The USC mosaics: How Helen Bruton’s contribution was nearly lost

Emerson mosaic at USC Hoose Library
www.publicartinla.com/USCArt/Hoose/

In 1929, Helen Bruton traveled from her home in northern California to Los Angeles. Her destination was the Gladding McBean Company, a major manufacturer of decorative terra cotta tile. Helen, who had been designing her own tiles, thought the company might be interested in purchasing some from her. Much to her surprise, when Helen arrived at Gladding McBean, they offered her a position. As Helen remembered, “They were frightfully busy and they had a great big job. They didn’t have a person that could really do it to their satisfaction, so they hired me to design a series of portrait panels that would be made up in terra cotta.”¹  These panels were going to the University of Southern California, where they would be installed in the Hoose Library in the newly constructed Mudd Hall of Philosophy.  Architect Ralph Carlin Flewelling was selected to design the philosophy building; he was, after all, the son of the head of the philosophy department, Dr. Ralph Tyler Flewelling.  

The concept for Hoose Library was to decorate the walls with mosaic tile portraits and quotations -- selected by Dr. Flewelling -- representing twenty-two great philosophers.  A previous draftsman had completed the panels of Confucius and Buddha, and Helen was to begin with the Greek philosophers. In an interview she described the process of creating the mosaics:  “I had to furnish a drawing, and the color theme…They were done on big twelve-inch tiles.”²

Hoose Library
www.publicartinla.com/USCArt/Hoose/

Although Helen loved working on the Greek philosophers, she eventually ran out of ideas. She especially struggled with the final panel, which depicted Emerson, the last of the twenty-two philosophers. Helen said, “all I could think of was [Emerson] sitting down under a tree on a funny bench and I had a dog or two in it, too.”³  But Dr. Flewelling forbade Helen from including dogs in the design as they “weren’t dignified.” Helen acquiesced, but the spirited artist got her subtle revenge by putting them in anyway:  “I put the dogs up in the sky [above Emerson] -- I made them like clouds drifting across and they were all dogs racing across… if you look close enough and if you know the key [you would] find the dogs.”⁴  

Detail of Emerson mosaic with dogs running across the sky

Mudd Hall won a gold medal for design from the Los Angeles Art Association in 1931 and was designated a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2013. Yet Helen Bruton’s significant contribution to this building was almost lost to history. When I checked USC’s website earlier this year, there was no mention of Helen Bruton in any history of the library, and to make matters worse, the college’s Art and Architecture brochure incorrectly asserted that the designer of the “Mosaics of Philosophers” was the architect, Ralph Carlin Flewelling. Staff and faculty have been made aware of this oversight, and they recently updated their information on the mosaics in the library: Hoose Library of Philosophy.

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¹Interview with Lydia Modi Vitale and Steven Gelber, 26 Feb. 1975.  de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, University of Santa Clara, p. 3.

²Oral history interview with Helen and Margaret Bruton, 1964 December 4. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

³Oral history interview with Helen and Margaret Bruton, 1964 December 4. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

⁴Interview, with Lydia Modi Vitale and Steven Gelber, 26 Feb 1975. de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, University of Santa Clara, p. 3-4.