Rex Slinkard
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Rex Rudy Slinkard (June 5, 1887, Edwardsport, Indiana – October 18, 1918, Manhattan, New York City) was an American
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
painter and teacher. He is best remembered for his
Symbolist Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...
works, most of which were unknown until after his premature death at age 31.Julia Armstrong-Totten, "The Legacy of the Art Student League," in Julia Armstrong-Totten, et al., ''A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906–1953'', exhibition catalogue, Pasadena Museum of California Art. 2008.


Biography

He was the younger son of rancher, Stephen Wall Slinkard and Laura Simonson Slinkard. His elder brother was named Donald. After 1900, the family moved from
Knox County, Indiana Knox County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana in the United States. The oldest county in Indiana, it was one of two original counties created in the Northwest Territory in 1790, alongside St. Clair County, Illinois. Knox County was gradu ...
to the Saugus section of
Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the List of United States counties and county equivalents, most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 202 ...
. They lived on a horse-and-cattle ranch in the Tehachapi Hills, north of the city.Marsden Hartley, "Rex Slinkard," in ''Adventures in the Arts'' (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921), pp. 87-9

/ref> Slinkard studied for two years at the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
under landscape painter
William Lees Judson Judson Studios is a fine arts studio specializing in stained glass located in the Highland Park section (also known as Garvanza) of northeast Los Angeles. The stained glass studio was founded in the Mott Alley section of downtown Los Angeles i ...
."Rex Slinkard," ''Painting and Sculpture in California, The Modern Era'' (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1977), p. 23

/ref>


ASL of LA

The
Art Students League of Los Angeles Art Students League of Los Angeles was a modernist painting school that operated in Los Angeles, California from 1906 to 1953. Among its students were painters Nicholas P. Brigante, Mabel Alvarez, Herman Cherry, Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Rex S ...
was organized in April 1906, and loosely modeled after the
Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...
. Slinkard entered the school in 1907, and studied under Walter Hedges, a student of
Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
. The League awarded Slinkard a 1908 scholarship to study under Henri at the
William Merritt Chase William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later became the Parsons School of Design. ...
School in New York City.Phil Kovinick, "The Art Student League of Los Angeles Chronology," in Julia Armstrong-Totten, et al., ''A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906–1953'', exhibition catalogue, Pasadena Museum of California Art. 2008. Slinkard and George Wesley Bellows were classmates at the Chase School, and shared a flat and studio. They both followed Henri when he opened his own school the following year. A cameo portrait of Slinkard appears in the foreground of Bellows's early fight painting, ''
Stag at Sharkey's ''Stag at Sharkey's'' is a 1909 oil painting by the American artist George Wesley Bellows depicting two boxers fighting in the private athletic club situated across from his studio. It is part of the Ashcan School movement known in particular fo ...
'' (1909). Hedges died in January 1910, and when Slinkard returned to California the following summer, he was offered the position of chief instructor at the League. The school organized an exhibition of works by Slinkard and League alumnus Pruett Carter in August 1910, which received a highly favorable review in ''The Los Angeles Times''. In early 1911, at age 23, Slinkard was named director of the League. His friend Carl "Sprink" Sprinchorn, a fellow student of Henri, joined him as an instructor at the school.
"For the present, instructors of the ASL of LA are pupils of Robert Henri of NY—and you know what that means! You know, at once, that they are strictly up-to-date in their artistic ideas, that they are the most modern of the moderns, and that they are smashing academic traditions with every vigorous stroke of charcoal stick or paintbrush." — Antony Anderson, ''The Los Angeles Times''
In addition to being a prodigious artistic talent, Slinkard was a charismatic teacher. But his adherence to teaching the Realist style of the
Ashcan School The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods. T ...
alienated experienced students such as Conrad Buff and Frank Curran, who had already established their own personal styles.Will South, "The Art Student League of Los Angeles: A Brief History," in Julia Armstrong-Totten, et al., ''A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906–1953'', exhibition catalogue, Pasadena Museum of California Art. 2008. The League provided a morning
life class A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures, using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detaile ...
for women and men, an evening life class for men, with afternoons open for individual work in the studio. Slinkard socialized with students outside the school, and their Saturday night pot-luck dinners were held at the League. Slinkard became romantically involved with artist's model Jessie Daisy Augsbury, and married her after she became pregnant. The wedding took place on February 15, 1912, and their son Robert was born on March 19.Charles C. Eldredge and Geneva M. Gano, ''The Legend of Rex Slinkard'' (Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 2011). Slinkard deserted them after less than a year, forcing her to divorce him. The scandal led to his resignation as director of the League in January 1913. Sprinchorn succeeded him as director.


Saugus

Slinkard retreated into self-imposed exile at the family ranch in Saugus. After not painting for close to a year, he began a series of increasingly moody self-portraits— ''Acolyte–Self-Portrait'' (1914-1916), ''Rex'' (1915), ''Self-Portrait'' (undated). These broke away from the influence of Henri, and developed into the Symbolist style for which he would be remembered.
Hello! S. prink I wish you were here to see what I am painting. ... I'm trying for rich colour, and trying to keep the painter out of it. That is, the brushwork, that attracts so many. And to get to the facts in a simple way. ... Am not painting along the lines of our old school. That is, the brush of the old school. Dear Mr. _ _ _. I like him as well as I used to but his pictures are not for me. I mean they don't hold me long enough. I'll paint different. I wish he could come on the ranch. I wish he could lie back and look into the sky till he became sleepy—and lie there and sleep. I wish he could see the Polish boy. Kiss this little calf, and his moist hand touch its wet nose. And grab it and almost strangle it with love. Oh! S.—love is the strongest thing. It makes one beautiful, and all things beautiful.
Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli ( ; ) or simply known as Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 1 ...
I love—and another—Teppo Tiffi
Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; 5 March 1696 – 27 March 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an importa ...
?]—that's not right, but maybe you will know who I mean. I'll send you a print of his. Puvis de Chavannes, I love, and Arthur Bowen Davies, Arthur Davies.
In ''Young Rivers'' (1916), perhaps Slinkard's most famous painting, he transformed the irrigation ditches of Saugus into an idyllic landscape populated by ethereal youths and animals. Curiously, ''Young Rivers'' was painted in the basement of his parents' house on Wright Street in Los Angeles.
My Dear C rl –It's in September. The day of the month I don't know. I'm working in a cement room 14X20 tunderneath the house—the ceiling of rafters. ...
On my easel I have a canvass 48X40 n This canvass I've been working on for six or seven days. ... My intention in this canvass is far from my surroundings. For a long time I've realized that I am working on a flat surface. This painting is a decoration. Its background—top is of green bushes, waterfalls and pools, and rock. Then coming on down, more rocks, water between the water-smoothed rocks which are oval-shaped everywhere—with pools of cold clear water, some above some below one another. And all coming down and moving to the right. In the center of the canvass, moving up and down, and to the right are two white boys on two white boy-horses, then two boys moving across, and a little up. And then a white deer with long glistening horns, and he is listening, hesitating, and moving down, one foot in a pool of purple water, which is hesitating, but running. And then a little up, and down, a girlish boy—a back view, arms folded above and in back of head. Head is turned sideways and looking directly out of canvass, to the right. The legs and back are stretched up and forward. Then moving on down, there are rocks and water that are of the same quality as all above. Then comes a large pool of clear blue water and at the left a goat running and jumping into the pool. And the pool has the same movement as the figures and water above. And then at the extreme left is a 3-stemmed, stripped bush which takes the gesture of the girlish boy above, at the extreme right. And, you have the picture. OTE: The misspellings of "canvas" are Slinkard's./blockquote>


Military service and death

Slinkard was drafted into the U.S. Army in September 1917. As part of the 91st Infantry Division, he would have been deployed to Europe in Summer 1918, but he contracted
scarlet fever Scarlet fever, also known as scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'', a Group A streptococcus (GAS). It most commonly affects children between five and 15 years of age. The signs and symptoms include a sore ...
in May. He recovered, and was promoted to sergeant at Newark, New Jersey in July. While waiting to be shipped overseas, he contracted
Spanish flu The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest docum ...
and was hospitalized on October 12. He died of
pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...
at St. Vincent's Hospital, Manhattan, on October 18, 1918. Carl Sprinchorn accompanied his body on the train ride from New York City to Los Angeles, for funeral and burial. At the time of his death, Slinkard was engaged to Gladys Whitney Williams, who inherited most of his paintings and drawings.


Posthumous recognition

The Los Angeles Museum mounted a memorial exhibition of Slinkard's work, June 3–30, 1919.
Marsden Hartley Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin. Early life and education Hartley was bor ...
, who never met the artist but had been shown his paintings and letters by Carl Sprinchorn, penned an effusive essay for the catalogue. Titled: "Rex Slinkard: Ranchman and Poet-Painter,"Marsday Hartley, ''Somehow a Past: The Autobiography of Marsden Hartley'', Susan Elizbeth Ryan, ed. (The MIT Press, 1997). Hartley asked: "How many are there who know, or could have known, the magic of this unassuming visionary person?"
There will be no argument to offer or to maintain regarding the work of Rex Slinkard. It is what it is, the perfect evidence that one of the finest lyric talents to be found among the young creators of America has been deprived of its chance to bloom as is would have done, as it so eagerly and surely was already doing. Rex Slinkard was a genius of first quality.

He was a young boy of light walking on a man's strong feet upon real earth over which there was no shadow for him. He walked straight-forwardly toward the elysium of his own personal fancies. His irrigation ditches were "young rivers" for him, rivers of being, across which white youths upon white horses, and white fawns were gliding to the measure of their own delights. He had, this young boy of light, the perfect measure of poetic accuracy coupled with a man's fine simplicity in him. He had the priceless calm for the understanding of his own poetic ecstasies. They acted upon him gently with their own bright pressure. He let them thrive according to their own relationships to himself. Nothing was forced in the mind and soul of Rex Slinkard.
The Los Angeles Museum's memorial exhibition traveled to the Exhibition Hall of the
Palace of Fine Arts The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, originally built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to 197 ...
in San Francisco, October 3–27, 1919.
Knoedler Gallery M. Knoedler & Co. () was an art dealership in New York City founded in 1846. When it closed in 2011, amid lawsuits for fraud, it was one of the oldest art gallery, commercial art galleries in the US, having been in operation for 165 years. Histo ...
in New York City mounted a memorial exhibition, January 19–31, 1920, and reprinted Hartley's essay in its catalogue. Spurred by Hartley, poet
William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
published letters by Slinkard in the first three issues of the literary magazine ''
Contact Contact may refer to: Interaction Physical interaction * Contact (geology), a common geological feature * Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye * Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects * C ...
''—December 1920, January 1921, and Spring 1921.Dickran Tashjian, ''William Carlos Williams and the American Scene, 1920-1940'' (University of California Press, 1978). The Los Angeles Museum mounted a second memorial exhibition in May 1929, and reprinted Hartley's essay in its catalogue.


Other exhibitions

* Four paintings by Slinkard were part of an exhibition of
Ashcan School The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods. T ...
painters at the MacDowell Club of New York, 108 W. 55th St., Manhattan, February 18 – March 2, 1919. * Ten paintings by Slinkard were hung alongside works by Thomas Hart Benton,
Stanton Macdonald-Wright Stanton Macdonald-Wright (July 8, 1890 – August 22, 1973), was a modern American artist. He was a co-founder of Synchromism, an early abstract, color-based mode of painting, which was the first American avant-garde art movement to receive int ...
, Morgan Russell and others, in the Group of Independent Artists of Los Angeles exhibition at the MacDowell Club, MacDowell Club of Los Angeles, Taos Building, January – February 1923. * ''Portrait of Gladys Williams'' (1912) was part of a 1964 exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art: ''Arts of California—XVI: Early Moderns''. * ''My Song'' (1915-1916) was part of an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: ''Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era'', September 3 – November 21, 1976. * ''The Path'' (n.d.), ''Reclining Nude'' (n.d.) and ''Figures with Flowers'' (n.d.) were part of an exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art: ''A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906-1953'', January 20 – April 13, 2008. * The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University mounted a retrospective exhibition: ''The Legend of Rex Slinkard'', November 9, 2011 – February 26, 2012.


Legacy

Slinkard, who had trained with Robert Henri, developed a lyrical, semiabstract form of symbolist painting in which he blended suggestions of music and dance into figural compositions. In Slinkard's paintings volume and outline alternately separated and blended to accentuate Richard Wagner, Wagnerian episodes of libinal yearning. The highly original visual qualities of these works were effectively captured in Hartley's erotically charged description of Slinkard's method, written to accompany the Los Angeles Museum's 1919 memorial exhibition.
Slinkard continued to influence his friends and students. Carl Sprinchorn made a 1920s drawing of his grave, done in the style of his friend. Former-student Nick Brigante made a series of 1920s drawings in Slinkard's style,"Exhibition Overview," Julia Armstrong-Totten, et al., ''A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906–1953'', exhibition catalogue, Pasadena Museum of California Art. 2008. and inserted miniature versions of his teacher's paintings into some of his 1940s Surrealism, Surrealist works. Mabel Alvarez's Symbolist paintings of the late 1920s seem to have been influenced by Slinkard.Susan M. Anderson, "Los Angeles Art of the 1920s," ''Modern Spirit and the Group of Eight'', exhibition catalogue, (Laguna Art Museum, 2012). Sprichorn wrote an unpublished biography: ''Rex Slinkard: A Biographical-Critical Study of His Life, Paintings, and Drawings'' (1952). The manuscript is in the Carl Spinchorn Papers at the Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine]
(PDF)
Florence A. Williams, sister of Slinkard's fiancee Gladys, bequeathed a large collection of his works to Stanford University in 1955."Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presents ''The Legend of Rex Slinkard''," ''Art Daily'', January 1, 201

/ref> This forms the core of the Cantor Arts Center's 268 works by Slinkard.


Notes


References


External links

*
Rex Slinkard
at SIRIS {{DEFAULTSORT:Slinkard, Rex 1887 births 1918 deaths Artists from Los Angeles Painters from California Symbolist painters American modern painters Students of Robert Henri Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in New York (state) United States Army personnel of World War I United States Army non-commissioned officers American military personnel killed in World War I Deaths from pneumonia in New York City Art Students League of Los Angeles people