Notebooks reveal personal side of Rex Brandt

Young Chang

Rex Brandt’s contribution to the California art world started in the

humble pages of his personal notebooks. Ink sketches done in quick

strokes. Watercolor drafts deliberately incomplete. Notes in writing,

done in pencil and ink, with words crossed out.

He filled a book every year, starting with his high school days, until

his death in March at age 85. The pages tell the history of this late

Newport Beach artist

Today, almost 20 of the notebooks -- with pages worn with age -- are

enclosed in glass. The books and more than 50 of Brandt’s paintings are

displayed in the Grand Salon of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum as

part of the “Wind, Water & Light, The Legacy of Rex Brandt” exhibit.

“It’s a highlight,” said Marcus de Chevrieux, the museum’s curator.

“It’s something that has never been seen before -- [his] personal, visual

diaries.”

The notebooks were made available by the Brandt family. Their

inclusion in the exhibit, the first since the artist’s passing, is a hint

of Brandt’s intimate relationship with his city.

He created the Newport Beach seal in 1957 and co-founded the

Brandt-Dike School of Painting in Corona del Mar with Phil Dike in the

late 1940s. He also brought attention to the local area on a national

scale.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, such East Coast painters as Thomas Hart

Benton and Grant Wood fueled the American scene painting movement.

From Southern California, from the quiet work he did in his notebooks,

Brandt brought attention to the West Coast while pioneering the

California scene painting movement.

“He was a Corona del Mar artist,” said G. Wayne Eggleston, the

museum’s executive director. “He was really fascinated by the sunlight,

the water and along the coast -- particularly between Newport Beach and

Laguna Beach.”

The beaches back then looked different from today. Land was largely

undeveloped and wild flowers bloomed in the spring, while the hills

turned a golden hue in the summer, Eggleston said.

With all the ordinary things that make up a beach -- boats, jetties,

sails, fisherman, rocks, waves, cliffs, caves and sea gulls -- Brandt

produced not-so-ordinary art of his surroundings.

Next to one of his paintings, an oil on canvas titled “First Lift of

the Sea,” a quote from him hangs on the wall: “To me, a boat is just

another object until that delicious moment when it enters the water and

commences to dip and dance with life. Movement is the reality of the

vessel.”

Many of the exhibited works are accompanied by such quotes. De

Chevrieux said they come from sources including Brandt’s published books

on watercolor techniques and his personal notebooks.

Eggleston’s favorite piece is called “Low Tide, Laguna Beach.” It is

scene with hazy figures of people, sand and water.

“To me, you can tell that the sand is wet,” Eggleston said. “On many

of his paintings, if you look at them, you can smell the ocean. You can

touch the ocean. You can see the ocean. All the human senses are there.”

Many of these ocean scenes are set in Newport Beach.

One of Brandt’s most famous paintings is titled “Pavilion and Bay.”

Next to it, Brandt is quoted: “There is no Balboa Bay on any map or

chart. It is bigger than all the varied islands, post offices and

channels which comprise the City of Newport Beach. It is a feeling shared

in all the parts and as difficult to define as love.”

FYI

WHAT: “Wind, Water & Light, the Legacy of Rex Brandt”

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays through Feb. 28.

WHERE: The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, aboard the Pride of

Newport, 151 E. Coast Highway, Newport Beach.

COST: Free

CALL: (949) 673-7863