There is something in the water in Idaho. I suspect it might be Philadelphia.
Exhibit A: Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound was a poet who happened to be (unfortunately) a fascist. He also happened to be partly responsible for much of what literature became in the 20th Century, for better or worse. He published an 800 page epic poem called the Cantos, which, according to Delmore Schwartz, who I’ve never heard of, “are one of the touchstones of modern poetry.” New Directions Books went to the trouble of printing that pronouncement onto the back cover of the paperback copy of the Cantos that I have read from, so I must assume that his words have merit.
Pound, during his time in Europe during the nineteen-teens and up until the closing moments of World War II, where Pound had hitched his pony to the losing side, he also became known as a literary facilitator of sorts. He is remembered for his key role in publishing James Joyce’s first collection of short stories Dubliners, as well as the publishing of his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He raised money so that T. S. Elliot could focus on writing poetry rather than having to work. A part of what was produced with Pound’s assistance was The Waste Land, which Pound edited. Or, as Louis Menand sums up Pound’s literary influence in his article “The Pound Error” in the New Yorker:
No doubt Eliot, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford, and Marianne Moore would have produced interesting and innovative work whether they had known Pound or not, but Pound’s attention and interventions helped their writing and sped their careers. He edited them, reviewed them, got them published in magazines he was associated with, and included them in anthologies he compiled; he introduced them to editors, to publishers, and to patrons; he gave them the benefit of his time, his learning, his money, and his old clothes.
After Pound was arrested for treason by the US military for his pro-fascist radio broadcasts in Italy during the war, he was found mentally unfit to be executed and was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, an insane asylum outside Washington DC. During his time in the ‘bughouse,’ Pound was a fixture of the national literary scene, much as he had been in Europe between the wars. Poets of the new generation such Elizabeth Bishop and Charles Olson came to present themselves to the poet in the bughouse.
But before all of this happened, Pound was a baby that was born in Idaho. As Menand lovelily describes it:
Pound was born in 1885, in Hailey, Idaho, a fact useful to English satirists, whose ridicule Pound abetted by occasionally speaking and writing in a kind of homemade cowboy/Yankee drawl. But Pound was not really a Westerner; he spent less than two years in Hailey, where his father, Homer, briefly registered mining claims. The family moved to New York and then to Wyncote, near Philadelphia, which is where Pound was reared and educated. Homer worked in the Philadelphia Mint; Pound’s mother, Isabel, was a New Yorker. Pound spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania, then transferred to Hamilton College, graduating in 1905.
The whirlwind that was the life and art of Ezra Pound began with a (short) life in Idaho, and a rearing in Philadelphia. A path that ends up being unusually common.
Exhibit B: David Lynch
David Lynch is a painter, photographer, and filmmaker. He is the mind-brain behind some very exciting, and often disturbing films, like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and the lovely television program and series of films based around the town and inhabitants Twin Peaks.
He is a second artist with Idaho roots who was forged in the furnace that is Philadelphia.
Lynch spent his early childhood years in Sandpoint, Idaho. He talks about his Idaho childhood in his documentary David Lynch: The Art Life.
I was born in Missoula, Montana. Then my parents got a house in Sandpoint, Idaho. And I lived there for two years. So I remember Sandpoint, Idaho, little Dicky Smith, my friend, he and I sat in a mud puddle, under this tree. My mother dug a hole, or my dad did, that we could sit in in the hot weather. And they’d fill it with, you know, water from the hose. And we’d sit in this mud puddle. It was so beautiful. And you’d get to squeeze mud and sit with your friend. Under the shade of this tree. Forget it. And then they moved to Spokane, Washington.
After time in Spokane, then a spell in Durham, North Carolina, the family did a second Idaho stint, this time in Boise, before transplanting to Alexandria, Virginia. Again from The Art Life:
You see Boise, Idaho seemed like sunshine, green grass, mowed lawns, such a cheerful place. Such a great place. Virginia seemed like always night. And I developed spasms of the intestines. It was total turmoil.
Of the three artists who are living a second life in this trial as Evidence, Lynch is almost certainly the one with the most awareness of the effects on his art and life of the tincture of Philadelphia in his Idaho solvent. At least, he is aware of the tremendous pleasantness of Idaho, and equally aware of the aptness of Philadelphia for producing art. Although, I admit, I cannot be certain that he has made a connection between the two. From The Art Life:
Philadelphia was one of the last places in the world I ever wanted to go. There was something about Philadelphia that I didn’t like. So when I got…I forget the way the bus goes…you’re not in Philadelphia, then you go across a bridge. And that bridge takes you. So on the bridge I was saying ‘I’m not in Philadelphia. I’m not in Philadelphia. I’m not in Philadelphia.’ Then I got halfway over the bridge and I said ‘I’m in Philadelphia. I’m in Philadelphia.’ And I just couldn’t believe it. Philadelphia was kinda a poor man’s New York City. So it was a weird town. It was kind of a mean town.
After describing various unnerving encounters with peculiarly aggressive Philadelphians, he goes on:
There was thick, thick fear in the air. There was a feeling of sickness, corruption, of racial hatred. But Philadelphia was just perfect to spark things. And the students [at the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts] were great. And they were workers.
And one more, just in case:
Philadelphia was what started, started, uh, it was so good for me. Really, really good. Even though I lived in fear, I kind of, um, uh, it was thrilling to live the art life in Philadelphia at that time.
Exhibit C: James Castle
James Castle lived each and every day of his life in Idaho. His art, therefore, is a deeply Idaho-based, mostly representing the landscapes of Garden Valley, Star, and Boise, where he lived throughout his life. On the other hand, a good chunk of what he produced was based on the various types of mass-advertising that began to flood American households during the 20th Century. Making him an intensely local, but also broadly experienced artist. Many of his pieces are further bathed in the Idaho milieu, being that they are composed mainly with a mixture of the artist’s saliva and soot from the family’s wood-burning stove, which, I assume, was burning Idaho wood.
But even in the tremendously Idaho life of James Castle, Philadelphia plays a central role in the story of his art.
In 1951, Castle’s nephew Bob Beach went to Portland, Oregon to attend the Museum Art School. Beach, who had always been interested in his uncle James’ art, now had an opportunity to show his prolific work to ‘those in the know.’ Ann Percy discusses what followed in an essay in James Castle: A Retrospective, which was published in 2008 by the Philadelphia Art Museum. Beach sent a selection of Castle’s work to a childhood friend from Yakima, Washington, Ben Kamihira, who was attending the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Kamihira showed the work to one of his teachers, the well-known Philadelphia artist Franklin Watkins. As Percy states it, “Watkins pronounced the drawings not only ‘art,’ but quite good, and they were returned to the family.”
After Watkin’s positive reaction to Castle’s work, a show was organized at the Museum Art School in Portland in March 1951. A second show was held in Portland in 1960, again with Beach organizing. Beach also showed Castle’s work to a Portland art dealer named Jack McLarty, who “organized an exhibition of about fifty of Castle’s drawings (thirty-five of which sold), in October 1962. The show was titled A Voice of Silence and travelled to the Bush House Museum in Salem, Oregon.” In January 1963, the Boise Gallery of Art showed A Voice of Silence, and Castle attended the show, apparently enjoying himself and the attention being paid to his life’s work.
And in 2008, 31 years after Castle’s death, Philadelphia again stepped into a prominent role in an Idaho boy’s art life. The Philadelphia Art Museum hosted Castle’s first major retrospective.
I Rest My Case
Ezra Pound, David Lynch, James Castle. From Idaho to Philadelphia. You may call all this a coincidence, but I won’t.
Leave a Reply