I would probably still be a diamond appraiser or jewelry designer if the depression had not kicked me out onto the desert. One morning I woke up with no job and payments due on just about everything I had, and now as I checked over my few assets I realized that rocks and semi-precious gems might be the answer. I had a back porch and backyard full of things from both California deserts from Death Valley to the Mexican border and began selling them off to the miniature golf courses that were mushrooming on vacant lots all over the Los Angeles area.

Then one day I happened to remember that the man at Fish Springs in the Coachella Valley owed me for some gems and minerals and I sure could use

"Why don't you start a curio store over there?" he ventured. "I wouldn't ask a cash rental -- just a small percent of what you take in -- and we could be a help to one another." I thought it over for a few minutes and drank a second grapefruit juice (on the house), then we shook hands and agreed on a lease. The understanding was that Russ would furnish the land and water and I would not sell dates, cold drinks, or date products; and he would not sell curios, cactus or rocks. This amazing verbal agreement stood up for nearly 10 years 'till I finally had made enough to buy the property

This is how I became part of the desert, and how it became part of me to the point where the long submerged desire to paint came out. I have never been the same since.

First, I started with pastels which had been an earlier hobby. An art editor, Leo Cotton, dropped in and we got acquainted because he too was interested in pastels. In fact, we looked-up old formulas and made pastels which had the colors we could not seem to find in commercial sets. Then Leo took up oil painting and I followed suit. About then Charlie Safford, who had some art education, and Fred Chisnall, who was a graduate of Otis Art Institute, started coming by and we would take painting trips together. Then, as if rolling a snow ball, more artists started dropping in and using my growing rock shop as a gathering point -- "Smoke Tree George" Frederick, Maynard Dixon, Jimmy Swinnerton, Clyde Forsythe. Some weekends were a regular artists'

convention, and gradually some of the techniques of those fine painters began to rub off on me.

A little at a time I found the ability to put down on canvas at least a fraction of the beauty of this land. The vast distances, the blue-gray hazes, the blush of a sunrise all cried to be painted and more and more I neglected the gem-cutting and Indian goods to go out with this strangely assorted bunch which eventually included such notables as Nicolai Fechin, Henri De Kruif, and occasionally Conrad Buff. Actually, the desert painters as we know them today had found each other through the rankest amateur because I had a centrally located place where they could all camp in the yard and cook spaghetti and sing at the top of their lungs.

I learned a great deal from all of these fellows, but the thought of copying any of their styles never entered my head -- or theirs. In the final analysis, they taught me informally about composition, color harmony, drawing, and the handling of paint; but it was the desert itself that taught me to really paint pictures that people would buy and hang on their walls.

It was on the days that I went out alone that I followed the advice of Maynard Dixon and spent all day painting bushes and throwing the sketches away, and

painting clouds and discarding them too. I became familiar with the great, wonderful land around me a piece at a time. A rock at a time, a bush at a time, a mountain or the Salton Sea -- each in its turn became mine as I discovered by trial and error how to get it down on a sketch board.

Then came a day when I was out in the backyard under my jalopy putting in some new con rod bearings.

article, and I guess it about broke his heart that he always had to correct so much of my copy. In the next several years there was a personal outpouring of several hundred articles on rocks, artists, and other desert subjects, and finally an article in the Saturday Evening Post on jumping beans, and a book on Sonora, Mexico.

Writing gave me a great deal of satisfaction and helped to pay the light and grocery bills, but painting never ceased to be my main objective. The desert is like an inexhaustible mine of beauty, and all a man has to do is dig it out. I guess I painted a thousand smoke trees, yet there were never two alike nor will there ever be. Sand dunes are more or less the same shape but they change with each gay-flowered outfits if the rains are right.

During the Great Depression, artists were hired by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to create "uplifting" scenes meant to raise people's spirits in the midst of challenging times.

Artists were asked to paint contemporary scenes of cities and rural areas, and especially to show people about the business of living. Many scenes showed people at work, striving together to overcome hard times.

Of course, when we look at these paintings 80 years or so after they were created, we find them to be an amazing visual record of an America now past. The cars, the architecture, and the dress of the people has changed greatly over the intervening years. Although artists weren't aware of it at the time, they were on-the-scene historians conveying the heart and soul of a generation who met extraordinary hardship with life affirming resilience. There may have been a depression in the economy, but this was certainly a high time in art.

The California Scene painters continued after the depression documenting an ever changing California landscape, including the building of its freeways, drive in restaurants, and the California beach scene. These paintings show the evolutionary stages

of cars, trains, barns, roadways, bayside piers -- points in time which serve as markers in the time line of California's remarkable story.

This exhibition includes famed artists such as Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Emil Kosa Jr., Milford Zornes, and Rex Brandt, who have long been the face of this art movement. But also included in this exhibition are other artists who received little attention during their lifetimes. Only now are they being recognized for their important contributions to the California Scene Painting movement.

A large format book, titled California Scene Paintings, accompanies the exhibition and visually documents artworks from this period and connects them to California's history. You may order this book from the Irvine Museum's bookstore.

California Scene Paintings 1920-1970 is at the Irvine Museum through May 8th. We strongly encourage you to visit and see these marvelous paintings in person. The exhibition includes works by these artists carried by our gallery, Milford Zornes, Ralph Hulett, Maurice Logan, Robert E. Wood and Phil Dike.

Our gallery offers the watercolors of Jean Warren who studied with both Milford Zornes and Robert E. Wood. Drop by and consider a California Watercolor for your collection.

In April of 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt established The American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. This entity was in short order referred to as the Roberts Commission, taking the name of its appointed leader, Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts. The Roberts Commission's charge was to promote the preservation and recovery of cultural properties in war areas including Europe, the Mediterranean and the Far East theaters of operation, so long as the mission did not interfere with military operations.

The Commission's mandate relied on Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower to achieve the goals outlined be the Roberts Commission.

Ike gave orders, forbidding U.S. forces in engaging in looting, destruction of art or to billet troops in structures of cultural significance. Ike cited that this was the first time in history any army attempted to fight a war while reducing damage to cultural monuments and property. In a letter dated December 29, 1943, Ike expressed his thoughts regarding the term "military necessity."

He said that when the term "military necessity" was used in the context of preserving artistic treasures, he advised his commanders that "we are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows." Pictured below are Ike's orders dated December, 29, 1943.

Ike told his commanders that they were not to be "indifferent" to the need to protect art treasures. He said, "If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go. But the choice is not always so clear-cut as that. In many cases the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs. Nothing can stand against the argument of military necessity. That is an accepted

principle. But the phrase "military necessity" is sometimes used where it would be more truthful to speak of military convenience or even of personal convenience. I do not want to cloak slackness or indifference."

During the war, Ike spent many hours with Winston Churchill who painted for relaxation. Either explicitly or implicitly from Churchill's example, Ike learned from the magic of painting as recreation to balance the demands of leadership. After the war, Ike took Churchill's advice and began painting. Perhaps his experience protecting and recovering art treasures during war helped nurture his love of painting, a hobby which helped sustain him during his presidency and throughout his retirement.

Monuments Men, Official Trailer, Opens in Theaters, Feb 7

While President, Ike would visit Palm Springs to play golf, but also used these excursions to pursue painting. He would visit desert artists such as John W. Hilton and Paul Grimm, enjoying their camaraderie and painting tips.

Through Roosevelt's "Roberts Commission," Eisenhower's leadership, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program was established. Known as the Monuments Men, the group of about 400 service men and civilians worked with the military to safeguard historic and cultural monuments, and worked to find and return works of art stolen by the Nazis or works hidden for safe keeping.

The Monuments Men debuts February 7th. It stars George Clooney, John Goodman, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray and Bob Balaban. It is billed as being a comedy / drama, but we have high hopes that it will convey the great story to be told here.

On the one hand, people can create beauty, creating the best of human aspirations. On the other hand, people get entangled in war, becoming participants, willingly or not, in desecration, destruction and death. The legacy of the Monuments Men is that if war needs to be waged, it must be fought to preserve the best of what we are and what we create.

The Walt Disney Family Museum
This museum tells Walt's story from the early days.
(on the Parade Grounds) 104 Montgomery Street,
The Presidio of San Francisco, CA 94129
-- view location on Google Maps --