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This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Narrative Imagismand the FigurativeTradition in Northern CaliforniaPainting

By Whitney Chadwick

he revoltof the Bay Area figurative satire, morality plays, puns, and personal important development in Bay Area T painters against the canons of mythology combine with flamboyantand painting of the 1960s. In New York, Abstract in the early eccentric personalstyles to form a visual Johns, Stella, and Warhol cooled the 1950s confirmed earlier tendencies in runningcommentary on the worldand the rhetoric of into northern art and made possi- history of art. Their sources range from the disengagement of Pop and Minimal. ble an art less preoccupied with mod- autobiography and 's love of In , however, painters ernist values than its New York and Los bizarre and evocative juxtaposition to tended to heat it up. Throughout the Angeles counterparts. The significance social and culturaltaboos. Their paintings decade concerns about "abstract" and of this heritage for succeeding genera- exhibit a maverick sensibility, downplay "figurative" disappeared in favor of tions of artists, its endorsement of an obvious skill, and break the "rules" of "personalized" art. A refusal to draw anti-aesthetic stance initiated by Sur- representationin ways often influencedby strict lines between art and life encour- realism's arrival in the area in the late the directness of naive art and popular aged the use of autobiographicalmateri- 1930s, and its persistence and manipula- illustration. al. The choice of figuration, "dumb" tion by younger painters have been less The development of a narrative syn- subjects (i.e., lowbrow and derived not fully documented. tax allowed these painters to distance from Pop but from a consciously articu- Some critics have argued that by the themselves from the Abstract Expres- lated anti-intellectualism), and the kind early 1960s the figurative renaissance in sionist legacy that they found still evi- of risky gestures for which Diebenkorn painting was over. The energy and vig- dent in the scale, anonymous figures, had long served as a model became a orous experiments with form that had and rhetoric of the Bay Area figuratives, means of denying the high-art content of characterized the first generation of fig- many of whom were their teachers. At Abstract Expressionism. urative painters had passed into the the same time, they chose to retain the Art influences among contemporaries hands of a group of sculptors and cera- qualities of assertive opposition to the are often difficult to trace. In the Bay mists whose brash and eccentric expres- mainstream that had characterized Ab- Area, sensibilities overlap, groups form sionism soon flowered into Funk.' This stract Expressionismon the West Coast. and reform, influences circle among art- reading, however, fails to take into For many young painters, the struggle ists. The personal and expressionist sen- account the consistency of a tradition for a personalized imagery and a figura- sibility that marked much of the art of and attitude, as opposed to a style, that tion that violated accepted canons of the area during the 1960s made few, if during the 1960s produced figurative representation took place in art school. any, distinctions among painting, sculp- painters as diverse as Robert Bechtle But the consistency of the tradition that ture, ceramics, and performance-con- and William T. Wiley. By the early sanctioned experimentation in all me- ceptual art. It produced a group of art- 1970s, drawing new life from the legacy diums in the Bay Area produced a kind ists of international stature like Robert of Surrealism and from the arrival of of painting that, though superficially Arneson, Joan Brown, Roy de Forest, Chicago's Hairy Who in northern Cali- similar to that of Chicago's Hairy Who Jess, and William T. Wiley whose work fornia, the same tradition had generated and Monster Roster to which it has and teaching directly influenced a a group of narrative imagist painters often been compared, has a look all its younger generation of narrative artists. who use the figure in a way that is both a own: less obsessive about sex, aggres- rejection and an assimilation of the pre- sion, physical and psychological pain; he art community in northern Cali- dominant forms of Bay Area figurative more concerned with personal history fornia is centered in art schools and painting of the 1950s and 1960s. and cultural attitudes. university art departments rather than For more than a decade, James Albert- If the representational violations of in commercial galleries. During the son, Olive Ayhens, Robert Colescott, this work place it in opposition to domi- 1960s the San Francisco Art Institute Irene Dogmatic, Judith Linhares, Donna nant figurative modes, its use, and (formerly the California School of Fine Mossholder, Ann Shapiro, M. Louise subsequent transformation of autobio- Arts), the California College of Arts Stanley, Elaine Wander,and others2have graphical material into narrative syn- and Crafts in Oakland (CCAC), and the producedworks in which social comment, tax, place it squarely in line with an University of California at Davis pro-

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This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions vided three important contexts for the exploration of new kinds of narrative and subjective figuration. Abstract Expressionism and Bay Area figurative painting have been closely identified with the Art Institute since the 1950s. But it was the arrival of European Surrealism in 1937 that had initiated the strong antiformalist stance taken by many artists associated with the school. Proto-Surrealism may have come to northern California as early as 1931 with an exhibition of the work of Giorgio de Chirico at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Seven of the paint- ings were loans from San Francisco pri- vate collections, and the word "Surreal- ist" may have first found its way into print in northern California when the San Francisco Examiner included in an article on local exhibitions the title of a work called Surrealistic House. Exhibi- tions by Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst in Los Angeles in 1935 and 1937 and Ernst and Mir6 at the Paul Elder Gallery and the East-West Gallery in San Francisco in 1934 officially announced the arrival Fig. 1 William T. Wiley, Slightly Hysterical Perspective, 1979, acrylic and of European Surrealism in California. charcoal on canvas, 89 x 102". Allan Frumkin Gallery. Tanguy's exhibition at the San Fran- cisco Museum of Modern Art in Jan- settle in the area bringing with him a ists connected with the Art Institute uary 1936 was probably that museum's large collection of Surrealist works. Solo began to use words as images. The writ- first Surrealist exhibition, but it was exhibitions of the work of Onslow-Ford, ing on Martin's Remember: It's Only The Museum of Modern Art's Fantastic Wolfgang Paalen, and Lee Mullican in Art, a watercolor and collage of 1962, Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition, the late 1940s were followed by a group anticipates the loose discursive script so which opened in New York in December exhibition of Paalen's Dynaton group in characteristic of Wiley's work a few 1936 and subsequently traveled to San 1951. years later (Fig. 1). A 1970 exhibition Francisco, that introduced local au- The freedom of expression promoted at the University of California's Barrow diences to a range of European and by the Surrealist technique of automat- Lane Art Gallery, Human Concern/Per- American work based on automatism, ism, the choice of figuration as the lan- sonal Torment, organized by Robert dreams, and other radical disruptions of guage of dream and unconscious, and Doty of the Whitney Museum gave rec- reality. Under the leadership of Grace the powerful imagery generated from ognition to the wide range of artists McCann Morely, who had become the study of myth and psychology drew working in this manner. Although not director two years earlier, the San Fran- many Bay Area artists towards an irrev- restricted to California artists, the exhi- cisco Museum of Modern Art joined the erent and idiosyncratic art that owed bition included work by Arneson, Bruce and the California much to Surrealism even as it rejected Connor, R. Crumb, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Palace of the Legion of Honor in spon- the European movement's ideological Nutt, Harold Paris, Clayton Pinkerton, soring avant-garde exhibitions in San basis and literary rhetoric.3 Among Joseph Raffaele, Peter Saul, Norman Francisco. them were Clay Spohn, Charles How- Stiegelmeyer, Ken Waterstreet, Wiley, A joint exhibition of the work of Kay ard, and Dorr Bothwell, all of whom and S. Clay Wilson. Sage and Yves Tanguy in 1941 was were on the faculty at the San Francisco followed by 31 Women, an exhibition Art Institute. T he most energeticmingling of Chi- organized for Peggy Guggenheim's Art By the early 1960s, Assemblage, cago art with local traditions took of This Century gallery in New York. which Peter Plagens has called the first place at Davis, where Wiley, who had The show included work by a number of "home-grown California modern art,"4 joined the University of California fac- women artists who were associated with and Funk mingled a Surrealist-derived ulty in 1962, became part of a loosely the Surrealists, among them Leonora punning and love of objects with the free knit group that soon included Roy de Carrington, Leonor Fini, Valentine flow of art, philosophy, and politics that Forest, Robert Arneson, William Allen, Hugo, Frida Kahlo, Jacqueline Lamba, had been the hallmark of the Beat poets , Bruce Nauman, and Meret Oppenheim, Sage, and Dorothea a decade earlier. Wally Hedrick, an David Gilhooly. In 1966, Peter Saul Tanning. In 1946, a joint exhibition of influential teacher whose art and life began teaching at Davis; two years later the work of Lamba-who had been became synonymous with the decade's his biting social commentaries were married to the Surrealist poet Andr6 revolt against establishment values, sus- exhibited at the San Francisco Art Insti- Breton during the 1930s-and David pected that Abstract Expressionism had tute and at CCAC. An exhibition of the Hare resulted in the purchase of Lam- failed in its quest for a contemporary Hairy Who, organized by Phil Linhares, ba's automatist canvas Galbre by the image and began combining junk mate- opened at the Art Institute on May 3, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. rials with verbal messages in large, 1968. Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson The following year, the English Surreal- rough paintings and sculptures. Jeremy arrived for the opening and stayed to ist painter Gordon Onslow-Ford would Anderson, Fred Martin, and other art- join the faculty at Sacramento State

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This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions University, where they were soon joined by Karl Wirsum and the photographer I Roger Vail. Whether in ceramics, painting, or ~i~ I I other mediums, the work of the Davis ~?-?~~ artists shared certain qualities: an x ~ emphasis on process and a vigorous experimentation with form, a subject matter closely tied to everyday life and r " often autobiographical, a love of mun- dane materials and a sense of humor that from to IF,<;4 ranged unpretentious jokey to (Fig. 2).' The attitudes and life-styles of ~ ~i~"~"~" the Davis artists often reflected the close a~ connections between artists and the r ~--~ local counterculture during the 1960s. s~i~

Rock posters for the Fillmore and a Avalon ballrooms blended Surrealist ;~ d,,? ? ~ -----~~ juxtaposition and Art Nouveau graphics 1aI-~s g ~ = ;

(Fig. 3); R. Crumb's "comix" cham- ~~--- ; -? pioned altered consciousness and social ~ ~:::-: r revolution What the Surrealist (Fig. 4). 3 Mouse Howlin c. 5 Paul 1-2-3 revolution had the Fig. Studios, Wolf, Fig. Pratchenko, initiated, psychedelic 1966. Poster for the Avalon on 65 x revolution Influenced Ballroom, Alchemy, 1981, acrylic canvas, perpetuated. by San Francisco. 50". San Collection of Jeanie realism and veristic Francisco, magic Surrealism, Rose. Norman Stiegelmeyer and others moved Surrealism in the direction of the vision- ary and mystical. Paul Pratchenko is one of several local artists who rejected automatism in favor of Chirico-like spaces and hallucinatory transforma- tions, initiating a brand of neo-Surreal- ism that flourishes today in works like his 1-2-3 Alchemy (Fig. 5). " ~3A In painting during the 1960s the shift in sensibility from the figurative heri- tage of the Park-Diebenkornschool to a conscious narrative or anecdotal sensi- bility occurred gradually. The work of Joan Brown and Roy de Forest exerted a t_251 seminal influence on that of younger 6 Joan Lace artists. From the beginning (she was a Fig. Brown, Large student of Elmer Bischoffs at the San INN Stocking and Thing in Small Sea, oil on canvas. San Francisco Art Institute in the 1950s), 1960, Francisco, Collection Dr. Robert J. Brown's work has relied heavily on sub- Jerry. jects common in her personal ambience. and detailed contemplation of the In 1959 she a series of began large, abstract surface. In 1961 he gave up brushy paintings that include shapes or abstract painting in favor of white and Mess in Class- "things": Things 4 R. cover grounds that provided a field for the room Fig. Crumb, for Zap (1959), Dog Dreaming of Things Comix. meandering automatic calligraphy and and Images (1960), Large Lace Stock- figure fragments that form the storytell- and in Small Sea 6), content. A 1963 exhibition at the ---- ing Thing (Fig. ing etc. Flat descriptive titles imply a mys- Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco in- i6h~Bi terious and unstated interaction be- cluded such works as The Inside Story tween the "things"-images that func- of a Youthful Strategist (1963) and tion as Abstract Expressionist "signs" The Autobiography of a Sunflower a i stripped of mythic content and reduced Merchant (Fig. 7). to quasi-abstract symbols-and their Many Bay Area narrative imagists ~n: pictorial environment.6 identify H.C. Westermann as among Like Brown, De Forest is also often their most important influences during identified with the traditions of Bay the 1960s. Judith Linhares found in the Area figurative and narrative painting. Chicago artist confirmation for her Leaving San Francisco in 1958, he spent search for a personalized imagery two years in the Pacific Northwest. At charged with Her retablo-like 2 Robert meaning. Fig. Arneson, Typewriter, that time he began using his own life compositions with their skeletons and 1965, 61/8x 113/8x 121/2"(at base). experiences as a source for his black cats, influenced a Collection of principal by youth spent the University Art themes. In My Life and Times in in southern California near the Mexican of Museum, University California, Yakima (1959) a stippled aerial and border, seem to echo Westermann's Berkeley. maplike format encourages prolonged Mysterious Yellow Mausoleum (Fig.

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This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Fig. 8 H.C. Westermann, Mysterious Yellow Mausoleum, 1958, wood and mixed material. San Francisco, Collection of Dr. Arthur Neumann.

nelle Paint, commenting that "those two [exhibition] walls became remarkably magnetic for me-without bombast, reverting to a menagerie of innocent/ Fig. 7 Roy de Forest, Autobiography of a Sunflower Merchant, 1963, latex and symbolic/cathartic imagery, the paint- oil on canvas, 68 x 68". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of the ings succinctly outshone their surround- Women's Board. ings. The stylistic common denominator among them-small pieces of paper 8), which contains a series of similarly Feminist Arts Program at Cal Arts, adorned by the artists, 'circled up,' as evocative images hidden inside a care- Valencia, visited the Bay Area and met Paint says, 'over a small pointed fully crafted box: steps leading nowhere, with the members of the three women- sharp brush. . . in a complex, per- a mirror designed to make the viewer artists' consciousness-raising groups ac- sonal, faux-naff communally derived three-eyed, a crucifix in the style of tive there. It was then that the narrative figuration.' "9 Mexican carvings, a black cat's head, a content of the work of Linhares, Stan- Stanley, Mossholder, and Paint, along very old newspaper clipping of a dead ley, Mossholder, Ayhens, Dogmatic, with James Albertson, were students at soldier, a gallows, and the sign of the and Wander matured in a direction CCAC in the late 1960s. Their revolt, skull and bones above the legs of a circus strongly influenced by personal autobio- prompted by an aesthetic derived from lady. graphy, the relating of which also forms flea-marketkitsch and a need to be more Westermann, who lived in San Fran- the basis of consciousness-raising tech- involvedin the imagery than was encour- cisco for a year in 1964, had his first niques. Although these artists had aged by CCAC's somewhat conservative West Coast exhibition at the Dilexi Gal- derived their imagery from personal curriculum, took the form of long com- lery in 1963. A number of local artists experience throughout the 1960s, the munal painting sessions in which they had seen his work there for the first time women's groups, which soon evolved consciouslytried to make "bad"art using in the two or three years preceding the into highly supportive artistic networks, inferior materials, holding their brushes exhibition; Wiley dates his awareness of encouraged the development of this close to the ferrules,and making lines out Westermann's work to the late 1950s. imagery as well as its extension into a of quarter-inch dabs in an attitude they As Barbara Haskell notes, the incorpo- sociopolitical sphere. Taking episodes identified with painting their fingernails. ration of language into artwork adopted from life, the artists exaggerated and These stylistic experiments provided a by Bay Area artists such as Wiley and enriched them with a web of associa- perfect vehicle for their developing femi- Nauman during this period reflects the tions and feelings, and expanded them nist sensibilities. wit of Westermann's inscribed titles and into bright, active watercolors, often Stanley's distorted figuration serves graphics.7 densely patterned, always idiosyncratic. both personal and comic ends, becoming A series of exhibitions at the San her means of pointing out and magnify- n 1970 organized groups of women Francisco Art Institute beginning in ing the psychological and social tensions artists began meeting regularly in the 1971 acknowledged the coalescing of that are revealed in mannerisms, cloth- Bay Area, motivated by the success of the women's energies in this narrative ing, facial expressions, and body lan- the Women's Art Program founded by imagist direction. In a 1971 Artforum guage. She often refers to herself as a Judy Chicago at Fresno State Univer- review of Paintings on Paper, Peter "junior-highrealist," and the term helps sity that year.8 In 1971, Chicago and Plagens singled out the work of Moss- locate her caricaturing style in the facial Miriam Schapiro, after establishing a holder, Stanley, Ann Shapiro, and Don- and gestural exaggerations of the high- 312 Art Journal

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions school notebook, a source more germane Westermann as one of her favorite art- to her development than the Surrealism ists, along with Camille Bombois and and underground comix that inspired other folk artists. In the early 1970s she or- the Chicago and Davis artists. The felt confirmed in the direction she was comic aspects of her style, influenced by pursuing by the work of Nutt, Joan her close association with Albertson, Brown, De Forest, and Judith Linhares. who received his B.F.A. from the Chi- But even while exhibiting with Nutt and cago Art Institute in 1966 and brought Nilsson at the Candy Store Gallery in his love of the Monster Roster's raw Folsom, California, in 1973, she sought energy to the Bay Area the same year, to keep her distance from the Chicago also suggest an adaptation of sophisti- School, replacing their scatological hu- cated 1950s advertising illustration. But mor and grotesque biomorphic distor- if there is 1950-ish about tions a that finds something by lighter sensibility M. Louise Artistic in from humor in social encounters and Fig. 9 Stanley, Stanley's sensibility, arising part poig- 30 x 37". the distilled mannerisms and of in human interactions. Friends, 1979, watercolor, patterns nancy San Collection of the the vast collection of urban flea-market Francisco, Quay Gallery. bric-a-brac that she has assiduously col- Sngagement with everyday life, and lected, her superb draftsmanship and the weaving of this engagement sophisticated palette locate these lush into themes drawn from art, history, and watercolors somewhere among carica- contemporary mores, is a primary char- ture, fantasy, and urban realism.'o In acteristic of Bay Area narrative imag- Artistic Friends (Fig. 9), in which the ism. This direct, head-on, approach to artist and three friends meet for a draw- life distinguishes the work from the ing session at The Museum of Modern more surreal imagism of the Chicago Art, she combines ingenuousness with painters. Among the Bay Area narrative risky juxtapositions of elegant washes imagists, the two painters whose work and tediously overworked areas of has been the most directly confronta- impasto in a parody of Picasso's Demoi- tional on a sociopolitical plane, and also selles d'Avignon. Stanley articulates the most controversial-both have been private feelings and fantasies through accused of everything from bad taste to Fig. 10 Judith Linhares, The Ghostly compositional tensions and social com- racism-are Albertson and Colescott. Lover, c. 1980, gouache on paper, 6 x mentary; her feminism finds expression Albertson's impulse towards subjec- 8". New York, Collection of the artist. in the assertiveness of female images tive painting, nourished by Surrealism, that dominate their surroundings and Expressionism, and the Hairy Who's often replace male figures. In Envy, explosive northern European sensibili- Sloth and Lust (1978), Envy and Lust ties and carefully crafted works, began confront Sloth, who slumps, in disarray in Chicago and continued at CCAC, and apparent unconsciousness,against a where he received his M.F.A. in 1968. hot-pink couch. His harsh figurative paintings are enliv- Among the narrative imagist paint- ened both by his choice of subjects- ers, Judith Linhares, who came to the often he chooses themes already socially Bay Area in 1960 but has recently charged or taboo: sex, death, racism, moved to New York, was one of the first religion, and violence-and by a manner to develop consciously a narrative syn- of painting in which the paint is moved tax based on personal associations as a about through intense, unpredictable means of infusing her images with a brushwork. Many of the works have more charged and intimate content.1" sources in illustrations of a narrative or Her revolt against the scale and anony- situational type-J.C. Penney's ads or mous figures of the earlier Bay Area instructional Public Health posters of figuratives took the form of a Jung- the 1950s-which, when combined with influenced exegesis of personal symbols psychosexual fantasies, acid colors, and and private mythologies chosen for their intense nervous brushwork, create alle- ability to resonate with both inner and gorical parodies that consistently violate outer reality and presented in small accepted notions about "good" taste. Fig. 11 James Albertson, The gouache-on-paper works (Fig. 10). Albertson's allegories range from The Triumph of Chastity, 1976, oil on Snakes, monkeys, black cats, mermaids, Triumph of Chastity (Fig. 11), in which canvas, 49 x 38". Oakland, Collection and skeletons become personal symbols adolescent male fantasy coexists uneas- of the artist. of the archetypal forces of life and ily with the lightly veiled sexual content death, the ordinary and the malevolent. of Mannerist painting, to seventeenth- The small size of these works, some less century historical compositions like The than a foot wide, prevents the viewer Inspiration of the Poet-After Poussin from stepping back from the paintings. (1980). The essence of objects-their gesture, For Albertson and Colescott no sub- texture, color, and feeling-is preserved ject is sacred; nor are any forbidden. and intensified by her careful attention Colescott, who received his M.A. in to paint handling and by the juggling of 1951 from Berkeley, where his early consciously na've applications of paint work showed the strong imprint of Bay with sophisticated handling of space. Area Abstract Expressionism, gradually Like Judith Linhares, Stanley cites evolved a loose figuration. As a result of

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This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:06:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions W1?1i&111? - 1:...... 5 These same qualities also came to characterize much local performance art of the 1960s. the first artists involved in A Among performance allm were and Nauman. Nauman was one of ...... RRIMMOM w wil Wiley UNK &K -Ell \Immmm V ? Min ...... NEENxv- the first to explore his own body as part of a MSM-I' ?Ell subjective-objective duality; he began working in real time and space while still a student at Davis. As Moira Roth notes, autobiography and narrativestructure typify Bay Area perfor- Is...... mance art of that decade; see her "Toward a mb6 ow Performance: Part MWL History of California I," NO Arts Magazine, 52 (February 1978), pp. 94- ...... 103. k" % Iv k mm. 6 Philip Leider, "Joan Brown: Her Work Illus- all trates the Progress of a San Francisco Mood," Artforum, 11 (June 1963), pp. 28-31. 7 H.C. Westermann,exh. cat., New York, Whit- H %vo ney Museum of American Art, 1978, p. 27...... 8 Judith Bettelheim, "Pattern Painting: The New Decorative. A California Perspective," Images and Issues, 3 (March-April 1983), pp. 32-36.

9 Peter Plagens, Review of Louise Stanley, ...... Donna Mossholder-Herresoff, Donnelle Paint, Ann Shapiro, in Artforum, 10 (June 1972), pp 87-88. Fig. 12 Robert Colescott, Eat Dem Taters, c. 1974, oil on canvas. New York, Collection of Robert Rosenblum. 10 Michael Auping, M. Louise Stanley, exh. cat., Berkeley, University Art Museum, MATRIX/ spending the decade of the 1960s away Colescott's and Albertson's work, as BERKELEY 14, 1978. from the his work of those well as that of the women is Bay Area, painters, 11 See: Phil Linhares, Paintings and Sculpture by years displays interesting parallels with their commitment to expanding paint- Judith Linhares, exh. cat., San Francisco, The that of Joan Brown and Judith Linhares ing's significance through intentional San Francisco Art Institute, 1976. while remaining completely unin- ambiguity, personal content, references fluenced by local developments. About to subjects about which people care and Whitney Chadwick is Professor of Art 1966 he began developing bright comic to art historical themes and conventions. at San Francisco State University. paintings with a strong quality of carica- The subjective, personal characteristics ture and a narrative content closely tied and sources of Bay Area narrative imag- to anecdote and the storytelling of ism coexist with the desire to keep paint- movies and comic books. Dr. Erlich's ing energetic and vital by establishing Magic Bullet of 1967 derived both its and perpetuating an intense pictorial title and theme from the movie. tension between individual and social Returning from Europe in 1970, reality. Among these painters, icono- Colescott settled in Oakland, where he clasm and visual exuberance replaced met Judith Linhares and Albertson. As modernist imperatives. The result has he gradually gave up painterliness, his been a kind of painting that has kept the surfaces became flatter and more post- figure alive and functioning in new ways er-like but retained the intense, bold, for almost twenty years. often garish palette that he handles with consummate skill. Social issues and Notes themes increasingly found their way 1 See, for example: Peter Plagens, Sunshine into the works of the early 1970s. Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast, Images from advertising illustrations, New York, 1974. billboards, and posters, often containing 2 There is so much painting in the Bay Area racial stereotypes of blacks drawn by during this period that is narrativeor imagist or whites, and magazine covers (including both that it is impossible to be inclusive within the lettering, which he frequently sten- the confines of a single article. I have focused on cils onto his surfaces) combine with per- painters who have studied and exhibited sonal and historical subjects in paintings together, and whose work served as an early charged with irony and humor. Kitchen indicator of new directions in Bay Area Assassination (1972) retells with stac- painting. cato, collage-like juxtapositions the 3 I wish to thank Michael Leonard, M.A. candi- events in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen, date in art history at San Francisco State while his parody of Van Gogh's famous University, whose Master's thesis on the his- image of an oppressed peasantry, Eat tory of painting at the California School of Fine Dem Taters (Fig. 12), mockingly Arts has greatly aided me in documenting the reminds us of an America seldom history of this period. in its art. depicted 4 n. 74. Essential to the narrative content of Plagens (cited 1), p.

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