EMILE NORMAN: LIFE AND EXAMPLE

(Emile Norman and Brooks Clement)

I watched the PBS documentary tonight Emile Norman: By His Own Design, and it sparked a wave of thought in me about art, long-term lesbian and gay relationships, and the limits imposed on artists by class and gender.

Emile Norman is now 90 but still actively working and living in the stunning, hand-built home atop a hill outside Big Sur that he created with his lover/partner Brooks Clement in the 1950s. Brooks has been dead since 1973, but they had 30 years together. During the 1950s and 1960s, they were openly gay, and their home was a refuge, a magnet for all kinds of creative people.

(Emile Norman waves from tower atop his Big Sur home)


Emile is an innovative sculptor/muralist who relies on nature for most of his symbolism and themes. He dropped out of art school after one day and pursued his own path during an era when abstract expressionism was all the rage. When Norman and Clement moved to Big Sur in 1946, Brooks told Emile "You go into the studio and I'll show the world what you're doing." It was a deal that made Emile successful and happy. The two men were inseparable, excellent companions and at the heart of a wide circle of friends. When Emile became too old to safely live alone, a pair of young gay men (Jeff Mallory and C. Kevin Smith) moved in as caretakers and forged family.

The documentary was produced by Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker, neighbors and friends of Emile. You may remember them as the husband-and-wife lawyers who immortalized the imaginary "butterfly kiss" on the TV series L.A. Law. It's a good film, interspersed with home movies from Brooks and Emile plus letters written about them by another neighbor, a young married woman and mother who visited constantly. The two men found freedom to be themselves in an era when few did, and the story of a sculptor who has been able to live by his art for 84 years is rare.

Equally striking to me, however, was the contrast between their good luck and the stories of other equally gifted and innovative artists who struggle with isolation and poverty. In particular, I wonder if two gay men of color would have found the welcoming attitude Emile and Brooks did. I doubt the Masonic organization whose mural represents Emile's largest work would have given him a commission if he had been non-white. Or a woman.

(History of San Francisco mural at Union Bank of California, by Emile Norman)

Lesbian artists of any ability are much less likely to be treated kindly by rural neighbors (even in a liberal place like Big Sur) or the arts community. They must contend with continuous sexism, veiled and incidental as well as outright violence and predation. If one of a pair of women is attractive by conventional standards, the men who enter their circle are likely to hope for a sexual conquest -- all dykes really want, after all, is the right cock, either from a manly man or, these days, from another queer. Or so the myth persists.

And with denial of access to circles of influence comes poverty. No chance to live atop hillsides, commune with nature, avoid wage-earning, and travel for inspiration.

(Solarium in home of Emile Norman and Brooks Clement)

Paula Gunn Allen died last month, far too early, with inadequate support at the end of her life. She had managed, while contending with her cancer, to buy a mobile home for herself (all she could afford) but it and most of her belongings were destroyed in a fire not long before she died. A lesbian of color poet, novelist, historian -- once the short-list for Pulitzer -- one of the greatest minds of our generation, but her death brought no public memorials that I've seen outside a few feminist blogs. And not even the Generation X blogs. It's as if she never existed.

I'm deeply glad Emile Norman is getting deserved recognition. I'm even more happy for the apparent happiness of his life. Still, it's not the face of minority art and artists. Not nearly enough.

(Polar Bear by Emile Norman)