James Weeks is not a name that will immediately bring an image to mind for most people. Yet his painting, though quite different, and more formal than Park, Bischoff and Diebenkorn has a very contemporary look. His role in Bay Area Figuration is less known.

Weeks had been a billboard sign painter. He became a colleague of theirs teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. He had destroyed all his figurative work in 1957 and begun over.

Weeks frequented jazz clubs and boxing rings. He was not just painting his own world and I was surprised that more has not been written about this white man, who, like Alice Neel, was unafraid of depicting people of color--though they were more part of her immediate world.

There are geometries and brighter, even harsher colors than the others in the group utilized , but the focus is on the posed, almost stilted, photographic, Fighter and Manager, from 1960. Weeks is often singled out from the others for his 'plain style'. He did paint landscapes—as noted by his granddaughter. He had been strongly influenced by the Mexican muralists and imparted a layer of social concern to the movement, which to my eye, seems to bring us right up to the present.