In this episode, Mark shares a few more stories about Bocour Artist Colors during WW II - from 1941 to 1946 - up to the point when Bocour started up again after the war.
Hi everyone, and welcome again to this second in the series of podcasts I call Paint Stories. My name is Mark Golden, Co-founder of Golden Arts Colors. A company I started with my father and mother, Sam and Adele Golden, and my wife Barbara. I know I promised that the next podcast would include my brother Tom. Yet before I brought in Tom, I thought I’d share a few more stories that have been shared with me from other folks about Bocour Artist Colors during the war years from 1941 to 1946, at least up to the point when Bocour Artist Colors started up again after the war.
Actually, Tom was just three at the start of the US involvement in the war. And I think his greatest memory of Dad during that time was the fear he felt when our father would go up on the roof of their apartment to listen and scout the night skies for enemy planes, of which there were none, but during the air raid warnings in New York City, it was clearly in every child’s imagination that this was going to be the night of enemy fire, bombs dropping in terror. So my brother nervously waited for his Dad to return safely to the apartment on Essex Street.
As I shared previously, this June we are celebrating our 40th year in business, but the story of Golden Artist Colors is really rooted in the threads and relationships that this family created beginning in 1933 with Bocour Artist Colors. I’ve previously shared some of the history of Bocour up to the war years, but thought it would be great to fill in what might be gaps when Bocour was partially closed, or with limited hours during the war.
As I made clear, the Bocour shop and Leonard, or Lenny as most people called him, or Len, had a slightly different mission during the war than simply making paint for artists. Right up through the entry of the US into the war, Sam and Leonard were serving the many artists that surrounded the little shop on 15th Street in the middle of the art scene in downtown Manhattan.
It was common that artists including de Kooning, Rothko, Louis and so many others were regular visitors to the shop. And when these artists couldn’t afford paint, Len would offer them half-filled tubes, or trade for small paintings to keep them going.
Leonard continued to make this fledgling company survive by whatever means possible. A story shared at Leonard’s induction to the National Art Material Trade Association Hall of Fame, an organization Leonard was an original member, was legendary among his friends and associates.
It seems that Leonard needed to get some printing done for the business, and he knew a printer who would do some swapping with some art, but he would only accept a Raphael Soyer, so Leonard went to Soyer to ask him if he would accept some paint for a painting. Soyer shared that he didn’t need any paint at this time, but his friend Nicolai S. Cikovsky did need some paint, and Cikovsky had a jacket that Soyer wanted.
So Cikovsky traded the jacket to Soyer. Cikovsky got the paint from Leonard. Leonard got the Soyer painting, and then traded the painting for the print job. Artists were constantly asking Bocour to make special paint or colors for them. Leonard, a huge fan of Grace Hartigan, made her own color, Hartigan Violet, as he would over the years, for many artists he admired.
Dad told me that early on, just as the US entered the war, he was given a resinous sticky material by the artist Mike Lenson to see if he could make it into a paint. This was eventually to become the first artist acrylic paint called Magna. But it wasn’t until after the war, about 1947, that he was actually able to convert that resin into a workable paint.
I had a chance recently to be corresponding with Barry Lenson, Mike’s son, who while he couldn’t confirm the date, remembered his Dad talking about Bocour to see if he could pigment this resin with some pigment like titanium dioxide. Barry remembers his Dad getting regular packages of oil and acrylic, and the Magna from Leonard in recognition of his contribution.
As the war effort ramped up it was clear that significant changes were happening within the small community of artists. The first change were the many artists that put down their paintbrushes and joined the various armed services. Many of Leonard’s dear friends joined the war effort, including Jack Levine, Ted Gillian, Gene Tepper and so many others.
For Leonard he had a 4-F exemption from the war for which he was truly heartbroken. It appears that on a trip out west during the summer of 1940 visiting with some artists, Leonard was in Gallup, New Mexico. He had heard that there was a Native American ceremony that he could see on a reservation nearby. Traveling with several artists they had asked Leonard to pose for them, so he put on some shorts and some tennis shoes.
When it was time for lunch everyone was gathered around. Leonard said he’d make the fire, so he gathered the wood and began to make the fire. Just then a fierce thunderstorm came in with pouring rain and lightning. Leonard ran to the car to get his umbrella and stuck it above the flue of the native hogan they were in, and crack. He regained consciousness after a few hours, and the crew finally took him to the hospital.
But from this lightning strike the only permanent damage seems to have been the loss of the patella reflex in his legs. Not exactly the sort of medical injury Leonard thought would keep him out of the war. And in fact, he put a little ad in the local paper saying, “Bocour Colors is gone to war,” but in fact, he never served. My Dad told me that Leonard showed him the burnt-up tennis shoes that supposedly saved his life. I’m pretty sure it was an old wives’ tale that rubber soles would save you from a lightning strike, but he did live to tell the story.
Leonard was able to get pigments for their limited color line from about 24 to 30 colors from a local New York supplier, Fezandie and Sperrle, which actually sold pigments right up through the 1990s. They were able to get small lots of pigment at least through the start of direct hostilities in the war. Just as so many materials went on ration during the war, specialty metals and pigments were no exception. Cadmiums and chrome and other metals were restricted.
In 1943 the government prohibited the use of cadmium in pigments, and these restrictions remained in effect through July of 1946. The streets were pretty quiet in the small art community of New York, and the Bocour shop was not very busy. Dad left Bocour sometime in 1942 when he got a job on the docks in Brooklyn to work as a laborer constructing liberty ships.
But even though sales of the paint were not very strong, the Bocour shop was still a hopping place. Leonard described it as his own USO for artists on leave from the war. Artists would stop in and crash while they were coming or going from one assignment or another. They would arrive with their duffle bags and stay until they had to head back.
A great story shared by the artist Gene Tepper was about an impromptu visit to Leonard. It was June of 1943 and Gene had shore leave from the merchant marines in New York City. Before leaving his liberty ship he had a brawl with a shipmate and left on shore leave with a concussion.
So Gene is wandering around New York and not sure why he had a huge knot on his forehead. He passed the Bocour shop and remembered that Leonard invited him over the next time he was in the city. So he called Leonard, and Len in his typical gracious fashion, offered for Gene to stay in his apartment on West 56th. Gene made it up to his place, and at first Lenny greeted him with obvious concern and, “What the hell happened? Was the ship hit?” To which he shared it was an uneventful trip until arriving in Brooklyn, and he’d tell him the whole story during dinner.
Leonard was able to fill him in on all the art world gossip, and Gene was starting to perk up. They stopped for a drink when Leonard remembered that he was invited to listen to jazz at a new club on 127th Street. Assuming that Gene must be exhausted, he suggested that they call it a night. But Gene was up for it so they went to meet Julie and Ted and to listen to Wingy Manone and his quartet at Johnny Little Club. I just love that name.
Not wanting to end the night, Leonard remembered that Count Basie was playing at the Apollo. So afterwards they paid their respects to the Count, as Gene shared, like any other good New Yorker. This was not the only time that Gene Tepper had enjoyed the hospitality of Leonard Bocour.
He recounts another time he was back in New York and not sure how long he was going to stay, but Leonard offered him a place as long as he wanted. The first thing they did as soon as Gene reached Leonard’s was to head down to a night club, Café Society, to listen to Josh White, Lena Horne, Art Tatum, and the Basie band.
He shared in the noise of the club that they were going next to a fundraiser for Soviet relief and meet some old friends before going to a party at Raphael Soyer’s place. Gene wound up staying four days at his place, able to connect up with old friends from the Art Students League, and just feeling a bit normal for a brief moment.
Jack Levine shared another story of the Bocour shop when he was on leave and able to crash with Leonard. It’s around 1945 he said. “I used to sleep off hangovers on an old leather couch in Lenny’s 15th Street shop. On the Sabbath the tables were cleared for action, and the regular Saturday afternoon Crap game would take place. Lenny was always surrounded by pretty girls.
My Dad described the shop during these times as a sex maniac’s club. Unfortunately, I think now, as I’m sharing all these stories with you, I wish I would have asked my Dad, “What was really going on during those days?” I don’t understand now why I didn’t ask. I’m pretty foolish.
Well, Sam rejoined Leonard after the war, but not before he was offered a position by his brothers Irving and Ben Golden, who had started what had become a really successful dairy on Long Island. Dad shared that he told his brothers, “I need to go back to Lenny. And anyway, in a few months the business might not be around.” That was certainly not the case as there was clearly a new level of demand for materials coming out of the war.
They soon couldn’t keep up with the production of especially white and gesso as the scale of painting started to explode. Eventually they had to purchase a mill to be able to mechanically grind the colors. Leonard said he borrowed money from his girlfriend, soon to be his wife Carol Wheeler, who was also an actress known for TV performances on the Goodyear Playhouse Inner Sanctum, as well as active on Broadway in several plays including the Parlor Story.
It was soon after this that Leonard and Carol gave birth to their only child Peter in 1947. Peter passed away recently but was regarded as a very talented painter. Something Leonard always dreamed for himself, but he passed it on to his son. It appears that neither Sam nor Leonard knew much about automated paint manufacturing, and they wound up buying a coconut crusher at first.
I’m not clear from Dad’s story as whether he was able to modify the equipment into something that would actually mill paint, or if they actually had to buy a real paint mill. Either way, they began to partially industrialize the process and started to produce a new oil brand. And to separate it from their hand-ground oils they named it Bellini.
Over the next few years it was clear that Bocour was going to be successful. So successful that in 1951 Leonard actually changed his name and his wife’s and son’s last name to Bocour, a name which he was so proud to own for the rest of his life known as Mr. Bocour.
So this brings us to the end of my second podcast, and I do promise to bring Tom Golden, my brother, back for the third podcast to share his paint stories. Thank you.
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