Gallery Guide Please do not remove from the gallery Way Bay Way Bay Way Bay January 17–June 3, 2018 BERKELEY ART MUSEUM PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE bampfa.org Gallery Guide Way Bay Way Bay explores the creative energies that have emerged from the San Francisco Bay Area over the past two hundred years. The exhibition features nearly two hundred works by Bay Area artists, filmmakers and others who have engaged with the region’s geographic, social, and cultural landscape. In contrast to a conventional historical survey, Way Bay has been organized to suggest poetic currents and connections among works from disparate times, cultures, and communities. The exhibition draws exclusively from the rich collections of BAMPFA, the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and the Bancroft Library. The gallery portion of the exhibition is divided into sections with titles borrowed from poems by Bay Area writers. Each section includes work from a broad range of periods, styles, and media. Films and videos share the space with paintings, photographs, sculptures, and works in other media, at times fitting into the poetically themed sections, and at others standing alone as resonant images of the Way Bay is organized by Director and Chief people and places of the Bay Area. Curator Lawrence Rinder, Film Curator Kathy Geritz, and Engagement Associate David Wilson, with Curatorial Assistant Matthew Coleman In the museum’s entry corridor is an interactive postcard and Assistant Film Archivist Jon Shibata. The project consisting of poems by and about the Bay Area exhibition is made possible with lead support by writers past and present, as well as an exploration from Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman. of BAMPFA’s rich archival holdings of audio and visual Additional support is provided by Alexandra Bowes and Stephen Williamson, Rena Bransten, recordings of artists and filmmakers. Visitors may delve Gertrud V. Parker, Janie and Jeff Green, The more deeply into the archives in BAMPFA’s Film Library and Jay DeFeo Foundation, an anonymous donor, Study Center on the lower level, where an area is devoted Dudley and Michael Del Balso, Lorrie and Richard Greene, Arun and Rummi Sarin, Sotheby’s, and to Way Bay. Ama Torrance and C.J. David Davies. Throughout the run of the exhibition, readings, Acknowledgements performances, and workshops extend Way Bay’s The curators are grateful for the generous exploration of Bay Area creative practice across diverse support of many people who have contributed their time and expertise to creating this media and disciplines. exhibition: Elaine C. Tennant, Jack von Euw, Lorna Kirwan, and Christine A. Hult-Lewis at the Bancroft Library; Benjamin Porter and Ira Jacknis at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology; Malcolm Margolin; Art Lab staff Alayna Tinney, Claire Astrow, and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo; and the California Audiovisual Preservation Project. Curatorial interns Lian Ladia and Emet Levy contributed invaluable research support. Many thanks to project advisor Lyn Hejinian. 1 See! I am dancing! On the rim of the world I am dancing! Ohlone song 1 ANONYMOUS 2 CHRIS DUNCAN (CHALON/OHLONE) United States, born 1974 Untitled, basketry tray, coiled Untitled (33) n.d. 2007 Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, India ink, paint, gouache, wood University of California, Berkeley Acc.393 putty, marker, graphite, color pencil Chalon is one of eight linguistic divisions on wood panel of the Costanoan (or Ohlone) people, who Gift of Elaine Gans in honor of Dr. Herschel are the original inhabitants of the Bay B. Chipp, professor emeritus 2017.74.2 Area. Between 1795 and 1814, many of the Chalon-speaking people were forcibly 3 ELISABETH SUNDAY relocated to the area of Mission Soledad, United States, born 1958 where they were made to work on the Mission’s farms and industries and denied Anima 4: Tuareg Woman the right to practice their culture. This tray Anima 9: Tuareg Woman was made primarily for sifting acorn meal. Anima 12: Tuareg Woman 2008-2009 Archival pigment print on rag paper, edition 2/10 Gift of Klaus Wirsing 2013.75.1.d, i, l 4 JUNE SCHWARCZ United States, 1918–2015 2492 2013 Folded copper with black baked-enamel surface Gift of Kim Schwarcz and Carl Schwarcz 2016.113 3 3 3 9 6 7 2 5 8 10 10 10 4 When the brightening came, only the darkest survived Namwali Serpell, from “Company” (covering Company by Samuel Beckett), 2017 5 CARLETON E. WATKINS 7 GRANVILLE REDMOND She filmed Riverbody at SFAI, where many United States, 1829–1916 United States, 1871–1935 students, faculty, and administrators agreed to participate—Fred Martin, then View from the university Night Marsh Scene the director of the school, makes an ground [sic] at Berkeley: the c. 1903 appearance, as do filmmakers Freude and Golden Gate (in the distance) Oil on canvas board Scott Bartlett, John Knoop, and Robert 1874 Gift of Sheldon and Judy Greene 2016.56 Nelson, then chair of the film department. Albumen photograph Granville Redmond became deaf at the 9 CARINA BAUMANN Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University age of three following a bout of scarlet United States, born Switzerland, 1965 of California, Berkeley UARC PIC 03:226a—FR fever. He attended the California School UC Berkeley was chartered in 1868. The for the Deaf and Blind (now the Clark Untitled University operated in Oakland until 1873, Kerr Campus of UC Berkeley). In 1893, 2008-2009 when it moved to its current site. Carleton Redmond won a scholarship to study art Translucent white film Watkins’s photograph was taken just a in Paris, where he roomed with another on aluminum Berkeley native, the sculptor Douglas year after the campus was inaugurated Purchase made possible by the Jan Boyce Fund and shows the recently completed North Tilden. When Redmond returned to for Contemporary Art 2010.14 and South Halls, in what was then a largely California, he settled in Los Angeles where This self-portrait photograph of the treeless landscape. he befriended Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was inspired by Redmond’s use of American artist was taken using only moonlight for 6 RICHARD MISRACH Sign Language, and gave the artist parts in illumination. several of his films, including City Lights. United States, born 1949 10 LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Untitled (Sandstorm) 8 ALICE ANNE PARKER (SEVERSON) United States, born 1919 1976 United States, born 1939 Out of Chaos Split-toned gelatin silver print Riverbody 2011 Museum purchase: Bequest of Phoebe Lithograph Apperson Hearst, by exchange 2013.4.2 1970 16mm BAMPFA preservation print Gift of Kala Art Institute and Lawrence transferred to digital file; black and Ferlinghetti 2017.171.a white, sound; 6 min. Poet, printmaker, and founder of the Courtesy of the artist legendary City Lights Books, Lawrence Ferlinghetti made this multipart print at the Alice Anne Parker, then known as Anne Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. In this work, Severson, began teaching at the San Ferlinghetti presents three images that Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 1966, express aspects of his poem “Out of Chaos.” making her first film in 1969. In 1970 she had the idea of making “a movie that was a continuous dissolve of nude bodies.” C 12 14 11 13 11 JESS 12 SABURO HASEGAWA 13 JENNIE SMITH United States, 1923–2004 United States, born Japan, 1906–1957 United States, born 1981 The Hero Describes Lineage Distance Untitled (1997) 1955 1952 2012 Oil on canvas Hanging scroll; ink and color on Graphite and watercolor on paper Gift of Fine Art Associates in honor of James paper Gift of Rena Bransten 2013.52 Elliott; courtesy of Odyssia Skouras 2014.18.1 Gift of Nobuku and Joe Brotherton in Jennie Smith’s monumental drawing is appreciation of James Cahill 1977.19 Jess trained as a chemist and worked inspired by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on plutonium production as part of the Saburo Hasegawa was an influential (also known as the Pacific trash vortex), a Manhattan Project during World War II. figure in the Bay Area, though he lived miasma of degraded plastic and chemical Concerned about the outcome of nuclear here for only two years at the end of sludge that has coalesced in the middle of weapons proliferation, he abandoned his his life. In his art, Hasegawa combined the Pacific Ocean. scientific career and turned to art, studying elements of traditional Japanese culture first at UC Berkeley and then at the with modern elements and techniques. 14 HASSEL SMITH California School of Fine Arts (now the San Distance includes an image printed from United States, 1915–2007 Francisco Art Institute). a tree stump onto which the artist carved This work reflects the influence of an abstracted version of the Japanese Untitled his teachers, especially the Abstract word gen, which means, roughly, “cloudy 1952 Expressionist painter Clyfford Still, and impenetrability.” Gen is also the second Oil on canvas captures Jess’s interest in what he called part of the compound word, yugen, Gift of William Roth 1986.1 the “mythic landscape,” in which the an essential term in the aesthetics of primordial energy of our chaotic origins noh drama. Between 1945 and 1951, Hassel Smith begins to resolve into form and meaning. Distance was created in Japan but first taught at the California School of Fine exhibited in San Francisco when the artist Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) relocated to the Bay Area in 1954. alongside Ansel Adams, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and Clay Edgar Spohn, among others. In 1952 he was included in the inaugural exhibition at the legendary King Ubu Gallery in North Beach. D 15 17 20 16 18 19 15 TODD HIDO 18 JIM MELCHERT United States, born 1968 United States, born 1930 Untitled A picture postcard 1951 from the series House (mailed from Japan)..