'Curious, Odd & Interesting'

The Eighth Lively Art: Conversations with Painters, Poets, Musicians,and the Wicked Witch of the West

By Wesley Wehr

University of Washington Press

2000, 301 pages

Paperback, $17.95

"You have known some remarkable people during the years I have knownyou," the pianist Berthe Poncy Jacobson told Wesley Wehr one day, "Iwas just wondering to myself how you came to know them?"

"Opportunities arose," Wehr answered her.

"That's it! That's it exactly!" Mrs. Jacobson exclaimed,"Opportunities arose, and you were quick to recognize them as such."

Inspired by the examples of James Boswell's The Life of SamuelJohnson, LL.D. and William Hazlitt's Table Talk, Wehr began in themid-1950s to take notes on the conversations he was having with hiscreative friends, starting with Tobey, who though he criticized theidea of turning into an "advice factory" ran one at top speed. NowWehr has turned those notes into a compelling series of portraits inThe Eighth Lively Art: Conversations with Painters, Poets, Musicians,and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wehr's literary sketches are invaluable additions to Northwestcultural history. He recounts personal stories that enliven ourunderstanding of luminaries such as Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, GuyAnderson, Imogen Cunningham, and Theodore Roethke.

He tells the story of Tobey's short marriage to a woman who hadrespected his painting before their wedding day, but afterwardsdeclared that he'd have to give up his artistic pretensions and get areal job. "Good God," Tobey told himself, "I'm going to have to listento this for the rest of my life!" So instead Tobey immediately packedhis things, left her, and moved out to Seattle.

Wehr describes how Guy Anderson accosted him when he and a friendknocked on the door of Anderson's studio in La Conner. Anderson,dressed in a maid's uniform and wig, demanded to know, "What gives youthe idea that Mr. Anderson would have any time for the likes of you?"then slammed the door on them. Minutes later, Anderson, now dressed inmore typical clothes, let them in with apologies for "that terriblemaid" whom he said he had just fired.

Wehr recalls how Morris Graves, with his physical charisma, couldcapture the attention of an entire room of people while remainingaloof from everyone.

Wehr's portraits also remind us of other significant Northwest artistsfrom that period whose reputations are now fading, like Helmi Juvonenand Pehr Hallsten. Juvonen was a very public artist; who would hang upher latest prints each morning on a clothesline outside her apartmentin the University District, priced at only fifty cents each. Herlinoleum block prints and watercolor paintings won the admiration ofcritics and local museum curators. Juvonen's unconventionality, whichincluded a wild infatuation with Mark Tobey, was the primary reason,according to Wehr, for her institutionalization in a state mentalhealth center in 1960. Pehr Hallsten was a scholarly, cosmopolitanSwede who became Tobey's life-long companion. Inspired more byJuvonen's playful artistic approach than Tobey's seriousness, Hallstentaught himself to paint at the age of fifty-six and in less than adecade gained an international audience for his colorful paintings ofchildhood memories--"unforgettable realms of reindeer, Lapps and snow,nights of darkness where trolls stole the light of day and Baldur wasslain by an arrow made of mistletoe."

Wehr also sets the historical record straight and credits theflamboyant art dealer Zoe Dusanne as the originator of the notion of aNorthwest school of painters. Dusanne had a friend on the staff ofLife magazine and suggested that the magazine do a story on the"solitary, 'mystical' painters living and working in the far reachesof the Pacific Northwest." A year later, in 1953, Life ran the feature"Mystic Painters of the Northwest" that made Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson,Morris Graves, and Kenneth Callahan nationally famous.

Surprisingly, and refreshingly, Wehr is a memoirist who ignores Freud. He offers no psychosexual exposes, violates no confidences, andrefuses to categorize these artists and thinkers by sexualorientation. While demurring from writing about sex, he does writeabout love. He tenderly describes Elizabeth Bishop's longing for herfriend Lota back in Rio de Janeiro that first dismal January whenBishop had come to Seattle to teach poetry at the University ofWashington, and then Bishop's surprise when he asked her some adviceabout love. "If you ever were to know much about my personal life,"Bishop answered, "you certainly wouldn't come to me for any sagelyadvice about a thing like love. I've usually been as confused about itas just about anyone else I've known. If you really are concernedabout that subject, I'd suggest you go and read W.H. Auden. If hedoesn't know something about love, I just don't know who else does."The title the "Eighth Lively Art" refers to the art of conversation,yet none of Wehr's friends and acquaintances is a genius of the bonmot; none is an Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Wehr doesn't present afull defense of the idea that conversation is an art. But what he doesdo is accurately capture the energy and intelligence that can be foundin conversations with very talented people, with their common humanneed for contact. And he gives us a primer in the ways of friendship,how dinners, calls, courtesies, letters, and simple gifts can braidstrong bonds. In a memorable visit to Morris Graves' beautiful home inLoleta, California, Graves proudly retrieved a note Wehr had writtento him years before, a note Graves had kept in his eyeglass case eversince.

When Wehr was a young man, his mother challenged him "to decide...whether I was going to have a rich and interesting life, or merely adull and conventional existence." Elizabeth Bishop testified to Wehr'sdecision in a 1974 letter to the poet James Merrill in which shewrote, "Wesley is older, but a very curious, odd and interestingpainter and person so mad about fossils the university has given himsome sort of position telling them about fossils." Wehr seized theopportunities that came his way and has made an interesting life forhimself, and in sharing it he has also passed his mother's challengeon to us.