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Foad Satterfield Then Is Now at Sanchez Art Center

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date March 24, 2024
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Foad Satterfield, *Jewel Lake Diptych*, Acrylic on Canvas, 60″ x 100″, 2016

Foad Satterfield Then is Now at Sanchez Art Center

Painter Foad Satterfield’s connection to nature, and to water in particular, runs deep. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, the artist reflected, “we were never more than two steps from being wet…” In addition to a visual art practice spanning over 50 years, Satterfield has had a distinguished career in academia, serving as a professor of fine art at San Rafael’s Dominican University for over three decades, as well as directing the university’s San Marco Gallery from 1980 to 2013.

In recent years, Satterfield’s accomplished work has begun to appear on a broader stage, with shows on both coasts garnering increasing critical attention. Present By Past at SF’s Maybaum Gallery in 2022 was followed by Space Before Us, Unrestrained at Malin Gallery in New York in 2022, along with a show at their Colorado branch Elemental Variations in Aspen in 2023. Other exhibitions of note include a memorable show, Things Known, at St. Mary’s College in 2019, as well as numerous exhibitions at Burlingame’s Studio Shop Gallery.

Satterfield grew up in a country whose soil was deeply permeated with injustice. Those whose skin color afforded them access at birth to a life of relative privilege took this situation for granted, while those in the opposite position were made painfully aware on a continual basis just how their aspirations might be constrained by their complexion. The artist’s rise to prominence in his field, despite the deck being stacked against him, is a testament to his boundless talent, persistence, and infinite grace. Satterfield is himself overflowing with gratitude: for his gifts, his success, his family, indeed for life itself.

Recently, the Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica presented an exhibition of Satterfield’s work, Then is Now, and as well hosted an artist’s talk on a chilly Superbowl Sunday. A vibrant performance by the Bernini Baroque Trio accompanied the event. Gallery Director Jerry Barrish, who curated the exhibition, also moderated the talk. Barrish noted that he has known Satterfield for 28 years, bemoaning the delay in presenting his work at Sanchez.

After his introduction, the artist took over the discussion. Foad Satterfield was born in Orange, Texas, moving at the age of eight to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he would spend the rest of his childhood. “I’d already been held back, I flunked the first grade,” he shared, explaining, “My English skills were not strong. At home we spoke a mixture of English and French.” It was certainly understandable that a small, sensitive child with language issues would have difficulties assimilating into a culture, the Jim Crow south of the 1950s, already predisposed to exclude him.

The level of pain and discomfort this caused him is never dwelt upon, certainly not here, and to my knowledge this is not something he cares to discuss at length. We learn of a compassionate 3^rd grade teacher who took the unmoored child aside and taught him how to cut stencils from notebook covers using a razor blade, and then to paint these on cloth “with a flat brush and color. Red, green, and yellow. That was my first experience making things…” he shares, adding that “making things” has been essential to him ever since.

Then is Now offered a lovely glimpse into the artist’s oeuvre with an “intimate retrospective” consisting of seven works spanning seventeen years. Early in his talk, Satterfield alludes to additional, earlier work painted with a vastly different technique, “no sign or indication of the artist’s hand. All the edges smooth and clean.” Feeling unsatisfied with this approach, he began to explore other forms more connected to gesture, materials, and process. Drawn to the power and beauty of African art, but lacking the funds to acquire quite the pieces he desired, the artist began a more modest collection with terra cotta vessels, often chipped or broken. These forms, evocative of the human figure, inspired the “Broken Vessel” series, of which the painting Red (2006) is a part. The stencil technique, we learn, was employed in this earliest of the canvases on view, here the artist using plaster, rather than paint, to create a dimensional effect.

Foad Satterfield, *Red*, Acrylic On Canvas, Plaster, 50″ x 60″, 2006

Indeed, Red is all about texture. The vessel form, obsessively duplicated across the massive canvas, sets up an initial rhythm and gesture for the eye to follow, almost like musical notation on a staff. Or braille, as the crusty forms progress across the surface seemingly inviting us to touch, to run our hands across their surface to better comprehend the message they contain. As one might expect, this work explores the warm range of the color spectrum, yellow to violet, punctuated by brilliant reds, dramatic blacks, and shot through with a ray or two of golden light—like an epiphany.

Underlying the entire body of recent work is the artist’s desire to express something about his relationship to the world around him, to the landscape, and to nature. He describes this more eloquently as “the outside world, the inner world, materials, and the compositional elements of making my paintings simply serve to give my narratives a place to dwell.”

He reflects on the tradition of landscape painting, and the attraction of iconic vistas like Yosemite’s El Capitan. When first visiting Yosemite, while awed by the majesty of El Cap, it was instead a small pond behind the cabin where he was staying that captured his imagination, wanting to “bring to that scrubby little pond the same level of attention, to find it of the same significance, as El Capitan.” He wanted “to bring to it the quality of what moves us when we are in the company of something bigger than ourselves.” This is, of course, an artist’s secret hiding in plain sight—it’s not the scenery that makes for great art, but what you do with it. Certainly photographs of Monet’s Giverny gardens, while charming, pale in comparison to that earlier artist’s revolutionary Nymphéas.

Foad Satterfield, *Big Fish Camp Series, Poem*, Acrylic On Canvas, 71.5″ x 84″, 2014

Satterfield’s canvases range in scale from large to monumental, Big Fish Camp, Poem (2014), the “scrubby pond,” spanning around six by seven feet. He does not care to work on small paintings, finding them far too easy to overwork. Like AbEx painters, such as Jackson Pollock, the artist activates every square inch of the canvas with dynamic, gestural energy—where one flings dripped paint, the other employs a dizzying array of vigorous brushstrokes. This image is moody, dramatic, fecund. The upper half is shot through with with dusky light, while a middle ground, perhaps patches of sky, shimmers with vibrant rosy hues—pink, violet, gold. A network of dark lines soaring upward suggests trees, then refutes the suggestion, breaking into their own quirky dance of rhythm, repetition, and sheer joy of mark-making. It feels like autumn, desolate, chilly, maybe in a sense bereft—but simultaneously breathtaking, transcendent, sublime.

When the scale of a work is so large that it’s hard to take the whole thing in, we respond in a variety of ways. We may move further away, to grasp the entire composition, or move our gaze, or our body, back and forth, up and down, to appreciate the work in full. With the massive Great Epic #1 (2018), one is drawn to employ these tactics, and as well to move closer still, for the dizzying satisfaction of losing oneself to total immersion in the paint.

Foad Satterfield, *Great Epic #1*, Acrylic on Canvas, 84″ x 96″, 2008

While traditional landscapes may employ horizon lines or perspective devices, Satterfield often takes a different tack, with a soft-focus, gestural marking technique inviting the viewer to experience the work from various vantage points. We absorb waves of color and energy, the paint refusing to comply with a desire that it settle down, come into focus, or indeed suggest any single vista. Presenting a watery view, the layered field of marks could represent reflected sky, blossoms or plants, or perhaps fish swimming beneath. A darker triangular section in deep green and violet, flecked with pink, holds down the upper left corner, with the lower edge rimmed by an irregular band of dark hues tending to blue-black. This vibrant work glows from within, bright patches of yellow and pastel violet shot through with flickers of coral. Our eye, drawn initially to marks in the upper left, soon darts back and forth, spiraling towards the center for a while, then branching out in all directions. Individual passages, jaw-dropping colors, swirls of pattern and energy, engage us in an indescribable manner, akin to the transcendent experience of being in nature itself.

From the earliest work on view, Red, (2006), to the most recent Trilogy #5, (2023), the work generates power from reservoirs of energy—clearly pent up and grateful to flow, indeed burst at times onto the canvas. Beauty is at its best when there’s an ache to it, an awareness of the flip side, the pain and the ugliness never far away, just a trick, perhaps, of the light can make the shift. But we can focus, or attempt to, on the bright side. Satterfield, who has without question seen both sides of life, has chosen to create, live, and to share, visions of positivity. Has chosen to focus on the light, the energies that sustain and connect us to each other. It bears noting that the artist has for decades sustained an ongoing meditation practice, one integral to the work, and views this as “accomplishing a great deal by doing nothing.”

When asked about his brushstrokes, if he felt indebted in some way to Van Gogh, his deft answer was kind of a “Yes, but…” which he employed in response to numerous inquiries about his process and influences. Van Gogh’s work, he suggests, is one significant part of the history of Western art which he, like most thoughtful contemporary painters, has drawn upon. The viewer’s perception is really perhaps not so much about line quality, but the energy, the sense of urgency and a conviction that would not bear disbelief. It simply is what it is. Finally one must note, while the canvases on view are massive, a tour de force of energy and scale in themselves, this is barely the tip of the iceberg… A prolific artist for half a century, Foad Satterfield’s beautiful, peaceful, challenging, and throughout thought-provoking work demands even broader attention, with future retrospectives on an expansive scale.

Barbara Morris

Foad Satterfield Then is Now closed at Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, on February 11, 2024.

Sanchez Art Center

Tags #abstractedlandscape, #acrylicpainting, #blackartists, #dominicanuniversity, #emeryvilleartists, #foadsatterfield, #gesteralabstraction, #gulfcoastartists, #racialjustice, #sanchezartcenter

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Grace Munakata Biology of Flight at Anglim/Trimble

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date December 22, 2023
2 Comments on Grace Munakata Biology of Flight at Anglim/Trimble

Grace Munakata, *Curious Cloud*, 2022, Acrylic, wax pastel on panel, 37 1/2 x 48 in.

Grace Munakata “Biology of Flight” at Anglim/Trimble

How does one define “abstract art?” Some feel that an abstract painting should not include any recognizable objects, while others suggest that it is the conceptual underpinning of a work, the way in which the artist approaches the canvas, that makes it abstract, rather than the eventual presence, or absence, of objects. The late John Baldessari, an influential multi-disciplinary artist and art professor, presented an interesting exercise to his students at UC San Diego. Each was given an abstract image, one completely devoid of any discernible objects, with the assignment to go find and photograph this image in the real world. Almost without exception, the students were successful.

Falling squarely into the realm of abstract work grounded in reality is that of painter Grace Munakata, whose current exhibition “Biology of Flight” at Anglim/Trimble presents a range of small and medium-scaled paintings, collages, and works on paper and panel. Munakata studied at UC Davis under Wayne Thiebaud, who became a mentor and friend. In a 2001 interview with Manneti Shrem Museum’s Associate Curator Susie Kantor in conjunction with the exhibition Wayne Thiebaud Influencer a New Generation, Munakata recalled Thiebaud’s belief that “painting is an intellectual inquiry, finding out about as many aspects of human experience as possible,” and his description of the studio as “a shared laboratory for experience.” Munakata went on to a her own distinguished career as a professor, teaching at Cal State East Bay (formerly Cal State Hayward) as well as sustaining a remarkable visual art practice.

Munakata grew up in the Central Valley, into a Nisei Japanese family which had endured internment during World War II. Her family’s experience undoubtedly colored her perceptions of the world, suggesting it as a place of mixed signals and shifting planes. Her mother was a seamstress, and the influence of her love of fabric, the feeling of swatches of different material and patterns, is clearly felt, as well as the influence of different cultures coming together. Descriptions of her family home include images of her father creating sumi-e works on the kitchen table, her mother spreading fabric and patterns on the floor, and décor ranging from gestural senryu poetry panels and elaborate Japanese dolls in lacquered boxes, to an Asian version of Santa Claus, all mixed in with a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge. With an eclectic mix of aesthetics, one senses in the work her openness to inspiration and source material of all kinds.

Curious Cloud (2022) hinges on an amorphous violet shape, the cloud, just left of center. Other forms may or may not suggest additional clouds, mountains, trees, or other natural forms. A rough oval is bisected into a rust orange on one side, the other broken into a floral pattern in blue-violet, cream, and yellow. An underlying checkerboard makes a subtle allusion to the Minimalist grid, and the Hofmannesque push and pull of the forms on the picture plane draw our eye in and out. What draws one into the work initially, in addition to it’s glorious color, are the dazzling visual pyrotechnics of her many overlapping compositional devices. We may think of the work of Julie Mehretu, using more hard-edged, architecturally-inspired images to construct a visual field of similar complexity and depth. Mt. Govardan and Wilson’s Snipe (2023) uses a similar strategy, balancing objects with the non-objective, careful rendering here and there, particularly of the bird, and washy patches of color. Contrasts of light and dark, blurry and focused, keep us engaged and create a satisfying sense of mystery.

Grace Munakata, *Mt. Govardan and Wilson’s Snipe*, 2023, Acrylic, wax pastels on panel
36 x 47 in.

Harbuz, 7 X Down, 8 X Up (2023), inhabited by insistent bumblebees, smiling pumpkins, and frowning gnomes, immerses us in the realms of fairy tale and fantasy, with a specific reference to Sankaku “Triangle” Daruma, Japanese dolls symbolizing resilience. Munikata displays an enduring playful spirit and willingness to, as Thiebaud advised, embrace the ridiculous, even to “risk artistic suicide.” Among her diverse practices and strategies, she also cites the importance of randomness and the gestural impulse.

Grace Munakata, *Harbuz, 7 x Down, 8 x Up*, 2023, Acrylic, wax pastels on panel
41 x 48 in.

Munakata also presents many smaller paintings and collages without distinct objects, “pure abstractions,” which are intensely satisfying. Deep in the Ground (2021) presents rich yet muted colors and quirky shapes overlaid with careful tracings of pattern dancing across the panel. The joyous collage Susan’s Circus (2019) offers deep purple and brilliant yellow bands anchoring an irregular rectangle; playful dots suggest balls and juggling, as well as the yin-yang symbol.

With art a highly subjective realm, ultimately abstraction, like beauty, may lie in the eye of the beholder. As with many attempts to define or quantify aesthetic qualities, words fall short of experience. In the work of Munakata, a mixture of influences and techniques, layers of imagery and gestural marks, combine in satisfying compositions highly abstract—yet suggesting a diaristic record of a life of intellectual inquiry.

Barbara Morris

Grace Munakata “Biology of Flight” will close Saturday, December 23 at Anglim/Trimble, SF.

Anglim/Trimble

Tags #abstractpainting, #anglimtrimble, #asianart, #Bayareaart, #biologyofflight, #birds, #calstateeastbay, #gardens, #gracemunakata, #japaneseartists, #minnesotastproject, #nature, #sfart, #ucdavis, #waynethiebaud

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Allow Nothing to Worry You: Inez Storer and Andrew Romanoff at Gallery 16

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date June 8, 2023
4 Comments on Allow Nothing to Worry You: Inez Storer and Andrew Romanoff at Gallery 16

Allow Nothing to Worry You

The recent exhibition at Gallery 16 in SF of work by Inez Storer and her late husband Andrew Romanoff presented a touching and bittersweet journey through time and place. Titled Allow Nothing to Worry You, the show pairs Storer’s unique brand of Magic Realism with Romanoff’s quirky and whimsical works.

A larger-than-life photograph of the pair greets viewers upon arrival, a mural-sized enlargement of a scene at the couple’s bucolic home in Inverness. Romanoff, a dashing figure in a striped shirt and ascot, is on the right, while Storer, an intense and vibrant figure on the left crackles with energy. But the punctuation point is where there hands are gently joined in a tender clasp.

Storer is the more sophisticated artist of the pair. Her formal art education included studies at Art Center Los Angeles, San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, Dominican University, and SF State, where she obtained her master’s degree. She taught art at SFAI for many years, as well as at Sonoma State, SF State, College of Marin, and numerous other colleges and art schools. She also ran the Lester Gallery in Inverness, while teaching and raising a blended family of six kids.

Allow Nothing to Worry You Installation Shot all photos courtesy Gallery 16

Storer’s work pairs an unerring eye for color and composition with a wicked sense of humor, filtered through a lens of social and political conscience. Drawing strongly on narratives inspired by found objects, iconic subject matter often includes romantic female imagery, Matisse-inspired flowers and still life objects, references to world politics, and environmental issues. With such a busy life and household, the fluidity of the collage medium enabled Storer to create her art when the opportunity presented itself.

Romanoff’s personal history has a strong intersection with that of modern civilization, as great nephew of Tsar Nicholas II, deposed and executed by Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, one might say in his case “the personal is political” is proven true in spades. He grew up in Great Britain, on the grounds of Windsor Castle, in a place with the beguiling name of “Frogmore.” While not allowed to consort with the royals, they did occasionally bump into each other in the garden. After serving in the British Navy in WWII, as a young man, Romanoff moved to the States at the encouragement of his cousin, he subsequently had to learn to fend for himself using his wits and his strength to get by.

Andrew Romanoff, New Boy at School, Acrylic paint and pen on polystyrene mounted to spray painted panel, 5.5″ x 6.75”

Inez and Andrew met and fell in love, introduced by the cousin, Igor, who lived in West Marin, and the rest is history. They raised a large blended family in Inverness. Andrew discovered his own artistic talents, and became focused on the medium of Shrinky Dinks®, a children’s craft material that reduces in size when baked in the toaster oven, one which seemed somehow well-suited to convey his unique memories and impressions of the world around him. The company provided him with a lifetime supply. (More information on Andrew’s life and work is found on this site at Remembering Andrew Romanoff.)

Inez Storer, *Telepathy*, 2023, Mixed media on panel , 24” x 36”

Storer had grown up in Los Angeles, with her father, who worked in the film industry, offering her a look at the backlot and underbelly of the glittering fantasies of the silver screen. Forties era films, with their glamorous women, suave men, and convoluted plots, inflect much of the aesthetic of the work. Her multi-faceted dad was also a pilot, and his international adventures add another layer of complexity to the work. Even more significant was Storer’s discovery, as an adult, that she was not, in fact, Catholic, as she had been led to believe. During a time when it was dangerous to admit, her family had hidden its Jewish faith from even its own members.

Inez Storer, *The Ordinary Life of Natalia Ortiz*, 2010, Oil paint and collage on panel 52” × 40”

The Ordinary Life of Natalia Ortiz (2010) makes a statement about the lives of all women, how behind the calm facade of a “normal” woman’s life there are always buried secrets, hidden intrigues, loves lost or found. A box of letters, purloined from her neighbor’s garage, set the stage for a narrative about one of these clandestine affairs, their flowing script sets up a lovely collage element on the lower edge of the canvas. A beautiful, mysterious woman stands in for Natalia, while her elusive suitor emerges from the upper edge of the canvas. A bit of detective work yields the result that a woman named Natalia Ortiz was, in fact, a 40s-era film star from Mexico.

Andrew Romanoff, *A Day at the Races*, 2004, Acrylic paint and pen on polystyrene mounted to spray painted panel, 9.5” x 9.5”

A Day at the Races (2004) suggests one of Romanoff’s iconic scenes from childhood. Here, a young lad in a stroller implores his father to push him faster, echoing the racetrack scene behind him. Scenes from Andrew’s own childhood, many included in the book The Boy Who Would be Tsar, published by Gallery 16 in 2006, have a particular poignancy that is well-suited to his chosen medium of Shrinky Dinks®. In other images, like 9 Second Limit No-Ogling Law (1995), the childlike drawing in juxtaposition with a mature theme feels more loaded; as Storer remarked, “Andrew had no filters.”

Andrew Romanoff, *No Ogling*, 1995 Acrylic paint and pen on polystyrene mounted to spray painted panel, 10.5” x 10.5”

The mingling of romance, intrigue, royalty, Hollywood movies, Pop art, and naive art blend and intermix to create a fantastic world of illusion firmly grounded in reality and personal narrative. Like many great celebrity pairs, say Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the duo brought out the best in each other; obviously Storer, a strong-minded woman, is no femme fatale, and Romanoff, who worked as a laborer and craftsperson much of his life, had a nuanced presentation. But, yes, he exuded a royal presence, and the pair together created a gestalt of grit and grace that was unstoppable. It seems as if their symbiosis shifted back and forth as needed, with one providing a rudder of stability when the other began to veer off course.

While Romanoff’s work remained largely a hidden talent outside of the Bay Area, Storer’s work has been widely acclaimed. They enjoyed traveling, in particular making several memorable trips to Russia, where Andrew was greeted by many as the sole surviving heir to the monarchy traveling incognito. Storer completed a remarkable series after one trip, conflating experiences of the thin veneer of normalcy and elegance being at the time displayed in certain settings—the Russian palaces they toured—and her early assimilation of the concept that the glamour of Hollywood was really all just paste.

Gallery 16’s presentation is a welcome tribute to the amazing lives and work of these two remarkable individuals. Romanoff passed away in 2021 at the age of 98, but Storer remains vibrant and active to this day. At Storer’s talk with Griff Williams near the end of the exhibition’s run, she commented that it was good Andrew had not lived to see Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, while the pair both feared such an eventual outcome, it would have made it no easier to take. With dry humor and unfailing deftness, each in their own way has made an indelible mark on the Bay Area art scene.

Barbara Morris

Allow Nothing to Worry You closed in May at Gallery 16, SF.

https://gallery16.com/

Inez Storer, *Fear*, 1992 Oil on panel 18.25” x 15.75”

Tags #allownothingtoworryyou, #andrewromanoff, #boywhowouldbetsar, #figurativepainting, #gallery16, #inezstorer, #magicrealism, #narrativeart, #pointreyesartists, #williamsgriff

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Joan Brown at SFMOMA

Joan Brown and her dog Bob, 1961; collection of the Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Glen Cheriton/Impart Photography; courtesy the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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.

Joan Brown (installation view, SFMOMA); photo: Katherine Du Tiel

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.

Joan Brown, Thanksgiving Turkey, 1959; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: © The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

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.

Joan Brown, Refrigerator Painting, 1964; private collection; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Glen Cheriton/Impart Photography

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.

Joan Brown, Fur Rat, 1962; University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, gift of Joan Brown; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: courtesy University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

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.

Joan Brown, Noel and Bob, 1964; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, museum purchase, American Art Trust Fund, Mr. and Mrs. J. Alec Merriam Fund, and Morgan and Betty Flagg Fund; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Courtesy Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

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.

Joan Brown, Green Bowl, 1964; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a fractional gift of Evelyn D. Haas; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Katherine Du Tiel; courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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.

Joan Brown, Grey Cat with Madrone and Birch Trees, 1968; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Paintings Special Fund; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: © 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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.

Joan Brown, The Bride, 1970; University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, bequest of Earl David Peugh III; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Johnna Arnold/Impart Photography

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, Christmas Time 1970 (Joan + Noel), 1970; Collection of Adam Lindemann; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Glen Cheriton/Impart Photography

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.

Joan Brown, After the Alcatraz Swim #1, 1975; Collection of Maryellen and Frank Herringer, promised gift to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Katherine Du Tiel; courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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.

Joan Brown, The Dancers in a City #2, 1972; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Alfred E. Heller; © Estate of Joan Brown; photo: Katherine Du Tiel; courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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.

Joan Brown, Harmony, 1982; private collection, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery; © Estate of Joan Brown

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

Tags #bayareafigurativemovement, #bayareafigurativeschool, #joan brown, #joanbrownatsfmoma, #joanbrownretrospective, #manualneri, #narrativepainting, #noelneri, #robertcolescott, #sanfranciscoartinstitute, #sfmoma, #ucberkeley, #ucberkeleyartalumnigroup, #ucberkeleyartdepartment

art feminism figurative art landscape painting narrative art oil painting painting

Devorah Jacoby: Inside Out at Seager/Gray

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date October 26, 2022
1 Comment on Devorah Jacoby: Inside Out at Seager/Gray

Painter Devorah Jacoby has always presented a complex internal world in her works. Coming to her career in art after a practice in psychotherapy, she is familiar with the intricacies of the mind and the dances we perform in response to our emotions and surroundings. In her latest body of work Inside Out, currently on view at Seager Gray Gallery, this world is inhabited primarily by women—women often lost in thought, submerged in a landscape that at times obscures or threatens to engulf them.

Jacoby’s surfaces are juicy, her command of oil paint is deft and joyous—here expressing a surprising and at times flamboyant melding of styles from pointillism to realism to splatters, knife painting, and even occasionally including some glitter. Outside (2022) features a woman in a full, swirling green skirt. Eyes closed, she is in and of nature. The upper half of the canvas is scraped and scumbled, scratched and marked with orange drips and a periwinkle blue outline, like a butterfly. Here, as elsewhere, a pattern of rectangular blocks of color suggests a broad pointillist stroke as well as a bit of the geometrical abstract passages in Gustave Klimt.

With the subtext of the pandemic shutdown and how all our lives were upended as a kind of undergirding principle, Jacoby’s tense, often dysfunctional or emotionally-fraught human dynamics have let up a bit in most of these works, as if finding relief from the challenges of daily life in painting the beauty of nature tipped the scales away from too much psychological tension. The artist spent time in Wyoming during shelter-in-place, and found abundant inspiration in the landscape. Jacoby uses gardens, plants, and in particular flowers to repeatedly draw the eye, and cause it to linger, in moments of pure pleasure.

*I Can Feel Your Heart Beating* oil on panel 12″ x 12″ 2022

Appearing in two versions, I Can Feel Your Heart Beating (2022) evokes some of the darker regions of Jacoby’s world, as an introspective young girl holds a disembodied heart in front of her white jumper. The words evoke a sweet moment of lovers, perhaps, in close embrace, while the more clinical vision presented suggests an opposite reading, something rent asunder, death, disease, or perhaps love gone bad. We may also recall the iconic works of Frida Kahlo, where externalized organs symbolize the physical and emotion pain which that artist endured.

Reading (2022) is an excuse for more juicy brushwork, an explosion of pattern including folds of creamy tones marked with yellow and orange splotches, a profusion of wild daisies forming a dense blanket in the foreground. Two parted feet and ankles draw the viewer inward, to an ambiguously rendered interior space. A blurry red form, the book, dissolves into a blotchy sky of blue and pink. The absence of a head or upper body offers a bit of a shock, and can be read a humorous, or disquieting, or both.

*Fruits de Terre* acrylic and oil on canvas 36″ x 60″ 2022

Fruits de Terre (2022) is the star of the exhibition. A red room houses woman clutching a Toy Poodle, the scene conveying a European Modernist vibe echoing Matisse and Manet. A red vase, patterned with the recurring rectangular color blocks, holds assorted flowers in warm hues, an array of food, salads, strawberry shortcake, even crustaceans, creating a tour de force of color and texture. Adding to the visual texture are charcoal lines delineating a cake and various cooking implements.

Lilypad (2022), a mid-sized vertical work, is mysterious, dark in hue and subject matter. A female form is splayed out across a horse. A bright red pattern wraps her body, reading alternately as fabric marked by pattern, or more disturbingly, as blood. Rough green circles, the pads of the title, fill the lower portion of the canvas. The woman’s leg and foot hang limply along those of the horse, one may well wonder exactly what kind of nocturnal ride has just transpired.

*Flowers All Year* oil on canvas 60″ x 48″ 2016-2022

In Flowers All Year (2016-2022) it is interesting to explore how the bouquet dissolves into geometry and gesture simultaneously, as does a woman’s face on its right, her right eye obscured by a giant orange rose. This bounty of flowers, a recurring device in the show, thus becomes a bit menacing, is this a surfeit of pleasure?

Horizon (2022) forces the issue of the figure’s immersion in the paint, bringing the rectangular marks front and center, a small nude seen from the rear appears as if in an attempt to pry them apart and enter the space. Starfish (2022), a dreamy exploration of every shade of blue, features a tiny form of the sea creature alongside a girl in a red bathing suit, a foil to all the cool hues. This work is one of the most successful in allowing the viewer to become vicariously immersed in the beauty and tranquility of nature.

Jacoby is a gifted painter, her skillful mix of generous swaths of seductive color and creamy paint entice the viewer into a space where the mental world intersects with the visual, introspection meshed with observation. Yet here, in this body of work, the figures appear strikingly and unmistakably alone, the only narrative one we may construct as to how and why they are isolated. Certainly an apt device for a dark time of social distancing, yet Jacoby’s disarming use of the power of nature to soothe and delight us ultimately puts a surprisingly positive spin on a time that has been anything but.

Barbara Morris

Tags #devorahjacoby, #figurativepainting, #millvalleyart, #seagergraygallery

art assemblage environmental art installation painting political art sound art video art

Lands End

Lands End

at the former Cliff House

The FOR-SITE Foundation, founded in 2003, has taken on the unique project of mounting exhibitions of immersive, site-specific installations set in some of the Bay Area’s national parks. With memorable exhibitions including 2012’s International Orange set at the imposing Fort Point, followed by 2014’s @Large:AiWeiwei at Alcatraz housed in the stark and unforgiving former prison, our relationship with the ocean, nature, and the environment, coupled with concern for human rights and freedom of expression, have long been at the forefront of their mission. Other exhibitions have dealt with thorny issues such as the needs for shelter, safety, and security.

The latest in this series is Lands End, curated by FOR-SITE’s executive director Cheryl Haines, which takes the site of the former Cliff House restaurant—vacant since 2020—as a point of departure for the work of 26 artists and artist teams from around the globe. With its spectacular vistas and precarious perch, the work is brought to our attention in a setting that dramatizes it and also holds it at a distance, our attention torn between the interior and the exterior. The show, Haines states, “invites visitors to wade into an immersive environment where their charge is twofold: to discover artwork in unlikely places and to consider the planet’s health.”

This is my second visit to the site, the former Cliff House, an iconic SF restaurant and ballroom—which I somehow managed to completely avoid during its lengthy history of providing dining with a spectacular backdrop to countless SF natives and tourists alike. The first Cliff House was built in 1863, and was destroyed and rebuilt twice, the rambling structure is perched at the edge of the Pacific Ocean on a bluff, quite literally the land’s end. On my previous visit, a clear day, the jaw-dropping views outside distracted me from focusing on the art for some time. This time, SF has been socked in and the coast is still blanketed in wispy fog. Crashing waves on rocks outside still beckon. With such a large show, I intend to give just a taste of the work, installations which stood out the most to me. As I am getting my bearings and juggling my pen, notebook, and other belongings, another visitor remarkably precisely echoes my initial sentiment, that “it’s hard to know whether to look inside or outside…” Well, perhaps it’s not so remarkable, given the show being put on in the bluffs.

Andy Goldsworthy, Geophagia, 2021; Ione kaolin clay and wooden tables. Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Off the bar area, which seems a fine place to start, is a large-scale work by Andy Goldsworthy, Geophagia (2021).Salvaged restaurant tables have been covered with Ione kaolin clay from a mine in the Gold Country near Sacramento. Goldsworthy is of course known for site-specific works often set in nature, using natural materials at hand. Here, the brittle clay echoes the earth with the changes it undergoes as it dries and cracks, while alluding as well to the white tablecloths often found in restaurants. We may read the cracks as a metaphor for the parched earth as California repeatedly deals with prolonged and cataclysmic droughts. “Geophagia,” incidentally, refers to the psychological disorder of earth-eating, creating an allusion to the tragic fact that many in our world have a meager table laid for them.

The restaurant is huge, sprawling rooms opening out into vast dining areas with expansive picture windows, lengthy stretches of bar, and other massive spaces whose functions may remain a bit of a mystery. The whole undertaking has the feel of a secret and kind of spooky place, a very cinematic vibe with it’s echoes of a bourgeois past juxtaposed against a harsh yet spectacular present. My first take is that there are some vibrations of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining, I could envision a reclusive restaurateur going mad here in the empty shell of the facility.

One Beach Plastic, for here or to go, *2021; plastic collected at Kehoe Beach and ceramic dishware;* Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Moving, perhaps, from horror to scifi, one might flash on the scene in Jurassic Park where the children are pursued by velociraptors into the hotel’s kitchen. The brushed steel cabinets here are certainly large enough for a small person to hide in to avoid being devoured. But rather than a game of reptilian hide-and-seek, we find a remarkable work by One Beach Plastic, the husband and wife team of Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang, who have created a striking and sobering installation for here or to go (2021) using an enormous amount of white plastic debris—a fraction of the tons they have cleaned from Kehoe Beach in Marin County since 1999. The West Marin-based couple have made combating plastic pollution of the ocean very much a life mission. Simultaneously playful and horrifying, the detritus is sorted into piles of different types of things, bottle caps, tampon tubes, hunks of Styrofoam, tortured plastic bags that refuse to die. Many are arranged aesthetically, almost appetizingly, on ceramic plates lining the steel shelves…“order up!”

Tuula Närhinen, Baltic Sea Plastique, 2013–14; plastic washed ashore near the artist’s studio, glass vases, water, single-channel video (color, sound). Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

With a related aesthetic, Tuula Närhinen, a Finnish artist, presents Baltic Sea Plastique (2013-14). A row of acrylic tubes contains colorful plastic assemblages suspended in water, all filled to the same precise level, suggesting a science project whose intent is unknown. These appealing, almost floral works make the menacing issue of aquatic pollution a bit seductive; one might liken them to colorful plants and animals who lure in their prey with beauty.

Shumon Ahmed, Metal Graves 14 *and* 15, 2009; When Dead Ships Travel 10 *and* 12, 2015; digital prints on archival rag fine art paper; Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Lurking in an alcove, perhaps the old freezer, we may find a display of solemn photographs, Metal Graves 14 and 15 (2009) and When Dead Ships Travel 10 and 12 (2015) Living in Bangladesh, Shumon Ahmed documents desolate areas there which constitute a container ship graveyard. We may think of the current issue of global supply chain breakdown, with these massive vessels stranded unloaded in ports around the world.

William T. Wiley, Punball: Only One Earth, 2008; rebuilt and restored pinball machine with original artwork;Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

On the lower level, the prolific punster and skillful draftsman William T. Wiley, who sadly passed last year, is represented by an uncharacteristically spare installation—a single pinball machine situated in a large wedge-shaped room. Wiley’s piece Punball: Only One Earth (2008) takes the theme of pollution and global warming to a repurposed vintage Gottlieb “North Star” game. Wiley’s alter-ego, Mr. Unnatural, poses bent over, wearing a red commedia dell’arte clown/jester nose and doffing his wizard cap to Buster time, a character who reminds viewers that the clock is always ticking. Wiley always had a strong social conscience, as as the environmental issues facing us grew more dire they became increasingly important in his diverse body of work. Recalling the artist’s propensity to a bit of excess, in its opposing starkness this work serves much as a memorial totem.

Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood,Confectionery Marvels and Curious Collections, 2021; resin, insects, porcelain, plaster, glass, various dry and wet specimens; Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Echoing the theme of something which beckons, but is a bit repellent on closer inspection are the Confectionery Marvels and Curious Collections (2021) of Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. These evoke ornate jello-molds in sparkly, colorful rows perched on small glass shelves set in circular niches, six glimmering jewel-like on either side of this elegant lower bar. Dotted with butterflies and other taxidermy insect specimens, the contrast implies the dual existence of food waste and excess for some, and food insecurity for others.

Ana Teresa Fernández fills an airy, light-filled room with her installation of seven large acrylic cylinders, each about human height at six feet tall, filled with sea water and perched on small heaps of sand. The cylinders distort the view outside, bringing it indoors, and create mesmerizing visual effects. On the Horizon (2021) alludes to the disturbing fact that sea levels are expected to rise at least six feet in the next century. We may think of Roni Horn’s installation Library of Water, in Stykkishólmur Iceland, where similarly-scaled tubes are filled with water obtained from melted glaciers. It bears noting that Fernández also created an earlier version of this work, temporarily installed on nearby Ocean Beach with the help of community volunteers.

Doug Aitken, migration (empire)*, 2008; single-channel video installation (color, sound), one projection, steel, and PVC screen billboard sculpture;* Part of the exhibition *Lands End*, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick

Taking the cinematic aspect of the exhibition to another level is Doug Aitkin with migration (empire) (2008), a single channel video installation. Aitkin has filmed surreal vignettes in empty motels where wild animals explore their unlikely surroundings; a puma enters, looking wary and alarmed, reindeer, peacocks, and even a buffalo roam. The banality of the motel gains an eerie, ominous quality when seen through the eyes of the unwitting animal visitors. Scenes of desolate roadsides are interspersed, giving the work a feel of a dystopian future somehow particularly appropriate for this moment.

Exiting Aitkin’s work through passageways that feel remote and a bit disorienting, one may encounter Norway-based Jana Winderen’s sound installation Energy Field (2010). The artist collects sounds from inaccessible places, like the bottom of the ocean or the interior of ice sheets, and quite appropriately here we also cannot reach the source of these unsettling sounds. Cold blue fluorescent light adds an unsettling quality.

Chester Arnold, Survivors, 2021; oil on linen. Part of the exhibition Lands End, organized byFOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick.

With so much to see, don’t miss Chester Arnold’s five small-scale oil paintings hanging in a narrow corridor. Unlike the traditional placid nautical scenes one might expect at a restaurant, here roiling seas churn with whirlpools from which these vessels clearly have no escape. Arnold’s meticulous style shows to good advantage in this intimate space, with Survivors (2021) huddling in a life raft showing a particularly deft balance command of gesture. Clearly Arnold finds a metaphor in the image of vessels and their crew at peril for the journey we all embark today on our imperiled planet.

Gülnur Özdağlar, The Last Reef, 2021; plastic bottles, fishing line. Part of the exhibition
Lands End, organized by FOR-SITE. Image courtesy FOR-SITE. Photo: Robert Divers
Herrick.

By the entrance/exit is Gülnur Özdağlar’s The Last Reef , (2021) a beautiful suspended installation of jellyfish made from plastic bottles, a glowing, ethereal work. This piece, like many visually stunning works on view, helps temper the harsher, more pessimistic vibes that also abound. Certainly plastic can be beautiful, it comes in so many bright, cheerful colors. The fact that it has been so inexpensive to manufacture for so long has made us complacent about using it once, then “recycling” it; we are just learning that recycling the material often merely meant shipping it overseas where it would ultimately end up in the landfill. Now, as these markets are increasingly saying “no thank you” we are stuck ourselves with this monster which we have created.

Reflecting on Lands End, I was delighted to play the game of seeking out the artworks amid the architecture, and the underlying message of environmental devastation hit squarely home. A third, strongly felt dimension is that of time, of the feeling of stepping into a realm caught between the past and the present, the lingering presence of different times and ways of living. We may sense how fragile our world is, how what we assume is permanent may without warning vanish, from a beloved restaurant to the polar ice caps.

Barbara Morris

Due to space concerns, many additional noteworthy works could not be discussed here. The other artists in the exhibition are Daniel Beltrá, Andrea Chung, Ólafur Elíasson, Elizabeth Ellenwood, Adam Eli Feibelman, Angelo Filomeno, Carsten Höller, Suzanne Husky, Brian Jungen, and Tony Matelli.

Lands End is free and open to the public Thursday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm, through March 27. Admission by timed ticket.

https://www.for-site.org/project/landsend/

Tags #andygoldsworthy, #cherylhaines, #cliffhouse, #environmentalart, #forsitefoundation, #landsend, #onebeachplastic, #williamtwiley

African American Art art Crafts folk art Great Migration Quilts Textile Art

Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date August 24, 2021
No Comments on Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective

Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective

Those of us fortunate enough to have seen the recent exhibition of Rosie Lee Tompkins remarkable textile works at the Berkeley Art Museum may count our blessings. We have, so far, survived the global pandemic of COVID-19, and the alarming delta variant currently bedeviling us. BAM has reopened, and is once again presenting exhibitions, including this unusual and groundbreaking show that was extended after the shut-down brought it to an early halt. Eli Leon and Larry Rinder both recognized the talent and vision of this unique woman. And, it all began with Tompkins herself mustering the stamina and tenacity to bring her visions to life.

Before diving into the work itself, heralded by Roberta Smith in the New York Times as “one of the century’s major artistic accomplishments,” let’s consider the journey of Rosie Lee Tompkins. Born Effie Mae Miller in Gould, Arkansas, like so many Blacks living in the south in the early 20^th century, she chose to leave that locale—rife with rampant racism, Jim Crow laws and wanton lynchings—for less hostile lands that would presumably offer more opportunity, to the north and west. A part of the Great Migration of over six million African Americans, Effie Mae migrated through Milwaukee and Chicago, eventually to settle in Richmond, CA, a few miles north of Berkeley.

After the dissolution of an early marriage, Effie Mae Howard was at liberty to pursue her calling, along with various pursuits designed to earn a living, such as working as a practical nurse for convalescents. But it was her crazy quilts and pillows that were her true love. Her eye for color and composition garnered significant attention, and sales, eventually allowing her to quit her other jobs. Like many artists, Tompkins was challenged by some personal demons, and suffered a nervous breakdown in her 40s. Deeply religious, she belonged to the Beacon Light Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and her abiding faith sustained her throughout the rest of her life, suffusing her work with an intensity and energy that is undeniable.

*String* (1985) detail. Detail shots of Rosie Lee Tompkins’ work taken by the author.

Entering the show at Berkeley Art Museum, one comes to face the spectacular String (1985) of velvet, velveteen, and chenille backing. While most of Tompkins’ quilts don’t correspond to size of a bed, this one does—a large bed. With long, curving stripes in dark, predominantly cool colors, the bands of fabric thrust upward, then take a strong arc to the left. Its strong symbolic presence suggests a flag, while shades of purple, black and gray, lend it a solemn feeling. The mood is set for not just an entry, but an ascension.

It was Tompkins belief that her artistry was a gift from God, and her work was created in support of healing and spiritual life, for herself as well as that of her friends and family. She was a very private person, and it was with Bay Area based collector and champion of African-American quilting Eli Leon’s strong encouragement that she eventually allowed her work to begin to be exhibited in the late 1980s, with the adoption of the pseudonym Rosie Lee Tompkins offering her a layer of anonymity. Leon’s bequest of some 3000 quilts to BAM makes theirs probably the largest collection of African American quilts held by any museum.

Across the entryway another striking work hung, Untitled (1970s with embroidered scripture added mid-1980s). A central figure depicting Jesus is surrounded by other squares of found embroidery, mostly floral. A wise owl sits sideways above, and a kitten with a yellow bow sits near upper left corner, with shisha cloth adjacent. These two works near the entry, String and Untitled embody the major directions that her work would follow. The first, the abstract vein, places an emphasis on color relationships, geometry and the rhythms of an improvisational design technique. The second, the pictorial quilts, are eclectic melanges of patterns and imagery, ranging from religious iconography, botanical elements and wild patterning to sheer unadulterated kitsch. One might wonder what Clement Greenberg would make of these. Surely, the 20^th century formalist critic might find them a hard sell.

A finished quilt consists of three layers, the sewn-together top pieces, a layer of batting and a uniform backing cloth. Tompkins primarily constructed the top-pieces, with the actual “quilting” left to to others. It is also interesting to note that often she did not specify orientation and that left to curators

Untitled (1984) displays a tropical motif, including fabric printed with word “Hawaii” hibiscuses, palm trees and other floral elements. Untitled (1986) incorporates faux fur and leopard/exotic cat prints in some traditional quilt patterns, rapidly morphing into randomness and chaos. It is Tompkins’ particular method to this madness that is one of the riveting aspects of the work, we may follow her mind processing the ways in which imperfections in one shape, say a square or “half-square,” better known as a triangle to non-quilters, will impact the subsequent shapes and arrangements that she will devise. She chose not to measure the components as she cut them, instead allowing the variations in size and shape to lend a distinctive and quirky element of randomness into the mix.

In the beautifully-produced exhibition catalog, there are three thoughtful essays. Former BAMPFA director Lawrence Rinder’s places the most emphasis on this improvisational aspect, finding in it close parallels to the work of 20^th century jazz musicians, particularly John Coltrane, as they sought to forge a unique style for their art form, severing it intentionally from any Eurocentric roots. Early on in her essay, Elaine Y. Yau, Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow and exhibition co-organizer with Rinder, acknowledges “the inequities of power, as well as reciprocity, that are always at play when artistic outliers enter the mainstream.” She focuses on the enduring significance of the craft aspect of Tompkins’ work, coupled with its significance in a fine art context. Curator and art historian Horace D. Ballard contributes his thoughts on Tompkins’ spiritual nature and enigmatic qualities.

Untitled (1986) is constructed entirely from recycled denim, squares containing pockets set up an insistent design and rhythm, in an homage to her grandfather Zebedee Bell and other farmers and laborers. Nearby, Untitled (2003) consists of found and repurposed neckties in various fabrics, a smaller work. These two works show a kind of formal and thematic discipline that gives them a tighter focus, and sets them a bit apart from much of the other work.

In a vitrine are a number of reliquary-like bottles, encrusted with ornate trim, baubles and bangles, suggesting shrines and totem objects. The abundance of pattern and texture begins to have a bit of a hallucinatory effect, with the intensity of the artist’s focus pulling us ever closer in to her mysterious inner world. BAM has included over 70 of the artist’s quilts, which is a little overwhelming at times—given how dense and complex each one is. With a visual overload of texture, shape and imagery, this abundance allows us to fully appreciate the scope of her work, her devotion to her craft, and the obsessive nature of the work.

In the rear gallery are several quilts with a color scheme of complimentary yellow/orange and purple. Tompkins called this the three sixes combination, an allusion to birthdates, her own, 9/6/36, as well as those of relatives, that contained the number six. Works such as Thirty-Six Nine-Patch (Three Sixes combination) (1999) offer simpler designs of squares of varying sizes, once again, pieced together with a system combining logic and chaos, straight edges and meandering lines that go askew. The vibration is overall harmonious, as we may sense the feeling of solidarity and support she derived from belonging to this connected group.

A section near the end of the exhibition highlights the Pictorial Quilts, many of massive size, which incorporate found images, embroidered or printed, including dishtowels and t-shirts. While critical attention has in general favored more abstract quilts—one may also recall the praise for the geometric works the quilters of Gee’s Bend—Tompkins more narrative works are crucial to present the scope of her unique passion. A trio of these, each Untitled from 1996, hang adjacent to one another. Stereotypical images of ethnic types, such as Native Americans, some with feathered headdresses, and exotic Spanish dancers, recur in the work. Whether this was a critique of racist imagery is unclear, perhaps more likely is her omnivorous appetite for symbols of all kinds to invigorate the work, although a more pointed intent is certainly a possibility.

In one, Jesus Christ and cherubic angels hover juxtaposed with a childish print of race cars, next to an embroidered calendar/dishtowel embellished with kittens. Stripes of red and white fly above a star-spangled blue field. A red scrap with turrets bears the phrase “Souvenir of Moscow.” The word Hawaii appears with a parrot nearby. Tompkins creates a kind of a multi-cultural tropical melting pot of sweetness laced with pain, and disconnect.

Another Americana-themed piece features John and Bobby Kennedy flanking Martin Luther King, iconic symbols for the civil rights movement of the 60s, interspersed with flags and squares of red and white, along with large swaths of a bucolic, pastoral print in sepia tones evoking a serene colonial scene. The third Untitled (1996) work featuring sports stars, basketball and football players, offers a confrontational image of O.J. Simpson surrounded by text asking “Who framed OJ Simpson? 100% innocent. Not guilty.” Searching for irony here is no doubt misplaced.

While the wall-hung works are predominantly flat, several notable works contain Tompkins’ version of fabric “donuts,” puffy circular forms created by gathering the edges of a round piece of cloth. These range from a joyous piece Untitled (1995) with brilliantly-hued donuts scattered on a field of kelly green, to a stark elegiac work, Untitled (2005), all in black that concludes the exhibition.

Rosie Lee Tompkins’/Effie May Howard’s work combines energies and forces largely beyond our comprehension in a remarkable collection of quilts that have taken on virtually a life of their own. Whether their status as art world icons, and Tompkins’ as a standard-bearer for a new atmosphere of inclusivity in museums and galleries, would have been something truly desired by their maker is likewise unknowable. As it stands, we may enjoy and celebrate the opportunity to experience the world through the eyes and mind of this truly visionary woman.

Barbara Morris

Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective closed at BAMPFA on July 18, 2021.

https://bampfa.org/program/virtual/rosie-lee-tompkins-retrospective

Tags #africanamericanquilting, #bampfa, #berkeleyartmuseum, #elileon, #rosieleetompkins

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Miguel Arzabe Cóndor de Cuatro Cabezas/Four-Headed Condor

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date July 2, 2021
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As coronavirus restrictions ease here in the SF Bay Area, it is quite exhilarating to be able to go out to galleries and see art once again in person. I visited Miguel Arzabe’s exhibition “Cóndor de Cuatro Cabezas/Four Headed Condor” twice, once masked, before the opening day of June 15, and again unmasked, more recently, to dig a little deeper into the work. Johansson Projects was filled with an array of brightly colored, two-dimensional objects displayed on the walls, as well as a sculptural installation. From a distance one might not initially pick up on the techniques the artist employs, perhaps imagining him using tape to grid off his canvas. And that wouldn’t really be so far from the mark, as Arzabe’s art practice at one point did rely upon the exhaustive use of tape, which helped motivate his current, more unusual practice of working with weaving strips of canvas or paper.

The wall-mounted works fall into two categories, works of woven canvas, mounted on traditional wooden stretcher bars, and works of woven paper, hung on wooden dowels. The kind of obsessive and detail-oriented structure of the works hints at a nimble mind, with a fine grasp of many variables at once and an ability to problem-solve structural or mechanical problems as they arise. Perhaps it may come as no surprise to learn that Arzabe, while paying deep homage to his Bolivian roots and indigenous cultures, is trained as an engineer, with a Master’s Degree in Fluid Dynamics.

Arzabe morphed from engineer to artist many years ago, picking up an MFA from UC Berkeley along the way, and apparently hasn’t looked back. He has compiled a lengthy résumé, with numerous international exhibitions and museum shows, as well as residencies and installations at the likes of Google, Facebook and YouTube. Jill D’Alessandro, curator of textiles at the de Young Museum, spoke with Arzabe at the gallery last weekend, an event also live-streamed on Instagram. They had initially met the artist when the artist held a residency at the museum in 2016.

When D’Alessandro presented the artist with an introductory question, he prefaced his response first with his thanks to those present, then asking all to reflect on the fact that they were currently on Ohlone soil. This shifted the dynamics of the talk to a different wavelength, and one began to sense how Arzabe might look at the world.

Five of Arzabe’s works are on, or of, canvas, in a variety of systems that combine cutting, weaving and stretching the fabric, upon which the artist has already painted. Two 20^th century modernist painters provided reference material, the artist reinterpreting their works in his own paintings, which are later sliced and woven together. In some one canvas was woven into a work already on the stretchers, in others the weaving was stretched over the bars after completion.

Miguel Arzabe Cosme 2021 Woven acrylic on canvas 50 “x 46”

Cosme (2021) bears the name of the artist’s father, as well as referencing the cosmos. Shapes flicker with rough, torn-appearing edges, navy blue toward center with brighter colors, orange, violet and phthalo blue, toward edges. A border is formed by lighter, cream-colored areas on top, bottom and right edges of the canvas. Some areas have longer vertical bands interwoven with shorter horizontal strips, and vice-versa. D’Alessandro and Arzabe discussed how he likes to turn his work during its making, in a painterly fashion, rather than working with a set warp and weft. Also unlike traditional weavers, Arzabe works intuitively, rather than following a set pattern. Feeling very organic, its snippets of abstract form have a somewhat Kandinsky-like energy.

Arzabe, whose parents moved to the US before he was born, returns fairly frequently to Bolivia to visit his ancestral home, and see relatives who still live there. At an outdoor market he discovered some vintage pieces of weaving, marked with holes and stains accrued in the passage of time, and these have provided inspiration for some of his motifs. He later discovered a reference book on Andean textiles, learning the meaning of a number of the animal symbols used in the designs. In Andean culture, many such mythical creatures are depicted and inform the legends passed down over the generations. One, which he had mistaken for a crab, was in fact a four-headed condor. The exhibition title, this phrase also alludes to four energies joined in the work, the two modernist painters, Arzabe himself, and ultimately the viewer.

During his talk, an audience member posed the question of precisely which two modernist artists were involved, but Arzabe demurred on a response. A colleague, one who also references other artists, had advised him that once he said it, he “couldn’t take it back…and that it would be all anyone would want to talk about.”

Miguel Arzabe Ti Quiero Inti 2021 Woven acrylic on canvas 48 “x 60”

Ti Quiero Inti (2021)refers to the Incan sun god, as well as the artist’s daughter, also named Inti. A central triangular shape in pale blue hues is flanked by arcs and funnel shapes in hot pink and burnt orange, suggesting sky and mountains. A band of brilliant yellow snakes down from the top of the canvas just off center, about to the midway point. This vibrant work suggests not only the artist’s love for his daughter, but for nature as well; it also suggests the work of Marsden Hartley.

Miguel Arzabe Cuniraya 2021 Woven acrylic on Yupo 89 “x 48”

Many of the works incorporate Yupo paper, a synthetic, polypropylene-based paper that is archival and extremely durable. Cuniraya (2021) is an imposing piece of woven acrylic on Yupo. Eighty-nine inches high, it is hung on a wooden dowel suspended from flat metal hooks screwed into the wall, lending it the feeling of a traditional tapestry or other textile art form. Curvilinear forms, evoking Jean Arp, break up into small squares where bits of weaving peek through, as well as larger squares that create a modernist grid on the lower third. The sleek Yupo material also creates an interesting contrast to the traditional craft references.

Miguel Arzabe *En El Ojo el Cóndor* 2021 Woven acrylic on Yupo 46 “x 60.5”

The striking En El Ojo el Cóndor (2021) features a central area of cadmium red, with wing-like forms in orange and pink, dissolving into background. A drab grey-green surrounds this, punctuated with a smattering of Matisse-like stars on the left. A fringe of white at the bottom creates an insistent energy, as intersecting diagonals meet in a central “v” configuration. Arzabe may be referencing 20^th century painters, but his palette appears very 21^st century, with acid hues and oversaturated values that somehow convey a digitally-informed perspective. Also, the persistent emergence of individual squares, created by the weaving process, simultaneously evokes the building block of our contemporary world of digital images, the pixel.

A sweeping angular installation work, Alas (2021) of strips of warm-hued, painted canvas connects the two sides of the gallery space, passing through the archway, and anchoring to wooden supports on the floor and high up the wall. The curved edge where the seven bands wrap and turn the corner before descending is a dramatic moment. Shadows on wall and floor add to the impact of the immersive experience.

Arzabe’s work is very much of this moment, reflecting a combination of influences and concerns, a mingling of materials and techniques that intertwine the ancient and the modern, the physical, mental and spiritual realms as well coming into play. Created during the time of COVID, it is infused as well with an undercurrent of uncertainly, wariness. Reflecting on that aspect, the artist stated that he found immersion in his complex process allowed him to focus his energy into something positive, and it is that resilient spirit of hope which resonates throughout.

Barbara Morris

Miguel Arzabe *En El Ojo el Cóndor* (detail) 2021

Miguel Arzabe Cóndor de Cuatro Cabezas/Four-Headed Condor at Johansson Projects through July 24

https://johanssonprojects.com/portfolio/miguel-arzabe/

Tags #johanssonprojects, #miguelarzabe

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M. Louise Stanley: No Regrets at Marin MOCA

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date March 30, 2021
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M. Louise Stanley: No Regrets

Marin MOCA

With a flood of recent solo shows and accolades over the past couple of years, it seems as if painter M. Louise Stanley’s ship has come in. Her current exhibition is No Regrets, at the Marin MOCA in Novato. Behind the entry desk, Bad Bankers (2011) escorts us into Stanley’s world with a line of contrite businessmen carrying briefcases, awaiting their turn to be spanked on their bare bottoms by an oversized goddess of justice. One could only wish that misbehaving power-brokers could all be taken down to size this easily.

Bad Bankers (2011), acrylic on paper, 30″ x 40″

The exhibition proceeds, for the most part, chronologically, and while weighted toward the artist’s later works, there are some gems from earlier years on view. The Mystic Muse and The Bums Who Sleep in the Golf Course Behind the Oakland Cemetery (1970), a small watercolor, is the earliest work on display. Stanley, “Lulu” to her friends, attended CCAC, (now California College of the Arts) and obtained her MFA in 1969, forming consciousness-raising groups with similarly feminist-minded friends. They often gathered to paint intimate, narrative watercolors, going against the grain of large, abstract oil paintings. We may note many features that predict the artist’s subsequent work, her palette, with its acid greens set against warm hues, is largely in place, we see already her love of patterning and costume, and the juxtaposition of the sexual—a naked “muse” with thrusting breasts—and the macabre, the creepy “bums” in their graveyard setting.

*The Mystic Muse and The Bums Who Sleep in the Golf Course Behind the Oakland Cemetery* (1970), watercolor, 11″ x 15″

Death of a Saleswoman (1981) adapts the title from Arthur Miller’s moody play, and invents a fictive tale of a door-to-door saleswoman, perhaps an Avon lady, who has been shot in the chest, spurting blood in a dramatic arc. A sprinkler on the lawn twins this image with its own benign gusher. The gunslinger is a woman wearing a high-heeled mule with a pink pompon. The subtext here is how women have historically been pitted against one another, the stay-at-home-mom, for example, versus the career woman, both battling over stakes that are depressingly small.

If the Shoe Fits (1976), watercolor, 22″ x 30″

Perhaps, like Warhol, Stanley may have a bit of a foot fetish—her emphasis on feet and footwear a recurring device dating back at least to If the Shoe Fits (1976) a discomfiting interlude of barely-contained sexual tension between a languid shoe-salesman and his eager customer. In these earliest works the distortion of the figures is more extreme, arching breasts, pointy noses and chins suggesting Peter Saul, Jim Nutt, The Hairy Who and the world of underground comix. Later figures remain stylized, often retaining comically-exaggerated features. A tendency throughout to present women as oversexualized caricatures, bitches, whores and temptresses, reflects the way they are so often portrayed in our culture. She employs a similar device to that used by the late, great, Black painter Robert Colescott—turning the tables on an oppressive culture by shoving caricatures back in its face.

The Mouth of Hell (Catherine Cleves Hours) (2018), gouache, 16″ x 12″

A sextet of mid-scale works on paper in gouache, painted as if pages taken from an illuminated manuscript, fits nicely along a curving wall in the middle gallery. A stunning version of The Mouth of Hell (Catherine of Cleves Hours) (2018) is both funny and more than a little scary. Small green devils prod and poke small damned souls, tossing them into the gaping maw of a structure both feline and architectural. Ars Longa for Ed (2020) offers a touching memorial to gallerist Ed Gilbert who sadly passed last year. (Stanley represented by Anglim/Trimble Gallery, the torch having been passed from Paule Anglim to Ed, and now to the resilient Shannon Trimble.) Gilbert, known for his stylish appearance, sports a natty outfit of red pants and a green shirt, with additional jackets and footwear mingled among vines embellishing the edges of the page.

Some of Stanley’s strongest works reside in her prodigious collection of sketchbooks, an accumulation of years of copious notes, skillful ink drawings, spontaneous color studies and fully-realized paintings—many of which have been created on the go, often in Italy, where she led countless art lovers on tours. A few of these remarkable journals are open on display here, under plexiglas vitrines.

In one, Piazzole dei Cavalli Marini, Borghese Gardens presents a three-tiered fountain, rising from a base of the torsos of rearing, spouting horses, bathed in a warm glow of rosy peach and grey-greens that co-mingle in a masterful play of light. A Grimacing Selfie, sketched with pen and ink, shows Stanley’s love of the grotesque with its twisted mouth, spotted chin, sagging jowls, angry eyes and crazy tufts of hair. We may recall some of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits, where he likewise reflects mercilessly at his aging, fallible visage.

Jupiter and Io (2008), acrylic on canvas, 62″ x 80″

Many significant works are clustered in the last gallery. Jupiter and Io (2008) a particular favorite, is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Roman myth of infidelity and sexual predation by shape-shifting gods. Io, in a clingy slip of peach-colored satin, is perched off balance on one foot, as a shoe flies off another. Her legs are encased in seamed nylons; the costuming, postures and personas of many of Lulu’s characters evoke a somewhat 1940s vibe—something out of Thomas Hart Benton, perhaps, with a nod to film noir.

Stanley frequently uses animal avatars to comment on the scene at hand. A furry little terrier stands guard, mouth agape, gazing intently at his mistress’ encounter with Jupiter, who manifests as a voluminous puff of steam that rapidly disperses through the nether-regions of Io’s attire. Achingly-beautiful details—a glass of milk, alluding to Io’s transformation to a heifer at one point in the legend and a dangling nylon so transparent and delicate you just can’t stand it—are contrasted with less subtle passages, notably a table lamp whose base consists of a pair of formally-dressed figures recoiling in exaggerated horror.

Melencholia (After Durer)2012, acrylic on canvas, 62″ x 80″

One of the big issues we face when discussing Stanley’s art is its abundant and unremorseful irreverence. In the exhibition catalog, the artist is quoted as saying “I strive for that precarious line between the colloquial and the sublime, perhaps in order to sabotage both extremes, but more often just to see if I can get pull it off.” That transgressive streak runs broadly through much of the work, and, like so many things, is both a blessing and a curse. A somewhat atypical take on this issue of humor is found in the ambitious Melencholia (After Dürer) (2012) featuring “The Archetypal Artist,” Stanley’s alter-ego, holding a jester’s mask bearing a dour expression in front of her own smiling face, trying to get the subject Melencholia, and/or a similarly grumpy putti to smile. Is Stanley suggesting that, like Dürer, she struggles with a tendency to melancholy? Just who, here, is pulling the leg of whom?

Anatomy Lesson (2003) acrylic on canvas 72″ x 96″

Anatomy Lesson (2003) is a very funny, tour-de-force work. This massive canvas presents overly-sedate art students, one with severely bad bangs, diligently working away as a bizarre scene unfolds. Their models consist of “The Artist,” clad in her signature lime-green pedal pushers and red and white striped top, and a pair of dancing partners who appear to have stepped out of Grey’s Anatomy. Her face is titled skyward in ecstasy, evoking Bernini’s St. Teresa. A skeleton, behind her cadaver partner, taps with a bony finger to cut in. We sense Stanley’s enduring love affair with the canvas, and with her muse, as often leaving her a bit breathless, with raw nerves exposed.

Gothic Revival (1997), gouache, 40″ x 26″

A pair of pithy works spinning liturgical tales anchor the two south corners. Gothic Revival (1997) is a beautiful medium-scale work where gouache paint describes a shadowy corner of a gothic cathedral, all vaulted arches and wrought iron, but our eye is drawn by a revelatory stream of yellow light to focus on the small figure of a distinctly male baby having its diaper changed on a bench in an alcove. The vertiginous composition accentuates the lofty architecture. Virgin Birth, Barcelona (1996) is also a small knockout, here painted in acrylic. A woman in a narrow gallery flanked by medieval statues of Madonna and Child appears poised to reenact her own nativity scene.

The artist often bemoans the fact that in the 1980s she developed an allergy to oil paint, necessitating the switch to the less responsive medium of acrylics. If acrylics can’t really pull off quite the same look or feel as oils, Lulu is one of the very best around at coaxing the medium into submission, achieving subtle tonal variations and delicate tactile qualities that are fairly astonishing.

Self-Portrait (After Ensor)(1992), gouache, 22″ x 30″

Coming full circle, we may find a small gouache near the entryway Self-Portrait (After Ensor) (1992) Here, riffing off the eccentric 19^th century Belgian painter James Ensor, the artist presents herself as a skeleton laid out on a slab, with head and back propped up. The skull, which has retained both teeth and thick ropes of spiky orange hair, gazes disconsolately at the viewer. Her neatly-folded capris and tunic at last cast aside, palette and brushes nearby at the ready.

Stanley has lived an uncompromising life, and as the title suggests, is at this stage of the game largely content with how things have played out. With a boundless imagination and keen wit, coupled with formidable draftsmanship and painterly skills, her work is poised to withstand the test of time.

Barbara Morris

M. Louise Stanley: No Regrets at Marin MOCA by appointment through April 18

https://marinmoca.org/exhibitions/event/130/

art assemblage cyanotype figurative art painting political art racial justice

One-Two Punch at Jack Fischer Gallery

Post author By Barbara Morris
Post date January 13, 2021
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Travis Somerville and Keris Salmon at Jack Fischer Gallery

In a similar fashion to that of German artists grappling with the Holocaust, caucasian American artists, perhaps in particular those who come, as Travis Somerville does, from the South, have a substantial burden of grief and shame to bear. Setting aside, for the moment, issues of geography and ethnicity, anyone paying attention to the political climate in our country in recent days—or to be frank at least the past four horrific years of the Trump White House—has to feel outraged and in despair. As I write this, we have thankfully voted that destructive presence out of office, and it looks like he at last has faced the reality of his loss. (Well, that hope for a glimmer of sanity has since been crushed-bjm)

1965 vintage ballot box with audio and video components 2020

Visiting Jack Fischer Gallery to see “One-Two Punch” before the election, it was a particularly fraught moment: so much was at stake. Given all the attempts to restrict voting in numerous nefarious ways, interfering with the US Postal Service perhaps the most insidious, the piece that had the greatest initial impact was not one of the artists massive and powerful wall-mounted works, but 1965 (2020), a sculptural installation. A wooden box, resting on a pedestal, was lit with a crackling video projection of dancing flames. A recording of LBJ’s 1965 speech approving the voting rights act sent chills down the spine as the wooden object came into focus as a vintage ballot box, particularly in light of the fact that several ballot boxes had actually recently been the target of firebombing.

Once one absorbs that sobering and dramatic content, the rest of the gallery comes into focus as filled with Somerville’s gargantuan and challenging paintings, as well as some moody and mysterious photographs which we will come to a bit later…

Year of Our Lord 2020, acrylic, collage, gesso on found truck tarp, 118″ x 123″ 2020

Somerville has taken every offensive triggering image in the racist playbook and painted it, beautifully, one might add, in oil on the rugged surface of recycled truck and army tarps. These rough images are juxtaposed with iconic American symbols like the flag and the Liberty Bell, and layered with some genteel lacy wallpaper. One work, Year of Our Lord 2020, features scrawled text stating Jeff Davis was not a president, punctuated by a Confederate flag. An image of a figure, toppled to the ground, may evoke images of statues of very unpopular Confederate Generals being pulled down in recent protests. We may recognize the dark blue suit and oversized red tie of the hooded figure holding the bible—upside-down.

The figure which has been knocked down is, in fact, a boxer, an image that recurs in several of the paintings. In one, The Mat (2020), a powerful torso and arms float in space, a klansman’s hood replacing its head, its hand clad in boxing gloves, one red bearing the initials “GOP.” The same figure appears in Poster Boy, only here we see his angry, mask-like face, shorn of an empty hood dangling adjacent. My initial take on this imagery was that the figure perhaps represented anger against racism and political injustice, but further thought on this has yielded a more probable conclusion that the pugilist, with tan skin of a hue that does not initially ascribe race, is perhaps the “Great White Hope” of the early 20^th century boxer Jim Jefferson, who came out of retirement in 1910 an ill-fated attempt to beat Jack Johnson, the African-American heavyweight champion. This figure as well is a stand-in for Trump, whose white-supremacist leanings are well-documented, with famous incidents such as his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. And, with the initials RNC and GOP prominent in The Mat and Poster Boy, it doesn’t take much of a leap to assume that Somerville finds the Republican party as well to be complicit in the rise of racism and white nationalist violence in our country.

*Poster Boy*, acrylic, collage on found painter’s tarp, 64″ x 48″ 2020

Sadly, as I have been working on this story, a new and tragic chapter has been written, with the storming of our nation’s Capitol last week by an angry mob of violent, deluded, Trump supporters, egged on by their amoral and lying leader. These ugly and appalling images, including rioters smashing Capitol windows, invading the sanctity of the most secure and private areas of our nation’s houses of government, carrying off the lectern of the speaker of the house, and even beating a police officer with of all things an American flag. When will this insanity stop? As I write, a second impeachment process has begun for this disgraceful excuse for a president. Some Republicans have, in the wake of their own lives being threatened by his mob, turned against the president, but others remain, if not loyal, unwilling to do anything to upset the status quo and in particular their Trump-supporting constituents.

It is hard to fathom the situation, but it certainly is reflected quite clearly in Somerville’s work, which seethes with rage and indignation at this twisted mutation of patriotism. Back to the hooded figures. Anyone paying attention to contemporary art has likely heard of the huge controversy over recent postponement of the major retrospective Philip Guston Now organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and scheduled to run at the Tate Modern, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All pulled out of the commitment, citing concerns in particular over how Guston’s challenging imagery—also containing hooded figures suggesting klansmen—would be viewed in the light of increased sensitivity to racial injustice. It is particularly ironic that those who support freedom of expression would censor the voice of Guston, one of the more influential painters of the 20^th century and one whose leftist political leanings are quite clear. As a youngster growing up in Los Angeles, Guston was profoundly affected by the KKK’s persecution of the Jewish community. Images of this violence are foundational to his later use of the imagery. These later hooded figures are, admittedly, more nuanced in nature, alluding perhaps to how we ourselves often contain elements of that which we most despise.

*The Mat*, acrylic, collage on found painters tarp 60″ x 48″ 2020

With heavily-loaded symbols, and there are a boatload of them here, one may feel the urge to tread lightly. Taken out of context, one might find them highly offensive, frightening, dangerous. But the ugliness is not created by the artist, rather he is reflecting the ugliness he sees before him in our fractured society. The references to Guston are likely meant to include a commentary on the thorny issue of censorship in the museum community. We even have some quotes from Guston in Somerville’s palette, with it’s bubble-gum pinks and candy-apple reds, while Gutted (2020) offers a klansman image lifted almost in entirety from Guston’s The Studio (1969).

*Gutted*, acrylic, collage on found painters tarp 66″ x 54″ 2020

“One-Two Punch”…so one blow is the racism and injustice perpetuated by elected officials, the other is the knockout punch of death and havoc wrecked by the COVID-19 virus. A jaunty ball with coronavirus spikes is tossed in the air above images of a skull and a patient on oxygen. Honestly it’s hard to imagine a more challenging time to be alive, at least from where we currently sit. With new administration just days away, we are holding our collective breaths for a return to sanity. Somerville’s unflinching work clearly struck a nerve.

Along with Somerville’s work, Jack Fischer presented The Architecture of Slavery, a haunting series of cyanotypes by Keris Salmon, an African-American artist. Salmon was appalled when her caucasian husband shared that “he had something to tell her about his ancestors.” They were, in fact, slave owners, and her work is derived from photographic negatives exposed at the estate where they had lived. Processing the real and intimate details of a world where ownership of human beings was commonplace is heartbreaking and sobering. A folio of works, To Have and To Hold, accompanied her exhibition.

What happened to the “Great White Hope”? Jim Jefferson lost the contest, and faded into obscurity. We may hope that the 45^th president soon does the same.

Barbara Morris

One-Two Punch closed in December at Jack Fischer Gallery

Jack Fisher Gallery: Travis Somerville