Resorts at Sea: Bill King's ss United States Smoking Room

Not bad as far as drafts go. Definitely need to find better images! Enjoy!

 

To see images of King's latest exhibition at the Algus Greenspon Gallery, go here.

 

To learn more about Bill King, go here.

 



 

An illustration from the Lester Beall designed United States Lines brochure. The overall color scheme

is representative, but the mural colors, except for the bronze, are way off. Instead of the beige

shown here, it was actually rendered in shades of blue-green.

 

Dorothy Marckwald and Anne Urquhart contacted the dean of Cooper Union in early 1951 asking if there were any “rising stars” they should be aware of. The dean gave them William King.¹

“It was a jet assisted boost to my career,” King said. “Heady days.”

Born in 1925, in Jacksonville, Florida, King originally wanted to be an architect, but after two years at the University of Florida, something was lacking. In a story King is fond of telling, his mother told him, “Here’s a hundred dollars. Now get out of this state and don’t come back till you’re 65. There’s nothing here for you.” ²

Two years at Cooper Union were followed by a stint at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where, in addition to his studies, he was an assistant instructor in sculpture. A Fulbright grant in 1949-1950 took him to Italy, during which he spent time at the Accademia dei Belle Arti in Rome.

Group shows include those at the RoKo Gallery in New York, the Cooper Union Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art’s “New Talent” exhibit of 1950. King was commissioned to do a fresco in South Solon, Maine in 1951. His works are in the collections of Nelson Rockefeller and John Hay Whitney, and others. ³

X marks the spot of King's mural.

 

Which brings us to this mural. Almost born to sculpt, this piece for the smoking room is definitely a departure. Wanting something of the oceans and time, King drew out the Mercator projection on a piece of cardboard for Marckwald and Urquhart. “They liked it,” King remembers, dryly. (But he also wondered if the ladies were in over their heads.) By fall 1951, the commission was officially his.

On December 1, 1951, King joined Charles Gilbert, Gwen Lux, Hildreth Meiere, Peter Ostuni, Austin Purves, Jr., Louis Ross, Charles Lin Tissot, and Raymond Wendell for a tour of United States, hosted by designer William Francis Gibbs. Though the ship looked practically complete on the outside, much work was going on inside. King remembers standing in the forward part of the ship and feeling he could see clear to the stern.

The artists at the shipyard. From left to right: Austin Purves, Jr., Charles Lin Tissot, Louis Ross,

William King (highlighted), Hildreth Meiere, Charles Gilbert, Gwen Lux, Raymond Wendell, and Peter Ostuni.

(image courtesy of David Hendrickson)

 

It took King almost six weeks to work up the full size sample in the cold water flat he shared with his wife, painter Lois Dodd⁴, on East 29^th Street, New York; full size being approximately 25 feet wide and 10 feet high. Drawn figuratively, the continents are dotted with bronze plaques labeling important cities. A frieze of clocks marking time zones graces the top. Finishing touches are a few decorative waves, and bands indicating the equator, Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and 40 degrees north latitude.⁵ The blue greens of the mural are in striking contrast to the browns and coppers of the room. You cannot help but notice it.

Through spring 1952, there were “beaucoup meets” with Rambusch Decorators during the fabrication process, which turned King’s sketches into five slightly curved panels of 1/8-inch thick aluminum.

1. Direct quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from conversations and correspondence between Bill King and Wayne Yanda.

2. This story has been phrased in a variety of ways in a variety of interviews.

3. Selected exhibit and collection data are from the William King papers, 1910-2007. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, reels 487, 488.
4. King and Dodd were soon to separate and divorce.
5. In a letter dated January 31, 1952, Anne Urquhart wrote Austin Purves, Jr. telling him she saw some of King’s metal work, thinking “it is very swell.” Austin Purves papers, 1939-1961. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, reels 112, 113.

 

Resorts at Sea: September: The Art of Moore-McCormack

“Why they were built in the first place remains a mystery of corporate decision-making,” said Moore-McCormack’s chairman about Argentina and Brasil at a U.S. Congressional hearing.

Entering service towards the end of 1958, Argentina and Brasil were laid up by the fall of 1969, victims of the jet age, which cut into passenger loads, and increasing labor costs.

Several months back, author David Hendrickson forwarded me pages from booklets detailing the artwork on these ships. (We’ve been trading info back and forth like baseball cards.) And recently, I stumbled across a copy of the Argentina booklet on eBay. Had. To. Have. It.

What was unique about the art on these ships is it was mix of new and old. This was in part thanks to Raymond Loewy, who styled several Moore-McCormack ships, Matson's Lurline, and more. In the library was Vanitas by Jan Vermeulen, a contemporary of Rembrandt. In the Casino Lounge: Georges Michel’s Approaching Storm. Michel, according to the text, rarely signed his works, Approaching Storm was an exception. The Sala de Argentina housed Indians on the Lower Mississippi by Felix Marie Ferdinand Storelli, court painter to Louis-Philippe, King of France after the Bourbons were restored to power after Napoleon.

I’ve tried to track these pieces down through an auction tracking sites. There are visual variations of Vanitas and Approaching Storm, and a plausible description of Storelli’s work, but without an image, it may well be a variation, too.

Compare those works to the one below. Very dynamic, very fresh. There were four 16 foot panels each on Argentina and Brasil lining the walls of the café balcony. You see the artist’s name? Rikki? Yeah, that’s a pseudonym. I haven’t been able to crack that one … Yet. The Brasil booklet says they believe the mural technique of baked enamel on aluminum was an innovation. It was, in 1952 when Peter Ostuni used it for the First Class Cocktail Lounge (aka: Navajo Lounge) on United States. Granted, Ostuni’s panels were not this large, and last I checked, size was not an innovation, merely an evolution.

This has lead to theories of how much design influence these two ships had on Holland America when they bought them in the early 1970s. There are definite “genetic” traits at work, and I will explore them soon.