Elwyn Moody "Wynn" Chamberlain (19 May 1927 – 27 November 2014), was an American artist Filmmaking and author. Described by The New York Times as a "pioneer realist painter",[Thorton (11 November 1973) p. 179] Chamberlain has two works, Interior: Late August (1955) and The Barricade (1958), in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[Smithsonian American Art Museum]
Early life
Elwyn Chamberlain was born in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1927.
[Stix (22 September 1978) p. C1. Note that the year of birth is given as 1928 in Cummings (1971) p. 94.and 1929 in American Federation of Arts (1959)] After serving in the US Navy from 1944 to 1946, he studied art at the University of Idaho, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1949. He then took a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, while continuing to paint and studying with the
Magic realism artist,
John Wilde.
[Cozzolino (2006)]
Art career
He had his first solo exhibition in Milwaukee in 1951,
[Smithsonian American Art Museum] and three years later he had his first New York City solo exhibition at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s his realist landscapes, interior scenes, and allegorical paintings were exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe. Although his work tended to become more
Abstract art in the 1960s, he had a major exhibition of nude portraits at the Fischbach Gallery in 1965. The portraits were of New York literary and artistic figures of the time. One of the most famous of these is
Poets Dressed and Undressed, two panels portraying
Joe Brainard, Frank O'Hara,
Joe LeSueur and Frank Lima. The exhibition also included a nude portrait of
Allen Ginsberg who wrote the publicity flyer for the exhibition (
Chamberlain's "Nakeds") as well as notes for the catalogue, wherein he equated Chamberlain's nudes with the ecstatic poetry of
William Blake.
[McCarthy (1998) p.31]
In the 1960s Chamberlain also became involved in Andy Warhol's circle.[Banes (1993) pp. 55-56 and p. 124. Further reading on the relationship between Chamberlain and Warhol can be found in: Watson, Steven, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, Pantheon, 2003. ] In the latter part of that decade he increasingly turned from painting to film and theatre. In 1967 he produced the premiere of Charles Ludlam's Conquest of the Universe at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre, directed by John Vaccaro and starring several members of Andy Warhol's The Factory, including Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet.[Smith (30 November 1967) p. 33] Chamberlain also wrote, produced and directed the film Brand X which premiered in 1970. The film, a satire on American television commercials, included Taylor Mead, Candy Darling, Abbie Hoffman, Baby Jane Holzer and Sam Shepard in the cast.
On 7 September 1965, in Staatsburg, New York,[ Social Register, Social Register Association, 1966, page 132] Chamberlain married Sally Stokes, the former wife of John Sergeant Cram III and a daughter of Frederick Hallock Stokes.["Miss Sally Stokes Married in the South to John S. Cram", The Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 April 1960, pages 1 and 3]["Duke's Daughter Maryland Bride of John Cram 3d", The New York Times, 10 March 1964] The couple had two children in 1968, fraternal twins Sara Ninigret Stokes Chamberlain and Samuel Wyandance Stokes Chamberlain.["Twins to Mrs Chamberlain", The New York Times, 14 March 1968]
Later life
In 1970, Chamberlain left the
Underground film scene and the art world behind. He burned his paintings and left for India with his wife and children.
[Stix (22 September 1978) p. C1] The family were to live there for five years – in the
Terai with a
Tantra yogi, in the village of Kollur in Karnataka, and in
Bangalore, in an old colonial mansion once owned by Arthur Wellesley.
[Chamberlain (July 2000)] On their return to the United States in 1975, they bought land in California's
Mendocino County, lived in a tent for three years, built their house and grew most of their own food.
[Stix (22 September 1978) p. C1] It was during this time that Chamberlain became a novelist. His first novel,
Gates of Fire, was published by Grove Press in 1978.
Gates of Fire, like his third novel,
Then Spoke the Thunder, is set in India.
Chamberlain was living in [[Marrakech, Morocco|Marrakech]].[*Chamberlain, (September 2009) p. 2]
Chamberlain died in New Delhi, India, of heart failure on 27 November 2014, at the age of 87.[Weber, Bruce (6 December 2014). "Wynn Chamberlain, an Artist in Paint, on Screen and in Novels, Dies at 87". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 December 2014.]
Novels
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Gates of Fire (1978) Grove Press, (also published in Spanish as El guru (1979) Martínez Roca, and in Dutch as Door een poort Van Vuur (1980) Omega, )
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Hound Dog (1984) North Atlantic Press
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Then Spoke the Thunder (1987) Grove Press (also published in French as La nuit tomba sur Kotagarth (1990) Laffont, )
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Paradise (2006) Kadmos Publishing
Sources
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ANP QUARTERLY, Volume 2, Number 4 '222 Bowery: The Bunker' by Ethan Swan, 2010
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American Federation of Arts, Who's Who in American Art, R. R. Bowker, 1959, p. 98.
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Banes, Sally, Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-garde Performance and the Effervescent Body, Duke University Press, 1993,
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Chamberlain, Elwyn, "Boom Bangalore", Geographical, July 2000. Accessed via subscription 19 June 2009.
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Chamberlain, Sally, "From Woodstock to Altamont: Sally Chamberlain says goodbye to 60s New York", Five Dials, No. 7, September 2009.
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Chamberlain, Sally "Make Little Mistakes". Five Dials No. 13 July 2010
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Cozzolino, Robert, In Memoriam: John Wilde (1919-2006) , Wisconsin Visual Artists, 2006. Accessed 20 June 2009.
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Cummings, Paul, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Artists, St. Martin's Press, 1971, p. 94.
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Greenspun, Roger, Review: Brand X, New York Times, 19 May 1970. Accessed 19 June 2009.
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Kadmos Publishing, Biography of Wynn Chamberlain. Accessed 19 June 2009.
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McCarthy, David, "Social Nudism, Masculinity, and the Male Nude in the Work of William Theo Brown and Wynn Chamberlain in the 1960s", Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1/2 (1998), pp. 28–38. Accessed via subscription 19 June 2009.
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Renfrue, Neff and Giorno, John, Love & Sleeze: Renfrue Neff Interviews John Giorno & Vice Versa, Smoke Signals, January–February 2009. Accessed 23 June 2009.
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Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wynn Chamberlain (excerpt from Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987). Accessed 19 June 2009.
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Spokane Daily Chronicle, "Minnesota Artist Shows Work at UI", 24 February 1949. Accessed 19 June 2009.
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Smith, Michael, "Theatre Journal: Conquest of the Universe , The Village Voice, 30 November 1967, p. 33
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Stix, Harriet, "From Artist's Life to Austerity", Los Angeles Times, 22 September 1978, Orange County Edition, p. C1. Accessed via subscription 19 June 2009.
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Thorton, Gene, "Male Nudes: Photographs, Paintings and Statues", The New York Times, 11 November 1973, Section: AL, p. 179.
External links
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Video interview with Wynn Chamberlain by Steven Watson, September 2001, on the official web site for Watson's book, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties.
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Elwyn Chamberlain, Paradise (2006), complete novel in electronic form with permission granted by the author for free download, on the official web site of Kadmos Publishing.
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Background information on Chamberlain's 1970 film, Brand X, including a lengthy video interview with Chamberlain, on the web site of the UK film company, Surreal Films.
