Note: The sections below are to be part of a future book on Charles Massey West, Jr., and Anne Warner West, their lives and their art. From time to time these sections have been revised with additional material for limited circulation. Some newly discovered information was added recently concerning the 1941 Corcoran Biennial Prize and the then newly opened National Gallery of Art. References to current articles in the Washington Post, The Economist and WSJ on Edward Hopper’s exhibition at the Whitney in New York City have been added, February 2023. -- TGW

 

“The Narrows,” 1942

 

by Thomas G. West

 

“The Narrows” by Charles M. West, Jr., 1941

In the autumn of 1942, “The Narrows,” a painting by Charles Massey West, Jr., a native of Centreville, Maryland, was one of the prize winners at the Fifty-Third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.

For West in 1942, it was not the top prize, but there he was, shoulder to shoulder with the top artists of the era -- artists like Grant Wood, Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe --who have come to represent, over time, the very best of a distinctly American form of art.

It is true that the year before, in 1941, the “The Narrows” had already won the Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC, and also had been published in Art Magazine (as noted below). But this was somehow different.

It wasn’t the top prize. But it was major prize in a major show, providing recognition among major artists of the time. 

*****

The Death of Grant Wood, Famous for “American Gothic”

In the fall of 1942, the Chicago show and its exhibition catalogue mainly honored Grant Wood, who had died earlier that same year. Wood had already become an icon of American painting.

With images such as “American Gothic” (of course, very well known), “Daughters of Revolution” and “Good Influence” (all reproduced in the catalogue), Wood had linked humor and satire with pride in the simplicity and honesty of Middle America. 

Sometimes he used a flat, almost plastic palate, with smooth forms, high contrast and deep shadows -- not commonly seen again until the Pixar computer animation films some 70 years later.

“Nighthawks” -- Edward Hopper’s “Triumph”

The top prize that year at the Art Institute of Chicago had gone to Edward Hopper for “Nighthawks,” a canvas that was to become itself another icon of American painting. 

Lonely people in a bright diner in a dark cityscape -- familiar in numerous magazine articles, satirical imitations and young persons’ wall posters -- culminating as the central focus of the major show on Hopper in the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, that closed January 21, 2008.

Art historian and commentator Robert Hughes called Hopper the most important painter of the period and it is noteworthy that “Nighthawks” is the lone image that spans the backs of his multi-tape video history of American painting.

It is also notable how pivotal “Nighthawks” was in Hopper’s professional life. One writer notes in the US National Gallery show catalogue: “In May 1945, having become famous and successful after his triumph with ‘Nighthawks,’ Hopper was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.” (Barter, 2007, p. 211.)

Hopper paintings have retained high interest and value even after many decades of fashionable non-representational art. In one example, one of Hopper’s paintings (“Blackwell’s Island,” 1928) was sold at Christie’s in New York, May 23, 2013. “Estimated at $15-20 million, it brought $17 million – making it the evening’s top lot and setting a new Christie’s record for a single work in an auction of American Art.” (Architectural Digest, September 2013, p. 66.) (See more recent 2023 articles listed in References and Readings, below.) 

Very Best of Distinctly American Painters

For West, it was not the top prize, but there he was, as we have seen, shoulder to shoulder with the top artists of the time – a group of artists who have come to represent the very best of a distinctly American art form during an important period of American history.

In the show catalogue, West’s short biographical sketch was listed in facing pages with other short sketches of the top prizewinners. Hopper’s bio noted that his “early work aroused so little interest that he gave up painting for several years.” 

 

“Nighthawks,” Edward Hopper, Art Institute of Chicago, 1942 

In West’s bio, his hometown is spelled incorrectly but his study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (PAFA, attended 1931-1934; the oldest and most prestigious art school in America) is noted along with his then current teaching position (at the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana) and his award in 1934 of the Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship (as top art school student at PAFA, for 4 months of study and painting in Europe).

In the show catalogue, there are black and white photographs of the winning paintings. Hopper’s “Nighthawks” is in the middle of the booklet, Plate VII, “Awarded the Ada S. Garrett Prize.” One page leaf away is “The Narrows” by Charles M. West, Jr., Plate IX, “Awarded the Honorable Mention for Landscape.”

Continuing Fame of Grant Wood and Edward Hopper at the Chicago Institute

It is interesting to note that the Grant Wood and Edward Hopper paintings figure prominently in the way the Art Institute of Chicago presents itself to the public even in recent years. In 2016, 74 years after this show and catalogue, the Institute proudly proclaimed itself as the finest museum in America for 2013 (“Winner, Voted #1 Museum in the United States, Travelers’ Choice 2013”). 

It is significant that the front cover of the short guide book to the museum has a photograph of “American Gothic” – while the long guide book cover shows a blown up of a detail section from “Nighthawks.” The museum shop even sells an expensive leather tote bag with the full “Nighthawks” painting shown on both sides.

Those Who Showed in the Chicago Exhibition But Did Not Win Prizes

Also listed in the 1942 Chicago show catalogue were paintings by well-known and not so well-known artists of the period whose work was exhibited but did not win any prize. The full catalogue listing is quoted below, indented, without quotation marks; comments from this writer are in brackets. In one case, the painting shown below is the actual painting exhibited in the Chicago show (Georgia O’Keeffe, “Red Hills and Bones”). 

Some of those listed were associated with the Pennsylvania Academy (now known as part of the “Pennsylvania Academy School” or “Pennsylvania Impressionists” or “American Impressionists”) or with the “Brandywine School” of painters in Wilmington, Delaware (started by magazine and book illustrator Howard Pyle), including N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and James Wyeth.

Henriette Wyeth, born Wilmington, Delaware, 1907; lives in San Patricio, New Mexico, 233 [given here is the reference number for the paintings exhibited in this show], Portrait of N. C. Wyeth. [Daughter of N. C. Wyeth, sister of Andrew Wyeth, aunt to James Wyeth.]

Peter Hurd, born Roswell, New Mexico, 1904; lives in San Patricio, New Mexico, 133, Prairie Shower. [Husband of Henriette Wyeth; much later famously commissioned to do portrait of LBJ.]

Francis Speight, born Windsor, North Carolina, 1896; lives in Roxborough, Pennsylvania, 217, Scene in West Manayunk. [West’s teacher at the PAFA; both Speight and West were students of Daniel Garber among other famous PAFA teachers. Speight and his wife Sarah were long time close friends of Charles and Anne West (Sarah was their classmate). Sarah Speight painted a portrait of the young Charles West (while at art school, apparently posing as part of his scholarship support; remarkably, Anne Warner also painted a portrait of CMW at the same sitting, now also in possession of the West gallery) that now hangs in the West Gallery in Centreville. The West Gallery also owns a painting of another Manayunk scene, “Cliff House,” by Francis Speight.]

Walter Stuempfig, Jr., born Philadelphia, 1914; lives in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, 218, Family Reunion. [West’s classmate at the PAFA.]

Donald M. Mattison, born Beloit, Wisconsin, 1905; lives in Indianapolis, 167, Good-by. [Mattison was West’s boss at the time. As Director of the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana, Mattison had recruited West, then at the University of Iowa, as a young star teacher. Indeed, as it become evident later, Mattison had been hired at this time to bring in new, high-quality talent, capable of producing students who would win major prizes in the US and Europe. See article by R.B. Perry, American Art Review, April 2011, cited below.]

Thomas [Hart] Benton, born Neosho, Missouri, 1889; lives in Kansas City, 59, Negro Soldier.

Georgia O’Keeffe, born Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, 1887; lives in New York, 180, Red Hills and Bones. [Shown below.]

*****

 

Boyhood in Centreville, the Once-Busy Wharf Area

It was not the top prize. But it was a long way to have traveled for the boy from Centreville -- a small river town, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, that had been in many ways unchanged for more than a century. The town of 2000 people on the Corsica River in a timeless rural area of farmers, watermen and shopkeepers on the Delmarva Peninsula, had long been a virtual island between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean -- reachable from Baltimore or Annapolis on the Western Shore only by slow ferry boat or ancient steamer. The two bridges across the Bay were not built until the 1950s and the 1970s.

Born in 1907, the young Charlie West had spent his boyhood mostly in the town’s nearby wharf area (not far from the family home on Chesterfield Avenue). Not unlike Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the young Charlie followed the river traffic, absorbing outrageous local superstitions from the cooks, deck hands and travelers, seeing plays and melodramas at the James Adams Floating Theater when it was in town -- escaping his four older sisters and his no-nonsense, small-town businessman father (who ran a dry goods store opposite the Queen Anne’s County Courthouse).

 

“The James Adams Floating Theater,” by Charles M. West, Jr., 1936

 

At the Centreville Wharf, the Original “Showboat”

The James Adams Floating Theater was a theater built on a barge towed from river town to river town around the Chesapeake Bay and other Eastern Seaboard locations, such as the Outer Banks area of North Carolina. It was said (and we now know, correctly) to have been the actual basis for the stories later used in the musical “Showboat.”

The watercolor by Charles West, “The James Adams Floating Theater,” was signed “CW’36.” Charles did several watercolors and oil paintings of this floating theater and related scenes. Stories from the lives of those living on this floating theater were, in fact, the actual basis for those later used in the novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber and the musical by Jerome Kern and Oskar Hammerstein. The origins of the novel and the musical are recounted in a history of the James Adams Floating Theater -- described at another location by historian Mark A. Moore (in Bath, North Carolina) -- provided in the following passage:

“. . . Edna [Ferber] finally beheld the arrival of the massive show boat. The ‘James Adams Floating Palace Theatre came floating majestically down the Pamlico and tied up alongside the rickety dock.’ The craft was enormous. Painted white with dark trim, the flat-bottomed vessel was 132 feet long, 34 feet wide, and drew 14 inches of water. The long rectangular barge — a full two stories high — kindled in Edna Ferber all of the romance and river lore that her studies had yielded thus far: ‘There began, for me, four of the most enchanting days I've ever known.’ . . . Miss Ferber scratched furiously on a pad of yellow notepaper as [owner-actor] Charles Hunter, smoking steadily, spun his tale for Edna. ‘It was a stream of pure gold,’ she confessed. ‘Incidents, characters, absurdities, drama, tragedies, river lore, theatrical wisdom poured forth in that quiet flexible voice. He looked, really, more like a small-town college professor . . . than like a show-boat actor.’

“. . . Miss Ferber initially resented the idea of a musical adaptation of her novel. But she signed a contract in November 1926, and was quickly won over by Jerome Kern's beautiful score, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. One of the compositions written for Show Boat has become an icon of Broadway and cinematic song. . . . ‘I must . . . confess,’ admitted Edna, ‘to being one of those whose eyes grow dreamy and whose mouth is wreathed in wistful smiles whenever the orchestra . . . plays Ol' Man River . . . . I never have tired of it . . . . And I consider Oscar Hammerstein's lyric to Ol' Man River to be powerful, native, tragic, and true.’ When Kern first played and sang the song for Edna, ‘I give you my word,’ she confessed, ‘my hair stood on end, the tears came to my eyes, I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama. This was great music. This was music that would outlast Jerome Kern's day and mine.’ And so it has.”

 

The Centreville Dance Hall

Among Charlie’s close boyhood friends in Centreville was the African-American Bush Gaines. They remained good friends throughout their adult years. On at least one occasion, Bush took Charlie to the “Colored-Only” dance hall in Centreville’s “Sandy Bottom” area (the location, near the intersection of South Commerce and Little Kidwell, is now empty except for a small park structure, recently installed). The painting, called the “Dance Hall” or the “Paladoria Inn,” became the subject of one of West’s most loved paintings. 

 

“Dance Hall, The Paladoria Inn” Charles M. West, Jr., c. 1933-1934

 

Some observers have noted that the painting appears to be patterned (in some respects) on the painting “La Danse Au Moulin-Rouge” and especially the “Moulin Rouge -- La Goulue” poster (1891) both by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec -- the latter with distant audience, lively dancer in the middle ground and cartoon-like characterization of a man in the near foreground. West greatly admired the work of Toulouse-Lautrec along with other French artists of the period.

“Moulin Rouge – La Goulue,” Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1891

*****

A Balance Point

The prize for “The Narrows” wasn’t the top prize. But in the fall of 1942, at the age of 35, the recognition received at the Chicago show was special indeed -- a kind of watershed, a balance point in his life as a nationally recognized painter and artist, one generation removed from a local family of farmers and shop keepers.

It was only 11 years before that West had won a scholarship to attend art school at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia – mainly based at the Academy’s Country School at Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.

It was only 8 years before that he had been awarded the top art school prize to study and paint in Europe in 1934 -- almost losing his life from appendicitis as the grand ship steamed toward France. (The French surgeon performed the operation at no charge, saying an American surgeon would have done the same for a traveling art student from France.)

After his operation in Paris, West was befriended in the hospital by a Hungarian Countess and her rich American husband -- and was invited to recuperate at their grand chateau outside Paris. In so doing, he saw, first hand, the last days of a style of life -- with lush gardens, expensive cars, grand estates and grander parties -- that was to end forever only five years later -- when war broke out in Europe in 1939.

Influence of French Impressionists

In his painting, West loved the dash and freshness and vitality of the French Impressionists of the late 1800s. He saw it as a style well suited to the rural landscapes and river scenes that he had known all of his life.

Two years before the Chicago show, in 1940, West had married a fellow art school student, Anne Dickie Warner. Their first son had been born in March of 1941, named after his father and grandfather – so the baby became the third Charles Massey West, known as “Chip.” A second son was born in August of 1943 – named Thomas Gifford West (with a middle name from his mother’s grandfather, Frank Gifford Tallman, shared by her first cousin, Frank (Gifford) Tallman (III), the famous movie stunt pilot, Mad Mad World, Catch 22, The Great Waldo Pepper, among others, see below).

Upon first seeing the Chicago exhibition catalogue, the man who later became the head of the Pennsylvania Academy sent a note to the former student: “Dear Charlie: I can only take time for the merest word this morning, but the Chicago Art Institute catalogue has just come to my desk and I see that you have crashed through again. Heartiest congratulations and best wishes for all the Wests! Sincerely Yours, Joseph T. Fraser, November 11, 1942.”

A Major Prize and a Major Event -- The Corcoran Biennial and The National Gallery of Art Opening

As noted above, “The Narrows” was selected to be included in the 1941 Corcoran Biennial, in Washington, DC -- chosen from among 2700 paintings considered that year. A black and white photograph of the painting is displayed on the first page of the magazine article, page 202, with the caption, “Charles M. West, Jr., ‘The Narrows,’ in the Seventeenth Corcoran Biennial.” in the Magazine of Art, “A Monthly Magazine Relating the Arts to Contemporary Life,” Volume 34, Number 4, The American Federation of the Arts, Washington, April, 1941. (Duncan Phillips of the Phillips Gallery is listed as one of the Associate Editors.) 

This issue included a major article on the newly opened National Gallery of Art, “The Last of the Romans, Comment on the Building of the National Gallery of Art,” By Joseph Hudnut, pp. 169-173. Also included in this issue, “The President Accepts the National Gallery of Art,” p. 210: “On the evening of March 17, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the following address at the dedication of the National Gallery of Art. Others participating where Chief Justice Hughes (as Chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution), Rev. Ze Barney Phillips, Mr. David K. E. Bruce, President of the Gallery, Mr. Samuel H. Kress, and Mr. Paul Mellon.” 

The Honeywell Prize -- While Teaching at the John Herron Art School

“The Honeywell prize . . . for the most excellent landscape in oils was awarded to Charles West, Jr., instructor in still life painting at the Art School for his ‘Landscape in Winter.’ ” One of the prizes awarded in the 18th Annual Hoosier Salon. The John Herron Art School Chronicle, Published Three Times a Year at Pennsylvania and Sixteenth Streets, Indianapolis, Indiana. February 1942, Vol. v, No. 2. pp. 1 and 2. 

This issue also includes the article: “John Herron Art School Adopts Wartime Schedule. . . . Donald M. Mattison, Director of the John Heron Art School, announces that classes in all departments of the school will be offered on a continuous all year schedule. . . . This schedule makes it possible for young men who have graduated from high school to complete the major part of three years of work before they become eligible for military service. . . . That the particular technical training obtained in an art school is of distinct value in many branches of military service is evidenced by the special duties assigned various Art School graduates and under-graduates now on active service.”

Retrained for War Work -- Move to Hometown -- Final Rest

When the Chicago show closed December 10, 1942, America had been at war for its first full year. The art school closed. West was retrained to become a draftsman for the local war industries in Indianapolis (as an employee of the P.R. Mallory Company).

Thirty years later -- after resettling his young family in his own hometown and having taught painting, sculpture and history of art at several schools, art schools and colleges -- eventually -- at the end of December 1972, at the age of 65, West’s life was at an end.

Charles West was buried, with a small family service, along side his parents in the family plot in Centreville (eventually, under one of the plain classical tombstones that he himself had designed), as flights of geese flew overhead in the cold of early January.

“The West Gallery” on Lawyers Row

In later years, Charles’ wife Anne turned a small building, former law offices on Lawyers Row in the center of the town, into a gallery to honor her husband’s paintings and to show the art work of others.

It is apparent that West’s father’s dream was that his son would become a lawyer, the top of the social scale of the small agricultural town and county, a northern-most outpost of very Southern rural attitudes and traditions. It is no small irony that West’s paintings -- his art and his career so much a puzzle to his father and virtually everyone else in this essentially provincial town and rural county -- finally ended up at the center of the law offices that face the old Queen Anne’s County Courthouse. 

There, property deeds had been exchanged and fought over for hundreds of years -- land ownership long having been in the area the main path to wealth and social position. Over the years, Anne West painted a number of views of the Courthouse from the upstairs rooms of the rented building, former law offices, which eventually became the “West Gallery.”

Anne lived on for another 34 years of painting and travel, grandchildren and family visits in Centreville, Chestertown and Washington, D.C. -- passing away in her sleep in the afternoon of November 10, 2006, at the age of 97, just a month short of her 98th birthday.

A Family of Artists, Visual Thinkers and Hands-on Craftsmen

It is perhaps significant that Anne Dickie Warner West was descended from an old Quaker family of millwrights, church clock makers, silver smiths, artists and engineers (a family that included sailing ship captains and, later, one famous cousin -- the movie stunt pilot Frank Gifford Tallman -- the third of that name). 

Originally from Blockley, in England, a village with many millers and craftsmen, the American Warners had settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then Wilmington, Delaware. William Warner had been the founder of the “Blockley” area of western Philadelphia, five years before the arrival of William Penn. For generations, the Warners did the kinds of work that required high levels of hands-on, visual-spatial skills.

The pattern is noted in a history of the area: “… Men … who provide … ‘Yankee ingenuity.’ In parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania, both before and after the Revolution [of 1776], if there was a need for someone to mend a watch, make a clock, fix a gun-lock, do local metalsmithing in pewter, copper or silver, run a store, build a water-power mill or operate it, there was often a Quaker named Warner or Ellicott in the neighborhood who could do the job.” (Maryland Historical Magazine, quoted in the book, An American Family.)

 

“Queen Anne’s County Courthouse,” by Anne Warner West, 1940

References and Readings

Art Institute of Chicago, 1942. Catalogue of the Fifty-Third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Barter, Judith A., 2007. “Travels and Travails: Hopper’s Late Pictures” in Edward Hopper, Boston, MA: MFA Publications, pp. 211-225. The book was published in conjunction with the exhibition “Edward Hopper,” organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Other sections of this book were written by Carol Troyen, Janet L. Comey, Elliot Bostwick Davis and Ellen E. Roberts.

Economist magazine, January 29, 2023. One full page on Hopper exhibition at Whitney in New York through March 5, 2023. Very popular. The show catalogue is “the gift to have” says the Economist. Full reference to be provided – along with reference to WSJ article as well. Perhaps suggesting a temporary revival of interest in some traditional representational art forms.

Kennicott, Philip, 2023. “Critic’s NoteBook: In Edward Hopper’s New York, Silence Speaks Volumes,” Washington Post, Arts&Style, Section E, January 29, 2023, pp. E1, E7-E8. Note: E1 is one quarter page (at bottom) with one photo: “Room in Brooklyn, 1932.” Pages E8 and E9 provide two full pages with one full line of text (left margin) plus large photos of 5 paintings: “Room in New York,” 1932; “City Roofs” 1932; “New York Movie,” 1939; “Approaching a City,” 1946; “People in the Sun,” 1960. 

More, Mark A., “Historic Bath: Edna Ferber and the James Adams Floating Theater,”http://www.nchistoricsites.org/bath/edna-ferber.htm

Perry, Rachel Berenson, 2011. “Indiana Realities: Regional Paintings 1930-1945.” American Art Review, Volume XXIII, Number 2, March – April 2011, pp. 68-75. (Grateful thanks to Charles Mendez for reference to this article.)

Sellin, David, 1986. “Francis Speight,” in Francis Speight: A Retrospective, November 7 – December 6, 1986. Taggart, Jorgensen & Putman, 3241 P Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20007.

 

Warner, Ralph F. and R. David Warner, Sr., 2010. An American Family: The Warners of Philadelphia. From the publisher: “An American Family is about the Warner family of Philadelphia's Blockley Township. R. David Warner, Sr., the author, is qualified to write this book because he and his father are the twelfth and thirteenth generation of a family which settled on the shores of the Schuylkill River five years before William Penn laid out the city. Before his death in 1992, the author's father wrote a series of letters containing the stories told to him as a child in the early twentieth century. He researched the public records of both the Historical Societies and the Quaker Meetinghouse to build upon the actual accounts of his family members. He spent the last twenty years of his life collecting this historical information.”

 

Copyright 2018, 2023: Thomas G. West. Rights for all West artwork and papers are held by Thomas G. West. Permission to reproduce non-West paintings will be secured for the future book prior to publication. Images are from open Internet sources unless otherwise noted. This is a draft chapter section, with additional images and text inserted from time to time. Revised in December of 2021 and January of 2023. 

 

Contact information: thomasgwest@gmail.com. Mobile phone: 202-262-1266. 

Blog: inthemindseyedyslexicrenaissance.blogspot.com. 

 

Biographical Notes -- Thomas G. West -- Son of CMW, Jr., and AWW.

 

Thomas G. West is the author of three books. After he was tested for dyslexia at the age of 41, Thomas West recognized how the distinctive visual strengths and academic weaknesses seen among dyslexics had major affects on the lives of his father, himself and other family members. This realization led to a series of researches and books -- which led, in time, to travels and talks to interested groups in many parts of the world.

 

The first book for Thomas West -- In the Mind’s Eye: Creative Visual Thinkers, Gifted Dyslexics and The Rise of Visual Technologies -- was first published in 1991 and was recently re-leased by a new publisher (first time in paperback) in a Third Edition, in July of 2020. It is considered an “evergreen” in the trade, a book that never ages and never stops selling. 

 

The book includes a Foreword by the famous medical writer Dr. Oliver Sacks, who says “In the Mind's Eye brings out the special problems of people with dyslexia, but also their strengths, which are so often overlooked. . . .  It stands alongside Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind as a testament to the range of human talent and possibility.” 

 

In the Mind’s Eye was published in Japanese translation as Geniuses Who Hated School. The book has also been translated into Chinese and Korean. Awarded a gold seal by the Association of College and Research Libraries of the American Library Association, the book was recognized as one of the “best of the best” for the year (in their broad psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience category). According to one reviewer: “Every once in a while a book comes along that turns one's thinking upside down. In the Mind's Eye is just such a book.” 

 

Over time, West was invited to provide presentations for scientific, medical, art, design, computer and business groups in the U.S. and 19 other countries, including groups in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Dubai-UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and twelve European countries. Since the pandemic, West has given Zoom talks and interviews in Egypt, The Netherlands, Singapore and Zimbabwe. 

 

West’s second book is Thinking Like Einstein -- Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in Computer Information Visualization. This book is based on five years of quarterly columns that he wrote for Computer Graphics, the in-house members’ publication of ACM-SIGGRAPH -- the international computer graphics association with conferences in Los Angeles attracting up to 60,000 computer artists, technical professionals and users of CG technologies -- including animators, astronomers, surgeons, mathematicians and makers of feature films. 

 

West’s third book is Seeing What Others Cannot See -- The Hidden Advantages of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains. In this book, he investigates how different kinds of brains and different ways of thinking can help to make discoveries and solve problems in ways unexpected by conventional experts. West focuses on what he has learned over some 30 years of travel and talks -- based on the stories he has heard from a group of extraordinarily bright and creative people -- strong visual thinkers and those with dyslexia, Asperger’s syndrome, and other different ways of thinking, learning and working. 

 

West has given presentations to the Royal College of Art in London, the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, the Confederation of British Industry in London, the Netherlands Design Institute in Amsterdam, a meeting of 50 Max Planck Institutes in Göttingen, Germany, the first ever “Diversity Day” conference for the staff of GCHQ (the code-making and code-breaking descendants of Bletchley Park, the source of the extremely secret “Ultra” for Winston Churchill in World War II), in Cheltenham, England, as well as scientists and artists at Green College and at Magdalen College within Oxford University, England. 

 

Other talks have included a conference at the University of Uppsala before the Queen of Sweden, the University of California at Berkeley, an education conference sponsored by Harvard and MIT, the Arts Dyslexia Trust in London, the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, the International Symposium on Dyslexia in the Chinese Language organized by the Society of Child Neurology and Developmental Pediatrics in Hong Kong, the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California – and a Director's Colloquium for scientists and staff of NASA Ames Research Center, at Moffett Field in California’s Silicon Valley. 

 

West’s papers, books and personal blog have been deposited in a permanent archive in the History of Medicine Section, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.