Mabel and Tony Luhan, Muriel Draper and Miguel and Rose Covarrubias taken by Edward Weston in Carmel in 1930 and Carl Van Vechten in New York and Taos in 1932 and 1934. There is definitely a story waiting to be told among these fascinating connections. (Some of the story can be found at my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrenceand Selected Carmel-Taos Connections").

Mabel Dodge Luhan by Edward Weston, Carmel, 1930. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.

Tony Luhan, Carmel, April 8, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. From Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932, p. 33. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.

Weston took the above images of Mabel Dodge Luhan and husband Tony during their visit to Carmel in the spring of 1930. Luhan's visit was a face-to-face attempt to lure poet Robinson Jeffers to Taos. Her endeavor was eventually successful as the Jeffers family would spend summers at the Luhan compound in the mid-1930s. She was also successful in luring Weston into her web during the summer of 1933. (Ibid).

Mabel Dodge Luhan by Carl Van Vechten, Taos, 1934. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Tony and Mabel Dodge Luhan by Carl Van Vechten, Taos, 1934. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Muriel Draper, by Edward Weston, Carmel, November, 1933. From Weston's Westons: Portraits and Nudes by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, p. 129. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.

Noted author and social activist Muriel Draper was living in Pebble Beach in late 1933 when she sat for the above portrait in Weston's Carmel studio. They likely had a fascinating chat about their mutual connections with Mabel and Tony whom Weston had photographed in 1930 and visited in Taos the previous summer. Draper was also close friends with Gertrude Stein and all in Mabel's New York salon circle.

Muriel Draper by Carl Van Vechten, 1934. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Miguel Covarrubias, 1926 by Edward Weston. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Rose Roland de Covarrubias, 1926 by Edward Weston. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.

Miguel Covarrubias and Tina Modotti, Mexico City, 1924. Photo by Edward Weston. Copyright 1981, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

I also serendipitously ran across the above and below photos of Miguel and Rose Covarrubias by both photographers. Weston first met and befriended Miguel and Rose in 1923 after moving to Mexico with his then lover Tina Modotti. Both Tina and Edward began photographing the couple in 1924 (see above). Weston often exhibited the above photo of Rose, likely for the first time in the U.S. during his two-man show with close friend Johan Hagemeyer at Gump's in San Francisco in February of 1925 (see below).

Edward Weston and Johan Hagemeyer, Gump's, Feb., 9 to Feb. 21, 1925. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.

Covarrubias visited the Luhan compound in Taos during the summer of 1929 following Van Vechten who had spent a few weeks there in early 1927. (The Tastemaker Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America by Edward White, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014, p. 224).  This was also around the time that Marjorie Eaton was getting acclimated to Taos and meeting architect R. M. Schindler's 1915 client Doc Martin and his old Chicago Palette and Chisel Club pals Walter Ufer, E. Martin Hennings and Victor Higgins and Mabel Dodge Luhan's by then secretary "Spud" Johnson with whom she had Berkeley connections. (For much more on this see my "Miguel Covarrubias in Taos, 1929").

Miguel Covarrubias, 1932 by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Van Vechten also first met Covarrubias in 1923. It was through his largess that Covarrubias had some of his caricatures published in Vanity Fair that year which turned him into an overnight success. The couple sat for their above and below Van Vechten portraits in New York in October of 1932. (Katherine Anne Porter in Mexico: The Illusion of Eden, by Thomas S. Walsh, University of Texas Press, 1992, p. 65).

Rose Covarrubias, 1932 by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Carl Van Vechten by Miguel Covarrubias, n.d. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

There are many more Weston-Van Vechten connections awaiting to be made and perhaps enough for a fascinating exhibition so stay tuned.

Miguel Covarrubias in Taos, 1929

While researching for my upcoming essay "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe" I ran across the below Miguel Covarrubias items resulting from his 1929 visit to Mabel Dodge Luhan's historic artist colony compound in Taos perhaps through the largess of mutual friend Carl Van Vechten who had preceded him in 1927. This was also around the time that artist Marjorie Eaton was getting acclimated to Taos with her close artist friend Katie Skeele and meeting architect R. M. Schindler's 1915 client Doc Martin and his old Chicago Palette and Chisel Club pals Walter Ufer, E. Martin Hennings and Victor Higgins and Mabel Dodge Luhan's by then secretary "Spud" Johnson with whom she had Berkeley connections. She also would have been visiting her dear friend Galka Scheyer who was convalescing at the Sunmount Sanitorium in Santa Fe.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House, "Los Gallos," Taos, 1929. Ansel Adams photo. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Miguel Covarrubias, 1932 by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

By 1929 Taos was very much the Bohemian crossroads of the Southwest largely through the efforts of the town's doyenne Mabel Dodge Luhan. Mexican caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias made his first pilgrimage in 1929, as did a plethora of luminaries from both the East and West Coast including besides Covarrubias, Georgia O'Keeffe, Rebecca Strand, Ansel Adams, Ella Young, Mary Austin, John O'Shea, Marjorie Eaton and her friends Katie Skeele and the Bruton sisters and numerous others. (For much on O'Keeffe and others' first visit to Taos in 1929 see my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel Taos Connections").

Georgia O'Keeffe by Miguel Covarrubias, 1929. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Georgia O'Keeffe was perhaps the most notable artist-in-residence among a legendary gathering of modernistas at Mabel's during the summer of 1929. Perhaps already friends from the Van Vechten circle in New York Covarrubias and O’Keeffe continued a lasting friendship while he caricatured her during their first Taos sojourns.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Carl Van Vechten, New York, May 3, 1932. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Spud Johnson, Taos, October 26, 1934 by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Covarrubias also reconnected with Mabel's secretary Spud Johnson (see above) who had spent the winter of 1926-27 in the Van Vechten circle in New York writing 24 irreverent articles for The New Yorker. Johnson seized the opportunity to solicit from Covarrubias a cover design for his by then legendary avant-garde literary magazine Laughing Horse (see above). (Author's Note: For much more on the relationship between Spud Johnson, Witter Bynner and the 1922 Laughing Horse scandal on the Berkeley campus see my "Edward Weston, Jean Charlot, "Spud" Johnson, Marjorie Eaton and Lloyd LaPage Rollins's 1932 "Horse Show").

Cover for Laughing Horse no. 16, by Miguel Covarrubias, 1929. From Spud Johnson & Laughing Horse by Sharyn R. Udall, University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

Miguel Covarrubias and Tina Modotti, Mexico City, 1924. Photo by Edward Weston. Copyright 1981, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

Having quickly befriended Covarrubias and his future wife Rose Roland shortly after he and his then lover Tina Modotti arrived in Mexico in August of 1923, mutual Eaton-Schindler-Scheyer friend Edward Weston wrote of his portrait sittings with Miguel and Rose,

"Later Covarrubias and Rose Roland came to see their proofs. Of Rose, I have one at least for myself. Miguel I should like to do again, but they leave for New York tomorrow. They are both very agreeable, jolly persons - I like them." (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Vol. I. Mexico, September 23, 1926, p. 192). 

Miguel Covarrubias, 1926 by Edward Weston. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Though O’Keeffe was a generation older than Covarrubias, they shared many professional as well as social experiences. Both O’Keeffe and Covarrubias were part of a coterie of avant-garde artists in New York City during the 1910s, 20s and 30s pollinated by social butterfly author and photographer Carl Van Vechten (see below).

CarlVan Vechten by Miguel Covarrubias, n.d.. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Carl Van Vechten, self portrait, 1934. From Wikipedia.

“Woman with Squash Blossom Necklace,” Taos, 1929 by Miguel Covarrubias. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

During a visit to Mabel's husband Tony's Taos Pueblo Covarrubias couldn't help sketch one of the smitten tourists laden down with Indian booty (see above).

Tony Luhan by Ansel Adams, 1929.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, 1934 by Carl Van Vechten. Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

This brief post is just meant to be a placeholder for a much lengthier essay I have in mind "Taos, 1929: A Bohemian Crossroads." Stay tuned. (For much on O'Keeffe's first visit to Taos in 1929 see my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel Taos Connections").

Edward Weston, Jean Charlot, "Spud" Johnson, Marjorie Eaton and Lloyd LaPage Rollins's 1932 "Horse Show"

Marjorie Eaton, ca. 1935. Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy Oakland Museum of California, Lange Collection.

While researching for my latest essay "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe" I discovered a 1932 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum with the all-encompassing title "Horse Show: Horses in Art From Ancient Times to the Present Day" (see catalogue below). 

Horse Show: Horses in Art From Ancient Times to the Present Day, November 19, 1932 through January 1, 1933, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco. (For sale from my collection at https://www.abebooks.com/modern-ism-playa-del-rey-ca-u.s.a/249441/sf).

Lloyd LaPage Rollins at 683 Brockhurst, 1932. Photo by Willard Van Dyke. From Group f.64 by Mary Street Alinder, Bloomsbury, New York, 2014, p. 82.

Ambitious museum director Lloyd LaPage Rollins (see above) rounded up and chronologically and subjectively herded 549 items for this omnibus display of horse art throughout the ages. What I found most intriguing about the show was Rollin's tongue-in-cheek inclusions of the work of, and from the collections of, his ever-widening circle of mutual artist friends. Rollins borrowed work from his recent exhibitor Diego Rivera (see below), Marjorie Eaton's close friends Esther Bruton, Maynard Dixon and recent Rivera mural assistant Maxine Albro. Rollins also made a special trip to Carmel where he found work by Edward Weston and his close friends Jean Charlot and Henrietta Shore, Marjorie's former teacher Armin Hansen, William Ritschel and others. 

"Zapata" by Diego Rivera, 1932, Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art.

Jean Charlot, 1926. Photo by Edward Weston. From Edward Weston in Mexico, 1923-1926, by Amy Conger, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 16. Courtesy Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawaii. 1981 Copyright Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. 

I found the most fascinating item in the show to be a tempera painting titled "Horsie" by Weston's close friend Jean Charlot (see above). Weston met and quickly befriended the French transplant Charlot shortly after moving to Mexico with Tina Modotti and his son Chandler in the summer of 1923. They exhibited together at Mexico City's Cafe de Nadie in April of 1924. Intrigued by the local folk art, in September of 1924 Weston began collecting and photographing it and sending it home as gifts for the family and friends. (Conger, p. 16).

Edward Weston by Jean Charlot, 1924. Courtesy Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawaii.

"Mexican Toys: Bull, Pig, and Horse, and Plate," 1925, Conger, p. 28. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Byron Meyer Fund Purchase. 1981 Copyright Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. 

Weston diarized of the profound impact these simple objects and their still-life arrangements made upon him.

"The evening I spent alone among the ever-fascinating puestos, purchasing for ridiculously small amounts more animals of clay - a bull, a horse, a pig (see above) - executed with fine feeling for essential peculiarities of form, or as in the pig, painted with a keen sense of decoration. ... Always when I go to the puestos (see below) I think of my little boys, and picture their wide-eyed wonderment and their sure cries of delight - "O buy this, daddy!" Then, arm-laden, we would walk joyfully home together."

"A Toy Stand in the Alameda" by Tina Modotti, n.d. From Tina Modotto and Edward Weston: The Mexico Years by Sara M. Lowe, Merrell, 2004, p. 100. 

"... Still-lifes they are, and pleasing ones: two fishes and a bird on a silver screen; head of a horse against my petate (see below). ...  The horse is Chinese in feeling - a 7th century porcelain perhaps! Charlot, seeing it, hied himself at once to the puestos to find another; disappointed, he playfully attempts to steal mine on every occasion. These still-lifes, strange to say, are the first I have ever done; and feeling quite sure they number among my best things, I would comment on how little subject matter counts.

"Caballito de Cuarenta Centavos" or "Horsie,"  Photo by Edward Weston, 1924. From Edward Weston in Mexico, 1923-1926 by Amy Conger, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 16. Also published in Idols Behind Altars, by Anita Brenner, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929, p. 113. Courtesy Collection of the California Museum of Photography. UC-Riverside. 1981 Copyright Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. 

"Diego, Tina tells me, also expressed delight over my "Fruta de Barro"-Clay Fruit- and "Caballito de Cuarenta Centavos"- Forty-cent Horse (see above). When Galván saw the title to this picture of my little horse, he said, "You're Gringo all right; you paid too much. ... 

But it is not my little horse any more; Charlot's desire for it was so great that I could not be comfortably selfish any longer, and sent the caballito to fresh pastures. Charlot's pleasure was expressed concretely - he wandered in last night with a water-color sketch under his arm. "To Edward, my first Boss - Horsie." It was a humorous thing, and I told Charlot that either he had fed horsie too well on beef-steak or else "he" had become a wee bit pregnant! The painting was signed "Fot. Silva", which starts another tale." (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Vol. 1, Mexico edited by Nancy Newhall, Aperture, 1961, pp. 93-94, 99).

"Horsie" by Jean Charlot, 1924. From Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister and Other Photographs, Sotheby's 2008. Courtesy Sally Kurtz, Dayton Art Institute.

Weston was still the owner of record for "Horsie" (see above) when it was loaned to Rollins for the 1932 exhibition. Seemingly Rollins had made a trip to Carmel to borrow "Horsie," Henrietta Shore's "White Horse and Goat" and some items from William Ritschel. As was his wont, Weston regifted "Horsie" and a copy of his print that inspired it to his sister for a 1935 "Xmas" present (see gift inscription below).

Verso, (Ibid)

"Clay Bull" by Jean Charlot, 1926. From Avant-Garde Art & Artists in Mexico: Anita Brenner's Journals of the Roaring Twenties by Susannah Joel Glusker, University of Texas Press, 2010, p. 23. Courtesy the Jean Charlot Estate. Photo by Beatriz Diaz.

On December 18, 1925 Charlot's then strong love interest Anita Brenner wrote in her journal of her feelings for Charlot and of buying a clay bull. Evidenced by the above Charlot painting Brenner perhaps purchased it as a Christmas present for the badly smitten Charlot knowing how much he admired the earlier above "Horsie" Weston gifted him the previous year. 

"I bought a very simple beautiful clay bull; of those so much like Chinese sculpture, primitive. White, black, red, yellow and orange. Squat, strong, startling. Very beautiful. A savings bank - thirty centavos." (Brenner, p. 23).

In any event Weston also photographed a clay bull seemingly in Charlot's possession around the same time (see below).

"Bull from the Town of Santa Cruz near Tonala," by Edward Weston, 1926. (Ibid). Copyright 1981 Center for Creative Photography, University Board of Regents. Photo by Michael Nye.

Much of the Mexican folk art Weston photographed during this period was reproduced in Brenner's 1929 paean to Mexico, Idols Behind Altars. The exhaustively researched book included dozens of other photos Brenner specifically commissioned from Weston and Tina Modotti in 1926 along with a compilation of illustrations by Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Merida, Guerrero, Goitia, Posada, Covarrubias and Charlot including his colorful cover design (see below).

Idols Behind Altars, by Anita Brenner, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929. Cover art by Jean Charlot. From my collection.

Willard "Spud" Johnson, Taos, 1932. Photo by Will Connell. New Mexico Art Museum Digital Archives.

Rollins's "Horse Show" catalogue "Acknowledgement" list also included from Taos, Miss Marjorie Eaton, Willard "Spud"Johnson (see above), and R. M. Schindler Chicago Palette and Chisel Club mate Walter Ufer. Through a fellow 1922-23 Berkeley classmate and drama performer Eileen Eyre, Rollins met Marjorie Eaton (see below), for whom he held a one-woman show in February of 1932. (Author's note: Rollins hosted a one-man show for Schindler in April of 1933. For much on the Schindler-Ufer friendship see my ("Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel-Taos Connections"). 

"Spud" Johnson (standing second from right), painter Marjorie Eaton (seated to far right), sculptor Ruth Cravath (seated three left of Eaton), and Weston-Adams muse Ella Young (seated center just left of Cravath). Santa Fe or Taos ca. 1929-30. Photographer unknown.

 Marjorie Eaton, ca. 1935. Photo by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy Oakland Museum of California, Lange Collection.

Miguel Covarrubias cover art for Laughing Horse, issue 16. Spud Johnson and Laughing Horse by Sharyn R. Udall, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,1994. From my collection. (For more on this cover see my "Miguel Covarrubias in Taos, 1929").

Fellow gay Rollins also knew Spud Johnson and his then lover Witter Bynner from their Berkeley college days. Johnson was one of the founders of the loosely affiliated radical satirical literary magazine Laughing Horse (see above) and Bynner was teaching poetry during 1920-21.  They both moved to Santa Fe in 1922 where Johnson became Bynner's secretary and continued his involvement editing the by then "scandalous" Laughing Horse (see below for example). By the time of Rollins's exhibition Johnson had moved to Taos to work for legendary Mabel Dodge Luhan. It was through these connections that Rollins solicited almost 20 "horse" pieces from Spud and a Mexican folk art horse sculpture from Marjorie to include in the show. (Horse Show, "Acknowledgement"). (Author's note: Bynner made a visit to Miss Burke's School to do a poetry reading during Eaton's senior year there in 1920. As yearbook editor Marjorie reported on his and Vachel Lindsay's April 1920 visits to the Julia Morgan-designed campus. Eaton's close friend Eileen Eyre and Rollins performed together in plays during their senior year in 1923. See much more on this in my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe").

"U.C. Instructors Lampooned by 'Laughing Horse'," Oakland Tribune, September 18, 1922, p. 30.

Johnson and much of Taos royalty including Schindler's former Chicago Palette and Chisel Club mates Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer and his 1915 Taos client Doc Martin and artists Oscar Berninghaus, Ward Lockwood, Bert Phillips, Ernest Blumenschein and others were at Marjorie's Taos going away party shortly after Rollin's "Horse Show" ended. ("Society," Albuquerque Journal, January 3 and 12, 1933). After spending much of the previous four years in Taos Eaton was heading off to New York to study at the Art Student's League with Hans Hofmann and Arshile Gorky. By the summer of 1933 she had befriended and was living with Louise Nevelson and was assisting her friend Diego Rivera on his New Worker's School murals (see below). (Author's note: Santa Fe artist James Morris, whom Eaton had shown around California in the spring of 1930 was also at the Art Student's League during this time period and was later in Mexico around the same time as Eaton. See more on this in my "Schindler-Scheyer-Eaton-Ain: A Case Study in Adobe").

Diego Rivera at work on his New Worker's School mural panels, 1933.

Announcement of Group f.64 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, November 1932. From Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography edited by Therese Thau Heyman, Oakland Museum, p. 159.

In closing, concurrent to the "Horse Show" Rollins also hosted at the de Young the first ever exhibition of Weston's "Group f.64" (see above). Rollins was by this time avidly collecting the Group's work and would go on to host seven total exhibitions by the Group and/or various iterations of its individual members during his three-year tenure. The originating members included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Weston. This exhibition also included four invited photographers: Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, and Brett Weston. (Alinder, p. 297). From the de Young the Group's exhibition immediately traveled to the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. In April of 1933 much of the same group and R. M. Schindler and Henrietta Shore all had concurrent shows hosted by Rollins at both the de Young and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor also under his directorship. (For much more on Schindler, Weston's Group f.64 and Henrietta Shore see my "Schindlers-Westons-Kashevaroff-Cage and Their Avant-Garde Relationships").