Visual Thinking: Sketchbooks from the Archives of American Art

The Smithsonian Institution

Visual Thinking: Sketchbooks from the Archives of American ArtAuthor(s): Liza KirwinSource: Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1987), pp. 21-29Published by: The Smithsonian InstitutionStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1557478 .

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David Smith Sketchbook, c. 1944-1954, 9 x 12 in. Left: pencil on paper; right: collage and ink on paper. David Smith Papers, Archives of American Art.

"I draw a lot to increase my mind or my vision," explained David Smith, "but when I work I try to let the work make its own vision-while I keep a history of knowing behind it. "'

VISUAL THINKING

LIZA KIRWIN

Thousands of sketchbooks in the Archives of American Art hold what Smith called "a history of knowing." They form a vast repository of ideas, perceptions, inspirational imagery, and graphic experiments. As personal documents, they afford an intimate view of an artist's visual thinking and reveal a private world and creative process that is often more direct and more ardent than in formal works of art.

Sketchbooks are as varied as the artists who keep them. John Graham doodled in a leatherbound diary, David Smith used sturdy, nine-by-twelve-inch workbooks, and Reginald Marsh cut and bound scrap paper to fit the size of his coat pocket.2 Some have flights of the imagination or visionary schemes. Others may be academic notebooks containing anatomical studies or journals of visual ex- perience. Albert Kahn copied architectural details and patterns for future projects. Oscar Bluemner kept painting diaries with copious notes on his color theory.

One of the earliest sketchbooks in the Archives of American Art is by Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910)

LIZA KIRWIN is the collector for the Archives of American Art in the Southeastern region.

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from his trip up the Rhine in 1849. Whittredge, a Cin- cinnati landscape painter, was traveling by boat to the

Diisseldorf Academy, where he would begin his formal art training. Each day he surveyed his surroundings for potential subjects. Cologne and Bonn did not interest him, but Drachenfels appealed to his romantic sensibil- ities. In his autobiography he wrote:

My first landing was Drachenfels. Guide-book in hand and constantly watching for the 'castled crag of Drachenfels, '....

I got off the boat as soon as possible and walked back and ascended the peak where I expected to meet the 'peasant girls with deep blue eyes' which Byron had intimated were there to be found.' Although the peasant girls left something to be desired,

the landscape appealed to him:

.. as the sun was rising over the 'Seven Hills' I

looked out of my window with the Rhine at my back, and saw a picture. It was but a moment, but I made some memoranda, and in the following winter painted a large picture of this subject for my Cincinnati friend, Mr. William Groesbeck.4

Whittredge's sketchbook includes his "memoranda" of the Seven Hills and Drachenfels, as well as views of

David Park Sketchbook, c. 1955, 83/4 x 12 in. Figure study, ink wash on paper. David Park Papers, Archives of American Art.

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Albert Kahn Sketchbook, December 25, 1890-February 6, 1891, 5 x 7 in. "Tower on Lateran Museum/Rome 18.1.91," pencil on cream paper. Albert Kahn Papers, Archives of American Art.

St. Goar, Rheinfels, Nonnenwerth, and other points of interest along the river. They are quick, lively sketches that outline the features of the landscapes with pano- ramas that span two pages. Whittredge's sketchbook is typical for a nineteenth-century American artist who studied or traveled abroad. It served as a repository of ideas, a place to develop his powers of observation, and a graphic memento of his grand tour.

Albert Kahn (1869-1942), who was America's leading industrial architect in the first half of the twentieth century, also made a European tour. In 1890, at age twenty- one, he won a scholarship from the American Architect and Building News to study architectural monuments abroad. His sketchbook from Genoa, Rome, and Viterbo includes sensitive drawings of decorative brickwork, doorways to courtyards, and campanile that rise dra- matically above terracotta roofs. Kahn was eager to leamrn and apply the vocabulary of Italian vemrnacular architec- ture. ".. . the one potent lesson to be deduced from the Renaissance," wrote Kahn, "... is that of adaption and appropriation."5 In his sketchbook, Kahn, who made revolutionary advances in factory design by applying old forms to new problems, extracted from the past the prin- ciples for the future.

The sketchbook of John White Alexander (1856-1915) shows the concemrns of a figure painter near the end of the nineteenth century. His undated book is devoted to value studies of single figures. On each page he experi- mented with the arrangement of shapes and pattemrns of light and shadow in shallow space. His subjects are en- gaged in quiet, composed, interior activities, much in the way that Alexander withdrew into the private world of his sketchbook to meditate on the formal elements of light and composition.

While Alexander rarely worked from preliminary sketches, Oscar Bluemner's (1867-1938) art evolved di- rectly from his painting diaries, which he kept from 1911 to 1936. Bluemner, who was trained in Germany as an architect, had an architect's penchant for planning. On his walking tours of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with his painting diary in hand, he made rough outlines of landscapes and plotted complex color arrangements. Each sketch from nature was Bluemner's blueprint of light, line, mass, shadow, and color. Later he embellished his books with additional studies and made extensive notes on his theories and observations. His diaries are evidence of his all-consuming commitment to aesthetic explora- tion. "One rule," wrote Bluemner, "draw and paint, equally, constantly, separately, thinking, feeling."'6

The sketchbooks of George Tooker (b. 1920) represent his student work in a class taught by Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League of New York in 1943 and 1944. The book includes a table of anatomical proportions and Tooker's figure studies in watercolor, charcoal, and pen and ink. While his sketch of a solitary drinker suggests the socially alienated figures of his later paintings, the fluid lines and thin color washes show the early influence of Reginald Marsh.

Marsh (1898-1954) was rarely without a sketchbook.7

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Oscar Bluemner Painting Diary, 1916-1918, 8 x 12 in. Left: "restudy Blackwells Mills," August 22, 1916, wax crayon on paper; right: "July 18-16 near Bloomfield, NJ," ink on paper. Oscar Bluemner Papers, Archives of American Art.

Oscar Bluemner Painting Diary, 1911, 6 x 8 in. "Bronx River Mt Vernon/Oct 7-111" ink on paper. Oscar Bluemner Papers, Archives of American Art.

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Reginald Marsh Sketchbook, c. 1950, 63/4 x 10V2 in. Left: "Sun bather/Union Sq Hotel-July 18, 1950," ink wash on cream paper; right: "Casien [sic]-Umber." Reginald Marsh Papers, Archives of American Art.

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He left hundreds in his estate. Most contain variations on his favorite themes-street scenes in New York City, bathers at Coney Island, and burlesque houses-but one from 1950 documents his experiments with various media. In it Marsh made thirteen racy sketches of women raising their skirts. Each tests the effects of different ma- terials including powder casein, colored ink and water, damar varnish, egg, chinese ink, pencil, and watercolor. These provocative sketches are evidence of his search for the perfect medium, long after he established himself as a master of tempera.

Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) was most concerned with

color. His sketchbook of New York City from the mid- 1940s includes comprehensive pencil studies with color notations. "That's what I want to know when I look at a drawing," explained Porter, "I want to use it for some-

thing that's going to be colored. So I give myself that information."8 In his sketch of Center Street looking toward Park Row and Printing House Square, Porter re- corded the architectural details of the Hall of Records on the right, the Municipal building on the left, the dome of the Pulitzer building, and the clock tower of the Trib- une, but he also noted the subtle colors of the city by distinguishing five separate shades of grey.

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John Graham Diary, 1937, 3x5 in. July 14-July 17, 1937, ink, pencil, and colored pencil on paper. John Graham Papers, Archives of American Art. David Smith Sketchbook, c. 1944-1954, 9 x 12 in. Left: pencil, colored pencil and wax crayon on paper; right: pencil, colored pencil, wax crayon, ink wash, pastel, and felt-tip pen on paper. David Smith Papers, Archives of American Art.

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The sketchbooks of David Park (1911-1960) show the liberating influence of Abstract Expressionism on figurative painting. In his undated spiral-bound books, Park restored the physical vigor of the studio nude. His bold, fluid brush strokes block out shapes in bright light and deep shadow. Park taught life drawing classes at the Cal- ifornia School of Fine Arts and later at the University of California at Berkeley. He also organized life drawing sessions in the 1950s with Elmer Bischoff, William Brown, Paul Wonner, Richard Diebenkorn, and other Bay Area artists.9 Presumably Park's sketchbooks are a record of these group sessions and his personal explorations toward a new figurative style.

John Graham (1881-1961), a Russian immigrant, writer, painter, collector, connoisseur, and charismatic spokes- man for the avant-garde, was also an incessant doodler. His 1937 pocket diary reveals the force of his imagination and his enthusiasm for Picasso. That year Graham published his treatise, System and Dialectics of Art, and was in the process of expanding and finishing several other writ- ing projects. He was also acting as a private agent for collector Frank Crowninshield and others and made at least one extended trip to Mexico. With most of his energy consumed by these activities, he had little time to paint. His diary was one place where he indulged in graphic expression. He covered his lists of objects to buy and sell, letters to write, and people to meet, with multi-colored pencil drawings and Picassoesque doodles. His small sketches have the same whimsical vulgarity that gave his later paintings their unsettling edge.

One of Graham's early associates was sculptor David Smith (1906-1965). Smith's papers include forty-eight

note and sketchbooks from the early 1930s to the mid- 1950s. They contain sketches of completed sculpture, works in progress, and future projects. Smith also made notes and pasted in letters, postcards, and pictures from magazines and newspapers for future reference and de- velopment. Smith described his drawings as "statements of my identity."'0 For a lecture on drawing he wrote:

Drawing is the most direct, closest to the true self, the most natural liberation of man-and if I may guess back to the action of the very early man, it may have been the first celebration of man with his secret self-even before song . . . drawings remain the life force of the artist. Especially is this true for the sculptor, who, of necessity, works in media slow to take realization. And where the orginal creative impetus must be maintained during labor, drawing is the fast-moving search which keeps physical labor in balance."

As a source of inspirational imagery and a personal record of his activities, Smith's sketchbooks reflect his visual interests, but they also reveal the vitality of his ideas and the energy of his creative process.

Sketchbooks are the traditional testing ground for color theories and compositions and the time-honored means of collecting ideas. As a standard artist's tool, they reflect developments in American Art and patterns of art training. As personal documents they provide an intimate view an artist's "secret self." f

NOTES

1. David Smith interviewed by Thomas Hess, June 1964. David Smith Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm roll NDSmith: 294. This interview also appears in Garnett McCoy, ed., David Smith (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1973), pp. 175-186. 2. Edward Laning made a similar point about Marsh's handmade sketchbooks in The Sketchbooks of Reginald Marsh (Greenwich, Con- necticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973), p. 16.

3. John I. H. Baur, ed., The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge 1820-1910 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), p. 20. The original manuscript of the autobiography is in the Worthington Whittredge Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm roll D28: 1-202.

4. ibid.

5. Albert Kahn lecture notes, ca. 1900. Albert Kahn Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm roll 1112: 537. 6. Painting Diary, 1911. Oscar Bluemner Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm roll 339: 160.

7. Laning, p. 16.

8. Fairfield Porter interviewed by Paul Cummings, June 6, 1968, p. 75. Oral History Collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Insti- tution.

9. Paul Mills, "David Park and the New Figurative Painting" (Masters Thesis, University of California at Berkeley, June 1962 version, pp. 76- 77). David Park Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Insti- tution, microfilm roll 849: 838-839.

10. Lecture by David Smith, Portland, Oregon, March 23, 1953. David Smith Papers, microfilm roll NDSmith 4: 1089.

11. Lecture by David Smith, Sophie Newcomb College, Tulane Uni- versity, March 21, 1955. David Smith Papers, microfilm roll NDSmith 4: 452-453. This lecture also appears in Garnett McCoy, ed., David Smith, pp. 119-137.

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Documents

Visual Thinking: Sketchbooks from the Archives of American Art