1930-1940 LACMA 2001

Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, LACMA Press Release 2001August 5 through October 28, 2001, 1973, 1930s

      "Not even the Great Depression could slow Macdonald-Wright's enthusiasm for work or his prodigious output . . . Because of his significance in the area, he was appointed director of the Los Angeles District of the Southern California Region of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. In addition to promoting the project through lectures and exhibitions, Stanton Macdonald-Wright also designed numerous mosaics for local buildings."

Macdonald-Wright's Santa Monica Projects

     "Curiously, the Great Depression which seized America in the 1930s gave Macdonald-Wright a unique opportunity to create some large-scale works in Santa Monica. Under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, he painted an extraordinary mural cycle in the Santa Monica Public Library, eight panels of which are included in the LACMA exhibition. It was the most extensive such project ever undertaken in Southern California. At a City Council meeting to approve the project, about $950 was collected to pay for the requisite materials. Macdonald-Wright devoted 18 months to the mural which traces the history of the region from prehistoric times to the birth of the movies, for which he was paid little or nothing, 

   "As shown in the photograph on this page, the mural was far grander than its setting. 

   "When the old Public Library was torn down, the mural-which Macdonald-Wright had wisely painted on removable panels-was dispatched by the City to the Smithsonian Institution where it has resided ever since. Not long ago, City Councilman Ken Genser proposed that a place be made for the mural in the Main Library addition.

       "Because of his significant place in the Los Angeles art world, Macdonald-Wright was appointed director of the Los Angeles District of the Southern California Region of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. In addition to promoting the project, Macdonald-Wright worked with the architects on various projects and designed numerous mosaics for local buildings-including the murals in the lobby of the Santa Monica City Hall, itself a WPA project, as well as painting the fire curtain mural and designing the mosaic in the lobby of Barnum Hall, the theater on the Santa Monica High School campus.

   "The City Hall murals are done in petracrome, a process Macdonald- Wright* developed which combines cement with crushed bits of marble, tile and granite. One of the City Hall murals depicts the arrival of the Spanish explorers in Southern California and the Mexican settlement. The other features such 1930s elements as sailboats, airplanes and road races. 

   "Built in 1937, Barnum Hall is one of the finest examples of the elegant Streamline Moderne architecture which flourished in Los Angeles in the 1930s. Like City Hall, it was a project of the federal government's Works Progress Administration and Federal Arts Project. 

  "And so it was that in one of this country's darkest decades Macdonald-Wright made bright and enduring works in Santa Monica's library, City Hall and high school auditorium. Today, City Hall and Barnum Hall head the roster of distinguished regional landmarks."

Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, LACMA Press Release 2001August 5 through October 28, 2001, 1973  

   "His older brother, Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) is worthy of note, too. After being kicked out of Harvard for drinking absinthe in class, he went abroad to study in Paris and Munich. At 22, he became the L.A. Times' literary critic and was promptly labeled "the boy iconoclast of Southern California" for his assaults on L.A. (i.e., "Hypocrisy, like a vast fungus, has spread over the city's surface"). In short order, he was named editor of New York's Smart Set. He also wrote several books of art criticism. Then, after a bout of drug addiction and a nervous breakdown, Wright literally reinvented himself. Under the pseudonym, S.S. Van Dine, he wrote a series of mysteries about a sophisticated, even effete Manhattan sleuth, modeled on himself, Philo Vance, who was featured in 27 motion pictures."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017