A chain of events from the sinking of a ship that gave rise to an icon.

 

 

An Affair

An impeccably dressed American millionaire, Benjamin Guggenheim, was one of 146 first class passengers to board the tender SS Nomadic in the harbor city of Cherbourg, France. The small ship then ferried the passengers to the Titanic anchored in the middle of the bay. The brand-new luxurious ship was too large for the docking facility on shore. It was the second of three stops for embarking passengers after Southampton, England and before Queenstown, Ireland. It was April 10, 1912.

 

Benjamin Guggenheim

 

He had with him a friend, a mistress, a young lady nearly half his age.

Very little is known about Leontine Pauline Aubart, the 24-year-old French lounge singer who was the 47-year-old Guggenheim’s travelling companion. It is easy to assume that the opportunity to cross the great deep in such a lavish fashion was a thrill and a dream for the young lady. Aubart packed her trunks with all her finest wearables, some, one may assume, may have been purchased by her doting date for the occasion. 

The dream, of course, became a nightmare. Aubart survived, Guggenheim did not. 

History reports very little of the details of Aubart’s life after the tragedy. Perhaps the trauma induced a profound silence in her communication with others. The trauma of surviving when so many perished, the public’s knowledge of the affair, and the embarrassment of being the other woman may have made the sharing of her experience difficult. Without definite documentation of what her life became, and well into the future, there came the countless writers, those compelled to create a narrative of such a compelling story.  

There does exist the testimony recorded and entered into legal files as Aubart described both her monetary losses and physical suffering from being at least ankle deep in the frozen water for the hours it took for her rescue and removal from the lifeboat. She went through with the retelling of the story to induce compensation for her losses and to aid in her recovery from the physical ailments as a result of the disaster.

Guggenheim’s decision to host his mistress instead of his family unintentionally milled a thread that would be woven into the fabric of art history. 

An Inheritance

Peggy Guggenheim was just 14-years-old and safe at home with her mother and two sisters in New York City when her father perished on the Titanic. The news became worse when the search for their father’s body failed. There would be many years of angst and anxiety, regret and resentment that overtook the girls and their mother.

 

Peggy Guggenheim c.1937

 

When Guggenheim reached majority, she inherited $450,000.00 (today $9,580,000.00) from her father’s estate. By the time she turned 22, she was living in Paris. There, surrounded by the avant-garde writers and artists, she embraced the bohemian lifestyle. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, all friends, all starving, and yet, all on the cusp of making a name for themselves in the Modern Art movement.

Her interest in art then, started organically. She was spurred on by the circles she found herself in, exposed to artists that were on the verge of success yet still experimenting in the break-through styles of abstraction. She may have been inspired by her uncle Solomon Guggenheim, an avid art collector, who was yet to found the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation that would result in the building of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and in New York City.

Then, London. In 1938, Guggenheim opened a gallery she called Guggenheim Jeune that featured some future heavy hitters. Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. With the success of the venture, Guggenheim set her sights on celebrating the Modern Art Movement by opening a Museum in London. She began to amass a collection of Surrealists, Cubists, Dadaists, and Abstract Expressionists.

Her plans were dashed when the Germans invaded France. 

World War II chased thousands of creatives from Paris and the surrounding areas. First, they left Paris and went into hiding. Several or as many as 2000 people were rescued out of Europe by an American journalist named Varian Fry. Guggenheim and Fry came together for a short period of time at a hiding place in the south of France. She then helped fund some of the escapees as the artists and intellectuals of the Jewish community ran for their lives. 

Guggenheim and many of her compatriots landed in the US. It was no accident that she went from the art mecca of Europe, Paris, to the art mecca of the United States, New York City. It was simply the only place to continue her career and influence on the art world. The 40’s America was about to learn everything about the avant-garde born to bloom in Paris that would be folded into the modern expressionist conversation started in American art circles in the 1930’s.

Guggenheim’s inheritance induced a journey of artistic discovery and a spirit of experimentation unprecedented. Her efforts had an influence on the art world for many years.

An Art Show

In 1942 Guggenheim opened what was to become a successful art gallery, Art of This Century, in New York City.  It was a combination of a trail blazing interior environments and cutting-edge art. It was carefully curated and featured many artists that were to become world famous.

A revolutionary set of shows were to follow. Two presentations that had never been done before. Both shows featured female artists exclusively. The first, the “Exhibition of 31 Women”, was juried by her male counterparts and ran from January 5th – February 6th, 1942. The novelty was surely a way to attract attention to the new venture, and the inclusion of a single collage by stripper Gypsy Rose Lee further supports that assumption. The show did get some notice yet did not set any of the women on equal footing with the men they touted as geniuses, even while many of the women were working in the same artistic veins. 

Surely, the women on the list of participants are known to some art historians that study this era intently. Artists that did develop an international reputation over time, Freda Kahlo and Louise Nevelson, did so independently from Guggenheim’s gallery.

The second show simply called “The Women” featured 33 female artists. The show ran from June 12th – July 7th, 1945. It included names that would become familiar in some circles, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, and one new artist, Janet Sobel. 

Sobel was not entirely obscure. She had her first solo show in 1944 and was just getting established when she was asked to participate in “The Women” show to be presented at Guggenheim’s gallery. The show was well attended, and the list of visitors included one relatively unknown artist, Jackson Pollock.

The Art of This Century Gallery’s and Guggenheim’s “The Women” presentation provided the place for the coincidental casual connection and an observation that would prove to be influential on Pollock. It was a stimulus that would help the artist become world renown.

 

Milky Way, by Janet Sobel. 1945

 

 

An Influence

Sobel was in her later years when she started to paint. She began by placing the canvas on the floor instead of an easel, and applied paint with unconventional tools. Her son, an art student, shared her early work with others in important circles like Max Ernst and Andre Breton. That started a series of events that would bring Sobel’s work to the attention of gallerists and critics. 

Sobel has been credited for being the first artist to experiment with drip painting. Proof of her influence on Pollock happened quickly and the change in his style was immediate. The works before seeing Sobel’s work and the works after are worlds apart. His experimentation with the drip technique began in earnest. Even though it was well documented in film and photography of Pollok’s activity during this period, it is a misconception that the fresh and new approach to paint application was his personal discovery. 

One look at the painting by Janet Sobel “Milky Way” from 1945 created two years before Pollock’s first drip painting, now in the permanent collection at the MoMA, tells a different story. Sobel’s painting would demonstrate the “all over” painting approach that Pollock would replicate.

The chance exposure to Sobel’s paintings changed Pollock’s manner of work instantaneously.

 

Stenographic Figure, by Jackson Pollock. 1942

 

White Light, by Jackson Pollock. 1954 

 

An Acknowledgment

It has also been documented, and in Pollock’s own words, although second-hand, his acknowledgment and credit given to Sobel after viewing her work. Clement Greenberg, an extremely influential art critic of the period and avid supporter of Pollock was quoted that after Pollock’s notice of Sobel’s paintings in the 1940’s that Pollock “admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him.”

The written word of a well-respected and established critic, especially one that supported Pollock, could be a record considered dependable. 

An Icon

There is no doubt that the power of support by critics and gallerists had just as much to do with Pollock’s success as did his work. His personality required/insisted on attention from the media. His angst and challenging attitude were made public in magazines, newspapers, and television.

Pollock created monumental works. Pollock’s works relied on sheer size, large canvases for visual impact. Pollock’s paintings in a small scale would lack the masculine power he tended to project. He perfected the application of the drip technique, the all over painting devoid of any negative space. The instant recognition of these series of paintings make them, and the artist, iconic.

And it was a (this) man’s world. That’s plain. 

An Aftermath 

How did Pollock launch into the stratosphere and Sobel fall into oblivion? 

Differences in the works by these two artists engaged in the new free form style of paint application were major. While Pollock omitted all recognizable forms, Sobel included figures. There were people in her life and that was reflected in her art. The all over drip technique she championed sometimes fell into the background and provided a textured surface on which she layered abstracted human forms. Sobel could have been considered a surrealist yet was saddled with the moniker of primitive, a description usually given to someone considered uneducated, low-brow. Critics were harsh. Even though she did build a momentum with a few gallery shows, the closing of the Guggenheim gallery meant her original and most important support system disappeared. 

Sobel was a grandmother and that was a much less compelling story than the angst-ridden artist always touted as the tortured trail-blazer even by people who knew better. Sobel made use of materials mostly made for artistic endeavors, while Pollock used house paint. The unconventional paints used by Pollock continue to prove unstable and have the tendency to crumble.

The promotion and perpetual advancement of his contentious personality and his art was continued after his death by his wife Lee Krasner. 

Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings continue to sell for millions. Two of his works created soon after his notice of Sobel’s works and from 1948, #17A sold for $200 million, (number five on the list of the top one hundred most expensive paintings ever sold) and #5 sold for $140 million.

Janet Sobel has been discovered. She has been celebrated by museums and gallerists, and even, in some circles, given out right credit for her influence on Pollock. ⬥

 

Kevin Boehm is the Founder of Grand Rapids Artists Bureau. He has been working in the world of visual art for over 35 years and finds fascinating the past, present, and the promise of the future of visual art in our community. Kevin credits the research of others that have provided the insights into the lives of such important and interesting individuals; Artists that create(d), sometimes, such iconic imagery.