The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act Three

Stigma, any way you slice it.

For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism – either a man emerges determined to be better, pure, kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.        

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945

Stigma was Taflinger's chosen word to most fully express the reality of his feelings after Thomas Hart Benton was chosen, over himself and all other local artists, for the creation of the prestigious Indiana murals for the Chicago's world's fair in 1933-4. 

Stigma has either of two major meanings; first, a mark of divine favor, and second, a mark of disgrace. 

Perhaps as alluded to by John Steinbeck in Cannery Row, in our world of modern men, the latter definition will rule the day. But what pain was Taflinger feeling when he took the very extraordinary and public action of filing suit to change the “nativity” of his birth, to wipe the Indiana dust from the soles of his feet? Was it the pain, even shame, of his own shortcoming, or the pain, and perhaps bitterness, of his being slighted by the powers that be? Again, as we shall see, a tree is known by its own fruit.

Full Spectrum Dominance – Taflinger's PR Totalitarianism in 1933.

Posterity records that Thomas Hart Benton was to win the media art war in Indiana in 1933, with his supreme victory on display in the Indiana pavilion at the world's fair. But an amazing array of skirmishes and small-scale battles were waged by Elmer Taflinger, on the battlefield of the newspaper pages, as he endlessly tilted at windmills that year. 

Taflinger refused to capitulate in the wake of his all too public shaming in the wake of the Benton affair. He did not lay down his brushes, and quit. There is no surrender in his bones as he fought on in the many trenches he would excavate that year. No capitulation or armistice in the man, as we begin to sense a cause for Taflinger much greater than revenge. His enemy was more formidable than Thomas Hart Benton. More unpredictable, unformed and, at times, downright crazy. The enemy of Elmer Taflinger was himself.

The word salad of Taflinger's scattered ideas was offered up in a public speech called 'The Business of Art' that he presented for the Indianapolis Business and Professional Women's Club on January 26, 1933. Reported in the January 27 Indianapolis Star, the talk was briefly summarized as follows,

“(Taflinger) sketched some ideas of Michelangelo applicable to art today and stressed the fact that the public...thinks that an artist is a peculiar person, but that in reality he must be as sane and sensible as the successful business man.

Artists are tending to make their work more human to get away from the influence of the mechanical age, and beauty as well as mechanical perfection is being achieved by fore-sighted manufacturers of today, he said. 

The speaker said it was a mistaken idea of the public that an artist excels in only one field of art. He said that a good portrait painter could paint a miniature as well as a 1000-foot painting and that the power of drawing gives him understanding and knowledge of all art.”

The work-in-process aspect of Taflinger's art psyche is hinted at in the his award winning picture he displayed at the 9th Annual Hoosier Salon in Chicago.  The January 29, 1933 Indianapolis Star reports the name  of his oil painting, which won an honorable mention in the outstanding picture category – Unfinished Picture.

(As we shall see, the painting was to transfix Indianapolis Star art critic, Lucille Morehouse, who will write about it, and its eventual name change, several times over the coming years.)

The spring and summer was filled with articles all over the state revolving around the Benton – Taflinger mural controversy. As summer gave way to fall, a new offensive was launched by Taflinger, his battle for the hearts and minds continued.

Taflinger would flood the pages of the local papers in what must be one of most bizarre public relations weeks for any Indiana artist in history. 

In early September, 1933,  during the run of the state fair, Taflinger articles and photographs appeared at the snap of a finger. 

The magic of his copy, of Taf just being Taf. 

Taf paints Calf and prize winning girl
Indiana State Fair, 1933

Over several consecutive days of coverage, the local papers reported that Taflinger would help judge the dress-making contest at the fair, but that's not all. He would paint the girl wearing the winning dress in a public display of his flash sketching technique, the same techniques taught at his art school. But that's not all. He would also paint the the fair's prize-winning calf, also while-you-wait and open to the public. But here's the real kicker.  He would paint the calf and the girl together, in one canvas, because...well...just because.  And he pulls off the high stake gambit, as documented in the photograph appearing in the November 7, Indianapolis Times. The photo shows Taf painting away, like a bullfighter in the ring, his canvas capturing both the beauty and the beast. The hilarious painting looks amazingly good.

Taf quaffs beer at Turnverein Hall
Indianapolis' 1933

His photo appeared again in The Indianapolis Times again, just two days later,on September 9. The Times and other papers picked up on Taflinger's selection as one of the judges of an Oktoberfest beer drinking contest held at the Turnverein Hall on the city' south side.  Taf's attention-seeking and performance art instincts were second to none, as he decided, once more, to not only judge the contest, but to get all up and involved. He drank from a large and ornate stein of beer, as cameras clicked, declaring,  “This is real art.”

His vaudevillian follies were likely informed by his many years in and around show business, first in Indianapolis and then New York.  He portrayed a canny ability to give 'em what they want. All of 'em, the papers, the public, the inebriated.

Taf's showmanship, or maybe some other local flagpole sitter, seems to have inspired a longtime student of his. A fledgling paint performer with a name of remarkable synchronicity and symbolism –  Isaac Lane Muse. 

The relationship between the two seems broader than teacher and student. Taf's Abraham and Isaac's Isaac seems more inexorably linked to some occult awareness of the machinations of mass media. The provocateur and the protegee, brought together at the tree by water's edge, in a fateful meeting.  

Lucille Morehouse devoted a long and tortured  column to Mr. Muse in the September 10, 1933 Indianapolis Star.  The connection of Muse to Taflinger is explained in a convoluted way, in great detail by Miss Morehouse,

"Elmer Taflinger first heard of (Muse) when he was living in a tree at Warfleigh while a life guard at the beach”

Morehouse is referring to the Broad Ripple neighborhood nestled between White River and the Central Canal. 

“(Mr. Muse) kept this up,  cooking his meals and sleeping with birds from May to September. Mr. Taflinger employed him to pose for his life class and found him so talented – judging from the compositions that he volunteered to hand in for criticism – that he gave him his tuition to pose for the second year. Another year he acted as class monitor for his tuition.”

Isaac Muse “began a serious study of art in the Taflinger life class,” Morehouse writes, at the start of her wild read. 

Isaac Lane Muse painting under water
Broad Ripple municipal pool, 1933

If you are a reader who understood Neal Cassady after drinking Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid..., perhaps you can make sense of the Morehouse portrait of Muse as a young artist. Suffice to say, in picking random tidbits from her coverage, exposure to Taflingerism should just as well come with a warning label,

“(Isaac Lane Muse) painted three pictures under water. And he did not go down in a diving bell to do it.  Each time he remained under water about three-quarters of an hour and each time he painted a full-length figure on a canvas about 12 by 15 inches. 

The municipal pool at Broad Ripple park was selected...Three Sunday mornings, around 10 o'clock...when the pool was less frequented and the artist could work unobserved and unmolested from swimmers and divers who approached him out of curiosity...

When painting under water, everything appears higher in key...A very fair skin becomes so luminous under water that it is almost phosphorescent. Sunburned skin takes on a purplish hue...Shadows are very luminous. You can see right through them.” 

Mr. Muse explained his rationale to the critic,

“I had listened to stories of deep sea diving...by a friend...he was in the South seas with a millionaire whose hobby was sea life...”

Muse's rich friend of a friend was actually the innovator of underwater painting, as the article explains. But the exotic stories of the life aquatic inspired Taf's student to don flippers and follow in the under water flapping.

The article goes on, perhaps too long, as by the end, the under water adventure of Muse has lost steam. He meets the girl, gets married, and moves to the big city to follow a new and different dream. The cliffhanger, if any, is if there was a happily ever after, or at least a relative peace for Mr. and Mrs. Muse in their life after Taflinger.

All this being said, Taflinger may come across as a self-promoter to the casual observer at first glance. But a deeper look reveals several threads weaving together his various publicity stunts. The threads of a desire to connect with and participate in the larger real world outside his everyday art world. To invite outside thoughts in, to join ranks with the thoughts in his everyday head. 

These threads can be seen in his many public talks, his judging of contests, his spontaneous participation in all aspects of society, high and low.

He was to offer a life drawing class at his studio to a couple of dozen young men, members of the American Business Club. By bringing in a group of unlikely artists, he was forced to find words and methods to teach them, to open them up to the idea and rationale of drawing naked bodies. As reported in the November 17, Indianapolis Star, he began his session, 

“Attention please!  If you were about to build a skyscraper, would you begin by building the penthouse?

It is so with drawing a suit of clothes or a dress. One does not begin with a dress.”

At the moment a model sat before the group on a stand in stark nakedness and any drawing of a dress would have to have been pure fantasy. 

“To attempt to draw a dress first would be a serious mistake...”

On the December 17, 1933 front page of The Star, Taflinger supplied a drawing of a young girl clutching at a doll while giving thanks in the lamplight of an empty room. The illustration was to draw attention to the newspaper's Santa Claus Fund that provided toys for the city's needy children. 

Holiday toy drive drawing by Elmer E. Taflinger, 1933

Taflinger  not only supplied the drawing, but he also volunteered to be on the festive Santa wagon to help deliver the toys to children, as was noted in a later article and photograph.

Finally, so beloved was Taflinger becoming to his friends and local community by this time, that a holiday present to him, made the The Star on Christmas day, as an elaborate and farcical send-up. The story was shortened and clarified as a newswire, feel-good  story and was printed in the Lafayette Journal and Courier, also on December 25, as follows,

“One Christmas present here today caused the whole town to chuckle. It was a new hat for Elmer Taflinger, Hoosier artist. The gift replaced a 17-year-old headpiece, the pride of Taflinger's existence, but the dismay of all of his friends, who for years had declared it a blot on the landscape....because of attempts of friends to snatch it...(Taf) had formed the habit of sitting on it when eating in a downtown restaurant...his friends had set up a cigar box...to take up  collection...for a new lid...The collection amounted to $2.50.”  

It would seem, judging him by his fruit, that his antics in the spotlight did not serve to alienate Taf from his friends, but rather to endear. The tree of his  stigma would only draw deeper into the soil, and spread wider the branches of his Hoosier soul.

Making a Masterpiece of the Nude.

As Indianapolis Star art critic, Lucille Morehouse, noted in her review of his two nude drawings in a 1929 show, Elmer Taflinger was exemplary in his knowledge of anatomy and rendering skills. His many years associated with George Bridgman and countless drawing sessions before the disrobed model, both while in school and then teaching, only strengthened these skills over time. That he could create drawings bordering on perfection cannot be seriously questioned. The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields collection contains many examples including Standing Female Academy, Standing Male Academy and Seated Nude. But it can also be noticed, arguably, that even today, in art learning institutions centered in traditional academic training, there is usually a teacher or a student, perhaps a few, perhaps many, at any given time, possessing such amazing skills.  

The key with the nude, again as an argument, is for the artist to make good use of the foundational skills honed by mind, eye and hand to create the image or object that transcends the sterile stage of the life drawing exercise.  

The transcendence of Elmer Taflinger is saved for posterity in an early nude masterpiece, the oil painting of an African-American woman, first called Unfinished Picture, and in later years, My Body is Weary.

The picture would haunt Lucille Morehouse for many years, as it would come back to mind, and she would vividly recall its details, long after she first saw it.  On February 5, 1933, in The Indianapolis Star, she writes,

“Elmer Taflinger displays his skillfully painted full length of a seated nude...It receives an honorable mention. If the jury hat rated it as highly as I do, they would have given it a leading prize. Brilliantly painted, it is one of the finest handlings of flesh textures that I have ever see...”   

Then again, in a January 13, 1935 review of a traveling show of American artists at Herron Institute, Morehouse recalls the Taflinger picture,

 "The local artist, Elmer Taflinger, painted a nude...a few years ago that was little less than a masterpiece. The brown flesh fairly quivered with life. When it was told me that the picture had been considered a the jury for a $500 prize, it did not surprise me.”  

Finally, in her review of the 13th Annual Indiana Artists exhibition at L. S. Ayres & Co. in Indianapolis, Morehouse writes on October 29, 1944,

"When Elmer E. Taflinger exhibited his full length nude...holding a scant length of red scarf in an earlier exhibition, I gave it unstinted praise for its skillful drawing and meritorious painting of flesh textures. I have not changed my opinion about it but I am still just as enthusiastic. I hope that it will some day be added to the permanent collection of the Herron Art Museum.”

My Body is Weary is now in the permanent collection of the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, and was included in the exhibition, Lucille Morehouse in 2023. 

Taflinger would transition in the following years to teaching a generation of students, to conceiving of grand projects, several of which he would accomplish, and some of which remained out of reach. The next part of this series will cover Taflinger's final act in Indiana, his final moments on the stage.

Mark Diekhoff, October 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act Two

Phantasm, Elmer E. Taflinger, pastel, 1928
offered as a prize in costume competition

Experience and Innocence.

That a struggle continued for Elmer Taflinger upon his return to Indianapolis in the 1920s is made evident by one of the earliest prizes his artwork earned upon his return.  Recall that Bridgman warned him to teach no more than a year at a time, to save room in his art life for pure creation. An admonishment to hold dear 'art for art's sake,' as opposed to other more mercantile pursuits. That teeter-totter between commission and creation, plan and serendipity, between Beelzebub and the Bible.

The March 9, 1926 Richmond Item newspaper announced the award winners at the 2nd Annual Hoosier Salon held at Marshall Field galleries in Chicago. Among the creators and winners was Wayman Adams and his masterpiece, the shows outstanding picture, The Art Jury. Also included was T. C. Steele and his beautiful The Hill Country – Brown County.

Elmer Taflinger was represented with the prize winning commission or study, Over Blackboard decoration for European History classroom.  Unfortunately, no description of the work is provided, but its title is as snooze-inducing as a lecture on the Reformation. 

During this time, Taflinger continued to pursue teaching as well. Beginning in 1927, he instructed night classes in figure drawing at the Circle Art Academy in Indianapolis, the teaching atelier of George and Gordon Mess. By 1929, he ended his association the brothers and their art school, as explained in a news article in The Star in June, 1929, although no reason was provided for the separation of ways.

Taf would soon set up his own school, teaching in his studio on the top floor of the Pierce Building, downtown, and then when he changed locations, at his 14th Street studio in the stable house of the Indianapolis Propylaeum.  

Meanwhile, art direction continued to call upon Taflinger's experience and attention as can be noted in in his contribution of decorative figurative pastels for the Indiana Artists' Club Annual Costume Ball at Herron Art Museum in April 1928. 

The first inklings in newsprint of Taflinger's somewhat manipulative and self-promoting inclinations begin to bubble to the surface of public awareness in the late 1920s as he approached the age of thirty. A tabloid persona of sturm und drang began to dominate his coverage in the papers, rather that the beauty or genius of his art.  

Whereas most other local artists would seem content to create art and enter exhibitions, and let the coverage, awards and sales fall where they may, Taflinger began to juggle his creative impulses and esoteric concerns in a very public way, with a  series of wobbly PR stunts, theatrically delivered by a cast of alter egos such as the faux innocent and the learned scribe. 

An example of Taflinger's coy provocation is demonstrated by the mini-firestorm of coverage generated by his attempt to enter nude artworks into the Indiana State Fair art competition in 1927.  An Indianapolis Star article in November recounts an ongoing saga of several months by then. A contest of wills between, on the one hand, an out-of-town juror, a gentleman artist from Chicago, finding the work meritorious, worthy of not only inclusion, but the grand prize. And on the other, the common sense of a local delegation of ladies, the state fair woman's board, upholding the moral decency of the fair-going public, and their children. 

The ladies' ban of the nudes would prevail, which opened the door for Taflinger to kick at a  hornet's nest of his own construction. A war, not on the battlefield of prudishness as Taflinger would have us believe, but on the grounds of a common sense modesty,  entirely justified and predictable for the venue and the time. He would wire a press release from New York, to keep stirring the pot, and to have the last word,

“Elmer E. Taflinger...had a canvas accepted for display in the winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design... New York.   

A telegram received last evening by Mr. Taflinger stated that his oil painting...Studio Interior...has been hung in the first gallery (of the exhibit).

Studio Interior is...an interior with nude figure, full length and about one-third life size.  Half sitting, half reclining, the slender form of a young woman gleams like a pearly-tinted  flower in a dark red calyx, as the round-backed seat on the which the figure is posed is draped with red velvet...

It is of interest to know that...(Studio Interior)...was entered at the state fair this fall and was so much admired by (a) judge (from) Chicago that he decided to give it the prize of $100 as outstanding picture...Acting in opposition to the judge's decision, the woman's board of the state fair...decided that the picture could not be hung because it was a painting of the nude.

...Taflinger...entered four nude subjects at the state fair, two oil paintings and two charcoal drawings, all of which were thrown out, much to the regret of the artist-judge from Chicago.” 

In an Indianapolis News article dated December 3, an unnamed writer reports Taflinger's Studio Interior and its inclusion in the current National Academy of Design show in New York, along with Indianapolis sculptor Myra R. Richards. The column contains a large photograph of Richard's slightly cubist, clearly modernist, portrait bust, titled Judge Napoleon Taylor. Again, no surprise, Hoosier modesty prevailed, an no photograph of Studio Interior is printed. 

A first impression of another trick up Taflinger's sleeve is rolled out in the same art column. His alter ego, as not only purist-pretending provocateur,  but as learned sage. Over time, it would also be a recurring trope, as we shall see.

The anonymous News writer dutifully reports to the Fine Arts page readers that,  

“At present Mr. Taflinger is carrying out researches in perspective begun during his trips to Europe.  He is convinced that the Greeks and Romans knew laws of perspective that have been lost, and that some of the early Italian masters had an inkling of the forgotten methods. His work for several years has been devoted to experimentation along original lines.”

Taflinger on the verge of turning common lead to elusive gold. If we buy into his words – hook, like and sinker – he's privy, or nearly so, to a long lost DaVinci code. But alas, the Bible says, a tree is known by its fruit. 

Art Milieu Multi-Tasking.

As the the 1920s would wind down, as the stock market would crash, Elmer Taflinger continued his multifaceted art career. 

That he continued to toil and perfect his touch at nude drawings is documented in Lucille Morehouse's remarks on his works as displayed in the 22nd Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron Museum.  Her column in The Indianapolis Star on March 17, 1929, observes,

“Elmer E. Taflinger is represented with two admirable studies in charcoal of the nude figure.  One is a female figure, reclining on a couch, the pose one of graceful relaxation. The other is a male figure, also in reclining posture but posed so that muscles are tense, while legs and arms are flexed,  so there are difficult problems of foreshortening, all of which have been skillfully solved by Mr. Taflinger.

If all painters of the figure had Mr. Taflinger's knowledge of anatomy and his skills as a draughtsman, I am guessing that there would not be so much resorting to distortion of the human figure under the plea of allying one's self with the modernistic school.” 

Taflinger was teaching drawing and painting out of his studio and presenting at least one public exhibition that September, Original Drawings by George B. Bridgman, as verified by a newspaper ad dated August 31, 1929. 

That Taflinger continued to make phone calls or whip out press releases to keep his name in the papers seems possible, when he was mentioned in passing in an Indianapolis Times front page bleed-leading snippet, 'Lives Periled When Storm Sweeps City – Scaffolding is Hurled from Circle Tower.'  A harrowing storm is reported to have blown through downtown Indianapolis on November 27, 1929,

“(A) storm...endangered hundreds of downtown pre-holiday shoppers...as it toppled a section of elevator shaft scaffolding from the new Circle Tower, under construction at Market street at Monument Circle...

One timber fell into the studio of Elmer Taflinger, on top of the Vinton-Pierce building east of the circle tower. Another shattered a plate glass window in a neighboring candy shop.”

During roughly the same period, Taflinger was art director for a local costume ball, as reported in the March 22, 1930 Indianapolis News, 

“ A gay Chinese setting will greet members of the Indiana Artists Club and others attending the seventh annual artists' ball to be given March 29 on the roof garden of the Hotel Severin.  The elaborate decorations planned by Elmer Taflinger, former theater art director, will call for almost 10,000 square feet of paper, which will be used to decorate the walls and ceiling of the roof garden and transform it into a Chinese ballroom.” 

 

Shame and Stigmata – The Thomas Hart Benton Affair.

Deciphering the Taflinger Code, a numerologist may expect the number 33 to reign significant as a clue. And so it was,  in the first month of 1933, on the ninth day (3 times 3), on a front page that announced in bold headline,  'McNutt to Become 33rd Governor Today,' that Elmer E. Taflinger would land himself, above the fold, on page one, section one, of The Indianapolis Star. 

He shared the honor with not only Indiana's new governor, but a swindling young banker from Rushville, who embezzled thousands from his employer and fled, only to be caught cross the state line in Kentucky. Also on the front page were the Chinese, having been bombed by the Japanese at their Jehol province. And below the fold, but still page one, a former alley cat, Big Boy, who bested all the other pedigree pussycats to win the blue ribbon at the 12th Annual Heart of America Cat Society show.

Taflinger's news, though, was not your run-of-the-mill political, crime, war or underdog reporting. It was more I the vein of man bites dog. 

as appearing in the Indianapolis Star, January 9, 1933

The prominent article in the center of of page one includes a photograph of Taf, splattered in paint, about to pounce at a banal-looking portrait canvas, locked-and-loaded paintbrush in his hand. The piece is sub-headed with an info-dump teaser, 'Prominent Local Artist Brands Awarding to New Yorker of State's World Fair Work as Disgrace to Hoosiers,' and reads, direct from a court petition filing penned by Elmer Taflinger, 

“Indiana artist is a term recognized as identifying Hoosiers of the brush and easel as nationally eminent in their profession, but in their own commonwealth of Indiana it amounts only to a stigma as far as state officials are concerned.”

The article goes on in further explanation,

“Elmer Taflinger, noted Indiana artist, makes this charge in an unusual petition which will be filed in the Marion Circuit court this morning. 

He asks that the court 'change the place of his nativity.'  In other words, he believes he can get further in his profession, at least in Indiana, if no one is able to prove that he was born here.

He offers in evidence the fact that Thomas Hart Benton of New York was given the contract by Richard Lieber, director of the state conversation department and head of the Indiana world's fair commission, to paint the murals at the Chicago fair depicting the history of this state.”

Taflinger goes on to argue that countless Indiana artists possess all the necessary and various talent needed to be awarded and to complete the world's fair project in an exemplary manner. He complains that the commission's decision was not an open process, and the result is similar to when local artists were shut out of the running for the World War Memorial plaza in Indianapolis and the George Rogers Clark memorial in Vincennes. Both those projects lacked Hoosier artist participation, which drew Taflinger's observation that “the only thing provided by Indiana was the dirt.”  

A couple of weeks later, Thomas Hart Benton offers a good-humored reply, from the busy workshop of his makeshift mural studio at Germania Hall on Delaware Street. The front page of the second section of the Indianapolis Times, January 25, 1933, begs in its headline 'Let's Have an Artists' Truce.' In the pictorial article with several photos of the artist and his preparatory work, a sub-headline declares 'Indiana's World Fair Muralist Prefers Work to War.'

Thomas Hart Benton, as appearing in The Indianapolis Times, January 25, 1933

The article by Times writer Arch Steinel plays up the controversy instigated by Taflinger's lawsuit stunt, and reports in part as follows,

“Benton waved the olive branch today at other Indiana artists. They have criticised his appointment by the department of conversation to the post of mural decorator for the Indiana building at the Chicago world's fair. 

...Benton tried to put all of the green apples of envy back into the barrel, offering to use students of his chief critic, Elmer E. Taflinger, to aid him in squaring up and doing preliminary work on his murals. Sure, I'm going to use some of Taft's pupils. Why not? He's a good fellow, even if he does want to change his birthplace through a court suit just because I was awarded the job. He can come down and help me himself if he wants to.”

Steinel writes about Benton's worries about the hubbub surrounding his assignment,

“His main worry is not the envy or the criticism clouding the state over his appointment, but the time he's got to do it in.”

Other local critics and artists joined Taflinger in complaining in the papers about Thomas Hart Benton, the carpet-bagging, out-of-town expert, who would have the last laugh as the masterpiece of his monumental mural-making would make him a household name and take the world by storm. 

We shall see in Part Three of this series, that like Thomas Hart Benton, Taflinger would create his own mural one day, and plan another one grander in scheme, but left undone.  

Finally, though, near the end of his life, he would tirelessly pursue a three-dimensional mural of sorts – a grand assemblage of earth art, found object and landscape. A massive and towering final work. With the mathematical precision  of its symmetry and the romantic splendor of its titans in stone, we see a culmination of Taflinger's artistic impulses resolved finally, and at rest.   

Both his stigma and his badge of honor – his Ruins at Holliday Park.

Mark Diekhoff, October 2025

The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act One

Elmer E. Taflinger at his Ruins at Holliday Park, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1976

Overture  –  The Riddle of Elmer Taflinger.

It's not often that an artist makes the front pages of the newspaper. Perhaps the front page of the Living section, or Arts and Entertainment or even the Sunday Magazine insert, but not the front page of a city daily paper.

The Indianapolis artist, Elmer E. Taflinger, was to accomplish this rare feat, not once but twice, mirrored at both ends of his long career, once above the fold, and once below – a comedy at the beginning, a tragedy at the end. 

In between the bookends of his page one coverage, Taflinger developed a persona as a rollicking genius and an outspoken provocateur, acting the part in the local art cosmos of know-it-all, of spoilsport, of jester.  Even while speaking truth to power, and earning, eventually, the title of grand old man of arts, there was a bit of P.T. Barnum to his guru.  His showy burlesque, his public apotheosis, seemingly his every word, a proclamation, or a riddle. In his later years Taflinger was covered by the press in a series of articles, snippets and lengthy spreads, crossing the genres of straight news, society reporting, art world and human interest. 

A life story told in newsprint, with the symbolic depth of a holy book or fairy tale, recited in a series of satyr plays  (to belabor the Greek drama metaphor),  of a man who had seen it all, and lived most of it too. The many exploits of Elmer Taflinger, starring Taf or Taffy, depending on the episode.

E.T. was often photographed, in character, wielding a cane or umbrella like a scepter, the magic power of pointing and prodding. With ever-present French beret askew upon his head, a bundle of out-of-this-world ideas wrapped in a bulky Columbo overcoat.  His omnipresent image, accompanied by his omnivorous quotes –  his dialog proclaiming secret revolutions and revelations to come.  He spins a lop-sided yarn – his gravitas teeters with mischief.  He plays the king's fool – teasing, mocking, trolling and throwing shade.  

Of his crowning glory, Taflinger says in old age, not his Ruins, his concept made real in the 1970s, but his Green Goddess, his painting perfected, decades before. Which begs the not so serious, yet mysterious questions, perhaps befitting a lengthy Sunday magazine newspaper pictorial; which came first, the salad dressing or Taflinger's self-important painting? And what became of either, in the end? 

Both may have been inspired by The Green Goddess, a popular stage play (and later silent movie), in the early 1920s. The delightful condiment was conceived and born at San Francisco's Palace Hotel in 1924 in honor of the play's starring actor, George Arliss. It gained nationwide popularity and was eventually sold coast to coast on grocery shelves. When Kraft bought Seven Seas in 1987, it was lost in the merger, disappeared, and has been largely forgotten. 

And what of Taflinger's painting of the same name, his Green Goddess? He mentions its preeminence in his ouervre in a late interview in 1970. At that time the painting was still in his possession, in a place of honor, in his spacious studio in the carriage house on the Indianapolis Propylaeum grounds.  Now, it is mentioned obliquely in the artist's personal papers, housed in the archive rooms of the Smithsonian Institute. Studies for the elusive masterpiece are cataloged, locked away and gathering dust, according to the museum's index. But his prized picture, the canvas itself?  Whereabouts unknown. Lost in a black hole of phased-out mid-century flavors. 

In late life, Taf spoke of a newfound obsession – writing – his love of sentences and words. He spoke  of an autobiography he was completing to contain his findings and his methods. But his alchemic recipe book remained unpublished. He took those secrets to his grave. 

To unravel his mystery,  maybe, is to look at the life of Elmer Taflinger, his grand tableau of ruins. The haphazard and often comical clues of his paper trail. The actor in a mirror – as reflected in the papers.  His stage, both regal and wrecked.  His performance, idiosyncratic yet always in-character. His fabled tale, an epic, Quixotic, mumbo jumbo of a quest, that spanned the globe.  From Indiana to Florence, Italy.  New York to Mexico. Minneapolis to, well, back to Indiana for the final act.

His back home again deus ex machina, curtain call, and final bow. His three colossi. The enduring epitaph of his philosophy in stone at Holliday Park. 

Curiosity of Beelzebub, Take One.

Elmer Edward Taflinger was born in Indianapolis in 1891. He describes his early years in several lengthy newspaper articles beginning in 1970 when he was 79 years old.

Taflinger would wax on endlessly, well not poetic,  more like chaotic, first with Lloyd B. Walton in a flashy pictorial article in the Sunday magazine supplement to The Indianapolis Star titled “Tradition Arts Advocate” on August 3, 1970. He would elaborate, obfuscate and simply repeat himself in additional articles over the next few years.  Marion Garmel's Indianapolis News two-pager “A Man of All Arts” on December 18, 1974. And then Thomas E. Ketchum's “...Long Illustrious Career,” an Indianapolis Star piece dated April 4, 1976, that included the rare, at the time, color photo in the paper, and the artist's large fanciful autograph as banner to the column. And finally Lloyd B. Walton, taking a second bite of the Taflinger, in a bizarre and confusing magazine spread called “Solving the Mystery of the Murat” in the October 27, 1979 Sunday Star.

Taflinger tells us, as a boy, he survived innumerable close calls to death, including two near drownings and an attack from a scythe-wielding gypsy. Of the water mishaps he explained to Thomas Ketchum, succinctly, as if obvious to all, “once I followed a duck down and once I slipped on a sewer pipe.” 

One will come to recognize Taflinger's signature verbal sleight-of-hand of his story telling.  Look here, sensational, the rabbit from the hat. All the while, something crucial, not noticed, out of focus, left unsaid. A wink or a nod that suggests maybe it's all bullshit.  

About the gypsy-slashing, in the same Ketchum article, Taflinger tells a bloody tale sure to leave readers scratching their heads, and maybe clutching their ankles, 

“My mother scolded me one day when I was four for trampling her flower garden. A few days later I saw a gypsy cutting flowers at a neighbor's house and I started cussing him out because I knew he wasn't supposed to do that.”

Elmer in his own words – a quick-learner at the blame game – a busybody – a dirty-mouthed four-year-old – blaming the down-the-street hired help.

“He nearly cut my ankle off with a scythe, then I almost lost it to gangrene, and I had to learn to walk all over again.”   

Ahhh the magic of Taflinger's tongue...losing his foot twice and a divine miracle in the span of one  sentence. 

It's no wonder that such an excitable boy would find himself in trouble come around Christmas time, as he recalled in a December 25, 1975 column called 'Thoughts of Christmas Past' in The Indianapolis Star.  Taflinger remembers his Christmas morning from 81 years prior, again in that magic fourth year of life,

“They (his parents, Santa Claus, whoever) removed every piece of furniture from the parlor except the stove, and in the middle of the room they left a bundle of switches. Back then, you had to accumulate a lot of good deeds or you wouldn't get anything you wanted for Christmas and that year I got good too late.”

About his first forays into art, Taflinger tells the same basic story over and over among the various articles.

His family owned a beautiful Bible, an 18 pound marvel, full of illustrations by Gustav Dore. 

As a child, he would lay flat on the floor on his stomach and pore over the amazing images. He's quoted in the Ketchum story, about the pictures he'd see at school and the pictures in the family Bible,

“I didn't like the pictures they had at school. I didn't understand a lot of the Bible pictures. Some of them even scared me, but they intrigued me. I'd lie on the floor with my pet cat Beelzebub curled up next to me and stare at them. That Bible had everything but pink lemonade.”

Beelzebub and pink lemonade.  Ol' Taf strikes again.

He learned to think in pictures, as a result of that Bible.  But where did he learn to talk in riddles? 

He had an eighth-grade teacher, Katherine McLaughlin. She recognized his talent and boosted his interest in art. 'His downfall,' he said, about either McLaughlin or art.  

About Mclaughlin, Taflinger recalls in the Ketchum piece,

“I won (an) art contest because my teacher was good-looking. The prettier my teacher, the better my grades.”

Miss McLaughlin suggested Otto Stark's art class at Manual High School. Once enrolled, Mr. Stark  also noticed young Elmer's talent and dissuaded the boy's planned math studies at Purdue with the strong suggestion that he attend the Art Students League in New York. The young Taflinger took Stark's advice, as Marion Garmel writes in the fore-mentioned column,

“(Taf)...boarded a train at Union Station with his mother's fried chicken in a George J. Marott shoe box and carried the chicken uneaten all the way to New York. He was 16 ½ years old.” 

The moral of our hero's early story – a clever boy does not live on chicken alone.

Elmer Taflinger at 21 years old

Show Biz Years, Brush with the Greats.

Elmer Taflinger's first taste of the theater business happened while he was still a boy studying drawing in high school and delivering papers for the Indianapolis News. A young man of many interests, he was 'enthralled' with the theater, as he is quoted in The Star's Ketchum interview in 1976.  Taf took on a second job as a stage hand at English's Opera House on the Circle in Indianapolis, and was paid 50 cents a show. 

By 1910, when the newly constructed Murat Theatre in Indianapolis opened and presented its first show, Havana, on February 28, he was 18 years old, and employed there as a prop assistant.

Taflinger was assigned the odd job of running an errand for the play's star, James T. Powers, after the comedian appeared pale and hung-over after the show's first matinee, and needed a hot meal shuttled over from a nearby restaurant. The episode would eventually take on mythic proportions as a mystery in Taf's mind, that he would mull over and finally solve some seventy years later. 

Taf's Holy Grail was that the pale hang-over was a result of the beginning of what would evolve into a several decade's long series of practical jokes, back and forth, between James Powers and Booth Tarkington, as revealed in Powers' memoir. Taf had stumbled upon the book in the library as an old man. 

Taflinger declares his enlightenment regarding the affair over several pages of a Sunday magazine spread in The Indianapolis Star authored by Lloyd B. Walton. Frankly, it comes across as 'much ado...,' at worst, or 'you had to be there,' at best.

On November 10,1912, in a short news notice in The Indianapolis Star,  Elmer Taflinger is shown in a photograph. He appears handsome and emotionless above the news about his studies in New York,

“Elmer Taflinger, 21 years old...was one of the winners in the students' art exhibit held in the Wanamaker galleries in Philadelphia last week. Mr. Taflinger was reared in Indianapolis and received his first instruction in drawing under Otto Stark, drawing instructor at Manual Training High School. He is entering on his second year in the Students' Art League in New York, preparing as an illustrator. His work, Pen Se, which won in the Eastern exhibit, was the subject of much comment among the critics.”    

Rekindling his employment in show business, in New York City, Taflinger's burgeoning career in theater art direction is detailed by Marion Garmel in her December 18, 1974 column in The News,

“For more than six years Taf studied at the Art Students League and maintained a succession of studios that became home to every Indiana artist visiting New York City . Then in 1914 he fell into a job as Belasco's art director...”

David Belasco had a popular theater in New York in his name, Belasco Theater. He is remembered for the innovative lighting effects of his productions.

“Taflinger designed costumes and sets for Belasco, scouted plays, collected props...even designed some of the elaborate effects....”

For eight years, without a vacation, Taflinger worked for Belasco. He fled to Europe for a much needed  and overdue escape from the grind. He would eventually return to New York, not to his job at Belasco, but for continuing studies at the Art Students League, where he would meet George Bridgman. 

Given the direction of Taflinger's subsequent painting and drawing, Bridgman's influence on him seems to have been immense. 

About Bridgman, Garmel quotes Taflinger, 

“When Bridgman had taught me all he could he said, okay, I was ready to go out and teach but I shouldn't teach more than one year at a time if I wanted to stay a producing artist.”  

It appears, we shall see, in Act Two, that this was advice Taf chose to ignore.

Taflinger as an art director, c. 1930

Mark Diekhoff, September 2025