Robert von Neumann Jr.

BORN: 1923 in Berlin, Germany

DIED: April 23, 1984 in Urbana, IL

While exposed to the art world by his father, a painter, printmaker and professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he was also encouraged by his mother to explore natural history. Summers were spent at the western Great Lakes - Michigan and Superior - and the northeast Atlantic coast of Maine and Massachusetts following commercial fishermen, his father's favorite subject matter.

In World War II he joined the military and served in the ski troops of the 10th Mountain Infantry Division, spending the war years in the Colorado Rockies and Italy.

After the war, von Neumann Jr. enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to major in painting and illustration, but found those forms of expression to be unsatisfying. While browsing in the library he came upon a book written in 1902 by H. Wilson called Silverwork and Jewelry. Interested, he began teaching himself the basic processes of sawing, filing, soldering and finishing. Since there were few retail jewelry tool suppliers in Chicago in 1947 , he used what could be found in hardware stores - bulky, shark-toothed pliers, heavy saw frames and a gas mouth blowpipe which attached to the front burners of the kitchen stove.

During the late 1940s, few people in the country were concentrating on decorative metalwork.  A number of small galleries began to show this unique work on consignment - a reasonable 10 percent in those days. Display techniques were primitive and the appearance of silver objects began to deteriorate the moment they went on display. 

Fortunately, there were also a number of national exhibitions exclusively for the decorative arts, ceramics, metal, weaving, enameling and some woodwork, and they were beginning to attract more and more artist-designers. Von Neumann entered many shows: the National Decorative Arts and Ceramics Exhibition, Wichita, Kansas; First National Decorative Sculpture and Crafts Show, Sarasota, Florida; Fiber, Clay and Metal, St. Paul, Minnesota; and Designer-Craftsmen USA, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, where he collected prizes and purchase awards. 

 After receiving his BFA from the Art Institute, von Neumann Jr. began to search for graduate programs in metalwork and soon heard that the University of Wisconsin at Madison was about to start such a program. The powerful driving force behind the Wisconsin program was Arthur Vierthaler. As the first candidate in the new metals MS program, armed with a teaching assistantship, von Neumann Jr. found himself teaching several classes in which he was also enrolled.

Vierthaler encouraged competency in all metalworking techniques, not only fabrication but enameling, casting, lapidary work and toolmaking. He also instilled a respect for and fascination with techniques of the past. Wisconsin soon accumulated one of the best metalworking reference libraries in the United States. Vierthaler's attitudes concerning all-around competency influenced von Neumann, and he has always hoped to instill similar values for competency and expression in his own students.

Upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1950, von Neumann landed one of the two academic positions available at Iowa State Teachers College (now Northern Iowa University). During the next five years, he produced several hundred works, primarily in sterling silver and karat golds. His subject matter reflected his love of forms in nature, mammals, birds, fish and dinosaurs as well as mankind and mythology - Greek myths, Old Testament stories and Arthurian and Northern European fables.

Particularly important in von Neumann's work is the human male, often fierce, pompous, encrusted in armor, and elegant. The images are sculptural, narrative, satirical - seldom abstract decoration.

"Though I was comfortable working in cultural isolation - on a table next to my bed for a studio (metalworkers need little space, just deaf neighbors) - I became somewhat involved in organizational aspects of the decorative arts. I had not properly learned the lesson painfully experienced by my father that, like mushrooms, art 'leagues,' 'associations' and 'organizations' grew, spouted manifestos, built memberships and soon died through internal jealousies and ennui. How often he contributed his time and energy, and how soon he regretted it. Then, watching him through years of entering his prints and paintings in national and regional exhibitions, to be elated when accepted, ecstatic when winning prizes and deeply depressed by rejection, also taught me much about such lotteries. I can understand the need, for young artists especially, to exhibit often. This is how the game is played. What they should not do, and what I do not do, is peg their personal sense of values on such successes or failures. I have been on dozens of juries. I realize how much compromise and aggressive domination can dictate results. Competitive shows are a lottery and standards change each time a new jury is appointed. I have always been fortunate in such shows, but if I had to attach value to exhibitions I would place much more on the invitational exhibition which, after all, should reflect the growing importance of a given artist. Even then, those doing the inviting are often less than objective and such shows can reflect quite narrow biases. All in all I approach this aspect of artistic activity with as much humor as possible.

"Organizational activity in the early 50s consisted of becoming a member of the American Crafts Council and participating in several meetings in New York and Seattle. Perhaps I should have remained in such organizations, if only to represent my point of view, which is fundamentally this: 'Art is to do - not to talk about" My father gave me another version of this when I presented him with the first edition of my metalwork textbook, The Design and Creation of Jewelry. 'Some people do it, others write about it.' A bit crushing at the time, but I can see the justness in his attitude."

By 1960, von Neumann had been at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for five years and was a prolific jewelry artist-designer. His work was shown in the United States Pavilion at the Brussels' World Fair in 1958 and was a part of a United States Information Agency exhibit that toured Europe and the Near East from 1958 to 1961. During this period, his work in metal had been developing into greater complexity in technique and scale.

By 1959 von Neumann had accumulated such a sheaf of notes and class outlines on jewelry processes that it seemed logical to organize them into a book. There was the need for a serious book at that time which would reflect a serious, artistic approach. The few technical books available were either outdated in terms of process and design attitude or they were utterly simplistic how-to-do-it volumes.

What he felt was needed was a text that told the 'how' in the words of an instructor sitting at one's elbow and guiding from basic to ever more complex processes. Ninety-five percent of the illustrations are of work done by his beginning students at the University of Illinois. This was done intentionally to not intimidate the beginner. People felt at ease with the book that they were able to teach themselves with its guidance.

In 1960 he was asked to be part of a four-person team to tour parts of Japan for two months. The State Department's International Cooperation Administration and the Japanese Government wanted us to view traditional handicraft products in various regions. The greatest impact of this two-month visit for him was seeing how deeply rooted the ceramic tradition is in Japan.

From that time on Robert von Neumann Jr. began to work in clay almost to the exclusion of small-scale metalwork. He took great pleasure in working with larger forms in clay, a malleable and forgiving material.

Later, von Neumann returned to doing work in sculptural jewelry using metal in combination with other materials such as plastic, wood and clay, but he did not abandon the larger clay combination sculptures.

Von Neumann, as an educator, was deeply concerned about his students and the philosophy behind their education. "Most young visual artists today go through a foundation training program that is essentially identical for the painter, sculptor, designer and metalworker. Usually the student doesn't begin his major concentration until the junior year. I continue to feel that the artist today should develop skills and expressive abilities in a far greater variety of media than formerly. It certainly is much less rare today to find an individual who is a painter, jeweler, ironsmith, photographer and designer. Each area requires the same dosage of keen perception, imagination, and the ability to be one's own severest critic."

His philosophy has been reasonably successful.  They have been on the beginnings of the careers of many nationally and internationally recognized metalsmiths, such as Eleanor Moty, J. Fred Woell, Francis Stephen, Lane Coulter, Joan Weiskopf, Anita Fechter, and Marvin Lipofsky - all undergraduates in metal at the University of Illinois or Iowa State Teachers College.

Von Neumann believed that the ability to draw, to delineate the mental image, is of utmost importance. The act of drawing helps the artist-designer create a preliminary order out of the chaos of possibilities the mind generates. And drawing helps to communicate with the potential consumer of art as well. This is perhaps more important to the artist-craftsman than to anyone else.

Robert von Neumann Jr. led a full life, as teacher, writer and artist creating his own metalwork and sculpture. His wife, Mary Willson, was also a professor of ecology at the University of Illinois. Together, they spent as much time as possible with their three sons backpacking, canoeing, biking, skiing, rafting, and enjoying the challenge of the wilderness. They also built a home with terraced gardens in Wisconsin where they longed to live and work full time.

** Biographical Credit: Excerpts from Biography by Carol S. Fisher for ganoskin.com. Carol S. Fisher was Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Special Programs at the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.