Seven Decades of Rex Brandt
Sunshine stirred his soul. The fabled coasts of Newport and Laguna held his heart. If ever there was a painter of place--of the particular play of light and wind and water along this shimmering edge of Orange County--it was Rex Brandt.
For almost 70 years Brandt infused his watercolors and oils with the warm Southern California sunshine that bathes our vistas in its multicolored glow.
Now, a well-conceived retrospective at Newport Harbor Nautical Museum attests to Brandt’s keen sense of landscape, his reputation as a nationally respected artist and his deep love of Newport Beach.
“These are paintings of Newport from someone who knew it well,” said museum curator Marcus De Chevrieux, who organized “Wind, Water & Light: The Legacy of Rex Brandt.”
“What is unique about our exhibit is that it focuses mainly on Brandt’s perception of his own hometown.”
On view through Feb. 28, the show includes more than 40 of Brandt’s sun- and wind-tossed paintings, all but a few of which are on loan from E. Gene Crain, an Orange County collector and longtime friend of the artist.
It is the first comprehensive exhibit of Brandt’s work since he died last March at age 85 in his Corona del Mar home.
Included are canvases from the mid-1930s to the late ‘80s, all lusciously colored and kinetic.
Vertical sails jut hard into the ocean wind in “Strong Light,” a 1968 watercolor.
The 1962 watercolor and gouache “China Cove” offers flat forms that seem drawn from Japanese art.
An early watercolor of “China Cove,” from 1936, boasts an exquisite range of rich and muted hues. It evokes the time when young Brandt’s star rose rapidly, when his expressive Southland landscapes caught national attention as part of the movement called California Watercolor Style or, more simply, the California School.
“Brandt’s national recognition occurred mainly in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” De Chevrieux said. “In later years his reputation was mostly local. He taught and he spent the rest of his career trying to regain the accolades he received when he was quite young.
“But creating the work was its own reward. His work was always experimental. Later works have abstract qualities that are just magnificent.”
“Wind, Water & Light” includes Brandt’s words too. Text panels offer his cogent comments on art and life.
“In our industrialized urban society we very badly need a reeducation of the senses,” reads one.
Another: “I provoke the paper to provoke me.”
Also on view is long-hidden treasure--open pages of Brandt’s personal notebooks, full of the sketches and observations he would use to hone his larger works.
Said De Chevrieux, “The interesting thing for me initially was that these [sketchbooks] were more or less ‘for my eyes only,’ for Rex Brandt personally. For example, what his mood was when he first saw something. How his colors changed from one hour to the next.”
One page gives a glimpse of Brandt’s playful nature. It is dated “Reid Harbor, 1:30 p.m. Wed. 9-2-81” and shows a bent leg with boot drawn from Brandt’s point of view. Below it is the inscription “Menu, tuna sand, beer, pickles, sun, wasps.”
Brandt also taught others to capture his beloved coast. For many years he maintained a school of painting in Corona del Mar, founded in 1947 with Phil Dyke.
He designed the official seal of the City of Newport Beach and co-founded the Newport Harbor Art Museum.
He was a member of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, where “Wind, Water & Light” is showing. Because the museum is on board the Pride of Newport riverboat, visitors can view Brandt’s work backed by glinting water, seen through wide windows on the harbor.
It’s a fitting venue for an artist who chose a sun-kissed view of life.
“He had a pretty good sense of humor and always seemed to paint the best of what he saw,” De Chevrieux said. “If there was one word for me that sums up his work it was his optimism.”
SHOW TIME
“Wind, Water & Light: The Legacy of Rex Brandt.” Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, 151 E. Coast Highway, Newport Beach. Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. Through Feb. 28. (949) 673-7863.