Understanding Modern Art : Boundless spirit of Clay Edgar Spohn

David Beasley

If, then, this is spirit's modus operand! for self-expression, we have only to transfer this conception from the scale of the cosmic spirit working on the plane of the universal to that of the individualized spirit working on the plane of the particular, to see that the formation of an ideal image by means of our thought is setting first cause in motion with regard to this specific object.-Thomas [...] The natural impulse is raised by the mind and the imaginative faculty into the regions of the ideal, producing pleasures more airy and delightful, more elevating and lasting, than those of sense alone, the physical pleasure becoming a psychical delight.-Felix Clay, The Origin of the Sense of Beauty, 1908 (Known to Clay Spohn). [...] He grew up in Piedmont where the family rode horses, picnicked in the hills, and camped out amongst the beauties of nature, John Jr., Lena Schaeffer, and Clay Spohn in San Francisco 5 UNDERSTANDING MODERN ART One of the strongest influences, he recalled later, was his experience of traveling across the continent by train at the age of five with his parents to visit relatives in the east. [...] In the show was a painting by an American, Henry V. Poor, about which Spohn overheard a man say to his wife that the "V" stood for "Very." Spohn was shocked and remembered it in after years when his own work was criticized because the remark illustrated the thoughtlessness of the public and the need of the artist to have the courage to feel free to do whatever he wanted to do, regardless of how fo [...] He took courses from Kenneth Hayes Miller, the avant garde intellectual of the League, George Luks, the boisterous, flamboyant exhibitionist who painted somewhat in the manner of Franz Hals with exuberance, Joseph Pennel, the squeaky-voiced master of the etching plate, Nicholides and Boardman Robinson, the excellent draftsmen and instructors in drawing, the sculptor Lientelli, the anatomist and ta