Paintings and Drawings by S. MacDonald-Wright and Paintings by Morgan Russell, November 5-December 5, 1931

Together Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell developed a movement in art called Synchromism, which used color in an abstract, rather than representational manner. They drew on analogies with musical composition, but combined planned intervals and chords with more intuitive combinations. By focusing on juxtaposed planes of color, contrasting to emphasize the materiality and tactility of color, they believed their paintings could directly evoke emotions and sensations. Its guiding principle was the close relationship between color and music, as MacDonald-Wright explained, ""Synchromism simply means 'with color' as symphony means 'with sound.' Their first exhibition as Synchromists took place in June 1913 in Munich.

Macdonald-Wright was born on July 8, 1890 in Charlottesville, Virginia and was named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom his mother greatly admired. In 1907, at the age of seventeen, Macdonald-Wright married Ida Wyman. The young couple relocated to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne, the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Colarossi. While in Paris, Stanton moved in avant-garde art circles, meeting several famous French artists. As a young student, he was fascinated by color theory. In particular, Michel-Eugène Chevreul's writing on ""simultaneous contrast,"" studying how colors react to one another, would influence Macdonald-Wright.

During his studies in Paris, Macdonald-Wright met Morgan Russell, a fellow American studying art. From 1911 to 1913, the two friends studied intensely with the Canadian painter and color theory proponent, Percyval Tudor-Hart. From Tudor-Hart, they learned to see color as related to music. The painters argued that harmonious visual compositions could be produced by selecting ""color chords"" that were developed from chromatic scales in which each color was assigned to a note on the musical scale. Pitch was expressed through luminosity of color, tone through hue, and intensity through saturation. This is what led them to develop Synchronism.

Relying on color, Synchromism bridged elements of Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and German Expressionism. Indeed, the relationships between color, music, and sensation were themes common in early 20th-century abstraction. While Synchromism was one of the earliest to develop, it was commonly dismissed by other abstract artists as having merely borrowed the principles of Orphism or Cubism. Macdonald-Wright adamantly denied these influences, although their grandiose language might have contributed to the critics' hostility.

At the start of World War I, Macdonald-Wright and his brother Willard Huntington Wright moved to London, where they lived for the next two years. During this time, the brothers collaborated on three art books that would later be published in New York. During these same years, however, Macdonald-Wright began reintroducing figurative elements into his paintings, often referencing a Greco-Roman tradition. In 1915, Macdonald-Wright moved to New York, where he lived with Thomas Hart Benton and attempted to gain recognition with American audiences. Unfortunately, he did not reach the level of fame he had been hoping for and struggled to make ends meet. Towards the end of his time in New York, he taught painting lessons in order to earn money and created posters and illustrations. Meanwhile, Morgan Russell turned away from the Synchromist style in 1916.

In 1918, Macdonald-Wright decided to move to Los Angeles to see if he might have better success there. In 1920, with the support of Alfred Stieglitz, he organized ""The Exhibition of American Modernists,"" the first show of modern art in Los Angeles. Shortly after this exhibition, Macdonald-Wright decided he was dissatisfied with the ""sterile artistic formulism"" of modern art, and even found Synchromism stale and academic. He thus abandoned the style in 1921, but revisited it in the 1950s. From 1922 to 1930, he served as the director of the Los Angeles Art Students League. Also during the 1920s, he expanded his studies of Asian art and culture, which had first started in Paris during 1912.

Under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which was a pilot for the larger Works Progress Administration (WPA), Macdonald-Wright was selected to paint a series of murals for the Santa Monica Library, which he completed in 18 months. Then, beginning in 1935, he served as the Director of the Southern California division of the WPA, as well as WPA Technical Advisor for seven western states.

From 1942 to 1952, Macdonald-Wright taught courses on art history, Asian aesthetics, and iconography at UCLA, USC, Scripps College, and the University of Hawaii. In 1952 and 1953, he traveled to Japan as a Fulbright exchange professor and lectured at Kyoiku Daigaku, the Tokyo University of Education.

In 1954, Macdonald-Wright retired from teaching, and returned his focus to abstract painting, producing an impressive body of ""neo-synchromist"" work. He continued to experiment with elements of Eastern art in these works, integrating them with the elements and principles of Synchromism.

Beginning in 1958, Macdonald-Wright spent five months a year living at the Zen monastery of Kenninji, Kyoto, where he learned more about Japanese art and poetry, and did a lot of painting. The following year, in 1959, MacDonald-Wright completed his Synchome Kineidoscope, a project he had envisaged with Russell decades earlier. These years witnessed a resurgence of interest in Macdonald-Wright's color painting. He was the subject of several retrospectives and there was also a brief revival of interest in Synchromism. Stanton Macdonald-Wright passed away at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, on August 22, 1973 at the age of 83.

Morgan Russell was born on January 25, 1886 in New York City to Antoniette and Charles Jean Russell. His father died when he was nine years old and his mother in 1909. He first worked as a model for James Fraser’s sculpture classes. He attended the Art Students League from 1903 to 1905, where he studied sculpture with Lee and James Fraser. It was in this same class where he encountered his future benefactor, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. He enrolled in an architecture school in 1904 and studied there for two years.

With the encouragement and financial support of Whitney, Russel traveled to France and Italy in 1906. After his voyage to Europe, he returned to New York and studied painting at the Art Students League with Robert Henri. He again left New York in 1909 to return to Paris, where he encountered the Fauve’s brash use of primary and secondary color and Gauguin’s intriguing pigments. He met several famous French artists and figure’s in the avant-garde circles. He attended Matisse’s Art school that same year where he learned new color principals. In 1911, he met Stanton Macdonald-Wright.

Macdonald-Wright and Russell had their first exhibition of Synchromist paintings in June of 1913 at the Der Neue Kunstsalon in Munich, followed by the Gallery Berheim-Jeune. Russell also exhibited this work at The Armory Show in 1913. By the end of 1915, he was ready to move on to something else, and his work became more realist than abstract. Russell went back to the United States in 1916.

On September 28th, 1918, he married Emilie Francesconi and the couple returned to France. After living briefly in Nice, Russel returned to Paris, where he found himself overwhelmed by the pace of the urban lifestyle. On July 4th 1921, he bought a farm and settled in Aigremont, France, a village in Burgundy. However after being isolated for so long, Russell was forced to return to the urban chaos to tend to his career. He exhibited in Salon des Independants in Paris each year from 1922 to 1925.

By the fall of 1922, things were looking a lot brighter for Russell. He overcame his depression and went back to painting abstract Synchromies, calling them ‘‘Eidos,’’ or ‘‘form’’ in Greek. Russell wanted his Eidos works to be accompanied by a kinetic light machine, which Macdonald-Wright successfully built years later. By the end of the 1920s his paintings returned to mainly figurations with strong Expressionists colors and Cubist technique and boldness. However, the artist never truly abandoned Synchromies. Later in life he combined figural painting and Synchromies.

In 1931 he went to California and worked with Stanton Macdonald-Wright at the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles. It was at this time that they exhibited together at the Legion of Honor. Russell was very much appreciated by the art community in California, and was welcomed by the Art Students League. Once he had completed the academic year in Los Angeles, he decided that he would return to France. For the next three years Russell would spend his winters working in Rome and the rest of the time in Aigremont.

Through the last half of the 1930s Russell’s work demonstrated a desire to express religious meaning. After the death of Emile in 1938, Russel married his mistress Suzanne Binon and upon the end of the Second World War, the two settled in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Russell converted to Catholicism in 1947. By this time Russell’s health had begun to fail. In 1948 Russell experienced a paralyzing stroke which forced him to learn to write and paint with his left hand. In the first few years of the 1950s Russell’s work was exhibited in New York at the Rose Fried Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art. Morgan Russell died in a nursing home in Broomall, Pennsylvania, on May 29, 1953.

Sources:
“Morgan Russell (1886-1953).” Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery. Accessed May 5, 2022. https://www.sullivangoss.com/artists/morgan-russell-1886-1953.
“Stanton Macdonald-Wright Biography, Life & Quotes.” The Art Story. Accessed May 5, 2022. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/macdonald-wright-stanton/life-and-legacy/.