“Woman in front of Danceland decoration for Bal,” 1938. Photographic print on paper, 8 x 10 inches. Kokoon Arts Club and Philip Kaplan papers. Kent State University. Special Collections and Archives.
By Alyssa Schmitt
In early 20th-century Cleveland, smokestacks from steel mills cast long shadows across the city, draping it in a gray haze. Each day, the relentless hum of factories underscored a rhythm of monotony while the sober pulse of business suits and briefcases marched through the city.
But once a year, starting in 1913, the city would burst away from its uniformity and become host to a soiree overflowing with color, risqué activities, provocative art and nudity. At a time when women’s fashion was just coming up above the ankle, this event scandalized the city and thrust the Modernist art form onto its residents.
This lively event, the Bal Masque, was hosted by the Kokoon Klub, an avant-garde artist group that championed experimental art and pushed Cleveland’s cultural boundaries.
This winter, as the world outside echoes those gray days, the Canton Museum of Art invites visitors to step into the Kokoon Klub’s luminous legacy with “Bohemian Chrysalis: Unveiling Cleveland’s Infamous Kokoon Klub,” opening Nov. 26 and on view until March 2, 2025. The exhibit promises one of the largest displays of the club’s art while offering an immersive journey through Cleveland’s artistic revolution. It will also reveal how the Kokoon Klub helped add color to a city bogged down in conservative life and make radical ideas the norm.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibit’s theme emerged by happenstance, explains Kaleigh Pisani, curator of collections and registrar at the Canton Museum of Art. While researching artists in the museum’s collection, she discovered many were members of the Kokoon Klub. The more she delved into their stories and the club, the more captivated she became.
“Then (I would) go to different people’s houses in Cleveland who collected Cleveland art and just happen upon Kokoon Klub posters that they just had,” she recalls. “I kept running into it, like there’s something here. It’s really embedded in Cleveland and I think we need to get the word out, the fact that it was so crazy and wild back then.”
August F. Biehle Jr., (American, 1885-1979) “Bathers,” c. 1920s. Watercolor on paper, 26 x 28 inches. Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection, Gift of Frederick A. and Helen C. Biehle, 999.9.
The exhibit will consist of artwork from Kokooners as well as their handmade costumes, tickets and posters that were used for the club’s infamous balls.
“This will be the first time that all of the remaining surviving posters will be represented and displayed together in an exhibit,” says Christy Davis, the museum’s curator of exhibits.
The posters and tickets were part of a competition Kokooners would participate in and the winning designs would be used for the event that year. Several Kokoon ball posters rank among the most remarkable works of art ever produced in Cleveland, explains Henry Adams, the Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and author of “Out of the Kokoon.”
“(The Kokoon Klub) provides a model of how Cleveland could become a vital artistic center in all kinds of ways,” Adams says. “It’s a need for a living art that makes a city an exciting place.”
CREATING THE KLUB
In the early 1900s, Cleveland was a hub for creative professionals, explains Adams. The city became home for working artists as many came to the area for its print and design industry. According to Adams, there were an estimated 6,000 working artists in the city at the time – one of the largest concentrations in the country outside of New York City.
One major attractor of artists was the Otis Lithography Company, which produced movie posters worldwide. At its height, the company created 500 million posters a year, Adams says.
“They hired a bunch of skilled lithographers from New York, particularly William Sommer,” Adams says. “Sommer, soon after arriving, started the Kokoon Klub. Initially, the club was for the artists who worked downtown to draw from a model.”
Sommer and Carl Moellman founded the club in 1911, five years before the Cleveland Museum of Art opened its doors. The group consisted of artists who desired to discuss what were then considered radical ideas and bring the Modernism they were seeing in Europe to America.
For many Clevelanders, the group offered a first glimpse at art reminiscent of modernists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, bringing new ideas to a city otherwise dominated by traditional forms.
Like most artists, the group’s members needed income, so it held art auctions to sell their work. Unfortunately, their efforts were met with limited success, Adams notes.
“(The pieces) went for less than the cost of the frame so they decided to do a costume ball,” he says. “The initial costume ball actually lost a few dollars but was very outrageous and was stimulating by Cleveland standards, both because of the wild costumes and near-naked dancers. … By the ‘20s, (it was) attracting several thousand visitors every year to the Kokoon Klub ball, and it became the vehicle that basically introduced modern art to Cleveland.”
THE BAL MASQUE
The club’s first fundraising ball was held in 1913. As all of the costumed guests filed in, the lights went out and a dimmed spotlight illuminated men clad only in loincloths who carried a giant cocoon. From the cocoon, which symbolized the club’s awakening, a woman dressed in butterfly wings burst forth into dance.
This inaugural event solidified the club’s soiree as a celebration of Cleveland’s bohemian community and featured unconventional costumes, exotic dances and unpredictable stunts throughout. It had created such a stir that by the 1920s, the attendance numbers had ballooned from 200 to well over 2,000, according to Adams’ “Out of the Kokoon.”
Kate Hatcher, curatorial assistant at the Canton Museum of Art and part of the team that put the exhibit together, says the soiree would be the talk of the town the day after.
“It was a really big deal,” she says. “There were newspaper articles published the day after the ball that would talk about how crazy the costumes were and how many people they saw at the ball. It was a huge event.”
Kokoon Klub members would work on their costumes up to a year in advance, she says, and the costumes themselves were a work of wearable art. And just like many artists today, the creators didn’t have access to many materials, so they had to be resourceful.
However, getting into the venue was no easy feat, Davis explains.
“If you came and your costume didn’t pass inspection, you weren’t allowed in,” she says.
Kokooners would be at the door acting as a costume committee, approving all the costumes that would be seen that night to ensure they fit the theme. One major rule was no rented costumes were allowed, and all the costumes had to be handmade.
“Women in black-light costumes for the Black Light Bal,” 1929. Photographic prints on paper, 3.5 x 2.5 inches each. Kokoon Arts Club and Philip Kaplan papers. Kent State University. Special Collections and Archives.
Between announcing the theme and the night of the ball, Kokooners would show costume sketches for inspiration and offer lessons on how to create abstract costumes. They would also set aside research materials at the Cleveland Public Library for guests and members to study and use to prepare their outfits, explains Adams, which served as another way to introduce the art form to the general public.
Politicians seemed nervous about these masked balls, though many would be counted among the guests, according to “Out of the Kokoon.” Cleveland Mayor Frederick Kohler even canceled the 1923 party, fearing potential debauchery. Yet, to focus solely on its immodesty would be to overlook its true intent: advancing the Modernist art form, often dismissed by many Clevelanders, the book explains.
The legacy group disbanded in 1956, due to dwindling numbers and as Modernism had become more normalized.
“Their legacy is in making Modernism so ingrained in society that we don’t even notice it’s a part of society,” Pisani says. “They brought it here. It wasn’t accepted, and they made it accepted.”
Fittingly, the exhibit will have a costume party reception Dec. 13 at the museum – but unlike the Kokoon Klub, no one will be turned down at the door.
- ON VIEW: “Bohemian Chrysalis: Unveiling Cleveland’s Infamous Kokoon Klub” will run from Nov. 26 to March 2, 2025 at the Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Ave. N., Canton. The museum will also host a costume party reception from 5-7 p.m. Dec. 13. For more information, visit cantonart.org.
