Microsoft Word - Feder Thesis.docx     1               LLOYD  NEY’S  NEW  LONDON  FACETS:  ABSTRACTION  AND  REBELLION  IN  THE   SECTION  OF  FINE  ARTS         A  Thesis   Submitted  to   the  Temple  University  Graduate  Board           In  Partial  Fulfillment   of  the  Requirements  for  the  Degree   MASTER  OF  ARTS           by   Louise  Howard  Feder   May  2013                           Thesis  Approvals:     Dr.  Gerald  Silk,  Thesis  Advisor,  Department  of  Art  History   Dr.  Susanna  Gold,  Department  of  Art  History     i     ABSTRACT     Lloyd  Raymond  “Bill”  Ney’s  mural  New  London  Facets  was  commissioned  for   the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office  through  the  Treasury  Department-­‐run  New  Deal   program,  the  Section  of  Fine  Arts  (the  Section),  and  is  the  only  mural  that  program   officials  considered  abstract.  An  examination  of  the  mural  today  reveals  that  the   label  of  “abstract”  may  be  a  bit  extreme;  objects  in  the  piece  have  been  abstracted   but  the  mural  as  a  whole  is  not  at  all  strictly  non-­‐representational.  This  discrepancy   and  the  ensuing  controversy  over  Ney’s  mural  reveal  much  about  the  sensitivity  of   Section  officials  to  abstraction  and  to  subjects  outside  genre  or  allegorical  scenes   typical  of  Section  commissions.  Correspondence  between  Ney  and  Section  officials   indicate  a  fear  in  the  Section  that  the  public  would  reject  and  fail  to  understand  or   relate  to  anything  outside  of  the  representational  norm,  a  belief  against  which  Ney   adamantly  and  successfully  argued.    As  a  result,  the  Section  made  its  lone  exception   in  the  case  of  Ney  and  New  London  Facets.   While  Ney  did  not  achieve  national  renown  as  an  artist  within  his  lifetime,  his   work  is  still  exhibited  and  auctioned  relatively  regularly  in  his  hometown  of  New   Hope,  Pennsylvania.  With  the  exception  of  Karal  Ann  Marling’s  description  of  the   New  London  Facets  incident  in  her  book  Wall  to  Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of   Post-­‐Office  Murals  in  the  Great  Depression,  there  is  nothing  significant  published  on   Ney  or  his  mural.  With  this  thesis  I  hope  to  raise  awareness  of  Ney  as  an  artist,   provide  readers  with  a  complete  understanding  of  the  New  London  Facets   commission  and  approval,  and  explore  the  relationship  between  abstraction  and  the   New  Deal  art  programs.       ii   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS     So  many  people  have  been  kind  enough  to  help  me  with  my  Master’s  Thesis.   First  and  foremost  I  want  to  thank  my  advisor  Dr.  Gerald  Silk  who  has  been   unendingly  patient  and  understanding  in  the  face  of  a  multitude  of  delays  and   persistent  computer  troubles.  He  was  also  incredibly  helpful  to  me  as  I  edited  this   thesis  and  I  could  not  have  completed  it  without  his  guidance.  My  second  reader,  Dr.   Susanna  Gold,  has  overseen  my  research  since  I  became  interested  in  Lloyd  Ney  in   her  course  The  Modern  American  Experience.  Her  encouragement  and  insights   throughout  this  process  have  been  exceedingly  helpful.  I  owe  them  both  my   warmest  thanks.   I  would  also  like  to  thank  Lloyd  Ney’s  grandchildren,  Odile  and  Michel   Laugier  for  welcoming  me  into  their  homes,  their  insights  about  their  grandfather’s   work,  and  unprecedented  access  to  their  family  archive  and  art  collection.  Birgitta   Bond  and  Pam  Sergey  at  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum  were  also  indispensible   in  tracking  down  a  plethora  of  archival  sources.  Without  all  of  their  help  I  could  not   have  explored  Ney’s  career  to  the  extent  I  did  for  this  thesis.   Finally  thank  you  to  my  family  and  friends  who  have  supported  me  through   every  part  of  this  process.  From  Philadelphia  to  Doylestown  to  New  Hope  to   Coaldale  they  have  helped  me  keep  my  head  clear  and  spirits  high.  Thank  you  all   very  much.       iii   TABLE  OF  CONTENTS   PAGE   ABSTRACT……………………..……………………………………………………………………………………..i   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………….…………………………………………………………………….ii   LIST  OF  IMAGES………………………………………………………………...………………………………..iv     CHAPTER   1. ABSTRACTION  WITHIN  THE  SECTION  OF  FINE  ARTS  AND  AMERICA  AT   LARGE  ……………………………………………………………………………………………………...1     2. LLOYD  RAYMOND  “BILL  NEY  AND  HIS  CAREER  PRIOR  TO  THE  NEW   LONDON  FACETS  COMMISSION  ……………………………………………………………….18     3. NEY,  NEW  LONDON  FACETS,  AND  FRICTION  WITH  THE  SECTION……………..43     BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………….67       iv   LIST  OF  IMAGES     Image                          Page     1. Lloyd  Ney,  New  London  Facets,  New  London,  Ohio  post  office,  1941.  Oil  on   canvas.  Photo  courtesy  of  Michel  Laugier…………………………………………………………1     2. Kindred  McLeary,  Modern  Justice,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse,  1937.   Oil  on  canvas………………………………………………………………………………………………......4     3. Howard  Cook,  Steel  Industry,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse,  1936.  Oil  on   canvas…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4     4. Stuyvesant  Van  Veen,  Pittsburgh  Panorama,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and   Courthouse,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas………………………………………………………………..........4     5. Alexander  Calder,  Mobile,  circa  1935.  Metal  and  steel……………………………………….7     6. Alexander  Calder,  Form  Against  Yellow,  1936.  Painted  metal  and  wood…………….7     7. Mark  Rothko,  Untitled,  1940.  Oil  on  canvas………………………………………………………8     8. Frank  Mechau,  Dangers  of  the  Mail,  Post  Office  Departmental  Building,   Washington,  D.C.,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas……………………………………………………………10     9. Victor  Arnautoff,  City  Life,  Coit  Tower,  San  Francisco,  California,  1934.  Fresco...11     10. Arshile  Gorky,  Mechanics  of  Flying  from  Aviation:  Evolution  of  Forms  under   Aerodynamic  Limitations,  1936-­‐1937.  Oil  on  canvas……………………………………….12     11. Minetta  Good,  Retrospection,  United  States  Post  Office,  Dresden,  Tennessee,   1938.  Oil  on  canvas……………………………………………………………………………………….15     12. Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,  Archives  of   American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]………………………………………18     13. Lloyd  Ney,  The  Drinkers,  1924-­‐25.  Oil  on  canvas…………………………………………….22     14. The  Mechanic  Street  Bridge  Towpath  House.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,   1902-­‐1987,  Archives  of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]….24     15. Lloyd  Raymond  Ney,  Mechanics  Street,  New  Hope,  1934.  Oil  on  canvas.  Gift  of   Marguerite  and  Gerry  Lenfest,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum……………………….24         v   16. Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  and  Jean  Ney.  The  Lloyd  Ney  Papers,  The  James  A.  Michener  Art   Museum,  Doylestown,  PA………………………………………………………………………………25     17. Lloyd  Ney,  The  Canal,  1935.  Oil  on  canvas.  Photo  Courtesy  of  Michel  Laugier…..26     18. William  Langston  Lathrop,  Chilmark  Moor,  1930.  Oil  on  canvas.  Gift  of   Marguerite  and  Gerry  Lenfest,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum……………………….26     19. Joseph  Pickett,  Coryell’s  Ferry,  1776,  1914-­‐1918.  Oil  on  canvas.  Whitney  Museum   of  American  Art…………………………………………………………………………………………….29     20. Lloyd  Ney,  Construction,  1958.  Wood,  iron,  steel  on  wood………………………………30     21. Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney.  Joe  Masick  and  Bill  Dwyer  for  the  Delaware  Valley  Scrapbook,   1946.  The  Lloyd  Ney  Papers,  The  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum,  Doylestown,   PA………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...31     22. Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  circa  1930s.  Oil  on  canvas……………………………………………….36     23. Lloyd  Ney,  Abstract,  1939.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  collection…………………………….37     24. Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Sketch  for  the  St.  Louis,  Missouri  competition,  Record  Group  121-­‐ MS,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD………………………………………………………...39     25. Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Sketch  for  the  St.  Louis,  Missouri  competition,  Record  Group  121-­‐ MS,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD………………………………………………………...40     26. Trew  Hocker,  The  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition,  Saint  Louis,  Missouri  Post   Office,  1940.  Fresco……………………………………………………………………………………….41     27. New  London  Facets  in  Lloyd  Ney’s  studio  in  New  Hope,  PA  with  studio  visitor.   The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,  Archives  of  American  Art,   Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]……………………………………………………………43     28. Howard  Cook,  Steel  Industry,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse,  Pittsburgh   Pennsylvania.  1936.  National  Archives…………………………………………………………..44     29. William  Gropper,  Construction  of  a  Dam,  1939.  Oil  on  canvas………………………….45     30. Ward  Lockwood,  Consolidation  of  the  West,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas……………………...46     31. Early  plan  for  New  London  Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,   Archives  of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]…………………….49         vi   32. Early  plan  for  New  London  Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,   Archives  of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]…………………….50     33. Early  plan  for  New  London  Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,   Archives  of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235]…………………….50     34. Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Simplified  visualization  of  outstanding  subject  matter.  Record   Group  121-­‐GA,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD……………………………………….52     35. Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Color  study  for  the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office.  Record  Group   121-­‐GA,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD………………………………………………….52     36. Lloyd  Ney,  Key  West  #1  C,  1939.  Watercolor.  Private  Collection………………………55     37. Lloyd  Ney,  Key  West  #3  C,  1939.  Watercolor.  Private  Collection………………………55     38. Lloyd  Ney,  Study  for  New  London  Facets,  1940,  charcoal,  graphite,  and  tempera   on  wood  panel.  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum……………………………………………..58     39. Lloyd  Ney,  New  London  Facets,  1941,  Oil  on  Canvas.  New  London,  Ohio  post   office.  Photo  courtesy  of  Michel  Laugier…………………………………………………………59     40. Lloyd  Ney,  Red  Center,  1941.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  Collection………………………...61     41. Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  circa  1940s.  Oil  on  canvas……………………………………………….61     42. Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  1941.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  Collection…………………………….61     43. Lloyd  Ney,  Composition  No.  9,  1950.  Watercolor  on  paper.  Photo  courtesy  of   Michel  Laugier………………………………………………………………………………………………62     44. Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney,  watercolor  of  planned  Ney  Museum.  Watercolor  and  charcoal   on  canvas.  Private  Collection.  Photo  by  Edwin  Hild………………………………………...64     45. Lloyd  Ney,  untitled  and  undated  sculpture.  Painted  metal.  Collection  of  Michel   Laugier…………………………………………………………………………………………………………65     46. Lloyd  Ney,  Self-­  Portrait,  1962.  Watercolor  on  Paper………………………………………65     47. Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  1963.  Oil  on  Canvas.  Private  Collection…………………………….65     48. Lloyd  Ney,  Apple  Orchard,  1950s.  India  ink  on  arch  paper.  Collection  of  Steven   Hochberg.  Photo  courtesy  of  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum  archive………..66     1   CHAPTER  1   ABSTRACTION  WITHIN  THE  SECTION  OF  FINE  ARTS  AND  AMERICA  AT  LARGE       Figure  1:  Lloyd  Ney,  New  London  Facets,  New  London,  Ohio  post  office,  1941.  Oil  on   canvas.  Photo  courtesy  of  Michel  Laugier.     Lloyd  Ney’s  mural,  New  London  Facets  (figure  1),  has  long  been  described   both  in  New  Deal  and  art  historical  literature  as  the  only  abstract  mural  created   through  the  Treasury  Department-­‐run  Section  of  Fine  Arts.1  Though  Ney’s  work  is   certainly  abstracted  in  form,  unusual  in  subject  matter,  and  unnatural  in  color,   christening  the  mural  with  such  an  exclusive  title  is  misleading.  Observation  of  the   work  reveals  that  Ney’s  style,  however  unconventional  for  murals  commissioned   through  the  New  Deal  program,  remains  rooted  in  representational  treatments  of   figures,  objects,  and  parts  of  the  surrounding  environment.  In  addition  to  being   disingenuous,  the  label  has  also  limited  research  on  Ney  and  New  London  Facets  to   issues  of  abstraction  within  the  Section  of  Fine  Arts  leading  to  scholarly  neglect  of                                                                                                                   1  Karal  Ann  Marling,  Wall  to  Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in   the  Great  Depression  (Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press,  1982),  293-­‐5.   Marlene  Park  and  Gerald  E.  Markowitz,  Democratic  Vistas:  Post  Offices  and  Public  Art   in  the  New  Deal  (Philadelphia:  Temple  University  Press,  1984),  21.   Richard  D.  McKinzie,  The  New  Deal  for  Artists  (Princeton:  Princeton  University  Press,   1973),  54.       2   much  of  the  rest  of  the  artist’s  career.  Over  the  course  of  this  thesis  I  hope  to  remedy   this  omission  and  examine  issues  of  abstraction  within  the  Section  of  Fine  Arts  as   found  in  New  London  Facets  within  the  larger  context  of  Ney’s  career.  A  detailed   probe  of  Ney’s  oeuvre  will  provide  a  broader  and  deeper  understanding  of  the   controversy  surrounding  his  New  Deal  mural  and  shed  vital  light  on  the  conscious   choices  of  style  and  subject  matter  that  the  artist  made  for  the  sake  of  his   composition’s  audience.  However,  before  delving  into  the  affect  of  Ney’s  rich  and   varied  career’s  affect  on  New  London  Facets,  it  is  important  to  first  investigate  the   New  Deal’s  Section  of  Fine  Arts’  thorny  relationship  with  abstraction.   The  New  Deal  spawned  a  great  many  new  federal  art  programs,  so  many  that   participants  sometimes  did  not  know  who  was  actually  in  charge  of  their  position,   commission,  or  work.2  This  may  have  been  due  to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  art   programs  were  designed  as  temporary,  experimental  projects  while  other  programs   lasted  for  years  in  order  to  create  as  many  jobs  as  possible,  and  still  more  programs   were  solely  concerned  with  creating  art  as  opposed  to  jobs.  Confusing  the  matter   further  for  artists,  nearly  all  of  the  New  Deal  programs  were  charged  with   representing  the  “American  scene”  in  art  for  American  citizens  in  the  midst  of  the                                                                                                                   2  Lloyd  Ney,  the  artist  discussed  in  this  thesis,  often  wrote  that  the  WPA  employed   and  commissioned  him  to  paint  a  mural  in  the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office.  In  fact,   Ney  was  never  approached  by  the  WPA  and  only  spoke  with  Section  officials.  Ney’s   confusion  has  led  to  numerous  mistakes  in  the  literature  about  his  time  working  on   his  New  London,  Ohio  commission.  The  most  noticeably  incorrect  example  of  this   was  the  label  formerly  accompanying  the  cartoon  for  Ney’s  final  mural,  New  London   Facets,  located  in  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum,  which  named  both  the  WPA   and  PWAP  as  the  institutions  in  charge  of  the  commission.  It  has  since  been   corrected  with  the  assistance  of  this  author.       3   Great  Depression.3  These  already  similar  programs  also  had  seemingly   interchangeable  acronyms  and,  in  this  confounding  sea  of  bureaucratic   abbreviations,  many  artists  simply  began  to  refer  to  all  New  Deal  art  programs  as   the  WPA.4          One  of  these  programs  was  the  Section  of  Painting  and  Sculpture,  later  the   Section  of  Fine  Arts,  and  always  called  simply,  “the  Section.”  The  Section  lasted  the   longest  of  the  New  Deal  art  organizations,  running  from  October  of  1934  through   1943.  Different  perhaps  from  the  more  widely  known  need-­‐based  Works  Progress   Administration’s  (WPA)  Federal  Art  Project’s  (FAP)  and  the  Public  Works  of  Art   Program’s  (PWAP),  both  of  which  gave  thousands  of  unemployed  artists  work,  the   primary  mission  of  the  Section  was  to  provide  artists  unable  to  obtain  large   commissions  on  their  own  with  jobs  that  would  jump-­‐start  their  careers  while   simultaneously  decorating  federal  buildings.5                                                                                                                                     3  Park  and  Markowitz,  Democratic  Vistas:  Post  Offices  and  Public  Art  in  the  New  Deal,   139-­‐142.   4  This  practice  was  has  not  only  made  archival  work  on  New  Deal  artists  and  their   commissions  understandably  confusing,  but  the  label  was  also  actually  incorrect.   The  WPA  was  an  umbrella  organization  responsible  for  organizations  such  as  the   Federal  Arts  Project  (FAP)  that  employed  needy  artists.   5  While  Section  commissions  were  not  awarded  based  on  financial  need,  many   artists  who  participated  in  Section  projects  did  qualify  for  and  often  took  part  in   need-­‐based  programs  like  the  FAP  and  PWAP.  However,  in  spite  of  the  presence  of   financially  troubled  artists,  the  Section  was  conceived  as  a  means  for  artists  of  any   background  to  compete  for  large,  public,  paid  commissions.       4               Figure  2:  Kindred  McLeary,  Modern            Figure  3:  Howard  Cook,  Steel  Industry,    Justice,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and                Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse,   Courthouse,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas.                      1936.  Oil  on  canvas.       Figure  4:  Stuyvesant  Van  Veen,  Pittsburgh  Panorama,  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and   Courthouse,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas.       The  most  frequently  commissioned  motifs  in  Section  murals  include  imagery   of  farms,  family  scenes,  episodes  from  local  history,  or  allegories  that  allude  to   topical  concepts  such  as  “freedom,”  “American  progress”  or  “work.”  For  example,   the  Section  awarded  three  mural  commissions  in  the  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and   Courthouse  to  artists  Kindred  McLeary,  Howard  Cook,  and  Stuyvesant  Van  Veen   who  won  with  submitted  sketches  that  depicted  Justice,  the  local  steel  industry,  and   a  panoramic  view  of  the  city  (figures  2-­‐4)  respectively,  all  of  which  were  subjects       5   suggested  by  Section  officials  in  the  commission  competition’s  initial   announcement.6     Terms  such  as  avant-­‐garde,  modern,  and  abstract  would  be  appropriate  for  a   far  fewer  number  of  such  murals.  Indeed,  a  general  accounting  of  New  Deal  murals   located  across  the  United  States  in  post  offices,  hospitals,  schools,  and  other  very   public  buildings  may  tempt  a  viewer  into  assuming  that  art  in  America  during  the   1930s  was  solely  concerned  with  depicting  the  American  landscape  in  a  pseudo-­‐ Regionalist  style.7  Of  course,  should  one  leave  the  post  office  and  seek  out  non-­‐New   Deal  commissioned  examples  of  American  painting  and  sculpture  from  the  1930s   and  1940s,  as  much  of  the  subject  matter  would  seem  almost  intentionally  at  odds   with  contemporary  New  Deal  works.     Simultaneously  with  the  Section’s  commissions,  artists  like  Alexander  Calder   were  creating  abstract  works  recognizable  by  flat,  colorful  shapes  and  imbued  with   movement.  Calder’s  Mobile  (figure  5),  for  example,  from  1935  consists  entirely  of   hanging  geometric  shapes.  Completely  abstract,  the  kinetic  sculpture  cannot  be   associated  with  any  recognizable  objects  outside  of  pure  geometrical  forms  and  is   entirely  concerned  with  shape,  line,  and  motion.  Calder’s  fascination  with  pure   abstraction  can  also  be  seen  in  1936,  the  same  year  Cook  completed  his  previously   mentioned  Section  commissioned  mural  for  the  Pittsburgh  post  office  and   courthouse,  in  Form  Against  Yellow  (figure  6).  Though  no  longer  literally  in  motion,                                                                                                                   6  Section  announcement  for  the  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse  Contest,   1935.  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse,  Textual  Records  Division,  National   Archives.   7  Marling,  Wall  to  Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  68-­‐69.       6   the  work’s  energetic  lines  and  three-­‐dimensional  forms  imply  movement  in  a  lively   manner.  With  Form  Against  Yellow,  Calder  also  plays  with  the  viewer’s  ideas  of   traditional  artistic  categories  with  the  work’s  liminal  placement  between  painting   and  sculpture.  Though  Calder  was  simultaneously  working  in  a  style  still  concerned   with  the  figural  and  representational  during  the  same  years  he  produced  Mobile  and   Form  Against  Yellow,  the  pure  abstraction  present  in  these  two  works  is  far  removed   from  the  type  of  painting  being  commissioned  by  the  Section  in  the  1930s.8     Outside  of  sculpture,  artists  like  Mark  Rothko  strived  towards  pure   abstraction  in  painting  during  the  1930s  and  1940s,  where  forms  existed  solely  as   forms  as  opposed  to  abstracted  versions  of  recognizable  objects.9  In  Rothko’s   Untitled  (figure  6)  from  1940  for  instance,  the  artist  has  painted  an  ambiguous,   orange  shape  in  front  of  a  red,  black,  yellow,  and  beige  background.  The  orange   shape,  though  perhaps  familiar  in  its  organic  form,  cannot  be  readily  identified  as  an   abstracted  version  of  a  specific  object.  This  type  of  non-­‐objective  abstraction,  which,   as  we  will  see,  was  of  much  of  interest  to  Ney,  was  completely  out  of  bounds  for   Section  officials.10  While  many  American  artists  seemed  far  more  interested  in                                                                                                                   8  Representational  and  figural  works  created  during  the  1930s  by  Calder  include   Cirque  Calder  and  associated  circus  wire  sculptures  and  drawings,  among  others.   9  During  this  period  Mark  Rothko  was  also  painting  urban  themes  including   paintings  of  street  scenes,  buildings,  and  portraits.   10  It  is  important  to  note  that  Rothko  viewed  himself  as  equal  parts  Surrealist  and   abstract  painter  during  the  early  1940s.  As  Jacob  Baal-­‐Teshuva  points  out  on  page   37  of  his  book,  Mark  Rothko  1903-­1970:  Pictures  as  Drama,  “The  war  had  caused  a   number  of  European  Surrealists  to  emigrate  to  New  York…The  great  pioneer  of   abstract  art,  Piet  Mondrian,  had  moved  to  New  York  back  in  1940.  The  critical   discussion  of  his  works  and  the  arrival  of  the  Surrealists  were  decisive  steps  in  the   rise  of  Abstract  Expressionism.  Rothko  and  Gottlieb  saw  themselves  as  the  new,   independent  successors  to  the  European  avantgarde.  They  sought  to  unite   Surrealism  and  abstract  painting.”       7   incorporating  these  modern  styles  and  techniques  into  their  work,  the  head  of  the   Section  dismissed  the  trend  as,  “that  Abstract  art  stuff.”11     Figure  5:  Alexander  Calder,  Mobile,  circa  1935.  Metal  and  steel.       Figure  6:  Alexander  Calder,  Form  Against  Yellow,  1936.  Painted  metal  and  wood.                                                                                                                     11  Marling,  Wall  to  Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  25,  293-­‐5.       8     Figure  7:  Mark  Rothko,  Untitled,  1940.  Oil  on  canvas.     This  interest  became  so  significant  that  in  1937  a  small,  select  group  of   artists  committed  to  abstraction  organized  and  formed  a  group  called  the  American   Abstract  Artists  (AAA).  Members  of  the  AAA  met  regularly  and  struggled  to  find   nomenclature  that  would  suit  the  varied  approaches  and  styles  of  all  involved.  Given   their  differing  uses  of  abstraction,  the  group  struggled  to  cohesively  define  “abstract   art”  as  a  term.12  Eventually  the  AAA  members  gave  up  on  this  precise  definition  and   decided  instead  to  embrace  a  liberal  interpretation  of  the  word  abstract.  The  term   was  used  generally  for  abstracted  works  and  purely  non-­‐objective  works  alike,   which  proved  useful  in  creating  an  environment  where  artists,  critics,  and,  later,   government  officials,  felt  comfortable  using  the  term  often,  and  for  very  different                                                                                                                   12  Elaine  D.  Gustafson  and  Susan  E.  Strickler,  The  Second  Wave:  American  Abstraction   of  the  1930s  and  1940s,  Selections  from  the  Penny  and  Elton  Yasuna  Collection   (Worcester:  Worcester  Art  Museum,  1991),  8-­‐9.       9   works  of  art.13  Unfortunately,  as  the  practice  of  using  abstract  as  a  broad  term   spread  outside  of  the  artistic  community,  it  began  to  be  applied  to  works  and   situations  that  were  not  abstract  at  all,  even  in  the  AAA’s  general  sense.   For  instance,  in  defending  Frank  Mechau’s  1937  mural,  Dangers  of  the  Mail   (figure  8),  officials  in  the  Section  program  repeatedly  called  the  several  nude  women   in  the  piece  “impersonal”  and  “almost  abstract”  in  an  attempt  to  pacify  the  public’s   concern  about  the  presence  of  nudity.  The  Section  officials’  logic  appears  to  have   been  that  if  a  recognizably  nude  figure  could  be  thought  of  in  any  way  as  abstract,   then  it  surely  cannot  exist  in  reality  and  can  therefore  be  acceptable  on  a  post  office   wall.  It  is  also  possible  that  the  Section  officials  hoped  that  having  a  discussion  about   the  nudes  would  keep  the  public  from  fretting  about  Mechau’s  otherwise  extremely   violent  painted  central  scene  in  Dangers  of  the  Mail.  Unfortunately  for  the  Section,   their  “abstract  vocabulary”  strategy  backfired;  the  publicity  surrounding  the   “scandalous”  D.C.  murals  fused  a  link  between  federally  funded,  accepted,  and   defended  “almost  abstract”  art  and  nudity,  immorality,  and  modernism.14                                                                                                                     13  Ibid.   14  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  24-­‐25.       10   Figure  8:  Frank  Mechau,  Dangers  of  the  Mail,  Post  Office  Departmental  Building,   Washington,  D.C.,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas.     This  new  correlation  among  styles  and  subjects  in  the  wake  of  Dangers  of  the   Mail  caused  subsequent  Section  commissions  that  contained  hints  of  nudity  to  be   labeled  “modern  art,”  which  made  Section  officials  nervous  about  further   controversy.  It  is  important  to  note  that  the  Section  was  commissioning  art  in  a   country  that  had  already  witnessed  and  condemned  the  creation  of  “modern,”  so-­‐ called  “Red”  art  under  the  auspices  of  the  WPA’s  FAP  and  PWAP.15  The  most   infamous  episode  was  that  of  the  Coit  Tower  murals  painted  under  the  Public  Works   of  Art  Program  (PWAP)  by  artists  Victor  Arnautoff,  Bernard  Zakheim  and  Clifford   Wight  in  1934  (figure  9).                                                                                                                     15  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  24.       11     Figure  9:  Victor  Arnautoff,  City  Life,  Coit  Tower,  San  Francisco,  California,  1934.   Fresco.     These  murals  included  subtle  references  to  the  Communist  beliefs  of  these   artists,  such  as  a  painted  magazine  stand  holding  copies  of  the  Daily  Worker.  When   asked  to  explain  these  references,  Zakheim  famously  stated  that  Communism  was   simply  an  alternative  to  the  “American  scene”  requested  in  the  PWAP  commission.16   The  public  was  outraged  and  became  mistrustful  of  artists  employed  in  PWAP.  Then,   adding  to  the  flames  of  public  resentment  towards  abstract  art,  controversy  erupted   three  years  later  over  Arshile  Gorky’s  murals  painted  for  the  WPA.   Gorky  was  commissioned  to  paint  ten  large  murals  between  1936  and  1937   for  the  Newark  Airport  Administration  Building  in  New  Jersey.  His  assigned  subject                                                                                                                   16  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  46.       12   was  “aviation,”  a  topic  WPA  officials  deemed  appropriate  and  non-­‐controversial  for   an  airport  setting.  However,  upon  its  completion  Newark  locals  were   overwhelmingly  negative  about  the  newly  installed  murals.  Though  Gorky  had   created  a  series  of  murals  based  on  aviation  as  instructed,  his  forms  were  severely   abstracted.  His  work  referenced  photographs  taken  by  Gorky’s  friend  Wyatt  Davis   throughout  the  airport.  At  times  objects  in  the  source  photos  were  used  in  their   entirety  and  for  other  parts  of  the  murals  the  original  photos  were  combined  into  a   photo-­‐collage  that  in  turn  was  represented  in  the  murals.         Figure  10:  Arshile  Gorky,  Mechanics  of  Flying  from  Aviation:  Evolution  of  Forms   under  Aerodynamic  Limitations,  1936-­‐1937.  Oil  on  canvas.     The  resulting  mural  series,  Aviation:  Evolution  of  Forms  under  Aerodynamic   Limitations  (figure  10),  is  an  amalgamation  of  forms,  colors,  and  lines  that  reference   parts  of  planes  and  airports  without  representing  objects  directly.  As  Kim  S.   Theriault  writes  in  Rethinking  Arshile  Gorky,  “The  composition  bridges  time  and   space  to  form  an  idea  of  flight  and  quotes  fragments  of  modern  life.  Just  as  one  can       13   fly  from  one  place  to  another,  thereby  compressing  time  and  shifting  easily  from   space  to  space  and  culture  to  culture,  Gorky’s  abstraction  dislocates  and  reattributes   elements  from  one  composition  or  location  to  another.”17   This  effect  created  by  the  disorienting  abstracted  forms  was  lost  on  the   murals’  audience  and  local  papers  were  quick  to  make  fun  of  Gorky’s  style.   Ultimately,  public  disapproval  became  so  strong  that  a  group  of  area  citizens   attempted,  unsuccessfully,  to  remove  the  murals  from  the  airport  in  the  middle  of   the  night.18  Though  Gorky  had  followed  the  WPA’s  directive  regarding  a  subject,  his   inclusion  of  abstracted  objects,  however  recognizable  they  were  in  parts,  and  use  of   compressed  space  proved  too  modern  for  citizens  in  Newark.  This  episode  when   combined  with  the  Coit  Tower  incident  led  officials,  concerned  about  funding  and   public  reception,  to  become  exceedingly  careful  about  artists’  “modern”  styles  in   later  commissions.19   As  Karal  Ann  Marling  points  out  in  her  seminal  book,  Wall  to  Wall  America:  A   Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great  Depression,  the  more  the  terms   “abstract,”  “modern  art,”  and  “the  contemporary  manner”  were  used  in  popular   reports  on  murals  that  communities  found  displeasing,  the  more  the  terms  became   catchalls  for  art  that  failed  to  please  or  was  deemed  in  bad  taste.20  Since  the  Section   was  intended  to  eventually  evolve  into  a  Federal  Department  for  the  Arts,  officials  in                                                                                                                   17  Kim  S.  Theriault,  Rethinking  Arshile  Gorky  (University  Park:  Penn  State  Press,   2009),  94-­‐95.     18  Theriault,  Rethinking  Arshile  Gorky,  96.   19  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  48.   20  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  A  Cultural  History  of  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great   Depression,  24.       14   charge  of  commissions  such  as  Edward  Bruce  and  Edward  Rowan  wanted  to  avoid   serious  controversy  in  order  to  guarantee  the  organization’s  permanence.  This   meant  that  even  if  Section  judges  and  officials  personally  took  no  issue  with   abstraction,  Cubism,  non-­‐objectivity,  Surrealism  or  any  other  Modern  art  style,   technique  or  movement,  it  did  not  make  sense  in  the  long  run  to  antagonize  the   public  with  modern  styles  or  unconventional  subjects.21   And  yet  Bruce,  Rowan  and  their  compatriots  desperately  did  not  want  to   become  stuck  too  deeply  in  the  past.  Rowan  in  particular  was  known  for   immediately  dismissing  submissions  that  were  too  academic  or  derivative  of  “old   masters”  works.22  The  Section  hoped  to  decorate  post  offices  with  American   subjects  painted  in  a  style  not  overly  dependent  on  European  academicism.  This  did   not,  of  course,  keep  the  Section  from  commissioning  a  number  of  murals  that   contained  unexplained  angels,  as  in  Karl  Free’s  Columbia  Under  the  Palm,  or   gestures  that  relied  relying  heavily  on  or  copied  directly  from  Renaissance  or   classical  sculpture  and  painting,  as  in  Edmond  Archer’s  Captain  Eppes  Making   Friends  with  the  Appomattox  Indians.23     With  officials  wary  of  modernistic  submissions  and  frustrated  with  academic   imitations,  the  Section  was  often  left  with  art  commissioned  and  painted  in  a  strange   middling  style.  The  majority  of  the  works  were  not  quite  Regionalist  in  nature,  but                                                                                                                   21  Ibid,  25.   22  Ibid,  312-­‐3.   23  Ibid,  307-­‐309.  Marling  further  remarks  that,  “According  to  the  minutes  kept  by   Bruce’s  private  secretary,  the  Section  was  struck  collectively  dumb  by  Captain  Eppes   Making  Friends  with  the  Appomattox  Indians.  Small  wonder!  The  most  stunning   feature  of  the  work  was  Archer’s  implicit  contention  that  Bernini  was  alive  and  well   and  working  in  Virginia.  And  Tiepolo  lived  in  the  neighborhood  too.”  309.       15   many  did  depict  scenes  from  American  life.  There  were  no  history  paintings  in  the   19th  century  sense  of  the  word,  but  there  certainly  were  a  large  number  of  murals   depicting  staged  historical  events.  Minetta  Good’s  1938  mural  Retrospection  (figure   11)  is  one  example  of  this  awkward  in-­‐between  categorization.  Good  has  painted   scenes  from  the  town  of  Dresden,  Tennessee’s  local  history;  on  the  left  pioneers   settle  the  land,  on  the  right  stagecoaches  arrive  bringing  the  mail,  and  in  the  middle   of  the  composition  there  is  a  representation  of  the  town  during  its  prosperous   antebellum  period.  Though  she  is  careful  in  representing  Dresden  accurately  in   terms  of  historical  events,  she  does  not  frame  the  place  as  an  alternative  to  urban,   modern  living  as  would  a  Regionalist  painter  nor  does  she  attempt  to  endow   Dresden  with  a  sense  of  greatness  or  gravity  as  one  would  in  a  19th  century  history   painting.       Figure  11:  Minetta  Good,  Retrospection,  United  States  Post  Office,  Dresden,   Tennessee,  1938.  Oil  on  canvas.     This  safe  middling  style  in  submissions  ultimately  produced  a  collection  of   murals  that  do  not  accurately  represent  current  artistic  trends  in  painting  and   sculpture  in  America.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  Section  failed  to  produce  interesting       16   or  successful  murals;  on  the  contrary  a  great  number  of  Section  murals,  like  Ney’s   New  London  Facets,  are  fascinating  in  terms  of  subject  matter,  composition,  and   style.  We  simply  must  acknowledge  that  an  artist  with  a  distinctive  or  progressive   style  hoping  to  obtain  a  Section  commission  had  to  fight  for  the  composition,   persuade  Section  officials  to  leave  the  comfortably  safe  and  established  aesthetic   style  behind,  and  to  take  a  significant  risk  in  terms  of  public  opinion  and  federal   support.   However,  in  spite  of  these  restrictions,  Section  officials  successfully  awarded   1400  contracts  to  artists  from  all  over  the  country  during  the  institution’s  tenure   from  October  of  1934  through  1943.24  The  Section  became  a  means  through  which   artists  across  the  country  could  obtain  large-­‐scale  commissions.  It  especially  favored   artists  who  were  either  just  starting  their  careers  or  were  not  well  known,  and   emerging  artists  became  ideal  candidates  for  the  Section’s  commissions.  If  a  Section   commission  could  launch  an  artist’s  career,  and  if  the  public  liked  his  or  her  art,  then   that  was  the  ultimate  success  both  for  the  artist  and  for  the  Section  as  an  institution.   That  said,  Section  officials  were  entirely  unprepared  for  a  public  that  might   favor  public,  abstract  art,  as  in  the  case  of  the  New  London,  Ohio  commission.  In  a   series  of  events  that  baffled  officials,  Ney,  whose  proposed  mural  for  New  London’s   post  office  was  initially  rejected  by  the  Section,  rallied  the  people  of  New  London  to   his  side.  Ney  presented  himself  to  the  public  as  an  artist  attempting  to  paint  America   in  his  own  individual  style,  not  as  someone  intentionally  engaged  in  an  elitist,                                                                                                                   24  Dows,  “The  New  Deal’s  Treasury  Art  Program:  A  Memoir,”  20.  The  Section  faded   out  because  of  budget  constraints  necessitated  by  the  advent  of  World  War  II   beginning  in  1941  and  then  finally  ending  the  program  altogether  in  1943.         17   incomprehensible,  foreign  style  of  painting.  Ney’s  passion  for  abstract  art  and  his   struggle  with  the  Section  was  then  viewed  by  New  London’s  citizens  as  an  example   of  an  American  standing  up  for  his  rights  in  the  face  of  the  government,  and  they   excitedly  defended  his  art  to  the  Section.   The  details  of  Ney’s  life  prior  to  his  New  London  appointment  are  outlined  in   detail  in  Chapter  Two.  There,  I  will  discuss  how  Ney’s  philosophies  about  painting   and  abstraction  changed  over  the  course  of  his  career,  leading  to  his  passionate   defense  of  his  New  London  mural.  Then,  in  Chapter  Three,  I  explore  Ney’s   interactions  with  the  Section  officials  and  how  his  relationships  with  them  affected   both  Ney’s  career  and  the  Section’s  attitude  towards  abstract  art.  As  the  Section   named  Ney’s  mural  as  the  only  abstract  mural  they  ever  commissioned,  the  incident   provides  a  case  study  in  the  Section’s  attitude  towards  abstraction.  An  analysis  of   Ney’s  art,  career,  and  relationship  with  Section  officials  throughout  the  incident   offers  important  insights  into  how  the  Section  felt  about  commissioning  art  outside   of  its  regularly  accepted  style.         18   CHAPTER  2     LLOYD  RAYMOND  “BILL  NEY  AND  HIS  CAREER  PRIOR  TO  THE  NEW  LONDON   FACETS  COMMISSION         Figure  12:  Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,  Archives   of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235].     Before  examining  the  controversial  circumstances  surrounding  the  New   London  Facets  commission,  I  shall  discuss  the  artist,  Lloyd  Ney,  and  his  body  of  work   prior  to  beginning  work  on  the  mural.  Past  accounts  of  Ney’s  important  clash  with   Section  officials,  such  as  those  by  Karal  Ann  Marling  in  Wall  to  Wall  America  and   Richard  D.  McKinzie  in  A  New  Deal  for  Artists,  focus  on  Ney’s  notorious  mural  and   information  about  his  relationship  with  the  Section.  As  important  as  these  accounts   are  in  regard  to  this  episode  within  the  Section’s  broad  and  at  times  confusing       19   history,  they  ignore  the  valuable  context  that  Ney’s  larger  career  provides.  Thus,  my   research  will  expand  upon  prior  accounts  to  consider  why  the  mural  was  so   important  to  Ney  and  why  he  was  adamant  that  the  final  mural  not  be  changed  from   his  original  conception  for  the  work.     Lloyd  Raymond  “Bill”  Ney  was  born  to  Sadie  Maidenford  and  William  W.  Ney   in  1893  in  Friendensburg,  Pennsylvania.  The  family  had  virtually  no  connection  to   the  arts,  although  Lloyd  claimed  that  he  was  related  to  Marshall  Ney,  a  general   under  Napoleon,  and  Elisabet  Ney,  “a  courtesan  to  Kings,”  both  of  whom  he   considered  creative.25    Despite  his  lack  of  exposure  to  the  arts,  Ney  became   interested  in  art  at  a  young  age  and  painted  often  without  the  aid  of  classes  or  a   teacher.  Recognizing  their  only  child’s  passion  for  the  arts,  Ney’s  parents  allowed   him  to  leave  high  school  in  1913  to  study  in  Philadelphia  at  the  Industrial  School  of   Art,  now  the  University  of  the  Arts,  where  he  specialized  in  cast  drawing.26  Ney   flourished  in  his  classes  and  transferred  to  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  Fine  Arts   in  Philadelphia  (PAFA)  in  1914  where  he  studied  under  Henri  McCarter  until  he                                                                                                                   25  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.  Ney  (New  York:  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.,  undated),  1.   Ney’s  relationship  to  Marshall  and  Elisabet  Ney  is  mentioned  in  a  biographical  essay   accompanying  his  solo  exhibition  at  the  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery  in  New  York  City.  The   author’s  name  is  not  included  in  the  catalog,  but  we  can  assume  that  Ney  aided  the   author  in  writing  the  essay  as  it  contains  several  anecdotes  repeated  by  Ney  in   unpublished  essays  and  in  his  personal  papers,  now  located  in  the  Archives  of   American  Art.     26  Lloyd  R.  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  (book  manuscript,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum,   undated),  1a.  Ney’s  daughter,  Gretchen  Ney  Laugier,  wrote  on  March  26,  2003  in  a   letter  to  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum  that  she  thought  her  father  finished  the   manuscript,  “around  November  27,  1949.”  Unfortunately,  the  manuscript  itself  is   not  dated,  so  we  cannot  know  for  sure  that  it  was  completed  in  1949.  We  may   however,  assume  that  Ney  wrote  it  around  that  time  as  the  only  date  referenced  in   the  manuscript  older  than  the  date  provided  by  Gretchen  Ney  Laugier  is  1950.       20   graduated  in  1918.27  Though  Ney  became  more  technically  precise  in  his  painting,   he  found  his  experience  in  school  lacking  in  creative  inspiration.  He  later  wrote   disparagingly  about  his  time  at  PAFA:     My  creative  and  inventive  spirit  continued  to  lie  dormant.  The  process   of  making  me  an   imitative  painter  was   stepped  up   in   tempo  –   full   length  casts,  nude  and  draped  with  many  folds,  hair  and  beards  full  of   large  and  small  curls,  each  curl  having  its  light,  half  tone  and  dark  to   challenge  accuracy.28     In  spite  of  Ney’s  reservations  about  his  academic  training,  the  staff  and   faculty  had  such  faith  in  his  work  that  he  was  awarded  the  prestigious  Cresson   Travelling  Scholarship  in  1920,  which  he  used  following  a  brief  tour  in  Europe  at  the   end  of  World  War  I.  Ney  utilized  the  scholarship  to  travel  throughout  Europe  where   he  was  exposed  to  and  quickly  admired  the  work  of  Pablo  Picasso,  Wassily   Kandinsky,  and  William  Blake.  While  living  in  the  Hotel  de  Versailles  in   Montparnasse,  Ney  made  the  acquaintances  of  painters  such  as  Jules  Pascin,  Moïse   Kisling,  Léonard  Fujita,  Henry  Ossawa  Tanner,  and  Frederick  Frieseke,  all  of  whom   helped  Ney  to  think  about  painting  in  ways  markedly  different  from  his  training  at   the  Industrial  School  of  Art  and  PAFA.29  His  four-­‐year  trip  in  Europe  proved  so   instrumental  to  his  style  and  career  that  the  majority  of  articles  and  biographic                                                                                                                   27  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.  Ney,  1-­‐2.   28  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  1a-­‐2b.   29  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.  Ney,  2.  The  essay  also  mentions  that,  while  in   Montparnasse,  Ney  also,  “helped  ‘Shorty’  Lazar  form  a  basketball  team,  played  chess   with  Walter  Pach  and  Roger  Fry  in  St.  Tropez.”       21   essays  in  exhibition  catalogs  discuss  it  in  detail.30    Ney  himself  later  wrote  about  the   trip  as  a  type  of  cure  for  his  academic  training:   I  had  to  learn  the  hard  way  by  trial  and  error;  experimentation,  travel   in   Europe,   seeing   the   masterpieces   of   the   world.   I   lived   in   Paris…surrounded  by  abstract  painting,  sympathetic  but  not  knowing   how  to  understand   it  always  searching   for  an  approach  to  painting   that  suited  by  particular  temperament.  I  read  Clive  Bell  and  Roger  Fry   thereby  gaining  my   first   real  understanding  and  was   tremendously   stimulated,  gradually  forming  a  philosophy  about  fine  art  in  painting.     About  the  year  1924-­‐25  I  started  painting  a  good  sized  canvas…My   theme  was  two  men  sitting  at  a  marble  top  table  in  one  of  the  small   bistro  eating  places  in  a  working  man’s  section  of  Paris  (figure  13).   Every  part  of  the  painting  was  completed  but  the  marble  top  of  the   table.   I  had  great  difficulty,  and  spent   in   time  at   least   four  months   trying  to  paint  the  top  of  that  table.  Somehow  I  couldn’t  get  it  right.   Out  of  desperation  one  day  I  mixed  together  cobalt  blue,  white  and  a   little  black  with  a  palette  knife  and  furiously  brushed  that  muted  color   tone  over  the  tabletop  surface  and  in  five  or  ten  minutes  my  canvas   was  completed!  A  perfect  relationship.  That  was  the  beginning  of  my   becoming   conscious   of   painting   relationships   instead   of   painting   things.   That   was   the   kind   of   intuitive   feeling   I   had   the   day   before   entering   art   school.   That   kind   of   understanding   at   its   highest   is   a   referential   approach   which   offers   some   creative   and   inventive   liberties.   So   if   I   am   embittered   with   organized   art   schools   and   the   standards  they  impose  bear  with  me…31                                                                                                                     30  Charles  Shaw,  “Bill  Ney  lives!  Retrospective  show  of  New  Hope  artist  reveals  his   artistry  and  prolificness,”  New  Hope  Gazette  (New  Hope,  PA),  October  12,  1978,  3,   10.  Shaw’s  article  is  perhaps  most  notable  among  the  articles  and  essays  as  it   accompanied  Ney’s  first  major  retrospective  exhibition.  Shaw  attempted  to   document  the  artist’s  evolution,  highlighting  the  most  important  events,  one  of   which  was  Ney’s  time  in  Paris.   31  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  2b-­‐4d.       22     Figure  13:  Lloyd  Ney,  The  Drinkers,  1924-­‐25.  Oil  on  canvas.  Photo  courtesy  of   Odile  Laugier.     Ney’s  daughter  remembered  after  his  death  that  her  father  never  promoted   art  school  or  painting  as  a  sole  career.  She  wrote  that  Ney  “would  say  stand  guard  in   a  museum,  dig  a  ditch,  drive  a  taxi  for  money,  but  paint  for  love.”32  It  is  by  no  means   an  understatement  to  say  that  Ney  left  the  United  States  a  traditional,  academically   trained  painter,  but  returned  committed  to  a  new,  more  abstracted  style  of   painting.33   Ney  left  Paris  and  settled  in  New  Hope,  Pennsylvania  in  1925  where  he  lived   next  door  to  close  friend  Harry  Rosin,  a  sculptor  whom  he  had  met  in  Paris.  The   town  of  New  Hope,  considered  a  center  of  the  Pennsylvanian  Impressionist   movement,  was  also  an  artist’s  colony  populated  by  a  new  wave  of  Modernists                                                                                                                   32  Gretchen  Ney  Laugier,  “Stream  of  consciousness,  thoughts  and  facts  about  Lloyd   R.  Ney,  my  father,  March  26,  2003,”  Lloyd  R.  Ney  Files,  James  A.  Michener  Museum,   Doylestown,  PA.   33  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.  Ney,  2-­‐5.       23   interested  in  moving  beyond  Impressionism  during  the  late  1920s  and  throughout   the  1930s.34  Ney  became  a  fixture  within  this  new  group  of  artists  and  was  friends   with  painters  such  as  Charles  Frederic  Ramsey,  Charles  Evans,  and  Louis  Stone.   Together  they  formed  a  group  appropriately  called  “The  New  Group,”  later  known   as  “The  Independents,”  and  strove  to  create  art  in  response  to  what  they  considered   the  dull,  staid  work  of  the  Pennsylvania  Impressionist  school,  still  very  active  in  the   late  1920s.35  Ney  bought  a  home  now  known  as  the  Towpath  House,  located  on   Mechanic  Street,  which  grew  into  a  thriving  artist’s  community  dubbed  the  “Latin   Quarter”  populated  by  this  new  wave  of  New  Hope  Modernist  painters  (figures  14   and  15).36                                                                                                                                   34  Roy  Pedersen,  “The  New  Hope  Modernists,”  in  New  Hope  Modernists,  1917-­1950,   ed.  Roy  Pedersen  and  Barbara  A.  Wolanin  (New  Hope,  PA:  The  New  Hope  Modernist   Project,  Inc.,  1991),  8.   35  Sarah  Langham,  A  Modernist  Experiment:  Visual  Jazz,  The  Cooperative  Painting   Project  and  Modernist  Works  (New  York:  Langham  Leff  Gallery),  3.   36  Shaw,  “Bill  Ney  lives!  Retrospective  show  of  New  Hope  artist  reveals  his  artistry   and  prolificness,”  10.       24                           Figure  14:  The  Mechanic  Street  Bridge              Figure  15:  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney,     Towpath  House.  The  Lloyd  Raymond                    Mechanics  Street,  New  Hope,  1934.  Oil     Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐1987,  Archives  of                        on  canvas.  Gift  of  Marguerite  and  Gerry         American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.            Lenfest,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum.   [4234-­‐4235]     Ney  painted  with  his  New  Group  peers  in  relative  quiet  over  the  course  of  the   following  five  years,  leaving  intermittently  to  take  teaching  positions  in  institutions   such  as  Converse  College  in  Spartanburg,  South  Carolina,  Ogontz  Junior  College  in   Abington,  Pennsylvania,  a  government  teaching  project  located  in  Saint  Thomas,   Virgin  Islands,  and  the  Kansas  City  Art  Institute  where  he  served  as  head  of  the   painting  school.37     In  1930  a  number  of  things  changed  for  Ney.  First,  he  left  his  position  at  the   Kansas  City  Art  Institute  to  return  home  to  New  Hope  where  he  continued  painting   with  the  New  Group  circle.  Then,  on  July  12  of  the  same  year,  he  married  his  fiancée   Jean  (figure  16).  Finally,  later  that  year,  Ney  was  dramatically  turned  down  from  the   annual  Phillips’  Mill  exhibition  held  in  New  Hope.                                                                                                                       37  Avant-­‐Garde  Gallery,  Ltd.  Ney,  2-­‐5.       25     Figure  16:  Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  and  Jean  Ney.  The  Lloyd  Ney  Papers,  The  James  A.   Michener  Art  Museum,  Doylestown,  PA.The  Phillips’  Mill  exhibition  was  first  held  in   the  summer  of  1929,  where  one  hundred  twenty  five  works  were  displayed  and   judged  by  famous  area  Pennsylvanian  Impressionists  such  as  John  Folinsbee,  Daniel   Garber,  and  Rae  Sloan  Bredin.38  When  Ney  submitted  his  painting  of  a  bridge  over   the  Delaware  Canal  in  New  Hope  the  exhibition  was  only  in  its  second  year,  was  still   a  young  “tradition”  in  the  community,  and  the  jurors  had  not  yet  encountered   anything  remotely  Modern  until  Ney’s  piece.  The  jury  concluded  that  the  painting  of   the  New  Hope  canal  did  not  fit  with  their  vision  for  the  exhibition;  Pennsylvanian   Impressionist  and  tonalist  William  Lathrop  told  Ney  that,  specifically,  his  use  of  red   on  a  bridge  was  too  garish  and  disturbing  for  the  exhibition.39                                                                                                                     38  Pedersen,  “The  New  Hope  Modernists,”  9.   Phillips’  Mill  Community  Association,  “Art  Exhibition:  History  of  the  Phillips’  Mill  Art   Exhibition,”  http://www.phillipsmill.org/art-­‐exhibition/.     39  Unfortunately,  the  name  of  the  actual  work  submitted  to  the  Phillips’  Mill   exhibition  has  been  lost  along  with  any  image  of  the  work.  Ney  painted  so  many   canvases  during  his  career,  and  so  many  of  them  abstract,  that  it  has  been  all  too   easy  for  names  of  paintings  and  reproductions  to  become  lost.  However,  based  on       26     Figure  17:  Lloyd  Ney,  The  Canal,  1935.  Oil  on  canvas.  Photo  Courtesy  of  Michel   Laugier.       Figure  18:  William  Langston  Lathrop,  Chilmark  Moor,  1930.  Oil  on  canvas.  Gift  of   Marguerite  and  Gerry  Lenfest,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum.     Given  Lathrop’s  own  style,  this  rejection  should  not  have  been  a  complete   surprise  for  Ney  and  the  New  Group.  Lathrop’s  work  featured  portraits,  still  lives,                                                                                                                   the  described  subject  matter,  we  may  assume  that  the  painting  submitted  to  the   Phillips’  Mill  Competition  was  similar  to  The  Canal  in  figure  17.       27   and  landscapes,  such  as  Chilmark  Moor  (figure  18),  rendered  in  the  muted  color   palette  and  hazy  brushstrokes  typical  of  Pennsylvania  Impressionist  painters.  The   style  was  still  rampantly  popular  in  1929,  but,  with  an  influx  of  modernist  painters   in  New  Hope,  formerly  home  to  impressionist  painters  only,  Lathrop  and  the  other   Phillips’  Mill  judges  were  probably  feeling  a  bit  threatened.  It  is  also  likely  that  the   members  of  the  judging  committee,  working  in  the  traditional  academic  style   championed  by  PAFA,  disapproved  of  Ney  and  the  New  Group’s  decidedly  anti-­‐ academic  feelings.  Looking  outside  of  New  Hope,  the  judges  may  have  also   recognized  hints  of  European  modernists  such  as  Henri  Matisse  and  Paul  Gaugin  in   Ney’s  submitted  work  with  its  expressive  use  of  color,  thick  black  lines,  and   flattened  perspective.  This  influence  would  not  have  been  welcomed  and  may   account,  in  part,  for  Ney’s  immediate  rejection  from  the  exhibition.   Frustrated,  Ney  and  his  New  Group  peers,  in  the  spirit  of  the  history  of   alternative  exhibitions  in  modernism,  quickly  put  together  a  display  of  Modern   paintings  to  rival  the  selection  of  traditional,  safe,  Impressionist  paintings  at  the   Phillips’  Mill.    Their  exhibition  was  held  in  a  local  abandoned  prison  and  opened  the   day  before  Phillips’  Mill,  thereby  stealing  most  of  the  initial  press  attention  and   publicity.40   The  rival  exhibition  significantly  raised  the  New  Hope  Modernists’  profile   within  the  art  world  as  a  whole,  but  perhaps  even  more  so  for  Ney  individually.  His   work  began  to  be  noticed  and  reviewed  by  critics,  publications,  and  galleries  outside   of  the  New  Hope  area.  He  started  exhibiting  almost  annually  in  major  group                                                                                                                   40  Pedersen,  “The  New  Hope  Modernists,”  9.       28   exhibitions,  first  in  the  College  Art  Association  International  Exhibition  in  1932,   then  the  “Little  International  Show”  in  the  Mellon  Galleries  in  Philadelphia,  and   again  in  the  Pickett  Galleries  locally  in  New  Hope  in  1934.41     The  Pickett  Galleries  is  especially  significant  for  Ney’s  career.  It  was  Ney  who   opened  and  ran  the  gallery  space,  demonstrating  his  dedication  to  establishing  new   homes  for  Modern  art  within  New  Hope.  Ney  also  named  the  gallery  after  Joseph   Pickett,  an  artist  whose  work  he  discovered  while  living  on  Mechanic  Street;  Ney   viewed  Picket  as  an  important  influence  on  his  own  work.  Ney  never  stated   explicitly  what  he  found  so  inspiring  in  Pickett’s  art  except  that  his  style  was,   “primitive.”  Extant  examples  of  his  work  are  extremely  rare,  but  in  Coryell’s  Ferry,   1776  (figure  19)  we  may  see  why  Pickett’s  painting  so  attracted  Ney.  Pickett’s   painting  style  is  flat  with  little  attention  to  actual  perspective,  scale,  or  shading,   similar  to  Ney’s  work  in  Canal.  Though  Coryell’s  Ferry,  1776  depicts  a  real  place   within  New  Hope  in  a  real  year,  the  scene  relates  very  little  to  actual  events  or  to  a   realistic  depiction  of  the  area.  In  Pickett’s  simplified  style,  Ney  may  have  found  a   local  inspiration  for  his  modern  way  of  painting.  Though  Ney  had  already  learned   about  modern  artists  finding  inspiration  in  non-­‐Western  “primitive”  objects  while   studying  in  Europe,  discovering  a  local,  untrained,  American  painter  from  which  he   could  draw  further  inspiration  must  have  been  exhilarating.                                                                                                                     41  The  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum  Bucks  Country  Artists  Database,  “Lloyd  (Bill)   Ney:  Career,”   http://www.michenermuseum.org/bucksartists/artist.php?artist=164&page=664.         29     Figure  19:  Joseph  Pickett,  Coryell’s  Ferry,  1776,  1914-­‐1918.  Oil  on  canvas.  Whitney   Museum  of  American  Art.     Additionally,  one  may  also  surmise  that  Pickett’s  reported  technique  of   introducing  textured  materials  into  his  paintings  like  sand  and  shells  was  exciting  to   Ney,  who  also  incorporated  nontraditional  materials  into  some  of  his  later  works   like  Construction  (figure  20).  Additionally,  his  assertion  that  Pickett’s  work  was   “primitive”  reinforced  Ney’s  disdain  for  the  academic  world;  in  seeking  out  the  pure,   untouched,  and  primitive  he  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  modern  artists  such  as   Gaugin,  Picasso,  and  Modigliani,  to  mention  but  a  few,  who  were  fascinated  with   “primitive”  art.  When  his  interest  in  Pickett  first  arose,  Ney  reportedly  bought  two   Pickett  paintings  for  $15  and  later  sold  them  to  Moore  Price,  a  local  collector.42  The                                                                                                                   42  New  Hope  Gazette  (New  Hope,  PA),  April  2,  1953.         30   episode  so  captivated  area  newspapers  that  Ney  was  later  the  subject  of  an  editorial   cartoon  (figure  21).     Figure  20:  Lloyd  Ney,  Construction,  1958.  Wood,  iron,  steel  on  wood.         31     Figure  21:  Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney.  Joe  Masick  and  Bill  Dwyer  for  the  Delaware  Valley   Scrapbook,   1946.   The   Lloyd   Ney   Papers,   The   James   A.   Michener   Art   Museum,   Doylestown,  PA.     His  interest  and  investment  in  Pickett  also  indicates  that  Ney  was  deeply   attentive  to  matters  of  art  history  and  artistic  relevance.  In  establishing  a  space  to   display  Pickett’s  work  as  well  as  his  own,  Ney  was  carefully  building  a  reputation  for   both  artists  that  would  hopefully  result  in  critical  attention,  fiscal  reward,  and  the   legitimatization  of  style.  Ney  also  vigilantly  documented  his  opinions  on  connections   between  art,  education,  and  the  public  throughout  his  career  and  came  closest  to       32   collecting  them  all  in  an  unpublished  manuscript  entitled,  “Art  Appreciation  for  the   People!  How  to  Look  at  Paintings!  What  Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”43  In  the   manuscript  Ney  drew  upon  different  episodes  throughout  his  career  in  order  to   instruct  the  reader  in  how  to  appreciate  works  of  art  within  their  own  historical   context  and  how  to  distinguish  between  commercial  art  and  great  and  true   masterpieces.     Ney’s  writing  is  at  times  difficult  to  follow  and  perhaps  not  fully  developed.  It   is  possible  that  Ney  was  waiting  to  edit  the  manuscript  carefully  only  after  he   obtained  a  publisher,  which  ultimately  never  happened.  In  spite  of  its  lack  of  flow   and  cohesion,  “Art  Appreciation  for  the  People!  How  to  Look  at  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  laid  out  what  Ney  thought  differentiated  abstraction   from  his  eventual  proclaimed  personal  style  of  the  Nonobjective.  According  to  Ney,   all  art  can  be  placed  into  one  of  three  groups:  Imitative,  Abstract,  or  Nonobjective.     The  Imitative  refers  to  any  art  that  relies  upon  artistic  convention  in   portraying  the  real;  as  Ney  writes,  “Imitative  painting  is  the  usual  readable  surface   aspect  of  perfection.”44  This  broad  definition  means  that  everything  from  academic   painting  to  history  painting  to  photography  falls  within  this  category  and  is   ultimately  problematic  as  realism  is  not  every  viewer’s  idea  of  perfection.  Ney  went   on  to  write  that  the  difficulty  with  Imitative  painting  is  that  in  imitating  the  masters                                                                                                                   43  A  copy  of  this  unpublished  manuscript  is  located  in  the  James  A.  Michener  Art   Museum’s  archives  in  Doylestown,  Pennsylvania  as  well  as  in  the  personal   collections  of  Michel  and  Odile  Laugier.   44  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  21.       33   every  imitation  gets  a  bit  worse,  as  if  every  artist  within  this  group  is  only  producing   a  poor  copy  of  what  someone  had  completed  before  them.   Abstract  painting  is  defined  in  the  manuscript  as,  “a  natural  sequence  from   referential  painting,”  which  took  place  when  Picasso  began  painting  in  the  beginning   of  the  twentieth  century.45  In  his  chapter  on  the  Abstract,  Ney  emphasizes  that  the   style  is  a  drastic  improvement  over  the  sameness  present  in  the  Imitative,  but  that   Abstract  painters  still  work  within  the  same  framework  as  their  predecessors.   Nevertheless,  Ney  reminds  his  reader  that  even  though  Abstract  artists  work  within   the  same  tradition  as  the  Imitative  the  end  result  is  so  different  that  viewers  must   interact  with  Abstract  works  in  an  entirely  different  way,  thereby  making  the   Abstract  vastly  superior  for  contemporary  viewers.   Finally,  Ney  writes  about  the  Nonobjective,  which  is  described,  as  one  might   expect  of  a  self-­‐proclaimed  practitioner,  to  be  the  superior  style.  Kandinsky  is   credited  with  starting  the  style  in  1911,  painting,  “for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of   painting  where  the  usual  life  and  nature  forms  aren’t  used  as  a  theme.”46  In  writing   his  own  treatise  on  art,  Ney  likely  had  read  and  drew  heavily  on  Kandinsky’s   Concerning  the  Spiritual  in  Art.  Kandinsky’s  comparison  of  humanity  to  a  pyramid   with  the  artist  leading  viewers  up  to  its  peak  is  reminiscent  of  Ney’s  three   progressive  stages.  Further  aligned  with  Kandinsky’s  writings,  Ney  goes  on  to   explain  how  the  Nonobjective  is  the  one  style  that  will  finally  allow  art  to  move   forward,  past  subject  and  theme  and  illusionistic  space  and  into  explorations  of                                                                                                                   45  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  26.   46  Ney,  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!  What   Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”36.       34   relationships  involving  a  spiritual,  fourth  dimension  of  inner  reality.  This  “inner   reality”  bears  a  striking  relationship  to  the  spiritual  in  Concerning  the  Spiritual  in   Art,  conscious  homage  to  Kandinsky  as  the  painter  that  Ney  believed  most   committed  to  this  approach.47   Perhaps  the  most  telling  aspect  of  Ney’s  passionate  belief  in  the  superiority   of  the  Nonobjective  is  his  description  of  it  as,  “the  beginning  of  a  new  wave  length,   [standing]  alone  as  a  beacon  for  all  time.”48  Ney’s  written  philosophy  of  artistic   styles  as  laid  out  in  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At  Paintings!   What  Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  –  along  with  his  teaching  history  –  informs  his   passionate  defense  of  New  London  Facets,  which  I  will  explore  in  more  detail  in   Chapter  Three.  For  Ney,  the  New  London  commission  was  not  just  a  simple  post   office  mural;  it  was  a  means  through  which  he  could  communicate  a  sample  of  his   aesthetic  beliefs  with  the  public.     In  1936,  Ney  had  his  first  major  solo  show  in  New  York  City  at  a  gallery  on   57th  Street.49  Though  the  exhibition  was  small,  the  noted  critic  Lewis  Mumford  in                                                                                                                   47  Among  Ney’s  papers  in  Odile  Laugier’s  family  archives  were  second  edition  copies   of  Kandinsky’s  Point  and  Line  to  Plane  and  Concerning  the  Spiritual  in  Art.  Both  were   inscribed  to  Ney  as  a  gift  from  the  Baroness  Hilla  von  Rebay,  a  staunch  advocate  of   Non-­‐Objectivism,  who  wrote  the  introduction  in  each  volume  and  was  involved  with   planning  the  new  Guggenheim  Museum,  originally  called  the  Museum  of  Non-­‐ Objective  Painting  when  it  opened  in  1939.  While  it  is  tempting  to  assume  Ney  only   read  Kandinsky’s  work  through  this  gift,  he  and  Rebay  did  not  know  each  other  until   the  early  1940s.  As  Ney’s  “Art  Appreciation  For  The  People!  How  To  Look  At   Paintings!  What  Constitutes  a  Work  of  Art!”  is  so  closely  related  to  Kandinsky’s   written  work,  it  is  much  more  likely  that  Ney  had  already  read  both  volumes  and   simply  kept  those  given  to  him  by  Rebay  because  they  were  beautifully  bound   volumes  from  a  friend.   48  Ibid.   49  Unfortunately,  though  the  artist’s  papers  mention  that  Ney  had  a  show  in  a  gallery   on  57th  Street  in  New  York  City  in  1936,  the  name  is  not  given.  Reviews  of  the  show       35   The  New  Yorker  enthusiastically  described  Ney  as  an  artist  capable  of  depicting   America  within  a  new  imaginative  style:   Ney’s   imagination,   while   intoxicated   with   this   world   of   color,   has   nevertheless  been  nibbling  at  the  daily  incidents  of  commonplace  life   in  a  Pennsylvania  village  –  New  Hope,  to  be  exact…Ney’s  paintings  are   as  much  paintings  of  the  American  scene  as  the  more  stridently  native   kind.   Ney’s   pictures   have   even   got   into   circulation   in   his   own   community:  he  has  three  murals  in  the  village  newsstand,  and  he  has   decorated   the   entrance   to   one   of   the   garages.   That   seems   to   me   a   healthy  sign.  Americana  should  show  us  fireworks  on  a  clear  Fourth  of   July  night  as  well  as  exploded  paper  and  charred  Roman  candles  and   empty  bottles  of  soda  pop  lying  on  the  grass  in  the  dull  drizzle  of  the   next  morning.50     Though  Mumford  does  not  directly  reference  Ney’s  use  of  abstraction,  Mumford  was   most  likely  reviewing  a  selection  of  abstracted  canvases  like  that  of  Untitled  (figure   22)  and  Abstract  (figure  23).  In  Untitled,  Ney  produced  a  fantastical  landscape,   complete  with  mountains  riding  from  a  blue  field  or  body  of  water,  a  multicolored   foreground,  two  possible  figures,  one  seated  and  the  other  peeking  in  at  the  lower   right  corner  with  a  partially  covered  face,  and  a  bunch  of  bright  red  flowers,   possibly  poppies,  in  the  lower  left  corner.  Just  as  Mumford  stated  in  his  review,  Ney   has  become  by  the  mid  1930s  completely  intoxicated  with  color.  In  Abstract,  it   becomes  more  difficult  to  discern  specific  forms.  Aside  from  some  potential  flowers   in  the  lower  left  corner,  the  entire  composition  is  an  assortment  of  shapes,  some   geometric  and  others  more  organic.  Clearly  Ney  had  begun  to  think  about  the   direction  his  painting  will  go  in  during  the  1930s,  with  a  slow  progression  towards                                                                                                                   do  not  mention  the  gallery  name  either  as  it  is  included  among  many  in  a  few   reviews  of  “group  shows.”   50  Lewis  Mumford,  “Group  Shows  and  Solos,”  in  Mumford  on  Modern  Art  in  the  1930s,   ed.  Robert  Wojtowicz  (Berkeley  and  Los  Angeles:  University  of  California  Press,   2007),  186.       36   pure  abstraction.  Ney  still  has  not  completely  become  a  Nonobjective  painter  as  he   would  following  New  London  Facets,  but  paintings  like  those  Mumford  reviewed   show  a  progression  away  from  the  strict  academic  representation  Ney  called   Imitative  and  towards  the  imaginative  Abstract.   Figure  22:  Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  circa  1930s.  Oil  on  canvas.           37     Figure  23:  Lloyd  Ney,  Abstract,  1939.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  collection.     Such  a  positive  review  by  a  prominent  critic  like  Mumford  seems  to  have   given  Ney  the  confidence  to  pursue  his  “charred  Roman  candle”  of  a  style  and  he   began  to  apply  for  a  number  of  large,  public  commissions.  Mumford’s  mention  of   “the  American  scene”  may  have  also  struck  a  chord  with  Ney  and  prompted  him  to   create  and  submit  a  design  for  the  Section’s  St.  Louis  post  office  competition.  As   mentioned  earlier,  PWAP  called  for  artists  who  would  explore  aspects  of  “the   American  scene,”  a  recommendation  that  permeated  all  subsequent  New  Deal  art   programs,  including  the  Section,  and  would  have  been  a  familiar  phrase  for  Ney.51   Mumford’s  review  echoed  everything  Ney’s  written  beliefs  about  art  and   encouraged  him  even  further;  Ney  has  been  charged  with  bringing  his  new,  colorful,                                                                                                                   51  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great  Depression,  43-­‐5.       38   imaginative  work  to  regular  American  citizens  outside  of  the  gallery-­‐going  crowd  in   New  York.  If  Mumford  applauded  Ney’s  casual  work  on  the  garages  of  New  Hope,  a   post  office  wall  would  serve  equally  well  if  not  better  as  a  podium  from  which  Ney   should  spread  his  own,  new  style.   Before  receiving  the  New  London,  Ohio  commission  (to  be  discussed  in   chapter  three),  Ney  submitted  a  proposal  for  a  Section  mural  in  1939  for  Saint  Louis,   Missouri.  The  Saint  Louis  commission  called  for  ten  panels:  nine  long  and   rectangular  and  one  large  and  square  to  be  mounted  above  the  others.  52  Ney’s   square  panel  is  a  striking  painting  of  a  man  whose  head  pensively  leans  against  his   propped  arm  and  hand,  looking,  presumably  at  post  office  patrons  below  the   mounted  canvas  (figure  24).  Behind  the  figure  is  a  collection  of  ambiguous   geometric  shapes  that  suggest  a  corner  of  a  picture  frame  and  part  of  a  chair,  though   one  cannot  distinguish  what  they  are  with  certainty.     The  lower  nine  panels  depict  various  modes  of  transportation,  presumably  in   the  act  of  delivering  mail  (figure  25).  Space  in  each  of  the  panels  has  been   compressed  in  the  same  manner  as  the  square  top  panel.  In  such  a  shallow  plane,   objects  are  stacked  on  top  of  each  other  and  activity  appears  chaotic  as  people,   animals,  plants,  and  vehicles  co-­‐exist  in  severely  altered  space.  This  is  seen  best  in   the  lower  right  panel  that  depicts  barges  carrying  livestock  on  a  canal  much  like  the   one  behind  Ney’s  house  in  New  Hope  and  depicted  in  The  Canal.  With  a  large  barge                                                                                                                   52  Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Sketch  for  the  St.  Louis,  Missouri  competition,  Record  Group  121-­‐ MS,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD.  Unfortunately,  the  only  surviving  images  of   Ney’s  submission  for  the  Saint  Louis  competition  are  in  black  and  white;  therefore  I   cannot  discuss  his  use  of  specific  colors,  only  tones.  This  is  a  terrible  loss  since  an   understanding  of  Ney’s  expressive  use  of  color  is  integral  to  a  complete  discussion  of   his  work.       39   located  in  the  middle  of  the  panel’s  foreground,  poles,  shores,  and  figures  have  been   cast  far  out  to  the  side  or  above  the  boat  in  order  to  fit  all  activity  into  the  panel.   Additionally,  Ney  has  included  a  crowded,  abstracted  skyline  of  a  town  in  the   background,  similar  to  the  ambiguous  shapes  present  in  the  top  square  panel.  While   the  town’s  skyline  has  a  somewhat  recognizable  silhouette  in  the  background’s   center,  it  becomes  less  delineated  closer  to  the  panel’s  corners  until  it  fades  into   amorphous  shades  of  gray.     Figure  24:  Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Sketch  for  the  St.  Louis,  Missouri  competition,  Record  Group   121-­‐MS,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD.         40     Figure  25:  Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Sketch  for  the  St.  Louis,  Missouri  competition,  Record  Group   121-­‐MS,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD.     Ney’s  panels  are  characteristic  of  his  work  during  the  1930s;  while  certain   elements  are  abstracted  his  subjects  are  mostly  recognizable  and  essentially   representational.  Similar  to  The  Canal,  in  which  Ney  painted  just  what  the  title   suggests  with  various  abstracted  elements  and  expressive  colors,  the  panels  depict   recognizable  sites,  objects,  and  activities,  but  with  dynamic,  angular  lines  and,   presumably,  similarly  energized  colors.  As  it  is  more  conservative  than  works  Ney   would  have  classified  as  Abstract  like  Untitled,  it  appears  that  Ney  was  conscious  of   his  audience.  While  Ney  was  ready  to  bring  his  style  to  the  public,  he  seems  aware   that  both  the  Section  and  his  work’s  eventual  audience  would  receive  abstract       41   works  skeptically.  Clearly  Ney  wanted  to  win  the  commission  and  yet  still  stay  true   to  his  style,  and  so  adjusted  his  composition  accordingly.   Though  the  Saint  Louis  commission  jury  was  intrigued  by  Ney’s  submission   and  style,  the  mural  contract  was  awarded  to  Trew  Hocker’s  The  Louisiana  Purchase   Exposition  (figure  26).  With  such  a  large  commission  the  Section  only  seemed   prepared  to  select  a  safe  composition  painted  in  the  type  of  nondescript  style   described  in  chapter  one  and  seen  in  Good’s  Retrospection.  Even  though  it  is  toned   down,  Ney’s  work  most  likely  was  too  progressive  in  style  for  the  Section  and  would   have  been  a  risky  choice  for  a  highly  publicized  commission  in  an  urban  center,   especially  when  compared  to  Hocker’s  nostalgic  depiction  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase   Exposition.     Figure  26:  Trew  Hocker,  The  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition,  Saint  Louis,  Missouri   Post  Office,  1940.  Fresco.     Following  the  Section’s  selection  of  The  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition  in   April  of  1939  the  St.  Louis  jury  decided  that  Ney  should  be  allowed  to  create  a   design  for  another  location  as  a  sort  of  runner-­‐up  prize.  The  available  mural  site  was       42   the  newly  constructed  post-­‐office  in  the  small  town  of  New  London,  Ohio.  Not  as   glamorous  or  high  profile  as  Saint  Louis,  a  commission  in  New  London  was  far  less   risky  in  stirring  up  serious  national  controversy  and  yet  would  still  provide  Ney   with  a  venue  to  introduce  the  public  to  his  style.     It  is  relatively  unclear  whether  jury  members  and  artists  Howard  Cook,  Ward   Lockwood,  and  William  Gropper  described  Ney’s  style  to  upper-­‐level  Section   officials  when  they  made  this  decision.  Regardless  of  what  they  disclosed,  Ney   received  a  letter  from  the  Section  in  September  of  1939  informing  him  of  the  New   London  commission  paying  $800.53  Ney’s  acceptance,  relationship  with  the  Saint   Louis  jury  as  he  worked  on  New  London  Facets,  and  his  ensuing  battle  with  the   Section,  permanently  changed  the  artist’s  later  career  as  well  as  the  Section’s   attitude  towards  abstraction.  This  will  be  the  subject  of  chapter  three.                                                                                                                       53  Rowan  to  Ney  Sep.  26,  1939       43   CHAPTER  THREE     NEY,  NEW  LONDON  FACETS,  AND  FRICTION  WITH  THE  SECTION       Figure  27:  New  London  Facets  in  Lloyd  Ney’s  studio  in  New  Hope,  PA  with  studio   visitor.   The   Lloyd   Raymond   Ney   Papers,   1902-­‐1987,   Archives   of   American   Art,   Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235].       Ney  was  understandably  thrilled  to  receive  the  New  London,  Ohio   commission  from  the  Saint  Louis,  Missouri  jury,  but  it  appears  that  the  jury   members  were  equally  as  excited  about  Ney’s  style.  The  mere  fact  that  Howard   Cook,  Ward  Lockwood,  and  William  Gropper  took  the  initiative  to  award  Ney  a   surprise  commission  speaks  to  their  faith  in  his  work,  but  the  jury  members’  careers   and  relationship  with  the  Section  must  have  also  contributed  to  their  decision.     At  that  time  Howard  Cook  was  already  a  Section  veteran,  having  completed   murals  for  the  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse  as  well  as  the  post  office  in  San   Antonio,  Texas.  While  his  style  was  far  more  representational  than  Ney’s,  Cook       44   habitually  compressed  space  and  action  in  a  manner  similar  to  Ney’s  submitted   sketch,  as  seen  in  his  Pittsburgh  mural,  Steel  Industry  (figure  28).  Cook  was  also   intensely  interested  in  Mexican  mural  painting,  which  he  saw  as  pushing  the   boundaries  of  what  murals  could  be.  It  is  possible  that  in  Ney’s  sketch  he  recognized   a  kindred  spirit  who  would  also  be  able  to  compress  a  meaningful  narrative  within  a   mural.54     Figure   28:   Howard   Cook,   Steel   Industry,   Pittsburgh   Post   Office   and   Courthouse,   Pittsburgh  Pennsylvania.  1936.  National  Archives.     William  Gropper  was  a  well-­‐known  cartoonist  in  the  1930s  but  he  was  also  a   book  illustrator  and  painter.  Famous  for  documenting  and  depicting  social  upheaval   through  his  drawings  and  prints,  at  the  time  of  the  Saint  Louis  jury,  he  had  recently   completed  a  mural  for  the  Interior  Department  through  the  Section  titled   Construction  of  a  Dam  (figure  29).  Though  his  style  in  the  Interior  Department  mural   is  much  more  polished  than  Ney’s,  Gropper  may  have  recognized  and  appreciated                                                                                                                   54  Robert  L.  Gambone,  “Howard  Cook:  From  Drawings  to  Frescoes,  January  28  –   March  19,”  Georgia  Museum  of  Art  Bulletin  14  no.  3  (1989):  4.         45   how  Ney’s  sketch  diverged  from  conventional  Section-­‐approved  styles  and  subjects.   As  Gropper  later  wrote,  “The  beauty  of  all  this  art  that  we  have  is;  it’s  challenging   and  you  cannot  disprove  it.  All  of  these  are  little  worlds  and  it  is  a  part  of  our   world.”55     Figure  29:  William  Gropper,  Construction  of  a  Dam,  1939.  Oil  on  canvas.     The  third  jury  member,  Ward  Lockwood,  had  already  completed  Section   murals  in  the  Lexington,  Kentucky  post  office  and  two  for  the  new  Post  Office   Department  Building  in  Washington,  D.C.  (figure  30).  Lockwood’s  themes  in  his   Washington  D.C.  murals  also  dealt  with  travel  through  the  post,  similar  in  subject   matter  to  Ney’s  scenes  in  his  nine  smaller  panels  submitted  for  the  Saint  Louis   commission.  Lockwood,  who  lived  in  Taos,  New  Mexico  along  with  Howard  Cook,   may  have  shared  Cook’s  interest  in  Ney’s  innovative  use  of  space.  In  any  event,   Lockwood,  whose  work  in  the  Section  had  been  praised  time  and  again  for  its   dramatic  historical  scenes  and  use  of  allegory,  also  gave  his  approval  for  Ney’s   commission  in  the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office.56                                                                                                                   55  William  Gropper,  “William  Gropper:  His  Statements,”  in  William  Gropper:   Retrospective,  ed.  August  L.  Freundlich  (Los  Angeles:  The  Ward  Ritchie  Press,  1968),   28.   56  Charles  C.  Eldridge,  Ward  Lockwood:  1894-­1963  (Kansas  City:  Kansas  Museum  of   Art,  1974),  74.       46     Figure  30:  Ward  Lockwood,  Consolidation  of  the  West,  1937.  Oil  on  canvas.     Ney  was  thrilled  with  the  jury  members’  interest  in  his  work  and  to  have   been  awarded  this  “runner-­‐up”  commission.57  While  he  had  hoped  to  receive  the   much  larger  Saint  Louis  competition  as  it  provided  the  winner  with  more  money,  he   still  saw  this  new  opportunity  in  the  small  community  of  New  London  as  a  chance  to   explore  and  experiment  more  fully  with  abstraction  in  a  public  venue.  He  said,  “In   my  competitive  sketches  for  the  St.  Louis  job  I  consciously  compromised  with  my   approach,  but  since  the  definite  New  London  assignment  was  on  hand  I  wanted  to   have  as  much  freedom  as  possible  to  express  myself.”58  Ney  viewed  his  newly   obtained  commission  as  a  sure  thing  and  did  not  assume  that  his  sketches  might  be   judged  harshly  before  final  approval.59       Ney  immediately  set  to  work  on  a  fresh  sketch  for  his  new  site.  Unprompted   by  the  Section,  he  drove  to  New  London  to  learn  as  much  as  he  could  about  the                                                                                                                   57  Rowan  to  Ney  Sep.  26,  1939.   58  Lloyd  R.  Ney  with  Frederick  Walker,  “My  Fight  With  Officialdom”  (book   manuscript,  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum,  undated),  5.   59  Ney  with  Walker,  “My  Fight  With  Officialdom,”  1-­‐3.       47   community,  its  people,  history,  and  landmarks.  It  seems  that  Ney  immersed  himself   effectively  in  the  town  life;  in  later  correspondence  with  Section  officials,  Ney   mentioned  the  specific  opinions  and  comments  of  individual  townspeople.  Among   his  many  encounters,  Ney  allied  himself  with  the  town’s  “oldest  resident,”  William  B.   Thom  who  provided  the  artist  with  a  detailed  summary  of  New  London’s  history.60       According  to  Thom,  New  London  was  established  as  part  of  the  “fire  land”   grants  during  the  revolutionary  war.  When  New  London,  Connecticut  was  burned  to   the  ground,  land  in  Ohio  was  set-­‐aside  for  those  who  had  lost  everything  in  the  fires,   which  led  to  the  founding  of  New  London,  Ohio.  The  town  was  also  deeply  proud  of   the  C.E.  Ward  factory  that  made  mail-­‐order  uniforms  and  that  it  was  the  site  of  the   first  hippopotamus  ever  shown  in  the  United  States.  Ney  was  inundated  with  stories   about  eccentric  townspeople  such  as  doctors  who  wore  shawls  instead  of  white   coats  and  a  man  who  drove  by  New  London  the  same  time  every  month  shouting,   “How  far  to  Belle  Fontaine?”  as  some  type  of  joke.61     Ney  was  deeply  affected  and  inspired  by  the  town  and  people  of  New   London,  Ohio  as  a  whole  and  decided  that  he  could  not  dismiss  the  local  flavor   completely  in  favor  of  a  Nonobjective  design.  At  the  same  time,  Ney  was  unwilling  to   forsake  his  abstract  style  in  favor  of  a  simple,  representational  scene,  typical  of   other  Section  commissions.  As  a  result,  Ney  presented  a  plan  to  town  members,  “of   doing  a  composite  painting  depicting  many  ideas  or  scenes  in  one  setting  similar  to   the  photo  montages  shown  in  every  moving  picture  house  at  the  beginning  of  a                                                                                                                   60  Marling,  Wall-­to-­Wall  America:  Post  Office  Murals  in  the  Great  Depression,  300-­‐321.   61  Ney,  “My  Fight  with  Officialdom,”  3.       48   newsreel.”62  While  the  plan  called  for  a  composition  that  was  certainly  much  more   narrative  than  his  other  works,  Ney  was  excited  to  work  within  an  abstracted  style   while  producing  something  the  people  of  New  London  could  understand  and   appreciate.  Ney  noted  that  when  he  explained  his  style  and  plan  to  the  citizens,   “Everyone  there  at  that  time  was  pleased  in  the  first  place  because  I  had  come  to   them  with  my  ideas.  They  said  go  ahead  as  it  sounded  alright  [sic]  to  them.  It  was  a   happy  experience.”63     The  people  of  New  London  were  not  only  excited  about  Ney’s  openness  and   the  opportunity  for  their  input,  but  also  must  have  quickly  realized  that  Ney’s  design   was  unique  and  distinct  from  most  Section  commissions.  According  to  their  local   newspaper,  citizens  were  proud  that,  much  like  the  first  unveiling  of  a   hippopotamus,  New  London  would  be  home  to  the  “first  abstract  mural”  in  the   United  States.64  Rather  than  feeling  alienated,  as  Bruce  had  always  feared  small   communities  would  be  by  abstract  art,  New  London  was,  as  a  whole,  thrilled  to   receive  something  new,  unique,  and  modern.     Ney’s  early  sketches  show  how  he  planned  the  mural  around  three  essential   geometric  shapes:  a  square,  triangle,  and  circle.  Ney  wrote  that  the  shapes  would   provide  a  divided  grouping  of  New  London’s  past  and  present,  both  of  which  were   connected  formally  to  a  triangle  that  represented  the  “pioneer  spirit”  (figure  31).65                                                                                                                     62  Ibid.   63  Ibid.   64  The  New  London  Record,  “$1,000.00  Mural  is  Placed  in  the  Postoffice  Lobby,”   December  2,  1940.   John  L.  O’Hara  to  Rowan,  December  2,  1940.   65  It  is  also  possible  that  the  triangle  was  another  allusion  to  Kandinsky’s  described   pyramid  in  Concerning  the  Spiritual  in  Art.       49   Figure  31:  Early  plan  for  New  London  Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,  1902-­‐ 1987,  Archives  of  American  Art,  Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235].     Ney  then  adjusted  his  plan  to  incorporate  recognizable  aspects  of  New  London,  all   seen  from  the  town’s  Main  Street.  He  began  loosely,  working  from  his  original  three   shapes  to  break  up  the  picture  plane.  By  this  stage  in  the  planning  process,  however,   the  circle  and  square  gradually  disappeared  as  the  central  triangle  became  more   prominent  and  the  spirit  of  the  pioneers  was  relegated  to  one  side  of  the   composition  (figures  32  and  33).       50       Figure   32:   Early   plan   for   New   London   Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,   1902-­‐1987,   Archives   of   American   Art,   Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235].     Figure   33:   Early   plan   for   New   London   Facets.  The  Lloyd  Raymond  Ney  Papers,   1902-­‐1987,   Archives   of   American   Art,   Smithsonian  Institution.  [4234-­‐4235].     While  Ney’s  interactions  with  the  citizens  of  New  London  went  smoothly,  his   later  correspondence  with  the  Section  proved  more  difficult.  Following  completion   of  his  initial  watercolor  plan  for  the  mural,  Ney  sent  the  work  along  with  a   “simplified  visualization  of  outstanding  subject  matter”  (figure  34)  to  Bruce  and  Ed   Rowan,  another  Section  official  who  handled  the  bulk  of  the  Section’s   correspondence  with  artists.  The  difference  between  Ney’s  simplified  visualization   and  his  color  plan  (figure  34)  for  the  post  office  mural  is  extreme;  had  the  two   sketches  not  arrived  in  the  mail  together  it  is  entirely  possible  that  Rowan  and   Bruce  could  have  assumed  they  were  intended  for  two  different  sites.     A  close  examination  of  Ney’s  color  study  for  New  London,  Ohio  reveals  few   similarities  with  his  submitted  panels  for  the  Saint  Louis  commission.  Both  plans   utilize  compressed  space  for  the  sake  of  the  painted  subject  matter  and  narrative.   Whereas  the  action  in  Ney’s  submission  for  Saint  Louis  was  spread  across  nine   panels,  each  of  which  had  its  own  unified  subject  matter,  the  New  London  color       51   study  has  just  as  much  activity  on  one.  A  pioneer’s  covered  wagon  appears  in  the   upper  left  corner  on  top  of  an  ambiguous  mass  of  figures.  The  central  triangle   remains  from  Ney’s  earlier  sketches,  but  it  is  full  of  strange  geometric  shapes,  what   appears  to  be  an  eye,  and  an  envelope.  Off  to  the  right,  Ney’s  color  study  becomes   even  more  difficult  to  decipher,  with  a  clock  tower  as  the  only  recognizable  object  in   the  midst  of  a  jumble  of  abstracted  forms  and  shapes.  Ney’s  plan  for  New  London   was  visually  more  unruly  than  his  original  regimented  sketches  for  Saint  Louis,  but   also  was  a  much  better  representation  of  Ney’s  personal  painting  style.   Following  his  submission  of  the  color  study  and  then  watercolor  plans  for   New  London’s  post  office,  Ney  suddenly  left  New  Hope  to  winter  in  Key  West  with   his  wife  and  four-­‐year-­‐old  daughter,  Gretchen.66  Ney  remembered  that,  “Back  in  my   subconscious  mind  I  knew  Bruce  spent  some  time  every  winter  in  Key  West,”  which   prompts  one  to  wonder  whether  Bruce  and  Ney’s  wintering  simultaneously  in  Key   West  was  pure  coincidence.  Or  did  it  result  from  Ney’s  worries  that  the  Section   would  take  issue  with  his  design  and  that  he  might  need  to  plead  his  case  to  Bruce   personally  and  directly?67  Surely  even  Ney,  who  believed  that  the  citizens  of  New   London  would  welcome  his  final  design  submitted  to  the  Section,  realized  how   unconventional  his  sketch  was  for  the  Section  and  how  little  it  looked  like  his   simplified  plan.                                                                                                                     66  Unfortunately  the  original  watercolors  have  been  lost,  but  we  can  assume  that   they  are  similar  to  Ney’s  color  study,  which  is  included  here  as  figure  29.   67  Ney,  “My  Fight  with  Officialdom,”  5-­‐6.       52     Figure   34:   Lloyd   R.   Ney,   Simplified   visualization   of   outstanding   subject   matter.   Record  Group  121-­‐GA,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD.       Figure  35:  Lloyd  R.  Ney,  Color  study  for  the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office.  Record   Group  121-­‐GA,  National  Archives,  College  Park,  MD.     As  it  turned  out,  whether  subconscious  or  planned,  Ney  needed  to  be  in  Key   West  to  plead  his  case  with  Bruce.  By  December  27,  1939,  less  than  three  months   after  Ney  was  selected  for  the  commission,  Rowan  returned  Ney’s  watercolor  and   rejected  the  design.  He  stated  that:         53   It  is  our  feeling  that  you  have  not  presented  the  material  in  a  way  that   will  be  acceptable  to  the  general  public.  First  of  all,  the  palette  is  so   extremely  vivid  that  it  is  our  feeling  the  mural  would  not  harmonize   with  the  architecture,  and  secondly  that  the  combination  of  the   objective  and  the  abstract  would  find  very  few  supporters  in  the   town…Your  design  seemed  more  fitting  as  a  theatrical  back  drop  than   as  a  single  mural  decoration  in  a  Federal  building.  It  is  our  feeling  that   it  would  have  absolutely  no  meaning  for  the  people.68     Typically,  when  Rowan  or  another  Section  official  rejected  a  design,  the   commissioned  artist  would  comply  with  the  critique  and  adjust  his  or  her  design   until  it  was  approved.  In  some  cases  this  could  take  a  great  deal  of  time;  in  one   extreme  case  artist  Stuyvesant  Van  Veen  was  forced  to  alter  his  submitted  design   over  the  course  of  a  full  year.69  Therefore,  when  Ney  refused  to  change  his  design,   Rowan  was  surprised  and  at  a  complete  loss  as  to  what  he  should  do.   Unbeknownst  to  Ney,  Bruce  had  been  largely  ignorant  of  the  whole  affair,  up   until  that  January.  Rowan,  most  likely  nervous  about  Ney’s  appointment  by  the  St.   Louis  judges  and  Ney’s  previous  work,  had  hoped  that  Ney  would  produce   something  “appropriate”  for  New  London  and,  barring  complications,  would  not   need  to  worry  Bruce.  However,  after  seeing  Ney’s  watercolor,  Rowan  decided  it  was   time  to  inform  Bruce  of  their  troublesome  artist,  writing,  “When  you  are  in  Key  West   you  will  no  doubt  be  bombarded  by  one  Lloyd  R.  Ney  of  515  Fleming  Street,  Key   West.  For  your  information  in  order  to  help  you  be  prepared,  I  attach  photographs   of  the  work  which  he  submitted  for  the  decoration  of  the  New  London,  Ohio,  Post   Office  and  which  the  Section  was  unable  to  accept.”70  Rowan  also  mentioned  that  he                                                                                                                   68  Rowan  to  Ney,  December  27,  1939.   69  Louise  Feder,  “New  Deal  Murals  in  the  Pittsburgh  Post  Office  and  Courthouse”   (Honors  thesis,  Dickinson  College,  2010),  51.   70  Rowan  to  Bruce,  Jan  26,  1940.       54   had  sent  the  same  photographs  to  the  St.  Louis  jury  members  to  get  their  comments   on  Ney’s  recent  work.     Bruce  needed  Rowan’s  warning;  aided  by  staff  at  the  Key  West  post  office,  a   furious  Ney  discovered  Bruce’s  address  and  went  to  plead  his  case  at  Bruce’s  home   in  Key  West  twice  that  January.  Ney  later  described  his  visits  as  arguments  between   “an  English  limey  [Bruce]  and  a  Pennsylvania  Dutchman  [Ney]…stalled  and  very   angry  with  each  other…I  was  the  little  man  against  officialdom  but  my  strength  was   backed  by  the  people  of  New  London,  Ohio.”71  According  to  Ney,  his  disagreement   with  Bruce  always  came  back  to  the  abstract  portions  of  the  mural  and  its  not  being   “academic”  enough,  even  though  Ney  retained  figures  in  his  composition.72   Apparently,  in  the  heat  of  one  of  their  aesthetic  debates,  Bruce  exclaimed  to  Ney,  “[I]   wouldn’t  allow  a  Picasso  in  any  one  of  [my]  post  offices,”  and,  when  Ney  reminded   him  that  the  people  of  New  London  wanted  his  design,  Bruce  supposedly  replied,  “to   hell  with  the  people  of  New  London,  Ohio!”73   While  his  discussions  with  Bruce  insured  attention  from  the  Section,  Ney  was   not  any  closer  to  getting  his  design  approved.  Looking  for  help,  Ney  turned  to  his   acquaintances  in  New  London,  who  started  a  petition  through  the  local  Rotary  Club                                                                                                                   71  Ney,  “My  Fight  with  Officialdom,”  9.   72  The  use  of  the  word  “academic”  is  certainly  surprising  given  Bruce’s  proclaimed   disinterest  in  true  academic  painting  as  he  thought  it  another  kind  of  extreme  not   appropriate  in  American  post  office.  As  discussed  in  chapter  one,  Bruce  was  as   opposed  to  academic  painting  as  he  was  to  abstract  works.  It  is  possible  that  Ney   remembers  the  particular  word  incorrectly  and  he  is  not  always  a  reliable  source,   which  is  evident  in  a  number  of  contradictions  in  his  papers  both  in  the  Archives  of   American  Art  and  the  archives  at  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum.  The  most   likely  truth  is  that  either  Bruce  or  Ney  used  “academic”  here  as  a  synonym  for   “representational”  or  “realistic.”   73  Ney,  “My  Fight  with  Officialdom,”  9-­‐10.       55   to  bring  Ney’s  mural  to  their  town,  which  they  sent  to  the  Rowan  at  the  Section.74   Most  likely  with  New  London  on  his  mind,  Ney  took  to  painting  Key  West  in  the   same  abstracted  style  that  he  had  planned  for  his  Section  mural  during  this  period   (figures  36  and  37).  Whether  he  depicted  Key  West  in  this  style  simply  to  calm  his   nerves  or  to  serve  as  visual  evidence  for  his  meetings  with  Bruce  is  unclear,  but  the   similarity  in  terms  of  color  and  line  to  the  New  London  mural  and  Ney’s  Key  West   work  is  striking.       Figure  36:  Lloyd  Ney,  Key  West  #1  C,  1939.  Watercolor.  Private  Collection.       Figure  37:  Lloyd  Ney,  Key  West  #3  C,  1939.  Watercolor.  Private  Collection.                                                                                                                     74  Rotary  Club  to  Rowan,  1940.       56   Ney  also  wrote  Rowan  and  Bruce  numerous  times  throughout  that  January   and  February,  continuously  stating  that  the  community  of  New  London  needed  and   wanted  his  mural  as  did  the  nation,  emphatically  ending  nearly  every  sentence  with   an  exclamation  point.  Ney  summarized  his  argument  in  a  letter  to  Bruce  on   February  12,  1940:   I  enjoyed  the  Privilege  of  meeting  you,  and  talking  with  you;  however   I   feel   that   you   are   turning   down   my   Work,   Presented   to   You   and   wanted  by  the  People  of  Ohio  because  it   is  an  abstract  approach  to   Painting,  my  St.  Louis  sketches  were  abstract  approaches  to  Painting!   The  St.  Louis   jury  designated  my  being  a  capable  artist,  when  they   gave  me  the  right,  to  Paint  the  mural  For  New  London.   When  the  People  of  New  London  request  you  to  allow  me  to  continue   developing   that  Particular  mural,   the  other  half  of   the   Idea  will  be   accomplished!  I  am  capable!  And  the  People  want  it!  Mr.  Bruce  You   represent,  a  medium!  Of  serving  the  People.   Mr.  Bruce  there  are  two  schools  of  thought  concerning  Painting  –  You   are  using  only  one  of  the  schools  of  thought!  You  are  only  using  half  of   an  idea!  in  what  you  are  presenting  to  the  People.   Mr.  Bruce  You  tell  me…that  you  will  have  to  stick  to  your  ideas!   …Mr.  Bruce  if  your  visualization  of  your  Section  of  Fine  Arts,  serving   the  People  as  a  whole  –  would  combine  all  the  creative  Forces  in  this   country,   combine   Modern   Art   and   Conservative   Art,   you   would   combine  a  full  force,  You  would  combine  a  Whole  idea,  not  half  an  idea   –  to  give  to  the  People.   Mr.  Bruce  it  isn’t  Fair  to  Mr.  Roosevelt!  It   isn’t  Fair  to  the  artists!  It   isn’t  Fair  to  your  self!  And  it  isn’t  Fair  to  the  People!   Why  don’t  you  show  good  sportsmanship!  My   last  pull  –   is   to   that   inner  man  in  all  mankind!75     Luckily  for  Ney,  his  emotional  letter  was  delivered  to  the  Section  close  to  the  same   time  that  the  institution  received  letters  of  support  for  Ney  from  the  St.  Louis  jury   members,  which  proved  to  be  exceptional  timing.  76  Adding  to  Ney’s  campaign  on   behalf  of  the  mural  all  three  jurors  stood  by  their  initial  decision  to  award  Ney  the                                                                                                                   75  Ney  to  Bruce,  February  12,  1940.   76  In  Ney  to  Rowan,  April  1,  1940,  he  mentions  that  he  enjoyed  the  letters  forwarded   by  the  Section  written  by  Cook,  Lockwood,  and  Gropper  at  an  earlier  date.       57   New  London  commission.77  By  this  point  the  whole  affair  had,  in  Bruce’s  opinion,   involved  too  many  people  and  taken  up  too  much  of  the  Section’s  time  away  from  its   other  commissions.  Therefore,  on  February  22,  1940  Bruce  gave  Ney  his  approval   and  informed  the  artist  that  he  would  convince  the  rest  of  the  Section  officials  to   accept  the  design.       Ney  was  overcome  and  told  Bruce  that  he  wanted,  “to  state  with  tears  in  my   eyes  to  you,  you  will  never  regret  giving  me  this  opportunity.”78  Indeed,  Bruce  may   have  been  correct  when  he  wrote  to  Forbes  Watson,  art  critic  and  Section  official,   that  he  feared  Ney  might  have  “cracked  up”  if  his  design  had  been  finally  turned   down.  Bruce  ended  his  letter  to  Watson  describing  his  final  decision  casually,   exclaiming,  “what  the  hell!”79  The  statement,  while  certainly  offhand,  may  have   indicated  a  shift  in  the  Section’s  attitude  toward  abstraction.  It  is  possible  that  by   February  of  1940,  following  his  extended  correspondence  with  Ney,  Bruce  was  able   to  relax  his  stylistic  standards  for  the  Section.  Perhaps,  after  witnessing  the   community  support  of  Ney’s  design,  Bruce  recognized  that  abstract  art  was  not  a   passing  trend.       After  all,  Ney’s  submission  for  the  New  London  post  office  was  not  pure   abstraction;  it  was  not  part  of  Ney’s  own  Nonobjective  category  of  painting.  The   charcoal  study  that  Bruce  approved  (figure  38)  was  abstracted,  but  in  the  midst  of   Ney’s  chaotic  composition,  a  viewer  could  still  identify  features  of  New  London’s                                                                                                                   77  Bruce  informed  Ney  by  letter  on  February  22,  1940  that  all  three  jurors  continued   to  support  his  appointment  and,  in  varying  degrees,  Ney’s  plan  for  the  New  London   post  office.  Bruce  also  mentions  that  Ney  has  a  “very  loyal  rooter”  in  Ward   Lockwood  and  that  Ney  was  “not  lacking  in  enthusiastic  friends.”   78  Ney  to  Bruce,  Feb  23,  1940   79  Bruce  to  Watson,  February  24,  1940.       58   landscape  and  history,  even  if  they  were  strangely  composed  and,  in  the  final  mural,   vibrantly  colored.  The  shawl  wearing  doctors,  famous  within  New  London,  were   clearly  depicted  on  the  left  of  the  central  stabilizing  triangle,  the  town’s  clock  tower   was  to  the  triangle’s  right,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  jumble  of  geometric  shapes  inside   the  triangle  are  two  envelopes.  Ney  had  created  and  Bruce  had  approved  a  sort  of   middle-­‐ground  abstraction,  one  that  incorporated  purely  abstract  shapes  and  colors   alongside  images  from  the  “American  scene”  that  the  Section  and  all  New  Deal   programs  looked  for  in  their  commissions.     Figure  38:  Lloyd  Ney,  Study  for  New  London  Facets,  1940,  charcoal,  graphite,  and   tempera  on  wood  panel.  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum.       Further,  in  giving  Ney  his  commission  Bruce  demonstrated  to  the  artistic   community  and  the  country  as  a  whole,  that  the  federal  government,  through  the   Treasury-­‐funded  Section,  had  begun  to  think  about  public  art  and  abstraction  in  a   new  way.  After  years  of  relatively  safe  subjects  commissioned  through  New  Deal  art   programs,  Bruce  and  the  Section  started  to  bend  and  allow  submissions  with  new,   Modern  styles:  “why  not,  what  the  hell!”       59       Figure  39:  Lloyd  Ney,  New  London  Facets,  1941,  Oil  on  Canvas.  New  London,  Ohio   post  office.  Photo  courtesy  of  Michel  Laugier.     Following  the  installation  in  1941  of  Ney’s  mural,  eventually  titled  New   London  Facets  (figure  39),  the  Section  only  ran  for  two  more  years,  during  which  it   was  not  able  to  award  many  commissions.  With  the  United  States’  involvement  in   World  War  II  fast  approaching,  Ney’s  mural  in  Ohio  and  the  Section’s  attitude   towards  abstraction  were  simply  not  newsworthy  at  the  national  level.  Ney’s  hopes   that  New  London  Facets  would  ignite  a  new  movement  in  art,  as  well  as  Bruce’s   initial  fears  that  public  abstract  murals  would  shock  American  citizens,  were  never   realized.  What  was  controversial  for  the  Section,  its  artists,  and  communities   surrounding  commission  sites  in  1940  was  a  non-­‐event  nationally  by  the  time  of  the   mural’s  completion  and  installation  in  1941.       New  London  Facets  still  hangs  in  the  New  London,  Ohio  post  office,  while   many  other  Section  murals  were  destroyed  or  misplaced  following  the  disbanding  of   the  Section  in  1943.  While  Ney’s  abstracted  vision  of  New  London  may  have  not   received  much  national  publicity,  the  local  community  was  delighted  that  they       60   owned  the  first  and  only  so-­‐called  abstract  Section  mural.80  When  presented  with   abstraction,  the  small  town  of  New  London  surprised  the  government  with  its   acceptance  of  what  must  have  been  a  new  style  of  painting  for  this  community,   choosing  not  to  reject  what  they  did  not  immediately  understand.  This  reaction  to   Ney’s  work  was  a  revelation  for  a  government  institution  previously  fixated  on  the   traditional  and  representational.  One  wonders  if,  following  the  success  of  New   London  Facets,  the  Section  would  have  accepted  more  abstract  murals  had  the   Section  been  reinstated  following  World  War  II.     In  what  may  have  been  surprising  for  Ney,  Rowan  took  a  genuine  interest  in   the  artist  following  the  New  London  commission.  Rather  than  attempt  to  forget  the   troublesome  and  opinionated  Ney,  Rowan,  at  the  artist’s  request,  went  out  to  New   Hope  in  August  of  1940  to  visit  Ney  and  view  some  of  his  more  abstract  and   nonobjective  paintings  most  likely  similar  to  Red  Center,  Untitled,  and  Untitled   (figures  40-­‐42).  Rowan  was  apparently  so  impressed  by  what  he  saw  that  he  wrote   to  Alfred  Barr,  Director  of  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art,  and  to  Baroness  Hilla  von   Rebay,  art  buyer  and  member  of  the  board  of  directors  at  the  Solomon  R.   Guggenheim  Museum.81  Rowan’s  introduction  led  to  a  close  working  relationship   between  Ney  and  Rebay.                                                                                                                     80  “$1,000.00  Mural  is  Placed  in  the  Postoffice  Lobby,”  New  London  Record,   November  28,  1940,  1.   81  Rowan  to  Barr  and  Rebay,  August  6,  1940.       61     Figure  40:  Lloyd  Ney,  Red  Center,  1941.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  Collection.       Figure  41:  Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  circa  1940s.  Oil  on  canvas.  Photo  courtesy  of  Michel   Laugier.       Figure  42:  Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  1941.  Oil  on  canvas.  Private  Collection.       62     It  remains  unclear  whether  Ney  realized  that  the  reason  Rebay  first  wanted   to  preview,  exhibit,  and,  ultimately,  buy  his  work  for  the  Guggenheim’s  permanent   collection,  was  all  thanks  to  Rowan’s  influential  letter.  In  Ney’s  unpublished   manuscript,  “My  Fight  With  Officialdom,”  the  introduction  to  Rebay  and  the   Guggenheim  is  not  mentioned  even  in  passing  in  an  otherwise  detailed  account  of   his  relationship  with  the  Section.  Ultimately,  though  Ney  resented  the  Section’s   initial  reluctance  to  let  him  paint  what  he  wanted  in  Ohio,  it  was  only  thanks  to   Section  officials  that  his  career  genuinely  took  off  both  nationally  and   internationally.  Rowan’s  introduction  enabled  Ney  to  show  his  work  in  group   exhibitions  at  the  Guggenheim’s  Museum  of  Non-­‐objective  Art  in  1941,  1942,  and   1956  where  Ney’s  Composition  No.  9  (figure  43)  was  selected  by  Rebay  for  the  cover   of  the  catalog.82  The  introduction  also  led  to  Ney’s  induction  into  the  museum’s   permanent  collection  in  1946.       Figure  43:  Lloyd  Ney,  Composition  No.  9,  1950.  Watercolor  on  paper.  Photo  courtesy   of  Michel  Laugier.                                                                                                                   82  Museum  of  Non-­‐objective  Painting,  Museum  of  Non-­objective  Painting  Exhibition   Catalog,  1956,  1.       63     Ney  also  had  a  solo  exhibition  at  the  Delgado  Museum  in  New  Orleans,   Louisiana  in  1948  and  the  Salon  des  Réalités  Nouvelles  in  Paris  in  1947,  as  well  as  a   number  of  group  exhibitions  in  France,  Germany,  Switzerland,  and  Italy  in  the  years   from  1947-­‐1955.83  Surely,  Ney’s  work  would  not  have  been  exhibited  as  readily,  let   alone  at  locations  as  experimental  as  the  Salon  des  Réalités  Nouvelles,  had  he  not   shown  at  the  Guggenheim  previously.  Even  as  his  career  expanded  and  Ney’s  art   grew  more  nonobjective,  he  still  considered  New  London  Facets  to  be  one  of  his   greatest  works.  When  Ney  began  to  conceive  of  and  organize  a  self-­‐run  Ney  Museum   in  New  Hope  in  the  years  before  his  death  in  1965  he  painted  a  watercolor  of  what   he  wanted  to  include  in  the  first  exhibition  (figure  44).  Featured  prominently  in  the   very  middle  of  the  largest  wall  and  above  all  other  paintings,  Ney  reproduced  his   cartoon  for  New  London  Facets,  which  he  had  carefully  preserved  in  his  home  in   New  Hope.  Even  if  Ney  did  not  realize  how  much  the  New  London  commission  had   helped  him  both  in  reputation  and  professional  connections,  he  did  recognize  its   importance  within  his  oeuvre.                                                                                                                   83  Again,  unfortunately,  the  names  and  locations  of  many  of  these  exhibitions  are  not   listed  in  Ney’s  papers  held  by  his  grandchildren,  Odile  and  Michel  Laugier.  Only  the   countries  and  years  have  survived.       64     Figure  44:  Lloyd  R.  “Bill”  Ney,  watercolor  of  planned  Ney  Museum.  Watercolor  and   charcoal  on  canvas.  Private  Collection.  Photo  by  Edwin  Hild.     In  the  decades  following  New  London  Facets  Ney  continued  to  paint  and   occasionally  sculpt  (figure  45)  in  his  home  and  studio  in  New  Hope,  Pennsylvania.84   As  his  health  deteriorated  Ney  began  to  produce  work  rapidly  in  the  hopes  that  his   wife  and  daughter  would  have  enough  work  to  fill  his  planned  museum.  Ney’s  work   in  the  1950s  ranged  greatly  in  terms  of  style  and  subject;  he  produced  a  vast   number  colorful  of  self-­‐portraits  (figure  46)  and  portraits  of  friends,  many   geometrically  based  and  linear  Nonobjective  paintings  (figure  47),  and  a  multitude                                                                                                                   84  Little  is  known  about  Ney’s  sculptures.  Michel  Laugier,  the  artist’s  grandson,  owns   the  undated  and  untitled  metal  sculpture  seen  in  figure  35  but  knows  nothing  about   its  conception  or  Ney’s  process.  However,  the  work  is  included  in  Ney’s  drawings  for   the  Ney  Museum,  so  we  may  assume  that  Ney  considered  it  one  of  his  important   works,  worthy  of  exhibition  alongside  a  slew  of  his  better-­‐known  nonobjective   paintings.       65   of  watercolors  that  illustrated  his  planned  museum.  Ney’s  work  never  attempted  to   replicate  or  reference  the  New  London  mural;  instead  he  produced  hundred  of   purely  abstract  paintings,  at  times  incorporating  material  other  than  paint,  such  as   sand  or  working  on  textured  surfaces  to  physically  enliven  the  picture  plane  (figure   48).                             Figure  45:  Lloyd  Ney,  untitled  and  undated                    Figure  46:  Lloyd  Ney,  Self-­   sculpture.  Painted  metal.  Collection  of                                      Portrait,  1962.  Watercolor  on   Michel  Laugier.                              Paper.  Collection  of  Odile  Laugier.       Figure  47:  Lloyd  Ney,  Untitled,  1963.  Oil  on  Canvas.  Private  Collection.           66     Figure  48:  Lloyd  Ney,  Apple  Orchard,  1950s.  India  ink  on  arch  paper.  Collection  of   Steven  Hochberg.  Photo  courtesy  of  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum  archives.     Though  the  Ney  Museum  was  never  realized  in  his  lifetime,  it  did  open  briefly   for  a  few  years  in  the  later  1960s,  and  was  run  by  his  widow  Jean  and  daughter   Gretchen  before  closing  and  being  converted  into  apartments.  A  number  of  his   works  are  part  of  the  permanent  collection  at  the  James  A.  Michener  Art  Museum,  a   museum  in  Bucks  County  that  specializes  in  art  by  the  Pennsylvania  Impressionists   and  New  Hope  Modernists.  The  cartoon  for  New  London  Facets  is  displayed   prominently  in  the  museum’s  lobby,  acknowledging  the  commission’s  importance  in   the  life  of  one  of  Bucks  County’s  greatest  Modernists,  Lloyd  Ney.  It  also  echoes  the   actual  mural’s  presence  in  New  London,  Ohio,  still  on  the  post  office  wall,  a   permanent  reminder  of  the  community’s  surprising  passion  for  abstraction  within   the 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