Some things never change like testosterone levels or old men chasing young girls, like Stanford White (1853-1906) did which led to his murder, like Jeffrey Epstein did which led to his ...
White's murder comes at the end of Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built The Gilded Age, a thoroughly engrossing tale by Henry Wiencek about White and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) two notable designers, sculptors, architects who helped set the tone for the Gilded Age, the Belle Époque.
This page turner unfolds the two associates' "secret lives," and same-sex relationships, which is not the main story here but the book is about friendship, associations, and big projects and what it took to finish them.
To protect his friend from exasperated and frustrated clients impatient for their delayed sculptures, White acted as Saint-Gaudens's agent, making excuses and constantly asking for patience from weary patrons, many waiting years for completions.
Throughout life, Saint-Gaudens accepted more work and commissions than he could perform, many at the same time, like the 40 he worked on while also designing the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial at Boston Common which took him almost 14 years (1884–1897) to finish.
Before the father of Augusta Homer ("Gussie") would agree to marriage between his daughter and Saint-Gaudens, Mr. Homer had to be convinced that the sculptor had a large future commission laying in the wings (which he proved), yet in his two-volume memoir, edited by their son, Homer Saint-Gaudens, Saint-Gaudens devoted only five lines to Gussie.
They were married for almost 60 years, until his death, although "Gus" spent much of that time with his mistress, using her face for many sculptures, including the famed Diana.
During Boston's single digit winter temperatures of 1876-77, Saint-Gaudens and White collaborated with others on Trinity Church.
Gus was often moody and depressed, constantly worried about debt.
Wiencek writes it is difficult to know why Gus accepted the Clovis Adams sculpture, Clovis Adams, the suicide victim and wife of Henry Adams, but Henry Adams acted on the advice of a friend and walked in to Gus's shop to obtain a commitment, which, to Adams' long anger, was years in the coming.
White's son Lawrence, also an architect, believed architecture "hemmed in his father’s natural talents” since his father really wanted to be a painter (pp. 80-81).
After seeing Renaissance painting in Europe, White remarked (p. 81) that “architecture seems but poor stuff compared with things like these.”
Like cheaters today, White paid hush money (p. 124) to keep his exploits out of the press.
Gus believed (p. 187) that “Sculpture lasts forever" and "he wanted perfection,” often turning away from projects for long periods, trying to find the something they lacked.
Most of the major works discussed in the book are pictured which sent me scurrying to Wikipedia to find the missing pieces. Without index and notes, the book runs 262 "little” pages and is a "fast read."
I am lucky to live near the Shaw and Adams's memorials to see them again and again in person, whether at Rock Creek Cemetery or the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the latter two which hold casts models of Shaw and Adams.
Stan and Gus is a New Yorker "Best Book of the Year" which lives up to the inclusion. Because of its complexity, the cover will fail to win any prizes.
It'll make a great movie!
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