Mark tells the early history of his Great Uncle Leonard Bocour and his father Sam Golden as they began Bocour Artist Colors in New York City.
The idea for the Podcast – Paint Stories – came about as we were gearing up to celebrate our 40th year of Golden Artist Colors, I had begun to gather information in various forms, most recently for a lecture at the Midland Center for the Arts in Midland, Michigan. As we moved into March and realized that much of our plans would have to be scrapped and with some unexpected time on my hands, I decided that since everyone was home bound right now, what a wonderful opportunity to connect with many of the folks that helped create the success of Golden Artist Colors! I was also able to put the earlier history of my Dad and Great Uncle Leonard Bocour into some greater context and with stories from my brother Tom, who actually worked at the shop in Manhattan, and later, joined us at Golden Artist Colors.
I couldn’t be more delighted with the response from the artists that were willing to share their stories and connections to both Bocour and Golden Artist Colors. It has brought back so many wonderful memories.
About Golden Artist Colors, Inc.
Golden Artist Colors, Inc. is a manufacturer of artist quality materials including colors and mediums for painting in acrylics, oils and most recently, watercolor. With two locations, a 100,000-square-foot facility in rural Columbus, N.Y., and a 45,000-square-foot commercial warehouse and distribution center in Norwich, N.Y., the company’s 224 full-time employees are committed to producing materials that encourage exploration of form and concept, while assuring archival integrity. The GOLDEN brand of acrylics is known for quality and archival integrity as well as being the most innovative and extensive system available. The company also owns Williamsburg Handmade Oil Colors, which is known for its quality and extensive palette of colors including genuine Italian and French earth colors. QoR®, a new, thoroughly modern watercolor is made with an exclusive Aquazol binder, providing more pigment in every brushstroke, as well as color strength, range and versatility unmatched in the history of watercolors. Furthermore, the Custom Lab at GOLDEN serves artists and organizations by formulating materials to fit their needs and purposes. Not only committed to its customers and local community, GOLDEN is dedicated to its employee owners as well. In April 2010, GOLDEN employees became the majority owners of the company and in 2008, the company became a 100% Tobacco Free Campus for staff and visitors. To learn more, call 1-800-959-6543 or visit www.goldenpaints.com, www.williamsburgoils.com or www.qorcolors.com.
Hi everyone, and welcome to my first podcast I call Paint Stories. My name is Mark Golden, Co-Founder of Golden Artist Colors, a company I started with my father and mother Sam and Adele Golden, and my wife Barbara. This June we have celebrated our 40th year in business. During this crazy period in our lives I’ve had more than enough time to think about what has made this journey so special. I’m a third generation paint maker, which by itself is a wonderful legacy, yet this story is not just about a family of paint makers. It’s also about the hundreds of stories of the amazing artists that have invited this family into their lives.
So although I’m doing this first podcast solo I hope this will also be my last one alone as there are so many people, so many artists, so many friends inside and outside this company who have shared this journey with me. I’d love to start this story beginning in June of 1980 as the four of us nervously sat in our attorney’s office signing our first incorporation papers together, but Paint Stories begins much earlier with the story of my great uncle, Leonard Bocour.
Actually, well before it was Leonard Bocour it was Leonard Bogdanoff, the youngest child of my great grandparents Harry and Hanna Bogdanoff who emigrated from Russia at the turn of the last century. Harry was a blacksmith by trade, but I don’t think it was this artistry with metal that gave Leonard the artist bug. Leonard was a kid with a passion for art. Leaving on expeditions with his school mate and later business partner, Irwin Lefcourt, to regularly spend time at the Met. Not something someone from his neighborhood was typically doing.
Leonard and Irwin studied art throughout high school. I will share what I thought was incredible coincidence when I was introduced to a local couple, Bernie and Honey Kassoy. Both were fabulous artists with a rich history within the New York scene. They lived part-time in the next town over from us, over from New Berlin. Honey shared with me that she was the daughter of Leonard’s high school art teacher, Mr. Blumenkrantz. It was his recommendation she shared, that Leonard and Irwin both applied to the art school of the New York Academy of Design.
So Leonard and Irwin put together a portfolio and were accepted into the school as teenagers, which offered art classes at no charge. When the academy closed for a period of time Leonard and Irwin both decided to take classes at the Art Students League. The League was a hotbed and continues to be a hotbed for artists. The artists teaching there at the time included Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Reginald Marsh, and John Sloan. There were so many others, although Leonard and Irwin never took classes with these giants, they were enmeshed in this incredibly exciting world.
So the story goes that Leonard and Irwin met two teachers, Rose and Sarah on a trip to Woodstock around 1927. I’m pretty sure that two guys lied about their age as they were still in their teens. Sarah had a cousin, Fanny, who was married to the artist, Emil Ganso. Ganso had immigrated to the US as a 16 year old from Germany around 1910 and worked as a baker until 1923 when his art would eventually support him. Here was a real artist with a real studio who knew other well-known artists like George Bellows and Leon Kroll, and Ganso was earning a regular stipend from a gallery.
Sarah, who was obviously smitten with Irwin, knew his weakness and asked him if he wanted to meet this famous artist. This was absolutely thrilling for Irwin, but being way too shy to visit his studio alone, he asked Leonard, his good friend to join him, which Leonard was more than willing to do. This was to be the real origin story for this family of paint makers beginning with Leonard and Irwin meeting Emil Ganso.
Leonard and Irwin were just starry-eyed to be visiting this artist, and when he invited them back they were hooked. They quickly became regulars at the studio helping with cleaning, stretching, whatever was needed. It was Ganso who taught Leonard how to hand-grind oil colors. Ganso was using recipes from Max Doerner’s book, which was first published in German in 1926. For many years this was the Bible for oil painters, although I don’t think Ganso’s oil paint recipes included the use of resins in combination with linseed oil.
Nathaniel Kaz was another young protégé of Ganso. Along with Leonard and Irwin I had the opportunity to meet Kaz who shared some early stories about the crew who are assisting Ganso. It seems that not only did the boys support the artist with chores in the studio, but according to Kaz they organized a clandestine movie house in Ganso’s studio. Kaz shared that they would rent lewd movies, close the shades and sell tickets for these racy shows.
I wasn’t sure about the stories, but when I researched Ganso’s range of work it certainly – I mean it consisted of the traditional landscapes and nudes that he was represented by in his gallery, and won certainly a level of acclaim. But there are a series of drawings of nudes that bear a close resemblance to much more of the girly magazines. Kaz also shared a story with me that as a young sculpture artist he was making a fairly spicy piece when his mom came in the room, and was totally shocked by what she saw, to which he shared, “Mom, this is just the start. I haven’t put clothes on it yet.” Well, it was a good story.
By 1928 both boys married their teachers, Leonard to Rose and Irwin to Sarah, to whom he remained married for over 50 years. Leonard and Rose’s marriage lasted about 12 years, but during that time they delighted in traveling, especially as their wives had their summers off from teaching. So the couples traveled together around the world to Europe, to the United Kingdom, to Cuba. Both the guys were still taking classes at the League. Leonard got a job as a paste up man in a graphics company, and Irwin got a job as I believe, a dress cutter.
Well, this was the depression, and Leonard eventually got fired from his graphics job. Without a job and concern with what he should do next he visited his mentor, Ganso. So the legend is that Ganso told Leonard, “Why don’t you make paint? Nothing could be a sure thing, and we could try to sell it. And if you can’t sell it, we can always use it.”
So Leonard invited his friend Irwin and the two rented a small shop on the ground floor at 2 West 15th Street right near 5th Avenue. The description that Leonard shared was that you could stretch your arms out and touch both walls. They made hand-ground oil paint using linseed oil and pigment on a ground glass plate, milling colors with a five kilo glass muller that I later got from Irwin, and then they would scrape the paint into lead tubes by hand. At first the new company was called Lefcourt, but soon they combined the BO from Leonard’s last name, Bogdanoff, and the Court from Lefcourt, Irwin’s last name to create Bocour, a very French sounding name.
The artist Ted Gillian, a dear friend of Leonard who had a small studio next to a studio that Leonard had for a short time, suggested that it was good that Leonard began a different career as he didn’t think Lenny would make it as an artist, but Leonard continued to struggle with the idea of being a painter. The idea of being a business man was anathema to Leonard, but eventually something had to give when he realized he needed to pay attention to this fledgling growing business.
A few years later the guys got another larger place in the same building, which was really considered by Leonard the ancestral home of Bocour Artist Colors, and they operated through that same place for at least until after the war. Think of where the shop was in relationship to all that was happening in New York at this time. Just blocks away the original Whitney Museum of Art on West 8th near 5th supporting contemporary US artists, on Hoffman School on 9th Street, and then on 8th Street with students ranging from Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, to Larry Rivers, Joan Mitchell and Red Grooms.
The Leonardo da Vinci Art School providing free instruction with alumni including Peter Agostini, Elaine de Kooning, Isamu Noguchi, Siqueiros Experimental workshop in a studio on Union Square in 1936 including unknown artists at the time like Jackson Pollock, Harold Lehman and Morris Louis. The area was filled with a rush of artistic activity of all sorts including small performing venues, vaudeville and the Yiddish theaters on the east side, as well as writers and poets exploring new social movements of the day, so many of these folks supporting the rise of leftwing politics.
The entire East and West Village was to become the home for nearly all the first generation abstract expressionists including Jack Kerouac, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock and so many artists considered to be part of what is now known as The New York School, including Arshile Gorky, Milton Resnick, Robert Rauschenberg and Perle Fine.
So here were Leonard and Irwin, two aspiring artists using their connections from the Art Students League, as well as through the artists that Ganso knew to begin to sell their hand-ground oil paints. The business started in late 1932, yet they did not have their first sale until February of 1933. I think that was to Leon Kroll who was an artist teaching at the Art Students League, and was Leonard’s first studio visit to sell his paints since he had the upper floor in the same building.
Whatever paints didn’t fill up a tube they would place into folded wax paper. Many artists would visit the Bocour shop to partake of this leftover paint. Eventually Leonard and Irwin were able to move to a larger studio in the same building that became the sort of ancestral home for Bocour. The paint business for Leonard and Irwin was often considered a three season affair as so many artists would escape the city for places like Provincetown where Hofmann held court during the summer, or Woodstock where Ganso spent many summers, as well as many well-known artists.
The Woodstock Art Association with members including Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Eugene Spiker, was considered even in the times as a hotbed of talent. Woodstock is also the home of the country’s earliest artist residency Byrdcliffe. Leonard would not hesitate to join his friends enjoying a respite from the city, as well as a chance to enjoy the summer with the artists he so appreciated. Eventually he would spend a great deal of time teaching the art of making color in Provincetown.
In 1936 Irwin Lefcourt was offered a job as print curator for the Smithsonian in Washington. At this time Leonard invited his nephew, Sam Golden who was only four years younger than Leonard, to join him in the fledgling company. My Dad, without any previous knowledge of chemistry or paint learned from Leonard how to mill the colors and fill the crimped tubes for all the years of hand-grinding oil colors. My Dad’s forearms were like Popeye’s. They were enormous.
The two continued to hand-grind these colors through the early 1950s. It was a partnership that lasted for 35 years. Dad was officially made a partner in the business in the mid-1950s. My Dad was a tinkerer, always working on some new invention. He quickly became fascinated with the process and was certainly awestruck by this very new exciting world of artists. Dad was always experimenting in our basement, and our walls were the record of these constant experiments. The workable and not so workable ideas were plastered in wonderful colors all around these walls.
Often also clogging the sinks next to my mom’s laundry area. One experiment we still have is a painting by Dad he did with a polyester two part resin. What he didn’t realize was the amount of heat that was going to be generated by these resins and the formula almost burnt down the place. For Sam and Leonard, the Depression years were certainly hard on everyone, especially the artists that surrounded the little shop. But it was the launching of the WPA, and specifically the public works of art project that was ushered in by Franklin Roosevelt’s new deal that truly gave the boost to thousands of artists, as well as to Bocour Artist Colors.
From 1935 until the beginning of the US involvement in World War II, artists who were accepted would receive a bit over $23 a week from this program. Artists including Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Stewart Davis, Phillip Guston, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Jack Levine, Alice Neel were among the over 5,000 artists across the country that received mural commissions, or assisted on murals during this time, or other works for public spaces, or prints and posters.
It’s no coincidence that many of these murals were inspired by the earlier works of the Mexican muralist including Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, but now it was to celebrate the American experience. Artists now had the money to purchase materials, and Leonard and Sam were in a unique position to deliver.
Dad had described to me that many artists were trying their hand at making artist colors themselves. It seemed that little artisan oil paint shops were spouting out all around the city, but the Bocour shop was not just about selling paint. The studio space on 15th Street was the regular meeting place for artists. It was well-known that the shop had a decent stove to keep visitors warm, and Leonard was truly an incredibly connected supporter for so many artists.
I’ve been told many stories by artists that I’ve met how generous Leonard was, and how connected he was with artists and the art world. He would rarely miss a show by a friend, and was famous for sending handwritten notes to artists about their latest show. It was this generosity that continues to inspire me, realizing that what you give out to the world comes back 1,000 fold in truly unexpected ways.
I have a wonderful photograph of Leonard and Sam along with Irwin Lefcourt, and the artist illustrator Alice Provensen who were making a list of artists and collectors to invite to a party they were throwing for five artists to raise money for a show. The story goes that the party was an incredible success, but they quickly ran out of booze, so a bit drunk they invited everyone to the bar downstairs, and I think they spent most of the money that they raised at the bar. I don’t know that the show was every put on.
The Bocour shop was the place where artists would get the news of the day, and to share gossip. The story shared in the book by Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women, was that it was Leonard who was the first to announce to the small art community the very exciting news that Mondrian, a recent immigrant from war torn Europe, was now in New York. The Bocour shop was a place where artists would come visit, and Leonard and Sam would move the glass table to one side and they would invite artists to paint and draw with a model.
I had received a copy of a photo from the author and social researcher Jan Marontate, who asked me if Sam could identify the artist in the photo taken during one of these painting sessions. I received it just a week after my Dad passed away in 1997. What should have been an incredibly sad moment was absolutely thrilling to have the documentation to what my Dad only described in stories.
It was years later that I met the artist Gene Tepper, who was one of the artists in the picture who was able to identify the many artists and the model in the photograph. Artists with names you probably wouldn’t recognize like Abe Kapner, Oliver Baker, Frank Wallace, Julie Slagmick, Ted Gilliam, and maybe you’d recognize Morris Kantor’s name. Yet the model they were drawing, Lillian Bassman, would go on to a career as a world renowned fashion photographer with a career spanning 25 years through the ‘40s to the ‘60s. And then began a career developing her own work well into her 90s.
I’ve tried to fill in as much as I’ve been able to with stories from my Dad, and an account from Leonard and their many friends I had the chance to meet along the way during my last 40 years. I’ve asked my brother, Tom, to assist in the next podcast. For those that know Tom you’ll know that this will be a special treat. Tom was actually there and worked in the old Bocour shop. So until next time when we continue to share some more Paint Stories.
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