THE DOUBLE LIFE OF JOHN PIERCE BARNES
Historical Society Exhibit Spotlights RCA Artist
CAMDEN, NJ -- Everyone knows the Victor Talking Machine Company, RCA-Victor and the RCA companies made Camden a mecca for engineers
and craftsmen. Few realize they also brought an unprecedented number of industrial artists to the city.
From February 28 through April 25, the Camden County Historical Society (CCHS) spotlights the work of one of those artists -- John Pierce Barnes, who worked in the Victor Design Division of RCA from 1926 until his death in 1954.
Kathryn Scimone Stanko, curator for the art of John Pierce Barnes, will offer a special Curator's Talk at 1 PM on February 28 in the CCHS Museum Gallery; exhibit co-curator is Museum Director Sarah Hagarty. Admission is included in the everyday CCHS Museum fee of $5.
Army of artists
In its heyday, Camden's RCA plant was the world's largest maker of records, Victrolas, record players and radios. Supporting the daily operation of this "city within a city"
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Barnes' luminous impressionist paintings and pastels depict landscapes and still lifes of the Delaware Valley.
| was a workforce of industrial artists who toiled anonymously and, today, are largely forgotten.
But one of them -- John Pierce Barnes (1893-1954) -- lived a double life of sorts. By day he worked as an industrial designer and draftsman for the Camden company. But on his own time the World War I Navy veteran became an award-winning impressionist painter.
World War I sketching
Born in Philadelphia, John Pierce Barnes showed an interest in drawing from an early age. He attended high school in the Germantown area and, with a good eye for color, helped design his high-school yearbook. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy during the first World War, sketching every place he visited in pencil, charcoal and pastels. On his return home, his family encouraged him to pursue a career as an artist.
Barnes began his training at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) and continued his education
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Trained in the fine arts, Barnes worked as an RCA industrial designer. He designed the GE logo still in use today. It appeared on one of the country's first electric fans.
| at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1921 -- the first art school in the United States -- where he quickly became an award-winning student of noted impressionist Daniel Garber. Garber's influence is apparent in Barnes' landscapes, in which he covers the entire surface of a panel with short strokes of rich, vibrant colors that capture the beauty of the American outdoors while creating a shimmering sense of light.
His work was featured in the 1921 and 1922 annual Philadelphia Watercolor and Miniature Exhibitions. Then, in 1923 and 1924 he was awarded consecutive Cresson Traveling Scholarships, allowing him to spend the next two years studying abroad in France, Holland, and Belgium.
Day job: industrial design
Unfortunately, Barnes contracted sleeping sickness in the 1920s. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he left his easel to make his living in the field of industrial design -- a choice that would bring him to the Camden, NJ, waterfront and RCA.
It was there that Barnes, working alongside other graphic artists, draftsmen, industrial designers and craftsmen whose names are long forgotten, designed escutcheons and ornamental hardware for RCA's line of products. But he is perhaps best known in the industry as the artist who designed an early RCA logo as well as the logo still used today by General Electric -- a logo first created to fill the round, ornamental plate covering the hub of one of America's earliest electric fans.
The exhibit on display at the Camden County Historical Society features 24 of Barnes' pastels, oils,
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Barnes' "Sunset" is a view of the Philadelphia skyline from Camden.
| and watercolors created between 1920 and 1930. One, called "Sunset," vividly captures the skyline of Philadelphia as viewed from a high vantage point -- most likely within the RCA complex in downtown Camden.
Exhibit items
These works will be shown alongside RCA design blueprints attributed to Barnes, putting his work into historical context with the artifacts, photographs, and documents that tell the story of RCA's history in the City of Camden.
The Camden County Historical Society is at 1900 Park Blvd., behind Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, just across Rte. 130 from Collingswood and next to Harleigh Cemetery. For more information, please call 856-964-3333.
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