Responding to the needs of artists displaced by the earthquake, in 1907, the Del Monte Hotel opened a large gallery catering to a wealthy, worldwide clientele, which helped introduce the best of California art to an international audience. Carmel thus gained national prestige as an important center for art. The natural beauty of the place and the creative energy of the artists’ colony created an atmosphere of enchantment and word began to spread. By 1910 the California press began to report on this new, hard-to-reach hot bed of progressive ideas and artistic souls. A visitor from the Los Angeles Times was amused by this village where “the butcher reads Browning and the liveryman wears long hair.” Founded in 1927 and still thriving today, the Carmel Art Association features (and sells) only local artists and offers a wealth of information about the local art scene, past and present.
the butcher reads Browning and the liveryman wears long hair San Carlos Square, aka “Artisan Alley,” where studios of artisans or “makers” offer a unique, handcrafted shopping experience.
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1913 Luxury by the Sea
When the Arts and Crafts Club began organizing lessons for aspiring painters, actors and craftsmen in 1914, some of the most prominent painters in the U.S. offered instruction for beginners and advanced students and soon achieved national recognition, with an article in The Mercury Herald commenting that “a fever of activity seems to have seized the community and each newcomer is immediately inoculated and begins with great enthusiasm to do something…with plays, studios and studies.” Carmel continued to be at the forefront of creativity during the 1960’s. For those interested in photography, Edward Weston displayed his prints at the New Group Gallery’s first photographic exhibition. The Friends of Photography, which later became Carmel’s Center for Photographic Arts (CPfA) blossomed in the 60’s and is still thriving in Carmel today, focusing not only on the Central Coast’s distinctive photographic art forms, but it has also become a vanguard of the future of photographic imagery. continued on page 30