Pauline Schindler and Joe Jones at Commonwealth, Summer of 1935

Pauline Schindler with son Mark in tow traveled to Arkansas during the Great Depression summer of 1935 to teach labor journalism and creative writing at the communist-leaning Commonwealth College founded by her estranged husband's erstwhile client Job Harriman. R. M. Schindler had prepared a preliminary master plan for the fledgling college for Harriman in 1924. Other radical luminaries teaching, lecturing or in residence at Commowealth that summer included leftist authors Jack Conroy and James T. Farrell and artist Joe Jones. Jones painted a mural "Struggle of the South" while in residence and was likely assisted by Pauline and others at the school. Artists united to exhibit their anti-lynching work at two exhibitions in early 1935 in New York. Pauline and Jones undoubtedly compared notes on similar lynching mural panels by Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish destroyed by the LAPD Red Squad at the John Reed Club in Hollywood in 1933. For more on this see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club."

Commonwealth College Fortnightly announcing the arrival of Pauline Schindler and Joe Jones for the summer session.

Pauline Gibling Schindler, 1935. Photo by Dorothea Lange. Oakland Museum of California Art.

Luis Arenal, Bloc of Painters postcard, February 1933, linoleum cut print. Harold Lehman Estate, from Herner, Irene, "What Art Could Be," Convergence, Fall 2010, p. 16.

In the same issue of the Times, Millier's "Brush Strokes" column reported that Siquerios would be creating his third Los Angeles mural on the four walls of the auditorium at the John Reed Club symbolizing the cultural role of the club. ("Brush Strokes," Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1932, p. III-16). On September 2nd Siqueiros lectured at the Club on, "The Vehicles of Dialectic-Subversive Painting." Although the mural never came to pass, the Mural Bloc, or "Bloc of Painters", including Otis Art Institute students Philip Goldstein (later Guston) and Reuben Kadish and Harold Lehman and Luis Arenal, planned an exhibition in support of the Scottsboro Nine of portable mural panels titled Negro America at the Club after Siqueiros left Los Angeles when his visa expired. (See announcement above). The Los Angeles Police Department Red Squad raided the Club on February 12, 1933 and destroyed the Bloc's work. (See below). 

Left, Reuben Kadish, portable mural for Negro America, right, Murray Hantman and Philip Goldstein (later Guston) murals for Negro Americaa, Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, February 13, 1933. From Landau, Ellen, "Double Consciousness in Mexico," American Art, Volume 21, No. 1, p. 82-3).

Therefore it is highly likely that Noguchi had crossed paths with the remnants of Siqueiros' Mural Bloc and possibly also Neutra and had become thoroughly familiarized with both Siqueiros' and Orozco's Los Angeles murals and techniques as well as the damaged Negro America frescoes that were intended for an exhibition at the John Reed Club the previous month. The Reuben Kadish panel seen earlier above likely served as partial inspiration for Noguchi's Death (Lynched Figure) cast in 1934 shortly after his Los Angeles visit. (See below). (See more at Oles, p. 14).

Isamu Noguchi, Death (Lynched Figure), 1934. Photo by Berenice Abbott. (From Oles, p. 14). 

"The Hanged Men" by Jose Clemente Orozco, 1934, Museum of Modern Art exhibited in early 1935 with Noguchi's "Death," work by Jones and numerous other artists.