Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1950’s-1960’s is an exhibition, a symposium and a website that revisions a visual triumph that was borne through social and aesthetic conditioning of that time before and during the civil rights movement ; that also brings about a more complete and inclusive picture of Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1950’s-1960’s.*

“In New York when Lee Krasner described what kind of painting she was doing (along with others at the Art Students League) during the late ‘40’s, She said,” that she was breaking up the structure”.

Presumably, the pervasiveness and structure of the Picasso influence (i.e. ,Cubism, etc) was what many were configuring and breaking -up in their paintings in America after WW2.

The “Artists Club” in Manhattan was basically a collective of artists who were “friend/enemies” that liked discussing and arguing art relating to those new issues. It started over tables at a local restaurant. Then (in time), the discussions moved to a small loft where the meetings were held regularly. Few (if any) women were invited to present at this enclave and in the whole group, there were only two African American artists.

In the San Francisco Bay Area- artists who wanted to be taken seriously came together at different studios but the real serious activity was presented at the California School of Fine Arts. Here, artists were teachers and some of the teachers got together privately and presented publicly.

There were young artists of all colors %Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

that were active and committed) that enrolled either at California College of Arts and Crafts or at the University of California art department, who individually went where ever there was some “aesthetic heat and energy “ happening. (This was before MFA or BFA degrees were given) The “School” (California School of Fine Arts) seemed to always be the place to work. the teachers and artists there were on “first name” basis and it all flourished in a “freedom” of academic convention that felt right.

This was still the 1950’s. It was still “tribal.” The ruling hierarchy was still mostly white male, however Sonya Gechtoff stated ,”that the San Francisco scene was much more liberal about the acceptance of women artists than in New York or Los Angeles.”

What about “Artists of Color”? During the 1950’s and early 1960’s, many were applauded, however few were allowed into those enclaves. Even fewer maintained that after-glow of fame over time. The male artist of color was usually in a “gap” between the “Happening Art Community” and the “community of family and childhood”. In those days artists made hard choices between the“comfortable community” versus being “in a collective where they made serious art”. He became a hipster artist: (maybe through other eyes , ) he might be perceived as being the one who always looked as though he is “trying” too hard….. (did’nt “the saying “ state that people of color had to try twice as hard in order to excel?) …sometimes if you were the brunt of some racial “joke” and you took it, so that there was almost a feeling that maybe one might even get to belong to the crowd. If you were a Woman Artist you could not just be a “woman artist”, In order to be seriously accepted , she would have to be perceived by “that enclave” that ” She could paint like a man”. If you were “Gay”, nobody knew about it.

No one had a choice. In back of everyone’s mind there was this saying.
“IF YOU ARE BLACK–STAY BACK
YOU ARE BROWN–‘STICK AROUND
IF YOU ARE WHITE–YOU ARE ALL RIGHT”

Everyone had their place. This was that period before and during the Civil Rights demonstrations.

The time during the 1950’s and 1960’s transgressive behaviors and actions were happening, socially and aesthetically. The book by James Baldwin, “Another Country” seemed to document in fiction social behaviors that signaled a new culture.

In the website, we have selected videos from Art Historians and artists that present notions and experiences about the public social structure outside of CSFA and the San Francisco Bay Area art world. These interviews will “frame” individual first voice interviews from many of the maker/ participants in the exhibition discussing their own histories during this time.

The individual works selected for the Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1950’s-1960’s evokes a tripartite experience “of being inside and outside (as well as) as going stylistically and visually beyond the usual icons and markers of San Francisco Bay Area American Abstract Expressionism of the time.

At our Fall symposium at the San Francisco Art Institute, Invited scholars ,participants, students and interested people will discuss issues and actions around the Rehistoricizing experience.

Despite the public and personal hegemonic social and aesthetic scrutiny of that time, these makers and their work in this exhibition are proof that their belief and commitment did survive with style and honor. In this exhibition much of this work and its excellence withstood over fifty years. They made work regardless of common stereotypes of how and what people thought of them and or their work, from either community.** The compiling of this work and the contextualization of these makers to themselves and to the San Francisco Bay Area art mainstream of that time reestablishes not only the value and importance of that accomplishment, but a rich, viable and very vibrant art historical portrait of The San Francisco Bay Area Art scene at that time.

The work in this exhibition is a Triumph!

---

*“Susan Landauer’s groundbreaking historical study of the Bay Area abstract expressionism helped document an important chapter of American art that has been largely overlooked by the mainstream art historical establishment. Carlos Villa’s ‘Rehistoricizing’ project reframes this period with a new perspective – one that highlights the contributions of women artists and artists of colors.
(Professor Mark Johnson, Director of the San Francisco State Art Gallery, San Francisco, California.)
**RE: “The group of seriously engaged artists” and “The community of family”

---

Artists in the Exhibition

Ruth Asawa was in an internment camp as a child during WWII. Her talent and hard work brought her to study with Joseph Albers at Black Mountain College in the 1950’s. As an educator in San Francisco. She introduced mural making to her students during the 1970’s. Her woven steel wire sculpture were once rejected by the San Francisco Arts Commission, as “sculpture,” because she had innovatively woven metal wire to form ovoid shapes that hung. ( sculpture, according to the Arts Commission, could only be welded or carved, in steel, stone or wood). Asawa’s sculpture was then red-lined as ”craft” or “women’s work.”

Bernice Bing was a painter and social activist and icon for the Asian American art community , Women’s Movement and for the San Francisco arts community-at-large. She was the first director at the South of Market Cultural Center. She had as much as three to four jobs at a time to support her family while at the same time maintaining a rigorous studio schedule.

Joan Brown’s Paintings were iconic representations of the Bay Area Figurative movement in the 1950’s -1960’s. In the early seventies those paintings and her sculpture were prominently noted in the Bay Area Funk Movement. The painting by Joan Brown (in the exhibition) is a portrait of a sculpture of herself by Manuel Neri.

Luis Cervantes was an under acknowledged but well respected ceramic sculptor. In the 1960’s he opened the New Mission gallery, in the Mission District in the 1960’s, later with his wife Susan, started the Precita Eyes mural project which is still in operation. At a SFAI Alumni Reunion in the 80’s, Artist James Melchert confided to Cervantes that he, (Cervantes) would have won a prestigious prize in a local Ceramics competition in the ’60’s had it not been awarded to a girl friend of a close friend of the juror from Los Angeles.

Sung Woo Chun had a meteoric art career here in San Francisco. Within the four years that he was here at California School of Fine Arts, he was represented by the Bolles Gallery and had a solo exhibition at the Richmond Art Center. Sung Woo Chun received a doctorate degree in studio art then returned to Seoul, Korea, where he is director of the Kansong Art Museum.

Bob Colescott is an artist whose work was done in great respect of the traditions of oil painting. His paints his themes with humor, satire, love and mockery……..He mocks love, sex, money, race, poverty, memories, anxieties, and fears. He made great gumbo. Among his many accomplishments, H represented the United States in the Venice Biennale.

Dewey Crumpler teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute and he is also an artist whose early murals are sources of inspiration to all who live around them…African American historical themes were/are held in great esteem at the Bay View and Fillmore districts. Very early on, at 21 years of age, he completed a mural at Washington High School entitled “Peoples’ History”. His Abstract and metaphorical paintings and Installations have been honored in solo exhibitions at the Dominican College at Marin, the Triton Museum in San Jose and most recently at the African American Museum in Los Angeles.

Jay De Feo’s large scale painting, “Death Rose,” which is now in the collection of the Whitney Museum, New York took 7 years, (‘working as much as 12 hours a day, six days a week ) to complete has grown to be a symbol of the Beat generation here in San Francisco, of the 1960’s. She was included in “16 Americans” (Dorothy Miller) at the New York MOMA.

Sonya Gechtoff is a highly regarded teacher and abstract artist who now resides in New York. While she was here in the 1950’s, her paintings as well as her teaching at California School of Fine Arts, was greatly influential. When Gechtoff was wheeling her baby stroller up the hill, she saw an artist and they started talking. She remembers (being both angry and inspired ) when he shook his head and said (something to the effect )” that she would never make it as an artist because she was married and had a baby.” Sonya Gechtoff and Deborah Remington agreed that the “Woman’s Movement” did harm to the general perception of Women artists because (the movement) did not consider “the individual maker.”

Allan Gordon is an artist, writer, and a History Scholar. His art reviews have appeared in Art Week, a bi-monthly Bay area art publication. For many years he was a chairman of the Art Department at California State University of Sacremento. His art work has been shown nationally. At the Rehistoriczing Symposium in the fall at the San Francisco Art Institute, He will share the keynote presentation duties with Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains.

Frank La Pena is an artist whose work has been used in ceremonial rituals and shown in Art Galleries. He is an elder in the Wintu Tribe of Northern California.

Jose Ramon Lerma is a multi-media collage artist. His work was featured at Galeria Dela Raza recently. Because of his long term commitment as a practicing artist from the ’50’s, He was referred to as “The Chicano Beat”. His work: “A Survey of Works 1947 to Present” was presented at ARTZONE 461 Gallery in San Francisco.

Carlos Loarca’s commitment as an artist never flagged in his over twenty years as an artist resident at SOMARTS here in San Francisco. His work was once referred to as being “craft.”

Jim Marshall is a renowned photographer of pop and jazz icons and scenes of the 1960’s through the 1970’s. His work has never been honored as art in a fine arts museum. In the eyes of the public, Marshall’s portraits of individuals seem to speak ‘volumes’ of his subject.

George Miyasaki is an artist and printmaker. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. A leading Asian American Artist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Arthur Monroe–Before he came to the west coast and San Francisco, Monroe was a painter and an art teacher in New York, who was friends with many of the abstract Expressionists there. During the late1950’s and early 1960’s Monroe was a catalyst to many art activities in the North Beach district of San Francisco.

Jose Montoya was a co-founder of the Royal Chicano Air Force arts organization of Sacramento, California. He was also chairman of Chicano studies at California State University of Sacramento. Montoya is a noted Scholar, Poet and Lecturer of The Zoot Suit ethos and Pachuco methodologies.

Manuel Neri is a noted Bay Area sculptor and artist. He is a past director of the legendary “6 Gallery.” During his tenure, poets and musicians performed, at one of those performances, Allen Ginsberg read “Howl,” at the end of that performance, all of the poets took axes and hammers and ‘totaled’ the house piano. Neri started his teaching career at California School of Fine Arts. He was asked by the Administration to teach a sculpture class: ironically it was the same administration that asked him to leave because He did not pay his tuition. The first showing of his sculpture at SFMOMA was very successful. His influence has been realized since the 1950’s. Because of his use of plaster as a sculpture material, since then all art departments in Northern California have used plaster as an excepted media.

Win Ng is a highly influential ceramic sculptor from the 1950’s through the 1990’s. His work was shown at the Braunstein Gallery. With his partner Spaulding Taylor, they founded the famous Taylor and Ng shops that featured art objects that were utilitarian as well as decorative.

Arthur Okamura–At the time that he and his parents were in the internment camp at a famous race track, there was a statue of Man o’ War, the famous race horse. Okamura at 8 years old would leap on the pedestal and “ride” the horse. Okamura was a successful painter and teacher, his work was shown at galleries in Chicago and the Braunstein Gallery San Francisco. He was a long time professor at the California College of Art.

Mary O’Neal is an artist who taught at San Francisco Art Institute. She also served as a chairperson at the University of California Berkeley, Art Department. When she was a graduate student at Columbia University, living and working “uptown”; One day a large abstract painting at her studio was being criticized by some African American poets, for not being a “solution to the problem”. At that moment, O’ Neal turned around, looked at the poets while pointing at her painting which was covered with black pigment, and replied, “is that black enough for you???!!!”

Joe Overstreet is currently a director of a non-profit gallery in the Bronx in New York. When he lived in San Francisco in the 1950’s-1960’s, he was a painter and a player in the North Beach Beat scene.

Deborah Remington was a co-founder of the legendary Six gallery here in San Francisco in the 1950’s. In the mid fifties she hitch hiked all around Asia by herself, ‘learned calligraphy, ‘taught the use of American slang at a Tokyo university, and ’starred in several Japanese noir films. ‘became a teacher at SFAI. Later in the 1960’s she had four solo exhibitions at the Bykert Gallery in New York.

Gustavo Rivera is originally from Mexico, His work has been exhibited internationally and locally. He has exhibited with the Freedman Hackett Gallery in San Francisco and Paula Kirkeby in Palo Alto, California

Barbara Rogers‘ work is widely exhibited nationally and internationally. She has recently retired from University of Arizona. B.Roger’s work and persona have always been honest , open, detailed and professional. I can remember when she became chair of the Painting Department at SFAI, how the undercurrent of critical departmental situations would always become “boys vs girls”.

Cornelia Schulz - Originally from Southern California where she attended Otis Art Institute she came to San Francisco in 1958 to study at San Francisco Art Institute. She was the first tenured womanto teach in the Art Department at UC,Davis, hired in 1973 retiring in 2002. Exhibiting regionally and nationally since 1962 she currently is represented by the Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco.

Nell Sinton was a thoughtful and prolific artist and philantropist who gave time and money to the California School of Fine Arts. Her work is exhibited in the Braunstein Gallery

Jimi Suzuki was born in Yokohama, Japan, and studied with a zen master. Jimmy Suzuki was a freelance artist in New York from the 1950’s through the 1960’s. He has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally.

Patricio Toro is a Chilean artist primarily based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who has studios in Chile and Cancun. He paints very large canvasses.

Leo Valledor was 17 years old when he was awarded a full scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts. At 18, He was given an opportunity to do a solo exhibition of paintings at the 6 gallery. By the time that he was 20 he was asked to exhibit his work at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco. Valledor moved to New York in 1961 and became affiliated with the Park Place Group at the invitation of Mark DiSuvero. Valledor’s work was included in NYC group shows with Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Jo Baer, etc. Solo exhibits in New York and San Francisco.

Carlos Villa was invited by Bruce Conner to exhibit work in the Rat Bastard Exhibition with Manuel Neri, Joan Brown and Alvin Light at the Spatsa Gallery in 1958. He lived in New York from 1963-1969-where he had a first solo exhibit with Poindexter Gallery. Back in San Francisco with questions, in 1969, he was inspired by work from Polynesia, Australia, New Guinea, Africa and began using blood, feathers, beads, broken mirrors because he wanted to bring in ritual and Filipino identity into his art practice.

Esteban Villa is a Co-Founder of the Royal Chicano Air Force Arts Organization in Sacramento, California. He teaches Art Education at California State University. When he and Jose Montoya enrolled as Fine Art Painters at the California College of Arts and Crafts, the program counselors immediately enrolled them into arts education classes instead of studio classes.

Gary Woo has been exhibited in many exhibitions in San Francisco, notably a one person exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and recipient of many arts prizes in San Francisco. He and his wife, Yolanda Garfias Woo lived in North Beach where they hosted many gatherings and discussions during the sixties and seventies.