{"id":639,"date":"2022-02-14T19:44:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T19:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/?page_id=639"},"modified":"2022-02-14T19:44:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T19:44:23","slug":"holiday-magazine-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/holiday-magazine-excerpt\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Magazine excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tale of Twin Cities
\nJack Ludwig
\nHoliday<\/em> \u00a0 \u00a0June 1962<\/p>\n

[The writer, Jack Ludwig, wrote a feature article about Minneapolis and St. Paul in the June 1962 issue of Holiday.\u00a0 In discussing the arts, he was directed to Cameron Booth.\u00a0 Here is the relevant excerpt beginning with lead-in discussions of the Walker Art Center and then the Guthrie Theater–]<\/p>\n

I asked about the Guthrie Repertory Theater, and what it was that made him choose to
\nlocate in the Twins rather than in Milwaukee, or Ann Arbor, both eager to have the theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimple.\u201d Guthrie said. \u201cThe people here wanted us badly enough and came up with a concrete plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Walker Art Center offered to provide land and put
\nup an initial $400,000 of the needed $2,000,000. The University
\nwas excited, and so were the leading cultural people of
\nthe two towns. Guthrie, with his assistant. Oliver Rea was
\nalready casting for the plays to open his theater in 1963.
\nOlivier and Gielgud and Christopher Plummer were excited
\nabout the new opportunity.<\/p>\n

I asked the obvious question\u2014why did Guthrie want to
\nget out of New York?<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York is oversupplied, Minneapolis undersupplied
\nit\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d he began. \u201cI’m under no illusions.
\nAt sixty I\u2019m not likely to join Mrs. Partington\u2019s effort to
\nsweep out the tide\u2014I no longer have strong revolutionary
\nconvictions, you see. I can\u2019t sweep out that New York theatrical
\ntide of expertise. False specialization. The designer
\nhas his corner of the play, the lights man his; the director
\nbullies the playwright and the playwright assumes that\u2019s the
\nway it must be. All because New York\u2019s so overcentralized it
\nleads to bureaucratic divisions of labor. And too much competition.<\/p>\n

Of course,\u201d he said with special emphasis, “if we’re
\nsuccessful we may start a counterrevolution. We’re hoping
\nto supply a Midwest demand for theater of the highest order.
\nDrama may return to life. New York’s bad for drama. It’s
\nnot a city; it’s a Cosmopolis\u2014it\u2019s cement. Plays don’t grow
\nout of cement. Drama in New York is the product now of
\nflamboyant middlemen. We may reach out here in the Midwest.
\nLess sophisticated, don’t you know\u2014less cynical. Perhaps
\nless hopeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had to rush off; I walked past the Walker jade collection
\nand found Martin Friedman again. His enthusiasm
\nfor Guthrie was matched by his feeling for the art center itself.
\n\u201cWe can bring air from outside,” he told me. \u201cMidwest
\npainters and, even more, sculptors, tend to be parochial and
\nisolated. We can be the catalyst here. We can’t wait till an
\nartist is established and then give him a big retrospective. We
\ncan exhibit recent work from all over the world. And we can
\nbe daring with our own Twin Cities people’s stuff.”<\/p>\n

He suggested I visit Cameron Booth, whose recent paintings
\nI had seen in various places around the Twin Cities,
\nwonderful work, exploding color over canvas with vitality
\nand power. Cam Booth was near seventy.<\/p>\n

He greeted me at the door of his studio, a handsome man
\nwith alert eyes, heavy brows, a fine mustache, the stance and
\nbearing of a fighter. While his twin grandchildren peeked in
\nat the door, he busied himself throughout the afternoon pulling
\nout canvases\u2014dozens of them, all done during 1959, 1960
\nand early 1961.<\/p>\n

\u201c1 painted New York style,” he laughed, “long before Pollock,
\nBaziotes, Stamos, Motherwell, de Kooning. It wasn’t
\ncalled abstract expressionism then, only painting. I could
\nnever live in New York. Gives me the flu. I can paint anywhere
\nexcept where I get the flu painting\u2014besides, I like
\nMinneapolis. Mississippi’s just outside my door. Good university.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a gallery in New York. They don’t do much.
\nWhen I’m out of town I think they lend all my stuff to interior
\ndecorators. But I work, galleries or no. I like the American
\nIndian attitude toward art. See this? Art has to be imperfect.
\nIndians drop a stitch, miss a weave. Makes it human. Those
\nboys hanging in the Guggenheim are too neat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a dazzling display, and Cam Booth was quite
\nobviously doing the best painting of his long distinguished
\ncareer. I kept seeing his canvases as I drove slowly back
\nto the university along the River Road. The\u00a0St. Paul
\nside of the river is beautiful all year round\u2014woolly green
\nin summer, in fall and early winter\u00a0a C\u00e9zanne surface
\nof lines and rocks; then, on the banks below the\u00a0Temple of
\nAaron, a Klee abstraction of rock shelves\u00a0and tree strokes.<\/p>\n

My favorite spot in all the Twin Cities is the Washington
\nBridge, above the Mississippi. \u00a0I parked the car and walked
\nto the bridge, still thinking about Cameron Booth and his painting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Tale of Twin Cities Jack Ludwig Holiday \u00a0 \u00a0June 1962 [The writer, Jack Ludwig, wrote a feature article about Minneapolis and St. Paul in the June 1962 issue of Holiday.\u00a0 In discussing the arts, he was directed to Cameron … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":481,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/wmace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}