San Francisco

A Brief Visit to the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
by Patricia Cox

Whenever I visit my family in this vibrant city, I like to spend time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Built in 1995, the building itself is an architectural work of art, both internally and externally. It provides a suitable setting for the collection which has been steadily growing since 1935; at that time it was the first of its kind, committed to the exhibition of contemporary art.

The permanent painting collection is a good representation of late nineteenth and twentieth century works. All the well known names are here, as well as some that are either local or less well known (to me at any rate).

It is possible to spend just two or three hours enjoying the whole of what is currently on view and not to become tired or overwhelmed. However, regardless of which style or genre they represent, and out of consideration for the reader, I shall comment on four works only.

Louise Nevelson

Cascade by Louise Nevelson ï At the end of two adjoining rooms, against a white wall, (most of the walls in SFMOMA are white) stands a structure which appears to be a massive black cabinet. Closer inspection reveals a construction of found objects joined together to form “Cascade”. This is the work of Louise Nevelson, American, born Russia 1899-1998.

During the Second World War, materials for artists were in short supply. Rather than give up, Louise turned her creative talents to other forms of expression, cleverly connecting items such as vegetable boxes, cartons, canisters, pieces of metal. The whole structure is painted in matte black, which serves to unify the piece. The result is very dramatic. Of her own work, Louise is quoted as saying, “I am an instrument of shadows”. The way the light falls on this work is interesting to contemplate.

Jess

Jess, 1923-2004, was apparently a San Francisco Bay Area legend in his lifetime.

Click HERE for a brief biography of Jess Collins, the S.F. artist known for modern pastiche.
He recomposed images borrowed from children's books and old science texts.

ï “Narkissos”1976-91 is possibly the biggest collage I have ever seen. Measuring approximately 5’by 7’ and executed in monochrome, it depicts Jess’s version of the legend of Narcissus. The work is described as “pencil on paper paste up”. Instead of using pictures cut from books or magazines, he faithfully copied the work of other artists in pencil, then cut and assembled the selection to create a visual narrative. All the main characters of the story are recognizable, together with dozens of references to other times and places.

My admiring response was, “Merran would love this!” I even spotted a unicorn amongst the myriad of images. Jess described this piece as a work in progress. Note the time he took to bring the work to this stage.

Yves Klein

In a corner of a room between two doorways was a trio in blue and white. A large white canvas featured several cobalt blue shapes. “Untitled Blue” is described by the artist, Yves Klein 1961, as one of a series done with “living paintbrushes”. In other words, take a large canvas, place it on the floor, enlist the aid of a willing naked female, dip her in paint and move her across the canvas.


A Klein "arthrometric" print	Yves Klein applying blue paint to a model in preparation of making one of his "arthrometic" prints	A sea sponge relief sculpture

I must admit that the resultant shapes were flowing and organic. Who said art should always be serious? The thing that made this particular corner so appealing was the combination of Untitled Blue, another large canvas completely done in the same brilliant hue, and, on a nearby white plinth, a large flower, made of a huge blue-dyed sea sponge, on a black wrought iron stem. All three were by Yves Klein. The whole effect was absolutely stunning.

Yves Klein was born in Nice, France in 1928. Between 1952 and 1953, he studied judo in Japan. In 1955, he moved to Paris. His pursuit of a pure color led him to paint in monochrome, particularly in his famous ultramarine blue, later dubbed "IKB" or "International Klein Blue." He made unique work that vacillated between the organic and inorganic; for example, relief sculptures using sea sponges, "anthrometric" prints (of the human body), and paintings made with fire. Considered one of the vanguard of the French Nouveau Realisme movement, Klein's work was featured in a retrospective which toured Japan between 1985 and 1986 at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Seibu Takanawa (later the Sezon Museum of Modern Art). Yves Klein died in 1962.

Mark Rothko

By now you have most likely realised that my knowledge and appreciation of modern art is somewhat limited. For instance, I have never been able to understand what Sister Wendy of TV fame saw in the work of Mark Rothko. That is until recently, when I saw Number 14. 1960. ò

At close hand, it is a canvas of carefully applied paint in three colours, burnt orange, deep purple with a border of aubergine. It has a mystical quality about it, however, when the viewer walks some distance away, then turns to take another look through two rooms of the gallery, it is possible to imagine a vast landscape, stripped down to its most basic essentials.

Have a look at the link to SFMOMA, http://www.sfmoma.org/ to see if you agree. All the works by Rothko in this series demand big spaces to be enjoyed to full effect.

Not much time remained to enjoy such favourites as Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo,or Rene Magritte. It would also have been a delight to have seen a work by someone from Australia. A work by Jeffrey Smart or Brett Whitely would not be out of place. I can’t wait until my next visit.

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Jess Collins - by Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle.

Painter and collage artist Jess Collins died January 2004 of natural causes at his home in San Francisco. He was 80.

Calling himself simply Jess after a break with his family in the late 1940s, Mr. Collins played an important, even defining role in the late 20th century Bay Area art scene.

"He was the essential San Francisco artist," said Harry Parker, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, who knew Mr. Collins well. "His political views and his quirky artistic style, his association with the poetry scene, his advocacy of gay rights -- all the issues that came into his work were so representative of the San Francisco perspective. Only here could you imagine work like his being made."

The Fine Arts Museums own a number of important paintings and graphic works by Jess.

Born Burgess Collins in Long Beach, he studied chemistry at Long Beach Junior College and the California Institute of Technology before being drafted into the military. As a radio-chemist with the Army Corps of Engineers, he had a small part in the Manhattan Project to develop the first atom bomb. After his discharge in 1946, Mr. Collins completed his degree and worked at the Hanford Atomic Energy Project in Richland, Wash., all the while painting in his spare time.

In 1948, a gruesome nightmare of the world destroying itself led Mr. Collins to renounce science for what he saw as more constructive pursuits. A year later, he enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts (as the San Francisco Art Institute was known then).

While there, Mr. Collins studied with some of the most eminent teachers in the school's history: Clyfford Still, David Park, Hassel Smith and William Corbett.

Despite these powerful influences, Mr. Collins gradually evolved his own style of enigmatic figurative painting. He made what he called "translations," lushly painted recomposed images borrowed from children's books and old science texts. Their meaning remains tantalizingly obscure.

Mr. Collins lived with the admired poet Robert Duncan from 1951 until Duncan's death in 1988. Together they made a force in the bohemian San Francisco art circles of the 1950s. With painter Harry Jacobus, they opened the King Ubu Gallery on Fillmore Street in 1953, showing art work, including Mr. Collins' own, that downtown galleries thought too raw to handle at the time.

By the early 1960s, Mr. Collins had become known for very elaborate collages, which he called "paste-ups," composed of old book illustrations and photographs from magazines. In their puzzling density and apparent seamlessness, the "paste-ups" recall the surrealist collages of Max Ernst, but Mr. Collins' stir feelings of childlike awe and wistful eroticism far from the violence of Ernst's vision.

Working outside the contemporary art mainstream throughout his career, Mr. Collins gradually won national critical esteem. It culminated in a 1993-94 museum retrospective seen in Buffalo, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Mr. Collins was represented exclusively by New York's Odyssia Gallery for more than 30 years but also worked closely with Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.

His work appears in major museum collections around the country including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.