2 p, mimeograph on matte off white paper
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College Year 11 Summer Bulletin 5
Monday, July 31, 1944
CALENDAR:
There will be a meeting of the Board of Fellows this evening at 7:15 o’clock in Study 10.
This Evening at 8:15 o’clock in the College Dining Hall Joseph Breitenbach will give his second in a series of slide-illustrated lectures on photography. He will speak on “The Human Face in Photography.”
There will be a brief meeting of the regular Faculty on Tuesday afternoon at 1:15 o’clock in the Round House to consider the reports of Examiners Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling on Maja Bentley and Jane Stone.
The Board of Fellows will continue its regular monthly business meeting for July on Tuesday, August 1 at 2:00 o’clock in Study 10.
The Admissions Committee will meet in the Straus “Patio” on Tuesday evening at 7:15 o’clock.
On Wednesday evening at 8:15 o’clock in the College Dining Hall Jean Charlot will give his second lecture in his series of informal lectures on “The Life and Times of the Old Masters.” He will speak on the life and works of Domonico Theotocopules, called El Groco. This lecture was postponed from last Wednesday.
A recital of compositions written for the viola will be presented on Saturday evening, August 5, at 8:15 o’clock by Marcel Dick, first violist with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra and instructor in the Summer Music Institute. The program will include a Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord by William Friedmann Bach, in which Mr Dick will be joined by Yella Pessl; an unaccompanied Sonata for Ernest Bloch, with Lionel Novak, Professor of Music at Converse College, as accompanist.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Jean Charlot, teacher of Composition and of Drawing and Painting from nature in the Summer Art Institute, has begun work on a mural set in two panels on the reinforced concrete pylons under the Studies Building. The set will include two draped figures, one symbolizing “Inspiration”, the other symbolizing “Knowledge”.
Mr Charlot will be assisted in his art project by Faith Murray, who has been designated “official helper”, and by a group of students who will aid in mixing and laying mortar, in embedding wire lathes in the outside moulding, and in grinding and blending colors with pestles in primitive but well-tested fashion.
The panels will be superimposed upon the pylons in true fresco style. This means hat the point will be put upon fresh mortar, that a section of a figure will be completed each day, and that an adjoining section will be laid the following morning. This is the only technique in which the ground is also the binder. By the ground is meant the surface upon which the paint is applied; by the binder is meant the element used with the mixture to insure its adherence to the ground. The mortar and paint mix chemically as they dry together into ta permanent medium for outdoor painting.
Later in the Summer Quarter, students, under the direction and supervision of Mr Charlet, will design and, eventually, partially paint frescos of their own on the remaining pylon surfaces under the Studies Building.
Herbert A Miller will leave Lake Eden on Thursday afternoon for Temple University in Philadelphia, where, for six weeks, he will teach courses in General Sociology and World Minorities. He will be accompanied to Pennsylvania by Mrs Miller.
B M C Community Bulletin Summer Bulletin 5 Page2
The address of the Millers will be: 1901 North Park Avenue, Philadelphia 22, Pennsylvania.
Joseph Breitenbach, who has been giving a course in photography to students in the Summer Art Institute and making photographs of teachers and students in action on the campus, will leave on Saturday for his home and studio in New York City.
According to Jean Charlet, Pearl, the Black Mountain College, served as the model for all the horses in his fresco, at the University of Georgia, depicting the Conquest of Mexico.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS:
New Addresses:
Private Cornella Goldsmith, A612647
Company 8, 21st Regiment
Third WAC Training Center
Port Oglethorpe, Georgia
Leddie Marshack
7 Norton Street
New York City
In the Mail:
T/5 Frances Foster writes from India: “Last night I saw a production of the India People’s Theatre Association, several pantomimes, songs and dances on the Bengal famine. The members of this organization believe that art forms do not justify their existence unless they concern themselves with the people’s problems. There are units of this organization all over India. Their work is supplemented by the cultural squads of the Communists that go into the villages- also the best artists and writers…”
Will Hamlin writes from New York City: “My job is as interesting as most jobs are. I rewrite, make-up, photograph for and generally nursemaid a newspaper every two weeks- the Eastern Procurement District Reporter, put out by the organization that buys all the Army plans. At the same time there is the getting together of a file of officer pictures, pictures that start with the full colonels and work down. Then there is the chasing down of information about the things bought by and for the planes- life-saving equipment, survival kits, and other things.”
Private Lucian Marquis writes from Camp Livingston in Louisiana: “am slowly edging closer to the kind of work I have always wanted to do. Am now part of a Battalion Intelligence Section. This is the glamour name for scouting and patrolling and very little sleep. Also a more intimate knowledge of the Louisiana landscape with its pines, bayous, chiggers, ticks and mosquitos. Despite all these handicaps I managed to get to New Orleans twice and made the rounds from Anteline’s to the old Absinthe House….I followed with some interest the discussion Fernando started, ie, a graduate school and Stix’s comment. I think both stress the communal aspect of BMC, make it seem all-time, all-consuming job. Which it certainly wasn’t. communal living was relatively simple…The great attraction for me at least lay in the freedom that was given to each individual, freedom to work or to loaf, and the close relation to the teacher. Things that aren’t possible anywhere else. Thus working harder the last year really didn’t affect communal living. Perhaps one didn’t see any many people, perhaps there weren’t as many parties (it was also the year the war began here), but that we were less a community for it, or less members in it, I doubt very much…A graduate school would seem possible in the arts only; in all other fields the equipment, post graduate work should be taken in larger schools where there is money, equipment, and expensive professors. But there is a real role for many more Black Mountain working as junior colleges and colleges teaching people among other things that solidarity can also be possible without an all-consuming artists at hand. The problem of specialization which Fernando raises is of course very real in our civilization but it reaches back to high school or even grammar school...I have said these things haphazardly and badly but hope the disciplined train of thought is perceptible…”
