Very sad news: Manuel Neri, the essential and only sculptor of the Bay Area figurative movement, son of Mexican farm workers, influenced by Gen 1 ( Park, Diebenkorn, Oliviera, Bischoff, Weeks) but his own man, husband ( of Joan Brown in early years), roommates with Jay de Feo even earlier, father ( of Ruby Neri) later, has died at 91.
A student of Peter Voulkos, Neri traveled throughout the US with Billy Al Bengston ( what a trip that must have been), was the first person to organize a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, was into Funk art, antiquity and color. He left the figure for a while, explored anew abstraction, got into minimalism, returned to the figure. He mostly devoted himself to the female figure. “I wanted an image that expressed all of mankind and for me the female does that.”
This is a rare painting, Nude Model with Bischoff Painting , 1958, before he had fully given over to sculpture. Don’t you agree he could have gone either way?
Joan Brown Was Inspired By Her Personal Life
This painting of Joan Brown’s, Noel in the Kitchen from 1964 shows her early concentration on subjects more domestic and personal than her other Bay Area figurative colleagues and mentors. This is her son Noel reaching toward the counter as his pjs slip away surrounded by two dogs as big as he is. Brown and Manuel Neri were in the midst of family life and the excitement of their work which in Brown’s case extended to thick impasto. “I loved what happened when I was using the trowel…the physical exuberance of just whipping through it with a giant brush”
The Sole Woman in Bay Area Figurative Brings Work Into Life
Joan Brown could only truly be considered as part of Gen 2 of Bay Area Figurative from about 1955 until 65. That's when the lessons of her teacher and mentor Elmer Bischoff really began to hit home and her style changed from AbEx to figuration-so really only 5 years of mature figuration.
But Brown's figuration was even more autobiographical and personal than any of the others. As the sole woman, and a young mother and wife (she was much married, but these years included the years of her short marriages to Bill Brown and Manuel Neri) she incorporated her life into work as a kind of diary.
She had an unhappy childhood with repressive Catholic schools and wanted to 'get the hell out of there." Brown gave her some books of European artists which began her flight from AbEx, (a Bacon show at the Legion had also been important) but a crit that David Park came to give in Bischoff's class where they actually disagreed over her work was dispositive. Park was a big fan.
She was the youngest artist to be included in a Whitney show of 1960, and the trip she took to Europe with Neri in 61 had as much of an influence on her as on him. This painting, Girl Sitting, from 1962, the year her child was born, is possibly a partial self portrait, and has the thick impasto of Park all over it. It is considered to be one of the masterpieces of her Bay Area Figurative era. But some of the other work, less derivative, is also spectacular.
Brown moved her studio home to be near her son Noel, and was utterly absorbed in him. She abandoned this kind of figuration in 1964, bored of impasto and her career after was suffused with flatter work and even more autobiography and mysticism. This marked the most definitive end of the 'movement'. A coming retrospective of her work curated by Janet Bishop at SF MoMA will surely be a revelation.
Sculptor Manuel Neri Creates His Place in the Bay Area Figurative
In general, sculpture is considered separately from painting. But there is one sculptor, Manuel Neri, who today at 91 can look back at his career as someone who was an important part of the Bay Area Figurative movement.
Another Gen 2 artist who was attached to the Beats and to Funk Art, Neri was nevertheless deeply influenced by his time as a student of Diebenkorn, Bischoff, Weeks, Oliviera and the work of the gone-too-early David Park. But Neri instead took the interest in the form and color three dimensionally.
Neri was from a Mexican immigrant family that had worked as laborers in the Central Valley. After a high school class in ceramics, and a course at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and a connection there to grad student Peter Voulkos who became his teacher and mentor, Neri served in Korea, and then traveled through Mexico with Billy Al Bengston (you see how the California artists begin to interconnect). Neri even invited Alan Ginsberg to read Howl in a debut of the piece.
He began by painting, but Diebenkorn thought he was a 'lousy painter' and that he should stick to sculpture. The early examples of his work are Picasso-esque constructions of wood and plaster, and very much in the vein of folk art. But Neri often decapitated his figures too, aiming for a kind of Greek archetype
He also lived with Jay De Feo who influenced him. "I'm a true romantic," he once said. But his more significant attachment was to come later as one half the power couple of the era with Joan Brown which provoked important exchanges including in this piece, Seated Girl from 1964 in a private collection and which sprang from a drawing of her. You can see the Parkian influence of color and shape.
Neri left the figure for a time but returned to it in the 70's and has devoted most of his career to this expressionistic form. He now also has fame as the father of Ruby Neri, another inventive sculptor.
Bay Area Figurative Artists: The Second Generation
The Second Generation of Bay Area Figurative Artists are perhaps not as easily categorized as Gen 1 but there are many things to discover. The 'bridge' generation (see previous posts) was more open to bringing their personal lives into their work, and did not shy away from the erotic or psychological. They also were willing to have one foot in abstraction, not having had the initial resistance to losing painterly, lyrical qualities.
Gen 2 was funkier. They even used that word-drawn from jazz. They did not have as much baggage as Gen 1 about resisting Abstract Expressionism. They also had a changing world to contend with. It was the sixties. They were Beats. Commercial success wasn't a priority.
Bruce McGaw had been the only one to be included in the landmark figurative 1957 show. McGaw revered his teacher Diebenkorn but he also loved Dada. "I just felt that anything was possible," he said. McGaw did not need for the body to appear frontally, or even in full. He could make small paintings of feet. Yet they still pack a punch.
This painting from 1957 does not represent the mature McGaw which hews closer to his beloved teacher Diebenkorn albeit with stark coloration. But in it I saw Ensor, and Bacon and an expressionism that borders on the cartoon. It is merely called Figure, but McGaw revealed it is drawn from a newspaper image of the Pope. McGaw wanted to poke holes at organized religion and repression. Like Bacon's image of the Pope, it is devoid of reverence.
Bruce McGaw is still alive, living in Oakland. He ranged far and wide stylistically, and has had a long life to graze. We should know more about this vigorous, talented artist. Alas, there is not even a hashtag associated with his name.
Oliviera Gets Hot and Personal
Nathan Oliveira whose family had immigrated from Portugal, had ambivalence about being lumped solely in with Bay Area Figurative artists. He had also been influenced by Bacon and Munch and the European tradition of Max Beckmann who was teaching at nearby Mills College. He also came to admire the work and the person of De Kooning.
He was included in the famous group drawing sessions. but he was not included in the important 1957 exhibition as the others were (see previous posts this week)-and wrote that his 'objectives were quite different'. Oliviera's art was described by Caroline Jones as "hot and personal" whereas Park, Diebenkorn and Bischoff, Gen 1, had been "cool and universal"
So he was something of a renegade, yet shared many of the main concerns of this 'bridge' generation. He had a foot in both worlds...and this painting, Spring Nude, 1962, from the Oakland Museum shows that synthesis. There is a feeling of mythology and of everywoman. (Oliviera began painting both sexes, but ended up concentrating on the female nude) The red spectrum is other worldly, the scale is large, and the woman drifts in and out of view, like an apparition. It is as if Park's figures had eventually dissolved into the canvas.
Soon after this was painted, Oliviera also moved to Los Angeles to teach at UCLA but then bounced back north to Stanford. By then the different strands of the Bay Area Figurative Movement had overtaken the original group. If you go to Stanford today, you can see where Oliviera's work ended, in a meditation center designed around his late paintings capturing bird flight.
Paul Wonner and the Bridge Movement
With David Park's too early demise, Deibenkorn should have become the Bay Area Figurative group's leader. But like Groucho Marx, he did not want to be a member of any group that would have him even if it was a counter movement to the AbEx painters in ascendance on the East Coast.
So James Weeks (yesterday's post) and those that followed were not as visible nationally but they still were important locally. Paul Wonner was one of these so called 'bridge movement' painters.
Wonner was looser, and more free. In fact he left the Bay Area and moved to Davis, to teach. This painting from 1960 Two Men at the Shore, part of the Lobell Family Collection, depicts Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown(another member of the 'bridge' group) who were in a committed relationship--but maybe this was the reason for the Davis move. It still was not easy to come out as gay in 1960.
I love the acid yellow of this painting. The men have faces, but they are not recognizable, perhaps due to the need for discretion. There are both Parkian and Diebenkornian echoes.
The "narrative richness, psychological nuance and sheer ambiguity of Wonner's figurative works were unmatched" * When Wonner moved to LA, his break with Bay Area Figurative was complete. By then Diebenkorn was in Santa Monica and the Bay Area movement's thrust has dissipated.
*In all posts this week I have been helped by Caroline Jones’s 1989 tome on the group for the SF MoMA exhibition that then traveled east to DC and Philadelphia. Taken with Janet Bishop's excellent catalog for her 2020 David Park show, any reader who wants more info than my scant posts need only see these two volumes. Upcoming: Bishop's show on Joan Brown (a peek into her work tomorrow).