Joan Brown at SFMOMA

If any artist stands as testimony to the possibility of reincarnation, it is surely Joan Brown, who rose from the ashes of her former self at times in alignment with adopting a new painting style, or finding a new husband—occurrences which happened simultaneously on several occasions. SFMOMA has mounted an ambitious retrospective featuring a generous offering of the artist’s works. Curated by Janet Bishop and Nancy Lim, respectively chief and associate curators of painting and sculpture at the museum, the selections include work from her student years at CSFA up through works she completed close to her untimely death in 1990.

Entering the exhibition, the viewer is surrounded by her thickly-impastoed early works. Brown was a student at the California School of Fine Arts, later known as San Francisco Art Institute, from 1955 to 1960, when she received her MFA. These appear almost equally sculptural as painterly, with massive swaths of oil paint troweled on straight from the can. In Girls in the Surf with Moon Casting a Shadow (1962), dark waves peak and crest in a froth of strands. Two female figures emerge from a dark, loosely painted environment suggesting the ocean at night. The left figure in particular resembles Brown, and here we are presented with two of the artists longstanding concerns, self-portraiture and her love of swimming, in particular swimming in the San Francisco Bay.

Brown is one of the second generation of Bay Area Figurative School painters, an informal movement spearheaded in 1950 by David Park with his painting Kids on Bikes. Like Brown, these artists, whose ranks included Elmer Bischoff, James Weeks, and Richard Diebenkorn, were well known for the way in which they combined abstract paint handling techniques with figurative subject matter. Thanksgiving Turkey (1959) presents dark earth tones of the carcass enmeshed in a rich field of viridian. While wall text, and catalog essays, reference Rembrandt here, one might well think of the tortured slabs of meat of Chaim Soutine, with their overtones of hallucinatory intensity and a high-keyed palette. This work was purchased by MOMA New York while Brown was still a student. Dog + Chair in Environment (1961) is another striking example of work of this era, a bull terrier, her beloved Bob the Dog, sitting adjacent to a chair painted in bright blocks of black and hot pink.

Brown’s first marriage was to fellow student William (Bill) H. Brown, they wed in 1956, an alliance that helped motivate her to stay in art school, where she was having a rough time; by providing her with art books, Bill Brown helped launch her love of classical and modernist art. He also encouraged her to take a summer painting class with Elmer Bischoff, who had a profound influence on her and would become her role model and mentor. This first marriage however fell apart fairly quickly, and Joan Brown soon became involved with another CSFA student, the dynamic young sculptor Manuel Neri. This vibrant period of the mid-60s was remarkably fruitful, arguably yielding Brown’s most successful work, with a continuation of the richly impastoed surfaces increasingly inhabited by figures. Neri and Brown married in 1962, their son Noel arrived later in the year. He appears often in her work of the time, portrayed in a knockout leopard costume in Noel on Halloween (1964), and in a mind-blowing Noel’s First Christmas (1963). The same whipped up texture seen earlier as surf recurs here in a white froth suggesting tree flocking.

Refrigerator Painting (1964) is in a sense a portrait of the appliance, in bilious shades of green. It offers an excellent example of her ability to use paint to transcend the mundane subject matter and create something stunning, otherworldly. Another domestic scene, the massive Noel in the Kitchen (1964) is just breathtaking, juxtaposing the imposing color scheme, gobs of cadmium red, the patterning, with the awkwardness of her toddling son, who has somehow lost his diaper. Noel and Bob (1964) also highlights two of the artist’s favorite subjects in a background of formal abstraction. Fur Rat (1962) and Untitled (Bird) (ca 1957-60) share this room, a pair of Brown’s rare sculptures. Each is inhabited by an unsettling energy, as if haunted by the ghosts of birds and rodents from time immemorial.

Brown was phenomenally successful with this body of work, showing in major museum shows including the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Young America 1960:Thirty American Painters under Thirty-Six, a New York exhibition Women in American Art along with Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keefe, and others, being represented by the Staempfli Gallery in New York—which also provided her a monthly stipend—and her work gracing the cover of Artforum. Creating such a powerful body of work at such a young age, Brown had perhaps painted herself into a corner. Discussing her reasons for abandoning this way of working, she mentioned that it no longer felt authentic, that she had discovered she could “fake spontaneity.” The artist also expressed dismay upon realizing that she had to continue to produce works in a certain style to satisfy the market demands of dealers or collectors.

Neri and Brown drifted apart and divorced in 1966. Certainly the shift from sharing a home and studio with Neri, whose sculptures were also based in gesture and physicality, to being on her own, must have changed her way of looking at things. In any event, despite the recognition she was continuing to receive for the expressionistic, bravado painting, she felt she could no longer work that way, her freedom of choice being of greater importance to her. Realizing she still had much to learn, Brown set out to be her own teacher.

Green Bowl (1964) is an example of a transitional piece, as Brown’s early gestural style evolved into one more pared down, eventually graphic. In this intimately-scaled work, the paint is still thickly applied, but her palette, and the subject matter, is muted, more Morandi-like. Not on display are two significant works from this time in her life, ones the artist would refer to when giving presentations on her work. The first, a still life of eggs and a cucumber, Still Life #1 (1965) the artist spent a year laboring over, and, while not certainly not the best painting, an important document of that stage of her life. She also put considerable effort into replicating the image of the Dreyfus lion, from their advertising logo. (Lion in Fake Environment (1967)) It is perhaps at this juncture, when Brown began unapologetically mining any veins of source material that appealed to her, that her critical acceptance began at times to flounder.

In 1968 Brown married another fellow artist, Gordon Cook, whose Minimalist still life style also echoed Morandi. A shared passion for art and the ability to mutually support each other’s work was important at the time. In the wake of her short-lived flirtation with Minimalism, her next style evolved to include more representationally painted figures and animals, with paint applied in a flatter, two-dimensional manner. With neither thick paint, nor the illusion of volume created with shading and rendering, the artist began to rely primarily on her elegant and deft line, bold color choices, patterning, and unusual compositions.

Brown and Cook had moved to the Sacramento River delta, where she worked in a converted barn. Running out of paint one day she dashed off to the hardware store and bought what they had, oil enamel. This is the kind of paint used on cars, or metal furniture, more than in fine art. She was delighted to find it was quick-drying, brilliantly colored, and shiny—all qualities she’d been looking for. In Memory of My Father J.W. Beatty (1970) was Brown’s first work to combine enamel paint and glitter, using her dog Allen and other animals appearing clustered around a wooden chest which had belonged to her dad—who had recently died of a heart attack—in an homage. (It is perhaps telling that Brown created no such testament in honor of her mother—a troubled woman of Mexican/Danish heritage, Vivien Beatty hung herself six weeks after the passing of her husband.) Evoking an era, Portrait of a Girl (1971) uses a family photo of a lost-looking Brown in front of a Chinese dragon, an understated testament to a sad and dysfunctional childhood. Bright spots in her early world were poring over books about Egypt and swimming in the chilly SF Bay nearby.

Grey Cat with Madrone and Birch Trees (1968) presents a haunting image featuring a very knowing cat, echoing another one of Brown’s influences, Rousseau. She enjoyed creating her own world as a stage for the narrative in her paintings, and appreciated a similar freedom to that of self-taught painters. With a particular passion for dogs and cats, animals as companions and symbols were extremely important in her work. The Bride (1970) is an amazing iconic Brown work, where a cat-headed figure and giant pet rat manifest in a field of poppies and sky full of fish. Somehow this work seems fully a self-portrait of the artist, embodied in feline form.

The next room is filled with self-portraits from the 1970s. Brown’s unflinching self-examination ranges from the more playful to a very subdued double portrait, Christmas Time 1970 Joan + Noel (1970) in front of a tree shedding leaves, her hands placed lovingly on her son’s shoulders. Along with her adoption of animal avatars and Egyptian-inspired hybrid creatures, Brown borrows a page from Rembrandt in her use of costume, as is reflected in a number of the self-portraits, whether dressed in Moorish attire at the Alhambra, in sexy underwear and a cat mask, or a furry hat.

Joan Brown had always enjoyed swimming in the frigid waters of the Bay, and in 1972 she took it up with a passion, enlisting the accomplished Charlie Sava as her coach. Perhaps the danger and challenge of it were also part of the attraction. She had a very strong rebellious streak, and it at times seems if someone or something were labeled off limits it would make her pursue that very goal with increased vigor.

A striking piece of the legend of Joan Brown is her near-fatal experience the night of the Dolphin Club’s first ever all women’s Alcatraz swim. Large freighters which should have been told to steer clear of the area had not received the message, and she and other swimmers were caught in the choppy wake of the boats, unable to complete their swim. As she recounts, “seven swimmers were pulled from the water.”

This extremely traumatic experience in recounted, tellingly, in a filtered manner. Placid, introspective women, wearing clothes with nautical prints, stand or sit in quiet, orderly rooms. Only the paintings hanging on the walls tell the true story, as female swimmers flail helplessly in choppy waters, a lighthouse and island in the distance. After the Alcatraz Swim #1 (1975) features a woman in a sleeveless blue dress, with trim resembling an anchor, who drapes her arm across the brick mantle above a roaring fire. Above, a very graphic image of a swimmer in distress, with a gaping mouth, limbs flailing, in churning waves. Behind, a darkened silhouette of the SF skyline.

In a back hallway, a brief video interview with the artist loops. Viewers quickly grasp that Brown was extremely strong and tough-minded, yet simultaneously it conveys a sense of her vulnerability. She flashes her remarkable pale green/blue eyes, always meticulously made up with shadow and liner, as she expresses how her work is at heart addressing essential issues of the human condition, and how connection to others through artwork makes her feel less alone, less “crazy.”

Brown and Gordon Cook loved dancing, as reflected by many works from the early 70s such as The Dancers in the City #2 (1972). A large dog dominates, with the knowing expression often held by Brown’s animals who seem to make mute commentary on the scene. The dancers look away from each other, the man just an outline. The pair divorced in 1978.

Nearing the end of the exhibition, and inching as well toward the end of Brown’s life, is a vibrant display of her travel paintings from the 1970s. The Journey #1 a couple stride toward the left edge of the canvas, the woman taking the lead, the man carries a red suitcase bearing the words “il Viaggio.”. With a rudimentary environment of lavender buildings, and sky of deep Prussian blue, the figures are done quickly, like gesture drawings, with bold, confident lines of black, red, and white.

Her drawing, which is sometimes dismissed as “cartoonish” due to the simplification of form and two-dimensional aspect, was indeed spare—but elegant, graceful, and confident. Particularly drawn to ancient art, and art from China and Japan, she keenly appreciated the way in which a sophisticated economy of means often described form, expressing outrage that such works were often labeled “primitive.” She had a similar attitude toward the idea of perspective, that it was open to many different methods of interpretation.

Brown’s transition to a life of spiritual devotion coincided with a union with her fourth, and final, husband, Michael Hebel, both disciples of the same guru, Sathya Sai Baba. Hebel was “a cop,” as Brown would proudly state, and clearly by their marriage in 1980 her allegiance to the dictates of the art world were looser than ever. Once again, Brown would take her artwork in the direction that fulfilled her own needs, rather than those of others.

Her last body of paintings were closely tied to her spiritual journey. In The Search (1977) Brown conflates her image and ego with 4^th dynasty Egyptian Princess Nofret. Both women appear imperial, commanding. Sheer garments reveal the body beneath. A background of shimmery turquoise and violet presages the works to come where energy fields become an important component. Harmony (1982), a diptych, juxtaposes the sun and moon, a figure half Brown on one side, half a human-sized orange cat on the other, in a portrayal of the duality of her nature. A New Age- The Bolti Fish (Transformation) (1984) features a tiny figure of Brown poised in the mouth of a large colorful fish. The bolti fish, which hatches its eggs in its mouth, was a symbol of reincarnation in ancient Egypt, and Brown here documents her own spiritual rebirth.

By the exhibition’s exit, a tall sculpture stands, Cat and Rat Obelisk, (1981) which hints hauntingly at her tragic death. Brown had traveled to Puttaparthi, India, to install an obelisk at the Eternal Heritage Museum in honor of Sai Baba. A turret overhead collapsed, killing the artist instantly. While a tremendous loss to her loved ones, and the art community, many sensed Brown had already ascended to a new plane and was on some level ready to move on.

Joan + Donald (1982) offers a charming and touching farewell in a self-portrait with her cat, and notorious model, Donald. Brown gazes off into the distance, clutching the cat lovingly, protectively. The cat, gazing straight at the viewer, braces forelegs on the figure’s shoulders, paws spread, claws perhaps sunk in to clutch her back.

In Joan Brown, SFMOMA has accomplished a major feat of tribute to an important 20^th century artist from the Bay Area. If curatorial bets seem at times a bit hedged, I will not look this gift horse too closely in the mouth. It bears noting that the description of this retrospective as the first in 20 years disregards the excellent and major Brown exhibition This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, mounted in 2012 at the San Jose Museum of art, curated by Jodi Throckmorton. I’ve written about Brown twice before, reviewing the San Jose Museum show as well as a dynamite drawing show, Joan Brown in Living Color, presented at Richmond Art Center in 2017, and thought I might have my final say here, but somehow I don’t think my thoughts and research about Brown have yet been fully realized. Perhaps in my own next life…

Barbara Morris

Joan Brown at SFMOMA on view through March 12