Legendry; Interview with Elsa Beckmann on Her Late Husband Hannes Beckmann, Part 2 of 2

Our theme men and marching mountains by Vermont's Carl Ruggles vidual welcome to legendary. Good afternoon. This is Frank Anthony the second part of my recent interview with Elsa Backman of Hanover New Hampshire. We discuss in detail the style and technique of her former husband honest Backman artist who trained at the legendary Bauhaus school in Germany. You are. Good afternoon Elsa Beckman and welcome to legendary for your second

program a to program series and a commemoration of your husband on a spectrum and also at the same time that he's having his exhibition at the Hopkins Center in Dartmouth. Now last week we talked more specifically about you and about your background and your life in Norway and then when you came over to America and studied at the Guggenheim Museum and which was then of course known as a nonobjective center and now we're going to spend more of our time during this interview talking about your husband and his paintings and his life and how it fits in particularly with his exhibition that's on the Hopkins Center in Dartmouth today. Could we begin by asking just a bit about his you spoke at one point about that he has a measurement or you had a measurement of reaching a certain understanding of color. And that had a relationship to the audience. And then how he

felt about this this relationship of color as he saw it when he was working at his drawing board and then as he saw it or as the audience would see the color when they were viewing it and actually looking at his paintings could we talk a bit about that. Yes. One of those may be majoring in stage a sign at the bar in their cell. And he told me that the most marvelous to sit down at the nice drawing board and do the colors that he thought would suit that particular figure or that particular background for the acting of the actors and so on. And he sometimes was very pleased with what he saw at the at the drawing board. And then when he went down into the middle of the theater into the middle of where the show was going to be on the stage and the audience was going to be out there he was terribly disappointed because it was not the same color that he had planned

at the drawing board. So he worked out the geometric way of a kind of color measuring until he went out in the audience and that I saw doing. He had produced the image of the color he had used on the drawing board. As he put it in English by hook or crook. So he had some kind of color relationship. Yes it had to do with perhaps some kind of a scientific approach. I think that the SWAT that worked out really to be. He called it genetic I don't notice. I couldn't explain it. Well then actually because approach to art was slightly different from yours yours was more or less based on feeling was good. Yes mostly I mean it came that way to me. And

like again I come back to that you can start mechanically and go into the creativity to start the other way and maybe eventually add technique to it. I mean there are two ways of many ways of doing that. Alice was a very well he never gave up learning. And then something interested him he will go anywhere to find out more about it and more about it and more about it. But I don't think that home has ever lost the creative spirit faculty always gave. Using geometry a great deal using color as an expression and many things like that I think that they never stop. Well now I have arrived I know everything. No he went right ahead. If you go then just inform for instance. You never gave up until he sort of within himself was finished with it and he had produced

paintings given lessons to students on the subject. And in many ways and then all right he had done paintings then take this as a triangle. He worked with a triangle for a long long time and created this group of paintings where you didn't you hardly saw the triangle and you could see circles. And the way they were produced in different colors and made color charge and people say oh what a beautiful thing. It's very circular you know. And when you looked at it that was all created by small triangles. So you never give up on the form and he wasn't once interested in that. So he was pushing this thing until he brought it to what he felt was the place that it should be. You know it's the when he was painting or else interesting one for him. Nothing could interfere with it.

He concentrated on that except the money in his teaching because he has you had to use everything to give to students and work with them. But in his own work he tried sometimes to just go from one thing to the other but I always had the feeling until he was finished within his own mind of a certain form that that interests him where he had created some very fine and interesting paintings. He he hasn't had that star you know breaking into that and starting something new while he was active in that particular form. That sounds a lot like the the original philosophy of the Bauhaus technique where they developed an idea. Yeah. Until it reached an almost optimum point of perfection. That's right. This was if he found a student prince this very group of so-called creative in quotation marks that sort of thing. He never discouraged it you know. All right

go ahead and do it in the. But never stop working. Two words the perfection. Well I was very interested in his painting of the Christmas card. Yeah. Where you see the light coming and going. Is there some way that he got that technique to happen so that he actually have the light coming right out of the painting at you. Well I have a feeling that that bus. Well to start from the beginning he was tired of the triangle as a Christmas tree card I mean the card of a gift for Christmas and I was reading a book with had you known Yang the two forms you see and I show that I drew it and I made a small print of it for my own fun song and I showed it to him and he said oh that's one of the you said his Christmas card. So this two forms you know in the one he worked on for a very long time and the

simplicity and adding space to it so that you had the feeling that you had this very great two in one figure there. It's there it's going down sort of and then you had a very light space and you had a very dark and way way in to space so that he created within that color scheme that he worked with. Like in blues in this particular case it created the very. To my way of thinking because one of the very fine paintings he did it came up that way. But when he was interested in that form nothing else could stop him. He would start in all the paintings long he was just how do you think the Bauhaus actually influenced him as an artist. Well all this started I think in Germany called gymnasium and they had art lessons and they had an artist

the professor who came in and watched and correct than all this. And the man said to this why don't you grow a beard so they satisfy but undergo the BIOS. That's a very different attitude. It's arts and crafts the same thing carries a division between craft and arts is if you're an artist so you can be craft like a sculpture painting and that sort of thing was an art form. But the making of pottery and the finest glass in the world was not an art form. So Hamas didn't except that they get very interested in the attitude they had six months trial period before they accepted them like they did with students at the Bauhaus they were not well they had to work six months on the teachers and get designs and assignments to do so and so and so on then finally they were accepted.

They didn't have to take a great many students that were there one time so I think they were. I read somewhere that there were only 200 students that had ever graduated from Dubai in 14 years. So in the 14 years you know who were his teachers there couldn't ski play Albertus and Schlemmer I believe in the theater they were his main teachers. And when he when he graduated it wasn't long after that that the Bauhaus was disbanded by Hitler. Well he graduated in 1930 too and was assigned to got his position at the best of theater and then of course he came in 33 so and closed everything up so it's never had really the possibility of fulfilling his wish and dream of being really theatre stage design and that was nothing during that period it was nothing to do. Opted for him been anything since the same time or was it before this that harness was working on his stage designs.

How this works. The station signs that are here now are from thirty two I think there is one. One or two dollars that might have been worked as a student that he might have done it at the graduation thing or before he graduated I'm not sure this is in the burbs. Yeah that's nows it or various colors being shown. Could you tell us a bit about those what they consist of. Well A it's for rather big names. One is Shakespearean one is good and one this strain very good on this Ibsen is where he is the thinks that you will see up at the barrel gallery and then he had he was very interested in faces and expressions and there was one in a photograph I have or drawing I guess in black and white. And I asked him once about it because it sort of made me think of the

stage again. And I it's called The Princess and it's very white the pale and the other one is very striped dark and white so it's black and dark and light actually. So I asked him about that and he said he said I think the Princess is always supposed to be pure and simple be light and just said Yeah well she's just like you and me we're good sometimes and we're not so good the other time something to that effect. So he worked this way a great deal with action motion and expression in in the portraits that I have photographed so and so. I think also when we talked before about what your husband was driving for all of his life with his paintings what he was trying to do with color there was some point where you said that he was working

always toward a kind of unity. Yes. What did you mean by that. Well Hollis would always make a color chart like a painting was going to well like say have blue kind of feel to it. And he graduated from the very dark this blue until it came to the very light is blue. And if there's any question that it was in the complete function in that particular field of blue is the break anywhere. Then he was very disappointed because only by so doing he could find the right blue to use next to say for instance the same idea in red. Well the same idea and yellow. So that when the weight of that particular color blue Say for instance coordinate itself with the weight of the yellow that they used with or the weight of the red if the red was too strong or

too much red or if the yellow was too yellow and too much yellow and it did not coordinate itself with the with the weight of the color then. Well he worked until he got it. Occasionally he failed and he would said he would say it to me some time do you think disagreement really doesn't break here. Well I said Yes I think it breaks. So he did it to even out the crescendo so to speak or the diminuendo of the color chart which you saw yesterday. Well that makes sense to you. Yes it does. Good. Very much so. What would you say about his kind of painting if someone were to were to ask you when this was important for a radio audience because they can't see anything now what would you say about his particular kind of painting. It's different from most painting in general. Well that's a very difficult question to answer actually because.

People for instance when the op art museum you know I had that big exhibition there on the all parts. This was in that. But they used his geometric things very much they were not in the sense of that exhibition was shole with so many other things how the stuck to the geometric thing but he made the circle of love like Eternal Return that you saw in my fireplace there. You see it's very hard to answer that question. But Thomas was very had the two very good paintings in it which had this continuation of color you know that started. And even if it started in yellow and ended up in purple it was still the graduation of that system that they invented

for themselves. Boys don't work. One of the things that was outstanding to me when I was looking at your husband's paintings was the orderliness and the precision the discipline. And I just wondered and this is a curious for them I suppose but I just wondered what is beyond the average of what it took him to do a painting if there was some some way you could give me an idea of the average of how long it took him. Well it's very it actually. I know that the last painting Hama's did which I showed you yesterday the idea of the painting was quite sometime back maybe two or three years in the small kind of thing he was playing with and then he was very busy teaching he was very busy with this other things. And then I would see him sometimes bring this thing out then and building it and building it and building it until you

know very shortly before you know I did and he worked during that time when he had finished his schooling and his classes and everything he worked on that painting very very much. And he played certain kinds of music with it. There's a great deal of movement. It seems to me you know you sometimes have to look for it. You know like I show the king and queen yesterday how I had looked on in every particular kid for that first and then I've been living with it I've had it in my room. I began to see that you know how it itself created for us how the light the going the direction of where you can use your own imagination to where it hits the crame you can go on from there. Is there something special that you feel hot is gained from being in the darkness community. I think he did it really gained a great deal he was very very happy here.

And when it came up that he came and had this artist in best and first at the symposium here and he then was maybe Longo was like a 1970 and he's 69 and 70. I think the I think the artist Ness was 16 but I he was 70 he came here and he was made full professor. And he was very happy here both with the sympathy of the interest of the people took in his art that the the Prince he made and the student work he was very happy here. He felt it was a real accomplishment the work with the Dartmouth students and the teachers and so on. How do you feel about the exhibition. You feel because you asked about this. I want to take on the show actually. Yes I think it's very for a small exhibition of a certain thing stage

design. I think it's very well presented and I think that the with the notes and everything which is translated that translated into English to tell us that but all in German I think it's very well presented. I think it would create with the hero apartment and so on. An interest in drama theater and film. What about house was of course. A legendary idea. It was a legend. It will be a legend in the world of art. That's right from now on. And the ideas or as valuable today as it were then if not even more so and it seems to me that whatever we can do to to bring recognition to the Bauhaus movement is very important. Your husband's work I saw many wonderful paintings at your home last night. Many of which have not been seen by the public at all. That's right. You know I just wonder

how you feel about what you'd like to do with his life's work at this point. Well I found this box of station signs which sort of started me he had shown me the Stenberg one time before but I found this box of all the other things which I had never seen that know existed. So I started working on that and then all the paintings from the graduation about this is where I when he graduated from all those paintings through the 30s these small canvases that he later Bay had sand and where the materials were difficult and his photographic learning doing commercial work and photography and all that. And I thought well here's a actually almost the history of a person's life. And so that this when the German department was nice enough to offer to show this at my home and organize it and have take you know really sponsored it. I got more and more interested in coordinating the different

times. Like people have an historical solong you can do that and so long you can do that and found photographs of things from Prague and all the station signs and how this work gets started it was different when it came when I started work in the United States and how it grew into the large new paintings of the late paintings that they sell. So I think it's a consistent the development historically for other people to see as well as for him to do it and for me to hang in there if you could have a retrospective exhibition of this type where would something like that be be shown. Well I have of course published his first exhibition in the United States was at the Guggenheim nonobjective painting and I have met the head curator Mrs. Benson and I hope to be able to talk with her about it.

Or find a person who will handle it and see what can be done I would very much like that it seems to me it was very important from an art history point of view and it seems like to me too. But then it will take some time and somewhere and the contacts and the usual thing that you have to have from my one point of view. People here in the upper valley are fortunate to be able to see some of his things even if it's only one facet of his work. But they can see them all through this month of November at the Hopkins Center. So that's a very good opportunity I would say. And I want to thank you very much for this second program of our two interviews. Thank you very much. Yet we're in. The. The rule. And.

You're. This is Frank Anthony. Thank you for joining me on my legendary journey from the Bauhaus yesterday of Kandinsky and Myles Vander O to the hottest Beckman exhibition at Dartmouth today. I learned yesterday that my guest Elsa Backman. Was just invited by the mayor of Berlin to attend the opening of the new Bauhaus archives on December 2nd in Berlin. Next Friday on Legendary a different look at art a different perspective. When Anthony Thompson tells us about his approach to making his art work on legendary Friday at 4:00 have a pleasant weekend. You.