Resorts at Sea is officially Murals on the High Seas

So the person who knows the least about building a website is building a website. I've said from time to time, whenever tackling a challenging project, that "I don't know enough not to try." Uh ... Yeah, if that doesn't fit now ...

The home page. The use of circular images gives the impression of portholes.
The tag line: It is art. It is history. Is it art history? (Ay, there's the rub.) 
A little cheesy, but there's no need to get too serious.

It all began with Resorts at Sea and a general interest in artworks created for American passenger ships. (You can read earlier entries by typing in "resorts at sea" in the search area at the upper right corner.) It was fun to see who did what and where it was installed. As I continued to dig, roadblocks kept cropping up with this national mural competition in 1940 to decorate American President Lines' President Jackson-class, seven ships designed for round-the-world passenger/cargo service. It was the second largest competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts, and it's become a veritable footnote. I aim to change that.

The New Deal portion has been the most intriguing chapter. 

Originally, the website was to focus on the Jackson-class, but many of the winners received commissions for other liners, so the scope expanded. Focusing on newly-built ships, the story starts with Matson Line's Malolo in 1927 and ending with the nuclear ship Savannah in 1962; covering about 50 ships total. The Malolo utilized art depicting scenes of Hawaii and California, as that was her route, while the Savannah is unique for artworks loaned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The story ends with the nuclear ship Savannah, which is still afloat in Baltimore.

Organized by decade (1920s, 1930s, etc.), these American ships will be placed in an even broader context, as you'll be able to look at artworks on foreign liners, like Empress of Britain, Bremen, Normandie, Queen Mary, Andrea Doria, and Rotterdam, to name a few. The fun part has been locating images with identifiable artworks in clear focus; not always an easy task. As a result, not all artworks can be shown.

It's been amazing the amount of resources consulted and/or gathered in this project; 
book covers are shown in the "portholes." Many will be shown in the Odds & Ends tab.

Phase One will take care of the basics: a little history, minor observations, and the obligatory Facebook page to drive traffic and conversation. (And acceptance that the site will continue to evolve, and not be 100% perfect right out of the gate.) Phase Two will include more observations, comparisons, exploration of themes, and the possible addition of more ships. Phase Three will include a book deal, traveling exhibit, perhaps a lecture tour, because why not? If we're going to do this, let's do it up right.

The Peabody Essex Museum, in cooperation with the Victoria and Albert Museum, just wrapped up Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, dedicated to all aspects of the ocean liner culture. Alas, I wasn't able to make the trip to see it, but I do have the book, and it's very well done, but with little emphasis on our side of "the pond." *grumble grumble* It does make for a nice benchmark, though.

Anyway, I think things are on track to launch sometime in March 2018. See you on the "maiden voyage!"

What I Did Last Summer ...

Lots of research pertaining to Resorts at Sea ... And a little sight-seeing. 

That was August. I'm almost done going through the info gathered; an initial sort, seeing what I actually have. (Before I hit the NY leg of my trip, I took photos of over 700 pages of documents in about 2.5 hours. Who knows what the hell's in there.)

Results to come in the weeks ahead!

Resorts at Sea: Malolo | Queen Frederica

Several of the ships in Resorts at Sea ended their days under foreign ownership. Among the first vessels examined, Matson’s Malolo, built in 1927, lasted until the late 1970s. Most of that time was spent under the moniker Queen Frederica for National Hellenic Lines, and later for Chandris.

As cruise ships today seem to have theme room after theme room, before the mid to late 1930s, American ships had a similar pattern: Georgian lounge, Tudor library; a hodgepodge of dated styles designed to keep the traveler’s mind off the sea outside. Post World War II, a unified “modern” look took hold, with each seafaring nation putting their own stamp on things via artworks and furnishings. Currently, I’m of the opinion that American ships embraced the sea and a seafaring heritage more than other nations.

(One of the better quotes I’ve found addressing this switch includes the phrase “decorative claptrap.” And you can find the source yourself; I’m not going to give it all away.)

I have two Queen Frederica brochures. Neither are dated. (Dang it.) The smaller one, page wise, on the left, is probably after 1955, but before a 1960 refit; the latter, and larger of the two, is after the refit.

When Malolo was originally built, stained woodwork, and lots of it, was the rule. Oddly, given the California to Hawaii route, and later South Pacific cruises, dark wood wasn’t given a second thought. Dark tones absorb heat, and this was before the days of air-conditioning. Whatever the ventilation, it must have been stifling, and the dark, oppressive woodwork would not have helped. A refit that raised the lifeboats up a deck and added several Lanai suites also resulted in a name change, to Matsonia. The original interior décor was not altered. Here’s a shot of the smoking room …

After the war, under foreign ownership, Matsonia’s woodwork was painted. Ordinarily, I would disapprove. White was the predominant color, but depending upon the room, gold, grey, or green was used as an accent. Coupled with colorful art and modern furniture, it works. Case in point …

This shot of the foyer between the lounge and Crystal Club is from the older brochure. Get a load of that mural! (Unfortunately, no idea who did it.) Note the grey columns, cross beams, and selected panels, as well as the slate blue baseboard. Not a fan of the pink and green floor, but that’s why they make rugs.

The first class dining room underwent a change, too. Odds are the décor on the upper level are mere stencils, but they do add to the overall scheme of things. (Not that I’m part of the “something is better than nothing” crowd, but if a space needs to be broken up, there are worse ways to go about it.) Note the two fans towards the back of the image, a holdover from the Matson days? The flooring may well be Malolo original, too, from the Pennsylvania Flooring and Woodoleum Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia.

One more room caught my eye, the children’s playroom. I do believe there are some well-known Disney characters on the left. One couldn’t get away with that today without paying hefty licensing fees.

Overall, these looks are a prototype for what is considered today’s luxe design. Take a look at any high-end magazine, like Architectural Digest, for land-based versions, or sticking to the seas: Oceania Cruises and Crystal Cruises, to name two.

Something to ponder ... A bit outside the realm of possibility, but had it been feasible, do you think a non-British operator, doing a France/Norway-type conversion, would've painted over Queen Mary's opulent veneers, culled from over 50 types of trees from all corners of the globe?

Resorts at Sea: May: The Cost of Art

The 1980s was when the cruise line industry began replacing their older ships, some dating back to the 1950s. Today ships measure anywhere from 150,000 to over 200,000 gross tons. Can you imagine getting excited over a new ship that’s a mere 36,000 tons? Well, that was the size of Carnival’s Tropicale in 1982, arguably the first ship of the modern cruise industry.

These new ships had to be decorated, and whenever a new ship debuted, the phrase “million dollar art collection” was usually attached. But what did it take to decorate the ships in my Resorts at Sea study?

Early indicators found that when taking account for inflation and size of ship, the cost of art was comparable. However, as I'll explain later, I didn't factor in all the variables.

 

At left is a sketch by Bernard Perlin for one of the hall spandrels for President Hayes.

At right is an entry from Perlin for the Rio Hudson-class competition. (Images courtesy

of Bernard Perlin and Michael Schreiber.) Below is a page from the April 1941

issue of American Artist magazine with the Rio Hudson competition highlighted. 

The first numbers I got were courtesy of David Hendrickson. I had the results of the Section of Fine Arts competition for six ships of the President Jackson-class, he had the announcement. So like baseball cards, we traded. A total of $6,940 ($115,900 today) was allotted for each ship. Bernard Perlin won two commissions: hall spandrels and library mural for President Hayes for $3,150 ($52,590). While they furnished him with the marinite panels, he had to provide the paint plus whatever else he needed to do the job, so I'm not sure what he netted. There was a second ship art competition in the spring of 1941 for the four ships of the Rio Hudson-class, but money and interest was waning.

The second number came from Henry Dreyfuss' book Designing for People (1957). Dreyfuss wrote the art budget for Independence and Constitution was $100,000 each ($972,000).

I had delayed this post in order to recheck my math, but I found I wasn’t comparing apples to apples. Art collections on today’s cruise ships are a mix of newly created artwork and purchased art. By purchased art I mean works that have already been created and found at a gallery, or part of a corporate collection. Holland America, Royal Caribbean, and Celebrity have amazing collections. Holland America recycles art from past ships, dating back to 1938’s Nieuw Amsterdam, plus new works, plus antiquities several centuries old. Celebrity has pieces of Olympic (Titanic’s sister), Normandie, and United States in specialty restaurants. So while the numbers give some indication, there's no real correlation.

Resorts at Sea - March 2013

Spent part of the week retrieving items from storage. It really made me want to drop a lit match and close the door behind me. But I grabbed some (I hope) relevant books and articles for this project. Among one of the boxes I found an ad I printed off microfilm many moons ago ...

 

It's from the March 16, 1912 edition of The New York Times, and it's a little creepy seeing the return trips listed. I should go back and see how late these ads were being run, especially when multiple special editions were being printed with disaster updates.

 

In addition to the items in storage, I visited a university library and slightly ransacked their stacks, obtaining some interesting articles. More pointed research to come ...



Resorts at Sea - February 2013

The first ship in this study should be Matson Lines’ Malolo, which entered service in 1927.

(Now I’m still wrestling with whether the Leviathan should take this spot. Technically the German-built Vaterland, William Francis Gibbs gave the ship a top to bottom rejuvenation, but if I hold true to keeping the ships in this study American-built, then no Leviathan. Argh.)

I found a pamphlet listing the artworks installed on the Malolo. Not murals, they were paintings meant to accessorize whatever room they were placed. I don’t believe they were specially created for the ship.

However, the prints adorning the staterooms and suites were created specifically for the Malolo. I had the name of Mary J. Coulter, but little else. Then I stumbled across a small piece in a long-defunct magazine: The Argus. (Subtitled: A Journal of Art Criticism and News.) Folios of the prints onboard the Malolo were on display in two galleries in San Francisco.

Stranger things have been listed on WorldCat.org, so why not search? Lo and behold, a catalogue of etchings and dry points* dated 1927, same year the Malolo entered service, same year The Argus article appeared. Not 100% conclusive proof, but as her work for the Malolo took two years, did Coulter make time for other projects? Perhaps, just to take a break and do something different, but that’s how I would do it. (And I admit Time Management is not always my friend.)

To my knowledge, there are no libraries in my area that are on WorldCat, so it may take a personal visit to check this lead out.

*Yeah, I didn’t know what dry points were either. Webster’s says a dry point is “a fine, hard needle for engraving lines on a copper plate without using acid.” Sounds pretty time-consuming.

Resorts At Sea - Jan 2013

Of the interior designers involved with the ships in this project, the one that may have the greatest name recognition is Raymond Loewy.

Fans of Mad Men … Which of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s accounts was the biggest? Yes, Lucky Strike, very good. Who designed the iconic packaging for Lucky Strike? … … … It was Raymond Loewy.

Few people have been so closely identified with their company: Steve Jobs and Apple, Hugh Hefner and Playboy, Walt Disney and, well, you get the picture.

Perhaps the biggest brand identity of the mid-20th century was that of Raymond Loewy. More often than not, if Raymond Loewy was listed as heading up a project, few, if any of the others involved were mentioned.

Apologies for the image quality. These are from the journal Pacific Marine Review. On the left, we have

a rendering of the Rio Hudson from October 1940. She, along with her three sisters were completed

as "baby flattops" - small aircraft carriers for World War II. On the right, are July 1950 renderings

of public spaces on the President Jackson. The Jackson, Adams, and Hayes were taken for troopship

duties during the Korean Conflict.

 

Loewy was involved with the interiors of Panama Lines’ Panama, Ancon, and Cristobal, the Rio Hudson quartette for Moore-McCormack, the postwar refit of Matson Lines’ Lurline, the President Jackson trio of 1950, Banner Lines’ Atlantic, and Moore-McCormack’s 1958 Brasil and Argentina.

 

Banner Lines' Atlantic was taken over by American Export Lines. On the right,

a sketch for the cafe on the Brasil/Argentina.

 

Any artists connected with any of the above projects were discovered almost by accident. Random Google searches have born some fruit, but a look at company papers, which seem to be scattered hither and yon, but mainly in Delaware and D.C., should prove useful.

Designs for an Exhibit

For those who haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been teasing about an art exhibit. This project is linked to my Resorts at Sea study. I’ve mentioned I’ve been in contact with a few of the artists who created art for American-built passenger ships. I’ve also said it’s been hard not to delve into the other works of these artists: the non-commercial art, the art for art’s sake; not the art for hire.

Bernard Perlin is 94 years old. He entered a national design competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts and the U.S. Maritime Commission in the spring of 1940. During the summer of that year, he was notified he won two commissions for the President Hayes, the third ship in the President Jackson-class of American President Lines.

Last summer, after I had found a good number of the artists involved in this study, I started gathering biographical material. I was stunned to find Mr. Perlin was still alive. (I shouldn’t have been, one grandma passed six months shy of 100, the other is still going strong, about to turn 93.) I wrote him, sending along a couple articles to jog his memory. A few weeks later, he wrote back!

I called him, but there was one heck of a thunderstorm blowing on his end, then his phone died. After several tries to get him back, I gave up. I reached his machine the next day, and that weekend, he called me back. If I live to be his age, I hope to be half as sharp as he is. Stories flowed as if they happened yesterday, and I am truly touched he took the time to share them with me.

He gave me the name of a man in Chicago who’s been working on his life story for further details, admitting he may have missed some things. And that’s how Michael Schreiber and I became acquainted. Michael has taken on the Herculean task of giving Mr. Perlin’s career a second look. After diving into a Flickr page with hundreds of shots of a wide variety of works, I was blown away. An exhibit had to be organized. Over the holidays, Michael and I decided "to do this thing."

Michael has also been shopping around a Perlin biography, and has been given many excuses as to why it’s a bad idea. Most publishers would do it, but it'd have to be in conjunction with an exhibit, which wasn’t happening because institutions wouldn’t take it on for this, that, and the other reasons.

Frequent readers know I do a lot of work for the Kirksville Arts Association. Kirksville is in Missouri. Actor and art aficionado Vincent Price was born in St. Louis and later in life was a frequent speaker in the Lyceum Series at what is now Truman State University in Kirksville. Price met Perlin at the 1938 Kosciusko Foundation Ball in New York. They struck up a friendship, with Price giving Perlin a commission: a mural in his tiny apartment. Price spoke highly of Perlin in his 1959 book I Like What I Know.

Perlin was also great friends with Missouri natives Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a St. Louis civic leader and a founder and the first vice president of the National League of Women Voters, and her daughter, Martha Gellhorn, one of the first female war correspondents, and third wife of Ernest Hemingway.

I could go on and on, and still not do Mr. Perlin any justice. So let’s focus on the exhibit.

Trying to arrange an artist’s career output – in this case, a 75-year career – with a handful of pieces is harder than I could’ve imagined. It’s akin to waking up one morning and deciding to take up cliff diving, and twenty feet before you hit the water, you’re trying to remember if you know how to swim.

Playing with groupings.

 

I started with the works at a 1/4 inch scale, moving them around, seeing what groups worked and those that didn't. Then Michael and I sat down on the phone to winnow the list down. And here’s the arrangement so far …

 Pages from the planning docs showing wall elevations. 

Along with arranging the pieces, the exhibit needs to be publicized. I chose a self portrait from 1937, when he was 19. (Image top right at the beginning of this post.) It scales pretty well for most poster and ad sizes with minor cropping required.

And every exhibit needs a catalogue with essays and loads of images. If I told you who I’m talking with in arranging the printing, you wouldn’t believe me, so we’ll wait until it’s done.

Front cover and sample pages for exhibit catalogue. (I told you the poster graphic scales and crops nicely.) 

But above all else, in order to make this go, we need funding. Options are being explored.

This is a fun project, and I hope Michael and I can bring it to fruition.

Resorts at Sea: January update

During a typical ocean liner's career, her decor was rarely, if ever, changed. She would go in for her annual overhaul, and given and good scrubbing inside and out, top to bottom. When done, she looked as good as the first day she sailed. Furniture may have been reupholstered, but it was renewed, not changed to reflect current trends.

This was the case -- from what I can determine -- for all major ocean liners. Ships like the Queen Mary, Christoforo Columbo, and Rotterdam may have received mechanical upgrades over the years, but the interiors were left alone. I can't remember where I read this, but the woodwork on the Rotterdam contained varieties so rare, repairs had to be made from other pieces of wood already on board.

Now I did find one instance where the Cabin Class Dining Room on the United States was repainted from a midnight blue to beige. Mmm ... beige ... *yawn*

(above) A rendering of the Cabin Class Dining Room on the United States

in the original midnight blue. (below) I started to repaint the walls

in beige, but since that color is so boring, I started to doze off.

Today's cruise ships are frequently overhauled. New amenities are needed to compete. Public spaces are added, renovated, or completely redesigned. Despite being advertised as one of the last ocean liners, the QE2 received more face lifts than Joan Rivers. Her original late '60s mod designs slowly gave way to a traditional British Art Deco as the company embraced its heritage. Which was a good thing, I don't think a room looking like a set from 2001: A Space Odyssey could really carry it off today.

It was frequently the case for the retired or laid-up American passenger ship to find new owners overseas. Holland America took Moore-McCormack's Argentina and Brasil. Chinese interests picked up APL's Presidents Cleveland and Wilson, plus two of the "4 Aces." Several Greek companies bought the pre-World War 2 Grace and Matson liners. Perhaps the biggest "get" was Chandris' acquisition of USL's America upon her retirement in 1964.

The America from a postcard in my collection. Under ownership

by Chandris, her dummy forward funnel was removed. Two days after

 she ran aground in 1994, she broke apart just behind the second funnel,

roughly in front of the last three lifeboats.

As cruising took hold, these ships would see numerous overhauls as they changed owners, usually increased capacity with more cabins and/or more berths in existing ones. While the America would see these changes as the Australis, her public spaces remained virtually unchanged from 1939.

In fact, those areas were remarkably well preserved up to the point when, while under tow to Asia for transformation into a floating hotel, her tow chains broke during bad weather and she ran aground off one of the islands in the Canary chain in 1994. While scavengers ransacked her for any piece of brass or copper they could lay their hands on, it's tough to say whether any of interior decoration made it off. Doubtful, as some murals were up to 20 feet long; tough to carry down a rickety ladder welded to the hull.

Parts of this Charles Baskerville mural around the Main Lounge

entrance on the America were still visible after her grounding

in 1994. This August 1940 image is part of the Gottscho-Schleisner

Collection in the Library of Congress.

Whatever didn't make it off was slowly destroyed over the next dozen years as nature slowly wore her down, each wave scooping out her insides. If any pieces did survive, who knows where they're at now.