Alexander Eliot, a former art critic for
Time
magazine who lives in
Venice, California, is the
author of a number of books, including
Three Hundred Years of
American Painting (
1957).
Although
Harvard was a tradition in the Eliot family
–Alexander Eliot’s great-grandfather
Charles W.
Eliot
had been president – Alex Eliot decided to take a different course.
He heard about
Black Mountain College from his uncle
Thomas Hopkinson Eliot and decided to
apply.
Alex Eliot's father,
Samuel Atkins Eliot, a professor at
Smith
College, had started the
Socialist Club when a Harvard student and
invited
Emma
Goldman to speak. When the rebellious son approached him with a
preference other than Harvard, his father readily agreed: "I
wouldn't want you to attend a university whose President Lowell
helped to condemn
Sacco and Vanzetti."
Before entering
Black Mountain, Eliot had studied art at
Loomis Institute in
Windsor, Connecticut with
Madame Cheruy, "a fine artist who did great
wash-drawings of cathedral interiors." She gave him access to an
excellent art history library which had been locked away for fear
that its many nudes would be "too stimulating for the boys."
At
Black Mountain, Eliot focused on art with
Josef Albers and Stage
Studies with
Xanti Schawinsky. He took Albers's drawing,
color and Werklehre courses, and on Friday evenings Albers gave him
private drawing critiques. At the end of the first year when John
Rice declined to renew his scholarship, Albers "exerted his
influence" and the scholarship was approved.
At the end of his
second year at Black Mountain, Eliot left to attend the
Boston Museum School where he could
receive "academic training." When he informed Albers of his
decision, Albers admonished him, "It's all a mistake. You won't
learn anything new there at all except cooking."
Ignoring
Albers's advice, Eliot enrolled at the Museum School. He and his
first wife
Ann Dick
set up a gallery, the
Pinckney Street
Artists’ Alliance. When it made no money, the Eliots moved to
New York where Alex Eliot joined the
Associated American Artists
Gallery and then worked for the
March of
Time Newsreel. During World War II, Eliot worked for the
Office of War Information.
After the war Eliot became art editor (1945-60) at
Time
Magazine. The success of his book Three Hundred Years of
American Painting (1957) plus a
Guggenheim
Fellowship for "Studies of Greece and the Middle East as
Spiritual Cradles of the Western World" enabled him and his second
wife
Jane Winslow Eliot to fulfill their wish
to rear their children abroad, where they would be exposed to
different languages and cultures. His book
Sight and Insight
(
1959) concerned masterpieces
of European art.
To prepare for a documentary film
The
Secret of Michelangelo, a wheeled, sixty-foot tower was
constructed in the
Sistine Chapel so that Alex and Jane Eliot
could spend hundreds of hours studying the ceiling from within
touching distance.
Eliot’s books include besides those
mentioned above:
Proud Youth (
1953),
Love Play: A Novel
Entertainment (
1966),
Socrates: The Person and
the Portent (
1967),
Myths (
1976),
Universal
Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters and Others (with contributions
by
Joseph
Campbell and
Mircea Eliade) (
1990),
The Global Myths: Exploring Primitive, Pagan, Sacred and Scientific
Mythologies (
1993), and
The Timeless Myths: How Ancient Legends Influence the World Around
Us (
1996).
Author of
eighteen books and hundreds of essays in magazines as varied as
The Eastern Buddhist and England's
Systematics, Eliot continues his writing.
In 1977 Eliot retired
Professor Emeritus from
Hampshire College. He never obtained a
degree beyond his high school
certificate.
http://www.bmcproject.org/Biographies/EliotAlexander/EliotAlexander.htm
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