William Holst studied at the Hans Hofmann School in Provincetown, MA the summers of 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954. Hofmann said of Holst that with further development he had “promise of turning into quite a remarkable cultural asset for this country.”
Rounding out his commentary, Hofmann said “I know William Holst very well as an artist and have only praise for his great talent, for his maturity and achievements… has undeniable promise of growth…excellent character…. sincerity….. He is able to mingle easily with and stimulate people” (Hans Hofmann 1957, Hans Hofmann Papers, Smithsonian).
According to Richard Candee, Professor Emeritus, Boston University, Holst was “a passionate advocate of modernism as his canvases and sculptures show.” Hofmann’s concept of “push and pull” was fundamental to Holst’s work and teaching. So was “to make the most of the least” as he quoted Hofmann for a 1967 article about an exhibition of his own work. Thus, 13 years after his last formal instruction, he quoted his teacher – none other. He attended Hofmann’s school as part of the GI Bill, and might have continued for a sixth or seventh summer if not for a dispute between the school and the Veterans Administration. Prior to WWII, he taught at Proctor Academy in Andover, NH, and in 1940 co-founded the New Hampshire Art Association where he served on the board and committees until 1977. After his military service, he worked briefly as an illustrator and taught at The University of Florida.
From 1948-1977 Holst taught art at Colby Sawyer College in New London, NH where he was head of the department. He exhibited at the Sawyer Center and Mugar Gallery many times. In that period, noteworthy artists and institutions put on shows there: The National Gallery and Elaine de Kooning foremost among them. The Art Journal, Spring 1962, said the art program Holst ran provided “insight into the means and values of art” in “a creative environment and superior facilities.” Anne Neely, former student and distinguished artist, says Bill “was an ardent believer in his mentor’s ideas about spatial relationships” and the “concept of ‘push pull’ in abstraction always started off in nature.” She said Holst “would look at something, whether a figure or landscape and reduce it to its most essential form.” In that vein, a 1962 “Colby Courier” article reported “his paintings become simpler in form the longer he works on them.” Holst also taught at least eight summers between 1957 and 1971 at the Haystack Mountain School on Deer Isle, Maine. He moved to the area permanently in 1978. Brooks Anderson, a noted California artist, who studied with Holst independently on Deer Isle recalls Holst introduced him to what Hofmann called “‘plasticity,’ imagine if everything on the surface of the canvas were exploding out to the seams and yet it was all contained on the canvas.” According to Chris Cook, one time colleague at Colby Sawyer and long time Director of The Addison Gallery of American Art, Holst provided “the most thorough art education” of all kinds (art history, theory, and art making) possible. He remarked that while Bill was private and shy, “if you got him worked up – he’d get revved up” and he could discuss art and theory deep into the night. Chris reiterated “Hofmann was very important to him.”
By 2005, just ten years after his death, William Holst had been all but forgotten. With work in the collections of The Addison Gallery and National Gallery; the Currier Prize, NHAA award, and Florida Federation of the Arts Gold Medal; and exhibiting for over forty five years, including some venerable venues – it is surprising his legacy is so under appreciated. During his lifetime, Holst exhibited at such esteemed institutions as The Addison Gallery, The Provincetown Art Association, The Carnegie Institute, The John Esther Gallery, The Hood Museum, and The Currier Museum – with one man shows in New York, Cleveland, the Sawyer Center, and Haystack. Now, without a great deal of digging, despite some digitization, it’s difficult to find a trace of him. It seems ironic given the concurrent rise in the popularity of abstract painting that such a principled, successful, and unswerving practitioner could be so quickly deserted.
In its 2019 show, “In The Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969,” The Portland Museum included a Holst print. According to Rachael Arauz, a curator of the show, during her research she found a lithography stone with Holst’s name on it still on the shelves in the graphics studio at Haystack. Are these perhaps signals that Holst should be remembered?
His former students remember him, as he honored his teacher. Holst was a beloved and successful teacher. More than a few of his former students have become well known artists. By all accounts, he was a reserved, focused, and erudite gentleman and a serious painter who loved teaching and had a subtle sense of humor and a gentle laugh. We share some of their remembrances in a section thus titled on the site. More broadly, though, I have researched Holst, off and on for 16 years. At times I’ve wondered if he actively disappeared himself Houdini-like. I don’t think so. Then, how did he all but vanish? Was he too modest, shy even, or was it that he was elegant, unassuming, and a gentleman, as Carol Lummus, (former student, printmaker represented in 29 galleries in 12 states and 3 countries, and lifelong friend) describes him? Did he lack the machismo, bravura and self-destructiveness associated with some of the famed abstract expressionist painters?
Whether in Romantic Poetry or Abstract Expressionism, pure inspiration is often mythologized. While it exists, instead creativity is more often anchored by or built upon a foundation of intentional, disciplined, hard work. Is the artist a noble savage or trained technician? Both. A metaphor is found in the traditional versus the modern use of the term “plasticity;” an expression often used to describe Holst’s work and found in Hofmann’s theories. On the one hand, the term “plastic arts,” as in “plasticize” or ‘to mold,” is a traditional one used to differentiate sculpture and painting from writing. On the other hand, a 1967 “Colby Courier” article states Holst “prefers to work with simple pure colors, whose unique ‘plastic’ qualities will not be modified.’” This more modern sense of plastic is the strict materiality of the paint, its insistence that it is paint. So, is it rigid or malleable? This duality is confounding, yes. Yet, it describes the art and science of a thing, the push and pull if you will. The contradictory meanings of “plastic” also may serve as a perfect analogy for the diligence of creativity and modernism “breaking the mould.”
Holst’s rigorous, disciplined approach to painting and belief “that experienced form had to be fought for, no easy short cuts” made him an artist of great integrity (friend and widely collected artist Arthur Yanoff), and worth remembering. In combination, his ardent adherence to Hofmann, reductive process, and “strict regimen” produced ”intellectual” art according to Anne Neely. Others have described his work as restrained yet expressive or refined yet primal; an analytical approach with sensual results. Much of Holst’s work demonstrates Hofmann’s ideal: “the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” Along the combined lines of this simplification and exploration (he once said his “work seems to fluctuate between the two extremes: the free direct approach and the more planned geometric one”) a 1962 review in ArtNews stated “some (Holst) abstractions are ‘Purist’” and the most successful “has a kind of logical irrationality.”
”Logical irrationality” is the verbal incarnation of Holst’s mature paintings and sounds to me like “the math in the music.“ ArtNews’ phrase embraces both senses of the word plastic and, like much of Holst’s work, epitomizes the tension in the balance of Hofmann’s “push and pull” (the forces and counter forces in nature at the root of abstraction), where Holst achieved grace.
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