Pauline Gibling Schindler

This article is about the arts promoter Pauline Gibling Schindler. For the suffragist Pauline Schindler O'Neill, see Pauline O'Neill (suffrage leader).
Pauline Schindler
Gibling in 1915
Born
Sophie Pauline Gibling

(1893-03-19)March 19, 1893
Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
DiedMay 4, 1977(1977-05-04) (aged 84)
Los Angeles, California, US
Occupation(s)Composer, educator, editor
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1919; div. 1927)​
Children1

Pauline Gibling Schindler (March 19, 1893 – May 4, 1977) was an American composer, educator, editor, and arts promoter, especially influential in supporting modern art in Southern California. Her husband was architect Rudolph Schindler.

Early life and education

Schindler House (Rudolf Schindler), 1922

Her father was English-born. Pauline Gibling was raised in the New York City area, and attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, where she was classmates with Alfred Kinsey.[1] She studied music at Smith College, in the class of 1915.[2] After graduation she spent two years teaching piano at Hull House in Chicago, Illinois.[3][4]

She married architect Rudolph Schindler in August 1919 in Chicago. They lived briefly at Taliesin the next year before moving to Los Angeles, where Schindler worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. Their home, the Schindler House in West Hollywood, was completed in 1922, an experiment in shared living, called "the built evocation of Schindler's collaboration with his wife."[5]

Career

While still in Los Angeles, she taught at the Walt Whitman School in Boyle Heights, and served with Rudolph on the school's board. Through the school, they met photographer Edward Weston, whose sons were students there.[6] The couple hosted social gatherings at Schindler House, with Pauline mainly inviting artists and political thinkers.[7] Pauline wrote an affidavit of support for architect Richard Neutra's visa into the United States in 1923, and the Neutras later lived at Schindler House for a few years.[8]

After separating from Schindler in 1927, Pauline moved to the artists' colonies at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She edited the weekly Carmel Pine Cone newspaper and later The Carmelite publication,[9] where she clashed with fellow editor Lincoln Steffens.[10][11]

Schindler moved to Oceano, California, where she helped to edit a monthly arts journal, Dune Forum.[12] She also lived at Halcyon, Santa Fe, and Ojai during these years.[13]

She returned to the Schindler House in the late 1930s, and lived there with her ex-husband until he died in 1953, and with others until her death in 1977.[14] She painted her side of the house pink, added carpeting and updated the plumbing in her later years.[15]

As a musicologist she published as "Sophie P. Gibling," the titles Types of Musical Listening and Problems of Musical Criticism.[16][17]

Personal life

Gibling and Schindler had one son, Mark. They divorced in 1940.[18] She had a brief relationship with composer John Cage, who was almost twenty years her junior, in the 1930s.[19][20][21]

Death

Pauline died on May 4, 1977 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 84.

Legacy

The non-profit Friends of Schindler House was formed by Pauline in 1976, shortly before her death, to maintain the house. It has since become an arts center, and is open for architectural tours.[22][23]

A musical performance based on Schindler's life, Pauline: An Opera, was presented by architects Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena at Schindler House, in October 2013.[24]

Other sources

  • Crosse, John (2014). The Carmelites in "Bohemian Crossroads: Art & Culture Collide Then Subside on the Monterey Peninsula" edited by Ted Wells. Guardian Stewardship Editions. ISBN 978-0991134908.
  • Hines, Thomas S. (January 2019). "Critic and Catalyst: Pauline Gibling Schindler (1893–1977)". Getty Research Journal. 11: 39–80. doi:10.1086/702748. ISSN 1944-8740.
  • "Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936", California Architectural History, July 14, 2010

References

  1. ^ Jonathan Gathorne-Handy, Sex the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey (Indiana University Press ): 14. ISBN 0-253-33734-8
  2. ^ Smith College Alumnae Association, Annual Register (1917): 117.
  3. ^ Thomas Lawson, "Rhapsody in Pink: Stephen Prina Paints," East of Borneo (April 11, 2013).
  4. ^ Richard Flower (2014). "Pauline Schindler & The Carmelite: Two Meteors in Carmel's Orbit". Stories of Old Carmel: A Centennial Tribute From The Carmel Residents Association. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. pp. 102–103. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ Lisa Zeigler (2003). "California Moderne" (PDF). World Monuments Fund. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
  6. ^ Beth Gales Warren, Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles (Getty Publications 2011): 253. ISBN 1606060708
  7. ^ "Sites: Schindler House", The MAK Center for Art and Architecture website.
  8. ^ Thomas S. Hines, Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture (University of California Press 1994): 42-43. ISBN 0520085892
  9. ^ "Pauline Schindler and The Carmelite Two Meteors in Carmel's Orbit" (PDF). Carmel Residents Association Newsletter. November–December 2010. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
  10. ^ Hartshorn, Peter (2011). I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens. Catapult. ISBN 978-1582436470. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  11. ^ "Dispute Over Carmel Paper Amuses Coast". Daily Capital Journal. February 26, 1929. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
  12. ^ Dune Forum 1(5)(May 15, 1934): 131, masthead lists her as "Associate Editor."
  13. ^ Reuben W. Borough, "Halcyon, Lone Survivor of State's Utopias, is Little Noticed, Likes It," The Fresno Bee (August 6, 1968): 29. via Newspapers.com Open access icon
  14. ^ Charlie Hailey, Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place (LSU Press 2008): 231. ISBN 080713323X
  15. ^ Thomas Lawson, "Rhapsody in Pink: Stephen Prina Paints," East of Borneo (April 11, 2013).
  16. ^ Sophie P. Gibling (1917). "Types of Musical Listening". The Musical Quarterly. 3 (3): 385–389. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
  17. ^ Sophie P. Gibling (1916). "Problems of Musical Criticism". The Musical Quarterly. 2 (2): 244–248. JSTOR 737955. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
  18. ^ Ehrhard Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis in Modernism (University of California Press 2007): 153. ISBN 9780520257955
  19. ^ Stacey Allan, "The Brief Love of John Cage for Pauline Gibling Schindler," East of Borneo (January 7, 2011).
  20. ^ Thomas S. Hines, "'Then Not Yet "Cage"': The Los Angeles Years, 1912-1938," in Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman, John Cage: Composed in America (University of Chicago Press 1994): 84-88. ISBN 9780226660578
  21. ^ Maureen. "Letters: the brief love of John Cage for Pauline Schindler, 1934-35". www.ex-tempore.org. Retrieved 2021-03-30.
  22. ^ "The Friends of Schindler House website". www.schindlerhouse.org. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
  23. ^ Bill Rollins, "Schindler House: All but invisible amid high-rise buildings and trees, home built in 1921 continues to influence inspire", Los Angeles Times (March 13, 1983): r1.
  24. ^ "The Perils of Pauline Schindler," Arts Meme (October 15, 2013).
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