Walter Conrad Arensberg

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Walter Conrad Arensberg (April 4, 1878 – January 29, 1954) was an American art collector, critic and poet. His father was part owner and president of a crucible steel company. He majored in English and philosophy at Harvard University. With his wife Louise (born as Mary Louise Stevens; 1879–1953), he collected art and supported artistic endeavors.[1]

Early life and career

Walter Arensberg was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of Conrad Christian Arensberg and his second wife, Flora Belle Covert. Walter's father was President and partial owner of a successful Pittsburgh crucible steel company. Between 1896 and 1900, Walter attended Harvard University. Following graduation, he traveled to Europe, where he spent at least two years. In 1903, he returned to Harvard, as a graduate student. He did not complete his degree, but rather moved to New York City to work as a cub reporter from 1904-1906.[citation needed]

Arensberg's first major book, The Cryptography of Dante (1921) was greeted as a literary scandal because of its deeply Freudian interpretation of the text. A full-page review appeared in The New York Evening Journal with the title "A Shocking Attack on Dante's immortal 'Inferno'."

cryptographic
validity.

Several volumes of his Symbolist-influenced verse were also published, including 1914's Poems and 1916's Idols. His poem Voyage a l'Infini was anthologized by Edmund Clarence Stedman. His far more adventurous, avant-garde poetry appeared in Dada magazines between 1917 and 1919: Rogue, The Blind Man, 391, TNT.[4]

Art collector

Between 1913 and 1950 the couple collected the works of Modern artists such as

Pre-Columbian art; they were assisted by dealer Earl L. Stendahl. The Arensbergs became particularly close with Duchamp, who lived in their apartment during the summer of 1915 while they vacationed at their summer home in Pomfret, Connecticut. They would become the artist's lifelong patrons and form the largest, most significant collection of his work.[6] When Duchamp's idea to dispatch his 1917 work Fountain, an ordinary bathroom urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt," to the first show of the Society of Independent Artists was rejected, both he and Arensberg felt obliged to resign from the society.[7] The circle of friends and artists frequented the Arensberg Salon in Manhattan has been represented in a visual reconstruction Chez Arensbergs by the French painter André Raffray (1925-2010), created upon a commission by the New York art dealer and dada specialist Francis M. Naumann, who also actively participated in the creative process.[8]

California years

In 1921, for health and financial reasons and upon Louise's insistence, the couple relocated to

Southwest Museum (1944–1954). In addition, he was a founding board member of the short-lived American Arts in Action (1943) and the Modern Institute of Art, Beverly Hills (1947–1949), organizations dedicated to showing modern art in California.[6]

Francis Bacon Foundation

Intrigued with writer

Huntington Library in San Marino. The collection is now known as the Francis Bacon Foundation Arensberg Collection.[citation needed
]

Legacy

In the 1940s the Arensbergs began to look for a permanent home for their collection. In 1941, a group around actors Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson, Fanny Brice, and Sam Jaffe tried to get the collection to stay on the West Coast, for the Modern Institute of Art in Beverly Hills.[10] In 1944, the Arensbergs signed a deed of gift with the University of California, Los Angeles, which included the stipulation that the University build an appropriate museum to house the collection in a specified time frame; their friend and fellow collector Galka Scheyer subsequently signed a similar agreement. By the fall of 1947 it was obvious that this condition would not be met and the contract was nullified. In 1939, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's board turned down a gift of avant-garde works from the collection.[11]

The Arensbergs then began negotiations with numerous other institutions, including the

San Francisco Museum of Art, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota. The Arensbergs eventually dropped their demand that the recipient of the collection also provide for the continuance of the Francis Bacon Foundation. After protracted discussions and many visits from Director Fiske Kimball and his wife Marie, the Arensbergs presented their collection of over 1000 objects, including correspondence, ephemera, clippings, writings, personal and art collection records, and photographs documenting the couple's art collecting activities as well as their friendship with many important artists, writers and scholars, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on December 27, 1950.[6]

In 1949, Daniel Catton Rich and Katherine Kuh organized the first public exhibition of the Arensberg collection, held at the

Whitney Museum of American Art partially recreated the interior of the Manhattan apartment of the Arensbergs.[13]

'Hollywood Arensberg', by Mark Nelson,

William H. Sherman, and Ellen Hoobler, provides a room-by-room, wall-by-wall, and object-by-object reconstruction of the couple’s Los Angeles home and art collection. Published by the Getty Research Institute in 2020, the book provides detailed context for the Arensbergs’ massive accumulation of modern and pre-Columbian art as well as Renaissance books and manuscripts. It recovers the intellectual world of a collector obsessed with chess and devoted to Baconian research, and sheds significant light on the couple's relationships with Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, Earl Stendahl, Robert Woods Bliss, Marius de Zayas, Walter Pach, William Friedman, and others.[citation needed
]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Walter and Louise Arensberg papers, 1912-1982, (bulk 1917-1982)". Research collections. Archives of American Art. 2011. Retrieved 17 Jun 2011.
  2. ^ " A Shocking Attack on Dante's Immortal 'Inferno'," The New York Evening Journal, January 21, 1922.
  3. ^ William and Elizebeth Friedman, The Shakespearean ciphers examined, Cambridge University Press, 1957. Chapter X.
  4. ^ Francis M. Naumann, "Walter Conrad Arensberg: Poet, Patron, and Participant in the New York Avant-Garde, 1915-20, The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 76, no. 328 (Spring 1980).
  5. ^ Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jean Metzinger, Tea Time (Woman with a Teaspoon), 1911
  6. ^ a b c Arensberg Archives: Historical Note Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  7. New York Times
    .
  8. ISSN 1522-7464
    .
  9. ^ http://www.philamuseum.org/pma_archives/ead.php?c=WLA&p=hn Dorothea Tanning, Birthday (1942) Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  10. ^ Oral history interview with Vincent Price, 1992 Aug. 6-14 Archives of American Art Oral History Program.
  11. ^ D.J. Waldie (September 18, 2011), L.A.'s postwar art scene: Hot rods and hedonism Los Angeles Times.
  12. New York Times
    .
  13. ^ Stephen Birmingham (September 8, 1996), L.A.'s postwar art scene: Hot rods and hedonism Los Angeles Times.

External links

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