Book Review: Hollywood Arensberg: Avant-Garde Collecting in Midcentury L.A.
Beatrice Wood. Louise Arensberg, Walter Arensberg, and Marcel Duchamp in the garden at 7065 Hillside Avenue, Los Angeles, 17 August 1936. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Alexina and Marcel Duchamp Papers (PMA-MDP), box 30, folder 17. Gift of Jacqueline, Paul, and Peter Matisse in memory of their mother, Alexina Duchamp. Reproduced courtesy of Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts / Happy Valley Foundation.
Hollywood Arensberg: Avant-Garde Collecting in Midcentury L.A. is an exciting new book published by the Getty on the collection of notable art collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg as displayed in their home in Hollywood. An attempt to bring their divided collection (currently split between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Huntington Library) back into a single frame, this book presents the first reconstruction and interpretation of their collection in entirety by presenting the works as they were originally displayed in a domestic setting by giving readers a room by room, object by object tour of the couple’s home in Los Angeles.
Map of 7065 Hillside Avenue, noting location of the North Archway.
Guided by the scholarship of authors Mark Nelson, William H. Sherman, and Ellen Hoobler, this book presents a meticulous record of the Arensberg’s collection with floor plans and photographs of every room and wall with annotations of where each piece was displayed in the home. Drawing on the idea of collections as “extensions of self” explored by art critic Susan Stewart, this book excitingly elucidates that the value of an art collection, as is the case here with the Arensberg’s, is many times more than the sum of its parts and when viewed in entirety as it was originally displayed, we are able to glean a better understanding of not only the works themselves and their relationship to others in the collection, but a better understanding of the collectors as well. When presented in this way, the Arensberg’s collection containing four thousand rare books and manuscripts and nearly one thousand works of art including hundreds of Pre-Columbian works and 20th century Cubism, Surrealism, and Primitivism, as well as their Sir Francis Bacon Library, containing the world’s largest private collection of texts by and about Sir Francis Bacon, reopens a dialogue between the seemingly disparate genres of art.
Described as an “oasis in the artistic desert of Los Angeles,” the Arensbergs‘ home held one of the most important collections of 20th century modern art and Pre-Columbian works in the U.S. and was one of the first collections to make their way to Los Angeles, California in 1929. A poet, writer, and member of the Dada movement, Walter, along with his wife, were greatly involved in the New York art scene, with their apartment serving as an influential artistic salon prior to the couple’s move to Los Angeles.
Photograph by Floyd Faxon. Living Room, with Views into the Dining Room through the North and South Archways, ca. January 1951. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Arensberg Archives (PMA-WLA), box 54. Constantin Brancusi, Prodigal Son, 1914-15, and Three Penguins, 1911-12: © Succession Brancusi – All rights reserved (ARS) 2020. Georges Braque, Still Life (Violin), 1913, and Still Life (with the Word VIN), 1912-13: © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Marcel Duchamp, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, 1912, and Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters, 1911: © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2020. Paul Klee, Village Carnival, 1926: © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pablo Picasso, Old Woman (Woman with Gloves), 1901, and Head, 1906: © 2020 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Dissolving the boundaries between art and home as well as collector and curator, this book explores the couple’s interest in displaying art as a means of engaging in dialogue. Understanding the importance of placing certain works alongside one another, the Arensbergs were not only intentional with the placement of their works in their home but intentionally playful in their arrangement, placing a work alongside another as carefully as one moves a piece in a chess game. Drawing on the scholarship of art historian Francis M. Naumann, the book traces a theme of oppositional dynamics in their approach to display, resembling tensions in the game of chess (one of Walter’s and his longtime friend Marcel Duchamp’s favorite games), as the couples approach to displaying and collecting art thrived on the contradictions created between displaying certain works alongside one another. Their rooms contained juxtapositions of finished and unfinished works, masculine and feminine; open texts and hidden subtexts— as well as drawing certain works together in service of overarching themes. As Naumann points out, the Arensbergs seemed to purposefully invite their visitors to make comparisons between the primitive and the modern through provocative juxtapositions of art in their apartment. For instance, their arrangement of placing a triangle of nudes by Picasso, Duchamp, and a Pre-Columbian nude from Nayarit, show that the Arensbergs liked to engage in conversation with the arrangement of pieces and perhaps even engaging with visitors in lessons on the history of art, as demonstrated by their paring a Henri Rousseau with the Cubist works that were inspired by the artist.
Photography by Floyd Faxon. Foyer, after September 25 but before October 12, 1948. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Arensberg Archives (PMA-WLA), box 54. Constantin Brancusi, Arch, ca. 1914-16, and Princess X, 1915-16: © Succession Brancusi – All rights reserved (ARS) 2020.
In fact, it is precisely Walter Arensberg’s obsession with cryptography, mystery, and multi-layered meanings that can be seen as a continuing thread between the seemingly disparate genres of art and literature that comprise the Arensberg collection. With a collection of nearly 13,000 books centering on Sir Francis Bacon, Walter was obsessed with Shakespeare-Bacon debate of authorship and using the Baconian method for the interpretation of nature to the interpretation of art. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the leading scholar of Renaissance England and the subject of much of Walter’s research and collection of Renaissance writing, was using a tradition which he inherited from Dante with the idea that art had four simultaneous meanings — the literal, the allegorical and then the allegorical further divided into the moral and mystical. Walter believed this method for interpreting nature and for interpreting literature was equally applicable to the interpretation of contemporary art and he used this to understand the works of artists in his collection like Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brancusi.
In presenting new research on the Arensberg’s Pre-Columbian collection as well as a wide selection of never-before-seen photographs of the home exactly as it was when the couple lived with their collection, this book is not only a must-read for those interested in the Arensbergs and their art, but also those interested in the art scene of mid century Los Angeles. With personal accounts from close friends of the collectors including renowned ceramicist Beatrice Wood (one of the only people they allowed to photograph them), we get a closer look into the lives of the Arensbergs and how they interacted with the art on a daily basis. The book also explores the influence of figures like Marcel Duchamp and Earl Stendahl on their purchasing and collecting of modern art, as well as Walter Pach, John Quinn, Marius de Zayas, and Robert Montenegro on the works they purchased of Pre-Columbian origin. Finally, the book traces the journey of how the Arensberg Collection eventually separates with the works of modern art making their way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art due to the creative thinking of Director Fiske Kimball and their thousands of rare books and manuscripts in their Francis Bacon Research Library to the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California.
Hollywood Arensberg: Avant-Garde Collecting in Midcentury L.A. is set to be released on Oct. 22. For more information or to purchase this book, please visit getty.edu.