“Fathoming, an Exploration: Holst Down Cape and Downeast”
William H. Holst (1912-1995), American Modernist Painter and Educator
By: Andrew W. Young, February 4, 2021
A disciple, William Holst carried Hans Hofmann with him as an artist and teacher for nearly a half a century. Hofmann’s teachings swept Holst like the prevailing southwesterly to his true north, like the tradewinds propelled prior generations in schooners, Down Cape and Downeast. A modernist pilgrim, Holst spread his own version of Hofmann’s gospel from Provincetown, to New London (NH) and Acadia.
Hofmann believed abstraction begins in nature. On Deer Isle and in Provincetown, nature abounds as do the sea, its tides and their movement and depth (fathoming, sounding, incoming, outgoing). Holst’s non-objective work is as organic as it is elemental.
Here we have a modernist living in Stonington and Cape Cod who isn’t painting the landscape in front of his eyes. While his art is grounded in structure and place it is abstracted to association and articulation. Therein lies a modernist tenet: a painting being something not of something.
Holst’s artist statement for “The Elusive Object” (1986), read non-objective,concludes “the mastery of the medium…brings the flat surface into a three-dimensional reality and experience – commonly called plasticity …where the metamorphosis of size, color, form takes place …by which the artist achieves new higher insights about life itself. The objects are left behind to be reincarnated in the act of creation.”
Fran Merritt, Holst’s MassArt classmate and a lifelong friend, razzed Holst for “regurgitating” Hofmann’s art philosophy. But, Merritt didn’t believe Holst merely parroted Hofmann, his teacher and mentor. Merritt and Holst“depended upon each other’s opinion about painting, about art in general, have done so over the years.” The artist Arthur Yanoff says “Bill had his own theories, which came out of Hofmann… The Holstian Theories. Bill gave stunning lectures to a group of us at an art school and in studios.”Chris Cook, former director of the Addison and ICA said Holst provided the most thorough education one could on art history, theory, and making.
In his characteristic use of only black and white Holst used “the barest means of creating form.” He quoted Hofmann “it is more important to make the most of the least… not the least of the most.” The argument advanced “Mr. Holst is more concerned with the relationships existing between objects than the objects themselves.” In stripping away layers, he got to the heart of a thing – went deeper. Ann Neely, artist, recalls “Holst would look at something, whether a figure or a landscape and reduce it to its most essential form…. teaching us to find the underlying energy.” She observeshis ardent adherence to Hofmann, reductive process, and “strict regimen” spawned ”intellectual” art.
According to artist Larry Moffett, Holst’s student, Seurat used the term “fathoming” to describe what Holst did when articulating in black and white Hofmann’s theories about planes, form, space, advancing and receding forces (i.e. push and pull). In my opinion, Holst took Hofmann’s theories, typically expressed boldly in color, to a different level in black and white.
Fathoming: the double entendre is exquisite. Holst’s paintings are cerebral. Get my drift? And, the word evokes “modulation of space” and the seafaring character of the Outer Cape and Downeast: landmarks I intend to navigate via Holst’s life and work here.
So, in “fathoming,” Seurat refers in his way to “plasticity” or “leaving the flat picture plane behind.” Holst’s artist statement asserts “objects themselves are not my basic concern… I do not want to paint them… of significance are relationship and metamorphosis…. the key factor for the painter is the translation of experience into the medium of expression.” Into this non-objective current the subject dissolves.
While we wrap our minds around that in the context of the reincarnation of objects in the artist’s (I think) act of creation – fathom it, if you will – I give you the backstory. In 2004 while vacationing with our two children at her parent’s house in Castine, my wife Stefanie reported “I bought a couple of paintings” in Blue Hill. “I get the walls and you get everything else” I retorted not quite beating her to “and you’re not going to like them, they’re abstract.” Is the preferred term non-objective? While Stefanie enjoys my oft spoken refrain “you’re right;” in this case dear, you were not quite. Ihave been spellbound since, and feel the compulsion of Coleridge’s “bright eyed Mariner” to tell Holst’s tale. At the time I found little on Holst other than a nice bio by Richard Candee on AskArt. Holst’s index card at the Farnsworth was hauntingly chicken scratched out. I still haven’t seen an obituary. The dealer from whom we bought the paintings said someone was working on a catalogue raisonne. I’m afraid they were referring to me far in the then distant future. Bewitched by the paintings and compelled by the mystery of enigma and arc of his coordinates, I was set on a quest, a personal odyssey (oof, epic mixed metaphor, of Homeric proportion).
Having journeyed sixteen years, I know not whether I’m nearer the voyage’s middle or end. But, I can report the following on Bill Holst, former mild-mannered citizen of Stonington. He/his:
⁃ prints reside in the National Gallery;
⁃ was in Carnegie Institute’s 1941 “Directions in Am. Paintings.”;
⁃ won The Currier Museum of Art Award in 1971;
⁃ large oil is included The Addison Gallery of American Art collection;
⁃ was included in the Portland Museum 2019 show “In the Vanguard;” and
⁃ is known to very few as the successful, principled, and faithful modernistpainter and teacher he was.
Those who knew him think so very much. Hofmann, his teacher the summers of 1949-52 and 1954, said Holst showed “promise of turning into a quite remarkable cultural asset for this country.” I think he did. Yet,Holst’s legacy is, well, shallow.
His Downeast ties were deep and enduring including teaching at least eight summers at Haystack beginning in 1957. He was a part of the Deer Isle community for four decades. Before landing in mid coast Maine, Holst’s five summers in Provincetown were foundational, perhaps revelational. Like many first-generation Abex painters in Provincetown then, he came of age in the Depression and was a WWII veteran when he turned to abstraction.
I. Likely exhibited in Holst’s 1962 one man show at the Steindler Gallery in New York.
II. Shown in “The Elusive Object”
Carol Lummus, artist and former Holst student, celebrates “the essence of all Hofmann’s theories in William Holst’s black and whites…reduced andsimplified.” Plates I and III illustrate two poles resembling calm and stormy seas. Some paintings roar “like noises in a swound” while others are as still as “a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”
With masterful measures of expression and restraint, Holst achieves a sophisticated balance. But, it’s no slack tide. I find “VII•14•83” (figure IV) elegant yet raw and refined yet primal: dignity in a squall. And, one need not “separate the dancer from the dance.” He was reserved, and even shy, but rigorous and uncompromising in painting and teaching.
“ArtNews” saw Holst at “a point of decision in black and white oils. Some … ‘purist’ in execution… the bulk are more loosely handled…. the most successful …. has a kind of logical irrationality.” To me, that sounds like math in the music or sextant in the storm. “Logical irrationality” is a verbal incarnation of Holst’s energy, tension, and ultimate grace in push and pull.
A 1974 press release reports Holst’s style evolved over twelve years. No doubt, but at least as remarkable is how unflinching his effort, results, and devotion to Hofmann were. Figures I and II, the same twelve year gulf between, are unwavering. Neely admired the “sheer rightness” in his conviction. Yanoff expounds “as a painter, Bill had great integrity. He believed that experienced form had to be fought for, no easy shortcuts.” Holst felt his paintings “become simpler in form the longer he works on them” but involve masked complexity (perhaps a metaphor for the man and his legacy).
And, isn’t Hofmann’s influence in plate III palpable?
.
III. Untitled, undated, monogrammed, oil on paper, 30” x 22”
I
IV. “VII-14-83,” monogramed and dated, oil on paper, 30” x 22”
So, along the lines of charting a course, embarking and disembarking, landmarks and seamarks, reflecting on a recent September research trip to Stonington (stunning by land or sea): the drive over the bridge; down a peninsula; into the briny-air-enriched wild – I was struck. I’d flirted with the idea but now it hits me full force. While there are unquestionably differences, Stonington and Provincetown, the geographical seaside bookends of Holst’s life as an artist and instructor are like sister ships. Granted: one is sandy and the other rocky; one has an opera house, the other a play house; and each is unique in many ways. But, like figures I and II, they are more alike than different. Each is associated with distinct bays (East Penobscot, Isle Au Haut, and Jericho on the one hand and Cape Cod and Massachusetts on the other), but both lay situate on the Gulf of Maine. Both are wonderfully scenic, “fishy,” historic, effectively two street, seafaring villages in the midst of great expanses of the natural world jutting into the sea. Both can seem the end of the earth – glorious in good weather and frightful in a blow.
As such, both have enhanced light and boast longstanding artist and writer colonies. Both offer top notch cuisine and honkytonk tourist attractions. Each is quirky and both have stubborn independent streaks. It is poetic Holst hailed from Stonington given his Provincetown launch. The historic interchange between the regions is centuries old, going back to pre-colonial cod fishing outposts, commerce, and migrations across the Gulf of Maine.
In 2020, the bicentennial year of Maine’s statehood, Provincetown celebrated the quadricentennial of the Mayflower’s arrival. I am reminded Provincetown’s Pilgrim Monument is built of Stonington granite.
Natural beauty defines both settings, so much so, that one boasts a National Park the other a National Seashore. Community, on the other hand, is vital to the teaching of art. A village fits the bill. These maritime villages, crucibles of Holst’s modernism, certainly punch above their weight in terms of contributions to history, art, literature, and culture – but also the annual catch.
V. Stonington from a hill just above Holst’s house.
.VI.
Student Work, “Figure,” 1950, charcoal on sketching paper, (monogrammed and dated LR, signed, dated, and titled on reverse), 27” x 20” (likely from The Hans Hofmann School).
Images courtesy of williamholst.info. References if not otherwise noted are also courtesy of williamholst.info.
For more information about, to share information on, or inquiries regarding William Holst:
The William Holst Project
Website: williamholst.info
Instagram: @williamholstinfo
email: thewilliamholstproject@gmail.com