Re-creating an LA house filled with art masterpieces
KnudMerrildwas just about the only avant-garde Los Angeles artist whosework was acquired by Louise andWalter Arensberg, the powerhouse collecting couple whomoved fromManhattan to Los Angeles in 1921. In their jam-packed house, a few modest examples ofMerrild’swork would eventually be found.
Merrild (1894-1954), an enigmatic artist, is hardly a household name today. Still, some of his pictureswere tucked in among the staggering array of masterpieces by the likes ofHenri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, PietMondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Fernand Leger, SalvadorDali and Giorgio de Chirico. Perhaps most notable among themwas dada founderMarcel Duchamp, the Arensbergs’ favorite.
Merrildwas aDanishborn expat. He had arrived in town a few years after the Arensbergs did and, like anyone with an interest in avant-garde art, gravitated to their home.
His layered cubist and surrealist abstractions no doubt appealed to two of America’s most astute— and daring— collectors of modern European art. Merrildwould go on to develop an experimental technique that he called “flux painting,” an oils-and-water method that allowed fluid colors to ooze, spread and seek their own marbleized shapes.
Merrild tipped and turned the small works before the fluid colors dried, but the mixed paint alsomoved with independent, chemically induced alacrity. Beginning in 1942 and predating by a few years the radical drip paintings of Janet Sobel and Jackson Pollock, the flux compositions owe much to themysterious vagaries of chance.
I’ve longwondered what might have inspired such a radically inventive approach to painting. Nowthere’s a robust clue: A terrific new book from Getty Publications displays the nearly 1,000works in the Arensbergs’ collection in awaywe’ve never seen before: roomby room, wall by wall, tabletop by tabletop.
One revelation is that, surely thanks to knowing the Arensbergs, Merrildwas captivated by the cryptic power of chance.
At one time or another, the Arensbergs owned the lion’s share of everything Duchamp made. Engaging themysterious properties of chancewas a driving force in Duchamp’s aesthetic. Merrild’s puzzling, chance-drivenwork fit right into the collectors’ astounding trove of European avantgarde paintings and sculptures.
A second, equally surprising revelation is the degree to which pre-Hispanic art is central to the story. In LA, the Arensbergswent fullthrottle into collecting carved stone sculptures and painted ceramicsmade in ancientMexico and Central America.
“Hollywood Arensberg: Avant-Garde Collecting in Midcentury L.A.,” set to be released Oct. 22, is 432 pages of fascinating reconstruction of the collectors’ house. Walterwas heir to a Pittsburgh company involved with iron smelting, and Louisewas a German-born textile heiress whosewealth funded their collecting enterprise.
A reader travels roomby roomthrough the two-story domicile. Side trips explore the gardens. There, monumental pre-Hispanic sculptures held sway.
Los Angeles art lore is filled with Arensberg stories. But only a few photographs of the home’s interior have been widely seen.
Those are nowamplified immeasurably. Several dozen anchor the book.
The thick tome is marvelously designed, the layout marked by coherent simplicity.
The Arensbergs lived in the house for almost 30 years. Art dealer Earl Stendahl, source of some of the modernwork and almost all of the pre-Hispanic art (including knowingly looted items), moved in next door.
Louise Arensberg died inNovember 1953 at 74. Less than twomonths later, Walter, 75, followed her. Stendahl bought the property and opened a private gallery. An incomparable chapter in the history of great art collecting closed. Surely, this captivating book will inspire new avenues of exploration.