Art Junket - East — mbfitzmahan

"Ansel Adams begins with the extraordinary in a place like Yosemite, and then makes it even more so. Edward Weston begins with the mundane and turns it into something worthy of obsessive focus." Amy Scott, chief curator at the Autry Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2016

In 1905, Picasso asked Gertrude Stein to sit for a portrait. Picasso said, "Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will.” (Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933.)

In February, 2019, the Art Junket welcomed New York to the Art Junket. Art Junket East is a spin-off of Art Junket West in Northern California. The first salon on the East coast was held in upstate New York near Pawling, New York.

After years of showing my photos on social media and occasionally exhibiting my photos in a coffee shop or a gallery, I have found that a much more rewarding venue is to share my photography at the quarterly salons of the Art Junket.

The salon or cafe has a long and important history in the development of art. A salon has been an incubator for innovation in art.

CHINESE SCHOLARS - Bringing together a group of artists to a private home to share ideas is an ancient Chinese concept. The Chinese scholar was the Uomo Universale (Universal Man) two thousand years before Italy produced Michelangelo. These Chinese musicians, artist, writers, and thinkers monopolized the art of painting and calligraphy in China. They gathered over tea and shared their techniques, new tools, and ideas.

SALON OF PARIS - At 27 rue de Fleurus, they came to meet Gertrude Stein, an American expat. A prickly critic, but a devotee of new ideas, Stein invited the new, unformed future greats of the art and writing world. From 1903-1946, she supplied a unique place for thinkers to come. Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were among her guests. Stein said, "Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began." (James R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, 1974)

Dressed in dark brown corduroy and seated in her overstuffed chair, Stein was a fearful sight. Terrified, the young artists shyly showed her their newest work. One of my favorite stories is that when the matron deigned to look at the paintings of Henri Cartier-Bresson, my favorite photographer, she advised him to give up painting, "Go back and work for your industrialist father." Three years later, Cartier-Bresson, stopped painting and took up photography.

F/64 GROUP OF OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - In the 1930s, the f/64 group of photographers of California met in a friend's old barn in Oakland. The Oakland Bay Bridge wasn't built until 1933, so Ansel Adams, coming from San Francisco had to get there by ferry boat. All the photographers showed up with photos in hand.

The males of the group were a hard drinking, hard womanizing bunch. They included Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Brett Weston. Interestingly, though, the group was more liberal than other art groups of the era and encouraged women photographers to join them, including Imogene Cunningham and Dorothea Lange. F/64 included as many women as men. The photographers met, philosophized and they partied, drinking illegal alcohol. Ansel Adams arranged to have their work exhibited in San Francisco on November 15, 1932, at the de Young Museum.

THE ART JUNKET OF BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA - Over an espresso and a hot apple pie, my daughter and I met in a café on Solano Avenue in North Berkeley. Erin and I discussed the idea of reviving the salon concept for artists - a salon for artists who are beset with 21st century demands, yet feel a need to make art. Supported by my second daughter, Katie, the three of us recruited a few friends to come to our first salon in March 2015. Art Junket West thrives in the Bay Area meeting quarterly and exhibiting yearly to the public. Five years later, the Art Junket East met for the first time in New York in February 2019.