Westerners Up

Nothing riles a West Coast artist more than being told that he lives in an artistic bush league, that every artist worthy of his brush ought to take off for Manhattan and the majors. To prove that they can hold their own even in international competition, West Coast stay-at-homes this year decided on an all-out effort. Occasion: the third Sao Paulo Bienal, which Brazilian Millionaire Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho has promoted to rank with Venice's Biennale and the Carnegie International as a worldwide roundup of modern art.

"I'm Amazed." To field their best, West Coast museum directors from Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles, headed by San Francisco Museum Director Dr. Grace L. McCann Morley (TIME, Feb. 28), selected the outstanding talents in their own areas, weeded down their entries to 98 works from 88 West Coast painters, printmakers and sculptors.

No one expected the relatively unknown Americans to walk off with a major prize at Sao Paulo last week. Aiming at a broad regional showing, the U.S. presented only one or two works by each artist, rather than the ten or more works which a jury expects to see before granting top honors. Bent on "making up for the injustice at Venice" last year, the ten-man jury gave the $4,000 grand prize to France's aging (74) modernist master, Fernand Leger (TIME color page, June 22, 1953-- see cut), then bypassed 29 works by topflight British Painter Graham Sutherland to hand the next prize of $1,300 to Italian Abstractionist Alberto Magnelli.

Top sculpture award went to another Italian, 45-year-old Sculptor Mirko, for his bronze, stone and copper figures. Not until the jury got to the 18 lesser awards did a West Coast artist finally score: a purchase award to Kentucky-born San Franciscan Ralph du Casse, 39, for his strong linear abstraction entitled The Viking. The news, when it reached California, all but floored Prizewinner du Casse. Said he: "I'm amazed. I don't paint to sell. That's too much to hope for."

Hash Slingers & Barkeeps. The plight of Painter du Casse is typical of most Western artists. After getting an M.A. in art at the University of California on the G.I. bill, Du Casse took a year in Paris, polished off at Hans Hofmann's strong hold of abstract art in New York. But back in San Francisco with a wife and two children to support, Du Casse had to take a job as a furniture salesman, now paints only on his days off.

Other artists teach, full or part time. Those who cannot find teaching jobs unload fish, run elevators, keep bar, build boats. In Sausalito, Calif., for instance, the Glad Hand restaurant alone boasts two painters as cooks.

Despite the tough economic cross-rip, West Coast artists have strong reasons for hanging on. The West Coast scenery is an obvious inspiration for any artist.

And most feel deeply rooted in their communities. Says Portland's Carl Morris: "There's a determination here to find your own way, to be an individual and not get lost in a 'school.' " Besides, artists find that economics works both ways. Says the wife of a leading San Francisco abstract artist, Walter Kuhlman: "If you have to live in a cold-water flat, you'll be a lot more comfortable here than in New York."

Top of the League. Only a handful of resident West Coast artists have earned international, or even nationwide, reputations. Among those who have: Seattle's Mark Tobey, 64, with his shimmering, Orient-influenced "white writing," and Morris Graves, 45, whose paintings have the touch of Chinese brushwork; Los Angeles' Rico Lebrun, 55, founder of the West Coast's school of symbolic realism.

But the tie that binds most West Coast artists together is, by and large, a headlong devotion to abstract art. Under the tutelage of Abstract Expressionists Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko (now decamped for the East), the techniques of drip and scrawl took hold like an epidemic of rabies. Currently, West Coast abstract painting tends to be more free and open, reflecting the mood and terrain of the West. But still, as one San Francisco painter points out: "About the only way you can be radical around here is to paint flowers."

In the hands of talented youngsters and oldtimers alike, the West has produced some handsome results, as the current Sao Paulo Bienal shows. Among the works from the top of the West Coast league: form Los Angeles, the hard-punching abstractions of Hans Burkhardt, the luminescent abstractionism of S. Macdonald-Wright, the liquid impressionism of Sueo Serisawa, and the violent bird-fighting picture of Jack Zajac, 25, currently a top student at Rome's American Academy; from San Francisco, strong abstract canvases by David Park and Robert McChesney, and the powerful, six-foot abstractions of Richard Diebenkorn, 33; from Portland, the expressive sea forms of Charles Heaney and the smoky, complex abstraction of Louis Bunce; from Seattle, the meticulous work of Tobey and Graves.

A Look West. In sculpture, the best U.S. works looked fresh from the machine shop: from Portland's Tom Hardy, 33, a welded-steel zebu; from Los Angeles' peppery Bernard Rosenthal, a hammered bronze "Crab's Nest"; from San Francisco's Keith Monroe, a Giacometti-like grouping of steel figurines. Only notable absentee artists were two ex-San Franciscans, John Hultberg, 33 (TIME, May 2), winner of this year's Corcoran Biennial, and Sam Francis, 32, currently the leading young American painter in Paris.

But even without them, the West Coast's Sao Paulo showing convincingly proved that American art is as broad as the U.S. itself.

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