The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act Six

The Ruins, Holliday Park, Indianapolis, designed by Elmer Taflinger
photo by the author, 2025

 

Puff Breathing Dragons.

For many years, and particularly during the 1960s, Elmer Taflinger was ever-present in a daily human interest Indianapolis Star column penned by Lowell Nussbaum. Nussbaum had a varied career before seeking out work as a journalist, which he pursued in Chicago, Indianapolis, Toledo then back for good in Indianapolis. The homespun column he would be known for, The Things I Hear!, ran in The Star from 1945 through 1971.

It is almost as if there was a direct telephone connection between between Nussbaum and Taflinger during those years. A red phone, hot-line that either man could call the other, when caught in a bind.  Taflinger, when he needed a little shot of dopamine, or Nussbaum, when he was running a little low on material. 

The Taflinger mentions in The Things I Hear! could be categorized as one of several common types;  know-it-all, gadfly, comic or eccentric.

For example, in the comic vein, in a November 1959 column, Nussbaum relays the following for his daily readers,

“Elmer Taflinger tells of the woman who wished a portrait of herself to give her husband. She said she would pay a handsome fee 'if you'll make me look 10 years younger.'

'Tell you what I'll do,' replied the artist, 'I'll paint you as you are today and you can give it to your husband 10 years from now.' ”

And on June 14, 1960, Nussbaum's column contained,

“Everything happened to Artist Elmer Taflinger while he was painting a picture of the Meridian Street Methodist Church last week.

During the painting, he nearly was run over by a woman riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. Then the frame slipped from the easel while Taflinger was leaning over. The heavy frame bopped him in the head, cutting a gash. 

To cap the climax, he learned later he had painted the wrong church.”

Taflinger as an expert on all things is demonstrated on August 8, 1962, when the artist corrects the columnist, as Nussbaum writes,

“Elmer Taflinger straightens out Friday's off-the-cuff quotation, 'All is not gold that glitters.'

The last word is 'glisters', not glitters, Elmer reminds. 'It's from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act II.'

Can I help it if Shakespeare didn't know how to spell glisten?”

And again in the column, March 1, 1966, when Nussbaum writes,

“An American touring Europe can 'read' the road signs without difficulty, even though he doesn't speak the language. But a foreigner trying to drive here is in for trouble.

Elmer Taflinger, Indianapolis artist, feels European signs are a lot safer than ours because they wordless, and the driver can tell their message at a glance...

How much simpler that is than our multiplicity of verbose signs which take our attention from driving while we read them.”

Taflinger as Lowell-appointed art expert can be seen in the January 16, 1969 column where Nussbaum bumbles his facts,

“Elmer Taflinger, the Indianapolis artist, blew his beret when he heard that Jan van der Marck, Chicago artist, whose 'thing' is wrapping entire buildings in canvas or paper, is to judge the Indiana Artists Exhibit in March.

Elmer's comment: 'Why don't they wrap him in canvas, head and all, and let him choose the winning painting by the touch system?' ”

Nussbaum had to correct himself in a later column, noting that van der Marck was actually director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and it was that museum building that then unknown artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, would wrap in 1969, in what become an international art world sensation.

Despite his glib dismissal of Christo, Jeanne-Claude and van der Marck, and what would be seen by history as their monumental achievement in Chicago, Taflinger, seemingly unfettered by humility or self-awareness, would  continue to plod on and perform the role of a know-it-all and art sage in Indianapolis. It would be his most common persona to appear in the press in his latter days as grand man of local arts.

In June of 1959, he would comment on the semi-circular design of alleyway pavement near the downtown Bankers Trust Building as “not limited to Germans,” but  Parisian as well. He provided pictorial proof and elucidated further regarding why the stones are laid in curves, “(cobblestones are) made by hand of very hard stone, (they) don't break exactly square...one side usually being wider than the other. And they just naturally work out better in a curves line.”

In an equally esoteric proclamation contained in a Nussbaum column in January of 1961, Taflinger, on the occasion of the demolition of the elaborate Marion County Courthouse which had stood since 1876, and was replaced by today's City County Building, lectured on the original building materials of the razed structure. The 'marble' walls of the structure were actually Keene's cement, a white gypsum powder, plaster-like material invented in England around 1840. And the stone pillars on the building's exterior were not granite, but rather something called Scotch marble, whatever that was.

In September 1962, Taflinger's opinion about the then current renovation to the Indianapolis Central Library was quoted. Nussbaum memorializes Taflinger's eye-in-the-sky remark to a workman on the scene, “This is one of most beautiful buildings in town, and it's a shame to spoil its appearance.” The workman's down-to-earth reply, “I don't know about that, Mister. But it has more waste space in it than any building in town.”

Even up to the last year of his life, Taflinger would be sharing an obtuse and mocking observation about a new public sculpture in town, Untitled (L's).  In Marion Garmel's 'Brush Strokes' column in the September 17, 1980, Indianapolis News, she reports what may be Taflinger's final words on art,

“Elmer Taflinger, the city's self-appointed guardian of artistic standards, says he has come up with the hidden secret in the sculpture designed by David von Schlegell, for the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis library.

The work, which went up last week, involves three L-shaped stainless steel pieces placed in a triangular pattern on the library plaza. It is said to be based on the 3-4-5 triangle of Pythagoras with the ratio in the distance from the base of one vertical shaft to the next – in this case 138 feet by 184 feet by 230 feet...

'So what you do,' says Taflinger, 'is divide each figure by 2. Then divide the smallest figure by 3, the next smallest by 4 and the largest by 5. What do you get? 23. And that's the meaning of it. When the sculptor gets his check, he'll be saying 23-skidoo.' ”

 

Curtain Call.

Threading through Taflinger's newspaper mentions, despite his showboat tenancies and his obvious affinity for press coverage, is his expertise in the classics, his drive toward preservation, and his Quixotic impossible dreams. 

Those elemental forces would combine and give meaning to the last act of his life, his final artistic statement, and the one that still endures at Holliday Park. 

It would begin in 1958, when Western Electric purchased the St. Paul Building in New York City's financial district as the location for their future modern office headquarters. The St. Paul was historical in several regards, primarily in that it was one of the very first skyscrapers in the city, and also that its facade contained sculptural components by renowned architectural artist, Karl T. Bitter. A preservation committee was established to place the important components of the building's artistry to further use at some other site, putting out a call for proposals. 

And so it was that Elmer Taflinger and Indianapolis architect David V. Burns would design a grotto and reflecting pond at Holliday Park in the city's northwest-side as a submission to the committee. 

According to the March 6, 1959 Indianapolis Star, the  Taflinger/Burns design won out over those by several different cities and universities, and over Idlewild Airport and the United Nations. 

Burns was to leave the project shortly thereafter, and it would be up to Taflinger to fight for money, implement the installation, and ultimately conclude the project, although to his mind, in an abbreviated, unfinished state some fifteen years later.

Perhaps Taflinger was first attracted to the project to preserve the important architectural elements contained in the facade of the St. Paul Building because of the sculpted figures. Arguably, the spectacular three colossi by renowned  artist Karl Bitter, deserved better then the wrecking ball. The three stone behemoths had held up the world on their shoulders for nearly sixty years, after all.

Or maybe because these same sculptural elements portrayed a trilogy of men, mankind as a Vitruvian multiplicity, much like Taflinger had painted as a centerpiece, the Leonardo da Vinci three-faced head, in his Apotheosis of Science mural years before.

A more mysterious fate may have been playing its hand, though, in attracting Taflinger to the project. 

The St. Paul Building, one of New York City's first skyscrapers, was built in 1898. It towered to a height of 22 stories, when nothing else did. As such, it was one of the nation's first buildings to, like Icarus, reach for the sun. That foolish ambition of architect, artist and dreamer alike. 

The building was named for its location near St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Granted, not the mid-town Taflinger knew in his many years in the city with Belasco and his theater, but on Broadway, nonetheless. 

Further, the exact spot of the building was the former location of a tourist trap called Barnum's American Museum, and then, when the Barnum building burned down, the New York Herald newspaper. Much as the St. Paul Building had a foundation built upon prior hucksterism and newsprint, Taflinger himself had created a career hobbled atop a similar footing. 

A March 6, 1959, Indianapolis Star article detailed the progress of the early days of the project,

“A Brooklyn stone firm is readying three 10-ton statues by the late world-famed architect Karl Bitter for their journey by truck to Indianapolis, where they will be installed in splendor at Holliday Park...Made of Indiana limestone, they are valued at more than $150,000...The statues represent workman of the world's three major races.

(Elmer) Taflinger will supervise the project to its completion...”

Just a few months later, the same paper reported a possible delay in the project in their July 24 edition,

“Plans for construction of a reflective pool in Holliday Park to house three famous statues have been delayed because of the artist's insistence that the pool must contain a giant spray splashing a 40-minute message in Morse code.  

Elmer E. Taflinger, world-famed Indianapolis artist, told the park board the 100-foot spray in Morse code is a 'definite must' if the proper setting is to be provided for the 51-year-old figures.

'We can cut down every place else, but if we are to have something distinctive – something different from anything else in the world – we must have these two jet sprays,' Taflinger said.”

The bizarre demand seems a strange sort of personal homage, to Taflinger's boyhood and lifelong love of electronics, as opposed to a universal or aesthetic statement in full service of the project. But who's to know. Most novel thoughts sound crazy at first. 

Whatever Taflinger's rationale, it all came down to money. Taflinger's construction proposal was at $180,000 and the city's budget was no more than $100,000.

Perhaps it was a tempest in a teapot devised by Taflinger to stir up controversy and public interest. Whether or not contrived, the story was carried by the wire service UPI and a blurb went out across the country and was widely reported. The July 25, 1959, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph is one such example with a small, below the fold, front-page piece as follows,

“Indianapolis, Ind. – City officials today studied a suggestion by artist Elmer Taflinger that the city build a park fountain of 100-foot high columns of water spelling out 'the prayer of the world' in Morse code.”

Lost in the story were the Bitter sculptures, but covered was Taflinger's name and his hair-brained sounding scheme.

A year or so later, the project was still delayed according to the June 12, 1960, Indianapolis Star,

“Three famous statues which have sat in crates at Holliday Park for 14 months probably will stay that way for quite a while... 

...the statues have remained in their crates while a slow-motion debate went on about how elaborate the setting should be. (Artist, designer, installer) Taflinger wanted 'the works,' including colored lights and a fountain that would squirt out the letter 'V' in Morse code.”

The eventual progress of the project was documented in a photograph in the August 17, 1961 Indianapolis News which showed the first statue being lowered into place on the constructed base work, largely complete.

Just two years later, the project would be subject of stark criticism in The Star, when they would report on September 29, 1963, 

“What was once planned as a cultural showplace for Indianapolis, a grotto in Holliday Park for the famous Karl Bitter statues, now is a neglected, barren and meaningless exhibit, serving primarily as a potential death trap for youngsters.”

The photo that accompanied the article contained the warning, “Loose Stones Pose Danger To Adventuresome Children.”  The article further reports that “Records show that at least two legal suits are pending against the city because youngsters  have fallen from the dangerous memorial.”

By 1973, final funding was being arranged for a scaled-back fountain in the hopes of a belated dedication of the site soon to follow.

Finally, in November 1974, with only landscaping yet to be completed, Elmer Taflinger, along with Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar, and U.S Representative William Hudnut participated in a tree-planting ceremony at The Ruins at Holliday Park. The three trees planted possessed a symbolic and esoteric meaning for Taflinger, which he tried to explain, but sort of failed, in the accompanying Indianapolis Star article on November 4, 1974. 

Deus Ex Machina.

Elmer Taflinger turned from art to words his last decade or so. His late life's work, The Ruins, were nearly complete by the 1970s, and since he was in his eighties, chances were, so was his life. A last straw came along that broke something in him that explained his change in course. Leave it to Lowell Nussbaum to score the scoop, when he wrote in his January 23, 1969, The Things I Hear! column,

“Something which Elmer Taflinger, prominent artist and art instructor, said the other day puzzled me...

'Elmer,' I said, 'what did you mean when you said to refer to you as a writer rather than an artist?'

'It's like this,' he explained. 'In a long career as an artist, I have won some prizes, but never a top prize. The nearest I ever came was in Chicago. The judges selected my painting – a nude – as best but the show manager rejected the award because he didn't think he could get a picture of a nude reproduced in a newspaper. So they gave me a special award and hung my picture behind a potted palm.'

And then Elmer got down to the point of his story:

'Last summer, my sister (retired Manual High School history teacher, Mrs. Robt. L Black), entered one of her paintings in the State Fair art show. She won the sweepstakes award in the amateur division.

They gave her a silver tray and a rosette almost as large as the picture. That did it. I decided right then to forget art and stick to writing my autobiography.'

The postscript to his lament:

'And I framed the picture for her.' ”  

So words it was, from there on out.

In his interviews and the articles written about him, even those quoting him directly, words were rarely adequate to express the depth of Taflinger's mind, the breadth of his insight. 

Elmer Taflinger was to struggle in the last years of his life to complete his memoir, a gargantuan 1600 page manuscript called Revolting Hoosier. Sadly, he was apparently unable to rein in and organize his overflowing thoughts and ideas during his lifetime, and the manuscript remains unpublished.

Perhaps his last great regret was not finishing the book. Or maybe, as he was to suggest in several late interviews, that the city did not fund The Ruins to the perfection in his mind's eye. The bizarre perfection on the outer limits of his hazy vision for a prayer in stone, trees and water, for the people of the world, broadcast in perpetuity from our Circle City crossroads, from Holliday Park on Earth, as it is in heaven. 

Epitaf.

In the August 30, 1970, Indianapolis Star interview by Lloyd B. Walton, the lifelong Taflinger mystery is described,

“Since boyhood Taflinger has pursued a will-o'-the-wisp idea – something he wanted but couldn't quite figure out. Something he needed, but couldn't define.” 

Taflinger alludes to the hidden secret of his life with scattered clues in his many newspaper articles over the many decades.

A love of three, his epitaph, yearning for the fourth. A trinity of ruined giants, that only you, a human soul, can perfect.

Taflinger was no lone wolf, nor was he a team player. It was always he and the other. 

The other of his model. Of his students. 

The other of a group of friends at the restaurant. The crowd at the fair. A mob lining the streets at a Christmas parade. 

The other of his public, his newspaper readers.  The reporters with their notepads and tape recorders, and the Morse code he played like a fiddle. 

Always he and his other.

Ever-changing, ever-complex – like abalone –possessing and reflecting an iridescent beauty from inside out.   

His Ruins  –  a graveyard – not of sorrow or regret, or even wary sadness.  But a park of wonder, and respite, of inspiration and admiration. For all men and women who carry the world on their shoulders and aspire for the sky. 

Amen.

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025

Dedicated to Edward John Diekhoff, Jr.  1938 - 2025

See Also:

Dawn Mitchell, Indy Star, How 'The Ruins' at Holliday Park took decades to complete

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 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