SAN SIMEON 11″ X 14″. Billionaires and artists have been known to be eccentric. William Randolph Hearst set the standard. Hurst was one of the most powerful and influential newspaper publishers in history. He started the Spanish American War by perfecting the art of ‘yellow journalism”, a style of news reporting that prioritizes sensationalism, lurid exaggeration and attention grabbing headlines over accurate, well researched reporting. Its mission is the boost readership and increase profits. Mission accomplished, Mr. Hearst! Hearst made bank and built Hearst Castle on 40,000 acres of land on California’s Central Coast near the town of San Simeon. Hearst’s father bought the land to have family picnics when Hearst was a boy. Known as the great accumulator, Hearst bought most of the architectural wonders of Europe and decorated his castle with them. Over 32 different ceilings, doorcases, fireplaces and mantles. He bought entire monestaries. Everything was disassembled in Europe, shipped to his New York warehouses and then on to California. He accumulated the largest collection of ancient Greek vases in the world, antiques and works of art. Hearst and his castle were satirized in the 1941 film classic, Citizen Kane, by actor and director, Orson Wells, who was himself no stranger to being eccentricities. Heast tried to suppress the film but did not succeed.
SAN SIMEON
500 $
SAN SIMEON 11″ X 14″. Acrylic on canvas board. 2005. You’ve heard the phrase “Go big or go home!” William Randolph Hearst went big and then he did one better: He made it his home. Hearst Castle is located off Hwy 1 in the Central California coast beach city of San Simeon. Just south of Big Sur. Hearst collaborated with architect Julia Morgan the build “something a little more comfortable up on the hill.” It had it’s own dock, its own air strip. It even had it’s own zoo. Construction lasted from 1920 until 1939, then started up again at the end of World War II. He had movie stars, politicians and other famous people as guests. Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. Political luminaries like Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill and Charles Lindbergh and literary giants like George Bernard Shaw. But you had to obey the rules. Those who did not comply were just told “Go home!” It was luxurious, it was sumptuous, it was grandiose. It was, as Shaw so eloquently put it “what God would have built if he had had the money.”
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