Walter Conrad Arensberg

Walter Conrad Arensberg ( born April 4, 1878 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † January 29, 1954 in Los Angeles, California ) was an American literary scholar, cryptanalyst and art collector.

Together with his wife Louise (* 1879 as Mary Louise Stevens in Dresden, † November 25, 1953 ) he was one of the most important collectors of pre-Columbian and modern art in the United States. The resulting from her estate Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia includes many important works of modern art, including some of the most significant works of Marcel Duchamp.

Life

Walter Conrad Arensberg was the eldest son of industrialist couple Conrad Christian Arensberg and Flora Belle Covert. The father was a partner and president of a steel forging in Pittsburgh. Walter Arensberg studied from 1896 to 1900 English Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating, he traveled to Europe, where he remained for two years. In 1903 he returned to Harvard. He then moved to New York City where he worked as a cub reporter from 1904 to 1906. 1907 married Walter and Louise. The two had about Louise Arensbergs brother Sidney, a classmate of Walter at Harvard, met.

Beginning as an art collector

The Arensbergs settled first in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she moved into the former home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in which previously the University Professor Charles Eliot Norton had lived. At this time Walter Arensberg began a career as a poet to aim; In 1914 he published his first volume of poetry. 1913 visited the Arensbergs the epochal art exhibition Armory Show in New York, at the Walter Arensberg some lithographs by Édouard Vuillard acquired. In the Boston exhibition of the Armory Show Arensberg swapped the prints turn against lithographs by Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin and a small painting by Jacques Villon one. From this point on, the Arensbergs continuously devoted to build up their art collection with a focus on the art of the 20th century, her adviser was the painter and art critic Walter Pach.

New York, friendship with Marcel Duchamp

1914 rented the Arensbergs an apartment in New York. Between 1915 and 1921 they collected nearly 70 works of art, notably French and American artists with whom they were friends. Was particularly close friendship with Marcel Duchamp, who lived during the summer of 1915 in the apartment of Arens Mountain in New York. The Arensbergs hit it off. Life as patrons of the artist and accumulated significant portions of his work, so among other things, the act of descending a staircase

Over the years, the apartment of the Arens Mountain in the 67th Street became a popular meeting place for the night of the New York intellectuals; well-known artists, musicians, actors and writers such as Constantin Brancusi, John Covert, Arthur Cravan, Jean and Yvonne Crotti, Charles Demuth, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Mina Loy, Allen and Louise Norton, Francis Picabia, Henri -Pierre Roché, Pitts Sanborn, Morton Schamberg, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Stella, Wallace Stevens, Elmer Ernst Southard, Carl van Vechten, Edgar Varèse, William Carlos Williams and Beatrice Wood met here. The exchange of these artists contributed to the most important art movements such as the New York Dada or the Society of Independent Artists (SIA ).

In December 1916 Arensberg was together with Duchamp, Pach and other founding member of the Society of Independent Artists, which was designed freely according to the French model, the Société des Artistes Independants. Arensberg acted in the short term as Managing Director of the Artists' Association. However, he came back in April 1917 again, as Duchamp's urinal controversial object Fountain that this under the pseudonym " R. Mutt " ( Richard Mutt ) had submitted, was excluded from the major annual exhibition of the SIA, the Big Show in New York's Grand Central Palace. In the presumably launched by Duchamp art scandal only Arensberg and Beatrice Wood were inaugurated that the "case Richard Mutt" in the following month, including a photograph of the " anti - art" by Alfred Stieglitz, in the second and final edition of the Dada magazine The Blind One published.

Cryptography, Shakespeare - Bacon Controversy

In addition to his interest in the visual arts Walter Arensberg dedicated to continue the literature and especially cryptography. In 1921 he published The Cryptography of Dante, in the following year, The Cryptography of Shakespeare. In his cryptanalytic publications Arensberg examined the work of the authors on acrostics, anagrams and word games, and sought correlations to Rosicrucianism. Throughout his life, pursued Arensberg the Shakespeare - Bacon controversy and hoped with the help of cryptography to be able to provide proof that Sir Francis Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare's plays, poems and writings. Arensbergs theories were refuted by later analyzes of cryptologists William and Elizebeth Friedman.

California, construction of the private museum, patrons

At the urging of Louise Arensberg, the couple moved to Hollywood in 1921. Although the move was planned as a temporary residence, Arensbergs should spend the rest of her life in California, interrupted only by a brief return to New York area between 1925 and 1926. In California, succeeded in Arensbergs to reactivate their influence in the art world. From 1922, they made loans to galleries and the Museum of the West Coast. In the firm belief that the general public should have a benefit to their collection, they restricted their generous loan from a first, as some of the works were damaged. Your own house at the Hillside Avenue 7065 in Hollywood they converted temporarily into a private museum that anyone could visit on request. The architect Richard Neutra had designed her house glass-enclosed space to accommodate Brancusi L' Oiseau dans l' espace ( The Bird in Space ) in 1940. Walter Arensberg was a board member of the " Los Angeles Art Association " (1937 ), the Los Angeles County Museum ( 1938-1939 ) and the Southwest Museum ( 1944-1954 ), he was also a founding member of the short-lived American Arts in Action (1943 ) and the Modern Institute of Art, Beverly Hills (1947-1949), which he supported financially.

During the 1930s and 1940s the Arens Bergs built their collection of continuously and bought preferred modern art, but also non-Western artifacts, oriental rugs, Byzantine Art and Renaissance paintings, as well as American folk art. There were also works of surrealist Salvador Dali and Max Ernst and the contemporary Mexican artist Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo. When it was possible, acquired the Arensbergs works of Marcel Duchamp. From their friendly neighbors, the collector Earl Stendahl, they bought additional pre-Columbian ceramics and sculptures.

Francis Bacon Foundation, Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection

1937 organized Walter Arensberg the Francis Bacon Foundation, a non-profit educational and research organization, which is dedicated to the work of Francis Bacon. In 1939, the Francis Bacon Foundation for financial and ideological considerations official owner of the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection.

In the 1940s, the Arensbergs began to search for a suitable place for their permanent art collection. In 1944, she gave an extensive donation to the University of California in Los Angeles with the contractual proviso that within a certain period an appropriate museum to be built for the collection. In the autumn of 1947 it became apparent that this would be available not satisfied so that the contract was canceled. In the period following the Arensbergs began negotiating with various institutions, among others, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, Harvard University, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art and further. Finally, the Arensbergs discarded their condition that the takeover of their collection and the Francis Bacon Foundation should be continued. After numerous discussions and negotiations in which Constantin Brancusi for Arensbergs began among others - the collection also included 19 works of Romanian sculptor - which consists of over 1,000 objects in the Arensberg Collection was presented on December 27, 1950 the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The opening of her art collection in the rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on October 16, 1954, the couple did not live Arensberg: Louise Arensberg died on November 25, 1953 from the effects of cancer; Walter Arensberg survived his wife only two months, and died on January 29, 1954 of a heart attack.

The library of the Francis Bacon Foundation ( 13,000 volumes), the Huntington Library in San Marino, California in 1995 added.

Writings

• Poems. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1914.
• Idols. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1916. Reproduction in Kessinger Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0-548-47043-5.
• The Cryptography of Dante. A. A. Knopf, 1921.
• The Cryptography of Shakespeare. H. Bowen, 1922. Reproduction in Kessinger Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0-7661-2814-8.
• The Burial of Francis Bacon and Its Significance Rosicrucian. Reproduction in Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4179-7126-6.
• The Compound Anagrammatic Acrostic of Shakespeare. Reproduction in Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4253-5653-2.
• The Simple Anagrammatic Acrostic of Shakespeare. Reproduction in Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4253-5652-4.
• Poems by Walter Conrad Arensberg. Kessinger Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0-548-47033-6.