Gordon Onslow Ford to Morgans, 12 December 1943

 

When Rosa and Murray moved to Patzcuaro in 1942, living on Murray's Pulitzer traveling scholarship, whose conditions he met by reporting on the Mexican press, they met an expat community of artists and writers centered around the English Surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford. They spent a lot of time together until the Morgans returned to Tacoma in the summer of '43 to await the draft.

Although he came from a family of artists, Ford was sent to a naval college at 14 and had only in 1940 left the service to paint full time. He and his American wife, the writer Jacqueline Johnson, were a few years older than Murray and Rosa and much more sophisticated. Gordon's description of his military service makes him sound like a reflective elder, though he was 32 at the time. Remarkably, his vision of an artistic community overlooking the sea, full of creative ferment and "beautiful women," was largely realized when they moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1947.

 

El Molino

Eronguaricuaro 

Dear Rosa and Murray,

We have been following your news with great sympathy. I can well imagine your military training having been through much the same thing myself—the abstract wife [?] of authority, the way the mind thinks only of bodily needs in states of bodily fatigue, the training schedule brought down to the level of the most stupid, the kick of drilling to perfection, the spirit of competition between one group and another, the occasional friend in the vast flock, the hopeless feeling of being part of an enormous wave, the luxury of a day’s rest, the importance of mail and dreams of the future. I sometimes feel very badly that I too am not in the thick of it, but it was not to be, and so I am still here on the banks of Lake Patzcuaro working like a demon and learning every day. My role as painter is clear, it is not to take an active part in progressive politics, not to gird myself about with super machine guns & fight the enemy. It is to paint pictures, create new objects, find a new way to explain the world. What influence it will have on culture is as difficult to predict as it is to know how any baby will develop. 

 

from left: Murray, Bill Fett, Jacqueline and Gordon, Carmen Fett

I am disgusted with all that I hear about the art world, art dealers, and museums. I hope to be able to leave them to stew in their own gravy and start something new with a small group of friends independently. Last spring I resigned from Surrealism --  all good reasons for being a surrealist had been destroyed. My only regret is a temporary break with my dear friends Breton and Tanguy, but I gather that all surrealist activity proper has by now more or less collapsed and the parole is now with imitations of what was alive twenty years ago. Breton is once again hard at work on no one knows what. The country here is a constant source of inspiration and theoretic inspiration comes mainly from American philosophy and modern physics. Of our old friends from Europe it is only with [Wolfgang] Paalen  that a real spirit of friendship and understanding exists and it is with him that we are going to work in ever closer contact. Jacqueline is becoming co-editor of Dyn for a new series beginning No7 where emphasis is going to be much more on practice than theory. Bill [Fett] and other young American friends probably contributing. If you have any ideas please send them in. Paalen has been seriously ill for 6 months with unknown microbes but now after being temporarily paralyzed is up and about again. Dyn 4.5 the Amerindian number is at the press. It will be of the best publications on the subject with a good article on the northwest coat. Needless to say our minds eye has as horizon the Pacific probably two years away as yet. Dyn will probably move with us maybe in disguise of a new title. The sun setting over the sea magnificent coastal scenery, contact with the orient, beautiful women, good printing presses, a young generation full of unprejudiced energy, the possibility of not only being a primitive of a new art, but also a primitive of a new civilization. Just imagine the influence of a first class art magazine—painting, poetry and architecture, prose, photography and anything that might lead to a more exciting way of living. Big reproductions in full colour, cheap color prints, interior decoration, colored cartoons, exhibitions, lectures, debates, new fashions, new manners. All this starting in a very humble way but growing like ripples in water from a falling stone.

When my dear Rosa and Murray you have your own paper we shall expect you to crusade for the Pacific World as yet only existing in dreams. In any case whatever the future holds for us let’s not lose contact even though we seldom write. Here’s to the day when we can meet again and both devote our energies to creation.

Happy Xmas and all good things possible for 1944

Gordon Onslow-Ford