Sep 2009
Its art scene may be smaller than those of New York and Los Angeles, but San Francisco, despite its modest size (forty-nine square miles) and population (less than a million), is a terrific town for art and artists. It’s tolerant, racially and culturally diverse, independent-minded, politically progressive almost to a fault, worshipful of creativity and innovation, and blessed with a natural beauty unique among American cities, enhanced by a human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure that encourages gaping and gawking at the stunning views. No wonder so many artists settle here, rather than seek ostensibly greener financial pastures elsewhere. This lifestyle choice was not always possible. The doyenne gallerist Ruth Braunstein remembers a very different situation: “In the 60’s an artist had to live in N.Y. to get exposure ... The interest in art has increased since l961 so [that now] an artist can stay in his own territory (California) and show in New York regularly.” Whatever the Big Apple’s or international art circuit’s blandishments to artists and dealers, San Francisco artworlders relish the vitality of the local scene: James Bacchi of Arthaus finds it “eclectic and noteworthy... [with a] transformed and ignited museum scenario.” Brian Gross of Brian Gross Fine Arts finds it “thriving ... with outstanding artists and solid institutions.” George Lawson of George Lawson Gallery notes, “The SF art community that revolves around the activities of the commercial galleries is more tightly knit than in LA, perhaps simply because it is easier to get around"
That critical mass of art talent is nurtured throughout the Bay Area by a host of schools, nonprofits, museums and galleries. The San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Arts, Mills College, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley have top-notch programs boasting illustrious histories and distinguished alumni; these schools continue to bring young artists to the area and to help them develop. Nonprofit alternative art spaces like Southern Exposure, SF Camerawork, Intersection for the Arts, the LAB, the Thoreau Center, Meridian Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery exhibit these emerging artists, introducing new ideas to the art community. Local museums, too, play a role. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the de Young Museum, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Asian Art Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, the Stanford Museum, the Museo Italo-Americano, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Oakland Museum of California all exhibit, regularly or at intervals, local work of sustained stylistic and intellectual development; the biennial “Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA)” exhibition at SFMOMA and the triennial “Bay Area Now” exhibition at YBCA are the best-known of these regional showcases. It is the galleries, however, that provide the most exposure to provocative art from emerging as well as established talent. Due to San Francisco’s small size and walkability, along with the clustering of galleries in a few areas, art mavens can easily do the gallery rounds on foot--intermittently fed and caffeinated, naturally.
A Man's Best Friend
1970
Richard Lindner
Lithograph on paper
22'' x 20''
Photo: courtesy of George Krevsky Gallery
UNION SQUARE
The blocks around Union Square contain the largest concentration of galleries in San Francisco. Set amid the grand hotels and glittering department stores and boutiques, most of these spaces tend be somewhat invisible to the casual pedestrian, located as they are above street level. The first block of Geary Street, however, beckons on brisk, windy days with so many fluttering art-gallery banners that it looks almost nautical. The historic building at 49 Geary Street was once a Western Union telegraph headquarters office; remodeled in the 1980s, it now houses some twenty galleries, giving it a certain prominence to art pilgrims. Whether you venture there on a First Thursday evening, taking the elevator to the fifth floor and wending your way down through the throng, or choose a quieter time during normal business hours for strolling, the gamut (which can seem a gauntlet sometimes) of paintings, photographs, sculptures, and installations presented here is remarkable. Established galleries here include Altman Siegel Gallery, Brian Gross Fine Arts, Haines Gallery, Gregory Lind Gallery, Micaela Gallery, George Lawson Gallery, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, and Steven Wolf Fine Arts, all showing primarily contemporary abstraction with a conceptual bent; Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, Jack Fischer Gallery, and Mark Wolfe Contemporary, showing contemporary figuration; Corden Potts Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, Robert Koch Gallery, Scott Nichols Gallery, and Robert Tat Gallery, focusing on photography; and the Art Exchange, exhibiting fine art for resale.
Not far off are the conceptualist Gallery Paule Anglim, the modernist Triangle Gallery, and Don Soker Contemporary Art, showing minimalist and contemporary Asian art, now relocated on Montgomery Street in a gigantic office building space. A bit west are 77 Geary, housing Rena Bransten Gallery, Marx and Zavattero, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and Togonon Gallery, all exhibiting a mix of contemporary figuration and abstraction; and George Krevsky Gallery, focusing on mid-century to contemporary American realism; and 251 Post, which houses the realism-friendly Hespe Gallery, the eclectic Scott Richards Contemporary Art, the blue-chip Meyerovich Gallery, and the Takada Gallery, showing American and Japanese contemporary abstraction. Within a few blocks are Modernism, Inc. and John Berggruen Gallery, showing mid-career and established artists, and Dolby Chadwick Gallery, showing emerging and mid-career artists. Frey Norris Gallery, Himmelberger Gallery, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Hang Art, and Silverman Gallery, all just west of Union Square, also show emerging to mid-career artists in a range of styles.
YERBA BUENA and SOMA
Just across Market Street from Union Square lies the SOMA district, south of Market Street (“south of the slot” in the parlance of streetcar-riding old-timers). Market Street is the southwest-northeast diagonal on a map where two orthogonal street-system grids collide like tectonic plates. The area, home to blue-collar workers during San Francisco’s port heyday, went into decline, and the dilapidated blocks between Second and Fifth Street, and Market and Harrison Streets were redeveloped in the 1980s. Today a 5.5-acre urban park, Yerba Buena Gardens, sits atop a hidden convention center complex, Moscone Center; it’s a terraced and landscaped haven of fountains, waterfalls and greenery surrounded by the cutting-edge architecture of the dotcom-era, comprising a permanent outdoor art exhibition in its own right.
San Francisco Bay Bridge Under Construction
Julius Shulman
1934
Recent Gelatin Silver Print
14'' x 11''
Photo: courtesy of Robert Berman/E6 Gallery
The Egg
Michael Garlington
2009
Silver gelatin
16'' x 20
Photo: courtesy of Gallery 291
Some of these museum-quality buildings actually are cultural institutions. These include the Cartoon Art Museum, SF Camerawork, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, the California Historical Society, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the newly opened Contemporary Jewish Museum, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind; its jazzy contemporary additions--a dark blue stainless-steel cube with diamond-shaped windows--engage in a trans-temporal dialogue with the building’s core, a staid Greco-Roman-style power substation by architect Willis Polk in 1907. Still striking after twenty years is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, designed by Mario Botta, with its trademark red-brick exterior, black-and-white striped cylindrical tower, and tilted oculus skylight. With a newly opened rooftop garden and glass-clad bridge designed by Mark Jensen, a new lobby mural by Kerry James Marshall (replacing Sol Lewitt’s mural of squares and arcs, which has subsided temporarily to virtual existence as painting instructions), and plans for a nearly 100,000 sq. ft. expansion (showcasing, if all goes well, the exquisite art collection of Gap founder Donald Fisher), SFMOMA remains the Yerba Buena Area’s art flagship as well as the city’s preeminent art venue. Across Third Street from SFMOMA is the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a showcase not only for contemporary visual art, but also dance, theater, film, video, and music--and an architectural delight as well, designed by Fumihiko Maki. Galleries immediately adjacent to SFMOMA on Minna Street are Catharine Clark Gallery and the new Baer Ridgway Gallery, both showing young, cutting-edge work; Chandler Fine Art, with a more traditional pictorial emphasis; and 111 Minna Gallery, which leads a double life as an eclectic art gallery and nightclub. On the other side of the museum is Sculpturesite Gallery, with its plaza of outdoor sculptures leading into a light-filled gallery. Just off Third Street is Crown Point Press, a gallery and printmaking studio offering etchings and woodcuts by well-established minimalist and abstract artists.
From here, you can go south or east for other galleries, all showing emerging to mid-career artists. This part of SOMA is gradually changing from light industry to mixed commercial and residential use, so the distances between galleries increase, and even the blocks are longer. Several blocks southward is Gallery 16, which does digital print editions and publishes several artists’ books yearly--autonomous artworks rather than monographs. Within reasonable distances are Arthaus, LIMN Art Gallery and Andrea Schwartz Gallery with a primary focus on contemporary painting from the Bay Area and beyond. Head east a few blocks and you find the Hosfelt Gallery and Braunstein/Quay Gallery side by side on Clementina Street. Many of these SOMA galleries also take part in the monthly afternoon Last Saturday Art Walk.
CIVIC CENTER and THE MISSION
It has been said that the avant-garde of any period is simply those with the most energy. By that token, the sometimes scruffy, less-than-pristine galleries in the Civic Center and Mission District might presage the future of San Francisco’s art world--at least if you accept the premise of Franklin Melendez, who, in a recent San Francisco magazine article praised the marketing savvy of the new, ambitious Generation Y entrepreneurs who have set up small galleries in the bohemian-hipster Mission District and who take their act on the road, networking at international art fairs, and spreading the word on the artists that interest them. Melendez believes that these new dealers might make San Francisco, which has never lacked artistic talent, but has often lacked buzz and a really serious local collector base, the next big thing, nationally and internationally: the new SoHo, LA Chinatown or Lower East Side. Whether the new artwork shown in these venues can achieve the global success of the Mission School of painting, with its cartooning/graffiti style and embrace of the lowbrow, banal and even abject, remains to be seen. The new Zeitgeist seems to draw as much from the skateboarding, tattooing, and surfing subcultures as from the contemporary art theory; its conceptually-informed pop surrealism, coolly intellectual and whimsically ironic, reveals a lot about contemporary life as seen by fifteenth-generation Bush-Era Americans. Whatever wider success eventually comes, or doesn’t, the exuberant spirit of this friendly art insurgency is evident in the galleries of the Civic Center area and the Mission District, both just a brief streetcar or bus ride west on Market Street from downtown.
In Civic Center, the predominant art venue is the decidedly grown-up Asian Art Museum, its Beaux-Arts building, formerly housing San Francisco’s Main Library, redesigned by architect Gae Aulenti to complement the surrounding government buildings while providing a modern setting for both historic and contemporary art. A few blocks north, up Larkin Street, in Little Saigon, is the Shooting Gallery, while back at or near Market Street is the new Robert Berman/E6 gallery recently opened by the established Los Angeles dealer. Berman describes his newest location as having everything people come to San Francisco to find, the atmosphere of a small town with an urban twist, while also providing an opportunity “to bring LA and San Francisco closer together.” Nearby are the Fecal Face Dot Gallery, named after the exuberant art website, an excellent guide to the Mission scene, by the way; the Luggage Store Gallery; and Lincart, in a new location. Inhabiting the gray area between Mission and SOMA are several independent project spaces and multi-purpose venues where facilities and services coexist with gallery spaces, Chroma Art Design hosting guest curators such as Geoffrey Smith of ArtTreasures.net; and Electric Works Gallery, a combination gallery and digital print publisher of artist’s books--with a store selling books, prints, magazines, toys and “oddments.”
Farther west along bike- and cafe-friendly Valencia Street are the closely spaced Jack Hanley Gallery, Michael Rosenthal Gallery, Artzone 461, and Mina Dresden Gallery, all showing emerging to mid-career artists. Other galleries in the Mission include the Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 31 Rausch, Fifty24SF Gallery, Triple Base Gallery, Queen’s Nails Annex Gallery, Receiver Gallery and David Cunningham Projects. Some of the more casually operated alternative galleries in the Mission and other areas are located in apartments, multipurpose spaces, or related businesses: Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, Ever Gold Gallery, Hamburger Eyes Photo Epicenter, Juice, Needles and Pens, Ratio 3 Gallery and Red Ink Studios fall into this hybrid category, so it’s best to check show dates and hours, and even addresses, on their websites. For that matter, it’s good idea to check hours at all galleries, with schedules being in flux these days.
CONCLUSION
Art lovers familiar with what Catharine Clark describes as the “competing missions and divergent visions” of San Francisco’s many players will recognize this listing as limited; although pedestrian-oriented, perhaps it escapes being completely pedestrian. A number of galleries that do not fit into the geographical approach taken here also deserve mention: Ping Pong Gallery and Ampersand International in the Dogpatch area; Paul Thiebaud Gallery in North Beach; Larry Evans Fine Art in Chinatown; Thomas Reynolds Fine Art in Pacific Heights; Giant Robot in the Haight; and Park Life Gallery and Anthony Meier Fine Arts in the Richmond District. San Francisco and the rest of the art world are adjusting to the changed economy, to new audiences and new technologies, so perhaps this article may serve as a slightly blurred, long-exposure group portrait of a diverse scene continually in transition. Heather Marx and Steve Zavattero of Marx and Zavattero, Inc., summarize: “SF has a tight-knit community of artists, curators, and art professionals. There is a great collaborative, collegial nature here which is unique [among] recognized art centers. However this seems to go unrecognized/underreported as far as bringing SF some art world notoriety.” Alex Meyerovich spoke glowingly of San Francisco’s “God-given location” on the Pacific Rim, and the situation for art is improving, however much it lags expectation and hope. There is more local art journalism, in print and online in art websites and blogs, despite the sudden, recent demise of Artweek, a local institution for nearly forty years. Collectors, responding to the challenges facing galleries, have promised to consider becoming, when possible, art locavores--and buying close to home. Certainly they, and anyone else visiting this beautiful city’s sprawling art scene, will have a wealth to choose from.
San Francisco Art Dealers Association (SFADA)
For almost forty years, the San Francisco Art Dealers Association (SFADA) has been a vital and contributing member of the local fine arts community. Founded in 1972 with the goal of promoting the highest standards of connoisseurship, scholarship and ethical practice among dealers, and advancing art education and public awareness of the visual arts, SFADA has grown along with the Bay Area art market over the ensuing thirty-seven years, almost doubling in size in the past decade.
The majority of its fifty members are located in the city, with a half dozen others located throughout the North and East Bay. Member galleries show a wide range of work dating from the 19th century to the present, in all media and styles, ranging from European prints to conceptual installations. Membership is extended by invitation only.
SFADA’s roster of past presidents lists some of San FranciscoÕs pre-eminent dealers: Wanda Hansen, Diana Fuller, Ruth Braunstein, Kay Kimpton, Peter Fairbanks, Joseph Chowning, John Pence, Karen Jenkins-Johnson, and Tracy Freedman.
The association's main programs include: community favorite “First Thursday” art walks; walking tours for collector groups; the Introductions exhibitions (1974-2003); various seminars, symposia, lectures and panel discussions; and the founding of the alternative art nonprofit space, 80 Langton Street (now New Langton Arts).
New initiatives under development since Trish Bransten became President last Fall include a high school internship program, and “ArtCare,” a fundraising program designed in partnership with the San Francisco Arts Commission that will that will raise money to preserve and care for permanently sited public art.
SFADA’s most popular educational initiative is the “First Thursday” art walk, inaugurated in 1993. The monthly nighttime open house draws hundreds of art mavens to the Union Square area. First Thursday is not only the night that galleries traditionally unveil new exhibitions, but it has become a social networking event for beginning and seasoned collectors, artists, and young professionals.
For almost thirty years (1977-2004) SFADA sponsored July “Introductions” in which member galleries simultaneously held exhibitions launching young artists with their first gallery shows. Although the practice is common now, when the program first debuted in the 70s, the premise of giving an unknown emerging artist a solo show-- backed with considerable marketing effort-- was a risky and innovative concept. Of the many talents who began eminent careers through the Introductions program, notable examples include: Anna Von Mertens, Mads Lynnerup, Emerson Woelffer, and Stacey Carter.
Past SFADA symposia include: “Got Art?,” moderated by the San Francisco Art Institute’s Karen Moss, and “Art, Culture and Technology: Speculating the Future,” moderated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtÕs David Ross, both in 1999; ÒWhat is Art Anyway?Ó featuring Timothy Burgard of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press, and “Looking at Art with an Open Eye,” featuring SFMOMA’s David Ross, Linda Craighead of the Palo Alto Cultural Center, collectors Sheila and Ralph Pickett, and Ruth Braunstein of Braunstein/Quay Gallery, both in 2000; and Wayne Thiebaud and Allan Stone in conversation for City Arts & Lectures, in 2002.
Committed to bolstering the visual art community from the very beginning, SFADA founded the nonprofit space 80 Langton Street in 1974 which evolved into beloved New Langton Arts the following year. Among its exhibitions: “A Tokyo/Bay Area Exchange” in 1977, featured, among other Californians, Jock Reynolds, Suzanne Hellmuth, Darryl Sapien, James Pomeroy, Manuel Neri, Philip Galgiani and Richard Alpert.
Bay Area Art Schools: A Formative Influence
Christian L. Frock
In 2007, Constance Lewallen, then Senior Curator for Exhibitions at University of California Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, organized “A Rose Has No Teeth,” an exhibition that explored the early development of Bruce Nauman’s work while he was a student at UC Davis and later living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. It was an eye-opening exhibition because it demonstrated that the artist’s early investigations provided the groundwork for his long career. It also shined a light on how Nauman, the internationally acclaimed artist selected to represent the United States at this year’s Venice Biennale, experienced the Bay Area as a crucial formative platform for his early work. This was revelatory because Nauman is not often associated with the Bay Area—nor is this region often recognized for its influence on contemporary art, an area that cultural critic Dave Hickey once referred to as “the Bermuda Triangle for artists.” A sampling of alumni from three other area schools—San Francisco Art Institute, University of California Berkeley, and California College of the Arts—reveals that the Bay Area has historically been an optimal site for early experimentation for a number of significant artists. Some more recent graduates, poised for similar success, will exhibit their work this autumn in San Francisco and beyond. San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was founded in 1871—it is one of the oldest contemporary art schools in the country. Though its long history cannot be encapsulated in one sentence, it is generally recognized for educating both influential painters—interestingly, Nauman, who started out as painter, was a part-time instructor at SFAI in 1966—and artists whose work draws on conceptual mediums such as video, performance and installation. Issues of identity and self-exploration are often intensively investigated themes. Joan Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Richard Diebenkorn, Don Ed Hardy, Michael Heizer, David Ireland, Annie Leibovitz, Paul McCarthy, Barry McGee, Catherine Opie, and Jason Rhoades are among SFAI’s noted alumni. Some of today’s emerging artists who can claim the same legacy include Michael Arcega, Colter Jacobsen, Brendan Lott, Tim Sullivan and Stephanie Syjuco (Arcega, Lott and Syjuco are also graduates of Stanford University’s MFA program). Brendan Lott's recent work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Baer Ridgway. In his new work the artist selects digital images from online sharing networks, such as Limewire, for reproduction as oil paintings in Chinese “oil painting factories,” assembly line-like environments where paintings are hand-painted to spec. Lott says in his artist statement: “These works began as an attempt to bring my practice in line with my life as a person living in 21st century America—wholly mediated, isolated, digital and decentralized and devoid of manual labor or craft.” Tim Sullivan’s recent solo exhibition at Steven Wolf Fine Arts included photography and video portrayals of the artist reenacting roles in iconic American films.
Mark di Suvero and Shirin Neshat are among the alumni from University of California Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice; more recent graduates include Sarah Cain, Jonn Herschend, Desirée Holman, Emily Prince, Alicia McCarthy, and Will Rogan. Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice was established in 1923; later Hans Hofmann famously delivered summer session lectures on modern art in the early '30s. Herschend, who co-publishes with fellow alum Rogan an object-based quarterly subscription called The Thing, will present a new film commissioned for the debut exhibition, “Bellwether,” at Southern Exposure during their reopening in October. Deadpan humor is a signature element in Herschend’s work, which often takes the form of performance, video and site-specific installations that leave the viewer wondering how much is real and how much is artistic license. Berkeley’s broad purview in the sciences also cultivates professional artists informed by unexpected disciplines. For example, photographer Richard Misrach, who is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, graduated from Berkeley with a degree in psychology in 1971. Artist, writer and experimental geographer Trevor Paglen, who divides his time between Oakland and New York, completed his doctorate in geography in 2008. Paglen’s research-based practice utilizes photography to document his investigations of covert government programs and military activities. His work has recently been featured in exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (as a SECA awardee) and Berkeley Art Museum. Works by Paglen were included in the recent Istanbul Biennial and will be featured by San Francisco gallery Altman Siegel in a solo presentation at the upcoming Frieze Art Fair in London.
Alumni such as Robert Bechtle, Squeak Carnwath, Nathan Oliveira, Raymond Saunders, Viola Frey, David Ireland (also an alumni of SFAI), Manuel Neri, Dennis Oppenheim and Peter Voulkos form the reputation of California College of the Arts (CCA), which has campuses in Oakland and San Francisco. Originally founded as School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in 1907, the school has re-branded three times and in 2003 settled on its current moniker. Its programs merge design and fine arts to provide the foundation for “the practical and ideal goals of the artist,” to paraphrase founder and cabinet-maker Frederick Meyer. Relational and community-centered practices have also become widely associated with CCA’s educational mission, with an emphasis on sustainability and green-practices across all disciplines. Emerging artists Anthony Discenza, Hank Willis Thomas, Leslie Shows, Mitzi Pederson and Jamie Vasta respectively engage CCA’s broad philosophical approach in their work. A site-specific painting by Shows, who is represented by Jack Hanley, is currently featured in “Wallworks Open Studio” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Part of the group exhibition, brainchild of incoming Director of Visual Arts Betti Sue-Hertz, was to allow the viewing public to visit the galleries over the course of the installation to watch the artists at work and to see the work take shape. During the installation, Shows left a working scale model of her painting out for visitors to gather greater understanding of not only her process, but her end vision as well. Jamie Vasta, who is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery, has a solo exhibition of her large-scale glitter compositions on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery through mid-September; new work by Mitzi Pederson will be featured in a solo exhibition at Ratio 3 from September through the end of October.
These examples provide only a core sample: most Bay Area colleges demonstrate formidable lists of artist alumni, many of which read like an index in Artforum. (The magazine, incidentally, was launched in San Francisco in 1962.) Indeed Mills College, Stanford, University of California Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, and San José State University are all also influential programs. But beyond the colleges, the Bay Area art scene is dense with alternative and non-profit spaces for contemporary art—there are more here than anywhere else in the country—that provide early exhibition and experimental opportunities for artists and host extensive public programs and lectures. The latter proceedings are material for an upcoming program presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary next year. Curated by Joseph del Pesco (also a graduate of CCA), “Pickpocket Almanack” is an experimental school-without-walls that invites guest faculty to create courses by stringing together free public events already scheduled at venues around the Bay Area. Faculty for the first session—set to take place October through December—includes independent filmmaker Les Blank, and artist and publisher Ben Kinmont, among others. The program draws on the transitory nature of a community laced together by eight major bridges. By participating in “Pickpocket Almanack,” students will also expand their sense of the San Francisco Bay Area as a whole.
This sense of mobility is an accepted norm. At some point all Bay Area artists fall into one of two categories: those who go and those who stay. Many who choose to go do so because they feel that they have completed their groundwork and are ready to move on to the next challenge. While this trajectory can be perceived as a negative association, it is, in fact, only a sign of constant change and growth—part of what keeps the area vital and allows for new ideas and innovation. Many choose to stay for all manner of reasons, not least of which is that it is a damned fine place to live: mild weather, progressive politics, strong art community, outstanding food and wine, and an uncommonly beautiful landscape that provides access to surf, snow, or hiking almost any time of the year. As often as people leave, new people arrive. Claudia Altman-Siegel decided to open her eponymous gallery in the 49 Geary hub of galleries in downtown San Francisco, after 10 years as a director at Luhring Augustine in New York, while on a visit to the Bay Area last year. As a place to live, her feeling was that “San Francisco was like a secret I had never heard before.”
Regardless of how long an artist stays in the Bay Area—for a while or for life—time spent here makes its mark on their work in unexpected ways. Educational institutions notwithstanding, there is a sensibility to this place that rubs off: a sense that experimentation, free from the concerns of the marketplace, is vital to making strong work. Recently Patricia Maloney, managing editor of Shotgun Review, a Bay Area online forum for contemporary art, humorously remarked that it was easy to imagine Nauman as a product of UC Davis because the long, narrow hallways of the art building resemble his early corridor works. If you visit the Nelson Gallery, you too will see reason in this observation. Recent graduates working in the Bay Area today reflect the characteristics of this formative environment, much as Nauman’s early work reflects the milieu of the greater Bay Area in the 1960s. Bruce Nauman eventually left San Francisco and the rest of his career is art history—but as his recent retrospective illustrated, the ideas that are given room to grow in the Bay Area can take on a wild, unpredictable life of their own and reach far beyond the San Francisco Bay, sometimes even as far as Venetian canals.
Christian L. Frock is an independent curator and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her independent curatorial enterprise, Invisible Venue, collaborates with artists to present art in unexpected settings. She possesses a master’s degree in curatorial practice from Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she learned, among other things, to appreciate California sunshine. Frock’s recent feature on William Kentridge can be read online at www.artltdmag.com
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