MARIO COOPER

by Britt Zaist

My favorite teacher at ASL (Art Students´ League of New York) was Mario Cooper. My goal in the early 80´s was to study drawing (Gustav Rehberger), oil painting (Francis Cunningham) and watercolor (Mario Cooper) at the League. What started out as a watercolor painting course blossomed into a friendship with Mr. Cooper and his wife, Dale Meyers. And he didn´t just teach painting. He taught the whole concept of art, philosophy, literature, music. Time was spent in class introducing his students to other artists we knew little about, to new (for us) ideas: the Golden Mean, Fibonacci numbers, to stories about his past and how they lead to his becoming the president of the American Watercolor Society. I learned one story firsthand about his bringing his art work unannounced to Harvey Dunn, a famous illustrator who later became his teacher. In Mr. Cooper´s watercolor class, everyone (but me) had trained artistic skills whereas I had been a secretary with good steno and typing skills. The latter he had more use of to compile information for the American Watercolor Society. He gave me that assignment, I did it quickly and walked over to the Hotel des Artistes to deliver the completed work. The doorman sent me up. I figured that was o.k. But going unannounced was not as Mr. Cooper patiently explained. I was mortified but forgiven and therein began the friendship.

For this story, I went thru files that I haven´t looked at in over 40 years. Files with the value studies that we would go to Central Park to make, beautiful brush stroke studies that Mr. Cooper showed us how to make with watercolors that would granulate. And the books he wrote – one with a lovely inscription to me. All a part of a time well spent in NYC that I was so lucky to have had.

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This story was generated by one of the people in my husband´s (Henry Vermillion) Tuesday Night Drawing Session. He wanted to know if I would teach him to draw in my style. My response “No, that takes a good deal of work studying the figure, learning anatomy and composition.” And it does. I was very fortunate to study drawing the figure with Gustav Rehberger at the Art Students´ League of New York. He was an incredible artist who took time with his students. At the League, instructors only needed to come a few days a week to lecture and demonstrate leaving the day-to-day instruction with their carefully chosen monitors who worked exactly in their style. Mr. Rehberger lived in the Carnegie Hall Apartments across the street from the League (ASL). His classes were large with all of us straddling the “donkeys” (wooden drawing “desks”) around a raised platform that held the model. Mr. Rehberger would lecture and demonstrate the required number of times but he would also come in daily to check, to offer help- always asking permission to draw on your pad to show you where you were going wrong.

He demonstrated brilliantly and fast. He gave me one of his one-minute demonstrations (pictured here) with a promise I would not sell it! Forty-one years later, it is still mine- a reminder of a magical time spent studying painting and drawing full time at the League. But I learned the most from him. To paraphrase him: “You have the first minute to capture the gesture, the next to articulate the form, the remainder to individualize it.” I have never gotten past the first minute leaving the viewer to fill in the rest. But I couldn´t have done that without studying with Mr. Rehberger-learning anatomy and watching his demonstrations.

He was the vice president of the Pastel Society of America (one of its founders). He would give wonderful art and music performances to large audiences drawing apocalyptic horses and figures to classical music- having his last stroke end exactly with the last note of the music.

A friend reading these newsletters of mine quoted George Burns: “You should not live in the past, but it is (SO) nice to have one.” She is right and it´s nice to share the memories.

GRAY FOX

by Britt Zaist

I met a nice man at a friends´ dinner party who wanted me to draw a gray fox for him. I am used to having clients provide the photos to work from. It was a busy time at the gallery (Galeria Izamal that I managed for 29 years) and I didn´t feel like going thru the research work for a gray fox. So, I stalled… He didn´t come back to SMA again; but he did send with his friends an enormous, expensive wildlife coffee table size book for me to select the gray fox photos to draw from. I honestly still didn´t want to do it. More time went by and the book remained unopened in my studio.

Then these same friends told me that their friend had cancer and was having a hard time paying his bills. I felt awful because he had bought this expensive book for me to keep and to draw from. I opened it right away– found photos to work from and drew a number of drawings of a gray fox. I scanned them to him to make his choice from and said I would send that piece in “his” book free as a gift from me. But it was too late. The nice man had died.

Eventually the drawings all sold…no doubt to people visiting the gallery who thought it was a dog. With my work-you never know… When we moved, I gave the book away to another artist who did wildlife drawings. I told him this story. He said it was sad that the man never got the fox drawings but that someone somewhere was loving them. That´s nice but I still feel badly about not doing his work promptly and for accepting his book.