A Surprise Discovery About the 1913 Avant-garde Armory Art Show

Previously unknown to me, my family's photography business, Hagelstein Brothers Photographers., was the official photographer of the 1913 Armory Show which brought Modern Art to America.  A reader of my blog indirectly led me to this link which documents my family's photographic involvement in this historic event.

I knew that the family business, established in 1866, had progressed from portraiture photography to commercial photography until they finally closed some 120 years later, and I was vaguely aware that they once also specialized in photographic reproductions of paintings, hand coloring the prints, but I did not know that my grandfather, Harry, went on such assignments, indeed, this particularly important one.

A recent issue of the Wall Street Journal reported that while the Armory Show "was widely panned" it nonetheless"sparked a new era" --The show lasted a scant four weeks, but Manhattan went on to become the Florence of modernism. The Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1929, became the first cultural institution in the Western Hemisphere ever to outclass comparable institutions in Europe. New York became the natural home of glass-box Bauhaus modernism at its best and worst (a style that is now re-emerging with new panache). And it became the home of Abstract Expressionism, of de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock—of the ultimate, transcendent achievement of abstract art....It all started at the Armory.

A more detailed account is in the New Criterion, The Armory Show at 100; The lessons of the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art

I've written about the family's photography business before, but there may be more curiosity concerning Hagelstein Brothers when the New York Historical Society "The Armory Show at 100" opens in October.

My beloved Uncle Philip was the family historian and regrettably I never had the opportunity to record all of his incredible family and business knowledge before he died.  He and my father (who was known by his middle name, Robert, and not his given one, Harry) were the last Hagelstein brothers to run the business.  I had chosen to go into publishing. 

Uncle Phil had given me some documents and from those I pieced together that my great-grandmother was from the Hamburg, Germany area but most of my family came from Cologne.  Four brothers, Anthony, Carl, Philip, and William came to America between 1853 and 1856.  Philip and Anthony bought a photography business in 1866 at 142 Bowery in New York City and although the two other brothers may had been involved on and off, Philip apparently was the main driving force. (William was drafted into the Union Army and he survived the war, settling in Brooklyn and went into the metal fabrication business. Carl went to California to make his fortune but came back after the war).

My grandfather, Harry, entered the business around 1905 and about 1915 he moved the business from the Bowery to 100 Fifth Avenue where it flourished (completing its transition to a commercial photographic firm from portraiture which it specialized in during the Bowery years) through the depression and two major wars. 

His sons, my father and my Uncle Philip, ran the business after WW II until the late 1980's at which time it was liquidated.  It was moved to Long Island City from 100 5th Avenue just before my father's death in 1984.

I have lamented the fact that the records of Hagelstein Brothers and, more importantly, hundreds and hundreds of Daguerreotypes and prints were destroyed in the early 1990's when my Uncle Philip's home (where they were stored) had to be sold and he went into a nursing home suffering from dementia..  We had sought to donate them but there was no interest at the time either from libraries or museums.  There was just no place to store them. Today, they would have all been digitized.

As an interesting family history aside, my father, who as I mentioned previously used the name, Robert,( my first name), purportedly was named after Anthony's son Robert, who became a well known Botanist. 

Coincidentally, at about the time I learned of the Armory assignment, out of the blue I received an email from another reader, Tom Luzzi, who had come across my blog after searching for information on Hagelstein Brothers as he had some photographs from their studio -- including ones of my grandfather and his sister -- and asked whether I would like to have them, explaining, my mother, who is 93, said the pictures came from her Aunt when they lived in Brooklyn in the early 1900's.  Her Aunt was best friends with a Kate Hagelstein (Harry's sister), who later became Kate McClelland.  The photos are from the Hagelstein studio and are of a Harry Hagelstein as a child while another photo shows Harry and Kate. 

Then he said he had several more, some which might be of the family, so he went to the considerable time and effort to scan and send them all.  This thoughtful, and generous act on his part allows me to incorporate his photographs as well as the few that I have from the Hagelstein Brothers Photography studio when it was in the Bowery and they are interspersed throughout this entry or appended at the end. 

Remarkably, he produced the only photograph I have ever seen on the co-founder of the studio, my great grandfather, Philip. I am profoundly grateful to Tom for making the effort to contact me and then  to scan and email the photographs he had from his mother.

Nonetheless, most of the studio's photographs have been lost to time.  But I was delighted to learn about the studio's work on the Armory exhibit and hope that anyone looking for information on Hagelstein Brothers Photographers will find this summary helpful. Below is the beginning and conclusion of a long article that appeared in the February and March 1942 issues of The Commercial Photographer.  It was about the firm and its innovative work in commercial photography.  (Unfortunately, Blogger does not support PDFs so I can not include it in its entirety, but anyone doing research on the studio can contact me at lacunaemusing@gmail.com and I will send a PDF.)

Creating "Sales Powered Photography"

A Two Part Series (With fourteen illustrations by Hagelstein Brothers)

"SALES Powered Photography"-this phrase which appears in the telephone Red Book advertising of Hagelstein Brothers, 100 Fifth Avenue; New York City, aptly suggests the firm's outstanding accomplishment in the field of merchandising. H. P. Hagelstein has developed an organization which is expert in dramatizing furniture, pianos, radio cabinets, lamps, china, glass, silverware, and other merchandise for the manufacturer who uses photography to sell his product to the wholesale or retail dealer. Associated with him in the management of the business

are his sons Philip and Robert.

This firm was founded by Philip Hagelstein, father of the present owners, and his brothers in 1866. In his studio, on the Bowery, he originally specialized in fine Daguerreotypes and portraits made on wet plates, working with the limited materials available at that time. Examples of his Daguerreotypes dating from 1860 to 1870 were included in the Eastman Kodak exhibit during the recent New York World's Fair. About 1880 he began to pioneer in commercial work for manufacturers in the conservative fashion of the time, and as his sons entered the business this specialty was further developed. Not until 1900, however, was portrait work entirely discontinued and attention focused on two special fields, one dealing with the manufacturer's merchandising needs, the other consisting of reproductions of paintings for artists and publishers.

When this latter specialty was a very important phase of the business, direct negatives from llx14 to 24x30 were made, and reproductions in black-and-white, sepia, and hand colored prints on platinum paper were sold to publishers and art dealers. These were discontinued due to the entry of mechanical printing processes, such as photogravure, photogelatine and color printing. But Hagelstein Brothers still have in their files examples of the exquisite reproductions of noted paintings which were done on platinum papers. And today they still photograph paintings for portrait artists, murals, and frequently sculpture.

Harry P. Hagelstein, who now directs sales contacts and planning, is as creatively minded in adapting photography to effective merchandising as in the technical aspects of camera work. That's an important reason why many customers have been buying photography from this concern for years-one firm, in fact, has been on the books since 1878 when Philip Hagelstein began to be interested in the relation of merchandise and photography.......

The firm's very best advertising, it is safe to say, is to be found in its adherence to the extremely high standards that Philip Hagelstein set for himself when photograph was very young and adventurous in 1866.  The profession has grown considerably older, but reliability and craftsmanship are still "better coin than money"....At any rate, Hagelstein Brothers have built on them for 75 years -- and will continue so in the future.

 

And they did for nearly fifty years more until advertising shifted from producing photographs for salesmen's catalogs to other media, magazines, radio, and television.  

One of the nice things writing this blog is occasionally hearing from readers whose lives have been touched in similar ways.  This is a postscript to this particular entry, received two years after I wrote it.  I’m including the email here by permission of the writer, Frank Fink, as well as the photograph he sent of his grandfather, taken by my great-grandfather in 1889.  As I said in the entry, most of the precious glass plates and prints from Hagelstein Brothers were destroyed after my Uncle’s death, although I had tried to place them with a museum.  This was before the age of digitization.  It would have been a very different outcome if it happened today.  Still, I’m always on the lookout for prints from Hagelstein Brothers, and it was thoughtful of Frank Fink to forward this image.

 

Hi Bob,

I ran across your blog while researching the provenance of a photograph of my grandfather, Ferdinand Ephraim Fink (b. 1885, New York NY, d. 1961 Brooklyn NY). The print carries the Hagelstein imprint on the bottom.  The handwritten caption on the back reads "Daddy when he was 4 years old." I believe that was written by my aunt Doris.  That would have made the date of the portrait 1889.

Anyway, it looks like you are on your way to recreating the Hagelstein archives. Hope this helps. 

Best,

Frank Fink

For more information on the history of Hagelstein Bros., go to this link

Hubris at Sea

"Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power."...Wikipedia.   Hubris and boating are a deadly mix.

Sunk: The Incredible Truth About a Ship That Never Should Have Sailed  tells the nightmarish story of the replica ship HMS Bounty's last days at sea, and the events leading up to her Captain's decision (Robin Walbridge) to put out to sea as monster storm Sandy was making its way up the coast.  As the investigation is not yet completed, perhaps "hubris" is the wrong word, but this thorough, unbelievable account published by Outside Magazine seems to point that way.  Captain Walbridge charisma enlisted the support of his crew in his decision to depart New London, CT in advance of the storm, the ultimate objective to sail to St. Petersburg, FL, some 1,400 nautical miles away.

As the article recounts, the HMS Bounty was a ship with a long history of difficulties.  It was a money pit with unceasing hull leakage and engine systems that one crew member described as “definitely patched together.” (Thus it could never be certified by the Coast Guard as a seagoing passenger vessel.) On the other hand, Walbridge had challenged bad weather before, and always came through.  The crew was well aware of that and apparently were willing to follow him to hell.

The plan "was to sail due east, wait for Sandy to turn toward land, and then push the vessel into the storm’s southeast quadrant, where hurricane winds are usually weakest. Why he so quickly abandoned that idea once at sea remains a mystery."  As soon as the ship rounded Montauk Point, it made a heading of 165 degrees,  south by southeast, right into the fury of Sandy.

The harrowing account of the rescue of most of the crew by the Coast Guard is told here in detail.  Unfortunately, in addition to never recovering Captain Walbridge who went down with his beloved ship, one crew member died, the least experienced of all, Claudene Christian, who was reportedly the great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Fletcher Christian, the acting Master who led the famous Mutiny on the Bounty in the 18th century.  Such is normally the stuff of fiction. 

The replica HMS Bounty was made for the 1962 movie with Marlon Brando.  "The ship was supposed to be burned for the film’s final scene. Hollywood legend has it that Brando threatened to walk off the set if the vessel was destroyed."  So began its long history as a moored attraction vessel with Robin Walbridge as the driving force in preserving it -- all the more inexplicable his decision which ultimately led to the Bounty's demise and his own untimely death.  As I said in my entry on the Costa Concordia disaster, "whether you are piloting a large ship or your own recreational vessel, most nautical disasters are the result of its Captain being overconfident." 

During its lifetime, it sailed to many destinations, sometimes to Europe but mostly the Northeast coast, Florida, and the Caribbean.  We've seen her before during our own trips, most recently in Puerto Rico last year.  In 2009 she visited Peanut Island at the Lake Worth inlet in West Palm Beach, and my son, Jonathan, and I went to see her.  Farewell, HMS Bounty.

'Tis the Season

February is peak season here in the West Palm Beach area.  There are more theatres, parties, exhibits, and restaurant rendezvous than we ever experienced in the northeast.  It's sort of like being a teenager again, ne'er a night at home. If I wrote about every such instance in this space, each would be like an expanded Twitter entry.  So, instead, this is a roundup of some of the happenings in the first part of the month, in no particular order.

 

But segueing from my last entry in which there is an implied correlation between boating and art, we visited this weekend's noteworthy Palm Beach Jewelry, Art &Antique Show where international dealers, "attracts tens of thousands of private collectors, museum curators, investors and interior designers."  Red carpet night was on Friday and we were lucky enough to be invited by our friends Harry and Susan to mix with the rich and famous (they seem to be able to get tickets to anything!). This show is like Art Palm Beach but on steroids.

Although paintings and antique furniture and jewelry seem to be the standout exhibits (all for sale of course at breathtaking prices), I was attracted by the antique marine engines, refinished to be exacting models of the originals, sparkling in chrome and painstakingly restored.  Boating and art can be compatible.

Part of the fun of attending such an event is to see and be seen.  Where else can you find a dog being escorted through the exhibit in a baby stroller?  I found a rotund object of art looking up and decided to pose there myself looking up.  In just a few moments a number of people stopped to look up themselves.

Earlier in the month Ann and I had made several trips to The Society of the Four Arts on Palm Beach proper.  The Society hosts a number of cultural programs that are unique, starting with Jeffrey Siegel's "Keyboard Conversations."  The Feb. 3 program was devoted to Claude Debussy and, as usual, Mr. Siegel first explained each piece, highlighting some of the themes at the piano first, and then playing the piece in  its entirety.  It is better than a concert.  I wish I had learned classical instead of "popular piano" skills, but had I gone that route, perhaps I would not play at all at this point in my life. (How many people do you know who say they "used" to play the piano?)  That is the problem with the classical technique  -- use it or lose it.  So, perhaps I should be grateful as my skills are easily retained and although I cannot sight read the bass clef and have to improvise with chords, I can play some classical that way, as the brief video below attests (naturally, Debussy inspired by Mr. Siegel, but apologies to you, sir).

On Feb. 6 we found ourselves back at the The Society of the Four Arts for a performance of Pride and Prejudice by the L.A. Theatre Works.  As this is a traveling group, don't miss it if it comes to your town!  The actors are in costume but the work is presented as a radio program, the performers standing at microphones, but not reading from the script -- acting their parts -- and the productions have sound effects, just like an old time radio show.  Some of the actors play multiple parts with on stage costume changes.  It is very effective and Ann and I were briefly able to enter the world of Jane Austen (Ann's favorite author and one of mine). 

Ann returned, yet again, to The Society of the Four Arts the following week for an all day special lecture on Downton Abbey, to which we are both utterly addicted.  Naturally, high tea was served.  Alas, tonight is the last episode of Season 3.

Last night we had a Mediterranean dinner with three other couples at one of their condos overlooking Lake Worth, Singer Island, and West Palm Beach.  Beautiful. Each couple brought a part of the meal, Ann's assignment was the dessert, Tiramisu. My assignment was to enjoy.  "'Tis the season!" 

 

Reprise

He made me do it

He made me do it

But we only have

Ourselves

To blame

Reprise...

He made me do it

He made me do it

But we only have

Ourselves

To blame

Investors could easily sing these bastardized lyrics from Chicago's "Cell Block Tango."  The "he" is Federal Reserve's Ben Bernanke (a.k.a. Uncle Ben) and the "it" is, well, investment allocation and spending decisions which, probably, in retrospect, we will "only have ourselves to blame."  Poor Ben.  He was dealt an impossible hand, an economy teetering on the brink of depression, investment bankers gone wild in a regulatory free-for-all, and a calcified Federal government.  In the absence of long-term prudent fiscal policy, monetary policy became a surrogate.  While the inexorable march towards zero interest rates seemed to be the right Keynesian tonic to drag the economy back from the brink, it has gone on long, too long perhaps, and it is leading to investment consequences of unknown dimensions. 

Just a glance at the blogosphere and financial publications demonstrates completely divergent opinions, ranging from new highs, and not merely marginal ones, for the S&P 500, to apocalyptic prognostications.  The problem is the ' rear view mirror' is less useful than in the past.  Into uncharted waters we have sailed, not knowing whether this economic world is really round.

John Hussman, who has been coined a "perma-bear" is nonetheless an astute economist.  He has accused Bernanke of creating an investment bubble of historic proportions, making people feel wealthier and thus more willing to spend, spend, spend, on "stuff" and on more speculative investments.  Whether that was Bernanke's objective, or whether it is merely a side-effect of righting the sinking ship is anyone's guess.

Hussman's most recent column, A Reluctant Bear's Guide to the Universe provides a lengthy, well reasoned, and highly statistically supported view, concluding with his own prediction:

...market conditions remained characterized by an overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising-yields condition, the extremes of which have been observed only 6 other times in history: 1929, 1972, 1987, 2000, 2007, and 2011 (the last being reasonably forgettable, but still followed by a near-20% market decline). I doubt that the present instance will end any better, but that resolution may not be immediate, and I am quite aware how quickly each marginal new high in the market can erode both patience and prudence.

But, if that doesn't grab one's attention, there is Bill Gross' latest missive Credit Supernova!

As Gross is known as the "Bond King" managing more debt securities than anyone on the planet (other than Uncle Ben perhaps), one has to sit up and take notice when he forebodes possible economic disaster.  He cites the work of the economist Hyman Minsky on what he called "Ponzi finance:"

First, he claimed the system would borrow in low amounts and be relatively self-sustaining – what he termed “Hedge” finance. Then the system would gain courage, lever more into a “Speculative” finance mode which required more credit to pay back previous borrowings at maturity. Finally, the end phase of “Ponzi” finance would appear when additional credit would be required just to cover increasingly burdensome interest payments, with accelerating inflation the end result.

Minsky’s concept, developed nearly a half century ago shortly after the explosive decoupling of the dollar from gold in 1971, was primarily a cyclically contained model which acknowledged recession and then rejuvenation once the system’s leverage had been reduced. That was then. He perhaps could not have imagined the hyperbolic, as opposed to linear, secular rise in U.S. credit creation that has occurred since....While there has been cyclical delevering, it has always been mild – even during the Volcker era of 1979-81. When Minsky formulated his theory in the early 70s, credit outstanding in the U.S. totaled $3 trillion....Today, at $56 trillion and counting, it is a monster that requires perpetually increasing amounts of fuel, a supernova star that expands and expands, yet, in the process begins to consume itself. Each additional dollar of credit seems to create less and less heat. In the 1980s, it took four dollars of new credit to generate $1 of real GDP. Over the last decade, it has taken $10, and since 2006, $20 to produce the same result. Minsky’s Ponzi finance at the 2013 stage goes more and more to creditors and market speculators and less and less to the real economy. This “Credit New Normal” is entropic much like the physical universe and the “heat” or real growth that new credit now generates becomes less and less each year: 2% real growth now instead of an historical 3.5% over the past 50 years; likely even less as the future unfolds.

So our credit-based financial markets and the economy it supports are levered, fragile and increasingly entropic – it is running out of energy and time. When does money run out of time? The countdown begins when investable assets pose too much risk for too little return; when lenders desert credit markets for other alternatives such as cash or real assets.

Gross' recommendations: (1) Position for eventual inflation.....(2) Get used to slower real growth....(3) Invest in global equities with stable cash flows...(4) Transition from financial to real assets if possible at the margin: buy something you can sink your teeth into – gold, other commodities, anything that can’t be reproduced as fast as credit....(5) Be cognizant of property rights and confiscatory policies in all governments....(6) Appreciate the supernova characterization of our current credit system. At some point it will transition to something else.

Wow, this is a bond guy arguing for hard assets and even intimating government confiscation.

One only has to look at the stock market, real estate, and even collectibles to see the results of a prolonged zero interest rate environment.  How far and how long is the question.  Meanwhile, investors and savers are left with a conundrum, a sense of cognitive dissonance in a world in which an inflationary or disinflationary outcome can be argued simultaneously.  No doubt though, the longer the asset bubble lasts, the more comfortable people become with it as a representation of reality and they spend and invest accordingly, until we reach either the implosion of the supernova Gross mentions, or, in the best of worlds, a governmental devised glide path, over time, to reduce the deficit, setting down the economy in the halcyon fields of a balanced budget. If the latter can be engineered, then, perhaps, the market is discounting the same.  Otherwise, watch out below!

As a retiree I have chosen to self manage my investment portfolio.  These last couple of years have been exasperating; old asset allocation rules seem to no longer apply, with many categories now highly correlated. Bonds mature and reinvesting in the same at today's interest rates seems insane.  This is exactly what the Fed wants, so either one goes out further on the risk curve, (in fact, much further) or sits with cash earning no return, or spend it (the other option the Fed would like one to do).

I've resisted the latter until now.  We went to the Art Palm Beach Exhibit at the West Palm Convention Center as we did last year. Talk about collectibles and at astronomical prices. But if we have the inflationary engine that some predict, these might be bargains. 

One such painting I liked was Pham Luan's Boats at Sam Son Beach at $9,200, but I've always been a sucker for boat and sea scenes.

Or the whimsical Vextrola by Jerry Meyer (note some of the "hits" such as those by the band I'm Through with Love entitled "Carl's Got the Clap" and on the flip side "Herpes Forever" and the more appropriate -- for us -- the band Senescence Singers' top hits, "Did I Take My Pills?" and "I Forgot What I Forgot").  Alas, no price was listed, but that was one I'd be interested in. 

For a mere $595k one could buy the star of the show, Marc Chagall's Le Paysan à la Hache, and who knows, that might be a steal if central banks induce an inflationary binge. Our check book was short a few bucks.

If I had money to invest in art at the show, no doubt I would have just stopped at the exhibit of Lino Tagliapietra's beautiful glass work.  Lovely to see, and he was honored as the recipient of the Visionary Award.

I also liked a piece that seemed to capture the essence of today's merriment on Wall Street, the one of the three dancing sheep. Unfortunately, I failed to note the artist's name, so apologies to him/her.

Returning from the exhibit, we decided to buy another kind of "work of art" -- this one is guaranteed to depreciate, no matter what the economy does.  Nice to have some certainty for a change!   Returning to the beginning theme, a reprise if you will, "he made me do it!"  As the Federal Reserve is encouraging either risky investments or just plain old vanilla consumer spending, we chose the latter and bought a new boat, not just any boat, but one we think is beautiful and one that will indubitably be the last boat of my life.  It is a small boat, and although Grady-White gives it the moniker of the "209 Fisherman," I am outfitting it for cruising, not long range of course, but something Ann and I can take out on a lovely day, perhaps to Peanut or Munyon Island, or down to West Palm Beach, or even an occasional overnight to Ft. Lauderdale or Stuart, staying at a marina/hotel.  It even has a head so that makes a full day on the boat practical. 

We are naming it 'Reprise' and with the magic of Photoshop we've been able to get an idea of how the name will look on the hull, using Grady's stock photograph (the younger version of me and my two sons do not go with the boat). The name of course comes from our love of music, and Wikipedia describes it best: "In musical theatre, reprises are any repetition of an earlier song or theme, usually with changed lyrics to reflect the development of the story."  And at our stage in life, the developmental section is definitely a thing of the past, and this represents a true "reprise" as we started with a 20' boat more than thirty years ago.  And, so, our boating life will ultimately conclude with the same size boat, one that is being made to our specifications. Most would consider it a folly, but to us it will lovely to look at sitting on our boat lift and a joy to run with its quiet four-stroke Yamaha while listening to some of our favorite jazz pieces on its stereo. Thanks for the suggestion, Uncle Ben!